[...] and rather than cutting the least important program, they cut the most visible program, in an attempt to get their funding restored.

Honestly, though, a qestion-answer service for school children probably does rank among the least important programs for a research lab. I very much doubt this is part of their written remit (as opposed to communicate their actual research to the public), and the people spending time at work answering the questions certainly get zero professional recognition for it.

It does sound like a very nice, fun service. And I do agree that this kind of outreach is important. But if this is not part of what their funders want them to do, then it should come as no surprise if it's among the first things to go when money becomes tight.

You want this kind of thing to continue? Make sure there's funding (and paid time) earmarked for doing it. In fact, that may be a good idea in general: add a small fraction (.1% or even less) to any research grant over a certain size for general science outreach. If it's part of your funding, that also removes the career obstacles toward doing outreach we too often have now.

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!"

AMD was (before haswel) not too bad if you have a multithreaded workload.

Thanks to the XboxONE with 8 cores games will run better on AMD as they will become more threaded since many are crappy xbox ports.

For a cheap box to run VM images in virtualbox/vmware workstation, video editing, or compiling code AMD offers a great value and the bios does not cripple virtualization extensions unlike the cheap ones from intel.

FYI I switched to an i7 4770k for my current system so I am not an AMD fanboy. But I paid through the nose for hyperthreading and 4 cores. I wanted good IPC for single threaded as well.

AMD dropped the ball twice. Both with abandoning the superior 5 year old phenom II which is still 25% faster per clock ticket than their newest system??? Second selling their fabrication plants to raise the shareprice last decade. They have .28 nm chips while intel is busy switching to .10nm??! How can you compete agains't that? Worse global foundaries are more interested in ARM chips as AMD has too low demand. OUCH.

Even if you love Intel it is in your best interest for AMD to stick around for competition and lower prices.

Here is the quicker. The half decade old phenom II is faster per clock cycle than the FX series based on the bulldozer architecture?? AMD really messed up as it was optimized for its graphics hoping it would win this way. In other words those mocking it call it Pentium IV 2.0

The i7 4770k is a fairly high end chip by Intel. I own one but I would not expect to find one in a sub 700. It is not a Xeon, but it is just 1 notch down from the $900 extreme edition so it is 2nd highest in consumer non server chips.

Well sites like tomshardware.com make it look like a Pentium or i3 can smoke the latest AMD black edition fresh out of the water. However, biased or not my real world experience says otherwise as many games are optimized for intel and use NVidia specific directX extensions with their studio software which boils a lot of AMD users blood but it is the truth.

In SWTOR I got a doubling of FPS from moving from a PhenomII black edition to an i7 4770k. True it has less cores but apps are optimized still for single tasking and I do have 4 real and 4 hyperthreaded cores for my VMs.

Reason being are games are crappy xbox ports. The 360 I think was single or dual core so games were single threaded. Therefore they kick ass on Intel. The only good news is the xboxONE is changing this with 8 cores with an AMD and forcing game makers to optimize more for ATI.

I expect the newer games to be more competitive as a result as they are more threaded and ATI optimized on tomshardware.com and other sites.

But damage is done and the power is much better with intel chips as they leave AMD further and further in the dust with lower chip nm sized dies since AMD sold their foundries. Global Foundaries only cares about ARM chips so sorry AMD stay in 2010 ... Intel is going 10nm next year and will finally put the last nail in the coffin. ... I pray NOT!

Overkill it may be, but I've been writing my prototype security code to generate new AES256 keys for each session, using the pre-generated keys only to initialize communications and handshake the generated keys. Even I won't know what keys are in use.

The NSA can kiss my ass. So can CSEC, GCHQ, and everyone else who thinks they have a "right" to spy on me.

Approach the service provider with a properly signed warrant in the appropriate jurisdiction of the server if you want access to my data.

You spent 10.4 minutes in the bathroom this morning.

The staff in your department average 5.6 minutes.

The doors in your office will therefore remain locked until 5:04 today to ensure you make up the time.

Alright sounds fair. Why can't a consortium or guild provide this certification? For coders who need something done will be programmers who will earn less and therefore no need for H1B1s and for critical architects and SOA for critical projects you can have certified engineers?

We could have 2 grades rather than average both of them and not having enough talent for one, yet be too expensive for the other use?

Really? Go look at people posting here and some of the job ads if you do not believe me that kids start at $60k a year?

Not to sound assholish but I thought only Indians would be doing IT and dropped out of CS to do business. Worst mistake ever! I am happy just to make 50k in a few years of experience so yes I do not believe they deserve a rise and HR and accounting need a way to conserve costs.

Only in slashdot is it discussed there are starving programmers all making 30k a year thanks to those horrible greedy H1B1 recruiters. I do not see it. I am being honest as I see it no different than CEOs whinning about making less than a million.

What is a good starting and experienced programmer salary? 100k a year? Unless they are specialized or own their companies a programmer should not make that much. Simple and the corporations are just trying to reballance the market. American programmers make nearly 2x as much as any other major so I have little sympathy.

I saw an episode of house hunters.

You can buy for $100k so yes it is cheap.

Bare in mind these companies are used to paying 2009 great recession salaries of 40k a year less.

The programmer who did this happily accepted as there was no work. Now he left. Employers need a reality check as the economy now is not 2009 anymore.l

... ok put the emotion aside here. Play the view for the corporation for a minute?

Name one field besides the medical industry that pays college kids with 0 years experience $60,000 a year!!

I know college buddies who made $14/hr and lived with their parents after graduating from a bachelors in business?! They were lucky and happy to make that much as it was their first job. Correction doctors make $30,000 a year for 2 years first in residency.

Why should a programmer make as much as a doctor??

Supply and demand is why. Slashdotters may hate my argument here but look at it through the employers eyes who need stuff done? There is a shortage right now. Otherwise why should a kid who has never worked a day in his life out of school earn nearly $70,000 a year?

If you all hate Indians taking jobs you need to lower your salary more to what other majors make including even those in the medical industry. My brother can't find any programmers. The same ones were jerks and demanded $70,000 a year and now were all butt hurt when the great recession hit. The average programmer is worth $50,000 a year and HR caps it to that with 5 years experience in Memphis.

So basically kids out of school make $10,000 more than the average.. see an issue with this? H1B1 are needed to fill in then due to a lack of qualified candidates to positions.

I used av-totals. They are a professional certification group