Interestingly, on the other hand in porn and swinger societies, black men seem to be quite popular. There's probably a mix of the exotic and forbidden at work, as well as the fact that it's generally a safe environment with other people present.
Thanks for the link. I always find it fascinating how complex and full of different aspects a topic becomes once you move beneath the surface and dissect causality.
Once you use a listing service that opens it to the public then there are all sorts of rules and laws that follow.
Why? You just state that like it's an obvious fact, but compared to "the sky is blue" it does not immediately follow.
Want to keep your rules? Don't use a listing service.
Why? That I need to follow the rules of the listing service, fine. That's part of signing the EULA when you register with it. But why do these rules have to be/contain specific rules? Why can the listing service not make up whatever rules it wants? It doesn't follow.
Rent to whomever you want, but don't advertise it to people you have no intention of renting to. That is what is illegal.
Ok, so add a filter to the listing service that allows the landlord to say "no men and no asian people" if they want, or "only single mothers of african decent" if that's their preference. What's wrong with that? If you find that nobody wants to rent to group X - go and figure out what's the reason for that and put your energy into fixing that. At the same time, there's suddenly a business opportunity for people to rent specifically to that group. The more they are discriminated against, the less competition and the more interesting it is to rent specifically to them.
Suppressing prejudices doesn't work. They don't go away just because you can't say it. Addressing them in an intelligent way is a much better approach.
Oh I love it when Ignoramus Anonymous trouts of free market nonsense.
When is the last time you saw an actual free market? You know, the one with an infinite number of buyers and sellers, perfect transparency, zero handling costs and no barriers of entry?
That's right, the whole free market thing is a purely theoretical model. It is not a real economical theory. It's the economists equivalent to the physicist saying "let's ignore friction and assume a perfect sphere in a vacuum..."
You need to adapt it to the real world or you are in for a hell of a lot surprises.
Because we live in a post-political-correctness world, where you are shouted down as racist, sexist, nazi or whatever if you have a not-approved-by-the-mainstream-police uncomfortable opinion. Some of those opinions actually are some or all of those things, but once people realised that it's an easy way to shut someone up, the labels expanded dramatically. You are now labeled a rape-culture sexist if you point out that "equal rights" also means men have rights. You are labeled a slave-holder racist if you point out that there are cases where discrimination goes against white people. And god forbid you say anything positive about a heterosexual white male.
Sadly, people didn't understand that the reason sexism and racism and political extremism are making a comeback tour is exactly that their proponents are being shouted down, giving them this "rebel" feeling that tends to make people stick more strongly to their opinion instead of changing theirs mind.
We should engage racists and reveal - to their and our eyes - what's behind their thoughts. Most often, it turns out it's a simple mix of stereotypes and fear, and once revealed it can be healed. We don't do it because we are also afraid - that if you seriously engage the topic, you have to face some uncomfortable facts for yourself. For example that certain demographic groups actually are more prone to violence, or more likely to commit certain crimes, or other such things. Dissecting that into the parts that are inherent to whatever the trait is and those that are self-fullfilling prophecies (if everyone thinks group A is full of criminals, they are less likely to be given good jobs, leaving many of them no other option than to become criminals). So in a way, the whole shouting match is because the non-racists are afraid to face an uncomfortable fact or two that might shake their simplified world-view.
For the record: I'm a racist. My Bengal cat is different from other cat races and I won't let anyone tell me that she's the same as any street cat. For humans, even the term is silly as there is only one human race. We extinguished the other ones (Neanderthals and such) tens of thousands of years ago.
On the one hand, yes racism is stupid and backwater countryside last-century silly. But on the other hand, this isn't some hotel room, this is, for many people, theirs home (or holiday home, or whatever). They should be able to decide who to let in, based on whatever criteria they want, including racism, sexism and I-don't-like-people-in-suits.
We will see these kind of things happening more and more as the "gig economy" blurs the line between the private and the business world.
I didn't say it was right, I said it was on to something.
When prosecution doesn't work as a deterence - and it obviously doesn't in high-stakes white collar crimes - then prevention needs the be stronger.
This could very well take the form of pre-crime investigations. I'm against imprisoning someone for something they didn't (yet) do. But why is it that police has to wait until a crime has been committed before they can even begin looking?
I was in this position once. Someone tried to run a common scam on me and I went to the police so that they could catch them in flagranti. The answer pretty much was "well, no crime has been committed so far, so we can do nothing".
A bigger stress on the part where in many crimes the attempt is a crime would help out a lot, especially with corporate crime.
Which part of "charging them in a legal system that operates on the timescale of years when their personal success depends on quarterly results" wasn't clear ?
Uber is actually a good example of what's going wrong with the world: They are openly criminal and it works. It's Al Capone all over again. Everyone knows what they are doing, but they're too slippery to be nailed.
Same with the tax evasion of multinational cooperation, wars based on invented bullshit, election frauds done almost openly (like in Turkey), and so on.
Minority Report may have been on to something: The legal system working after the fact, and with a delay often measured in years, does not deter criminals. If you can take over a country, or become a billionaire, the threat that ten years from now they might file charges which your $1000/h lawyers will then simply drag through the courts for twenty years - well, that is not a very threatening thing especially for people trained to think primarily about next quarter.
They are selling fast because there are not many on the market. I checked recently, as I'm shopping for a new car, and the closest one was 150 km away from me. And there were about 5 or 6 in the entire german speaking area (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).
The Pentagon wants money, Hollywood wants to make movies.
If you think this is primarily about money, you need to stop smoking that shit man, it's bad for your brain. Every, literally (not figuratively) *every* article that described the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon points out the PR, recruitment and image benefits for the Pentagon long before the monetary aspect, which seems to about cover the costs and thats it.
Yes, there are kooks who will develop conspiracy theories about anything,
Really.
So why are your evening news full of news about Syria, and when is the last time they mentioned Jemen?
t's a statement of reality that much of the world recognises that Russia is the biggest threat to world peace right now as demonstrated through real actual seizure of sovereign foreign territory - I was against the 2003 Iraq war, but at least there was never a plan to seize it permanently and claim it as actual American soil.
As the Iraqi if the difference matters much for them. Oh wait, a lot of them are dead.
You need to stop restricting yourself to pro-Russian propaganda like RT, when that propaganda is such a tiny minority of the global media landscape.
I actually watched RT maybe 3 times in my life. I am grateful to the plurality of media in the western world because most of my information about how the echo chamber works (long before that word was popular) I got from there. And if you really think the mainstream media, you know, the one that 95% of the people watch and draw their opinions from, is completely unbiased, independent and presents all points of view and all newsworthy news, then I'll end this discussion here because it's pointless to discuss with deluded people.
Given that this is the premise of your whole argument and is demonstrably untrue then I don't know what the point in responding to the rest is.
It is not the premise of everything, and cutting the argument short with another cheap trick is dishonest.
Are you really suggesting the US, UK, Europe et. al. have a secret great firewall like China, and have the same lack of plurality of media?
I suggested nothing of the kind. Western propaganda is fundamentally different and much less obvious than Chinese or Russian propaganda. For example, almost every Hollywood action movie portraits the US military in generally good terms (even if there are individual villains), and quite often they are the ones who save the world. The Pentagon, meanwhile, supports such movies generously with vehicles, equipment and other support. Coincidence?
There are literally books about how the western propaganda system works, who is connected to whom how, who owns the media and why, for examples, there are wars and genocides that you don't find on the evening news even though the body count far exceeds other wars that do get reported.
Now stop the russiophobic bullshit talk to a person who's not telling you that Russia is right, but that you should worry about being lied to by your own media before you worry about other countries telling lies to their people.
Why are the West the bad guys for intervening against a war criminal, but Russia isn't a bad guy even though it's also carrying out war crimes by bombing civilian populations, by annexing sovereign foreign territory (Crimea), by shooting down an airliner full of civilians over the sovereign territory of a nation it is attacking, and by backing a war criminal?
Because we are the subject to propaganda no less than anyone else in the world. Let's dissect that statement:
"bad guy" is not a term likely to be found in any law book. So you are making a moral argument, but I was making a legal one.
Then you are mixing Syrian and Crimea as if they were the same thing. While western propaganda links them, there's no legal connection between the two.
Bombing of civilian populations is done by all sides in Syria, they all claim that they target military targets (or "terrorists") and that civilian casualties are unfortunate collateral damage. Whom you choose to believe and whom you call liars is an entirely political choice.
Shooting down an airliner is again Crimea, unless you are referring to SA 1812, which was shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force with 78 civilians on board (no survivors). Or maybe to Iran Air 655, shot down by the US with 290 civilian casualties. The unfortunate fact is that even if it was Russia that shot down MH17, a conclusion the international investigation did not make (they say russian missile system, probably operated by the rebels) - civilian airliners get shot down in war zones, and over the years everyone made that fatal mistake, including the US.
Backing a war criminal? Where is the investigation and conviction? Is Erdogan in Turkey any less of one, and the west is backing him? What about Saudi Arabia, the wests stronges ally in the region, whose government is comparable to the fucking Taliban? And wasn't Saddam Hussein backed by the west for decades, even after it was absolutely clear he is using poison gas in the Iraq-Iran war? Funny how being a war criminal only counts if you're inconvient to current politics.
Your final list is very nicely cut. It excludes such things as unprovoked invasions or bombings, which the west is a hundredfold guilty of, or the "temporary" (we are speaking years and decades) occupation of territory, all of which are illegal under international law. It ignores all the military interventions done on simiarly bullshit grounds, or even based on pure fabrications (Iraqs WMD). Nice parlour trick. You have a nice multi-color cake on the table, but you cut out only the white parts and then claim the whole cake was white. You really think that only 12-year olds read/. who don't immediately see through that trick?
Your "self-hatred" argument I left for last. This is censorship par excellence. By putting negatively connotated labels on criticism, you silence it. Chapter one in, ironically, the Nazi book on propaganda. This is literally the first thing they did - labelling things according to their perspective. This allows you to frame the entire discussion in your mindset.
But have you ever given a thought to the fact that the whole binary approach could be wrong? That in these questions maybe there is not one good and one bad guy? This is the real world, not a Hollywood movie! There can be two bad guys. Or three, or five. Or mixed guys - good intentions, bad methods. Or mixed intentions. Someone (forgot who, damn it) once said "Nobody is the villain in their own life story." and in the same way that Bush or Obama or Trump will be able to explain to you why everything they do is right and proper, I'm sure Putin can do the same. Or Assad. Or even these ISIS fanatics. And if you really listen, you would find that their argument is sound. It will be subjective, one-sided and leave out many facts and nuances, but it makes sense to them. And that is why we are in this mess, because eve
The International Red Cross agrees with my assessment, now calling the Syrian war an international armed conflict.
At this time, it is still unclear what exactly happened. The UN wants an investigation, the Russians claim that an islamist bomb factory was hit, causing the poison gas explosion, neither side can be believed because they are all far from independent.
What we do know is that Turkey is trying since 2013 to make the USA cross the red line, and has been caught selling poison gas (the same, interestingly, Sarin) to Syrian islamists before. Erdogan was the first to point fingers, and he has a massive internal politics reason to increase tensions, with his upcoming referendum likely going the wrong (for him) way. So a false flag operation is possible as well.
If you think false flag operations are a myth, never forget that WW2 was started by one.
When you spend almost 10 times as much on the military as your opponent, you better be vastly superior or you'd be the laughing stock of the world.
The issue is not whether or not the USA would win such an engagement. The issue is that Russia is an ally of Syria and their presence is covered by international law. The US is not, and their attack is an act of war, in breach of international law.
So Syria is now not in a civil war, but in an actual war. It could declare the airspace a war zone and ask Russia to guard it with the S-400, and they could legally shoot down whoever they want shot down. Maybe they'll succeed, maybe not, but they would be justified in doing it. Of course nobody in the west would care, we'd get fed enough propaganda to not think about the fact that we have become, once again, the bad guys, and the only people not seing it is us.
adding that Thursday's strike was the "first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country's civil war began six years ago."
It is also an act of war and a military attack on a foreign country. Not that the USA ever cared about that, but if you wanted to give Russia a perfect excuse to activate it's S-400 on US airplanes, you just did.
The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.
It's never good for shoppers. Prices will drop, but it is highly unlikely the difference comes out of the pockets of the CEOs or the shareholder profits. It will come out of quality, safety, worker sales or worker numbers, all of which sooner or later cycles back to the disadvantage of the shopper.
You don't understand the argument you are using by yourself.
"I don't believe it" is a blanket statement, and the belief of the author is the only statement made.
"I don't believe it, because..." is a phrase giving a reason to an argument. The "I don't believe" could be cut out with no loss of content.
In this case: The job market being good is the argument, not my belief in company behaviour. As I said, if you are in IS, are willing to relocate to Germany, especially if you're a woman, contact me because I can prove you wrong right away, I have jobs to fill.
True, there are less women working in Information Security.
False, it has anything to do with discrimination. In fact, the job market right now is so good that I cannot for the life of me believe any company would turn down a woman or risk making her not take the offer by paying her less. Right now I know of several customers who are dying to hire qualified IS people (if you're anywhere in central Europe and/or willing to relocate, contact me).
Neighbourhood: Several studies about the alleged "gender pay gap" already revealed that the actual causes of the gap is that, statistically speaking, women have less years of experience at the same age, more gaps in their careers and CVs, and negotiate worse. Some of that may be gender-related, but it's not the same as crying "discrimination".
Whenever I am leading a team, I personally am happy to have a good mix of men and women, it tends to give the broadest perspective and the best results. But if you have an imbalance, you should look for the underlying reasons, not just paint a buzzword over it.
Unfortunately, it is the big stars that pull the crowds, so if the movie industry hurts, they will be the last to feel the pressure. The paychecks of regular workers will be cut first, as always.
If people would stop to ideolize people whose job is basically to stand in a place and deliver a few words of pre-written dialog, and instead focus on the guys who write the script, setup up the beautiful locations, create the props and costumes, etc. etc.
But of course that's as crazy as expecting that we'd actually admire the designers and engineers instead of the CEO...
I once failed a phone interview because I couldn't use Google to look up some helpful side info, not the answers directly, just clarifying information. I immediately thought "what a bullshit. Unless you're studying for a test, you don't have this detail in your head, you pull it up as you need it."
I look up functions and parameters all the time. Half of the time I kind of remember them, but look them up to make sure - it's faster to spend 30 seconds checking than finding a fixing a mistake later on.
I would flat out refuse to do riddles and bullshit tests today. I would ask them if they want someone who is good at memorising trivia or someone who can actually solve real-world problems and if it involved a few Google searches, what exactly is their problem with that?
When I studied, we were allowed a full formulary during math tests. The professor once said, and I agree for 100%, that unless you understand the math, the formula won't do you any good. The skill is not in memorising the formulas, it's in applying them, and knowing which one to use in which situation.
No don't think that you as a citzen can do something similar. These laws were made to ensure that the noble class rules over the peasant class for all... what? Yes?... ah... ok... sorry to interrupt, there was a mix-up in the time scale. So as I said, these laws were made to ensure that the corporate, legal entity rules over... what? oh? ok, apparently we don't say that anymore, the proper phrase is "can create more jobs".
Mathematically, yes. Realistically, you would have to be a complete idiot to bet money on it.
The one area that MS consistently fails in, for all its existence, is usability. Everything they make has always been just barely usable. Their interface design is inconsistent, constantly changing and at best tolerable. But for a small screen on a phone, the interface is the king. It is the one thing you have to get right.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, on the other hand in porn and swinger societies, black men seem to be quite popular. There's probably a mix of the exotic and forbidden at work, as well as the fact that it's generally a safe environment with other people present.
Thanks for the link. I always find it fascinating how complex and full of different aspects a topic becomes once you move beneath the surface and dissect causality.
Once you use a listing service that opens it to the public then there are all sorts of rules and laws that follow.
Why? You just state that like it's an obvious fact, but compared to "the sky is blue" it does not immediately follow.
Want to keep your rules? Don't use a listing service.
Why? That I need to follow the rules of the listing service, fine. That's part of signing the EULA when you register with it. But why do these rules have to be/contain specific rules? Why can the listing service not make up whatever rules it wants? It doesn't follow.
Rent to whomever you want, but don't advertise it to people you have no intention of renting to. That is what is illegal.
Ok, so add a filter to the listing service that allows the landlord to say "no men and no asian people" if they want, or "only single mothers of african decent" if that's their preference. What's wrong with that? If you find that nobody wants to rent to group X - go and figure out what's the reason for that and put your energy into fixing that. At the same time, there's suddenly a business opportunity for people to rent specifically to that group. The more they are discriminated against, the less competition and the more interesting it is to rent specifically to them.
Suppressing prejudices doesn't work. They don't go away just because you can't say it. Addressing them in an intelligent way is a much better approach.
Oh I love it when Ignoramus Anonymous trouts of free market nonsense.
When is the last time you saw an actual free market? You know, the one with an infinite number of buyers and sellers, perfect transparency, zero handling costs and no barriers of entry?
That's right, the whole free market thing is a purely theoretical model. It is not a real economical theory. It's the economists equivalent to the physicist saying "let's ignore friction and assume a perfect sphere in a vacuum..."
You need to adapt it to the real world or you are in for a hell of a lot surprises.
Because we live in a post-political-correctness world, where you are shouted down as racist, sexist, nazi or whatever if you have a not-approved-by-the-mainstream-police uncomfortable opinion. Some of those opinions actually are some or all of those things, but once people realised that it's an easy way to shut someone up, the labels expanded dramatically. You are now labeled a rape-culture sexist if you point out that "equal rights" also means men have rights. You are labeled a slave-holder racist if you point out that there are cases where discrimination goes against white people. And god forbid you say anything positive about a heterosexual white male.
Sadly, people didn't understand that the reason sexism and racism and political extremism are making a comeback tour is exactly that their proponents are being shouted down, giving them this "rebel" feeling that tends to make people stick more strongly to their opinion instead of changing theirs mind.
We should engage racists and reveal - to their and our eyes - what's behind their thoughts. Most often, it turns out it's a simple mix of stereotypes and fear, and once revealed it can be healed. We don't do it because we are also afraid - that if you seriously engage the topic, you have to face some uncomfortable facts for yourself. For example that certain demographic groups actually are more prone to violence, or more likely to commit certain crimes, or other such things. Dissecting that into the parts that are inherent to whatever the trait is and those that are self-fullfilling prophecies (if everyone thinks group A is full of criminals, they are less likely to be given good jobs, leaving many of them no other option than to become criminals). So in a way, the whole shouting match is because the non-racists are afraid to face an uncomfortable fact or two that might shake their simplified world-view.
For the record: I'm a racist. My Bengal cat is different from other cat races and I won't let anyone tell me that she's the same as any street cat.
For humans, even the term is silly as there is only one human race. We extinguished the other ones (Neanderthals and such) tens of thousands of years ago.
Wow, that's going to clash.
On the one hand, yes racism is stupid and backwater countryside last-century silly.
But on the other hand, this isn't some hotel room, this is, for many people, theirs home (or holiday home, or whatever). They should be able to decide who to let in, based on whatever criteria they want, including racism, sexism and I-don't-like-people-in-suits.
We will see these kind of things happening more and more as the "gig economy" blurs the line between the private and the business world.
I didn't say it was right, I said it was on to something.
When prosecution doesn't work as a deterence - and it obviously doesn't in high-stakes white collar crimes - then prevention needs the be stronger.
This could very well take the form of pre-crime investigations. I'm against imprisoning someone for something they didn't (yet) do. But why is it that police has to wait until a crime has been committed before they can even begin looking?
I was in this position once. Someone tried to run a common scam on me and I went to the police so that they could catch them in flagranti. The answer pretty much was "well, no crime has been committed so far, so we can do nothing".
A bigger stress on the part where in many crimes the attempt is a crime would help out a lot, especially with corporate crime.
Which part of "charging them in a legal system that operates on the timescale of years when their personal success depends on quarterly results" wasn't clear ?
Uber is actually a good example of what's going wrong with the world: They are openly criminal and it works. It's Al Capone all over again. Everyone knows what they are doing, but they're too slippery to be nailed.
Same with the tax evasion of multinational cooperation, wars based on invented bullshit, election frauds done almost openly (like in Turkey), and so on.
Minority Report may have been on to something: The legal system working after the fact, and with a delay often measured in years, does not deter criminals. If you can take over a country, or become a billionaire, the threat that ten years from now they might file charges which your $1000/h lawyers will then simply drag through the courts for twenty years - well, that is not a very threatening thing especially for people trained to think primarily about next quarter.
They are selling fast because there are not many on the market. I checked recently, as I'm shopping for a new car, and the closest one was 150 km away from me. And there were about 5 or 6 in the entire german speaking area (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).
The Pentagon wants money, Hollywood wants to make movies.
If you think this is primarily about money, you need to stop smoking that shit man, it's bad for your brain. Every, literally (not figuratively) *every* article that described the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon points out the PR, recruitment and image benefits for the Pentagon long before the monetary aspect, which seems to about cover the costs and thats it.
Yes, there are kooks who will develop conspiracy theories about anything,
Really.
So why are your evening news full of news about Syria, and when is the last time they mentioned Jemen?
t's a statement of reality that much of the world recognises that Russia is the biggest threat to world peace right now as demonstrated through real actual seizure of sovereign foreign territory - I was against the 2003 Iraq war, but at least there was never a plan to seize it permanently and claim it as actual American soil.
As the Iraqi if the difference matters much for them. Oh wait, a lot of them are dead.
You need to stop restricting yourself to pro-Russian propaganda like RT, when that propaganda is such a tiny minority of the global media landscape.
I actually watched RT maybe 3 times in my life. I am grateful to the plurality of media in the western world because most of my information about how the echo chamber works (long before that word was popular) I got from there. And if you really think the mainstream media, you know, the one that 95% of the people watch and draw their opinions from, is completely unbiased, independent and presents all points of view and all newsworthy news, then I'll end this discussion here because it's pointless to discuss with deluded people.
Given that this is the premise of your whole argument and is demonstrably untrue then I don't know what the point in responding to the rest is.
It is not the premise of everything, and cutting the argument short with another cheap trick is dishonest.
Are you really suggesting the US, UK, Europe et. al. have a secret great firewall like China, and have the same lack of plurality of media?
I suggested nothing of the kind. Western propaganda is fundamentally different and much less obvious than Chinese or Russian propaganda. For example, almost every Hollywood action movie portraits the US military in generally good terms (even if there are individual villains), and quite often they are the ones who save the world. The Pentagon, meanwhile, supports such movies generously with vehicles, equipment and other support. Coincidence?
There are literally books about how the western propaganda system works, who is connected to whom how, who owns the media and why, for examples, there are wars and genocides that you don't find on the evening news even though the body count far exceeds other wars that do get reported.
Now stop the russiophobic bullshit talk to a person who's not telling you that Russia is right, but that you should worry about being lied to by your own media before you worry about other countries telling lies to their people.
Why are the West the bad guys for intervening against a war criminal, but Russia isn't a bad guy even though it's also carrying out war crimes by bombing civilian populations, by annexing sovereign foreign territory (Crimea), by shooting down an airliner full of civilians over the sovereign territory of a nation it is attacking, and by backing a war criminal?
Because we are the subject to propaganda no less than anyone else in the world. Let's dissect that statement:
"bad guy" is not a term likely to be found in any law book. So you are making a moral argument, but I was making a legal one.
Then you are mixing Syrian and Crimea as if they were the same thing. While western propaganda links them, there's no legal connection between the two.
Bombing of civilian populations is done by all sides in Syria, they all claim that they target military targets (or "terrorists") and that civilian casualties are unfortunate collateral damage. Whom you choose to believe and whom you call liars is an entirely political choice.
Shooting down an airliner is again Crimea, unless you are referring to SA 1812, which was shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force with 78 civilians on board (no survivors). Or maybe to Iran Air 655, shot down by the US with 290 civilian casualties. The unfortunate fact is that even if it was Russia that shot down MH17, a conclusion the international investigation did not make (they say russian missile system, probably operated by the rebels) - civilian airliners get shot down in war zones, and over the years everyone made that fatal mistake, including the US.
Backing a war criminal? Where is the investigation and conviction? Is Erdogan in Turkey any less of one, and the west is backing him? What about Saudi Arabia, the wests stronges ally in the region, whose government is comparable to the fucking Taliban? And wasn't Saddam Hussein backed by the west for decades, even after it was absolutely clear he is using poison gas in the Iraq-Iran war? Funny how being a war criminal only counts if you're inconvient to current politics.
Your final list is very nicely cut. It excludes such things as unprovoked invasions or bombings, which the west is a hundredfold guilty of, or the "temporary" (we are speaking years and decades) occupation of territory, all of which are illegal under international law. It ignores all the military interventions done on simiarly bullshit grounds, or even based on pure fabrications (Iraqs WMD). Nice parlour trick. You have a nice multi-color cake on the table, but you cut out only the white parts and then claim the whole cake was white. You really think that only 12-year olds read /. who don't immediately see through that trick?
Your "self-hatred" argument I left for last. This is censorship par excellence. By putting negatively connotated labels on criticism, you silence it. Chapter one in, ironically, the Nazi book on propaganda. This is literally the first thing they did - labelling things according to their perspective. This allows you to frame the entire discussion in your mindset.
But have you ever given a thought to the fact that the whole binary approach could be wrong? That in these questions maybe there is not one good and one bad guy? This is the real world, not a Hollywood movie! There can be two bad guys. Or three, or five. Or mixed guys - good intentions, bad methods. Or mixed intentions. Someone (forgot who, damn it) once said "Nobody is the villain in their own life story." and in the same way that Bush or Obama or Trump will be able to explain to you why everything they do is right and proper, I'm sure Putin can do the same. Or Assad. Or even these ISIS fanatics. And if you really listen, you would find that their argument is sound. It will be subjective, one-sided and leave out many facts and nuances, but it makes sense to them. And that is why we are in this mess, because eve
The International Red Cross agrees with my assessment, now calling the Syrian war an international armed conflict.
At this time, it is still unclear what exactly happened. The UN wants an investigation, the Russians claim that an islamist bomb factory was hit, causing the poison gas explosion, neither side can be believed because they are all far from independent.
What we do know is that Turkey is trying since 2013 to make the USA cross the red line, and has been caught selling poison gas (the same, interestingly, Sarin) to Syrian islamists before. Erdogan was the first to point fingers, and he has a massive internal politics reason to increase tensions, with his upcoming referendum likely going the wrong (for him) way. So a false flag operation is possible as well.
If you think false flag operations are a myth, never forget that WW2 was started by one.
When you spend almost 10 times as much on the military as your opponent, you better be vastly superior or you'd be the laughing stock of the world.
The issue is not whether or not the USA would win such an engagement. The issue is that Russia is an ally of Syria and their presence is covered by international law. The US is not, and their attack is an act of war, in breach of international law.
So Syria is now not in a civil war, but in an actual war. It could declare the airspace a war zone and ask Russia to guard it with the S-400, and they could legally shoot down whoever they want shot down. Maybe they'll succeed, maybe not, but they would be justified in doing it. Of course nobody in the west would care, we'd get fed enough propaganda to not think about the fact that we have become, once again, the bad guys, and the only people not seing it is us.
adding that Thursday's strike was the "first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country's civil war began six years ago."
It is also an act of war and a military attack on a foreign country. Not that the USA ever cared about that, but if you wanted to give Russia a perfect excuse to activate it's S-400 on US airplanes, you just did.
The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.
It's never good for shoppers. Prices will drop, but it is highly unlikely the difference comes out of the pockets of the CEOs or the shareholder profits. It will come out of quality, safety, worker sales or worker numbers, all of which sooner or later cycles back to the disadvantage of the shopper.
The most often told and most consequential lie that programmers constantly tell themselves is this one:
I'll fix this later.
You don't understand the argument you are using by yourself.
"I don't believe it" is a blanket statement, and the belief of the author is the only statement made.
"I don't believe it, because ..." is a phrase giving a reason to an argument. The "I don't believe" could be cut out with no loss of content.
In this case: The job market being good is the argument, not my belief in company behaviour. As I said, if you are in IS, are willing to relocate to Germany, especially if you're a woman, contact me because I can prove you wrong right away, I have jobs to fill.
Truth and lies are often neighbours.
True, there are less women working in Information Security.
False, it has anything to do with discrimination. In fact, the job market right now is so good that I cannot for the life of me believe any company would turn down a woman or risk making her not take the offer by paying her less. Right now I know of several customers who are dying to hire qualified IS people (if you're anywhere in central Europe and/or willing to relocate, contact me).
Neighbourhood: Several studies about the alleged "gender pay gap" already revealed that the actual causes of the gap is that, statistically speaking, women have less years of experience at the same age, more gaps in their careers and CVs, and negotiate worse. Some of that may be gender-related, but it's not the same as crying "discrimination".
Whenever I am leading a team, I personally am happy to have a good mix of men and women, it tends to give the broadest perspective and the best results. But if you have an imbalance, you should look for the underlying reasons, not just paint a buzzword over it.
Unfortunately, it is the big stars that pull the crowds, so if the movie industry hurts, they will be the last to feel the pressure. The paychecks of regular workers will be cut first, as always.
If people would stop to ideolize people whose job is basically to stand in a place and deliver a few words of pre-written dialog, and instead focus on the guys who write the script, setup up the beautiful locations, create the props and costumes, etc. etc.
But of course that's as crazy as expecting that we'd actually admire the designers and engineers instead of the CEO...
So true, so true.
I once failed a phone interview because I couldn't use Google to look up some helpful side info, not the answers directly, just clarifying information. I immediately thought "what a bullshit. Unless you're studying for a test, you don't have this detail in your head, you pull it up as you need it."
I look up functions and parameters all the time. Half of the time I kind of remember them, but look them up to make sure - it's faster to spend 30 seconds checking than finding a fixing a mistake later on.
I would flat out refuse to do riddles and bullshit tests today. I would ask them if they want someone who is good at memorising trivia or someone who can actually solve real-world problems and if it involved a few Google searches, what exactly is their problem with that?
When I studied, we were allowed a full formulary during math tests. The professor once said, and I agree for 100%, that unless you understand the math, the formula won't do you any good. The skill is not in memorising the formulas, it's in applying them, and knowing which one to use in which situation.
Someone within Microsoft finally got the memo that you should never, ever, buy anything from Microsoft until version three...
No don't think that you as a citzen can do something similar. These laws were made to ensure that the noble class rules over the peasant class for all ... what? Yes? ... ah... ok... sorry to interrupt, there was a mix-up in the time scale. So as I said, these laws were made to ensure that the corporate, legal entity rules over... what? oh? ok, apparently we don't say that anymore, the proper phrase is "can create more jobs".
games
One has to admit the possibility is there.
Mathematically, yes. Realistically, you would have to be a complete idiot to bet money on it.
The one area that MS consistently fails in, for all its existence, is usability. Everything they make has always been just barely usable. Their interface design is inconsistent, constantly changing and at best tolerable. But for a small screen on a phone, the interface is the king. It is the one thing you have to get right.