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Submission + - What happens when it's suddenly illegal to move money out of your country?

schwit1 writes: Basic Internet services disappear.

Just as individual Greeks are losing access to Apple's iCloud, as the Athens staff of Bloomberg News recently discovered, so companies are finding themselves cut off from services critical to their ongoing operations.

The problem demonstrates a hidden risk in today's otherwise efficient vertical disintegration. Taking for granted the easy flow of money across borders, system designers never foresaw a situation in which companies with adequate funds would find that they couldn't pay foreign vendors.

"Greek companies are not able at this moment to pay for hosting (Amazon), storage (Dropbox), email services (MailChimp) and many other services," says Jon Vlachogiannis, a Bay Area entrepreneur, in an email. Without these services, otherwise viable businesses are in trouble.

Vlachogiannis and other expats are stepping up to pay the bills from California, rescuing companies with astonishingly small amounts.

Comment Re:alogrithms aren't racist (Score 4, Interesting) 352

I followed the link and looked at the photos. I could see how it would make that mistake.
1. The Color balance was off: What we call black people are actually just a richer brown. the color balance gave their color more of a real Black/Gray color, the natural color of a Gorilla.

2. The Angle of the shot. The tilted Angle makes it appeared that they are not upright but slouching in.

3. They were making unnatural facial features for humans. They were making funny faces at the camera.

4. The dark hue of the gentleman who was behind shirt, combined with the ladies hair style, makes it seem the body with much broader shoulder.

I expect the combination of a lot of factors created the wrong choice. But computer decision making, while getting good, isn't perfect, but it is often better then not having it because then it wouldn't be possible to catalog the millions of images. We need to accept that computers make mistakes and there should be a way to fix them when they are found.

Many of our derogatory comments come from the fact that we find similarities with something else, so it come to reason that a computer may make an actual mistake that will reinforce such derogatory meaning.

Comment Re:Makes sense. (Score 4, Insightful) 278

You are implying that ones political stance is an indicator of their intelligence?

There is a huge group of people who's opinion is based on what the party says, I am a loyal Democrat/Republican so my stance will match what they say. There is no attention of the detail of the message nor any attempt to challenge the notion brought up. So the Democrats say Global Warming is a problem, people will blindly follow. If the Democrats say GMO foods are bad, they will blindly follow. Intelligence isn't the issue, it is just the current polarized nature of the two party system which will normally make one side right and the other wrong (assuming one side is right)

Now the Democrats vs Government view on funding. Democrats prefer more of a blanket funding in scientists, So Scientists who are funded via the Democrats policies have invested interests in that party, so they are making a living off of researching climate science due to Democrats funding, so they will be friendly to that party, and in turn that party will listen to their studies. The Republicans will more likely fund Military or Energy science. Where there is less science and more engineering. Thus you will find a lot more Right winged engineers. As their main means of living is due to Republican policy. So the Republicans will more likely push ideas of a new Military Technology or Energy Extraction technology.

It is interesting on how your political views change depending on where you are living and who is controlling your purse strings.
Now they are crazies on both sides. You got the Leftist hippie type who wants to change everything to match their utopian vision where everyone is all happy because they follow one idea of a perfect life. Then you got the Far Right densest who thinks we should go back to the "Leave it to Beaver" life style, that he fondly remembers as a child (too young to realize the pressures of the world). These guys can often get into the House or Representatives thus get enough media attention to direct "The I have to do what the party says" people.

   

Comment College != Jobs (Score 3) 133

The problem in the US is the impression You go to School then you go to College with the college degree you can get a good job.
The marketing for the the For Profit takes advantage of this, and tries to make a Job focuses curriculum. But because employers are expecting a college degree, there is a bunch of other classes and stuff that is needed to take, which overall doesn't help out that much.
The traditional colleges, may have their marketing team say this will get you a good job, once you get into the school it is the impression "College is for learning, not job training"

The real solution is to give a better status of vocational training. So someone who wants a job in a particular field can get job training for that field. It isn't necessary for a Computer Science Degree to be a programmer. Also a Computer Science Degree shouldn't need to focus so much on programming, but more on the abstract concepts, that we normally wont get to until grad school.

College should be for learning. We should have a better quality and more positive few towards vocational schools for the Job training.

Comment Re:adjective choice (Score 1) 133

That is a general argument against most not-for-profit organizations. Because they NFP do seem to spend a lot of time and resources towards collecting money, and investing their "Excess Revenue" into sources where they can bring in more revenue.

For Not for profits do have to deal with being under a fine tooth comb and do not enjoy the same freedoms a for-profit will.

Comment Re: Assumptions are the mother of all ... (Score 1) 172

OK.
So you may had good reasons to stick with Windows 7. My place at work is using Windows 7, the UI change to windows 8 would cause way too much issues. Also we just migrated a few years to windows 7. And there was a huge compatibility issues that needed to be address... I do expect it is much easier to go from Windows 7 to Windows 10, as this time we didn't jump from a 32bit OS to a 64 bit.

Comment Re:Assumptions are the mother of all ... (Score 1) 172

I expect it is more from the Small business white box community. Yes they still exist. So they save money by getting Windows 7 Licenses and upgrading to Windows 10 by the time they sell their PC's.
I expect technically this would be against some agreement with Microsoft. But these guys are such small fries. The the cost of investing and fighting for it is more then then small pocket change these companies have for profit. If it were a Dell, HP or Lenovo doing this, that would be a different story all together.

Comment Re:Drone It (Score 1) 843

Politics seems to conflict with the engineering process.

We make a prototype and test it. Then we fix the problems and try again.
It is rather expensive and time consuming. But it is the process. Aircraft are not your standard PC there are factors that are still not easily simulated.

Submission + - Quebec government to force ISPs to block gambling websites

ottawanker writes: In order to drive more customers to their own online gambling website, the Quebec government and Loto-Quebec (the provincial organization in charge of gaming and lotteries) are thinking about forcing the province's ISPs to block all other online gambling websites. The list of websites to be blocked will be maintained by Loto-Quebec, and the government believes that the blocking will increase government revenue by up to $27 million (CAD) per year.

Comment Re:Price is a second order function (Score 1) 292

There's a huge difference between a big boat trailer behind a pickup truck and a small generator behind a Tesla. With decent instrumentation and driver assist the Tesla will practically drive itself. Imagine cameras on the trailer and angle sensors in the hitch, with on-screen instructions telling you which way to turn the wheel as you back up around a corner or into a parking space. Piece of cake, even for a "guy with a midlife crisis."

Backing up a trailer isn't rocket science; you just have to be careful and overcome your natural tendency to turn the wrong way. If you're telling the truth about your hobby you know full well that most people even manage a boat trailer on a ramp with no backup cameras without incident.

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