On the other hand, if the University decided that this type of conference isn't in line with what they think is appropriate for an educational setting and don't let them, they would use that as ammo for a grand conspiracy, etc...
Better to let them have it. Have the few devote followers show up to hear what they already believe in, and be prepared to have a bunch of young drunk immature university students show up to make fun and heckle them.
On the plus side, they likely have to pay the school for the conference space, which if it isn't funneled into the administration, might be used directly to fund real science (or arts I suppose)!
We have nothing to worry about for a very long time.
1) AI or real AI, is far away. Very far. Current endeavors are not even close. 2) Manual processes. Until we have largely autonomous processes it isn't something that is a big deal
A) In order to really do anything in space, we will require, not only AI, and autonomous robots, but the ability to self replicate and repair construct, and produce. While possible, eventually, and yes, at that point dangerous, we are so far away from that point, there are so many things that are a much bigger deal. B) Even in the event of some douchebag making all military craft controlled by AI, while that might do some damage, really, unless the craft are being built and the construction material and the whole entire process chain automated, it isn't that big a deal.
We still need human miners to get the ore, we still need it transported by humans to a foundry, who need more humans to process it, who need more to construct, design, control, etc... and so on. Never mind it is several degrees of magnitude cheaper to hire human workers (offshore or otherwise) than it is design, construct, and maintain robot ones.
About the only three reasonably near term events that might occur that involve AI that might be negative are: 1) AI inserted into enemy networks by another nation to spoof orders to military units. However it is unlikely to not be compartmentalized, and is also likely already beaten by physical countermeasures (i.e. voice confirmation, etc...) 2) AI loosed on the internet for some marketing purpose goes haywire causing significant internet disruption, which would be costly. 3) AI designed to do HFT on the stock market, goes off the rails, causing significant problems and lots of lost money and economic issues. We have already seen this happen to a certain degree, where an algorthim designed to do something, does something unexpected, due to human error, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Which so far the result has been they basically turn back the clock the next day cancelling trades.
Anyway long story short, there are so many manually processes, and manually checks, and we are so far away for anything resembling AI, it is a bit premature to worry about it to any degree.
A few years back, some drunk jerks were caught on camera peeing on the war memorial. The government thought this wasn't very good. So they posted a ceremonial guard, to essentially ward off the drunken pee. To be effective at that, one needs to stand there, so drunk people don't feel comfortable peeing there. Giving the guy a fully loaded automatic weapon might be seen as a bit of overkill... Is he realistically going to bullet spray potential drunken pee jerks?
As previously mentioned, the guy was just standing there and got shot in the back. Having a loaded weapon, or even bullets, wouldn't have been any help.
I do find it a bit dishonorable that the government is using this as an excuse to push though draconian laws however.
and yet since being changed, is he in jail? Has he paid a fine? Has their been any consequence whatsoever? Is he still an MP? How is it one can cheat to get elected, then somehow stay elected?
As I said I'll wait and see, but I see the most likely result being it will be dragged out until it is no longer in the public eye, and he might pay some token fine or something.
And yet apparently they only thing he could get his hands on for his shooting spree was a two shot shotgun. Hardly ideal (if there is such a thing really). The fact that he probably couldn't even get a hand gun, or a rifle such as you mention says a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if even the shotgun was stolen from another family member or something.
You are aware that these positions are appointed by their political masters right? The Gov. Gen, is appointed by the PM, and the LG by their Provincial Premier... I am not sure what kind of sanity check or emergency break they are seeing as they owe their very position to the one they are supposed to be limiting.
Case and point PM Harper proroguing government multiple times to avoid having to face scandal or answering uncomfortable questions, to which each time requires the GG approval, and she did it every single time, even with public protest to the contrary.
As to the public relations, the last one was involved in a scandal that basically had her spending close to 50 million dollars for what amounted to a bunch of parties with political leaders, private jet trips, etc...
So no, they are totally useless positions that spend money, that are undemocratic, that are pork handed out by political leaders to flunkies. There is absolutely no need for them. They were in the past, the Queen's hand within government, however now that that hand is totally symbolic, it is just a left over anarchism that has position, power, money, to be doled out for political favors. Git rid of them all already.
Only thing I could think of was Canada's relationship status on Facebook...
Anyway I have no problem with the Queen as a symbol etc... However there are a ton of wasteful APPOINTMENTS (not democratic even), that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars each year.
I do not see the need for A) A lieutenant governor of Canada, or B) another one for each Province.
Not only is it political pork, but they each have an office, staff, and budgets to spend... because why?
The gunman was using a double barreled long shotgun says otherwise. If that was the best weapon they could find to go on rampage with, I would say it is working.
Most "coders" are entry level positions. I have been working in my field for 15 years now, and I grew up in the 1990's really. If you grew up in the 1980's you might still be or do coding, but most would be at a high level position now. Ad's from the 1980's would have little effect.
Now you might make the argument that, most of those Managers would do the hiring and have a preconceived idea about hiring Women VS Men. However you could pretty much use the same argument for any field of work, none of which has anything to do with stupid 1980's ads.
I always thought it funny that in the US there seems to be this fear of socialism and communism, yet lately they appoint Czar's to everything it seems, which are most commonly attributed to pre-communist Russia...
At least if your City does that however, presumably that would go towards the tax base, and would help them manage their taxes better or be able to lower them, rather than just going to some faceless corporate coffers.
Which is to say, it isn't ideal, but presumably at least the local users might reap some benefit out of it at least.
Two bits of detail here: 1) It was his own money he spent, not corporate donations. Which is still a no no. I think the deal was he spent about 20k of his own money over the limited cap, and tried to hide the fact. 2) "getting" charged? So far as I am aware, there has been no consequences as yet (other than Harper throwing him under the bus as quick as could be). Anyway I will believe it when I see any results from it. My money is it gets dragged out long enough until no one knows or cares about it anymore, then it will just quietly disappear.
Hey I am not saying the report it wrong, hell I didn't read it... however really? This just seems like something politically motivated, like say justification for the billions spend on Wind Power, saying "see it's the cheapest, honest!"...
I can't speak for the US, but that is the same model in Canada. It doesn't really work without competent regulation. In Canada this is done though the CRTC, who are all pretty much former executives of either Bell or Rogers (The two telecommunication companies with monopolies, one on Cable and the other on Phone infrastructure).
Part of this comes down to what is a "reasonable fee" and how that is determined. The other part is the actual control they exert over the infrastructure. For example a few years ago when throttling was front and center, an independent ISP complained to the CRTC that it wasn't fair competition because even though the leased the lines from the above companies, the speeds to which they could offer their clients were being throttled. At the hearing I believe it was Bell's argument that it was fair because they throttled everyone equally...
So while there are independent ISP in Canada, they are beholden to their landlords so to speak, and the rules are set forth by former landlords.
The whole Netflix VS CRTC is another example. It is basically an extension of Bell and Rogers Telecommunications (who are set to release their own competing video streaming service... nice timing that).
No didn't bother, very well could be that. I use that as my throw away account. However that said, spoofing would be random. One would have to access my Yahoo address list to get my Gmail account. So unless spoofers used my Yahoo account and sent it around the world, it would be pretty coincidental that using my Yahoo address would hit my Gmail address several times in the last couple of weeks, and as I said, within hours of me changing passwords. Otherwise how would they know to use one against the other. Unless they were specifically targeting me, and I don't think I am that special!:)
I think it is more likely that Yahoo is compromised (or was) and in that time they were scripting spam using personal address books (sending from my account to everyone in my address book) over and over again. If they have access to the passwords, then logging in and repeating would be trivial, even when changes are made... until of course Yahoo patches their damn servers so that they cannot anymore.
I have gotten spam mail from myself several times the last few weeks (From Yahoo to Gmail), and have gone into the stupid yahoo site to change passwords several times. They were obviously compromised as hours after changing passwords, I would get more spam. Little point to changing passwords if they have total access to them. Might be time to finally drop them.
They were all a fictional job offer, that I guess I was going to give to myself for big bucks... Sounds like something I would do!:)
This is not a big deal. Even if it does happen, there is likely a preexisting licence, or they will just licence the tech from Samsung. Both devices licence each other Apple/Samsung, along with a host of other companies that have various patents on technology. Or what will happen is the Apple will just continue to use it, refuse to pay the licencing fees as Samsung has set them too high per device, then they will eventually go to court over the whole thing 5 years later, and a army of lawyers will get rich trying to figure it out. The later has already happened on one occasion.
I was rolled out with an "Enhanced" desktop a few years back. It wasn't really all that enhanced than the normal desktop that all office types got. I (and a subgroup of others), do a lot more technical work, and use specialized software. However the folks in charge of the specs (and bean counters probably) didn't either know that the enhance spec was barely better then the base, or figured it was good enough. A bunch of us rebelled, and worked with the vendor to create a new more appropriate spec.
That said. Much of the work that used to be highly impacted by graphics cards, such as GIS, CAD, and a host of others, aren't so much anymore. It is mostly CPU dependent now. Most modern CPU of middling power are sufficient for most tasks. From my own experience the two biggest improvements are multiple monitor (also used to be video card dependent, now pretty much anything can), and RAM for large tasks which is dirt cheap anyway. The monitor allows someone that say needs to see tables on one screen, and graphics on another, or application on one, and DB on other much easier to get things done. I recall trying to use 4 really small windows on a tiny screen rather than flipping through them all the time. RAM simply allows someone who is processing a lot of data to use maybe one process rather than have to create 5 processes out of fear of running out of memory and having to repeat it all.
So while the base is good for most, there are a semi-large subset that do need something a bit better. However that bit that needs to be better has evolved over the years, and is frankly not as different as it used to be (at least in things I am exposed to). The few changes that make the most impact, are so cheap that not to do them borders on insane, as you won't pay the difference of say a 75$ annual lease payment for an employee you pay 70,000$ to simply make them happier as their job might be a little less irritating? You can still technically do stuff on a base spec, it just takes longer, might be more work, and be more frustrating. Though sometimes it does have its perks.... When I first started as an entry level, they gave me a a base box (IBM PL300 or something if my memory serves)... There was a time where I was pretty much just doing large data processing of GIS data. I would put it into smaller more manageable chunks, and automate them together in a batch. Occasionally I would miscalculate and run out of memory and have a fail, and would have to redo a few but it worked pretty well more less. However, while it was processing the computer was using everything it had, and wouldn't respond to anything else... I got into the habit of bringing a book to work. There were many days where I would do nothing but processing, and I would have the feet on the desk reading a book for the entire day(s). I had my manager come in and question me, where I would point to the spinney hourglass (or whatever it was) and say "processing". So in that way it made me happy. Though from a business standpoint, they were not really utilizing me nearly as much as they could. Of course as entry level they weren't exactly paying me all that much anyway so they probably didn't care all that much anyway.:)
I manage a bunch of legacy apps that all use INI files, and it is one of the things I like. Your DB move locations? Update the local INI file to reflect the new location. It takes notepad, a cut and a past, or about 5 seconds. Recently had to update a new.NET application for the same purpose... oh that will be actual development and support costs, etc... Poor design didn't help either.
Also makes testing easy, being able to switch between dev/test/prod DB instances simply by using a ";".
As an added bonus, because it doesn't use registry you also get around the privileges BS, when in a corporate environment can be a pain as usually no one has them. Of course security probably likes it.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, if the University decided that this type of conference isn't in line with what they think is appropriate for an educational setting and don't let them, they would use that as ammo for a grand conspiracy, etc...
Better to let them have it. Have the few devote followers show up to hear what they already believe in, and be prepared to have a bunch of young drunk immature university students show up to make fun and heckle them.
On the plus side, they likely have to pay the school for the conference space, which if it isn't funneled into the administration, might be used directly to fund real science (or arts I suppose)!
Sounds like the motto for the H-1B visa program! USA USA USA!
We have nothing to worry about for a very long time.
1) AI or real AI, is far away. Very far. Current endeavors are not even close.
2) Manual processes. Until we have largely autonomous processes it isn't something that is a big deal
A) In order to really do anything in space, we will require, not only AI, and autonomous robots, but the ability to self replicate and repair construct, and produce. While possible, eventually, and yes, at that point dangerous, we are so far away from that point, there are so many things that are a much bigger deal.
B) Even in the event of some douchebag making all military craft controlled by AI, while that might do some damage, really, unless the craft are being built and the construction material and the whole entire process chain automated, it isn't that big a deal.
We still need human miners to get the ore, we still need it transported by humans to a foundry, who need more humans to process it, who need more to construct, design, control, etc... and so on. Never mind it is several degrees of magnitude cheaper to hire human workers (offshore or otherwise) than it is design, construct, and maintain robot ones.
About the only three reasonably near term events that might occur that involve AI that might be negative are:
1) AI inserted into enemy networks by another nation to spoof orders to military units. However it is unlikely to not be compartmentalized, and is also likely already beaten by physical countermeasures (i.e. voice confirmation, etc...)
2) AI loosed on the internet for some marketing purpose goes haywire causing significant internet disruption, which would be costly.
3) AI designed to do HFT on the stock market, goes off the rails, causing significant problems and lots of lost money and economic issues. We have already seen this happen to a certain degree, where an algorthim designed to do something, does something unexpected, due to human error, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Which so far the result has been they basically turn back the clock the next day cancelling trades.
Anyway long story short, there are so many manually processes, and manually checks, and we are so far away for anything resembling AI, it is a bit premature to worry about it to any degree.
A few years back, some drunk jerks were caught on camera peeing on the war memorial. The government thought this wasn't very good. So they posted a ceremonial guard, to essentially ward off the drunken pee. To be effective at that, one needs to stand there, so drunk people don't feel comfortable peeing there. Giving the guy a fully loaded automatic weapon might be seen as a bit of overkill... Is he realistically going to bullet spray potential drunken pee jerks?
As previously mentioned, the guy was just standing there and got shot in the back. Having a loaded weapon, or even bullets, wouldn't have been any help.
I do find it a bit dishonorable that the government is using this as an excuse to push though draconian laws however.
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/...
Wow, even more crooked than I thought...
and yet since being changed, is he in jail? Has he paid a fine? Has their been any consequence whatsoever? Is he still an MP? How is it one can cheat to get elected, then somehow stay elected?
As I said I'll wait and see, but I see the most likely result being it will be dragged out until it is no longer in the public eye, and he might pay some token fine or something.
And yet apparently they only thing he could get his hands on for his shooting spree was a two shot shotgun. Hardly ideal (if there is such a thing really). The fact that he probably couldn't even get a hand gun, or a rifle such as you mention says a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if even the shotgun was stolen from another family member or something.
You are aware that these positions are appointed by their political masters right? The Gov. Gen, is appointed by the PM, and the LG by their Provincial Premier... I am not sure what kind of sanity check or emergency break they are seeing as they owe their very position to the one they are supposed to be limiting.
Case and point PM Harper proroguing government multiple times to avoid having to face scandal or answering uncomfortable questions, to which each time requires the GG approval, and she did it every single time, even with public protest to the contrary.
As to the public relations, the last one was involved in a scandal that basically had her spending close to 50 million dollars for what amounted to a bunch of parties with political leaders, private jet trips, etc...
So no, they are totally useless positions that spend money, that are undemocratic, that are pork handed out by political leaders to flunkies. There is absolutely no need for them. They were in the past, the Queen's hand within government, however now that that hand is totally symbolic, it is just a left over anarchism that has position, power, money, to be doled out for political favors. Git rid of them all already.
Only thing I could think of was Canada's relationship status on Facebook...
Anyway I have no problem with the Queen as a symbol etc... However there are a ton of wasteful APPOINTMENTS (not democratic even), that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars each year.
I do not see the need for A) A lieutenant governor of Canada, or B) another one for each Province.
Not only is it political pork, but they each have an office, staff, and budgets to spend... because why?
The gunman was using a double barreled long shotgun says otherwise. If that was the best weapon they could find to go on rampage with, I would say it is working.
Perhaps Women in Management positions.
Most "coders" are entry level positions. I have been working in my field for 15 years now, and I grew up in the 1990's really. If you grew up in the 1980's you might still be or do coding, but most would be at a high level position now. Ad's from the 1980's would have little effect.
Now you might make the argument that, most of those Managers would do the hiring and have a preconceived idea about hiring Women VS Men. However you could pretty much use the same argument for any field of work, none of which has anything to do with stupid 1980's ads.
I always thought it funny that in the US there seems to be this fear of socialism and communism, yet lately they appoint Czar's to everything it seems, which are most commonly attributed to pre-communist Russia...
Foreshadowing of things to come?
Considering the Beam is limited to 20cm right now, my money is on grappling hooks...
Then again, if looking for space battle damage, firing an actual Tractor at the target might be more effective.
At least if your City does that however, presumably that would go towards the tax base, and would help them manage their taxes better or be able to lower them, rather than just going to some faceless corporate coffers.
Which is to say, it isn't ideal, but presumably at least the local users might reap some benefit out of it at least.
Two bits of detail here:
1) It was his own money he spent, not corporate donations. Which is still a no no. I think the deal was he spent about 20k of his own money over the limited cap, and tried to hide the fact.
2) "getting" charged? So far as I am aware, there has been no consequences as yet (other than Harper throwing him under the bus as quick as could be). Anyway I will believe it when I see any results from it. My money is it gets dragged out long enough until no one knows or cares about it anymore, then it will just quietly disappear.
Uh, if you look at who actually wrote the report, you might want to think about what sort of bias it might contain...
Here is the consultant group that wrote the report:
http://www.ecofys.com/
LOL!
Hey I am not saying the report it wrong, hell I didn't read it... however really? This just seems like something politically motivated, like say justification for the billions spend on Wind Power, saying "see it's the cheapest, honest!"...
...it's the only way to be sure!
Actually Carl XVI Gustaf is king in Sweden.
Take that Democracy! jk :)
HA!
I can't speak for the US, but that is the same model in Canada. It doesn't really work without competent regulation. In Canada this is done though the CRTC, who are all pretty much former executives of either Bell or Rogers (The two telecommunication companies with monopolies, one on Cable and the other on Phone infrastructure).
Part of this comes down to what is a "reasonable fee" and how that is determined. The other part is the actual control they exert over the infrastructure. For example a few years ago when throttling was front and center, an independent ISP complained to the CRTC that it wasn't fair competition because even though the leased the lines from the above companies, the speeds to which they could offer their clients were being throttled. At the hearing I believe it was Bell's argument that it was fair because they throttled everyone equally...
So while there are independent ISP in Canada, they are beholden to their landlords so to speak, and the rules are set forth by former landlords.
The whole Netflix VS CRTC is another example. It is basically an extension of Bell and Rogers Telecommunications (who are set to release their own competing video streaming service... nice timing that).
Um, by definition I think anyone can "Hack" Foreign Servers Without Warrants...
The question if they can legally access foreign servers without warrants is another matter entirely.
No didn't bother, very well could be that. I use that as my throw away account. However that said, spoofing would be random. One would have to access my Yahoo address list to get my Gmail account. So unless spoofers used my Yahoo account and sent it around the world, it would be pretty coincidental that using my Yahoo address would hit my Gmail address several times in the last couple of weeks, and as I said, within hours of me changing passwords. Otherwise how would they know to use one against the other. Unless they were specifically targeting me, and I don't think I am that special! :)
I think it is more likely that Yahoo is compromised (or was) and in that time they were scripting spam using personal address books (sending from my account to everyone in my address book) over and over again. If they have access to the passwords, then logging in and repeating would be trivial, even when changes are made... until of course Yahoo patches their damn servers so that they cannot anymore.
I have gotten spam mail from myself several times the last few weeks (From Yahoo to Gmail), and have gone into the stupid yahoo site to change passwords several times. They were obviously compromised as hours after changing passwords, I would get more spam. Little point to changing passwords if they have total access to them. Might be time to finally drop them.
They were all a fictional job offer, that I guess I was going to give to myself for big bucks... Sounds like something I would do! :)
This is not a big deal. Even if it does happen, there is likely a preexisting licence, or they will just licence the tech from Samsung. Both devices licence each other Apple/Samsung, along with a host of other companies that have various patents on technology. Or what will happen is the Apple will just continue to use it, refuse to pay the licencing fees as Samsung has set them too high per device, then they will eventually go to court over the whole thing 5 years later, and a army of lawyers will get rich trying to figure it out. The later has already happened on one occasion.
I was rolled out with an "Enhanced" desktop a few years back. It wasn't really all that enhanced than the normal desktop that all office types got. I (and a subgroup of others), do a lot more technical work, and use specialized software. However the folks in charge of the specs (and bean counters probably) didn't either know that the enhance spec was barely better then the base, or figured it was good enough. A bunch of us rebelled, and worked with the vendor to create a new more appropriate spec.
That said. Much of the work that used to be highly impacted by graphics cards, such as GIS, CAD, and a host of others, aren't so much anymore. It is mostly CPU dependent now. Most modern CPU of middling power are sufficient for most tasks. From my own experience the two biggest improvements are multiple monitor (also used to be video card dependent, now pretty much anything can), and RAM for large tasks which is dirt cheap anyway. The monitor allows someone that say needs to see tables on one screen, and graphics on another, or application on one, and DB on other much easier to get things done. I recall trying to use 4 really small windows on a tiny screen rather than flipping through them all the time. RAM simply allows someone who is processing a lot of data to use maybe one process rather than have to create 5 processes out of fear of running out of memory and having to repeat it all.
So while the base is good for most, there are a semi-large subset that do need something a bit better. However that bit that needs to be better has evolved over the years, and is frankly not as different as it used to be (at least in things I am exposed to). The few changes that make the most impact, are so cheap that not to do them borders on insane, as you won't pay the difference of say a 75$ annual lease payment for an employee you pay 70,000$ to simply make them happier as their job might be a little less irritating? You can still technically do stuff on a base spec, it just takes longer, might be more work, and be more frustrating. Though sometimes it does have its perks.... When I first started as an entry level, they gave me a a base box (IBM PL300 or something if my memory serves)... There was a time where I was pretty much just doing large data processing of GIS data. I would put it into smaller more manageable chunks, and automate them together in a batch. Occasionally I would miscalculate and run out of memory and have a fail, and would have to redo a few but it worked pretty well more less. However, while it was processing the computer was using everything it had, and wouldn't respond to anything else... I got into the habit of bringing a book to work. There were many days where I would do nothing but processing, and I would have the feet on the desk reading a book for the entire day(s). I had my manager come in and question me, where I would point to the spinney hourglass (or whatever it was) and say "processing". So in that way it made me happy. Though from a business standpoint, they were not really utilizing me nearly as much as they could. Of course as entry level they weren't exactly paying me all that much anyway so they probably didn't care all that much anyway. :)
I manage a bunch of legacy apps that all use INI files, and it is one of the things I like. Your DB move locations? Update the local INI file to reflect the new location. It takes notepad, a cut and a past, or about 5 seconds. Recently had to update a new .NET application for the same purpose... oh that will be actual development and support costs, etc... Poor design didn't help either.
Also makes testing easy, being able to switch between dev/test/prod DB instances simply by using a ";".
As an added bonus, because it doesn't use registry you also get around the privileges BS, when in a corporate environment can be a pain as usually no one has them. Of course security probably likes it.