Well, to be fair there's a lot more to SC2 than just build-orders.:-) Build orders are mainly concerned with the "macro" aspect of SC2 gameplay, which is base management and economy, and they're also relevant only in the opening. Everything past the 7 or 8-minute mark is beyond build orders. Good micro (unit-level manipulation of movement and actions), harassment of workers, and timed expansions all kick in after that point, and those become the difference between winning a game and losing a game.
Also, there is an element of "good practices" in SC2. Rushes, especially "all-in" rushes (referred to by TFA) are generally considered bad practice. Beating your opponent every time is cool, but this is usually indicative of a game imbalance that Blizzard will probably patch at some point down the line, at which point you'll rapidly fall in the leagues as you lose to high-level players clued in on countering that or who simply have the good practices to beat it (like early scouting, etc.).
The other (more important) factor is that a gamer specializing in an all-in rush deteriorates his/her gameplay, because he won't have the variety to compensate for a failure of that rush. A rush usually means a sacrifice of something or the other (the tight game-mechanics of an SC2 opening means there's always an opportunity cost; to get that extra army, your economy suffers, or to get those extra resource-collectors, your army will be smaller). All-in rushes, and rushes in general sacrifice some thing or the other which a good opponent can exploit if he/she manages to push back the rush. Someone over-playing one tactic will lack the skills to compensate for its failure, so varying one's game by mastering different build-orders and plays is the better way to do this (if slower).
This is a stupid, flamebait, troll's topic. "iOS and OS X will merge, THEREFORE... all apps will be solely distributed by Apple in a walled garden."
Where's the logical connection there? How do you get from one to another? Why not conclude that since iOS and OS X will merge, the app distribution model will completely open up like on OS X? Mac OS X doesn't even have an activation key, for goodness sake. Apple is the patron of many an open source project, including WebKit which is the most prolific rendering engine on mobile devices. No, no, the geek outrage on/. is reserved for the App Store.
If anything, Apple has shown itself to be responsive to the market. From opening up the SDK, to multitasking, to a host of other issues, they wear their ignorance on their sleeve and they have shown themselves to be responsive, and when the market speaks, Apple will, I believe, listen.
If it doesn't, it will fade away into obscurity like many tech companies before it. Sheesh.
This topic (and most of the ensuing Apple-hating group think on slashdot) is sheer bullshit. I got karma to burn, make my day.
I agree with you on that but it's during these times that Muslims least want to be identified as such. Muslims watch the same news you do and we have a pretty good idea what's going through the average person's mind. And it's not your fault either, that's the admission: if I was not a Muslim I'd be pretty mad at Muslims too (in fact even as a Muslim I'm fairly annoyed).
And so the moderates are kind of, I feel from personal experience, in limbo. Now is the worst possible time I can imagine to have to admit being even remotely associated with people I deeply disagree with and, in fact, have very little in common with.
It's really a weird spot to be in. They're a half a world away, I disagree with them (and honestly kind of dislike them), but somehow I need to dissociate myself from them.
It's an unenviable position to be in for any reasonable person, Muslim or not. All reasonable dialogue is drowned out by shouts of exclusion from both sides. The best time to talk is usually after the full-throated yelling has ended, and is best demonstrated by actions rather than words.
These things really set back that long term, grassroots dialogue back. Depressing.
And even if I am offended (which I reserve the right to be), I don't think any of this should be happening (i.e., censorship). There has been defamatory material on the prophet for centuries, and in fact were around even during his time. This is nothing new; anyone as prominent as him had to have grown pretty thick skin to get anything done.
His followers 14 centuries on, however, can't seem to follow in his footsteps even half as much as they claim they do.
Every time something like this comes up, I try to dig a hole and disappear best I can. Yet another dysfunctional government like Bangladesh or Pakistan come up with a way to do their magical rabble-rousing and distract from the real issues at hand: economic development, education, and healthcare. All of which they are failing *miserably* at.
This is all *political*. Almost all Muslims (both in the "West" and in the "East") have no beef with anyone or anything, and just want to go ahead living their lives. These idiots in government, who can't even ensure their citizens get basic utilities like garbage collection and electricity, are spending their energy on some drawings, which is perverse on multiple levels.
The minority here is basically speaking for the majority. And honestly... the majority (like me) are looking to dig their own holes as well. We don't want to stick our heads out because we don't want the confrontation. This isn't something we particularly care about. I honest to goodness don't want to argue about the merits and demerits of my faith with some of the slashdotters on here, who are convinced that Muslims "don't belong."
But someone's gotta say it. Most of us are not like this. Most of us just want to get on with our lives. Please don't let the vocal minority dominate the debate. This is political distraction tactics and has little or nothing to do with free speech, Facebook, or the prophet.
Oh, really?! I was waiting for Snow Leopard so I could make the jump from Tiger in one go, and then it sounded like you couldn't do that!
Are you sure this is possible? Because their marketing certainly seems to strongly *suggest* that it's not. They're saying, and I quote:
Snow Leopard Upgrade Requirements
Snow Leopard requires an Intel-based Mac. Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard users, buy the upgrade. Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger users, buy the Mac Box Set.
Find out which upgrade is right for you.
Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard): Upgrade your Mac by purchasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger): Upgrade by purchasing the Mac Box Set, which includes Snow Leopard, iLife â(TM)09, and iWork â(TM)09.
I'm thinking, "what would Apple do," and it might be possible they'll block upgrades from v10.4, so I might have to back up all my data, clear my hard-drive and do a clean install.
What's your take on that?
And I'm not doing this just because I'm cheap, but because I already purchased iWork '09, and I don't want to pay for it again.
I was in San Francisco earlier this year and I couldn't help but notice how crumbling the BART network really was. The ticketing system was inefficient, the trains weren't maintained with, and it seemed like people really didn't use it all that much.
Mass rapid and alternate modes of transport are really neglected. At my hotel, I asked if there was supermarket nearby, they're like, yeah, there's one a couple of miles that way. I'm like great, I'll just walk it, it's not that far. They're like, if you don't have a vehicle we don't suggest you go there on foot, there's a thoroughfare you have to go by that doesn't have sidewalk and it wouldn't be safe. I was astounded. If there is the convenience of having facilities nearby, what's the point in making them inaccessible by anything other than by car?
I use Thunderbird a lot, but I can't say I really like it. I, too, hope it doesn't get ignored though. Goodness knows it needs a lot of work. It's the only real open source competitor to Outlook, barring Evolution perhaps (unless someone here can recommend me to a good open source POP client?), but Mozilla has a tremendous amount of goodwill from people from its Firefox endeavours, so it's better-poised to dethrone Outlook.
But in all honesty, Thunderbird is one of those pieces of software that makes me breathe a sigh of relief when I go back to Outlook. Outlook is light-years ahead of anything Thunderbird has come out with.
That's actually an excellent point, and very insightful, but I don't have mod points. Most of the moderate Muslim world that looks upon these incidents shaking their heads in shame know this.
Most of the people rioting against the Danish cartoons, or trying to kill Mr. Rushdie, hadn't ever even read the book or seen the cartoons. In fact, most of them probably had never read a book in English, or even read the Qur'an for that matter. If the had, they read it in Arabic, a language they simply don't understand.
Lack of education in the Muslim third world is endemic, and these kinds of riots and chest-thumping are essentially political posturing. They all were. The teddy prophet was (Sudan trying to get into the favor of hardline elements in money-rich Saudi Arabia), the Irani fatwa was (Iran raging against the Western machine), the Danish cartoons were (Pakistan, where rioting lead to deaths was undergoing severe political repression under their dictator Pervez Musharraf, and the opposition parties organized the riots).
You make the (stupid) mistake of associating a centuries-old religion with its followers from nothing other than soundbites from the news.
The fatwa on Salman Rushdie was universally condemned by Muslims and Muslim scholars at the time it was issued; not a good soundbite to sell rags.
The murder of Theo Van Gogh was also universally condemned by Muslims and Muslim scholars. But no, you want to correlate the actions of hopeless, uneducated people with the religion. I guess you need a scapegoat, so, sure. Knock yourself out. Blame a 1400-year-old religion that does not have a single complete incarnation of itself in any government of the world.
By pointing your finger at a religion and blaming it (basically punching a wall) you do a disservice to those who are really looking for a peaceful existence, by ignoring the real issues of the human condition in hopeless, helpless people who are feeling disenfranchised for whatever twisted reasons.
But no, please. Don't sympathize. Don't empathize. In fact, totally ignore the human element in all this (the only element that really matters?). "Religion of peace... hah. Sure." Great help you are.
Obviously all these proclamations are definitely dubious, considering we're talking about one of the most reviled villains in modern history, but it only adds to the fact that there isn't any evidence to support that he did it.
Another thing that is also not publicized much is that the Taleban condemned Osama bin Laden, and asked him to leave the country, because although he was their "guest", they didn't want to be bombed on his account. Mullah Omar was actually low down in the order of their theocracy, and his friendship with OBL was trumped by the religious council.
They asked the United States for evidence so they could try him in their courts. Yes, that could be mistaken for a joke by many, but the truth remains: the Taleban were willing to talk about it.
As twisted and messed up the Taleban were (which they were!), they had restored order to the country after many years of terrible in-fighting. The US jumped into the war with Afghanistan purely because they were angry, and people were penning "Nuke the bastards" on soot-covered cars in New York.
9/11 was sad, but the many civilian lives lost in the two wars that followed are also sad. There were other avenues besides war at the time, and it probably would have made sense to explore them. Even if it was for due diligence.
The Taleban of then and the Taleban of today are 2 wholly different animals. Back then, there were senior members of their religious circles who were somewhat reasonable. Most of them have been sidelined or are dead, and the radicals are now firmly in charge. The high casualties they take and their high management turnover has ensured of that.
The thing I find strangest is that news reports that were covering the attacks started suggesting Osama bin Laden as a possible perpetrator of the attacks within hours of the event. It became "fact", and everyone was working on this assumption.
I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, but that's a fact; news anchors repeated it enough, and people were shocked enough to just lap it up.
I work for a print publishing firm, and we've been experiencing a recent surge in customers, because publishers are starting to focus on their core competency, which is content generation. The "other" business of printing, quality control, packaging, and distribution is now being out-sourced to other companies who specialize in squeezing the last dollar of efficiency out of this (manufacturing it cheaply, transporting it somewhere cheap to be processed, then ship it out everywhere else), and whose entire purpose in life is to efficiently produce, and distribute printed matter.
I'm sure Dell has complete control of the design of their hardware, where every nut and bolt goes. And the specifications will no doubt be very detailed, if my experience in the print industry's any indication.
It's just a matter of letting the organization that does something very well do it, rather than trying to do everything in-house.
What an intelligent description of a sixth of humanity. Those are your brothers and sisters there. Whatever "issues" they have, you have, by mere association.
It means I went from alarm at the overt maneuver to an absolute inability to care.
A dead Muslim is worth less than a dead non-Muslim. Just listen to yourselves, people.
The truth is, when the United States flouts international law, the world is far worse off than when another country flouts international law.
There's a reason why the president of the US is considered the most powerful man in the world, or "the leader of the free world." He represents something much bigger than just a country. As the source of many of the world's innovation and progress, and by its own claims of having the moral high ground, the United States has set some terrible precedents in the past 8 years under George Bush.
This is only the first of many terrible incidents to come in the following years, as people have lost all respect for international law and what were thought to be common decencies (not torturing prisoners, etc).
Despotic police states all over the world have been emboldened by the irresponsibility of the United States.
This isn't anti-Western rhetoric, I totally agree with what you say in principle. We should condemn all the bad we see, but the US torturing prisoners is materially worse than, say, Iraq doing the same thing.
My bank has a Bill Payments facility in their online banking. It allows you to elect a recipient, and the amount. When I get my paper bills, I just key in the exact amount, select the right recipient, and do it manually.
Each transaction comes with a unique 10-digit transaction identification number. Just keep that in case there are issues (which has never happened yet). Takes a few days to process.
I don't want people to be taking money out of my account, so I will never set up an automated payment system. I want to know who I'm paying how much. It's a good way to keep track of what you're spending on.
There was an article on the BBC about a similar method like this this last year.
A new method of looking at stars in the sky through cloud cover; it actually takes several pictures, and combines the best parts of each picture to form one clear picture. Allows telescopes to increase their sharpness many fold. The professor in the news story actually gives an example of a heat haze, coincidentally enough (or not)!
But this looks like a step up from what's in that article. They're taking the best magnified parts of the picture.
There are 9 planets orbiting the sun. Turns out Pluto isn't even a planet.
Okay, you had us all until the last point there. This may be offtopic, but since you're marked +5 Interesting, it's worth it to point out a glaring mistake:
What is, or isn't a planet, isn't a theory based on empirical evidence, observation, or experimentation, and is not falsifiable (unless of course you discover you had some grit on your telescope). It's an arbitrary set of standards that scientists agree upon. Pluto was decided not to be a planet after a bunch of these scientists met and decided, you know what? That Pluto being a planet thing? Forget about it. No, *this* is what a planet is now. And according to that definition, Pluto doesn't cut it. Nothing about Pluto changed, no new evidence was found.
It's not a theory that was revised at all. It was an arbitrary standard that was revised.
Spot on on the rest of your post, though. Many thanks for the insight.
The parent poster is possibly either a Sunni ethnic Muslim, or a Sunni sympathizer of some sort, because his obvious disdain for the Shi'ites in Iran is a classic symptom of this deep, deep schism within Islam.
The Arab states don't like Iran at all, and it's largely because they see Iran as the heretical, more organized, non-Arab, superior brothers. The Gulf Arab states as a group are very suspicious of the relatively successful model of Iran. Shi'ites, as a minority group within Islam, are generally very well-educated in both the religious and secular sciences, and as the grotesquely rich Gulf Arab states have squandered the first few decades of their oil wealth, Iran has a very well-organized military, some great universities, a great sense of national pride that pre-dates Islam, and have committed resources to nation building.
The Sunni Gulf-Arab states dread Iran for these very reasons, and lots of Sunnis hate Shi'ites more than they hate non-Muslims.
Other things the Arab states don't like because it's heretical and/or destabilizing: women's rights, infidels (aka: anyone they disagree with on practically anything), beer, etc, etc.
Having lived in a Gulf-Arab state for a long time, I have to say, the Gulf-Arab states get a bad rep because of Saudi Arabia. Not all Gulf-Arab states are the same. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, all have very emancipated women in social life, even though their legislation is still based on some form of male chauvinism. Some of these countries have women in their fledgling democratically-elected legislative assemblies, and one of them actually recognizes Israel, if I'm not mistaken.
Many of these countries are moving forward, slowly, but surely. The transition from a nomadic lifestyle diving for pearls or wandering the desert, to a fully modern, post-industrial society is a generations-long journey, and many of these Gulf-Arab states, though with deep-seated social and political immaturity (I would know, I grew up in one), are making the first strides towards some form of acceptable modernity.
I just feel credit must be given where credit is due.:)
In hindsight, it may not sound as earth-shatteringly obfuscated as when I first came across it.:P And, yeah, I've used much worse than 3-d arrays. With auto-vivification, you can make nested hashes and arrays to the nth degree, or as much as you can stomach, whichever comes last. But for the code I was looking at, a multi-dimensional array seemed very unnecessary.
I couldn't tell you exactly why, because I can hardly remember. You're just going to have to take my word for it!:)
Slashdot Mirror
A relatively short life, in modern terms, but one full of activity. Rest in peace, Steve.
I agree, rushes and cheese are perfectly legitimate strategies. Supremely annoying, but legitimate. :-)
Well, to be fair there's a lot more to SC2 than just build-orders. :-) Build orders are mainly concerned with the "macro" aspect of SC2 gameplay, which is base management and economy, and they're also relevant only in the opening. Everything past the 7 or 8-minute mark is beyond build orders. Good micro (unit-level manipulation of movement and actions), harassment of workers, and timed expansions all kick in after that point, and those become the difference between winning a game and losing a game.
Also, there is an element of "good practices" in SC2. Rushes, especially "all-in" rushes (referred to by TFA) are generally considered bad practice. Beating your opponent every time is cool, but this is usually indicative of a game imbalance that Blizzard will probably patch at some point down the line, at which point you'll rapidly fall in the leagues as you lose to high-level players clued in on countering that or who simply have the good practices to beat it (like early scouting, etc.).
The other (more important) factor is that a gamer specializing in an all-in rush deteriorates his/her gameplay, because he won't have the variety to compensate for a failure of that rush. A rush usually means a sacrifice of something or the other (the tight game-mechanics of an SC2 opening means there's always an opportunity cost; to get that extra army, your economy suffers, or to get those extra resource-collectors, your army will be smaller). All-in rushes, and rushes in general sacrifice some thing or the other which a good opponent can exploit if he/she manages to push back the rush. Someone over-playing one tactic will lack the skills to compensate for its failure, so varying one's game by mastering different build-orders and plays is the better way to do this (if slower).
Enchantments? iOS doesn't have that. Android rules.
This is a stupid, flamebait, troll's topic. "iOS and OS X will merge, THEREFORE... all apps will be solely distributed by Apple in a walled garden."
Where's the logical connection there? How do you get from one to another? Why not conclude that since iOS and OS X will merge, the app distribution model will completely open up like on OS X? Mac OS X doesn't even have an activation key, for goodness sake. Apple is the patron of many an open source project, including WebKit which is the most prolific rendering engine on mobile devices. No, no, the geek outrage on /. is reserved for the App Store.
If anything, Apple has shown itself to be responsive to the market. From opening up the SDK, to multitasking, to a host of other issues, they wear their ignorance on their sleeve and they have shown themselves to be responsive, and when the market speaks, Apple will, I believe, listen.
If it doesn't, it will fade away into obscurity like many tech companies before it. Sheesh.
This topic (and most of the ensuing Apple-hating group think on slashdot) is sheer bullshit. I got karma to burn, make my day.
I agree with you on that but it's during these times that Muslims least want to be identified as such. Muslims watch the same news you do and we have a pretty good idea what's going through the average person's mind. And it's not your fault either, that's the admission: if I was not a Muslim I'd be pretty mad at Muslims too (in fact even as a Muslim I'm fairly annoyed).
And so the moderates are kind of, I feel from personal experience, in limbo. Now is the worst possible time I can imagine to have to admit being even remotely associated with people I deeply disagree with and, in fact, have very little in common with.
It's really a weird spot to be in. They're a half a world away, I disagree with them (and honestly kind of dislike them), but somehow I need to dissociate myself from them.
It's an unenviable position to be in for any reasonable person, Muslim or not. All reasonable dialogue is drowned out by shouts of exclusion from both sides. The best time to talk is usually after the full-throated yelling has ended, and is best demonstrated by actions rather than words.
These things really set back that long term, grassroots dialogue back. Depressing.
And even if I am offended (which I reserve the right to be), I don't think any of this should be happening (i.e., censorship). There has been defamatory material on the prophet for centuries, and in fact were around even during his time. This is nothing new; anyone as prominent as him had to have grown pretty thick skin to get anything done.
His followers 14 centuries on, however, can't seem to follow in his footsteps even half as much as they claim they do.
Every time something like this comes up, I try to dig a hole and disappear best I can. Yet another dysfunctional government like Bangladesh or Pakistan come up with a way to do their magical rabble-rousing and distract from the real issues at hand: economic development, education, and healthcare. All of which they are failing *miserably* at.
This is all *political*. Almost all Muslims (both in the "West" and in the "East") have no beef with anyone or anything, and just want to go ahead living their lives. These idiots in government, who can't even ensure their citizens get basic utilities like garbage collection and electricity, are spending their energy on some drawings, which is perverse on multiple levels.
The minority here is basically speaking for the majority. And honestly... the majority (like me) are looking to dig their own holes as well. We don't want to stick our heads out because we don't want the confrontation. This isn't something we particularly care about. I honest to goodness don't want to argue about the merits and demerits of my faith with some of the slashdotters on here, who are convinced that Muslims "don't belong."
But someone's gotta say it. Most of us are not like this. Most of us just want to get on with our lives. Please don't let the vocal minority dominate the debate. This is political distraction tactics and has little or nothing to do with free speech, Facebook, or the prophet.
Oh, really?! I was waiting for Snow Leopard so I could make the jump from Tiger in one go, and then it sounded like you couldn't do that!
Are you sure this is possible? Because their marketing certainly seems to strongly *suggest* that it's not. They're saying, and I quote:
I'm thinking, "what would Apple do," and it might be possible they'll block upgrades from v10.4, so I might have to back up all my data, clear my hard-drive and do a clean install.
What's your take on that?
And I'm not doing this just because I'm cheap, but because I already purchased iWork '09, and I don't want to pay for it again.
Mod parent up.
This survey means absolutely nothing. It was taken before Microsoft announced a release date, and that means it's no longer relevant.
Considering that, the number is quite strong.
Windows 7 has a lot of mindshare as "Microsoft [finally] gets it right."
I don't mind burning some karma here, but you gotta call it like you see it.
Agreed.
I was in San Francisco earlier this year and I couldn't help but notice how crumbling the BART network really was. The ticketing system was inefficient, the trains weren't maintained with, and it seemed like people really didn't use it all that much.
Mass rapid and alternate modes of transport are really neglected. At my hotel, I asked if there was supermarket nearby, they're like, yeah, there's one a couple of miles that way. I'm like great, I'll just walk it, it's not that far. They're like, if you don't have a vehicle we don't suggest you go there on foot, there's a thoroughfare you have to go by that doesn't have sidewalk and it wouldn't be safe. I was astounded. If there is the convenience of having facilities nearby, what's the point in making them inaccessible by anything other than by car?
I use Thunderbird a lot, but I can't say I really like it. I, too, hope it doesn't get ignored though. Goodness knows it needs a lot of work. It's the only real open source competitor to Outlook, barring Evolution perhaps (unless someone here can recommend me to a good open source POP client?), but Mozilla has a tremendous amount of goodwill from people from its Firefox endeavours, so it's better-poised to dethrone Outlook.
But in all honesty, Thunderbird is one of those pieces of software that makes me breathe a sigh of relief when I go back to Outlook. Outlook is light-years ahead of anything Thunderbird has come out with.
I sincerely hope Thunderbird 3 proves me wrong.
I kinda liked Sphere (the movie), it had Samuel L. Jackson in it, but I was a kid at the time, and I loved Star Trek at the time too.
I read his Jurassic Park, and quite enjoyed it.
This was sudden and unexpected. He sounds like a really nice person from what people are saying about him.
Rest in peace, Mr. Crichton.
That's actually an excellent point, and very insightful, but I don't have mod points. Most of the moderate Muslim world that looks upon these incidents shaking their heads in shame know this.
Most of the people rioting against the Danish cartoons, or trying to kill Mr. Rushdie, hadn't ever even read the book or seen the cartoons. In fact, most of them probably had never read a book in English, or even read the Qur'an for that matter. If the had, they read it in Arabic, a language they simply don't understand.
Lack of education in the Muslim third world is endemic, and these kinds of riots and chest-thumping are essentially political posturing. They all were. The teddy prophet was (Sudan trying to get into the favor of hardline elements in money-rich Saudi Arabia), the Irani fatwa was (Iran raging against the Western machine), the Danish cartoons were (Pakistan, where rioting lead to deaths was undergoing severe political repression under their dictator Pervez Musharraf, and the opposition parties organized the riots).
You make the (stupid) mistake of associating a centuries-old religion with its followers from nothing other than soundbites from the news.
The fatwa on Salman Rushdie was universally condemned by Muslims and Muslim scholars at the time it was issued; not a good soundbite to sell rags.
The murder of Theo Van Gogh was also universally condemned by Muslims and Muslim scholars. But no, you want to correlate the actions of hopeless, uneducated people with the religion. I guess you need a scapegoat, so, sure. Knock yourself out. Blame a 1400-year-old religion that does not have a single complete incarnation of itself in any government of the world.
By pointing your finger at a religion and blaming it (basically punching a wall) you do a disservice to those who are really looking for a peaceful existence, by ignoring the real issues of the human condition in hopeless, helpless people who are feeling disenfranchised for whatever twisted reasons.
But no, please. Don't sympathize. Don't empathize. In fact, totally ignore the human element in all this (the only element that really matters?). "Religion of peace... hah. Sure." Great help you are.
Obviously all these proclamations are definitely dubious, considering we're talking about one of the most reviled villains in modern history, but it only adds to the fact that there isn't any evidence to support that he did it.
Another thing that is also not publicized much is that the Taleban condemned Osama bin Laden, and asked him to leave the country, because although he was their "guest", they didn't want to be bombed on his account. Mullah Omar was actually low down in the order of their theocracy, and his friendship with OBL was trumped by the religious council.
They asked the United States for evidence so they could try him in their courts. Yes, that could be mistaken for a joke by many, but the truth remains: the Taleban were willing to talk about it.
As twisted and messed up the Taleban were (which they were!), they had restored order to the country after many years of terrible in-fighting. The US jumped into the war with Afghanistan purely because they were angry, and people were penning "Nuke the bastards" on soot-covered cars in New York.
9/11 was sad, but the many civilian lives lost in the two wars that followed are also sad. There were other avenues besides war at the time, and it probably would have made sense to explore them. Even if it was for due diligence.
The Taleban of then and the Taleban of today are 2 wholly different animals. Back then, there were senior members of their religious circles who were somewhat reasonable. Most of them have been sidelined or are dead, and the radicals are now firmly in charge. The high casualties they take and their high management turnover has ensured of that.
The thing I find strangest is that news reports that were covering the attacks started suggesting Osama bin Laden as a possible perpetrator of the attacks within hours of the event. It became "fact", and everyone was working on this assumption.
I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, but that's a fact; news anchors repeated it enough, and people were shocked enough to just lap it up.
I work for a print publishing firm, and we've been experiencing a recent surge in customers, because publishers are starting to focus on their core competency, which is content generation. The "other" business of printing, quality control, packaging, and distribution is now being out-sourced to other companies who specialize in squeezing the last dollar of efficiency out of this (manufacturing it cheaply, transporting it somewhere cheap to be processed, then ship it out everywhere else), and whose entire purpose in life is to efficiently produce, and distribute printed matter.
I'm sure Dell has complete control of the design of their hardware, where every nut and bolt goes. And the specifications will no doubt be very detailed, if my experience in the print industry's any indication.
It's just a matter of letting the organization that does something very well do it, rather than trying to do everything in-house.
What an intelligent description of a sixth of humanity. Those are your brothers and sisters there. Whatever "issues" they have, you have, by mere association.
A dead Muslim is worth less than a dead non-Muslim. Just listen to yourselves, people.
The truth is, when the United States flouts international law, the world is far worse off than when another country flouts international law.
There's a reason why the president of the US is considered the most powerful man in the world, or "the leader of the free world." He represents something much bigger than just a country. As the source of many of the world's innovation and progress, and by its own claims of having the moral high ground, the United States has set some terrible precedents in the past 8 years under George Bush.
This is only the first of many terrible incidents to come in the following years, as people have lost all respect for international law and what were thought to be common decencies (not torturing prisoners, etc).
Despotic police states all over the world have been emboldened by the irresponsibility of the United States.
This isn't anti-Western rhetoric, I totally agree with what you say in principle. We should condemn all the bad we see, but the US torturing prisoners is materially worse than, say, Iraq doing the same thing.
My bank has a Bill Payments facility in their online banking. It allows you to elect a recipient, and the amount. When I get my paper bills, I just key in the exact amount, select the right recipient, and do it manually.
Each transaction comes with a unique 10-digit transaction identification number. Just keep that in case there are issues (which has never happened yet). Takes a few days to process.
I don't want people to be taking money out of my account, so I will never set up an automated payment system. I want to know who I'm paying how much. It's a good way to keep track of what you're spending on.
There was an article on the BBC about a similar method like this this last year.
A new method of looking at stars in the sky through cloud cover; it actually takes several pictures, and combines the best parts of each picture to form one clear picture. Allows telescopes to increase their sharpness many fold. The professor in the news story actually gives an example of a heat haze, coincidentally enough (or not)!
But this looks like a step up from what's in that article. They're taking the best magnified parts of the picture.
Okay, you had us all until the last point there. This may be offtopic, but since you're marked +5 Interesting, it's worth it to point out a glaring mistake:
What is, or isn't a planet, isn't a theory based on empirical evidence, observation, or experimentation, and is not falsifiable (unless of course you discover you had some grit on your telescope). It's an arbitrary set of standards that scientists agree upon. Pluto was decided not to be a planet after a bunch of these scientists met and decided, you know what? That Pluto being a planet thing? Forget about it. No, *this* is what a planet is now. And according to that definition, Pluto doesn't cut it. Nothing about Pluto changed, no new evidence was found.
It's not a theory that was revised at all. It was an arbitrary standard that was revised.
Spot on on the rest of your post, though. Many thanks for the insight.
The parent poster is possibly either a Sunni ethnic Muslim, or a Sunni sympathizer of some sort, because his obvious disdain for the Shi'ites in Iran is a classic symptom of this deep, deep schism within Islam.
The Arab states don't like Iran at all, and it's largely because they see Iran as the heretical, more organized, non-Arab, superior brothers. The Gulf Arab states as a group are very suspicious of the relatively successful model of Iran. Shi'ites, as a minority group within Islam, are generally very well-educated in both the religious and secular sciences, and as the grotesquely rich Gulf Arab states have squandered the first few decades of their oil wealth, Iran has a very well-organized military, some great universities, a great sense of national pride that pre-dates Islam, and have committed resources to nation building.
The Sunni Gulf-Arab states dread Iran for these very reasons, and lots of Sunnis hate Shi'ites more than they hate non-Muslims.
Having lived in a Gulf-Arab state for a long time, I have to say, the Gulf-Arab states get a bad rep because of Saudi Arabia. Not all Gulf-Arab states are the same. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, all have very emancipated women in social life, even though their legislation is still based on some form of male chauvinism. Some of these countries have women in their fledgling democratically-elected legislative assemblies, and one of them actually recognizes Israel, if I'm not mistaken.
Many of these countries are moving forward, slowly, but surely. The transition from a nomadic lifestyle diving for pearls or wandering the desert, to a fully modern, post-industrial society is a generations-long journey, and many of these Gulf-Arab states, though with deep-seated social and political immaturity (I would know, I grew up in one), are making the first strides towards some form of acceptable modernity.
I just feel credit must be given where credit is due. :)
In hindsight, it may not sound as earth-shatteringly obfuscated as when I first came across it. :P And, yeah, I've used much worse than 3-d arrays. With auto-vivification, you can make nested hashes and arrays to the nth degree, or as much as you can stomach, whichever comes last. But for the code I was looking at, a multi-dimensional array seemed very unnecessary.
I couldn't tell you exactly why, because I can hardly remember. You're just going to have to take my word for it! :)
The beauty of it really, is that Perl can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.
(I love Perl too! :)