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Comment Re:Responsibilitiy (Score 1) 137

and "free speech" shouldnt be a protection against those laws. kind of like using the 1st Amendment to protect the practice of discrimination, as some have been wont to do recently)

The first amendment contains more than the right to free speech. It also contains the right of free association which is what is used to defend discriminatory practices.

It also contains freedom of the press which I think much more closely fits the situation of Google's search results algorithm. Google is allowed to publish what it wants however it wants, within the bounds of libel/slander and related (e.g. fraud) laws. So, while the results of the algorithm may not be "speech", Google's right to publish those results seems like it should be protected.
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JimFive

Comment Re:Where is the seat of consciousness? (Score 1) 114

I shouldn't bother but here goes:

A very fundamental question that no one has answered yet and few people even ask is this: does the brain produce consciousness/mind/spirit or is it the other way around?

This is not an interesting question. You are essentially asking if the universe is based on physics or mysticism. Idealism is absurd, Dualism leads to unanswerable questions and Materialism seems to be working out pretty well for us.

It is a known experimental fact that in quantum physics a conscious observer changes the outcome of the experiment. Why is this?

The observer doesn't need to be conscious. While quantum physics is weird, it is not mysticism.

There is no way to find out the function of the software in a computer, no matter how minutely the hardware thereof is examined, unless the complete computer is functioning correctly. Software is a product of the mind and is not physical even though it requires physical hardware to execute the software.

You can if you include the HD and it's magnetic contents as part of the computer hardware. There is nothing non-deterministic about the way a computer loads and executes software.
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JimFive

Comment Re:Bad design leads to problems. (Score 1) 613

I just want to point out that there is at least one exception to this idea. In personal calendars, for example in outlook, someone may have a recurring appointment on Wednesday at 11 am. This time should not change with daylight savings time, it should stay 11am regardless of what the UTC offset is.

Having said that, I agree that everything should default UTC and exceptions such as personal calendaring should be well thought out.
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JimFive

Submission + - Virgin Galactic spaceship crashes (yahoo.com)

JimFive writes:

A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, officials said. Two pilots were aboard the spaceship, which was undergoing its first powered test flight since January. It was not immediately known if they were able to parachute to safety.


Comment Re:I welcome the Death Spiral (Score 1) 392

I disagree. The pricing won't be $50/channel. It will be something like:
Connection Fee(possibly includes local OTA): $30/mo
Basic Channels (each): $5/mo
Premium Channels (each): $10/mo
Supreme Channels (each): $20/mo
ESPN: $50/mo

And every channel you actually want is going to be Premium or Supreme. So your 4 channels are still going to cost $70-150 every month
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JimFive

Comment Re:How hard is it to recognize a stoplight? (Score 1) 287

That's easy. The stoplight is above you. [...] plus the stoplight is not on the side of the road

There are places where the stop lights are on posts at the side of the road and only slightly above you, about the height of the lights on a Semi trailer. If the road is divided there may be a light on each side of the road indicating instructions for particular lanes. I saw this most often in Paris, but I've also seen it in Chicago.
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JimFive

Comment Re:Enough with the concern trolling (Score 1) 786

for whatever reason

Since this is the entire point, I find it suspicious that you gloss over it.

If the reason that women don't want to go into tech is due to social systems (education, media, etc) that discourage women by treating women is a biased way then those social systems should be changed to eliminate that bias. Why should they be changed? Because social systems are supposed to provide equal opportunity and treating people in a gender biased way fails at that. That failure means that society is not getting the best value from its populace.

Alternatively, if the reason is that the "culture" of technical workplaces is hostile to women, then that culture should be named and shamed until it changes because it is morally reprehensible to treat people badly, even if the current members of that culture don't think they're doing anything wrong.
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JimFive

Comment Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? (Score 1) 786

Can you now spout off some more righteous anger about that fact that male veterinarians are rapidly becoming extinct?

Are they?

Are young men being kept away from the field by social pressure and estrogen fueled sexual harassing female vets?

I haven't heard of any men proclaiming that they had left a large veterinary project due to rampant sexism and harassment. I have heard that from women on programming projects.

Or is that just the way it needs to be because women are better than men?

Or is there some other professional area(s) that men are moving to which they see as a better field than veterinary medicine that for some reason women aren't pursuing?

Equate the two situations, is your challenge.

Red herrings and false dichotomies are red herrings and false dichotomies.

Comment Re:1..2..3 before SJW (Score 1) 786

I just listened to this story and one of the key points was that male college freshman had been given computers as toys and already had several years of tinkering with them before college while the profiled women had not had that experience. They posit that this disparity was due to computers being advertised as toys for boys in the early 80s. The one woman also implied that the college professors were expecting that the students would have that computer experience before entering the program.
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JimFive

Comment Re:Another way to beat the paid/delivery issue. (Score 1) 342

I don't think this works out. People would buy all the tokens they think they'll need for the event up front and then just turn in the tokens to get ice as they need it. That way they only have to wait in the money line once. If the delay is in the money handling then tokens and separate lines are probably a good idea, but if the delay is in the actual transfer of the ice then having money separate from delivery doesn't really change anything.
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JimFive

Comment Re:Let me get this right (Score 1) 839

Those would be per item rates. And sure, buying parts instead of assembled goods would remove some of the "progressiveness" of that system, but would only be reasonable if the cost of assembly was less than the additional tax.

Again, I'm not endorsing this type of system, but if someone wanted to create a progressive consumption tax, they probably could.

Comment Re:Let me get this right (Score 1) 839

How do you implement a progressive consumption tax?

The easy way would be to have different tax rates depending on the cost and/or type of the good.
An example rate schedule might include:
Groceries: Exempt
$0-50: 2%
$50-100: 4%
$100-1000: 6%
$1000-10000: 10%
Automobile < $30000: 6%
Automobile 30,000-100,000: 10%
Housing: < $200,000: 5%
etc

This is not an endorsement, I don't like the idea of replacing income taxes with consumption taxes, but this is a way to make a progressive consumption tax. The problem is, however, that once someone is wealthy enough, they don't have to buy their goods within your borders. They'll buy the $500,000 yacht somewhere that won't tax them for it.
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JimFive

Comment Re: So... (Score 1) 253

But it's simply not $0.70 on the dollar when comparing apples to apples.

This is true.

You cannot complain about wage discrepancies between different professions

But you can try to figure out why professions that attract women pay less than professions that attract men. Are the professions attractive to women really "worth less" than the ones that attract men or is there a bias in society that leads to the discrepancy?

The data seems to show that there are at least two distinct issues involved in gender wage discrepancies. One being the overall lower value placed on jobs that are primarily held by women while the other is the approximately 7% discrepancy when you "compare apples to apples". You can't address gender wage discrepancies without at least investigating these things. Now, it may be that professions that attract women really are less valuable over all than those that attract men. However, it's possible that women are being actively discouraged from more valuable professions.

Denying the discrepancy is unhelpful.
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JimFive

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