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Comment Why aren't whistleblower laws shielding him? (Score 1) 124

I thought there were whistle blower laws to shield people from these mishaps?

Is it because he went to the media rather than the FBI? I'm genuinely curious as the article doesn't say much except that he's a "hacker" that downloaded a bunch of public web addresses that were easily predictable.

Comment Re:Filibuster and Supermajority (Score 1) 104

That logic is unbreakable.

The threat of a filibuster is only necessary when your side doesn't have more votes. People can blame Republicans for it all they want, but it was Democrats that didn't vote for the Bill.

Not to mention the obvious by adding that it's a good thing that a Lame Duck session did not grant more power to one of the most incompetent bureaucracies in the US: the DHS. The last thing that anyone needs is the DHS knocking on every business' door while making inane requirements that protect nothing.

It would be analogous to how they oversee the TSA, which we all clearly believe makes us totally-super-duper safer.

Comment Re:Deadlock? (Score 1) 104

Not to mention that the submission fails to note that Republicans cannot block anything in the Senate when done by a vote shy of a filibuster. They are the minority party in the Senate--both before and after the election--and anything that goes by party lines will always fall in favor of the Democrats in that case. Therefore, a 51-47 vote means that one person didn't even vote, and that some Democrats agreed with the Republicans that it was a bad bill.

Besides, anyone that thinks creating a new, major bureaucracy during the Lame Duck session is simply asking for trouble. And, furthermore, why Congress and the President are focusing on anything other than the looming tax increases and sequestration is beyond me, but the latest Slashdot poll made it clear that it will always be the Republican's fault. There's one month to left to do it; whether or not this bill had passed, nothing would have changed within that month anyway, which means that it could have waited until next year.

This Bill would have put the same people in charge of cybersecurity as are in charge of the TSA: the DHS. There's a winning group of government bureaucrats with a proven track record of incompetence. But, I suppose based on the rest of the poster's sentiments that the Republicans can likely be blamed for that as well (rather than the shocking reality that the DHS came about through the same issue proposed to break Congressional deadlock).

Comment The summary disagrees with itself? (Score 1) 488

Pundits continue to weigh in on Steve Sinofsky's sudden exit from Microsoft (as executive head of Windows Division, he oversaw the development and release of Windows 7 and 8).

followed by

Few PC users are upgrading to Windows 8 with its unwanted Touch UI, sales of the Surface tablet are disappointing, and few are buying Windows Phones.

If the second statement is to be believed, then why should anyone be worried that the person behind it leaving the company?

Alternatively, if you choose not to believe the second statement (though WP sales being high is certainly hard to claim no matter how you look at it), then the first statement is scary for Microsoft.

I was personally a bit stunned by Steve's sudden departure, but considering that the people that supposedly came up with the most hated pieces of Windows 8 took over for him, I doubt much will change (love it or hate it).

Comment Re:But that's not the real problem. (Score 1) 1651

Still stemming from the implication being that people aren't riding bikes because they have to wear helmets. I don't bike because I work too far away from wear I live, and I don't want to have to take a shower when I get to work. Not to mention, unlike a lot of people, I take time out of the day for exercise separate from my commute.

I also don't buy that a lot of drivers miss bikers because, just as anecdotally as the article, I have seen far more bikers--both with and without helmets--riding like morons both in and out of traffic. With very few exceptions, bikers appear to expect the best of both worlds: respect on the road, as if they were moving remotely the same speed as traffic, and the ability to act as a pedestrian whenever it's convenient, thus enabling them to run red lights and similar signs. That last bit is why bikers need to wear helmets: in practice, they appear both in-and-out of traffic as they see fit.

It's incredibly risky business, and you are not going to fix the drivers that are texting any time soon.

Comment Re:Still haven't found the claim of "illegal" then (Score 1) 747

Me thinks you misunderstood my entire post. I was not attacking the use of the word illegal in the GP post, nor was I getting into whether the OP actually used the word, which he clearly and literally did not.

I was attacking your definition of free speech, and how it applies to the United States, which was flatly wrong. Finally, I was separately attacking the idiocy of your last statement regarding a lack of Muslim hypocrisy.

It makes sense that you did not get it, as you did not refute a single point that I made, nor do you coherently make any of your own. For example:

So I point out that this poster is missing any claim that the original poster has said he's a scumbag and this is illegal.

The original poster literally called the person a dirtbag in the title of his post, which is synonymous with scumbag. The poster that you responded too was making the--apparently to you--audacious point that simply being a dirtbag is not illegal in-and-of-itself, linking the idea that him being locked up because of making a film that has incited Muslim rage goes against free speech. Then you made a series of misinformed, or downright wrong points.

In summary, you were wrong in your last post on all but one thing: the OP never literally said "illegal." And you're still wrong about everything, except that.

As I ended my last post, continue moving forward with your blinders on.

Comment Re:Good times! Clearly, he's a dirtbag (Score 1) 747

You misunderstood my stance on the matter. I think even the founders would agree that the WBC stands on the unfortunate side of free speech. They are protected, when clearly no one wants them to be, simply to protect everything else. But, I still think, like the founders, that they are a necessary evil to put up with to avoid the slippery slope that it would otherwise create.

Comment How were the scores given? (Score 1) 467

It's not particularly clear from the story, nor is it clear from the abstract on how they actually differentiated for natural bias in the random selection. Did each professor receive the same candidate twice, once as a male and once as a female (hopefully far apart)?

It sounds like the data set was randomly generated once, and then used to push through the study. It's quite possible that the data set simply had a lopsided pool of better qualified "males" versus "females." Considering that they do not state the number of students in the pool in either the story or the abstract, it also seems plausible that the results are from a very small pool of students, which makes the bad random data bias much more likely regardless of a large pool of graders (the 127 professors).

Of course, it could also be that the mandating of gender equality, where they are otherwise not equal, has led to a worse perception of actually qualified female candidates due to bad past experiences. Anyone in a decent engineering program has seen women coast through when they otherwise should have failed like many of their male peers, and I suspect that happens in science as well, where the number of women in the programs is simply far lower than the number of males. This, in effect, results in an immense quality bias given the same academic record, so when women have a certain academic record, it will be called into question due to past experiences.

Now, with that said, I would like to believe that people would rate people as equals from paper until the actual interview process differentiates them. Without seeing the random applicant data (specifically the quantity, and the randomization of it), then it's impossible to say. Just as we've seen women coasting where they shouldn't, literally this week, I heard of a professor in academia that still hold the age-old idea that women are only good for dictation and secretarial duties.

Comment Re:Good times! Clearly, he's a dirtbag (Score 4, Insightful) 747

Ah, the apologist logic here is pathetic.

Clearly you see the word "illegal" everywhere, even when it hasn't been written.

The trouble with freedom of speech is that speech isn't just words...

That doesn't change the definition of Free Speech. That just means that if you have threats along with your Free Speech, then it changes the issue entirely. It's the threat that is the issue, and not the speech itself.

The issue at hand is from a terribly low budget movie's trailer, which is insulting to Muslims. It is not threatening. Calling for the destruction of Israel is threatening, particularly when said Imam is calling upon his followers to make it happen.

This is no different than the Westboro Baptists that go around protesting at military funerals. They can get away with it it because it's not threatening anybody, and that's why it is the unfortunate side of acceptable Free Speech.

At least the Muslims demanding this movie be banned aren't being hypocrites over it.

The issue to them is very cut and dry, but it is far from not being hypocritical. You cannot insult Islam in any way. But the reverse is completely acceptable; they can insult your nation (e.g, Great Satan, which also associates religious aspects to it), or your religion (e.g, Jews), and you had better accept it. And they're going to do it while they destroy your embassy, even if your nation wasn't involved at all (e.g., German Embassy protests).

But you're right, I guess I don't see any hypocrisy in there. Keep running around with your blinders on.

Comment Re:Why is she apologizing? (Score 2, Informative) 761

I realize that this is Slashdot, and no one reads the original article, but this woman was mocking the fact that she got a DUI on Facebook, which is what caught the attention of the judge in the first place.

She was laughing it off as a status update, after hitting another car with, I believe (I read this somewhere else), 4 people in it.

Under normal circumstances, I would agree that the judge was looking for a power grab, but in this case, I think that the judge was trying to make a point to a person that simply did not understand the ramifications of the situation.

Comment Re:In Other News... (Score 2) 585

I often see this statistic thrown around, but I rarely see anything more than the percentage. As an engineer, I have found that women earn the same amount that I do, if not more when they get to the same level of experience.

But then I wonder: are they comparing every job equally, and the averaging the pay? Clearly, there are more men in engineering, so I wonder how this is balanced in these averages, if it is at all? And then, do they equally not balance based on other female-dominated fields such as education.

I say this as a male that is ready to eat his own words, but I am tired of being accused of having it easy simply because I am a male. I have literally never seen a woman being shorted in their paycheck because of anything except experience or talent, and even in those situations it seems that many women have been given more leeway out of fear.

I don't like discrimination for anything beyond experience and talent, and maybe it's because I do not accept it for any other reason that I don't let the people around me commit it.

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