DanTheSysAdmin (1409) 0 SFW Posts | 22 Space Comments | Favorites | RSS Feed Registered 2007-10-19 01:21:52 Comment Karma: 2 Featured Comments: 0 Member of :

Recent Comments from DanTheSysAdmin

Comment on Beau Geste (2009-03-16 12:20:26)
Who would have expected a viking funeral in the middle of a desert?
Comment on Tunnel Flood (2008-09-11 22:20:28)
I knew I shouldn't have flushed a second time.
Comment on X-Men With Dragon (2008-08-29 09:30:13)
Wolverine is there because he's Marvel's cash cow. When he takes off his shirt (or as is more likely, has it ripped off him in an explosion) you can see he has a pair of udders where his nipples should be. Who would have thought a character who is the simple, violent expression of readers frustration at the complex world and yearning to cut through complications with a simple black and white world view would be so popular? And if you look really closely you can see Gambit is there, hidden deep inside of Rogue.
Comment on America's Army at E3 (2008-08-29 01:50:18)
reboot, didn't realize you were the arbiter of such things. I'll start running all technical reputation credit operations through you for a thorough vetting. I always wondered who appointed the cool people to their cooldom. garbledxmission, you are spending way too much time convincing yourself you wouldn't hit it.
Comment on America's Army at E3 (2008-08-28 12:47:09)
She's got confidence, short hair, geek cred, an athletic build and a friggin' sniper rifle. So go ahead, be a hater. Just avoid open spaces.
Comment on America's Army at E3 (2008-08-28 09:01:57)
I knew the hottie looked familiar, she's the inestimable and toothsome Xeni Jardin of bOING bOING, Wired and NPR. All those looks and she's a hard core geekster. Source of the photo is her flickr feed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Tiki has great taste in women.
Comment on Animal Crossing (2008-08-05 11:49:10)
Wow, that's an intense slice of life. I'm surprised to come across it on MyConfinedSpace, which is typically a pretty upbeat place. I am REALLY surprised it was posted by diabeetus.
Comment on Before and After A Shave (2008-02-26 22:00:52)
Before: Tech guy nobody outside IT talks to After: On the CEO's short list for CTO
Comment on Step It Up 2 - THE STREETS (2008-02-22 10:54:13)
Yeah, dancing isn't success and future. Just ask that loser, Baryshnikov. I love to listen to those rebellious smart guys inveigh against dancing and how stupid it is. Get over yourself. Dancing is like public speaking, first couple times you feel like an idiot but once you get a taste for it your confidence goes up and you can enjoy yourself. The act of dancing is like an expression of joy. And on a social note it's like an advertisement of your health, coordination and sexuality. Ever notice all those animal mating rituals that involve a weird little dance? There's a reason for that dance. And that's nothing compared to what can happen on the dancefloor. That girl who keeps bumping into you? She's sending a none too subtle signal she's interested in being chatted up. Ah, to be young again. Good dancers really are better lovers.
Comment on Tools Of The Trade (2008-02-19 09:33:25)
My first thought was that it was for breaking and entering. Guess I don't watch enough horror movies. But there are no lock pick tools so that isn't it. What makes me think it's not a surgeons kit are two items, the tiny hammer and the core taking device (lower left corner). Plus the lack of variety in scalpels. And the wide variety of chisels. If it is a surgeons kit I'd suspect bits are missing. My best guess is ... I have no idea. I'd go with tree surgeon but for the lack of a heavy hammer. The item in the lower right corner looks like a non-motorized chain saw (two handles and a chain between them).
Comment on US Disaster Hotspots (2008-02-13 23:48:04)
I'm sorry for your loss Caio. Sese Seko was a monster and I won't try to defend the US's support of him. . That said I'll still disagree with almost everything you assert. . I lived in Swaziland at the time of the Mozambique civil war. Did I visit? No, I make it a policy to stay out of freefire zones. I remember that the functional currency were international food aid vouchers. I remember that South Africa aided the rebels. I remember that the US presence there was negligible during the hostilities (ambassador was recalled and the consulate had a skeleton staff). I also remember the context for those tractors. . This was just after the Green Revolution had spread out of Mexico and increased crop yields world wide. India had used new strains of rice and wheat to become self-sustaining agriculturally. Africa was expected to be the next big success. Zimbabwe and South Africa did have great success but mainly because of two factors: Latitude and Stability. The latitude dictates the kind of crops you grow, and because the latitude of southern Africa is the opposite poles version of Northern Europe it could use some well understood farming techniques. Unfortunately, where South Africa and Zimbabwe had stability to maintain long term investments in agriculture Mozambique had a civil war. So those tractors, they were there because somebody invested in making Mozambique a bread basket and failed. . So someone, let's say the IMF, made a loan to Mozambique. Mozambique then invested in irrigation and farming equipment (tractors) and started to farm. Then the instability comes along and civil war disrupts the economy. Prices go up. The price of gas, in particular, makes using those tractors economically infeasible. (In all probability it also made anyone with a sellable skill, like fixing tractors, leave the country.) So the fault here is obviously Americas. We caused the price of gas to spike. We caused the civil war. We caused the devaluation of the currency. Let's laugh long and hard at those bozos who gambled on Africa's future and lost. . Now you indicated that US loans to South Africa were behind all this. I have a question, are you narcoleptic? Because someone was napping at a strategic time during history class. South Africa was under embargo from the US. We didn't make loans to South Africa. The pop sensation around the world was "Sun City" (look it up). South Africa was a pariah state with its own agenda. . My pointing out the WWI vs. WWII example was to show how we learn about economics. I wasn't comparing the development of the individual nations. . Your central fact needs some work. Nobody thought these countries would suddenly become first world nations. They did expect the loans to be used to boost the economy. The central premise of those loans were threefold; help create a stable economy that would be resistant to Soviet aid, engender good relations with the country (or usually with its leadership) and BUY AMERICAN WEAPONS TO FIGHT THE COMMUNISTS. Nobody had any illusions about the US agenda at the time. And leaders like Sese Seko played the US fears of communist incursions into a nice steady paycheck, from both sides. But the IMF really did expect that money to be used to create a good economy, that was one of the central premises for the loans. . Back to the learning of economics from experience. I agree that these loans are crushing developing economies. The economists have learned and are modifying the terms of new loans. But see, that modification is now the 'new and untested' economic policy. You test it by doing it. They are also trying hard to better the management of loans. It's not an easy thing to do because those loans are matters of national pride and what happens once the money leaves the IMF coffers is up to the recipient. Loan forgiveness is also being increasingly adopted (though it took Bono to force the issue with the governmental underwriters). But here they are requiring benchmarks be met too. There are no free lunches. Hopefully the economics work better now. . I can't help myself. I have a one name response to "Read my lips: If you use an entire population as a Guinea Pig because you really liked Atlas Shrugged, you will fail." . Alan Greenspan . That would be our own economy used as a Guinea Pig. (In case you are unaware he was a student and friend of Ayn Rand and is a leading proponent of the obectivist school of economics.) . By the way, what was the section that gave your post context? You said there was one but didn't reiterate. As far as I could tell your central premise was that the US was the boogieman who made all evil occur and that we are all cheeseburger eating idiots. Was it the bit where you made wild assertions about the parameters of loans without considering how intergovernmental loans work? Or maybe where you pointed out that economists weren't precogs who could foresee all the unintended consequences of their loans? Or maybe about how untested economic theories were used to test econo ... hey, wait a minute! . Anyway, unfuck you Caio. This isn't personal.
Comment on US Disaster Hotspots (2008-02-13 19:05:46)
Just had dinner. Guess what it was. Cheeseburgers. Glad to show you're right about at least one thing.
Comment on US Disaster Hotspots (2008-02-13 18:32:59)
"Now, how are your US charity dollars to Africa being used? Well, you’re mainly paying to ship food to places where people are dying of hunger on arable land. Because all the economic means of these countries is being payed out mainly to Americans, the local farmers can’t maintain equipment (so even giving them a tractor wont work, because if it breaks, who will fix it?) and end up working the land by hand, guaranteeing a low return on crops and thus everything else." . I'll call BS on this. Speaking as the child of a USAID worker who has gone to and visited places which received funds I'll have to point out that you are full of it. I've seen medical clinics in Swaziland, Peace Corps volunteers in Haiti, locally operated fabric manufacturers in Guatemala, schools and hospitals in South Africa, and a multitude of other very direct contributions to local communities. This may not be how the majority of the money is distributed, but I can tell you what I have personally seen. Good people have made best efforts to put what money was available to good use. . You are right in that most US foreign aid is spent on US company products but that's the way the money was made available in the first place. Want that new power generation plant? Bechtel has to build it. Net effect? They have a power generation facility. Are you under the misapprehension that this is different for any given country's foreign aid? . If you want to talk about radical economic policies how about we look at a historic example. After WWI what did the Allied nations do? They imposed harsh economic reparation regimes on the conquered countries. After WWII what did the Allied nations do? They insisted on reparations but then created a massive financial investment mechanism to rebuild the Axis economies first. Why am I point this out? Because that's how we learned that the first method was bad economic policy. We learn from the economic missteps we experience. In 1974 Panama had a catastrophic earthquake. The US sent a massive amount of food aid to help with the impact. It essentially put many Panamanian farmers out of business. Bad economics, we learned from it, we (eventually) learned to moderate food aid. You point out that the economic policy of free market adoption hasn't resulted in the benefits expected. Guess what? Lesson learned. Time to move on. . I'll just say in passing that most of your assertions rap a healthy dose of fertilizer around a seed of truth. Charities send food places! Uh, most of them are trying to teach people to farm sustainably not how to import corn on the cob. (ADM may have their own ideas here.) Sometimes they do ship food but these days most realize it's a bad long term practice and do so only in emergencies. Real economic progress is a closed issue! So the adoption of microbanks (originating in India) and specialization of production on local talents with international distribution (fair trade) is a non-occurrence? Good to know, sensei. Radical changes to lower income countries failed because of untested economic policies ! So the countries were pictures of economic health beforehand and weren't taking the terms of the loans because of dire need and past policy failures? These countries were ready to institute their own perfect economic policy poised to revolutionize their economy when ham fisted, cheeseburger gobbling imperialist running dogs put a gun to their head to do what they demanded? They weren't making the changes because they needed the loans to prop up already failed economic policies? (Oh, and by the way the US was at fault for any corrupt leader who chose to accept the loans in the first place, of course. The US number one export is cronyism and nepotism.) . If you want to smugly shove bullshit down the throat of us stupid cheeseburger gobbling American's you might want to step back and reconsider your own infallibility. The people who made the policy decisions did what seemed best at the time. They lacked your 20/20 future vision. How the policy played out wasn't dictated by them. And afterward they learned from the results. But the one thing they unequivocally did was get up off their fat asses and do something. You?
Comment on The Empress (2008-02-12 08:50:37)
A. Nightsister of Dathomir B. Why are none of the pics linking to their enlarged versions anymore? They all link back to the home page for me for the last few days.
Comment on The Charmed Ones (2008-02-10 21:34:21)
This photo was taken just after they defeated the hair spray demon.