Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Google: Select jurors who understand stats. (Score 1) 349

Regardless of intent or not, certain practices may indeed lead to age-tilted hiring as an actual end result. That doesn't necessarily make it "right", though.

One can argue a company is obligated to balance its employees' race, gender, and age to reflect the external population of available talent. This may involve counter-acting other hiring practices that indirectly lead to imbalances. Using your example, either stop paying in pink unicorn pillows, or adjust your hiring to match calculated age goals to compensate for the pillow bias.

The specifics of what you feel a company is obligated to do is of course a personal political opinion. I'm just trying to point out that "discrimination" can be purely accidental, and being accidental may not be considered a sufficient "excuse" to keep doing it.

If it's accidental, one could make a good case that the org doesn't deserve punitive or "retro" fees, but are at least obligated to remedy it going forward.

Perhaps a law should be passed that companies above a certain size are obligated to actively monitor their hiring profiles so as to avoid bias. Then "we didn't know" wouldn't be a valid claim anymore.

Comment Culture (Score 2) 349

I've learned over time that skills are only about half the factors of hiring decisions (with exceptions for high-demand specialties). Personality and "feeling" issues play the other half.

A work-place has a culture just like any village or geographical region, and if you don't fit the culture, your are likely to be turned away. Age of growing up is part of that "culture". I'm not saying it's fair, but rather that it's human nature.

Comment Re:GeoThermal Energy anyone? (Score 3, Insightful) 152

That's what I keep thinking: too bad we can't mine all that energy such that we'd be killing two birds with one stone: getting energy AND draining the heat from that spot, reducing the risk or magnitude of a volcanic explosion.

It's kind of like using ocean water to solve coastal droughts: all that water sitting right next to us, but no practical way to turn it into potable water. It's a tease; at least with current technology.

Comment Laptab (Score 1) 417

I see tablets and laptops eventually merging into incarnations of the same thing. If they focus on that, they should be okay.

The trick may be different requirements for x86 conventions versus ARM such that it's difficult to have interchangeable parts and share manufacturing for both.

Comment Re:Hey, there's a shock ... (Score 2) 334

In other words, we're bumbling idiots.

If you lock captives in a dark basement, then outside observers will have a hard time knowing they exist. I suppose you could take inventory of the garbage to see if the waste quantity and type matches the known occupants, but stealing garbage in a consistent manner needed by such "I/O research" is probably not realistic.

Slashdot Top Deals

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

Working...