So a company announces a bug-bounty program, and bugs are found by programmers working for a major software company? Stop the press!
Isn't this what you would expect? Most people who are good enough to find exploits (as opposed to randomly crashing Windows) generally make a profession out of programming. And the good ones generally work for the big named companies (there are exceptions, of course).
It is interesting that both exploits have to do with IE. While I don't use IE frequently, I'd assume that it is easier to own a system using *@F# Adobe exploits (which would still be the OS's fault). Or are there restrictions that prevent rewards for exploits via third party software?
It should have been in the summary, but the virus is about a micrometer in length. Which is cool, and huge. Just imagine - a a group of a few thousand, and it becomes visible to the naked eye.
I wonder. Conflicts arise for ideological reasons as well. Not that I disagree with your viewpoint in general - the more technologically advanced you get, the less you care about ideological debates. However, if an advanced species landed on earth peacefully, I'd still expect nutjobs to try and blow them up because they are "heretics who challenge my simplified view of $deity" . Not that it would matter to someone capable of crossing interstellar distances, but they'd either (a) swat us aside like an irritating insect, or (b) Leave us to ourselves, but quarantine us to one planet.
Even with sufficient resources, we believe that the universe has finite "accessible" resources - there might be a heat death. So if you think long term, extracting energy now is a waste. We burn resources like crazy. They help society to grow. However, another advanced rate might look at our processes and decide that we are wasting "their" resources in such an inefficient matter that we need to be stopped. Stephen baxter and Arthur Clarke explore this in their "Time Odyssey" series.
the Italian situation is still different. For the trespass case to be similar, you would have to have two people trespass on your property, get into a fight and then have the loser sue you for the injuries sustained during the fight.
I think it is more like if two trespassers got into a fight on your property, one of them picks up your shovel from the ground and kills the other. The victim's family sues you for leaving your shovel outside.
"a fascination with the early history of the computer age"
1976 was already the middle of the computer age.
Really? I feel the computer age hasn't even taken off yet, and speaking of a middle for something that is open ended is just silly. In fact, even though the age of the gene-manipulation/bio-tech might be starting now, let us not forget that it is progress in our computation capabilities that makes all this possible. There is still lots more to be done in computational mathematics/biology/engineeering/science.
It baffles me that two-factor authentication patents can be valid. Haven't ATM machines always done that (One factor - the ATM card, the second factor is the PIN)? What about USB key+password decryption? I know the patent system is broken, but this should get thrown out when challenged. More interesting, what advice is Dotcom's lawyer giving him? Or does New Zealand legal system not provide lawyers to someone arrested there who can't afford one?
But how can I make that transition? The guy I'd need to hire would have to know a lot of languages and be proficient in all of them. Plus, I can't afford to pay someone $100k/year right now. Ideas?"
So let's see: you want (a) A person who knows a lot of languages, (b) Proficient in all of them - i.e. many years of experience, hopefully very skilled (i.e. not resume padding), and (c) Relatively inexpensive.
Good luck with that. You can't have all three. Hell, getting one really good developer who is inexpensive is hard. Fresh out of college, sure. Someone who has a lot of real world experience in a lot of languages? Nope.
Also, since you are talking about difficulties with transition, you want your outside developers to either do a knowledge transfer, or the new guy to spend time reading the old stuff independently - i.e. it will take him/her weeks (if not months) while learning, making it a loss of money early on. If you want to make a clean break (and not support your old work), then you can skip this step (assuming you found someone).
And finally, you do NOT pay for bugs? Then recover your costs (SLAs) or do your testing and refuse to pay till the code is clean. Saying developers are fine with it till bugs are brought to light means that the developers are not fine with it! And assuming your specifications are great ("there is no excuse for not testing their code") then either the devs are keeping testing to the end, or the timeline is too stringent, not giving enough time for testing. So your project management skills aren't great (you are being optimistic in what you tell your clients as a schedule), or you are picking lazy developers.
Ever project ends up being a battle...
So you don't learn from your mistakes either? Why do assume moving things in house will solve all your problems? The common factor for a lot of your projects seems to be you...
The LA times report mentions that another dolphin had alerted them a few days ago, but the operator didn't send anyone to check it out because they didn't expect to find anything. Does the system have a large number of false positives?
And incidentally democracy dies definitively once and for all.
There are plenty of democracies in the world. I doubt a bunch of power-hungry lunatics can destroy a system that has been tried repeatedly for more than 2000 years.
It if is designed for hunting there is little difference between hunting animals and hunting humans beyond the fact that humans can (and will) shoot back.
If that were true. the companies selling those home warranties would be bankrupt. It is mathematically impossible for almost all customers to get more money out of their home warranties than they put.
Actually no. Insurance companies (and I'm guessing these warranty companies) take the money you give them and invest it to ensure they make a profit. They don't sit on it hoping to collect more than they pay out.
Yeah, it is unlikely that almost ALL people are getting more than they put it, but not mathematically impossible.
Some programmers like free dinners, and enjoy sleeping til noon and working til midnight, and don't mind the 12 hours because their best friends are at work.
Other programmers want to work 9-5 to drop kids off in the morning and get home to them at dinner.
Many programmers go through each of those stages in their carreers.
It's not an either/or question. Just make a workplace that accomodates both groups and keeps both happy.
While I agree in principle, it doesn't help in practice. Maybe someone young comes in who likes spending time away from the office, maybe has a significant other/children. If his boss is a workaholic (he might like being that way), junior feels pressured into staying late and sacrificing his interest so as not to "look bad" or get laid off when things go bad (as they eventually do, for factors outside the organization's control).
In fact, I'd say that having such a policy is good because if you really want to work, you can always network in from home or take your work home or something. But you don't pressure others into staying with you. You could do something like have a take out cafeteria at the end of the day - want to keep working? Grab a to-go bag and go wherever you want and work.
developers who are nice to each other, write to spec, comment appropriately, and write code that anyone can understand and maintain.
This is pretty much the textbook definition of a good programmer, not a mediocre one.
Ah, but the definition among many young-uns is all night marathon coding living off soda and cheetos with the occasional coffee/smoke break, and producing something that is lean, mean and impresses other programmers with cryptic lines that no one else understands. After all, who looks at code they wrote the previous semester? Whitespaces and comments are for n00bs - the code is the documentation.
Wow. Just wow. Did you even read what the original user problem was? I'll quote it here:
I clicked "install updates" in the update manager window, it failed, and next thing I know I can't apt-get install any packages, it just suggests I try apt-get -f install, which fails with the following message.
Assuming you are right that it was caused by a user error in which they dared to install stuff "manually" (by which I assume you mean downloaded a package outside the repositories and installed it, causing some dependency problems) without understanding dependencies, violations, how to avoid said violations - that makes them "retards"...? (FYI, please don't go on a Linux user community with that "people are dumb if they don't understand dependencies" attitude - you do more harm than good).
Don't get me wrong, Linux is great (and I use it). But thinking that everything is fine and dandy, while Windows/Macs are always plagued with problems is just as blind as assuming Windows/Macs are great and Linux sucks. If you are competent, any of them can be handled. If you aren't, you can mess up any of them.
Why do you assume things need to be turned around? By which I mean they might not be headed in the wrong direction completely, just going off on a tangent.
Here are some facts: more and more people will have at least one "consumption" device such as a tablet, as well as a smartphone. A section of the population will have a full-fledged development device (laptop/desktop) for work and/or at home. People will prefer that all the devices have a uniform interface and are part of one ecosystem.
Right now, I have a Windows 7 laptop, a Windows 8 desktop, a Linux desktop, Android phone, and a Kindle e-reader (with a Kindle Fire on the way). It is not as nice as a single-ecosystem environment CAN be. No single OS is great for all platforms yet - for me (I count Android and a Linux Desktop OS as different).
I believe every OS company will push for a unified experience, and that is the right way to go. Is Windows 8 the solution? No, but I don't think it is as horrible as most people make it out to be. On my dual-monitor setup, I prefer it to Windows 7.
The concept of a unified experience cannot and should not die. They need to take their user feedback, and act on it - specifically make the switch from desktop to tablet smoother. Have a start button that brings up the start screen, put in an edit box on the top of the start screen for desktops (making it more obvious - though if you just start typing on the start screen, it works), make it easier to find the shut-down and restart options on PCs/dekstops: little things like that.
IMO, Windows 7 is a great GUI-based desktop environment. For command line/remote access OS, I'd choose Linux any day. Windows 8 is a bit too tablet for desktops - they have the right idea, they just removed some stuff that people expect to have on desktops in their haste to make it tablet-ey. Scale back a bit. Don't try a single generation leap to a unified OS. Baby steps.
Actually, I think you are describing positive feedback - less women in STEM workforce leads to less women in STEM classes, which leads to less women applying for STEM jobs which leads to even fewer women in STEM workforce.
Balancing the quota in the short term leads to biasing and loss of productivity, but in the long term it MIGHT lead to an actual equilibrium - say you want 50% of people in an industry to be women. Right now, not too many ladies are in that field, so you will hire the most competent women you can find while discarding better qualified men. Girls joining colleges might see the favorable bias, and enter that field (while boys shy away from it). With more women to choose from, you have more hiring choices (and since the ladies have greater competition, they can't just slide by - they will be competing against more women). Eventually, you can reach the equilibrium with men and women being as talented (assuming no inherent difference in abilities across the genders).
I don't claim that this is a worthy goal to pursue. I am just pointing out that this strategy of bias can (if implemented properly) get you to the desired gender ratio.
Under which guideline would you have down-modded his post? I don't have points myself right now, but I don't remember there being an option in the dropdown for "Unlikeable."
Flame-bait: There is no evidence at this time to back up his hypothesis that it was Islamic fundamentalists. Also, he used a phrase "If the world can't keep Islam and all the Islamic violence out, at least USA can try" - which would seem to imply that he has a problem with the religion and the violence, without differentiating the two (and which planet would he have them relocate to?).
Since you had the courage to post with your account, I decided not to down-mod you, but ask you a counter-question: How?
Many countries have problems with selective interpretations of religion (including Christianity - abortion clinics, for example). How would you prevent such behavior? By outlawing a religion (Won't help - you don't declare your religion upon entry into the US)? How about ethnic cleansing (huge collateral damage)?
And if you resort to such techniques, what does it say about the robustness of your country's ideals? If you drop them at the first sign of trouble, are they really worth preserving? India (the world's largest democracy) has had attacks for decades (citation). And they haven't spent years interfering in the Middle East. So if you have a workable solution, I'd love to hear it.
It's all well and good to be a one product company that does one thing really well. The truth is, you need to work with a lot of different organizations if you are in the E-reader business. And E-readers are no more end goals than Phones.
This is where the size of Amazon plays a big role. Sure, they sell other stuff. But they sell books (dead-tree versions). And music. And movies. And they can sit down with publishers and set terms, sign up authors, make money off advertising, and do a lot of other things that support their products. I bought a Kindle DX, and the lending library program is one of the big plus points for me. And I joined their Prime program, which gets me access to other digital content. These incentives keep me going back to Amazon. If I like one of the books I loan out, I buy it.
An e-reader is a device. It isn't a goal in itself. The content is the goal. The iPhone needed a carrier - just selling an unlocked phone for $600 wouldn't have helped Apple (not to start a flamewar, use any phone you want in this example) - they needed a carrier's backing to take off. So claiming you make a great e-reader isn't worth much unless you have the infrastructure to support it - THIS infrastructure is what Amazon can afford to buy because they sell washing machines.
It looks like this might be a blessing for the Ouya console, if they can support it. They don't have to develop multiplayer capabilities or host their own network.
He claims that Silicon Valley CEO's support this bill. Well, let's see. Google never took a stance, Facebook and Microsoft rescinded their support, while AT&T and Verizon (big surprise), IBM, Intel and McAfee support it (didn't Intel buy McAfee?)
So no, Silicon Valley CEO's do NOT all support it - and even if they did, it isn't a ringing endorsement against privacy concerns. After all, what does the CEO know about the technical ramifications? In many cases (esp. for long established companies), they are business school graduates. They know that they are now off the hook for breaking privacy contracts. Gee, I'm surprised that some companies don't support it!
And for the love of God, can it be made illegal to give cool sounding names to acts and bills that sound all "PATRIOT-ic"? Not that I expect the politician who writes the bills is dumb enough to believe that they are rally helping their country (instead of their political backers), but it stops silly soundbites like "My opponent voted against the CyberSecurity bill".
The engineer spends some time talking about some of these things. They use Google's street view images to make detailed maps. The car knows what lanes exist, where the stop signs are, where the lanes are, what the surrounding terrain is like etc... before it even leaves the garage. If there's too big of a difference between the map and actual conditions, it switches to manual mode.
Current car AI systems aren't perfect. He even says in the video that they don't handle snow. But, a system with known limitations that preforms well in its competency zone is nothing to sneeze at.
And I wasn't sneezing at the system. I agree, it is a cool achievement. One flaw which I didn't see addressed (though I admit I skimmed through the video) was not about local information, but global dynamic information issues. What happens when lanes are closed? Even if it applies a correction after reaching the problem area, it might not have much appeal to a passenger. If I get stuck in a traffic jam that I could have found out about on the radio (had I been manually driving), I'd be pretty pissed off.
My point was that the state of automated decision making is quite advanced. Given accurate information, long term planning (home-work, for example) is pretty easy: route-planning is already a part of Google. For short-term control - we have been doing much more advanced control for decades. The real road-block as I see it is getting accurate information. Even his example about the bikes - once you get (and analyze) the information correctly, the actual mechanical control is quite straightforward.
No offense, but I believe you are just making shit up. Do you care to cite a reference? A number of my friends got a PhD and all they get is OPT which is good for 12 months and requires a (relevant) employment offer to match it those 12 months. My roommate is out of US now, because he had no way of staying here after graduating with a PhD.
You cannot apply for green card based on your PhD degree (unless you come from the parallel universe where common sense prevailed -- as that would be a great idea to allow this).
However, the process is hard - the OP made it sound easier than it is. You need to show that you are an extraordinary asset, with skills that are of national merit. You need several reference letters, a lot of top-notch publications (I have heard that you need more than most faculty positions require), and having contacts helps a lot (say, you had a famous advisor with lots of contacts during your Ph.D.).
The process is still quite long, so you might as well get a job and let them apply for you instead. If you can qualify for this type of green card, you should have no problem getting a job with a high pay.
Slashdot Mirror
So a company announces a bug-bounty program, and bugs are found by programmers working for a major software company? Stop the press!
Isn't this what you would expect? Most people who are good enough to find exploits (as opposed to randomly crashing Windows) generally make a profession out of programming. And the good ones generally work for the big named companies (there are exceptions, of course).
It is interesting that both exploits have to do with IE. While I don't use IE frequently, I'd assume that it is easier to own a system using *@F# Adobe exploits (which would still be the OS's fault). Or are there restrictions that prevent rewards for exploits via third party software?
A few thousand and you have a 1 mm line that's a few um thick. Still not visible to the naked eye.
Which is what I meant by a group - not a line of a few thousand, but just a jumble. 0.1mm should be visible to the naked eye.
It should have been in the summary, but the virus is about a micrometer in length. Which is cool, and huge. Just imagine - a a group of a few thousand, and it becomes visible to the naked eye.
... he might suddenly decide to decrease the size of a pizza, or the amount of topping, or the quality, or both.
You can reduce the quality of Papa Johns pizzas?
I wonder. Conflicts arise for ideological reasons as well. Not that I disagree with your viewpoint in general - the more technologically advanced you get, the less you care about ideological debates. However, if an advanced species landed on earth peacefully, I'd still expect nutjobs to try and blow them up because they are "heretics who challenge my simplified view of $deity" . Not that it would matter to someone capable of crossing interstellar distances, but they'd either (a) swat us aside like an irritating insect, or (b) Leave us to ourselves, but quarantine us to one planet.
Even with sufficient resources, we believe that the universe has finite "accessible" resources - there might be a heat death. So if you think long term, extracting energy now is a waste. We burn resources like crazy. They help society to grow. However, another advanced rate might look at our processes and decide that we are wasting "their" resources in such an inefficient matter that we need to be stopped. Stephen baxter and Arthur Clarke explore this in their "Time Odyssey" series.
the Italian situation is still different. For the trespass case to be similar, you would have to have two people trespass on your property, get into a fight and then have the loser sue you for the injuries sustained during the fight.
I think it is more like if two trespassers got into a fight on your property, one of them picks up your shovel from the ground and kills the other. The victim's family sues you for leaving your shovel outside.
"a fascination with the early history of the computer age"
1976 was already the middle of the computer age.
Really? I feel the computer age hasn't even taken off yet, and speaking of a middle for something that is open ended is just silly. In fact, even though the age of the gene-manipulation/bio-tech might be starting now, let us not forget that it is progress in our computation capabilities that makes all this possible. There is still lots more to be done in computational mathematics/biology/engineeering/science.
It baffles me that two-factor authentication patents can be valid. Haven't ATM machines always done that (One factor - the ATM card, the second factor is the PIN)? What about USB key+password decryption? I know the patent system is broken, but this should get thrown out when challenged. More interesting, what advice is Dotcom's lawyer giving him? Or does New Zealand legal system not provide lawyers to someone arrested there who can't afford one?
But how can I make that transition? The guy I'd need to hire would have to know a lot of languages and be proficient in all of them. Plus, I can't afford to pay someone $100k/year right now. Ideas?"
So let's see: you want (a) A person who knows a lot of languages, (b) Proficient in all of them - i.e. many years of experience, hopefully very skilled (i.e. not resume padding), and (c) Relatively inexpensive.
Good luck with that. You can't have all three. Hell, getting one really good developer who is inexpensive is hard. Fresh out of college, sure. Someone who has a lot of real world experience in a lot of languages? Nope.
Also, since you are talking about difficulties with transition, you want your outside developers to either do a knowledge transfer, or the new guy to spend time reading the old stuff independently - i.e. it will take him/her weeks (if not months) while learning, making it a loss of money early on. If you want to make a clean break (and not support your old work), then you can skip this step (assuming you found someone).
And finally, you do NOT pay for bugs? Then recover your costs (SLAs) or do your testing and refuse to pay till the code is clean. Saying developers are fine with it till bugs are brought to light means that the developers are not fine with it! And assuming your specifications are great ("there is no excuse for not testing their code") then either the devs are keeping testing to the end, or the timeline is too stringent, not giving enough time for testing. So your project management skills aren't great (you are being optimistic in what you tell your clients as a schedule), or you are picking lazy developers.
Ever project ends up being a battle...
So you don't learn from your mistakes either? Why do assume moving things in house will solve all your problems? The common factor for a lot of your projects seems to be you...
The LA times report mentions that another dolphin had alerted them a few days ago, but the operator didn't send anyone to check it out because they didn't expect to find anything. Does the system have a large number of false positives?
And incidentally democracy dies definitively once and for all.
There are plenty of democracies in the world. I doubt a bunch of power-hungry lunatics can destroy a system that has been tried repeatedly for more than 2000 years.
It if is designed for hunting there is little difference between hunting animals and hunting humans beyond the fact that humans can (and will) shoot back.
Sharks and lasers and all that...
If that were true. the companies selling those home warranties would be bankrupt. It is mathematically impossible for almost all customers to get more money out of their home warranties than they put.
Actually no. Insurance companies (and I'm guessing these warranty companies) take the money you give them and invest it to ensure they make a profit. They don't sit on it hoping to collect more than they pay out.
Yeah, it is unlikely that almost ALL people are getting more than they put it, but not mathematically impossible.
Just keep employees happy.
Some programmers like free dinners, and enjoy sleeping til noon and working til midnight, and don't mind the 12 hours because their best friends are at work.
Other programmers want to work 9-5 to drop kids off in the morning and get home to them at dinner.
Many programmers go through each of those stages in their carreers.
It's not an either/or question. Just make a workplace that accomodates both groups and keeps both happy.
While I agree in principle, it doesn't help in practice. Maybe someone young comes in who likes spending time away from the office, maybe has a significant other/children. If his boss is a workaholic (he might like being that way), junior feels pressured into staying late and sacrificing his interest so as not to "look bad" or get laid off when things go bad (as they eventually do, for factors outside the organization's control).
In fact, I'd say that having such a policy is good because if you really want to work, you can always network in from home or take your work home or something. But you don't pressure others into staying with you. You could do something like have a take out cafeteria at the end of the day - want to keep working? Grab a to-go bag and go wherever you want and work.
This is pretty much the textbook definition of a good programmer, not a mediocre one.
Ah, but the definition among many young-uns is all night marathon coding living off soda and cheetos with the occasional coffee/smoke break, and producing something that is lean, mean and impresses other programmers with cryptic lines that no one else understands. After all, who looks at code they wrote the previous semester? Whitespaces and comments are for n00bs - the code is the documentation.
Wow. Just wow. Did you even read what the original user problem was? I'll quote it here:
I clicked "install updates" in the update manager window, it failed, and next thing I know I can't apt-get install any packages, it just suggests I try apt-get -f install, which fails with the following message.
Assuming you are right that it was caused by a user error in which they dared to install stuff "manually" (by which I assume you mean downloaded a package outside the repositories and installed it, causing some dependency problems) without understanding dependencies, violations, how to avoid said violations - that makes them "retards"...? (FYI, please don't go on a Linux user community with that "people are dumb if they don't understand dependencies" attitude - you do more harm than good).
Don't get me wrong, Linux is great (and I use it). But thinking that everything is fine and dandy, while Windows/Macs are always plagued with problems is just as blind as assuming Windows/Macs are great and Linux sucks. If you are competent, any of them can be handled. If you aren't, you can mess up any of them.
Why do you assume things need to be turned around? By which I mean they might not be headed in the wrong direction completely, just going off on a tangent.
Here are some facts: more and more people will have at least one "consumption" device such as a tablet, as well as a smartphone. A section of the population will have a full-fledged development device (laptop/desktop) for work and/or at home. People will prefer that all the devices have a uniform interface and are part of one ecosystem.
Right now, I have a Windows 7 laptop, a Windows 8 desktop, a Linux desktop, Android phone, and a Kindle e-reader (with a Kindle Fire on the way). It is not as nice as a single-ecosystem environment CAN be. No single OS is great for all platforms yet - for me (I count Android and a Linux Desktop OS as different).
I believe every OS company will push for a unified experience, and that is the right way to go. Is Windows 8 the solution? No, but I don't think it is as horrible as most people make it out to be. On my dual-monitor setup, I prefer it to Windows 7.
The concept of a unified experience cannot and should not die. They need to take their user feedback, and act on it - specifically make the switch from desktop to tablet smoother. Have a start button that brings up the start screen, put in an edit box on the top of the start screen for desktops (making it more obvious - though if you just start typing on the start screen, it works), make it easier to find the shut-down and restart options on PCs/dekstops: little things like that.
IMO, Windows 7 is a great GUI-based desktop environment. For command line/remote access OS, I'd choose Linux any day. Windows 8 is a bit too tablet for desktops - they have the right idea, they just removed some stuff that people expect to have on desktops in their haste to make it tablet-ey. Scale back a bit. Don't try a single generation leap to a unified OS. Baby steps.
Negative feedback loop anyone?
Actually, I think you are describing positive feedback - less women in STEM workforce leads to less women in STEM classes, which leads to less women applying for STEM jobs which leads to even fewer women in STEM workforce.
Balancing the quota in the short term leads to biasing and loss of productivity, but in the long term it MIGHT lead to an actual equilibrium - say you want 50% of people in an industry to be women. Right now, not too many ladies are in that field, so you will hire the most competent women you can find while discarding better qualified men. Girls joining colleges might see the favorable bias, and enter that field (while boys shy away from it). With more women to choose from, you have more hiring choices (and since the ladies have greater competition, they can't just slide by - they will be competing against more women). Eventually, you can reach the equilibrium with men and women being as talented (assuming no inherent difference in abilities across the genders).
I don't claim that this is a worthy goal to pursue. I am just pointing out that this strategy of bias can (if implemented properly) get you to the desired gender ratio.
Under which guideline would you have down-modded his post? I don't have points myself right now, but I don't remember there being an option in the dropdown for "Unlikeable."
Flame-bait: There is no evidence at this time to back up his hypothesis that it was Islamic fundamentalists. Also, he used a phrase "If the world can't keep Islam and all the Islamic violence out, at least USA can try" - which would seem to imply that he has a problem with the religion and the violence, without differentiating the two (and which planet would he have them relocate to?).
Since you had the courage to post with your account, I decided not to down-mod you, but ask you a counter-question: How?
Many countries have problems with selective interpretations of religion (including Christianity - abortion clinics, for example). How would you prevent such behavior? By outlawing a religion (Won't help - you don't declare your religion upon entry into the US)? How about ethnic cleansing (huge collateral damage)?
And if you resort to such techniques, what does it say about the robustness of your country's ideals? If you drop them at the first sign of trouble, are they really worth preserving? India (the world's largest democracy) has had attacks for decades (citation). And they haven't spent years interfering in the Middle East. So if you have a workable solution, I'd love to hear it.
It's all well and good to be a one product company that does one thing really well. The truth is, you need to work with a lot of different organizations if you are in the E-reader business. And E-readers are no more end goals than Phones.
This is where the size of Amazon plays a big role. Sure, they sell other stuff. But they sell books (dead-tree versions). And music. And movies. And they can sit down with publishers and set terms, sign up authors, make money off advertising, and do a lot of other things that support their products. I bought a Kindle DX, and the lending library program is one of the big plus points for me. And I joined their Prime program, which gets me access to other digital content. These incentives keep me going back to Amazon. If I like one of the books I loan out, I buy it.
An e-reader is a device. It isn't a goal in itself. The content is the goal. The iPhone needed a carrier - just selling an unlocked phone for $600 wouldn't have helped Apple (not to start a flamewar, use any phone you want in this example) - they needed a carrier's backing to take off. So claiming you make a great e-reader isn't worth much unless you have the infrastructure to support it - THIS infrastructure is what Amazon can afford to buy because they sell washing machines.
It looks like this might be a blessing for the Ouya console, if they can support it. They don't have to develop multiplayer capabilities or host their own network.
Also, first post?
He claims that Silicon Valley CEO's support this bill. Well, let's see. Google never took a stance, Facebook and Microsoft rescinded their support, while AT&T and Verizon (big surprise), IBM, Intel and McAfee support it (didn't Intel buy McAfee?)
So no, Silicon Valley CEO's do NOT all support it - and even if they did, it isn't a ringing endorsement against privacy concerns. After all, what does the CEO know about the technical ramifications? In many cases (esp. for long established companies), they are business school graduates. They know that they are now off the hook for breaking privacy contracts. Gee, I'm surprised that some companies don't support it!
And for the love of God, can it be made illegal to give cool sounding names to acts and bills that sound all "PATRIOT-ic"? Not that I expect the politician who writes the bills is dumb enough to believe that they are rally helping their country (instead of their political backers), but it stops silly soundbites like "My opponent voted against the CyberSecurity bill".
Have you seen this video about Google's cars? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yd9Ij0INX0
The engineer spends some time talking about some of these things. They use Google's street view images to make detailed maps. The car knows what lanes exist, where the stop signs are, where the lanes are, what the surrounding terrain is like etc... before it even leaves the garage. If there's too big of a difference between the map and actual conditions, it switches to manual mode.
Current car AI systems aren't perfect. He even says in the video that they don't handle snow. But, a system with known limitations that preforms well in its competency zone is nothing to sneeze at.
And I wasn't sneezing at the system. I agree, it is a cool achievement. One flaw which I didn't see addressed (though I admit I skimmed through the video) was not about local information, but global dynamic information issues. What happens when lanes are closed? Even if it applies a correction after reaching the problem area, it might not have much appeal to a passenger. If I get stuck in a traffic jam that I could have found out about on the radio (had I been manually driving), I'd be pretty pissed off.
My point was that the state of automated decision making is quite advanced. Given accurate information, long term planning (home-work, for example) is pretty easy: route-planning is already a part of Google. For short-term control - we have been doing much more advanced control for decades. The real road-block as I see it is getting accurate information. Even his example about the bikes - once you get (and analyze) the information correctly, the actual mechanical control is quite straightforward.
No offense, but I believe you are just making shit up. Do you care to cite a reference? A number of my friends got a PhD and all they get is OPT which is good for 12 months and requires a (relevant) employment offer to match it those 12 months. My roommate is out of US now, because he had no way of staying here after graduating with a PhD.
You cannot apply for green card based on your PhD degree (unless you come from the parallel universe where common sense prevailed -- as that would be a great idea to allow this).
Actually, the OP is right: Reference
However, the process is hard - the OP made it sound easier than it is. You need to show that you are an extraordinary asset, with skills that are of national merit. You need several reference letters, a lot of top-notch publications (I have heard that you need more than most faculty positions require), and having contacts helps a lot (say, you had a famous advisor with lots of contacts during your Ph.D.).
The process is still quite long, so you might as well get a job and let them apply for you instead. If you can qualify for this type of green card, you should have no problem getting a job with a high pay.