Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment A thin wedge against free speech (Score 1) 128

These laws against recording in public are an early step toward curtailing freedom of speech. The recent popularity of variations on this, particularly with regard toward laws against recording police officers should be a tip-off.

We already have laws that differentiate between what's acceptable in public versus private space: walking around naked, for instance. Blurring this line looks like something that favors those who would erode and limit the public space.

Comment Quality / $ (Score 1) 379

As long as the quality of work continues to be an imponderable - not sure why this still is the case, unless management continues to remain clueless - decisions will be made only based on how much money someone costs, and older people want more money. Perhaps they imagine that experience is valuable.

Submission + - High-Protein Diet Considered Harmful - who wants to hear that? (wsj.com)

Submitted by DavidHumus
DavidHumus writes: There's a report in the Wall Street Journal recently on two studies showing an association between low-protein, high-carbohydrate diets and longevity. The TL;DR is "eating a lot of meat (and other animal-derived protein like cheese) in middle-age lowers longevity but the same things help longevity after the age of 65."

These studies are not too surprising if you follow this sort of thing. What is perhaps more interesting is the strong reaction against this article and articles like it. The comments on the article range from the merely dismissive — "...this study means nothing in the real world" — to the abusive — "what the food nazi's approve....grass, cardboard, tofu, yogurt" and "just more commie propaganda to get americans to eat grass and tree bark like our North Korean comrades".

What's interesting is that you don't get this sort of thing only from WSJ readers — many /. responders parrot the same sort of irrelevant nonsense upon encountering a scientific study pointing to conclusions they don't like: the study "is biased", "fails to account for X", "was based on mice so doesn't apply", and so on with no evidence the responder has looked at (or even understood) at the actual research, of course.

What's also interesting, perhaps not surprisingly, is the corresponding prevalent confusion between information based on empirical evidence and notions from popular culture: many commenting on the article seem to think that there was scientific support for some of the recent high-protein diet fads — that scientists "keep changing their minds".

Submission + - Eating meat and cheese may be as bad as smoking (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by DavidHumus
DavidHumus writes: According to an article on medicalxpress.com:

In a new study that tracked a large sample of adults for nearly two decades, researchers have found that eating a diet rich in animal proteins during middle age makes you four times more likely to die of cancer than someone with a low-protein diet—a mortality risk factor comparable to smoking.

Uh-oh, not only should I be a vegetarian, maybe I should be vegan.

Comment Error cascade? (Score 2) 126

by DavidHumus (#46409251) Attached to: Interview: Ask Eric Raymond What You Will

Your stance on AGW seems to deny the error-correcting features of the scientific method.

So which do you think is more likely: that AGW-deniers are primarily politically-motivated and don't give a crap about simple facts (like the greenhouse effect of CO2) or that the scientific method is deeply flawed?

Submission + - Why do we think bankers get paid too much, but not technology CEOs? 1

Submitted by DavidHumus
DavidHumus writes: From the NY Times article (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/outrage-over-wall-st-pay-but-shrugs-for-silicon-valley/):

Big paydays on Wall Street often come under laserlike scrutiny, while Silicon Valley gets a pass on its own compensation excesses. Why the double standard?

The typical director at a Standard & Poor’s 500 company was paid $251,000 in 2012, according to Bloomberg News. Mr. Schmidt [Google's CEO] is above that range by over $100 million. ... The latest was the criticism of Jamie Dimon’s pay for 2013, given the many regulatory travails of his bank, JPMorgan Chase. The bank’s board awarded Mr. Dimon $20 million in pay for 2013, $18.5 million of which was in restricted stock that vests over three years. ... For one, the outsize pay for Mr. Schmidt doesn’t square with Google’s performance. Putting aside the fact that he is not even the chief executive, Google had net income of $12.9 billion last year. JPMorgan was higher at $17.9 billion....

On pure economics, Mr. Schmidt appears to be receiving an inordinate amount. By every measure, JPMorgan is bigger, with more profits. And yet Google awards $100 million to its chairman and there is nary a peep.

Maybe the bigger question is why is CEO pay so entirely disconnected from company performance?

Comment Re:That's interestingly backwards (Score 1) 240

by DavidHumus (#46029129) Attached to: Code Is Not Literature

This is an extremely blinkered view of code that probably well-represents the majority opinion, given that that's the genesis of most programming languages.

However, there is a small group of languages that aspires to represent computational concepts at an abstract level in a clear, consistent, and logical manner. These languages, like APL and J, are based on a regularization of mathematical notation.

Slashdot Top Deals

"You shouldn't make my toaster angry." -- Household security explained in "Johnny Quest"

Close