Holy crap, if that isn't the next sign of the dystopian future I don't know what is.

Private corporations getting the consulting services of the king spook of the spy agency which has tapped into the entire fucking world.

That scares the bejezzus out of me.

Because all of the secrecy of the NSA combined with the douche-baggery of corporations is straight out of a cyberpunk novel.

The surveillance state meets Wall Street. Oooh, they could privatize the NSA, that would be really profitable.

Time to stock up on Guy Fawkes masks.

Yeah, but it's not real science unless someone is wearing a shock collar...

Hmmm ... it's only science if some of the subjects can shock some of the other subjects without actually knowing who (including themselves) will get shocked.

Otherwise, I think it's just kinky adults, and the goth kids. ;-)

those electrical stimulators mildly shock muscles to force a friend to mirror the user's movements). It's an imperfect system

LOL, what could possibly go wrong?

There's a super(hero|villain) origin story in here waiting to happen.

VR, dodgy electrical shocks, a budding young scientist, a Microsoft product ... quick, someone should sell this to Marvel. =)

What a neat looking dust filter. Probably will do a good job catching cat hairs too.

Maybe the agreement should be 70% (seems low anyway, BT is free!) for the Author and Publisher and 30% for Amazon (so when it's inevitably decided publishers aren't vital in Ebooks we don't have to go through this again!).

That was the agreement - 30% to Amazon, and right now, 35%-35% split for authors/publishers.

And no, publishers do a lot - the author's main job is to deliver a manuscript. Just a block of text.

it's the publishers job to take that block of text, add the necessary front and back matter (Tables of Contents, Indices, cover art, author bio, etc), then also format that block of text for print and electronic publishing (not as easy as it seems - authors can often have their own interpretations of how to format text), and also link in images and such. Oh yeah, and market it - because otherwise your book is just one amongst the thousands appearing daily. And maybe do a bit of editing on the side.

It's very rare that a self-published book is actually any good - most are just crap (because the author kept getting rejected), and spelling mistakes galore. You really wonder if the author is even literate at all.

Sure there are a few good examples and there are publishers that do get out of the way and let you do it all (and some very good examples), but those are the exception, not the rule.

Hell, you could even consider a publisher's job to help wade through the millions of crap manuscripts submitted daily to find the good works and reduce it down to thousands that have a chance of making money.

Or, more correctly - you can't just develop an app. You must market your app too.

Too many of the big guys got there because they got in early. Then everyone assumes "if you build it, they will come", but no, you have to advertise it, market it, or like obscure FOSS projects, no one knows about it.

It's just like everything else - doesn't matter if it's Apple's App Store, Google Play, Steam, Xbox Live Market, Playstation Network, etc. Just putting it on there isn't enough - you have to get word out there.

Perhaps the worst part is, developers really do NOT know how to market. Or they think they're above it - "I hate advertising, and everyone blocks ads, so it's pointless". Well, if people don't know, they can't find it.

For iOS, there's a neat service called Appshopper.com, and it pulls new apps from the app store. There's easily over 100 pages of NEW apps every day. Relying on "stumble upon" traffic isn't going to happen.

There are two kinds of people who run servers without firewalls: Nitwits and professionals.

Nitwits do it because they think they don't need a firewall and it gives them a bit more performance or whatever.

Professionals do it when they know the conditions are right to justify it and they've made a risk assessment that confirms they are right. For example you run a high-traffic server that does exactly one thing on one port and the server software is robust - a firewall wouldn't do you any good, it's just additional security in case you open a port you didn't want to or such.

This is why these app developers fail where Apple succeeds. They create apps for an environment they don't get. Apple is very much about this attention to detail in everything they do, and it's a huge part of why they are successful.

The "economics get tighter" argument is a strawman. Apple users are not the kind of people who drive to a different supermarket because the tomatoes are 5 cents cheaper there.

For some reason, Americans have developed a stereotype of "white" and "black" that is related far more to social class than anything else. When you say "white," we imagine someone from the middle class. When you say "black," we imagine someone from lower socioeconomic status. How many blacks are in the middle class, I'm not sure, but as for whites in lower classes, we have them coming out our ears. While we may have millions of blacks who live in ghettos, we have 10 times as many whites living in trailor parks.

Because of our confusion between ethnicity and social class, we end up with things like Dave Chappelle's "Racial Draft": http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/blogs/2013/06/chappelles-show-june5-racial-draft
While amusing, it highlights the real problem, and this false stereotype is widespread throughout American culture.

I recall an interview with Bill Cosby, talking about educational advancement among black children. Peers discourage each other from studying because it's "acting white." When in fact it is "acting middle class," because this same kind of discouragement occurs among lower class whites as well. As long as education is not valued within any group, that group will have difficulty being equally represented in white collar industries.

What we have to work out to explain the disparity between population demographics and white collar job demographics is the proportions of the underrepresented groups who discourage education. People like Jesse Jackson want to make this all out to be the result of prejudice on the basis of genetics or skin color. Honestly, I think we're long past that. There are still plenty of racist bastards out there, but in general, we do not have pink people acting intentionally or unconsciously to undermine the advancement of brown people when it comes to getting college degrees.

It's not PC to talk about genetic differences, but genetics is interesting. Geneticists have identified differences between different ethnic groups, and they have correlated them with some minor differences in physical and cognitive adaptations. Things like muscle tone, susceptibility to certain diseases, social ability, and other things have been correlated to a limited degree with variation in human DNA. But the average differences between genetic groups are miniscule compared to their overlap (statistically, we have very small mu / sigma for basically any meaningful measurable characteristic).

Thus I can only conclude that correcting any disparities must come from within. Regulating businesses won't do any good, because unqualified minorities will end up getting unfairly hired and promoted. We have to start with the children and get them to develop an interest in science and math. If Jesse Jackson wants to fix this problem, he need to learn science and math and start teaching it. I assure you, even at his age, he has that capability, if he just cared enough to do it. Unfortunately for him, if he were to corrupt himself with this knowledge, he would find himself taking a wholly different approach than the "we're victims" schtick he's played most of his life. Personally, I prefer the "the universe is awesome" philosophy held by Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's one of my biggest heroes, having nothing to do with his skin tone.

One last though: I'm sure someone will find something racist in what I have said. Either that or I'm being too anti-racist and appear like I'm overcompensating. There are also aspects of these social issues I know nothing about. I'm just writing a comment on Slashdot that is about as well-informed as any other comment. One thing people should think about in general is whether or not they have hidden prejudices. It's not their fault, having been brought up in a culture that takes certain thing for granted. Instead of burying our heads in the sand, we should be willing to admit that we probably do have subconscious prejudices. That's okay, as long as we consciously behave in a way that is fair to other human beings, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, autism, or any other thing they didn't choose to be born with (and plenty of things they have chosen, because it's people's right to choose).

Absolutely. And if only 1% of your staff is black you've got to suspect that something else is already in play...

Starting with "how many African Americans have an education in tech?".

When I went to university, I do not remember a single black person in my courses. Since then, I've known only a handful in tech.

I've known and worked with Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Czech, Russian, Australian, Egyptian, Pakistani, Turkish and pretty much every other nationality I can think of -- which makes for awesome company pot lucks.

And, for reasons I cannot even begin to explain, the only blacks/African Americans I've met have been what I'd call "recently African" (ie. first generation immigrants).

I have never known anybody who refused to hire a qualified black candidate. But, in my experience (which admittedly doesn't cover everything), there's simply not many applicants.

So, the question to ask is: do blacks, as a group, even go into tech? Are they self excluding from the profession? Is the education system failing to get them into it?

I don't think it's so much that people are excluding anybody, it's that you can only include people who come to the game.

You need to move air through it. Otherwise you know what you get? An insulator!

Tiny pockets of air are very good insulators - it's why you use stuff like spray foam, fiberglass, etc., in your house - the material itself doesn't matter. The fact that the material traps air in tiny pockets makes it very insulating. Aerogel is one of the best insulators around - and it consists of basically air and a tiny silica weave to trap it in little pockets.

This thing does have copper so it will transmit heat, but the air pockets in the middle, unless you force circulation will just keep the heat trapped there as you'll have lots of little pockets of air, turning it into a poorer conductor of heat than a solid block.

Without air flowing through the weave, it'll overheat. So your fan better not die.

The liability thing isn't an issue if you think about it. If the accident was caused by lack of maintenance, then its the owners fault. Otherwise its the manufactures fault.

Sure, that sounds great. It's a nice simplistic response, all neatly tied up in a bow.

But, until there is case law (or laws explicitly passed) to address this, the reality is ... you have no basis on which to make that statement.

The law is much more complex than what we here on Slashdot like to reduce it to. And until someone has passed a law, and the courts have had a chance to rule on it, I'm going on the assumption this is FAR from a resolved question.

Or is this not an issue in the UK?

Because, if it's a driverless car, I'm not taking any control or responsibility for the vehicle other than telling it my destination.

If the car can suddenly say "Oh, crap, you take over I don't know what to do" then it defeats the purpose.

If you're going to have truly driverless cars, then you need to determine who takes liability if it runs over a person. Because I'm going to be sleeping in the back seat or reading a book.

Somehow, I doubt the companies making these cars have stepped up and said they're so confident in their technology that they'll take responsibility. And someone who has disengaged themselves from the act of driving (like reading a book) can't immediately switch to being in control of the vehicle. If I have to keep tabs on it and be responsible at a moments notice, then what is the benefit at all?

Every time this comes up, it just seems like nobody has actually addressed this yet.

You want a driverless car? Make sure I can crawl into the backseat after a night at the pub and not have to worry about it. Until then, this is really advanced cruise control, but you still need to be aware the whole time.

Oh, in that case, HTML5 +CSS3 qualifies. The more you know.

No, really. If you can implement a Turing Machine in HTML5 and CSS3 (and I mean a real one, not something which mimics it but actually doesn't do the computations) -- then what you would have would be a programming language.

I have no idea if you actually can or not with those technologies, but Turing Completensss is the measure.

If it aint Turing Complete, it's not really a programming language (or a computer).

That definition is decades old.

The ML in HTML is for markup language. I think you splitting hairs if you think programming language does not include markup langauge.

If you could implement a Turing machine in it, it's a programming language. If you can't, it isn't.

SGML, the precursor to HTML and eventually XML, was written by a lawyer to allow people to mark up documents for printing and layout.

HTML most certainly is NOT a programming language in and of itself.

There are variables, no control flow, no logical operators, and nothing which is actually programming in it. It's had a bunch of other things grafted onto it (Javascript, DOM, Ajax etc) which give you the ability to program against the HTML.

But HTML is not, and never has been, a programming language.

Could they extend it to make it a programming language? Sure they could. Is it currently a programming language? Nope, it isn't.