You laugh, but someone has already combined the Oculus Rift with something like the Novint Falcon attached to a strap around the crotch to create a sex simulator (anime-themed, of course, so probably a Japanese company.) I'd search for the video of it in action, but I'm at work so it would probably be a Bad Idea. :)

Throw a Fleshlight in there somewhere with a stable (and modular, for various positions) housing and, boom, you're a step or two below a holographic sex bot as seen in something like The 7th Day. By 2020 I bet many porn shops will replace their video booths with virtual hooker booths, where the guy picks his "girl" of preference (oh, I can just smell the lawsuits over using the likeness of actresses, models, and video game/fictional characters), puts on the headset, and gets busy with a box.

Not only did they remove them, but in the process they broke much of the scrolling functionality for some users: https://code.google.com/p/chro...

I've received at least one complain from a user of our small company website, then found out that a few of our office folks were having the same problem (they primarily use Chrome, I primarily use FireFox.) It was double fun because I have auto-updating turned off for Chrome and, when I went to update, I wasn't affected by the issue so I had to find someone else's computer that was and do my testing there.

A lot of users who encounter this problem with wrongly blame the issue on the website they're using instead of on Google.

(I'm actually okay with removing the arrows; they were likely removed as stats showed they were rarely used, with people either using the moving part of the bar and dragging it, or just clicking on an "empty" part to jump up or down, or using their scroll wheel; that last functionality was kinda broken in this release, too.)

While I agree that much of this may be about older CxOs not having experience with equipment, this is not a problem that will die with them.

Just like "Kids these days have no respect or aptitude" has been a thing since the days of Socrates (or, rather, Aristophanes?), so to is "Old people just can't understand" (or, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks".) For the past two decades it's been the internet. Before that it was computers in general. In two decades people 30 years our junior will have hushed conversations about how we're having trouble targeting our Brainmemos to certain employees instead of broadcasting to the entire company, wondering why we find it so hard to figure it out.

Those assistants and entitlements will stick around, too, but they'll adjust to different things just as the thing that we can't adjust to will also change.

DOES ANYONE DOUBT AMERICA IS NOW ESSENTIALLY A POLICE STATE??

I do.

Because as bad as things are now, as many privileges the government grants itself (both openly and in secret), as much money is spent on LEO/military gear and gadgets but not on training, as many exceptions as they are claiming from the Constitution, as much "oversight" as they give themselves, as many private prisons are built and those companies push the government to fill them, as much power as the courts happily rubber-stamp for the government, and as much as they claim we need what they are doing for our own protection, we, as a country, still have so much further we can fall.

And I see us continuing to fall.

That is why and what I fear.

I can personally attest to this. This past labor day my debit card (which I'd had all of six months) was used to purchase some pharmaceuticals over in Spain to the tune of $300+. Since the debit card is through Visa, their protection services called me to let me know about the odd charge. My credit union I had the card with did diddly to inform me; I had to call them. After some pain with paperwork (which they had to mail/fax and I had to mail/fax back) Visa ruled in favor of the merchant (because it's totally plausible for me to order pills from Spain that were likely shipped to a Spanish address when I've never stepped foot outside the continental US.)

Thankfully, my credit union is really good (aside from not catching the charge themselves) and reimbursed me the total amount after the ruling, but I was still down that amount for about two weeks (and, since I already end each month with no money, this made things quite stressful.) But I will never again use my debit card online.

If someone can't afford all of that to cook, I would be surprised if they were buying multivitamins in the first place.

But, assuming that they do, that seems like a real stretch. It seems tou're trying to convey something in your comment, but I'm not entirely sure what (poor==stupid?); the short version is that a poor person (to the point of not being able to prepare their own meals, even with food stamps) who reads the article will likely continue taking their multi-vitamins, regardless of their intellectual means:

Many a /. article has shown that people up and down all sort of spectrums don't like to be "wrong", even when absolute proof is right in front of them (and this "article" isn't absolute proof.) So, if someone were taking multivitamins under the belief that they were helpful, and found this article, there's a good chance they'd just keep on taking them regardless of both the validity of the article and their level of income.

Furthermore, if said poor person did read the article (and not the /. summary, which is missing important details as usual), they would see that it says the vitamins offer no benefit to those with proper nourishment; the vitamins can be far cheaper than buying the foods necessary to get the same amounts, which means they aren't even wrong about taking them; so if they were intelligent they would continue to take said vitamins since they have trouble eating in the first place. (The Dunning-Kruger effect may lead those without intelligence to see themselves as knowing better than the article/scientists if they miss the part about being well-nurished, and so continue taking it; if they see it, it's reinforces their world-view, and they'll continue taking it. I think they would most likely just not see the article at all, though.)

Indeed. Something else I haven't seen in this topic so far is the initial investment necessary for healthy cooking. To properly cook for yourself (especially from complete scratch, but even using some "in a box" things) you (general you) need pots, pans, utensils, potable water (for cleaning and cooking), soap, a working stove, and gas/electricity (or just electricity and a toaster oven/rotisserie/whatever, but you'll be limited in what you can do). A microwave and tupperware is cheaper still, but you're extremely limited in what you can actually make (if anything.) Oh, and a home/apartment in which to cook. And the means to get the food from shop to home; either it has to be close enough for walking, you can afford the bus fare (which may or may not be on the way to/from work, assuming you have a job), or you have a car.

For most Slashdotters, these seem like no-brainers and we probably give no thought to what it took to get those things. But to someone who grew up in poverty and are unable to land a job or higher education themself, many of these seem like far-off dreams, and if they can afford food they likely get things that don't need to be cooked or purchase from the dollar menu at fast food joints.

(I'm not saying this is the GGP's problem, but too often I see/hear people espouse about how "easy" it is to cook healthily and that poor people should be doing it a lot more, which is making a lot of assumptions, so I wanted to add to your correct statement.)

I agree. So we need to ask the question: Who is her client? Google, the US Government, or the US People?

It has been shown, especially as late, that those employed by the government are not necessarily working for the government. And rare is the case where someone working for the US Government is also working for the US People...

Let's just completely ignore any moral issues or questions of whether it's a good thing or not to live in a world where orwell's wildest nightmares are everyday occurrences and where all communications are monitored by blanket surveilance.

While I agree with you that it is a serious problem beyond the technical/legal, if people like the parent want to paint it in such a narrow scope then I'm okay with that; it's still completely wrong in that regard and--as much as it would be nice to wreck it all at once--I think good change will occur faster if we hit the narrow scopes first and work our way out.

And there's plenty more. Genesis 19:30-36 (NIV; choose your own path at http://biblehub.com/genesis/19.htm, look for "Lot and his Daughters")

Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children--as is the custom all over the earth. Let's get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father." That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

The next day the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I slept with my father. Let's get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father." So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father.

While not as risqué as your verses, it involves both rape and incest, but still no outcry to remove Bibles...

I think it's more than that: By making a controller that can mimic keyboard/mouse to some acceptable degree of accuracy for all but the hardcore/tournament players, it takes the onus off of the developers to code/test for a regular controller, meaning it becomes much easier to design their game for a Steam Machine, improving the chances they'll do so over a Windows-only version.

For those that come along to these comments later, I believe the parent is referring to this: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/10/09/1551240/the-linux-backdoor-attempt-of-2003

And that is the issue of television and movies in Finland are all subtitled, and never dubbed. It seems minor but it's a huge incentive to learn to read. You can not be illiterate in Finland and watch the popular television programs or movies from America. Even Baywatch is subtitled in Finnish and Swedish. Not only do you have to read you have to read at a reasonable speed to keep up. So as a student if the rest of the children are talking about going to see Iron Man 3 and you can't read very well you now have an reason to work much harder.

Highly interesting. I wonder if they could do another round of tests, and this time have an indicator for how much time a tester spent as a kid/teen watching subtitled shows in America (I'm thinking primarily of Anime, especially for those that grew up in the mid 90s when the internet really started expanding but the American Anime industry was yet to see its heyday, or even things like Godzilla.)

And it's not just that, it's also about handling both expected average load and initial max load. If you focus on just max load, you'll wind up capacity that just sits around. If you focus on just average capacity, you run into problems like this (which is assuming they can get roughly the right estimate in the first place.) So a good plan needs to have something where it can account for max load (perhaps offload image hosting to CDNs and non-privacy-related data processing to AWS or something?) but not have a bunch of extra, idling capacity when the initial furor dies down.

I'm hoping that, while they allow anyone to use SteamOS for their system, they create a "branded" system by which to easily measure system specs for quick eyeballing of whether a particular Steam Machine can run a particular game. The way I see it, they have yearly specifications and a ranking system per year. It can be simple numbers 1-5, or tier like Start, Mid, Pro. Then it's a rolling designation, with the idea being that this year's Pro should be roughly equivalent to next year's Mid, then the following year's Start. It also means that games can target only that year's specs on their box; instead of having to say something like "Supports Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP", a game released in 2016 can list SteamOS support as "Supports 2016 Pro and beyond", so gamers that pick it up later will know it also works for 2017 Mid, 2018 Simple, and then everything after that. Maybe have it simplify it and have just a High and Low tier, or go even further and have a minimum hardware requirements to be "Certified SteamOS-Compatible 2015."

This is a lot like the Windows Experience Index, but easier to understand IMHO (their system is an addition one, in that they'll increase the max score over time as newer hardware becomes available; right now it's still 7.9 for Win8, which was the same max for Win7).

With this kind of system in place, they can have the best of both worlds: Those who want more esoteric hardware options or roll their own can do so (SteamOS would include a utility to give your system a rating, though it wouldn't be "certified"), and the major hardware manufacturers can target one or a few of a set of hardware specs in order to improve the price point through mass production. Depending on how high the "minimum" specs are, they could even make a cheap-o or super-small model by targeting a prior year that can still run the biggest AAA games.