That's entirely false. If anything you said is true then someone should probably let India know, because they're on the verge of dropping out of the project altogether because of the abject failure of Russia to manage the project reasonably.
Who are these reliable sources you talk about? I'd be intrigued to know what source is more reliable than the Kremlin itself.
I hear you, but I think that's why it's problematic to class that as liberalism, by it's very definition that simply is not liberalism.
It concerns me greatly that liberalism has been tarred with that brush when by definition that type of politics cannot be liberalism. It's a form of authoritarianism, and we saw it here too in the UK under Gordon Brown's abysmal two years as unelected Prime Minister.
Those your are referring to as intellectuals, undoubtedly aren't. I'd consider very few politicians intellectuals, but many great people such as David Attenborough are both intellectual and liberal - that's the classic type of liberal intellectualism we need a hell of a lot more of, don't assume because a certain set of people are painting themselves with a specific brush that they have earned it or that it's a correct description of them - I'm well aware there are people who are a serious problem on both sides of the political divide in both the US and UK, but there are a handful of genuinely good people trying to do the right thing, sadly Trump and his inner circle not only contains none of those people, but actively shows disdain, distaste, and disrespect for them - there's the incompetent illiberal "liberals" that you're referring to, and then there's people who are just out and out illiberal. I fully get why you would confuse the two, as most of the time, they do indeed look exactly the same.
The only dissenting voice seems to be some guy from a site called Airwars whose evidence to the contrary is merely "I don't believe them because past wars have had more casualties!". That theory is nonsense of course, because that's the whole point - this isn't a past war, this is a war learning from the mistakes both in terms of missile technology and rules of engagement of past wars. Given the low destructive nature of Brimstone, which is why it's great at avoiding collateral damage in the first place, it should be trivial to find remnants of Brimstone missiles at the site of civilian casualties, but even ISIS with their love of propaganda seem to have been entirely unable to do so.
Of course, you might argue that no missile would leave remnants, but we know that's bullshit because every other time this happens it's been trivial to find remnants, this is from a US predator airstrike with a hellfire for example (which has a larger warhead than Brimstone so would be expected to leave even less evidence behind) in Yemen:
I'm not saying I specifically believe the MOD's claim of no casualties, but given the lack of evidence of any casualties caused by RAF Brimstone strikes it seems pretty clear that the number is incredibly low, and yes Mr Airwars, unprecedented in the history of warfare - that's how progress works, things improve.
"Meanwhile the russians are gradually updating their Mig29s and Sukolevs with junkyard scraps or something and can actually fly. Like, they have pilots trained on them that can strap in and take off in 3.5 Minutes flat."
Nonense, many of Russia's projects are in complete disarray too. They created a high tech electronic controlled tank that crashes more than Windows ME, and a 5th gen fighter jet that spontaneously explodes and has become such a fuckup that Russia has reduced it's order to a mere 12 aircraft, a number of which will be kept for spares and training meaning at best 3 - 9 available for active duty, 10 years after the F-22 entered service (and was still more effective).
I agree that military procurement is a complete and utter shambles, but it's not just the West getting it wrong. The problem is rarely what gets produced (you mention the F-15 and F-16 - there's a reason both these aircraft have reached their E variants, you can't compare the stability of an A variant aircraft against an E variant aircraft, the A-10 however is a masterpiece in it's role I'll admit.). The problem is entirely about corruption, but it's not even just the military - people scoff at the $122million price tag of an F-22, but here in the UK we're spending $100billion on a fucking train line and a handful of trains), the fact is public sector is entirely hopeless at producing sensible contracts with private sector - public sector ALWAYS gets ripped off, because unlike with private sector there's fuck all accountability when it comes to overspending - the Department of Defence doesn't go bankrupt like a company would if it blew way over it's budget (this is FWIW the same problem with bailing out the banks, when you remove the risk of failure, you also remove the accountability and incentive to do a good job that failure provide).
"Clearly the reason recent conflicts have required coalitions is so each government's incompetence can be cancelled out."
I know you're (half) joking but there's some (half) truth to this. The reason it was such a problem when the UK first refused to join strikes in Syria, and such a big deal when we eventually did join is because of the UK's Brimstone missile, it provides a capability that the US just doesn't have - it's accuracy against moving targets, and ability to cancel very last minute if there's a risk of civilian casualties is immensly important when striking inner city areas such as those ISIS hides in, but it also has millimetre wave and laser guidance options making it incredibly flexible in terms of hitting the target. There was some buzz about buying Brimstone in the US, but instead they chose to reinvent the wheel and just try and upgrade the hellfire themselves to do the exact same thing - launch from fast jets, with dual mode seekers, because military industrial complex money wasting.
As an aside the F-117 was cancelled in 2008, but there have been numerous videos of them flying since despite supposedly being mothballed, including earlier this year - one theory is that it's because the F-22 doesn't do laser guidance and so can't hit moving targets on the ground, therefore the F-117 remains the USAF's only option for doing this, hence why they're keeping them airworthy and flying and the crews trained and active just in case. The F-35 can do this (which is why when people say the F-35 can't dogfight they're missing the point, it's not meant to, it's a strike fighter, dog fighting is what the F-22 is for, which is why the F-22 can't hit moving ground targets - there's no jack of all trades aircraft that can do everything perfectly).
Regarding the carriers, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm fast jet pilots were transitioned to the RAF, but are seconded to fly with countries like France and the US to practice carrier efforts - there are currently RAF (former fleet air arm) pilots flying French Rafales with the French Navy and American F/A-18s and Harriers with the US Navy and Marines.
France does a decent job of maintaining full spectrum capabilities making it much more independent than the UK and US but the cost is that it means some of those capabilities are now incredibly dated - it's hard for one single country to afford everything. The US can afford to do it, but due to overly inflated project costs through corruption and backhanders it just runs out of money even though it shouldn't.
It's not just the West though - Russia's joint project with India, the PAK-FA, their 5th generation attempt at creating a competitor for the F-22 is also in the shit, with Russia now dropping it's order of them to a mere 12 aircraft so probably only ever between 3 and 9 combat ready at best (you don't have all your aircraft flying at once, some are always used as reserves, some will be trainers etc.). China's having a good go but whilst many of it's designs are based on stolen US designs (there's a reason some of it's aircraft have striking similarities, they don't appear to have ever managed to steal a comprehensive design, so what you get is something where half of the plane looks like a cutting edge Western equivalent design, and the rest of it looks straight out of the 60s. See this image for example highlighting the front of the aircraft having a similar profile to the F-35, but the engines demonstrating the stealth profile of a gigantic flying turd (and likely the avionics of a Commodore 64).
So you're actually not far wrong, countries genuinely are working together to fill gaps, and it genuinely is because of terrible decision making based on corrupt procurement processes - there's really no question that the Brimstone was far and away the most sensible purchase option for the US, it would've saved millions and does everything they want. Similarly selling the Royal Navy's entire 72 Harrier fleet to the US for less than the price of 2 F-35s only to then pay the US to let our pilots keep
The UK's data protection act is based on Europe's European Data Protection Directive anyway, it's the UK's implementation of it, so you can be fairly well rest assured that the rest of the EU will reach the same conclusion. The DPA doesn't really go much over and above the DPD.
"Unlike the UK, Canada has a very recent Constitution and it has specific rights of privacy."
The UK has rights of privacy via both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights implemented as the Human Rights Act.
We just don't do such things in constitutions, because it's not clear they have ever actually worked as originally intended - the US constitution gives gun rights, but depending where you are in the US there are restrictions, most people agree with the advent of nuclear weapons that they shouldn't be covered, so there is some overarching limitation on the legislation - net result, what was written a few hundred years ago now needs to be changed, better to recognise that and do it properly than to have some fixed unchanging thing that ultimately just gets surrounded by fudged solutions or just outright ignored by government when it stops making sense. Otherwise you just end up by people picking and choosing when people should and shouldn't listen to the constitution to suit their current political bias and you just end up with an entirely needless legal quagmire and a whole lot of shouting. When you just have a clear set of adaptable laws and don't pretend one group of people's words are perfect and indefinitely immaculate through time it's pretty clear what the status quo is and what needs to change if anything does at any point. If we wanted that we'd probably just stick to wot the the bible sez or something equally daft.
Which if true, in the (and in fact, I believe any European country) would in itself be illegal.
In the UK It's illegal for an organisationto hold data on you without your consent unless it falls into a handful of exemptions - law enforcement, credit rating and so forth. Facebook falls into none of these exemptions, therefore shadow profiles on anyone who has not signed up and agreed to the T&Cs would be entirely illegal. There's no legal mechanism for Facebook to retrieve, acquire, or store that unconsented data.
As much as you may wish to hope you can stop it the trajectory is towards liberalism, this is why even with the odd hiccup such as Brexit and possibly a Trump victory they're still ultimately only blips on the overall timeline of history. Trump and Farage alike are entirely dependent on people who will be dead in 10 - 20 years to even remotely achieve the numbers they need to reach the goals they want. Beyond that they and their mindsets are well and truly done.
Liberalism goes hand in hand with intellectualism, as people become better educated on average, more knowledgeable on average, they want more freedom, more rights. They're never going to vote for someone who wants to create interment camps, who calls for political opponents to be assassinated, who hates people over arbitrary and meaningless traits such as sex, sexuality, skin colour and so on. The only way you can stop this tide of change is by making people more stupid, and guess what happens when you do that? you lose the global geopolitical race to someone who hasn't made their population more stupid, and who is progressive, does respect intellect, and in turn pushes human advancement forward with or without you, at which point you adapt and follow or face poverty and irrelevance.
Human advancement is a basic instinct that no amount of conservatism can put a stop to. Japan and Germany didn't lose World War II because of any particular military strategy, because of bad luck, and so forth, but because when you don't respect intellectuals, those that do get things like the atom bomb instead, and then they win.
When you understand this, you'll understand why liberalism is such a powerful and effective force that you should probably embrace, rather than continue to fight a war you will never win, as much as a handful of ultimately irrelevant short term victories many excite you.
This is why liberals have nothing to worry about. They're not losing, and human progress ensures that will always be the case - it's been the overarching trajectory throughout the entirety of human history.
You realise to any rational human being who isn't tangled up in the US elections such as myself, you sound like a raving paranoid crackpot who is in severe need of a psychiatrist right?
OMGS THEY TLAK IN CODE, SHE SAID SHE'S GOING TO DINNER WITH HIM TONIGHT, IT MUST MEAN SHE KILLED HIS MUM AND HATES AMERICA!!!!111111
"As the value of our currency continues to decline and we push for cheaper labour and lower pay, we will start to become very competitive with India for highly skilled developers."
They're different markets, there's still a substantial cost difference between India and the UK, the UK will become more cost competitive sure, but India will still always be cheaper.
But it ultimately doesn't matter, as India doesn't produce highly skilled developers anyway, it has no universities in the top 250 global universities and only 5 in the top 500 global universities. You go to India to pay cheap and get cheap, you don't go to India to get highly skilled developers.
There are cheaper nations where you can get skill for less, typically the Eastern European nations like Lithuania and Estonia where highly skilled developers are available at low salaries, having often trained in some of Europe's top universities.
Don't mistake India as a place to secure highly skilled tech talent, that's the exact opposite of what it's for when it comes to outsourcing - it's entirely about when you need quantity, not quality. That isn't to say there aren't some star talents of the industry coming from India, but they all leave India and end up in countries like the US anyway- only the low skilled get left behind.
On the Xbox One you can already Skype chat in the background and completely bypass game and party chat, the latter of which runs in isolation to games and does nothing to prevent covert information sharing anyway. Only game chat enforces limitations.
That was always the theory but Shadowrun supported Xbox 360 / PC cross-play and on the 360 I never found myself particularly disadvantaged against PC players, if there was a gulf it certainly never showed up in the end of game scoreboards - you'd have expected PC players to, on average, position higher than Xbox gamers, but it never really happened. The spread was always pretty even.
The biggest problem as I see it for cross-play in general is cheating - people on PS4 wouldn't be happy if for example the Xbox One got hacked and smothered in aimbots, or vice versa with the Xbox One and the PS4 getting hacked, or both consoles and the higher rate of PC hacks and cheats.
Unless you can guarantee an equivalent level of security across all systems cross-play is just going to result in players demanding segregation again because they wont want to play against cheats on another platform.
It doesn't, even if no other company made any profit, or if any made a loss then that loss doesn't in any way transfer to Apple's profits.
At best Apple can achieve 100% of smartphone profits for a period if everyone else makes a loss or breaks even, but even that isn't true. Regardless of whether Samsung et. al. have had a bad quarter, there are still a whole lot of players that make small profits - i.e. many of the Chinese firms, so the idea that Apple hit even 100% is complete drivel.
But in fact, it gets worse, because the summary even says Samsung gained 0.9% of the profits for the quarter, therefore that alone brings Apple's share down to at least 99.1%. Samsung can have failings and still make a profit in part because losses are usually tax deductible so are pulled off before the final figure for profit.
Profit is a well defined term, it's the amount of money you have left over after you've paid taxes, bills, costs, and so on and so forth. What your competitors gain in terms of profit has absolutely no reference to what you gain in terms of profit, they're separate figures for separate companies.
I suspect there's some kind of messed up clickbait logic behind the number that gives some kind of figure where Apple gets 104% of something, but whatever that something is it's not profit, nor any figure anyone having any kind of useful discussion ever uses.
"If we were both aliens and this was the first election on Earth that we've seen, that would be reasonable... but you know that this is routine work for politicians. Now you're the one being an idealist."
On the contrary, I'm being a realist. There's a broad gulf between the blame mongering people like to engage in and what politicians are really, actually like.
"If Clinton had a completely private, in-her-head position that "I want open borders but I'll do what the electorate wants" that would be fine, and we wouldn't even know about it. But when she's giving speeches and accepting large speaking fees for saying the exact opposite, I think it's very naive to give her the benefit of the doubt. The fact that we're talking about it shows that she doesn't have the discipline to keep her private stance private... what makes you think she will magically have the will power to keep her private stance from influencing policy if elected?"
There's a vast different between having a private stance and acting on it, it doesn't matter if she doesn't keep it private, it's really irrelevant, what matters is if she acts on it, and you have zero evidence that she would, you're merely speculating that she would for partisan reasons. That's not really any different to saying if elected Trump would anally fuck every 5 year old in the country till they bleed to death because he agreed that his own daughter is a piece of ass and so must be a sexual predator. Everyone can make shit up, but it's not a good basis on which to make any kind of worthwhile decision. Decisions should be based on facts, and there's literally zero evidence that Clinton's private position matters in the fucking slightest beyond what you're choosing to project merely because you've already made your mind up and are trying to self-justify.
"The danger with a person who governs by following polls is that polls are so easily manipulated, not to mention a number of decisions made in the upper echelons of government depend on information not available to the public, or even if the information is available the public may be ill equipped to process it and make a competent decision. You do have to, at some level, trust the instincts and personal views of the people you elect."
It's really got nothing to do with polls, most elements of public opinion sway far enough in one direction or another for things to be obvious, it's not rocket science to recognise that if push came to shove, most people wouldn't want a nuclear war for example. Cases where there is even public division is why you have representatives to try and thrash out a votable compromise, and where it's not left to the president alone, that's kind of the point of having representatives. If you think a president should act unilaterally on divisive issues then what you're asking for is a dictator, I don't see any evidence Hillary wants to be that, nor does the idea of completely open borders exist as an issue that a president could unilaterally act or achieve anything upon anyway. Even her own party wouldn't give sufficient backing to it, so it's folly to pretend it even matters, and she's smart enough to know that there's no point having a fight she wouldn't have a cats chance in hell of winning because such fights only weaken you and leave you a lame duck.
"Public opinion obviously goes into that, but no candidate is successful who says "all of my positions are subject to change, I don't have any firmly held beliefs, I'm just telling you what you want to hear, trust me." Calling someone a "flip flopper" is a real thing in political debates, for instance.. and it's not a compliment."
It's also not that simple either, people get elected on issues where they do have sufficient support for their views, Hillary's private view isn't one of those things on the books, precisely because she would never get elected on it, and hence will know that there's no point pursuing it, regardless of how much she may wish it to one day be possible.
You're effectively arguing though that you'd prefer someone who sticks to their ideals, even if it goes against the will of the populace that elected them.
Personally I think Hillary's stance is far, far better - "I have this personal view, but the electorate wants this so I'll pursue that instead". She may well want open borders, but it's clear based on her public policy that she understands that that's not what the electorate wants - you can only call her deceptive if she gets into power and pursues her private viewpoint, rather than her public viewpoint. The alternative is someone who doesn't differentiate between the two, they state their viewpoint and stick to it regardless of whether it's right or wrong, regardless of whether people agree with it or not. This problem is present with Trump, consider his comments on the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS, I doubt many people who support him seriously want him to use them, but if he does, despite it being grossly against the will of the populace, is that somehow better than if he privately wants to use them, but knows the public don't support it so opts not to?
Having a personal opinion, but recognising that public opinion overrides it is exactly the sort of quality you should want in a politican in a democracy, not decry and claim is hypocritical, or corrupt, or somehow bad. It's those whose views are unwavering regardless of what the population they profess to represent thinks that you should worry about.
You're highlighting limitations on your own level of thinking there rather than demonstrating that she's somehow in the wrong.
There's nothing wrong with having an idealist mindset as a long term hope, but a realist mindset as a pragmatic set in stone goal.
For example, I've seen idealists say we should cut off all links to Saudi Arabia because of their treatment of women, with the view that doing so will punish them for not treating women well, an idealist would view having links with such a country when claiming to support womens rights as outright hypocritical, but a pragmatist would recognise that cutting off links may cause the regime to collapse and make things even worse for women, whilst noting that the Saudi regime is already opening up opportunities for women, such that the advisory council to the ruling body is now 50% female which is better than most Western parliaments.
It's possible therefore to say you support women's rights, but also support the existing Saudi regime without being hypocritical because the safety of pragmatism is often better than the massive risks of idealism.
So when someone like Hillary says her dream is a common market with open trade and open borders, that doesn't in any way mean she believes she can achieve that dream during her presidency, nor that hence she will take any actions towards that dream during her presidency. It's perfectly possible to dream of owning a Ferrari but not be a hypocrite by buying a Ford Focus because you realise your budget wont stretch that far.
I suspect that if you believe dreams and actions must always be the same thing, then you're an idealist, and are incapable of weighing up your ideals against pragmatism of reality. That's not a problem in itself, idealists are the people that come up with ideas of potential destinations, pragmatists are the ones that have to figure out whether we can actually get there - some people are capable of being both, but just because you can't separate the two doesn't mean it's valid to assume that everyone can't separate the two.
I speak from experience, I've had many ideas in my working life of where I'd like to see the companies I've worked for get to, but in reality market conditions, company politics and so forth means I've had to settle for something quite different than where I'd like to see the company be. She's not lying, she's just capable of separating her personal beliefs and hopes from her pragmatic actions of what the country wants, personally I think that's a good quality to have - far better than a straight idealist who breaks the country because they can't be pragmatic, FWIW that's precisely the problem we have in the UK at the moment with our only viable opposition, Jeremy Corbyn - the ideas he has are lovely (free shit for everyone), but there isn't a cats chance in hell of being able to pull them off without bankrupting the country so I'd rather take someone that has that as their ideal, but also has the pragmatism to understand that it's not something you can just do without hitting the brick wall of reality face first at 100mph.
But that was exactly my point - that Greece's economy had not reached an equivalent maturity of France and Germany's, and they rushed through their entrance to the euro regardless of them not being ready. Had they instead waited and said, "You're not ready yet", then Greece would've had an incentive to make it's economy actually ready and join at a later date when it had undergone the necessary changes, hence precisely why it was a rushed state of affairs. They turned a blind eye to Greece's known problems because they just wanted to rush ahead with things.
Whilst I understand the logic behind your pedantry, I actually disagree with you. Why?
Because Microsoft never changes prices in the other direction on things like this when following the UK pound - when it was $2 USD to the pound back in about 2007 we sure as hell didn't get an 80% discount on stuff compared to where we are priced now.
So I actually think it is a price increase, precisely because Microsoft has never followed the pound - following the pound implies that these price changes will fluctuate up and down, but I'd wager this price increase isn't reversed when the pounds fortunes improve.
I think this price increase is absolutely justified given what we have done to our country and currency, however I also think cuts are justified when the pound is strong, and yet we never get them. In fact, only a couple of years ago the pound was back up to 1.70 - 1.80 USD and yet we never saw a price cut then.
The whole point in the EU was to share wealth and bring all countries up to the same level so that the continent could move forward together.
It was a noble and sane idea, the problem is it's been rushed, which is why the euro has struggled, because as you say they pushed ahead with it long before that cross-continental equalisation of wealth and productivity had occurred.
So you're somewhat right and somewhat wrong, there was nothing wrong with the idea per-se, just the way it was implemented. I think some naively hoped that pushing it through would somehow speed up the process, but like many processes in economics and nature alike, you just can't rush these things. People are impatient, and that's where it all went horribly wrong.
Even some of the most hard-right Brexiteers such as Daniel Hannan who has a massively long history of xenophobia believe that immigration shouldn't see greater control.
You're right, it really is only the genuinely far right fringes that are pushing that idea such as Jacob Rees Mogg and Nigel Farage. Even the hard-right aren't keen on the idea because they know we're so economically dependent on it.
Honestly, I suspect Farage admitting the whole NHS £350million was a lie within 2 hours of winning the referendum would've been enough to make people realise what they've done was stupid - the real peak realisation will be next summer when all the chavs realise they can no longer afford to go to Benidorm, but hey-ho, May seems intent on making a point now. I can't tell if she's grossly inept or if she's calling the far-right Brexiteers bluffs by showing them what happens when they get their way. Either way it's a dangerous game.
All trade deals that had any impact on British sovereignty had to be agreed by Britain anyway - see the current CETA debacle as an example, where one tiny little irrelevant region in Europe can crush an entire treaty.
So your argument is incorrect, there's no difference in the decrease in sovereignty, Britain was always part of negotiations and acceptance anyway, the difference now is we're negotiating from a much weaker starting point - we only have 65million people instead of 580million people. That necessarily means we're going to have to accept more compromise in favour of the larger parties (i.e. US, China, etc.) than we did before because we need the deals more than they do.
The idea Britain can bully other countries into trade deals that suit us is a naive and ignorant hangover of British imperialism where there's a view that we somehow still control half the world and can somehow still bully other countries to our whim. We can't.
"I don't care if the information about Hillary's lies are part of some Russian plot or not. If the truth is "destabilizing" well then fuck stability. Hillary admitting to having "public" and "private" positions is a piece of information that I, as a citizen, want to have."
Sure, but here's the question you need to ask yourself, given that, are you willing to completely and utterly disregard it when choosing a political candidate to back, given that you have absolutely no idea whether Trump shares the exact same trait due to a lack of similar leaks on his side of the spectrum?
Therein lies the problem, if you're only receiving one side of facts, and are deciding based on only a half-truth, then you're no better off than if someone had just outright lied to you. You're still exactly as likely to make an incorrect choice when you have half the information, as when you have all the information - Wikileaks is influencing the election with half-truths.
The English legal system originally changed it's court vow from "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth" to "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" precisely because after a few shoddy court cases where the guilty went free it was realised that half-truths can be as misleading as outright lies.
So sure, transparency is great, but unless you're willing to completely disregard everything from transparency leaks that only tell half the story when forming an actual opinion and making a decision then there's a good chance you're actually making yourself more stupid by making decisions based upon those half-truths because you're letting them influence you into making decisions that do not benefit either your personal self-interest, or any hint of altruism you may have. For something like an election there is simply absolutely no benefit in making a decision based on transparency of one candidate over another with no transparency, and that works both ways - you may now believe you know, you have evidence that Hillary is corrupt, but what you don't know is whether Donald is even more corrupt, and that is a problem - you still have the exact same 50-50 chance of guessing which one is more corrupt that you had before you had any of that leaked information.
Slashdot Mirror
That's entirely false. If anything you said is true then someone should probably let India know, because they're on the verge of dropping out of the project altogether because of the abject failure of Russia to manage the project reasonably.
Who are these reliable sources you talk about? I'd be intrigued to know what source is more reliable than the Kremlin itself.
I hear you, but I think that's why it's problematic to class that as liberalism, by it's very definition that simply is not liberalism.
It concerns me greatly that liberalism has been tarred with that brush when by definition that type of politics cannot be liberalism. It's a form of authoritarianism, and we saw it here too in the UK under Gordon Brown's abysmal two years as unelected Prime Minister.
Those your are referring to as intellectuals, undoubtedly aren't. I'd consider very few politicians intellectuals, but many great people such as David Attenborough are both intellectual and liberal - that's the classic type of liberal intellectualism we need a hell of a lot more of, don't assume because a certain set of people are painting themselves with a specific brush that they have earned it or that it's a correct description of them - I'm well aware there are people who are a serious problem on both sides of the political divide in both the US and UK, but there are a handful of genuinely good people trying to do the right thing, sadly Trump and his inner circle not only contains none of those people, but actively shows disdain, distaste, and disrespect for them - there's the incompetent illiberal "liberals" that you're referring to, and then there's people who are just out and out illiberal. I fully get why you would confuse the two, as most of the time, they do indeed look exactly the same.
Incredibly well it would seem:
https://ukdefencejournal.org.u...
The only dissenting voice seems to be some guy from a site called Airwars whose evidence to the contrary is merely "I don't believe them because past wars have had more casualties!". That theory is nonsense of course, because that's the whole point - this isn't a past war, this is a war learning from the mistakes both in terms of missile technology and rules of engagement of past wars. Given the low destructive nature of Brimstone, which is why it's great at avoiding collateral damage in the first place, it should be trivial to find remnants of Brimstone missiles at the site of civilian casualties, but even ISIS with their love of propaganda seem to have been entirely unable to do so.
Of course, you might argue that no missile would leave remnants, but we know that's bullshit because every other time this happens it's been trivial to find remnants, this is from a US predator airstrike with a hellfire for example (which has a larger warhead than Brimstone so would be expected to leave even less evidence behind) in Yemen:
https://www.hrw.org/sites/defa...
I'm not saying I specifically believe the MOD's claim of no casualties, but given the lack of evidence of any casualties caused by RAF Brimstone strikes it seems pretty clear that the number is incredibly low, and yes Mr Airwars, unprecedented in the history of warfare - that's how progress works, things improve.
"Meanwhile the russians are gradually updating their Mig29s and Sukolevs with junkyard scraps or something and can actually fly. Like, they have pilots trained on them that can strap in and take off in 3.5 Minutes flat."
Nonense, many of Russia's projects are in complete disarray too. They created a high tech electronic controlled tank that crashes more than Windows ME, and a 5th gen fighter jet that spontaneously explodes and has become such a fuckup that Russia has reduced it's order to a mere 12 aircraft, a number of which will be kept for spares and training meaning at best 3 - 9 available for active duty, 10 years after the F-22 entered service (and was still more effective).
I agree that military procurement is a complete and utter shambles, but it's not just the West getting it wrong. The problem is rarely what gets produced (you mention the F-15 and F-16 - there's a reason both these aircraft have reached their E variants, you can't compare the stability of an A variant aircraft against an E variant aircraft, the A-10 however is a masterpiece in it's role I'll admit.). The problem is entirely about corruption, but it's not even just the military - people scoff at the $122million price tag of an F-22, but here in the UK we're spending $100billion on a fucking train line and a handful of trains), the fact is public sector is entirely hopeless at producing sensible contracts with private sector - public sector ALWAYS gets ripped off, because unlike with private sector there's fuck all accountability when it comes to overspending - the Department of Defence doesn't go bankrupt like a company would if it blew way over it's budget (this is FWIW the same problem with bailing out the banks, when you remove the risk of failure, you also remove the accountability and incentive to do a good job that failure provide).
"Clearly the reason recent conflicts have required coalitions is so each government's incompetence can be cancelled out."
I know you're (half) joking but there's some (half) truth to this. The reason it was such a problem when the UK first refused to join strikes in Syria, and such a big deal when we eventually did join is because of the UK's Brimstone missile, it provides a capability that the US just doesn't have - it's accuracy against moving targets, and ability to cancel very last minute if there's a risk of civilian casualties is immensly important when striking inner city areas such as those ISIS hides in, but it also has millimetre wave and laser guidance options making it incredibly flexible in terms of hitting the target. There was some buzz about buying Brimstone in the US, but instead they chose to reinvent the wheel and just try and upgrade the hellfire themselves to do the exact same thing - launch from fast jets, with dual mode seekers, because military industrial complex money wasting.
As an aside the F-117 was cancelled in 2008, but there have been numerous videos of them flying since despite supposedly being mothballed, including earlier this year - one theory is that it's because the F-22 doesn't do laser guidance and so can't hit moving targets on the ground, therefore the F-117 remains the USAF's only option for doing this, hence why they're keeping them airworthy and flying and the crews trained and active just in case. The F-35 can do this (which is why when people say the F-35 can't dogfight they're missing the point, it's not meant to, it's a strike fighter, dog fighting is what the F-22 is for, which is why the F-22 can't hit moving ground targets - there's no jack of all trades aircraft that can do everything perfectly).
Regarding the carriers, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm fast jet pilots were transitioned to the RAF, but are seconded to fly with countries like France and the US to practice carrier efforts - there are currently RAF (former fleet air arm) pilots flying French Rafales with the French Navy and American F/A-18s and Harriers with the US Navy and Marines.
France does a decent job of maintaining full spectrum capabilities making it much more independent than the UK and US but the cost is that it means some of those capabilities are now incredibly dated - it's hard for one single country to afford everything. The US can afford to do it, but due to overly inflated project costs through corruption and backhanders it just runs out of money even though it shouldn't.
It's not just the West though - Russia's joint project with India, the PAK-FA, their 5th generation attempt at creating a competitor for the F-22 is also in the shit, with Russia now dropping it's order of them to a mere 12 aircraft so probably only ever between 3 and 9 combat ready at best (you don't have all your aircraft flying at once, some are always used as reserves, some will be trainers etc.). China's having a good go but whilst many of it's designs are based on stolen US designs (there's a reason some of it's aircraft have striking similarities, they don't appear to have ever managed to steal a comprehensive design, so what you get is something where half of the plane looks like a cutting edge Western equivalent design, and the rest of it looks straight out of the 60s. See this image for example highlighting the front of the aircraft having a similar profile to the F-35, but the engines demonstrating the stealth profile of a gigantic flying turd (and likely the avionics of a Commodore 64).
So you're actually not far wrong, countries genuinely are working together to fill gaps, and it genuinely is because of terrible decision making based on corrupt procurement processes - there's really no question that the Brimstone was far and away the most sensible purchase option for the US, it would've saved millions and does everything they want. Similarly selling the Royal Navy's entire 72 Harrier fleet to the US for less than the price of 2 F-35s only to then pay the US to let our pilots keep
The UK's data protection act is based on Europe's European Data Protection Directive anyway, it's the UK's implementation of it, so you can be fairly well rest assured that the rest of the EU will reach the same conclusion. The DPA doesn't really go much over and above the DPD.
"Unlike the UK, Canada has a very recent Constitution and it has specific rights of privacy."
The UK has rights of privacy via both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights implemented as the Human Rights Act.
We just don't do such things in constitutions, because it's not clear they have ever actually worked as originally intended - the US constitution gives gun rights, but depending where you are in the US there are restrictions, most people agree with the advent of nuclear weapons that they shouldn't be covered, so there is some overarching limitation on the legislation - net result, what was written a few hundred years ago now needs to be changed, better to recognise that and do it properly than to have some fixed unchanging thing that ultimately just gets surrounded by fudged solutions or just outright ignored by government when it stops making sense. Otherwise you just end up by people picking and choosing when people should and shouldn't listen to the constitution to suit their current political bias and you just end up with an entirely needless legal quagmire and a whole lot of shouting. When you just have a clear set of adaptable laws and don't pretend one group of people's words are perfect and indefinitely immaculate through time it's pretty clear what the status quo is and what needs to change if anything does at any point. If we wanted that we'd probably just stick to wot the the bible sez or something equally daft.
Which if true, in the (and in fact, I believe any European country) would in itself be illegal.
In the UK It's illegal for an organisationto hold data on you without your consent unless it falls into a handful of exemptions - law enforcement, credit rating and so forth. Facebook falls into none of these exemptions, therefore shadow profiles on anyone who has not signed up and agreed to the T&Cs would be entirely illegal. There's no legal mechanism for Facebook to retrieve, acquire, or store that unconsented data.
As much as you may wish to hope you can stop it the trajectory is towards liberalism, this is why even with the odd hiccup such as Brexit and possibly a Trump victory they're still ultimately only blips on the overall timeline of history. Trump and Farage alike are entirely dependent on people who will be dead in 10 - 20 years to even remotely achieve the numbers they need to reach the goals they want. Beyond that they and their mindsets are well and truly done.
Liberalism goes hand in hand with intellectualism, as people become better educated on average, more knowledgeable on average, they want more freedom, more rights. They're never going to vote for someone who wants to create interment camps, who calls for political opponents to be assassinated, who hates people over arbitrary and meaningless traits such as sex, sexuality, skin colour and so on. The only way you can stop this tide of change is by making people more stupid, and guess what happens when you do that? you lose the global geopolitical race to someone who hasn't made their population more stupid, and who is progressive, does respect intellect, and in turn pushes human advancement forward with or without you, at which point you adapt and follow or face poverty and irrelevance.
Human advancement is a basic instinct that no amount of conservatism can put a stop to. Japan and Germany didn't lose World War II because of any particular military strategy, because of bad luck, and so forth, but because when you don't respect intellectuals, those that do get things like the atom bomb instead, and then they win.
When you understand this, you'll understand why liberalism is such a powerful and effective force that you should probably embrace, rather than continue to fight a war you will never win, as much as a handful of ultimately irrelevant short term victories many excite you.
This is why liberals have nothing to worry about. They're not losing, and human progress ensures that will always be the case - it's been the overarching trajectory throughout the entirety of human history.
You realise to any rational human being who isn't tangled up in the US elections such as myself, you sound like a raving paranoid crackpot who is in severe need of a psychiatrist right?
OMGS THEY TLAK IN CODE, SHE SAID SHE'S GOING TO DINNER WITH HIM TONIGHT, IT MUST MEAN SHE KILLED HIS MUM AND HATES AMERICA!!!!111111
"As the value of our currency continues to decline and we push for cheaper labour and lower pay, we will start to become very competitive with India for highly skilled developers."
They're different markets, there's still a substantial cost difference between India and the UK, the UK will become more cost competitive sure, but India will still always be cheaper.
But it ultimately doesn't matter, as India doesn't produce highly skilled developers anyway, it has no universities in the top 250 global universities and only 5 in the top 500 global universities. You go to India to pay cheap and get cheap, you don't go to India to get highly skilled developers.
There are cheaper nations where you can get skill for less, typically the Eastern European nations like Lithuania and Estonia where highly skilled developers are available at low salaries, having often trained in some of Europe's top universities.
Don't mistake India as a place to secure highly skilled tech talent, that's the exact opposite of what it's for when it comes to outsourcing - it's entirely about when you need quantity, not quality. That isn't to say there aren't some star talents of the industry coming from India, but they all leave India and end up in countries like the US anyway- only the low skilled get left behind.
On the Xbox One you can already Skype chat in the background and completely bypass game and party chat, the latter of which runs in isolation to games and does nothing to prevent covert information sharing anyway. Only game chat enforces limitations.
That was always the theory but Shadowrun supported Xbox 360 / PC cross-play and on the 360 I never found myself particularly disadvantaged against PC players, if there was a gulf it certainly never showed up in the end of game scoreboards - you'd have expected PC players to, on average, position higher than Xbox gamers, but it never really happened. The spread was always pretty even.
The biggest problem as I see it for cross-play in general is cheating - people on PS4 wouldn't be happy if for example the Xbox One got hacked and smothered in aimbots, or vice versa with the Xbox One and the PS4 getting hacked, or both consoles and the higher rate of PC hacks and cheats.
Unless you can guarantee an equivalent level of security across all systems cross-play is just going to result in players demanding segregation again because they wont want to play against cheats on another platform.
That's the most braindead thing I've probably ever seen posted on an IT security article on Slashdot.
The idea that changing OS can magically give you absolute security is an astoundingly dangerous myth to peddle.
Please, step away from the keyboard before you cause someone some kind of data or financial loss.
It doesn't, even if no other company made any profit, or if any made a loss then that loss doesn't in any way transfer to Apple's profits.
At best Apple can achieve 100% of smartphone profits for a period if everyone else makes a loss or breaks even, but even that isn't true. Regardless of whether Samsung et. al. have had a bad quarter, there are still a whole lot of players that make small profits - i.e. many of the Chinese firms, so the idea that Apple hit even 100% is complete drivel.
But in fact, it gets worse, because the summary even says Samsung gained 0.9% of the profits for the quarter, therefore that alone brings Apple's share down to at least 99.1%. Samsung can have failings and still make a profit in part because losses are usually tax deductible so are pulled off before the final figure for profit.
Profit is a well defined term, it's the amount of money you have left over after you've paid taxes, bills, costs, and so on and so forth. What your competitors gain in terms of profit has absolutely no reference to what you gain in terms of profit, they're separate figures for separate companies.
I suspect there's some kind of messed up clickbait logic behind the number that gives some kind of figure where Apple gets 104% of something, but whatever that something is it's not profit, nor any figure anyone having any kind of useful discussion ever uses.
"If we were both aliens and this was the first election on Earth that we've seen, that would be reasonable... but you know that this is routine work for politicians. Now you're the one being an idealist."
On the contrary, I'm being a realist. There's a broad gulf between the blame mongering people like to engage in and what politicians are really, actually like.
"If Clinton had a completely private, in-her-head position that "I want open borders but I'll do what the electorate wants" that would be fine, and we wouldn't even know about it. But when she's giving speeches and accepting large speaking fees for saying the exact opposite, I think it's very naive to give her the benefit of the doubt. The fact that we're talking about it shows that she doesn't have the discipline to keep her private stance private... what makes you think she will magically have the will power to keep her private stance from influencing policy if elected?"
There's a vast different between having a private stance and acting on it, it doesn't matter if she doesn't keep it private, it's really irrelevant, what matters is if she acts on it, and you have zero evidence that she would, you're merely speculating that she would for partisan reasons. That's not really any different to saying if elected Trump would anally fuck every 5 year old in the country till they bleed to death because he agreed that his own daughter is a piece of ass and so must be a sexual predator. Everyone can make shit up, but it's not a good basis on which to make any kind of worthwhile decision. Decisions should be based on facts, and there's literally zero evidence that Clinton's private position matters in the fucking slightest beyond what you're choosing to project merely because you've already made your mind up and are trying to self-justify.
"The danger with a person who governs by following polls is that polls are so easily manipulated, not to mention a number of decisions made in the upper echelons of government depend on information not available to the public, or even if the information is available the public may be ill equipped to process it and make a competent decision. You do have to, at some level, trust the instincts and personal views of the people you elect."
It's really got nothing to do with polls, most elements of public opinion sway far enough in one direction or another for things to be obvious, it's not rocket science to recognise that if push came to shove, most people wouldn't want a nuclear war for example. Cases where there is even public division is why you have representatives to try and thrash out a votable compromise, and where it's not left to the president alone, that's kind of the point of having representatives. If you think a president should act unilaterally on divisive issues then what you're asking for is a dictator, I don't see any evidence Hillary wants to be that, nor does the idea of completely open borders exist as an issue that a president could unilaterally act or achieve anything upon anyway. Even her own party wouldn't give sufficient backing to it, so it's folly to pretend it even matters, and she's smart enough to know that there's no point having a fight she wouldn't have a cats chance in hell of winning because such fights only weaken you and leave you a lame duck.
"Public opinion obviously goes into that, but no candidate is successful who says "all of my positions are subject to change, I don't have any firmly held beliefs, I'm just telling you what you want to hear, trust me." Calling someone a "flip flopper" is a real thing in political debates, for instance.. and it's not a compliment."
It's also not that simple either, people get elected on issues where they do have sufficient support for their views, Hillary's private view isn't one of those things on the books, precisely because she would never get elected on it, and hence will know that there's no point pursuing it, regardless of how much she may wish it to one day be possible.
Not gonna lie, I found a certain amount of amusement in the fact a story about a new Samsung phone was coming from a site called Hot Hardware too.
Oh Samsung, I know you want to move past this, but I think you have some work to do yet.
You're effectively arguing though that you'd prefer someone who sticks to their ideals, even if it goes against the will of the populace that elected them.
Personally I think Hillary's stance is far, far better - "I have this personal view, but the electorate wants this so I'll pursue that instead". She may well want open borders, but it's clear based on her public policy that she understands that that's not what the electorate wants - you can only call her deceptive if she gets into power and pursues her private viewpoint, rather than her public viewpoint. The alternative is someone who doesn't differentiate between the two, they state their viewpoint and stick to it regardless of whether it's right or wrong, regardless of whether people agree with it or not. This problem is present with Trump, consider his comments on the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS, I doubt many people who support him seriously want him to use them, but if he does, despite it being grossly against the will of the populace, is that somehow better than if he privately wants to use them, but knows the public don't support it so opts not to?
Having a personal opinion, but recognising that public opinion overrides it is exactly the sort of quality you should want in a politican in a democracy, not decry and claim is hypocritical, or corrupt, or somehow bad. It's those whose views are unwavering regardless of what the population they profess to represent thinks that you should worry about.
You're highlighting limitations on your own level of thinking there rather than demonstrating that she's somehow in the wrong.
There's nothing wrong with having an idealist mindset as a long term hope, but a realist mindset as a pragmatic set in stone goal.
For example, I've seen idealists say we should cut off all links to Saudi Arabia because of their treatment of women, with the view that doing so will punish them for not treating women well, an idealist would view having links with such a country when claiming to support womens rights as outright hypocritical, but a pragmatist would recognise that cutting off links may cause the regime to collapse and make things even worse for women, whilst noting that the Saudi regime is already opening up opportunities for women, such that the advisory council to the ruling body is now 50% female which is better than most Western parliaments.
It's possible therefore to say you support women's rights, but also support the existing Saudi regime without being hypocritical because the safety of pragmatism is often better than the massive risks of idealism.
So when someone like Hillary says her dream is a common market with open trade and open borders, that doesn't in any way mean she believes she can achieve that dream during her presidency, nor that hence she will take any actions towards that dream during her presidency. It's perfectly possible to dream of owning a Ferrari but not be a hypocrite by buying a Ford Focus because you realise your budget wont stretch that far.
I suspect that if you believe dreams and actions must always be the same thing, then you're an idealist, and are incapable of weighing up your ideals against pragmatism of reality. That's not a problem in itself, idealists are the people that come up with ideas of potential destinations, pragmatists are the ones that have to figure out whether we can actually get there - some people are capable of being both, but just because you can't separate the two doesn't mean it's valid to assume that everyone can't separate the two.
I speak from experience, I've had many ideas in my working life of where I'd like to see the companies I've worked for get to, but in reality market conditions, company politics and so forth means I've had to settle for something quite different than where I'd like to see the company be. She's not lying, she's just capable of separating her personal beliefs and hopes from her pragmatic actions of what the country wants, personally I think that's a good quality to have - far better than a straight idealist who breaks the country because they can't be pragmatic, FWIW that's precisely the problem we have in the UK at the moment with our only viable opposition, Jeremy Corbyn - the ideas he has are lovely (free shit for everyone), but there isn't a cats chance in hell of being able to pull them off without bankrupting the country so I'd rather take someone that has that as their ideal, but also has the pragmatism to understand that it's not something you can just do without hitting the brick wall of reality face first at 100mph.
But that was exactly my point - that Greece's economy had not reached an equivalent maturity of France and Germany's, and they rushed through their entrance to the euro regardless of them not being ready. Had they instead waited and said, "You're not ready yet", then Greece would've had an incentive to make it's economy actually ready and join at a later date when it had undergone the necessary changes, hence precisely why it was a rushed state of affairs. They turned a blind eye to Greece's known problems because they just wanted to rush ahead with things.
Whilst I understand the logic behind your pedantry, I actually disagree with you. Why?
Because Microsoft never changes prices in the other direction on things like this when following the UK pound - when it was $2 USD to the pound back in about 2007 we sure as hell didn't get an 80% discount on stuff compared to where we are priced now.
So I actually think it is a price increase, precisely because Microsoft has never followed the pound - following the pound implies that these price changes will fluctuate up and down, but I'd wager this price increase isn't reversed when the pounds fortunes improve.
I think this price increase is absolutely justified given what we have done to our country and currency, however I also think cuts are justified when the pound is strong, and yet we never get them. In fact, only a couple of years ago the pound was back up to 1.70 - 1.80 USD and yet we never saw a price cut then.
The whole point in the EU was to share wealth and bring all countries up to the same level so that the continent could move forward together.
It was a noble and sane idea, the problem is it's been rushed, which is why the euro has struggled, because as you say they pushed ahead with it long before that cross-continental equalisation of wealth and productivity had occurred.
So you're somewhat right and somewhat wrong, there was nothing wrong with the idea per-se, just the way it was implemented. I think some naively hoped that pushing it through would somehow speed up the process, but like many processes in economics and nature alike, you just can't rush these things. People are impatient, and that's where it all went horribly wrong.
Even some of the most hard-right Brexiteers such as Daniel Hannan who has a massively long history of xenophobia believe that immigration shouldn't see greater control.
You're right, it really is only the genuinely far right fringes that are pushing that idea such as Jacob Rees Mogg and Nigel Farage. Even the hard-right aren't keen on the idea because they know we're so economically dependent on it.
Honestly, I suspect Farage admitting the whole NHS £350million was a lie within 2 hours of winning the referendum would've been enough to make people realise what they've done was stupid - the real peak realisation will be next summer when all the chavs realise they can no longer afford to go to Benidorm, but hey-ho, May seems intent on making a point now. I can't tell if she's grossly inept or if she's calling the far-right Brexiteers bluffs by showing them what happens when they get their way. Either way it's a dangerous game.
All trade deals that had any impact on British sovereignty had to be agreed by Britain anyway - see the current CETA debacle as an example, where one tiny little irrelevant region in Europe can crush an entire treaty.
So your argument is incorrect, there's no difference in the decrease in sovereignty, Britain was always part of negotiations and acceptance anyway, the difference now is we're negotiating from a much weaker starting point - we only have 65million people instead of 580million people. That necessarily means we're going to have to accept more compromise in favour of the larger parties (i.e. US, China, etc.) than we did before because we need the deals more than they do.
The idea Britain can bully other countries into trade deals that suit us is a naive and ignorant hangover of British imperialism where there's a view that we somehow still control half the world and can somehow still bully other countries to our whim. We can't.
"I don't care if the information about Hillary's lies are part of some Russian plot or not. If the truth is "destabilizing" well then fuck stability. Hillary admitting to having "public" and "private" positions is a piece of information that I, as a citizen, want to have."
Sure, but here's the question you need to ask yourself, given that, are you willing to completely and utterly disregard it when choosing a political candidate to back, given that you have absolutely no idea whether Trump shares the exact same trait due to a lack of similar leaks on his side of the spectrum?
Therein lies the problem, if you're only receiving one side of facts, and are deciding based on only a half-truth, then you're no better off than if someone had just outright lied to you. You're still exactly as likely to make an incorrect choice when you have half the information, as when you have all the information - Wikileaks is influencing the election with half-truths.
The English legal system originally changed it's court vow from "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth" to "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" precisely because after a few shoddy court cases where the guilty went free it was realised that half-truths can be as misleading as outright lies.
So sure, transparency is great, but unless you're willing to completely disregard everything from transparency leaks that only tell half the story when forming an actual opinion and making a decision then there's a good chance you're actually making yourself more stupid by making decisions based upon those half-truths because you're letting them influence you into making decisions that do not benefit either your personal self-interest, or any hint of altruism you may have. For something like an election there is simply absolutely no benefit in making a decision based on transparency of one candidate over another with no transparency, and that works both ways - you may now believe you know, you have evidence that Hillary is corrupt, but what you don't know is whether Donald is even more corrupt, and that is a problem - you still have the exact same 50-50 chance of guessing which one is more corrupt that you had before you had any of that leaked information.