You don't believe me? Good grief, it's been illegal to consider all manner of things when hiring for years, all over the place. Not to mention there are questions you can't even ask.

They also don't seem to be charging him under it. So they probably agree with you.

This is an inherent problem with systems that have a centralized control. Including GitHub. git is inherently decentralized, so it has different problems, which the designers of GitHub tried to resolve through centralization. If you'll notice, it worked. The problems with decentralization were solved. But now we have the problems of centralization.

I don't know what a real solution would be. Google is a good example in another area. Web pages are decentralized, but Google makes it possible to find what you need...but Google is centralized, so if Google doesn't want you to find somthing, it is even more difficult to find than before.

This is the inherent problems of monopolies, even when they aren't abusing their power. But monopolies always eventually abuse their power. Sometimes not until the first generation of management retires, but eventually.

I was worried about SourceForge from the first time that I heard about it. But it was so useful...

It's not a GPL violation, merely unethical. It probably isn't illegal.

Well, trust isn't a single bit operation. More nearly a float. Actually, trust along a single dimension is reasonably considered a float, but there are multiple dimensions.

Yes, it's safer if you use your own trusted compiler. But it's also safer if you build your own CPU, and the rest of your computer. And I doubt that MS would have bothered to build a custom compiler that would hide back doors when it was compiling the MSWind OS. It clearly *could*, it's just unlikely. Of course, how unlikely you consider it depends on what you are worried about, and I'm not planning on using any of their software, so I can afford to be unworried. I worry more about SOHO router vulnerabilities.

So the question becomes "For what purposes are they considering using MSWind?". This is still probably only security theater, but your proposed objection is likely to be unreasonable. One should never be certain, so one operates on the balance of probabilites of cost and gain.

I didn't do anything of the kind. I substituted an act for an act. I pointed out a general truth that applies across the board. That's all.

Seriously, it's like some of you never made it through English class.

Oh, FFS. Look. No matter *what* I chose, the point, which you completely missed, was that one malfeasance is in no way made less by the existence of others.

By concentrating on the particulars -- which named no one and drew no level of equivalence except withing the example, as without -- you failed.

The example is the same if it is stealing from the cookie jar or shoplifting -- or murder -- or twisting the truth. That's the WHOLE POINT. That's the whooshing sound you heard.

The slashdotter below you screws up and makes some dumb remark about my post, missing the point? Doesn't excuse you doing it at all. How's that? A little closer to home?

You're missing the point. The other guy *is* evil/hateful/fascist/$badBadBad, just in a slightly different way than the guy you were convinced to vote for. This is usually true even for the candidates offered by the minority parties, though that may well be because only loons will run after an office (and spend the effort) when there's just about no chance they'll get it.

Every election I witness I become more and more convinced that a lottery would be a much better way to select a representative. Three adults at random from each voting district. And penalties for declining (say, triple your tax bill for the next 20 years). And when you "retire" from office, you get a pension of twice the median income in your district, and are prohibited from accepting "favors" (how to phrase that to eliminate loopholes) from anyone you regulated or passed laws concerning while you were in office.
This would require a bit of internal restructuring of the government to remove the ability of a single person to really screw things up (as occasionally a real winner would get selected) but that needs doing anyway (as occasionally a real winner gets elected).

It isn't even mentioned in the summary until the end, but "over-criminalization" has been worrying me, too. Another example, and an even better one, is the increasing criminalization of predicate behaviors, like alcoholism, that MIGHT lead to criminal behavior but are not of themselves criminal. There are many such predicate behaviors that are now criminalized, and the number increases. Making these predicate behaviors illegal allows gung-ho police and prosecutors and lawyers to indict and convict many more people than they could otherwise. It once again trades liberty for "safety".

I understand that you think that Synroc is a solution. Maybe it "sort of" is. I've long considered glassification to be a reasonable approach to develop. But I said "develop". I don't believe that there has been any extensive testing of Synroc, so I don't consider it a proven solution. Perhaps it would work out. (And could you use it for process heat?)

The thing is, this is deciding that we're going to throw away most of the recoverable energy. I think hot breeders are a more desirable approach, with something like Synroc used only on the final result. But it's also quite possible that really counting all the costs would leave the decision as "This costs more than the alternatives in almost all situations."

Clearly the current approach is bad policy, poorly and unsafely implemented. It's not clear to me what good policy would be, particularly when one can pretty much guarantee that over time some people are going to be lazy, stuipd, and selfish. This seems to mean that you need to ensure that it's difficult to profit from unethical behavior. Preferably both difficult and dangerous, but at least difficult. So fast breeders are problematic. It's possible to stop them and extract weapons grade materials. One of the arguments for pebble bed reactors is that it makes this more difficult. But pebble bed reactors have lots of high level waste. What's really needed is a way to make that useful, not just a better way to throw it away.

No it shouldn't. If gender is a predictor of ability then the probability distributions are BY DEFINITION not independent. If therefore you use the knowledge of gender after evaluating ability then you are treating them as independent variables when you combine them. This is mathematically bogus.

Actually, that's just mathematically simplistic. Here's what your reasoning does not account for: There are leanings, abilities and competencies that do not exist in isolation from other influences. Gender can be one of those. Therefore, to the extent that affect is possible, it is a valid consideration.

It could be a positive for either sex.

For instance, the air force has definitively determined that females are significantly better at maintaining more comprehensive situational awareness in complex aerial situations. This is because of a real world gender-based difference in information processing.

On the other hand, if one was hiring a bouncer, the competencies lean strongly the other way.

There will be outliers, of course, but that's why we need to think about these things rather than operate by rote. The law, unfortunately, but needfully (due to blind prejudice), specifies decision by rote. This is why many parts of the decision making process have gone missing from public view.

See here

What evil is Google perpetrating, exactly?

In this case (there are certainly others), they are using deceptive reporting to mislead people on the current state of affairs. Ask yourself why they would do this. The answer isn't "because they are angels."

What they should do is publish relevant and clear statistics on the issue instead of attempting to obfuscate the relevant issues at hand.

Try to keep up. It's really not that difficult.

Am I right, or am I right?

You seem fringe left to me. But hey, perhaps you're just trolling. Difficult to tell.