Yes it does, due to the nature of the party system coupled with FPTP the UK system is not democratic.
For example, the current government has 100% of power, but was only elected by 37% of the populace, that means that 63% of the country have no power representation in the UK at all. Due to FPTP their vote is directly equivalent to 63% of the populace simply being denied a vote at all. 37% is quite high, we've seen it go as low as about 32% - that is, a party having 100% of power against the will of 68% of the population.
That's not democracy. Democracy requires that everyone have a meaningful (no matter how small in impact) vote, but that doesn't happen in the UK, a majority of the population have no effective vote. The UK's system is best described as elected dictatorship because a minority dictate to a majority, but are elected through an undemocratic system.
I saw a bit about that, but as someone else pointed out, and as Google pointed out to them in the article I read, Google does already shoulder the burden and has done for some time with tools and staff supporting the whole business of takedowns on YouTube.
I'd ask a question though as to why artists are special, every other industry has to pay for their own policing, whether it's a guy with a convenience store paying for CCTV to prevent shoplifting, a cinema or train station paying for people to check tickets on entry, or an independent software developer issuing his own takedown notices.
Everyone else has to take this on as a cost of doing business, why should artists be treated as special cases?
Yes, I'm unable to find much information on what these artists actually want other than they're not happy with the fact that the DMCA protects hosts from the actions of their users. This implies that they actually just want to make the DMCA far, far worse.
The problem they're talking about where artists get fucked by labels is a problem with copyright and is trivially solved by making copyright non-transferable from the author. That way the music industry can still offer them contracts and help them produce and sell, but can never take ownership of their creation and fuck off and make all the profits on it without paying the artist a penny.
As such you'll have to colour me sceptical that the artists aren't just doing this on behalf of the music industry, because what they're suggesting will destroy the technology industry to the benefit of not the artists, but the very companies they're complaining about.
As such I will treat this list of artists as the list of artists I will not pay a penny to as what they're suggesting is anti-progress, anti-consumer, anti-technology, and pro-big music industry.
It's probably worth noting that G2A shouldn't be treated as some kind of saint, the organisation is in itself as dodgy as they come. They engage in all sorts of illegal practices such as advertising instant delivery on purchase of game keys and then demanding you hand over your phone number, or e-mail them a scan of your passport inevitably resulting in deliver of your key being far from instant.
Furthermore, in the past they've been outed as one of the biggest abusers of paid reviews to give their company a massively inflated rating. I believe they have their roots in WoW/other MMO gold farming using Chinese sweatshops to farm gold.
It wouldn't surprise me therefore if it was the case that G2A is helping facilitate the criminals actions whilst making life difficult for tinybuild, G2A are after all very clearly and openly willing to break the law to make money in other cases, so why not in this case?
G2A is one of those companies that kind of works for consumers in practice whilst nothing is going wrong, but is ultimately just not a good idea and should probably be shut down, because given the intrusiveness of data it collects on people (again, passport information) coupled with it's generally shady practices and willingness to work with criminals it's pretty much inevitable that it's not going to end well. It strikes me as the sort of company that's a mass consumer credit card fraud tragedy or similar just waiting to happen and given that it's based in China there will be zero accountability for the impact on it's largely Western customer base when it does.
Wonderful, but none of those things actually give her any real practical power, hence, she's a figurehead. Just like here in the UK where she's also our head of state, but also has not the slightest amount of political power whatsoever. Sure in theory she could try to disband the government etc., but everyone would ignore her and carry on as usual. To have actual power a leader needs people who would follow them, the monarch does not have that precisely because she's understood as purely ceremonial in role, which is precisely why she'd never try it in the first place - no point giving orders that would be ignored and remove you and your family from your palace permanently.
Having your face on currency, having an oath sweared to you, doesn't actually give you any kind of power whatsoever. The Governor Generals are themselves picked by the prime minister not the Queen. Of course, you should know this, it's your fucking country.
She's also not imposed on you as part of your Commonwealth membership, you have her because you choose to continue to have her regardless of the Commonwealth.
If you don't like having her as a symbolic figurehead then get rid of her, she can't stop you, again, because she has no actual power, but don't pretend she's there for any reason other than the fact you like having a symbolic figurehead.
I see illiteracy is still strong in you Alaskans, no wonder you ended up with someone as thick as you are as governor by way of Palin if you can't even read basic English. Given that it's pretty understandable that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about as you'd have to be able to read to understand why you're wrong. I did think it was odd you didn't just Google before posting your original wholly incorrect post and making a fool of yourself (and continuing to do so ever since), but now I know you're illiterate it all makes sense.
Really? you're still trying to deny it in the face of 3 copies of your direct quote.
You can keep pretending I ever denied SOME Commonwealth countries have the Queen as a monarch, but you'll still be wrong, because I never did. You can keep pretending that you didn't claim the Commonwealth imposes a leader on a nation, but you'll still be wrong, because you did.
Just to be certain you didn't somehow fail to read the last post, let's just quote you again:
"but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government. Also, if you wish to prove me wrong, name a single country in the Commoneealth that doesn't have the Queen mentioned or depicted on their passport."
Let's just quote me:
"It's an organisation comprising 53 states, only 14 of these states choose to have the Queen as their ceremonial head of state"
So yes, I love the fact you're agreeing with me now, it's wonderful, I'm just not sure why you have to pretend otherwise, apart from the obvious fact you think you're an internet big man who can make up for his real world insecurities by being right on the internet somehow - I'll give you a hint, you real can't. Now you've seen these quotes it's clear you've accepted you were wrong and I was right, but what's driving you to still not be able to say it? You really just can't stop yourself digging that hole ever deeper?
Serious question, how many times do you think you can ignore your own claim before your attempt to twist reality becomes reality? I mean you obviously believe that if you deny reality long enough that you can form a new reality, I'm just wondering how long you think that takes?
Oh god, so now you think you can make me wrong by simply changing the argument and pretending you're engaging in a debate that never actually happened and by claiming I said things I never said?
Let's just recap here with a direct copy and paste quote of what you said:
"The Queen is the sole head of the nation. It's not in "ceremony" but in law. Sure, if she ever used that power, the laws would be changed, but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government. Also, if you wish to prove me wrong, name a single country in the Commoneealth that doesn't have the Queen mentioned or depicted on their passport."
Let's just quote that bit again:
"but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government"
You know you can just post "Sorry Xest, it looks like you're right" yeah? You don't have to flap around like a dying fish on a deck of a fishing boat, you can just give up and accept that you posted about something you had no clue about and made a fool of yourself. I'm sure you think that trying to reframe the argument by slowly agreeing with me that you'll somehow be able to get out of this hole you've dug yourself, first by dropping the idea that all Commonwealth countries have the Queen as head of state, and secondly now by dropping the idea that the Commonwealth has any bearing on what head of state a country has. In reality though all you're doing is slowly agreeing that you were wrong by moving to agreement with my post without actually having the balls or humility to grow up and formally actually admit it. You've reached a level of desperation where you're now basically taking my argument against your incorrect post and trying to claim it as your own, that's really kind of special.
Again, your argument, for the third time, because you know, I just want to make certain you are aware of the idiocy you posted before you try and creep out of it even further:
"but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government"
You got wrecked and you've failed so hard as a human being in the face of it.
I've met many people on the internet, especially Slashdot, who can't accept when they're wrong, but you really are a special case.
Never before have I encountered someone so completely and utterly wrong, whom issued a challenge, which I kindly obliged, hence even proving you wrong on your own terms, and yet who still so desperately tries to pretend that he's right.
You really are one very special case in believing that you are somehow right, and it's not that I don't recognise the fact that you're now trying to reframe the argument in that you're declaring you're right whilst now trying to back away from your original claim and focus only on nations who choose to have the Queen as head of state, but that even that is still completely wrong for the aformentioned reason that the Commonwealth simply does not define head of state, that happens separately from the Commonwealth, again, why so many Commonwealth countries have Queen as head of state.
Now, I'm not going to argue with you any further because you're obviously a very broken, defective, failure of a human being when even in the face of being shown to be so completely and utterly wrong about something you enter some kind of weird reality denial mode. I am however going to give you one piece of advice, that even if when you are so completely wrong about something, you desperately cling on in the hope you can somehow pretend you're right, even though that will never happen to any rational observer, that you are making yourself stupid. You aren't accidentally stupid, because you had a poor upbringing, or a learning difficulty or some other thing - you're wilfully stupid because you favour trying to desperate salvage your pride from an unsalvageable position on the internet over gaining a bit of humility and simply admitting that you did not realise something was the case.
Or, you could keep being wrong, and we could keep laughing at your wilful stupidity and hopeless attempts at trying to salvage your shattered argument.
"Sounds to me like you need to be more unsure of a lot of things."
What, so I can end up ignorant? No thanks, facts are facts, I'd rather stick to knowing them.
"It's worth noting as nominal GDP the US has higher productivity per hour than every example you gave but Norway. That plus the US's greater working hours led to a considerable GDP per capita advantage over everyone but Norway. So you can say "we know", but the US is demonstrating a considerable economic advantage due to its greater working hours per employee."
You are making the fundamental mistake that correlation equals causation, and you show a deep lack of knowledge about how confounding factors can distort things. As such, you're making claims that simply aren't true, and you're ignoring cases whereby it remains not true, Britain also works much longer hours than Germany but is less productive. The US is showing no greater productivity due to working hours, it's GDP per person is high for reasons such as having a mass of raw resources (it's the biggest oil producer in the world again which is why it's embarassing that Norway is more productive on GDP per person and far fewer hours) through to the fact that it's in massive debt and has hence frontloaded it's GDP using massive debt based investment - that has to be paid off at some point.
"Workers don't have to be "consistently efficient". They just need to be more productive than the cost of hiring more workers at fewer hours per worker. We need to keep in mind that there are significant fixed costs per worker. Further, for a lot of jobs productivity doesn't go down that fast for lots of hours worked."
No, they need to be producing more output than the cost of having them as an employee, and that's simply not the case.
"Yes, let's science up this discussion! At least with something relevant please."
Oh I see, you don't like science, because statistics is hard right? That would explain why you're incapable of understand this discussion.
"Funny, how when you were providing examples, a few cherry picked examples were good enough, but now that I'm playing the same game, we need science because of all this complexity that you had ignored before."
Again, you don't understand relevant sampling, cherry picking is where you take examples to make a point, sensible sampling is when you build a sensible sample where confounding factors are reduced or mitigated. This is why we use science, because it matters.
"So why is Germany less efficient than the US despite working so much fewer hours?"
In large part because it's still working to boost the East to modern economic standards post reunification. You've still not addressed why Britain is less efficient due to massive productivity with more hours worked if greater working hours increases productivity, and why companies inside Britain with less working hours consistently show better productivity than those with more. On life expectancy alone the US is losing the equivalent of 17 days a year of working days compared to a country like Germany, so giving even 10 days to people which would likely contribute to a noticable improvement in life expectancy would problem allow you to break even.
"But not in directions that are rational."
Yes, that's an understandable comment from someone who has a problem with science and can't accept that modern research has proved them wrong. Do you think the Earth is flat and 6,000 years old as well?
But it's clear you're not going to let this go, you're clearly anti-science, don't understand statistics, refuse to accept peer reviewed academic research, can't accept the evidence but you're determined to pretend that you're getting some benefit from throwing away days of your life away for nothing so yeah, I'll leave you to keep pretending whilst I enjoy having an actual life and not seeing any reduction in quality of life as a result - even with your higher headline GDP you end up blowing it on things like your military, your broken penal system, and the inefficiency of your healthcare system anyway, so it's not like you even get to spend what you've got anyway regardless of what productivity improvements you falsely think you have.
"My view is that the attitude which just decides that forcing another month of vacation on employers won't cause problems is the same sort of attitude which has resulted in vastly worse productivity per hour worked for Greece than for Germany. While Germany's ideas about the value of vacation may be based on fantasy, they do get a lot of other things right economically."
I'm not sure you really have the slightest understanding what the problems were in Greece. Greece's GDP was effectively just completely and utterly faked, they were borrowing and buying things they couldn't afford, and inevitably when it no longer remained tenable to keep cooking the books it all came tumbling down in a shit storm. Trying to compare anything to a broken economy like that is entirely meaningless, as Greece is so full of confounding factors that you just can't take anything meaningful away from measuring it.
We already know that offering additional vacation wont result in reduced productivity, because once again, we have more than enough real actual examples, so you're flogging a dead horse here in trying to pretend otherwise.
"It probably doesn't increase productivity per hour worked (there's a trade off between reduced efficiency of many jobs at long hours per week versus synergy with a more active economy). But it does increase total output up to some point (which is probably in excess of 60 hours for most non intellectual jobs)."
And herein I suspect is the crux of the problem, you seem to think productivity is equal to output, it's not, productivity is a question of how much output you can get relative to the amount of effort put in. Productivity and output are two different things that are only partially related. Your view that more hours worked equates to increased output is based on the outdated and long discredited idea that humans remain consistently efficient regardless of how tired they are.
You're working from the rather old fashioned idea that humans will consistently keep producing output and that in itself is the only factor involved, such that even if you accept that that output declines as a person gets more tired, they're still producing output, and hence still more productive than someone who doesn't put in the extra hours. That's an incredibly naive and incorrect viewpoint, because in reality there are costs to that too in that people become less engaged from being tired (and hence work less hard overall), people become more ill, the slow down in effort doesn't produce enough economic output to make up for the expenditure on equipment and machinery running and maintenance costs, and higher staff turn over results in more time spent trying to hire people which is dead time.
That's where economic activity is lost as you make people work increased hours, and where it can be gained by reducing hours, and that is evidence in many studies.
Science in general is something we keep learning more about as we get better methods at bringing in more variables, and it is through that that we can find things like this out, this is no different in this respect. So your simplistic world view is simply outdated, we now know there is more too it than simple output that must be balanced against the simplistic mindset of people at work = most stuff gets done.
That is precisely why Germany is more efficient than Britain, because people in Britain have hire levels of sickness, higher levels of absence, lower levels of happiness and engagement, all of which can be reduced by working lower hours (this is something that has been shown within Britain itself in comparisons between companies that give more leave, hence eliminating the confounding factors of different nations economic statuses).
The discussion has moved on from your very Victorian understanding of productivity.
You still have not the slightest clue what the commonwealth is or how it works.
It's an organisation comprising 53 states, only 14 of these states choose to have the Queen as their ceremonial head of state, but few of them grant her any actual political power, and of those that do the powers are so pointless as to be nothing more than a nod to her as a sign of respect. You seem to be under the assumption that a role of ceremonial head of state automatically imbues actual legal political power, but it simply does not.
Pakistan is a member of the Commonwealth, but it does not recognise the Queen as head of state, nor does it reference her in their passports. Some Commonwealth members like Rwanda were never even under British rule and hence never even had a link to the Queen as head of state. It's trivial therefore for me to name a member of the Commonwealth that has neither the Queen as ceremonial head of state, nor has her on their passport, in fact, such nations comprise about 40 or so out of 53 of the nations in the Commonwealth, that is, the vast majority of them. Why would you even make such a challenge to me that I could trivial oblige you and embarrass you on, surely no one is that stupid? Are you just trolling?
Also, "The Commonwealth" is NOT short for "The British Commonwealth", that name was dropped in 1949 precisely to reflect the fact that it was no longer and organisation related to British rule, but instead an organisation for mutual cooperation between states as equals.
You may want to consider spending at least 30 seconds to get familiar with a topic before making such a laughing stock of yourself in future. There is literally no link between the Queen as ceremonial head of the commonwealth and power over sovereignty of member states. The link between those few nations in the commonwealth that do retain the Queen as ceremonial head of state do so outside of and regardless of the commonwealth.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, you seem to have largely just summed up the exact point I made in my last post to you other than adding some blurb about the false suggestion that atheism somehow requires proof, and I'm not really sure what the relevance of that is, it seems to be going off on a tangent somewhat.
"Agnosticism is a statement that something (the existence of a god or gods) cannot be known. It says nothing, however, about one believes."
Except that is in itself a belief.
Say for one moment that a theist has actually seen god, and that their god is actually real, it would imply that existence is in fact knowable, and that the agnostic merely believes that it's unknowable. Agnosticism as a statement as you describe is in itself something that simply cannot be known with certainty, and hence must inherently be a belief.
Agnostic atheism and agnostic theism are merely midpoints of indecision where someone has committed fully to neither view. A true agnostic still remains someone who is not willing to commit in either direction, that doesn't change.
I'm not sure you really understood the philosophical texts you apparently claim to have read.
"So where do dictionaries come in? A dictionary is an attempt to record the current state of the English language as used in a formal setting. Thus it serves as a reference to those who care to guide them in their use of form English. However, this distinction is not perfect because the over riding goal of a dictionary is to record usage."
But that's the point isn't it? People who author dictionaries have to decide what makes it into the official definition of the language, and when there is dispute it's where people go for the formally accepted definition. You're right that this can change, but it needs critical mass to change the meaning of a word, and then those who build dictionaries determine when that change of meaning has reached sufficient level to be altered officially.
So we refer to the dictionary for the current determined meaning not because we view the writers of dictionaries as the grand dictators of language, but as journalists who document the current accepted state of the language, and if someone is going against the current accepted state then they're still showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what the term means to objective speakers of the language.
Um, that's not even remotely what the Commonwealth is, it sounds more like you're describing crown depedencies which are typical self-governing (to varying degrees) sovereign British territory, this includes places like the Falkland Islands.
Commonwealth states are very much independent sovereign nations, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria and so on. They maintain links to the Queen in ceremony only, she and those around here hold absolutely no actual political power over these sovereign nations whatsoever.
Sorry yes, to clarify I absolutely agree with you and should probably have been more explicit, by biggest threat I meant biggest terrorist threat, I agree there are far bigger threats ranging from the rise of the far right in Europe, through to Putin's increased aggression, through to continued economic instability as well as all those you mention.
That was a very roundabout and long winded way of accepting that I'm right you know?
You could've just admitted it outright rather than waste all your time getting confused about what things like PPP are you know right?
Putting the final paragraph in to accept that I'm right, but refuse to accept it simultaneously was just... odd. You have still provided absolutely no evidence that increased working hours creates increased productivity, and there is still a large body of evidence and research into that specific thing showing the opposite.
"That does not make me an agnostic, for that implies the belief that there might be something. I don't have that belief, in fact I don't have any beliefs at all."
Yes you do, this very statement declares that you believe that there isn't something, else you would have no issue with the label of agnosticism implying that there might be something. You cannot both declare that you do not agree with the implication that there might be something, and pretend that you don't have a belief because disagreeing that their might be something is in itself a declaration that you believe that there isn't something.
I can only go on the data that comes out of your country, and it still seems to show widespread opposition to things like gay marriage, and widespread claims of persecution by people who are actually homosexual and so on and so forth. Maybe you're right, but the data doesn't show it because for whatever reason gay people in your country disagree with you completely.
You're still confusing yourself between atheism and agnosticism.
If you have no view either way then you're agnostic because you've determined the answer to be unknowable with current available evidence, if you have a belief there is no god, or a specific disbelief in god, then you're an atheist.
"Actually having a belief that there is no higher power, in a way validates the belief in a higher power, which is completely contrary to what atheism/non-belief is."
No, it really does no such thing. If what you mean is that theist zealots can say "But your system is just a belief too!" then you're right, the difference is that atheists have the pragmatism of being able to argue that if you're going to believe in one unproveable thing like a god, that you might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hence, it makes more sense to simply not believe in such nonsense, or alternatively, to go the agnostic route and at least argue that it's all unknowable so not worth having an opinion on.
There are ultimately just three answers to the question, is there a god? Yes, no, and maybe/I don't know. Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism are the words we use to describe these things, and once again, the dictionary makes this clear. If you don't like that, then don't argue with me, I don't define language, I just consume it as defined. Argue with the authors of every dictionary every written if you have a problem with it, that is unfortunately how the English language is defined, and if you want to create your own definitions you must start your own language.
No, atheism is what it says on the tin. Theism is a belief in a god or higher being, atheism is belief that there is not a god or higher being, again, the a means not, it is the inverse of theism.
What you're talking about is agnosticism. If you believe the question is open then you're an agnostic, not an atheist.
Lookup the definitions for theist, atheist, and agnostic if you want to confirm this for yourself.
I'm fascinated by how much of this I see in the UK's referendum debate - there are an awful lot of immigrants declaring they want out to stop immigration.
Interestingly there are groups that want out to change immigration, for example, Pritti Patel a Conservative MP for the Brexit campaign wants out so that rather than having large numbers of European migrants, we can instead increase the number of Bangladeshi migrants acting as curry workers (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/minister-priti-patel-quit-eu-to-save-our-curry-houses-a3251071.html). They had an interview with a Malaysian student (who can vote, because she's a commonwealth citizen resident in the UK) who said she will vote out because she wants less Polish immigrants and wants it to be easier for her and other Commonwealth people from countries like Nigeria to immigrate instead.
Personally I'm not the anti-immigration type, it's not affected me negatively and just like every politician that comes into power I realise it creates a net economic good for the countries (something that contrary to the rhetoric has been shown in a number of studies such as that from Oxford's migration observatory, and from the ICL) but I never cease to be amazed at the complete selfish shit fight going on amongst those who are immigrants, and as such I propose that if we're going to close our doors and remove people that the first people we kick out are the intolerant ones, because my country was always built on tolerance and if they don't like that they can fuck off home.
The people that are going to be most surprised though are British natives who are voting out for xenophobic anti-immigrant reasons and are going to get a sore surprise when they realise that it isn't going to decrease immigration for the reasons above. Instead of Poles who are reasonably educated, and have a similar culture and so integrate fairly well they're going to be faced with Pritti Patel's Bangladeshi migrants which will be fun, given that poor integration of nationals from poorer Islamic nations in the UK is the one thing that's created most our nation's anti-immigration sentiment in the first place.
I think it's sad that so many people come to countries like ours to take advantage of the wealth and then would deny it to others. I wonder how much Taco Cowboy will be parroting the closed borders policy when the next step is to also start deporting folks like him back home?
The whole immigration debate is flooded with nonsense and bile from top to bottom including from those who have most benefited from the status quo. The real problem is that sociopaths like him aren't the isolated cases. If we could figure out how to spot them a mile off and deny them entry in the first place then I suspect the whole immigration issue would be a whole lot less problematic, but maybe there's something to that? Maybe people who leave their country behind in the first place are more inclined to be selfish and be the type that just looks out for themselves, whilst those that stay behind and try and fix their country are inherently more selfless in general, hence why we end up with so much hypocritical dross like we're seeing here?
"Go up to a Christian in Rome and state you're gay. The worst that will happen is they'll tell you you're a sinner and you need to repent or go to hell. Now do the same in Mecca, and the Government will try you and sentence you to execution."
Go up to a Christian (Russian Orthodox) skinhead in Russia, or a Christian fundamentalist in Uganda and do the same and tell me it works out just as well. You can't compare a stable modern Western European country with a backwards violent state like Saudi Arabia. Christian nations like Russia have defacto state sanctioned with the backing of their churches the violent, sometimes murderous persecution of gays also.
Gay people are persecuted just as much in Christian countries as in muslim countries, just not in our Christian countries in the West because we're that much more progressive. Ex-soviet regions like Serbia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Russia itself, as well as many African nations and some Central and South American nations that are Christian treat gay people just as poorly.
Even in the UK if you get on the wrong side of a Catholic IRA member over the issue you're going to be in for a bad time. Mugabe in Zimbabwe is Catholic and has similarly called for the beheading of gay people. Nigeria is 40% Christian, but >95% of the populace support harsh punishment for homosexuality. Honduras is a Christian nation and over 100 people have been killed there for being homosexual in the last 10 years.
You're probably right that the death penalty for homosexuality is more common in statute in islamic nations, but then, the death penalty is also more common in statute in islamic nations in general so that shouldn't be too surprising. You can't pretend that overall though that homosexual people have any less a hard time under religions other than Islam as they do under Islam, it's simply not true. Christians are far and away just as guilty of engaging in violence against and murder of homosexuals (and in fact, so are Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs).
You could argue that ISIS are exceptional, as it would often seem they are, but even they sometimes come across as amateurs in their trade compared to the violence inflicted by groups like the drug cartels in Mexico, or numerous rebel groups in Africa that align with Christianity and have targetted homosexuals before. You can search for more information on this if you desire, but it's particularly disturbing, don't say I didn't warn you if you do, it'll certainly change your perspective on ISIS having a monopoly on excelling at violence.
Homophobia is a problem that goes beyond any one single religion, if you think otherwise then you have an incredibly naive and short sighted world view. Homosexuals are simply a convenient hate target for groups seeking a hate target to rally their supporters around, much as the Jews have been for thousands of years. It's a common target because homosexuals are a minority present in every community around the world. It doesn't matter what background the people professing the hate are from, it's entirely tangential to the issue - they just need a target to hate, and this particular target is present on each and every one of them's doorstep.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it does, due to the nature of the party system coupled with FPTP the UK system is not democratic.
For example, the current government has 100% of power, but was only elected by 37% of the populace, that means that 63% of the country have no power representation in the UK at all. Due to FPTP their vote is directly equivalent to 63% of the populace simply being denied a vote at all. 37% is quite high, we've seen it go as low as about 32% - that is, a party having 100% of power against the will of 68% of the population.
That's not democracy. Democracy requires that everyone have a meaningful (no matter how small in impact) vote, but that doesn't happen in the UK, a majority of the population have no effective vote. The UK's system is best described as elected dictatorship because a minority dictate to a majority, but are elected through an undemocratic system.
I saw a bit about that, but as someone else pointed out, and as Google pointed out to them in the article I read, Google does already shoulder the burden and has done for some time with tools and staff supporting the whole business of takedowns on YouTube.
I'd ask a question though as to why artists are special, every other industry has to pay for their own policing, whether it's a guy with a convenience store paying for CCTV to prevent shoplifting, a cinema or train station paying for people to check tickets on entry, or an independent software developer issuing his own takedown notices.
Everyone else has to take this on as a cost of doing business, why should artists be treated as special cases?
Yes, I'm unable to find much information on what these artists actually want other than they're not happy with the fact that the DMCA protects hosts from the actions of their users. This implies that they actually just want to make the DMCA far, far worse.
The problem they're talking about where artists get fucked by labels is a problem with copyright and is trivially solved by making copyright non-transferable from the author. That way the music industry can still offer them contracts and help them produce and sell, but can never take ownership of their creation and fuck off and make all the profits on it without paying the artist a penny.
As such you'll have to colour me sceptical that the artists aren't just doing this on behalf of the music industry, because what they're suggesting will destroy the technology industry to the benefit of not the artists, but the very companies they're complaining about.
As such I will treat this list of artists as the list of artists I will not pay a penny to as what they're suggesting is anti-progress, anti-consumer, anti-technology, and pro-big music industry.
It's probably worth noting that G2A shouldn't be treated as some kind of saint, the organisation is in itself as dodgy as they come. They engage in all sorts of illegal practices such as advertising instant delivery on purchase of game keys and then demanding you hand over your phone number, or e-mail them a scan of your passport inevitably resulting in deliver of your key being far from instant.
Furthermore, in the past they've been outed as one of the biggest abusers of paid reviews to give their company a massively inflated rating. I believe they have their roots in WoW/other MMO gold farming using Chinese sweatshops to farm gold.
It wouldn't surprise me therefore if it was the case that G2A is helping facilitate the criminals actions whilst making life difficult for tinybuild, G2A are after all very clearly and openly willing to break the law to make money in other cases, so why not in this case?
G2A is one of those companies that kind of works for consumers in practice whilst nothing is going wrong, but is ultimately just not a good idea and should probably be shut down, because given the intrusiveness of data it collects on people (again, passport information) coupled with it's generally shady practices and willingness to work with criminals it's pretty much inevitable that it's not going to end well. It strikes me as the sort of company that's a mass consumer credit card fraud tragedy or similar just waiting to happen and given that it's based in China there will be zero accountability for the impact on it's largely Western customer base when it does.
Wonderful, but none of those things actually give her any real practical power, hence, she's a figurehead. Just like here in the UK where she's also our head of state, but also has not the slightest amount of political power whatsoever. Sure in theory she could try to disband the government etc., but everyone would ignore her and carry on as usual. To have actual power a leader needs people who would follow them, the monarch does not have that precisely because she's understood as purely ceremonial in role, which is precisely why she'd never try it in the first place - no point giving orders that would be ignored and remove you and your family from your palace permanently.
Having your face on currency, having an oath sweared to you, doesn't actually give you any kind of power whatsoever. The Governor Generals are themselves picked by the prime minister not the Queen. Of course, you should know this, it's your fucking country.
She's also not imposed on you as part of your Commonwealth membership, you have her because you choose to continue to have her regardless of the Commonwealth.
If you don't like having her as a symbolic figurehead then get rid of her, she can't stop you, again, because she has no actual power, but don't pretend she's there for any reason other than the fact you like having a symbolic figurehead.
"You are the one denying your own quote."
I see illiteracy is still strong in you Alaskans, no wonder you ended up with someone as thick as you are as governor by way of Palin if you can't even read basic English. Given that it's pretty understandable that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about as you'd have to be able to read to understand why you're wrong. I did think it was odd you didn't just Google before posting your original wholly incorrect post and making a fool of yourself (and continuing to do so ever since), but now I know you're illiterate it all makes sense.
Really? you're still trying to deny it in the face of 3 copies of your direct quote.
You can keep pretending I ever denied SOME Commonwealth countries have the Queen as a monarch, but you'll still be wrong, because I never did. You can keep pretending that you didn't claim the Commonwealth imposes a leader on a nation, but you'll still be wrong, because you did.
Just to be certain you didn't somehow fail to read the last post, let's just quote you again:
"but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government. Also, if you wish to prove me wrong, name a single country in the Commoneealth that doesn't have the Queen mentioned or depicted on their passport."
Let's just quote me:
"It's an organisation comprising 53 states, only 14 of these states choose to have the Queen as their ceremonial head of state"
So yes, I love the fact you're agreeing with me now, it's wonderful, I'm just not sure why you have to pretend otherwise, apart from the obvious fact you think you're an internet big man who can make up for his real world insecurities by being right on the internet somehow - I'll give you a hint, you real can't. Now you've seen these quotes it's clear you've accepted you were wrong and I was right, but what's driving you to still not be able to say it? You really just can't stop yourself digging that hole ever deeper?
Serious question, how many times do you think you can ignore your own claim before your attempt to twist reality becomes reality? I mean you obviously believe that if you deny reality long enough that you can form a new reality, I'm just wondering how long you think that takes?
Oh god, so now you think you can make me wrong by simply changing the argument and pretending you're engaging in a debate that never actually happened and by claiming I said things I never said?
Let's just recap here with a direct copy and paste quote of what you said:
"The Queen is the sole head of the nation. It's not in "ceremony" but in law. Sure, if she ever used that power, the laws would be changed, but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government. Also, if you wish to prove me wrong, name a single country in the Commoneealth that doesn't have the Queen mentioned or depicted on their passport."
Let's just quote that bit again:
"but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government"
You know you can just post "Sorry Xest, it looks like you're right" yeah? You don't have to flap around like a dying fish on a deck of a fishing boat, you can just give up and accept that you posted about something you had no clue about and made a fool of yourself. I'm sure you think that trying to reframe the argument by slowly agreeing with me that you'll somehow be able to get out of this hole you've dug yourself, first by dropping the idea that all Commonwealth countries have the Queen as head of state, and secondly now by dropping the idea that the Commonwealth has any bearing on what head of state a country has. In reality though all you're doing is slowly agreeing that you were wrong by moving to agreement with my post without actually having the balls or humility to grow up and formally actually admit it. You've reached a level of desperation where you're now basically taking my argument against your incorrect post and trying to claim it as your own, that's really kind of special.
Again, your argument, for the third time, because you know, I just want to make certain you are aware of the idiocy you posted before you try and creep out of it even further:
"but all of the commonwealth countries formally have the Queen as their head of government"
You got wrecked and you've failed so hard as a human being in the face of it.
I've met many people on the internet, especially Slashdot, who can't accept when they're wrong, but you really are a special case.
Never before have I encountered someone so completely and utterly wrong, whom issued a challenge, which I kindly obliged, hence even proving you wrong on your own terms, and yet who still so desperately tries to pretend that he's right.
You really are one very special case in believing that you are somehow right, and it's not that I don't recognise the fact that you're now trying to reframe the argument in that you're declaring you're right whilst now trying to back away from your original claim and focus only on nations who choose to have the Queen as head of state, but that even that is still completely wrong for the aformentioned reason that the Commonwealth simply does not define head of state, that happens separately from the Commonwealth, again, why so many Commonwealth countries have Queen as head of state.
Now, I'm not going to argue with you any further because you're obviously a very broken, defective, failure of a human being when even in the face of being shown to be so completely and utterly wrong about something you enter some kind of weird reality denial mode. I am however going to give you one piece of advice, that even if when you are so completely wrong about something, you desperately cling on in the hope you can somehow pretend you're right, even though that will never happen to any rational observer, that you are making yourself stupid. You aren't accidentally stupid, because you had a poor upbringing, or a learning difficulty or some other thing - you're wilfully stupid because you favour trying to desperate salvage your pride from an unsalvageable position on the internet over gaining a bit of humility and simply admitting that you did not realise something was the case.
Or, you could keep being wrong, and we could keep laughing at your wilful stupidity and hopeless attempts at trying to salvage your shattered argument.
"Sounds to me like you need to be more unsure of a lot of things."
What, so I can end up ignorant? No thanks, facts are facts, I'd rather stick to knowing them.
"It's worth noting as nominal GDP the US has higher productivity per hour than every example you gave but Norway. That plus the US's greater working hours led to a considerable GDP per capita advantage over everyone but Norway. So you can say "we know", but the US is demonstrating a considerable economic advantage due to its greater working hours per employee."
You are making the fundamental mistake that correlation equals causation, and you show a deep lack of knowledge about how confounding factors can distort things. As such, you're making claims that simply aren't true, and you're ignoring cases whereby it remains not true, Britain also works much longer hours than Germany but is less productive. The US is showing no greater productivity due to working hours, it's GDP per person is high for reasons such as having a mass of raw resources (it's the biggest oil producer in the world again which is why it's embarassing that Norway is more productive on GDP per person and far fewer hours) through to the fact that it's in massive debt and has hence frontloaded it's GDP using massive debt based investment - that has to be paid off at some point.
"Workers don't have to be "consistently efficient". They just need to be more productive than the cost of hiring more workers at fewer hours per worker. We need to keep in mind that there are significant fixed costs per worker. Further, for a lot of jobs productivity doesn't go down that fast for lots of hours worked."
No, they need to be producing more output than the cost of having them as an employee, and that's simply not the case.
"Yes, let's science up this discussion! At least with something relevant please."
Oh I see, you don't like science, because statistics is hard right? That would explain why you're incapable of understand this discussion.
"Funny, how when you were providing examples, a few cherry picked examples were good enough, but now that I'm playing the same game, we need science because of all this complexity that you had ignored before."
Again, you don't understand relevant sampling, cherry picking is where you take examples to make a point, sensible sampling is when you build a sensible sample where confounding factors are reduced or mitigated. This is why we use science, because it matters.
"So why is Germany less efficient than the US despite working so much fewer hours?"
In large part because it's still working to boost the East to modern economic standards post reunification. You've still not addressed why Britain is less efficient due to massive productivity with more hours worked if greater working hours increases productivity, and why companies inside Britain with less working hours consistently show better productivity than those with more. On life expectancy alone the US is losing the equivalent of 17 days a year of working days compared to a country like Germany, so giving even 10 days to people which would likely contribute to a noticable improvement in life expectancy would problem allow you to break even.
"But not in directions that are rational."
Yes, that's an understandable comment from someone who has a problem with science and can't accept that modern research has proved them wrong. Do you think the Earth is flat and 6,000 years old as well?
But it's clear you're not going to let this go, you're clearly anti-science, don't understand statistics, refuse to accept peer reviewed academic research, can't accept the evidence but you're determined to pretend that you're getting some benefit from throwing away days of your life away for nothing so yeah, I'll leave you to keep pretending whilst I enjoy having an actual life and not seeing any reduction in quality of life as a result - even with your higher headline GDP you end up blowing it on things like your military, your broken penal system, and the inefficiency of your healthcare system anyway, so it's not like you even get to spend what you've got anyway regardless of what productivity improvements you falsely think you have.
Yep, though I'm not sure how that helps you, as it doesn't change the fact you clearly have no idea of the organisation your nation is a part of.
I guess that was some kind of desperate way to salvage things after you've made such a fool of yourself?
"My view is that the attitude which just decides that forcing another month of vacation on employers won't cause problems is the same sort of attitude which has resulted in vastly worse productivity per hour worked for Greece than for Germany. While Germany's ideas about the value of vacation may be based on fantasy, they do get a lot of other things right economically."
I'm not sure you really have the slightest understanding what the problems were in Greece. Greece's GDP was effectively just completely and utterly faked, they were borrowing and buying things they couldn't afford, and inevitably when it no longer remained tenable to keep cooking the books it all came tumbling down in a shit storm. Trying to compare anything to a broken economy like that is entirely meaningless, as Greece is so full of confounding factors that you just can't take anything meaningful away from measuring it.
We already know that offering additional vacation wont result in reduced productivity, because once again, we have more than enough real actual examples, so you're flogging a dead horse here in trying to pretend otherwise.
"It probably doesn't increase productivity per hour worked (there's a trade off between reduced efficiency of many jobs at long hours per week versus synergy with a more active economy). But it does increase total output up to some point (which is probably in excess of 60 hours for most non intellectual jobs)."
And herein I suspect is the crux of the problem, you seem to think productivity is equal to output, it's not, productivity is a question of how much output you can get relative to the amount of effort put in. Productivity and output are two different things that are only partially related. Your view that more hours worked equates to increased output is based on the outdated and long discredited idea that humans remain consistently efficient regardless of how tired they are.
You're working from the rather old fashioned idea that humans will consistently keep producing output and that in itself is the only factor involved, such that even if you accept that that output declines as a person gets more tired, they're still producing output, and hence still more productive than someone who doesn't put in the extra hours. That's an incredibly naive and incorrect viewpoint, because in reality there are costs to that too in that people become less engaged from being tired (and hence work less hard overall), people become more ill, the slow down in effort doesn't produce enough economic output to make up for the expenditure on equipment and machinery running and maintenance costs, and higher staff turn over results in more time spent trying to hire people which is dead time.
That's where economic activity is lost as you make people work increased hours, and where it can be gained by reducing hours, and that is evidence in many studies.
Science in general is something we keep learning more about as we get better methods at bringing in more variables, and it is through that that we can find things like this out, this is no different in this respect. So your simplistic world view is simply outdated, we now know there is more too it than simple output that must be balanced against the simplistic mindset of people at work = most stuff gets done.
That is precisely why Germany is more efficient than Britain, because people in Britain have hire levels of sickness, higher levels of absence, lower levels of happiness and engagement, all of which can be reduced by working lower hours (this is something that has been shown within Britain itself in comparisons between companies that give more leave, hence eliminating the confounding factors of different nations economic statuses).
The discussion has moved on from your very Victorian understanding of productivity.
You still have not the slightest clue what the commonwealth is or how it works.
It's an organisation comprising 53 states, only 14 of these states choose to have the Queen as their ceremonial head of state, but few of them grant her any actual political power, and of those that do the powers are so pointless as to be nothing more than a nod to her as a sign of respect. You seem to be under the assumption that a role of ceremonial head of state automatically imbues actual legal political power, but it simply does not.
Pakistan is a member of the Commonwealth, but it does not recognise the Queen as head of state, nor does it reference her in their passports. Some Commonwealth members like Rwanda were never even under British rule and hence never even had a link to the Queen as head of state. It's trivial therefore for me to name a member of the Commonwealth that has neither the Queen as ceremonial head of state, nor has her on their passport, in fact, such nations comprise about 40 or so out of 53 of the nations in the Commonwealth, that is, the vast majority of them. Why would you even make such a challenge to me that I could trivial oblige you and embarrass you on, surely no one is that stupid? Are you just trolling?
Also, "The Commonwealth" is NOT short for "The British Commonwealth", that name was dropped in 1949 precisely to reflect the fact that it was no longer and organisation related to British rule, but instead an organisation for mutual cooperation between states as equals.
You may want to consider spending at least 30 seconds to get familiar with a topic before making such a laughing stock of yourself in future. There is literally no link between the Queen as ceremonial head of the commonwealth and power over sovereignty of member states. The link between those few nations in the commonwealth that do retain the Queen as ceremonial head of state do so outside of and regardless of the commonwealth.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, you seem to have largely just summed up the exact point I made in my last post to you other than adding some blurb about the false suggestion that atheism somehow requires proof, and I'm not really sure what the relevance of that is, it seems to be going off on a tangent somewhat.
"Agnosticism is a statement that something (the existence of a god or gods) cannot be known. It says nothing, however, about one believes."
Except that is in itself a belief.
Say for one moment that a theist has actually seen god, and that their god is actually real, it would imply that existence is in fact knowable, and that the agnostic merely believes that it's unknowable. Agnosticism as a statement as you describe is in itself something that simply cannot be known with certainty, and hence must inherently be a belief.
Agnostic atheism and agnostic theism are merely midpoints of indecision where someone has committed fully to neither view. A true agnostic still remains someone who is not willing to commit in either direction, that doesn't change.
I'm not sure you really understood the philosophical texts you apparently claim to have read.
"So where do dictionaries come in? A dictionary is an attempt to record the current state of the English language as used in a formal setting. Thus it serves as a reference to those who care to guide them in their use of form English. However, this distinction is not perfect because the over riding goal of a dictionary is to record usage."
But that's the point isn't it? People who author dictionaries have to decide what makes it into the official definition of the language, and when there is dispute it's where people go for the formally accepted definition. You're right that this can change, but it needs critical mass to change the meaning of a word, and then those who build dictionaries determine when that change of meaning has reached sufficient level to be altered officially.
So we refer to the dictionary for the current determined meaning not because we view the writers of dictionaries as the grand dictators of language, but as journalists who document the current accepted state of the language, and if someone is going against the current accepted state then they're still showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what the term means to objective speakers of the language.
Um, that's not even remotely what the Commonwealth is, it sounds more like you're describing crown depedencies which are typical self-governing (to varying degrees) sovereign British territory, this includes places like the Falkland Islands.
Commonwealth states are very much independent sovereign nations, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria and so on. They maintain links to the Queen in ceremony only, she and those around here hold absolutely no actual political power over these sovereign nations whatsoever.
Sorry yes, to clarify I absolutely agree with you and should probably have been more explicit, by biggest threat I meant biggest terrorist threat, I agree there are far bigger threats ranging from the rise of the far right in Europe, through to Putin's increased aggression, through to continued economic instability as well as all those you mention.
That was a very roundabout and long winded way of accepting that I'm right you know?
You could've just admitted it outright rather than waste all your time getting confused about what things like PPP are you know right?
Putting the final paragraph in to accept that I'm right, but refuse to accept it simultaneously was just... odd. You have still provided absolutely no evidence that increased working hours creates increased productivity, and there is still a large body of evidence and research into that specific thing showing the opposite.
"That does not make me an agnostic, for that implies the belief that there might be something. I don't have that belief, in fact I don't have any beliefs at all."
Yes you do, this very statement declares that you believe that there isn't something, else you would have no issue with the label of agnosticism implying that there might be something. You cannot both declare that you do not agree with the implication that there might be something, and pretend that you don't have a belief because disagreeing that their might be something is in itself a declaration that you believe that there isn't something.
Therefore, you are an atheist.
Then it's not me you need to convince, it's your fellow countrymen who are homosexual that rank your country incredibly poorly:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
https://euobserver.com/beyond-...
I can only go on the data that comes out of your country, and it still seems to show widespread opposition to things like gay marriage, and widespread claims of persecution by people who are actually homosexual and so on and so forth. Maybe you're right, but the data doesn't show it because for whatever reason gay people in your country disagree with you completely.
You're still confusing yourself between atheism and agnosticism.
If you have no view either way then you're agnostic because you've determined the answer to be unknowable with current available evidence, if you have a belief there is no god, or a specific disbelief in god, then you're an atheist.
"Actually having a belief that there is no higher power, in a way validates the belief in a higher power, which is completely contrary to what atheism/non-belief is."
No, it really does no such thing. If what you mean is that theist zealots can say "But your system is just a belief too!" then you're right, the difference is that atheists have the pragmatism of being able to argue that if you're going to believe in one unproveable thing like a god, that you might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hence, it makes more sense to simply not believe in such nonsense, or alternatively, to go the agnostic route and at least argue that it's all unknowable so not worth having an opinion on.
There are ultimately just three answers to the question, is there a god? Yes, no, and maybe/I don't know. Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism are the words we use to describe these things, and once again, the dictionary makes this clear. If you don't like that, then don't argue with me, I don't define language, I just consume it as defined. Argue with the authors of every dictionary every written if you have a problem with it, that is unfortunately how the English language is defined, and if you want to create your own definitions you must start your own language.
No, atheism is what it says on the tin. Theism is a belief in a god or higher being, atheism is belief that there is not a god or higher being, again, the a means not, it is the inverse of theism.
What you're talking about is agnosticism. If you believe the question is open then you're an agnostic, not an atheist.
Lookup the definitions for theist, atheist, and agnostic if you want to confirm this for yourself.
I'm fascinated by how much of this I see in the UK's referendum debate - there are an awful lot of immigrants declaring they want out to stop immigration.
Interestingly there are groups that want out to change immigration, for example, Pritti Patel a Conservative MP for the Brexit campaign wants out so that rather than having large numbers of European migrants, we can instead increase the number of Bangladeshi migrants acting as curry workers (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/minister-priti-patel-quit-eu-to-save-our-curry-houses-a3251071.html). They had an interview with a Malaysian student (who can vote, because she's a commonwealth citizen resident in the UK) who said she will vote out because she wants less Polish immigrants and wants it to be easier for her and other Commonwealth people from countries like Nigeria to immigrate instead.
Personally I'm not the anti-immigration type, it's not affected me negatively and just like every politician that comes into power I realise it creates a net economic good for the countries (something that contrary to the rhetoric has been shown in a number of studies such as that from Oxford's migration observatory, and from the ICL) but I never cease to be amazed at the complete selfish shit fight going on amongst those who are immigrants, and as such I propose that if we're going to close our doors and remove people that the first people we kick out are the intolerant ones, because my country was always built on tolerance and if they don't like that they can fuck off home.
The people that are going to be most surprised though are British natives who are voting out for xenophobic anti-immigrant reasons and are going to get a sore surprise when they realise that it isn't going to decrease immigration for the reasons above. Instead of Poles who are reasonably educated, and have a similar culture and so integrate fairly well they're going to be faced with Pritti Patel's Bangladeshi migrants which will be fun, given that poor integration of nationals from poorer Islamic nations in the UK is the one thing that's created most our nation's anti-immigration sentiment in the first place.
I think it's sad that so many people come to countries like ours to take advantage of the wealth and then would deny it to others. I wonder how much Taco Cowboy will be parroting the closed borders policy when the next step is to also start deporting folks like him back home?
The whole immigration debate is flooded with nonsense and bile from top to bottom including from those who have most benefited from the status quo. The real problem is that sociopaths like him aren't the isolated cases. If we could figure out how to spot them a mile off and deny them entry in the first place then I suspect the whole immigration issue would be a whole lot less problematic, but maybe there's something to that? Maybe people who leave their country behind in the first place are more inclined to be selfish and be the type that just looks out for themselves, whilst those that stay behind and try and fix their country are inherently more selfless in general, hence why we end up with so much hypocritical dross like we're seeing here?
"Go up to a Christian in Rome and state you're gay. The worst that will happen is they'll tell you you're a sinner and you need to repent or go to hell. Now do the same in Mecca, and the Government will try you and sentence you to execution."
Go up to a Christian (Russian Orthodox) skinhead in Russia, or a Christian fundamentalist in Uganda and do the same and tell me it works out just as well. You can't compare a stable modern Western European country with a backwards violent state like Saudi Arabia. Christian nations like Russia have defacto state sanctioned with the backing of their churches the violent, sometimes murderous persecution of gays also.
Gay people are persecuted just as much in Christian countries as in muslim countries, just not in our Christian countries in the West because we're that much more progressive. Ex-soviet regions like Serbia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Russia itself, as well as many African nations and some Central and South American nations that are Christian treat gay people just as poorly.
Even in the UK if you get on the wrong side of a Catholic IRA member over the issue you're going to be in for a bad time. Mugabe in Zimbabwe is Catholic and has similarly called for the beheading of gay people. Nigeria is 40% Christian, but >95% of the populace support harsh punishment for homosexuality. Honduras is a Christian nation and over 100 people have been killed there for being homosexual in the last 10 years.
You're probably right that the death penalty for homosexuality is more common in statute in islamic nations, but then, the death penalty is also more common in statute in islamic nations in general so that shouldn't be too surprising. You can't pretend that overall though that homosexual people have any less a hard time under religions other than Islam as they do under Islam, it's simply not true. Christians are far and away just as guilty of engaging in violence against and murder of homosexuals (and in fact, so are Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs).
You could argue that ISIS are exceptional, as it would often seem they are, but even they sometimes come across as amateurs in their trade compared to the violence inflicted by groups like the drug cartels in Mexico, or numerous rebel groups in Africa that align with Christianity and have targetted homosexuals before. You can search for more information on this if you desire, but it's particularly disturbing, don't say I didn't warn you if you do, it'll certainly change your perspective on ISIS having a monopoly on excelling at violence.
Homophobia is a problem that goes beyond any one single religion, if you think otherwise then you have an incredibly naive and short sighted world view. Homosexuals are simply a convenient hate target for groups seeking a hate target to rally their supporters around, much as the Jews have been for thousands of years. It's a common target because homosexuals are a minority present in every community around the world. It doesn't matter what background the people professing the hate are from, it's entirely tangential to the issue - they just need a target to hate, and this particular target is present on each and every one of them's doorstep.