text:
Talk:George W. Bush/Archive 7

"Republican" Clarke
This was already covered--Clarke's claim to be a Republican is used to bolster the concept that he is criticizing "one of his own," thereby strengthening the impact of his charges. Evidence that his loyalties are elsewhere speak to his credibility. If that evidence comes out, the claim must come out. Removing this material on the claim "this is about Bush" is ingenuous, at least. Cecropia 21:46, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is all completely irrelevant, and none of it should be in the article - either Clarke's claim to be a republican or any evidence that he is not in fact one. john 22:01, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I essentially agree with that point. In fact, I'm not sure Clarke's charges should even be in a Bush bio instead of an article about his administration. However, an earlier user said Clarke's claim to be a Republican is relevent to the credibility of the charge, so either the GOP claim should stay with the qualifier, or it should all go. Any consensus on which? Cecropia 22:04, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * The Bush Administration is a redirect to this article so as long as that is the case, I think the info needs to stay here. Mdchachi 14:29, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree with John that it is irrelevant to discuss whether Clarke is a Republican and with Mdachi that the info about Clarke's claims needs to stay here. Get-back-world-respect 15:35, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Also agree. The fact that he held the same position in both the Clinton and Bush administrations demonstrates his party affiliation is a non-issue. - Hephaestos|§ 15:39, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Woodward
I do not think we can present Woodward's statements as if he stated facts given the Bush administration denies most of them. Get-back-world-respect 10:53, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * If you are talking about the two dates I added, they have not been denied by anybody. Actually the administration is not denying "most" of the facts at all. After all, they are the ones that supplied most of them. Mdchachi|Talk 14:35, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * As far as I know, the Bush administration denies having planned the war so much in advance, and they claim the decision was not final before the end of the ultimatum. Get-back-world-respect 14:42, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Correct. They're making it out to be a conversation wich started with "The president has not decided" before the recording started, and then continued on to "You can take this to the bank", "This is going to happen", and "Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.".  I'm not sure exactly how such a conversation could occur, but it's their claim.  It should be pointed out that the reason that the administration and Bandar haven't been denying what Woodward claimed, but instead have insisted that there's a different interpretation for the words or that there were prefixed/postfixed statements, is that Woodward tape recorded all of his interviews.  Consequently, what Woodword quotes are correct quotes; it's only their meaning that the administration is disputing. --Rei

 * They are NOT denying the request to Rumsfeld 11/2001 to update the Iraq war plans. In fact the white house confirmed it. I also haven't heard them denying that Dec/January conversations which started the final countdown to war.  They have been denying some of the spin that has been put on it as well as the order & characterization of them. (e.g. Saudia Arabia getting informed before Powell, etc.). In any case, if you can find anything disputed in what I added let me know.  Mdchachi|Talk 17:02, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, close. They are not denying that they had made the plans before (their claim, which has some truth to it, is that the government often develops war plans that it doesn't plan to use), but they have denied that the decision was made in January (which makes for a rather strange conversation, as I mentioned above).  The reason they're denying that is because during that time, they pretended not to have already agreed to go to war, and were still working with the security council to get a new "inspection" resolution (which would contain what Germany, France, Russia, and China referred to as "triggers"). --Rei

 * While I myself set great store by Woodward's books (there is really no-one like him), his works may be problematic for Wikipedia because of his unique methods. He does not provide sources or citations for any of the specific facts related in his books, nor will he if asked.  In some limited cases he may have sat in on a meeting.  In the great majority of the cases not.  His narratives are carefully synthesized from a variety of first-, second-, and third-hand sources, stitched into a seamless form, and generally presented omnisciently.

 * This is a neat way to do journalism, and its uniqueness surely contributes to his unique results. He surely gives a great view of the big picture of how things happen.  However, for any specific fact, it is difficult to credit sourceless and citeless Woodward against someone who has direct firsthand knowledge of what happened at some particular meeting.

 * I see this as problematic for Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is about verifiable facts, not about "big picture" narratives. --Roland walker 19:09, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Equally problematic is any statement made by Bush or the Bush administration. We should not have a double standard. Kevin Baas 22:45, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Hey Kevin, glad to know you. The reason it is not a double standard is that  reports from anyone with first-person knowledge of events are different than reports based on third-person knowledge.  Bob Woodward books contain plenty of second- and third-hand knowledge woven into his story, with no way to tell which bits are which.

 * If say Ted Kennedy was at a meeting with Bush and both came away with a different story about that meeting, it would indeed be a double standard to prefer one version over the other.

 * If, however, a journalist (Woodward) writes a third-person narrative of the meeting without revealing his sources or even _how_ it was sourced, a direct report by a witness to events should be given considerably more weight. For instance, Woodward may have learned about that particular meeting from person A, who learned it from person B, who learned about it from sneaking a look at the minutes.

 * Unlike other journalists, Woodward does not typically give a report with hints about source information ("a senior White House official who was privy to the discussions said ..."). His (great) books are seamless narratives synthesized from many different types of sources.  Some of these sources are a great first-person witness.  Some of those sources are much less reliable than a first-person witness.  If there is no way to inquire about the source, then that is problematic compared to a first-person witness who reports straight out "I was there on this date and Bush said X".

 * Again, Woodward is open about how he works and why. He gets results and I think his books are great.  But for Wikipedia purposes, when a specific factual matter is disputed, his accounts may be problematic.--Roland walker 00:49, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * To get a matter out of the way first - I am not concerned with Woodward. I am unfamiliar with his book and his remarks.  With regard to statements: when Bush, for instance, makes a statement like "We know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."  This may be construed as a first person account - but really he is implying that certain statements have been made by certain established authorities.  That is, this statement is in effect a compliation of second and third (and fourth, fifth, etc.) hand sources.  Without, ofcourse, revealing his sources.  This is problematic.

 * Furthermore, his decisions regarding policy (in contrast to his statements) likewise have such implicit connotations, and must be balanced out by a representative diversity of interpretation, in order to put this information in proper context.

 * President Bush is by no means a first person witness to the events in question. He may be a first-hand source to his own statements, at best.  But even in this case, it may very well be that second-hand sources are in general more reliable than this first-hand source.  For example, the statement that weapons of mass destruction was never used as a justification to go to war is less reliable than the historical record.

 * The point is that there is, in the suggested distribution, a clear and naive bias of sources: some are considered a priori more "legitimate" than others, while those considering things as such are unaware of this bias. Kevin Baas 05:56, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Hey, Kevin. You say "I am not concerned with Woodward", but that's what this thread is about.  Our friend Mr World-Respect started this thread with

 * It is clear and evident that that is what this thread is about. That does not preclude the possibility of discussing logical discrepencies in the discussion that are independant of whether one is talking about woodward or not.  Clearly, I am doing this on a relevant and important issue.  Since all of this is quite obvious, and your response does not address any of the argument (nonetheless mention it), I can only assume that your statement is an attempt to distract from this (valid) line of reasoning.  The topic is reliability of sources in regards to woodward, and in comparison to the norm of this page.  I am discussing reliability of sources in general and in comparison to the norm of this page.  This is critical to the discussion. Kevin Baas 16:36, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I do not think we can present Woodward's statements as if he stated facts given the Bush administration denies most of them

 * I do not think we can present the Bush adminstration's statements as if he stated facts given Woodward denies most of them Kevin Baas 16:36, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * My own comments were in agreement with this and just fleshing out why that would be. So we are off the topic, or perhaps finished with it.--Roland Walker 14:18, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * This thread is much adieu about nothing; Get-back-world-respect likes to harrass me otherwise I doubt this thread would have come into being.
 * I added two dates sourced from Woodward and not disputed by the administration. I agree with the points about using Woodward as a source but then that point holds true with just about any source. Mdchachi|Talk 16:54, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hey there, Dubya Talk people. I snipped out the phrase

..., and winning in 30 of the 50 states...

from the section on the 2000 election under =Business and political career=. While certainly factual, it distracts from the flow of the sentence. The purpose of the sentence is to say "Bush won Electoral College", though "Gore won popular vote". A principle of good English writing is that there shouldn't be too much verbiage between the point and the counterpoint within such a sentence. In addition, this fact overlaps quite a bit with the previous statement (Electoral-College margin of five). Perhaps this level of detail belongs on the dedicated page for the 2000 election.

I'm overexplaining this style edit because a factual item was removed from a contentious section. I'm leaving it here on the Talk page in case someone has the need to work in this fact elsewhere.--Roland walker 20:01, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Revised the sentence slightly; I think this makes for good sentence flow as well as making the link to the Electoral College article more functional. I think it is useful to note Bush won a majority of the states. MisfitToys 20:28, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, now it reads nice, doesn't it? Thanks for the catch on the math (actually the meaning of the word _margin_).--Roland walker 20:32, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

2002 mid-term elections
Here's something I am deleting over to Dubya Talk:

Others have argued that the Democrats lost seats in the election because of their timidity in criticizing Bush as a popular "war-time" President.

from the Popularity section. My reasoning is that this sentence contains two ideas:

1. Democrats were "timid" -- This tells a vivid story, but uses unfortunate value laden language. And since Bush is a Republican, the mood/mode of    Democrats is not technically germane to his page. 2. Bush was popular -- This is adequately covered in the previous sentence.

I am always open to opposing arguments.--Roland walker 20:53, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oops -- missed a word -- I meant "NOT technically germane to his page".--Roland walker 00:17, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * In response to 1: first part - the word "timid" can easily be replaced. For example, "reticent" is a good candidate. second part - political pages are not partisan.  That would conflict with the NPOV policy of wikipedia.

 * In response to 2: Refering to the election: Bush was not popular. Popular refers to population, literally.  He did not recieve the popular vote, therefore, he was not popular.  Nor did he win by popular suffrage.  America, clinically, does not elect its national leaders by popular suffrage, but by an electoral college.  This all follows logically, without distortion.  I.e. is the truth.

 * "Reticent" means 'unwilling to talk', which isn't the right word. And Bush was fairly popular in 2000, though Gore got more votes. It's possible for more than one person to be popular, even if only one can be the most popular. Anyway, in 2002 Bush was indeed a 'popular "war-time" president', with sky-high approval ratings. --wwoods 23:53, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * "Reticent" does not mean 'unwilling to talk'. That is close, but doesn't cut it.  Reticent is clearly more to the point of what is meant by those making the statement.

 * Yes, it is possible for more than one person to be popular in a certain sense of the word popular. But it is clear and evident that that is not the sense that is being refered to.  Rather, the sense as construed by the average reader in the statement in question is "the most popular".  Kevin Baas 05:56, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Exactly. The above comment (from Kevin Baas?) missed the fact that the relevant section covered Bush's popularity in 2002, not 2000.--Roland walker 00:17, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Globally, Bush was very unpopular in 2002. But where does the talk page discussion refer to 2002?  As far as I can tell, the popularity is concerned with election.  War-time president and reticence is a separate issue altogether. Kevin Baas 05:56, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Key Kevin. Actually. this entire thread refers solely to domestic popularity of Bush in 2002.  Check the "Popularity" section of the Bush article, and see above the start of this thread, which shows the text I deleted from "Popularity" into Talk.  This text was about domestic popularity of Bush in 2002.  This thread is a discussion about that deletion.--Roland Walker 14:18, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Thank you for the clarification. At the time I asked this, this section was not titled 2002, and the discussion just above what is now the section break was discussing the 2000 election.  There was nothing below that to suggest that the 2002 election was being discussed.  There was only one tangential reference to it.  To be clear: what I have discussed refers to the 2000 election, and I stand by it.  With regards the 2002 election, I agree that domestic polls reflected approval rating statistically expected for a wartime president: above 50%. (I don't recall the exact number) And that this reflects that he was "popular" domestically.  Since this is an international medium, it should be made clear in that section that the popularity refers to domestic popularity.  Also, the statistic should be put in statistical context: It should be compared with the statistical distribution for wartime presidents ("conditioned on"), so that the reader has an accurate statistical model of events.  Kevin Baas 16:58, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Regarding the relevance of 2 (brought up below) - Its pretty significant, it was all across the news, and it is in relation to Bush. Someone researching Bush may be interested in this information.  This page is here to provide information that someone researching Bush would be interested in.

 * As well, socially, it is clear and evident that people find this connection relevant, interesting and important. (How political leaders get power is a very important thing to know if one is at all concerned with politics.) As well, information theory-wise, it is important to communicate this improbable event so that those who are not informed of it will not be misled into thinking that Bush won the popular vote. (by minimum message length) I.e. in effect, this information improves the accuracy of the page.  Kevin Baas 23:03, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't understand your comment about point #2 above. My point was that the "Bush was popular during the 2002 elections" concept was covered in two consecutive sentences.  This is a good argument for trimming out redundancy.  I didn't remove the concept nor even move it from its place in the paragraph.--Roland walker 00:17, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I am refering exclusively to the comments made on the talk page. Kevin Baas 05:56, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

PS wwoods - you reformatted my text, but the way you did it looked kooky in my browser, with two bullets and bullets plus numbers. I'm reverting to see what was wrong in the first place.--Roland walker 00:17, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * As the page is getting longish anyway, getting into a long section analyzing the 2002 elections might more appropriately belong in a separate article, which could be linked from here. Discussing why the Dems lost seats in Congress is not, I think, closely enough related to this article for a longer section. I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't articles such as U.S. congressional election, 2002, with an national overview of the elections, but perhaps that's something for the WikiProject: US Congress. Such an article would presumably include links to the pages for various Senate races, etc. MisfitToys 03:50, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't think the discussion of "why" the Dems lost ground in 2002, while interesting, is capable of NPOV, because (at this point, at least) it's Monday morning quarterbacking. I'm fascinated by how most of the pundits have no idea that there is some kind of upset in the offing in an election, but the minute one happens, they know exactly why it happened. For one thing, I don't remember the Democrats as being especially timid. In fact, they made a number of races declared "must wins" and lost almost all of them. Particularly striking was the Jeb Bush election in Florida in which the Dems were sure that anger over 2000 would oust him. It didn't.

 * The "timid" comment was about something completely different. Please refer to the comment: "Others have argued that the Democrats lost seats in the election because of their timidity in criticizing Bush as a popular "war-time" President." This refers to the 2002 mid-term congressional election, with regard to the Iraq war.  It has nothing at all to do with the 2000 presidential election or the controvery regarding electoral corruption in Florida.  (Notice also that the comment is very specific: "in criticizing...".)  You have taken this out of context.  Taking things out of context is not a valid (or respectable) method of argument. Kevin Baas 17:07, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * OTOH, if the Democrats had been more aggressive (as by attacking Bush heavily on foreign policy) and lost, then the same pundits would be saying "the Democrats lost ground because they were too aggressive and this turned off the electorate." - Cecropia 04:43, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * No. The statement that the Democrats were too timid quite intentionally implies that the democratic-leaning populace were fairly confident in their assesments and would have given stronger assent in their voting affinities to a more aggressive response by the candidates.  This is completely unrelated to the contrapositive of the disputed statement.  Every statement has a contrapositive.  This does not in any way reduce the validity of every statement. Kevin Baas 06:13, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No majority of the popular vote
For the benefit of those not in the U.S., I think the phrase "the third consecutive presidential election in which no candidate received a majority of the popular vote" is a little misleading, in that it imples that this is unusual. Because of third party candidates, it is a common occurence. The popular vote wasn't even an important issue until Andrew Jackson lost the presidency in 1824 with 43% of the measured popular vote to John Quincy Adams' 31%. In fact, a number of famous American presidents were elected at least once with a minority of the popular vote, including Lincoln in 1860 (40%), Woodrow Wilson in both 1912 (42%) and 1916 (49%), Truman in 1948 (49.5%), Kennedy in 1960 (49.7%), Nixon in 1968 (43.2%), Clinton in 1992 (42.9%) and 1996 (49.2%), and of course, G.W.Bush in 2000 with 47.9%. Ironically, even if Gore had gotten the Electoral College vote, he would still have had a minority of the popular vote at 48.4%. Cecropia 20:56, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree. People often write something along the lines of "plurality victories are the rule, rather than the exception, for the modern president".  But how much is this a history lesson on American elections vs an entry on GW Bush?  If it was up to me the phrase would be snipped but people tend to be funny about that.--Roland walker 21:03, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * But it is unusual for there to be no majority for three consecutive elections (I believe the last time was 1884-1892?), and I think that briefly noting that fact contributes to understanding the closeness of the race. I note that Gore himself was elected twice by a minority, though this would be more appropriately noted on his page than here. MisfitToys 03:41, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)
 * I guess—but there have been so many "minority" popular votes that I don't think it's amazing. Only three Democrats since the Civil War have won with a popular vote majority—Roosevelt (all four times), LBJ and Carter. - Cecropia 04:35, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Guantanamo Prisoners and International Law
Hey get-back-world-respect. Let's not get in to an edit/revert war. I've entered my change for the second time with some expl below.

In section Afganistan, I changed

stated that they must be treated as

to

asked that they be treated as

I'm going to lay out some reasons/thoughts here now. I also plan to make some more changes in this section.

This whole issue is complex. Law is complex. International law is incredibly hairy stuff. Precise wording helps.

The parties arguing on behalf of the Camp Delta prisoners have no legal standing to "state" how the prisoners "must" be treated wrt the Geneva Conventions (GC). These entities are merely third parties in any such dispute. They can query, but they can only query the US. And this is merely the sovereign equivalent of a chat. Because we are talking about something in the vicinity of law, "stated" carries the implication that something deeper is going on.

Of course, these various entities may have a strong motivation or interest, but that doesn't create standing under GC. With considerable simplifications to get us started on the thrust of the thing: The GC creates a structure recognizing two entities - those nations which are at war with each other. It sets rules and standards for the treatment of prisoners acquired during the course of the war. But the prisoners themselves aren't parties to the GC. The warring sovereign nations are the parties to the GC.

The specific structures of the GC don't include nations which aren't part of the conflict, so those third-party nations just don't exist under the GC, in the same sense that, if you consider the rules laid out in your elementary arithmetic textbook, concepts such as "France" or "the US" are so irrelevant or orthogonal as to not exist under the system of arithmetic.

If I say

The nation of Italy "stated" that 3 + 5 "must" be equal to 8

it would be somewhat nonsensical, no? Even if 3 + 5 really does equal 8. Your main question would be: what does Italy have to do with 3 + 5?

Likewise, if I say

The nation of China, "stated" that a new arithemic operation, addification "must" be used in all US 3rd-grade arithmetic

it would be nonsensical. The most China could do, would be to ask or propose to the US that our arithmetic books adopt their new idea. They just don't have any standing to "state" this with authority.

Similarly, we could not meaningfully say that the United States "states" that Russia "must" allow imports of Turkish marmalade under the terms of some Russian-Turkish trade agreement.

In general, each bit of international law, each treaty, each convention, is a law unto itself. There is no unified "international law" in the sense we are used to thinking about law.

Now, to further complicate things, Law is a very precise kinda mechanical beast. It doesn't work based on general concepts but on specific mechanisms. The GC lays out what happens to prisoners taken between warring nations. In the case of British prisoners at Guantanamo, Britain could hardly claim redress under the GC, as the UK and US fought on the same side!

If the parties we describe in the article take a position on the interpretation of international law wrt the Guantanamo prisoners, such a position is inherently argumentative. They don't carry the authority to "state" anything on the matter.--Roland Walker 22:46, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I am not familiar with the meaning of "stated" in the context of legal issues. I know that law has its own wordings which do not always match with the everyday use of words. I only wanted to stress that organizations do not simply "ask" the US to treat the prisoners according to the Geneva Convention and international law - or law at all. This could be interpreted as if they just thought it would be nice to do so. But much more than this, the organizations expressed their deep concern about the point that they see the US action as a violation of international - and even US - law. If "to state" has a meaning in this context that I did not know about I am ok with a rewording, but "to ask" is clearly misleading. My suggestion is "to argue". Get-back-world-respect 23:43, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Dear Mr World-Respect, please bear in mind that while I like to argue, I am friendly and would like to be friends with you. You have just reverted my change for the second time, replacing "stated" with the synonym "said" and restoring "must be".  I don't think that should be how this works.

 * I am not saying that "state" is so much of a legal term itself. I'm saying that (as my last paragraph makes clear) the position of third parties in this matter is (inherently) merely argumentative, and that (as earlier paragraphs make clear) there is no understood framework or venue in which their arguments may appear.  This is all the more true when you say they have concerns that the US violates its own law.

 * The wordings "said", "state", and "must" are deceptive in this instance, as they imply to the reader that something is going on which is not in fact going on. Because they have no standing, because there is no venue, yes, in the fundamental sense (and you are free to feel this is unfortunate), all they are doing with regard to the GC is saying "it would be nice".  There is no authoritative interpretation, and there is no compulsion.

 * Perhaps we could separate out the concept that certain other nations registered protest about the treatment of individual prisoners. Then we could have the protest/deep concern thought without muddying the waters on the other stuff.

 * I would like to try to refine the whole paragraph. I believe I can make it better.  I would like to work together, even actively collaborate, instead of having small changes spark edit/revert wars and require inordinate amounts of Talking.--Roland Walker 00:40, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I really do not see why you do not see that they all said that international law applies. Even if they have no legal standing they can still state their opinion and criticize. If my brother says "Mumia Abu Jamal is a political prisoner" he has no legal standing, but he can still say so. Or he could theoretically, since I have no brother. The point is, if I had many many brothers or if they could encourage many many people to join him, they could set up a "Free Mumia Jamal Group", boycott Coca Cola and Microsoft, and if they were about one billion or so maybe Mumia would be set free. Since in our case governments and human rights organizations representing probably more than a billion people made a statement, the statement is worth noting. However, given that they still have not come up with the idea to boycott Microsoft and Coca Cola, nothing much changes. Although some of the "illegal combatants" may have killed less people than Abu Jamal. Get-back-world-respect 01:45, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Hey, now we are getting somewhere. The key is that what we say can be deceptive to the reader.  If the Mumia entry went like

Mumia is in jail. Tony World-Respect, brother of a noted Wikipedian, has stated that Mumia is an illegal political prisoner and must be   released.

 * This would confuse the reader. It would make the reader think that something was going on that was not really going on.  It would suggest to the reader that  Tony World-Respect has some substantive relationship to the proceedings.  It doesn't matter how famous Tony is, or how many people are represented by some group.  A substantive relationship doesn't arise after some threshold of intense fame, intense interest, or large number of people.  It either is or it is not.

 * In this case, the wording "said/state" ... "must be" is would deceive the reader into thinking that there is some sort of substantive relationship.

 * PS I find that your wording "you do not see" personalizes the question unnecessarily. I can and do see what people say.  I'm trying to respect the reader by giving her correct information and correct wording.--Roland Walker 03:24, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Would 'complained' be a better word than 'stated'? I think it fits what's being indicated by the paragraph; 'charged' seems to me too harsh. MisfitToys 21:05, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * MisfitToys, yes, "complained" is closer to the truth than "stated". However, I feel it is weaker/less specific than "asked", because, as I understand it, certain entities did petition the US to consider the prisoners as lawful combatants under the GC. --Roland Walker 23:58, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Roland, I really do not understand you. There are people in cages at Guantanamo and US authorities deny them any access to law and order. The whole world protests against it and you say it should not be reported because US courts and you say that the rest of the world has no legal standing in the issue? Are the Geneva Convention and international law defined by US courts or the US administration? We know that they were kind of in the case of Nicaragua v. United States and in many cases when the US executed foreigners whom they denied access to legal services as guaranteed by international law and as ruled by the International Court of Justice . It would however be deceptive not to report here a major issue in the worldwide view of George W. Bush and his administration. Get-back-world-respect 22:08, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Dude, back up a minute. I never said it should not be reported.  I have a very technical objection over the wording of "stated"/"said" vs "asked".  Maybe you are confusing me with some of those involved in an edit war right now.  I'm not editing the page, right now, just Talking. --Roland Walker 23:58, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * A "belief" is not necessarily based on an analysis. The statement of human rights organizations and numerous governments is. Get-back-world-respect 22:43, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I regard it not helpful to get back to a version that was already discussed to be misleading without even pointing out why you do so and claiming "it was explained at length at talk". Get-back-world-respect 23:29, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as "discussed to be misleading". I find the current wording misleading.  I have let that wording stand while it was talked out.  It seemed to be talked out at last, so I changed entered the change.  This should not be a controversy -- it is a technical improvement.  If we could reach a consensus we could both help defend the consensus text.  I am interested in a consensus, accurate text.  Patiently, --Roland Walker 03:20, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't have a major problem with the wording of this as it stands now, but saying that the critics complaint is bsaed on "analysis" is begging the question. "Analysis" implies that they had no opinion on the subject, read the law, considered ("analyzed") it, and decided on that basis that the detainees are POWs. We don't know this--what we do know is that they are expressing a belief, which may be based on analysis, on internal politics, on political sympathies, or some combination of those, that the combatants are entitled to be treated as POWs. Cecropia 01:57, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A belief tends to be something you cannot argue about, e.g. whether Mohammed or Jesus is the one to believe in. The question whether people can legally be kept without any rights is not something about that you can only have beliefs but something where you can refer to laws and international agreements. You analyze those, and you come to a conclusion, as even US courts do. You state that conclusion, and I very much doubt any western government would make such a statement without basis of a legal analysis of the question. In that case they would only say say "We think it is immoral", although they would use a more diplomatic wording. Get-back-world-respect 13:18, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC) PS: U.S. Detentions Undermine the Rule of Law, Guantánamo remains an affront to the rule of law
 * Cecropia, who appears to be a native speaker of English, has a better grasp of the meaning of the word "believe" here. GBWR, I respectfully request that you consider listening more closely to native speakers on fine points of English wording such as the difference between "ask" and "state".
 * Overall, GBWR seems to be conflating two things: what has been said, and the vehemence with which it has been said. This is not a matter of adding more vehemence or more persons brings us to the point where that quantitative change transforms into a qualitiative change and standing and authority are acquired.  To "state ... must" implies standing and an authoritative interpretation.  Period.  The entities described have no such standing and authority.  Period.  I understand that they may hold vehement opinions, which is why I previously suggested separating the two thoughts in the text of the article.--Roland Walker 15:04, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * GBWR, I am very sad to tell you that this

people can legally be kept without any rights [...] something where you can refer to laws and international agreements isn't so. The problem is when there is no law or international agreement which applies. International agreements are especially problematic b/c "referring" to the text is not sufficient. The body of practice that surrounds an agreement is rather more important than the text, given how many agreements are signed and then ignored, or relax/mutate into new de facto agreements over time.
 * Again, this is a sad thing, but it is the truth. "Rule of Law" and "International Law" are currently immiscible.  Part of the Rule of Law concept is that in the bad old days, laws (domestic laws) were like codifications of the Crown's commandments.  The Crown could change its commandments at any time, and it went without saying that the commandments did not apply to the Crown itself.  One of the big, hard-fought transformations to come about was that the Crown, the issuer of laws, was itself made subservient to Law.  This set the stage for all sorts of amazing new developments, such as democratic self-government.
 * International law is in its very early stages. One day people will look back and casually remark that these were its "bad old days".  Most arrangements are broken, those that survive are basically contingent on circumstance.  When you get down to fundamentals, international law can change at any moment, unless you are prepared to enforce your interpretation by war.  Someday, after much time and probably many battles, the Rule of Law concept will become a fundamental part of international law.  This will set the stage for all sorts of amazing new developments, about which I cannot even hazard a guess.  I can hope that my children or grandchildren live to see such a world.  I can fight those battles on their behalf.  But I can't pretend we are living in that glorious future now.
 * PS I personally oppose indefinite detention of the prisoners in Guantanamo. But that shouldn't affect the current technical debate, should it?--Roland Walker 16:01, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * ''I am very sad to tell you that this people can legally be kept without any rights [...] something where you can refer to laws and international agreements

isn't so. Hm, was it not you who complained about my'' English? The Bush administration shows us that they can be kept without any access to the law, but that does not mean it is legal. The Supreme Court is currently investigating it, and even if the US Supreme Court decides that they have no right for a trial in the US this would not change that many governments and human rights organizations claim that the current treatment is a violation of international law. Feel free to have your opinion, do not feel free to let it appear as if the rest of the world had just some beliefs like others believe in ghosts or that they asked like the poor ask not to be disadvantaged by Bush's tax policies. Get-back-world-respect 17:02, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am really sorry, but this is the poorest attempt to save your strange argumentation I could imagine. I am fully aware that as a non-native English speaker I do not know all the subtleties of the English language - native English speakers do not know all of them either, but many know more than I. However, the terms "believe", "state" and "ask" are such simple words, and also so close to the German counterparts, that I have to fully refute your claim. As merriam webster clearly shows, "to believe" has a connotation of not being based on analysis: 1 a : to have a firm religious faith b : to accept as true, genuine, or real 2 : to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something . "to ask" can also mean to make a request. But the governments and organizations do not ask "Could you please treat them like human beings rather than animals." They insist that it is the duty of the US to do so. Stop trying to obscure this. Get-back-world-respect 15:46, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Aha! "insist" is argumentative, and much better than "state".--Roland Walker 16:01, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * If just that was your problem where was your problem with "argued"? Get-back-world-respect 17:02, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * "Argued" instead of "stated ... must" would be a clear step in the right direction, and I'm all for it over "stated ... must". While you did bring up "argued" above, the commit you actually entered at that moment was "said ... must", along with a comment that "said" was an improvement on "argued".  The continuing discussion on my part was based on your advocacy of "said ... must".
 * However, as with complained, it may be a little less than what we want in the sense that "ask" makes more clear that they went farther, and sought a change in the situation by direct request to one of the parties involved (the US). The other problem with "argued", is that it carries with it considerable specific connotation of a legal venue.  It's still an improvement over "stated ... must", though it's not as specific and correct ask "asked".  I still say we separate out the technically-correct "asked" from the concept of the vehemence of the request in a separate sentence that discusses how strongly felt the objections are.  Regards.--Roland Walker 19:46, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Redundant statement
"Several member states of the European Union and the Organization of American States, as well as non-governmental human rights organizations, have said that they must be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention or, at least, be protected against indefinite detention as specified in international human rights law."

I removed the part about being treated as prisoners of war, because it is redundant. If they are treated as prisoners of war, then they would be protected against indefinite detention. So saying that they must be treated as prisoners of war or be treated given a specific protection given to prisoners of war is redundant. anthony (see warning)

 * True, but keeping it in keeps the link to prisoners of war. That link is important; so is the statement about indefinite detention, which is the most specific right these groups are including.  Thus, both parts of the sentence are important, IMO. Meelar 00:48, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Why is a link from George W. Bush to prisoners of war a good thing? The new phrasing: "Several member states of the European Union and the Organization of American States, as well as non-governmental human rights organizations, have said that they must be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and thus protected against indefinite detention as specified in international human rights law." if true, is better, though.  My main problem was the "or" (though I wasn't going to change it to "and" since I don't have a cite for that). anthony (see warning) 01:01, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, in general, if readers aren't sure why they should be protected from indefinite internment, the POW article could be helpful. It establishes that these groups have a legal argument, rather than just a human-rights one. Meelar 01:32, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, the Geneva Convention does not state that POWs cannot be detained indefinitely. What it does say was removed.  And the original phrasing of the statement was not that the Geneva Convention requires this for POWs, but that international human rights law requires it of all prisoners.  My phrasing, back in early March, was Under article 118 of the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war "shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities." However, under article 119, POWs "against whom criminal proceedings for an indictable offence are pending may be detained until the end of such proceedings, and, if necessary, until the completion of the punishment."  But at some point (when I wasn't following), this got removed.  anthony (see warning) 01:47, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Ah. My mistake.  Well, I have seen groups pressing to grant them POW status--I think that's where my error got in.  Do what you will. Meelar 03:06, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Without some sort of citation, the only thing I can think to do is remove it, because I don't really know what exactly the sentence is referring to. But I'm sure if I removed it someone would just add it back, so I'm waiting a while for someone to explain themselves first. anthony (see warning)

 * I want to add here, as in the thread above, that there is no such thing as a monolithic system of "international human rights law". There are only individual agreements between nations.  The statement could be greatly improved by mentioning which international agreement is at issue.  I plan to get to this too, but got hung up just trying to change a couple of adjacent verbs and haven't yet been able to progress to the nouns.--Roland Walker 03:31, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

172 - VV edit war protected
Hey guys, what ever happened to the "three-revert" rule? Can we cool down and discuss it here? Cecropia 05:35, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * To answer your question, it's usual POV/style stuff. The ABM treaty is called "a bedrock of U.S.-Russian nuclear stability for three decades" (my emphasis), clearly one person's opinion; it's hard to believe it was a "bedrock" in 2001.  In fact, a whole spin is put in to make Bush look bad; in this case it was helped by splitting up paragraphs with explanatory material from the initial criticism.  Also, there's pure nonsense, such as "The Kyoto protocol was signed by President Bill Clinton either." (?)  I could have picked through and tried to straighten it all up, but 172 would have just reverted me either way, so I didn't bother. -- VV 05:59, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * You are an active editor on this article, and you had no right to to pick sides and then protect your favored version. If you don't remove the protection and the notice, then I will do so myself. 172 05:38, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Cecropia is NOT an active editor of this page, his only edit was to revert a vandalism. I checked that out myself since he reverted to a version which has his name on it. If YOU delete the protection, *I* will block you. RickK 05:45, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I dare you. Both of you have axes to grind and that's obvious. 172 05:48, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC) 172 05:48, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Sure, everyone else is the devil. -- VV 05:49, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for backing me. I removed protection to lookup policy. If you think appropriate, maybe you'll consider restoring it. Cecropia 05:47, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * 172 just unprotected and reverted to his version. You've probably noticed by now. -- VV 05:49, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, let the war begin. I've just blocked him. RickK 05:53, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually, no he didn't, I jumped the gun. I'm unblocking him. RickK 05:55, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * You fucking coward. You didn't have the balls after all. 172 05:56, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * In Protection log, it says he did. -- VV 06:00, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * It looks like there was some sort of race condition; RickK tried to protect after Cecropia's unprotection, but 172 unprotected immediately after that in response to Cecropia's protection. -- VV 06:03, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh dear god, this is all a mess. The chronology would appear to be as follows:

1:31 - Cecropia protects article 1:33 - Cecropia reverts to his last version of the article 1:34 - Cecropia adds protection notice 1:43 - Cecropia unprotects 1:44 - Cecropia removes protection notice 1:46 - Confusion! RickK protects and then 172 unprotects. At some point, 172 reverts to his version. But is this before or after RickK reprotects? 1:47 - RickK adds protected notice 1:49 - RickK reverts.

The whole thing is unclear, I think. john 06:09, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * And Rick blocked me for a couple of minutes, perhaps to put up and protect his little bitch's version in the meantime. 172 06:12, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * It was unprotected the last I saw, so I protected it. I'm such a neutral party :-) I only looked at one diff - was disappointed to see that uncontroversial grammar fixes were being reverted along with the more difficult claims. Not up on who is whose "bitch" though, is there a special page for tracking that? Stan 06:17, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * VeryVerily probably didn't even look through the changes. This was just an attempt for him to assert ownership over the article and prevent me from editing the article. 172 06:27, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure, but I think I'm the "little bitch" (or is it Cecropia?). Maybe we should have a Bitches to clarify this matter.  (And the reason I didn't bother reinstating the grammar fixes is that it was too likely 172 would just insta-revert no matter what.) -- VV 06:23, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I was calling you RickK's bitch. 172 06:27, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I would prefer if sysops only acted on articles they feel neutral about. In this case, I remember 172 openly makes anti-, and Cecropia makes anti-Bush-critics edits. So would it not be wiser to ask someone else? Furthermore, "You fucking coward. You didn't have the balls after all. 172" and "Well, let the war begin.  I've just blocked him.  Rick" are unacceptable. Get-back-world-respect 22:36, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I see your point, GBWR, but look at the edit history. It was an ongoing and rapid edit war, and I happened to be the admin on the spot. I looked it up and it was not against policy for me to protect the page as I was not part of the edit war--still, I stopped the war and asked the parties to talk it out here, which you can see above. Since 172 is an admin, I was quite aware he could unprotect it if he chose. As it is the temporary protect (which I removed earlier today) worked, at least for the time being. Cecropia 22:45, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * You can just request it to be protected, someone neutral will take care of it fast. And if the edit war goes on for some minutes, how many people will read the article in the meantime? Probably only wikaddicts, no one will suffer from misinformation. Get-back-world-respect 21:48, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Domestic policy
The main reason I added this section was because there was no mention of the environment in the article and to be consistent with the foreign-policy section. Once this area is fleshed out, I envision the Legislation section containing little more than the bullet list. Mdchachi|Talk 16:54, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * That was really sloppy of you, to create new subtitles and not take care of redundancies. Also, your additions were unbalanced. Get-back-world-respect 22:14, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Mdchachi, for creating this new subtitle, and for your additions. These are valuable contributions, which most of us appreciate. Kevin Baas 22:19, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * GBWR, I noticed a deficiency and didn't have a few hours to research the content. So I added a section-stub knowing that eventually it will evolve into something comprehensive.  I simply added factual seeds to get the process going.  If you don't like it, then tough tooties.
 * Kevin, thanks for the encouragement.
 * Mdchachi|Talk 14:49, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I do not say you should have spent hours in research but that you should not have rewritten paragraphs about topics we already had. You easily could have copied what we had under legislation to your sections as I did. Get-back-world-respect 14:54, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Enron, the oil business and jobs
There is nothing here about the Bush administration's ties to the oil business and Enron or the job statistics during the presidency. Why? Get-back-world-respect 14:51, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:George W. Bush/Archive 7


text:
Drake University

Drake University is a private university in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. The University offers over 140 undergraduate and graduate programs, including professional programs in business, education, law, and pharmacy. Drake University Law School was founded in 1865, which makes it one of the 25 oldest law schools in the United States.

History

Drake University was founded in March 1881 by George T. Carpenter, a teacher and pastor, and Francis Marion Drake, a Union general during the Civil War. Drake was originally affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), although no religious affiliation is officially recognized today. The first classes convened in 1881, with 77 students and one building constructed, Student's Home.

In 1883, the first permanent building, Old Main, was completed. Old Main remains prominent on campus, housing administration offices, Levitt Hall, and Sheslow Auditorium, and as the site of many United States presidential debates and other events. The university's law school–the second oldest law school in the country west of the Mississippi River, after Saint Louis University School of Law–was established in 1865, by Chester C. Cole, who served on the Iowa Supreme Court from 1864 to 1876. Drake's first international students enrolled for classes in 1886, and were citizens of China, Persia, Armenia, and Japan. The first campus library opened on June 16, 1908. In 1920, due to a housing crisis, the university allowed social fraternities to use Greek letter emblems and affiliate with national offices.

Drake's law school, one of the 25 oldest law schools in the nation, traces its history to 1865. It is a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools; has been accredited since 1923, when accreditation began; and is one of only 75 ABA-approved law schools with a chapter of the Order of the Coif. Drake University Law School is home to the American Judicature Society; the archives of the National Bar Association, the nation's oldest and largest national association of predominately African American lawyers and judges; and the Drake Constitutional Law Center, one of only four constitutional law programs established by the U.S. Congress and funded by the federal government.

In 1887, the Iowa College of Pharmacy affiliated with Drake University and operated as one of the colleges of the university, until 1906, when it was discontinued. Drake was without a pharmacy school until 1939, when the Des Moines College of Pharmacy Corporation, which separated from Des Moines University in 1927, was dissolved and the college's staff and facilities became part of Drake University.

In 1931, the women's dormitory opened—the first on-campus student residence built since the university's founding. In 1937, ground was broken on commencement day for Cowles Library, now the university's primary library. In 1939, a new men's dormitory was completed, which included a student union, dubbed "The Kennel". In 1963, Kirk Residence Hall opened, then Meredith Hall opened, in 1965, opening the door for the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Journalism. During the height of nationwide student protests in 1970–culminating in the Student Strike of 1970–a bomb exploded inside Harvey Ingham Hall. No one was injured, but windows were shattered in nearby Meredith, Fitch and Herriott Halls. Ingham was decimated but repaired. The largest building on campus, the Harmon Fine Arts Center, opened in 1972. The Olmsted Center, Drake's student union building, opened in 1974.

On September 17, 1969, the Drake student newspaper, The Times-Delphic, published what appears to be the first documented account of the Paul is dead hoax. No articles published prior to this piece about the supposed death of Paul McCartney are evidenced, although fellow Times-Delphic reporter and musician Dartanyan Brown, one of the sources for the article, recalled hearing about the hoax from other musicians and reading about it in some underground newspapers.

In 1992, the Knapp Center opened as home to the men's and women's basketball teams, and the women's volleyball team. It contains four racquetball courts, five basketball and volleyball courts, a 200-meter track, and a weight training center. The facility hosted President Bill Clinton in 1996.

In September 2010, Drake launched the distinctlyDrake Campaign to support its successful $200 million capital fundraising campaign to become "one of the nation's very best institutions of higher learning."

In 2013, Drake University became the home of The Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement.

Academics
The university is organized into 7 colleges and schools:

 * College of Arts & Sciences
 * Zimpleman College of Business
 * John Dee Bright College (Two-year associate degree program only)
 * School of Education
 * School of Journalism & Mass Communication
 * Law School
 * College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences

Student life
Drake features over 160 student organizations, which including several fraternities and sororities.

The School of Journalism & Mass Communication (SJMC) magazine program has achieved national prominence. The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC) team that visited in 1999 termed Drake's Magazines program the strongest undergraduate sequence in the country. In 2007, Drake student magazines THiNK and 515 won Pacemaker Awards.

Athletics
Drake student-athletes compete in NCAA Division I in the Missouri Valley Conference in all sports except football, men's tennis and women's rowing. In football, Drake competes in the FCS NCAA Division I Pioneer Football League. In women's rowing, Drake competes in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. In men's tennis, Drake competes in the Summit League.

 * Basketball (men's and women's)
 * Crew (women's)
 * Cross-country (men's and women's)
 * Football (men's)
 * Golf (men's and women's)
 * Soccer (men's and women's)
 * Softball (women's)
 * Tennis (men's and women's)
 * Track & Field (men's and women's)
 * Volleyball (women's)

History
In 1885, baseball became the university's first varsity sport, followed by football and track.

In 1904, Drake organized a women's basketball team, but Mary Carpenter, the first Dean of Women, banned the team as "not appropriate" for women.

Also in 1904, the athletic teams received their nickname of Bulldogs from a sportswriter who noticed that John L. Griffith, who coached every sport, was bringing his pet bulldogs to the practice fields. The teams had previously been known as the Ducklings and Ganders.

On October 11, 1905, Drake's first football field, Haskins Field, opened with a 17–0 loss to Iowa.

In 1928, Drake's football history continued when Drake defeated Simpson College 41–6 in what is believed to be the first night football game west of the Mississippi River. Perhaps the most famous incident in Drake's football history is known as the Johnny Bright Incident, where Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs in the Des Moines Register proved an intentional attack on the African American quarterback by Oklahoma A&M football players (Oklahoma A&M became Oklahoma State in 1957).

In 1969, Drake's men's basketball team reached the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. Top-seeded UCLA Bruins men's basketball and its 7-foot megastar Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) barely escaped an upset in the national semifinals, 85–82.

In 1973, nearly 70 years after the original women's basketball team had been banned, Drake established a department of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics.

In 1981, senior Lewis Lloyd, the nation's second-leading scorer in Division I men's basketball, was named a first-team All-American. Drafted by the Houston Rockets, Lloyd went on to an eight-year NBA career.

In 1982, the first year of the NCAA women's basketball tournament, Drake came within one step of the Final Four.

Drake Relays
Drake's most famous event, the Drake Relays, began in 1910 in a blizzard with fewer than 100 participants. In 1935 Jesse Owens set an American broad jump record (26 feet 1-3/4 inches) at the Drake Relays. Today, the Drake Relays draws athletes from all over the world, including Olympians. It is common to see Relays participants compete in the Summer Olympics and vice versa. Students' kick-off the Relays in the annual tradition of street painting, in which student organizations colorfully decorate areas of Carpenter Avenue near the center of campus under a common theme.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Drake University


text:
User:Jareha

Hi, I’m Jonathan! What’s with the username jareha, then? J on a than R uss e ll H or a k.

Philosophy
I am an Eventualist/Inclusionist Wikipedian.

Contributions
For the most part, I copyedit articles. Some articles I’ve heavily edited follow: Blue October (created), BMIR (created), dermatillomania (created), latrinalia (created), Smokey the Cannon, Chinquapin Preparatory School (created) and Charles Whitman.

Not necessarily a contribution, but Jimbo Wales commenting on my talk page remains, to this day, well, mind-blowing.

IP addresses
I’ve accidentally made quite a few contributions without having logged in first. Oops.
 * 67.96.48.35: Barbara Jordan, United States Constitutional Convention, Acquisition, Donnie Darko, University of Texas at Austin, June 28, CSP and continental philosophy
 * 198.241.156.7: AP Poll
 * 70.112.101.148: List of billionaires (2005)
 * 167.246.61.4: Steve Martin

Reference
For everything I once struggled to remember...

Boilerplate

 * Revert edits made by  to last version by.

Useful links

 * There are many stub types out there. Finding the right one can be especially difficult when one can’t even remember where to find the list of stub types.
 * Took me forever and a day to find: administrator intervention against vandalism.

title: User:Jareha


text:
User:Vim Fuego

I'm named after Adrian Edmondson's excellent character from the parody metal band Bad News. I've been editing a few of the mistakes in heavy metal and it's related genres.

title: User:Vim Fuego


text:
Talk:2004 Panamanian general election

Untitled
Is there some of way of formatting these tables so that if we choose to leave a box empty, we don't get these ugly spaces? The borders of the boxes should be visible even if there is nothing in them. Adam 00:36, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I think that's a matter between you and your browser. In Opera (see a screenshot of mine here) the empty cells do have borders -- but, as I've just seen by opening the same page in ie6, that apparently doesn't apply to all browsers (and, yes, it does look tatty). I think you need a table guru -- maybe there's a switch to include in the table syntax that forces the cells to fill out? –Hajor 00:55, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I hacked it: put a &nbsp; into the "empty" cells and crappy IE doesn't fold the cell boundaries. -- 81.152.87.230 01:21, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Adam 01:38, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Guru! Guru! –Hajor

 * The correct solution is to use wikimarkup tables, not html tables. I'm not saying that will be bug free either, but at least there is someone (bar Bill Gates) to whom you can complain. -- 81.152.87.230 01:46, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:2004 Panamanian general election


text:
Meteor (mobile network)

Meteor Mobile Communications Limited was a GSM and UMTS mobile telecommunications company in Ireland. They operated a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS(HSPA+) and LTE cellular communications network under licence from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), and were the third entrant in the market, after Vodafone Ireland and Three Ireland. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Irish telecoms network Eir, having been purchased for €420m in 2005. Meteor was the only Irish owned mobile operator in Ireland. Meteor once issued new numbers with the prefix code 085. Since the introduction of full mobile number portability in Ireland, access codes have become less relevant as mobile telephone users may now retain their mobile telephone numbers when moving between mobile network operators. As a result, Meteor customers could have numbers starting with the codes 083, 085, 086, 087, or 089.

As of September 2008, Meteor had over 1 million customers, or 20% of the market.

Award of licence
In 1998, the then Director of Telecommunications Regulation held a competition to award the third mobile telecommunications licence. Two companies submitted bids for the licence, Orange, then controlled by Hutchinson Whampoa, and Meteor Mobile Communications (consisting at that point of Western Wireless, RF Communications Limited, and TWG Ireland LLC). On 19 June 1998 it was announced that Meteor had been ranked first in the competition. However, Orange took legal action against the Director to prevent the licence being awarded. This legal action ultimately failed and on 29 June 2000 Meteor were finally issued with the third mobile telecommunications licence.

Launch
Under Peter Quinn, Western Wireless International's VP of European Operations and Meteor's first CEO, Meteor launched on 22 February 2001, eight months after the High Court found in favor of their license over Orange. Uniquely, at the time, Billpay and prepaid customers could join without contracts and at the same cost of entry. Meteor slowly picked up a low (under 10%) share of the Irish market. However, they became profitable in their first year of operation and picked up much of the lucrative pre-paid market among teenagers, due to low SMS rates and promotions such as free Meteor-to-Meteor text messages.

In 2004, Western Wireless International bought out the remaining minority shareholders in the consortium, and it became a wholly owned subsidiary of that company.

Acquisition by eircom
In early 2005 several Irish newspapers reported that Western Wireless had been approached with a view to selling Meteor. On 9 July 2005 it was reported by The Irish Times that there had been three bidders for Meteor: eircom, Smart Telecom, and a consortium led by Denis O'Brien. It was considered that the probability of eircom winning, was looking increasingly unlikely due to their heavy debt of approximately €1.9 billion. It seemed unlikely they could afford it, should the price have topped €400 million. However, on 14 July 2005, RTÉ News reported on their business website that Denis O'Brien had withdrawn from bidding, and that it was understood that eircom was the top bidder at €410m. On 21 July it was announced that Smart Telecom had also withdrawn, leaving eircom as the sole bidder. On 25 July eircom announced that it had agreed to purchase the company for €420m. On 18 November 2005 the Competition Authority approved, subject to conditions (primarily, that separate accounts continue to be published for Meteor). The purchase was completed on 23 November 2005.

Rapid growth
In a report by eircom, Meteor had gained an 18.9% share of the mobile market in Ireland, with a customer base of over 962,000 of which over 100,000 (12%) were post paid subscribers under the Meteor BillPay brand. The company's subscriber base had increased to over one million as of September 2008. Meteor accounted for 66% of the overall growth of the Irish mobile market in the year to September 2006. The company worked closely with Eircom in upgrading its billing systems and deploying EDGE and 3G technology on its network. With the developments in eircom's acceptance of the fourth 3G licence from ComReg, Meteor was obliged to have 33% of the population covered with commercial roll out of 3G services in October 2007. Meteor also signed a deal with T-Mobile UK which saw T-Mobile UK contract customers being offered a flat rate £0.25 for calls made while roaming on the Meteor network in Ireland. On 21 September 2006 Meteor announced the abolition of charges to receive calls while in the UK, by signing a deal with T-Mobile UK.

Appointment of examiner
On 29 March 2012, a number of companies within the eir group, including Meteor, petitioned the Irish High Court for the appointment of an examiner.

Products and services
Meteor initially started out as a value-driven mobile service offering customers basic mobile voice telephony and text-based SMS services to mostly Pay and Go customers.

The company offered mobile services, such as MMS, GPRS, EDGE and 3G through their Pay as You Go and Bill Pay brands. In 2009 Meteor launched Bill Pay Lite. It offered short contracts and low monthly fees.

In February 2009 Meteor launched Broadband To Go, its mobile broadband offering. The service offered internet at HSDPA speeds and was available to Bill Pay and Pay as You Go customers. There were 3 different products on bill pay, with download allowances of 5GB, 10GB and 15GB. The Pay as you go service offered 7.5GB.

Meteor Mobile Internet was the company's mobile internet based services, offering access to the mobile internet, realtones, full track music downloads and other content available for download to existing customers.

Meteor Business was the company's division focusing on business customers. They offered services such as Mobile Email using Visto technology, Microsoft Windows Mobile Email and other products.

4G - LTE
Meteor (along with its sister company, eMobile), provided 4G. 4G was originally only available in Dublin, Carlow, Cork, Clare, Limerick, Galway, Mullingar, Athlone and Dundalk. Meteor claimed to have 90% 4G population coverage across Ireland and had planned to cover the country with 90% geographic coverage by April 2017.

eir Mobile (MNO) (former MVNO)
As part of their mobile strategy eir and Meteor also launched eir Mobile aimed at the older residential and business market. This was complementary to the now discontinued Meteor brand (mainly used by younger residential wireless customers). eir Mobile was a mobile virtual network operator MVNO which used the Meteor Network for its services to residential and business customers, to complement the residential and business mobile services offered by Meteor. It is now a Mobile network operator with 96% 4G coverage, as well as 99% 3G population coverage as of September 2017, when it became the successor to Meteor Mobile.

Network
Meteor previously had a national roaming agreement with O2 Ireland which meant that, only on the westernmost areas of Ireland (where Meteor did not have coverage), a Meteor customer could use O2 Ireland's network at no extra charge. This deal expired in February 2007. The final arrangement allowed Meteor customers access to the Vodafone Ireland network on the western-seabord of Ireland.

Like all other Irish operators, Meteor held a UMTS licence. They had offered nationwide 3G services from 2007, but the Meteor 3G network was available to 33% of the Irish population (this included the four cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and other regional centres) with very limited geographic coverage, around 15% by 2013.

They also offered GPRS (2.5G) and EDGE (2.75G) services. Their parent eir won a bid for the final 3G licence, when their parent, eircom accepted this, because, Smart Mobile Ltd. was unable to pay for the license. Meteor continued to add EDGE capabilities to their then existing 2G network. In order to comply with the terms of licence, Meteor launched stage one (10% 3G population coverage area) from their UMTS/HSDPA Network on the end of October 2007, with the second phase having gone live to customers at the end of September 2008.

Meteor's network also offered 4G services, which covered 96% of the Irish population. Meteor had Ireland's second largest 4G footprint after Vodafone.

The legal transfer of licence for UMTS services from Meteor's parent, eircom, was officially authorised on 26 June 2008 taking effect the following day.

Meteor Ireland Music Awards
Meteor sponsored Ireland's national music awards annually, becoming known at one point as The Meteors, until their cancellation in 2011.

Sponsorship
Meteor sponsored RTÉ One's travel show No Frontiers and the second season of TV3's The Apprentice. They have since removed their sponsorship of The Apprentice, while RTÉ have since replaced No Frontiers with a new holiday show, Getaways.

Copyright Enforcement
On the 1st of September 2009, Meteor and eircom began regulating access to the Pirate Bay with a "three strike" system, in compliance with a High Court order issued to eircom as a result of a court case between themselves and the Irish Recorded Music Association. This system was challenged by the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) in 2010, but was overruled by the High Court. The DPC issued an order to eircom to halt this system in 2011, citing a ruling by the European Court of Justice. They continued to voluntarily completely block access to the Pirate Bay for some time after, however eircom does not block the Pirate Bay as of 2024.

title: Meteor (mobile network)


text:
List of regiments of foot

This is a list of numbered regiments of foot of the British Army from the mid-18th century until 1881, when numbering was abandoned. Foot was the contemporary term for infantry.

Establishment of precedence
The rank of regiments of the English Army was first fixed during the Nine Years' War. Doubts as to the respective rank of regiments fighting in the Spanish Netherlands led William III to command a Board of General Officers meeting on 10 June 1694 to establish the order of precedence of the various units.

With the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 the British Army came into existence (see Creation of British Army). The order of seniority for the most senior line regiments in the British Army is based on the order of seniority in the English army. Scottish and Irish regiments were only allowed to take a rank in the English army from the date of their arrival in England or the date when they were first placed on the English establishment.

The rank or precedence of regiments was fixed by the following criteria:
 * English regiments, raised in England, should rank from their date of raising
 * English, Scots and Irish regiments, raised for service of a foreign power, should rank from the date that they came onto the English establishment

This led to anomalies, such as the Royal Irish Regiment, raised in 1684, being ranked as the 18th of the line, junior to eleven regiments raised between 1685 and 1688. Similarly, the Coldstream Guards is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army. However, this regiment was placed as the second senior regiment as it entered the service of the Crown after the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards. (The Coldstream answered by adopting the motto Nulli Secundus—Second to None.)

Numbering
While regiments were known by the name of their colonel, or by their royal title, the number of their rank was increasingly used. Thus, in the Cloathing Book of 1742, which illustrated the patterns of uniforms worn by the King's forces, the regiments of foot are designated simply by numbers.

The substitution of numbers for names was completed by a clothing regulation of 1747 and a royal warrant of 1751. The 1747 document, which used numbers for the regiments throughout, decreed that no colonel was "to put his Arms, Crest, Device or Livery on any part of the Appointments of the Regiment under his command." Furthermore, in the centre of the regiment's colours was to be "painted or embroidered in gold Roman characters the number of the Rank of the Regiment". The warrant, dated 1 July 1751, repeated the instructions of the 1747 regulation and provided that regiments should in future be known by their numbers only.

As the size of the army expanded and contracted during the various conflicts of the 18th and 19th centuries, junior regiments were raised and disbanded. Accordingly, there were often a number of different regiments that bore the same number at different periods. Additionally, there were occasional partial renumberings. For instance, in 1816 the 95th (Rifle) Regiment of Foot was renamed the "Rifle Brigade", without a number. The existing 96th–103rd regiments were redesignated as the 95th–102nd.

Childers reforms
With modifications the numbers existed until 1881, when the Childers Reforms introduced "territorialisation". From 1 July 1881 the United Kingdom was divided into regimental districts, each allocated a two-battalion regiment, usually bearing a "county" title. Regimental numbers were abandoned: the 1st to 25th foot, which already had two battalions adopted new titles. The remaining regiments were paired to become the 1st or 2nd battalions of the new regiments. Two rifle regiments: the King's Royal Rifle Corps (ex 60th Foot) and the Rifle Brigade, who had four battalions each, recruited nationally.

Although the numbers were officially abolished in 1881, in some cases they continued to be used informally within the regiments. The regimental system introduced in 1881 was to last for more than seventy years. When new regiments were formed by amalgamation from 1958 onwards, the old regimental numbers were sometimes reintroduced into their titles. Examples are the 3rd East Anglian Regiment (16th/44th Foot), Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment (29th/45th Foot).

Royal and subsidiary titles
The 1751 warrant confirmed the royal titles or other special designations of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 27th and 41st regiments. In later years, other regiments were allowed to bear the names of the monarch or other members of the Royal family. Only one regiment, the 33rd Foot, was allowed to bear the name of a person other than Royalty when it became the "Duke of Wellington's" in 1853, the year after the death of the First Duke, who had served as a subaltern in the regiment.

County affiliations
On 21 August 1782, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, Henry Seymour Conway, issued a regulation giving an English county designation to each regiment of foot other than those with a royal title or highland regiments. The intention was to improve recruitment during the unpopular American War of Independence, and the Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend issued a circular letter to the lieutenants of each county in England in the following terms: My Lord, The very great deficiency of men in the regiments of infantry being so very detrimental to the public service, the king has thought proper to give the names of the different counties to the old corps, in hopes that, by the zeal and activity of the principal nobility and gentry in the several counties, some considerable assistance may be given towards recruiting these regiments".

The names of the counties were added to the regimental titles in parentheses, ranging from the 3rd (Buffs – East Kent) Regiment of Foot to the 70th (Surrey) Regiment of Foot. In some cases more than one regiment was allocated to a county, for example, the 38th (1st Staffordshire) Regiment of Foot and 64th (2nd Staffordshire) Regiment of Foot. The attempt to link regimental areas to specific counties was found to be impractical, with regiments preferring to recruit from major centres of population. By June 1783 each regiment was again recruiting throughout the country, although the county names were to remain. In a few cases, affiliations were altered: for example the 14th and 16th Foot "exchanged" counties in 1809.

Fusiliers, light infantry and rifles

 * Fusiliers: The 7th, 21st and 23rd foot had borne the title of fusiliers for some time before 1751. These regiments had originally been armed with flintlocks (or fusils, from the French), rather than matchlocks. Later, the "fusilier" title was granted as a purely honorary distinction to the 87th Foot in 1827 and to the 5th Foot in 1836. The 101st to 104th Fusiliers joined the British Army from the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) in 1861.
 * Light infantry: During the Napoleonic Wars it was decided to convert a number of line regiments to light infantry, and in 1803 the 43rd and 52nd foot were accordingly redesignated as the 43rd (Monmouthshire Light Infantry) Regiment of Foot and 52nd (Oxfordshire Light Infantry) Regiment of Foot. In the next few years the 13th, 51st, 68th, 85th and 90th foot were converted to light infantry. By the middle of the 19th century the title of "light infantry" was largely an honorary one, reflected by the "elevation" of the 32nd Foot to light infantry in 1858 to recognise their gallantry in the Siege of Lucknow. Two more light infantry regiments subsequently joined the British Army, as the 105th and 106th regiments, transferred from the HEIC in 1861.
 * Rifle regiments: An experimental corps of riflemen, equipped with Baker rifles and clothed in rifle green uniforms, was formed in 1800, and numbered as the 95th foot in 1802. The 60th Foot, which had some rifle battalions, was converted to rifles in 1824.

title: List of regiments of foot


text:
Reconstruction Acts

The Reconstruction Acts, or the Military Reconstruction Acts (March 2, 1867, 14 Stat. 428-430, c.153; March 23, 1867, 15 Stat. 2-5, c.6; July 19, 1867, 15 Stat. 14-16, c.30; and March 11, 1868, 15 Stat. 41, c.25), were four statutes passed during the Reconstruction Era by the 40th United States Congress addressing the requirement for Southern States to be readmitted to the Union. The actual title of the initial legislation was "An act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States" and was passed on March 4, 1867. Fulfillment of the requirements of the Acts was necessary for the former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union from military and Federal control imposed during and after the American Civil War. The Acts excluded Tennessee, which had already ratified the 14th Amendment and had been readmitted to the Union on July 24, 1866.

Background
Reconstruction first began under the Union Army, which implemented policies conducive to their military goals. The succession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was initially supported by Radicals in Congress, who thought Johnson's policies would be more punitive and far reaching than Lincoln's. However, the Radicals disapproved of how Johnson took a conciliatory approach and inflicted almost no punishment on the South, and how Johnson permitted Southern states to pass the Black Codes and to elect former Confederates to Congress. Johnson sought to finish Reconstruction by December 1865, before Congress would meet again. When Congress met in 1866, they overturned all of the President's decisions related to reconstruction, barring delegations from the Southern States from entering the Congress, and passing the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, both over Johnson's veto. Johnson's hostility to Congressional plans led to growing discontent in Congress with his administration. The midterm elections of 1866 produced a resounding endorsement of Radical policy and a rejection of Johnson's, effectively leaving Johnson powerless to slow down the plans of the Radical Congress. Support grew among Congressional Republicans to wipe away the current Johnson state governments and their abuses and to create new governments.

History
The passage of the Reconstruction Acts marks the beginning of Congressional Reconstruction. The Acts set forth the requirements for the late rebel states to regain entry into the Union. For reentry, each state had to draft a new state constitution, which would have to be approved by Congress. These constitutions would have to enfranchise the freedmen and abolish the Black Codes. A key addition of the Acts included the creation of five military districts in the South, each commanded by a general, which would serve as the highest authority for the region, though few generals were actively involved in day-to-day affairs, especially after new constitutions were passed. The states were also required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. President Andrew Johnson's vetoes of these measures were overridden by Congress. The Military Reconstruction Acts served to greatly increase the power of the Federal government over that of the States, and were perceived by most Southerners as justifying antebellum worries about the potential of Northern sectional dominance leading into the Civil War.

Each Military Reconstruction Act had slightly different requirements for readmission to the Union, and were successively passed in response to various political developments in the Southern States. For example, the earlier acts required that the new State Constitutions be approved by a popular vote, earning the approval of a majority of the population registered to vote (mostly freed blacks and non-confederate whites). In Mississippi, where the State's proposed Constitution was overwhelmingly hated by the public, the opponents of the new Constitution refused to vote, making it impossible for a majority of registered voters to approve of the State Constitution. In response, the Radical Congress passed another Reconstruction Act, changing the requirement for a new Constitution to require only a majority of actual voters to approve. Because opponents of the Reconstruction Constitution didn't vote, the majority of actual voters were in favor, and the Constitution was automatically ratified. Congressional actions like this served to drastically lower the trust of Southerners in the Federal Government.

General George Meade (of the Third Military District) appointed Brig. General Thomas H. Ruger to replace Governor of Georgia Charles J. Jenkins, who had been elected as the only candidate in 1865 to succeed James Johnson, who had been appointed by President Andrew Johnson.

After Ex parte McCardle (1869) came before the United States Supreme Court, Congress feared that the Court might strike the Reconstruction Acts down as unconstitutional. To prevent this, Congress repealed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, eliminating the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over the case.

title: Reconstruction Acts


text:
Talk:Double-checked locking

With JVM1.5, using the keyword final and the idiom of eager initialization, you shouldn't need to do double-checked locking to create singleton any more. It is as simple as just declared a field final, and JVM will guarantee the the field is visible only after fully initialized. Pls see link below. AltosAce (talk) 17:55, 7 August 2010 (UTC) * http://www.javamex.com/tutorials/synchronization_final.shtml * http://renaud.waldura.com/doc/java/final-keyword.shtml

Double Checked Locking works with a ReadWriteLock in Java. The read lock is obtained, the value is checked, and if a write is necessary, the read lock is released and the write lock is obtained. The check must be performed again before writing because another thread may have obtained the write lock in the meantime. Finally the write lock is downgraded to a read lock, and the read lock (either way) is released. http://weblogs.java.net/blog/2006/09/11/rechecking-double-checking 65.82.131.225 (talk) 21:06, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Please also see: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/singletons/ This web site also confirms that the only way to solve the singleton pattern problem when using multiple threads in Java is by making the constructor synchronized. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thosylve (talk • contribs) 19:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

the proposed solution for DCL in Java with the volatile keyword doesn't work

see here: http://www.javaworld.com/jw-02-2001/jw-0209-double.html?page=1 and here: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-dcl.html and here: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=133

Even the referenced source itself states that it does not work yet: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/DoubleCheckedLocking.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tcorbat (talk • contribs) 09:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

-

uh, AFAIK double checked locking is broken on JAVA, but it can work nicely in C and C++. the problem is, that in Java, you can't insert the required memory barriers...

Good news, Mr./Mrs. 84.157.213.97, perhaps you could add the details to the article? Seriously, I think the article should make clear how it applies to different languages, and should include a formal demonstration of how it can fail in a given memory model (or a proof that it cannot fail :)). PJTraill 18:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC) Aha, I realise that since I last looked a number of things have changed... But a summary of which versions x platforms it can work on would be useful. PJTraill 18:46, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

-

 * According to this article it is also problematic in C++. I found this link on the article page.  Perhaps it was added after your comment or you just didn't bother to look at it.  http://www.aristeia.com/Papers/DDJ_Jul_Aug_2004_revised.pdf

Java example which uses “initialized” boolean seems to be broken
The Java example which uses the boolean variable to check whether the instance has already been initialized seems flawed and non-functional. “instance” and the call of the constructor in no way depends on the value of “initialized”, so the compiler or the virtual machine executing the code might reorder (swap) the two instructions in the synchronized block. (Or does the Java™ Language Specification explicitly prohibit that???) 87.236.198.84 12:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Indeed, since the JVM can reorder the instructions the example is equivalent to the earlier (helper == null). iirc this is also mentioned in the "The "Double-Checked Locking is Broken" Declaration" article. So this should be removed. Initworks 09:49, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Sorry for dummy question but why not:

class Foo { private Helper helper = null; private boolean helperInitialized = false; public Helper getHelper { if (helperInitialized == false) { synchronized(this) { if (helperInitialized == false) { // Variant One: helper = new Helper; helperInitialized = helper.toString != null;// or helper.calcFlag // Variant Two: try { helper = new Helper; } finally { helperInitialized = true; }               }            }        }        return helper; } }
 * --Shurup 06:20, 14 Jule 2007 (UTC)
 * The code above looks like it solves the problem w/o volatile. --71.192.157.35 (talk) 13:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

 * A problem is that assignments are not guaranteed to be visible in the same order across different threads. Another thread may never see the updated value of helper, and always return null, or it can see the assignment to helper and helperInitialized before Helper is fully constructed. 217.155.35.160 (talk) 06:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

 * I believe the following code should also work (with the Helper class having a getThis method that just returns a reference to this:

class Foo { private Helper helper = null; public Helper getHelper { if (helper == null) { synchronized(this) { if (helper == null) { helper = (new Helper).getThis; }           }        }        return helper; }
 * --Kod-meister (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

DCL isn't a "design pattern"
How is double-checked locking a "design pattern"? It's really just a programming idiom that may happen to be used in the implementation of some patterns. It's easy to see the difference -- applying a pattern takes work, but using this idiom just takes plugging in the variable names of your choice. Anyone disagree?

Java version doesn't really reduce overhead on modern JVMs
From here:

The whole point of double-checked locking was that it was supposed to be a performance optimization, designed to eliminate synchronization on the common code path, largely because synchronization was relatively expensive in very early JDKs. Not only has uncontended synchronization gotten a lot cheaper since then, but the new changes to the semantics of volatile make it relatively more expensive than the old semantics on some platforms. (Effectively, each read or write to a volatile field is like "half" a synchronization -- a read of a volatile has the same memory semantics as a monitor acquire, and a write of a volatile has the same semantics as a monitor release.) So if the goal of double-checked locking is supposed to offer improved performance over a more straightforward synchronized approach, this "fixed" version doesn't help very much either.

-- nyenyec ☎ 17:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not exactly true. Volatile read/writes are cheaper than any locking since locking itself includes at least a CAS (that includes volatile read/write) and owning thread assignment. Using class initialization to avoid double check idiom had its downsides: classes take extra spaces into the perm gen space. Double check pattern is not a design pattern at any rate. The entire article should be moved away and rewritten. 83.99.131.77 (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

VC++ information seems to be wrong for x86 at least
volatile keyword does not seem to emit memory barrier instructions on x86 so how can it prevent CPU reordering?

http://bartoszmilewski.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/who-ordered-memory-fences-on-an-x86/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.175.44.87 (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks to me that the Visual C++ version number specified in the article is incorrect. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/12a04hfd%28v=VS.71%29.aspx - this is for Visual Studio .NET 2003 and mentions nothing about ordering. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/12a04hfd%28v=VS.80%29.aspx is for Visual Studio 2005 and specifically mentions ordering. Hence the reference to Visual C++ 5.0 should read Visual Studio 2005 I think. SoftwareDave (talk) 14:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

It appears that VC treats volatile as memory barrier as well, at the compiler level, meaning it prevents compiler from reordering memory accesses. I don't think it can prevent CPU reordering without inserting processor-specific memory fences.

C# version should be mentioned as it has been working robustly since 2.0 as well.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163715.aspx

How about a derivation of the original DCL that avoids using fences in C++?
(Syntax not checked! Using pthread in this example, but can be any other threading library!)

class Foo {  private: Helper *helper; pthread_key_t localHelper; pthread_mutex_t mutex; public: Foo : helper(NULL) {     pthread_key_create(&localHelper, NULL); pthread_mutex_init(&mutex); }   ~Foo {     pthread_key_delete(&localHelper); pthread_mutex_destroy(&mutex); }   Helper *getHelper {     Helper *res = pthread_getspecific(localHelper); if (res == NULL) {       pthread_mutex_lock(&mutex); if (helper == NULL) {         helper = new Helper; }       res = helper; pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex); pthread_setspecific(localHelper, res); }     return res; } };

This works because it stores the pointer to the common Helper in a thread-local variable. It has to acquire the lock only the first time the method is called per thread. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruestevens (talk • contribs) 09:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Why not a paragraph about C++11 ?
For instance, have a look at where use of atomic operations is suggested and illustrated. Ptyxs (talk) 15:11, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Why not a paragraph about c++98/03?
There is still a huge amount of legacy C++98 code still running, being maintained and being written from scratch for that matter. It would be good to have a section describing the situation pre-C++11, i.e. a summary of Meyers and Alexandrescu's article. 160.83.36.129 (talk) 09:17, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Please verify a reference
Anybody can verify the change of data in this edit special:diff/954987354...? The history of the IP contributions makes me somewhat suspicious. --CiaPan (talk) 10:54, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

 * Wrong page number, but I found it. The page number could be different editions or something. Mathnerd314159 (talk) 21:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Memory order for store?
The C++ version constructs a, then loads with  , which makes sense because the mutex-lock provides a memory fence. But then at the end it does. Can't that also be relaxed since it is followed by the RAII mutex unlock? —Ben FrantzDale (talk) 14:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

 * I thought I understood why, but then I re-read it. If it were a  and if we were doing additional work inside the lock, then I think I see why it needs to be  : While the mutex-unlock is a fence, inside the lock, we need be sure that the store isn't reordered before the other work. However, in this case, the only work is   and the atomic store, so I don't think (?) the   could be reordered before   even if it were  . In the general case, where it's doing other work inside the lock, then I do think    is needed. —Ben FrantzDale (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Double-checked locking