Except people today run over 5 yr olds too, and drivers get sued and even jailed all the time for negligence and it hasn't changed anything.
These rideshare/automated cabs will have ensured that the legislative environment for their vehicles is able to properly protect them from every little lawsuit due to a glitch.
Their first defense will likely be to trundle out the statistics showing that they have actually decreased their company's rate of accidents by moving to driverless vehicles. Which will most likely be the case unless they completely fail to test their vehicles and the software properly. And at that point, they would deserve to be sued into oblivion for complete failure to use common sense.
Discussion of driverless cars seems to mirror some of the discussions of the original automobiles. And honestly, autos built back then were significantly more dangerous than vehicles driven by software are likely to be today and they still took right off as soon as everyone understood how useful they were.
Which is not to say that the fears were entirely unfounded. Auto accidents are a big killer of people, certainly much more so than terrorism could even dream of. And that being the case, cars have only been increasing, not decreasing, in utilization since they have been invented. This is not likely to be any different for self-driving cars, if they can even improve on the safety record of human drivers even just a little bit.
While she did not have the power to keep that video from being spread by the recipient, I am distressed that this is being referred to as an example of "rape culture".
Yes, she was powerless to stop her ex-boyfriend from acting. His was a despicable act.
On the other hand, she not only put the ammunition in his hands, but her original intent was despicable as well.
The sad part is that, unless both of these people were chronic assholes, she was probably upset and did something stupid, and then she upset him, and made him more liable to do something stupid in response.
Calling this an example of "rape culture" is a distraction from a very important reason to carefully evaluate her actions. She may not have had any power to prevent the action of her ex-boyfriend, but she herself had the power to control the risks to herself in facing that fate. As an adult, she *must* be responsible for protecting herself. She was 31 years old, not 13.
Now, if she had sent that video to her current boyfriend with good intentions and after making an agreement about how it might be handled and expected her boyfriend to be an adult about it, I could certainly see how blaming her would be victim blaming. In that case, she protected herself, perhaps not as much as she might have (by not making the video at all), but her risks were reasonable, and her intent was good and she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
That said, I agree that there should be a more balanced discussion of blame and actions taken. But trundling out the rape culture concept *does not actually do this*. If anything, you've focused more attention on the woman, and have not actually opened a discussion on the actions of the ex-boyfriend or the culture at large by being so focused on the innocence of someone who, frankly, was unfortunate but far from innocent.
You need a particular type of personality to be someone like a Kardashian and be able to blissfully make money from notoriety. And that family has a support structure where the mom not only allows it, but frankly, probably encouraged that sort of thing.
This woman's mother was probably not of that breed and clearly, neither was this woman herself.
Well, if there were t-shirts made with the phrase... so I'd say that it could easily have gone beyond her peer group and relatives. At that level, you could get random people who have seen you in that video and have never even known they existed until they find you to harass you, or you see them walking by in that t-shirt and they realize who you are.
Although that wouldn't save him from charges of passing it on. If he wanted to go down the harassment route, the only other people to see that video should have been the cops.
I'd say the boyfriend might well have done wrong here, although my sympathy for her is limited. It was a bitch move which was followed up by a dick move. I'd say he would deserve the copyright lawsuit, just like she got herself into her own mess by being manipulative.
I do feel bad, though, that she took her life over it. Which is why most of us, when faced with people acting this way, should not act to make it worse for our own amusement.
Her estate, which is probably her parents. And this sort of thing could certainly make a parent upset enough to take it on. Especially if they think that they can sue targets big enough to pay off the legal fees.
I sort of agree with you, but would point out that all of your examples signed up for a public life. If you go into politics and you don't have an effigy made of you, you're probably not really getting all that far. If *they* cry about it, well, then they're idiots.
This woman did something that is pretty much self destructive and, let's be honest, stupid even for someone who doesn't know "information security practices". I mean, all you have to do is think ahead a little. Yeah, you may have made him feel bad, success. Now that he feels as bad and probably angry as she wanted him to, what is he going to do? Well, it just so happens that he has a nude video of you having sex. I wonder how that happened?
I agree that this world can be incredibly unforgiving for something like that which gets into the public eye. And that's why I encourage people to do what ever they can to understand and teach their children that actions have consequences. There are no takebacks on some things no matter how much you cry or sue about it.
I'd like to say that this was karma hitting her in the ass for being manipulative, although I'd have to agree that this is all out of proportion to what probably was deserved. Unfortunately, that's the way life goes.
Yes, but that's not the only reason. Making batteries replaceable means designing the phones around that to some degree. They can't be jammed behind something else or a tight fit, they would need to be accessible. If they aren't easily accessible, then replacing the batteries is a nightmare not only for the company, but for you, which then makes you hate them anyway. And you breaking your phone to replace a certified replaceable battery generates maintenance requests, and general bad PR for them since they said that you could do it, and lo and behold, everyone is breaking their phone trying to get at it, where it is shoehorned in your ultraslim device where every millimeter of space is accounted for.
There are good reasons to buy a phone with a replaceable battery, but making it non-replaceable does simplify the process of designing, testing and manufacturing the phones if they don't have to deal with removal and replacement of the battery by consumers.
They may have also noticed that most people buy a new phone long before the original battery has worn out. Certainly there are people who use theirs into the ground and would appreciate a replaceable battery, but if that percentage is relatively small compared to their user base, then it's not an important feature overall for a mass market product.
I actually doubt many people would have criticized that particular photo being left in. It's had rather wide exposure over the decades.
Or rather, they wouldn't have criticized only Facebook about it. It's been all over the media.
With all that in mind, I don't have a problem with their algorithm catching it, it's the picture of a naked minor who is definitely not enjoying herself at the time. Sounds like the filter found exactly what it was supposed to find. I think the people who were offended by it being filtered out are hyperventilating. Yes, it was a mistake, but only because that picture has historical relevance. Managing by exception is an appropriate way to deal with such things as long as they get around to putting it back and adding it as an exception for the future.
That said... am I really going to lack for knowledge of certain historical photos or current events even if FB does censor them? I knew of that particular picture for decades before FB came out. The reason is that it was plastered all over the place in journalism, in art and even was in one or two music videos that I can recall. Not to mention, you know, history books.
I agree that they tend to box you into your own little echo chamber if you let them, but I am frequently annoyed and even somewhat offended by what people sometimes post on my FB. The reason for that is that I don't unfriend people who simply differ from my opinions on FB. Even if it is eye roll inducing at times.
Ultimately, FB lets you form your own little soundproof room safe from other viewpoints and censored from objectionable material, but it isn't keeping me from seeing any of those things because I have chosen to not become offended by other people's opinions. I know that not every one does that, but in the end, that's less about FB and more about them.
Again, you're talking about equipment and budget. That's great and all, but Saudi's experience fighting actual modern wars is limited. They've a) rode shotgun with the US during the Gulf War, and b) fought some Yemeni insurgents. None of that is the same experience as deciding to go against Israel, US or not.
And while the Israelis had a lot of indirect support in the past, what makes you think that would change now?
Putting aside the nuclear weapons, what makes you think the Saudis actually *want* to declare war on Israel? Israel doesn't threaten them. They're more concerned about Iran than the traditional Zionist enemy.
Most of the Arab governments still bang the drum of anti-Israel to keep their people quiet, but none of them really want to actually have a war, except maybe those twatwaffles in Iran, and I am not entirely sure about them either.
On the other hand, these days when an app locks up, I can double press the home button to get the app selector screen and quit the frozen app by sliding it off the screen.
Now if the OS fails, sure, the phone has to be restarted. However, based on my experience with software home buttons with my Android devices, the real buttons tend to work better than the software buttons, mostly because you don't have to wait for the processor to respond to even click on the button reliably. Even if I have to wait for the interrupt, at least I managed to get it into the queue, whereas with the software button, I am not even sure it fully registered that I pressed it, even when it does eventually show up to press.
Of course, I have known for years that the real button has taken up a lot of real estate on iPhones and have been wondering when they were going to remove it to take back that space. That doesn't mean I think its a great idea.
As for removing the phone jack, I still think they should replace the audio jack with a second multi-use port because losing the extra port does remove capability from the phone and I am the sort of user who appreciates something a little bigger if it is more capable. The same reason I demanded that I get a beefier laptop for work than the slim one they gave me initially. Slim is nice, I am actually doing work with this thing, so make it thin, but don't take away capabilities and tell me you're doing me a favor.
At the same time, Hamas also goes out of its way to make it extremely difficult for Israel to avoid attacking civilian centers.
On one hand, that makes sense. They're an insurgency, not an army. They're not going to open a fortress, run up the flag and wait to have it bombed into dust by the much superior forces of the Israelis.
On the other hand, that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is fighting from inside the civilian areas. Israel cannot simply stand by and allow rockets to be launched *at their own civilian areas* simply because Hamas is hiding in their civilian areas. If Hamas was targeting military installations only, we'd probably be telling a different story.
And let's be clear, Hamas isn't just forced into these circumstances, they make sure their sites are located so that near misses and collateral damage have propaganda value. So, even aside from the unfortunate positioning of civilians, Hamas goes at it with gusto. It knows that propaganda is King with the media fed people in the West. They know that they can attempt to commit atrocities and when the Israelis retaliate, the Israelis will look bad because the Israelis will hit back and kill people that Hamas doesn't care about except as chips to be played.
Make no mistake, I think the Israelis have gone overboard, but they've gone overboard in the way that the kid who has been picked on one too many times goes overboard when they decide to flip out and take a baseball bat to their persecutors. Hamas could easily end this war in its tracks. Israel is a democracy and will calm down eventually to the point where a deal can be made. That's not going to happen while Hamas decides to keep lobbing rockets at civilians.
That's why it has always been at war, and probably will still be for a long time in the future, at least until it has the support of the US, the only reason why Saudi Arabia still hasn't attacked and easily defeated it.
And the fact that the Saudis are well equipped, but in no way able to take on the Israelis at the actual game of modern warfare.
That and the Israeli nuclear weapons, of course.
And the Saudis are not stupid. Their money is better spent on fighting proxy wars while the Kingdom remains nice and clean and unattacked.
The loss of US support for Israel would be a hard thing for the Israelis, but they fought for their independence without the support of the US and won that. Their position now is considerably better than it was then, US or not.
Both Islam and Christianity are not against being Jewish, but they both have very specifically stated that those religions replace Judaism. Jews definitely had it better under the Muslims *during the European medieval period* than under the Christians of the same time period.
It should be noted, however, that even under the Islamic regimes of the time, and just about every time, they were and are second class citizens by definition. They just had the important benefit of the Islamic states being predictable and generally better able to accept the role of the non-Islamic groups in the political structure. The lack of progroms and forced conversion would be a huge plus, but like the Christians under the same regimes, there was a lot of un-forced conversion to Islam based on being able to be first-class citizens which they would never be as Jews (or Christians).
Today, the roles have mostly switched, with the Islamic states being a lot more hostile to Jews than the Christian West (although much of that is down to secularism). And of course, that's because the Jews have reclaimed territories at the expense of Muslims and are taking sometimes excessive action to ensure that they are not overcome. And while the way that this happened might have been handled better by both sides, the reality is that many Muslims simply don't like the idea that there has been a regression of territory to the Jews, who should be second-class citizens in their world view.
Make no mistake. Today, the Palestinians in the area would probably accept a two nation goal because they want to have a real state back where Israel doesn't keep them down and in camps. However, let's not be naive, the general thrust of worldwide Muslim antipathy towards Israelis isn't due to the prosecution of the occupation, it is because the Jews are there and represent the very drastic fall of Islam's fortunes from their presumed high point. The occupations make it worse and keep people mad, but the occupation is not the full story and never has been.
I believe there are currently two wrongheaded ideas at work which are keeping peace from happening. On one side, the Israelis want to keep what they have, and keep their state majority Jewish. While understandable based on history, it does represent a real problem for the area because it keeps some segments of the Israelis desirous of the purity of their ethnicity over even democracy.
The other side is the idea that the Palestinians will be made whole, somehow, in this process for lost lands or assets. While I understand the idea of equity being considered justice, the reality is that the Israelis won their state by a right of conquest, just like the Muslims did over the Byzantines. Only in this case, the war was started by the Muslims and prosecuted constantly by them until they were beaten and assumed the mantle of aggrieved party. Let's face it, while the Jews of the 1949 time period were effectively illegal immigrants, a negotiated solution to that situation was ended by the decades of war prosecuted from the Muslim side. The solution was then war, and the Israelis won that war, and the territorial gains. Palestinians are refugees from that who should have been resettled, and it is just as much on the Muslim states as it is Israel that they have been allowed to languish as permanent camp dwellers in the various areas they live in now.
Perhaps, but it really depends on the number of false reviews, as opposed to people who got the items through those sources. A developer with a lot of keys to pass out may well trump those who obtained their keys in those other ways.
You might think, however, that Steam might have a way to tell where they keys come from and it would make sense to block sources of keys more specifically. Of course, since that would be an obvious solution, they probably have no way to do that or they would have. It might make sense if they were to create that capability to avoid locking out bundle and Kickstarter users, although Kickstarter users would be harder, given that those keys come from developers directly by definition.
There are plenty of situations that could be torpedoed by the engineer refusing to do the work. Engineers are not disposable.
Do not underestimate your ability to say "No" to something that is obviously illegal. You will end that shit right there in most cases. Especially when up against your own lower level boss who is probably less than pleased himself about having to ask you to do it.
And do not believe for a second that there are not engineers who will collaborate because they want to, or because they are rewarded, and not because of pressure or fear. Amorality and criminality are not exclusive traits for management.
Probably not, but on the other hand, blame could be fairly limited in scope. If I programmed some code with a root kit in it, my boss wouldn't need to be involved for it to be distributed to all my customers, I'd just need to make sure it was properly hidden so it made through the certification process without triggering any extra review.
And we assume that everyone at VW would have known about it. Its usually a lot more murky than that. Usually some middle manager needs to get a raise or make a target, and directs his engineers to do something. The manager's boss is presented with the situation and approves it, even though he didn't strictly order it. Or alternately, the big boss awards bonuses without really looking that closely at it. The Engineer and Manager makes a bonus and the Executives get their claim. At least until it is discovered.
That doesn't mean the Execs didn't order it, and more to the point, they may well have failed in their oversight responsibilities or they may have encouraged an atmosphere of regulatory avoidance or contempt for certain countries' (*cough* US EPA *cough*) regulation.
Actually, H1-Bs are not terrible. What we need to get rid of are the people who use loopholes in that system to pay grunt wages to contractors who can then replace US workers.
If H1-B worked the way it was supposed to, it would be used to fill job roles where there was much more demand than supply of workers. In IT, there are definitely those places where there is low supply and high demand.
The problem is, as we have seen, is when places like UC get those workers, they do so after firing the US workers. That's basically a complete perversion of the system. UC has proof that there are US workers who could do those jobs (since they were actually employing them), but for some reason, they're being replaced by H1-Bs.
Trump, if he actually has a plan, which is debatable, should be targeting not H1-Bs, but the contracting firms that allow places like UC to get H1-Bs at second hand and evade letter and the spirit of the H1-B rules.
This does seem like it would have that effect, or at least a chilling effect on for-profit search engines as they now bear the burden of proof that they did not link illegally to the images. I didn't see anything that would lead me to believe there would be an exception for search engines, although I don't know if they have some other protection. I would have thought the article would have underlined a problem for search engines, though.
Even if this doesn't affect them it still looks the EU wants a piece of Google on behalf of copyright holders:
The European Commission, the EU executive, is set next week to propose tougher rules on publishing copyrighted content, including a new exclusive right for news publishers to ask search engines like Google (GOOGL.O) to pay to show snippets of their articles.
The employees in those departments shouldn't be surprised at all. They're mostly back office which does in fact become redundant when you have a merger. They don't need two HR departments or two accounting departments.
The people losing their jobs probably knew for months that they were going to be let go.
The thing is... I know that the contracting company is how they get around it, but how do the contracting companies justify the H1-Bs? Shouldn't they need to hire US citizens as well. This is where I think it is more than fishy. Yes, UC is doing something legal, although honestly they should (and do) know the real deal and shouldn't be doing that.
We need to find and close these contracting company loopholes.
Although if the people you are hiring are not US nationals, then the money is not being fully reinvested into the community that UC serves and relies on for at least part of their operating income.
Of course, H1-Bs do pay US taxes, but much of their discretionary income is sent back home, which is then used overseas, making H1-Bs a much less efficient consumption source for the US in terms of circulation of money locally. Since they are not complete black holes in terms of taxes, an H1-B is justified when they fill roles that no US person could. However, when they displace US persons in jobs, they decrease the amount of money in the US domestic market per capita.
Okay, Apple. Can't justify a single use port. I get that. Are you now providing two Lightning ports? One for charging and one for audio? It's still a money grab for accessories, but at least you'd have two multi use ports to replace that single use port.
Slashdot Mirror
Except people today run over 5 yr olds too, and drivers get sued and even jailed all the time for negligence and it hasn't changed anything.
These rideshare/automated cabs will have ensured that the legislative environment for their vehicles is able to properly protect them from every little lawsuit due to a glitch.
Their first defense will likely be to trundle out the statistics showing that they have actually decreased their company's rate of accidents by moving to driverless vehicles. Which will most likely be the case unless they completely fail to test their vehicles and the software properly. And at that point, they would deserve to be sued into oblivion for complete failure to use common sense.
Discussion of driverless cars seems to mirror some of the discussions of the original automobiles. And honestly, autos built back then were significantly more dangerous than vehicles driven by software are likely to be today and they still took right off as soon as everyone understood how useful they were.
Which is not to say that the fears were entirely unfounded. Auto accidents are a big killer of people, certainly much more so than terrorism could even dream of. And that being the case, cars have only been increasing, not decreasing, in utilization since they have been invented. This is not likely to be any different for self-driving cars, if they can even improve on the safety record of human drivers even just a little bit.
While she did not have the power to keep that video from being spread by the recipient, I am distressed that this is being referred to as an example of "rape culture".
Yes, she was powerless to stop her ex-boyfriend from acting. His was a despicable act.
On the other hand, she not only put the ammunition in his hands, but her original intent was despicable as well.
The sad part is that, unless both of these people were chronic assholes, she was probably upset and did something stupid, and then she upset him, and made him more liable to do something stupid in response.
Calling this an example of "rape culture" is a distraction from a very important reason to carefully evaluate her actions. She may not have had any power to prevent the action of her ex-boyfriend, but she herself had the power to control the risks to herself in facing that fate. As an adult, she *must* be responsible for protecting herself. She was 31 years old, not 13.
Now, if she had sent that video to her current boyfriend with good intentions and after making an agreement about how it might be handled and expected her boyfriend to be an adult about it, I could certainly see how blaming her would be victim blaming. In that case, she protected herself, perhaps not as much as she might have (by not making the video at all), but her risks were reasonable, and her intent was good and she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
That said, I agree that there should be a more balanced discussion of blame and actions taken. But trundling out the rape culture concept *does not actually do this*. If anything, you've focused more attention on the woman, and have not actually opened a discussion on the actions of the ex-boyfriend or the culture at large by being so focused on the innocence of someone who, frankly, was unfortunate but far from innocent.
You need a particular type of personality to be someone like a Kardashian and be able to blissfully make money from notoriety. And that family has a support structure where the mom not only allows it, but frankly, probably encouraged that sort of thing.
This woman's mother was probably not of that breed and clearly, neither was this woman herself.
Well, if there were t-shirts made with the phrase... so I'd say that it could easily have gone beyond her peer group and relatives. At that level, you could get random people who have seen you in that video and have never even known they existed until they find you to harass you, or you see them walking by in that t-shirt and they realize who you are.
Although that wouldn't save him from charges of passing it on. If he wanted to go down the harassment route, the only other people to see that video should have been the cops.
I'd say the boyfriend might well have done wrong here, although my sympathy for her is limited. It was a bitch move which was followed up by a dick move. I'd say he would deserve the copyright lawsuit, just like she got herself into her own mess by being manipulative.
I do feel bad, though, that she took her life over it. Which is why most of us, when faced with people acting this way, should not act to make it worse for our own amusement.
Her estate, which is probably her parents. And this sort of thing could certainly make a parent upset enough to take it on. Especially if they think that they can sue targets big enough to pay off the legal fees.
I sort of agree with you, but would point out that all of your examples signed up for a public life. If you go into politics and you don't have an effigy made of you, you're probably not really getting all that far. If *they* cry about it, well, then they're idiots.
This woman did something that is pretty much self destructive and, let's be honest, stupid even for someone who doesn't know "information security practices". I mean, all you have to do is think ahead a little. Yeah, you may have made him feel bad, success. Now that he feels as bad and probably angry as she wanted him to, what is he going to do? Well, it just so happens that he has a nude video of you having sex. I wonder how that happened?
I agree that this world can be incredibly unforgiving for something like that which gets into the public eye. And that's why I encourage people to do what ever they can to understand and teach their children that actions have consequences. There are no takebacks on some things no matter how much you cry or sue about it.
I'd like to say that this was karma hitting her in the ass for being manipulative, although I'd have to agree that this is all out of proportion to what probably was deserved. Unfortunately, that's the way life goes.
Yes, but that's not the only reason. Making batteries replaceable means designing the phones around that to some degree. They can't be jammed behind something else or a tight fit, they would need to be accessible. If they aren't easily accessible, then replacing the batteries is a nightmare not only for the company, but for you, which then makes you hate them anyway. And you breaking your phone to replace a certified replaceable battery generates maintenance requests, and general bad PR for them since they said that you could do it, and lo and behold, everyone is breaking their phone trying to get at it, where it is shoehorned in your ultraslim device where every millimeter of space is accounted for.
There are good reasons to buy a phone with a replaceable battery, but making it non-replaceable does simplify the process of designing, testing and manufacturing the phones if they don't have to deal with removal and replacement of the battery by consumers.
They may have also noticed that most people buy a new phone long before the original battery has worn out. Certainly there are people who use theirs into the ground and would appreciate a replaceable battery, but if that percentage is relatively small compared to their user base, then it's not an important feature overall for a mass market product.
I actually doubt many people would have criticized that particular photo being left in. It's had rather wide exposure over the decades.
Or rather, they wouldn't have criticized only Facebook about it. It's been all over the media.
With all that in mind, I don't have a problem with their algorithm catching it, it's the picture of a naked minor who is definitely not enjoying herself at the time. Sounds like the filter found exactly what it was supposed to find. I think the people who were offended by it being filtered out are hyperventilating. Yes, it was a mistake, but only because that picture has historical relevance. Managing by exception is an appropriate way to deal with such things as long as they get around to putting it back and adding it as an exception for the future.
That said... am I really going to lack for knowledge of certain historical photos or current events even if FB does censor them? I knew of that particular picture for decades before FB came out. The reason is that it was plastered all over the place in journalism, in art and even was in one or two music videos that I can recall. Not to mention, you know, history books.
I agree that they tend to box you into your own little echo chamber if you let them, but I am frequently annoyed and even somewhat offended by what people sometimes post on my FB. The reason for that is that I don't unfriend people who simply differ from my opinions on FB. Even if it is eye roll inducing at times.
Ultimately, FB lets you form your own little soundproof room safe from other viewpoints and censored from objectionable material, but it isn't keeping me from seeing any of those things because I have chosen to not become offended by other people's opinions. I know that not every one does that, but in the end, that's less about FB and more about them.
Again, you're talking about equipment and budget. That's great and all, but Saudi's experience fighting actual modern wars is limited. They've a) rode shotgun with the US during the Gulf War, and b) fought some Yemeni insurgents. None of that is the same experience as deciding to go against Israel, US or not.
And while the Israelis had a lot of indirect support in the past, what makes you think that would change now?
Putting aside the nuclear weapons, what makes you think the Saudis actually *want* to declare war on Israel? Israel doesn't threaten them. They're more concerned about Iran than the traditional Zionist enemy.
Most of the Arab governments still bang the drum of anti-Israel to keep their people quiet, but none of them really want to actually have a war, except maybe those twatwaffles in Iran, and I am not entirely sure about them either.
On the other hand, these days when an app locks up, I can double press the home button to get the app selector screen and quit the frozen app by sliding it off the screen.
Now if the OS fails, sure, the phone has to be restarted. However, based on my experience with software home buttons with my Android devices, the real buttons tend to work better than the software buttons, mostly because you don't have to wait for the processor to respond to even click on the button reliably. Even if I have to wait for the interrupt, at least I managed to get it into the queue, whereas with the software button, I am not even sure it fully registered that I pressed it, even when it does eventually show up to press.
Of course, I have known for years that the real button has taken up a lot of real estate on iPhones and have been wondering when they were going to remove it to take back that space. That doesn't mean I think its a great idea.
As for removing the phone jack, I still think they should replace the audio jack with a second multi-use port because losing the extra port does remove capability from the phone and I am the sort of user who appreciates something a little bigger if it is more capable. The same reason I demanded that I get a beefier laptop for work than the slim one they gave me initially. Slim is nice, I am actually doing work with this thing, so make it thin, but don't take away capabilities and tell me you're doing me a favor.
At the same time, Hamas also goes out of its way to make it extremely difficult for Israel to avoid attacking civilian centers.
On one hand, that makes sense. They're an insurgency, not an army. They're not going to open a fortress, run up the flag and wait to have it bombed into dust by the much superior forces of the Israelis.
On the other hand, that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is fighting from inside the civilian areas. Israel cannot simply stand by and allow rockets to be launched *at their own civilian areas* simply because Hamas is hiding in their civilian areas. If Hamas was targeting military installations only, we'd probably be telling a different story.
And let's be clear, Hamas isn't just forced into these circumstances, they make sure their sites are located so that near misses and collateral damage have propaganda value. So, even aside from the unfortunate positioning of civilians, Hamas goes at it with gusto. It knows that propaganda is King with the media fed people in the West. They know that they can attempt to commit atrocities and when the Israelis retaliate, the Israelis will look bad because the Israelis will hit back and kill people that Hamas doesn't care about except as chips to be played.
Make no mistake, I think the Israelis have gone overboard, but they've gone overboard in the way that the kid who has been picked on one too many times goes overboard when they decide to flip out and take a baseball bat to their persecutors. Hamas could easily end this war in its tracks. Israel is a democracy and will calm down eventually to the point where a deal can be made. That's not going to happen while Hamas decides to keep lobbing rockets at civilians.
That's why it has always been at war, and probably will still be for a long time in the future, at least until it has the support of the US, the only reason why Saudi Arabia still hasn't attacked and easily defeated it.
And the fact that the Saudis are well equipped, but in no way able to take on the Israelis at the actual game of modern warfare.
That and the Israeli nuclear weapons, of course.
And the Saudis are not stupid. Their money is better spent on fighting proxy wars while the Kingdom remains nice and clean and unattacked.
The loss of US support for Israel would be a hard thing for the Israelis, but they fought for their independence without the support of the US and won that. Their position now is considerably better than it was then, US or not.
Both Islam and Christianity are not against being Jewish, but they both have very specifically stated that those religions replace Judaism. Jews definitely had it better under the Muslims *during the European medieval period* than under the Christians of the same time period.
It should be noted, however, that even under the Islamic regimes of the time, and just about every time, they were and are second class citizens by definition. They just had the important benefit of the Islamic states being predictable and generally better able to accept the role of the non-Islamic groups in the political structure. The lack of progroms and forced conversion would be a huge plus, but like the Christians under the same regimes, there was a lot of un-forced conversion to Islam based on being able to be first-class citizens which they would never be as Jews (or Christians).
Today, the roles have mostly switched, with the Islamic states being a lot more hostile to Jews than the Christian West (although much of that is down to secularism). And of course, that's because the Jews have reclaimed territories at the expense of Muslims and are taking sometimes excessive action to ensure that they are not overcome. And while the way that this happened might have been handled better by both sides, the reality is that many Muslims simply don't like the idea that there has been a regression of territory to the Jews, who should be second-class citizens in their world view.
Make no mistake. Today, the Palestinians in the area would probably accept a two nation goal because they want to have a real state back where Israel doesn't keep them down and in camps. However, let's not be naive, the general thrust of worldwide Muslim antipathy towards Israelis isn't due to the prosecution of the occupation, it is because the Jews are there and represent the very drastic fall of Islam's fortunes from their presumed high point. The occupations make it worse and keep people mad, but the occupation is not the full story and never has been.
I believe there are currently two wrongheaded ideas at work which are keeping peace from happening. On one side, the Israelis want to keep what they have, and keep their state majority Jewish. While understandable based on history, it does represent a real problem for the area because it keeps some segments of the Israelis desirous of the purity of their ethnicity over even democracy.
The other side is the idea that the Palestinians will be made whole, somehow, in this process for lost lands or assets. While I understand the idea of equity being considered justice, the reality is that the Israelis won their state by a right of conquest, just like the Muslims did over the Byzantines. Only in this case, the war was started by the Muslims and prosecuted constantly by them until they were beaten and assumed the mantle of aggrieved party. Let's face it, while the Jews of the 1949 time period were effectively illegal immigrants, a negotiated solution to that situation was ended by the decades of war prosecuted from the Muslim side. The solution was then war, and the Israelis won that war, and the territorial gains. Palestinians are refugees from that who should have been resettled, and it is just as much on the Muslim states as it is Israel that they have been allowed to languish as permanent camp dwellers in the various areas they live in now.
Perhaps, but it really depends on the number of false reviews, as opposed to people who got the items through those sources. A developer with a lot of keys to pass out may well trump those who obtained their keys in those other ways.
You might think, however, that Steam might have a way to tell where they keys come from and it would make sense to block sources of keys more specifically. Of course, since that would be an obvious solution, they probably have no way to do that or they would have. It might make sense if they were to create that capability to avoid locking out bundle and Kickstarter users, although Kickstarter users would be harder, given that those keys come from developers directly by definition.
I actually disagree.
There are plenty of situations that could be torpedoed by the engineer refusing to do the work. Engineers are not disposable.
Do not underestimate your ability to say "No" to something that is obviously illegal. You will end that shit right there in most cases. Especially when up against your own lower level boss who is probably less than pleased himself about having to ask you to do it.
And do not believe for a second that there are not engineers who will collaborate because they want to, or because they are rewarded, and not because of pressure or fear. Amorality and criminality are not exclusive traits for management.
Probably not, but on the other hand, blame could be fairly limited in scope. If I programmed some code with a root kit in it, my boss wouldn't need to be involved for it to be distributed to all my customers, I'd just need to make sure it was properly hidden so it made through the certification process without triggering any extra review.
And we assume that everyone at VW would have known about it. Its usually a lot more murky than that. Usually some middle manager needs to get a raise or make a target, and directs his engineers to do something. The manager's boss is presented with the situation and approves it, even though he didn't strictly order it. Or alternately, the big boss awards bonuses without really looking that closely at it. The Engineer and Manager makes a bonus and the Executives get their claim. At least until it is discovered.
That doesn't mean the Execs didn't order it, and more to the point, they may well have failed in their oversight responsibilities or they may have encouraged an atmosphere of regulatory avoidance or contempt for certain countries' (*cough* US EPA *cough*) regulation.
It will be interesting to see how it pans out.
If I was a multimillionaire, 90% of my net income would suck, but I'd still probably be rich or at least upper middle class.
If this guy got nailed with 90% or even 50% of his net income, he'd lose his house.
Fines like this cannot just be a percentage, they need to match the circumstances.
Actually, H1-Bs are not terrible. What we need to get rid of are the people who use loopholes in that system to pay grunt wages to contractors who can then replace US workers.
If H1-B worked the way it was supposed to, it would be used to fill job roles where there was much more demand than supply of workers. In IT, there are definitely those places where there is low supply and high demand.
The problem is, as we have seen, is when places like UC get those workers, they do so after firing the US workers. That's basically a complete perversion of the system. UC has proof that there are US workers who could do those jobs (since they were actually employing them), but for some reason, they're being replaced by H1-Bs.
Trump, if he actually has a plan, which is debatable, should be targeting not H1-Bs, but the contracting firms that allow places like UC to get H1-Bs at second hand and evade letter and the spirit of the H1-B rules.
This does seem like it would have that effect, or at least a chilling effect on for-profit search engines as they now bear the burden of proof that they did not link illegally to the images. I didn't see anything that would lead me to believe there would be an exception for search engines, although I don't know if they have some other protection. I would have thought the article would have underlined a problem for search engines, though.
Even if this doesn't affect them it still looks the EU wants a piece of Google on behalf of copyright holders:
The European Commission, the EU executive, is set next week to propose tougher rules on publishing copyrighted content, including a new exclusive right for news publishers to ask search engines like Google (GOOGL.O) to pay to show snippets of their articles.
The employees in those departments shouldn't be surprised at all. They're mostly back office which does in fact become redundant when you have a merger. They don't need two HR departments or two accounting departments.
The people losing their jobs probably knew for months that they were going to be let go.
The thing is... I know that the contracting company is how they get around it, but how do the contracting companies justify the H1-Bs? Shouldn't they need to hire US citizens as well. This is where I think it is more than fishy. Yes, UC is doing something legal, although honestly they should (and do) know the real deal and shouldn't be doing that.
We need to find and close these contracting company loopholes.
Although if the people you are hiring are not US nationals, then the money is not being fully reinvested into the community that UC serves and relies on for at least part of their operating income.
Of course, H1-Bs do pay US taxes, but much of their discretionary income is sent back home, which is then used overseas, making H1-Bs a much less efficient consumption source for the US in terms of circulation of money locally. Since they are not complete black holes in terms of taxes, an H1-B is justified when they fill roles that no US person could. However, when they displace US persons in jobs, they decrease the amount of money in the US domestic market per capita.
Okay, Apple. Can't justify a single use port. I get that. Are you now providing two Lightning ports? One for charging and one for audio? It's still a money grab for accessories, but at least you'd have two multi use ports to replace that single use port.