Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:April Fools? (Score 1) 137

I think it's going to be more challenging for writers to create a scenario than even Battleship!

Is the hero going to use a laser beam, telepathy, or Jeff Goldbloom's laptop to steer geometric alien enemies into a well packed space in order to disable their ships? Or do they have a weakness to water? Or is our super weapon of the future large geometric shapes and we have to contract a super bright Chinese exchange student to quickly configure them in order to save the world, while John Glenn walks slowly in the background to stirring music?

The EASY part will be the battle scenes -- just hire the same FX group that did Enders game.

The HARD part is creating a movie where the plot is; "use large geometric shapes and pack them well!" If it's a comedy, I'd enlist people who stack boxes for a living. Maybe a giant fork lift with laser beams.

Comment Re:Idiot (Score 1) 115

And the other giant elephant poop in the room that burns me up; A drone is a NEW WAY to allow surveillance on people. The attitude seems to be that "they have a RIGHT to find out everything the can" without actually letting anyone know what the burning need is. Technology is accelerating, but people don't seem to be at a greater threat of organizing, growing unions and becoming educated and empowered citizens in a Democracy.

Heck, you've got Wall Street brokers talking on PBS, and sleezy monopoly frankenfood peddlers endowing NPR, and since the Reagan era, there are no more civics classes -- so people don't know what a Congress person does anymore. Where is the threat?

Oh, you mean them bad guys you divert a Trillion dollars to chasing down rather than spend it on education or jobs -- so people here get angry and you have to spend another trillion spying on them so they don't make a mess of your perfect country that has no opportunity except for prison guards and drone operators? Yeah, well, I don't think the BAD GUY in the us are going to be doing stuff out in the open. They won't use their credit cards to buy bad guy equipment -- they'll steal it. They won't use their names to plot of facebook.

Honestly, it's all about keeping citizens from organizing and having some capability to disrupt them should they start acting like French and treat this country as if it belonged to the People, rather than stock holders.

Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 1) 460

Yes, American scientists seem to be trained in adsvertising their accomplishments too much. When I graduated we were tought to be modest, talk en write mostly factional. An American guest student had the habit of reporting each small result in a way someone else would only do if he truly believed it would earn him a Nobel prize.

What you are talking about is the very real pressure to "publish or perish". The fact is that those with better connections do get published and sited far more than the rest regardless of merit.

However, when scientists publish garbage, they can lose their credibility. You don't get a Nobel Prize for filling sheets of paper.

Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 2) 460

The fact that a good chunk of scientists are just that corrupt doesn't help either.

And most of those are the ones actively discrediting the 'good' ones because they've been paid off by the fossil fuel industry.

Seriously though, what evidence do you have that 'a good chunk' are corrupt?

A good deal of offal pulled from the nether regions of highly paid media pundits and think tanks.The fact that some people suspect the average scientist MORE than people who MAKE A PROFIT from the exact topic they are disparaging tells me that someone spent their money well to make sure people are ignorant.

That isn't to say I don't process what I'm told from all sources with a healthy dose of skepticism and logic. But I don't swat at butterflies all day just in case they might attack. I think I can depend on butterflies and scientists more than bees and pundits.

Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 4, Interesting) 460

I think that critical thinking skills are something that scientists cannot trust American citizens to have. We are lead to believe that someone would have around 16 years of higher education, and take a job that pays at least a third of what they could make with the math and technical skills if they became stock brokers or media pundits -- and they do all this so they can lie about a passion for seeking truth and knowledge. It shows a complete lack of empathy or understanding of human nature.

If I'm wanting to rip people off, I'll open a pay-day loan or a bank and charge bounce fees to poor people -- I don't need to waste time with difficult science to fudge a climate report in the desperate hope of getting a meager research grant.

The Crooks that own the media and hire think tanks to make every controversy like dealing with the Tobacco industry -- they are to blame. They are a cancer on society. We have to do something about these idle, useless rich people gaming the system to ruin it for everyone else. What, are they not able to afford a prostitute and enough steak to eat? These entitled parasites need to be shut down. We face a few existential crisis right now but we can't deal with Climate Change or the end of cheap labor (replaced by robots) because money owns politics and the media.

Comment Re:more info on Kiriakou (Score 1) 224

You have to plead guilty or get buried in debt, and then when you are broke, somehow defend against new charges.

Face it; Whistleblowers will be found guilty. And the longer they wait to "sign the papers" the more the Prosecutor will force them to defend expensive and spurious charges.

These Whistleblowers are all national treasures, yet they must sacrifice their futures so that the rest of us can sit on our asses and pretend to have a Democracy for a few more years.

Comment Re:Fine! (Score 1) 365

Awesome start.

We also need to have tariffs such that Taxes on a business are assessed to make up the difference from Gross sales to the region over taxes paid on business operations in that region; E.g., you shift your mail box to Ireland, you pay as if you had all your business in the US and THEN you get profits.

The main revenue shortfall in the US is we have so many end-runs around import fees, then businesses making huge profits on labor and cost disparities whine about global competitiveness.

We've got flat-lined wages, increasing expenses and no money for necessary school programs while of course we have a Trillion $ to blow chasing down the latest "threat to the world" like ISIS. Instead of education, we can just get scared every day about the next existential threat.

Comment Re:Way to compare apples to light bulbs (Score 4, Insightful) 200

Another HUGE thing to consider that "Government Waste" is not always government waste.

If it costs $120,000 to keep a top level engineer employed at NASA and they compete with a $20,000 engineer in India -- that isn't $100,000 of waste. That's +$100,000 to our GDP, and someone sending their kids to college.

The true meaning of Waste is a cut to taxes on financial instruments that end up becoming offshore investments. Extra "profits" are things you need to worry about in a free market economy -- not people pulling in a paycheck.

I want to live next to that Engineer at NASA, I want my kids to go to boyscouts with his kids, and I don't want everyone to have families arguing over bills -- THAT is the hidden cost to bean counters trying to micromanage society.

Comment Re:Non-pirateable??? (Score 2) 358

Apple is adding the "bone phone" to their headphone lineup and it's only a slight tweak to convert that fingerprint scanner to detect ear signatures.

So YES -- Apple will use ear authentication and a combination of ultrasonic and sonic frequencies to compile the sound "in ear".

Unless we hack the nervous system -- this music can NEVER be pirated. /s

Comment Re:Nope they are clever (Score 1) 336

"remotely amazing"

-- not the tech. This is like iTunes all over again. AFTER itunes -- everyone and their brother has digital music for sale. BEFORE iTunes -- it was a minefield of different contracts and protected content.

Apple lined up companies that they very likely will come into competition with. There was likely an army of lawyers and experts to try and negotiate all the various deals.

Nobody has done this before because of all the legal agreements and negotiations -- otherwise, everyone would have swipe to pay.

The fact that it seems simple and no hassle on our end, just shows why Apple is so damn good at implementations.

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

Working...