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Comment Re:GitLab (Score -1) 165

I interviewed with GitLab and declined going further once I found out that I'd be getting 63.3% of a San Francisco (their baseline) employee simply because of where I live. My state was one that didn't have any special locales carved out for different COLAs. Sure, my state is vastly cheaper than CA, NY, etc. but companies like GitLab think they should be involved in some type of socioeconomic re-distribution of wealth by adjusting as much as they do for geographic reasons. The quality of my work is the same whether I'm in the middle of Kansas or in downtown San Francisco. GitLab knows if they look long enough a candidate in a remote low cost of living area will look at their salaries and see $$$ and gladly accept but I knew I could get higher because I had previously and did again by applying to other companies. I can understand having some regional differences but I think GitLab takes it too far.

Comment You need to see the traffic to truly appreciate it (Score 5, Informative) 151

I lived in Bangalore for six months.

Traffic there is like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Lane markers... they're just suggestions. Speed limits? What's that? Traffic lights, well, maybe, if there's a cop handy.

What's amazing to me is how the congestion isn't as bad as it could be, because traffic in Bangalore, and well India as a whole, is compressible. When a traffic light turns red, cars and auto-rickshaws and especially motorbikes, move in to fill the space as tightly as they can. Then when the light changes, everyone moves out and traffic flows. What that means is that while North American traffic behaves a lot like a liquid, my observation in Bangalore was that traffic behaved much more like a gas.

Comment Joao wrote a book about this over a decade ago (Score -1) 244

I read Joao's book "Faster than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation" on this topic over a decade ago. The first half of the book was not really that groundbreaking as it rehashed some relativity and talked about Joao himself. But the 2nd half was interesting. I started thinking that having a speed of light that was much higher than today would explain why it looks like the earth is so old despite not actually being that old due to discrediting current carbon dating results. The entire carbon dating concept is based on an assumption that light speed is a constant without ever having a way to prove that our 'measuring stick' is properly 'calibrated' despite having so many theories depend on that 'fact'.

Comment Lessig is grasping at straws (Score -1) 1430

Complaining that the electoral college weights the votes in Wyoming roughly four times as heavily as the votes in Michigan, Lessig argues that the popular vote should be respected, and that the authors of the U.S. Constitution "left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton's favor."

The only problem with this logic (but it's a big problem) is that it sounds like he wants all electors to choose Clinton just because she won the national popular vote. But what would be the point of having states-specific electors if he advocates voting based on the national popular vote results? As someone explained recently on facebook (I forget what the guy's name was), he used a baseball analogy to state why we shouldn't be changing the rules of the game. Back in the 20th century the Pirates beat a team in the world series 4 games to 3, but the other team had more overall runs throughout the series. The rules of the game ignore who has the most overall runs and instead bases who wins on the number of games they won. Should we change the rules of the game just because a particular team didn't win one year? For every person who wants their team to win there is another who wants a different team to win. But rules exist for a reason: to make processes consistent, and therefore fair. They are still fair even if you don't get the result you wanted because next time you may very well get the result you wanted as the rules are consistently applied.

If anyone should support the electoral college it should be Lessig, given that he is a lawyer. We are a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy. Therefore we don't vote purely on the majority wins mentality. If you prefer that then move to another country. Conservatives didn't ask for a recount nor did they riot in the streets or do their damnedest to figure out how to make electors change their minds either of the last 2 elections when Obama won. I guess they are just more honorable losers.

The electors will indeed be exercising the choice of the voters *in their individual states* rather than the national vote since our electors are at the state level, not national.

Comment Are we now writing headlines in yoda speak? (Score -1) 29

IDG, Owner of PCWorld and Research Firm IDC, in Advanced Talks To Sell Itself To Chinese Buyout Group: Reuters - This makes it sound like the Chinese buyout group is named Reuters rather than the report coming from Reuters

Here is the correct way to write a headline: Reuters: IDG, Owner of PCWorld and Research Firm IDC, in Advanced Talks To Sell Itself To Chinese Buyout Group

Comment Re:Genesis 6:3 NIV (Score -1) 290

Also... the bible is not a trusted reference source. It was written by people who weren't there, repeatedly re-written by people with poor translation skills (not to mention political agendas to achieve). Each new interpretation of "The word of God" heralded as an unchanging, perfect holy text. Codswallop!

The part about not being there is also like every history book currently being printed for use in schools right now. Are you going to start lobbying for those to be removed from schools because they can't be trusted? With that said, you do realize that the parts about Jesus in the gospels were written by people who actually KNEW Jesus, right? There is no issue with being trustworthy for those parts.

And for the other parts, if you have problems with verbal or written history being handed down over the generations then how can you personally trust anything in history that happened more than about 117 years ago (the age of oldest still living person)? What has to happen for you to trust the information? Must you see it for yourself? What personal issues do you have with the people who wrote/translated the Bible versus those who wrote/translated other historical texts, especially those used in schools today? Do you have evidence for this opinion of poor translation skills? Since *you* weren't there either how well do you know the people who were writing and translating the Bible? What *political* agenda was there for documenting someone's life 2000 years ago while they were living? And finally, would you care to point out the parts that you can't trust because you know they are wrong? It would be difficult wouldn't it? Then how do you know *any* of it is wrong?

Comment Evolution (Score 0) 288

Sounds like evolution isn't science based on this criteria. Evolution doesn't make predictions for new species. Note that small mutations (micro evolution, if you must call it that) do not make new species.

Comment Re: Climatology (Score -1, Troll) 288

You say they are stupid because they don't blindly believe in fudged data that is fudged in a way that make certain types of people and companies a lot of money? Whose is the stupid group again? If the conservatives were the ones receiving this money you would claim the data is fudged. As it is, you and any other democrat view it as a humanitarian crisis so you can convince yourselves (ie rationalize) you are doing the right thing despite fleecing citizens through idiotic taxes, regulations, etc. whose costs get passed down to them despite being levied on evil oil companies.

Comment Re: Theory (Score -1) 591

"But you pretend to know that a God created everything. You probably pretend to know the exact nature of that God. But "evolutionist" are the know it all jerks." He doesn't have to pretend to know. It's quite clearly written in the Bible, you know, the thing you don't want to read because you might learn something. For someone accusing someone else of pretending to know a lot you sure are making a lot of assumptions about someone you don't know. If you would read the Bible you would know that it isn't possible to ever know everything about God. One can still pretend but those who read the Bible know that it would never be possible to achieve that. Evolutionists need more faith that their idea is true than the people whose faith they are trying to prove wrong. Evolutionists and their followers are full of hubris. They believe Man can find all the answers and that any answer given to us by God is fake information given to us by other humans who wrote the Bible. Man's answers, such as evolution, are backed by conjectures that can't be proven because no one was alive to know if they are true. Evolutionists only exist to give atheists some peace of mind.

Comment Re:Please insert Multics subthread here. (Score 3, Interesting) 484

There was a desktop OS called Domain/OS from Apollo Systems. Rumour had it that Apollo was founded by Multicians who fled from Honneywell. It was a great OS on a lot of levels, not least you had native Domain/OS, BSD4.3 and System5 UNIX, an amazing shared filesystem, and networking that was literally plug and play.

Then of course HP bought it and killed it in favor of HP/UX, sigh.

Comment Re:This is good (Score 1) 1094

Redistribution of wealth rewards laziness and punishes success by using the gov't as the sole arbiter for who should be rewarded, regardless of what one did to earn the dollar. The only entity in charge of how much one earns is oneself, not the gov't, not one's parents, not one's employer. If one wants to earn more money it is one's own responsibility to make that happen. It isn't the gov't's job to settle the fairness score among citizens because what the gov't considers fair is not always fair due to bias. One should be able to decide for oneself whether his current wage is fair and if it isn't then to do something about it rather than whine to the gov't that society is against him. The US has been raising a bunch of lazy ass people for the last generation or two. If someone wants lifted out of poverty then they should do more to earn it like everyone else did. Society doesn't pick and choose certain people to hate or to make poor. Being poor is a personal choice due to lack of motivation regarding work, education, responsibility, etc. The only people who deserve assistance are the disabled who can't actually work but any able bodied person should be working and if they want to earn a certain wage then they need a minimum set of skills, knowledge, experience, education and willingness to accept responsibility to earn that desired wage. Giving people money for no reason devalues them and it demotivates them causing less work to be done at great cost to society as a whole.

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