I've been a "left wing greenie" since the 70's, my 80yo parents are both life long "war baby" conservatives who grew up under Winston Chuchill, I love my elderly parents, I don't agree with everything they say but that doesn't make me hate them? I'm also old enough to clearly remember the 70's and 80's and I think you are correct, Thatcher deserves credit for pulling the UK out of a bad financial position, even though her methods polarized the political landscape. It should also be noted that "trickle down economics" has also ultimately been discredited by the recent GFC but you can hardly blame Thatcher and Reagan for the extremes of deregulation implemented by others that followed their tenure. For example, here in Oz it was the left wing treasurer and later PM (Paul Keating) who pushed for deregulating the banks.
Having said that, Thatcher, Reagan and Malcom Fraser (Australia's late 70's, conservative PM) were not even the same species as GWB, Palin, and Tony Abbot (current Oz PM). For example Thatcher was the first world leader to publically acknowledge AGW is a problem and Reagan personally sought and obtained an international cap and trade treaty on sulphur emissions that has been very successful in curbing acid rain. I suspect Reagan was taking his cues from Thatcher on the acid rain thing since she had read chemistry at Oxford before becoming involved in politics. Fraser's "radical" policy on refugees was closer to today's green party policy than it is to either of the majors who currently are so close to each other that the only meaningful debate on the subject is which third world nation should host our immigration gulags..
Hate parades
Aside from the fact that ALL leaders make good and bad decisions, celebrating the death of anyone pretty much makes you a douchebag in my opinion. Headlines such as "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" were a low point even by the UK's notoriously low tabloid "standards". Far right conservatives flying an upside down flag after Obama's election were equally obscene.
Liberals hate conservatives
The real problem is human nature, ideas and long term results are simply ignored because people pigeon hole others by whatever political colour they wear on the outside. This stereotyping separates people into political "football teams" and you're not suppose to just enjoy a game of football, society expects you to be a one-eyed supporter of a particular team. GWB summed up that attitude succinctly with the infamous words addressed to the entire planet - "You're either with us or against us". That anti-human attitude, wherever it raises it's ugly head, is what I "hate" about politics.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to be anymore immune to the tribal nature of humans than anyone else on the planet, however just being aware of it's existence does make one stop and think every now and then.
Heh, so did I, for about AU$400. It was built like a tank and weighed about the same, was still working when the analog signal was turned off in early 2000's
How about not taxing companies for anything except money earned as interest. Instead, tax the individual in such a way that the difference in after tax income between the average and the top is limited to a single order of magnitude. Studies have shown time and again that if the gap between rich and poor is small (as in some Scandinavian countries) then people are generally more content. IIRC Sweden applies monetary penalties such as fines on the principle that the penalty should be equally distressing to rich or poor. So if last year your income was 10X the average, then so is your fine.
Sure at some point you might end up paying 100% tax on the surplus and can genuinely claim to be "working for the government". However the reward bestowed by society for reaching the maximum is not paid in money, it is paid in leisure time and it's your prerogative to spend it "working for the government" if that's what you want to do with it.
The US economy is a chocolate cake baked by 300 million people using a government recipe that includes ingredients such as property law. Right now a handful of those 300 million have their face buried in the cake while the rest stand around sniffing the chocolate in the air.
Amazing creatures, some of their less well known abilities - They can communicate over long distances (several km) using ultra low frequencies, they pick up the vibrations through their feet, not their ears. In the Congo they dig "post holes" with one foot to mark the correct route where forest paths branch. They can drink stagnant water that would kill most other large mammals, they know the difference from fresh water and no matter how hot and thirsty they cautiously wad in and gently sip the later of fresh water off the surface with their trunk, the older ones restrain the young and teach them how to do it without stirring up the toxic crap on the bottom.
Should a judge learn to fly a passenger jet if there is a pilot on trial for negligence? - Think about it, judges are there to listen to testimony and make decisions based on the facts presented to them, they are essentially laymen in everything but the law. So they don't use email, they probably also don't use slashdot, twitter, facebook, youtube, need I list them all? - Should the judge use all of them before he makes a decision on a case that involves a computer?
I'm all for ending prohibition but lets not oversell it by claiming it will make a big difference to the level of gun violence in the US. Mexico maybe, maybe not, the existing Mexican cartels / US gangs will have to find something else to do and they are likely to look for something with a high ROI that their organization is already good at, kidnapping, extortion, protection racket, maybe a Mexican based resurgence in Caribbean piracy. I say they would need "something else to do because no good would come from allowing the big boys to survive by "turning legit", that simply opens the doors to legitimate political power for them.
I think you have nailed it. I first saw "big dog" a few years back and was very impressed so you had me convinced at point 1. I was unaware google had bought the company.
As I said, I might be reading into it a bit, but the timing and notions just seem weird.
I don't think you are misreading anything, most politicians and CEO are smart people, they say stupid things that they themselves do not believe for a reason. Notice how he doesn't mention Boston Dynamics directly, this is because politics and big business are a "gentleman's game", and a gentleman will play the idea, not the man.
The bullshit is motivated by the desire to "capture the market".The truth is that the ideas are complementary rather than competitive, and the robot market is already big enough to support both ideas, even though the demand for stationary manufacturing robots will probably always be higher than it is for "beast of burden" robots. For instance, you wouldn't use big dog to move stuff around in a large military warehouse, just as you wouldn't use a robotic forklift to carry stuff to front line troops in a war zone.
I started my working life in the mid-seventies, back then people thought robots would eventually take over manufacturing. They believed that this would cause working hours to drop well below the standard 40hr week. To a large extent robots have now taken over manufacturing, mining, finance and telecoms, to name a few industries. The shorter week never happened, mass unemployment did not materialise. My question is what the fuck is everybody doing for a job these days? - Servicing robots?
The flagellum has a wheel at it's base that allows the tail to rotate, but they do not use them like the wheels on a cart. Spheres are more commonly used by nature as a kind of wheel, eg: tumble weeds roll around and spread seeds, armadillos and wood lice curl into a ball and roll away when attacked.
Law doesn't say it has to be hidden or clandestine...the jury exists only to determine guilt based on the law.
Maybe you should read the actual law before pre-empting what the judge might say, it clearly includes the words "intent", "secrecy" and "privacy" in the following excerpt - "[Thou shall not photograph people's wobbly bits] with the intent to secretly conduct or hide such activity, when the other person in such place and circumstance would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in not being so photographed".
So the prosecutor needs a bit more than just the video, he has to demonstrate the defendant intended to film the victim's "private parts", was attempting to conceal his true intent, and that the victim had an expectation of privacy. A naked toddler running around on a public beach clearly does not have an expectation of privacy and it would be very difficult to demonstrate secrecy and intent in such a scenario (assuming the defence lawyer is not in a coma). Why the chief prosecutor would bring such a case before the judge will also be questioned by any judge who (in your own words) is just interested in what "the law states". OTOH making upskirt videos of strangers with a hidden camera in your shoe is now clearly illegal.
As a non-American the jury nullification thing doesn't apply to me, nor do I have to suffer elected judges who don't have a clue what they are doing. However the concept of jury nullification is interesting, a majority vote by a jury that the law is unjust should at least delay a verdict until the legislators have publically reviewed both the case and the law. With such a system (US*) public prosecutors may become less keen to use bogus charges as bargaining chips to score a "confession" on a less "scary" charge.
And that wasn't enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
And yet a guy in Texas was recently executed on nothing more than the testimony of a couple of people simply because the governor wanted to be president and saw an opportunity to prove he was "tough on crime". Of course he was nowhere near as rich and famous as OJ. With such inconsistent outcomes I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would support capital punishment
Involuntary actions....triggered by MUSIC are the most relevant questions, surely you hear music when your not playing your violin? Do you NATURALLY react? BTW: my score was 58 - I can't play any instrument and I don't spend a lot of money on music.
AI suffers from continuously moving goal posts because nobody has a good definition of intelligence.. A computer (Watson) has already convincingly beat humans at general knowledge. Watson is an amazing technological feat however the general public does not recognise Watson as intelligent in any meaningful way, they have the same reaction as my wife when they see Watson playing Jeopardy - "It's looking up the answers on the internet, so what?". They don't even understand the problem Watson has solved, when the general public talk about AI they are thinking about robots that appear in modern movies and are basically indistinguishable from humans (eg:Terminator), something that is not only intelligent but also has also (nearly) mastered human social intelligence.
In a way they are right, emotions drive what the logical mind thinks about and AI cannot (yet) communicate, let alone reproduce, human emotions, I have long thought that this is partly because AI researchers in general concentrate on modelling the brain and more or less ignore the huge network of intricate sensors and actuators attached to it.
Don't care who he is but I would like to know how many BC the guy mined before he found someone else who would accept them. What would happen to the currency if he suddenly dumped $US10T worth of pre-mined BC onto the market? - Even if BC were as ubiquitous as US dollars such a large injection of "new money" would cause a huge spike in inflation and everyone would suffer, in today's BC market the spike would be so large as to render them worthless..
Not during my 50 odd years on the planet*, before the luggable betamax cameras came onto the market in the mid 70's, jurnos would mill around people's homes with a pencil, a notepad, and maybe a camera with an enormous flash bulb attachment that recorded pictures on strips of photo-sensitive plastic called "film". At some point (about the mid 90's) the technology reached the point where we are now. ie: A one man TV camera crew can run faster with his camera equipment than a jurno can run with her high heels and pencil skirt.
* - This is not to say that there are no journalists who live up to the ideological promises of a free press, just that they are rare in any era.
In trouble for other people's actions (the idiots who would trample others). That's because the government hates freedom and ignores the first amendment, though.
Idiots? - When you are part of a crowd of tightly packed humans that suddenly stampede in response to a universally recognised alarm call you have two choices, join in or get trampled. The only idiots in the equation are the free speech extremists who think there must be a third choice because they are absolutely convinced their dogma trumps human nature.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's, really good music has always been "harder to find", only cream of 70's musicians lived on, the rest were promptly forgotten. Same with any era, my adult kids still listen to the Nirvana and Gun's and Roses they grew up with and enjoy it just as much as I enjoy Floyd and Marley. The difference since about the late 80's is that parents and their children often have similar tastes in music.
I can't comprehend how someone could not enjoy ANY music, music is the fundamental pre-cursor to language, not only is it deeply ingrained into humans but species as diverse as whales and grasshoppers use music to communicate with each other.
Hard to tell, you can get "identical effects" (vivid visual and auditory hallucinations) simply by forcing yourself to stay awake for more than ~60hrs.
Exactly, charging for an install is not permitted under the license agreement for using the FireFox trademark in their marketing material. Dell can keep charging whatever they want for it if they stop using the trademarked name.
It's also pretty clear from the summary - "Our trademark policy makes clear that this is not permitted and we are investigating this specific report. Also from the summary, Dell responded by changing the subject "saying that this practice is okay because the company is charging for the service and not the product."
I have a BSc in computer science and operations research (logistics), that bestows the title of "computer scientist" on me but I prefer the term "software developer", I currently do software development at a place that calls itself a "systems engineering research centre". There are lots of stats and data involved in the job but these things do not add up to a scientist doing science.
A Phd is valuable in that it demonstrates that you can research a given topic in an academic setting and formally communicate your findings to others, it's practically mandatory if you want to get someone to pay you to ponder the universe full time. Having said that, Science itself is a philosophy not a vocation, if you live by that philosophy then you are a "Scientist", if you are incurious and just enjoy the fruits of science then you're probably a "Utilitarian".
As to TFA, as an Aussie I've never heard the term "data scientist", I figure it must be American MBA's looking for the word "statistician". They should know however that data mining the internet has been "solved" , IBM are starting to make instances of 'Watson" available to commerce. And speaking of doctors, Watson is also expected to pass the standard exam for a US medical license.
Re:Not sure what you're talking about
on
The New PHP
·
· Score: 1
low level details of this or that's garbage collection and memory management is way, way down the priority list somewhere
Agreed, any memory leaks or performance problems should fall out in testing. The major problem I have with PHP is it's poor backward compatibility with previous versions, that sort-coming can quickly turn into a giant configuration/maintenance headache. Glad to see they are trying to do something about it.
[E]ncourage independent learning and discovery through projects and reading and not relying solely on lectures
Or put another way, what you get from education is proportinal to what you put into it.
In the late nineties my son was starting his last year of (Aussie) HS, he came home and showed me a single A4 sheet of paper printed on both sides. He said to me with a sigh of incredulity - "Our computer teacher thinks this pascal project will take all year". I read the paper, it started with "phase one" - a simple in memory table to store and retrive some lines of text. Each point added some functionality that eventually added up to a multi-user file based db with a gui front end and some pretend bussiness logic in between, it was a well written spec that nicely covered the basic concepts and trade-offs. I looked back at my son and said, "If done properly, hes' right!".
It's probably the most encouraging thing any of my kids every brought home from their teacher's, although the math teacher who taught algebra with a spreed sheet was pretty good too. Not only did it cover the basics of most commercial applications, it also required a sustained effort and most importantly with each step in the project you paid for what you didn't get right in the previous steps with extra re-work. The way I helped him was not to solve all his problems for him but to give him hints like - "You should read up on something called binary trees".
Unashamed pride: He's 33 now and I'm happy to say he graduarted his EE degree with first class honurs and is now in a financial postion such that he can choose to work on what interestes him the most as opposed to what puts food on the table. Having spent the first 15yrs of my working life as a semi-skilled labourer I have absolutely no doubt that my (mature age) university education had a benifitial influence to both my children as well as myself.
The basic premise of capitalism is that the guy with the capital takes both the financial risks and the financial rewards. Labour prostitutes itself to capital for the best deal it can get. The government sets and enforces the rules of trade (ie: the "market"), some are closed markets (eg: plutonium market), others are "free" for anyone to participate (eg: NYSE). However without government regulations (in particular property law), there is no "free market" or any other kind of market, the entire edifice simply collapses back to the default system of trade - anarchic barter.
Domestic laws and international trade agreements are the "mysterious force" that motivates the "invisible hand" to move in a particular direction in search of profit. Unfortunately for most of us that direction has been towards greater income inequity for the last 4-5 decades, so much so that the world's richest 500 now have a greater combined net income than the world's poorest 3.5 billion, to put that number in perspective there were only 3.0 billion people alive when I was born..
The "system" can and should be changed to one where labour is actually rewarded and the difference between riches and poorest is one or two orders of magnitude, not the current six or seven. How this can be achieved I have absolutely no idea, all the other "isims" are just as bad, if not worse. For instance Karl Marx starts his manifesto with the words "To each according to need, from each according to ability", it's a really good opening line that is hard to disagree with without looking like a sociopath, but it goes down hill rather rapidly after that first sentence.
There is however hope that the pendulum might swing the other way. This whole (modern) democracy thing can be traced back to a group of wealthy merchants forcing a warmongering English King to sign the Magna Carta. Wealthy merchants today also have the upper hand with the current globalization thing and wars are bad for everyone except those in the (closed market) international arms trade. Many of the really big multi-nationals have openly embraced moves like the Sarbanes-Oxley act in the US and anti-corruption laws in the UK/EU. I'm sure like me, many people here on Slashdot have to suffer mandatory "corporate governance training" as I do once a year to officially remind us these laws exist and apply no matter where you do business. But at least it's a serious attempt from the "big end of town" to move the invisible hand in the right direction. - Assuming that you think enforcing the same basic market rules no matter where or with whom the company does business is a sensible step towards levelling out a very lopsided global playing field.
That's LordLucless's point, you perceived a subtext where there was none and then promptly put the words of the subtext (that only you perceive) into the author's mouth. It has nothing to do with comprehension and everything to do with your pre-existing (and firmly held) opinion on the subject. You appear to see only the negative impacts of gentrification, but like many social issues it is a double edged sword. Sure some people are permanently priced out of the area where they grew up but others find job/business opportunities that would not be possible in that area without the influx of cash required to rebuild a slum.
Disclaimer: Yes I have experienced being homeless, in my early twenties I lived in a 4 man tent for 3 months with wife, baby, and dog in tow. The problem of inequity is not due to people living in nice towns, there is more than enough wealth in the US (and the world for that matter) for everyone to enjoy a reasonable living standard. The problem is a global society where it's considered normal to have the world's richest 500 people "earn" more than world's poorest 3,500,000,000 people in any given year. According to Red Cross figures, the combined income of these fortunate 500 is enough to end world poverty four times over. I have nothing personal against these people, I actually quite like some of them. However society has been overgenerous to them, we grow resentful of their wealth and power but do nothing about it because deep inside we all wish to be in their shoes "one day".
Today the federal government is over-taxing and underspending.
I'm not from the US but I believe that the US government is currently spending something like $1.00 for every $0.60 it earns in revenue. Income inequality in the US is not entirely the fault of politicians and CEO's, it is the unintended side-effect of a society that still believes they too can become obscenely rich through honest, hard work - if they could "just get a break".
Slashdot Mirror
admit a conservative like Thatcher was right.
I've been a "left wing greenie" since the 70's, my 80yo parents are both life long "war baby" conservatives who grew up under Winston Chuchill, I love my elderly parents, I don't agree with everything they say but that doesn't make me hate them? I'm also old enough to clearly remember the 70's and 80's and I think you are correct, Thatcher deserves credit for pulling the UK out of a bad financial position, even though her methods polarized the political landscape. It should also be noted that "trickle down economics" has also ultimately been discredited by the recent GFC but you can hardly blame Thatcher and Reagan for the extremes of deregulation implemented by others that followed their tenure. For example, here in Oz it was the left wing treasurer and later PM (Paul Keating) who pushed for deregulating the banks.
Having said that, Thatcher, Reagan and Malcom Fraser (Australia's late 70's, conservative PM) were not even the same species as GWB, Palin, and Tony Abbot (current Oz PM). For example Thatcher was the first world leader to publically acknowledge AGW is a problem and Reagan personally sought and obtained an international cap and trade treaty on sulphur emissions that has been very successful in curbing acid rain. I suspect Reagan was taking his cues from Thatcher on the acid rain thing since she had read chemistry at Oxford before becoming involved in politics. Fraser's "radical" policy on refugees was closer to today's green party policy than it is to either of the majors who currently are so close to each other that the only meaningful debate on the subject is which third world nation should host our immigration gulags..
Hate parades Aside from the fact that ALL leaders make good and bad decisions, celebrating the death of anyone pretty much makes you a douchebag in my opinion. Headlines such as "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" were a low point even by the UK's notoriously low tabloid "standards". Far right conservatives flying an upside down flag after Obama's election were equally obscene.
Liberals hate conservatives
The real problem is human nature, ideas and long term results are simply ignored because people pigeon hole others by whatever political colour they wear on the outside. This stereotyping separates people into political "football teams" and you're not suppose to just enjoy a game of football, society expects you to be a one-eyed supporter of a particular team. GWB summed up that attitude succinctly with the infamous words addressed to the entire planet - "You're either with us or against us". That anti-human attitude, wherever it raises it's ugly head, is what I "hate" about politics.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to be anymore immune to the tribal nature of humans than anyone else on the planet, however just being aware of it's existence does make one stop and think every now and then.
I bought a 13" Sony Trinitron on sale, for $399.
Heh, so did I, for about AU$400. It was built like a tank and weighed about the same, was still working when the analog signal was turned off in early 2000's
How about not taxing companies for anything except money earned as interest. Instead, tax the individual in such a way that the difference in after tax income between the average and the top is limited to a single order of magnitude. Studies have shown time and again that if the gap between rich and poor is small (as in some Scandinavian countries) then people are generally more content. IIRC Sweden applies monetary penalties such as fines on the principle that the penalty should be equally distressing to rich or poor. So if last year your income was 10X the average, then so is your fine.
Sure at some point you might end up paying 100% tax on the surplus and can genuinely claim to be "working for the government". However the reward bestowed by society for reaching the maximum is not paid in money, it is paid in leisure time and it's your prerogative to spend it "working for the government" if that's what you want to do with it.
The US economy is a chocolate cake baked by 300 million people using a government recipe that includes ingredients such as property law. Right now a handful of those 300 million have their face buried in the cake while the rest stand around sniffing the chocolate in the air.
possess abilities we've previously overlooked
Amazing creatures, some of their less well known abilities - They can communicate over long distances (several km) using ultra low frequencies, they pick up the vibrations through their feet, not their ears. In the Congo they dig "post holes" with one foot to mark the correct route where forest paths branch. They can drink stagnant water that would kill most other large mammals, they know the difference from fresh water and no matter how hot and thirsty they cautiously wad in and gently sip the later of fresh water off the surface with their trunk, the older ones restrain the young and teach them how to do it without stirring up the toxic crap on the bottom.
Should a judge learn to fly a passenger jet if there is a pilot on trial for negligence? - Think about it, judges are there to listen to testimony and make decisions based on the facts presented to them, they are essentially laymen in everything but the law. So they don't use email, they probably also don't use slashdot, twitter, facebook, youtube, need I list them all? - Should the judge use all of them before he makes a decision on a case that involves a computer?
I'm all for ending prohibition but lets not oversell it by claiming it will make a big difference to the level of gun violence in the US. Mexico maybe, maybe not, the existing Mexican cartels / US gangs will have to find something else to do and they are likely to look for something with a high ROI that their organization is already good at, kidnapping, extortion, protection racket, maybe a Mexican based resurgence in Caribbean piracy. I say they would need "something else to do because no good would come from allowing the big boys to survive by "turning legit", that simply opens the doors to legitimate political power for them.
As I said, I might be reading into it a bit, but the timing and notions just seem weird.
I don't think you are misreading anything, most politicians and CEO are smart people, they say stupid things that they themselves do not believe for a reason. Notice how he doesn't mention Boston Dynamics directly, this is because politics and big business are a "gentleman's game", and a gentleman will play the idea, not the man.
The bullshit is motivated by the desire to "capture the market".The truth is that the ideas are complementary rather than competitive, and the robot market is already big enough to support both ideas, even though the demand for stationary manufacturing robots will probably always be higher than it is for "beast of burden" robots. For instance, you wouldn't use big dog to move stuff around in a large military warehouse, just as you wouldn't use a robotic forklift to carry stuff to front line troops in a war zone.
I started my working life in the mid-seventies, back then people thought robots would eventually take over manufacturing. They believed that this would cause working hours to drop well below the standard 40hr week. To a large extent robots have now taken over manufacturing, mining, finance and telecoms, to name a few industries. The shorter week never happened, mass unemployment did not materialise. My question is what the fuck is everybody doing for a job these days? - Servicing robots?
The flagellum has a wheel at it's base that allows the tail to rotate, but they do not use them like the wheels on a cart. Spheres are more commonly used by nature as a kind of wheel, eg: tumble weeds roll around and spread seeds, armadillos and wood lice curl into a ball and roll away when attacked.
Law doesn't say it has to be hidden or clandestine...the jury exists only to determine guilt based on the law.
Maybe you should read the actual law before pre-empting what the judge might say, it clearly includes the words "intent", "secrecy" and "privacy" in the following excerpt - "[Thou shall not photograph people's wobbly bits] with the intent to secretly conduct or hide such activity, when the other person in such place and circumstance would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in not being so photographed".
So the prosecutor needs a bit more than just the video, he has to demonstrate the defendant intended to film the victim's "private parts", was attempting to conceal his true intent, and that the victim had an expectation of privacy. A naked toddler running around on a public beach clearly does not have an expectation of privacy and it would be very difficult to demonstrate secrecy and intent in such a scenario (assuming the defence lawyer is not in a coma). Why the chief prosecutor would bring such a case before the judge will also be questioned by any judge who (in your own words) is just interested in what "the law states". OTOH making upskirt videos of strangers with a hidden camera in your shoe is now clearly illegal.
As a non-American the jury nullification thing doesn't apply to me, nor do I have to suffer elected judges who don't have a clue what they are doing. However the concept of jury nullification is interesting, a majority vote by a jury that the law is unjust should at least delay a verdict until the legislators have publically reviewed both the case and the law. With such a system (US*) public prosecutors may become less keen to use bogus charges as bargaining chips to score a "confession" on a less "scary" charge.
* - Google "prison population by nation".
And that wasn't enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
And yet a guy in Texas was recently executed on nothing more than the testimony of a couple of people simply because the governor wanted to be president and saw an opportunity to prove he was "tough on crime". Of course he was nowhere near as rich and famous as OJ. With such inconsistent outcomes I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would support capital punishment
Involuntary actions....triggered by MUSIC are the most relevant questions, surely you hear music when your not playing your violin? Do you NATURALLY react? BTW: my score was 58 - I can't play any instrument and I don't spend a lot of money on music.
AI suffers from continuously moving goal posts because nobody has a good definition of intelligence.. A computer (Watson) has already convincingly beat humans at general knowledge. Watson is an amazing technological feat however the general public does not recognise Watson as intelligent in any meaningful way, they have the same reaction as my wife when they see Watson playing Jeopardy - "It's looking up the answers on the internet, so what?". They don't even understand the problem Watson has solved, when the general public talk about AI they are thinking about robots that appear in modern movies and are basically indistinguishable from humans (eg:Terminator), something that is not only intelligent but also has also (nearly) mastered human social intelligence.
In a way they are right, emotions drive what the logical mind thinks about and AI cannot (yet) communicate, let alone reproduce, human emotions, I have long thought that this is partly because AI researchers in general concentrate on modelling the brain and more or less ignore the huge network of intricate sensors and actuators attached to it.
Don't care who he is but I would like to know how many BC the guy mined before he found someone else who would accept them. What would happen to the currency if he suddenly dumped $US10T worth of pre-mined BC onto the market? - Even if BC were as ubiquitous as US dollars such a large injection of "new money" would cause a huge spike in inflation and everyone would suffer, in today's BC market the spike would be so large as to render them worthless..
Journalists used to have a little class.
Not during my 50 odd years on the planet*, before the luggable betamax cameras came onto the market in the mid 70's, jurnos would mill around people's homes with a pencil, a notepad, and maybe a camera with an enormous flash bulb attachment that recorded pictures on strips of photo-sensitive plastic called "film". At some point (about the mid 90's) the technology reached the point where we are now. ie: A one man TV camera crew can run faster with his camera equipment than a jurno can run with her high heels and pencil skirt.
* - This is not to say that there are no journalists who live up to the ideological promises of a free press, just that they are rare in any era.
In trouble for other people's actions (the idiots who would trample others). That's because the government hates freedom and ignores the first amendment, though.
Idiots? - When you are part of a crowd of tightly packed humans that suddenly stampede in response to a universally recognised alarm call you have two choices, join in or get trampled. The only idiots in the equation are the free speech extremists who think there must be a third choice because they are absolutely convinced their dogma trumps human nature.
I grew up in the 60's and 70's, really good music has always been "harder to find", only cream of 70's musicians lived on, the rest were promptly forgotten. Same with any era, my adult kids still listen to the Nirvana and Gun's and Roses they grew up with and enjoy it just as much as I enjoy Floyd and Marley. The difference since about the late 80's is that parents and their children often have similar tastes in music.
I can't comprehend how someone could not enjoy ANY music, music is the fundamental pre-cursor to language, not only is it deeply ingrained into humans but species as diverse as whales and grasshoppers use music to communicate with each other.
have identical effects
Hard to tell, you can get "identical effects" (vivid visual and auditory hallucinations) simply by forcing yourself to stay awake for more than ~60hrs.
From what I'm seeing this is a trademark dispute
Exactly, charging for an install is not permitted under the license agreement for using the FireFox trademark in their marketing material. Dell can keep charging whatever they want for it if they stop using the trademarked name.
It's also pretty clear from the summary - "Our trademark policy makes clear that this is not permitted and we are investigating this specific report.
Also from the summary, Dell responded by changing the subject "saying that this practice is okay because the company is charging for the service and not the product."
I have a BSc in computer science and operations research (logistics), that bestows the title of "computer scientist" on me but I prefer the term "software developer", I currently do software development at a place that calls itself a "systems engineering research centre". There are lots of stats and data involved in the job but these things do not add up to a scientist doing science.
A Phd is valuable in that it demonstrates that you can research a given topic in an academic setting and formally communicate your findings to others, it's practically mandatory if you want to get someone to pay you to ponder the universe full time. Having said that, Science itself is a philosophy not a vocation, if you live by that philosophy then you are a "Scientist", if you are incurious and just enjoy the fruits of science then you're probably a "Utilitarian".
As to TFA, as an Aussie I've never heard the term "data scientist", I figure it must be American MBA's looking for the word "statistician". They should know however that data mining the internet has been "solved" , IBM are starting to make instances of 'Watson" available to commerce. And speaking of doctors, Watson is also expected to pass the standard exam for a US medical license.
low level details of this or that's garbage collection and memory management is way, way down the priority list somewhere
Agreed, any memory leaks or performance problems should fall out in testing. The major problem I have with PHP is it's poor backward compatibility with previous versions, that sort-coming can quickly turn into a giant configuration/maintenance headache. Glad to see they are trying to do something about it.
[E]ncourage independent learning and discovery through projects and reading and not relying solely on lectures
Or put another way, what you get from education is proportinal to what you put into it.
In the late nineties my son was starting his last year of (Aussie) HS, he came home and showed me a single A4 sheet of paper printed on both sides. He said to me with a sigh of incredulity - "Our computer teacher thinks this pascal project will take all year". I read the paper, it started with "phase one" - a simple in memory table to store and retrive some lines of text. Each point added some functionality that eventually added up to a multi-user file based db with a gui front end and some pretend bussiness logic in between, it was a well written spec that nicely covered the basic concepts and trade-offs. I looked back at my son and said, "If done properly, hes' right!".
It's probably the most encouraging thing any of my kids every brought home from their teacher's, although the math teacher who taught algebra with a spreed sheet was pretty good too. Not only did it cover the basics of most commercial applications, it also required a sustained effort and most importantly with each step in the project you paid for what you didn't get right in the previous steps with extra re-work. The way I helped him was not to solve all his problems for him but to give him hints like - "You should read up on something called binary trees".
Unashamed pride: He's 33 now and I'm happy to say he graduarted his EE degree with first class honurs and is now in a financial postion such that he can choose to work on what interestes him the most as opposed to what puts food on the table. Having spent the first 15yrs of my working life as a semi-skilled labourer I have absolutely no doubt that my (mature age) university education had a benifitial influence to both my children as well as myself.
The basic premise of capitalism is that the guy with the capital takes both the financial risks and the financial rewards. Labour prostitutes itself to capital for the best deal it can get. The government sets and enforces the rules of trade (ie: the "market"), some are closed markets (eg: plutonium market), others are "free" for anyone to participate (eg: NYSE). However without government regulations (in particular property law), there is no "free market" or any other kind of market, the entire edifice simply collapses back to the default system of trade - anarchic barter.
Domestic laws and international trade agreements are the "mysterious force" that motivates the "invisible hand" to move in a particular direction in search of profit. Unfortunately for most of us that direction has been towards greater income inequity for the last 4-5 decades, so much so that the world's richest 500 now have a greater combined net income than the world's poorest 3.5 billion, to put that number in perspective there were only 3.0 billion people alive when I was born..
The "system" can and should be changed to one where labour is actually rewarded and the difference between riches and poorest is one or two orders of magnitude, not the current six or seven. How this can be achieved I have absolutely no idea, all the other "isims" are just as bad, if not worse. For instance Karl Marx starts his manifesto with the words "To each according to need, from each according to ability", it's a really good opening line that is hard to disagree with without looking like a sociopath, but it goes down hill rather rapidly after that first sentence.
There is however hope that the pendulum might swing the other way. This whole (modern) democracy thing can be traced back to a group of wealthy merchants forcing a warmongering English King to sign the Magna Carta. Wealthy merchants today also have the upper hand with the current globalization thing and wars are bad for everyone except those in the (closed market) international arms trade. Many of the really big multi-nationals have openly embraced moves like the Sarbanes-Oxley act in the US and anti-corruption laws in the UK/EU. I'm sure like me, many people here on Slashdot have to suffer mandatory "corporate governance training" as I do once a year to officially remind us these laws exist and apply no matter where you do business. But at least it's a serious attempt from the "big end of town" to move the invisible hand in the right direction. - Assuming that you think enforcing the same basic market rules no matter where or with whom the company does business is a sensible step towards levelling out a very lopsided global playing field.
I objected to their subtext
That's LordLucless's point, you perceived a subtext where there was none and then promptly put the words of the subtext (that only you perceive) into the author's mouth. It has nothing to do with comprehension and everything to do with your pre-existing (and firmly held) opinion on the subject. You appear to see only the negative impacts of gentrification, but like many social issues it is a double edged sword. Sure some people are permanently priced out of the area where they grew up but others find job/business opportunities that would not be possible in that area without the influx of cash required to rebuild a slum.
Disclaimer: Yes I have experienced being homeless, in my early twenties I lived in a 4 man tent for 3 months with wife, baby, and dog in tow. The problem of inequity is not due to people living in nice towns, there is more than enough wealth in the US (and the world for that matter) for everyone to enjoy a reasonable living standard. The problem is a global society where it's considered normal to have the world's richest 500 people "earn" more than world's poorest 3,500,000,000 people in any given year. According to Red Cross figures, the combined income of these fortunate 500 is enough to end world poverty four times over. I have nothing personal against these people, I actually quite like some of them. However society has been overgenerous to them, we grow resentful of their wealth and power but do nothing about it because deep inside we all wish to be in their shoes "one day".
Today the federal government is over-taxing and underspending.
I'm not from the US but I believe that the US government is currently spending something like $1.00 for every $0.60 it earns in revenue. Income inequality in the US is not entirely the fault of politicians and CEO's, it is the unintended side-effect of a society that still believes they too can become obscenely rich through honest, hard work - if they could "just get a break".
There's more than a few of us who survived the era before software took over the planet.