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Comment: Thought Experiment: Liability mitigation (Score 1) 722

Hypothetical situation: A law with a perfect enforcement rate was written. The law punishes firing of a weapon by anyone other than the owner with a $1 million dollar fine and 20 years in prison. It is intentionally draconian for the purpose of this thought experiment.

Now, consider someone who must posess a firearm (the reason they must is irrelevant, so assume that they must own one). Also assume that they are allowed to implement ONE method of control which exists or is possible today while still keeping the firearm available/useable to the owner. (viable options: Smart-tech, Safe, Triggerlocks, etc. Non-options: encase in concrete and sink in ocean, etc)

Given the hypothetical situation: Draconian punishment for non-owner discharge, requirement to posess/operate a firearm, only allowed one method of control.

What would you pick as your method of control to limit your exposure to the draconian punishment? Would you pick the smart-gun fingerprint reader, a safe, a recurring 'talk' with the members of your household, etc.

Personally, I'd pick the option for a gun-safe with an X09 style lock. I'd not trust a trigger lock (vulnerable to theft and drilling), nor smart tech which could be circumvented, especially if the gun was stolen.

Comment: Re:Oblig xkcd (Score 2) 154

by IndustrialComplex (#43793445) Attached to: EPA Makes a Rad Decision

This advice is pretty much worthless

Only if you misapply it as advice for how to avoid harm from radiation. It's good advice if someone were comparing risk between internal vs external radiation measurements.

Your advice is pretty much worthless, to a 103 year old man who is more likely to die from almost anything other than radiation damage to his thyroid.

You were not wrong, and neither was he. And YOUR advice is helpful, but you really need to consider your delivery and not call someone's statement worthless just because you wanted to discuss the topic in a different manner.

Comment: Small Market and easily fixed (Score 1) 235

by IndustrialComplex (#43774369) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Wiring Home Furniture?

I'd say you don't see furniture makers adding these options for non-specialty furniture because of the following reasons:

1. Any deviation to standard reduces your market. A table is a table, but when you add in ports/outlets you have to pick a trim. Chrome/Wood/Black/Plastic/White... etc. If a table/chair has no extraneous colors/trim then it's a non-factor, but you will inevitably discourage some sales due to personal preference.

2. Safety concerns. A table/chair just needs to be a table/chair, but the instant you put wires/ports/plugs or even just places for plugs you open yourself up to liability. You've got to test your furniture (or have it certified for it to be carried by certain retailers) and you better have sufficient warning labels that your pre-drilled wire runs are ONLY for 12VDC or less. Of course, you and I both know that the 12VDC wire run will inevitably be run with 120VAC in some cases.

3. Electrical code restrictions. Sure there is a uniform code, but who knows if you've now created something that is unapproved in certain markets.

4. Logistics. You are complicating your design. Now, instead of just having to produce a table, you now have extra steps to install or cut boxes for the wires/ports, etc. If someone damages a plug, do you have to keep some spares to sell, or risk getting a bad reputation for not supporting your products.

And this is my BIG one:

5. It's easy enough to DIY. If you want ports in your table/chair/etc, the work involved is not that difficult to do on your own. The advantage of DIY is that you likely will get EXACTLY what you want and not 'almost' what you want (I wish this thing had 2 USB ports instead of just 1, I wish it came in yellow...)

To simplify those points: It's complicated and costly for the manufacturer, the market is small, and most people who would want this are the kind to just do it themselves.

Comment: Re:Not the only reason (Score 1) 485

by IndustrialComplex (#43753563) Attached to: Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy

The reason I identified Colorblindness is because I find it interesting as a study for discrimination due to disabilities.

Currently Colorblindess is not considered a disability with respect to work because it doesn't significantly limit a major life function (vision, mobility, etc). However it's interesting because while it isn't considered to be limiting in your job options (and therefore not a 'Disability') in practice it actually is a limiting factor in an increasing number of jobs. (police, design, pilot, equipment operators, etc)

My point in relating it to this discussion is that disclosure of even 'non-disaiblities' can have significant consequences to the person being discriminated against. It is not uncommon for someone to be literally doing a job in a satisfactory manner, then be 'outed' with respect to a medical condition, and then legally discriminated against when they are denied promotions/positions/etc.

In onecase, I saw a coworker get blocked from transferring locations (but the same job) because due to 'color blindness' he wouldn't be able to do the job that he had been doing for over 20 years. (Electronics test) The policy was that applicants had to have normal color vision. Because color blindness isn't one of the protected disabilities, and because the color vision test was applied to ALL applicants, it wasn't a case he could easily win. (No guarantee to win, plus an offered retirement package = it wasn't worth it for him to fight). In his case, he never knew he was 'color blind' until they performed the medical test.

Again the point of this is to show that personal medical information can be very sensitive.

I liken it to an encounter with the police. The absolute BEST case senario of an encounter with the police is to come out of the encounter as you entered. Neutral, no charges, no tickets, etc. The absolute BEST case scenario for a company getting hold of your medical information is neutral, in that they don't act upon that information. When the range of possible outcomes ranges from Worst(Fired) to Neutral(nothing), then the expected outcome must be somewhere in that spectrum, and thus negative.

Comment: Re: Citations? They need to be sued heavily (Score 1) 506

Can you not see that a certain width of intersection and slowness of speed that, if the yellow goes off just as you enter the intersection, then you can easily be IN the intersection when your light turns red and it goes green the other way? You have done nothing wrong, but are not "running a red light" and in danger of getting hit by cross traffic. Does this sound right to you?

That has nothing to do with what I posted. The purpose of the yellow light duration doesn't change because municipalities abuse red light revenue cameras.

The purpose of the yellow light duration is not to ensure that a car can traverse the intersection within that duration. The purpose of the yellow light duration is to ensure that a vehicle traveling at the posted speed has enough time to observe the yellow light, decide if the distance to the intersection is sufficient to safely stop the vehicle, and safely stop the vehicle.

The DELAY on the green light for the orthogonal lanes is what needs to be proportional to the time it takes a vehicle to traverse the intersection.

Comment: Re:Not the only reason (Score 3, Insightful) 485

by IndustrialComplex (#43749045) Attached to: Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy

Good luck proving that.

I didn't hire him because I had a feeling that he wouldn't perform well in our company.
You don't think that an HR person would actually say "I didn't hire him because XYZ was protected".

Also, in response to this:

It is illegal for an employer to discriminate based on medical conditions

...
That depends greatly on the medical condition. Assume I'm colorblind. Want to bet that a media publishing firm could turn me down for a design job and break no laws? There are still pushes to keep colorblind people from becoming medical doctors because the belief is that they might miss a rash or color based symptom (jaundice?)

To say that it is illegal to discriminate based on medical conditions isn't exactly true.

Comment: Re:Didn't Alan Turing already do this in 1936? (Score 1) 392

Unless the brain taps into some unknown force of nature, it can be completely simulated and run on any computer available today. Might run a little slow on a flip phone, but still..

That all depends on how narrowly you define 'unknown force of nature'. Let's imagine you simulate a basic door lock.

Do you assume the lock has two states? Locked/Unlocked

Do you assume the lock has 4 states?
Locked+Keyinserted
Locked+Keyremoved
Unlocked+Keyinserted
Unlocked+Keyremoved

Do you assume the lock has individual states each corresponding to the key entering the keyhole and the position of grooves to each tumbler. Do you then double these states to consider the period where the key is being removed from the keyhole?

As you can see, something as simple as a 'Door Lock' has an infinite number of states depending on how accurately your model needs to be. Don't think you need to simulate individual tumblers? I think you do, because the one on the interior side will receive much less wear than the ones closer to the keyhole, so it's likely that one will last longer, wear the key less, etc.

What you suggest is that everything could be simulated because it must follow known physics. However even if you assume that we have a perfect understanding of the physics which influences a neuron, we would still lack the understanding of how to apply those physical laws to a model which could be accurate enough to predict the behavior of a simulated neuron for any significant period of time.

Consider a single mote of dust in a sealed 1m^3 glass container with 1 mole of hydrogen sealed within. Tell me, with accuracy to 1.0e-90 meters where it will land if released from the interior top of the container.

Comment: Re:About time (Score 4, Informative) 224

by IndustrialComplex (#43732897) Attached to: Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint

One of the key differences is that when entities settle out of court, the plaintiff sets a settlement cost at an amount which would be reasonable to offset their losses.

ie: You broke my fence, I am typically entitled to the cost to a repair of that fence and attributable damages (cows wandered out via the gap). Such a cost might be $4000. However, perhaps we agree that because the fence was pretty degraded, it isn't fair for you to have to pay for the cost of replacing the fence (effectively giving me a NEW fence for free) but a portion of the cost commensurate to the value of the original needing repairs anyway fence.

The main difference, of course, is that the settlement amount tends to focus on repairing the actual harm done.

Comment: Re:Wow... (Score 1) 491

I only type in the browser when I absolutely need to type in the web browser.

For most of my web browsing, it's a pure click interface. Even on Chrome, I click on a new tab, and my most visited websites show up as thumbnails. Slashdot has a thumbnail, XKCD, Gmail, etc.

The removal of the button would be like Chrome suddenly removing all the tabs for websites and requiring that I type the first letters of the address in the addressbar every time I wanted to open a website.

It's not that one method is better than the other for all people, it's that there used to be two methods, and one was eliminated because people were told that the other method is better for you, therefore you must use it.

Q: What is the difference between a duck? A: One leg is both the same.

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