Comment Not quite there yet (Score 1) 170
Researches also asked Watson, "What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?"
It replied 41.9999999999, so I think the technology still has a ways to go.
Comment Re:Tune in a half-hour early... (Score 1) 170
That first bet of
If you said I get to play this game a million times I would definitely take the 50-50 chance in both cases. But expected value if statistically meaningless with a sample size of one (that is, playing the game just once).
This, I find to be the main fallacy with the recently published popular behavioral finance examples.
Submission + - Reasons for Incompetent Software Developers (javaworld.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: The May 12 whyjava blog post Reasons for Incompetent Software Developers in India caught my attention. This post, which rightfully earned a Top Links position on DZone, is explicitly aimed at highlighting reasons why some Indian developers are less competent, but what I couldn't help think as I read his reasons is how they have applied to some of the less competent developers I have witnessed working in the United States. In this post, I look at the five reasons outlined in that post from a "western" perspective; some things aren't all that different because we're all humans.
Submission + - Washington considers Internet gambling reform (daniweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Online gambling in the US could either be banned from 1st June, or set free to raise millions in tax income today.
Submission + - It's Official: Valve Releasing Linux Source Engine (phoronix.com) 1
l_bratch writes: "Valve Corporation has today rolled out their Steam Mac OS X client to the general public and confirmed something we have been reporting for two years: the Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine are coming to Linux. This news is coming days after we discovered proof in Steam's Mac OS X Client of Linux support and subsequently found more Linux references and even the unreleased Steam Linux client. The day has finally come and Linux gamers around the world have a reason to rejoice, as this is the biggest news for the Linux gaming community that sees very few tier-one titles."
Comment Re:i develop for the web (Score 1) 472
And now the mandatory xkcd insight:
http://xkcd.com/198/
Where the hell are my flying cars?
Submission + - Kindle DX’s price will drop to fight IPad (tablettweet.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: There is a big rumor about the Amazon’s market strategy against IPad pre-order which will starts from this Friday 12th. If you planing to buy a Kindle or Kindle DX global wireless maybe it’s good thing to wait for a while at least until the end of IPad pre-sale period. Some said that maybe the Kindle DX’s price will drop 20% from it’s current price, it’s mean you can buy 9.7 inch reading screen e-book reader for only 400 USD ! Worth to wait isn’t it ?
Submission + - Computing Pioneer Thacker to Win Turing Award (wsj.com)
btcoal writes: The Wall Street Journal has a profileof Charles Thacker, of Alto fame. It reads, "The Association for Computing Machinery on Tuesday is naming Thacker the latest recipient of the A.M. Turing award, which comes with $250,000 and carries prestige akin to a Nobel Prize in the industry. Thacker is being recognized largely for the Alto, a machine developed in 1974 at Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center that is often called the world’s first personal computer. The ACM is also citing Thacker’s contributions at Xerox PARC to the invention of Ethernet–the most widely used technology for local networks–as well as work on tablet-style computers since becoming a researcher at Microsoft in the 1990s.
'This guy is a real genius,' says Alan Kay, a researcher who worked with Thacker at PARC and a fellow Turing award winner. 'We don’t like to sling that word around in our field, but he is one. He is magic.'"
'This guy is a real genius,' says Alan Kay, a researcher who worked with Thacker at PARC and a fellow Turing award winner. 'We don’t like to sling that word around in our field, but he is one. He is magic.'"
Submission + - The state of open government in Canada (oreilly.com)
macslocum writes: David Eaves, a public policy entrepreneur, discusses the rise of open government in Canada's cities. He also looks at the country's federal inertia, and he explains how a beta mindset could benefit government projects.
Submission + - Cybercrooks Surpassed Old School Bankrobbers in 09 (krebsonsecurity.com)
krebsonsecurity writes: Organized cyber criminal gangs stole $25 million in the 3rd quarter alone last year, by pilfering the online bank accounts of small to midsized businesses, the FDIC reported last week. In contrast, traditional bank robbers hauled just $9.4 million in 1,184 bank robberies during that same period, according to an analysis of FBI bank crime statistics by krebsonsecurity.com. From that story: "The federal government sure publishes a lot more information about physical bank robberies that it makes available about online stick-ups. Indeed, the FBI’s bank crime stats are extraordinarily detailed. For example, they can tell you that in the 3rd quarter of last year, bank robbers were more likely to hold up their local branch between the hours of 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on a Wednesday than at any other time or day of the week; they can tell you the number of tear gas and dye packs taken with the loot, the number of security cameras activated, the number of food stamps taken, even what percentage of suspected perpetrators had illegal drug habits at the time of the robberies. About the only thing the stats don’t tell you is what brand of jeans the perpetrators were wearing and whether the getaway car had cool vanity plates. What do we get about e-crime statistics from the federal government? One guy from the FDIC giving a speech at the RSA conference.
Comment I know how this ends. (Score 1) 79
Bet it goes rogue...
Comment Re:A partial solution: (Score 1) 629
Well said. It always amazes me that even among /.ers, a non-representative selection of the population in terms of intelligence, there is a lack of sound reasoning. That is, outside of the domain-specific knowlwedge of most /.ers. Take, for example, the immediate debunking of some sharlatan's claim that Windows 7 uses up all your available memory. That argument was torn apart with the first few posts. Take, as a counter-example, the discussion on Google's unwillingness to disclose the race, gender or nationality stats of its workforce. It seemed as if most posters came to the discussion with their own view of how the world works and their own biases about diversity. Not much useful insight was gained from this latter discussion. The difference: domain-specific knowledge. (I am making the assumption that most /.ers are experts in technology and not sociology, race/gender studies, or politics).
That is upsetting. Logical thinking is one of the most highly transferable skills a human being can have.
Comment Re:Privacy (Score 1) 303
Is not privacy essential to a high quality of life?
Not for me. Just stating a trite belief in an axiomatic fashion does not make it so. Privacy as a concept has not been shown as fundamental as free expression or thought.
Comment Re:Capitalism will find a way (Score 1) 844
Prove that.
Based on what metrics were standard of living higher?
Is the decline in SOL that you state uniform across the population or have some groups fared worse than others? If so, which groups?
IF true, there other exogenous factors or confounding variables that can explain it?
It would be nice of more engineers or just people in general took some econometrics courses or remembered basic statistics and experimental design. Or we could all just make decisions and observations about the universe based on our limited personal experience.
Rant. Over.
Comment In Defense of Statistics (Score 5, Informative) 844
The only thing worse than a statistic is an anecdote. The author has his personal experience- fine. But my personal experience directly contradicts his. And the only statistics on the subject (from NACE and BLS) give a fairly Normal distribution of salaries between 57,000 and 151,000
(http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos304.htm)
Median annual wages of computer and information scientists were $97,970 in May 2008. The middle 50 percent earned between $75,340 and $124,370. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $57,480, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $151,250. Median annual wages of computer and information scientists employed in computer systems design and related services in May 2008 were $99,900.
