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User: profplump

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  1. Re:Travel trailers have dual use. on Slashdot Asks: How Prepared Are You For an Earthquake? · · Score: 1

    A lot of people would be excited to have $1.5k to spend on their vacation. Your plan sounds great for you, but it's hardly generally applicable. Even ignoring the costs, most people who live in dense urban areas wouldn't be able to park the thing anywhere useful.

  2. Re:Are You Kidding? on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 1

    So which differences in skin tone, height, and facial features uniquely define the races? If you start with the assumption that race is a physical, heritable trait this work might make sense. But if you want to be take seriously you first have to establish that claim, and thus far no one has done so (nor is anyone honestly trying, as definitions of race are not stable across cultures or time, which almost certainly means they aren't physical in the first place).

  3. Re:Politically Correct Science on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 2

    You might want to re-read the quotations from the article: “Our findings do not even provide a hint of support in favor of Wade’s guesswork.”

    That is not the same as saying "I didn't publish those conclusions" -- it's a rebuttal that the conclusions he makes are supported by the evidence he provides, from one of the foremost authorities on that evidence. You can claim that the original authors are lying if you want, but they aren't making the sort of wishy-washy statements you describe.

  4. Re:alas on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 1

    As soon as you come up with a heritable definition for race you can start on your analysis of heritable differences in relation to race. But historically we can't even come up with racial definitions that are stable across cultures and over a few generations, let alone that are heritable on the scale of evolution, which makes the whole discussion nothing more than handwaving.

  5. Re:Are You Kidding? on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 1

    Which has essentially nothing to do with the way most people -- scientist and layman alike -- define and delineate race. Which is the objection the scientists are raising.

  6. Re:Politically Correct Science on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 1

    I can't tell from your post what agenda you think these PC-police have, or what science you think they are suppressing. Could you make an actual refutable claim rather than merely implying that your unexpressed viewpoint is supported by science?

  7. Re:I don't get it. on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 4, Informative

    You really should publish the work you've done identifying IQ as a physical aspect of the brain, and identifying the genetic definitions of "white" and and "Asian". I'm sure the relationships are clear to you but the rest of us are stuck in a world where race is more social than genetic and IQ is merely one particular measure of a combination of dynamic mental processes.

    Or maybe you just didn't take up the required reading before claiming that actual scientists are ignoring their work in pursuit of some globally-unified set of politics.

  8. Re:Switch off servers? on How Facebook Is Saving Power By 10-15% Through Better Load Balancing · · Score: 1

    Or it could be that the power-cycle stresses actually aren't a big factor, or aren't a big factor given the expected lifecycle of the device, or are a big factor but not big enough to offset the savings, and so it would make perfect sense to turn them off any time you're fairly sure it's safe to add the delay of a boot cycle. It's also possible that reducing power usage might be worth more than the pure cost of power, as it might reduce say, expected future power costs or installation costs or any of 100 other things.

    We get it, there are lots of potentially complicating issues. But it's silly to talk about how factor B might overwhelm factor A when you don't have numbers for factor B.

  9. Re:Contract binding third parties on Hotel Charges Guests $500 For Bad Online Reviews · · Score: 1

    Insurance, though, is strongly regulated, precisely because of the sort of difficulties discussed here. You can't form an arbitrary insurance contract; the insurer must be licensed and the contract must conform to a whole slew of extra rules not applicable to contracts in general.

  10. Vote Selling? on Ask Slashdot: Should I Fight Against Online Voting In Our Municipality? · · Score: 1

    I've never understood the problem with vote selling. I mean, I think it poorly serves the people selling their votes, but if the most important issue to them is who will give them $10, why isn't that a valid choice? All sorts of people make voting decisions based on their expected personal economic outcomes, and this doesn't seem any different to me.

    It's also unclear to me how putting the election online makes vote selling easier. If anything I'd expect that would make it harder, as you have to try harder to distribute the payouts.

    But maybe I'm not understanding the process and harms of vote selling. Anyone want to disabuse me?

  11. Re:A critical need in disasters is housing on Airbnb Partners With Cities For Disaster Preparedness · · Score: 1

    Demographic restrictions are doom for a plan like this. There's a reason we don't allow housing discrimination and I don't see why we'd want to suspend those rules in an emergency; if anything they seem more important when people are in desperate need.

  12. Re:Decentralizing FEMA one step at a time on Airbnb Partners With Cities For Disaster Preparedness · · Score: 2

    Who told you they'd be doing this for months? We're talking about an alternative to emergency housing like the Superdome -- which was occupied for only 6 days during Katrina. Even if you added the Reliant Dome occupancy it's still only 18 days until the domes were clear and the vast majority of people were in permanent housing.

  13. Re:Many questions on Airbnb Partners With Cities For Disaster Preparedness · · Score: 2

    Yes, landlords can restrict subleases. Though cities could probably override such contract requirements, and landlords could make exceptions. Plus that only applies to renters in the first place; AirBnB includes a lot of owner-occupied and investment properties.

    In terms of safety, have some faith. Yes, it's possible that someone will wait for a natural disaster, sign up for emergency housing, head to a randomly selected AirBnB property, and commit a crime. But that's a fairly elaborate plan with lots of moving parts the planner cannot even influence; if their intent was to harm whatever non-specific household they were assigned they could do it without so much hassle. But more importantly, the vast majority of people won't seek to harm their hosts, and we should not choose to let them suffer just on the off chance that Bond villain is waiting to take advantage of the situation. You have a much, much, much greater risk of dying in an motor vehicle accident, but you probably never think twice about getting on the road; don't overestimate the risk here.

    It's also not clear that this situation would require weeks of housing. In many evacuations people only couple of days of housing, and even if their particular residence is unavailable for weeks a city as a whole can generally organize longer-term housing for the small number of people who need it, once the short-term need recedes.

    In terms of families, if you're worried about natural disasters you should first be appalled at homeless shelters. In most cities there are no shelters that will take entire families on an emergency basis -- they'll take women and children, or men, but not men and women (and sometimes not even men and children). Frequently males must continue to live on the street while the rest of their family is in a shelter until they can get enrolled as a family in a longer-term solution (thankfully many longer-term providers make a provision for entire families, though there are a more than a few women-and-children-only long-term shelters as well); I'm sure they'd rather the rest of their family get shelter than not, but the gender discrimination hurts everyone, including the women and children in the shelter. That happens every night; if you're okay with that you can probably get over the possibility of breaking up a family for a couple of days after a disaster.

  14. Re:NO, all candy bar on Lots Of People Really Want Slideout-Keyboard Phones: Where Are They? · · Score: 1

    So what interface would you suggest that allows me to run arbitrary commands on remote machines with less typing than the standard CLI?

  15. Re:What is rbp anyway? on Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 Seems To Be Terminally Broken" · · Score: 3, Informative

    %rpb is the base pointer. The offset is negative because the local variables live below the base pointer (being in-scope only after the base pointer is moved to the current function); -X(%rbp) points to a local variable.

    http://stackoverflow.com/quest...

  16. Re:Maybe it's just me ... on The "Rickmote Controller" Can Hijack Any Google Chromecast · · Score: 2

    But you can just hard-reset the Chromecast and reconfigure it for the network you want it to use. If the article says otherwise it's wrong.
    https://support.google.com/chr...

    To quote the manual:
    "There are two ways to Factory Data Reset (FDR) your Chromecast: Factory Data Reset your Chromecast from the Chromecast app. You will find the option to FDR under ‘Settings’ or ‘Menu’ or Physically hold down the button on your Chromecast for at least 25 seconds or until the solid light begins flashing."

  17. Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 on New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't it be easier and more profitable for them to sell the one-time cure for the same price as the lifetime treatment?

  18. Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 on New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Eating vegetables prevents cancers? Or not eating vegetables causes cancer?

    Is this information being withheld from us by some sort of anti-vegetable cabal? Wouldn't it be easier for the corn producers to let us learn this and just sell us raw corn instead of corn syrup?

  19. Re:Answer needed on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 2

    Laws are one of the tools we use to align the interests of groups that are potentially in conflict. Why aren't they a valid option here?

  20. Re:Connect with a VPN on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not artificial because of the details of the technical implementation, it's artificial because it's a scarcity that would not be expensive or difficult to resolve. Drought is geographic scarcity that cannot be readily resolved; an undersized water treatment plant is systematic scarcity that can be resolved but would be expensive and slow; a faucet that's rusted half-closed is artificial scarcity.

  21. Re:But scarcity! on Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't I want city-owned fibre? I'm a big fan of city-owned roads and city-owned sewer pipes.

  22. Re:ZeroCoin: won't need to mix shit shortly on New York State Proposes Sweeping Bitcoin Regulations · · Score: 0

    FYI: Zerocoin is also a fiat currency.

  23. Re:Cashless can't happen, here is why ... on Predicting a Future Free of Dollar Bills · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The assumption that some sort of special merchant status will be required to accept non-physical payment strikes me as unfounded. Even today it's fairly easy for individuals to send money via ACH -- or a paper check, like individuals have used for years -- and it's not hard to imagine ways to make a similar process even easier and less dependent on banks.

  24. Re:Will we ever stop celebrating him? on "Internet's Own Boy" Briefly Knocked Off YouTube With Bogus DMCA Claim · · Score: 1

    Exactly which tools did he break, and in what way? Why didn't the people running those tools support charges against him? Also, what makes a "research tool" a "critical" system -- does someone die when the tool goes offline?

    You don't have to venerate the guy if you don't want to, but please don't spread lies about the dead.

  25. Re:Not just iPhone on Chinese State Media Declares iPhone a Threat To National Security · · Score: 1

    Exactly. It's not the Chinese are opposed to phone tracking, it's that Apple hasn't agreed to let them access the data.

    Which doesn't necessarily make Apple the good guy, but having the Chinese government dislike them doesn't make them the bad guy either