1. I did not intend to say that the USA is a conquering civilization. I wanted to make an analogy that successful cultures have a kind of a motor, which drives them. With the Romans (I sustain my opinion) it was conquest (they didn't raise countries, but they captured slaves), with the USA -- it is immigration.
2. About the Romans: their economical system was based on slavery. Slaves tilled the fields and produced food for everybody else (they gave food for free to poor citizens of Rome, so they had to have it cheap). Slaves were gathered from wars. So too keep the economy going, they needed land to give to people and slaves to till that land.
This what I'd call 'pissing people in passive mode': some people just can't get over it that secular democracies exist (does the term 'secular democracy' apply to the USA??), and that's it.
There is a lot of room for improvement on 'pissing people off in active mode'.
The primary reason for the failure of the Roman Empire was that was a conquering civilization. They conquered a country, robbed it, took slaves and gave land to their people, esp. retired soldiers (thay had to have some incentive for people to server 25 years in the ranks). When they had nothing more to conquer (or, the possible choices were too far away), the machine stopped. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but the important source of the US strength was constant supply of immigrants, enthusiastic about their new country. As soon as that ends...
This assuming those baddies come from a place like Afghanistan. Fighting terrorism boils down to two issues:
1. prevention: trying not to piss off people, letting terrorists know that you won't yield under the pressure and eliminating situations which create supply of fresh suicide bombers (hint: Palestine)
2. police and intelligence action: most terrorist get caught by the police, not by the military; Afghanistan solution was an exception, it failed miserably in Iraq.
Microsoft's not better
on
Moving To Linux
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Compare it with the number of 'Windows XP for dummies' copies sold.
Just like people writing about Berry phases quote Michael Berry's papers, even though the reasonin which led to the discovery of Berry phase is also quite simple.
Essentially, there are two neat things about DFT. The first is that it proves that it is possible to fully describe the state of a bunch of electrons with the 4 dimensional spin density, rather than the normal 4N coordinates
Only the ground state can be fully described (I assume you write about the Kohn-Hohenberg theorem).
What threat of privace is in Symantic Web? It's all about gathering information from the Web. If you don't want people to know something, don't put it on the Web.
That's why we had Doug Lenat of the CYC corporation, who somehow ended up on President Ashcroft's post-coup blacklist as a dangerous intellectual and hasn't been seen since.
in the article.
I know perfectly well that the Negroes were lynched in the USA. Just as I know perfectly about 'pogroms' in Tzarist Russia. The USSR didn't encourage pogroms, only because it wanted to have a monopoly on violence. Remember the outburst of antisemitism in 1953, the case of 'Kremlin doctors'? Stalin used antisemitism as a tool in the internal politics, while using 'internationalism' and 'friendship of nations' as catchphrases to lure Western leftwingers into believing he was OK. The term WASP? What's wrong with calling somebody White Anglo-Saxon Protestand when he is White Anglo-Saxon Protestant? It is a sociological term by now.
You say that the USSR developed all republics. Especially these Siberian one, by sending there people against their will, even whole nations. If you say that it did not discriminate whole nations, than let me remind you about Crimean Tatars, who were exiled from Crimea and were forbidden to return.
That's different from the USSR, where there were less reasons to desire political freedom.
Ah, I get the point. You argue not that there is the same amount of freedom in the USA and in former Soviet Union, only that there was the same amount of freedom in the Soviet Union relative to people's needs. I won't argue with that since I really don't know, but:
this is a different issue,
I always treat such arguments (about 'cultural differences with respect to freedom') with suspicion.
at least the Soviets didn't lynch Negroes
There is a saying in Poland, that whenever a communist is asked a hard question, he answers "... and they beat up Negroes in the USA!". People from Caucasus always had a hard time in the USSR, and the Soviet Union inherited after the Czar Empire tradition of antisemitism. I won't comment on how "Soviet culture was opposed to discrimination on the very basic level" because this is nonsense.
Americans tend to associate human rights with political freedom. This is not necessarily natural for people in other cultures.
I live in Poland, not in the USA. We in Poland did not consider ourselves as free as Americans, before 1989. Don't sell me the bullshit that Polish culture is so drastically different than Russian.
There was censorship in the USSR, there is censorship in the USA.
There's no comparison. The fact you can bash the American government on a USA-hosted website is a proof that I'm right. USSR was cracking down not only on political opposition freedom of speech, it also punished people (severely, in some circumstances) for possessing or producing porn (yes, I believe that freedom of speech means that I can look at whatever I like, as long as nobody is hurt). The USSR also discriminated people with nationalities different than Russian.
We only need to invent a cheap material which is superconducting in room temperature and we have a wonderful way to store energy (not to mention transfering it).
Slashdot Mirror
1. I did not intend to say that the USA is a conquering civilization. I wanted to make an analogy that successful cultures have a kind of a motor, which drives them. With the Romans (I sustain my opinion) it was conquest (they didn't raise countries, but they captured slaves), with the USA -- it is immigration.
2. About the Romans: their economical system was based on slavery. Slaves tilled the fields and produced food for everybody else (they gave food for free to poor citizens of Rome, so they had to have it cheap). Slaves were gathered from wars. So too keep the economy going, they needed land to give to people and slaves to till that land.
This what I'd call 'pissing people in passive mode': some people just can't get over it that secular democracies exist (does the term 'secular democracy' apply to the USA??), and that's it. There is a lot of room for improvement on 'pissing people off in active mode'.
Downloading pirated games is not any 'communication'.
I can't understand people who can't afford to buy a game and yet can afford the hardware to run the game on.
Evidence is in Iraq and there's lots of it. Military can't obviously cope with terrorism, because Iraq has no functioning police force.
AFAIR American military commanders in Iraq have been calling on Pentagon for long to send them some Military Police...
There is also a nice package manager and retriever for rpm's called poldek.
Will this get my karma raised?
(Score:5, Insightful)
Wow... works like a charm...
During the war with the Talibs, the US mostly outsourced it to the Northern Alliance (too bad their best leader was aleady dead).
The primary reason for the failure of the Roman Empire was that was a conquering civilization. They conquered a country, robbed it, took slaves and gave land to their people, esp. retired soldiers (thay had to have some incentive for people to server 25 years in the ranks). When they had nothing more to conquer (or, the possible choices were too far away), the machine stopped. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but the important source of the US strength was constant supply of immigrants, enthusiastic about their new country. As soon as that ends...
The armor will stay intact, but the soldier inside will get kinda squashed.
Unfortunately, not all of those 1500 were militia, AFAIR majority were civilians.
This assuming those baddies come from a place like Afghanistan. Fighting terrorism boils down to two issues:
1. prevention: trying not to piss off people, letting terrorists know that you won't yield under the pressure and eliminating situations which create supply of fresh suicide bombers (hint: Palestine)
2. police and intelligence action: most terrorist get caught by the police, not by the military; Afghanistan solution was an exception, it failed miserably in Iraq.
Compare it with the number of 'Windows XP for dummies' copies sold.
Will this get my karma raised?
Just like people writing about Berry phases quote Michael Berry's papers, even though the reasonin which led to the discovery of Berry phase is also quite simple.
Essentially, there are two neat things about DFT. The first is that it proves that it is possible to fully describe the state of a bunch of electrons with the 4 dimensional spin density, rather than the normal 4N coordinates
Only the ground state can be fully described (I assume you write about the Kohn-Hohenberg theorem).
Sometimes it's getting hard to tell the difference between the two.
Czasami trudno odroznic, czy to Federacja Rosyjska, czy ZSSR.
Who wore the towel: Bush or Saddam?
Fuck the Israeli government all the way.
Yeah, and people who blame the nation which defends itself agains terrorism.
In Europe neofascist/neonazi groups use phatboy to finance and also to distribute their propaganda.
the writer of phatbot has been arrested as well (coincidently also a german)
Coincidently?
They can do it now. It all depends whether the police would be stupid enough to take slander as sound evidence.
What threat of privace is in Symantic Web? It's all about gathering information from the Web. If you don't want people to know something, don't put it on the Web.
That's why we had
Doug Lenat of the CYC corporation, who somehow ended up on President Ashcroft's post-coup blacklist as a dangerous intellectual and hasn't been seen since.
in the article.
I know perfectly well that the Negroes were lynched in the USA. Just as I know perfectly about 'pogroms' in Tzarist Russia. The USSR didn't encourage pogroms, only because it wanted to have a monopoly on violence. Remember the outburst of antisemitism in 1953, the case of 'Kremlin doctors'? Stalin used antisemitism as a tool in the internal politics, while using 'internationalism' and 'friendship of nations' as catchphrases to lure Western leftwingers into believing he was OK. The term WASP? What's wrong with calling somebody White Anglo-Saxon Protestand when he is White Anglo-Saxon Protestant? It is a sociological term by now.
You say that the USSR developed all republics. Especially these Siberian one, by sending there people against their will, even whole nations. If you say that it did not discriminate whole nations, than let me remind you about Crimean Tatars, who were exiled from Crimea and were forbidden to return.
Ah, I get the point. You argue not that there is the same amount of freedom in the USA and in former Soviet Union, only that there was the same amount of freedom in the Soviet Union relative to people's needs. I won't argue with that since I really don't know, but:
at least the Soviets didn't lynch Negroes
There is a saying in Poland, that whenever a communist is asked a hard question, he answers "... and they beat up Negroes in the USA!". People from Caucasus always had a hard time in the USSR, and the Soviet Union inherited after the Czar Empire tradition of antisemitism. I won't comment on how "Soviet culture was opposed to discrimination on the very basic level" because this is nonsense.
Americans tend to associate human rights with political freedom. This is not necessarily natural for people in other cultures.
I live in Poland, not in the USA. We in Poland did not consider ourselves as free as Americans, before 1989. Don't sell me the bullshit that Polish culture is so drastically different than Russian.
There was censorship in the USSR, there is censorship in the USA.
There's no comparison. The fact you can bash the American government on a USA-hosted website is a proof that I'm right. USSR was cracking down not only on political opposition freedom of speech, it also punished people (severely, in some circumstances) for possessing or producing porn (yes, I believe that freedom of speech means that I can look at whatever I like, as long as nobody is hurt). The USSR also discriminated people with nationalities different than Russian.
We only need to invent a cheap material which is superconducting in room temperature and we have a wonderful way to store energy (not to mention transfering it).