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Comment Re:I bet Infosys and Tata are dancing in the stree (Score 2) 186

Still, the complaint is not that he doesn't do anything with the laws that the Congress passes, the complaint is that Congress doesn't pass any laws that address important issues.

No, the problem is that the congress has passed clear laws on the issue of immigration, but Obama doesn't like them. So he makes his own law through creative (lack of) enforcement.

âoeThere are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, to ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.â - Candidate Obama

""the biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. That is what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America." - Candidate Obama

Comment Re:Invite link? (Score 1) 319

After all, they have like 98% marketshare, while the 2% belong to those more questionable networks (the ones that advertise for sites that Google won't touch - e.g., torrent sites and the like).

Actually, 33%. They're by far the biggest single player, but aren't anywhere close to 98%. Google's share of mobile ads is larger, at 56%.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/06/13/in-online-ads-theres-google-and-then-everybody-else/ (that's 2013, but things haven't changed much in 2014, and I couldn't find a 2014 link that included both all digital and mobile ads).

Comment Re:Standards (Score 1) 334

Fantastic link.

They have 2.36GB of data on me.

At least this is reassuring...

"It may take some time before it is ready to download. Don't worry, we'll email you when it's ready."

I'm not sure how to respond, as well as process the data load.

How much of that is your Gmail?

Comment Re:Global warming is bunk anyway. (Score 2) 367

Its ironic that one of the potential benefits of geoengineering research is that it will force many climate change deniers to admit that its possible for human activity to have major deleterious effects on Earth's climate.

Probably not. Consider the thoroughly-documented example of the evolutionary process at work in the modern world. This doesn't affect the belief systems of the religious folks, who still insist that evolution is bogus, and has nothing to do with our modern world. One of the major cases is with the over-use of antibiotics, especially in agriculture. This is forcing the evolution of resistance in most of our disease organisms, destroying the value of many of our medicines. The evidence of all this has no effect at all on the religious believers. They also put pressure on the school systems (especially here in the US) to eliminate evolution from the textbooks, so the people responsible for this evolutionary pressure (mostly in agriculture, but also in medicine) don't understand the issues, and continue to make frivolous or incorrect use of the antibiotics.

Historians have documented many such cases in which our ancestors had knowledge that their actions were leading to disasters, but they continued anyway. These are typically cases where short-term actions were profitable to the people doing them, but bad for society in the long run. History says that we humans don't respond logically to such situations. We continue to act for short-term profit, and ignore the long-term results. Our "leaders" also tend to take actions that encourage this, by hiding the information or denying the validity of knowledge that can't be hidden.

There's no reason to expect that we can organize on a global scale to fix such problems. Our political systems tend to be controlled by the wealthier people, who are the ones ultimately profiting from the short-term results of the problems. About all we can do is prepare for the predictable long-term results, when possible.

Comment Re:I bet Infosys and Tata are dancing in the stree (Score 1) 186

Congress has abdicated its responsibility to serve the public interest by openly declaring that it will oppose any initiative by the President just for spite.

Open declaration? Surely you have a link to the speech about "just for spite"? You're not just making that up, right?

Even so, the congress has that power under the Constitution. The Congress is in charge of America, per the Constitution. The President, as leader of the executive has the job of executing the laws created by Congress, you know, the legislative branch, the lawmakers.

It's no wonder that he's forced to seek alternative solutions to get anything done.

It's his job to "get done" those laws that the Congress passes. Simply choosing not to enforce those laws because he doesn't like them is rather the opposite of his job. As the leader of the Democratic party, OTOH, he had a different path for many years to "get stuff done", a constitutional one! The American voters deliberately took that power away in the recent election, if you believe that democracy is important.

Comment Re: I bet Infosys and Tata are dancing in the stre (Score 0) 186

Which is all good in theory... until the parliament/congress becomes more interesting with infighting and navel gazing than actually improving the country.

If there's no strong consensus as to the best way to improve the country, better to do nothing that try something that "seemed good at the time". But in any case inaction is better than ignoring the Constitution.

And if it takes an unconstitutional tyrant to get us back on the proper track, so be it

Has there ever, ever been an unconstitutional tyrant who seized control for the betterment of the governed? I can think of a couple of cases where someone seized power militarily, then went on to create a constitution and parliament, rare as that is, but "El Presidente for Life"? Not so much.

I'm sure you'll have no regrets if a hyper-religious-conservative ends up with tyrannical control? Because you really think the problem is democracy, rather than getting your way, right?

Comment Re:I bet Infosys and Tata are dancing in the stree (Score 4, Interesting) 186

Method matters. Obama's actions are appaling and well on the way to destroying the country for reason that have nothing to do with immigration. Immigration is a distraction at this point.

It's the constitutional issues that matter - it's been 800 years of wars to establish in Western culture that parliaments, not kings, are ultimately in charge. Ignoring the will of Congress and just making proclamations is a serious structural problem. Now we'll see if congress will do anything about this, or simply give up their position as a co-equal branch of government.

The House has the power to stop anything the government does, but they would have to actually take a stand for once. I'm not holding my breath for that: the idea that a majority of congresscritters would actually care more about governing than fundraising --- well, it's hard to take seriously.

Comment Re:I bet Infosys and Tata are dancing in the stree (Score 1) 186

I'm thinking that there should be some mechanism for funding X scholarships in STEM for X visas of the H1B1 type.

Corporations receive 100 H1B1 visas this year, then 100 STEM scholarships are also provided this year. Funding via taxes on those corporations.

At least it would make it easier to graduate in a STEM field without the massive debt.

Comment Re:So close, so far (Score 1) 561

Can you point out some of the special treatment that feminists are asking for, with a citation of them asking for it? I think you are making this shit up because every mainstream feminist I have read or listened to is just interested in equality.

Oh, you've missed the calls to fix the income inequality gap by just taxing men an extra 25% and giving it to women? You've missed the continuous refrain of every SJW ever that what offends women is all-important, but what offends just men is irrelevant? You've missed the suggestion that the best plan is to just kill 95% of men and jail the rest on an island somewhere so they can't cause any harm to real people? I see that kind of shit all the time.

But this says it all, really. (That's Jessica Valenti, of course, but the attitude expressed is common enough.)

Quality of opportunity is exactly what we all want. Try to help more women into IT not by favouring them, but by simply removing barriers to them even applying and letting the best candidate win.

Any evidence that there's actually a problem once women graduate? (Women being dissuaded from technical interests in middle and high school is a real and studied problem, of course.) All the companies I've worked for actually did favor women in the recruiting (but not interview) process. I've done plenty of "new college grad" interview days that the field of candidates that were flown in were 40-50% female, which sure as heck isn't the ratio of grads. We interview everyone the same of course, but every place I've been for the past decade has made a special effort to try to recruit women at the start of the process.

The only people who are offended are the ones being called out for defending the indefensible

Sure, by your definition accusations by a feminist have no possible defense, I guess? OTOH, painting the vast and diverse world of "gamers" with a stereotype that's only relevant to the few games that are predominately teenage boys is bigoted and unfair. (If your argument is "14-year-olds are rude and should behave better", you're preaching to the quire, also they should get off my lawn!)

attacks on anyone are not acceptable

... they say, and then go on to vigorously attack "gamers", starting a culture war that won't soon end.

Comment Could do that, much less secure in principle (Score 1) 267

I could do that. Of course I already have both Firefox and Chrome installed anyway, but there is no "install a separate browser for one plugin".

In this particular case, either way is probably fine. For security I tend to think in terms of principles, though. Which is a better principle
a) Open a hole, and put a bandaid over the hole
b) Don't open a hole

Hint - Windows does a lot of choice a).

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