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User: some+old+guy

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  1. Be a Good Parent on Better Learning Through Expensive Software? One Principal Thinks Not · · Score: 3, Insightful

    TFA is a dot on the trend line of parental and educational laziness, IMHO. Parents slough off responsibility for their kids' educations to schools of questionable quality. The schools in turn palm of their work to computers. It's sad, and the only effective remedy is parental re-involvement.

    I knew the schools sucked when my son was reading 3 grade levels above his peers at age 6. Now he's a sophomore in High School, and further along (knowlege-wise) toward his BSEE than most e-school juniors because I take the time to not just nurture and encourage but actually teach him at whatever level he is ready for. He's 15, and has built his own Siemens S7 PLC lab project. His science classmates won't get Ohm's Law till next year. Pity them.

    We can blab all day about how to fix teh skoolz, but when it comes to your own kids, give them your best. As a parent, you owe it to them. The schools aren't going to do it for you.

  2. Re:Start with copyright on How Laws Restricting Tech Actually Expose Us To Greater Harm · · Score: 2

    We had such rules once. I think we called them the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

    They used to work pretty good, until we started allowing the will of the Military Industrial Complex and Wall Street to supplant the will of the people.

    Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.

  3. Bench Laughs on 'Citizenfour' Producers Sued Over Edward Snowden Leaks · · Score: 1

    I wonder if the judge will be able utter the phrase "dismissed with prejudice" while laughing his robe off.

  4. Re:convex lens on Finland Announces an Anti-Laser Campaign For Air Traffic · · Score: 1

    The gods themselves strive in vain to improve PowerPoint usage.

  5. Sounds Nicer on Skeptics Would Like Media To Stop Calling Science Deniers 'Skeptics' · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Denier is certainly more polite than what they really are: idiots.

  6. Re:Economists on Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates · · Score: 1

    +5 Insightful

  7. Re:China and India are now in the game on Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you hadn't noticed but when economic conditions improve, birth rates tend to fall. Often they fall below replacement.

    Aye, there's the rub. What indication is there that economic conditions, beyond those for the 1%, will improve?

  8. Re:Whence the trend? on Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates · · Score: 1

    Since one cannot undo history, it makes more sense to just get on with it than to merely sit in the mud and cry about evil colonial powers that left 50 years ago.

  9. Re:Whence the trend? on Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates · · Score: 1

    How's that working for you in Bangladesh and Zaire? We have what are essentially experimental laboratory results (I think we call them revolutions) to invalidate any proposed "economic" solution.

  10. Whence the trend? on Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates · · Score: 5, Informative

    Disclaimer: I've been an industrial automation engineer since the PLC-2 and System 1 were king. I'm still at it, killing jobs wherever possible. Not out of malice, nor with any joy in that, but just doing my job.

    TFA may be authored by a fuzzy-headed economist, but the core concept is undeniable. Humankind faces a surplus of employable bodies, and a deficit of employer positions, in the industrialized world. This trend can be compared to the situations in a lot of 3rd World countries. The industrialized nations, once fully built-out with AI and AA (Advanced Automation) will become 3rd world societies too. We're getting close to the tipping point already. There are only so many burgers to be flipped, and consumers with enough money to buy them.

    Nature used to auto-correct overpopulation problems, with food supply vs. demand being the major engine. Is that what we're going to see when the whole world becomes third world? All the attendant unrest and upheaval will not be pretty.

    My own solution: Enable and reward birth control wherever possible. Not as efficient as famine or genocide, but much less nasty.

  11. Re: AH, the good old days on The Joker Behind the Signetics 25120 Write-Only Memory Chip Hoax · · Score: 1

    Yeah, a social model where 99.9% of society endures scarcity while .1% enjoys a surplus.

  12. Re:This is why NASA needs to end. on NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Since when was Ayn Rand a rocket scientist?

  13. Re:im sure nasa is used to this, on NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower · · Score: 2

    +5 Sad but so.

  14. Re:How can people restrain government agents? on Once Again, Baltimore Police Arrest a Person For Recording Them · · Score: 2

    The Fourth, and the othe nine, Amendments in the Bill of Rights, are not criminal statutes. They are proscriptions against specific judicial, executive, and legislative actions.

    Violations can be tortious and civilly actionable, but not criminal.

  15. Re:Fire all the officers? on Once Again, Baltimore Police Arrest a Person For Recording Them · · Score: 2

    Since when do police go to jail? /sarcasm

  16. Opt-Out Strategy on Feds Plan For 35 Agencies To Collect, Share, Use Health Records of Americans · · Score: 2

    Move to another country where privacy means more than a door on a commode stall. That's about the extent of available options.

  17. Re:Unlicensed taxi broker on Court Orders Uber To Shut Down In Spain · · Score: 1, Troll

    So true. To these people's thinking, medical licensing stifles innovation and competition too! We should have a web app to bypass over-priced hospitals and insurance companies, and summon an independent health practitioner. Let the free market decide!

  18. Legal Opinion, Please? on French Publishers Prepare Lawsuit Against Adblock Plus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IANAL, so I'd like a tort guru to enlighten us on exactly how creation and distribution of a product (AdBlock) that that gives consumers an informed choice over another product (advertising bullshit) is an actionable case. It sounds like a water utility company suing faucet makers for making a device that restricts flow of billable water, or the electric company suing light switch manufacturers.

  19. New$ Media Coverage on Displaced IT Workers Being Silenced · · Score: 2

    I haven't a shred out doubt that these people are being hushed up, by whatever means necessary.

    What I do doubt is the significance of the effect on mass media coverage. Other factors are in play.

    Corporate media disdains adverse coverage of the H1B scandal because it is portrayed as "racist" against third-world emigres, and also because hey, business is business, right? (wink, wink).

  20. I'm no lover of Sony (even though I do play EQ2), but if this B-grade flick is so annoying to the Dear Butterball, the widest possible distribution of the film certainly seems worthwhile. Like Spengler said about the Nazis, "When one has the opportunity to annoy these people, one should do so."

  21. Re:So what is it? on Google Hopes To One Day Replace Gmail With Inbox · · Score: 1

    Damn, where's my mod points? +5 Hilariously insightful.

  22. IdIoTs on IoT Is the Third Big Technology 'Wave' In the Last 50 Years, Says Harvard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, an article hyping a fork of the internet that is all...hype!

    Let's say 2-10% of the total population use devices to actually control or monitor web-connected appliances. That's not where the market is.

    It's all about the 100% of the population are subjected to an unending bombardment of ads on their refrigerator and microwave screens, based on personal data profiles garnered from same-said appliances associated with other known user info. Universal real-time context-based marketing. SCORE!

    This isn't about technology. It's about marketing, pure and simple.

  23. Re:Good thing SCADA isn't on internet on Iranian Hackers Compromised Airlines, Critical Infrastructure Companies · · Score: 1

    This. People with no industrial background love to blame the engineers for the security failings of SCADA and Distributed Controls, but we, like all good company drones, are at the mercy of the MBA shitheels and their bankster overlords. It's never been a technical problem. It's a money problem.

  24. Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda? on Is Chernobyl Still Dangerous? Was 60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Precisely. As we used to say in the Navy, "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see."

  25. Re:Is Already Happening on Hawking Warns Strong AI Could Threaten Humanity · · Score: 2

    There will be an intermediate period where we have a lot of "jobs for the sake of jobs", but eventually I hope we just let the machines we've built do the work and find some better (hopefully more direct) way of managing actual finite resources.

    Said intermediate period is well under way. We call it "government". /sarc