Comment Re:Lobster metaphor (Score 2) 209
Just replace "frog" with "lobster" - that way it is accurate and everyone's happy.
Comment Re:Sounds like FUD (Score 2) 209
Given the technology invovled my guess it would be functionally about the same as a cop on every street corner 24x7. Now thats what I call a police state.
Police state doesn't mean "lots of cops", it means "unaccountable cops."
Comment Re:Niger (Score 1) 302
If this estimate is correct, its 0.4% worldwide.
Comment Re:Easy to do (Score 1) 302
they'll be able to simply turn and say "you voted us in, blame yourselves you proles!
FTFY
Ask Slashdot: Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?
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With so much personal data being kept on the cloud, including government and health records or your source code, do you have any concerns about it falling into the wrong hands? Do you think the cloud's benefits are outweighed by continuing security issues?
Comment Re:Novices learning from whom...? (Score 5, Informative) 538
Yes it was Perl 4, which is one of the flaws in this study.
Comment Re:hands free? (Score 1) 171
Interesting question actually.
In the UK at least:
- Driving with your right hand on the wheel and a phone in your left hand: illegal
- Driving with your right hand on the wheel when you do not have a left hand: legal
If the laws were there just because of the distraction, using a hands-free phone would also be banned, but it is not.
Comment Nothing new here (Score 4, Insightful) 57
I just tried the web version at TellTaleGames. It has the same problem as every other chatbot I've seen - When it cannot parse your sentence or you do not give any keyword that it knows about, it tries to conceal the fact by giving a non-sequitur or changing the subject.
The trouble with that is that humans are trained to spot that and react with suspicion (because other humans use it to dodge difficult questions.)
Chatbot developers might have more luck if they start programming their bots to admit when they don't understand something. That didn't work in the 80s because the bot would say "I don't understand" every 3rd sentence or so. But they can fit in much larger databases now so that should be less of a problem.
Submission + - Extrasolar planet was hiding in old Hubble image (sciencenews.org)
Kristina at Science News writes: "A new way to process images reveals an extrasolar planet that had been hiding in an 11-year-old Hubble picture. After ground-based telescopes found three planets orbiting the young star HR 8799, a team took that information and reprocessed some 11-year-old Hubble Space Telescope images. Voila. There was one of the three planets, captured by Hubble but not visible until new knowledge could see the picture in a fresh light. The technique could reveal hidden treasures in many archived telescope images."
Submission + - New Way to Produce Hydrogen (thefutureofthings.com)
Iddo Genuth writes: "Scientists at Pennsylvania State University and Virginia Commonwealth University are producing hydrogen by exposing clusters of aluminum atoms to water. Rather than relying on the electronic properties of the aluminum, this new process depends on the geometric distribution of atoms within the clusters and requires the presence of Lewis acids and Lewis bases in those atoms. Unlike most hydrogen production processes, this method can be used at room temperature and doesn't require the application of heat or electricity to work."
Comment One of the entries turned out to be Skynet (Score 1) 124
...and the judges couldn't shut it down, and so had to create a temporal bubble around the lab to contain it. They're still trapped inside.
Comment vi (Score 1) 663
Being able to move around your cursor and delete and edit things without leaving your home position can easily *double* your editing speed. That's the reason why people still love vi and Emacs. And this is not a joke.
Well almost. You still have to reach for the ESC key to switch between typing and moving the cursor. I find that slightly harder than reaching for the enter or backspace keys. You can train yourself to reach for it in a certain location, then find that when you switch to a laptop you keep hitting backquote or F1 instead.
AMD Employee Charged With Stealing Intel Secrets 212
IWonderWhatICanPutInThisFieldWithoutBeingDeleted writes "A man who once worked for Intel and then jumped ship to join AMD has been accused of stealing his erstwhile employer's chip secrets. Federal detectives allege they discovered 19 CAD designs and more than 100 pages of confidential Intel documentation."
Submission + - Dvorak on the gPhone, DOOMED says he! (pcmag.com) 3
drewmoney writes: Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness, John C. Dvorak (from CNET fame, not to be confused with the good Doctor), rants, cries, and laughs his way through an article explaining why the gPhone will never work. Yes, this is the same Apple basher that made fun of the company when they included a mouse with their systems in 1984.
"There is no evidence that people want to use these things.", he said.
And, yes, this is the same person that made fun of the iBook, saying it looked like it was made for a child. And of course, who could forget when he said that people were making judgment on a product they haven't even used yet, referring to the praise that the iPhone got before its release.
Try to ignore the parts where Mr. Dvorak makes judgement on a product that he hasn't even used yet. And when you're done, feel free to make your own judgements.
"There is no evidence that people want to use these things.", he said.
And, yes, this is the same person that made fun of the iBook, saying it looked like it was made for a child. And of course, who could forget when he said that people were making judgment on a product they haven't even used yet, referring to the praise that the iPhone got before its release.
Try to ignore the parts where Mr. Dvorak makes judgement on a product that he hasn't even used yet. And when you're done, feel free to make your own judgements.
Submission + - NASA satellites to prevent infectious diseases (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "NASA and its Applied Sciences Program will be using 14 satellites to watch the Earth's environment and help predict and prevent infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Through orbiting satellites, data is collected daily to monitor environmental changes. That information is then passed on to agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense who then apply the data to predict and track disease outbreaks and assist in making public health policy decisions. The use of remote sensing technology helps scientists predict the outbreak of some of the most common and deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, West Nile virus and Rift Valley Fever.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21654"
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All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
