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User: JimSadler

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  1. Better Thinking on Will You Ever Be Able To Upload Your Brain? (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Maybe the very last thing we should want to do is duplicate the human brain. Obviously humans are not so good at thinking. We have nuts who run into public places and shoot people, people who live stoned or drunk and people with all kinds of behaviors that self defeat themselves. Maybe machine thinking is the right way to go and perhaps make the human brain more like a computer. For those that think machines are not smart enough try any of the major chess programs. They actually do play unique games of chess and they do it with radical skills. Yes, the rules of the game are programmed in as are the methods of "thinking" but the actions of the machine are creative and blunders can be quite rare. Humans no longer can compete with these machines and all too soon this will transfer into systems that are better than you are for managing your own life.

  2. Wrong Way on Dell To Buy EMC For $67 Billion (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Dell should plow that huge sum into making far better computers than anything they have produced in the past. They have too many problems with existing products.

  3. The Scam Returns on Chinese Company To Sell Genetically Modified Micro Pigs as Pets (abc.net.au) · · Score: 1

    There was quite a mini pig scam a while back when pot bellied pigs were popular. people paid huge money to but a dwarf pot belly and were left wondering why their baby pig just passed the 400 lb. mark. I had a friend with a pot bellied pig and that sucker learned the sound or smell of the pizza delivery car and would roll onto its back, wiggle its legs and squeal with glee when he heard the delivery car pulling up the long driveway.

  4. Proof? on How Academia Still Struggles With Sexual Harassment (buzzfeed.com) · · Score: 1

    Accusations without strong proofs mean nothing. If there is a single incident that has serious factual credibility then the man should be fired on the first offence. But these situations are rarely filmed or witnessed by several bystanders. At some point we need to have vey severe punishments for people who make complaints with no evidence at all to back up those claims. The sports team at Duke leaps to mind. Those boys spent a fortune on lawyers. Their team was ruined and their school year and future prospects were also damaged. So just why is the crack whore that made the false claims not doing a fifty year prison sentence?

  5. Re:Evil, Mean and Cruel + Dell on Dell, EMC Said To Be In Merger Talks (itworld.com) · · Score: 1

    I find it really odd that anyone would want a Dell computer. Both the designs as well as the quality are lacking in my humble opinion.

  6. In my area taxi drivers simply pay a set fee for the cab for the shift. It used to be $75. per shift. The driver keeps everything on the meter. A small number of drivers own their own cabs but operate through a major company like Yellow Cab. Most of the year in south Florida it is hell to make a living driving a cab. Some days the cab rental costs more than your intake and you actually lose money driving. If your car breaks five minutes into your shift they keep the $75. and you do not get another cab. If you are injured on the job they claim you are an independent contractor and in fact you are not but your medical care and disabilities will not be paid for. In training they actually tell you to make arrangements with the local whore houses to steer likely customers to them and have an agreed upon fee for delivering these customers with the whore house. So a driver that gets four sailors near the port can get quite a fee from the brothels. Meanwhile politicians have made the fees so demanding for taxi insurance policies that very few people can operate as an independent. Taxi drivers have other gimmicks such as demanding a $20. minimum fee or adding a large charge for using your debit or credit card. All in all the taxi business in city areas in Florida is so corrupt that taxis need to be made illegal for a while so that new standards and regulations can be put into play. A continuous film recording all of the interaction and conversations are recorded and held for 30 days would help. These drivers are robbing the IRS blind.

  7. It Will Change Everything. on Daimler Tests a Self-Driving Truck On the Autobahn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Think about it. One tractor trailer driver can easily be paid 60K per year and he must get food and shelter allowances as well. The law limits his hours in the cab so unless he is breaking the law that truck will sit still at least 12 hours a day. On the other hand a machine driving the truck requires zero rest so that truck can keep rolling 24/7 with brief stops for fueling. That means operation of a truck will be reduced in cost by 60% or greater. Further the customers will get much faster delivery of their orders. Trucking companies will want this like you won't believe. Taxis will also be automated and we will probably see Uber cars automated as well. The cost of owning such a vehicle will be far lower as the vehicle can stay in constant use. So you own the vehicle and it is out earning you money every minute you are not in your car. This means that we can reduce the actual number of cars on the road vastly. Further your automated car can drop your kids off at school and then go to the grocery store and have it loaded by the bag boy and the car brings your order home. Amazon is about to start a delivery service such that products from any store can be delivered to your home. One side effect is that hundreds of thousands of jobs are about to vanish because of this technology.

  8. Fear on Cape Verde Boulders Indicate Massive Tsunami 73,000 Years Ago · · Score: 1

    Imagine living near a beach and seeing an 800 ft. wave coming at you. The fear would have been awful for a few seconds before you were slammed down under tons of water.

  9. Conspiracy on EPA Gave Volkswagen a Free Pass On Emissions Ten Years Ago Due To Lack of Budget · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The extreme right wants to prove that any government regulations are wasteful and ineffectual. To make certain that all programs fail they insist on severely under funding the programs at which point they do become wasteful and ineffectual. There followers are so stupid that they can't even see what is actually going on.

  10. Crowding and Hills on San Francisco Still Among Most Dangerous For Pedestrians · · Score: 1

    Population density can cause accidents. Too many people and too many cars in too small an area leads to accidents. San Francisco is also famous for rather steep hills and twisty turns. One can well imagine that breaking distances are greater on the downhill slopes and any mechanical failure on a steep hill is likely to have amplified, negative results. cars simply rolling out of parking spaces when parked on an incline probably account for several deaths a year there.

  11. Re:CO2 on Foam-Eating Worms May Offer Solution To Mounting Waste · · Score: 1

    The article hit me the same way. We need to find out how to capture and bind CO2 in such a way as it remains isolated from us.

  12. Re:Likely parents as well on Houston's Gifted Education Program Biased Against Blacks and Latinos · · Score: 2

    It is cultural to some degree. Japanese children are pushed really severely to excel in education and they do! Yet there are minority races in the US in which a father may punish a son for being weird and reading a book. Parents are often a child's worst enemy.

  13. Re:define "gifted" on Houston's Gifted Education Program Biased Against Blacks and Latinos · · Score: 1

    Beware generalizations. Look at the few musical prodigies that crawl to a piano at the age of three and are able to play well in just a few minutes. Some abilities really are hard wired into a person by genetics or even a blow to the head whereas some cases of really dull minds seem to be a curse from birth. That is not true of most young people but there really are numerous exceptions to our expectations. The famous mathematician who came from a mud hut in India and was taken in by Oxford is a great example. The man was doing world class, breakthrough mathematics without any text books or education at all.

  14. I Don't Think So on Houston's Gifted Education Program Biased Against Blacks and Latinos · · Score: 1

    Poverty causes tremendous disadvantages in learning in US cultures. It does not relate to intelligence at all but rather activities and items available to people who have more money. Worse yet the damage done by limited stimulation and behavior modeling in the first three years of life largely sets the stage for what will take place for the rest of a child's life. Overcoming that poor start the first three years is usually impossible. testing really measures the ability of the person taking the test to achieve the tasks presented on the test. one either knows or does not know the answers.After all the area of a circle is just that. A young person either knows how to calculate that area or he does not. When it is cold the poor get colder. When it is hot the poor get hotter. The only way to make that untrue is to put money in the hands of the poor and it must be quite a bit of money and one must expect really bad decisions as it may take several years for people to re- pattern their lives. The problem gets worse as most low end jobs really are aimed at making people wage slaves rather than providing a living and if those wage slaves do not need those low end jobs people simply will not take them or perform them well.

  15. Perfect Timing on Uber Raided By Dutch Authorities, Seen As 'Criminal Organization' · · Score: 1

    This comes the same day as Amazon announces an Uber like service for package deliveries to the home. Want something from Wall Mart? It will be waiting for the Uber driver to deliver it to your door.

  16. No Way ! on Edward Snowden Promotes Global Treaty To Curtail Surveillance · · Score: 0

    The problem is that people seek to expand what the word privacy is all about. We are not talking about two people, home alone, whispering a secret to each other. If I go to the grocery store the items I buy are in plain view in a public space. If i use a debit card to pay for the groceries I have shared that data with banks, the grocery store and god knows who else. It is not private information. So if the data is sold to my life insurance company or my medical insurance company why should I gripe? After all, the purpose of privacy should not be to deceive others who have a financial interest in my health and longevity. Now the second layer of use should kick in. Suppose I buy about five quarts of vodka every week. If that data is mined and passed along to the local police force it might pay to have them make note of the times when my car pulls into my driveway. A sudden police stop as I approached my home and a field sobriety test administered making certain that I do not drive impaired. If that five quarts of vodka is for my personal use you could place a bet that i drive drunk most of the time. Wouldn't it be nice to know the alcohol habits of your surgeon or even your lawyer? And again when you buy liquor at a liquor store it is a public transaction in every sense of the word. Surveillance is only a problem when individuals or companies are not allowed to do what the government does. Equality must extend to data mining and analysis.

  17. Future Challenges on Jeff Atwood NY Daily News Op-Ed: Learning To Code Is Overrated · · Score: 1

    Human knowledge is doubling at about every three years. That implies that we need to cram a lot more education into our students which is a difficult if not back breaking demand. Obviously nations like Japan traditionally are quite severe in the demands put upon children. Americans would see their system as child abuse. But against that we have a strong counter point. If you want great trumpet players you must train many thousands of trumpet players for several years for the great ones to rise from the mundane players. Programming should be about like that. If we train 30 million young people to very high levels of programming we will see programming super stars emerge. We very well may need those super stars to survive as a nation. If that seems extreme then simply consider that drones use a lot of computer programming and if an enemy has and edge your drones are dead meat. Our air craft will soon fly without humans on board. Naval war ships are being designed to operate without human crews. There is no way to send reliable messages from afar to such war weapons. It has to be done by heavily protected, internal computers. Programmers will need to have the highest level of skills to keep us ahead of other nations.

  18. Who Pays on Reports: Volkswagen Was Warned of Emissions Cheating Years Ago · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The share holders end up paying for this mess and the share holders never had a clue. Meanwhile the typical manager or executive who was responsible has probably already sold off their shares and are beyond punishment. Seriously when will people get the point that corporations exist in order to avoid responsibility. Doesn't the term LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) declare upfront the intent to not be liable or responsible?

  19. I suspect that advanced cultures would deeply value data collection and analysis and would like very open communications. Think of an ant hive. As far as we know every ant in the hive is able to receive as much communications as every other ant. As very advanced cultures there would be almost no danger from less evolved cultures and very advanced cultures are by definition rare compared to more mundane cultures. One would think that truly advanced cultures would have no need for war or aggression but be more than able to easily defend themselves if attacked. This is the very reason that Babe Ruth could point to the spot at which the ball would go over the fence when he hit home runs. there was nothing the opponent could do to stop him. The more advanced a species becomes the less one has to be concerned about enemies. In a way encryption really is an act of war. In the human equation hidden equals sinister.

  20. Re: there is no on Study: Man-Made Global Warming First Became Evident In the Mid 20th Century · · Score: 1

    We need no sophistry. Simply go to a local beach an ask if the water line is advancing. Rising seas prove global warming. As to the degree which man adds to the problem it is irrelevant. We need to cut back on human generated heat whether it adds much to warming or not. The time spent avoiding the issue would be far better used planting trees and shutting down coal and oil fired industries.

  21. There Is no Fox News on Government Finds New Emails Clinton Did Not Hand Over · · Score: 0, Troll

    Any poll or utterance from Fox News is bound to be corrupt, biased, lies.

  22. Number 2 ? on Don't Worry, That Blimp Isn't Watching You Much · · Score: 1

    It has been my understanding that the feds have been using a tethered blimp at the extreme edge of southern Florida to detect drug runners for more than a decade. Perhaps it is now out of service but a few years back they were observing more drug boats racing for the edge of the everglades than they could hope to confront and a good number of planes dropping packages from the air as well. There was a lot of flack as the defenses were way down during popular events such as Super Bowl and Christmas mornings.

  23. I live eight miles from a nuke that is at sea level with a rising sea and disappearing beaches. It makes me wonder what kind of hell closing that plant and cleaning it out will be. Meanwhile in Miami they also have a nuclear plant that rising seas will effect. So just how does Miami evacuate 2 million people permanently.

  24. Hedge Rows on Tank Hack Ensured Farmland Didn't Thwart the Invasion of Europe · · Score: 1

    I think it was the hedge rows and not trees that were so difficult for tanks. Tanks can deal with trees rather easily but the hedge rows would snarl the tracks and everything else on a tank. If you think about it trees will make a poor cattle fence as cows can simply walk between the trees as there has to be a gap for trees to grow. Generally trees do not grow well, shoulder to shoulder. A hedge row can make a great fence. As I recall it was a farm boy from a rural state that showed the staff how to attach an item to the front of a tank that would rip through a hedge row. Once the tanks had that attachment they went through rather easily. Regardless of all of that a landing at Normandy was like an invitation to hell on Earth. It's a wonder anyone came back sane or alive.

  25. Racist in Effect not in Intent on Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes · · Score: 1

    Crime and poverty go hand in hand. Usually poverty occurs among minorities more than upon the majority race. Better said crime that is easy to detect is common among minorities. Crimes behind mansion walls are normally not in the eye of cops. Predictive policing can be as simple as recording what area has the most incidents at a certain time of day and then putting extra cops at that location at that time of day. The effect can be racist simply because cops are evaluated from the number of arrests they make. Is it better to assign much more police effort to white collar crime or to arrest 1,000 people trying to buy crack or carrying an illegal weapon? I suspect that to prevent social chaos that it would be far better to assign a lot of police effort to the types of crimes normally committed by businesses such as falsely labeling workers as independent contractors and thus raising money from penalties rather than spending money locking up people for carrying a knife which may well be needed to survive in some neighborhoods.