If there is tampering it won't take place during the voting and be done by a voter. It will most likely be a technican who "needs" to change out a faulty card. Or it will be an individual who needs to load "special" software to tabulate the votes, or something silly like that.
The point, which you are skillfully avoiding, is that the violence done by America (and before them other imperial powers) to the region, including redrawing the boundaries in the first place (GB) and installing puppet governments (US), and funding brutal dictatorships like those of the Shah and Saddam, Musharaf, and Saudi Arabia (US), has provoked the visceral hatred many people feel for American interference, and the desire to see you leave, for good.
Thank you for making this point for me. I didn't have the energy to continue this conversation, but you've summed it up well. I will further add that the Chinese seem to be doing quite well in the region, despite being non-Muslim. The Soviets have great ties with the Iranians, despite being portrayed as such a scourge to the region in the 1980s. I don't see either of those huge nations with entrenched business interests in the region being subject to suicide terrorism. I don't see the leaders of those countries telling their citizens to be worried about nuclear suitcase bombs, or biological attacks in their major cities.
So what is really going on? Is there some huge conspiracy against the United States? Or is it that nearly a century of imperialistic military dominance of the region is finally starting to wear thin? There is a saying, "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Well, I'd modify that saying in relation to our foreign policy and say, "If your only tool is violence, everyone looks like a threat."
It is to laugh! Propaganda, huh? I was personally involved with providing intelligence to, um, unconventional units that tracked down AQI/ISI (Al Qaeda in Iraq/ Islamic State of Iraq). I followed Awakening movements (Sahwa, or Sahawa), which we later called Sons of Iraq for some unknown reason. And I can tell you there really are Iraqi Sunnis that are rejecting Al Qaeda's grip on their communities and are fighting back, quite successfully in some areas.
You further emphasized my point for me. Al Qaeda is so radical that even the majority of Sunni's don't like their oppressive form of Islam. And yes, it is propaganda. It may be propaganda based in fact, but it is propaganda... information released with the intent of influencing discourse about the war.
Saudi Arabia asked us to push Saddam out of Kuwait and not UBL's Mujahadin
The point that I was making to the OP was that Iraq wouldn't have invaded Saudi Arabia. The only reason Saddam went into Kuwait was because he believed that he had implicit permission from our government, which he did. He asked the Ambassador what the position of the United States was in regards to Kuwait, and the Ambassador replied that the United States did not consider Kuwait to be of any interest to the United States. Then he invaded, and suddenly we had a reason to villify Saddam as the first step to gaining control over the petroleum resources of Iraq.
Well, we funded some mujahadin who later turned their attention to us. But we didn't "build" it. In any case, what's your point?
My point is that the government created the very "problem" that they are now telling us to worry about. My point is that the bigger picture is that our government is creating our problems with a fucked up foreign policy. We've been terrorizing the Middle East since the end of WW2. It's okay for us to "fight them over there", but if "Islamic Extremists" want to come fight us over here in America then they are in the wrong? Violence begets violence, it is as simple as that. We spend $300 million a day in Iraq, killing civilians and further inciting violence that will fuel hatred of the United States as foreign occupiers for generations. That $300 million a day could be spent on better, more effective long term solutions. In any situation, the best defense is to befriend your enemies. Unfortunately the United States government isn't interested in peace. They are interested in the balance of power.
I challenge you to name one - JUST ONE - 'network a admin requirement' that XP "Pro" provides that XP Home can't do.
I haven't used XP Home since XP first came out, but can you connect to a file share using Home? I seem to remember that you can't. Basically anything that requires network credentials doesn't work on XP Home.
Citrix already has this, and if you've ever used MSOffice as a published Citrix web application, you'll know what I'm talking about. None of this flaky ajax crap. Accessible from anywhere. Documents exist on the corporate server. It costs a bundle to license though and I don't know if it supports linux.
And if you want to take it to another level, you can implement something like this...
It will do RDP or Citrix connections via a web browser, no VPN client software required. So anywhere you have a web browser and internet access, you have access to your applications and documents. Of course it isn't free, but when it comes to IT, I find that you get what you pay for.
I have to admit though, I sure miss the old reveal codes capability in Word Perfect.
I used to use WP 5.1 and I'm not sure what you're talking about. Word will show you all of the underlying formatting for your document. In Word 2003 you can simply Shift+F1.
We had bases in Saudi Arabia in case Saddam invaded again, which probably would have happened if we weren't there.
You must have missed the tidbit of information where Saddam ASKED OUR PERMISSION before he invaded Kuwait. The US government enabled Saddam to build his military up to the point it was at in order to fight Iran. Saddam was a puppet of the United States. He wasn't going to do anything he thought might endanger that relationship.
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.
In other words, "We don't care what you do with Kuwait."
I'm no fan of the Patriot Act and other encroachments on our rights to privacy, but I genuinely believe these things are done because of a very real threat. Fight warrantless domestic surveillance. But don't think for a second the threat isn't real.
Look at where the threat really came from. Look how much support truly radical Islamists have within their society. If you believe the propaganda coming out of Iraq, the US government has been able to find support among the Sunni's to fight al Qaeda because moderate, mainstream Sunni's didn't like the radical form of Islam that al Qaeda was trying to hoist upon their society.
Where did al Qaeda come from? The US government built it to fight the Soviets. They worked together with the Pakistani ISI to make it happen. Where does al Qaeda get its propaganda from? It gets it from the United States having permanent bases in the Middle East.
Some people are so narrow minded and short sighted. If we agreed to trade for what we are currently taking with force, the world would be more peaceful. If we made it known that we were using peaceful means to compete for the resources but were going to annihilate any al Qaeda supporters in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States, we'd be right back where we were with the former USSR. Sure, al Qaeda could talk about the evil United States all day long, but so long as we weren't overthrowing popularly elected leaders (Iran 1953), playing Arab nations against each other (Iraq versus Iran, ~1980s) and supporting apartheid like conditions (Palestine, right now), the rhetoric would be empty. If, heaven forbid they actually did detonate a nuke in the United States and then we retaliated by levelling Syria or Iran or something, we would be in the right because we didn't strike first.
I'm not saying that there aren't crazy people out there. Crazy people can be contained and their support can be taken away. Al Qaeda gets support because they have legitimate gripes, namely that the United States is intefering in the internal affairs of Muslim nations.
Do you really think Iran is going to nuke Israel? It's mutually assured destruction all over again. Do you really think the Arabs are going to detonate an nuke right next to Palestine, the very land that they are fighting to "save" from the Jews?
I could be wrong here, but if everyone running ParanoidLinux becomes a node in the Tor network then aren't they effectively increasing the size of the network in proportion to their increased load on it? Granted the only thing I know about Tor came from the initial presentation at DefCon and I stopped listening after they said, "Frequently your entry and exit points are on the same network, making it trivial to determine your identity."
My very limited understanding of QoS is that both sides of the connection have to support it. Your application on the PC has to support QoS packet tagging and the router/firewall that you are using has to acknowledge those QoS tags.
Of course a customer that paid for what you describe probably didn't have their AD working right either...
There are a surprising number of completely borked AD implementations out there. I don't know how people manage to do it. They must try using ADSIEdit as word processor or something.
Has anyone EVER had a exceptional experience with HP/Dell/Gateway? I'm serious, this is a good discussion point.
Yes. See one of my other responses in this thread about dealing with HP. Brief recap... If you actually PAY for a support contract, you will get good support.
Or do you want to buy IBM or HP with a 24x7 on-site service contract? (Those are the only two I could think of that even offer that kind of support.)
This is probably the best support they think they can offer at the price. I would be interested how people are treated at the different tiers of support that they purchased.
It has been my experience that consumer level support everywhere sucks. I've been working with HP and Compaq servers and desktops for over a decade. Whenever there is a problem, as long as the hardware is under warranty they will replace it. For instance on Monday two of the cooling fans in one of my servers went out. The server shut itself down to keep from overheating (they were the fans responsible for CPU cooling). I called tech support, read them the POST error message and three and a half hours later there was a tech onsite replacing the mainboard. Same thing with their desktops... Evo series, dc7xxx series, xw8xxx series, whatever... so long as it is under warranty you really don't even have to troubleshoot the problem. Just give them the error message and they will send you the part. On Monday they even went above and beyond. Some how the extended warranty (Care Pack) didn't get properly associated with the serial number of the server. I told them that it should be on there. I told them we have over 15 HP servers here, all with extended warranties. They put me on hold for five minutes and then sent the tech out with the parts.
Now support for a Pavillion home PC... freakin forget about it. You will be talking to some guy in India who only knows how to read from the manual and walk you through the steps that you've already tried. But that is pretty much par for the course. If you pay extra for support you will get good support. If you are expecting support as part of the purchase price on an already cheap computer, well... you get what you pay for.
I completely agree with you on the field techs. Those guys always seem to get the job done, when they eventually show up. Some are better than others about showing up on time but they definitely know their stuff when they do. I just figured that everyone involved in the process was unionized, at least in the provisioning process.
All that because banks, retailers, auto dealerships, etc... want to make it easy for you, the consumer, to go into debt to buy their shit. There is no other reason.
And to take it one step further... our entire economy is based on debt. If the bank loans you $1000, they can now use that loan of $1000 as an "asset" and loan that asset out to someone else. Thanks to fractional reserve banking, they can actually loan out the $1000 that they loaned to you out many times over.
If you really want to trip out, realize that if everyone paid back their debt there wouldn't be any money left in circulation. Every dollar in existance today has been loaned into existance. Our money supply isn't backed by anything more than the belief that people will continue to exchange their labor for paper.
I don't think the telco's can ever be that responsive but there's no reason why they couldn't cut that 7-10 day window down to 1-2 business days if they wanted to spend the money to hire more people. There's no reason why they couldn't coordinate orders better between their various departments.
How much of that do you think has to do with the union culture in the telcos? Could it have something to do with the combination of being unable to get rid of positions and being unable to fire inefficient people? I've always had the sense that they have some really outdated processes, but those processes can't be streamlined because it would involve either moving people or getting rid of people. My experience has been that no matter what industry you are dealing with, if they are unionized they are going to fight change at every turn as some sort of knee jerk reaction.
Verizon provisioning sucks, but it has been pretty much my experience that provisioning EVERYWHERE sucks no matter who you go with. The one exception has been UUNet, currently MCI/WorldComm/Verizon Business. Those guys are on it.
I agree on their customer service with regards to billing. I've been with them since the days when 384k was considered "platinum" service. They don't even offer "platinum" service anymore but my account is flagged as a platinum DSL customer. No matter where I go, I get their highest available speed for $34.99 a month... the same price I've been paying since the late 1990s.
Technical support is alright. They had some provisioning problems with their 3mb lines for a while. The initial provision was for 1.5mb and then they'd have to get the okay from Genuity to get the full 3mb. I moved to a couple of different places in a short period of time. Every time I moved they screwed up the provisioning and wouldn't believe me when I told them, "I've been through this twice before. Just call Genuity and get the line properly provisioned." Yet even dealing with their skepticism they still resolved the issue within 48 hours.
Well, for one thing, the _rest_ of society is made up of simpletons whose mantra is "I want to believe."
I completely agree with this. People don't want to be bothered with the reality of things. They don't want to take responsibility for themselves. They want to follow the herd and believe that everything will be okay because they are going along with what everyone else is doing.
I almost caved in. I almost bought some property at the peak but I realized that things were screwed up. I realized that real estate values were inflated. The thing that boggled my mind and messed me up is that I thought I was poor. I thought I was some how out of sync. "Everyone" around me seemed to be able to come up with some money for some property. The questions I was asking myself were, "Is there really so much money in the economy?" "What kind of jobs are these people doing that they can afford these housing prices?" "Where are all of the jobs that are letting people buy these houses?" In the end it looks like I dodged the bullet... kind of. The hidden tax of inflation is already here and it's only going to get worse. The Federal Reserve and the government are going to bail out all of the assholes. They have to keep "the economy" going. We don't produce anything in America anymore and we're running out of shit to sell each other. All we have is debt. I heard a rumor that they're going to collaterialize car debt. That's what it is coming down to... the wealth of our nation is based on our ability to reliably pay off our automobiles?!??
I've been a Verizon DSL subscriber since the late 1990s, back when they were still GTE. They have had constantly good service and great uptimes. I started using torrents about a year ago and have never had any problems. I have one running at home right now. On my 1.5/384 line I'm getting about 170k down and 40k up, constantly.
It has been my experience that in some ways DSL is superior to cable. I remember when cable first came out everyone who got it thought it was great. Then their neighbor got it, and their other neighbor got it, and suddenly it became obvious that the entire neighborhood was on one shared pipe and a single bandwidth hog could ruin it for everyone. It doesn't seem like much has changed in the last decade. With DSL you can count on getting the bandwidth that you pay for but the peak available bandwidth isn't as high as cable. On cable you might get some really high peak speeds, but the cable networks haven't been designed to sustain high transfer rates for long periods of time.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng_Mui
If there is tampering it won't take place during the voting and be done by a voter. It will most likely be a technican who "needs" to change out a faulty card. Or it will be an individual who needs to load "special" software to tabulate the votes, or something silly like that.
There is something wrong with your computer then. I have an HP desktop with a P4 2.8ghz chip running XP and it takes about a minute or two to boot up.
Thank you for making this point for me. I didn't have the energy to continue this conversation, but you've summed it up well. I will further add that the Chinese seem to be doing quite well in the region, despite being non-Muslim. The Soviets have great ties with the Iranians, despite being portrayed as such a scourge to the region in the 1980s. I don't see either of those huge nations with entrenched business interests in the region being subject to suicide terrorism. I don't see the leaders of those countries telling their citizens to be worried about nuclear suitcase bombs, or biological attacks in their major cities.
So what is really going on? Is there some huge conspiracy against the United States? Or is it that nearly a century of imperialistic military dominance of the region is finally starting to wear thin? There is a saying, "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Well, I'd modify that saying in relation to our foreign policy and say, "If your only tool is violence, everyone looks like a threat."
You further emphasized my point for me. Al Qaeda is so radical that even the majority of Sunni's don't like their oppressive form of Islam. And yes, it is propaganda. It may be propaganda based in fact, but it is propaganda... information released with the intent of influencing discourse about the war.
Saudi Arabia asked us to push Saddam out of Kuwait and not UBL's Mujahadin
The point that I was making to the OP was that Iraq wouldn't have invaded Saudi Arabia. The only reason Saddam went into Kuwait was because he believed that he had implicit permission from our government, which he did. He asked the Ambassador what the position of the United States was in regards to Kuwait, and the Ambassador replied that the United States did not consider Kuwait to be of any interest to the United States. Then he invaded, and suddenly we had a reason to villify Saddam as the first step to gaining control over the petroleum resources of Iraq.
Well, we funded some mujahadin who later turned their attention to us. But we didn't "build" it. In any case, what's your point?
My point is that the government created the very "problem" that they are now telling us to worry about. My point is that the bigger picture is that our government is creating our problems with a fucked up foreign policy. We've been terrorizing the Middle East since the end of WW2. It's okay for us to "fight them over there", but if "Islamic Extremists" want to come fight us over here in America then they are in the wrong? Violence begets violence, it is as simple as that. We spend $300 million a day in Iraq, killing civilians and further inciting violence that will fuel hatred of the United States as foreign occupiers for generations. That $300 million a day could be spent on better, more effective long term solutions. In any situation, the best defense is to befriend your enemies. Unfortunately the United States government isn't interested in peace. They are interested in the balance of power.
I haven't used XP Home since XP first came out, but can you connect to a file share using Home? I seem to remember that you can't. Basically anything that requires network credentials doesn't work on XP Home.
And if you want to take it to another level, you can implement something like this...
http://www.sonicwall.com/us/products/Secure_Remote_Access.html
It will do RDP or Citrix connections via a web browser, no VPN client software required. So anywhere you have a web browser and internet access, you have access to your applications and documents. Of course it isn't free, but when it comes to IT, I find that you get what you pay for.
I used to use WP 5.1 and I'm not sure what you're talking about. Word will show you all of the underlying formatting for your document. In Word 2003 you can simply Shift+F1.
You must have missed the tidbit of information where Saddam ASKED OUR PERMISSION before he invaded Kuwait. The US government enabled Saddam to build his military up to the point it was at in order to fight Iran. Saddam was a puppet of the United States. He wasn't going to do anything he thought might endanger that relationship.
http://www.thetip.org/art_April_Glaspie___US_Ambassador_to_Iraq______292_icle.html
From the article:
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.
In other words, "We don't care what you do with Kuwait."
Look at where the threat really came from. Look how much support truly radical Islamists have within their society. If you believe the propaganda coming out of Iraq, the US government has been able to find support among the Sunni's to fight al Qaeda because moderate, mainstream Sunni's didn't like the radical form of Islam that al Qaeda was trying to hoist upon their society.
Where did al Qaeda come from? The US government built it to fight the Soviets. They worked together with the Pakistani ISI to make it happen. Where does al Qaeda get its propaganda from? It gets it from the United States having permanent bases in the Middle East.
Some people are so narrow minded and short sighted. If we agreed to trade for what we are currently taking with force, the world would be more peaceful. If we made it known that we were using peaceful means to compete for the resources but were going to annihilate any al Qaeda supporters in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States, we'd be right back where we were with the former USSR. Sure, al Qaeda could talk about the evil United States all day long, but so long as we weren't overthrowing popularly elected leaders (Iran 1953), playing Arab nations against each other (Iraq versus Iran, ~1980s) and supporting apartheid like conditions (Palestine, right now), the rhetoric would be empty. If, heaven forbid they actually did detonate a nuke in the United States and then we retaliated by levelling Syria or Iran or something, we would be in the right because we didn't strike first.
I'm not saying that there aren't crazy people out there. Crazy people can be contained and their support can be taken away. Al Qaeda gets support because they have legitimate gripes, namely that the United States is intefering in the internal affairs of Muslim nations.
Do you really think Iran is going to nuke Israel? It's mutually assured destruction all over again. Do you really think the Arabs are going to detonate an nuke right next to Palestine, the very land that they are fighting to "save" from the Jews?
I could be wrong here, but if everyone running ParanoidLinux becomes a node in the Tor network then aren't they effectively increasing the size of the network in proportion to their increased load on it? Granted the only thing I know about Tor came from the initial presentation at DefCon and I stopped listening after they said, "Frequently your entry and exit points are on the same network, making it trivial to determine your identity."
My very limited understanding of QoS is that both sides of the connection have to support it. Your application on the PC has to support QoS packet tagging and the router/firewall that you are using has to acknowledge those QoS tags.
There are a surprising number of completely borked AD implementations out there. I don't know how people manage to do it. They must try using ADSIEdit as word processor or something.
Yes. See one of my other responses in this thread about dealing with HP. Brief recap... If you actually PAY for a support contract, you will get good support.
This is probably the best support they think they can offer at the price. I would be interested how people are treated at the different tiers of support that they purchased.
It has been my experience that consumer level support everywhere sucks. I've been working with HP and Compaq servers and desktops for over a decade. Whenever there is a problem, as long as the hardware is under warranty they will replace it. For instance on Monday two of the cooling fans in one of my servers went out. The server shut itself down to keep from overheating (they were the fans responsible for CPU cooling). I called tech support, read them the POST error message and three and a half hours later there was a tech onsite replacing the mainboard. Same thing with their desktops... Evo series, dc7xxx series, xw8xxx series, whatever... so long as it is under warranty you really don't even have to troubleshoot the problem. Just give them the error message and they will send you the part. On Monday they even went above and beyond. Some how the extended warranty (Care Pack) didn't get properly associated with the serial number of the server. I told them that it should be on there. I told them we have over 15 HP servers here, all with extended warranties. They put me on hold for five minutes and then sent the tech out with the parts.
Now support for a Pavillion home PC... freakin forget about it. You will be talking to some guy in India who only knows how to read from the manual and walk you through the steps that you've already tried. But that is pretty much par for the course. If you pay extra for support you will get good support. If you are expecting support as part of the purchase price on an already cheap computer, well... you get what you pay for.
Yet the condescending assholes never seem to take a break.
I completely agree with you on the field techs. Those guys always seem to get the job done, when they eventually show up. Some are better than others about showing up on time but they definitely know their stuff when they do. I just figured that everyone involved in the process was unionized, at least in the provisioning process.
And to take it one step further... our entire economy is based on debt. If the bank loans you $1000, they can now use that loan of $1000 as an "asset" and loan that asset out to someone else. Thanks to fractional reserve banking, they can actually loan out the $1000 that they loaned to you out many times over.
If you really want to trip out, realize that if everyone paid back their debt there wouldn't be any money left in circulation. Every dollar in existance today has been loaned into existance. Our money supply isn't backed by anything more than the belief that people will continue to exchange their labor for paper.
How much of that do you think has to do with the union culture in the telcos? Could it have something to do with the combination of being unable to get rid of positions and being unable to fire inefficient people? I've always had the sense that they have some really outdated processes, but those processes can't be streamlined because it would involve either moving people or getting rid of people. My experience has been that no matter what industry you are dealing with, if they are unionized they are going to fight change at every turn as some sort of knee jerk reaction.
Verizon provisioning sucks, but it has been pretty much my experience that provisioning EVERYWHERE sucks no matter who you go with. The one exception has been UUNet, currently MCI/WorldComm/Verizon Business. Those guys are on it.
If you subscribe to the theory that oil is a finite resource then you are better off consuming everyone else's before you tap your own.
Technical support is alright. They had some provisioning problems with their 3mb lines for a while. The initial provision was for 1.5mb and then they'd have to get the okay from Genuity to get the full 3mb. I moved to a couple of different places in a short period of time. Every time I moved they screwed up the provisioning and wouldn't believe me when I told them, "I've been through this twice before. Just call Genuity and get the line properly provisioned." Yet even dealing with their skepticism they still resolved the issue within 48 hours.
I must be lucky, or maybe Verizon knows what they are doing when it comes to residential data circuits.
I completely agree with this. People don't want to be bothered with the reality of things. They don't want to take responsibility for themselves. They want to follow the herd and believe that everything will be okay because they are going along with what everyone else is doing.
I almost caved in. I almost bought some property at the peak but I realized that things were screwed up. I realized that real estate values were inflated. The thing that boggled my mind and messed me up is that I thought I was poor. I thought I was some how out of sync. "Everyone" around me seemed to be able to come up with some money for some property. The questions I was asking myself were, "Is there really so much money in the economy?" "What kind of jobs are these people doing that they can afford these housing prices?" "Where are all of the jobs that are letting people buy these houses?" In the end it looks like I dodged the bullet... kind of. The hidden tax of inflation is already here and it's only going to get worse. The Federal Reserve and the government are going to bail out all of the assholes. They have to keep "the economy" going. We don't produce anything in America anymore and we're running out of shit to sell each other. All we have is debt. I heard a rumor that they're going to collaterialize car debt. That's what it is coming down to... the wealth of our nation is based on our ability to reliably pay off our automobiles?!??
It has been my experience that in some ways DSL is superior to cable. I remember when cable first came out everyone who got it thought it was great. Then their neighbor got it, and their other neighbor got it, and suddenly it became obvious that the entire neighborhood was on one shared pipe and a single bandwidth hog could ruin it for everyone. It doesn't seem like much has changed in the last decade. With DSL you can count on getting the bandwidth that you pay for but the peak available bandwidth isn't as high as cable. On cable you might get some really high peak speeds, but the cable networks haven't been designed to sustain high transfer rates for long periods of time.