I caution attempts at social engineering result in greater injustices than those they seek to fight against.

I would say that the first thing those attempting social engineering should seek is to utilize the solutions they propose. For instance, it's amazing how many of the politicians in the US who seek to raise the minimum wage also make broad use of unpaid interns. If even the crusaders can't manage to pay everybody minimum wage (not the new level of $10, $15, or whatever is being proposed today, but just the current amount), what makes you so certain it's a great idea?

Okay, so we have a benchmark where the bog-standard human being scores 94.9%.

Then in February (that's three months ago), Microsoft reports hitting 95.06%; the first score to edge the humans.

Then in March, Google notches 95.18%.

Now it's May, and Baidu puts up a 95.42%.

Meh. Swinging dicks with big iron are twiddling with their algorithms to squeeze out incremental, marginal improvements on an arbitrary task.

I presume that next month it will be IBM boasting about "leading the race" and being "much greater than their competitors". The month after that it will be Microsoft's turn again. Google will be back on top in August or so...unless, of course, some other benchmark starts getting some press.

One should be very wary of the distinction between "run without refueling" and "run without regular maintenance". Even assuming that the reactor's fuel would last, the ancillary equipment associated with the reactor's operation (coolant pumps and such) and electricity generation (steam turbines) certainly wouldn't be expected to operate unattended and unmaintained for months, let alone years.

That said, the fifty-year planned lifespan of the Nimitz-class includes, if I'm not mistaken, a mid-life refuelling and complex overhaul (RCOH). To be fair, the reactor's fuel would likely last longer than the planned 20-25 years if the carrier weren't actively steaming--but I wouldn't trust the other parts to last anywhere near so long.

That would work...except that the employer insisted that she keep the phone with her and powered on at all times. According to the claim, she was on call for client emergencies, even when off the clock.

It's an interesting question. On the other hand, most collisions are something a human driver could have avoided somehow...but didn't.

I would be shocked if they didn't "know" something like it. I can't imagine any car (let alone the entire group of 44 which didn't have a collision) doing a full year of city driving without encountering multiple situations where another driver failed to appropriately yield the right of way.

The point is, I think, that in exchange for an improvement (real or hypothetical) in convenience for a small fraction of total air travellers, there is a substantial and arguably unnecessary burden of cost and inconvenience to the entire system (which is ultimately paid for out of everyone's pockets--and user experiences).

Well no, it wouldn't. A fully-served point-to-point network with n nodes (cities served) has on the order of n squared links between nodes. The number of passengers desiring each direct link gets to be very small, very quick, meaning infrequent scheduled flights on small, underfilled, costly-per-seat aircraft. So what happens is that airlines adopt (to one extent or another) a hub-and-spoke model. Most direct point-to-point routings are dropped. If I want to fly from East Podunk, NY (POD) to Los Angeles, I can't get a direct flight POD-LAX. Instead, I get a hop to an airline's hub (JFK or ORD or DTW or wherever), and a connection from that hub to LA: POD-JFK-LAX, or POD-DTW-LAX, or POD-ORD-LAX.

If I want to go to a destination served by a smaller airport (let's call it West Lemon, CA: LEM), then I'm taking three flights: spoke to hub, hub to hub, hub to spoke: POD-JFK-LAX-LEM. And each of those flights carries with it the time penalties associated with loading and unloading passengers and cargo, and a risk of delays or cancellations due to weather and other circumstances--plus the plain old waiting for connections, because service to and from the small airports at POD and LEM is infrequent.

Worse still, all those little commuter flights linking the regional airports to the major hubs are going to take up gates and takeoff and landing slots at those busy airports, slowing down the whole system and/or pushing those less-important flights to less-desirable times of day. Taken all together, offering frequent (or even just daily) service to a lot of small airports is going to mean a lot more flights of a lot more smaller aircraft, and/or passengers frequently making multiple connections. It would be expensive per-seat and vulnerable to failures and delays.

Now, La Guardia is an interesting case. Since it's right next to downtown New York, it draws a substantial number of departing or arriving passengers, and enjoys a kind-of-weird pseudo-hub status for historical reasons. Practically speaking, though, it means that there are effectively two hubs (LGA and JFK) or even three (if we count EWR) serving the same area, resulting in needless duplication of services. Routes that could enjoy frequent service with inexpensive (per-seat) full-sized jets get less-full or more-expensive aircraft, or less-frequent services divided between two or three New York destinations. Local New Yorkers enjoy the appearance of convenient, direct flights, at the cost of making the rest of the system a bit worse and a bit more expensive for everyone.

Welp...sort of. The U.S. BLP recently published their 2013 census of fatal occupational injuries. The overall fatality rate for the workforce was 3.3 fatal injuries for every 100,000 full-time-equivalent workers per year. Management employees averaged 2.4; sales 1.6--no surprises there, really.

For employees in the "protective service occupations" - police, firefighters, correctional services, animal control, security guards, and so forth - the rate was 6.9 fatalities per 100,000 FTE. (I haven't been able to find data broken out by occupation within the category. If someone can find that, that would be great.) So that's what we expect--police, firefighters, and others do have a riskier job than the average, and riskier than the typical office worker. Somewhat surprisingly, the relative risk is only a factor of three or four different when comparing a police officer to, say, an IT manager.

But...there's the rest of the table. "Intallation, maintenance, and repair" occupations? 7.2 fatalities per 100,000. "Construction and extraction"? 12.2. "Transportation and material moving"? 14.9. "Farming, fishing, and forestry"? 23.9.

The real manly men, in real danger on the job, are apparently out there working with tools, building stuff, drilling for oil, driving big rigs, and cutting down trees.

And let's be honest--a lot of the injuries and fatalities sustained by police officers aren't directly attributable to violent suspects. A big chunk of them come from the fact that the typical frontline officer spends a lot of time moving around--in a patrol car, on a motorcycle, on foot, or on a bicycle. Special laws protecting police officers from insults don't actually reduce their likelihood of being in a vehicular accident, or getting clipped by a passing car during a traffic stop, or slipping on an icy sidewalk in the winter. Looking at the last ten years' police fatalities for the United States, the total number of officers killed in motor vehicle incidents (car and motorcycle crashes; hit by car) is 605. The total number of officers fatally shot, strangled, or stabbed is 553. (And I suspect that the proportion who get shot is even lower in Canada.)

That was true for 1986 NASA, certainly. Post-Challenger there were major changes (extensions) to the list of abort options - including a new bail-out capability - which made the loss of two engines crew-survivable for the entire ascent, and the loss of all three main engines survivable for most of the ascent. (See the Wikipedia article for details.) As it turns out, we have higher expectations 30 years on. Whodathunkit?

As other posters have noted, 248 days of operation means skipping twenty-plus maintenance and inspection cycles, plus missing one or more engine overhauls. That sucker's going to fall out of the sky due to a hardware problem before the software error gets the chance.

Even in the absence of regular, scheduled, required maintenance, there will be hardware failures due to stuff wearing out, with sufficient frequency to force reboots at less-than-eight-month intervals. Honestly, the FAA is going to ground any airline that was so lax as to get within six months of tripping over this bug.

That's not to say that this bug is a good or acceptable thing, nor that something like it couldn't have much more serious effects. But this particular error is a non-issue from a real-life consequences standpoint.

I don't know about the technology or the algorithm(s), but the linked article is certainly nonsense.

Look, I get it. Nobody wants to admit that they're spending their grant money this way because it's fun to get a computer to play Hold 'em. But that's got to be the dumbest justification I've ever read. Human metabolism is complex, but the pancreas doesn't bluff.

In other words, either the researchers involved are complete idiots, or a Slashdot poster jumped to a useless conclusion based on a strawman argument spun from the summary. Hm.

I'm not entirely sure you're not trolling, but I'll bite anyway.

The US Constitution states that the purpose of copyright is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", artists and inventors may be granted a (temporary, limited) exclusive right to their work. Anytime copyright comes up among my group of friends (who include a large number of writers, musicians, and graphical artists, in addition to programmers) copyright is a fairly contentious issue. I tend to like to argue the position that any "common", mass produced work that is unavailable for public purchase for longer than one year has outlived its' salable value and should lose copyright protection. (This is particularly true in the age of digital distribution, where "shelf space" is a non-issue.) Fine art (where only one copy of the item ever gets created) clearly requires a different definition for copyright term, but for the things which usually are referenced in these debates online -- CDs, mass market books, newsclippings, etc. -- a strictly limited term is far more beneficial to keeping works available to the public.

I loved the Captain Crunch bit. For me it was clear the Stephenson really understands that geek mentality. I think he a a great author and while the endings sometimes do fall a bit short, it is always a great ride to get there.

I don't think I dare look at your link right now, but your question has been answered. To quote from that Wikipedia article: "The lead plaintiff was Frank Ricci, who had been a firefighter at the New Haven station for 11 years. ... Because he has dyslexia, he paid an acquaintance $1,000 to read his textbooks onto audiotapes." (Emphasis mine.)

Make whatever noises you like: just because a person is part of the privileged class in the two most visible categories of discrimination (race & gender) doesn't exclude them from being a member of any other legally protected class.