... or they're actually hitting insurgents, but because insurgents don't wear uniforms or dog tags, it's really hard to tell them apart from civilians.
A heterosexual couple who can't breed (infertility of whatever form) is disabled, not disordered. This is sort of like saying that because a human can't see, that he isn't human anymore. The nature of humans is to be able to see, but we do have disabled humans who cannot.
A homosexual couple's nature is not to be able to procreate, while a heterosexual couple's nature is to be able to procreate. A homosexual couple who cannot procreate is not abnormal, while a heterosexual couple who cannot procreate is disabled. There's a huge difference. We cannot legislate away nature!
The only poll that counts is the election-day poll anyway. Heaven forbid anyone actually do something with a poll.
Of course, we all still like to see our favourite candidate winning even if, for non-Rep/non-Dem supporters, the definition of "winning" simply is "increased numbers", but, even then, the only results that matter, even for non-mainstream candidates, is that final election-day vote.
Is this sort of like "the better OS" as in "OS/2", Mac, BeOS,...? No, when MS turns full-tilt on a specific target, it generally wins. For example, Netscape.
Anyone ever think that IBM is touting Linux only so that MS focuses on Linux rather than DB2?;-)
Actually, I'd say there now are laws against wasting peoples' time - if you do it with spam. What a wonderful, evolving civil law system we have. (I'll let everyone's personal bias on the issue determine if I'm being sarcastic or not with that last sentence;->)
This is a story looking for more research, not more explosives. Unfortunately, most people would rather toss bombs than to do the hard work of finding out what is really going on.
DISCLAIMER: I'm still a Bush supporter, and still don't like Kerry.
However, a "flip" and a "flop" that are 11 and 9 years apart for your two examples, respectively, is not exactly a problem to me... if it is phrased as I said above. That is, that he explains why the change in mind. Even then, 9-11 years is a long time to keep track of nuances in the multitude of bills and amendments that could possibly have been dealt with. Bush simply has not had that many years in which to flip-flop on federal issues!
I'm not going to disagree with anything here - it's all written very well, and very calmly, and someone would mod me down for disagreeing;-). However, I do want to take issue with the dishonesty charge - I take my integrity quite seriously. Just let me point out that I never claimed anything about Bush's internal workings or lack thereof. Only the public statement. After all, politics is largley about the public persona (PR), and not about the real reasons to do something. I only stated that once Bush had declared his intention, he could not go back on it without causing everyone to think he was just another pushover. And that this is very different than any alleged flip-flop on other subjects, such as USAPA, DMCA, or other favourite/. topics. Now, if you want to debate about whether he should have made the original declaration of intent to go to war, or if his reasons were honest, respectable, honourable (<-- see? non-american spelling;-}), or anything else, that we can have in another forum at another date. Well, you can - I've had enough of the politics section of/.;-)
As I've said other times - politics is 90% PR. Since most voters don't take the time to educate themselves, the candidates must educate the public. I'm not saying Bush doesn't need to do this, just that I'd appreciate Kerry's team setting the record straight. Of course, I'm also dreaming of a completely unbiased media which would help all candidates in the education of the public. And interfere with all candidates' attempts to diseducate the public (e.g., negative campaigning - especially false and misleading campaigning). Of course, any help for Kerry's education, or interference in Bush's diseducation, will be viewed by the right as media bias, as would the reverse seen by the left.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that politics is set up to fail, and the more I'm convinced there is no such thing as an ideal.:-(
Sometimes, there is no "right" or "wrong". It's often more important just to make the decision and move on rather than relegating it to yet another committee.
Not to say any of this (Iraq, USAPA, DMCA) is necessarily is such a case. However, I do think that Afghanistan was another similar case: act now or never. No time for a committee - in fact, I thought the US response was too slow as it is. Retaliatory strikes need to be in the "here and now". Not some months later. In such a scenario, there's no time to figure out "right" vs "wrong" - it's act or do not act, and being certain is incredibly important.
Besides, the majority of voters in most countries are not far from sheep in their voting. They like to be lead. So a strong conviction is important and comforting. People like to think they can rely on their government to take care of them and their children. Since 90% of politics is public-relations, being certain is way more advantageous than being right.
DISCLAIMER: yes, I prefer Bush to Kerry. No, Bush doesn't quite live up to my ideals either. No, I don't live up to my ideals either. Oh, and I'm not American.
This is sorta like some of my wife's "rules". She calls them "changing her mind." All I ask is not that she remains 100% consistant (that would be also known as "inflexible") but that she warns me about those changes.
If she, or Kerry, were to prefix all changes in opinion with, "I have come to a new understanding of this," I think I'd have a lot less problem with it. For example, if Kerry had said, "I have had conversations with Americans from all over our glorious land. I think I can see, now, how certain aspects of <insert "flip-flop" subject here> can be abused. I will take my first opportunity to fix this oversight by a) repealing the law, b) amending the law, c) ???," I think I would have a lot more respect for him than I do now.
Bush is so consistant that he is seen as inflexible by his detractors. I can understand their perspective. Some times, such as announcing to Saddam that he had to allow unfettered nuclear inspector access by a certain date or face military action, you have to follow through, even if you change your mind (which I doubt Bush did), just so people know you mean business. Other times, such as USAPA or DMCA, I would love to see education change his mind.
They both have issues. My coworkers are spread over the entire N.American continent, plus Germany and India. At least, these are the ones I deal with on a regular basis.
In my experience, location is a larger barrier to effective communication, if only because turn-around time when emailing with India from here (11.5 hours difference from MDT to at least their location in India) is so long that it takes forever to realise that there was a misunderstanding.
And then ethnicity/culture/language (here I refer to a person's "mother tongue") can incredibly multiple that time zone problem. Then again, so can attitude. I have native Chinese people working with me - those who have a positive attitude about trying to learn English and communicating effectively (and looking like they can communicate at a native-speaker's adult level in email) are much better than those who have no interest in improving their communication. (Guess which one is in management.)
Short version: yes, you can get around communication issues. But most of us want to concentrate on the work at hand, not on communication.;-)
Actually, email does kinda work that way. In fact, http://www.spamcop.net/ is starting to do this. It tracks back from known servers until it finds an unlikely server, and now knows at least one open relay for spam to use - if we can get the relays closed, then we'll know where the spam really originated from.
Pick one. Regardless of which one you pick, there will have been many other options. Bush picked this one, rightly or wrongly. In an alternate universe, he picked Iran - and you are still complaining there were other choices.
You can only make one choice at a time - and the fact that there are other options merely is evidence that a choice was made, not that the wrong choice was made.
I do not deny my bias. If I wanted to do that, I'd just click the "Post Anonymously" check box, and then no one would be able to check.
That said, what you couldn't see, because it really hasn't come up on/., is that I have a relatively strong bias against the police. I must agree with pbox above - the police do need control. That said, I'm not sure that human nature (wanting to believe everyone will act responsibly - especially those in authority) would necessarily prompt either candidate to assume that the police would overreact.
Fascism? No. This is a bunch of cops who would rather inflict than be inflicted upon. I highly doubt either candidate would tell the cops to do this!
From the article:
We were being loud, but I never knew that was against the law.
Yeah, most cities have noise ordnances. And:
...the protest was peaceful until a few people started pushing police. Police reacted...
You start pushing them, they get worried about their safety, and respond. An earlier protest didn't get the news coverage, so I assume there were no pepper bullets fired there. Just a bit of a mob mentality (two opposing sides yelling at each other - it'll get heated!), and a few self-preserving cops.
Actually, the performance gain I saw in SCSI was simply the fact that the SCSI card took care of large amounts of my I/O processing, leaving my CPU free to do, you know, CPU stuff.
SCSI's advantage is not solely in the performance of its devices.
When I'm burning CDs on my IDE-based CD burner, it chews up nearly all my system resources on my puny 1.8GHz processor. But on my old 486DX2/66MHz system, with 5 SCSI disks (no RAID) and SCSI CDROM, I could have all these lit up without any drain to my system. Do I miss those days or what. <sigh>
Is that sort of like defining Republicans as the actions of the party, rather than its members? Group names take on the meaning of its loudest members... don't be so hard on people whose only interactions with your group has been reading about those vocal members. That's just human nature, not a failing of the other person.
Normally, I wouldn't respond to this type of political statement, but since this is the politics section of/., I suppose I will.
I don't think even now we understand the full relationship between Saddam, the Sunni/Shiite/Kurd mess, Al-Queda (sp?), and other volatile groups, people, and events in this part of the world. Saddam probably was unaware of the 9/11 planning, yes. But was he supporting it? That's always a bit more tricky - define "support". Direct financial aid? Maybe, maybe not. Harbouring terrorists? Almost definitely. Moral support? Most absolutely.
If leaders had to wait until all the facts are available, we would never have any action. For one, those who oppose those leaders would simply conceal some facts, and render those leaders incapable of action. Strong leaders take action on educated (as informed as possible) guesses. In politics as in business.. as in family life. If you suspect your teenage daughter of having sex, do you wait to see her pregnant before having a chat with her, or do you try to keep her from those consequences by a "pre-emptive" strike and talking to her before (hopefully) she ends up pregnant?
Decisive leaders, like decisive fathers, act based on the preponderance of evidence, not on having all the facts. Once you have all the facts, it's too late. Once the first plane hit the tower, it was too late to stop the second plane!
Obviously, this is an op-ed piece. Not really news. Then again, this is the politics section of/., so I suppose it fits.
The more politically-aware of us have ideologies which we believe are larger than ourselves. They dictate things like taxes, spending, abortion, stem-cell research, etc. So I won't even pretend to agree with TFA on all points.
To me, the only universal point was to ensure that we think about the consequences if we do something, but, unlike the article, we need to think also about the consequences if we don't. We endanger ourselves to years of extremists terrorising us if we stay in Iraq. Something tells me that if we didn't go in to begin with, we'd be in a worse position after a generation or two of no consequences to committing terrorist acts.
Oh, and I always cringe when a political statement involves "think of the children" mentality. Of course we all care about our children. Too often, this cry is followed by an appeal to do things that otherwise really don't make sense, and are very, very shortsighted.
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... or they're actually hitting insurgents, but because insurgents don't wear uniforms or dog tags, it's really hard to tell them apart from civilians.
A heterosexual couple who can't breed (infertility of whatever form) is disabled, not disordered. This is sort of like saying that because a human can't see, that he isn't human anymore. The nature of humans is to be able to see, but we do have disabled humans who cannot.
A homosexual couple's nature is not to be able to procreate, while a heterosexual couple's nature is to be able to procreate. A homosexual couple who cannot procreate is not abnormal, while a heterosexual couple who cannot procreate is disabled. There's a huge difference. We cannot legislate away nature!
The only poll that counts is the election-day poll anyway. Heaven forbid anyone actually do something with a poll.
Of course, we all still like to see our favourite candidate winning even if, for non-Rep/non-Dem supporters, the definition of "winning" simply is "increased numbers", but, even then, the only results that matter, even for non-mainstream candidates, is that final election-day vote.
Is this sort of like "the better OS" as in "OS/2", Mac, BeOS, ...? No, when MS turns full-tilt on a specific target, it generally wins. For example, Netscape.
Anyone ever think that IBM is touting Linux only so that MS focuses on Linux rather than DB2? ;-)
So does that mean moving from mainframe to windows would be expensive, too, like one of his other points?
Oops, I suppose that announces that I actually RTFA'd. That'll get me either a "flamebait" or an "overrated" for sure...
Canadian (n): An American in all but name, who is proud that s/he doesn't have the name.
(Yes, I'm Canadian.)
Actually, I'd say there now are laws against wasting peoples' time - if you do it with spam. What a wonderful, evolving civil law system we have. (I'll let everyone's personal bias on the issue determine if I'm being sarcastic or not with that last sentence ;->)
That would include most reporters, no?
DISCLAIMER: I'm still a Bush supporter, and still don't like Kerry.
However, a "flip" and a "flop" that are 11 and 9 years apart for your two examples, respectively, is not exactly a problem to me ... if it is phrased as I said above. That is, that he explains why the change in mind. Even then, 9-11 years is a long time to keep track of nuances in the multitude of bills and amendments that could possibly have been dealt with. Bush simply has not had that many years in which to flip-flop on federal issues!
I'm not going to disagree with anything here - it's all written very well, and very calmly, and someone would mod me down for disagreeing ;-). However, I do want to take issue with the dishonesty charge - I take my integrity quite seriously. Just let me point out that I never claimed anything about Bush's internal workings or lack thereof. Only the public statement. After all, politics is largley about the public persona (PR), and not about the real reasons to do something. I only stated that once Bush had declared his intention, he could not go back on it without causing everyone to think he was just another pushover. And that this is very different than any alleged flip-flop on other subjects, such as USAPA, DMCA, or other favourite /. topics. Now, if you want to debate about whether he should have made the original declaration of intent to go to war, or if his reasons were honest, respectable, honourable (<-- see? non-american spelling ;-}), or anything else, that we can have in another forum at another date. Well, you can - I've had enough of the politics section of /. ;-)
As I've said other times - politics is 90% PR. Since most voters don't take the time to educate themselves, the candidates must educate the public. I'm not saying Bush doesn't need to do this, just that I'd appreciate Kerry's team setting the record straight. Of course, I'm also dreaming of a completely unbiased media which would help all candidates in the education of the public. And interfere with all candidates' attempts to diseducate the public (e.g., negative campaigning - especially false and misleading campaigning). Of course, any help for Kerry's education, or interference in Bush's diseducation, will be viewed by the right as media bias, as would the reverse seen by the left.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that politics is set up to fail, and the more I'm convinced there is no such thing as an ideal. :-(
Sometimes, there is no "right" or "wrong". It's often more important just to make the decision and move on rather than relegating it to yet another committee.
Not to say any of this (Iraq, USAPA, DMCA) is necessarily is such a case. However, I do think that Afghanistan was another similar case: act now or never. No time for a committee - in fact, I thought the US response was too slow as it is. Retaliatory strikes need to be in the "here and now". Not some months later. In such a scenario, there's no time to figure out "right" vs "wrong" - it's act or do not act, and being certain is incredibly important.
Besides, the majority of voters in most countries are not far from sheep in their voting. They like to be lead. So a strong conviction is important and comforting. People like to think they can rely on their government to take care of them and their children. Since 90% of politics is public-relations, being certain is way more advantageous than being right.
Given the current options, I'm sure many would choose being shot, so that they don't need to see what comes next ;-)
DISCLAIMER: yes, I prefer Bush to Kerry. No, Bush doesn't quite live up to my ideals either. No, I don't live up to my ideals either. Oh, and I'm not American.
This is sorta like some of my wife's "rules". She calls them "changing her mind." All I ask is not that she remains 100% consistant (that would be also known as "inflexible") but that she warns me about those changes.
If she, or Kerry, were to prefix all changes in opinion with, "I have come to a new understanding of this," I think I'd have a lot less problem with it. For example, if Kerry had said, "I have had conversations with Americans from all over our glorious land. I think I can see, now, how certain aspects of <insert "flip-flop" subject here> can be abused. I will take my first opportunity to fix this oversight by a) repealing the law, b) amending the law, c) ???," I think I would have a lot more respect for him than I do now.
Bush is so consistant that he is seen as inflexible by his detractors. I can understand their perspective. Some times, such as announcing to Saddam that he had to allow unfettered nuclear inspector access by a certain date or face military action, you have to follow through, even if you change your mind (which I doubt Bush did), just so people know you mean business. Other times, such as USAPA or DMCA, I would love to see education change his mind.
I'm waiting for the U.S. to string up a pipeline for "reducing [their] reliance on the Middle East".
We're now talking about two entirely different things:
- Ethnicity/culture/language (they're tightly intertwined)
- Location
They both have issues. My coworkers are spread over the entire N.American continent, plus Germany and India. At least, these are the ones I deal with on a regular basis.In my experience, location is a larger barrier to effective communication, if only because turn-around time when emailing with India from here (11.5 hours difference from MDT to at least their location in India) is so long that it takes forever to realise that there was a misunderstanding.
And then ethnicity/culture/language (here I refer to a person's "mother tongue") can incredibly multiple that time zone problem. Then again, so can attitude. I have native Chinese people working with me - those who have a positive attitude about trying to learn English and communicating effectively (and looking like they can communicate at a native-speaker's adult level in email) are much better than those who have no interest in improving their communication. (Guess which one is in management.)
Short version: yes, you can get around communication issues. But most of us want to concentrate on the work at hand, not on communication. ;-)
Actually, email does kinda work that way. In fact, http://www.spamcop.net/ is starting to do this. It tracks back from known servers until it finds an unlikely server, and now knows at least one open relay for spam to use - if we can get the relays closed, then we'll know where the spam really originated from.
Pick one. Regardless of which one you pick, there will have been many other options. Bush picked this one, rightly or wrongly. In an alternate universe, he picked Iran - and you are still complaining there were other choices.
You can only make one choice at a time - and the fact that there are other options merely is evidence that a choice was made, not that the wrong choice was made.
I do not deny my bias. If I wanted to do that, I'd just click the "Post Anonymously" check box, and then no one would be able to check.
That said, what you couldn't see, because it really hasn't come up on /., is that I have a relatively strong bias against the police. I must agree with pbox above - the police do need control. That said, I'm not sure that human nature (wanting to believe everyone will act responsibly - especially those in authority) would necessarily prompt either candidate to assume that the police would overreact.
Oh, and I'll take that bet. ;-)
Fascism? No. This is a bunch of cops who would rather inflict than be inflicted upon. I highly doubt either candidate would tell the cops to do this!
From the article:
Yeah, most cities have noise ordnances. And: You start pushing them, they get worried about their safety, and respond. An earlier protest didn't get the news coverage, so I assume there were no pepper bullets fired there. Just a bit of a mob mentality (two opposing sides yelling at each other - it'll get heated!), and a few self-preserving cops.Nothing to see here. Move along.
Actually, the performance gain I saw in SCSI was simply the fact that the SCSI card took care of large amounts of my I/O processing, leaving my CPU free to do, you know, CPU stuff.
SCSI's advantage is not solely in the performance of its devices.
When I'm burning CDs on my IDE-based CD burner, it chews up nearly all my system resources on my puny 1.8GHz processor. But on my old 486DX2/66MHz system, with 5 SCSI disks (no RAID) and SCSI CDROM, I could have all these lit up without any drain to my system. Do I miss those days or what. <sigh>
Is that sort of like defining Republicans as the actions of the party, rather than its members? Group names take on the meaning of its loudest members ... don't be so hard on people whose only interactions with your group has been reading about those vocal members. That's just human nature, not a failing of the other person.
Normally, I wouldn't respond to this type of political statement, but since this is the politics section of /., I suppose I will.
I don't think even now we understand the full relationship between Saddam, the Sunni/Shiite/Kurd mess, Al-Queda (sp?), and other volatile groups, people, and events in this part of the world. Saddam probably was unaware of the 9/11 planning, yes. But was he supporting it? That's always a bit more tricky - define "support". Direct financial aid? Maybe, maybe not. Harbouring terrorists? Almost definitely. Moral support? Most absolutely.
If leaders had to wait until all the facts are available, we would never have any action. For one, those who oppose those leaders would simply conceal some facts, and render those leaders incapable of action. Strong leaders take action on educated (as informed as possible) guesses. In politics as in business .. as in family life. If you suspect your teenage daughter of having sex, do you wait to see her pregnant before having a chat with her, or do you try to keep her from those consequences by a "pre-emptive" strike and talking to her before (hopefully) she ends up pregnant?
Decisive leaders, like decisive fathers, act based on the preponderance of evidence, not on having all the facts. Once you have all the facts, it's too late. Once the first plane hit the tower, it was too late to stop the second plane!
Obviously, this is an op-ed piece. Not really news. Then again, this is the politics section of /., so I suppose it fits.
The more politically-aware of us have ideologies which we believe are larger than ourselves. They dictate things like taxes, spending, abortion, stem-cell research, etc. So I won't even pretend to agree with TFA on all points.
To me, the only universal point was to ensure that we think about the consequences if we do something, but, unlike the article, we need to think also about the consequences if we don't. We endanger ourselves to years of extremists terrorising us if we stay in Iraq. Something tells me that if we didn't go in to begin with, we'd be in a worse position after a generation or two of no consequences to committing terrorist acts.
Oh, and I always cringe when a political statement involves "think of the children" mentality. Of course we all care about our children. Too often, this cry is followed by an appeal to do things that otherwise really don't make sense, and are very, very shortsighted.
I think we now have proof ... Darl reads /.