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User: brillow

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  1. Re:When girls can be raped in public with no 911 c on Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? · · Score: 1

    Yes, put more people in jail, thats a good idea, prisoners are getting lonely is so not-crowded in there! Think about this: 20 people see it. What if one person called 911, are the 19 who didn't going to be prosecuted? There are a lot of details here which go against most common-law philosophy.

  2. Re:A bit late? on Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? · · Score: 1

    What if they don't have a cell phone? Should they go find a phone? Should they run for help? Do they have to jump in and risk themselves to try and help? Where does it end? How do we define the minimum required action? Aren't our prisons and court systems clogged with enough bullshit crimes?

  3. Re:A bit late? on Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? · · Score: 1

    Don't be small-minded, just because the gov't should be able to force you to do some things doesn't mean it should be able to force you to do all things.

  4. Re:A bit late? on Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? · · Score: 1

    Who told you that?

  5. Re:No on Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? · · Score: 0

    Actually had a discussion in HS with a teacher about this test's failed logical underpinnings. Its unclear how the mechanism is supposed to work. Why does item 5 supersede items 2-4? 2 says clap, 5 says don't, which do I do? The ordinal nature of the list suggests that 2 should be higher priority than 5, but this is apparently not what the proctor intends. Also, item 1 commands you to read all instructions, implicating that in this exercise, the implied actions inherent in taking the test (as in, looking at the instructions, reading them, and performing them, and "finishing the test") should not be taken as implied. To wit, if I must be instructed to "read" the instructions, it would seem there should be a second instruction commanding me to perform the instructions, there is not. Which brings up an odd situation of not performing step 5. After 10 mins of this, to an teacher who was obviously giving us this test to be a smart-ass more than teaching us about critical analysis, I was told to "shut up." Also, I was being a little shit.

  6. Re:Lasers, Xrays, etc. on SETI Founder Outlines Ambitious Future Plans · · Score: 1

    People involved in building and running the "Ice cube" neutrino detector have speculated that their instrument would be capable of detecting neutrino-based communications from ETs. Neutrinos being an ideal communication medium, not being blocked by anything.

  7. Re:Tablet market seems like the ultimate niche on CrunchPad Being Re-branded As JooJoo · · Score: 1

    When the iPhone came out, it cost $500. It was a fraction the size and had a fraction of the (computational) capability. People went NUTS over it. They should have apps though, if the iPhone taught us anything, its that "web apps" are not enough. I am sure though that if this device ends up sticking around it will have apps. I'm also pretty sure that someone will have it running windows 7 or ubuntu or android within two weeks of it coming out.

  8. sales tax? on Pittsburgh To Tax Students · · Score: 1

    Someone should compute how much student's contribute to total sales tax revenues. I am certain that students bring in more money to the city and average residents. These are people who get money from OUTSIDE PGH, and bring it INSIDE PGH. Students are little money importers. I am sure people say "oh its just $400", for most students with a part-time job, that could be 2 mos pay. Plus, it unfairly discriminates against students with higher academic achievement who go to more expensive universities. Linking it to tuition seems retarded. It seems to imply that students who pay more tuition use more city resources? So a full time student at Pitt uses more than one at CMU?

  9. Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's because that's how it works in a science: you assume the rules don't change in an arbitrary fashion. Humans, however, do.

    Human behavior does not change in an arbitrary fashion. Just because we can't predict something accurately doesn't mean its random or arbitrary. I mean, do you act randomly? Do you purchase products and change careers because of a coin flip? No. No one else does either. (except well, psychotics)

    "We know the rules of Economics!", someone else is going to look at those rules and either game them to their benefit, or rewrite them to better suit their own purpose.

    This is, I think, an incomplete view on what "the rules" of economics would be should we find them. A true "rule" of economics would be like a law of nature. There would be no possibility of changing it. The "rule" here is not a regulatory system, its a model which explains behavior. Knowledge of the model could itself be a parameter of the model. The "rule" might also be incredibly abstract, more of a mathematical framework than a specific model. There is no reason to think its somehow impossible. Those who claim "X" is impossible have a poor track record.

    This makes any prediction of human behavior a statistical undertaking at best.

    All predictions are statistical, its just that for many things the probabilities fall very near 1 or very near 0. Induction cannot induce itself etc. The fundamental problem with this pervasive idea that human behavior cannot be usefully modeled is that its not based on anything. People say "its too complicated." Yeah, it is now. But that's not good evidence that the problem is somehow intractable. "Too hard" does not mean "impossible." Not knowing something also doesn't mean its possible. If you're going to assert impossibility, you need to come up with a proof of its impossibility. I am sure you can think of some examples where something was though to be impossible for no good reason and was proven to be not only possible, but eventually became mundane.

  10. Re:Hayek on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 2, Insightful

    >No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action. This is incorrect. We can do lots of this. In fact, a huge amount of modern product design and marketing is based on successfully and accurately predicting human action. Mainly though I have a problem with this: >It is impossible to reform the sciences of human action according to the pattern of physics and the other natural sciences. So humans are magic eh? The brain is a black box? Its IMPOSSIBLE to predict what someone will do? This isn't just wrong, its irrational. Go back to church.

  11. Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 1

    Hari Seldon still has much to teach us.

  12. isn't there a law on Dutch Gov't Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls · · Score: 1

    Isn't there a law which would prevent an entity from blocking another entity from complying with the law? For instance, if I sign a contract with you that requires me to break the law to fulfill it, the contract is invalid and you can't hold me to it. How does this work in the case of one entity withholding information which compels others to break the law? I'd not heard of this Dutch wiretapping of lawyers stuff, but its ironic that a society which many naive American liberals (of which I am one) view as more-enlightened than the use would so quickly slide down the slope of injustice. Privilege is one of the pillars of society.

  13. Re:Lawyer client privilege on Dutch Gov't Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Lawyers in the US cannot lie either, nor can they knowingly prompt clients to lie. They cannot allow clients to testify information they know to be false. There are ways around this however, as only the client and lawyer know about the lie, its easy to hide and I imagine its done all the time. The client can also recant the truth they made to the lawyer and the lawyer can then claim they believed it (though if they end up in front of a bar they will have to be pretty persuasive in why they beleived the 2nd story and not the first.) >What about: I find out the intimate details of what you and your client were talking about on the phone and then use those details to dig deeper and >find evidence I never would have without that phone call? Then I turn up in court, destroy your case, have nothing but hard evidence and you have >no way of knowing that I used your taped conversation to do so (and probably couldn't prove it even if you thought that). Youd have to be pretty persuasive, evidence obtained through illegal means is itself inadmissible. Search a house without a warrant and find a dead body, and you get a murderer that walks free. It would be difficult to find physical evidence in this manner due to chain of custody. If youheard a call explaining that the gun was buried in the woods, and went and found it, a judge would want to know how you knew to look there. If you were pointed to evidence, like bank records etc, that would be easier. However, a prosecutor would be stupid to try this unless it was perfectly air-tight. That kind of misconduct (at least in the US) can give retroactive grounds for appeal for every case they've done, it would unwind much justice. Not to mention your career would be over and you would probably serve some jail time for contempt.

  14. sample prep? on An Electron Microscope For Your Home? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    EM is all fine and good, but you cant just stick things into it like you can a light microscope. Sample prep is very complex. Unless these kids have several rather nasty solvents to fix the sample, and a high-pressure liquid CO2 bomb to remove excess liquids, not to mention a sputter-coater, there is nothing you can do with it. Sounds like a waste of money for schools to buy this. Better to buy 200 decent light-scopes and let kids play with it individually than watch the teacher put a prepared sample into a tube and look at a computer screen.

  15. Value of music on Music Exec Fires Back At Apple CEO · · Score: 1

    The guy says, its not fair to the artists to have all music be the same price, implying that some "Artists" have move valuable music. What about this, if he is concerned about the artists, then it doesnt apply to dead ones, since they aren't being reimbursed anyway. And he is right, any on of Rachmaninov's concertos is better than any pop song in the past 20 years, why not charge more for his music since its obviously more valuable? Jobs, as much as I hate him, is right. .99 is a very appropriate price point, and is just about what songs cost off the shelf anyways.