"In most civilized countries you can replace the government through a process known as an election. You guys should look into that. It might help."
I'm not commenting on the rights and wrongs of using Nasa's webspace, however this democratic argument isn't viable against the type of issue being discussed. In the UK the majority were against the war, yet the government was reelected after the event. The reason for this is simple. domestic issues always take priority of international ones in the democratic system, moreover elections are won/lost over a wide range of policy issues, so a single issue can very rarely unbalance a governement. The problem here is that the west is too keen to see democracy as a panacea for good governance which it isn't, nor is democracy in the UK or US ideal in any sense - it may be amongst the better implementations but no 2 party system can be perfect, with N issues at stake. Now if foreign policy was elected seperately to domestic, then the argument might have credence.
"The problem with your argument is that it can be used to justify any research no matter how hair brained. It could be used to justify research into perpetual motion machines or ID."
Not really thats why research proposals get generally peer reviewed - which isn't always an ideal process, but it does generally get the perpetual motion machines, I've discovered the ether, and CPT violating transportation devices type projects thrown out.
>>"So you say..." >Yes, I do. What do you say - I'm still waiting for some meaningful content and not just 13-year-old sarcasm.
I don't think so obviously, and you posted the amazingly generalized observation without much thought argument or justification - so quite franky the 13 year old sarcasm was from my angle quite appropriate.
>>"err..." >Is that the sound of your brain warming up? It's still cold.
Ah personal insult time, a good choice of response:) Again if there were no US umbrella to protect us from the evil communist regime we would all be dead meat by now? More probably if the US did not exist many of the semi-conflicts that occured in that time would not have and the cold war may very well not have been as serious as it was - your conjecturing an an alternative history and completely missing that the US was an *active* participant in that rather than a *passive* defender of The Rest Of The World^tm. Your comment drips with an arrogance which is in part why so many europeans have the feelings that they do.
>>"political prejudice here?" >Ah, your brain kicked in -
yep lets keep this on a personal level shall we.... > but it's still not really saying anything. Yes, I have political prejudices... you don't?
Of course I do, but I try not to project them by making wild sweeping generalisations about other nations decisions about how and where they spend their money. If the EU member like social programs, good on them - their happy, why are thei decisions a problem to you - unless of course they are 'evil socialists' which we all know is a close relative of communism, and not a viable form of democratic governance....
> Personally, I think that Europe has largely bankrupted itself with social programs, whereas the US > has bankrupted itself with military spending AND social programs.
You can think what you want, but as I said I think most Europeans are quite happy with the product they spent their money on. I didn't notice France being invaded yet so perhaps they got the balance right?
>>"Who incidentally look quite sensible with hindsight;)" >Cute, but no they don't. Their objection was that any use of military force is wrong - not that the intelligence was >faulty. One of these esteemed ladies also voted against the Afghan War, which is absurd even in hindsight.
Big generalisation. I know quite a lot of californians and quite a lot of Europeans. I've never met anyone who says "there is never circumstance that war is not the appropriate response" or a *very* small number of pacifists. What I have heard (at the time) are comments like;
"We will only make things worse with war" - turns out true "Is the evidence really there that there is a threat" - turns out true "Is it appropriate that the US leads the charge against the general consensus of the UN" "Hans Blix is the guy running the show and he says no and we should believe the proffesional not the politician"
where the contrary position as it reached my ears was something to do with US and UK quoting each others intelligence services (so that they don't take liability later when its found to be baloney) to trump up the severity of the 'threat' and patently false media shots associating 9/11 with Iraq leveraging the existing (well founded) anger in the US populace. So I think I'll stick to my position on that one thanks.
>>"I think you don't understand NC's motivation for his actions very well." >His motivations don't matter - the results of his actions do. He let a problem fester and ended up paying for it.
What you have to understand is that at that time there was no alliance. neither france nor the US had offered support and germany was strong. The 'result' of his actions - the important bit as you say - was that by the time Britain did get dragged in it was stronger (as you note), allied and the result was a win. The alternative was pro
>I didn't vote for the guy, but you are really pissing ME off.
Like we care?
>Europeans hold America to a higher standard than you do yourselves.
So you say...
>It must be nice to live under the military umbrella that the US has provided for you over the past 60 years
err...
> - makes it much easier to spend on lavish social programs, doesn't it?
political predjudice here?
>As an aside, do you really think that Bush is this one yahoo that operates independently? He is not - all three branches of
>government are controlled by his party. When he went to war in Iraq, he went with the blessing of nearly every member of congress >except for some wackos in California.
Who incidently look quite sensible with hindsight;)
>really care. Europeans are not very popular, especially when all we see is criticism from our "allies". One of the above comments >actually compares Bush to Hitler. Yeah, well I'd compare the attitude of most of Europe as that of Neville Chamberlain - eager to
>solve the world's ills peacefully until one day they wake up and their civilization is nearly gone. Just because you don't want
>to fight anyone doesn't mean that they don't want to fight you.
I think you don't understand NC's motivation for his actions very well.
thnx
Step 2: threatening peoples lives, plotting to kill people or destroy buildings, taking up arms against this country are all perfectly good reasons to have your "civil liberties" taken away. i strongly recommend you refrain from those activities, and you should be fine...
-> NO NO NO not without the due process of law. He is talking about people who were not afforded that. foreigners who take up arms against a nation are also subject to appropriate processes and conduct no matter what heinous crime you believe they commited.
The way this works is evolutionary and "ok sounding" tweaks to your rights that result in ambiguity that can be exploited by a potentially malicious government. In the UK we see introduction of laws that makes it illegal to voice certain opinions about terrorism. When Hitler comes to power after the next election, be sure that he will exploit the lack of definition of "terrorism", "encourage", and "glorify" in that legislation to use the *law* as a weapon against "undesirable" elements in society.
Step 3: your a nut...
nah - you just don't know enough history....
Hmm the BPI has my IP address, the ISP has my personal details. The ISP cannot provide my detail to the BPI due to the data protection act. How will the BPI *know* whether or not the ISP terminated my contract? If the ISP cannot inform the BPI in a reliable fashion that they did terminate a particular account (after all the IP changes and is dynamic), then why should the ISP bother to lose a customer?
SoM
If foo and bar are a collection of libraries and binaries, then this is a solved problem.
http://modules.sourceforge.net/ it really sounds like you are maintaing two OS images because you can't set LD_LIBRARY_PATH:)
-s
Slashdot Mirror
"In most civilized countries you can replace the government through a process known as an election. You guys should look into that. It might help."
I'm not commenting on the rights and wrongs of using Nasa's webspace, however this democratic argument isn't viable against the type of issue being discussed. In the UK the majority were against the war, yet the government was reelected after the event. The reason for this is simple. domestic issues always take priority of international ones in the democratic system, moreover elections are won/lost over a wide range of policy issues, so a single issue can very rarely unbalance a governement. The problem here is that the west is too keen to see democracy as a panacea for good governance which it isn't, nor is democracy in the UK or US ideal in any sense - it may be amongst the better implementations but no 2 party system can be perfect, with N issues at stake. Now if foreign policy was elected seperately to domestic, then the argument might have credence.
wasn't the web nice back then?
S.
"The problem with your argument is that it can be used to justify any research no matter how hair brained. It could be used to justify research into perpetual motion machines or ID."
Not really thats why research proposals get generally peer reviewed - which isn't always an ideal process, but it does generally get the perpetual motion machines, I've discovered the ether, and CPT violating transportation devices type projects thrown out.
>>"So you say..."
:) Again if there were no US umbrella to protect us from the evil communist regime we would all be dead meat by now? More probably if the US did not exist many of the semi-conflicts that occured in that time would not have and the cold war may very well not have been as serious as it was - your conjecturing an an alternative history and completely missing that the US was an *active* participant in that rather than a *passive* defender of The Rest Of The World^tm. Your comment drips with an arrogance which is in part why so many europeans have the feelings that they do.
;)"
>Yes, I do. What do you say - I'm still waiting for some meaningful content and not just 13-year-old sarcasm.
I don't think so obviously, and you posted the amazingly generalized observation without much thought argument or justification - so quite franky the 13 year old sarcasm was from my angle quite appropriate.
>>"err..."
>Is that the sound of your brain warming up? It's still cold.
Ah personal insult time, a good choice of response
>>"political prejudice here?"
>Ah, your brain kicked in -
yep lets keep this on a personal level shall we....
> but it's still not really saying anything. Yes, I have political prejudices... you don't?
Of course I do, but I try not to project them by making wild sweeping generalisations about other nations decisions about how and where they spend their money. If the EU member like social programs, good on them - their happy, why are thei decisions a problem to you - unless of course they are 'evil socialists' which we all know is a close relative of communism, and not a viable form of democratic governance....
> Personally, I think that Europe has largely bankrupted itself with social programs, whereas the US
> has bankrupted itself with military spending AND social programs.
You can think what you want, but as I said I think most Europeans are quite happy with the product they spent their money on. I didn't notice France being invaded yet so perhaps they got the balance right?
>>"Who incidentally look quite sensible with hindsight
>Cute, but no they don't. Their objection was that any use of military force is wrong - not that the intelligence was
>faulty. One of these esteemed ladies also voted against the Afghan War, which is absurd even in hindsight.
Big generalisation. I know quite a lot of californians and quite a lot of Europeans. I've never met anyone who says "there is never circumstance that war is not the appropriate response" or a *very* small number of pacifists. What I have heard (at the time) are comments like;
"We will only make things worse with war" - turns out true
"Is the evidence really there that there is a threat" - turns out true
"Is it appropriate that the US leads the charge against the general consensus of the UN"
"Hans Blix is the guy running the show and he says no and we should believe the proffesional not the politician"
where the contrary position as it reached my ears was something to do with US and UK quoting each others intelligence services (so that they don't take liability later when its found to be baloney) to trump up the severity of the 'threat' and patently false media shots associating 9/11 with Iraq leveraging the existing (well founded) anger in the US populace. So I think I'll stick to my position on that one thanks.
>>"I think you don't understand NC's motivation for his actions very well."
>His motivations don't matter - the results of his actions do. He let a problem fester and ended up paying for it.
What you have to understand is that at that time there was no alliance. neither france nor the US had offered support and germany was strong. The 'result' of his actions - the important bit as you say - was that by the time Britain did get dragged in it was stronger (as you note), allied and the result was a win. The alternative was pro
>I didn't vote for the guy, but you are really pissing ME off. Like we care? >Europeans hold America to a higher standard than you do yourselves. So you say... >It must be nice to live under the military umbrella that the US has provided for you over the past 60 years err... > - makes it much easier to spend on lavish social programs, doesn't it? political predjudice here? >As an aside, do you really think that Bush is this one yahoo that operates independently? He is not - all three branches of >government are controlled by his party. When he went to war in Iraq, he went with the blessing of nearly every member of congress >except for some wackos in California. Who incidently look quite sensible with hindsight ;)
>really care. Europeans are not very popular, especially when all we see is criticism from our "allies". One of the above comments >actually compares Bush to Hitler. Yeah, well I'd compare the attitude of most of Europe as that of Neville Chamberlain - eager to
>solve the world's ills peacefully until one day they wake up and their civilization is nearly gone. Just because you don't want
>to fight anyone doesn't mean that they don't want to fight you.
I think you don't understand NC's motivation for his actions very well.
thnx
.... there isn't much we CAN do, short of rebellion. ... What would you suggest we do?
I think you already answered that :)
Step 2: threatening peoples lives, plotting to kill people or destroy buildings, taking up arms against this country are all perfectly good reasons to have your "civil liberties" taken away. i strongly recommend you refrain from those activities, and you should be fine ...
-> NO NO NO not without the due process of law. He is talking about people who were not afforded that. foreigners who take up arms against a nation are also subject to appropriate processes and conduct no matter what heinous crime you believe they commited.
The way this works is evolutionary and "ok sounding" tweaks to your rights that result in ambiguity that can be exploited by a potentially malicious government. In the UK we see introduction of laws that makes it illegal to voice certain opinions about terrorism. When Hitler comes to power after the next election, be sure that he will exploit the lack of definition of "terrorism", "encourage", and "glorify" in that legislation to use the *law* as a weapon against "undesirable" elements in society.
Step 3: your a nut ...
nah - you just don't know enough history....
Are you kidding? I think more likely the member states will just keep it and claim a good year....
Hmm the BPI has my IP address, the ISP has my personal details. The ISP cannot provide my detail to the BPI due to the data protection act. How will the BPI *know* whether or not the ISP terminated my contract? If the ISP cannot inform the BPI in a reliable fashion that they did terminate a particular account (after all the IP changes and is dynamic), then why should the ISP bother to lose a customer? SoM
If foo and bar are a collection of libraries and binaries, then this is a solved problem. http://modules.sourceforge.net/ it really sounds like you are maintaing two OS images because you can't set LD_LIBRARY_PATH :)
-s
Windows already runs on EFI on some architectures.