How does that work again? If this system is used, they will know where the optimal location is *before* choosing their destination. It would work in the opposite way you described; people would be more likely to stay at the bar they first arrived at given that they know, before they arrive, whether or not it meets their qualifications for a good place to stay. The one possible echo effect would be the ability to qualitatively determine a bar isn't worth staying at, and then going back to your quantitative resource (the App in question) to decide on and travel to a new bar. However, that has been a problem (for patrons, and an opportunity for street vendors) for as long as bars existed in quantities greater than 1.
Wow, i found a USB stick once on a college campus, looked like a nice one so i plugged it into a computer to see if i could find who's it was so i could return it to them. I didn't realize that i deserved having my computer fried for trying to return something. Do you put mace in your wallet so that if you drop it and someone tries to return it that it sprays them in the face?
Sure... The odds of finding your wallet through a "good Samaritan" are probably about even with the odds of finding it by coming across someone who just got maced in the face.
On a more serious note, if enough people know about and use this system, wouldn't this approximately model simulated annealing as people leave the bars with unfavorable ratios and go to bars with more favorable ratios? By the end of the night, all bars in a geographic area will probably exactly represent the ratio of all bar patrons that night divided according to gender preference. Thus defending the system against itself.
Think of it as creating a more efficient "market". Just as the electronic exchanges allow stocks and commodities to be traded with incredible efficiency, so to will these sorts of tools allow for the socializing "market" to be made much more efficient. Just think, no more sausage-fest over-supply of dudes at one bar and a severe under-supply at another just a few blocks away. I would think the equalization of supply and demand would be the ultimate goal of such a system. It will leave the free market forces to settle on the value of attractiveness in order to lure patrons. That is, until it starts porting the faces to hotornot.com, developing a "hotness quotient" for the bar's attendees...
I didn't pay attention to the figure in the image once I realized that the image itself has mouse-sensitive layers that shift around. Wait, what was I looking for again? Oh well. Nevermind. It's been a while since I checked slashdot.org. I better go do that.
"The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not."
Harden up sweet heart. Somehow British, Australian, Canadian, and other Commonwealth troops ran riot across Northern Africa and the Middle East in two world wars without their armies collapsing from heat stroke. Air conditioned tents are just a creature comfort like having fast food vendors on the bases is. It has nothing to do with military effectiveness (it probably detracts from it as the troops won't be properly acclimatised for when they are off base).
Alexander the Great CONQUERED Afghanistan and his troops were probably lucky to have woollen blankets and had walked all the way from Macedonia conquering what is now Iraq and Persia along the way.
P.S. The Soviet army response to their soldiers complaining about having to sleep in the snow with just a great-jacket was to make them spend more time training in the snow so they got used to it.
The Soviet empire also collapsed not long after their sojourn into Afghanistan, so using them as an example of how to win a war and keep your country whole is probably not where you want to go with this argument... As for the rest, no "empire" held Afghanistan for long after conquering it, and as for the risks of heat stroke they are quite real and quite expensive when you have to take a man off duty for an indeterminate period while he recovers. Air conditioning also addresses a key issue not mentioned (the purpose for which it was actually invented): reducing airborne insects and pathogens to prevent diseases. Heat might be tolerable, but someone who catches Malaria can't be ordered to "tough it out" and soldiers are most susceptible (and least likely to wear repellent) in the confines of their tents.
Finally, just because General Anderson is an expert and "knows what he's talking about", does not mean he is being honest. Argument from authority and all that.
Here is what you were looking for: "[Anderson]'s in the private sector now, pitching green solutions to the Pentagon - things like foam insulation, which the military has tried, spraying this stuff on to tents to make those air-conditioning bills go down."
He has a clear motivation to try to make the cost of Aircon (and energy in general) sound as large as possible. Now that doesn't mean it's not true, only that it is subject to bias. But then again, we have no problem letting the beef industry tell us what's OK to eat, or the coal industry from telling us what's OK to breathe; why should we have a problem when a fine upstanding capitalist like Steven Anderson tells us what to do about our energy problems?
LOL... Width AND Height, huh? Double one without the other and what do you get? A horribly rectangularly odd image. Double then both and what do you have? 4x the original pixel count. Geometric growth, it's not just for breakfast anymore! (it's also NOT equal to Linear growth.)
Reading, it's fundamental! NPR pointed out that the $20B per year is for Iraq AND Afghanistan. Please add the cost of the Iraq war to the $107B before dividing the $20B figure by it to come to a percentage of total cost. Then, you will arrive at the actual percentage of the war cost spent on air conditioning (*based on the criteria for this report.) It's also worth noting that this figure came from none other than Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq, Steven Anderson. So no, this isn't a "liberally biased anti-war puff piece" like the NPR detractors would have you believe; this is a figure from someone very high up *inside the Defense Department*.
Or, you can turn off NPR and go back to being told what to think by some other news outlet. Your choice.
The Afghan/Iran border area is ripe for wind power production, and some areas of southern Afghanistan are good solar prospects. But getting the needed equipment in place and protecting it might cost more than the return it provides. If the US would just take over Iran already (come on, you know they are itching to) the problem would be solved by putting a refinery in Afghanistan and piping in crude. Then, there is abundant energy locally and the nation as a whole becomes wealthier due to the energy production. Win/win, except if you are a desperate dictator or religious figurehead residing in Tehran.
True. Latency be damned, when it downloads its fast.
But what I found interesting in the charts is that they more or vindicated AT&T as far from the worst carrier, and usually second only to T-Mobile in the 3G arena. From the grouse level on the web you would be lead to believe that AT&T were the slowest and offered no connectivity at all in most place.
With an independent assessment, will any of these carriers change their advertising to avoid false advertising claims.
Your take is it was AT&T users that complained the most? I always figured it was iPhone users complaining the most. Not to mention, AT&T did have pretty low availability scores in tests gone by, and they have been dumping all that iLoot they earned from exclusivity into network upgrades (as they should) which seems to have brought the problem under control.
You complain about lack of freedom with the iPhone, and you want to switch to Samsung? Seriously, that seems like you are just replacing one evil with another. There are certainly open android phones out there, but they are not made by Samsung.
Er, Samsung doesn't have a good track record across their entire line, although unlike some mfrs, they do not lock their bootloader making upgrades via unconventional means very easy. However, they do make the newest, openest android handset on the market so you probably should give them some credit... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_S
I think you're wrong. The human audio visual system has limited resolution/perception ability. Once something is "good enough" most people stick with it. They don't keep pushing. Once audio/video is free of perceptible noise and distortion and is clear and sharp most people are happy.
Those are called "Old People" and they generally are not target markets for new products because they are "cheap and poor". We are nowhere near the peak of the video fidelity curve. If I (someone near middle age with marginal eyesight) can easily spot artifacts in they very best HD broadcasts and streams with a 26" monitor, then I know for sure we aren't there yet. If you want to think that streams aren't getting any bigger, go right ahead.
You do realize current video technology (HD broadcast TV) is higher definition that most people can see in their homes right?
You realize that for anyone with functioning eyeballs and a 720p TV, the difference between pure uncompressed HD content and the HD content delivered via the airwaves or typical streaming is pretty stark fucking obvious, right? If your eyes can't tell then good for you, but saying that no one else will ever want more fidelity because you can't seem to tell the difference isn't how progress works. If more bandwidth is present, more bandwidth will be consumed. If there is a magical tipping point at which all the bottlenecks go away and people miraculously declare "this is all I will ever need" and actually stick to it, you need to write that down and sell it to the highest bidder. You don't? OK, nevermind.
I realize that in your imaginary world, the bandwidth of content grows exponentially.. but thats just your imagination. The jump from SD to HD was not an exponential growth in the size of content.
The jump from 0.3 Mpixel/frame for DVD video to 2.0 Mpixel/frame for HD video doesn't count as "exponential" to you? Fine then, we can agree to disagree. Go ahead and bet that there will never be a "bigger and better" video format now that we have "the video format to end all video formats". That sure has worked well in the past:rolleyes:
So the inaccuracy is that you disagree with what I'm saying. Nice. Good luck getting past a 0 mod. Don't let a little thing like actually having a point to make stop you from being a raging asshole. FYI, not everyone has a connection that can handle 6-10 HD Netflix streams, and unless you are paying for 25Mbit+ service, neither do you. And my comment about MTU was for the exact reason you pointed out; the only time that efficiency goes down when streaming is if the MTU is unmet and a packet goes across the network part-full. In all other cases, the packets are full, and there is no net difference in the number of bytes moving across the network when streaming compared to downloading.
Do you? No, I don't think you do, not with existing video techniques. If block downloads were of a format that used end to end compression instead of stream compression, you could gain additional savings by requiring the user to download the whole file. As it is, prerecorded video streams already buffer enough to fill the MTU on the network, meaning that any ability to transfer it faster will still result in the same net amount of bytes going across the network. Wake me up when we have practical end-to-end compression techniques for video...
'So rather than [receiving] the bits out in a synchronous way, instead you could download the hour's worth of video in 15 seconds and watch it at your leisure.' He adds: 'It actually puts less stress on the network to have the higher speed of operation.'
Sure, it naturally would stand to reason that the operations (like streaming video) that currently require 100% utilization on today's network might only require a fraction of that on tomorrow's much faster network. The problem is, tomorrow we won't be happy with the same old video we used to stream, we are going to want a super high-def version with 8 channel stereo sound and in-line twitter commentary plus it will have to update our facebook status every time we pause it to go to the bathroom... And then we will be back to streaming at 100% capacity again, wondering when the next leap in networking will let us do block downloads again.
Seriously, Vint Cerf? This is the best idea you can muster? This is the same problem/solution cycle the internet has been locked in for its entire existence.
Hah, saying Apple has an average legal department is like saying Apple dabbles in selling phones. They live and breathe patents, IP, copyrights, trademarks and the like. They are suing other companies for just thinking about making a product that bears resemblance to theirs. They don't hesitate to buy up trademarks and other IP that they think have decided is valuable (to the tune of many millions of dollars). And they survive in the marketplace solely thanks to the fact that their devices are all equally good at playing music. Do you think they would let anything stand in the way of keeping their spot as the king of the hill?
I would challenge people to find out where I live or work. I think anonymity is still alive for those who care.
This. Anonymity is dying because corporations want it to die, and slowly but surely they are getting their way. Anonymity isn't good for the bottom line, and we are being teased and enticed and in some cases (facebook) dragged kicking and screaming out of anonymity. For those that still want to use the Internet anonymously, there aren't too many hurdles to doing so. *IF* you care. Anonymity just isn't the default any more (so few people choose it), but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
On top of that, many forget how tiny the music industry really is. Sure, they have been around a long time and sure, they are just about everywhere you look. But really, it's a few billion-dollar companies. Apple, on the other hand, is a $65B company that would gladly buy up or pay off any of the pathetic little music companies that might try to get in their way. Apple wants what it's customers want, after all; music that's affordable and easy to manage.
Banks have classified "Government" information? What are these kids trying to achieve, exactly?
Emails, most likely. Like the alleged Bank of America scandalous emails that WikiLeaks talked up. Remember, these days nationwide banks and Governments have a LOT in common (see: speculation, regulation, insider deals, campaign contribs, etc.)
I am not saying that we should not develop it, Im saying that how can we have discussions around the proper use of technology if we wont admit to what it can actually be used to accomplish.
That's ok, when the technology is perfected they will go ahead and make you forget you ever had such a silly objection in the first place. See, problem solved!
Slashdot Mirror
Most people DRIVE from bar to bar...not walking or taking a bus....at least in the US.
You're right... the real benefit will be felt by the cops out to arrest drunk drivers!
How does that work again? If this system is used, they will know where the optimal location is *before* choosing their destination. It would work in the opposite way you described; people would be more likely to stay at the bar they first arrived at given that they know, before they arrive, whether or not it meets their qualifications for a good place to stay. The one possible echo effect would be the ability to qualitatively determine a bar isn't worth staying at, and then going back to your quantitative resource (the App in question) to decide on and travel to a new bar. However, that has been a problem (for patrons, and an opportunity for street vendors) for as long as bars existed in quantities greater than 1.
Wow, i found a USB stick once on a college campus, looked like a nice one so i plugged it into a computer to see if i could find who's it was so i could return it to them. I didn't realize that i deserved having my computer fried for trying to return something. Do you put mace in your wallet so that if you drop it and someone tries to return it that it sprays them in the face?
Sure... The odds of finding your wallet through a "good Samaritan" are probably about even with the odds of finding it by coming across someone who just got maced in the face.
On a more serious note, if enough people know about and use this system, wouldn't this approximately model simulated annealing as people leave the bars with unfavorable ratios and go to bars with more favorable ratios? By the end of the night, all bars in a geographic area will probably exactly represent the ratio of all bar patrons that night divided according to gender preference. Thus defending the system against itself.
Think of it as creating a more efficient "market". Just as the electronic exchanges allow stocks and commodities to be traded with incredible efficiency, so to will these sorts of tools allow for the socializing "market" to be made much more efficient. Just think, no more sausage-fest over-supply of dudes at one bar and a severe under-supply at another just a few blocks away. I would think the equalization of supply and demand would be the ultimate goal of such a system. It will leave the free market forces to settle on the value of attractiveness in order to lure patrons. That is, until it starts porting the faces to hotornot.com, developing a "hotness quotient" for the bar's attendees...
I didn't pay attention to the figure in the image once I realized that the image itself has mouse-sensitive layers that shift around. Wait, what was I looking for again? Oh well. Nevermind. It's been a while since I checked slashdot.org. I better go do that.
"The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not."
Harden up sweet heart. Somehow British, Australian, Canadian, and other Commonwealth troops ran riot across Northern Africa and the Middle East in two world wars without their armies collapsing from heat stroke. Air conditioned tents are just a creature comfort like having fast food vendors on the bases is. It has nothing to do with military effectiveness (it probably detracts from it as the troops won't be properly acclimatised for when they are off base).
Alexander the Great CONQUERED Afghanistan and his troops were probably lucky to have woollen blankets and had walked all the way from Macedonia conquering what is now Iraq and Persia along the way.
P.S. The Soviet army response to their soldiers complaining about having to sleep in the snow with just a great-jacket was to make them spend more time training in the snow so they got used to it.
The Soviet empire also collapsed not long after their sojourn into Afghanistan, so using them as an example of how to win a war and keep your country whole is probably not where you want to go with this argument... As for the rest, no "empire" held Afghanistan for long after conquering it, and as for the risks of heat stroke they are quite real and quite expensive when you have to take a man off duty for an indeterminate period while he recovers. Air conditioning also addresses a key issue not mentioned (the purpose for which it was actually invented): reducing airborne insects and pathogens to prevent diseases. Heat might be tolerable, but someone who catches Malaria can't be ordered to "tough it out" and soldiers are most susceptible (and least likely to wear repellent) in the confines of their tents.
Finally, just because General Anderson is an expert and "knows what he's talking about", does not mean he is being honest. Argument from authority and all that.
Here is what you were looking for: "[Anderson]'s in the private sector now, pitching green solutions to the Pentagon - things like foam insulation, which the military has tried, spraying this stuff on to tents to make those air-conditioning bills go down."
He has a clear motivation to try to make the cost of Aircon (and energy in general) sound as large as possible. Now that doesn't mean it's not true, only that it is subject to bias. But then again, we have no problem letting the beef industry tell us what's OK to eat, or the coal industry from telling us what's OK to breathe; why should we have a problem when a fine upstanding capitalist like Steven Anderson tells us what to do about our energy problems?
LOL... Width AND Height, huh? Double one without the other and what do you get? A horribly rectangularly odd image. Double then both and what do you have? 4x the original pixel count. Geometric growth, it's not just for breakfast anymore! (it's also NOT equal to Linear growth.)
Reading, it's fundamental! NPR pointed out that the $20B per year is for Iraq AND Afghanistan. Please add the cost of the Iraq war to the $107B before dividing the $20B figure by it to come to a percentage of total cost. Then, you will arrive at the actual percentage of the war cost spent on air conditioning (*based on the criteria for this report.) It's also worth noting that this figure came from none other than Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq, Steven Anderson. So no, this isn't a "liberally biased anti-war puff piece" like the NPR detractors would have you believe; this is a figure from someone very high up *inside the Defense Department*.
Or, you can turn off NPR and go back to being told what to think by some other news outlet. Your choice.
The Afghan/Iran border area is ripe for wind power production, and some areas of southern Afghanistan are good solar prospects. But getting the needed equipment in place and protecting it might cost more than the return it provides. If the US would just take over Iran already (come on, you know they are itching to) the problem would be solved by putting a refinery in Afghanistan and piping in crude. Then, there is abundant energy locally and the nation as a whole becomes wealthier due to the energy production. Win/win, except if you are a desperate dictator or religious figurehead residing in Tehran.
True. Latency be damned, when it downloads its fast.
But what I found interesting in the charts is that they more or vindicated AT&T as far from the worst carrier, and
usually second only to T-Mobile in the 3G arena. From the grouse level on the web you would be lead to believe that
AT&T were the slowest and offered no connectivity at all in most place.
With an independent assessment, will any of these carriers change their advertising to avoid false advertising claims.
Your take is it was AT&T users that complained the most? I always figured it was iPhone users complaining the most. Not to mention, AT&T did have pretty low availability scores in tests gone by, and they have been dumping all that iLoot they earned from exclusivity into network upgrades (as they should) which seems to have brought the problem under control.
You complain about lack of freedom with the iPhone, and you want to switch to Samsung? Seriously, that seems like you are just replacing one evil with another. There are certainly open android phones out there, but they are not made by Samsung.
Er, Samsung doesn't have a good track record across their entire line, although unlike some mfrs, they do not lock their bootloader making upgrades via unconventional means very easy. However, they do make the newest, openest android handset on the market so you probably should give them some credit... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_S
I think you're wrong. The human audio visual system has limited resolution/perception ability. Once something is "good enough" most people stick with it. They don't keep pushing. Once audio/video is free of perceptible noise and distortion and is clear and sharp most people are happy.
Those are called "Old People" and they generally are not target markets for new products because they are "cheap and poor". We are nowhere near the peak of the video fidelity curve. If I (someone near middle age with marginal eyesight) can easily spot artifacts in they very best HD broadcasts and streams with a 26" monitor, then I know for sure we aren't there yet. If you want to think that streams aren't getting any bigger, go right ahead.
You do realize current video technology (HD broadcast TV) is higher definition that most people can see in their homes right?
You realize that for anyone with functioning eyeballs and a 720p TV, the difference between pure uncompressed HD content and the HD content delivered via the airwaves or typical streaming is pretty stark fucking obvious, right? If your eyes can't tell then good for you, but saying that no one else will ever want more fidelity because you can't seem to tell the difference isn't how progress works. If more bandwidth is present, more bandwidth will be consumed. If there is a magical tipping point at which all the bottlenecks go away and people miraculously declare "this is all I will ever need" and actually stick to it, you need to write that down and sell it to the highest bidder. You don't? OK, nevermind.
I realize that in your imaginary world, the bandwidth of content grows exponentially.. but thats just your imagination. The jump from SD to HD was not an exponential growth in the size of content.
The jump from 0.3 Mpixel/frame for DVD video to 2.0 Mpixel/frame for HD video doesn't count as "exponential" to you? Fine then, we can agree to disagree. Go ahead and bet that there will never be a "bigger and better" video format now that we have "the video format to end all video formats". That sure has worked well in the past :rolleyes:
So the inaccuracy is that you disagree with what I'm saying. Nice. Good luck getting past a 0 mod. Don't let a little thing like actually having a point to make stop you from being a raging asshole. FYI, not everyone has a connection that can handle 6-10 HD Netflix streams, and unless you are paying for 25Mbit+ service, neither do you. And my comment about MTU was for the exact reason you pointed out; the only time that efficiency goes down when streaming is if the MTU is unmet and a packet goes across the network part-full. In all other cases, the packets are full, and there is no net difference in the number of bytes moving across the network when streaming compared to downloading.
Do you? No, I don't think you do, not with existing video techniques. If block downloads were of a format that used end to end compression instead of stream compression, you could gain additional savings by requiring the user to download the whole file. As it is, prerecorded video streams already buffer enough to fill the MTU on the network, meaning that any ability to transfer it faster will still result in the same net amount of bytes going across the network. Wake me up when we have practical end-to-end compression techniques for video...
'So rather than [receiving] the bits out in a synchronous way, instead you could download the hour's worth of video in 15 seconds and watch it at your leisure.' He adds: 'It actually puts less stress on the network to have the higher speed of operation.'
Sure, it naturally would stand to reason that the operations (like streaming video) that currently require 100% utilization on today's network might only require a fraction of that on tomorrow's much faster network. The problem is, tomorrow we won't be happy with the same old video we used to stream, we are going to want a super high-def version with 8 channel stereo sound and in-line twitter commentary plus it will have to update our facebook status every time we pause it to go to the bathroom... And then we will be back to streaming at 100% capacity again, wondering when the next leap in networking will let us do block downloads again.
Seriously, Vint Cerf? This is the best idea you can muster? This is the same problem/solution cycle the internet has been locked in for its entire existence.
Hah, saying Apple has an average legal department is like saying Apple dabbles in selling phones. They live and breathe patents, IP, copyrights, trademarks and the like. They are suing other companies for just thinking about making a product that bears resemblance to theirs. They don't hesitate to buy up trademarks and other IP that they think have decided is valuable (to the tune of many millions of dollars). And they survive in the marketplace solely thanks to the fact that their devices are all equally good at playing music. Do you think they would let anything stand in the way of keeping their spot as the king of the hill?
Enjoy your new easy-open (kicked in) door and your oh so comfortable (face smashed into it) flooring in your cozy apartment! It sounds nice! http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/25/1415259/Bizarre-Porn-Raid-Underscores-Wi-Fi-Privacy-Risks
I would challenge people to find out where I live or work. I think anonymity is still alive for those who care.
This. Anonymity is dying because corporations want it to die, and slowly but surely they are getting their way. Anonymity isn't good for the bottom line, and we are being teased and enticed and in some cases (facebook) dragged kicking and screaming out of anonymity. For those that still want to use the Internet anonymously, there aren't too many hurdles to doing so. *IF* you care. Anonymity just isn't the default any more (so few people choose it), but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
On top of that, many forget how tiny the music industry really is. Sure, they have been around a long time and sure, they are just about everywhere you look. But really, it's a few billion-dollar companies. Apple, on the other hand, is a $65B company that would gladly buy up or pay off any of the pathetic little music companies that might try to get in their way. Apple wants what it's customers want, after all; music that's affordable and easy to manage.
Banks have classified "Government" information? What are these kids trying to achieve, exactly?
Emails, most likely. Like the alleged Bank of America scandalous emails that WikiLeaks talked up. Remember, these days nationwide banks and Governments have a LOT in common (see: speculation, regulation, insider deals, campaign contribs, etc.)
Don't forget to hide your kids... hide your wife... and you better hide your husband cause they leakin everybody out here...
lulz
I am not saying that we should not develop it, Im saying that how can we have discussions around the proper use of technology if we wont admit to what it can actually be used to accomplish.
That's ok, when the technology is perfected they will go ahead and make you forget you ever had such a silly objection in the first place. See, problem solved!