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User: rmandevi

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  1. Re:Read a few articles, not seeing it. on Elon Musk Lays Out His Evidence That NYT Tesla Test Drive Was Staged · · Score: 1

    Note that Musk uses Broder's own words against him. Either Broder is lying, or Broder is...lying. Maybe Musk is as well, but Occam's Razor suggests no.

  2. Re:Simply Could Not Fulfill His Duties on Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While the Church is a church of forgiveness, it is not a Church of forgetfulness. The Church can decide not to punish a molesting priest, but it should realize that it has a problem with that priest and should not let that priest around children again.

    For the record, policy in the USA requires any Church members (from bishops down to Religious Education teachers) are required to take a course in child abuse detection and prevention (sexual and otherwise). One of the things that they teach there is if they see signs of abuse from anybody, they are to inform both the Church and the local constabulary.

    The reasons that the Catholics have been singled out on the abuse angle are roughly:
    1: We are expected to be held to a higher moral standard than even other churches, as well we should be
    2: There are an awful lot of priests there. Roughly a third of the US Christian population is Catholic, and no other church has a quarter as many members as the Catholic church does. Again, more reason to keep our noses (and other parts) clean.
    3: The ugly reason is that the Catholic Church is organized different from other churches, and thus easier to sue for big money. Because we are an authoritarian church, ownership is by hierarchy. When the scandal started up in Boston (the archidiocese I grew up in), people weren't suing a priest, or that priest's church, but the archdiocese itself, which draws its income from every Catholic church in the Greater Boston area.

    None of these should be taken as excusing things that the Church and priests, but I do note that the above reasons may explain why we don't see similar scandals rocking other churches. I highly doubt that the Catholics have cornered the market on molesting clergy.

    For my money, the fact that these pedophiles exist in the Church is horrible, but in a way understandable. Any large group will have some bad apples, and it's impossible to weed them all out. The fact that the Church had been protecting these priests [em]as policy[/em] is much worse. I for one would have loved to see Cardinal Law explain himself to a grand jury, and think in retrospect that Pope John Paul II did us all a disservice by getting him out of the country before that could happen.

  3. Re:Let me get this straight on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 0

    Are you suggesting that the army gets an arrest warrant before shooting at Al-Qaida? Any member of Al-Qaida, regardless of citizenship, can safely assume that the US demands their surrender.

    Are you saying that this could be abused to just say "Yeah, I just don't like that guy, I'll say that he's Al-Qaida, say he's threatening lives, and say he's uncapturable"? It certainly could. Can a cop just shoot you in the head and pass it off as you trying to mug somebody? He certainly can. Can the family or loved ones of the deceased demand that the one who made the decision to kill, in either case, be hauled up before a judge on murder charges? Absolutely. Abuse can happen, with or without this document.

    This has nothing to do with accusation of crime. When a cop fires his weapon, it's not because he has a warrant signed by a judge, it's because he believes that an innocent person is about to get killed and that nothing less can stop that from happening.

  4. Let me get this straight on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    So the President has given the DoD the power to kill a US citizen abroad who is threatening US lives, and can't be safely captured? Our cops already have the power to kill US citizens in the US who are threatening US lives and cannot be safely captured (arrested). That's why cops carry guns. If you are threatening someone's life, they will arrest you if they can, and kill you if they must. If this document is genuine, it is giving US citizens abroad rights similar to what they would have here. In either case, the rule is simple: surrender the gun (or IED, or strike force), and nobody gets hurt.

    I am not a fan of our current President, but this is a sane policy. If we don't claim the right to kill US citizens under these circumstances, we give them more powers to kill us than they had when they were within our borders. If a US Al-Qaida member doesn't like being on a US hit list, they can come out with their hands up, just like any other suspect.

  5. Re:Provoking on Machine Gun Fire From Military Helicopters Flying Over Downtown Miami · · Score: 1

    > What was he supposed to do? Stop reading to the kids, stand up, and say "Children, I must save the United States! Begone!"? Absolutely. Even if he had no decision to make (and are you seriously telling me that the POTUS has no duties when the US is being attacked?), the instant he realized that the US was under attack, he needed to also realize that he was a walking bullseye. The next plane could well have come into the school. He should have walked out, with or without explanation ON NATIONAL TELEVISION (letting the bad guys know where he _wasn't_ any longer), pulled the fire alarm on the way, and left a Secret Service agent behind to work with the principal to evacuate the school and the entire block.

  6. Re:Politicians have it wrong.... on Is Technology Eroding Employment? · · Score: 1

    Whether every single person should work depends on your definition of "work". If that is defined as what we currently call work-for-hire, then probably not. At the other extreme, somebody who sits in front of the flatscreen all day eating chips isn't doing anybody any good, including themselves. There's something truly fulfilling and human about serving your fellow person.
    Throughout history, when we have too much labor to handle our necessities, we invent new sorts of "jobs" to get more people to do to give us more...something. That's what allowed us to build cities, and even factories. The entire entertainment industry is built on that. We have professional bloggers, for Pete's sake.
    If we got to the point where we gave everybody a living wage just for breathing, I suspect that a lot of people would be doing little things like blogging, playing on one of 29,347 quasi-pro sports teams (admission is free, but the hot dogs are five bucks), taking up music (so you can afford a local live band for your kid's birthday party) or art (why buy prints for your walls when you can tell an artist what you're looking for). For most people, you couldn't earn enough to live on by doing this, but if you were just looking for a little differential pay to buy some of the finer things in life (like that five-dollar hot dog at the East Overshoe Kumqats baseball game), it would be worth doing.

  7. Re:Misleading Summary on Texas GOP Educational Platform Opposes Teaching Critical Thinking Skills · · Score: 1
    "We oppose the teaching of...programs...which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs"

    First off, learning is always about behavior modification, and usually about challenging fixed beliefs. Teaching math focuses on changing student behavior when encountering numbers and symbols on a piece of paper. Phys. Ed focuses on changing student behavior when swinging at a ball. If you haven't changed their behavior, you haven't taught them anything.

    As to whether the language of the plank refers to things in the generic or the specific, note that "Higher Order Thinking Skills" is capitalized and noted as an acronym. While I can't find it in Google, this at least implies that there is a very specific definition for that term. It's entirely possible that there is a known "Higher Order Thinking Skills" curriculum that is nothing of the sort. But there is certainly ambiguity there that they should have cleaned up, if they're talking about a specific program or curriculum.

    When they say they oppose "critical thinking skills", they didn't say "Critical Thinking Skills", "'Critical Thinking Skills'", or "the so-called 'Critical Thinking Skills' program proposed by those Godless Democrats for the purpose of teaching free love and atheism". There is nothing in their text that implies that they mean anything but the generic sense of critical thinking skills.

    The authors had plenty of opportunity to spin their words properly, if they meant anything other than actually opposing the teaching of critical thinking skills. If they couldn't be bothered to do so, neither should we.

  8. Re:Because insurance pays for them -- WRONG! on Ask Slashdot: Why Are Hearing Aids So Expensive? · · Score: 1

    You say that like we're wrong about it most of the time...

  9. Re:Not just analytic... on Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief · · Score: 1
    Okay, that's just about enough of this. I understand that Christians are in the world's minority (as is every faith, or lack of faith), but that is uncalled for.

    First off, the FSM was invented as an example--even it's creator never claimed it to be true.

    Secondly, Christianity has evidence. Sure, it's not slam-dunk proof, sure things can be argued either way, but there is evidence. You want miracles with physical evidence? Google "incorruptable saints". Look up the eucharistic miracle at Lanciano (http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html).

    Also, look at the Bible. The Old Testament is a history, written over thousands of years by dozens of authors. Then comes a story of one man who not only fulfills prophecies written over the millenia, but even causes many of the segments of the Old Testament much more meaningful (example: Why did God ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son as a test? Because God did it for real). One person, or a tight team of people living in the same century, could make something like that hang together. But is it easier to believe that a group of authors could do this over millenia without a guiding hand, or with divine intervention? Apply Occam's razor there.

    Yes, there are counterarguments, and there are those that doubt the evidence. But to dismiss it as if to say "if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you" is uncalled for.

  10. Re:We'll find out: I'm 50 and looking for new work on Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg · · Score: 1

    Your profile won't let me send you email. If you're in the Massachusetts, USA area, my company (http://www.litle.com) is hiring. No embedded stuff, but I think a credit card processor always needs networking savvy.

  11. Re:Allow Me to Rephrase the Problem on Student Charged For Re-selling Textbooks · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the reference. So this law is a special import/export clause in copyright law. I was afraid that this was a case of Intimidation By Attorney, hoping that you'll settle out of court before realizing that they don't have a leg to stand on. So the publisher's complaint appears to be legit to me.

  12. Re:Allow Me to Rephrase the Problem on Student Charged For Re-selling Textbooks · · Score: 1

    I'm definitely missing something here. I legally buy a copy of a book, in India, for $9. I bought a copy, and have rights to the physical copy. I don't have the copyright, so I can't copy it, but I have rights to the physical book. I can read it, share it with my friends, prop up a table leg, rip the pages out and paper my room or the bottom of my parrot cage with it. I really don't see how copyright law applies here. I could see how international trade agreements apply here. What are the relevant laws?

  13. Re:Wireheads on Treating Depression With Electrodes Inside the Brain · · Score: 1

    Big difference here. With (as far as I can tell) the above treatment or just about any antidepressant treatment, it is impossible to get "high" off of it. Above a certain dose, it doesn't increase your pleasure levels like many recreational drugs. So there's no drive to keep upping the dosage...or voltage. The "droud" works by stimulating the pleasure centers directly, if that's even neurologically possible. This does nothing of the sort, so there's really little risk of going into full-on junkie mode.

  14. Re:Recourse? on Up To 1.5 Million Visa, MasterCard Credit Card Numbers Stolen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That would have to be a pretty cagey crook. The breach occurred January-February. Global reported the breach to Visa, MasterCard, and Federal authorities once they detected it last month (source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=125339&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1678656&highlight=). The news only came out Friday to give the Feds enough time to investigate without tipping anyone off. Truth in posting: I work for one of Global's competitors.

  15. Open Source Surgeon? Bad idea. on Open Source Robotic Surgeon · · Score: 1

    From the article: UW researchers also created software to work with the Robot Operating System, a popular open-source robotics code, so labs can easily connect the Raven to other devices and share ideas. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of open source and I use it all the time. But this isn't desktop software, server software, or mobile device software. This isn't mission-critical software, where a bug can mean only millions of lost dollars. This is life-critical software--when it fails, someone dies. That's right up there with nuclear reactor controls, submarine life support systems, fly-by-wire, and such things. NASA knows how to do this right. See http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html for how they do it. In part, they do it by keeping the scope as small as possible and re-defining the term "anal-retentive", from requirements to testing and beyond. Their stuff runs on the bare hardware, not the operating system, because there isn't an operating system in the world that is stable enough for this. The rest of us don't know how to do this right; there are probably less than a thousand people who know how to make software of this quality. If there's an open-source interface that reads data from the machine, I'm all for that. If you can use open-source software to control this thing, I'll make sure that my surgeon _isn't_ using it the next time I go under the knife.