No, it's not an exaggeration. Rather than rehash arguments from the previous thread, I'll just linktosomeofthem.
(Note that that is far from an exhaustive list of the arguments explaining how that politician is indeed trying to ban teaching science in general. I just can't be bothered to go re-read through and pick out all the good ones.)
Social Conservatives are less than 25% of Republicans and are probably less than 20% of the total.
Then why do they get more than 50% of the vote in the primaries?
Being religious does not equal being a social conservative.
Sure, some people are religious but not socially conservative... but they're usually Democrats.
But Gary Johnson and others are/were pretty damn close to "coming out."
Sure, Gary Johnson was pretty great (I voted for him)... which is why he lost the Republican primary by a landslide. The Republicans are incapable of electing a reasonable candidate like Johnson precisely because they're overrun with authoritarian theocrats!
It's too bad, too, because unlike the rest of the Republican candidates, he was socially-liberal enough to have a chance of beating Obama in the general election (had he run as a Republican instead of a Libertarian).
Go to Red State and Legal Insurrection and you'll see that many are opposed to the leviathan state.
Maybe some people on those sites say that, but they are either A) a vocal minority, B) fail to actually vote, or C) claim to be for small government, until they realize such a position is a detriment to their pet special interest (usually Social Security or one of the talk-radio "rile up the dumbasses" issues, such as any involving religion, race, evolution or climate change) whereupon they vote for the authoritarian candidate anyway.
This hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades, especially when you consider which Republicans are capable of actually getting elected (rather than losing the primary due to lack of support from the social conservative faction of their party -- clear evidence that it constitutes a majority).
If you can show me an atheist Republican in Congress, then I'll show you a flying pig. We can hold the show-and-tell in Hell (but make sure you bundle up, because it'll have frozen over)!
The key divides between republicans and democrats is over the size and scope and purpose of the Federal government.
No it isn't; they're both in complete agreement that the Federal government should be huge and authoritarian. They only differ in which departments they prefer the bloat to occur (e.g. war vs. welfare). Even the Tea Partyists who claim to be fiscally conservative hypocritically support Social Security, just like the Democrats.
Well, let's see... just a few weeks ago, we discussed how they want to (effectively) ban teaching science by gutting all the actual scientific reasoning from it and doing only rote memorization. (And even then, omitting the rote memorization of certain theories deemed inconvenient to their religion.)
You might want to re-think that characterization, since these ISIS fools are pretty much the polar opposite of 12th century Arabs! In fact, they're much more similar to medieval Europeans, or modern Republicans.
if your "society" is being propped up via funding and arms, and you have no need to actually produce anything yourself or even produce engineers at all, then it isn't as much of a problem.
Math isn't just used by engineers; it's also needed to operate pretty much any business -- even low-tech ones. Even a damn goat-herder needs to be able to multiply, assuming he wants to be able to sell X goats for $Y each, and end up with the correct number of $ afterwards!
Yes, mostly because "University" could refer to any of the following:
world-famous elite research institutions (e.g. Harvard University)
public state colleges that do significant research (e.g. University of Georgia)
regional colleges (e.g. University of West Georgia), which offer bachelor's degrees, but more commonly have students do their first two years there then transfer to the state research uni
for-profit diploma mills (e.g. University of Phoenix).
My Nexus 5 is pretty thin. I don't use a case with it. The screen has not broken. I haven't gone out of my way to be especially careful with it, either.
It's just not that damn hard to use a phone without breaking it, unless you're ridiculously careless.
It depends where the degree is from. If it's from CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) then it means a lot. If it's from "CMU" (Central Michigan University) then less so. If it's from "CMU" (Certificate Mill University) then it isn't worth shit.
The difference used to be, that they operated outside the law.
Not quite. The difference used to be that the USA's spies broke other countries' laws for our (the American public's) benefit, whereas now they break our laws for their own benefit!
the day they catch a jihadist with a nuke backpack right before he enters Manhattan, we will both be glad they were spying on whoever it took.
Speak for yourself. I, for one, think our civil liberties are so important that preserving them even at the cost of failing to prevent some city from being nuked (including my city, killing me) would be worth it.
On one hand, of course we see a problem with this! But on the other hand, if you decided to use Apple products, you should have known what you signed up for...
There is a huge amount of FOSS that has an entire "front" web page that tells people in exquisite detail what changes have been made, who contributed, how others can get involved and what bugs are outstanding without ever mentioning what the hell the project does, or what benefits it brings the world.
Quoted for truth!
That said, "KDevelop" is pretty self-explanatory: it's the word "develop" with a "K" in front of it, which pretty obviously (to Slashdotters, at least) means a development environment for KDE. I've never used KDevelop, and in fact haven't even used KDE in at least a decade, but instantly understood anyway.
Now, if we were talking about Gimp or Konqueror or any number of project names pulled straight from/dev/random, then yeah, you're absolutely right.
What do mean, "will be?" Anonymous anything is gone, because Comcast is judge, jury and executioner. Since the Bill of Rights applies to the government but not corporations (to the extent that it applies at all, but I digress...), moving internet service from corporate control to government control is a way to get anonymity back.
Sure, illegal government surveillance could continue, but that situation is already infinitely bad, so it can't get any worse.
The next issue is going to probable cause, uploading to much? Well you must be a criminal copyright violator and their will be be a warrant to search your computer so fast your head is gonna spin.
What, and you think this isn't already the case?! At least if government were the ISP then the police would have to get a warrant to find out how much you're uploading; right now Comcast will just voluntarily tell them!
You don't want Government to have that kinda of control Look at Turkey's internet crack down!
And you think Comcast would act any differently?
Here's the bottom line: you're saying government control is bad, and I would tend to agree. However, my point is that we already have that, except the enforcement has been outsourced to crony capitalists in order to do an end-run around Due Process!
There is no difference between Comcast and the government, except that the government has to at least pretend to respect your rights.
What they were doing may not have even been illegal, which is the whole problem.
Bullshit. What they have doing has always been illegal -- any plain reading of the Constitution shows it. The issue is that people in power (possibly including the Supreme Court) refuse to acknowledge the law, not that it doesn't exist!
After all, if he didn't raise concerns, then how could they have possibly known there were any issues.
Well, for starters, they could have listened to the last several whistleblowers (e.g. Binney and Drake) who did try to use "official channels" instead of marginalizing them and ruining their lives.
If Snowden can show that he applied due diligence by going through the channels to discuss his concerns and was ignored or he felt threatened, he can still try to use whistle-blowing as a defense.
Otherwise, he may have had legitimate concerns, but bypassed normal procedures and just ran off with the stash and caused them to be made public, which is a federal offense, whistle-blower or not.
What are you talking about? Snowden doesn't need a defense, because he'd be an utter moron to ever willingly come back to NSA jurisdiction again.
Aside from that, Snowden knew damn well that "going through the channels" directly results in the NSA ruining your life and burying whatever you were trying to be a whistleblower about. How did he know this? Simple, by learning about what happened to the last few people who tried to be whistleblowers using the "channels!"
In other words, the "official channels" don't work, so trying to say Snowden is guilty because he didn't use them is specious. Any court that accepts such an argument is of the "Kangaroo" or "Star Chamber" variety.
This raises the question of why Comcast would care. For many years at least, the conventional wisdom among service providers and other carriers was that they'd prefer to NOT know what a customer uses the service for. If the ISP doesn't, and can't, know which sites customers are visiting, they can't be held responsible either legally or in regards to PR.
The answer is simple: Comcast has caught on to the fact that there are enough corporatists and totalitarians in Congress who want to gargle their balls that they won't be held responsible no matter what they do. Data-mining, spying, injecting ads into third-party content, and all the other "should-be-illegal" shit not only improves profits but lets the execs get off on their power, with no downside whatsoever because We The People are too fucking clueless to elect people motivated to help us instead of them!
Quit spreading FUD. You know the difference between Big Government "regulating" the Internet and "Big Cable" controlling the Internet? With government, you can complain on Constitutional grounds if they infringe your rights. With Comcast, you're shit out of luck!
Bullshit. The Supreme Court damn well knows the 4th Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of Rights) should be interpreted broadly, so as to limit the government as much as possible. They just don't give a fuck because they're partisan, totalitarian bastards!
Why the Hell would Cuba give a damn about US patent law? With medicine it's typically the research that's the hard part, not the manufacturing, so all Cuba would have to do is get a copy of the patent (perhaps via an intermediary) and make the drugs itself.
Are you sure? There are actually two (possible) dialogs:
One is a white-themed dialog with a header labeled with the Google Voice icon + "Google Voice", the choices "Call with Google Voice" and "Call without Google Voice", and a cancel button.
The other is a black-themed dialog with a header labeled "Call" and the choices (on my phone) the CSipSimple icon + "[my VoIP number]" and the Dialer icon + "Use Mobile".
If your phone is set up the way I think it is, when making a call from Google Voice you'd see the first, white dialog. If you choose "Call without Google Voice" it would make a normal cellular call. If you choose "Call with Google Voice" it would still make a cellular call, but the number called would be Google Voice's number itself, whereupon it would then be routed through Google's servers and then to its destination. But it would still use cellular voice protocols between you and Google. (Your phone would report that it called the number you told it to call, but if you requested a call log from your cellular provider it should show you calling Google instead.)
If you try to dial out with Google Voice, it pulls up whatever app is registered to handle dialing phone numbers and makes a call with that. If you only have one such app -- e.g., the system Dialer app -- then it uses that and completes the call as a "real cellular call" using voice minutes. (On my device, it prompts me to choose between the system dialer and my VoIP app, but I only see the prompt because I have multiple programs to handle that intent.)
Try it when on Wi-Fi without a cellular connection and you'll see that it fails.
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No, it's not an exaggeration. Rather than rehash arguments from the previous thread, I'll just link to some of them.
(Note that that is far from an exhaustive list of the arguments explaining how that politician is indeed trying to ban teaching science in general. I just can't be bothered to go re-read through and pick out all the good ones.)
Then why do they get more than 50% of the vote in the primaries?
Sure, some people are religious but not socially conservative... but they're usually Democrats.
Sure, Gary Johnson was pretty great (I voted for him)... which is why he lost the Republican primary by a landslide. The Republicans are incapable of electing a reasonable candidate like Johnson precisely because they're overrun with authoritarian theocrats!
It's too bad, too, because unlike the rest of the Republican candidates, he was socially-liberal enough to have a chance of beating Obama in the general election (had he run as a Republican instead of a Libertarian).
Maybe some people on those sites say that, but they are either A) a vocal minority, B) fail to actually vote, or C) claim to be for small government, until they realize such a position is a detriment to their pet special interest (usually Social Security or one of the talk-radio "rile up the dumbasses" issues, such as any involving religion, race, evolution or climate change) whereupon they vote for the authoritarian candidate anyway.
This hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades, especially when you consider which Republicans are capable of actually getting elected (rather than losing the primary due to lack of support from the social conservative faction of their party -- clear evidence that it constitutes a majority).
If you can show me an atheist Republican in Congress, then I'll show you a flying pig. We can hold the show-and-tell in Hell (but make sure you bundle up, because it'll have frozen over)!
No it isn't; they're both in complete agreement that the Federal government should be huge and authoritarian. They only differ in which departments they prefer the bloat to occur (e.g. war vs. welfare). Even the Tea Partyists who claim to be fiscally conservative hypocritically support Social Security, just like the Democrats.
Well, let's see... just a few weeks ago, we discussed how they want to (effectively) ban teaching science by gutting all the actual scientific reasoning from it and doing only rote memorization. (And even then, omitting the rote memorization of certain theories deemed inconvenient to their religion.)
For the Arabs, the middle ages were great!
Well, at least until the Crusaders showed up and took all the Arabs' discoveries so they could jump-start the Renaissance....
You might want to re-think that characterization, since these ISIS fools are pretty much the polar opposite of 12th century Arabs! In fact, they're much more similar to medieval Europeans, or modern Republicans.
Math isn't just used by engineers; it's also needed to operate pretty much any business -- even low-tech ones. Even a damn goat-herder needs to be able to multiply, assuming he wants to be able to sell X goats for $Y each, and end up with the correct number of $ afterwards!
Yes, mostly because "University" could refer to any of the following:
Some places calling themselves "Universities" might be nationally accredited instead of regionally accredited, or even not accredited at all.
My Nexus 5 is pretty thin. I don't use a case with it. The screen has not broken. I haven't gone out of my way to be especially careful with it, either.
It's just not that damn hard to use a phone without breaking it, unless you're ridiculously careless.
It depends where the degree is from. If it's from CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) then it means a lot. If it's from "CMU" (Central Michigan University) then less so. If it's from "CMU" (Certificate Mill University) then it isn't worth shit.
Not quite. The difference used to be that the USA's spies broke other countries' laws for our (the American public's) benefit, whereas now they break our laws for their own benefit!
Speak for yourself. I, for one, think our civil liberties are so important that preserving them even at the cost of failing to prevent some city from being nuked (including my city, killing me) would be worth it.
'Twas gallows humor. In reality, I'm not stupid enough to buy a Kindle, and I do use Project Gutenberg.
On one hand, of course we see a problem with this! But on the other hand, if you decided to use Apple products, you should have known what you signed up for...
Quoted for truth!
That said, "KDevelop" is pretty self-explanatory: it's the word "develop" with a "K" in front of it, which pretty obviously (to Slashdotters, at least) means a development environment for KDE. I've never used KDevelop, and in fact haven't even used KDE in at least a decade, but instantly understood anyway.
Now, if we were talking about Gimp or Konqueror or any number of project names pulled straight from /dev/random, then yeah, you're absolutely right.
What do mean, "will be?" Anonymous anything is gone, because Comcast is judge, jury and executioner. Since the Bill of Rights applies to the government but not corporations (to the extent that it applies at all, but I digress...), moving internet service from corporate control to government control is a way to get anonymity back.
Sure, illegal government surveillance could continue, but that situation is already infinitely bad, so it can't get any worse.
What, and you think this isn't already the case?! At least if government were the ISP then the police would have to get a warrant to find out how much you're uploading; right now Comcast will just voluntarily tell them!
And you think Comcast would act any differently?
Here's the bottom line: you're saying government control is bad, and I would tend to agree. However, my point is that we already have that, except the enforcement has been outsourced to crony capitalists in order to do an end-run around Due Process!
There is no difference between Comcast and the government, except that the government has to at least pretend to respect your rights.
Bullshit. What they have doing has always been illegal -- any plain reading of the Constitution shows it. The issue is that people in power (possibly including the Supreme Court) refuse to acknowledge the law, not that it doesn't exist!
Well, for starters, they could have listened to the last several whistleblowers (e.g. Binney and Drake) who did try to use "official channels" instead of marginalizing them and ruining their lives.
What are you talking about? Snowden doesn't need a defense, because he'd be an utter moron to ever willingly come back to NSA jurisdiction again.
Aside from that, Snowden knew damn well that "going through the channels" directly results in the NSA ruining your life and burying whatever you were trying to be a whistleblower about. How did he know this? Simple, by learning about what happened to the last few people who tried to be whistleblowers using the "channels!"
In other words, the "official channels" don't work, so trying to say Snowden is guilty because he didn't use them is specious. Any court that accepts such an argument is of the "Kangaroo" or "Star Chamber" variety.
Hmm... that sounds like something I read on my Kindle once, but I went to check and I can't find it...!
The answer is simple: Comcast has caught on to the fact that there are enough corporatists and totalitarians in Congress who want to gargle their balls that they won't be held responsible no matter what they do. Data-mining, spying, injecting ads into third-party content, and all the other "should-be-illegal" shit not only improves profits but lets the execs get off on their power, with no downside whatsoever because We The People are too fucking clueless to elect people motivated to help us instead of them!
Quit spreading FUD. You know the difference between Big Government "regulating" the Internet and "Big Cable" controlling the Internet? With government, you can complain on Constitutional grounds if they infringe your rights. With Comcast, you're shit out of luck!
Bullshit. The Supreme Court damn well knows the 4th Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of Rights) should be interpreted broadly, so as to limit the government as much as possible. They just don't give a fuck because they're partisan, totalitarian bastards!
Why the Hell would Cuba give a damn about US patent law? With medicine it's typically the research that's the hard part, not the manufacturing, so all Cuba would have to do is get a copy of the patent (perhaps via an intermediary) and make the drugs itself.
Are you sure? There are actually two (possible) dialogs:
If your phone is set up the way I think it is, when making a call from Google Voice you'd see the first, white dialog. If you choose "Call without Google Voice" it would make a normal cellular call. If you choose "Call with Google Voice" it would still make a cellular call, but the number called would be Google Voice's number itself, whereupon it would then be routed through Google's servers and then to its destination. But it would still use cellular voice protocols between you and Google. (Your phone would report that it called the number you told it to call, but if you requested a call log from your cellular provider it should show you calling Google instead.)
If you try to dial out with Google Voice, it pulls up whatever app is registered to handle dialing phone numbers and makes a call with that. If you only have one such app -- e.g., the system Dialer app -- then it uses that and completes the call as a "real cellular call" using voice minutes. (On my device, it prompts me to choose between the system dialer and my VoIP app, but I only see the prompt because I have multiple programs to handle that intent.)
Try it when on Wi-Fi without a cellular connection and you'll see that it fails.