Hillary should be thrown in jail for the email server and Benghazi... but Trump's illegal hidden email and messaging servers? It's ok because yuge hackers and fake news.
No, it's OK because you guys insisted that it was OK when Hillary did it.
If what Hillary did wasn't bad, why is it bad when Republicans do it?
Yeah totally, so that way the US can be a couple of decades behind, still be pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and end up with a backwards economy.
That's how the US succeeded, by sitting on its fucking ass.
That's exactly what we did with digital TV.
While other countries were rolling out their own specs, the US held back and waited a couple of years. When we decided to switch the technology had grown more capable, new algorithms for compression and such were available, and...we leapt ahead of everyone else in the world.
As far as the CO2 thing, that's probably a marketing issue. The people worried about that haven't done an effective job of presenting their case to the rest of the country. I'm not saying their case is *wrong*, just that it was ineffectively presented. The arguments are largely based on insults and derision, hyperbolic doom and gloom, and suppression of dissent. It's hard for people to get behind a message presented that way.
Our country went from great to backwards over the last 20 years or so under the globalism model, starting with NAFTA (1994) and continuing to other countries. It's highly likely that continuing that same model would have driven us further into 3rd world status, but we've recently changed course.
There's no guarantees, but plotting a different economic course might bring us back to 1st world status. We'll have to wait a couple of years to see if this works - if not, we can try something else. It's fairly clear that doing the same thing harder would only hasten our destruction.
why we tolerate these people? I just realized I can't afford a house because of how the mathematics of mortgages work.
Such it up you clueless millennial whiner. You understand nothing, nothing at all. Want to pay more principal early on in your loan? Just [...]
Many people will say your problems are due to your own personal choices.
They are not.
Certainly there's a certain group of people who make bad choices and ruin their lives, or who can't seem to get ahead.
But there's another group of people, who we used to call the "middle class", who make intelligent choices but who are on the brink of poverty, or falling into poverty, or generally having a tough time getting ahead.
We see articles here about the rising cost of education, and the answer is always "some people don't need higher education". We see articles about how few jobs there are, and the answer is always "move to where the jobs are". We see articles about outsourcing, and the opinions are "you lose your job, but the population benefits overall due to lowered costs".
We are gutting the middle class in this country, have been for about 20 years, and the overall sentiment is "expect less out of life". Don't expect to own a house, don't expect to send your kids to college, don't expect to live as long, don't expect to get paid more, don't expect to be able to pay your medical bills...
...and on and on.
You're ahead of the curve by actually doing the calculations and trying to predict your finances - a lot of people up to 2009 didn't do that, and thought that they could have the same opportunities as people had in the 1980's.
There's lots of people who think everything's fine and will try to pin this back on you, but it's most likely not anything you did.
It might be because nice people tend to lose patience and go away, so that the forums have nothing but griefers left.
Lots of forums are completely toxic in this regard, and Slashdot has fallen prey to this as well. Post a non-insulting position about something that doesn't jibe with the group-think and you'll get nothing but insults. No thought put into it, almost a boiler-plate "you're really stupid" or "you're a racist".
Try to contribute to Slashdot by submitting articles, and the toxic users will mod them as spam and get your account locked.
They seem to think that any tactic in support of their end goals is OK, and they don't see the value of well-formed alternate opinions, and reasoned discourse. All they see is that opposition seems to be less over time.
They view it as "winning" when reasonable people lose patience with the griefers and leave.
You could certainly achieve net neutrality without regulating it. It's fairly simple, and many other countries have done it, by making sure that there is competition in the internet service provider space, and breaking up the monopoly/duopoly structure. And yet, the self-proclaimed champions of the free market haven't done jack squat to try to put that into effect, and are instead happy to proclaim that the status quo of third-world internet service and bloated profits from rent-seeking monopolists is the "free market" at work, and needs to be defended against those evil leftists. In short, denying that there's any problem at all, instead of offering up alternate/better solutions.
The Democrats are not, and never have been, the "champions of the free market" as you describe. They've been the ones in power for the last 8 years, and have done nothing to improve any of our infrastructure. Capital buildout for the last 2 years or so (since the Title II rule) has been less than the buildout before the rule.
Here's a good quote, something you can find if you bother to try:
Pai’s first big crusade as commissioner has been addressing what the “digital divide,” or the discrepancy between areas with abundant broadband and those without it. On Tuesday, he announced the formation of a new committee that will give advice on how to expand fast internet to more areas, and develop a general set of policies that communities can use to purportedly make deployment easier. Who exactly will be on that committee is yet to be determined. Pai laid out a wider plan for this initiative in September, where he mentioned creating tax incentives, reducing “unfair and unreasonable fees,” and adopting more “shot clocks” to encourage ISPs to build out sooner.
So it seems like the Democrats failed to do anything to help us build out the internet and, in fact, slowed it down a little.
The Republicans plan to address the actual issues, without resorting to socialism.
Who are these "economists" who felt net neutrality was unnecessary and counter-productive?
It's too bad there isn't some place once could go to look for answers to questions like these.
Some sort of repository of information, indexed by topic that someone could use to track down answers.
I feel your pain. Without such a resource, highly intelligent and technical people such as ourselves are often left clueless and in the dark when it comes to these matters.
It's impossible to be well informed in the modern age.
(Ans: Dr. Mark Jamison, economist at the University of Florida)
The problem with net neutrality isn't the stated goals, it's the way the left went about it. instead of a law saying "no paid prioritization, no throttling, and no blocking", they pushed through a bill that reclassified the ISPs as utilities, opening them up to enormous regulation in addition to net neutrality requirements.
Pai is against this (Title II) classification, and that's all he's against. He's stated several times in the past that he wants a free and open internet, and has specifically mentioned the "no paid prioritization, no throttling, and no blocking" thing as something he supports.
Furthermore the bill was passed with no study, and several economists have chimed in saying that zero-rating (the practice mentioned in the OP) isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes it's a good thing, and that there's no clear indication overall that can be used to guide legislation.
So yeah, it 'kinda looks like neutrality is the right and obvious way to go, and it makes perfect sense to us technical people, but that's not the whole story here. The legislation was so overreaching and awful that dumping it along with the neutrality provisions was the right choice. (Also the economists who felt that it was unnecessary and counter-productive.)
Perhaps if the left had passed legislation that confined itself to the obviously good parts we wouldn't be in this situation.
But hey, don't let me get in the way of a good Trump bashing.
It's Trump's fault that we have to roll back the good parts along with the bad.
A friend of a friend on Facebook is Iranian by birth. She has lived 20+ years in Australia and is an Australian citizen. She has also previously lived 5+ years in the UK and is now in the middle of a 5+ year stint in the US. She does not have a green card but is working in the US under a valid US work visa (but I don't know which class). She has had to cancel 5 international business trips in the short term because as per Trump if she leaves the US the immigration lawyers at her work have said as a best guess that she won't be able to re-enter.
How's that for fucking over your friends.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Iranian government screwed her over?
That's what he wants. It's what he needs to feel important and the more you give into it, the more he's going to keep doing these stupid, stupid things.
This isn't about getting more Americans employed. It's about punishing people who wouldn't kowtow to him and his corrupt cronies. It's about hurting those he thinks need to be hurt.
He doesn't understand the world or how it works. He couldn't care less about you or I or how well we are employed. Neither can anyone else in his administration. Don't fool yourself into thinking that is a good thing. It's not. It's only going to hurt us more and more each day it goes on. It's going to hurt the prestige of the nation. It's going to hurt the economic prospects going forward. It's going to affect each and everyone of us in subtle and not so subtle ways. It already has.
You do realize his approval rating has jumped 5 points in the last week, right?
Speaking as someone who has spent thousands of dollars in legal assistance getting the appropriate visa in place allowing me to work in the US (but luckily am not from one of the countries in the executive order)... go fuck yourself. This isn't about American jobs, its about screwing over people you don't like and trying to win political points with morons.
People have spent years getting those visas. People may have even been living the in US for decades. This is not a moratorium on new visas, this is retroactively screwing people who have followed the process to get into the US legally.
I don't get it either.
The order does not affect people from other countries, it doesn't affect people from your country, and it specifically doesn't affect *you*.
It doesn't affect 87% of all Muslims, so it isn't a ban, and it affects the 10% Christian populations of those countries and other religions, so it isn't a religious thing.
And the DHS has further clarified the executive order by saying that it doesn't affect green-card holders.
Furthermore, many countries don't allow immigration at all, and many other countries have onerous requirements to immigrate, so the US is not unusual in that regard. Obama banned immigration from Cuba, and Carter banned immigration from Iran with no fanfare.
The "no fanfare" bit - was that because Obama and Carter were Democrat? Or was there some other difference(*) that no one has noticed?
Muslims in the US have come out in favor of extreme vetting, some Muslim *countries* have come out in favor of the ban, and the president's approval rating has jumped 5 points.
Add in the fact that this is a temporary ban, that the order specifically directs the departments to sort it out, and that this was a campaign promise... it looks less like a fascist order and more like a reasonable and prudent order(*).
I *honestly* don't see why anyone thinks that this is a big deal.
It rather looks suspiciously like an issue of convenience - something people can protest without actually caring about which side they're on.
Is it anything else?
Can someone explain how this is anything to get worked up over?
(*) And for the record, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952:
"Whenever the president finds that the entry of aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, the president may, by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrant's or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
Obama used this same law at least six times between 2010 and 2014 against people in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Crimea without even a whimper from the ACLU, ADL, John McCain, Gender Netural Graham, Chuck You Schumer, Hillary, Mark Zuckerberg, Hollywood elites, or the establishment globalist media.
Lithium-ion batteries don't contain lithium-metal because they're even more prone to overheating and exploding than lithium-ion, but that risk is removed by Zimmerman swapping out the liquid electrolyte for a solid.
Cynic in me says they are looking for someone who can be implicated as a terrorist supporter to be used to justify the ban.
Funny thing about that...
Trumps actual order has an exception for immigrants who are already in transit, viz section (e): "[...] when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship -- and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States."
So holding people up at US airports just some ICE pricks trying to make a false narrative to paint Trump in a bad light.
And other than Syria, which was specifically referenced in the order, Trump is using Obama's list of Muslim countries, viz: "Obama restricted visa waivers for those seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen — and now, Trump is looking to bar immigration and visitors from the same list of countries."
So this is just lefties not caring about the actual issue. When they do it it's OK, but thay have to paint Trump in a bad light when he does it.
(Speaking of which, has Hillary been seen in a black church or black community since November? Or was that just an election thing?)
Also, Obama banned Iraq refugees for 6 months and we didn't hear a peep out of the lefties. Once again, they don't care about the issue, only which side does it.
And no, he didn't ban Muslim immigration. Muslims from Turkey and Saudi Arabia (for example) are not affected by this.
There's a fuckton of people on social media who are actually in favor of this, and who see this as a temporary measure intended to create common-sense rules intended to keep us safe. People are also noting that this was one of his campaign promises, and it's both surprising and refreshing to see someone actually keeping those promises.
You guys have 6 1/2 years to groom a replacement, and you'd better get started real soon now. Your campaign strategy of being the "lesser of two evils" won't work the next time around.
If Jared Kushner or Donald Jr. decides to run for president, the current of actually kept promises will be almost impossible to swim against.
Medical science has largely stagnated in this country over the last few decades, due to the enormous amount of red tape and expense needed to bring medical technology to the market.
Seriously: think back to all the articles we see here at Slashdot: 3-d printing skin, growing human organs in pigs, curing diabetes in mice, and so on. We've been seeing these articles for about 20 years, but nothing high-tech or disruptive has entered into common practice.
It's gotten so bad that many people in the hacker community are making their own "mild" (my term) medical devices. Prosthetics by 3-d printer, home-built hearing aids, glasses that can be tuned and set by a non-professional... even some frighteningly potentially dangerous items such as electric brain stimulation devices.
Check out Hackaday.io for a long list of these. There's actually a vibrant community of people doing interesting medical things "to themselves" or "based in a 3rd world country"(*).
So now a bunch of doctors are getting bothered by parents who take the trouble to monitor their infants, and their solution is to have the FDA regulate the devices. Because making less bother for doctors is totally what the FDA is for. Assuming the device doesn't itself cause a medical problem, there's no reason the FDA should regulate it. There's not even any reason to regulate the accuracy of such a device (let the market, or industry standards compliance handle that aspect).
"For most healthy babies there is not a role for home monitoring at all," said neonatologist Dr Elizabeth Foglia, one of the authors of the opinion piece published by the American Medical Association journal Jamanet.
The "most healthy babies will do just fine" line is an appeal to historical evidence, where we *didn't* have this sort of information. It may very well be that historical monitoring could turn over predictable evidence of future problems such as SIDS.
To take an extreme example, "washing hands" between child delivery was strongly opposed by the doctors of the time, probably using the same logic as these doctors are using today. In most normal cases, washing hands shouldn't matter.
The FDA should focus on whether the device hurts patient, and leave everything else open.
Anything else will make for further stagnation in the field.
(*) I follow one project that aims to automate detecting TB in 3rd world countries. Completely ad-hoc, done by a handful of students in a SA community college.
But did they get the worst fake news sites like CNN, NBC and Huffington Post? How about Faux News?
If you have an eye for humor, you can find it in lots of interesting places. "Fake news" is one of these hilarious situations that just makes me laugh.
The whole thing started right after the election. One of the reasons Hillary lost is because of "fake news", and the articles of the time specifically talked about smaller web sites, about how more mainstream sites couldn't get the word out because some small upstart would post an article saying the exact opposite, and "how can the everyday person tell the difference"?
It was specifically aimed at Breitbart and Drudge report.
Then about 2 weeks later Google and Facebook announced plans to "fix" fake news, by implementing algorithms to suppress the less mainstream reporting and promote real, honest-to-goodness news sites as search results.
And people started talking about how easy it was to snooker a right-wing website into printing anything, but they could never do that to the left-ish sites because someone would point out the facts and it would all go down in flames. (Note: Actual article covered on Slashdot said exactly that.)
And... they're off.
People started taking pot-shots at the MSM with fake news tweets and facebook posts and YouTube videos, and we saw all sorts of crap being shown as real news on MSM media sites. Such as CNN running that they inadvertently ran pornography for a half hour during Thanksgiving, then apologizing for doing that. (Hint: the original incident didn't happen, CNN got pranked and doesn't even check out stories that involve themselves.)
This culminated in the Tump "golden showers" news report widely circulated by BuzzFeed and CNN and looked like an obvious fake from the outset (from tone, style, and other aspects), and would have been easy to check if they had taken the time to do so. It was also outrageously insulting and viciously timed.
BuzzFeed and CNN did not walk this back or apologize - they doubled down, writing how they felt that it was important to post the information so that the American public could come to their own conclusion. Contrast with the "how can the public tell the difference", which was the original argument against "fake news".
Trump then burned CNN bigly at a press conference (he hadn't yet been been sworn in as POTUS). Dressed them down harshly in front of the world audience, and had to harshly reprimand them as if they were children for all their shouting out of turn, demands for answers out of turn, and demands to be called on.
It was glorious! The net had a field day, everyone had a good hard laugh at the disgrace of CNN.
So now everyone has calmed down, we've had our laugh, and things are back to normal, right?
The MSM has a new term "alternative facts". It seems "fake news" didn't work out so well for them, they have to reset and restart, we're back to the beginning.
We're at the point now where we were just after the election. Trump has started setting up the MSM for another fall with his comment about inauguration numbers - that'll get the ball rolling. The MSM won't be able to let this go, the terms "alternative facts" will grow large in the public eye in the next couple of weeks.
And let's see how that goes for them. It 'sorta looks like Trump has already set them up for the big fail, giving them all the rope they need to be a laughingstock once more.
But hey, I might be wrong. It's not as if Trump knows how to manupilate the media or anything, right?
Yes, we want to bring broadband to all Americans... so my ex-clients can gouge the shit out of them with rent-seeking behavior, unneeded service caps and fees, and charging content providers that aren't directly owned by the ISP access fees after we shitcan Net Neutrality!
The announcement appears to be better than the current situation in every possible way.
It is also better in the first week than the previous administration over 8 years, and better than the alternative [candidate] would have done....and yet lefties have to invent a fictional inner voice just so they can pour derision on the situation.
Maybe we should keep a small segment of the Obama administration in charge of something just to let everyone know how "stay the course" would have worked.
The lefties can't possibly take the announcement at face value, they would have to concede that the current administration is doing something right.
So, is US congress now going to change the law so a US judge can permit the US DOJ to access foreign servers? May we assume reciprocity, so that other countries can then serve warrants to providers in the USA and legally demand access to data stored on US soil?
I think not..
Another solution is to pass a law saying that all US citizen data has to be kept in servers in the US.
The benefit is that foreign countries don't get to access our citizens' data as easily (Russia, China, Canada).
The *real* solution is that E-mail and other data should be encrypted end-to-end, where the provider and location don't matter. Proton mail and Lavabit come to mind.
I remember when DropBox first came out, it required a driver to install (in WinXP) to synchronize the data to the cloud, and asked whether they had any plans to add encryption. Their response was "Oh, we'll never add encryption! That's the end-user's responsibility, and besides... it's haaaaaard!"
We need turn-key solutions. If good security is a checkbox "make my messages private", more people would use it.
When Obama was campaigning in '07 he said he would end the spying on U.S. citizens. And have the most transparent government ever. And close Gitmo.
Two things there:
(1) Congress prevented him.
(2) Candidate Obama, once elected, adapted to fit the political reality. Candidate Trump seems so far to keep wanting to distort reality to conform to his fragile ego.
About 6 months prior to Obama's first term election, he completely flip-flopped on telecom immunity.
As a result, Obama received greater telecom campaign donations, which helped him spend more money on his campaign.
That's an example of a politician "adapting to fit political reality", and the political climate was so corrupt that your candidate felt comfortable betraying a promise several months before the election!
Framing "betraying campaign promises" as "adapting to fit the political reality" makes it seem almost... noble.
Shit on workers so hard they turn to full-time Uber then demand basic income on their behalf... Aren't you virtuous.
Despite your low-PH response, the OP really has a point.
Economically speaking, automation and increased use of AI(*) will put many people out of work(**), and unlike the previous manufacturing revolutions there won't be enough work remaining to keep everyone employed.
Our economic system has to change, it simply cannot survive the rise in productivity. UBI is one way to accomplish that, I know of at least three other viable solutions.
Being toxic and preaching doom and gloom won't solve this issue, but inspiring people to action and raising their hopes might.
You could try educating yourself and then getting the word out - pick a stance that you like and try to convince others. (Assuming that you can't implement any of the actual solutions, that is.)
The system has to change - why not be part of that change?
(*) In the current industry-used version of that term. (**) Self-driving vehicles alone are poised to put 5 million out of work in the next 10 years.
I mean, I'm aware the DMCA is awful. They should just do something about that. Maybe say, we're going to repeal and replace it? Introduce the All-new Copyright Act, or ACA for short?
Sorry. The DMCA is Republican creation. Republicans are only opposed to laws created by Democrats.
The DMCA was a bipartisan effort. Created by Republicans, but signed into law by a Democratic president. The husband of the same person who almost became our current president.
Get away from the "us versus them" mentality. All the bad shit we have right now is the result of bi-partisan cooperation among politicians.
Your side is crap as well as the other side.
Insulting "the other side" does nothing to solve the underlying problem.
You are a fucking idiot. The problem is people like you who have no fucking clue about reality, but seem to think your worthless fucked in the head opinion means something. The problem with the right is their base is the most gullible, uneducated, self serving, anti-American, anti-Christian pieces of shit around.... and their politicians are all lying sacks of shit.
Here's a good example of my point. This post adds nothing to the conversation, it's simply a leftist vomiting insults at the other side.
Look, I want there to be competition among politicians. I want the left and the right to compete against each other for best policies, best governance, and best leadership.
I'm an independent, so I'm free to vote for whichever side I want in any election. The left has several positions I agree with, such as abortion rights for women, universal health care, and social safety net (and others).
I'd really *really* like to support your side, and have sided with these issues in the past, but your group is just so toxic right now that no one wants to have anything to do with you.
A recent poll showed that about 5% of Trump voters regret voting for him, but almost twice as many (9%) Clinton voters now regret voting for her(*).
Your group is protesting the outcome of fair elections that you participated in, it's whining and cursing about unfair rules that everyone agreed to. Your group is breaking windows, smashing cars, and lighting things on fire. And because of it, people are regretting having supported you.
You lefties just don't get it. You could get your way by earning respect, being smarter and better than your opponents.
You don't look to yourselves as a way to succeed, your only action is to make other people look worse.
(*) Which, BTW, erases and reverses the popular vote that Clinton won.
Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.
It's a middle finger to progressives.
This is the problem with the political right at the moment. They're not trying to correct the market or protect local jobs, they're trying to rile up their base by pissing off people concerned about global warming.
And the problem with the left is that they can't compromise and won't evolve.
I was just listening to Bill Maher from last night, and all the liberals encouraging the audience to fight, disrupt, oppose, insult(*), and combat everything the right wants to do.
Nowhere did anyone say "we have to become better". Nothing about making better policies, making more intelligent arguments, doing things voters want, making the country better, or anything that could be considered noble.
The fundamental difference between the left and the right, through the campaign and after, is that the right has tried to make themselves the better option, while the left tried to make the *other side* the worse option. Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive, saying essentially "we're in this together, we can win, we can do better". Clinton's speeches, delivered by others during campaign rallies, were essentially throwing insults at the other side.
I don't think anyone on the left has a clue how ineffective their campaign of crying, whining, and insulting is. Their actions are not turning minds and swaying the voters they will need if they want to win future elections.
I have no idea how they can continue with this ludicrous behaviour, but I'm sure the right will continue to laugh at them while they do it.
(*) One of the panel members was saying "always call racism".
In the rust belt. Full stop. Young people, blacks and Latinos stayed home. If you doubt me 538 had a meticulously sourced article on the subject. Hilary was arrogant. She assumed no sane country would elect Trump. She was wrong, and we're all gonna pay for it. For God's sake people, vote in your mid terms.
Nate Silver is a smart guy, but he relies too much on the models and not the context or the assumptions.
The actual context is that Hillary lost the popular vote by a small margin, which means that *any* of about two dozen reasons could have flipped the election the other way.
It's like viewing a stack of books one inch higher than another stack, and saying that the reason is a specific book halfway up isn't big enough.
The reality is that Clinton could have done better in any one of : her political dealings during the election (getting debate answers, screwing Bernie supporters, superdelegates, and so on), her financing and backing (Moroccan meeting, Saudi donations, Soros), her image (not attending rallies and letting others do her campaigning for her, coming across as cold and unfeeling, "I feel your pain"), or her past actions (the server, her actions during Benghazi, Russian unfreeze, Clinton Foundation shenanigans).
It's hard to imagine Trump doing better in any of his several categories (meaning: there's nothing he could have done to mitigate).
Pretty-much any one of these would have upped her popular vote by the 1% she needed to beat Trump and win several more electoral colleges. The reliable polls pointed out that she had some 1024 ways to win, while Trump had only four.
538 isn't the oracle of prediction that everyone thinks it is. Nate's basic premise is that "past performance predicts future actions", which has been completely disproven this year.
So for example, Nate predicted that Trump's presidency would go down in flames early last year, predicted 80% chance Trump would lose the general election, and noted that Congressional endorsements are the best predictor of the primary candidate; meaning, Ted Cruse would win the primary.
538 is racking up a long list of failed predictions.
Slashdot Mirror
Hillary should be thrown in jail for the email server and Benghazi... but Trump's illegal hidden email and messaging servers? It's ok because yuge hackers and fake news.
No, it's OK because you guys insisted that it was OK when Hillary did it.
If what Hillary did wasn't bad, why is it bad when Republicans do it?
I mean... which is is?
Yeah totally, so that way the US can be a couple of decades behind, still be pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and end up with a backwards economy.
That's how the US succeeded, by sitting on its fucking ass.
That's exactly what we did with digital TV.
While other countries were rolling out their own specs, the US held back and waited a couple of years. When we decided to switch the technology had grown more capable, new algorithms for compression and such were available, and ...we leapt ahead of everyone else in the world.
As far as the CO2 thing, that's probably a marketing issue. The people worried about that haven't done an effective job of presenting their case to the rest of the country. I'm not saying their case is *wrong*, just that it was ineffectively presented. The arguments are largely based on insults and derision, hyperbolic doom and gloom, and suppression of dissent. It's hard for people to get behind a message presented that way.
Our country went from great to backwards over the last 20 years or so under the globalism model, starting with NAFTA (1994) and continuing to other countries. It's highly likely that continuing that same model would have driven us further into 3rd world status, but we've recently changed course.
There's no guarantees, but plotting a different economic course might bring us back to 1st world status. We'll have to wait a couple of years to see if this works - if not, we can try something else. It's fairly clear that doing the same thing harder would only hasten our destruction.
why we tolerate these people? I just realized I can't afford a house because of how the mathematics of mortgages work.
Such it up you clueless millennial whiner. You understand nothing, nothing at all.
Want to pay more principal early on in your loan? Just [...]
Many people will say your problems are due to your own personal choices.
They are not.
Certainly there's a certain group of people who make bad choices and ruin their lives, or who can't seem to get ahead.
But there's another group of people, who we used to call the "middle class", who make intelligent choices but who are on the brink of poverty, or falling into poverty, or generally having a tough time getting ahead.
We see articles here about the rising cost of education, and the answer is always "some people don't need higher education". We see articles about how few jobs there are, and the answer is always "move to where the jobs are". We see articles about outsourcing, and the opinions are "you lose your job, but the population benefits overall due to lowered costs".
We are gutting the middle class in this country, have been for about 20 years, and the overall sentiment is "expect less out of life". Don't expect to own a house, don't expect to send your kids to college, don't expect to live as long, don't expect to get paid more, don't expect to be able to pay your medical bills...
You're ahead of the curve by actually doing the calculations and trying to predict your finances - a lot of people up to 2009 didn't do that, and thought that they could have the same opportunities as people had in the 1980's.
There's lots of people who think everything's fine and will try to pin this back on you, but it's most likely not anything you did.
Don't listen to them.
Things are bad right now, and whether they will get better remains to be seen.
You're asking HERE?
I'll second that.
It might be because nice people tend to lose patience and go away, so that the forums have nothing but griefers left.
Lots of forums are completely toxic in this regard, and Slashdot has fallen prey to this as well. Post a non-insulting position about something that doesn't jibe with the group-think and you'll get nothing but insults. No thought put into it, almost a boiler-plate "you're really stupid" or "you're a racist".
Try to contribute to Slashdot by submitting articles, and the toxic users will mod them as spam and get your account locked.
They seem to think that any tactic in support of their end goals is OK, and they don't see the value of well-formed alternate opinions, and reasoned discourse. All they see is that opposition seems to be less over time.
They view it as "winning" when reasonable people lose patience with the griefers and leave.
What's left is the toxic residue.
You could certainly achieve net neutrality without regulating it. It's fairly simple, and many other countries have done it, by making sure that there is competition in the internet service provider space, and breaking up the monopoly/duopoly structure.
And yet, the self-proclaimed champions of the free market haven't done jack squat to try to put that into effect, and are instead happy to proclaim that the status quo of third-world internet service and bloated profits from rent-seeking monopolists is the "free market" at work, and needs to be defended against those evil leftists. In short, denying that there's any problem at all, instead of offering up alternate/better solutions.
The Democrats are not, and never have been, the "champions of the free market" as you describe. They've been the ones in power for the last 8 years, and have done nothing to improve any of our infrastructure. Capital buildout for the last 2 years or so (since the Title II rule) has been less than the buildout before the rule.
Here's a good quote, something you can find if you bother to try:
Pai’s first big crusade as commissioner has been addressing what the “digital divide,” or the discrepancy between areas with abundant broadband and those without it. On Tuesday, he announced the formation of a new committee that will give advice on how to expand fast internet to more areas, and develop a general set of policies that communities can use to purportedly make deployment easier. Who exactly will be on that committee is yet to be determined. Pai laid out a wider plan for this initiative in September, where he mentioned creating tax incentives, reducing “unfair and unreasonable fees,” and adopting more “shot clocks” to encourage ISPs to build out sooner.
So it seems like the Democrats failed to do anything to help us build out the internet and, in fact, slowed it down a little.
The Republicans plan to address the actual issues, without resorting to socialism.
Or terrorism, which is what they're doing now.
Who are these "economists" who felt net neutrality was unnecessary and counter-productive?
It's too bad there isn't some place once could go to look for answers to questions like these.
Some sort of repository of information, indexed by topic that someone could use to track down answers.
I feel your pain. Without such a resource, highly intelligent and technical people such as ourselves are often left clueless and in the dark when it comes to these matters.
It's impossible to be well informed in the modern age.
(Ans: Dr. Mark Jamison, economist at the University of Florida)
Well, gentleman, we've been sold out.
Yeah, well... about that.
The problem with net neutrality isn't the stated goals, it's the way the left went about it. instead of a law saying "no paid prioritization, no throttling, and no blocking", they pushed through a bill that reclassified the ISPs as utilities, opening them up to enormous regulation in addition to net neutrality requirements.
Pai is against this (Title II) classification, and that's all he's against. He's stated several times in the past that he wants a free and open internet, and has specifically mentioned the "no paid prioritization, no throttling, and no blocking" thing as something he supports.
Furthermore the bill was passed with no study, and several economists have chimed in saying that zero-rating (the practice mentioned in the OP) isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes it's a good thing, and that there's no clear indication overall that can be used to guide legislation.
So yeah, it 'kinda looks like neutrality is the right and obvious way to go, and it makes perfect sense to us technical people, but that's not the whole story here. The legislation was so overreaching and awful that dumping it along with the neutrality provisions was the right choice. (Also the economists who felt that it was unnecessary and counter-productive.)
Perhaps if the left had passed legislation that confined itself to the obviously good parts we wouldn't be in this situation.
But hey, don't let me get in the way of a good Trump bashing.
It's Trump's fault that we have to roll back the good parts along with the bad.
Thank you.
A friend of a friend on Facebook is Iranian by birth. She has lived 20+ years in Australia and is an Australian citizen. She has also previously lived 5+ years in the UK and is now in the middle of a 5+ year stint in the US. She does not have a green card but is working in the US under a valid US work visa (but I don't know which class). She has had to cancel 5 international business trips in the short term because as per Trump if she leaves the US the immigration lawyers at her work have said as a best guess that she won't be able to re-enter.
How's that for fucking over your friends.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Iranian government screwed her over?
That's what he wants. It's what he needs to feel important and the more you give into it, the more he's going to keep doing these stupid, stupid things.
This isn't about getting more Americans employed. It's about punishing people who wouldn't kowtow to him and his corrupt cronies. It's about hurting those he thinks need to be hurt.
He doesn't understand the world or how it works. He couldn't care less about you or I or how well we are employed. Neither can anyone else in his administration. Don't fool yourself into thinking that is a good thing. It's not. It's only going to hurt us more and more each day it goes on. It's going to hurt the prestige of the nation. It's going to hurt the economic prospects going forward. It's going to affect each and everyone of us in subtle and not so subtle ways. It already has.
You do realize his approval rating has jumped 5 points in the last week, right?
Speaking as someone who has spent thousands of dollars in legal assistance getting the appropriate visa in place allowing me to work in the US (but luckily am not from one of the countries in the executive order)... go fuck yourself. This isn't about American jobs, its about screwing over people you don't like and trying to win political points with morons.
People have spent years getting those visas. People may have even been living the in US for decades. This is not a moratorium on new visas, this is retroactively screwing people who have followed the process to get into the US legally.
I don't get it either.
The order does not affect people from other countries, it doesn't affect people from your country, and it specifically doesn't affect *you*.
It doesn't affect 87% of all Muslims, so it isn't a ban, and it affects the 10% Christian populations of those countries and other religions, so it isn't a religious thing.
And the DHS has further clarified the executive order by saying that it doesn't affect green-card holders.
Furthermore, many countries don't allow immigration at all, and many other countries have onerous requirements to immigrate, so the US is not unusual in that regard. Obama banned immigration from Cuba, and Carter banned immigration from Iran with no fanfare.
The "no fanfare" bit - was that because Obama and Carter were Democrat? Or was there some other difference(*) that no one has noticed?
Muslims in the US have come out in favor of extreme vetting, some Muslim *countries* have come out in favor of the ban, and the president's approval rating has jumped 5 points.
Add in the fact that this is a temporary ban, that the order specifically directs the departments to sort it out, and that this was a campaign promise... it looks less like a fascist order and more like a reasonable and prudent order(*).
I *honestly* don't see why anyone thinks that this is a big deal.
It rather looks suspiciously like an issue of convenience - something people can protest without actually caring about which side they're on.
Is it anything else?
Can someone explain how this is anything to get worked up over?
(*) And for the record, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952:
"Whenever the president finds that the entry of aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, the president may, by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrant's or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
Obama used this same law at least six times between 2010 and 2014 against people in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Crimea without even a whimper from the ACLU, ADL, John McCain, Gender Netural Graham, Chuck You Schumer, Hillary, Mark Zuckerberg, Hollywood elites, or the establishment globalist media.
Lithium-ion batteries don't contain lithium-metal because they're even more prone to overheating and exploding than lithium-ion, but that risk is removed by Zimmerman swapping out the liquid electrolyte for a solid.
Illogical, Illogical.
All units relate. All units.
Norman, please coordinate!
Cynic in me says they are looking for someone who can be implicated as a terrorist supporter to be used to justify the ban.
Funny thing about that...
Trumps actual order has an exception for immigrants who are already in transit, viz section (e): "[...] when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship -- and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States."
So holding people up at US airports just some ICE pricks trying to make a false narrative to paint Trump in a bad light.
And other than Syria, which was specifically referenced in the order, Trump is using Obama's list of Muslim countries, viz: "Obama restricted visa waivers for those seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen — and now, Trump is looking to bar immigration and visitors from the same list of countries."
So this is just lefties not caring about the actual issue. When they do it it's OK, but thay have to paint Trump in a bad light when he does it.
(Speaking of which, has Hillary been seen in a black church or black community since November? Or was that just an election thing?)
Also, Obama banned Iraq refugees for 6 months and we didn't hear a peep out of the lefties. Once again, they don't care about the issue, only which side does it.
And no, he didn't ban Muslim immigration. Muslims from Turkey and Saudi Arabia (for example) are not affected by this.
There's a fuckton of people on social media who are actually in favor of this, and who see this as a temporary measure intended to create common-sense rules intended to keep us safe. People are also noting that this was one of his campaign promises, and it's both surprising and refreshing to see someone actually keeping those promises.
You guys have 6 1/2 years to groom a replacement, and you'd better get started real soon now. Your campaign strategy of being the "lesser of two evils" won't work the next time around.
If Jared Kushner or Donald Jr. decides to run for president, the current of actually kept promises will be almost impossible to swim against.
Medical science has largely stagnated in this country over the last few decades, due to the enormous amount of red tape and expense needed to bring medical technology to the market.
Seriously: think back to all the articles we see here at Slashdot: 3-d printing skin, growing human organs in pigs, curing diabetes in mice, and so on. We've been seeing these articles for about 20 years, but nothing high-tech or disruptive has entered into common practice.
It's gotten so bad that many people in the hacker community are making their own "mild" (my term) medical devices. Prosthetics by 3-d printer, home-built hearing aids, glasses that can be tuned and set by a non-professional... even some frighteningly potentially dangerous items such as electric brain stimulation devices.
Check out Hackaday.io for a long list of these. There's actually a vibrant community of people doing interesting medical things "to themselves" or "based in a 3rd world country"(*).
So now a bunch of doctors are getting bothered by parents who take the trouble to monitor their infants, and their solution is to have the FDA regulate the devices. Because making less bother for doctors is totally what the FDA is for. Assuming the device doesn't itself cause a medical problem, there's no reason the FDA should regulate it. There's not even any reason to regulate the accuracy of such a device (let the market, or industry standards compliance handle that aspect).
"For most healthy babies there is not a role for home monitoring at all," said neonatologist Dr Elizabeth Foglia, one of the authors of the opinion piece published by the American Medical Association journal Jamanet.
The "most healthy babies will do just fine" line is an appeal to historical evidence, where we *didn't* have this sort of information. It may very well be that historical monitoring could turn over predictable evidence of future problems such as SIDS.
To take an extreme example, "washing hands" between child delivery was strongly opposed by the doctors of the time, probably using the same logic as these doctors are using today. In most normal cases, washing hands shouldn't matter.
The FDA should focus on whether the device hurts patient, and leave everything else open.
Anything else will make for further stagnation in the field.
(*) I follow one project that aims to automate detecting TB in 3rd world countries. Completely ad-hoc, done by a handful of students in a SA community college.
https://gabfiles.blob.core.win...
But did they get the worst fake news sites like CNN, NBC and Huffington Post? How about Faux News?
If you have an eye for humor, you can find it in lots of interesting places. "Fake news" is one of these hilarious situations that just makes me laugh.
The whole thing started right after the election. One of the reasons Hillary lost is because of "fake news", and the articles of the time specifically talked about smaller web sites, about how more mainstream sites couldn't get the word out because some small upstart would post an article saying the exact opposite, and "how can the everyday person tell the difference"?
It was specifically aimed at Breitbart and Drudge report.
Then about 2 weeks later Google and Facebook announced plans to "fix" fake news, by implementing algorithms to suppress the less mainstream reporting and promote real, honest-to-goodness news sites as search results.
And people started talking about how easy it was to snooker a right-wing website into printing anything, but they could never do that to the left-ish sites because someone would point out the facts and it would all go down in flames. (Note: Actual article covered on Slashdot said exactly that.)
And... they're off.
People started taking pot-shots at the MSM with fake news tweets and facebook posts and YouTube videos, and we saw all sorts of crap being shown as real news on MSM media sites. Such as CNN running that they inadvertently ran pornography for a half hour during Thanksgiving, then apologizing for doing that. (Hint: the original incident didn't happen, CNN got pranked and doesn't even check out stories that involve themselves.)
This culminated in the Tump "golden showers" news report widely circulated by BuzzFeed and CNN and looked like an obvious fake from the outset (from tone, style, and other aspects), and would have been easy to check if they had taken the time to do so. It was also outrageously insulting and viciously timed.
BuzzFeed and CNN did not walk this back or apologize - they doubled down, writing how they felt that it was important to post the information so that the American public could come to their own conclusion. Contrast with the "how can the public tell the difference", which was the original argument against "fake news".
Trump then burned CNN bigly at a press conference (he hadn't yet been been sworn in as POTUS). Dressed them down harshly in front of the world audience, and had to harshly reprimand them as if they were children for all their shouting out of turn, demands for answers out of turn, and demands to be called on.
It was glorious! The net had a field day, everyone had a good hard laugh at the disgrace of CNN.
So now everyone has calmed down, we've had our laugh, and things are back to normal, right?
The MSM has a new term "alternative facts". It seems "fake news" didn't work out so well for them, they have to reset and restart, we're back to the beginning.
We're at the point now where we were just after the election. Trump has started setting up the MSM for another fall with his comment about inauguration numbers - that'll get the ball rolling. The MSM won't be able to let this go, the terms "alternative facts" will grow large in the public eye in the next couple of weeks.
And let's see how that goes for them. It 'sorta looks like Trump has already set them up for the big fail, giving them all the rope they need to be a laughingstock once more.
But hey, I might be wrong. It's not as if Trump knows how to manupilate the media or anything, right?
They're too smart to fall for that a second time.
Yes, we want to bring broadband to all Americans... so my ex-clients can gouge the shit out of them with rent-seeking behavior, unneeded service caps and fees, and charging content providers that aren't directly owned by the ISP access fees after we shitcan Net Neutrality!
The announcement appears to be better than the current situation in every possible way.
It is also better in the first week than the previous administration over 8 years, and better than the alternative [candidate] would have done. ...and yet lefties have to invent a fictional inner voice just so they can pour derision on the situation.
Maybe we should keep a small segment of the Obama administration in charge of something just to let everyone know how "stay the course" would have worked.
The lefties can't possibly take the announcement at face value, they would have to concede that the current administration is doing something right.
USA is all that matters, the rest of the world can go fuck themselves.
You should apply to work at the White House - I hear they're hiring.
So, is US congress now going to change the law so a US judge can permit the US DOJ to access foreign servers? May we assume reciprocity, so that other countries can then serve warrants to providers in the USA and legally demand access to data stored on US soil?
I think not..
Another solution is to pass a law saying that all US citizen data has to be kept in servers in the US.
The benefit is that foreign countries don't get to access our citizens' data as easily (Russia, China, Canada).
The *real* solution is that E-mail and other data should be encrypted end-to-end, where the provider and location don't matter. Proton mail and Lavabit come to mind.
I remember when DropBox first came out, it required a driver to install (in WinXP) to synchronize the data to the cloud, and asked whether they had any plans to add encryption. Their response was "Oh, we'll never add encryption! That's the end-user's responsibility, and besides... it's haaaaaard!"
We need turn-key solutions. If good security is a checkbox "make my messages private", more people would use it.
When Obama was campaigning in '07 he said he would end the spying on U.S. citizens. And have the most transparent government ever. And close Gitmo.
Two things there:
(1) Congress prevented him.
(2) Candidate Obama, once elected, adapted to fit the political reality. Candidate Trump seems so far to keep wanting to distort reality to conform to his fragile ego.
About 6 months prior to Obama's first term election, he completely flip-flopped on telecom immunity.
As a result, Obama received greater telecom campaign donations, which helped him spend more money on his campaign.
That's an example of a politician "adapting to fit political reality", and the political climate was so corrupt that your candidate felt comfortable betraying a promise several months before the election!
Framing "betraying campaign promises" as "adapting to fit the political reality" makes it seem almost... noble.
Shit on workers so hard they turn to full-time Uber then demand basic income on their behalf... Aren't you virtuous.
Despite your low-PH response, the OP really has a point.
Economically speaking, automation and increased use of AI(*) will put many people out of work(**), and unlike the previous manufacturing revolutions there won't be enough work remaining to keep everyone employed.
Our economic system has to change, it simply cannot survive the rise in productivity. UBI is one way to accomplish that, I know of at least three other viable solutions.
Being toxic and preaching doom and gloom won't solve this issue, but inspiring people to action and raising their hopes might.
You could try educating yourself and then getting the word out - pick a stance that you like and try to convince others. (Assuming that you can't implement any of the actual solutions, that is.)
The system has to change - why not be part of that change?
(*) In the current industry-used version of that term.
(**) Self-driving vehicles alone are poised to put 5 million out of work in the next 10 years.
I mean, I'm aware the DMCA is awful. They should just do something about that. Maybe say, we're going to repeal and replace it? Introduce the All-new Copyright Act, or ACA for short?
Sorry. The DMCA is Republican creation. Republicans are only opposed to laws created by Democrats.
The DMCA was a bipartisan effort. Created by Republicans, but signed into law by a Democratic president. The husband of the same person who almost became our current president.
Get away from the "us versus them" mentality. All the bad shit we have right now is the result of bi-partisan cooperation among politicians.
Your side is crap as well as the other side.
Insulting "the other side" does nothing to solve the underlying problem.
You are a fucking idiot. The problem is people like you who have no fucking clue about reality, but seem to think your worthless fucked in the head opinion means something. The problem with the right is their base is the most gullible, uneducated, self serving, anti-American, anti-Christian pieces of shit around.... and their politicians are all lying sacks of shit.
Here's a good example of my point. This post adds nothing to the conversation, it's simply a leftist vomiting insults at the other side.
Look, I want there to be competition among politicians. I want the left and the right to compete against each other for best policies, best governance, and best leadership.
I'm an independent, so I'm free to vote for whichever side I want in any election. The left has several positions I agree with, such as abortion rights for women, universal health care, and social safety net (and others).
I'd really *really* like to support your side, and have sided with these issues in the past, but your group is just so toxic right now that no one wants to have anything to do with you.
A recent poll showed that about 5% of Trump voters regret voting for him, but almost twice as many (9%) Clinton voters now regret voting for her(*).
Your group is protesting the outcome of fair elections that you participated in, it's whining and cursing about unfair rules that everyone agreed to. Your group is breaking windows, smashing cars, and lighting things on fire. And because of it, people are regretting having supported you.
You lefties just don't get it. You could get your way by earning respect, being smarter and better than your opponents.
You don't look to yourselves as a way to succeed, your only action is to make other people look worse.
(*) Which, BTW, erases and reverses the popular vote that Clinton won.
Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.
It's a middle finger to progressives.
This is the problem with the political right at the moment. They're not trying to correct the market or protect local jobs, they're trying to rile up their base by pissing off people concerned about global warming.
And the problem with the left is that they can't compromise and won't evolve.
I was just listening to Bill Maher from last night, and all the liberals encouraging the audience to fight, disrupt, oppose, insult(*), and combat everything the right wants to do.
Nowhere did anyone say "we have to become better". Nothing about making better policies, making more intelligent arguments, doing things voters want, making the country better, or anything that could be considered noble.
The fundamental difference between the left and the right, through the campaign and after, is that the right has tried to make themselves the better option, while the left tried to make the *other side* the worse option. Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive, saying essentially "we're in this together, we can win, we can do better". Clinton's speeches, delivered by others during campaign rallies, were essentially throwing insults at the other side.
I don't think anyone on the left has a clue how ineffective their campaign of crying, whining, and insulting is. Their actions are not turning minds and swaying the voters they will need if they want to win future elections.
I have no idea how they can continue with this ludicrous behaviour, but I'm sure the right will continue to laugh at them while they do it.
(*) One of the panel members was saying "always call racism".
In the rust belt. Full stop. Young people, blacks and Latinos stayed home. If you doubt me 538 had a meticulously sourced article on the subject. Hilary was arrogant. She assumed no sane country would elect Trump. She was wrong, and we're all gonna pay for it. For God's sake people, vote in your mid terms.
Nate Silver is a smart guy, but he relies too much on the models and not the context or the assumptions.
The actual context is that Hillary lost the popular vote by a small margin, which means that *any* of about two dozen reasons could have flipped the election the other way.
It's like viewing a stack of books one inch higher than another stack, and saying that the reason is a specific book halfway up isn't big enough.
The reality is that Clinton could have done better in any one of : her political dealings during the election (getting debate answers, screwing Bernie supporters, superdelegates, and so on), her financing and backing (Moroccan meeting, Saudi donations, Soros), her image (not attending rallies and letting others do her campaigning for her, coming across as cold and unfeeling, "I feel your pain"), or her past actions (the server, her actions during Benghazi, Russian unfreeze, Clinton Foundation shenanigans).
It's hard to imagine Trump doing better in any of his several categories (meaning: there's nothing he could have done to mitigate).
Pretty-much any one of these would have upped her popular vote by the 1% she needed to beat Trump and win several more electoral colleges. The reliable polls pointed out that she had some 1024 ways to win, while Trump had only four.
538 isn't the oracle of prediction that everyone thinks it is. Nate's basic premise is that "past performance predicts future actions", which has been completely disproven this year.
So for example, Nate predicted that Trump's presidency would go down in flames early last year, predicted 80% chance Trump would lose the general election, and noted that Congressional endorsements are the best predictor of the primary candidate; meaning, Ted Cruse would win the primary.
538 is racking up a long list of failed predictions.