I expect a health care reform repeal act to pass at some point in 2017.
I'd be shocked if Obamacare wasn't repealed in the first 100 days of Trump's tenure in office.
The Republicans HATE Obamacare. If there's one thing we've learned from the many previous Republican votes to repeal Obamacare, each and every one of them useless because they've never had enough votes to override a presidential veto, Republicans are going to jump at any chance to repeal Obamacare for real. As time passes, we may find that Trump and the Republican party don't always stand together on every issue, but Obamacare is one thing we can be virtually certain they'll agree upon.
The President has admitted sexually assaulting women, and is being sued for the Trump University scam, used cheap immigrant labour to build his empire and wants to put his political rival in jail.
It will be especially interesting to see how this goes now, especially Trump University and the ultimate treatment of Hillary.
I tend to think the Trump University affair will just quietly disappear at this point. And as to Hillary's freedom -- Trump said he'd lock her up, and one has to imagine that many in his base will continue to push for Hillary's imprisonment. Will president Trump fulfill that campaign pledge, or will he backslide and let Hillary go? He was magnanimous during his victory speech, so that's hopeful, but will that attitude last in the weeks and months to come? Given that Republicans control the House, the Senate and -- soon -- the Supreme Court, does Trump even need to care what anyone who's not a Republican thinks?
I have little doubt that Republicans will conclude *anything* which goes wrong, for the next four years, is ultimately the fault of Democrats. Or Hillary. Or liberals. Or undocumented workers. Or minorities. Or ISIS. Or anyone other than themselves...
Who the hell does these kind of jobs in the US today? Those things have been automated or outsourced for the last 8-10 years. Who the hell banks on having a career on any of these fields? Monitoring? Helpdesk support? Patch management?
I too can't imagine that many people 'bank' on having a permanent career in any of those positions. Still, some people in the US are working in those kinds of positions. And like most folks, they're not thrilled with an impending layoff. Can you blame them? It's especially galling when the companies they're working for are likely outsourcing these jobs to a IT services company, who then turn around and hire an H1B visa worker at a fraction of the wage the US worker was previously paid. From the company's' point of view, it looks like a great deal, but it's obviously not a good deal for the US workers involved, and it's debatable if it's a good deal for the US economy at large.
That was fine 15 years ago. And with the rise of DevOps and sophisticated virtualization/cloud infrastructure and automation, you truly do not need people in the US to do all the other things mentioned in the article.
DevOps is most certainly the way of the future, but it can be a tough sell in many organizations, especially those whose bread-and-butter business isn't like Netflix, Google, et. al. I tend to think offshoring DevOps itself is going to be difficult to do, but fear not my friend -- I'm sure within five years, the folks at Google and Netflix will be looking to do it too.
I'm not trying to be mean. People are going to be affected by this... but this aren't surprising news. It has been done for the last 8-10 years, and the transition has been mostly complete.
Keep your pulse on shit so that you do not get blindsided by paradigm shifts.
I hate to break it to you, but no amount of technological upkeep is going to save you or your job from the forces at work here. As long as it's cheaper to hire a guy from overseas than to keep you in your job, jobs will continue to flow from the US. That's the economics of the situation, and it's a powerful driving force that trumps any skillset. While you may spend many hours per week brushing-up on your skill set, the management lassie three levels above you doesn't know and doesn't care. If she can benefit from outsourcing or offshoring your job, she'll do it in a heartbeat, and she likely won't hear any arguments about how your skillset is essential, or what a benefit your work is to the company. You are simply a cog in the machine, and that's the way upper management will treat you.
Until we're all willing to face facts here, and recognize that the invisible hand of the free market is not going to fix all of our problems, anyone involved in US-based IT work is going to get shafted. It's just a question of time. Sad as it is, the only viable long-term solutions will be public relations and political action, and the sooner we start exploring those approaches, the fewer problems we'll have going forward.
Where to start? Perhaps you could start by reading the articles you've linked, or maybe even going to the actual sources of those stories? Allow me to help:
2) Patriot Majority USA (voter fraud ring) -- As other posters in this thread have noted, the investigation is for alleged voter registration issues, not voting fraud. However, a total of 10 suspicious registration forms, out of the 40,000 the group claims to have submitted, certainly isn't going to move the election one iota in either direction, and this incident seems a far cry from the kind of fraud you appear to be alleging.
4) Peter Kadzik supposedly in charge of reopened investigation -- Again, as CNN reported in the article linked above, Peter Kadzik is not involved in any known Justice Department investigations regarding the Clinton family. Obviously, if Mr. Kadzik isn't involved the investigations, there is no conflict of interest, making his relationship with John Podesta, or his son's relationship with Podesta for that matter, wholly immaterial. Even Republican Senator Trey Gowdy, who chaired the House Select Committee on Benghazi, admits Mr. Kadzik isn't a decision-maker at the Department of Justice.
5) Hopewell Baptist Church fire -- Unfortunately, your YOUCARING link appears dead, but several sources confirm that the Hopewell church was likely set on fire Tuesday night, with the message 'Vote Trump' spray-painted around the same time. As the article points out, there's likely no way to know for sure if Trump supporters started the fire, but it's certainly troubling. However, I have no doubt that the community of Greenville will pull together and rebuild the damage, and I imagine some of that help will likely come from Republicans, including those supporting Trump in the election.
Have you actually watched that video you're linking? I mean, really -- have you watched the video? I just did, and what I'm seeing is a guy, Steve Pieczenik, claiming he's behind and staging a real-life, no joke, we're-very-big-and-really-serious, all-backed-by-the military-and-everything, political coup of the American government.
Really? You're supporting this? Do you realize that this is what Mr. Pieczenik is saying?
If so, I just have to ask you; are you truly siding with, and apparently actively promoting, a guy who claims to be working with the CIA, the FBI, the Director of Intelligence and military intelligence (plus 15 other unnamed governmental agencies) to overthrow the rule of law and to stage an actual coup in the United States? Again -- watch the video. He really is talking about his own personal role in staging a coup. He claims that the Clintons have already staged a 'silent' coup, and he's staging a counter-coup, on the Internet, via Wikileaks and what I assume are the Podesta emails, to counter the Clinton's corruption and co-optation, because in his opinion, the Clintons don't deserve power. I'll give him credit for one thing -- at least he says the "second American Revolution" as he calls it is intended to be non-violent and bloodless, but rest assured that he also states that he'll convict the president, Loretta Lynch and many others who, he claims, are involved in the massive corruption of the Clinton Foundation.
Putting aside the plain fact here that Steve Pieczenik is most likely -- and I can't say this strongly enough -- completely Looney Tunes crazy, it sounds to me like rhetoric on the not-Hillary side has expanded to encompass the notion that if it's American government 'patriots' hacking the Clinton campaign, and not Russian spies, that's fine? And you're OK with that, yes? Personally, I'd rather have the Russians, because I'd hate to think that anyone in the *American* government would commit illegal activities to throw an election towards one candidate or party. But your thinking seems to be that an internal government coups d'état via illegal hack is A-OK, because that free and fair election thing just might not work out, and the 'right' candidate, a.k.a. the candidate from your party, might not get in... yes?
I don't know -- sounds to me like Steve, and you too I suppose given your willingness to link the story and your stated hope that the mainstream media picks it up, are going to save the democracy even if you have to destroy it in the process, by making sure that a 'free and fair' election isn't anywhere as free or as fair as it should be.
I appreciate that you included a link to the audio recording, so people can judge the comment for themselves. However, you might want to include the whole quote, because it better illustrates what the speaker actually meant when he said, "White people are the problem." The actual statement from guest Bill McKibben came on the heal of a discussion about the lack of climate change questions during the presidential debates, and in the election overall, and McKibben's estimation of Republican positions on climate change (pardon any errors in my transcription):
Greg Dalton (moderator): "Bill McKibben, there's a sense that, that even some of the policies that are addressing climate change aren't working for everyone, that they're, they're not including communities of color, even though African-American and Latino voters are more likely to support climate action, but talk about inclusion in the idea that this is.. climate is a, ah, kind of a, a... climate is a white coastal concern..."
Bill McKibben: "Ah, yeah, I think, again I think that's wrong. You know, ah, truthfully, ah, I mean, think about our politics. White people are the problem (laughter)... for the most part. If we had, if we had the presidential election today, just among white people, Donald Trump would win, and and pretty easily. What does that tell you?"
The real question is whether you think a restaurant should have the right to discriminate against gays, black people, jews, swedes, poor people, poorly dressed people, etc. I think they should. It's not because I think discrimination is ok.
I see two problems here. First, you seem to be contradicting yourself. Either you believe it's OK to discriminate or you don't. If you think a restaurant should have the right to discriminate based on sexual orientation, race, religion or attire, than you believe discrimination is OK. You may not practice such discrimination yourself, but your statement makes it clear that you don't have a problem when other people do practice such discrimination.
The second issue I note is a little more subtle, but I think it too deserves attention. Specifically, discrimination based on something like attire, which is relatively easy for anyone to alter to meet a businesses' requirement, is inherently different from discrimination based on an inflexible aspect like ethnicity. In other words, I can change my shirt and tie without too much trouble, but I can't ever change the racial makeup of my parents, grandparents, etc. Conflating these two types of discrimination is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest. It leaves people with the false impression that restrictions on 'discrimination' are simply trying to limit or curtail the ability of businesses to make *any* choices regarding their clientele, customers, policies, etc. That's not what's going on here. The question at hand is, "In Arizona, will a restaurant be able to post a sign that reads, 'We refuse to serve gays.'"
Throwing invalid and in many cases demonstrably false claims at students who don't have the background to see the invalidity is ludicrous.
But the real world throws-out false and misleading claims all the time. If we don't teach students how to think critically, how to weigh evidence-backed claims against claims based solely on authority, culture, religion, etc., than how are students ever supposed to gain the skills required to make reasoned choices when encountering conflicting 'facts' for the first time?
I mean, why single science out? Why not teach Holocaust denial in history class? After all, wouldn't that challenge students too? Perhaps you could also teach 2+2=5 and French verb conjugation in English class.
I dearly hope schools teach Holocaust denial in history class, and the conjugation of French verbs in English class. Examining the reasons why Holocaust denial persists against overwhelming evidence to the contrary can teach far more about why the Holocaust happened in the first place than any mere regurgitation of the historical facts involved. In the same vein, comparing and contrasting English verb conjugation against the French equivalent can serve as a stepping-stone to understanding how language actually works, which can in turn lead to a whole host of fascinating ideas you might never have even imagined existed otherwise. So yes -- I do hope schools are teaching exactly these kinds of things.
Schools are supposed to teach science, like any other subject, to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Teaching students that somehow just because someone calls some nonsense claim a "theory" is not teaching at all.
You're talking about teaching science instead of religion in the classroom; what I'm suggesting is that we'd be better off if we simply taught the scientific method instead. Ultimately, I don't believe that science lies only in facts like the weight of an electron, or the density of water at one atmosphere, or concepts like the Theory of Evolution. At least as I understand it, what science is truly about is a way of looking at the world around us, thinking about how that world is actually put together, and then testing those thoughts to see if there's any evidence to support them. I think if you can teach core concepts like that to students, and get them to understand what it really means, than you'll have armored those students against the myriad of dogmatic 'truths' the world is all too likely to throw at them.
Let's be real about this -- if the N.S.A. wants data on any particular Yahoo user, or on all Yahoo users for that matter, it's not going to make one wit of difference if Yahoo encrypts its data or not. All the N.S.A. has to do is issue a national security letter, and Yahoo will cough-up whatever they got. Yahoo's encrypting the data on disk or in transit through their datacenters is little more than a pathetic attempt to lure customer's into believing that Yahoo is doing something to protect their data when, in fact, there's little Yahoo can do to prevent the N.S.A. for getting its hands on your data.
I'd second this. For the past three months I've been using Sonic.net for business-class DSL, and I'm pretty happy with them. It's been rock-solid for reliability and performance, plus their support staff are a pleasure to work with. Thumbs-up for Sonic.net.
Amen, brother. This is what I've been saying for years. Blaming the corporate name and logo for bad business behavior is both pointless and counterproductive. It's like the police fingering my famous twin brother for a crime I committed simply because my twin's name is well-known while mine is not. Corporations can't commit crimes -- the people making the decisions for those corporations are the ones we need to hold accountable. As long as we let crooks and swindlers hide behind the fiction of corporate personhood, the real people who actually commit these crimes are never going to see any incentive to stop fleecing the public.
A free ISP connection courtesy of my very cute and extremely generous next door neighbor Christina
The Incredible PBX (I-PBX) runs within VMware and is pre-configured to support free VoIP calls anywhere in the US over Google Voice. The Google Voice service gives me a local phone number (DID), and will route calls to my home-based I-PBX over GTalk. Siphon on the iPhone gives me both in and outbound SIP calling while I'm on WiFi at home. At home, I also have a Cisco VoIP phone I got a few years ago which also handles inbound and outbound calls. When I'm away from home, I can make outbound calls whenever there's a WiFi network available by routing the calls over a VPN connection back to the Macmini server.
Note that there were a couple of caveats with my setup. The biggest problem is that inbound calls via Google Voice and GTalk don't seem to work reliably; the phones ring, but the voice connection never seems to work. I tend to think the problem is in my configuration though, and if I spent a bit more time troubleshooting the issue, I'm sure I could solve the problem. However, I can still use Google Voice to forward inbound calls back to the iPhone phone via the cellular network. I can then get the call, figure out who it is and how long it will take and, if it's going be be more than a couple of minutes, I can call back via VoIP.
The problem is they lied under oath. And once people are lying about the state of things you don't know what else they are or will lie about. These might not matter, but they might very well lie about the next leak when it is a serious problem. As with many issues, the initial incident isn't nearly as much of a problem as the coverup.
How do you know they lied? How can you be sure it wasn't an honest error by a company official who simply didn't understand the technical details of the reactor's plumbing? I don't know about you but, in my experience, these types of corporate misstatements and goof-ups are pretty common in any industry, nuclear or otherwise. I'm not convinced that isn't the case here. TFA doesn't provide enough evidence one way or the other on this point. It certainly doesn't substantiate a deliberate coverup. There's just no hard evidence of that.
The recent revelation of a tritium leak at Vermont Yankee in 2005 seems, at least to me, to indicate that someone at Entergy is trying to be up-front and honest with the public and the NRC. I applaud that. Good for them. God knows, after Three-Mile Island in 1979, I can't imagine anyone in the US nuclear industry wanting to admit to any accident, benign or otherwise.
As others have already pointed out, a tritium leak isn't particularly dangerous. I don't feel compelled to get my own knickers in a knot over the problem. But I do think it's telling how quickly a minor leak at a nuclear facility spirals into, "They're lying -- it's a coverup!" This type of knee-jerk anti-nuclear reaction is exactly why the US hasn't built a new reactor in over a quarter of a century. It's also why I'm dubious about new nuclear projects today. Until US citizens show a willingness to get facts in their hands and abandon the "if it's nuclear it must be bad' mentality we are never going to have the kind of debate we deserve to have over the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
This is a pet peeve of mine, so I'll apologize in advance for the rant, but I think the idea of a so-called corporate death penalty, or revoking the corporate charter, is just a bad idea in general.
Why? Simple -- it gives corporate decision makers, i.e. the real, flesh and blood people actually responsible for these types of problems, an easy-out of the mess they created. The corporate death penalty is, it seems to me, just a giant grant of absolution for corporate officers who are, in many cases, committing out-and-crimes.
Think about it; did Enron's corporate charter, i.e. the legal fiction we once collectively called Enron the company, commit massive financial fraud? No. Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling and the other directors of Enron deceived the public and their investors about Enron's true state of financial affairs. These individuals committed the crime. The corporate charter had no part in the affair. Does revoking the corporate charter affect Enron's decision makers in any way, forcing them to accept responsibility for their actions? No. What it does is get them off the hook for any personal financial responsibility to the investors they defrauded.
This I think is a bad idea. Acquitting the criminals and focusing on the legal entity as the responsible party does nothing to detour this type of behavior in the future.
Revoking the corporate charter in situations like the Enron debacle only shifts blame away from the individuals responsible for the bad conduct. In addition, killing the corporate entity hurts the investors and the regular employees of the corporation, the folks who, in most part, had little to do with the fraud involved. The employees are now suddenly out of a job and the investors, the real targets of the fraud in the Enron case, are now left with nothing, having been bilked by Lay and Skilling and now, with the imposition of corporate death penalty, further harmed by the public at large. Is that what we want? Does killing the legal facade of a corporation really serve any purpose except to make us feel better when we associate the name 'Enron' with billions of dollars lost to overstated earnings and financial fraud?
In the end, the people running Enron created the mess that sank the company. The investors paid the price; they saw their hard-earned money literally vanish overnight. Revoking Enron's corporate charter wouldn't have fixed this problem. If we want revenge for the crime, we should go after the people who committed the fraud -- the former directors of the company. The corporate charter is just a legal smokescreen, and it should be treated as such.
so what does one do in a world with bias everywhere? answer: they develop a good bullshit detector
and making peace with this fact of biased media is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. do you honestly believe it is a better world where everyone just took something written by a media mouthpiece as solid gold truth, and never questioned it? isn't it better to have a well-read populace who disbelieves and doubts everything? and how do you train such a populace? you throw bias at them from every monitor and printed word, and you train their mind like a muscle to develop an extremely strong and sophisticated bullshit detector
Ding, ding, ding! You get the prize. I couldn't have said it better myself.
My thought exactly. At least Safari is made by the same company, and it's not really going to do anything to my computer sitting there as an alternate browser. Google Desktop, on the other hand, does it's desktop integration thing which simply annoys me, yet Java updates offer the stupid option to install this software, by default, every damn time I update Java. Enough already! I un-clicked the checkbox the last ten fucking times -- why can't Java get a clue! I don't want Google Desktop! Stop trying to install the damn thing! It feels like I'm avoiding some spyware program every time I update. Hey guys -- stop offering me Google Desktop!
It's easy to romanticize the past, but if you look closely at the landscape of 20th century American history you'll find that there were probably as many dissenters back then -- think socialists, communists, beatniks, etc. -- as you see now. Our collective outlook as a nation hasn't changed much either; "Look, there's a Communist hiding under that rock over there" isn't substantively different from today's cry of, "Look, there's a Terrorist hiding under that rock over there." The names of those involved have changed, and the actors have changed too, but the political game has remained essentially the same throughout the course of human history, much less American history. There will always be a majority of the population that doesn't give rat's-ass about politics, just as there will always be a minority of the population who cares deeply about everything the government says or does.
That said, I too am concerned about the direction we're headed as a nation, but I've just about given up wondering when the rest of the population will wake the fuck up and realize that secret detentions, warrentless wiretaps and all the rest really do matter, even if it doesn't immediately affect them. Ignorance is not bliss -- we've watched far too many corrupt, bad or just plain evil governments shed massive amounts of blood in the 20th century to believe now that these types of governments will just magically disappear one day. Changing the course of American governance is certainly going to require a great deal of action, and probably a substantial sacrifice from the people involved in the process, but it likely going to be the work of a minority of the population, not a majority.
Some people require chains to bind them; most need no chains to hold them because they bind themselves. As long as that remains true, nod your head at the people who expound the goodness of the government, simply because it is *their* government, and instead gather your like-minded friends. Since I'm not yet seeing jack-booted thugs roaming the streets, so I'm guessing that there's still some time left to affect change for the better. Talk to the people who will listen; get enough of them to act and maybe you can make a difference. I suspect we're fast approaching a tipping point, so a little action now might make a world of difference later on. Think about it.
Question is, is there another way to tell the stories that isn't so formulaic and that doesn't give such an incorrect impression?
That's an excellent question, and I think the answer is; yes, there are numerous ways to tell a good story regarding science. One slight modification to the lone-scientist-against-the-establishment narrative might be to cast the scientific method itself as the hurdle for our budding young scientist to overcome. This approach would allow the writer to detour into describing what the scientific method is and why it's important to scientists. That's one obvious avenue to better frame the story, but I suspect there are many, many other ways to better tell the tale.
However, I think the real trick in good science journalism is in writing a story that informs the average reader about what's truly happening in the scientific community. In addition, the essense of good science journalism is also in writing a story that's both accurate and entertaining for the lay reader. Truth be told, much of the ongoing work in any scientific field is difficult to understand for those not deeply involved in the subject material. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the general public to hit the science journals on a regular basis and come away with a detailed understanding of current work in the field. If the public is to have any awareness at all of what's happening in science, someone has to summarize the data and present it in a form suitable for a non-scientist to grasp. Given the myriad other pop-trash tales and lurid features Lehrer could have chosen to write about, I'm impressed that he's devoting column inches to writing about any current issue of scientific interest. While Dr. White may fault Lehrer for his formulaic approach to covering Roughgarden's work, I'm applauding the guy for at least making the attempt. He may be framing the issues in a dogmatic way, and he may be tweaking the subject material to interject a little drama into the story, but that's a minor issue I'm willing to live with given the greater good in telling the story at all.
Journalists are not scientists -- they are never going to treat scientific subjects with the asme kind of dispassionate rigor you'll find in peer-reviewed journals. Journalists are storytellers; that's their job, and it's quantifiably different from the kind of work actual scientists perform.
I think Kennedy said it best, so I'll let his words speak for me:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard... we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun... and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold." http://www.quotesandsayings.com/sjfk.htm
Unless I'm misreading those words, sending a man to the moon in the sixties wasn't easy either, but we still managed to do it and bring everyone back safely. Sending a man or woman on a one-way mission to Mars in this century strikes me as a failure compared to Project Apollo's goals. I can't imagine any politician seriously supporting the plan. The mere idea of televising the journey seems barbaric to me. A one-way trip to Mars is clearly a death sentence to any astronaut willing to make the trip -- televising it feels like a particularly horrid version of reality TV, with a murder/suicide as the gruesome series finale. If that's our bold plan for the conquest of space in 2008, I'd feel better if we just stayed on Earth.
I think, if you look beneath the SciFi surface of the series, that what the writers of BSG are trying to say is simply this; while our *instinct* is to utterly destroy those who would destroy us, our *humanity* should always be telling us that the proper course of action when confronted with a seemingly implacable foe is to find a way to convince them that the whole idea of solving their problems through violence is itself a bad idea. The struggle between Humans and Cylons in the series is essentially the same as any other struggle between two divergent cultures and/or social groups in our human world, groups that historically have often demonized each other and called into question if the 'Others' really are as human as we are.
You can clearly see this basic idea of 'Us' vs. 'Them' surfacing again and again at many junctures in the series. The Cylons, while initially purely mechanical in nature, are often and eloquently depicted as struggling to become more and more human all the time. They live, they die, they laugh, they love, they fight, they mourn, they invest enormous energies into learning how to procreate just as humans do -- the Cylons ceased being mechanical 'toasters' the moment they chose to mimic human behavior so closely that the difference between a humanoid Cylon and a real flesh-and-blood human became little more than a philosophical debating point between the survivors of the Twelve Colonies. Cylons *are* by now, it seems, exactly the same as humans, in virtually every way that counts
Consider -- while the Cylons have a markedly separate culture and a distinctly different religion than that depicted for the Colonials, yet similarities between the two groups are much stronger than the divergences. The Humans and the Cylons in BSG are not much more different than any other two human cultures that have struggled against each other throughout recorded history. The Humans to the Cylons in BSG are very much like the Axis to the Allies in our real history, or like the East to the West in more modern times; the Humans and the Cylons in BSG are, in essence, not much more than a new coat of paint on a very old idea, that of a collision of two cultures with very different ideas on how to divide up a territory they share.
Of course, once you understand this central point in the series, it's easy to see why genocide can't ever be the *right* solution for either side in the Human/Cylon conflict. If genocide were the appropriate answer, than it would be little different from the series writers saying that genocide is sometimes the correct response when two groups of humans come into conflict. Clearly, mass killing of your own kind isn't ever a good way to solve problems, and the writers of the series pound this point home over and over again in many episodes. This is why we see Helo go to such great lengths to sabotage Apollo's plan to annihilate the Cylons; Helo, through his relationship with Sharron, has come to view the Cylons as equivalent to humans. This is a key theme in the series, and we've seen a great deal of evidence over the course of the last three seasons of BSG to suggest that most of the other lead characters are starting to come to this same conclusion as well. Baltar believes the Cylons are the same as humans -- he believes so strongly that he even wonders if he might be a Cylon himself -- and Adama certainly has his suspicions too. Roslyn was ready to exterminate the Cylons, but she has the future of the human race to worry about, so genocide seems like a good idea to her, just as it has to many other leaders when confronted with an oposing group seemingly Hell-bent on their destruction. But Roslyn will come around in time... she must. Otherwise, we end up with a television series advocating genocide, and I can't imagine that's what RDM has in store for us in the last act of the show.
As the series moves into it's fourth and final season, I suspect these themes of Cylons being the same as Humans will become painfully, blindingly ob
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I expect a health care reform repeal act to pass at some point in 2017.
I'd be shocked if Obamacare wasn't repealed in the first 100 days of Trump's tenure in office.
The Republicans HATE Obamacare. If there's one thing we've learned from the many previous Republican votes to repeal Obamacare, each and every one of them useless because they've never had enough votes to override a presidential veto, Republicans are going to jump at any chance to repeal Obamacare for real. As time passes, we may find that Trump and the Republican party don't always stand together on every issue, but Obamacare is one thing we can be virtually certain they'll agree upon.
The President has admitted sexually assaulting women, and is being sued for the Trump University scam, used cheap immigrant labour to build his empire and wants to put his political rival in jail.
It will be especially interesting to see how this goes now, especially Trump University and the ultimate treatment of Hillary.
I tend to think the Trump University affair will just quietly disappear at this point. And as to Hillary's freedom -- Trump said he'd lock her up, and one has to imagine that many in his base will continue to push for Hillary's imprisonment. Will president Trump fulfill that campaign pledge, or will he backslide and let Hillary go? He was magnanimous during his victory speech, so that's hopeful, but will that attitude last in the weeks and months to come? Given that Republicans control the House, the Senate and -- soon -- the Supreme Court, does Trump even need to care what anyone who's not a Republican thinks?
Was it ever fun to be a minority in the US?
I have little doubt that Republicans will conclude *anything* which goes wrong, for the next four years, is ultimately the fault of Democrats. Or Hillary. Or liberals. Or undocumented workers. Or minorities. Or ISIS. Or anyone other than themselves...
Who the hell does these kind of jobs in the US today? Those things have been automated or outsourced for the last 8-10 years. Who the hell banks on having a career on any of these fields? Monitoring? Helpdesk support? Patch management?
I too can't imagine that many people 'bank' on having a permanent career in any of those positions. Still, some people in the US are working in those kinds of positions. And like most folks, they're not thrilled with an impending layoff. Can you blame them? It's especially galling when the companies they're working for are likely outsourcing these jobs to a IT services company, who then turn around and hire an H1B visa worker at a fraction of the wage the US worker was previously paid. From the company's' point of view, it looks like a great deal, but it's obviously not a good deal for the US workers involved, and it's debatable if it's a good deal for the US economy at large.
That was fine 15 years ago. And with the rise of DevOps and sophisticated virtualization/cloud infrastructure and automation, you truly do not need people in the US to do all the other things mentioned in the article.
DevOps is most certainly the way of the future, but it can be a tough sell in many organizations, especially those whose bread-and-butter business isn't like Netflix, Google, et. al. I tend to think offshoring DevOps itself is going to be difficult to do, but fear not my friend -- I'm sure within five years, the folks at Google and Netflix will be looking to do it too.
I'm not trying to be mean. People are going to be affected by this... but this aren't surprising news. It has been done for the last 8-10 years, and the transition has been mostly complete.
Keep your pulse on shit so that you do not get blindsided by paradigm shifts.
I hate to break it to you, but no amount of technological upkeep is going to save you or your job from the forces at work here. As long as it's cheaper to hire a guy from overseas than to keep you in your job, jobs will continue to flow from the US. That's the economics of the situation, and it's a powerful driving force that trumps any skillset. While you may spend many hours per week brushing-up on your skill set, the management lassie three levels above you doesn't know and doesn't care. If she can benefit from outsourcing or offshoring your job, she'll do it in a heartbeat, and she likely won't hear any arguments about how your skillset is essential, or what a benefit your work is to the company. You are simply a cog in the machine, and that's the way upper management will treat you.
Until we're all willing to face facts here, and recognize that the invisible hand of the free market is not going to fix all of our problems, anyone involved in US-based IT work is going to get shafted. It's just a question of time. Sad as it is, the only viable long-term solutions will be public relations and political action, and the sooner we start exploring those approaches, the fewer problems we'll have going forward.
Where to start? Perhaps you could start by reading the articles you've linked, or maybe even going to the actual sources of those stories? Allow me to help:
1) The Thornton Law firm (straw donor program) -- The Boston Globe reports that at least 21 politicians nationwide, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have agreed to give back or give-away over $600,000 received from the law firm. Given that no charges have yet been brought, nor have federal authorities even begun investigating the case, it looks to me like the Democrats who received donations from the Thornton firm are being about as above-board regarding this unfortunate incident as you could reasonably ask them to be.
2) Patriot Majority USA (voter fraud ring) -- As other posters in this thread have noted, the investigation is for alleged voter registration issues, not voting fraud. However, a total of 10 suspicious registration forms, out of the 40,000 the group claims to have submitted, certainly isn't going to move the election one iota in either direction, and this incident seems a far cry from the kind of fraud you appear to be alleging.
3) Peter Kadzik email on May 19th, 2015 -- As CNN points out in a recent article, the filing referred to in the email had already been made public a day before Mr. Kadzik sent his email. However, aside from that point, I'd agree it does look like Mr. Kadzik intended to tip-off the Clinton campaign, and I would also agree that even the appearance of impropriety in a Justice Department official should be investigated.
4) Peter Kadzik supposedly in charge of reopened investigation -- Again, as CNN reported in the article linked above, Peter Kadzik is not involved in any known Justice Department investigations regarding the Clinton family. Obviously, if Mr. Kadzik isn't involved the investigations, there is no conflict of interest, making his relationship with John Podesta, or his son's relationship with Podesta for that matter, wholly immaterial. Even Republican Senator Trey Gowdy, who chaired the House Select Committee on Benghazi, admits Mr. Kadzik isn't a decision-maker at the Department of Justice.
5) Hopewell Baptist Church fire -- Unfortunately, your YOUCARING link appears dead, but several sources confirm that the Hopewell church was likely set on fire Tuesday night, with the message 'Vote Trump' spray-painted around the same time. As the article points out, there's likely no way to know for sure if Trump supporters started the fire, but it's certainly troubling. However, I have no doubt that the community of Greenville will pull together and rebuild the damage, and I imagine some of that help will likely come from Republicans, including those supporting Trump in the election.
Have you actually watched that video you're linking? I mean, really -- have you watched the video? I just did, and what I'm seeing is a guy, Steve Pieczenik, claiming he's behind and staging a real-life, no joke, we're-very-big-and-really-serious, all-backed-by-the military-and-everything, political coup of the American government.
Really? You're supporting this? Do you realize that this is what Mr. Pieczenik is saying?
If so, I just have to ask you; are you truly siding with, and apparently actively promoting, a guy who claims to be working with the CIA, the FBI, the Director of Intelligence and military intelligence (plus 15 other unnamed governmental agencies) to overthrow the rule of law and to stage an actual coup in the United States? Again -- watch the video. He really is talking about his own personal role in staging a coup. He claims that the Clintons have already staged a 'silent' coup, and he's staging a counter-coup, on the Internet, via Wikileaks and what I assume are the Podesta emails, to counter the Clinton's corruption and co-optation, because in his opinion, the Clintons don't deserve power. I'll give him credit for one thing -- at least he says the "second American Revolution" as he calls it is intended to be non-violent and bloodless, but rest assured that he also states that he'll convict the president, Loretta Lynch and many others who, he claims, are involved in the massive corruption of the Clinton Foundation.
Putting aside the plain fact here that Steve Pieczenik is most likely -- and I can't say this strongly enough -- completely Looney Tunes crazy, it sounds to me like rhetoric on the not-Hillary side has expanded to encompass the notion that if it's American government 'patriots' hacking the Clinton campaign, and not Russian spies, that's fine? And you're OK with that, yes? Personally, I'd rather have the Russians, because I'd hate to think that anyone in the *American* government would commit illegal activities to throw an election towards one candidate or party. But your thinking seems to be that an internal government coups d'état via illegal hack is A-OK, because that free and fair election thing just might not work out, and the 'right' candidate, a.k.a. the candidate from your party, might not get in... yes?
I don't know -- sounds to me like Steve, and you too I suppose given your willingness to link the story and your stated hope that the mainstream media picks it up, are going to save the democracy even if you have to destroy it in the process, by making sure that a 'free and fair' election isn't anywhere as free or as fair as it should be.
Greg Dalton (moderator): "Bill McKibben, there's a sense that, that even some of the policies that are addressing climate change aren't working for everyone, that they're, they're not including communities of color, even though African-American and Latino voters are more likely to support climate action, but talk about inclusion in the idea that this is.. climate is a, ah, kind of a, a... climate is a white coastal concern..."
Bill McKibben: "Ah, yeah, I think, again I think that's wrong. You know, ah, truthfully, ah, I mean, think about our politics. White people are the problem (laughter)... for the most part. If we had, if we had the presidential election today, just among white people, Donald Trump would win, and and pretty easily. What does that tell you?"
According to the latest research on the subject, the Islamic State seems to favor Android over iPhone http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/22...
I suppose Android makes for a more honest, humble jihad?
...that no one has even considered how this stacks-up to the Time Cube.
The real question is whether you think a restaurant should have the right to discriminate against gays, black people, jews, swedes, poor people, poorly dressed people, etc. I think they should. It's not because I think discrimination is ok.
I see two problems here. First, you seem to be contradicting yourself. Either you believe it's OK to discriminate or you don't. If you think a restaurant should have the right to discriminate based on sexual orientation, race, religion or attire, than you believe discrimination is OK. You may not practice such discrimination yourself, but your statement makes it clear that you don't have a problem when other people do practice such discrimination.
The second issue I note is a little more subtle, but I think it too deserves attention. Specifically, discrimination based on something like attire, which is relatively easy for anyone to alter to meet a businesses' requirement, is inherently different from discrimination based on an inflexible aspect like ethnicity. In other words, I can change my shirt and tie without too much trouble, but I can't ever change the racial makeup of my parents, grandparents, etc. Conflating these two types of discrimination is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest. It leaves people with the false impression that restrictions on 'discrimination' are simply trying to limit or curtail the ability of businesses to make *any* choices regarding their clientele, customers, policies, etc. That's not what's going on here. The question at hand is, "In Arizona, will a restaurant be able to post a sign that reads, 'We refuse to serve gays.'"
Throwing invalid and in many cases demonstrably false claims at students who don't have the background to see the invalidity is ludicrous.
But the real world throws-out false and misleading claims all the time. If we don't teach students how to think critically, how to weigh evidence-backed claims against claims based solely on authority, culture, religion, etc., than how are students ever supposed to gain the skills required to make reasoned choices when encountering conflicting 'facts' for the first time?
I mean, why single science out? Why not teach Holocaust denial in history class? After all, wouldn't that challenge students too? Perhaps you could also teach 2+2=5 and French verb conjugation in English class.
I dearly hope schools teach Holocaust denial in history class, and the conjugation of French verbs in English class. Examining the reasons why Holocaust denial persists against overwhelming evidence to the contrary can teach far more about why the Holocaust happened in the first place than any mere regurgitation of the historical facts involved. In the same vein, comparing and contrasting English verb conjugation against the French equivalent can serve as a stepping-stone to understanding how language actually works, which can in turn lead to a whole host of fascinating ideas you might never have even imagined existed otherwise. So yes -- I do hope schools are teaching exactly these kinds of things.
Schools are supposed to teach science, like any other subject, to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Teaching students that somehow just because someone calls some nonsense claim a "theory" is not teaching at all.
You're talking about teaching science instead of religion in the classroom; what I'm suggesting is that we'd be better off if we simply taught the scientific method instead. Ultimately, I don't believe that science lies only in facts like the weight of an electron, or the density of water at one atmosphere, or concepts like the Theory of Evolution. At least as I understand it, what science is truly about is a way of looking at the world around us, thinking about how that world is actually put together, and then testing those thoughts to see if there's any evidence to support them. I think if you can teach core concepts like that to students, and get them to understand what it really means, than you'll have armored those students against the myriad of dogmatic 'truths' the world is all too likely to throw at them.
Let's be real about this -- if the N.S.A. wants data on any particular Yahoo user, or on all Yahoo users for that matter, it's not going to make one wit of difference if Yahoo encrypts its data or not. All the N.S.A. has to do is issue a national security letter, and Yahoo will cough-up whatever they got. Yahoo's encrypting the data on disk or in transit through their datacenters is little more than a pathetic attempt to lure customer's into believing that Yahoo is doing something to protect their data when, in fact, there's little Yahoo can do to prevent the N.S.A. for getting its hands on your data.
I'd second this. For the past three months I've been using Sonic.net for business-class DSL, and I'm pretty happy with them. It's been rock-solid for reliability and performance, plus their support staff are a pleasure to work with. Thumbs-up for Sonic.net.
Amen, brother. This is what I've been saying for years. Blaming the corporate name and logo for bad business behavior is both pointless and counterproductive. It's like the police fingering my famous twin brother for a crime I committed simply because my twin's name is well-known while mine is not. Corporations can't commit crimes -- the people making the decisions for those corporations are the ones we need to hold accountable. As long as we let crooks and swindlers hide behind the fiction of corporate personhood, the real people who actually commit these crimes are never going to see any incentive to stop fleecing the public.
A few months ago, I decided to ditch my landline and move as many calls as I could to my iPhone via SIP. Here's how I did it:
***My Equipment***
The Incredible PBX (I-PBX) runs within VMware and is pre-configured to support free VoIP calls anywhere in the US over Google Voice. The Google Voice service gives me a local phone number (DID), and will route calls to my home-based I-PBX over GTalk. Siphon on the iPhone gives me both in and outbound SIP calling while I'm on WiFi at home. At home, I also have a Cisco VoIP phone I got a few years ago which also handles inbound and outbound calls. When I'm away from home, I can make outbound calls whenever there's a WiFi network available by routing the calls over a VPN connection back to the Macmini server.
Note that there were a couple of caveats with my setup. The biggest problem is that inbound calls via Google Voice and GTalk don't seem to work reliably; the phones ring, but the voice connection never seems to work. I tend to think the problem is in my configuration though, and if I spent a bit more time troubleshooting the issue, I'm sure I could solve the problem. However, I can still use Google Voice to forward inbound calls back to the iPhone phone via the cellular network. I can then get the call, figure out who it is and how long it will take and, if it's going be be more than a couple of minutes, I can call back via VoIP.
I assume this means they're suing for an a full and immediate apology, right?
The problem is they lied under oath. And once people are lying about the state of things you don't know what else they are or will lie about. These might not matter, but they might very well lie about the next leak when it is a serious problem. As with many issues, the initial incident isn't nearly as much of a problem as the coverup.
How do you know they lied? How can you be sure it wasn't an honest error by a company official who simply didn't understand the technical details of the reactor's plumbing? I don't know about you but, in my experience, these types of corporate misstatements and goof-ups are pretty common in any industry, nuclear or otherwise. I'm not convinced that isn't the case here. TFA doesn't provide enough evidence one way or the other on this point. It certainly doesn't substantiate a deliberate coverup. There's just no hard evidence of that.
The recent revelation of a tritium leak at Vermont Yankee in 2005 seems, at least to me, to indicate that someone at Entergy is trying to be up-front and honest with the public and the NRC. I applaud that. Good for them. God knows, after Three-Mile Island in 1979, I can't imagine anyone in the US nuclear industry wanting to admit to any accident, benign or otherwise.
As others have already pointed out, a tritium leak isn't particularly dangerous. I don't feel compelled to get my own knickers in a knot over the problem. But I do think it's telling how quickly a minor leak at a nuclear facility spirals into, "They're lying -- it's a coverup!" This type of knee-jerk anti-nuclear reaction is exactly why the US hasn't built a new reactor in over a quarter of a century. It's also why I'm dubious about new nuclear projects today. Until US citizens show a willingness to get facts in their hands and abandon the "if it's nuclear it must be bad' mentality we are never going to have the kind of debate we deserve to have over the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
This is a pet peeve of mine, so I'll apologize in advance for the rant, but I think the idea of a so-called corporate death penalty, or revoking the corporate charter, is just a bad idea in general.
Why? Simple -- it gives corporate decision makers, i.e. the real, flesh and blood people actually responsible for these types of problems, an easy-out of the mess they created. The corporate death penalty is, it seems to me, just a giant grant of absolution for corporate officers who are, in many cases, committing out-and-crimes.
Think about it; did Enron's corporate charter, i.e. the legal fiction we once collectively called Enron the company, commit massive financial fraud? No. Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling and the other directors of Enron deceived the public and their investors about Enron's true state of financial affairs. These individuals committed the crime. The corporate charter had no part in the affair. Does revoking the corporate charter affect Enron's decision makers in any way, forcing them to accept responsibility for their actions? No. What it does is get them off the hook for any personal financial responsibility to the investors they defrauded.
This I think is a bad idea. Acquitting the criminals and focusing on the legal entity as the responsible party does nothing to detour this type of behavior in the future.
Revoking the corporate charter in situations like the Enron debacle only shifts blame away from the individuals responsible for the bad conduct. In addition, killing the corporate entity hurts the investors and the regular employees of the corporation, the folks who, in most part, had little to do with the fraud involved. The employees are now suddenly out of a job and the investors, the real targets of the fraud in the Enron case, are now left with nothing, having been bilked by Lay and Skilling and now, with the imposition of corporate death penalty, further harmed by the public at large. Is that what we want? Does killing the legal facade of a corporation really serve any purpose except to make us feel better when we associate the name 'Enron' with billions of dollars lost to overstated earnings and financial fraud?
In the end, the people running Enron created the mess that sank the company. The investors paid the price; they saw their hard-earned money literally vanish overnight. Revoking Enron's corporate charter wouldn't have fixed this problem. If we want revenge for the crime, we should go after the people who committed the fraud -- the former directors of the company. The corporate charter is just a legal smokescreen, and it should be treated as such.
Ding, ding, ding! You get the prize. I couldn't have said it better myself.
My thought exactly. At least Safari is made by the same company, and it's not really going to do anything to my computer sitting there as an alternate browser. Google Desktop, on the other hand, does it's desktop integration thing which simply annoys me, yet Java updates offer the stupid option to install this software, by default, every damn time I update Java. Enough already! I un-clicked the checkbox the last ten fucking times -- why can't Java get a clue! I don't want Google Desktop! Stop trying to install the damn thing! It feels like I'm avoiding some spyware program every time I update. Hey guys -- stop offering me Google Desktop!
It's easy to romanticize the past, but if you look closely at the landscape of 20th century American history you'll find that there were probably as many dissenters back then -- think socialists, communists, beatniks, etc. -- as you see now. Our collective outlook as a nation hasn't changed much either; "Look, there's a Communist hiding under that rock over there" isn't substantively different from today's cry of, "Look, there's a Terrorist hiding under that rock over there." The names of those involved have changed, and the actors have changed too, but the political game has remained essentially the same throughout the course of human history, much less American history. There will always be a majority of the population that doesn't give rat's-ass about politics, just as there will always be a minority of the population who cares deeply about everything the government says or does.
That said, I too am concerned about the direction we're headed as a nation, but I've just about given up wondering when the rest of the population will wake the fuck up and realize that secret detentions, warrentless wiretaps and all the rest really do matter, even if it doesn't immediately affect them. Ignorance is not bliss -- we've watched far too many corrupt, bad or just plain evil governments shed massive amounts of blood in the 20th century to believe now that these types of governments will just magically disappear one day. Changing the course of American governance is certainly going to require a great deal of action, and probably a substantial sacrifice from the people involved in the process, but it likely going to be the work of a minority of the population, not a majority.
Some people require chains to bind them; most need no chains to hold them because they bind themselves. As long as that remains true, nod your head at the people who expound the goodness of the government, simply because it is *their* government, and instead gather your like-minded friends. Since I'm not yet seeing jack-booted thugs roaming the streets, so I'm guessing that there's still some time left to affect change for the better. Talk to the people who will listen; get enough of them to act and maybe you can make a difference. I suspect we're fast approaching a tipping point, so a little action now might make a world of difference later on. Think about it.
That's an excellent question, and I think the answer is; yes, there are numerous ways to tell a good story regarding science. One slight modification to the lone-scientist-against-the-establishment narrative might be to cast the scientific method itself as the hurdle for our budding young scientist to overcome. This approach would allow the writer to detour into describing what the scientific method is and why it's important to scientists. That's one obvious avenue to better frame the story, but I suspect there are many, many other ways to better tell the tale.
However, I think the real trick in good science journalism is in writing a story that informs the average reader about what's truly happening in the scientific community. In addition, the essense of good science journalism is also in writing a story that's both accurate and entertaining for the lay reader. Truth be told, much of the ongoing work in any scientific field is difficult to understand for those not deeply involved in the subject material. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the general public to hit the science journals on a regular basis and come away with a detailed understanding of current work in the field. If the public is to have any awareness at all of what's happening in science, someone has to summarize the data and present it in a form suitable for a non-scientist to grasp. Given the myriad other pop-trash tales and lurid features Lehrer could have chosen to write about, I'm impressed that he's devoting column inches to writing about any current issue of scientific interest. While Dr. White may fault Lehrer for his formulaic approach to covering Roughgarden's work, I'm applauding the guy for at least making the attempt. He may be framing the issues in a dogmatic way, and he may be tweaking the subject material to interject a little drama into the story, but that's a minor issue I'm willing to live with given the greater good in telling the story at all.
Journalists are not scientists -- they are never going to treat scientific subjects with the asme kind of dispassionate rigor you'll find in peer-reviewed journals. Journalists are storytellers; that's their job, and it's quantifiably different from the kind of work actual scientists perform.
I think Kennedy said it best, so I'll let his words speak for me:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard... we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun... and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold." http://www.quotesandsayings.com/sjfk.htmUnless I'm misreading those words, sending a man to the moon in the sixties wasn't easy either, but we still managed to do it and bring everyone back safely. Sending a man or woman on a one-way mission to Mars in this century strikes me as a failure compared to Project Apollo's goals. I can't imagine any politician seriously supporting the plan. The mere idea of televising the journey seems barbaric to me. A one-way trip to Mars is clearly a death sentence to any astronaut willing to make the trip -- televising it feels like a particularly horrid version of reality TV, with a murder/suicide as the gruesome series finale. If that's our bold plan for the conquest of space in 2008, I'd feel better if we just stayed on Earth.
I think, if you look beneath the SciFi surface of the series, that what the writers of BSG are trying to say is simply this; while our *instinct* is to utterly destroy those who would destroy us, our *humanity* should always be telling us that the proper course of action when confronted with a seemingly implacable foe is to find a way to convince them that the whole idea of solving their problems through violence is itself a bad idea. The struggle between Humans and Cylons in the series is essentially the same as any other struggle between two divergent cultures and/or social groups in our human world, groups that historically have often demonized each other and called into question if the 'Others' really are as human as we are.
You can clearly see this basic idea of 'Us' vs. 'Them' surfacing again and again at many junctures in the series. The Cylons, while initially purely mechanical in nature, are often and eloquently depicted as struggling to become more and more human all the time. They live, they die, they laugh, they love, they fight, they mourn, they invest enormous energies into learning how to procreate just as humans do -- the Cylons ceased being mechanical 'toasters' the moment they chose to mimic human behavior so closely that the difference between a humanoid Cylon and a real flesh-and-blood human became little more than a philosophical debating point between the survivors of the Twelve Colonies. Cylons *are* by now, it seems, exactly the same as humans, in virtually every way that counts
Consider -- while the Cylons have a markedly separate culture and a distinctly different religion than that depicted for the Colonials, yet similarities between the two groups are much stronger than the divergences. The Humans and the Cylons in BSG are not much more different than any other two human cultures that have struggled against each other throughout recorded history. The Humans to the Cylons in BSG are very much like the Axis to the Allies in our real history, or like the East to the West in more modern times; the Humans and the Cylons in BSG are, in essence, not much more than a new coat of paint on a very old idea, that of a collision of two cultures with very different ideas on how to divide up a territory they share.
Of course, once you understand this central point in the series, it's easy to see why genocide can't ever be the *right* solution for either side in the Human/Cylon conflict. If genocide were the appropriate answer, than it would be little different from the series writers saying that genocide is sometimes the correct response when two groups of humans come into conflict. Clearly, mass killing of your own kind isn't ever a good way to solve problems, and the writers of the series pound this point home over and over again in many episodes. This is why we see Helo go to such great lengths to sabotage Apollo's plan to annihilate the Cylons; Helo, through his relationship with Sharron, has come to view the Cylons as equivalent to humans. This is a key theme in the series, and we've seen a great deal of evidence over the course of the last three seasons of BSG to suggest that most of the other lead characters are starting to come to this same conclusion as well. Baltar believes the Cylons are the same as humans -- he believes so strongly that he even wonders if he might be a Cylon himself -- and Adama certainly has his suspicions too. Roslyn was ready to exterminate the Cylons, but she has the future of the human race to worry about, so genocide seems like a good idea to her, just as it has to many other leaders when confronted with an oposing group seemingly Hell-bent on their destruction. But Roslyn will come around in time... she must. Otherwise, we end up with a television series advocating genocide, and I can't imagine that's what RDM has in store for us in the last act of the show .
As the series moves into it's fourth and final season, I suspect these themes of Cylons being the same as Humans will become painfully, blindingly ob