Yeah - but a net twerk ?

People don't listen to that preflight announcement stuff because they've heard it a hundred times before. People who've flown even a couple of times before don't need to listen. People who are on their first flight, where it's all new and exciting are paying attention.

So, no - I know how to wear a seatbelt and that my seat cushion can be used as a floatation device and to check where the nearest exit row is...yadda yadda yadda. I can stick my nose into my phone and I won't miss anything important.

What's needed is either to make those instructions INTERESTING (like the Southwest Airlines people often do) - or to only give the routine instructions to people who need it. That way, when something truly important comes up, people will pay attention.

"leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years"

ROTFL

Will this madness ever end?

why this is on front page?

I used flickr years ago, then I switched to 500px. Yesterday I wanted to check out how flickr looks now, I did basic test - display best photos. On 500px you can just click "popular" and you can browse amazing photography. How to do it on flickr? After few minutes I resigned, because all I saw was just crap.

So I assume you wrote similar comments to all news about 9/11 or any american politics, which is not related to technology at all? Or do you mean that Ukraine is not important while USA is?

I completely disagree.
Why bull**** about "global warming" is important "news for nerds" and information about kernel developer / russian invasion on Ukraine is not important?
I think Slashdot was much more intesting 10 years ago than it is now, but your comment shows that this direction is not accidental.

I ran Minix for a year or more on my Atari ST - having a UNIX-like operating system on a machine I could have at home was a truly awesome thing. Tanenbaum's work is fascinating, useful and will be around for a good while...which is more or less the definition of "successful" in academic circles.

The debates with Linus were interesting - but I always felt that they were arguing at cross-purposes. Linus wanted a quick implementation of something indistinguishable from "real UNIX" - Tanenbaum wanted something beautiful and elegant. Both got what they wanted - there was (and continues to be) no reason why they can't both continue to exist and be useful.

Tanenbaum's statement that the computer would mostly be running one program at a time was clearly unreasonable for a PC - but think about phones or embedded controllers like BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi? Perhaps Minix is a better solution in those kinds of applications?

I think that to pass the Turing test, you have to tell the judges that the entity they are about to talk to *might* be a computer program. Eliza worked because people had never encountered a computer that even tried to be remotely human - so the assumption was that this was a real person from the outset. Also Eliza is a psychologist - so she gets to ask all the questions and steer the conversation into territory she can actually handle. Responses to things she can't parse are things like "So how does that make YOU feel?" - which work in that situation.

In a real turing test, the questions are completely open and the judge is initially highly sceptical that this is a real human.

Judges in these contests always seem to low-ball the questions. Ask "How would Santa Claus fend off a horde of attacking Ninjas?"

Those are insanely difficult questions for an AI to get right without some neutral "I don't feel like answering that right now" kind of response. A 13 year old kid would leap in and start wondering whether Santa could fly away in his sleigh and drop presents on them...or set the elves loose on them...or ask another question in return, like "Can the reindeer help out?"

Something that requires creativity - not just knowledge (which Watson could pull off) or a decent use of the English language (which Eliza could manage to some degree).

WW2 was started by Germans, not by Nazis from space.

"Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again." I was trying to understand what these numbers mean but I failed. What's your point? If the cost of game is zero then anyone can try it, just like anyone could install demo version or just watch gameplay on youtube. While I agree that in-app purchases can destroy games (and perfect example is Dungeon Keeper) - I don't see any logical conclusion in your numbers.

Long article about poor iPad sales and no single word about Android.

Welcome in the 2014 - the Freedom of Speech is dead.
I use Mozilla since its first days, when Phoenix (later Firefox) was only usable browser on Linux.
I was always trying to support it, now it's just another evil company, just like Microsoft of Apple.

What about Asus and others? If the deal is against Apple then it should be between everyone not just Samsung and Google.