Comment And the next Google Mapping project is... (Score 1) 68
...Google Balls!
Comment It's the current job market (Score 4, Funny) 465
The job market is very tight, so employers are spoiled for choice. They will seek employees who can hit the ground running immediately. In this environment, they see even a week's learning curve as a waste, and would rather hire someone ordinary who can be immediately productive rather than someone great who might take a little longer.
Watch out for this changing as the economy recovers, and jobs again become an employee's market.
Comment Big Win for Bars and Nightclubs (Score 2) 152
Self-driving cars means that people will be able to drink and "drive" to their hearts content, legally and safely. This will help to rejuvenate the ailing club/pub scene and maybe restore the live entertainment industry to grace. It would make sense for liquor companies, pubs and clubs to invest substantially in autonomous vehicle tech.
Anyone up for a new "Roaring 20s"?
Comment Sure, I'll cooperate, they can have the... (Score 1) 438
...credentials to my Mailinator account :P
Comment The *real* test... (Score 1) 51
Rule 34.
Or, in other words, a major internet industry needs to VC the development of advanced tactile transducers.
Comment Boon for bikers (Score 1) 604
On my motorbike, I'd feel much safer if all the cars around me were driverless. Human car drivers, who so often tend to blank out half-unconscious and fail to check blind spots, are the leading cause of death for bikers.
Comment The real differences (Score 3) 333
From my R&D experience across many companies, it's clear to me that a "software engineer" is a proper superset of "developer".
- A 'developer' is paid to create code that works within the company's contrived runtime environment and passes a few stages of testing, while a 'software engineer' is also paid to ensure the code actually works reliably in this nebulous abstract construct called the "real world" - customer/client installations where there are innumerable environmental variables and things that can go wrong.
- A "developer" nods timidly and reluctantly to Murphy while passing in the corridor. But the software engineer says "Thanks for another great night. What would you like for breakfast?"
- A "developer" goes whining to her/his team leader when the tools or OS play up. A software engineer cracks out the machine-code debugger, logic analyser and oscilloscope, traces all the API calls, and spits out working patches for the bugs in the libraries, drivers and kernel.
If I had some plant that was failing at 3:15am and costing me a fortune, I know which I would prefer to have on site.
Comment A hard verdict for Pfizer (Score 3, Funny) 100
But the Supreme Court had no choice but to stand up for justice. No going soft on patent abuses!
Comment Needs mass spook-spamming (Score 4, Insightful) 106
I'm thinking along the lines of the emacs "spook" function, amongst other things. You just need enough a large enough group of participants working together.
The system can be trained in weird ways. For instance, if enough people in enough places scratch their noses with their left hands, then break out in a mock fight, the system will learn to sound the alarm every time someone scratches their nose with their left hand.
Or, for something more socially useful - have people pull out a cellphone, talk for a few seconds, then pull out a mock gun and pretend to mug others. Then, the system will freak out every time some annoying jerk pulls out a cellphone in public. Along that same theme, train the system to send in the troops whenever someone adjusts their underwear in public, or picks their nose, or farts loudly...
Submission + - Official DHS "Spy Words" Revealed (dailymail.co.uk)
heretic108 writes: The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to reveal its list of words which automatically result in one being spied upon. This list is a precious resource for plugin authors for email programs like Thunderbird, who want to offer an updated counterpart of the old (in)famous Emacs "M-x spook" function.
Comment Firefox - spiritual benefits (Score 5, Funny) 665
Firefox is the greatest browser, with advanced features to benefit every user at a profound spiritual level:
* Its memory bloat teaches us to be mindful of our resources, both within the computer, and our use of our resources in everyday outer life.
* Its slowness helps teach us patience.
* When the whole browser freezes up from a bit of incompetent CPU-thrashing javascript code running in one tab, it teaches us to be responsible for our own coding decisions and how they affect others.
* Its slow startup teaches us that wonderful things don't happen instantly, and that we need to lose our attachment to time
Stay away from Chrome - it feeds the ego by promoting our addiction to instant gratification
* Its memory bloat teaches us to be mindful of our resources, both within the computer, and our use of our resources in everyday outer life.
* Its slowness helps teach us patience.
* When the whole browser freezes up from a bit of incompetent CPU-thrashing javascript code running in one tab, it teaches us to be responsible for our own coding decisions and how they affect others.
* Its slow startup teaches us that wonderful things don't happen instantly, and that we need to lose our attachment to time
Stay away from Chrome - it feeds the ego by promoting our addiction to instant gratification
Comment Wrong premise (Score 2) 114
Framing the discussion as "piracy reduction" is long obsolete. Might as well call it a "reduce gas diffusing in a vacuum" conference.
They need to restart with a premise of "finding ways for content creators to be rewarded for their works". Then we might start getting some workable and relevant ideas.
Submission + - How Facebook can defeat password-demanders 1
heretic108 writes: In response to people like employers who demand Facebook credentials for current and prospective workers, a simple solution would be for Facebook to allow all account holders to create "sandbox accounts". Once you create a sandbox account, you can (from your main account) selectively set your posts, photos, likes etc to be visible or invisible to the sandbox account. You can also choose which of your friends (and your friends' activities) will be visible. For instance, you can set it so Sandy Smith's activities are hidden by default, while Jim Stone's activities are visible by default.
The idea is that when logged in to the sandbox account, there will be nothing to indicate that it's a sandbox login. You will even be able to create a nested sandbox within this sandbox, with no nesting restriction.
With this in place, an employer will never know whether his/her employee or candidate has given up the master password, or just a sandbox password — with the ability to nest the sandboxes, account holders will have plausible deniability and will regain some control over their privacy in the event of duress attacks.
The idea is that when logged in to the sandbox account, there will be nothing to indicate that it's a sandbox login. You will even be able to create a nested sandbox within this sandbox, with no nesting restriction.
With this in place, an employer will never know whether his/her employee or candidate has given up the master password, or just a sandbox password — with the ability to nest the sandboxes, account holders will have plausible deniability and will regain some control over their privacy in the event of duress attacks.
Submission + - High School Student Expelled For Tweeting Profanity; Principal Admits School Tra (techdirt.com)
amiller2571 writes: "Tinker v. Des Moines is considered a key lawsuit in defining the free speech rights of students. While there have been a few cases that limited the ruling, it's still seen as the key case in establishing that students have First Amendment rights and that schools can't just arbitrarily shut them down."
Submission + - Microsoft censors The Pirate Bay in Messenger (torrentfreak.com)
Fluffeh writes: "As originally picked up by Torrentfreak, Microsoft Live Messenger now blocks a TPB link via its Live Messenger instant messaging tool. This is somewhat similar to when Facebook started blocking TPB "due to the controversy". This time round, Microsoft is claiming that someone told them TPB was "reported as unsafe." This is troubling on a number of fronts. First of all, a link by itself should never be considered infringing. Second, of course, is the fact that not all TPB content is infringing. Yes, an awful lot of it is almost certainly infringing. But automatically deciding that all of it is and not letting people share such links is extreme and dangerous. Finally, the really scary part is the realization that Microsoft appears to be monitoring content being shared in private communication between two individuals in an instant messenger conversation."
