Er, no. In fact, if I actually went to any trouble to scrape up the Kill Bill comments that usually come up when discussing him or his wealth or how he's giving it away, the actual quotes would be far more rabid than my hypothetical ones. The rabid reaction, which I'm looking to shame (for once!) into just chilling out, comes like clockwork from his critics here. Everyone here knows it, and anyone choosing from a thousand daily contributions here to post that particular articles knows it and knows that the flamefest is good for page views and advertising revenue. You know it, too.
No matter what manipulations the wealth goes through, the fact is he's still giving it away.
But that's exactly my point: he's not. In every sense that matters, he's investing it. Which is a far, far better thing than giving it away. He has a vested interest in a thriving market economy peopled by healthy, educated, productive (not dead or dying of hideous diseases) folks, and he's spending the money towards that end. As we've seen over and over again, simply giving it away not only doesn't really help, it usually makes matters worse.
It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.
No, it's not. Exactly not.
He's not taking the cash equivalent of the price of a vaccine and all of the costs of getting that vaccine to a child in Africa, and then just handing that money to that poor person. He's changing the circumstances on the ground so that those people can become middle class folks who will participate in an economy like the one that his existing customers enjoy. That's WAY better than "giving" it to them.
Bill is evil for having that much money!
Money is evil for existing!
He was evil for hording it!
He's evil for spending it, no matter he spends it on!
He's evil if he doesn't spend it fast enough!
He's evil unless he spends it exactly on the things that the most people here who say he's evil can agree that he should spend it on! And even then, he's still evil!
Children with AIDS shouldn't want to live longer if it means saying they don't care about Windows 98's browser implementation issues!
Really, why do articles like this even make it here? Bill and Melissa's charitable foundation - which puts all others to shame - is nothing more than a blank canvas on which to paint your already-existing opinion of the man. We might as well put up an article about what brand of corn chips he prefers, since it would result in exactly the same conversation.
What's disturbing is that this happened at all. What would really be disturbing would be if the source or vector for this seemed to come from Chechnya or someplace where, rather than Russian politics, it was cultural warfare trotting the stuff out as a weapon. In a wierd sort of way, it's actually comforting that it was out of Russia, aimed at a Russian (however stupidly).
Right, so lets void the common-carrier clauses and start eavesdropping on all conversations, snail mail, internet-communications, tele-communications.
Ignore the internet for a moment. If we have some reason to think that a bunch of people who communicate with each other by other means are in the middle of plotting something heinous, we look into it. Wiretaps, moles, that sort of thing. It's a lot harder, now, with disposable phones and other such technologies, which is why that's been, and needs to continue to be updated. Enter net-based communications. Same problem. But when you've got some laptop siezed in Pakistan that shows one end of network of communications, or you've got a guy in Germany that you know has been talking to that guy in Pakistan who had the laptop, and that seems to be making a lot of phone calls right about the same time that he's pushing a bunch of money around, and some of those calls land on a series of disposable Trac phones bought with a pile of cash from a Wal-Mart five minutes over the Mexican border, do you think it's pointless to at least hang onto the calling data? Because when the guy in Germany turns out to be Mohammad Atta's successor, you've at least got something pre-indexed that you can work with - and in the short-notice fashion that's needed when you realize the next Madrid is about to happen.
Eh? What are you drinking? Around these parts folks were simply fed up with *whoever* the incumbent was and voted accordingly. Or the folks who believe that a divided, get-nothing-done gov't is probably the best out of all bad choices.
I guess you weren't seeing the same ads we were here in the DC metro area! The ads this time around were totally unprecedented, as far as I'm concerned. From both parties.
love this part of the story, it's really great. The first stories I read about this incident said there were five Imams, and they were sitting in their assigned seats
Just because the first version you heard didn't include the specific details that actually got the flight crew (and the passenger that watched the guys promote themselves to first class seating) worried doesn't really matter, does it?
How is it effective? In order to defeat it, all one needs to do is book a round-trip flight, purchased with a credit card, well in advance of the flight. BOOM. No more plane. The only terrorists such nonsense will stop are those who have procrastination problems.
I don't mean to suggest that the single feature of the flight I describe (my use of a one-way ticket) is all you'd need. It's larger patterns that stick out. Was the card used owned by the person boarding the plane? Do the billing address and reported home address of the passenger match? Is there some longevity to that scenario? That, plus a lot of other tell-tales aren't going to stop a terrorist, per se... but they have a little impact on which inspection line you pass through, or whether your checked bags should get flipped ninety degrees twice during x-raying, just in case another view will help spot something. Nothing's perfect, but not caring is guaranteed not to work.
So, thanks for making my point for me. Assuming you can actually read and comprehend complete sentences, try going back one more time. I responded to a comment that said fear had nothing to do with the election results. I pointed out that the campaign (on the dem side) revolved pretty much entirely on pointing out why the electorate should be afraid having the republicans in control of the legislature. This seems to be your point, too.
So, rather than constructively pointing out how they'd get Iran to stop fueling sectarian violence in Iraq, or how they'd avoid the problems their party caused last time they were in charge of dealing with North Korea, or what they'd do to keep unemployment as low as it is - doesn't matter what policy issue we're talking about. They didn't HAVE to talk in useful, specific policy terms - all they had to do was have a shrieking fit rather like yours. Fear was their primary tool, and they used it - a lot. It was a much more unifying theme across that party's campaigning than any other topic (since they were, as usual, highly fractured on most actual matters of substance, as are many republicans). Let me know if any of my words were too big or anything, OK? Have a nice weekend.
News flash: White people get treated nice by homeland security. Hardly worth the anecdote
I know you have a lot of trouble with context, so: how pleasantly the people I was talking to talked to me wasn't the point of the anecdote. That (being white, a citizen, a long-time resident at the same address, etc) I was singled out for a look-over, and that my profile within their system was going to flag me for the same thing (four years ago) was interesting. Period.
Submission to authority no doubt spoke in your favour as well.
I bet you hated crossing guards on the street out in front of your school, too. Regardless, it wasn't "submitting to authority." I was helping the people who are tasked with helping to keep my flight free of exploding things and knives to get their job done quickly, and helping them to treat everyone they have to deal with that day a little better by not making their job miserable for them. You're really a piece of work, I must say. Have you ever held a public-facing service job of any type? It's really enlightening.
If somebody prayed to Jesus before getting on a plane because they are afraid of flying, should they be removed as a provocative terrorist?
No.
Now: you and five other people do that, and do it very loudly as a group in the terminal. And, of course, you do this in the context of several years of recent history during which your bretheren have a well-documented history of doing the same thing right before an attack in a public space. But never mind that... then, you and your five friends get on a plane, and ask for odd things: like, those of you that are not large, fat people ask for seatbelt extensions, which you then put on the floor by your feet. Then, despite having your request declined, you get up from your seats, and pair up: two walk up to the first class section and site together, two go to the rear of the plane, and two take the middle near the exits.
Gee, do you think that's maybe a little different than some Jesus-type having a little I'm-a-nervous-flier prayer? Pray all you want: but the actions of those six guys (ALL of their actions) have to be taken as a whole. They were deliberately provoking their audience with this stunt, exactly to get the camera time they got, so that they could talk about how people don't treat them nicely. Gee.
Yeah, because if a few people blew themselves up just after uttering "Jesus" then Christians would change their ways our of sensitivity for the rest of us. This is so plausible that I can see why any utter imbecile might momentarily believe it before coming to their senses.
Hmmm. First, I don't seem to actually be hearing about a lot of Jesus-chanting suicide bombers. At least, not outside of hypothetical conversations. That's really rather in contrast to a lot more than a "few" suicide bombers working for a particular, identifiable team. Really now: how many people you know celebrate suicide bombers as cultural heros? Honestly, now.
Well, if you stopped there, you missed my description of Ted Kennedy, which unfortunately may have been unfair to orangutans. It's my humorless self, I'm afraid.
A religious obligation for over a billion people five times a day.
And, for a group of people that are totally aware that quite a few people have uttered that same phrase right before blowing themselves up, doing so loudly (as the witnesses in the terminal say they did) is just plain provocative.
US Airways pointed them to other airlines, which proves it wasn't a safety issue.
No, it was reasonable refusal to do business with people who, clearly (since they weren't carring explosives, etc) engaging in a deliberate stunt. They carried out several very deliberate actions absolutely guaranteed to imply trouble - specifically so that they could make a scene about it and get the political correctness machinery working in their favor. Personally, I think it backfired, because they were being such asses about it. I hope it did, anyway.
Hell, about four years ago, I was flagged for a super-duper security check at the Denver airport because I was flying on a last-minute one-way flight (bought with a debit card!) as I rushed in to put out a fire at a hosting operation. So there's me, looking more than a little bedraggled, with nothing but the clothes on my back and a laptop bag stuffed with some mysterious-looking replacement parts. The very nice, but very thorough inspectors told me that I should completely expect every flight I take for the following several years to end up going exactly the same way, because the profiling has some real inertia to it. They were correct, as I've gotten the (polite/thorough) treatment every time since, even when traveling on more conventionally purchased tickets. Maybe it's my warm, fuzzy personality.
Not really. It's behavioral profiling - a lot more effective than skin-based profiling. Something that doesn't seem to get the coverage it's supposed to in recent flaps like the imam-fest the other day. (hint: loudly uttering "allah" and dispersing your group of six guys in pairs to the wrong parts of the airplane rather invites a look at your behavior). I may have the imam hair, and perhaps my shoes COULD explode after standing in them for 48 hours straight in front of a rack of servers, but I don't tend to send a lot of those other signals. On the other hand, I've met some very nice TSA people - they keep the best ones on the sidelines for the personal inspections, it seems.
I think the challenge in confronting something with which we are unhappy is lucidly describing exactly what we don't like and offering some course for finding a better solution.
My point exactly, actually. And the problem is that the dems were not (again, my point) offering anything constructive about which to talk. The notion of increasing minimum wage is a red herring. Specifically, it's framed in terms of making sure that it goes up, but also making sure that small businesses aren't "hurt" by having to comply with it. And thus, tax credits. Bigger employers typically already pay well above the federal minimum because they can't attract better employees if they don't. Small businesses - if you look at the whole picture described - would essentially be passing your tax dollars on to their entry-level employees. That's not constructive. Even if we stipulate that redistributing one group's income to another is a good thing (not something you'll find me stipulating, but let's pretend), doing so through this double-hop "increase"/"tax credit" dance is incredibly inefficient, and just places an enormous paperwork burden and IRS involvement in the loop. Not constructive. But the "fear" part was clear: vote for the dems, or the scary republicans will make sure you don't have as much money (and never mind where that money was going to come from in the first place).
I'd have layed all that out in an earlier comment, but I assumed it was clearly known by anyone discussing the issue.
No. Or, if you think that's the entirety of "the truth," then I can point at a scotch-swilling orangutan like Ted Kennedy and say "Democrat Senators drown young women in their cars and get away with it," or harp on Democrat representatives that stash $90k of bribery cash in their freezers. Extrapolating people like Foley into that whole party isn't any more reasonable than extrapolating the last gay-underage-intern-affair-having democrat into his whole party. Um, except, of course, Foley's party wanted nothing more to do with him, whereas the dems put their guy right back in power... but I digress. The universal theme that washed through the dem campaigns this year was one of the scariness of their opposition (they want us to be in wars! they want our gas prices high! they like child molesters in office!). And hence the original point I made: I responded to a comment that said fear no longer played a part in the election, and maintain that it sure as hell does, just pointed in a different direction.
Um... ok, here is a Washington Post piece from yesterday titled "Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion."
There's plenty more coverage of the same, but that one can hardly be accused of coming from a right-wing source, so I thought it would be a valid one.
As for Pelosi's much-trumpeted "new direction" missive... have you actually read that thing? No less a liberal than Michael Kinsley wrote an op-ed piece begging his fellow partisans to, essentially, be sure NOT to read it before they went to the polls. It's the most empty bucket of platitudes you can imagine - except for the part where they want to cure all ills via tax credits... even as they say that lowering taxes is their opposition's greatest sin. Anyway, actually read it, if you haven't eaten yet.
When something is this widely adopted and this tempting to rapidly trot out (because PHBs are desparate for that shiny stuff as they head to the next board meeting), the fact that you're suddenly introducing a wildly more complex set of GETs and POSTs and layered hoo-hah on an interactive page (never mind the purpose of the app) means that all of the stuff that always introduces vulnerabilities will be there, multiplied by the new complexity. And, of course, with a smaller crowd of talented, experienced people truly able to quickly size up the risks as something goes live.
It's not the (non-existent?) inherent security problems in the bundle of techniques we're referring to, it's the weaknesses that show up in the practice of shoddy implementation, cheezy hosting platforms, etc. There's nothing wrong with AJAX, it's the AJAX-envy among less sophisticated operators that we have to worry about. We just have to quit saying it's 'easy' to implement, because none of the underlying bits and pieces are (in terms of being bullet-proof) are 'easy,' and a browser-agnostic soup of a couple dozen of those bits is that many times harder.
Ok, what would you do? You've been accused plenty of not "putting together the pieces" of a looming threat. Arabs taking flying lessons? Nah, that's benign, etc. Then something ghastly happens and it's your fault for not shouting to the rooftops that there's a risk of people crashing airplanes into buildings, etc.
What if there was a bot-net-powered DoS attack on a couple of popular exchange-related sites/services? No big deal in the real scheme of things, but more than enough to seriously spook some investors, and for at least a while, take billions of dollars out of investment circulation. That impacts business growth, tightly-margined industries like air travel, and so on. And you knew it was being talked about - and said nothing! Why, you were obviously in on it, just like the CIA blew up the WTC, etc. You cannot win, in these situations, if it's your job to watch for this stuff. No matter what does, or does not happen, you're going to be pilloried for saying, or not saying what you knew when you knew it. That's the new reality. So, what would you do? Would you ever convey any warning, at all? About anything? How do you draw the line, each and every time, when hundreds of millions of people are going to have different opinions about your thought process?
Fortunately, this last set of elections proved that fear-mongering by itself isn't enough; or that it can last only so long.
Heh! Not really. This last election was all about fear mongering. The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control. They certainly didn't win seats by actually spelling out contstructive, real-world things they'd actually, successfully do that would actually be helpful in any way. In fact, just yesterday they made it clear they were already going to break one of their loudest campaign promises (to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission). Fear is exactly what it's all about, but they just played it differently ("the republicans want to starve your baby!" "the republicans want to make sure your social security money is wasted on dot-com investments!" "the republicans like to see our soldiers die!" "the republicans work for scary corporations that want to hurt you!"). Say you don't know exactly what I mean.
big business that I know is doing things to hurt the poor
If you think that big businesses (such as the ones that manufacture the equipment and provide that technology that you're deploying at the library) wake up each morning and decide how they will go about "hurting the poor" that day, then you really, really need to get to know some actual working human beings who make up those large companies. The standard of living in this country is higher than it ever has been. Ever. The poorest people in his country have more opportunity than they've ever had. The "middle class" of 100 years ago lived very poorly by today's standards.
Businesses do more evil than good? Great! Be sure to stop using antibiotics, refridgeration, high-tech transportation engines, fiber optic data lines, etc. Those computers that you put out in front of "less priviledged" people? Let me guess... you make sure that the components are only made by small mom-and-pop integrated circuit craftspeople that live in rustic villages with socialized witch doctoring for quality health care?
I'm not wealthy, but I'm not poor, either. I didn't get anyone to pay my way through higher education (but neither did I make taxpayers do it through handouts). I went to middle-of-the-road public schools where plenty of my classmates were drug-using idiots or thought that actually learning anything was un-cool. The only thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful ones (though you seem to equate being a success with being 'privileged,' as if someone just hands that sort of thing out as a door prize) is the culture in which they're raised. Meaning, it's not some movie-villain characiture of a mean ol' Big Business that keeps someone from deciding that being articulate, thoughtful, and hard-working will help them earn their keep - it's socializing with people that tell you that being articulate, thoughtful, and hard-working is somehow un-cool. Do you really help some poor schmoe sit down in front of a computer in the library and think to yourself, "the only reason this person can't earn another $10 more per hour is that employers are trying to hurt him"? Or do you ever say to yourself, "the only thing in between this person and double his income, great health insurance, and more opportunities is a shift away from a sense of entitlement and towards the same sense of opportunity that makes successes out of immigrant families that work three jobs for a few years so that they can be the people the locals hate for being a success?"
I like how you assume that I can't do it because I'm somehow unskilled or stupid. That's the implication in your words.
No, you're the one that said you can't make enough money to leave. Read your own comment. So, it's not that you can't, it's that despite what you're whining about, you don't want to. Why? Aren't there poor people in the UK that would also benefit from your selflessness? So, take all of your skills, spend a year making a real salary, save half of it in the bank (maybe even invest a little bit of it a small business that one of your poor patrons wants to start - ever think of how much that would help that person? no?), and then move to the place you say is better, and help people there so that you can stop complaining about how horrible it is here.
Firefox and Opera are what people are using anyway.
If by "using" you mean "in a small minority of the traffic that I see on the many sites I track," then, sure, I guess you're right. But you're not, of course. About 90% of the traffic I see, and about 94% of the revenue I see created, comes from people using MSIE - typically v6+. Wishful thinking doesn't make it otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering how rabidly defensive your post is
Er, no. In fact, if I actually went to any trouble to scrape up the Kill Bill comments that usually come up when discussing him or his wealth or how he's giving it away, the actual quotes would be far more rabid than my hypothetical ones. The rabid reaction, which I'm looking to shame (for once!) into just chilling out, comes like clockwork from his critics here. Everyone here knows it, and anyone choosing from a thousand daily contributions here to post that particular articles knows it and knows that the flamefest is good for page views and advertising revenue. You know it, too.
No matter what manipulations the wealth goes through, the fact is he's still giving it away.
But that's exactly my point: he's not. In every sense that matters, he's investing it. Which is a far, far better thing than giving it away. He has a vested interest in a thriving market economy peopled by healthy, educated, productive (not dead or dying of hideous diseases) folks, and he's spending the money towards that end. As we've seen over and over again, simply giving it away not only doesn't really help, it usually makes matters worse.
It's literally taking (willingly) from the rich and giving to the poor.
No, it's not. Exactly not.
He's not taking the cash equivalent of the price of a vaccine and all of the costs of getting that vaccine to a child in Africa, and then just handing that money to that poor person. He's changing the circumstances on the ground so that those people can become middle class folks who will participate in an economy like the one that his existing customers enjoy. That's WAY better than "giving" it to them.
Bill is evil for having that much money!
Money is evil for existing!
He was evil for hording it!
He's evil for spending it, no matter he spends it on!
He's evil if he doesn't spend it fast enough!
He's evil unless he spends it exactly on the things that the most people here who say he's evil can agree that he should spend it on! And even then, he's still evil!
Children with AIDS shouldn't want to live longer if it means saying they don't care about Windows 98's browser implementation issues!
Really, why do articles like this even make it here? Bill and Melissa's charitable foundation - which puts all others to shame - is nothing more than a blank canvas on which to paint your already-existing opinion of the man. We might as well put up an article about what brand of corn chips he prefers, since it would result in exactly the same conversation.
according to a disturbing report...
What's disturbing is that this happened at all. What would really be disturbing would be if the source or vector for this seemed to come from Chechnya or someplace where, rather than Russian politics, it was cultural warfare trotting the stuff out as a weapon. In a wierd sort of way, it's actually comforting that it was out of Russia, aimed at a Russian (however stupidly).
Right, so lets void the common-carrier clauses and start eavesdropping on all conversations, snail mail, internet-communications, tele-communications.
Ignore the internet for a moment. If we have some reason to think that a bunch of people who communicate with each other by other means are in the middle of plotting something heinous, we look into it. Wiretaps, moles, that sort of thing. It's a lot harder, now, with disposable phones and other such technologies, which is why that's been, and needs to continue to be updated. Enter net-based communications. Same problem. But when you've got some laptop siezed in Pakistan that shows one end of network of communications, or you've got a guy in Germany that you know has been talking to that guy in Pakistan who had the laptop, and that seems to be making a lot of phone calls right about the same time that he's pushing a bunch of money around, and some of those calls land on a series of disposable Trac phones bought with a pile of cash from a Wal-Mart five minutes over the Mexican border, do you think it's pointless to at least hang onto the calling data? Because when the guy in Germany turns out to be Mohammad Atta's successor, you've at least got something pre-indexed that you can work with - and in the short-notice fashion that's needed when you realize the next Madrid is about to happen.
Eh? What are you drinking? Around these parts folks were simply fed up with *whoever* the incumbent was and voted accordingly. Or the folks who believe that a divided, get-nothing-done gov't is probably the best out of all bad choices.
I guess you weren't seeing the same ads we were here in the DC metro area! The ads this time around were totally unprecedented, as far as I'm concerned. From both parties.
love this part of the story, it's really great. The first stories I read about this incident said there were five Imams, and they were sitting in their assigned seats
Just because the first version you heard didn't include the specific details that actually got the flight crew (and the passenger that watched the guys promote themselves to first class seating) worried doesn't really matter, does it?
How is it effective? In order to defeat it, all one needs to do is book a round-trip flight, purchased with a credit card, well in advance of the flight. BOOM. No more plane. The only terrorists such nonsense will stop are those who have procrastination problems.
I don't mean to suggest that the single feature of the flight I describe (my use of a one-way ticket) is all you'd need. It's larger patterns that stick out. Was the card used owned by the person boarding the plane? Do the billing address and reported home address of the passenger match? Is there some longevity to that scenario? That, plus a lot of other tell-tales aren't going to stop a terrorist, per se... but they have a little impact on which inspection line you pass through, or whether your checked bags should get flipped ninety degrees twice during x-raying, just in case another view will help spot something. Nothing's perfect, but not caring is guaranteed not to work.
So, thanks for making my point for me. Assuming you can actually read and comprehend complete sentences, try going back one more time. I responded to a comment that said fear had nothing to do with the election results. I pointed out that the campaign (on the dem side) revolved pretty much entirely on pointing out why the electorate should be afraid having the republicans in control of the legislature. This seems to be your point, too.
So, rather than constructively pointing out how they'd get Iran to stop fueling sectarian violence in Iraq, or how they'd avoid the problems their party caused last time they were in charge of dealing with North Korea, or what they'd do to keep unemployment as low as it is - doesn't matter what policy issue we're talking about. They didn't HAVE to talk in useful, specific policy terms - all they had to do was have a shrieking fit rather like yours. Fear was their primary tool, and they used it - a lot. It was a much more unifying theme across that party's campaigning than any other topic (since they were, as usual, highly fractured on most actual matters of substance, as are many republicans). Let me know if any of my words were too big or anything, OK? Have a nice weekend.
News flash: White people get treated nice by homeland security. Hardly worth the anecdote
I know you have a lot of trouble with context, so: how pleasantly the people I was talking to talked to me wasn't the point of the anecdote. That (being white, a citizen, a long-time resident at the same address, etc) I was singled out for a look-over, and that my profile within their system was going to flag me for the same thing (four years ago) was interesting. Period.
Submission to authority no doubt spoke in your favour as well.
I bet you hated crossing guards on the street out in front of your school, too. Regardless, it wasn't "submitting to authority." I was helping the people who are tasked with helping to keep my flight free of exploding things and knives to get their job done quickly, and helping them to treat everyone they have to deal with that day a little better by not making their job miserable for them. You're really a piece of work, I must say. Have you ever held a public-facing service job of any type? It's really enlightening.
If somebody prayed to Jesus before getting on a plane because they are afraid of flying, should they be removed as a provocative terrorist?
No.
Now: you and five other people do that, and do it very loudly as a group in the terminal. And, of course, you do this in the context of several years of recent history during which your bretheren have a well-documented history of doing the same thing right before an attack in a public space. But never mind that... then, you and your five friends get on a plane, and ask for odd things: like, those of you that are not large, fat people ask for seatbelt extensions, which you then put on the floor by your feet. Then, despite having your request declined, you get up from your seats, and pair up: two walk up to the first class section and site together, two go to the rear of the plane, and two take the middle near the exits.
Gee, do you think that's maybe a little different than some Jesus-type having a little I'm-a-nervous-flier prayer? Pray all you want: but the actions of those six guys (ALL of their actions) have to be taken as a whole. They were deliberately provoking their audience with this stunt, exactly to get the camera time they got, so that they could talk about how people don't treat them nicely. Gee.
Yeah, because if a few people blew themselves up just after uttering "Jesus" then Christians would change their ways our of sensitivity for the rest of us. This is so plausible that I can see why any utter imbecile might momentarily believe it before coming to their senses.
Hmmm. First, I don't seem to actually be hearing about a lot of Jesus-chanting suicide bombers. At least, not outside of hypothetical conversations. That's really rather in contrast to a lot more than a "few" suicide bombers working for a particular, identifiable team. Really now: how many people you know celebrate suicide bombers as cultural heros? Honestly, now.
Well, if you stopped there, you missed my description of Ted Kennedy, which unfortunately may have been unfair to orangutans. It's my humorless self, I'm afraid.
A religious obligation for over a billion people five times a day.
And, for a group of people that are totally aware that quite a few people have uttered that same phrase right before blowing themselves up, doing so loudly (as the witnesses in the terminal say they did) is just plain provocative.
US Airways pointed them to other airlines, which proves it wasn't a safety issue.
No, it was reasonable refusal to do business with people who, clearly (since they weren't carring explosives, etc) engaging in a deliberate stunt. They carried out several very deliberate actions absolutely guaranteed to imply trouble - specifically so that they could make a scene about it and get the political correctness machinery working in their favor. Personally, I think it backfired, because they were being such asses about it. I hope it did, anyway.
Wasn't this talked about at LEAST 2 years ago?
Hell, about four years ago, I was flagged for a super-duper security check at the Denver airport because I was flying on a last-minute one-way flight (bought with a debit card!) as I rushed in to put out a fire at a hosting operation. So there's me, looking more than a little bedraggled, with nothing but the clothes on my back and a laptop bag stuffed with some mysterious-looking replacement parts. The very nice, but very thorough inspectors told me that I should completely expect every flight I take for the following several years to end up going exactly the same way, because the profiling has some real inertia to it. They were correct, as I've gotten the (polite/thorough) treatment every time since, even when traveling on more conventionally purchased tickets. Maybe it's my warm, fuzzy personality.
Not really. It's behavioral profiling - a lot more effective than skin-based profiling. Something that doesn't seem to get the coverage it's supposed to in recent flaps like the imam-fest the other day. (hint: loudly uttering "allah" and dispersing your group of six guys in pairs to the wrong parts of the airplane rather invites a look at your behavior). I may have the imam hair, and perhaps my shoes COULD explode after standing in them for 48 hours straight in front of a rack of servers, but I don't tend to send a lot of those other signals. On the other hand, I've met some very nice TSA people - they keep the best ones on the sidelines for the personal inspections, it seems.
I think the challenge in confronting something with which we are unhappy is lucidly describing exactly what we don't like and offering some course for finding a better solution.
My point exactly, actually. And the problem is that the dems were not (again, my point) offering anything constructive about which to talk. The notion of increasing minimum wage is a red herring. Specifically, it's framed in terms of making sure that it goes up, but also making sure that small businesses aren't "hurt" by having to comply with it. And thus, tax credits. Bigger employers typically already pay well above the federal minimum because they can't attract better employees if they don't. Small businesses - if you look at the whole picture described - would essentially be passing your tax dollars on to their entry-level employees. That's not constructive. Even if we stipulate that redistributing one group's income to another is a good thing (not something you'll find me stipulating, but let's pretend), doing so through this double-hop "increase"/"tax credit" dance is incredibly inefficient, and just places an enormous paperwork burden and IRS involvement in the loop. Not constructive. But the "fear" part was clear: vote for the dems, or the scary republicans will make sure you don't have as much money (and never mind where that money was going to come from in the first place).
I'd have layed all that out in an earlier comment, but I assumed it was clearly known by anyone discussing the issue.
So they won by telling the truth?
No. Or, if you think that's the entirety of "the truth," then I can point at a scotch-swilling orangutan like Ted Kennedy and say "Democrat Senators drown young women in their cars and get away with it," or harp on Democrat representatives that stash $90k of bribery cash in their freezers. Extrapolating people like Foley into that whole party isn't any more reasonable than extrapolating the last gay-underage-intern-affair-having democrat into his whole party. Um, except, of course, Foley's party wanted nothing more to do with him, whereas the dems put their guy right back in power... but I digress. The universal theme that washed through the dem campaigns this year was one of the scariness of their opposition (they want us to be in wars! they want our gas prices high! they like child molesters in office!). And hence the original point I made: I responded to a comment that said fear no longer played a part in the election, and maintain that it sure as hell does, just pointed in a different direction.
Can you site some sort of reference for this?
Um... ok, here is a Washington Post piece from yesterday titled "Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion."
There's plenty more coverage of the same, but that one can hardly be accused of coming from a right-wing source, so I thought it would be a valid one.
As for Pelosi's much-trumpeted "new direction" missive... have you actually read that thing? No less a liberal than Michael Kinsley wrote an op-ed piece begging his fellow partisans to, essentially, be sure NOT to read it before they went to the polls. It's the most empty bucket of platitudes you can imagine - except for the part where they want to cure all ills via tax credits... even as they say that lowering taxes is their opposition's greatest sin. Anyway, actually read it, if you haven't eaten yet.
So, I guess I can't help but laugh when you try to blame (or credit depending on your perspective) the Democrats for the Republican loss in Congress.
You're missing the point! They didn't win by offering anything constructive, they won by saying "they suck, and we're not them!"
When something is this widely adopted and this tempting to rapidly trot out (because PHBs are desparate for that shiny stuff as they head to the next board meeting), the fact that you're suddenly introducing a wildly more complex set of GETs and POSTs and layered hoo-hah on an interactive page (never mind the purpose of the app) means that all of the stuff that always introduces vulnerabilities will be there, multiplied by the new complexity. And, of course, with a smaller crowd of talented, experienced people truly able to quickly size up the risks as something goes live.
It's not the (non-existent?) inherent security problems in the bundle of techniques we're referring to, it's the weaknesses that show up in the practice of shoddy implementation, cheezy hosting platforms, etc. There's nothing wrong with AJAX, it's the AJAX-envy among less sophisticated operators that we have to worry about. We just have to quit saying it's 'easy' to implement, because none of the underlying bits and pieces are (in terms of being bullet-proof) are 'easy,' and a browser-agnostic soup of a couple dozen of those bits is that many times harder.
what are they actually up to, hmmmmmmmmmmmm?
Ok, what would you do? You've been accused plenty of not "putting together the pieces" of a looming threat. Arabs taking flying lessons? Nah, that's benign, etc. Then something ghastly happens and it's your fault for not shouting to the rooftops that there's a risk of people crashing airplanes into buildings, etc.
What if there was a bot-net-powered DoS attack on a couple of popular exchange-related sites/services? No big deal in the real scheme of things, but more than enough to seriously spook some investors, and for at least a while, take billions of dollars out of investment circulation. That impacts business growth, tightly-margined industries like air travel, and so on. And you knew it was being talked about - and said nothing! Why, you were obviously in on it, just like the CIA blew up the WTC, etc. You cannot win, in these situations, if it's your job to watch for this stuff. No matter what does, or does not happen, you're going to be pilloried for saying, or not saying what you knew when you knew it. That's the new reality. So, what would you do? Would you ever convey any warning, at all? About anything? How do you draw the line, each and every time, when hundreds of millions of people are going to have different opinions about your thought process?
Fortunately, this last set of elections proved that fear-mongering by itself isn't enough; or that it can last only so long.
Heh! Not really. This last election was all about fear mongering. The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control. They certainly didn't win seats by actually spelling out contstructive, real-world things they'd actually, successfully do that would actually be helpful in any way. In fact, just yesterday they made it clear they were already going to break one of their loudest campaign promises (to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission). Fear is exactly what it's all about, but they just played it differently ("the republicans want to starve your baby!" "the republicans want to make sure your social security money is wasted on dot-com investments!" "the republicans like to see our soldiers die!" "the republicans work for scary corporations that want to hurt you!"). Say you don't know exactly what I mean.
big business that I know is doing things to hurt the poor
If you think that big businesses (such as the ones that manufacture the equipment and provide that technology that you're deploying at the library) wake up each morning and decide how they will go about "hurting the poor" that day, then you really, really need to get to know some actual working human beings who make up those large companies. The standard of living in this country is higher than it ever has been. Ever. The poorest people in his country have more opportunity than they've ever had. The "middle class" of 100 years ago lived very poorly by today's standards.
Businesses do more evil than good? Great! Be sure to stop using antibiotics, refridgeration, high-tech transportation engines, fiber optic data lines, etc. Those computers that you put out in front of "less priviledged" people? Let me guess... you make sure that the components are only made by small mom-and-pop integrated circuit craftspeople that live in rustic villages with socialized witch doctoring for quality health care?
I'm not wealthy, but I'm not poor, either. I didn't get anyone to pay my way through higher education (but neither did I make taxpayers do it through handouts). I went to middle-of-the-road public schools where plenty of my classmates were drug-using idiots or thought that actually learning anything was un-cool. The only thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful ones (though you seem to equate being a success with being 'privileged,' as if someone just hands that sort of thing out as a door prize) is the culture in which they're raised. Meaning, it's not some movie-villain characiture of a mean ol' Big Business that keeps someone from deciding that being articulate, thoughtful, and hard-working will help them earn their keep - it's socializing with people that tell you that being articulate, thoughtful, and hard-working is somehow un-cool. Do you really help some poor schmoe sit down in front of a computer in the library and think to yourself, "the only reason this person can't earn another $10 more per hour is that employers are trying to hurt him"? Or do you ever say to yourself, "the only thing in between this person and double his income, great health insurance, and more opportunities is a shift away from a sense of entitlement and towards the same sense of opportunity that makes successes out of immigrant families that work three jobs for a few years so that they can be the people the locals hate for being a success?"
I like how you assume that I can't do it because I'm somehow unskilled or stupid. That's the implication in your words.
No, you're the one that said you can't make enough money to leave. Read your own comment. So, it's not that you can't, it's that despite what you're whining about, you don't want to. Why? Aren't there poor people in the UK that would also benefit from your selflessness? So, take all of your skills, spend a year making a real salary, save half of it in the bank (maybe even invest a little bit of it a small business that one of your poor patrons wants to start - ever think of how much that would help that person? no?), and then move to the place you say is better, and help people there so that you can stop complaining about how horrible it is here.
Firefox and Opera are what people are using anyway.
If by "using" you mean "in a small minority of the traffic that I see on the many sites I track," then, sure, I guess you're right. But you're not, of course. About 90% of the traffic I see, and about 94% of the revenue I see created, comes from people using MSIE - typically v6+. Wishful thinking doesn't make it otherwise.