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User: Anonymous+Cowpat

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Comments · 1,493

  1. Re:Seems reasonable.. on Doctors "Fire" Vaccine Refusers · · Score: 1

    Note, I wasn't saying allowing discrimination for arbitrary reasons was a good idea. I was attempting to make eyegone face up to the reality of what he was proposing. I think all discrimination for arbitrary reasons is bad (especially if you're supposed to be a professional physician, or similar) and don't like this watered-down 'protected classes' list idea which effectively authorises arbitrary dicrimination against everyone else.

  2. Re:Seems reasonable.. on Doctors "Fire" Vaccine Refusers · · Score: 1

    A doctor in private practice should be able to "fire" whoever [s]he wants (barring discrimination on prohibited grounds, of course).

    I disagree. Why should there be a "barring discrimination on prohibited grounds, of course" get-out? Either a doctor should be free to refuse to treat anyone, and be an asshat about it if [s]he wants, or they shouldn't.

  3. Re:Nothing to do with Common Sense on Texas Jury Strikes Down Man's Claim to Own the Interactive Web · · Score: 1

    did you actually read the article you linked all the way through? No-one is saying 'it would break the internet for the patent to be valid, therefore it isn't'. They're saying 'it would break the internet for the plantiffs to win this case, so they shouldn't'. [in the past tense, obviously, since the case has now been concluded]

    Further, the very last section of that article:

    In law, an argument from inconvenience or argumentum ab inconvenienti, is a valid type of appeal to consequences. Such an argument would seek to show that a proposed action would have unreasonably inconvenient consequences

    supports the view that a legal ruling which would have ridiculous consequences ought not to be made simply because the consequences would be ridiculous.

  4. Re:Missing a letter on Man Claiming He Invented the Internet Sues · · Score: 1

    It's like a sick joke - for it to be a broadly known and utilised fact that courts are clearly inconsistent as to how they handle cases from place to place, and nothing being done about it.

    I mean, can't they implement some sort of moderation (and meta-moderation) system for judges and start tossing out the ones who fail?

  5. Re:U.S. law is the new international law on Megaupload.com Shut Down, Founder Charged With Piracy · · Score: 1

    unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any further jurisidictional test than asking the requesting country "do you claim jurisdiction?"

  6. Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism on North Korean Nuclear Facilities, From 30,000 Feet · · Score: 1

    c) i) "I know, we've had a spy in the Manhatten Project for years"

  7. Re:Money on What's Keeping You On XP? · · Score: 1

    it's a nice idea, but I can't help thinking it's not going to produce a significant enough saving to be worth the trouble, or the risk.

  8. Re:News? on Paypal Orders Buyer of Violin To Destroy It For a Refund · · Score: 1

    the buyer, because they're deemed to have accepted the goods, and have failed to make payment. The buyer then makes a claim against paypal which may or may not be successful ("you didn't have to use our dispute resolution service or follow our instructions, not our fault that you smashed your violin").

  9. Re:Money on What's Keeping You On XP? · · Score: 2

    I build my own machines, so it's entirely about the money.
    Even buying the 'OEM' version, you still end up paying a huge amount for Windows. Windows 7 Professional will set you back £110 - that's an upgrade from an i5 to an i7 AND 6GB of RAM.

    However, I won't be putting XP on any new machine I build, so I suppose my next upgrade (with begruding purchase of a new version of Windows) will just have to wait until this one really can't cope.

  10. Re:P&T on handicapped parking on In New Zealand, a System To Watch for Disabled Parking Violators · · Score: 1

    As long as the requirement applies equally to all protected classes, then it's not discriminatory

    it is discriminatory. It's just not illegal.

  11. Re:OR NOT...? on No SOPA Vote Until 2012 · · Score: 1

    Given how irresponsibly they use their legislating time, I'm all in favour of them being there as little as possible. (This seems to apply to all legislatures, everywhere)

  12. Re:a serious duty should pay more as well on Juror's Tweets Overturn Trial Verdict · · Score: 1

    I'll take it as a form of taxation so long as you're prepared to stomach the introduction of other randomly allocated taxes to plug other budget holes.

  13. Re:a serious duty should pay more as well on Juror's Tweets Overturn Trial Verdict · · Score: 1

    so that rather than individuals being expected to bear the loss of however much work time, by having to take time off without pay, we shift it to requiring employers to bear the cost by paying someone who isn't working?

    Why is it perfectly normal for public funds to pay the judge, the balliff, the clerk, the chap who maintains the building, etc., but everyone suddenly baulks at using them to pay jurors?

  14. Re:No coffee tweet mentioned in the opinion on Juror's Tweets Overturn Trial Verdict · · Score: 1

    Well, have you already made up your mind in this case what you’re going to – how you’re going to vote?

    Thankyou for putting this bit in. The judge's problem is foremost that the juror had not been able to retain an open mind before the end of the evidence.
    This is why everyone arguing for jurors to be punished for this sort of thing are wrong - the problem is that they were unable to do the job properly and it's grossly unjust to force someone to do a job, and then punish them for not being any good at it.

    Actually, we should probably be glad that the electronics revolution has done this for us - we can now more readily detect the incompetent jurors when they tweets about it and weed them out before they make their decision.

  15. Re:First he has to win this appeal... on Assange Wins Right To Submit Appeal · · Score: 1

    actually, the Association of Chief Police Officers guideline for the threshold for enforcement is +10% +2. But this is is the 'you absolutely should be ticketing people above this speed' limit, not the 'you should not issue tickets below this speed' limit. Safety Camera Partnerships can, and do, set the cameras dead-on the limit without notice to anyone.

  16. Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the on Ask Slashdot: Good, Useful Free Software For Gifts? · · Score: 1

    And everyone hates receiving... You've spent $20 to give them $20, but you've tied their hands about where they can spend it. There's nothing more infuriating than a giftcard for a store which doesn't sell anything you want.

    (upshot: give cash)

  17. Re:main problem is backhaul on BT Fiber Infrastructure Plans 'Fatal' To Competition · · Score: 1

    Virgin are saddled with crazy debt because the various companies which Virgin is made up of had to collectively dig up almost every residential road in Britain, plus everywhere else they needed to lay fibre (can't sling fibre on telegraph poles). That's not profligacy, that's the cost of entry to the national-telecommunications-provider market. And that's why we're unlikely to see any more real competition any time soon.

    Interestingly, NTL's debt, in 2001, was larger than the GDP of Panama (and a substantial list of other countries). debt, list of GDPs

  18. Re:Dont' quit, but don't agree either. on Zynga To Employees: Surrender Pre-IPO Shares Or You're Fired · · Score: 1

    Are these fully contested cases?

  19. Re:Theory on Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? · · Score: 1

    digging deep into bra-ket notation

    Now THAT I remember:

    "Now, this is called a 'bra' "
    [sniggers from back of lecture theatre]

  20. Re:Read the book AGAIN! on Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? · · Score: 1

    You need to learn how to STUDY. This is a problem with kids who were too smart in high school. They never learned to study because all the material was too simple to stress them. Once they hit harder subjects, they flounder.

    Now, this is absolutely true. High-school maths & physics homework, one just sat down and blitzed the night before it was due in. There was never any expectation of independent study, and we wouldn't have known what do it if there had been.

    I remember two sections of independent study in history, which both consisted of reading a portion of a book, and regurgitating the information.

    Once one runs into degree-level physics problems though, it's like a brick wall. With spikes on it.
    No idea what the answer is, no idea how to approach finding out, and a hideously expensive texbook (which you'd had to shell out £50 of your own money on) which was completely incomprehensible - the worked problems seemed to be coming from the direction of "we invented these problems, so let's just run that process backwards and show you the way to solve this particular one". All my tutor could ever say was "sometimes you just need to struggle away at the problem until you get it", which is little help to someone who has spent 30 minutes staring at the question, and staring at a blank sheet of paper, and not having the faintest idea where to start.

  21. Re:High school doesn't prepare you for college on Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? · · Score: 1

    "a well prepared student should be doing 3 hours of were for each credit hour to get an average grade"

    I saw a similar comment in the introduction to my main physics text when I was re-reading it recently. (Though they recommended 2.5 hours for every hour in lectures.) On closer inspection one finds that they were recommending ~75-hour working weeks. Which can be in terms of anything up to 11 consecutive weeks. Clearly insane. Although I haven't yet figured out how to do things any better.

  22. Re:Private School on Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? · · Score: 1

    dangle it over the humanities graduates with him in the unemployment queue?

  23. Re:Excellent news for Unesco on US Defunds UNESCO After Palestine Vote · · Score: 1

    I didn't see the current adminstration scrambling to get the law amended when it looked like this would go through. I didn't see them shaming congress into changing the law when explaining that they were pulling the plug.

    For something which they allegedly had no choice about they've done a remarkable job of making it look like petulant spite on the part of the present administration.

  24. Re:When photography is outlawed.... on Illegal To Take a Photo In a Shopping Center? · · Score: 1

    I meant subject in a grammatical sense.

    So while it's possible they could have handled the situation better (I have no idea, we only have your version of events), they were probably concerned that [there should be a word here] may have been breaking the law.

  25. Re:When photography is outlawed.... on Illegal To Take a Photo In a Shopping Center? · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, your sentence doesn't have a subject, so I'm not sure who you think may have broken the law. But if the self-service doohickeys have caused the store to sell him more paracetamol than it should have, isn't that the store's problem? It seems highly doubtful that it entitles the store manager to prevent the customer leaving, and deprive them of goods which are now theirs.