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Comment Why (Score 1) 203

I have no idea why ANYBODY would even consent to logging in to his Facebook account on a computer or unlocking his phone while in custody, let alone post a coerced message like that. I'm sure lawyers will hash all this out in court, but my according to the article

Jamerson was charged with two counts of simple assault and one count of obstruction against the officer, all misdemeanors, Lyon said.

I am for civil liberties, but I'm not sure I disagree with the charges.

Having said that, his case is about being coerced. Who's to say he didn't offer to write a nice post himself and the officers laughed and said "sure!"?

Businesses

Germany's Glut of Electricity Causing Prices To Plummet 365

WIth an interesting followup to the recent news that Germany's power production by at least some measures was briefly dominated by solar production, AmiMoJo (196126) writes Germany is headed for its biggest electricity glut since 2011 as new coal-fired plants start and generation of wind and solar energy increases, weighing on power prices that have already dropped for three years. From December capacity will be at 117% of peak demand. The benchmark German electricity contract has slumped 36% since the end of 2010. "The new plants will run at current prices, but they won't cover their costs" said Ricardo Klimaschka, a power trader at Energieunion GmbH. Lower prices "leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet" according to Bernhard Guenther, CFO at RWE, Germany's biggest power producer. Wind and solar's share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42% by next year from 30% in 2010. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28% from 32%.

Comment Re:Speculation (Score 5, Funny) 475

Amen brother! I switched to Bitlocker a while ago and never even looked back at LUKS or TrueCrypt. The problem I had, though, was that I run only Linux on my machine. No worries. I installed VirtualBox, created a VM and installed Windows on it. That way I could make /home/lsllll as a private share available in the VM and have Bitlocker go at it. That is the ONLY reason why I run Windows. God praise the Bitlocker developers. They saved me from the NSA.

Comment Re:no (Score 1) 437

I don't think you understood what GP was saying. He just wanted to make sure that he wouldn't be held liable under any circumstances if A) he was not controlling the vehicle and B) he had all the required maintenance performed on the vehicle.

I can see his point. I wouldn't want to be sued for a "computer glitch" that may end up killing someone. I'm not even sure I want that on my conscience.

Comment Re:no (Score 1) 437

So are humans. Every single workplace safety program starts and ends with "stop and think what you're about to do before doing it". Our higher functions operate at the timespan of minutes, not fractions of a second. This is also the reason we have traffick laws: they turn driving from an activity requiring judgement into a mechanical exercise. When that fails, accidents follow.

Not necessarily. There was a discussion of this on Slashdot back in 2006. Here's an article that explains the rationale behind removing street signs and lights: Traffic Management. What is boils down to is more driver awareness, not less (mechanical exercise)

Humans have next to no intellectual contextual awareness in realtime situations. Various levels of automation drive your body, most social situations, and even activities usually considered intellectual, like math or programming. "Intellectual contextual awareness" is what you use to pick a career, and often not even then.

I've gotta also disagree here. The day may come in our lifetime when computers can write better novels than Stephen King, but until then our intellectual capacity is king. Computers beating us at chess and in Jeopardy are one thing. A computer writing Romeo and Juliet, or composing Beethoven's Ninth is not around the corner. Hell. A computer which can do the menial programming tasks on do on a computer is not even around.

At the end of the day, I don't want a computer driving my car, because I enjoy driving my car. I like to keep it in third gear and hear the engine roar for a bit when I'm driving on the highway before I put in fourth. I just don't think I would get the same pleasure if a computer was driving my car.

Comment Re:Get computers out of primary school (Score 1) 310

Technology as classroom aids in elementary grades needs to be limited to special-purpose machines, like things that help present curriculum, or help in classroom discussion to let the teacher or the students aid their point, or if they're used for things like testing to make grading easier, they need to be locked down so that they only do the function that they're called upon to do at that time.

Once the kids get to secondary school, then start introducing the general-purpose machine. Let them learn how to use a productivity suite, or how to do research electronically, or how to use programs to aid in science education. At least at that point it's possible for the skill to actually still apply to the person's life once they reach adulthood where it might have to be applied.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Except that kids have access to the nuances of the Internet at home and on their cellphones. As others have said above, education must start at home and be extended at school. It cannot just be pushed unto kids at school. Schooling and parenting go hand in hand.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 5, Insightful) 310

Ummm, let me guess. Yes? Sitting in boring classrooms got us to the moon and got us the computers we're sitting in front of, so I think we must have been doing something right.

I am not saying that we got it all right before computers. Sitting in boring classrooms may not be the optimal use of time, but it sure beats wasting the same amount of hours sitting behind the computer. I am a computer programmer and I spend much of my time behind the computer, but had I been in school I would have thought it would be better to attend classes, whether they were boring or not. What TFA is saying is that children have lost the ability to concentrate and that multitasking and online social media has robbed the kids of their ability to relate to their peers in the real world. I have raised two kids and always attempted to curb their use of computers, not harshly, but sensibly. In addition, they were not allowed to have televisions, game consoles and computers in their bedrooms. This was all an attempt to get them to spend time on the first floor with their parents or with their friends around the neighborhood. I am fairly certain that now that they're in college and looking at their peers, they appreciate the way they were raised.

A part of life is actually learning to deal with the boring parts, since there are many instances in our lives that are spent doing things we really don't want to do. Calming down, taking a sip of coffee while looking outside the window and admiring the bird, passers by, and the clouds, is something today's kids do NOT understand.

Comment Re:Time for a union that is only way to get the po (Score 1) 215

My wife works for a school district and their union sucks big Willy Wonka dick. Truly the union is looking only for its own best self interest. On another note, I worked at a corporation in California for a couple of years. When their NetWare server had issues, I suggested that they swap the NIC with another one that was sitting on the shelf above the server. They had to wait for a union guy to come in and swap the card. Seriously? Any half-brained twat could have replaced the card. I had done it only a thousand times before I was in the position to suggest so. But everyone was scared of the union and they wouldn't swap the card.

The issue with unions in this country is that they get in the way of doing things. But the downside without the unions is that corporations will fuck you with a steel rod if you're not part of a union.

Let me fix that for myself. Corporations will fuck you with a still rod whether you're in a union or not. Given the choice between union and non-union, I choose union, because at least some poor soul is getting some dough instead of the corporation.

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