Well, the auto makers have "fixed" that problem in their latest models. They now have those little "onboard computers" that constantly scan many of the controls and figure out how to map them to physical actions. This means that any "upgrade" to the software can change the functioning of all the controls. You can think you're just getting an upgrade to improve the mileage, but that upgrade can flip the meaning of the turn-signal controls.

Some of the latest models have wifi, so they can do upgrades while you're traveling. We'll probably soon be hearing of accidents caused by a sudden change in meaning of what the driver did with the controls. (Yes, they may say the upgrades won't happen while the car is moving. What that means is that if you stop at a stop sign or light, when you start moving again, the controls may have silently changed. And if you think they wouldn't do upgrades without your permission, you haven't been paying attention.)

If computer-industry history is any guide, it'll probably take decades for all this to settle down to an intuitive, reliable auto UI. And the security problems still won't be solved, so your car can be taken over at any moment by "hackers" - or the police - or your insurance company.

(I wish I were joking ... but I'll probably get a "funny" mod for this anyway. ;-)

Simple way to fix it- require that any H1B hired must be paid twice the highest paid domestic worker. That means they'll only be paid if they really are necessary. Any company that's found breaking this rule is not allowed to hire an H1B again- ever. And they're fined 20 times what the salary(s) were supposed to be.

We can't throw companies in jail, so breaking the law should be fucking punishing.

The reason IT jobs are down is a combination of things:

1)Too many people went into it, because it was seen as hot yet didn't require a degree, just certs (or nothing).
2)Improved knowledge of computers by the general public, and improved software for them to use (its not like the 90s when you had to really know Windows to set up a network). Not many people need to call helpdesk to plug in a mouse anymore.
3)Automation and improved infrastructure. It takes fewer people to manage a fleet of machines because the software is better.
4)We don't fix hardware anymore. We replace it. This is a lot lower effort. Also a lot of the hardware is more reliable.

IT jobs went away because demand decreased while supply increased. There's still a fuckton of jobs writing software, but we don't need as many people to take care of the hardware and administrate the systems. Those jobs aren't going completely away, but they'll never spike again.

There are republicans with other principles. Unfortunately they take them from the parts of the bible with lots of thou shalt nots and mentions of stoning and punishment. They make the rest look good.

Nah; if we do that, they'll all just agree with each other. (Haven't you been paying attention. ;-)

Well,yeah, but that's balanced out by the large population of native English speakers with a poor command of the language. ;-)

We're seeing a bit of that here on /. these days ...

Thus starts another round of the old "Is Pluto a real planet?" fiasco. ;-)

The pseudo-argument is really based on a poor understanding of basic English grammar. The word "dwarf" in the phrase "dwarf planet" is being used as an adjective modifying the noun "planet". A fellow at NASA (whose name I didn't catch) explained the fallacy of saying this means that Pluto isn't a real planet, by giving a few examples of the usage. Thus, we have several "dwarf apple trees" in our yard. Nobody who understand English would say that this means they're not real apple trees; they are real apple trees that bear real apples, but are much smaller (3-4m tall) than most (full-size) apple trees. Similarly, our sun is classified as a "dwarf star". This means that it's a real star that fuses H atoms and gives off light, but it's smaller than most of the stars you can see in the sky. This is a good thing, because a "full-size" star 140 million km from our planet would totally vaporize all our water, and would burn out in a few hundred million years, destroying our planet at the end of its life. If there are other intelligent critters on planets around other stars, those will also be multi-billion-years-old dwarf stars like ours (to within an order of magnitude). Most of the galaxy's stars are dwarf stars.

Readers can probably think of lots of other common uses of "dwarf" or "pygmy" to mean a small version of something. This isn't mysterious; it's standard English syntax. (We have a potted "dwarf jade plant". It's a real jade plant, but its parts only grow to about 1/3 the size of the equivalent "standard" jade plant. It's a very easy sort of bonsai to grow. But when we bring it inside for the winter, we have to protect it from our cockatiels, who find it tasty.)

Other astronomers have pointed out the major problem with the term "planet": It's far too inclusive. It includes object as varied as Mercury and Jupiter, so it's an almost useless classification term. The long-term sensible approach is to prepend various modifiers to say which of a list of classes a given planet is filed under. We have a few of them, like "gas giant", and the more recent "ice giant", of which our solar systems contains two each. The classification "dwarf" was added a few years ago for the tiny planets that can't hold an atmosphere. We still don't seem to have a standard classification for the 3 intermediate-size planets, Venus, Earth and Mars. We also haven't figure out good terminology for the similar objects (Titan, Triton, etc) that also have things like an atmosphere with weather, but which share an orbit with a planet in a larger class. Pluto is an interesting borderline case, because at the recent perihelion, it has had a very thin but significant atmosphere, which is now condensing out as the sun gets more distant.

In the long run, we really should have a reliable set of classes for the sort of astronomical object that's big enough to be (roughly) spherical but too small for fusion to happen in its core. We've found that there are lots more of them in our solar system than we thought, at least 6 with atmospheres denser with ours, and several with thinner atmospheres. Pretty soon, we'll be getting good data on similar objects orbiting other stars.

Calling all the round-but-not-stars objects "planet" is a useful term. But such a vague term really shouldn't ever be used without a prefix. Maybe the astronomical community should get a committee together to come up with a better list of planet classes than the current mess. And try to get the media and general public to use it correctly. ;-)

Or maybe they should just officially declare "planet" to be a non-technical term, with no precise astronomical definition. But then they'd have to come up with some new technical terms, so they probably won't do that.

In any case, saying a "dwarf planet" isn't a planet merely shows ignorance of basic English grammar. Some astronomers have pointed this out. We just need to get the word out to all the people who misunderstand it due to their poor command of the English language.

Heh. That would really baffle anyone in the 95% of the human population who's not a literate, native speaker of English. (Just imagine a tourist staring at their dictionary, trying to make sense of that set of three simple English words. ;-)

Of course, it's not at all unusual for people to put up signs with this level of clarity, nearly anywhere in the world. There's a nice web site, engrish.com, that has a large collection of similar signage, mostly from east Asia, but also from most of the rest of the world.

Its called Libertardia, land of the Libertarians. In their mind its all rainbows and unicorns. The reality is much closer to Somalia.

Free interns aren't allowed to displace paid workers. That means they cannot do anything material for the company. An intern at a software company cannot write software, unless he's a paid intern.

Of course that's why unpaid internships are pretty much non-existent these days.

If they're free. Most of them are paid, then they can do work. Pay for an engineering intern is actually pretty good- the firms want to recruit the better ones.

You're low, on any scale. If you're way the fuck out in the boonies you should be making a good chunk more than that. If you live in an actual city, double that. And that's just salary, not equity.

No engineering intern makes 0. The law is that an intern can only be unpaid if they do no work relating to the company. For example, an unpaid intern at an advertising company can sit in on meetings and bring coffee, but they can't draw an ad or write copy. If they do, they have to be paid. An unpaid intern at a software company wouldn't be able to write source code. SO basically worthless. So engineering interns get paid, just a lot less. Generally a good chunk more than minimum wage though, as there is competition for interns.

Huh? If you don't trust the OS provider, Apple is the worst choice- you can't put on a custom ROM, you can't use non Apple stores, you can't use non Apple approved software, you can't use non Apple approved browser. If you don't trust the OS provider a custom ROM of Android is the only option.

Also Android tracks usage by app, and has forever. My biggest user is Maps, then facebook, then messenger. It even lists out things like Google Play Services.

What are you talking about? TMobile is the best at it- I get free unlimited data in Europe for fucks sake. Unlimited roaming data in over 120 countries. ANd I've used it in Spain and South Korea. Only place I wasn't given free data was Gibraltar.

http://www.t-mobile.com/option...