>“The plane was shot down by the Ukrainian side,” said Serhiy Kavtaradze, a member of the rebels’ security council, according to the Russia’s Interfax news agency. “We simply do not have such air defense systems.” He said rebels’ shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles “have a firing range of only 3,000 to 4,000 meters” and that passenger jets fly at much higher altitudes.
He denied that the rebels possess the SA-17 Buk air-defense as Kiev alleges."
Or are you referring to people who have taken up arms because they no longer want to be part of the Ukraine. Why not simply call these people "rebels" or "separatists"?
Even speaking as a US citizen, I can admit that the actions of some rebels did constitute terrorism. Innocent Loyalist civilians were targeted, for the purpose of political change. It doesn't get much closer to the textbook definition of terrorism than that.
The actions of many national armies in wartime counts as terrorism by application of various textbook definitions was well. That does not make those armies or their soldiers terrorists.
I disagree. However, nobody wants to admit that their team did evil things, so we whitewash. Very rarely do people see anything but black and white when it comes to 'Us vs Them' situations.
Then you are extending the definitions of "terrorist" and "terrorism" to such broad lengths as to make the terms useless for anything except political and propaganda purposes. It has nothing to do with admitting to or denying evil things.
Terrorism is political violence, but not all political violence is terrorism. Terrorists use political violence to further their ends, but not everyone who uses political violence is a terrorist.
I read the page. There are no facts contained therein, just someone posting a link to a BBC article about the venerable Ukrainian legal scholar Vladimir Putin's opinion on the legality of the events. Additionally, some other people share their opinions.
You might want to double check that link you posted.
Would you not put it past the Ukraine backed neo-nazis, which even the state-funded BBC now admit exist, trying to widen the conflict and drag third parties into the fight?
You are making an ad hominem argument. Just because there exists a mention of neo-nazis by a relevant news organizations does not LOGICALLY imply that group, or those people associated with that group, shot down the airline. On the other hand, knowing a Buk was deployed in the region where the plane was shot down (and the fact it was shot down in separatist territory to boot) is a much more compelling line of reasoning than what you've put down here. I get that you may be angry about this, but that doesn't justify making up a rationalization about it.
FWIW, I don't like neo-nazis or people who shoot down innocent civilians who weren't even involved in the area (other than being over it) to begin with. Whoever did this will be determined. Are you OK with accepting the outcome when it is?
An independent investigation needs to look at this tragedy and figure out what happened. I think everyone would agree on that.
I just think it's ridiculous that minutes after the event, some Ukranian officials start finger-pointing and people want to believe them because they have been conditioned to associate Russia with bad things.
Up until yesterday, 99% of the people reading this thread had probably never even heard of a Buk, yet suddenly everybody's an expert. Might as well accept neo-nazis could have done it, after all, look what Brevik did to those kids in Norway and his reasoning.
Yes, this tragedy may be due to the separatists but it could also easily have been a mistake by the Ukrainians. In fact, a British major was just on TV saying that they could have accidentally shot down the plane because their air defence is "slack".
At the end of the day, look at this thread and see how quickly people are to blame Russia. It must be a Pavlovian response of some sort.
Blaming statements suck regardless of who's at fault (to blame) or who knows the facts about the situation. Unless everyone involved is totally Zen, which is highly unlikely, you are going to get this sort of behavior. The only thing I've been able to come to over the last few years dealing with this is that it only takes ONE person being rational to help a whole lot of others who aren't get settled down enough to talk about it. I think they are called diplomats! :)
We both agree this is wrong, and that's where we have commonality. I hear you about the blaming being laid about. It sucks on top of already a sucky situation.
What I really find distasteful is that the Ukrainian nationalists immediately announce their theories to the press, with no evidence, whilst the wreckage and the bodies are still smouldering.
It smacks of sick political opportunism at a time when all sides should be trying to figure out what happened. The separatists have at least offered a ceasefire for a few days so investigators can come in and bodies can be recovered.
We simply don't know what happened and we should heed the warnings from missing flight MH370 where all kinds of media reports and intelligence turned out to be worthless.
Sadly many parties have an incentive to shape the narrative and they will use anonymous "tips" to push the frenzied media in different directions. Unless there is independent, corroborated and conclusive evidence, we may never know what happened to this flight.
We know Russia has been supplying the rebels with heavy weapons. It's unlikely that Ukrainian pro-Kiev "neo nazis" marched a heavy SAM launcher through rebel controlled territory. Also, in any case, it doesn't follow that because someone is a "neo nazi" they will shoot down aircraft.
> We know Russia has been supplying the rebels with heavy weapons.
More than that, we know the rebels themselves claim to have captured exactly the sort of weapon that would be able to do this (Buk missiles) from a raid on a Ukrainian military base.
>“The plane was shot down by the Ukrainian side,” said Serhiy Kavtaradze, a member of the rebels’ security council, according to the Russia’s Interfax news agency. “We simply do not have such air defense systems.” He said rebels’ shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles “have a firing range of only 3,000 to 4,000 meters” and that passenger jets fly at much higher altitudes.
...
He denied that the rebels possess the SA-17 Buk air-defense as Kiev alleges."
The stories in which the Donetsk People's Republic -- the initial claim that they had the missiles didn't come from Kiev, though the claim that they had used them to shoot down this plane did -- claimed to have captured the Buk missiles [0] were before this incident (and they've apparently shot down Ukrainian military aircraft recently beyond any altitude that MANPAD missiles would reach), so the furious backpedal and claiming they don't have the technology now is somewhat dubious.
It could, though, be an honest retreat from a propaganda misrepresentation that has since become more of a burden than a benefit.
(Incidentally, I upvoted the parent because even though the claim may be dubious, noting the fact that the claim has been made is a valuable addition to the conversation, IMO.)
Anything's possible, I suppose. But the rebels and/or Russians are the only ones to have shot down any aircraft in this episode so far (so far as I know). And if the goal is to broaden the conflict, a Malaysian Airlines flight is a pretty odd choice when there were numerous other flights operated by big western airlines (British Airways, Lufthansa, etc.) also flying in the area.
There's also the fact that Ukranian officials have specifically said that Russian-backed rebels shot the plane down. We shouldn't accept those statements uncritically, but they're out there and they are worthy of some consideration. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of anyone credible, who is in a position to know, asserting that Ukraine is behind this.
We simply don't know what happened and we should heed the warnings from missing flight MH370 where all kinds of media reports and intelligence turned out to be worthless.
Sadly too many parties have an incentive to shape the narrative and they will use anonymous "tips" to push the frenzied media in different directions. Unless there is independent, corroborated and conclusive evidence, we may never know what happened to this flight.
That's very interesting and unsettling of course. But how would those guys get access to 10km high aircraft destroying weapons? Are they so well backed that they'd have access? Are they active in the same area?
(btw, it's a valid point, no need to downvote. Yes it may seem obvious that it was Russian allies, but it's important to keep an open mind in times of war, as both sides usually play dirty)
2. Subsequently, people in the already autonomous region of Crimea, ethnically/culturally/historically Russian, had a referendum to break-away from Ukraine and then join Russia - especially after the new coup leaders decided to ban use of the Russian language.
I've been following the Russian news somewhat and my parents have been talking to friends/relatives in both Ukraine an Russia, and the amount of outright invention in the official Russian media has been quite impressive.
You forgot illegal use of the Russian armed forces in Crimea denied at the time but admitted later.
Oh, and banning the use of the Russian language was completely invented by Russian TV.
AN ACADEMIC has said schools should "give up" trying to attract more girls into traditionally male subjects such as physics, computing and engineering.
Dr Gijsbert Stoet said there was little point trying to bridge the gender divide in education as differences between boys and girls meant they would always be drawn to different subjects.
The academic, who is based at Glasgow University's Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change, said: "We probably need to give up on the idea that we will get many female engineers or male nurses."
He added that initiatives to reduce gender divides "completely deny human biology and nature".
Well, let's just wait and see, because frankly, I'm tired of reading marketing fluff like "We can’t wait to see what you build!".
After years in the making (which means plenty of time to think of an answer), one of the most important questions still hasn't been answered, and not even mentioned on the blog.
Namely, will Swift be open-source and submitted to standards bodies? Will key libraries also be released?
If I make an investment to learn Swift, what are the chances that I can take this knowledge and use it outside of the Apple ecosystem? Or is Swift destined to follow the fate of Objective-C and be completely useless outside of Mac/iOS apps?
I may yet be disappointed but I'm expecting them to open source it after release as they do with the other LLVM changes they make.
I think it could work with anything based on C libraries (C++ linkage sounds a bit trickier) but it has been very much designed to operate with the Obj-C libraries.
It might be that Haskell is a language to learn and may help you develop functionally if you switch to Swift later. There isn't that much to learn about Swift itself really.
Seems fairly transparent: members of the team would like to make it open source closer to the release, but they haven't made a decision yet and will likely do so once the 1.0 release is complete.
I did phrase that terribly. What I meant (and failed) to convey was that the most authoritative source of info on this topic was a post to a relatively obscure LLVM-related mailing list, rather than any sort of official announcement. However, I shouldn't have said "lack of transparency", because the devs could have chosen to not make any sort of public statement at all.
Considering that Swift is built on LLVM, it's not surprising that a comment was made there. It's also probably where an announcement of it being open source would be made (and now probably the Swift blog).
I've heard from various people that any decision on open source wouldn't happen until after 1.0 since the language syntax decisions haven't been nailed down yet.
Interesting thread. Not buying Chris's (with his Apple hat on) answer though.
The idea that you spend a few years to create a new language and have not even had a discussion yet about whether or not it will be open source is simply not credible.
Unless Swift was rushed to release because companies like Apportable were making too much progress and they wanted to herd developers back into the pens with new proprietary languages and APIs e.g. Metal.
Maybe they just don't want to deal with open sourced stuff for 1.0 Reference the arm64 stuff, I bet that the situation is that swift is in heavy flux (which if you follow Chris Lattner on the apple forums you realize they're changing things like crazy right now) and they just don't want to deal with people contributing to something that isn't quite ready. They already committed to saying they will introduce breaking changes in future releases. Maybe the whole team just doesn't have the time to deal with it, who knows, lets wait. Its not like C# suffered by not being open source from the start.
I wouldn't put that past Apple. Remember the more we antagonize them the more likely their legal team might go "not worth the effort just keep it in house".
Have you ever worked at a company that open sources code? I mean it's fairly common, even VERY common that the devs are all for open sourcing the product but the legal department has not made a decision yet. Engineers move at an incredibly swift, no pun intended, pace but Lawyers tend to take glacial ages to decide anything. It's completely and totally credible that the legal department hasn't given their final ok on things, especially at a company like Apple and as large as Apple is.
Some commentators like Thomas Sowell, who is himself black, believe that "affirmative action" is in fact bigoted because it basically says that a certain group of people are not capable of getting a job or an education unless they are given special help.
More nastily, it leads to the actually competent people of that group being forced to "prove" themselves.
Additionally, it leads to increased failure rates of people who get into the program / position. Advocates like to think that it's just these racist old meanies in admissions and hiring positions who are dictating unfair requirements, and it's bullshit. Often, requirements, especially very selective ones, are well-founded. Saying, "If they get in, they'll succeed" is a bad idea.
"In 1996, California voters approved Prop. 209 to block public institutions, notably state universities, from discriminating by race. Asian-American freshman enrollment at the University of California's 10-flagship universities has since climbed to 40.2% from 36.6% and to 47% from 39.7% at Berkeley."
Prop. 209's ban on racial preferences has helped Asian Americans by forcing admissions officers to focus on such academic qualifications as high-school grades and test scores.
Liberals argue that race-based admissions are necessary to increase black and Hispanic representation, but minority enrollment has increased since 1996 at the University of California. Hispanics now make up 28.1% of the UC system's freshman class, up from 13.8% in 1996, while black enrollment has ticked up to 4% from 3.8%."
...the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on Michigan's Prop. 2, which is based on Prop. 209, and liberals hope this will provide grounds for a new lawsuit to overturn California's ban on racial preferences.
...Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris and Governor Jerry Brown have both argued for its repeal."
The problem is that social activists have discovered computing. Now they are trying to force their world view into the tech domain because they have failed to impart change in the real world.
Hence the faux moral outrage over gendered words.
Hence the hounding of Brendan Eich for his personal views which had no bearing on his technical competency.
Hence the Gnome foundation running out of money because they diverted all their funds to a women's outreach program instead of focusing on software development.
Right now, in the real world, scantily-clad women in bikins are draped across magazine covers, sporting events segregate the sexes, and in many Islamic countries women are treated like slaves... yet somehow “The tech industry may have a problem with women"?
The process has to start somewhere. People in tech like to call themselves egalitarian and progressive, so they should be open to encouraging more people from different backgrounds to enter the pipeline.
"We care deeply about making tech a more inclusive and diverse place."
If we assume that other companies listed here will abide by employment law i.e. non-discrimination in hiring, what is your selling point? That you care more than other companies do? That you engage in diversity outreach programs?
Or are you sending a subtle message that white heterosexual male programmers who like watching sports need not apply?
Given that the Gnome foundation ran out of money because they diverted donations to women's outreach, rather than focusing on the core mission of programming, I think it's fair to ask especially as your founder was embroiled in a controversy over gender neutral pronouns, if you intend npm to be a pure technology company or some kind of activist organization?
"Given that the Gnome foundation ran out of money because they diverted donations to women's outreach, rather than focusing on the core mission of programming"
This is, shockingly, incorrect:
1) The GNOME Foundation did not run out of money.
2) The reason for the financial issues was not that money from donations was diverted to women's outreach - instead, corporate donations that were intended specifically for OPW were not received before outgoings to students were due. Money from existing reserves was used to cover the shortfall, most of which has now been made up as the original donations have been received.
3) The GNOME Foundation's charter does not define a core mission of programming. One of its roles is to promote development of the GNOME platform, and recruiting developers from a pool that's been largely ignored by the free software community is an excellent way to do that.
That's three fundamental factual errors in 25 words.
"The GNOME Foundation had a temporary lack of reserves due to processing the funds for the Outreach Program for Women (OPW). Due to a very fast and generous response from the Free software community, the foundation now has over three months of operating costs, which is more than enough time for the pending invoices to be paid."
In plain English: They ran out of money because they used money which people had donated for software development to pay for the women's outreach program. Instead of waiting for the corporate downations to arrive, they prioritised the women's outreach program over everything else.
As for the GNOME charter, "The GNOME Foundation will work to further the goal of the GNOME project: to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free software."
Nowhere does it say that the GNOME foundation is going into the business of diversity outreach. So why should people donating to the GNOME foundation, who expect the money to be spent on building the GNOME platform/desktop, instead see it goto an outreach program?
Running out of money would imply that there was, well, no money. Which was never the case. The Foundation has significant cash reserves, as you can easily verify from looking at its public accounts.
The outreach program has resulted in a significant increase in the number of developers working on the GNOME project, which improves their ability to build the GNOME platform. The charter doesn't say that they'll sponsor developer travel to conferences either, or the purchase of hardware in order to improve integration. Why are you hung up on a specific example of spending money in a way that improves the project, but not any others?
Employment law only covers so much. For one, people are still discriminated against on the basis of their belonging to a protected class - it just can't be done overtly. For another the laws don't cover everything.
I appreciate that you feel the phrasing is antagonistic; but I hope you can appreciate that to me it is deeply reassuring and gives me much needed hope.
Searching for employment for me is very stressful (as it is for most people I imagine). I'm non-typical in a few ways, and some of them are rather visible. I have to worry about and have experienced judgment/reluctance to hire me based on those differences. It is nice for me to know ahead of time that an employer is not just looking for people who fit a certain mold.
It's not just about women, LGBTQ, people of color, etc either. One of the ways I am somewhat non-typical as a developer is I'm a high school dropout. It's relatively common for developers not to have a college/university education, but overall it's still not the norm and there are places that will discount you on that basis (especially outside the major tech hubs). Sure, a lot of postings will add that nice qualifier "or equivalent experience"; and that's great. This goes a little farther though, and lets me know that not only will they not hold my lack of a piece of paper against me, they won't hold my alternate path in life against me either.
I can appreciate that it might seem like it goes without saying to you, or might ring hollow... but honestly I've found there are places that don't care about diversity/inclusiveness, or are even hostile to it. Also, I do actually appreciate just the effort of hanging that little sign that says "this is a welcoming place".
I think its appropriate for somebody to figure out if a potential employer is likely to fire them because of personal donations or political beliefs.
Given what happened with Brendab Eich its clear some organisations are more activist and polticial than tech. The recent history of npm's founder (and those at Joyent) suggests he will discriminate if he doesn't like your politics.
So why bother wasting time and effort trying to interview and get a job at such a politically charged environment?
Since when was "we want our employees to respect one another and not harass each other" considered "political beliefs"? Fuck off with your childish manbaby bullshit nonsense shitgarbage. Get the fuck out of our industry if that's how you're going to act. You have the emotional maturity of a walnut.
You know what? Don't even bother responding. You're gonna think you're clever, but you'll actually be responding with trite garbage that we've all heard, literally, hundreds of times before. People like you are climate change deniers, or creationists. You have tons of information and resources right in front of you, but you never bother to pay attention. Then suddenly you're the idiot asking why monkeys still existed if humans evolved from them.
If the dudebro frat brogrammer scene is the "software industry" you're trying to keep from being "ruined", then I say we ruin it as fast as possible.
And yes, Brandon Eich got run out of town because of his political beliefs. They ran contrary to the stated beliefs of the organization he was going to run. When you're the CEO of something as public as the Mozilla Foundation those sort of things will be scrutinized. If he was just running Brandon Eich Consulting, LLC no one would have thought twice about it.
Thanks for your support for us white cis men. I don't know where we would be without your bravery and courage. /s
As a gay guy, I congratulate you in your inclusiveness, npm. I'm not interested in working on front-end at the moment, but if I were you would have gotten my attention. Thank you.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/malaysia-airlines...
>“The plane was shot down by the Ukrainian side,” said Serhiy Kavtaradze, a member of the rebels’ security council, according to the Russia’s Interfax news agency. “We simply do not have such air defense systems.” He said rebels’ shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles “have a firing range of only 3,000 to 4,000 meters” and that passenger jets fly at much higher altitudes.
He denied that the rebels possess the SA-17 Buk air-defense as Kiev alleges."