Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Worst law in the history of the United States. (Score 1) 739

Huh... there's a lot about this post that can be used to sprout new conversation.

1. PPOs are move expensive than HMOs. To save money, go to an HMO.

2. There is no such thing as a "modest six-figure household income"-- at least without context. $100,000/year in California's Inland Empire will get you a lot more than $200,000/year in the middle of Manhattan.

3. You're paying $1,000/month in premiums? Do you pay for it personally? One would assume that the employers that could facilitate a household's 6-figure income could negotiate a lower premium for its employees.

4. You didn't mention if there was any change to your coverage (for example, if you get a whiff of cancer, you'll still taken care of).

5. The law didn't require insurance premiums to go up. Insurers decided to jack up their prices instead of cutting profits. And no one knows if they simply used the opportunity to increase the prices on the independently insured.

6. I work for a major university system. My rates stayed the same and my coverage expanded. My household makes significantly less than yours. I guess we can chalk it up to my employer having more negotiating power than yours. But here's the big question: why does there need to be insurance price bargaining in the first place? Oh yes... the for-profit insurance industry and associated medical industries.

Comment The AirBnB Jab -- (Score 1) 282

"While similar bullying applied to short rentals of private rooms through sites like Airbnb"

Look-- Uber, Lyft, and all the other distributed taxi services are being so heavily attacked by regulatory agencies because it is the responsibility of those agencies to protect consumer safety. Voluntarily make sure your company meets all the same safety and insurance requirements as an existing taxi system and you'll be set.

AirBnB is similar in that the repeated short-term rental of homes as hotels requires health and fire inspections of these distributed hotels, BUT there's an additional issue. Amsterdam is a massive tourist attraction. People want to visit Amsterdam, ride bikes, get high, and maybe visit a prostitute. However, Amsterdam is not that big... and the people who live there don't want it to get very big. In fact, if it got too big or too expensive, then you'd have no dutch people living there-- just tourist agencies and immigrants dressed in stereotypical Dutch garb-- "Welcome to Dutch Land, Americans!".

The ease of facilitating short-term tourism rentals via AirBnB makes it exceedingly profitable to buy a flat and use AirBnB to bring in more revenue per month than you could get renting the place out to people who actually want to live and work in the city. And that's the problem. Amsterdam should be full of the Dutch but without appropriate regulation, it will be full of tourists with some Dutch on the side.

I would love to visit Amsterdam, but wouldn't care to do so in the future if it's jam packed with tourists.

Comment Re:metric you insensitive clod! (Score 1) 403

When selling to end-users, you should be describing cost per distance traveled. They will want to know how much it will costs them to use the vehicle day to day.
When describing emissions, you should be describing lbs or kg of CO2 or CO2e per distance traveled. Since vehicle mileage is easily tracked, we can use that figure to determine, with simple multiplication environmental effects of driving an automobile.

Of course, when you are using an EV, this goes out the window because the cost of refueling is highly dependent on when and where you charge. Moreover, the blend of electricity sources determines the actual pollution from charging the vehicle. (Charging in West Virgina is significantly worse for the environment than Southern California).

Comment Bribery's Sin is Relative (Score 1) 110

Countries most likely to require a bribe (per Transparency International)

1. Russia
2. China
3. Mexico
4. Indonesia
5. United Arab Emirates
6. Argentina
7. Saudi Arabia
8. Turkey
9. India
10. Taiwan

Sometimes bribery is just expected. Russians have been brow-beaten by their ruling class(es) since the dawn of time. If you were to moan about paying a bribe there, grandmother passers-by would tell you to nut up and just get it done. In China, it's simply an expected part of business-- gifts of all sorts and money are expected when visiting offices, homes, and closing deals. Mexico's just messed up. They've not had a stable government since the narco cartels took over.

Comment Re:So what exactly is the market here. (Score 1) 730

Just a quick correction because I see a lot of people buying Fitbits without understanding what they actually do. And then returning them.

Fitbits are very simple devices that act as an accelerometer, pedometer, altimeter, and a watch.

Worn Fitbits do not monitor your health or fitness. They cannot tell you if you're sick, developing cancer, or at risk for heart disease. They cannot tell you your BMI, your body fat percentages, glucose levels, or blood pressure. They can't tell you if you need a recovery day or if you're about to pass out due to dehydration.

Fitbits are not substitutes for regular medical visits. It sounds nitpicky, but as a go-to nerd, I've had to explain this to too many people who then feel dumb for the purchase. Everything you think your Fitbit is doing for you, you can do on your own or don't need to do in the first place.

Comment Yes, But How Would YOU Design the System? (Score 1) 170

I know next to nothing about what is required to inventory, issue, use, download, store, index, and recall all the hardware and video that would be required for such a system. I can only speculate. Has anyone had experience in this realm? Creating massive databases for video or images and indexing them in such a way that police reports could be tied directly to them and be pulled up as necessary?

If so, in your perfect world, how would you build the system and how much would it cost?

Comment Re:Actions Against People Who Happen to be Women (Score 1) 1134

Where do you go to see RL gay people and women being verbally attacked online because they are gay and/or women? That's sounds like a horrible place. Why do you go there?

But are you certain it's *because* they have those characteristics or might it be, as suggested, that knowing those characteristics, the offender specifically uses certain terms and phrases to hurt that person?

There's a big difference between a person who thinks everyone woman is a slut to be hated and person angry at another person who happens to be a woman and (using the knowledge of womanhood) chooses the word "slut" as a means of honing one's insult.

Too hard to believe? Consider the angry rantings of a child.

Almost everyone has heard a pissed off kid say, "I hate you! I wish you weren't my mom!!"? Maybe you said it yourself as a child.
Which is the more likely interpretation?
(A) "I genuinely wishes that s/he had different parents. I would not cry if I was taken away from you."
(B) "I'm pissed that I didn't get my way. Knowing that you love me as a parent, I offer words contrary to my own knowledge and opinion with for the specific intent in doing you emotional or psychological harm in retribution."

Comment Re:I predict (Score 1) 1134

This is easy and it's happening more and more frequently. Today's games are much more likely to have female non-victim playable characters. But if that's going to be a gauge for any kind of improvement over time, then you have to establish a reference date. For example:

2003 -- Year Zero -- X number of games and Y% of games on the market have the option to play female lead characters.
2004 -- Year One -- X number...

But then you can't go back and say, ".01% of all video games made between 1982 and 2014 have had the option of playing a female lead character." That would be disingenuous. That would be holding today's developers and writers accountable for actions taken by other developers while today's developers were in primary school. At some point, you have to have the integrity to say, "The old generational thought is dying out. The new generational thought is taking hold. It just takes time from here."

And still, you can't force game designers to choose to make a character female any more than you can force a novelist. Part of game creation is following a creative vision. Yes, studios can make such changes. Yes, we can HOPE that newer game designers have the same gender-based sentiments as we, but since it is still an artistic endeavor, they should have the freedom to create the games they wish to create... with the audience deciding if it's a game they want to buy.

"Assuming that art is ultimately a cultural product, what does that say about the gaming industry's attitudes toward women? How do they compare to other creative industries? (Movies, TV, etc.)"

It says a couple things-- neither are too surprising. Young girls are taught to want to be rescued. Young men are taught to want to rescue. After the rescue transaction, adult-oriented fiction asserts that there's an expectation of physical intimacy. That's the fantasy story that told day-in and day-out. Sometimes the story is reversed. Sometimes it includes the same gender. It says nothing about women but quite a bit about our **historical** fantasies.

Today's stories are different. Resident Evil, Salt, Twilight, Harry Potter-- Female competence and heroism is a celebrated expectation and is becoming more and more mainstream-- not because peoples' tastes are being forcibly changed, but because kids grew up with the expectation that boys and girls can both be whomever they wish.

It's generational. The old and their ideas will die off. The new and their ideas will replace them. So just make sure not to hold the new accountable for the actions of the old. Hell... don't even lump them into the same categories.

Comment Re:Actions Against People Who Happen to be Women (Score 1) 1134

Translation A: I don't like what you've said and I'm showing it by saying things that I hope to make you angry.
Translation B: I'm a random troll.

And by the way, I wish you hadn't capitalized all those words. Now I can't help but imagine what a culture of reptilian Mexicans worshiping at Temple would look like. And now I'm imagining the combination of cultural dietary habits. Great! Now I have a novel!

Comment If necessary, what's the best way to do it? (Score 1) 137

There are some things (very few) in this world that I simply accept to be inevitable. I predict that the cost of having non-tracked auto insurance will increase greatly in relation to the cost of tracked auto insurance. It will become costly to hold onto 100% privacy in your automobile transportation habits.

While I have the preference of not being tracked whatsoever, what limitations would you propose within such a tracking system to preserve as much privacy as possible while also promoting the risk analysis that an insurance company would want from the data?

My suggestions:
-- Record speed measurements every 5 seconds the engine is on.
-- Record mile traveled per day.
-- No GPS coordinates recorded. (No actual location.)
-- Transmit data only once per month. Frequent transmissions can be used as a means of obtaining location.

What say you?

Comment Re:I predict (Score 3, Insightful) 1134

I'm a male gamer and I agree with the assertion that video games with women typically find methods of objectifying the female form... but it's not as though video games or gamer culture is unique in this way. The gaming industry objectifies women. As does Hollywood. And print media.

One of the best selling products in history is the female form and it sells well. Sex sells well. What do you do in a capitalist society when there is a seemingly unlimited demand for a product of which you have a nearly unlimited supply? Well, you sell it.

We can even take it a step further an confidently assert that there will always be a sufficient supply of the female form to meet or exceed demand due to psychological imperative with which most Western girls grow up that suggests that if they cannot receive validation of self through other actions or deeds, then there's always the option to resort to sexuality. One could even assert that this persistent and potentially indoctrinated psychological rationale may be one of the roots of reproduction for humanity.

And it's even easier to supply the female form in games because you don't even need a female. You just need artistic skills and an imagination!

So we've defined the multifaceted problem (biologically-enforced demand and an unlimited supply). We've also based the discussion on the issues that such objectification is becoming more and more of a nuisance to the comfort of more and more people (social evolution).

So what is to be done?

Stop all games that singularly sexualize the female form? What if both the male and female forms are equally sexualized? All good?
Do the same for video and print media?
Do we affect demand?
Are we to shame males and lesbians for appreciating the female form in game, video, and print media?

And this is where I always get stuck. If we want to change the frequency or the visibility of the objectification of the female form, we have to affect supply, demand, or both-- but doing so by shaming or legislation seems to infringe not only upon the social contract but upon biological imperatives thus making such an effort pointless.

So what is to be done?

Comment Actions Against People Who Happen to be Women (Score 1) 1134

Is there any evidence that it's a such concentrated effort to imply a genuine, heartfelt hatred of women (misogyny)? You would really have to stretch your rationale and ignore massive amounts of evidence to the contrary to assert that there's a pervasive vein of misogyny growing throughout nerd/gamer culture.

Yes, some male gamers will use derogatory words to intentionally offend women. And men. And transgendered people. And dogs. And the dead. And the not-yet-living. And mythical characters.

If there's any cultural bias against any one group, it's the group that "pissing us off right now". And "women-as-a-whole" have never been that group.

It has nothing to do with women as a whole, but a targeted hatred at people who happen to be women.

It doesn't matter who you are. Male, female, man, woman, gay, straight, asexual, black, white, brown, Asian, American, French, German, Argentinian-- if you piss off nerds and they come after you, you can be fairly certain it has nothing to do with your immutable characteristics and everything to do with your actions. You can try to hide behind immutable characteristics as a means of suggesting some sort of irrational bias, but nerds, by their very nature, are too damn smart to fall for that.

Comment Neat, but I can't wait for... (Score 2) 116

This is really cool. I'll probably watch a race... if at all possible. But I'm really watching Formula E as an industry because I can't wait for the day when they announce "Next year, no more car-swapping! You must develop battery-swapping methods!" Let Formula E be the test bed for 30 different battery swapping methods and let the world be better for it.

Slashdot Top Deals

Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.

Working...