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At least already in the US.

Similarly, it's insane that people in Wyoming have four times the electoral voting power as New Yorkers. "

Should we take away their senator's as well and give them to New York?

Similarly, it's insane that people in Wyoming have four times the electoral voting power as New Yorkers. "But Wyoming is so big on the map!" Sure, but it has the about the population of Staten Island.

There is no justifiable reason why those one or two cities shouldn't have all the power if that's where all the people live.

How is that different for the polling station? They still have to travel and they still have to get the time off... How is that a valid argument?

A variety of reasons:
1) Its much more common for employers to give people a couple of hours off to vote on election day than it is to give them time off a random regular day.
2) Most polling locations are open outside of regular business hours too.
2) Many states have early voting on weekends or even entire weeks before the official election day letting people vote when its convenient for them. Of course the GOP has been working hard to kill that too. Voter repression is hand in glove for them.

Zero people have been killed by antifa so far. Here's how many people were killed by neo-nazis and associated white nationalists since 1995:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Not very law-abiding to murder people, is it?

Do you really think the government should be in the business of saying that Michael Moore's films are documentaries and were therefore OK but Citizens United's were campaign spending and hence were not?

They just did a sort of Socratic method series of queries and actions and ended up winning this Supreme Court case which held that First Amendment protections applied to both.

That seems to me far better than having some Democrat appointee ban CU's film and at the same time pretend Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was a documentary and not a tiresome propaganda piece, as Hitchens pointed out memorably here

Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something-I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now-has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all-the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002-or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the fact

Germany emits almost twice as much CO2 per capita as France. Hard to call that a success.

Germany also has over twice the exports compared to France. That's the problem with statistics, they can mislead.

Besides, Germany's historical emissions are what you need to compare with, otherwise you get a muddled picture anyway.

For the entire 8 years of Obama's administration "Merry Christmas" was in the banned list.

That's strange... Obama has said Merry Christmas in many occasions. I guess that the only thing that's in the "banned list" of Trump supporters is critical thinking.

YES!!!

The 9th circuit said, basically, that they were pretty much the same stature as executive orders

If you read the actual article, instead of just the first sentence which you cited, you'll see that the 9th circuit claimed nothing of the kind. They merely cited a tweet in the context of their ruling that Trump exceeded his statutory authority, and that he had no rationale for his decision:

Indeed, the President recently [tweeted] his assessment that it is the “countries” that are inherently dangerous, rather than the 180 million individual nationals of those countries who are barred from entry under the President’s “travel ban.”

So, the court merely made note of one of his tweets, even though they mocked it. But the court paying attention to them does not elevate them to the status of executive orders. If that were true, then God help us. What are we to make of his re-tweets of phony news stories?

Established that they are official statements? No, but that was claimed earlier this year by Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary at the time.

More than just Spicer. The 9th circuit said, basically, that they were pretty much the same stature as executive orders:

Buried in a footnote in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ unanimous opinion upholding the bulk of the injunction blocking Donald Trump’s travel ban, there is a moment of reckoning in which the panel addresses whether the president’s tweets constitute binding statements of executive intent.

Basically, some have this perception that there is a 'war on Christmas'.

Trump always playing to this kind of bigotry, whether it is 'bad hombres', 'rapists', or 'from now it is Merry Christmas'.

This perception of a war on Christmas is only in the mind of the bigots.

Trump keeps this general narrative that the majority is victimized. Exactly like Hitler kept the narrative that the majority of Germans are victims of the minority Jews. We know how this went ...

By the way, here is Obama saying Merry Christmas.

But bigots will be bigots. Facts will not sway them.

Who the hell modded this up? This is the worst sort of garbage conspiracy theory BS that I expect on RT.

The Middle East is a horribly complicated situation, with constantly shifting alliances, groups and militias popping into and out of existence regularly, and members changing groups whenever the pay changes. FFS, even Slate admits it's complicated.
When the US bombs the Syrian government positions, is it helping ISIS? No. It doesn't matter that ISIS is also fighting the Syrian government; the US bombs ISIS too when it gets the chance - but not because it is helping Assad. When the US arms a group that then changes sides (or re-sells the arms to ISIS) it isn't funding or supplying ISIS. It's just losing out on a gamble.

And Blackwater? Blackwater (now Academi) has employees in the low-to-mid thousands. The Kabul police have 5-10 times as many people, and are much better armed. The Afghan military is almost 200,000 people on top of the 150,000 national police. Even the Taliban massively outnumber Blackwater, with around 30,000 armed members.
There is no way Blackwater could enslave anyone, much less the entire population. As for "steal the Afghani resource", Blackwater has trouble getting paid right now, and you think they've got the power to take control of several thousand mines and farms?

Seriously, slashdot. I expect idiot trolls, but they shouldn't be voted up. This isn't even funny.

For the entire 8 years of Obama's administration "Merry Christmas" was in the banned list.

That's strange... Obama has said Merry Christmas in many occasions. I guess that the only thing that's in the "banned list" of Trump supporters is critical thinking.

Most people now do their computing on mobile devices (laptops, phones, tablets). Outside of gaming and corporate use, desktops are becoming rare. And thus the phrase "Linux on the desktop" doesn't mean what it used to.

If you take it to mean Linux as the OS used most by the general public, that's pretty much already happened, though not in the way most Linux advocates wanted. Android is based on the Linux kernel (and you can add get most of the familiar Unix tools with BusyBox) If some of the open source compilers were ported over so you could compile traditional Linux apps, that would pretty much be it (my phone is more powerful and has more memory and storage than my PC from the 1990s when I began using Linux). But the idea of porting to a platform controlled by Google seems to stick in the craw of open source advocates.

James Rosen came to mind quickly, which also referenced the AP journalists that were also targeted at the time.

So, hacking journalists is evil right? Or is it fine since Obama was the one doing it?

You wanna see what FCC chairman Ajit Pai thinks of you? Here is a video he posted yesterday to tell you why you should not worry about losing Net Neutrality.; He posted it on the right-wing website Daily Caller. (for real, you should watch this 1.5 minute video from Trump's FCC chairman, as he reveals he has no idea what Net Neutrality is, and also that he is a massive fuckwit.)

https://youtu.be/JeKK637IYAg

He's telling you all the things you'll still be able to do on the Internet after he signs over control to Comcast. Oh, and by the way, in the part of the video where he does the "Harlem Shake", one of the girls he's dancing with is a blogger who promoted the "Pizzagate" pedophilia controversy.

https://gizmodo.com/ajit-pai-t...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Ask the washington post, cnn, nbc, or abc news. They've done a bang-up job over the last few years of making fake news all on their own. You might even remember what started it in the current era, it was Dan Rather's "fake but accurate" which offered no proof at all.

Uh no, actually, the current era began with an incident on Dateline. Of course, the fact is, those tanks did result in lots of settled lawsuits so you can be sure it wasn't entirely manufactured.

Then again, concurrent with Dan Rather, we have....real fraud that got hundreds of thousands killed, and you'll never ever bring that up.

But if you want a real conspiracy? Ask yourself why the transmovement is pushing their stuff on pre-teens, and believe that a 3yr old boy or girl "really knows they're a girl or boy." And pushing puberty blockers before they're even old enough to legally engage in sex. Think back if you can, to when you were that young and all the stupid garbage you believed. I can remember wanting to be a train. And you can bet your and my ass, that if your parents were fawning after the transmovement you'd do what they were saying just to make them happy. Why? Because your brain isn't developed enough to understand.

Man, that is a crazy conspiracy Mashiki, and you don't even have a reason to blame the reverse vampires.

Meanwhile, actual reality escapes you.

You know, you wouldn't sound so crazy if you didn't make up such hysterical bullshit, but stuck to facts. Actual provable events.

Not your foaming at the mouth hyperbole.

FYI if you want affordable healthcare, you need it to be at the state level. Not the federal level, even at that I hope you're going to enjoy shortages and healthcare rationing.

Nope, I'm a citizen of the United States, and you may not understand this, but I want healthcare EVERYWHERE in my country, and more to the point, there are some practical considerations that necessitate my ability to cross state lines to get healthcare, as the boundaries of states were not set according to population or economics. A fatal flaw, but what can we do?

Whether it's in Canada, Sweden, France or the UK, we all have rationed healthcare even if it's free.

Everybody everywhere has rationed healthcare. That's because health care resources are not infinite or unlimited.

Letting you buy some healthcare at my expense because you have more money is not a gain.

Oh, and I still have medical insurance here in Canada because that "free healthcare" doesn't cover everything.

That's a choice. Not a necessary element. If you don't like it, write your Prime Minister.

And if you want to see wait times, you can look here. I hope you don't mind waiting 30-50 days for cancer treatment to start, or 150 days for bypass surgery or 11 months to get into a pain management clinic.

And what happe

Somewhat moot now that Moore lost. Although still relevant that the RNC funded a credibly accused child molester.

It was analyzed by "Arthur T. Anthony, a court-certified document examiner in Georgia." They just ignore that because they claim the expert was hired by her attorney.

"Nelson is willing to submit the yearbook for independent examination, but only in the context of a formal proceeding, such as a Senate investigation, in which both Nelson and Moore can be called to testify under oath." No, she wasn't willing to hand the yearbook over to Moore, but do you blame her? "Oops", I lost it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Actually, gas taxes cover the costs of road subsidies and actually subsidize most other forms of transit. It's just that States tend to take the gas taxes and spend them on non-transit related things, then claim poverty about the crumbling roads. With a ~$0.77 per gallon tax, and assuming 12,000 miles average, and 14.5 million registered vehicles in the State of California, fuel taxes alone bring the State about $5.4 billion a year in taxes. Caltrans spends about $10 billion annually with 60% of that going to non-road-infrastructure maintenance. 30% of road taxes are currently going to fund a high speed rail line between Merced and Bakersfield, with no route identified from Bakersfield to LA. There is plenty of gas tax funding to cover roads, it's just that States love to spend that money on other things then plead poverty when it comes to roads.

If you want to put the taxes where they need to be, then tax weight. Weight damages roads, with the damage going as going as the 4th power. The average US vehicle weighs in at 4,000 pounds, and the average Tesla S clocks in around 5,000 pounds. Meaning the Tesla will do approximately 2.4 times more road damage than the average vehicle, but pays essentially zero for its infrastructure costs. The Tesla 3 is also heavier than the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and BMW i3, and in fact is close to the weight of an average vehicle.

With the above calculations, and assuming the $10 billion Caltrans budget was covered by excise taxes, there should be a flat $0.06 per mile charge for all vehicles. If we were smart, we'd scale that tax based upon weight ratio to the average. A BMW i3, weighing in at 2800 pounds, would pay about $0.015 per mile for its excise tax. The Tesla model 3, and the average car - both being around 4000 pounds - would pay the $0.06 per mile. And a Tesla S, being a bit portly at 5000 pounds, would pay around $0.15 per mile. That would cover costs of infrastructure as well as scale it to where it belongs - weight, primarily, then mileage.

"But the point stands most of the "examples" of right wing hate have been hoaxes perpetrated by the "victims"

I have yet to see much in the way of proof. However that laudable purveyor of truth who calls himself James O'Keefe is up to his old tricks

"Right-Wing Group Caught Red-Handed Trying to Feed Washington Post a Fake Roy Moore Story"
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

You don't somehow think that all of the missiles that North Korea has been firing were somehow summoned by magic since the start of the Trump administration, do you? They were obviously being worked on during the Obama administration. What we are seeing is the flowering of Obama's work. (Or do you blame Her?)

For what? North Korea wasting their limited resources on a tool that's only useful when you want to provoke an ill-tempered boob who will go off on freak out over them, then erroneously claim to send an aircraft carrier to deal with it?

So what you're saying is that at best, he's par for the course. "Par" is not what we were told to expect.

Trump hasn't even been in office for a year yet and he already has far more rigorous sanctions in place than Obama achieved, has China cooperating, and missile defense is getting a big boost in funding.

Except it turns out those sanctions are a failed policy that only harms the innocent North Korean people, China is, as usual, lying, and putting money into missile defense has been a favorite way to waste tax dollars since the Reagan years.

He seems to be making progress that Obama couldn't.

So far, your examples are only repeated examples of waste, fraud, and failure.

That's not a common definition of progress. Admittedly, to somebody trying to sabotage America, it would seem different.

Lets see what happens between now and the end of the eighth year of the Trump administration.

Let's see what happens between now and the end of the next year.

I'd say this year, but eh, you won't have any results.

That's always been a problem IMHO with any vendor pre-installed bullshit of any kind. Most of this turn-key OEM-installed bullshit isn't for the most of the crowd here, it's for the people who want that computer to 'just work' out of the box, and pre-installed with not-even-free versions of software packages anymore. This is such a non-story to me personally because over the last 20 year I've been into the tech/IT/computing realm of things, there's just way too many instances of this to cite of this going on at the big player level. It's here, and here for the 30 seconds of googling it too to refresh my memory.

I saw a lot of banter about installing Linux on this or that or 'Linux solves this issue' --- no it doesn't. I've ran Linux + X-windows + gnome/evolution/xfce window manager mixes since late 1990's on all my laptops and desktops to now in 2017; that's a preference. And the way Linux installs have become super mega friendly, tell me if you're in any worse a boat knowing every waking package you got installed on there? A great example is goa-daemon in Gnome Window Manager builds the last two years on most distros --- fuck that package. May not be spyware, but with all it's seemingly conspiracy-driven build-deps around it, I mind as well be trying to remove spyware.

My long winded point is: Please have that nephew, niece or some half savvy ass person in your life just put in a fresh install of Windows on that pre-bundled piece of OEM shit HP/Dell/Lenovo and anyone else in that space calling an 'Windows OS deployment'. I don't trust that shit and no one else should.

The US Mint does the same thing and part of the reason that the United States has had commemorative quarters since the 1990's is the seigniorage. In fact that seigniorage is one of the avenues of revenue, although not as much as taxes are.

> Or maybe a simple test. You know, some basic facts and civic
> knowledge that any knowledgeable voter should demonstrate.

Been tried already. The SJWs won't like it http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Even "scone" differs. The scones we have here are typically triangular-shaped items of dense and very sweet bread, and are really quite recent; I don't remember them at all prior to 15 years ago, but now they're common in coffee shops. My understanding is that English scones are very different from this, according to Wikipedia at least, and are really a lot like our biscuits.

Here's an article that discusses the differences between British and American scones.

as if their opinions are somehow more valid, important, or enlightened than the rest of us.

"The rest of us" being the minority of the population who votes right wing? Look at the right wing right now. Yes, they are more enlightened than you are.

From the 2nd Amendment: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" (the comma doesn't change anything, and wasn't really meant to be left in the final document, anyway; go read about the history of its passage and ratification).

Read about it yourself. Read about all of the argumentation and disagreement, and then realize that People were very upset at the poor expression that was chosen for many of the amendments, including in particular, the second (or rather, the fourth or fifth article of Madison's proposal). No, not the comma, the expression itself was worse than the available options. This is true today. There are far better options, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg was right.

Furthermore, your own example from the Virginian constitution doubles down on this idea. It says that a well-equipped group of fighters, composed of the body of the people (that is, every individual), such that those people are familiar with arms and how to use them, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State.

Exactly the problem. Note I am saying that the Virginia Constitution is flawed compared to the contemporary choices. Even the people of Virginia recognized that, if almost 200 years later.

I mean, it explicitly says "composed of the body of the people" and scoffs at standing armies in time of peace. Your idea of a governmental agency called a "militia" composed of official militiamen would be a.... wait for it.... STANDING ARMY.

Come on, man. COME ON! It's right there.

That's not my idea at all. My problem, which I will restate, since you apparently you didn't realize even though it should have been evident in my post, is that the phrasing as found in the US Constitution is flawed, mistaken, and subject to the misinterpretation hereby being argued.

I, instead of pointlessly insisting otherwise, solve the problem by insisting on an improved phrasing reflecting on the issues that has demonstrably become a needless matter of argumentation.

LynnwoodRooster, sjames, and Bostonpilot, and perhaps even yourself, in this thread have demonstrated a stubborn unwillingness to do so, even though it would solve the problem rather effectively if they were willing to commit to statements of principle, instead uselessly relying on a false argument that they aren't able to support.

I suggest you abandon this failed methodology and instead advocate that you pursue a more reputable course.

That really is what the whole crowd suffers from though, an unwillingness to change their tune, even if it would work better.

I think it's driven by fear. Which kills their thinking abilities.

Oh, please cite of stfu

Here is a well researched article describing the lack of any Federal support for freedom of speech on private property through SCOTUS rulings over the past 70 years. Only one case found for free speech, because the California constitution allowed for it and it was seen to supersede the US Constitution. Laws like that only apply in 6 states.

You really should learn how to back up your spew

No, no, and no. This kind of thinking is why video games are highly censored in Germany and Australia, and why England now has a mandatory porn filter, among many, many other solutions to problems that don't actually exist. All it does is make life harder for those who know better.

To be honest, this smells of old media attacking new media after new media took a big bite out of old media's advertising revenue. The author happens to be a writer and at least part-time journalist. Worst of all, we've already seen this fictional horror film before:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

TL;DR in paragraph 4:

How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America’s newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted. In an editorial titled “Terror by Radio,” the New York Times reproached “radio officials” for approving the interweaving of “blood-curdling fiction” with news flashes “offered in exactly the manner that real news would have been given.” Warned Editor and Publisher, the newspaper industry’s trade journal, “The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove ... that it is competent to perform the news job.”

Could this be a real threat to kids? Maybe, but I'd much rather hear this from somebody skilled in separating the damn lies from the statistics and somebody else skilled in pediatric psychology, rather than some C list writer trying to win a Pulitzer, before drawing any conclusions.

The document contained detailed criticism of Google's diversity initiatives and their effects on employees, and it said that the company's biases led to alienation among employees holding conservative views.

Google's diversity efforts also alienate many minorities and women, because the message that Google is sending loud and clear to minorities and women is: "You are incapable of standing up for yourself, and unless we train the wealthy straight white males to walk on eggshells around you, you can't succeed here on your own." Of course, the same wealthy straight white males have no trouble heaping vitriol on anybody who doesn't toe their political line.

No wonder that Google has some of the worst turnover rates of any US corporation (average stay: 1 year) and that diversity at Google isn't improving. I found the atmosphere stifling and left within less than a year. My new company deals much more maturely with diversity issues than Google, and the job is actually more fun too. I will never work for an Alphabet company again.

The bigger question that should have been clarified long before now is "The president's tweets have zero legal or military weight, right? This should be a silly question but seriously can we get a fucking answer ASAP?"

Obviously, Trump should not issue anything resembling military commands via twitter nor should the military follow anything that looks like a command via twitter.

The first part of that should go without saying, but given that the electoral college elites have successfully put the most incompetent person in the country on the throne, only an idiot would assume it CAN'T happen. It's in the same category as "the president should not fire the guy investigating him for corruption." The framers of the constitution failed to put that in because they wouldn't have been able to fathom a president doing such things.

The second part is something that needs to be clarified. There's currently nothing saying tweets can't be orders. The military shouldn't have to figure out whether something is or is not an order.

It's conceivable with this administration that top military officials would be accused of committing a coup because they didn't act on a tweet.

That is obviously unacceptable already. Yet here we are.

Maybe the possibility that a twitter employee could issue commands to the united states military is enough fucking absurdity to get the GOP cult to act on it? I know they've utterly ruled out the possibility that a foreign adversary like Russia or North Korea could possibly compromise national security by taking advantage of our stupidity via social media. There are a lot of liberals working at twitter, maybe that will get them to think "Hey, this is worth clarifying maybe?"

"I don't buy that for a second."

"Every employed person is likely to be working between 9 and 5, Monday through Friday. Is it inconvenient to give up a lunch break, or lose a bit of time on the clock?"

Yeah, people living paycheck to paycheck are going to be hurt more by giving up some time on the clock. And they likely work for employers who won't give them the time off.

"Sure. It's inconvenient for anyone, yet somehow everyone has always managed to deal with it. "

The people who didn't manage to deal with it didn't vote.

"Rich folks would breeze through because they have drivers licenses?? Poor people don't? People of color don't?"

Yes.

The most common voter ID is a driverâ(TM)s license, and minorities are less likely to drive. A 2007 study found that in California, New Mexico, and Washington, whites were more likely to have driverâ(TM)s licenses than nonwhites. In Orange County, Calif., about 92 percent of white voters had driverâ(TM)s licenses, compared with only 84 percent of Latino voters and 81 percent of âoeotherâ voters. A 2005 study of Wisconsin similarly found that while about 80 percent of white residents had licenses, only about half of African-American and Hispanic residents had licenses.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

"Think about it, if getting to a government office is a problem for getting an ID, then it's a problem to get to any office for any reason. Yet people manage every day no matter what they do or how much they make."

That's a pretty ridiculous argument. If 98% of rich people manage it, and 90% of poor people manage it... you've created a bias. Nobody said 'all poor people can't get registered', only that it's a bigger obstacle that disproportionately affects them.

Claiming the EU is taking Catalonia's economic output

Spain way more than the EU.

The only people arrested were those who fought with police

Man I hate when people LIE about actual events in a way so easily disproven.

I mean, there is video everywhere on this showing that you are lying through your teeth - the Catalonian voters were doing the non-violent protest thing where they were simply staying in place to keep polls open, and being beaten for the trouble.

All you just did was show how you like covering for tyrants. What is the point of destroying your rep like that to protect some entrenched interests in the Spanish government? Crazy.

... because some smart legislators introduced the ACDC Act, again.

But both of them are now process driven companies, primarily focused on not overturning the boat, and the result is code that follows process.

I see evidence of this in a lot of different places. For Microsoft, there is this, and from what I've heard from people who worked there, it's basically like that all over Microsoft. Similarly, you can see the results in their products (that link shows an example of their processes entering the product in an obvious way). Similarly, at Google, I've talked to people who work there, and it seems about the same. Again you can see it in the output of their product (they must have some good people on the search team, though).

Honestly though, looking at the turnover these two company (check out their turnover rate) you have to focus on process, because you need them to be able to replace engineers when they leave.

As long as process is followed, you don't have to worry about whether you did a good job or not. Just go home at the end of the day

This isn't an assertion about Microsoft or Google, it's a description of how process driven companies are in general. This has been my experience both observing and being a part of them.

That is the mentality of the vast majority of mediocre programmers at both companies

This is what I get from talking to people who've worked there. Note that not everyone is a mediocre programmer.

The problem the US has is not too few rules. It has a vast number of rules, and each new rule has been subtly altered by interested parties lobbying. And those interested parties are very, very good at gaming the rules that exist and at the same time lobby for subtle changes in any new rules which suit their interests and screw their opponents.

A couple of examples would be the ban on Kinder Surprise eggs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act prohibits confectionery products which contain a "non-nutritive object", unless the non-nutritive object has functional value.[19] Essentially, the Act bans "the sale of any candy that has embedded in it a toy or trinket".[20]

In 1997, the staff of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) examined and issued a recall for some Kinder Surprise illegally brought into the US with foreign labels.[21] The staff determined that the toys within the eggs had small parts. The staff presumed that Kinder Surprise, being a chocolate product, was intended for children of all ages, including those under three years of age. On this basis, the staff took the position that Kinder Surprise was in violation of the small parts regulation and should be banned from importation into the US.[21]

Kinder Surprise eggs are legal in Canada and Mexico, but are illegal to import into the US. In January 2011, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) threatened a Manitoba resident with a $300 (Canadian dollars) fine for carrying one egg across the US border into Minnesota.[22] In June 2012, CBP held two Seattle men for two and a half hours after discovering six Kinder Surprise eggs in their car upon returning to the US from a trip to Vancouver. According to one of the men detained, a border guard quoted the potential fine as US $2,500 per egg.[23]

In 2012, the FDA re-issued their import alert stating "The embedded non-nutritive objects in these confectionery products may pose a public health risk as the consumer may unknowingly choke on the object".[24]

Kinder Surprise bears warnings advising the consumer that the toy is "not suitable for children under three years, due to the presence of small parts", and that "adult supervision is recommended".[25]

Some US cosmetics manufacturer got a ban in for some long forgotten product which now means Kinder Surprise eggs are seized by customs and illicit egg importers fined.

Or look at this

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

The agency's failure to effectively regulate cigarettes, a mature technology that has been extensively studied since the 1950s, raised doubts about its competence to take on the far more complex questions surrounding e-cigarettes. When the FDA detailed its plans to aggressively regulate e-cigarettes last year by using the same exact regulatory regime it had used for cigarettes, that concern seemed warranted. Per that plan, any vapor products introduced after 2007--essentially all of them--would have to retroactively apply for pre-market approval. Those that failed to receive it could be ordered off the market, potentially sending millions of users back to far more dangerous combustible cigarettes. It looked as if Philip Morris' gamble would pay off more than anyone could have anticipated.

Since the market for e-cigarettes barely existed in 2007, there was no baseline established for the product, meaning e-cig producers couldn't just apply under the substantial equivalence standard that is available to cigarettes. Instead they had to meet a much vaguer standard, convincing FDA regulators that approving their products is "appropriate for the protection of the public health." It's uncertain exactly what that will entail with the FDA's new direction, but we do know

I can believe two things.

Part is good ole boys club in management and trying to make year end numbers look good. The other part is likely high salary employees who could be replaced 2 for 1 for the same amount of money.

In my experience nearly all management and executives fail upwards. Its rare to find ones who truly understand or have hands on experience doing the work being done by those beneath them as you climb the management ladder.

I've been on both sides of that situation. I've quit jobs over having to fire people, or move them to other cost units to make numbers look better for some idiot director, VP, or C-level exec up the chain because of some performance goal in their performance review for their yearly bonus.

I've also been on the receiving end of being paid more than my Director or VP while delivering results that paid for all our salaries and another 50 employees while making those members of the good ole boys club look bad across the board. Once we automate ourselves out of a job, its easy to let people go rather than apply their skills to other functions and groups in the business because then that management group will look bad and lose their jobs. Those good ole boys clubs form, the top of the ladder that fails upwards to bonuses looks out for each other tooth and nail.

Good companies who invest in their employee's and promote a proper work life balance and value the human behind the role and growing those employees and diversifying their skills are few and far between.

This current tech bubble has killed off most jobs and destroyed most companies and jobs that people used to hold for entire careers. People who go to companies that follow the cultures of Amazon or Google or Tesla are just idiots in my opinion.

Look at this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bus...

Note the companies with the highest turnover compared to the ones with the lowest. Sure that's from 2013. Those number have not changed much and are indicative of the changing job market and lack of loyalty between employers and their employees in both directions. If you dig deeper. Its the people up the management chain that keep their jobs longer because they get to decide who gets fired.

Trump voters might have had a point.

You just lost all credibility.

seeing TEH ROOSHINS under your bed

That Russia worked to influence the 2016 election is not in doubt any more.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

The receipts have been found and displayed for all to see. Don't be so invested in Orange Julius that you refuse to see what's in front of your face.

While they couldn't use propaganda as overtly racist, crack was preferred by poor black people, while powder cocaine was preferred by rich white people. So thinly veiled racist propaganda led to requiring 100x as much powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory prison terms as crack.

This contradicts the historical record. The Black Leaders of the time were the ones calling for the stiff penalties due to out of control crime. For example gangs were massively prevalent in the 80s - urban homicide rates corroborate this.

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I look forward to this race being run in Finland in October next year with the same winning criteria.

Uh-oh. I'm sensing a really stupid statement coming up..

The success for real life usage will be when this works in a place with inclement weather and short days - like where most of the world's population lives for most of the year.

And...there it is!

Most of the world's population does not live "in a place with inclement weather and short days". Most of the world's population lives within 30 degrees of the equator. Finland is the anomaly, not Australia.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

The lipid hypothesis is dead. The notion that fat clogs up the arteries like a drain clogged with lard, is dead.

When I was in grade school in the 1970s, our parents came to our class one by one over about a month so we could get a sense of what types of careers there were. My friend's father was a bioresearcher. He brought in samples of rabbit aortas. They'd been experimenting by feeding rabbits diets with different amounts of fat in their food. (Yes, herbivores can eat and process meat.) After a few years (however long rabbits live), they dissected the rabbits, and sliced and unrolled the aorta to measure how much arterial plaque had built up on the walls.

The display board he brought in had 4 or 5 aorta sections, arranged from no-fat diet to increasing fat diet. There was a visually obvious correlation between amount of fat in the diet and amount of plaque built up on the artery walls.

I'm sure the mechanism is much more complicated than simply "consumed fat turns into plaque on artery walls." There's probably a threshold below which consumed fat doesn't clog your arteries. And I'm sure other types of food could be converted by your body into lipids which turn into plaques. But there most assuredly is a positive causal correlation between fat consumption and arteriosclerosis.

All three of those prizes do recognize. You can maybe argue that literature has been overly focused on European literature and even more so on Swedish literature to the exclusion of others, and with a very specific idea of what counts as "literature" (See some discussion here http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2008/10/nobel_gas.html). But the works being recognized are still major literary achievements.

However, the Peace prize has for all its issues, recognized some real accomplishments. Last year, the prize went to Juan Manuel Santos for his work trying to end the ongoing violence in Columbia, and although the initial peace deal was rejected by the voters, the follow-up seems to be really holding and FARC seems to have been mostly disarmed. Real progress can occur.

The Economics prize has also gone for serious and substantial work. (Note that the Econ prize is actually from a separate grant and awarded by a separate body (hence being referred to at the Nobel Memorial Prize officially rather than the Nobel Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences) .) Examples of substantial work include the 2005 prize to Schelling and Aumann recognized major work that is relevant not just to understanding economics, but many related fields including general negotiation theory and some aspects of what is sometimes called political economy. For example, the idea of a Schelling point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) has found its way into standard negotiating texts, and it is useful for simply making people more likely to come to agreements. Similarly, Aumann's agreement theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann's_agreement_theorem is important not just in economics (for understanding how markets behave) but has also become relevant in philosophy as well as AI research. This is not the only example in econ, just one of the more blatant.

That you personally really like certain specific STEM fields says more about you than it does about the prizes.

You already have one, remember? Rachael Maddow disclosed it and guess what - no problem. She was one again being the stupid idiot that she is.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bro...

He's been under IRS audit for 20 years. Give it a rest, you're not going to find anything. Just like with Russia - NOTHING! Well Nothing on Trumps behalf. We've found plenty of collusion with Obama and Hillary and Russia. Even the fact Obummer hid the hacking from everyone even though he knew it was going on and even made fun of Trump for saying it could be hacked. We also found out that Hillary was given about 500K from the Russians and she gave them a bunch of Uranium. Just google Hillary Russia Uranium. It'll pull up the NY Times story on that.

Except that Hillary's 08 campaign created the claim.

Except they didn't, but even if they did, Hillary did not make Trump spend half a dozen years shouting about it.

Sorry, but no matter how much Trump tries to deflect responsibility, we know what he did, why he did it, and how he did so.

http://www.slate.com/articles/... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Every source I find on the matter indicates that there existed some white slavery, but not in the US, and that "white slavery" in the US existed, as an illegal sex trafficking, and the theory is the idiot racists confused the two to believe that there were white slaves.

There were not white slaves in the US, so "white slavery" as a response to BLM makes no sense.

Rule 34! Rule 34!

Okay, Ted Cruz is now on board.

Dietary changes.

Sure, and hot weather is caused by an increase in temperatures.

OF COURSE diets changed. But why did they change? A small bump of 5% or 10% might be explained away as "advertising for junk food" or "more video games". But we saw a 200% increase, a TRIPLING of obesity. That is a profound and extreme change in food consumption and metabolism. Why? If it was really something simplistic like "video games", then there would be huge amounts of data to confirm that. So far no one has even been able to show a correlation between video game use and obesity, and certainly not any causation.

Here is a summary article about video games and obesity, including both observation studies and controlled experiments. They found NO evidence to support the hypothesis that video games, or watching TV, cause obesity.

I- want global coorperation for our global problems, and I want as much freedom as possible without destroying the world in exploding anarchy.

The explosion I see coming is a mix of cultural and economic - and those in power (both parties) use the one against the other. Freedom to me means being able to do what you want without forcing your view on others. For example if the Catholic church doesn't want to marry gays or accept gay marriage that's fine. If gay people want to get married they will need to find someone willing to do the ceremony and bake their cake. When people start forcing their will on others - ie you must bake my cake or else - that's when freedom gets reduced. Live and let live but don't force others. Forcing bakers to declare messages that they don't believe in is at least as bad as not allowing gays to marry and probably worse. Live and let live won't work unless both sides respect it. UT is the leader in this common sense approach as described here: https://www.deseretnews.com/ar...

but those who insist on controlling others won't allow it as described here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/out...

only the approach of not forcing others allows for avoiding conflict. I try and live peacefully but if every wish of the SJW crowd was enacted in law eventually I would be forced to take up arms. I'm not alone. Sadly I think the SJW crowd would gladly kill me and another 100M+ off to achieve their "paradise". It's nothing the left hasn't done before after all.

Even if Houston had sane zoning laws, there literally is no precedent for 53 inches of rain in 2 days, which is the average amount of rain that Houston gets in 365 days.

Except you know, actual literal precedents.

And Flooding in general is not unprecedented, so...maybe you should think about what you claim is unprecedented.

The local and extended area response was still a hell of a lot better than what happened in New Orleans after Katrina (where there were mass rapes, lots of people firing on rescue boats and helicopters, and it took a large military presence to get things back under control).

You should also be more careful about examining the stories you've heard, the mass rapes was a myth(driven by the idea that is the sort of thing would happen in New Orleans), the firing reports also happened in Harvey(and are as likely exaggerated as the first), and that military presence was needed to bring in supplies, which took somebody with the guts to think about the people to do(mostly because FEMA under Brown was dithering).

While I'm all for shitting on Houston's lack of zoning for many different reasons, this did not contribute anything to the problem with Harvey. Harvey killed 70 people (so far), while Katrina killed closed to 2,000.

I'd be careful about that too, the deaths attributed to Katrina include people who had heart attacks due to the stress, suicides and quite a few drug overdoses.

Probably not got complete results for the Harvey deaths either, at that.

It could have been so much worse.

It could have been less worse. They got lucky. In another year, Trump probably would have ruined FEMA. Even a few weeks later, if it had hit, when Trump was planning his shutdown, would have increased the disaster.

You love fake news so much?

http://www.slate.com/articles/...