Comment Re: Ugh, WordPress (Score 1) 31
But it works in IE 6?!!
Comment Re:it can be air filled (Score 4, Interesting) 200
Also mind the day duration: the Venus sidereal day is 243 Earth days. That makes for a worse than polar night, solar panel-wise, and that's not even counting the permanent, thick cloud cover. There just is no point in reaching the venusian ground and its lead-melting heat. It's far better to hang in the high atmosphere, well above the sulfuric acid clouds, and loft around in the 200 mph winds, circling the planet every 4 or 5 Earth days.
Comment Re:As with all space missions: (Score 1) 200
Meat starts cooking at around 60C.
Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates 688
HughPickens.com writes: Claire Cain Miller notes at the NY Times that economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology used to create as many jobs as it destroyed. But now there is deep uncertainty about whether the pattern will continue, as two trends are interacting. First, artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement. At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past — and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Self-driving vehicles are an example of the crosscurrents. Autonomous cars could put truck and taxi drivers out of work — or they could enable drivers to be more productive during the time they used to spend driving, which could earn them more money. But for the happier outcome to happen, the drivers would need the skills to do new types of jobs.
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
ODF Support In Google Drive 40
An anonymous reader writes: Google's Chris DiBona told a London conference last week that ODF support was coming next year, but today the Google Drive team unexpectedly launched support for all three of the main variants — including long-absent Presentation files. You can now simply open ODT, ODS and ODP files in Drive with no fuss. It lacks support for comments and changes but at least it shows progress towards full support of the international document standard, something conspicuously missing for many years.
Comment I would just request (Score 5, Funny) 330
that we not get it all at once please.
Comment Re:It's required (Score 5, Insightful) 170
Your indignation should not be directed at Verizon - it should be directed at Washington, DC.
A fun part of this is that the government employees at ARPA back in the 1960s explained it all to us. They firmly rejected building any sort of encryption into the network itself, on the grounds that such software would always be controlled by the "middlemen" who supplied the physical connectivity, and they would always build what we now call backdoors into the encryption. They concluded that secure communication between two parties could only be done via encryption that they alone controlled. Any encryption at a lower level was a pure waste of computer time, and shouldn't even be attempted, because it will always be compromised.
This doesn't seem to have gotten through to many people today, though. We hear a lot about how "the Internet" should supply secure, encrypted connections. Sorry; that's never feasible, unless you own and control access to every piece of hardware along the data's route. And the ARPA guys didn't consider that, because that first 'A' stands for "Army", and they wanted a maximally-redundant, "mesh" type network that would be usable in battle conditions. They went with the approach that you use any kind of data equipment that's available, including the enemy's, and you build in sufficient error detection to ensure that the bits get through undamaged,. Then you use encryption that your team knows how to install on their machines and use. And you probably change the encryption software at irregular intervals.
Anyway, the real people to direct your anger at are the PR folks in both industry and government, who keep trying to convince you that they can supply encryption that's secure. Yeah, maybe they can do that, but they never have and they never will. And the odd chance that they've actually done so in some specific case doesn't change this. The next (silent, automatic;-) upgrade will introduce the backdoor.
Unless you have all the code, compile it yourself, and have people who can understand its inner workings, you don't have secure encryption; you have encryption that delivers your text to some unknown third parties. It's the US government's own security folks who explained this to us nearly half a century ago.
Comment Have times changed that much? (Score 1) 280
It used to be that any degree would get your "foot in the door" with HR. Some of the best programmers I worked with over the years had degrees in English, Philosophy, and even a History major.
University teaches you how to learn new material, how to prioritize it, how to summarize, how to reach the meat in the middle of the chaff. It does not teach you how to program. While there are benefits to knowing computing theory, it's not theory that gets the job done -- experience does that.
I'm surprised you're having such a tough time finding work if you're actually good at programming. Perhaps it's the way you're presenting yourself in your resume, because, as I said, it doesn't really matter what your degree is in for getting your foot in the door.
Comment It's far easier (Score 1) 448
It's far easier to just have the cops shoot the white people, too. Then they'll know what it's like to be a "person of colour."
Comment Re:undocumented immigrant (Score 1) 440
Why does the fourth amendment apply? If he is not a citizen of the US, our laws shouldn't protect him.
So you think tourists shouldn't be protected by US law?
There are a lot of people and companies in the tourism industry who would strongly disagree with you. Not to mention the shipping industry, whose employees often make short visits to places where they aren't citizens, as part of their jobs.
If your suggestion were put into effect, it would be a disaster for a lot of valuable businesses. For that reason, it's not how the law works in the US or in any other country.
Comment Re:Probably cruel but... (Score 1) 137
I hope the more rational part of you realizes that this wouldn't be good for anyone.
Comment Re:this is ridiculous (Score 0) 440
In that case, why not get a warrant ?
Because they didn't have any evidence against the guy.
Remember this when you hear (or use) the argument "If I'm doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear."
Comment Re: AH, the good old days (Score 1) 100
I was wondering why someone was still employed after reading the story myself. Next they made an ad?? Yeah heads would roll in today's more hostile work environment.
Maybe I just worked for shitty employers recently? But I heard back then you stayed with a company for 30 years. So different today where firing 15% every year is the new rage. Sigh
Comment Re:Interesting, but ... (Score 1) 150
Great idea! Now we all only need to agree on which language to standardize on. I'm sure that worldwide discussion will be calm, focused and productive. Please post the results here in the thread once it's been decided.
I suggest Swedish. It's just about equally well known by almost everybody in the world, so nobody is starting out with an unfair advantage. I get a lifetime gig teaching Swedish to everybody. And you get umlauts! Win-win.
Oh, and by "suggest" I of course mean "absolutely demand or I will refuse any part of this scheme".
Comment Re: please keep closed! (Score 1) 50
This is cool for a project I am working on. I plan to see if I can create a
My Idea is to have no sql and sql databases where something like this will do the transactions to ACID.
