>> Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'
Um...isn't this the way the world is supposed to work? Or is getting someone's attention and letting them know that it's time to move along now considered a microaggression?
I wouldn't say "grossly underfunded" - they currently pay about $15K/year per student. For that kind of money, you'd think you could get 1 teacher (making $50K or so) for every 5 students. http://www.isbe.net/finance/ve...
>> magically extract the funding for a comp sci program
Oh, but politicians in Chicago ARE good at that. In fact, very little of the spend mentioned above goes to student education. If the mayor kicked off a "CompSci Bootcamp" or a similar initiative, the money would flow but quite a lot would take a sideways route to connected contractors (with the appropriate kickbacks to the politicians and their family of course). That's the Chicago Way, and the reason why Chicago's taxes are among the highest in the country.
A week ago news broke that Chicago was padding its graduation rates. (They're really around 66% - yikes.) http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Then there's the story from TODAY about Chicago's school chief agreeing to plead guilty to bribery: http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
To me, this "code for all" announcement mainly seems timed to distract from the fact that Chicago's public schools are horribly ineffective dumps run by hacks.
From TFA, the bank wrote "We investigated your report immediately. However, the data you saw was not real customer sessions or data – just some debug information. Our developers corrected this later that day."
Sounds like a lot of crying over nothing. The bank acknowledged and fixed the problem. Winning, right?
>> Things sure have changed since thirty years ago, when schoolchildren were provided with materials like The BASIC Book to foster computational thinking!
Thirty years ago, we learned by sitting down in front an Apple II. You either learned the command line and programmed in BASIC or you didn't get to play any games at all. It was a great, distraction-free environment to learn the, er, basics.
>> I know I will spend at least a day dreading the potential toxic background radiation of interacting with the kernel community before I send anything
"About three quarters of Americans view NASA favorably – second only to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among federal agencies – according to a 2013 Pew Research survey." (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/23/americans-keen-on-space-exploration-less-so-on-paying-for-it/)
>> as opposed to the claim that by cutting the taxes of corporations and the wealthy somehow that improves everybody's lives
No, as opposed to the claim that we need to keep raising taxes/fees on middle class working people, which is what actually continues to happen. (Need a recent example? Go see Chicago...and the huge property tax increase they just pushed through.)
Where to cut? How about pensions, which are currently 25% of our total federal spend, and are the line item choking a lot of state and local governments too. Or the military at 22% of current spend. In other words, switch government employees to a 401K systems (even with more pay to make up the difference) or drop a couple of carrier groups from the Navy (maybe kill the F-35), and you'd have billions upon billions to spend on things taxpayers actually want, like NASA.
>> support is still there from the general public to go and do really challenging missions
Sure, it's there until the next commercial break when we're told we're awful people for trying to pay for it by cutting back on military/social/pork. The answer always seems to be "we need more taxes"...
Taxis and busses are already covered in ads, and some of them are now animated. With its solid (i.e., easy to scrub down), this car seems like it's ready made to be a taxi.
>> The solution is they need more budget, or the emissions requirements need to be reduced / changed so they can meet them within current budget.
Or...perhaps they could consider more options: 3) Reallocate resources away from other less-pressing issues to this one instead. 4) Replace existing staff with cheaper staff, spend less on salaries/pensions and more on stuff. 5) Outsource the testing to cheaper and more efficient third parties. (More tests, less costs.) 6) Start paying attention to industry trends so things like "the major producer of consumer diesel cars just introduced a 'clean' diesel" don't go unnoticed.
Personally, the whole VW thing doesn't really bother me. Tuning engine performance with electronics is common these days and people who tune for performance in regions that test for emissions (thankfully, not where I live) already know how to flip the right switches to get into compliance for an hour or a day.
I bought a VW diesel in 2005, the last year of the "old" line. When VW came back with their "clean diesel" a little over a year later, it came with a huge advertising campaign, and, as posters have noted in other forums, other car manufacturers publicly and privately wondered "how did VW do a clean diesel" without seeming to have changed their technology.
>> Byron Bunker, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s vehicle compliance program, says: “We can’t do a 100 percent check of every data point for every modelWe focus on new vehicles, new technologies or those where we have a concern.”
So...if that didn't raise a flag for "new vehicle or new technology" in the mid-2000's, one has to wonder what kind of dark place the EPA's head was in then.
>>...people who specialize in robotics, artificial intelligence, and other areas have an increasing opportunity to get involved...
Lemme fix that for ya':...defense contractors who can claim they can build out the necessary robotics, AI, and other areas have an increasing opportunity to get lucrative contracts...
>> evidence that we catch (and convict) a representative sample of criminals
You might be looking for something called "clearance" (what percentage of crimes are resolved) and it's tracked by type of crime, region of country, size of population center, etc. e.g., https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...
And people wonder why I quit Facebook years ago. I can't wait until the place turns into a nest of libel lawsuit discovery in the next few years - my popcorn is ready.
If you've committed a crime, it's more likely that you, rather than someone who has never committed a crime, will commit the next crime. The term is "recidivism."
If you've never committed a crime, I think it's about a 3% chance you'll commit a serious one. (http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet) However, if you have committed a serious crime, you'll about 40% likely to commit another serious one within 3 years. (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/recidivism_and_mental_illness_iowa_s_central_pharmacy_pilot_project_is_an.html)
Slashdot Mirror
>> Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'
Um...isn't this the way the world is supposed to work? Or is getting someone's attention and letting them know that it's time to move along now considered a microaggression?
It's just like the games industry: burn out 100 and you'll still have 250 lining up to take their place.
>> grossly underfunded piles of crap
I wouldn't say "grossly underfunded" - they currently pay about $15K/year per student. For that kind of money, you'd think you could get 1 teacher (making $50K or so) for every 5 students.
http://www.isbe.net/finance/ve...
>> magically extract the funding for a comp sci program
Oh, but politicians in Chicago ARE good at that. In fact, very little of the spend mentioned above goes to student education. If the mayor kicked off a "CompSci Bootcamp" or a similar initiative, the money would flow but quite a lot would take a sideways route to connected contractors (with the appropriate kickbacks to the politicians and their family of course). That's the Chicago Way, and the reason why Chicago's taxes are among the highest in the country.
A week ago news broke that Chicago was padding its graduation rates. (They're really around 66% - yikes.)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Then there's the story from TODAY about Chicago's school chief agreeing to plead guilty to bribery:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
To me, this "code for all" announcement mainly seems timed to distract from the fact that Chicago's public schools are horribly ineffective dumps run by hacks.
Isn't that called your undergrad degree?
>> Yale University had posted online 170,000 Library of Congress photographs
How many Library of Congresses is that?
>> So how do I get a raise in such an environment?
Do you basically live at the office? Raise, unless...
>> How do I differentiate myself from my coworkers?
Do they also live at the office? Then you can't.
From TFA, the bank wrote "We investigated your report immediately. However, the data you saw was not real customer sessions or data – just some debug information. Our developers corrected this later that day."
Sounds like a lot of crying over nothing. The bank acknowledged and fixed the problem. Winning, right?
>> Things sure have changed since thirty years ago, when schoolchildren were provided with materials like The BASIC Book to foster computational thinking!
Thirty years ago, we learned by sitting down in front an Apple II. You either learned the command line and programmed in BASIC or you didn't get to play any games at all. It was a great, distraction-free environment to learn the, er, basics.
>> Have you ever done something stupid and damaged your electronics?
If you haven't you don't really belong on SlashDot.
>> I know I will spend at least a day dreading the potential toxic background radiation of interacting with the kernel community before I send anything
Grammar Nazis? Your move.
>> Everything is based on current or near term science. I have almost given up on science fiction...
You are looking for "hard science fiction" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
>> Any other suggestions?
Not every author is "hard" all the time. Check out the list of novels, but I'm a little interested to know why you didn't list Clarke.
If only the Khmer Rouge had this tech...
"About three quarters of Americans view NASA favorably – second only to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among federal agencies – according to a 2013 Pew Research survey." (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/23/americans-keen-on-space-exploration-less-so-on-paying-for-it/)
>> as opposed to the claim that by cutting the taxes of corporations and the wealthy somehow that improves everybody's lives
No, as opposed to the claim that we need to keep raising taxes/fees on middle class working people, which is what actually continues to happen. (Need a recent example? Go see Chicago...and the huge property tax increase they just pushed through.)
Where to cut? How about pensions, which are currently 25% of our total federal spend, and are the line item choking a lot of state and local governments too. Or the military at 22% of current spend. In other words, switch government employees to a 401K systems (even with more pay to make up the difference) or drop a couple of carrier groups from the Navy (maybe kill the F-35), and you'd have billions upon billions to spend on things taxpayers actually want, like NASA.
>> support is still there from the general public to go and do really challenging missions
Sure, it's there until the next commercial break when we're told we're awful people for trying to pay for it by cutting back on military/social/pork. The answer always seems to be "we need more taxes"...
Taxis and busses are already covered in ads, and some of them are now animated. With its solid (i.e., easy to scrub down), this car seems like it's ready made to be a taxi.
>> The solution is they need more budget, or the emissions requirements need to be reduced / changed so they can meet them within current budget.
Or...perhaps they could consider more options:
3) Reallocate resources away from other less-pressing issues to this one instead.
4) Replace existing staff with cheaper staff, spend less on salaries/pensions and more on stuff.
5) Outsource the testing to cheaper and more efficient third parties. (More tests, less costs.)
6) Start paying attention to industry trends so things like "the major producer of consumer diesel cars just introduced a 'clean' diesel" don't go unnoticed.
Personally, the whole VW thing doesn't really bother me. Tuning engine performance with electronics is common these days and people who tune for performance in regions that test for emissions (thankfully, not where I live) already know how to flip the right switches to get into compliance for an hour or a day.
I bought a VW diesel in 2005, the last year of the "old" line. When VW came back with their "clean diesel" a little over a year later, it came with a huge advertising campaign, and, as posters have noted in other forums, other car manufacturers publicly and privately wondered "how did VW do a clean diesel" without seeming to have changed their technology.
>> Byron Bunker, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s vehicle compliance program, says: “We can’t do a 100 percent check of every data point for every modelWe focus on new vehicles, new technologies or those where we have a concern.”
So...if that didn't raise a flag for "new vehicle or new technology" in the mid-2000's, one has to wonder what kind of dark place the EPA's head was in then.
The actual article seems to be:
http://static.googleuserconten...
Oddly enough, they don't mention how wonderfully effective AdBlock software has been to help people avoid the recent rise of ad-based malware.
>> ...people who specialize in robotics, artificial intelligence, and other areas have an increasing opportunity to get involved...
Lemme fix that for ya': ...defense contractors who can claim they can build out the necessary robotics, AI, and other areas have an increasing opportunity to get lucrative contracts...
>> evidence that we catch (and convict) a representative sample of criminals
You might be looking for something called "clearance" (what percentage of crimes are resolved) and it's tracked by type of crime, region of country, size of population center, etc.
e.g., https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...
And people wonder why I quit Facebook years ago. I can't wait until the place turns into a nest of libel lawsuit discovery in the next few years - my popcorn is ready.
If you've committed a crime, it's more likely that you, rather than someone who has never committed a crime, will commit the next crime. The term is "recidivism."
If you've never committed a crime, I think it's about a 3% chance you'll commit a serious one. (http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet) However, if you have committed a serious crime, you'll about 40% likely to commit another serious one within 3 years. (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/recidivism_and_mental_illness_iowa_s_central_pharmacy_pilot_project_is_an.html)
For giggles, do a "ping localhost" on your Windows PC and tell me what happens. I'll bet it's ::1...