I hardly consider the Freeper nuts a reliable source:)
It's not clear who is more culpable for 9/11 - Bush or Clinton -- I tend to cut both quite a bit of slack because in a free society with civil rights it's hard to keep track of everyone and every action. Sure, in hindsight, it's easy (much as diagnosing a tough multithreading bug is easy once the patch is available), but for each relevant report, there were probably thousands of irrelevant ones - filtering through them is very costly and requires enormous resources which can't just appear in three or six month time-frames. Also, it only takes one judge who is unwilling to grant a search or wiretap warrant to delay things beyond the time-frame that makes the warrant relevant.
But, to pin most of the blame on Bush as the GP seemingly tried to do is absurd. Bush is being a complete idiot right NOW by not controlling the US borders because, of course, someone needs to pick the strawberries, mow the lawns, and put up the drywall. History will probably (correctly) hold Bush responsible for the actions of some of the sleepers that have crept across our borders in the past five years (if a poor uneducated farm-worker can pay a coyote enough to get across the border, somehow I doubt that a funded Al-Qaeda zealot can't do the same quite easily).
The Freeper chronology shows facts that were determined AFTER no court would stand in the way of any investigative effort against the 19 hijackers. Their actions prior to 9/11 were odd, but I bet that we know people whose actions are equally odd and really are just the strange behavior of maladjusted geeks...
I think we will just have to agree to disagree about if we need more information (if one doesn't have the information, filters will never generate it) however, I think we agree that we need better filters.
I really think you're being a little hard on President Clinton here. He was only in office for eight years and was very busy while 9/11 was being planned.
Besides, if he (or Bush) had implemented the security levels that we now have at the airport before the events of 9/11, the public would have screamed about "privacy" and "my constitutional rights" and the like.
As for the paper trail idea: Why make someone vote on a computer screen to produce a paper ballot? Keep It Simple, Stupid applies to methodologies and processes beyond programming and interfaces.
Such a system could:
Eliminate unintentional "overvoting" and "undervoting".
Eliminate arguments about "voter intent" (is that a smudge or a vote???).
Allow official results can be tabulated very quickly so, if requested, a recount from the paper copies can be initiated nearly immediately.
Provide a method (such as described below) through which people could check if their vote was recorded correctly.
Keep two copies of each vote in very different technologies which would make it much harder to "fix" the vote by altering both copies perfectly (esp. if the electronic tally is regularly sent during the voting day to a central location to guard against site disaster etc.).
Make it easy to make backup copies of the electronic vote to avoid problems if a box of paper ballots "disappears". (Obviously, the loss of the recountable paper ballots in this case means whenever this happens, a careful investigation would be required, and possibly those who voted at that precinct would be particularly encouraged to verify that their vote was recorded correctly - i.e., that the electronic copy had not been tampered).
These seem like substantial benefits.
You can't allow people to check back on their vote -- it would allow people to sell their vote in a way that could be verified later.
Agreed - in some cases. However, there could be a process by which one could check that would solve all the problems I know of. The process must assure that ONLY you could check and ONLY in private and NO ONE else can look at your vote. If you then choose to claim your vote was misrecorded, obviously election officials, judges etc. would have to get involved and would probably have to see your vote in order to investigate.
When you vote (electronically), you could get a receipt. Your vote would be encrypted with a composite key built from the following components to yield an "encrypted vote":
A key the voter provides (of course most people will use a key that either they can't remember or which is completely insecure - for this reason, this key might be optional at the voter's discretion) [VOTER_KEY],
A random key, unique for each vote, which is printed ONLY on the receipt [RECEIPT_KEY],
A random key, unique for each vote, which is retained by the vote system and stored only with your vote record [STORED_KEY].
ALL significant data on the receipt would be encrypted with a public key whose private key is distributed among a panel of trusted people (perhaps judges) in a n-of-m fashion so, perhaps, any 3 (or more) of the panel members could recreate the private key [I don't know what state of the art in this area is, so the method may be different from what I describe].
The receipt would contain (again, all also encrypted with the public key):
The encrypted (i.e., with VOTER_KEY, RECEIPT_KEY, and STORED_KEY) vote.
The "id" of the database record which records this vote encrypted with the VOTER_KEY.
RECEIPT_KEY
The "voter roll" identifier for the voter after being encrypted with both the VOTER_KEY and STORED_KEY.
If someone wanted to determine if their vote was recorded correctly, they would apply for a confirmation process which would consist of:
Identifying oneself (with appropriate id) to the necessary number of the "trusted people" panel (n-of-m) who would look up the voter rolls and find the "voter roll" identifier for that voter.
Using secure machines, each panel member would enter their portion of the private key which would be used to perform the first level of decryption of the receipt.
The voter would, from a secure and private locatio
I think, for the arts, you stated this more eloquently than I could have. The arts include a substantial component of passion and to pretend otherwise would be arrogant and annoying. I tire quickly of those who wax on in a superior tone about art - it is arrogant to believe that some "art" is "art", while other "art" is "trash" - convince me with your passion that your "art" is "art", perhaps I will agree, perhaps not, but you've fulfilled your responsibility if I truly understand (but not necessary share) your passion and your reasons for it.
On the continuum of academic subjects, art is among the most emotional and subjective. Hard (i.e., physics, chemistry, etc) sciences are the least. Political Science is somewhere in-between (i.e., logical argument and support is required for credibility, but opinions are impossible to eliminate).
However, if a art professor is ranting on about Clinton or Bush 43 in a class about the art of the Italian Renaissance, something is wrong because when I last checked, neither Clinton or Bush 43 were BORN by the close of the Italian Renaissance.
Of course anything can be political grist. However, I expect someone qualified to be a university professor to be smart enough, open enough, and knowledgeable enough to present and evaluate views that they don't personally hold. Indeed, this capability should be a minimum job requirement.
Nor is it rational to suggest that the New Deal or the Great Society are more readily considered objectively now than in the past.
At the time the Great Society was being implemented, it was only possible to evaluate the programs based on their intended effect. Now, it is possible to evaluate them based on their actual effect. There will of course be arguments about which programs (both within the Great Society framework and outside that framework) contributed to which effects, but certainly knowing the actual effect provides for a more useful discussion than not knowing the outcome. Of course, there will still be subjective aspects, but someone could have said at the beginning of the Great Society that "Program X will end poverty forever in this country" and that statement would be impossible to refute, but now (assuming program X was implemented) we can conclusively say that such a statement is provably false (and, notice that the hypothetical statement above was absolute and without qualifiers, so saying that the "program X would have ended poverty forever, but program Y interfered with it" does not make the original statement true).
Notice that I'm not passing judgement on any program or programs that comprised the Great Society - merely using it as an example. Virtually any policy or set of policies could be used equally well.
I'm not sure that it would be truly POV neutral but think it could very well be acceptable in a political science class if the comments were in context and directly related to the published course syllabus/description in the catalog. Since a particular class was not identified, I can't be very specific as to this case, but to be educational, it seems likely that the instructor should spend just as much time stating their opinions on the same dimensions of effectiveness (such as foreign affairs or domestic economic policy), and justification for those opinions, for the level of effectiveness of each recent president (perhaps Nixon on, perhaps FDR on depending on the time available). Also, the instructor should present the alternative views of Bush and, to the best of their ability (which, any professor at a respected university should be very adept at), the justifications for those alternative views.
I would point out that from an educational aspect, Bush may be one of the least useful presidents to comment on because no one yet knows the long term outcome of his policies and actions. To consider examples from history, was it more educational to discuss the New Deal or the Great Society during FDR's and LBJ's terms respectively or now when the consequences (good and bad) of these policies can be determined more objectively?
To be POV neutral, if class discussion is also permitted and student's are allowed to express their opinions (rather than being required to stick to just factual material - which is frankly probably hard to do in most effective political science courses), students must be free to express their opinions equally (along with their justifications) regardless of the content of their opinion as long as the opinions are not so absurd as to be in direct conflict with known facts (such as claiming that NASA didn't put men on the moon, there was no holocaust, or that evolution doesn't exist in any form).
I think the point is that a public university should, on the whole, be POV neutral. To some extent this is accomplished by Biology teachers not talking about politics (or ID) and to some extent by making sure that in the areas where it's impossible to avoid politics to some extent, extreme right/left/up/down professors are not hired and a professor being consistently intolerant of academically responsible alternative views from their customers (the students) should be a "fireable" offense. This does not of course mean that a professor needs to allow riots in her lecture hall or can't control the lecture hall - just that no one's ability to speak should be interfered with solely because of the content of their speech as long as the topic is relevant and the view is not so extreme and provably false that it's absurd (and clearly supporting the right of Israel to defend itself or the notion that the U.S. military actions in the Middle East are appropriate are not so extreme to be absurd.)
UCLA should not be (nor do I think it is) the left wing equivalent of Pepperdine or Biola.
While I question the need (and the motives) of the "tape recorder gang", a professor at a public university should be happy to have their views broadcast and not feel they must hide them from those paying their salaries. There is a risk of "out of context" quotes, but the risk is even greater when the only record is hand written notes. Also, I would expect that professors may choose to record their own classes also to make sure that if a claim is made that is untrue, that they can refute it.
If you make a "tax deductible donation", you don't have the money anymore - it's like you never had the money. While I don't agree with tax deductible donations, it seems odd to object to the fact that wealthy taxpayers make donations and get a tax deduction. If you contribute $10M/year, leaving you with $40K to live on, you live pretty much like someone who only earned $40K in the first place rather than like someone who earned $10,040K annually.
Sure, there are some loopholes - but most of these apparent loopholes actually benefit the charity at the level that the contributor benefits from a tax standpoint.
Of course this may have something to do with the fact that most households with "working age" members have at least one person being forced to pay into the Medicare fund. Most people also don't expect their broker to abscond with their IRA funds and would favor a requirement that they not be allowed to do so.
Why not give us a link supporting your position? (Nope, moveon.org and dailykos.com don't count as reputable, authoritative or POV neutral sources). Please enlighten us with where to "look it up" - and pick the most authoritative source you can come up with in order to give your argument weight.
Not saying it's not true, but when I "look it up" at places like Merriam-Webster, I see a lot about "government" and nothing about "corporate".
I too am less comfortable with Nagasaki than Hiroshima, but either neither or both were war-crimes.
Remember, three days elapsed between the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Yet, in those three days they didn't surrender even after KNOWING what our bomb could do. Somehow if "Little Boy" didn't convince them to surrender in three days, I doubt that a test film would have been MORE effective.
They would have, rightfully, been suspicious of a test film as it could have been faked. Also, from my limited understanding of the culture, it seems that they would have suspected that even if the test film were real, that the bomb was not a practical weapon we could deliver (either because we blew up our only copy or we couldn't figure out how to transport the thing or...) because they would (and would expect anyone to) USE the bomb rather than just threaten to.
As I'm sure you know, a difficulty we DID have, and could not let them know, was that we only had two working bombs ready to go. If we had entered protracted talks after Hiroshima, they probably would have suspected we DIDN'T have any more and could have called our bluff - saying "so you have a lot of those do you, we don't believe you, show us" and we would have been in a tight spot - we couldn't show them the only one we had (then they would know we only had one) but we couldn't show them a bunch of them (because we didn't have them). They (i.e., the leadership) might have been willing to let us use the second one just to get rid of it. By striking again after a reasonable period of time for a surrender (as you seem to agree three days is), it gave the impression that we had plenty of bombs and could perhaps deliver one every three days if needed (since human nature is NOT to use your last bullet except when you HAVE to).
I agree that today we would not repeat both, perhaps even the first, bomb. However, today technology has changed war enough that it would not be necessary as conventional weapons could do the trick quickly and accurately take out infrastructure and military targets without extensive civilian deaths (unless of course, the civilians are put in/around the military targets to deter attack - but civilian deaths that arise as a result of this would not be on our hands).
Although posting as AC vs. somelamename doesn't have an impact on the thoughts expressed, it does make it harder to follow/respond to the discussion in deeply nested threads. I tend to ignore ACs when too many of the posts on a thread are from ACs and it's too much work to try to sort out which AC is making which argument - or even if there is one inconsistent flipflopping AC or ten consistent ones posting.
Certainly not a big deal, but I suspect I'm not the only one that pays less attention to ACs for this reason.
So, what should we have done? Drag the war on for two more years? Kill many more people on both sides (woman, children, and elderly included) than what we did? You do know that Japanese civilians were being trained to fight to the last man don't you?
Yes, it was laughable that Japan could really defeat us - but they didn't seem to share that opinion and were willing to sacrifice every man, woman, and child for "the Emperor".
Life sucks sometimes. Get of your basement and face reality. I don't like war, but I'm not willing to lay down and acquiesce to aggressors in order to avoid it. I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that you are under 30 years old - and went through school when prohibitions on "bullying" and "conduct codes" were prevalent - unfortunately these rules don't exist in the international world (or the inter-corporate world) and the earlier you understand that, the earlier you will understand the world.
(BTW, did the Germans follow the Geneva convention? If one party to a conflict violates the rules, the other side sticks to the "rules" only if they are idiots.)
(BTW, you never said what your plan would have been - and you have the benefit of 60 years of hindsight)
By the time we firebombed Japan, we were well beyond Pearl Harbor - we had lost many American lives in combat with an enemy whose soldiers were willing to die for their imperialistic motherland - think Kamikaze pilots. The goal of Japan was to force the surrender of the U.S. (yes, I know there were internal differences within the leadership of Japan as to if this was possible).
And what was your plan? Surrender to the Japanese?
Oh, I forgot, you didn't have to have a plan. You just get to enjoy the benefits of not having to learn Japanese and kowtow to the Emperor.
Oh yes, how long do you think you would have lived after posting something critical of the Emperor? Count your blessings.
You can trash the current administration (by inference) because the history books haven't yet been written. However, I'd suggest that if you want anyone to take you seriously, you don't show your idealistic bent by second guessing how WWII was conducted when you enjoy the benefits of it. War is ugly, war is to be avoided if feasible (but not to a Neville Chamberlainistic level), war is sometimes necessary.
An easier way would be to have it centallized in a database. You type in where you want to dig, In GPS coordinates, and it tells you what is located underneath, if anything.
Yeah, but the darned thing would be so overloaded with terrorists looking for places to drill holes in the ground that people with legitimate needs would usually just get back "server too busy, try again later".
Actually, isn't the accuracy of consumer level GPS is insufficient for this task?
For some reason I find it neat that I can go onto the City of Los Angeles web page and find a lot of stuff like where sanitary sewers run, the construction type of the sanitary servers, where the sanitary server access and hookups are, where street trees are planted and what type they are, where the fire hydrants are and what type they are, where the street lights are, where easements on property are, where storm drains are, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Of course, the info is inaccurate in my neighborhood so one would be ill advised to start digging holes based on anything there!
This isn't quite what you're asking for, but Nero CD-DVD Speed has some quality tests that might give you some (scary) insight. At least one of the error reporting features only works on some drives (interestingly, my burner doesn't support this feature but my readonly drive does).
Also, if you want to know more than you want to know about the bits, check out the CD R Primer (this is a pdf, but there's an HTML version and additional stuff here)
Yep - if you can actually get close enough and dare put it right up against the sweater. Oh, I forgot, this is/. so the "getting close" part is even unrealistic...
When you rent, you are paying property taxes indirectly, that doesn't mean they aren't paying at all.
Agreed. Just as corporate income taxes are not paid by corporations or stockholders - they are paid by consumers just like any other cost of doing business while making a suitable ROI. Corporations and landlords don't pay taxes, they just collect them.
Which is exactly as it is supposed to be. We don't make programs like social security for the RICH, we make them for the poor.
Umm... Social Security was not created just "for the poor" - indeed to this day it is not means tested directly (although, as I recall, the benefits now begin to be taxed if one has outside income above some limits) and is (generally) only provided to those who pay into it and the level of payment is related to how much was paid in by the individual recipient. Inevitably, Social Security Retirement benefits will be directly means tested - at which time it will become known as a welfare program and will eventually be reformed by workers forced to pay into it and realizing they will receive little or nothing from it.
Actually, the rich tend to find tax shelters to avoid paying the taxes they are otherwise required to.
This is true - but so do the middle class (esp. the travesty of the giant mortgage interest deduction) and some poor (who, based on my observations, barter, tax free, a larger proportion of their income than rich folks whose income is mostly traceable). For example, I see a fair amount of construction work being done "off the books" around my neighborhood (sometimes using traditional employer's equipment in off hours) for cash or barter.
Are you just subtly trying to say we shouldn't have any programs for the poor?
Nope. I didn't say that either.
Once again, they reap a lot of the INDIRECT benefits.
To the extent that the travesty of corporate welfare exists, this is true. Such corporate welfare should be ended ASAP. What other indirect benefits are you referring to?
You get a tremendous benefit out of having money, period.
Except for security of having money for a rainy day, what is this "tremendous benefit" you speak of - give some specifics. How does "Mr. Frugal" in my example benefit so "tremendously"?
The rich would also be a much, much larger boon to the economy if they spent their money, rather than locking it up in stocks or bonds, period.
This is of course a legitimate debate economists will have - again some balance is needed but, IMHO, will occur naturally. Your claim that money is "locked up" in "stocks and bonds" suggests that you don't know much about economics. Virtually no money is "locked up" (a few nuts put cash under their mattress, but that accounts for a tiny portion of the money supply) in stocks and bonds. Money invested in stocks and bonds is spent for capital and operating expenses and, as such, creates and sustains jobs.
Your whole argument is based upon a buch [sic] of these half-facts, misdirection, a few blatant lies, etc.
And why didn't you point these out and categorize them. For example, which are "blatant lies", which are "etc."?
Not even remotely true. The voucher only helps for the poorest of the poor, and those that don't qualify get royally screwed.
That assumes that the amount of the vouchers is not sufficient to cover the consumption taxes of the (less than poorest of the) poor and lower-middle income. In reality, it would likely be larger than the tax on "minimum requirements" (i.e., it may end up being a form of subsidy).
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It's not clear who is more culpable for 9/11 - Bush or Clinton -- I tend to cut both quite a bit of slack because in a free society with civil rights it's hard to keep track of everyone and every action. Sure, in hindsight, it's easy (much as diagnosing a tough multithreading bug is easy once the patch is available), but for each relevant report, there were probably thousands of irrelevant ones - filtering through them is very costly and requires enormous resources which can't just appear in three or six month time-frames. Also, it only takes one judge who is unwilling to grant a search or wiretap warrant to delay things beyond the time-frame that makes the warrant relevant.
But, to pin most of the blame on Bush as the GP seemingly tried to do is absurd. Bush is being a complete idiot right NOW by not controlling the US borders because, of course, someone needs to pick the strawberries, mow the lawns, and put up the drywall. History will probably (correctly) hold Bush responsible for the actions of some of the sleepers that have crept across our borders in the past five years (if a poor uneducated farm-worker can pay a coyote enough to get across the border, somehow I doubt that a funded Al-Qaeda zealot can't do the same quite easily).
The Freeper chronology shows facts that were determined AFTER no court would stand in the way of any investigative effort against the 19 hijackers. Their actions prior to 9/11 were odd, but I bet that we know people whose actions are equally odd and really are just the strange behavior of maladjusted geeks...
I think we will just have to agree to disagree about if we need more information (if one doesn't have the information, filters will never generate it) however, I think we agree that we need better filters.
I really think you're being a little hard on President Clinton here. He was only in office for eight years and was very busy while 9/11 was being planned. Besides, if he (or Bush) had implemented the security levels that we now have at the airport before the events of 9/11, the public would have screamed about "privacy" and "my constitutional rights" and the like.
Not only that, he must, in effect, be getting paid overtime for posting to /. because he's non-exempt - that's a neat trick!
You owe me a keyboard :)
I only wish I could use that one in the politically correct, socially sensitive, caring, litigation happy workplace :)
Such a system could:
These seem like substantial benefits.
Agreed - in some cases. However, there could be a process by which one could check that would solve all the problems I know of. The process must assure that ONLY you could check and ONLY in private and NO ONE else can look at your vote. If you then choose to claim your vote was misrecorded, obviously election officials, judges etc. would have to get involved and would probably have to see your vote in order to investigate.
When you vote (electronically), you could get a receipt. Your vote would be encrypted with a composite key built from the following components to yield an "encrypted vote":
ALL significant data on the receipt would be encrypted with a public key whose private key is distributed among a panel of trusted people (perhaps judges) in a n-of-m fashion so, perhaps, any 3 (or more) of the panel members could recreate the private key [I don't know what state of the art in this area is, so the method may be different from what I describe].
The receipt would contain (again, all also encrypted with the public key):
If someone wanted to determine if their vote was recorded correctly, they would apply for a confirmation process which would consist of:
On the continuum of academic subjects, art is among the most emotional and subjective. Hard (i.e., physics, chemistry, etc) sciences are the least. Political Science is somewhere in-between (i.e., logical argument and support is required for credibility, but opinions are impossible to eliminate).
However, if a art professor is ranting on about Clinton or Bush 43 in a class about the art of the Italian Renaissance, something is wrong because when I last checked, neither Clinton or Bush 43 were BORN by the close of the Italian Renaissance.
Nor is it rational to suggest that the New Deal or the Great Society are more readily considered objectively now than in the past.
At the time the Great Society was being implemented, it was only possible to evaluate the programs based on their intended effect. Now, it is possible to evaluate them based on their actual effect. There will of course be arguments about which programs (both within the Great Society framework and outside that framework) contributed to which effects, but certainly knowing the actual effect provides for a more useful discussion than not knowing the outcome. Of course, there will still be subjective aspects, but someone could have said at the beginning of the Great Society that "Program X will end poverty forever in this country" and that statement would be impossible to refute, but now (assuming program X was implemented) we can conclusively say that such a statement is provably false (and, notice that the hypothetical statement above was absolute and without qualifiers, so saying that the "program X would have ended poverty forever, but program Y interfered with it" does not make the original statement true).
Notice that I'm not passing judgement on any program or programs that comprised the Great Society - merely using it as an example. Virtually any policy or set of policies could be used equally well.
I would point out that from an educational aspect, Bush may be one of the least useful presidents to comment on because no one yet knows the long term outcome of his policies and actions. To consider examples from history, was it more educational to discuss the New Deal or the Great Society during FDR's and LBJ's terms respectively or now when the consequences (good and bad) of these policies can be determined more objectively?
To be POV neutral, if class discussion is also permitted and student's are allowed to express their opinions (rather than being required to stick to just factual material - which is frankly probably hard to do in most effective political science courses), students must be free to express their opinions equally (along with their justifications) regardless of the content of their opinion as long as the opinions are not so absurd as to be in direct conflict with known facts (such as claiming that NASA didn't put men on the moon, there was no holocaust, or that evolution doesn't exist in any form).
UCLA should not be (nor do I think it is) the left wing equivalent of Pepperdine or Biola.
While I question the need (and the motives) of the "tape recorder gang", a professor at a public university should be happy to have their views broadcast and not feel they must hide them from those paying their salaries. There is a risk of "out of context" quotes, but the risk is even greater when the only record is hand written notes. Also, I would expect that professors may choose to record their own classes also to make sure that if a claim is made that is untrue, that they can refute it.
If you make a "tax deductible donation", you don't have the money anymore - it's like you never had the money. While I don't agree with tax deductible donations, it seems odd to object to the fact that wealthy taxpayers make donations and get a tax deduction. If you contribute $10M/year, leaving you with $40K to live on, you live pretty much like someone who only earned $40K in the first place rather than like someone who earned $10,040K annually.
Sure, there are some loopholes - but most of these apparent loopholes actually benefit the charity at the level that the contributor benefits from a tax standpoint.
Of course this may have something to do with the fact that most households with "working age" members have at least one person being forced to pay into the Medicare fund. Most people also don't expect their broker to abscond with their IRA funds and would favor a requirement that they not be allowed to do so.
Hey, you sound like you may be a closet libertarian (or, God (god?) forbid, even a closet Libertarian). Welcome :)
Not saying it's not true, but when I "look it up" at places like Merriam-Webster, I see a lot about "government" and nothing about "corporate".
Remember, three days elapsed between the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Yet, in those three days they didn't surrender even after KNOWING what our bomb could do. Somehow if "Little Boy" didn't convince them to surrender in three days, I doubt that a test film would have been MORE effective.
They would have, rightfully, been suspicious of a test film as it could have been faked. Also, from my limited understanding of the culture, it seems that they would have suspected that even if the test film were real, that the bomb was not a practical weapon we could deliver (either because we blew up our only copy or we couldn't figure out how to transport the thing or...) because they would (and would expect anyone to) USE the bomb rather than just threaten to.
As I'm sure you know, a difficulty we DID have, and could not let them know, was that we only had two working bombs ready to go. If we had entered protracted talks after Hiroshima, they probably would have suspected we DIDN'T have any more and could have called our bluff - saying "so you have a lot of those do you, we don't believe you, show us" and we would have been in a tight spot - we couldn't show them the only one we had (then they would know we only had one) but we couldn't show them a bunch of them (because we didn't have them). They (i.e., the leadership) might have been willing to let us use the second one just to get rid of it. By striking again after a reasonable period of time for a surrender (as you seem to agree three days is), it gave the impression that we had plenty of bombs and could perhaps deliver one every three days if needed (since human nature is NOT to use your last bullet except when you HAVE to).
I agree that today we would not repeat both, perhaps even the first, bomb. However, today technology has changed war enough that it would not be necessary as conventional weapons could do the trick quickly and accurately take out infrastructure and military targets without extensive civilian deaths (unless of course, the civilians are put in/around the military targets to deter attack - but civilian deaths that arise as a result of this would not be on our hands).
Certainly not a big deal, but I suspect I'm not the only one that pays less attention to ACs for this reason.
Yes, it was laughable that Japan could really defeat us - but they didn't seem to share that opinion and were willing to sacrifice every man, woman, and child for "the Emperor".
Life sucks sometimes. Get of your basement and face reality. I don't like war, but I'm not willing to lay down and acquiesce to aggressors in order to avoid it. I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that you are under 30 years old - and went through school when prohibitions on "bullying" and "conduct codes" were prevalent - unfortunately these rules don't exist in the international world (or the inter-corporate world) and the earlier you understand that, the earlier you will understand the world.
(BTW, did the Germans follow the Geneva convention? If one party to a conflict violates the rules, the other side sticks to the "rules" only if they are idiots.)
(BTW, you never said what your plan would have been - and you have the benefit of 60 years of hindsight)
By the time we firebombed Japan, we were well beyond Pearl Harbor - we had lost many American lives in combat with an enemy whose soldiers were willing to die for their imperialistic motherland - think Kamikaze pilots. The goal of Japan was to force the surrender of the U.S. (yes, I know there were internal differences within the leadership of Japan as to if this was possible).
Oh, I forgot, you didn't have to have a plan. You just get to enjoy the benefits of not having to learn Japanese and kowtow to the Emperor.
Oh yes, how long do you think you would have lived after posting something critical of the Emperor? Count your blessings.
You can trash the current administration (by inference) because the history books haven't yet been written. However, I'd suggest that if you want anyone to take you seriously, you don't show your idealistic bent by second guessing how WWII was conducted when you enjoy the benefits of it. War is ugly, war is to be avoided if feasible (but not to a Neville Chamberlainistic level), war is sometimes necessary.
Yeah, but the darned thing would be so overloaded with terrorists looking for places to drill holes in the ground that people with legitimate needs would usually just get back "server too busy, try again later".
Actually, isn't the accuracy of consumer level GPS is insufficient for this task?
For some reason I find it neat that I can go onto the City of Los Angeles web page and find a lot of stuff like where sanitary sewers run, the construction type of the sanitary servers, where the sanitary server access and hookups are, where street trees are planted and what type they are, where the fire hydrants are and what type they are, where the street lights are, where easements on property are, where storm drains are, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Of course, the info is inaccurate in my neighborhood so one would be ill advised to start digging holes based on anything there!
And given the level of whining by /.ers about getting dates, this condition seems doomed to only get worse as evolution continues its inexorable march.
Also, if you want to know more than you want to know about the bits, check out the CD R Primer (this is a pdf, but there's an HTML version and additional stuff here)
Everyone knows that good drives have gold lasers, gold cables, and gold chipsets so the digital signal doesn't degrade.
As did your post and mine!
Yep - if you can actually get close enough and dare put it right up against the sweater. Oh, I forgot, this is /. so the "getting close" part is even unrealistic...
When you rent, you are paying property taxes indirectly, that doesn't mean they aren't paying at all.
Agreed. Just as corporate income taxes are not paid by corporations or stockholders - they are paid by consumers just like any other cost of doing business while making a suitable ROI. Corporations and landlords don't pay taxes, they just collect them.
Which is exactly as it is supposed to be. We don't make programs like social security for the RICH, we make them for the poor.
Umm... Social Security was not created just "for the poor" - indeed to this day it is not means tested directly (although, as I recall, the benefits now begin to be taxed if one has outside income above some limits) and is (generally) only provided to those who pay into it and the level of payment is related to how much was paid in by the individual recipient. Inevitably, Social Security Retirement benefits will be directly means tested - at which time it will become known as a welfare program and will eventually be reformed by workers forced to pay into it and realizing they will receive little or nothing from it.
Actually, the rich tend to find tax shelters to avoid paying the taxes they are otherwise required to.
This is true - but so do the middle class (esp. the travesty of the giant mortgage interest deduction) and some poor (who, based on my observations, barter, tax free, a larger proportion of their income than rich folks whose income is mostly traceable). For example, I see a fair amount of construction work being done "off the books" around my neighborhood (sometimes using traditional employer's equipment in off hours) for cash or barter.
Are you just subtly trying to say we shouldn't have any programs for the poor?
Nope. I didn't say that either.
Once again, they reap a lot of the INDIRECT benefits.
To the extent that the travesty of corporate welfare exists, this is true. Such corporate welfare should be ended ASAP. What other indirect benefits are you referring to?
You get a tremendous benefit out of having money, period.
Except for security of having money for a rainy day, what is this "tremendous benefit" you speak of - give some specifics. How does "Mr. Frugal" in my example benefit so "tremendously"?
The rich would also be a much, much larger boon to the economy if they spent their money, rather than locking it up in stocks or bonds, period.
This is of course a legitimate debate economists will have - again some balance is needed but, IMHO, will occur naturally. Your claim that money is "locked up" in "stocks and bonds" suggests that you don't know much about economics. Virtually no money is "locked up" (a few nuts put cash under their mattress, but that accounts for a tiny portion of the money supply) in stocks and bonds. Money invested in stocks and bonds is spent for capital and operating expenses and, as such, creates and sustains jobs.
Your whole argument is based upon a buch [sic] of these half-facts, misdirection, a few blatant lies, etc.
And why didn't you point these out and categorize them. For example, which are "blatant lies", which are "etc."?
Not even remotely true. The voucher only helps for the poorest of the poor, and those that don't qualify get royally screwed.
That assumes that the amount of the vouchers is not sufficient to cover the consumption taxes of the (less than poorest of the) poor and lower-middle income. In reality, it would likely be larger than the tax on "minimum requirements" (i.e., it may end up being a form of subsidy).