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Submission + - Cringely on Big Data and AI

squideatingdough writes: Once again, Robert X. Cringely provides an insightful (and somewhat scary) vision of the future: http://www.cringely.com/2014/0.... He describes how today's Artificial Intelligence is so very different from the vision of those IT folks working in the field back in the 80's. And then he goes on to posit how algorithms are improving at a rate that exceeds Moore's Law for hardware. A very interesting read.

Submission + - Bill Gates Patents Detecting, Responding to "Glassholes" 1

theodp writes: As Google Glass goes on sale to the general public, GeekWire reports that Bill Gates has already snagged one patent for 'detecting and responding to an intruding camera' and has another in the works. The invention proposes to equip computer and device displays with technology for detecting and responding to any cameras in the vicinity by editing or blurring the content on the screen, or alerting the user to the presence of the camera. Gates and Nathan Myhrvold are among the 16 co-inventors of the so-called Unauthorized Viewer Detection System and Method, which the patent application notes is useful "while a user is taking public transportation, where intruding cameras are likely to be present." So, is Bill's patent muse none other than NYC subway rider Sergey Brin?

Submission + - Now you can get an Office 365 subscription for $6.99 a month 1

DroidJason1 writes: Microsoft has launched Office 365 Personal, a lower-priced subscription option for users who want to use Office on only one PC. You can even use it on the iPad or a tablet. Office 365 Personal is priced at $6.99 a month, or $69.99 for a year. Previously, the company offered a package that costed $10 a month or $100 a year for five PCs.

Comment Re:Wat? (Score 1) 582

Also of course regardless of whatever the product is open source or propitary and paid for you can't from that draw any conclusions about the skills of the individual who have written the code but if it's a high prestige brand/project I guess chances are higher they have been more picky than if it's some small rather unknown one individual thing.

The idea was to make it a point that you for instance may not want to trust the individuals who roll their own packages for your Linux distribution of choice and download from random page or trust THISISTHEBEST___INTHEWORLDBUTITSNOTAWELLKNOWNPRODUCT from someone rather unknown for instance.

But I guess it all fails with this being OpenSSL which I feel is a high prestige / well-known product and where safety should be important and still it simply failed.

Somewhat related I noticed that Fedora run OpenSSH by default and with the defaults (PermitRootLogin yes) and listening to the whole world which imho is completely retarded and I don't see why one would want to have that the default. I guess it could be argued that "Hey, someone may need that to access the computer after installation!" but I guess in that case let them set that up in the installer or make a special installation with such settings and really, do they use the regular installer but have no keyboard and screen hooked up so they can turn it on if they want to afterwards?

It did seemed like none of the BSDs ran sshd by default. Which imho is much more reasonable. Whatever to allow root or not as default I guess one could argue on. Since the OpenSSH default is PermitRootLogin yes I guess it make some sense to keep that the default rather than changing it but I guess there has been some argument about that one too. A way of rescuing a poorly setup installation? Possibly better (imho) to just force people to redo it correctly if they mess up and really need some way to get in.

And regarding trusted source code, prestige projects and whatever anyone is actually watching the code and finding the bugs. What happened with the claim about some backdoor in was it OpenBSD or OpenSSH? Was it just bullshit or something real? I guess the first question would be whatever anything/it was actually found, because without that the answer would of course be "we don't know" =P

Guess I'm off-topic enough to not take it even further so I'll stop there :)

Comment Re:Upgrade, don't update. (Score 2) 575

But there is. They broke the integrity of the core packaging system by marrying it so deeply to .NET that there are multiple people out there who have to reinstall the OS from scratch because the update broke the package registry irreversibly.

Funny, I didn't hear people bitching and moaning over that when they did the same thing with .net 3.5 in windows 7....which did exactly the same thing.

Comment Re:Upgrade, don't update. (Score 2) 575

Speak for yourself. I run both Windows 8 and Windows 7 machines, and my Windows 7 machines are demonstrably more stable and less buggy than my Windows 8 one.

So do I. I actually haven't run across an OS quite as stable as this since Win2k, probably my favorite version of windows. My follow up would be XPx64. If it's taking *that* long on a fresh install, you've got something else going on wrong on your system, either ram timings, spread spectrum, or something esoterically weird going on. I've seen exactly that type of issue before in Win7 and XP, and each case it was something different anything between windows itself trying to remotely grab a driver and getting "hung" on trying to install/update a NIC driver. Or something else.

Anecdotes are just those.

Comment Re:Upgrade, don't update. (Score 1) 575

Since there's nothing inherently wrong with Windows 8.1 besides the awful UI, I can't figure why you'd downgrade to Windows 7. Or are you telling me that you can't install another UI and go on your way? I now await people to say that's it's worse than vista, when it's not. Especially when it's main negative feature is the UI.

Comment Re:Just use headlights (Score 1) 187

Uhh, we plow I-80 for 4 months of the year in Norcal, and we still have lane markings. Maybe you're doing it wrong.

Last time I looked, Norcal doesn't use on average of 1ton of salt per 10 miles per road either, we do. Unless of course it's too cold for it, then we use sand or gravel. Yep it really does get cold enough here in Canada that salt and chemical deicers stop working on road surfaces.

Comment Re:Just use headlights (Score 3, Interesting) 187

Those of us who don't live in cities have been driving fine at night without streetlights forever. No special paint needed. Cars have headlights.

I'm guessing you don't actually live anywhere that has serious wear and tear on their roads, otherwise you'd know that by the time half the winter is over that the paint is already worn down to the point where it's useless. And of course, if it's raining good luck on seeing those lines at all. Luckily HID lamps have helped with this, but don't get stuck driving on any Canadian highway anywhere between the months of: January(sometimes if it's really bad, this can hit as early as early November) through June when there is: Snow, rain, slush, mud, slop, dirt, or less than 50% sunlight.

And don't count on the shoulders to be a guide, because we don't really use them in most cases. Though if you're driving on a major highway like the 400 series(401,402,403,etc), some parts of the Trans-Canada, and a few other busy highways, we do have rumble strips.

Comment Re:The Real Solution (Score 1) 433

So linking to a newspaper article qualifies now as 'drawing a picture', I guess you are not good at drawing?
Well, continue to practice and you will improve!

Oh I see. It's a classic case of, it doesn't fit my tidy little view of the world therefore I won't read it. After all it might shatter my fragile ego and endanger my strongly held viewpoint that an environmental organization is responsible for killing people by starving them to death.

Comment Re:If the pace is too slow, you're doing it wrong. (Score 1) 103

No shit Sherlock? You've figured her out! She's just one of them agile folks ruining everything.

You are probably under some pressure today, or have some other back story thing going on.

Either way, better things are expected from you. Carry on like this, and on your deathbed you'll be wondering why you wasted the time you had... so angry, so long.

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