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Comment Re:But think of the accountants! (Score 2) 436

by SubtleGuest (#35637466) Attached to: US Competitiveness Chief Immelt's GE Tax Bill: $0

Hell, yes.

Except that... optimizing the prices/competitiveness of the economy and optimizing the overall good for the society are two different objectives, isn't it? Chasing one with means for the other is what brought US in the current situation.

Your comment is actually very profound. People treat economics and business as some sort of mathematical equation to optimize. "Pay the least amount to workers, make the most profit from the poor saps that must buy our products. Collect profits." The economy is a fake man-made framework we arrange ourselves on and hope to get as nice of a life, as free from want, as we can. I think almost everyone can't see that anymore. Money is just paper, we are really just trying to make a nice pleasant society with its distribution. If that is not being accomplished, those working saps (us) are fools for continuing in the current mode.
Robotics

Surveillance Robot That is Programmed To Hide 148

Posted by samzenpus from the our-new-clandestine-overlords dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The folks over at Lockheed Martin have just released information about their new covert robot that can sneak up on buildings, detect and evade sentries, and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys. From the article: 'What makes the robot special is its ability to build a computer model of its surroundings, incorporating information on lines of sight. The robot is fitted with a laser scanner to allow it to covertly map its environment in 3D. It also has a set of acoustic sensors which it uses to distinguish nearby footsteps and their direction.'"

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.
Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
Star Wars Prequels

The Star Wars Christmas Special Still Exists 316

Posted by CmdrTaco from the truth-is-out-there dept.
rapturizer noted the critical news that "Fans of "Star Wars" have a chance to see a free screening of the notoriously bad 'Star Wars Holiday Special' next week in Minneapolis." Nothing brings out the Christmas spirit like watching what may very well be the worst TV ever produced. Sadly however, I'm not sure that this is the worst *Star Wars* merch ever made.
Television

D-Link's New Boxee Box Runs Linux, Eyes Netflix 138

Posted by CmdrTaco from the one-ui-to-rule-them dept.
DeviceGuru writes "OpenBoxeeBox.com is reporting that D-Link's new DM-380 Boxee Box, demonstrated last night in New York at Boxee's Boxee Beta unveiling, runs Linux but does not yet stream Netflix video-on-demand titles. However, according to an unnamed Boxee insider, 'the goal is to have the device support Netflix.' The DM-380 features ports for HDMI, optical digital and analog audio, dual USB, and wired Ethernet, plus it has an SD card slot and built-in WiFi. Photos and screenshots are at OpenBoxeeBox, and additional details are on D-Link's website."

Comment Re:That's weird (Score 1) 664

by SubtleGuest (#30163334) Attached to: Google Releases Source To Chromium OS
I really do think that is the only thing going for this. It has to be the cheapest thing around. Jane or John Doe goes to Wal-Mart and next to the >$500 laptops is this and it is cheap as hell but does everything they need. They get something new that just works for them. Just how cheap?
Earth

NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears 881

Posted by timothy from the nostalgia-for-y2k dept.
eldavojohn writes "The apocalyptic film 2012 has dominated the box office, taking in $65 million on opening weekend. But with all those uninformed eyeballs watching the film, NASA has found itself answering so many common questions that their Ask an Astrobiologist blog offers calming, professional reassurance that there is no planet Nibiru, nor will it collide with Earth (although I do recall a massive solar storm forecast). NASA's main site even offers a FAQ answering similar questions. NPR has more on NASA scientist David Morrison and his efforts to calm the ensuing public hysteria, but survivalists are already planning for the big one. Pretty funny, right? Not according to Morrison: 'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?" And I don't know how to answer those questions.'"
The Internet

Comcast's New Throttling Plan Uses Trigger Conditions, Not Silent Blocking 698

Posted by timothy from the sir-there's-some-whining-on-lines-1-through-57 dept.
clang_jangle writes with this excerpt from The Inquirer outlining Comcast's new traffic-throttling scheme, based on information from Comcast's latest FCC filing. "Its network throttling implements a two-tier packet queueing system at the routers, driven by two trigger conditions. Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes. Its second traffic throttling trigger is tripped when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to – along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers – gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible. Tripping either of Comcast's high bandwidth usage rate triggers results in throttling for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilisation rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes."
Security

In Test, Windows 7 Vulnerable To 8 Out of 10 Viruses 843

Posted by kdawson from the take-your-shots dept.
As Windows 7's market share passes 3.6%, up from 1.9% the day before launch, llManDrakell notes an experiment they did over at Sophos. They installed Windows 7 on a clean machine — with no anti-virus protection — with User Access Control in its default configuration. They threw at it the next 10 virus/worm samples that came in the door. Seven of them ran; UAC stopped only one baddie that had run in the absense of UAC. "Lesson learned? You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7."
The Courts

Data Entry Errors Resulted In Improper Sentences 138

Posted by kdawson from the month-here-a-month-there dept.
shrik writes "Slate has a look at the efforts of Emily Owens, in 2005 a Ph.D student in economics at the University of Maryland, who 'came across thousands of inconsistencies and errors in the sentencing recommendations provided to judges' by the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy. Quoting: 'The sentencing guidelines for judges were based on a work-sheet [PDF] that "graded the severity of a convict's crime and his risk to society", ostensibly to make the rulings meted out more objective in nature. But on carefully studying her data, Owens noticed something wasn't adding up — the system seemed to be producing 1 error in every ten trials. She also realized that this "recommendation system" actually mattered: crimes and criminals analyzed to be quite similar were resulting in systematically different punishments correlated with the work-sheet.' The source of these discrepancies was ultimately found to be a simple, but very significant, PEBKAC: 'More than 90 percent of errors resulted from the person completing the work sheet [usually the DA, but signed off by the defense attorney] entering the figure from a cell next to the correct one. ... The remaining errors came mostly from incorrect choice of criminal statute in calculating the offense score and from a handful of math errors (in operations that were literally as simple as adding two plus two).' Timo Elliott's BI Questions Blog lists the morals of the story."
NASA

Astronaut Group Endorses Commercial Spaceflight 144

Posted by timothy from the airforce-must-hold-bake-sale dept.
FleaPlus writes "Buzz Aldrin and twelve other astronauts have published a joint endorsement of commercial human spaceflight, stating that 'while it's completely appropriate for NASA to continue developing systems and the new technologies necessary to take crews farther out into our solar system, [the astronauts] believe that the commercial sector is fully capable of safely handling the critical task of low-Earth-orbit human transportation.' They are confident that commercial systems (which NASA already relies on for launching multibillion-dollar science payloads) can provide a level of safety equal to the Russian Soyuz and higher than the Space Shuttle, while strengthening US economic competitiveness. They also support the expected endorsement of the White House's Augustine Commission regarding NASA's use of commercial spaceflight — the Commission's final report will be released today." And here's the Augustine report itself (PDF).

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