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User: Your.Master

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  1. Re:In the shadow of the valley of bacon on Scientists Develop Nutritious Seaweed That Tastes Like Bacon · · Score: 1

    I have to disagree. I don't think the platonic ideal of bacon is cooked into our minds like facial expressions, and therefore I don't think the uncanny valley applies.

    Lots of things taste kind of like other things, but not quite.

  2. Re:11 rear enders on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    Yes, it's hard, but when you fail, it's your fault.

    Who else are you going to blame? It's certainly not the Google Car's fault. It *might* in some extreme cases be the fault of poor signage or a criminal cutting your brake lines or something, but if you misjudge traction on an icy road, you're not alone, but you're at fault.

  3. Re:11 rear enders on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    In principle, a self-driving car could use directed sound to lessen the annoyance. Humans aren't generally expected to "aim" their horn.

  4. Re:Mimicing on UK Government Releases Rules To Get Self-Driving Cars Onto Public Roads · · Score: 2

    I think the whole point of this law is to legalize further development in the UK.

    I don't actually think this is a terrible idea, for now. In the future we'll need to be rid of this, but until self-driving cars are consumer-ready we need a transitional state that still maintains public safety but allows for real-world development. Hence, you get somebody who knows the limitations of a self-driving car in the driver's seat, and you have him assimilate as closely as possible with human drivers.

  5. Re:There's that confusion again: on New Molecular Transistor Can Control Single Electrons · · Score: 1

    Your experiment tells you it does go through both, your physics model says its indivisible.

    The particle model said it was indivisible. The wave model did not. Your flock of starlings is essentially the wave model.

    Showing that neither the particle model nor the wave model could, by itself, replicate the double slit experiment, is literally the whole point of the double slit experiment. You're pointing out the particle incompatibility alone.

    In your final paragraph, you confuse photon and proton. I assume you meant proton throughout?

    (You know, "flock of starlings" "quantum mechanics" brings up slashdot AC comments multiple times on the 1st page of results).

    "just look at this math and don't think of the model" isn't an answer.

    If your model can produce math that predicts at least as well as the existing math, then you're in business. But otherwise, it is indeed an answer. There's basically no math that's ever done a better job.

  6. Re:Other opponents on US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I consider myself an opponent of mandatory labelling GMO foods as GMO, without having a financial stake in it.

    I would suggest instead that non-GMO products should voluntarily label themselves as non-GMO, and enforce the veracity of that claim under truth in advertising laws. I still believe that's actually better even for the people who are opposed to GMO in general, because now they know what to look for. This is the "kosher-label" model instead of the "danger: explosive!" model.

    I could also see my way to mandatory labelling specific classes of GMO products if a legitimate concern could be cited about them. Otherwise it's just really arbitrary. Like mandating a "contains Utah genes" label for products whose ancestry ever included a plant or animal raised in Utah.

    Enforcing labelling on an arbitrary basis does in fact create a barrier because your choice of what is a mandatory label *itself* conveys information ("we politicians aren't confident this is safe for human consumption, but aren't willing to ban it outright either"). And the thing is, that's what presumably any product that intentionally contains no GMO truly wants to advertise, so they should go ahead and advertise it. It's their right. I haven't seen a lot of these labels. There is "organic" which guarantees no GMO, but it also comes with some extra requirements you may not wish to impose, like limitations on pesticides and fertilizers.

    It's kind of like biased reporting. It is possible to report a sequence of things that everybody agrees are facts, in such a way as to suggest something that is non-factual. That's what bias is.

  7. Re: Sure, I favor doing more of it on How the Biggest, Most Expensive Oil Spill In History Changed Almost Nothing · · Score: 1

    Yes, I saw and do not dispute that definition. You seem to be disputing that you are implying causality, even though definition 1 is because.

    Clear communication is not achieved by being able to provide a golden path through various dictionary definitions that aren't strictly wrong. It's by saying things such that they can be understood as easily as possible, without losing the message.

    If you can't understand the objections people are raising in this thread, then I very strongly recommend that you avoid the phrase "in light of" entirely. It doesn't matter whether you believe you are using it correctly, because it's not working and we don't seem to be able to communicate to you why it's not working.

    One last effort:

    If something has two definitions, and the one you want is *not* the primary definition, you should avoid using it in a sentence where the primary definition fits grammatically.

    This is how people use "in light of" for "because":

    "In light of this new evidence, the police no longer suspect Bob of the Museum Caper."

    And this is how people use "in light of" for "in consideration of".

    "When you are selecting what university program to apply to, consider them in light of your personal interest in the field, and not just expected salary at graduation"

    Yours was in a form like the "because" case, so it's confusing.

    Citations where people recommend using "because" as a go-to replacement:

    http://english.stackexchange.c...
    http://www.4syllables.com.au/r...
    http://web.uvic.ca/~gkblank/wo...

    Yes, the stack exchange guy did say considering. Considering itself means because in some cases, usually when it's the first word of a sentence. But not that last sentence I used.

  8. Re:Sure, I favor doing more of it on How the Biggest, Most Expensive Oil Spill In History Changed Almost Nothing · · Score: 1

    Or it isn't, because that's not what I said.

    No, it is, because it's what you implied. Things you imply are by definition unsaid.

    Here: http://idioms.thefreedictionar...

    First clause of the first definition:

    "because of certain knowledge now in hand; "

    The use of "because" in this definition clearly conveys the causal link.

    Is the person who has trouble with language the one who utilizes accepted vocabulary, or the one who does not?

    Everybody here is using accepted vocabulary, but not everybody is agreeing on what it means. I believe you are in the minority on this issue, both today and historically speaking.

  9. Re:It only works with no scarcity on A 'Star Trek' Economic System May Be Closer Than You Think · · Score: 3, Informative

    but in an economy without scarcity, with nothing much to do but lay about and make babies, the population tends to grow rather quickly.

    This claim appears to fly in the face of every statistic, which shows the wealthier the nation (in other words, the less scarcity there is), the lower the birthrate, to considerably less than 1.5 children per person.

  10. Re:Reasons I'm not a judge. on Vancouver Area Teen Sentenced To 16 Months For Swatting · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First of all, it's not clear to me that robbing a store with an unloaded pistol is necessarily less dangerous. Are there statistics on that?

    But for the sake of argument, I'll assume it is. In that case, it's not irrelevant that what this guy did is more dangerous, but that's not a sole determining factor either.

    The five main points of criminal justice: rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, restitution.

    If we believe that teenagers are unlikely to ever again swat somebody after a month in jail (which I personally consider extremely likely), then that satisfies incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Restitution can never be fully satisfied because you can't truly un-SWAT somebody. It's only retribution that's left, and I reject that as a reason for high sentences.

    So the question is, even if this is more dangerous, is it also easier to fix the root problem?

  11. Re:Not on /. on Technology and the End of Lying · · Score: 1

    Most government issued ID I've had (from two different governments) offer free replacements if the data is entered erroneously on their end, provided you inform them in a timely fashion after getting the ID.

  12. Re:All this means is that you can catch them on Technology and the End of Lying · · Score: 1

    Some of us are more mature than that and try to take a more grandfatherly view of things.

    No. No human being is without bias. But those who think they are without sin are dangerous because they throw stones with impunity.

    I am a very good judge of character if I spend any time with someone. If figure out how their minds work. It is both conscious and unconscious. A lot of it is just obvious and some of it is puzzled out when I get weird signals from people.

    I suspect that almost everybody believes they are a very good judge of character.

    Real rape and false accusations of rape are both almost always a character misjudgement, because although both of them can happen to random strangers, they are more likely to happen to acquaintances.

    I don't care if men are treated like shit and i don't really care if women are treated like shit

    I'm sorry, that's a "grandfatherly view"?

    Birth rates across the west have collapsed. Why is that? I don't know. But this trend coincides quite well with this gender agitation. And it could well lead to cultural, social, and civilizational suicide.

    Birth rates collapsing aren't a bad thing. More people means we have more "human resources" but that our nonhuman resources have to be divided between more people. We can make arguments about what the optimal rate is, but the optimal population is clearly not infinity humans.

    Also, birth rates have nothing to do with false rape accusations, and only a very dark correlation to actual rapes.

    My interests are the preservation of my civilizaiton as it goes through the last dry heaves of the collapse of communism.

    ...what?

    I really don't know where all this marxism bullshit is coming from. I do understand why you're bringing up MRAs, even though they weren't in this thread before, but then you bring up Marxists, birth rates, and your superhuman (though not unique) ability to smell evil.

    For the record, I agree that the fundamental principles of justice demand innocent-until-proven-guilty in criminal matters, and prosecuting false accusations. Every false accusation of rape is both an assault on the accused -- an attempt to kidnap them and lock them in a cage for years -- and a huge slap in the face of actual rape victims, both ones that got convictions, ones that tried and failed, and ones that went unreported, because it reinforces, legitimately, the notion that their accusation may also be fake.

    However, I have seen no significant evidence presented that there's any particular rash of false rape accusations that is getting "out of hand". I'm open to it but I haven't seen it.

  13. Re:False accusations of rape are not rare on Technology and the End of Lying · · Score: 1

    8% aren't false, they are false *or unfounded*. Unfounded is very different from false. The first lines of the wikipedia article point out that it's hard to get statistics because of the difference between false and unfounded.

    Also, 8% of accusations can be rare, depending on how many accusations there are in a year.

  14. Re:50,000? Whaaat? on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: 1

    Why would you assume no damage when the article is linked and describes damages in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as his purchases using stolen credit cards?

  15. Re:fix the contrast on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: 1

    Because this criminal did a strictly worse thing, and the outcome for him was strictly better. That makes for an easy comparison between how two jurisdictions handle criminal justice.

    Two things scuttle the comparison:

    1. This guy committed crimes as a minor. Whether or not you think that should be important, it makes the comparison uneven.
    2. Swartz was threatened with insane sentences to induce him to plea-bargain, but AFAIK didn't actually get sentenced. I don't know whether plea bargains are a thing in the Finnish justice system, and the article doesn't make clear whether this guy was threatened with anything like that.

    BTW you don't just have to presume the credit card details were used, it's outright stated in the article. He used them to buy, at least, champagne and gift cards.

  16. Re:useless idea person... on Even the "Idea Person" Should Learn How To Code · · Score: 2

    I learned some very basics about circuits in grade 9 science, which was a mandatory class. You learn about resistors, capacitors, inductors, and make calculations of circuits involving them in DC current. I can't remember if we wired up a breadboard to make lights respond to switches at that time, or if that came later.

    Didn't really dive into AC current calculations until we hit classes that were not mandatory, although of course we talked in broad strokes about it.

    I don't dismiss the electronics course idea out of hand because I think it's a good idea. Op amps are too much, but you can absolutely introduce kids to simple circuits. I don't think it's fundamentally different from introducing kids to basic chemistry or basic biology, both of which only convey the tip of the iceberg to students.

    This said, in elementary school we were exposed to LOGO and the like, and a popular spare time activity was to make "movies" using a simple scripting environment. This was the mid-90s. Honestly I think basic programming is easier to teach than electronics, having had experience with both. It's also more easily "gamified" such that even some students that would never want to program in their spare time, get into it.

    It's almost entirely irrelevant what language they are taught in. You really just need loops and branching to give the idea.

  17. Re:I've tried turning IPV4 off.. on North America Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses · · Score: 1

    He has one: monitoring IPv6 compatibility.

  18. Re:Accepting Responsibility on Google Apologises For Photos App's Racist Blunder · · Score: 1

    If you reported to Google that it classified you as a Yeti, I'd be shocked if they didn't apologize, even if you told them you thought it was hilarious.

    People apologize when they, or the things they sell, make mistakes. Even if it was unforeseeable.

  19. Re:Casper is Concerned on Google Apologises For Photos App's Racist Blunder · · Score: 1

    No, we're asking the humans, who understand the nuances of human culture, to prioritize fixing those aspects of the algorithm that are both wrong and hurtful, over those that are just wrong but not particularly hurtful.

    A lot of people seem to be overreacting to this. A guy said "you fucked up" on Twitter, and then questioned the initial sampling data -- which is a *perfectly legitimate technical question in this context*, because an insufficient variety of pictures of black women and/or of gorillas is a potential cause for this problem, and if it was, an easy solution is to make sure that people in the future train their neural nets with a wider variety of such.

  20. Re:alogrithms aren't racist on Google Apologises For Photos App's Racist Blunder · · Score: 1

    You need to read up on "unconscious bias".

    Everybody has it. There's no shame in that. The only shame is in insisting that you don't, and others don't, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

  21. Re:Who watches this crap? on Watching People Code Is Becoming an (Even Bigger) Thing · · Score: 2

    Watching somebody type is worthless.

    Watching somebody's thought process as they write code is maybe helpful, maybe worthless.

    Watching somebody code while they natter about random things could be entertaining, depending on how entertaining the coder is.

    Watching somebody debug their code is by far the best way to learn advanced debugging techniques that I've ever seen. That goes way beyond facile examples.

    I haven't watched any of these streams. I don't know what they do. But I can't discard it as idiocy without thinking it through.

  22. Re:Very Disturbing Trend on Supreme Court Ruling Supports Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    I believe that homosexuality is a behavior that is learned and changeable, instead of inborn.

    Setting aside whether this is true, why does this matter? How does it have the least bit of relevance?

    Something that is without a doubt best for children are a mom and a dad.

    Plenty of reason to doubt this. For instance, "child abuse".

    But aside from that, what relevance is that? Do you think that banning gay marriage will cause a child to live in two-parent male/female households? I suspect that, absent another rule that is completely separate from gay marriage, you'll get exactly as many pairs of gay parents whether or not they are married.

    If you don't think this makes a difference look at all the statistics - from physical, physiological and mental health and including the heightened probabilities of drug use, suicide, school drop out rates, wedlock births and crime - if you just take the father out of the equation

    Do you have any statistics that compare to female parents to a male and female parent? Because comparing a male and female parent, to a single female parent, is not isolating sexual diversity as what improves parenting. The number of parents is clearly relevant.

    wedlock births

    ...you are opposed to wedlock births????

    Having two women trying to raise a child mimics correctly the absence of a father

    No. Come on. That's obviously BS. It's pretty obvious why two parents would be better than one.

    So I decided to look up the statistics on this, since you mentioned that they existed, and what I found completely contradicts you. It shows that *only* the number of parents really matter, and their gender is irrelevant: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

    It may even be that three live-in parents are better than two, but it's much harder to find statistics on that.

    If this is really your reasoning, you should push for laws that remove children from single-parent and same-sex-parent households, and redistribute them in mixed-sex households (perhaps some polyamorous households, maybe some non-romantically-involved roommates?). Gay marriage doesn't matter to you, it's single-sex parenting, and you don't really help that by opposing gay marriage.

  23. Re:GMOs have so many different problems on Controversial Trial of Genetically Modified Wheat Ends In Disappointment · · Score: 1

    Then ask the people who sell non-GMO products to label themselves non-GMO.

    The whole label law controversy was about forcing GMO products to label themselves GMO. But that's totally backwards! Even for the people who want to avoid GMO! Because you don't want to have to look for the absence of a label, you want to look for a label, because things are easier to find than unthings.

    If they don't label they must not consider it to be important, OR, they aren't confident that they aren't GMO, one or the other. Tell them you think it's important.

  24. Re:GMOs have so many different problems on Controversial Trial of Genetically Modified Wheat Ends In Disappointment · · Score: 1

    Look, I agree with you on GMO food, but the answer to your question is blindingly obvious.

    We are on a website that literally prompts people to discuss subjects. The subject this time is GMO food.

    What I'm more curious about is what prompted you to talk about organic foods. At time of writing, you are the only result in ctrl+f for organic on this page.

  25. Re:Simple reason on Average Duration of Hiring Process For Software Engineers: 35 Days · · Score: 1

    That doesn't make sense, unless you're saying there are more A people than C people.

    Otherwise, having B people in charge, who would be happy to hire C people, should make hiring *easier*.