By the way - thanks for pointing me to that link in your sig. I never fully understood what all the fuss was about POWs in Vietnam, but it makes it a little clearer now. For what it's worth - the NV had all the reasons in the world to withhold some prisoners, and the US government had all opportunities to leave them behind.
Odds are, the stories are true. I think this will go down as one of the darkest actions of the US government.
I wouldn't consider armed militias a functioning government. These militias are causing trouble, but they are a far cry from providing an alternative to the government sanctioned by the US military.
What you would get is the same thing as in Iraq: some "restless" areas that occasionally get "pacified" via massive military incursions. Peace might only be temporary and tenuous, but Iraq is still a single country.
And California apparently is covered for 99.73% percent of its population. A few other states have similar distributions, even though they aren't %100 covered geographically.
Have you ever tried to work on home construction with the metric system? It's just like the imperial system, because you either measure things out directly, or you use fractions as derived by geometric methods.
Yes, easily manipulatable numbers are good. Base 10 is no better than base 12 when it comes to geometric relationships, but far easier when it comes to numeric relationships.
And seriously? Using computers for figuring out how to center a window frame in the metric system? I'll suspect you've never done this, because the same methods you use to do it in the imperial system work in the metric system (Hint: it generally involves a long string that may or may not be marked at regular intervals).
10 only has the factors 2(very useful) and 5 (mostly useless except for stuff that arises directly or indirectly from its role in our base number)
I think you grossly underestimate the usefulness of a factor of 5 when the base is 10. It's actually far more useful than 4, which is just 2*2, and also far more useful than 3, which is non-trivial to computer for large numbers. Quick - what's 387 divided 5? Divided by 3?
12 is an idiotic system to work with if your day-to-day base is 10. Standardize on either, but mixing them is just stupid.
The target of Android is technically not the end-user. The target are the phone-makers. Google wants to ensure that there is something out there that will always be able to run Google Apps.
Actually, I think it's a brilliant idea. However, it will never see the light of day, as it would require an open market for bandwidth - which doesn't exist.
The remote-controlled bombing drones are not the problem: the military found out that one of the advantages of the drone, the control or recording of the bomb right up until impact, has the most psychological impact. A jet pilot gets to a coordinate, drops the cargo, and scurries out of there. The drone-operator gets to see what he/she it - which can be ugly on occasion.
But point taken on the robotic armies. If you don't sacrifice anything in war, you will not consider it a last resort anymore.
Damn - that's one hell of a concept. I have to admit, I don't see a downside to it. Just like there aren't any more railroad crossings where a little guy runs out and moves the barriers up and down each time a train comes by, there's no reason to manually dock train cars at rest for the entire trip.
I'd also love to see this applied to cars, but it would actually be easier to implement on trains: - single, dedicated tracks already exist - trains are already centrally monitored and controlled - trains are already electronically controlled for a large portion of the maneuvers
It would work awesomely in japan, and even on the coasts in the US, which are basically one long, narrow corridor.
I've been playing since the Atari 2600 games. My favorite game? Battle tank, against my friend who owned the Atari. I've pretty much played every game type since then. But there are two trends I noticed in my gaming: - time to game has gone down steadily. - tolerance for internet asshattery has gone down as well. - more and more people game.
The result? Gaming is now a social activity for me. My favorite moments are when my friends and I sit around a table and play some random WC3 mod or beat each other up in a game of VF5 or Halo. I still play single-player games, and I still play network games. But the #1 thing I look at in games is how well it will work with friends in the same room.
Do you hear that, Blizzard? No LAN play might look like a good idea, but you're completely ignoring the current social trends. It's indeed possible to play everything over the internet - but the fun factor of playing L33tH4x0r666 over my internet connection pales in comparison to the fun factor of beating my buddy in Halo. Or crushing them in Starcraft. If you truly want to make the best multiplayer experience, include LAN play. It's a must.
You forgot one thing: sometimes, a problem needs to be addressed immediately. And sometimes, the problem that needs to be addressed immediately cannot be solved completely in the required timeframe. That's when incremental approaches are useful. Remember the bail-out? Something needed to be done right there and then, or we were looking at another Great Depression. The plan everyone agreed on sucked, only incrementally solved the problem, but it gave everyone time to solve the underlying issue.
Here's the other problem you're overlooking: if no one is spending money on resolving a problem, then there is no problem. End of story. The corollary though is that if anyone spends any money resolving a problem - well, by definition, it is. And there is significant benefit to be had from being the first to identify a potential problem. You're either first to market with a solution, or you head off a real problem and reduce total cost later.
In other words, your summary is correct in its individual statements. However, your conclusion is completely wrong, as it misses the benefits that come from pre-emptive action.
After all, they didn't arrest, because he didn't present a threat. And he didn't. So it's a bit difficult to say that the system failed, based on this story.
However, it's interesting to see exactly how little actual security there is at the airport. Bruce is right - the only thing new is better cockpit doors and passengers who'd rather die than get high-jacked.
Very liberal-minded, indeed: he only wants to execute those dissenters who are vocal about their dissent.
Learn to read. Vocal dissent != enemy or threat to Islam. Unless you have some supporting evidence that that's what was meant.
Let me clarify here: I meant criminal, and punishable by corporal punishment (up to death), not by some ethereal Hell in the afterlife. I can live with the latter.
I didn't know that moderate Islam required that. Got some support for that notion? Malaysia doesn't execute adulterers, Morocco doesn't, Turkey doesn't.
As for your quote about al-Qimni, you're again conflating "radical Islamists" and "most Muslims". Look. I'm all for an open debate. However, you're defining most Muslims to be radical Islamists, which renders the entire discussion pointless. You keep redefining what you're asking for, all with the goal to get answers that match your current bias. That's not a discussion, that's an echo chamber.
Bleah. It's people like you who make me think that the "Culture War" is actually not far away. Not because of Radical Islamists, but because the other side is just as irrational in its assessment of the actual threat.
1) Personally? I'd like to introduce you to some of my friends. Sadly, you don't seem to know enough Muslims. 2) Sheik Tantawi 3) Adultery is not a punishable? I'd dare you to find one RELIGION where that's not punishable (and no, Hedonism doesn't count). 4) I've got a few more: Sayyid al-Qimni, Abd-al-Karim, Ridwan al-Sayyid.... a quick google brings up plenty of moderate Muslim scholars who aren't considered apostate by most other Muslims. They are, of course, apostates by the standard of radical Fundamentalists, but that's not what we're talking about, are we? Unless, of course, you're arguing that the majority of Muslims are radical Fundamentalists. In which case, I can't help you.
Being offended is not the same as lynching someone. Furthermore, the people being offended were polite in their requests. This brings us to your larger point: the fear that someone, somewhere, might do something stupid because of it. See the distinction? SOMEONE might be doing something stupid. Not "the followers of the supposed 'religion of peace'". Your argument is nothing but basic flamebait - in quite the literal sense, sadly. You might have knowledge of theological texts, but your knowledge of conflict resolution is exactly zero.
For someone to use the term/b/tard, you'd have to have spent a significant amount of time there. Nice going.
The point is not to distract from a problem. The point is to point out that the fundamental problem is not the text, but the people. And unless you understand that, you will not be able to deal with Islamic extremists.
See below. The point is that this is completely counterproductive, and doesn't help with the current problem. As a matter of fact, the only thing that this approach of "Religion of peace - *snicker*" helps with is stoking the fires of culture wars.
And if you follow theological discussions about the Q'ran, you'd know that it works the same exact way. The Q'ran is no worse than the Bible, and Islam is no worse than Christianism. What matters, however, is what PEOPLE do with those directives. Demonizing a religion won't help with dealing with people.
The point is that posts like Moryath's are designed with one single goal in mind: to demonstrate that Islam is violent by nature, and antagonistic to Christianity.
Posting excerpts from the bible with similar injunctions demonstrates that Christianity is similar to Islam in that respect, and that it therefore does not follow that all Muslims are violent extremists. Because if that were true, all Christians would be violent extremists.
It's the old beam-in-the-eye approach. Don't bitch about someone else's holy texts if yours aren't that clean either.
Couple of things to keep in mind: 1) Your post was off-topic. Nowhere in the original request was there a threat, a promise of a threat or anything that would indicate violence. This means that there was no reason to post the neo-con mantra that Islam is violent by nature.
2) This leads to the question of why you posted that refrain. If snippets of violence are common in other mainstream religions, why are they noteworthy in the Q'ran? If you're interested in pointing out violence in general, your post is singularly narrow-minded. If you're interested in pointing out where Islamist jihadists get their justification from - duh. They've been telling you this for years.
This means your post is either redundant, too narrow to be useful, off-topic - or it was done to stoke the holy fires of religious warfare. Nice going.
As opposed to the Bible? Seriously, this line of argument is crap. "Evil is as Evil does", or something to that effect. The bible has its share of slay them all, sleeping with your daughters and subhuman people. It boils down to what people do with it. And the vast majority of the 2 billion+ Muslims ARE peaceful.
Not anymore. This was true about a year to two ago, but most laptops have come down tremendously in price. Check out for example a Lenovo T500. Same exact specs, with the exception of an ATI Radeon instead of the NVIDIA, and CCFL backlights instead of LED. LED backlights are available on the 14 inch model of the Lenovo, which is even cheaper.
The Apple is $2000, the Lenovo $1419.
That's a significant markup for what is essentially OSX, LED backlighting and a different video card.
I bought an iMac 2 years ago when it was the same price as a similarly specced PC.I love it, but it's not good enough to make me spend 30% more.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way - thanks for pointing me to that link in your sig. I never fully understood what all the fuss was about POWs in Vietnam, but it makes it a little clearer now. For what it's worth - the NV had all the reasons in the world to withhold some prisoners, and the US government had all opportunities to leave them behind.
Odds are, the stories are true. I think this will go down as one of the darkest actions of the US government.
I wouldn't consider armed militias a functioning government. These militias are causing trouble, but they are a far cry from providing an alternative to the government sanctioned by the US military.
What you would get is the same thing as in Iraq: some "restless" areas that occasionally get "pacified" via massive military incursions. Peace might only be temporary and tenuous, but Iraq is still a single country.
And California apparently is covered for 99.73% percent of its population. A few other states have similar distributions, even though they aren't %100 covered geographically.
Have you ever tried to work on home construction with the metric system? It's just like the imperial system, because you either measure things out directly, or you use fractions as derived by geometric methods.
Yes, easily manipulatable numbers are good. Base 10 is no better than base 12 when it comes to geometric relationships, but far easier when it comes to numeric relationships.
And seriously? Using computers for figuring out how to center a window frame in the metric system? I'll suspect you've never done this, because the same methods you use to do it in the imperial system work in the metric system (Hint: it generally involves a long string that may or may not be marked at regular intervals).
I think you grossly underestimate the usefulness of a factor of 5 when the base is 10. It's actually far more useful than 4, which is just 2*2, and also far more useful than 3, which is non-trivial to computer for large numbers. Quick - what's 387 divided 5? Divided by 3?
12 is an idiotic system to work with if your day-to-day base is 10. Standardize on either, but mixing them is just stupid.
The target of Android is technically not the end-user. The target are the phone-makers. Google wants to ensure that there is something out there that will always be able to run Google Apps.
Actually, I think it's a brilliant idea. However, it will never see the light of day, as it would require an open market for bandwidth - which doesn't exist.
The remote-controlled bombing drones are not the problem: the military found out that one of the advantages of the drone, the control or recording of the bomb right up until impact, has the most psychological impact. A jet pilot gets to a coordinate, drops the cargo, and scurries out of there. The drone-operator gets to see what he/she it - which can be ugly on occasion.
But point taken on the robotic armies. If you don't sacrifice anything in war, you will not consider it a last resort anymore.
Damn - that's one hell of a concept. I have to admit, I don't see a downside to it. Just like there aren't any more railroad crossings where a little guy runs out and moves the barriers up and down each time a train comes by, there's no reason to manually dock train cars at rest for the entire trip.
I'd also love to see this applied to cars, but it would actually be easier to implement on trains:
- single, dedicated tracks already exist
- trains are already centrally monitored and controlled
- trains are already electronically controlled for a large portion of the maneuvers
It would work awesomely in japan, and even on the coasts in the US, which are basically one long, narrow corridor.
I've been playing since the Atari 2600 games. My favorite game? Battle tank, against my friend who owned the Atari. I've pretty much played every game type since then. But there are two trends I noticed in my gaming:
- time to game has gone down steadily.
- tolerance for internet asshattery has gone down as well.
- more and more people game.
The result? Gaming is now a social activity for me. My favorite moments are when my friends and I sit around a table and play some random WC3 mod or beat each other up in a game of VF5 or Halo. I still play single-player games, and I still play network games. But the #1 thing I look at in games is how well it will work with friends in the same room.
Do you hear that, Blizzard? No LAN play might look like a good idea, but you're completely ignoring the current social trends. It's indeed possible to play everything over the internet - but the fun factor of playing L33tH4x0r666 over my internet connection pales in comparison to the fun factor of beating my buddy in Halo. Or crushing them in Starcraft. If you truly want to make the best multiplayer experience, include LAN play. It's a must.
Interesting.
You forgot one thing: sometimes, a problem needs to be addressed immediately. And sometimes, the problem that needs to be addressed immediately cannot be solved completely in the required timeframe. That's when incremental approaches are useful. Remember the bail-out? Something needed to be done right there and then, or we were looking at another Great Depression. The plan everyone agreed on sucked, only incrementally solved the problem, but it gave everyone time to solve the underlying issue.
Here's the other problem you're overlooking: if no one is spending money on resolving a problem, then there is no problem. End of story. The corollary though is that if anyone spends any money resolving a problem - well, by definition, it is. And there is significant benefit to be had from being the first to identify a potential problem. You're either first to market with a solution, or you head off a real problem and reduce total cost later.
In other words, your summary is correct in its individual statements. However, your conclusion is completely wrong, as it misses the benefits that come from pre-emptive action.
After all, they didn't arrest, because he didn't present a threat. And he didn't. So it's a bit difficult to say that the system failed, based on this story.
However, it's interesting to see exactly how little actual security there is at the airport. Bruce is right - the only thing new is better cockpit doors and passengers who'd rather die than get high-jacked.
Learn to read. Vocal dissent != enemy or threat to Islam. Unless you have some supporting evidence that that's what was meant.
I didn't know that moderate Islam required that. Got some support for that notion? Malaysia doesn't execute adulterers, Morocco doesn't, Turkey doesn't.
As for your quote about al-Qimni, you're again conflating "radical Islamists" and "most Muslims". Look. I'm all for an open debate. However, you're defining most Muslims to be radical Islamists, which renders the entire discussion pointless. You keep redefining what you're asking for, all with the goal to get answers that match your current bias. That's not a discussion, that's an echo chamber.
Bleah. It's people like you who make me think that the "Culture War" is actually not far away. Not because of Radical Islamists, but because the other side is just as irrational in its assessment of the actual threat.
I'll make you a deal.
You stop talking about Muslims as if they were a homogeneous hive mind, and I'll stop considering you a flame-stoking bigot.
1) Personally? I'd like to introduce you to some of my friends. Sadly, you don't seem to know enough Muslims.
2) Sheik Tantawi
3) Adultery is not a punishable? I'd dare you to find one RELIGION where that's not punishable (and no, Hedonism doesn't count).
4) I've got a few more: Sayyid al-Qimni, Abd-al-Karim, Ridwan al-Sayyid.... a quick google brings up plenty of moderate Muslim scholars who aren't considered apostate by most other Muslims. They are, of course, apostates by the standard of radical Fundamentalists, but that's not what we're talking about, are we? Unless, of course, you're arguing that the majority of Muslims are radical Fundamentalists. In which case, I can't help you.
Looks like we're agreeing on this. Funny. :)
Being offended is not the same as lynching someone. Furthermore, the people being offended were polite in their requests. This brings us to your larger point: the fear that someone, somewhere, might do something stupid because of it. See the distinction? SOMEONE might be doing something stupid. Not "the followers of the supposed 'religion of peace'". Your argument is nothing but basic flamebait - in quite the literal sense, sadly. You might have knowledge of theological texts, but your knowledge of conflict resolution is exactly zero.
For someone to use the term /b/tard, you'd have to have spent a significant amount of time there. Nice going.
The point is not to distract from a problem. The point is to point out that the fundamental problem is not the text, but the people. And unless you understand that, you will not be able to deal with Islamic extremists.
See below. The point is that this is completely counterproductive, and doesn't help with the current problem. As a matter of fact, the only thing that this approach of "Religion of peace - *snicker*" helps with is stoking the fires of culture wars.
And if you follow theological discussions about the Q'ran, you'd know that it works the same exact way. The Q'ran is no worse than the Bible, and Islam is no worse than Christianism. What matters, however, is what PEOPLE do with those directives. Demonizing a religion won't help with dealing with people.
That's the point.
The point is that posts like Moryath's are designed with one single goal in mind: to demonstrate that Islam is violent by nature, and antagonistic to Christianity.
Posting excerpts from the bible with similar injunctions demonstrates that Christianity is similar to Islam in that respect, and that it therefore does not follow that all Muslims are violent extremists. Because if that were true, all Christians would be violent extremists.
It's the old beam-in-the-eye approach. Don't bitch about someone else's holy texts if yours aren't that clean either.
Nice repost. That's not the point.
Couple of things to keep in mind:
1) Your post was off-topic. Nowhere in the original request was there a threat, a promise of a threat or anything that would indicate violence. This means that there was no reason to post the neo-con mantra that Islam is violent by nature.
2) This leads to the question of why you posted that refrain. If snippets of violence are common in other mainstream religions, why are they noteworthy in the Q'ran? If you're interested in pointing out violence in general, your post is singularly narrow-minded. If you're interested in pointing out where Islamist jihadists get their justification from - duh. They've been telling you this for years.
This means your post is either redundant, too narrow to be useful, off-topic - or it was done to stoke the holy fires of religious warfare. Nice going.
As opposed to the Bible? Seriously, this line of argument is crap. "Evil is as Evil does", or something to that effect. The bible has its share of slay them all, sleeping with your daughters and subhuman people. It boils down to what people do with it. And the vast majority of the 2 billion+ Muslims ARE peaceful.
Not anymore. This was true about a year to two ago, but most laptops have come down tremendously in price. Check out for example a Lenovo T500. Same exact specs, with the exception of an ATI Radeon instead of the NVIDIA, and CCFL backlights instead of LED. LED backlights are available on the 14 inch model of the Lenovo, which is even cheaper.
The Apple is $2000, the Lenovo $1419.
That's a significant markup for what is essentially OSX, LED backlighting and a different video card.
I bought an iMac 2 years ago when it was the same price as a similarly specced PC.I love it, but it's not good enough to make me spend 30% more.
It worked the same way for Doom and the orignal Warcraft. I know that that approach sold a few copies on its own.