Software in a wearable gadget that does what my brain used to be able to do? Oh yes, fear this software! Run away, run away!
The last thing we want individuals to be able to do is have access to cognitive assistive software.
Besides, facial recognition of members of the lumpen proletariat is a power reserved to our corporate and government masters. Allowing the proles to do the same thing turns surveillance into sousveillance, which is obviously unacceptible.
The software should be banned. We should also mandate surgery to as to prevent anyone from using their internal processing capacity to reconnize faces. Harrison Bergeron had it right..
Great idea. Record sales and profits for Makerbot, and a broken-down dust catcher in the corner of every classroom. Meanwhile, the teachers will still be sending notes home at the beginning of each school year asking for donations of paper, pens and pencils, and other basic supplies.
This could become worse than the Dancing Plague of 1518 or the June Bug epidemic of 1962!
Worse, this shows every sign of being a hysterical contagion, capable of being transmitted over the Internet and infecting it's victims through contact with their computers, tablets, and smartphones!
The good news is that I know of a possible cure, and if I can reach my Kickstarter goal of $500,000, I can begin work on a treatment for the unfortunate victims...
Just yesterday, I picked up a water glass in a restaurant. I also used the silverware.
5 bucks to a busboy, and someone could have gotten a pretty clear set of my prints. Oops.
Worried about someone getting YOUR fingerprints? Wear gloves everywhere. Bring along a handkerchief to wipe everything down if you momentarily have the gloves off.
> when and if sea level actually starts to rise... we'll talk
Water level measurements from the San Francisco gage (CA Station ID: 9414290) indicate that mean sea level rose by an average of 2.01 millimeters (mm) per year from 1897 to 2006, equivalent to a change of eight inches in the last century. The rate of rise has increased to about 3 mm per year over the past 15 years.
This is the oldest tidal guage in continuous operation in the United States, and is located near the Golden Gate.
Don't worry. The remaining system administrators will properly triage all the work among the remaining admins.
They'll just punt all the routine boring stuff like security audits and access control management to concentrate on the more urgent firefighting, like user requests that would otherwise hold things up, and more visible projects like those new TPS cover sheets.
Pardon me for interrupting the usual/. dialogue with something relevant to the original topic, but Ken Shirriff did a couple of teardowns a year ago that point out exactly why the counterfeit chargers are Not Safe. The safety issues revolve around poor isolation practices between the line and USB sides of some USB chargers.
Major items include 1) lack of "double insulated" construction in the internal transformer. 2) parts placement of line and USB side components on a single circuit board such that paths may be readily formed between line and USB sides from moisture, construction errors, or component failure. 3) inadequate margins between line side and USB side in overall layout of the charger internal components.
And in other news, the bill has been declared DOA on arrival at the House of Representatives, where the Speaker of the House has announced that they intend to do their own thing, perhaps later this year, or possibly next year where a bill can be used as fodder for the 2014 campaigns.
Absolute not-hire. Even if the employee came to the company on their own, they couldn't extend an offer.
Correct. At one point I was told that I would have to quit my current job before I could be interviewed for a position at another of these companies. Naturally, applying for a position while newly unemployed would handicap my salary negotiating ability.
The businesses viewed the anti-poaching deals as convenient for their HR operation and containing payroll costs. No pesky counter-offers...
That would be Knuth, of course. MIX, or, starting Volume 4 and the eventual Ultimate Edition of Volumes 1-3, MMIX.
The development of hardware capable of using this assembler is an exercise left to the reader.
They aren't the same thing. Your example is inefficient because it uses more labour to achieve the same result - a shorter working week would get less done but require less work to do it, which isn't less efficient.
Nah. We'll get the efficiency back via unpaid overtime.
Yeah! This'll fix em! Every time one of those electric vehicles pulls into a gas station, their mileage tax gets added onto... their... gas... bill.
Oh. Never mind...
I'm pretty sure that if you prove P=NP, that there may be consequences. It you are very, very lucky, Bob from the Laundry will pop by and arrange for a new career for you, or at least keep your brain from being eaten.
If you're not so lucky, well, pointing a loaded theorem at the... things... that cast shadows on the walls of Plato's cave may make them pay attention. This is, however, a dangerous process, because many of the shadow-casters are unclear on the distinction between pay attention and free lunch buffet here. [1]
So you are of the opinion that it is ok to have a database; whose existence appears to be a mystery to about 90% of the public; that keeps detailed location data for an indefinite period of time (ref: years); that is unencrypted; that can be accessed not only by thieves, but Law Enforcement as well; that can be used to provide a detailed time-line map of where you have been; is not a big deal?
Ah, you should probably be aware that the phone company does this already for all cell phones. The database can be queries by any 'authenticated agent', a person with an account and password, such as a law enforcement officer. Social engineering works well, too. The US Justice Department classifies this information as 'routine business documents', not requiring a warrant.
If you don't want your location history known to others. do not carry a cell phone.
Ah, I remember looking at the sorting algorithm in a low level graphics library. Tightly hand coded, packed to keep every pipeline stage filled and make optimal use of all the parallel units in a VLIW graphics processor, it was probably the most efficient bubble sort I'd ever seen.
I coded up a quicksort to about the same degree of tightness in a couple days, and, golly gee, a whole bunch of code suddenly got faster. Some MUCH faster... That was Lesson 1 for me. Optimize algorithms before optimizing implementations.
For persons using screen readers to read web content (Apple VoiceOver, for example) the option to simplify the content of an article and automatically pull it together as a single page is wonderful.
Try closing your eyes and reading, via a text to speech system, a typical Forbes article broken across five pages packed with links, for example. This option or the Firefox Readability extension speeds things up something wonderful.
I just wish that pre-production meetings between producers and writers could be recorded and popped onto DVDs as extras. Then you'd see where some of the goofier decisions in film making come from.
Oh, it won't happen, of course. The sort of producers that come up with these things take themselves much too seriously to want their 'process' exposed for mere entertainment.
This was a great book. I shudder to think of what they'll do with it in a movie. 3D. That means the producers will want something scary to repeatedly shove in the face of the audience. This won't end well...
First, they'll have to get rid of the fighting suits. Too expensive, and to much CGI or practical effects needed. Besides, how can we see the brilliant acting if the actors are all canned?
Second, the Taurans just aren't scary enough. They should look like multiple species of giant insects.
Third, using dead stellar objects for the FTL transportation of canned primates is so 1980. The Stargate collapsar should be a big ring thingie the troops can just walk through. This also gets rid of the tired old spaceship gags, saves money on effects, and avoids breaks in the action.
Keep the salute, though. That tests big with the 18-24 male demographic.
Slashdot Mirror
Software in a wearable gadget that does what my brain used to be able to do? Oh yes, fear this software! Run away, run away!
The last thing we want individuals to be able to do is have access to cognitive assistive software.
Besides, facial recognition of members of the lumpen proletariat is a power reserved to our corporate and government masters. Allowing the proles to do the same thing turns surveillance into sousveillance, which is obviously unacceptible.
The software should be banned. We should also mandate surgery to as to prevent anyone from using their internal processing capacity to reconnize faces. Harrison Bergeron had it right..
Great idea. Record sales and profits for Makerbot, and a broken-down dust catcher in the corner of every classroom. Meanwhile, the teachers will still be sending notes home at the beginning of each school year asking for donations of paper, pens and pencils, and other basic supplies.
And I think of the wonders XEROX brought to us every day when I fire up my Star and telnet about the Internet.
This could become worse than the Dancing Plague of 1518 or the June Bug epidemic of 1962!
Worse, this shows every sign of being a hysterical contagion, capable of being transmitted over the Internet and infecting it's victims through contact with their computers, tablets, and smartphones!
The good news is that I know of a possible cure, and if I can reach my Kickstarter goal of $500,000, I can begin work on a treatment for the unfortunate victims...
Just yesterday, I picked up a water glass in a restaurant. I also used the silverware.
5 bucks to a busboy, and someone could have gotten a pretty clear set of my prints. Oops.
Worried about someone getting YOUR fingerprints? Wear gloves everywhere. Bring along a handkerchief to wipe everything down if you momentarily have the gloves off.
Low tech doesn't mean no tech.
What? No Bear McCreary soundtrack?
As a bonus, the robots can protect us from The Terrible Secret of Space.
I just hope they don't get all philosophical. Remember the lesson of Bomb #20...
> when and if sea level actually starts to rise... we'll talk
Water level measurements from the San Francisco gage (CA Station ID: 9414290) indicate that mean sea level rose by an average of 2.01 millimeters (mm) per year from 1897 to 2006, equivalent to a change of eight inches in the last century. The rate of rise has increased to about 3 mm per year over the past 15 years.
This is the oldest tidal guage in continuous operation in the United States, and is located near the Golden Gate.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012publications/CEC-500-2012-014/CEC-500-2012-014.pdf
Don't worry. The remaining system administrators will properly triage all the work among the remaining admins.
They'll just punt all the routine boring stuff like security audits and access control management to concentrate on the more urgent firefighting, like user requests that would otherwise hold things up, and more visible projects like those new TPS cover sheets.
Pardon me for interrupting the usual /. dialogue with something relevant to the original topic, but Ken Shirriff did a couple of teardowns a year ago that point out exactly why the counterfeit chargers are Not Safe. The safety issues revolve around poor isolation practices between the line and USB sides of some USB chargers.
Major items include
1) lack of "double insulated" construction in the internal transformer.
2) parts placement of line and USB side components on a single circuit board such that paths may be readily formed between line and USB sides from moisture, construction errors, or component failure.
3) inadequate margins between line side and USB side in overall layout of the charger internal components.
http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html
http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html
"Where have you lived where your neighbors shunned you for not belonging to the "local church"?"
Idaho Falls, Idaho. They don't much hold with all that whacky stuff the liberals down in Pocatello do. Boy, do I wish I were kidding.
And in other news, the bill has been declared DOA on arrival at the House of Representatives, where the Speaker of the House has announced that they intend to do their own thing, perhaps later this year, or possibly next year where a bill can be used as fodder for the 2014 campaigns.
Meh.
Gah! Wrong article. So much for using a cat as a personal assistant...
The best part will be the weekly stack ranking and 360 degree review sessions.
"You are an A/10! Please vacate the house at once!"
Absolute not-hire. Even if the employee came to the company on their own, they couldn't extend an offer.
Correct. At one point I was told that I would have to quit my current job before I could be interviewed for a position at another of these companies. Naturally, applying for a position while newly unemployed would handicap my salary negotiating ability. The businesses viewed the anti-poaching deals as convenient for their HR operation and containing payroll costs. No pesky counter-offers...
No ASM programming?
That would be Knuth, of course. MIX, or, starting Volume 4 and the eventual Ultimate Edition of Volumes 1-3, MMIX.
The development of hardware capable of using this assembler is an exercise left to the reader.
They aren't the same thing. Your example is inefficient because it uses more labour to achieve the same result - a shorter working week would get less done but require less work to do it, which isn't less efficient.
Nah. We'll get the efficiency back via unpaid overtime.
Yeah! This'll fix em! Every time one of those electric vehicles pulls into a gas station, their mileage tax gets added onto... their... gas... bill. Oh. Never mind...
I'm pretty sure that if you prove P=NP, that there may be consequences. It you are very, very lucky, Bob from the Laundry will pop by and arrange for a new career for you, or at least keep your brain from being eaten.
... things ... that cast shadows on the walls of Plato's cave may make them pay attention. This is, however, a dangerous process, because many of the shadow-casters are unclear on the distinction between pay attention and free lunch buffet here. [1]
If you're not so lucky, well, pointing a loaded theorem at the
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#The_.22Bob_Howard_.E2.80.94_Laundry.22_series
So you are of the opinion that it is ok to have a database; whose existence appears to be a mystery to about 90% of the public; that keeps detailed location data for an indefinite period of time (ref: years); that is unencrypted; that can be accessed not only by thieves, but Law Enforcement as well; that can be used to provide a detailed time-line map of where you have been; is not a big deal?
Ah, you should probably be aware that the phone company does this already for all cell phones. The database can be queries by any 'authenticated agent', a person with an account and password, such as a law enforcement officer. Social engineering works well, too. The US Justice Department classifies this information as 'routine business documents', not requiring a warrant.
If you don't want your location history known to others. do not carry a cell phone.
Ah, it's articles like this that make me so glad I'm retired!
C++ programmers have it too easy. Why, in C we had to code our own bugs. C++ programmers just inherit them!
Ah, I remember looking at the sorting algorithm in a low level graphics library. Tightly hand coded, packed to keep every pipeline stage filled and make optimal use of all the parallel units in a VLIW graphics processor, it was probably the most efficient bubble sort I'd ever seen.
I coded up a quicksort to about the same degree of tightness in a couple days, and, golly gee, a whole bunch of code suddenly got faster. Some MUCH faster... That was Lesson 1 for me. Optimize algorithms before optimizing implementations.
For persons using screen readers to read web content (Apple VoiceOver, for example) the option to simplify the content of an article and automatically pull it together as a single page is wonderful.
Try closing your eyes and reading, via a text to speech system, a typical Forbes article broken across five pages packed with links, for example. This option or the Firefox Readability extension speeds things up something wonderful.
I just wish that pre-production meetings between producers and writers could be recorded and popped onto DVDs as extras. Then you'd see where some of the goofier decisions in film making come from.
Oh, it won't happen, of course. The sort of producers that come up with these things take themselves much too seriously to want their 'process' exposed for mere entertainment.
This was a great book. I shudder to think of what they'll do with it in a movie. 3D. That means the producers will want something scary to repeatedly shove in the face of the audience. This won't end well...
First, they'll have to get rid of the fighting suits. Too expensive, and to much CGI or practical effects needed. Besides, how can we see the brilliant acting if the actors are all canned?
Second, the Taurans just aren't scary enough. They should look like multiple species of giant insects.
Third, using dead stellar objects for the FTL transportation of canned primates is so 1980. The Stargate collapsar should be a big ring thingie the troops can just walk through. This also gets rid of the tired old spaceship gags, saves money on effects, and avoids breaks in the action.
Keep the salute, though. That tests big with the 18-24 male demographic.