Comment Re:No thank you! (Score 1) 115
So PHB has the obviously best laptop in the room!
Comment These allegations are a "political attack" (Score 1) 410
There are two possible translations, based on the context.
1. Are the allegations based on a) verifiable facts or on b) unconfirmed or debunked rumors?
If answer=a, then translation="I'm so mad we got caught!"
If answer=b, then translation="This is a political attack."
Comment Re:"Facebook Experience"? (Score 1) 534
It wasn't gneiss.
Comment Interesting to look for disease markers (Score 2) 34
While iridology is bunk , it would be interesting to see what disease markers could be found with eye exams. We already know about a few. Ankylosing spondylitis is often associated with eye inflammation and abnormalities in the retina can be associated with diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disease, and stroke, as well as a lot of systemic diseases.
Eye exams are generally non-invasive and the scans could be set up almost anywhere.
Submission + - FBI: Business e-mail scam losses top $3B, a 1,300% increase in since Jan. (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) this week said the scourge it calls the Business Email Compromise continues to rack-up victims and money – over $3 billion in losses so far.
Submission + - 'Spam King,' Sanford Wallace, sentenced to two years in prison (bbc.com)
Xochil writes: Sanford Wallace gets a two-year prison term and $310K fine on charges of fraud and criminal contempt for sending 27+ millions spams to Facebook users.
Submission + - The end of fossil fuels is coming, renewables are set to overtake gas and coal (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydroelectric, will overtake natural gas as an energy source by 2027; Ten years later, those same renewables will surpassed the largest electricity-generating fossil fuel: coal, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Solar and wind will account for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested in energy over the next 25 years, according to Bloomberg's New Energy Outlook 2016 report. One conclusion that may surprise, Bloomberg noted, is that the forecast shows no golden age for natural gas, except in North America. As a global generation source, gas will be overtaken by renewables in 2027. The electric vehicle boom will increase electricity demand by 2,701TWh (terawatt hours), or 8% of global electricity demand in 2040. The rise of EVs will drive down the cost of lithium-ion batteries, making them increasingly attractive to be deployed alongside residential and commercial solar systems.
Submission + - Bill guarantees 50% of salary for workers laid off with non-compete (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: Non-compete agreements are controversial for many reasons, but what may be worst of all: Even if you are laid off from your job, a non-compete agreement may still apply. California has made non-compete agreements unenforceable, but Massachusetts has not. Some opponents say that's partly the result of lobbying by EMC, which has considerable clout as a major state employer, headquartered in the Boston suburb of Hopkinton. But the pending $67 billion merger of EMC with Dell, and the prospect of merger-related layoffs, is spurring a new attack on non-compete agreements. State lawmakers are considering limiting non-compete agreements to one year, banning them for low-wage workers and for people terminated without cause. The leading legislative proposal will also require an employer to pay at least 50% of the former employer's salary during the period of time the non-compete is in effect. This salary guarantee is called "garden leave" and is in Massachusetts House bill H.4323. In May, the White House released a report about non-compete agreements. It found that 18% of the workforce is now covered by a non-compete agreement, but over the course of a career, some 37% of all workers will be subject to them.
Comment Theranos still worth $900 million? (Score 2) 215
I'm surprised that it has that high a value at all, given that their legal and accounting expenses must be tremendous (even if they were somehow to win every lawsuit against them) and their liability insurance provider is doubtless going to fight them over every single claim.
The real question is whether Holmes was as good at deceiving herself as she was at deceiving others. If she was, her net worth may indeed be limited to personal property (which certainly she'll get to keep since it's very difficult to confiscate personal property from the wealthy), but if she was aware of just how much of it was all smoke and mirrors, then I'm sure she found ways to hide as much as she could.
What she really needs to do is declare that she's found religion, write a book, and then become a talk show guest.
Submission + - Freeman Dyson talks Interstellar Travel, Climate Change and more... (theregister.co.uk)
Tulsa_Time writes: he life of physicist Freeman Dyson spans advising bomber command in World War II, working at Princeton University in the States as a contemporary of Einstein, and providing advice to the US government on a wide range of scientific and technical issues.
He is a rare public intellectual who writes prolifically for a wide audience. He has also campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation.
At America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published [PDF] today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
He is a rare public intellectual who writes prolifically for a wide audience. He has also campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation.
At America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published [PDF] today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Submission + - How Putin Tried to Control the Internet (vice.com)
derekmead writes: In this excerpt from the recently published The Red Web , Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan describe how the Kremlin has been trying to rewrite the rules for the internet to make it “secure” as it is understood by Russia’s secret services.
Vladimir Putin was certain that all things in the world—including the internet—existed with a hierarchical, vertical structure. He was also certain that the internet must have someone controlling it at the top. He viewed the United States with suspicion, thinking the Americans ruled the web and that it was a CIA project.
Putin wanted to end that supremacy.
Just as he attempted to change the rules inside Russia, so too did he attempt to change them for the world. The goal was to make other countries, especially the United States, accept Russia’s right to control the internet within its borders, to censor or suppress it completely if the information circulated online in any way threatened Putin’s hold on power.
Vladimir Putin was certain that all things in the world—including the internet—existed with a hierarchical, vertical structure. He was also certain that the internet must have someone controlling it at the top. He viewed the United States with suspicion, thinking the Americans ruled the web and that it was a CIA project.
Putin wanted to end that supremacy.
Just as he attempted to change the rules inside Russia, so too did he attempt to change them for the world. The goal was to make other countries, especially the United States, accept Russia’s right to control the internet within its borders, to censor or suppress it completely if the information circulated online in any way threatened Putin’s hold on power.
Comment Re: Professional Engineers have the power to say n (Score 5, Insightful) 618
It's fascinating to see how many posters here automatically assume that it must be the PHBs who pressured the engineers into this. Very few assume that the engineers saw an opportunity for a bonus or for the PHB to owe them one, and added the cheat function voluntarily. I've not seen any posts so far that suggest an engineer thought of the cheat and suggested it to a PHB.
A reminder that we tend to think of our peers as being much more ethical than "them" and look for reasons to think of them as victims of force or circumstances, and assume that "they" are only motivated by sheer callous greed. Whoever the "them" is.
Comment Re:Erdogen is an Islamofascist (Score 1) 145
They did commit what they'll reluctantly admit were mass killings of Armenians (what the rest of the world correctly recognizes as genocide) in the aftermath of World War I.
During the Ottoman era, they did occupy Greece and were, like virtually every occupying force, remarkably brutal. This got a lot of attention in the West because they were oppressing Europeans and Christians (instead of Asians and Muslims).
But here's a story about them. During the Irish genocide by famine (when a country exports food during a famine and the occupying foreign land owners raise rents during a period of starvation, that's genocide, whether the original cause was natural or not), the then Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Majid Khan, offered to send food and 10,000 pounds sterling. England refused to allow this.
Why? Why would it refuse the kind of aid that would have saved several thousand lives?
Queen Victoria gave only two thousand pounds and a gift greater than that would make her look ungenerous.
The Sultan insisted on giving something and finally they bargained him down to one thousand pounds. He also send three ships worth of food, but kept it quiet.
Comment Re:having lived in Turkey (Score 2) 145
Technically, the government is secular (women working in government offices are even forbidden to wear head scarves, for example), but Erdogan has been doing everything possible to uproot that. As in many countries, the cities tend to back full separation of church/temple/mosque and state, while the rural areas tend to want religion integrated into government.
As you say, for a long time the military was a strong force for secular liberalism and the standard-bearer for Ataturk's secularist reforms and even led several coups to restore secular and democratic rule. Erdogan, though, made sure early on in his administration to gut their capacity to affect policy, let alone lead a coup.
I don't think that Turkey's capacity to be a mix of Muslim culture and secular government is entirely gone, but it's certainly diminishing. If it had a stronger and more diverse economy, Tunisia might be in a position to do so, but poverty (which often breeds Islamism, just like it does Christianism) and terrorism have virtually ruled out that possibility.
Comment Re: buh, bye (Score 1) 495
I can't imagine it being feasible for major elections, but it would be great if there were a voting option to say, "None of these candidates." If the majority of voters select that option, the candidates are replaced with a new batch.
