Are you kidding me? Her downfall was that she was treated too well
OK, having seen the way the US media treated Hillary Clinton, I can only conclude you did not watch any of the coverage.
Trump got a free pass on anything stupid he said, the only thing you heard about Clinton was "Email", "Podesta" and "Lock her up". All charges that were later dropped once the Republicans got in. The media, especially the Murdoch media was so biased against Clinton it was funny, it wasn't even subtle.
I have no doubt the Russians manipulated the US election, an unstable US with economic problems is in Russia's advantage. Russia no longer has the power to go toe to toe with the other major powers in the world (EU, China and the US), economically, politically or militarily. So they need to weaken other countries through less conventional means to remain a world power (I'd be very unsurprised if the Russians weren't manipulating China, mostly through North Korea, they have to get their missile technology and expertise from somewhere).
The US elections were manipulated, by Murdoch and by the Russians.
But if you're looking for someone to blame, don't blame Murdoch or the Russians, to find the blame you need only find the nearest mirror.
Yes that's right, you were manipulated, but its because you let yourself be manipulated. You swallowed such obvious bullshit. You swallowed so much of it that you cant even tell what actually happened any more, nor how much trouble you're in. There's a reason the GBP is trading near an 11 month high against the dollar... Whilst the GBP is trading at near 11 month lows against most other currencies. You accept carefully prepared soundbites without fact checking, you look to propaganda over reality and this will come back to bite you.
Like most people who live in the ROTW, we look at your news sources and wonder how you can be so easily manipulated. Semi-legitimate sources like Fox News use the same tricks that we expect from state run news agencies in despotism that produce nothing but government approved propaganda, we see through them in an instant. Its gotten so bad that people are now looking for more extremely biased organisations like Brietbart because Fox News allows the tiniest sliver of fact through and realistically, until this is fixed, the US is on a downward spiral. The most effective defence of a democracy is an informed populace, so the corollary must follow that a wilfully ignorant population is it's destruction.
Long time Slashdot readers will know how it was always Microsoft, and then later on SCO, who were accused of causing harm to Linux distributions, and open source software in general.
Yet it's now becoming more and more apparent that it's not outside influences that are most harmful to Linux and open source, but rather it's the open source projects that destroy themselves by making idiotic and unwanted changes,
This is and isn't true. It's true now but I remember the age when SCO and MS were fighting tooth and nail to destroy Linux. They were a lot more destructive than the most pigheaded designers or developers. The reason that errant project leaders seem to be the problem these days is because the SCO threat was destroyed and Microsoft have simply accepted that Linux exists and have given up fighting (no doubt due to internal changes during the late 00's), people who don't remember those times forget just how much of a threat they were. The fact there is still a FOSS community is because these threats were destroyed almost a decade ago.
In that respect it is a good thing the worst thing about the open source community is that we have developers making unwanted changes. In a way this is good as it spurs new projects but that's a useful side effect to a bad thing, like the way that a bad gastro bug promotes weight loss. I think the biggest threat to open source is apathy. We've rested on our laurels too much, become too comfortable and now we have another company rising that threatens to be worse than Microsoft... and many here herald their rise with celebrator cheer.
Firefox is another example. Years of unwanted changes forced on its users by the Firefox developers have caused these users to flee to Chrome and other browsers
Not strictly true. The worst mistake the Firefox developers made was not taking the mobile device market seriously.
The other problem they have is one that Open Source railed against for years under the iron fisted reign of Microsoft... pre-installed browsers. Every Android device comes with Chrome, a lot of personal computers come with Chrome pre-installed. A lot of Chrome's user base is there because they've thought to use another browser, this is why Chrome has the lions share of the market (50% +). Safari is the same, but restricted to Apple devices which is why it's in 2nd place with 14% of the market. In fact in the case of most Apple devices, users have no choice but to use Safari. This is why I consider Apple to be the new Microsoft... and they aren't nearly as... shall we say "nice" as Microsoft were in the 90's and 00's.
Apple is now the threat, not just to Open Source, but to almost all the freedom we've come to expect from computers. Imagine if Microsoft prohibited any other browser but Edge in Windows 11, or forced us to go to the Microsoft store to get software because we couldn't install it from any other source... We'd nail MS to the wall, well if there were anything left to nail to the wall after their partners and major clients were finished with them... So why do we accept this behaviour from Apple?
If your answer to that question is anything but "I don't and nor should anyone else" then you are part of the problem. Apple are already committing the same excesses that made Microsoft so hated and despised in the 90's... but in a far more extreme form and are being celebrated for it. Apple abides open source as long as they get what they want, but what they want is total control so you're gambling that they'll come for open source last. Fortunately, we still have an option and powerful opposition to Apple, unfortunately it's Google. Much as we relied on IBM to destroy SCO, not because IBM cared about FOSS, but because IBM and FOSS shared a common enemy, FOSS and in fact anyone who wants to have any form of control over their computer is now depending on Google... and as much as I dislike a monoculture, Google's is far less restrictive and destructive than Apple's.
No doubt the fanboys are frothing at the mouth, ready to mod this into oblivion but this needs to be said and I will not be scared of saying it because it offends a few fanboys.
it should only count as an addiction if it interferes with your life.
There are plenty of functional alcoholics, smokers, even users of heroin. Just because you've managed to incorporate it into your life doesn't mean your not addicted
Just because you manage to incorporate something into your life, doesn't mean you're addicted to it.
In fact when it doesn't interfere with your life, its pretty much not an addiction. Addiction is defined as a substance or activity that becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary responsibilities and concerns. So someone managing a drinking or gambling habit so that it does NOT interfere with their lives is not an addict. You can argue that it isn't healthy, but its not an addiction if they're not sacrificing for it. An addict isn't someone who drinks regularly, an addict is someone who eschews eating to afford to drink.The difference is when it comes down to food or drink, the non addict picks food where as the addict picks drink.
There is a huge difference between use and abuse and another difference between abuse and dependence.
I've yet to see anyone, no matter how glued to their phone that will give up food for screen time. So I'm calling bollocks and Betteridges on this "phone addiction" BS. Seriously, deprive someone of a phone for a few days and they'll get over it pretty quick. They'll find another way to entertain themselves. Deprive a smoker of cigarettes and you'll see some pretty bad mood swings. Anyone who compares the two is a complete moron.
Actually, third parties have reviewed the fact checkers, and overall found that their bias is minimal. What's more, decent fact-checking organizations document supporting evidence directly in their reports - so you can see things for yourselves.
The problem the parent poster has is that the minimal bias of the fact checkers does not match his own bias.
He's worried his echo chamber is going to be violated by something he doesn't want to hear.
Facebook's problem is two fold.
1. They want to be taken seriously.
2. They've built their success on making echo chambers.
Facebook, whether we like it or not has become a source for news, much the same as any other aggregator of news. They don't produce it, but they distribute it. In order to be taken seriously, they need to reduce the amount of fake news. You will say this is simple enough, and it would be if it weren't for point #2. In order to gain legitimacy, they have to penetrate the echo chambers, for most of us this doesn't matter but we're not the problem. Its the small number of extremists who have spent their time specially cultivating their feeds from Brietbart, Natural News, Zero Hedge, so on and so forth, To these people, an opposing argument is something to be crushed with aggression and vitriol, not because the opposing view is right (or wrong, to extremists this is irrelevant) but because it makes them question their own views. Extremism does not survive for long when exposed to a rational society, so anything rational must be crushed, denied and driven out of the echo chamber.
Whilst Facebook could afford to lose these types, these types of extremists will fight tooth and nail to make it hard not simply because they believe in some insane shit... but because they believe it to a point where they think everyone has to listen and silently agree with them.
I think the only way for a baseline neutral is opposing views. I don't think CNN's or Fox's bias are bad. I think they are both equally biased in opposite directions. By regularly paying attention to both of them, you can get a fairly neutral view.
Sounds fine in principle, but this is exactly how we ended up with "teach the controversy" the "global warming debate" and the "vaccination scare".
Opposing views do not always have the same weight or basis in fact. Presenting them as if they do does not make the presentation baseline neutral, it biases it towards the lunatic fringe.
This, refusing to accept some uneducated idiots opinion as legitimate opposition to fact is not bias.
The saddest part of modern society is that people think that their ignorance is worth as much as scientific knowledge.
Her argument makes sense only when you look at the context it is made in. She is the leader of a party which held an election recently, thinking that their main opponent was so utterly useless that the result would be a massively increased majority for them. In this assumption, she and her party were wrong, because the opposition rightly surmised that telling outright lies and promising untold riches stolen from "the rich" via tax, borrowing and printing more money would increase their vote share by persuading the younger and stupider voters to vote for them.
This technique worked.
Mrs May is now working with a greatly reduced majority, and cannot steamroller through unpopular or just plain wrong-headed legislation at will.
This.
The Conservatives got their arses handed to them in the snap election.
The Conservatives aren't in the majority and are relying on deals with two northern Irish parties to get a majority in parliament. Sinn Fein (former IRA party who are very unpopular with the militarists and many older English, the backbone of the conservatives) and the Democractic Unionist Party (DUP) who are very unpopular with everyone because their stated goal is to funnel money from the other parts of the UK into Northern Ireland. Also Sinn Fein and DUP dont really like each other much.
So May's position is very precarious to say the least. So this kind of thing is just a way of distracting the hoi polloi from the real issues of our worsening economy and the fact that Brexit negotiations are going exactly the way the remainers said they would. Basically, the government is now parroting an old BBC Sitcom called "Yes Minister".
Minister: The people are unimpressed with our performance. Lackey: Say something stupid to distract them.
This is a common conservative move when they're losing popularity. Get people to focus on something other than the issues they themselves have caused.
The post is flame bait, whatever. Sony phones have cameras that are years ahead of the iphone. That said, nobody who knows anything about photography expects a phone to replace a DSLR. The sensors and lenses simply cannot be even remotely similar, due to size limitations in phones.
This,
Considering its from 9to5mac, we can safely assume that the article is biased fanboy fellatio.
However we can apply Betteridges law of headlines as well as reality and say no. No simply because Iphones still don't automatically adjust the orientation of the picture based on the internal Gyro. If I'm holding my nexus 5 upside down, it'll automatically rotate the picture to the orientation I'm holding my camera. Meanwhile, my Iphone holding colleague has sent me another upside down picture (fortunately the default picture viewer in Windows allows me to rotate).
That being said, if I'm going anywhere that I'll be serious about taking photos, I'll take a camera.
The end of the DSLR for most people has already arrived. I left my professional camera at home and took these shots at dinner with my iPhone 7
Translation: Hipsters who used to use a $1,000 DSLR as a $70 point-and-shoot are now using a $1,000 iPhone as a $70 point-and-shoot. The DSLR isn't going away any time soon for anyone who cares about proper photography.
Neither are point and shoots. I recently went to the Goodwood FoS with a mate. I had a 4 year old Canon P&S (albeit a quite good one), he had the latest Samsung. He was astounded after the level of quality in my shots of fast moving cars. Furhter more, I can get my camera out of pocket and powered on in less time than it takes me to open my camera app on my Nexus 5 (and yes, I've got a shortcut on the shortcuts bar... I probably should replace it with maps or something as I hardly ever use the camera, but I digress). The P&S simply had better optics, a faster shutter, an optical zoom, faster focusing actuators and better processor and image sensor.
Whilst it's 100% true that having a better camera wont make you a better photographer, the reverse isn't true. No amount of talent in the world can get good shots out of bad cameras. As the old saying goes, a poor craftsman blames his tools but the corollary is a good craftsman buys better tools. Things have gone back to the way they were, DSLR's are the domain of professionals, P&S are the domain of amateurs, phones are good for non photographers or when you dont have a camera handy.
Those prefacing the iPhone 8's arrival with "X already done here, Y already done there" are once again missing the point.
People don't buy Apple products because they're the first to market with an insignificant number of less than excellently integrated features.
Those who think people are buying the Iphone because it has excellently integrated features couldn't have missed the point further if they were facing in the completely wrong direction and the point was in another country altogether.
In 2012, it was revealed that 4 out of every 5 Iphone purchases was made by someone who previously owned an Iphone. I'm willing to bet that statistic would now be closer to 19 out of every 20.
People are buying the iphone because they are emotionally attached, financially invested or technologically locked into buying another Iphone. In fact Apple has been losing marketshare in it's original markets because people are finally realising that the myth of Apple's "quality" and "Integration" is just that, a myth.
I have an Android phone and a Windows phone for work. Honestly the Windows phone is miles ahead of the interfact and application integration of the Iphone, Windows phone is the most integrated, but that has the downside of being the least useful for anything MS hasn't designed it for (it makes phone calls and integrates with Office, so it's fine as a work phone but I'd never buy one personally). The Iphone for me has been the most frustrating device I've ever had to use, just typing on it frustrates me to throwing it because the keyboard is so counter intuitive (I dont have this issue with the Windows Phone, so it isn't Android fanboyism).
However you've admitted one thing, if you want to know what the Iphone might get in 18-24 months, look at what Android is offering now.
Around 4.4% of the population said they were Muslim at the last census (2011). Keep in mind that the census tends to inflate the numbers because the people filling it in put their kids down as being religious when they aren't really and stop participating when they grow up.
Anyway, that's up 1.7% since 2001, so in a decade. At that rate, by 2050 a massive 10% of the population will be Muslim. I don't think we have too much to worry about.
Beyond that, what makes these fools think that they're all going to be bent on establishing a caliphate. Most immigrant Muslims are happy to be here, doing menial jobs for decent pay (on a global scale) instead of back in their home countries eeking out a living, never getting ahead.
Someone on minimum wage here in the UK can have a decent used car, late model phone, decent accommodation and no debt. That's what being a developed country means.
The problem the UK has been having with extremists of late has been mostly with 2nd or beyond generations, people born here in the UK and I'm willing to bet a lot of that can be traced back to worsening economic conditions in the UK rather than ISIS recruiting. Take the Westminster attacker. UK born, converted to Islam in prison, was in prison because of a history of violent offences. a 20% increase in his bills would definitely have driven him over the edge.
The EU has given us more power, more control and more sovereignty.
What they meant when they said "lost sovereignty" to the EU is that they can no longer say that people of the wrong colour, accent or believing in the wrong sky faerie should be sent home.
I am an immigrant to the UK... but I get a free pass because I've got the right skin colour, accent and as far as the EDL is concerned, religion. I'm a white Anglo from Australia who came here expressly to take a high paying job. Overall my experience here has been very positive and British people are generally quite friendly and welcoming, but there are a very small number of racists and xenophobes who are very upset that they're not able to say racists and xenophobic things without opposition.
"Sovereignty" was never about laws and governance. It was always about race, religion and accents.
The British joined the EU with special conditions because their economy was in really bad shape.
And if we were to leave our economy would go straight back to that state.
The British automotive industry, which is actually quite a strong sector, is something the Germans and French would love to kill but are presently powerless to do so. Post Brexit, all they have to do is put a small tariff on it and boom, it's gone. Toyota and Honda will move production to Spain and the Czech Republic, Vauxhauls will be imported from Europe, Fords from Europe and the Americas. Luxury marques like Aston martin, McLaren, RR, et al. haven't been profitable for decades (and most are now owned in part or full by ze Germans).
The Auto industry in the UK exists because it's cheaper to operate here than in Germany or France and we have more educated and motivated workforce than cheaper European countries. Add a tariff and we become more expensive, sales fall and factories shut down. The UK alone is not big enough to sustain a car industry, we depended on the sales from 300 million Europeans. Almost overnight the British car industry will become 5 blokes in a shed in Leicestershire.
The same with many other products, at first this will be cushioned by the fact we'll have a large glut of domestic produce in some areas because Europeans have stopped buying our products... but this means they'll all be selling at a loss so it's self correcting as business shut down. The Tories will have to change their slogan from "Britain's open for business" to "Could the last one out please switch off the lights".
That's why I firmly believe that Brexit will never happen. The person who signs that order will be forever remembered as the one who destroyed the United Kingdom, something that dictators, churches, foreign powers and the French have failed to do for centuries. Hammond, Davis and that utter muppet Boris Johnson are being set up to take the fall for Brexit failing, probably the only smart thing T-May has done in office.
You are spot on. The biggest country in Western Europe is France, and it falls between the size of California and Texas. Most people simply haven't a clue of the scale of the United States of America,
Hi, I'm Australian, Australia is roughly the size of the continental US and has a much lower population density. We had a workable plan to fibre up most of the country and provide fixed wireless (LTE Advanced) to most rural areas with satalite covering the rest. The requirement was for 12 MBit and the technology could have delivered it.
Australia called this, the National Broadband Network.
So you know nothing of scale and nothing about how it isn't a hindrance.
So what happened to Australia's NBN which if left alone, would have been delivered by this year. Well the conservative government got in and ruined it because it was a good idea from the other side of government. That is what the US needs to fix, the US government is not regulating the industry properly.
Government jerks found a new excuse to steal $15 to $99 from random people walking around minding their own business.
Yes, but they're stealing it from careless, inconsiderate, phone addled jerks.
This reduces their requirement to extract money from me, being perfectly capable of not stupidly walking out in front of cars because I've stupidly buried my head in my phone.
This is a tax on stupid jerks... I'm in no way unhappy with that.
The goal is to protect the motorist. Even if the pedestrian completely deserved to be removed from the gene pool, accidentally killing someone who walks into the street is quite traumatic and the idiots looking at their phones shouldn't have the right to inflict that on a random stranger.
Not to mention my insurance. If they cant get money from the other party because they're dead or permanently disabled and unable to work... I have to pay and possibly lose my NCD.
Beyond that, most pedestrians wont die, rather they'll have a debilitating injury or disability that will make them a burden on the rest of us.
If you can't pull your eyes away from your phone long enough to safely cross a street... whoever hits you is helping Darwin and they're the one and only person getting my sympathy.
Legislation SHOULD be passed... freeing the motorist from liability.
As a man who has just picked up a new 2 series (and paid his insurance) Darwin wont help me when a careless zombie embeds themself in my engine bay. You cant really get money from a dead person (who probably has more debts than savings by an order of magnitude).
No, this is a story about raising taxes on the middle class,
Are things so bad now in the US that an income of $150,000 is middle class. I mean I haven't checked the exchange rate since this morning but at the time US$150,000 was around £115,000. Over here you stop being middle class around £80,000.
I'm middle income, middle class, if I earned £115,000, I'd have a house paid off within 5-8 years.
Make no mistake, this is a tax on the wealthy, not the ultra rich like Trump, but those who have a very good income. This is emphatically not an attack on the middle or lower classes.
The problem with eCigs is the amount of vapor these things give off. In a work or school environment even driving, the vapor cloud is huge and distracting.
I'm in the same boat as the GP. If someone sparks up in a large room, I'll smell it, doesn't matter where it is in the room, within a few moments I'll know about it. Smokers dont get how much they smell, when I smoked I certainly didn't (well over 15 years ago now). This is because cigarettes deaden your sense of smell and taste. Within a few weeks of quitting I regained these senses and realised how bad smoking smelled.
Vaping is nowhere near as bad as smoking. Sure I don't really like walking through the vape clouds which are usually some sickly sweet scent... but I'd much rather walk through 100 vapers with the most annoying cherry flavoured vapes that have to suffer through the acrid stench of a single cigarette.
As I said above, most smokers don't know how bad they smell, as such are completely inconsiderate about it towards non smokers. Also, pretty certain that vaping is not permitted in a school or inside a building here in the UK either, so same rules as smoking.
Sure the technical term isn't racism, it's xenophobia. However most xenophobes are so dumb they cant understand words with more than two syllables, they're also dumb enough that they think anyone besides them is going to be fooled by the old "Islam is not a race" excuse and will forgive their bigoted bollocks.
So the term racism has become interchangeable with xenophobia because the practical difference between a racist and a xenophobe is the practical difference between being a jerk and being a jerk.
First you have to stop certain religious groups in the first world telling people in the second and third worlds that birth control is a sin.
First off, I agree.
Secondly... It won't help nearly as much. The impetus to have a lot of children in developing and undeveloped nations is that children take care of the elders when they cant work any more. So more children == a better retirement. This is why many non-christian/muslim developing nations have high birth rates. The Thai govt in the 70's handed out free condoms, combined with sexual education it cut disease rates (in the 1970's Thailand was tipped to have an AIDS epidemic... this never happened) but didn't affect family sizes that much.
Thirdly, 1st, 2nd and 3rd world monikers don't actually reflect economic conditions. For example, Switzerland and Sweden are third world countries whilst Thailand and the Dominican Republic are first world. This is because 1st, 2nd and 3rd world defined what side the nation was on in the cold war.
1st world == Aligned with the US and NATO.
2nd world == Aligned with the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc (note: this does not exist any more).
3rd world == Unaligned.
My big issue with using them to describe whether a country is rich or poor is that "3rd world" does not differentiate between a developing nation like India and an undeveloped one like Sudan. Now of course I know what you meant because I speak English to such a degree that I understand colloquial definitions. But if you're making a report to the UN Security Council, you'd do well to use "developed", "developing" and "undeveloped" instead of first or third world.
Medically - politically - I have to look at the calendar everyday because it feels like I'm in a time warp and it's really 1917.
Not quite,
In 1917, the medical profession was quite well respected. Few people would believe some publication printed by a discredited quack (Wakefield) or some snake oil salesman (David "Avocado" Wolfe) that is very light on fact and mainly uses fear and thought terminating cliches over the reviewed publications of medical professionals. No reputable publisher would touch it. People would take the advice of their doctors, or at least seek out another medical professional to help them over healing crystals and herbal remedies.
Now whilst the medical professionals of the US haven't done themselves any favours in recent decades by becoming drug salesmen, they are not really to blame here. As much as I hate saying this, the Internet is to blame. Now I think the internet is the most important development since the steam engine, it has had the unfortunate side effect of giving charlatans a lot of influence over the stupid. A comfortable life free of debilitating disease, the decline of public education and a culture that glorifies stupidity has made the internet the perfect hunting ground for fraudsters and snake oil merchants like David "Avocado" Wolfe and Belle Gibson to gather small hordes of blindly aggressive, unthinking followers.
To fix this, I would not propose in any way to change the internet, what we need to do is stop glorifying stupidity, we need to stop accepting and even tolerating it. One of the greatest tragedies of the modern age is that someone thinks their ignorance is worth as much as a professionals knowledge. This means that we'll need to insult a few snowflakes, point out that they're not smart enough to be contradicting medical and/or scientific professionals and uniformly ignore their opinions. We've seen the fad of fat shaming, why aren't we dumb shaming?
Yes, the Internet has given Anti-Vaxxers and their ilk a powerful platform. But it has given us so many other benefits so it's a case of society needing to change to accommodate the internet, not the internet changing to accommodate the stupid of our society. The internet has given us near unlimited access to information, not all of it accurate and true information so people need to change to become more critical of information and the only way we can do this is by better education.
It would be great if libertarian principles applied to vaccines (my base ideology is libertarian), but:
If we applied Liberatarian principles to vaccination, we'd be handing the Anti-Vaxxers the argument on a silver platter... because unlike Libertarian principles... vaccines work in the real world.
Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
This.
I'm in the same boat as the OP, I've got @gmail.com (I.E. jsmith@gmail.com) and some silly tart in South Africa keeps using (she has jsmith1@gmail.com). I've just marked it as spam and moved on... although there was an interesting email from her lawyer, she sounds like a shitty landlord to be engaging a lawyer for what was detailed... but again I just deleted it.
Fortunately I've got a relatively uncommon last name, so I don't get that much random stuff. Google is pretty good at figuring out what is and isn't spam on its own.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding me? Her downfall was that she was treated too well
OK, having seen the way the US media treated Hillary Clinton, I can only conclude you did not watch any of the coverage.
Trump got a free pass on anything stupid he said, the only thing you heard about Clinton was "Email", "Podesta" and "Lock her up". All charges that were later dropped once the Republicans got in. The media, especially the Murdoch media was so biased against Clinton it was funny, it wasn't even subtle.
I have no doubt the Russians manipulated the US election, an unstable US with economic problems is in Russia's advantage. Russia no longer has the power to go toe to toe with the other major powers in the world (EU, China and the US), economically, politically or militarily. So they need to weaken other countries through less conventional means to remain a world power (I'd be very unsurprised if the Russians weren't manipulating China, mostly through North Korea, they have to get their missile technology and expertise from somewhere).
The US elections were manipulated, by Murdoch and by the Russians.
But if you're looking for someone to blame, don't blame Murdoch or the Russians, to find the blame you need only find the nearest mirror.
Yes that's right, you were manipulated, but its because you let yourself be manipulated. You swallowed such obvious bullshit. You swallowed so much of it that you cant even tell what actually happened any more, nor how much trouble you're in. There's a reason the GBP is trading near an 11 month high against the dollar... Whilst the GBP is trading at near 11 month lows against most other currencies. You accept carefully prepared soundbites without fact checking, you look to propaganda over reality and this will come back to bite you.
Like most people who live in the ROTW, we look at your news sources and wonder how you can be so easily manipulated. Semi-legitimate sources like Fox News use the same tricks that we expect from state run news agencies in despotism that produce nothing but government approved propaganda, we see through them in an instant. Its gotten so bad that people are now looking for more extremely biased organisations like Brietbart because Fox News allows the tiniest sliver of fact through and realistically, until this is fixed, the US is on a downward spiral. The most effective defence of a democracy is an informed populace, so the corollary must follow that a wilfully ignorant population is it's destruction.
Long time Slashdot readers will know how it was always Microsoft, and then later on SCO, who were accused of causing harm to Linux distributions, and open source software in general. Yet it's now becoming more and more apparent that it's not outside influences that are most harmful to Linux and open source, but rather it's the open source projects that destroy themselves by making idiotic and unwanted changes,
This is and isn't true. It's true now but I remember the age when SCO and MS were fighting tooth and nail to destroy Linux. They were a lot more destructive than the most pigheaded designers or developers. The reason that errant project leaders seem to be the problem these days is because the SCO threat was destroyed and Microsoft have simply accepted that Linux exists and have given up fighting (no doubt due to internal changes during the late 00's), people who don't remember those times forget just how much of a threat they were. The fact there is still a FOSS community is because these threats were destroyed almost a decade ago.
In that respect it is a good thing the worst thing about the open source community is that we have developers making unwanted changes. In a way this is good as it spurs new projects but that's a useful side effect to a bad thing, like the way that a bad gastro bug promotes weight loss. I think the biggest threat to open source is apathy. We've rested on our laurels too much, become too comfortable and now we have another company rising that threatens to be worse than Microsoft... and many here herald their rise with celebrator cheer.
Firefox is another example. Years of unwanted changes forced on its users by the Firefox developers have caused these users to flee to Chrome and other browsers
Not strictly true. The worst mistake the Firefox developers made was not taking the mobile device market seriously.
The other problem they have is one that Open Source railed against for years under the iron fisted reign of Microsoft... pre-installed browsers. Every Android device comes with Chrome, a lot of personal computers come with Chrome pre-installed. A lot of Chrome's user base is there because they've thought to use another browser, this is why Chrome has the lions share of the market (50% +). Safari is the same, but restricted to Apple devices which is why it's in 2nd place with 14% of the market. In fact in the case of most Apple devices, users have no choice but to use Safari. This is why I consider Apple to be the new Microsoft... and they aren't nearly as... shall we say "nice" as Microsoft were in the 90's and 00's.
Apple is now the threat, not just to Open Source, but to almost all the freedom we've come to expect from computers. Imagine if Microsoft prohibited any other browser but Edge in Windows 11, or forced us to go to the Microsoft store to get software because we couldn't install it from any other source... We'd nail MS to the wall, well if there were anything left to nail to the wall after their partners and major clients were finished with them... So why do we accept this behaviour from Apple?
If your answer to that question is anything but "I don't and nor should anyone else" then you are part of the problem. Apple are already committing the same excesses that made Microsoft so hated and despised in the 90's... but in a far more extreme form and are being celebrated for it. Apple abides open source as long as they get what they want, but what they want is total control so you're gambling that they'll come for open source last. Fortunately, we still have an option and powerful opposition to Apple, unfortunately it's Google. Much as we relied on IBM to destroy SCO, not because IBM cared about FOSS, but because IBM and FOSS shared a common enemy, FOSS and in fact anyone who wants to have any form of control over their computer is now depending on Google... and as much as I dislike a monoculture, Google's is far less restrictive and destructive than Apple's.
No doubt the fanboys are frothing at the mouth, ready to mod this into oblivion but this needs to be said and I will not be scared of saying it because it offends a few fanboys.
it should only count as an addiction if it interferes with your life.
There are plenty of functional alcoholics, smokers, even users of heroin. Just because you've managed to incorporate it into your life doesn't mean your not addicted
Just because you manage to incorporate something into your life, doesn't mean you're addicted to it.
In fact when it doesn't interfere with your life, its pretty much not an addiction. Addiction is defined as a substance or activity that becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary responsibilities and concerns. So someone managing a drinking or gambling habit so that it does NOT interfere with their lives is not an addict. You can argue that it isn't healthy, but its not an addiction if they're not sacrificing for it. An addict isn't someone who drinks regularly, an addict is someone who eschews eating to afford to drink.The difference is when it comes down to food or drink, the non addict picks food where as the addict picks drink.
There is a huge difference between use and abuse and another difference between abuse and dependence.
I've yet to see anyone, no matter how glued to their phone that will give up food for screen time. So I'm calling bollocks and Betteridges on this "phone addiction" BS. Seriously, deprive someone of a phone for a few days and they'll get over it pretty quick. They'll find another way to entertain themselves. Deprive a smoker of cigarettes and you'll see some pretty bad mood swings. Anyone who compares the two is a complete moron.
You are basically coming from the "my lies are as valid as your facts" camp, and your signature confirms that.
This,
I should also point out that his signature makes absolutely no logical sense. He needs a better thought terminating cliche.
Actually, third parties have reviewed the fact checkers, and overall found that their bias is minimal. What's more, decent fact-checking organizations document supporting evidence directly in their reports - so you can see things for yourselves.
The problem the parent poster has is that the minimal bias of the fact checkers does not match his own bias.
He's worried his echo chamber is going to be violated by something he doesn't want to hear.
Facebook's problem is two fold.
1. They want to be taken seriously.
2. They've built their success on making echo chambers.
Facebook, whether we like it or not has become a source for news, much the same as any other aggregator of news. They don't produce it, but they distribute it. In order to be taken seriously, they need to reduce the amount of fake news. You will say this is simple enough, and it would be if it weren't for point #2. In order to gain legitimacy, they have to penetrate the echo chambers, for most of us this doesn't matter but we're not the problem. Its the small number of extremists who have spent their time specially cultivating their feeds from Brietbart, Natural News, Zero Hedge, so on and so forth, To these people, an opposing argument is something to be crushed with aggression and vitriol, not because the opposing view is right (or wrong, to extremists this is irrelevant) but because it makes them question their own views. Extremism does not survive for long when exposed to a rational society, so anything rational must be crushed, denied and driven out of the echo chamber.
Whilst Facebook could afford to lose these types, these types of extremists will fight tooth and nail to make it hard not simply because they believe in some insane shit... but because they believe it to a point where they think everyone has to listen and silently agree with them.
I think the only way for a baseline neutral is opposing views. I don't think CNN's or Fox's bias are bad. I think they are both equally biased in opposite directions. By regularly paying attention to both of them, you can get a fairly neutral view.
Sounds fine in principle, but this is exactly how we ended up with "teach the controversy" the "global warming debate" and the "vaccination scare".
Opposing views do not always have the same weight or basis in fact. Presenting them as if they do does not make the presentation baseline neutral, it biases it towards the lunatic fringe.
This, refusing to accept some uneducated idiots opinion as legitimate opposition to fact is not bias.
The saddest part of modern society is that people think that their ignorance is worth as much as scientific knowledge.
Her argument makes sense only when you look at the context it is made in. She is the leader of a party which held an election recently, thinking that their main opponent was so utterly useless that the result would be a massively increased majority for them. In this assumption, she and her party were wrong, because the opposition rightly surmised that telling outright lies and promising untold riches stolen from "the rich" via tax, borrowing and printing more money would increase their vote share by persuading the younger and stupider voters to vote for them.
This technique worked.
Mrs May is now working with a greatly reduced majority, and cannot steamroller through unpopular or just plain wrong-headed legislation at will.
This.
The Conservatives got their arses handed to them in the snap election.
The Conservatives aren't in the majority and are relying on deals with two northern Irish parties to get a majority in parliament. Sinn Fein (former IRA party who are very unpopular with the militarists and many older English, the backbone of the conservatives) and the Democractic Unionist Party (DUP) who are very unpopular with everyone because their stated goal is to funnel money from the other parts of the UK into Northern Ireland. Also Sinn Fein and DUP dont really like each other much.
So May's position is very precarious to say the least. So this kind of thing is just a way of distracting the hoi polloi from the real issues of our worsening economy and the fact that Brexit negotiations are going exactly the way the remainers said they would. Basically, the government is now parroting an old BBC Sitcom called "Yes Minister".
Minister: The people are unimpressed with our performance.
Lackey: Say something stupid to distract them.
This is a common conservative move when they're losing popularity. Get people to focus on something other than the issues they themselves have caused.
The post is flame bait, whatever. Sony phones have cameras that are years ahead of the iphone. That said, nobody who knows anything about photography expects a phone to replace a DSLR. The sensors and lenses simply cannot be even remotely similar, due to size limitations in phones.
This,
Considering its from 9to5mac, we can safely assume that the article is biased fanboy fellatio.
However we can apply Betteridges law of headlines as well as reality and say no. No simply because Iphones still don't automatically adjust the orientation of the picture based on the internal Gyro. If I'm holding my nexus 5 upside down, it'll automatically rotate the picture to the orientation I'm holding my camera. Meanwhile, my Iphone holding colleague has sent me another upside down picture (fortunately the default picture viewer in Windows allows me to rotate).
That being said, if I'm going anywhere that I'll be serious about taking photos, I'll take a camera.
The end of the DSLR for most people has already arrived. I left my professional camera at home and took these shots at dinner with my iPhone 7
Translation: Hipsters who used to use a $1,000 DSLR as a $70 point-and-shoot are now using a $1,000 iPhone as a $70 point-and-shoot. The DSLR isn't going away any time soon for anyone who cares about proper photography.
Neither are point and shoots. I recently went to the Goodwood FoS with a mate. I had a 4 year old Canon P&S (albeit a quite good one), he had the latest Samsung. He was astounded after the level of quality in my shots of fast moving cars. Furhter more, I can get my camera out of pocket and powered on in less time than it takes me to open my camera app on my Nexus 5 (and yes, I've got a shortcut on the shortcuts bar... I probably should replace it with maps or something as I hardly ever use the camera, but I digress). The P&S simply had better optics, a faster shutter, an optical zoom, faster focusing actuators and better processor and image sensor.
Whilst it's 100% true that having a better camera wont make you a better photographer, the reverse isn't true. No amount of talent in the world can get good shots out of bad cameras. As the old saying goes, a poor craftsman blames his tools but the corollary is a good craftsman buys better tools. Things have gone back to the way they were, DSLR's are the domain of professionals, P&S are the domain of amateurs, phones are good for non photographers or when you dont have a camera handy.
Those prefacing the iPhone 8's arrival with "X already done here, Y already done there" are once again missing the point.
People don't buy Apple products because they're the first to market with an insignificant number of less than excellently integrated features.
Those who think people are buying the Iphone because it has excellently integrated features couldn't have missed the point further if they were facing in the completely wrong direction and the point was in another country altogether.
In 2012, it was revealed that 4 out of every 5 Iphone purchases was made by someone who previously owned an Iphone. I'm willing to bet that statistic would now be closer to 19 out of every 20.
People are buying the iphone because they are emotionally attached, financially invested or technologically locked into buying another Iphone. In fact Apple has been losing marketshare in it's original markets because people are finally realising that the myth of Apple's "quality" and "Integration" is just that, a myth.
I have an Android phone and a Windows phone for work. Honestly the Windows phone is miles ahead of the interfact and application integration of the Iphone, Windows phone is the most integrated, but that has the downside of being the least useful for anything MS hasn't designed it for (it makes phone calls and integrates with Office, so it's fine as a work phone but I'd never buy one personally). The Iphone for me has been the most frustrating device I've ever had to use, just typing on it frustrates me to throwing it because the keyboard is so counter intuitive (I dont have this issue with the Windows Phone, so it isn't Android fanboyism).
However you've admitted one thing, if you want to know what the Iphone might get in 18-24 months, look at what Android is offering now.
Around 4.4% of the population said they were Muslim at the last census (2011). Keep in mind that the census tends to inflate the numbers because the people filling it in put their kids down as being religious when they aren't really and stop participating when they grow up.
Anyway, that's up 1.7% since 2001, so in a decade. At that rate, by 2050 a massive 10% of the population will be Muslim. I don't think we have too much to worry about.
Beyond that, what makes these fools think that they're all going to be bent on establishing a caliphate. Most immigrant Muslims are happy to be here, doing menial jobs for decent pay (on a global scale) instead of back in their home countries eeking out a living, never getting ahead.
Someone on minimum wage here in the UK can have a decent used car, late model phone, decent accommodation and no debt. That's what being a developed country means.
The problem the UK has been having with extremists of late has been mostly with 2nd or beyond generations, people born here in the UK and I'm willing to bet a lot of that can be traced back to worsening economic conditions in the UK rather than ISIS recruiting. Take the Westminster attacker. UK born, converted to Islam in prison, was in prison because of a history of violent offences. a 20% increase in his bills would definitely have driven him over the edge.
The EU has given us more power, more control and more sovereignty.
What they meant when they said "lost sovereignty" to the EU is that they can no longer say that people of the wrong colour, accent or believing in the wrong sky faerie should be sent home.
I am an immigrant to the UK... but I get a free pass because I've got the right skin colour, accent and as far as the EDL is concerned, religion. I'm a white Anglo from Australia who came here expressly to take a high paying job. Overall my experience here has been very positive and British people are generally quite friendly and welcoming, but there are a very small number of racists and xenophobes who are very upset that they're not able to say racists and xenophobic things without opposition.
"Sovereignty" was never about laws and governance. It was always about race, religion and accents.
The British joined the EU with special conditions because their economy was in really bad shape.
And if we were to leave our economy would go straight back to that state.
The British automotive industry, which is actually quite a strong sector, is something the Germans and French would love to kill but are presently powerless to do so. Post Brexit, all they have to do is put a small tariff on it and boom, it's gone. Toyota and Honda will move production to Spain and the Czech Republic, Vauxhauls will be imported from Europe, Fords from Europe and the Americas. Luxury marques like Aston martin, McLaren, RR, et al. haven't been profitable for decades (and most are now owned in part or full by ze Germans).
The Auto industry in the UK exists because it's cheaper to operate here than in Germany or France and we have more educated and motivated workforce than cheaper European countries. Add a tariff and we become more expensive, sales fall and factories shut down. The UK alone is not big enough to sustain a car industry, we depended on the sales from 300 million Europeans. Almost overnight the British car industry will become 5 blokes in a shed in Leicestershire.
The same with many other products, at first this will be cushioned by the fact we'll have a large glut of domestic produce in some areas because Europeans have stopped buying our products... but this means they'll all be selling at a loss so it's self correcting as business shut down. The Tories will have to change their slogan from "Britain's open for business" to "Could the last one out please switch off the lights".
That's why I firmly believe that Brexit will never happen. The person who signs that order will be forever remembered as the one who destroyed the United Kingdom, something that dictators, churches, foreign powers and the French have failed to do for centuries. Hammond, Davis and that utter muppet Boris Johnson are being set up to take the fall for Brexit failing, probably the only smart thing T-May has done in office.
You are spot on. The biggest country in Western Europe is France, and it falls between the size of California and Texas. Most people simply haven't a clue of the scale of the United States of America,
Hi, I'm Australian, Australia is roughly the size of the continental US and has a much lower population density. We had a workable plan to fibre up most of the country and provide fixed wireless (LTE Advanced) to most rural areas with satalite covering the rest. The requirement was for 12 MBit and the technology could have delivered it.
Australia called this, the National Broadband Network.
So you know nothing of scale and nothing about how it isn't a hindrance.
So what happened to Australia's NBN which if left alone, would have been delivered by this year. Well the conservative government got in and ruined it because it was a good idea from the other side of government. That is what the US needs to fix, the US government is not regulating the industry properly.
Government jerks found a new excuse to steal $15 to $99 from random people walking around minding their own business.
Yes, but they're stealing it from careless, inconsiderate, phone addled jerks.
This reduces their requirement to extract money from me, being perfectly capable of not stupidly walking out in front of cars because I've stupidly buried my head in my phone.
This is a tax on stupid jerks... I'm in no way unhappy with that.
The goal is to protect the motorist. Even if the pedestrian completely deserved to be removed from the gene pool, accidentally killing someone who walks into the street is quite traumatic and the idiots looking at their phones shouldn't have the right to inflict that on a random stranger.
Not to mention my insurance. If they cant get money from the other party because they're dead or permanently disabled and unable to work... I have to pay and possibly lose my NCD.
Beyond that, most pedestrians wont die, rather they'll have a debilitating injury or disability that will make them a burden on the rest of us.
If you can't pull your eyes away from your phone long enough to safely cross a street... whoever hits you is helping Darwin and they're the one and only person getting my sympathy.
Legislation SHOULD be passed... freeing the motorist from liability.
As a man who has just picked up a new 2 series (and paid his insurance) Darwin wont help me when a careless zombie embeds themself in my engine bay. You cant really get money from a dead person (who probably has more debts than savings by an order of magnitude).
Sorry to trouble you, but, um ... what are the apps? What are they named?
Or better yet, what are the publishers named.
Also, 20 apps out of how many hundreds of thousands?
No, this is a story about raising taxes on the middle class,
Are things so bad now in the US that an income of $150,000 is middle class. I mean I haven't checked the exchange rate since this morning but at the time US$150,000 was around £115,000. Over here you stop being middle class around £80,000.
I'm middle income, middle class, if I earned £115,000, I'd have a house paid off within 5-8 years.
Make no mistake, this is a tax on the wealthy, not the ultra rich like Trump, but those who have a very good income. This is emphatically not an attack on the middle or lower classes.
The problem with eCigs is the amount of vapor these things give off. In a work or school environment even driving, the vapor cloud is huge and distracting.
I'm in the same boat as the GP. If someone sparks up in a large room, I'll smell it, doesn't matter where it is in the room, within a few moments I'll know about it. Smokers dont get how much they smell, when I smoked I certainly didn't (well over 15 years ago now). This is because cigarettes deaden your sense of smell and taste. Within a few weeks of quitting I regained these senses and realised how bad smoking smelled.
Vaping is nowhere near as bad as smoking. Sure I don't really like walking through the vape clouds which are usually some sickly sweet scent... but I'd much rather walk through 100 vapers with the most annoying cherry flavoured vapes that have to suffer through the acrid stench of a single cigarette.
As I said above, most smokers don't know how bad they smell, as such are completely inconsiderate about it towards non smokers. Also, pretty certain that vaping is not permitted in a school or inside a building here in the UK either, so same rules as smoking.
Islam is not a race.
And this excuses bigotry... How?
Sure the technical term isn't racism, it's xenophobia. However most xenophobes are so dumb they cant understand words with more than two syllables, they're also dumb enough that they think anyone besides them is going to be fooled by the old "Islam is not a race" excuse and will forgive their bigoted bollocks.
So the term racism has become interchangeable with xenophobia because the practical difference between a racist and a xenophobe is the practical difference between being a jerk and being a jerk.
First you have to stop certain religious groups in the first world telling people in the second and third worlds that birth control is a sin.
First off, I agree.
Secondly... It won't help nearly as much. The impetus to have a lot of children in developing and undeveloped nations is that children take care of the elders when they cant work any more. So more children == a better retirement. This is why many non-christian/muslim developing nations have high birth rates. The Thai govt in the 70's handed out free condoms, combined with sexual education it cut disease rates (in the 1970's Thailand was tipped to have an AIDS epidemic... this never happened) but didn't affect family sizes that much.
Thirdly, 1st, 2nd and 3rd world monikers don't actually reflect economic conditions. For example, Switzerland and Sweden are third world countries whilst Thailand and the Dominican Republic are first world. This is because 1st, 2nd and 3rd world defined what side the nation was on in the cold war.
1st world == Aligned with the US and NATO.
2nd world == Aligned with the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc (note: this does not exist any more).
3rd world == Unaligned.
My big issue with using them to describe whether a country is rich or poor is that "3rd world" does not differentiate between a developing nation like India and an undeveloped one like Sudan. Now of course I know what you meant because I speak English to such a degree that I understand colloquial definitions. But if you're making a report to the UN Security Council, you'd do well to use "developed", "developing" and "undeveloped" instead of first or third world.
Medically - politically - I have to look at the calendar everyday because it feels like I'm in a time warp and it's really 1917.
Not quite,
In 1917, the medical profession was quite well respected. Few people would believe some publication printed by a discredited quack (Wakefield) or some snake oil salesman (David "Avocado" Wolfe) that is very light on fact and mainly uses fear and thought terminating cliches over the reviewed publications of medical professionals. No reputable publisher would touch it. People would take the advice of their doctors, or at least seek out another medical professional to help them over healing crystals and herbal remedies.
Now whilst the medical professionals of the US haven't done themselves any favours in recent decades by becoming drug salesmen, they are not really to blame here. As much as I hate saying this, the Internet is to blame. Now I think the internet is the most important development since the steam engine, it has had the unfortunate side effect of giving charlatans a lot of influence over the stupid. A comfortable life free of debilitating disease, the decline of public education and a culture that glorifies stupidity has made the internet the perfect hunting ground for fraudsters and snake oil merchants like David "Avocado" Wolfe and Belle Gibson to gather small hordes of blindly aggressive, unthinking followers.
To fix this, I would not propose in any way to change the internet, what we need to do is stop glorifying stupidity, we need to stop accepting and even tolerating it. One of the greatest tragedies of the modern age is that someone thinks their ignorance is worth as much as a professionals knowledge. This means that we'll need to insult a few snowflakes, point out that they're not smart enough to be contradicting medical and/or scientific professionals and uniformly ignore their opinions. We've seen the fad of fat shaming, why aren't we dumb shaming?
Yes, the Internet has given Anti-Vaxxers and their ilk a powerful platform. But it has given us so many other benefits so it's a case of society needing to change to accommodate the internet, not the internet changing to accommodate the stupid of our society. The internet has given us near unlimited access to information, not all of it accurate and true information so people need to change to become more critical of information and the only way we can do this is by better education.
It would be great if libertarian principles applied to vaccines (my base ideology is libertarian), but:
If we applied Liberatarian principles to vaccination, we'd be handing the Anti-Vaxxers the argument on a silver platter... because unlike Libertarian principles... vaccines work in the real world.
Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
This.
I'm in the same boat as the OP, I've got @gmail.com (I.E. jsmith@gmail.com) and some silly tart in South Africa keeps using (she has jsmith1@gmail.com). I've just marked it as spam and moved on... although there was an interesting email from her lawyer, she sounds like a shitty landlord to be engaging a lawyer for what was detailed... but again I just deleted it.
Fortunately I've got a relatively uncommon last name, so I don't get that much random stuff. Google is pretty good at figuring out what is and isn't spam on its own.