And what is the situation where it's safe to text while stopped at a red light? I can't find any.
A light that stays red over 2 minutes because the stupid trams keep overriding the signal? Even if an emergency vehicle comes up to the intersection, I will notice it because it will blast it's sirens extra loud before coming close to the intersection. (Not that I can do that much.)
On the other hand any distraction while moving is a bad idea, no matter how short. The only two times I ever ran a red light (in twenty years of deriving experience) was when gleaning at a map and trying to get the nav to shut up. In both cases I did not realize that there was a light at the intersection and since there where no other cars around, so I did not get additional hints about the situation. Many things that are considered "safe" can be quite unsafe when done in the wrong point in time. So I disagree with GP, once the vehicle is moving you should try to remove all distractions, that includes changing the radio station.
At least an IDE won't (usually) introduce blatant syntax errors.
Except when the autocompleate function jumps out of the window and suggests similar named but different functions. I had intelisense die on me regularly on large projects, I turned it off. It "helps" weak programmers in that they can create valid but poor code and never really learn the ins and outs of an API. Reading documentation is actually a better idea than hitting CTRL+SPACE. From that point on the benefit of autocompleate is negligible.
Let me clue you in. Don't think of it as an IM, think of it as an SMS replacement. It functions and behaves as SMS would, except that it is dirt cheap and can handle way larger data. The most genius thing they did was that you did not "sign up", you just installed the app and got all your fiends that used WA immediately. This is a classical example of "reducing friction".
You might find that if you used GG here in Germany, you might find yourself confronted with a lawsuit.
I am not sure about this. German privacy laws strongly hinge on expectation of privacy and publication. For example, if I am in a bar that does not explicitly forbade the taking pictures and somebody takes a picture of someone else and I am in the background. I can not prevent this or force the deletion/destruction. Yet if the picture gets published I can demand that my face is obfuscated.
As long as someone uses Glass in publicly accessible area where taking pictures is not something out of the common and the pictures are not published, Google Glass does not infringe on any privacy laws. Realtime streaming from a Glass unit will get you into trouble for sure.
The reason why CCTV is explicitly and visibly announced has nothing to do with the law proper, but with your expectation of privacy. If you passed a huge sign declaring that the area is videotaped 24/7 you can simply not claim you expected being unobserved.
Actually it makes sense to use UDP. With TCP, when one packet is out of order / dropped you delay all remaining packets. With UDP you either forget about the packet if you wish and continue with the rest of the data. This is especially important for real time streaming or VoIP. Then again, if you only "stream" an entire file for replay, you can basically use clunked HTTP 1.1.
Honestly I think the quote nails it, even though not in the sense that GP meant it. I think coding is easy, you can pick up any programming language quite easily and learning to code is not more that a couple house away. Yet designing, writing, packaging and deploying an application that does not immediately break down in production is a different thing. It takes allot of experience to pull it off and like everything in life 10.000 hours of practice separates the novice from the expert. The problem is not that programming needs a special skill, but it need a special aptitude to put in all the work necessary to get good at it. Few people are ready to indulge in this odd activity. It does not help that to get anything interesting done it takes like forever.
How? Each and every "green" technology has some form of "problem". Solar? Forget it the energy to produce the cells is astronomical and the rare earth are non trivial to extract. Wind and water? Better, but you need to build the damned things from some metals. Smelting metals, even when recycling creates toxic smoke and other junk. Biomass? Works sort better, you are CO2 neutral, but the process of burning still creates SO2 and similar pollutants. You can combat air pollutants with filters, but then you end up with highly toxic filters you need to dispose of.
This also ignores the production of certain substances. Yes you can reduce use of plastic with a wood compound or wholly replacing some materials. The problem is that these materials where selected for their properties. You can replace many but the result is that you basically can ditch a large part of your high tech. You can build a car that has zero emissions (e.g. Hydrogen from solar-heat-plants in the Sahara), but building the car and infrastructure itself will never be zero emission.
We can do significantly better than now and I am totally for scientific research into this these areas. But zero pollution is fully and totally out of the question.
For example, I have seen a documentary where scientists are starting to consider digging up metals, such as copper from old garbage dumps. It the price for these resources makes this viable, it will be done. Same goes with all things "green", if the cost/benefit ratio makes it viable, it will be widely adapted.
It actually get's worse. The "why haven't we heard from them" paradox was based on the fact that in the 60s scientists could not imagine an advanced civilization without strong RF emissions. But we are already strongly dialing back the RF emissions by putting more onto wires, using more directed beams and lower power emissions. This overall means that in a couple of decades the earth will not emit any decipherable RF transition, either since most RF has died out or because you can not make out a signal from the noise. I dough that a satellite in LEO can pickup and decipher WiFi or mobile transmissions, so why should aliens be able to do so. All we will be is an anomaly strong RF source, but probably not of intelligent origin.
They basically lost the sale to me at the 18. word: polymorphism Do these marketing schmucks even know what that word means? If I built a automated malware filtering technology I would use a whole other set of technobable, like "advanced pastern recognition", "dynamic filtering", "machine learning" and maybe even "neural network". They not only fail to build a product that actually does something for their users, but also fail to properly sell it to anybody remotely technical.
I like it the way they solved it in the new BBC Sherlock movies/TV-show. Actual screens are rearlly shown, the important information is hovered somewhere in mid air. Interestingly this seems like less breaking suspension of disbelieving than bogusly large UI element. But this is also used to convey information, like for example what Scherlock sees. There is so far only one instance of 4th wall braking, where Moriarty dismissively blows away the text.
Ok if I see one single English man wearing a bowler hat, you are a liar! (also known as absolutes are never right)
Re:Isn't this the ultimate goal?
on
If I Had a Hammer
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
With services, it depends. I am quite sure that the average joe may get his hair cut and food waited by a robot at some point. But the people that own means of production (i.e. capital) will pride themselves that they are served by real humans. The millionaire may have a self flying jet but 12 gorgeous flight attendants. Unless we have a radical change in the society, I think we will have a situation pre industrial revolution: few with capital that employ hundreds of servants.
/* * [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum * possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP * to talk to the University of Mars. * PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented * ftp to mars will work nicely. */
Speaking of Germany, in severe cases of excessive speed (not speeding since it was allowed) drivers are convicted of man slaughter. The rule goes you are allowed to drive as fast as the conditions allow. Since there was an accident with fatalities, chances are you exceeded the speed that the current conditions allowed. Although there is no death penalty in Germany, getting ten years in the slammer is nothing light.
Slashdot Mirror
And what is the situation where it's safe to text while stopped at a red light? I can't find any.
A light that stays red over 2 minutes because the stupid trams keep overriding the signal? Even if an emergency vehicle comes up to the intersection, I will notice it because it will blast it's sirens extra loud before coming close to the intersection. (Not that I can do that much.)
On the other hand any distraction while moving is a bad idea, no matter how short. The only two times I ever ran a red light (in twenty years of deriving experience) was when gleaning at a map and trying to get the nav to shut up. In both cases I did not realize that there was a light at the intersection and since there where no other cars around, so I did not get additional hints about the situation. Many things that are considered "safe" can be quite unsafe when done in the wrong point in time. So I disagree with GP, once the vehicle is moving you should try to remove all distractions, that includes changing the radio station.
At least an IDE won't (usually) introduce blatant syntax errors.
Except when the autocompleate function jumps out of the window and suggests similar named but different functions. I had intelisense die on me regularly on large projects, I turned it off. It "helps" weak programmers in that they can create valid but poor code and never really learn the ins and outs of an API. Reading documentation is actually a better idea than hitting CTRL+SPACE. From that point on the benefit of autocompleate is negligible.
s/Emacs/Notepad++/ But I totally agree.
Let me clue you in. Don't think of it as an IM, think of it as an SMS replacement. It functions and behaves as SMS would, except that it is dirt cheap and can handle way larger data. The most genius thing they did was that you did not "sign up", you just installed the app and got all your fiends that used WA immediately. This is a classical example of "reducing friction".
You might find that if you used GG here in Germany, you might find yourself confronted with a lawsuit.
I am not sure about this. German privacy laws strongly hinge on expectation of privacy and publication. For example, if I am in a bar that does not explicitly forbade the taking pictures and somebody takes a picture of someone else and I am in the background. I can not prevent this or force the deletion/destruction. Yet if the picture gets published I can demand that my face is obfuscated.
As long as someone uses Glass in publicly accessible area where taking pictures is not something out of the common and the pictures are not published, Google Glass does not infringe on any privacy laws. Realtime streaming from a Glass unit will get you into trouble for sure.
The reason why CCTV is explicitly and visibly announced has nothing to do with the law proper, but with your expectation of privacy. If you passed a huge sign declaring that the area is videotaped 24/7 you can simply not claim you expected being unobserved.
Now, if you were an airline you might lobby for this so you didn't have to deal with brawls on your planes.
Don't forget about those overpriced "airphones".
Actually it makes sense to use UDP. With TCP, when one packet is out of order / dropped you delay all remaining packets. With UDP you either forget about the packet if you wish and continue with the rest of the data. This is especially important for real time streaming or VoIP. Then again, if you only "stream" an entire file for replay, you can basically use clunked HTTP 1.1.
Honestly I think the quote nails it, even though not in the sense that GP meant it. I think coding is easy, you can pick up any programming language quite easily and learning to code is not more that a couple house away. Yet designing, writing, packaging and deploying an application that does not immediately break down in production is a different thing. It takes allot of experience to pull it off and like everything in life 10.000 hours of practice separates the novice from the expert. The problem is not that programming needs a special skill, but it need a special aptitude to put in all the work necessary to get good at it. Few people are ready to indulge in this odd activity. It does not help that to get anything interesting done it takes like forever.
Designed in Germany...
How? Each and every "green" technology has some form of "problem". Solar? Forget it the energy to produce the cells is astronomical and the rare earth are non trivial to extract. Wind and water? Better, but you need to build the damned things from some metals. Smelting metals, even when recycling creates toxic smoke and other junk. Biomass? Works sort better, you are CO2 neutral, but the process of burning still creates SO2 and similar pollutants. You can combat air pollutants with filters, but then you end up with highly toxic filters you need to dispose of.
This also ignores the production of certain substances. Yes you can reduce use of plastic with a wood compound or wholly replacing some materials. The problem is that these materials where selected for their properties. You can replace many but the result is that you basically can ditch a large part of your high tech. You can build a car that has zero emissions (e.g. Hydrogen from solar-heat-plants in the Sahara), but building the car and infrastructure itself will never be zero emission.
We can do significantly better than now and I am totally for scientific research into this these areas. But zero pollution is fully and totally out of the question.
For example, I have seen a documentary where scientists are starting to consider digging up metals, such as copper from old garbage dumps. It the price for these resources makes this viable, it will be done. Same goes with all things "green", if the cost/benefit ratio makes it viable, it will be widely adapted.
It actually get's worse. The "why haven't we heard from them" paradox was based on the fact that in the 60s scientists could not imagine an advanced civilization without strong RF emissions. But we are already strongly dialing back the RF emissions by putting more onto wires, using more directed beams and lower power emissions. This overall means that in a couple of decades the earth will not emit any decipherable RF transition, either since most RF has died out or because you can not make out a signal from the noise. I dough that a satellite in LEO can pickup and decipher WiFi or mobile transmissions, so why should aliens be able to do so. All we will be is an anomaly strong RF source, but probably not of intelligent origin.
They basically lost the sale to me at the 18. word: polymorphism Do these marketing schmucks even know what that word means? If I built a automated malware filtering technology I would use a whole other set of technobable, like "advanced pastern recognition", "dynamic filtering", "machine learning" and maybe even "neural network". They not only fail to build a product that actually does something for their users, but also fail to properly sell it to anybody remotely technical.
I was thinking the same, except mine was:
A programming language for the ages: C11
I like it the way they solved it in the new BBC Sherlock movies/TV-show. Actual screens are rearlly shown, the important information is hovered somewhere in mid air. Interestingly this seems like less breaking suspension of disbelieving than bogusly large UI element. But this is also used to convey information, like for example what Scherlock sees. There is so far only one instance of 4th wall braking, where Moriarty dismissively blows away the text.
Ok if I see one single English man wearing a bowler hat, you are a liar! (also known as absolutes are never right)
With services, it depends. I am quite sure that the average joe may get his hair cut and food waited by a robot at some point. But the people that own means of production (i.e. capital) will pride themselves that they are served by real humans. The millionaire may have a self flying jet but 12 gorgeous flight attendants. Unless we have a radical change in the society, I think we will have a situation pre industrial revolution: few with capital that employ hundreds of servants.
That is because the current breed of CGI is extremely inefficient. Procedural generation can go quite far and will improve in the future.
/*
* [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum
* possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP
* to talk to the University of Mars.
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented
* ftp to mars will work nicely.
*/
(from /usr/src/linux/net/inet/tcp.c, concerning RTT [retransmission timeout])
+1 totally agree. Team Fortress is a fun game and all, but the graphics where never really updated since 2007. Not that I think this is a bad idea...
no-one wears a bowler hat
[citation needed]
Speaking of Germany, in severe cases of excessive speed (not speeding since it was allowed) drivers are convicted of man slaughter. The rule goes you are allowed to drive as fast as the conditions allow. Since there was an accident with fatalities, chances are you exceeded the speed that the current conditions allowed. Although there is no death penalty in Germany, getting ten years in the slammer is nothing light.
For example congested motorways?
In Texas the law is on the books but nobody, including the police follows it. Trying to follow it is a safety hazard.
Unless you count the 60 km/h limit on constructions zones, yes. In construction zones you have absolutely no compliance, they all drive at 80 km/h.