I don't care for this new UI. What I really don't care for though, is the increase in cross-site javascript. I've been using Slashdot since it had no client-side scripting, and it worked just fine without any javascript at all.

I think that Slashdot/Dice is telling me that it's time to get off the computer and go out and live my life in the real world again. Perhaps I should listen.

Yes, but Mozilla/Netscape was not an integral part of my OS kernel giving malware a vector right into the system-level processes of the computer.

Volunteers are never very good at police work, and previous volunteers at the border have proven to be a bit on the contentious side...

Why pay minimum wage? I bet we could outsource that work to a 3rd world country and only pay a 1/10 of minimum wage. It is not like the pilots would have to be physically here in the US to run them remotely.

Damn lag...

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

That's what I was thinking. Equipping every border patrol unit with a commercial version of the ubiquitous quad-copter with preprogrammed flight rules (ie, can't cross the border itself) and with some sanity checking (all transmitted footage is logged elsewhere too, to reduce abuse) would probably be a hell of a lot cheaper and would give officers significantly more 'eyes' where they need them.

Probably because I support a progressive tax platform and holding corporations and their officers to full account when they do ill, with a nice healthy dose of a short highest-paid to lowest-paid ratio for company employees...

On one hand I agree, you are right about our ridiculous nudity taboos. On the other, does it matter whether its clothed or not? The intention of this sort of posting is clearly malicious. Yes its silly that people get treated badly for being seen nude, yes its stupid that anybody cares, but, if it were actually the case that being nude wasn't such a taboo, then forums like this wouldn't exist.

To put it another way, I don't particularly care if someone wants to walk out his house and down the street as nude as the day he was born. I wouldn't personally treat him any different from anyone else.

Yet, I still am bothered by someone who would walk up to people in a park; open his trench coat and force his nakedness on others. It isn't really the same thing as just being naked or being seen naked.

Similarly, there is a difference between posting pics with permission, of which there is no shortage out there, and posting something you know you wouldn't get permission for. They really are two very different act, even though they are technically the same actions.

And yes, its nudity taboos that give power to the action and we need to get over them, but, we also don't need to coddle the petty assholes who don't think consent matters.

Journalism has already been crowdsourced. All you have to do is look at the number of blog postings and discussions at any website that references "news" articles (including Slashdot) to realize that.

Newspapers are already being forced into a co-operative model to apply the resources needed to do true investigative reporting, like the most recent HSBC scandal. None of them have enough staff left on the payroll to do it by themselves.

Software and IT have much the same problem, though the "crowd" is a bunch of cheap overseas labourers instead of the general public. But the end result is the same -- highly paid skilled professionals replaced by cheap mob mentality grunts working on the "million monkeys" theory of producing quality.

The legal profession has been impacted big time just by the ability to do keyword searches of article databases instead of paying junior staff to do the legwork of researching relevant cases for the lawyers in a firm. Most new lawyers are finding it hard as hell to get into any real firms to gain experience as a result, much less ever be offered a partnership.

Note that not one of these changes required anything as earth-shattering as "AI" -- just automation and distribution of common tasks.

It's not even a good example of image recognition, because the images to be processed don't have to be "understood" to be used. On top of that, the graphics of the games in question were very simple and primitive compared to what image recognition software deals with.

Add to that the repetitive nature of old video games that were based on 99% reaction time and 1% strategy, and you can just flat out colour me "unimpressed" with this "research".

Back in University, my AI project was a game player (a simple strategy game whose name I forget.) As it turned out, the entire game mapped down to a pre-determined set of decisions, so after playing only a dozen games, the "AI" would win every time, and that was just with a simple weighted-algorithm system of play. Some problems are just eminently suited to "AI" is all that I ended up learning from that project, but it was a useful lesson on the difference between optimizing a decision tree and actual "intelligence".

Until someone comes up with a system that can deal with bad and erroneous inputs as well as humans, I will continue to be unimpressed. Yet at the same time, I don't consider it necessary for a computer to be able to think and understand per se to be considered an "intelligence." It just needs to be able to make decisions and choose between alternatives faster than it's human counterparts in order to be useful, and to reduce the number of errors compared to it's human counterparts.

I have little faith in "neural networks." They place too much emphasis on emulating simple biological components and not enough on the "art" of understanding. Neural networks basically take the approach that "if it's big enough, we'll maybe get lucky and it will start to think." That's not "solving a problem." That's "playing the lottery."

Given Apple's own abusive patent behaviour over the years, I can't help but smugly thinking "That's Karma, bitch!"

I'm curious as to how you've drawn this conclusion. Please elaborate.

That's a matter of a being having the capability of standing up and asserting that it truly is a being and has the ability to determine its own future for itself and to make that future for itself.

We are definitely not there yet.

Good, you listened that it's always, "a dildo," and never, "your dildo."

I don't necessarily agree with instilling too much compassion.

I think that it may be better to teach her to own her decisions, as in, don't just go along with the flow, but to actually think-out and make a real decision on things. Your daughter is in the process of entering a part of her life that will fundamentally change who she is in her adolescence. She'll be faced with the social pressures of maturing into adulthood along with the internal pressures of body changes. You need to teach her to truly think about the ramifications of her decisions, to understand that in many circumstances there's no choice with all-positive results, and to accept the bad along with the good when she decides. She needs to confidently own her decisions with education, with dating, with employment. That confidence will carry her a long way, much longer than simple compassion, or in teaching blind respect.

Remember, not everyone deserves the same respect, but the reasons that individuals may deserve more or less respect is based on the individual, not on any easy category that the individual has no control over. She should judge people, but she should judge them for things within their control, for their choices. Everyone should start out as a blank slate and through observation the level of respect is determined.

I don't think that the religious expression, "the meek shall inherit the Earth," is a good thing, I think it's a cautionary tale. The meek will get what's left over after everyone else that isn't meek is done with it. That means the scraps, the used up, worn out remains. She needs to not be meek, she needs to be strong, she needs to be assertive, she needs to figure out what she wants and to make it happen, and to make decisions when others are willing to just go with the flow. She needs to understand true Machiavellianism (ie, the understanding that there are times to come into direct conflict with others, even those in authority, but that there could be consequences or long-term ramifications for treading on such people) and that life simply isn't fair. What she wants she has to go get. The Universe owes her nothing, and will give her a raw deal (ie, the expected loss of her father) and that her life is what she makes of it.

Sorry if this is tough to hear, but I'm pretty sure that it's the truth. Life is what we make of it for ourselves. Our decisions at one point affect our options at other points, and we have to assert what we want if we're actually to get it.