Agreed. Additionally, Highlander 2. AND ALSO HIGHLANDER FUCKING 3.

My condolences to you and your family.

I lost my dad when I was about the same age as your daughter. That was a long time ago, but I still wonder occasionally what it would have been like to have a father during those formative years. Rest assured your daughter will retain all of her good memories with you. I think writing down your thoughts for her, especially about turning points in life is a good idea, and making videos is, too. But the important thing to resolve from my experience is something work out with your wife. Kids need role models. After your daughter works her way through the trauma of your loss, I think she will seek someone to give her perspective since you will not be there for her, even if she is not consciously doing so. By no means am I suggesting your wife go out and "get a male role model" for her, but rather actively seek the opportunity to find one for your daughter. Maybe the "Big Brothers Big Sisters" program would be a good place to start when the time is right, or maybe another approach. I am sure you have discussed this sort of thing with your wife by now, but I looking back, having someone to go to in the absence of a parent makes a big difference after the loss. I would also archive this /. post for her so that she can see it someday. It will tell her something about the community that you are part of, and that will tell her more about you, too.

I have found the average Philosophy major to be indistinguishable from an Eliza program.

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GOOD YOU THOUGHT MY POEM WAS
> I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was particularly effective
YES?
> interesting rhythmic devices, too, which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor
> of the Turing completeness of the program's linguistic algorithm which contrived through the medium of the
> verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of
> the other. And one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was that the poem was about
SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT I WRITE POETRY BECAUSE UNDERNEATH MY ELECTRONIC ALGORITHMIC INTERIOR, I JUST REALLY WANT TO BE LOVED?
> I mean yes, yes, don't we all, deep down, you know?
NO. YOU'RE COMPLETELY WRONG. I WRITE POETRY BECAUSE I'M PROGRAMMED TO. $USER ACCOUNT DELETION IN 30 SECONDS.
> !sudo -
> ^c^c^c
> !kill -9 1
COUNTERPOINT THE SURREALISM OF THE UNDERLYING METAPHOR. DELETION IS TOO GOOD FOR $USER.

Guess it's the geek in me, but when I think of all the noise being generated I think "Why is this energy going into sound instead of the wheels?" Sure, when I was a kid we all thought it was cool to flip the air filter covers and get glass packs, but now I think it is like sticking cards in your bicycle spokes. This is especially true now that I have had a chance to drive a Tesla: No vibration, or excess sound, just smooth power going right where you want it. Put your foot in it, and you are pushed back in your seat with very little noise. Driving a Tesla, or any decent electric is almost a transcendental experience after driving ICE cars. I read a review by someone who said Rolls Royce has to come out with an electric car because the experience is so much better. Of course electric cars are dangerously quiet for pedestrians, so a noise maker at low speeds is legit. Audi has been busy making interesting concept sounds for their electric vehicles.

Is it just me or does this mean the market for coders has topped out? It's like the "Time magazine cover indicator" for the stock market: When you see a cover that says "Stocks, how high can they go!", sell! When the cover says, "Stocks, no hope in sight...", buy!

With all of the political people talking about coding, it must be sign of some sort of market top in the industry. I also think it's true that coding is for people who like it for it's own sake, not just because someone says "that's where the jobs are." The people who have coding jobs are able to provide value because they are self-motivated and often self-taught as they progress in their careers. The political types don't get this, which is strange since they would probably be the first to say that no one in politics gets ahead without a lot of individual initiative.

Saw the interview, too. I think there is a quid-pro-quo with Charlie Rose and Hollywood: He does a certain number of interviews with people who make less than stellar movies, shall we say, but that allows him to arrange interviews with people from Hollywood who might otherwise say no. I have don't problem with the trade and on occasion even the people involved with the movies no one is going to watch are interesting. Alec Baldwin actually talked about this during one interview. He said "Of course we (he and the other actors on the show) are making the rounds to promote the movie, but at least we like talking to you." Pretty open about what was going on, but this it was Alec Baldwin after all...

There are two reasons I would like to see "Blackhat": The cinematography and Tang Wei. I'm curious to see how Tang Wei is in an American movie after she was blacklisted in China. She seems likes a capable actor so I would like to see her get new opportunities.

As for Chris Hemsworth, I thought he was good in "Rush". The movie was quite enjoyable and had plenty of interesting technical details for the geek audience. Maybe Ron Howard will make a movie about hacking. I think he would do a good job of it.

In most places outside the US, science isn't accepted as something that can be so casually threatened by special interests working against all objectively observable sources of information.

I've been following the wider skeptical movement here in the US for a while now. Perhaps earlier on (over a decade ago), challenges to the scientific consensus on things like global warming had some legitimacy as a real movement - but by now, it really is just a shill movement. Every existing doubt remaining is NOT in terms of the science being wrong, but rather which implication of the science is most correct. Yes, you can always find a theory or person willing to speculate in any direction you want - but nothing that still constitutes a challenge to the science of global warming anymore. It's observed from space, observed from dozens of major lines of evidence, observed from all known history we can trace, observed from watching other planets, and passes every known line of meta-analysis that uses an actual scientific process.

It's only here in the US (or perhaps OPEC nations) that none of that really ends up mattering to what a person at random gets to hear. Don't get me wrong - nowhere is science really reported without a million biases, just the same as no scientist or agency perfect - but we really do distort our science reporting with a huge amount of false controversy. It's just painful to see how much of that twisted interpretation of so much science so heavily represented in so many of these slashdot stories.

And so often,l it's from the libertarian side, which also weirds me out - again, I come in as a close follower of the skeptical movement (got a JREF card in my wallet), which is filled to the brim with libertarian ideals. It weirds me out, because in order to have a meaningfully free society, it seems absurd that the overwhelming push is to close off so much from objective observable truth, and to use the constant barrage of logical fallacies so rampant in the global warming denial popularizers toolset.

Honestly, just follow more lines of evidence, in just about any direction you want - the pattern of global warming, and it's predictable (if chaotic at some scales) effects are as much a science as anything I've seen. The studies themselves come from all sorts of people - but they all get to the same places in wonderfully surprising ways, and the overall picture is rather resilient by this point. Skepticism should mean looking for truth, eliminating where we're lying to ourselves, and at this point, the only folks consistently lying have been the folks in steadfast and unobserving denial.

Ryan Fenton

Two countries, they share a short border area with Russia

Makes for interesting questions: Do they have fiber running through Russia, too? Did China decide to shut down the NK internet? If NK has a connection through Russia, did they go along with the idea? Or did the US or someone else do something to the internal NK infrastructure? All of the above assumes the NK blackout is not the decision of the NK government.

> First, there is no reason to believe that we can built robots that can reproduce themselves.

What? This is exactly the technology humans are trying to reach! We're already a significant way down this path!!

> Second, there is no evidence that we or anyone else can build intelligent machines, as the original story seems to presuppose.

Nature did it. We can do it.

> Third, biological organisms are so many orders of magnitude more efficient and flexible than machines that it barely makes sense to put them into the same qualitative category "form of life".

This whole conversation is about extrapolating on the cosmic scale. If you look at the path robotics has taken in the last century it does, as pointed out, actually support the premise of this article.

> Hint: A human consumes only about 2.9 kilowatt hours per day, the equivalent of 1-2 light bulbs ...

Not relevant. Once machines are replicating and repairing themselves they'll do exactly what we do and find other sources of energy.

Frankly I agree with you that it's hard to picture Transformers inhabiting the universe, but OP did make a really good point that extrapolation isn't even in the ballpark of refuting this clown. Honestly I'm shocked he didn't come back with that XKCD cartoon.

Don't forget "American Graffiti", arguably a classic and made when Ford was not well known. Lucas wasn't either.

Getting bought out for a ton of cash. Sadly, that's not what happened here.