Arguably, the Freedom Caucus in the House and President Trump in the White House make it something of a four party system, currently. Three of those parties operate with the Republican label, but maybe sub-parties are the way we need to go. Perhaps this will lead to more negotiating and deal-making in the future, but I don't think anyone is there, yet.
Fake news had a very specific meaning, which is propaganda consisting of outright lies masquerading as real news to influence public opinion in a given way....
The middle of your "fake news" definition is correct, but you've tacked on a few unnecessary qualifiers; it is simply "outright lies masquerading as real news". It doesn't have to be propaganda, and it doesn't have to have a specific public opinion shifting goal.
While it's good that some whales managed to escape, I find it extremely disconcerting that whales are beaching themselves en masse and we don't know why.
One theory floated on the PBS New Hour was that the later beachers were responding to distress calls from the earlier beachers.
If you make sure an H1B holder is paid over $100k a year the abuses will stop.
Or require them to be paid the average prevailing wage of the position in the CEO's MSA.
Either one will kill large chunks of the body-shop industry.
Lastly, put in a bounty program for body shops that use B1 visa holders for body shopping. Reporters get 40% of the imposed fine, which is a multiple of the salary delta between the body shoppers and the equivalent FTE.
I could cheat either system easily:
If you set a minimum pay, no matter what the level, have the foreign contract company who "owns" that employee to pay a fee for the privilege of keeping their job. They still make a good wage, from their perspective, if perhaps not as much as the USA intended. The foreign asset (or outsourcing company like Tata) kicks back a portion of that money to the corporation who holds the visa (or charges a lower contract fee), and everybody wins. This sort of thing is probably illegal with current USA labor laws, but either cut the jobs of regulators who are supposed to be watching for this sort of corruption, or we get rid of that pesky labor law... in the name of cutting useless regulation and bureaucracy.
If you base wages off CEO's home district, then clearly we need to place a subcontracting CEO in a low-pay district. Maybe we can set up a bunch of straw CEOs in Appalachia (jobs for coal miners!) and create a market where all the H-1B visa earners are well above the district's market value.
As long as the system appears to have been fixed (no regulators to check it, and no one trusts the media when they report it is broken), the people will be happy. Maybe throw in a periodic ritual sacrifice of an H-1B shell company to show you're working hard to stamp out corruption.
I'll admit it took us by surprise that a politician (new to it or not) didn't lie.
Isn't it sad how corrupt politics has become that it actually surprises us to see a President attempt to actually deliver on his promises?
So, what you're saying is you apparently have forgotten the start of any other presidency, governorship, or other political term. Everyone comes in trying to change things and implement their new agenda. They meet with mixed success, depending on how much of the rest of government is behind them. That's part of the "checks and balances" system. Trump is coming in harder and faster than usual by bypassing the legislative process and going strait into executive fiat mode. Just as quickly, balance of power is hitting back to let him know that isn't (or shouldn't be) how it works.
If you think he is more honest than other politicians, again you haven't been paying attention; he simply lies more boldly. He knows that his supporters will accept strongly-worded "alternate facts" more easily than the carefully worded, weaselly, technically true or unverifiable statement of a skilled politician.
All that aside, I hope that his H-1B changes are more effective and thoughtful than his previous executive actions. This is a system that could use some fixing, but I suspect bold meddling will just create a mess. We'll have to see what the final order looks like.
Is this the young earth creationist wet dream, that would make it possible for the earth to be 5000 years old?
Definitely not new. I remember reading an article back in the late '80s that followed that line of thinking: that C is constant now, but was faster when first measured, allowing a magical curve that placed earth's age between 5,700 and 10,000 years old.
However VW denies the vehicles have software designed to cheat tests.
Instead the company says that cars with the 3.0 litre diesel V6 engines "had a software function which had not been adequately described in the application process".
If VW wants to get past this scandal, they really need to adopt a full-transparency, maximum mea culpa stance right now, and this kind of statement does not appear to be helping. If there's a software function that seems to the EPA to be cheating on emissions tests, well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
The defense they appear to be using goes like this: The law says the cars must pass this specific test, but it doesn't say the cars have to perform according to those emission standards the rest of the time. Therefore, our actions (or the actions of our rogue engineers) are morally wrong, but not legally wrong. We're sorry, and will fix our reprehensible (but not illegal) actions without opening ourselves up to criminal liability.
The interesting question, to me, is whether or not it was actually flying below the treeline. From TFA, the drone's owner presented flight data showing that the drone was not below the treeline, but the man who shot the drone down had two eyewitnesses saying it was lower. If we have altitude readings and video footage, it seems to me those should be able to trump eyewitnesses (assuming that data is complete and not suspect). That's why people are pushing to put bodycams on police, for example.
How far does this "character" concept extend? Do you need permission to sell your home-made stormtrooper costume? Do stealth airplanes and the "invisible" flying aircraft carrier violate the "character" of Wonder Woman's invisible airplane? Are you allowed to sell your Pontiac Firebird after installing a K.I.T.T. kit?
Since the only numbers provided in the article were alarmist figures on the current number of kids exposed to video games and violent media (which might be part of the data, but certainly aren't part of the study results), it's a bit difficult to tell what they were looking at with this research. Without some concrete information, this is just a piece of unsupported propaganda.
Which means that the FBI just needs to data-mine for hotbeds of cash use. If you're afraid to be tracked by your credit card and discount card use, you clearly have something to hide. Just remember: If you use cash, the terrorists win!
Speaking of ratios, it's interesting to note that, according to the article, they're requesting $258.5 million for 659 field agents. Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else? I suppose it depends on what kind of support staff gets lumped into that bucket.
Also, how exactly do you define a field agent, in this case? Is the guy who hangs out in chat rooms, pretending to be a 14 year old girl a field agent, or are field agents the ones kicking down doors and confiscating computer equipment?
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson
Liberty costs. It's nice to know that America still has people willing to pay the price to fight tyrrany. Assuming he's the leaker, he weighed the risks and made his choice.
They would have thrown the book at her for vigilante justice. Considering the 44 days and probation served by the thief, the "heroine" would likely have gotten a stiffer sentence. Assault is a very serious crime, after all.
Criminal penalties don't work that way. If you want to soak him for everything he owns, you follow up the criminal conviction with a class-action civil case.
Yes, someone should invent MUDs. They'd be like open MMOGs without the graphics. And since you don't have to worry about graphic engines, experienced players could quit the playing ranks and join the coders and crank out lots of user-generated content. We'll call them wizards. It'll be great. And I'm sure there won't be a bit of grinding involved.
cdguru wrote: Let's say you work for a book publisher. Today it is impractical to redistribute a book that you buy in a book store. And books in digital form aren't generally sold or not sold without some kind of protection.
Since you mentioned books, if you read sci-fi/fantasy, you might be interested in www.webscriptions.net. They sell electronic copies of books in convenient, DRM-free formats. You can also find the first few chapters or even entire books (with the author's permission) free of charge at the Baen books free library. If you like the author's writing, they likely have other books you can buy (in electronic or paper form). I appreciate being treated like a responsible adult by these authors and publishers, and have spent a fair amount, buying books by authors I normally wouldn't have tried.
I know some musicians are trying the same thing (They Might Be Giants, IIRC). I think the recording labels could learn a few lessons from them. Most likely, they'll continue sueing their customers, though.
Actually, the trojan targetted anyone who visited an unnamed newsgroup which was frequented by people seeking child porn. While that set of people includes the guilty, it also likely includes:
- law enforcement officers
- researchers
- trolls (the flamewar kind)
- other vigilantes
- people who used the same computer as one of the above
Collateral damage is one of the reasons the LEOs are (theoretically) required to follow the rules.
I take sugar as my breakfast pick-me-up of choice, saving caffeine for "emergencies". I drink at most one can of Mt. Dew a month, usually to keep me from falling asleep after lunch (usually when I didn't get enough sleep the previous night).
All that aside, my breakfast of choice is french toast (made with egg whites so I can pretend it's healthy) with syrup and OJ. The syrup gets me going, and the french toast keeps full longer than cereals do.
The A-Team show had plenty of bullets flying, but how often were people actually hit? Generally, the violence was limited to people being knocked out or thrown from a vehicle by an explosion. I suspect the blood and gore were limited to help the show appeal to a larger family-oriented audience, though I suppose it is possible censorship was involved.
If you read the article, Peter M. Jackson's call for "rational and measured discourse" is especially telling, when compared to this discussion. As usual, we have frothing-at-the-mouth comments from "both" sides of the issue. Here are a couple points which I think may have been missed by some/.ers:
1) This article is about oil production, not oil consumption. We could very well be heading for the collapse of oil-based civilization, due to Hummers and China's booming thirst for oil. That doesn't mean this report is wrong, because it is about supply, not demand.
2) Contrary to the article's (somewhat) misleading title, the report isn't disputing that there will be a global peak in oil production. Instead, it disputes the (oft-rescheduled) temporal location of that peak, and the shape of the resulting down-turn (predicting a plateau and gradual decline, rather than a rapid drop-off).
It seems to me the root questions debated by the report are whether or not hard-to-extract oil should be included in our oil reserve estimates, and how much new technology will delay and soften the inevitable oil decline. Agree or disagree, we could all use a little more "rational and measured discourse".
When you apply for a house loan, the house is held as collateral, and you often pay lender's insurance, so unless you have BAD credit, the loan will fly through.
-snip-
If you use your credit cards almost like debit cards... and and are ultra-conservative about using your cards, your credit will be just as good (and your available borrowing rate just as low) as it would be for carrying a $3000 credit balance and making the "required" monthly payments.
The problem here is that not every lender uses the same criteria for deciding whether or not to lend to you, how much to lend you and at what rate. The first place I applied for a home loan rejected me, even though I had no negative credit history. When I asked why, they explained that my practice of paying my credit card in full every month did not generate the positive credit history they were looking for; they were looking for applicants that had a history of making monthly payments on a credit card balance or a car.
Rather than giving up and ranting about the corrupt system, I went to another lender and was approved for the loan. The second company's criteria included maintaining a substantial bank balance for one year ($3000 or $6000; I don't recall which). They also accepted my practice of paying off the credit card each month as evidence of good credit.
To make a long story short (too late!), shop around for a good lender if you have the time to do so. If a company has unreasonable credit requirements, write them a letter to let them know that you won't be using their services and why. Regale your friends and coworkers with your tale of woe, and make sure they know which company jerked you around. If you're planning on getting a loan, get a copy of your credit report before you apply; you can then head off potential problems before the red tape starts flying.
Note that the article does mention they are only seeking access to other census information, NOT the 2000 census that everyone is so worried about. The data they are asking for is "voluntary responses to monthly surveys, with confidentiality promised." That means that your census 2000 answers about commute time and ethnicity will continue to be safe, regardless of whether or not this amendment passes. The only thing you have to worry about is the "slippery slope" problem/fallacy.
If you really want to make the president elect nervous, try voting for a "third party" (as opposed to 4th party, 5th party, or 6th party?) candidate. Nothing says, "many of the people don't like you" more than an election won with 35% of the vote.
Slashdot Mirror
Arguably, the Freedom Caucus in the House and President Trump in the White House make it something of a four party system, currently. Three of those parties operate with the Republican label, but maybe sub-parties are the way we need to go. Perhaps this will lead to more negotiating and deal-making in the future, but I don't think anyone is there, yet.
Fake news had a very specific meaning, which is propaganda consisting of outright lies masquerading as real news to influence public opinion in a given way....
The middle of your "fake news" definition is correct, but you've tacked on a few unnecessary qualifiers; it is simply "outright lies masquerading as real news". It doesn't have to be propaganda, and it doesn't have to have a specific public opinion shifting goal.
While it's good that some whales managed to escape, I find it extremely disconcerting that whales are beaching themselves en masse and we don't know why.
One theory floated on the PBS New Hour was that the later beachers were responding to distress calls from the earlier beachers.
If you make sure an H1B holder is paid over $100k a year the abuses will stop.
Or require them to be paid the average prevailing wage of the position in the CEO's MSA.
Either one will kill large chunks of the body-shop industry.
Lastly, put in a bounty program for body shops that use B1 visa holders for body shopping. Reporters get 40% of the imposed fine, which is a multiple of the salary delta between the body shoppers and the equivalent FTE.
I could cheat either system easily:
If you set a minimum pay, no matter what the level, have the foreign contract company who "owns" that employee to pay a fee for the privilege of keeping their job. They still make a good wage, from their perspective, if perhaps not as much as the USA intended. The foreign asset (or outsourcing company like Tata) kicks back a portion of that money to the corporation who holds the visa (or charges a lower contract fee), and everybody wins. This sort of thing is probably illegal with current USA labor laws, but either cut the jobs of regulators who are supposed to be watching for this sort of corruption, or we get rid of that pesky labor law... in the name of cutting useless regulation and bureaucracy.
If you base wages off CEO's home district, then clearly we need to place a subcontracting CEO in a low-pay district. Maybe we can set up a bunch of straw CEOs in Appalachia (jobs for coal miners!) and create a market where all the H-1B visa earners are well above the district's market value.
As long as the system appears to have been fixed (no regulators to check it, and no one trusts the media when they report it is broken), the people will be happy. Maybe throw in a periodic ritual sacrifice of an H-1B shell company to show you're working hard to stamp out corruption.
I'll admit it took us by surprise that a politician (new to it or not) didn't lie.
Isn't it sad how corrupt politics has become that it actually surprises us to see a President attempt to actually deliver on his promises?
So, what you're saying is you apparently have forgotten the start of any other presidency, governorship, or other political term. Everyone comes in trying to change things and implement their new agenda. They meet with mixed success, depending on how much of the rest of government is behind them. That's part of the "checks and balances" system. Trump is coming in harder and faster than usual by bypassing the legislative process and going strait into executive fiat mode. Just as quickly, balance of power is hitting back to let him know that isn't (or shouldn't be) how it works.
If you think he is more honest than other politicians, again you haven't been paying attention; he simply lies more boldly. He knows that his supporters will accept strongly-worded "alternate facts" more easily than the carefully worded, weaselly, technically true or unverifiable statement of a skilled politician.
All that aside, I hope that his H-1B changes are more effective and thoughtful than his previous executive actions. This is a system that could use some fixing, but I suspect bold meddling will just create a mess. We'll have to see what the final order looks like.
Is this the young earth creationist wet dream, that would make it possible for the earth to be 5000 years old?
Definitely not new. I remember reading an article back in the late '80s that followed that line of thinking: that C is constant now, but was faster when first measured, allowing a magical curve that placed earth's age between 5,700 and 10,000 years old.
However VW denies the vehicles have software designed to cheat tests.
Instead the company says that cars with the 3.0 litre diesel V6 engines "had a software function which had not been adequately described in the application process".
If VW wants to get past this scandal, they really need to adopt a full-transparency, maximum mea culpa stance right now, and this kind of statement does not appear to be helping. If there's a software function that seems to the EPA to be cheating on emissions tests, well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
The defense they appear to be using goes like this: The law says the cars must pass this specific test, but it doesn't say the cars have to perform according to those emission standards the rest of the time. Therefore, our actions (or the actions of our rogue engineers) are morally wrong, but not legally wrong. We're sorry, and will fix our reprehensible (but not illegal) actions without opening ourselves up to criminal liability.
The interesting question, to me, is whether or not it was actually flying below the treeline. From TFA, the drone's owner presented flight data showing that the drone was not below the treeline, but the man who shot the drone down had two eyewitnesses saying it was lower. If we have altitude readings and video footage, it seems to me those should be able to trump eyewitnesses (assuming that data is complete and not suspect). That's why people are pushing to put bodycams on police, for example.
How far does this "character" concept extend? Do you need permission to sell your home-made stormtrooper costume? Do stealth airplanes and the "invisible" flying aircraft carrier violate the "character" of Wonder Woman's invisible airplane? Are you allowed to sell your Pontiac Firebird after installing a K.I.T.T. kit?
Since the only numbers provided in the article were alarmist figures on the current number of kids exposed to video games and violent media (which might be part of the data, but certainly aren't part of the study results), it's a bit difficult to tell what they were looking at with this research. Without some concrete information, this is just a piece of unsupported propaganda.
Which means that the FBI just needs to data-mine for hotbeds of cash use. If you're afraid to be tracked by your credit card and discount card use, you clearly have something to hide. Just remember: If you use cash, the terrorists win!
Speaking of ratios, it's interesting to note that, according to the article, they're requesting $258.5 million for 659 field agents. Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else? I suppose it depends on what kind of support staff gets lumped into that bucket.
Also, how exactly do you define a field agent, in this case? Is the guy who hangs out in chat rooms, pretending to be a 14 year old girl a field agent, or are field agents the ones kicking down doors and confiscating computer equipment?
- Thomas Jefferson
Liberty costs. It's nice to know that America still has people willing to pay the price to fight tyrrany. Assuming he's the leaker, he weighed the risks and made his choice.
They would have thrown the book at her for vigilante justice. Considering the 44 days and probation served by the thief, the "heroine" would likely have gotten a stiffer sentence. Assault is a very serious crime, after all.
Criminal penalties don't work that way. If you want to soak him for everything he owns, you follow up the criminal conviction with a class-action civil case.
Yes, someone should invent MUDs. They'd be like open MMOGs without the graphics. And since you don't have to worry about graphic engines, experienced players could quit the playing ranks and join the coders and crank out lots of user-generated content. We'll call them wizards. It'll be great. And I'm sure there won't be a bit of grinding involved.
cdguru wrote:
Let's say you work for a book publisher. Today it is impractical to redistribute a book that you buy in a book store. And books in digital form aren't generally sold or not sold without some kind of protection.
Since you mentioned books, if you read sci-fi/fantasy, you might be interested in www.webscriptions.net. They sell electronic copies of books in convenient, DRM-free formats. You can also find the first few chapters or even entire books (with the author's permission) free of charge at the Baen books free library. If you like the author's writing, they likely have other books you can buy (in electronic or paper form). I appreciate being treated like a responsible adult by these authors and publishers, and have spent a fair amount, buying books by authors I normally wouldn't have tried.
I know some musicians are trying the same thing (They Might Be Giants, IIRC). I think the recording labels could learn a few lessons from them. Most likely, they'll continue sueing their customers, though.
Actually, the trojan targetted anyone who visited an unnamed newsgroup which was frequented by people seeking child porn. While that set of people includes the guilty, it also likely includes:
- law enforcement officers
- researchers
- trolls (the flamewar kind)
- other vigilantes
- people who used the same computer as one of the above
Collateral damage is one of the reasons the LEOs are (theoretically) required to follow the rules.
I take sugar as my breakfast pick-me-up of choice, saving caffeine for "emergencies". I drink at most one can of Mt. Dew a month, usually to keep me from falling asleep after lunch (usually when I didn't get enough sleep the previous night).
All that aside, my breakfast of choice is french toast (made with egg whites so I can pretend it's healthy) with syrup and OJ. The syrup gets me going, and the french toast keeps full longer than cereals do.
Master of Magic inspired a number of other games. For example, you'll find quite a few of MoM's features in Age of Wonders.
The A-Team show had plenty of bullets flying, but how often were people actually hit? Generally, the violence was limited to people being knocked out or thrown from a vehicle by an explosion. I suspect the blood and gore were limited to help the show appeal to a larger family-oriented audience, though I suppose it is possible censorship was involved.
If you read the article, Peter M. Jackson's call for "rational and measured discourse" is especially telling, when compared to this discussion. As usual, we have frothing-at-the-mouth comments from "both" sides of the issue. Here are a couple points which I think may have been missed by some /.ers:
1) This article is about oil production, not oil consumption. We could very well be heading for the collapse of oil-based civilization, due to Hummers and China's booming thirst for oil. That doesn't mean this report is wrong, because it is about supply, not demand.
2) Contrary to the article's (somewhat) misleading title, the report isn't disputing that there will be a global peak in oil production. Instead, it disputes the (oft-rescheduled) temporal location of that peak, and the shape of the resulting down-turn (predicting a plateau and gradual decline, rather than a rapid drop-off).
It seems to me the root questions debated by the report are whether or not hard-to-extract oil should be included in our oil reserve estimates, and how much new technology will delay and soften the inevitable oil decline. Agree or disagree, we could all use a little more "rational and measured discourse".
When you apply for a house loan, the house is held as collateral, and you often pay lender's insurance, so unless you have BAD credit, the loan will fly through. -snip- If you use your credit cards almost like debit cards... and and are ultra-conservative about using your cards, your credit will be just as good (and your available borrowing rate just as low) as it would be for carrying a $3000 credit balance and making the "required" monthly payments.
The problem here is that not every lender uses the same criteria for deciding whether or not to lend to you, how much to lend you and at what rate. The first place I applied for a home loan rejected me, even though I had no negative credit history. When I asked why, they explained that my practice of paying my credit card in full every month did not generate the positive credit history they were looking for; they were looking for applicants that had a history of making monthly payments on a credit card balance or a car.
Rather than giving up and ranting about the corrupt system, I went to another lender and was approved for the loan. The second company's criteria included maintaining a substantial bank balance for one year ($3000 or $6000; I don't recall which). They also accepted my practice of paying off the credit card each month as evidence of good credit.
To make a long story short (too late!), shop around for a good lender if you have the time to do so. If a company has unreasonable credit requirements, write them a letter to let them know that you won't be using their services and why. Regale your friends and coworkers with your tale of woe, and make sure they know which company jerked you around. If you're planning on getting a loan, get a copy of your credit report before you apply; you can then head off potential problems before the red tape starts flying.
Note that the article does mention they are only seeking access to other census information, NOT the 2000 census that everyone is so worried about. The data they are asking for is "voluntary responses to monthly surveys, with confidentiality promised." That means that your census 2000 answers about commute time and ethnicity will continue to be safe, regardless of whether or not this amendment passes. The only thing you have to worry about is the "slippery slope" problem/fallacy.
If you really want to make the president elect nervous, try voting for a "third party" (as opposed to 4th party, 5th party, or 6th party?) candidate. Nothing says, "many of the people don't like you" more than an election won with 35% of the vote.