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Science

There Is a Finite Limit On How Long Intelligence Can Exist In Our Universe 205

Posted by timothy from the never-outlives-the-ballot-box dept.
StartsWithABang writes: The heat death of the Universe is the idea that increasing entropy will eventually cause the Universe to arrive at a uniformly, maximally disordered state. Every piece of evidence we have points towards our unfortunate, inevitable trending towards that end, with every burning star, every gravitational merger, and even every breath we, ourselves, take. Yet even while we head towards this fate, it may be possible for intelligence in an artificial form to continue in the Universe for an extraordinarily long time: possibly for as long as a googol years, but not quite indefinitely. Eventually, it all must end.

Comment Re:How hard will this break Corp Intranet apps? (Score 4, Informative) 133

by drakaan (#49673031) Attached to: Microsoft Is Confident In Security of Edge Browser
If only I had mod points. I write .net web apps all the time, and for businesses, and I test in IE *last* because first and foremost, I want it to work in the future, which means for mostly-standards-compliant browsers. Writing IE-specific code is an extremely bad plan. Not all browsers are running on windows desktops or laptops.

Comment Re:Why the hate for VB (Score 1) 181

by drakaan (#49579149) Attached to: Swift Tops List of Most-Loved Languages and Tech
I'm not arguing that VB is good, but that's a pretty trivial example of what makes it bad. Here's a discussion of where DIM came from: http://stackoverflow.com/quest... You used to be able to just say "variablename = value" without a dim statement. That's improved in the current syntax for VB.Net. If you want an example or two of what makes VB bad look at some of the legacy VB6 and classic ASP code hanging around out there. PHP has some (most) of the same problems.
Music

Music Industry Argues Works Entering Public Domain Are Not In Public Interest 302

Posted by samzenpus from the watching-out-for-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes: With news that Canada intends to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performers, the recording industry is now pushing the change by arguing that works entering the public domain is not in the public interest. It is hard to see how anyone can credibly claim that works are "lost" to the public domain and that the public interest in not served by increased public access, but if anyone would make the claim, it would be the recording industry.
Transportation

Autonomous Cars and the Centralization of Driving 181

Posted by Soulskill from the go-where-the-algorithm-lets-you dept.
New submitter arctother writes: Taxicab Subjects has posted a response to a Morgan Stanley analyst's recent take on how driverless cars will shape society in the future. From the article: [R]eally, 'autonomy' is still not the right word for it. Just as the old-fashioned 'automobile' was never truly 'auto-mobile,' but relied, not only on human drivers, but an entire concrete infrastructure built into cities and smeared across the countryside, so the interconnected 'autonomous vehicles' of the future will be even more dependent on the interconnected systems of which they are part. To see this as 'autonomy' is to miss the deeper reality, which will be control. Which is why the important movement reflected in the chart's up-down continuum is not away from 'Human Drivers' to 'Autonomous' cars, but from a relatively decentralized system (which relies on large numbers of people knowing how to drive) to an increasingly centralized system (relying on the knowledge of a small number of people)."
The Military

UN To Debate Lethal Autonomous Weapons 166

Posted by Soulskill from the smart-money-is-on-the-lethal-autonomous-weapons dept.
Hallie Siegel writes: Should robots be allowed to make life and death decisions? This will be the topic of heated debate at the United Nations (UN) Palais des Nations in Geneva next week (April 13-17th, 2015). As part of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), experts from all over the world will gather to discuss 'questions related to emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems.' The Open Roboethics Research Initiative will be presenting public views at the debate. Human rights groups are urging the UN to ban such weapons. A new report titled "Mind the Gap" details the accountability issues that need to be solved before going any further. "A key concern with fully autonomous weapons is that they would be prone to cause civilian casualties in violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The lack of meaningful human control that characterizes the weapons would make it difficult to hold anyone criminally liable for such unlawful actions."

Comment Re:They do what they're paid to do... (Score 3, Interesting) 550

Actually, after my follow-up email pointint out the idiocy of the reply I got, a staffer sent me a *real* email asking if I'd like to call and talk to him about it. Not that it means that they're really listening, but at least they have enough sense to not just ignore it completely. Meh.

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