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User: malkavian

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  1. Bruce, much as though I respect what you've done for the world at large, how would you react to an organisation that encouraged participation of the majority (say something as sweeping as education), and stated clearly that funding would only be applied if you were a majority (minorities not allowed)?
    The ethics of it is that a meritocracy should be largely blind to gender, skin colour, ancestry and so on. I'm on board with that wholeheartedly. By all means, go and campaign for women and minorities to skill up in the areas you want them to be in.
    When you start dehumanising (I've read the feminist manifestos and "anti-racism" manifestos, and they're scarily like the language used to justify genocides in wording) people and turning away valid, skilled candidates over ideology, I call it a fail on ethical grounds, as well as a regressive step competitively.

  2. I'd love to see you go for the internship that was being advertised then (no white males allowed, unless they happen to be gay).
    I'm completely with encouragement. What I'm against ethically is discrimination any segment for any reason not related to their ability to perform a job, especially when one of the rules of the community is that discrimination is not allowed, when they are themselves actively discriminating.

  3. I've read opinions, and case studies galore that say discrimination to blame. But they are scientifically weak to unacceptable to determine causality.
    I've read a few cross sectional studies that say discrimination isn't to blame. Quite a few of those have actively been starting with the proposal that discrimination is to blame, and they've intrusively gone looking for it to find none, yet drawn conclusions that discrimination is to blame, they just haven't found it yet (which incidentally is exactly what the Inquisition of old used to say about heretics; they're guilty of heresy, but they may not have quite been tortured enough to confess yet).
    Case control studies and above show no discrimination, and seem to be concluding that choice is the largest factor (not just the choice about whether to go for job (x), but the life choices leading up to being able to qualify for job (x)).
    It's looking like the stronger the scientific used to examine the situation, the less it looks like discrimination is to blame, so the system isn't broken.

  4. Re:Yeah, this is what he's talking about. on One Of LLVM's Top Contributors Quits Development Over Code of Conduct, Outreach Program (phoronix.com) · · Score: 1

    Hey, you're charging them as a murderer? They only killed one person..
    What he's objecting to is the constructed paradox that is being forced on him. Namely being told "You must treat everyone with respect and as an equal regardless of their attributed", then being associated with an organisation that openly discriminates based on skin and gender.
    You know all the disgust that people show when the subject is brought up of days of old where signs were hung up saying "No blacks allowed"? Well, in certain areas of the community, signs are going up saying "No white men allowed". And it's being cheered on as something great.
    That's what he's objecting to, the complete lack of ethics in this. It's something I rarely see in SJWs, real ethics. They virtue signal like crazy, yet openly peddle bigotry, but as long as it's their bigotry, it's all fine.

  5. Re:Meet minimum standards of human behavior on One Of LLVM's Top Contributors Quits Development Over Code of Conduct, Outreach Program (phoronix.com) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No gender or skin colour is going to cost you a job in tech. If it did, there would not be the large Asian and Indian presence in the roles that there are now.
    In the places that are the most inclusive of all (such as Sweden etc.), there are still very low numbers of the groups in roles. This indicates that choice is a fairly large factor (and seems that the more "free to choose, rather than forced to work to survive" you are, the more men overall take up the roles, and women look elsewhere.
    It's also illegal to discriminate based on gender or colour of skin, yet this is blatantly being done. If you want to raise the best talent you can, open the doors, and let people prove themselves. Take the best and the world improves. Force ideology onto things, and you're going to find yourself in a less than optimum situation, where the person that takes "that internship" will forever be looked on as "someone that could only get it because they're (x)", not someone that's achieved.
    It's a massive insult to someone you way want to nurture in the first place, as they'll have that stigma, perhaps even detracting from a real talent (hey, if they're talented, why not hire them anyway?).
    I keep hearing "It's so hard to get a job in (x) if you're a (y)", but see nothing in real numbers of qualified people complaining about it (you can bet it'd hit news pretty quickly). It seems it's the "everyone knows it" type of fallacy; everyone's being told that's what's going on, so people believe it. Despite very little evidence of it being true.

  6. Re:I hate saying this on AMD Wants To Hear From GPU Resellers and Partners Bullied By Nvidia (forbes.com) · · Score: 1

    I think you may be a statistical outlier. Happens in any large dataset. I've had exclusively AMD for the last 15 years or so, and never had a problem. I change GPU about every 3 years, so that'd be about 5 cards. Not a problem.

  7. Not so much. The UK has all those policies and has a rate comparable to the US (not quite sure which is the real value, 4.1 or 8.6 for the US; UK has only 4.2%).
    Over here, 25 days annual leave (plus bank holidays, which is another 6 I think) is standard. And it goes up from there..
    The price paid is generally lower overall pay packet (I know I could earn a lot more in the US, but I like my vacation days too much to worry about that).

  8. And very little talk on the root cause. on Jailed Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Sneaks Online, Threatens More 'Swats' (kansas.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, loads of comments about "how cops are bad", but very little on the responsibility of the root cause that started this chain of events.
    A guy deliberately set up an armed response team to an address. From this point, the amount off things that can go badly wrong is staggering, not to mention the cost of performing the action itself in monetary terrms.
    In this case, something did go wrong, that would not have happened if the false callout had not been made. Everything stems from that malicious callout, therefore, everything that went wrong should be put on the shoulders of the malicious caller.
    The caller should be tried for "attempted murder" if a malicious swatting is made, or at least assault with a deadly weapon (as that's what SWAT teams carry, and it's definitely an assault if done maliciously).
    It's very easy to point a finger at a cop and say "Your fault", but unless you do the job, day in, day out, with your life at risk, and nearly every situation you face is life or death, then I take the voices as 'armchair experience'. Yes, training can always be improved, yes, odds can be shrunk, but in situations like this, risk cannot be eliminated. Thus you go for the root cause. Make the malicious caller responsible for all costs, all outcomes, and at least that assault with deadly weapon to boot. Every, single, malicious, call.
    Maybe then we'll see swattings "for fun" vanish. As long as people treat it as "just a kicks thing that went wrong", it'll keep on happening, and more deaths will ensue because of it.

  9. Re:Why are so many people defending this guy? on Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says He Does Not Regret Firing James Damore (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    He's being defended because he was responding to an internal request for increasing diversity, and making a better working place, by doing research (inside his field), and coming up with a very rational piece that fit the bill of the request entirely. Now the internal SJW brigade decided to troll him, creating the hostile environment (this would still just be in the area of "people being told to calm down" and suspension of thread. Except one or more of the SJW brigade decided to _alter_ the memo, then send the edited version out to clickbait journalists, which made the headlines and got the CEO to come back. Nothing Damore did caused that level of problem, the entire thing was a classic antifa style action (spin a circumstance so you make yourself out in the press to be a victim, and make it all emotive, with few facts, and have people hounded by the masses; it's a tried and tested propaganda tactic). The leakers should have been fired (as it wasn't whistle blowing on anything, it was just pure spite) as they caused the whole mess. The lawyers would quite possibly have been wrong if they'd advised HR to get rid of him (thus the lawsuit that's coming Google's way). He definitely wasn't radioactive internally and externally, and certainly woudn't have been a problem if it hadn't been for SJW spin and mob rousing tactics. Have you read the proper memo, or one of the edited ones? The real, original one is well worth reading, as he's saying that women may not want to work in certain environments because as a statistical set, they tend to work better in a different environment, and be happier in said other environment. He put proposals for how to set up such environments as part of the general workplace, so making it more female friendly. Now this is a population set, not an individual; the standard SJW tactic is to conflate population sets with individual behaviour and vice versa, which is an extreme logical fallacy (i.e. you can say as a population set, 99.999% of the human population that has ever lived is now dead. Therefore you're 99.999% dead, and it's ok if I put you in an incinerator for cremation right now). The obvious jerks where are the SJW brigade, for getting in the way of learned discussion (his research was supported by men and women in that particular field who were at the top of the game; the SJWs just had politics and mob rousing on their side, no rational argument) that could have made the world better. I see it so many times that people would prefer to rant and raise mobs because their opinion isn't supported by rational discussion. Much easier to tear down enlightenment that actually work for it. The bullies are the SJW crowd. Trump seems to me to be a right wing version of the left wing rabble rousers. We already have millions of loud-mouth zero-filter trump clones, but lots of them just aren't where you think they are. And the new bullying is not the playground style "I'll beat you up"; people have got cleverer. Much easier to cry "they offended me because of " and have other people do the bullying of your target for you. That SJW variant of PC is the most uncivilised environment I can think of, and they form the biggest jerks in any conversation (I know quite a few of them, and I find them exactly the same as the strong right that I know; tiring to talk to and very difficult to educate on a whole world view).

  10. Except the memo was all about creating a less hostile work environment. The hostile work environment was created by the SJWs who deliberately misinterpreted it, and also passed it onto clickbait journalism sites, edited to corrupt it from its original intent. The firing should have been the SJWs and especially the leakers (as this wasn't whistleblowing, this was outright sabotage), as they've made things incredibly hostile.

  11. Re:Jerks are not a protected class. on James Damore Sues Google For Allegedly Discriminating Against Conservative White Men (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    They asked for comments, they got comments. The memo, in the internal form it was passed around, wasn't a problem to his continued work. What made it problematic was that someone decided to take an internal memo, and put it in a lot of vocal SJW media. THAT is what caused the explosion. So by rights, what Google should have done is immediately try to discover the leaker, and fire them. I personally think this as a court case could be interesting, and I'm looking forward to hearing some decent legal minds chime in on it, and see what's really up for grabs. Much as though I disagree with you, no idea how you got modded to 'Troll', as it's definitely not fitting the definition of that..

  12. Nope, Damore didn't cause any bad PR. The person who leaked the document and put it in high profile areas (which was definitely not Damore) caused the bad PR. Classic case of victim blaming you have there.

  13. Re:signal to each other in plain sight on Ex-NSA Hacker Is Building an AI To Find Hate and Far-Right Symbols on Twitter and Facebook (vice.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's a great example of Cherry Picking.
    A rather fuller examination of the data, and a proper conclusion can be found here.
    A quick hint, Vox are basically using mis-framing of the population statistics to give a completely wrong picture.

  14. Re:No, it's a blatant re-branding. on Ex-NSA Hacker Is Building an AI To Find Hate and Far-Right Symbols on Twitter and Facebook (vice.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    I used to listen to Radio 4 in the UK (that's a pretty "middle of the road" station).. At the hours I was in the car listening to it, Women's hour was often on; it was interesting to hear what the subjects were that women were focusing on, and sometimes came up with things that were worth pondering a lot from the male perspective..
    I gave it up when day in, day out, they were getting further and further into 3rd wave/intersectional feminism.. Now this is a "mainstream" station, not an extreme or "out there" kind of place. I gave it up and just listen to the music stations now.
    I'm finding 3rd wave being more and more "normal feminism".. If you're first or second wave feminist, it's not called "feminist" by a huge section these days, just "normal".. After the war of sex in feminism that led to 3rd wave, there's no agreement on what it means to be feminist, so you say what it means, and anyone who disagrees is an oppressor. I've had loads of 'mainstream' women tell me it's perfectly valid to put me down and be as abusive as they like, as I have "male privilege", and it's their enshrined right to do this.

  15. Re:Why would you want to? on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way to Retrain Old IT Workers? · · Score: 1

    Well, big companies that have tried this have ended up paying more then they expected when the "young, keen and cheap" make mistakes the older guys have already learned not to make.
    I guess if you're all for infrastructure that's of a quality equivalent to a chinese plastic toy, then fine. If you need quality and stability, then you need your old guard, and your young blood. The old to temper the young with hard earned wisdom, and the young to keep the old guard moving with the times.
    That's how craftsmanship has been working for almost the entirity of human endeavour, it's only in recent times that this seems to have been forgotten.

  16. Re:There isn't on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way to Retrain Old IT Workers? · · Score: 1

    So, you honestly think the other professions out there spend their own time learning completely new things on their own time? If a company wants continuity of service, and an effective IT, then they need to have training plans, with time and budget allocated to keeping staff current in the necessary technologies. OTherwise staff end up effectively doing work for free, and paying for it themselves. That works very nicely for a corporate bottom line, but is terrible for working for said corporation and actually having a life.

  17. Re:Don't use formal training, buy them a computer! on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way to Retrain Old IT Workers? · · Score: 1

    Ok, you're going off on them a fair old bit.. The question I'm asking is why the company hasn't had a training policy, budget and time to ensure their employees are kept trained in areas of requirement?
    What, you think it should all be training time and budget out of an employee's own time and money? That's not how the world works (and if you think it does, you've just bought into a nasty dystopian vision).
    If training is to be kick started again, then you need specific goals, with milestones that are reachable in fairly easily obtainable steps. Then determine what training courses there are (that are actually worth something, not the "tick in the box" training) to cover those steps, and pay for it.
    Increase the workload in the new areas over time until they're comfortable. Have them practice new skills in the test area (there is a test area for doing this, isn't there?).
    Good will in a company is invaluable. It usually means someone's been doing a job of keeping things running, and has interpersonal skills, which speaks highly of them.
    As long as you have a goal, budget, and work time that's dedicated to learning new skills, and a planned path to get to new (company relevant) technologies, then things will work. If that's not there, then the company is going to be in trouble over time.

  18. Re:no gray zone on Sexual Harassment In Tech Is As Old As the Computer Age (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    That's just so much rubbish. Companies are where groups of _people_ meet and do an activity. You don't leave your humanity at the door in the name of 'being professional'.
    The sexual harrassment training is a tick box for companies so they don't get sued as an entity when someone complains. What the most successful companies have is enough flexibility that people can be people, while having recourse so that the real problematic people can be deal with appropriately.
    The big problem with "grey area" is that it's now being used to have punishments given out, depending on someone's whim _after the fact_. So if a guy approaches the woman, and she decides she likes him and decides to be receptive, happy days. If she decides she really doesn't like him, she can get to call sexual harrassment by the regulations.. And it's always for the protection of women, not men..
    I've asked female friends what they'd think of a hypothetical situation where a man was to get into the bed of a woman who wasn't interested in her and proceed to grope her.. Every single one said "He should go to court and be charged with sexual assault". Now I've had a couple of women do exactly that to me, and I've asked them what they thought of that, and every single one said "You must have thought it was a good night.". No, I didn't.. It was awkward, embarrassing, and really made living around them hell. When I explained that, they still said, "well, it's different for you, your're a guy.. It's not that bad"..
    That's what really aggravates me.. Most of these vocal women want a world where they can do what they want without consequence, but they want to deny those freedoms to men, and by and large, the law supports that. Then they accuse men of entitlement syndromes?

  19. Re:Tired of political correctness and agendas on Sexual Harassment In Tech Is As Old As the Computer Age (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    Sexual offender can be almost nothing.. Friend of mine managed to get himself on the sex offenders register.
    When he was 20, he met a pretty gal at a nightclub.. She latched on to him, and they ended up going out.. After a while, she started staying over at his place at weekends, and things were good.. She looked young and fresh faced, so always got ID'd, but always pulled out her ID and all was good..
    Then eventually he got to meet her folks, and over dinner he said approximately that he knew where she got the cooking skills from now, because she made fantastic breakfasts for him when she stopped over.
    That's when conversation pretty much stopped.. He got worried about having made a social faut pas, and left pretty early.
    Next day, the police came round to his place and arrested him for rape. Turns out the gal was 15, with false id (age of consent is 16 in UK), and her nights out she was saying she was spending at friends houses studying.
    When the court case came around, he was told that ignorance of her age was no defence, and the fact she'd been lying to him and telling him she was 18 and working was no defence.
    End result, he did time, and was put on the sex offenders register. He's a nice chap, and thoroughly decent.. Not the sharpest, but damn honourable..
    And thoroughly screwed because a gal lied to him. She had no consequence apart from her folks scolding her for lying about being at her friends' houses.

  20. Re:I've no interest in the article on Sexual Harassment In Tech Is As Old As the Computer Age (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    And my nieces have none of that.. One is up to her PhD now, and has had to have lots of computing classes to do that. 2 have their masters degrees (one maths, one biology), and the youngest has a firm interest in computing and enjoys spending time with the guys in her class.. None of that behaviour.. Yes, it can occur. No, it's not endemic to the subject.

  21. Re:Nothing changed but the language on Sexual Harassment In Tech Is As Old As the Computer Age (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    Except, as statistics show, a large number of people meet their partners at work (as that's where you spend the large part of your time). It sounds as though you're saying "you have to go to these clubs or a pay for dating app to get interest", well, huge amounts of people hate that and would never use that.. They prefer to meet at work, in a bar, out hiking etc., which means they're right back at standing the risk of being accused of sexual harrassment as the parent post to your explained very well.

  22. Re:College should be replaced with apprenticeships on Why Do Employers Require College Degrees That Aren't Necessary? (thestreet.com) · · Score: 1

    You haven't worked in commercial software dev have you?

  23. Re:Degrees are Useless Now on Why Do Employers Require College Degrees That Aren't Necessary? (thestreet.com) · · Score: 1

    Must be a really crappy degree then.. There's a hell of a lot that I did through both of mine (chem eng. and real time computing) that I still apply today, and still utilise as a framework.. And those degrees are over 20 years in the rear view mirror..

  24. Re:Will not solve their problems on Linux Pioneer Munich Confirms Switch To Windows 10 (techrepublic.com) · · Score: 2

    No, they needed to run a set of commercially available software, that had no Linux running version.
    I've seen it so often, it's painful. There just isn't the commercially developed software ecosystem for enterprises out there (well, apart from server stuff). If you can't purchase up to date commercial software to support what you want to do, there's only one avenue left.. Go back to Windows where there's a glut of it.
    Now, this could be a good money spinner for people who want to produce good software in that arena, but you've got the chicken and egg scenario.. People don't develop the software because the market is too small (linux on desktop).. And because there's not the glut of software competing, people can't easily move to Linux because of the lack of enterprise software..
    It's sad, but that's the current state of things..

  25. Re:ORLY? on Google Hit With Gender Pay Discrimination Lawsuit (axios.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    "The Economist" did an article on this. The end result from it (in the UK anyway) was that the gender pay gap was a fraction of a percentage point in a like for like. Inside a given company, with the same responsibilities and title, women earned the same as men. Women in a company tended to go for the lower paid, more hourly flexible positions, which is what dragged the average down. This is from the statistics gathered by a consultancy (Korn Ferry) with about 25 million sample points. That's reasonably robust.
    The UK as a 0.8% difference in post from men to women for exactly the same role.
    Oddly, the cries around this are suddenly that women must be given equal shares in the board rooms and at higher management. It doesn't say whether skills and choices lean that direction or not, simply that this must be made so.
    You're absolutely right as far as I can see that people must be given every chance to shine, irrespective of gender, colour, or whatever. If they can do the jobs well, that's what counts.