Having seen many companies where IT is indeed on a power trip, with everything locked down tight and network monitoring to determine if any new hardware shows up on the network (collectively known as the IT fascists, and no, this was not a defense contractor or some other similar situation where super-max lock-down was warranted), where I currently work I think we have the best, most reasonable balance. Engineers typically have free reign on their own PCs as far as installing/modifying software, installing hardware locally etc. The general rule is if it connects to the network, we shoot an email to IT with it's details.
All other departments who cannot show a business case otherwise have their PCs locked down and are not allowed to install new hardware on the network without permission from IT. We used to have a few managers who were originally engineers back in the Jurassic age who wanted their PCs unlocked, but that ended when one of them clicked on some spam with a virus payload and got his machined wrecked. Those who have the competence to handle it and the business need have their PCs unlocked, everyone else has them locked down for security reasons as well as the convenience of IT.
Doors, plumbing, AC wiring, lighting etc. are handled by facilities. Now if you have smart doors that are key-less entry and the malfunction is on the reader or the system behind the reader, then yes, you will likely fix that in IT. IT is essentially a handyman for anything that transmits or stores information. If it has an Ethernet plug or WiFi antenna, you guys will get to fix it/replace it.
If you just want to write software, there is a completely different job for you. It is called software engineer... Those guys usually work closely with electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. If it isn't code related, an EE fixes it if it has an electrical component and an ME fixes it if it has a physical problem. Though the software guys still end up doing a lot of the integrated testing and debugging, since their code usually brings it all together past the basic motion tests MEs will do and the basic scope/function tests that the EEs do.
If the press actually cared about the truth and having accurate, verified facts, I would care more. As it is, Gawker got what they legally deserved, and I hope Hogan owns the houses of the asshats in charge at Gawker and everyone else associated with that sex tape too. Actions have consequences, and we have an out of control press these days that cares more about their agenda than they do about the truth. That is by far more dangerous to our democracy than a few rich people buying newspapers to get better press.
Something like 50% of all adults no longer trust CNN now, thanks to all their BS reporting of the Russian hacking and followon reporting. That is not a good place to be for a news outlet. When CNN ties MSNBC for distrust numbers, maybe they will clean house and start pursuing the truth, regardless of who benefits... But I am not holding my breath.
The harsh reality your small mind can't handle is there is no comparison. The liberals were the fascists in the Nazi party (Nazi meaning new socialist), they supported the fascists in Communist regimes around the world who for the last 70 years have murdered hundreds of millions of innocents, and the liberals are the fascists today, who cannot tolerate any other viewpoints or questioning of their theories (socialism/communism/atheisim/progressiveism/multiculturalism/diversity/evolution/AGW/...) and the list goes on. If you question any of these you are demagogued. You "hate poor people" or you are "a religious fanatic" or you are a "racist" or a "climate denier". Notice that none of these ad homonym attacks actually refute the underlying problems with each of their positions, they just attempt to vilify the opposition. If you do this enough, some liberals start believing that the opposition is actually evil and you start to see violence (violent protests: Berkeley riots against conservative speakers, violence against the opposition: we had people bashed in the head with a bike lock and a man tried to assassinate 12 Republican congressmen, etc) and we are currently seeing this right now. This can go 3 ways:
1. Liberal progressives in the media and left wing political leaders can tone down the BS rhetoric and support the rule of law. Police are allowed to do their job and the people breaking the law are confined and punished.
2. Liberal progressives in the media and left wing political leaders choose not to tone down their rhetoric and the republicans, most of whom are just moderate centrists, but whom hold the house, senate and WH, begin to enforce laws against inciting violence, throwing people like Kathy Gifford in prison for a few years. The left wing nuts who incited James Hodgkinson to attempt the assassination of US representatives are hunted down through his digital footprint and incarcerated for any and all incitement that they committed.
3. Liberal progressive fascists in the media and left wing political leaders choose not to tone down their rhetoric. Government at all levels is apathetic or ineffectual at controlling those breaking the law. There is some catalytic event (video of a child being killed by left wing nuts at a conservative rally after police are told to stand down, for example) that triggers a civil war between the fascists and the rest of the country.
I am hoping for #1, I would settle for #2, I am praying that it doesn't get to #3.
Those who are ignorant of history (and reality) are doomed to repeat it.
Well, right now it is 100% left wing progressive fascist indoctrination camps, and variation on that theme, the only difference is degrees. Every patriotic American should be against these bastardized versions of what college was supposed to be, especially on the taxpayer dime. If you can't recognize the fact that colleges (and more specifically college professors) are out of control rabid, fascist leftists, you are part of the problem.
How about eliminating the antiquated concept of tenure entirely and require professors to perform just like every other profession. Their job is to teach the course in a professional and accurate manner, there should be a requirement to focus on the content and keep your shitty political views to yourself unless you are teaching a poli sci class, and even then you must bring in both view points faithfully, since it is a roughly even split in the country, it should be taught with balance, and grading against conservatives solely against their point of view should be grounds for discipline or dismissal.
The bottom line is that not all colleges are the same degree of out of control, but conservatives are done paying for the liberal indoctrination camps. The fascist progressives (who btw, are by far the largest fascist group in the US in modern history) have overreached and they are in the process of violently collapsing.
This kind of thing is fraud, and it is high time that any developer or company that buys the developer or an app needs to be held to account, criminally (i.e. PMITA prison time) for the practice of selling an app, then updating it later removing features or adding adware/other unwanted shit not in the original app that you bought.
It is like buying a car, and then when you take it in for a oil change the dealer rips out the seats and replaces them with lawn chairs while selling the seats to a third party. It would be a no-brainer in the phsyical world, but due to international borders, abstraction of software, etc. this crap goes largely unpunished.
At the very least, the companies and individuals involved should be blackballed by Google and Apple and banned for life from submitting any apps to the app store or owning any apps/updating any apps listed in the app store. It is in Google/Apple's best interest to protect their users from this kind of crap.
Except all those other countries have fractional costs due to the fact that the US pays to develop all of the medical equipment, all the drugs, all the therapies, all the surgical techniques, etc. Something like 80% plus of all of the above are developed in the US and the rest of the world rips us off with generics and clones, etc. Beyond that, thousands if not millions of people world wide die while waiting for treatment in your "socialized healthcare Nirvana" around the world. In Canada, for example, doctors offices essentially shut down towards the end of the year since the money runs out before the end of the year, and Canada won't pay for life saving drugs that you can get in the US. https://www.city-journal.org/h...
BTW, WTF do you think Medicaid is anyway? It is by definition socialized healthcare funded by the state. Most of us don't want that shitty care though, we want affordable, high quality, responsive, free market healthcare, which was the envy of the world until Obamacare shit all over it. No one is arguing that health insurance shouldn't be regulated, just that for the majority of Americans who can afford to pay for it shouldn't have to subsidize the poor with the same top end of insurance.
Criminal prosecution is better. If they are not criminally convicted, they can often declare bankruptcy, shield their assets offshore or with other shady methods and those they stole from are SOL. If they are criminally convicted, I don't think you can get rid of judgments against you through bankruptcy, though IANAL.
We have a limited power representative government with Republicans holding a slight majority. There is a difference between goals and reality. If a few Democrats would admit that Obamacare is an utter failure and vote for the repeal/replace instead of digging in their heels just for shits and giggles, Obamacare would already be replaced. But the Dims don't give a shit about the country or people, only their own power.
Out of millions of statements by thousands of Republicans, yes, you can find a few mis-statements (but I understand the intent, to damn the entire group by the mis-statements of one). The statement you cite was clarified, and the intent, in part, was to reflect the reality of the recent spate of false rape allegations like Tawana Brawley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and Crystal Gail Mangum (Duke Lacrosse rape allegations) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and the list goes on. Not all rape allegations are false, but not all are legitimate, clearly.
Beyond the legitimacy of the rape allegation, medical statistics indicate that just 5% of rape results in pregnancy, and most of those pregnancies occur in statutory rape (consentuality is not differentiated in the study) where the perpetrator is known by the victim and the act is frequent (so most of these pregnancies could be consentual sex between 18 year old boyfriend and 17 year old girl friend and they would still count as a rape pregnancy). Those are just the medical facts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Then you should be pleased to know that you breathe far more water every day than CO2 and we will never approach even 0.5% CO2, and indeed all indications from the raw data are that global CO2 concentration is a myth (as some kind of fixed constant). CO2 concentration is actively consumed by plant life, meaning it peaks where CO2 is produced, and valleys where it is consumed by plants. CO2 is plant food and is limited not by production but by plant life (mostly in the ocean) and will never exceed 0.08% (we think we are around 0.04% right now based on one observation station in Hawii for the entire planet, but even those readings can fluctuate by 600PPM in a single day, and we have plenty of historical evidence that in the 1800s they were measuring CO2 as high as 0.06% or higher, but the data has been cherry picked to support a false narrative of increasing CO2 levels. http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-... We also have long term data (thousands of years) showing plant and animal life flourished during CO2 levels that were a little higher, so you should not be worried in the slightest. I sure as hell am not worried, I just try to post so that those who are brainwashed can get a brief glimpse of knowledge every once in a while in the hopes that it will gradually undo their brainwashing/programming, hopefully before they manage to collapse our society with their ignorance.
Because we are soooo close to having that condition at 400PPM... Oh wait, that's complete bullshit (that's.04% since you clearly have no math skills or comprehension of proportion).
VR on PC suffers from the same issue that most things on PC suffer from, too much complexity, which is why the PSVR has been outselling all the PC VR platforms. They have sold over 1 Million units so far with no signs of slowing down. The PSVR offers the best of both worlds: online VR content as well as a huge library of 100% compatible games that you can play, without all the headaches of PC. The other barrier to entry on PC is the rig that you have to have. If you already have a PS4, you are good to go, if you are hardcore, you can drop $400 for the PS4 pro. On PC you are looking at at least a $1200 PC. If Zuck were smart, he would partner with Microsoft and tailor Occulus for the Xbox Scorpion (or whatever they are calling it these days). Most people who would buy and use VR aren't willing to put up with the hassle or price of PC (as evidenced by their falling numbers).
At 2.25% there probably won't be that big of an impact, but if they ever ratchet it up to 5%, or definitely at 10% you will start to see all kinds of rich homes popping up just outside the city limits, and the city will get no income tax revenue as well as missing out on the property tax revenue, but liberals never quite figure out that the rich are thinking people too who act in their own interest...
Carbon emissions... get back to me when you are interested in real pollution (like China and India are putting out by the metric ton). Anyone who wants to call CO2 emissions a pollutant should be required to try to live without it for a month.
Who exactly will be killed by the repeal of Obamacare? Medicaid and Medicare still exist, there are still over 12,000 free clinics in the US, and no ER in the country can turn you away without treatment. On top of that, there are hundreds of minute clinics (and other similar clinics) where you can get checked out by an RNP for $90 with no insurance...
The whole point of buying insurance is to cover against something unexpected. If you choose not to buy insurance and then you have a massive medical expense that creates a pre-existing condition, sorry, you played Russian Roulette and lost. Why should the rest of us who have been paying for insurance all along for being healthy foot the bill for your medical costs after you chose not to buy insurance to begin with (which is what is going on with pre-existing conditions).
Obamacare was nothing about fixing health care or making it more affordable, it was a massive socialist giveaway to the indigent and working poor on the backs of the middle class, which is why everyone who is reading this post (who works for a living) is now paying 120% more for insurance that now has deductibles 2-5x higher than before Obamacare. Rather than making it affordable for everyone, Obamacare made it free for some at the expense of the middle class, who can ill afford a $8,000/year increase in cost of insurance, plus $5000/year deductibles for a family of 4. The increases are not making the insurance companies rich either, many of who have been posting losses and pulling out of exchanges because all that money goes straight to people with pre-existing conditions and/or premium subsidies for the poor.
Poor people deserve what they earn; nothing. Out of the kindness of our hearts, we provide many free medical services for them in the form of free clinics that may or may not have long lines and Medicaid that may or may not have access to a doctor that they like or longer wait times, but beggars can't be choosers (except in Obamacare, apparently). The US sure as hell can't afford to give them all top tier medical care (as evidenced by the cratering of Obamacare along with out of control insurance premiums.)
The rich get most of the tax cuts these days because the bottom 45% of workers DONT PAY ANY TAXES (and no, SS is not a tax per se, it is a benefit that you are paying into, since you will get Social Security when you hit 68 or 70).
Sorry, you were right about the Democrats, they want to tax everything while creating class warfare in order to buy the votes of every entitlement taking person in the country. They do not give a shit that welfare ruins people's lives and destroys their sense of worth, they want those votes.
OTOH, the Republicans are students of history as well as reality. They know that if you tax the rich too much, the rich will move physically or their business incorporation HQ to a more favorable tax haven. Is it better to tax the rich at 25% and actually get 25%, or tax the rich at 90% and have them move all their business beyond your taxing borders (usually taking jobs with them). The reality is that it is better for everyone if taxes are consistent percentages with no exemptions at all (or standard exemptions based on family size). Everyone should pay something though.
All the Trump bashing has created a negative straw man of the president, but when we are two years into his term and the economy is growing at 6% and jobs are through the roof, the Russia farce is played out for what it was, and all the asshats in the media have trust numbers lower than dirt, it will be interesting to see how the public views Trump. He is clearly not a politician, but so far, his actual actions have been pretty populist (rather than pro business).
There is already a perfectly valid way to invest in the US, it is called the stock market.
What this did was provide a path for rich people to buy their way into the country, rather than stand in line like everyone else. Also, this EO would have seen hundreds of startups for the sole purpose of getting their rich owners into the US. It wasn't even clear to me how many if any employees they needed to sustain to be a valid business for the Visa.
Incorporation only protects you from personal civil liability, it does nothing to insulate you from criminal liability. Further, if there is fraud or certain other types of crime, incorporation does not protect you from prosecution or recovery by victims.
However, you may be right in that the feds will confiscate all of his assets, but it will only amount to a few bucks per person he defrauded.
"The age of the earth is plenty of evidence. It's well understood though that you can't prove or disprove the divine... you can just shift the goalposts "who said time was constant", "the dinosaurs were created in-situ as a test of faith", "who said the decay of C-14 was stable?"
Straw man arguments aside: - Time is constant - Dinosarus were destroyed during the global flood (which is why they are always in sedimentary rock, found in corpse rafts, and are no longer around.) - C-14 levels are currently changing in the atmosphere. C-14 levels should be stable after about 16,000 years (decay=creation) but they are not. If the earth is millions of years old, that's a problem. If it is ~10,000 years old, it makes sense... It also means that assuming constant C-14 levels throws off all of your carbon dating tests if that is not the case (which is why penguins that died 200 years ago radiocarbon date 2000 years old.) Radiocarbon dating, along with other radioisotope dating, have huge problems to the point where they are meaningless because if your ruler is not consistent, your measurement cannot be...
What we are actually discussing in part is not science but history, and how/if/when we can apply science to history. The age of the earth according to Evolution is a massive rubber ruler, based on inherent assumptions about radioactive decay of mantle minerals that are in fact totally blind assumptions. This is why over the last 70ish years, the earth went from millions of years to billions of years old according to "science", based on pure conjecture and circular logic.
It is a common assertion by Atheists and evolutionists that you can't prove the divine because they are unwilling to accept the possibility. For the rational man, it is simple: Will the universe/atoms last forever? No. Then there must be a divine to have created it, since anything finite must have a beginning. The assertion that nothing exploded and caused the big bang is irrational.
To understand history, we must examine the evidence since history is not science and we cannot directly observe/test it. I am not sure who you should take up your complaint there, since that is simple logic.
I believe what I believe based on reasoned faith. If Evolutionists/Athiests could come up with something better than it rained on rocks and they came alive, or the banana turned into the dog, with no genetic evidence, no duplication of evolution/creative mutations in a lab, etc. I might take them more seriously. If someone comes along with a more reasonable explanation with better evidence, I am open to listening and learning from a skeptical point of view.
"Jesus established his church on earth through the gospel and it's been recorded in the bible. Questioning the pope and distancing Roman Catholicism as "not true Christian", only changes the conversation to one of how you interpret your personal Christianity. Roman Catholicism is hardly the fringe of Christianity."
Your statement is like saying that Saudi Arabia is Islam. There are fundamental precepts of Christianity that existed before the RC church, (which didn't come along until 1054AD), over 1000 years after the founding of the Christian church. The RC church broke away from the Orthodox Church, which still exists today and is a much more accurate representation of Christian beliefs. The RC church likes to claim all Christians belong to the RC church to inflate their importance and legitimacy, but most Christians do not belong to the RC church or practice it's tennants. Equating all/most Christianity to the RC church is disingenuous and factually incorrect. It is not about personal this or that, it is about facts in historical evidence, that exist for all to see if you are willing to look into it.
It is perfectly healthy to be skeptical of all beliefs/theories, after all there are some pretty silly beliefs out there, like bananas that can turn into dogs, or mineral water can come to life...
"This kind of stuff certainly shouldn't be taught in schools... it's bad religion masquerading as bad science."
I agree with you wholeheartedly, Evolution is bad religion (Athiesim) masquerading as science, and it has no place in schools.
Net neutrality using the FCC was always a bad idea from a regulatory standpoint. The FCC has no business regulating the internet or ISPs. Net neutrality needs to be passed as a law (or won via lawsuit). There is clearly public demand for a net neutrality law, so call your congress person and demand it.
Alternatively, it would be trivial to make the case that traffic shaping is a bait and switch practice (ISP offers X speed, but throttles it when you want to view your legally paid content like Netflix because it competes with their products and/or costs them bandwidth).
If I had to guess, they are probably targeting viewing 3D movies on your phone without having to wear glasses. Regarding the price point, I doubt that is much of an issue, if they truly had a killer app (iPhones are already in the $800 range). I personally am not interested 3D gimmicky stuff with 3" depth of field though. You cite Occulus and Vive, but all the while, PSVR is leading the VR revolution. They have already sold over 1 million units while Occulus and Vive sales numbers sag. It is comfortable and affordable (worst case you have to buy a PS4 pro for $400 along with a $400 sticker price) vs the competition where the VR units alone are $800 plus a VR capable PC which will run you $1200. Plus PSVR already has over 100 games available.
So the argument is that home schooled kids are the cream of the crop with greater inherent ability than the average kid and that somehow invalidates a study that shows that they do better at scholastic achievement? This will be my last post since you clearly have no clue what makes a valid study.
Further, please cite your source for the assertion that products of state run schools are better people who perform better.
It sounds like you have a personal stake in this since you are criticizing a legitimate study while defending state run schools, which are worse across the board, and which are failing in global competition (number one in global spending on education, 25th in terms of quality of education).
What you are describing is variation within a kind. You assume that it is the beginning of a major change, but there is no evidence that it is (either historical or observed in a lab).
There are mountains of evidence that God created kinds, and within those kinds He created genetic diversity in the gene pool such that that kind of animal could survive on a variety of biomes and food sources. Various studies of plant and animal DNA bear out this hypothesis. Further, every experiment with mutation has demonstrated either a replication or loss, not a creation of something that did not exist (for example, growing extra wings, no wings, deformed wings, extra legs, no legs on fruit flies, but never fish scales etc.) which is required for evolution to happen.
"Religious, metaphysical theories are not helpful and can even be harmful. Science was launching probes into the outer planets by the time the ROMAN CATHOLIC church forgave Galileo for daring to suggest a helocentric solar system. It's a good thing those scientists didn't have the church contradicting the lessons in their classrooms."
Please note that the RC church is a political organization masquerading as a religious one. They are their own country... What they did in the name of Christianity was not Christian at all (Jesus said that the greatest command was love God with all your might and love your fellow man as you love yourself). Further, what was damaging to science was the behavior of the church to persecute other viewpoints and theories, the exact same thing that academia does to creationists today (maybe not burning at the stake, but the persecution is real).
The problem with your statement is that if biological evolution were a strong theory, or in fact science at all, you would be able to easily refute the Creation story (much the same way science can easily refute that the world is not riding on the back of elephants or a giant turtle shell/etc and the sun and moon are not the eyes of some cosmic corpse).
The problem for evolutionists is the more we learn about DNA and genetics, and the more experiments that we have done with mutations, the more evidence has piled up supporting creation (that there is an initially created gene pool that allows variation within a kind, with hard limits at the boundaries; boundaries that have dozens of mechanisms to kill any cell or zygote that violates the boundaries). Those facts are blithely ignored by the evolution crowd of today, and any hard scientist who dares to question the orthodoxy of evolution is excommunicated, fired and his work burned at 451F. That is now how science works, and if you don't understand that, you don't understand science.
A lot of 3D films were shot using Red cameras because shooting 3D requires 2 cameras shooting simultaneously in a 3D rig. This doubles the number of cameras you need, thus with Red, they dramatically reduced the cost of filming 3D.
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Having seen many companies where IT is indeed on a power trip, with everything locked down tight and network monitoring to determine if any new hardware shows up on the network (collectively known as the IT fascists, and no, this was not a defense contractor or some other similar situation where super-max lock-down was warranted), where I currently work I think we have the best, most reasonable balance. Engineers typically have free reign on their own PCs as far as installing/modifying software, installing hardware locally etc. The general rule is if it connects to the network, we shoot an email to IT with it's details.
All other departments who cannot show a business case otherwise have their PCs locked down and are not allowed to install new hardware on the network without permission from IT. We used to have a few managers who were originally engineers back in the Jurassic age who wanted their PCs unlocked, but that ended when one of them clicked on some spam with a virus payload and got his machined wrecked. Those who have the competence to handle it and the business need have their PCs unlocked, everyone else has them locked down for security reasons as well as the convenience of IT.
Doors, plumbing, AC wiring, lighting etc. are handled by facilities. Now if you have smart doors that are key-less entry and the malfunction is on the reader or the system behind the reader, then yes, you will likely fix that in IT. IT is essentially a handyman for anything that transmits or stores information. If it has an Ethernet plug or WiFi antenna, you guys will get to fix it/replace it.
If you just want to write software, there is a completely different job for you. It is called software engineer... Those guys usually work closely with electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. If it isn't code related, an EE fixes it if it has an electrical component and an ME fixes it if it has a physical problem. Though the software guys still end up doing a lot of the integrated testing and debugging, since their code usually brings it all together past the basic motion tests MEs will do and the basic scope/function tests that the EEs do.
If the press actually cared about the truth and having accurate, verified facts, I would care more. As it is, Gawker got what they legally deserved, and I hope Hogan owns the houses of the asshats in charge at Gawker and everyone else associated with that sex tape too. Actions have consequences, and we have an out of control press these days that cares more about their agenda than they do about the truth. That is by far more dangerous to our democracy than a few rich people buying newspapers to get better press.
Something like 50% of all adults no longer trust CNN now, thanks to all their BS reporting of the Russian hacking and followon reporting. That is not a good place to be for a news outlet. When CNN ties MSNBC for distrust numbers, maybe they will clean house and start pursuing the truth, regardless of who benefits... But I am not holding my breath.
The harsh reality your small mind can't handle is there is no comparison. The liberals were the fascists in the Nazi party (Nazi meaning new socialist), they supported the fascists in Communist regimes around the world who for the last 70 years have murdered hundreds of millions of innocents, and the liberals are the fascists today, who cannot tolerate any other viewpoints or questioning of their theories (socialism/communism/atheisim/progressiveism/multiculturalism/diversity/evolution/AGW/...) and the list goes on. If you question any of these you are demagogued. You "hate poor people" or you are "a religious fanatic" or you are a "racist" or a "climate denier". Notice that none of these ad homonym attacks actually refute the underlying problems with each of their positions, they just attempt to vilify the opposition. If you do this enough, some liberals start believing that the opposition is actually evil and you start to see violence (violent protests: Berkeley riots against conservative speakers, violence against the opposition: we had people bashed in the head with a bike lock and a man tried to assassinate 12 Republican congressmen, etc) and we are currently seeing this right now. This can go 3 ways:
1. Liberal progressives in the media and left wing political leaders can tone down the BS rhetoric and support the rule of law. Police are allowed to do their job and the people breaking the law are confined and punished.
2. Liberal progressives in the media and left wing political leaders choose not to tone down their rhetoric and the republicans, most of whom are just moderate centrists, but whom hold the house, senate and WH, begin to enforce laws against inciting violence, throwing people like Kathy Gifford in prison for a few years. The left wing nuts who incited James Hodgkinson to attempt the assassination of US representatives are hunted down through his digital footprint and incarcerated for any and all incitement that they committed.
3. Liberal progressive fascists in the media and left wing political leaders choose not to tone down their rhetoric. Government at all levels is apathetic or ineffectual at controlling those breaking the law. There is some catalytic event (video of a child being killed by left wing nuts at a conservative rally after police are told to stand down, for example) that triggers a civil war between the fascists and the rest of the country.
I am hoping for #1, I would settle for #2, I am praying that it doesn't get to #3.
Those who are ignorant of history (and reality) are doomed to repeat it.
Well, right now it is 100% left wing progressive fascist indoctrination camps, and variation on that theme, the only difference is degrees. Every patriotic American should be against these bastardized versions of what college was supposed to be, especially on the taxpayer dime. If you can't recognize the fact that colleges (and more specifically college professors) are out of control rabid, fascist leftists, you are part of the problem.
How about eliminating the antiquated concept of tenure entirely and require professors to perform just like every other profession. Their job is to teach the course in a professional and accurate manner, there should be a requirement to focus on the content and keep your shitty political views to yourself unless you are teaching a poli sci class, and even then you must bring in both view points faithfully, since it is a roughly even split in the country, it should be taught with balance, and grading against conservatives solely against their point of view should be grounds for discipline or dismissal.
The bottom line is that not all colleges are the same degree of out of control, but conservatives are done paying for the liberal indoctrination camps. The fascist progressives (who btw, are by far the largest fascist group in the US in modern history) have overreached and they are in the process of violently collapsing.
This kind of thing is fraud, and it is high time that any developer or company that buys the developer or an app needs to be held to account, criminally (i.e. PMITA prison time) for the practice of selling an app, then updating it later removing features or adding adware/other unwanted shit not in the original app that you bought.
It is like buying a car, and then when you take it in for a oil change the dealer rips out the seats and replaces them with lawn chairs while selling the seats to a third party. It would be a no-brainer in the phsyical world, but due to international borders, abstraction of software, etc. this crap goes largely unpunished.
At the very least, the companies and individuals involved should be blackballed by Google and Apple and banned for life from submitting any apps to the app store or owning any apps/updating any apps listed in the app store. It is in Google/Apple's best interest to protect their users from this kind of crap.
Except all those other countries have fractional costs due to the fact that the US pays to develop all of the medical equipment, all the drugs, all the therapies, all the surgical techniques, etc. Something like 80% plus of all of the above are developed in the US and the rest of the world rips us off with generics and clones, etc. Beyond that, thousands if not millions of people world wide die while waiting for treatment in your "socialized healthcare Nirvana" around the world. In Canada, for example, doctors offices essentially shut down towards the end of the year since the money runs out before the end of the year, and Canada won't pay for life saving drugs that you can get in the US. https://www.city-journal.org/h...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
BTW, WTF do you think Medicaid is anyway? It is by definition socialized healthcare funded by the state. Most of us don't want that shitty care though, we want affordable, high quality, responsive, free market healthcare, which was the envy of the world until Obamacare shit all over it. No one is arguing that health insurance shouldn't be regulated, just that for the majority of Americans who can afford to pay for it shouldn't have to subsidize the poor with the same top end of insurance.
Criminal prosecution is better. If they are not criminally convicted, they can often declare bankruptcy, shield their assets offshore or with other shady methods and those they stole from are SOL. If they are criminally convicted, I don't think you can get rid of judgments against you through bankruptcy, though IANAL.
We have a limited power representative government with Republicans holding a slight majority. There is a difference between goals and reality. If a few Democrats would admit that Obamacare is an utter failure and vote for the repeal/replace instead of digging in their heels just for shits and giggles, Obamacare would already be replaced. But the Dims don't give a shit about the country or people, only their own power.
Out of millions of statements by thousands of Republicans, yes, you can find a few mis-statements (but I understand the intent, to damn the entire group by the mis-statements of one). The statement you cite was clarified, and the intent, in part, was to reflect the reality of the recent spate of false rape allegations like Tawana Brawley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and Crystal Gail Mangum (Duke Lacrosse rape allegations) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and the list goes on. Not all rape allegations are false, but not all are legitimate, clearly.
Beyond the legitimacy of the rape allegation, medical statistics indicate that just 5% of rape results in pregnancy, and most of those pregnancies occur in statutory rape (consentuality is not differentiated in the study) where the perpetrator is known by the victim and the act is frequent (so most of these pregnancies could be consentual sex between 18 year old boyfriend and 17 year old girl friend and they would still count as a rape pregnancy). Those are just the medical facts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Then you should be pleased to know that you breathe far more water every day than CO2 and we will never approach even 0.5% CO2, and indeed all indications from the raw data are that global CO2 concentration is a myth (as some kind of fixed constant). CO2 concentration is actively consumed by plant life, meaning it peaks where CO2 is produced, and valleys where it is consumed by plants. CO2 is plant food and is limited not by production but by plant life (mostly in the ocean) and will never exceed 0.08% (we think we are around 0.04% right now based on one observation station in Hawii for the entire planet, but even those readings can fluctuate by 600PPM in a single day, and we have plenty of historical evidence that in the 1800s they were measuring CO2 as high as 0.06% or higher, but the data has been cherry picked to support a false narrative of increasing CO2 levels. http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-... We also have long term data (thousands of years) showing plant and animal life flourished during CO2 levels that were a little higher, so you should not be worried in the slightest. I sure as hell am not worried, I just try to post so that those who are brainwashed can get a brief glimpse of knowledge every once in a while in the hopes that it will gradually undo their brainwashing/programming, hopefully before they manage to collapse our society with their ignorance.
Because we are soooo close to having that condition at 400PPM... Oh wait, that's complete bullshit (that's .04% since you clearly have no math skills or comprehension of proportion).
VR on PC suffers from the same issue that most things on PC suffer from, too much complexity, which is why the PSVR has been outselling all the PC VR platforms. They have sold over 1 Million units so far with no signs of slowing down. The PSVR offers the best of both worlds: online VR content as well as a huge library of 100% compatible games that you can play, without all the headaches of PC. The other barrier to entry on PC is the rig that you have to have. If you already have a PS4, you are good to go, if you are hardcore, you can drop $400 for the PS4 pro. On PC you are looking at at least a $1200 PC. If Zuck were smart, he would partner with Microsoft and tailor Occulus for the Xbox Scorpion (or whatever they are calling it these days). Most people who would buy and use VR aren't willing to put up with the hassle or price of PC (as evidenced by their falling numbers).
At 2.25% there probably won't be that big of an impact, but if they ever ratchet it up to 5%, or definitely at 10% you will start to see all kinds of rich homes popping up just outside the city limits, and the city will get no income tax revenue as well as missing out on the property tax revenue, but liberals never quite figure out that the rich are thinking people too who act in their own interest...
Carbon emissions... get back to me when you are interested in real pollution (like China and India are putting out by the metric ton). Anyone who wants to call CO2 emissions a pollutant should be required to try to live without it for a month.
Who exactly will be killed by the repeal of Obamacare? Medicaid and Medicare still exist, there are still over 12,000 free clinics in the US, and no ER in the country can turn you away without treatment. On top of that, there are hundreds of minute clinics (and other similar clinics) where you can get checked out by an RNP for $90 with no insurance...
The whole point of buying insurance is to cover against something unexpected. If you choose not to buy insurance and then you have a massive medical expense that creates a pre-existing condition, sorry, you played Russian Roulette and lost. Why should the rest of us who have been paying for insurance all along for being healthy foot the bill for your medical costs after you chose not to buy insurance to begin with (which is what is going on with pre-existing conditions).
Obamacare was nothing about fixing health care or making it more affordable, it was a massive socialist giveaway to the indigent and working poor on the backs of the middle class, which is why everyone who is reading this post (who works for a living) is now paying 120% more for insurance that now has deductibles 2-5x higher than before Obamacare. Rather than making it affordable for everyone, Obamacare made it free for some at the expense of the middle class, who can ill afford a $8,000/year increase in cost of insurance, plus $5000/year deductibles for a family of 4. The increases are not making the insurance companies rich either, many of who have been posting losses and pulling out of exchanges because all that money goes straight to people with pre-existing conditions and/or premium subsidies for the poor.
Poor people deserve what they earn; nothing. Out of the kindness of our hearts, we provide many free medical services for them in the form of free clinics that may or may not have long lines and Medicaid that may or may not have access to a doctor that they like or longer wait times, but beggars can't be choosers (except in Obamacare, apparently). The US sure as hell can't afford to give them all top tier medical care (as evidenced by the cratering of Obamacare along with out of control insurance premiums.)
The rich get most of the tax cuts these days because the bottom 45% of workers DONT PAY ANY TAXES (and no, SS is not a tax per se, it is a benefit that you are paying into, since you will get Social Security when you hit 68 or 70).
Sorry, you were right about the Democrats, they want to tax everything while creating class warfare in order to buy the votes of every entitlement taking person in the country. They do not give a shit that welfare ruins people's lives and destroys their sense of worth, they want those votes.
OTOH, the Republicans are students of history as well as reality. They know that if you tax the rich too much, the rich will move physically or their business incorporation HQ to a more favorable tax haven. Is it better to tax the rich at 25% and actually get 25%, or tax the rich at 90% and have them move all their business beyond your taxing borders (usually taking jobs with them). The reality is that it is better for everyone if taxes are consistent percentages with no exemptions at all (or standard exemptions based on family size). Everyone should pay something though.
All the Trump bashing has created a negative straw man of the president, but when we are two years into his term and the economy is growing at 6% and jobs are through the roof, the Russia farce is played out for what it was, and all the asshats in the media have trust numbers lower than dirt, it will be interesting to see how the public views Trump. He is clearly not a politician, but so far, his actual actions have been pretty populist (rather than pro business).
There is already a perfectly valid way to invest in the US, it is called the stock market.
What this did was provide a path for rich people to buy their way into the country, rather than stand in line like everyone else. Also, this EO would have seen hundreds of startups for the sole purpose of getting their rich owners into the US. It wasn't even clear to me how many if any employees they needed to sustain to be a valid business for the Visa.
Incorporation only protects you from personal civil liability, it does nothing to insulate you from criminal liability. Further, if there is fraud or certain other types of crime, incorporation does not protect you from prosecution or recovery by victims.
However, you may be right in that the feds will confiscate all of his assets, but it will only amount to a few bucks per person he defrauded.
"The age of the earth is plenty of evidence. It's well understood though that you can't prove or disprove the divine... you can just shift the goalposts "who said time was constant", "the dinosaurs were created in-situ as a test of faith", "who said the decay of C-14 was stable?"
Straw man arguments aside:
- Time is constant
- Dinosarus were destroyed during the global flood (which is why they are always in sedimentary rock, found in corpse rafts, and are no longer around.)
- C-14 levels are currently changing in the atmosphere. C-14 levels should be stable after about 16,000 years (decay=creation) but they are not. If the earth is millions of years old, that's a problem. If it is ~10,000 years old, it makes sense... It also means that assuming constant C-14 levels throws off all of your carbon dating tests if that is not the case (which is why penguins that died 200 years ago radiocarbon date 2000 years old.) Radiocarbon dating, along with other radioisotope dating, have huge problems to the point where they are meaningless because if your ruler is not consistent, your measurement cannot be...
What we are actually discussing in part is not science but history, and how/if/when we can apply science to history. The age of the earth according to Evolution is a massive rubber ruler, based on inherent assumptions about radioactive decay of mantle minerals that are in fact totally blind assumptions. This is why over the last 70ish years, the earth went from millions of years to billions of years old according to "science", based on pure conjecture and circular logic.
It is a common assertion by Atheists and evolutionists that you can't prove the divine because they are unwilling to accept the possibility. For the rational man, it is simple: Will the universe/atoms last forever? No. Then there must be a divine to have created it, since anything finite must have a beginning. The assertion that nothing exploded and caused the big bang is irrational.
To understand history, we must examine the evidence since history is not science and we cannot directly observe/test it. I am not sure who you should take up your complaint there, since that is simple logic.
I believe what I believe based on reasoned faith. If Evolutionists/Athiests could come up with something better than it rained on rocks and they came alive, or the banana turned into the dog, with no genetic evidence, no duplication of evolution/creative mutations in a lab, etc. I might take them more seriously. If someone comes along with a more reasonable explanation with better evidence, I am open to listening and learning from a skeptical point of view.
"Jesus established his church on earth through the gospel and it's been recorded in the bible. Questioning the pope and distancing Roman Catholicism as "not true Christian", only changes the conversation to one of how you interpret your personal Christianity. Roman Catholicism is hardly the fringe of Christianity."
Your statement is like saying that Saudi Arabia is Islam. There are fundamental precepts of Christianity that existed before the RC church, (which didn't come along until 1054AD), over 1000 years after the founding of the Christian church. The RC church broke away from the Orthodox Church, which still exists today and is a much more accurate representation of Christian beliefs. The RC church likes to claim all Christians belong to the RC church to inflate their importance and legitimacy, but most Christians do not belong to the RC church or practice it's tennants. Equating all/most Christianity to the RC church is disingenuous and factually incorrect. It is not about personal this or that, it is about facts in historical evidence, that exist for all to see if you are willing to look into it.
It is perfectly healthy to be skeptical of all beliefs/theories, after all there are some pretty silly beliefs out there, like bananas that can turn into dogs, or mineral water can come to life...
"This kind of stuff certainly shouldn't be taught in schools... it's bad religion masquerading as bad science."
I agree with you wholeheartedly, Evolution is bad religion (Athiesim) masquerading as science, and it has no place in schools.
Net neutrality using the FCC was always a bad idea from a regulatory standpoint. The FCC has no business regulating the internet or ISPs. Net neutrality needs to be passed as a law (or won via lawsuit). There is clearly public demand for a net neutrality law, so call your congress person and demand it.
Alternatively, it would be trivial to make the case that traffic shaping is a bait and switch practice (ISP offers X speed, but throttles it when you want to view your legally paid content like Netflix because it competes with their products and/or costs them bandwidth).
If I had to guess, they are probably targeting viewing 3D movies on your phone without having to wear glasses. Regarding the price point, I doubt that is much of an issue, if they truly had a killer app (iPhones are already in the $800 range). I personally am not interested 3D gimmicky stuff with 3" depth of field though. You cite Occulus and Vive, but all the while, PSVR is leading the VR revolution. They have already sold over 1 million units while Occulus and Vive sales numbers sag. It is comfortable and affordable (worst case you have to buy a PS4 pro for $400 along with a $400 sticker price) vs the competition where the VR units alone are $800 plus a VR capable PC which will run you $1200. Plus PSVR already has over 100 games available.
So the argument is that home schooled kids are the cream of the crop with greater inherent ability than the average kid and that somehow invalidates a study that shows that they do better at scholastic achievement? This will be my last post since you clearly have no clue what makes a valid study.
Further, please cite your source for the assertion that products of state run schools are better people who perform better.
It sounds like you have a personal stake in this since you are criticizing a legitimate study while defending state run schools, which are worse across the board, and which are failing in global competition (number one in global spending on education, 25th in terms of quality of education).
What you are describing is variation within a kind. You assume that it is the beginning of a major change, but there is no evidence that it is (either historical or observed in a lab).
There are mountains of evidence that God created kinds, and within those kinds He created genetic diversity in the gene pool such that that kind of animal could survive on a variety of biomes and food sources. Various studies of plant and animal DNA bear out this hypothesis. Further, every experiment with mutation has demonstrated either a replication or loss, not a creation of something that did not exist (for example, growing extra wings, no wings, deformed wings, extra legs, no legs on fruit flies, but never fish scales etc.) which is required for evolution to happen.
"Religious, metaphysical theories are not helpful and can even be harmful. Science was launching probes into the outer planets by the time the ROMAN CATHOLIC church forgave Galileo for daring to suggest a helocentric solar system. It's a good thing those scientists didn't have the church contradicting the lessons in their classrooms."
Please note that the RC church is a political organization masquerading as a religious one. They are their own country... What they did in the name of Christianity was not Christian at all (Jesus said that the greatest command was love God with all your might and love your fellow man as you love yourself). Further, what was damaging to science was the behavior of the church to persecute other viewpoints and theories, the exact same thing that academia does to creationists today (maybe not burning at the stake, but the persecution is real).
The problem with your statement is that if biological evolution were a strong theory, or in fact science at all, you would be able to easily refute the Creation story (much the same way science can easily refute that the world is not riding on the back of elephants or a giant turtle shell/etc and the sun and moon are not the eyes of some cosmic corpse).
The problem for evolutionists is the more we learn about DNA and genetics, and the more experiments that we have done with mutations, the more evidence has piled up supporting creation (that there is an initially created gene pool that allows variation within a kind, with hard limits at the boundaries; boundaries that have dozens of mechanisms to kill any cell or zygote that violates the boundaries). Those facts are blithely ignored by the evolution crowd of today, and any hard scientist who dares to question the orthodoxy of evolution is excommunicated, fired and his work burned at 451F. That is now how science works, and if you don't understand that, you don't understand science.
A lot of 3D films were shot using Red cameras because shooting 3D requires 2 cameras shooting simultaneously in a 3D rig. This doubles the number of cameras you need, thus with Red, they dramatically reduced the cost of filming 3D.