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Comment Demetri Martin analogy (Score 1) 1469

This reminds me of a Demetri Martin joke. I believe it was on the Large Pad sequence.

There's a saying that goes "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Okay. How about "Nobody should throw stones"? That's crappy behavior. My policy is: "No stone throwing regardless of housing situation."

Seriously, if you don't know anything, just shut up and refuse to comment further. How hard can it be? And how much are these blokes making to say things like this?

Comment Sonic Gun? (Score 2) 193

I guess they're trying to prevent the outbreak of that ridiculous Olympic Games series featuring a certain blue hedgehog.

Jokes aside, this is a good bit paranoid. At a certain point comes "too cautious" and this has probably reached that point. The balance of enjoyment vs safety is not safe in a world, nay, a country that has more countermeasures for a worldwide event than you can shake a stick at. Oh wait, they took my stick too. Darn it!

Comment John Mayer approved (Score 1) 195

Instantly thought of "Your Body is a Wonderland" with that title.

On a more relevant note, it's very apparent nowadays that privacy is becoming less and less of a guarantee and more of a perk in society today. I somewhat agree and disagree with this personal data trend. On the one hand, I'd like to think that this means people will be more willing to be themselves and be more honest and open with others (e.g., based on experience, we in America hardly even associate with our next-door neighbors). I personally would love to not have to be so cryptic and secretive about my information. However, on the other hand and being the cynic I am, I know this is only going to lead to even bigger identity and privacy problems.

Still, asking for a Facebook username and password is tantamount to invasion of privacy. If companies want to check someone's Facebook, there are plenty of options for allowing others to look at a specific profile without the need of a password or even a username. Digital personal information is still personal information, and this sounds like a "good vs service" kind of problem. Something tells me that this is only the beginning...

Crime

Looking For iPad, Police Find 750 Pounds of Meth 195

An anonymous reader writes "Hot on the trail of a stolen iPad using the 'Find my iPad' feature in iOS, Police in San Jose tracked the stolen device back to an apartment complex where they then stumbled onto 750 pounds of meth. All told, the meth is worth about $35 million on the street. The seizure was one of the largest drug busts in recent memory."
AI

Teaching Robot Learners To Ask Good Questions 93

garthsundem writes "I disagree with this article's opening line: 'Within a decade, personal robots could become as common in U.S. homes as any other major appliance.' Haven't we been promised this since the 50s? But I'm fascinated by the rest — how do you teach humans to teach robots? Or, more precisely, how can you teach robots to teach humans to teach robots? The idea that designers can put a flexible platform in a robot, allowing users to determine functionality, is pretty interesting. The lead researcher for this project said, 'People are not so good at teaching robots because they don't understand the robots' learning mechanism. It's like when you try to train a dog, and it's difficult because dogs do not learn like humans do. We wanted to find out the best kinds of questions a robot could ask to make the human-robot relationship as 'human' as it can be.'"
Book Reviews

Book Review: Java Performance 160

jkauzlar writes "The standard Oracle JVM has about sixty 'developer' (-XX) options which are directly related to performance monitoring or tuning. With names such as 'UseMPSS' or 'AllocatePrefetchStyle', it's clear that Joe Schmo Code Monkey was not meant to be touching them, at least until he/she learned how the forbidding inner recesses of the JVM work, particularly the garbage collectors and 'just-in-time' compiler. This dense, 600-page book will not only explain these developer options and the underlying JVM technology, but discusses performance, profiling, benchmarking and related tools in surprising breadth and detail. Not all developers will gain from this knowledge and a few will surrender to the book's side-effect of being an insomnia treatment, but for those responsible for maintaining production software, this will be essential reading and a useful long-term reference." Keep reading for the rest of jkauzlar's review.

Comment Title vs summary (Score 2) 271

The title and summary seem to convey different things. "Job Seeking Hacker Gets 30 Months In Prison" sounds like a hacker was trying to get a hacking job somewhere, while the summary makes it clear that he hacked his way into getting said job. Just saying.

Nonetheless, blackmail is blackmail. Malicious hacking involving the exposure of private data to unwarranted eyes ought to be punished.

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