Can a voice-recognition system that gets rid of human operators, human salespeople, human technical support, a robot?

What of an online card catalog, replacing the librarian?

The list is just beginning...

Building a secure system is like building a wall out of swiss cheese. Lots of layers, minimizing the overlapping holes.

The operative phrase is, "working with select California communities to leverage their publicly-owned fiber networks".

In essence, they can focus on a community with a tight and selected set of network connections. In other words, the environment is gamed for performance.,

A large ISP has to hand a wide variety of conditions -- distant users, poor existing infrastructure, etc. Not a fair comparison.

Conspiracy theory? You want a conspiracy theory? Here's one...

Flight MH370 never existed. The plane never existed. Neither did the passengers.

It was all a coverup, creating false people with false identities, to allow people in protection programs or otherwise needed to be hidden to be "killed".

Simple. Create the information for a flight and an aircraft. Hack the information into databases as needed, going back to the "purchase", "earlier flights", and "maintenance records" of the aircraft. Create bookings for every person who needs to "disappear". Create flight prep and departure records.

Then the plane is gone. No evidence. No bodies. And the so-called victims, the real people who were listed as being booked onto the flight, can be taken away, wherever they need to be taken to.

No one will look for them in their new locations as they are "dead, lost at sea."

From noted experts on lie detectors and their weaknesses: Yes, they are measuring your current emotional/visceral response. Pathological liars do very well on these as they are acting out their stories (true or not); as they experience the universe of the story, it becomes their reality and their bodies react accordingly.

Okay, you aren't a pathological liar. Can you focus on images, at least? You want a positive emotional response? Focus your mind on sex while answering a question. You'll inhale, your pupils will dilate, skin thermal and electrical properties will change. For an opposite reaction, focus on maggots on an open wound on your arm.

When you go into the store, you see a lot of items on endcaps of the aisles. They are highly visible. You see items on shelves at eye level and other items that are shelved high up or at the floor.

Why do you think some items are on endcaps, and some are shelved at eye-level as opposed to floor-level? That's right. Companies PAY to have their products placed at more desirable locations.

As you were saying, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads.

TI introduced their SR-10 calculator in 1972, not 1975. I bought one in 1973. It could do SQUARE and SQUARE ROOT in addition to the four basic functions, for around $100. A marvel!

They released the SR-50 calculator, full trig-log capable, in 1974. I replaced my SR-10 with one of these before going off to college.

Nope. I had an SR-10 (1973) and an SR-50 (1974). I don't know where the SR-50 is, but the SR-10 STILL WORKS!

I went to a technical school (RPI) with the ongoing battle between RPN and algebraic notation (HP vs. TI). I knew a lot of people that had both, and both families lasted very nicely under heavily used conditions.

Someone once proposed letting companies and people appraise their own buildings and houses for tax purposes.

The caveat is that this appraisal is now a for-sale price. If Apple appraised their HQ at $200 and I walked in with a pair of Franklins, I now own the building.

After all, they have lots of courses of material on managing hiring planning...

Sounds like a giant honeypot scheme.

1. Set up a site with backend code to store images in a set database.
2. Discard images that are submitted.
3. Prepopulate the database with trash images.
4. Publicize the site/
5. Watch for hackers attacking the site.

Be interesting to see what kinds of leads they get...

In a nutshell:

1. Meet the tools

2. Learn how to use the tools

3. Learn how to answer questions

4. Learn how to ask questions

Roughly: High school, Bachelor's, Master's, Ph.D. Experience and the right work substitutes and moves you ahead, as well. In music, a nice correspondence is: play the recorder/violin in school, form a/play in a band, compose music for your band/in genre, write compositions that extend/break genres.

It seems the author is bemoaning the existence of step 1 (and possibly parts of step 2). The author is jumping ahead quite a bit. The initial part of learning a field is learning the basic vocabulary of the field. The initial part of learning the JOY of a field is learning a field in the context of other things that bring you joy.

Cognitive bias is a self-deceptive practice in which a person (unintentionally) selects data to support his or her hypothesis. Understanding this principle is central to the critical analysis of scientific research. Is the person influenced by what they are seeing (due to their position, etc) when seeing a subset of the universe? Is the person drawing conclusions, abstracting from the subset to the whole, without realizing that the subset is not a representative one?

There are many issues for concern when reviewing this article. First, Dr. Evans is embedded in a nonrepresentative world, is seeing two changes (increased cellphone use and increased identification of issues within children), and is stating a correlation on factors that may well be coincident. Second, there is the issue of the definition of mental illness in children. For autism (a general example, not one of mental illness), the definition and boundaries have shifted over time. This has been one of the causes of the increased incidence of autism. I will hypothesize that the definitions and boundaries of "mental illness" in children has also changed over time, and this may well be a critical factor in the increased incidence of the same.

Dr. Evans proposes an interesting hypothesis (and one we have heard before). But the evidence quoted in the article is circumstantial at best, consisting of anecdotes. She does not quote any general studies. She focuses solely on the negative aspects of a changing environment, without quoting on the positive. Without baselining the definition of "mental illness", without a complete and neutral analysis of the overall impact of the *change* (both positive and negative), Dr. Evans's proposal is at best a weakly supported hypothesis.

There is gameplay and there is story. There is story and there is art. There is business and profit and legacy.

Why do we want HL2E3? It isn't gameplay (for the most part). We can get that anywhere. Do you pull out HL2E1 or HL2E2 (or even Black Mesa) every now and then? Yeah. It is story. It is borderline art (though my artist-wife would guffaw to read that).

Story, give us story. If no one is interested in completing it, is it because no one is interested in the story, or because no one is interested in extending the gameplay? Would it be a fulfilling experience to take their existing framework, give it to new devs as an experimental/toy playground and treat it as a "have fun" environment? Would they be able to entice a team into a non-profit-driven, do-it-for-the-fan-accolades pro bono/cover the cost experience?

Do it, Gabe. How you sell it internally ("another game release in our catalog" vs. "art and glory for the ages") HIGHLY influences how it appears to potential team members. You can sell product outside, I'm sure you can sell it inside as well.

You obviously have never traveled on business. Most business travel for most of the business travelers I know works like this:

• Pick a hotel chain that has points and is within the company's budget (that is, how much you can bill to the client).
• Stick with that hotel chain forever and accumulate points to your personal account.
• Use the points for your vacations.

We bill out the cost for our consultants. As long as the client is paying and it is within the contract budget, everyone is happy. And all of the hotels cost about the same, kind of like all of the gas stations at a corner costing the same. For company-supported travel, we establish a budget (yes, we are reasonable, we like to keep our employees happy) and go from there.