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Comment Automation is good (Score 5, Insightful) 510

Repeat with me: Automation is good. It makes we, human kind, more productive. With the same human work, we can get more benefits for ourselves, so on average our wealth improves. The people that do not need to do manual and repetitive jobs can move to a more creative work which produces more benefit for mankind. Gutenberg's printing was good. e-mail was good, despite removing works in the Post office. Hydraulic excavators are good. And all of them reduce the number of jobs, and unions cannot and shouldn't try to prevent this. Fortunately, we are no longer relying on picks and shovels to dig tunnels.

The problem is not with automation, which is good for mankind as a whole; the problem is with the distribution of wealth. We are facing a serious problem, in which those who have the machines (capital) become much richer by producing the same as before, and those that lose their employments become poorer. I certainly believe that this problem will aggravate with time, as more jobs are out-dated by technology, and "the system" cannot provide an alternative way to earn a living.

One option might be to move to a system in which everyone has a basic "social earning", enough for a living, while those with a work would earn more money. However, this imposes serious trouble, such as obvious abuse and unfairness. I see the problem, but I don't foresee a clear solution.

Comment Re:X32 (Score 2) 95

Note that, on multiple processors, the legacy x86 and the x64 implementations are (almost completely) separated, using different processor resources. Between the larger/better resources, and the higher number of register, the x64 pipeline gets a better performance in the same processor. The lower memory usage also helps to improve performance, but its impact is minor.

The Internet

Sony Put Video Service on Hold Due to Comcast Data Caps 348

suraj.sun writes with more fallout from Comcast's bandwidth caps that give preference to their own video services. From the article: "An executive from Sony said Monday that concerns about Comcast's discriminatory data cap are giving the firm second thoughts about launching an Internet video service, that would compete with cable and satellite TV services. In March,Comcast announced that video streamed to the Xbox from Comcast's own video service would be exempted from the cable giant's 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap. 'These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth,' he said. 'If they start capping things, it gets difficult.' Sony isn't the first Comcast rival to complain about the bandwidth cap. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has also blasted Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality. Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers."

Comment Original article and scope (Score 5, Informative) 187

The vulnerability is originally disclosed here, not in the posted link.

This vulnerability only works from the same broadcast domain where the TV is, since the remote control protocol relies on broadcast messages to announce the service. This means that your TV cannot be cracked from the Internet. Let's hope that Samsung apply a fix soon, in any case.

Comment Way old idea! (Score 1) 132

The seminal paper proposing the use of switched/routed interconnection networks on-chip (NoCs) was published by Dally and Towels 11 years ago in DAC'01: Route packets, not wires: On-chip interconnection networks. The idea of associating a router to each core and replicating it in "tiles" is not new either; Tilera was (IIRC) the first company to sell processors based on a tiled design, which was an evolution of the RAW research project. A related research project, the TRIPs, replicated functional units on each tile, rather than full cores. Intel has used a tiled design in the Polaris, SSC and MIC (which includes the forthcoming Knights Corner).

So no, the idea of using routed interconnects is not new at all. In fact, after reading the linked article, turns out that 2/3ths of the text are introducing the idea, and the last section details the contributions: Two ideas developed by the group of Li-Shiuan Peh seeking to improve performance (by using virtual bypassing, a form of routing precomputation) and reducing power consumption (using low-swing signaling).

Education

Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project 162

mikejuk writes "Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity — an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car. In a moving speech at the Digital Life Design conference, he explained that after presenting the online AI course to thousands of students he could no longer teach at Stanford: 'Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting.' Let's hope Udacity works out; Stanford is a tough act to follow."
The Internet

Vint Cerf On Human Rights: Internet Access Isn't On the List 398

Gallenod writes "In an op-ed for the New York Times, Vint Cerf writes that civil protests around the world, sparked by Internet communications, 'have raised questions about whether Internet access is or should be a civil or human right.' Cerf argues that 'technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself,' and contends that for something to be considered a human right, it 'must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things.'"

Comment Re:NO it depends... (Score 1) 664

its a bit like saying you can plug in a CAT 5 cable and get gigabit...
the answer is it depends...
the longer the cable the more the signal degrades and just because its digital does not mean it will produce the same results..

Actually, if the Ethernet CAT5 does not get to gigabit speeds, then a certification of the cable would fail. That cable is not cat5.

There are two categories of HDMI cables, category-1 and category-2 (for 720p and 1080p, roughly speaking). If a cable is certified for a given cat, it means that it can transmit the corresponding signal with a low (bounded) error rate. Obviously, it is more difficult for a longer cable to pass the cat-2 test. But there are more factors, such as the length, the construction (connectors, etc) and the instalation itself (twists are bad!!).

So no, the fact that you build an Ethernet cable from cat-5 does not mean the final result will be certified for cat-5; similarly, a high-speed HDMI cable should be certified before being sold, and probably the cheapest ones are not. However, the fact that the digital signal transmitted on these cables is uncompressed audio/video makes them much more error-tolerant, so it is likely that a lower-quality cable (i.e., with a higher bit error rate) produces a higher distorsion, but it is not noticed by the end user.

Education

Several Student-Led Experiments To Fly On Endeavour 39

Phoghat writes "STS-134, the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour – is set to carry several experiments of students from the middle school, high school and collegiate levels. Two of these payloads are sponsored by the NASA Florida. The first experiment is one that could provide some guidance on future long-duration space flight missions, it deals with seed germination. As missions take astronauts further and further away from Earth, they will need to be able to produce their own food. Learning everything possible about the effects of micro-gravity on seeds therefore is viewed as relevant and important research. Another experiment, one comprised of squid embryos is being spearheaded by the University of Florida and will research the physiological impact of the micro-gravity environment on the animal's growth and development."
The Internet

Chinese Written Language To Dominate Internet 535

Zothecula writes "In the beginning, the language of the World Wide Web was English. Times change though, and the United States military's gift to civilization knows no national boundaries, and growing worldwide adoption of the internet has changed the audience make-up to such an extent that the dominant language of the internet is about to become Chinese. That's not to say the Chinese are all that comfortable with this either. There has just been an official decree requiring the use of Chinese translations for all English words and phrases in newspapers, magazines and web sites. While all countries have watched the unregulated global nature of the internet erode traditional cultural values and the integrity of national languages, it seems the Chinese powers-that-be have concluded that the purity of the Chinese language needs to be preserved."
Games

Roger Ebert On Why Video Games Can Never Be Art 733

Roger Ebert has long held the opinion that video games are not and can never be considered an art form. After having this opinion challenged in a TED talk last year, Ebert has now taken the opportunity to thoughtfully respond and explain why he maintains this belief. Quoting: "One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite an immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them. She quotes Robert McKee's definition of good writing as 'being motivated by a desire to touch the audience.' This is not a useful definition, because a great deal of bad writing is also motivated by the same desire. I might argue that the novels of Cormac McCarthy are so motivated, and Nicholas Sparks would argue that his novels are so motivated. But when I say McCarthy is 'better' than Sparks and that his novels are artworks, that is a subjective judgment, made on the basis of my taste (which I would argue is better than the taste of anyone who prefers Sparks)."
Crime

Federal Agents Quietly Using Social Media 171

SpuriousLogic passes along this excerpt from the ChiTrib: "The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, too. US law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. ... The document... makes clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips. Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree... can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries." The FoIA lawsuit was filed by the EFF, which has posted two documents obtained from the action, from the DoJ and Internal Revenue (more will be coming later). The rights group praises the IRS for spelling out limitations and prohibitions on deceptive use of social media by its agents — unlike the DoJ. The US Marshalls and the BATFE could not find any documents related to the FoIA request, so presumably they have no guidelines or prohibitions in this area.

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