Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Are Gates, Musk Being "Too Aggressive" With AI Concerns? (xconomy.com)

Submitted by gthuang88
gthuang88 writes: Bill Gates and Elon Musk are sounding the alarm “too aggressively” over artificial intelligence’s potential negative consequences for society, says MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson. The co-author of “The Second Machine Age” argues it will take at least 30 to 50 years for robots and software to eliminate the need for human laborers. In the meantime, he says, we should be investing in education so that people are prepared for the jobs of the future, and are focused on where they still have an advantage over machines---creativity, empathy, leadership, and teamwork.

Submission + - 4 Forgotten Code Constructs: Time to Revisit the Past?

Submitted by mikeatTB
mikeatTB writes: Some things in the programming world are so easy to misuse that most people prefer to never use them at all. These are the programming equivalent of a flamethrower: You might rarely be in the position to really need one, but every once in a while it turns out that you need to take down a forest. In that case, there’s no easier way than going Rambo on your codebase. That's where a few of the old, forgotten code constructs come into play. Creative use of features such as goto, multiple inheritance, eval, and recursion may be just the right solution for experienced developers when used in the right situation. Is it time to resurrect these four forgotten code constructs?

Comment Re:Radiation! (Score 1) 420

Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was full to bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I showed them. I had a lobotomy in the end. Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.

Submission + - Steve Ballmer's Big-Time Error: Not Resigning Years Ago (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Any number of executives could take Ballmer’s place, including a few he unceremoniously kicked to the curb over the years. Whoever steps into that CEO role, however, faces a much greater challenge than if Ballmer had quietly resigned several years ago. Ballmer famously missed the boat on tablets and smartphones; Windows 8 isn't selling as well as Microsoft expected; and on Websites and blogs such as Mini-Microsoft (which had a brilliant posting about Ballmer’s departure), employees complain bitterly about the company’s much-maligned stack-ranking system, its layers of bureaucracy, and its inability to innovate. Had Ballmer left years ago, replaced by someone with the ability to more keenly anticipate markets, the company would probably be in much better shape to face its coming challenges. In its current form, Microsoft often feels like it’s struggling in the wake of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook.

Submission + - Mozilla, Foxconn confirm Firefox OS partnership (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Firefox OS maker Mozilla has confirmed reports that indicated a probable collaboration with Foxconn for development of Firefox OS based devices. Announcing the "wide ranging partnership" with Foxconn Mozilla’s SVP of Mobile Devices noted in a blog post that collaboration between the two companies “demonstrates the full potential of Firefox OS,” and it would not only enable the smartphone “but also a wide range of mobile devices".

Submission + - Will users get paid for their slice of the "big data" economy? (xconomy.com)

Submitted by curtwoodward
curtwoodward writes: Better healthcare, more efficient government, cheaper goods and services — it's all possible in the age of "big data." According to the big companies hoping to make a killing off all that information, anyway. But will the people generating that valuable data — Joe and Jane Consumer — ever get a piece of the action?
A few startups are trying to establish first-party marketplaces for personal data, compensating users directly for contributing high-quality information about themselves. The World Economic Forum is also involved, hoping that one day, "a person’s data would be equivalent to their money ... controlled, managed, exchanged and accounted for just like personal banking services operate today." But some entrepreneurs think it might be too late in the developed world, where a consumer's data fingerprint is already very well documented.

Submission + - IBM Uses Roomba Robots To Plot Data Centre Heat (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: IBM is using robots based on iRobot Create, a customisable version of the Roomba vaccum cleaner, to measure temperature and humidity in data centers. The robot looks for cold zones (where cold air may be going to waste instead of being directed to the servers) and hotspots (where the air circulation may be breaking down. IBM is putting the robots to commercial use at partners — while EMC is at an early stage on a strikingly similar project.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in the cigarettes?" -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970

Close