OT: Did we just win?

On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 01:42:01 -0800, xray wrote: ...

Please enlighten us, xray, exactly whose personal experiences do you use to justify your opinions, if not your own?

Which "group" is that? You and Jim?

Standard Neocon response - no valid counter-arguments to the truth, so you name-call.

Oh, OK, that group. Not all of the Johns are neocons, however - some of them are merely ironic. :-)

Thanks, Rich

On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:50:43 -0800, xray wrote: ...

Well, you fooled me. ?:-/

Thanks for the clarification, Rich

LOL! Good one! Who'da thunk you got a sense of humour? ;-D ;-D

Cheers! Rich

Do you do your engineering the way he does war?

Q: "What will you accomplish?" A: "Oh, I dunno." Q: "When will it be finished?" A: "Oh, I dunno." Q: "What will it cost?" A: "Oh, I dunno - but it'll be a lot!"

And so on, and so on, and so on...

Thanks, Rich

Good point, but I guess my smiley wasn't obvious enough - I only intended to make a joke on "overt" vs. "covert" operations. :-)

But I like the idea of Congress asking embarrassing questions. :-) :-)

Cheers! Rich

I hear Rush Limbaugh is looking for an assistant.

Well, 'them' was the GOP which until recently were in control of Congress. If the GOP constitutes 'his critics', he's in real trouble.

Until Pelosi is handed the gavel, or magic scepter or whatever, she was only one of many nuisances that the administration could shield him from. That is, if he had any support left in his own party.

Someone pointed out that if Rumsfeld really was a sacrifice, it should have been done before the election. That way, the GOP might have benefited from it.

I'm afraid it will be something more than embarrassment. If this turns out to be a 'son of Iran-Contra affair' with the CIA shuffling cash and weapons around, there may be some charges of treason handed down.

stop posting your political stuff here

They'd never think of that - they're just like every other dysfunctional group: they don't see that they have a problem until they hit rock bottom and they can't make excuses any more.

Thanks, Rich

Please cite all the technical contributions that YOU have made to this group?

Otherwise STFU !!

...Jim Thompson

Basically, yes. After choosing a cause, a goal, I plow into difficult, unknowable tasks with the confidence that I can solve whatever problems arise. I don't always succeed, but generally I do.

I don't usually generate detailed schedules or estimates of tasks, I just _do_ them, as expeditiously and economically as they can possibly be done, such that the result is as good as it can possibly be.

Some years ago my division of a certain company was tanking, IMHO for want of improved products. The President, however, specifically forbade me from developing said products.

I did it anyhow.

It was a huge effort, which I had to do alone, on the sly. Some months along the way my effort was discovered, whereupon everyone could see its value and became extremely excited about the prospects for the new thing, wanting to know immediately how long it would take, size, weight, cost, specs...

That is, they wanted to know a priori all the details of how long it would take me to do something that I wasn't even sure was possible, something I hadn't designed, solving problems that had never been solved, using unknown parts, etc.

Those things were unknowable, of course.

At great expense to me and the project, I made an effort to give decent estimates as to the specs and cost. Final result? Specs exceeded, cost estimate was within 2% of vendors' quotes. Time-to-completion? I exceeded that estimate too, slightly, but only by working double time, for 500 consecutive days. Cost to develop? Nada--just my usual pay, with trivial expenses. It saved the company, for a time.

Okay, so that's the BS side of it. The real answer, however, was that I was going to make the best possible thing, in the least amount of time possible, for the lowest cost, and if that wasn't good enough then we shouldn't have been in the business of making these things to begin with (which was our business). All the time spent appeasing others' curiosity was time not devoted to the goal; it was counter-productive.

And the same goes a thousand times over in war, where there are many imponderable and unknowable factors--I do not envy Rumsfeld his job. AFAICT, this war is going far better than WWII or any number of others, the difference being the press. Maybe they'll manage to engineer a defeat for us, just like in Vietnam.

The President of our division? He was fired.

Best wishes, James Arthur

Go f*ck yourself.

How many apologists do you bushists need?

Cheers! The pig bladder from Uranus

...

So, how many innocent civilians lost their lives as a result of your machinations?

Can you see the difference here?

Thanks, Rich

Thanks, James. I don't think we can pursue much of the rest of this here. Partly because it makes me recall the suffering too clearly; to hear the cries in the night, so to speak. I remember all too clearly those who pursued "the ends justify any means necessary" agendas that horribly hurt and divided the US, financially and politically, as well many others in other countries. They were ruinous then and they have been similarly ruinous now.

Which brings me to addressing myself just to one latter comment above. You say, "I admit to being young at heart, and loathe to assume malice until proven." The team that gradually assembled under this Bush administration _had_ already proven themselves abundantly well.

I'll leave it at that.

Jon

SHIT, I agree with Jim

sorry :-)

martin

Well, let's see, we've had Genome not washing for some time, Well I think thats what he meant

There haven't been many design Questions, a HV thing, a fast led thing, the usual perpertual motion device ( mainly Republican, I think).

Mr Larkin provided a jpg about his front end, which provided some discussion. There was a quick Fetish, and some uncomplimentary stuff about Don L's website.

Dibert has a dead person problem, but this has been passed to marketing. Phil is back on/off his meds, maybe.

Bill S has been chatting to his wife about genetics, and telling us what she said

So what else do we chat about?

Politics.......and beer and food, and how the US is going to Save/Destroy life, as we know it, Jim

This place is a lot more fun than EDN

martin

Were you replying to "feebo" or to me?

I just love the bravery of anonymous posters ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Is there anything worse than a WHINEY leftist weenie ?:-)

...Jim Thompson