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User: ixl

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  1. Work for hire? on Germany Says Taking Photos Of Food Infringes The Chef's Copyright · · Score: 1

    Surely if I pay the Chef to produce the food then it's a work for hire, and copyright passes to me, no?

  2. Re:One correction on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 1

    If the camera is damaged but the footage survives, and the last frame shows you wrecking the camera, then you've got some explaining to do. To a judge.

  3. Re:The death of leniency on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The US has a strong tradition of prosecutorial discretion. DAs decline to charge people all the time, in court, with a written record. Cameras wouldn't necessarily require the death of leniency, although I see your point that they might encourage it if cops decide to be stricter that as a form of protest. But who knows, that just might encourage people to repeal stupid laws *cough*non-violent possession*cough*.

  4. Re:One correction on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make evidence retrieved without camera coverage inadmissible, citations issued without camera coverage inadmissible, and so on.

  5. Re:Patching.... on Ask Slashdot: System Administrator Vs Change Advisory Board · · Score: 2

    In addition to the above two comments, if the policy changes the CAB is instituting impair sysadmin efficiency (and it sounds like they do), then the CAB should be held accountable for the effects of those changes. This means that they should have to find additional funding for additional sysadmins for these servers.

  6. Re:Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 1

    Agreed, with one tiny exception — undetected bias in gathering hard data/sampling can cause huge problems... diversity could potentially help with that.

  7. Re:Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 1

    Or... you know... hire the best person for the job, not set a goal of having a 50/50 distribution?

    Makes sense for the employee, but not for the employer; for the same reason that having a football team made up entirely of quarterbacks is a bad idea. A diversity of hiring (not just gender, but age, experience, background, and yes, skin colour) makes for a more diverse team that understands a much larger potential target market. It also has a much broader base of experiences to draw from during planning and decision making. All of this ultimately results in better software and better products.

  8. Re:Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 1

    That's an argument why 50/50 parity isn't possible, not an argument why it's not desirable.

  9. Re:Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 1

    There is no intrinsic value in someone's bodily traits that they cannot control, so "male and pale" are irrelevant factors for indoor jobs that aren't physically demanding. Adding vaginas and darker skin (or subtracting the same) has no effect to the ability to write code, create procedure analysis reports, put toothpase tubes in boxes, or use a microscope. Gender parity is flat-out irrelevant from the standpoint of hiring someone in a business to perform specific tasks.

    Not even remotely true. The diversity of viewpoints exposed by hiring as broad a variety of people as possible make for better decision making, better analysis, and ultimate better software.

    Here's another interesting way to examine it: in "gender-dominated job" arguments, replace "male/female" with "tall/short" and see how the emotions change. Gender naturally being a binary trait only makes it lower-hanging fruit for an "us vs. them" discrimination war, but perhaps there aren't enough short people in tech either! Why aren't we seeing a "more short people in tech initiative?" People are just as likely to be discriminated against for their height as their gender.

    Ok, I'll bite. Having a decent variety of people of all heights (from very very tall to quite short) on a team would certainly allow you to design a better shelving system — the diversity of viewpoints allows for a much broader basis for design and accessibility. In this case "viewpoint" is even used literally: when you're 6'3", the top of the fridge is a shelf, and when you're 5'2", the top of the fridge is invisible.

    More industry diversity is good, period.

  10. Re:Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Well, I personally think that the people controlling the jar have good business sense, and that gender parity in the IT industry is a good thing. That's probably true on a number of axes: the IT industry is too male, too pale, and too immature.

    But whether you agree with that statement or not, I'm pretty sure that we can agree that they didn't set out to encourage more guys to take computer science courses and bungle it really badly.

  11. Re:Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 1, Troll

    your scenario presupposes that a 50/50 distribution of green and yellow marbles is a valid, just and reasonable goal.

    No it doesn't — it presupposes that a 50/50 distribution is the desired goal of whoever is manipulating the jar of marbles. I think it's pretty clear that gender parity is in fact what the people making the incentive want.

    If you don't think that is valid, just, or reasonable, you're free not to. You should argue that point with the people funding the incentive. Money is speech, so they're well within their first amendment rights, but maybe you could convince them.

    Of course, you haven't provided any arguments at all why a 50/50 distribution of men and woman in the industry isn't a desired goal...

    And also, there's the tiny problem that saying "having as many women as men in the IT industry isn't valid, just, or reasonable" does makes you sound like a bit of a dick.

  12. Why would they do anything else? on Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    No, seriously, why would anyone do anything else if the goal is gender parity in the industry?

    Let's take gender out of the equation. Say you have a jar full of ten million marbles. 95% are green, 5% are yellow. 10000 marbles are added to the jar every year. Your goal is to make the jar 50% green, 50% yellow, and you can't take any marbles out of the jar. Changing the distribution of marbles added each year to 50/50 will never make the entire jar 50/50. The only way to solve the problem without removing existing marbles from the jar is to raise the distribution of marbles added to more than 50% yellow. Clearly the most effective solution problem is to only add yellow marbles to the jar at all.

    Back in the real world: you either need to fire men who don't deserve it, hire equal numbers of men and women and wait a generation or two for enough people to retire, or try to hire more women than men. Because math.

  13. Re:A piece of paper in a drawer on Ask Slashdot: How To Protect Your Passwords From Amnesia? · · Score: 1

    I wonder if SAML/identity federation support for corporate twitter accounts is something twitter should develop as a paid feature? Corporate Security departments in large corporations would almost insist on signing up for that.

  14. This is a good thing! on Data Storage Capacity Mostly Wasted In Data Center · · Score: 1

    One of the subtle benefits of the computer revolution is that it gives society the ability to be wasteful. Desktop computers that often aren't at 100% cpu utilization, and (local) networks that rarely see peak usage are also good signs, for the same reason. Hard drive capacities obviously aren't quite there yet, but they're getting closer. This might be yet another sign of the singularity.

  15. Test Driven Development on Defining Useful Coding Practices? · · Score: 1

    TDD, TDD, and more TDD. If it's too clever to maintain, than it's not testable. When done properly, test driven development functions very well as a guard against that sort of thing. The converse is also true, by the way. If something is very clever, but written in a testable way, than it's likely to be maintainable and easy to read. Even if it's not easy to read, the tests allow it to be refactored into an easy to read form without breaking anything.

  16. Re:Caterpillar 789 on Stunt Driving Mining Truck · · Score: 1

    How much do they sell for after you roll them over? I'd hate to have to make up the difference out of my own pocket.

  17. Re:economics and variability on Computer-Controlled Cargo Sailing Vessels Go Slow, Frugal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dependable schedules are one reason, the other big reason is that sails interfere with loading and unloading the boat.

    Modern shipping extensively uses cargo containers that are rapidly loaded and unloaded using cranes. This advance has drastically lowered the per-unit costs of shipping freight in the last half-century (check out the book "The Box" for more details).

    If adding sails makes it difficult to use a crane to unload containers from the deck of a boat (likely, imo), then it would make the per-unit cost of shipping skyrocket.

  18. Re:Frames on Tool Detects "In-Flight" Webpage Alterations · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The hash would have to be signed by the originating website. So the frame would be detected, because the hash wouldn't be signed by the domain name that created the other content. Browsers could also display (at least) a warning when an unsigned frameset included a signed frame.

  19. Re:how2blow one's credibility with a single letter on Microsoft Is Sued For Patent Violation Over .NET · · Score: 1

    Sniggle. Did you mean faux pas? ;-)

  20. Re:Wakey Wakey! on Apple vs Microsoft- Who's the Copycat? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lights out management will be an available feature on the new Intel XServes. This was announced in the keynote.

  21. Re:Linus is wrong on Linus Speaks Out On GPLv3 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Actually, no they don't. The FSF uses copyright law to prevent people from forking the GPL. Ironic, huh?

    From the text of TFL: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

  22. Re:Your Answer, Stephen on Stephen Hawking Asks The Internet a Question · · Score: 1

    100% employment is actually undesirable from an economic point of view. Assume you are the founder of a brand new business. If the population is 100% employed then you are unable to hire any new workers (unless you poach them from someone else, in which case their old employer has the same problem). A small amount of unemployment makes economic growth much easier.

  23. Re:Personal Computer != personal computer on New Apple Campaign Target PC Flaws · · Score: 1

    It sounds like we're more or less agreeing with each other. IBM used the capitalized term as a brand name at least, if not a trademark.

  24. Re:Personal Computer != personal computer on New Apple Campaign Target PC Flaws · · Score: 1

    It at least was a brand name. Nobody used the term before the IBM PC, and there was a collection of assorted products (PCjr, etc). Before the IBM PC, the generic term was microcomputer, IIRC.

  25. Personal Computer != personal computer on New Apple Campaign Target PC Flaws · · Score: 1

    You're trolling, but I'll bite anyways. A Mac is a personal computer (lower case, generic term), but is not a Personal Computer (upper case, brand name).