They shit in a box and cover it up afterwards. They're more domesticated than dogs.

Some people are better carpenters, better coders, better fencers, or better with words. Some people know how to get others to cheer up, or laugh, or get riled, or get angry.

But we're all equally human, and deserve all the respect that humans are afforded.

OH, you want "practical"? That's easy: Legal rights.
Equal protection under the law. Equal rights of movement, speech, organization, ownership, blah blah blah. Everyone has the same rights to vote (barring you don't get convicted with a felony). There is most definitely some minor imbalances, but on the whole, the USA is doing pretty good with this one. Personally, the imbalance that irks me the most right now is that James Clapper blatantly lied to congress and hasn't been prosecuted yet. It's a breakdown in the rule of law and shows that the heads of the intelligence community are not our equals. It's a problem.

Quality!

If you spent more time retraining workers.... then you'd fire half of them?

"failing to learn in"?

. . . I'm pretty sure that "an" is supposed to be "and". So.... you gave in... and then attempted.... to find someone with the skillset?
Maybe that "an" is superfluous. Maybe you spent 10 months before giving up and accepting you failed to find anyone with the skillset.

Have you considered training yourself in English?

One of the big flaws in corporate America is the idea that a couple day's "training" where they sit you in front of a salesman and some slides will actually impart anything of value. "Job Training" takes years of working with a mentor showing you the ropes the entire way with both of you doing meaningful work. It's not something you get a cert for after a week. At least, you know, for the sort of knowledge work that I'm tasked with. Certs and that sort of training are good for, say, introducing a new tool when nobody in the office has any experience with it.

But hey, let me guess, you need someone to be an expert with a laundry list of niche technologies and you're only going to pay $40K in shitsville, Iowa. Good luck with that.

Wait.... you understand that "most of the visas" are "trade school hacks", "clearly underskilled", with "false resumes". That most of this program is just to undercut the local employees. You are fully cognizant of this.... and when someone asked you what you thought about that... you ignored the question and how themajority of the system operates, and focused on how well the system worked for your company.

Huh.

As a tangent, why aren't you working for the high-tech joint anymore? Did they replace you with an Indian PHD and force you to move down into the trenches of web-dev? What do you think of that?

awwwww, he's just whistling dixie. Nothin' more to it.

(SARCASM with a dose of historical anecdote)

Uhhhhhhhh..... yeah, gerrymandering. That's in effect NOW, for most of the USA.

Well that doesn't matter as congress has fuck all to say about how the STATES vote for their representatives and how they draw their districts.

And fuck "limiting", have the districts be drawn by an algorithm. A hard-set rule that determines who the politicians represent. The problem is that the algorithm has to be made while a party is in power, and the algorithm will therefore be made to support said party. This sort of change to the power structure could really only happen during a revolution of some sort. Like if the tea-partiers had made it one of their agendas.

Well that's the march of progress. The cutting edge of technology eventually filters down into the hands of everybody.

But for this specific concern, the creations of blatantly false information, it's a cat and mouse game. There are technologies out there to identify fakes. Analyzing lighting, mostly, from my brief glances. But it means the thoughtless email "omglookatthisvideoTHANKSOBAMA" spam will dive off into the deep end of the crazy pool. As if they weren't already there. Ultimately, we had a brief window between the point where evidence could be created without the ability to falsify that evidence, and the point where everything had to be taken with a grain of salt. I imagine the future content will be trusted solely based on who presented it. The echo chambers will intensify and trustworthiness will have value.

The poor in Egypt were motherfucking skinny. At least they were in 2008. Maybe you were looking at the shopkeepers or taxi-drivers, or tour guides who spoke English.

Same for Peru. Also went through the Caribbeans, but never really saw the poor there.

Costa Rica is doing just fine. That was a pleasant experience. Nice enough I felt fine just driving around by myself. I'd feel fine accepting them in as another state if it weren't for my OCD demanding there be an even number of states.

I was going to give you shit about saying that first world nations experienced famine, but then I looked up the actual definition of first, second, and third-world nations. I thought it just meant established vs poor-as-shits-ville. Rather, it's a hold-over from the cold war. But sure, if you consider Oman first world, then that's totally legit.

Hey there, don't fret too much. I'm sure Oracle will take good care of you.

IMMEDIATE and urgent RED FLAG!
No I don't think that this job is a "career opportunity leading to rapid advancement". I will not work for "exposure".

Fuck you, pay me!

What kind of class-warfare propaganda bullshit is this? Hey, I get the sentiment, having a home/hobby project where you code in your spare time does indeed help turn you into a better programmer. But the way he spins it... dude, what the hell?

Weeeeellllll, you have to remember that he said "democratic framework". I was going to call bullshit on that aspect of his post until I re-read it and realized he didn't actually say that the USA was democratic at the time, just that it had the framework for a democracy. One which we could re-enable with relative ease. "Relative ease" still being decades of unrest.

We're not all that democratic right now, all things considered. The two party system both pay lip-service to the polls and their talking points. When something new comes along like the Snowden's whistle-blowing, they scramble to figure out which side of the fence they belong on and make sure it's balanced so that nothing gets done.

China's communist system, where the party members vote on things and who is in charge, could kinda sorta be construed as something similar to the democratic process. It'll be different, certainly.

Have you ever been to a third-world country?
Have you lived there?
Because I think it's quite apparent that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. But here's a quick'n'easy test: Our poor are fat. Their poor are skinny.

They're going to have growing pains. Developing a middle class and shifting from expendable factory workers to knowledge workers doesn't happen overnight. We had our own struggles during the era of the robber-barons. I hope they have an easier time of it.

What the fuck are you smoking?
"old, narrower meaning"? Son, the enlightenment has a lot to say about censorship and it got codified into some of the laws. Since then, people with power have tried to stuff the term into a narrow little box that only applies to other people. So you can take your "older" meaning and shove it right up your box.

The term "censorship" has an definition. Has had it for a very long time. It has negative connotations because it DAMN WELL SHOULD. If you pay for and run a server which allows users to post comments, you have the right (in the USA, barring contracts and licenses) to delete someone's posts. Exercising that right is most certainly an act of censorship. Straight up. Negative connotations and all.

Some censorship is good. Some censorship is bad. It's one of those things that people should take a critical eye to because of how it can be abused.

You are litterally redefining the word to suit your purpose.

Bias confirmed.

I don't, because I won't, because I don't hold any such sentiments. And I'm fully aware that a lot of people do not hold any sort of lofty ideals when it comes to the freedom of speech. Plebeian shmucks who haven't thought it through, affluent power-mongers who want to control people, self-centered assholes who don't give a fuck about society while leeching off it as much they can. Since you "run several websites" you probably lean towards the power-monger type.

It IS censorship. In very much the same way an editor selects editorials. Don't redefine the word and then bitch about people not using your definition. Learn some history kiddo.

Yeah, man, the LAUNCH of the next version of D&D. These are rule-books, most of the people who play the game already have the pathfinder core rulebooks. That is, sales of core rulebooks represent market share growth. The launch of an edition should be similar to an IPO with everyone scrambling to get it. Conversly, the sales of a 5 year old rule-book should be petering off. I would have imagined that the 5th ed D&D would trounce any other sales at GenCon as all the established gamers who already own both pathfinder and D&D1,2,3,4 rulebooks should be getting the 5th ed books, even if they hate it.

So yeah, hearing that more Pathfinder core rule-books were sold at GenCon than D&D 5th ed core rule-books on it's launch day.... Yeah that's pretty damn shocking. I mean, GenCon was a D&D convention. Gary founded it when D&D was taking off. And maybe he would have smiled at this turn of events. Showing that the soul of D&D is not in the hands of some corporate whore with controlling shares, but rather in the hands of the gamers who liked what they had going on back when Gary was driving the boat.

But maybe it's because the MM isn't out yet, and just the PHB was up for sale. And everyone who really wanted it it had early access of some sort. So it wasn't exactly a "launch date". Dunno.