It's not about pulling out. If America just pulled out, it wouldn't be wrong. What was wrong was that America first encouraged shiites to start an uprising, and then didn't help them. Without American help they were weak, Saddam crushed the rebellion and took sweet revenge. In 1991 Saddam was too strong for any domestic revolution to have a chance of success. Don't you think some people didn't try to stage a coup d'etat? All attempts failed miserably with terrible consequences to the people involved. Sometimes Saddam acted first, before people did anything, and executed them just because of his paranoia.
I think that you're too rash in your judgement. If America moved out of Middle East, Al-Qaeda would still want to attack it. Just look at what is happening in Spain, Northern Ireland or (a few years ago) in Palestine. Basques have autonomy, and yet ETA is still killing people. There was a lot of peace effort in Northern Ireland, and yet some parts of IRA still fight. A few years ago, prime minister Barak of Israel offered Arafat a lot more than Sharon is ever going to offer the Palestinians, but Arafat started second intifada. The point is, for these people (ETA, IRA, Hamas, surely Al-Qaeda too) terrorism is a way of life. What would become of Ben Laden, if he ceased to be a terrorist? No more money, no more protection from fanatic supporters. Very likely someone would finish him off. To make matters worse, Al-Qaeda does not have central organization, so it is not a partner for negotiations, however asurd negotiating with them may sound like.
Please do not forget too, that America is protecting a nation or two in the Middle East (Israel -- which would presumably be able to take care of its own -- and Kurds -- who would be unable to defend themselves agains Saddam). Moving out from Middle East would mean letting Saddam finish the Kurds off. America let shiites down in 1991, it was a sad story. Wouldn't it be damaging for the America's image abroad if it happened again?
My objection against making America's presence in the Middle East does not mean that I don't agree with some other arguments of yours. To be precise, America's presence in Saudi Arabia is especially irritating for the Arabs, and maybe in this case the costs are bigger than the gain. Saudis are a pain in the ass for America, that's for sure. Also, I also think that invadind Iraq was a mistake.
Now the permanent war economy is back with a vengeance and it sucks. The bad thing about working on weapons is:
A. They contribute very little real economic value unless you sell them to other countries, they prevent an attack or you use them to loot and pillage other countries. Otherwise they are economic black hole and most other countries aren't squandering their treasure on at the same rate the U.S. is giving them a real economic edge.
I don't depend on a car. It takes me about two hours two reach my mother's house in the country. Probably the same time it takes you to leave the suburbs.
I'll make you feel miserable: I don't own a car, I go to work by bus, the nearest grocery is 50 m from my apartment, the nearest park is 100 m away, and when I buy furniture, refrigerator, washing maschine, they bring it to me for little or no charge. But I don't live in the USA.
He wasn't interested in America. When France lost Canada, they barely noticed. France was quite friendly to the US during their war for independence (Lafayette). Too bad now it is seen in the USA as an arch-enemy.
We need a star that will be shining long enough for intelligent life to evolve and won't explode into a supernova after a short period of time. IANAA (I am not an astronomer), but I think that a large percentage of stars qualify into this category. Magnetic field is necessary, or else the radiation from space would kill life. At least it would kill the life as we know it, but I suspect that you can't get life without having a large number of complicated chemical compounds, and they don't like high energy photons flying around and ejecting electrons from their orbits. Apart from organic compounds, we do not know any other, so complicated family of elements, and we've been poking around Mendeleyev's table quite extensively (of course, one can never be sure, but there are theoretical explanations why carbon is so special). Plus, we need water (or gas) to carry out chemical reactions efficiently (chemical reactions in solids are too slow), which gives restrictions on temperature. Come to think of it, we're pretty lucky...
Granted, if the aliens look fairly similar to us and have the ability to communicate with us it will probably all work out fairly well, eventually anyway.
Or not. Aztecs were very similar to Pizarro or Cortez, but this did not prevent their demise.
Napoleon didn't stop the US from going to war with Britain in 1812
Napoleon did not pose any threat to the US, so your point is not valid. The example with WW II is valid, though. It did bring France and England together.
Afterall, he wasn't a "dictator" but a elected leader, sure he changed the system when he had won so that he would remain in power, but anyways.
He abused the system to get to power (beating up political oponents for example). In a healthy democracy such person wouldn't have a chance of running for the office because of the charges against it.
THEY are. Somebody else may not. Imagine a situation in which a private entepreneur, who is a bigot, patents some gene which is needed to combat AIDS. He may refuse to license the patent for research, just because he thinks AIDS is punishment from God for the sinners.
I'd prefer to call you just stupid. There are many people out there who'd sooner call themselves Serendipiditus Schtrompf than A. H., and that's because they still remember who this guy really was. Grow up.
Elementary school should teach children clean and readable handwriting. I often received handwritten notes from people and was barely able to recognize what they intended to write.
Curiously enough, I vaguely remember reading a news about a guy from Akron, OH who won 2 million bucks in an Internet lottery... He was very surprised when they sent him a letter.
I think that people who write about software patents in Europe should read the proposed directive in its original form
http://www.debata.ukie.gov.pl/test/dp.nsf/projekt. pdf, starting from page 10. After reading this, I think it is clear that some of the dangers which are being spoken of here, that allegedly come from implementing this proposition, are non-existent.
For example, Article 2 (p. 13) states that to patent a computer-implemented invention, it has to have a 'technical contribution', which is defined as a contribution to the state of the art in a technical field which is not obvious for a person skilled in the art. So patenting double-click is out of the question.
Article 3. says that an algorith which is defined without reference to physical environment does not meet the definition of 'computer-implemented invention'.
The amendments proposed by the European Parliament go further in watering down the patentability. They explicitly forbid patenting algorithms, for instance. See http://www.debata.ukie.gov.pl/test/dp.nsf/poprawki.pdf,
page 9.
They also prevent the patent protection from forbiding reverse engineering in order to achieve compability with patented software (p. 12.)
Also, see page 16., they state explicitly that patent protection cannot prevent exchange of data between the users (thus, MS cannot patent document formats and prevent OpenOffice from reading/writing MS Word files).
Another thing is that it is easier (cheaper) to challenge the validity of the patent in Europe than in the USA (I gather this from the original directive). On the whole, while there is some danger (the original proposition of the directive included several misleading statements, inserted there by commisar Bolkenstein, who is a supporter of software patents; he succeeded to the point of misleading German justice minister), I don't think EU will prepare itself such a mess like the US has, especially after the corrections of European Parliament. The pressure on them is needed, of course.
Taking a nation and making it pay 30% of the gdp to service loans is a sure way to cause poverty.
Yes. What's more, sudden influx of capital into a thirld world country can be detrimental for it. The reason is, governments in such countries are prone to spend the loans on capital-intensive investments, which do not create jobs and do not bring people out of poverty. With less money, the can create more jobs because they have to make labour-intensive investments.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not about pulling out. If America just pulled out, it wouldn't be wrong. What was wrong was that America first encouraged shiites to start an uprising, and then didn't help them. Without American help they were weak, Saddam crushed the rebellion and took sweet revenge. In 1991 Saddam was too strong for any domestic revolution to have a chance of success. Don't you think some people didn't try to stage a coup d'etat? All attempts failed miserably with terrible consequences to the people involved. Sometimes Saddam acted first, before people did anything, and executed them just because of his paranoia.
I think that you're too rash in your judgement. If America moved out of Middle East, Al-Qaeda would still want to attack it. Just look at what is happening in Spain, Northern Ireland or (a few years ago) in Palestine. Basques have autonomy, and yet ETA is still killing people. There was a lot of peace effort in Northern Ireland, and yet some parts of IRA still fight. A few years ago, prime minister Barak of Israel offered Arafat a lot more than Sharon is ever going to offer the Palestinians, but Arafat started second intifada. The point is, for these people (ETA, IRA, Hamas, surely Al-Qaeda too) terrorism is a way of life. What would become of Ben Laden, if he ceased to be a terrorist? No more money, no more protection from fanatic supporters. Very likely someone would finish him off. To make matters worse, Al-Qaeda does not have central organization, so it is not a partner for negotiations, however asurd negotiating with them may sound like.
Please do not forget too, that America is protecting a nation or two in the Middle East (Israel -- which would presumably be able to take care of its own -- and Kurds -- who would be unable to defend themselves agains Saddam). Moving out from Middle East would mean letting Saddam finish the Kurds off. America let shiites down in 1991, it was a sad story. Wouldn't it be damaging for the America's image abroad if it happened again? My objection against making America's presence in the Middle East does not mean that I don't agree with some other arguments of yours. To be precise, America's presence in Saudi Arabia is especially irritating for the Arabs, and maybe in this case the costs are bigger than the gain. Saudis are a pain in the ass for America, that's for sure. Also, I also think that invadind Iraq was a mistake.
Now the permanent war economy is back with a vengeance and it sucks. The bad thing about working on weapons is:
;-)
A. They contribute very little real economic value unless you sell them to other countries, they prevent an attack or you use them to loot and pillage other countries. Otherwise they are economic black hole and most other countries aren't squandering their treasure on at the same rate the U.S. is giving them a real economic edge.
That's because they're protected by the US
The last time I checked, the USA never ratified the Convention on Rights of Child. Or the Landmine ban.
I don't depend on a car. It takes me about two hours two reach my mother's house in the country. Probably the same time it takes you to leave the suburbs.
I'll make you feel miserable: I don't own a car, I go to work by bus, the nearest grocery is 50 m from my apartment, the nearest park is 100 m away, and when I buy furniture, refrigerator, washing maschine, they bring it to me for little or no charge. But I don't live in the USA.
He wasn't interested in America. When France lost Canada, they barely noticed. France was quite friendly to the US during their war for independence (Lafayette). Too bad now it is seen in the USA as an arch-enemy.
Since so many humans preferred rape and pillage to peaceful conquest, we can assume we're not the exception.
We need a star that will be shining long enough for intelligent life to evolve and won't explode into a supernova after a short period of time. IANAA (I am not an astronomer), but I think that a large percentage of stars qualify into this category. Magnetic field is necessary, or else the radiation from space would kill life. At least it would kill the life as we know it, but I suspect that you can't get life without having a large number of complicated chemical compounds, and they don't like high energy photons flying around and ejecting electrons from their orbits. Apart from organic compounds, we do not know any other, so complicated family of elements, and we've been poking around Mendeleyev's table quite extensively (of course, one can never be sure, but there are theoretical explanations why carbon is so special). Plus, we need water (or gas) to carry out chemical reactions efficiently (chemical reactions in solids are too slow), which gives restrictions on temperature. Come to think of it, we're pretty lucky...
Granted, if the aliens look fairly similar to us and have the ability to communicate with us it will probably all work out fairly well, eventually anyway.
Or not. Aztecs were very similar to Pizarro or Cortez, but this did not prevent their demise.
Napoleon didn't stop the US from going to war with Britain in 1812
Napoleon did not pose any threat to the US, so your point is not valid. The example with WW II is valid, though. It did bring France and England together.
What's this, Killing field?
"Who put wrote that code here? It's just as shitty as SCO's system!"
Afterall, he wasn't a "dictator" but a elected leader, sure he changed the system when he had won so that he would remain in power, but anyways.
He abused the system to get to power (beating up political oponents for example). In a healthy democracy such person wouldn't have a chance of running for the office because of the charges against it.
THEY are. Somebody else may not. Imagine a situation in which a private entepreneur, who is a bigot, patents some gene which is needed to combat AIDS. He may refuse to license the patent for research, just because he thinks AIDS is punishment from God for the sinners.
I'd prefer to call you just stupid. There are many people out there who'd sooner call themselves Serendipiditus Schtrompf than A. H., and that's because they still remember who this guy really was. Grow up.
You've seen the movies where one of the cool kids asks some homely, nerdy girl to the prom, only to find out it was some big joke at the end.
It usually ends pretty bad for the cool kids.
Elementary school should teach children clean and readable handwriting. I often received handwritten notes from people and was barely able to recognize what they intended to write.
Curiously enough, I vaguely remember reading a news about a guy from Akron, OH who won 2 million bucks in an Internet lottery... He was very surprised when they sent him a letter.
I think that people who write about software patents in Europe should read the proposed directive in its original form http://www.debata.ukie.gov.pl/test/dp.nsf/projekt. pdf, starting from page 10. After reading this, I think it is clear that some of the dangers which are being spoken of here, that allegedly come from implementing this proposition, are non-existent.
i .pdf,
page 9.
For example, Article 2 (p. 13) states that to patent a computer-implemented invention, it has to have a 'technical contribution', which is defined as a contribution to the state of the art in a technical field which is not obvious for a person skilled in the art. So patenting double-click is out of the question.
Article 3. says that an algorith which is defined without reference to physical environment does not meet the definition of 'computer-implemented invention'.
The amendments proposed by the European Parliament go further in watering down the patentability. They explicitly forbid patenting algorithms, for instance. See http://www.debata.ukie.gov.pl/test/dp.nsf/poprawk
They also prevent the patent protection from forbiding reverse engineering in order to achieve compability with patented software (p. 12.)
Also, see page 16., they state explicitly that patent protection cannot prevent exchange of data between the users (thus, MS cannot patent document formats and prevent OpenOffice from reading/writing MS Word files).
Another thing is that it is easier (cheaper) to challenge the validity of the patent in Europe than in the USA (I gather this from the original directive). On the whole, while there is some danger (the original proposition of the directive included several misleading statements, inserted there by commisar Bolkenstein, who is a supporter of software patents; he succeeded to the point of misleading German justice minister), I don't think EU will prepare itself such a mess like the US has, especially after the corrections of European Parliament. The pressure on them is needed, of course.
Taking a nation and making it pay 30% of the gdp to service loans is a sure way to cause poverty.
Yes. What's more, sudden influx of capital into a thirld world country can be detrimental for it. The reason is, governments in such countries are prone to spend the loans on capital-intensive investments, which do not create jobs and do not bring people out of poverty. With less money, the can create more jobs because they have to make labour-intensive investments.
Eliminating world povery is also a matter of national security.
da, tovarisch!
With Microsoft it somehow doesn't work.
They'll put it on GPL and watch everybody's jaws dropping to the floor.