Comment Re:" Foley's killers may have thought of him as le (Score 1) 11
We are all human, we all have extremely similar DNA. Nietzsche was an idiot. There is only one morality that actually works.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Alternate software for use on smartboards?
SmarterThanMe writes: Teacher here, you can call me Mr. SmarterThanMe. I have a fancy smartboard installed in my room. Smartboards allow me to show students a whole range of other stuff other than just whatever I'm writing. I can prepare instructions and activities before the lesson and just move through the boards. I can pull up some students' work and display it through the projector. I can bring up some stimulus for use in a writing task. So much better than blackboards.
Except the software that comes bundled with this particular brand of smartboard is ridiculously clunky. Without naming this particular piece of software, and highlighting it's shortfalls, has anyone got any suggestions on alternatives (open source or otherwise)?
The main features that I'd like are:
Except the software that comes bundled with this particular brand of smartboard is ridiculously clunky. Without naming this particular piece of software, and highlighting it's shortfalls, has anyone got any suggestions on alternatives (open source or otherwise)?
The main features that I'd like are:
- Handwriting recognition
- The ability to make and use templates
- Grids or guides or *something* to be able to teach measurement
I have gold star stickers for any good suggestions. Thanks in advance.
Comment Re: you are badly informed (Score 1) 324
Or 10% or 0%. The most equitable and progressive tax is the tax on individual incomes. Corporate taxes are always a shell game.
Comment Re: This is why my hair always stands on end (Score 1) 324
The perfect example of this is the tax on dividends which should be exactly the same rate as other income, but it was argued that it was already being taxed as corporate profits so the rate was set lower. The perverse effect is that people that actually make a wage or salary would pay higher income tax rates compared to those who can shift their income to dividends.
Comment Re: Most taxes are legalized theft (Score 2) 324
It is hard to convince people they are better off knowing how much is really being taken from them.
But the worst things about indirect or obfuscated taxation are that it is harder to have an informed electorate when taxation is hidden so indirect taxes undermine Liberty and democratic systems and it is harder for even the most well informed to accurately judge whether the tax burden is equitable, progressive or regressive.
As far as I can tell the tax system is primarily responsible for the erosion of the middle-class in the US because it is a regressive burden on the middle-class more so than the very wealthy. But try convincing a wealthy person that the higher tax bracket they see and combined taxation is actually less of a tax burden on them than the middle-class. Most people just don't understand how insideous and distorting indirect taxation can be to all our perceptions.
Comment Re: Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) (Score 1) 545
I could go either way. I think though as long as it doesn't require a third party tool it's "native" just not "out-of-the-box".
It is used natively though, just not in a way you may like. When the security warning pops up and the screen dims a bit that's actually a different desktop environment.
Comment Re:Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) (Score 4, Informative) 545
Interesting fact but this isn't new to Windows either. Win2k and maybe even earlier had native multidesktop support. They just didn't ship a default front end for it but they've had a free tool available for years that let you set it up.
Comment Re:The protruding lens was a mistake (Score 2) 425
If they'd just made it as thick as the camera it still would have been thin enough and they may have been room to add a bit more battery juice.
Classic crApple form over function BS.
Comment Hurd, is that you? (Score 1) 93
Will be this the real Hurd?
Comment Re:" Foley's killers may have thought of him as le (Score 1) 11
"Regardless, that is not what starts and perpetuates these wars. Religion is a psychological tool, used to motivate or dissuade, by those who want to dominate."
So eliminate the theologies that are based in domination instead of service.
"Military recruits recite almost the same thing during bootcamp. And salespeople, oof! ever been to one of those seminars? This is standard procedure."
Standard procedure for 99% of the world's philosophies yes. Exactly the opposite of standard procedure for one.
"The prime motivator is biological, and all driven by the laws of physics." Not all. One is different.
Submission + - Ask slashdot: Remote support for disconnected, computer-illiterate relatives.
An anonymous reader writes: I use email to communicate with my folks overseas. Their "ISP" only allows dial-up access to their email account (there is no option of chaning ISP), that can receive messages no larger than 1MB nor hold more than 15MB (no hope of changing that either). They are computer-illiterate, click on everything they receive, and take delight on sending their information to any nigerian prince that contacts them, "just in case this one is true". Needless to say, thir PC is always full of viruses and spyware. In my next yearly visit, instead of just cleaning it up, I'd like to gift them with some "hardened" PC to use for email only that would hopefully last the year before someone has to fix it. So far, these are the things I have in mind:
- Some kind of linux distro, or maybe even mac. Most viruses over there are windows only and propagate via Autorun.inf or by email attachments, not having Windows could prevent both.
- Some desktop environment that hides anything unrelated to connecting to the net and accessing their account (dial-up software, email client, web browser, exchanging files between their hard disk/email attachments and USB drives). By "hide", I just want the rest to be out of the way, but not entirely removed, so that if necessary, I can guide them over the phone. For this, Ubuntu's Unity seems like a particularily bad solution, but a Gnome desktop with non-removable desktop shortcuts (is this possible?) for the file manager, browser, email client and dial-up program could work. An android system is unlikely to work (they have no wifi, and they were utterly confused with Android's UI).
- This could be a life saver: some kind of extension to the email client that executes commands on specially formated emails (e.g., signed with my private key), so that I can do some basic diagnostics or install extra software if I have to. This las point is important: they currently rely on aquaintances who may not be competent (they can't evaluate that) if something happens between my visits. They, most likely, wont know how to deal with anything non-windows, so all tech support would fall on me. (This is the reason I haven't moved them from windows yet.)
- Another very useful extension would be something to automatically re-assemble attachments split into several emails, to overcome the 1MB message limit.
Does any of that exist? If I have to build that system myself (or parts of it), do you have other suggestions? For the inevitable and completely reasonable suggestion of getting someone competent for tech support: I've tried that too. The competent ones don't last beyond the third visit.
Submission + - Neuroscientists Working to Push the Boundaries of Perception Through Wearables (kickstarter.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A pair of neuroscientists from Houston, Texas, Dr. David Eagleman and his graduate student, Scott Novich, have teamed up to work on the ultimate test of pushing the boundaries of our sensory perceptions: giving deaf individuals the ability to 'hear' through their sense of touch. The two are experimenting with raising funds for the project through a crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter. At the moment, it looks like they have a working prototype developed along with some preliminary data. If the science works out, they plan to utilize the technology to provide atypical information streams to people, like Twitter feeds or stock market data.
Submission + - New Global Plan Would Crack Down On Corporate Tax Avoidance
HughPickens.com writes: Reuters reports that plans for a major rewriting of international tax rules have been unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that could eliminate structures that have allowed companies like Google and Amazon to shave billions of dollars off their tax bills. For more than 50 years, the OECD’s work on international taxation has been focused on ensuring companies are not taxed twice on the same profits hampering trade and limit global growth. But companies have been using such treaties to ensure profits are not taxed anywhere. A Reuters investigation last year found that three quarters of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies channelled revenues from European sales into low tax jurisdictions like Ireland and Switzerland, rather than reporting them nationally. For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. “We are putting an end to double non-taxation,” says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.
For the recommendations to actually become binding countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. The OECD says that it plans to hold an international conference on amending the network of existing tax treaties. Sol Picciotto, an emeritus professor at Lancaster University in Britain, says the recommendations are at least five to 10 years from becoming law, and that the jury is still out on whether they will accomplish their stated goals. “These are just tweaks,” says Picciotto. “They’re trying to repair an old motorcar, but what they need is a new engine.”
For the recommendations to actually become binding countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. The OECD says that it plans to hold an international conference on amending the network of existing tax treaties. Sol Picciotto, an emeritus professor at Lancaster University in Britain, says the recommendations are at least five to 10 years from becoming law, and that the jury is still out on whether they will accomplish their stated goals. “These are just tweaks,” says Picciotto. “They’re trying to repair an old motorcar, but what they need is a new engine.”
Submission + - Ethical trap: robot paralysed by choice of who to save (newscientist.com) 1
wabrandsma writes: From New Scientist:
Can a robot learn right from wrong? Attempts to imbue robots, self-driving cars and military machines with a sense of ethics reveal just how hard this is
In an experiment, Alan Winfield and his colleagues programmed a robot to prevent other automatons – acting as proxies for humans – from falling into a hole. This is a simplified version of Isaac Asimov's fictional First Law of Robotics – a robot must not allow a human being to come to harm.
At first, the robot was successful in its task. As a human proxy moved towards the hole, the robot rushed in to push it out of the path of danger. But when the team added a second human proxy rolling toward the hole at the same time, the robot was forced to choose. Sometimes, it managed to save one human while letting the other perish; a few times it even managed to save both. But in 14 out of 33 trials, the robot wasted so much time fretting over its decision that both humans fell into the hole.
Winfield describes his robot as an "ethical zombie" that has no choice but to behave as it does. Though it may save others according to a programmed code of conduct, it doesn't understand the reasoning behind its actions. Winfield admits he once thought it was not possible for a robot to make ethical choices for itself. Today, he says, "my answer is: I have no idea".
As robots integrate further into our everyday lives, this question will need to be answered. A self-driving car, for example, may one day have to weigh the safety of its passengers against the risk of harming other motorists or pedestrians. It may be very difficult to program robots with rules for such encounters.
Can a robot learn right from wrong? Attempts to imbue robots, self-driving cars and military machines with a sense of ethics reveal just how hard this is
In an experiment, Alan Winfield and his colleagues programmed a robot to prevent other automatons – acting as proxies for humans – from falling into a hole. This is a simplified version of Isaac Asimov's fictional First Law of Robotics – a robot must not allow a human being to come to harm.
At first, the robot was successful in its task. As a human proxy moved towards the hole, the robot rushed in to push it out of the path of danger. But when the team added a second human proxy rolling toward the hole at the same time, the robot was forced to choose. Sometimes, it managed to save one human while letting the other perish; a few times it even managed to save both. But in 14 out of 33 trials, the robot wasted so much time fretting over its decision that both humans fell into the hole.
Winfield describes his robot as an "ethical zombie" that has no choice but to behave as it does. Though it may save others according to a programmed code of conduct, it doesn't understand the reasoning behind its actions. Winfield admits he once thought it was not possible for a robot to make ethical choices for itself. Today, he says, "my answer is: I have no idea".
As robots integrate further into our everyday lives, this question will need to be answered. A self-driving car, for example, may one day have to weigh the safety of its passengers against the risk of harming other motorists or pedestrians. It may be very difficult to program robots with rules for such encounters.
Ask Slashdot: Any Place For Liberal Arts Degrees In Tech? 392
Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes A new article in Fast Company suggests tech CEOs want employees with liberal arts degrees, because those graduates have critical thinking skills. Meanwhile, a new article on Dice (yes, yes, we know) posits that STEM degrees such as data science, IT admin, and electrical engineering are what science-and-tech companies are going to want for the foreseeable future. What do you think? What place do those with liberal arts degrees have in companies such as, say, Tesla or a biomedical engineering firm?
