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Comment Re:End of November (Score 1) 250

Not really. It sounds like a position that should have been filled from the beginning is just now getting filled.

The mythical man month does not directly cover the case of being under-manned until a month after release, then bringing staffing up to where it should be. And certainly if that is the entirety of your contribution, I have to assume you mean the most recognized portions of the concept.

Under-manned because they hired one more person? I haven't seen any evidence they were understaffed or under-manned. And someone I'm skeptical that a CEO guy with a BS in Political Science and no Software Engineering background is the key to turning this around.

Comment Re:It may all be for naught (Score 2) 250

And since they are treated differently than people in the other 14 states that do have exchanges, you can bet an Equal Protection lawsuit will be quick in coming.

Here is the Equal Protection Clause:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Note that the boundary of the clause is the State. Different states have different laws all the time. Massachusetts has had statewide healthcare for a long time, and Vermont passed a single-payer healthcare. Oregon has vote-by-mail. Minnesota abolished the death penalty while it remains in the majority of states. Some states have legalized marijuana, while in Pennsylvania you can only buy wine and spirits from state owned shops. Taxes are different, environmental laws are different, etc.

Statehood wouldn't mean much if states weren't allowed to have different laws.

Comment Missing human "imagination" (Score 4, Insightful) 277

The thing missing with many of the current AI techniques is they lack human "imagination" or the ability to simulate complex situations in your mind. Understanding goes beyond mere language. Statistical models and second-order logic just can't match a quick simulation. When a person thinks about "Could a crocodile run a steeplechase?" they don't put a bunch of logical statements together. They very quickly picture a crocodile and a steeplechase in a mental simulation based on prior experience. From this picture, a person can quickly visualize what that would look like (very silly). Same with "Should baseball players be allowed to glue small wings onto their caps?". You visualize this, realize how silly it sounds, and dismiss it. People can even run the simulation in their heads as to what would happen (people would laugh, they would be fragile and fall off, etc).

Comment Re:Just what we need right now... (Score 1) 582

From the point of view of most Europeans where guns are generally banned you all look crazy. We don't have guns and yet somehow aren't being robbed, raped and murdered nearly as much as you guys. At no time in our history would guns have helped us rise up against the government either.

From our point of view you should be trying to figure out how to change your society so that you don't need guns, rather than trying to advocate more of them. You are treating the symptom, not the cause.

Europeans are sure sanctimonious about their "morally superior" culture considering that two World Wars have originated there the past 100 hundred years and it was the site of the Holocaust. And if you think that is ancient history, let me point out the Bosnian War.

The large amount of gun murders is the direct result of the failed drug policy of the US and mostly involves criminal-on-criminal murders that would not be affected by stricter gun laws. As proof, many of the cities with the strictest gun laws have the most gun violence. In general, the US's total crime rate is lower than many European countries: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_vic-crime-total-victims

Comment Re: It's The American Drean (Score 3, Insightful) 1313

please, fox just lies, saying other news networks are somehow as bad is ridiculous.

Saying "I hate Fox News, they are biased" doesn't scream out "I just want honest, balanced coverage". It screams out "I am a biased left-winger". Take one obvious example, NBC/MSNBC have had a rash of "selectively editing" videos recently. There was the 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case, the bogus sandy hook "heckling", and taking a Romney speech completely out of context.

The news gathering in the US is atrocious. Anyone who is not completely biased can see Fox is right-wing, MSNBC is left-wing, and the rest are center-left (although CNN seems to push more to the MSNBC side these days). They are all a bad combination of sensationalist ratings driven garbage combined with a huge agenda that rarely has the viewers' best interests in mind. If you don't view the news with a filter that considers the source, you are being deceived."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/trayvon-martin-nbc-news-editing-911-call-306359
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/29/msnbc-caught-selectively-editing-another-clip-this-time-of-sandy-hook-victims-father/
http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/06/19/msnbc-busted-for-editing-romney-comments-out-of-context-backtracks-sorta-video/

Comment Re:Soul Crushing? (Score 2) 276

Another way of looking at it: If you work in a suburban office park, describe how it's different in any significant way from the one portrayed in Office Space.

Wait, urban business don't have cube farms? For me personally, living in a city would be like my entire life is Office Space. Work in a cube, come home to a cube of an apartment. Except that the cube of an apartment is ridiculously expensive.

Comment Re:Allegedly (Score 1) 480

I don't want to steer this discussion away from the topic, but this is exactly why no theist will ever be able to convince me about the "truths" of his religion. How am I supposed to believe that those word-of-mouth stories that are thousands of years old could be true when people believe in such ludicrous things as "the moon hoax", despite the fact that it was a much more recent event and there are tons of material evidence to support the fact that there was *no* super-competent con man who supposedly managed to trick thousands of engineers into thinking that they are not building a fake rocket and that they are not receiving fake telemetry not from the Moon? People *want* to believe in the irrational, they find something irrational everywhere they look. Human capacity for self-deception never ceases to amaze me.

Fascinating. I take the opposite lesson, that despite the all of the evidence for the moon landing there are deniers just 40 years after the event. I can imagine in 2000 years most people not believing the story of the moon landing. From their standpoint, how could a primitive technological society who just learned about spaceflight manage to get to the moon and back. And then for some reason just "stopped" going all of a sudden for 50-100+ years.

From a theological standpoint, if Jesus arrived today as in the BIble there would be just as many disbelievers 2000 years ago as there are today despite all of the video and news stories generated.

Comment Re:Harry Potter director? (Score 5, Insightful) 303

Jackson did a great job with bringing Middle-Earth to life in sets and costumes, but that hurdle has largely been crossed. The Hobbit needs someone who can take the sets and costumes and tell a story.

Peter Jackson managed to take the LOTR trilogy and make it a critical and popular success, winning both box office awards AND the OSCAR for BEST PICTURE. Let me repeat that--he took a trilogy of orcs, elves, dwarves, and hobbits and managed to win an academy award for best picture. That isn't just great film making--that is a freaking miracle

Comment Re:Errr... you do realise .... (Score 1) 535

... that those tribesmen 2000 years ago would have been jewish , right? So where does the christian bashing come into it?

"If you want to know why readership has declined significantly, here is an example."

Yeah right, because most of /. 's readership are churchgoing evangelists.

Not.

Get over yourself.

Well not anymore. Actually, I think the only people left are sanctimoniousness jerks who live in an echo chamber.

Comment Re:He was too ambitious (Score 0) 535

Except it's not a translation of the word of God, but a translation of a bunch of superstitious middle-eastern tribesmen from 2000 odd years ago (or more).

I find it extremely sad that Slashdot has declined to the point where any random Christian-bashing is modded +5 Insightful, instead of off-topic. If you want to know why readership has declined significantly, here is an example.

Comment Re:I trust parents more than government (Score 1) 1007

The only people I trust less than qualified, vetted, officials is uneducated jackasses pretending to understand the world around them when really they are just ignorant twits. There is a mantra from conservatives "They think they know better than you!". Um, yep. I think the scientists and knowledgeable health professionals "know better" than the backward backwater assholes who raise their children as if it were the year 1512.

I am very much pro-vaccination. I do have to point out it wasn't a "uneducated conservative" who started this mess, but Andrew Wakefield who was considered a "knowledgeable scientist and health professional". And there are thousands of examples where the scientists and medical professionals were wrong and/or completely changed their consensus (ex. breastfeeding bad/good). Someone breastfeeding in 1969/1970 may have been considered a ignorant, backwater redneck for choosing archaic breastfeeding over the scientifically developed, precision method of delivering nutrition that is Infant Formula.

Comment Re:Estate tax (Score 1) 1065

But I do think billion-dollar estates should be taxed--a lot. The wife and kids (if any) did not create wealth. They deserve money, but so do we.

1. Using the term wife and not spouse or partner is sexist and assumes that only men can create large value estates.
2. You cannot assume that a spouse or partner did not assist in the creation of wealth. In divorce proceedings, there is something called "Reimbursement Alimony" whereby the spouse is compensated for their contribution to the other spouse's career.
3. Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery. You do not "deserve" anyone else's money.

Comment Re:If rule by corporations bothers you (Score 1) 1002

Slightly off-topic but if you are asking "what can I do" and you want to get at the root cause, not the symptom, you might want to check out the Move to Amend.

Do you realize if the "Move to Amend" passed, then what Google/Amazon/etc are doing could and would be illegal! Heck, this very Slashdot post would be illegal since it could be construed to influence an election and a forum could be argued as not meeting the criteria as "press".

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