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User: haystor

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  1. Re:Have things changed in recent years... on Artificial Intelligence Can Now Predict Suicide With Remarkable Accuracy (qz.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why is it you say you don't find ELIZA to be that effective as a program?

  2. Top performer on Fitbit Wants To Help Corporations Track Employee Health · · Score: 2

    I predict the guy at Home Depot working the paint mixer will be a top performer.

  3. Re:Google doesn't target ads on Study: Women Less Likely To Be Shown Ads For High-paid Jobs On Google · · Score: 1

    This hasn't been shown by the data. Viewers are shown a limited number of ads. If women get a lot of women specific ads, they'll get fewer gender neutral ones.

  4. Re:Why different in America? on Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? · · Score: 1

    My experience from tutoring math for years: I would get home school students who had surpassed their parents math skills. So there is some self selection bias of good students with parents who care enough to pursue additional math/physics through tutoring.

    The level of socialization of homeschooled children that I tutored was superior in virtually every way. Whether they were homeschooled for religious reasons or not, they were well adjusted young *adults*, far more mature than the regular teenagers I know from tutoring and coaching on a daily basis. Homeschooled kids grew to be adults. They interact with me as an adult. They took on responsibilities in a much more adult fashion -- scheduling tutoring times, paying me directly, etc...

    Everyone likes to hate on the religious nuts and lump all of homeschooling in with it, but that was never my experience. Also, as far as socialization goes, they typically aren't locked in a room all day. There are abundant resources and communities surrounding homeschooling that have the kids interacting with others on a daily basis.

    My opinion (and my kids are in public school) is that the hate for public school is just hate with virtually no foundation. There may be examples of some homeschooling craziness out there, but it's probably under the rates of public school drug dealing, murders, assaults, etc...

  5. Re:You know what they call alternative medicine... on Jimmy Wales To 'Holistic Healers': Prove Your Claims the Old-Fashioned Way · · Score: 0

    They have a word for alternative medicine that works: medicine.

  6. Re:Texas Barely Registers on Map of Publicly-Funded Creationism Teaching · · Score: 1

    The key in the case of vouchers is that public funds are being spent by the public. While you may disagree with what is being taught, as long as they meet the standards of the state's education, these schools should continue to receive those funds. Dictating what religious values they may or may not teach would itself be a an establishment of religion.

    The kids don't belong to the government and the money doesn't belong to the government. Let the crazies teach what they want to teach.

  7. Re:Dispute - not often at all on SF Airport Officials Make Citizen Arrests of Internet Rideshare Drivers · · Score: 1

    Additionally:

    I paid more for my car because of airbags. Because of them, I can't seat a kid in the front seat. "The back seat is the safest place for a kid to sit" you say? It's the safest place for my wife to sit too, but I don't make her sit back there. I don't get a choice in the matter because my usage is dictated by the government.

    Same thing with seat belts. We have basically the same seat belts we had 30 years ago. They can't make those better? They must be so good they're also used in F1, NASCAR and Indy. Not even close. Government regulation has completely stopped any effort to make seat belts safer for regular drivers by making any such innovation a liability to whoever tries it.

  8. Re:Well on SF Airport Officials Make Citizen Arrests of Internet Rideshare Drivers · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most places in the US, the taxi service is highly regulated not merely for safety but for the purpose of excluding competition. The common "regulation" is that a new taxi service must show customer demand that requires their new service. This is typically overseen by a board of their competitors who never seem to agree that they need another competitor.

    You're spot on about the near impossibility of starting a new cab in a lot of major US cities. The price of a medallion for a cab in NYC is roughly $360k for an independent operator. They have a fixed number and nobody else is allowed to participate, regardless of need or service availability.

    The concept of "everyone should play by the same rules" is pointless with some groups are grandfathered in and allowed to play.

    Having read some discussions of Uber in Sweden, I think, regulation just meant a proper license, posting fares and insurance. All relatively reasonable requirements of a regular taxi service. There are issues with the posting of fares as Uber is a one-off service of unique trips, but that's perhaps an issue of updating the law. There is still the problem of traditional taxi services using the law to prevent a new service from coming into existence. They aren't truly interested in the customer who this law is supposed to support.

  9. Re: Don't Do The Dig ... on Canadian Couple Charged $5k For Finding 400-Year-Old Skeleton · · Score: 1

    We pay regularly for police response. We don't pay one big bill after the police show up. You present exactly the opposite case of how the environmental bills are split up (or not split up). We bear the costs of police, fire, education as a society. Some bones show up on a property which are deemed valuable to society (deemed valuable by some small group and some bureaucrats in actuality) and single land owners are responsible for the whole cost.

  10. Re:Don't Do The Dig ... on Canadian Couple Charged $5k For Finding 400-Year-Old Skeleton · · Score: 1

    It is your greed that thinks someone else should pay for something you value.

  11. Re:Don't Do The Dig ... on Canadian Couple Charged $5k For Finding 400-Year-Old Skeleton · · Score: 1

    Fundamentally, it is putting a value on the site, but putting the cost on the finder. The cost should be borne by those who value it, if that means "the people" then the government should come in and pick it up, possibly even paying the owner of the land for the use.

    In this case, the government only values it as far as the owner can pay for it.

  12. Re:"Liberty-Minded"? on The Free State Project, One Decade Later · · Score: 1

    So we can't be free to go without a seat belt because we aren't allowed to be free from government interference in the medical marketplace?

    Really, once you accept that a government hand in health care grants the government authority to dictate our actions, there is virtually nothing which is beyond the scope of the government.

  13. Re:Ebook's main advantage is price on Amazon: Publishers Strong-Armed Us On E-Books · · Score: 1

    More advantages for ebooks:
    4. Instant delivery
    5. Reading form factor - ebook lies flat on its own, resize text, no curve to the page, etc...
    6. Updates

  14. You put them in the rumble seat or the bed of the pickup and you can't hear a peep out of them.

  15. Re:blahblah on Web of Tax Shelters Saved Apple Billions, Inquiry Finds · · Score: 1

    A pile of money in Apple's account is significantly better for shareholders than sending it to the IRS when it wasn't owed.

  16. Re:Great... on EA Is the Game Company Disney Was Looking For · · Score: 1

    Don't tell me there will be plot holes in a space opera.

  17. Re: what? on What Modern Militaries Can Learn From Battlestar Galactica · · Score: 1

    And you have the Marines, who are just now getting some used TRS-80's from the Army and Air Force.

  18. Re:Equal rights on So What If Yahoo's New Dads Get Less Leave Than Moms? · · Score: 1

    I'm going to go way out on limb here and say that nursing is more frequently done by the mothers.

  19. Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans on Let Them Eat Teslas · · Score: 2

    How are you going to stop the wealthy from getting better services? Will you shut down the Harvards and Yales? Force them to teach who you deem worthy?

    This "public" you speak of which will dole out education to those approved -- who are they? The same elected officials and their agents who have caused the current problems? You don't think this will lead to only the best connected getting the premium schools?

    At least in a free market a poor person with talent can take a loan to go to a good school. The best schools will continue to want the most talented people.

    Also, risk shouldn't necessarily be borne by the universities, but by the lenders. A student would probably end up with a credit score for education loans based on a universities success, their own academic history, their chosen field's ability to repay, etc... The poor would definitely be able to attend an elite university in this fashion, they just might not be able to study 18th century French literature.

  20. Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans on Let Them Eat Teslas · · Score: 2

    One of the major causes of the high price of college is the easy availability of loans. College students are not price sensitive. Lenders are not risk sensitive since these loans are either government backed or non-dischargeable.

    Today's solution *is* a non-market solution. It is a government created situation which, of course, means the same people who caused the current problem will be screaming for even more government to solve it.

  21. Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans on Let Them Eat Teslas · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No. I don't want to fund the current crop of college students. There is no accountability that they are doing anything worthwhile. The vast majority of degrees are meaningless.

    Let the market fund the schools instead of government loans and non-dischargeable debt. The college price bubble would crash and true lenders could actually enter the market.

    What am I saying?! Let's just give away more money that we really don't have.

  22. Re:Obvious reason on Most Doctors Don't Think Patients Need Full Access To Med Records · · Score: 4, Insightful

    John Edwards and his kind are the reason. Many malpractice suits don't have any scientific basis, it's just a matter of running a sympathetic "victim" in front of a jury.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/aug/16/20040816-011234-1949r/?page=all

  23. Re:nice efficiency there on Bradley Manning Pleads Guilty To 10 Charges · · Score: 1

    While some of the material may have been what those sympathetic to Manning might call "whistelblower" material, the majority of it was probably much more mundane. Even so, releasing the boring stuff compromises our sources, whether they are electronic or human intelligence. Many documents are classified much more strongly because of how we obtained the material than what the material actually is.

    Some boring piece of correspondence will have some boring detail about how one person went from home to the grocery store and it will be pieced together that his driver is the an intelligence source. It turns out this guy wasn't even an agent, he just has a conversation at a bar with a friend about his day. But these documents get released, one thing leads to another and some poor driver ends up getting beaten.

    But none of this matters, because we don't like Bush.

  24. Re:It's called the key on Driver Trapped In Speeding Car At 125 Mph · · Score: 1

    Typically this is holding the power button for a few seconds.

  25. Re:Nope on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    Not sure who you mean by "everyone else", but when I search for reviews the only negatives that I find are questions whether a new car company can make it. There is very, very little negative about about any of the actual cars. Things like "rear headroom is cramped", stuff like that.

    http://www.automobilemag.com/features/awards/1301_2013_automobile_of_the_year_tesla_model_s/viewall.html