But comparing what happens to a relatively small group of people
You actually said it there. In China bad things only happen to really small group of people. Just like you seem to indicate about US.
If by "relatively small group of people", you mean all of them, then you are correct.
I don't know how good you are at math, but let he help you out here: Population of China=1,324,655,000 (all blocked from receiving information, all are legal citizens of China) Population of Gitmo=~500 (none of which are US Citizens)
So here's the hard math part: 1,324,655,000 is greater than 500.
That help?
I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong. I'll let the numbers do that.
Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China? I think I've heard so many times on slashdot.
US is just as bad. It's just for different interests (protecting the money and cash flow of huge corporations versus ensuring that the people in the country don't start bloody revolts).
Twist it how you want to, but the fact remains that both countries act like assholes and US is in the same level.
Funny. A few years ago when something like this happened, you saw the story and comments here say that Bush was the problem. Now we read that the US is the problem.
Imagine if something like this happened a few short years ago. We'd be looking at a whole different story.
Wake up, pal. You are nowhere near as free as you think you are. Your life is as constrained by our bullshit corporatist state as the Chinese are by their bullshit corporatist state. The only difference is that you are showered with a moronic brain-junk-food commercial pop-culture that has evidently convinced you completely that you are free and can express yourself freely and without limit.
You're not. You are just as enslaved, censored, exploited, and brainwashed as they are. Beware, it is vastly worse than you imagine.
So have the authorities shown up to send you to "reeducation camp"?
So in other words, the iPhone 4 sucks, but every other phone you'd consider sucks more.
No. What I think he meant was, "So in other words, the iPhone 4 sucks, but every other phone carried by ATT sucks more."
ATT's only offers the Aria and Backflip for Android. While the Aria and Backflip are nice phone, they are not the iphone4g. All OS considerations aside, the hardware doesn't even compete. I don't see this changing as ATT doesn't want to piss Apple off by carrying an Android powered phone with better hardware specs than the iphone.
I'm sure this guy would be quite happy trading in his iphone for an ATT powered EVO, Incredible or DroidX.
Asking the price of any military purpose automatically makes you a traitor and an America-hater. Please turn yourself in at your local FBI office. We have no place in this country for people who question the economics, ethics, or efficacy, of any part of the military-industrial complex.
Um.... This thing is British. You can't use this as an excuse to hate America, although I don't think you really need facts for that.
And we could call it a cruise missile. It is true that if you are using them to drop nukes that last thing you will really worry about is getting it back. Of course you could drop the weapon and then use the UAV as a decoy. Or you could fit multiable weapons in the UAV but at that point it is all just terrible.
Kind of. It's more like a stealth cruise missile without the hot rocket flash on launch. The first the enemy knows about it is the bright flash and bang over the target. With cruise missiles and ICBM's, there is a return address. These don't have one. It's truly a sneak attack. With enough of these, you could literally obliterate your enemy on the first strike, even before the enemy knows it's at war.
No they don't. 450 lbs is more than enough payload for a 100kt+ nuke. Nukes weighing several tons went out in the 1950s/1960s
And we wouldn't even need to drop it. There's no pilot in these things so if you can afford to lose the plane, just set off the nuke while it's still in the bomb bay.
Can you show me the email that was state business being sent from Sarah Palin's personal account? Everything I've seen is stuff that didn't belong on the official government email. The email titled "LOOK AT TRIGG!" does not belong on government servers.
Also, Todd did not work for the State of Alaska, regardless of what is in his email. Had he gotten an official Alaska.gov email address, then you'd have something. Otherwise, Michelle Obama's statement that the government can tell us what to eat could be considered an executive order.
But Palin and Co. were using their emails for business purposes (even if it was more day-to-day stuff, so far as the snoop caught).
I'm not saying your wrong here, but I just checked the images of the emails from way back when and the only thing I could see that even comes close to government business was a letter entitled something along the lines of "Draft Letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger / Container Tax", which may or may not have dealt with the business of running Alaska. It could have contained something along the lines of "Dear Arnold, as a citizen of Alaska, I find your container tax to be pure BS!" Who knows. Either way, that's hardly proof of any laws being broken.
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
--jeffk++
Wasn't Palin's email full of personal stuff and not full of emails from lobbyists and the like offering bribes?
There's nothing forbidding politicians and their staffers from having personal email accounts. However, it is illegal to use them for official, government business as is being alleged here.
You seem a little confused on what "the EXACT same thing" means. If someone claims "12" is exactly the same as "52", it perfectly appropriate to say, "no the '5' and '1' are not the same." If someone then claims that is only half right because they did not address the second digit, I tell them they're on crack.
You're on crack.
Sorry, dude. I have to agree with Sootman. You were not clear. It appeared to me that you were saying that both points were wrong. You need to be more specific and stop blaming people for not completely understanding your one word response. You are the problem here, not the reader.
"It was some low paid drone in a call center who made the original decision."
You're absolutely right. But what is happening to us as a species when these drones are so concerned with "following the rules" that they can't show some human compassion? I am really sick and tired of drones who can't/won't help, even on a basic, simple request, because the rulebook says 'no'.
Having worked customer (dis)service, it generally comes down to:
A) Follow Rule Book and say "No." -- Keep job, even if low paying, in an economy that is still utterly tanked.
B) Fuck the Rule Book. -- Help some random stranger you really don't care about, who really doesn't care about you or the crap you put up with on a daily basis, which in turn places your job and livelihood at risk.
I'm sorry, but given the options most customer service representatives can choose from, they will undoubtedly go with the "cover your ass" approach to insulate themselves being detrimentally effected by poor decision-making. Was it right to charge an ETF to a grieving widow? No. But in business contracts are king. You signed it, deal with it.
Obviously, you have never worked in customer service or if you have, you didn't last very long because you're too stupid for the job.
Let me show you how it's done: Option C: Escalation. Call your manager over and ask him/her what to do. If they say bill the widow, you say, "Although I'm not qualified to make that decision, I don't agree with the decision you have made here. Since the decision is yours, either you tell her yourself of tell me, i writing or email, exactly what it is you want me to tell this lady."
I've done CS for years and I'm actually making a pretty good living at it. I'm high enough to make decisions and if I have any problems with something I'm told to do, I either take it the supervisor of whoever gave the order or make the manager do it his or her self.
No job can make you do what you don't think is right.
As a rather large piece of shit myself, I take offense to that comment. Take it back you insensitive clod!
How dare you associate perfectly good pieces of shit with that worthless piece of.... Oh dear Lord. What can we call something so low? There is no term for such a lowlife (no offense meant towards lowlifes)
Why does it matter what his name is? I could easily look it up. We could have learned some valuable lessons from Korea but apparently didn't bother to apply them. We could and should have stayed out of both of them.
That's your opinion. I'm sure the people of S. Korea disagree. For that matter, I'm sure many in the N. Korea wish we would finish the job.
Most wars aren't justified. The reason is that the human, economic, and environmental cost almost always outweigh any supposed benefits. I don't see how you have really shown otherwise.
Agreed. Many wars are not justified. BUT MANY ARE. We go out of our way to stay out of wars and when we are in them, we will place our soldiers at additional risk the lives of our soldiers in order to save the lives of the innocent. Very few other countries will do that. Still, your admission that "most wars aren't justified" means that some are, which goes counter to your original statement. As for your cost assessment, imagine the lives that could have been saved if we had jumped on Germany immediately after Hitler invaded Poland. Germany was fairly week at that point and it wouldn't have taken much to contain Germany and take Hitler out. Instead, we waited. We tried the diplomatic route and millions died. Not just the six million Jews, but the 20 million Russians, seven million Germans, 13.5 million Chinese (10 million civilians!) and 5.5 million Poles (5.3 million civilians).
Straw man. They are both obviously terrible. But war is often worse than genocide. More innocent people are often forced to participate in war, who would rather not, including myself.
NOT a straw man. A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar yet weaker proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. (obviously, Wikipedia). I never created any illusions of your argument. I said wars are necessary to stop things like genocide and to dispose of evil dictators (who are usually genocidal).
You said it yourself, "But war is often worse than genocide." Um, do you know what genocide is? Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.[1] That means the absolute extermination of a people, men, women and children with no exceptions. The only way that war could possibly be worse than genocide is if more than one genocide takes place, say in a nuclear war where both sides literally become extinct. In a non-nuclear exchange, that is not likely.
Perhaps, but that's not the point. The point is that engaging in war probably would have caused more than that. War always costs more than people initially think it will. Iraq is yet another perfect example of that
Um, no. Like I said, over 500,000 children (not total people, this is only the count of people under the age of 5) died due to Saddam Hussein. The entire body count for both Iraqi wars was less than 100,000. So... um.... no. Iraq is a perfect example of wars saving lives. See, 100,000 is less than 500,000. You can't argue with math.
As for Rwanda, if UN soldiers had stood their ground, 800,000 innocent civilians would not have died. I can also promise you that 800,000 soldiers would not have died as there were not 800,000 soldiers in country! When bullets start flying, thugs usually flee.
If a brutal tyrant really is powerful enough to slaughter millions of men, women, and children, chances are pretty damn good that attempting fight him will do nothing more than cause millions of additional death and property destruction that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
Strange, that wasn't the case in Iraq. WWII, maybe, b
Are you honestly trying to tell me, with a straight face, that the horiffic death of over 60,000 american lives and the vast amount of property damage to the countryside and environment was worth saving a few thousand refugees? And do you deny that the country of Vietnam is MUCH better off than North Korea is today?
Can you name the brutal dictator of Vietnam? No? Then it really doesn't apply here does it?
Besides, I never said all wars were justified. I did say that sometimes war is the best and/or ONLY answer. In Vietnam's case, it may not have been. It was you that said that war was never justified and the same results could be achieve without it.
Yes, that is precisely what I would tell them. Who are you to say that over 600,000 people much be viciously murdered in order to free people who would have been free a few years later? They could have immediately begun a mass exodus from the south to the north if the north simply would have ignored the fugitive slave laws. Not a few generations as you ridiculously claim. No massively destructive war necessary.
Yep! Because freedom isn't free. Sometimes, you have to fight for it. I joined, trained, served and was ready to die not just for my own freedoms, but for the freedoms of the oppressed anywhere in the world. What makes me so special that I get freedom and someone else does not? And are you sure that slavery would have ended a few years later? Do you have a source for that? We lost more lives in the civil war than all other wars combined. I don't think that something that many people were willing to die for would have been abolished within a generation, much less a few years.
As far as I know, nobody elected USA to be policeman of the world. If you think people should be forced to give up their life instead of sacrificing other lives from halfway around the world maybe you should pay for it yourself. Because most normal people certainly can't afford it. By the way, WW1 still stands as one of the most striking examples of folly.
I never said the US had to be the policeman. I said that nothing short of war could have possibly saved the 800,000 people who were slaughtered. I don't care who did the fighting. The responsibility falls on the UN who has the legal obligation to stop this sort of thing. That is why the UN was formed. Do you honestly feel that genocide is better than war? Evidently. Even if you just look at the cold numbers, by the most liberal body count has Iraqi deaths at 100,000 (although that number has been repeatedly debunked).
Either way, what you are really saying is, no, you can't name a single brutal dictator that has been deposed without war or non-violent death of the tyrant. Yet, for some reason, you still believe that war is never the answer, under any circumstances at any time, even if millions of men, women and children are being slaughtered by a brutal tyrant.
USA lost Vietnam war to the commies. Vietnam is clearly much better off today, and much more open, than North Korea. If Americans completely stayed out of Vietnam it would have been even more advanced, not having to spend as much effort recovering from the war.
Go find any one of the thousands of refugees that fled to America from Vietnam because those commies were killing them and their families. I guess you are right, we should have stayed out and let them slaughter those that wanted to keep their property.
Korea could have been the same. If USA stayed out of there completely, and let it remain as one country, they could wholly avoided the animosity it is now causing.
No, the communists would have taken all of Korea, not just the northern half and all of Korea would be like N. Korea is today. Also note that Korea was a UN action, not a US one.
The Civil War could have been avoided too. Slavery would have likely died out eventually.
This one is my favorite. So you would tell those that are in shackles to simply wait it out? "Don't worry there, Kunte Kente, your great, great, great grandkids may be free, give of take a few generations." How long should an enslaved people wait before their captors tired of the wealth gained from the labor of others?
Also, I noticed that you didn't respond to Rwanda. Are those people better off than they would have been if we had taken action? You know, better than being tortured, raped and killed? Rwanda is a fine example of what happens when good people do nothing. Kosovo is an example of what happens when good people tire of seeing thugs rape, torture and kill innocents.
And you live in a fantasy world where the external policy of the USA is done for the good of ANYONE except for the American big-ass corporations and their friends.
Tell that to the good people of Kuwait. Tell that to the people living in Australia, England, Poland, France, Spain, Italy, and Berlin. Tell the S. Koreans that they are now officially "American big-ass corporations".
By the way, that computer you used to type that message was created by an "American big-ass corporation". That Internet thing you posted it on is a product of the American military industrial complex. Put your money where your mouth is and turn your computer and cell phones off and give them to someone who can appreciate what freedom has brought them. Otherwise, you're just a hypocritical little bitch who needs to STFU.
Not only that but you are VASTLY underestimating the cost of war. In most cases it is far greater than the cost to the people of a few years rule by a petty dictator. It takes a lot longer than the lifespan of one petty dictator to recover from war when your entire country is blown up and large swaths of your productive capacity is shut down. People like you are the ones who are guilty of causing far more death and suffering as a result of war than would otherwise happen if someone remained in power for a few years.
So are you saying that South Korea is just as bad off and N. Korea? Both are the product of war. Unfortunately, only the Southern half was liberated (by war) and the North was left alone in the hope that some sort of political resolution could be reached. So, tell me, how's that worked out? Which was worse, the few years that the Korean War lasted or the generational misery that awaits those stuck in N. Korea.
Don't like my Korean example? Let's take a look at Iraq. In the years that Saddam Hussein was in power, over half a million children died from preventable diseases because Saddam's corruption of the Oil for Food program. Both Iraqi wars took far less than half a million lives and the people there are better off now than they would have been if left under Saddam Hussein. Of course, you will say that if we left Saddam alone, the Iraqi people would have been better off. What about the people of Kuwait? Remember, Saddam started all this by invading that country.
How about the old standby, WWII? Do you think the six million Jews that were gassed in fake showers or literally worked to death would have been better off if there was no war? You say Hitler was the result of war? How did WWI cause the deaths of six million Jews?
How about American slavery. Do you think that African Americans would be better off living under slavery than they are today due to the Civil War?
Tell you what, I can give examples all day long. How about you give me one, just one brutal dictator that willingly gave up power to improve the lives of the citizens. Just one.
Well, Stalin died of an old age, as well as Mao. Nice try, but I'd suggest next time to check your facts before posting.
Right! Everyone on the list either died of old age or was forced from office by force. None of them gave up power as a result of international pressure that lacked the use of force. For that matter, no brutal dictator has ever, in the history of man, willingly given up power except to resign after handing power to a handpicked successor, such as a relative. They have all either died or been forced from office by war.
Any of the "good things" that might possibly come out of war can also be done without war.
Pol Pot Hitler Hussien Mugabe Al-Bashir Kim Jong-Il Sayyid Ali Khamenei/Ahmadinejad Castro Stalin Mao Tse-Tung Milosevic... and many many more...
None of these dictators could have been/can be removed from office without the use of force. No amount of talk, sanctions, or shame will cause these evil men to willingly give up their power. War is the only answer sometimes. Yes, war is a horror unto itself, but it is nothing compared to the wasted lives and absolute horror people are forced to endure every day under tyrants. Wars almost always end in a few years. Tyrants survive a life time and usually hand pick their successors who are just as bad or even worse. People like you who insist on trying to talk these sons of bitches down only cause their people to suffer more. By refusing to make the hard decisions, people like you are just as guilty of the suffering and needless death of the innocents.
There must be a way to get the location services you want, like finding the local Krispy-Kreme, without broadcasting your location to the service in question. Like a blocked phone number.
The services mentioned here are only those that you explicitly run that you give permission to broadcast your location. Google Latitude, for example, will show your location on Google Maps to everyone you give permission to show it to.
It's not just your GPS that can get you in trouble, but your own stupidity can do just as well of a job. An example would be taking a picture a of a well known foreign landmark while vacationing and posting it on your Facebook page with the caption, "Look at what I saw today".
It's also a good idea to NOT geo-tag your photos if you take them of anyplace you don't want people to know the location of, like your living room in front of your new big screen TV and pile of cash.
That's horseshit. When someone makes a better OS than MS, I'll start believing these stories. The level of complexity between Windows and OSX is incomparable. OSX works on like 5 hardware configurations, while windows will run on pretty much any hardware.
Uh, no. Windows runs on one, and only one platform, the x86 (x86-64 is still x86). OSX used to only run on RISC (PowerPC) but recently made the switch to x86 as well. It should be noted that Apple did a pretty good job making the old stuff written for RISC run on x86 for a time in order to complete the transition. The core of OSX also runs on a few different mobile platforms as well for i-phone/pod/pad devices.
Linux will run on just about anything. Sure, you can't download the latest Ubuntu and install it on an Alpha based machine, but you can find Linux distro's designed for just about any platform.
Linux may have some technical merit, but is a mess where people without advanced computer skills are left in the dark.
Linux is easier to set up or operate than either Windows or OSX. The problem is that 99% of all computers sold come with either Windows or MacOS installed, so it's what people learn. Once you learn a system, it is easy to you, even if it's some antiquated, console driven, remote accessible Unix app.
MS is having problems selling upgrades. Why do you think ~90% of businesses are still on XP? Because it was/is a useable, relatively stable OS that did what people wanted.
People are not upgrading because XP is good enough and it's cheaper to keep running XP than it is to upgrade. Even if the OS itself was free, you still have to pay your IT guys to create an image for every machine config in the office, install it, train your employees to use it, and pay for the downtime they experience backing up their old stuff and learning the new OS.
You can say what you want about MS, but the fact is, they are the best OS for Businesses, and most consumers
No. MS produces the OS used by most businesses and consumers, therefor, it is what most businesses and consumers choose when they upgrade. It's easier to make the upgrade from XP to 7 than it is to upgrade form XP to Ubuntu 10.4, just as it's easier to make the move from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. When you upgrade to a newer version of your current OS, odds are that you lose nothing. If you switch OS's entirely, you have find replacements for every application you currently depend on and still convert all your files to the new format.
When Linux is usable by joe user, I'll take it seriously.
My three year old daughter runs Linux and she can't even read yet. Hopefully Joe User is more savvy than an illiterate three-year-old.
And what will you do when some of these localities start bringing back segregation, or other policies abhorrent to the nation as a whole? The federal government needs to be able to protect the rights of citizens across the country. That's how it got to be this way in the first place. Expecting people to uproot their lives and move to a different locality that respects them isn't a reasonable fix.
If you find that the federal government needs more power, amend the Constitution to grant those powers. Anything else violates the 10th Amendment.
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But comparing what happens to a relatively small group of people
You actually said it there. In China bad things only happen to really small group of people. Just like you seem to indicate about US.
If by "relatively small group of people", you mean all of them, then you are correct.
I don't know how good you are at math, but let he help you out here:
Population of China=1,324,655,000 (all blocked from receiving information, all are legal citizens of China)
Population of Gitmo=~500 (none of which are US Citizens)
So here's the hard math part:
1,324,655,000 is greater than 500.
That help?
I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong. I'll let the numbers do that.
Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China? I think I've heard so many times on slashdot.
US is just as bad. It's just for different interests (protecting the money and cash flow of huge corporations versus ensuring that the people in the country don't start bloody revolts).
Twist it how you want to, but the fact remains that both countries act like assholes and US is in the same level.
Funny. A few years ago when something like this happened, you saw the story and comments here say that Bush was the problem. Now we read that the US is the problem.
Imagine if something like this happened a few short years ago. We'd be looking at a whole different story.
Wake up, pal. You are nowhere near as free as you think you are. Your life is as constrained by our bullshit corporatist state as the Chinese are by their bullshit corporatist state. The only difference is that you are showered with a moronic brain-junk-food commercial pop-culture that has evidently convinced you completely that you are free and can express yourself freely and without limit.
You're not. You are just as enslaved, censored, exploited, and brainwashed as they are. Beware, it is vastly worse than you imagine.
So have the authorities shown up to send you to "reeducation camp"?
No? Then STFU.
So in other words, the iPhone 4 sucks, but every other phone you'd consider sucks more.
No. What I think he meant was, "So in other words, the iPhone 4 sucks, but every other phone carried by ATT sucks more."
ATT's only offers the Aria and Backflip for Android. While the Aria and Backflip are nice phone, they are not the iphone4g. All OS considerations aside, the hardware doesn't even compete. I don't see this changing as ATT doesn't want to piss Apple off by carrying an Android powered phone with better hardware specs than the iphone.
I'm sure this guy would be quite happy trading in his iphone for an ATT powered EVO, Incredible or DroidX.
Asking the price of any military purpose automatically makes you a traitor and an America-hater. Please turn yourself in at your local FBI office. We have no place in this country for people who question the economics, ethics, or efficacy, of any part of the military-industrial complex.
Um.... This thing is British. You can't use this as an excuse to hate America, although I don't think you really need facts for that.
And we could call it a cruise missile.
It is true that if you are using them to drop nukes that last thing you will really worry about is getting it back.
Of course you could drop the weapon and then use the UAV as a decoy. Or you could fit multiable weapons in the UAV but at that point it is all just terrible.
Kind of. It's more like a stealth cruise missile without the hot rocket flash on launch. The first the enemy knows about it is the bright flash and bang over the target. With cruise missiles and ICBM's, there is a return address. These don't have one. It's truly a sneak attack. With enough of these, you could literally obliterate your enemy on the first strike, even before the enemy knows it's at war.
No they don't. 450 lbs is more than enough payload for a 100kt+ nuke.
Nukes weighing several tons went out in the 1950s/1960s
And we wouldn't even need to drop it. There's no pilot in these things so if you can afford to lose the plane, just set off the nuke while it's still in the bomb bay.
Can you show me the email that was state business being sent from Sarah Palin's personal account? Everything I've seen is stuff that didn't belong on the official government email. The email titled "LOOK AT TRIGG!" does not belong on government servers.
Also, Todd did not work for the State of Alaska, regardless of what is in his email. Had he gotten an official Alaska.gov email address, then you'd have something. Otherwise, Michelle Obama's statement that the government can tell us what to eat could be considered an executive order.
But Palin and Co. were using their emails for business purposes (even if it was more day-to-day stuff, so far as the snoop caught).
I'm not saying your wrong here, but I just checked the images of the emails from way back when and the only thing I could see that even comes close to government business was a letter entitled something along the lines of "Draft Letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger / Container Tax", which may or may not have dealt with the business of running Alaska. It could have contained something along the lines of "Dear Arnold, as a citizen of Alaska, I find your container tax to be pure BS!" Who knows. Either way, that's hardly proof of any laws being broken.
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
--jeffk++
Wasn't Palin's email full of personal stuff and not full of emails from lobbyists and the like offering bribes?
There's nothing forbidding politicians and their staffers from having personal email accounts. However, it is illegal to use them for official, government business as is being alleged here.
You seem a little confused on what "the EXACT same thing" means. If someone claims "12" is exactly the same as "52", it perfectly appropriate to say, "no the '5' and '1' are not the same." If someone then claims that is only half right because they did not address the second digit, I tell them they're on crack.
You're on crack.
Sorry, dude. I have to agree with Sootman. You were not clear. It appeared to me that you were saying that both points were wrong. You need to be more specific and stop blaming people for not completely understanding your one word response. You are the problem here, not the reader.
You could have spent a fraction of a second (0.15 seconds) with Google
You must type freakin' FAST!!!!! I can't even say my search terms that fast, much less type them. Hell, I can't ctrl-c, ctrl-v in 0.15 seconds!
"It was some low paid drone in a call center who made the original decision."
You're absolutely right. But what is happening to us as a species when these drones are so concerned with "following the rules" that they can't show some human compassion? I am really sick and tired of drones who can't/won't help, even on a basic, simple request, because the rulebook says 'no'.
Having worked customer (dis)service, it generally comes down to:
I'm sorry, but given the options most customer service representatives can choose from, they will undoubtedly go with the "cover your ass" approach to insulate themselves being detrimentally effected by poor decision-making. Was it right to charge an ETF to a grieving widow? No. But in business contracts are king. You signed it, deal with it.
Obviously, you have never worked in customer service or if you have, you didn't last very long because you're too stupid for the job.
Let me show you how it's done:
Option C: Escalation. Call your manager over and ask him/her what to do. If they say bill the widow, you say, "Although I'm not qualified to make that decision, I don't agree with the decision you have made here. Since the decision is yours, either you tell her yourself of tell me, i writing or email, exactly what it is you want me to tell this lady."
I've done CS for years and I'm actually making a pretty good living at it. I'm high enough to make decisions and if I have any problems with something I'm told to do, I either take it the supervisor of whoever gave the order or make the manager do it his or her self.
No job can make you do what you don't think is right.
Are you really equating our troops to mob hitmen?
Are you really that big of a piece of shit?
Hey!
As a rather large piece of shit myself, I take offense to that comment. Take it back you insensitive clod!
How dare you associate perfectly good pieces of shit with that worthless piece of.... Oh dear Lord. What can we call something so low? There is no term for such a lowlife (no offense meant towards lowlifes)
Why does it matter what his name is? I could easily look it up. We could have learned some valuable lessons from Korea but apparently didn't bother to apply them. We could and should have stayed out of both of them.
That's your opinion. I'm sure the people of S. Korea disagree. For that matter, I'm sure many in the N. Korea wish we would finish the job.
Most wars aren't justified. The reason is that the human, economic, and environmental cost almost always outweigh any supposed benefits. I don't see how you have really shown otherwise.
Agreed. Many wars are not justified. BUT MANY ARE. We go out of our way to stay out of wars and when we are in them, we will place our soldiers at additional risk the lives of our soldiers in order to save the lives of the innocent. Very few other countries will do that. Still, your admission that "most wars aren't justified" means that some are, which goes counter to your original statement.
As for your cost assessment, imagine the lives that could have been saved if we had jumped on Germany immediately after Hitler invaded Poland. Germany was fairly week at that point and it wouldn't have taken much to contain Germany and take Hitler out. Instead, we waited. We tried the diplomatic route and millions died. Not just the six million Jews, but the 20 million Russians, seven million Germans, 13.5 million Chinese (10 million civilians!) and 5.5 million Poles (5.3 million civilians).
Straw man. They are both obviously terrible. But war is often worse than genocide. More innocent people are often forced to participate in war, who would rather not, including myself.
NOT a straw man. A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar yet weaker proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. (obviously, Wikipedia). I never created any illusions of your argument. I said wars are necessary to stop things like genocide and to dispose of evil dictators (who are usually genocidal).
You said it yourself, "But war is often worse than genocide." Um, do you know what genocide is? Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.[1] That means the absolute extermination of a people, men, women and children with no exceptions. The only way that war could possibly be worse than genocide is if more than one genocide takes place, say in a nuclear war where both sides literally become extinct. In a non-nuclear exchange, that is not likely.
Perhaps, but that's not the point. The point is that engaging in war probably would have caused more than that. War always costs more than people initially think it will. Iraq is yet another perfect example of that
Um, no. Like I said, over 500,000 children (not total people, this is only the count of people under the age of 5) died due to Saddam Hussein. The entire body count for both Iraqi wars was less than 100,000. So... um.... no. Iraq is a perfect example of wars saving lives. See, 100,000 is less than 500,000. You can't argue with math.
As for Rwanda, if UN soldiers had stood their ground, 800,000 innocent civilians would not have died. I can also promise you that 800,000 soldiers would not have died as there were not 800,000 soldiers in country! When bullets start flying, thugs usually flee.
If a brutal tyrant really is powerful enough to slaughter millions of men, women, and children, chances are pretty damn good that attempting fight him will do nothing more than cause millions of additional death and property destruction that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
Strange, that wasn't the case in Iraq. WWII, maybe, b
Are you honestly trying to tell me, with a straight face, that the horiffic death of over 60,000 american lives and the vast amount of property damage to the countryside and environment was worth saving a few thousand refugees? And do you deny that the country of Vietnam is MUCH better off than North Korea is today?
Can you name the brutal dictator of Vietnam? No? Then it really doesn't apply here does it?
Besides, I never said all wars were justified. I did say that sometimes war is the best and/or ONLY answer. In Vietnam's case, it may not have been. It was you that said that war was never justified and the same results could be achieve without it.
Yes, that is precisely what I would tell them. Who are you to say that over 600,000 people much be viciously murdered in order to free people who would have been free a few years later? They could have immediately begun a mass exodus from the south to the north if the north simply would have ignored the fugitive slave laws. Not a few generations as you ridiculously claim. No massively destructive war necessary.
Yep! Because freedom isn't free. Sometimes, you have to fight for it. I joined, trained, served and was ready to die not just for my own freedoms, but for the freedoms of the oppressed anywhere in the world. What makes me so special that I get freedom and someone else does not? And are you sure that slavery would have ended a few years later? Do you have a source for that? We lost more lives in the civil war than all other wars combined. I don't think that something that many people were willing to die for would have been abolished within a generation, much less a few years.
As far as I know, nobody elected USA to be policeman of the world. If you think people should be forced to give up their life instead of sacrificing other lives from halfway around the world maybe you should pay for it yourself. Because most normal people certainly can't afford it. By the way, WW1 still stands as one of the most striking examples of folly.
I never said the US had to be the policeman. I said that nothing short of war could have possibly saved the 800,000 people who were slaughtered. I don't care who did the fighting. The responsibility falls on the UN who has the legal obligation to stop this sort of thing. That is why the UN was formed. Do you honestly feel that genocide is better than war? Evidently. Even if you just look at the cold numbers, by the most liberal body count has Iraqi deaths at 100,000 (although that number has been repeatedly debunked).
Either way, what you are really saying is, no, you can't name a single brutal dictator that has been deposed without war or non-violent death of the tyrant. Yet, for some reason, you still believe that war is never the answer, under any circumstances at any time, even if millions of men, women and children are being slaughtered by a brutal tyrant.
USA lost Vietnam war to the commies. Vietnam is clearly much better off today, and much more open, than North Korea. If Americans completely stayed out of Vietnam it would have been even more advanced, not having to spend as much effort recovering from the war.
Go find any one of the thousands of refugees that fled to America from Vietnam because those commies were killing them and their families. I guess you are right, we should have stayed out and let them slaughter those that wanted to keep their property.
Korea could have been the same. If USA stayed out of there completely, and let it remain as one country, they could wholly avoided the animosity it is now causing.
No, the communists would have taken all of Korea, not just the northern half and all of Korea would be like N. Korea is today. Also note that Korea was a UN action, not a US one.
The Civil War could have been avoided too. Slavery would have likely died out eventually.
This one is my favorite. So you would tell those that are in shackles to simply wait it out? "Don't worry there, Kunte Kente, your great, great, great grandkids may be free, give of take a few generations." How long should an enslaved people wait before their captors tired of the wealth gained from the labor of others?
Also, I noticed that you didn't respond to Rwanda. Are those people better off than they would have been if we had taken action? You know, better than being tortured, raped and killed? Rwanda is a fine example of what happens when good people do nothing. Kosovo is an example of what happens when good people tire of seeing thugs rape, torture and kill innocents.
And you live in a fantasy world where the external policy of the USA is done for the good of ANYONE except for the American big-ass corporations and their friends.
Tell that to the good people of Kuwait. Tell that to the people living in Australia, England, Poland, France, Spain, Italy, and Berlin. Tell the S. Koreans that they are now officially "American big-ass corporations".
By the way, that computer you used to type that message was created by an "American big-ass corporation". That Internet thing you posted it on is a product of the American military industrial complex. Put your money where your mouth is and turn your computer and cell phones off and give them to someone who can appreciate what freedom has brought them. Otherwise, you're just a hypocritical little bitch who needs to STFU.
Not only that but you are VASTLY underestimating the cost of war. In most cases it is far greater than the cost to the people of a few years rule by a petty dictator. It takes a lot longer than the lifespan of one petty dictator to recover from war when your entire country is blown up and large swaths of your productive capacity is shut down. People like you are the ones who are guilty of causing far more death and suffering as a result of war than would otherwise happen if someone remained in power for a few years.
So are you saying that South Korea is just as bad off and N. Korea? Both are the product of war. Unfortunately, only the Southern half was liberated (by war) and the North was left alone in the hope that some sort of political resolution could be reached. So, tell me, how's that worked out? Which was worse, the few years that the Korean War lasted or the generational misery that awaits those stuck in N. Korea.
Don't like my Korean example? Let's take a look at Iraq. In the years that Saddam Hussein was in power, over half a million children died from preventable diseases because Saddam's corruption of the Oil for Food program. Both Iraqi wars took far less than half a million lives and the people there are better off now than they would have been if left under Saddam Hussein. Of course, you will say that if we left Saddam alone, the Iraqi people would have been better off. What about the people of Kuwait? Remember, Saddam started all this by invading that country.
How about the old standby, WWII? Do you think the six million Jews that were gassed in fake showers or literally worked to death would have been better off if there was no war? You say Hitler was the result of war? How did WWI cause the deaths of six million Jews?
How about American slavery. Do you think that African Americans would be better off living under slavery than they are today due to the Civil War?
Tell you what, I can give examples all day long. How about you give me one, just one brutal dictator that willingly gave up power to improve the lives of the citizens. Just one.
Well, Stalin died of an old age, as well as Mao. Nice try, but I'd suggest next time to check your facts before posting.
Right! Everyone on the list either died of old age or was forced from office by force. None of them gave up power as a result of international pressure that lacked the use of force. For that matter, no brutal dictator has ever, in the history of man, willingly given up power except to resign after handing power to a handpicked successor, such as a relative. They have all either died or been forced from office by war.
Any of the "good things" that might possibly come out of war can also be done without war.
Pol Pot ...
Hitler
Hussien
Mugabe
Al-Bashir
Kim Jong-Il
Sayyid Ali Khamenei/Ahmadinejad
Castro
Stalin
Mao Tse-Tung
Milosevic
and many many more...
None of these dictators could have been/can be removed from office without the use of force. No amount of talk, sanctions, or shame will cause these evil men to willingly give up their power. War is the only answer sometimes. Yes, war is a horror unto itself, but it is nothing compared to the wasted lives and absolute horror people are forced to endure every day under tyrants. Wars almost always end in a few years. Tyrants survive a life time and usually hand pick their successors who are just as bad or even worse. People like you who insist on trying to talk these sons of bitches down only cause their people to suffer more. By refusing to make the hard decisions, people like you are just as guilty of the suffering and needless death of the innocents.
Another fine example.
It's stored on the card in the phone, not the phone's internal memory. The SD card is not erased during a factory reset.
(This was typed on my EVO.)
There must be a way to get the location services you want, like finding the local Krispy-Kreme, without broadcasting your location to the service in question. Like a blocked phone number.
The services mentioned here are only those that you explicitly run that you give permission to broadcast your location. Google Latitude, for example, will show your location on Google Maps to everyone you give permission to show it to.
It's not just your GPS that can get you in trouble, but your own stupidity can do just as well of a job. An example would be taking a picture a of a well known foreign landmark while vacationing and posting it on your Facebook page with the caption, "Look at what I saw today".
It's also a good idea to NOT geo-tag your photos if you take them of anyplace you don't want people to know the location of, like your living room in front of your new big screen TV and pile of cash.
That's horseshit. When someone makes a better OS than MS, I'll start believing these stories. The level of complexity between Windows and OSX is incomparable. OSX works on like 5 hardware configurations, while windows will run on pretty much any hardware.
Uh, no. Windows runs on one, and only one platform, the x86 (x86-64 is still x86). OSX used to only run on RISC (PowerPC) but recently made the switch to x86 as well. It should be noted that Apple did a pretty good job making the old stuff written for RISC run on x86 for a time in order to complete the transition. The core of OSX also runs on a few different mobile platforms as well for i-phone/pod/pad devices.
Linux will run on just about anything. Sure, you can't download the latest Ubuntu and install it on an Alpha based machine, but you can find Linux distro's designed for just about any platform.
Linux may have some technical merit, but is a mess where people without advanced computer skills are left in the dark.
Linux is easier to set up or operate than either Windows or OSX. The problem is that 99% of all computers sold come with either Windows or MacOS installed, so it's what people learn. Once you learn a system, it is easy to you, even if it's some antiquated, console driven, remote accessible Unix app.
MS is having problems selling upgrades. Why do you think ~90% of businesses are still on XP? Because it was/is a useable, relatively stable OS that did what people wanted.
People are not upgrading because XP is good enough and it's cheaper to keep running XP than it is to upgrade. Even if the OS itself was free, you still have to pay your IT guys to create an image for every machine config in the office, install it, train your employees to use it, and pay for the downtime they experience backing up their old stuff and learning the new OS.
You can say what you want about MS, but the fact is, they are the best OS for Businesses, and most consumers
No. MS produces the OS used by most businesses and consumers, therefor, it is what most businesses and consumers choose when they upgrade. It's easier to make the upgrade from XP to 7 than it is to upgrade form XP to Ubuntu 10.4, just as it's easier to make the move from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. When you upgrade to a newer version of your current OS, odds are that you lose nothing. If you switch OS's entirely, you have find replacements for every application you currently depend on and still convert all your files to the new format.
When Linux is usable by joe user, I'll take it seriously.
My three year old daughter runs Linux and she can't even read yet. Hopefully Joe User is more savvy than an illiterate three-year-old.
And what will you do when some of these localities start bringing back segregation, or other policies abhorrent to the nation as a whole? The federal government needs to be able to protect the rights of citizens across the country. That's how it got to be this way in the first place. Expecting people to uproot their lives and move to a different locality that respects them isn't a reasonable fix.
If you find that the federal government needs more power, amend the Constitution to grant those powers. Anything else violates the 10th Amendment.