Call me naive, but I've always seen MySpace as a souped-up version of geocities. IOW: a site where you could build up your own homepage. Not a site that's primarily for two-way communication (and try designing a nice "home page" on Facebook - you can't really do this). So I still don't really get all those comparisons between Facebook and MySpace.
This is going on already. For a year or two at least.
Besides having Facebook, Gmail and other popular services advertised in the phone's description and feature list, local providers sell low-cost unlimited data plans for use on facebook and gmail mobile sites only (any other data use falls out of that plan).
Having the Facebook logo on the phone directly won't make much of a difference.
Most other film producers do it with budgets fractions of Hollywood's budgets.
Even a small market like Hong Kong to this day has a rather active movie production. Sure it's far from it's heydays in the 70s but still it's doing quite OK. And the result is generally at least as watchable as Hollywood stuff. They don't use lots of CG effects. They don't use studios: just shooting on the street (so you often see random passers-by in the background - that also eliminates the need for extras). And in the end the budget is just a few percent of that of a typical Hollywood flick, and they manage to survive on a home market that's a mere 7 mln people, plus a few exports. While Hollywood barely seems to survive on a 350 mln home market, plus a huge export market.
An option, but inconvenient. And just hope that the shop has stock of the one I'm looking for.
HBO/Showtime/Cable TV/Pay-per-view
PPV not available on my cable system & not going to pay big buchs for the off-chance that the movie I want to watch is broadcast at a time I am happy to watch it.
Netflix/Hulu
FYE/GameStop
Not available for almost 90% of Internet users (mind that North America has only 12% of worldwide users).
Wal-Mart/Target
Same problem. Not in my part of the world.
Amazon
Mail order; expensive mailing fees; long wait to get the DVD.
How many other legal formats do you need?
For me, like the other almost 90% of Internet users (and about 95% of the world population) the only reasonable legal option is to go to a shop and get the DVD. If available in my region. And on stock in the shop.
So while the US may have several legal options, the rest of the world will stick to torrents.
The MPAA is a bit odd. Have a ton of blood and guns, get a R. Have a bit of male frontal nudity, NC-17. It does slant the story telling process.
Here I also see a cultural effect. The US likes violence and sees it as a normal part of life (see also NRA, carrying weapons on the streets, "stand your ground" laws, etc), while sex is considered bad and to be avoided. Europeans see violence as a bad thing and to be avoided, while sex is a normal part of life and something to be enjoyed. The human body is far less of a taboo too - just have a look around the beaches on a nice summer day.
As a result the average US made movie has a lot of violence and little sex; the average Europe made movie more sex and far less violence. And violent movies have a much higher chance to be rated up in Europe than in the US.
I remember as a child, some 30 years ago, seeing prime-time TV ads for some personal care product (shower gel or deodorant or so) using images of a pretty half-naked woman swimming around. Nowadays that's not done much anymore, it lost effect long time ago.
So access to old-fashioned paper encyclopedias in those schools is no problem? Or are those encyclopedias simply grossly incomplete by not having any entries on controversial subjects such as porn, sex and sexuality and related parts of he human body, violence, rape, massacres, etc?
By the way do commercial encyclopedias like Brittania censor their own content? Or are they banned too?
Hey it gets us less dependent on the host OS, as everything is run in the browser. And that's a good thing, isn't it? This assuming Office365 is not IE-only of course. I know that's probably a stretch though... even though IE is getting more standards compliant than ever.
Well of course. Pretty much all Chinese foreign trade is settled in USD. It is the most used currency for settling trade to begin with: lots of international trade is settled in USD. EUR is a distant second. Lots of trade with Europe is also settled in USD.
Add to that the fact that the yuan is not freely convertible (this means you as US importer can not get the yuan to pay for your imports - you can only exchange 30,000 yuan, about 4,700 USD, a day without special permission), and that by using USD it's getting easier for the manufacturers to keep their profits out of China. This to avoid tax, and to give more investment opportunities.
I can't imagine them selling fighter planes to Saudi Arabia and not putting in a kill switch.
Its called the spare parts stream.
Maybe the US military (and many other militaries for that sake) should worry about becoming too dependent on Chinese made spare parts. Just in case they'd wage a war against China, and China stops supplying those parts.
Part of the problem here will be that the US themselves simply don't have the facilities to produce those chips.
And that is assuming that all the know-how that goes into those parts is in-house too.
A lot of IC development is done in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, just to name a few. I wouldn't be surprised if modern weapon systems depend on bits and pieces of know-how and specialised chips that are developed in one of those countries (China doesn't develop much themselves, they mainly produce stuff on order), and for which the know-how is simply not available in the US, so they can't copy the system and make it by themselves.
The osteoporosis part is of course mainly to attract attention.
The key of the article however is that they found a new way to measure bone loss, and that this technique allows for much earlier detection of bone loss than before. So it's apparently also much more sensitive and/or accurate. And detection of osteoporosis would be an obvious application of this test.
I never said that car would be 6m (which indeed would be well over 18 ft). An average car is a little less than that.
All I said was that their separation was roughly one car length. Which is accurate enough for the sake of the argument, and to help visualise what's going on.
On vacation hitchhiking around Norway about a decade ago I saw some of those lake-roads mapped, and actually asphalt ending in the water. The driver told me that was the start of one of those winter roads. I totally forgot where it was, but it was quite intersting to see.
I wonder how they handle winter roads, like one can find in the northern part of Scandinavia.
This are routes that are open only in winter when the lakes are frozen, and provide very convenient routes and shortcuts. In summer however they are closed for obvious reasons.
I don't know how TomTom is vetting their user-supplied corrections (if at all).
In case of OSM however anyone can add anything to the map, and it's published right away. I have contributed various hiking trails to their map, and they became available on the online maps instantly (only delay is caused by their tile rendering). I have not tried to e.g. wipe a motorway or so just to see what happens, but it seems that is possible.
Like Wikipedia, a full history is kept of all parts of the map, so any removals can be undone easily by other users, and there is a basic tracking of who (by user ID, which is not verified against or linked to a real-world identity) has made which change.
While of course you are totally correct, psychology comes into play.
Humans are just not good in handing over control to machines. That's why most subway trains still have drivers on board, even when they are actually operated fully automatically.
The cars will also have to be instructed to break out of the train. When they reach their exit.
I assume at least that the end goal is going to be for cars to be able to hook up arbitrarily, and to be able to be "dropped off" arbitrarily. The latter isn't that hard either: when your vehicle reaches the start of the exit, the system sends your vehicle to that lane (basically next to the train), and you can take back manual control (and if you don't, take you back in). Then the rest of the train closes the gap and moves on.
First of all a train should never become too long. And that's easy: every train head (the truck they used) should accept only a certain number of vehicles. If it reaches that number, other cars will simply not be allowed to join the train. This as otherwise you could get infinite length, blocking all exits for the other traffic and so. At 6m separation between vehicles it's simply not possible to cut through such a train.
Secondly you can not just break a train, and ask an arbitrary driver to take over. Who knows what they're doing? They are may be two hours away from their exit so may be sleeping. You can not put a car into manual mode without a certain warning time.
Finally only trained drivers should be allowed to head such a train. They carry responsibility for the safety of everyone behind them, and a normal driver is trained to operate a single vehicle with optional trailer, not longer than say 15m or so total, not to operate a train which may be ten times that length.
The article says that the cars were following the truck at an average separation of just 6m. That's roughly the length of a typical car. Good luck moving in between two of them (unless the train cooperates - which would require the overtaking car to communicate with the train's control systems).
This sounds like a system suitable for motorways only - where traffic is highly predictable, and you never have to abort overtaking. The human driver in the front, who basically drives the complete train, is then in charge of stopping the train in case of traffic jams and so.
Interesting issues that are not mentioned in the article, but that must have received thought:
1) when a car in the train reaches its intended exit, the driver will have to take over again. How do they manage that with say the second car in line? Having a human driver in control at a 6m separation doesn't sound like a great idea. Or will the car automatically be moved on the slipway where control is handed back?
2) breakdown of a car in line: there must be some sort of fail safe in place. Will it move the car to the emergency lane and stop automatically?
Entry-level IT employees may become mid-level IT employees, and some, even without college, might become high-level IT employees or even IT managers. Thing is, probably only one in ten will be good enough to be mid-level, and probably one in a hundred will be good enough to be at the top or to be a manager or owner. [...] When probably less than 20% of incoming entry-level IT workers are women, and distill that to the one in ten or one in a hundred to mid and high level jobs, [...]
This shows a strong bias against women moving up the ladder. The higher up in the chain, the less women.
You must be writing all your software yourself, and auditing all third-party source before you compile it in your audited (or self-written) compiler as it seems you don't see any reason to trust anyone.
Or if you do use software you didn't write or audit yourself: what is your trust in that software based upon?
And for some reason you can (are allowed to) install Linux on your work laptop, but you can not fix the basic security features of Win XP on that same laptop?? Especially as in this case it's just a matter of not running executables: that means switching off automatic running of such programs (and of course not doing it manually).
Slashdot Mirror
Call me naive, but I've always seen MySpace as a souped-up version of geocities. IOW: a site where you could build up your own homepage. Not a site that's primarily for two-way communication (and try designing a nice "home page" on Facebook - you can't really do this). So I still don't really get all those comparisons between Facebook and MySpace.
This is going on already. For a year or two at least.
Besides having Facebook, Gmail and other popular services advertised in the phone's description and feature list, local providers sell low-cost unlimited data plans for use on facebook and gmail mobile sites only (any other data use falls out of that plan).
Having the Facebook logo on the phone directly won't make much of a difference.
Most other film producers do it with budgets fractions of Hollywood's budgets.
Even a small market like Hong Kong to this day has a rather active movie production. Sure it's far from it's heydays in the 70s but still it's doing quite OK. And the result is generally at least as watchable as Hollywood stuff. They don't use lots of CG effects. They don't use studios: just shooting on the street (so you often see random passers-by in the background - that also eliminates the need for extras). And in the end the budget is just a few percent of that of a typical Hollywood flick, and they manage to survive on a home market that's a mere 7 mln people, plus a few exports. While Hollywood barely seems to survive on a 350 mln home market, plus a huge export market.
DVD/Blu-Ray
An option, but inconvenient. And just hope that the shop has stock of the one I'm looking for.
HBO/Showtime/Cable TV/Pay-per-view
PPV not available on my cable system & not going to pay big buchs for the off-chance that the movie I want to watch is broadcast at a time I am happy to watch it.
Netflix/Hulu
FYE/GameStop
Not available for almost 90% of Internet users (mind that North America has only 12% of worldwide users).
Wal-Mart/Target
Same problem. Not in my part of the world.
Amazon
Mail order; expensive mailing fees; long wait to get the DVD.
How many other legal formats do you need?
For me, like the other almost 90% of Internet users (and about 95% of the world population) the only reasonable legal option is to go to a shop and get the DVD. If available in my region. And on stock in the shop.
So while the US may have several legal options, the rest of the world will stick to torrents.
The MPAA is a bit odd. Have a ton of blood and guns, get a R. Have a bit of male frontal nudity, NC-17. It does slant the story telling process.
Here I also see a cultural effect. The US likes violence and sees it as a normal part of life (see also NRA, carrying weapons on the streets, "stand your ground" laws, etc), while sex is considered bad and to be avoided. Europeans see violence as a bad thing and to be avoided, while sex is a normal part of life and something to be enjoyed. The human body is far less of a taboo too - just have a look around the beaches on a nice summer day.
As a result the average US made movie has a lot of violence and little sex; the average Europe made movie more sex and far less violence. And violent movies have a much higher chance to be rated up in Europe than in the US.
I remember as a child, some 30 years ago, seeing prime-time TV ads for some personal care product (shower gel or deodorant or so) using images of a pretty half-naked woman swimming around. Nowadays that's not done much anymore, it lost effect long time ago.
So no access to Slashdot either :-) It's not that this site filters content.
So access to old-fashioned paper encyclopedias in those schools is no problem? Or are those encyclopedias simply grossly incomplete by not having any entries on controversial subjects such as porn, sex and sexuality and related parts of he human body, violence, rape, massacres, etc?
By the way do commercial encyclopedias like Brittania censor their own content? Or are they banned too?
Hey it gets us less dependent on the host OS, as everything is run in the browser. And that's a good thing, isn't it? This assuming Office365 is not IE-only of course. I know that's probably a stretch though... even though IE is getting more standards compliant than ever.
His assets are frozen, not seized. It's still his, but he can't touch it.
Well of course. Pretty much all Chinese foreign trade is settled in USD. It is the most used currency for settling trade to begin with: lots of international trade is settled in USD. EUR is a distant second. Lots of trade with Europe is also settled in USD.
Add to that the fact that the yuan is not freely convertible (this means you as US importer can not get the yuan to pay for your imports - you can only exchange 30,000 yuan, about 4,700 USD, a day without special permission), and that by using USD it's getting easier for the manufacturers to keep their profits out of China. This to avoid tax, and to give more investment opportunities.
I can't imagine them selling fighter planes to Saudi Arabia and not putting in a kill switch.
Its called the spare parts stream.
Maybe the US military (and many other militaries for that sake) should worry about becoming too dependent on Chinese made spare parts. Just in case they'd wage a war against China, and China stops supplying those parts.
Part of the problem here will be that the US themselves simply don't have the facilities to produce those chips.
And that is assuming that all the know-how that goes into those parts is in-house too.
A lot of IC development is done in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, just to name a few. I wouldn't be surprised if modern weapon systems depend on bits and pieces of know-how and specialised chips that are developed in one of those countries (China doesn't develop much themselves, they mainly produce stuff on order), and for which the know-how is simply not available in the US, so they can't copy the system and make it by themselves.
The osteoporosis part is of course mainly to attract attention.
The key of the article however is that they found a new way to measure bone loss, and that this technique allows for much earlier detection of bone loss than before. So it's apparently also much more sensitive and/or accurate. And detection of osteoporosis would be an obvious application of this test.
You're really twisting the words that I wrote.
I never said I have a car (I don't).
I never said that car would be 6m (which indeed would be well over 18 ft). An average car is a little less than that.
All I said was that their separation was roughly one car length. Which is accurate enough for the sake of the argument, and to help visualise what's going on.
On vacation hitchhiking around Norway about a decade ago I saw some of those lake-roads mapped, and actually asphalt ending in the water. The driver told me that was the start of one of those winter roads. I totally forgot where it was, but it was quite intersting to see.
Normal passenger cars are much smaller and more streamlined than those huge trucks, so will have far less drag.
I wonder how they handle winter roads, like one can find in the northern part of Scandinavia.
This are routes that are open only in winter when the lakes are frozen, and provide very convenient routes and shortcuts. In summer however they are closed for obvious reasons.
I don't know how TomTom is vetting their user-supplied corrections (if at all).
In case of OSM however anyone can add anything to the map, and it's published right away. I have contributed various hiking trails to their map, and they became available on the online maps instantly (only delay is caused by their tile rendering). I have not tried to e.g. wipe a motorway or so just to see what happens, but it seems that is possible.
Like Wikipedia, a full history is kept of all parts of the map, so any removals can be undone easily by other users, and there is a basic tracking of who (by user ID, which is not verified against or linked to a real-world identity) has made which change.
While of course you are totally correct, psychology comes into play.
Humans are just not good in handing over control to machines. That's why most subway trains still have drivers on board, even when they are actually operated fully automatically.
The cars will also have to be instructed to break out of the train. When they reach their exit.
I assume at least that the end goal is going to be for cars to be able to hook up arbitrarily, and to be able to be "dropped off" arbitrarily. The latter isn't that hard either: when your vehicle reaches the start of the exit, the system sends your vehicle to that lane (basically next to the train), and you can take back manual control (and if you don't, take you back in). Then the rest of the train closes the gap and moves on.
Total disagree here.
First of all a train should never become too long. And that's easy: every train head (the truck they used) should accept only a certain number of vehicles. If it reaches that number, other cars will simply not be allowed to join the train. This as otherwise you could get infinite length, blocking all exits for the other traffic and so. At 6m separation between vehicles it's simply not possible to cut through such a train.
Secondly you can not just break a train, and ask an arbitrary driver to take over. Who knows what they're doing? They are may be two hours away from their exit so may be sleeping. You can not put a car into manual mode without a certain warning time.
Finally only trained drivers should be allowed to head such a train. They carry responsibility for the safety of everyone behind them, and a normal driver is trained to operate a single vehicle with optional trailer, not longer than say 15m or so total, not to operate a train which may be ten times that length.
The article says that the cars were following the truck at an average separation of just 6m. That's roughly the length of a typical car. Good luck moving in between two of them (unless the train cooperates - which would require the overtaking car to communicate with the train's control systems).
This sounds like a system suitable for motorways only - where traffic is highly predictable, and you never have to abort overtaking. The human driver in the front, who basically drives the complete train, is then in charge of stopping the train in case of traffic jams and so.
Interesting issues that are not mentioned in the article, but that must have received thought:
1) when a car in the train reaches its intended exit, the driver will have to take over again. How do they manage that with say the second car in line? Having a human driver in control at a 6m separation doesn't sound like a great idea. Or will the car automatically be moved on the slipway where control is handed back?
2) breakdown of a car in line: there must be some sort of fail safe in place. Will it move the car to the emergency lane and stop automatically?
Entry-level IT employees may become mid-level IT employees, and some, even without college, might become high-level IT employees or even IT managers. Thing is, probably only one in ten will be good enough to be mid-level, and probably one in a hundred will be good enough to be at the top or to be a manager or owner.
[...]
When probably less than 20% of incoming entry-level IT workers are women, and distill that to the one in ten or one in a hundred to mid and high level jobs, [...]
This shows a strong bias against women moving up the ladder. The higher up in the chain, the less women.
You must be writing all your software yourself, and auditing all third-party source before you compile it in your audited (or self-written) compiler as it seems you don't see any reason to trust anyone.
Or if you do use software you didn't write or audit yourself: what is your trust in that software based upon?
And for some reason you can (are allowed to) install Linux on your work laptop, but you can not fix the basic security features of Win XP on that same laptop?? Especially as in this case it's just a matter of not running executables: that means switching off automatic running of such programs (and of course not doing it manually).