Well hey, I bet the handful of homemade rockets that Hammas scraped together were fired at military targets too, right?

Except they weren't. And it's not an interpretation, as Hamas's officially declares the the Israeli civillians as the targets of its missiles.

After all, there are Israeli military personel scattered all around Israel, right?

Actually, no. The military is surprisingly absent from israeli cities. All military buildings are sorrounded by a law-mandated security zone (to avoid, you know, using civillians as human shields) and most of them are away from populated zones. Even at settlements there is a long distance between military and civillian buildings.

You're acting like the typical leftard: shooting random arguments from your head like an AK-47 shoots bullets. I mean, what you believe MUST be correct, right? Gotta defend it at all costs.

And anyway, the Israeli people have repeatedly elected military aggressive, expansionist governments that are always invading and occupying neighboring territories.

That's a valid concern. And it should be addressed by official, law-abiding armies. Not by thugs hidden between children.

If someday Jordan, Syria or even Egypt invade Israel, that's cool. It will be just about the big boys fighting. Not about cowards using the population as a way to make shitloads of money and achieve almost infinite pwoer with a conflict that never ends. Because terrorism was never about doing an damage to Israel but about controlling the people of Palestine.

If these excuses work for one side, why not the other?

Because one side is a civilizated country, a democracy, making mistakes during the course of self-defense. A country where people from all religions and ethnicies enjoy freedom and respect. The other side is a terrorist organization hiding behind civillians and abusing their ignorance to inject hate and chaos so their group can continue to dominate the entire population.

If you can't see a difference, you're retarded.

Wafa' Nabil Abu Jarad, a 21-year-old pregnant mother of two, was one of those killed. Her husband and her mother-in-law told the team that the family had just had breakfast and were outside the house drinking tea in the sun.

Oh god, this is hilarious. They there, just "chillin", drinking some tea, watching the sun...
ON A SIEGED CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF A BLOODY WAR.
When people insert small lies in the middle of an article, to make it sound more "dramatic", the entire content gets compromised. "Yes, Mr.. reporter, we were just hanging outside, watching the missile shower and driking some tea while chilling at the sun. I wonder why someone got struck by military fire.".

All I see are small violations. A war is a war: things get messy, soldiers make mistakes. I never said that Israel never commited ANY violations. They're still small: compared to a militia that sends children with bombs strapped to their bodies and hides inside hospitals and schools, Israel is still a saint. An official army that makes mistakes is still an official army.

And about dropping flechettes on a civillian area: What's next, forbidding ANY weapon inside a civillian area? That's just a legitimization of human shields. Flechettes are extremely useful at urban warfare situations where floor face-to-face contact is too dangerous for your solders who are, I might remind you, members of an official organization and also people who do not deserve to be put in danger just to spare terrorism-cooperative citizens.

You people are asking for something impossible: a clean war. It's better to fight for no war at all, and that will never be achieved until the leftard world acknowledges that terrorists are also part of the conflict. Until then, you'll all keep bitching about Israel is just a mad state murdering civillians for no reason at all, while nothing changes, as this kind of partial attitude only strenghtens the Israeli's government position on what related to their own population.

I think it's mostly strong emphasis on math and other hard sciences starting with high school, and the system of "advanced" (but still public/free) schools for bright students (you usually have to pass some fairly hard exams to get in) with even more emphasis. I've studied in two such schools in my last 4 years of school studies - we had about 8 hours of math and 4 hours of physics each week, and in the last two years math involved solving cubic and quadratic equations, dealing with derivatives, integrals and logarithms, functional analysis, stereometry (solid geometry) and so on. It helps to set the right frame of mind.'

That's not what I hear from friends at work who migrated from Russia to, on their words, "any country on the west that would accept me". They often told histories about how smart young people from Russia had to survive by doing "tricks" and acting "cute" to foreigners and big national companies at events such as Math/Chess/Programming competitions. A good and modern example of this situation is the malware scene.

It's all about need. Those eastern european kids really need to win these competitions. They can't afford to be "normal" because the job market for normal people was always a great mess at Russia.

The same kid from the west, with the same capabilities, will simply dismiss so much work just for some competition and say "ohhh, screw this, I tried". The number of kids from the west who actually need this kind of victory is extremely small and this group is mostly composed of empoverished folks and people with extremely serious issues related to socialization and self-esteem.

Being quick and dirty: "spoiled" (that's always relative - I'm considering a eastern european view) kids won't put that much effort into this kind of event. They don't really care about being named "Top Coder" as they're living an extremely confortable life at the moment and will achieve good job positions at the future just for beinga national with a good diploma. That's why the malware scene is really weak at the US: people have better options.

That's also bad for the west: if you were born at the US and attended a good university, you'll end up being a manager without needing much knowledge or even an IT-related graduation. That sucks because it means that our companies are being run by spoiled idiots instead of leading the race of improvement technology creation.

Attacking civilian targets

They did that, huh? Do you have a source? Or do you actually mean "civillians being killed while the Israeli army attacked militants hidden in the middle of the population?". Do you a credible source that says that Israel actually planned and executed an attack on civilians?

bombing a territory that they occupy and control

They left Gaza years ago. They were not occupying the region. Israel controls the borders of Israel.

And the reports of phosphorous bombs, among other things, are pretty damn credible.

Actually, they are not. Not even the most die-hard leftist at ONU is giving much credit to these alegations. The only "source" of evidence of this kind of situations are palestinian doctors talking about "different kinds of skin burns" and onlookers (and I bet they're mostly militants) talking about "never seeing a building burn like that before".

If they have never seen a BOMBARDED building burn before, I guess they're either lying or have never seen bombs being dropped at a building before. An explosive not causing a fire at this kind of situation is a rare event.

Not that you care.

Yes, I don't. I see two armies fighting: one has soldiers hidden behind children, the other has an excessive amount of power. One lost, the other won. And both of them are far, far away from where I live and aren't connected to my culture or family. So yes, I don't care.

You're a "might makes right" idiot.

No. I'm not a leftist retard who wants to "SAVE THE PLANET!!!!" but will not actually achieve anything useful for the planet or itself on a whole lifetime. I'm someone who believes in respect and civilization. And I believe that "feel good" attitudes aren't worth shit. I'd rather plan and achieve actual results to help other people than acting like a simplistic prick who thinks that real life is a leftist retard fantasy.

With US backing. 20% of their military expenditures are covered by us.

It is still a victory. And the support for Israel is also good for the US: they almost 100% of their expenditures on foreign equipment is based on US products.

No: if you step on their foot, they blow away a thousand people standing over there, in the ultimately vain hope that people will get so pissed off at you for provoking them that they'll put pressure on you to avoid it next time. Weirdly enough, the "arab street" blames Israel when Israel kills a thousand innocent people.

If you accept terrorists to speak on your behalf, the consequences will also apply to you. Giving support to extremist militants is the same as fighting at their side.

The Palestinian population has two choices:
+ Remove terrorists from their "foreign relations" posts.
+ Declare themselves as powerless victims and ask someone to run the house for them.

They can't have it both ways: independence is directly tied to accountability.

You have to be a nut job to think that Israel's warcrimes are "small violations".

Can you name a proven crime, please? Doubts about the nature of skin burns are not acceptable at the moment, as they're just speculation from palestinian doctors. And firing back at left-wing organization buildings that allow militants to use their facilities as missile silos is not relevant either: the legitimization of civilian shields is not and will never be an option.

You can not justify this insanity on grounds of realistic pragmatism: it's both stupid and evil (not unlike much of the Bush Jr regimes foreign policy).

What's your point? Israel should just ignore rockets and kidnappings?

The ones hiding behind those children should be, in theory, the first ones to care about that.

Weirdly enough, when Israel drops bombs on them, they tend to blame Israel. Funny that.

That's the power of religion brainwashing. If you think that using the civilian population as a human shield is an acceptable practice, I'm sorry for you.

Now try doing some comparisons to the people behind Israel's foreign policy -- most recently they intentionally violated a cease fire (and then blamed it on the other side when they retaliated), and began bombing a defenseless civilian population that was trapped in a box they had created... apparently they were in a rush to get in some last licks on Bush Junior's watch.

I guess you've been spending too much time being told what to do. Don't worry, you're not the only one with this problem and it's not such a big deal. But it makes people consider global situations such as middle-east conflicts as if they were interactions between individuals being watched by the police, the boss or any power figure you might want to choose.

Lots of people mention specific events as if the planet was ruled by a single onipotent institution that sets rules and laws that must be followed without questioning. Like if countries were citizens of a "country of countries" able to guarantee the well-being of its members, justifying the blind adoption of a set of rules.

But, guess what: the world doesn't work like that. If a country does not take care of its own stuff, there will be noone able or willing to provide the proper help. If your country signs a cease fire and the other side uses it to increase their weapon stock so they can try to completely destroy you, it's up to your country to predict the obvious outcome of such a system and react to it.

There is no benefit of following such agreements because there is and there will never be anyone responsible of taking care of such situations. There are no "global policemen", only extremely powerful countries that will turn the entire situation into a giant mess if they ever need to get involved in. A cease fire agreement doesn't mean "let's all be happy friends". It only means "I think I might stop kicking your ass... until it's convenient for me to keep the conflict ceased".

Israel is living a real-life situation at the current moment. And as a sovereign country they need to consider real-life events and strategic positions so they can keep existing. They can't call mommy and tell her what jimmy just did. They need to take action.

But hey, who cares about slaughtering children, they were only Palestinians right? I bet those kids voted for Hamas. Or would have, if they could.

The ones hiding behind those children should be, in theory, the first ones to care about that. But they don't. And legitimizing the act of using civilians as a shield to official (after all, they control their own fate now) military operations is not and will never be an option.

Poor little Israel, just wants to be left alone but keeps getting picked on? While you're looking things up, you need to review the history of this conflict. Try starting with 1967. Or if you like more recent events, try figuring out which side violated the truce agreement before Israel decided to stomp on the Gaza strip. I would not go as far to say that Israel is always at fault, but they're far from being angels.

You're forgetting that they actually win all conflicts they get involved in, and are the only truly wealthy (a sustainable economy based on internal generation of wealth instead of just pumping oil out of the floor) country of the entire region. They don't need to care about "getting picked on".

You step on their foot (and you can use lots of dates and events to justify it) and they'll smack you in the head. Later on, after attacking an enemy (whose destruction you listed as your top priority) that's hundreds of times more powerful than you, all you have left is the ability to moan and cry.

Yes, sure, there are small violations here and there. There is actually lots of fuel for any kind of nutjob to burn as a justification for anything at all. But the nutjobs will lose the battle, and then all they can do is cry, cry and cry. Lots of spoiled westerners will turn to your side and try to help you, but they won't be of much help if you consider the real life needs of your objective or even your population.

But why is there so much close-minded hatred among the common people? Are Egyptians just really mean? No, I would argue that it is a mindset which results from living in a police state which limits freedoms, restricts information, and perpetuates extremism.

Yes, but just like you said: things need to be slow. Otherwise the extremists will just play around with ours rules, using its weaknesses and loopholes to achieve a status of legitimacy to their actions.

That's how it works at Europe at the current moment: Muslims won't respect laws but will abuse them to get protection from the consequences of their actions. They are simply mocking our system.

If you think violence is never considered to be a solution, you're not paying much attention. Just because the front is a little farther from your home doesn't mean the war isn't going on.

You're correct: I don't pay much attention to the ghetto.

Congratulations. You've just made it comparable. Besides, any society that considers genocide as an option is not civilized by definition: "showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; humane, ethical, and reasonable."

I wasn't mentioning any particular situation or advocating genocide to any current conflict.

Let's say that you're landlocked on a small piece of land and outside your borders there is a well organized group of 100 to 200 thousand people ready to invade and kill everyone inside your city/state/country/whatever. All intelligence efforts have only managed to conclude that unless you kill 150 thousand people in the next four days, you're all going to be dead in a week or so.

I consider that kind of solution, even if only at extreme cases, to be superior to spending an entire life preaching hate. That's my point. It's 100% hypothetical.

Placing the blame on any side doesn't solve the issue in question. What the hell are you going to do about it? Attack them back? Will that cause their hate against you to subside?

Their hate is not my problem. I don't need to bend over just so they can change their minds and stop acting like ignorant pricks. It's their job to achieve progress for their own people.

Give medical aid and food to people, and let them know that when you attack, it's only because the other side has forced your hand. Make the citizens see who is really to blame.

I'm going to repeat again: They can't be an independent nation and powerless victims at the same time. They either have an official army that attacked you, or they're just powerless victims that need someone to occupy their land and tell them what to do. You can't have it both ways.

And you're forgetting how they fought back. Killing whites and performing random acts of violence was counterproductive. What worked was non-violent civil disobedience. That meant that there were a lot of whites fighting on their side to help out (included elected politicians and judges), who would have otherwise been much less willing to help. If they had fought back violently, the anger would have escalated, and we wouldn't have made the strides we have made.

Yes, they fought it the smart but hard way. Too bad palestinians will never do that.

I don't disagree. I disagree that there is any solution that doesn't involve talking. It's either that or a continuation of hostilities and no peace. Trying to do anything else is futile.

The definition of a "solution" depends on what side are you analysing. If you consider the palestinian side, a solution will certainly consider educating a large mass of people and providing them the adequate means of living. Sure, some idiots will certainly call that "westernization", as if achieving proper education and respect for one another is something exclusively western, but it's a solution.

But if you're on the other side of the conflict, a solution might consider on just not being attacked anymore. The old and famous "being left alone".

If you're not directly related to the conflict but the fact that there is a conflict is something bad for you, a solution might just consist on getting both sides to shut the hell up.

The real catch is: helping any side of the conflict to achieve a better life is not, and never will be, an obligation. Even if you're a "save the planet" kind of yuppie, taking zero-result actions to turn a bloody conflict into a land full of puppies and brotherhood is still just part of your self-serving nature and not related to actually helping people.

Like I said, you are more alike than you care to admit. You have also pigeonholed an entire people into a characterization that, although applies to some (and perhaps even most, depending on the region), prevents you from even attempting a peaceful solution to a problem, because you believe a peaceful solution cannot exist.

You're still wrong. I still live on a society that preaches and practices respect on a daily basis. There is continous discussion about the problems of society, about tolerance, about minorities, about giving people equal opportunities. My side of the planet (not my country) just elected a black president and even crazy nutjobs such as Evo Morales or Hugo Chaves base their dictatorship attempts on common rules and solid institutions.

When I walk on the street, I interact with white people, black people, asian people, poor people, rich people. And everybody gets along. Violence is never considered to be a solution to any problem and we work hard to actually provide means for people to achieve a better life. Yes, we have issues, but we're trying.

There's no comparison between a western man giving cheap ideas from behind his keyboard to a sand monkey firing an AK-47 to a jewish family just because they're jewish, or a hate-filled idiot teaching kids that jews should be beheaded. Sure, strong military or even diplomatic solutions might sound "cruel" to the common self-serving feel-gooder type, but they're technical solutions based on official and lawful institutions. But even genocide, if discussed and decided by a civilizated society that sees no other solution to the conflict, is superior than living at stone age and teaching kids to hate people based on their ethnicity or religion.

You say that I have "pigeonholed an entire people into a characterization [...]" but you forgot to account the fact that hate and war is the result coming from their "side". The internal issues of their society that are causing the creation of this troubled interface with other societies is their problem, not ours. And we must be careful not to preach a double standard here: they can't be an independent society and fragile victims at the same time. We'll either leave them alone and let them pay for their own decisions or we'll step in and mess around with their internal issues. I haven't "pigeonholed an entire people", I am treating them as an independent society of adults. And listening to arguments and speeches is not what they're interested of doing at the current moment.

I'm saying that a leader needs to talk and try to convince their people to find a peaceful solution. Most will ignore this leader, some (especially from the younger generation) will listen. Given time and effort the peaceful population may outnumber the mostly older prejudiced and combative one.

Perfect! I really hope that such a nice and caring leader arises and lead them into the light.

Until then, whoever is being attacked by the result of the collective ignorance of the said people will continue to pursue violent actions to defend its own people. Or did you expected everyone else to just wait and sacrifice so these people can solve their own internal issues?

I can already see:
- They're trying to mass-murder us!
-- Hey! Leave them alone! Two hundred years from now they'll be nice people.
- But... they'll kill us!
-- Shhh!!! Let's wait for their next generation!

It took time in the US, but the KKK went from an organization that had quite a lot of admiration from the public (watch the movie Birth of a Nation...it's hilarious to see how they are glorified in that film), to a complete joke today. It's not because we have removed their rights to gather and talk--they still publicly march to this day. However, when they do it now, they are ridiculed. The population of non-racists simply overwhelm the population of racist individuals (at least violently racist). It wasn't an instant change, and the road was a pretty tough one, but we managed to get this far, and we're continuing to make strides.

You're forgetting the fact that black people actually stood up against racism. By your measure, they should just have waited for us whites to "naturally" elect or obtain the correct leaders.

You're confusing up the intended audience of a product. The ads show "This is vista" with Aero. OEMs say "Buy this, it runs that new Vista you've seen." At no point does anyone say, directly to the average consumer, "Some computers won't look like the Vista that was advertised." There's the problem, because the advertising led people to believe something that's not true.

You're preaching a double standard. Most product families are based on versions, all of them using the same name such as "Civic" or "Bravia", where the expensive ones are more capable than the cheaper ones. And the Ads will always show you the most expensive items when mentioning the entire product line.

You can also say that "At no point does anyone say, directly to the average consumer, 'Some versions of Honda Civic won't look like the sporty Honda Civic that was advertised'. There's the problem, because the advertising led people to believe something that's not true.". Do you know why people never complain about that? Because cheap and expensive versions of stuff is a basic fact of life. It's up to you to inform yourself when making a purchase.

The Crysis defining features you mention are largely just more detail, while the Aero interface is supposed to be an entirely new way of doing things.

Actually, Aero will only add transparency to windows. The "way of doing things" is still present at Vista Basic.

Remember the McDonald's hot coffee lady? [...] Since there is no commonly in use beverage temperature gauge other than your lips and tongue.

Yeah, expect that she actually gauged the temperature with her vagina. Nice of you bringing this case up: It strengthens my position on the stupidity of the Vista sticker lawsuit.

Hence, Microsoft came up with a deceptive campaign that took advantage of people's natural tendency to automatically fill ambiguous information gaps with whatever conclusion is subtly suggested to them. It was therefore intended by Microsoft that "Vista Capable" would be interpreted by the masses as meaning "able to run the advertised features of 'The Vista That Does Stuff.'"

What a crybaby. It's just like the sporty version of Honda Civic presented at the TV Ads: everybody knows that the basic version costs less and the most expensive one costs more. Not even top class retards expect to get the most expensive version, shown at the TV Ad, for the small price quoted at "starting from XYZ USD" at the Ad.

Only Microsoft Haters and class action lawyers believe that shit.

While Microsoft deserves every bit of the potential $8B settlement costs

Yes, they deserve. Because you hate them.

You're the typical open-source geek: You believe that your ideology will certainly save the universe because it's superior both on moral and technical grounds. Yet, to achieve the desired victory, anything is desired: from abusing the legal system to "make things even and get them what they deserve" to plain old group beatings.

Talk about being right and superior....

So I assume then that you would not mind if you bought a new car, then afterwards found out that you could not drive it on the freeway because it was not able to get past 40 and started falling appart if you tried?

You're comparing a defective product with the confusion between the capabilities of three editions of a product that weren't even mentioned at the said sticker. Vista Basic will not crash the user's computer and will not limit the usefulness of the user's machine. It's only Vista without a specific set of features that are exclusive to more expensive versions of the same product.

If you do give a shit about Vista when you're buying a new PC, it's up to you to know what the Vista thingy mentioned at the sticker is really about. If you don't really know about Vista, then it's not deception, it's just a misinformed purchase.

It's just like a Honda TV Ad showing a sporty 25k USD Honda Civic running on a nice road, telling that the product's price "start from 16k USD". Nobody expects to get the most expensive version for the least expensive price. Only lawyers can sell that idea to people because will make shitloads of money if the minimum quantity of people sign in for the lawsuit.

There were adds showing off 'Vista' primarily as aero, but then when it shipped, there was vista basic, which in no way resembled the 'Vista' people has got excited about, and bought computers claiming to support.

Yeah, and you really don't start smiling and cheering at pretty people when you go shopping at the Gap, and a shitty italian-named drink at Starbucks will not make you a smart and happy notebook-using NY resident. And my 15k USD Honda does not look as good at the sport edition that got me all excited about having a Honda.

That's life. Making a good purchase is your own responsability.

Microsoft never advertised Aero, though. They advertised Windows Vista, and showed how pretty it looked. The vast majority of consumers barely know there are different versions of Vista, much less the differences between them, and if something has a sticker saying it'll run Vista, then it should be able to run what is advertised as Vista.

Vista has three editions: Basic, Premium and Ultimate. If you know what "Vista" is when you're shopping for a new notebook, you should also know about the options related to the purchase of the said product. If you're a consumer that "barely knows the options of buying Vista" then you should not be using the Vista characteristic as a defining factor of your purchase option, as you're obviously misinformed about the subject. It's all about personal responsability.

Honda is advertising sporty-like Civics on TV all the time. Yet everybody knows that the base price listed at the ad will not allow you to purchase the exciting and pretty version that's being shown at that specific ad. It's a fact of life that products have cheap + simple and expensive + full-featured versions.

This lawsuit only exists because the lawyers mediating it are going to make shitloads of cash in the process. Not because people were hurt as consumers.

Going with your example, Crysis will run as a full game with all the features on any system with at least the minimum specs. You get to play every level, every enemy, nothing is left out. That is not what happened with Vista... you can't run all of the Vista content with a "Vista Capable" PC, even slowed down. It's just impossible. And that's the issue.

Crysis will not look as good as in the back of the game box when running on a PC that meets the recommended specs, let alone a PC comparable only to the minimum specs. This is not a problem because consumers are expected to know that PC games are prone to restrictions when their machine is not good enough.

Knowing that your PC must be really good to run a brand new game is part of being a well-informed consumer for that market. People should be responsible for their actions.