In all of recorded history up until somewhere about the 19th century, there were multiple essentially independent civilizations. It would take a staggering coincidence or a global physical catastrophe (like a dino asteroid) to take them all down at once. In the modern era there is just one civilization. Every place is interconnected with every other and becoming more so. A large enough, fast enough, regional catastrophe could bring everything down if the areas not directly affected can not replace what was lost quickly enough to keep their own machinery from grinding to a halt.

Further, modern technology has given us the means to create global catastrophes. We don't need to wait for the exceedingly rare natural global catastrophe.

Gold is a good hedge against economic chaos causing fiat currencies to lose value. But if the machinery actually stops, it is pretty worthless.

I doubt the OP is concerned about being unable. The concern is convincing a prospective employer. 'Been there, done that.

I graduated in 1990. After nearly 7 years of high effort, I finally landed my first engineering job in 1997. What I found is that, even well into the DotCom boom,it was very difficult to get traction. Customers understood experienced engineers. While the demand was less, they knew what to do with fresh grads too. They did not know what to do with or even want to spend the time on an "old grad", someone out of school several years but without relevant work experience. I took numerous extension classes. I carried around prototype board of a project Is working on and eventually go through to two firms at a job fair.

Hardware is harder nut to crack then software, of course but I also had a much more lively economy to work with and I was 7 years out, rather than 12. So, it is not obvious is the OP's task is more or less challenging than mine.

No. No. No. The purpose of the modern call center is to "solve" customer problems in the most cost efficient manner. If the customer goes away and keeps paying without the company needing to spend resources to fix something, that is a good result. It gets even better if this can be accomplished while paying the customer service rep as little as possible.

It is, of course, a delicate balancing act. Go too cheap and you lose customers. Spend too much and it cuts into the bottom line. The robot training is an attempt to get more successful outcomes (continued customer revenue) without the excessive cost of actually solving problems. Keeping customers "happy" while you screw them is key.

It looks like it just a means of hosting content directly on Facebook. I don't think this means that content will stuffed into the newfeeds of people who didn't ask for it or auto-posted to the walls of those who did. Both would be very bad.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

The window seats have more room than either the center or aisle seats. The aisle seats do allow extra leg room by using the aisle. However, when the service cart rolls up, the window seat has the advantage.

I'm 6'2" with a 36" inseam. I generally prefer the aisle for the stretch out option but I see the utility of the window seat. The middle seat is painful, of course, as I experienced Sunday on a four hour flight where no other options were available. Mercifully, the passenger in front did not try to recline.

It's hard to take seriously an article claiming New York is the most wasteful megacity when they don't even mention Los Angeles. New York metro is 20 million. Los Angeles metro is 18 million.

I've had Sonic continuously for 12 years at two residences. In this time period, I have actually lived at three locations and it includes two periods where I did not live anywhere in particular (no fixed address).

So far, the need for service that supports a server in a practial fashion has trumped the desire for speeds faster than 6-7Mbps that DSL can provide. I've never used AT&T, though I did have Comcast for a few months at my residence while my server was hosted at a friend's house.

It doesn't work with checked luggage. It doesn't work with route trip tickets either. The airlines fixed that a long time ago. If you don't get on the second leg, they cancel your return flight.

What really the trick doesn't work for the kinds of flights most people actually take.

Actually, this is useful from a law enforcement perspective. Much in the way that Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion rather than racketeering, anybody caught using illegal encryption could be arrested and convicted for that without having to prove that they were doing anything else nefarious.

Bad idea for other reasons but definitely useful.

I would expect the whole surface of the (dwarf) planet to be ice, much like all the other outer system objects too small to be gas giants. It would not necessarily be water ice and TFA did not suggest that it was water. In a region where methane and co2 freeze there are lots of options and water ice would not be favorite for a polar cap.

Actually, the only information so far is: "There is a spot that is brighter than the rest. We don't know why."

While "really useful" is not the word I would use to describe them, Hinge and Tinder are mobile only. Neither has a web site that does more than point to a mobile app.

As I recall, some Craiglist scraping apps had features unavailable on any web site or desktop application.

Waze finally has a useful web interface after years of only being able to check routes on the mobile app.

That's a share-taxi. A ride share would be if the UberDude dropped you off at the terminal, then parked the car and got on a plane.

to free up the name name for the inevitable 7" smart phone.

Microcomputer and "personal computer" (no caps) were used almost interchangeably. They did not mean the same thing though. A personal computer was simply a computer dedicated to a single person. A microcomputer was a computer built around a microprocessor. In principle a microcomputer could be a multi-user and a personal computer could have a multi-chip processor. In this era, though, both were rare.

What you did not encounter was the acronym. Any machine could be a "personal computer" but "PC" was shorthand first for IBM PC and later for "IBM PC clone".