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Comment Why is a person at university? (Score 3, Interesting) 57

The ideal answer is that the person is really interested in the subject they are studying and want to know a lot more.

The honest answer is that society forces them to go to university as the next step towards a high paying job. The fact that it's also a chance to PARTY is probably also significant!

For the person whose only motivation is the latter, then the logic of cheating is overwhelming; they don't really believe that they need the stuff they are being taught, so why bother to play nicely?

The AI challenge, on top of the pandemic's revelation that an awful lot can be done on line, is raising all these hard questions which nobody wants to face. However to some extent it is merely clarifying the questions which were already being raised about the degree to which a university education has become a weapon in the arms race of getting the first job. Once you start to see the university industry as arms salesmen in a war, it's a lot easier to disregard their self serving claims to be making a meaningful contribution to our culture. Of course SOME are doing things of value - especially in STEM - but overall?

Perhaps the answer is for major companies to announce that they are going to recruit high school graduates with good SATs results for in house apprenticeships that will lead to management. Unfortunately most seem to be continuing to use a degree as the first jump for candidates to get over...

Comment Re:Major payout when it goes wrong (Score 2) 45

Ultimately the facial recognition software has got it wrong, so its creator should pay. Of course the cost will need to be added into the payments from the police...

The $5000 is for any false positive. The additional consequences should be charged against the police if they fail to confirm the person's identity appropriately.

Comment Major payout when it goes wrong (Score 2) 45

If a person is misidentified by the software, then an immediate $5000 payment should be made. This will encourage the software maker to be very careful.

The Manchester, UK police claim a very low false positive rate:

GMP have had a total of 1 false confirmed from over 641,533 face

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com...

Comment Banking collapses (Score 1) 187

Banks go bust for two very different reasons. The first is that they are no longer making a profit on their activities and so, like any other firm, eventually their creditors will force them into bankruptcy.

The second pattern is where a bank suffers a run on its deposits so that it is no longer able to meet the demand for cash from its depositors despite the loans that it has made remaining profitable. It is this second pattern of failure, which is driven by irrational panic, that modern central banks seek to prevent by being willing to act as 'lender of last resort'. This adds stability to the crucial plumbing of the economy, because if the banks have been adequately well run then their loans' long term value should be enough to pay off the depositors.

Note that there is always a risk of panics associated with banking; they inevitable borrow short - from depositors who want immediate access to their money - to lend to creditors who want to be certain their loan won't be called in overnight. Noone has come up to a solution to this problem, but the present system of bank regulation and 'lender of last resort' does generally work well enough.

Comment Kids' pester power (Score 1) 105

'Parents have no need to give their kids smart phones which access all that garbage and why would they.'

If you have children who have grown up recently and you resisted their getting smart phones, then you are a super hero and I am not worthy to untie your shoe laces. If you've not had to resist that pester power, then I'd encourage you to be more sympathetic.

To be clear I've not had brats...

Comment A teaser set it spinning (Score 0) 10

"A teaser?"

"Yeah."

"Er, what is ..."

"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."

"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really."

Douglas Adams 'Hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy'

Comment Some good comments (Score 1) 86

I suspect the joker is the word 'confirmed' in 'false confirmed'. If the person stopped is immediately able to demonstrate they aren't who the system says they are, are they going to bother to make sure the false stop is recorded. Similarly if the person is able to prove they weren't the person when they get to the police station, they may just get released without it being recorded on the system as a false positive for the facial recognition system. I entirely agree the figure is miraculous; I'm merely reporting the response to give an idea what the cops believe about the situation.

Submission + - Journalist spots off-the-radar terrorist using facial recognition software (theguardian.com)

Bruce66423 writes: A German court this week sentenced a member of the Red Army Faction — a hard left terrorist organisation that operated in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s — to jail. She had remained hidden for decades, and the German police hadn't deployed facial recognition software to catch her. But according to the article a journalist did, to good effect.

Is the ban on the police using it a good thing? Is it good that a journalist was able to track her down using it?

Submission + - Museum exhibit KITT replica hit with speeding ticket in New York (nzherald.co.nz)

Adrian Harvey writes: A replica of KITT from Knight Rider has been issued a speeding ticket in New York. Whilst stationary at the Volvo Museum in Chicago!

The museum said: “You couldn’t make this up! Our KITT hasn’t left the museum in years. Does anyone have David Hasselhoff’s number? He owes us $50!!!!!”

The museum is seeking a hearing to dispute the ticket.

Submission + - The Virtual OS Museum (virtualosmuseum.org)

Z00L00K writes: This is a virtual museum of operating systems (and standalone applications) running under emulation, implemented as a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM.

A custom emulator-independent launcher is provided, and all OSes and emulators are pre-installed and pre-configured. The launcher includes a snapshot feature to quickly revert broken installations back to a working state. Hypervisor installers and shortcuts to run the VM on Windows, macOS, and Linux are also included.

Want to see the earliest resident monitors? The ancestor of all modern OSes (CTSS)? The earliest versions of Unix? The first OS with a desktop metaphor GUI (Xerox Star Pilot/ViewPoint)? Early versions of mainstream OSes? If you want to explore historical OSes and platforms without having to worry about configuring/installing emulators and OSes or corrupting emulated installations, you’ve come to the right place.

Just about every well-known OS and platform (and also a lot of obscure ones) is included in some form, spanning the entire history of stored-program computing from the Manchester Baby of 1948 (the first stored-program computer) to the present day.

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