Elsehwere? How is that "elsewhere". Currently, the problem is left entirely on the shoulders of the students who use the library. If any nefarious use is possible, is attempted etc, (fraudulently using their ID, Fingerprint collisions etc) then the student may or may not, according to school policy, be exposed, and will bear the burden of being the victim. Now the risks may be entirely theoretical, but, the choice as to whether to accept that risk is being made by the institution, and not the individual who bears the risk.
My intent is to shift some amount of the risk, an intentionally potentially large amount, onto the institution which is making the decision as to how to implement and which risks to accept within any given implementation. Essentially yes, simply a shifting of risk/cost, but a shifting to where it belongs.
Mexican plastic surgeons? Wood shop? I hear people who work in food service moving hot items around quite frequently end up temporarily removing theirs. I mean, they are tiny little groves, it shouldn't really take much at all to abrade them off. (I know, I too look at my baby soft 'office worker' hands and cringe too....)
Of course, if they really meant it, then they would allow the assignment of absolutely outrageous damages to the school when this is not done. Very simple, you make the school system, superintendent, principal and vice principal jointly and separately responsible for ensuring that the data is erased and removed from any/all backups within 21 days of the student no longer being enrolled.
If the school is found to be in non-compliance, they shall be jointly and separately responsible to pay damages in the amount of $250,000 to the student or legal guardian, for every 7 day period in excess of 21 days that the information is found to still exist.
make sure that this applies not only to school controlled systems, but contracted systems in the control of 3rd parties on behalf of the school.
You put that into place and I GUARANTEE that this will not end up being an issue.
Sure but... why do you care? It seems to me that you should filter/tune your alert messages. You must get tons of spew from all sorts of IPs all the time. Every single one of my servers sees all manner of shit. Attempts to exploit IIS vulnerabilities (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that its more time efficient to spam vulnerabilities at every host than to check what you are connected to), exploit software that isn't even installed etc... google cache rechecks seem like they would be the least of your worries.
I mean... it is essentially a false alarm, and you want google to make an exception for you when, its your alarm that you setup thats really bothering you. Tune the alarm.
Ok, I was being a bit of a coward. I read a great article from some issue of playboy back in the 80s that I found in my fathers porn stash many years ago. As such, I can't quote it, attribute the author, and any statistics from the article are AT BEST fuzzy memories.
What I do remember is the author absolutely lambasting a study on handgun violence that made a very similar claim. The author of the article pointed out 3 specific flaws, I don't remember what evidence he cited but... my memory this: 1) He claimed the study looked only at 1 county of Washington state for data 2) He claimed suicides were included in the data 3) He claimed other studies have found that indeed suicides with guns go down in areas without access to hand guns, but oveall suicide rates do not, people just change tactics (seriously, is hanging yourself really so much harder?... hell David Caradine did it without even trying to kill himself)
Thats a good question. Actually, I believe the "no hitting" thing actually comes under "domestic assault" laws. I would have to look, but its entirely possible that either its legal to hit people that you don't live with or otherwise have a romantic involvement with. (I note, martial arts classes often train students to hit eachother and learning to "take a hit" is as much a part of the training as learning to hit)
Its also possible that there are specific regulations for boxing and other sports that categorizes it as something other than assault. So in short, I would have to look. A FOAF who runs a BDSM "play space" reports that the police interpretation of the law (or at least, how they claim to enforce it) is that they make a distinction between a person who is free to walk away and someone who is restrained. So... you can tie up your lover or beat them, but not both. Of course, that was verbally communicated by police officers to her, and is NOT a statement by the AG or a legal decision.
I don't disagree, but, it cuts both ways. I think the article has a point... the numbers only have meaning in context.
If I tell you "X people die every year from being shot, in their home, with their own gun", that tells you something. It evokes images of burglars or irresponsible people playing. It SOUNDS like a statement about how safe or dangerous it is to have a gun in your own house.
However, if my number "X" includes suicides, well, then how much of a statement about the relative danger of owning a gun am I making? How about if I can find no link between owning a gun and committing suicide?
Clearly the statement is correct, "shot, in their home, with their own gun" but, even so, its misleading if you then use the numbers wrong.
Take texting while driving. The claim is 900 deaths a year. How do they come at that number? Even better, how big is that number? 900 sounds like a lot.. However... its less than the estimated number of serial murder victims in the US. Overall driving deaths are more like 40,000 a year. Context is everything. If I said "about 1 driving death in 40 is related to txting while driving" thats suddenly a lot smaller, yet, represents the same data.
frankly, I tend to think a LOT of statistics are meaningless. NY state enacted a law against handhed phone use while driving. It resulted in a 70% decrease in OBSERVED use. There was no decrease at all in accident rate.
What this tells me is, someone really believed that this was going to make a difference, came up with numbers and statistics and, in reality, the one little item that he picked out had about as much bearing on accident rates as the price of butter in bangladesh does.
Much of the time statistics are used to just bullshit and make it look like we aren't playing blindfolded darts when we make public policy.
> However there plenty of instances apart from murder where this makes sense:
Ok yes, there are a few, I am not sure about plenty. However, I do think it would be reasonable to say that, at the very least, there should be onus on the state to show, in each case, that this case is one where such an exclusion should apply.
> Where the victim is a young child unable to make a clear decison themselves
Yup, tho, I might add "And the alleged perpetrator is the child's legal guardian"
> Where the victim might be initimidated
might be? Not sure how I feel about might be. It smacks way too much of "I know whats best for you". At some point, is there really a victim if there is nobody who is willing to stand up and make a complaint? Who is the state exactly to be second guessing people? The only real solution that I see for intimidation is to offer to protect the person from intimidation. If thats not enough then, at some level, why doesn't silence imply consent?
> Where the criminal is rich and might buy off the victim
Settlement out of court. Case closed. I don't see how this is the states problem.
> Where the victim is embarassed
Again, at some level you really are going far too far into "we know whats best for you" territory. I think part of this is, I don't recognize a duty to stop all evil in the world. Not being a party to evil is more important than stopping evil as it exists. If someone stands up and asks the state for help, then I have little problem with the state helping.
When nobody asks for, or even wants help... well... I don't tend to thank people who "help me" by doing things that I ask them explicitly not to do. In fact, it perplexes me, but several people have been extremely distraught when I chewed them out for it. "But I was trying to help you".
In the end, I don't care how big or how powerful you are, a person who doesn't want help can't be helped, I don't support efforts to help such people.
You know, if I had any artistic talent at all, I would probably respond to all this by drawing up a picture of a child be graphically anally penetrated by "Uncle Sam" with the words "No Child Left Behind" tattooed on his cock, just to help test (and illustrate) how ridiculous these laws can be. (of course, I would be cowardly hiding behind free speech through political satire....)
Actually.... I guess it could be done in stick figures and labels. I mean, is a stick figure is meant to represent a 10 year old boy, and another stick figure represents a man raping that child... is that child porn? What about a picture of a guy stroking his hard on, while looking at a catalog of children's toys? I mean.... seriously!
heh and I tend to be of the opinion that that concept is about where criminal justice and good ideas parted ways. Certainly, in the case of a murder or other area where a victim can't speak for themselves (dead, brain damaged, etc) we are left needing that to be the case. I can't think of many other cases where that seems like a good idea.
I mean, that concept is why we have a problem here in MA with BDSM clubs. Its a crime to hit someone, and the state is the plaintiff... so even if the person wanted to be hit, asked you to hit them, hell, even if they begged for it... its still a crime to do it.
Perhaps, but, c'est la vie. As my sister is so fond of saying "Freedom is what you do with whats done to you".
Using state power in a ridiculous and arbitrary way against me would pretty much just validate my current opinion of how badly the system is setup. So, its pretty much what I figure I should expect could happen anyway since I live in a place where justice is a game and there are so many laws that its barely possible to take a shit without violating one.
> That was really dumb. If he has been under a search warrant on his email account or a wiretap equivalent, you might have been in > some deep shit with prosecutors.
I think you give them way too much credit. Sure its international fraud, but thats half the problem, These guys operate out of Ghana. Since they steal from individuals a few grand at a time, the feds tend to have bigger and easier fish to fry.
Plus, at worst, they would start watching me, and waiting for me to get the package. They would probably be quite disappointed to see me take the money out and toss the rest in the nearest garbage bin. If they did find that they had enough to go after me on, well... as my sister says "freedom is what you do with whats done to you". Throw me in jail, I still know what I did wasn't wrong, so I will still sleep like a baby at night.
In the end, isn't that what matters? Besides, as Thoreau said "Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.". I see no reason to cower in fear that some thug might come and try to oppress me.
Before your time? I mean, isn't he still making movies?
The Unforgiven came out in 1992 (thats the movie whose plot involved a prostitute being cut up by a man whose penis she laughed at, which the other prostitutes respond to by putting a bounty on the mans head, a bounty that William Money (clint eastwood) intends to collect)
It is indeed quite a dark movie (and well done), and highly recommended... and I don't even typically like Westerns or Eastwood movies in general, but Unforgiven was well worth it (Also featuring Morgan Freeman, and Gene Hackman)
I got a scammer hitting me up when I posted an ad for a room. I had seen this trick before, so I just went along and kept my ad up.
They sent a pack of money orders, nice ones. I never acknowledged they arrived. He sent another pack.
Then I told him that I knew what was up, and I had seen better forgeries (the last scammer who tried this same act). He immediately dropped that and decided to try and recruit me! "I need packages sent out from a US address. We send you a package of envelopes, all you have to do is mail them and we will pay you $500". He also asked if I was interested in buying counterfeit currency. This man was a real entrepreneur.
I agreed of course, more "wall paper" as you say. Now, I figured they would be smart enough to have a few "canaries" on there so that they could tell if I actually sent out the envelopes or not, and would want to not pay me if I didn't send them out (since there was no way in hell) so i tried to talk them into putting the money in the package for payment upfront. I even offered to take payment in the counterfeit bills, at a premium of course.
I chickened out when he wanted my phone number to talk on the phone. I should have gotten a skype line and continued. I really wanted to rip off a scammer. What was he going to do, call the police?
My favorite was that Major League Baseball player a few years back. As I remember the case, he met a girl in a bar. She had used a fake ID to get into the bar, but was actually under age.
He was convicted anyway. Even though she was in a 21+ place, with a fake ID, apparently its not unreasonable for the state to expect men in bars to check ID before they take girls home, and do a better job than the bar at catching fake IDs.
dude, it takes HOURS to play any really good game. If your child can play a video game that you don't want him to play, given the dynamics of gaming, I feel pretty confident saying that you are pretty unplugged.
Frankly, I think that, if you are asking for a government rating to stop store owners from selling such a thing to your kid because you can't be bothered to police it yourself... given how much time is involved in playing a game to begin with, then some scapegoating is definitely going on, but its not other people who need to stop it.
> This, of course, puts them into a bind: Without enough viewers, you can't justify the advertising > costs for specific slots so you either charge less for a specific time slot in order to attract > advertisers or you lose them. If you lose them, you're not bringing in the revenue
Of course, anyone with cable or equivalent should know already.... the upside is, that for any given time slot, there isn't all that much competition. Nearly every time I hit "guide" and look for a show to relax and watch for a few, I find myself wondering why I even pay for TV.
1100 channels of nothing worth watching is impressive, but, not uncommon.
Interesting. Actually, I added 1812 because I knew it was a war that we fought with England, but, I couldn't remember why and I vaguely thought that they started it.
As for WWI, I could at least make the case that with such a large conflict going on, there is something to be said for taking sides in a conflict thats already going on and bringing it to an end. At least we didn't start that one, or otherwise provoke it into happening.
So essentially, they do it for the exact same reasons that many suicide bombers who were told that their families would be paid large sums of money when they were martyred do it?
> Because some people want to ensure a future for their children? Is that really that hard to > understand? > > I'll grant you though that the need to do so may or may not exist today.
No not at all, though, what IS hard to understand, for me, is how anyone, who hasn't had their head in the sand for their entire life, equates signing up to fight whoever congress and/or the president says to fight with ensuring a future for their children.
So far, they have a piss poor track record when it comes to picking the fights that we need to (or even should) fight. So far they have shown absolutely no shame whatsoever when its come to provoking the start of conflicts for political ends (a tradition going back far enough that Lincoln himself was nicknamed "Spotty Lincoln", long before he was president).
Aside from the revolution (which wasn't fought under the current government), the war of 1812, WWI, and WWII, I am having trouble thinking of a conflict that Americans needed to fight to ensure the future for their children.
Slashdot Mirror
> If we suffer a WMD terrorist attack, I want the BEST products to be used to deal with it, who cares if it's "green"?
Sure me too, but... I figure there are far more likely scenarios for me to worry about.
All of the bad guys intentionally doing bad things doesn't add up to the danger of random chance or well intentioned bungling.
Spending on mitigation should be allocated accordingly.
As such, in a budget the size of the federal budget, the entire budget for these sorts of terrorism preparedness products shouldn't eceede maybe $50.
-Steve
Elsehwere? How is that "elsewhere". Currently, the problem is left entirely on the shoulders of the students who use the library. If any nefarious use is possible, is attempted etc, (fraudulently using their ID, Fingerprint collisions etc) then the student may or may not, according to school policy, be exposed, and will bear the burden of being the victim. Now the risks may be entirely theoretical, but, the choice as to whether to accept that risk is being made by the institution, and not the individual who bears the risk.
My intent is to shift some amount of the risk, an intentionally potentially large amount, onto the institution which is making the decision as to how to implement and which risks to accept within any given implementation. Essentially yes, simply a shifting of risk/cost, but a shifting to where it belongs.
-Steve
Mexican plastic surgeons? Wood shop? I hear people who work in food service moving hot items around quite frequently end up temporarily removing theirs. I mean, they are tiny little groves, it shouldn't really take much at all to abrade them off.
(I know, I too look at my baby soft 'office worker' hands and cringe too....)
Of course, if they really meant it, then they would allow the assignment of absolutely outrageous damages to the school when this is not done. Very simple, you make the school system, superintendent, principal and vice principal jointly and separately responsible for ensuring that the data is erased and removed from any/all backups within 21 days of the student no longer being enrolled.
If the school is found to be in non-compliance, they shall be jointly and separately responsible to pay damages in the amount of $250,000 to the student or legal guardian, for every 7 day period in excess of 21 days that the information is found to still exist.
make sure that this applies not only to school controlled systems, but contracted systems in the control of 3rd parties on behalf of the school.
You put that into place and I GUARANTEE that this will not end up being an issue.
-Steve
Sure but... why do you care? It seems to me that you should filter/tune your alert messages. You must get tons of spew from all sorts of IPs all the time. Every single one of my servers sees all manner of shit. Attempts to exploit IIS vulnerabilities (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that its more time efficient to spam vulnerabilities at every host than to check what you are connected to), exploit software that isn't even installed etc... google cache rechecks seem like they would be the least of your worries.
I mean... it is essentially a false alarm, and you want google to make an exception for you when, its your alarm that you setup thats really bothering you. Tune the alarm.
-Steve
Then the grammar nazi's would be up their ass asking them to change it so as to reflect that 'shat' is a verb conjugation and not a noun.
Verbing weirds language enough, nouning we can avoid.
-Steve
Quite a surprising number have even declared it to be Holy!
Ok, I was being a bit of a coward. I read a great article from some issue of playboy back in the 80s that I found in my fathers porn stash many years ago. As such, I can't quote it, attribute the author, and any statistics from the article are AT BEST fuzzy memories.
What I do remember is the author absolutely lambasting a study on handgun violence that made a very similar claim. The author of the article pointed out 3 specific flaws, I don't remember what evidence he cited but... my memory this:
1) He claimed the study looked only at 1 county of Washington state for data
2) He claimed suicides were included in the data
3) He claimed other studies have found that indeed suicides with guns go down in areas without access to hand guns, but oveall suicide rates do not, people just change tactics (seriously, is hanging yourself really so much harder?... hell David Caradine did it without even trying to kill himself)
-Steve
Thats a good question. Actually, I believe the "no hitting" thing actually comes under "domestic assault" laws. I would have to look, but its entirely possible that either its legal to hit people that you don't live with or otherwise have a romantic involvement with. (I note, martial arts classes often train students to hit eachother and learning to "take a hit" is as much a part of the training as learning to hit)
Its also possible that there are specific regulations for boxing and other sports that categorizes it as something other than assault. So in short, I would have to look. A FOAF who runs a BDSM "play space" reports that the police interpretation of the law (or at least, how they claim to enforce it) is that they make a distinction between a person who is free to walk away and someone who is restrained. So... you can tie up your lover or beat them, but not both. Of course, that was verbally communicated by police officers to her, and is NOT a statement by the AG or a legal decision.
-Steve
I don't disagree, but, it cuts both ways. I think the article has a point... the numbers only have meaning in context.
If I tell you "X people die every year from being shot, in their home, with their own gun", that tells you something. It evokes images of burglars or irresponsible people playing. It SOUNDS like a statement about how safe or dangerous it is to have a gun in your own house.
However, if my number "X" includes suicides, well, then how much of a statement about the relative danger of owning a gun am I making? How about if I can find no link between owning a gun and committing suicide?
Clearly the statement is correct, "shot, in their home, with their own gun" but, even so, its misleading if you then use the numbers wrong.
Take texting while driving. The claim is 900 deaths a year. How do they come at that number? Even better, how big is that number? 900 sounds like a lot.. However... its less than the estimated number of serial murder victims in the US. Overall driving deaths are more like 40,000 a year. Context is everything. If I said "about 1 driving death in 40 is related to txting while driving" thats suddenly a lot smaller, yet, represents the same data.
frankly, I tend to think a LOT of statistics are meaningless. NY state enacted a law against handhed phone use while driving. It resulted in a 70% decrease in OBSERVED use. There was no decrease at all in accident rate.
What this tells me is, someone really believed that this was going to make a difference, came up with numbers and statistics and, in reality, the one little item that he picked out had about as much bearing on accident rates as the price of butter in bangladesh does.
Much of the time statistics are used to just bullshit and make it look like we aren't playing blindfolded darts when we make public policy.
-Steve
> However there plenty of instances apart from murder where this makes sense:
Ok yes, there are a few, I am not sure about plenty. However, I do think it would be reasonable to say that, at the very least, there should be onus on the state to show, in each case, that this case is one where such an exclusion should apply.
> Where the victim is a young child unable to make a clear decison themselves
Yup, tho, I might add "And the alleged perpetrator is the child's legal guardian"
> Where the victim might be initimidated
might be? Not sure how I feel about might be. It smacks way too much of "I know whats best for you". At some point, is there really a victim if there is nobody who is willing to stand up and make a complaint? Who is the state exactly to be second guessing people? The only real solution that I see for intimidation is to offer to protect the person from intimidation. If thats not enough then, at some level, why doesn't silence imply consent?
> Where the criminal is rich and might buy off the victim
Settlement out of court. Case closed. I don't see how this is the states problem.
> Where the victim is embarassed
Again, at some level you really are going far too far into "we know whats best for you" territory. I think part of this is, I don't recognize a duty to stop all evil in the world. Not being a party to evil is more important than stopping evil as it exists. If someone stands up and asks the state for help, then I have little problem with the state helping.
When nobody asks for, or even wants help... well... I don't tend to thank people who "help me" by doing things that I ask them explicitly not to do. In fact, it perplexes me, but several people have been extremely distraught when I chewed them out for it. "But I was trying to help you".
In the end, I don't care how big or how powerful you are, a person who doesn't want help can't be helped, I don't support efforts to help such people.
-Steve
You know, if I had any artistic talent at all, I would probably respond to all this by drawing up a picture of a child be graphically anally penetrated by "Uncle Sam" with the words "No Child Left Behind" tattooed on his cock, just to help test (and illustrate) how ridiculous these laws can be. (of course, I would be cowardly hiding behind free speech through political satire....)
Actually.... I guess it could be done in stick figures and labels. I mean, is a stick figure is meant to represent a 10 year old boy, and another stick figure represents a man raping that child... is that child porn? What about a picture of a guy stroking his hard on, while looking at a catalog of children's toys? I mean.... seriously!
And as I type this.... I did a quick google search and find.... I am.... just not that original... http://stickfigurechildporn.blogspot.com/2008/12/here-is-template-for-stick-figure-child.html
I guess all the good ideas really are taken.
-Steve
heh and I tend to be of the opinion that that concept is about where criminal justice and good ideas parted ways. Certainly, in the case of a murder or other area where a victim can't speak for themselves (dead, brain damaged, etc) we are left needing that to be the case. I can't think of many other cases where that seems like a good idea.
I mean, that concept is why we have a problem here in MA with BDSM clubs. Its a crime to hit someone, and the state is the plaintiff... so even if the person wanted to be hit, asked you to hit them, hell, even if they begged for it... its still a crime to do it.
-Steve
Perhaps, but, c'est la vie. As my sister is so fond of saying "Freedom is what you do with whats done to you".
Using state power in a ridiculous and arbitrary way against me would pretty much just validate my current opinion of how badly the system is setup. So, its pretty much what I figure I should expect could happen anyway since I live in a place where justice is a game and there are so many laws that its barely possible to take a shit without violating one.
-Steve
> That was really dumb. If he has been under a search warrant on his email account or a wiretap equivalent, you might have been in
> some deep shit with prosecutors.
I think you give them way too much credit. Sure its international fraud, but thats half the problem, These guys operate out of Ghana. Since they steal from individuals a few grand at a time, the feds tend to have bigger and easier fish to fry.
Plus, at worst, they would start watching me, and waiting for me to get the package. They would probably be quite disappointed to see me take the money out and toss the rest in the nearest garbage bin. If they did find that they had enough to go after me on, well... as my sister says "freedom is what you do with whats done to you". Throw me in jail, I still know what I did wasn't wrong, so I will still sleep like a baby at night.
In the end, isn't that what matters? Besides, as Thoreau said "Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.". I see no reason to cower in fear that some thug might come and try to oppress me.
-Steve
Before your time? I mean, isn't he still making movies?
The Unforgiven came out in 1992 (thats the movie whose plot involved a prostitute being cut up by a man whose penis she laughed at, which the other prostitutes respond to by putting a bounty on the mans head, a bounty that William Money (clint eastwood) intends to collect)
It is indeed quite a dark movie (and well done), and highly recommended... and I don't even typically like Westerns or Eastwood movies in general, but Unforgiven was well worth it (Also featuring Morgan Freeman, and Gene Hackman)
-Steve
I actually had some fun with this a while back.
I got a scammer hitting me up when I posted an ad for a room. I had seen this trick before, so I just went along and kept my ad up.
They sent a pack of money orders, nice ones. I never acknowledged they arrived. He sent another pack.
Then I told him that I knew what was up, and I had seen better forgeries (the last scammer who tried this same act). He immediately dropped that and decided to try and recruit me! "I need packages sent out from a US address. We send you a package of envelopes, all you have to do is mail them and we will pay you $500". He also asked if I was interested in buying counterfeit currency. This man was a real entrepreneur.
I agreed of course, more "wall paper" as you say. Now, I figured they would be smart enough to have a few "canaries" on there so that they could tell if I actually sent out the envelopes or not, and would want to not pay me if I didn't send them out (since there was no way in hell) so i tried to talk them into putting the money in the package for payment upfront. I even offered to take payment in the counterfeit bills, at a premium of course.
I chickened out when he wanted my phone number to talk on the phone. I should have gotten a skype line and continued. I really wanted to rip off a scammer. What was he going to do, call the police?
-Steve
My favorite was that Major League Baseball player a few years back. As I remember the case, he met a girl in a bar. She had used a fake ID to get into the bar, but was actually under age.
He was convicted anyway. Even though she was in a 21+ place, with a fake ID, apparently its not unreasonable for the state to expect men in bars to check ID before they take girls home, and do a better job than the bar at catching fake IDs.
-Steve
Apparently you haven't watched many Clint Eastwood movies.
dude, it takes HOURS to play any really good game. If your child can play a video game that you don't want him to play, given the dynamics of gaming, I feel pretty confident saying that you are pretty unplugged.
Frankly, I think that, if you are asking for a government rating to stop store owners from selling such a thing to your kid because you can't be bothered to police it yourself... given how much time is involved in playing a game to begin with, then some scapegoating is definitely going on, but its not other people who need to stop it.
-Steve
That ones never good, because its always followed by blood and screaming...
then next thing you know some kid is kicking open a shitter door and someones being shot to collect some damned reward...
> This, of course, puts them into a bind: Without enough viewers, you can't justify the advertising
> costs for specific slots so you either charge less for a specific time slot in order to attract
> advertisers or you lose them. If you lose them, you're not bringing in the revenue
Of course, anyone with cable or equivalent should know already.... the upside is, that for any given time slot, there isn't all that much competition. Nearly every time I hit "guide" and look for a show to relax and watch for a few, I find myself wondering why I even pay for TV.
1100 channels of nothing worth watching is impressive, but, not uncommon.
-Steve
Interesting. Actually, I added 1812 because I knew it was a war that we fought with England, but, I couldn't remember why and I vaguely thought that they started it.
As for WWI, I could at least make the case that with such a large conflict going on, there is something to be said for taking sides in a conflict thats already going on and bringing it to an end. At least we didn't start that one, or otherwise provoke it into happening.
-Steve
So essentially, they do it for the exact same reasons that many suicide bombers who were told that their families would be paid large sums of money when they were martyred do it?
Seems... appropriate.
-Steve
> Because some people want to ensure a future for their children? Is that really that hard to
> understand?
>
> I'll grant you though that the need to do so may or may not exist today.
No not at all, though, what IS hard to understand, for me, is how anyone, who hasn't had their head in the sand for their entire life, equates signing up to fight whoever congress and/or the president says to fight with ensuring a future for their children.
So far, they have a piss poor track record when it comes to picking the fights that we need to (or even should) fight. So far they have shown absolutely no shame whatsoever when its come to provoking the start of conflicts for political ends (a tradition going back far enough that Lincoln himself was nicknamed "Spotty Lincoln", long before he was president).
Aside from the revolution (which wasn't fought under the current government), the war of 1812, WWI, and WWII, I am having trouble thinking of a conflict that Americans needed to fight to ensure the future for their children.
-Steve