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User: Antisyzygy

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  1. Re:A first on Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions · · Score: 1

    Which is sufficiently vague enough research to not mean shit. Populations will most likely either A) stabilize significantly below the UN threshold due to some major resource shortage or B) surpass it significantly. The truth is we can accurately estimate how much oil is left, and we can see that our renewable resources are lagging behind enough to be worrisome. Its only pointless to worry about distant horizons to someone who is more concerned about the "now" than the future.

  2. Re:A first on Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions · · Score: 1

    Sure it does. Ready access to energy is what makes our lives better than an iron age farming village. It enables us to become wealthy, get fat, produce large structures. This energy is fossile fuels. The production of energy is tied to wealth as it enables more resources to be produced. He has some other posts that show why we will eventually have a finite supply of energy on Earth even with fusion, geothermal and solar. At some point, we wont have enough energy to meet the demand. With such a large population dependent on this energy, the results will be catastrophic. I suspect the population will stabilize eventually, but he does a good job tying energy production into the economic system and essentially showing why we either must become self sufficient in small family groups and watch our population, or head to the stars (which he also thinks is highly unlikely).

  3. Re:No love for financial institutions. on Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions · · Score: 1

    I agree with fairtax in principal, however it is known that rich people always are less harmed by sales taxes. Even with the prebate, I still see a potential problem there.

  4. Re:A first on Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't call that fraud at all. Fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual, I'd hardly call someone getting a mortgage to buy a home following all the regulations de-frauding a bank.

  5. Re:A first on Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions · · Score: 1

    You say your wife here then your "girlfriend" below. What are you up to?

  6. Re:A first on Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions · · Score: 1

    Linear/exponential growth is not possible forever. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/

  7. Re:The United States of China on One Tenth of China's Farmland Polluted With Heavy Metals · · Score: 0

    Re-puking-can is another one, since they continually spout the same bullshit all the time.

  8. Re:"Spare the rod, spoil the child." on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 1

    You don't discipline a 16 year old by beating them with a belt until they are crying and scared. 16 year olds are basically young adults, and they can be reasoned with. He could have thrown the computer out the window to make his point, or simply taken it away, or he could have reported her to the authorities.

  9. Re:well hang on on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 2

    Sexual molestation? Come on.

  10. Re:Not All Spankings Are The Same on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 1

    Spanking makes sense for younger children since they can't be reasoned with. They understand pain and discomfort as something to fear, so they avoid it. However when you spank them you don't beat the fuck out of them with a belt and verbally abuse them. You just swat them a few times without causing injury to get the point across. Even some unruly 16 year olds that try to hit you or push you need to be restrained or slapped a few times, but this guy actually seemed to be enjoying or at least craving beating her with a belt. He went and got another one when the wife took the belt from him rather than let the few swats he already did stick. The daughter was sitting there crying and scared, and he kept at it. She wasn't trying to resist, nor was she being violent towards them. He could have just picked the computer up and stuck it in his closet or something. Lesson learned.

  11. Re:hard to watch on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 1

    You are an asshole, and I don't give a damn if you have mutilated genitals. It doesn't give you the right to be a worthless pile of shit.

  12. Re:hard to watch on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 1

    The issue is most 23 year olds are incapable of being financially independent even if they are employed or hard workers in this economy. The unemployment rate amongst that age group (18-26 or something) is 24 percent. This is not because they are lazy, its because they are competing for jobs that 35 year old laid off people with working experience are also competing for, and also because some jobs were annihilated never to come back, and many people aren't retiring.

  13. Re:Just another corrupt judge on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 2

    You Texans and your pride. I lived there for a few years and got sick of hearing about it.

  14. Re:Child? on No Charges For Child-Whipping Judge Caught On YouTube · · Score: 1

    Legally considered yes, not a child in reality. 16-22 year olds are somewhere between child and adult. A 16 year old should have the right to self determination, and freedom from being beat on. If I did that to my 18 year old child, who is insignificantly more mature than a 16 year old I would be charged with assault. There is no reason a 16 year old shouldn't be allowed some level of self determination and be treated like a young adult.

  15. Re:Some clarifications about credit unions on Fee Increase Attempt Inspires 'Dump Your Bank Day' · · Score: 1

    Thank you for being an advocate of the voice of reason.

  16. Re:Heavily cited too on Dutch Psychologist Faked Data In At Least 30 Scientific Papers · · Score: 1

    Even so, these PhD candidates are screwed for life by being associated with this guy. Most institutions will think twice about letting someone that couldn't spot fraud in their midst.

  17. Re:Published in Science on Dutch Psychologist Faked Data In At Least 30 Scientific Papers · · Score: 1

    Its a bit easier with mathematics, engineering and computer science papers as your equations and methodology must be clearly spelled out, and generally it will get checked out by the reviewers, and they know what to expect usually for data. I.e. general behaviors, expected distributions for certain processes, etc. If you are bullshitting they can usually pick it out. Some of them are real assholes as well about nit-picking through everything. Essentially, psychology is too subjective to be considered a science in my opinion, and should have stricter requirements for having papers accepted. Psychology students should at least take some upper level mathematics and stats courses along with some scientific ethics classes to get their PhD so they know how not to bias their conclusions. A good example of how easy it is to screw with definitions to get any result you want from data is the "Does eating a meal on a big plate mean you will eat more?" problem. People genuinely thought this was true but as it turns out, if you redefine what a "large" plate is, what a "medium" plate is, and what a "small" plate is you can pretty much get any result you want. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129126/, this example is a pretty good one because it shows that suppose if you had an agenda against big plates, you could prove yourself right without actually fabricating anything through your misunderstanding of statistics and experimentation.

  18. Re:But, but, but on Dutch Psychologist Faked Data In At Least 30 Scientific Papers · · Score: 1

    Not exactly irrelevant, as what is easy and what tastes good usually were the things that helped us survive in the past.

  19. Re:They're impossible to fire on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 1

    Nice spin on liberalism there. Liberalism is attempting to "balance" things out because it is well know what happens when you have absolutely no protections for workers and the lower classes, i.e. feudalism. Capitalism will always result in some wealthy class ruling a lower class because money rules politics and eventually it will cause unfair bias in laws benefiting the wealthy and/or corporations. Saying that money doesn't influence politics and that the little guy has more say than a wealthy entrepreneur is a pipe dream. Liberals just want an equal chance at becoming wealthy for everyone meanwhile having an equal voice in politics for everyone but rarely does this happen in our modern society. Also, Liberal people are willing to part with their money in exchange for government programs in the form of taxes. If you think that as soon as a liberal person got rich they would change there mind, you simply are wrong. There are plenty of liberal wealthy and middle class people who are perfectly willing to spend some extra cash in exchange for universal health care and welfare in case they ever are down on their luck.

  20. Re:Nice straw man you got there on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 1
    The reason the system is a joke is because of the admins and because of easy access to college loans which the administration is all too happy to take and keep gouging students so that it can grow and leech off the entire system.

    Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent.http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/the_high_cost_of_college_admin.php

    Essentially, you have easy access to loans allowing morons who have no business going to college to go to college, then you have the colleges willfully reducing the requirements to get good grades and graduate on some of their more popular programs, like marketing/business, then you have administration swelling just like any bureaucracy and spending more money on useless or redundant positions. The professors aren't the ones to blame, they are producers compared to the administration which are becoming the consumers. The reason Asians come here to study is because we have damn good professors for engineering and sciences. However, for some reason in American culture everyone chooses to be a business major because its easy and they expect that they will make a lot of money with it compared to the effort put in. As a consequence you have colleges flooded with business students and the administration is dumbing down the program so that its just like going to 4 years of common sense classes and re-learning shit you should have learned in high school. News flash for these people, spending 4 years partying and barely getting by for grades is a fucking waste of your time. Get a job. The bad thing is is that administration has an incentive to dumb down programs to fuel their revenue and to justify having redundant and useless positions. Having worked at 2 different universities in various departments, I can tell you first hand how much waste there is with people just screwing around or taking days off for no good reason, or spending countless hours in useless meetings that literally interrupt your work and don't yield any benefits as you just simply continue doing what you were already doing afterwards. Having a meeting about being more productive that lasts 4 hours and actually interrupts you from being productive is the type of shit they have. Granted, with as lazy as people are there they probably need it but they rarely listen. Instead its just a drain on the time of the people who are already productive thus reducing productivity overall. Other meetings include planning other meetings, planning useless events for students, or discussing the "direction" the dept. wants to go several times a week.

  21. Re:Nice straw man you got there on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 1

    Tenured professorships are valuable, as it allows research to continue that otherwise may have political consequences that are not necessarily right. To get rid of tenure track professors would essentially make our entire university system an even bigger joke than it currently is as it would be easy for anyone with an agenda to step all over the professors, and Asia would just dominate us even worse. Ever notice how many Asians come here to study? We must be doing something right. If anything, they need to get rid of all the administration bureaucracy. They have people that do the same job and spend half their day screwing around. Then they have upper level admins making half a million dollars a year who take multiple days off a week. Its sickening how lazy people are that work at universities. Professors are partially included in that, but many of them are working hard all the time doing actual beneficial research like my mathematics professors who study things like wild fires. If high school education is a joke its because they simply pay teachers too shitty and also require ridiculous bullshit courses about feelings meanwhile no child left behind is cutting funding from schools that need it the most. It essentially makes all the talented people pick other careers since the whole system is a joke, so you just get college burn-outs that graduated with 2.5 GPA's as teachers since they can't do anything else.

  22. Re:They're impossible to fire on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What are you even talking about? How are conservatives trying to do that? All I see conservatives doing is trying to maintain the status quo.

  23. Re:Most definitely on Ask Slashdot: Image Recognition For Race Timing? · · Score: 1

    This is still more-or-less a significant domain reduction over the human face. If you weren't human you wouldn't be able to identify one face from another. Try identifying faces upside-down sometime in a split second. We are uniquely built to identify very small variations in the human face in upright position. I suspect the front end of a car would be much less difficult. For example, first classify what the make of the car is, then classify color, then classify markings. If you have a database of cars in the race you will find a match with high probability.

  24. Re:GPS? on Ask Slashdot: Image Recognition For Race Timing? · · Score: 1

    http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2499210&cid=37875118 There are image processing techniques that would work with relatively small identification marks and a sufficiently "good enough" camera. The processing may take 5 minutes but you can cut to commercial and have a human verify it later. The issue is getting the original system accurate enough you are 99 percent sure whoever crossed the line first, crossed it. Facial recognition systems already have this level of accuracy. Just like voting systems however, for fairness you need human review before passing definite judgement. Apply some science and you would have a killer product there. Im surprised there aren't more industries employing at least one academic to make their systems more cutting edge.

  25. Re:no one got fired buying intel on Smarter Thread Scheduling Improves AMD Bulldozer Performance · · Score: 1

    Most likely power consumption due to the power needed for each cpu and cooling requirements (which affect the space needed and infrastructure needed to store it all). I don't think an AMD cluster is less reliable over an Intel one in ideal physical conditions for the AMD processors on each. What I mean by that is, sufficient cooling and power supply for the AMD cluster since they are known to be more power hungry and require more cooling.