Also, there are far more high-end Android phones sold at around the same price point as Apple phones anyway.
So yes, a lot of Android's sales figures are because of people buying lower cost phones as the GP I believe intended, but even amongst those with money, people still opt for Android.
I feel obliged to point this out each time this argument is made, if he is not their customer then who is?
Judging by Apple's 13.9% and falling marketshare it would seem that less and less people are deemed to be Apple's customer by Apple themselves.
In contrast Android's marketshare has grown to 75%, so the number of people who would be deemed to be Android's customer seems to be ever growing.
I don't think the argument really makes sense, if Apple simply says "you're not our customer" each time their device doesn't allow them to do something then it's eventually going to find itself with no customers.
"You have me wrong. I'm not from the Far Right, I vehemently reject the ideology of the Far Right, and I vehemently reject extremists as you do. In fact, I'm a lefty, but that doesn't mean I lack a spine and will turn a blind eye as most lefties do. What I'm arguing for is to recognize evil for what it is and nip it in the bud, before you and I, or our descendants have to go and do what your grandfather did. "
Sorry but this makes no sense, you may want to think you're a "lefty" but you're spouting far right views and pushing far right politics.
You talk about nipping evil in the bud, and that your focus is on Islam because it's been the biggest problem for the last 20 years - where exactly? In Africa I think you'll find far more people have died to Christian extremist groups, in India more people have died to Hindu extremists. You've got a very ethnocentric view of the world.
You talk about the most violent teachings of Islam taking over the moderates, where is your evidence? The 180million muslims in India certainly haven't been taken over, you just don't hear about them precisely because they're getting on with their lives peacefully, despite Hindu terrorists attacking them.
You talk about groups like the Chechens as being examples of dangerous muslim extremist groups, but you do realise that they're actually the victims of violent Russian oppression right?
"From Britain have you not seen the Muslims from your own country shouting, "Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to Britain!"."
Yes, there's also a bunch of far right extremists known as the EDL running round cities, causing riots, and harming innocent non-muslims and destroying their property. The EDL have actually caused far more damage than the Islamic protesters have.
No one however caused as much damage as the mixed-race, mixed-culture gangs did with the riots, or as students did with student loan protests however. Maybe we should fight against students too?
"Did you not realise that your schools all serve halal meat in their canteens."
Well no, they don't. Some offer it as an option. It's called multi-culturalism, we have a multucultural society here in the UK, far more so than most countries. Perhaps that's why we're more tolerant and recognise that different communities have different problems, and that it's not all just about Islam.
"Surely you also know of the Sharia courts operating in parallel to your existing courts."
Yep, but because of the overriding laws of this country people are only bound by them if they choose to be. Are you suggesting we shouldn't give people the freedom to practice their beliefs if they choose to?
"Of course, you have read the Qur'an and hadiths and realise that Sharia is completely and fundamentally incompatible with the modern rights of women and homosexuals."
Yes, I'm also aware that the Church of England recently voted against equal rights for women and consistently fights against gay rights for homosexuals. The Catholic church is even worse again on these issues.
"Then there is the polygamy that is being legalised in Europe - but only for Muslim men, since they are special and don't have to obey the same rules as the rest of is (to try and apply Engligtenment values to everyone is 'culturally insenstive' don't you know?)."
Again, but only if the women consent. They cannot be forced into it. Again, are you suggesting we should not allow women to make their own choices? The EU clamps down very strongly on enforced and arranged marriages- a lot of money is being poured into preventing that. You could argue that they should allow it for other reasons for fairness purposes, but other religions don't want it for their followers.
"Does this not concern you at all?"
It concerns me about as much as people with far right ideologies like yourself do. You're worrying, you're annoying, but ultimately you don't yet have enough of a foothold to be too much of a concern. This is changing somewhat as the far right in the UK and Eu
"Prove that the Antiguan sites were blocked for *censorship* reasons."
What are you on about? It doesn't matter what the reasons were, the fact is it was censorship. Or are you saying that prevent access to information arbitrarily defined as illegal is somehow not censorship?
I suppose you could argue that it's "good" censorship and start going down that path, but then you have to admit that you're not actually for an open internet and actually for an internet that's censored against someone's subjective morals but however you cut it it's censorship.
"I'm a New Zealander and I'm disgusted the way that my Government has kowtowed in the Kim Dotcom case, and in how the US has behaved. However, he ain't no saint - his site was designed to support piracy. It is a slippery slope between MegaUpload and Google but the difference is *intent*. There are plenty of emails captured (maybe not legally, but that is moot) that show he and his staff encouraged use of the site for piracy. You need more than a fig leaf to defy the law. "
Ah so here's my answer - you actually aren't for a free and open internet, you aren't actually for justice, you're saying that if someone feels something is illegal because of "intent" it's actually okay to censor.
I wont bother with the rest of your posts as it's more of the same anti-Islamic paranoia. I don't think you recognise the hypocrisy of your position though, you say you're for a free open internet, but then you suggest that censorship is actually okay in some circumstances, and you justify this to yourself by trying to pretend it's not censorship.
cenÂsorÂship/ËsensÉ(TM)rËOESHip/ Noun The practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.
If seizure of said gambling domains is not censorship, then please tell me what it is, as you appear to have a completely different definition of censorship to the rest of the world.
I think you need to accept that you're not actually for a free and open internet, but simply for the status quo, where the US is the only place that gets to decide what to arbitrarily censor, and that the rest of the world should live by the US' morals, both the good ones, and bad ones.
This does at least explain why you're continuing to argue against me on this point when I am for a genuinely free and open internet, something you claim you are meaning we should agree, yet for some reason you don't. You don't agree because you want a censored internet in some circumstances.
Dotcom was done previously for fraud, though when I read about the case it didn't sound much different to what some bankers do day in day out for a living, so it seemed more like Dotcom, being rather young at the time, was just being naive about how you play the game the big boys play.
A poster here previously admitted he was one of Dotcom's "victims", and hence that I believe is probably why you see a campaign here, only I don't think it's much of a campaign, it's actually just one or two people posting lots of FUD in the same thread, presumably because they feel if they say the same thing 10 times instead of once then that somehow makes the FUD not actually FUD.
There's a lot of talk about Dotcom's "horrendous" past, but it's documented fairly well on Wikipedia, much of his supposedly horrendous past, whilst I'm not defending it, was from when he was much younger and seems to be more about naivety and stupidity than anything.
"Yes, but *you* miss the point (hence your disingenuous 'weasel words' yourself). The US-led voting bloc (that is, countries sharing Enlightenment values) is outnumbered by the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement combined with the Islamic countries. Just look at the content of many of UN resolutions, they all go against what the US would like."
What resolutions and where? Different parts of the UN are different, the ITU doesn't use majority voting so I don't understand what the relevance of your point is here. The elements of the UN where majority voting is used are non-binding on other member states anyway. The UN was set up to facilitate handling of international issues with the recognition that it could only ever work if it worked for each individual member state. This is why countries like Israel can choose not to be members of the IAEA and hence have to declare their nuclear arsenals. It's also why any general assembly majority vote for pro-Islamic ideals is meaningless to the West, because there's no onus on us to implement them.
About the only place where things can be outright imposed on countries is the security council, which has vetoes for opposing blocks for good reason. The Islamic voting blocs have no power to prevent US veto here, nor do they really have anything of a say.
You attack me, insult me, and say I don't get it, but I do get it, which is why I'm not worried - you seem to view the UN as some monolithic single organisation where everything is decided and imposed by majority vote. That's not even remotely true.
"Oh, and by the way. The Antiguan sites were shut down because they were involved in $3 billion dollars worth of fraud and money laundering."
So censorship is okay if ICE makes up an arbitrary excuse? If this is true why didn't ICE officials just chase it through Antiguan courts? Antigua isn't some backwater corrupt country, it's very modern and arguably less corrupt than nations like the UK and US. Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source of the problem and actually catch the criminals and get the money back than arbitrarily censor a website? Do you feel that if ICE says something, it must be true? that they'd never be wrong?
You harp on about me being anti-US yet I'm wondering if you actually read my original post here. I made it quite clear that my first preference is that the US retains control but ups their game and stops with the abitrary domain seizures and censorship. I stated that ITU control should only be a last resort of the US fails to sort itself out and recognise that the internet is international, and not it's own private entity to do with as it wishes. If I was anti-US as you so repeatedly claim, why would I state a first choice preference of the US retaining control? why wouldn't I suggest it goes straight to the ITU without even considering that?
Your entire argument seems to be based on fallacies - false understanding of how the UN works, false appeals to authority as ICE being incapable of doing wrong, false attacks on me as being anti-US and wanting removal of US control above all else.
When your whole argument is propped up on fallacies, what do you think that says about your argument?
Go read my other response to you, and understand why your fear of "the Islamists" is clouding your judgement, and exacerbating your unfounded paranoia on this issue before you bother to post again. You're being irrational, your arguments are based on unsound premises. You say you're an astrophysicist, you of all people should know that science requires your findings to be built on a sound basis, treat this discussion like a scientific one, cut away the populist paranoia filled tripe, and actually come back with points that make sense and are based on an actual understanding of the likes of the way the UN etc. work. Arguments based on falsehoods don't cut it with me, because I do understand how organisations like the UN actually work and so forth.
It looks like Slashdot is losing posts again as I actually posted a response to this yesterday pointing out that your attitude is exactly that of the far right. You talk of defeating Nazism yet seem oblivious to the fact you're exploiting the exact same politics Hitler did - you're focussing on a specific minority group and using that as your target of blame to stir populist and nationalist resentment against it to push your cause. I don't think you realise quite how hypocritical this is.
I find you somewhat of an enigma because on one hand you seem to know a decent bit about programming, and you claim to have been, or still are, an astrophysicist. Both of these things require a basic understanding of logic, and yet your post borders so very dangerously on the fringes of the far right - which is inherently illogical, and irrational.
But I'm going to go out on a limb, and make a few points in the hope you'll think about them and what they mean in the context of your argument because if you do have the background of an astrophysicist you should be able to see the problems with your viewpoint given these points.
You live in New Zealand, a place pretty much untouched by terrorism, and pretty far from places that are affected. You view Islam as a problem because as you say you feel it affects you the most. I believe this has distorted your view that whilst yes, New Zealand's biggest threat from a religious grouping probably is Islam, in other parts of the world it's quite a different story. I live in the UK, and the most recent terrorist attacks here have been Islamic - 7/7, the 21/7 attempt, the Glasgow airport attack and so on. Our most significant terrorist attack is from Islam also, make no doubt about that, yet I don't single out Islam as being inherently worse than other religious. Why is that? Well, in my lifetime whilst Islamic terrorism is in most recent memory, throughout my whole life I've seen more people killed in this country and more terrorist attacks by Catholics fighting as the IRA against the Protestant unionists, but attacking even English soil and civilians to put pressure on the British government. The Protestants themselves have committed terrorist acts against the Irish also. The problem is that the Islamists are still small fry in terms of terrorist acts committed in my own backyard by Catholics, so why despite the most recent attacks should I view Islam as the bigger problem? If you look at the global picture it might be fair to argue that it's all irrelevant compared to an atrocity on the scale of 9/11 where 3,000 people died, but then what of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where again, Serbian Catholics massacred in the most brutal way possible 8,000 muslim civilians? This was only 6 years before 9/11 so can hardly be written off as ancient history or any such thing. Coincidentally just yesterday the BBC had an article on how there was a distinct lack of Islamic extremists coming from India despite the violence they have suffered at the hands of Hindu extremists, and despite the fact that they have a population of 180million there. Also, realise that in Lebanon, the Christians tend to actually side with Hezbollah and the Islamists against the Jews in Israel, rather than support the secularists who simply want peace. Anders Breivik in Norway certainly wasn't a muslim and his was probably the single most effective terrorist attack in Scandinavia ever - he modelled himself after the Christian crusaders as a templar.
Now I don't personally like religion much at all, I think it's for fools, people too stupid to see the obvious fallacies it relies on and the complete lack of evidence that exists for it's most fundamental teachings (i.e. that of a god, or gods), but I simply can't agree with your view that Islam is somehow deserving of being singled out. I agree parts of the text are disturbing, but the Bible is really no better. The problem is that bad people will find an excuse for their bad actions whatever the case - Hitler didn't even need to really use a religion much, he ju
Yes, but as pointed out, what the US calls legal, the rest of the world doesn't.
The WTO found against the US in it's attack on Antiguan gambling sites, and yet despite this the US still continues to censor those sites. It's doing so without even the law on it's side.
But your use of weasel words - "the US does not generally" - generally being the key point here, meaning that in fact, it absolutely does, masks this fact.
"The countries that do practice censorship are the ones that form voting blocs in the UN (refer to the video in my first post)."
You realise the US is a member of certain voting blocs right?
No need to cry, it'd be easier to just admit you were wrong.
You're admitting ICE has committed censorship whilst simultaneously trying to deny they've been guilty of censorship, whilst also having previously said that you find censorship unacceptable and that you wont make excuses for it, despite now once again doing exactly that.
If you can't see how illogical your argument is than I think I'm not the one that should be worried about their IQ. I don't expect people to agree with me on everything, but I ask that if people disagree with me that their disagreement at least make some kind of logical sense. You've sadly completely and utterly failed to fulfil this simple task.
Really, it's not hard to at least be consistent in your argument, I feel for you in finding life such a difficult battle that you cannot even manage such a simple task and that you apparently burst into tears when you try and fail.
Here in the UK ISPs have been using DPI for many years anyway to allow traffic prioritisation.
I agree with you that it's horrible, I don't like it either, but it seems naive to assume whether this will or wont be a threat, it already is and has been for many years.
I'm not terribly sure what the ITU's approval will mean, countries all around the world are already using it and have been for some time. It looks like they're just standardising how it should work. If it's standardised then it should be trivial to poke holes in the standard and work around it, but this will surely mean countries will start using non-standard DPI techniques, which means we're just right back to square one, where we are now.
Oh I absolutely agree, I don't buy into it either, I was just making the point that some people do, and if those people are your clients you have little choice.
There's people like you point out on one side of the spectrum that think everyone should wear a suit and tie.
There's people in the middle like you and I that think it's silly, but will do it if our clients expect it so that we can make the sale or whatever.
Then there's people at the other end of the spectrum who think it's silly and refuse to go through with it even if it means pissing off the client and fucking their employer over.
My point was that in business, you really want people like you and I - those in the middle category that will do it to help the business, and that's why it's a useful test in an interview - because if they come in to the interview dressed too casually they may be in that latter category, and may cost you business, and depending on your company and it's circumstances, maybe even your job!
The point is that handing ICANN over to the UN would put it in a place where political stalemate would prevent the consensus the ITU requires from ever being achieved.
This is far better than the current status quo where the US has no accountability and so can and does arbitrarily censor across the globe at will.
"Odd that I have any number of gambling websites I can go to and spend money in spite of all this censorship you refer to."
So because not every gambling site has yet been taken down it's acceptable to censor others? What a horrible failure of logic you just made.
"Also, I make no excuses for censorship. "
No, that's exactly what you did. That's exactly what you did just now too, you said, because you can access some gambling websites, it's not a problem. If you're instead denying any gambling websites were taken down then it's trivial to use Google to find out that you were wrong.
"Just because ICE doesn't have a perfect record doesn't mean they are bad."
There go the excuses again...
"Mistakes have happened and they should be correct but they are on record as not having any interest in censorship."
Yet they do exactly that. Excuses, excuses, excuses.
"That's a lot more than I can say for the UN. You actually believe they would do a better job? Seriously?"
I think they'd have no choice because the stalemate and failure to gain unanimity which is a requirement in the ITU would force it to be the case. That's better than the status quo where the US is accountable to absolutely no one.
Actually, some US domain seizures have been for gambling websites. Sites that are legitimate international businesses with a legitimate international web prescence.
But this highlights the problem, what is illegal in the US is not necessarily illegal elsewhere.
Unfortunately people like you are the reason the US can follow a downhill trajectory in terms of this sort of censorship, because you make excuses for it, and say it's okay because it could be worse. That's not an acceptable excuse, because it could also be better, and that's what I, and many others want - a completely free internet like we used to have, rather than the partly free internet we have now.
AFAIK where it can be automatically inferred that a particular task can be run in a functionally independent manner as in your bunny.hop() example.NET 4.5 already automatically does this for the LINQ extension methods.
So for example, if you have a list, such as:
List bunnies = new List();
Then you can do, say:
bunnies.ForEach(x => x.hop());
and the call to the ForEach extension method will automatically split execution against multiple threads. IIRC it's even somewhat intelligent in that it will only do this optimisation if the list is of adequate size to make it worthwhile.
It sounds like this new research basically extends this existing idea beyond the LINQ extension methods but is based largely on the same base concept.
It's because most people look their smartest in a suit, so when you interview you want to see that your prospective employee can actually look presentable to a client in case they ever have to meet them.
It doesn't mean you expect them to wear that all the time, but the point is when dealing with clients you can't assume what their standards will be. A suit is always a safe bet for clients, hence it's always a safe bet for interviews.
But for what it's worth where I work currently we have an extremely casual dress sense, and I started looking for a job elsewhere recently, not wanting to tell my current employer at the time I asked the companies that offered me interviews if they'd mind me turning up dressed casually and on explaining the situation they had no problem with it so most employers do understand.
I have got another job now having had 3 offers from 3 interviews, and the one I chose mandates a shirt, trousers, and tie, which really, really sucks coming from the current casual background but then everything else about the company is great - superb pay, great holidays, great pension scheme, good working hours, interesting work, good career potential, technologies I enjoy and want to work with, really genuine friendly staff etc. At that point, the dress code becomes irrelevant, there's too many other perks for it to matter in the slightest. I could've taken one of the other offers that allowed for more casual dress, but to me it wasn't worth being able to dress in jeans and t-shirt for the £9k pay difference, lack of pension, less leave, and more annoying colleagues that company had.
But I digress, let those people turn up in their suits and ties, they're doing it to prove that they're willing to make an effort in their appearance for you rather than throwing on what they normally throw on, and to show you that they can dress for the occasion if the occasion were to ever demand a difference in dress - again, i.e. client meetings. It's just another part of the interview process, it tells you they're willing.
"But is it the prerogative of the people in that country? Or is it a government acting unilaterally for the sake of retaining power? Should we be accepting or tolerant of that?"
It's up to the people of that country to do something about it. It's a painful situation to watch sometimes, seeing people oppressed by their government, but as things like Iraq have taught us, intervention can be so much worse. Saddam's use of chemical weapons and so forth to kill 5,000 odd civilians was sick, but was the situation worse than the best part of a million people who died as a result of America's intervention there?
Compare this to say, Egypt, Libya, or Tunisia, and yes blood was spilt, but far less than through external intervention and the inevitable power vacuum that that causes.
Not really true, most console games still have local multiplayer.
I think all party games do too rather than "pretty specific" ones, that's kind of the point of party games - they're for parties. I think just about all Kinect titles for example do, maybe only one or two that don't.
"Why is the UN this way? unfortunately it is due to past and future conflicts (a legacy of the Cold War, and now influenced by the rise of global Jihad and Salafism). I refer you to this video for an overview (mid-way describes how the Non-Aligned and Islamic movements have joined to form a voting bloc to defeat the interests of the US, Israel and much of the 'Western' World)"
I'm intrigued, pray tell how does an Islamic voting block defeat the interests of the US, Israel and the rest of the West in the UN's organisations that requires a consensus vote? Even if they gain a majority a majority is still meaningless where consensus is required. Majority voting only works in places like the general assembly which is entirely unrelated to the ITU. The ITU for what it's worth was created in about the 1880s, about 60 years before the UN, which is a large reason why it has a very different structure to some other UN organisations.
"Now some on these forums have argued that the ITU has been good at what it does. This is entirely true. However, I would argue that this was precisely because the ITU held no power that it has avoided the manipulating interest of special groups."
It has no inherent power, nor will it ever do beyond that which is granted through consensus of it's member states - i.e. just about every country in the world. The ITU can only do what the entire world agrees unanimously it can do - you seem to believe it's some kind of entity that exists in a vacuum, that's not true, it only exists and can do things where states unanimously agree to let it do so. To date those powers granted have been things like assigning communication satellite orbits - because someone has to do that and if states do so independently you'll find countries accidently crashing satellites into each other.
"Second example. The UN is working on making criticism of religion equivalent to hate speech. This means you can't say that the beheading of criminals under Islam's Sharia Law is barbaric, because Muslims will almost certainly wail that they have been offended by your statement."
This is simply an outright lie. What would be correct to say is that a few countries have proposed this even though they have no hope of passing it, and even if they did there is no structure within the UN by which they could multilaterally enforce it on those countries who don't want this. It's worrying that to try and make a point you're having to resort to outright literal FUD, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you've said this through lack of knowledge about the topic, rather than an attempt to maliciously manipulate the discussion using the politics of fear.
It seems the majority of your post seems to be a muddle of anti-Islamic paranoia and confusion about how the UN/ITU relationship and governance works. Your post reads like a Fox News fear piece, rather than a factual, useful commentary.
For what it's worth we've already lost our free internet, if you haven't noticed ICE domain seizures are already enforcing global internet censorship at the behest of a single government. This is the flip side of your initial point that you've failed to mention - that ICANN also has to adhere to the bad laws of the US as well as the good due to it being part of a single nation. The situation is hence not quite as perfect as you make out.
If you genuinely care about internet freedom you wouldn't be spending your time spreading FUD about the ITU/UN/Islam, you'd instead be trying to create pressure on the US to make ICANN a special entity that is above US law when it comes to demands from judges in some backwater part of a US state, or customs officials bought off by the MPAA/RIAA to enforce global internet censorship. If you did that, and achieved that, there'd be no valid reason for people to argue for a move to ITU control of ICANN in the first place. You're focussing on the symptom of the problem of calls for changes to internet governance, rather than the root cause - fixing US mismanagement of t
"I'm not speaking to the value of releasing product, you said he could write great code in a "perfect code" contest, I would say that's ignorant"
I didn't say he could, I said "I'm sure he could" which is a figure of speech meaning he probably could. I say he probably could because writing immaculate and optimised code isn't difficult, there's just often little benefit to doing so when compared against the disadvantage of the time lost in doing so. Do you actually have any or much real world programming experience? Getting something delivered is part of programming whether you like it or not.
Most people wouldn't call a plumber a good plumber no matter how immaculate his piping job if he never actually managed to get the job he's tasked with done leaving it half finished and programming should be treated no differently.
I suspect I know where you're coming from, many programmers have a tendancy towards perfectionism, and believe everything should be perfect. This is after all what programmers are taught during their education and so is enforced, but in the real world things aren't quite as simple, you have to balance quality against cost against time and a good programmer will get that balance right to deliver a good product. Notch has done this where many thousands of other indie games programmers failed and to a degree that only a handful of other indie games programmers have ever achieved such as the guys behind Popcap, Angry Birds and so forth.
The issue is that you're projecting your personal view that code quality/optimisation are the only measures of a programmer, that's not fact, that's merely your subjective opinion - you need to see past that and recognise that your view is merely your view. Whilst there are no doubt others that share your opinion, the absolute vast majority of the world's population only care that you deliver them what they want and the metrics you value most are only secondary to them, and that is why I believe it's the only metric that matters, because to most people, that's true. That was my point, and it still stands.
So you're saying that someone who produces pristine code of a half-finished and non-working project is a better programmer than someone who produces a slightly rough round the edges bit of code that meets the client's expectations?
A programmer's job is to write some code that fulfils a specific requirement, it doesn't matter how good your code is if you spend all your time writing pretty, but never complete code, you're still worthless relative to the person who has produced not quite so pretty code but that at least fulfils the requirements of the user.
It doesn't matter that the one code example we have from him is bad because writing good code is actually a much easier task than getting something to market a lot of the time. It might even not be a coincidence that the code that we do have is the code that isn't a symbol of perfection because that's kind of the point - if you spend all your time writing perfect code, you may never get it to a point it can be released anyway. God only knows there are billions of started but unfinished projects out there that were never completed because people were too focussed on perfection, and not enough on actually releasing something of worth and indie game dev is absolutely the worst for this. I've seen so many engines abandoned that were designed to be beautiful marvelous architectural masterpieces but that never got finished. Notch got something finished, he got something delivered, that matters above all else, because projects that never get finished are no better than projects that never existed.
Agreed, but as we see in the UK, the problem is that unions in the meantime are a money draining red tape producing waste of space.
The time between those laws initially coming into place, and them being change by a government wanting to revert rights is usually many many decades, so sure they make for nice protection when needed, but also create decades of incompetent workers being protected in the most unjustified circumstances. Local government workers who emplace themselves as union reps for example are basically unsackable yet may often provide absolutely zero worth to the tax payer who is funding their existence.
I don't know what the solution is, presumably the best solution would be a better educated, more responsible workforce that realises when their union is taking the fucking piss and stops funding them during this period only to increase funding when it's the government that starts to try and take the piss, but most people aren't smart enough to recognise when either is the case. It seems to be one of those things where balance is impossible to achieve and swings from one extreme to the other - you either have unions taking the piss and wasting money of hard working people, and getting laws enacted that benefit only the heads of the unions, or you have governments taking the piss exploiting the fuck out of people for the favour of their corporate puppetmasters.
I generally agree with your sentiment as it's true regarding the likes of the BBC etc.
But having seen Russia today quite a few times I absolutely assure you it's not the case. RT is bottom of the pile tosh, and it is almost exactly the Russian equivalent of Fox News.
The Kaiser report is best, it's almost humorous to watch, it'll be going on about some topic, like, say, deforestation in Brazil or whatever, and then the host will go off on a tangent and say something like "Well I bet it's part of a CIA plan, by destroying the rainforest with their spies they can destabilise the Brazilian economy in the long run". This is a made up example, but it's exactly the sort of thing you get. As I say, it's great if you view it as a comedic Russian parody of Fox News, but it becomes slightly less funny when you realise it's meant to be serious, and there are people who fall hook, line, and sinker for it's propaganda.
Sure but the point is we made it our war to back the Americans up rather than because it was of any inherent benefit to us other than gaining favour with America.
There was no benefit to us other than helping America, presumably in the hope that America would return the favour in kind some day.
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Also, there are far more high-end Android phones sold at around the same price point as Apple phones anyway.
So yes, a lot of Android's sales figures are because of people buying lower cost phones as the GP I believe intended, but even amongst those with money, people still opt for Android.
I feel obliged to point this out each time this argument is made, if he is not their customer then who is?
Judging by Apple's 13.9% and falling marketshare it would seem that less and less people are deemed to be Apple's customer by Apple themselves.
In contrast Android's marketshare has grown to 75%, so the number of people who would be deemed to be Android's customer seems to be ever growing.
I don't think the argument really makes sense, if Apple simply says "you're not our customer" each time their device doesn't allow them to do something then it's eventually going to find itself with no customers.
"You have me wrong. I'm not from the Far Right, I vehemently reject the ideology of the Far Right, and I vehemently reject extremists as you do. In fact, I'm a lefty, but that doesn't mean I lack a spine and will turn a blind eye as most lefties do. What I'm arguing for is to recognize evil for what it is and nip it in the bud, before you and I, or our descendants have to go and do what your grandfather did. "
Sorry but this makes no sense, you may want to think you're a "lefty" but you're spouting far right views and pushing far right politics.
You talk about nipping evil in the bud, and that your focus is on Islam because it's been the biggest problem for the last 20 years - where exactly? In Africa I think you'll find far more people have died to Christian extremist groups, in India more people have died to Hindu extremists. You've got a very ethnocentric view of the world.
You talk about the most violent teachings of Islam taking over the moderates, where is your evidence? The 180million muslims in India certainly haven't been taken over, you just don't hear about them precisely because they're getting on with their lives peacefully, despite Hindu terrorists attacking them.
You talk about groups like the Chechens as being examples of dangerous muslim extremist groups, but you do realise that they're actually the victims of violent Russian oppression right?
"From Britain have you not seen the Muslims from your own country shouting, "Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to Britain!"."
Yes, there's also a bunch of far right extremists known as the EDL running round cities, causing riots, and harming innocent non-muslims and destroying their property. The EDL have actually caused far more damage than the Islamic protesters have.
No one however caused as much damage as the mixed-race, mixed-culture gangs did with the riots, or as students did with student loan protests however. Maybe we should fight against students too?
"Did you not realise that your schools all serve halal meat in their canteens."
Well no, they don't. Some offer it as an option. It's called multi-culturalism, we have a multucultural society here in the UK, far more so than most countries. Perhaps that's why we're more tolerant and recognise that different communities have different problems, and that it's not all just about Islam.
"Surely you also know of the Sharia courts operating in parallel to your existing courts."
Yep, but because of the overriding laws of this country people are only bound by them if they choose to be. Are you suggesting we shouldn't give people the freedom to practice their beliefs if they choose to?
"Of course, you have read the Qur'an and hadiths and realise that Sharia is completely and fundamentally incompatible with the modern rights of women and homosexuals."
Yes, I'm also aware that the Church of England recently voted against equal rights for women and consistently fights against gay rights for homosexuals. The Catholic church is even worse again on these issues.
"Then there is the polygamy that is being legalised in Europe - but only for Muslim men, since they are special and don't have to obey the same rules as the rest of is (to try and apply Engligtenment values to everyone is 'culturally insenstive' don't you know?)."
Again, but only if the women consent. They cannot be forced into it. Again, are you suggesting we should not allow women to make their own choices? The EU clamps down very strongly on enforced and arranged marriages- a lot of money is being poured into preventing that. You could argue that they should allow it for other reasons for fairness purposes, but other religions don't want it for their followers.
"Does this not concern you at all?"
It concerns me about as much as people with far right ideologies like yourself do. You're worrying, you're annoying, but ultimately you don't yet have enough of a foothold to be too much of a concern. This is changing somewhat as the far right in the UK and Eu
"Prove that the Antiguan sites were blocked for *censorship* reasons."
What are you on about? It doesn't matter what the reasons were, the fact is it was censorship. Or are you saying that prevent access to information arbitrarily defined as illegal is somehow not censorship?
I suppose you could argue that it's "good" censorship and start going down that path, but then you have to admit that you're not actually for an open internet and actually for an internet that's censored against someone's subjective morals but however you cut it it's censorship.
"I'm a New Zealander and I'm disgusted the way that my Government has kowtowed in the Kim Dotcom case, and in how the US has behaved. However, he ain't no saint - his site was designed to support piracy. It is a slippery slope between MegaUpload and Google but the difference is *intent*. There are plenty of emails captured (maybe not legally, but that is moot) that show he and his staff encouraged use of the site for piracy. You need more than a fig leaf to defy the law. "
Ah so here's my answer - you actually aren't for a free and open internet, you aren't actually for justice, you're saying that if someone feels something is illegal because of "intent" it's actually okay to censor.
I wont bother with the rest of your posts as it's more of the same anti-Islamic paranoia. I don't think you recognise the hypocrisy of your position though, you say you're for a free open internet, but then you suggest that censorship is actually okay in some circumstances, and you justify this to yourself by trying to pretend it's not censorship.
cenÂsorÂship /ËsensÉ(TM)rËOESHip/
Noun
The practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.
If seizure of said gambling domains is not censorship, then please tell me what it is, as you appear to have a completely different definition of censorship to the rest of the world.
I think you need to accept that you're not actually for a free and open internet, but simply for the status quo, where the US is the only place that gets to decide what to arbitrarily censor, and that the rest of the world should live by the US' morals, both the good ones, and bad ones.
This does at least explain why you're continuing to argue against me on this point when I am for a genuinely free and open internet, something you claim you are meaning we should agree, yet for some reason you don't. You don't agree because you want a censored internet in some circumstances.
Dotcom was done previously for fraud, though when I read about the case it didn't sound much different to what some bankers do day in day out for a living, so it seemed more like Dotcom, being rather young at the time, was just being naive about how you play the game the big boys play.
A poster here previously admitted he was one of Dotcom's "victims", and hence that I believe is probably why you see a campaign here, only I don't think it's much of a campaign, it's actually just one or two people posting lots of FUD in the same thread, presumably because they feel if they say the same thing 10 times instead of once then that somehow makes the FUD not actually FUD.
There's a lot of talk about Dotcom's "horrendous" past, but it's documented fairly well on Wikipedia, much of his supposedly horrendous past, whilst I'm not defending it, was from when he was much younger and seems to be more about naivety and stupidity than anything.
Making sticky pistons?
"Yes, but *you* miss the point (hence your disingenuous 'weasel words' yourself). The US-led voting bloc (that is, countries sharing Enlightenment values) is outnumbered by the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement combined with the Islamic countries. Just look at the content of many of UN resolutions, they all go against what the US would like."
What resolutions and where? Different parts of the UN are different, the ITU doesn't use majority voting so I don't understand what the relevance of your point is here. The elements of the UN where majority voting is used are non-binding on other member states anyway. The UN was set up to facilitate handling of international issues with the recognition that it could only ever work if it worked for each individual member state. This is why countries like Israel can choose not to be members of the IAEA and hence have to declare their nuclear arsenals. It's also why any general assembly majority vote for pro-Islamic ideals is meaningless to the West, because there's no onus on us to implement them.
About the only place where things can be outright imposed on countries is the security council, which has vetoes for opposing blocks for good reason. The Islamic voting blocs have no power to prevent US veto here, nor do they really have anything of a say.
You attack me, insult me, and say I don't get it, but I do get it, which is why I'm not worried - you seem to view the UN as some monolithic single organisation where everything is decided and imposed by majority vote. That's not even remotely true.
"Oh, and by the way. The Antiguan sites were shut down because they were involved in $3 billion dollars worth of fraud and money laundering."
So censorship is okay if ICE makes up an arbitrary excuse? If this is true why didn't ICE officials just chase it through Antiguan courts? Antigua isn't some backwater corrupt country, it's very modern and arguably less corrupt than nations like the UK and US. Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the source of the problem and actually catch the criminals and get the money back than arbitrarily censor a website? Do you feel that if ICE says something, it must be true? that they'd never be wrong?
You harp on about me being anti-US yet I'm wondering if you actually read my original post here. I made it quite clear that my first preference is that the US retains control but ups their game and stops with the abitrary domain seizures and censorship. I stated that ITU control should only be a last resort of the US fails to sort itself out and recognise that the internet is international, and not it's own private entity to do with as it wishes. If I was anti-US as you so repeatedly claim, why would I state a first choice preference of the US retaining control? why wouldn't I suggest it goes straight to the ITU without even considering that?
Your entire argument seems to be based on fallacies - false understanding of how the UN works, false appeals to authority as ICE being incapable of doing wrong, false attacks on me as being anti-US and wanting removal of US control above all else.
When your whole argument is propped up on fallacies, what do you think that says about your argument?
Go read my other response to you, and understand why your fear of "the Islamists" is clouding your judgement, and exacerbating your unfounded paranoia on this issue before you bother to post again. You're being irrational, your arguments are based on unsound premises. You say you're an astrophysicist, you of all people should know that science requires your findings to be built on a sound basis, treat this discussion like a scientific one, cut away the populist paranoia filled tripe, and actually come back with points that make sense and are based on an actual understanding of the likes of the way the UN etc. work. Arguments based on falsehoods don't cut it with me, because I do understand how organisations like the UN actually work and so forth.
It looks like Slashdot is losing posts again as I actually posted a response to this yesterday pointing out that your attitude is exactly that of the far right. You talk of defeating Nazism yet seem oblivious to the fact you're exploiting the exact same politics Hitler did - you're focussing on a specific minority group and using that as your target of blame to stir populist and nationalist resentment against it to push your cause. I don't think you realise quite how hypocritical this is.
I find you somewhat of an enigma because on one hand you seem to know a decent bit about programming, and you claim to have been, or still are, an astrophysicist. Both of these things require a basic understanding of logic, and yet your post borders so very dangerously on the fringes of the far right - which is inherently illogical, and irrational.
But I'm going to go out on a limb, and make a few points in the hope you'll think about them and what they mean in the context of your argument because if you do have the background of an astrophysicist you should be able to see the problems with your viewpoint given these points.
You live in New Zealand, a place pretty much untouched by terrorism, and pretty far from places that are affected. You view Islam as a problem because as you say you feel it affects you the most. I believe this has distorted your view that whilst yes, New Zealand's biggest threat from a religious grouping probably is Islam, in other parts of the world it's quite a different story. I live in the UK, and the most recent terrorist attacks here have been Islamic - 7/7, the 21/7 attempt, the Glasgow airport attack and so on. Our most significant terrorist attack is from Islam also, make no doubt about that, yet I don't single out Islam as being inherently worse than other religious. Why is that? Well, in my lifetime whilst Islamic terrorism is in most recent memory, throughout my whole life I've seen more people killed in this country and more terrorist attacks by Catholics fighting as the IRA against the Protestant unionists, but attacking even English soil and civilians to put pressure on the British government. The Protestants themselves have committed terrorist acts against the Irish also. The problem is that the Islamists are still small fry in terms of terrorist acts committed in my own backyard by Catholics, so why despite the most recent attacks should I view Islam as the bigger problem? If you look at the global picture it might be fair to argue that it's all irrelevant compared to an atrocity on the scale of 9/11 where 3,000 people died, but then what of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where again, Serbian Catholics massacred in the most brutal way possible 8,000 muslim civilians? This was only 6 years before 9/11 so can hardly be written off as ancient history or any such thing. Coincidentally just yesterday the BBC had an article on how there was a distinct lack of Islamic extremists coming from India despite the violence they have suffered at the hands of Hindu extremists, and despite the fact that they have a population of 180million there. Also, realise that in Lebanon, the Christians tend to actually side with Hezbollah and the Islamists against the Jews in Israel, rather than support the secularists who simply want peace. Anders Breivik in Norway certainly wasn't a muslim and his was probably the single most effective terrorist attack in Scandinavia ever - he modelled himself after the Christian crusaders as a templar.
Now I don't personally like religion much at all, I think it's for fools, people too stupid to see the obvious fallacies it relies on and the complete lack of evidence that exists for it's most fundamental teachings (i.e. that of a god, or gods), but I simply can't agree with your view that Islam is somehow deserving of being singled out. I agree parts of the text are disturbing, but the Bible is really no better. The problem is that bad people will find an excuse for their bad actions whatever the case - Hitler didn't even need to really use a religion much, he ju
Yes, but as pointed out, what the US calls legal, the rest of the world doesn't.
The WTO found against the US in it's attack on Antiguan gambling sites, and yet despite this the US still continues to censor those sites. It's doing so without even the law on it's side.
But your use of weasel words - "the US does not generally" - generally being the key point here, meaning that in fact, it absolutely does, masks this fact.
"The countries that do practice censorship are the ones that form voting blocs in the UN (refer to the video in my first post)."
You realise the US is a member of certain voting blocs right?
No need to cry, it'd be easier to just admit you were wrong.
You're admitting ICE has committed censorship whilst simultaneously trying to deny they've been guilty of censorship, whilst also having previously said that you find censorship unacceptable and that you wont make excuses for it, despite now once again doing exactly that.
If you can't see how illogical your argument is than I think I'm not the one that should be worried about their IQ. I don't expect people to agree with me on everything, but I ask that if people disagree with me that their disagreement at least make some kind of logical sense. You've sadly completely and utterly failed to fulfil this simple task.
Really, it's not hard to at least be consistent in your argument, I feel for you in finding life such a difficult battle that you cannot even manage such a simple task and that you apparently burst into tears when you try and fail.
Don't US ISPs use this already?
Here in the UK ISPs have been using DPI for many years anyway to allow traffic prioritisation.
I agree with you that it's horrible, I don't like it either, but it seems naive to assume whether this will or wont be a threat, it already is and has been for many years.
I'm not terribly sure what the ITU's approval will mean, countries all around the world are already using it and have been for some time. It looks like they're just standardising how it should work. If it's standardised then it should be trivial to poke holes in the standard and work around it, but this will surely mean countries will start using non-standard DPI techniques, which means we're just right back to square one, where we are now.
Oh I absolutely agree, I don't buy into it either, I was just making the point that some people do, and if those people are your clients you have little choice.
There's people like you point out on one side of the spectrum that think everyone should wear a suit and tie.
There's people in the middle like you and I that think it's silly, but will do it if our clients expect it so that we can make the sale or whatever.
Then there's people at the other end of the spectrum who think it's silly and refuse to go through with it even if it means pissing off the client and fucking their employer over.
My point was that in business, you really want people like you and I - those in the middle category that will do it to help the business, and that's why it's a useful test in an interview - because if they come in to the interview dressed too casually they may be in that latter category, and may cost you business, and depending on your company and it's circumstances, maybe even your job!
The point is that handing ICANN over to the UN would put it in a place where political stalemate would prevent the consensus the ITU requires from ever being achieved.
This is far better than the current status quo where the US has no accountability and so can and does arbitrarily censor across the globe at will.
"Odd that I have any number of gambling websites I can go to and spend money in spite of all this censorship you refer to."
So because not every gambling site has yet been taken down it's acceptable to censor others? What a horrible failure of logic you just made.
"Also, I make no excuses for censorship. "
No, that's exactly what you did. That's exactly what you did just now too, you said, because you can access some gambling websites, it's not a problem. If you're instead denying any gambling websites were taken down then it's trivial to use Google to find out that you were wrong.
"Just because ICE doesn't have a perfect record doesn't mean they are bad."
There go the excuses again...
"Mistakes have happened and they should be correct but they are on record as not having any interest in censorship."
Yet they do exactly that. Excuses, excuses, excuses.
"That's a lot more than I can say for the UN. You actually believe they would do a better job? Seriously?"
I think they'd have no choice because the stalemate and failure to gain unanimity which is a requirement in the ITU would force it to be the case. That's better than the status quo where the US is accountable to absolutely no one.
Actually, some US domain seizures have been for gambling websites. Sites that are legitimate international businesses with a legitimate international web prescence.
But this highlights the problem, what is illegal in the US is not necessarily illegal elsewhere.
Unfortunately people like you are the reason the US can follow a downhill trajectory in terms of this sort of censorship, because you make excuses for it, and say it's okay because it could be worse. That's not an acceptable excuse, because it could also be better, and that's what I, and many others want - a completely free internet like we used to have, rather than the partly free internet we have now.
AFAIK where it can be automatically inferred that a particular task can be run in a functionally independent manner as in your bunny.hop() example .NET 4.5 already automatically does this for the LINQ extension methods.
So for example, if you have a list, such as:
List bunnies = new List();
Then you can do, say:
bunnies.ForEach(x => x.hop());
and the call to the ForEach extension method will automatically split execution against multiple threads. IIRC it's even somewhat intelligent in that it will only do this optimisation if the list is of adequate size to make it worthwhile.
It sounds like this new research basically extends this existing idea beyond the LINQ extension methods but is based largely on the same base concept.
It's because most people look their smartest in a suit, so when you interview you want to see that your prospective employee can actually look presentable to a client in case they ever have to meet them.
It doesn't mean you expect them to wear that all the time, but the point is when dealing with clients you can't assume what their standards will be. A suit is always a safe bet for clients, hence it's always a safe bet for interviews.
But for what it's worth where I work currently we have an extremely casual dress sense, and I started looking for a job elsewhere recently, not wanting to tell my current employer at the time I asked the companies that offered me interviews if they'd mind me turning up dressed casually and on explaining the situation they had no problem with it so most employers do understand.
I have got another job now having had 3 offers from 3 interviews, and the one I chose mandates a shirt, trousers, and tie, which really, really sucks coming from the current casual background but then everything else about the company is great - superb pay, great holidays, great pension scheme, good working hours, interesting work, good career potential, technologies I enjoy and want to work with, really genuine friendly staff etc. At that point, the dress code becomes irrelevant, there's too many other perks for it to matter in the slightest. I could've taken one of the other offers that allowed for more casual dress, but to me it wasn't worth being able to dress in jeans and t-shirt for the £9k pay difference, lack of pension, less leave, and more annoying colleagues that company had.
But I digress, let those people turn up in their suits and ties, they're doing it to prove that they're willing to make an effort in their appearance for you rather than throwing on what they normally throw on, and to show you that they can dress for the occasion if the occasion were to ever demand a difference in dress - again, i.e. client meetings. It's just another part of the interview process, it tells you they're willing.
"But is it the prerogative of the people in that country? Or is it a government acting unilaterally for the sake of retaining power? Should we be accepting or tolerant of that?"
It's up to the people of that country to do something about it. It's a painful situation to watch sometimes, seeing people oppressed by their government, but as things like Iraq have taught us, intervention can be so much worse. Saddam's use of chemical weapons and so forth to kill 5,000 odd civilians was sick, but was the situation worse than the best part of a million people who died as a result of America's intervention there?
Compare this to say, Egypt, Libya, or Tunisia, and yes blood was spilt, but far less than through external intervention and the inevitable power vacuum that that causes.
Not really true, most console games still have local multiplayer.
I think all party games do too rather than "pretty specific" ones, that's kind of the point of party games - they're for parties. I think just about all Kinect titles for example do, maybe only one or two that don't.
"Why is the UN this way? unfortunately it is due to past and future conflicts (a legacy of the Cold War, and now influenced by the rise of global Jihad and Salafism). I refer you to this video for an overview (mid-way describes how the Non-Aligned and Islamic movements have joined to form a voting bloc to defeat the interests of the US, Israel and much of the 'Western' World)"
I'm intrigued, pray tell how does an Islamic voting block defeat the interests of the US, Israel and the rest of the West in the UN's organisations that requires a consensus vote? Even if they gain a majority a majority is still meaningless where consensus is required. Majority voting only works in places like the general assembly which is entirely unrelated to the ITU. The ITU for what it's worth was created in about the 1880s, about 60 years before the UN, which is a large reason why it has a very different structure to some other UN organisations.
"Now some on these forums have argued that the ITU has been good at what it does. This is entirely true. However, I would argue that this was precisely because the ITU held no power that it has avoided the manipulating interest of special groups."
It has no inherent power, nor will it ever do beyond that which is granted through consensus of it's member states - i.e. just about every country in the world. The ITU can only do what the entire world agrees unanimously it can do - you seem to believe it's some kind of entity that exists in a vacuum, that's not true, it only exists and can do things where states unanimously agree to let it do so. To date those powers granted have been things like assigning communication satellite orbits - because someone has to do that and if states do so independently you'll find countries accidently crashing satellites into each other.
"Second example. The UN is working on making criticism of religion equivalent to hate speech. This means you can't say that the beheading of criminals under Islam's Sharia Law is barbaric, because Muslims will almost certainly wail that they have been offended by your statement."
This is simply an outright lie. What would be correct to say is that a few countries have proposed this even though they have no hope of passing it, and even if they did there is no structure within the UN by which they could multilaterally enforce it on those countries who don't want this. It's worrying that to try and make a point you're having to resort to outright literal FUD, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you've said this through lack of knowledge about the topic, rather than an attempt to maliciously manipulate the discussion using the politics of fear.
It seems the majority of your post seems to be a muddle of anti-Islamic paranoia and confusion about how the UN/ITU relationship and governance works. Your post reads like a Fox News fear piece, rather than a factual, useful commentary.
For what it's worth we've already lost our free internet, if you haven't noticed ICE domain seizures are already enforcing global internet censorship at the behest of a single government. This is the flip side of your initial point that you've failed to mention - that ICANN also has to adhere to the bad laws of the US as well as the good due to it being part of a single nation. The situation is hence not quite as perfect as you make out.
If you genuinely care about internet freedom you wouldn't be spending your time spreading FUD about the ITU/UN/Islam, you'd instead be trying to create pressure on the US to make ICANN a special entity that is above US law when it comes to demands from judges in some backwater part of a US state, or customs officials bought off by the MPAA/RIAA to enforce global internet censorship. If you did that, and achieved that, there'd be no valid reason for people to argue for a move to ITU control of ICANN in the first place. You're focussing on the symptom of the problem of calls for changes to internet governance, rather than the root cause - fixing US mismanagement of t
"I'm not speaking to the value of releasing product, you said he could write great code in a "perfect code" contest, I would say that's ignorant"
I didn't say he could, I said "I'm sure he could" which is a figure of speech meaning he probably could. I say he probably could because writing immaculate and optimised code isn't difficult, there's just often little benefit to doing so when compared against the disadvantage of the time lost in doing so. Do you actually have any or much real world programming experience? Getting something delivered is part of programming whether you like it or not.
Most people wouldn't call a plumber a good plumber no matter how immaculate his piping job if he never actually managed to get the job he's tasked with done leaving it half finished and programming should be treated no differently.
I suspect I know where you're coming from, many programmers have a tendancy towards perfectionism, and believe everything should be perfect. This is after all what programmers are taught during their education and so is enforced, but in the real world things aren't quite as simple, you have to balance quality against cost against time and a good programmer will get that balance right to deliver a good product. Notch has done this where many thousands of other indie games programmers failed and to a degree that only a handful of other indie games programmers have ever achieved such as the guys behind Popcap, Angry Birds and so forth.
The issue is that you're projecting your personal view that code quality/optimisation are the only measures of a programmer, that's not fact, that's merely your subjective opinion - you need to see past that and recognise that your view is merely your view. Whilst there are no doubt others that share your opinion, the absolute vast majority of the world's population only care that you deliver them what they want and the metrics you value most are only secondary to them, and that is why I believe it's the only metric that matters, because to most people, that's true. That was my point, and it still stands.
So you're saying that someone who produces pristine code of a half-finished and non-working project is a better programmer than someone who produces a slightly rough round the edges bit of code that meets the client's expectations?
A programmer's job is to write some code that fulfils a specific requirement, it doesn't matter how good your code is if you spend all your time writing pretty, but never complete code, you're still worthless relative to the person who has produced not quite so pretty code but that at least fulfils the requirements of the user.
It doesn't matter that the one code example we have from him is bad because writing good code is actually a much easier task than getting something to market a lot of the time. It might even not be a coincidence that the code that we do have is the code that isn't a symbol of perfection because that's kind of the point - if you spend all your time writing perfect code, you may never get it to a point it can be released anyway. God only knows there are billions of started but unfinished projects out there that were never completed because people were too focussed on perfection, and not enough on actually releasing something of worth and indie game dev is absolutely the worst for this. I've seen so many engines abandoned that were designed to be beautiful marvelous architectural masterpieces but that never got finished. Notch got something finished, he got something delivered, that matters above all else, because projects that never get finished are no better than projects that never existed.
"Those laws can be changed."
Agreed, but as we see in the UK, the problem is that unions in the meantime are a money draining red tape producing waste of space.
The time between those laws initially coming into place, and them being change by a government wanting to revert rights is usually many many decades, so sure they make for nice protection when needed, but also create decades of incompetent workers being protected in the most unjustified circumstances. Local government workers who emplace themselves as union reps for example are basically unsackable yet may often provide absolutely zero worth to the tax payer who is funding their existence.
I don't know what the solution is, presumably the best solution would be a better educated, more responsible workforce that realises when their union is taking the fucking piss and stops funding them during this period only to increase funding when it's the government that starts to try and take the piss, but most people aren't smart enough to recognise when either is the case. It seems to be one of those things where balance is impossible to achieve and swings from one extreme to the other - you either have unions taking the piss and wasting money of hard working people, and getting laws enacted that benefit only the heads of the unions, or you have governments taking the piss exploiting the fuck out of people for the favour of their corporate puppetmasters.
I generally agree with your sentiment as it's true regarding the likes of the BBC etc.
But having seen Russia today quite a few times I absolutely assure you it's not the case. RT is bottom of the pile tosh, and it is almost exactly the Russian equivalent of Fox News.
The Kaiser report is best, it's almost humorous to watch, it'll be going on about some topic, like, say, deforestation in Brazil or whatever, and then the host will go off on a tangent and say something like "Well I bet it's part of a CIA plan, by destroying the rainforest with their spies they can destabilise the Brazilian economy in the long run". This is a made up example, but it's exactly the sort of thing you get. As I say, it's great if you view it as a comedic Russian parody of Fox News, but it becomes slightly less funny when you realise it's meant to be serious, and there are people who fall hook, line, and sinker for it's propaganda.
Sure but the point is we made it our war to back the Americans up rather than because it was of any inherent benefit to us other than gaining favour with America.
There was no benefit to us other than helping America, presumably in the hope that America would return the favour in kind some day.