Comment Re:Already there (Score 1) 102
No? Then she can or has to use software written by someone else. Basically how she always works with data on her computer.
Even with FOSS software you depend on others to maintain it. If they stop, then you don't get updates.
Wrong. You just don't get free updates anymore if others cease to maintain a piece of software, now you have to create additions or maintenance fixes by yourself.
Or, as is more realistic for most people and organizations, hire someone with skills matching the problem to do it. It is not like programmers -even fairly well-trained ones- are much more of a rarity or generally more expensive than doctors of matching skill. Plus, maybe your problem is one that doesn't even require skills like any kind of doctor. Add to that that some may be convinced to give you a discount, because open source work can be counted as "charitable", too.
So, according to you, the plan is:
1. Obama does not withdraw from Iraq as fast as he promised to during his election campaign.
2. ???
3. The US attack Libya with the intent to get its oil - and not like before in trade, but occupation of sorts. Also implied: Libya exports to the US, not to the EU, China, and Turkey anymore as it did before.
4. Profit!
Correct?
If it turns into a "Serbian-style" conflict, then we'll be helping the wrong side yet again.
Assuming you're a citizen of a NATO member country, you were on the correct side. Both in the humanitarian sense (fighting the worst war criminals, even if combatants had a pretty shoddy record) and in the general sense (supporting a democracy or an authoritarian state - guess which is better)...
I also feel very strongly against this action. UN-sanctioned or no, it's a declaration of war
I disagree, the UN matters. It decides what is the law of nations, and whether and how to enforce it. We all know it is still law made by men, but in this case, it represents the overwhelming majority of humanity and a good part of its power, too. It should not be ignored, for both practical and moral reasons.
war of which we have plenty right now.
Hey, if you wanted to stay clear of this one, you could actually do so, the rest will likely somehow get the job done. But would you really want to start two wars that aren't exactly perceived as righteous, and then turn down one that mostly is?
This is a civil war. Ghaddafi keeps his revolutionary guard well-paid, and his military is more than he needs to maintain control. The UN forces will only prolong the fighting, and it's very difficult to convince the world that the no-fly action has nothing to do with the price of oil.
I don't think either applies.
A few things about the actual fighting: There's no real way to take heavy equipment or even just cars or carts with supplies through the desert when superior planes and helicopters control the air. And the important cities are the ones at the coast. Guess who'll have superiority in either place, even if it were just France vs Libya?
About the Libyan oil: Really, there are probably economic motivations at work, but this idea seems far-fetched. The EU and US at least surely care more about not getting a rebel army worth of refugees, safe shipping channels through the mediterranean sea, and safe coastlines. Definitely not the comparatively small bit of oil that might be expensively exploited (the cost of paying for the security of the extraction effort, the cost of domestic protests against it all, etc.) instead of just bought in trade.
'Everything short of an invasion' is rhetoric. This is a declaration of war. It violates Libya's sovereignty. From here on in, its not a question of who is right and who is wrong. It is a question of who applies more force to subdue whom.[...]
I think you missed the part where member states, like Libya, explicitly agreed to various things the UN charter demands from members.
The UN is also not just some random faction subject to international law. No, it is essentially the international law, even though if its enforcement is only taken care of by willing volunteers.
With the intervention of western countries, do you think this resolution will influence further revolutions across the globe, fueled by the hope that the UN will come to the rescue if the targets of revolt become aggressors similar to Gadhafi?
I wouldn't advise anyone starting a revolution unless they realistically can win. As far as Libya is concerned, the world's most powerful factions are now quite convinced that Gadaffi and/or his forces are too insane, too brutal, too much going against their ideals and interests, and too close nearby, and the rest does not even disagree. Protecting people as described in the resolution is hence already very close to meaning the destruction Gadaffi's armies, so it may actually benefit the rebels decisively.
But I don't think most other rebels can even be "too close nearby" or get many of these other things, at which point it may even be doubtful if anyone cares for them.
Isn't it interesting that social media and modern technology have done more for the desire for democratization than most of our cold-war efforts ever did?
Social media are helpful. But it took enormous steps for all of China, Russia, and the EU, even (in recent times especially) the US to get to where they are now. All social media wouldn't matter much otherwise, we would either already be at each other's throat, close to or entirely extinct, or actively preventing anyone from gaining prestige, territory, influence and anything. In the last case, what the rebels wanted wouldn't matter, they'd be just one more battlefield to fight on over entirely different issues, or be ignored.
[...]The point is that Stallman probably doesn't insist on full schematics for his microwave. He probably doesn't ask for the complete recipe for the TV dinner he's nuking. He probably doesn't tour the facility where the TV dinner (and/or microwave) was built. He probably doesn't check to make sure that the cows that were used to make the leather for his sneakers were free-range and humanely slaughtered.[...]
You actually can modify (fix or alter) your sneakers or microwave with not much more effort than the original producer. Looking at the components from the outside as they are will generally tell you exactly what they do, too. And here, unlike with software, an occasional surprise inspection and scrutiny of the equipment available and used in the industrial facilities and tests of samples is quite good to ensure animals get butchered humanely or that food is created according to a certain recipe.
But with software, you generally need all of the code, build instructions and documentation as well as access to the binary in order to meaningfully be able to either inspect or modify it. And evil can be done in the slightest fraction of it, generally without any good means of detection and with maybe only one programmer knowing that it was done.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect "Hungry." -- a Larson cartoon