Iraqi Seizes the Chance to Make War Profitable(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Iraqi Seizes the Chance to Make War Profitable
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/world/middleeast/05baghdad.html
2 comments
Could we please leave the politics to reddit, onreact? Please?
This is not about politics, this is about business. In a weird way but it is. It shows that while businesses in the US struggle some huge amounts of money end up in questionable channels abroad spend on some shady business that in the best case is NOT about killing people.
I dont know about other people - and if people want to correct me, please do and I'll shut up - but I come to HN because I find interesting and RELEVANT news which are helpful to tech startups (or just techies, for anyone whos not trying to start a startup). Political, health care etc news stories are easy enough to find on digg, slashdot, reddit, google news etc. Posting them to HN only dilutes what I (and from talking to people, it seems plenty of others) feel makes HN great.
"I come to HN because I find interesting and RELEVANT news"
Exactly. You don't contribute much of value though with your zero submissions. People who only manage to criticize others while using the community resources and not contributing to those should not try to teach others who do contribute regularly. Try to find some relevant stories first to share and then tell me how you do it not before you even tried.
Exactly. You don't contribute much of value though with your zero submissions. People who only manage to criticize others while using the community resources and not contributing to those should not try to teach others who do contribute regularly. Try to find some relevant stories first to share and then tell me how you do it not before you even tried.
Btw.:
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In your case it seems one year wasn't enough.
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In your case it seems one year wasn't enough.
You might want to re-read his posts then. He said that YOUR posts are too reddit-y, not that HN is turning in to reddit. Thankfully we have more people submitting than just you.
No, he said that by posting I turn HN into Reddit which is actually the same as just stating "Flagged for being too Reddit-like".
So you don't like heath care stories likes this one?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840702
To be honest, I don't use Digg, Reddit or any other main stream social news sites and I won't due to several factors so don't tell me to go there. Also when some people like a story enough to vote for it this story must make sense to some "hackers" too.
I rather get tired of the hard core programming langauge stuff that's better suited for http://www.dzone.com/
Still, I just ignore it and don't tell others to shut up. I don't know why YOU feel entitled to me to shut up.
Btw.: Where I live hackers are the most political people around. I just say Pirate Party so I don't understand why hackers are not even allowed to discuss business and tech policies here.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=840702
To be honest, I don't use Digg, Reddit or any other main stream social news sites and I won't due to several factors so don't tell me to go there. Also when some people like a story enough to vote for it this story must make sense to some "hackers" too.
I rather get tired of the hard core programming langauge stuff that's better suited for http://www.dzone.com/
Still, I just ignore it and don't tell others to shut up. I don't know why YOU feel entitled to me to shut up.
Btw.: Where I live hackers are the most political people around. I just say Pirate Party so I don't understand why hackers are not even allowed to discuss business and tech policies here.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.
Ignoring my comment on the healthcare post (which I only did because you submitted a bunch of them in a reasonably short space of time and the HN gimmick was too good to pass up), I replied to your comment to tell you why I down voted it. I wasn't the first person to post and clearly others down voted you too.
A lot of hackers care about healthcare and politics - even I do. My point was that there are a lot of other sources where these things are easy to find and they are, in my opinion, better suited to discussions on those topics for that reason. HN, from the vast majority of submissions and votes, is very tech startup oriented. A lot of people I talk to come here for that reason. From looking at comments and submissions, it seems most people do. Posting other things, like healthcare, though it may be interesting or useful to people, isn't very useful here because a) it makes the articles that most people come here for (from what I can see) harder to find (signal to noise etc) and b) its trivial to find these discussions elsewhere, so removing them from HN doesn't mean anyone loses out.
You are free to disagree; I just wanted to explain my views to you.
Ignoring my comment on the healthcare post (which I only did because you submitted a bunch of them in a reasonably short space of time and the HN gimmick was too good to pass up), I replied to your comment to tell you why I down voted it. I wasn't the first person to post and clearly others down voted you too.
A lot of hackers care about healthcare and politics - even I do. My point was that there are a lot of other sources where these things are easy to find and they are, in my opinion, better suited to discussions on those topics for that reason. HN, from the vast majority of submissions and votes, is very tech startup oriented. A lot of people I talk to come here for that reason. From looking at comments and submissions, it seems most people do. Posting other things, like healthcare, though it may be interesting or useful to people, isn't very useful here because a) it makes the articles that most people come here for (from what I can see) harder to find (signal to noise etc) and b) its trivial to find these discussions elsewhere, so removing them from HN doesn't mean anyone loses out.
You are free to disagree; I just wanted to explain my views to you.
"You are, of course, entitled to your opinion."
Thank you, very kind of you. I thought you rather assume that I am not entitled to it. Thus you try to subdue it by voting it down and telling me not to submit stuff like that. You are really very generous.
"Ignoring my comment on the healthcare post (which I only did because you submitted a bunch of them in a reasonably short space of time and the HN gimmick was too good to pass up)"
Are you some kind of weird stalker or something voting everything down of mine or on a particular topic? Get a life then. Btw. I wouldn't need to resubmit stuff when people wouldn't block it from being seen. People who like to decide what others are allowed to see should work as censors for China but stop policing democratic communities.
"the vast majority of submissions and votes, is very tech startup oriented"
Yes, indeed it is, which sometimes gets a little boring. HN is not strictly a niche topical community it deals with everything hackers might interest so please let the hackers themselves decide, here 6 of them did. I don't see a problem with the occasional non-Ruby, TechCrunch or startup article.
"You are free to disagree"
Thank you again for this generosity but it's not something you allow me to do, I have the same right to voice my opinion here as you do.
P.S.: Ever since I'm on the Web (1997) people like you always shouted "off topic". In most cases where they succeeded the places they did it on died off due to their topical limitations as the subjects evolved.
Thank you, very kind of you. I thought you rather assume that I am not entitled to it. Thus you try to subdue it by voting it down and telling me not to submit stuff like that. You are really very generous.
"Ignoring my comment on the healthcare post (which I only did because you submitted a bunch of them in a reasonably short space of time and the HN gimmick was too good to pass up)"
Are you some kind of weird stalker or something voting everything down of mine or on a particular topic? Get a life then. Btw. I wouldn't need to resubmit stuff when people wouldn't block it from being seen. People who like to decide what others are allowed to see should work as censors for China but stop policing democratic communities.
"the vast majority of submissions and votes, is very tech startup oriented"
Yes, indeed it is, which sometimes gets a little boring. HN is not strictly a niche topical community it deals with everything hackers might interest so please let the hackers themselves decide, here 6 of them did. I don't see a problem with the occasional non-Ruby, TechCrunch or startup article.
"You are free to disagree"
Thank you again for this generosity but it's not something you allow me to do, I have the same right to voice my opinion here as you do.
P.S.: Ever since I'm on the Web (1997) people like you always shouted "off topic". In most cases where they succeeded the places they did it on died off due to their topical limitations as the subjects evolved.
sigh
Just because people disagree does not mean they censor you. Furthermore, freedom of speech is not guaranteed on this site. Basically, you can only say stuff on pg's terms and his terms include the flagging process available to all.
6 people upvoted, more have flagged it. That's not a single person "subduing" you, that's people deciding they don't think this submission is the kind of stuff they want to see on HN. That's their right. But as a "social media power user" you knew that right? Right?
Just because people disagree does not mean they censor you. Furthermore, freedom of speech is not guaranteed on this site. Basically, you can only say stuff on pg's terms and his terms include the flagging process available to all.
6 people upvoted, more have flagged it. That's not a single person "subduing" you, that's people deciding they don't think this submission is the kind of stuff they want to see on HN. That's their right. But as a "social media power user" you knew that right? Right?
> don't tell me to go there.
It's your business if you don't want to read news from other places. Should I be able to get Italian language celebrity gossip news here if I find a few people to vote it up? Or bike racing news?
It's your business if you don't want to read news from other places. Should I be able to get Italian language celebrity gossip news here if I find a few people to vote it up? Or bike racing news?
I don't see the connection to Italian and celebrities. You stretch your analogy a little.
You're playing 7 degrees of hacker news.
I like politics, but the connection to Hacker News is a bit tenuous. Compared to links on (say) DARPA, where domestic US techies have gotten federal subsidy due to war spending. There is no need to focus on some Iraqi guy when the US tech industry is built on it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=90058...
There's nothing new about the US economy being highly dependent on the military. It's after all a news sites here. This article I submitted is news, it's a new way of "business".
I agree in the sense that Iraq is current affairs... though invading armies often rewarded useful locals, when setting up client states. (Recently, I saw "Terry Jones' Barbarians," which depicted an instance when this went disastrously wrong for the Roman Empire in the city I'm currently living in... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Jones%27_Barbarians)
Well, I am glad somebody is enjoying my wasted tax payer money.