Slashdot: Only 36 Percent of Indian Engineers Can Write Compilable Code Says Study
India Graduates Millions, but Too Few Are Fit to Hire
Only 7 per cent engineering graduates employable: What's wrong with India's engineers?
BTW, what does this have to do with the price of Apple's stock?
I'm guessing the grandparent was intended as a reply to my first link here, since on slashdot's front page it's right below this story on Apple right now.
Here's an interview with Gareth Porter on the IAEA's report.
Correction: the mention of the Gulf War should in fact be to Operation Desert Fox.
For anyone interested in this topic there's a great book by investigative journalist Gareth Porter that details the whole saga: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare
It should be pointed out that the evidence which both the US intelligence estimate and the IAEA rely on to determine that there was an Iranian nuclear weapons program prior to 2003 is the so-called "laptop documents" which are fairly clearly forged but for which there are political reasons to ignore that fact.
These forged documents had been used as the basis for a number of inspections by the IAEA of Iranian military facilities. The IAEA's inspections never found any evidence to substantiate the forged documents. Iran permitted such inspections even though they went above and beyond what Iran was required to permit under its NPT agreement. However given that these sorts of inspections were used by the US used to gather detailed targeting data on Iraqi facilities for the Gulf War Iran chose not to allow even more non-required inspections. That's the sole basis of the IAEA's 'concern' and the reason they keep bringing these forged documents up even though they've not been substantiated at all.
As part of the recent nuclear talks Iran insisted that these forged documents be put to rest and not brought up again in the future, which is what this report is supposed to be about.
The linked article by Ariane Tabatabai makes it sound like Iran has now admitted the existence of a nuclear weapons program, but this is false. Instead what Tabatabai is doing is essentially repeating the same cycle of making accusations on the basis of these forged documents and using the previous unsubstantiated accusations as the only 'substantiation'. For example Tabatabai writes:
The IAEA report unsurprisingly indicates that Tehran did have a “coordinated” nuclear weapon development program until 2003.
The report in fact says:
Information available to the Agency prior to November 2011 (i.e., the forged "laptop documents") indicated that Iran had arranged, via a number of different and evolving management structures, for activities to be undertaken in support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear programme. According to this information, the organisational structures covered most of the areas of activity relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The information indicated that activities commenced in the late 1980s within Departments of the Physics Research Centre (PHRC) and later, under the leadership of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, became focused in the early 2000s within projects in the AMAD Plan, allegedly managed through the ‘Orchid Office’. Information indicated that activities under the AMAD Plan were brought to a halt in late 2003 and that the work was fully recorded, equipment and work places were either cleaned or disposed of so that there would be little to identify the sensitive nature of the work that had been undertaken. Eventually, according to the information, a new organization known as the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research29 was established by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and based at the Mojdeh Site near Malek Ashtar University in Tehran.
The report goes on describing Iran's response:
In Iran’s submission of 15 August 2015 under the Road-map, Iran provided the Agency with information concerning a number of organisations described in the 2011 Annex (i.e., the forged "laptop documents") and on their relation and functions. In this regard, Iran, inter alia, denied the existence of a coordinated programme aimed at the development of a nuclear explosive device, and specifically denied the existence of the AMAD Plan and the ‘Orchid Office’ as elements of such a programme.
As far as I can tell the documents Iran submitted don't appear to be available so I'm not sure exactly what they say.
The Agency submitted questions to Iran on this subject on 8 September 2015, which were then discussed at technical-expert meetings in Tehran. A significant proportion of the information available to the Agency on the existence of organizational structures was confirmed by Iran during implementation of the Road-map.
Of course no further details are given as to what "a significant proportion" is, or what 'organizational structures' Iran confirmed and there's especially no indication that they were engaged in any nuclear weapons program. If Iran had confirmed that then that certainly would be explicitly described here. Since the report is vague on this point we can be pretty certain that Iran did not confirm that any such organization was involved in a nuclear weapons research and the report is simply leaving that out, likely so as to give an appearance opposite to the reality.
In the overall conclusion the report ends with
The Agency’s overall assessment is that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device (but which the Agency acknowledges also have alternative applications, and for which there's no evidence that these activities actually were part of any nuclear weapons program) were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities (again, activities with non-nuclear applications and for which there's no evidence that they were undertaken for any nuclear weapons related purposes) took place after 2003. The Agency also assesses that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities. The Agency has no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009.
So in essence there is no new information substantiating any of the previous allegations about a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and the only basis for such allegations remains the forged laptop documents.
Even taking the report's deceitful language at face value it should be clear just how far away from reality many of the accusations flying around are: Iran does not currently possess nuclear weapons, they do not have any secret uranium enrichment program, they are not engaged in working toward having a nuclear weapon, and even in the unlikely event that they ever decided that they should begin developing the technology for a nuclear weapon they would then have to engage in many years of work to do so and they could not do so without detection.
Your argument doesn't hold water. You state roughly that the Nazis are leftist because all totalitarians are leftist. And as Nazis are totalitarians they must be leftist.
Actually if you read his post you'll see that he placed the Nazi's on the left not by simply equating totalitarianism with leftism, but by listing four Nazi policies: universal health care, minimum wage, social security, and a 102% tax on certain corporations. His argument is more like "These policies are leftist and therefore mark the party implementing them as being on the left."
Note that I'm not taking any position is this argument; I can certainly see problems with his argument. This is simply a 'meta' comment on your discussion to point out that your characterization of his argument is incorrect.
Unless you can name one right wing politician who opposes minimum parking requirements?
Pretty much any libertarian leaning Republican. Not that I particularly support him, but I imagine Sen. Paul would express opposition to minimum parking requirements if asked, and his father certainly would and would have voted against any such legislation.
It's interesting how the left errs on the side of the poor while the right errs on the side of the wealthy.
Actually both sides err on the side of the wealthy, the left only pretends or is fooled into thinking the things it does 'for the poor' actually benefit the poor. For example almost all of the programs that are supposedly to benefit the less well off in fact transfer more from the poorer to the better off than vice versa.
But the bitcoin isn't leaving the cloud; The bitcoin is being transferred between bitcoin addresses like any other bitcoin transaction, recorded in the same global ledger. Even if the token gets sent to someone other than the owner of the original bitcoin address, effectively 'transmitting' money, this is no different than every other bitcoin transaction.
So perhaps every bitcoin transaction needs to be regulated. Perhaps the software should be illegal and using bitcoin should require a State granted license. After all, bitcoin was originally designed and implemented by anarchists for the express purpose of undermining the State.
Because one of the advantages of living in a civilized society is we can depend on the system to keep us protected (to a degree).
Sure, but there's a large body of philosophical and economic work arguing both that these ends don't justify any and all means (and specifically not the means you are advocating for) and that there are alternative, humane means for achieving these ends.
Whether he likes it or not, by engaging in the business he is in, he now falls into a regulated area. Tough shit. That's the cost of doing his business.
that's not an argument that it's right.
And as a consumer, you should be grateful that such systems are in place and you can do all the things I listed above without any thought.
Why should one be grateful for these specific institutions and not advocate for a more humane way of achieving such goals?
If you don't like it, there are plenty of places in the world that do not have such protections. Either him or you are welcome to vote with your feet and pursue a different philosophy of consumer protection.
The problem with the 'love it or leave it,' position is that it seems to me that, philosophically, it should be the aggressors that leave, not the victims.
Those two things are different. In one case the intervention by a third party is prior restraint for the sake of bad consequences not known to be occurring; that is, the third party is involved even when money laundering is not occurring and the individuals transacting are innocent victims of the third party*. In the other situation the two people are actively violating the neighbor's rights.
*(Although a more radical point is that money laundering is entirely legitimate for anyone not under contractual obligations not to engage in it.)
That is an utterly ridiculous way to look at a transaction. All people that at some point in the future get the materials have rights over all previous transactions involving them? That makes no sense and just sounds like a weak attempt at rationalization.
the rules are to protect consumers and other participants
There are two people involved: the guy printing the token and the guy who wants the token printed. If neither of these people want to be protected, or they've taken other measures on their own, why should they be protected by a third party that neither of them wants involved? To me that sound a bit like a 'protection' racket.
Bitcoin -> Currency has and always will be the choke point the government(s) control.
In this case is that the guy is being paid in Bitcoin and is effectively mailing Bitcoin back; That is, it's not a transfer between Bitcoin and another currency that's being regulated here.
There's some controversy over whether the static_if proposal is really right, and modules is a major change which was never expected to get into C++14. As I understand it the current plan is for the committee to release modules as a technical specification separate from the overall C++ spec and then perhaps it will get rolled into C++17 or later.
LLVM no longer stands for 'low level virtual machine'. It's simply random letters used as an umbrella name for a collection of different projects. The LLVM backend and libc++ are separate projects, but libc++ is also separate from clang.
"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah
