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Comment for math? (Score 2) 440

I might agree with you for virtually every other subject, but math is about the only thing that can be measured accurately using standardized testing. 3 X 3 = 9, whether you memorized the times tables or counted it out on your fingers. No matter what method you were taught, you should get the same answer. There are no cultural biases to deal with and even difficulty with understanding English shouldn't affect the outcome.

Comment It's not a TripAdvisor review. (Score 1) 784

To be fair, the US prisons on that list were elaborate clean facilities, unlike most of the rest.

Yes, the US prisons are clean and in good repair compared to the ones in poor third-world countries. But guess what? US schools and hospitals are also clean and in good repair compared to the ones in poor third-world countries. This isn't a review of hotels on TripAdvisor. The prisons are being judged for how humanly they treat the inmates, not whether or not they have bed bugs.

Comment Bed bugs don't eat dirt (Score 1) 432

If you believe that a bed bug infestation should somehow be acceptable by paying customers and is somehow a industry standard then you've spent too much time working on a dirty hotel and not enough time visiting hotels which aren't squalors.

That is a common misconception. Other insects like cockroaches, are more common in dirty environments because they are attracted to bits of food and other waste that are a food source to them. Bed bugs on the other hand are attracted to human beings, because that is their food source. Whether a room is clean or dirty doesn't matter to the bed bugs, and normal cleaning methods (vacuuming, etc) doesn't get of them.

Comment Psychological effect (Score 1) 111

You do know that they have to completely shutdown a tower to prevent the worker to fry like if he was in a microwave when he climbs one of them for maintenance, right?

A stove can burn me if put my hand on it, so it must also be dangerous if I'm across the room from it, right? Brilliant logic, but unfortunately wrong. Like the heat from a stove, radio power follows an inverse-square law, meaning power is proportional to the inverse of the distance squared. If something is (for example) 1000 Watts at 100 ft from the antenna, it would be 250 Watts at 200 ft and less than 4 Watts at 1600 ft from the antenna.

Many people have reported problems with radio waves especially when close to the transmitter although I do not know if their suffering is psychological or real.

Many people have reported anecdotal medical problems caused by radio waves, power lines, windmills, vaccinations, magnets, aluminum pots, fluoridated water, contrails, and voodoo curses. Until legitimate medical research confirms a causal link, the best explanation for all of these is psychological.

Comment Nitpick (Score 1) 144

So there's 11 channels, but transmitting on channel 1 means that you are putting noise on channels 1-5; transmitting on channel 6 means that you are putting noise on 1-10; and transmitting on channel 11 puts noise on 7-11.

Nitpicking here, but I think you meant to say "transmitting on channel 6 means that you are putting noise on 2-10", otherwise 1 & 6 aren't nonoverlaping.

Comment Orphan works (Score 4, Informative) 259

Yes, I get it - it just seems like it's solving a problem no one has.

The problem that a progressively increasing copyright registration fee solves is the problem of orphan works. Under the current system, lots of works are still covered by copyright even though the copyright owner cannot be found and thus the works cannot be licensed. A system like the GP is suggesting would force abandoned works into the public domain where they can be preserved, while still allowing actively used works to have a longer period of copyright protection.

Comment POWs? (Score 2) 213

Under the Law of War, POWs can be held until the end of the conflict, no trials are needed. It is misleading to suggest that there needs to be trials because they are being held as POWs, that isn't true.

Except that they aren't POWs. That would require that they be treated as per the Geneva convention (which they are not). They have none of the rights of civilian criminals (i.e. habeas corpus) AND none of the rights of military POWs.

Comment Free is not the enemy (Score 4, Insightful) 224

If a service does not charge you money the service will either 1) spy on you and sell your information, 2) bombard you with advertisement or 3) fail (or a combination of the three).

If you remove "If a service does not charge you money" from your statement, it is still true. I pay a monthly charge for my phone service plus an additional charge for every text message I send, but all that money I spent doesn't stop the phone company from logging my "metadata" and selling it to the government (and god knows who else). Whether you pay for a service with cash or ad views, you're just a vulnerable to spying. Stop focusing on how services are paid for and focus on who is controlling them. Controlling them yourself (e.g. running your own email server on hardware you control) is ultimately the best solution.

Comment Social Darwinism (Score 0) 284

The opposite of Darwinism, yet teaching Darwinism is very high on their agenda. I've yet to figure out why those who most adamantly demand the teaching of Darwinism are those most against it's implementation.

A better question might be, why are those so opposed to teaching Darwinism, so keen on applying it outside of the biological realm (i.e. Social Darwinism)?

Comment NAND flash = transistors on a chip (Score 1, Interesting) 147

Moore's Law applies to the number of transistors in a chip. Just because you have found an increase in performance that did follow Moore's Law for a while does not mean that Moore's Law is somehow about flash memory. Therefore, when the increase no longer follows Moore's Law, it does NOT mean that Moore's Law has failed. The only thing that has failed is your own prediction that things other than the number of transistors would follow that curve.

So what do you think NAND flash is made of? Tiny spinning hard drives? Magnetic bubbles? Pixie dust? NAND flash is made of (you guessed it) transistors on chip. As such, it is perfectly reasonable to expect it to conform to Moore's law.

Comment or blindness? (Score 1) 325

Wouldn't visual defects, such as myopia, or an excess of floaters, impact the results of this exam?

or blindness ("Your IQ is zero sir, but luckily your companion dog is smarter than Einstein!"). They've just replaced a culturally biased test with a visually biased one.

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