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Comment Re:Ignore the Troll (Score 2, Insightful) 703

Really? Count the number of times John Stewart makes direct fun of a Republican, then rewatch an episode and count the number of times he makes fun of a Democrat. Each episode is HEAVILY weighted to make fun of conservatives. (Colbert is a little more middle but still ridicules Republicans more.) Comedy Central is just as left-leaning as CNN and MSNBC.

Comment Re:Job-seeking tips for computer programmers (Score 1) 349

But computer science graduates don't go into IT. Thats a blue collar profession now. Installing windows and reloading printers.

As an employer, this is all too true. If you have mediocre skills, you get nothing. The commodity "institutes" churn out unemployable garbage, and the entitled college graduates throw around terms like "ERD" but have no actual skill and balk at Help Desk offers because they think it's beneath them.

Comment Re:Well? (Score 1) 981

You're absolutely correct IF you assume that the man is just describing one of his children. That is the logical interpretation of the problem. However, if someone went out and specifically selected a family with at least one boy...

I hate to be a smart ass on this one... but the question was posed by a man who was just describing (at least) one of his children.

Comment Re:Well? (Score 4, Informative) 981

This is a gambler's fallacy problem. The more tangents you throw at it, the closer you get to .5 (50%), while never reaching it. This is the limit, why? Because there's only two potential outcomes for the other child: boy or girl.

What you (or the website you copied and pasted the ratio from) fail to take into account (and why it's a Gambler's fallacy problem) is that when involving chance, anything that happened in the past is completely irrelevant to future probables. I could roll a die 99 times, and get 6, the probability of getting 100 6's when I've already got 99 6's is still 1 out of 6, not 6^100.

The reason the chi square doesn't come into play here is because it doesn't MATTER the order. Has she said "What is the probability my SECOND-BORN was a boy?" it would be perfectly logical to write the square because the boy who was born on Tuesday could be either the first born or the second born, she never stipulated.

We can say that the boy, who was born on a tuesday, was also a Gemini. Does this change the ratio? No, the probability of having two boys is still 50-50%, because the unknown only has two possible outcomes: boy or girl.

Comment Pissed about this! (Score 2, Insightful) 539

I'm mostly pissed that the guy making the mice is getting paid $0.52/hr but I have to pay $16 plus shipping to get one?!! I'm OUTRAGED! I don't think this would be such a big deal if the greedy corporations actually passed down some of the savings to us.

Yes, because of the pesky labor unions in the US, I can see a mouse needing to cost $16 if made here because some high-school dropout is entitled and thinks he should get $25/hr for putting self-adhesive feet on mice. But if you saving money on labor, how about the customer saves money too?

Comment Re:What is "more random"? (Score 2, Interesting) 395

What exactly does "more random" mean in the summary? I think something is either random or it isn't. Perhaps this claim should just make us "more skeptical".

Nothing can be ever be considered random. If it is, it's just in a state of "we just don't have a means of measuring it's next value."

You can call me guessing a "number between 1 and 10" random, but that's just because you don't know my method of choosing. If you did, it wouldn't be random at all. If you knew the order of the deck of cards, and precisely each transition of the shuffle, then the next card could easily be predicted. Since you don't have that power, it's considered "random".

Same thing with network traffic, moving the mouse or memory contents; if you had a way to quickly and accurately measure all the inputs and knew it's method of generation, you could very easily guess the outputs. In all these cases, "random" only means "you cannot guess the outcome with any statistical significance."

Comment Re:An alternative to the Magic Mouse (Score 3, Informative) 255

They made one glaring design error with the Wacom (Daewoo) Bamboo Touch Tablet. When using in right hand mode, the buttons are on the left (so your thumb can hit it), unfortunately, so is the WIRE. Meaning you can't flush it up against your keyboard or something else. Regardless of where your computer is, in this design, the buttons and wire should be on opposite sides. If you want it on your left side, the wire should hang off the left side, not the right side. That alone says "cheap knockoff".

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