Iranian Police Tracking Dissidents Using Tech From Western Companies 161
chrb writes "A recent article at Bloomberg discusses Western companies supplying monitoring equipment to Iran. There are few regulations restricting the sale of intelligence monitoring systems to the Iranian government, and large corporations like Ericsson and Nokia have supplied the equipment used to identify dissidents and suppress anti-government protests. '[One such system from Creativity Software] can record a person’s location every 15 seconds — eight times more frequently than a similar system the company sold in Yemen, according to company documents. A tool called "geofences" triggers an alarm when two targets come in close proximity to each other. The system also stores the data and can generate reports of a person's movements. A former Creativity Software manager said the Iran system was far more sophisticated than any other systems the company had sold in the Middle East.'"
Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Too true.
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You know though if any of those companies took the moral highroad and said "no" someone else would just do it. This is one of the VERY VERY few cases were government should act.
By act I mean pass very simple regulations that stipulate you can't sell shit to anyone on the rogue state list. Going through an intermediary does not work either, if knowing sell to someone who is likely to redistribute the goods to a rogue state, you still responsible. Then you add some punitive fines that don't go so earmarked
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There are plenty of laws prohibiting companies from selling sensitive tech to rogue nations, but that doesn't keep them from doing it through shell companies and intermediaries. Doesn't seem like they are doing a bit of good in light of these events does it.
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America makes some fine weapons systems in the cruise missle/air superiority fighter category. Conflicts in the third world usually swing more on lower-level weapons such as rifles and grenades and the like, which the Russians and Chinese do very well (some would argue better than the Americans).
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America makes some fine weapons systems in the cruise missle/air superiority fighter category. Conflicts in the third world usually swing more on lower-level weapons such as rifles and grenades and the like, which the Russians and Chinese do very well (some would argue better than the Americans).
About a year ago I was noodling around in the desert in Nevada and found dozens of expended cartridge shells. I picked them up and brought them home. The marking was "bxn 85", which I found to be a style of rifle popular in Russia from the time of the Tsars to the present, the 7.62mm54R. Oddly enough you can go into a Big 5 sporting goods and find a rifle which uses these shells (still commonly produced in Poland and Czech Republic) for $90 to $120, depending upon when they are on Sale. Comparable to an
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The difference between .30-06 M1 ball and surplus 7.62x54r is a muzzle velocity of about 50-100fps for a bullet of comparable weight, out of a barrel of comparable length, with the very slight edge going to .30-06. .30-06 and 7.62x54r is the apt comparison, as each was designed originally for bolt action service rifles, and each was later adopted to various machine gun applications.
Also, by the time 7.62x51 NATO was adopted, each of the above cartridges had already been in service for about a half century.
F
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provided the one you get is in good condition -- inspect for rust and gauge the chamber before you fire.
... And clean it if you shoot surplus or you'll find your bolt face covered in rust and barrel pitted.
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Wow, I thought the only guns /. geeks knew about were of the "hot glue" and "N.E.S." varieties.
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such as rifles and grenades and the like, which the Russians and Chinese do very well (some would argue better than the Americans).
Depends on your metric. If you wish to use a rifle as a rifle and strike a target from a distance, you are better off with an M16 variant than an AK-47 variant. If you wish to treat a rifle as a brick and then expect it to fire in the general vicinity of an adversary, then the AS-47 is your platform of choice. The functionality of the AK-47 in harsh conditions is a bit of engineering with a lot of loose tolerances.
Both will do the job. It comes down to a preference for accurate fire or spray-and-pray.
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Professional armies that use AK rifles - and specifically, Soviet army, which introduced it - have always trained soldiers to fire single shots or short bursts.
Recalling perhaps hazy memories of my old US army ROTC basic camps, I seem to remember that the existing doctrine for infantry squads was that the M16 was to be fired in single shot mode by everyone except the designated automatic rifleman. He got to use full auto but was supposed to limit to 3 round bursts. This was specifically because of the recoil causing aiming problems.
The only time we were all allowed to use full auto was when we were firing off unexpended blanks after an exercise. Of course, the s
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The M16 really doesn't have a recoil, because of the buffer, it was more of a shake along the axis of fire; the barrel was in alignment with the stock so it didn't rise during automatic fire.
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America is the largest arms exporter in the world; the only reason the dictators don't provide American arms to their rank and file is because they are in general too expensive and perceived to be unreliable compared to AKs. But there are plenty of American-made heavy weapons found all over third-world killing zones.
Puh-leeze (Score:2, Insightful)
You must be joking. The US is the world's largest exporter of weapons. Amongst the countries the US exports weapons to, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Israel have recently been in the news for their "killing fields".
Of course, what the US govt does is make a list of evil doers and good guys. This list has little to do with killing fields or human rights, but rather political convenience and the lobbying of the arms industry. Then when someone sells to the side that the US govt doesn't like or couldn't sell to,
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The US is the worlds largest arms exporter because it has so many wealthy allies. When you're trading arms with places like: Japan, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, etc. (you know places with real economies and money) it's not hard to see why they are the biggest. You don't need to (but they probably do anyways) violate arms embargoes when you can sign NATO friends up for multi-decade, multi-billion dollar tanks/fighters/ships/rockets.
I seriously doubt the handful of weapons Yemen buys is in an
Re:Businesses are not the only ones doing this (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever notice the dearth of American weapons in all of the third world killing zones?
No, actually - first off, I've never been there, so I have no firsthand knowledge. Second, with the amount of American-backed violence in those Third World 'killing zones', I figure they must have handed the guys we've decided are on our side at least a few American weapons.
There's also a practical reason for preferring the Russian-made weapons over American-made: The AK-47 is cheaper to make, and easier to maintain, repair, and clean.
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> Ever notice the dearth of American weapons in all of the third world killing zones?
Don't worry, the American weapons are all being used to outfit drug cartels!
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Back in the cold war days, the Soviets would pretty much give/sell AK-47s, RPGs and who knows what else to any government that hated the same countries the Soviets did.
Re:Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Profit! (Score:4, Insightful)
I know your trying to take a shot, but to answer your question, yes. When did a company become responsible for governments using/misusing thier technology/product? Our own govt. (U.S.) uses Sun boxes and Cisco switches to monitor ME. Think the US government isn't using similar software/hardware to monitor dissidents (Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, Neo Nazi, etc..). It's a snow job blaming big companies (which is all the rage today). It reminds me when global warming fired up, even the traffic reports changed: Before global warming debate: "Intoxicated man ran over a pedestrian." After: "Intoxicated driver's SUV ran over a pedestrian".
You're an idiot. As a civil society with democratic norms we draw limits to commerce all of the time. For example, we don't allow people to sell human body parts because of the perverse incentives it would create. We could, if we wanted, limit sale of such technology to those countries that misuse it and punish those countries that don't follow suit. The fact is that we, as a society, don't really care that much. Oh, we talk about how horrible it is, but when it comes to hard decisions we always take the easy way out by spouting the kind of nonsense you just did. As far as America doing it too, so what? We are talking about Iran.
Re:Profit! Hello mods? (Score:1)
Bingo. For crying out loud, someone please mod this up.
Re:Profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Profit! (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is that it's not up to the individual business to decided who is nice enough to buy thier technology.
It is up to every individual, whether they're a blue-collar working-class stiff, or CEO of a Fortune 500, to make ethical decisions.
Anyone who sold surveillance equipment to Iran knew they were making an unethical sale, but they simply didn't give a shit. Legality isn't ethics, so the defense that it was legal is just another way of saying that they don't give a shit about ethics or morals, they only care about any consequences they personally may face.
We try to make unethical business practices illegal, because we know the sociopaths running many corporations will not behave ethically willingly. Often this happens as a consequence of them engaging in unethical activity and using the "well it was legal" excuse.
Not everyone behaves ethically only to the extent that the law requires them to. Including CEOs. It is an individual choice to do so.
So sure, maybe selling this equipment to Iran was legal for the companies that did it. It was still unethical, it was still wrong, and I will not refrain from saying so.
The idea that because they can't be prosecuted for doing it, that therefore it wasn't unethical, or that it isn't their responsibility to be ethical, is the argument of amoral cads with no ethics to begin with.
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If Nokia sold them equipment/technology that was against U.S. policy, then by all means, prosecute.
Nokia isn't a US company. Neither is Ericsson. (Though to be fair, you're not the only one who missed this rather crucial detail.)
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For example, we don't allow people to sell human body parts because of the perverse incentives it would create.
Heard on NPR this morning that there's an auction going on to sell Elvis' tooth. The reporter made a point to ask, "Do you sell any other body parts?" So, you are quite wrong.
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Well you are in complete agreement with generations of the Bush family which has been making profits from wars for a century or so. Even wars against us. It was a Bush that was helping build the labor camps at Auschwitz. Preston Bush, a former U.S. Senator and director of a firm that helped and backed Nazi Germany which continued until their records were siezed in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Companies do have a moral and ethical responsibility as well as a legal one not to support the enem
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I had a trying marriage, does that count?
The fault there could have been the lack of my trying though. It was all very confusing.
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Hog Wash (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, we would be legally liable for failing our fiduciary duty to our shareholders
This is not strictly true, though it is often quoted from someplace, usually someoneâ(TM)s ass.
A company has the responsibility to do what is best for the stockholders. There is NO law requiring publically traded companies to pursue profit above all other considerations.
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In fact, we would be legally liable for failing our fiduciary duty to our shareholders
This is not strictly true, though it is often quoted from someplace, usually someoneâ(TM)s ass.
A company has the responsibility to do what is best for the stockholders. There is NO law requiring publically traded companies to pursue profit above all other considerations.
And what's best for the stockholders is, almost always, increased profits. That's why the stockholders hold the stock, after all. Now, if you could show that an action would increase profits temporarily but prove disastrous in the long run then perhaps increasing profit would not be the fiduciarily responsible thing to do - but that is only because you are trading relatively minor short-term profit for (potentially) much greater long-term profits.
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And what's best for the stockholders is, almost always, increased profits.
Bullshit.
Two words: "externalized costs." Your whole post was talking about profits versus profits. Nowhere did you even start to think about, say, profits versus social destabilization, or profits versus gigantic tax-funded bailouts, or profits versus poisoning large numbers of human beings, or profits versus destroying our own food supply.
NO ONE is insulated from these things. No one.
Buying shares = accessory (Score:2)
What needs to happen is for every shareholder to be aware of exactly what it is they are buying into. If I buy a share that is responsible for killing someone I must be made accountable for it. Is there a legal framework for this already? That is, when Enron happened can we pursue shareholders seeing as no knowledge is no defense.
Too many people buy shares recklessly, many without knowing exactly what it is they are creating.
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And what's best for the stockholders is, almost always, increased profits.
Short term or long term?
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A company has the responsibility to do what is best for the stockholders. There is NO law requiring publically traded companies to pursue profit above all other considerations.
You are correct that "there is no law". However, there are shareholders, and thus there are lawsuits.
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If they are legally liable for failing to maximize profits, how do they get away with management buyouts?
Management isn't buying the company to make less profit -- they're buying it to make more profit. But if they know of a way to make more, money, where's their legal liability for not pursuing this fiduciary duty?
Isn't a violation of that fiduciary duty to fail to implement a plan that they know will result in increased profits?
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A lot of the time this happens, it's because management wants to take a more aggressive strategy that shareholders won't support. Nobody has a crystal ball that can guarantee increased profits. If management fundamentally disagrees with ownership about where the company should go, a MBO is usally the result of a lot of meetings where management puts forward proposals and gets repeatedly shot down.
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So then the board owns the loss of fiduciary duty -- if they are turning down management's initiatives as not in the best interest of shareholders, how do you justify selling out to the same management who will presumably implement those initiatives as being in the best interest of the shareholders?
This is totally inexcusable (Score:3)
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Probably the
web camera [hkcolordigital.com]
is included in the intelligence monitoring system. For those who sitting in front of a computer, the government can know what you are doing immediately.
Nuts to that. Get a bunch of these [gopro.com]
As to the Iranian State, it's really a fake puppet democracy, power is in the Revolutionary Guards, who have ursurped pretty much everything in the country. The sham election as all the evidence anyone could need. There's no civil rights, not there ever were. Keep your head down, don't speak out and you might be able to get by. Speak out and it's curtains for you.
Yeah, and? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I'm more concerned about this tech being used to track people in Western nations.
Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me just say: fuck Creativity Software and fuck any programmer willing to work for them. There's this thing called 'ethics' and if they choose to violate the most basic premises to enable people to do shit like this, the outcomes are also on *their* heads. None of this "just doing my job" bullshit.
--Jeremy
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Let me just say: fuck Creativity Software and fuck any programmer willing to work for them. There's this thing called 'ethics' and if they choose to violate the most basic premises to enable people to do shit like this, the outcomes are also on *their* heads. None of this "just doing my job" bullshit.
This. Take it from someone who worked in a non-tech position at a previous job (hey, it was a recession). That job entailed unethical and somewhat illegal practices against consumers.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd live in a cardboard box!
Re:Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably. This is how oppression works. Not just simply by forcing people to do things--too labor intensive--but by stacking the deck against them so they feel they have no choice but to participate in the BS because they have to put food on the table. BS is institutionalized.
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Probably. This is how oppression works. Not just simply by forcing people to do things--too labor intensive--but by stacking the deck against them so they feel they have no choice but to participate in the BS because they have to put food on the table. BS is institutionalized.
Well said.
If people had less difficulty making sure their kids were fed, there would be a lot more people at OWS. Of course if people had less difficulty making sure their kids were fed, there would be no OWS.
A Catch-22 if ever I saw one.
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I dunno if it is maybe the lack of a cohesive message or even goal that OWS is protesting....but it almost seems to me, that while some are protesting the bailouts of the corporations....many of the young are wanting their own bailouts from college loans they willing signed onto, or more govt. handouts to red
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Maybe if there was a more united singular message, I'd get it...but from what I'm seeing on TV and reading...
If you're watching/reading mainstream big media news then you're soaking up corporate propaganda. Try branching out a bit.
In a nutshell the protest is about the incredible inequality that has risen out of corporate power. i.e. The banks committed a shitload of fraud that caused the mortgage crisis, the public took it up the ass bailing them out, and no one is being held accountable, how that for starters? Do you understand what happened? If not, why not? The information is out there. That's just th
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You know, the type of person that works for such companies is a type I've seen before. They tend to surround themselves with similar people: scum that will do anything for a quick buck. People that have such a company on their CV raise a red flag when hiring.
What's the solution, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
FYI - I couldn't be more against despotic regimes, I don't fly because of the TSA... I'm not an apologist. /Syria was before this one)
I do; however, have the same question anytime this article runs on Slashdot (Bluecoat
If you are Ericcson/Cisco/Bluecoat/Juniper/etc, how do you ensure your tech never ends up being used for "evil"?
Who is evil? Should network filtering equipment be declared munitions and its export controlled? Should they include a killswitch so if it gets in the hands of an evil dictator it can be disabled? Should Nokia do background checks on all potential buyers to try to predict whether or not they are straw purchasers for evil entities?
Both of those ideas some either really far fetched, impractical, or inethical in themselves... so my question is - if you feel a hatin' rising up after reading this about Ericcson/Nokia - what should they do?
Guns don't kill people (Score:2)
Isn't that the line we can always use? The same thing should apply here. Minus the 7-day wait period, of course.
Why produce such software? (Score:2)
Should they include a killswitch so if it gets in the hands of an evil dictator it can be disabled?
Why not? It would strongly discourage the act. Who cares if you lose sales from it? It surely isn't significant. Then again, why even produce such software? In what case is it appropriate, and in which legitimate case is there no alternate means of achieving the desired goal?
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Hellfire, never mind that.
How the hell do you make the switch work from thousands of miles away, in a non-remotely-reachable location? (For instance, behind the Great Islamic Firewall.)
And after the first time, how do you make it work again? It would only take a modicum of debugging skill to uncover and block any remotely-triggerable killswitch technique once it's been revealed by first use, unless your killswitch is also engaging hidden incendiary charges and slagging the hardware. And then you'll have to
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Did they do so? I'm of the impression Bluecoat hardware was sold through an intermediary in Dubai.
To quote TFA
"marketed or provided gear over the past two years that Iran’s law enforcement or state security agencies would have access to,"
That's pretty vague. Do you know that they sold directly to Iran?
I think I hate biased or incorrect media about as much as censorship.
Let's Track the Companies (Score:2)
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It would be easier to track companies that don't. Much shorter list.
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2011 List of American companies that don't abuse human rights:
1) Bob's Diner, Kennesaw, Georgia, USA
2) Samir's News Stand, New York City, New York, USA
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Lol :)
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Why not turn the tables? I'd love to see a website that tracks the companies that help violate human rights.
Julian Assange called...
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What counts as "Helps violate human rights?" ........
Is not being tracked a human right? What about 911 calls on cells where they can find the location of the call to send help?
What about Microsoft? I bet those systems run windows.
Maybe the GNU project if they use Linux and or GCC to write the code?
Maybe Asus or Foxconn for making the motherboards that the code runs on?
Maybe Intel and AMD for making the chips that the code runs one?
Or Seagate for making the hardrives that they use to store the data?
Or
How in
Blaming the gun shop? (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't past articles say they were smuggled into Iran by Dubai-based buyers?
I guess we can have a debate about how many degrees of separation is needed for effective export restrictions, but I don't know how we can ever draw the lines to be reasonable.
IBM did the same thing in WWII (Score:5, Informative)
Back in WWII IBM's Brazilian division kept working with and suppling IBM's German division. The IBM's Hollerith punch card system was updated to be the workflow system for the holocaust. According to the author of the book IBM and the Holocaust when IBM USA found out IBM Brazil was still working with German division their response was a request no longer to be told of the activities. At the same time IBM was one of the few companies that knew when the D-Day invasion would be as it was actively using computer power to predict the best weather for the invasion.
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Total bollocks. Weather forecasting using artificial means didn't start properly until post-war, let alone IBM being a leader in this field. The reason that the British forecast D-Day correctly, and the Germans didn't, were the availability of surface observations from the North Atlantic. See the short, but wonderful, book by Overlord's Chief Met Officer: J. M. Stagg, Forecast for Overlord
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I take the author at his word that IBM had a contract for weather related activities. It may be more accurate to say they were using tabulating power. That's not to say IBM provided quality output or even useful output, only that they were one of the few entities that knew the date.
As the old joke goes, Why is it the British don't make computers? Because they have found a way to make them leak oil yet.
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So silly. (Score:2)
It's so silly to condemn tech companies for doing business with "Bad Guys." It's not our (US citizens) job to be world police, and part of that means we don't get to decide who's a big bad government and who's all good (I.E. it's stupid to say any non-white/non-christian-based/non-democratic government is evil). One mans political dissident is another man's terrorist. Sure in some cases it's pretty clear cut (humorist writes funny cartoon about scary dictator who wears funny hat and gets thrown in the sl
More worrisome.. (Score:2)
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An Episode of Leverage?
That was my first thought.
I wonder if, like the episode, the whole system is running on some 80s-era desktop sitting in some guy's man cave.
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I blame Battlefield 3 - It's all a plot by Sweden, actually. They are manipulating us via amazing video games.
Hold on, I just dropped my tinfoil hat.... erm... actually, Sweden is amazing and totally innocent, and DICE is the best studio in the whole universe. EA is even better. Iran has a really fair government that clearly loves their people, and everyone should trust the Federal reserve, they're heart is in the right place.
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they're heart is in the right place.
They are heart is in the right place? What does that mean?
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Thanks, my pedantic friend. I award you 3 internets for catching my lackadaisical usage of grammar and relying to heavily on Chromium's spellcheck.
I announce the world, in apology, that I should have used "their" to indicate possession, not the ugly mistake of a misplaced homophone.
I hid a similar error in the second sentence of this apology, mostly for your schadenfreude. It's the least I can do.
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Thanks, my pedantic friend. I award you 3 internets for catching my lackadaisical usage of grammar and relying to heavily on Chromium's spellcheck.
That's what you get for using Chromium instead of Internet Explorer, you unwashed hippy.
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I think it means you lack the flexibility to interpret language in practice.
What, are you a computer? Deal with it, it wasn't hard to understand the intended meaning from context.
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I think it means you lack the flexibility to interpret language in practice.
What, are you a computer? Deal with it, it wasn't hard to understand the intended meaning from context.
No it isn't hard. It is annoying to have to do a double take when the meaning is obfuscated by illiteracy.
The easiest thing to do is to just skip it, and move on to something written in English. The hard thing to do is to let people know that their literacy has been found wanting, because they probably don't care.
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Yea, a missing or extraneous punctuation mark makes that so hard. It's not like he dropped any letters or words...
If this was paper, youd (see what I did there?) be screwed if printing was even slightly off or damaged.
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er... oops?
Still. If read aloud (physically or in your head) you should hear the same (or very similar) sound. This should not be very difficult to puzzle out.
I remember working through less easy issues in a first-year Spanish class, so there really is no excuse for being such a bitch about it.
We're not writing term papers or treaties, here.
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You're praising EA?!?!? Did a brain slug land on your head right after your tin foil hat fell off?
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I know, that might have been the most flagrant remark, following closely behind the idea of trusting the Fed... :P
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Ahem, the joke is that simply losing one's tin foil hat is not enough to say good things about EA and that something much more extreme(like a brain slug) would be needed to even think of such a thing.
"WOOOOOOOSH" indeed.
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Then you didn't actually play BF3 did you?
SPOILER: A renegade was manipulating everyone, and the only reason Russia is involved is because they want to get their nukes back before anyone realizes they lost them to begin with.
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Then you didn't actually play BF3 did you?
SPOILER: A renegade was manipulating everyone, and the only reason Russia is involved is because they want to get their nukes back before anyone realizes they lost them to begin with.
That doesn't sound like the Battlefield 3 I know. The only renegade I'm familiar with is that ass that just blew up the jeep I was trying to hop into with our base AA.
Oh, I see. You must have made the mistake of clicking on "Campaign." That's actually just there as punishment for anyone unfamiliar with the Battlefield series - it isn't actually meant to be, you know, played.
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Or right. In which case one side is the US and the other is Russia.
What does this have to do with the Middle East again?
Re:Anti-Iran sentiment (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's some reading for you.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/uk-military-iran-attack-nuclear [guardian.co.uk]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/iran-nuclear-ambitions-secret-war [guardian.co.uk]
Come back when you have a clearer picture of your country's current political strategy.
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Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned.
The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.
In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.
They also believe the US would ask permission to launch attacks from Diego Garcia, the British Indian ocean territory, which the Americans have used previously for conflicts in the Middle East.
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Oh, I think I have a really clear picture of my countries' political strategy. Coinsidering I'm stuck with it, and no candidate I vote for makes a difference, and I am forced to pay into it (our military spending is 2 magnitudes bigger than what we spend on education), it's somewhat depressing to think about. Occasionally, I intentionally try to blind myself by making levity of the situation because it is truly depressing.
My comment was meant as a goofy side note, I don't want to water down your message - m
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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The Iranian government was put in place by the Iranian people, and the fact a few students and others object doesn't change that.
If US companies want to legally sell equipment to a democracy, so what?
Wake me when the Iranian protesters have the same level of dedication the Libyans just displayed.
Iranians aren't serious until they start wearing suicide vests into police stations and literally "offing the pigs". People who REALLY want freedom are delighted to kill for it.
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