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Comment Re:Fleeing abusive companies? (Score 1) 257

In fact why does this article focus on the tech sector? Similar claims could be made of banks or car companies among others. If anything has changed it's that the tech sector has grown and diversified enough that its subsections can support major companies as monopolies (or near monopolies) for example facebook/twitter for the relatively new social media section.

So major companies with virtually no competition naturally become destructive to society. Maybe we need a wave of enforcement of anti-monopoly laws... or given modern corruption per Citizens United some new major limitation on how corporations are allowed to incorporate or buy stock in existing corporations for any state (e.g. Make Wal-mart unable to incorporate in a new state due to its annual revenue nor buy out smaller companies and run them as mini-Wal-Marts).

Of course, we should outlaw Corporations as "People" on top of that.

Comment Ergodox (Score 1) 82

Massdrop just started another run on the ergodox that will be ending in about a week, anyone interested in this keyboard would probably want to check that out.
I've never used anything but standard cheap keyboards but I'll be trying the ergodox on this latest run. At a glance they appear very similar. I like this guy's thumb layout better, though I'd prefer the board was split into two pieces one for each hand.

Submission + - Activist group sues US border agency over new, vast intelligence system

An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sued the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an attempt to compel the government agency to hand over documents relating to a relatively new comprehensive intelligence database of people and cargo crossing the US border. EPIC’s lawsuit, which was filed last Friday, seeks a trove of documents concerning the 'Analytical Framework for Intelligence' (AFI) as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. EPIC’s April 2014 FOIA request went unanswered after the 20 days that the law requires, and the group waited an additional 49 days before filing suit. The AFI, which was formally announced in June 2012 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consists of 'a single platform for research, analysis, and visualization of large amounts of data from disparate sources and maintaining the final analysis or products in a single, searchable location for later use as well as appropriate dissemination.'

Submission + - France Bans Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations (dailymail.co.uk)

Sun writes: Citing the violence these demonstrations deteriorate into, the French government has placed a ban on all pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The step is receiving criticism from all sides of this particular conflict.

One has to wonder whether more traditional means of crowd control wouldn't be more appropriate, such as limiting the number of participants or assigning locations not next to Jewish centers.

Comment Re:John Carmack, no questions asked (Score 1) 285

Having read your link, no he did not. From your source:

When we got the first build to test, I was pleased with how the high res artwork looked, but I was appalled at how slow it ran...
...Using the iPhone's hardware 3D acceleration was a requirement, and it should be easy...
...As usual, my off the cuff estimate of "Two days!" was optimistic, but I did get it done in four, and the game is definitely more pleasant at 8x the frame rate.

He converted an existing implementation that used software acceleration to use hardware acceleration instead. The original team did estimate 2 months for that change.

Comment Re:Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortag (Score 1) 401

The Chinese folks seem to have their ducks in a row. They ain't great on the innovation part and you have to spent a LOT of time steering them, but at least they work hard.

The Indians spend most of their time emailing management about how awesome they (the Indians) are, rather than doing any actual work.

The Americans seem to be stuck in the glory days of post-WWII when America didn't have any real competition (rest of the world was smoldering ashes) so they now seem allergic to the concept of hard work.

I've found 0 (or near 0) correlation between country of origin and work ethic. This is complete bullshit and flamebait. That this was posted by an AC does not surprise me.

My company tried for almost a year to find good tech people. Begged, scrounged, tried to poach, nada. The jobs may not be the best paying, ~$120k/year

I'm not certain about the COL in silicon valley and other very expensive areas (generously assuming you're even in one), but unless the skills you were looking for was some obscure language and/or toolset I'm pretty sure this is obvious bullshit as well.

Comment Classic $Politician (Score 3, Insightful) 211

It seemed odd that only posts I see on this subject ("Classic Obama", "Obama ... What is it with this guy", and "Why does Obama keep doing this") all seem to suggest this hypocrisy is somehow unique to the current president.

Maybe I'm missing something as I was born in '88, was there a time when politicians weren't appointing people based on who would be best for the major corps in the industry.?How is this anything but the standard Corruption which we can expect from all future presidents?

Comment Oblig xkcd (Score 1) 129

Makes me think of this: http://xkcd.com/189/

But monitored by some wearable computer(s), I don't know how good current technology would have for accurately sensing and represnting various body types (plenty of critism of BMI for example) but I could see how turning excercise into a sort of game could have a future. If they can, more power to them, obesity has sadly become a significant problem and excercise is a necessary tactic for reducing it.

Comment Re:Oh snap! (Score 1) 370

You could even put that playlist on a local music server.
Sockso is good though when I last used it (~2 years ago) some features didn't work it didn't play all file types so I had to convert music files to, I believe, .mp3 (maybe .ogg).
The program itself is just an executable jar you have to configure, comes bundled with a tomcat if I remember correctly, just double click and you have a music server.
I can confirm, that at the time, it ran out of the box on 10.04 Ubuntu.

Comment Re:Wrong target (Score 1) 406

I have little faith in the unbiased nature of someone named war4peace. But I'll bite...

The engineer designs/builds the stuff. Someone else uses the stuff unethically.

True an engineer can't know ahead of time exactely how/when/where say an American combat rifle will be used. However, seeing that after 9/11 we invaded 2 countries that had little (Afghanistan) and no (Iraq) connection to it but do have strategic uses/oil (rich tasty oil) its pretty clear the US will use those weapons as it chooses, unilaterally (more or less) and in violation of international law and any sense of morality.
It would be like suggesting chemical weapons research for Bashar al-Assad might be used to find new cures. Technically true but the precedent suggests otherwise.

Pretty much anything can be weaponized; some things more directly than others, but in the end, whatever you design, think, build, imagine can (and likely will) be used to hurt others, be they human beings or animals.

We should build more powerful nukes because people would just knife each other anyway?
Logistics matter a great deal, saying the internet is worthless because USPS is a reliable means of transmitting information would be moronic.

if John Doe is an engineer and he's offered a military industry job, then if he turns it down, someone else will take it.

And someone else can deal with the ethics of that.
"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept." Don't pretend you have higher ethics than what your actions reflect, you don't.

Also, the article implies that an engineer should think of all possible implications when working on something, including ethical use of the product. Which brings back the original statement: you can't make sure that the product will only be used in an ethical manner. It's an impossibility. The only assurance would be that no engineer builds anything anymore. And I'm pretty sure that most people would loathe shivering in a cave with only a raw pelt covering their skin. Just sayin'...

I completely agree that there could be times an engineer is working on a project and not predict how that technology, even fairly directly, could be used for purposes they would never condone. I, personally, would only ask that an engineer make an honest attempt to determine if immoral uses are possible and reasonably likely in lifetime of the technology and use that to judge the work as ethical or not. A standard would need a more concrete definition and thus more consideration than I can put into this comment.

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