Slashdot Mirror


User: spud603

spud603's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
300
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 300

  1. Re:What? Government misapplication of stats? on Google Schools US Government About Gender Pay Gap (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    The articles mistakenly assume that the rate of police bias should be equivalent to the rate of crime bias, but that's nonsense.

    No, it doesn't. It has three models that all incorporate previous crime rates by race in different ways, with essentially the same results. It shows very clearly that police stop people of color disproportionately more often than white people, in their sample. That is called racial bias in police behavior.

  2. Re:What? Government misapplication of stats? on Google Schools US Government About Gender Pay Gap (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Check out my links. They both very specifically account for differing crime rates.
    Seriously, there are entire subdisciplines (of sociology, economics, psychology, criminology, etc) that study this, and they have, on net, done a very good job. It is not hard to find really good research on this topic, and it ALL points to a racial bias.

  3. Re:What? Government misapplication of stats? on Google Schools US Government About Gender Pay Gap (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Racial bias in police behavior (in the USA) is extremely well established pretty much across the board (as is gendered gaps in pay, promotion, evaluation, etc).

    http://amstat.tandfonline.com/...
    http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

    ... and so many more

  4. Re:first post? on Perl Data Language 2.4.10 released · · Score: 2

    So true. Also R is great for vector-based data as well, and does some stuff quite a bit better (and some stuff quite a bit worse) than scipy/matplotlib.

  5. Re:Don't panic. on Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean · · Score: 1

    Thank you. Regardless of the origin of the changes to the climate, they are real and potentially devastating. If they are largely caused by our behavior, then maybe we can help mitigate by changing our behavior asap. But that doesn't change the fact that we'll all want to figure out something to do about the changes as they're already being realized.

  6. Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? on Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Ok, a thought experiment:
    Let's say the city of Chicago throws its bureaucratic hands in the air and cancels any city-supported trash collection. A whole bunch of new and existing companies jump on this hugely expanded market, and households/buildings start paying individually for their trash collection. (We'll ignore for now the huge inefficiency of having multiple companies sending trucks down a single alley each emptying a small subset of the bins).
    But what happens in the poorer neighborhoods, where a number of households will likely find it more efficient to just dump their trash in the vacant lot or unused portion of the alley than to pay to have it picked up? There might be fewer companies willing to service these areas, and prices for collection may be higher. Before long the underprivileged communities are loaded with garbage, rats and disease. Impromptu mismanaged landfills, blocked alleys, decomposing and non-decomposable waste everywhere. All of a sudden trash collection looks a lot like a civil liberties issue. Or even if you take an individualist well-that's-their-problem-they-shouldn't-be-so-poor stance, this would affect the whole city in terms of public health, sewer water management, ER visits, etc.

    Despite the appeal of the libertarian ideal of everybody taking responsibility for just themselves, it simply doesn't work in the real world. We're all in it together and, no matter how frustrating it is, our actions unavoidably affect one another.

  7. Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? on Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities? · · Score: 1

    I'm genuinely curious what goes into that much waste.
    And as a secondary question: how much of that is recyclable or compostable?

  8. Re:A real important thing to note... on Global Warming 'Confirmed' By Independent Study · · Score: 1

    Actually Obama has done a hell of a lot stop prosecution of marijuana. The reason that marijuana is becoming so normalized in places like California and Colorado is Obama's executive order to not enforce federal law in the states that have decriminalized the drug. However it's not law, so that policy could be immediately reversed by the next administration.

  9. Re:Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? on Global Warming 'Confirmed' By Independent Study · · Score: 1

    Well freaking stated.
    Excellent breakdown of the roles played by evidence and models in scientific methodology.
    And an excellent summarization of the holes in the whole "if we didn't cause it, then stay the course" argument.

  10. Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al on Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database · · Score: 1

    sorry:
    * for any value of n not equal to one

  11. Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al on Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database · · Score: 2

    Please do it!
    If you managed to create a database with every real number between 1 and n, for any value of n, (not just a program that can generate arbitrarily precise real numbers from that range) you would deserve a lot more than a copyright.

  12. Re:Nothing to see.. on New Mac OS X Trojan Hides Inside PDFs · · Score: 1

    what is iMail?

  13. Re:Einstein replied "Check your measurements, son" on CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos · · Score: 1

    Nonsense.

    Whats the speed of gravity?

    Um... c . What's your point?

  14. Re:Boy did I misread that title on Ballmer Hints At 'Metro-ization' of Office · · Score: 1

    so: "metro-ization" > "metrosexual" > "homosexual" > queer eye
    I get it now, but that's quite a few leaps :)

  15. Re:Boy did I misread that title on Ballmer Hints At 'Metro-ization' of Office · · Score: 1

    what? what part of the title made you think of that?

  16. Re:Privacy? on App Enables Surfing Over SMS/MMS Through T-Mobile · · Score: 1

    I'm not an expert, but i don't see why public-key encryption wouldn't work here. The browser (which supports the SSL) is still just a browser. It's just that your encrypted data gets sent via SMS rather than TCP/IP.
    Unless I'm missing something...

  17. Re:Wouldnt that be... on App Enables Surfing Over SMS/MMS Through T-Mobile · · Score: 1

    it's probably ok on bandwidth, but dog-slow on latency

  18. Re:Node on Ask Slashdot: Best Programs To Learn From? · · Score: 1
  19. Re:Really? on Starz To Pull Content From Netflix · · Score: 1

    The netflix clients are phenomenal? How does a 'phenomenal' client max out my 2.8GHz processor to display a *paused* video? That and it routinely takes over a minute for the Silverlight-based client to even load itself, let alone start loading the content.

  20. Re:Awful on Microsoft 'Ribbonizes' Windows 8 File Manager · · Score: 1

    In my experience OSX developers stick to the UI design standards more than their MS counterparts. My guess is that there's a higher premium on macs for programs that have the right 'look and feel' so it's really the users of the programs that enforce the UI standards. That is, there are more mac users that care whether their program feels like a mac program than there are windows users that care whether their program feels like a windows program.

  21. Re:cue confused aliens in 3..2.. on NASA Sends Lego Figures to Jupiter · · Score: 1

    hehe. The Great Shriving Civilization of Jupiter. They died out through excessive penance.

  22. Re:Or... on 3D Nausea Solved By Eye-Tracking · · Score: 1

    mod this AC up. These cameras could do exactly what ggp was asking, though there's a lot of hard-/software that would need to go into it.

  23. Re:Mod summary up! on There Oughta Be a Standard: Laptop Power Supplies · · Score: 1

    I hate to stereotype

    Then you should probably try not doing so. As a certified nerd you ought to know that anecdotal evidence isn't enough to make a strong conclusion, and that holds double for topics underpinned by strong and persistent cultural biases.

  24. Re:The relevant bits on How Windows 7 Knows About Your Internet Connection · · Score: 1

    however after a maybe 30min primer anyone who is not completely lazy could know enough to get started and use tools to locate the additional information they need.

    Having taught a fair number of highly motivated and intelligent people to use the command line 'from scratch', I can offer quite a bit of evidence against this claim.

  25. Re:So instead of . . . on Face-Mounted Nose Stylus Created For Phones · · Score: 1

    I was so happy to see this story already tagged with 'finglonger'. I guess I keep reading /. for a reason.