I'd argue, but when an asshole states that he thinks FGM is 'amusing' its only validating the fact that their input is worthless and that they are scum.
Since when do they only inflict their horrors on themselves?
The animals amongst them have a view that they must bring back the Califate, that women who don't cover themselves in a black head to toe tent should get an acid bath, or be raped, and that young girls who want to better themselves and want to go to school have a target on their back.
Basically detest islam in the majority of its forms. But having looked at Egypt for a while, the level of abuse on women, organised or social rape, the deliberate and appalling levels of enforced FGM, and coming to a conclusion that as a people in a general sense, I feel only sorry for the victims, but generally regard most with a deep disdain.
As an aside, this looks to me to have civil war written all over it. But before that, an observation of my own on this. I have zero belief that Islam can fit into modern society. Into democracy. In secularism or into multiculturalism. I don't believe it deserves a seat at the table, nor do I think they actually want a seat unless it comes with all the usual preconditions and appalling islamic fundamentalism.
However, if a person like me - has a theory that I demand or expect islamics to adhere to modern standards, and to put aside some of their normal activities and behaviour and to fall into line and operate on a civil basis in society, take part in democracy, campaign for what they believe and if they can do so in the civil way, perhaps get a deserved place at the table of government - then things in Egypt don't provide any good news. And under normal circumstances I'd welcome the Muslim Brotherhood getting chewed up and spat out. But I can't have it both ways, even with my somewhat harsh line of thought. If they do put down the guns, and do put aside the bombs, and come to play a full part in the democratic processes, then what?
So, the context now is that they win an election (debate that as you see fit), and a number of months later, find the US supported and equipped Army deposes their chosen man and suspends the entire constitution. An awkward pause for me now occurs. If they get excluded and sidelined in this way, it seems to me that this is fuel in the tank for bad stuff. What is the point of elections now to Morsi and this brotherhood. Democracy by its nature has to be inclusive, even to forces or views I dislike. Thats almost the point.
In this instance, I find myself having a tiny amount of sympathy to bad people, whom I normally don't have any sympathy with, as there is an air of injustice and incorrectness about this. I detest Islam and its fundamentalism, BUT, if they put their guns and arms down and come to the table - something I may not like, but may well respect - then their part in it can't be cut off like this - at least thats a vague feeling I have. But I know that the Muslim Brotherhood are scum, and I know only idiots would vote for them. Bingo - look what happened. Idiots and then the MB got elected.
There is no escape. The men are involved. The women. The mothers. There are no innocents in this appalling crime against humanity, and against women in particular. And against the young girls, often under age, who are forcably held down and have their sexual organs butchered in full 7th century barbarism. The fact that the women are often involved in the infliction of this crime only erodes all respect. Despicable, and beyond contempt. It doesn't matter who gets into Government over such people. Its very hard for me to find sympathy for these fucking people. Their behaviour is worse than animals. Their choice of 'leadership' is a reflection of the people as a whole. Normally it is said that to correct fundamental problems - in a society, the advancement of women is critical. I have no problem with that,... but these women.. there is a black hole here where an education and care for their own siblings should be.
The calls for 'freedom' or 'democracy' really become meaningless. Human rights? Yeah - as if anyone a citizen of such a place t
People did tend to stretch the technet subscription. Certainly on for my part it ended up being rigged all the way at home, in VMs with a scratch infrastructure used for work and for fun. Microsoft and pretty much everyone else has twigged that whats happened is a slippage where I think I am not alone. Companies do not give me a test farm. As a tech, I think MS fund this out. My company found this out. I was either going to end up worse at what I do - Or do this.
But, and here is the elephant in the room *But*, I started more than 20 years ago. I started before all the DRM and ever deeper licensing and chasing down every dollar. I started before MS thought is was smart to have 9 versions. I have seen what the loss leader of allowing home use for free actually translated into computers on the office floor as people triggered the wave that meant windows at home - windows at work.
So, that was the tide coming in. I guess the tide always has to shift. So, the home user got targetted as 'pirate' - so between being made the enemy and crapping over them with worse versions and less features, less features, and less features, and them finding the competition (Hi iOS, Android, *nix, OSX) Microsoft have been on the path of eradicating the crack investment first pack free loss leader. You can add in shipping Win8hate - which only tiny minorites even accept, and demand every corner of the ecosystem use (er no..) and then just to cap it off - why not withdraw Technet. Having blown away the loss leader that brought in the kids, Joe Sixpack and the wife, now its time to chew on some tech and admin bones. You can only chew on your roots up to a point, then the plant dies.
Slashdot should actually be happy. MS used to be a company that seemed to wholly understand how to build marketshare, to build the monopoly. iOS and OSX upgrades cost what? £20 or less? Android is free(ish). *Unix has lots of choices. The dev stacks for these exist and are largely in place.
When the OS has rotted, there becomes a growing crisis where the reason for the windows ecosystem rots as well. If you don't run Windows, you don't need sharepoint. You won't need Exchange. You'll be able to change DBs.
Azure? What would anyone need Azure for?
I'm watching the world slowly walk away, and the Board is like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Oh, I know. They have other cities they are building. But Rome is Rome. And when Rome fell, that was the end.
US companies do business in India? Wait.. To get in there you have to fight to pass innumerable hurdles thrown in your way. How about China?
If the world was a level playing field, I'd probably be ok with the H1 Visa scam bullshit. But I'm not (and I'm a Brit in the UK). Globalisation is fine, I have no problem with it in its bassic capitalist basis. But it has to cut both ways. If China and India get to grow their middle class by working on US workload, then US companies should have the same access to do the same in China and India.
I watch real time each week. Its somewhat weird seeing the slagging off the republicans get there. The dems in the US seem very very friendly to immigration, and to globalisation, and seem to take a lot of funding from the Apple and 'Media' funding. In the meantime on an observational level, seems to me the bone marrow of America - the middle class person is under seige. I can't fundamentally understand off shoring, from a business perspective. Even in raw capitalists terms - eroding the middle class is eroding away your own customer base long term.
Globalisation in the west now seems to be 'worry about the H1 visa holders', and immigrants, and 3rd world - more than your own people. Screw them. Very strange way to proceed.
Its ok to have a concern about minorities and immigrants, but its got strangely out of kilter.
However, it may be possible to cut costs by 50% if you have some expensive bad practises.
Let me give you an example. We replaced our old Dell Workstations - these were £2500 each, with newer, better units (Dell T3600s) for around £1100 a unit. There. In a single phase we cut more than 50% and the new units are not in any way a step backwards. IT costs can/do fall over time, so I'd argue initially that taking a good look may not be as hurtful as initially it seems. Virtualisation and cloud are offering for some areas a seismic shift in workload and capacity and I think spending in some areas in terms of investment can harness good returns on the funding/cost side.
*In the above, I am not agreeing with cuts per se, but if they are there, and are viable, then it has sense to take some time with them and examine the cases.
I did some testing with it. Its good, but its clearly work in progress, and a technical marvel. But its also lacking the tools and toolset for deployment, and management. The only cloud winners will in the end be the ones that have great toolsets and management. If something in the end remains a huge mass of spagetti that only finite skilled souls can pull together and run, then it will be eaten alive.
I have not tested JuJu, but that seems to be like the kind of deployable real world end user tooling that this is going to require.
You can't just slide from XP to 8. You'll have to rethink your app layers. You'll have to retrain staff.
Many won't. Many will simply look around and choose a different way.
Microsoft's shipping of WinH8, and a massive dose of arrogance in the same dose, has done enormous damage. It wasn't required, and they could have taken a better view and estimation on things and simply underlined 7.
And better yet, they decided in utter crass stupidity to bet the farm on an ARM based incomplete porting effort, and dragged the worst parts on the most undesirable places. Now the ARM based RT versions can't be hooked up to AD, and the Windows clients are fubar. There was no need to do this. They could have run RT as a light weight ARM based Win client - and not damaged X86/64.
On the flip side. PC vendors ship business units that are $300 - have a crappy spec, and have to be replaced on a cycle because they are baseline nasty units. This model is so broken its not even funny. People are rightly looking at $99 tablets and doing the same workloads on something 1/3 price. Mr HP here probably thinks he can sell some business notebooks with 2GB ram. At an inflated price, and inbuilt 'obselete'. These people need firing.
Ultrabooks are just reheated junk, with downclocked parts, shitty performance, a lack of storage, and an inability to do anything really PC level interesting. Oh, and 4 times the price of the other garbage. I can understand why some people might like them, but for me, I can't do chunky computing, I can't play games, I can't adaquatly virtualise on them. They are just thin light office machines, and are worth only a tenth of the price. HP and other vendors persist in building PC's that people simply don't really want. *Thats really why the sales slide has started*.
Hopefully someone will wake up and start shipping real PCs again, with 4 mem slots as a basic standard in lappies, and 8 on the more expensive homeboards.
A medium sized company asked you, and you asked slashdot. My alarm bells are ringing here. If you don't have decent background in this area, and you're query ends up on slashdot, I suspect that as a whole management of the company is screwed. Otherwise they would not have called you in, but rather someone with the right background. To be honest, this seems wrong from the very beginning.
And I note the thread is suggesting 'management consultant'. No, although an IT focused one would be fine. If you are going to establish if an IT team and its function are busted, its not a spreadsheet numbers game. Its an in the trench and looking at the wider picture. In most cases sadly, the truth is a broken IT depeartment is in fact a reflection of a broken management/board structure.
IT isn't easy. And some businesses assume it costs buttons, and that IT projects are simplistic things that just click click and are done. The reality is they can be hugely complex and require seriously good solid workmanship in development and production.
The creation and implementation of such systems is a lurch towards totalitarianism. It is equally bad news should a state cease to be moderate, and any such system will be turned against people in the society. The problem with the ideal 'you have nothing to fear so long as you are law abiding' is that the people implementing the system, also happen to make the laws. So fundamentally they can arbitrarily decide to make you a law breaker.
Let me put this another way. If you investigate a person, - at some point, you'll collate enough dirt on them to do them harm. Its that simple, and its that evil.
I'm English. Its in my legal DNA that my people are supposed to operate in life as innocent until proven guilty. We can read through history the occasons where habeas corpus gets suspended, and its chilling effects.
Actually, the ignorant people are those who fucking swallow hook line and sinker the ideal peddled that Nazi'ism and Hitler and the movement were not socialist. People actually have to go and read the whole history of things, not listen to snippets peddled by media and especially leftists.
In his final days Ernst Röhm made a speech seriously underlining the 'socialist' aspect of it within the movement. And if you ever read in detail, it becomes impossible to extract socialism from its involvement. Wether it was nationalisation, class war, the power of state over individual, - the party was born from the German workers party, the list is long.
And you can add in something we see today. A lot of bad blood being brewed about 'capitalists', 'bankers' 'economists' and 'industrialists'. Remember this next time you take the time to note a 'socialist' ranting.
The debate about Nazi and where they sit gets skewed. Hilter found much that he shared and created the Nazi party from the German Workers party. He aligned himself with the socialists, until he was famously able to turn to them and stated in Parliament 'And now I don't need you any more'.
Politics is circular, not so much left or right. If middle ground sits at the tp of the circle, offering a level of moderate landscaping, other hardline doctrines slide down the circle, and meet at the bottom, which is where you'll actually find Nazi'ism and communisim and other foul totalitarian and political ideals on near common ground.
I laugh at leftists who persist in trying to find a big enough gap away from Nazi'ism. Socialism IS linked to nazi'ism both in history and idealogy. Hilter nationalised industry. He made enrolled people into the state, and he grew the fucking shit from the German workers party. He carried out a class war - many aspects of his bullshit came directly from socialism.It is true that parts of his evil craven idealogy were not socialist in nature, but parts of it were.
I agree that at both ends of the spectrum, you'll find a strange similar evil to achieve control in a totalitarian aspect share a commonality. Its why you'll find at rally's the right wing hardliners carry stanley knives and the hard left scum carry claw hammers. Neither side believes in open democracy.
In the 30's in Germany - it fell to gangs of brown shirts, or communists, and as the violence and loss of control escalated, the rule of law and democracy was lost. Democracy is not to be decided by small bands of thuggery precahing their twisted idealism as a new religion.
IT is already being shattered. But don't assume this is a good thing. All thats actually happening is massive damage, loss of control, and data being islanded. Whole departments and even orgs will spin out and data spiral arms will spin out.
The primary old school reasons for IT departments - these still exist. You might well think regulation, and compliance have simply gone away. They haven't, they just got forgotten.
One thing being forgotten, is that IT has always been capable of game changing. Always. But what you find is this is usually killed by lack of funding, and by severe red tape. The idea that end around onto the nearest cloud makes you fast moving - is true. But its also usually arbitrary, and outside of operational agreement in many cases.
People assuming that everyone on BYOD and every device under the sum being an out of control compromised, un policied device as a good thing. It will be, for a short time. Until the damage happens.
As for older techs who don't or cant stay up to speed - whats new? Thats not a new IT problem. Thats ever present. Part of the idea of google docs is that to a greater degree - you don't need IT..(at least thats the theory... )
But, I started out long ago. Here is how it rolled.
Started by accident. Foot in the door was someone I knew needed an AS/400 night operator. This job basically entailed loading tapes at given times, and handling print runs and batch jobs, and escalating where needed to 2nd line. That job ran for a while.. That place decided to downsize and change, but the AS/400 stuff gave me enough to go look for more. I ended up in a place with AS/400 and Novell. They moved across adding Win 3.1 and 3.11 and NT4 with MS mail. This worked through 95 and 95b (at the same time at home at this stage I was running a mob of stuff, a Cyrix IBM 5x68 and some mixed Amiga gear. The office was moving through 286, 386, and 486 gear. Carried on as AS/400 and PC support continued to cross over, with growing aspect on PCs and support.
Moved to London, carried on, the AS/400 stuff faded and I ended up full on covering PCs, Networks, Servers. I've been through the whole MS family and I started on Exchange 5 through to the current 2010 release.
Cutting to the chase. 1. Get Technet. I don't know if current circumstances allow MSDN, but get a technet account. Anyone, and I mean anyone working with MS software, PC stuff in their job aspect should have a Technet account. No discussion. No If's, no But's. 2. One of the short comments above was one of the best. Get an MS virtual academy account, and get a trial of Azure. 3. I'll assume you already use virtualisation. If yes, hit 4. If no. Stop everything else. Now go explore Hyper V. Learn it. Learn how to set it up on domain (easier) - and off domain (who made this shit) - and go find a tool called coreconfig from codeplex. 4. Check 3 carefully. Check it again. Anything you are going to build in MS-SQL or with Exchange going forward will likely sit on Hyper V. 5. The requirements of single handedly working on a large scale MS structure of AD, MS-SQL, and Exchange - have basically gotten pretty huge. So large in fact you'll then need to become expert in System Centre. So, slow down. Start to work this carefully. If you plan to do this, and you really mean it, start with some core parts, like Hyper V, and build an exam path and qualify what you can as you go. 6. 5 is an enormous workload today in 2013. If anyone claims otherwise, I think they are talking shit. You are likely to end up majoring in parts, and being laymen in others. My suggestion is that if you choose to do Exchange, and you like it, then built it, test it, exam on it, and make the cert grade. If likewise you work on MS-SQL - and you like it, commit to a focus. 7. The world is full of laymen. Then numbers of people who know enough to be laymen is legion. There are way too few people who really know their shit. In the near future, the laymen are the ones who are heading out of this, don't be one of them.
8. IMHO, although I have said stuff in the above, I believe the above is an environment Microsoft are actively looking to kill, damage, reduce, and replace. As such, be exceptionally aware that you may take the above path and be heading for oblivion. Microsoft are buying more servers than anyone else at this time, and have done this for an extended period of time. Their sole intention to a greater degree is to make cloud their business, and make everyone else out there run their business on the MS cloud. And by MS cloud, I mean a non user serviceable cloud run by Jeffrey Snover level powershelling autobots, because the size and scale by intention is to make what I do now, and what I think you seek to do in near future - too expensive, too slow, and legacy. AD, PC management, Mail, and SQL won't be staying on our Local Lan's, and our users are already mobile. Areas like backup and system management will get automated out, or reduced. So, go look at point 2 carefully. The trial azure account, and learning azure to a level you were considering for Exchange and MS-SQL may be your first step along with Hyper V - and then you may take modifed roads on handling Exchange and MS-SQL azure versio
When the Israeli's pulled back in Gaza, and they brutally removed their own people's settlements via an agreement to try to change the above fair comments, the response was and has been to use that repartriated land to fire rockets into civilian Israeli areas..
Its a war, I expect nothing less. But expecting the Israeli's to be angelic is cloud cookoo land.
In 36-45, The Israeli's - Jews - insert your chosen rhetorical names - were indeed put against the walls and they were shot. And they got shunted into trains and into ovens and into gas chambers. 7 million of them.
The UN mandated Israel, and within hours Arabic and Palestinian armies, contrary to UN and international law decided to launch a mass invasion, and once again the put the israeli against the wall loomed. The Arab world and the Palestinians were quite happy with this, because they were under the illusion that they were about to wipe israel off the map. It did not go that way.
And multiple attempts later, the map is the same, and so are the politics. Arab and Palestinian now appeal to the laws and international community they were so brazen to ignore when they believed they would win.
The Israeli's decided long ago that no one was going to put them against the walls or in the ovens again. And if that meant telling the world where to go, thats what they would do.
I do not have any like or love of Israel or the jewish people. They have for most of their history been on the recieveing end, and having made a home for themselves they now hold a somewhat extreme view on this world, its make up, and where they sit in it. I have no liking for either side. I frankly blame the arab and palestinians for making a complete bouncing balls up in 48, and since then they have been crying like babies and have spent decades being fed AK47s and reading mein kampf. Anyone who things magic-ing away Israel would somehow make that part of the human armpit a better place is under drug induced stupidity.
As much as I dislike Israel - I dislike fascist islam and its armed fuckheads more.
Post WWII, there was going to be no peace. The Jews were going to take a homeland, and the palestinians and arab world with extreme xenophobia and racism were not going to accept it.
I don't accept that this is a one side is evil equasion - there you have my two penneth.
It's a symptom of the long term, tragic and disasterour immigration theory and policy that has operated in the leftist stateism in the UK.
The UK under this system hates allowing in commonwealth, white, english speakers. They get clobbered by levels of visa limitations and immigration policy blockades. 'Asylumn' seekers and refugees somehow end up in the social care system. Its unheard of that you roll up in a state, go to a place in the capital and end up in a scenario where you get to claim a roof over your head and be fed and clothed. Thats how London has ended up. Its wholy wrapped up in PC bullshit, lies and deciet. Its not just London, its a disease across the country.
The people who come do not get properly checked and vetted. Nor are they forced to make admissions of statehood, allegience, or any other boundary. So this has led to a state where large numbers who live inside hate it, have no affinity with it, detest the way of life, and the rest. The numbers of such people who serve in the civil society, or in the state, police, or military is risible. That this has been allowed to happen, and those responsible for this have blood on their hands today.
You can add in Islam on top. Islam has zero place in western society. None. Nothing. Nada. You cannot have the ridiculous ideal of some western liberals where you want gay people to have equality, and you want the Islamics who are so stupid and none intergrational that they still wish to kill gay people or people who decide to leave the 'religion'.
You'll have seen the peddling by political classes that this is not Islam. Oh yes it is. Its the Islam being peddled on the street, in the mosque, in the university, and across the internet, and by the imams. Its the same Islam being applied in endless notable countries across the globe. Its the same islam that legalises rape in pakistan, that legalises female forced criminal child abuse level sexual mutilation across most of the arab world, and its the same islam that is very simple to absorb by looking around the world you live in.
As we have failed to remove problem imams and terrorists over decades, there is zero shock in this attack, in 7/7 or in the worldwide war of the low IQ stupid islamics. So what. I expect nothing less.
I'm now 'guilty' of islamophobia a false and manmade bullshit excuse created to attempt to stifle anti islamic commentry and blame - and of 'blashpemy' - and am the target of 50+ Islamic states who have at UN level attempted to create laws in none islamic states against me, and any other free thinking or enlightened era people in particular in the west.
Very few of these 50 states make it above the state of worthless shithole dominated by islam, with appalling human rights, womens rights, and so on and so on.
I'm seeing a lot of horse shit about race. I'm seeing a whole pile of horseshit about how two people born in the UK of Nigerian family roots, who converted to Islam are angry about people dying in Iraq and Afganistan. Maybe I should go kill someone in Canada because I'm angry about people dying in new zealand. It would make about as much sense. Unless anyone dares to try to make Islam the link. If it is done, rememeber, I hold that link open in all other ways. The Umma isn't a one way street to use to the benefit of islamic stupidity, and then discarded when suitable as a bullshit cloak.
I think concerns about Oracle's long-term plans for MySQL are valid to ask.
If it isn't making Larry money, what did he buy it for and what is he planning to do with it?
Oracle isn't exactly a customer friendly company (just ask anyone who had an older Solaris machine when Oracle bought Sun and got told they needed to buy a support contract to even access docs), so I've always wondered why they would buy a free database and continue to develop it and give it away.
If I was choosing based purely on open-ness, something which doesn't have the chance of Oracle coming along and closing it otherwise strong-arming people would be a plus.
I guess it legitimately is FUD, but sometimes, there's valid reasons to mistrust such entities. And having dealt with Oracle over the years, they themselves are a very strong reason to be suspicious.
Oracle maintain multiple open source initiatives. *I'm * not making any claim about wether these are maintained 'correctly or not, because the truth is that I am not in a position to state factually what the true state is.
But - people still use Virtual box. People still use Java. People are still using MySQL. I'll pitch - even though I struggle to think its true - that if Oracle maintained them well, and if a true state exaists where the smaller MySQL may lead to an upgrade when things get large to Oracle DB - I can see why a vendor might say to itself that damaging our own product isn't productive. If they trust us implicitly doing a good job on MySQL they will believe the same basic premise on the day they need heavier iron and DB.
It is understandable commecially to look at things and remove or kill things that are done and have a fork in them. Its another to just vandalise in an unthinking stupid way a well grounded, popular and well regarded product.
The core question got asked at the end of the first post: That alone is grounds for concern — will Oracle do something to impede MySQL's development? Citation and real evidence required. The real world, true answer to that question is the real guide, other stuff and argument is fluffy..
Don't equate Islam and Islamic culture interchangably with al Qaida and jihadism and 7th century bullshit. Islamic culture is very rich and has contributed much to civilization. Your own culture isn't without its own flaws and stained past either. People don't go around judging your culture by the Westboro Baptist Church or Hitler. You'd do well to remember there's a LOT more to Islamic culture than jihadism and bin Laden.
I will equte it. And PC wankers like you need to be told to quit doing this smokescreening. Islamic culture is a culture where 500,000 people demonstrate in public in Dhaka that Athiests and people of other religion should be hung. Its where abuse of women is at 7th century levels in very_much of the islamic world, and where female sexual mutiliation is supported by the leading schools and religion. You claim that its all innocent. Its a lie. In most islmaic states, the laws are not compatable with our world. Where else in the world are you put to death for leaving religion?
Do not tell me to not associate Islam with scum like Al Quida and terrorism. Go away. Go_and demand Islam modernise and break away from the bad things its wholly enrolled and wrapped in. Let every islamic state denouce themselves and remove from their laws the laws that are reprehensible and are not compatable with everyone else.
Maybe you missed this. But supposedly when you are right, and its wrong to suppress groupings who don't agree with you, and you stomp your feet about it and demand a better civilisation - You aren't actually supposed to start doing the same when you hold the reins. Maybe you fucking missed the memo.
If its ok - then why are you complaining about McCarthy'ism. If its all ok, then don't. Otherwise, grow a pair of balls and stand up for what you believe in. That Gov (whoever that is) should not do this kind of thing. Either you believe in it or you don't. Its not a pick and fucking choose menu.
You are out of your mind if you think Bin Laden could have been taken alive. If you think we should have not run the mission, that is one thing. But it could not have been run any other way. And for the record I would have prefered for Bin Laden to stand trial.
The President did try to close Gitmo, I think we have to give him a lease a B for effort.
But the cross boarder attacks are an issue. just not a simple issue.
Sorry, I disagree. I believe Bin Laden could have been taken alive. I believe there was never any intention to take him alive, I believe the orders were 'kill' orders. And I believe the president and cabinet watched these kill orders.
I have zero feelings for Bin Laden, and I detest islam, and I detest Al Quida, and I detest Islamic culture, Jihadism, and the 7th century bullshit.
My problem is that - and this is vaguely where I sit. I'm an English Anglophile. I know my history. I understand our common laws, and the pain that was traversed through to reach them. I understand how America came about, and I understand the basic premise that in our History, we have due process in law. Some of this very long held and long won process is badly broken when a king in old school terms, or a president in new school terms is simply going to hold or kill opponents. The limits we built to stop kings or.. in this case presidents doing this were done for good reasons..
And thats all well in play before we ever start looking at international treatise like Geneva convention.
The president now flies drones over US soil and can kill American citizens by his command? I could have believed this activity came from republicans or Teaparty folk who go too far. Its harder to absorb when its being done by the ever morally superior Dems, who now think or believe they have... forgive me for this, but a god given right to be better than others. The sneering and jeering of 'democrats' aimed at these groups is lost on me. Maybe they are missing that from where I sit, I'm not seeing as big a difference as they might think they have here, and that is bad news.
The democrat press rah rah their own side while seeming to say or do nothing about problems is depressing. I'm old enough to Remember the Soviet union and Pravda. A free press is a press that actually gets off its ass and doesn't just rah rah its fav black president. Sorry if thats too un PC for people..
Under Bush, lotta crying, moaning, and bleeting from the people. Seems now the same people who did this are or have been involved in;
Cold blodded murder of enemy combatants (Bin Laden could have been taken. He was simply assasinated..) - remember the pictures of a soldier doing this under Bush? all hell let loose. Wot, now its ok cos the pres says so?
Illegal bombardment of other nations land, and illegal operations and flights over other nations airspaces. Drone use today is at an all time high.. Gitmo still seems to be open.. Still in Afganistan, and ever more so in Afpak.
Seems to me that the President and friends is getting a very big free pass on a lot of activities. And some stuff is new, like drones over the US and further assassinations of unwanted or disliked individuals.
Whatever the background, the IRS should be politically independant and not a tool to be aimed at opponents. I'm not American. But I have to say that in recent years it seems a lot of mud gets thrown. The republicans and tea party folks are accused of living in their own bubble. And I think thats true. But have to say, the other side is in its own bubble, and its not getting better. In fact, its getting really quite bad.
The President is murdering civilians. And he's issuing orders to kill people. And he seems to have no check or balance. Seems dem press are giving free rides. Doing so isn't proving loyaltly to their beliefs or so called values.
When 3000 Pakistani's die from drone strikes, will it turn to a Pearl Harbour for Pakistan? More than anything else, put aside the politics, these policies and ideas are not more effective than Bush, or better than Bush. The current work isn't effective in even the medium term. Short term, maybe the US gets some people. But whole villages are being turned. Its winning hearts and minds, but not for the US. This is not going well. It may seem like it is on the surface, but thats all.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd argue, but when an asshole states that he thinks FGM is 'amusing' its only validating the fact that their input is worthless and that they are scum.
Since when do they only inflict their horrors on themselves?
The animals amongst them have a view that they must bring back the Califate, that women who don't cover themselves in a black head to toe tent should get an acid bath, or be raped, and that young girls who want to better themselves and want to go to school have a target on their back.
Is a walking sack of shit - when asked about FGM he declared 'that is between a mother and daughter'.
Such fucking animals are worthless.
Basically detest islam in the majority of its forms. But having looked at Egypt for a while, the level of abuse on women, organised or social rape, the deliberate and appalling levels of enforced FGM, and coming to a conclusion that as a people in a general sense, I feel only sorry for the victims, but generally regard most with a deep disdain.
As an aside, this looks to me to have civil war written all over it. But before that, an observation of my own on this. I have zero belief that Islam can fit into modern society. Into democracy. In secularism or into multiculturalism. I don't believe it deserves a seat at the table, nor do I think they actually want a seat unless it comes with all the usual preconditions and appalling islamic fundamentalism.
However, if a person like me - has a theory that I demand or expect islamics to adhere to modern standards, and to put aside some of their normal activities and behaviour and to fall into line and operate on a civil basis in society, take part in democracy, campaign for what they believe and if they can do so in the civil way, perhaps get a deserved place at the table of government - then things in Egypt don't provide any good news. And under normal circumstances I'd welcome the Muslim Brotherhood getting chewed up and spat out. But I can't have it both ways, even with my somewhat harsh line of thought. If they do put down the guns, and do put aside the bombs, and come to play a full part in the democratic processes, then what?
So, the context now is that they win an election (debate that as you see fit), and a number of months later, find the US supported and equipped Army deposes their chosen man and suspends the entire constitution. An awkward pause for me now occurs. If they get excluded and sidelined in this way, it seems to me that this is fuel in the tank for bad stuff. What is the point of elections now to Morsi and this brotherhood. Democracy by its nature has to be inclusive, even to forces or views I dislike. Thats almost the point.
In this instance, I find myself having a tiny amount of sympathy to bad people, whom I normally don't have any sympathy with, as there is an air of injustice and incorrectness about this. I detest Islam and its fundamentalism, BUT, if they put their guns and arms down and come to the table - something I may not like, but may well respect - then their part in it can't be cut off like this - at least thats a vague feeling I have. But I know that the Muslim Brotherhood are scum, and I know only idiots would vote for them. Bingo - look what happened. Idiots and then the MB got elected.
In the end tho, Its Egypt. Its a state where this is the picture across its society.
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/unkindest-cut-13yearolds-death-shines-spotlight-on-rise-of-fgm-in-egypt-8657104.html
There is no escape. The men are involved. The women. The mothers. There are no innocents in this appalling crime against humanity, and against women in particular. And against the young girls, often under age, who are forcably held down and have their sexual organs butchered in full 7th century barbarism. The fact that the women are often involved in the infliction of this crime only erodes all respect. Despicable, and beyond contempt. It doesn't matter who gets into Government over such people. Its very hard for me to find sympathy for these fucking people. Their behaviour is worse than animals. Their choice of 'leadership' is a reflection of the people as a whole. Normally it is said that to correct fundamental problems - in a society, the advancement of women is critical. I have no problem with that, ... but these women.. there is a black hole here where an education and care for their own siblings should be.
The calls for 'freedom' or 'democracy' really become meaningless. Human rights? Yeah - as if anyone a citizen of such a place t
You are partly right and partly wrong.
People did tend to stretch the technet subscription. Certainly on for my part it ended up being rigged all the way at home, in VMs with a scratch infrastructure used for work and for fun. Microsoft and pretty much everyone else has twigged that whats happened is a slippage where I think I am not alone. Companies do not give me a test farm. As a tech, I think MS fund this out. My company found this out. I was either going to end up worse at what I do - Or do this.
But, and here is the elephant in the room *But*, I started more than 20 years ago. I started before all the DRM and ever deeper licensing and chasing down every dollar. I started before MS thought is was smart to have 9 versions. I have seen what the loss leader of allowing home use for free actually translated into computers on the office floor as people triggered the wave that meant windows at home - windows at work.
So, that was the tide coming in. I guess the tide always has to shift. So, the home user got targetted as 'pirate' - so between being made the enemy and crapping over them with worse versions and less features, less features, and less features, and them finding the competition (Hi iOS, Android, *nix, OSX) Microsoft have been on the path of eradicating the crack investment first pack free loss leader. You can add in shipping Win8hate - which only tiny minorites even accept, and demand every corner of the ecosystem use (er no..) and then just to cap it off - why not withdraw Technet. Having blown away the loss leader that brought in the kids, Joe Sixpack and the wife, now its time to chew on some tech and admin bones. You can only chew on your roots up to a point, then the plant dies.
Slashdot should actually be happy. MS used to be a company that seemed to wholly understand how to build marketshare, to build the monopoly. iOS and OSX upgrades cost what? £20 or less? Android is free(ish). *Unix has lots of choices. The dev stacks for these exist and are largely in place.
When the OS has rotted, there becomes a growing crisis where the reason for the windows ecosystem rots as well. If you don't run Windows, you don't need sharepoint. You won't need Exchange. You'll be able to change DBs.
Azure? What would anyone need Azure for?
I'm watching the world slowly walk away, and the Board is like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Oh, I know. They have other cities they are building. But Rome is Rome. And when Rome fell, that was the end.
US companies do business in India? Wait.. To get in there you have to fight to pass innumerable hurdles thrown in your way.
How about China?
If the world was a level playing field, I'd probably be ok with the H1 Visa scam bullshit. But I'm not (and I'm a Brit in the UK). Globalisation is fine, I have no problem with it in its bassic capitalist basis. But it has to cut both ways. If China and India get to grow their middle class by working on US workload, then US companies should have the same access to do the same in China and India.
I watch real time each week. Its somewhat weird seeing the slagging off the republicans get there. The dems in the US seem very very friendly to immigration, and to globalisation, and seem to take a lot of funding from the Apple and 'Media' funding. In the meantime on an observational level, seems to me the bone marrow of America - the middle class person is under seige. I can't fundamentally understand off shoring, from a business perspective. Even in raw capitalists terms - eroding the middle class is eroding away your own customer base long term.
Globalisation in the west now seems to be 'worry about the H1 visa holders', and immigrants, and 3rd world - more than your own people. Screw them. Very strange way to proceed.
Its ok to have a concern about minorities and immigrants, but its got strangely out of kilter.
However, it may be possible to cut costs by 50% if you have some expensive bad practises.
Let me give you an example. We replaced our old Dell Workstations - these were £2500 each, with newer, better units (Dell T3600s) for around £1100 a unit. There. In a single phase we cut more than 50% and the new units are not in any way a step backwards. IT costs can/do fall over time, so I'd argue initially that taking a good look may not be as hurtful as initially it seems. Virtualisation and cloud are offering for some areas a seismic shift in workload and capacity and I think spending in some areas in terms of investment can harness good returns on the funding/cost side.
*In the above, I am not agreeing with cuts per se, but if they are there, and are viable, then it has sense to take some time with them and examine the cases.
I did some testing with it. Its good, but its clearly work in progress, and a technical marvel. But its also lacking the tools and toolset for deployment, and management. The only cloud winners will in the end be the ones that have great toolsets and management. If something in the end remains a huge mass of spagetti that only finite skilled souls can pull together and run, then it will be eaten alive.
I have not tested JuJu, but that seems to be like the kind of deployable real world end user tooling that this is going to require.
MariaBD is something of a lame name. Its gonna be harder to pitch/sell than the well named 'MySQL'..
You can't just slide from XP to 8.
You'll have to rethink your app layers.
You'll have to retrain staff.
Many won't. Many will simply look around and choose a different way.
Microsoft's shipping of WinH8, and a massive dose of arrogance in the same dose, has done enormous damage. It wasn't required, and they could have taken a better view and estimation on things and simply underlined 7.
And better yet, they decided in utter crass stupidity to bet the farm on an ARM based incomplete porting effort, and dragged the worst parts on the most undesirable places. Now the ARM based RT versions can't be hooked up to AD, and the Windows clients are fubar. There was no need to do this. They could have run RT as a light weight ARM based Win client - and not damaged X86/64.
On the flip side. PC vendors ship business units that are $300 - have a crappy spec, and have to be replaced on a cycle because they are baseline nasty units. This model is so broken its not even funny. People are rightly looking at $99 tablets and doing the same workloads on something 1/3 price. Mr HP here probably thinks he can sell some business notebooks with 2GB ram. At an inflated price, and inbuilt 'obselete'. These people need firing.
Ultrabooks are just reheated junk, with downclocked parts, shitty performance, a lack of storage, and an inability to do anything really PC level interesting. Oh, and 4 times the price of the other garbage. I can understand why some people might like them, but for me, I can't do chunky computing, I can't play games, I can't adaquatly virtualise on them. They are just thin light office machines, and are worth only a tenth of the price. HP and other vendors persist in building PC's that people simply don't really want. *Thats really why the sales slide has started*.
Hopefully someone will wake up and start shipping real PCs again, with 4 mem slots as a basic standard in lappies, and 8 on the more expensive homeboards.
A medium sized company asked you, and you asked slashdot. My alarm bells are ringing here. If you don't have decent background in this area, and you're query ends up on slashdot, I suspect that as a whole management of the company is screwed. Otherwise they would not have called you in, but rather someone with the right background. To be honest, this seems wrong from the very beginning.
And I note the thread is suggesting 'management consultant'. No, although an IT focused one would be fine. If you are going to establish if an IT team and its function are busted, its not a spreadsheet numbers game. Its an in the trench and looking at the wider picture. In most cases sadly, the truth is a broken IT depeartment is in fact a reflection of a broken management/board structure.
IT isn't easy. And some businesses assume it costs buttons, and that IT projects are simplistic things that just click click and are done. The reality is they can be hugely complex and require seriously good solid workmanship in development and production.
The creation and implementation of such systems is a lurch towards totalitarianism. It is equally bad news should a state cease to be moderate, and any such system will be turned against people in the society. The problem with the ideal 'you have nothing to fear so long as you are law abiding' is that the people implementing the system, also happen to make the laws. So fundamentally they can arbitrarily decide to make you a law breaker.
Let me put this another way. If you investigate a person, - at some point, you'll collate enough dirt on them to do them harm. Its that simple, and its that evil.
I'm English. Its in my legal DNA that my people are supposed to operate in life as innocent until proven guilty. We can read through history the occasons where habeas corpus gets suspended, and its chilling effects.
Actually, the ignorant people are those who fucking swallow hook line and sinker the ideal peddled that Nazi'ism and Hitler and the movement were not socialist.
People actually have to go and read the whole history of things, not listen to snippets peddled by media and especially leftists.
In his final days Ernst Röhm made a speech seriously underlining the 'socialist' aspect of it within the movement. And if you ever read in detail, it becomes impossible to extract socialism from its involvement. Wether it was nationalisation, class war, the power of state over individual, - the party was born from the German workers party, the list is long.
And you can add in something we see today. A lot of bad blood being brewed about 'capitalists', 'bankers' 'economists' and 'industrialists'. Remember this next time you take the time to note a 'socialist' ranting.
The debate about Nazi and where they sit gets skewed. Hilter found much that he shared and created the Nazi party from the German Workers party. He aligned himself with the socialists, until he was famously able to turn to them and stated in Parliament 'And now I don't need you any more'.
Politics is circular, not so much left or right. If middle ground sits at the tp of the circle, offering a level of moderate landscaping, other hardline doctrines slide down the circle, and meet at the bottom, which is where you'll actually find Nazi'ism and communisim and other foul totalitarian and political ideals on near common ground.
I laugh at leftists who persist in trying to find a big enough gap away from Nazi'ism. Socialism IS linked to nazi'ism both in history and idealogy. Hilter nationalised industry. He made enrolled people into the state, and he grew the fucking shit from the German workers party. He carried out a class war - many aspects of his bullshit came directly from socialism.It is true that parts of his evil craven idealogy were not socialist in nature, but parts of it were.
I agree that at both ends of the spectrum, you'll find a strange similar evil to achieve control in a totalitarian aspect share a commonality. Its why you'll find at rally's the right wing hardliners carry stanley knives and the hard left scum carry claw hammers. Neither side believes in open democracy.
In the 30's in Germany - it fell to gangs of brown shirts, or communists, and as the violence and loss of control escalated, the rule of law and democracy was lost. Democracy is not to be decided by small bands of thuggery precahing their twisted idealism as a new religion.
IT is already being shattered. But don't assume this is a good thing. All thats actually happening is massive damage, loss of control, and data being islanded. Whole departments and even orgs will spin out and data spiral arms will spin out.
The primary old school reasons for IT departments - these still exist. You might well think regulation, and compliance have simply gone away. They haven't, they just got forgotten.
One thing being forgotten, is that IT has always been capable of game changing. Always. But what you find is this is usually killed by lack of funding, and by severe red tape. The idea that end around onto the nearest cloud makes you fast moving - is true. But its also usually arbitrary, and outside of operational agreement in many cases.
People assuming that everyone on BYOD and every device under the sum being an out of control compromised, un policied device as a good thing. It will be, for a short time. Until the damage happens.
As for older techs who don't or cant stay up to speed - whats new? Thats not a new IT problem. Thats ever present. Part of the idea of google docs is that to a greater degree - you don't need IT..(at least thats the theory... )
But, I started out long ago. Here is how it rolled.
Started by accident. Foot in the door was someone I knew needed an AS/400 night operator. This job basically entailed loading tapes at given times, and handling print runs and batch jobs, and escalating where needed to 2nd line. That job ran for a while..
That place decided to downsize and change, but the AS/400 stuff gave me enough to go look for more. I ended up in a place with AS/400 and Novell. They moved across adding Win 3.1 and 3.11 and NT4 with MS mail.
This worked through 95 and 95b (at the same time at home at this stage I was running a mob of stuff, a Cyrix IBM 5x68 and some mixed Amiga gear. The office was moving through 286, 386, and 486 gear.
Carried on as AS/400 and PC support continued to cross over, with growing aspect on PCs and support.
Moved to London, carried on, the AS/400 stuff faded and I ended up full on covering PCs, Networks, Servers.
I've been through the whole MS family and I started on Exchange 5 through to the current 2010 release.
Cutting to the chase.
1. Get Technet. I don't know if current circumstances allow MSDN, but get a technet account. Anyone, and I mean anyone working with MS software, PC stuff in their job aspect should have a Technet account. No discussion. No If's, no But's.
2. One of the short comments above was one of the best. Get an MS virtual academy account, and get a trial of Azure.
3. I'll assume you already use virtualisation. If yes, hit 4. If no. Stop everything else. Now go explore Hyper V. Learn it. Learn how to set it up on domain (easier) - and off domain (who made this shit) - and go find a tool called coreconfig from codeplex.
4. Check 3 carefully. Check it again. Anything you are going to build in MS-SQL or with Exchange going forward will likely sit on Hyper V.
5. The requirements of single handedly working on a large scale MS structure of AD, MS-SQL, and Exchange - have basically gotten pretty huge. So large in fact you'll then need to become expert in System Centre. So, slow down. Start to work this carefully. If you plan to do this, and you really mean it, start with some core parts, like Hyper V, and build an exam path and qualify what you can as you go.
6. 5 is an enormous workload today in 2013. If anyone claims otherwise, I think they are talking shit. You are likely to end up majoring in parts, and being laymen in others. My suggestion is that if you choose to do Exchange, and you like it, then built it, test it, exam on it, and make the cert grade. If likewise you work on MS-SQL - and you like it, commit to a focus.
7. The world is full of laymen. Then numbers of people who know enough to be laymen is legion. There are way too few people who really know their shit. In the near future, the laymen are the ones who are heading out of this, don't be one of them.
8. IMHO, although I have said stuff in the above, I believe the above is an environment Microsoft are actively looking to kill, damage, reduce, and replace. As such, be exceptionally aware that you may take the above path and be heading for oblivion. Microsoft are buying more servers than anyone else at this time, and have done this for an extended period of time. Their sole intention to a greater degree is to make cloud their business, and make everyone else out there run their business on the MS cloud. And by MS cloud, I mean a non user serviceable cloud run by Jeffrey Snover level powershelling autobots, because the size and scale by intention is to make what I do now, and what I think you seek to do in near future - too expensive, too slow, and legacy. AD, PC management, Mail, and SQL won't be staying on our Local Lan's, and our users are already mobile. Areas like backup and system management will get automated out, or reduced. So, go look at point 2 carefully. The trial azure account, and learning azure to a level you were considering for Exchange and MS-SQL may be your first step along with Hyper V - and then you may take modifed roads on handling Exchange and MS-SQL azure versio
Some of the above is true.
When the Israeli's pulled back in Gaza, and they brutally removed their own people's settlements via an agreement to try to change the above fair comments, the response was and has been to use that repartriated land to fire rockets into civilian Israeli areas..
Its a war, I expect nothing less. But expecting the Israeli's to be angelic is cloud cookoo land.
Here is the problem..
In 36-45, The Israeli's - Jews - insert your chosen rhetorical names - were indeed put against the walls and they were shot. And they got shunted into trains and into ovens and into gas chambers. 7 million of them.
The UN mandated Israel, and within hours Arabic and Palestinian armies, contrary to UN and international law decided to launch a mass invasion, and once again the put the israeli against the wall loomed. The Arab world and the Palestinians were quite happy with this, because they were under the illusion that they were about to wipe israel off the map. It did not go that way.
And multiple attempts later, the map is the same, and so are the politics. Arab and Palestinian now appeal to the laws and international community they were so brazen to ignore when they believed they would win.
The Israeli's decided long ago that no one was going to put them against the walls or in the ovens again. And if that meant telling the world where to go, thats what they would do.
I do not have any like or love of Israel or the jewish people. They have for most of their history been on the recieveing end, and having made a home for themselves they now hold a somewhat extreme view on this world, its make up, and where they sit in it. I have no liking for either side. I frankly blame the arab and palestinians for making a complete bouncing balls up in 48, and since then they have been crying like babies and have spent decades being fed AK47s and reading mein kampf. Anyone who things magic-ing away Israel would somehow make that part of the human armpit a better place is under drug induced stupidity.
As much as I dislike Israel - I dislike fascist islam and its armed fuckheads more.
Post WWII, there was going to be no peace. The Jews were going to take a homeland, and the palestinians and arab world with extreme xenophobia and racism were not going to accept it.
I don't accept that this is a one side is evil equasion - there you have my two penneth.
It's a symptom of the long term, tragic and disasterour immigration theory and policy that has operated in the leftist stateism in the UK.
The UK under this system hates allowing in commonwealth, white, english speakers. They get clobbered by levels of visa limitations and immigration policy blockades. 'Asylumn' seekers and refugees somehow end up in the social care system. Its unheard of that you roll up in a state, go to a place in the capital and end up in a scenario where you get to claim a roof over your head and be fed and clothed. Thats how London has ended up. Its wholy wrapped up in PC bullshit, lies and deciet. Its not just London, its a disease across the country.
The people who come do not get properly checked and vetted. Nor are they forced to make admissions of statehood, allegience, or any other boundary. So this has led to a state where large numbers who live inside hate it, have no affinity with it, detest the way of life, and the rest. The numbers of such people who serve in the civil society, or in the state, police, or military is risible. That this has been allowed to happen, and those responsible for this have blood on their hands today.
You can add in Islam on top. Islam has zero place in western society. None. Nothing. Nada. You cannot have the ridiculous ideal of some western liberals where you want gay people to have equality, and you want the Islamics who are so stupid and none intergrational that they still wish to kill gay people or people who decide to leave the 'religion'.
You'll have seen the peddling by political classes that this is not Islam. Oh yes it is. Its the Islam being peddled on the street, in the mosque, in the university, and across the internet, and by the imams. Its the same Islam being applied in endless notable countries across the globe. Its the same islam that legalises rape in pakistan, that legalises female forced criminal child abuse level sexual mutilation across most of the arab world, and its the same islam that is very simple to absorb by looking around the world you live in.
As we have failed to remove problem imams and terrorists over decades, there is zero shock in this attack, in 7/7 or in the worldwide war of the low IQ stupid islamics. So what. I expect nothing less.
I'm now 'guilty' of islamophobia a false and manmade bullshit excuse created to attempt to stifle anti islamic commentry and blame - and of 'blashpemy' - and am the target of 50+ Islamic states who have at UN level attempted to create laws in none islamic states against me, and any other free thinking or enlightened era people in particular in the west.
Very few of these 50 states make it above the state of worthless shithole dominated by islam, with appalling human rights, womens rights, and so on and so on.
I'm seeing a lot of horse shit about race. I'm seeing a whole pile of horseshit about how two people born in the UK of Nigerian family roots, who converted to Islam are angry about people dying in Iraq and Afganistan. Maybe I should go kill someone in Canada because I'm angry about people dying in new zealand. It would make about as much sense. Unless anyone dares to try to make Islam the link. If it is done, rememeber, I hold that link open in all other ways. The Umma isn't a one way street to use to the benefit of islamic stupidity, and then discarded when suitable as a bullshit cloak.
I think concerns about Oracle's long-term plans for MySQL are valid to ask.
If it isn't making Larry money, what did he buy it for and what is he planning to do with it?
Oracle isn't exactly a customer friendly company (just ask anyone who had an older Solaris machine when Oracle bought Sun and got told they needed to buy a support contract to even access docs), so I've always wondered why they would buy a free database and continue to develop it and give it away.
If I was choosing based purely on open-ness, something which doesn't have the chance of Oracle coming along and closing it otherwise strong-arming people would be a plus.
I guess it legitimately is FUD, but sometimes, there's valid reasons to mistrust such entities. And having dealt with Oracle over the years, they themselves are a very strong reason to be suspicious.
Oracle maintain multiple open source initiatives. *I'm * not making any claim about wether these are maintained 'correctly or not, because the truth is that I am not in a position to state factually what the true state is.
But - people still use Virtual box. People still use Java. People are still using MySQL.
I'll pitch - even though I struggle to think its true - that if Oracle maintained them well, and if a true state exaists where the smaller MySQL may lead to an upgrade when things get large to Oracle DB - I can see why a vendor might say to itself that damaging our own product isn't productive. If they trust us implicitly doing a good job on MySQL they will believe the same basic premise on the day they need heavier iron and DB.
It is understandable commecially to look at things and remove or kill things that are done and have a fork in them. Its another to just vandalise in an unthinking stupid way a well grounded, popular and well regarded product.
The core question got asked at the end of the first post:
That alone is grounds for concern — will Oracle do something to impede MySQL's development? Citation and real evidence required.
The real world, true answer to that question is the real guide, other stuff and argument is fluffy..
"... I detest Islamic culture..."
Don't equate Islam and Islamic culture interchangably with al Qaida and jihadism and 7th century bullshit. Islamic culture is very rich and has contributed much to civilization. Your own culture isn't without its own flaws and stained past either. People don't go around judging your culture by the Westboro Baptist Church or Hitler. You'd do well to remember there's a LOT more to Islamic culture than jihadism and bin Laden.
I will equte it. And PC wankers like you need to be told to quit doing this smokescreening. Islamic culture is a culture where 500,000 people demonstrate in public in Dhaka that Athiests and people of other religion should be hung. Its where abuse of women is at 7th century levels in very_much of the islamic world, and where female sexual mutiliation is supported by the leading schools and religion. You claim that its all innocent. Its a lie. In most islmaic states, the laws are not compatable with our world. Where else in the world are you put to death for leaving religion?
Do not tell me to not associate Islam with scum like Al Quida and terrorism. Go away. Go_and demand Islam modernise and break away from the bad things its wholly enrolled and wrapped in. Let every islamic state denouce themselves and remove from their laws the laws that are reprehensible and are not compatable with everyone else.
Maybe you missed this. But supposedly when you are right, and its wrong to suppress groupings who don't agree with you, and you stomp your feet about it and demand a better civilisation - You aren't actually supposed to start doing the same when you hold the reins. Maybe you fucking missed the memo.
If its ok - then why are you complaining about McCarthy'ism. If its all ok, then don't. Otherwise, grow a pair of balls and stand up for what you believe in. That Gov (whoever that is) should not do this kind of thing. Either you believe in it or you don't. Its not a pick and fucking choose menu.
You are out of your mind if you think Bin Laden could have been taken alive. If you think we should have not run the mission, that is one thing. But it could not have been run any other way. And for the record I would have prefered for Bin Laden to stand trial.
The President did try to close Gitmo, I think we have to give him a lease a B for effort.
But the cross boarder attacks are an issue. just not a simple issue.
Sorry, I disagree. I believe Bin Laden could have been taken alive. I believe there was never any intention to take him alive, I believe the orders were 'kill' orders. And I believe the president and cabinet watched these kill orders.
I have zero feelings for Bin Laden, and I detest islam, and I detest Al Quida, and I detest Islamic culture, Jihadism, and the 7th century bullshit.
My problem is that - and this is vaguely where I sit. I'm an English Anglophile. I know my history. I understand our common laws, and the pain that was traversed through to reach them. I understand how America came about, and I understand the basic premise that in our History, we have due process in law. Some of this very long held and long won process is badly broken when a king in old school terms, or a president in new school terms is simply going to hold or kill opponents. .. in this case presidents doing this were done for good reasons..
The limits we built to stop kings or
And thats all well in play before we ever start looking at international treatise like Geneva convention.
The president now flies drones over US soil and can kill American citizens by his command?
I could have believed this activity came from republicans or Teaparty folk who go too far. Its harder to absorb when its being done by the ever morally superior Dems, who now think or believe they have... forgive me for this, but a god given right to be better than others. The sneering and jeering of 'democrats' aimed at these groups is lost on me. Maybe they are missing that from where I sit, I'm not seeing as big a difference as they might think they have here, and that is bad news.
The democrat press rah rah their own side while seeming to say or do nothing about problems is depressing. I'm old enough to Remember the Soviet union and Pravda. A free press is a press that actually gets off its ass and doesn't just rah rah its fav black president. Sorry if thats too un PC for people..
I have a question...
Maybe more than one..
Under Bush, lotta crying, moaning, and bleeting from the people. Seems now the same people who did this are or have been involved in;
Cold blodded murder of enemy combatants (Bin Laden could have been taken. He was simply assasinated..) - remember the pictures of a soldier doing this under Bush? all hell let loose. Wot, now its ok cos the pres says so?
Illegal bombardment of other nations land, and illegal operations and flights over other nations airspaces. Drone use today is at an all time high..
Gitmo still seems to be open..
Still in Afganistan, and ever more so in Afpak.
Seems to me that the President and friends is getting a very big free pass on a lot of activities.
And some stuff is new, like drones over the US and further assassinations of unwanted or disliked individuals.
Whatever the background, the IRS should be politically independant and not a tool to be aimed at opponents.
I'm not American. But I have to say that in recent years it seems a lot of mud gets thrown. The republicans and tea party folks are accused of living in their own bubble. And I think thats true. But have to say, the other side is in its own bubble, and its not getting better. In fact, its getting really quite bad.
The President is murdering civilians. And he's issuing orders to kill people. And he seems to have no check or balance. Seems dem press are giving free rides. Doing so isn't proving loyaltly to their beliefs or so called values.
When 3000 Pakistani's die from drone strikes, will it turn to a Pearl Harbour for Pakistan?
More than anything else, put aside the politics, these policies and ideas are not more effective than Bush, or better than Bush. The current work isn't effective in even the medium term. Short term, maybe the US gets some people. But whole villages are being turned. Its winning hearts and minds, but not for the US. This is not going well. It may seem like it is on the surface, but thats all.
Who got here first?