That is my point. I tend to follow the 3 second thing when possible to avoid this very problem. However, when I get stuck following closer due to traffic if I leave any kind of significant gap it causes problems. They don't have to fit the car in, they just have to have enough room to start the turn into that gap. I either slam on the breaks or smash into their side/back end. These assholes muscle their car into the gap.
I wish it was that easy. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have been cut off and nearly put in a wreck because some idiot asshole thinks he can squeeze his car between me and the car in front at high speeds. Leaving a safe following distance is asking for people to do risky maneuvers to get into that gap for the benefit of being a whole car length ahead of their previous position.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you could take all the idiot assholes off the road and replace them with people that understand high school physics then you probably wouldn't have many problems at all.
Violating sanctions and starting a war are two pretty different things. Just like not paying a speeding ticket and robbing a convenience store are not the same thing. In fact, what we proved is that if you own nukes you don't get touched. This of course makes developing nuclear weapons much more valuable. All of the major nuke owners get to break WAY more rules, and thus far, only non nuke owners have actually had military action taken against them.
The thing that makes big nukes hard to survive is that someone else will hit back. Mutually Assure Destruction is what stops nukes from being used. That is the whole point behind developing the "tactical" variety. Trying to justify the use of nuclear weapons without triggering MAD. This of course works much better when you are nuking countries that don't have nukes to retaliate with and you can use your position to discourage the other nuke holders from defending the country you are using nukes in.
Abu Ghraib is a favorite hobby horse to people on the left? What kind of bullshit is that? I don't fucking care what your political alignment is, Abu Ghraib was a travesty and to minimize the rape, murder, and torture of prisoners as a "hobby horse" is disgusting beyond measure. I also suggest you read up on the facts a little rather than right wing talk radio talking points. I'm not sure what "smoking gun" you are looking for. There has been plenty of evidence that quite a few senior leaders, generals and above, that at least knew of it if not directly authorized it. These people aren't stupid, they aren't going to put "you can rape prisoners" in a signed letter. It is all done through that wink wink nudge nudge look the other way shit. Rumsfeld publically thanked the soldier that brought attention to the abuse...while he was still deployed with that unit. You should read his story. I can't imagine the fear after listening to my coworkers talk about the horrible things they would do to the person who squeeled and then have my name announced on tv in front of 200 people as the guy who did it.
It blows my mind to see the "morally superior" right wing treat defend that crap and babble about how anyone who cries foul at it is some "leftist". The sad truth here is that the new "right" has made EVERYONE that disagrees with them "left". It baffles me to have ideas and behaviors championed by folks like Eisenhower berated as being leftist. With that...I end.
Please, this news is worthless compared to other coming attractions. Just think about the vast amount of land that is working its way towards being tropical climate beach front property! All those rich people living in the current beach front property will lose their places and be forced to buy new places! You should buy up some land in those middle regions now while it is still cheap. I for one welcome our ice caps melting! Travel is expensive so bringing the ocean to me is a much more cost effective vacation solution.
They would have been had the plan of "kicking ass and taking names" actually worked. That was the overarching goal, to show the world we had the biggest dick and we could fuck them bloody if they even looked at us wrong. From a political standpoint we should have been bombed into the stone age by a coalition of forces for telling the UN to fuck off and then invading another country. While we didn't prove we can drop "small" nukes without retribution, it did prove that we can tell the UN to fuck off and no one will do a god damned thing about it. We helped build the UN under the premise that it would be used to stop wars from happening, and then we cry foul about how they are worthless when they tell us we can't go start a war... The whole notion was that the UN was supposed to resolve these things and step in and stop conflicts.
We proved that no one is willing to point the gun at us for starting a preemtive conventional war. The only reason the big nukes are harder to use is because it is harder to survive. If you use a small one, contain the damage, and then can stare down anyone who would say anything against you doing it...then they are easier to use by a long shot. Now it isn't a question if we can break the rules...the only question now is how much can we get away away with it. I say using WP incendiary weapons as anti-personnel is another pretty good example of pushing those boundaries, and we pretty much got away with that. I say Abu Ghraib was another pretty good example of pushing those boundaries, and other than having to listen to a bunch of people bitch and moan...we got away with it. We proved that we can pretty much do whatever the fuck we want, and the most we will get is people whining about us. So I absolutely believe that we could have used these tactical nukes in certain areas and gotten away with little more than a sternly worded letter from the UN.
How many men do you know have cried there way out of a ticket? How many women do you know who have done the same? How many male cops have been busted trading sex acts for "warnings"? How many female cops? You can take that further and start looking at cases that actually made it to court. If that whole Caylee thing had been about a male doing that to the little girl this whole thing would have been done and over long ago with barely a hint of media coverage. Really, in pretty much every aspect of our culture gender biases play a huge role.
Saying that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime may not be overtly racist, but it is still racist. How about this...let us examine crime rates by economic station rather than skin color. I am sure you will find that it is actually the lowest economic classes that are involved in the most crime. So what you are saying is that it is justified to profile based on race because race tends to indicate economic status. Which is largely tied to racism in the first place. Deliberately skipping the economic portion to talk about it in terms of skin color is racism. Poverty is the biggest indicator of crime, not skin color. The skin colors that show up in the bottom of our economic ladder are a separate issue.
I could also point out that we have the highest ratio of people in/out of prison of any civilized nation. So now stack that with most people in prison are minorities and you get a pretty different picture as well.
Most people aren't even aware of these types of judgments being made. There have been piles and piles of studies that given the same facts minorities are more likely to be convicted. Similar studies have shown that with the same facts that minorities are less likely to be recommended for expensive life saving care by a doctor. These are just the cultural undertones that affect our various decisions and most people aren't even aware they are making them. The woman in the article clearly was aware and proud.
RTFA. "O-dumb-a" is not the racial slur. She goes on racist rants about how blacks deserve to be profiled because our prison population is mostly black. Which aside from being racist is the classical circular logic displayed by people too stupid to think for themselves.
I don't know anything about the backends, but I can say as a student Angel has been my favorite setup that I have had to deal with thus far. My least favorite was a homegrown thing described as a "clone" of BB and if the normal BB product is anything like it then it should deserve to die a horrible and painful death.
However, there have been plenty of good products ruined by shitty companies.
They wouldn't be ready in time for Afghanistan? We are still in Afghanistan! Between the guys in Afghanistan holing up in the caves and the belief that Iraq had a massive underground network of bunkers for Saddam to hide in. That kind of weapon would have meant squat when dealing with PRNK. They thought they could nuke us and win over 10 years ago. We have had defectors coming here telling us that he believes he could win a war with us. Using the logical approach when dealing with a psycho like that is pointless at best.
Anything on whether they would have got the nukes, how fast, etc, is all pure speculation since we will never know how it would have played out. Generally speaking, when your opponent knows you can't mount an effective response they are going to be much bolder. We had our military tied up in two separate wars and our credibility is at an all time low. The whole notion of our little Iraqi adventure was they had weapons of mass destruction. PRNK was always closer to getting it done...but we cooked up some fake documents and went after Iraq instead. So that whole "stop nukes" crap is pretty much out the door and we are back to the notion that we could smash and dash in Iraq to make us look like no one can challenge us. Now...I will readily admit, had this strategy worked, Iran and PRNK would probably be thinking much harder about telling us off, but I think it was a misguided and disgusting plan doomed to fail from the beginning.
Now...back to the original point of the story. Developing "easy to use" nuclear weapons creates a MUCH higher risk for that whole hacker/nuke scenario. If you only maintain an arsenal for end of the world type scenarios it would be MUCH harder for a successful information operation to trick anyone into striking. IF you have a whole arsenal of ones meant to be used then it isn't a matter of tricking you into using them...it is a matter of tricking you into using them where I want them used.
"unconstitutional" being the keyword there. "shitty lopsided laws purchased by assholes" are not necessarily "unconstitutional". Judges ONLY law removal should be of unconstitutional laws. Anything else IS *activist judge stuff. The various shitty laws are our own fault and must be removed by us. It is that simple. The only thing we can do to fix shitty laws is stop using shitty legislators. The only thing the judiciary is for is stopping shitty legislators from shitting directly on the constitution, they are not meant to stop them from shitting on us.
*Activist judge - This is more commonly used as an insult hurled at judges that don't rule way the insulting party wanted. However, judges that rule outside of the law without declaring the law unconstitutional are indeed being activist judges.
What the Bush administration advocated was for tactical nuclear weapons that could serve in battlefield conditions. They requested these for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had diddly to do with PRNK. They wanted these things to go after those "cave dwellers" and their vast underground network they were believed to have. The notion was that it wouldn't kick up much fallout so it could be used "safely". The Bush administration believed that America needed to fight, and decisively win, two simultaneous wars to assert American military dominance. You are talking about an Administration that launched a preemptive strike invasion using forged evidence. The whole point of that mess was to show American dominance in a way that would ensure no one would dare question us if we used tactical nuclear weapons.
This was all part of their "Who has the biggest dick" approach to foreign policy. It served us quite well...while we were out swinging dicks in the sand Iran and PRNK became (or nearly became) the proud new owners of nuclear weapons. Rather than showing these "axis" powers who they are messing with...we have demonstrated quite effectively how they can lock us into an unending mess and have enabled others to operate in the knowledge we cannot afford to go after them too. We have also become the poster child for terrorist recruitment efforts.
Nuclear weapons were necessary to end a war and ultimately prevent another from starting, but now they are just dangerous artifacts left behind. The notion you can develop "tactical" nuclear weapons to win a war is stupid and dangerous beyond measure. The only thing nuclear weapons are for is proving that you can never lose a war unless you choose to.
And they were a bad idea then. Anyone who desires to develop nuclear weapons for offensive use rather than as a deterent should be drug into the street and shot.
The whole point behind the nuclear weapon is that it is a weapon so terrifying that no one dares risk a fight with one. I find it absolutely hilarious that the administration that is saying we need to pursue Iraq/Iran/Korea for their desire to build and use nuclear weapons was also trying to develop nuclear weapons that were easier to use...
Fool me once...shame on me. Fool me twice...you can't get fooled again. -- George W Bush
Maybe this is what he was talking about. If you trick a trigger happy world leader bent on imposing his world view on everyone into pushing the red button to rid the world of some foreign threat...well...you can't get fooled again because you will all be radioactive waste.
Now...I certainly can't imagine a group of people that would be easily tricked into launching a preemptive nuclear strike...well except for Republicans. I guess it is a good thing that ol George's request for nukes that could be used in "tactical" situations didn't go anywhere.
I am curious how you can say you have no problem reading neat cursive when you type riding instead of writing. How do you know you are reading it correctly when you don't know which letters are supposed to be there?
I just want to bring a MacBook to their "Answer Bar" and ask "I can't seem to find the Windows key on this keyboard."
Why does it seem that the MS core business strategy is to copy whatever Apple is doing. It was the birth of Windows...and they continue to this day with "Aero" and "Sideboard". Then they broke out of just copying the OS and started pushing the Zune. Now they want to copy the stores too? I guess if anyone really wants to know what the next MS "innovation" will just look at what Apple is successful with. I am curious as to how they have redefined "innovation" as "copy what that other guy has been doing for years."
3). I regret to inform you that the dust mite beat you. However, I must sadly mention that you were both disqualified based on the requirement of it being seen.
I am sure there are plenty of great improvements in Vista. That doesn't change the fact that MS behaves like a giant asshole shitting on everyone they can. What you are saying here is that despite their abuses of monopoly power, their strong arming of governments, their "open" standard shenanagins, their treatment of hardware vendors, and pretty much all around bad behavior...they have managed to hire some pretty technically competent people that are able to put together neat things from time to time. However, I can't seem to find the new great features because every time I turn around Microsoft has redesigned their entire interface while droning on about how no one should switch because the cost of retraining users to use a different interface is so high. Again...this goes back to their shitty behavior more than their technical ability.
Here is a feature that MS seems to be leading the pack on...Serial keys for the OS coupled with online activation tied to the hardware and a call home mechanism to disable the computer if it is suspected "pirate". The limited reactivation thing and the inability to activate on mismatched hardware is a great feature. I just love being unable to boot a drive from an OEM machine using different hardware. I have BSD, Linux, Solaris, and OS X machines...none of which require serial keys, let alone call home activation crap. That is another great new Vista feature too...the corporate Vistas still require activation even though corporate XP and Win2k3 Server stuff does not.
There is hope for the future...IBM used to be the big asshole, they lost their stranglehold on the industry and had to learn how to be good neighbors. With Linux and OS X on the rise...Google tearing things up...and Firefox gaining speed... Well...MS either will have to learn how to really compete instead of just throwing their weight around and treating the consumer like a suspected criminal...or they will go away. Either way it will be better for everyone involved.
Do you even begin to understand what is wrong with that statement? Talk about circular. You do understand that the only reason legislation really exists is due to the lack of common sense right?
In all seriousness I think it is insane to blame anything other than human nature and poor parenting. Kids now are learning these "violent" contact sports at a much older age than what kids used to learn hunting skills. I would put obscene amounts of money that children that learn firearm and hunting safety stuff at a very early age are less likely to engage in violent gun behavior than the kids that are sheltered from the very same.
These violent outbursts are not from "teaching violence". They are from teaching piss poor conflict resolution skills, or not teaching them at all. It is for thinking stupid shit like "bully free zone" signs will fix a fucking thing. It is from "no bullying contracts" being used to make kids agree to not be bullies. It is from the complete and total lack of adults actually getting involved and acting like adults and putting these little brats in their place. Instead they whine and bitch and moan and hire lawyers and blah blah blah. When all of the adults are acting like whiney children and not taking responsibility for anything how do you expect the children to learn any other behavior?
Looking back, I am not convinced that a child was ever beaten in the principals office at my gradeschool. But *EVERYONE* sure as hell believed it. Now kids know they can act like little fucking terrors and no one will say a god damned thing to them, and if anyone DOES stop them, their little shithead parents come charging in with stupid lawsuits. The few places the administration DOES step in, it is usually with assinine draconian measures on kids that didn't deserve it and they wind up screwing it up for any administration that WOULD actively get involved in a sane fashion.
It isn't irrelevant because my whole point is that our legal system is totally hosed in dealing with this kind of crap. This case is specifically DMCA, but I also was bringing up the other issues that were not specifically DMCA related. This was about the general problem, not the specific case.
Also, to say it is wrong is not entirely true. However I was being lazy and didn't make a completely accurate statement. Trademarks are specifically in that forced defense mode or you lose them. The other pieces have other forces "forcing" you to defend them. Shareholders are a good example. There is a whole bunch of stuff that companies must do to keep shareholders happy. Unfortunately "happy" is more important than "best for them". Unhappy shareholders can oust leadership and replace them with guys that do what they want even if it is self destructive crap that only works for short term gains. There is also the problem of getting into the legal battles. You may not lose your patent, but if you are selectively enforcing without pursuing agreements you are going to have a much harder time in a court battle.
Either way...the entire problem comes mostly from a very broken set of laws regarding technology and "intellectual property". Businesses have to play the game according to the rules in place, not according to the rules that should be. In many cases they go overboard, and that is usually zealous lawyers selling stupid ideas to leadership that doesn't understand the problem. However, the root cause is still stupid ass laws signed by stupid or bought legislators.
No, you are wrong. With the new "Recoil & Jam" model mice you can train kids to be violent killers. You see...these new mice actually recoil with each shot and can occasionally jam and even will backfire and injure/kill the operator sometimes!
The hilarious thing about all the people that cry foul about the military training stuff is that I have yet to meet one that has even had a clue about what they do, why they do it, or have even a remote understanding of human behavior. These "murder simulators" have precious little to do with the killing. You can't train people for live fire with a fucking mouse and a monitor. What you CAN train them for is tactics, squad movement, reaction times, perception skills, etc. There is no soldier in the field (and probably never will be) that has not gone through the live fire training or any of the other live combat training stuff. The issue is that it is WAY cheaper and WAY faster to train a lot of those skills through a simulator. The military has been using "violent video games" for LONG time training pilots how to fly without losing valuable jets or any training accidents. No one talks about the lives saved by using these simulators for the initial training.
What I can't figure out is this whole definition of "violence". There aren't exactly a whole lot of games that could completely avoid the "violent" definition. This is just the D&D panic all over again. If the kids cannot separate reality from fantasy that has more to do with the kid and less to do with the video game. They love to point out "look at all the kids that were violent killers and played lots of FPS games". Well..I bet they also all drank soda too...should we go after Coke and Pepsi for making kids violent? The number of people that play those games and don't go psycho should pretty much show that it isn't the games doing it...but again...no on talks about how many people play them without going nuts. So...I blame Coke and Pepsi!
Uhm...actually this is a clever trick devised by married men. You see...I do the same thing and I have been banned from doing laundry because of it. I have also been banned from folding laundry other than my own (which mostly just gets tossed in a slight shape and then stuffed into a drawer anyways) because "I do it wrong".
I am going to go with zealous lawyers. That whole thing about malice vs stupidity. Apple is hardly alone in that boat. There have been quite a few DMCA and GPL type lawsuits that basically came from fanatic lawyers that probably don't know anything more about technology than how to push the power button on their computer. (And then call the tech guy because it didn't boot up and have him come to their office and push the power on the monitor too).
I view the heart of the problem here is asshats like Ted "Internet Tubes" Stevens are being allowed to make the laws regarding technology with absolutely NO working knowledge of the subject they are legislating. To blame the companies for trying to use the laws that these idiots passed isn't exactly fair. Now, that doesn't mean these companies are innocent isn't true either, but now we are back to the malice vs stupidity problem.
Now, Apple does have a pretty nasty history of being very secretive about their stuff and locking people out. However, even this goes beyond sinister. As a company they are VERY focused on the whole "user experience" thing. They have huge design documents and enforce these design rules pretty strictly. Forcing all of your users to play in a well defined sandbox lowers your support costs dramatically. You can have your support staff much smaller, much better trained, and ultimately much more effective because the number of bizarro variables they have to face is drastically reduced. Almost the entire Apple brand is built around that "simply works" image and regardless of whether you agree with their tactics, they defend that "simply works" viciously.
There is also the stupid bits of the American legal system that says they must defend their patents/trademarks/etc or lose them. So it puts these companies in the position of fight everyone or lose their assets. They can't really "look the other way" because it would allow a competitor to come in and eat their lunch and then go to court and say "they didn't defend against this guy, so they can't stop us!"
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That is my point. I tend to follow the 3 second thing when possible to avoid this very problem. However, when I get stuck following closer due to traffic if I leave any kind of significant gap it causes problems. They don't have to fit the car in, they just have to have enough room to start the turn into that gap. I either slam on the breaks or smash into their side/back end. These assholes muscle their car into the gap.
Given that this post is just a complaint is it safe to assume that you ar ein the whiner douche-bag bunch and I am a masochist for responding?
I wish it was that easy. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have been cut off and nearly put in a wreck because some idiot asshole thinks he can squeeze his car between me and the car in front at high speeds. Leaving a safe following distance is asking for people to do risky maneuvers to get into that gap for the benefit of being a whole car length ahead of their previous position.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you could take all the idiot assholes off the road and replace them with people that understand high school physics then you probably wouldn't have many problems at all.
Violating sanctions and starting a war are two pretty different things. Just like not paying a speeding ticket and robbing a convenience store are not the same thing. In fact, what we proved is that if you own nukes you don't get touched. This of course makes developing nuclear weapons much more valuable. All of the major nuke owners get to break WAY more rules, and thus far, only non nuke owners have actually had military action taken against them.
The thing that makes big nukes hard to survive is that someone else will hit back. Mutually Assure Destruction is what stops nukes from being used. That is the whole point behind developing the "tactical" variety. Trying to justify the use of nuclear weapons without triggering MAD. This of course works much better when you are nuking countries that don't have nukes to retaliate with and you can use your position to discourage the other nuke holders from defending the country you are using nukes in.
Abu Ghraib is a favorite hobby horse to people on the left? What kind of bullshit is that? I don't fucking care what your political alignment is, Abu Ghraib was a travesty and to minimize the rape, murder, and torture of prisoners as a "hobby horse" is disgusting beyond measure. I also suggest you read up on the facts a little rather than right wing talk radio talking points. I'm not sure what "smoking gun" you are looking for. There has been plenty of evidence that quite a few senior leaders, generals and above, that at least knew of it if not directly authorized it. These people aren't stupid, they aren't going to put "you can rape prisoners" in a signed letter. It is all done through that wink wink nudge nudge look the other way shit. Rumsfeld publically thanked the soldier that brought attention to the abuse...while he was still deployed with that unit. You should read his story. I can't imagine the fear after listening to my coworkers talk about the horrible things they would do to the person who squeeled and then have my name announced on tv in front of 200 people as the guy who did it.
It blows my mind to see the "morally superior" right wing treat defend that crap and babble about how anyone who cries foul at it is some "leftist". The sad truth here is that the new "right" has made EVERYONE that disagrees with them "left". It baffles me to have ideas and behaviors championed by folks like Eisenhower berated as being leftist. With that...I end.
Please, this news is worthless compared to other coming attractions. Just think about the vast amount of land that is working its way towards being tropical climate beach front property! All those rich people living in the current beach front property will lose their places and be forced to buy new places! You should buy up some land in those middle regions now while it is still cheap. I for one welcome our ice caps melting! Travel is expensive so bringing the ocean to me is a much more cost effective vacation solution.
They would have been had the plan of "kicking ass and taking names" actually worked. That was the overarching goal, to show the world we had the biggest dick and we could fuck them bloody if they even looked at us wrong. From a political standpoint we should have been bombed into the stone age by a coalition of forces for telling the UN to fuck off and then invading another country. While we didn't prove we can drop "small" nukes without retribution, it did prove that we can tell the UN to fuck off and no one will do a god damned thing about it. We helped build the UN under the premise that it would be used to stop wars from happening, and then we cry foul about how they are worthless when they tell us we can't go start a war... The whole notion was that the UN was supposed to resolve these things and step in and stop conflicts.
We proved that no one is willing to point the gun at us for starting a preemtive conventional war. The only reason the big nukes are harder to use is because it is harder to survive. If you use a small one, contain the damage, and then can stare down anyone who would say anything against you doing it...then they are easier to use by a long shot. Now it isn't a question if we can break the rules...the only question now is how much can we get away away with it. I say using WP incendiary weapons as anti-personnel is another pretty good example of pushing those boundaries, and we pretty much got away with that. I say Abu Ghraib was another pretty good example of pushing those boundaries, and other than having to listen to a bunch of people bitch and moan...we got away with it. We proved that we can pretty much do whatever the fuck we want, and the most we will get is people whining about us. So I absolutely believe that we could have used these tactical nukes in certain areas and gotten away with little more than a sternly worded letter from the UN.
How many men do you know have cried there way out of a ticket? How many women do you know who have done the same? How many male cops have been busted trading sex acts for "warnings"? How many female cops? You can take that further and start looking at cases that actually made it to court. If that whole Caylee thing had been about a male doing that to the little girl this whole thing would have been done and over long ago with barely a hint of media coverage. Really, in pretty much every aspect of our culture gender biases play a huge role.
Saying that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime may not be overtly racist, but it is still racist. How about this...let us examine crime rates by economic station rather than skin color. I am sure you will find that it is actually the lowest economic classes that are involved in the most crime. So what you are saying is that it is justified to profile based on race because race tends to indicate economic status. Which is largely tied to racism in the first place. Deliberately skipping the economic portion to talk about it in terms of skin color is racism. Poverty is the biggest indicator of crime, not skin color. The skin colors that show up in the bottom of our economic ladder are a separate issue.
I could also point out that we have the highest ratio of people in/out of prison of any civilized nation. So now stack that with most people in prison are minorities and you get a pretty different picture as well.
Most people aren't even aware of these types of judgments being made. There have been piles and piles of studies that given the same facts minorities are more likely to be convicted. Similar studies have shown that with the same facts that minorities are less likely to be recommended for expensive life saving care by a doctor. These are just the cultural undertones that affect our various decisions and most people aren't even aware they are making them. The woman in the article clearly was aware and proud.
RTFA. "O-dumb-a" is not the racial slur. She goes on racist rants about how blacks deserve to be profiled because our prison population is mostly black. Which aside from being racist is the classical circular logic displayed by people too stupid to think for themselves.
I don't know anything about the backends, but I can say as a student Angel has been my favorite setup that I have had to deal with thus far. My least favorite was a homegrown thing described as a "clone" of BB and if the normal BB product is anything like it then it should deserve to die a horrible and painful death.
However, there have been plenty of good products ruined by shitty companies.
They wouldn't be ready in time for Afghanistan? We are still in Afghanistan! Between the guys in Afghanistan holing up in the caves and the belief that Iraq had a massive underground network of bunkers for Saddam to hide in. That kind of weapon would have meant squat when dealing with PRNK. They thought they could nuke us and win over 10 years ago. We have had defectors coming here telling us that he believes he could win a war with us. Using the logical approach when dealing with a psycho like that is pointless at best.
Anything on whether they would have got the nukes, how fast, etc, is all pure speculation since we will never know how it would have played out. Generally speaking, when your opponent knows you can't mount an effective response they are going to be much bolder. We had our military tied up in two separate wars and our credibility is at an all time low. The whole notion of our little Iraqi adventure was they had weapons of mass destruction. PRNK was always closer to getting it done...but we cooked up some fake documents and went after Iraq instead. So that whole "stop nukes" crap is pretty much out the door and we are back to the notion that we could smash and dash in Iraq to make us look like no one can challenge us. Now...I will readily admit, had this strategy worked, Iran and PRNK would probably be thinking much harder about telling us off, but I think it was a misguided and disgusting plan doomed to fail from the beginning.
Now...back to the original point of the story. Developing "easy to use" nuclear weapons creates a MUCH higher risk for that whole hacker/nuke scenario. If you only maintain an arsenal for end of the world type scenarios it would be MUCH harder for a successful information operation to trick anyone into striking. IF you have a whole arsenal of ones meant to be used then it isn't a matter of tricking you into using them...it is a matter of tricking you into using them where I want them used.
"unconstitutional" being the keyword there. "shitty lopsided laws purchased by assholes" are not necessarily "unconstitutional". Judges ONLY law removal should be of unconstitutional laws. Anything else IS *activist judge stuff. The various shitty laws are our own fault and must be removed by us. It is that simple. The only thing we can do to fix shitty laws is stop using shitty legislators. The only thing the judiciary is for is stopping shitty legislators from shitting directly on the constitution, they are not meant to stop them from shitting on us.
*Activist judge - This is more commonly used as an insult hurled at judges that don't rule way the insulting party wanted. However, judges that rule outside of the law without declaring the law unconstitutional are indeed being activist judges.
What the Bush administration advocated was for tactical nuclear weapons that could serve in battlefield conditions. They requested these for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had diddly to do with PRNK. They wanted these things to go after those "cave dwellers" and their vast underground network they were believed to have. The notion was that it wouldn't kick up much fallout so it could be used "safely". The Bush administration believed that America needed to fight, and decisively win, two simultaneous wars to assert American military dominance. You are talking about an Administration that launched a preemptive strike invasion using forged evidence. The whole point of that mess was to show American dominance in a way that would ensure no one would dare question us if we used tactical nuclear weapons.
This was all part of their "Who has the biggest dick" approach to foreign policy. It served us quite well...while we were out swinging dicks in the sand Iran and PRNK became (or nearly became) the proud new owners of nuclear weapons. Rather than showing these "axis" powers who they are messing with...we have demonstrated quite effectively how they can lock us into an unending mess and have enabled others to operate in the knowledge we cannot afford to go after them too. We have also become the poster child for terrorist recruitment efforts.
Nuclear weapons were necessary to end a war and ultimately prevent another from starting, but now they are just dangerous artifacts left behind. The notion you can develop "tactical" nuclear weapons to win a war is stupid and dangerous beyond measure. The only thing nuclear weapons are for is proving that you can never lose a war unless you choose to.
And they were a bad idea then. Anyone who desires to develop nuclear weapons for offensive use rather than as a deterent should be drug into the street and shot.
The whole point behind the nuclear weapon is that it is a weapon so terrifying that no one dares risk a fight with one. I find it absolutely hilarious that the administration that is saying we need to pursue Iraq/Iran/Korea for their desire to build and use nuclear weapons was also trying to develop nuclear weapons that were easier to use...
Fool me once...shame on me. Fool me twice...you can't get fooled again. -- George W Bush
Maybe this is what he was talking about. If you trick a trigger happy world leader bent on imposing his world view on everyone into pushing the red button to rid the world of some foreign threat...well...you can't get fooled again because you will all be radioactive waste.
Now...I certainly can't imagine a group of people that would be easily tricked into launching a preemptive nuclear strike...well except for Republicans. I guess it is a good thing that ol George's request for nukes that could be used in "tactical" situations didn't go anywhere.
I am curious how you can say you have no problem reading neat cursive when you type riding instead of writing. How do you know you are reading it correctly when you don't know which letters are supposed to be there?
I just want to bring a MacBook to their "Answer Bar" and ask "I can't seem to find the Windows key on this keyboard."
Why does it seem that the MS core business strategy is to copy whatever Apple is doing. It was the birth of Windows...and they continue to this day with "Aero" and "Sideboard". Then they broke out of just copying the OS and started pushing the Zune. Now they want to copy the stores too? I guess if anyone really wants to know what the next MS "innovation" will just look at what Apple is successful with. I am curious as to how they have redefined "innovation" as "copy what that other guy has been doing for years."
3). I regret to inform you that the dust mite beat you. However, I must sadly mention that you were both disqualified based on the requirement of it being seen.
I am sure there are plenty of great improvements in Vista. That doesn't change the fact that MS behaves like a giant asshole shitting on everyone they can. What you are saying here is that despite their abuses of monopoly power, their strong arming of governments, their "open" standard shenanagins, their treatment of hardware vendors, and pretty much all around bad behavior...they have managed to hire some pretty technically competent people that are able to put together neat things from time to time. However, I can't seem to find the new great features because every time I turn around Microsoft has redesigned their entire interface while droning on about how no one should switch because the cost of retraining users to use a different interface is so high. Again...this goes back to their shitty behavior more than their technical ability.
Here is a feature that MS seems to be leading the pack on...Serial keys for the OS coupled with online activation tied to the hardware and a call home mechanism to disable the computer if it is suspected "pirate". The limited reactivation thing and the inability to activate on mismatched hardware is a great feature. I just love being unable to boot a drive from an OEM machine using different hardware. I have BSD, Linux, Solaris, and OS X machines...none of which require serial keys, let alone call home activation crap. That is another great new Vista feature too...the corporate Vistas still require activation even though corporate XP and Win2k3 Server stuff does not.
There is hope for the future...IBM used to be the big asshole, they lost their stranglehold on the industry and had to learn how to be good neighbors. With Linux and OS X on the rise...Google tearing things up...and Firefox gaining speed... Well...MS either will have to learn how to really compete instead of just throwing their weight around and treating the consumer like a suspected criminal...or they will go away. Either way it will be better for everyone involved.
legislate common sense.
Do you even begin to understand what is wrong with that statement? Talk about circular. You do understand that the only reason legislation really exists is due to the lack of common sense right?
In all seriousness I think it is insane to blame anything other than human nature and poor parenting. Kids now are learning these "violent" contact sports at a much older age than what kids used to learn hunting skills. I would put obscene amounts of money that children that learn firearm and hunting safety stuff at a very early age are less likely to engage in violent gun behavior than the kids that are sheltered from the very same.
These violent outbursts are not from "teaching violence". They are from teaching piss poor conflict resolution skills, or not teaching them at all. It is for thinking stupid shit like "bully free zone" signs will fix a fucking thing. It is from "no bullying contracts" being used to make kids agree to not be bullies. It is from the complete and total lack of adults actually getting involved and acting like adults and putting these little brats in their place. Instead they whine and bitch and moan and hire lawyers and blah blah blah. When all of the adults are acting like whiney children and not taking responsibility for anything how do you expect the children to learn any other behavior?
Looking back, I am not convinced that a child was ever beaten in the principals office at my gradeschool. But *EVERYONE* sure as hell believed it. Now kids know they can act like little fucking terrors and no one will say a god damned thing to them, and if anyone DOES stop them, their little shithead parents come charging in with stupid lawsuits. The few places the administration DOES step in, it is usually with assinine draconian measures on kids that didn't deserve it and they wind up screwing it up for any administration that WOULD actively get involved in a sane fashion.
It isn't irrelevant because my whole point is that our legal system is totally hosed in dealing with this kind of crap. This case is specifically DMCA, but I also was bringing up the other issues that were not specifically DMCA related. This was about the general problem, not the specific case.
Also, to say it is wrong is not entirely true. However I was being lazy and didn't make a completely accurate statement. Trademarks are specifically in that forced defense mode or you lose them. The other pieces have other forces "forcing" you to defend them. Shareholders are a good example. There is a whole bunch of stuff that companies must do to keep shareholders happy. Unfortunately "happy" is more important than "best for them". Unhappy shareholders can oust leadership and replace them with guys that do what they want even if it is self destructive crap that only works for short term gains. There is also the problem of getting into the legal battles. You may not lose your patent, but if you are selectively enforcing without pursuing agreements you are going to have a much harder time in a court battle.
Either way...the entire problem comes mostly from a very broken set of laws regarding technology and "intellectual property". Businesses have to play the game according to the rules in place, not according to the rules that should be. In many cases they go overboard, and that is usually zealous lawyers selling stupid ideas to leadership that doesn't understand the problem. However, the root cause is still stupid ass laws signed by stupid or bought legislators.
No, you are wrong. With the new "Recoil & Jam" model mice you can train kids to be violent killers. You see...these new mice actually recoil with each shot and can occasionally jam and even will backfire and injure/kill the operator sometimes!
The hilarious thing about all the people that cry foul about the military training stuff is that I have yet to meet one that has even had a clue about what they do, why they do it, or have even a remote understanding of human behavior. These "murder simulators" have precious little to do with the killing. You can't train people for live fire with a fucking mouse and a monitor. What you CAN train them for is tactics, squad movement, reaction times, perception skills, etc. There is no soldier in the field (and probably never will be) that has not gone through the live fire training or any of the other live combat training stuff. The issue is that it is WAY cheaper and WAY faster to train a lot of those skills through a simulator. The military has been using "violent video games" for LONG time training pilots how to fly without losing valuable jets or any training accidents. No one talks about the lives saved by using these simulators for the initial training.
What I can't figure out is this whole definition of "violence". There aren't exactly a whole lot of games that could completely avoid the "violent" definition. This is just the D&D panic all over again. If the kids cannot separate reality from fantasy that has more to do with the kid and less to do with the video game. They love to point out "look at all the kids that were violent killers and played lots of FPS games". Well..I bet they also all drank soda too...should we go after Coke and Pepsi for making kids violent? The number of people that play those games and don't go psycho should pretty much show that it isn't the games doing it...but again...no on talks about how many people play them without going nuts. So...I blame Coke and Pepsi!
Uhm...actually this is a clever trick devised by married men. You see...I do the same thing and I have been banned from doing laundry because of it. I have also been banned from folding laundry other than my own (which mostly just gets tossed in a slight shape and then stuffed into a drawer anyways) because "I do it wrong".
I am going to go with zealous lawyers. That whole thing about malice vs stupidity. Apple is hardly alone in that boat. There have been quite a few DMCA and GPL type lawsuits that basically came from fanatic lawyers that probably don't know anything more about technology than how to push the power button on their computer. (And then call the tech guy because it didn't boot up and have him come to their office and push the power on the monitor too).
I view the heart of the problem here is asshats like Ted "Internet Tubes" Stevens are being allowed to make the laws regarding technology with absolutely NO working knowledge of the subject they are legislating. To blame the companies for trying to use the laws that these idiots passed isn't exactly fair. Now, that doesn't mean these companies are innocent isn't true either, but now we are back to the malice vs stupidity problem.
Now, Apple does have a pretty nasty history of being very secretive about their stuff and locking people out. However, even this goes beyond sinister. As a company they are VERY focused on the whole "user experience" thing. They have huge design documents and enforce these design rules pretty strictly. Forcing all of your users to play in a well defined sandbox lowers your support costs dramatically. You can have your support staff much smaller, much better trained, and ultimately much more effective because the number of bizarro variables they have to face is drastically reduced. Almost the entire Apple brand is built around that "simply works" image and regardless of whether you agree with their tactics, they defend that "simply works" viciously.
There is also the stupid bits of the American legal system that says they must defend their patents/trademarks/etc or lose them. So it puts these companies in the position of fight everyone or lose their assets. They can't really "look the other way" because it would allow a competitor to come in and eat their lunch and then go to court and say "they didn't defend against this guy, so they can't stop us!"
Hulk Smash!