Comment Re:Industry attacks it (Score 1) 328
Water is a basic necessity of life. It's not a product.
Its also a chemical.
In fact, its a fracking chemical.
Comment Re:All aboard the FAIL train (Score 1) 553
Please explain how civil strife in nation-states like Syria where there is little American much like the Secretary of State's influence are Hillary Clinton's fault.
Please explain how you can be so fucking obtuse as to wave away the example of Libya (which she enthusiastically supported) and her vote in favor of the Iraq War AUMF.
On second thought, don't bother. You have nothing interesting to say and are conveniently ignoring the points that don't line up with your world view.
Comment Re:let me weigh in on this (Score 2) 144
It's only outdated if you don't want a dedicated device for time. Some of us do want or need such a device, preferably one that doesn't need to be recharged every 24 hours, do a bunch of shit we don't care about, and occupy half of our lower arms. A nice looking watch is also a fashion statement; I'm not talking Rolex level (although you can certainly do that), just something that looks halfway decent and goes with most of your wardrobe.
There's still a market for dedicated devices. What does a smartwatch give me? Don't need it for fitness, it will never compete with a decent runner's watch for durability and ease of use. Don't want it for time, my real watch is less cumbersome and has a battery life measured in years. Can't do anything productive (e-mails, shopping lists, etc.) with it that I can't do better with my smartphone. Directions? That might be an argument, but again, how is the watch better than my phone? I've gotten around foreign cities where I don't speak the local language using my phone and Google Maps. Where's the game changer in doing the same with my watch?
The Challenge of Getting a Usable QWERTY Keyboard Onto a Dime-sized Screen 144
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Spain and Germany are building on Carnegie Mellon's work to attempt to create workable text-input interfaces for wearables, smartwatches and a new breed of IoT devices too small to accomodate even the truncated soft keyboards familiar to phone users. In certain cases, the screen area in which the keyboard must be made usable is no bigger than a dime. Of all the commercial input systems I've used, Graffiti seems like it might be the most suited to such tiny surfaces.
Comment Re:Windows one is my fave (Score 1) 59
It was Windows 95 and 98, and the rollover happened at 49.7 days.
And yes, you are a troll because it's quite easily explained as a garden variety mistake due to careless programming. An unsigned 32 bit integer can hold up to 4 billion. 4 billion milliseconds is about 49.7 days. 4 billion sounds "big enough"-- but it isn't when we're talking milliseconds. And clearly, a Windows box COULD stay up that long, or else the bug would never have been discovered.
How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text 164
Presto Vivace writes: Dan Froomkin reports at The Intercept: "Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community's 'holy grail,' the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and 'extract' the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest." I am torn between admiration of the technical brilliance of building software like this and horror as to how it is being used. It can't just be my brother and me who like to salt all phone conversations with interesting keywords.
Comment Re:At the same time (Score 2) 323
So the Hurricane was the Y-Wing, and the Spitfire was the X-Wing?
Comment Re:Trickle Down? (Score 1) 227
No good deed goes uncriticized, right?
Comment Re:Depends how you evaluate the curve (Score 1) 425
So you think only the best AND the absolute WORST musicians make money?
I'm at a loss as to what line of reasoning could be used to come to such a conclusion.
Recent Paper Shows Fracking Chemicals In Drinking Water, Industry Attacks It 328
eldavojohn writes: A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences turned up 2-Butoxyethanol from samples collected from three households in Pennsylvania. The paper's level headed conclusion is that more conservative well construction techniques should be used to avoid this in the future and that flowback should be better controlled. Rob Jackson, another scientist who reviewed the paper, stressed that the findings were an exception to normal operations. Despite that, the results angered the PR gods of the Marcellus Shale Gas industry and awoke beltway insider mouthpieces to attack the research — after all, what are they paying them for?
Appeals Judge Calls Prenda an "Ingenious Crooked Extortionate Operation" 71
ktetch-pirate ("pirate politician" Andrew Norton) writes with this news from his blog: [Monday] was the long-awaited appeals court hearing in the ongoing Prenda copyright troll saga. Almost exactly two years after Judge Otis Wright went sci-fi on Prenda and its principles, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held an appeals hearing requested by Prenda on the sanctions, and it was not a pretty day for Prenda. Highlights included Senior Judge Pregerson calling Prenda's operation an "Ingenious Crooked Extortionate Operation" after describing in detail how they operate.
Prenda also astonished the judges by welcoming the idea of a criminal contempt hearing, which Legal blog Popehat thinks is likely to happen, on top of the sanctions being sustained.
Prenda also astonished the judges by welcoming the idea of a criminal contempt hearing, which Legal blog Popehat thinks is likely to happen, on top of the sanctions being sustained.
Comment Vaccinations? (Score 1, Troll) 227
I hope they enforce all vaccinations for entry, other than those with legitimate medical exemptions.
The Programming Talent Myth 425
HughPickens.com writes: Jake Edge writes at LWN.net that there is a myth that programming skill is somehow distributed on a U-shaped curve and that people either "suck at programming" or that they "rock at programming", without leaving any room for those in between. Everyone is either an amazing programmer or "a worthless use of a seat" which doesn't make much sense. If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution. According to Edge this belief that programming ability fits into a bi-modal distribution is both "dangerous and a myth". "This myth sets up a world where you can only program if you are a rock star or a ninja. It is actively harmful in that is keeping people from learning programming, driving people out of programming, and it is preventing most of the growth and the improvement we'd like to see." If the only options are to be amazing or terrible, it leads people to believe they must be passionate about their career, that they must think about programming every waking moment of their life. If they take their eye off the ball even for a minute, they will slide right from amazing to terrible again leading people to be working crazy hours at work, to be constantly studying programming topics on their own time, and so on.
The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, says Edge, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Programming isn't even one thing, though people talk about it as if it were; it requires all sorts of skills and coding is just a small part of that. Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed. If we embrace this idea that "it's cool to be okay at these skills"—that being average is fine—it will make programming less intimidating for newcomers. If the bar for success is set "at okay, rather than exceptional", the bar seems a lot easier to clear for those new to the community. According to Edge the tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination and although it is a multi-faceted problem, the talent myth is part of the problem. "In our industry, we recast the talent myth as "the myth of the brilliant asshole", says Jacob Kaplan-Moss. "This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic. In reality, given the normal distribution, it's likely that these people aren't actually exceptional, but even if you grant that they are, how many developers does a 10x programmer have to drive away before it is a wash?"
The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, says Edge, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Programming isn't even one thing, though people talk about it as if it were; it requires all sorts of skills and coding is just a small part of that. Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed. If we embrace this idea that "it's cool to be okay at these skills"—that being average is fine—it will make programming less intimidating for newcomers. If the bar for success is set "at okay, rather than exceptional", the bar seems a lot easier to clear for those new to the community. According to Edge the tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination and although it is a multi-faceted problem, the talent myth is part of the problem. "In our industry, we recast the talent myth as "the myth of the brilliant asshole", says Jacob Kaplan-Moss. "This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic. In reality, given the normal distribution, it's likely that these people aren't actually exceptional, but even if you grant that they are, how many developers does a 10x programmer have to drive away before it is a wash?"
Cisco Names Veteran Robbins To Succeed Chambers as CEO 32
bledri writes: After 20 years as Cisco's CEO, John Chambers will step down this summer. The search for a replacement took a committee 16 months, and they selected Chuck Robbins, who was previously responsible for the company's global sales and partner team. From the article: "Wall Street analysts said a change was expected and could signal a refocusing of Cisco, which acquired dozens of companies under Chambers but has failed to make great headway outside its core networking business."
Comment Re:All aboard the FAIL train (Score 1) 553
No, the destruction of nation-states (Libya, Syria, and Iraq) that created the conditions for ISIS to flourish are Clinton's responsibility. She was a policy-maker, not the policy-maker, but a policy-maker nonetheless who was in the room when these decisions were made.
