He's got a reputation as a Playboy and admittedly has a very punchable face. This seems to be enough to brand him a shameless opportunist and dickhead, despite the fact that he's both successful and has chosen to invest his time and money into companies that actually do properly cool stuff which may have positive impact on the world.
If he's a shameless dickhead I hope for more shameless dickheads in the world.
Unless you are simply passionate about web technologies and just really want to work with it, stop trying to chase the latest and greatest here. You will find it remarkably hard to compete for the Javascript/web/whatever jobs as the 20 year old wizz-kids will have more experience than you in web-stuff but will probably need much less money.
Instead focus on improving what you already do, and expand into new areas of the embedded sphere. All that fancy web tech will in the end use and require embedded devices. We will get many more embedded devices, rather than fewer of them. Furthermore, try to expand your embedded domain knowledge. Perhaps there are some really exciting new embedded devices (drones, wireless home management devices, etc) you'd enjoy working on as a hobbyist? Expand into other embedded languages as necessary to work on the range of devices you like (i.e. Objective-C if you want to write iOS apps). You will only really learn properly if you have something concrete you want to do anyway.
The point is; unless you hate what you're doing, you should work on ways to make all those 15 years of embedded experience count. Chasing some Javascript web-stuff will not achieve that.
Since I haven't read the actual paper, I'll give the researchers the benefit of the doubt. But the BBC reporting is terrible. What I got from the story is that a study has demonstrated that this Quantum computer isn't better at everything. Well, duh! Everyone who has even very casually followed Quantum computing knows that they are a new class of computing which can solve a limited set of problems very quickly. I'm really not much wiser after reading this story.
"I've always taken jobs where I could either work remotely or walk / cycle less than 10 minutes each way. I wouldn't consider working somewhere where I'd need to drive to work, or where I'd spend more than 10 minutes commuting, and I'm always amazed at people in the US who are happy to spend more than the equivalent of one working day a week just getting to and from work"
I'm pleased for you. But if both you and your spouse have specialised careers with limited numbers of possible job locations AND you've got children that are already settled in their current schools, then this isn't necessarily easy. Finding jobs and housing becomes an optimisation problem (limit the amount of commute and school travel for 3+ people, taking roads, public transport and obstacles into account) which rarely have a particularly fantastic minima.
XP was a very good choice compared to Linux as it was 12 years old. Cost of Windows ($50 per copy?) was entirely immaterial. The important things were maturity, support, features, and toolchain. Linux in the year 2000 was light on those.
So was Windows XP, given that it wasn't released until the autumn of 2001. Linux was already really quite mature in 2001 and pushed by some of the world's largest companies. You could get paid support from IBM for instance. The rest of your post is a buzzword-laden mess with handwaving and conclusions you completely lack the knowledge to make
Actually, since TFA, the court decided that the prosecution had to prove the glasses were turned on and displaying something.
A different matter altogether and not the point I was making.
But there i a real question if a HUD counts a a monitor. A key feature of a monitor is that you aren't looking at the road if you are looking at the monitor. That i the promary reason for laws against it. That characteristic i not necessarily true for a HUD.
That is not a "key feature" of a monitor. I doubt you will find any reputable definiton of monitor that includes that in its description. The key feature of a monitor is displaying information. If your DVD-playing LCD screen was semi-transparent you still wouldn't be allowed to keep it over your windscreen while driving because it is distracting. There are actual semi-transparent monitors out there, and guess what, they are still called "monitors".
But the important part is that it is not up to the individual driver to decide whether a HUD is distracting. As long as the technology has not been whitelisted (a listed exception to the monitor rule) it is illegal to use on the road according to the California law stated elsewhere. If you want to use Google Glass while driving, ask your local road authorities to consider it for road purposes. They will most likely turn you down.
Wouldn't it be the prosecution's duty to show that it wasn't?
Given a choice between the driver looking at the GPS or seeing it on a HUD, the latter seems safer.
No. As stated by others, there are laws against monitors while driving on a public road. There are specific exemptions (essentially a whitelist) when they have been tested and considered safe. Google Glass (or any wearable HUD-type tech) has not yet been tested and approved for driving but she decided to use it anyway. She is a douche and endangering others and should be prosecuted as such.
The most important consideration about driving: driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right. Driving on them comes with conditions set and enforced by the public. This should be kept in mind when discussing "driver's rights". Whenever Slashdot discusses things like random breathalyzer tests someone always brings up the constitution and inaliable rights. Surely the consitution says nothing about rights of access to public highways? If you refuse to take a breathalyzer test, I'm sure the state could ban you from driving on its roads without breaking any amendment.
No, it's offensive because it suggests that people are where they are *simply* because of societal bias.
No. It does not. It suggests that a certain level of societal bias has helped you along. That your 95% dedication wasn't quite enough, but 5% privilege was also necessary. This idea is vehemently opposed by people who have their whole self-image built upon the idea that everything in life is their whole doing. They also assert that every story about discrimination is wrong with no first hand knowledge of anything but success after their hard work despite lots of examples of people who have failed after a very similar series of hard work. They still maintain that everything is due to them, despite the fact that if you were the daughter of child-beating and molesting parents from the favelas (I'm just adding up bad things, not saying people from favelas are molestors) you would be extremely unlikely get as far with your hard work as some male kid from decent parents from a lower-middle-class background from the US.
Succeeding in life is not a simple matter of privilege or hard work. It is a series of factors including (but not limited to) genetics, social privilege and hard work which affects your probability of success.
You would at least be given the chance to fail. Instead of being assigned to 'write the documentation' in a University project, you would get a decent task which you may actually learn something from. By the time you get to a real job you may actually know what you are talking about.
which was done decades ago, I laughed at the 80s mention, I was taught as child in the 60s and in 70s this was popular science fair homemade wind tunnel experiment.
About once a month slashdot runs article on "discovery" or "invention" that is decades old
Really? They performed experiments with syncronised flapping wings in a homemade wind tunnel? They actually timed real birds wing flapping to confirm the hypothesis? I call bullshit on this one. It is very typically Slashdot "stupid science / is this new??" kneejerk reaction and as usual there is no fucking evidence. I suspect the experiments you are talking about was with fixed wings.
In any case, aerodynamics with fixed wings is obviously pretty ancient by now, but sensible modelling of flapping wings is far more recent.
And neither does the media-consuming public. Most would totally ignore your measure of precision regardless of whether you call it standard deviation or mean absolute deviation. For them your average is absolute and if any values aren't at all near it something is terribly wrong. They will also not rest until every school performs above average and nothing in your work will convince them otherwise. The public doesn't like uncertainty and will assume every outcome is for a special reason, and this even goes for the non-religious ones. The idea that some things aren't absolute and are actually uncertain and variable terrifies them.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in sports. Everything there is always "written in the stars" or "destiny" and if you win it always proves beyond doubt your are better than your opposition (or you were 100% cheated by the refs). Hell, journalists may have had a full article written up 2 minutes before the end of a game and then completely change everything to be about one team's dogged determination because chance would have it they scored in the last minute. I love football (soccer), but discussing it can be frustrating.
If you still believe you can convince them, use mean absolute deviation in your "executive summary" or press release and leave the standard deviation as is in your actual paper. The only ones that actually read the paper are scientists anyway. The typical journalist reading your actual paper is likely to misunderstand something in every paragraph anyway. Changing real science to pander to the masses is a fucking huge mistake.
Now you too can own stolen credit card to buy all your online pr0n! All for the limited cost of $1. Nothing could be easier! Simply pay by Credit Card! No hassle!
Yes, because people like myself like shopping there as the staff are generally happy and hence far more polite than the people working in the tesco down the road where they barely speak english and simply can't be arsed.
It goes both ways! A positive feedback cycle; treat your employees well and give them ownership and most tend to be happy and perform better and you tend to do better and you can thus treat them even better.
Although, to be fair, it is probably easier to do this in an upmarket retailer than in Tesco, where absolutely ever penny counts and margins are razor thin.
The John Lewis Partnership, the most upmarket of any widespread retailer (Waitrose and John Lewis brands) in the UK is employee owned. Their wages are good, they are profitable (with a strongly positive trend) and typically pay out two months salary as a yearly staff bonus.
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them over the horizon. -- K.A. Arsdall
