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I'm happy as the next guy to pillory Halliburton, which deserves little but scorn for its shocking profiteering in US government contracts. But you probably don't want want to cite dated Chavezista leftie Froot-Loops talking about how the rapidly disintegrating former Venezuelan economy is a model for anything except citizen outrage.

Just ask the folks living in the former Socialist Paradise where condoms now cost $755/pack on the black market because the Bolivar is worth less than toilet paper and it turned out that Chavez was mortgaging his country's future to buy temporary popularity with oil dollars.

All we had to do was LITERALLY NOTHING

But then, what's going to be his legacy? Not Obamacare, not peaceful Iraq (or Libya), not economic recovery, not lower unemployment, not reductions in income disparity.

Liberalization of marijuana? But that's individual States' achievement...

Being able to claim to have "normalized relationship" with Iran (and Cuba) will — for generations — be trumpeted as "success" by sympathetic historians. Or so he hopes...

It's strange hearing you praising education, when you continue to labour under the false impression that fundamentalists of a certain flavour represent the moderates of the same flavour, even though that's been pointed out to you time and time and time again. I guess you're happy with that nonsense as it makes you feel in control somehow, so you let it slide. You are either a lazy human being, a scared human being, or an ignorant human being. Pick at least one, please.

Perhaps you should educate yourself by reading the qur'an and noting that that twice as many muslims have joined ISIS than the armed forces and that ICM Poll: 11% of British Muslims find violence for political ends acceptable. Not all people who call themselves Muslims follow the Qur'an and Hadith but enough of them do to be a real threat.

Flight 17 was purposely shot-down by United States assholes: http://www.newsweek.com/russia...

That's quite simply not true.

It quite simply is true.

Read: http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.newsweek.com/theres...

OK, if you say so.

Right. Assange wrote a piece about Google

http://www.newsweek.com/assang...

There are guerilla wars, insurgencies, or even open warfare, going on across the world by Islamic extremists to impose their view of society, including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Phillippines and many other places. What makes you think Europe is immune to this?

16% of French Citizens Support ISIS, Poll Finds

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

Poll reveals 40pc of Muslims want sharia law in UK

Ignorance and denial are a poor basis for public policy, although they are often the fodder for moderation.

Boko Haram has stated openly they are an Islamic group and are trying to form an ISIS like African Caliphate . What more do you need to see the truth?

Have a look at http://www.cfr.org/nigeria/bok... . Yes, Boko Haram is a very violent and abhorrent group (or rather a set of groups) right now, but they weren't always like that. Their current actions also have little or nothing to do with Islam (a bit like how "spreading democracy" had little to do with the Iraq war). At the same time, the Nigerian "Joint Task Force" of Nigerian police, army and private security forces (primarily funded by oil companies) is regularly accused of "summary executions, use of excessive force, and widespread arrests of suspected extremists, many based on little or no evidence" (words of the US Department of State, not mine) in the Niger delta (where Boko Haram is active). The paragraph in which that sentence appears also sketches the situation after 2009 (when Boko Haram became violent) quite well.

The JTF has been active since 2003 though, and some people directly argue (albeit in a mess of many missing/broken links that make it hard to check several argued points) that they basically made Boko Haram into what it is today with the objective of being able to justify the use of excessive force against them.

I still have to read up more on it from different sources, but from what I've read until now it seems that really has very little to do with Islam. It's just the banner they use due to their origins, just like we in the West (not just the US) justify almost all of our actions with "helping democracy", "supporting human rights", "increasing free trade" etc, even when that banner doesn't cover the actions at all. In many cases, it's mainly a cultural reference to something that the people involved (on the "aggressor's" side) can identify with as "good" or that they can relate to.

They live in an impoverished country with little real government to speak of with lots of tribal warfare that may or may not have anything at all to do with religion.

That is unbelievable whitewashing bullshit of what happened, and you dishonor the 2000+ dead with your sickening lies/ignorance.

Boko Haram has stated openly they are an Islamic group and are trying to form an ISIS like African Caliphate . What more do you need to see the truth?

There are several concrete basic income proposals that would potentially decrease the cost of welfare while providing a basic income to everyone.

e.g. This Newsweek Article

I only have my own personal anecdote, but I was the top boy in my highschool class by far. That didn't even get me into the top 10% of my class, though, since the top 10% were all girls. I think the only other boy in the honor society was a boy from the next year's class but I can't remember. (I know who the next highest boy in the school's ranking was but I don't remember whether or not he hit the cutoff for honor society.)

This was during the 90s in a public high school, so it wasn't like the population was simply unbalanced. This is hardly a new problem. Our education system simply doesn't engage with boys and hasn't for years at this point.

If you want links, though, it isn't hard to find them:

Itâ(TM)s Time to Worry: Boys Are Rapidly Falling Behind Girls in School How to Make School Better for Boys: Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding. Education: Boys Falling Behind Girls in Many Areas (Paywalled, so I have no idea what it says)

Those were just the top results on Google.

Indeed. Our educational system simply doesn't engage with kids in general, it's just that girls don't act out the general frustration in as obvious a fashion as boys do. By the time you get to higher education, you've selected out the kids who really can't deal with it at all. No other modern industry has the failure rate that we accept as normal in our educational system.

They send balloons with stuff.
http://www.newsweek.com/activi...

They are doign this for years already and seemingly with good results.

I only have my own personal anecdote, but I was the top boy in my highschool class by far. That didn't even get me into the top 10% of my class, though, since the top 10% were all girls. I think the only other boy in the honor society was a boy from the next year's class but I can't remember. (I know who the next highest boy in the school's ranking was but I don't remember whether or not he hit the cutoff for honor society.)

This was during the 90s in a public high school, so it wasn't like the population was simply unbalanced. This is hardly a new problem. Our education system simply doesn't engage with boys and hasn't for years at this point.

If you want links, though, it isn't hard to find them:

Itâ(TM)s Time to Worry: Boys Are Rapidly Falling Behind Girls in School
How to Make School Better for Boys: Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding.
Education: Boys Falling Behind Girls in Many Areas (Paywalled, so I have no idea what it says)

Those were just the top results on Google.

http://www.newsweek.com/assang...

Yeah - working with Schmidt's company is really going to keep your stuff away from the US government... http://www.newsweek.com/assang...

http://www.newsweek.com/german...

we spy on them, they spy on us. :) trust but verify. It's the most conservative and safest way to operate on the international stage.

So here I am, an indie-turned-professional game developer, who has not really followed along with the controversy. I don't read much game-related journalism, and my games aren't quite big enough to get media attention themselves.

In short, I'm not familiar with the controversy, and I don't have a whole lot of stake in it. Nor do I have a whole lot of time to devote to it. So how should I judge it?

I guess I could take a Slashdot user's word, especially if the user was voted +5. That's something.

On the other hand, I could trust the Extra Credits. As a game developer myself, I can tell that they do their research on game-development-related topics, so I would assume they'd do their research on Internet movements as well.

I could trust the CEO I work for, who has done a statistical analysis demonstrating that women in the game industry get harassed (at least slightly) more than men.

Or how about Newsweek? Gamergate only claims that gaming journalism is corrupt, right? Other journalists should be fine, right?

Or I could go to Wikipedia. After all, Wikipedia attempts to cite its sources and provide a neutral point of view. Wikipedia doesn't take a stance on what the movement is "really" about, nor does it state whether there is or isn't any corruption. But it does state that certain allegations against Nathan Grayson that are false. You do agree that Nathan Grayson is not guilty of everything he's been accused of, right? Because otherwise, I'll be forced to conclude that you're simply denying the facts of the situation.

Are you really going to tell me that, even though I haven't found a single reliable source agreeing with you, I should ignore them and take your word for it? Are you going to tell me that even Wikipedia is in on the conspiracy?

That sounds exactly like a fire marshal who wasn't sufficiently bribed.

Well, you're probably joking but we are talking about Rhode Island, the most notoriously corrupt state in the Northeast, after maybe Pennsylvania. Some say that on a per capita basis it's the most corrupt state in the country.

I had a colleague whose father was an electrician in Rhode Island. When he saw what the state was paying to maintain the lights on a bridge near his house he figured he could easily do it for less. The contract came up to bid and when he found out the amount he'd have to pay in bribes, he realized he couldn't afford to do it.

I personally like Providence quite a bit. I think Federal Hill is great,Waterfire is a blast, and many times we drove down to take our kids to the zoo or the Children's Museum. But I wouldn't do business in the state. It's not worth the hassle.

The first part rambles and it seems like he isn't going to tell us anything then it winds into commentary that is spot on. I fear Google, but even I can't envision how the public perception will ever swing far enough negative to stop them. Google is a stranger with candy, sure it's free, but it pays to question the motives.
----
"By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment of the "benevolent superpower." "

"This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil." They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem."

"For an American Internet services monopoly to ensure global market dominance, it cannot simply keep doing what it is doing and let politics take care of itself."

Credit: Newsweek: Google Is Not What It Seems, by By Julian Assange
http://www.newsweek.com/assang...
-----

This is a pretty good article describing the differences between the two projects.

At its best, the game is not unlike being in the woods with your best friends.

Considering the slenderman girls. If that is considered to be Minecraft at its best I'd rather not experience it at its worst.

Example:

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/0...

There are no formed Russian military units pouring over the border. There are some Russian soldiers who are on leave and using their personal time to help the separatist movement in Ukraine, but there is absolutely NO ORGANIZED RUSSIAN EFFORT here.

NATO has pictures of Russian artillery units operating in Ukraine. Russian soldiers on leave might bring a uniform, they wouldn't bring artillery and ammunition for it. Your post is total BS.

NATO Satellites Show Russian Troops, Armored Vehicles Inside Ukraine

NATO has pictures of Russian units operating in Ukraine
http://www.newsweek.com/nato-s...

Rebel forces admit the Russians are fighting with them.

The Ukrainian government says Russian forces are in their country fighting them.

Russia and Ukraine have swapped prisoners, including Russian airborne soldiers captured in Ukraine.

Exactly what sort of proof were you looking for that this isn't enough?

The stories linked to were at:

News.com.au
CNN
Newsweek

Those are hardly obscure names in the world of journalism.

The pattern I see is that that you won't go to where the stories are posted and try to manufacture a controversy from it.

and nobody's threatening Ukraine with nukes

You're assuming too much of Putin.

A lot of latest and greatest weapons they use are home made.

yeah, but, whose home are we talking about?

You can say a lot of things about the negative side of modern nations becoming so invested in the global economy, but there's a good side to those countries not wanting to disrupt that economy by getting into wars. It's the fact that those countries start less wars. There's pretty good evidence that Russia has been less aggressive in the Ukraine than they were originally planning because after Crimea the sanctions issued by other countries have already had a significant effect on their economy. (Russia's Growth Was Already Slowing - Then Came Crimea, Russian government admits economy in crisis as Ukraine weighs, Sanctions Will Work, All Right. Just Ask the Oligarchs)

If Russia's economy had been better to begin with they probably wouldn't have started this whole mess, and personally i think that would be a good thing, even if it prompted Russian ultra-nationalists to complain about the government selling out to corporate interests.

a "continuing criminal enterprise" charge that's better known as the "kingpin" statute used to prosecute criminal gang and cartel leaders.

Given the billion's of $US that various banks have been fined recently, for things like evading US taxes and money laundering for Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, isn't it about time that the legal system give the same treatment to bankers committing these crimes?

Why do they get to pay fines that don't have any real effect? Just look how their stock always go up after they announce a deal. If any individual ever gets fired it's always the low level person who takes the hit, and they all end up going to work for someone else and never face any real problems.

Oh, I just remembered: bribes/campaign contributions along with the revolving door and juicy high paying jobs for former regulators. To bad drug dealers can't have a revolving door with law enforcement.

After all, everyone knows that free pizza makes everything better after an event like this.

In Russia it seems like government and orthodox church leaders have teamed up to become an unbeatable force http://www.newsweek.com/putins...

College is about learning theory and how to apply it, it isn't a vocational program.

When you have a $100k bill to pay off that you can't escape through bankruptcy, you'd better have some way to pay it off. When you have a trillion dollar debt problem based upon this (see previous slashdot headlines) you have what they call a "real problem."

What you say is a nice sentiment. It's a sentiment that was only valid 40 years ago, when a summer job every year could pay for tuition at Northeastern.

It is also preposterous to not teach the concepts of security for devices connected to hostile environments (i.e., every network ever), and networking is not a "fad." The only people that thought that the Internet and networking in general for "the great unwashed" were fads were "futurists" like Cliff Stoll who were wildly wrong in 1995.

http://www.newsweek.com/cliffo...

Read that. A 30 year trend is not a fad.

--
BMO

Just for reference, here's the original Newsweek article.

What, seriously? I said: Newsweek. It's the very first link in the summary, you can't find that? Fine, for your lazy ass: link.

Hate to burst your bubble, but that link has no evidence whatsoever, only a lot of conjecture and speculation. As of now, there is still no evidence that this man and the bitcoin inventor are the same person.

What, seriously? I said: Newsweek. It's the very first link in the summary, you can't find that?

Fine, for your lazy ass: link.

The theory would be that the number of taxis would be basically the same as present cars during peak traffic (give or take), since they are replacing private vehicles, and they will be distributed appropriately.

I'm not convinced of the "world of taxis" theory. I'm not even sure it will lead to reduced private car ownership. You can in principle have a private car for young children at an age where today we wouldn't trust them with a driver's license but we would trust them to bike to the store. It can drive itself to a parking lot you don't need parking on your property for all your vehicles, just your main "I decided to go out right now" vehicle (similarly, you don't need a parking lot at every last box store).

But you have to make reasonable assumptions. Asserting a 45 minute wait for a peak period taxi is like saying that cars can't replace horses because you can't switch to a new car at the stables when your old one gets tired of carrying you on a long journey. That's only an argument against the world of taxis if you simply cannot imagine a reasonable scenario that doesn't have a 45 minute wait, and we surely can imagine such a scenario -- 1:1 replacement of all private cars with taxis would be more than enough; you realistically only need a fraction of that. Especially if the world can get behind the idea of staggered work hours.

Or you can look at the line of reasoning that lead to this guy making terrible predictions: http://www.newsweek.com/cliffo... (he has commented with embarrassment about the article).

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is unraveling pretty quickly as a result of the US cooperation with India. Now China is helping Pakistan http://www.newsweek.com/china-commits-65-billion-pakistani-nuclear-project-225076 Regional nuclear was is becoming more likely.

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

others have tried as well: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/01/back-to-school-for-the-billionaires.html

So while we here in Nebraska appreciate the concern, get your ducks in a row and remember who has been stable through the mess the rest of you created. In the meantime, our economy will continue to kick ass despite the best efforts of the coasts.

References:

Blog and newsweek:

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/andie531/nebraska-bucks-recession

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/18/why-the-midwest-fared-best-in-the-recession.html

Happiness:

http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/happiness-index-nebraska-nabs-top-spot

Silicon Valley

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/technology/17iht-valley.4.20255686.html Silicon Valley Foreclosure rate

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/02/10/calif-posts-nations-3rd-highest.html

Except they are--presently, and "not sure" for the future.

The Mobile /Handheld CE development kit will be released in July of this year. The Army is whether or not a commercial made phone or government off the shelf model is more appropriate. Regardless, the Army says, the software development kit will be designed for a variety of Android based systems.

"I saw the ability when a soldier is wounded to take a picture of the wound and to pass that to the doctors, so that medics can make sure that they are treating the soldier in the appropriate way, given the wound that he has received. So there are many, many applications of this,"

McCarthy said that to date, the project has been run on shoestring budget, and he'd like to keep it that way. Defense contractors have provided him with proposals that would requrre the expenditure "of a lot of money," he said, but he does not want to pursue proposals that would transform a $200 commercial gadget into a $2,400 Army-unique phone. from

more...

• example
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I'm not certain if the you you speak of is directed targeted at me or what you perceive to be people like me, but really, I think there's a benefit to people thinking critically and trying to not simply believe the marketing without due consideration and proper knowledge.

The way Hollywood's been remaking Scandinavian and Swedish films you could argue they're just taking back what's theirs :-)

I'm not sure they want to. To pick one at random, Let Me In (the Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In / Låt den rätte komma in) made just $84000 in Sweden. The original made 20× as much.

The remake made twice as much money as the original in the UK. With the attraction of watching the film in English one could be surprised it didn't do better, but everyone I know here didn't bother to see the remake as they knew it would be shit.

The way Hollywood's been remaking Scandinavian and Swedish films you could argue they're just taking back what's theirs :-)

Yep, they are...

http://www.newsweek.com/2003/02/02/a-reverse-midas-touch.html

That article is from 2003 - Vulcan has been more conservative since then, but still not much more successful (for example, Allen spent over $100M on Digeo, and recently sold it for $20M. Not sure if that $100M includes the acquisition of Moxi a while back. And if you throw in the $7B Charter Cable fiasco, he'll probably never make back that bad decision... luckily he made a lot more than that from Microsoft.

Every once in a while they cash in on a company (though when it happens it seems more like the "dartboard approach" to investing), but no way Vulcan (or Allen in his other ventures) has had a net gain in a LONG time...

The searing experience of the 2008–09 recession has also conditioned consumers at large to seek discounts. Americans have always loved bargains, but today they require them. Coupons have morphed from a hobby of retirees to a technologically enabled form of social media. Since its launch in November 2008, Chicago-based Groupon has become a phenomenon. It sends out a daily e-mail blast to people in specific cities, offering a huge discount on teeth-whitening, or pizza, or jeans from a specific vendor—but only if a certain number of your peers commit to buying at the low price. “This is a way of introducing e-commerce to local and small businesses,” says Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon. Mason notes that local businesses had traditionally looked down on coupons and discounting because they didn’t attract the upscale, repeat customers they desired. But Groupon has tapped into the new lowballing tendencies of yuppies. “The demographic we attract is one businesses want to reach: 21 to 35 years old, 70 percent female, making good money,” says Mason. (Groupon splits the revenues from sales with vendors who sign up.)

Whether you’re an executive at Mott’s or a fashionista in Chicago seeking a deal on jeans, lowballing makes economic sense. It’s good for balance sheets, and the fact that people are being more cautious about what they pay for goods and services is a welcome reaction. But systematic lowballing has broad implications. The economist John Maynard Keynes identified the “paradox of thrift”—if everybody saves, everybody gets poorer, since a rise in savings tends to dry up demand. By the same token, there may be a paradox of lowballing. If everybody lowballs and steadfastly refuses to pay existing prices as part of an effort to improve their financial standing, then everybody will suffer.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html

Rank of Cuba in various categories:
Education 20th
Health 29th
Quality of Life 32nd
Economic Dynamism 72nd
Political Environment 92nd

Granted, of course the study is not perfect; it does not for example weight income disparity and many of the measures are relative to middle income. They do have a section in the full feature describing their methods. While your account certainly is horrific; I'm not saying it's paradise, but I am not sure it's quite the hell you paint.

... Pimp My Humvee.

Pimp My Humvee was a 2004'ish *reality* show in Iraq.

"And Rocco's Humvee is, today, equipped--with "Gypsy racks"--steel-plated cages around the gunner--and other add-on, improvised hardware, known as "hillbilly armor." "It's Mel Gibson 'Road Warrior' stuff," says Capt. John Pinter, the battalion's maintenance officer. "We're not shooting for pretty over here." This is the ugly reality that National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson was apparently trying to convey to Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last week ... Wilson asked Rumsfeld: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?""
http://www.newsweek.com/2004/12/19/hillbilly-armor.html

According to this list, 2006 Virginia SAT was 512/513/500 (R/M/W) and ACT was 21.1.

US Average is 503/518/497 and 21.1. So Virginia doesn't look particularly different than the US average, a little worse at math and better at reading and writing.

SAT and ACT test results are of course highly self-selective because not every student takes them. I think more important metrics include actual drop-out rates. Virginia's graduation rate is 74%, which is near the median. Plenty of states with mandatory teacher union bargaining have lower graduation rates.

I will concur that Texas has both low SAT/ACT scores and a low graduation rate (67%)...although Newsweek's best public high school 2010 is Talented and Gifted, Dallas, TX, and #4 is Science/Engineering Magnet, Dallas, TX.

H-B Woodlawn, Arlington, VA is Newsweek's #28 top high school, and George Mason, Falls Church , VA is #45.

Wisconsin has a high graduation rate (85%) - if you are not black (Wisconsin black graduation rate is 40%, compared to 64% in Virginia and 59% in Texas).

The US Government? As of late, that has become a sort of pipe dream. We have revolutions and protests happening to try and secure more democratic ideals and oust the dictatorships and autocracies in Egypt, Iran, and several other prominent Arab/Muslim countries and states, but here in the US we are seizing innocent people's web sites and then pretending it didn't happen, enacting legislation that singles out groups of people by racial profiling them, have senators and governors trying to repeal health care reform, and are trying to find ways to change our laws and/or constitution to prohibit the free press and make it so they can't leak sensitive information anymore without facing jail time and possible treason charges, while we still have a "secret" government prison open at Guantanamo Bay holding prisoners against their will with no charges or due process, one of which died recently after 9 years of captivity, while we hold Bradley Manning in solitary confinement, possibly torturing him because he saw something wrong and decided it was horrible enough that the PEOPLE needed to know about it.

Where the fuck do I live again?