Software in a wearable gadget that does what my brain used to be able to do? Oh yes, fear this software! Run away, run away!

The last thing we want individuals to be able to do is have access to cognitive assistive software.

Besides, facial recognition of members of the lumpen proletariat is a power reserved to our corporate and government masters. Allowing the proles to do the same thing turns surveillance into sousveillance, which is obviously unacceptible.

The software should be banned. We should also mandate surgery to as to prevent anyone from using their internal processing capacity to reconnize faces. Harrison Bergeron had it right..

Great idea. Record sales and profits for Makerbot, and a broken-down dust catcher in the corner of every classroom. Meanwhile, the teachers will still be sending notes home at the beginning of each school year asking for donations of paper, pens and pencils, and other basic supplies.

And I think of the wonders XEROX brought to us every day when I fire up my Star and telnet about the Internet.

This could become worse than the Dancing Plague of 1518 or the June Bug epidemic of 1962!

Worse, this shows every sign of being a hysterical contagion, capable of being transmitted over the Internet and infecting it's victims through contact with their computers, tablets, and smartphones!

The good news is that I know of a possible cure, and if I can reach my Kickstarter goal of $500,000, I can begin work on a treatment for the unfortunate victims...

Just yesterday, I picked up a water glass in a restaurant. I also used the silverware.

5 bucks to a busboy, and someone could have gotten a pretty clear set of my prints. Oops.

Worried about someone getting YOUR fingerprints? Wear gloves everywhere. Bring along a handkerchief to wipe everything down if you momentarily have the gloves off.

Low tech doesn't mean no tech.

What? No Bear McCreary soundtrack?

As a bonus, the robots can protect us from The Terrible Secret of Space.

I just hope they don't get all philosophical. Remember the lesson of Bomb #20...

> when and if sea level actually starts to rise... we'll talk

Water level measurements from the San Francisco gage (CA Station ID: 9414290) indicate that mean sea level rose by an average of 2.01 millimeters (mm) per year from 1897 to 2006, equivalent to a change of eight inches in the last century. The rate of rise has increased to about 3 mm per year over the past 15 years.

This is the oldest tidal guage in continuous operation in the United States, and is located near the Golden Gate.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012publications/CEC-500-2012-014/CEC-500-2012-014.pdf

Don't worry. The remaining system administrators will properly triage all the work among the remaining admins.

They'll just punt all the routine boring stuff like security audits and access control management to concentrate on the more urgent firefighting, like user requests that would otherwise hold things up, and more visible projects like those new TPS cover sheets.

Bah. They can "collate" all they like, but they are swamped by the false positive (and false negative) problem.

Of course, it sucks to be a false positive, but air travel is overrated...

Pardon me for interrupting the usual /. dialogue with something relevant to the original topic, but Ken Shirriff did a couple of teardowns a year ago that point out exactly why the counterfeit chargers are Not Safe. The safety issues revolve around poor isolation practices between the line and USB sides of some USB chargers.

Major items include
1) lack of "double insulated" construction in the internal transformer.
2) parts placement of line and USB side components on a single circuit board such that paths may be readily formed between line and USB sides from moisture, construction errors, or component failure.
3) inadequate margins between line side and USB side in overall layout of the charger internal components.

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html

http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html

"Where have you lived where your neighbors shunned you for not belonging to the "local church"?"

Idaho Falls, Idaho. They don't much hold with all that whacky stuff the liberals down in Pocatello do. Boy, do I wish I were kidding.

And in other news, the bill has been declared DOA on arrival at the House of Representatives, where the Speaker of the House has announced that they intend to do their own thing, perhaps later this year, or possibly next year where a bill can be used as fodder for the 2014 campaigns.

Meh.

However, I stay clear of Java or Visual Studio only people. They have a truly warped and unrepairable mindset.

Stay clear of anyone who is [anything]-only.

Anyone who will only use one language will warp all problems to that language -- and worse, warp all solutions to only those that they don't have to think about. It doesn't matter if the language is Java, C#, C++, C, Perl, Python, Ruby, or COBOL. If they are only willing to code in one language, let them go.

Nearly every accredited university offers "language survey" courses. This is where a CS degree can be useful -- the graduates have, in theory, been exposed to other languages. Bring this up in the interview. See if they can articulate the tradeoffs of various languages.

Entirely-self-taught developers often require a lot of basic remedial training. I'd suggest investing in them only if they will spend their evenings completing a CS degree. For an intelligent and skilled person, this isn't terribly difficult. The ones to be careful with are the "Meh, I can't be bothered to obtain/complete a degree." types. They might be intelligent, and they might be skilled. But their ego is going to make a lot of work for everyone else, as that can't-be-bothered attitude is a sign.

(Yes, there are lots of people who could only possibly succeed in an academic environment where the problem is carefully structured to be completed in five weeks by a mediocre and distracted person. This is where "what do you do in your free time?" comes in useful. One of the best teams I've ever worked on had "What are the last three books you've read for pleasure, and when?" as a key interview question.)

As for the 10% effect ... Sturgeon's Law.

Gah! Wrong article. So much for using a cat as a personal assistant...