Sooooo, Google Voice? Except GV is carrier independent, and free, so I guess that's what sets it apart.
I actually just tried to sign up for this with GV recently and my only two options were 1) Port my existing number to GV to get free service or 2) pay for GV to be able to keep my number with my current provider. Since I don't want to port my number, I just went with a different company that charges $1 to set it up and $0.01 per minute to accept calls on the new number I wanted.
Makes no claims that the NSA was intercepting calls made by those people in the US, nor GCHQ in the UK. Since Air France was targeted they may have been intercepting calls made anywhere in the world.
This is, by the way, what NSA and GCHQ are supposed to be doing. Intercepting foreign (to the US and UK respectively) communications.
Yes of course that is what those organizations should be doing. But we all know that they no longer restrict themselves to foreign surveillance. This means that if they were doing it against Air France back in 2005, they're now doing it in the US and UK now.
You make a very brazen assumption that they found him due to all of this domestic spying the GCHQ and NSA do. The article makes no mention of how he was found and killed. He may have been targeted and killed on accident. If it was a deliberate act, it is most likely that he was found via leaks on the ground. These terrorist organizations almost never use technology like cell phones, email, etc. They're very careful about it. The smart terrorists evade detection for years through these means. Just look at Osama Bin Laden. He was found by a CIA agent posing as a doctor in Pakistan, not by intercepts and spying in the US, UK, or any other country. I am more inclined to believe Patent Lover is correct - that they've found nearly zero terrorists of any significant value in this way. They can't even find clowns like the shoe bomber using all this illegal spying.
This ala carte thing is really backfiring - as much as I dislike Comcast, there is something to be said for getting everything in one bill. When you add up netflix, HBOgo, hulu, CBS, Amazon, and your choice of Directv NOW, Playstation TV, or that Dish/sling offering plus a decent internet connection, its already more than the tv+net package from the cable company and the content we want constantly disappears or has some goofy restriction placed on it. The media companies are making this WORSE...
Definitely not true for me. Not with the internet package I have, at least. I can spend over $70 on things before I match the price that Comcast wanted to add any TV bundle to my internet service. With that promo price of $35 for DirecTV now, I would still have over $35 to blow on things like Netflix before I started spending more than Comcast wanted.
don't need to wait for so long, they can trap you in your privately owned car today in the hot sun! breaking car windows from the inside without a large hard object is very difficult by the way.
How about American cricket fans? Cricket Ticket costs more, by itself, than I pay for gas, car insurance, electricity and water combined. And required an insane tv subscription as a prerequisite.
That's because only you 1%ers have the leisure time to sit around and watch a match for 5 days;)
Anecdotal, I know, but the few marijuana users I have known had little drive in their lives (career, education, hobbies). I always wondered whether their personality type caused the use of marijuana or vice versa (or neither). I wonder if this study might explain that.
My guess is their personality, but again my experience is just as anecdotal as yours. I only know a few people who went from smoking weed every day to full-blown pothead. And I know a few people who smoke every day but work incredibly hard. I have never personally tried the stuff, I've never had any inclination, but these kinds of studies should be taken with a grain of salt strictly because we allow people to legally drink alcohol, which is by all appearances far more deadly than marijuana, so why all the hate for people who want to smoke weed from time to time? Society deals with alcoholics, I suspect we can openly deal with potheads, too.
You mean like the Sugen combined-cycle power plant in Gujarat, India? Or one of the 22 nuclear reactors in operation at seven sites that generate about 25% of India's electricity?
Shhhh we're bashing India right now. You can come back with a comment on India's various achievements next time there's a Trump article posted. Don't worry, there will be one soon enough.
This seems to be very common at Amazon. Going by the FACE site, it shows a clear pattern of abuse, and I'm not surprised that this hasn't happened before.
Granted the FACE site is posted to those who are usually pissed at Amazon, but with so many postings and so often it shows that there is a clear pattern of employee abuse.
Hey look at this post from a friend of an Amazon employee! Maybe this person can start a support group? Doesn't sound like Amazon is going to start one.
Eating less fast food has far more to do with marketing than actually feeling full. No one stops in the middle of a Super-sized triple-decker McShitburger "happy" meal just because they feel full. Not when there's still 2 pounds of french fries left.
I almost never feel full. I don't know if it's my biome, my genome, my upbringing, or what. I always feel like I could eat more. As a teen and 20 something when I could eat unlimited amounts of crap and not gain weight, I would be one of those eating 5 or 6 plates of food from an all you can eat-buffet.
As I hit my 30's I began to gain weight so had to start watching what I eat. I'm always hungry, I always feel like I could eat more, but I limit what I eat to stay healthy. Some of us, myself included, never feel full. It takes a huge amount of willpower for me to not overeat and maintain a healthy weight. I fully sympathise with those who do get huge because they have large appetites. It would certainly be very easy to let go and just pig out rather than be hungry all the time, like I am.
Many people who are overweight aren't so because they continued eating after they felt full, they just don't feel full.
I am the same way. I played sports daily as a kid and college student and would literally eat all day. I do find that certain foods make me feel full - but never for long. I go from full to famished in about an hour. I basically starve myself all morning because, if I ate breakfast at home, I'd eat breakfast two more times in the office before an early lunch. Exercising on a daily basis causes me to increase my intake to 4-5000 calories a day. It's all a game of self control.
I'm not trying to claim that you have to coddle farmers at all. I am just saying that you could not afford to throw away 90% of the landmass of the US because you don't like their political views. That's not just food, that is military, national security, transportation, all those things that we take for granted because of the cohesiveness of the country. You do realize that most members of the military (not all) are from red states? And which blue states have nuclear submarines? Washington state and that's about it. I'm not trying to claim that the red states would nuke the blue states or vice versa. I am just saying that without the red states the blue states would not have very much in the way of self defense or security. And good luck maintaining a cohesive country with 2600 miles of flyover of a non-friendly country between your two most populous states. Sure, it's possible but shipping raw materials, food, and resources through the Panama canal is not cheaper than a train full of goods across the continent. You naively have this notion that California or whatever state you live in is so successful despite the country around it and not because of the benefits of that country and the (relatively) cohesive culture you find in the US. You also seem to naively believe that there are such vast differences between the reds and the blues when the fact of the matter is that the politicians are playing the reds and the blues against each other over stupid shit. The two parties are almost identical in every meaningful way and just have talking points about abortion, gay rights, immigration, and things like that. In general you don't see either side doing anything more than talking about touching any of those things. It's all a fucking show.
Of all of those channels, I only saw two or three that I would want to watch. I don't want ESPN. Should I completely cut the cable, let me choose the 10 channels I want, some of which aren't listed, for $1.00 each, and I might be all in. I might need to pay Comcast an extra $50 per month for unlimited data use because of data use limits now in force. I see very few channels that don't have commercials. I HATE commercials.
That would be ideal but that is exactly the situation that the channel owners / networks do not want. They force you to pay for channels you don't want to get the things you do want. The demographic that always gets screwed the most? Latin American soccer lovers. You want to get Univision Deportes? It's only ever in the most expensive package. I love soccer, but I am not crazy about it. There's no way I am paying for that pack just to watch a few soccer games.
To put this cost into perspective, though, I just picked up gigabit internet last week. The provider offered me something akin to this 60 channel package and wanted over $60 a month for it. I knew this was going to be unveiled soon and figured I would wait and see. It's honestly a bit of disappointment, but I might sign up for 3 months to try it out and get the free Apple TV.
Wait, you mean to tell me those who don't like paying obscene taxes on goods the rest of the world enjoys VAT-free, try and find ways around it?
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
In related news, I wonder how many of those high-level regulators who are super-pissed about this problem also enjoy tax loopholes on a personal level.
Speaking of loopholes, any chance regulators from the Tax Haven of the Universe (Ireland) are super-pissed? They shouldn't be, since they harbor tax evasion on a scale most can't even dream of.
Oh if only you could have bothered to read the summary.
Mostly, however, their prices remain in line with law-abiding competitors and the proceeds of evasion disappear overseas, often to China.
Why? This is an astonishing claim to make in the 21st century. We are not an agrarian society any more, let alone an agrarian society with slave states to humor. A very, very small number of people own the farms and they're already fairly well taken care of at the federal and state levels. One city vote should equal one rural vote.
You think it's astonishing? That California and New England can live without the flyover states? What incentive do the flyover states have in participating in the union if they can be trampled by California and New England and have no real say in the matter? California grows a lot of fruits and vegetables but most of US's grain and meat comes from flyover states. LA gets a lot of water from the Colorado river which also originates in, and passes through several low population states. Most military bases in California and the NE states have been closed as well. Pretty much the entire US nuclear arsenal is stored in a flyover state. So no, I don't think it's terribly astonishing or unreasonable to try and provide some incentive to the Midwest to participate in the union.
All the pre-launch publicity can be viewed as a massive exercise in building hype without actually committing to much at all. The language used irks me a lot as well, as it's bordering schizophrenia, but that's probably the point of it; they don't want to commit to anything, but make people think that's what they're getting. A case in point was the commonly asked question of whether you will see some other player... The answer was always that the universe is so large that statistically speaking it would be almost zero, but never gave the answer of 'no' because that wasn't implemented in the game.
Unfortunately no man's sky is a game which had a reasonably good concept, but it was then taken to a completely absurd level of marketing and spin. I just wonder how much of these problems are due to the forced hand of publishers who want their ROI, and how much was just incompetence from Hello Games?
Almost zero is not zero. It therefore implies that it is possible, even if its completely unlikely. However, without multiplayer support, the probability was exactly zero. So therefore they did lie and I have heard, from a coworker who bought the game, that there are several state attorney generals who are investigating the release of the game. I've also heard that the company basically vanished into thin air over night, so I am actually quite surprised to see there was an update.
Any right which is not stripped from the states is with the states according to the 10th amendment. So it would be a pretty high bar to prove that the Constitution forbids the states from directing the college members on how to vote.
True except that the election itself is a federal affair and should fall under federal power.
Read the context of my comment. The GGP was suggesting that the electoral college works because, if you ignore millions of voters, the electoral collage would match the popular vote.
IMHO, ignoring millions if voters isn't the way democracy should work. I was not arguing that the electoral college is not working as designed.
However, on that topic, I wonder if the founding fathers could imagine such large differences in the populations of the various states, and, had they realized how much the populations would differ, whether they would have not set the system up differently.
What do you mean? Do you think they would have set up the House of Representatives differently so that these large population centers can't have extra influence in the legislative branch? Or do you think it's only fair to correct imbalances of power in the election process for the executive branch?
Well, if they're not up for it now, the Democrats have 4 years to prepare a hardball strategy to vote as they deem fit
Funny you should say that, as the majority around here have been describing such a thing as "rigging the system" and arguing that the only fair thing for them to do is elect Trump.
As far as being realistic goes, the left as it stands probably doesn't have the guts or the endurance to try to kick up a fuss now, but they absolutely should be working on a long term strategy to influence the EC and to flood the media with messages about how the imbalance in electoral representation is a leftover compromise to give the former slave states extra power. Inspiring an actual revolt might be unrealistic, but they could probably kick up enough of a fuss to push through a reformation that would prevent (or at least make highly unlikely) this sort of thing from happening again.
I don't believe that it is just a leftover compromise, though. I believe that the unity of the nation depends on the "flyover states" having more power in presidential elections to compensate for their lesser power in the house of representatives. Are California and New York going to give up their extra power in the house to compensate? I doubt it. So why should the midwest and other less populous states give up their extra power in appointing the executive branch?
It would be one thing if he genuinely didn't get it. But he knows he is wrong and he makes the argument anyway. State laws is what obligates members of the electoral college to vote proportionately or winner-take-all. If states wanted to, they could change their laws through state legislatures. Lessig's argument is that the members of the electoral college should break the law. And, as a law professor, he knows it. As for whether or not the law should be changed, the electoral college acts as a check on corruption. If a certain locality decides to game the system by having a lot of fake votes, there is very little to stop it after the candidate takes office. Currently such a locality would only effect he votes of one state. Without electoral college, it would effect the vote count nation-wide. And, again as a law professor, Lessig knows this.
I don't believe anyone has tried to challenge state laws that bind their electoral voters, but I would expect such a law to be unconstitutional. The constitution allows states to pick their electoral college representatives but forcing them to vote in a specific way would undermine the whole point of the electoral college - to isolate the election of the president from a direct democracy.
This is proof the electoral college WORKS, not the other way around.
Apparently you don't believe in democracy. There is no legitimacy in a count that ignores millions of people just because they happen to live in or near one or two cities.
They weren't ignored. Their state elected Clinton. On December 19th, their representatives will vote for Clinton. Their votes were heard loud and clear. What I think you mean to argue is that the electoral college somehow makes their vote less powerful than the vote of someone who lives in say, Iowa. And while that may be true in the executive branch, California has a lot more pull in half of the legislative branch than any other state! So it's not like there aren't balances in the system.
Except what is being proposed here isn't a change. The electoral college would be operating exactly as it has in the past, as it was designed to be able to, and indeed as it was intended: giving the electors the ability to prevent a moronic populist from ascending to the presidency is arguably precisely the entire point of the electoral college. The fact that Hillary won the popular vote by millions is just a happy coincidence.
You hear that, all you people pro-electoral college people? The very core of the electoral college absolutely gives them the electors the right (barring state law requirements) and the duty to jump ship based on the needs of the country. Don't like it? Then you should support electoral college reform.
I personally think there are some fairly compelling arguments against this actually happening, but this needs to be said loudly and clearly for all of you smug pro-EC nutters who don't understand what it is what you're actually arguing for: You don't get to dismissively wave away appeals to the popular vote as irrelevant whilst simultaneously rejecting any possibility that the electors might execute their own judgment. Either you are for some form of electoral college reform, or you are completely fine with the possibility that they may yet choose to elect someone other than Donald J. Trump for President.
I'm pretty sure most of us pro EC people are well aware of the fact that it is perfectly legal for the EC to vote as they deem fit. I doubt that any law that a state erects to force them to vote a particular way could even be used to change their vote as the constitution would have power over state law in that case. The fact of the matter is that the EC rarely chooses to exercise that power, and is unlikely to do so in this case as well. However, I would tend to argue that the fact that we ended up with Clinton and Trump as the two choices in the most popular parties in the US implies that far more of the population is moronic than you seem to be suggesting.
If droughts were a regular feature in that part of the world, then THE FUCKING TREES WOULDN'T BE DYING FROM IT. They would have already evolved to deal with it. But species that are NATIVE to the afflicted regions are dying off IN DROVES. That means they are NOT adapted, which implies that such events are rare at best, hence why they are DYING.
No, it's not a good thing.
The problem with that theory is that the tree mix in California is not what it historically used to be. California used to be mostly Black Oaks and other deciduous trees intermixed with some conifers - douglas firs, etc. At least, that was the case in the Sierra Nevada foothills and lower elevations. If you go there now, you'll rarely see any oak trees - they were all cut down in the 1800s. The conifers were blocked out by the oaks and, since oaks take up more space, there were fewer trees in the same land area. Without the competition for space, the conifers really took over as they grow much more quickly than an oak.
If Apple never admits their flaws, then how come I got a Free bumper for my iPhone 4 years back when some were complaining that the glass back was too fragile?
That bumper wasn't because the glass was shattering. It was because of antenna gate. Left handed phone users had difficulty making a phone call in areas where there wasn't absolutely perfect reception because the antenna placement would cause your hand to detune the antenna.
The timeline is well explained in some of the stories. If you don't understand, that's a personal fault of yours, and in no way affects the well documented incident (with medical reports, and confirmation/denials from Apple) all consistent and well explained.
Medical records which don't indicate anything other than the patient reporting the burns to have come from an iPhone7. Let's review the time as reported by the patient:
Melanie Tan Pelaez had her iPhone 7 plugged into the charger and was watching movies from her device when she fell asleep
In the morning, she woke up to pins and needles down her arm and knew something was wrong.
“I went to get dressed and realised my arm was very red, so I then went to the GP and they advised me I needed to go straight to the hospital”
“The hospital did a number of tests and told me the mark was a burn from a foreign object and told me to check around my bed to see what could be the cause of the injury.”
Patient returns for a follow up with a discharge note that suggested burn came from iPhone 7 but doesn't indicate how this was determined as referenced in this photo.
Patient takes phone to Apple Store. They indicate the phone shows no signs of having caught fire
Apple sends the phone to California to have an engineer analyze the phone.
Ms Tan Pelaez said she has been offered a new iPhone 7 from Apple, but that is all that has come from the tech giant. She declined the phone. One would assume that Apple offered her a new phone since they have the old one.
So where is there some sort of forensic analysis that the burns match an iPhone? They sure as hell don't look anything like an iPhone to me. Where did Apple confirm anything? There's nothing in the timeline to suggest that any of this is related to an iPhone. And where in all of this did she stop to take a picture of the phone? Wouldn't you document it if you thought your phone caught fire and burned you? Or is she suggesting that the phone got so hot that it caused the burns pictured but that it did not cause the battery pack to swell or any other signs of damage to show on the phone?
Slashdot Mirror
Sooooo, Google Voice? Except GV is carrier independent, and free, so I guess that's what sets it apart.
I actually just tried to sign up for this with GV recently and my only two options were 1) Port my existing number to GV to get free service or 2) pay for GV to be able to keep my number with my current provider. Since I don't want to port my number, I just went with a different company that charges $1 to set it up and $0.01 per minute to accept calls on the new number I wanted.
Makes no claims that the NSA was intercepting calls made by those people in the US, nor GCHQ in the UK. Since Air France was targeted they may have been intercepting calls made anywhere in the world.
This is, by the way, what NSA and GCHQ are supposed to be doing. Intercepting foreign (to the US and UK respectively) communications.
Yes of course that is what those organizations should be doing. But we all know that they no longer restrict themselves to foreign surveillance. This means that if they were doing it against Air France back in 2005, they're now doing it in the US and UK now.
Since you seem to be very factually challenged.
You make a very brazen assumption that they found him due to all of this domestic spying the GCHQ and NSA do. The article makes no mention of how he was found and killed. He may have been targeted and killed on accident. If it was a deliberate act, it is most likely that he was found via leaks on the ground. These terrorist organizations almost never use technology like cell phones, email, etc. They're very careful about it. The smart terrorists evade detection for years through these means. Just look at Osama Bin Laden. He was found by a CIA agent posing as a doctor in Pakistan, not by intercepts and spying in the US, UK, or any other country. I am more inclined to believe Patent Lover is correct - that they've found nearly zero terrorists of any significant value in this way. They can't even find clowns like the shoe bomber using all this illegal spying.
This ala carte thing is really backfiring - as much as I dislike Comcast, there is something to be said for getting everything in one bill. When you add up netflix, HBOgo, hulu, CBS, Amazon, and your choice of Directv NOW, Playstation TV, or that Dish/sling offering plus a decent internet connection, its already more than the tv+net package from the cable company and the content we want constantly disappears or has some goofy restriction placed on it. The media companies are making this WORSE...
Definitely not true for me. Not with the internet package I have, at least. I can spend over $70 on things before I match the price that Comcast wanted to add any TV bundle to my internet service. With that promo price of $35 for DirecTV now, I would still have over $35 to blow on things like Netflix before I started spending more than Comcast wanted.
don't need to wait for so long, they can trap you in your privately owned car today in the hot sun! breaking car windows from the inside without a large hard object is very difficult by the way.
So you're saying Ron Jeremy will be safe?
How about American cricket fans? Cricket Ticket costs more, by itself, than I pay for gas, car insurance, electricity and water combined. And required an insane tv subscription as a prerequisite.
That's because only you 1%ers have the leisure time to sit around and watch a match for 5 days ;)
Anecdotal, I know, but the few marijuana users I have known had little drive in their lives (career, education, hobbies). I always wondered whether their personality type caused the use of marijuana or vice versa (or neither). I wonder if this study might explain that.
My guess is their personality, but again my experience is just as anecdotal as yours. I only know a few people who went from smoking weed every day to full-blown pothead. And I know a few people who smoke every day but work incredibly hard. I have never personally tried the stuff, I've never had any inclination, but these kinds of studies should be taken with a grain of salt strictly because we allow people to legally drink alcohol, which is by all appearances far more deadly than marijuana, so why all the hate for people who want to smoke weed from time to time? Society deals with alcoholics, I suspect we can openly deal with potheads, too.
You mean like the Sugen combined-cycle power plant in Gujarat, India? Or one of the 22 nuclear reactors in operation at seven sites that generate about 25% of India's electricity?
Shhhh we're bashing India right now. You can come back with a comment on India's various achievements next time there's a Trump article posted. Don't worry, there will be one soon enough.
I don't see the point in installing cameras in Catholic churches. Church of Elvis maybe...
Think of the children! How many alter boys would benefit from have mass surveillance?
This seems to be very common at Amazon. Going by the FACE site, it shows a clear pattern of abuse, and I'm not surprised that this hasn't happened before.
Granted the FACE site is posted to those who are usually pissed at Amazon, but with so many postings and so often it shows that there is a clear pattern of employee abuse.
Hey look at this post from a friend of an Amazon employee! Maybe this person can start a support group? Doesn't sound like Amazon is going to start one.
Eating less fast food has far more to do with marketing than actually feeling full. No one stops in the middle of a Super-sized triple-decker McShitburger "happy" meal just because they feel full. Not when there's still 2 pounds of french fries left.
I almost never feel full. I don't know if it's my biome, my genome, my upbringing, or what. I always feel like I could eat more. As a teen and 20 something when I could eat unlimited amounts of crap and not gain weight, I would be one of those eating 5 or 6 plates of food from an all you can eat-buffet.
As I hit my 30's I began to gain weight so had to start watching what I eat. I'm always hungry, I always feel like I could eat more, but I limit what I eat to stay healthy. Some of us, myself included, never feel full. It takes a huge amount of willpower for me to not overeat and maintain a healthy weight. I fully sympathise with those who do get huge because they have large appetites. It would certainly be very easy to let go and just pig out rather than be hungry all the time, like I am.
Many people who are overweight aren't so because they continued eating after they felt full, they just don't feel full.
I am the same way. I played sports daily as a kid and college student and would literally eat all day. I do find that certain foods make me feel full - but never for long. I go from full to famished in about an hour. I basically starve myself all morning because, if I ate breakfast at home, I'd eat breakfast two more times in the office before an early lunch. Exercising on a daily basis causes me to increase my intake to 4-5000 calories a day. It's all a game of self control.
I'm not trying to claim that you have to coddle farmers at all. I am just saying that you could not afford to throw away 90% of the landmass of the US because you don't like their political views. That's not just food, that is military, national security, transportation, all those things that we take for granted because of the cohesiveness of the country. You do realize that most members of the military (not all) are from red states? And which blue states have nuclear submarines? Washington state and that's about it. I'm not trying to claim that the red states would nuke the blue states or vice versa. I am just saying that without the red states the blue states would not have very much in the way of self defense or security. And good luck maintaining a cohesive country with 2600 miles of flyover of a non-friendly country between your two most populous states. Sure, it's possible but shipping raw materials, food, and resources through the Panama canal is not cheaper than a train full of goods across the continent. You naively have this notion that California or whatever state you live in is so successful despite the country around it and not because of the benefits of that country and the (relatively) cohesive culture you find in the US. You also seem to naively believe that there are such vast differences between the reds and the blues when the fact of the matter is that the politicians are playing the reds and the blues against each other over stupid shit. The two parties are almost identical in every meaningful way and just have talking points about abortion, gay rights, immigration, and things like that. In general you don't see either side doing anything more than talking about touching any of those things. It's all a fucking show.
Of all of those channels, I only saw two or three that I would want to watch. I don't want ESPN. Should I completely cut the cable, let me choose the 10 channels I want, some of which aren't listed, for $1.00 each, and I might be all in. I might need to pay Comcast an extra $50 per month for unlimited data use because of data use limits now in force. I see very few channels that don't have commercials. I HATE commercials.
That would be ideal but that is exactly the situation that the channel owners / networks do not want. They force you to pay for channels you don't want to get the things you do want. The demographic that always gets screwed the most? Latin American soccer lovers. You want to get Univision Deportes? It's only ever in the most expensive package. I love soccer, but I am not crazy about it. There's no way I am paying for that pack just to watch a few soccer games.
To put this cost into perspective, though, I just picked up gigabit internet last week. The provider offered me something akin to this 60 channel package and wanted over $60 a month for it. I knew this was going to be unveiled soon and figured I would wait and see. It's honestly a bit of disappointment, but I might sign up for 3 months to try it out and get the free Apple TV.
Wait, you mean to tell me those who don't like paying obscene taxes on goods the rest of the world enjoys VAT-free, try and find ways around it?
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
In related news, I wonder how many of those high-level regulators who are super-pissed about this problem also enjoy tax loopholes on a personal level.
Speaking of loopholes, any chance regulators from the Tax Haven of the Universe (Ireland) are super-pissed? They shouldn't be, since they harbor tax evasion on a scale most can't even dream of.
Oh if only you could have bothered to read the summary.
Why? This is an astonishing claim to make in the 21st century. We are not an agrarian society any more, let alone an agrarian society with slave states to humor. A very, very small number of people own the farms and they're already fairly well taken care of at the federal and state levels. One city vote should equal one rural vote.
You think it's astonishing? That California and New England can live without the flyover states? What incentive do the flyover states have in participating in the union if they can be trampled by California and New England and have no real say in the matter? California grows a lot of fruits and vegetables but most of US's grain and meat comes from flyover states. LA gets a lot of water from the Colorado river which also originates in, and passes through several low population states. Most military bases in California and the NE states have been closed as well. Pretty much the entire US nuclear arsenal is stored in a flyover state. So no, I don't think it's terribly astonishing or unreasonable to try and provide some incentive to the Midwest to participate in the union.
All the pre-launch publicity can be viewed as a massive exercise in building hype without actually committing to much at all. The language used irks me a lot as well, as it's bordering schizophrenia, but that's probably the point of it; they don't want to commit to anything, but make people think that's what they're getting. A case in point was the commonly asked question of whether you will see some other player... The answer was always that the universe is so large that statistically speaking it would be almost zero, but never gave the answer of 'no' because that wasn't implemented in the game.
Unfortunately no man's sky is a game which had a reasonably good concept, but it was then taken to a completely absurd level of marketing and spin. I just wonder how much of these problems are due to the forced hand of publishers who want their ROI, and how much was just incompetence from Hello Games?
Almost zero is not zero. It therefore implies that it is possible, even if its completely unlikely. However, without multiplayer support, the probability was exactly zero. So therefore they did lie and I have heard, from a coworker who bought the game, that there are several state attorney generals who are investigating the release of the game. I've also heard that the company basically vanished into thin air over night, so I am actually quite surprised to see there was an update.
Any right which is not stripped from the states is with the states according to the 10th amendment. So it would be a pretty high bar to prove that the Constitution forbids the states from directing the college members on how to vote.
True except that the election itself is a federal affair and should fall under federal power.
Read the context of my comment. The GGP was suggesting that the electoral college works because, if you ignore millions of voters, the electoral collage would match the popular vote.
IMHO, ignoring millions if voters isn't the way democracy should work. I was not arguing that the electoral college is not working as designed.
However, on that topic, I wonder if the founding fathers could imagine such large differences in the populations of the various states, and, had they realized how much the populations would differ, whether they would have not set the system up differently.
What do you mean? Do you think they would have set up the House of Representatives differently so that these large population centers can't have extra influence in the legislative branch? Or do you think it's only fair to correct imbalances of power in the election process for the executive branch?
Well, if they're not up for it now, the Democrats have 4 years to prepare a hardball strategy to vote as they deem fit
Funny you should say that, as the majority around here have been describing such a thing as "rigging the system" and arguing that the only fair thing for them to do is elect Trump. As far as being realistic goes, the left as it stands probably doesn't have the guts or the endurance to try to kick up a fuss now, but they absolutely should be working on a long term strategy to influence the EC and to flood the media with messages about how the imbalance in electoral representation is a leftover compromise to give the former slave states extra power. Inspiring an actual revolt might be unrealistic, but they could probably kick up enough of a fuss to push through a reformation that would prevent (or at least make highly unlikely) this sort of thing from happening again.
I don't believe that it is just a leftover compromise, though. I believe that the unity of the nation depends on the "flyover states" having more power in presidential elections to compensate for their lesser power in the house of representatives. Are California and New York going to give up their extra power in the house to compensate? I doubt it. So why should the midwest and other less populous states give up their extra power in appointing the executive branch?
It would be one thing if he genuinely didn't get it. But he knows he is wrong and he makes the argument anyway. State laws is what obligates members of the electoral college to vote proportionately or winner-take-all. If states wanted to, they could change their laws through state legislatures. Lessig's argument is that the members of the electoral college should break the law. And, as a law professor, he knows it. As for whether or not the law should be changed, the electoral college acts as a check on corruption. If a certain locality decides to game the system by having a lot of fake votes, there is very little to stop it after the candidate takes office. Currently such a locality would only effect he votes of one state. Without electoral college, it would effect the vote count nation-wide. And, again as a law professor, Lessig knows this.
I don't believe anyone has tried to challenge state laws that bind their electoral voters, but I would expect such a law to be unconstitutional. The constitution allows states to pick their electoral college representatives but forcing them to vote in a specific way would undermine the whole point of the electoral college - to isolate the election of the president from a direct democracy.
Apparently you don't believe in democracy. There is no legitimacy in a count that ignores millions of people just because they happen to live in or near one or two cities.
They weren't ignored. Their state elected Clinton. On December 19th, their representatives will vote for Clinton. Their votes were heard loud and clear. What I think you mean to argue is that the electoral college somehow makes their vote less powerful than the vote of someone who lives in say, Iowa. And while that may be true in the executive branch, California has a lot more pull in half of the legislative branch than any other state! So it's not like there aren't balances in the system.
Except what is being proposed here isn't a change. The electoral college would be operating exactly as it has in the past, as it was designed to be able to, and indeed as it was intended: giving the electors the ability to prevent a moronic populist from ascending to the presidency is arguably precisely the entire point of the electoral college. The fact that Hillary won the popular vote by millions is just a happy coincidence. You hear that, all you people pro-electoral college people? The very core of the electoral college absolutely gives them the electors the right (barring state law requirements) and the duty to jump ship based on the needs of the country. Don't like it? Then you should support electoral college reform. I personally think there are some fairly compelling arguments against this actually happening, but this needs to be said loudly and clearly for all of you smug pro-EC nutters who don't understand what it is what you're actually arguing for: You don't get to dismissively wave away appeals to the popular vote as irrelevant whilst simultaneously rejecting any possibility that the electors might execute their own judgment. Either you are for some form of electoral college reform, or you are completely fine with the possibility that they may yet choose to elect someone other than Donald J. Trump for President.
I'm pretty sure most of us pro EC people are well aware of the fact that it is perfectly legal for the EC to vote as they deem fit. I doubt that any law that a state erects to force them to vote a particular way could even be used to change their vote as the constitution would have power over state law in that case. The fact of the matter is that the EC rarely chooses to exercise that power, and is unlikely to do so in this case as well. However, I would tend to argue that the fact that we ended up with Clinton and Trump as the two choices in the most popular parties in the US implies that far more of the population is moronic than you seem to be suggesting.
If droughts were a regular feature in that part of the world, then THE FUCKING TREES WOULDN'T BE DYING FROM IT. They would have already evolved to deal with it. But species that are NATIVE to the afflicted regions are dying off IN DROVES. That means they are NOT adapted, which implies that such events are rare at best, hence why they are DYING.
No, it's not a good thing.
The problem with that theory is that the tree mix in California is not what it historically used to be. California used to be mostly Black Oaks and other deciduous trees intermixed with some conifers - douglas firs, etc. At least, that was the case in the Sierra Nevada foothills and lower elevations. If you go there now, you'll rarely see any oak trees - they were all cut down in the 1800s. The conifers were blocked out by the oaks and, since oaks take up more space, there were fewer trees in the same land area. Without the competition for space, the conifers really took over as they grow much more quickly than an oak.
If Apple never admits their flaws, then how come I got a Free bumper for my iPhone 4 years back when some were complaining that the glass back was too fragile?
That bumper wasn't because the glass was shattering. It was because of antenna gate. Left handed phone users had difficulty making a phone call in areas where there wasn't absolutely perfect reception because the antenna placement would cause your hand to detune the antenna.
The timeline is well explained in some of the stories. If you don't understand, that's a personal fault of yours, and in no way affects the well documented incident (with medical reports, and confirmation/denials from Apple) all consistent and well explained.
Medical records which don't indicate anything other than the patient reporting the burns to have come from an iPhone7. Let's review the time as reported by the patient:
So where is there some sort of forensic analysis that the burns match an iPhone? They sure as hell don't look anything like an iPhone to me. Where did Apple confirm anything? There's nothing in the timeline to suggest that any of this is related to an iPhone. And where in all of this did she stop to take a picture of the phone? Wouldn't you document it if you thought your phone caught fire and burned you? Or is she suggesting that the phone got so hot that it caused the burns pictured but that it did not cause the battery pack to swell or any other signs of damage to show on the phone?