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Comment Re:We should be fine... (Score 1) 754

by Fex303 (#38198828) Attached to: Paper On Super Flu Strain May Be Banned From Publication

As long as the virus does not increase the intelligence of apes.

Or a retrovirus that is highly contagious and reduces the intelligence of human victims to near that of apes by changing brain chemistry, but leaves them alive and "OK", driven by only animal survival insticts, and permanently infected?

Have you seen what was going down at Walmart last Friday? That ship has sailed, my friend.

Comment Re:Geez... (Score 1) 611

by Fex303 (#38142872) Attached to: Baker Has to Make 102,000 Cupcakes For Grouponers

Do you have insurance? I bet you do... and it's almost the same thing

Not quite. With insurance you're guaranteed to 'win' if something bad happens to you. (Except when insurance companies are being complete jerks.) That's the key point. If your insurance payouts were tied to something that wasn't your personal situation, say the roll of a dice, it would be gambling - but since insurance payouts are tied to you being a in situation where you really need the money, it makes a lot more economic sense.

Comment Re:Purely out of curiosity (Score 1) 692

by Fex303 (#37710092) Attached to: Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac?

No, the real issue is now we're training already-smug dorks to give out unconditional orders reflexively and expect them to be followed. How long before they start expecting that to work with humans?

Oh, I'd say about negative a thousand years... Smug dorks who like to order people around aren't exactly a new thing.
Education

Accent Monitoring: Innovation Or Rights Violation? 448

Posted by samzenpus from the do-you-understand-the-words-that-are-coming-out-of-my-mouth? dept.
theodp writes "After almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers' articulation, the NY Times' Marc Lacey reports that a federal investigation of possible civil rights violations has prompted Arizona to call off its accent police. The teachers who were found to have strong accents were not fired, but their school districts were required to work with them to improve their speech. Interestingly, one person's civil rights violation is another's 'wonderful little phenomenon', which is how PBS described the accent neutralization classes attended by Bangalore call center workers who worked for the likes of IBM and Microsoft. On its website, IBM Daksh notes that 'To make sure that customers all over the world can understand the way our people speak, every new hire is trained in what we call voice and accent neutralization.' So, is accent monitoring and neutralization a civil right violation, as the U.S. Depts. of Justice and Education suggest, or is it an 'innovation', as IBM argues?"

Comment Re:Tracking us, what? (Score 1) 637

by Fex303 (#37136660) Attached to: Coming Soon, Shorter Video Games

I would like to know how they were tracking us and why we weren't told about this.

I'm gonna guess that it's buried somewhere in the EULA. So techincally, we were told about it. And they were almost certainly tracking it when people played on consoles which phone home for updates anyhow, and I believe can send a set of info about how they've been played in the process.
Transportation

Big Buzz For $60,000 Electric Flight Prize 78

Posted by samzenpus from the lightning-powered dept.
gilgsn writes "Electric Light Sport Aircraft are sprouting up all over. Now that the Experimental Aircraft Association is offering a 60,000 prize for the best ones, manufacturers are gearing up for the competition to be held the last week in July, at AirVenture 2011 in Oshkosh, 'The World's Greatest Aviation Celebration.' Airplanes will be tested for endurance, speed and time-to-climb. Pilots, charge up your batteries.."

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