With the announcement by May that she wants a hard Brexit, companies have started to announce that they are either leaving or starting to plan for that eventuality. HSBC has already announced 1000 jobs moving to France.
If you listened to May's speech she didn't say she wanted a hard Brexit. It was the media that reported it that way.
And companies like HSBC said before the referendum that if there was a brexit, jobs would go to Europe.
The news yesterday is that the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that parliament has to vote on Brexit before talks can even begin. This is Microsoft saying to MP's that there will be consequences if there is a Brexit. Most of us expected this, without access to Europe a lot of industries are simply going to shut up shop here in the UK.
A voice activated 3D TV with a built in Blu-ray player.
We'll own the market.
Fixed that for you.
Given how even after all this time, DVD is still selling better than Blu-Ray and probably always will until the both have been killed by download or another format.
That's not entirely true, you can own a gun in the UK- most people can't own concealable handguns, but sporting guns you can. The guns that are allowed are tightly regulated.
The result: very low gun crime. I've often thought the US should follow a similar policy. Most gun crime is committed by people with concealable handguns. You don't have to ban guns completely, you can have a right to bare arms, maintain an armed citizenry that can protect itself, without completely banning guns.
If you ban handguns, you eliminate most of the crime.
The purpose most people state for right to bare arms, is so that the government can't run rough-shod over the people. If that's true, if you're going to mount an insurrection, you're going to want to do it with rifles, not small handguns.
This, guns are controlled in the UK, not banned. You need to be licensed and firearms registered, just like cars which are per use, less dangerous than firearms.
Also when it comes to modern revolutions, you are pretty much entirely dependent on the military, in part or in whole, being part of the revolution. Without this you only end up with situations like Waco which only end in the favour of the government.
You're also entirely correct about guns and cirme. When guns are controlled, crime is also reduced. I live in the UK, the worst thing I worry about are my car being broken into when I'm not there. If someone were to attack me with a bat or knife, I know how to defend against that unarmed (I also know how to take a gun off someone, but that is mainly for shits and giggles). Although conventional wisdom says, if you're in a knife fight you're going to get cut I can say I prefer the notion of having to nurse a few lacerations compared to a gunshot wound. Much higher chance of surviving a stab wound than a 9mm, especially since you can block a knife with your arm and only get a slash there.
If I lived in a place with an abundance of guns I wouldn't be so unconcerned with the potential for being attacked... And having a concealed weapon is no defence when an attacker will already have a gun pointed at you. As any shooter knows, you always treat a gun as being loaded and locked (yep, I've owned guns). This is because the criminal will get the jump on you and it's not like you can say "excuse me Mr Crim, could you not shoot me whist I pull my own gun out", fuck no, if even look like going for a weapon you're brown bread mate.
Finally there will be gun control in America.. about 10 seconds after the rich feel threatened by the peasantry. That's more or less much how it happened here in the UK in the 1900's and 20's, the irony is we aren't any less free than you (we just have less crime and fewer gun deaths). Go back and see my point about revolutions and Waco, your AR15 is no threat to criminals or the government.
And when do you expect to get the raise that will allow you go buy the now more expensive product? Someone making $15/hr already who gets no raise when the minimum goes to $15/hr will be in serious trouble as the prices for everything that come from current minimum wage workers goes up to cover your largesse. I'm glad you have lots of excess cash now that you can spend on the more expensive products, but most people do not.
Sorry to interrupt your lecture on crackpot economics 101 (or introduction to economic fallacies) but there are many, many nations throughout the world that demonstrates this is not the case. The UK, Australia, Japan and and many European nations demonstrate that paying a livable minimum wage does not result in mass unemployment. Quite the opposite in fact, paying people a livable wage enables them to buy things like rent and food instead of living in a leased car in a car park and subsisting on whatever they could get from Poundland.
In fact Henry Ford's entire business model depended on his employees being paid enough to buy his own products... And that worked out fantastically for him as compared to Uber... who are haemorrhaging cash.
Well, to be fair...not every job out there is meant to be a full time, "real" job that you earn your full living from....
I mean, uber is just a side money job, that's it. I mean, should I pay a living wage to the kid down he block to mow my lawn or rake leaves...or baby site my kid, and throw in full blown benefits too?
I know I"m moving closer and closer to the "get off my lawn" crowd, but please tell me, I missed it..when did things change an EVERY job available became one where you were supposed to make a living from and have a career?
I mean, when did burger flipping become a "real job" instead of something teens did in high school?
Since burgers have been available within school hours.
So it always was, the question is why do you think it's a job for high school teens only when Micky D's runs 24 hours.
Uber is advertising itself as a full time career when it suits it but pretends that its ad hock when it is called out on its bullshit.. However we should have learned by now that Uber is lying out its arse about everything.
Where the hell did you get that? Yes, there were people driven by religious zeal and whatnot, but for most of the European nobility the crusades were a chance to conquer a land for themselves, for as second born they had no claim to the land the firstborn got.
If you go down the list of noble participants of the various crusades, you will come up with a handful of landed leaders who wanted to ensure that the new "owners" will swear fealty to them and a huge number of landless nobles who wanted some.
Yes, religion was just the excuse used. As Napoleon sad "A man does not get himself killed for a piece of ribbon or a petty distinction, you must speak to the soul to electrify him". Men fought the crusades in the name of god, but the benefit of a few leaders, of course people being people, if told the truth would never have travelled half way around the world to fight and die for a few rich arseholes who were just being greedy, so they turn it into a holy war to get the peasantry whipped up into a frenzy.
You know what, in the intervening 500 odd years, little has changed. Religious wars are still fought for the benefit of a few powerful arseholes. There is no such thing as a innately violent religion, only men who twist it to their designs. The only real change in this method is that some leaders have been forced to use newer justifications to get people to go to war for the benefit of rich arseholes, religion having fallen out of favour with the local populace.
What's to stop people from going to Venezuela and buying 10 copies of Final Cut Pro and bringing it back to the US? Unless you are suggesting that they start region locking software, controlling which country you can use software in depending on where you bought it.
The fact that they will be able to do it online. Seriously, almost all software is digital download these days, only the purchase needs to go via Venezuela (and possibly the activation, but a/.er should know how to handle that).
There was once a time right up until the early 00's where it was cheaper to fly from Perth, Western Australia to Los Angeles to buy 5 copies of Creative Suite than it was to buy it locally including flights, 2 nights accommodations and the average wage of an Australian for a full working week.
After the mid 00's that kind of activity was made redundant by the internet and couldn't be stopped by the fact the Govt made it legal to buy grey imports.
Today too many dumb people consider a well written computer program to be AI, like Alexa. Alexa will not threaten humanity because it's really not 'artificial intelligence' to start with, it's just a clever piece of software.
FTFY
We are nowhere near having real 'AI' yet and won't be for decades.
Only if you're thinking about AI in terms of strong AI.
Alexa and many other equivalents are examples of weak AI. They operate within limited perimeters, generally aren't capable of determining actions by themselves or determine outcomes/actions based on a large set of historical data, generally using formulas to determine next steps. More or less they're still dependent on humans giving them directions or at the least, a dataset.
You're right that we are decades, if not centuries away from strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence that is truly capable of self determination or put simply, an AI that can think in the way a human can. However weak AI is something we've had for a while now. It takes at least 25 years for an invention to go from development to everyday life and it's fair to say that weak AI has pretty much reached that point.
The H-!B program prohibited the replacement of American workers before, but ways were found to get around it. This bill is really saying the same thing with the addition of foreign students getting preference for them? Maybe I'm being a negative nellie here but it seems that this bill doesn't do anything extra than the original bill did except give domestic STEM workers more competition to get into good schools due to an influx of students looking for the H-1B ride.
You're not being a Negative Nellie. You're being a Realistic Ryan.
Only a fool thinks Trump is magically fixing the H1B problem. Like the Parent said, there were always provisions to prevent H-1B's from taking jobs from Americans, but there were loopholes that were easy to exploit so expect a status quo ante trump. You've got to be naive in the extreme not to know that big business butters Trump's bread, he's not going to do anything to jepordise that, in the mean time if a bit of hand waving can appease the bleating masses, then it's a win-win.
Patriotism has never been a dirty word. Misuse of the words "patriot" and "patriotism", though, has stained the words to the point where they're immediately associated with something being covered up (see: USA PATRIOT Act).
Nationalism, though, has been a dirty word since the '40s when nationalism's big brother "Fascism" became a bit of an issue for people living in the countries immediately adjacent.
This.
Having pride in your country because its something to be proud of is patriotism, a patriot strives to improve his country.
Demanding your country is recognised as superior without merit is nationalism. A nationalist seeks to belittle other countries to make his own look better.
A patriot does not mind people criticising their country, a Nationalist or Jingoist does not permit any questions about his beliefs.
I just got back from Holland. contrary to popular American views is actually a nation of people who are very proud to be Dutch, I think the confusion comes in the way the Dutch express their patriotism. Everywhere I went I was asked "You are from England, how are you enjoying Holland". Hell, even the Dutch customs officer asked me how my trip was on the way out of Schipol. The Dutch take great pride in their hospitality and friendliness. Because of this, they are actually quite open to criticism, seeing it as a means of improvement (or at the worst, know when a critisim is not valid and should be ignored).
Even though I'm technically an Australian, I really dont mind being called English (I live there now). It happens all the time in the US, I consistently am asked "What part of England are you from" (which should be "which" part) and respond with "I'm from this small island a bit south of England called Australia". Well I guess I cant use that one any more. Sorry for the Grandpa Simpson story, and yes I did have an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time.
So it's a shame that I have to use my own country as an example of nationalism, particularly as nationalism pretending to be patriotism. Traditionally, for an Australian to be proud of Australia, we were proud of its accomplishments, accomplishments that often outshone larger nations. It was always an easy going pride, the idea was that you didn't have to wave a flag or recite a poem to be a proud Australian. The Australian way used to be giving people a fair go, being kind and generous to your friends. Sure it was always cliquey but nowhere near the level of outright xenophobia you see today. The people in Australia who label themselves "patriots" are nothing but xenophobic ultra-nationalists who have adopted ironically un-Australian sayings like "Fuck off, we're full", make barely coherent arguments about "boat people" who are allegedly "destroying the Australian way of life" and "taking jobs from Hard working Australians" (lets ignore that the speaker has probably been on the dole for the last 4 years).
Sure I know plenty of people who like Australia, who would like to express their pride, but are too scared of being associated with the likes of Reclaim Australia because... because to be frankly Australian about it, they aren't racists fuckwits like One Nation and Reclaim Australia.
I see the same thing here now I've lived in England for a while. There's lots to celebrate about English culture (not the food, but I digress) however nationalists like the EDL (English Defence Leauge) make it hard for ordinary English to do this because they deliberately try to weld being a proud Englishmen to a xenophobic ideology... And I think that's a bloody shame.
My Valcun first officer tells me we're running the risk of Klangon attack, but I never listen to that pointy-nosed pink-blooded twerp.
Ironically you should mention this.
The series Andromeda was based on unused material from Gene Roddenberry, much of which was from Star Trek so its no surprise that a lot of it was very similar (I.E. Commonwealth == Federation and Nietzschiens == Klingons). However it was picked up by another production company so someone ran a find/replace through it just enough to avoid Paramount's lawyers.
The few Finns I've talked to seem rattled by Russia's annexation of Ukraine. Like Crimea, Finland was once a territory of Russia. So I expected that Finns would not be happy about having a US president that doesn't support NATO and has almost forgiven Russia for their acts in the Ukraine. Finland has been moving to join NATO for over 10 years.
This.
And one of the things he said in his inauguration speech was that he wanted to reduce the trade restrictions with Russia. Putin has got his two favourite things, a destabilised Europe and a Ruski friendly US president... Basically no-one to oppose him. I hope the GGP speaks Russian.
Now a few things I noticed were absent from his speech.
1. Lock HER up. That was never going to happen. The whole email thing was deliberately overblown to create a media shitstorm to detract from how bad Trump was. It worked because he bullied the US population into believing a lie. Now that the election is over the Clinton email scandal is being pushed quietly aside. The main reason for this is to protect Trumps own ample orange arse. Whatever he does to Clinton is tacit permission for the same thing to happen to him. So now she'll be treated with a modicum of respect.
2. Mexicans go-home. Another thing that was never going to happen because it meant that he'd have to pay American wages for Americans to clean his properties. That means he'll need to charge Americans prices they cant afford. Trump needs cheap labour.
So two of the key points were clearly and obviously utter bullshit. I bet the people who swallowed this bollocks whole will regret it very shortly.
What was also absent was a plan to reduce the deficit. Sure he had a lot of spending that wont come to fruition because the US Govt is broke and there is only so much debt that they can continue to accumulate.
His attacks on are also very short sighted as they own a significant amount of US debt. They dont need a war to cripple Trump, they just need to ask for what is owed.
No, Nazis are a specific brand of racial and religious supremacy. And you can say that Trump is a bad person without saying he's a Nazi (he'd be a really bad one, seeing as how his daughter converted to Judaism).
So... are you saying he's just a regular, garden variety Fascist, or perhaps just falls into the despot group in general.
Because his first acts were to start putting his friend and family into positions of power... which is something I expect to see in a 3rd world dictatorship, not on the so-called bastion of the free world.
And I suspect that is just the beginning of the comparisons we'll be making between Trump and tin pot dictators.
Those who are less likely to hold back what they are saying are more likely to not hold back what they are thinking. Big surprise.
A slightly subtle point that I think both you and the OP are missing is that honesty is not quite the same as naively or spontaneously expressing whatever goes through your head. I won't provide an example, but it is fully possible to be honest and considerate at the same time, for example, just like it is possible to express even severe anger and dissatisfaction without shouting or getting into a fight.
Whilst I agree with your point, honest requires a certain amount of apathy towards the feelings of others. The truth is not always a comfortable thing, the same drivers that allow you to use an uncomfortable truth can easily be the same driver that stops you from caring when you drop a C-Bomb.
A common scenario, you find out your best friends girl is cheating on him. If you tell him you'll hurt him. There are two main schools of thought here:
1. Tough love, it'll hurt now but be better in the long run.
2. Hope it will abate, is there any harm if he never finds out.
Personally I beleive in #1, I also swear when it's appropriate.
That last part is key. There's a big difference between using profanity appropriately and just spouting off swearwords like a teenager trying to act tough. Using profanity just to be profane is childish, profanity when used in the appropriate situation, such as to express anger, frustration, surprise or used in comedy makes your communication more effective. Knowing when to swear without being offensive is simply about knowing your audience. Yes, like honesty it's also possible to be profane and inoffensive at the same time.
Also people who swear also tend to be smarter due to the fact they generally have a larger vocabulary and use it.
Clinton never grabbed a woman by the pussy, nor endorsed the practice. He got laid, which is different. The problem you and Trump seem to have is that you can't tell the difference between consensual, and non-consensual, sex. They're not equivilent.
To be more accurate, Clinton got a blow job, but still consensual.
Lying only works if you tell the truth often enough that your lie is believed.
At the risk of Godwining this thread... The great masses of the people will more readily believe a big lie than a small one.
The recent US elections are proof of that concept.
The key to lying successfully is not to tell the truth, but to make people believe you're telling the truth. There are quite a few tricks here but I'll go through some of the common ones.
1. Believe your own lie to sell it. 2. Pick your mark. lie to the gullible ones first. Going back to point #1, if you can get others to believe your lie they will repeat it as if it were the truth. 3. Repeat often. Lies need to reach a critical mass to work properly, see point #2 about getting gullible people to repeat it. 4. Alienate critical thought. Make people angry/emotional and they'll be less likely to think critically about your lie. This is the trick used by the likes of Fox News or the Daily Mail to keep their audience satisfied with obvious falsehoods. Anger and other extreme emotional states also have the added benefit of making people more suitable to advertising. 5. Keep your lies consistent.
Telling the truth is often contrary to these points, so it's best avoided.
....is a lie, it reduces image quality just in a way you cannot see visually
If all you want to do is look at the image this is fine, but anything else that needs it full quality will be sacrificed
Well that's kind of the point. They didn't develop this for image manipulation tools... they developed it to save bandwidth on websites. If you cant visually tell the difference, Mission Hay-Fucking-Complished.
Obamacare wasn't much of an answer to America's medical problems, but it is also not much of a problem. It has helped at the margins. Unfortunately, it has helped the insurance companies more than it should have, but that's called politics.
I eagerly await Mr. Trump and his Republican colleague's attempt at improving things.
The problem is,
The Republicans are responsible for the state of the ACA. They stalled it and refused to pass it until it was in a sufficiently neutered state that it couldn't succeed. Basically, the current ACA is what the republicans did in an attempt to "improve" things.
Hey, but I've lived in two nations with working universal health systems.
I completely understand the struggles people who are impacted by a disease and there's a cure out of there, but just costs so much.
At the same time, for all it's flaws in the patent system, in the grand scheme of things... the patent lasts like 5 or 10 or 20 years (I don't know). My point is it's not that long.
Let's remember that the drug wasn't there before. That's the price the society pays for a dynamic drug market.
You invent something; it's prohibitively expensive for a bit, then the price drops.
The alternative is... maybe it's not invented.
The former sadly is easy to rail against. The later is a bit more complex.
You do know that most drugs are actually developed with public money. Universities and government funded research labs. That means we already pay the cost of development, testing, so on and so forth. If it were left up to what was profitable, we'd have almost nothing cured at all.
Also cures and treatments aren't particularly profitable. Big Pharma spends a lot of its research and marketing budget on "lifestyle" drugs which are mostly two things,
1. Hardness pills. Because people with waning libido's will pay anything.
2. Vitamin supplements. Not that these are expensive, but they're so cheap to make because they don't have to pass FDA or equivalent testing. That means they don't have to work, in fact it's better if they dont work because then they cant be accidentally scheduled. They make placebo's a dozen for the penny and sell them a pound for 12 to hipsters and middle aged mothers who think multi-vitamins make them healthy. Their main cost here is advertising, convincing the middle aged mothers that popping a pill each morning compensates for their bad lifestyle choices.
When it comes for a cure for an illness, Big Pharma contributes very little in its development, they just buy up the rights for cheap, manufacture it cheaply and charge a fortune for it. This is why many governments forcibly license patents for local companies to make the drugs.
It's hard to see this being a major success, outside of the (aging, shrinking) Nintendo hardcore. The consensus on gaming sites (and their forums) seems to reinforce this. So do the markets; Nintendo's stocks have fallen around 5.75% since the reveal.
Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo are making money... and they'll make money on this even though its a lack lustre offering.
The Wii U still outsold the XBox One, more importantly it made a profit which Sony hasn't been able to do despite selling more consoles.
So I'll count on Nintendo being around longer than Sony or Microsoft's game divisions as they have to be supported by other divisions. As soon as they get in trouble, games will be axed.
I smoked for nearly two decades -- I was always always self-conscious of the odor and for the last decade mostly smoked outside because I didn't like the odor in my house.
I would have never considered smoking on a plane or anywhere else where it was prohibited, that would have been crazy, you could never get away with it and the punishment was always severe.
About the only place I cheated where smoking was prohibited was an above ground parking ramp connected to my building. They prohibited smoking in the ramp, but I assumed it was more of a non-smoker complaining thing, since (a) the ramp was exposed to the open air, (b) it was filled with vehicle traffic, which meant more toxic output in a minute than 10 cigarettes. Regardless, I only used it as a smoke shelter at odd hours when doing maintenance when there was essentially nobody using the facility.
Fair enough, I'm an ex-smoker myself (haven't had one in over 15 years) but in my experience for every polite smoker, there's usually 10 arrogant ones. The plus side of this is that the polite ones stand out.
The thing is, its not that the ban on smoking on aircraft isn't common knowledge. Its just that some people think they can get away with it. In 2013 I had the misfortune of watching, ashamedly, another Australian shout at an Air Asia hostess for half an hour because he was caught smoking in the toilets. The flight was to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian cops do not mess about when it comes to airport security. This guy was bound and frogmarched off the plane at gunpoint (They bound his hands behind his head). I assume the next thing that happened to him was being put on another plane out of Malaysia. The thing is, if he hadn't of argued he'd probably have gotten away with it (would have avoided a lot of paperwork).
However, vehicle traffic emissions are nowhere near as toxic as cigarette smoke. 2 hours in a shed with an idling diesel is less harmful than one cigarette. The old hose pipe from the exhaust was always a very unsuccessful way to commit suicide as you'd just pass out until some one found you or you woke up with a stalled car. With modern vehicles, you probably wont even get that far. In the UK you'd be banned from smoking there because OH&S says you cant stand idly about high traffic area, they're more worried that you'd fall onto the road.
Nice in theory and if journalists actually aspired to be moral and ethical in their reporting it would be great. However, the problem with all this is NEWS (fake or not) is now a business.
Which is why I dont get my news from businesses... or sites with obvious agendas.
I'd find sources like the BBC to be trustworthy than the Guardian who I find more trustworthy than the Daily Mail which is Fox New's redneck cousin who moved to England and pretends to be erudite.
But I don't trust any one source 100%, there are some I trust reasonably but there are sources such as Fox and the Daily mail who I distrust 100% until I see the news from a less biased source, even then I still treat the article as suspect and wont quote it.
The reason I trust the BBC and similar organisations in Australia (ABC) and Canada (CBC) because they're rarely caught lying, when they are it's almost always an error and a correction is always issued. The reason I distrust the Daily Mail and Fox News is because they've consistently been caught lying, when they are it's found they deliberately fabricated something and they never, ever issue a correction. They are taken to court over these kinds of things often enough that they have a fund to pay off litigants.
BTW, news (or reality) does not have a Liberal bias, in fact it's slightly conservative... It's just that extremists live outside reality.
Slashdot Mirror
With the announcement by May that she wants a hard Brexit, companies have started to announce that they are either leaving or starting to plan for that eventuality. HSBC has already announced 1000 jobs moving to France.
If you listened to May's speech she didn't say she wanted a hard Brexit. It was the media that reported it that way.
And companies like HSBC said before the referendum that if there was a brexit, jobs would go to Europe.
The news yesterday is that the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that parliament has to vote on Brexit before talks can even begin. This is Microsoft saying to MP's that there will be consequences if there is a Brexit. Most of us expected this, without access to Europe a lot of industries are simply going to shut up shop here in the UK.
A voice activated 3D TV with a built in Blu-ray player.
We'll own the market.
Fixed that for you.
Given how even after all this time, DVD is still selling better than Blu-Ray and probably always will until the both have been killed by download or another format.
Will it have suicide nets?
They'd have to be pretty strong to catch the robots that will be working there.
If you are a woman, LGBTQ, a muslim, a black or hispanic person etc., why would you support jobs in a state that helped put Trump into power?
Because you're a decent human being?
No you misread the grand parent, he said why WOULD you support Trump.
That's not entirely true, you can own a gun in the UK- most people can't own concealable handguns, but sporting guns you can. The guns that are allowed are tightly regulated.
The result: very low gun crime. I've often thought the US should follow a similar policy. Most gun crime is committed by people with concealable handguns. You don't have to ban guns completely, you can have a right to bare arms, maintain an armed citizenry that can protect itself, without completely banning guns.
If you ban handguns, you eliminate most of the crime.
The purpose most people state for right to bare arms, is so that the government can't run rough-shod over the people. If that's true, if you're going to mount an insurrection, you're going to want to do it with rifles, not small handguns.
This, guns are controlled in the UK, not banned. You need to be licensed and firearms registered, just like cars which are per use, less dangerous than firearms.
Also when it comes to modern revolutions, you are pretty much entirely dependent on the military, in part or in whole, being part of the revolution. Without this you only end up with situations like Waco which only end in the favour of the government.
You're also entirely correct about guns and cirme. When guns are controlled, crime is also reduced. I live in the UK, the worst thing I worry about are my car being broken into when I'm not there. If someone were to attack me with a bat or knife, I know how to defend against that unarmed (I also know how to take a gun off someone, but that is mainly for shits and giggles). Although conventional wisdom says, if you're in a knife fight you're going to get cut I can say I prefer the notion of having to nurse a few lacerations compared to a gunshot wound. Much higher chance of surviving a stab wound than a 9mm, especially since you can block a knife with your arm and only get a slash there.
If I lived in a place with an abundance of guns I wouldn't be so unconcerned with the potential for being attacked... And having a concealed weapon is no defence when an attacker will already have a gun pointed at you. As any shooter knows, you always treat a gun as being loaded and locked (yep, I've owned guns). This is because the criminal will get the jump on you and it's not like you can say "excuse me Mr Crim, could you not shoot me whist I pull my own gun out", fuck no, if even look like going for a weapon you're brown bread mate.
Finally there will be gun control in America.. about 10 seconds after the rich feel threatened by the peasantry. That's more or less much how it happened here in the UK in the 1900's and 20's, the irony is we aren't any less free than you (we just have less crime and fewer gun deaths). Go back and see my point about revolutions and Waco, your AR15 is no threat to criminals or the government.
And when do you expect to get the raise that will allow you go buy the now more expensive product? Someone making $15/hr already who gets no raise when the minimum goes to $15/hr will be in serious trouble as the prices for everything that come from current minimum wage workers goes up to cover your largesse. I'm glad you have lots of excess cash now that you can spend on the more expensive products, but most people do not.
Sorry to interrupt your lecture on crackpot economics 101 (or introduction to economic fallacies) but there are many, many nations throughout the world that demonstrates this is not the case. The UK, Australia, Japan and and many European nations demonstrate that paying a livable minimum wage does not result in mass unemployment. Quite the opposite in fact, paying people a livable wage enables them to buy things like rent and food instead of living in a leased car in a car park and subsisting on whatever they could get from Poundland.
In fact Henry Ford's entire business model depended on his employees being paid enough to buy his own products... And that worked out fantastically for him as compared to Uber... who are haemorrhaging cash.
Well, to be fair...not every job out there is meant to be a full time, "real" job that you earn your full living from....
I mean, uber is just a side money job, that's it. I mean, should I pay a living wage to the kid down he block to mow my lawn or rake leaves...or baby site my kid, and throw in full blown benefits too?
I know I"m moving closer and closer to the "get off my lawn" crowd, but please tell me, I missed it..when did things change an EVERY job available became one where you were supposed to make a living from and have a career?
I mean, when did burger flipping become a "real job" instead of something teens did in high school?
Since burgers have been available within school hours.
So it always was, the question is why do you think it's a job for high school teens only when Micky D's runs 24 hours.
Uber is advertising itself as a full time career when it suits it but pretends that its ad hock when it is called out on its bullshit.. However we should have learned by now that Uber is lying out its arse about everything.
Where the hell did you get that? Yes, there were people driven by religious zeal and whatnot, but for most of the European nobility the crusades were a chance to conquer a land for themselves, for as second born they had no claim to the land the firstborn got.
If you go down the list of noble participants of the various crusades, you will come up with a handful of landed leaders who wanted to ensure that the new "owners" will swear fealty to them and a huge number of landless nobles who wanted some.
Yes, religion was just the excuse used. As Napoleon sad "A man does not get himself killed for a piece of ribbon or a petty distinction, you must speak to the soul to electrify him". Men fought the crusades in the name of god, but the benefit of a few leaders, of course people being people, if told the truth would never have travelled half way around the world to fight and die for a few rich arseholes who were just being greedy, so they turn it into a holy war to get the peasantry whipped up into a frenzy.
You know what, in the intervening 500 odd years, little has changed. Religious wars are still fought for the benefit of a few powerful arseholes. There is no such thing as a innately violent religion, only men who twist it to their designs. The only real change in this method is that some leaders have been forced to use newer justifications to get people to go to war for the benefit of rich arseholes, religion having fallen out of favour with the local populace.
What's to stop people from going to Venezuela and buying 10 copies of Final Cut Pro and bringing it back to the US? Unless you are suggesting that they start region locking software, controlling which country you can use software in depending on where you bought it.
The fact that they will be able to do it online. Seriously, almost all software is digital download these days, only the purchase needs to go via Venezuela (and possibly the activation, but a /.er should know how to handle that).
There was once a time right up until the early 00's where it was cheaper to fly from Perth, Western Australia to Los Angeles to buy 5 copies of Creative Suite than it was to buy it locally including flights, 2 nights accommodations and the average wage of an Australian for a full working week.
After the mid 00's that kind of activity was made redundant by the internet and couldn't be stopped by the fact the Govt made it legal to buy grey imports.
Today too many dumb people consider a well written computer program to be AI, like Alexa. Alexa will not threaten humanity because it's really not 'artificial intelligence' to start with, it's just a clever piece of software.
FTFY
We are nowhere near having real 'AI' yet and won't be for decades.
Only if you're thinking about AI in terms of strong AI.
Alexa and many other equivalents are examples of weak AI. They operate within limited perimeters, generally aren't capable of determining actions by themselves or determine outcomes/actions based on a large set of historical data, generally using formulas to determine next steps. More or less they're still dependent on humans giving them directions or at the least, a dataset.
You're right that we are decades, if not centuries away from strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence that is truly capable of self determination or put simply, an AI that can think in the way a human can. However weak AI is something we've had for a while now. It takes at least 25 years for an invention to go from development to everyday life and it's fair to say that weak AI has pretty much reached that point.
The H-!B program prohibited the replacement of American workers before, but ways were found to get around it. This bill is really saying the same thing with the addition of foreign students getting preference for them? Maybe I'm being a negative nellie here but it seems that this bill doesn't do anything extra than the original bill did except give domestic STEM workers more competition to get into good schools due to an influx of students looking for the H-1B ride.
You're not being a Negative Nellie. You're being a Realistic Ryan.
Only a fool thinks Trump is magically fixing the H1B problem. Like the Parent said, there were always provisions to prevent H-1B's from taking jobs from Americans, but there were loopholes that were easy to exploit so expect a status quo ante trump. You've got to be naive in the extreme not to know that big business butters Trump's bread, he's not going to do anything to jepordise that, in the mean time if a bit of hand waving can appease the bleating masses, then it's a win-win.
TL;DR,
Nothing is going to change.
Patriotism has never been a dirty word. Misuse of the words "patriot" and "patriotism", though, has stained the words to the point where they're immediately associated with something being covered up (see: USA PATRIOT Act).
Nationalism, though, has been a dirty word since the '40s when nationalism's big brother "Fascism" became a bit of an issue for people living in the countries immediately adjacent.
This. Having pride in your country because its something to be proud of is patriotism, a patriot strives to improve his country.
Demanding your country is recognised as superior without merit is nationalism. A nationalist seeks to belittle other countries to make his own look better.
A patriot does not mind people criticising their country, a Nationalist or Jingoist does not permit any questions about his beliefs.
I just got back from Holland. contrary to popular American views is actually a nation of people who are very proud to be Dutch, I think the confusion comes in the way the Dutch express their patriotism. Everywhere I went I was asked "You are from England, how are you enjoying Holland". Hell, even the Dutch customs officer asked me how my trip was on the way out of Schipol. The Dutch take great pride in their hospitality and friendliness. Because of this, they are actually quite open to criticism, seeing it as a means of improvement (or at the worst, know when a critisim is not valid and should be ignored).
Even though I'm technically an Australian, I really dont mind being called English (I live there now). It happens all the time in the US, I consistently am asked "What part of England are you from" (which should be "which" part) and respond with "I'm from this small island a bit south of England called Australia". Well I guess I cant use that one any more. Sorry for the Grandpa Simpson story, and yes I did have an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time.
So it's a shame that I have to use my own country as an example of nationalism, particularly as nationalism pretending to be patriotism. Traditionally, for an Australian to be proud of Australia, we were proud of its accomplishments, accomplishments that often outshone larger nations. It was always an easy going pride, the idea was that you didn't have to wave a flag or recite a poem to be a proud Australian. The Australian way used to be giving people a fair go, being kind and generous to your friends. Sure it was always cliquey but nowhere near the level of outright xenophobia you see today. The people in Australia who label themselves "patriots" are nothing but xenophobic ultra-nationalists who have adopted ironically un-Australian sayings like "Fuck off, we're full", make barely coherent arguments about "boat people" who are allegedly "destroying the Australian way of life" and "taking jobs from Hard working Australians" (lets ignore that the speaker has probably been on the dole for the last 4 years).
Sure I know plenty of people who like Australia, who would like to express their pride, but are too scared of being associated with the likes of Reclaim Australia because... because to be frankly Australian about it, they aren't racists fuckwits like One Nation and Reclaim Australia.
I see the same thing here now I've lived in England for a while. There's lots to celebrate about English culture (not the food, but I digress) however nationalists like the EDL (English Defence Leauge) make it hard for ordinary English to do this because they deliberately try to weld being a proud Englishmen to a xenophobic ideology... And I think that's a bloody shame.
My Valcun first officer tells me we're running the risk of Klangon attack, but I never listen to that pointy-nosed pink-blooded twerp.
Ironically you should mention this.
The series Andromeda was based on unused material from Gene Roddenberry, much of which was from Star Trek so its no surprise that a lot of it was very similar (I.E. Commonwealth == Federation and Nietzschiens == Klingons). However it was picked up by another production company so someone ran a find/replace through it just enough to avoid Paramount's lawyers.
The few Finns I've talked to seem rattled by Russia's annexation of Ukraine. Like Crimea, Finland was once a territory of Russia. So I expected that Finns would not be happy about having a US president that doesn't support NATO and has almost forgiven Russia for their acts in the Ukraine. Finland has been moving to join NATO for over 10 years.
This.
And one of the things he said in his inauguration speech was that he wanted to reduce the trade restrictions with Russia. Putin has got his two favourite things, a destabilised Europe and a Ruski friendly US president... Basically no-one to oppose him. I hope the GGP speaks Russian.
Now a few things I noticed were absent from his speech.
1. Lock HER up. That was never going to happen. The whole email thing was deliberately overblown to create a media shitstorm to detract from how bad Trump was. It worked because he bullied the US population into believing a lie. Now that the election is over the Clinton email scandal is being pushed quietly aside. The main reason for this is to protect Trumps own ample orange arse. Whatever he does to Clinton is tacit permission for the same thing to happen to him. So now she'll be treated with a modicum of respect.
2. Mexicans go-home. Another thing that was never going to happen because it meant that he'd have to pay American wages for Americans to clean his properties. That means he'll need to charge Americans prices they cant afford. Trump needs cheap labour.
So two of the key points were clearly and obviously utter bullshit. I bet the people who swallowed this bollocks whole will regret it very shortly.
What was also absent was a plan to reduce the deficit. Sure he had a lot of spending that wont come to fruition because the US Govt is broke and there is only so much debt that they can continue to accumulate.
His attacks on are also very short sighted as they own a significant amount of US debt. They dont need a war to cripple Trump, they just need to ask for what is owed.
No, Nazis are a specific brand of racial and religious supremacy. And you can say that Trump is a bad person without saying he's a Nazi (he'd be a really bad one, seeing as how his daughter converted to Judaism).
So... are you saying he's just a regular, garden variety Fascist, or perhaps just falls into the despot group in general.
Because his first acts were to start putting his friend and family into positions of power... which is something I expect to see in a 3rd world dictatorship, not on the so-called bastion of the free world.
And I suspect that is just the beginning of the comparisons we'll be making between Trump and tin pot dictators.
The real question is how quickly Apple will move to reduce prices if/when the Pound recovers?
lol. How quick is "never"?
I'm not sure if he's talking about Apple reducing prices or the Pound recovering.
Those who are less likely to hold back what they are saying are more likely to not hold back what they are thinking. Big surprise.
A slightly subtle point that I think both you and the OP are missing is that honesty is not quite the same as naively or spontaneously expressing whatever goes through your head. I won't provide an example, but it is fully possible to be honest and considerate at the same time, for example, just like it is possible to express even severe anger and dissatisfaction without shouting or getting into a fight.
Whilst I agree with your point, honest requires a certain amount of apathy towards the feelings of others. The truth is not always a comfortable thing, the same drivers that allow you to use an uncomfortable truth can easily be the same driver that stops you from caring when you drop a C-Bomb.
A common scenario, you find out your best friends girl is cheating on him. If you tell him you'll hurt him. There are two main schools of thought here:
1. Tough love, it'll hurt now but be better in the long run.
2. Hope it will abate, is there any harm if he never finds out.
Personally I beleive in #1, I also swear when it's appropriate.
That last part is key. There's a big difference between using profanity appropriately and just spouting off swearwords like a teenager trying to act tough. Using profanity just to be profane is childish, profanity when used in the appropriate situation, such as to express anger, frustration, surprise or used in comedy makes your communication more effective. Knowing when to swear without being offensive is simply about knowing your audience. Yes, like honesty it's also possible to be profane and inoffensive at the same time.
Also people who swear also tend to be smarter due to the fact they generally have a larger vocabulary and use it.
Clinton never grabbed a woman by the pussy, nor endorsed the practice. He got laid, which is different. The problem you and Trump seem to have is that you can't tell the difference between consensual, and non-consensual, sex. They're not equivilent.
To be more accurate, Clinton got a blow job, but still consensual.
Lying only works if you tell the truth often enough that your lie is believed.
At the risk of Godwining this thread... The great masses of the people will more readily believe a big lie than a small one.
The recent US elections are proof of that concept.
The key to lying successfully is not to tell the truth, but to make people believe you're telling the truth. There are quite a few tricks here but I'll go through some of the common ones.
1. Believe your own lie to sell it.
2. Pick your mark. lie to the gullible ones first. Going back to point #1, if you can get others to believe your lie they will repeat it as if it were the truth.
3. Repeat often. Lies need to reach a critical mass to work properly, see point #2 about getting gullible people to repeat it.
4. Alienate critical thought. Make people angry/emotional and they'll be less likely to think critically about your lie. This is the trick used by the likes of Fox News or the Daily Mail to keep their audience satisfied with obvious falsehoods. Anger and other extreme emotional states also have the added benefit of making people more suitable to advertising.
5. Keep your lies consistent.
Telling the truth is often contrary to these points, so it's best avoided.
....is a lie, it reduces image quality just in a way you cannot see visually
If all you want to do is look at the image this is fine, but anything else that needs it full quality will be sacrificed
Well that's kind of the point. They didn't develop this for image manipulation tools... they developed it to save bandwidth on websites. If you cant visually tell the difference, Mission Hay-Fucking-Complished.
Obamacare wasn't much of an answer to America's medical problems, but it is also not much of a problem. It has helped at the margins. Unfortunately, it has helped the insurance companies more than it should have, but that's called politics.
I eagerly await Mr. Trump and his Republican colleague's attempt at improving things.
The problem is,
The Republicans are responsible for the state of the ACA. They stalled it and refused to pass it until it was in a sufficiently neutered state that it couldn't succeed. Basically, the current ACA is what the republicans did in an attempt to "improve" things.
Hey, but I've lived in two nations with working universal health systems.
I completely understand the struggles people who are impacted by a disease and there's a cure out of there, but just costs so much.
At the same time, for all it's flaws in the patent system, in the grand scheme of things... the patent lasts like 5 or 10 or 20 years (I don't know). My point is it's not that long.
Let's remember that the drug wasn't there before. That's the price the society pays for a dynamic drug market.
You invent something; it's prohibitively expensive for a bit, then the price drops.
The alternative is... maybe it's not invented.
The former sadly is easy to rail against. The later is a bit more complex.
You do know that most drugs are actually developed with public money. Universities and government funded research labs. That means we already pay the cost of development, testing, so on and so forth. If it were left up to what was profitable, we'd have almost nothing cured at all.
Also cures and treatments aren't particularly profitable. Big Pharma spends a lot of its research and marketing budget on "lifestyle" drugs which are mostly two things,
1. Hardness pills. Because people with waning libido's will pay anything.
2. Vitamin supplements. Not that these are expensive, but they're so cheap to make because they don't have to pass FDA or equivalent testing. That means they don't have to work, in fact it's better if they dont work because then they cant be accidentally scheduled. They make placebo's a dozen for the penny and sell them a pound for 12 to hipsters and middle aged mothers who think multi-vitamins make them healthy. Their main cost here is advertising, convincing the middle aged mothers that popping a pill each morning compensates for their bad lifestyle choices.
When it comes for a cure for an illness, Big Pharma contributes very little in its development, they just buy up the rights for cheap, manufacture it cheaply and charge a fortune for it. This is why many governments forcibly license patents for local companies to make the drugs.
It's hard to see this being a major success, outside of the (aging, shrinking) Nintendo hardcore. The consensus on gaming sites (and their forums) seems to reinforce this. So do the markets; Nintendo's stocks have fallen around 5.75% since the reveal.
Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo are making money... and they'll make money on this even though its a lack lustre offering.
The Wii U still outsold the XBox One, more importantly it made a profit which Sony hasn't been able to do despite selling more consoles.
So I'll count on Nintendo being around longer than Sony or Microsoft's game divisions as they have to be supported by other divisions. As soon as they get in trouble, games will be axed.
I smoked for nearly two decades -- I was always always self-conscious of the odor and for the last decade mostly smoked outside because I didn't like the odor in my house.
I would have never considered smoking on a plane or anywhere else where it was prohibited, that would have been crazy, you could never get away with it and the punishment was always severe.
About the only place I cheated where smoking was prohibited was an above ground parking ramp connected to my building. They prohibited smoking in the ramp, but I assumed it was more of a non-smoker complaining thing, since (a) the ramp was exposed to the open air, (b) it was filled with vehicle traffic, which meant more toxic output in a minute than 10 cigarettes. Regardless, I only used it as a smoke shelter at odd hours when doing maintenance when there was essentially nobody using the facility.
Fair enough, I'm an ex-smoker myself (haven't had one in over 15 years) but in my experience for every polite smoker, there's usually 10 arrogant ones. The plus side of this is that the polite ones stand out.
The thing is, its not that the ban on smoking on aircraft isn't common knowledge. Its just that some people think they can get away with it. In 2013 I had the misfortune of watching, ashamedly, another Australian shout at an Air Asia hostess for half an hour because he was caught smoking in the toilets. The flight was to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian cops do not mess about when it comes to airport security. This guy was bound and frogmarched off the plane at gunpoint (They bound his hands behind his head). I assume the next thing that happened to him was being put on another plane out of Malaysia. The thing is, if he hadn't of argued he'd probably have gotten away with it (would have avoided a lot of paperwork).
However, vehicle traffic emissions are nowhere near as toxic as cigarette smoke. 2 hours in a shed with an idling diesel is less harmful than one cigarette. The old hose pipe from the exhaust was always a very unsuccessful way to commit suicide as you'd just pass out until some one found you or you woke up with a stalled car. With modern vehicles, you probably wont even get that far. In the UK you'd be banned from smoking there because OH&S says you cant stand idly about high traffic area, they're more worried that you'd fall onto the road.
Which is why I dont get my news from businesses... or sites with obvious agendas.
I'd find sources like the BBC to be trustworthy than the Guardian who I find more trustworthy than the Daily Mail which is Fox New's redneck cousin who moved to England and pretends to be erudite.
But I don't trust any one source 100%, there are some I trust reasonably but there are sources such as Fox and the Daily mail who I distrust 100% until I see the news from a less biased source, even then I still treat the article as suspect and wont quote it.
The reason I trust the BBC and similar organisations in Australia (ABC) and Canada (CBC) because they're rarely caught lying, when they are it's almost always an error and a correction is always issued. The reason I distrust the Daily Mail and Fox News is because they've consistently been caught lying, when they are it's found they deliberately fabricated something and they never, ever issue a correction. They are taken to court over these kinds of things often enough that they have a fund to pay off litigants.
BTW, news (or reality) does not have a Liberal bias, in fact it's slightly conservative... It's just that extremists live outside reality.