In the United States, you have to be 18 years old to decide whether or not to possibly damage your future life by smoking. Additionally, except for some serious cases, we have a juvenile court record which is sealed for life, because at one time people recognized a young person might make mistakes which should not affect them when they are adults.
But, as Chris Good points out, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Web sites, etc. might end up following people for the rest of their lives.
Is it reasonable for a judge being confirmed in 2050 to have this denied via public opinion because he/she had a Facebook video of themselves with a group of friends doing something stupid when they were 15? Or 12?
What about pictures taken via a Web-cam attached to a laptop which was lent to them by their public school?
What about archived video from one of the thousands of cameras placed in public places in most larger US cities?
As a result of an earlier Slashdot article discussing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's support for eliminating diseases in developing countries, there was a discussion suggesting population control might be a better place to invest.
It looks like the Gates foundation is not ignoring this issue.
You know, two people or groups can arrive at the same conclusion, because it was obvious in the first place. And why is it so appropriate? What if the work had been done elsewhere, would that be inappropriate or offensive?
I should have been more specific in my first post.
David Marr's vision book (published in 1982 after his early death in 1980) is considered a seminal work in understanding human visual processing.
Marr was trying to describe how humans see. The new work at MIT is trying to allow computers to see. David Marr would be glad to see the developments, whether at MIT or elsewhere.
David Marr proposed the idea of a primal sketch as the first stage of converting the two-dimensional image on the retina to a full understanding of what is being looked at. This work culminated in a paper published in 1980 called "Theory of edge detection."
Marr was a faculty member at MIT, so it is appropriate for this work to have been done there.
How about a merit badge for creating Web pages or setting up a Web site.
Maybe one for completing a simple self-taught course in a simple language like Java?
The pin is for cubs not scouts, most cubs are still learning to read and write.
When I was a Cub scout, I was programming my TI-57 calculator.
I think we often set the bar too low for our children. New math might have been the worst thing to happen to me academically. I did not find out how devastating it was until I took my first graduate-level mathematics course at the University of Wisconsin.
They can last about 2,500 complete cycles or 4,800 80% discharge cycles. (From the wikipedia article linked elsewhere). Presuming a power outage once a week requiring 80% discharge, it would last about 90 years, if the number of cycles is the only thing determining its longevity.
That is 10-15 years when used as a night-time backup for solar collection.
No - it can hold 32MWh (=115.2GJ). Batteries hold energy not power. Since power is energy per unit time you have to multiply it by a time to get energy.
Thank you, 007, for clearing up this little misunderstanding.
I wonder how long this battery will last and what the cost of a refurbishment is. Also, how does the lifetime change with more dischare/charge cycles? I think these numbers are as important as the initial cost, but usually do not get mentioned.
A $25M batter which lasts 50 years sounds like a pretty nice piece of technology if it can be discharged/charged daily. If it lasts 5 years and has a 100% refurbishment cost, it does not sound so great.
People like the higher-ups at Microsoft (or most companies, I believe) do not care or want to hear about these issues.
If it does not involve a bonus (for the executive) or making them look good (the executive), engineers have to shut up and smile.
-Todd
p.s. Of course, this is my opinion--not what I would do, and it goes against good ethics. But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics?:-|
Why are people marking this as a troll?
As far as I know, it is true.
I suppose my comment, "But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics?" is a bit of a troll, but based on reality. For example:
I was offered a job. The HR department at the company pressed me to make a decision about taking the job. As a result, I lost the opportunity to play-out the interview process for a much better position.
When I described this tough problem to a well-known Silicon Valley CEO, he said I should have taken the job (as I did), kept up the interview process with the other company (I told them I was taking another job), and then quit the job I took if the better one panned out. He specifically said he had done the same thing, which involved working at a company for 1.5 weeks and then quitting for a better offer.
Maybe it is just me, but this seems wrong. But, in Silicon Valley, it appears to be business-as-usual.
Now we can ship 100,000 Mexican workers to Haiti to rebuild everything. They will earn US government-subsidized wages while the Haitians--who need the money/work--relax and watch!
I cannot imagine--if this did happen as reported--it did not violate laws. If it did NOT violate any federal laws concerning privacy rights, then we need to make sure this IS a violation in the future.
Another note: If they retrieved one photo of someone underage engaged in a sex act (this includes the "m" word, I assume), they are guilty of manufacturing and distribution of c. p, which means 10+ years in federal prison.
What were these people thinking when they set this up?
I picked the four countries with the highest birth rate and the four with the lowest. Countries not on the list of major infectious diseases are assumed to be at low risk.
Country, Children Born Per Woman, Life Expectancy, Risk of Major Infectious Diseases
For the countries with the highest birth rates:
Niger, 7.75, 52.6, very high risk
Uganda, 6.77, 52.72, very high risk
Mali, 6.62, 51.78, very high risk
Somalia, 6.52, 49.63, high risk
For the countries with the lowest birth rates:
Macau, 0.91, 84.36, low risk (not on the list)
Hong Kong, 1.02, 81.86, low risk (not on the list)
Singapore, 1.09, 81.98, low risk (not on the list)
Taiwan, 1.14, 77.96, low risk (not on the list)
I think the data speaks for itself. There is a very high correlation between a low birth rate and longevity/low risk of infectious diseases.
Perhaps spending money on birth control to keep the population small so the land can provide the people with clean water and resources to handle sewage is a good way to limit disease.
Of course, the fewer people who are born, the lower the cost of vaccinating them.
Side note: The article should have mentioned gmail.
Companies change. Look at Sun Microsystems. Suppose Google ends up needing money. What is going to stop them from allowing me / your mother in law / the king of Sweden from paying to dig through all of the data they have related to you? This might not be done directly through Google, but through a "nice, responsible company" which has paid for access to Google's data. If Google makes the data available to other companies, who knows what those entities might do with it?
We need legislation and a way to verify compliance!
Of course, it would be good if the legislation also protected our data from the Department of Homeland Security, but I do not expect lawmakers to be able to do the right thing there anytime soon.
-Todd
Have I not heard this before?
on
Y2.01K
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· Score: 1
Didn't I hear this before? I remember people talking about scamming banking systems via the confusion caused by 2010.
Does anyone remember this well enough to dig up the article?
A research lab at one of the big chip makers issued me earmuffs, as they did to all employees. Note: This is a research lab, which looks a lot like any cubicle environment at a company like Google, Microsoft, etc. This worked very well, and to this day, I consider noise-blocking earmuffs to be part of my office supplies.
Good noise-blocking earmuffs are better than earplugs. If they are of good quality, they will be more comfortable than all but the best headphones. Be careful, because many of these earmuffs are designed to block loud noises like jet engines, while letting in conversations. You do not want something that lets conversations in, but instead, muffs that block everything.
When I am wearing my earmuffs, I can barely hear my phone ring. If someone walks up behind me and talks to me, I do not know they are there.
-Todd
P.s. One more important consideration is one way to block noise is to block air movement. Some inexpensive earmuffs do this, but it causes pressure issues in your ears, similar to pushing your hands against your ears (painful!).
You can tell whether a set of earmuffs is good by putting them on and then pressing the muffs tighter into your head. If the pressure goes up like you are in an airplane, these are cheap. The Vikings will NOT do this.
I assume Google will beta test a phone like this in-house. I will be watching for Google employees carrying something unusual as they walk across the street on the Santa Clara campus.
Slashdot Mirror
In the United States, you have to be 18 years old to decide whether or not to possibly damage your future life by smoking. Additionally, except for some serious cases, we have a juvenile court record which is sealed for life, because at one time people recognized a young person might make mistakes which should not affect them when they are adults.
But, as Chris Good points out, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Web sites, etc. might end up following people for the rest of their lives.
Is it reasonable for a judge being confirmed in 2050 to have this denied via public opinion because he/she had a Facebook video of themselves with a group of friends doing something stupid when they were 15? Or 12?
What about pictures taken via a Web-cam attached to a laptop which was lent to them by their public school?
What about archived video from one of the thousands of cameras placed in public places in most larger US cities?
-Todd
As a result of an earlier Slashdot article discussing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's support for eliminating diseases in developing countries, there was a discussion suggesting population control might be a better place to invest.
It looks like the Gates foundation is not ignoring this issue.
-Todd
You know, two people or groups can arrive at the same conclusion, because it was obvious in the first place. And why is it so appropriate? What if the work had been done elsewhere, would that be inappropriate or offensive?
I should have been more specific in my first post.
David Marr's vision book (published in 1982 after his early death in 1980) is considered a seminal work in understanding human visual processing.
Marr was trying to describe how humans see. The new work at MIT is trying to allow computers to see. David Marr would be glad to see the developments, whether at MIT or elsewhere.
-Todd
David Marr proposed the idea of a primal sketch as the first stage of converting the two-dimensional image on the retina to a full understanding of what is being looked at. This work culminated in a paper published in 1980 called "Theory of edge detection."
Marr was a faculty member at MIT, so it is appropriate for this work to have been done there.
For more information, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marr_(neuroscientist)
and
http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Computational-Investigation-Representation-Information/dp/0716715678
-Todd
Maybe this was a cyber-terror attack and it is being covered up.
-Todd
How about a merit badge for creating Web pages or setting up a Web site. Maybe one for completing a simple self-taught course in a simple language like Java?
The pin is for cubs not scouts, most cubs are still learning to read and write.
When I was a Cub scout, I was programming my TI-57 calculator.
I think we often set the bar too low for our children. New math might have been the worst thing to happen to me academically. I did not find out how devastating it was until I took my first graduate-level mathematics course at the University of Wisconsin.
-Todd
How about a merit badge for creating Web pages or setting up a Web site.
Maybe one for completing a simple self-taught course in a simple language like Java?
-Todd
p.s. The discrimination thing is an unfortunate issue, but, hey, just "Don't tell."
My God! How can something like this possibly get by QA as a company the size of McAfee? Have they outsourced all of their QA to a team with no clue?
-Todd
They can last about 2,500 complete cycles or 4,800 80% discharge cycles. (From the wikipedia article linked elsewhere). Presuming a power outage once a week requiring 80% discharge, it would last about 90 years, if the number of cycles is the only thing determining its longevity.
That is 10-15 years when used as a night-time backup for solar collection.
This might be useful.
-Todd
so it holds 32MW
No - it can hold 32MWh (=115.2GJ). Batteries hold energy not power. Since power is energy per unit time you have to multiply it by a time to get energy.
Thank you, 007, for clearing up this little misunderstanding.
I wonder how long this battery will last and what the cost of a refurbishment is. Also, how does the lifetime change with more dischare/charge cycles? I think these numbers are as important as the initial cost, but usually do not get mentioned.
A $25M batter which lasts 50 years sounds like a pretty nice piece of technology if it can be discharged/charged daily. If it lasts 5 years and has a 100% refurbishment cost, it does not sound so great.
Todd
Custom dental crowns cost $150 to $250 depending on the material used. You can find adds for these in magazines targeting dentists.
Your dentist then sells the crown to you for 4x the cost, earning about $500/hour for your crown-placement visit.
-Todd
"the authorities said.' I guess you can break any system like CAPTCHA if you want it badly enough."
All this proves is the "authorities" do not know computability theory.
I.e., it should be impossible to make a CAPTCHA which will work for every person and will not be breakable by a machine.
-Todd
People like the higher-ups at Microsoft (or most companies, I believe) do not care or want to hear about these issues.
:-|
If it does not involve a bonus (for the executive) or making them look good (the executive), engineers have to shut up and smile.
-Todd
p.s. Of course, this is my opinion--not what I would do, and it goes against good ethics. But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics?
Why are people marking this as a troll?
As far as I know, it is true.
I suppose my comment, "But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics?" is a bit of a troll, but based on reality. For example:
I was offered a job. The HR department at the company pressed me to make a decision about taking the job. As a result, I lost the opportunity to play-out the interview process for a much better position.
When I described this tough problem to a well-known Silicon Valley CEO, he said I should have taken the job (as I did), kept up the interview process with the other company (I told them I was taking another job), and then quit the job I took if the better one panned out. He specifically said he had done the same thing, which involved working at a company for 1.5 weeks and then quitting for a better offer.
Maybe it is just me, but this seems wrong. But, in Silicon Valley, it appears to be business-as-usual.
-Todd
People like the higher-ups at Microsoft (or most companies, I believe) do not care or want to hear about these issues.
:-|
If it does not involve a bonus (for the executive) or making them look good (the executive), engineers have to shut up and smile.
-Todd
p.s. Of course, this is my opinion--not what I would do, and it goes against good ethics. But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics?
Now we can ship 100,000 Mexican workers to Haiti to rebuild everything. They will earn US government-subsidized wages while the Haitians--who need the money/work--relax and watch!
Oh... Sorry... That was Katrina/New Orleans.
-Todd
I cannot imagine--if this did happen as reported--it did not violate laws. If it did NOT violate any federal laws concerning privacy rights, then we need to make sure this IS a violation in the future.
Another note: If they retrieved one photo of someone underage engaged in a sex act (this includes the "m" word, I assume), they are guilty of manufacturing and distribution of c. p, which means 10+ years in federal prison.
What were these people thinking when they set this up?
Here is some information from the CIA's web site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
I picked the four countries with the highest birth rate and the four with the lowest. Countries not on the list of major infectious diseases are assumed to be at low risk.
Country, Children Born Per Woman, Life Expectancy, Risk of Major Infectious Diseases
For the countries with the highest birth rates:
Niger, 7.75, 52.6, very high risk
Uganda, 6.77, 52.72, very high risk
Mali, 6.62, 51.78, very high risk
Somalia, 6.52, 49.63, high risk
For the countries with the lowest birth rates:
Macau, 0.91, 84.36, low risk (not on the list)
Hong Kong, 1.02, 81.86, low risk (not on the list)
Singapore, 1.09, 81.98, low risk (not on the list)
Taiwan, 1.14, 77.96, low risk (not on the list)
I think the data speaks for itself. There is a very high correlation between a low birth rate and longevity/low risk of infectious diseases.
Perhaps spending money on birth control to keep the population small so the land can provide the people with clean water and resources to handle sewage is a good way to limit disease.
Of course, the fewer people who are born, the lower the cost of vaccinating them.
-Todd
Just checking...
Side note: The article should have mentioned gmail.
Companies change. Look at Sun Microsystems. Suppose Google ends up needing money. What is going to stop them from allowing me / your mother in law / the king of Sweden from paying to dig through all of the data they have related to you? This might not be done directly through Google, but through a "nice, responsible company" which has paid for access to Google's data. If Google makes the data available to other companies, who knows what those entities might do with it?
We need legislation and a way to verify compliance!
Of course, it would be good if the legislation also protected our data from the Department of Homeland Security, but I do not expect lawmakers to be able to do the right thing there anytime soon.
-Todd
Didn't I hear this before? I remember people talking about scamming banking systems via the confusion caused by 2010.
Does anyone remember this well enough to dig up the article?
Thanks (and lazy),
Todd
That's why, when I copy source code I always change all variables, functions and classes to a, b, c, ...
Whenever I copy code, I make sure it follows my current employer's coding standard.
Unfortunately, this makes it hard to find code to copy, so I always have to write my own.
-Todd
A research lab at one of the big chip makers issued me earmuffs, as they did to all employees. Note: This is a research lab, which looks a lot like any cubicle environment at a company like Google, Microsoft, etc. This worked very well, and to this day, I consider noise-blocking earmuffs to be part of my office supplies.
Good noise-blocking earmuffs are better than earplugs. If they are of good quality, they will be more comfortable than all but the best headphones. Be careful, because many of these earmuffs are designed to block loud noises like jet engines, while letting in conversations. You do not want something that lets conversations in, but instead, muffs that block everything.
The best set I have found (other than very expensive examples) are the Bilsom Viking V3 earmuffs. See http://earplugstore.stores.yahoo.net/bilsom-viking-v3-1.html as one example.
When I am wearing my earmuffs, I can barely hear my phone ring. If someone walks up behind me and talks to me, I do not know they are there.
-Todd
P.s. One more important consideration is one way to block noise is to block air movement. Some inexpensive earmuffs do this, but it causes pressure issues in your ears, similar to pushing your hands against your ears (painful!).
You can tell whether a set of earmuffs is good by putting them on and then pressing the muffs tighter into your head. If the pressure goes up like you are in an airplane, these are cheap. The Vikings will NOT do this.
But, I cannot remember on which day...
-Todd
I assume Google will beta test a phone like this in-house. I will be watching for Google employees carrying something unusual as they walk across the street on the Santa Clara campus.
-Todd
Microsoft just added 500 more layoffs to their earlier 5,000. Why the heck are they spending money on a recruiting tour?
-Todd