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User: digitrev

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  1. Re:Libertarian strawmen on The Future of Shopping: Trapping You in a Club You Didn't Know You Joined (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1
    So what's the keep the courts & the police from being captured & corrupted? To quote the Non-Libertarian FAQ ,

    As far as I know there is no loophole-free way to protect a community against externalities besides government and things that are functionally identical to it.

  2. Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police on The Courage of Bystanders Who Press "Record" · · Score: 1

    If a police office tells you to murder someone, and you do not, is that still a misdemeanor?

  3. Re:Asana on Ask Slashdot: Issue Tracker For Non-Engineers? · · Score: 1

    I've used Asana as well, and while it's not perfect, it definitely has value. You can assign things to folks, segment by project, and set due dates. You'll still want a proper calendar application for meetings, though.

  4. Re:Same thing in the US on Pirate Bay Co-Founder Peter Sunde Is a Free Man Again · · Score: 2, Informative

    Truth. My wife's been vegetarian for going on 2 decades now. There have been times in the past when meat has accidentally made its way into her diet, and she's gotten horribly sick from it. She doesn't even have to know she had the meat, so I doubt that it's psychosomatic.

  5. Re:Wait.. on Bounties vs. Extreme Internet Harassment · · Score: 1

    Gendered violence is violence that is precipitated primarily by gender. As a guy, if I get mugged, it probably had little to do with my being male. If I go to a hypothetical "feminazi utopia" (as certain MRA types seem to believe we're living in), get the shit kicked out of me, and have "fuck all men" cut into my chest with a knife, that's probably gendered violence.

    A good litmus test is: did their gender make the violence worse than it would have been had they been the opposite gender? If yes, the violence was probably gendered. If not, then it probably wasn't. Compare a school shooter that shoots everyone, versus a school shooter that targets only women.

  6. Re:Why on Shooting At Canadian Parliament · · Score: 1

    The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is at the Canadian War Memorial.

  7. Re:Dear Canada.... on Shooting At Canadian Parliament · · Score: 2

    No word on whether or not the soldier on guard at the Tomb is dead. Latest news is that there is a man being treated for gunshot wounds at one of Ottawa's hospitals.

  8. Re:hmmmm on California Tells Businesses: Stop Trying To Ban Consumer Reviews · · Score: 1

    Libel, slander, harassment, yes. But not yelling fire in a crowded theatre. That was used to justify censorship of war critics.

  9. Thrilling Stuff on Helsinki Aims To Obviate Private Cars · · Score: 2

    Thrilling, but can we get literally any information from a source? I know, I know, no one reads the article, but still. This isn't an Ask Slashdot nor is it an interview, so some sort of article would be nice.

  10. Re:War of government against people? on America 'Has Become a War Zone' · · Score: 1

    This only holds if every other variable has been controlled for. I think it's time for a thought experiment.

    Let's say that the government of Ontario is interested in reducing health care costs. They have a hypothesis if there are more smokers, there will be more people diagnosed with lung cancer. So they look at the data and find that, while the number of smokers in the province has been decreasing steadily, the number of people diagnosed with lung cancer has been increasing. According to your logic, that means that the number of smokers does not cause an increase in the number of people diagnosed with lung cancer. But what if what actually happened is that people started getting tested more frequently for lung cancer, or that there was an improvement in the tests that detect lung cancer, so the numbers were going to rise anyway? Unless you control for other variables, it's really hard to make a judgment call.

    Now, in the hypothetical situation where you only have X (gun control) and Y (violent crime rates) changing, and there are no Z (population), W (economy), A (political climate), D (weather), F (wealth disparity), P (inflation), Q (gun availability in nearby states), or T (number of police in the neighbourhood) factors fluctuating to complicate things, then, and only then, can you say that X and Y are in fact negatively correlated, and that an increase in X does not cause an increase in Y.

    The point I'm getting at is that things are more complicated than the simple independent-dependent model that you seem to be pushing.

  11. Re:These work some of the time, cars all the time on Lit Motors, Danny Kim, and Changing How Americans Drive · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I actually like this comment, because it brings up one of the major idiosyncrasies of how we buy cars. Specifically, we buy cars that meet all of our needs, as opposed to buying cars that meet our most frequent needs, and we can only really afford one vehicle per driver.

    Consider my household growing up (I know, I know, plural of anecdote is not data, but this is just an example). Growing up we always had two vehicles - one minivan, and one smaller sedan. This was mostly fine - my dad took the car to work, and my mom had the van for driving the kids around, doing groceries, etc... The sedan got much more use, and the van mostly stayed in the driveway, except when it needed to be used for something a sedan can't handle. But when my mom went back to work, the van had to be used for the daily commute. And this eats gas like crazy. You shouldn't be driving a minivan with only one person in it, but because we couldn't afford a third car (a sedan to get my mom to and from work) and because we still needed the minivan for groceries & family trips, a huge amount of gas gets wasted hauling one person around.

  12. Re:isn't it used on violent prisoners? on The Science of Solitary Confinement · · Score: 1

    However we're talking about people who have been judged by a jury of their peers.

    No we're not. We're talking about people who may have been judged by a jury of their peers. They also may have accepted a plea bargain.

  13. Becquerels of particles on Safety Measures Fail To Stop Fukushima Plant Leaks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Becquerels of particles? Really? That's like saying (obligatory car analogy incoming) joules of cars. A becquerel is a measure of activity - each litre gives off 2.3e8 electrons per second. While this is a problem, this is a nonsensical way to talk about it. What's that law again? The one that says that "every news article in your field of expertise is utter garbage". I'm pretty sure it holds here.

  14. "and who have proactively signed up to receive the motivational messages". Read the freaking summary at least, dude.

  15. Re:Is Bruce Schneier Leaving His Job At BT? on Is Bruce Schneier Leaving His Job At BT? · · Score: 4, Funny

    Betteridge's law of headlines strongly suggests no.

  16. Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! on Why There Shouldn't Be a Chess World Champion · · Score: 2

    I believe the appropriate colloquialism is "Whoosh!".

  17. Re:"leading a coalition"? on U.S. Will Not Provide Financing For New International Coal-Fired Power Plants · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that definitely struck me as some spectacular American Exceptionalism double-think there.

  18. Re:What ? on Why Can't Big Government Launch a Website? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Toyota has more than one plant in 6 different countries - 4 in Brazil, 3 in Canada, 2 in Colombia, 15 in Japan, 4 in Thailand, and 6 in the USA. Looking at the ratio of population:plant, Japan obviously has the most favourable one (about 8.5 million people in Japan for each plant), and then it goes Canada (11.7 million), Thailand (16.5 million), Colombia (23.6 million), Brazil (50.3 million), and trailing the pack is the USA, with 52.8 million people of population per one Toyota plant.

    When Toyota says that they chose Canada over the US because of health care reasons, I'm heavily inclined to believe them. After all, with its larger population, surely the US has a higher number of highly skilled technicians to work for Toyota. But instead, they chose to add another plant to Canada. I'll leave you to reconcile the facts with your rhetoric.

  19. Re:vs gasoline cars on Tesla Model S Catches Fire: Is This Tesla's 'Toyota' Moment? · · Score: 1

    Best post of the day.

  20. Re:Story from my Math teacher 20 years ago on What Works In Education: Scientific Evidence Gets Ignored · · Score: 2

    Well, I never met a math exercise I wouldn't at least try. Here you go.

  21. Re: Yo Dawg we heard the chinese on NSA Cracked Into Encrypted UN Video Conferences · · Score: 1
  22. Re:Hormone therapy? on Bradley Manning Wants To Live As a Woman · · Score: 1

    As opposed to the USA, where the only people benefit are the rich and the healthy.

  23. Re:MSRP of $62,400 Though? on Tesla Motors May Be Having an iPhone Moment · · Score: 1

    To be fair, cars tend to last a touch longer in the (southern) USA than they do in Canada. Something to do with them not needing rust-causing salt on their roads 4 months out of the year. Some rough data from last year suggests that they get about 25% more out of their cars than we do.

  24. Re:False Flag on Apple Sued For Man's Porn Addiction · · Score: 3, Funny

    And now having re-read the article, I realize that this man is patently insane. Primarily because he blames Apple for driving sex shops out of business.

  25. False Flag on Apple Sued For Man's Porn Addiction · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Normally, I'm not this paranoid, but this reads like a false flag operation by some religious group looking to get filters installed by default. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they're helping fund this insane lawsuit.