We have a fatness crisis in america anyways apparently, maybe a little twist n' lean to read the tiny letters inside the case could burn a few calories.
Is it flamebait for me to call you all snobs? Cant be any more flamebaitish then making fun of case modders. Case modding is just a different subculture within geekdom and you should defend your brothers. Granted, it is a lesser position in the kingdom, but we can't all be haxors now can we?
People looked at the beige boxes and wanted something different, just like SOMEONE looked at minix and wanted something different. Sure you dont NEED the lights or extra fans, but you could say the same for X, or a graphical browser, or color monitors.
I do remember a certain app when i first started using linux. It was a pair of eyes that followed the mouse. Hmm... now that is a program that certainly deserves my time and attenti... DELETED!
Your Numbers are wrong. That money is spent to protect our troops and rebuild a country as well as kill insurgent forces and iraqis who attack us.
First off, your logic. You cant aid a victim. They are dead. You can help the family of the victim though. Also, we could just use high yield expolsives and kill everyone in these terrorist hot bed cities, that would reduce costs and bring up the death toll. We might even bring the total to 350 dollars to kill an iraqi. Dont you get it, spending alot for each kill means we are spending more to make sure we avoid high death tolls. Wanna be more cost effective? We could be like saddam and bill the families of those we kill for the bullets we used to take him out. We could use inexpensive chemicals and wipe out entire villages.
Like doing math? Why dont you figure these stats out? Divide money Saddam and his cohorts bilked from the oil for food program, by number of iraqis who died of starvation in the 90's. That figure would be a sum of people dead who never raised a gun at an american soldier. Divide money wasted on the pre-war UN debaucle, by the amount of lives lost due to the iraqis having more time to plan an insurgency.
I guess we do have one thing in common, im ashamed that you are an american too.
Though, could any optimism be expected from someone named the "Marxist Hacker"?
I get what you are saying, i dont like the media the way it is. Im conservative but i get sick of the spin on both sides, thats why i use the internet and use the news filter called the brain. I hate CNN because its just bush bashing, and for a true conservative, fox news tends to be like getting chocolate all the time. Seems like a good idea to have what you want all the time, but its empty calories.
Im not concerned about a lack of voter turnout, considering how uninvolved some people are. I get pissed when people vote because of how celebrities vote.
E-voting might have problems as all new technology does (though, come on, how hard could it be to make right?), but i think in the end it will be ok. Internet voting just seems bad. We might end up with Cthulu as president, though i suppose from your POV we already have him.
I think America is working because people are able to disagree and still have a working relationship. I would be surprised if you and I had ANY common ground politically, but we both want the votes to be accurate and to mean something. Just as long as we can drop the fighting after the ballots are cast, America still has some life left in her.
Im sorry, did i miss in the constitution where the media has veto power over elected officials? And don't say Bush wasnt elected. He's been elected twice now. And even if you choose not to believe the first time, the authorization for the use of force was given to him by congress. Do you believe they TOO were selected?
And what do you mean by failed Bush administration? Mr. Joe I tend to think youre just upset that a majority of Americans do not agree with you. You can blame the media, you can blame christians, you can blame the kerry campaign and the DNC (which i think lost you guys the election) , but like it or not... more people voted for Bush.
This is not a faliure of the media, they tried for kerry. CBS Memogate, CNN and ABC holding out for a loooong time to call Ohio at the behest of the Kerry Camp, the smearing of the swift boat vets, george soros, Farenheit 9/11. It didnt work. You have to win on ideas. I truly hope you learn this, and dont run more campaigns like this last one was run. We need a multiple party system to keep everyone honest, but if your party doesnt gain seats in the next election and tries to run an extreme lefty again in '08 (Hillary, Kerry again), then youre gonna be out in the DC Cold once again.
The media is not, or should not, be a tool for anything, it should just get facts as they know them out. The people do with it what they want.
Al Zarquai is in Iraq, he is al qaeda. Russia is developing ICBMs to avoid our defense shield that we dont even have yet. China is developing antisat missiles.
this is NOT an anti-terror system, but terrorism isnt the only threat.
we should have just developed the thing in secret like the stealth bomber and stealth fighter.
as far as countless americans not having healthcare... boo hoo. I opted out because i couldnt afford the premiums. I have it now because my smaller company got eaten by a larger one, who COULD provide health care at lower costs. Healthcare is not a RIGHT. Healthcare is not a RIGHT. Healthcare is not a RIGHT. Keep repeating that or pretty soon broadband, free lunches for working families, subsidy programs for christmas presents, and any other nonsense will become rights.
Remember its not a RIGHT until a politician promises it to you in an election year. Even bush (whom i support) is guilty of this with the medicare package he sent up.
The water gets stirred up again, and everyone starts screaming that we need to put more money into the school system. If this were a business, we would find out where the money was going and what it was doing. Why is it that many private schools cost far less per student, yet the students get higher scores and better chances at good jobs. Before you start claiming we were all "fortunate sons", the school I went to for half of my highschool years had a tuition of 2,500 a year per student. My classmates are now doctors, nurses, and couple of graphic designers. One even was offered several 4 year scholorships based on his math abilities.
Maybe the issue is family life? Parents who take the time to find a good solution for education are more involved? Who knows, but the point is it DOESNT have to cost more.
Show me the stat on 2 billion on less than 2 dollars a day. How much did you give to help them? Are they in the United States? We dont even have 2 Billion people living here. Are we to pay for other governments mistakes? Who would handle the money? The UN? They did a great job with the oil for food program! Can we expect thank-yous from the rest of the world in the form of flowers or bullets?
Space exploration leads to advances in science which leads to better quality of life. If you cant see that maybe you should look into exploring the world beyond your own nose.
A useless military? Please remove your head from your ass before making statements on the internet, or engaging in any form of communication that could be recieved by sentient life. While you may disagree with certain aspects of the use of force, you cannot, without being the king of the asshats, possibly regard the miltary as useless. If you are, infact, the king of all asshats then i apologize and do hope you forgive this transgression, your majesty.
The bible says women have a different number of ribs? I can only assume this is a reference to eve being taken out of Adam's rib in a literal interpretation of creation. So, if i have my tonsils removed do my children still have tonsils? Anything that was taken from or added to the bodies of Adam and Eve would be the same as a transplant or an amputation. He removed the part, not the DNA that would cause the part to grow.
Maybe we should build our own internet called 1337net or something of that nature. No www style sites, only boring teching stuff... mostly text based, maybe some bit torrent and irc support. Oh, and no gifs or jpgs. I for one would love to see webdings back in fasion
Ive heard alot of people say that if people arent willing to keep thier computers secure by a) installing patches, b) installing anti-virus, or c) installing linux then they shouldnt be allowed online.
While I dont rule out a "we want to own the internet" theory, maybe he is talking about increased accountablity for keeping your own system secure. If they do want to "block all the hackers", thats about as possible as going to iraq and "shooting all the bad people". Too many lawyers and businessmen in DC, not enough techies, doctors, scientists, pastors, teachers, construction workers, etc.
I realize there are always personal experience differences. I work in a 3000+ user environment and we rarely see the thinkpads for repairs, just the occasional upgrades. Sony, Dell, and HP on the otherhand....
Maybe you got a lucky HP... or maybe the ones i got were just unlucky. Or maybe you work for HP. =)
I love my thinkpad! How can those insensitive clods do this?? What, do they think only old South Koreans use IBMs now? I guess in Soviet America, IBM Thinkpads turn on YOU!
Ok, enough of that. This will be a huge shame if they start slapping the thinkpad name on any rinky-dink, cheap plastic laptop. It would be like those guys who buy Viper body kits for a Fiero. Dell was able to market at home, and send out those little catalogs, and IBM lost its street cred among the idiots, i mean, the average user. I never was one of those self righteous techies, but man. People choosing HP and Compaq over IBM. It makes me ill.
A friend of mine said he wouldnt buy an IBM cuz they "look old". God, does EVERYTHING have to look like an iMAC these days? Laptops should be sleek, simple, and reliable. Unfortunately, Joe Lattitude cant see past his overheating CPU and broken keyboard to realize this. *Pours out a can of Bawls* This one's for you Thinkpad... at least we'll have your old models. Id take a t23 over a new hp any day.
Man you totally had me considering what you were saying until you brought up the pentagon attack. While i didnt see it personally myself, a friend of the family works there and lost his office (he was held up in traffic that day). He saw alot of the situation first hand. Also check snopes on this. Also a friend of mine told me about human shield tactics that he has used, generally involving getting the gunman to leave the area to save the civilian. If you watch some news footage, there was some of this captured on film as well. I cant remember which city they were attacking in, but US troops were advancing on a bridge and the insurgents used human shields to hold thier positions.
At Any Rate... I realize your opinion of the US Foriegn policy is low. Maybe we are a young country who "doesnt get it", but after 9/11 we cant let a gathering threat gather. I realize Iraq did NOT have anything to do with the planning of the attacks, but the point is... we let Bin Laden's group fester and it brought about several large attacks. We felt, after years of sanctions, that Iraq couldnt be given the same opportunity to strike again. Maybe sanctions would have worked if it wasnt for the oil for food program. He got plenty of money and international support. Its a real mess.
As far as the russian part in ww2, i guess the initial pact with hitler and the gulag tarnishes the "great ally" image. I love history and I think that the accomplishments of the Russian military was pivitol. If they hadnt prevented the nazi push for oil fields and sustained hitlers offenseive then the US and British efforts in africa would have been in vain. By opening up another front, they forced him to spread his forces thin and undoubtedly saved US lives. They deserve more credit for what they did. That being said, i think the reason the US gets alot of the credit for ww2 is that we crossed the pond to fight... we were never fighting on our own soil. We fought for an ideal and for our friends. We could have signed a peace pact with hitler too, i would imagine.
Scary times now though, with Chinese nuclear subs, political issues in Ukraine, fight over the Koreas and Taiwan. Its a big big mess. I always think of that quote "I know not what World War 3 will be fought with, but I know World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones."
True, but a thriving Japan and a thriving Germany were not part of the mission in ww2. Today, rebuilding a strong democracy in iraq is essential to what we are trying to accomplish. This is difficult in the shadow of a mushroom cloud.
Dresden wasn't a moral operation. The Allies, the US included, crossed the line. While it was for vengence after the firebombimg of london, that does not justify it. The reason that stands out is because it is the exception, not the rule.
Our genetics ARE your genetics. We came from all over the world to build america. We are not a master race, and never claimed to be. I do remember a certain EU Member in recent history asserting they were.
They ARE terrorists. They attack with roadside bombs, suicide bombs, decapitations and the like.
Great example of the distinction can be found in chechnya. When they attack the leadership of russia, or russian targets, they are resistance fighters. When they are shooting children in the back as they run from an exploding school, they are terrorists. In the same vein, when iraqi resistance attacks US Troops, while I want the iraqi fighters to be defeated, i do not label them terrorists. If someone invaded america, there would certainly be a resistance of that nature. We would try to force the foriegn army off our soil. The line is crossed when they use thier own civilians as human shields, hide in mosques and claim religious amnesty while the mass in force, and blow up iraqi police officers who just want to have a job and feed thier family. People who carry out such acts are not resistance fighters, they are terrorists. A resistance fighter looks for targets of opportunity to weaken an enemys resources. A terrorist looks to cause fear, panic, and chaos in the hopes to gain control in the midst of anarchy.
I cant speak for everyone, but in my minds the ends do not justify the means. Even if I was fighting a foriegn army on our soil, I would not use the terrorist tactics demonstrated in Iraq. Even if it DID work, I would be destroying that which i fought for.
As far as 9/11 being justified.... I know you dont endorse that view, as you stated. Sniping leadership being justified is a literal, not a metaphorical. The WTC attack can in NO way be construed as an attack on US leadership. The pentagon attack could be considered that way, if they didnt Hijack a plane full of civilians do what they did.
People fight when they 1) have a grudge, 2) are poor 3) feel they're being taked advantage of 4) are scared or 5) are disenfranchised and feel they don't have a say in their own future.
People fight when an ideal or issue is more important than peace, and more important than thier own physical saftey.
If the USA were under occupation by a superior force, we'd fall back on insurgent and/or terrorist tactics, too. Go watch "Red Dawn". As a matter of fact, that's how we won our independence. We couldn't defeat the british regulars on the field, so we slinked through the forests and sniped their leaders... an evil, terrorist tactic by 17th century standards.
We changed the battlefield, but we didnt target civilians and still dont. That is the supreme difference. No warfare is moral that specifically targets civilians. The more collateral damage, the more you have to rethink how important the attack was. Case in point... what if we "nuked fallujah"? Alot of people wanted that to happen, but the result would be counterproductive to democracy, and nuking a whole city just to kill a handful of terrorists is not right. Now, do you think the terrorists would think twice about using a nuke on a US city? Do you think they would hit Virgina, a naval center, or NYC and LA, polulation centers. That right there tells you the real story. Its not about defeating our military, it is about defeating our mentality. Washingtons army and the militias targeted leadership first in an attempt to confuse the troops and create disorder among the ranks. Sniping at uniformed leadership is not a terrorist action, it is a tactic.
BTW, throwing tea in the harbor in 1773 is about equivalent moneywise to torching 15 hummers to make a political statement in 2003. That guy is headed to jail, and nobody is singing his praise...
The Boston Tea Party was for freedom from England, because we didnt want them controlling our lives. From what I have heard about the arsonist who burned the hummers, he hates SUVs and wants them banned. So he is fighting for peoples lives to be more controlled. Instead of talking to people and getting his message across by influencing minds, he throws a tantrum and burns cars. We live in a world where our vote counts, our voice can be heard (mine is right now), and we have the right to share our opinions. Had the founding fathers been afforded this freedom there wouldnt have been a boston tea party.
Alot of people also use this as the dashboard, or OS so to speak, of their modded XBOXes. The version I have also has some built in VOIP capabilities. With VOIP locked into a media center, you could simulate the full movie theater experience, with everyone talking to each other during the movie.
Seriously though, comedies tend to seem funnier in theaters, i think in part to the fact that you are with a bunch of other people laughing. Its like how children, and some adults, look around before or while they are laughing, as if they are looking for approval.
VOIP in a media center could also be fun and useful for streaming educational videos, sporting events, sales, what have you. I hope they port those options over too. Forgive me if they mentioned that in TFA, but i couldnt seem to connect to it.
Slashdot Mirror
We have a fatness crisis in america anyways apparently, maybe a little twist n' lean to read the tiny letters inside the case could burn a few calories.
Is it flamebait for me to call you all snobs? Cant be any more flamebaitish then making fun of case modders. Case modding is just a different subculture within geekdom and you should defend your brothers. Granted, it is a lesser position in the kingdom, but we can't all be haxors now can we?
People looked at the beige boxes and wanted something different, just like SOMEONE looked at minix and wanted something different. Sure you dont NEED the lights or extra fans, but you could say the same for X, or a graphical browser, or color monitors.
I do remember a certain app when i first started using linux. It was a pair of eyes that followed the mouse. Hmm... now that is a program that certainly deserves my time and attenti... DELETED!
how is this NOT offtopic? How?
Your Numbers are wrong. That money is spent to protect our troops and rebuild a country as well as kill insurgent forces and iraqis who attack us.
First off, your logic. You cant aid a victim. They are dead. You can help the family of the victim though. Also, we could just use high yield expolsives and kill everyone in these terrorist hot bed cities, that would reduce costs and bring up the death toll. We might even bring the total to 350 dollars to kill an iraqi. Dont you get it, spending alot for each kill means we are spending more to make sure we avoid high death tolls. Wanna be more cost effective? We could be like saddam and bill the families of those we kill for the bullets we used to take him out. We could use inexpensive chemicals and wipe out entire villages.
Like doing math? Why dont you figure these stats out? Divide money Saddam and his cohorts bilked from the oil for food program, by number of iraqis who died of starvation in the 90's. That figure would be a sum of people dead who never raised a gun at an american soldier. Divide money wasted on the pre-war UN debaucle, by the amount of lives lost due to the iraqis having more time to plan an insurgency.
I guess we do have one thing in common, im ashamed that you are an american too.
Though, could any optimism be expected from someone named the "Marxist Hacker"?
I get what you are saying, i dont like the media the way it is. Im conservative but i get sick of the spin on both sides, thats why i use the internet and use the news filter called the brain. I hate CNN because its just bush bashing, and for a true conservative, fox news tends to be like getting chocolate all the time. Seems like a good idea to have what you want all the time, but its empty calories.
Im not concerned about a lack of voter turnout, considering how uninvolved some people are. I get pissed when people vote because of how celebrities vote.
E-voting might have problems as all new technology does (though, come on, how hard could it be to make right?), but i think in the end it will be ok. Internet voting just seems bad. We might end up with Cthulu as president, though i suppose from your POV we already have him.
I think America is working because people are able to disagree and still have a working relationship. I would be surprised if you and I had ANY common ground politically, but we both want the votes to be accurate and to mean something. Just as long as we can drop the fighting after the ballots are cast, America still has some life left in her.
Im sorry, did i miss in the constitution where the media has veto power over elected officials? And don't say Bush wasnt elected. He's been elected twice now. And even if you choose not to believe the first time, the authorization for the use of force was given to him by congress. Do you believe they TOO were selected?
And what do you mean by failed Bush administration? Mr. Joe I tend to think youre just upset that a majority of Americans do not agree with you. You can blame the media, you can blame christians, you can blame the kerry campaign and the DNC (which i think lost you guys the election) , but like it or not... more people voted for Bush.
This is not a faliure of the media, they tried for kerry. CBS Memogate, CNN and ABC holding out for a loooong time to call Ohio at the behest of the Kerry Camp, the smearing of the swift boat vets, george soros, Farenheit 9/11. It didnt work. You have to win on ideas. I truly hope you learn this, and dont run more campaigns like this last one was run. We need a multiple party system to keep everyone honest, but if your party doesnt gain seats in the next election and tries to run an extreme lefty again in '08 (Hillary, Kerry again), then youre gonna be out in the DC Cold once again.
The media is not, or should not, be a tool for anything, it should just get facts as they know them out. The people do with it what they want.
Al Zarquai is in Iraq, he is al qaeda. Russia is developing ICBMs to avoid our defense shield that we dont even have yet. China is developing antisat missiles.
this is NOT an anti-terror system, but terrorism isnt the only threat.
we should have just developed the thing in secret like the stealth bomber and stealth fighter.
as far as countless americans not having healthcare... boo hoo. I opted out because i couldnt afford the premiums. I have it now because my smaller company got eaten by a larger one, who COULD provide health care at lower costs. Healthcare is not a RIGHT. Healthcare is not a RIGHT. Healthcare is not a RIGHT. Keep repeating that or pretty soon broadband, free lunches for working families, subsidy programs for christmas presents, and any other nonsense will become rights.
Remember its not a RIGHT until a politician promises it to you in an election year. Even bush (whom i support) is guilty of this with the medicare package he sent up.
Why is it our responsibility to ensure that record labels and movie studios can make as much money as possible?
The water gets stirred up again, and everyone starts screaming that we need to put more money into the school system. If this were a business, we would find out where the money was going and what it was doing. Why is it that many private schools cost far less per student, yet the students get higher scores and better chances at good jobs. Before you start claiming we were all "fortunate sons", the school I went to for half of my highschool years had a tuition of 2,500 a year per student. My classmates are now doctors, nurses, and couple of graphic designers. One even was offered several 4 year scholorships based on his math abilities.
Maybe the issue is family life? Parents who take the time to find a good solution for education are more involved? Who knows, but the point is it DOESNT have to cost more.
Show me the stat on 2 billion on less than 2 dollars a day. How much did you give to help them? Are they in the United States? We dont even have 2 Billion people living here. Are we to pay for other governments mistakes? Who would handle the money? The UN? They did a great job with the oil for food program! Can we expect thank-yous from the rest of the world in the form of flowers or bullets?
Space exploration leads to advances in science which leads to better quality of life. If you cant see that maybe you should look into exploring the world beyond your own nose.
A useless military? Please remove your head from your ass before making statements on the internet, or engaging in any form of communication that could be recieved by sentient life. While you may disagree with certain aspects of the use of force, you cannot, without being the king of the asshats, possibly regard the miltary as useless. If you are, infact, the king of all asshats then i apologize and do hope you forgive this transgression, your majesty.
No! Its The World! Its the Series! Shut it off!
Its a TGS thing...
The bible says women have a different number of ribs? I can only assume this is a reference to eve being taken out of Adam's rib in a literal interpretation of creation. So, if i have my tonsils removed do my children still have tonsils? Anything that was taken from or added to the bodies of Adam and Eve would be the same as a transplant or an amputation. He removed the part, not the DNA that would cause the part to grow.
Maybe we should build our own internet called 1337net or something of that nature. No www style sites, only boring teching stuff... mostly text based, maybe some bit torrent and irc support. Oh, and no gifs or jpgs. I for one would love to see webdings back in fasion
... in my lifetime that I can see the Red Sox win the world series!
Ive heard alot of people say that if people arent willing to keep thier computers secure by a) installing patches, b) installing anti-virus, or c) installing linux then they shouldnt be allowed online.
While I dont rule out a "we want to own the internet" theory, maybe he is talking about increased accountablity for keeping your own system secure. If they do want to "block all the hackers", thats about as possible as going to iraq and "shooting all the bad people". Too many lawyers and businessmen in DC, not enough techies, doctors, scientists, pastors, teachers, construction workers, etc.
Click, but dont release, slowly pull the mouse away from the link, THEN release.
All the people at IBM will get now is 10 dollars off the next time they decide to buy a blade server. :/
I realize there are always personal experience differences. I work in a 3000+ user environment and we rarely see the thinkpads for repairs, just the occasional upgrades. Sony, Dell, and HP on the otherhand....
Maybe you got a lucky HP... or maybe the ones i got were just unlucky. Or maybe you work for HP. =)
I love my thinkpad! How can those insensitive clods do this?? What, do they think only old South Koreans use IBMs now? I guess in Soviet America, IBM Thinkpads turn on YOU!
Ok, enough of that. This will be a huge shame if they start slapping the thinkpad name on any rinky-dink, cheap plastic laptop. It would be like those guys who buy Viper body kits for a Fiero. Dell was able to market at home, and send out those little catalogs, and IBM lost its street cred among the idiots, i mean, the average user. I never was one of those self righteous techies, but man. People choosing HP and Compaq over IBM. It makes me ill.
A friend of mine said he wouldnt buy an IBM cuz they "look old". God, does EVERYTHING have to look like an iMAC these days? Laptops should be sleek, simple, and reliable. Unfortunately, Joe Lattitude cant see past his overheating CPU and broken keyboard to realize this. *Pours out a can of Bawls* This one's for you Thinkpad... at least we'll have your old models. Id take a t23 over a new hp any day.
Man you totally had me considering what you were saying until you brought up the pentagon attack. While i didnt see it personally myself, a friend of the family works there and lost his office (he was held up in traffic that day). He saw alot of the situation first hand. Also check snopes on this. Also a friend of mine told me about human shield tactics that he has used, generally involving getting the gunman to leave the area to save the civilian. If you watch some news footage, there was some of this captured on film as well. I cant remember which city they were attacking in, but US troops were advancing on a bridge and the insurgents used human shields to hold thier positions.
At Any Rate... I realize your opinion of the US Foriegn policy is low. Maybe we are a young country who "doesnt get it", but after 9/11 we cant let a gathering threat gather. I realize Iraq did NOT have anything to do with the planning of the attacks, but the point is... we let Bin Laden's group fester and it brought about several large attacks. We felt, after years of sanctions, that Iraq couldnt be given the same opportunity to strike again. Maybe sanctions would have worked if it wasnt for the oil for food program. He got plenty of money and international support. Its a real mess.
As far as the russian part in ww2, i guess the initial pact with hitler and the gulag tarnishes the "great ally" image. I love history and I think that the accomplishments of the Russian military was pivitol. If they hadnt prevented the nazi push for oil fields and sustained hitlers offenseive then the US and British efforts in africa would have been in vain. By opening up another front, they forced him to spread his forces thin and undoubtedly saved US lives. They deserve more credit for what they did. That being said, i think the reason the US gets alot of the credit for ww2 is that we crossed the pond to fight... we were never fighting on our own soil. We fought for an ideal and for our friends. We could have signed a peace pact with hitler too, i would imagine.
Scary times now though, with Chinese nuclear subs, political issues in Ukraine, fight over the Koreas and Taiwan. Its a big big mess. I always think of that quote "I know not what World War 3 will be fought with, but I know World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones."
True, but a thriving Japan and a thriving Germany were not part of the mission in ww2. Today, rebuilding a strong democracy in iraq is essential to what we are trying to accomplish. This is difficult in the shadow of a mushroom cloud.
Dresden wasn't a moral operation. The Allies, the US included, crossed the line. While it was for vengence after the firebombimg of london, that does not justify it. The reason that stands out is because it is the exception, not the rule.
Our genetics ARE your genetics. We came from all over the world to build america. We are not a master race, and never claimed to be. I do remember a certain EU Member in recent history asserting they were.
They ARE terrorists. They attack with roadside bombs, suicide bombs, decapitations and the like. Great example of the distinction can be found in chechnya. When they attack the leadership of russia, or russian targets, they are resistance fighters. When they are shooting children in the back as they run from an exploding school, they are terrorists. In the same vein, when iraqi resistance attacks US Troops, while I want the iraqi fighters to be defeated, i do not label them terrorists. If someone invaded america, there would certainly be a resistance of that nature. We would try to force the foriegn army off our soil. The line is crossed when they use thier own civilians as human shields, hide in mosques and claim religious amnesty while the mass in force, and blow up iraqi police officers who just want to have a job and feed thier family. People who carry out such acts are not resistance fighters, they are terrorists. A resistance fighter looks for targets of opportunity to weaken an enemys resources. A terrorist looks to cause fear, panic, and chaos in the hopes to gain control in the midst of anarchy.
I cant speak for everyone, but in my minds the ends do not justify the means. Even if I was fighting a foriegn army on our soil, I would not use the terrorist tactics demonstrated in Iraq. Even if it DID work, I would be destroying that which i fought for.
As far as 9/11 being justified.... I know you dont endorse that view, as you stated. Sniping leadership being justified is a literal, not a metaphorical. The WTC attack can in NO way be construed as an attack on US leadership. The pentagon attack could be considered that way, if they didnt Hijack a plane full of civilians do what they did.
People fight when they 1) have a grudge, 2) are poor 3) feel they're being taked advantage of 4) are scared or 5) are disenfranchised and feel they don't have a say in their own future.
... an evil, terrorist tactic by 17th century standards.
People fight when an ideal or issue is more important than peace, and more important than thier own physical saftey.
If the USA were under occupation by a superior force, we'd fall back on insurgent and/or terrorist tactics, too. Go watch "Red Dawn". As a matter of fact, that's how we won our independence. We couldn't defeat the british regulars on the field, so we slinked through the forests and sniped their leaders
We changed the battlefield, but we didnt target civilians and still dont. That is the supreme difference. No warfare is moral that specifically targets civilians. The more collateral damage, the more you have to rethink how important the attack was. Case in point... what if we "nuked fallujah"? Alot of people wanted that to happen, but the result would be counterproductive to democracy, and nuking a whole city just to kill a handful of terrorists is not right. Now, do you think the terrorists would think twice about using a nuke on a US city? Do you think they would hit Virgina, a naval center, or NYC and LA, polulation centers. That right there tells you the real story. Its not about defeating our military, it is about defeating our mentality. Washingtons army and the militias targeted leadership first in an attempt to confuse the troops and create disorder among the ranks. Sniping at uniformed leadership is not a terrorist action, it is a tactic.
BTW, throwing tea in the harbor in 1773 is about equivalent moneywise to torching 15 hummers to make a political statement in 2003. That guy is headed to jail, and nobody is singing his praise...
The Boston Tea Party was for freedom from England, because we didnt want them controlling our lives. From what I have heard about the arsonist who burned the hummers, he hates SUVs and wants them banned. So he is fighting for peoples lives to be more controlled. Instead of talking to people and getting his message across by influencing minds, he throws a tantrum and burns cars. We live in a world where our vote counts, our voice can be heard (mine is right now), and we have the right to share our opinions. Had the founding fathers been afforded this freedom there wouldnt have been a boston tea party.
I know there is a "Soviet Russia" Joke in there, but those jokes are only told by Elderly Koreans.
Alot of people also use this as the dashboard, or OS so to speak, of their modded XBOXes. The version I have also has some built in VOIP capabilities. With VOIP locked into a media center, you could simulate the full movie theater experience, with everyone talking to each other during the movie.
Seriously though, comedies tend to seem funnier in theaters, i think in part to the fact that you are with a bunch of other people laughing. Its like how children, and some adults, look around before or while they are laughing, as if they are looking for approval.
VOIP in a media center could also be fun and useful for streaming educational videos, sporting events, sales, what have you. I hope they port those options over too. Forgive me if they mentioned that in TFA, but i couldnt seem to connect to it.