I can't quite imagine why you are so supprised? ADSL run's on copper lines, phone lines, from your house to the local DSLAM there needs to be a pair of copper lines, in all places those lines are owned by someone, meaning the DSL provider has to pay the line owner to setup and access the DSLAM in the local exchange. Now if Sprint owned the local pstn network, you wouldnt have a problem, they would just say; "Oh no phone line, we'll just add $xx to you bill then, okay?"
What 99.99% likely happened with your old DSL provider is they just connected the copper pair on your behalf with 'Ameritech' and added that cost to your bill. Many business-grade DSL providers here in Australia do that, but no home dsl providers, simply because of the admin overhead which you can bet the isp doesnt want!
If this is stopping you from signing up for ADSL, I would say you need to rethink!
The idea of Quantum Crypto is to send the key (one-time-pad to your actual message) in a secure fashion. You *know* if the key was viewed by a third party therefore you can be sure if it is secure.
If you send your secret message using the quantum crypto, then sure you know if it has been seen but do you want to send your attack plans in an open format? In that case your enemy won't care so much if you know he know's, the fact is he has what he was after!
I think if you thought about that a little more you would relise that the reason most bombs dropped on every second third world country has a "Made in the USA" sticker on it, is because America sell's a hell of a lot of weapons, many to people at special prices because it furthers their own needs..
A hilarious article I read just recently, about how the Israelis sold many weapons to the Bosnian serbs illegally (as did the the US, useful when you're enforcing the embargo isn't it?), of course Bosina/Serbia being a mix of all races many of the Bosnian Jews living in Muslim-Bosnia were quite supprised to see the unexploded cluster bombs in their backyard with jewish markings on them! hah, how ironic..
Ergh, the Sydney monorail system, *shudder*.. It was built back in '88 i think for the centenary celebrations, and to "alleviate" Sydney's traffic. Unfortunatly the second part was a joke, each carriage fits about 10 people and there are only 4 carriages per train! (That LosVegas one apparently will have 600 per train!)
Unbelievable, but of course it's just another ridiculous tourist attraction, as most of the stops are just tourist stops anyway..
Add that to our half city covered subway, 1/4 city light rail, and you get the idea of how crazy the city planners are here!:)
The trend today is tunnels, they are building at least two long road tunnels under the city in addition to an existing two already operational tunnels! What next I wonder?:)
Thank god someone else out there has some idea! There is an almost scary number of potential hot-spots in Asia, for Japan, Nth Korea may be the closest, but China certainly isnt a "friendly neighbour"..
Otherwise though, an interesting point you reminded me of, one of the requirements of a neutral country is a HUGE military! Obviously if you depend on someone else to defend you then you're far from neutral by any definition. This is the reason why Switzerland has one of the largest standing army's in the world, can't remember the exact figure but it's in the hundreds of thousands! (Compared to the US of about 400,000)
It's funny that people target SUV's so much, why bother, the fact is as fuel prices rise exponentially, SUV running costs will too, just like the rest of our cars.
Fuel prices will keep rising, no matter what 'secret reserve' the next fool in power decides to drill, that is the thing that will force changes, and the reason people will love it even if whatever alternate fuel costs +50% of todays fuel costs.
Re:War is a thing of the past..
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
Sure about that? Let's add up the body counts from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan (the Soviet invasion specifically) and the various regional wars that ended up being almost all surrogates (Latin America and Africa were thick with these)
True, but not quite what I was refering too, as bad as it may sound (at least too someone involved in any of those conflicts) all of those conflicts combined dont nearly compare to WWII, my point was despite many 'regional' conflits be they heavily influenced by the us and ussr, direct conflict between the US and USSR never broke out.
That's where this 'age of optimism' that I mentioned came from, the fact that the Cold war supprised everyone and didn't kill us all, was and is a very good reason to be optimistic.
Unfortunatly yes, I didnt go into Sept.11, it's a very different world, but some things are the same. Post-sept11 we still dont have to fear thermonuclear war, at least not on a world stage, which would undoubtedly kill us all. China I think is overestimated in threat, sure they have very different belief's to the rest of us. But I personnally think it's all very much like the Cold War situation, in which the only catalyst for the Cold War itself was paranoia, and fear of the otherside. As it supprisingly turned out just like us, the Soviets didnt want to die in a nuclear blast, and I'd say neither do the Chineese.:) Hopefully we all learned something there.
Of course we are far from absoluted peace and happyness, with no fear of terrorism or war, but compare our situation now to our ancestors living only 60 or 80 years ago..
Europe's 're-entry' into the world power scene will not be a military one, at least not in the near future. More importantly though it will be increasingly more an 'Economic Power' and in the future that likely will mean a lot more. When you look at the numbers, population, technology (largly shared), etc Europe's position is one which could well surpass America in the not too distant future.
Re:Military threats promote innovation
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The important thing is the reason, military competition is the reason why war promotes technological advances, be it World War or a Cold war, it's all the same, to varying degree's..
Economic competition has the same effect, to varying degree's, some area's such as space have at present limited commercial applications, for example with the Moon and Mars, there is no financial return on such ventures. At least not yet. So it takes government spending, mainly for propaganda purposes to reach them, meaning that in todays world, we're a long way from putting a man on Mars.
Throughout history war has benifited many things, such as for one peace itself! Without certian major wars, the relative peace we now how enjoy would not exist. War may be an absolutly terrible thing, but it's benifits are very noticable it has shaped the world we now live in, the question is when war is made obsolete (through the lack of significant threats) what will drive us?
Of course the answer is simple, it is the same thing that WWI and WWII were fought over, that is democracy, or more specifically capitalism. In years past it was the merchants and growing middle (working) class of Europe and America that created the revolution that replaced Monarch's with Democracies, those newly rich democracies then were forced to defend against the old ways of the Empires and Dictatorships! Hence very vaguly WWI / WWII.
The new world we live in, one of capitalism ruleing, will mean a much slower path to certain advances. Space exploration will only take off (excuse the pun) when the econmic need is found, say new resources, living space, etc.
Pure exploration right now unfortunatly is on hold...:(
War is a thing of the past..
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
World War at least, it may have taken us a few thousand years but we have 'grown' to a stage where war is a thing of the past. There will always be small conflicts here and there, such as terrorists with a grudge but that's another issue altogether. World war is a thing of history, we learnt many good lessons, and for once there is real reason to be optimistic.
Wheather you agree that it's a good thing that the US is the last one standing (i have my reservations) it is undoubtedly a good thing that the current situation came about through political change and revolution, not war.
But a paradox exists, why then are so many countries dramatically _increasing_ defence budgets? America is by a _significant_ amount, down here in Australia we are again by a big amount again, at least by our standards. So are the rest of the world players, you name them, Europe, China and even Japan! Just this week I read some comments from a Japaniese politician that Japan needs to counter China's threat, even if that means becoming a Nuclear power! That's a long way off thank god, but back to my point, Japan and Germany for sake, are abolishing their post-wwii consitutional renouncment of war!
All of this in such an age of optimism?
To empahasis my previous post now (the subject), think about it all you westerners (like me), could you even stomach a world war? What _possible_ reason could that be tolerated by the people of the world? Lets assume for a moment democracy works. (which i think it does)
It really makes you wonder.. Perhaps we are un-learning some things, important things, like how to contain regional conflicts, (think middle east), perhaps some things we never learnt..
ps. Yes i know money is needed to fight new forms of terrorism, and as this topic is about space war, etc, but with 10 gazzilion dollars worth of space weapons, does the US really need a 400,000 (or whatever) man army??
Re:Need Digital TV Support for ... Downunder?
on
PVR For Linux
·
· Score: 1
How about Australia? Anyone? I know digital cable/sat is close to non-existant down here, I'm probably the only one with DigitalCable (it's still a trial service), but what is involved here? I wish so much i could get a Tivo or similar device, but nothing of its kind exists down under, how can I help to make this one work here??
Actually more to the point where can i find hacking info on digital set-top boxes, if the thing that i have has not only a console port but a network port it has to have some 'unused' potential.:)
ISP support I dount think should be about 'software' on a cd, I have had countless problems trying to install for clients most of these cd's. Especially the stubborn one's that _insist_ that their version of IE must be installed, even when it is older than the system version, and WILL cause windows to crash!! Argh!? But having said that for 90% of users it is good and helpfull, that's not the issue though.
What ISP's need to ammend is the steady decline in _SUPPORT_ sure 90% of problems can be fixed with a reboot and giggling the farken cables, but what really bites me is the times when that is not enough, its like they have a check list for every call; 1. Reboot, try again. 2. Check connections, phone number. 3. Return PC to manufacturer, hang up.
One time I had the displeasure to deal with Support from our local quasi-monopoly CableISP (Telstra, Australia) for one of my clients with a Business LAN user account (cheap connection upto 8 users), they had just had their cable modem replaced after the old one died, after working fine for 8months mind you. Now the new modem would only assign 4 IP's (via DHCP) to the first four pc's on (I figured it only accepted 4 MAC address's). The first phone call went like this: Me:"... we just had a modem replaced, but it does not work correctly, only allowing 4 users" Support:"Sorry, we dont support network connections, call your Network Engineer." Me:"I _am_ the network engineer! Im telling you there is a fault in _your_ modem, you are charging my client for eight users, but it will only accept four!" Support:"Im sorry we dont support networks." Me:"Can I speak to someone else about getting the modem replaced." Support:"No im sorry, try to reboot and reset the modem and it should be okay. Bye."
Argh! Luckily when i called back in 5 minutes i got someone with a clue! Who understood that i knew a heck of a lot more than him, and as soon as I explained it again he organised for another modem to be installed ASAP. Which fixed the problem.
If ISP's don't do something about helping the 5% of calls that _need_ more than the standard checklist of solutions, then their support will just continue to get worse. Just think about it, those "support people" there now who have next to no clue, are training the next support people who will have even less of a clue!
Ouch, the analogy you made there says so much about the true 'insightfullness' of your other comments. But of course it all depends on what you believe.. Why is it that now everything can so easily degenerates into a US vs the_rest type argument?? (wondering out loud)
Lets not go there (it's always a dead end), are you saying that Impartiality is a _bad_ thing for a news agency??? I guess it is when you only want to hear one side of the story..
In my opinion the best coverage of Sept11 was from _anyone_ but an American news company. But that's because Im Australian, and I dont like too be fed everyone else's 'spin', as you put it.
This/. article has to be one of the worst applications of geek "thinking"!
How about be a _responsible_ owner, and give your cat a bell AND lock it inside at night so it can't go out and kill every second native bird in your neighbourhood!
It's not the microwave leakage, otherwise if you did sit in front of the thing you would warm up nicely. It's the RF interference caused by having such a huge RF (microwave) generator within close proximity.
That metal grill you see on the front window of the microwave is all that's needed to keep in those pesky micro-waves.:)
The Linksys WAP11 has a maximum user limit of 64 i believe. But even at that level sharing a measly 11Mb is quite an ask.. A better way to do it, although mose expensive, is by using 2 or 3 AP's (Linksys's) each with rather than one Omni Antenna a sector antenna, giving either 120deg or 180deg depending on how many. This also gives you more speed (well less shared bandwith) to play with as each ap is connected togethere by a switch / hub.
Why does someone always have to point out the obvious? If you want large boards go buy any one of the 4 gazzilion standard ATX boards out there? But for those of use who like to use our pc's differently we have great things like this! Personnaly i have been looking for something like this for a compact DivX/dvd/cd player, ie whole pc being no bigger than half your standard VCR/DVD.
It wasnt necessarily a case of misunderstanding you, more-so just me using that as an example in my opinion. History is written by the victors, so it is very hard to determine the accuracy of as you said Quote:"United States... was incalculably less aggressive and expansionist than the USSR" it depends who's calculating doesnt it?
Just about every example of Soviet aggression i have read about, I could think of a similar counter example. For example, the Cuban missile crisis, I can sure understand the fear Americans felt knowing there were ICBM's only a few hundred kilometers away, but think about how the citizens of Moscow or St.Petersburg felt *every single day*, with WestGermany and the first line of US ICBM's virtually right next door.:(
Trust me i have many suggestions, and love an argument but i was doing that particular response at the same time as two others.:)
The problem (like most) needs to be fought at the roots, you cant stop a man from killing you by killing his brother/sister/auntie, but if you educate his bother/sister/auntie, then _maybe_ you wont have to stop him. They will!
That's an overly simiplistic example. Dont take as is. It's an extremely long and rocky road to gain someone's trust, but that's not needed here. Perhaps all that is needed is to show the vast majority that your not trying to contol them or threaten them?
You need to relise the causes of these problems. Why do many muslims (certainly not confinded to muslims tho) hate americans? What can be done to limit that hatered.
Sept 11 was done by a small minority willing to do such bad. Not even in the muslim world would a vast majority of people want to see thousands of innocent deaths as such. (although for other reasons they may think differently) But if you went and nuked say, Syria or Iraq, that small minority would suddenly get a lot bigger!
What are you going to do then? Nuke the entire Middle east? Athough some people may believe this is the answer, that is the reason we have governments of proportional representation. (to filter out such views)
It's an extremly complex issue, one of the best things we can do is learn from history. This is not the first time when a situation such as this has existed. (in reference to the radicals vs. america)
You and many others apparently dont understand the real difference here. There is a significant change in policy, now the US may be ready to use nukes as just another weapon. This is a _huge_ change.
I too dont want to be harsh but you need to read between the lines a little more. (try a non US news source for example, see what i mean)
Slashdot Mirror
I can't quite imagine why you are so supprised? ADSL run's on copper lines, phone lines, from your house to the local DSLAM there needs to be a pair of copper lines, in all places those lines are owned by someone, meaning the DSL provider has to pay the line owner to setup and access the DSLAM in the local exchange. Now if Sprint owned the local pstn network, you wouldnt have a problem, they would just say; "Oh no phone line, we'll just add $xx to you bill then, okay?"
What 99.99% likely happened with your old DSL provider is they just connected the copper pair on your behalf with 'Ameritech' and added that cost to your bill. Many business-grade DSL providers here in Australia do that, but no home dsl providers, simply because of the admin overhead which you can bet the isp doesnt want!
If this is stopping you from signing up for ADSL, I would say you need to rethink!
You're joking right?
:)
The lack of ":)" make me think you need to go look up humour in a dictionary!
I've been dying to find out what this one cartoon was back in the early eightes, for the life of me i cant remember, but it was my favourite of all!
:)
It was a story about this huge ship lost in space and basically the ship was a big cannon, which obviously blew big holes in things?
I really can't remember much i must have been only 4 or 5 back then! Can anyone help??
The idea of Quantum Crypto is to send the key (one-time-pad to your actual message) in a secure fashion. You *know* if the key was viewed by a third party therefore you can be sure if it is secure.
If you send your secret message using the quantum crypto, then sure you know if it has been seen but do you want to send your attack plans in an open format? In that case your enemy won't care so much if you know he know's, the fact is he has what he was after!
I think if you thought about that a little more you would relise that the reason most bombs dropped on every second third world country has a "Made in the USA" sticker on it, is because America sell's a hell of a lot of weapons, many to people at special prices because it furthers their own needs..
A hilarious article I read just recently, about how the Israelis sold many weapons to the Bosnian serbs illegally (as did the the US, useful when you're enforcing the embargo isn't it?), of course Bosina/Serbia being a mix of all races many of the Bosnian Jews living in Muslim-Bosnia were quite supprised to see the unexploded cluster bombs in their backyard with jewish markings on them! hah, how ironic..
Ergh, the Sydney monorail system, *shudder*.. It was built back in '88 i think for the centenary celebrations, and to "alleviate" Sydney's traffic. Unfortunatly the second part was a joke, each carriage fits about 10 people and there are only 4 carriages per train! (That LosVegas one apparently will have 600 per train!)
:)
:)
Unbelievable, but of course it's just another ridiculous tourist attraction, as most of the stops are just tourist stops anyway..
Add that to our half city covered subway, 1/4 city light rail, and you get the idea of how crazy the city planners are here!
The trend today is tunnels, they are building at least two long road tunnels under the city in addition to an existing two already operational tunnels! What next I wonder?
Thank god someone else out there has some idea! There is an almost scary number of potential hot-spots in Asia, for Japan, Nth Korea may be the closest, but China certainly isnt a "friendly neighbour"..
Otherwise though, an interesting point you reminded me of, one of the requirements of a neutral country is a HUGE military! Obviously if you depend on someone else to defend you then you're far from neutral by any definition. This is the reason why Switzerland has one of the largest standing army's in the world, can't remember the exact figure but it's in the hundreds of thousands! (Compared to the US of about 400,000)
It's funny that people target SUV's so much, why bother, the fact is as fuel prices rise exponentially, SUV running costs will too, just like the rest of our cars.
Fuel prices will keep rising, no matter what 'secret reserve' the next fool in power decides to drill, that is the thing that will force changes, and the reason people will love it even if whatever alternate fuel costs +50% of todays fuel costs.
True, but not quite what I was refering too, as bad as it may sound (at least too someone involved in any of those conflicts) all of those conflicts combined dont nearly compare to WWII, my point was despite many 'regional' conflits be they heavily influenced by the us and ussr, direct conflict between the US and USSR never broke out.
That's where this 'age of optimism' that I mentioned came from, the fact that the Cold war supprised everyone and didn't kill us all, was and is a very good reason to be optimistic.
Unfortunatly yes, I didnt go into Sept.11, it's a very different world, but some things are the same. Post-sept11 we still dont have to fear thermonuclear war, at least not on a world stage, which would undoubtedly kill us all. China I think is overestimated in threat, sure they have very different belief's to the rest of us. But I personnally think it's all very much like the Cold War situation, in which the only catalyst for the Cold War itself was paranoia, and fear of the otherside. As it supprisingly turned out just like us, the Soviets didnt want to die in a nuclear blast, and I'd say neither do the Chineese.
Of course we are far from absoluted peace and happyness, with no fear of terrorism or war, but compare our situation now to our ancestors living only 60 or 80 years ago..
Europe's 're-entry' into the world power scene will not be a military one, at least not in the near future. More importantly though it will be increasingly more an 'Economic Power' and in the future that likely will mean a lot more. When you look at the numbers, population, technology (largly shared), etc Europe's position is one which could well surpass America in the not too distant future.
The important thing is the reason, military competition is the reason why war promotes technological advances, be it World War or a Cold war, it's all the same, to varying degree's..
:(
Economic competition has the same effect, to varying degree's, some area's such as space have at present limited commercial applications, for example with the Moon and Mars, there is no financial return on such ventures. At least not yet. So it takes government spending, mainly for propaganda purposes to reach them, meaning that in todays world, we're a long way from putting a man on Mars.
Throughout history war has benifited many things, such as for one peace itself! Without certian major wars, the relative peace we now how enjoy would not exist. War may be an absolutly terrible thing, but it's benifits are very noticable it has shaped the world we now live in, the question is when war is made obsolete (through the lack of significant threats) what will drive us?
Of course the answer is simple, it is the same thing that WWI and WWII were fought over, that is democracy, or more specifically capitalism. In years past it was the merchants and growing middle (working) class of Europe and America that created the revolution that replaced Monarch's with Democracies, those newly rich democracies then were forced to defend against the old ways of the Empires and Dictatorships! Hence very vaguly WWI / WWII.
The new world we live in, one of capitalism ruleing, will mean a much slower path to certain advances. Space exploration will only take off (excuse the pun) when the econmic need is found, say new resources, living space, etc.
Pure exploration right now unfortunatly is on hold...
World War at least, it may have taken us a few thousand years but we have 'grown' to a stage where war is a thing of the past. There will always be small conflicts here and there, such as terrorists with a grudge but that's another issue altogether. World war is a thing of history, we learnt many good lessons, and for once there is real reason to be optimistic.
Wheather you agree that it's a good thing that the US is the last one standing (i have my reservations) it is undoubtedly a good thing that the current situation came about through political change and revolution, not war.
But a paradox exists, why then are so many countries dramatically _increasing_ defence budgets? America is by a _significant_ amount, down here in Australia we are again by a big amount again, at least by our standards. So are the rest of the world players, you name them, Europe, China and even Japan! Just this week I read some comments from a Japaniese politician that Japan needs to counter China's threat, even if that means becoming a Nuclear power! That's a long way off thank god, but back to my point, Japan and Germany for sake, are abolishing their post-wwii consitutional renouncment of war!
All of this in such an age of optimism?
To empahasis my previous post now (the subject), think about it all you westerners (like me), could you even stomach a world war? What _possible_ reason could that be tolerated by the people of the world? Lets assume for a moment democracy works. (which i think it does)
It really makes you wonder.. Perhaps we are un-learning some things, important things, like how to contain regional conflicts, (think middle east), perhaps some things we never learnt..
ps. Yes i know money is needed to fight new forms of terrorism, and as this topic is about space war, etc, but with 10 gazzilion dollars worth of space weapons, does the US really need a 400,000 (or whatever) man army??
How about Australia? Anyone? I know digital cable/sat is close to non-existant down here, I'm probably the only one with DigitalCable (it's still a trial service), but what is involved here? I wish so much i could get a Tivo or similar device, but nothing of its kind exists down under, how can I help to make this one work here??
:)
Actually more to the point where can i find hacking info on digital set-top boxes, if the thing that i have has not only a console port but a network port it has to have some 'unused' potential.
ISP support I dount think should be about 'software' on a cd, I have had countless problems trying to install for clients most of these cd's. Especially the stubborn one's that _insist_ that their version of IE must be installed, even when it is older than the system version, and WILL cause windows to crash!! Argh!? But having said that for 90% of users it is good and helpfull, that's not the issue though.
What ISP's need to ammend is the steady decline in _SUPPORT_ sure 90% of problems can be fixed with a reboot and giggling the farken cables, but what really bites me is the times when that is not enough, its like they have a check list for every call;
1. Reboot, try again.
2. Check connections, phone number.
3. Return PC to manufacturer, hang up.
One time I had the displeasure to deal with Support from our local quasi-monopoly CableISP (Telstra, Australia) for one of my clients with a Business LAN user account (cheap connection upto 8 users), they had just had their cable modem replaced after the old one died, after working fine for 8months mind you. Now the new modem would only assign 4 IP's (via DHCP) to the first four pc's on (I figured it only accepted 4 MAC address's). The first phone call went like this:
Me:"... we just had a modem replaced, but it does not work correctly, only allowing 4 users"
Support:"Sorry, we dont support network connections, call your Network Engineer."
Me:"I _am_ the network engineer! Im telling you there is a fault in _your_ modem, you are charging my client for eight users, but it will only accept four!"
Support:"Im sorry we dont support networks."
Me:"Can I speak to someone else about getting the modem replaced."
Support:"No im sorry, try to reboot and reset the modem and it should be okay. Bye."
Argh! Luckily when i called back in 5 minutes i got someone with a clue! Who understood that i knew a heck of a lot more than him, and as soon as I explained it again he organised for another modem to be installed ASAP. Which fixed the problem.
If ISP's don't do something about helping the 5% of calls that _need_ more than the standard checklist of solutions, then their support will just continue to get worse. Just think about it, those "support people" there now who have next to no clue, are training the next support people who will have even less of a clue!
Ouch, the analogy you made there says so much about the true 'insightfullness' of your other comments. But of course it all depends on what you believe.. Why is it that now everything can so easily degenerates into a US vs the_rest type argument?? (wondering out loud)
Lets not go there (it's always a dead end), are you saying that Impartiality is a _bad_ thing for a news agency??? I guess it is when you only want to hear one side of the story..
In my opinion the best coverage of Sept11 was from _anyone_ but an American news company. But that's because Im Australian, and I dont like too be fed everyone else's 'spin', as you put it.
After you have spent countless moments explaining to someone how to double-click, then come back and say that! :)
So true!
/. article has to be one of the worst applications of geek "thinking"!
This
How about be a _responsible_ owner, and give your cat a bell AND lock it inside at night so it can't go out and kill every second native bird in your neighbourhood!
It's not the microwave leakage, otherwise if you did sit in front of the thing you would warm up nicely. It's the RF interference caused by having such a huge RF (microwave) generator within close proximity.
:)
That metal grill you see on the front window of the microwave is all that's needed to keep in those pesky micro-waves.
Damn, where are those mod points when you need them..
The Linksys WAP11 has a maximum user limit of 64 i believe. But even at that level sharing a measly 11Mb is quite an ask.. A better way to do it, although mose expensive, is by using 2 or 3 AP's (Linksys's) each with rather than one Omni Antenna a sector antenna, giving either 120deg or 180deg depending on how many. This also gives you more speed (well less shared bandwith) to play with as each ap is connected togethere by a switch / hub.
Why does someone always have to point out the obvious? If you want large boards go buy any one of the 4 gazzilion standard ATX boards out there? But for those of use who like to use our pc's differently we have great things like this! Personnaly i have been looking for something like this for a compact DivX/dvd/cd player, ie whole pc being no bigger than half your standard VCR/DVD.
It wasnt necessarily a case of misunderstanding you, more-so just me using that as an example in my opinion. History is written by the victors, so it is very hard to determine the accuracy of as you said Quote:"United States ... was incalculably less aggressive and expansionist than the USSR" it depends who's calculating doesnt it?
:(
Just about every example of Soviet aggression i have read about, I could think of a similar counter example. For example, the Cuban missile crisis, I can sure understand the fear Americans felt knowing there were ICBM's only a few hundred kilometers away, but think about how the citizens of Moscow or St.Petersburg felt *every single day*, with WestGermany and the first line of US ICBM's virtually right next door.
Trust me i have many suggestions, and love an argument but i was doing that particular response at the same time as two others. :)
The problem (like most) needs to be fought at the roots, you cant stop a man from killing you by killing his brother/sister/auntie, but if you educate his bother/sister/auntie, then _maybe_ you wont have to stop him. They will!
That's an overly simiplistic example. Dont take as is. It's an extremely long and rocky road to gain someone's trust, but that's not needed here. Perhaps all that is needed is to show the vast majority that your not trying to contol them or threaten them?
You need to relise the causes of these problems. Why do many muslims (certainly not confinded to muslims tho) hate americans? What can be done to limit that hatered.
Sept 11 was done by a small minority willing to do such bad. Not even in the muslim world would a vast majority of people want to see thousands of innocent deaths as such. (although for other reasons they may think differently) But if you went and nuked say, Syria or Iraq, that small minority would suddenly get a lot bigger!
What are you going to do then? Nuke the entire Middle east? Athough some people may believe this is the answer, that is the reason we have governments of proportional representation. (to filter out such views)
It's an extremly complex issue, one of the best things we can do is learn from history. This is not the first time when a situation such as this has existed. (in reference to the radicals vs. america)
You and many others apparently dont understand the real difference here. There is a significant change in policy, now the US may be ready to use nukes as just another weapon. This is a _huge_ change.
I too dont want to be harsh but you need to read between the lines a little more. (try a non US news source for example, see what i mean)
Obviously you prefer to just throw insults rather than actually think and agrue something like this.
Read any of the hundreds of probably redundant posts as to why this really is a bad thing(tm).