Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Ruling doesn't change much. (Score 1) 560

Because forensic analysts have determined the same gun used to kill the president may have been used to kill the Joint Chiefs. Because they think someone else may have used your gun. Because they believe the person who sold you your gun is an accomplice. Because you are contesting your confession.

It's a rather cynical view that the only point of trying someone for a crime is to send them to prison for that crime. The point is to find out the truth and mete out justice accordingly. That requires a full evaluation of all of the evidence. In this case, the lawyer has admitted the evidence exists and is located on the harddrive, but it's not clear how the details of that evidence will affect the case and subseqeunt sentencing.

Comment There are no such features (Score 1) 427

Frankly, I stopped wearing a digital watch because I noticed when I forgot it class passed by much more quickly and enjoyably than when I was counting away the minutes until it was over. Also, it lead to the rude habbit to be checking my watch when conversing or keeping company with someone, as if I was just waiting to get away.

Having technology always at the ready is at least mildly antisocial, especially when it's visible to others. If I'm sitting down to do work then I want my full laptop. I will carry a smartphone for alarms, texting, important email, GPS, etc., but that stays in my pocket until it's needed, I don't fiddle with it and distract myself while I have any kind of company or other work to do. If there were useful features that only a smartwatch could perform, then I would carry the smartwatch in my pocket. I absolutely don't want some gaudy box on my wrist which can distract me from whatever I am presently doing. For the most part, each feature you add to it is another reason I don't want it.

Comment Professors are disposable (Score 4, Interesting) 538

The fact of the matter is that there are far too many people who want faculty positions compared to the number of available positions. I quote directly from our university president, "I can get professors anywhere."

This is detrimental to learning as well. Some adjunct faculty, desperate to keep jobs, rely on easy courses and popularity with students to stay employed. Many others feel obligated to help students beyond the limited office hours they're paid for, essentially working for free in order to get the students the help they need. At a time when tuition prices are rising faster than ever, why are we skimping on the most fundamental aspect of college?

There is pressure from the administration to buffer grades, as that effects various important statistics for the school, and it's far easier for them to give out As rather than worry about complaints and legal action etc., but otherwise the administration couldn't give a rats arse about how popular the professors are with the students. They care most about how much research money the professor is bringing in. Maybe at some big private school where you have legacies and wealthy donnors to worry about the administration actually cares about the students' feelings.

No one goes into a professorship expecting a 9-5 job, but pointing out professors are spending extra time with their students isn't really making the case the situtation is detrimental for education, either. When you get your degree, you have a decision -- do I enjoy doing research/teaching so much that I go into academia, or do I want a profitable career and go into industry? Professors aren't in it for the money. They're the sort of people who just wouldn't fit anywhere else. You don't need to pay them well. The professors making $40k tend to work as hard and spend as much time in the lab as the professors making $80k. I'll bet many would work for room and board if you gave them a nice lab to go with it.

If you want to improve the situation, your options are either establish some legal minimums, or curb the excess of academics by providing either positions for them and/or doing a better job of training people for other positions. Unless you're an engineer, most bachelors degrees are more or less geared toward becoming an academic, even though relatively few people will wind up in academia, and it doesn't help this situation when you have a flood of graduates who aren't really sure what they can do with themselves besides stay in the university environment.

Comment Re:My two cents (Score 2) 646

Unequal application of the law is always a challenge to our freedoms, including free speech. When two men are fighting, you are commiting far less of a crime by pinning both down than by pinning just one down while the other pommels him. If libel laws were "loosened" to apply only to liberals and not to conservatives, that would not be a gain in freedom as you propose: that would become far more of an affront to free spech than the fully implemented law ever was. Allowing trademarks to some and not others is the same sort of distortion.

Trademarks are a (very limited) restriction on free speech, but they also increase our freedom to express ourselves through the cultivation of a particular symbol. A government which decides it will make political assessments on whether to grant that freedom is not upholding the principles of free speech. Whether the term Redskins is actually offensive is a matter of ongoing social debate, and the government should not be deciding the answer.

Comment Re:Turn off, tune out. (Score 4, Interesting) 127

Or set the tone yourself by posting words of encouragement. As someone who has never quite mastered the hug or unsolicited complement or prying into what's bothering people, I find the broadcast medium of facebook a means of providing what I can. I mostly post humor (which has helped me through dark times), mix in occasional inspiration quotes from people like Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau, Kierkegaard, some art I find beautiful, and try to be open about my struggles and the good places they have lead.

Over the years many have taken time to thank me for encouraging them (sometimes they are persons who have never interacted with me on facebook but eventually tell me in person), occasionally I receive a private message from someone who needs a friend, an ear, or advice, and other times they post something about their struggles and I am able to approach them about it. There is a lot to be said if you have the social skills to offer these things in person. But most of us are accustomed to the "Hi, how are you?" "Oh, I'm fine" routine where it is impolite to turn someone's general courtesy into a demand for their time and sympathy. The rules are different on social media, where all information is broadcast and can be ignored as easily as it is read. Why not let us introverts do something good with that?

I don't know if I can claim credit in anyway, but over the years the character of what is posted among my peers on facebook has definitely become more positive. Perhaps people have simply realized they don't enjoy the drama and the complaining. Or maybe a few of us have had an impact. But this study seems to show that having a positive impact is something you can set out to do. Pursuing that may be worth considering.

Comment Re:Seems reasonable... (Score 1, Insightful) 260

And people would buy toys with lead paint in them too if the price was low and they weren't aware of the risks of lead paint. Does that mean the regulations preventing them are wrong?

Children are assumed to lack the capacity to make intelligent decisions for their well-being. They receive both additional protections, and are denied most of the rights which are granted to adults. Regulating toys may hold up in that philosophy, in as much as they are intended for children. However, adults are still allowed to purchase products which contain lead, such as solder, because the assumption is they can adequately assess the risks, and have the right to decide accordingly.

Certainly, we can treat average citizens as too ignorant to tend for their own welfare, and provide state protection, but just as with children, these adults are being denied certain rights and freedoms in exchange. There are many proxies for this question, among them, whether people should be allowed to purchase firearms or drugs, even though they are capable of doing damage, depending on the decisions of the user.

 

Which is how the regulations came into effect in the first place -- the public was tired of getting into cabs that weren't insured or maintained properly.

The question is how necessary are the regulations, and, especially, how applicable the regulations which were written specifically for taxis in a different era are nowadays.

This is one of the major problems with government solutions--they have an awful lot of momentum. It's hard to make changes when changes are warranted.

Do I really care how well-maintained the transport car is? Why does it need to exceed rules established for cars in general? Are poorly maintained vehicles as much of an issue with modern automobiles as it was when the law was passed? Does the ability of users in Uber and Lyft to rate drivers completely solve the problem since they can vote down drivers with unpleasant or unreliable rides? Is it now so easy to flag down a new driver that the car breaking down is not a particular issue?

How important is a multimillion dollar insurance package? Is this actually improving the situation for people who would otherwise be walking or taking their own vehicles or a friend's vehicle without such a high insurance coverage? Would it possibly make more sense to transition to a system in which passengers carry insurance instead of drivers?

The situation is simply not the same as it was when these laws were passed. Back then, these laws provided possibly needed solutions. Now, if the problems they were intended to solve even exist, there may be better solutions. The question is whether the state is going to step in and forbid citizens from pursuing these solutions, on the premise the state is once-and-always-correct, or if we are going to let citizens experiment and make their own decisions.

Comment First city? (Score 4, Informative) 1040

In the first year of implementation, hourly minimum wage will be raised to either $10 or $11 according to the employer size category. By 2021, hourly minimum wage across the board should be at or above $15. Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners

Santa Fe has had a living wage since 2003, presently at $10.66. San Francisco implemented a living wage shortly thereafter, presently at $10.74. I'm sure there are others at this point.

Comment Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score 4, Insightful) 298

By all means, less likely views should be marginalized, but they should be marginalized as a side effect of their having only a marginal chance of being correct, not because you've built up some vicious characterization of their adherents. It's interesting that in the reasons you list for your opposition -- politics, religion, mental illness (?) -- you forgot to include anything about their explanations of the observed phenomena being less satisfactory.

My first problem with this attitude is, who decides when the best response is simply treating the adherents as unworthy neanderthals and making sure that no legitimate scientific criticisms get swept in? Will that be you? I don't trust that this is always going to work out. I do, however, always trust in a dispassioned comparison of evidence, or at least, there's nothing I trust more.

My second problem is that it much more difficult to reason with people when you start your arguments by giving them a bloody nose. At that point they're just in it to retaliate for the bloody nose, assuming they don't stop reading entirely. IMHO you are making it ten times more difficult to actually stamp out these bad thinkings just so you can have the satisfication of wielding a few insults. What does referring to anyone snidely actual accomplish in the scientific discourse?

Comment Bad article (Score 2) 200

IMHO the article written is not of publishable quality. (The journal it *did* get published in has a very low impact factor of 1.3.) It's badly written, poorly supported, and subject to substantial methodological errors.

Each subject comparison is based entirely on the subjective evaluation of a random med student. It doesn't seem like they even provided them with standard protocols. They just assumed that any discrepancies represented factual errors in the wikipedia article. They didn't make comparison to other sources or even internal to the literature.

It would be lovely if they would actually include some of the assertions they evaluated. But frankly I would put infinitely more faith in the Wikipedia articles cited than this particular report. Certainly they represent better and more substantial writing.

Comment Re:remote doesn't equal secure (Score 4, Insightful) 213

I would call sparsely populated a significant security advantage. Post proper signage and you don't have to supply much doubt than any unauthorized person in the vicinity is up to no good. None of the fake delivery guy nonsense that works in the movies. You stand a good chance of intercepting the hostiles before they even are close enough to see the facility.

As any bank robber can tell you, the most important part of the operation is the getaway. Walking in and taking what you want at gunpoint is comparatively easy. The next step is to get out of there and lose the authorities by getting to where you can hide and blend in. When the getaway involves hundreds of miles of empty single access road? You're screwed. No criminal or terrorist force is going to come close to matching what the government can dish out for firepower. Their only hope is to get away before the government can mobilize, which, in this case, they have plenty of time to do.

Also, I believe these contaminants are buried deep underground. That's foolproof security. A lock can be picked to bypass having to use the official key. When the security mechanism is a million tonnes of rock there is no shortcut, the terrorists are stuck using the exact same equipment and accessways as everyone else to extract the waste.

The final step is to get the radioactive waste to the target, which is a population area. Terrorists might not care what population area it is, which means by storing it near *any* population area you have saved them the trouble of doing any work to get it to its target. Having access to it for just a few minutes could be enough to do all the damage they want to do. Not so with a remote site.

Slashdot Top Deals

"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl." -- Dave Barry

Working...