Posts by xperroni 558 posts • joined 20 Jul 2010
Every time I hear something is the "fastest-growing" of its kind, I remember a friend back from undergraduate days commenting on his latest test results. "I managed to improve my grade 100%", he said: "from 1 to 2".
Numbers: if tortured enough, they'll confess anything you want to hear.
I've done a couple Udacity nanodegrees and I'm generally satisfied with the experience, but I have to agree they went a bit overboard with this one. From the curriculum they could just have called it "self-piloting drone nanodegree", but no – not eye-catching enough for the marketing people, I reckon.
We're merely selling kits that users can then do whatever they want with afterwards. (...) It's optimized to run OS X, but you can install Linux or Windows on it and use it however you want - that's completely up to the user. If Apple contacts us with concerns we'll work together to solve them.
I love how he seems to think of Apple as a sensible, reasonable entity that would totally be deterred by a convincing argumentation.
Oh boy, new to the business world aren't we?
"Microsoft’s ability to restrict access to Windows among server and PC makers is what helped make Windows reliable, and thus successful, in the first place."
Isn't Microsoft the company that for most of its history sold boxed software you could just buy and install on whatever machine you owned, confident that drivers would either come bundled or be provided by hardware makers? You know, the one that eventually came to dominate the PC market riding a wave of bland OEM products?
Well, maybe you're talking about another Microsoft, apart from the one I know – and likely founded by a Steve Jobs wannabe, by the look of things.
I think they have a point, actually. USB is already fast and user-friendly enough for virtually all inter-device communication scenarios – portable storage, cameras, peripherals etc. It is also likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, file sizes and storage density having all but stagnated in the past decade. Personally I think USB-C is already overkill, addressing as it does a marginal usability issue. Intra-device connections (veg. video card slots) may still change some, but I can totally see user-facing ports remaining the same for quite a long time.
My thoughts exactly. Time was when only turd-polishing PR bods would resort to this sort of BS jargon, but now it seems even internal communications are written in it, lest management's real thoughts be known through a leaked memo. Which, as it turns out, was actually a sensible concern?
Salesforce's support team said the problems occurred after it performed a "successful site switch" on the instance from its primary data center after power supply problems caused nearly two hours of downtime in around 24 hours ago.
I'm not sure how these people define "successful", but it's hardly what I'd call 12h of downtime.
Is it possible that we've become too lazy? Rather than write one-line functions, folks are pulling in outside code, and thus overly relying on dependencies.
I don't think that's the problem. People really shouldn't have to write their own code for base stuff like padding strings or checking object types. I think the real problem is, that code should be in a standard library, not scattered across a dozen projects that live and die at the will of individual developers.
Likewise, if projects in repositories such as NPM depend on one another, what's needed is a system to check such dependencies and prevent operations that would break them. Preventing automatic unpublishing of projects older than 24 hours is at best a makeshift solution, that fails to address the fundamental issue.
Perhaps JavaScript development should transition to a model closer to Linux distributions: a small core of basic components upon which all other projects build; a variety of online code repositories; and a degree of checks and balances regarding who curates those, as opposed to "just" contributing code.
"As both shareholders and employees, all of us here at Yahoo want to return this iconic company to greatness. We can best achieve this by working with the committee to pursue various strategic alternatives while, in parallel, aggressively executing our strategic plan to strengthen our growth businesses and improve efficiency and profitability."
I've got an idea: bullshit-as-a-service! Just create a web interface to the bullshit generator they already use internally to generate these blurbs. Think how much other companies could save in PR fees!
Of course we've heard of government bodies looking to ditch Windows time and again for the last 20-odd years, and it always flopped – mostly at planning stages, though China did seem to give it an honest try a few years back.
However, this time around the main impediment to adopting Linux is gone: with Office 365, it's possible to read and edit the odd MS Office file in Linux over the web, while new documents could be created using a FOSS tool like LibreOffice.
Unless of course it's all a feint to wriggle out some extra volume discounts from the Beast*... Again.
* Remember when El Reg would affectionately refer to MS as "the Beast"?
[T]he movie will be titled Playmobil: Robbers, Thieves & Rebels (...)
Am I the only one put off by the title's apparent attempt to convey an "edgy" and "racy" vibe?
Don't get me wrong, I love an animated mayhem as much as the next guy. But I can't help thinking that LEGO has over the years established for itself – through the games and TV commercials – an image of wacky but good-natured foolishness, which the film could then exploit for good effect; while Playmobil looks rather bland in comparison. Unless of course you include Reg-like renditions, but I doubt that's the style film makers are going for...
Could the Playmobil film fall prey to "tell don't show" syndrome – trying to convince spectators that they're "rebellious" just by saying so, instead of actually doing something risqué?
And not a moment too soon, either.
To be fair, they did try to out-Google Google, by peddling their API's to third-party developers and supporting developer tools like YUI. Too little, too late, I'm afraid.
With their mail and search services reduced to hollow shells (the later quite literally), no foothold in the developer community and no idea of how to monetize – or indeed keep – their membership, what's left for them, save to gradually whittle down and die? It would be better to cut the losses now and let out whatever bits and pieces still have some survival chance.
The thing I notice about this foxtrot is that all explanations are suspiciously convenient for the people giving them. It's convenient for HP to frame Lynch as a fraudster and Leo as foolhardy, since both are gone; but then so it is for Lynch to claim it was all HP's fault for dropping the ball.
Playing devil's advocate can get very frustrating when you can't tell who's even the devil.
I've always thought there was no point in running a rigged lottery, since the prize is already a tiny fraction of the money paid by punters, and the loss of trust (and hence bets) should any such scheme ever be uncovered would far outstrip any possible gains.
I guess there I was again expecting humans to be sensible?
...or disappointment. Maybe both.
I get the impression Kuratas was designed not so much to be effective as a weapon but to look good, while MegaBot looks ugly but sturdy. I think this fight will be slow, awkward, and end with a lucky shot sending one of the pilots straight to the hospital / grave – kind of like UFC fights, really.
OK, I see why we'd shore up an institution that would create too much collateral damage if it just crumbled.
What I don't get is why the people who oversaw such disasters can get off without so much as a slap in the wrist. Hell, some of them get bonuses!
So long as the banks get our money, can we get their executives to return the favour by doing a little dancing number over at that traditional floor, Ye Olde Gallows? Thank you.
Blomkamp isn’t interested in a movie about whether AI is possible, this is a film about the complexity of human nature and the likelihood that any other sentient race we create would be just as complicated and as mired in the moral shades of grey as we are.
THIS.
A thousand times this.
Oh God, I thought I'd never see the day movie makers would get this!
Except for the cut'n'paste of flesh bits I've seen this general procedure – surgically recruit nerve terminals to drive a bionic prosthesis – reported time and again for the past 5 years at least. I cannot really be arsed to look up the earliest examples now, but here is one from late last year:
Amputee Makes History with APL's Modular Prosthetic Limb http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2014/141216.asp
A Colorado man made history at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) this summer when he became the first bilateral shoulder-level amputee to wear and simultaneously control two of the Laboratory’s Modular Prosthetic Limbs. Most importantly, Les Baugh, who lost both arms in an electrical accident 40 years ago, was able to operate the system by simply thinking about moving his limbs, performing a variety of tasks during a short training period.
"By creating an irreconcilable contradiction between America’s domestic and foreign policies, the cause of an open and freedom-enhancing global Internet will suffer"
Well now that's complete bollocks. Outside of its own borders the US routinely supports authoritarian regimes that oppress their own people. If they were to be consistent on domestic and foreign policies we'd see American streets taken by armored vehicles and policemen in military gear
Oh.
Herbivore's or grasseaters is a real thing. Though to be honest I'm not sure if the Gov't there has any success combating the trend. Afaik population decline is still a real issue there.
No they don't and yes it is. In fact, far from helping matters, the government is about to exacerbate the problem by getting young people into the military to fight and die in pointless Middle East wars.
I tell you, by the dawn of the 22th Japan will be granting citizenship to domestically-built robots as a way to offset population decline without having to resort to (shock, horror) immigration.
When I read notes, I thought this must be an early version of Lotus Notes. Then I realised how stupid would that be (...).
True. However it's reasonable to suppose that during his lifetime Turing did occasionally record his thoughts on pieces of paper, no? Well, where I come from that's what we usually mean by "notes", and wouldn't it be nice if we found some previously undiscovered ones by Turing! Whereas throwaway scribblings of the kind one makes when working on a math problem could also be called "notes", I guess, but except perhaps as historic artifacts it's hard to see much value on those.
People will still own their own and in fact will own more as people who can't drive will be able to use one.
I'm not too sure about that. If Google offered a subscription service where I would have a self-driving car available to summon or send off whenever I wanted, and if the price was right, I'd sign up and never bother owning a horseless carriage ever again. Never again bother with parking, insurance, revisions, lining up at gas stations? Oh if I ever see the day!...
Now that women have equal rights, they can take paying jobs and support themselves; not like ancient times, where every woman had to be married so her parents wouldn't have to be the ones to feed her.
Yes, because women only care about money and power. It's only us men who miss the company of a kindred soul; woe to us, who cannot anymore just go out and buy a woman to our liking!
Oh wait...
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