In a few years, your.net skills will not be marketable...A monopoly strongly tends to...
I think you do not understand the meaning of "monopoly". If Microsoft had a monopoly, we would all be using Windows 95 and Visual Basic..Net was Microsoft's competitive response to Java, and.Net and Java continue to aggressively compete with each other.
That is why most "democratic" nations are actually variations on a theme called "Republic". That is the democractic will of the masses is constrained by a set of rules, such as the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, and the like. This prevents (at least in theory) tragic outcomes of the proverbial situation where 2 wolves and a sheep vote democratically on "what's for dinner?".
All of them are. A true democracy would be hell. If the U.S. were a true democracy, we would face a great danger of a vote for the complete withdrawl of troops from Iraq, which would be the beginning of World War III, and for which the Arab world would never forgive us. Instead we have leaders who are given the opportunity to actually study the situation, to talk to the Iraqi leaders, to visit Iraq, etc. So in a Republic what you get instead is the out-of-power party tapping into that sentiment, implying that they will get out of Iraq, but meanwhile assuring the Iraqi leaders that they will not. It's a good thing... or at least better than any alternative I can think of.
I spoke to a local lawyer about it who told me there was no recourse - iow, I couldn't sue the local police department for the damage caused.
You're misdirecting your anger. The police were doing their rightful job in investigating you. Nor would it be even remotely appropriate for the police to publicly declare the innocence of everyone they investigated and did not charge. Your "damages" from being investigated are the fault of your ex. If you really need to sue someone, sue her.
Yet for the last 30 years or so, the Republicans have been the undisputed champion of big wasteful government. The Democrats have consistently been better "Republicans" than the Republicans.
First of all, the Republicans only gained the power to pass budgets 12 years ago, and they gained it by telling the American people that they would introduce a Balanced Budget Amendment and a Line Item Veto, both of which the Democratic Party tried tell the American people would bring the End Of The World As We Know It, as if it were global warming.
After taking over, the Republicans passed the first fiscally responsible budget since the balanced budget of 1969, and Bill Clinton refused to sign it, shutting down the government instead. Clinton and the media successfully demonized Gingrich until he had to back down.
Nevertheless, just 4 years after taking over, the Republicans got through a balanced budget, and kept turning in surplusses until we went to war in 2001.
It's only because of the depths to which the Republican party has fallen, and sold out its core values, that the Democrats look fiscally responsible
No, it's only because the Democrats have been out of the legislature for 12 years that they look fiscally responsible.
authoritarian social policies of Midwest and Southern Republicans
Authoritarian?? Social conservatives are the opposite of authoritarian, as their highest goal is to return the control of social issues back to the peoples' representatives (where the Constitution put it in the first place), instead of the Supreme Court.
"Yeah, so they can enact authoritarian laws," you might say. But calling laws that say you can't kill human beings without a damn good reason, regardless of their stage of development, "authoritarian" is more than a little twisted.
But anyway, yes, when the libertarians and the religious right combine forces, we easily defeat socialism. But if you REALLY have your heart set on having the state officially celebrate your relationship with someone of the same sex, or multiples of the opposite sex, or any number of either sex of a different species, or what have you, then, well, I guess you can join the Democrats, and we can all live happily in the Workers' Socialist Republic of Unholy Unions.;-);-)
You criticize Verizon's decision of ending a business relationship which made them a conduit for a pederast sites ("what's a pederast, Walter"), because the pederast sites were "entirely legal". What the hell? Does that mean that if the sites was illegal you would approve? If so, you're saying that only the government has the right to make moral decisions, and you're a lunatic. You're probably actually saying that "all censorship is bad," (that is, that no one should make moral decisions about their actions, or business dealings), and the government shouldn't get involved either, and your "entirely legal" arguement was purely hypocritical....and in which case you're also a lunatic.
As for your (non-)question, no a common carrier doesn't give up its status by deciding which ISPs it's going to do business with.
Censorship is an ethical cancer. There can be no legitimate justification for it.
No, the idea that censorship is an ethical cancer, is an ethical cancer. Every individual and every corporation is responsible for their own moral and ethical behavior. If that means self-censorship, and that also means making moral decisions about who you enter into business relationships with (which you evidently call "censorship"). If that stops happening, it's the END of morality and ethics.
US has initiated a war of agression against Iraq. This was called a crime by United States and its allies during Nuremberg Trial after WWII.
There is no reasonable (or legal) measure by which the invasion was a "war of aggression".
Saddam had a WMD program before, and had used WMDs before. And he was trying to start up a new weapons program, and had just kicked out the weapons inspectors. He had repeatedly demonstrated that he would use such weapons against the U.S. and its allies at any opportunity, and without weapons inspectors there was no way to responsibly keep that threat in check. He was attacking our aircraft daily as we tried to enforce the U.N. no-fly zone. Aside from WMDs he had proven that he would do anything he could to harm the U.S. or its allies. The invasion was both a response to aggression and an act of self-defense. We could have done nothing, and that would surely have been more politically expedient, but it would have been foolish. It is impossible to rationally justify calling the invasion aggression on the part of the U.S.
Do you remember Colin Powel holding up supposed chemical weapon examples in front of the U.N.?....Did we pretty much lie to the world audience about our intentions? You betcha.
That's nothing but a political accusation, of which that there has never been any evidence, because it is simply not true.
We now know that Saddam was (in contradiction of Joe Wilson's claims) trying to get Uranium from Niger. While it's true that he hadn't made any progress since the first Gulf War, he was certainly trying. However he had convinced even his own generals that his WMD program was in full swing. And he convinced us too.
And although it naturally got very little coverage, we did recover WMD's from Iraq -- although they were the old rusty ones, not new ones.
You could start with aggression. Aggression is defined as invading another country.
So you think any invasion is illegal? Like the invasion at Normandy? If you look at Article 2, the idea of "aggression" has to do with the "first use" of force. Which certainly didn't happen in 2003.
Even if you believe that there should be no check on U.S. sovereignty, I think you could make good arguments that the war on Iraq broke many U.S. laws - the Constitution (declaration of war by congress and the questionable nature of the blank check written by Congress with the AUMF), the War Crimes Act, etc.
The Constitution doesn't say when or why Congress should declare war, only that it possesses that power. It also says that only the President has the power to command the military. There's no way you can logically make the leap that an invasion without a declaration of war is unconstitutional. I declaration of war is a political act not a military act.
I don't understand what you're saying about the AUMF... most of what it says is simply redundant with the Constitution, so I'm not sure how it could be unconstitutional. And I have no idea how you could possibly claim that the invasion violated the War Crimes Act.
The bit in the UN Charter that says that the only exception to peaceful resolution of conflicts is self defense when attacked by armed forces of another country, unless explicitly authorized by the Security Council. The UN charter IS international law.
The Iraqi armed forces had been attacking our aircraft for 10 years, as we enforced the U.N. no-fly zones. Although there are plenty of other arguments, this alone makes the above not apply.
You do remember that the Security Council decided against invading Iraq at the time, and that the US was condemned by the Security Council for its unilateral invasion, don't you? Oh, I guess you conveniently forgot.
No I remember. That doesn't make the invasion illegal. If it only revealed the depth of corruption of the UN, and their contempt for the U.S.
Did you also forget the protests all over the world?
Thus making it illegal??????
No one likes this war, especially not now since the conflict is dragging on and middle-eastern stability is worsening, not increasing. When will the US admit it screwed up - AGAIN?
No sane person likes war. The long term effect of the invasion will depend on whether or not the U.S. abandons what it started, as some are advocating. How "everyone" perceives the invasion and occupation is irrelevant to whether or not it was the right thing to do, and it's certainly irrelevant to whether or not it was illegal.
It's theatre. The court he was tried in has no legal standing over crimes that were perpetuated before the court was created. It was in every sense of the word a kangaroo court.
According to what does a court have to be created before the commission of the crimes that are tried in that court??????
He should have been tried in The Hague at the International Court of Justice.
The parties to the trial are the Iraqi People and Saddam et al. That has no business in an international court.
The problem with trying him there is that the US would lose control over the proceedings and would not be able to use the trial for their own political gain.
What evidence do you have that the U.S. had any control over the proceedings other than the efforts of the former Attorney General to undermine its credibility as defense counsel???
Saddam did things far worse than simply killing. His execution is an act of mercy for the millions of people who will continue to live in terror of him until he is dead.
Several minutes ago, I saw this picture [wikipedia.org] of him over on Wikipedia, and I just felt really, really sorry for him.
When I looked at the picture my thought was: I can imagine why she's so happy... she's the only girl in Baghdad who doesn't have to live it perpetual fear of getting raped by one of Saddam's sons.
This was a show trial. The US hand picked the judges and the sentence was a forgone conclusion.
"Hand-picked"? They help train new judges and they helped get rid of judges that were loyal to the Baathist regime. That's a bad thing?
Yes, the verdict was a forgone conclusion... because the guy slaughtered hundreds of innocent people from a village and made their widows and orphans bury them in secrecy and fear. And his defense was that it was his right to do it.
Will Saddam get a chance to talk about how he had US support during the war with Iran? I doubt it.
Huh? Why on earth would he want to talk about how the U.S. was nice to him before. He's gotten plenty of chance to talk, and he talks about how we're the evil invaders.
Saddam shouldn't be executed he should be kept alive in a cell for the rest of his life as a lesson for the Iraqi's to learn from.
As long as Saddam is alive, people will live in fear of him returning to power and exacting revenge on them. He needs to be executed.
Executing Saddam will only turn him into a martyr.
No one who rules by raw power and fear is ever turned into a martyr by execution. The followers of such are only following power itself, not some enduring philosophy.
I'm not saying for sure they timed it, because I just don't know. But I do know for sure that they could have waited 3 days and changed the whole image of the thing.
That presupposes that the Iraqi judges know that the U.S. is having congressional elections, which I don't know why they would. It's not like presidential election, in that the rest of the world doesn't really care about it.
Secondly, and more importantly, Iraqi judges should, and do, care about the credibility of their courts amongst Iraqis, not amongst Americans. Again I doubt most Iraqis know or care that there is about to be a vote in the U.S. It would only undermine the credibility of the Iraqi courts if they did things like changing the timing of thier actions because of U.S. elections.
First of all, why would any Iraqi know that there are congressional elections taking place in the U.S. Secondly, the person who outed the minister for buying meth (and allegedly, gay sex) SAID he was doing it to influence the elections. Most far-fetched of all, what kind of individual is going to switch which congressman he is going to vote for because of a predictable anouncement of a predictable verdict?
Not to mention the rather minor point that the US broke international law by invading Iraq in the first place.
I'm sorry, what law was that????
The law of not invading a country that is funnelling oil-for-food voucher proceeds to U.N. bigshots? Come on, spit it out! What is this law that we broke????
First, Vernor Vinge has a PhD in Computer Science. This obviously doesn't guarantee he can't be wrong, but to those commenters who said something like "these ideas are idiotic"... you've got an uphill battle to convince me that you're that much smarter than Vernor Vinge,
This just means that the guy has probably never developed code in a real live production environment.
If tuna fisherman could get $300 for every can of tuna they sold, I bet they'd be a lot more motivated to catch every last tuna they could find.
Unless he can't find enough tuna per day to feed his family, which would be the case if scarcity had driven tuna to $300/can. Tuna would be driven to a specialty market where you need to have special expensive tuna-finding equipment and gear to make it pay, and most fishers would move on to other species.
Example: Free market economics alone hasn't been enough to protect the African Elephant. If you took away those burdensome, meddling, bureaucratic government controls that protect the remaining ones, there is still enough demand for new, genuine ivory to doom the species.
This is true. However, this is very particular situation in that... 1. Ivory is rare thing of intrinsic value, like a precious metal; whereas tuna don't even taste very good unless their chopped up and mixed with mayo. 2. As very large animals, elephants have an extremely long reproductive cycle and don't maintain huge populations in any conditions. This makes it much more feasible for a bunch of yahoos to go out at kill them all before they could recover their numbers.
I'm not saying there's no place for political controls on commercial fishing, but it is a much different situation.
It galls me when people like yourself talk about how we don't need to worry about destroying resource X, because when it runs out we'll move to resource Y. Especially when that resource could be eternally productive, if people would just agree to live off the interest, instead of sucking it dry. We'll all be worse off when the fish are gone.
Despite the extremist language, no one is actually talking about the fish being gone. Fisheries "collapsing" means there's not enough to fish. (Or even just that there's a lot less than there used to be.) No one is talking about species going extinct. If you figure out a way to farm any of these species of fish they're all still there to capture are breed and raise your farm.
1.Sea life is dying faster than it is being replenished 2. The supply is finite Wouldn't it seem painfully obvious that we'll run out? Do you think they're really relying on the "argument from authority" fallacy?
No, it's neither obvious, or likely to be true. The lower the population of a species of fish becomes, the less it is fished. At some point it becomes an equilibrium, and the species is dying at the same rate it is being replenished.
More importantly, you have here scientists making statements that show a lack of scientific objectivity, and a desire to infulence political matters, and a headline they hoped to get in the papers. This is something worth studying, and I assume there are people who take science more serious doing so who we aren't hearing about.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you do not understand the meaning of "monopoly". If Microsoft had a monopoly, we would all be using Windows 95 and Visual Basic.
All of them are. A true democracy would be hell. If the U.S. were a true democracy, we would face a great danger of a vote for the complete withdrawl of troops from Iraq, which would be the beginning of World War III, and for which the Arab world would never forgive us. Instead we have leaders who are given the opportunity to actually study the situation, to talk to the Iraqi leaders, to visit Iraq, etc. So in a Republic what you get instead is the out-of-power party tapping into that sentiment, implying that they will get out of Iraq, but meanwhile assuring the Iraqi leaders that they will not. It's a good thing... or at least better than any alternative I can think of.
You're misdirecting your anger. The police were doing their rightful job in investigating you. Nor would it be even remotely appropriate for the police to publicly declare the innocence of everyone they investigated and did not charge. Your "damages" from being investigated are the fault of your ex. If you really need to sue someone, sue her.
First of all, the Republicans only gained the power to pass budgets 12 years ago, and they gained it by telling the American people that they would introduce a Balanced Budget Amendment and a Line Item Veto, both of which the Democratic Party tried tell the American people would bring the End Of The World As We Know It, as if it were global warming.
After taking over, the Republicans passed the first fiscally responsible budget since the balanced budget of 1969, and Bill Clinton refused to sign it, shutting down the government instead. Clinton and the media successfully demonized Gingrich until he had to back down.
Nevertheless, just 4 years after taking over, the Republicans got through a balanced budget, and kept turning in surplusses until we went to war in 2001.
So what exactly are you smoking???
No, it's only because the Democrats have been out of the legislature for 12 years that they look fiscally responsible.
Authoritarian?? Social conservatives are the opposite of authoritarian, as their highest goal is to return the control of social issues back to the peoples' representatives (where the Constitution put it in the first place), instead of the Supreme Court.
"Yeah, so they can enact authoritarian laws," you might say. But calling laws that say you can't kill human beings without a damn good reason, regardless of their stage of development, "authoritarian" is more than a little twisted.
But anyway, yes, when the libertarians and the religious right combine forces, we easily defeat socialism. But if you REALLY have your heart set on having the state officially celebrate your relationship with someone of the same sex, or multiples of the opposite sex, or any number of either sex of a different species, or what have you, then, well, I guess you can join the Democrats, and we can all live happily in the Workers' Socialist Republic of Unholy Unions.
You criticize Verizon's decision of ending a business relationship which made them a conduit for a pederast sites ("what's a pederast, Walter"), because the pederast sites were "entirely legal". What the hell? Does that mean that if the sites was illegal you would approve? If so, you're saying that only the government has the right to make moral decisions, and you're a lunatic. You're probably actually saying that "all censorship is bad," (that is, that no one should make moral decisions about their actions, or business dealings), and the government shouldn't get involved either, and your "entirely legal" arguement was purely hypocritical. ...and in which case you're also a lunatic.
As for your (non-)question, no a common carrier doesn't give up its status by deciding which ISPs it's going to do business with.
No, the idea that censorship is an ethical cancer, is an ethical cancer. Every individual and every corporation is responsible for their own moral and ethical behavior. If that means self-censorship, and that also means making moral decisions about who you enter into business relationships with (which you evidently call "censorship"). If that stops happening, it's the END of morality and ethics.
There is no reasonable (or legal) measure by which the invasion was a "war of aggression".
Saddam had a WMD program before, and had used WMDs before. And he was trying to start up a new weapons program, and had just kicked out the weapons inspectors. He had repeatedly demonstrated that he would use such weapons against the U.S. and its allies at any opportunity, and without weapons inspectors there was no way to responsibly keep that threat in check. He was attacking our aircraft daily as we tried to enforce the U.N. no-fly zone. Aside from WMDs he had proven that he would do anything he could to harm the U.S. or its allies. The invasion was both a response to aggression and an act of self-defense. We could have done nothing, and that would surely have been more politically expedient, but it would have been foolish. It is impossible to rationally justify calling the invasion aggression on the part of the U.S.
That's nothing but a political accusation, of which that there has never been any evidence, because it is simply not true.
We now know that Saddam was (in contradiction of Joe Wilson's claims) trying to get Uranium from Niger. While it's true that he hadn't made any progress since the first Gulf War, he was certainly trying. However he had convinced even his own generals that his WMD program was in full swing. And he convinced us too.
And although it naturally got very little coverage, we did recover WMD's from Iraq -- although they were the old rusty ones, not new ones.
So you think any invasion is illegal? Like the invasion at Normandy? If you look at Article 2, the idea of "aggression" has to do with the "first use" of force. Which certainly didn't happen in 2003.
The Constitution doesn't say when or why Congress should declare war, only that it possesses that power. It also says that only the President has the power to command the military. There's no way you can logically make the leap that an invasion without a declaration of war is unconstitutional. I declaration of war is a political act not a military act.
I don't understand what you're saying about the AUMF... most of what it says is simply redundant with the Constitution, so I'm not sure how it could be unconstitutional. And I have no idea how you could possibly claim that the invasion violated the War Crimes Act.
The Iraqi armed forces had been attacking our aircraft for 10 years, as we enforced the U.N. no-fly zones. Although there are plenty of other arguments, this alone makes the above not apply.
No I remember. That doesn't make the invasion illegal. If it only revealed the depth of corruption of the UN, and their contempt for the U.S.
Thus making it illegal??????
No sane person likes war. The long term effect of the invasion will depend on whether or not the U.S. abandons what it started, as some are advocating. How "everyone" perceives the invasion and occupation is irrelevant to whether or not it was the right thing to do, and it's certainly irrelevant to whether or not it was illegal.
According to what does a court have to be created before the commission of the crimes that are tried in that court??????
The parties to the trial are the Iraqi People and Saddam et al. That has no business in an international court.
What evidence do you have that the U.S. had any control over the proceedings other than the efforts of the former Attorney General to undermine its credibility as defense counsel???
Saddam did things far worse than simply killing. His execution is an act of mercy for the millions of people who will continue to live in terror of him until he is dead.
When I looked at the picture my thought was: I can imagine why she's so happy... she's the only girl in Baghdad who doesn't have to live it perpetual fear of getting raped by one of Saddam's sons.
I don't know. Let's find out.
"Hand-picked"? They help train new judges and they helped get rid of judges that were loyal to the Baathist regime. That's a bad thing?
Yes, the verdict was a forgone conclusion... because the guy slaughtered hundreds of innocent people from a village and made their widows and orphans bury them in secrecy and fear. And his defense was that it was his right to do it.
Huh? Why on earth would he want to talk about how the U.S. was nice to him before. He's gotten plenty of chance to talk, and he talks about how we're the evil invaders.
As long as Saddam is alive, people will live in fear of him returning to power and exacting revenge on them. He needs to be executed.
No one who rules by raw power and fear is ever turned into a martyr by execution. The followers of such are only following power itself, not some enduring philosophy.
That presupposes that the Iraqi judges know that the U.S. is having congressional elections, which I don't know why they would. It's not like presidential election, in that the rest of the world doesn't really care about it.
Secondly, and more importantly, Iraqi judges should, and do, care about the credibility of their courts amongst Iraqis, not amongst Americans. Again I doubt most Iraqis know or care that there is about to be a vote in the U.S. It would only undermine the credibility of the Iraqi courts if they did things like changing the timing of thier actions because of U.S. elections.
First of all, why would any Iraqi know that there are congressional elections taking place in the U.S. Secondly, the person who outed the minister for buying meth (and allegedly, gay sex) SAID he was doing it to influence the elections. Most far-fetched of all, what kind of individual is going to switch which congressman he is going to vote for because of a predictable anouncement of a predictable verdict?
I'm sorry, what law was that????
The law of not invading a country that is funnelling oil-for-food voucher proceeds to U.N. bigshots? Come on, spit it out! What is this law that we broke????
This just means that the guy has probably never developed code in a real live production environment.
Unless he can't find enough tuna per day to feed his family, which would be the case if scarcity had driven tuna to $300/can. Tuna would be driven to a specialty market where you need to have special expensive tuna-finding equipment and gear to make it pay, and most fishers would move on to other species.
This is true. However, this is very particular situation in that...
1. Ivory is rare thing of intrinsic value, like a precious metal; whereas tuna don't even taste very good unless their chopped up and mixed with mayo.
2. As very large animals, elephants have an extremely long reproductive cycle and don't maintain huge populations in any conditions. This makes it much more feasible for a bunch of yahoos to go out at kill them all before they could recover their numbers.
I'm not saying there's no place for political controls on commercial fishing, but it is a much different situation.
Despite the extremist language, no one is actually talking about the fish being gone. Fisheries "collapsing" means there's not enough to fish. (Or even just that there's a lot less than there used to be.) No one is talking about species going extinct. If you figure out a way to farm any of these species of fish they're all still there to capture are breed and raise your farm.
No, it's neither obvious, or likely to be true. The lower the population of a species of fish becomes, the less it is fished. At some point it becomes an equilibrium, and the species is dying at the same rate it is being replenished.
More importantly, you have here scientists making statements that show a lack of scientific objectivity, and a desire to infulence political matters, and a headline they hoped to get in the papers. This is something worth studying, and I assume there are people who take science more serious doing so who we aren't hearing about.
And you can also make rope out of it.