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Comment Re:Wait until those lamers find out... (Score 1) 385

WE don't lack the will.

We lack the power.

The ones with the power lack the will (or desire) - because their power depends on control of generation of energy through resources they control; namely fossil fuels. They're not going to give up that power while they have it. Not voluntarily.

Comment Re:So what are good languages to get into? (Score 1) 197

A masters in computer science program means taking about 10 three credit courses to get the degree. That means learning potentially 10 different languages. Which 10 would you choose? Which of those 10 are a must to learn, which would be merely advantageous to know?

Take at least one OO language (Java's fussy and bureaucratic, but its a pretty good example of the breed and is likely to be useful after you get your masters), at least one functional language (probably Haskell these days), at least one declarative language (Prolog or SQL), and don't just learn programming languages. You also need to learn about data, about data structures, about algorithms and their analysis, about parsing and compilation, and about concurrency; these are all independent of any programming language.

But computing is well served by not just learning about computing. If you have time, learn about math, stats and logic too, and learn how to communicate your ideas effectively; you'll never get far if you can't communicate with other people well.

Comment Re:Transcendence (Score 1) 564

And by booboo I naturally mean something along the lines of

if(target->ThreatRating == ThreatRating::American) { target->Kill(); } // booboo

I'd guess something like:
        if(target->ThreatRating = ThreatRating::Trrist) { target->Kill(); }

Let that be a lesson to you: Trrist must evaluate to 0, for humanity's sake!

Comment Re:The frustrations of AI. (Score 1) 564

If hardware isn't the problem, then it must be an algorithmic one. So, why can't an algorithm be discovered that is a breakthrough?

The problem is that it requires a true breakthrough, and there's no way to predict when that will happen. It also doesn't help that we don't really know what intelligence really is; all we've got is lots of things it isn't. I suspect that when someone cracks it, there'll be lots of people going "Is that all?! Anyone could have got that." and they'd be right, except that nobody did and it involves something both trivial and non-obvious. It might also require a lot of parallel processing, which we're still learning how to do well.

As we don't have any handy breakthroughs right now, we should instead study how brains really work and how to make computers do useful things (including stuff like "understanding" speech, "understanding" written natural language, drive cars safely, etc.) Those might or might not make the breakthrough easier, but they'll have other benefits along the way so they're still right to do.

Comment Re:Generic revenge on phone companies (Score 1) 110

Writing off a loss generally doesn't do much for you. It might save you 30% of the charge or so.

Insurance companies have a better deal because their business often involves re-insurance, that is off-loading their liabilities to pools.

The best of all is credit cards. They charge fees to merchants to cover the losses. The merchants then bake the fees into the retail price which people pay regardless of whether or not they use the card.

So no, T-Mobile isn't quite in the same league as insurance and credit cards.

Comment Re:Insurance and Employment (Score 1) 1330

I didn't say there is no reason for it. There are in fact a lot of reasons, primarily in the tax code for such.

However the idea of 'group discount' is not one of these reasons. We have lots of other insurance programs that work fine for individual purchasers. Homeowners, auto, term life, umbrella policies etc. My experience (through CORBA) is that you can usually find coverage for LESS than what your employer is paying.

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