Slashdot Mirror

tickets.domain.com

Next?

I could see, maybe, why some people would want this, but $100,000,000 worth? No, never happen, this will never make $100,000,000 in profits.

And it's owned by Paul Stahura who started eNom in 1997, so why did he need $100 million? Is eNom not going that great?

Ultimately it does not matter your domain, what matters is if people can find your website when they search for it, so really Google, Bing and Yahoo are important, not the domain name. It's not 1997 anymore, you don't need to say "go to blahblahjunkwebsite.com", you can say "google "best page in the universe" to find me"

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:FB
what could possibly go wrong

Now...a rocket blowing up is not "little" by any stretch of the imagination. And usually it doesn't provide a second chance (the event)....kids should be allowed to do more things, but unfortunately rocket building is not one of them.

You, sir, are a fine example of what is wrong with America. You know not what you are speaking of, and consequently, you are filled with fear because of what you don't know.

At 13, I blew up a model rocket engine in my face. Guess what? I'm still here (23 years later). No scars. No permanent damage. No missing appendages. I'm FINE, albeit I have a bit more respect for warning labels and for not doing stupid things that I frikken' KNOW are stupid, and yes, I knew what I was doing when I blew up the engine that it was a Really Dumb Idea (the engine wouldn't ignite, so I ground it up into a powder and tried to light it with a match -- kids don't try this at home!). I flew rockets from about age eight (with my dad doing most of the work) through college (solo) with not a single injury other than the above incident. In fact, I've carried on the tradition with my own kids now that I'm a dad myself; I'm currently building a twin-engine D-size rocket to boost an Arduino, which I'll be using to measure air temperature, air pressure and acceleration. I've had far more injuries due to riding a bicycle than I have had flying rockets -- do you therefore want to ban bicycles, too?

There's a reason they call that science: rocket science.

Ummm...because it's science, and involves rockets? What NASA or Space-X does *is* really hard, because they are dealing with very, very large, very, very powerful and very, very complex machines, which have to fly very precise trajectories. An A- through C-size model rocket is many, many orders of magnitude less complex and less dangerous, particularly if you don't try to DIY your engines. Building and flying such a rocket is well within the capabilities of a jr. high school student; designing and building such a rocket is well within the capabilities of a high school student with a little supervision from a high school science teacher.

I tried Chromium. There is a problem: I've become addicted to tree-style tabs, courtesy of the Firefox extension.

Chromium/Chrome had this feature natively for a long time, until the developers disabled it in a sneaky-Pete maneuver that pissed off a bunch of people.

The obvious response, to write a Chromium extension for Tree-Style Tabs, is not an option. The Chromium plugin API does not expose the functionality necessary to do so.

Webkit (Chromium/Chrome's layout engine) seems to be a little faster than Gecko (Firefox's equivalent), but I would prefer to use a browser that gives the user (ME!) control over it, even at the cost of some rendering speed.

The time I would gain in rendering efficiency would probably be lost trying to scan this, as opposed to this.

After looking at the pictures, it's not like the Brooklyn bridge just jumped out in front of the barge carrying the shuttle. It was transiting a fairly narrow bridge. The wingspan on the shuttle is 78 feet, and a google map distance measurement of where the shuttle clipped the bridge says the space they had to work with was about 100 feet, give or take. That means if you absolutely threaded the needle, you should have had 11 feet (That's about 3.3 meters for you folks unfamiliar with a proper unit of measurement =) ) to work with on either side of the bird. That seems like a lot, but on a windy day.....very touchy.

https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=J+F+K+Airport,+New+York,+NY&aq=0&oq=JFK+&sll=40.639749,-73.824348&sspn=0.097239,0.057421&vpsrc=0&t=h&ie=UTF8&hq=J+F+K+Airport,+New+York,+NY&z=13&cid=17028024512003641840&iwloc=A

(if the link is jacked up, just go to JFK and work your way south east)

It looks like, from the pictures upthread, the shuttle hit the railroad bridge that sits between Cross Bay Blvd and JFK airport. I've ground handled large aircraft on the tarmac, and 11 feet is too close for comfort in my book. I don't envy the guys who had to try and make that work.

In fact, this particular material is called "sandstone" (really, a gypsum powder glued together, then coated with superglue). It's heavy and a bit cold to the touch, and is definitely bumpy - see this closeup, for example. There are plenty of other materials out there, this just happens to be the one that Shapeways provides that can print with a wide range of colors. That said, they don't have any really great smooth plastic multicolor material available now. Here's an example (excuse my crappy camera phone) showing a much nicer colored result, from an Object Connex 3D printer. Things appear to be rapidly improving in this area - my main wish is "cheaper" at this point.

Install AIDE and go for a walk in a park with your phone, having your IDE handy with you. Or put your phone/pad to a treadmill in front of you.

There not a shortage of tech jobs right now, particularly in engineering, but also in other hard sciences.

Maybe if "we" got out of the mindset of wanting to pay third world wages, people would move to these kinds of fields?

It is funny, in my opinion, the ones to the greatest extent setting wages ( trying to keep them low ) seem to be the ones lamenting the fact that people don't want those jobs, and all the while praising the market for all the magic it can do ( and it can ).

I thought tech jobs were paying well in the US? The lowest wage I could earn in the US is at least two times as much as I earn in Argentina working as a software developer, even when most things cost twice as much as in the US (1000 ARS are 224 USD)

I don't see how USD50 000 is a third word wage.

Now we only have a project that converts HTML5 to something that can be rendered on IE

FTFY^2: Google Chrome Frame is a browser helper object for IE that allows web sites to tell iexplore.exe to render them in Chrome's version of WebKit instead of Trident.

Google has a project going along these lines, called Swiffy. Looking at the demos, it appears to work pretty well.

Google has a project going along these lines, called Swiffy. Looking at the demos, it appears to work pretty well.

Are you of the opinion that Linus isn't a grownup? He posted a rant about SuSE on his G+ page a few months back:

https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCYpi5

That can't be right. This is what the government says about Camels!

It's sort of a British thing.

You really should look around you some time.

Basically, he's a famous Troll.

Pretty much.

It's sad that people invent stories to prove a point. I don't really have much to contribute, but I can mention that I believe those two spaces are mainly an English thing, I never heard of it before having used the internet for quite a while. I'm old enough to have taken a typewriting class at school, and never heard it mentioned there. In Norwegian, at least, it's expressly forbidden ("It should never be two spaces after each other" in Google's somewhat clumsy translation. That page is trustworthy, they gather language rules from all sorts of authoritative sources). I notice that you don't use them in your own post.

As an aside double spaces look "wrong" to me, maybe because I'm not used to them. The nerd part of me is inclined to think that no space should be necessary after a sentence, as the period or other sentence ending punctuations are separators on their own, but that messes with how the brain parses words. Besides, it just looks too damn ugly :)

I have actually tried this BTW, just to shut up those "Linux is ready for the desktop!" types, only instead of 12 years old I gave them a HUGE advantage by only going back 4 years, less than half the established MSFT lifecycle for OSes. What did I get? BROKEN BOXES, nothing but broken boxes as far as the eye can see.

In just the past 4 years they've got from ALSA to Pulse, GNOME 2 to 3 and KDE 3 to 4, it was just a fucking mess! Wireless wouldn't work, Ethernet would just drop in and out, give audio up it was just a mess, and of course the Nvidia and ATI drivers were crapped on, the Intel worked but only in VESA mode. So what did I get told then? "Well you should use Red hat, its supported" yeah at $399 a year it IS supported, its also 40 times the cost of Windows over that same 10 year cycle.../facepalm/

For all those that think Linux is ready I invite you to read this article by Ingo Molnar, who is one of the head develeopers at Red hat. if ANYBODY would know what is wrong with Linux this would be the guy, and he says mistakes such as lack of an ABI for drivers and a system where the devs try to "own" and control the repo has led to the "death cries" of the Linux platform. It is simply impossible to do QA on 20,000 packages and over a billion lines of code, it simply can't be done. THAT is why Linux doesn't work for the majority, because it simply can't keep up with the changes in hardware and software.

JSON also introduces a fantastic new method of inserting arbitrarily executing code into a web application

How so, if you parse the JSON in your own code instead of eval()ing it?

They already do, with live humans!
http://support.google.com/googleplay/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=contact_policy

You're comparing apples and oranges. Right now for most people 100mbit service residential is about $100/mo if you live in an urban area, much higher if you live in a rural area. But that's why, it's a lot more line to maintain. So rural schools can expect to pay a lot more than the $42 you're parading around. Your argument is disingenuous, but it illustrates my point perfectly. Because the U.S.A. is so much larger it costs orders of magnitude more to create infrastructure for. In tiny countries even the rural areas aren't too far from the capitol city.

How far is Leggett, California from the nearest urban center? My sister lives there now, it's a real city! Middle of nowhere. I think you would need to travel the width of Japan to even get to a major urban area. People living in Leggett don't expect to get cheap internet service anytime soon, and that's their choice, they want to be out in the middle of nowhere. But now they're being used as pawns in this weird statistics game. Ya, they don't have 100mbit service, and why the hell would they, it's of no use to them, when it becomes needed it will show up in the form of Verizon or Cox peddling flyers "FIOS is coming to your area!" or what not. That's pretty much how capitalism naturally works. Supply and demand. It's a indefatigable law of nature. There is plenty of high speed service in the urban areas, and very little in the rural areas.

IF only the school systems in america werent structured how they are I imagine that we could have many folks finishing schooling much earlier than 18 and college a few years later..

I know many students who were held back merely because they had to wait to go on to the next year.. at best put in an "advanced placement" course..

we could easily have students graduating highschool at 14 or 15 ...if not sooner.. with the 'smart' ones beating that.. all of the time.. but.... it just doesnt seem to happen

^^^^^^^^ THIS

I'm more interested in how he got a college to even *look* at him. I've been looking into it, and I can not find a state that will grant a GED to anyone under 16 and even then you need high school superintendent permission. Without a GED even community colleges won't allow someone to take a class.

So how did this kid cut through all the red tape to get to college without a GED?

Except that my wife's camera doesn't have the Eye-Fi cards, so we're manually downloading the pictures from the camera to the laptop.

I have an Ubuntu server running rsync. I've installed cwrsync and am using a very simple script (below) to sync my laptop to the rsync server. I'm using a windows at command to schedule the script to run hourly when the laptop is on. That last part is pure laziness, I haven't bothered figuring out how to test for network connectivity and then to run when connected.

One very nice advantage to running my own rsync server is that I can sync my photos from my Android phones as well. Micha Kowalczuk has written a terrific rsync backup program for Android that's easy to use and can easily be set up to use ssh public/private keypairs for authentication using the instructions on his website. That, in addition to Crafty Apps' Tasker, enables me to backup all of the pictures (and whatever else I want) from my phone every time I have an established WiFi link. (Note that that is my own restriction. I don't want to pay the extra data fees for uploading my pictures over the cell data link.)

Hope that helps.

Note that and are replacing the actual values to protect my server. ;-) Also, I have created ~/rsync folders for each user for the backups. Finally, the switches in use will NOT delete pictures from the server if they're deleted from the laptop.

@echo off
cd c:\Program Files (x86)\cwRsync\bin
rsync -av --chmod u+rwx -e "ssh -i c:\Users\\Documents\certificates\cwrsync" "/cygdrive/c/Users//Documents/rsync/" @:/home/user/rsync/

Except that my wife's camera doesn't have the Eye-Fi cards, so we're manually downloading the pictures from the camera to the laptop.

I have an Ubuntu server running rsync. I've installed cwrsync and am using a very simple script (below) to sync my laptop to the rsync server. I'm using a windows at command to schedule the script to run hourly when the laptop is on. That last part is pure laziness, I haven't bothered figuring out how to test for network connectivity and then to run when connected.

One very nice advantage to running my own rsync server is that I can sync my photos from my Android phones as well. Micha Kowalczuk has written a terrific rsync backup program for Android that's easy to use and can easily be set up to use ssh public/private keypairs for authentication using the instructions on his website. That, in addition to Crafty Apps' Tasker, enables me to backup all of the pictures (and whatever else I want) from my phone every time I have an established WiFi link. (Note that that is my own restriction. I don't want to pay the extra data fees for uploading my pictures over the cell data link.)

Hope that helps.

Note that and are replacing the actual values to protect my server. ;-) Also, I have created ~/rsync folders for each user for the backups. Finally, the switches in use will NOT delete pictures from the server if they're deleted from the laptop.

@echo off
cd c:\Program Files (x86)\cwRsync\bin
rsync -av --chmod u+rwx -e "ssh -i c:\Users\\Documents\certificates\cwrsync" "/cygdrive/c/Users//Documents/rsync/" @:/home/user/rsync/

Humble Bundle apparently has more followers on G+ than Facebook and Twitter combined.

Awesome to know if I ever move to the US. In Sweden we have Bahnhof, same thing - they're the linux of our ISPs :) If you have Sonic imo you should inform them about "Integrity" http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.integrity.st%2F&act=url Bahnhof was amongst the founders of this 'program' in Sweden, would be nice to see such things pop up in other countries as well :)

Sadly the article is wrong. It is 185,000 dollars.

Watching the Wii on a HDTV now is *just painful.*

Just plugging it into a modern TV can be difficult. The stock composite cables produce a pathetic image with distortion all over the place. You need component to even do 480p. Not having a HDMI port is terrible, I bought a more expensive AV receiver with component inputs specifically to accommodate my Wii.

Low resolution in a cartoon-y Mario game is fine. Lack of connectivity isn't.

Details? Have you tried http://www.google.com/mapmaker ?

I'm not sure which planet you're referring to, but during the current ice age ice sheets only extended partially down the continents; in the case of North America, they extended over almost all of Canada and much of the northern US. A very interesting book on the biology of the current interglacial period is After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America by E. C. Pielou. Many species which are now widespread held out in various "refugia" during the glacial periods; a striking example is that of maples and chestnuts, which grew around the mouth of the Mississippi River. They spread north at varying rates as well. Some species gained a foothold in an area, then died out as climate warmed too much for their liking.

Check out https://vaadin.com/home, if you want your app to behave like a desktop app. It uses GWT for the front end, but it handles the session states and communication for you, so it feels familiar Java desktop apps. Take a look at what they have for components http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler If you are like me who hates web containers (JBoss, Tomcat). I have an example of embedded web server, where you just give it a port and run like a normal server Java program. http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/vaadin-push-example/

Add -site:ebay.com for now this still works but they'd taken away almost every other useful decrapping filter.

http://www.google.com/search?q=crucial%20memory%20-site%3Aebay.com

GMail, and much of Google's stuff is written with GWT, which is a platform for developing the client-side of web applications that compiles Java code into JS. You can't really make a modern web app with Java and run it as java (you know, through a JRE, unless someone makes a JRE in the browser, and lol @ that), but you can cross-compile. GWT is like Coffeescript on steroids with a framework behind it as well. These meta-compilation schemes are becoming more and more popular. Look at Facebook, they write their website in PHP and compile it to C++ for efficiency with Hiphop. Google's Traceur compiles code from ES5+ down to ES3 so you can write code with advanced ES5 features on modern browsers that still only have ES3 support.

It is still pretty common to write Java back-ends (primarily on Tomcat and a few other major players), but that's becoming less and less common in newer more modern web apps. I have no citation for this outside of my own observations, and I surely haven't seen everything so I might just be horribly wrong.

GMail, and much of Google's stuff is written with GWT, which is a platform for developing the client-side of web applications that compiles Java code into JS. You can't really make a modern web app with Java and run it as java (you know, through a JRE, unless someone makes a JRE in the browser, and lol @ that), but you can cross-compile. GWT is like Coffeescript on steroids with a framework behind it as well. These meta-compilation schemes are becoming more and more popular. Look at Facebook, they write their website in PHP and compile it to C++ for efficiency with Hiphop. Google's Traceur compiles code from ES5+ down to ES3 so you can write code with advanced ES5 features on modern browsers that still only have ES3 support.

It is still pretty common to write Java back-ends (primarily on Tomcat and a few other major players), but that's becoming less and less common in newer more modern web apps. I have no citation for this outside of my own observations, and I surely haven't seen everything so I might just be horribly wrong.

GWT also gets some Spring Roo love.

Oh I see you did mention it :)

GWT also gets some Spring Roo love.

Oh I see you did mention it :)

Yahoo to Log "Source Port" with IP Address/Time

        - https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/dfDBtCcXNmH

        via http://cryptome.org/ @ O f f s i t e :

        2012-00344 Yahoo to Log "Source Port" with IP Address/Time June 2, 2012

        ===
        FBI: New Internet addresses could hinder police investigations

        "As the Internet prepares to celebrate World IPv6 Day next week, law enforcement is worried the transition could hinder legitimate investigations. Some tech companies agree it's a concern."

        by Declan McCullagh

        May 31, 2012 11:58 PM PDT

        - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57445157-83/fbi-new-internet-addresses-could-hinder-police-investigations/

If you're familiar with Java but not web development,...

+

In the long term, writing a view-only version as an Apple and/or Android app is on the radar

+

I have no experience with PHP and would like to stay in my Java comfort zone as much as possible, but want to use the right tool.

In my opinion, give GWT a try. Why should make it exciting for you: the entirely dev cycle (this includes debug) is Java based - including the code in the "views" that will be shown in the browser (even if this code will be transpiled to javascript - a very compact one for the functionality it implements).

Using GWT, the "presentation logic" is totally separated by the lower layers (in both "architectural" and "exploitation" senses): i.e. your business logic will implement only "services" type of functions, the "presentation logic" - in browser - will be in charge to render the data the way you see fit - no more server-side resources to be consumed by layouting the page, applying "data model basic consistency validation", etc - (oh, how I hated JSP at their time). Let the "client CPU" do a bit of this effort - if your application will be highly used, a bit from every client-side that takes some care about itself will get you some serious server-side savings.

As I write, I'm digging into a piece of GWT that promises to take care of the integration with JPA entities, e.g. bringing Hibernate into the picture without the need of heaps of "plumbing code".

If you're familiar with Java but not web development,...

+

In the long term, writing a view-only version as an Apple and/or Android app is on the radar

+

I have no experience with PHP and would like to stay in my Java comfort zone as much as possible, but want to use the right tool.

In my opinion, give GWT a try. Why should make it exciting for you: the entirely dev cycle (this includes debug) is Java based - including the code in the "views" that will be shown in the browser (even if this code will be transpiled to javascript - a very compact one for the functionality it implements).

Using GWT, the "presentation logic" is totally separated by the lower layers (in both "architectural" and "exploitation" senses): i.e. your business logic will implement only "services" type of functions, the "presentation logic" - in browser - will be in charge to render the data the way you see fit - no more server-side resources to be consumed by layouting the page, applying "data model basic consistency validation", etc - (oh, how I hated JSP at their time). Let the "client CPU" do a bit of this effort - if your application will be highly used, a bit from every client-side that takes some care about itself will get you some serious server-side savings.

As I write, I'm digging into a piece of GWT that promises to take care of the integration with JPA entities, e.g. bringing Hibernate into the picture without the need of heaps of "plumbing code".

As for styling them differently, using a new color seems confusing without also adding a legend.

I guess what I really want you guys to do is add a legend. :-)

A different road color could mean the highway is more/less prominent or (in some areas) a seasonal route.

Well, I also think these should be better indicated. For instance, read the first part of my post here, comparing the view of Google Maps to Bing.

Let's see if I can explain my main gripes with Google Maps. This is long, so if you actually read it I thank you (and it's pretty cool that you responded in the first place, BTW... maybe you can convince people to add an "informative map" view :-)). And don't take it too personally; I whine about software a lot, and Google Maps is kinda software. :-)

Viewed on my 1080p 22" monitor, the scale of this map appears at roughly the same real size as it does in my Rand McNally road atlas. Google's is actually about 60% bigger, which just adds strength to my arguments. (The distance from Platteville to the Madison Capitol building is 11.3mm on screen and 7.2mm on paper.) On the Google map, I can discern two kinds of roads: limited access highways and other highways. In the atlas, that cross section has limited access highways, other multilane highways, principle highways, other through highways, and other roads (reading off their key). In other areas of the country toll roads would also be visible, and presumably in others there would also be unpaved roads. (It's in the legend but I don't know where it ever appears.) On Google's map, there are 12 unique route markers visible. On Rand McNally's, I picked a somewhat random 1 inch by 1 inch square; it had 8. (The square was around House on the Rock and Talesin, two things that aren't on Google's map.)

If we zoom in one notch, a bunch of additional roads appear. (In fairness, there are now far more roads than appear on the Rand McNally atlas.) But there's no distinction between them. On that map, County Road H ("other road (conditions vary -- local inquiry suggested)" in the atlas legend) appears to me exactly the same as US-18 east of Dodgeville ("principle highway"), except that the latter has a route designator at that zoom level. You have to zoom in again before the route designators for the county highways (or WI-23 going north from Dodgeville ("other through highway")) appear -- two levels in from "60% larger than printed atlas".

Now let's compare to Bing. (I don't actually know how this'll go; we'll see.) At nearly the same zoom level as the first Google map we looked at (11.5mm from Platteville to central Madison, probably within my measurement error from Google's 11.3), Bing is missing several roads that appear on Google's. On the other hand, it has many more town names (like Monticello and New Glarus). If we zoom in once, they seem to have about the same roads on them, though the're a little hard to see on Bing's map and I actually had to zoom in again to actually establish that they are, in fact, roads. But we do see that WI-23 north of Dodgeville is decidedly indicated as a more major road than a lot of the county roads (the whisker-thin lines) and yet less than US-18 and US-151. Interestingly, US-18 west of Dodgeville is marked as a noticably more major road than it appears in either Google Map

As for styling them differently, using a new color seems confusing without also adding a legend.

I guess what I really want you guys to do is add a legend. :-)

A different road color could mean the highway is more/less prominent or (in some areas) a seasonal route.

Well, I also think these should be better indicated. For instance, read the first part of my post here, comparing the view of Google Maps to Bing.

Let's see if I can explain my main gripes with Google Maps. This is long, so if you actually read it I thank you (and it's pretty cool that you responded in the first place, BTW... maybe you can convince people to add an "informative map" view :-)). And don't take it too personally; I whine about software a lot, and Google Maps is kinda software. :-)

Viewed on my 1080p 22" monitor, the scale of this map appears at roughly the same real size as it does in my Rand McNally road atlas. Google's is actually about 60% bigger, which just adds strength to my arguments. (The distance from Platteville to the Madison Capitol building is 11.3mm on screen and 7.2mm on paper.) On the Google map, I can discern two kinds of roads: limited access highways and other highways. In the atlas, that cross section has limited access highways, other multilane highways, principle highways, other through highways, and other roads (reading off their key). In other areas of the country toll roads would also be visible, and presumably in others there would also be unpaved roads. (It's in the legend but I don't know where it ever appears.) On Google's map, there are 12 unique route markers visible. On Rand McNally's, I picked a somewhat random 1 inch by 1 inch square; it had 8. (The square was around House on the Rock and Talesin, two things that aren't on Google's map.)

If we zoom in one notch, a bunch of additional roads appear. (In fairness, there are now far more roads than appear on the Rand McNally atlas.) But there's no distinction between them. On that map, County Road H ("other road (conditions vary -- local inquiry suggested)" in the atlas legend) appears to me exactly the same as US-18 east of Dodgeville ("principle highway"), except that the latter has a route designator at that zoom level. You have to zoom in again before the route designators for the county highways (or WI-23 going north from Dodgeville ("other through highway")) appear -- two levels in from "60% larger than printed atlas".

Now let's compare to Bing. (I don't actually know how this'll go; we'll see.) At nearly the same zoom level as the first Google map we looked at (11.5mm from Platteville to central Madison, probably within my measurement error from Google's 11.3), Bing is missing several roads that appear on Google's. On the other hand, it has many more town names (like Monticello and New Glarus). If we zoom in once, they seem to have about the same roads on them, though the're a little hard to see on Bing's map and I actually had to zoom in again to actually establish that they are, in fact, roads. But we do see that WI-23 north of Dodgeville is decidedly indicated as a more major road than a lot of the county roads (the whisker-thin lines) and yet less than US-18 and US-151. Interestingly, US-18 west of Dodgeville is marked as a noticably more major road than it appears in either Google Map

As for styling them differently, using a new color seems confusing without also adding a legend.

I guess what I really want you guys to do is add a legend. :-)

A different road color could mean the highway is more/less prominent or (in some areas) a seasonal route.

Well, I also think these should be better indicated. For instance, read the first part of my post here, comparing the view of Google Maps to Bing.

Let's see if I can explain my main gripes with Google Maps. This is long, so if you actually read it I thank you (and it's pretty cool that you responded in the first place, BTW... maybe you can convince people to add an "informative map" view :-)). And don't take it too personally; I whine about software a lot, and Google Maps is kinda software. :-)

Viewed on my 1080p 22" monitor, the scale of this map appears at roughly the same real size as it does in my Rand McNally road atlas. Google's is actually about 60% bigger, which just adds strength to my arguments. (The distance from Platteville to the Madison Capitol building is 11.3mm on screen and 7.2mm on paper.) On the Google map, I can discern two kinds of roads: limited access highways and other highways. In the atlas, that cross section has limited access highways, other multilane highways, principle highways, other through highways, and other roads (reading off their key). In other areas of the country toll roads would also be visible, and presumably in others there would also be unpaved roads. (It's in the legend but I don't know where it ever appears.) On Google's map, there are 12 unique route markers visible. On Rand McNally's, I picked a somewhat random 1 inch by 1 inch square; it had 8. (The square was around House on the Rock and Talesin, two things that aren't on Google's map.)

If we zoom in one notch, a bunch of additional roads appear. (In fairness, there are now far more roads than appear on the Rand McNally atlas.) But there's no distinction between them. On that map, County Road H ("other road (conditions vary -- local inquiry suggested)" in the atlas legend) appears to me exactly the same as US-18 east of Dodgeville ("principle highway"), except that the latter has a route designator at that zoom level. You have to zoom in again before the route designators for the county highways (or WI-23 going north from Dodgeville ("other through highway")) appear -- two levels in from "60% larger than printed atlas".

Now let's compare to Bing. (I don't actually know how this'll go; we'll see.) At nearly the same zoom level as the first Google map we looked at (11.5mm from Platteville to central Madison, probably within my measurement error from Google's 11.3), Bing is missing several roads that appear on Google's. On the other hand, it has many more town names (like Monticello and New Glarus). If we zoom in once, they seem to have about the same roads on them, though the're a little hard to see on Bing's map and I actually had to zoom in again to actually establish that they are, in fact, roads. But we do see that WI-23 north of Dodgeville is decidedly indicated as a more major road than a lot of the county roads (the whisker-thin lines) and yet less than US-18 and US-151. Interestingly, US-18 west of Dodgeville is marked as a noticably more major road than it appears in either Google Map

It's been a long time since I've used the Google Widget Toolkit, but it was an interesting shim between Java and WebApps. Would someone with more recent experience than mine please chime in and say whether it would be useful to the original poster?

Spyder is the best that I've found. Auto-completion, documentation, style checking, and more.

I work on maps at Google and we do show toll road designations on freeway routes where we know of the restriction:
https://maps.google.com/?ll=47.635784,-122.250881&spn=0.082012,0.17458&t=m&z=13
https://maps.google.com/?ll=40.765917,-74.006052&spn=0.04609,0.08729&t=m&z=14

We start labeling toll roads at zoom 13, I think it would look too cluttered to label them in the more regional-view screenshot you posted. As for styling them differently, using a new color seems confusing without also adding a legend. A different road color could mean the highway is more/less prominent or (in some areas) a seasonal route. Directions has an option to avoid toll roads, which to me seems sufficient for regional driving. For tolls on bridges or narrow corridors where one may have many alternate route options available the roads are usually only visible at z >= 13 anyway.

Does this change your mind at all? :) Maybe we could address some of your other gripes?

I work on maps at Google and we do show toll road designations on freeway routes where we know of the restriction:
https://maps.google.com/?ll=47.635784,-122.250881&spn=0.082012,0.17458&t=m&z=13
https://maps.google.com/?ll=40.765917,-74.006052&spn=0.04609,0.08729&t=m&z=14

We start labeling toll roads at zoom 13, I think it would look too cluttered to label them in the more regional-view screenshot you posted. As for styling them differently, using a new color seems confusing without also adding a legend. A different road color could mean the highway is more/less prominent or (in some areas) a seasonal route. Directions has an option to avoid toll roads, which to me seems sufficient for regional driving. For tolls on bridges or narrow corridors where one may have many alternate route options available the roads are usually only visible at z >= 13 anyway.

Does this change your mind at all? :) Maybe we could address some of your other gripes?

If lol was used historically on usenet, and Google owns Usenet, then couldn't Google claim ownership of it? Interestingly, AOL tried to trademarke LOL in 2003 but never filed a use statement...

Google doesn't own Usenet, they bought Deja News (a Usenet provider). No one can own Usenet, any more than one can own the Internet. It's a decentralized service, and functions almost exactly like the Internet in general, with peers sharing posts between eachother... That's why I can subscribe to a giganews account and my posts still show up in Google's usenet service.

It depends. It's hard to look at imagery map tiles without seeing four different copyrights from private and government agencies. For map data, just looking through Los Angeles, sometimes the map data is (c) Google, sometimes it's (c) City of Pasadena, sometimes it's (c) Cybercity. Also when you route directions more people seem to be involved.

You can see in Google's licensing terms an enumeration of where they get their mapping data; a lot of this can be delivered under Google's copyright if their work, their "final map data" is a derived work or aggregation of business locations from infoUSA, park locations from the city government, subway stops from the county authority... even if each of these data sources is the copyright of their original creator.

Out of the millions of SSIDs in the US alone, TFA writer could only confer with 400 of them for a sample

400 is what you can find in an afternoon of war driving in suburbia, or an hour walking around apartment complexes with a wardriving app on your smartphone.

But realistically, with WIFI being such a short range medium getting a significantly larger sample with a non-google scale budget is pretty problematic. You can't detect them very far away, and the more crowded the wifi space the smaller the detection distance due to unfavorable signal to noise ratio.

To the rescue: http://wigle.net/ a collection of 57 million crowd-sourced, geocoded access points gleaned via various means, but most of them with a smart phone application like Wigle Wifi Wardriving available free for android. Simply turn that on, put on your headphones and go for a walk and when you get back you will have very accurate maps of dozens of routers. Log into Wigle.com, upload, and contribute to the map which can also be searched and zoomed. (Their server is prone to slashdotting).

They could have worked a deal with Wigle.net to mine their SSID names, sorted in order by the first 6 letters, and discarded the first 98% and come up with a far more interesting collection.

If lol was used historically on usenet, and Google owns Usenet, then couldn't Google claim ownership of it? Interestingly, AOL tried to trademarke LOL in 2003 but never filed a use statement...

Not dozens of road types, hundreds of various symbols etc that you see in some road maps

And this is my problem with it; you say "the philosophy is simplicity and clarity", I say "the philosophy is have far less information" and then dispute the "clarity" part.

Here's another example; I'll just compare to Bing maps because I like them the best (in no small part because they seem to be the closest to printed maps). Compare this to this. (Durrr, I can link the maps directly, I don't need to take a screenshot and upload them.)

On Bing's map, the distinction between the main routes through the area (US 65 and US 412) and others is very clear. It's there in Google's, but it's far far less pronounced. Furthermore, Bing makes a distinction between AR-7 (going south from Harrison) and US-62 (upper-left corner, where US-412 turns south), versus the other roads that are shown on the map, like AR-43 and AR-397. That distinction isn't visible on Google's at all.

Without a legend you don't know what kind of roads those are, but from the information there you can at least get a good sense of what are likely to be major routes.

And that also provides a good illustration of my counter argument to your "clarity" statement. To me, the distinctions made on the Bing map actually make it much easier to read... the Google version comparatively just looks like a big jumble of roads.

When you do actually want to see a route, you are told which roads are toll roads, and you can have option to adjust and avoid them.

But... it's not just that! If you want to say "are there decent toll-free routes" you have to try a bunch of things. With an actually good road map, you just look. Furthermore, it's not just a matter of "toll roads are A-OK!" and "avoid toll roads"; one part may have an easily-avoidable toll while another may not.

Sure, you can adjust each segment individually, but then you run into the first problem. Now you have to figure out what part of the map corresponds to the turn-by-turn direction that is a toll road (even just hovering over the turn-by-turn directions is an active action you have to take)*, try a different route, see if it's still marked as a toll, try a different route, see if it's still marked as a toll, etc.

* Actually counting this against Google's approach isn't quite fair; in both Bing and Mapquest, the route line they draw on the map covers over the toll indications. So if you want to try other routes to avoid tolls, you have to do the same thing.

At the bottom of the style guide for the Liberated Pixel Cup there's a list of resources.
One of those resources suggests using http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
"GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms."