These claims would be from the same Iraqi opposition groups that claimed that Iraq was far along in developing all sorts of weapons of mass destruction, right?
News flash: people lie. And these ones have been proved outright liars WRT to Saddam Hussein, saying anything to get him overthrown. If they said tomorrow was February 28th, I'd recheck my calendar.
You want an article showing the opposite? Here goes. If you don't want to register, here's the beginning:
Hussein Warned Iraqis to Beware Outside Fighters, Document Says By JAMES RISEN
Published: January 14, 2004
ASHINGTON, Jan. 13 -- Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle American troops, according to a document found with the former Iraqi leader when he was captured, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.
The document appears to be a directive, written after he lost power, from Mr. Hussein to leaders of the Iraqi resistance, counseling caution against getting too close to Islamic jihadists and other foreign Arabs coming into occupied Iraq, according to American officials.
It provides a second piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Mr. Hussein's government and terrorists from Al Qaeda. C.I.A. interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Mr. Hussein.
Officials said Mr. Hussein apparently believed that the foreign Arabs, eager for a holy war against the West, had a different agenda from the Baathists, who were eager for their own return to power in Baghdad. As a result, he wanted his supporters to be careful about becoming close allies with the jihadists, officials familiar with the document said.
---
If you're still wondering about which is right, consider this: why the frell would these Al Queda be in northern Iraq, an area largely controlled by the Kurds? You know, those people Hussein gassed a while back?
P.S. Correct my last message to read "But there's no evidence he was promoting terrorism beyond that.
No, he reportedly died in 2002, so he no longer existed. Hussein was giving $25K to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and harboring a former terrorist. But there's no evidence he was promoting terrorism.
Cutting taxes in the long run generates more revenues than leaving them alone.
No it doesn't. (Which I say with as much conviction and as much evidence as you have for your claim.) Reducing wasteful spending generates more revenues, but borrow-and-spend is no better than tax-and-spend -- save for the people whose taxes were cut. Based on my recent tax calculations, I'm not one of them.
That's a ridiculous statement. If people have less money to spend, there is no way you can make the case that they spend the same amount.
Money is just green bits of paper. Look at the actual number of people working and what they're working on, boosting "real" productivity is what makes a difference in revenues. If the government borrows money, it's competing for investment funds with the corporate market, and thus raising the cost of those investments, and it becomes every bit the drag that higher taxes would be.
No, largely the same Congress that created this deficit eliminated the old ones.
Except with a different president, who apparently isn't aware he can veto bills.
However, they kept taxes at levels that would restrain growth enough that it was all temporary; in a few years when the Baby Boomers start retiring, there will be deficits like you wouldn't believe unless somebody listens to Greenspan.
In other words, their approach to fiscal discipline is "max our our credit cards so we have to cut spending!" How about cutting some spending now first, such as massive farm bills designed to keep midwestern states voting Republican? Or perhaps... not cutting taxes? "Pay as you go" is more fiscally responsible than the party now, pay later approach. Particularly when we have this nice regressive tax system, so often ignored by Republicans: FICA. Those earning under $89K get to pay ~11% of income as tax before even starting on the other income tax. And that money goes into a "trust fund", which is another way of saying it's being spent largely for general expenses, and the rest is being given to the elderly. Now Greenspan doesn't want to continue the Ponzi scheme.
In any event, there are three situations in which a deficit is to be expected:
But as I pointed out, even discretionary spending is way up under Bush. That's not the deficit, that's simply the rate of growth of the things that could be cut, other than defense.
However, I'd rather have a deficit (which is at a much lower percentage of GDP than the deficits in the Reagan years, which didn't impact the economy negatively) for a while than have a crappy economy because of high taxes and terrorists blowing up my children.
High taxes have no more of an effect on the economy than high deficit spending. Oh, and those terrorists aren't in Iraq, or they weren't; now people's (grown) children are being blown up by suicide bombers who wouldn't have done so without the invasion. So Bush has spent $100s of billions invading a country whose leader was quietly abusing his own people and otherwise living the high life, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis, to no effect at all on the pre-existing terrorists.
Actually, it's not that suddenly; they decided it in January of 2001.
Perhaps that was because before that, that horrible tax-and-spend Liberal president had eliminated the deficit?
Oh, I know what you're thinking, he had the advantage of a nice economy (despite the 80's growth not helping Reagan similarly.) And defense is more of an issue these days. So let's look at non-defense discretionary spending under various presidents, as provided by that Left-wing think-tank, the Heritage Foundation:
Oops. Looks like Bubba had discretionary spending under control, whereas Bush...
(P.S. If you aren't familiar with the Heritage Foundation and actually think it is a left-wing think-tank, just go to their front page.)
But where could we find a man like that, in this day and age?
Judging by the state of the union speech and the current budget deficit, nowhere. Since when it is "courage" for a politician to propose spending still more money?
No, arrow keys are a very poor substitute. In iTunes, for example, arrow keys will move one song per key press. A quick flick of the scroll wheel, in contrast, zips you up or down multiple lines, and is proportional to how much you move the wheel.
Also, the arrow keys are on the wrong side of the keyboard for efficient use that way, assuming your right hand is on the mouse.
We *do* know that in the last century alone we've had atleast a few impacts big enough that if they had happened to hit a major city rather than (for example) the tundra in Siberia, tens of thousands of dead would result.
Really, we know of a very few in the last millenium, of which Tunguska was the most recent. And really big ones are on the order of tens of millions of years per event.
So the risk probably isn't that high in the next hundred years. But decent funding for OWL or other high-power telescopes is a good idea with good science potential on the side. If the enthusiasm for keeping Hubble alive could possibly be redirected into ground-based scopes that will long outlive it, we could be in good shape that way.
I don't see them ignoring piracy, but fighting it.
The original poster's point was that if there is time between the movie release and the DVD release, there are people who will get a pirate copy during that time when the DVD is not yet available. If the DVD is available at release time, at least some of those people will buy the legal copy. So releasing the DVD at the same time as the theatrical release may reduce the likelihood of piracy.
It's effectively happened, and in fact if you follow some links from the BBC article, you can read bits about slave auctions, child prostitution, and the like in the Sims Online.
Well, if you read the article (stop laughing!), you'll see a screen shot of people riding rocket-powered hoverboards. No, I don't think it's real. (Are they modelling "Treasure Planet" or something?)
But on the more serious side, laser correction techniques seem to be more and more popular, at least in the U.S. It'll be interesting to see if eyeglasses are as needed in the long run.
While it may be illegal to steal source code that is privately held. I don't know that it is illegal to view it once it has been released.
It shouldn't be. It is the responsibility of the distributor of copyrighted material to ensure that they are intitled to distribute said material. If the New York Times distributes an article that turns out to have been plagiarized, are you as a subscriber liable? I think not.
I refer you to this article about the fine spending under the Department of Homeland Security. A few choice bits of its budget?
" A new university-based homeland security research center program for Texas A&M, avoiding an open and competitive award process. This was pushed by Republican Whip, Tom DeLay, whose district includes Texas A&M.
$2 million so the Smithsonian can start a 108,000-square-foot building in Maryland to house its collection of fish, frogs, bugs, birds and other animals preserved in alcohol-filled containers.
$5 million to subsidize farmers' markets and roadside produce stands in 31 states.
$2.5 million to map coral reefs in the waters around Hawaii."
This is no different than mandating seatbelts yet I get modded to hell when I mention that I don't think it should be LAW that we have to wear them.
Seat belt laws keep the driver behind the wheel of the car (and the passenger out of his/her lap.) Since in many accidents, the car is still moving after the initial impact, the driver still has the opportunity to minimize further damage to himself and others.
I was referring to stealing to support an alcohol habit. Are you implying you have seen people doing that? I've seen begging, but generally not stealing. I'm arguing this purely on the grounds of the price of drugs. I've heard of crack whores, but not Jack Daniels whores...
Perhaps problems would go down if drugs were legal, perhaps not.
It should make it somewhat easier to keep harder drugs out of the hands of kids, and it'll eliminate the side effects. Even if it doesn't reduce the direct problems of drug abuse, it'll make it a little easier to afford to deal with them. And perhaps if drug dealing gangs are thereby eliminated (just as the Mafia doesn't do much alcohol dealing these days), life in the inner cities will be a little more pleasant.
How about putting a decent-sized asteroid (perhaps a km in diameter) into one of the stable LaGrange points? That seems like it might be a decent base for accumulating stuff, placing telescopes, building launchers, etc., with the possibility of some raw materials for in-space construction, without much of that pesky gravity well problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Would you encourage your kid to become a suicide bomber for $25K?
These claims would be from the same Iraqi opposition groups that claimed that Iraq was far along in developing all sorts of weapons of mass destruction, right?
News flash: people lie. And these ones have been proved outright liars WRT to Saddam Hussein, saying anything to get him overthrown. If they said tomorrow was February 28th, I'd recheck my calendar.
You want an article showing the opposite? Here goes. If you don't want to register, here's the beginning:
Hussein Warned Iraqis to Beware Outside Fighters, Document Says
By JAMES RISEN
Published: January 14, 2004
ASHINGTON, Jan. 13 -- Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle American troops, according to a document found with the former Iraqi leader when he was captured, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.
The document appears to be a directive, written after he lost power, from Mr. Hussein to leaders of the Iraqi resistance, counseling caution against getting too close to Islamic jihadists and other foreign Arabs coming into occupied Iraq, according to American officials.
It provides a second piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Mr. Hussein's government and terrorists from Al Qaeda. C.I.A. interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Mr. Hussein.
Officials said Mr. Hussein apparently believed that the foreign Arabs, eager for a holy war against the West, had a different agenda from the Baathists, who were eager for their own return to power in Baghdad. As a result, he wanted his supporters to be careful about becoming close allies with the jihadists, officials familiar with the document said.
---
If you're still wondering about which is right, consider this: why the frell would these Al Queda be in northern Iraq, an area largely controlled by the Kurds? You know, those people Hussein gassed a while back?
P.S. Correct my last message to read "But there's no evidence he was promoting terrorism beyond that.
Abu Nidal wasn't a pre-existing terrorist?
No, he reportedly died in 2002, so he no longer existed. Hussein was giving $25K to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and harboring a former terrorist. But there's no evidence he was promoting terrorism.
Cutting taxes in the long run generates more revenues than leaving them alone.
No it doesn't. (Which I say with as much conviction and as much evidence as you have for your claim.) Reducing wasteful spending generates more revenues, but borrow-and-spend is no better than tax-and-spend -- save for the people whose taxes were cut. Based on my recent tax calculations, I'm not one of them.
That's a ridiculous statement. If people have less money to spend, there is no way you can make the case that they spend the same amount.
Money is just green bits of paper. Look at the actual number of people working and what they're working on, boosting "real" productivity is what makes a difference in revenues. If the government borrows money, it's competing for investment funds with the corporate market, and thus raising the cost of those investments, and it becomes every bit the drag that higher taxes would be.
No, largely the same Congress that created this deficit eliminated the old ones.
Except with a different president, who apparently isn't aware he can veto bills.
However, they kept taxes at levels that would restrain growth enough that it was all temporary; in a few years when the Baby Boomers start retiring, there will be deficits like you wouldn't believe unless somebody listens to Greenspan.
In other words, their approach to fiscal discipline is "max our our credit cards so we have to cut spending!" How about cutting some spending now first, such as massive farm bills designed to keep midwestern states voting Republican? Or perhaps... not cutting taxes? "Pay as you go" is more fiscally responsible than the party now, pay later approach. Particularly when we have this nice regressive tax system, so often ignored by Republicans: FICA. Those earning under $89K get to pay ~11% of income as tax before even starting on the other income tax. And that money goes into a "trust fund", which is another way of saying it's being spent largely for general expenses, and the rest is being given to the elderly. Now Greenspan doesn't want to continue the Ponzi scheme.
In any event, there are three situations in which a deficit is to be expected:
But as I pointed out, even discretionary spending is way up under Bush. That's not the deficit, that's simply the rate of growth of the things that could be cut, other than defense.
However, I'd rather have a deficit (which is at a much lower percentage of GDP than the deficits in the Reagan years, which didn't impact the economy negatively) for a while than have a crappy economy because of high taxes and terrorists blowing up my children.
High taxes have no more of an effect on the economy than high deficit spending. Oh, and those terrorists aren't in Iraq, or they weren't; now people's (grown) children are being blown up by suicide bombers who wouldn't have done so without the invasion. So Bush has spent $100s of billions invading a country whose leader was quietly abusing his own people and otherwise living the high life, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis, to no effect at all on the pre-existing terrorists.
If only McCain wasn't looking so old recently.
Sure, if you want to sit in the dark. Personally, I find projector images to be lower quality, and more fatiguing on the eyes.
Actually, it's not that suddenly; they decided it in January of 2001.
Perhaps that was because before that, that horrible tax-and-spend Liberal president had eliminated the deficit?
Oh, I know what you're thinking, he had the advantage of a nice economy (despite the 80's growth not helping Reagan similarly.) And defense is more of an issue these days. So let's look at non-defense discretionary spending under various presidents, as provided by that Left-wing think-tank, the Heritage Foundation:
Oops. Looks like Bubba had discretionary spending under control, whereas Bush...
(P.S. If you aren't familiar with the Heritage Foundation and actually think it is a left-wing think-tank, just go to their front page.)
Those li'l things? I want one of Samsung's 80" plasmas...
Sounds like one hell of a case mode project if you ask me... But damn that would be so cool.
Perhaps you could get one of those Lego Mindstorm experts to figure one out...
But where could we find a man like that, in this day and age?
Judging by the state of the union speech and the current budget deficit, nowhere. Since when it is "courage" for a politician to propose spending still more money?
No, arrow keys are a very poor substitute. In iTunes, for example, arrow keys will move one song per key press. A quick flick of the scroll wheel, in contrast, zips you up or down multiple lines, and is proportional to how much you move the wheel.
Also, the arrow keys are on the wrong side of the keyboard for efficient use that way, assuming your right hand is on the mouse.
We *do* know that in the last century alone we've had atleast a few impacts big enough that if they had happened to hit a major city rather than (for example) the tundra in Siberia, tens of thousands of dead would result.
Really, we know of a very few in the last millenium, of which Tunguska was the most recent. And really big ones are on the order of tens of millions of years per event.
So the risk probably isn't that high in the next hundred years. But decent funding for OWL or other high-power telescopes is a good idea with good science potential on the side. If the enthusiasm for keeping Hubble alive could possibly be redirected into ground-based scopes that will long outlive it, we could be in good shape that way.
I don't see them ignoring piracy, but fighting it.
The original poster's point was that if there is time between the movie release and the DVD release, there are people who will get a pirate copy during that time when the DVD is not yet available. If the DVD is available at release time, at least some of those people will buy the legal copy. So releasing the DVD at the same time as the theatrical release may reduce the likelihood of piracy.
Maybe, but you'd better get help from the guy with the last of the V-8 interceptors once The Humongous comes to steal your supplies...
"You wanna get out of here? You talk to me."
But can someone please explain how guns can ever be used in good ways.
Ask a policeman. They all seem to have 'em...
(Note that using doesn't necessarily mean firing.)
It's effectively happened, and in fact if you follow some links from the BBC article, you can read bits about slave auctions, child prostitution, and the like in the Sims Online.
None of this is real?
Well, if you read the article (stop laughing!), you'll see a screen shot of people riding rocket-powered hoverboards. No, I don't think it's real. (Are they modelling "Treasure Planet" or something?)
You'll have to ask his girlfriend.
But on the more serious side, laser correction techniques seem to be more and more popular, at least in the U.S. It'll be interesting to see if eyeglasses are as needed in the long run.
The sexual revolution was in the 60's, man. :-)
It died in the 80's.
It sure did for me, that's all I know...
While it may be illegal to steal source code that is privately held. I don't know that it is illegal to view it once it has been released.
It shouldn't be. It is the responsibility of the distributor of copyrighted material to ensure that they are intitled to distribute said material. If the New York Times distributes an article that turns out to have been plagiarized, are you as a subscriber liable? I think not.
I mean, christ, I mention biking eight miles to the office and people marvel at how I can cover that kind of distance without a car
I marvel that you can cover that kind of distance without getting hit by a car.
Something as stupid and simple as an hour's worth of walking on a daily basis
Spending 10% of my waking hours walking may be simple in concept, but it's a hell of a demand on my time.
I refer you to this article about the fine spending under the Department of Homeland Security. A few choice bits of its budget?
" A new university-based homeland security research center program for Texas A&M, avoiding an open and competitive award process. This was pushed by Republican Whip, Tom DeLay, whose district includes Texas A&M.
$2 million so the Smithsonian can start a 108,000-square-foot building in Maryland to house its collection of fish, frogs, bugs, birds and other animals preserved in alcohol-filled containers.
$5 million to subsidize farmers' markets and roadside produce stands in 31 states.
$2.5 million to map coral reefs in the waters around Hawaii."
This is no different than mandating seatbelts yet I get modded to hell when I mention that I don't think it should be LAW that we have to wear them.
Seat belt laws keep the driver behind the wheel of the car (and the passenger out of his/her lap.) Since in many accidents, the car is still moving after the initial impact, the driver still has the opportunity to minimize further damage to himself and others.
Why would these representatives care if their chauffeur was inconvenienced?
It doesn't happen with alcohol?
I was referring to stealing to support an alcohol habit. Are you implying you have seen people doing that? I've seen begging, but generally not stealing. I'm arguing this purely on the grounds of the price of drugs. I've heard of crack whores, but not Jack Daniels whores...
Perhaps problems would go down if drugs were legal, perhaps not.
It should make it somewhat easier to keep harder drugs out of the hands of kids, and it'll eliminate the side effects. Even if it doesn't reduce the direct problems of drug abuse, it'll make it a little easier to afford to deal with them. And perhaps if drug dealing gangs are thereby eliminated (just as the Mafia doesn't do much alcohol dealing these days), life in the inner cities will be a little more pleasant.
How about putting a decent-sized asteroid (perhaps a km in diameter) into one of the stable LaGrange points? That seems like it might be a decent base for accumulating stuff, placing telescopes, building launchers, etc., with the possibility of some raw materials for in-space construction, without much of that pesky gravity well problem.