imagine this floating around a programming group -- being passed from one person to the next, each with their partial understanding of the whole system.
Imagine if that group had a manager!!! It would float around a board of directors, being passed from one department head to the next, each with their limited or non-existant understanding of anything related to the project. Finally, after weeks of meetings, it would be assigned to the development manager who would dump it into the lap of the programming group you mentioned with incorrect instructions on how to fix the problem.
Would you actually listen to yourself? You compare "A Few Hundred" civilian deaths to something like spilling a can of coke! Do you actually pause for a second and think about the fact that that is "A few hundred" individuals??? PEOPLE!!!! like you and me, wiped off the face of the planet by a bomb dropped from 10000 feet, the fact that such destructive power can be unleashed from so far away perfectly sums up the current American administrations (and anyone who supports thems) values, "Hey, I didnt see them get ripped apart in front of their families in a shower of flying debris, so i'll just call it a statistic, who could get offended by a statistic?" that distance between pulling the trigger and actually seeing the person die is what allows people to "justify" the war, as they have no connection with the war actually killing people, they see numbers like 30'000 Iraqi Civilians (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/) (Thats 30'000 people who were living and breathing 30 seconds before a state funded and trained pilot decided to release a bomb costing more than all those people would probably ever earn in their entire working lives combined, if they survived) think about that, think about where you live and if suddenly 30'000 of those people didnt exist anymore, does 30'000 deaths "balance" out the 3000 from 9/11?? i bet it makes you feel good that "Your country is making them pay!" Just remember that an eye for an eye will leave the world blind
I never said I was happy about civilian deaths, but to compare a stray missile to a suicide bomber is wrong. Trust me, if the suicide bombers had the aresenal of the US Military, none of us would be here talking about it!
But, if you to count numbers, fine. We'll use the number you posted of 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. Now let's assume these were innocent civilians, killed by US personel, and not suicide bombers (also a civilian), terrorists charging checkpoints or making bombs or whatever. We'll also assume that these deaths were not the result of other means such as suicide bomber or whatever.
Now, compare that 30,000 number to the numbers Unicef reported. Unicef reported 1,000,000 deaths of children... just children, due to Saddam Hussein. Of course, this does not include the numbers of bodies we've found in mass graves (hundreds of thousands of men, women and children).
So, if we take your numbers and Unicef numbers, by my public school math skillz, I figure we saved 970,000 lives. These are people we are talking about. 970,000 people just like you and me. So, yeah! It does make me feel good that my country is doing something about it. Does it make you feel good when a mass grave is discovered filled with the skeletal remains of mothers still holding their toddler age children?
Of course, if you had your way, there would still be children dying from preventable diseases and bullets to the head as opposed to the accidental and rare stray missile.
Science doesn't have a specifically anti-Christian bias. Certain Fundamentalists simply just see something there and use it to play up their own sense of persecution.
It's not so much the scientist that have an anti-Christian bias. It's people like so many here on slashdot that take every evolutionary discovery and try to use to beat Christians over the head saying, "See, ID people are stoopid".
Truth is, neither scientist nor fundamentalists can full explain how the universe was created. What most of us know for sure is that it exists.
"Proving" evolution does not disprove the existence of God. Even Einstein spoke of God. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive.
Personally, I believe in God. I believe in ID. This does not mean that I do not believe in evolution. The fact is, my feeble mind can not comprehend how God created life and the universe. For all I know, evolution may be the intelligent design. I won't know until I meet God and ask him (or her:-)
All I know is: 1) God does not play dice with the Universe and 2) Do not tell God what to do with His dice.
Furthermore, the USA simply stated that everybody arrested in Guantanamo is exempted from the Geneva conventions. Why? Well, because. Well, yeah. Because the Geneva conventions only apply to uniformed soldiers. These guys were neither uniformed not soldiers of any government. That is why Geneva does not apply.
While a little bit of collateral damage (i.e., a few hundred dead civilians) is perfectly acceptable when a missile misses its target, its against "the rules of war" to blow yourself up in midst a crowd of civilians. I think the main difference here is that when you blow yourself up in a crowd of civilians, your target is the civilians . When a US missile goes astray and lands in a neighborhood, it was an accident, and the US apologizes repeatedly for it. I have yet to hear Bin Laden apologize for the accidental civilian deaths on 9-11. That's the difference between collateral damage and plain old targets.
Sounds like a good experiment and I'd be fascinated with the results, if I had not already been through such "torture".
Unfortunately, I have already experienced the joys of sleep depravation and all of its symptoms. While I was in the Army, for the first two months, I was never allowed more than 5 hrs sleep in any 24 hrs. Officially, we were allowed 1 hr of sleep and 1 hot meal a day. On nights when we were allowed more than the guranteed 1 hr sleep, it was usually interrupted by an hour of "fire watch" (where you walk around for an hour looking for fires before waking up the next guy to do the same) or CQ (sit and watch a phone from 3:00-4:00am just in case the Prez calls). Of course that was during Basic/OSUT. It got much worse once I went to my active unit.
As for the AC, I only wish I had such a thing. Unfortunately we had to drive across the deserts of California, Kuwait and the planes of Texas without such comforts. The only relief we had was warm water from a canteen. Of course, I understand that the cold sux too as I spent a winter at Ft. Knox KY, in formation every morning before the sun came up in shorts waiting for PT to start.
Of course, this does not count as the psychological "torture" I had to put up with. I got used to having myself, my girlfriend and my mother insulted every waking moment. So you'll have to forgive me for not seeing things from your point of view. I have first hand experience in this sort of treatment.
There's more. One detainee had his head and mouth duct-taped. Another was "short-shackled" to the eye-bolt in the floor of the interrogation room. Detainees were subject to 16-20 hour interrogations plus sleep deprivation and isolation for up to 54 consecutive days. Strip searches were used as an interrogation technique. Detainees would be locked in a refrigerated room known as the "freezer" for extended periods of time. In the course of interrogation, a detainee was told that his family had been captured by the United States and that they were "in danger". Barking, growling, teeth-baring military dogs were used in interrogations.
You mean they were isolated, locked up and had dogs barked at them?!!? My wife does that to me before 9:00am! Did the US Military run out of finger-nail splints? Was there no one to give them the ol' Texas Titty Twister?
I'm sorry, but psychological "torture" does not qualify as torture in my book. Until someone is physically abused, I don't call it torture. I don't care what AM-Nasty Intl says. Unless it's Club Med, it's not torture. If you want to see torture, take a look at Abu Ghraib before we got there. Pay a visit to a N. Korean work camp. See how Jewish prisoners (or suspected sympathizers) are treated in Palestine. AM-Nasty has not uttered a peep about these places but they are quick to call for Guantanimo's shut down because a female guard wasn't wearing a burka around the prisoners.
Sorry, I have to call bullshit on that one. Unless you call three squares a day and 5 prayer breaks torture. OK, there has been some sleep depravation and one prisoner there did flush a Koran.
I think you are confusing Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib, and even then, panties on the head is hardly torture.
Besides, this guy's lawyer is talking out his ass. Guantanimo is where terrorists found on the battlefield go for interrogation. Not where Brittish computer hackers go torture.
Center Texas, population about 5000, had two grocery stores, Howard's and Piggly Wiggly. Piggly Wiggly was near the Holly Farm's processing plant (now Tyson) and Howard's was on the other side of town, with nothing around it. About 10 years ago, a "Super-Walmart" was opened up across the street from Howard's. Howard's went under within a year. It's now a Dollar General. Piggly Wiggly is now a Brookshire Bro's and is doing just fine as it is across town.
In the past nine years, where there was nothing but a Howard's, is now a Super-Walmart, Dollar General, Eckerd Drugs, McDonalds, an upscale clothing store (for Center, anyway), a Hotel, an assisted living apartment complex, a movie rental store, an auto parts store, a few local specialty shops like embroidery or whatever, and four locally owned resturaunts.
Granted, it was rough for Howard's employees at first, and although Mr. Howard wasn't too happy, he's doing just fine as he has several other investments in the area. But now, some of those Howard's former employees are now the ones owning the local resturaunts, working at the other stores in the area, making as much or more money than they were before, and for the first time in their lives, they have things like health insurance and stock options. All the while, they can save money buying crap products at discounted prices at the Walmart where as before they could only buy crap at the Howard's and pay a premium.
While I don't care for Walmart either, they have breathed life into an otherwise dead area of town. The economic boom in the area did much more good than harm and even the Walmart employees are better off than they were before.
Walmart is destroying America. They affect everything in our life, but don't you dare complain about them... they are very litigious. Plus, they have most of the American population eating from their hand. Oh well, come on everyone, it's a race to the bottom!
That's the joy of Capitalism and the free market. If you don't like Walmart, don't shop there. Personally, I don't like Walmart either. I shop at Target or Meijer. Both places just seem cleaner and the employees seem to care more.
However, some people like to shop at Walmart. That's their choice and respect it. I'm not going to go around and demand that some place be put out of business because I don't like it. How about if we protest the places you like to shop?
That's what are entitled to when you are the world's largest retailer. Walmart is known for being extremely hard on vendors. For example, they demanded that all shipments to Walmart must be RFID tagged. Vendors had the choice of tagging all their shipments or stop doing business with Walmart. I don't know of any that stopped doing business.
Currently, my company has a few trial units in Walmart. We bend over backwards to give them anything they want. If we get the account, our revenue will quadruple and make us a national player in a billion dollar industry with about 60 employees. As much of a pain that is, it is worth it to the company.
Still, I'd like to see more game manufacturors tell Wally-World to stick it and make the game to what the consumers want rather than the Walton family dictates.
I think that shows that you have fallen way to far off the left end. You are basically calling for a terrorists action, "Kill all those that believe differently." This conversation is over. I'm not going to waste any more time trying to reason with someone who hurls third grade level insults and wants me dead. Why don't you go find Republican soldier who is willing to die for your freedoms and tell him you want him dead. Until you are willing to do that to me in person, we are done here.
Stop posting to slashdot and start digging that bunker boy, Osama's coming to get you. Time to roll up the old freedoms and seal that hatch.
See, here's the thing, I know that Al Qaeda had one main goal, to scare the beejezus out of us and I refuse to be scared. I refuse to be cowed by some six-foot zealot and the goddamned fools he surrounds himself with, and I also refuse to be cowed by those who would wrest my freedoms away from me while pretending to fight the first guy. I want my freedoms, bought and paid for by my grandfather and great-grandfather. I want my freedoms despite the horror of September 11, and I refuse to give them all up because you're scared and the government thinks it needs more information when it doesn't know what to do with the information it already has.
You're a goddamned coward.
Yeah, I said it.
I think you are giving Al Qaeda too much humanity. You see, they don't give a shit if I'm scared or not. They didn't put on masks and scream BOO on 9/11. They killed as many people as possible. THAT is their goal.
Next you mention that you are going to lay around and enjoy the freedoms that your ancestors fought for. Then you have the balls to call me a coward. You see, I fought for those freedoms too, like your grandfather and great-grandfather. Were they cowards too? I guess that is the difference between us, I served. When I was on my tank rolling across the Kuwaiti desert, I had no rights, no privacy, no freedoms, no choices to make. I made sacrifices. That's part of what fighting is. I consider listening to phone calls from terrorists, tracking their emails and learning what books they check out of the library part of the fight. It's just not part of the fight you'd recognize because you won't see it on John Stewart.
So you can call me a coward all you want, but anyone reading this knows the truth. You, however are a leach. You are unwilling to lift a finger or give up anything at all in order to preserve the lives and freedoms of your fellow citizens. You won't even give up the illusion of privacy. I served my time. Other than go to protests, coffee shops and bong-parties, what have you done to earn the right to call me a coward? Are you willing to call a soldier a coward to his face, or are you a coward?
This has no relevance to Godwin's law, it is a perfect illustration of exactly how stupid your argument is.
OK, let me get this straight... you are comparing the government sniffing packets to The Fucking Holocaust. OK, now I've think you've gone way to far overboard with the BusHitler thing.
Next, you have the bad taste to call my argument stupid. Did you not read my post? My point was that you will never know if the anyone perused your packets or not. In otherwords, it has little or no affect on me, you, or anyone else but the terrorist who is stupid enough to transmit his attack plans via email. You see, Jews were affected by the holocaust. Comparing the NSA's packet sniffing to being sent to a work camp and worked to death (literally) is a serious insult to Jews around the world. Are you an antisemite?
This moron posts this shit and I get modded a troll?
Unfortunately, it is impossible for you to give up your rights while I retain mine, therefore you don't just give up your own rights because the terrorists managed to scare into wetting the bed, you also give up mine.
I could say the same for you, changing rights with safety and terrorists with ACLU. My point was "if nothing in your life has changed, how are your rights being violated?" I guess it depends on who are more afraid of; the gov't or the terrorists. The way I see it, those that are leaving Guantanimo get to leave Guantanimo, those that left the WTC were taken out in pieces.
Tell you what, you keep wearing your tin foil hat and I'll keep wearing my flack vest and we'll see who has more rights after the car across the street blows up.
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. You can be insightful even if I don't agree.
From the metamoderator guidelines: Please read the Moderator Guidelines and try to be impartial and fair. You are not moderating to make your opinions heard, you are trying to help promote a rational discussion. Play fairly and help make Slashdot a little better for everyone.
Ok so your privacy isn't worth the death of 100's of people, how about 10's, or less?
Evidently, I don't value privacy as much as everyone else. I guess I'm an end-result kinda guy. When I go into a resuraunt, I speak freely. I don't care who listens. Then again, if I see someone leaning over to hear my conversation, I may get upset. But if I don't know they are listening, I don't care. I hope they find the conversation insteresting. Their evesdropping does not change what I was going to say or its meaning to whoever I'm speaking with.
How many lives or crimes is my privacy worth? Zero. Like I said, I don't mind the sniffing as long as it is used to capture/kill terrorists and/or prevent a terrorists attack. The second it is used to prevent a drug deal or liquor store robbery... it's out. I guess national defence is more important to me than the assumed privacy of my emails and web browsing habbits. (And yes, I view porn)
This is what happens when your views differ from the main slashdot stream, you get modded down. People here bitch when their free speech gets violated, and then mod down whoever says something they don't like.
How can you be upset about your rights being violated by AT&T, the NSA and GWB and then mod me down because you don't like my opinion? Isn't that worse than what AT&T, the NSA and GWB are doing? They are just sniffing your packets, not punishing you for them.
I hate to be the lone decenter here and I know that my karma will pay for my opinions, but how has this affected any of you? Assuming that it's true, has any aspect of your lives changed? Do you think that there is someone burried deep in a mountain somewhere devoted to reading your email and usenet posts?
What if you found out that programs like this stopped a nuclear bomb from going off in some big city on Sept 11, 2004? Am I fear mongering, sure. Unfortunately, the fear mongerers were right on Sept 10'th, but they were called fear mongerers and dismissed, much as I'm going to be dismissed here. With all the flack the Prez got over two memos among thousands that said "Bin Laden wants to attack America" and "Terrorists might want to fly planes into buildings", do you think he's gonna let the next one get by?
However, any of this information is used for anything other than capturing/killing terrorists and/or preventing a terrorists attack, I'll join all of you in the rage. But until then, I don't care if someone has a packet sniffer on the Internet. Hell, I always assumed that it wasn't only the government sniffing packets, and I trust the government more with my packets than some Russian hacker with a packet analyzer looking for credit card numbers and email passwords.
Cray CTO Steve Scott says, 'The Cray motto is: adapt the system to the application - not the application to the system.'
That seems like a good idea, but you end up with a "one trick pony" that does only one thing really well. Once that application is end-of-life or no longer needed, your million dollar machine is worthless piece of lounge furniture unless it can be reconfigured for some other application.
To me, it doesn't seem like a good investment. Then again, that's probably why I'm not building super computers!
Re:Denial of Service, abbreviated DoS
on
Sun Grid DOS'd
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, there is a difference between DOS and MSDOS. DOS, Disk Operating System, is a generic term.
Slashdot Mirror
imagine this floating around a programming group -- being passed from one person to the next, each with their partial understanding of the whole system.
Imagine if that group had a manager!!! It would float around a board of directors, being passed from one department head to the next, each with their limited or non-existant understanding of anything related to the project. Finally, after weeks of meetings, it would be assigned to the development manager who would dump it into the lap of the programming group you mentioned with incorrect instructions on how to fix the problem.
Would you actually listen to yourself? You compare "A Few Hundred" civilian deaths to something like spilling a can of coke! Do you actually pause for a second and think about the fact that that is "A few hundred" individuals??? PEOPLE!!!! like you and me, wiped off the face of the planet by a bomb dropped from 10000 feet, the fact that such destructive power can be unleashed from so far away perfectly sums up the current American administrations (and anyone who supports thems) values, "Hey, I didnt see them get ripped apart in front of their families in a shower of flying debris, so i'll just call it a statistic, who could get offended by a statistic?" that distance between pulling the trigger and actually seeing the person die is what allows people to "justify" the war, as they have no connection with the war actually killing people, they see numbers like 30'000 Iraqi Civilians (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/) (Thats 30'000 people who were living and breathing 30 seconds before a state funded and trained pilot decided to release a bomb costing more than all those people would probably ever earn in their entire working lives combined, if they survived) think about that, think about where you live and if suddenly 30'000 of those people didnt exist anymore, does 30'000 deaths "balance" out the 3000 from 9/11?? i bet it makes you feel good that "Your country is making them pay!" Just remember that an eye for an eye will leave the world blind
I never said I was happy about civilian deaths, but to compare a stray missile to a suicide bomber is wrong. Trust me, if the suicide bombers had the aresenal of the US Military, none of us would be here talking about it!
But, if you to count numbers, fine. We'll use the number you posted of 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. Now let's assume these were innocent civilians, killed by US personel, and not suicide bombers (also a civilian), terrorists charging checkpoints or making bombs or whatever. We'll also assume that these deaths were not the result of other means such as suicide bomber or whatever.
Now, compare that 30,000 number to the numbers Unicef reported. Unicef reported 1,000,000 deaths of children... just children, due to Saddam Hussein. Of course, this does not include the numbers of bodies we've found in mass graves (hundreds of thousands of men, women and children).
So, if we take your numbers and Unicef numbers, by my public school math skillz, I figure we saved 970,000 lives. These are people we are talking about. 970,000 people just like you and me. So, yeah! It does make me feel good that my country is doing something about it. Does it make you feel good when a mass grave is discovered filled with the skeletal remains of mothers still holding their toddler age children?
Of course, if you had your way, there would still be children dying from preventable diseases and bullets to the head as opposed to the accidental and rare stray missile.
Science doesn't have a specifically anti-Christian bias. Certain Fundamentalists simply just see something there and use it to play up their own sense of persecution.
It's not so much the scientist that have an anti-Christian bias. It's people like so many here on slashdot that take every evolutionary discovery and try to use to beat Christians over the head saying, "See, ID people are stoopid".
Truth is, neither scientist nor fundamentalists can full explain how the universe was created. What most of us know for sure is that it exists.
"Proving" evolution does not disprove the existence of God. Even Einstein spoke of God. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive.
:-)
Personally, I believe in God. I believe in ID. This does not mean that I do not believe in evolution. The fact is, my feeble mind can not comprehend how God created life and the universe. For all I know, evolution may be the intelligent design. I won't know until I meet God and ask him (or her
All I know is:
1) God does not play dice with the Universe
and
2) Do not tell God what to do with His dice.
Furthermore, the USA simply stated that everybody arrested in Guantanamo is exempted from the Geneva conventions. Why? Well, because.
Well, yeah. Because the Geneva conventions only apply to uniformed soldiers. These guys were neither uniformed not soldiers of any government. That is why Geneva does not apply.
While a little bit of collateral damage (i.e., a few hundred dead civilians) is perfectly acceptable when a missile misses its target, its against "the rules of war" to blow yourself up in midst a crowd of civilians.
I think the main difference here is that when you blow yourself up in a crowd of civilians, your target is the civilians . When a US missile goes astray and lands in a neighborhood, it was an accident, and the US apologizes repeatedly for it. I have yet to hear Bin Laden apologize for the accidental civilian deaths on 9-11. That's the difference between collateral damage and plain old targets.
Sounds like a good experiment and I'd be fascinated with the results, if I had not already been through such "torture".
Unfortunately, I have already experienced the joys of sleep depravation and all of its symptoms. While I was in the Army, for the first two months, I was never allowed more than 5 hrs sleep in any 24 hrs. Officially, we were allowed 1 hr of sleep and 1 hot meal a day. On nights when we were allowed more than the guranteed 1 hr sleep, it was usually interrupted by an hour of "fire watch" (where you walk around for an hour looking for fires before waking up the next guy to do the same) or CQ (sit and watch a phone from 3:00-4:00am just in case the Prez calls). Of course that was during Basic/OSUT. It got much worse once I went to my active unit.
As for the AC, I only wish I had such a thing. Unfortunately we had to drive across the deserts of California, Kuwait and the planes of Texas without such comforts. The only relief we had was warm water from a canteen. Of course, I understand that the cold sux too as I spent a winter at Ft. Knox KY, in formation every morning before the sun came up in shorts waiting for PT to start.
Of course, this does not count as the psychological "torture" I had to put up with. I got used to having myself, my girlfriend and my mother insulted every waking moment. So you'll have to forgive me for not seeing things from your point of view. I have first hand experience in this sort of treatment.
There's more. One detainee had his head and mouth duct-taped. Another was "short-shackled" to the eye-bolt in the floor of the interrogation room. Detainees were subject to 16-20 hour interrogations plus sleep deprivation and isolation for up to 54 consecutive days. Strip searches were used as an interrogation technique. Detainees would be locked in a refrigerated room known as the "freezer" for extended periods of time. In the course of interrogation, a detainee was told that his family had been captured by the United States and that they were "in danger". Barking, growling, teeth-baring military dogs were used in interrogations.
You mean they were isolated, locked up and had dogs barked at them?!!? My wife does that to me before 9:00am! Did the US Military run out of finger-nail splints? Was there no one to give them the ol' Texas Titty Twister?
I'm sorry, but psychological "torture" does not qualify as torture in my book. Until someone is physically abused, I don't call it torture. I don't care what AM-Nasty Intl says. Unless it's Club Med, it's not torture. If you want to see torture, take a look at Abu Ghraib before we got there. Pay a visit to a N. Korean work camp. See how Jewish prisoners (or suspected sympathizers) are treated in Palestine. AM-Nasty has not uttered a peep about these places but they are quick to call for Guantanimo's shut down because a female guard wasn't wearing a burka around the prisoners.
Sorry, I have to call bullshit on that one.
Unless you call three squares a day and 5 prayer breaks torture. OK, there has been some sleep depravation and one prisoner there did flush a Koran.
I think you are confusing Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib, and even then, panties on the head is hardly torture.
Besides, this guy's lawyer is talking out his ass. Guantanimo is where terrorists found on the battlefield go for interrogation. Not where Brittish computer hackers go torture.
That this is he lawyer talking. His lawyer is going to say whatever it takes to keep him there.
Trust me, Guantanimo is not where they send Brittish computer hackers.
Revenues will quadruple while margins are slashed. Good luck. It will be great in the short term.
Let me put it to you this way... If we don't the contract, revenues may plumet to zero.
You can't be picky as to who your customers are if plan to stay in business.
I'm gonna tell you the story of Center Texas.
Center Texas, population about 5000, had two grocery stores, Howard's and Piggly Wiggly. Piggly Wiggly was near the Holly Farm's processing plant (now Tyson) and Howard's was on the other side of town, with nothing around it. About 10 years ago, a "Super-Walmart" was opened up across the street from Howard's. Howard's went under within a year. It's now a Dollar General. Piggly Wiggly is now a Brookshire Bro's and is doing just fine as it is across town.
In the past nine years, where there was nothing but a Howard's, is now a Super-Walmart, Dollar General, Eckerd Drugs, McDonalds, an upscale clothing store (for Center, anyway), a Hotel, an assisted living apartment complex, a movie rental store, an auto parts store, a few local specialty shops like embroidery or whatever, and four locally owned resturaunts.
Granted, it was rough for Howard's employees at first, and although Mr. Howard wasn't too happy, he's doing just fine as he has several other investments in the area. But now, some of those Howard's former employees are now the ones owning the local resturaunts, working at the other stores in the area, making as much or more money than they were before, and for the first time in their lives, they have things like health insurance and stock options. All the while, they can save money buying crap products at discounted prices at the Walmart where as before they could only buy crap at the Howard's and pay a premium.
While I don't care for Walmart either, they have breathed life into an otherwise dead area of town. The economic boom in the area did much more good than harm and even the Walmart employees are better off than they were before.
The corrupted capitalist lifestyle
Walmart is destroying America. They affect everything in our life, but don't you dare complain about them... they are very litigious. Plus, they have most of the American population eating from their hand. Oh well, come on everyone, it's a race to the bottom!
That's the joy of Capitalism and the free market. If you don't like Walmart, don't shop there. Personally, I don't like Walmart either. I shop at Target or Meijer. Both places just seem cleaner and the employees seem to care more.
However, some people like to shop at Walmart. That's their choice and respect it. I'm not going to go around and demand that some place be put out of business because I don't like it. How about if we protest the places you like to shop?
That's what are entitled to when you are the world's largest retailer. Walmart is known for being extremely hard on vendors. For example, they demanded that all shipments to Walmart must be RFID tagged. Vendors had the choice of tagging all their shipments or stop doing business with Walmart. I don't know of any that stopped doing business.
Currently, my company has a few trial units in Walmart. We bend over backwards to give them anything they want. If we get the account, our revenue will quadruple and make us a national player in a billion dollar industry with about 60 employees. As much of a pain that is, it is worth it to the company.
Still, I'd like to see more game manufacturors tell Wally-World to stick it and make the game to what the consumers want rather than the Walton family dictates.
Your sig:
--
Be a patriot: Murder a Republican.
I think that shows that you have fallen way to far off the left end. You are basically calling for a terrorists action, "Kill all those that believe differently." This conversation is over. I'm not going to waste any more time trying to reason with someone who hurls third grade level insults and wants me dead. Why don't you go find Republican soldier who is willing to die for your freedoms and tell him you want him dead. Until you are willing to do that to me in person, we are done here.
Stop posting to slashdot and start digging that bunker boy, Osama's coming to get you. Time to roll up the old freedoms and seal that hatch.
See, here's the thing, I know that Al Qaeda had one main goal, to scare the beejezus out of us and I refuse to be scared. I refuse to be cowed by some six-foot zealot and the goddamned fools he surrounds himself with, and I also refuse to be cowed by those who would wrest my freedoms away from me while pretending to fight the first guy. I want my freedoms, bought and paid for by my grandfather and great-grandfather. I want my freedoms despite the horror of September 11, and I refuse to give them all up because you're scared and the government thinks it needs more information when it doesn't know what to do with the information it already has.
You're a goddamned coward.
Yeah, I said it.
I think you are giving Al Qaeda too much humanity. You see, they don't give a shit if I'm scared or not. They didn't put on masks and scream BOO on 9/11. They killed as many people as possible. THAT is their goal.
Next you mention that you are going to lay around and enjoy the freedoms that your ancestors fought for. Then you have the balls to call me a coward. You see, I fought for those freedoms too, like your grandfather and great-grandfather. Were they cowards too? I guess that is the difference between us, I served. When I was on my tank rolling across the Kuwaiti desert, I had no rights, no privacy, no freedoms, no choices to make. I made sacrifices. That's part of what fighting is. I consider listening to phone calls from terrorists, tracking their emails and learning what books they check out of the library part of the fight. It's just not part of the fight you'd recognize because you won't see it on John Stewart.
So you can call me a coward all you want, but anyone reading this knows the truth. You, however are a leach. You are unwilling to lift a finger or give up anything at all in order to preserve the lives and freedoms of your fellow citizens. You won't even give up the illusion of privacy. I served my time. Other than go to protests, coffee shops and bong-parties, what have you done to earn the right to call me a coward? Are you willing to call a soldier a coward to his face, or are you a coward?
And how did the holocaust affect you?
This has no relevance to Godwin's law, it is a perfect illustration of exactly how stupid your argument is.
OK, let me get this straight... you are comparing the government sniffing packets to The Fucking Holocaust. OK, now I've think you've gone way to far overboard with the BusHitler thing.
Next, you have the bad taste to call my argument stupid. Did you not read my post? My point was that you will never know if the anyone perused your packets or not. In otherwords, it has little or no affect on me, you, or anyone else but the terrorist who is stupid enough to transmit his attack plans via email. You see, Jews were affected by the holocaust. Comparing the NSA's packet sniffing to being sent to a work camp and worked to death (literally) is a serious insult to Jews around the world. Are you an antisemite?
This moron posts this shit and I get modded a troll?
Why is there a thick curtain of smog around Los Angeles but not over the cows north of the city?
Uh, because methane is an clear (and unfortunately not odorless) gas. Smog (Smoke + Fog) is not.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for you to give up your rights while I retain mine, therefore you don't just give up your own rights because the terrorists managed to scare into wetting the bed, you also give up mine.
I could say the same for you, changing rights with safety and terrorists with ACLU. My point was "if nothing in your life has changed, how are your rights being violated?" I guess it depends on who are more afraid of; the gov't or the terrorists. The way I see it, those that are leaving Guantanimo get to leave Guantanimo, those that left the WTC were taken out in pieces.
Tell you what, you keep wearing your tin foil hat and I'll keep wearing my flack vest and we'll see who has more rights after the car across the street blows up.
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. You can be insightful even if I don't agree.
From the metamoderator guidelines:
Please read the Moderator Guidelines and try to be impartial and fair. You are not moderating to make your opinions heard, you are trying to help promote a rational discussion. Play fairly and help make Slashdot a little better for everyone.
Ok so your privacy isn't worth the death of 100's of people, how about 10's, or less?
Evidently, I don't value privacy as much as everyone else. I guess I'm an end-result kinda guy. When I go into a resuraunt, I speak freely. I don't care who listens. Then again, if I see someone leaning over to hear my conversation, I may get upset. But if I don't know they are listening, I don't care. I hope they find the conversation insteresting. Their evesdropping does not change what I was going to say or its meaning to whoever I'm speaking with.
How many lives or crimes is my privacy worth? Zero. Like I said, I don't mind the sniffing as long as it is used to capture/kill terrorists and/or prevent a terrorists attack. The second it is used to prevent a drug deal or liquor store robbery... it's out. I guess national defence is more important to me than the assumed privacy of my emails and web browsing habbits. (And yes, I view porn)
This is what happens when your views differ from the main slashdot stream, you get modded down. People here bitch when their free speech gets violated, and then mod down whoever says something they don't like.
How can you be upset about your rights being violated by AT&T, the NSA and GWB and then mod me down because you don't like my opinion? Isn't that worse than what AT&T, the NSA and GWB are doing? They are just sniffing your packets, not punishing you for them.
I hate to be the lone decenter here and I know that my karma will pay for my opinions, but how has this affected any of you? Assuming that it's true, has any aspect of your lives changed? Do you think that there is someone burried deep in a mountain somewhere devoted to reading your email and usenet posts?
What if you found out that programs like this stopped a nuclear bomb from going off in some big city on Sept 11, 2004? Am I fear mongering, sure. Unfortunately, the fear mongerers were right on Sept 10'th, but they were called fear mongerers and dismissed, much as I'm going to be dismissed here. With all the flack the Prez got over two memos among thousands that said "Bin Laden wants to attack America" and "Terrorists might want to fly planes into buildings", do you think he's gonna let the next one get by?
However, any of this information is used for anything other than capturing/killing terrorists and/or preventing a terrorists attack, I'll join all of you in the rage. But until then, I don't care if someone has a packet sniffer on the Internet. Hell, I always assumed that it wasn't only the government sniffing packets, and I trust the government more with my packets than some Russian hacker with a packet analyzer looking for credit card numbers and email passwords.
That really irks the hell out of me too!
Cray CTO Steve Scott says, 'The Cray motto is: adapt the system to the application - not the application to the system.'
That seems like a good idea, but you end up with a "one trick pony" that does only one thing really well. Once that application is end-of-life or no longer needed, your million dollar machine is worthless piece of lounge furniture unless it can be reconfigured for some other application.
To me, it doesn't seem like a good investment. Then again, that's probably why I'm not building super computers!
Actually, there is a difference between DOS and MSDOS. DOS, Disk Operating System, is a generic term.