cubancigar11

Which means it will be up to the general populace to ensure the small guy wins. And Obama as a person doesn't believe that.

Now that is the real question here. We as people do not think surveillance is bad. We clap for Batman and worry about Jack Bauer. That is the real insight here.

See, I get that. He got a lot of money. But still he doesn't owe them anything. What is going to happen to him if he doesn't deliver to people who paid him that much money? Is he going to get assassinated? Is he going to have legal troubles? As a president he has the option to bypass large chunks of constitution, which in fact is the actual problem here. He is literally above the law.

That is a very absurd argument, one I have heard several times in liberal circles. President of United States of America is the most powerful man in the world. He doesn't owe anyone anything. We elect him thinking he will do what he promised and the only retribution for him is that he will either be impeached or not get re-elected.

That's it. That is democracy. Unless he had 'an offer he could not refuse', he is guilty of a lot of betrayal (apart from crimes he can commit from a presidential position).

He is not there to do physics, he has been given power to explicitly do what cannot be done without power. Apologetic my ass.

Its actually worse. Only this Saturday I searched for a ice cream shop and it directed me 2.5 miles away. So now I am riding the prescribed route when I see a different branch of the same shop in 0.6 miles. Baffled I looked again at the search results and for some reason this nearest branch was listed at number 5 and I had to scroll down to find it. This when I had GPS and 3G on.

It has become gnome of map applications. It used to open so fast 10 years ago it was surprisingly amazing, now it takes more time to load and crashes my browser randomly. I dread opening google maps now thinking if I will have to reopen all my tabs, and I literally use it only on chrome now.

Funny. In my experience telling something as it is is a very easy way to piss of the client, who in general have huge ego that they are from a superior culture.

It is important to remember that when you outsource something to a cheap labor, the keyword is 'labor' and not 'cheap'. Developers in SV don't understand this, probably because they aren't directly doing the cost calculations.

And here is the problem - articles like his one, saying how outsourcing doesn't work, are actually why outsourcing doesn't work. For example, consider someone who reads one article daily which says outsourcing doesn't work or that the resources are not very good. In last 10 years I have yet to meet a single client that gave the kind of independence you get as a developer in US. Yet every time all I read in a client's bad experience is that he/she had given too much independence.

I am in Bangalore and I work for a British Client. I WILL take the name, it is 3ds (French one). And here the only thing that matters is that client remains happy. Here is what happens here in Bangalore:

1. Client doesn't give any work which requires cognitive skills, since he is sure the return will be bad and he doesn't have time to take chances.

2. This in turn discourages good developers and forces them to:

a) Suck it up, forget about any career achievements and keep doing the maintenance job as mortgage payments are a bigger threat. Slowly the quality of output decreases.

b) Switch clients/jobs, which means sudden requirement of a resource and investing even more time in training him/her.

3. A lot of companies hear only bad stories about China stealing tech and making knock-offs, never mind that most of these knock-offs don't have any effect outside China and China is a closed market in the first place, that they have trouble handing over critical software/hardware for development. Half of my friends I know work via VPN even in office. In my office it is not possible to work on a laptop. I need to come to office and then work remotely. This is shit. Even with internet speeds in India being faster and cheaper than UK/US, when 2k people suddenly connect to VPN from a single point cursor stops responding immediately. This means slower work.

4. All meeting times are decided by client according to his/her convenience. Almost all of clients from UK that I have worked so far had literally 0 idea what its like to attend a scrum after lunch. Too early to start asking questions, too late to completely absorb the answers. US is even worse - most American clients set up a meeting at around 10:00pm (9:30am PST). Then they complain that people from India don't talk a lot.

5. Worst is pacifying a client's ego. It is not possible to tell him that he has done something wrong. It is not possible to squarely go over his authority and fix it. So Indian managers let the failures lurk for longer than necessary, and at the last moment find some scapegoat and hope the client doesn't fire him.

Mediocre developers are who make it big at the end. They stick around until H1B and then earn hefty amounts abroad.

I am just pointing out the fact. Unless you are ready to be degraded everywhere in your society called as a beggar, you are not going to get anything for free. I am pointing out the fact that men who don't complain are called grown-up. It is fact, just as the fact that you can exchange money for stuff. I have not pointed out any right or wrong.

And by free I mean free as in money, not free as in freedom. So free air and free water doesn't count. You can count free hygienic bottled water. And yes there are places where the alternative is sewage.

It is misandry.

"I never wanted my problem to be someone else's by asking for charity or living on someone's couch for free," he said.

Brave. Men don't get anything for free anyway.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327035/ ?

I am in no way related to this but have you tried https://www.noom.com/ ?

It not only helps in counting calories it also gives daily articles and a set of TO-DOs. I was 275 lbs around 2.5 months ago but since then have lost 22 lbs.

Regarding 'keeping the weight down', I learned from this app itself why it is difficult:

1. Not eating anything for a week is not only a bad strategy to lose weight it is actually a good strategy to gain weight afterwards. In my own experience whenever I tried to lose weight by eating less I lost a lot of weight but gained more than what I lost afterwards. You cannot stay hungry forever and if you lose more than 2 lbs per week your body goes into starvation mode, burning any stored energy rapidly, and rapidly storing anything you eat afterwards as fat just in case you don't get food again. Body is more intelligent than we think. 2. Once a fat cell is born it craves fat and that makes you hungry. Rapidly losing weight by staying hungry will only remove fat from fat cells but won't kill them. Weight loss must be sustained for longer time to have any permanent effect. 3. I have replaced white rice with brown rice, white bread with whole grain wheat bread and started eating sprouts and corn, oranges, guava etc. other fruits. Sprouts are killer deal man - you eat 200g of it you will hardly feel hungry for hours. 4. You need to do some physical exercise everyday - not intense, just walking is okay. But you have to be consistent so your body learns how much energy you are going to lose anyway and doesn't store much fat.

I have yet to start heavy exercises but I like the effect on my body :)

From a purely survivalist approach slavery is without a doubt a better proposition because it is nigh impossible to break away from poverty.

But lack of free and targeted internet is not poverty. Internet is already extremely cheap in India - cheaper than USA for example - and is easily available via mobile phones that are more ubiquitous than toilets!

To say that Internet.org is an alternative to no internet is not only disingenuous it is basically a mockery of 'them 3rd worlders...' as if they will never get internet without Internet.org. And that too for India? A country that has achieved more feats in technology domain than many of the first world countries (and before solving the problem of toilet)? It is hard to sell product to a level-headed person.

Not to say that Indian government is squarely going to reject Internet.org - Indian government - specially judiciary - is mind bogglingly corrupt - but it should be rejected.

"Do you mean the birth of a girl child is a trigger to go back?" Yes. "What measure are you referring to?" Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment.

I am not sure what is intimate partner violence but 40% of victims 'being hit' by their partner are men, and in most cases of 'being hit', women start it - predominantly under the assumption that no one will hit them back because a) they are women b) society still goes gaga after 'women and children' and not men c) in practice women are protected from any consequence of hitting a man but men are by default assumed guilty until proven innocent.

For example, while VAWA talks about non-gendered domestic violence, in practice only one partner is arrested so the other can be allowed to take care of children and in 100% of cases where both parties got into a physical altercation it is MEN who end up in jail and with a restraining order.

Thanks. That is exactly what I meant.

It is not voluntary when it is the only thing left in the market. We are already living in an age where some places on this planet consider basic internet connection a human rights issues so no, internet is a necessity.

What is there to debate? Question: Is being a slave really worse than being poor?

I can only talk about India so here are my 2 cents:

1. Almost all people who are trying to leave India are highly educated.

2. Most of them don't plan to stay outside India for long time.

3. Large percentage of them go back to India when they have a girl child (contrary to popular western rhetoric about 'we are so great they are so bad', women in India are several times safer than in USA).

4. Another large group goes back to India once they have paid house loans, earned enough money, have ailing parents that need help. (India doesn't have a social security system.)

5. A large group of Indians who end up staying 'abroad' are from very specific areas of India (5 out of 29 states of India - Punjab and 4 states of southern India).

6. People from Punjab suffered a cultural shock during partition of India in 1947 and so they see little value in blind nationalism. Most of them are doing business and are not necessarily highly educated (I mean disproportionately). They accept westernization with open hearts.

7. Southern states don't appreciate Hindi being promoted by a Delhi based government - imagine Texas where everyone spoke 4 different languages but not English). So they are prone to moving out for prosperity. They are mostly highly educated. Most of the 'talent companies' like Infosys etc. are being run by them because they generally keep good ties back home. In general no love for westernization. Apu from Simpsons is their caricature.

In short - the degree of success for an Indian in America depends on his support structure. Some communities have built it by being quite and bringing over the family, others have embraced westernization. Both require sheer perseverance. But for large number of Indians, it is simply easier to go back rich and enjoy respect from peers back in India.

The old water ways built by British have turned into dumpyards over which poor people have built bridges of wooden planks and they live their. Mismanagement of resources at its finest.

Family system used to take care of elderly and the disabled, which ultimately meant housewives were supposed to do that, unless you could afford a caretaker (which was socially frowned upon in middle class).

Then women got voting power and family system broke down, replaced by social structure. In a way today's capitalist Europe is closer to what Marx suggested than USSR.

Yes absolutely. Chennai used to be called a city of lakes, and now even Pallikaranai[1] is seeing disastrous development.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallikaranai_wetland

I am in India.

I did the same - subscribed in 2007 and cancelled it in 2012. And I am here in minority but I cancelled it BECAUSE of its content. The barrage of anti China news, anti India news, and then the lack of any standing on any issue except free market. Economist consistently backtracks on everything if it somehow results in more free market. It is why it was established in the first place so why complain? The height was when they published an article saying how Iran is against hezbollah but two issues later they said Iran must stop supporting hezbollah. Then they once went on for several weeks about chinese government's crackdown on prostitution and how it is fomenting dissent. Then a train crashed and again they went harping about how dissent was just around the corner. Moving out of West in 2010 suddenly showed me how Economist is just a high end mouth piece of British government, hidden behind sophistication and the prestigious name. So I decided to just cancel my subscription.

Anything that doesn't result in equal outcome of greateness is sexism. For example, asking 50% reservation for women in soldiers going to war is sexism because war is not greatness, but preferring women 200% over men in STEM[1] is not sexism because doing science is greatness and women are still < 50% of sceintists.

Just joking of course. Women having different immune system functions means more funding for women specific medicine - hence it is good. Study of behavior at workplace based on gender doesn't generate funding because there aren't many women doing startups anyway.

You keep watching, in a decade or two when there will be enough women in startups that they will actually have any economical significance there WILL be studies conducted. And depending on how that turns out - if 'women better than men', it will be an 'evil corrected' story, and if 'women worse than men', state will intervene via laws to protect women's rights. It has already started actually.

This is why I took the risk of losing mod points and posted 'another decade' comment above.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ICcdpH2WA

Wrong time man. Gotta wait for another decade.

Everytime I read such articles I am reminded of my stay in Germany. In those 5 years I behaved exactly the way the author behaves, and shared same thoughts as the author.

And then I came back to India and I am so totally different man now, I wonder if the whole autism spectrum has society as an influential input too. Being in India I just have so many friends with whom I can discuss very intimate doubts or facts about life that you can arrive at a peaceful state of mind very easily and function as a normal member of society without ever having a doubt about yourself, while in west in general the focus on individualism means most people don't talk to each other and are always expected to behave a certain way otherwise they will get 'what is wrong with him' look all the time.

Upholding a law is more tricky that being obtuse about how the world is going to unfold before The Judgement Day (TM). Look at Aaron Swartz. There is a way to have things done - if the world is becoming a better place it is because a lot of people are doing a lot of things behind the smokescreen.

This happens to me on some online shopping websites. When I search for some generic term, I am shown a slider between minimum and maximum where minimum is so often 0 and maximum is 10^5, while I am interested in something, say, between 500 to 1500.

I am of the thought that it is very much a crusade, because there is no reason to believe the actual crusades were anything beyond riling up the peasants for the benefit of the rich.