Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA (Score 1) 981

Life is not black and white. Actions are not ever wholly good nor evil. There is always evil associated with war, or violence in general, which is why deterrence is so much better. But ISIS is pretty damned close to "wholly evil", and military action against them could well be better on balance than giving them free reign.

To quote John Kerry, recently taking Code Pink to task for protesting a military response to ISIS:

âoeyou ought to care about fighting ISIL because ISIL is killing and raping and mutilating women. And they believe women shouldnâ(TM)t have an education ...

Thereâ(TM)s no negotiation with ISIL, thereâ(TM)s nothing to negotiate. And theyâ(TM)re not offering anyone healthcare of any kind. You know, theyâ(TM)re not offering education of any kind. For a whole philosophy or idea or a cult, whatever you want to call it, that frankly comes out of the Stone Age, theyâ(TM)re cold-blooded killers, marauding across the Middle East, making a mockery of a peaceful religion.

And thatâ(TM)s precisely why we are building a coalition to stop them from denying the women and the girls and the people of Iraq the very future that they yearned for.

It would be a great moral flaw for us to simply let ISIS do what it wills. They are the worst sort of theocracy: the sort that's willing to ignore the moral code of their own religion, using it only as a crutch for power.

Comment Re:they will defeat themselves (Score 2) 981

You link one paper from Harvard on "why terrorism doesn't work".
I'll refute that by pointing to:
1) 8 guys sneaking onto planes with boxcutters and crashing them into buildings is terrorism
2) 15000 psychos taking over chunks of country with astonishing brutality is not terrorism (as referenced in that paper), and 'thousands of psychos taking crap over' HAS worked* repeatedly through human history; from the "Barbarian invasions" of Roman times, to the Huns, the Mongols)

*maybe not in the longest scales, but certainly enough to enmiserate a generation or three.

Comment Re:I LOVE READING PROPAGANDA (Score 3, Insightful) 981

In 1953 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing was 28%. In 2012 it was at 12%. I'd call that a drop.

Were you really confused by this, or are you just trolling now?
In 1953 US GDP was ~$2.5 T in 2009 dollars. Today it's ~$16T in 2009 dollars.

Can you see now that US manufacturing has grown significantly? The rest of the economy just grew faster, shifting our focus over the years. Much the same happened with farming before that. Technology is neat that way.

What real threat do any of these nations pose?

Again, appearance of strength is important. People who are a threat seeing the US as weak and starting a war would be a catastrophe from any moral perspective. We do get judged, like it or not, by whether minor player can shake their fists at us without consequence. Was is a surprise to you that Russia is getting froggy again (occasionally hopping across its borders) over the past decade?

Geopolitics aside, some would say that a strong man who sees a horrific crime that he has the strength to stop has the moral responsibility to do so. ISIS has conquered territory by force of arms - do we want to allow that sort of thing to be acceptable on the world stage again? The way ISIS is treating their conquered subjects is horrific and appalling, and we should probably put a stop to it.

Comment Re:Keyboard (Score 4, Insightful) 216

Tapping a keyboard three times to type special character. No Swype. Caps always showing, regardless of actual capitalization. All but Unusable with one hand (one handed typing jokes aside). Auto Correct that guesses wrong more often than it should. The interface is not as intuitive as Apple or iOS users claim it is, IMHO.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff." -- Dave Enyeart

Working...