I think I saw this as a senior in high school's art class.

This guy was a Senior Software Engineer at MS? He certainly doesn't talk like one.
Also, most people in software development who use technology daily would disagree Microsoft ever had a "customers first" mantra at all.
He cites Adobe as a reason we have to continue using Microsoft products, but if he had any inkling how much data Adobe ripped from your system without telling you he wouldn't use them as an example either.
I'm glad that more people are talking about actively avoiding MS products, at least.

Stop fucking interrupting asshole!

Jesus, forget politics, it's just bad fucking manners. How do you get to be a senior advisor to a presidential candidate without learning basic debate etiquette?

Here's an example of a project we'd have 2-weeks to finish:

A Space for 2 people to live out their life-cycle together.
Site: Desert (Southwest US)
Requirements:
- mass-based passive heating/cooling w/ profound southern views
- brise-soleil with morning privacy
- compost privy as hearth of house


about 3 years of projects like this, fast-fast-fast, with our Senior Thesis being a year-long self-initiated/directed exercise. Fluidity and broad gestures were rewarded...but not as we were discover in the "real world".

With Polygon at the controls, he's about as fast as the senior citizens in front of you in the line at Kroger.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/9/5/12800464/sonic-mania-gameplay

Ha! We need more of this: Architecture as Machine! So tired of Architecture as Object.

My senior thesis was to design a "multi-nodal theater" in San Francisco. It was in the form of a hyper cube, always in a state of flux, as stages and seating shifted and moved into new configurations.

For starters, I have to oppose the implied thought that Saddam's reign of terror was preventing this sectarian violence. His rule through the Suni minority to wage genocides against the Kurdish and Shia majority and decades of brutal repression of same all served to make the sectarian hatred and violence worse. Tally up the hundreds of thousands he killed through genocide, the million plus he killed in the Iran-Iraq war and everyone that died by direct execution or deliberate starvation level poverty and compare it doesn't stand out as starkly and objectively a desirable alternative to today.

Now if you ask what would I do differently it depends on what level of power I've got to act with. Ideally, we can go back to first Iraq war and have Bush senior march on Baghdad. This would've aborted one of Saddam's genocides. Equally importantly, this would have kept the Shia Iraqi population's view of America as a liberating force. The standing in the desert and watching Saddam slaughter them thing still carried their mistrust of American forces after Saddam's actual removal later. That singularly stupid move of leaving Saddam in power, at the urging of most of the planet, drove the Shia population of Iraq back to Iran as their sole sympathetic ally.

Next step, after the removal of Saddam, whether we can do it back then, or only a few years ago as it really happened is to truly setup an occupation government. You don't bring stability to a region by immediately trying to transition to a democracy before the shooting has even stopped. The occupation government would be run by somebody with actual knowledge and experience with Iraq, rather than as Bush senior did by sending in a guy with zero experience and a two week lead to brief himself. The task you should place on this leader, is to setup a federated Iraq, with distinct and autonomous Shia, Sunni and Kurdish states. The occupation government would dictate things after taking input from Iraqi's rather than holding them to the tyranny of the majority as Bush and co allowed. The occupation would setup an initial constitution defining what laws and agreements spanned all three Iraqi provinces/states and what extent of autonomy they had to define their own systems of government. The American military's job would be to enforce this very basic constitutional framework. Each Iraqi state/province would be aided in setting up their own governments with a transition plan again dictated not voted upon. The transition plan would define the point in time when each state transitioned from occupation rule to a self determined future and rule of law.

The above plan on the whole would work, but Bush and co couldn't have managed post Saddam Iraq more poorly if they had actively tried to.

If zero time travel is allowed and we are to 'fix' things today, you need a lot MORE power. You need an army the size of America or Russia's and the political will to spend several years doing things the public will hate you for. The end game is still the same as above, a federated Iraq kicked off under a dictatorial occupation. To get there from today though you need to create stability. You need to take an army and march it across the entire country. As each city is cleared of militants you take a census of everybody and keep it because you need it to track down future militants. In entirely hostile locations like were ISIS has full rule, you bomb them into the stone ages before marching the army in. The surviving population is given full medical treatment. Now, as for sorting militants from civilians though, you do NOT use American style innocent until proven guilty justice. Instead, any fighting age males are considered guilty until proven innocent. This level of rule of law needs to remain in place until stability can be restored. You of course guarantee lots of innocent arrests, but your trying to prevent massive numbers of innocent deaths so it's required. As you stabilize the nation you can relax back to innocent until proven guilty and work on re-integrating the convicted.

You'll note that although the methods I'd declare necessary above are by any count 'brutal', they do not extend into Saddam's usage of genocide, torture and rape as the weapons of choice.

Mr Seventh had seniority. Union rules.

As a lifelong flight sim addict (with a decent bit of real world experience), there is a twisted part of my brain that wills exactly this scenario to happen whenever I'm on an airliner.

I have no doubt that I would swiftly regret this if it ever did happen and I was mad enough to volunteer.

@mxxcon Unless a qualified pilot happened to be on the plane it would likely be the senior attendant that takes responsibility yes.

I imagine there is some procedure in place, but the scenario is so massively unlikely and modern avionics so good that there would be little point in doing much if any formal training (I can't see most airlines warranting the expense).

I dare say they might be shown how to work the radio though.

It's more than black (and asians and latinos who incidentally get almost no award representation) are just a smaller portion of the population, or more directly a smaller part of the movie industry.

If anything, there's a bias against female directors, generally female senior movie staff and leading actresses in casting and employment since on a population basis you would expect it to be roughly 50-50.

But then again at least at the actor/actress level, studios just make what sells. Perhaps there simply isn't the demand for as many female led movies or it's not something enough people pay to go see.

insane, back when I was in highschool there was no cops/guards/etc

We even had a smoking section, and guns could be brought on campus.

For smoking section you just needed a letter from parents that they knew you smoked. and on recess the smokers all hung out there.

To bring gun to school, it was during any hunting season. You had to have note from parents that they know. The gun had to be visible, either gun rack in back window of truck or in passenger seat. Rifles and Shotguns only no pistols.

You had to have your Hunter's Safety Course card, Your Hunting License both on you to give copies at office.

You had to leave your vehicle keys with the front office and submit to random vehicle search of the hunter's vehicles only.

So while everyone could go to their cars at recess, or if you had extra empty elective, some of us juniors would drive up to Hardees before lunch and grab fast food then be back before 4th period started, but the hunters had to leave their keys with front office and they could not retrieve them until end of school.

So much more freedom.

Smoking was banned on campus for students only my 10th grade year, but Teachers had the smoking lounge in building. There was a teacher's lounge on each hall, the back hall F where weight lifting, welding, home ec, and vocational classes were was where the teacher's smoking lounge was. Most students friendly with teachers could sneak in there and smoke anyhow.

crazy times.

I had a 84 Camaro and kept a flare gun under seat my dad owned a boat and had couple extra flare guns. So I had that for some crazy reason thinking if someone attacked me, at point blank range I'd put on a huge firework show


Then there was the stereotypes that were proven right not wrong.

The jocks hung out together, the headbangers/smokers hung out together, the nerds, the band folks like me as my senior year I was drum major
and the blacks stayed together all in separate cliques at lunch and recess and before/after school.

stereotypes even went further.

the only highschool girls with babies (during time I was there I stress) were black girls, they had to build a daycare from the old mechanic shop behind the highschool for them. And even though this was the early 90s in the south, you'd hear over the Intercom every 6 months "All Black female students to gym at this time please" where they'd get lectured on abstinence, or condom use, and std's and such.

the only time rest of the student body went through that was in 10th grade they'd take the boys one day, and girls the next day.

We had a blast though as the guys, the protection/std talk was given by one of the football coaches, and during the talk with the guys and showing various "shock images" of std's on penis on the TV, when he got to the "sex ed" portion, he flipped in a Nina Hartley porn intro where a nude Nina Hartley showed the correct way to place a condom on. haha was hilarious looking back before "political correctness" went out of control.

I loved highschool and college.

Graduated high school in 94, got associates in 96, took year off then got bachelors in computer science in 99.

But 89-94 (our highschool here in the deep south is 8th through 12th) most are 9-12, but not here. It's still 8-12th here. So it's nothing seeing 12th graders dating 8th graders. Freaky yea, but not unusual.


If you got into a fight, if a coach was around he'd let the fight finish, unless it got a bit too over the top then they'd break it up. You didn't get suspended, you lost recess privileges usually 3 days plus the starter of the fight got 10 licks of the paddle in principle office, the other only got 1 to 3, or if person was just dominated and got ass kicked you just got detention.


Kids didn't act up at all most times. And the reason was Corporal Punishment. Not private paddling either.


Once I was having a bad day, me and "highschool" sweetheart were having a bit of a spat. We sat next to each other so we were bickering a bit during class. Teacher had yelled at me to shut up and do the work. I sighed "Leave me the fuck alone"

bad move.

She called me to front of class and I got 5 licks of paddle in front of everyone. They'd stick finger in your belt loop and yank it up tight to put that extra sting on it. Embarrassing as hell! Even female older teachers who didn't paddle hard, it was just too embarrassing to get paddled, so kids behaved.


And of course if you refused paddling which you could but you'd take a zero for the day's work. few of those in a semester and no matter how hard you worked you were flunking that semester.


But the system worked.

It wasn't until they went crazy insane on political correctness, stopping corporal punishment, and putting cops/rent a cops/guards in schools and after the No Child Left Behind was signed into law, they severely dumbed down kids forcing the smartest to learn at the slowest kids pace. Doc's prescribing SSRI's like candy to kids in MASSIVE quantities, that schools in today's culture are crazy.

Yes, I was wondering when you would trot out Hooker's paper and the 'CDC whistleblower" bit. You see, in the lack of clear scientific fact, conspiracy theorists tend to grab whatever they can to prove that they are right. I'll dissect your attempt right now.

First, Hooker's paper was covering the data involving African-American children with supposed predilection towards autism. The sample size was small, the math was ludicrous, and he incorrectly analyzed a cohort study. Because of the NUMEROUS failures to appropriately conduct a true scientific study, his paper was retracted. So, when exposed to the light, his theory was decidedly lacking in content and was canned.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/08/27/journal-takes-down-autism-vaccine-paper-pending-investigation/

This incompetent study was the result, allegedly, of discussions between Hooker and a senior psychologist at the CDC named William Thompson. Hooker then teamed up with Andrew Wakefield to cherry pick bits to make it sound as though Thompson were confessing to some horrible crime of data manipulation to hide this “bombshell” result reported by Wakefield. Thus was born the “CDC whistleblower".

In February 2010, the General Medical Council in the U.K. recommended that Wakefield be stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K. because of scientific misconduct related to his infamous 1998 case series published in The Lancet, even going so far as to refer to him as irresponsible and dishonest, and in May 2010 he was. He is a now doing everything he can to prove his theories, like possibly illegal recording of conversations, so that he can regain some credibility. The guy is a hack.

Thompson has admitted to being prone to anxiety disorders, being delusional, and has shown that he is more scared of being 'the bad guy' then doing his job. His career is pretty much finished at the CDC, because he has shown that he will waffle if confronted by angry people who can't understand science. I feel sorry for him, but he has issues.

So, now we can address your link. A congressman, not a scientist, has received information from people who have been laughed out of the scientific community for multiple reasons. He sees buzzwords and decides to get ahead of the bandwagon, calling for further investigation and research. I can, of course, show you knee-jerk reactions by multiple members of congress similar to this, like Ted Cruz calling for immediate investigation into Planned Parenthood over the recent videos. You know, the ones that were chopped and spliced together to make it sound like PP was selling aborted babies? Do you see a pattern with the chop and splice for sensationalism? I hope you do.

In other words, you don't have any scientific facts. Like all anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, you rely on a few items that seem to tie together to form a true fact, but they don't. When confronted with this, you will say that it's all big pharma and money trails, etc. Do you not see the fallacy in that logic? It's like saying that the the earth was created 9000 years ago...because RELIGION!

Btw, if you want to place your trust in politicians trying to be scientists, I leave you with this gem from former congressman Paul Broun.

"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

It has always seemed kind of bass ackwards to me that probationary members can self-promote but not promote others' videos. What was the reasoning behind that? Maybe reverse the rule? Or allow probies to do either but require more cost for self-promoting (3 stars)?

While we're talking about abilities, calling dupes should probably be allowed by lower levels. I'm thinking bronze or silver. But it should still require a gold member or above to isdupe it so that a more senior member always double-checks.

Also, as someone who literally spent years at silver, I thought it might be cool to award star points for time spent actively on the site. Like, if you logged in and upvoted something at least 'X' number of times during the year (on different days of course) then every year you earn 10 star points on your anniversary. That would mean after 5 years an active user could be at silver without ever sifting a video. This would also prevent people from ever realistically achieving gold or above without sifting something.

Just food for thought anyways.

I thought the video made a good point, but rather different from the one I assumed it was going for before watching.

As I was finishing up my senior year of High School after 4 years of taking crap for being a nerd etc., a friend/acquaintance of mine was starting her freshman year. She got picked on also, probably worse than I had had it. She made it through 1 semester before dropping out. Then she got a part time job for a half-year, took night classes at the local community college, and got her GED.

At the time, I thought she was making a terrible decision by not sticking it out and trying to get through High School the usual way -- 4 years of hell. But then, the next year she ended up at the same University where I was, both as Uni-freshmen, and she handled the much more mature University environment just fine.

It ended up completely turning the tables for me, to the point that I thought that her path of dropping out -> GED -> Uni was actually objectively superior to my suffering through the more traditional path.

So, that's what I thought "don't stay in school" was going to refer to.


But the actual message is good as well. The best classes that I had in Middle and High School were more practical things. But oddly enough, the best examples of that for me were my math classes. I had the same teacher for Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, and Calculus (AP, so equivalent to Calc 1 at a University). He stressed the real-life applications of advanced mathematics by doing lots of word problems, and only teaching topics that he could point to concrete, real-world applications for. And by letting us use calculators for everything as long as we could explain WHY specific operations were needed to answer the questions.


...So, long-winded response boiled down:
I like the message. More practical stuff in school is better. And feel free to drop out -- especially if doing so is just a shortcut to further education at a University, Vo-Tech, or whatever.

@newtboy
Firstly, people who worry about other people's sexual attraction to human adult non-relatives usually have sexual problems of their own. Therefore, they disqualify themselves to be taken seriously at that debate. The more you argue against the LGBT community, the more likely you are to be sexually harmful.

Secondly, dude, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I live in a country that faces a future where a majority of the population is senior citizens because we made it to expensive and impractical to even have children. I wish my government could do more to encourage women to have children and support them raising them without sacrificing their careers. Right now, my best hope for a nation that isn't dominated by senior citizens is immigration.
I'm less worried about global overpopulation in the west because we have (or at least should have) access to birth control.
The only people in the west that are willing to have more than a handful of kids are the religious nutjobs and the mentally questionable/ill. Here's something most women know and agree on:
Vaginas aren't clowncars.