When going to Europe, I would get a burner phone as it was cheaper than paying roaming/data fees. Since they must now unlock the phone (in my case, an iPhone), does that mean that when I now go to Europe all I need to do is buy a SIM card/service from a local cell provider and stick it in my iPhone and it will work?
Funny how, "lawmakers" seem to often ignore the "law" of the land. The American constitution is supposed to be the measuring stick/regulations by which other laws are judged. If they do not measure up, they have to be repealed.
A democracy stops working for the benefit for all as soon as people stop ignoring the constitution.
When the laws are working for the benefit of all, some people will not be happy and some people will not get what they want. I know some of you believe that guns are evil but criminals will always find a way to procure guns. The majority of gun related violence is perpetrated by criminals. When I say gun violence, I am not just talking about deaths but also non-lethal injuries and use of guns for intimidation. The anti-gun people are too focused on individual stats and do not stop to consider armed robberies where nobody gets shot during the robbery. That is still a use of guns as a weapon to intimidate/coerce others into doing something against their will.
Not everybody lives alone. Moving everybody in the household closer to my work would disadvantage others in the household.
Maybe you should take a more serious look? Living in the suburbs can present some disadvantages for children. They can grow up isolated from other classes of people and lack access to many of the local cultural resources nearby such as museums and concert halls. How can you be certain that your children are being best served? Maybe you could look at a compromise where your commute is shortened a bit and your spouse's commute is lengthened slightly? Why do Americans insist on suburban sprawl and then complain about the commute? You are causing your own problems.
A bus? Come on, nobody can actually get any work done on a bus.
Then I guess I should change my name to Nemo because I must be nobody. I routinely work on hobby programming projects, building a portfolio that could be valuable for landing my next job, during the half hour each way that it takes the city bus to get me to and from my current job. Could you explain how that's necessarily ineffective?
Sorry but you are not really being as effective or efficient with your time as you think you are. Work smarter, not longer. You should be measuring your success based on your throughput and and quality of your work rather that house much time you spent on it. Sorry but you should be working on your hobby stuff either early in the morning before work or later on at night. Alternatively, set aside a few hours on a Saturday. All you have to do is make an appointment for yourself and have the discipline to keep it.
I worked on a side project for a couple of weekends and I was able to bang out a usable version of the product. It spend a few hours a day for two weeks on it.
A 10 inch laptop can be easier for a bus or carpool passenger to use in cramped quarters than a 13 inch laptop.
That would be a perfect example of someone with time management issues. Using a laptop in a carpool? Really? If it takes you that long to commute, consider moving in closer to work and giving yourself a better quality of life. Your productivity will go through the roof if you arrive at work refreshed and reading to face the day than if you have already a couple of hours in a car trying to type on a small keyboard and display.
A bus? Come on, nobody can actually get any work done on a bus.
Now don't even get me started on the "Cylons infected humanities computers with viruses" notion. This is as silly as Independence Day, where simply knowing that the aliens had computers made Jeff Goldblum's character competent to write a virus for the enemies computers. Yeah, right.
Ok, you obviously never watched the entire series or the movie "The Plan" because then you would have know that the Caprica 6 model "rewrote" half of the algorithms for Gaius which really meant that she hid a trojan in the military computer operating systems which was then spread to the battlestar ship as a "upgrade" right before the attack.
The only two capital ships that survived was an outdated one called Galactica and the Pegasus. The latter survived because the upgrade had not be installed completely.
In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry.
Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.
I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.
Clearly you've never been to a 'modern' society such as Japan. Anonymously purchased and recharged digital cash cards are the norm.
Clearly, neither have you. Many cabs there only accept cash while some accept only cash or JCB credit cards and Japanese Debit cards. The trains/subways have a system called Pasmo/Suica which is either an RFID card that is reloadable through a machine with cash or incorporated into some Japanese specific cellphones. You can also use that Pasmo card as a Tap and pay card at some convenience stores such as AM/PM to pay for small purchases and some vending machines.
Some department stores do accept Visa/Mastercard and Amex but the majority of places accept only cash.
How do I know this? I spent a couple of weeks in Tokyo the year before the big earthquake.
I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.
Slashdot has hit a new low, you did not even bother reading the summary. I quote:
"The controller chip can save from 15,000 to 20,000 fingerprints. If a large military unit wanted to program thousands of finger prints into a single weapon, it would be possible."
Even so, would you really want to have each gun accessible by every person in the unit? What if there was a friendly fire incident? Wouldn't you want to know that the only person capable of firing a weapon was the person it was allocated to? If it could only be fired by one person then an investigation into a friendly fire or non-combatant death could be investigated rather quickly.
You probably have an Amex credit card, rather than an Amex Charge card. The latter has no preset spending limit, however, the balance must be paid off within 28-30 days or you get dinged with a 30% interest charge and lose any points that your purchases would have earned for that month. You are considered not in good standing if you leave a balance on it past the interest free period.
If you had a platinum charge card, it would have arrived in a leather bonded portfolio.
Ok, what are your credit card numbers, their associated security codes and expiry dates? What is your bank account number and banking site password? What is your date of birth, name and SSN? What is your current address and two previous addresses?
Wait, you don't want to share "your" information? But I thought information has to be free?
"...suicide is forbidden in the bible. "
HAHAHahahah. aren't you cute.
YOu are a non thinking fundlmentalist, and in case you disagree, there is a chek list!
Oh, the irony. First of all, it is spelled fundamentalist and "checklist". Fundamentalism in Christianity is about following reading the bible WITHOUT heavily interpreting things which are not presented as "parables". Liberal theology, on the other hand, is about liberally reinterpreting parts of the bible, ignoring large sections and taking things out of context. The great irony is that you just quoted some stupid top ten list that you found on the internet.
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
You are a bit confused. There is no specific requirement to actively/vigorously deny the existence of other powers but only to worship the one true god and to believe that the god of the bible is above every other god. So essentially, you are to just consider them irrelevant and not worthy of worship. Try reading a bible for yourself some time.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
I think you are a bit confused. You are dehumanizing yourself because you cannot believe that you are not insignificant in the greater scheme of things and that god cares about you. You want to make yourself feel small and worthless for some reason.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
You laugh at the Triune god but have no problem with the concept of the id, ego and superego. You also seem to have no problem with the concept that a family is considered a unit and yet they are composed of more than one "person".
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
They were killed because the pharaoh has previously killed all of the first born Jewish babies except for Moses. Apparently, you are ok with the atrocities that were happening all of the time at that time right? It was a "war" against a people who had sinned against god.
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
You obviously have not read the bible yourself seriously. It was prophesied in the old testament to happen the way it happened. The entire bible talks about Jesus. The "lord" of the old testament is Jesus. Whenever the lord appeared as a man, that was the son of man, aka Jesus.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
I don't waste my time with that crap. You are the one obsessed with it. It is irrelevant either way but I don't just blindly trust what some guy says.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell
Hey how come you forgot to mention these are Chechen Bagger NRA loving bible thumpers huh?
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout"
That is not known, it is quite possible he died of bast from his suicide vest at the hospital or on the way, It is believed his last words were "I love the NRA, hold by beer and watch this!"
Fuckwads.
*NEWS FLASH* They are muslims. They are Koran thumpers. Real bible thumpers do go around killing people. Also belonging to the NRA does not mean that you would go around shooting other people. Some people like to go to shooting club ranges and fire their guns there while others are hunters. Suicide vest? Read your damn bible, suicide is forbidden in the bible. I think you are confusing the bible and the Koran. The former has commandments against lying and killing whereas the latter encourages doing both if they are non-muslim. Jesus taught us to love our enemies.
Only workers soviets can sort this mess out fairly. Laura and I agree, and so do you!
I think you are confused. the soviets were socialists, not communists. Communism cannot exists as a political party as communism abhors a "state" government. Communism is about voluntarily living in a "commune" or "community" and sharing your resources voluntarily out of the common good. Amish settlements are an example of this. Socialism is about a top down power structure that seizes the means of production by force and forces everyone to be "equal" in theory. More often than not, socialist republics have some people who are "more" equal than others.
The long name for the Soviet Union was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR for short.
Right, so while there are in the US, they are not using all of the infrastructure of your country for an extended period of time? Do you think all of the infrastructure on the university was paid for by student tuition alone?
And how is that different than when I paid for my own education as a citizen? Despite whatever taxes paid for the country's and university's infrastructure, I would certainly not entertain the idea from someone like Zuck that "we" educated me.
By the same logic, we could claim that "we" paid for the vacations of foreign tourists as they use our infrastructure and go to museums that are tax supported. And it would be just as absurd an assertion as Zuck's is here.
Your education as a citizen was partially subsidized. That is one of the reasons why foreign students pay "more" than you do. Even still, both of you are still using buildings and other infrastructure that you did not pay for directly through tuition fees. You were only paying for part of the expenses to run the courses themselves but the tax payers of your country had been paying to infrastructure all students were to take advantage of.
Because of this, it would be wise to consider looking for a way to keep the talented students within the country that educated them.
"Given all this, why do we kick out the more than 40% of math and science graduate students who are not US citizens after educating them?"
Wait a sec...*who* educated them? Does the US gov't typically pay a foreign student's tuition, or do they have to either pay their own way or manage a grant/scholarship? My guess would be the latter case would be the overwhelming majority, with the only role of gov't in most cases being to grant a student visa. It's one thing to suggest that maybe 'we' should have program to help convert student visas to work visas, but to say we are "kicking out" people who were granted visas solely for education because they finished their education, which it is dubiously implied that "we" paid for, is simply dishonest.
Right, so while there are in the US, they are not using all of the infrastructure of your country for an extended period of time? Do you think all of the infrastructure on the university was paid for by student tuition alone?
Apple has repeatedly spent millions of dollars in cash upfront to secure flash chip supplies since they started their switch to flash storage years ago so where is this anal-yst pulling their information from?
IMO the bundling of email service and addresses with internet access service is a historical artifact that adds lockin and reduces competition in the internet access market.
So who do you work for? Google? Yahoo? Some other third party email provider? A dishonest ISP that lies to the customers and uses a third party for email? Here is a cluestick for you to hit yourself with. Lock-in is an artifact of a proprietary email schema. Google is an example of a proprietary extension of IMAP email. They don't "delete" you emails, they are just archived. Most email providers that offer IMAP protocol access will move the deleted email to the deleted folder and allow you to easily empty that folder whereas Google does not follow that standard. This story is an example of how Google's implementation is non-standard and causes a level of "lock-in".
If you are going to offer customers email but in the background use gmail then don't bother and just provide instructions on how to setup a Gmail account.
I personally use both my ISP and a couple of cloud based providers but I am not a noob. You should not be lying to noobs.
Oh I see, instead of buying a laptop with HDMI / Gb Network and USB3, I can buy a laptop with a single ThunderBolt port and also buy a whole bunch of adapters or a dock to carry around in my laptop case?
My rMBP laptop has an HDMI port, SD card slot, two USB 3 ports and two thunderbolt ports. Each of those thunderbolt ports can break out Gigabit Ethernet, additional USB 3 ports, display port, Firewire 800 and passthrough thunderbolt with the right dock/breakout box.
With Thunderbolt, you can daisy chain a thunderbolt display and thunderbolt storage off one of those ports.
Like I said, it already has HDMI out but if I need Firewire 800, I can use an adapter. If I need Ethernet, I can use an adapter too but I don't use ethernet at home and most places have wifi these days. I don't always need Firewire 800 or ethernet but if I do, I can plug in the adapter for those rare times that I do.
Occam's razor to the rescue!
The simpler explanation of the world is better. I.e. the one without invisible pink unicorns.
(There existence is already a logical impossibility, since something that's invisible cannot have color, but that misses the point)
So the simpler explanation would be that we are a random occurrence? Since nobody cannot explain life from lifelessness on earth, panspermia was invented to shift the problem to "mars". Unfortunately, that really explains nothing but just shifts the problem to another planet. I particularly like the convoluted explanation of how DNA supposedly "evolved" out disparate components by molecules hitching a ride on some dancing crystals floating randomly in the sea. But life supposedly sprung forth from "something" zapping the components into place by a completely random chance.
While a very boring science fiction short story, it does not sound logical, probable or scientific to me. It just sounds like someone came up with an explanation out of thin air to comfort themselves because they did not want to face reality. Scientists have no bloody clue how life sprung forth.
Using Occam's razor, the explanation that "god did it" is the simpler explanation.
I'm not sure where you're getting your definitions/meanings of words, but here on planet Earth, atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities and agnosticism is the view that the existence or non-existence of deities is unknown or unknowable.
As an atheist, I don't have "faith" in the absence of god - I just look at the available evidence and realise that gods are equivalent to invisible pink unicorns. I don't have faith that invisible pink unicorns don't exist, I just haven't seen any evidence to support their existence (and thus I believe that only fools would think they exist).
I think you are mistaken and have narrow definition of Atheism. In the most simple terms, Atheism is the rejection of the worship of the primary deity or deities of the society you are in.
For example, in the Roman empire prior to the conversion of Constantine, Christians were persecuted for being "atheists" because they refused to worship the Emperor as a living god and refused to worship roman gods. They did not deny the existence of the emperor but they refused to "worship" the emperor.
Similarly, non-christians living or visiting a fundamentalist muslim country might be viewed as "athiests" for the same reason.
A lot of people mistakenly assume that because Buddhism abstains from worshiping local deities that local of Buddhist practices deny their existence. They simply view them as not worthy of worship.
Your disbelief in the existence of gods or a god is simply your personal justification for your "atheism" rather what atheism is. So I would argue that your disbelief in gods is your "belief" which reenforces your atheistic position. Look into the root of that work for some insight It is simply the rejection of the predominant faith or religion in a society and it does not require a disbelief in the existence of gods.
Slashdot Mirror
This may sound like a stupid question to some...
When going to Europe, I would get a burner phone as it was cheaper than paying roaming/data fees. Since they must now unlock the phone (in my case, an iPhone), does that mean that when I now go to Europe all I need to do is buy a SIM card/service from a local cell provider and stick it in my iPhone and it will work?
Yes.
A democracy stops working for the benefit for all as soon as people stop ignoring the constitution.
When the laws are working for the benefit of all, some people will not be happy and some people will not get what they want. I know some of you believe that guns are evil but criminals will always find a way to procure guns. The majority of gun related violence is perpetrated by criminals. When I say gun violence, I am not just talking about deaths but also non-lethal injuries and use of guns for intimidation. The anti-gun people are too focused on individual stats and do not stop to consider armed robberies where nobody gets shot during the robbery. That is still a use of guns as a weapon to intimidate/coerce others into doing something against their will.
consider moving in closer to work
Not everybody lives alone. Moving everybody in the household closer to my work would disadvantage others in the household.
Maybe you should take a more serious look? Living in the suburbs can present some disadvantages for children. They can grow up isolated from other classes of people and lack access to many of the local cultural resources nearby such as museums and concert halls. How can you be certain that your children are being best served? Maybe you could look at a compromise where your commute is shortened a bit and your spouse's commute is lengthened slightly? Why do Americans insist on suburban sprawl and then complain about the commute? You are causing your own problems.
A bus? Come on, nobody can actually get any work done on a bus.
Then I guess I should change my name to Nemo because I must be nobody. I routinely work on hobby programming projects, building a portfolio that could be valuable for landing my next job, during the half hour each way that it takes the city bus to get me to and from my current job. Could you explain how that's necessarily ineffective?
Sorry but you are not really being as effective or efficient with your time as you think you are. Work smarter, not longer. You should be measuring your success based on your throughput and and quality of your work rather that house much time you spent on it. Sorry but you should be working on your hobby stuff either early in the morning before work or later on at night. Alternatively, set aside a few hours on a Saturday. All you have to do is make an appointment for yourself and have the discipline to keep it.
I worked on a side project for a couple of weekends and I was able to bang out a usable version of the product. It spend a few hours a day for two weeks on it.
A 10 inch laptop can be easier for a bus or carpool passenger to use in cramped quarters than a 13 inch laptop.
That would be a perfect example of someone with time management issues. Using a laptop in a carpool? Really? If it takes you that long to commute, consider moving in closer to work and giving yourself a better quality of life. Your productivity will go through the roof if you arrive at work refreshed and reading to face the day than if you have already a couple of hours in a car trying to type on a small keyboard and display.
A bus? Come on, nobody can actually get any work done on a bus.
You need to manage your time more effectively.
Come on, what monitor these days doesn't have DVI or HDMI (other than Apple's Cinema Displays)?
Uh, yeah, HDMI and DVI are still quite a bit different. You would need an adapter. Only some monitors offer HDMI ports.
Now don't even get me started on the "Cylons infected humanities computers with viruses" notion. This is as silly as Independence Day, where simply knowing that the aliens had computers made Jeff Goldblum's character competent to write a virus for the enemies computers. Yeah, right.
Ok, you obviously never watched the entire series or the movie "The Plan" because then you would have know that the Caprica 6 model "rewrote" half of the algorithms for Gaius which really meant that she hid a trojan in the military computer operating systems which was then spread to the battlestar ship as a "upgrade" right before the attack.
The only two capital ships that survived was an outdated one called Galactica and the Pegasus. The latter survived because the upgrade had not be installed completely.
In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.
I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.
Is it made with whole milk? What's the fat content?
Quite the opposite, Mozilla/Firefox has had to become leaner and meaner to run (acceptably) on these devices.
*WHOOSH*
The key is in the title of the comment.
Clearly you've never been to a 'modern' society such as Japan. Anonymously purchased and recharged digital cash cards are the norm.
Clearly, neither have you. Many cabs there only accept cash while some accept only cash or JCB credit cards and Japanese Debit cards. The trains/subways have a system called Pasmo/Suica which is either an RFID card that is reloadable through a machine with cash or incorporated into some Japanese specific cellphones. You can also use that Pasmo card as a Tap and pay card at some convenience stores such as AM/PM to pay for small purchases and some vending machines.
Some department stores do accept Visa/Mastercard and Amex but the majority of places accept only cash.
How do I know this? I spent a couple of weeks in Tokyo the year before the big earthquake.
I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.
Slashdot has hit a new low, you did not even bother reading the summary. I quote:
"The controller chip can save from 15,000 to 20,000 fingerprints. If a large military unit wanted to program thousands of finger prints into a single weapon, it would be possible."
Even so, would you really want to have each gun accessible by every person in the unit? What if there was a friendly fire incident? Wouldn't you want to know that the only person capable of firing a weapon was the person it was allocated to? If it could only be fired by one person then an investigation into a friendly fire or non-combatant death could be investigated rather quickly.
AmEx cards don't have a pre-set limit.
My AmEx card begs to differ.
You probably have an Amex credit card, rather than an Amex Charge card. The latter has no preset spending limit, however, the balance must be paid off within 28-30 days or you get dinged with a 30% interest charge and lose any points that your purchases would have earned for that month. You are considered not in good standing if you leave a balance on it past the interest free period.
If you had a platinum charge card, it would have arrived in a leather bonded portfolio.
did all five victims of the "pandemic"
According to WHO the number is actually 773 deaths, with 8273 cases in total.
But who gave you those numbers? We want to know who your source is.
All of your data has got to be free.
Ok, what are your credit card numbers, their associated security codes and expiry dates? What is your bank account number and banking site password? What is your date of birth, name and SSN? What is your current address and two previous addresses?
Wait, you don't want to share "your" information? But I thought information has to be free?
"...suicide is forbidden in the bible. " HAHAHahahah. aren't you cute.
YOu are a non thinking fundlmentalist, and in case you disagree, there is a chek list!
Oh, the irony. First of all, it is spelled fundamentalist and "checklist". Fundamentalism in Christianity is about following reading the bible WITHOUT heavily interpreting things which are not presented as "parables". Liberal theology, on the other hand, is about liberally reinterpreting parts of the bible, ignoring large sections and taking things out of context. The great irony is that you just quoted some stupid top ten list that you found on the internet.
Top 10 ways to tell if you are a Fundamentalist Idiot. from - http://www.evilbible.com/Top_Ten_List.htm
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
You are a bit confused. There is no specific requirement to actively/vigorously deny the existence of other powers but only to worship the one true god and to believe that the god of the bible is above every other god. So essentially, you are to just consider them irrelevant and not worthy of worship. Try reading a bible for yourself some time.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
I think you are a bit confused. You are dehumanizing yourself because you cannot believe that you are not insignificant in the greater scheme of things and that god cares about you. You want to make yourself feel small and worthless for some reason.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
You laugh at the Triune god but have no problem with the concept of the id, ego and superego. You also seem to have no problem with the concept that a family is considered a unit and yet they are composed of more than one "person".
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
They were killed because the pharaoh has previously killed all of the first born Jewish babies except for Moses. Apparently, you are ok with the atrocities that were happening all of the time at that time right? It was a "war" against a people who had sinned against god.
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
You obviously have not read the bible yourself seriously. It was prophesied in the old testament to happen the way it happened. The entire bible talks about Jesus. The "lord" of the old testament is Jesus. Whenever the lord appeared as a man, that was the son of man, aka Jesus.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
I don't waste my time with that crap. You are the one obsessed with it. It is irrelevant either way but I don't just blindly trust what some guy says.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell
Hey how come you forgot to mention these are Chechen Bagger NRA loving bible thumpers huh?
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout"
That is not known, it is quite possible he died of bast from his suicide vest at the hospital or on the way, It is believed his last words were "I love the NRA, hold by beer and watch this!"
Fuckwads.
*NEWS FLASH* They are muslims. They are Koran thumpers. Real bible thumpers do go around killing people. Also belonging to the NRA does not mean that you would go around shooting other people. Some people like to go to shooting club ranges and fire their guns there while others are hunters. Suicide vest? Read your damn bible, suicide is forbidden in the bible. I think you are confusing the bible and the Koran. The former has commandments against lying and killing whereas the latter encourages doing both if they are non-muslim. Jesus taught us to love our enemies.
How about people eat them? They're fabulous dipped in some garlic butter.
"They also carry a form of rat lungworm which can cause meningitis in humans"
Be my guest. Personally, I think snails are disgusting.
Only workers soviets can sort this mess out fairly. Laura and I agree, and so do you!
I think you are confused. the soviets were socialists, not communists. Communism cannot exists as a political party as communism abhors a "state" government. Communism is about voluntarily living in a "commune" or "community" and sharing your resources voluntarily out of the common good. Amish settlements are an example of this. Socialism is about a top down power structure that seizes the means of production by force and forces everyone to be "equal" in theory. More often than not, socialist republics have some people who are "more" equal than others.
The long name for the Soviet Union was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR for short.
Right, so while there are in the US, they are not using all of the infrastructure of your country for an extended period of time? Do you think all of the infrastructure on the university was paid for by student tuition alone?
And how is that different than when I paid for my own education as a citizen? Despite whatever taxes paid for the country's and university's infrastructure, I would certainly not entertain the idea from someone like Zuck that "we" educated me.
By the same logic, we could claim that "we" paid for the vacations of foreign tourists as they use our infrastructure and go to museums that are tax supported. And it would be just as absurd an assertion as Zuck's is here.
Your education as a citizen was partially subsidized. That is one of the reasons why foreign students pay "more" than you do. Even still, both of you are still using buildings and other infrastructure that you did not pay for directly through tuition fees. You were only paying for part of the expenses to run the courses themselves but the tax payers of your country had been paying to infrastructure all students were to take advantage of.
Because of this, it would be wise to consider looking for a way to keep the talented students within the country that educated them.
I also thought this was particularly galling:
"Given all this, why do we kick out the more than 40% of math and science graduate students who are not US citizens after educating them?"
Wait a sec...*who* educated them? Does the US gov't typically pay a foreign student's tuition, or do they have to either pay their own way or manage a grant/scholarship? My guess would be the latter case would be the overwhelming majority, with the only role of gov't in most cases being to grant a student visa. It's one thing to suggest that maybe 'we' should have program to help convert student visas to work visas, but to say we are "kicking out" people who were granted visas solely for education because they finished their education, which it is dubiously implied that "we" paid for, is simply dishonest.
Right, so while there are in the US, they are not using all of the infrastructure of your country for an extended period of time? Do you think all of the infrastructure on the university was paid for by student tuition alone?
Apple has repeatedly spent millions of dollars in cash upfront to secure flash chip supplies since they started their switch to flash storage years ago so where is this anal-yst pulling their information from?
IMO the bundling of email service and addresses with internet access service is a historical artifact that adds lockin and reduces competition in the internet access market.
So who do you work for? Google? Yahoo? Some other third party email provider? A dishonest ISP that lies to the customers and uses a third party for email? Here is a cluestick for you to hit yourself with. Lock-in is an artifact of a proprietary email schema. Google is an example of a proprietary extension of IMAP email. They don't "delete" you emails, they are just archived. Most email providers that offer IMAP protocol access will move the deleted email to the deleted folder and allow you to easily empty that folder whereas Google does not follow that standard. This story is an example of how Google's implementation is non-standard and causes a level of "lock-in".
If you are going to offer customers email but in the background use gmail then don't bother and just provide instructions on how to setup a Gmail account. I personally use both my ISP and a couple of cloud based providers but I am not a noob. You should not be lying to noobs.
Oh I see, instead of buying a laptop with HDMI / Gb Network and USB3, I can buy a laptop with a single ThunderBolt port and also buy a whole bunch of adapters or a dock to carry around in my laptop case?
My rMBP laptop has an HDMI port, SD card slot, two USB 3 ports and two thunderbolt ports. Each of those thunderbolt ports can break out Gigabit Ethernet, additional USB 3 ports, display port, Firewire 800 and passthrough thunderbolt with the right dock/breakout box.
With Thunderbolt, you can daisy chain a thunderbolt display and thunderbolt storage off one of those ports.
Like I said, it already has HDMI out but if I need Firewire 800, I can use an adapter. If I need Ethernet, I can use an adapter too but I don't use ethernet at home and most places have wifi these days. I don't always need Firewire 800 or ethernet but if I do, I can plug in the adapter for those rare times that I do.
Occam's razor to the rescue! The simpler explanation of the world is better. I.e. the one without invisible pink unicorns. (There existence is already a logical impossibility, since something that's invisible cannot have color, but that misses the point)
So the simpler explanation would be that we are a random occurrence? Since nobody cannot explain life from lifelessness on earth, panspermia was invented to shift the problem to "mars". Unfortunately, that really explains nothing but just shifts the problem to another planet. I particularly like the convoluted explanation of how DNA supposedly "evolved" out disparate components by molecules hitching a ride on some dancing crystals floating randomly in the sea. But life supposedly sprung forth from "something" zapping the components into place by a completely random chance.
While a very boring science fiction short story, it does not sound logical, probable or scientific to me. It just sounds like someone came up with an explanation out of thin air to comfort themselves because they did not want to face reality. Scientists have no bloody clue how life sprung forth.
Using Occam's razor, the explanation that "god did it" is the simpler explanation.
I'm not sure where you're getting your definitions/meanings of words, but here on planet Earth, atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities and agnosticism is the view that the existence or non-existence of deities is unknown or unknowable. As an atheist, I don't have "faith" in the absence of god - I just look at the available evidence and realise that gods are equivalent to invisible pink unicorns. I don't have faith that invisible pink unicorns don't exist, I just haven't seen any evidence to support their existence (and thus I believe that only fools would think they exist).
I think you are mistaken and have narrow definition of Atheism. In the most simple terms, Atheism is the rejection of the worship of the primary deity or deities of the society you are in.
For example, in the Roman empire prior to the conversion of Constantine, Christians were persecuted for being "atheists" because they refused to worship the Emperor as a living god and refused to worship roman gods. They did not deny the existence of the emperor but they refused to "worship" the emperor.
Similarly, non-christians living or visiting a fundamentalist muslim country might be viewed as "athiests" for the same reason.
A lot of people mistakenly assume that because Buddhism abstains from worshiping local deities that local of Buddhist practices deny their existence. They simply view them as not worthy of worship.
Your disbelief in the existence of gods or a god is simply your personal justification for your "atheism" rather what atheism is. So I would argue that your disbelief in gods is your "belief" which reenforces your atheistic position. Look into the root of that work for some insight It is simply the rejection of the predominant faith or religion in a society and it does not require a disbelief in the existence of gods.