This is hardly a novel problem. All manners of talking, noisemaking, and other disturbances have been problems in theaters for centuries; phones are simply another type of potential disturbance.
I recall that on-campus movie showings back in the 80's used to flash a slide on the screen saying "NERDS - SILENCE YOUR WATCHES". Because, you know, they used to have these digital watches that would beep on the hour, back before everybody used their cell phones to tell time.
TFA mentions $20 million in tax incentives to create 200 temporary construction jobs and 29 permanent ones. I suspect Iowa got taken here....
Some data centers are going up here in Colorado Springs, largely because of cheap electricity from the city-owned utility. Iowa also has relatively cheap power, which may have been a factor in MS's decision along with tax incentives.
The authors had the real threat in their sights, but missed it. From TFA:
A super-intelligence might not take our interests into consideration in those situations, just like we don't take root systems or ant colonies into account when we construct a building.
Think how it might be to compete for resources with the dominant species.
The ants outnumber us by perhaps a factor of 20 in mass, and a factor of 10 million in numbers. Are we really the "dominant species", or are we just deceiving ourselves? And we're not "taking them into account"? Be afraid, be very afraid...
I somehow doubt that a Mars mission funded by a reality show is going to create a viable self sustaining colony which allows these people to die of natural causes.
I'd say the odds are at least 78,000 to 1 against it. In fact, if any of these clowns reach Earth orbit I'd be shocked.
That article directly contradicts a Utah study that showed that cell phone users drive more slowly and change lanes less. Both of these behaviors should decrease accidents, but they violate the accepted dogma that "cell phones cause accidents", so they're ignored. In fact, the researchers concluded that driving slower and changing lanes less was actually bad, which shows that they wanted to demonstrate something that followed the dogma (probably because it's easier to get funding if you come to the "correct" conclusions).
As TFA notes, Microsoft sends information on all scanned files back to a central server, but Google does local evaluation and only sends back info on suspected malware. From a privacy standpoint, there's a big difference between the two.
From NPR, a few days ago. Why is Congress supporting this (other than the obvious answer, campaign contributions)?
If you scroll through the government's visa data, you notice something surprising. The biggest employer of foreign tech workers is not Microsoft â" not by a long shot. Nor is it Google, Facebook or any other name-brand tech company. The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."
For the past decade, he's been studying how consulting firms use temporary work visas to help American companies cut costs. He says they use the visas to supply cheaper workers here, but also to smooth the transfer of American jobs to information-technology centers overseas.
"What these firms have done is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs [of] the Americans to then ship it back offshore," he says. "And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper on the H-1B and undercut American workers right here."
The biggest user of H-1B last year was Cognizant, a firm based in New Jersey. The company got 9,000 new visas. Following close behind were Infosys, Wipro and Tata â'â' all Indian firms.
My favorites are the "walk" signs that count down, with the light turning yellow when they reach zero. These are becoming more common in urban areas around here. Unfortunately, the safety mavens can't resist making the count reach zero a few seconds before the yellow in some places, which totally negates the advantage of the counter.
The patent covers te exact calculation used to combine those three factors.
Which begs the question: why is a patent necessary for this calculation? The answer, of course, is that patents are mostly created not to protect valuable trade secrets (which this isn't, by a long shot). Instead, they're used as currency to be traded with other large corporations. Patents have become like Bitcoins in a way; they're valued because of the effort it takes to create them, not because the result has any value.
OTOH, some courses in industrial design might be useful. Personally, I struggle with looking things look nice, even when the internal algorithms are easy enough (for my skill set, anyway).
I, too, miss the good old days, when Slashdot was full of liberal arts majors discussing classic literature. Where did all these 20-something male techies come from, anyway?
Since the only known perfect numbers are derived from Mersenne Primes, this means there are also now 48 known perfect numbers. Interestingly, this property of Mersenne Primes was discovered by Euclid about 2000 years before Mersenne was born (time machine, anyone?). Finding a non-Mersenne perfect number would be a huge accomplishment.
According to Wikipedia, QuickC was introduced in October 1987, probably as a response to Borland's Turbo C which came out earlier that year.
I used Turbo C for a few years starting with version 1.5 in 1988. It was a sweet product, with one-button building and test runs plus an integrated debugger, and it was incredibly fast for the time. The editor was kind of primitive compared to vi, but usable (basic insert/delete/arrow key stuff).
I eventually switched over to Zortech C++ to get extended memory support. That was an impressive product also, and apparently all developed by one programmer. It eventually became the Symantech product mentioned in the article.
Nowadays my Windows development work is split between Visual Studio and vi/make. I still prefer the latter for anything that's algorithmically complex.
These tests were also just as simple as calculating Pi a thousand times.
Which, if you calculated all the digits, wouldn't be particularly simple at all. In fact, doing it once would take as long as doing it a thousand times.
Slashdot Mirror
This is hardly a novel problem. All manners of talking, noisemaking, and other disturbances have been problems in theaters for centuries; phones are simply another type of potential disturbance.
I recall that on-campus movie showings back in the 80's used to flash a slide on the screen saying "NERDS - SILENCE YOUR WATCHES". Because, you know, they used to have these digital watches that would beep on the hour, back before everybody used their cell phones to tell time.
Isn't it AC#AX now that Java is in its death throes?
{cue the outraged Javascript fans to tell me Java != Javascript...too bad...}
TFA mentions $20 million in tax incentives to create 200 temporary construction jobs and 29 permanent ones. I suspect Iowa got taken here....
Some data centers are going up here in Colorado Springs, largely because of cheap electricity from the city-owned utility. Iowa also has relatively cheap power, which may have been a factor in MS's decision along with tax incentives.
A super-intelligence might not take our interests into consideration in those situations, just like we don't take root systems or ant colonies into account when we construct a building.
Think how it might be to compete for resources with the dominant species.
The ants outnumber us by perhaps a factor of 20 in mass, and a factor of 10 million in numbers. Are we really the "dominant species", or are we just deceiving ourselves? And we're not "taking them into account"? Be afraid, be very afraid...
Who compiles the compiler?
I guess it's time to introduce another generation to the devious genius of Ken Thompson.
You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.)
we may have an actual chance to hear what the Government is actually requesting
They're only asking to be allowed to release counts, not the content of the requests. So, no, still no chance of finding out what's being requested.
If this were an X-Files episode, I'm sure they'd do something to us instead. Something horrible.
There was a live broadcast of the Olympic torch reaching the summit in 2008. But it doesn't count if it's not a westerner, I guess.
other important news stories...like the Gosnell trial.
The Gosnell trial wasn't an important news story, unless you spin it as a referendum on abortion. Got anything else?
I somehow doubt that a Mars mission funded by a reality show is going to create a viable self sustaining colony which allows these people to die of natural causes.
I'd say the odds are at least 78,000 to 1 against it. In fact, if any of these clowns reach Earth orbit I'd be shocked.
...they use Centurylink.
That article directly contradicts a Utah study that showed that cell phone users drive more slowly and change lanes less. Both of these behaviors should decrease accidents, but they violate the accepted dogma that "cell phones cause accidents", so they're ignored. In fact, the researchers concluded that driving slower and changing lanes less was actually bad, which shows that they wanted to demonstrate something that followed the dogma (probably because it's easier to get funding if you come to the "correct" conclusions).
As TFA notes, Microsoft sends information on all scanned files back to a central server, but Google does local evaluation and only sends back info on suspected malware. From a privacy standpoint, there's a big difference between the two.
If you scroll through the government's visa data, you notice something surprising. The biggest employer of foreign tech workers is not Microsoft â" not by a long shot. Nor is it Google, Facebook or any other name-brand tech company. The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."
For the past decade, he's been studying how consulting firms use temporary work visas to help American companies cut costs. He says they use the visas to supply cheaper workers here, but also to smooth the transfer of American jobs to information-technology centers overseas. "What these firms have done is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs [of] the Americans to then ship it back offshore," he says. "And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper on the H-1B and undercut American workers right here."
The biggest user of H-1B last year was Cognizant, a firm based in New Jersey. The company got 9,000 new visas. Following close behind were Infosys, Wipro and Tata â'â' all Indian firms.
My favorites are the "walk" signs that count down, with the light turning yellow when they reach zero. These are becoming more common in urban areas around here. Unfortunately, the safety mavens can't resist making the count reach zero a few seconds before the yellow in some places, which totally negates the advantage of the counter.
The patent covers te exact calculation used to combine those three factors.
Which begs the question: why is a patent necessary for this calculation? The answer, of course, is that patents are mostly created not to protect valuable trade secrets (which this isn't, by a long shot). Instead, they're used as currency to be traded with other large corporations. Patents have become like Bitcoins in a way; they're valued because of the effort it takes to create them, not because the result has any value.
OTOH, some courses in industrial design might be useful. Personally, I struggle with looking things look nice, even when the internal algorithms are easy enough (for my skill set, anyway).
It would in the Middle East.
Or even Australia.
I wanted 2TB more, not 1.8TB.
1.8TB ought to be enough for anybody.
Slashdot is full of illiterate masses now
I, too, miss the good old days, when Slashdot was full of liberal arts majors discussing classic literature. Where did all these 20-something male techies come from, anyway?
Name one Marxist mainstream media outlet.
Fox chairman Roger Ailes once called NPR "the left wing of Nazism". Does that count?
Since the only known perfect numbers are derived from Mersenne Primes, this means there are also now 48 known perfect numbers. Interestingly, this property of Mersenne Primes was discovered by Euclid about 2000 years before Mersenne was born (time machine, anyone?). Finding a non-Mersenne perfect number would be a huge accomplishment.
I used Turbo C for a few years starting with version 1.5 in 1988. It was a sweet product, with one-button building and test runs plus an integrated debugger, and it was incredibly fast for the time. The editor was kind of primitive compared to vi, but usable (basic insert/delete/arrow key stuff).
I eventually switched over to Zortech C++ to get extended memory support. That was an impressive product also, and apparently all developed by one programmer. It eventually became the Symantech product mentioned in the article.
Nowadays my Windows development work is split between Visual Studio and vi/make. I still prefer the latter for anything that's algorithmically complex.
Besides, it's only $150 million. A drop in the bucket, relative to the tech industry as a whole.
These tests were also just as simple as calculating Pi a thousand times.
Which, if you calculated all the digits, wouldn't be particularly simple at all. In fact, doing it once would take as long as doing it a thousand times.