He is right. Wristwatches remain only as fashion items, often very expensive ones. From practical point of view, though, a cell phone is far more practical - it tells you the date and the time, has an alarm clock, a notepad, a calculator, a text message service, a Web browser, and if all that fails you still can call people.
I have a wristwatch, but I do not wear it. There are very, very few occasions when I must know the time constantly throughout the whole day (like when I travel.) Then I wear it. Otherwise I'm surrounded by clocks - in phones, in computers, in my car, and in every business. A wristwatch is not an expensive item, but it is simply useless today. Besides, some people dislike their bands and bracelets. The age of a wristwatch is behind us; we are living in the era of small, pocket-sized tablet computers (also known as smartphones.)
As I vaguely made it known, I worked (not too far back) in the area of mobile industrial computing. UPS and FedEx are just a small part of the crowd that runs around with tablets, barcode scanners, RFID readers, and transmits all that over the radio direct into the mainframe.
Very few of those guys would want anything that is more sophisticated than a rugged UPS tablet. Why? Because it is rugged. You'd be amazed to learn what requirements - real, necessary requirements - shipping companies specify for these gadgets. They have to survive drop on concrete from the top of the truck. They have to be waterproof. They have to work at temperatures that burn your hands (happens in parked trucks.) There are tons of other requirements.
It does not help when you make the gadget even more complicated. Heads-up display... OK, but where does the customer sign? Oh, I need to punch this number in manually because the label is torn. Ah, I need to show some data to the customer. Eh, where is the barcode scanner in this thing? And so on.
What you propose is a viable system for a very specific purpose. I saw requirements for such systems (of course I cannot say where they came from.) But those are unique requirements; there are maybe less than 1,000 specialists on the whole planet that need such a unique setup to do their job better. Kinect is all nice and good until you have to use it in pitch dark, or under water, or in fog, or in a forest in wind, or crammed head first into an access hatch. You know, most people do not use these mobile gizmos when they are comfortably at home in their armchairs. One could easily hang from a rope while operating the wearable computer. In such cases the whole system is built around what fingers and what eyes and what else can the guy allocate to computing. Usually it isn't much. A firefighter, for example, will certainly benefit from a wearable computer that analyzes the situation all around him independently from fireman's own brain. But think of what level of ruggedness such a system will require!
Nevertheless, if you read SciFi then you certainly see such ideas like yours proposed here and there. They seem natural today. But technology develops nonlinearly. We periodically invent disruptive technology that changes everything overnight. It is likely that there will be disruptive developments in the field of wearable computing. The HUD, once you try it, is really a cumbersome device that is a bother to wear. It is also capable of hurting your vision if it is not perfectly fitting your particular eyesight. It certainly is capable of hurting your stereo vision - and that is bad because this processing is done in the brain, and the brain tends to learn new tricks. It has no switch for "Mode A" and "Mode B."
I don't want to say "no" to your proposal. It would be too easy. I would instead urge you to build such a system. Get yourself some Kopin HUD and play with it. Maybe you can take apart an old digital camera. Cut and polish your own prisms and mirrors. Build what you want, and show it to people. You may find more interest in the industry than you know what to do with. Or perhaps you get no interest. But that's the only way to find out. Just talking about it is not sufficient.
You have no idea what this technology might do for us.
Yes, of course. My expectations are only of the near future, and I am leaving possibilities open if someone comes up with, say, an implant for operation of computers by a thought.
I am sure you have seen people wearing a string
I am not a fan of *that* kind of behavior:-)
But sure you can have all your gizmos wired. You will be tired of plugging them in and out of that "body LAN" every time you put your hat on or remove it, every time you take the coat or jacket off, every time you stop by the restroom. If a technology is more annoying than it is useful it will not become popular. Cell phones got popular when they became small enough so that carrying a phone did not require careful planning of logistics weeks ahead of the trip.
Augmented reality has never been implemented successfully on large scale which is reason enough not to judge it based on what you imagine it is going to be like.
Perhaps. But it is an excellent reason to be skeptical about its future until we have at least *some indications* that it is going anywhere. As I said, the worst problem of augmented reality is that it is not necessary in most cases. As an example, would you want to read your email while driving a car - or while just walking down the street? You can do it today; the wearable hardware exists for at least a decade. But the exercise is pointless. That's why I don't see a bright future of this technology in the near term. That might change once you get implants - but then there would be no need to wear anything outside of your body. Arguing for wearable computing today is analogous to walking on stilts. You can do it right now, but there is no benefit in doing so.
This would allow to maintain aesthetic appeal by making you resemble a Borg.
I probably should not offer a comment on that statement:-)
Interesting thing to know would be which device would actually consume more power. HUD or your normal handheld device screen.
I would expect the HUD to be far more efficient. However there is a price to pay. I actually tested some HUDs, and while they were nice, presenting you with a view of a large computer screen, they are very expensive. You also need a HUD that has the alpha channel, and must be perfectly transparent where required. Otherwise you cannot see the other reality through it. I have a setup here that uses a camera and an opaque screen, but that is not practical in glasses - if your computer crashes you lose the visual input. Anyway, HUDs are used in a few areas, and they are practical there. Everywhere else people do not need them. If a geek or two is enamored with the idea, let them play with it. Perhaps they will stumble upon something useful.
Gmail never started randomly adding "suggested" recipients to your emails.
As I said, they implemented a previously Google Labs plugin that "suggested" to add those. The initial wording of that suggestion was much more harsh. It was not "Consider including..." - it was "Also include", IIRC. Here is a link that explains people's fear of this new feature. A quote:
Is there any way to disable the 'Consider including' feature that has just appeared on my gmail??? I do not need Google to suggest people for me to send emails to, and now i am terrified I add someone accidentally. It's absolutely mind-boggling why they would add it and not give their users the ability to disable it.
I also hate the 'consider including' feature. Sometimes companies grow so large that employees resort to adding more and more useless features in order to get recognition by management.
Serious. I got fired because of a mistake I made due to this feature.
There is much more at that link. The feature is ill-conceived. I suspect that it was a brainchild of young Google developers who cannot understand that most people do not send stuff to every contact they can get hold of. This feature cannot be turned off.
There are more complaints here and here - and probably millions more. This feature is truly a GMail killer; misdirected emails are known to cause all kinds of grief, from being red in the face to losing a contract to being fired.
In the end, nobody asks for execution of the developer of this feature. (Almost nobody, that is.) All that the people ask is a way to opt out of this disaster. Google, in its infinite arrogance, refused - and made this "feature" permanent. What choice did the people have, with regard to a free service? Only to pack up and leave.
But if you have such a big problem with the UI, why not just point your own mail program at Google's IMAP interface?
I am not a battered wife. When someone tries to fsck with me I fsck them back.
Wearable computing will continue, since modern smartphones are pretty close to the desired ideal.
However many proponents of wearable computing are explicitly associating it to wearing headsets, Borg-like heads-up displays, cameras, GPS, implanted compasses, and whatnot. These, IMO, will not be popular just because there is no need for them. Even the heads-up display is a distraction for most people. A cell phone form factor is with us since the days of ancient clay tablets. It is something that we are well equipped to operate - we can take it, give it, leave it, look at it, and work with it. I can imagine a communicator from ST:TNG as well. But even those communicators, as shown, are pretty limited. They had no video, for example - and many an away team would benefit from that. They would be better off with a modern smartphone, actually, as long as it can communicate with the orbit.
At most I can imagine a heads-up display that is wirelessly linked to the smartphone in your pocket. That would have some use. Beyond that I don't see anything obvious; perhaps future developments give us other hardware that is worth wearing.
Also in all these cases we must remember that the battery technology is still not good enough. Replacing batteries in all these wearable gizmos is a hassle - and a visible expense.
So what? Where I live I have no choice but use an *unreliable* and dynamic IP connection - all the static IPs in the world won't help the reliability one bit. What world do you live in that makes you think everyone in the world 'can do the same'?
If you value your data you can always rent a server, physical or virtual, from any number of hosting companies. You do not have to keep the box at home. What stops you now?
Just because in *your* situation this is feasible you jump to some wild ass conclusion that it's the same for everyone else.
It is the same for everyone else, as I just demonstrated, unless perhaps you are a citizen of North Korea or something. Or if you cannot afford a super-cheap hosting plan. Last time I checked they were under $100/yr. But if you think it's too expensive... I guess that's what it is.
Of course if you are Aunt Janice and you have "nothing to hide" besides your recipes of a plum jam then perhaps Google Mail is fine and dandy. Let Google know that you are a citizen in good standing.
There are other people, however, that still remember how free people operate. Those are intent on keeping "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" - and they understand perfectly well that while the government is constitutionally prohibited from running a mass surveillance program it can outsource it to a commercial entity, and the people will cheerfully sell themselves into information slavery for a handful of shinies.
The discussion about security of SMTP is only a remote part of that thought process. Google has a direct 100 Gbps pipe into mail archives of all GMail subscribers. Hunting for an occasional email that flies through core routers between privately owned servers is a much harder task. You will do well if you simply run your own server. Not only your data is better protected, you are also independent from whims of Google. You, as matter of fact, are the master of your domain. Remember that Google used to kick people out for violations of the G+ "real name" requirements? Would you like to lose your primary email just because a robot decided that you violated something?
My parents like Gmail because it provides tons of space, good searching facilities, excellent spam filtering, and a built-in web-based chat/voice/video client so they can easily click two buttons and be chatting with my sister or me. Yes, it's possible to setup something similar on one's own, but it's (a) a hassle and (b) likely to be not as cleanly integrated as Gmail, which is a big turn-off for non-technical users.
My first alarm bell about Google rang when they added chat to the GMail window. I was able to quickly extinguish that problem.
The next alarm bell rang when they added Buzz, I think. I had to spend time searching and then disabling that Buzz.
Then they made yet another change - some GUI change, I think - that made me mad. I connected with POP and moved all my messages onto my own server. Since then I haven't connected to GMail over the Web even once. I'm pulling email out that is occasionally sent by someone who has my old email address, but in last months I haven't seen even one valid email coming from there. I can safely terminate the Google account now.
With regard to UI changes, this is extremely annoying. Those busybodies keep changing things for reasons unknown - I guess just because they have to do something, and this is just as good as anything else. But this bothers me because once I get used to something I see no reason to fiddle with it. I have many other things that need change, and I'm busy working on those. Leave things that work alone.
By the way, now I recall what made me so mad that I stopped using GMail completely. It was a new feature called "Also copy $someone". When I sent an email a note appeared with these words, initially suggesting that the other recipient WILL be copied on the email. Later Google was kicked so hard they had to change the words to "Suggesting to also copy $someone". This was all calculated from previous email history and it was as bat$hit crazy as it gets. I haven't sent a single email through GMail interface from that day. I simply do not want to risk emailing stuff if I am not in 100% control of who gets what. (The suggestions were all wrong, by the way.) I do not know what they are doing now because I'm done with their "free" service.
The reverse DNS setup required just one email to the tech support of my ISP. When you pay for static IPs this comes as a natural part of the deal. You are *expected* to run servers.
Who's to say your IP address and presumably you, intended to download a file which exists under copyright? How do you know it is under copyright?
Imagine that someone takes a gun, points it at someone else, pulls the bang switch... and nothing happens. The gun was not loaded. Can the unsuccessful shooter walk free?
IANAL, but as I seem to recall an intention to commit a crime is a crime in itself. That shooter will not be tried for murder, but he can be tried for attempted murder.
In this case if you see a torrent of a $copyrighted_movie, download it, and connect to the swarm, any reasonable juror will conclude that you intended to receive or transmit that movie. You'd need to present some extraordinary proof that you were motivated by something else.
I'd be a complete idiot if I thought my unreliable and dynamic IP internet connection would suffice for a mail server.
I have a few static IP addresses, and I pay good money for them. The ISP didn't ask for my geek cred, they only asked for cash. There is nothing magical about my situation - anyone (who wants) can do the same. Or he can sell his privacy to Google; that is "free."
Well, in that case you would still be trying to participate in illegal file sharing. Kind of throwing a rock in a window of a jewelery store to get some loot, but the rock not even breaking the glass.
No, that would amount to requesting the data and not getting any.
A better analogy is that during a riot you are standing near the window of a store, in perfect position for a throw, with a rock in your hand. And you don't throw it.
I don't need to "remember" those days. Only a complete idiot would trust his email to a company like Google. Anyone on/. who cannot set up Ubuntu with Postfix should turn in his geek card.
No insurance company that I know of is in business as a public charity.
For sake of technical correctness, let me mention that there are a few faith-based mutual insurance societies. Some are even set up such that the money goes direct, by a personal check, from you to the person who needs it. The society then only reconciles the numbers and publishes sums of donations. But those societies are tightly closed, and available only to members of a specific religion. Sadly, my sincere faith in FSM does not count. The closed nature of those societies is actually understandable; its operation is based on honesty, and allowing outsiders would lead to insane levels of abuse.
if you've got any sense (and money) you'll be going to one of the private providers that accepts cash
In the old USSR there was a joke: "Medical services are free as long as the outcome is not important." There was a reason for the joke: public healthcare was staffed with poorly paid doctors and equipped with machines that were many decades behind the curve.
To illustrate, a dental drill in at a Soviet public healthcare provider was straight from 1920's - it had a low speed motor somewhere and a set of belts and rollers to transfer the power to the drill bit. The speed of that drill was something like a thousand RPM. (Modern dental drills spin at up to 400K RPM.) Anesthetics were unheard of; there was no nurse, no suction, no X-rays. And indeed, why would the State spend money on such luxuries? You already paid for all that largesse, and now the government decides what to give to you instead. Of course they'd give you the bare minimum. Read this link or this one for a better explanation of what was NOT done. Now you know why 100% of escapees from USSR have bad teeth. It's because every visit to the dentist was a torture - literally. It was true even in UA3Axx, let alone some faraway provinces like UA0xxx.
USSR had commercial dental clinics, and they were somewhat better. For example, if a tooth has to be extracted they would give you an anesthetic first. But they did not have best of the best equipment either; that was reserved to clinics that serviced the leaders of the Party - and doors of those were always barred to the peasants.
The USSR's healthcare in its setup was actually better and more practical than Obamacare. There were no death panels in USSR. If you wanted you could visit every specialist and present your case - and they all would suggest the best treatment they had access to. There was no insurance bureaucracy simply because the healthcare was wholly owned by the government. The only bottleneck was the lines. A good specialist would be pretty busy (just like anywhere) and you would need to wait for your turn. Canada has a system that is half-way there. You go to the doctor, the doctor bills the government, the government pays. There is no middleman. Obamacare seems to combine worst elements of all known systems.
No project for the public good would ever be accomplished.
That's why those railways are not built for public good - they are built for profit. Public good comes from the fact that a member of the public can buy a ticket and ride the train. It also comes from the fact that a member of the public can buy a share of the railway company and get dividends as other people buy tickets.
But if I did have a million or two under the mattress, I would be just as likely to purchase health insurance as I now do, simply because I don't want to put that million or two at risk if I were to have a catastrophic illness or accident. Sheltering assets from risk is the correct reason for insurance.
Insurance only buys you predictable, periodic expenses in exchange for unpredictable, larger expenses. However it is a net loss if you can tolerate an occasional larger expense. Insurance companies work for profit. Where does that profit come from? Right, it comes out of your pocket.
Unfortunately, our health system is very insurance oriented and we don't treat our health the same way. Going to the doctor is so different from any other transaction that it is bizarre. What other service do you purchase in a year that you don't have any idea what it will cost, and not even the service provider has any clue or reason to find out?
It's not just the health system. Insurance permeates the whole US culture. I guess that's what you get when you have a country full of people who are willing to trade daily guaranteed small loss for an occasional, unpredictable, larger loss and lose in the end.
As you could guess, I do not use health insurance. I pay with cash. I never hear that "this treatment is disallowed" - everything is allowed to me, as long as I pay. 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.' - and so many people choose, or are forced, to not to be masters of their own lives anymore. How can a man be called "free" if he has no freedom of buying a service or not buying it? If a man wants $x and someone says "disallowed" then that man is a slave. As you correctly indicate, the modern peasant can only pay his dues to Insurance Gods, and those Gods may occasionally dispense a few copper coins in return. Insurance contracts give all the power to insurance companies and leave you in position of a beggar.
do you have health insurance? if no, then you are a freeloader
Imagine that I am Bill Gates. I can buy a hospital - or ten. Why would I need insurance?
Note that the threshold of self-sufficiency is much lower than BG's wealth. If you have a million or two under the mattress you are all set.
Insurance is only needed when you cannot afford the loss. In all other cases you are better off self-insuring. That's what most large businesses do. They have the money; they don't need to beg someone else to pay for their loss.
you have abrogated your financial responsibility to take care of your health
Neither me nor anyone else has such responsibility. Unless you are religious and afraid of your god(s) - which I am not.
if you get cancer, or have a heart condition, or something that is a cost higher than you can afford under your salary, you are shifting the cost to take care of you onto me
If I cannot afford the treatment (such as it is above the mentioned million or two) then nothing on this planet will help me.
Furthermore, if you are a cash patient you are treated like a King. All treatments are open to you, including those that are expensive and those that insurance companies do not pay for. I choose the best because I can afford it. Doctors love cash patients because it's the cash in the till right away - not a year later, after all the insurance bureaucracy signed off on the paperwork.
are you saying it is impossible for you to have a health crisis you can't afford?
It is up to an individual to determine what risks one can or cannot afford. But as I said at some level of wealth you are just as good without insurance as with it. Essentially, you have more money under your control than the insurance payout would ever be. Free men will choose what they want - to stand alone or to pool their resources into an emergency (insurance) fund.
why don't you just use your brain cells, bang some rocks together, and realize you have a responsibility to have health insurance so you don't freeload off of me
You are mixing things up here. The only responsibility I have is not to freeload off of you. The rest that you wrote has nothing to do with you.
Not, individually, afford to fund a national railroad or air traffic control system or anything like that.
Yes, exactly like that. A railroad company would be formed, and investors (now with money) would be buying shares of it. Railroads to nowhere would be laughed at. But right now the government has uncontrollable use of your money, and it can spend it as the Congress wants (which is linked to campaign funding and other types of incentivizing that in any normal country would be seen as a bribe.)
If it does lay an egg, do you really think CIOs are going to say "Well Win8 is no good - let's drop MS and switch to $(MacOS/Linux/whatever)"? Nope, it'll be "We'll wait for Win 9"
Yes, of course. If MS rescinds their stoopid Metro UI decision and makes Metro into an optional API layer then Win9 will be usable and it will be used by the enterprise.
However if Win9 sticks to its guns but Win7 is taken off the life support (like XP - so that you can't buy it, can't maintain it) then what options does an enterprise have?
That depends on ISVs. If major ISVs start supporting alternative OS then migration is likely. If 3rd party shells (that remove Metro and install an equivalent of Explorer) show up then Win8 may become an option. If MS makes sure that 3rd party shells are not allowed (the technology is already there) then they will shoot themselves in the foot, again.
Businesses are interested only in one thing: in doing business. They have no love for Windows, Linux or anything else. They only want to use computers to make money. It helps if the OS is established, well supported, runs their software and is cheap enough (doesn't have to be free.) But if their old beloved OS is no more then the business will have to make a painful decision - and it may go with an alternative OS because it will promise to be more stable. In fact, any company (like RedHat) can make and maintain a stable Linux OS pretty much forever, until there are paying customers.
In any case, we are years away (up to a decade) from that decision point. Win7 will be around for a while. Removal of Win7 from the shelves (by stopping its license servers) would be such an affront to businesses in the country that MS will not survive the backlash. It would become a matter of national security; the government users aren't going to bend over that easily. MS was hit pretty hard even during the XP obsolescence phase even though Vista and Win7 were largely compatible with XP. Win8 UI is not even compatible with anything, and its workflow is highly unintuitive. Typing arcane commands to start programs? Scrolling horizontally through pages and pages of big, poorly colored, visually identical boxes to find your program? Not having a structured list of programs that you can look through? Running your software always full screen? Or in two tiled windows? MS must be on some strong drugs if they don't understand that business users connect multiple huge LCD monitors for a reason.
It would be easier to commit suicide in their own countries.
Mexico is a failed state, with massive territories under control of large organized criminal enterprises. Mexicans themselves are afraid. When Mexicans cross the border they hire coyotes to show them the safe route. A foreigner, knowing no Spanish and being unfamiliar with the lay of the land, has excellent chances of being caught by a narco cartel soldier and executed; or arrested by Mexican border guards; or robbed and killed by just anyone. He also can drown in the river, and he can be arrested by US border guards, and he can also be arrested by any police force or by any county Sheriff. That is a concern, of course, only if you are a well trained backpacker with desert experience and if you know what you are doing; otherwise one man enters, zero men leave.
A successful crossing is possible, and tens of thousands cross every year. But you need to know the way. Coyotes are in business of knowing the way - and even they fail now and then. Coyotes carry weapons and they use them when necessary. Ownership of firearms in Mexico is illegal, so a European man cannot go and buy one for himself. (Neither he could do it in the USA, by the way.)
Still, a small number of non-Mexicans - Asians, Europeans, Africans - cross the border. There is a special designation for them. I suspect that they are sufficiently organized to safely pay for their transportation across the border. But if a random man from a faraway land tries to meet a coyote he will find his death right there. Nobody would be looking for him, and another headless corpse along the road will not make a difference.
So in short, you ought to be ashamed for writing off "poor little Paco", as though his desire to live better is no big deal.
Either you have no idea how US immigration works, or you are positioning yourself against millions of legal immigrants (Green Card holders, H1B, TN and naturalized citizens.)
It is very difficult - sometimes impossible - for a foreigner to obtain residency in the USA. It takes enormous effort to find a company that is willing to sponsor you, to get the visa, to move in and work as a slave for many years until your GC application is approved and completed. A GC card holder still cannot vote, and he can be kicked out of the country whenever the government wants it (for a reason or without.)
But you here are proposing that someone from MX is free to just walk across the border and get everything (if not more) than a law-abiding citizen works toward for more than a decade?
Of course that's not the only reason to stop illegal immigration. One of the most significant signs that a state is a failed state is its inability to control its borders. When anyone can waltz in and out, carrying anything he wants (from his kids to his drugs and his nuclear bombs) you have no country. You are not in control; you are at mercy of invaders who may or may not kill you today. Some that do kill are disappearing back across the border and remain out of reach of the law.
You should also notice that the country is not in its top shape right now. Each illegal immigrant takes a job from a citizen. You may say that the job pays so poorly that no citizen would want it. Well, stop the government payouts and watch. Otherwise of course who would want to work - for any salary - if he can live well enough by doing nothing.
sanctions do not work for their intended purpose, and only hurt the innocent civilian population in the country of their target.
That's exactly how sanctions are intended to work. It is understood that people in power (like NK's Kim and his exquisite alcohol; like military programs and their bottomless funding) will not be even inconvenienced. However by applying pressure to the masses the authors of sanctions expect those masses to become unhappy with their government and to trigger a revolt against that government.
This, of course, is a collective punishment, but Important People never mention sanctions in this context.
If I buy an item, it is MY responsibility. They can arrest me or do whatever they desire, but not the Apple store or any other store.
Your opinion is irrelevant because you have no power to enforce it. "They" (such as the government) have a different approach. They arrest everyone in the chain of the sale who had duty to prevent the violation of the law and failed at it.
a 7 or 8 year old [...] Just make sure they know what they're doing.
I don't know about others, but when I was 7 or 8 years old I certainly didn't know what I was doing - even when I thought I do. From my today's position I think I got some reasonable awareness of adult world when I was about 16 years old, and continued learning further.
Unless you think most people are rapists or terrorists who will magically molest them over the internet
The worst thing that can happen to a kid on Internet is another kid on Internet. Pretty much like IRL.
Slashdot Mirror
Hermit, prisoner or blind ?
He is right. Wristwatches remain only as fashion items, often very expensive ones. From practical point of view, though, a cell phone is far more practical - it tells you the date and the time, has an alarm clock, a notepad, a calculator, a text message service, a Web browser, and if all that fails you still can call people.
I have a wristwatch, but I do not wear it. There are very, very few occasions when I must know the time constantly throughout the whole day (like when I travel.) Then I wear it. Otherwise I'm surrounded by clocks - in phones, in computers, in my car, and in every business. A wristwatch is not an expensive item, but it is simply useless today. Besides, some people dislike their bands and bracelets. The age of a wristwatch is behind us; we are living in the era of small, pocket-sized tablet computers (also known as smartphones.)
As I vaguely made it known, I worked (not too far back) in the area of mobile industrial computing. UPS and FedEx are just a small part of the crowd that runs around with tablets, barcode scanners, RFID readers, and transmits all that over the radio direct into the mainframe.
Very few of those guys would want anything that is more sophisticated than a rugged UPS tablet. Why? Because it is rugged. You'd be amazed to learn what requirements - real, necessary requirements - shipping companies specify for these gadgets. They have to survive drop on concrete from the top of the truck. They have to be waterproof. They have to work at temperatures that burn your hands (happens in parked trucks.) There are tons of other requirements.
It does not help when you make the gadget even more complicated. Heads-up display... OK, but where does the customer sign? Oh, I need to punch this number in manually because the label is torn. Ah, I need to show some data to the customer. Eh, where is the barcode scanner in this thing? And so on.
What you propose is a viable system for a very specific purpose. I saw requirements for such systems (of course I cannot say where they came from.) But those are unique requirements; there are maybe less than 1,000 specialists on the whole planet that need such a unique setup to do their job better. Kinect is all nice and good until you have to use it in pitch dark, or under water, or in fog, or in a forest in wind, or crammed head first into an access hatch. You know, most people do not use these mobile gizmos when they are comfortably at home in their armchairs. One could easily hang from a rope while operating the wearable computer. In such cases the whole system is built around what fingers and what eyes and what else can the guy allocate to computing. Usually it isn't much. A firefighter, for example, will certainly benefit from a wearable computer that analyzes the situation all around him independently from fireman's own brain. But think of what level of ruggedness such a system will require!
Nevertheless, if you read SciFi then you certainly see such ideas like yours proposed here and there. They seem natural today. But technology develops nonlinearly. We periodically invent disruptive technology that changes everything overnight. It is likely that there will be disruptive developments in the field of wearable computing. The HUD, once you try it, is really a cumbersome device that is a bother to wear. It is also capable of hurting your vision if it is not perfectly fitting your particular eyesight. It certainly is capable of hurting your stereo vision - and that is bad because this processing is done in the brain, and the brain tends to learn new tricks. It has no switch for "Mode A" and "Mode B."
I don't want to say "no" to your proposal. It would be too easy. I would instead urge you to build such a system. Get yourself some Kopin HUD and play with it. Maybe you can take apart an old digital camera. Cut and polish your own prisms and mirrors. Build what you want, and show it to people. You may find more interest in the industry than you know what to do with. Or perhaps you get no interest. But that's the only way to find out. Just talking about it is not sufficient.
You have no idea what this technology might do for us.
Yes, of course. My expectations are only of the near future, and I am leaving possibilities open if someone comes up with, say, an implant for operation of computers by a thought.
I am sure you have seen people wearing a string
I am not a fan of *that* kind of behavior :-)
But sure you can have all your gizmos wired. You will be tired of plugging them in and out of that "body LAN" every time you put your hat on or remove it, every time you take the coat or jacket off, every time you stop by the restroom. If a technology is more annoying than it is useful it will not become popular. Cell phones got popular when they became small enough so that carrying a phone did not require careful planning of logistics weeks ahead of the trip.
Augmented reality has never been implemented successfully on large scale which is reason enough not to judge it based on what you imagine it is going to be like.
Perhaps. But it is an excellent reason to be skeptical about its future until we have at least *some indications* that it is going anywhere. As I said, the worst problem of augmented reality is that it is not necessary in most cases. As an example, would you want to read your email while driving a car - or while just walking down the street? You can do it today; the wearable hardware exists for at least a decade. But the exercise is pointless. That's why I don't see a bright future of this technology in the near term. That might change once you get implants - but then there would be no need to wear anything outside of your body. Arguing for wearable computing today is analogous to walking on stilts. You can do it right now, but there is no benefit in doing so.
This would allow to maintain aesthetic appeal by making you resemble a Borg.
I probably should not offer a comment on that statement :-)
Interesting thing to know would be which device would actually consume more power. HUD or your normal handheld device screen.
I would expect the HUD to be far more efficient. However there is a price to pay. I actually tested some HUDs, and while they were nice, presenting you with a view of a large computer screen, they are very expensive. You also need a HUD that has the alpha channel, and must be perfectly transparent where required. Otherwise you cannot see the other reality through it. I have a setup here that uses a camera and an opaque screen, but that is not practical in glasses - if your computer crashes you lose the visual input. Anyway, HUDs are used in a few areas, and they are practical there. Everywhere else people do not need them. If a geek or two is enamored with the idea, let them play with it. Perhaps they will stumble upon something useful.
Gmail never started randomly adding "suggested" recipients to your emails.
As I said, they implemented a previously Google Labs plugin that "suggested" to add those. The initial wording of that suggestion was much more harsh. It was not "Consider including..." - it was "Also include", IIRC. Here is a link that explains people's fear of this new feature. A quote:
There is much more at that link. The feature is ill-conceived. I suspect that it was a brainchild of young Google developers who cannot understand that most people do not send stuff to every contact they can get hold of. This feature cannot be turned off.
There are more complaints here and here - and probably millions more. This feature is truly a GMail killer; misdirected emails are known to cause all kinds of grief, from being red in the face to losing a contract to being fired.
In the end, nobody asks for execution of the developer of this feature. (Almost nobody, that is.) All that the people ask is a way to opt out of this disaster. Google, in its infinite arrogance, refused - and made this "feature" permanent. What choice did the people have, with regard to a free service? Only to pack up and leave.
But if you have such a big problem with the UI, why not just point your own mail program at Google's IMAP interface?
I am not a battered wife. When someone tries to fsck with me I fsck them back.
Wearable computing will continue, since modern smartphones are pretty close to the desired ideal.
However many proponents of wearable computing are explicitly associating it to wearing headsets, Borg-like heads-up displays, cameras, GPS, implanted compasses, and whatnot. These, IMO, will not be popular just because there is no need for them. Even the heads-up display is a distraction for most people. A cell phone form factor is with us since the days of ancient clay tablets. It is something that we are well equipped to operate - we can take it, give it, leave it, look at it, and work with it. I can imagine a communicator from ST:TNG as well. But even those communicators, as shown, are pretty limited. They had no video, for example - and many an away team would benefit from that. They would be better off with a modern smartphone, actually, as long as it can communicate with the orbit.
At most I can imagine a heads-up display that is wirelessly linked to the smartphone in your pocket. That would have some use. Beyond that I don't see anything obvious; perhaps future developments give us other hardware that is worth wearing.
Also in all these cases we must remember that the battery technology is still not good enough. Replacing batteries in all these wearable gizmos is a hassle - and a visible expense.
This is in the USA and you are talking to doctors who own their own practice?
So what? Where I live I have no choice but use an *unreliable* and dynamic IP connection - all the static IPs in the world won't help the reliability one bit. What world do you live in that makes you think everyone in the world 'can do the same'?
If you value your data you can always rent a server, physical or virtual, from any number of hosting companies. You do not have to keep the box at home. What stops you now?
Just because in *your* situation this is feasible you jump to some wild ass conclusion that it's the same for everyone else.
It is the same for everyone else, as I just demonstrated, unless perhaps you are a citizen of North Korea or something. Or if you cannot afford a super-cheap hosting plan. Last time I checked they were under $100/yr. But if you think it's too expensive... I guess that's what it is.
Of course if you are Aunt Janice and you have "nothing to hide" besides your recipes of a plum jam then perhaps Google Mail is fine and dandy. Let Google know that you are a citizen in good standing.
There are other people, however, that still remember how free people operate. Those are intent on keeping "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" - and they understand perfectly well that while the government is constitutionally prohibited from running a mass surveillance program it can outsource it to a commercial entity, and the people will cheerfully sell themselves into information slavery for a handful of shinies.
The discussion about security of SMTP is only a remote part of that thought process. Google has a direct 100 Gbps pipe into mail archives of all GMail subscribers. Hunting for an occasional email that flies through core routers between privately owned servers is a much harder task. You will do well if you simply run your own server. Not only your data is better protected, you are also independent from whims of Google. You, as matter of fact, are the master of your domain. Remember that Google used to kick people out for violations of the G+ "real name" requirements? Would you like to lose your primary email just because a robot decided that you violated something?
My parents like Gmail because it provides tons of space, good searching facilities, excellent spam filtering, and a built-in web-based chat/voice/video client so they can easily click two buttons and be chatting with my sister or me. Yes, it's possible to setup something similar on one's own, but it's (a) a hassle and (b) likely to be not as cleanly integrated as Gmail, which is a big turn-off for non-technical users.
My first alarm bell about Google rang when they added chat to the GMail window. I was able to quickly extinguish that problem.
The next alarm bell rang when they added Buzz, I think. I had to spend time searching and then disabling that Buzz.
Then they made yet another change - some GUI change, I think - that made me mad. I connected with POP and moved all my messages onto my own server. Since then I haven't connected to GMail over the Web even once. I'm pulling email out that is occasionally sent by someone who has my old email address, but in last months I haven't seen even one valid email coming from there. I can safely terminate the Google account now.
With regard to UI changes, this is extremely annoying. Those busybodies keep changing things for reasons unknown - I guess just because they have to do something, and this is just as good as anything else. But this bothers me because once I get used to something I see no reason to fiddle with it. I have many other things that need change, and I'm busy working on those. Leave things that work alone.
By the way, now I recall what made me so mad that I stopped using GMail completely. It was a new feature called "Also copy $someone". When I sent an email a note appeared with these words, initially suggesting that the other recipient WILL be copied on the email. Later Google was kicked so hard they had to change the words to "Suggesting to also copy $someone". This was all calculated from previous email history and it was as bat$hit crazy as it gets. I haven't sent a single email through GMail interface from that day. I simply do not want to risk emailing stuff if I am not in 100% control of who gets what. (The suggestions were all wrong, by the way.) I do not know what they are doing now because I'm done with their "free" service.
The reverse DNS setup required just one email to the tech support of my ISP. When you pay for static IPs this comes as a natural part of the deal. You are *expected* to run servers.
Who's to say your IP address and presumably you, intended to download a file which exists under copyright? How do you know it is under copyright?
Imagine that someone takes a gun, points it at someone else, pulls the bang switch ... and nothing happens. The gun was not loaded. Can the unsuccessful shooter walk free?
IANAL, but as I seem to recall an intention to commit a crime is a crime in itself. That shooter will not be tried for murder, but he can be tried for attempted murder.
In this case if you see a torrent of a $copyrighted_movie, download it, and connect to the swarm, any reasonable juror will conclude that you intended to receive or transmit that movie. You'd need to present some extraordinary proof that you were motivated by something else.
I'd be a complete idiot if I thought my unreliable and dynamic IP internet connection would suffice for a mail server.
I have a few static IP addresses, and I pay good money for them. The ISP didn't ask for my geek cred, they only asked for cash. There is nothing magical about my situation - anyone (who wants) can do the same. Or he can sell his privacy to Google; that is "free."
Well, in that case you would still be trying to participate in illegal file sharing. Kind of throwing a rock in a window of a jewelery store to get some loot, but the rock not even breaking the glass.
No, that would amount to requesting the data and not getting any.
A better analogy is that during a riot you are standing near the window of a store, in perfect position for a throw, with a rock in your hand. And you don't throw it.
I don't need to "remember" those days. Only a complete idiot would trust his email to a company like Google. Anyone on /. who cannot set up Ubuntu with Postfix should turn in his geek card.
No insurance company that I know of is in business as a public charity.
For sake of technical correctness, let me mention that there are a few faith-based mutual insurance societies. Some are even set up such that the money goes direct, by a personal check, from you to the person who needs it. The society then only reconciles the numbers and publishes sums of donations. But those societies are tightly closed, and available only to members of a specific religion. Sadly, my sincere faith in FSM does not count. The closed nature of those societies is actually understandable; its operation is based on honesty, and allowing outsiders would lead to insane levels of abuse.
if you've got any sense (and money) you'll be going to one of the private providers that accepts cash
In the old USSR there was a joke: "Medical services are free as long as the outcome is not important." There was a reason for the joke: public healthcare was staffed with poorly paid doctors and equipped with machines that were many decades behind the curve.
To illustrate, a dental drill in at a Soviet public healthcare provider was straight from 1920's - it had a low speed motor somewhere and a set of belts and rollers to transfer the power to the drill bit. The speed of that drill was something like a thousand RPM. (Modern dental drills spin at up to 400K RPM.) Anesthetics were unheard of; there was no nurse, no suction, no X-rays. And indeed, why would the State spend money on such luxuries? You already paid for all that largesse, and now the government decides what to give to you instead. Of course they'd give you the bare minimum. Read this link or this one for a better explanation of what was NOT done. Now you know why 100% of escapees from USSR have bad teeth. It's because every visit to the dentist was a torture - literally. It was true even in UA3Axx, let alone some faraway provinces like UA0xxx.
USSR had commercial dental clinics, and they were somewhat better. For example, if a tooth has to be extracted they would give you an anesthetic first. But they did not have best of the best equipment either; that was reserved to clinics that serviced the leaders of the Party - and doors of those were always barred to the peasants.
The USSR's healthcare in its setup was actually better and more practical than Obamacare. There were no death panels in USSR. If you wanted you could visit every specialist and present your case - and they all would suggest the best treatment they had access to. There was no insurance bureaucracy simply because the healthcare was wholly owned by the government. The only bottleneck was the lines. A good specialist would be pretty busy (just like anywhere) and you would need to wait for your turn. Canada has a system that is half-way there. You go to the doctor, the doctor bills the government, the government pays. There is no middleman. Obamacare seems to combine worst elements of all known systems.
No project for the public good would ever be accomplished.
That's why those railways are not built for public good - they are built for profit. Public good comes from the fact that a member of the public can buy a ticket and ride the train. It also comes from the fact that a member of the public can buy a share of the railway company and get dividends as other people buy tickets.
But if I did have a million or two under the mattress, I would be just as likely to purchase health insurance as I now do, simply because I don't want to put that million or two at risk if I were to have a catastrophic illness or accident. Sheltering assets from risk is the correct reason for insurance.
Insurance only buys you predictable, periodic expenses in exchange for unpredictable, larger expenses. However it is a net loss if you can tolerate an occasional larger expense. Insurance companies work for profit. Where does that profit come from? Right, it comes out of your pocket.
Unfortunately, our health system is very insurance oriented and we don't treat our health the same way. Going to the doctor is so different from any other transaction that it is bizarre. What other service do you purchase in a year that you don't have any idea what it will cost, and not even the service provider has any clue or reason to find out?
It's not just the health system. Insurance permeates the whole US culture. I guess that's what you get when you have a country full of people who are willing to trade daily guaranteed small loss for an occasional, unpredictable, larger loss and lose in the end.
As you could guess, I do not use health insurance. I pay with cash. I never hear that "this treatment is disallowed" - everything is allowed to me, as long as I pay. 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.' - and so many people choose, or are forced, to not to be masters of their own lives anymore. How can a man be called "free" if he has no freedom of buying a service or not buying it? If a man wants $x and someone says "disallowed" then that man is a slave. As you correctly indicate, the modern peasant can only pay his dues to Insurance Gods, and those Gods may occasionally dispense a few copper coins in return. Insurance contracts give all the power to insurance companies and leave you in position of a beggar.
do you have health insurance? if no, then you are a freeloader
Imagine that I am Bill Gates. I can buy a hospital - or ten. Why would I need insurance?
Note that the threshold of self-sufficiency is much lower than BG's wealth. If you have a million or two under the mattress you are all set.
Insurance is only needed when you cannot afford the loss. In all other cases you are better off self-insuring. That's what most large businesses do. They have the money; they don't need to beg someone else to pay for their loss.
you have abrogated your financial responsibility to take care of your health
Neither me nor anyone else has such responsibility. Unless you are religious and afraid of your god(s) - which I am not.
if you get cancer, or have a heart condition, or something that is a cost higher than you can afford under your salary, you are shifting the cost to take care of you onto me
If I cannot afford the treatment (such as it is above the mentioned million or two) then nothing on this planet will help me.
Furthermore, if you are a cash patient you are treated like a King. All treatments are open to you, including those that are expensive and those that insurance companies do not pay for. I choose the best because I can afford it. Doctors love cash patients because it's the cash in the till right away - not a year later, after all the insurance bureaucracy signed off on the paperwork.
are you saying it is impossible for you to have a health crisis you can't afford?
It is up to an individual to determine what risks one can or cannot afford. But as I said at some level of wealth you are just as good without insurance as with it. Essentially, you have more money under your control than the insurance payout would ever be. Free men will choose what they want - to stand alone or to pool their resources into an emergency (insurance) fund.
why don't you just use your brain cells, bang some rocks together, and realize you have a responsibility to have health insurance so you don't freeload off of me
You are mixing things up here. The only responsibility I have is not to freeload off of you. The rest that you wrote has nothing to do with you.
Not, individually, afford to fund a national railroad or air traffic control system or anything like that.
Yes, exactly like that. A railroad company would be formed, and investors (now with money) would be buying shares of it. Railroads to nowhere would be laughed at. But right now the government has uncontrollable use of your money, and it can spend it as the Congress wants (which is linked to campaign funding and other types of incentivizing that in any normal country would be seen as a bribe.)
If it does lay an egg, do you really think CIOs are going to say "Well Win8 is no good - let's drop MS and switch to $(MacOS/Linux/whatever)"? Nope, it'll be "We'll wait for Win 9"
Yes, of course. If MS rescinds their stoopid Metro UI decision and makes Metro into an optional API layer then Win9 will be usable and it will be used by the enterprise.
However if Win9 sticks to its guns but Win7 is taken off the life support (like XP - so that you can't buy it, can't maintain it) then what options does an enterprise have?
That depends on ISVs. If major ISVs start supporting alternative OS then migration is likely. If 3rd party shells (that remove Metro and install an equivalent of Explorer) show up then Win8 may become an option. If MS makes sure that 3rd party shells are not allowed (the technology is already there) then they will shoot themselves in the foot, again.
Businesses are interested only in one thing: in doing business. They have no love for Windows, Linux or anything else. They only want to use computers to make money. It helps if the OS is established, well supported, runs their software and is cheap enough (doesn't have to be free.) But if their old beloved OS is no more then the business will have to make a painful decision - and it may go with an alternative OS because it will promise to be more stable. In fact, any company (like RedHat) can make and maintain a stable Linux OS pretty much forever, until there are paying customers.
In any case, we are years away (up to a decade) from that decision point. Win7 will be around for a while. Removal of Win7 from the shelves (by stopping its license servers) would be such an affront to businesses in the country that MS will not survive the backlash. It would become a matter of national security; the government users aren't going to bend over that easily. MS was hit pretty hard even during the XP obsolescence phase even though Vista and Win7 were largely compatible with XP. Win8 UI is not even compatible with anything, and its workflow is highly unintuitive. Typing arcane commands to start programs? Scrolling horizontally through pages and pages of big, poorly colored, visually identical boxes to find your program? Not having a structured list of programs that you can look through? Running your software always full screen? Or in two tiled windows? MS must be on some strong drugs if they don't understand that business users connect multiple huge LCD monitors for a reason.
Most Democrats think Mitt Romney himself to be a humanoid
This opinion is not limited to Democrats. Or to Romney.
It would be easier to commit suicide in their own countries.
Mexico is a failed state, with massive territories under control of large organized criminal enterprises. Mexicans themselves are afraid. When Mexicans cross the border they hire coyotes to show them the safe route. A foreigner, knowing no Spanish and being unfamiliar with the lay of the land, has excellent chances of being caught by a narco cartel soldier and executed; or arrested by Mexican border guards; or robbed and killed by just anyone. He also can drown in the river, and he can be arrested by US border guards, and he can also be arrested by any police force or by any county Sheriff. That is a concern, of course, only if you are a well trained backpacker with desert experience and if you know what you are doing; otherwise one man enters, zero men leave.
A successful crossing is possible, and tens of thousands cross every year. But you need to know the way. Coyotes are in business of knowing the way - and even they fail now and then. Coyotes carry weapons and they use them when necessary. Ownership of firearms in Mexico is illegal, so a European man cannot go and buy one for himself. (Neither he could do it in the USA, by the way.)
Still, a small number of non-Mexicans - Asians, Europeans, Africans - cross the border. There is a special designation for them. I suspect that they are sufficiently organized to safely pay for their transportation across the border. But if a random man from a faraway land tries to meet a coyote he will find his death right there. Nobody would be looking for him, and another headless corpse along the road will not make a difference.
So in short, you ought to be ashamed for writing off "poor little Paco", as though his desire to live better is no big deal.
Either you have no idea how US immigration works, or you are positioning yourself against millions of legal immigrants (Green Card holders, H1B, TN and naturalized citizens.)
It is very difficult - sometimes impossible - for a foreigner to obtain residency in the USA. It takes enormous effort to find a company that is willing to sponsor you, to get the visa, to move in and work as a slave for many years until your GC application is approved and completed. A GC card holder still cannot vote, and he can be kicked out of the country whenever the government wants it (for a reason or without.)
But you here are proposing that someone from MX is free to just walk across the border and get everything (if not more) than a law-abiding citizen works toward for more than a decade?
Of course that's not the only reason to stop illegal immigration. One of the most significant signs that a state is a failed state is its inability to control its borders. When anyone can waltz in and out, carrying anything he wants (from his kids to his drugs and his nuclear bombs) you have no country. You are not in control; you are at mercy of invaders who may or may not kill you today. Some that do kill are disappearing back across the border and remain out of reach of the law.
You should also notice that the country is not in its top shape right now. Each illegal immigrant takes a job from a citizen. You may say that the job pays so poorly that no citizen would want it. Well, stop the government payouts and watch. Otherwise of course who would want to work - for any salary - if he can live well enough by doing nothing.
sanctions do not work for their intended purpose, and only hurt the innocent civilian population in the country of their target.
That's exactly how sanctions are intended to work. It is understood that people in power (like NK's Kim and his exquisite alcohol; like military programs and their bottomless funding) will not be even inconvenienced. However by applying pressure to the masses the authors of sanctions expect those masses to become unhappy with their government and to trigger a revolt against that government.
This, of course, is a collective punishment, but Important People never mention sanctions in this context.
If I buy an item, it is MY responsibility. They can arrest me or do whatever they desire, but not the Apple store or any other store.
Your opinion is irrelevant because you have no power to enforce it. "They" (such as the government) have a different approach. They arrest everyone in the chain of the sale who had duty to prevent the violation of the law and failed at it.
a 7 or 8 year old [...] Just make sure they know what they're doing.
I don't know about others, but when I was 7 or 8 years old I certainly didn't know what I was doing - even when I thought I do. From my today's position I think I got some reasonable awareness of adult world when I was about 16 years old, and continued learning further.
Unless you think most people are rapists or terrorists who will magically molest them over the internet
The worst thing that can happen to a kid on Internet is another kid on Internet. Pretty much like IRL.