> But, yes, your policies led to the 9/11 attackers deciding to attack you. Is this not blisteringly obvious?
In exactly the same way that wearing miniskirts leads to rape. Take for example UBL's main grievance: the presence of the international Desert Shield force, or as UBL put it, allowing infidels to live in the land of the two holy cities. That force was there at the request of King Saud of Arabia. So what makes this agreement between King Saud and 30+ other powers a valid cause for the King's subjects, or anybody else, to wage war against the US? What makes Usama bin Laden the superior authority to say who is allowed to live in Arabia? What justifies forbidding people from holding any other religious belief than the approved one? What makes Usama bin Laden the sole authority on religious matters in Arabia who can decide what religion people are allowed to believe?
Ehm, didn't USA support Israel which was/is very hostile towards Muslims living on its territory (Gaza Strip)? So it's not like their politics weren't giving Al-Queda a reason to be provoked.
To use your metaphor, it's a lot like wearing a miniskirt and flashing the perpetrator. Neither side is really 100% clean in this.
Even in Canadian protests the police have been caught sneaking in trouble-makers with rocks and black ski-masks. If they didn't create the panic they wouldn't get paid for solving it.
Considering that the Turkish government is trying to make the protestors look bad so they have justification for going overboard in their earlier treatment of them, it's more likely that plain-clothes police officers looted those stores and overturned the cars.
When something violent and destructive happens, look at who did the last such thing.
I helped a client write their own HN hiring letter.
They'd originally had corp-speak in there like "5y PHP Developer". "Must have BS in ..." and we rewrote their requirements to things developers would have to know how to use (PHP OO, SQL with X, Able to do Y in Z, etc) and a description of the challenges you'd have.
Despite having chopped out the arbitrary restrictions, we made the posting much tougher. Which is good, it was for essentially engineer #1 and they needed someone who'd let the founder be able to delegate.
Yeah, many of the posts here are much more exacting than "regular" job boards. They're written by the people doing the work rather than via an HR filter.
It's too bad they can choose to stop once they've started. Like the patent trolls new-egg is fighting.
New-egg should essentially be able to take the trolls to court and part them out for sale, down to their CEO's organs, for trying this in the first place.
> denying you access to the firmware was never their intent.
Unlikely. With a new person or company it's sporting to give them the benefit of the doubt. With Microsoft if you're still ignoring everything illegal and anti-competitive they do you're on the payroll.
Microsoft specifically modified its products to sabotage a competitor, and lied about it. Microsoft faked evidence to use in Federal court and Bill presented that evidence though it was clearly wrong to anyone who'd used windows.
Why on Earth would anyone give them the benefit of the doubt?
The BSA, which they support, wouldn't give you the benefit of the doubt.
Actually, software licenses aren't required to simply use a program - though you can certainly obtain a copy by licensing it.
Essentially, copies made that are inherently required for the expected function of the work (to the HD if required, to RAM, to screen, etc) aren't copyright violations. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
> People accuse NATO soldiers of war crimes everyday without even realizing the legitimate war crimes we prevented every single place we went.
Had we gone into Afghanistan in the 90s when various groups of locals were asking us to we might have fought about as much, in the end, but we'd have been there at the request of the people, actually building relationships, instead of continually rebuilding a failed-by-design state for some bullshit 9/11 excuse.
Bin Laden might still have happened because he wasn't depending on Afghanistan, or he might not have, because the allies could have had a better (good) reputation in the area negating much of the terrorist fervor.
But, I (one who criticizes our soldiers for war crimes) do recognize that we often, ultimately, bring some good to the survivors - hospitals, clean water, etc, and often stop many ongoing killings and other horrible practices. But never for the reasons we say we're there and only in doing things that perpetuate the cycle of war such as setting up dictators and selling critical resources and infrastructure.
Even if in their specific case any given soldier may save more lives than they cost, our war overall and our continued ability to wage it via the complicity of our soldiers, will cost far more lives in the end.
Refusing to fight for an unjust cause, or hurt without need, is a duty of all soldiers of modern civilized militaries. Sure, it realistically means jail for those who refuse - but it means death for their victims if they don't.
Afghanistan and Iraq were clearly not justified by 9/11 or implicated by any related evidence. By fighting for the USA and allies despite these lies, without the mandate of the people, soldiers are essentially pissing on the rule of law.
We're showing - through action not words - that no matter what they do we'll just make shit up and bomb them. Why do we expect them to expect anything else?
If our governments couldn't field the army unjustly, our peacekeeping might not only be welcome but might finally work.
At this point they're lawless thugs with guns.