let it suffice to say that the rest of the world has a bit different view of your army. And of your country. I am a Canadian and I motorcycle tour the US frequently, and I have always been treated with hospitality. I like Americans. The Dutch people to this day honor US military for liberating their country in WWII. The original joke was not bad, let's not get carried away here.
Maybe Americans are better hosts than patrons; I don't know.
They are not universally liked, however. In some parts of the world, in fact, they are not liked at all.
I suggest we stop here, though; this has all the potential to turn into a flamefest, which I wouldn't like in the least.
1. You can think what you want, but can you really argue that the US Army is a quality force? "Best trained" as the OP said is a little presumptuous. Israel does a damn fine job, for example.
A well-trained force? Sure.
Best in the world? I wouldn't really know, and I don't really care.
2. It should be noted that you most likely live in an allied state (either a NATO country or one in the western hemisphere) OR an enemy/former-enemy state like the old soviet bloc.
If you live under the latter, well, I understand why you'd say such a thing.
However, if you live in the former, please consider this: The US has, for 50 years, guaranteed your safety. It may not seem like much to you. But please, consider it: We've made a treaty that says that if you're attacked by nuclear weapons that we would consider that an attack upon our own soil and retaliate as necessary.
Since the USA is not the only country in the NATO with nuclear weaponry, do keep in mind that each of the other countries in the NATO has said absoutely the same thing.
Frankly, if my country is attacked with nuclear weaponry, I don't give jack shit how you will retaliate; I'll have been incinerated and/or irradiated to the degree of absolute apathy by that point.
Furthermore, during the Cold War, it seems to me that you benefited way more from that treaty; the USSR was more likely to nuke you than us. With several European nations armed with nuclear weaponry, they were much less likely to try anything.
I don't believe in altruism in high politics; if it hadn't benefitted you and you primarily, you wouldn't have signed the treaty. Case in point: Tokyo Treaty.
BTW, your either-or logic is severely flawed: I was born in Yugoslavia, which has since fallen apart in a nasty little bunch of nasty little wars. We were neither in the Allied nor in the Soviet block, and Croatia is only now about to enter NATO. Probably.
Yugoslavia was Non-Aligned, which I still consider the best position in the dick-measuring contest you had with the Russians.
In other words, we, the American People, would deliberately involve ourselves in full nuclear exchange just to protect you and your countrymen.
Oh, puh-lease.
It's so sad to encounter people who so fervently believe their own propaganda.
I lived through a war.
However, I lived in the capital, which was only a target of several air raids.
Some of my friends survived regular bombings day after day, night after night; some of them had their parents and other relatives killed; some were re-settled or lived in camps.
Do you think my feelings about the war are as deep and as strong as theirs?
I'm pretty anti-war and anti-military myself, for various reasons, but I will never ever try to imagine I can feel as deeply about it as they do.
As for financing your education... people do what they can. Or what they have to. I refuse to judge their choices as long as they act humane.
In Yugoslavia there used to be something called ORA(s), which is an acronym I can't readily translate, but which included very large groups of young people doing some pretty hard jobs for a period of time, e.g. (rail)roadbuilding.
This is a form of service I can subscribe to and would actually like to see re-instated in Croatia. For one, if high-school kids today just picked up the trash arund their schools and rebuilt the demolished bus stops, they would be less prone to littering and demolishing them all over again. IMO, of course.
There are fast-mutating viruses appearing in our military that are becoming antibiotic resistant 100 times faster than expected.
Well, what little I can recall from my primary school biology classes, viral diseases are not treated with antibiotics anyway.
Antibiotics work against bacteria; viruses are best combatted with vaccines, i.e. with prevention. That's why there is no cure for the flu, but you can get inocculated.
If they abhor it so much, why the HELL did they VOLUNTEER to do it?
Well, first of all, you only get to abhor the war as much when you've actually participated in one. Or four.
Furthermore, some people join up in order to finance their education, hoping to hell there would never be a war they would have to fight in.
Then again, as a Croatian citizen, I know fairly well what kind of people also joins the military and fights in wars.
You get all kinds, and thus all generalizations are false.
Humor of all kinds (satire included) needs to have an element of truth in it to be funny. In other words, in order to find his "joke" funny, you would have to believe (on some level) that the US military really DOES go out and commit atrocities on a regular basis.
Actually, no, you would not.
You would merely have to know enough history to know that the modus operandi described in my post has been characteristic for invading armies since the invention of armies.
Then you would have to notice that I actually implied that American soldiers were kind of wusses for not raping and pillaging, since all they really do is jack off to porn.
The rest of your post I would rather not comment on in great detail; let it suffice to say that the rest of the world has a bit different view of your army. And of your country.
Any one of the geeks here could pass it with one hand tied under the desk.
Yes, but we geeks have had lots of practice doing things one-handed, with the other hand tied up with something else under the desk.
Really, it would almost be unfair advantage.
Ok...I'm a bit confused. How does one get a virus just playing a DVD???
It isn't an executable...just a bunch of vob files really isn't it? How does one get a virus by playing a simple DVD?
How did Sony's music CDs infect people's computers with the infamous rootkit?
Just because.vob files are not executable themselves, it doesn't mean that you can't include an autorun.inf that will wreak havoc on your Windows install.
You know, I'm fairly certain (at least I hope so) that you're either joking or just being a troll (in which case, I'm falling directly into your trap),
FWIW, the part that offended you was mostly a joke.
but as (maybe one of the few) people on this site that were also previously in the military, I'm just about as offended as humanly possible at your comment above.
Now you just flatter me. I didn't even mention many things that would offend a much greater number of people, but which would not be funny in the least.
Not everyone that goes into the military is a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, and quite a few of us are above average in terms of intelligence.
I know quite a number of people of various IQ levels who've been to war. IQ and the ability to commit a war crime are not that related that I'd consider that comment as any kind of explanation.
And their war was much closer to home than yours.
I spent 6 years in the Navy, and I (nor anyone I knew) didn't shoot, rape OR pillage anyone.
Yeah, I've heard quite a lot about seamen.
Sorry, but you really walked into that one.;)
On a site like this one, where people from the outside would presume everyone is a pasty and pimply 34 year old living in their parent's basement, I really would expect (just a little) a little more tolerance and less assumption from the people involved.
Don't take it all so seriously; beneath the irritating tone of my post there is some relatively sound biology.
Previously, at least soldiers could count on running around, meeting interesting people, shooting them and raping their women.
Of course, often that also meant some kind of medical treatment afterwards, usually including some nasty shots of penicillin, but that was a small price to pay for the vast spread of one's genetic material.
Nowadays, the only virus you can get as a soldier infects your computer while you jack off to porn?
Really, they shouldn't have gone all the way to Iraq for that.
Although I know/. is full of gurus that know everything about computer, I for one, believe that not everyone has to. Even though I know is important, I can't complain if my dad or my mom don't fully understand what the OS does for them, and I won't expect them to go mess with the/etc files either. And I don't expect them to read a confusing literature as the one provided in some manuals.
A computer is a bit more complex than, say, a car. Yet we systematically educate people who want to drive, but not the people who want to use a computer.
Yes, a computer is just a tool. But it is not a mere hammer.
I gave my father both Windows and Linux. That forced him to learn.
He'd started from scratch; now I have to find some time to teach him some database stuff.
I must say I'm quite proud of him.
I can't name a single significant open source project that originated as an OS X-only application but now runs on Linux, for example.
Um... Transmission?
It's only the best BitTorrent client I've ever used, and now it has become the default client in Ubuntu. Though AFAICT the Mac version is still superior.
Basically, your whole post can be summed up in one single sentence:
"If you want stability, use Debian."
Of course everything has quirks and bugs, but there are bugs and then there are bloody cockroaches. And Debian is usually free of cockroaches.
(Gentoo and OS X user here, BTW)
[The Hitler Youth] was the best propoganda machine Hitler had because it recruited complete loyalty and subscription to Nazism from a very young age. And you think that makes it different from the BSA? That's so cute.
Replace "Nazism" with "Neo-conservatism" and watch the shit stick.
It took me a while to figure out where the fuck the Business Software Alliance figured in all this...
Still, you present the typical American view on economy and resources, which makes Americans so well-liked throughout the world... why economize when you can spend more? You used to be well-known for that stance in autmobile industry, now it shows in electric power... I don't understand why is it so hard to save energy that every other option must be exhausted first?
More power plants - sure, why not. But just because people can't economize... no. Learn to manage the resources you have; they are not that scarce, you are just wasteful.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe Americans are better hosts than patrons; I don't know.
They are not universally liked, however. In some parts of the world, in fact, they are not liked at all.
I suggest we stop here, though; this has all the potential to turn into a flamefest, which I wouldn't like in the least.
A well-trained force? Sure.
2. It should be noted that you most likely live in an allied state (either a NATO country or one in the western hemisphere) OR an enemy/former-enemy state like the old soviet bloc. If you live under the latter, well, I understand why you'd say such a thing. However, if you live in the former, please consider this: The US has, for 50 years, guaranteed your safety. It may not seem like much to you. But please, consider it: We've made a treaty that says that if you're attacked by nuclear weapons that we would consider that an attack upon our own soil and retaliate as necessary.Best in the world? I wouldn't really know, and I don't really care.
Since the USA is not the only country in the NATO with nuclear weaponry, do keep in mind that each of the other countries in the NATO has said absoutely the same thing.
Frankly, if my country is attacked with nuclear weaponry, I don't give jack shit how you will retaliate; I'll have been incinerated and/or irradiated to the degree of absolute apathy by that point.
Furthermore, during the Cold War, it seems to me that you benefited way more from that treaty; the USSR was more likely to nuke you than us. With several European nations armed with nuclear weaponry, they were much less likely to try anything.
I don't believe in altruism in high politics; if it hadn't benefitted you and you primarily, you wouldn't have signed the treaty. Case in point: Tokyo Treaty.
BTW, your either-or logic is severely flawed: I was born in Yugoslavia, which has since fallen apart in a nasty little bunch of nasty little wars. We were neither in the Allied nor in the Soviet block, and Croatia is only now about to enter NATO. Probably.
In other words, we, the American People, would deliberately involve ourselves in full nuclear exchange just to protect you and your countrymen.Yugoslavia was Non-Aligned, which I still consider the best position in the dick-measuring contest you had with the Russians.
Oh, puh-lease.
It's so sad to encounter people who so fervently believe their own propaganda.
I lived through a war.
However, I lived in the capital, which was only a target of several air raids.
Some of my friends survived regular bombings day after day, night after night; some of them had their parents and other relatives killed; some were re-settled or lived in camps.
Do you think my feelings about the war are as deep and as strong as theirs?
I'm pretty anti-war and anti-military myself, for various reasons, but I will never ever try to imagine I can feel as deeply about it as they do.
As for financing your education... people do what they can. Or what they have to. I refuse to judge their choices as long as they act humane.
In Yugoslavia there used to be something called ORA(s), which is an acronym I can't readily translate, but which included very large groups of young people doing some pretty hard jobs for a period of time, e.g. (rail)roadbuilding.
This is a form of service I can subscribe to and would actually like to see re-instated in Croatia. For one, if high-school kids today just picked up the trash arund their schools and rebuilt the demolished bus stops, they would be less prone to littering and demolishing them all over again. IMO, of course.
Well, what little I can recall from my primary school biology classes, viral diseases are not treated with antibiotics anyway.
Antibiotics work against bacteria; viruses are best combatted with vaccines, i.e. with prevention. That's why there is no cure for the flu, but you can get inocculated.
Well, first of all, you only get to abhor the war as much when you've actually participated in one. Or four.
Furthermore, some people join up in order to finance their education, hoping to hell there would never be a war they would have to fight in.
Then again, as a Croatian citizen, I know fairly well what kind of people also joins the military and fights in wars.
You get all kinds, and thus all generalizations are false.
Actually, no, you would not.
You would merely have to know enough history to know that the modus operandi described in my post has been characteristic for invading armies since the invention of armies.
Then you would have to notice that I actually implied that American soldiers were kind of wusses for not raping and pillaging, since all they really do is jack off to porn.
The rest of your post I would rather not comment on in great detail; let it suffice to say that the rest of the world has a bit different view of your army. And of your country.
Yes, but we geeks have had lots of practice doing things one-handed, with the other hand tied up with something else under the desk.
Really, it would almost be unfair advantage.
It isn't an executable...just a bunch of vob files really isn't it? How does one get a virus by playing a simple DVD?
How did Sony's music CDs infect people's computers with the infamous rootkit?
Just because .vob files are not executable themselves, it doesn't mean that you can't include an autorun.inf that will wreak havoc on your Windows install.
FWIW, the part that offended you was mostly a joke.
but as (maybe one of the few) people on this site that were also previously in the military, I'm just about as offended as humanly possible at your comment above.Now you just flatter me. I didn't even mention many things that would offend a much greater number of people, but which would not be funny in the least.
Not everyone that goes into the military is a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, and quite a few of us are above average in terms of intelligence.I know quite a number of people of various IQ levels who've been to war. IQ and the ability to commit a war crime are not that related that I'd consider that comment as any kind of explanation.
I spent 6 years in the Navy, and I (nor anyone I knew) didn't shoot, rape OR pillage anyone.And their war was much closer to home than yours.
Yeah, I've heard quite a lot about seamen.
Sorry, but you really walked into that one. ;)
On a site like this one, where people from the outside would presume everyone is a pasty and pimply 34 year old living in their parent's basement, I really would expect (just a little) a little more tolerance and less assumption from the people involved.Don't take it all so seriously; beneath the irritating tone of my post there is some relatively sound biology.
With Norton, you'll still get infected, but the system will slow down just enough that a DVD movie becomes a slideshow.
But seriously, what is the world coming to?
Previously, at least soldiers could count on running around, meeting interesting people, shooting them and raping their women.
Of course, often that also meant some kind of medical treatment afterwards, usually including some nasty shots of penicillin, but that was a small price to pay for the vast spread of one's genetic material.
Nowadays, the only virus you can get as a soldier infects your computer while you jack off to porn?
Really, they shouldn't have gone all the way to Iraq for that.
You're lucky, and you don't even realize that.
Once when your luck runs out, you'll see what I mean.
Nice troll.
Well-written, well thought-out.
A computer is a bit more complex than, say, a car. Yet we systematically educate people who want to drive, but not the people who want to use a computer.
Yes, a computer is just a tool. But it is not a mere hammer.
I gave my father both Windows and Linux. That forced him to learn.
He'd started from scratch; now I have to find some time to teach him some database stuff.
I must say I'm quite proud of him.
... gritting his teeth?
I'd rather guess, even incorrectly, than have a C3P0 in my room.
I wouldn't have a moment's peace.
.... that this site has already succumbed to the dark side !You're overreacting.
It only uses Flash, not Silverlight.
What, no hologram projections?
I think I'll pass.
I think the title says it all.
Carry on, this is not the post you are looking for.
Um... Transmission?
It's only the best BitTorrent client I've ever used, and now it has become the default client in Ubuntu. Though AFAICT the Mac version is still superior.
Basically, your whole post can be summed up in one single sentence:
"If you want stability, use Debian."
Of course everything has quirks and bugs, but there are bugs and then there are bloody cockroaches. And Debian is usually free of cockroaches.
(Gentoo and OS X user here, BTW)
It took me a while to figure out where the fuck the Business Software Alliance figured in all this...
More accurately, it used to be known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
I don't think many further explanations are necessary.
Still, you present the typical American view on economy and resources, which makes Americans so well-liked throughout the world... why economize when you can spend more? You used to be well-known for that stance in autmobile industry, now it shows in electric power... I don't understand why is it so hard to save energy that every other option must be exhausted first?
More power plants - sure, why not. But just because people can't economize... no. Learn to manage the resources you have; they are not that scarce, you are just wasteful.