I don't expect to be a Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I'd love to have enough knowledge in these subjects to research and experiment to the point where I could possibly start contributing back to the field.

Look up "Galaxy Zoo". You can start contributing today.

As for classes, start reading. Find out which books are used for the courses and buy the books and read them even if you cannot take the courses.

They tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing

Snowden released the files he had in 2013.

That's TWENTY YEARS where they would be using their old communication methods while we were hunting them. There should not be a terrorist left alive.

The PROBLEM is that we collect too much data. It is impossible to process into useful information. It is a mass of "dots" for 300,000,000 people that increases every single day.

And terrorists are so rare that they (and their communications) vanish into the mass of regular people. If you live in the USofA you are more likely to be killed by someone in your own family than by a terrorist.

That's wouldn't be "looking for people with liberal arts degrees", that's "looking for people with demonstrable technical experience" and finding that they just happen to have a liberal arts degree.

Yep.

As an analogy I'd point to pedigree and breed in a dog show. Your FORMAL education also has a breed (your major/minor) and a pedigree (which schools you attended).

But when it comes to hiring, I'd be looking for the "big dogs". And while breed and pedigree can be a factor (Chihuahua compared to Sheep Dog) I won't exclude the mutts.

If you have the drive and dedication to complete a formal major in one field while spending your free time becoming competitive in a different field then you are someone I should be interviewing.

While I'd tend toward Computer Science (since that is what my degree is in) I'd FIRST want to see what they've done already.

Is there anything the Lit major can show that demonstrates his programming skills? Like patches submitted to a FLOSS project? Or a mobile app? Or even a personal website?

It's not that you cannot get a programming job with a Lit degree. It is that the other candidates will probably have more DEMONSTRATED skills in the programming field.

Show me that you CAN program (sufficient to the basic requirements of the project) AND that your Lit degree gives you a different perspective AND how you implement that perspective.

Physics - awesome!
Chemistry - awesome
Biology - awesome

But I think he's wrong on some many issues. From the summary:

... he imagined laser-scanning every object in the Smithsonian for students to explore ...

Why? That's like looking at a single car from one country and claiming an "education". Think REALITY. The students could see HOW the objects were created. What tools were used. Who crafted the item. What the society was like that required it.

... and collaborating in shared virtual spaces rather than campuses.

They're called "chat rooms". Wanna "cyber"? Porn is NOT the same as education.

Looking at other students would be a distraction.

The next step past that is when you have shared space, and not only do you believe that this object is right there in front of me, but I look around and I see other people just like we see each other now, and I really, truly believe that youâ(TM)re right in front of me.

Why does it matter that you see avatars looking at the same point that you are looking at?

And he keeps going on about that. For him it is all about "seeing" other "people" (really just avatars) so it can be the same "experience" as real life.

That's stupid. They are not people. They are avatars. And knowing how people are, their avatars would be designed to be as distracting as possible.

A word doesn't automatically take its worst possible meaning.

Here is the quote from TFA. It provides the context.

Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters.

No. That is not referring to an IDE drive.

Or, more completely:

Humans have rights, under which they retain some measure of dominion over their bodies. Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters. Our laws may, directly and indirectly, protect peopleâ(TM)s right to use certain machines - freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms. But our laws do not recognize the rights of machines themselves.

So no. They are not talking about an IDE "master/slave" situation. They are talking about humans using machines (with examples provided) and equating that to "slavery".

That would be nice. But in the meantime ... it's about property. From TFA:

But our laws do not recognize the rights of machines themselves.

Because they are non-sentient property. Ask again once AI is achieved.

But what is the difference between that and having a phone with you - sorry, a computer with you - all the time that is tracking where you are, which you're using for storing all of your personal information, your memories, your friends, your communications, that knows where you are and does all kinds of powerful things and speaks different languages?

And the difference between a stored text communication and a written letter? Learn the 4th Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters.

Really? "Slaves"? Maybe you should look into actual slavery.

As to "uncertain" just look for the sales receipt or lease agreement. My car is a machine and there is no uncertainty as to who owns it.

... understanding that we are - if not yet Terminators - at least a little more integrated ...

Fuck you.

Learn what technology really is before you go off on movie tangents.

a. Being offensive is not the same as being offended.

b. Rights are not the sole consideration. There is also politeness.

The first question would be whether the person being offensive would say the same things on a public street corner. People who are offensive tend to be a lot more insistent upon their claimed "Rights" when they have anonimity.

The next question would be whether they'd say it alone on a public street corner. The people from Westboro Baptist Church seem to be focused on being offensive. Which is why they "protest" in groups.

If you cannot pass both those tests then you are being "offensive" and your goal is to offend someone else. So do not try the "no freedom of speech" argument.

The guy standing on the street corner telling the world about how the government is tracking him through his dental fillings is doing more for "freedom of speech" than the guy screaming "fucking jew whore" when his character is shot in a video game.

From TFA:

But taking my phone on the raft wasn't the stupid part; I had it sealed in a zippable plastic bag.

There needs to be a law to make those plastic bags really, REALLY watertight so people who are NOT being stupid by putting their phone in one and then going on a raft ...

Were you really going to answer the phone while you were on the raft? No that's not stupid. (sarcasm)

But on the way back through the locks, some jerks in a rental yacht pulled up to the raft, started chatting, and then suddenly urged us to get on board and get our raft into the yacht very urgently, making me think it was an emergency and causing me to lose track of my phone.

And you did not ask "why" because ... ?

... we later determined that the "emergency" was that the jerks were trying to get the three women in bikinis on board their boat.

Is there some reason /. keeps posting bullshit like this?

He made a series of stupid decisions about his 1st-world-toy and now he wants the government to make it better for him.

It troubles me that you were without your phone for a few days. Really... well... NOT.

I'm old. I remember the times before cell phones. Sometimes, when you moved, you were without phone service for a whole week or more. And you had to tell everyone who mattered what your new phone number was.

And still society managed to survive.

Somehow, without constant phone reception, the country put men on the moon.

But let's make a law now so companies will be forced to stock replacement phones because OVERNIGHT is too slow.

It reminds me of a two-year-old crying over spilt milk.

Worse. It's that child whinging because he cannot have the toy he really really wants RIGHT NOW! Tomorrow is too late!

It is also quite possible that he is actually suffering from mental illness -- schizophrenia often manifests itself in early adulthood, for example -- and that his books were originally written as a coping mechanism for the early stages of illness.

The problem with that is that they are keeping him in an undisclosed location.

But they're revealing that he is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Wouldn't they just send him to the closest psychiatric hospital AND TELL THE PRESS THAT HE WENT THERE for evaluation? If there is no problem with the actions of the police then there is no need for secrecy.

The police are under no requirements to act - they even won a Supreme Court case regarding the matter.

The problem is that there are very few people with the guts to say "I will take the responsibility for ending this investigation right now because I believe there is no risk".

Once "the children" are invoked then anything can be justified to protect "the children".

And who is going to end his/her career by saying there is no risk when someone else might find something that was missed in the perpetrator's background?

I'm old. I remember when playing games at school was fun. Even if it was pretend assassination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_(game)

Asking nerds what apps are good is like strolling into a literature forum and asking "I haven't read a book in 15 years - anything new out that you think is good?"

Well this "Twilight" series is a best seller. As is this "50 Shades of Grey".

I really with the old Twilight Zone was still running. I think that that premise would make a great episode.

I'm going to map my drive to work, by driving it a few dozen times.

And that is if you are the ONLY person with a robot car on that road. Which may be correct for the initial roll-out. But this is a great example of the "network effect". If 100 people in your state own robot cars then a LOT of your state will be continuously mapped / re-mapped / re-re-mapped / etc.

Are we really whining because a brand new technology can't do EVERYTHING for us? Because it only takes care of MOST of the drudgery?

There is space to be filled and page hits to be collected. Demanding instant perfection for every edge-case is a good way of doing both.

Google has logged over 700,000 miles in those vehicles. Without a single robot-controlled accident.

There might be problems in certain weather conditions. Or in certain other conditions. Or whatever. In which case the driver should take over.

And since it is software, eventually those problems should be solved.

Judging by how badly TFA was written.

If a new stop light appeared overnight, for example, the car wouldn't know to obey it.

Got it. So the cars cannot handle changes in traffic markers.

Google's cars can detect and respond to stop signs that aren't on its map, a feature that was introduced to deal with temporary signs used at construction sites.

So they cannot deal with new stop LIGHTS but they can deal with new stop SIGNS. WTF?

But in a complex situation like at an unmapped four-way stop the car might fall back to slow, extra cautious driving to avoid making a mistake.

And it would be "unmapped" for the first attempt. Right? Because the cars should be sending back data on road conditions and such to HQ. Right?

Maps have so far been prepared for only a few thousand miles of roadway, but achieving Google's vision will require maintaining a constantly updating map of the nation's millions of miles of roads and driveways.

And the car needs the map to drive, right?

Google's cars have safely driven more than 700,000 miles.

So they just drove over the same "few thousand miles of roadway" again and again and again and again? Until they got to 700,000 miles?

The car's sensors can't tell if a road obstacle is a rock or a crumpled piece of paper, so the car will try to drive around either.

As it should. Because you don't know if that piece of paper is covering a rock or a pothole or whatever.

For example, John Leonard, an MIT expert on autonomous driving, says he wonders about scenarios that may be beyond the capabilities of current sensors, such as making a left turn into a high-speed stream of oncoming traffic.

Isn't that one of the easier problems? The car waits until it detects a gap of X size where X is dependent upon the speed of oncoming vehicles and the distance it needs to cross PLUS a pre-set "safety margin".