The motivation for this is that MS can look at the cost of gasoline and health care and observe that as state-by-state regulations get more complicated, the cost of producing health care services and gasoline skyrockets. Software is in the same boat. As privacy becomes a bigger concern, state-by-state regulations will become more and more expensive to keep atop of. A solution at the national level reduces costs. Microsoft is doing good business here; it's a coincidence that it may benefit us.
I can already see Blizzard taking Sony to court because their rootkit allows people to cheat. Yes it may seem stupid but if you ever look at some court cases a lot of them are very stupid indeed. There's no question that the US legal system is broken and provides just the means to pull off a stunt like this.
The legal system is not broken on this level. The courts correctly interpret the laws 99% of the time, and there's an appeals court for when they don't. The problem is that our legislative body passes laws that contradict other laws and it's left up to the courts to figure out which law is going to trump the other in any given situation. It's even more complicated for Fair Use cases because, according to SCOTUS, there can be few or no hard-and-fast rules, and applications of the Fair Use doctrine must be established on a case-by-case basis. This could end up being one of them.
In the long run, the courts get it right most of the time, with rare but much-publicized exceptions that are also later corrected most of the time.
The courts established our Fair Use rights, and then Congress gave us the DMCA. It's a matter of time before a case that involves rich people or corporations causes these two to butt heads, and this could be the lead-up to it. However, do not start thinking that this case has any application to us as far as circumventing the DMCA. Sony will get treated differently than you or I would in court against Blizzard for a DMCA violation in bypassing The Warden.
No, republicans win elections because they actually have ideas. democrats loose because people reject socialelitism.
Everybody has idea. The question is whose ideas the majority of voters will support. Or rather, whose marketing they'll buy. I agree that America in particular has a continuing history of its population and leaders strongly rejecting socialism, even before socialism resulted in Nazism and Sovietism. What I meant by my comment that you quoted was that when your party is receiving a lot of money from small to medium donations, it means you have a significant population base of what could easily be classified as "mainstream" America: middle class families and small business owners with a modicum of disposable income.
If those people were contributing to Democrats, I'd interpret it as the Democratic platform appealing more to that class of people, and I think they'd start winning elections. Part of the Democrat's problem is that they're still playing by the rules and assumptions of the 1970's and 1980's, which are really far out of date. When you tell people for three decades that the Republicans are going to dismantle all of the social safety nets, then the Republicans get power and you still get your entitlement check, people stop trusting you when you keep running on that same platform.
I think you can also point to the waning power of labor unions. My friends are about the most leftist, liberal people I know. There's not a Democrat in congress who is liberal enough to satisfy them. They almost didn't vote for Kerry because he's not liberal enough. And even they think the unions are more of a burden than a help to the "working man."
I have no cure for what ails the Democrats. It seems to me that they have no real platform other than a non-stop caterwauling over the myriad shortcomings of George Bush, which is a road to nowhere, since Bush is very unlikely to run for President in 2008. I voted libertarian in 2004, but had I not, I'd have voted for Bush before Kerry. Not because of any real love for the man, his party, or his platform, but because Kerry could provide me with no compelling reason for vote for him. And I'm searching desperately for a rising star in the Democratic party with a shred of intellectual integrity, and I'm not finding any. Nor any in the Republican party, frankly, and barring that, I'll vote Libertarian again. I basically vote for whomever at least gives good lip service towards the principles of our way of life that I embrace and believe in. And I'll vote AGAINST any party that attacks those things, or hides an ideology that runs counter to those things in a veil of patriotism.
Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this question by building on advances in programming languages and tools to develop a new system architecture and operating system (named Singularity), with the aim of producing a more robust and dependable software platform. Singularity demonstrates the practicality of new technologies and architectural decisions, which should lead to the construction of more robust and dependable systems.
A key aspect of singularity is... Software-Isolated Processes, which encapsulate pieces of an application... and provide information hiding, failure isolation, and strong interfaces. All code outside the kernel executes in a SIP.
That sounds alarmingly like a closed address space. Microsoft in 2005 is giving us what UNIX had over 30 years ago. thx u sir!
SIPs are closed object spaces, not address spaces
I stand corrected! What's the difference?
Two Singularity processes cannot simultaneously access an object.
Ruh ruh! So we're going back to the model where two processes can't open a handle to the same file? You mean... like.. er... DOS?
A process cannot dynamically open or generate code.
So like... you can't run Perl on it. Or shared libraries. #include <dlfnc.h> is a thing of the past.
SIPs are created and terminated by the operating system, so that... resources can be reclaimed.
Yeah uhhh... the runlib library for, say, C executables in UNIX does this. And has for a long time. Like, since Gerald Ford or something.
I'd go on but I'm just making fun of them. If you read through their overview document there's actually some very good ideas in there, and knowing a few programmers from W2K, I can tell you that they do employ some top-notch talent there.
The Republicans almost always have WAY more money than the Democrats, but how they can spend it is sharply constrained by campaign finance laws.
You're a Republican? I don't buy it, because you've got your facts wrong. And Republicans never get their facts wrong.
Err... shit.
No, seriously, let's take a look. Republicans do have MUCH more money but the sources may surprise you. For all of the Democrats constant bitching about how the Republicans are the party of rich business men and oil tycoons, the largest donors are almost always to Democrats. Republicans tend to collect a lot of small and medium sized donations from a ton of people. Which is probably why they win elections. It's the Democrats who have the financial support of the elite rich and nobody else. Poor people don't give money to campaigns. The Republicans have the middle class nailed down tight. All that family values bullshit.
2000 Election, Top 10 527 Commitee Donors
1. Pro Choice Vote $12,364,150
2. Planned Parenthood Votes $7,217,204
3. Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc-Recount Fund $7,211,773
4. New York Senate 2000 $6,337,785
5. Gore Lieberman Recount Committee $3,685,287
6. DLCC $3,542,722
7. Republican Leadership Council (RLC) $3,059,730
8. WORKING FAMILIES 2000 $2,954,655
9. EMILY's List Non-Federal $2,810,939
10. Democratic Governors' Association$ 2,016,475
2002 Election, Top 10 Donors to 527's
1 . Fonda, Jane $11,955,000
2 . AFL-CIO $1,442,755
3 . DCCC Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte $1,422,285
4 . American Fedn of St Cty & Municipal Empls $1,180,071
5 . DNC Democratic National Cmte/DNC Services Co $1,110,000
6 . Messinger, Alida Rockefeller $970,000
7 . KIRSCH, STEVEN T & MICHELE $750,000
8 . Service Employees Int'l Union $675,250
9 . HARRIS, JOHN A IV AND MRS $652,500
10 . Soros, George $500,000
If you can't figure out that half of these are unions that their money goes almost exclusively to Democrats...
Top Donors PACS, 2006
1. NATIONAL BEER WHOLESALERS ASSOCIATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $984,100
2. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS COMMITTEE ON POLITICAL EDUCATION $979,000
3. ASSOCIATION OF TRIAL LAWYERS OF AMERICA POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $966,000
4. CREDIT UNION LEGISLATIVE ACTION COUNCIL OF CUNA $942,869
5. AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION PAC (BANKPAC) $847,514
6. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE COUNTY & MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES - P E O P L E, QUALIFIED $841,673
7. DEALERS ELECTION ACTION COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL AUTOMOTIVE DEALERS ASSOCIATION $803,350
8. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE INC. POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $778,298
9. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIREFIGHTERS INTERESTED IN REGISTRATION AND EDUCATION PAC $684,705
10. CARPENTERS LEGISLATIVE IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS AND JOINERS
And so on and so forth. BIG MONEY donors tend to go Democratic more than Republican.
It's not about free speech, really. It's about campaign finance and tactics.
Sure. In a nutshell, you've been lied to. I would never assert that the Republican party has always vote pro-Freedom (yeah, we wrote the Patriot Act. Sorry about that.), but censorship has often been a Democratic pastime. Remember, the DMCA was signed by a Democrat president, and the PMRC [wikipedia.org] was a pet project of Tipper Gore.
I find the censorship falls down on both sides of the aisle. Republicans tend to vote to censor stuff "for our own good." They're always wanting to save our poor souls from the evils of naked people and swear words and violence. The Democrats, recently, have hopped onto this issue too, because it's a winner with families, and your soccer moms and suburbanites are a huge voting bloc. There's no clear party line on this stuff. Antonin Scalia, probably the most conservative judges on the Supreme Court, strongly upheld the right to burn the flag under first ammendment protections, to the chagrin of Republican hardliners. You just can't fracture this issue easily along party lines like you can with so many others.
And yet, to hear liberal groups tell it, it's always the Evil Republicans (tm) who want to silence everyone. The truth is far more complex, but how often do you hear of both parties' sins?
Politicians want to silence anybody who damages or threatens their stranglehold on power. People are often afraid of the truth, but I think people are even more afriad of lies being repeated and believed. Well, not afraid. People are afraid of truth. They get angry when lies are believed. Anger tends to be a greater motivator to take positive action. Fear causes people to turtle up and protect themselves.
P.S. I don't know which party Jack Thompson affiliates with. I won't blame either party for that nut.
He associates with the Republicans, but lately they don't associate much with him. He is to the right-wing what Cindy Sheehan is the left-wing. He's so far off the edge that even RIGHT WING right-wingers alienate him.
It's pretty disturbing that such an obviously slanted article summary was posted here without the editors even bothering to check the facts.
Yes. It's always very disturbing that Slashdot article summaries contain clear political slants. At least, it's disturbing when the slant is biased against whatever political cults I happen to agree with. When it's slanted in their favor, it's just good journalism.
[quote]This is the same sort of nonsense that almost sunk Everquest, except the Everquest API only scanned the task manager for names. This does that and also scans for running process "signatures". Yet another reason not to play WoW. Goes right along with needing a Credit card for a "free trial".[/quote]
Actually, what sunk EQ is that better games game out so people abandoned its ridiculous treadmill. I played EQ on Xegony from server launch until Dark Age of Camelot came out, and not once did I witness any major ripples in the EQ community regarding draconian invasions of privacy. We were far more irritated when guilds found ways to defeat EQ's shit-ass AI and got banned for exposing that Verant was releasing unfinished zones in their expensions with the assumption that nobody would find out about it until they could patch in the rest of the world. That's the kind of shit that almost sunk EQ. They already have my goddam credit card number, and most gamers shut down EVERY SINGLE application that could possibly be shut down before launching a game using a 3d graphics engine.
I appreciate privacy concerns as much as anybody, but this one's a non-story.
True dat. Also, if it's raining outside, or it LOOKS LIKE IT MIGHT RAIN SOON, everybody in St. Louis county slows down to 45 miles per hour. They also brake while going uphill. This causes traffic problems that are usually confined to within a 2-mile radius of major interchanges, such as 40/170 and 40/270 to run all the way into Illinois. I'm not sure why this is. Despite the fact that it rains here like every other day in the fall, St. Louisans react to every weather phenomenon as if it were the first time they've ever encountered it. There are two basic philosophies.
Weather Driving Philosophy #1: Denial
It's not really pouring rain with lightning strikes every 1.9 seconds. I will continue to drive 80 miles per hour and weave in and out of traffic in my H2 and honk at people who don't do the same.
Weather Driving Philosophy #2: Abject Terror
Oh my god, it's the end of the world, I am going to die in this rain storm if I creep this hulk along any faster than 30 miles per hour in the left lane, nevermind the six miles of furious motorists behind me, don't they understand that it's my life we're talking about?
Amazingly, despite this, there are rarely any major weather-related accidents here. I have learned, however, to not even bother going to work if it snowed over night. First, the roads are jammed, even if there's not actually any snow on the road itself. The mere thought of snow paralyzes this entire metropolitan area. They cancel school at 4:00pm the day before when it's not even snowing, it's just predicted to snow. This has resulted in "snow days" when it's 49 degrees and sunny. Second, even if you manage to get to work, nobody else will show up until 11:30 and everybody leaves at 3:00 to "beat the traffic" which is still getting sorted out from the morning snow snarl.
Perhaps it's too easy for me to be critical, having grown up, "in the north" where a 12 inch snowfall isn't uncommon, there's school the next day (at worst, it's delayed for an hour while they shovel the buses out of the lots and all the drivers get there), and life goes on. Still. It'd be nice to log into a web site in the morning and see a density-map of traffic activity and try to plan an alternate route that, while getting me work no faster, feels faster because I'm not staring at the Kerry/Edwards 04 sticker on the bumper of the Volvo in front of me for an hour.
...they got rid of pollution. Easily the most annoying aspect of Civ3. The ability to select multiple cities is also good news. Can't wait for my copy to arrive!
My girlfriend bought me a copy for Christmas and, bless her heart, had it sent directly to my house so I could play it now. That's a good woman. Even though I waste inexcusable quantities of time playing Warcraft, he buys me more video games because I like them. Plus she'd prefer me to play Civ over WoW. I can get up and walk away from Civ at any moment. Not so with WoW.
So does everybody else who makes money off their web sites, services, or what amounts to nothing more than intellectual property, yet we trumpet ad nauseum here the merits of deconstructing the patent and copyright system because we personify information as wanting to be free, mostly so we can take as much as of it as we want without paying for it or breaking the law.
When it comes to history, lore, and general knowledge about the evolution of Slashdot itself, I'd say the UID matters quite a bit.
That does make good sense. I mean, I was reading Slash in around 1997 or 1998 but never made an account because I didn't post much. I created one eventually but never logged in to it. I finally made one that I use a year or two ago, maybe not even THAT long ago, honestly, I don't remember. Anyway, my shitty UID is clearly grounds to dismiss my ideas and opinions in an open discussion community like Slashdot, since I can't know what I'm talking about, having not been around for long enough.
In other news, Slashdotters tend, as a group, to hate Old Boys' networks and bitch relentlessly when people in the real world receive undue credence, deference, or positions due to who they know and how long they've been around. New, fresh ideas are what the industry (ANY industry) always needs, not the tired, pendantic business-as-usual plodding forth of decaying dinosaurs who have inherited positions of power from the old guard elites! Down with the system! Up with p2p!
it's not that nobody got them, it's just that they're neither clever nor funny.
That actually completely explains why they were modded funny on Slashdot. Not clever or funny. Just like everything else posted here that leaves us clutching our sides in paroxysmal jubilation.
But when I was asked in Dark Age to rename my Infiltrator ("Sofonda Cox"), my Cabalist ("Flaymin Nainus"), my Cleric ("Dawn Keebawlz"), and my Minstrel ("Grabbin Mcgroyn"), I wasn't really that put out. I drew the line when my Mercenary, "Meatmissile," was told that his name was inappropriate. That's when I bailed. I've since learned my lesson and my WoW Shaman is called "Jamin," which is actually just part of my real name ("Benjamin"). I only know one person in WoW whose name was changed, and it was done after he omgwtfpwned the hell out of Alliance in AB for a month and people got sick of it and reported him. His name was "Boodah" which was too close to "Buddha," a deity/religious figure, and thus a rule violation. He changed his name to "Dahboo" which I thought was rather clever.
Look, I'm not saying things couldn't have been done better. What sickens me is the spectacle of people who pulled off a miracle being ragged on because they didn't pull off four more.
Neither am I. The federal government could have done a better job. So could the state and local governments.
I may not be an expert in DP/DR planning
Clearly.
but I happen to live here and I have seen the process. I have watched things improve a little every time the city tries this. It is fucking annoying to watch a bunch of nerds sit in their mother's basements and pronounce how they would have handled the situation so much better and what a bunch of morons a bunch of people they never heard of before are.
Hey, nothing backs up your emotional caterwauling like ad hominem attacks! I can't speak for anybody else, but I own my home and rent the basement out to... well, ok a nerd, but I'm not his mother and he doesn't even read Slashdot. I didn't accuse anybody of being a moron, I accused YOU of blasting the federal government for failing to orchestrate something that is not their responsibility while absolving your local government from any culpability in failing to activate some provisions of their own plan. You called for criminal charges against the whole lot of them (the feds) for their slow response to Katrina, but your local government is utterly absolved because they did their best.
We actually succeeded in getting more than a million people out of the city -- about 90% of the population -- in less than 48 hours.
That is, in itself, an insane amount of effort. And, typical of the media, it's not being reported or lauded. We only saw pictures of people on rooftops refusing help and bullshit reports of rapes and gunfire.
The people who are ragging on Nagin and Blanco for what they didn't do should actually be on their fucking knees thanking them for their efforts. This required coordination between more than 10 parishes and counties and two state governments.
I'm not ragging on Nagin, although I do think both he and Blanco ought to be held equally liable for the Katrina failings as Bush and FEMA. I'm ragging on you for your retarded double standard and self-righteous chest-thumping over your unquestionable authority on this issue over the rest of us because you live in New Orleans. Especially when you're flat out WRONG.
I have been in these traffic jams.
Yeah, it took me 90 minutes to commute this morning, it blows.
I have stayed at times because I weighed the traffic jam potential against the hurricane. I have watched them get better at it every time they try. What in the name of Bob makes you think they haven't been looking and learning?
Nothing, nobody has made that claim.
For Katrina nearly every existing plan at the local level actually went smoothely, many for the first time ever.
Good!
To complain that such-and-such other plan wasn't in place is stupid and rude.
But only for state and local governments. It's perfectly reasonable to complain about the errors in the federal response. That's not stupid or rude.
Maybe a few more cycles down the road there would have been bus evacuations. There was no infrastructure for that this time nor was there any sane reason for such infrastructure to have been introduced. It's very easy to show pictures of the flooded buses and yell "Nyahh nyaah" but there are damn good reasons those buses stayed where they were.
Actually, there was an infrastructure for it. There were three. One in the New Orleans local evac plan, one in the state of Lousiana evac plan, and one in a draft plan that FEMA put together. Yet you're only pissed at FEMA. Huh.
A lot of this bullshit is propaganda that was deliberately constructed to deflect blame from FEMA, which did not content itself with merely not showing up in time to save hundreds of lives but
I am going to ignore everything you said except one thing, which illustrates why everything else you say should be ignored.
In other words, I have one factual error, and you're going to use it as a crutch upon which to lean your emotional appeals since you have no counter for the rest of my facts.
The feds said "get out of there" DAYS before it hit. Your own mayor didn't concur until it was too late.
This is absolutely untrue. I remember it QUITE well because I was in Detroit, MI on Friday evening, and went to bed thinking (along with the locals, the feds, the NOAA, and the rest of the country) that Katrina would be a cat 1 to cat 2 event for northern Florida. When I woke up Saturday morning I found out at the airport that it was going to be a cat 5 headed right up my arse.
Katrina breached the Louisiana cost at 6:00 am local time on the morning of Monday, August 29th.
The evacuation order was given by Nagin less than 20 hours ahead of time. New Orleans' own evacuation plan indicated that a minimum of more than 40 hours lead time would be necessary to evacuate.
The plan also CLEARLY indicated that the evacuation and initial relief efforts were the responsibility of the local and statement government. It may crush you to know that YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT FAILED YOU TOO, but they did, and all the Bush-bashing hatred in the world doesn't change that. I'm no fan of the President, or FEMA, or this administration, or the federal government in general, but to blame the largest, slowest agency for failing on a relatively microscopic level is utterly absurd.
About 36 hours later -- mid-day Sunday -- if you weren't out of town, it was too late. All previous evacuation planning had assumed a 72 hour window of opportunity, and we barely got 48 this time (and that realistically starting in the middle of the night). NOBODY was advising evacuation before Saturday morning, unless you count the "gee why does anybody live there at all" crowd. The fact that we managed to get everyone who had the means out in that time frame is a miracle. Nobody, including the people in charge, really expected it to work that well. It didn't work that well for Dennis a mere three weeks before. It had never worked that well in the 10 years or so that contraflow plans have been on the drawing board.
So, would be fair to rephrase this as, "The hurricane's sudden change in strength and direction gave New Orleans insufficient lead time to fully implement its evacuation plan."? If so, why is then the FEDERAL government's fault that they didn't get there on time? If the LOCAL government, which is supposed to be the most familiar with its own area of jurisdiction and the quickest responder, didn't have enough time, why are you so irate that the federal government didn't either?
So where do you get this bullshit idea that "the Feds told us to get out days before?" Maybe from the same bullshit source that said those school buses were "intended for evacuation?" Here's a clue: Those school buses were "intended" to carry kids to school. Nobody in their right mind would have loaded them up with people when their most likely fate based on all of our experience would be to get caught out on a gridlocked overwater crossing when the hurricane arrived.
Specific references to the use of school buses to evacuate those unable to evacuate themselves is laid out in FEMA's emergency plan for the city. A less specific reference can also be found in the "City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan" under Annex I: Hurricanes, Part 2: EVACUATION, Subsection V (Tasks), Subsection D (Regional Transit Authority), Item #3: "Position supervisors and dispatch evacuation buses."
Further, the Louisiana State Evacuation plan indicates that "[t]he primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportat
The governor and mayor did everything possible with the resources at their disposal
Like drowning the school buses intended for the evacuation?
Let's go over the timeline.
3 days before the storm, Blanco declares a state of emergency.
A day later, she asks for a federal declaration of same, which she receives immediately along with federal funding and FEMA support to coordinate the relief effort.
At 9:30 am the day before the storm hits, the mayor orders an evacuation. The evacuation is called for with under 20 hours until the hurricane hits, which is less than 50% of the minimum amount of time that they'd been told NO would require to clear out its people.
An empty Amtrak train leaves New Orleans, with room for hundreds of potential evacuees. "We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm's way...The city declined," said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. The train left New Orleans no passengers on board. The city denied that this ever happened.
Brownie orders relief workers sent to NO 5 hours after the hurricane hits, but diverts them to other states for training first.
Later that afternoon, at least 11 hours after the hurricane hits, Blanco asks for "everything you've got" from the federal government.
The day after the storm, the Army Corps of Engineers examine the failed levees and begin repairs. Blanco is asked about the potential for a "toxic soup" of floodwaters, and says, "It's water from the lake, water from the canals. It's just, you know, water."
Two days after the storm, the mayor calls off search and rescue operations in favor of cracking down on looters. During the last few days, the President is still on his regular schedule of talks and speeches before heading to Crawford. On day Katrina+2, he heads to DC to relief efforts. 25 S&R teams are deployed at this point, and buses from Houston are heading to N.O. to help evacuate survivors.
3 days after the storm, the Red Cross is denied permission to enter the city with relief supplies by Louisiana state officials. The National Guard troops begin to trickle in, and most do not arrive for several days. Buses arrive at the Superdome. The drowned buses in NO are discovered in aerial photography. Brown double-talks about the convention center, spreading FUD. Nagin blames the crisis on Blanco and Bush in a radio interview.
4 days after, the Red Cross reviews its request to enter the city. Louisiana Officials refuse, citing that they need a 24-hour notice to assemble an escort and prepare for their arrival. The Red Cross never does reach the city to help. Bush doubletalks about FEMA and "Brownie." The National Guard arrives en masse.
7 days after, the Army Corps of Engineers completes the first levee repair.
8 days after, Nagin orders law enforcement to remove everybody not involved in recovery efforts. Many residents still refuse to go.
Afterward, with their resources scattered and the city under water, they begged the federal government for help.
Seems to me they got it as quickly as it could be mobilized. The federal government isn't known for its blazing speed in reacting to problems, under any president.
While the storm was still raging governor Blanco was on the phone with FEMA telling them what we would need -- helicopters, water, food, and tents, in more or less that order. Contrary to what you may have read in some quarters all of the paperwork was filled out properly and submitted ahead of time. The state of emergency was declared.
It was declared three days before the hurricane struck in the state, and two days before at the federal level.
The Katrina disaster was much too large for the locals to handle it themselves; things like this are why we have a Federal government at all.
Yes, it is. Because state resources are exhausted within days. But they are expected to hold out for that long until federal help arrives. It's generally considered unwise to position your relief effor
Some corrections to your propaganda, if you don't mind. And I'd like to shamefully admit that I voted for the idiot (Bush) the first time around. I'm so f'n sorry, but at least he did lose the first election.
Actually, he won. Hence, he took the oath of office and was President for 4 years. I don't know how you missed that, but it did happen.
In Kosovo and Haiti, the death toll has been much lower than Iraq. In addition, in Kosovo, Clinton used this thing called 'the international community', which can be beneficial when conducting 'police actions'.
So, the military and nom-military forces in Iraq from Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, Tonga, the UK, and the Ukraine are not an "international community."
But Clinton! First he assembled Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia into a partnership that involved rich guys in suits arguing about stuff while thousands died. They around and did nothing for years while over a quarter million more people were slain. Finally the United Nations heads in with the "international community" and brokers a cease fire that almost immediately breaks down and the bloodshed resumes. Sounds like Israel in the 1940's and 1950's, huh?
FEMA did so well in Florida because they were, well, f'n embarrassed by Louisana (one n, thanks). In the case of LA, when your state is so devastated that the local infrastructure collapses, you have a right to expect federal help. There are documented cases where FEMA told police officers in various parts of LA to *email* them requests for help, when police stations and power stations were completely flooded and useless. Good job Brownie!
You have the right to expect federal help, but not 24 hours later. The federal government can't produce an armpit fart in under six days of paperwork and discussion. The local infrastructure didn't just break down, it cut tail and run, then went on TV whining that nobody was helping. There's no question that the federal response was sluggish and inadequate, but the local government didn't even follow it's own plan. Brownie was indeed a hapless cronie with no business being in his business.
Blowing the cover of a CIA agent because you're pissed that they uncovered one of your major lies for going to war, understandable
We don't know that. That's what you want to believe happened. I'm reserving judgment on this until Fitzgerald's report is done.
You left out the screed about how "ideas don't have owners" and why our entire intellectual property system is broken and anybody creative who defends it is a millionaire sellout jerk RIAA clone trooper.
Apparently, Take Two also owns all rights to the Sid Meier's Personal Opinion franchise.
Translation from Slashbot into English:
I like Sid and his games and I'm pissed off that he cares about making money off his innovation instead of blindly embracing open source like I do. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. One more person I can't respect.
Dude, seriously. If I was in his shoes and had my career aspirations, bankroll, retirement, and basically every financial aspect of my life hinging upon the legal protection of what amount to ideas, I'd wouldn't even be THIS evasion about it. I'd be saying something like, "Are you seriously asking me what I think of people who take my ideas and produce half-assed clones of them that they distribute for free while I'm trying to run a company that feeds six dozen developer's families?"
Insert cliched rebuttal about how ideas don't have owners here.
There is zero need for any regulation. The Internet could be usurped by any big business but isn't.
The (supposed) purpose of American government is to protect freedom, not regulate. Government oversight is necessary specifically to ensure that nobody - not a private citizen, a foreign power, or the government itself, trods upon that freedom. Sounds great, we don't always succeed, but I think the long term our bad but corrected decisions get corrected.
The ultimate proof of anarchy in action. Companies that try to control the users are beaten by those that provide open access.
Sounds more like a free market in action.
Companies that want to break free from the global structure will anger their users who want access to anyone else. Verizon could separate their phone network completely but its in their best interest to communicate with their competition.
Adam Smith referred to this as mutual gain. The baker is baking bread because he can sell it and it serves his own interests. We win because we can buy it, and it serves ours. A fundamental principle of capitalism is that two people can both engage in a business relationship or transaction for completely self-serving reasons, and both come out getting what they wanted. A free market makes this arrangement possible; laws and limited oversight make it probable (e.g., when one side of the other violates this principle by breaking the market, for example by stealing something, or by price fixing, our laws get involved to reset the balance).
The market thrives on giving people what they want, not what somebody thinks they ought to want, the reality of limited resources means that not everybody has equal access to those things. That's a defining characteristic of capitalism, and really, of liberty. That each individual may make a choice and deal with the consequences. When your decisions don't matter because somebody has removed or adjusted consequences, either good or bad, you can reach a point where your freedom is only an illusion, in the Classsical sense. You appear to have choices but your decisions are irrelevent. Indeed, you don't really have choices at all, as all decisions lead to the same outcome. This is one of the reasons I distrust collectivist economies.
Slashdot Mirror
The motivation for this is that MS can look at the cost of gasoline and health care and observe that as state-by-state regulations get more complicated, the cost of producing health care services and gasoline skyrockets. Software is in the same boat. As privacy becomes a bigger concern, state-by-state regulations will become more and more expensive to keep atop of. A solution at the national level reduces costs. Microsoft is doing good business here; it's a coincidence that it may benefit us.
The legal system is not broken on this level. The courts correctly interpret the laws 99% of the time, and there's an appeals court for when they don't. The problem is that our legislative body passes laws that contradict other laws and it's left up to the courts to figure out which law is going to trump the other in any given situation. It's even more complicated for Fair Use cases because, according to SCOTUS, there can be few or no hard-and-fast rules, and applications of the Fair Use doctrine must be established on a case-by-case basis. This could end up being one of them.
In the long run, the courts get it right most of the time, with rare but much-publicized exceptions that are also later corrected most of the time.
The courts established our Fair Use rights, and then Congress gave us the DMCA. It's a matter of time before a case that involves rich people or corporations causes these two to butt heads, and this could be the lead-up to it. However, do not start thinking that this case has any application to us as far as circumventing the DMCA. Sony will get treated differently than you or I would in court against Blizzard for a DMCA violation in bypassing The Warden.
Everybody has idea. The question is whose ideas the majority of voters will support. Or rather, whose marketing they'll buy. I agree that America in particular has a continuing history of its population and leaders strongly rejecting socialism, even before socialism resulted in Nazism and Sovietism. What I meant by my comment that you quoted was that when your party is receiving a lot of money from small to medium donations, it means you have a significant population base of what could easily be classified as "mainstream" America: middle class families and small business owners with a modicum of disposable income.
If those people were contributing to Democrats, I'd interpret it as the Democratic platform appealing more to that class of people, and I think they'd start winning elections. Part of the Democrat's problem is that they're still playing by the rules and assumptions of the 1970's and 1980's, which are really far out of date. When you tell people for three decades that the Republicans are going to dismantle all of the social safety nets, then the Republicans get power and you still get your entitlement check, people stop trusting you when you keep running on that same platform.
I think you can also point to the waning power of labor unions. My friends are about the most leftist, liberal people I know. There's not a Democrat in congress who is liberal enough to satisfy them. They almost didn't vote for Kerry because he's not liberal enough. And even they think the unions are more of a burden than a help to the "working man."
I have no cure for what ails the Democrats. It seems to me that they have no real platform other than a non-stop caterwauling over the myriad shortcomings of George Bush, which is a road to nowhere, since Bush is very unlikely to run for President in 2008. I voted libertarian in 2004, but had I not, I'd have voted for Bush before Kerry. Not because of any real love for the man, his party, or his platform, but because Kerry could provide me with no compelling reason for vote for him. And I'm searching desperately for a rising star in the Democratic party with a shred of intellectual integrity, and I'm not finding any. Nor any in the Republican party, frankly, and barring that, I'll vote Libertarian again. I basically vote for whomever at least gives good lip service towards the principles of our way of life that I embrace and believe in. And I'll vote AGAINST any party that attacks those things, or hides an ideology that runs counter to those things in a veil of patriotism.
Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this question by building on advances in programming languages and tools to develop a new system architecture and operating system (named Singularity), with the aim of producing a more robust and dependable software platform. Singularity demonstrates the practicality of new technologies and architectural decisions, which should lead to the construction of more robust and dependable systems.
Where have I hear that before?.
A key aspect of singularity is ... Software-Isolated Processes, which encapsulate pieces of an application ... and provide information hiding, failure isolation, and strong interfaces. All code outside the kernel executes in a SIP.
That sounds alarmingly like a closed address space. Microsoft in 2005 is giving us what UNIX had over 30 years ago. thx u sir!
SIPs are closed object spaces, not address spaces
I stand corrected! What's the difference?
Two Singularity processes cannot simultaneously access an object.
Ruh ruh! So we're going back to the model where two processes can't open a handle to the same file? You mean ... like .. er... DOS?
A process cannot dynamically open or generate code.
So like ... you can't run Perl on it. Or shared libraries. #include <dlfnc.h> is a thing of the past.
SIPs are created and terminated by the operating system, so that ... resources can be reclaimed.
Yeah uhhh... the runlib library for, say, C executables in UNIX does this. And has for a long time. Like, since Gerald Ford or something.
I'd go on but I'm just making fun of them. If you read through their overview document there's actually some very good ideas in there, and knowing a few programmers from W2K, I can tell you that they do employ some top-notch talent there.
They aren't, because they are politicians and politicians are never the standard bearers of free speech. People are. And politicians aren't people!
You're a Republican? I don't buy it, because you've got your facts wrong. And Republicans never get their facts wrong.
Err... shit.
No, seriously, let's take a look. Republicans do have MUCH more money but the sources may surprise you. For all of the Democrats constant bitching about how the Republicans are the party of rich business men and oil tycoons, the largest donors are almost always to Democrats. Republicans tend to collect a lot of small and medium sized donations from a ton of people. Which is probably why they win elections. It's the Democrats who have the financial support of the elite rich and nobody else. Poor people don't give money to campaigns. The Republicans have the middle class nailed down tight. All that family values bullshit.
2000 Election, Top 10 527 Commitee Donors 1. Pro Choice Vote $12,364,150
2. Planned Parenthood Votes $7,217,204
3. Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc-Recount Fund $7,211,773
4. New York Senate 2000 $6,337,785
5. Gore Lieberman Recount Committee $3,685,287
6. DLCC $3,542,722
7. Republican Leadership Council (RLC) $3,059,730
8. WORKING FAMILIES 2000 $2,954,655
9. EMILY's List Non-Federal $2,810,939
10. Democratic Governors' Association$ 2,016,475
2002 Election, Top 10 Donors to 527's 1 . Fonda, Jane $11,955,000
2 . AFL-CIO $1,442,755 3 . DCCC Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte $1,422,285
4 . American Fedn of St Cty & Municipal Empls $1,180,071
5 . DNC Democratic National Cmte/DNC Services Co $1,110,000
6 . Messinger, Alida Rockefeller $970,000
7 . KIRSCH, STEVEN T & MICHELE $750,000
8 . Service Employees Int'l Union $675,250
9 . HARRIS, JOHN A IV AND MRS $652,500
10 . Soros, George $500,000
If you can't figure out that half of these are unions that their money goes almost exclusively to Democrats...
Top Donors PACS, 2006 1. NATIONAL BEER WHOLESALERS ASSOCIATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $984,100
2. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS COMMITTEE ON POLITICAL EDUCATION $979,000
3. ASSOCIATION OF TRIAL LAWYERS OF AMERICA POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $966,000
4. CREDIT UNION LEGISLATIVE ACTION COUNCIL OF CUNA $942,869
5. AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION PAC (BANKPAC) $847,514
6. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE COUNTY & MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES - P E O P L E, QUALIFIED $841,673
7. DEALERS ELECTION ACTION COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL AUTOMOTIVE DEALERS ASSOCIATION $803,350
8. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE INC. POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $778,298
9. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIREFIGHTERS INTERESTED IN REGISTRATION AND EDUCATION PAC $684,705
10. CARPENTERS LEGISLATIVE IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS AND JOINERS
And so on and so forth. BIG MONEY donors tend to go Democratic more than Republican.
It's not about free speech, really. It's about campaign finance and tactics.
I concur!
I find the censorship falls down on both sides of the aisle. Republicans tend to vote to censor stuff "for our own good." They're always wanting to save our poor souls from the evils of naked people and swear words and violence. The Democrats, recently, have hopped onto this issue too, because it's a winner with families, and your soccer moms and suburbanites are a huge voting bloc. There's no clear party line on this stuff. Antonin Scalia, probably the most conservative judges on the Supreme Court, strongly upheld the right to burn the flag under first ammendment protections, to the chagrin of Republican hardliners. You just can't fracture this issue easily along party lines like you can with so many others.
And yet, to hear liberal groups tell it, it's always the Evil Republicans (tm) who want to silence everyone. The truth is far more complex, but how often do you hear of both parties' sins?
Politicians want to silence anybody who damages or threatens their stranglehold on power. People are often afraid of the truth, but I think people are even more afriad of lies being repeated and believed. Well, not afraid. People are afraid of truth. They get angry when lies are believed. Anger tends to be a greater motivator to take positive action. Fear causes people to turtle up and protect themselves.
P.S. I don't know which party Jack Thompson affiliates with. I won't blame either party for that nut.
He associates with the Republicans, but lately they don't associate much with him. He is to the right-wing what Cindy Sheehan is the left-wing. He's so far off the edge that even RIGHT WING right-wingers alienate him.
Yes. It's always very disturbing that Slashdot article summaries contain clear political slants. At least, it's disturbing when the slant is biased against whatever political cults I happen to agree with. When it's slanted in their favor, it's just good journalism.
Actually, what sunk EQ is that better games game out so people abandoned its ridiculous treadmill. I played EQ on Xegony from server launch until Dark Age of Camelot came out, and not once did I witness any major ripples in the EQ community regarding draconian invasions of privacy. We were far more irritated when guilds found ways to defeat EQ's shit-ass AI and got banned for exposing that Verant was releasing unfinished zones in their expensions with the assumption that nobody would find out about it until they could patch in the rest of the world. That's the kind of shit that almost sunk EQ. They already have my goddam credit card number, and most gamers shut down EVERY SINGLE application that could possibly be shut down before launching a game using a 3d graphics engine.
I appreciate privacy concerns as much as anybody, but this one's a non-story.
Weather Driving Philosophy #1: Denial
It's not really pouring rain with lightning strikes every 1.9 seconds. I will continue to drive 80 miles per hour and weave in and out of traffic in my H2 and honk at people who don't do the same.
Weather Driving Philosophy #2: Abject Terror
Oh my god, it's the end of the world, I am going to die in this rain storm if I creep this hulk along any faster than 30 miles per hour in the left lane, nevermind the six miles of furious motorists behind me, don't they understand that it's my life we're talking about?
Amazingly, despite this, there are rarely any major weather-related accidents here. I have learned, however, to not even bother going to work if it snowed over night. First, the roads are jammed, even if there's not actually any snow on the road itself. The mere thought of snow paralyzes this entire metropolitan area. They cancel school at 4:00pm the day before when it's not even snowing, it's just predicted to snow. This has resulted in "snow days" when it's 49 degrees and sunny. Second, even if you manage to get to work, nobody else will show up until 11:30 and everybody leaves at 3:00 to "beat the traffic" which is still getting sorted out from the morning snow snarl.
Perhaps it's too easy for me to be critical, having grown up, "in the north" where a 12 inch snowfall isn't uncommon, there's school the next day (at worst, it's delayed for an hour while they shovel the buses out of the lots and all the drivers get there), and life goes on. Still. It'd be nice to log into a web site in the morning and see a density-map of traffic activity and try to plan an alternate route that, while getting me work no faster, feels faster because I'm not staring at the Kerry/Edwards 04 sticker on the bumper of the Volvo in front of me for an hour.
Traffic is bad on 40 East in the morning and 40 West in the afternoon. 270 is often packed too. Source: me. I drive it every day.
Hey, in modern English, all pronouns are gender-neutral! I don't want to offend anybody.
My girlfriend bought me a copy for Christmas and, bless her heart, had it sent directly to my house so I could play it now. That's a good woman. Even though I waste inexcusable quantities of time playing Warcraft, he buys me more video games because I like them. Plus she'd prefer me to play Civ over WoW. I can get up and walk away from Civ at any moment. Not so with WoW.
So does everybody else who makes money off their web sites, services, or what amounts to nothing more than intellectual property, yet we trumpet ad nauseum here the merits of deconstructing the patent and copyright system because we personify information as wanting to be free, mostly so we can take as much as of it as we want without paying for it or breaking the law.
That does make good sense. I mean, I was reading Slash in around 1997 or 1998 but never made an account because I didn't post much. I created one eventually but never logged in to it. I finally made one that I use a year or two ago, maybe not even THAT long ago, honestly, I don't remember. Anyway, my shitty UID is clearly grounds to dismiss my ideas and opinions in an open discussion community like Slashdot, since I can't know what I'm talking about, having not been around for long enough.
In other news, Slashdotters tend, as a group, to hate Old Boys' networks and bitch relentlessly when people in the real world receive undue credence, deference, or positions due to who they know and how long they've been around. New, fresh ideas are what the industry (ANY industry) always needs, not the tired, pendantic business-as-usual plodding forth of decaying dinosaurs who have inherited positions of power from the old guard elites! Down with the system! Up with p2p!
Screw you guys, I'm going home!
That actually completely explains why they were modded funny on Slashdot. Not clever or funny. Just like everything else posted here that leaves us clutching our sides in paroxysmal jubilation.
But when I was asked in Dark Age to rename my Infiltrator ("Sofonda Cox"), my Cabalist ("Flaymin Nainus"), my Cleric ("Dawn Keebawlz"), and my Minstrel ("Grabbin Mcgroyn"), I wasn't really that put out. I drew the line when my Mercenary, "Meatmissile," was told that his name was inappropriate. That's when I bailed. I've since learned my lesson and my WoW Shaman is called "Jamin," which is actually just part of my real name ("Benjamin"). I only know one person in WoW whose name was changed, and it was done after he omgwtfpwned the hell out of Alliance in AB for a month and people got sick of it and reported him. His name was "Boodah" which was too close to "Buddha," a deity/religious figure, and thus a rule violation. He changed his name to "Dahboo" which I thought was rather clever.
Neither am I. The federal government could have done a better job. So could the state and local governments.
I may not be an expert in DP/DR planning
Clearly. but I happen to live here and I have seen the process. I have watched things improve a little every time the city tries this. It is fucking annoying to watch a bunch of nerds sit in their mother's basements and pronounce how they would have handled the situation so much better and what a bunch of morons a bunch of people they never heard of before are.
Hey, nothing backs up your emotional caterwauling like ad hominem attacks! I can't speak for anybody else, but I own my home and rent the basement out to ... well, ok a nerd, but I'm not his mother and he doesn't even read Slashdot. I didn't accuse anybody of being a moron, I accused YOU of blasting the federal government for failing to orchestrate something that is not their responsibility while absolving your local government from any culpability in failing to activate some provisions of their own plan. You called for criminal charges against the whole lot of them (the feds) for their slow response to Katrina, but your local government is utterly absolved because they did their best.
We actually succeeded in getting more than a million people out of the city -- about 90% of the population -- in less than 48 hours.
That is, in itself, an insane amount of effort. And, typical of the media, it's not being reported or lauded. We only saw pictures of people on rooftops refusing help and bullshit reports of rapes and gunfire.
The people who are ragging on Nagin and Blanco for what they didn't do should actually be on their fucking knees thanking them for their efforts. This required coordination between more than 10 parishes and counties and two state governments.
I'm not ragging on Nagin, although I do think both he and Blanco ought to be held equally liable for the Katrina failings as Bush and FEMA. I'm ragging on you for your retarded double standard and self-righteous chest-thumping over your unquestionable authority on this issue over the rest of us because you live in New Orleans. Especially when you're flat out WRONG.
I have been in these traffic jams.
Yeah, it took me 90 minutes to commute this morning, it blows.
I have stayed at times because I weighed the traffic jam potential against the hurricane. I have watched them get better at it every time they try. What in the name of Bob makes you think they haven't been looking and learning?
Nothing, nobody has made that claim.
For Katrina nearly every existing plan at the local level actually went smoothely, many for the first time ever.
Good!
To complain that such-and-such other plan wasn't in place is stupid and rude.
But only for state and local governments. It's perfectly reasonable to complain about the errors in the federal response. That's not stupid or rude.
Maybe a few more cycles down the road there would have been bus evacuations. There was no infrastructure for that this time nor was there any sane reason for such infrastructure to have been introduced. It's very easy to show pictures of the flooded buses and yell "Nyahh nyaah" but there are damn good reasons those buses stayed where they were.
Actually, there was an infrastructure for it. There were three. One in the New Orleans local evac plan, one in the state of Lousiana evac plan, and one in a draft plan that FEMA put together. Yet you're only pissed at FEMA. Huh.
A lot of this bullshit is propaganda that was deliberately constructed to deflect blame from FEMA, which did not content itself with merely not showing up in time to save hundreds of lives but
In other words, I have one factual error, and you're going to use it as a crutch upon which to lean your emotional appeals since you have no counter for the rest of my facts.
The feds said "get out of there" DAYS before it hit. Your own mayor didn't concur until it was too late.
This is absolutely untrue. I remember it QUITE well because I was in Detroit, MI on Friday evening, and went to bed thinking (along with the locals, the feds, the NOAA, and the rest of the country) that Katrina would be a cat 1 to cat 2 event for northern Florida. When I woke up Saturday morning I found out at the airport that it was going to be a cat 5 headed right up my arse.
Katrina breached the Louisiana cost at 6:00 am local time on the morning of Monday, August 29th.
The evacuation order was given by Nagin less than 20 hours ahead of time. New Orleans' own evacuation plan indicated that a minimum of more than 40 hours lead time would be necessary to evacuate.
The plan also CLEARLY indicated that the evacuation and initial relief efforts were the responsibility of the local and statement government. It may crush you to know that YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT FAILED YOU TOO, but they did, and all the Bush-bashing hatred in the world doesn't change that. I'm no fan of the President, or FEMA, or this administration, or the federal government in general, but to blame the largest, slowest agency for failing on a relatively microscopic level is utterly absurd.
About 36 hours later -- mid-day Sunday -- if you weren't out of town, it was too late. All previous evacuation planning had assumed a 72 hour window of opportunity, and we barely got 48 this time (and that realistically starting in the middle of the night). NOBODY was advising evacuation before Saturday morning, unless you count the "gee why does anybody live there at all" crowd. The fact that we managed to get everyone who had the means out in that time frame is a miracle. Nobody, including the people in charge, really expected it to work that well. It didn't work that well for Dennis a mere three weeks before. It had never worked that well in the 10 years or so that contraflow plans have been on the drawing board.
So, would be fair to rephrase this as, "The hurricane's sudden change in strength and direction gave New Orleans insufficient lead time to fully implement its evacuation plan."? If so, why is then the FEDERAL government's fault that they didn't get there on time? If the LOCAL government, which is supposed to be the most familiar with its own area of jurisdiction and the quickest responder, didn't have enough time, why are you so irate that the federal government didn't either?
So where do you get this bullshit idea that "the Feds told us to get out days before?" Maybe from the same bullshit source that said those school buses were "intended for evacuation?" Here's a clue: Those school buses were "intended" to carry kids to school. Nobody in their right mind would have loaded them up with people when their most likely fate based on all of our experience would be to get caught out on a gridlocked overwater crossing when the hurricane arrived.
Specific references to the use of school buses to evacuate those unable to evacuate themselves is laid out in FEMA's emergency plan for the city. A less specific reference can also be found in the "City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan" under Annex I: Hurricanes, Part 2: EVACUATION, Subsection V (Tasks), Subsection D (Regional Transit Authority), Item #3: "Position supervisors and dispatch evacuation buses."
Further, the Louisiana State Evacuation plan indicates that "[t]he primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportat
Like drowning the school buses intended for the evacuation?
Let's go over the timeline.
3 days before the storm, Blanco declares a state of emergency.
A day later, she asks for a federal declaration of same, which she receives immediately along with federal funding and FEMA support to coordinate the relief effort.
At 9:30 am the day before the storm hits, the mayor orders an evacuation. The evacuation is called for with under 20 hours until the hurricane hits, which is less than 50% of the minimum amount of time that they'd been told NO would require to clear out its people.
An empty Amtrak train leaves New Orleans, with room for hundreds of potential evacuees. "We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm's way...The city declined," said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. The train left New Orleans no passengers on board. The city denied that this ever happened.
Brownie orders relief workers sent to NO 5 hours after the hurricane hits, but diverts them to other states for training first.
Later that afternoon, at least 11 hours after the hurricane hits, Blanco asks for "everything you've got" from the federal government.
The day after the storm, the Army Corps of Engineers examine the failed levees and begin repairs. Blanco is asked about the potential for a "toxic soup" of floodwaters, and says, "It's water from the lake, water from the canals. It's just, you know, water."
Two days after the storm, the mayor calls off search and rescue operations in favor of cracking down on looters. During the last few days, the President is still on his regular schedule of talks and speeches before heading to Crawford. On day Katrina+2, he heads to DC to relief efforts. 25 S&R teams are deployed at this point, and buses from Houston are heading to N.O. to help evacuate survivors.
3 days after the storm, the Red Cross is denied permission to enter the city with relief supplies by Louisiana state officials. The National Guard troops begin to trickle in, and most do not arrive for several days. Buses arrive at the Superdome. The drowned buses in NO are discovered in aerial photography. Brown double-talks about the convention center, spreading FUD. Nagin blames the crisis on Blanco and Bush in a radio interview.
4 days after, the Red Cross reviews its request to enter the city. Louisiana Officials refuse, citing that they need a 24-hour notice to assemble an escort and prepare for their arrival. The Red Cross never does reach the city to help. Bush doubletalks about FEMA and "Brownie." The National Guard arrives en masse.
7 days after, the Army Corps of Engineers completes the first levee repair.
8 days after, Nagin orders law enforcement to remove everybody not involved in recovery efforts. Many residents still refuse to go.
Afterward, with their resources scattered and the city under water, they begged the federal government for help.
Seems to me they got it as quickly as it could be mobilized. The federal government isn't known for its blazing speed in reacting to problems, under any president.
While the storm was still raging governor Blanco was on the phone with FEMA telling them what we would need -- helicopters, water, food, and tents, in more or less that order. Contrary to what you may have read in some quarters all of the paperwork was filled out properly and submitted ahead of time. The state of emergency was declared.
It was declared three days before the hurricane struck in the state, and two days before at the federal level.
The Katrina disaster was much too large for the locals to handle it themselves; things like this are why we have a Federal government at all.
Yes, it is. Because state resources are exhausted within days. But they are expected to hold out for that long until federal help arrives. It's generally considered unwise to position your relief effor
Actually, he won. Hence, he took the oath of office and was President for 4 years. I don't know how you missed that, but it did happen.
In Kosovo and Haiti, the death toll has been much lower than Iraq. In addition, in Kosovo, Clinton used this thing called 'the international community', which can be beneficial when conducting 'police actions'.
So, the military and nom-military forces in Iraq from Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, Tonga, the UK, and the Ukraine are not an "international community."
But Clinton! First he assembled Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia into a partnership that involved rich guys in suits arguing about stuff while thousands died. They around and did nothing for years while over a quarter million more people were slain. Finally the United Nations heads in with the "international community" and brokers a cease fire that almost immediately breaks down and the bloodshed resumes. Sounds like Israel in the 1940's and 1950's, huh?
FEMA did so well in Florida because they were, well, f'n embarrassed by Louisana (one n, thanks). In the case of LA, when your state is so devastated that the local infrastructure collapses, you have a right to expect federal help. There are documented cases where FEMA told police officers in various parts of LA to *email* them requests for help, when police stations and power stations were completely flooded and useless. Good job Brownie!
You have the right to expect federal help, but not 24 hours later. The federal government can't produce an armpit fart in under six days of paperwork and discussion. The local infrastructure didn't just break down, it cut tail and run, then went on TV whining that nobody was helping. There's no question that the federal response was sluggish and inadequate, but the local government didn't even follow it's own plan. Brownie was indeed a hapless cronie with no business being in his business.
Blowing the cover of a CIA agent because you're pissed that they uncovered one of your major lies for going to war, understandable
We don't know that. That's what you want to believe happened. I'm reserving judgment on this until Fitzgerald's report is done.
FYI, Bush != Conservative.
I agree, but I can't figure out what he is.
You may be insightful, but you're also incorrect.
You left out the screed about how "ideas don't have owners" and why our entire intellectual property system is broken and anybody creative who defends it is a millionaire sellout jerk RIAA clone trooper.
Translation from Slashbot into English:
I like Sid and his games and I'm pissed off that he cares about making money off his innovation instead of blindly embracing open source like I do. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. One more person I can't respect.
Dude, seriously. If I was in his shoes and had my career aspirations, bankroll, retirement, and basically every financial aspect of my life hinging upon the legal protection of what amount to ideas, I'd wouldn't even be THIS evasion about it. I'd be saying something like, "Are you seriously asking me what I think of people who take my ideas and produce half-assed clones of them that they distribute for free while I'm trying to run a company that feeds six dozen developer's families?"
Insert cliched rebuttal about how ideas don't have owners here.
The (supposed) purpose of American government is to protect freedom, not regulate. Government oversight is necessary specifically to ensure that nobody - not a private citizen, a foreign power, or the government itself, trods upon that freedom. Sounds great, we don't always succeed, but I think the long term our bad but corrected decisions get corrected.
The ultimate proof of anarchy in action. Companies that try to control the users are beaten by those that provide open access.
Sounds more like a free market in action.
Companies that want to break free from the global structure will anger their users who want access to anyone else. Verizon could separate their phone network completely but its in their best interest to communicate with their competition.
Adam Smith referred to this as mutual gain. The baker is baking bread because he can sell it and it serves his own interests. We win because we can buy it, and it serves ours. A fundamental principle of capitalism is that two people can both engage in a business relationship or transaction for completely self-serving reasons, and both come out getting what they wanted. A free market makes this arrangement possible; laws and limited oversight make it probable (e.g., when one side of the other violates this principle by breaking the market, for example by stealing something, or by price fixing, our laws get involved to reset the balance).
The market thrives on giving people what they want, not what somebody thinks they ought to want, the reality of limited resources means that not everybody has equal access to those things. That's a defining characteristic of capitalism, and really, of liberty. That each individual may make a choice and deal with the consequences. When your decisions don't matter because somebody has removed or adjusted consequences, either good or bad, you can reach a point where your freedom is only an illusion, in the Classsical sense. You appear to have choices but your decisions are irrelevent. Indeed, you don't really have choices at all, as all decisions lead to the same outcome. This is one of the reasons I distrust collectivist economies.