It's also a dick move, and exactly the kind of dick move that got Microsoft on everybody's shit list. If this is how google behaves in the future, they'll end up shitlisted too.
Two wrongs were done here:
- Microsoft added the download button when they themselves would never provide such functionality to their own services, and did it just because they deliberately wanted to anger google. (While I myself would absolutely love a download button - Microsoft's motivation for doing so isn't exactly benevolent.)
- And then of course there's google being angry about skipping ads, but not producing any means for those ads to be delivered. (I think? At first I thought MS was just skipping them on purpose, but now it seems that there's no means to put them there to begin with - without knowing how youtube works, I'm a bit shaky on this one) but beyond that, Google wanting to forbid access to youtube by microsoft's customers entirely.
Google is under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to write apps for any tom dick and harry who demands it for their platform. And given the tiny marketshare of windows phone, it would make sense because it would probably be costly to maintain and simply not worth their time. And while they legally can forbid access to it (after all - it is their service that they pay for,) doing so is - again - a dick move.
If google isn't making a youtube app for windows phone due to the reason I stated, it would make sense because they haven't made one for blackberry either, which currently has a larger market share than windows phone. A third party youtube app is available for blackberry, but it doesn't violate the TOS, and likewise google doesn't seem to have any issue with it.
Silicon Valley; In fact jobs have left and have not been created. Sure there are success stories, but the influence of Silicon Valley as a job creator has waned. Take for example Apple, or Oracle, who have jobs there, but have created a huge number of jobs outside of that region. Facebook is a bit of the old culture of creating jobs in silicon valley. New jobs have not replaced the old jobs. I can bring in many other examples of where more jobs are not created.
Jobs are leaving silicon valley due to taxifornia syndrome. You know where they are going? Well the silicon desert, for one. Many other places as well. They're not simply disappearing - not at all. The states with more socialist policies such as higher minimum wages, union monopolies, and high taxation are losing out on jobs - they're moving to places like Arizona, South Carolina (boeing), Kansas, and Texas. Speak of Kansas, do you know why google picked KC as their first fiber deployment? Because KC has the fewest regulations. Did they get tax incentives? Absolutely, in fact most cities will happily grant that to somebody who is building infrastructure, however they already had some of the fewest ordinances restricting where you could dig and what politician you had to bribe.
Wrong, another example, Germany. Germany has no minimum wage and in fact there is this concept of hunger wages. This means a person is working full time, and does not even come close to making enough money to support their family. I am talking wages of about 1 euro per hour. The government kicks in social help to make ends meet. Germany has shown that to survive you will take work below your pay because you need to do something.
Thank you for bringing up Germany! You know, they are the only thing keeping the EU afloat right now? The rest of the EU has such strong social policies that they are sinking, and Germany is bailing them out. Yes, there are a few there who will make absolute shit wages - those are the ones who I described to you. There aren't many though. You know who else does? Norway, Finland, and Denmark, all of the few countries that are actually self sustaining in Europe. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Oh yes just because I can pay for cheaper consumer crap things are ok. I am going to ask how old are you? For life also includes health care, education, etc. These costs have become prohibitive for the poor. Sure they are given loans and then get jobs where they can barely pay back these things. But hey as long as I can get get cheap consumer crap all is ok, right?
A previous poster (stenvar) debunked this talking point already (I say talking point, because you're basically arguing that my new stuff is inherently worse than my old stuff simply because it costs less, without any sort of reasoning why) and he debunked it pretty thoroughly too. I'll simply refer you to him.
Ah yes armchair snapshot economist. Yes Krugman did say this a long time ago. But did you happen to dig a bit deeper? He also called for wealth redistribution! I am sure having no minimum wage, but wealth redistribution is much better, no? Cynically put what Krugman was talking about could be referencing to something like Germany has. No minimum wage, but wealth redistribution. Which do you prefer? I happen to prefer a living minimum wage thank-you.
Personally I'm rather vehemently opposed to krugman, what I'm showing you was that even the liberal poster child of economists was at odds with what the common liberal view is on wage issues. However when he talks about redistribution, he isn't talking about handing around money, rather he's talking about government spending to provide jobs, such as public works. And of course, to fund it we need high taxes. Again, this is where I was pointing out how he still follows one of the few old keynesian theories that because government spending is part of GDP, therefore having a big complex government means a stronger eco
The concept of being a race to the bottom is just a flat out fallacy. It's all theory, but in reality it doesn't happen. Unless of course, by bottom you mean technology becoming so cheap that even the poor can easily afford it.
So far we've seen the following implemented under the idea of prevention of the so called race to the bottom:
- Ludditism (i.e. banning technology because in theory it takes away jobs) - Lump of labor (mandating reduced working hours to increase employment) - Living wage (aka minimum wage) - Tariffs
The first three work under the assumption that the demand for labor always remains constant. That alone is a huge huge mistake.
As for the first one, even if new technology doesn't create new jobs while getting rid of the old ones but in the short term results in layoffs, in the long run the demand for labor continues to rise. So while your job might go the way of the dodo, new jobs will spring up somewhere else, likely in another unrelated industry. For example, in the classic case of the original Luddites, when it became cheaper to make clothing due to technological advance, people had more money to spend elsewhere, and that elsewhere is where the new jobs go, and you invariably see more jobs created than had existed before that "job costing" technology was invented. It happens every single time, without fail. No matter how automated things become, people will always find some place to spend their excess money.
As for the second - the argument that we need to reduce working hours is often tried, and instead of getting reduced unemployment, you get the opposite. Every single time. Counter-intuitive I realize, but it is a fact nonetheless. The reasoning for this is rather simple:
As for minimum wage...If your wage was below what you're willing to work for, then you'd simply not take the job. This is a fact. Most people do in fact work at above minimum wage. Minimum wage has the following effect: For the low end workers who really aren't worth a shit (there are many out there - this nobody can deny) they simply have no job at all. Whereas they could have at least had SOMETHING, they now have nothing. This has two effects: Increased unemployment, and higher prices. Because prices now go up to match that minimum wage increase, your purchasing power hasn't really gone anywhere. Most people tend to equate money with wealth, and that relationship isn't one to one.
A classic example I look at is this: Back in 2001, I paid $3800 for a 50" tv. The thing was pretty massive not just in diagonal length, but it was pretty fat too - it was rear projection. A really big and obnoxious TV by today's standard. Last year I "upgraded" my whole living room: Bought a new leather couch, ($1,200) built a 5.1 surround system from the ground up (none of the HTIB crap, a truly good sound system, $1,000ish with 8 channel lossless audio) and a new samsung 50" tv that has a MUCH better picture quality than the one from 11 years ago, consumes a lot less power and is light enough for one person to carry. Total spent was $3,200. Basically by spending less I have more "wealth" than I did 10 years ago - and that's even ignoring inflation.
When somebody tells you that the poor are poorer and the wealthy are wealthier because - adjusted for inflation - the poor are making fewer dollars today than they were in the 90's, they have no idea what they are talking about. Even though they say wealth, they aren't looking at wealth, rather they are simply using the medium of exchange as a guide. In reality it doesn't work that way. The example I gave above applies to a lot of things beyond just entertainment. Cheaper shoes, cheaper food, cheaper you name it. Something I might add - I have less money today than I did in the 90's. Mainly due to economic issues I am by the liberal definition "poorer", but nonetheless I have it better than I did then - I have a better ca
Oh, and unlike DNS, there is no way the end user can get around BGP route poisoning. It just can't happen. There's no mechanism for instructing the routers to provide an alternate route, they make those decisions entirely by themselves.
There are only a few things I can think of that *can* be done, but none of them are doable by the end user:
- Peering ISPs outside of the jurisdiction of the poisoned routers will all have to filter those route advertisements. - The direct ISP of TBP will have to play with its local BGP table to subdivide it into smaller routes to make them more specific and thus preferred, which otherwise needlessly complicates the global BGP table, and doesn't completely solve the problem (some areas will still use the poisoned routes.) - And finally, the blacklisted websites could move their services to be inside of the tor network. This is sort of the nuclear option though - tor is notoriously slow and your server compute requirements go through the roof, not to mention "domain names" inside of tor are hard to memorize.
I bet you the next step will be government mandated BGP route poisoning. The nice thing about it (from the point of view of the censors) is that it denies access to far more people than those within your jurisdiction/country/border. Potentially even remove access to the site from the whole world, and it can be done from any trusted BGP peer.
In my experience, all HTC phones are horrible when it comes to bluetooth. But it could easily be argued that this is isolated to HTC, because HTC uses their own bluetooth stack on all phones, and it is known to be inferior (for example, you can't use wiimotes HTC phones, whereas they work fine with AOSP.)
I'd say Chuck Schumer was pissed off because when he ordered the DoJ to cease a certain domain name and related servers, they couldn't possibly oblige even if authorized to use nuclear weapons. That guy is known for getting verbally pissed off at anything he can't control.
I've bought some pretty nice stuff with bitcoins that I've mined.
Anyways, people like you are the suckers who will let the government do anything it chooses because the evil thing they do only targets ( kiddieporn | gambling | drugs ) so they should be allowed to do it as they please, because clearly only those people will be affected.
Not to defend him, but the last guy ordered capture and detainment. The current guy by far prefers drone strikes, most of which include civilian casualties, and many of which are ONLY civilian casualties (i.e. no terrorist was hit in the strike.)
Also, the last guy didn't lie about WMD's. Yes, there were none, that much is true. However the belief that they were there is not just what the last guy beheld, but numerous other nations did as well. Basically everybody believed there were WMD's, not just the US. It isn't a lie unless you were unaware that you weren't speaking the truth.
Now the current guy? He actively and knowingly lies about who he targets:
If you want to talk about innocents being killed, the current guy is much worse. That, and he himself made the argument that he has the right to hit Americans with drone strikes without due process. Personally I'm happy with the one time that this has been done because that asshole had it coming, but it still sets a bad precedent.
No, Saudi Arabia is very westernized in terms of dress and hygiene, as well as technology. People usually go there to strike it rich, because westerners get paid a ton of money to work on projects there. Still though, in the end they follow islamic traditions, many of which have horrible consequences if you violate.
I think the western governments would be a bit more clever than that. They have the resources to develop their own home grown spying tools. They don't need an outside consultant, which is what this guy would have been. Otherwise you'd be hearing about this kind of stuff all the time.
If it was real, I'd be a bit leery about posting details to the public in a way that identifies himself. You never know if an Al-Saud crony might off him. That family themselves HAVE been tied to terrorist groups, or at least certain members of them.
I'd say that's a definite yes. You take it to too far of an extreme, and you end up with the present day middle east.
I have my biases against bronies, but that's probably because the first and only one I've ever met IRL was one of the most annoying people I have ever met. He's in his late 20's and he whines about every god damn thing there is. He was in my CCNP Tshoot class, and every time some little thing doesn't quite go his way, he makes this sound like a baby that can't reach its pacifier, every bit as high pitched, only much louder. And then when it goes a little more not quite so his way, he starts talking like the world is about to end, often times letting out a squeal (literally.) Oh, and he'd randomly start playing cartoons on youtube in the middle of class, with no headphones.
Of course, the bronie part wasn't defining as he didn't mention that he was one until the class was halfway done, and that sort of set the tone for it in my view. It's one of those first impression things that are hard to change.
When I look in retrospect though, there are all sorts of things that we take for granted as kids things but they used to be adult things. Early jazz for example has various jingles that most people today think were songs made for kids, but that is far from the truth. Also apparently pink used to be a masculine color prior to the 1920's. I think that might have changed because pampered rich boys tended to wear pink the most, and people wanted to get away from that, so it became a feminine thing. Still though I wouldn't be caught dead wearing pink.
He's right, actually. If you don't pay for your own schooling, then it sort of becomes meaningless to you. That was part of my motivation to do better in college than I did in high school. I paid for my college tuition on my own (save for the GI bill and fafsa - mind you I was only eligible for a single year worth of the GI bill) and I never had to borrow a cent.
Personally I think the problem is people are going to schools that they probably shouldn't be going to to begin with. For example, I know of a handful of people who are in law school and medical school, and the return on investment for those degrees is shitty. I once read somewhere that there are 40,000 new lawyers graduating each year, and some industry study indicated that we only need about 7,000 new ones each year. It's pretty common to spend upwards of $100,000 to $250,000 for medical school, and most people never make enough to pay for that in any reasonable amount of time.
Take a gander at the link in my signature. The video is about 20 minutes, but it is a pretty good narrative on why "follow your dreams" is more often than not very horrible advice. The "do what you want to do" mantra that is common today is part of the cause of these huge tuition hikes.
The other cause is loans being made available to people who shouldn't be taking them out to begin with, which artificially increases the demand, and thus increases the price. The loans don't even take into consideration whether or not the person going for their degree program is even smart enough to handle any job beyond bagging groceries for example; rather they just hand them out like candy to whoever wants them. This is why real estate became very expensive, if you may recall. People were getting loans where they shouldn't have been able to, and for the same reason as well.
I'll bet most of these are drug dealers, gamblers, or con artists hiding dirty money.
Usually it's easier to simply pay your taxes. The stereotypical argument of the rich always evading taxes typically doesn't happen. It's just not worth the risk of having everything taken away from you if you already run a legitimate operation.
Actually rainforest destruction isn't the result of rich folks. It's the result of poor farmers in south america clearing space for land to plant their crops. And the dumping of toxic chemicals are the same thing - mainly in China.
I would imagine it's a wash because livestock are fed grains and other materials that are completely unfit for human consumption. Literally, our gastric system is completely incapable of absorbing nourishment from most food sources. Unlike herbivores, we have a very simple gastric system (single chambered heart, no cud, and shorter intestines than true herbivores.) Try eating something as common as grass for example - it'll pass right through you. Cows are also fed grains that will literally break your teeth if you try to chew them - cow teeth are a bit heartier though.
Also, I hope you don't go organic, because organic farms use much higher quantities of pesticides than conventional farming. Conventional farms can use synthetic pesticides that they can keep changing to meet the adaptations of the fauna. Organic farms have to use much greater quantities of "natural" pesticides.
Well you talk about not being a jerk yet you have the attitude that people who don't behave like you belong in hell and/or are lazy cop outs. That sounds like a jerk (and snobby) thing to do.
I think you're basically asking for a person who is pristine - and quite honestly, nobody like that exists, nor have they ever. For example, Mahatma Gandhi who is often celebrated as being perfect was a well known racist, yet most people you talk to just think he was this brilliant peaceful guy.
I don't think he chose to be a German of his age any more than Tom Cruise chooses to have gay thoughts. These things sort of just happen.
I think what's most important is now we have the mathematical models in place that allow us to simulate convincing sounds rather than "sample and include". For the creative types, this will save a ton of effort and money. It also has implications for games, e.g. with the given environment model, be able to produce convincing sounds in real-time rather than taking sound samples mixing them with reverb, attenuation, positioning, etc.
I'm a bit doubtful that those are correlated. I think that higher socioeconomic status of the parents has an equal chance in resulting in spoiled brat syndrome. That, and most people with wealth weren't born into wealth.
The only potential correlation I could see would be that those in private schools do better than in public schools. Private schools aren't as heavily bogged down by unions and politicians which allows them to focus more on the teaching.
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It's also a dick move, and exactly the kind of dick move that got Microsoft on everybody's shit list. If this is how google behaves in the future, they'll end up shitlisted too.
Two wrongs were done here:
- Microsoft added the download button when they themselves would never provide such functionality to their own services, and did it just because they deliberately wanted to anger google. (While I myself would absolutely love a download button - Microsoft's motivation for doing so isn't exactly benevolent.)
- And then of course there's google being angry about skipping ads, but not producing any means for those ads to be delivered. (I think? At first I thought MS was just skipping them on purpose, but now it seems that there's no means to put them there to begin with - without knowing how youtube works, I'm a bit shaky on this one) but beyond that, Google wanting to forbid access to youtube by microsoft's customers entirely.
Google is under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to write apps for any tom dick and harry who demands it for their platform. And given the tiny marketshare of windows phone, it would make sense because it would probably be costly to maintain and simply not worth their time. And while they legally can forbid access to it (after all - it is their service that they pay for,) doing so is - again - a dick move.
If google isn't making a youtube app for windows phone due to the reason I stated, it would make sense because they haven't made one for blackberry either, which currently has a larger market share than windows phone. A third party youtube app is available for blackberry, but it doesn't violate the TOS, and likewise google doesn't seem to have any issue with it.
Silicon Valley; In fact jobs have left and have not been created. Sure there are success stories, but the influence of Silicon Valley as a job creator has waned. Take for example Apple, or Oracle, who have jobs there, but have created a huge number of jobs outside of that region. Facebook is a bit of the old culture of creating jobs in silicon valley. New jobs have not replaced the old jobs. I can bring in many other examples of where more jobs are not created.
Jobs are leaving silicon valley due to taxifornia syndrome. You know where they are going? Well the silicon desert, for one. Many other places as well. They're not simply disappearing - not at all. The states with more socialist policies such as higher minimum wages, union monopolies, and high taxation are losing out on jobs - they're moving to places like Arizona, South Carolina (boeing), Kansas, and Texas. Speak of Kansas, do you know why google picked KC as their first fiber deployment? Because KC has the fewest regulations. Did they get tax incentives? Absolutely, in fact most cities will happily grant that to somebody who is building infrastructure, however they already had some of the fewest ordinances restricting where you could dig and what politician you had to bribe.
Wrong, another example, Germany. Germany has no minimum wage and in fact there is this concept of hunger wages. This means a person is working full time, and does not even come close to making enough money to support their family. I am talking wages of about 1 euro per hour. The government kicks in social help to make ends meet. Germany has shown that to survive you will take work below your pay because you need to do something.
Thank you for bringing up Germany! You know, they are the only thing keeping the EU afloat right now? The rest of the EU has such strong social policies that they are sinking, and Germany is bailing them out. Yes, there are a few there who will make absolute shit wages - those are the ones who I described to you. There aren't many though. You know who else does? Norway, Finland, and Denmark, all of the few countries that are actually self sustaining in Europe. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Oh yes just because I can pay for cheaper consumer crap things are ok. I am going to ask how old are you? For life also includes health care, education, etc. These costs have become prohibitive for the poor. Sure they are given loans and then get jobs where they can barely pay back these things. But hey as long as I can get get cheap consumer crap all is ok, right?
A previous poster (stenvar) debunked this talking point already (I say talking point, because you're basically arguing that my new stuff is inherently worse than my old stuff simply because it costs less, without any sort of reasoning why) and he debunked it pretty thoroughly too. I'll simply refer you to him.
Ah yes armchair snapshot economist. Yes Krugman did say this a long time ago. But did you happen to dig a bit deeper? He also called for wealth redistribution! I am sure having no minimum wage, but wealth redistribution is much better, no? Cynically put what Krugman was talking about could be referencing to something like Germany has. No minimum wage, but wealth redistribution. Which do you prefer? I happen to prefer a living minimum wage thank-you.
Personally I'm rather vehemently opposed to krugman, what I'm showing you was that even the liberal poster child of economists was at odds with what the common liberal view is on wage issues. However when he talks about redistribution, he isn't talking about handing around money, rather he's talking about government spending to provide jobs, such as public works. And of course, to fund it we need high taxes. Again, this is where I was pointing out how he still follows one of the few old keynesian theories that because government spending is part of GDP, therefore having a big complex government means a stronger eco
The concept of being a race to the bottom is just a flat out fallacy. It's all theory, but in reality it doesn't happen. Unless of course, by bottom you mean technology becoming so cheap that even the poor can easily afford it.
So far we've seen the following implemented under the idea of prevention of the so called race to the bottom:
- Ludditism (i.e. banning technology because in theory it takes away jobs)
- Lump of labor (mandating reduced working hours to increase employment)
- Living wage (aka minimum wage)
- Tariffs
The first three work under the assumption that the demand for labor always remains constant. That alone is a huge huge mistake.
As for the first one, even if new technology doesn't create new jobs while getting rid of the old ones but in the short term results in layoffs, in the long run the demand for labor continues to rise. So while your job might go the way of the dodo, new jobs will spring up somewhere else, likely in another unrelated industry. For example, in the classic case of the original Luddites, when it became cheaper to make clothing due to technological advance, people had more money to spend elsewhere, and that elsewhere is where the new jobs go, and you invariably see more jobs created than had existed before that "job costing" technology was invented. It happens every single time, without fail. No matter how automated things become, people will always find some place to spend their excess money.
As for the second - the argument that we need to reduce working hours is often tried, and instead of getting reduced unemployment, you get the opposite. Every single time. Counter-intuitive I realize, but it is a fact nonetheless. The reasoning for this is rather simple:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
As for minimum wage...If your wage was below what you're willing to work for, then you'd simply not take the job. This is a fact. Most people do in fact work at above minimum wage. Minimum wage has the following effect: For the low end workers who really aren't worth a shit (there are many out there - this nobody can deny) they simply have no job at all. Whereas they could have at least had SOMETHING, they now have nothing. This has two effects: Increased unemployment, and higher prices. Because prices now go up to match that minimum wage increase, your purchasing power hasn't really gone anywhere. Most people tend to equate money with wealth, and that relationship isn't one to one.
A classic example I look at is this: Back in 2001, I paid $3800 for a 50" tv. The thing was pretty massive not just in diagonal length, but it was pretty fat too - it was rear projection. A really big and obnoxious TV by today's standard. Last year I "upgraded" my whole living room: Bought a new leather couch, ($1,200) built a 5.1 surround system from the ground up (none of the HTIB crap, a truly good sound system, $1,000ish with 8 channel lossless audio) and a new samsung 50" tv that has a MUCH better picture quality than the one from 11 years ago, consumes a lot less power and is light enough for one person to carry. Total spent was $3,200. Basically by spending less I have more "wealth" than I did 10 years ago - and that's even ignoring inflation.
When somebody tells you that the poor are poorer and the wealthy are wealthier because - adjusted for inflation - the poor are making fewer dollars today than they were in the 90's, they have no idea what they are talking about. Even though they say wealth, they aren't looking at wealth, rather they are simply using the medium of exchange as a guide. In reality it doesn't work that way. The example I gave above applies to a lot of things beyond just entertainment. Cheaper shoes, cheaper food, cheaper you name it. Something I might add - I have less money today than I did in the 90's. Mainly due to economic issues I am by the liberal definition "poorer", but nonetheless I have it better than I did then - I have a better ca
Oh, and unlike DNS, there is no way the end user can get around BGP route poisoning. It just can't happen. There's no mechanism for instructing the routers to provide an alternate route, they make those decisions entirely by themselves.
There are only a few things I can think of that *can* be done, but none of them are doable by the end user:
- Peering ISPs outside of the jurisdiction of the poisoned routers will all have to filter those route advertisements.
- The direct ISP of TBP will have to play with its local BGP table to subdivide it into smaller routes to make them more specific and thus preferred, which otherwise needlessly complicates the global BGP table, and doesn't completely solve the problem (some areas will still use the poisoned routes.)
- And finally, the blacklisted websites could move their services to be inside of the tor network. This is sort of the nuclear option though - tor is notoriously slow and your server compute requirements go through the roof, not to mention "domain names" inside of tor are hard to memorize.
I bet you the next step will be government mandated BGP route poisoning. The nice thing about it (from the point of view of the censors) is that it denies access to far more people than those within your jurisdiction/country/border. Potentially even remove access to the site from the whole world, and it can be done from any trusted BGP peer.
In my experience, all HTC phones are horrible when it comes to bluetooth. But it could easily be argued that this is isolated to HTC, because HTC uses their own bluetooth stack on all phones, and it is known to be inferior (for example, you can't use wiimotes HTC phones, whereas they work fine with AOSP.)
I heard communists had no souls, but that takes it to a whole new level.
I'd say Chuck Schumer was pissed off because when he ordered the DoJ to cease a certain domain name and related servers, they couldn't possibly oblige even if authorized to use nuclear weapons. That guy is known for getting verbally pissed off at anything he can't control.
I've bought some pretty nice stuff with bitcoins that I've mined.
Anyways, people like you are the suckers who will let the government do anything it chooses because the evil thing they do only targets ( kiddieporn | gambling | drugs ) so they should be allowed to do it as they please, because clearly only those people will be affected.
Oops, editing mistake on that one. Flip the logic of the lying sentence.
Not to defend him, but the last guy ordered capture and detainment. The current guy by far prefers drone strikes, most of which include civilian casualties, and many of which are ONLY civilian casualties (i.e. no terrorist was hit in the strike.)
http://www.policymic.com/articles/16949/predator-drone-strikes-50-civilians-are-killed-for-every-1-terrorist-and-the-cia-only-wants-to-up-drone-warfare
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes
Also, the last guy didn't lie about WMD's. Yes, there were none, that much is true. However the belief that they were there is not just what the last guy beheld, but numerous other nations did as well. Basically everybody believed there were WMD's, not just the US. It isn't a lie unless you were unaware that you weren't speaking the truth.
Now the current guy? He actively and knowingly lies about who he targets:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas-drone-war-kills-others.html
If you want to talk about innocents being killed, the current guy is much worse. That, and he himself made the argument that he has the right to hit Americans with drone strikes without due process. Personally I'm happy with the one time that this has been done because that asshole had it coming, but it still sets a bad precedent.
No, Saudi Arabia is very westernized in terms of dress and hygiene, as well as technology. People usually go there to strike it rich, because westerners get paid a ton of money to work on projects there. Still though, in the end they follow islamic traditions, many of which have horrible consequences if you violate.
I think the western governments would be a bit more clever than that. They have the resources to develop their own home grown spying tools. They don't need an outside consultant, which is what this guy would have been. Otherwise you'd be hearing about this kind of stuff all the time.
If it was real, I'd be a bit leery about posting details to the public in a way that identifies himself. You never know if an Al-Saud crony might off him. That family themselves HAVE been tied to terrorist groups, or at least certain members of them.
I'd say that's a definite yes. You take it to too far of an extreme, and you end up with the present day middle east.
I have my biases against bronies, but that's probably because the first and only one I've ever met IRL was one of the most annoying people I have ever met. He's in his late 20's and he whines about every god damn thing there is. He was in my CCNP Tshoot class, and every time some little thing doesn't quite go his way, he makes this sound like a baby that can't reach its pacifier, every bit as high pitched, only much louder. And then when it goes a little more not quite so his way, he starts talking like the world is about to end, often times letting out a squeal (literally.) Oh, and he'd randomly start playing cartoons on youtube in the middle of class, with no headphones.
Of course, the bronie part wasn't defining as he didn't mention that he was one until the class was halfway done, and that sort of set the tone for it in my view. It's one of those first impression things that are hard to change.
When I look in retrospect though, there are all sorts of things that we take for granted as kids things but they used to be adult things. Early jazz for example has various jingles that most people today think were songs made for kids, but that is far from the truth. Also apparently pink used to be a masculine color prior to the 1920's. I think that might have changed because pampered rich boys tended to wear pink the most, and people wanted to get away from that, so it became a feminine thing. Still though I wouldn't be caught dead wearing pink.
Alex Jones called, he wants his "gold medal for worst conspiracy theory ever" back.
He's right, actually. If you don't pay for your own schooling, then it sort of becomes meaningless to you. That was part of my motivation to do better in college than I did in high school. I paid for my college tuition on my own (save for the GI bill and fafsa - mind you I was only eligible for a single year worth of the GI bill) and I never had to borrow a cent.
Personally I think the problem is people are going to schools that they probably shouldn't be going to to begin with. For example, I know of a handful of people who are in law school and medical school, and the return on investment for those degrees is shitty. I once read somewhere that there are 40,000 new lawyers graduating each year, and some industry study indicated that we only need about 7,000 new ones each year. It's pretty common to spend upwards of $100,000 to $250,000 for medical school, and most people never make enough to pay for that in any reasonable amount of time.
Take a gander at the link in my signature. The video is about 20 minutes, but it is a pretty good narrative on why "follow your dreams" is more often than not very horrible advice. The "do what you want to do" mantra that is common today is part of the cause of these huge tuition hikes.
The other cause is loans being made available to people who shouldn't be taking them out to begin with, which artificially increases the demand, and thus increases the price. The loans don't even take into consideration whether or not the person going for their degree program is even smart enough to handle any job beyond bagging groceries for example; rather they just hand them out like candy to whoever wants them. This is why real estate became very expensive, if you may recall. People were getting loans where they shouldn't have been able to, and for the same reason as well.
I'll bet most of these are drug dealers, gamblers, or con artists hiding dirty money.
Usually it's easier to simply pay your taxes. The stereotypical argument of the rich always evading taxes typically doesn't happen. It's just not worth the risk of having everything taken away from you if you already run a legitimate operation.
Actually rainforest destruction isn't the result of rich folks. It's the result of poor farmers in south america clearing space for land to plant their crops. And the dumping of toxic chemicals are the same thing - mainly in China.
I would imagine it's a wash because livestock are fed grains and other materials that are completely unfit for human consumption. Literally, our gastric system is completely incapable of absorbing nourishment from most food sources. Unlike herbivores, we have a very simple gastric system (single chambered heart, no cud, and shorter intestines than true herbivores.) Try eating something as common as grass for example - it'll pass right through you. Cows are also fed grains that will literally break your teeth if you try to chew them - cow teeth are a bit heartier though.
Also, I hope you don't go organic, because organic farms use much higher quantities of pesticides than conventional farming. Conventional farms can use synthetic pesticides that they can keep changing to meet the adaptations of the fauna. Organic farms have to use much greater quantities of "natural" pesticides.
Well you talk about not being a jerk yet you have the attitude that people who don't behave like you belong in hell and/or are lazy cop outs. That sounds like a jerk (and snobby) thing to do.
I think you're basically asking for a person who is pristine - and quite honestly, nobody like that exists, nor have they ever. For example, Mahatma Gandhi who is often celebrated as being perfect was a well known racist, yet most people you talk to just think he was this brilliant peaceful guy.
I don't think he chose to be a German of his age any more than Tom Cruise chooses to have gay thoughts. These things sort of just happen.
Do you breathe? Do you drive a car? Do you make s'mores? If so, get in line because you are no more part of the solution than a "denier".
I think what's most important is now we have the mathematical models in place that allow us to simulate convincing sounds rather than "sample and include". For the creative types, this will save a ton of effort and money. It also has implications for games, e.g. with the given environment model, be able to produce convincing sounds in real-time rather than taking sound samples mixing them with reverb, attenuation, positioning, etc.
I'm a bit doubtful that those are correlated. I think that higher socioeconomic status of the parents has an equal chance in resulting in spoiled brat syndrome. That, and most people with wealth weren't born into wealth.
http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/most-wealthy-individuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth/
The only potential correlation I could see would be that those in private schools do better than in public schools. Private schools aren't as heavily bogged down by unions and politicians which allows them to focus more on the teaching.
http://privateschool.about.com/cs/employment/a/advantages.htm