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User: MaskedSlacker

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Comments · 3,075

  1. Re:Liberal arts professors' worst nightmare on College Board To Rethink the SAT, Partner With Khan Academy · · Score: 1

    I didn't. I did however assume a correlation between SAT scores and ADMISSIONS rates. I made no assumption about which of those admitted graduated. It's not relevant to my point.

    If 50%-70% of HS students take the test (I'm guessing here, but it seems reasonable) and the top 50-70% of those are admitted and somewhere around 50-70% of those graduate my argument that a score from the 80th percentile of SAT takers will be around the middle or lower of scores of college graduates holds.

  2. Re:Liberal arts professors' worst nightmare on College Board To Rethink the SAT, Partner With Khan Academy · · Score: 0

    Around 25% of Americans complete college. If you score at the 80th percentile on a test that over half of graduating seniors are taking that puts you roughly in the middle quintile of future college graduates.

    So yes, mediocre.

    A more relevant reply than questioning the definition of mediocre would be to point out that its stupid to care about being mediocre on a test that is only ever used once in your life. On that we would agree. It would be similarly stupid to care about being mediocre at finger-painting or underwater basket weaving. However the fact that its stupid to care about it doesn't change the fact that you'd still be mediocre.

    tldr; Middle of the pack of college grads is mediocre but it doesn't really matter for anything so who gives a fuck?

  3. Re:Liberal arts professors' worst nightmare on College Board To Rethink the SAT, Partner With Khan Academy · · Score: 0

    Depends on when you took it. In the days of the 1600 max score that'd be mediocre even with no sleep. In the days of the 2400 max score it's pitiful even with no sleep.

  4. Re:Bennett Haselton? on Bennett Haselton: Google+ To Gmail Controversy Missing the Point · · Score: 1

    Those of us who use it for things connected to our real lives?

  5. Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote on Court Rules Against Online Anonymity · · Score: 1

    And as soon as I hit submit I remember that the army was segregated. Disregard me. I should not post before sunrise.

  6. Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote on Court Rules Against Online Anonymity · · Score: 1

    Checks and balances are federal, and there was no federal segregation. Moreover, the federal constitution was still in the process of being extended to apply to the states in the early 20th. It originally did not apply to the states at all.

    TLDR: It wasn't unconstitutional at all until the USSC agreed that the new amendments made it unconstitutional.

  7. Re:Why bother on First US Public Library With No Paper Books Opens In Texas · · Score: 0

    Dead trees last centuries, epads don't survive the first hard drop.

    Hilariously false. Dead trees last, at most, decades, and that's only if they're not used much. Under frequent use they last a few years max. My e-reader on the other hand, under almost daily use in sometimes rather adverse conditions (I've lugged it up mountains in Thailand, down the Mekong, across open ocean in an outrigger canoe, etc), has lasted four years in perfect functioning order. Dead trees would never have survived the abuse I've put my kindle through. The battery doesn't last as long as it used to (I used to be able to read seven to eight novels on a single charge, now I get about one or two novels), but it's long enough to still not matter much.

    That some people don't know how to handle electronics is not the electronics fault.

  8. Re:don't read To Kill a Mockingbird! on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Books Everyone Should Read? · · Score: 1

    I've read it. Probably five or six times. It's a brilliantly written, well-paced narrative that so trounced the genre conventions of its day that it invented a genre that still exists.

    AND I HATE EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN IT.

    From page one, I want them all to just die in a fire. Every one of those pathetic, entitled, spoiled snobs is a waste of time and oxygen.

    I do have to admit though that I only have this reaction because it is so brilliantly written. It has to be for you to hate the characters like they were real.

  9. Re:What to read on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Books Everyone Should Read? · · Score: 1

    Don't feed the trolls.

  10. Re:Well... on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Books Everyone Should Read? · · Score: 1

    He was very specific already. Anyone who didn't understand didn't read it in the first place. They just fabricated a rationalization for their own assholery.

  11. Re:Well... on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Books Everyone Should Read? · · Score: 1

    As an ECONOMIST, Marx's analysis is largely faultless. His basic analysis of what we today call the business cycle is sound. He was correct about the problem of positive feedback loops in the boom and bust cycle, and he was correct that, if left unchecked, such a cycle would inevitably lead the poor and starving to revolt. That analysis formed the basis of later, more detailed work, which is still used by governments to this day,

    Then he decided to be a philosopher of human nature and political theorist instead. We all know how THAT turned out.

  12. Re:bit of a tricky question with forums on Ask Slashdot: Getting an Uncooperative Website To Delete One's Account? · · Score: 1

    I understand that you are perfectly content with taking the spoon fed definition of ownership defined by "statute", however there are some of us that tend to think about these things as innate properties by virtue of us being human beings. Welcome to the world without spoon-fed state definitions; it's wonderfully ethical, and if you can stomach it and go past your own hypocritical definitions then you definitely should try it sometime.

    Are you always this rude to strawmen, or is it just because your Christmas stocking was full of coal?

  13. Re:Violate the TOS on Ask Slashdot: Getting an Uncooperative Website To Delete One's Account? · · Score: 1

    You can try claiming it's not all you want, but that doesn't change the legal facts.

    To the letter of the law under the CFAA ANY USE OF A COMPUTER SYSTEM THAT IS NOT AN AUTHORIZED USE is a felony. You must have been asleep the last few years if you missed all the cases of prosecutorial abuse of this law where people have been charged with felonies for (among other things) making accounts for a fake persona (the Megan Meier suicide case) and downloading things too quickly (the Aaron Swartz case). Those are just the famous ones.

    THE REALITY: If the company decides to ruin your life by complaining about your violation of the ToS to a federal prosecutor looking for an easy conviction (or just a bribe^H^H^H^H^H campaign contribution for when they run for Congress), then you will be facing felony charges.

  14. Re:bit of a tricky question with forums on Ask Slashdot: Getting an Uncooperative Website To Delete One's Account? · · Score: 1

    As soon as you start mangling definitions, then you can do anything to this world.

    You're the only one mangling definitions. He's using the same one everyone else in his jurisdiction does, where (like every where else in the world) "ownership" is defined by statute. Just because you don't like the law doesn't change the fact that the law defines what property "ownership" is. Welcome to civilization. It's an improvement over the previous condition where the definition of "ownership" was "you've killed everyone who wasn't willing to let you keep it."

  15. Re:Americans surrendered in Vietnam on Battlefield 4 Banned In China · · Score: 1

    Again with ignorant tripe being moderated informative.

    The US was involved before the partition. Vietnam never would have been split except because of US interference.

  16. Re:First Shot on Battlefield 4 Banned In China · · Score: 1

    it's only us Westerners who have a long history of violent, expansionist, imperialism.

    How does this kind of ignorant tripe get modded insightful? Only someone with the most cursory, Eurocentric understanding of history would say this. All of your examples suggest that you passed your high school World History course by snoring through it.

    Violent, Expansionist, Imperialist Powers NOT part of "the West": Achaemenid Empire, the Mauryan Empire, the (several) Mongol Empires, the Mughal Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the several Caliphates, the Angkorian Empire, the Burmese Kingdoms from 1400-1800, virtually every Chinese empire ever, etc. Depending on your particular definition of "Western," add the Russian and Byzantine empires for good measure.

    Of course, they all had great positive achievements as well, just as the violent, expanionist, imperialist powers of the west all had great achievements too. Except, of course (just to Godwin this whole line of conversation), the Nazis. Fuck those guys.

  17. Re:First Shot on Battlefield 4 Banned In China · · Score: 1

    There are lots of games where you can fight against the US in campaign mode. Hell, in C&C: Generals you could even play as Muslim terrorists. Of course, there are several Civil War games where you play from the Confederate side (Civil War Generals by Sierra was one of my favorite strategy games of all time if only for the imagined challenge of reversing what was really such a one sided conflict.

  18. Re:supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults on Multivitamin Researchers Say 'Case Is Closed' As Studies Find No Health Benefits · · Score: 1

    Food cost in any restaurant is going to be at most 30%. At McDonald's it's going to be much lower--almost certainly under 20% (which is the 5x he means, even though he used the wrong word since it's not an operating margin).

  19. Re:Let's see what the judge says... on Gov't Puts Witness On No Fly List, Then Denies Having Done So · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That is not the same law that was overturned. The USSC did not strike down all gun control in DC. They struck down a limited portion of the handgun restrictions.

    You need to go back to high school and learn how to read.

  20. Re:Take that Darwin on Scientists Find Olfactory "Memory" Passed Between Generations In Mice · · Score: 1

    Which may be of interest to sociologists and linguists, but not to biologists.

  21. Re:I pay 11 cents per kWh on Harvesting Power When Freshwater Meets Salty · · Score: 1

    I pay 44 cents per kWh, so...

  22. Re:those numbers seem unsustainable on Glut In Stolen Identities Forces Price Cut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Moving $60k online doesn't do you any good. You move it from their bank account to...what? Another stolen account that you can't withdraw from? Or one that has your address? Or one with a stolen SS#, but that has you on security cam footage? You move that kind of money out and you are going to be caught.

  23. Re:Change your passwords ASAP! on Glut In Stolen Identities Forces Price Cut · · Score: 1

    BeOS came on CDs?

  24. Re:Wow, this _is_ kind of a shame on Clam That Was Killed Determining Its Age Was Over 100 Years Older Than Estimated · · Score: 1

    I thought it was a crime punishable by exile to England to eat any non-leek based food in Wales.

  25. Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ... on Full Details of My Attempted Entrapment For Teaching Polygraph Countermeasures · · Score: 1

    You're thinking of 'assimilated.' Also, resistance is futile!