Sorry, but I think it's not just case of being old-fashioned, but being blind to how things *really* were like before.
See, the thing is, as other posters have noted, so-called internet "misuse" is easy to monitor. You just check your firewall/proxy logs.
But in the olden days, if a worker was distracted, or chatting at the watercooler, or just staring off into space for a few minutes, you couldn't really log that (unless you had audio surveillance at work, as well as mind-reading devices). Heck, they could have a fat reference handbook out, and the latest edition of New Scientist tucked inside it, and you'd be none the wiser.
But these new tools (like the internet) give employees more ways than ever to track every second of their worker's lives.
We don't want to get into a 1984 state, where workers are afraid to even think non-work-related thoughts. Fortunately, most employees have strayed away from that sort of mentality. After all, most of us are professionals. There's a certain understanding with our work - they pay your salary, and you get the job done. Sure, you can goof of a bit, you can take go take a walk around if you're feeling tired, but as long as you're reasonably professional in your conduct, and you get the job done well, most of them are happy.
Well, let's see...their last release was a big fat wad of....boring? Seriously *sigh*. Basically, the spark notes version was:
1. War is ugly, war involves killing people 2. Occasionally we will accidentally hit our own people 3. Some people do not cope well with the stress, and get desensitised.
I'm fairly sure all of the above are things that we've managed to learn in the...oh....10,000 odd years that humans have been waging war on each other?
Oh right, and we learned that the Taliban has no qualams about using human shields or killing civilians to make it's point and scare the populace. Gee, whoop de do. Everybody talks about how the US caused a few tragedies (because they still are tragedies), and completely ignores the fact that the opposition is basically committing free-scale genocide...*shakes head*.
That is why I have lost respect for Wikileaks - they've basically turned into a anti-US drone, with a one-track agenda.
The KGB is the FSB these days, I believe (more or less).
And yeah, they will find a creative way of killing you - whether it's stabbing you with a poisoned umbrella, or poisoning you slowly so you die from radiation sickness, in excruciating agony...lol.
It's kind of funny, all these silly DOWN WITH THE US IMPERIALIST jokers going around about how evil the US is - if the US were actually half as evil as you say they are, and half the cock-brained conspiracies you talk about were true, then you'd probably be lying in a shallow unmarked grave somewhere instead of ranting on like you do.
Whilst I may not agree with the recent US administrations and their various actions as such, I'm hardly gullible enough to think it's part of some far-reaching global conspiracy for world domination.
Most of what they've done has been fairly reactionary:
Afghanistan: Ok, so you bomb the WTO and kill a few thousand, we'll come over and hunt you down, and oust the government that gave you sanctuary and thumbed their noses at us.
Iraq: Ok, so you've been goading us for the past decade to give you aid, and blackmailing us with alleged WMDs - now we're fed us, we're going to come over and oust you.
Whilst neither actions may have been the wisest in terms of short-term regional stability (or fidicuary duty, for that matter - the US is plouging moutains of cash into this), it's hardly a global conspiracy - it's more a case of, you keep on throwing rocks at a dog, eventually it'll get up and bite you. Idiots.
And the Wikileaks people are a bit of a joke, at the moment.
Firstly, their alleged "war diaries" were nothing more than public domain knowledge, covering a rife of friendly-fire incidents, and well-document US military screw-ups. Sorry, but this is war - and if you're going to to retarded things - like driving *into* a US vs. insurgents firefight, you can expect to cop some flak. The lengths to which people will go to defend some obvious stupidity astounds me.
And Julian Assange seems to trying to cement his reputation as an attention-seeking little boy. I (and most people) don't know what really happened with the whole "rape" allegation, but based on his antics in the press, and his past history, whilst I seriously doubt he actually raped somebody, I don't have much trouble believing he's an arrogant little twat who probably overstepped the bounds of decency with a few girls. It's hardly like he's actually denied sleeping with them, he's just denied actually outright raping them. Poetic justice, if there ever was any.
You know, I can't tell if you're being ironic (and hence kudos for being funny), or you actually have no idea...lol....
I used to do a fair bit of photography. Sorry, but from everything I've seen, an optical viewfinder still kicks the pants off of every EVF (electronic view finder) I've seen.
And LCD's are notoriously bad in sunlight. And the small CCDs in camera-phones are bad in low-light, and at the opposite tend of the spectrum, in full-sun, tend to produced washed out shots. (Although you probably have more chance of fixing those than trying to de-noise a grainy low-light shot...lol. Could be wrong there - thoughts?). A cheap Diana camera would probably have done the job better...lol. Sometimes I'm tempted to just drag around a nice, rangefinder or compact along for those spur-of-the-moment shots. Anybody else already carry one, and if so, what model?
Well, my point is that in this new age, stuff isn't that hard to stumble upon.
In the olden days, sure, you could get smut films, snuff films, hardcore pornography, whatever. But it was difficult, and you could bet people would remember you using them to get your hands on it.
Nowadays, the stuff's just so accessible, it's not funny. You can get it from the comfort of your lounge without even having to go outside and meet some older kid in a shady alley...lol.
It's not about bubble-wrapping your kid, so I don't know where you got your argument about sheltering and all that. It's about a simple NSFW warning - a little "are you sure you want to view this, yes/no" warning. My gosh, you're acting liking this is Burma all over again.
If I really want to view the content, sure I'll just click "Yes, show it to me". If I"m curious, I probably would as well. But if I just got rick-rolled by somebody, or I accidentally Google-stumbled onto it, I might think twice - particularly if I was say, at work, or my girlfriend was behind me...lol.
Oh, don't worry, I wasn't a kid that long ago. I know a lot of the time it's like holding a red flag to a bull...haha.
But look, at the end of the day, it's teaching kids a bit of responsibility.
So say, there was something like goatse or the 2girls1cup behind a "click warning". And it said, do you really want to proceed? Well, sure the kid clicks, and he says "oh s*it...that is sick...". He or she has nobody but themselves to blame now. And they're going to feel a bit stupid for clicking through. It's like a reverse-rick-roll or something...I think....haha.
You're either very, very sheltered from the Internet, or you've never actually had any contact with kids...
There's a lot of weird stuff on the internet. No, I mean, seriously wacko stuff. In the public limelight, there's already goatse, and that 2girls and a cup thingy. Even movies like The Human Centipede are pretty wacked. Or stuff like Saw. Nothing I've mentioned here is particularly hard to find, and in fact is commonly mentioned on forums like Slashdot (would you regard Slashdot as not family friendly?), 4chan, or heck, a Google search will bring it back.
Is that the sort of thing you want your kids seeing?
Look hard enough, and there is much worse. Either very graphic violence, that would make even adults like us cringe/throw up, or weird kinky deviant s*xual stuff.
It's got nothing to do with indoctrination, it's got to do with not coming home and seeing your kids crying, or vomiting up their dinner because they saw something graphic.
Or maybe it's just text, and they read something that creeps them out, and will make them wake up crying every night for the next 6 months *shrugs*.
I'm speaking here generally, of course, as apparently other commentators say this site isn't even that bad.
But the point remains, your silly knee-jerk reactions about how any parent who wants to know what their kid views is "indoctrinating" their kid shows your ignorance.
The internet is awesome - it's brilliant, the amount of data that it can put at your fingertips. But if you're young, and prone to typing in random stuff or clicking on random links...sometimes it's not really the greatest thing. I'm sure generations before us had access to dirty stories, pornography, and smut films - but they had to look hard for it. Now, any kid who can type and use a mouse can find it from home.
It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea.
Err, I don't know about Google being warm and fuzzy, but thus far, I seem to like what they do. That, and quite a few of my mates from uni went across to work for them (I sold out and went to "evil" banks...lol). From what I hear, nice place to work. Maybe that'll change in the future *shrugs*, but at the end of the day, Google's doesn't do dodgy anti-competitive stuff, they don't sue their customers, and they provide a lock of value back to the open-source community. A *lot*.
Sony...gosh, don't get me started.
Sony is a soul-less evil megacorporation in every sense of the world. They sue their customers. They install malware on their systems. They force you to use their own stupidly coded, buggy software, and try to lock you in. The DRM on MiniDisc was a pain in the a*se - the irony is, from a technical perspective, Sony makes awesome technology. Then they weigh it down with so much DRM, vendor control and lock-in, and badly coded junk software made by some second-rate coder, that it turns into a steaming pile of c*ap.
One word - OpenMG...*shudders*.
Then we look at their other products, like MemoryStick. Gee, I wonder why that died? Because Sony decided to be greedy corporate buggers, and try to squeeze out more money by overcharing, and also prevent licensees. Open-standards? Nah, not the Sony way.
Or say BetaCam?
Then look at the dodgy run-around they gave PS3 owners with the whole Linux on PS3 thing.
Sorry, Sony lost my respect a long time ago. And believe me, I was a big fan before (I bought a MiniDisk deck, and portable MD players ok...lol. Multiple TVs, VCRs, all our DVD players etc.)
Lol, this was personal backups which mean a lot to *me*, but I doubt to anybody else. I have very critical stuff backed up on Dropbox, this was some periphery stuff that happened to be in $HOME, and I hadn't moved across.
Annoying, and I'm kicking myself, but s*it happens.
And I don't have so much hubris that I'm not afraid to admit I make a mistake. *shrugs*. Maybe you're that arrogant ? I don't know.
Also, at the end of the day, I have neither the budget, nor the time, to make sure the harddisk on my laptop is real-time synchronised to redundant storage in multiple datacentres. Dropbox provides that to an extent (it's based on Amazon S3), and Google provide it in a different way (they get you to use their full application stack).
My lesson is this - I hear enough about SANS and heavily replicated storage systems via work (I work for an IB, so let's just leave it at that). Outsourcing my personal storage needs to a company, that's supplying it for free for targeted advertising is, at least to me, a good value proposition.
It's not just the fact that their storage infrastructure is more advanced that mine. It's the other services the offer, like sync and web-access. For instance, as I mentioned, via Google Contacts, my contacts are backed up online - and hence accessible from any internet-enabled box. Also, if I lose my phone, I can instantly resync, and know everything will be update.
Likewise for chat logs, it's stored online, so I can search or browse it via an online interface, on any internet-enabled computer. This wouldn't be available before, unless I wanted to store my logs locally in a DB, then hack up a webapp to make that available via the web.
I actually do use Dropbox, and I quite like it. However for collaboration, I've actually found the Google Docs interface (the new version - the old one was pretty terrible) better for dealing with simultaneous edits. Dropbox tends to dump a whole bunch of conflicted copies in the folder - you don't lose anything, but you have to manually merge which is just...annoying. And that's only for text files, for binary files like Word documents, it just doesn't work. The tradeoff here is of course the more limited online interface of Google Docs, but that's getting better and for most common features (at least for me) it's nearly at parity.
You seem to have completely missed my point...*sigh*.
Please, feel free to "stalk" me, as you say. My point is this - I'm a boring, mundane person, just another data-point. There's another 6 billion souls where I came from. I'm not Larry Ellison, I'm not Eric Schmidt, I'm not David Cameron.
At the end of the day, if your life is even more pathetically sad than that, that you've got nothing better than to type some random strangers name into Google...well...you have my pity.
Seriously, go out, get a life, get some sunshine, play some sports. My gosh, you guys aren't doing wonders for geek credibility...haha.
As somebody who just lost a bunch of data due to faulty backup disks, I for one welcome this.
I've yet to lose data stored on Google's cloud *touch wood*...lol.
Having data in the cloud, as well as cached/accessible locally seems like the best option. And to those talking about going underground on a train, I'm fairly sure Google's accounted for that - either through Gears, HTML5 Local Storage, or another local caching mechanism. I have a Google Nexus One, when I'm underground, I can still access all my email (that's been synced), my contacts, my calendar etc.
And having all my contacts synced online, along with all my Google Talk logs, is *awesome*. I'm a bit anal-retentive when it comes to storing things, so knowing that it's all stored, and available, and won't get lost due to filesystem corruption or something equally idiotic is good news to me. And look, worst come to worst, I lose my phone (hopefully not...lol) I'll get another, login to my Google Account, and voila, everything is synced again.
And people seem to over-value their privacy, at least to corporations. Seriously, most of you are pathetically mundane. I for one am not so insecure that I can't admit I am too. I mean, jeez, trawling through my personal emails you get...err...a bunch of emails between me and mates talking about work, me arranging lunch with my parents, and me buying stuff on eBay. Big whoop de doo. I'm happy to admit I'm a fairly boring individual, and I'm sure statistically I just fade into the background. If I was the Pope, or Jason Bourne, or I was trying to overthrow the Australian government, I suppose I might think differently. But as it is, I'm just another random guy. I doubt anybody at Google really cares, except to display targeted advertising.
The government spying on me, yeah, I have issues on that. Serious issues. A teacher at uni. Absolutely. A colleague, sure. People I know IRL, yeah. Heck, if this was Sony even, I'd have issues, seeing as they're a bunch of immoral corporates, who have no qualms about installing malware on consumer's PCs (I bought into MiniDisc ok...lol, I have a right to be bitter). But some analytical algorithm, trying to figure out which ads I'll click on? Pftt, who cares.
Google has tried to hide what they do - they display targeted ads. It's not like they've every tried to cover that fact up, nor have they been really been caught out on a privacy breach. (I'm going to discount the technical incompetent idiots who don't understand what unencrypted wireless communication is, or who can't be bothered to read what they're clicking on before they click it, a la Buzz).
They also freely list all the data they store on you:
I find that really awesome, and a refreshing change from every other corporation that tries to lock you in, hand over foot. It also speaks volumes about their confience - they're confident enough in the technical superiority of their solutison, that they dont' ened to resort to lock-in to try to desperately cling onto their customers.
Now, I know people in Canada like to trumpet about how WE'RE NOT THE US!!
Lol, personally, here in Australia, I find it quite funny. And likewise, Europeans want nothing to do with those horrible Americans *eye rolls*. The fact that they're inward-looking and quite a bit xenophobic (disguised as nationalistic pride) has nothing to do with it.
However, apply some logic here. The parent had it dead on. Whichever idiot used the "walk into somebody's home" argument is either technically incompetent (which in itself isn't a negative thing, although I do wonder why they're reading Slashdot), or just an idiot, full stop.
This is like broadcasting in clear on the CB.
Personally, I think the Canadians and EU are probably just annoyed off at the whole American hegemony or whatever, or the fact that Google is an American corporation, and they didnt' think of it first...lol. That, or this is some silly populist pandering exercise, designed to make ti look like their privacy commissioners are actually doing real work.
I mean, seriously, Google is hardly going to kick and scream, they're an easy target in that sense, they'll just shrug and move on. Why don't you actually try targeting something that shows balls, like I don't know...real companies who actually violate your privacy?
See, most of the US incidents have been either tragic accidents, or people being in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g. AP reportered embedded inside of insurgent groups, or van drivers being stupid and driving fans into the middle of a US versus insurgent firefight, and then picking up insurgents into the van). Or isolated incidents of soldiers just being tools.
Now see, Russia, heck, if they suspected there was a single Chehyan separist, they'd just carpet bomb the whole building.
And then if you were an attention-mongering idiot like Julian Assange, shopping for a bit of the media limelight, and you were idiotic enough to try to leak a Russian government docuemnt...err...the FSB would bury you? Or poison you with radiation? Or basically cut off your head, and dump you in a ditch? Seriously, they wouldn't dick around.
Say what you like about the US, but at least they're a free democracy, and on the whole, you do have the right to come out and say is a tool.
You compare that to a place like Russia, or China, or heck, even Singapore - if you came out in any of those places with anything remotely anti-government, you're basically dead. Literally. (Well, in the first two - in the third, they'd either jail you for some obscure anti-sedition law, or just sue you into oblivion).
They drove an unmarked van *RIGHT INTO THE FRGIGGIN FIREFIGHT*. Like, *headslap*, how idiotic is that. And to drive a van full of kids into it as well is just plain negligent parenting - we should be telling the parents off for being idiotic parents.
The US and insurgents just exchanged fire, trying to kill each other. Now, most smart people - including the majority of Iraqis, who I assume are quite intelligent - would stick their heads down, avoid it, or at the very least not go running like fools right towardsit.
This wasn't some van driving along a street, this was a driver who intentionally drove through fire to get there, to pickup insurgents. Gee, to the guy in a helicopter a few kliks away, an unmarked van just drove onto the insurgents side to pick some of them up. I wonder what that looks like? I'll give you a clue - starts with r, ends in "einforcements".
If you're going to spout propaganda and bias, as least try to get some of the facts right.
If you're referring to that stupid incident involving the embedded AP reporter, then I'm sorry, that myths already being debunked.
AP has a reputation of embedding its reporters within insurgent groups. The AP reporter in question here was a Iraqi local who decided to hang with an insurgent group...gee...whodee damn doo, I wonder what happens when you decided to embed yourself inside an insurgent group, trying to kill Americans, in order to be "on the ground", and get the other side of the story. Seriously guys, blaming the US for killing an embedded reporter in enemy forces is just plain stupid.
And the van issue, with kids? Right, so the US just had a firefight with some insurgents armed with AK-47's and RPGs...so what do you do? Gee, drive an unmarked van, with kids *inside* the van, to go take a closer look? *sigh*. Even if you were allegedly picking up wounded insurgents (gosh, I wonder what side that makes me look at), has anybody considered that it's frigging retarded, if not bad parenting, to drive a van with your kids into the aftermath of a US versus insurgents aftermath?
I mean, if you yourself want to basically commit suicide, and paint a big target on your head saying, please, please, shoot me, then at least leave your damn kids out of it.
Urgh, seriously guys. Take off your ANTI-US DOWN WITH THE IMPERIALIST blinkers, and actually apply the logic. I dislike the US for other reasons, but at least I can apply some common basic sense here.
I bet if it was any other two forces, we'd be like...yeah...that is a pretty retarded thing to do. Vote them for a Darwin award...
I'm surprised that something like Google Voice hasn't taken over in the US for SMSes...any reason?
I have a Voice account, but I'm in Australia =(. It doesn't make sense though, SMSes surely aren't the most efficient way of transmitting messages, and their cost is also way our of proportion to the cost to the provider. Also, with unlimited data plans available now, surely it makes more sense to use TCP as the transport?
Look, what really gets me is the double-standard that's been applied here.
You say that the US military should document, name, photograph and tally every single civilian killed. *sigh*. If you actually understood the intricacies, it's not that easy. Firstly, this isn't a case of, there's that guy, we're going to go in and kill him. These are usually soldiers on patrol, they get shot at, they return fire, and afterwards, you find out, oh s*it, one of the guys we hit wasn't an "enemy combatant". But even that term is rife with difficulty.
Wat exactly is an "enemy combatant"? We're not talking uniformed soldiers here - we're talking the Taliban, who use dodgy things like bombing marketplaces, suicide bombers, IEDs, and purposely firing rockets from among civilians, then trying to disguise yourself to look like those civilians afterwards. Who's to say that the unnamed, unmarked, no-ID carrying Afghani you just shot isn't actually just a Taliban?
It's very difficult, which is why building good relationships with the local populace is very important - something that I think they're only catching onto now.
In the case of that Polish shooting at a wedding the above poster referenced (), let's see - eight civilians were killed, and three wounded, when a patrol of Polish soldiers took fire, and fired back with mortar. Turns out it was a screw-up, and they hit the wrong guys (either that, or they wrongs guys melted back into the local populace).
The soldiers are currently being investigated, and the governments apologised, bought them food and supplies, gave them a goat (like...what the..? Lol, must be a Afghan thing) as a goodwill gesture, and scheduled regular visits to repair relationships.
The ironic thing is, the villagers say they had no love lost for the Taliban anyway:
" The villagers stated that the Polish soldiers should have come to the village to ask for information regarding Taliban planting of IEDs, since the villagers were opposed to Talibans' operations near their village."
You compare that to the Taliban - gee, they detonate a bomb in a crowded marketplace, you don't see them apologising. Pft, please.
So firstly - it's very hard to document everything, like you claim they should. And secondly, when we screwup - which we have, we usually try to make amends, except for isolated incidents, like that whole digging bullets out thing, which is still under investigation.
Secondly - why we're in Afghanistan? Gee, cause they funded and sheltered Al Qaeda, who bombed the World Trade Centre? Sorry, it's pretty plain here. It's not like Iraq, which I know you guys love to hold up as a prime example of American hegemony, or whatever the buzzword is - even there, well, the end result is we got rid of Saddam Hussein, who'd consistently tried to bluff the world that he had WMDs, then lots when we called him bluff. His own people were all too happy to see him go, and they even hung the sorry b*stard. Personally, I'm a bit opposed to that (don't agree with the death penalty, even for sick men like him), but hey, it shows how his own "people" felt about that tyrant.
Also, we got rid of the Taliban as a by-product, and the Afghanistan people are all too happy to see them go. It's kind of ironic that our own people are all up in arms about these alleged conspiracies and trying to derail their own country, while the Afghan people, on the whole, are quite happy with what we've done. Has anybody on the Left actually asked them what they think?
I mean, sure they're p*ssed about these friendly fire incidents, and who wouldn't - but we've tried to make amends when we botch up, usually, and by all reports, many of them are actually angry at us now we're packing up our bags and leaving the job half-done, because they're worried about reprisals from the Taliban in the power vacuum that gets left behind.
Finally, look, nation rebuilding is never "quick" ok. We gave them a democracy, we rebuild their infrastructure, we're retraining their police force and
Err, let's see, please try and pick up some basic comprehension skills
Either read what I wrote, or read the linked Wikipedia article.
Assange was a media clown, who drummed up publicity and all this fanfare, then let us all down.
He revealed that a bunch of countries, like Pakistan - who tries to appear as a legitimate, stable, honest global citizen, but is in actuality a corruption-ridden cesspool of double-crossing snakes - and Iran were screwing us over. That was already known.
And we also knew that there had been both collateral damage and friendly fire incidents.
We also knew the Taliban was exclusively targeting civilians with either bombs or guns, and had killed 2000 so far - a number far larger than the couple hundred that we had knocked off, usually through stupidity or carelessness or just bad judgement. Still bad, but nowhere near as bad as them (ideally you'd want it to be zero, but realistically, I doubt that's ever going to happen in a war).
What we didn't know was the location of villages, or the identities of people who had helped in the fight against the Taliban. And they've already publicaly come out and said...let's see:
We will investigate...if they are US spies, then we know how to punish them.
Basically, it means they'll either torture, kill or maim these people, and probably rape their families. It's par on course for them
So Assange has been a tool - he drummed up excitement for nothing, and needlessly endangers people in Afghanistan for his own gain. Sure, they're very far away, and all, and he'll never have to see them, but it's still a very low thing to do. If you were that concerned about the Afghanistan people, then frigging go over there and volunteer, or donate stuff, or hell, just be lazy like me and just donate to aid organistiaons, who will do all the hard work for you.
Yeah, like I said, there's been several hundred civilian casualties.
Nobody's tried to cover it up. Gee gosh, so we didn't manage to get reporters onto all of them. You can dress it up in really *suspicious* sounding language, like 'not previous revealed", but at the end of the day, what you're trying to say is, several hundred civilians have been killed over the last 8 or so years, we know about most of them, but there's a few that didn't make it to the news.
As many other posters here have noted, and anybody who exercises their common-sense will note, civilian casualties, collateral damage, cross-fire, whatever you decide to call it, will happen in a war. It's very bad, and you should minimise it - but there's no evidence here of "war crimes".
It's actually kinda insulting to people who actually suffered war crimes, I would think. Things like genocide, torture, or intentionally bombing civilians centres, that's a war crime. I think people during the Holucast, or say, during the Kosovo crisis would be a little offended if you try to dress up every friendly-fire incident as a "war crime".
What's not happening is some grand conspiracy by dark forces unseen to target and kill Afghanistan civilians for no reason at all. All these weirdos and kooks haven't exactly explained what's to be gained by killing civilians, but hey, logic was never their strong suit.
Look, if there's say, bad training, or poor morale that's causing troops to be trigger-happy, or careless, then by all means, we should fix it up.
But if it's just, the Taliban is picking fights in crowded market places, or they're shooting rockets from among civilians, then melting back into the crowds, it does make it hard to avoid tragedies like those described in the reports. If anything, the reports just a description of what normally happens in war.
Err, you want the truth? And you don't care about the Afghanistans who are helping us?
*sigh*
You sound like some pretentious, silly boy living in his mum's basement, a million miles away from the conflict.
Look, firstly, who are you to be demanding "the truth"? Does this whole thing even affect you? Seriously, have you even been to Afghanistan? Are you a soldier fighting over there, or something?
And we didn't "invade" the place, and we're not "occupying" the face. Idiot. We came in to boot out the Taliban, who by any measure were a bunch of barbaric, twisted people, as well as to catch that tool Osama Bin Laden. Then, we installed a democratically elected government. Now, you might have your own views of Karzi, but at the end of the day, that's who the Afghanistani people voted in and guess what - it's their damn choice who they want, not you, living in your mum's basement, or me, living in my quite comfortable existence here in the West.
I have no idea of the hardships that they're subjected to over there, nor do I pretend to.
And gee gosh, the 20 million odd Afghanistan people on the whole are pretty happy the Taliban got booted out. They were well known for being cruel, barbaric and pretty whacked in the head (admittedly for religious reasons, I suppose). The recent Time magazine, with the girl with her nose cut off was a prime example of why we don't want those religions whack-jobs back.
In this whole debacle, does anybody actually care what they think? With the US's rapid exit from Afghanistan, it's actually them who are complaining the loudest, as they're worried in the vacuum that gets left, the Taliban might come back, and starting doing their old ways of killing and pillaging. It's like we've sacrificed their wellbeing on the podium of political expediency. Sorry, but I have little respect for a nation, and a president who's not in it for the long haul...
Back to you - it's you who's crying like a little b*tch. Look, the Afghanistan conflict has no effect on you - let's be honest. It has not effect on me either. If we actually cared about them, as opposed to just using them as our little podium for our stupid little anti-US rants, you'd be doing things to actually help them - making going over there to volunteer in a camp, or sending over blankets/food, or heck, just giving to one of the many charities or aid organisations that are helping over there. Heck, I"m a lazy person by nature, and even I managed to do the last one.
Err yeah, but there's little evidence of these so-called war crimes so far.
I mean, Assange drummed up excitement, played the media really well, and then released these so-called Afghan War Diaries, to much fanfare...and it's turned out to be a fat lot of nothing.
Most of the data in there was already public knowledge.
Err, we have evidence that Pakistan is screwing over the US, UK and other NATO nations, and aiding the Taliban to kill our soldiers. Great....so what happens now? We try to charge Pakistan with war crimes? Lol.
Then we have evidence that Iran likewise is helping the Taliban and screwing us over. We're going to charge them with war crimes as well? We can't even get them to have clean elections....
Oh, and our good chum North Korea as well.
The of course, we have the civilian casualties, currently standing at a few hundred. Very regretable, and tragic. However, it's in contest how much of it's avoidable, and how much of it was caused by negligence, say, or poor regard for the civilian folk. Ultimately, that's a question for a court to decide - however, I don't see anybody actually making a solid case for any charges of war crimes. I mean, gee, most of these incidents are caused by cross-fire, bad-luck, panicking soldiers, or the Taliban deliberately trying to drag civilians into the conflict, or using questionable tactics.
Hardly any evidence of the grand conspiracy all these silly, IT'S A CONSPIRACY hippies are decrying about.
Then we have evidence in these war diaries that the Taliban is deliberately targeting civilians, and has killed some 2000 to date. Gee, we're going to charge the Taliban with war crimes? We can't even catch them all yet.
Hmm, then we reveal that the Taliban is using heat-seeking missiles to shoot down our aircraft. Oh great, another revelation.
I mean, seriously guys, the defence of Assange is getting pretty flimsy. He needless endangered Afghan informants and screwed over active military operations, just so he could get his name in the papers - and what, he reveals a bunch of useless information.
Sure, the US military, in fact, many militaries have a tendency to just mark everything classified, "just to be safe" even if it's completely stupid. But really...what of note was revealed here?
Yes, but then you're doling out harsh punishments that don't fit the crime.
Now, you and I might have our opinions on what's "fair", or what's a sufficient time to rehabilitate somebody. But at the end of the day, our justice system has had many centuries to work out those questions, and I think there's a large volume of case law and precedent that defines the current system.
I don't think it's up to us to come along and arbitrarily say, oh, let's jack up all degrees of murder to life imprisonment. Because then you'd have to re-evaluate all crimes, and their punishments. And then deal with retroactive issues. You have to balance, sure we can jail this person, but on the flip-side, can we rehabilate them and turn them into a functioning member of society?
Slashdot Mirror
heya,
Sorry, but I think it's not just case of being old-fashioned, but being blind to how things *really* were like before.
See, the thing is, as other posters have noted, so-called internet "misuse" is easy to monitor. You just check your firewall/proxy logs.
But in the olden days, if a worker was distracted, or chatting at the watercooler, or just staring off into space for a few minutes, you couldn't really log that (unless you had audio surveillance at work, as well as mind-reading devices). Heck, they could have a fat reference handbook out, and the latest edition of New Scientist tucked inside it, and you'd be none the wiser.
But these new tools (like the internet) give employees more ways than ever to track every second of their worker's lives.
We don't want to get into a 1984 state, where workers are afraid to even think non-work-related thoughts. Fortunately, most employees have strayed away from that sort of mentality. After all, most of us are professionals. There's a certain understanding with our work - they pay your salary, and you get the job done. Sure, you can goof of a bit, you can take go take a walk around if you're feeling tired, but as long as you're reasonably professional in your conduct, and you get the job done well, most of them are happy.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Well, let's see...their last release was a big fat wad of....boring? Seriously *sigh*. Basically, the spark notes version was:
1. War is ugly, war involves killing people
2. Occasionally we will accidentally hit our own people
3. Some people do not cope well with the stress, and get desensitised.
I'm fairly sure all of the above are things that we've managed to learn in the...oh....10,000 odd years that humans have been waging war on each other?
Oh right, and we learned that the Taliban has no qualams about using human shields or killing civilians to make it's point and scare the populace. Gee, whoop de do. Everybody talks about how the US caused a few tragedies (because they still are tragedies), and completely ignores the fact that the opposition is basically committing free-scale genocide...*shakes head*.
That is why I have lost respect for Wikileaks - they've basically turned into a anti-US drone, with a one-track agenda.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
The KGB is the FSB these days, I believe (more or less).
And yeah, they will find a creative way of killing you - whether it's stabbing you with a poisoned umbrella, or poisoning you slowly so you die from radiation sickness, in excruciating agony...lol.
It's kind of funny, all these silly DOWN WITH THE US IMPERIALIST jokers going around about how evil the US is - if the US were actually half as evil as you say they are, and half the cock-brained conspiracies you talk about were true, then you'd probably be lying in a shallow unmarked grave somewhere instead of ranting on like you do.
Whilst I may not agree with the recent US administrations and their various actions as such, I'm hardly gullible enough to think it's part of some far-reaching global conspiracy for world domination.
Most of what they've done has been fairly reactionary:
Afghanistan: Ok, so you bomb the WTO and kill a few thousand, we'll come over and hunt you down, and oust the government that gave you sanctuary and thumbed their noses at us.
Iraq: Ok, so you've been goading us for the past decade to give you aid, and blackmailing us with alleged WMDs - now we're fed us, we're going to come over and oust you.
Whilst neither actions may have been the wisest in terms of short-term regional stability (or fidicuary duty, for that matter - the US is plouging moutains of cash into this), it's hardly a global conspiracy - it's more a case of, you keep on throwing rocks at a dog, eventually it'll get up and bite you. Idiots.
And the Wikileaks people are a bit of a joke, at the moment.
Firstly, their alleged "war diaries" were nothing more than public domain knowledge, covering a rife of friendly-fire incidents, and well-document US military screw-ups. Sorry, but this is war - and if you're going to to retarded things - like driving *into* a US vs. insurgents firefight, you can expect to cop some flak. The lengths to which people will go to defend some obvious stupidity astounds me.
And Julian Assange seems to trying to cement his reputation as an attention-seeking little boy. I (and most people) don't know what really happened with the whole "rape" allegation, but based on his antics in the press, and his past history, whilst I seriously doubt he actually raped somebody, I don't have much trouble believing he's an arrogant little twat who probably overstepped the bounds of decency with a few girls. It's hardly like he's actually denied sleeping with them, he's just denied actually outright raping them. Poetic justice, if there ever was any.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
You know, I can't tell if you're being ironic (and hence kudos for being funny), or you actually have no idea...lol....
I used to do a fair bit of photography. Sorry, but from everything I've seen, an optical viewfinder still kicks the pants off of every EVF (electronic view finder) I've seen.
And LCD's are notoriously bad in sunlight. And the small CCDs in camera-phones are bad in low-light, and at the opposite tend of the spectrum, in full-sun, tend to produced washed out shots. (Although you probably have more chance of fixing those than trying to de-noise a grainy low-light shot...lol. Could be wrong there - thoughts?). A cheap Diana camera would probably have done the job better...lol. Sometimes I'm tempted to just drag around a nice, rangefinder or compact along for those spur-of-the-moment shots. Anybody else already carry one, and if so, what model?
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Well, my point is that in this new age, stuff isn't that hard to stumble upon.
In the olden days, sure, you could get smut films, snuff films, hardcore pornography, whatever. But it was difficult, and you could bet people would remember you using them to get your hands on it.
Nowadays, the stuff's just so accessible, it's not funny. You can get it from the comfort of your lounge without even having to go outside and meet some older kid in a shady alley...lol.
It's not about bubble-wrapping your kid, so I don't know where you got your argument about sheltering and all that. It's about a simple NSFW warning - a little "are you sure you want to view this, yes/no" warning. My gosh, you're acting liking this is Burma all over again.
If I really want to view the content, sure I'll just click "Yes, show it to me". If I"m curious, I probably would as well. But if I just got rick-rolled by somebody, or I accidentally Google-stumbled onto it, I might think twice - particularly if I was say, at work, or my girlfriend was behind me...lol.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Oh, don't worry, I wasn't a kid that long ago. I know a lot of the time it's like holding a red flag to a bull...haha.
But look, at the end of the day, it's teaching kids a bit of responsibility.
So say, there was something like goatse or the 2girls1cup behind a "click warning". And it said, do you really want to proceed? Well, sure the kid clicks, and he says "oh s*it...that is sick...". He or she has nobody but themselves to blame now. And they're going to feel a bit stupid for clicking through. It's like a reverse-rick-roll or something...I think....haha.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
You're either very, very sheltered from the Internet, or you've never actually had any contact with kids...
There's a lot of weird stuff on the internet. No, I mean, seriously wacko stuff. In the public limelight, there's already goatse, and that 2girls and a cup thingy. Even movies like The Human Centipede are pretty wacked. Or stuff like Saw. Nothing I've mentioned here is particularly hard to find, and in fact is commonly mentioned on forums like Slashdot (would you regard Slashdot as not family friendly?), 4chan, or heck, a Google search will bring it back.
Is that the sort of thing you want your kids seeing?
Look hard enough, and there is much worse. Either very graphic violence, that would make even adults like us cringe/throw up, or weird kinky deviant s*xual stuff.
It's got nothing to do with indoctrination, it's got to do with not coming home and seeing your kids crying, or vomiting up their dinner because they saw something graphic.
Or maybe it's just text, and they read something that creeps them out, and will make them wake up crying every night for the next 6 months *shrugs*.
I'm speaking here generally, of course, as apparently other commentators say this site isn't even that bad.
But the point remains, your silly knee-jerk reactions about how any parent who wants to know what their kid views is "indoctrinating" their kid shows your ignorance.
The internet is awesome - it's brilliant, the amount of data that it can put at your fingertips. But if you're young, and prone to typing in random stuff or clicking on random links...sometimes it's not really the greatest thing. I'm sure generations before us had access to dirty stories, pornography, and smut films - but they had to look hard for it. Now, any kid who can type and use a mouse can find it from home.
It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Err, I don't know about Google being warm and fuzzy, but thus far, I seem to like what they do. That, and quite a few of my mates from uni went across to work for them (I sold out and went to "evil" banks...lol). From what I hear, nice place to work. Maybe that'll change in the future *shrugs*, but at the end of the day, Google's doesn't do dodgy anti-competitive stuff, they don't sue their customers, and they provide a lock of value back to the open-source community. A *lot*.
Sony...gosh, don't get me started.
Sony is a soul-less evil megacorporation in every sense of the world. They sue their customers. They install malware on their systems. They force you to use their own stupidly coded, buggy software, and try to lock you in. The DRM on MiniDisc was a pain in the a*se - the irony is, from a technical perspective, Sony makes awesome technology. Then they weigh it down with so much DRM, vendor control and lock-in, and badly coded junk software made by some second-rate coder, that it turns into a steaming pile of c*ap.
One word - OpenMG...*shudders*.
Then we look at their other products, like MemoryStick. Gee, I wonder why that died? Because Sony decided to be greedy corporate buggers, and try to squeeze out more money by overcharing, and also prevent licensees. Open-standards? Nah, not the Sony way.
Or say BetaCam?
Then look at the dodgy run-around they gave PS3 owners with the whole Linux on PS3 thing.
Sorry, Sony lost my respect a long time ago. And believe me, I was a big fan before (I bought a MiniDisk deck, and portable MD players ok...lol. Multiple TVs, VCRs, all our DVD players etc.)
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Lol, this was personal backups which mean a lot to *me*, but I doubt to anybody else. I have very critical stuff backed up on Dropbox, this was some periphery stuff that happened to be in $HOME, and I hadn't moved across.
Annoying, and I'm kicking myself, but s*it happens.
And I don't have so much hubris that I'm not afraid to admit I make a mistake. *shrugs*. Maybe you're that arrogant ? I don't know.
Also, at the end of the day, I have neither the budget, nor the time, to make sure the harddisk on my laptop is real-time synchronised to redundant storage in multiple datacentres. Dropbox provides that to an extent (it's based on Amazon S3), and Google provide it in a different way (they get you to use their full application stack).
My lesson is this - I hear enough about SANS and heavily replicated storage systems via work (I work for an IB, so let's just leave it at that). Outsourcing my personal storage needs to a company, that's supplying it for free for targeted advertising is, at least to me, a good value proposition.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Read my post again.
It's not just the fact that their storage infrastructure is more advanced that mine. It's the other services the offer, like sync and web-access. For instance, as I mentioned, via Google Contacts, my contacts are backed up online - and hence accessible from any internet-enabled box. Also, if I lose my phone, I can instantly resync, and know everything will be update.
Likewise for chat logs, it's stored online, so I can search or browse it via an online interface, on any internet-enabled computer. This wouldn't be available before, unless I wanted to store my logs locally in a DB, then hack up a webapp to make that available via the web.
I actually do use Dropbox, and I quite like it. However for collaboration, I've actually found the Google Docs interface (the new version - the old one was pretty terrible) better for dealing with simultaneous edits. Dropbox tends to dump a whole bunch of conflicted copies in the folder - you don't lose anything, but you have to manually merge which is just...annoying. And that's only for text files, for binary files like Word documents, it just doesn't work. The tradeoff here is of course the more limited online interface of Google Docs, but that's getting better and for most common features (at least for me) it's nearly at parity.
Cheers,
Victor
Hi,
You seem to have completely missed my point...*sigh*.
Please, feel free to "stalk" me, as you say. My point is this - I'm a boring, mundane person, just another data-point. There's another 6 billion souls where I came from. I'm not Larry Ellison, I'm not Eric Schmidt, I'm not David Cameron.
At the end of the day, if your life is even more pathetically sad than that, that you've got nothing better than to type some random strangers name into Google...well...you have my pity.
Seriously, go out, get a life, get some sunshine, play some sports. My gosh, you guys aren't doing wonders for geek credibility...haha.
Cheers,
Victor
Hi,
As somebody who just lost a bunch of data due to faulty backup disks, I for one welcome this.
I've yet to lose data stored on Google's cloud *touch wood*...lol.
Having data in the cloud, as well as cached/accessible locally seems like the best option. And to those talking about going underground on a train, I'm fairly sure Google's accounted for that - either through Gears, HTML5 Local Storage, or another local caching mechanism. I have a Google Nexus One, when I'm underground, I can still access all my email (that's been synced), my contacts, my calendar etc.
And having all my contacts synced online, along with all my Google Talk logs, is *awesome*. I'm a bit anal-retentive when it comes to storing things, so knowing that it's all stored, and available, and won't get lost due to filesystem corruption or something equally idiotic is good news to me. And look, worst come to worst, I lose my phone (hopefully not...lol) I'll get another, login to my Google Account, and voila, everything is synced again.
And people seem to over-value their privacy, at least to corporations. Seriously, most of you are pathetically mundane. I for one am not so insecure that I can't admit I am too. I mean, jeez, trawling through my personal emails you get...err...a bunch of emails between me and mates talking about work, me arranging lunch with my parents, and me buying stuff on eBay. Big whoop de doo. I'm happy to admit I'm a fairly boring individual, and I'm sure statistically I just fade into the background. If I was the Pope, or Jason Bourne, or I was trying to overthrow the Australian government, I suppose I might think differently. But as it is, I'm just another random guy. I doubt anybody at Google really cares, except to display targeted advertising.
The government spying on me, yeah, I have issues on that. Serious issues. A teacher at uni. Absolutely. A colleague, sure. People I know IRL, yeah. Heck, if this was Sony even, I'd have issues, seeing as they're a bunch of immoral corporates, who have no qualms about installing malware on consumer's PCs (I bought into MiniDisc ok...lol, I have a right to be bitter). But some analytical algorithm, trying to figure out which ads I'll click on? Pftt, who cares.
Google has tried to hide what they do - they display targeted ads. It's not like they've every tried to cover that fact up, nor have they been really been caught out on a privacy breach. (I'm going to discount the technical incompetent idiots who don't understand what unencrypted wireless communication is, or who can't be bothered to read what they're clicking on before they click it, a la Buzz).
They also freely list all the data they store on you:
https://www.google.com/dashboard
And they also don't try to lock you in to their system - they provide open exports from most of their systems.
http://www.dataliberation.org/
I find that really awesome, and a refreshing change from every other corporation that tries to lock you in, hand over foot. It also speaks volumes about their confience - they're confident enough in the technical superiority of their solutison, that they dont' ened to resort to lock-in to try to desperately cling onto their customers.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
You're an idiot.
Now, I know people in Canada like to trumpet about how WE'RE NOT THE US!!
Lol, personally, here in Australia, I find it quite funny. And likewise, Europeans want nothing to do with those horrible Americans *eye rolls*. The fact that they're inward-looking and quite a bit xenophobic (disguised as nationalistic pride) has nothing to do with it.
However, apply some logic here. The parent had it dead on. Whichever idiot used the "walk into somebody's home" argument is either technically incompetent (which in itself isn't a negative thing, although I do wonder why they're reading Slashdot), or just an idiot, full stop.
This is like broadcasting in clear on the CB.
Personally, I think the Canadians and EU are probably just annoyed off at the whole American hegemony or whatever, or the fact that Google is an American corporation, and they didnt' think of it first...lol. That, or this is some silly populist pandering exercise, designed to make ti look like their privacy commissioners are actually doing real work.
I mean, seriously, Google is hardly going to kick and scream, they're an easy target in that sense, they'll just shrug and move on. Why don't you actually try targeting something that shows balls, like I don't know...real companies who actually violate your privacy?
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
You're quite silly....
See Chechnya, and come back and talk to us.
See, most of the US incidents have been either tragic accidents, or people being in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g. AP reportered embedded inside of insurgent groups, or van drivers being stupid and driving fans into the middle of a US versus insurgent firefight, and then picking up insurgents into the van). Or isolated incidents of soldiers just being tools.
Now see, Russia, heck, if they suspected there was a single Chehyan separist, they'd just carpet bomb the whole building.
And then if you were an attention-mongering idiot like Julian Assange, shopping for a bit of the media limelight, and you were idiotic enough to try to leak a Russian government docuemnt...err...the FSB would bury you? Or poison you with radiation? Or basically cut off your head, and dump you in a ditch? Seriously, they wouldn't dick around.
Say what you like about the US, but at least they're a free democracy, and on the whole, you do have the right to come out and say is a tool.
You compare that to a place like Russia, or China, or heck, even Singapore - if you came out in any of those places with anything remotely anti-government, you're basically dead. Literally. (Well, in the first two - in the third, they'd either jail you for some obscure anti-sedition law, or just sue you into oblivion).
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
You've just completely ignored the facts.
They drove an unmarked van *RIGHT INTO THE FRGIGGIN FIREFIGHT*. Like, *headslap*, how idiotic is that. And to drive a van full of kids into it as well is just plain negligent parenting - we should be telling the parents off for being idiotic parents.
The US and insurgents just exchanged fire, trying to kill each other. Now, most smart people - including the majority of Iraqis, who I assume are quite intelligent - would stick their heads down, avoid it, or at the very least not go running like fools right towardsit.
This wasn't some van driving along a street, this was a driver who intentionally drove through fire to get there, to pickup insurgents. Gee, to the guy in a helicopter a few kliks away, an unmarked van just drove onto the insurgents side to pick some of them up. I wonder what that looks like? I'll give you a clue - starts with r, ends in "einforcements".
If you're going to spout propaganda and bias, as least try to get some of the facts right.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
If you're referring to that stupid incident involving the embedded AP reporter, then I'm sorry, that myths already being debunked.
AP has a reputation of embedding its reporters within insurgent groups. The AP reporter in question here was a Iraqi local who decided to hang with an insurgent group...gee...whodee damn doo, I wonder what happens when you decided to embed yourself inside an insurgent group, trying to kill Americans, in order to be "on the ground", and get the other side of the story. Seriously guys, blaming the US for killing an embedded reporter in enemy forces is just plain stupid.
And the van issue, with kids? Right, so the US just had a firefight with some insurgents armed with AK-47's and RPGs...so what do you do? Gee, drive an unmarked van, with kids *inside* the van, to go take a closer look? *sigh*. Even if you were allegedly picking up wounded insurgents (gosh, I wonder what side that makes me look at), has anybody considered that it's frigging retarded, if not bad parenting, to drive a van with your kids into the aftermath of a US versus insurgents aftermath?
I mean, if you yourself want to basically commit suicide, and paint a big target on your head saying, please, please, shoot me, then at least leave your damn kids out of it.
Urgh, seriously guys. Take off your ANTI-US DOWN WITH THE IMPERIALIST blinkers, and actually apply the logic. I dislike the US for other reasons, but at least I can apply some common basic sense here.
I bet if it was any other two forces, we'd be like...yeah...that is a pretty retarded thing to do. Vote them for a Darwin award...
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Why not try a VPN provider, like StrongVPN, and use it with your Android phone?
You should be able to tunnel VoIP/Skype through this.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
I'm surprised that something like Google Voice hasn't taken over in the US for SMSes...any reason?
I have a Voice account, but I'm in Australia =(. It doesn't make sense though, SMSes surely aren't the most efficient way of transmitting messages, and their cost is also way our of proportion to the cost to the provider. Also, with unlimited data plans available now, surely it makes more sense to use TCP as the transport?
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Look, what really gets me is the double-standard that's been applied here.
You say that the US military should document, name, photograph and tally every single civilian killed. *sigh*. If you actually understood the intricacies, it's not that easy. Firstly, this isn't a case of, there's that guy, we're going to go in and kill him. These are usually soldiers on patrol, they get shot at, they return fire, and afterwards, you find out, oh s*it, one of the guys we hit wasn't an "enemy combatant". But even that term is rife with difficulty.
Wat exactly is an "enemy combatant"? We're not talking uniformed soldiers here - we're talking the Taliban, who use dodgy things like bombing marketplaces, suicide bombers, IEDs, and purposely firing rockets from among civilians, then trying to disguise yourself to look like those civilians afterwards. Who's to say that the unnamed, unmarked, no-ID carrying Afghani you just shot isn't actually just a Taliban?
It's very difficult, which is why building good relationships with the local populace is very important - something that I think they're only catching onto now.
In the case of that Polish shooting at a wedding the above poster referenced (), let's see - eight civilians were killed, and three wounded, when a patrol of Polish soldiers took fire, and fired back with mortar. Turns out it was a screw-up, and they hit the wrong guys (either that, or they wrongs guys melted back into the local populace).
The soldiers are currently being investigated, and the governments apologised, bought them food and supplies, gave them a goat (like...what the..? Lol, must be a Afghan thing) as a goodwill gesture, and scheduled regular visits to repair relationships.
The ironic thing is, the villagers say they had no love lost for the Taliban anyway:
" The villagers stated that the Polish soldiers should have come to the village to ask for information regarding Taliban planting of IEDs, since the villagers were opposed to Talibans' operations near their village."
You compare that to the Taliban - gee, they detonate a bomb in a crowded marketplace, you don't see them apologising. Pft, please.
So firstly - it's very hard to document everything, like you claim they should. And secondly, when we screwup - which we have, we usually try to make amends, except for isolated incidents, like that whole digging bullets out thing, which is still under investigation.
Secondly - why we're in Afghanistan? Gee, cause they funded and sheltered Al Qaeda, who bombed the World Trade Centre? Sorry, it's pretty plain here. It's not like Iraq, which I know you guys love to hold up as a prime example of American hegemony, or whatever the buzzword is - even there, well, the end result is we got rid of Saddam Hussein, who'd consistently tried to bluff the world that he had WMDs, then lots when we called him bluff. His own people were all too happy to see him go, and they even hung the sorry b*stard. Personally, I'm a bit opposed to that (don't agree with the death penalty, even for sick men like him), but hey, it shows how his own "people" felt about that tyrant.
Also, we got rid of the Taliban as a by-product, and the Afghanistan people are all too happy to see them go. It's kind of ironic that our own people are all up in arms about these alleged conspiracies and trying to derail their own country, while the Afghan people, on the whole, are quite happy with what we've done. Has anybody on the Left actually asked them what they think?
I mean, sure they're p*ssed about these friendly fire incidents, and who wouldn't - but we've tried to make amends when we botch up, usually, and by all reports, many of them are actually angry at us now we're packing up our bags and leaving the job half-done, because they're worried about reprisals from the Taliban in the power vacuum that gets left behind.
Finally, look, nation rebuilding is never "quick" ok. We gave them a democracy, we rebuild their infrastructure, we're retraining their police force and
heya,
Err, let's see, please try and pick up some basic comprehension skills
Either read what I wrote, or read the linked Wikipedia article.
Assange was a media clown, who drummed up publicity and all this fanfare, then let us all down.
He revealed that a bunch of countries, like Pakistan - who tries to appear as a legitimate, stable, honest global citizen, but is in actuality a corruption-ridden cesspool of double-crossing snakes - and Iran were screwing us over. That was already known.
And we also knew that there had been both collateral damage and friendly fire incidents.
We also knew the Taliban was exclusively targeting civilians with either bombs or guns, and had killed 2000 so far - a number far larger than the couple hundred that we had knocked off, usually through stupidity or carelessness or just bad judgement. Still bad, but nowhere near as bad as them (ideally you'd want it to be zero, but realistically, I doubt that's ever going to happen in a war).
What we didn't know was the location of villages, or the identities of people who had helped in the fight against the Taliban. And they've already publicaly come out and said...let's see:
We will investigate...if they are US spies, then we know how to punish them.
Basically, it means they'll either torture, kill or maim these people, and probably rape their families. It's par on course for them
So Assange has been a tool - he drummed up excitement for nothing, and needlessly endangers people in Afghanistan for his own gain. Sure, they're very far away, and all, and he'll never have to see them, but it's still a very low thing to do. If you were that concerned about the Afghanistan people, then frigging go over there and volunteer, or donate stuff, or hell, just be lazy like me and just donate to aid organistiaons, who will do all the hard work for you.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Yeah, like I said, there's been several hundred civilian casualties.
Nobody's tried to cover it up. Gee gosh, so we didn't manage to get reporters onto all of them. You can dress it up in really *suspicious* sounding language, like 'not previous revealed", but at the end of the day, what you're trying to say is, several hundred civilians have been killed over the last 8 or so years, we know about most of them, but there's a few that didn't make it to the news.
As many other posters here have noted, and anybody who exercises their common-sense will note, civilian casualties, collateral damage, cross-fire, whatever you decide to call it, will happen in a war. It's very bad, and you should minimise it - but there's no evidence here of "war crimes".
It's actually kinda insulting to people who actually suffered war crimes, I would think. Things like genocide, torture, or intentionally bombing civilians centres, that's a war crime. I think people during the Holucast, or say, during the Kosovo crisis would be a little offended if you try to dress up every friendly-fire incident as a "war crime".
What's not happening is some grand conspiracy by dark forces unseen to target and kill Afghanistan civilians for no reason at all. All these weirdos and kooks haven't exactly explained what's to be gained by killing civilians, but hey, logic was never their strong suit.
Look, if there's say, bad training, or poor morale that's causing troops to be trigger-happy, or careless, then by all means, we should fix it up.
But if it's just, the Taliban is picking fights in crowded market places, or they're shooting rockets from among civilians, then melting back into the crowds, it does make it hard to avoid tragedies like those described in the reports. If anything, the reports just a description of what normally happens in war.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Err, you want the truth? And you don't care about the Afghanistans who are helping us?
*sigh*
You sound like some pretentious, silly boy living in his mum's basement, a million miles away from the conflict.
Look, firstly, who are you to be demanding "the truth"? Does this whole thing even affect you? Seriously, have you even been to Afghanistan? Are you a soldier fighting over there, or something?
And we didn't "invade" the place, and we're not "occupying" the face. Idiot. We came in to boot out the Taliban, who by any measure were a bunch of barbaric, twisted people, as well as to catch that tool Osama Bin Laden. Then, we installed a democratically elected government. Now, you might have your own views of Karzi, but at the end of the day, that's who the Afghanistani people voted in and guess what - it's their damn choice who they want, not you, living in your mum's basement, or me, living in my quite comfortable existence here in the West.
I have no idea of the hardships that they're subjected to over there, nor do I pretend to.
And gee gosh, the 20 million odd Afghanistan people on the whole are pretty happy the Taliban got booted out. They were well known for being cruel, barbaric and pretty whacked in the head (admittedly for religious reasons, I suppose). The recent Time magazine, with the girl with her nose cut off was a prime example of why we don't want those religions whack-jobs back.
In this whole debacle, does anybody actually care what they think? With the US's rapid exit from Afghanistan, it's actually them who are complaining the loudest, as they're worried in the vacuum that gets left, the Taliban might come back, and starting doing their old ways of killing and pillaging. It's like we've sacrificed their wellbeing on the podium of political expediency. Sorry, but I have little respect for a nation, and a president who's not in it for the long haul...
Back to you - it's you who's crying like a little b*tch. Look, the Afghanistan conflict has no effect on you - let's be honest. It has not effect on me either. If we actually cared about them, as opposed to just using them as our little podium for our stupid little anti-US rants, you'd be doing things to actually help them - making going over there to volunteer in a camp, or sending over blankets/food, or heck, just giving to one of the many charities or aid organisations that are helping over there. Heck, I"m a lazy person by nature, and even I managed to do the last one.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Err yeah, but there's little evidence of these so-called war crimes so far.
I mean, Assange drummed up excitement, played the media really well, and then released these so-called Afghan War Diaries, to much fanfare...and it's turned out to be a fat lot of nothing.
Most of the data in there was already public knowledge.
Let's see...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary
Err, we have evidence that Pakistan is screwing over the US, UK and other NATO nations, and aiding the Taliban to kill our soldiers. Great....so what happens now? We try to charge Pakistan with war crimes? Lol.
Then we have evidence that Iran likewise is helping the Taliban and screwing us over. We're going to charge them with war crimes as well? We can't even get them to have clean elections....
Oh, and our good chum North Korea as well.
The of course, we have the civilian casualties, currently standing at a few hundred. Very regretable, and tragic. However, it's in contest how much of it's avoidable, and how much of it was caused by negligence, say, or poor regard for the civilian folk. Ultimately, that's a question for a court to decide - however, I don't see anybody actually making a solid case for any charges of war crimes. I mean, gee, most of these incidents are caused by cross-fire, bad-luck, panicking soldiers, or the Taliban deliberately trying to drag civilians into the conflict, or using questionable tactics.
Hardly any evidence of the grand conspiracy all these silly, IT'S A CONSPIRACY hippies are decrying about.
Then we have evidence in these war diaries that the Taliban is deliberately targeting civilians, and has killed some 2000 to date. Gee, we're going to charge the Taliban with war crimes? We can't even catch them all yet.
Hmm, then we reveal that the Taliban is using heat-seeking missiles to shoot down our aircraft. Oh great, another revelation.
I mean, seriously guys, the defence of Assange is getting pretty flimsy. He needless endangered Afghan informants and screwed over active military operations, just so he could get his name in the papers - and what, he reveals a bunch of useless information.
Sure, the US military, in fact, many militaries have a tendency to just mark everything classified, "just to be safe" even if it's completely stupid. But really...what of note was revealed here?
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Depends - are we talking real girlfriends, or virtual?
Because speaking from experience, the former is often enough for you to buy Xbox live membership for your street...lol.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Yes, but then you're doling out harsh punishments that don't fit the crime.
Now, you and I might have our opinions on what's "fair", or what's a sufficient time to rehabilitate somebody. But at the end of the day, our justice system has had many centuries to work out those questions, and I think there's a large volume of case law and precedent that defines the current system.
I don't think it's up to us to come along and arbitrarily say, oh, let's jack up all degrees of murder to life imprisonment. Because then you'd have to re-evaluate all crimes, and their punishments. And then deal with retroactive issues. You have to balance, sure we can jail this person, but on the flip-side, can we rehabilate them and turn them into a functioning member of society?
Cheers,
Victor