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User: NoOneInParticular

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  1. Re:Free market economy on US Senator Blasts Microsoft's H-1B Push As It Lays 18,000 Off Workers · · Score: 1

    Let me correct that for you: About the only place where you see corruption worse than in politics, is in an American union. If you look abroad, there are many unions that are actually functional. In particular, I was very impressed with Nordic unions, having direct experience with Danish ones. There, whilst membership is mandatory, they function exceptionally well. The reason is that they have responsibilities. One of these responsibilities is that the union itself pays unemployment benefits. So here we have functional socialism. Everybody pays into a pot for unemployment, and when people get unemployed, there's a strong incentive to get people up and running again, lest the pot of money dries up. This works incredibly well. People in Denmark are unemployed for a couple of months. If it is conjunctural, they sing it out, if it is structural, the union forces re-education.

  2. Re:What the senator is really saying... on US Senator Blasts Microsoft's H-1B Push As It Lays 18,000 Off Workers · · Score: 2

    I think that indeed, the more generations people are residing on a continent, the more native they become. Furthermore, it is clear from the history of America that its success is based on the non-natives, the immigrants. Therefore it seems only logical that people from, say, fourth generation and beyond are officially declared to be native Americans, and thereby stripped off their possessions, and put into reservations.

  3. Re:Core Wars on The Lovelace Test Is Better Than the Turing Test At Detecting AI · · Score: 1

    I think he describes Tom Ray's Tierra system.

  4. Re:Rewrites Suck on TrueCrypt Author Claims That Forking Is Impossible · · Score: 1

    I don't think so. When you do a rewrite, you have to uncover all use-cases that the the original software was covering. The software was doing A,B as well as C, D, E. When you do the rewrite, you will focus on the truly important use-cases A & B, and only later you figure out that people were really depending on C. Then you implement C, but D&E were really important as well. And before you know it, you're back to where you were before the rewrite: an organically grown codebase that solves A, B, C, D as well as E. The only difference with the original codebase is that it does A&B more efficiently, but C,D,E are bolted on. The original codebase had different biases (maybe C&E).

  5. Google ranks the info, making some stuff come out on top, and some stuff at the bottom. That's Google's claim to fame, and that's why they are targetted. Nobody would care if they would work like a phone book, as the info people want to remove cannot be found. They make it appear on the first page, and that's the problem.

  6. You're wrong here. Google doesn't blindly index. It ranks information, adding a subjective measure of worth to the information. That's why they make money, and that's why they are targetted by this legislation.

  7. Re:Ellsberg got a fair trial on Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden Would Not Get a Fair Trial – and Kerry Is Wrong · · Score: 1

    Yes, he might very well go to jail after a fair trial. But that will never happen, as he won't get a fair trial. By now, more than a decade after 9/11, the US has sufficient legislation in place to be able to completely avoid fair trials. That's the entire point of the article: Snowden will not get a fair trial. Chances are, he will not get a trial at all. He would be locked up and isolated, and will not be allowed to defend himself in court, because you know, law. It will indeed teach everyone about democracy, and the message is simple: don't screw over the best democracy money can buy. And large parts of the US will cheer: Snowden is obviously a traitor and traitors don't deserve a fair trial, that's for decent folks.

  8. Re:All I'll say... on Thousands of Europeans Petition For Their 'Right To Be Forgotten' · · Score: 1

    When Google complies, who cares that somebody creates searchable lists? Even if it is Microsoft. For all practical purposes, it would have dissappeared. You are probably a software developer, making the edge case (the information is not gone) dominate the common case (google doesn't show it). That makes bad software, and also bad argumentation.

  9. Re:Fail on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1

    Sounds like 'murica.

  10. Re:In my youth on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 2

    Dude, you are the one confused. The average is commonly used to denote the (arithmetic) mean. But yes, technically speaking there are multiple averages possible. This doesn't make it right to talk about a graph that shows 'the average'. What average? Mean (geometric or arithmetic), median, or mode? There are a few more choices. Talk about bad math.

  11. Re:There is no such thing as "maths" on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1

    Well, the word 'maths' didn't really surface before 1911, so I guess it's the English that in this case have introduced a break with tradition. The word was 'math' before.

  12. Re:danger will robinson on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1
    And I think that Common Core is doing it the wrong way around. First teach the method, then teach the model, if at all needed. The smart kids will have figured out the model simply due to practice, the not-so-smart kids might have a little benefit from being taught the model. Most of them have forgotten when they're 16 though (you know, hormones), but at least they will have the method to fall back on. Rote learning sticks.

    Common Core is obviously invented by mathematicians, reasoning from a Platonic ideal. It would have been nice to have first done some science on it, i.e., figure out if it really leads to improved skill and understanding before rolling it out. You need psychologists for that.

  13. Re:danger will robinson on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1
    I truly am waiting for the first psychological study that will show that Common Core training leads to better arithmetic than skills training does at the age of, say, 50. Because that's the the important bit. People not going into any kind of higher education will simply forget about the concepts. People that have learned algorithms will remember the algorithms, even if the concepts have faded away.

    My mother in law of 71 does not have a higher education, and doesn't have a clue about the concepts behind numbers. Old-fashioned education. However, when confronted with a math problem in the supermarket, she beats my 12 year old by a mile. Algorithms and lots of exercise.

  14. Re:Why Google? on Pedophile Asks To Be Deleted From Google Search After European Court Ruling · · Score: 1

    Google isn't *publishing* information, it's just indexing information (web page) already available elsewhere (on 3rd-party webservers).

    Not entirely true. Google's claim to fame is not that it can index information, even altavista could do that, it is that it can rank it in a meaningful way. I'm pretty sure this lawsuit wouldn't have come up if Google would have shown this bit of information on page 10, instead of 1. In other words, the Google algorithms have decided that this is the most important bit of information to divulge about this person. And you think it's weird that the person in question wants this to stop?

  15. Re:Why are they in the EU again? on UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law · · Score: 1

    There's a bit more to that. The Germans are perfectly capable of cooking the books, and perfectly capable of hiding this just enough so that they can offload the bagage to somebody else. The fun part of the crisis in Greece was where Merkel was forcing Greece to keep the Euro and take the money just so long that the German Landesbanken could offload their toxic (but highly profitable) Greek debts to the French banks (backed by the state). This because many German politicians actually own those banks. Clean economy? Not so much. Of course, the French retailiated by pushing more money to Greece so that their banks would not fail. And everyone is happy...

  16. Re:Why are they in the EU again? on UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Au contraire. Switzerland needs to keep their end of the bargain, and are therefore subject to many, if not most of the random dictats from Brussels as they refer to free trade. They just don't have the right to influence them, just obey.

  17. Re:It would be different but... on How Predictable Is Evolution? · · Score: 1

    Determinism of state is fundamentally at odds with quantum mechanics. But that doesn't preclude the fact that the mind is a machine, as also machines are not deterministic for the same reason.

  18. Re:Not terribly surprising on US College Students Still Aren't All That Interested In Computer Science · · Score: 1
    A && B == C | D

    What happens?

  19. Re:Party Funding on Silicon Valley's Love-Hate Relationship With President Obama · · Score: 1

    There is such a movement. The approach is to get 51% of the states (measured in electoral votes) to sign a compact that will force them to vote in the electoral college for the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results in their state. They are currently 61% of the way.

  20. Re:Motivated rejection of science on Wyoming Is First State To Reject Science Standards Over Climate Change · · Score: 1

    We typically shy away from a risk of death of less than a a percent. We get completely shocked when 250 people on a population of 5 billion die due to an airplane crash. We would not take a means of transportation if the risk of dying of it in your lifetime is as high as 1 percent. So, say that a global extinction event has a probability of 1%, or even of 0.1%. According to our normal risk patterns, that is considered highly probably, and all alarm bells should go off and we should start to act. Personally, I guess that the probability is indeed in the 1-5% range. What is your estimate?

  21. Re: Motivated rejection of science on Wyoming Is First State To Reject Science Standards Over Climate Change · · Score: 2

    Not really, economic theory is, and has been, completely lacking any kind of consensus. About practically anything. What we've seen up to 2008 was the worship of one particular cult of economic theory because it was so damned convenient. There were plenty of economists crying murder about it. And they still are. Contrast this with climate science. It must be very frustrating for the US population that there are not two schools of thought on the issues, allowing them to pick the one that's most convenient and stop thinking. No. There's an actual consensus in the field, and there's some pretty solid science being done in this very complex field. Not so much in economics: it's still fighting itself tooth and nail about all fundamental questions.

  22. Re:NSA College Campus Recruiters on Mathematicians Push Back Against the NSA · · Score: 1

    I think the logical conclusion from this thought experiment is that because it works well for us in the past, we should continue doing it. Therefore, we should simply take the lands of all people that have been here for more than 4 generations, call them natives, put them in reservations, and call this the American way. That's what you're saying, right?

  23. Re:Jump through the mirror? on Erik Meijer: The Curse of the Excluded Middle · · Score: 1

    Have you ever looked at physics, and how it separates state from function? Where are the side-effects in math? Do you really think an OO based view of particles would have gotten us anywhere? Well, I have this particle, and then this other particle, and they update their own states independently. Now, sometimes, if they are near, one particle sends a message to the elastic collision controller, which will ask then the other particle to update its state a bit differently. With trillions of particles, this becomes a bit awkward, but hey, that's how nature works.

  24. Re:Ukraine on Former US Test Site Sues Nuclear Nations For Disarmament Failure · · Score: 1

    Yes, from the inside, by its government.

  25. Re:Misleading headline on Apple, Google Agree To Settle Lawsuit Alleging Hiring Conspiracy · · Score: 1
    You live in a fairy-tale land where the market will always self-correct. Companies with a price arrangement are typically in a Nash equilibrium, which essentially means that there is no incentive to cheat as both parties know they are worse off if they cheat the other party. If I am in a pricing agreement with another company, and I break it by lowering my prices, I know that we will go into a downward spiral of lowered prices until we settle on a level that has less profit for either of us.

    This leaves competition from other companies. A well set up monopoly or oligopoly can readily create such significant barriers to entry (price wars) that it will take a tremendous amount of effort to break through the status quo. However, once through, the competing company will be invited to join the price-fixing strategy. It is the more profitable move for all involved.

    Price-fixing is a stable and profitable strategy for companies. There is no natural mechanism that opens up a market that is dominated by a few players that fix price. In short: a laissez-faire market is not necessarily competitive.