"A few years ago, I was moving a new bed into my apartment, and this woman who lived in the building opened the front door for me with her key. She said, 'I'm not worried because a rapist wouldn't have a bed like that.' That's how she started the conversation. Now, what I should have said was nothing. What I did say was 'You'd be surprised.' '
I think the most interesting part of the story, and that which makes it/.-appropriate is that they're storing the energy mechanically instead of in a battery. I'd imagine the power levels this kind of system would require and charge/drain rates would wreak all kinds of havoc on a typical battery. Furthermore, it seems like a good call for a rapid (6-8 seconds) release of the stored power. It's a hybrid race car, not a commuter; the primary benefit is the speed boost (akin to using nitrous oxide), not the fuel economy.
Reminds me of episode where Dwight teaches the office self-defense by attacking himself. It's kind of hard to successfully attack yourself without the element of surprise!
People appearantly want their OS like their politicians: Making decisions for them.
Exactly, because the average end user wants a computer that just works, and they don't care about the specifics of how it does.
Imagine you take your car to the dealer for service and the technician asks you: What would you like to set the spark plug gap to? What would you like the ignition timing to be? Would you like the tires to be rotated in a cross or mirror pattern? You would give him a funny look and say "I don't know, I just want it to drive like it's supposed to."
I doubt he doesn't understand how cruise control systems work. I'm quite sure he can build one out of paperclips.
He just may not have been aware (read:not read the manual) of how the "adaptive" cruise control works on his Prius since its new and probably way different from any cruise control system he has ever used.
Furthermore, in my opinion, it's still the fault of the car. Just because software acts in the manner that the programmer intended doesn't mean that it does what it should do. This really comes down to an issue of user interface design. A well-designed system made for the typical automotive consumer should assume that the end-user will never look at the manual.
I fondly recall playing Fallout and Fallout 2, but still haven't tried Fallout 3. Between that game being 3D and real time on the one hand, and moralistically limiting actions (no killing children, for example) on the other, I'm afraid it won't be the same, or even that it'll somehow ruin the first couple games.
I know, right! The inability to ruthlessly murder young children is what stopped me from buying Uncharted 2.
When they were going after P2P networks like Napster and Kazaa, you could argue the merits of what the technology could be used for versus what it was actually being used for.
However, BitTorrent sees very widespread legitimate use that you can't argue with. And honestly, in those legit cases, blocking BitTorrent won't reduce network traffic, but instead shift it back into the FTP/HTTP client-server model, instead of allowing BitTorrent to distribute the load among people who already have the data.
Specifically, I had a cell phone (Sanyo PM-xxxx IIRC) that won't charge over USB until a *driver* was loaded onto the PC. The driver sent a small command over the USB, and that command opened the switch and started charging. This can be easily implemented in any device if the manufacturer wants it.
I've run into quite a few devices that are designed to act in similar [stupid] ways. I'm a firm believer in the Unix design philosophy. For example, only recently have digital camera manufacturers loosened their grip on software interaction. Certain brands are/were especially bad. I'm looking at you, Kodak. They would refuse to function in USB mass transfer mode and would only let you upload photos via a proprietary (read: ridiculous and bloated) software suite.
The hub is powered and without a data connection. USB is supposed to be just 5+V, 5-V, D+, D-. The hub runs the powered half with more than enough power on tap, but no data signal.
Apple apparently decided that they don't like the idea of using a "dumb" USB port to draw power as it's been disabled on my [wife's] 5G iPod Nano. Unfortunately, vendors have caught on and now charge $20+ for "iPod-compatible" chargers.
To make sure that only the official cable was used, there would be loop-back configurations built into unused pins at each end of the cable, so that a connector patched up from twenty-five core cable and a couple of RS232 snap connectors wouldn't work.
Kind of like how Apple charges $35 for an iPod USB wall charger, and makes sure that my generic USB wall chargers / powered USB hub won't work.
That's pretty much the experience I've had. My dad bought a Gateway desktop in 2006 (S-939 Athlon 64) and just outside of the [short] warranty period the motherboard started dying. The on-board video started going, so I got him a cheap video card to circumvent the problem. That worked for almost a year until the south-bridge died too. All in all I think the box lasted about 3 years. In comparison, I built my own system with similar specs in 2005, but with decent brand-name parts, and I've had very very few problems with it.
... my Wii does not output in 1080p, will movies streamed by Netflix display in HD? If not, why bother?
Because, believe it or not, most Wii end users would rather have Netflix streaming in 480p than nothing at all. The vast majority of end users still do most of their at-home movie-watching in 1080p and are ok with that.
To work on that slippery slope, as most real-world software development must, an anchor is needed. RMS and FSF are that anchor.
I agree 100%. I tend to disagree with a lot of RMS's philosophy, but the reality is that we need "extreme" viewpoints in the community to create "boundaries" for acceptable practice. Decisions will rarely reach an outlying boundary, like RMS, but if his philosophy disappeared we would see the software community drift in the opposite direction.
The same idea goes for politics. The two-party system works theoretically by creating two sides whose extremes argue opposing viewpoints, and the final decisions should end up at a logical compromise in between.
A better question would be: what about your tendons and all the other moving parts? Having super strong muscles doesn't do you a whole lot of good if your tendons can't support the extra load. Imagine shoving a heavy-duty diesel engine into a Honda Civic. The extra power is only useful until it starts to rip apart the chassis.
“According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” --Jerry Seinfeld
And yet $2000 is a serious barrier to entry for a small start-up or a hobbyist developer. Who says that only big name game studios produce quality games?
Next thing we will have 10foot disclaimers on the entrance to cinemas telling the dumb masses that its just pretend.
We already do. Stick around and watch the credits after the movie all the way through. I work at a theater and some of the legal disclaimers are kind of ridiculous already.
Really? Zombieland is entirely fictional and any similarities to any actual event or persons are entirely coincidental?... Really?
I know the SR60s/SR80s win a lot of awards, but I've not been a fan of them. They don't have enough presence, and in any slightly noisy environment they got completely drowned out - either down to their not keeping ambient sound out, or not packing enough punch. In isolation, they are pretty good. They're also not as comfortable as a good sennheiser, for me, I find the foam a little scratchy.
I own a pair of SR60's and they are the best headphones I have ever owned, for listening at home. You can't expect one pair of headphones to be the be all and end all of headphones in any particular set of circumstances. The audio quality that the SR60's provide is about as good as it gets, in my opinion, before the price/value curve shoots skyward. However, they are bulky and don't do a fantastic job of keeping audio in and external noise out. That's why I use them for listening at home when I really care about the quality. If I'm on the go, I care slightly less about quality and a lot more about convenience so I go with something a lot more portable and less expensive (in case of loss/theft/damage/etc).
I will say, though, that the SR60's have the highest build quality of any headphones I have personally handled. I've gone through so many cheapo Made-in-Taiwan pairs of headphones over the years and they all either fall apart, or the internal connections at the plug separate. The SR60's are built like a tank: heavy-gauge wires, heavy-duty connections, replaceable earpads, etc. At the very least I feel like I would actually take them up on the warranty if something ever happened to them and not just throw them in the trash like I would the cheapos.
(I also have no fiscal interest in Grado or any other headphone company.)
At least you got air to breathe and it's not a neutron star......
Even if we found another planet whose atmosphere contained oxygen, human beings require a pretty specific concentration of oxygen to breathe unassisted. Too highly concentrated and you get oxygen poisoning, not concentrated enough and you get lack-of-oxygen poisoning.
they forget to mention the *EXTRA* fuel expense for the leading vehicle that is basically towing the others..)
Fortunately, aerodynamics does not work like that. The reduced fuel consumption for the following vehicles is a result of reduced aerodynamic drag. Basically the lead vehicle pushes the air and forms a low-pressure wake behind it that the followers take advantage of. However, there is no additional drag penalty for the lead car. The only thing the lead car has to envy is the fuel savings that he doesn't get by being up front.
Statistically speaking, this would be mitigated by the fact that you should only rarely have to be at the front of the "train". E.g. in a ten car "train", you could expect to be a beneficiary approx. 90% of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
"A few years ago, I was moving a new bed into my apartment, and this woman who lived in the building opened the front door for me with her key. She said, 'I'm not worried because a rapist wouldn't have a bed like that.' That's how she started the conversation. Now, what I should have said was nothing. What I did say was 'You'd be surprised.' '
I think the most interesting part of the story, and that which makes it /.-appropriate is that they're storing the energy mechanically instead of in a battery. I'd imagine the power levels this kind of system would require and charge/drain rates would wreak all kinds of havoc on a typical battery. Furthermore, it seems like a good call for a rapid (6-8 seconds) release of the stored power. It's a hybrid race car, not a commuter; the primary benefit is the speed boost (akin to using nitrous oxide), not the fuel economy.
Reminds me of episode where Dwight teaches the office self-defense by attacking himself. It's kind of hard to successfully attack yourself without the element of surprise!
People appearantly want their OS like their politicians: Making decisions for them.
Exactly, because the average end user wants a computer that just works, and they don't care about the specifics of how it does.
Imagine you take your car to the dealer for service and the technician asks you: What would you like to set the spark plug gap to? What would you like the ignition timing to be? Would you like the tires to be rotated in a cross or mirror pattern? You would give him a funny look and say "I don't know, I just want it to drive like it's supposed to."
I doubt he doesn't understand how cruise control systems work. I'm quite sure he can build one out of paperclips. He just may not have been aware (read:not read the manual) of how the "adaptive" cruise control works on his Prius since its new and probably way different from any cruise control system he has ever used.
http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042251_is-wozs-prius-acceleration-just-toyotas-wacky-adaptive-cruise
Furthermore, in my opinion, it's still the fault of the car. Just because software acts in the manner that the programmer intended doesn't mean that it does what it should do. This really comes down to an issue of user interface design. A well-designed system made for the typical automotive consumer should assume that the end-user will never look at the manual.
We still need to brush our teeth to avoid calculus buildup and bad breath
Rationally speaking, brushing a minima of three times a day is integral to good oral hygeine.
rimshot();
I fondly recall playing Fallout and Fallout 2, but still haven't tried Fallout 3. Between that game being 3D and real time on the one hand, and moralistically limiting actions (no killing children, for example) on the other, I'm afraid it won't be the same, or even that it'll somehow ruin the first couple games.
I know, right! The inability to ruthlessly murder young children is what stopped me from buying Uncharted 2.
When they were going after P2P networks like Napster and Kazaa, you could argue the merits of what the technology could be used for versus what it was actually being used for.
However, BitTorrent sees very widespread legitimate use that you can't argue with. And honestly, in those legit cases, blocking BitTorrent won't reduce network traffic, but instead shift it back into the FTP/HTTP client-server model, instead of allowing BitTorrent to distribute the load among people who already have the data.
That's a terrible analogy. It's like saying a novelist is a book mechanic.
That, sir, was an excellent analogy.
I think the joke was that they officially make a salary of $1 a year, from which is deducted pennies in Social Security and Taxes. Whoosh?
Specifically, I had a cell phone (Sanyo PM-xxxx IIRC) that won't charge over USB until a *driver* was loaded onto the PC. The driver sent a small command over the USB, and that command opened the switch and started charging. This can be easily implemented in any device if the manufacturer wants it.
I've run into quite a few devices that are designed to act in similar [stupid] ways. I'm a firm believer in the Unix design philosophy. For example, only recently have digital camera manufacturers loosened their grip on software interaction. Certain brands are/were especially bad. I'm looking at you, Kodak. They would refuse to function in USB mass transfer mode and would only let you upload photos via a proprietary (read: ridiculous and bloated) software suite.
The hub is powered and without a data connection. USB is supposed to be just 5+V, 5-V, D+, D-. The hub runs the powered half with more than enough power on tap, but no data signal.
Apple apparently decided that they don't like the idea of using a "dumb" USB port to draw power as it's been disabled on my [wife's] 5G iPod Nano. Unfortunately, vendors have caught on and now charge $20+ for "iPod-compatible" chargers.
To make sure that only the official cable was used, there would be loop-back configurations built into unused pins at each end of the cable, so that a connector patched up from twenty-five core cable and a couple of RS232 snap connectors wouldn't work.
Kind of like how Apple charges $35 for an iPod USB wall charger, and makes sure that my generic USB wall chargers / powered USB hub won't work.
That's pretty much the experience I've had. My dad bought a Gateway desktop in 2006 (S-939 Athlon 64) and just outside of the [short] warranty period the motherboard started dying. The on-board video started going, so I got him a cheap video card to circumvent the problem. That worked for almost a year until the south-bridge died too. All in all I think the box lasted about 3 years. In comparison, I built my own system with similar specs in 2005, but with decent brand-name parts, and I've had very very few problems with it.
... my Wii does not output in 1080p, will movies streamed by Netflix display in HD? If not, why bother?
Because, believe it or not, most Wii end users would rather have Netflix streaming in 480p than nothing at all. The vast majority of end users still do most of their at-home movie-watching in 1080p and are ok with that.
To work on that slippery slope, as most real-world software development must, an anchor is needed. RMS and FSF are that anchor.
I agree 100%. I tend to disagree with a lot of RMS's philosophy, but the reality is that we need "extreme" viewpoints in the community to create "boundaries" for acceptable practice. Decisions will rarely reach an outlying boundary, like RMS, but if his philosophy disappeared we would see the software community drift in the opposite direction.
The same idea goes for politics. The two-party system works theoretically by creating two sides whose extremes argue opposing viewpoints, and the final decisions should end up at a logical compromise in between.
A better question would be: what about your tendons and all the other moving parts? Having super strong muscles doesn't do you a whole lot of good if your tendons can't support the extra load. Imagine shoving a heavy-duty diesel engine into a Honda Civic. The extra power is only useful until it starts to rip apart the chassis.
“According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” --Jerry Seinfeld
And yet $2000 is a serious barrier to entry for a small start-up or a hobbyist developer. Who says that only big name game studios produce quality games?
Next thing we will have 10foot disclaimers on the entrance to cinemas telling the dumb masses that its just pretend.
We already do. Stick around and watch the credits after the movie all the way through. I work at a theater and some of the legal disclaimers are kind of ridiculous already.
Really? Zombieland is entirely fictional and any similarities to any actual event or persons are entirely coincidental? ... Really?
I know the SR60s/SR80s win a lot of awards, but I've not been a fan of them. They don't have enough presence, and in any slightly noisy environment they got completely drowned out - either down to their not keeping ambient sound out, or not packing enough punch. In isolation, they are pretty good. They're also not as comfortable as a good sennheiser, for me, I find the foam a little scratchy.
I own a pair of SR60's and they are the best headphones I have ever owned, for listening at home. You can't expect one pair of headphones to be the be all and end all of headphones in any particular set of circumstances. The audio quality that the SR60's provide is about as good as it gets, in my opinion, before the price/value curve shoots skyward. However, they are bulky and don't do a fantastic job of keeping audio in and external noise out. That's why I use them for listening at home when I really care about the quality. If I'm on the go, I care slightly less about quality and a lot more about convenience so I go with something a lot more portable and less expensive (in case of loss/theft/damage/etc).
I will say, though, that the SR60's have the highest build quality of any headphones I have personally handled. I've gone through so many cheapo Made-in-Taiwan pairs of headphones over the years and they all either fall apart, or the internal connections at the plug separate. The SR60's are built like a tank: heavy-gauge wires, heavy-duty connections, replaceable earpads, etc. At the very least I feel like I would actually take them up on the warranty if something ever happened to them and not just throw them in the trash like I would the cheapos.
(I also have no fiscal interest in Grado or any other headphone company.)
At least you got air to breathe and it's not a neutron star......
Even if we found another planet whose atmosphere contained oxygen, human beings require a pretty specific concentration of oxygen to breathe unassisted. Too highly concentrated and you get oxygen poisoning, not concentrated enough and you get lack-of-oxygen poisoning.
they forget to mention the *EXTRA* fuel expense for the leading vehicle that is basically towing the others..)
Fortunately, aerodynamics does not work like that. The reduced fuel consumption for the following vehicles is a result of reduced aerodynamic drag. Basically the lead vehicle pushes the air and forms a low-pressure wake behind it that the followers take advantage of. However, there is no additional drag penalty for the lead car. The only thing the lead car has to envy is the fuel savings that he doesn't get by being up front.
Statistically speaking, this would be mitigated by the fact that you should only rarely have to be at the front of the "train". E.g. in a ten car "train", you could expect to be a beneficiary approx. 90% of the time.
... $30 per month for the mandatory 'unlimited' data plan that has a monthly cap of 5Gb.
Verizon has confirmed that tethering will cost another $30 per month for an additional unlimited data plan that is also limited to 5Gb.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I love flan, but I just can't eat it and drive at the same time. Look! I've got flan all over me! Introducing: Pocket Flan!