best known for being the setting of such uplifting police dramas as The Wire and Homicide and who's most famous football player killed a guy at a Super Bowl party^W^W^W^W^W^W^W just happened to be standing there when three of his buddies killed a guy.
was the Clear Channel CEO saying that all content, including pay cable and satelite radio, should be held to the same standard as public broadcast. His rationale: for the kids.
*pfff* Sorry but there's a reason why there is "public" standards on "public" channels. This wasn't about any sort of moral or ethical standard. This guy was just pissy because all adults were voting with their $$$ and going off to adult-level content on HBO or XM radio that he, as bound by public broadcast, could never provide.
So his whole thing is to level the playing field by screwing everybody else. What a nimrod.
I'm wondering if the use of university as a standard educational step, a High School v. 2, instead of an institution if you are so inclined to study an advanced field may have something to do with it.
Not that there are too many philosophy or business majors out there, but because someone has to teach them. Instead of putting money into RA's, grad students must be pooled into TAs and untenured professors (probably those with the most recent education, more reason to do cutting edge research, and none of the mental roadblocks to do it) have their time eaten up teaching them.
Especially in the new liberal education where everybody has to have some computer skills, etc. So instead of two sections of 30 non-chem chemistry courses, you have 25 totally 300+. Same resources, spred thinner.
People (read: parents and some academics) might not like the idea that college isn't a panecea or that going to college and not reading James Joyce doesn't hurt you in our adult life (everybody here remembers the major themes of Finnegin's Wake right?). Modern society works partly because people can specialize. So let them do so: let the physicists hack physics, not intro courses or three class workloads, etc.
Naturally this may play back to the crappy K through 12 making people think that college is necessary... eh, just a thought.
is any more political than your average FPS cyberpunk anti-corporation plot. Sure, you're fighting the agents of oppression with graffiti and actively "fighting" police (since you don't kill anyone)... but is that much different than Deus Ex (other than BS-2000 and Cibo Matto being on the soundtrack)?
It is less political than more of an attitude (authorities are to be distrusted, corporations are greedy, etc.). Unless a game made a specific call to a political item (say Echo the Dolphin and the environment or that one about the animal testing where you swing the invulnerable rabbit like a mace) I can't really see calling these games political.
And maybe its just me, but I haven't questioned my own beliefs after playing a game.
You seem to be missing what representational means. Presentational means tempo-switching in terms of rules of the game. When Neo wakes up in the trainstation after being blown out of reality after being woken up from the Matrix's fake reality it occurs within the rules of the movie regardless of it disproving what the audience initially believed. Because there was a reason: the Matrix is an illusion or Neo is trapped between worlds, etc. The rules aren't RL realistic, but they are rules and have an inherent logic.
Compare that to the similar Oshii's Avalon where Ash escapes from a video game into the real world. After the climax, the real world audience in the theater hall disappears and is replaced by the Ghost. Even the gritty realism of Beat Takashi's work is defined by the nonsensical (a bar full of men instantly cut to all of them standing stoically as they fire point blank at each other. Sonatine). The same could be said of the ending to Final Fantasy VII.
Of course this is all ancedotal. We could debate subjectives and you could just dismiss my examples as "absolutely not" true, "poor examples", and "untrue in general".
I'd suggest then reading the cultural works of noted scholar Donald Richie (A Hundred Years of Japanese Film where he talks of the Presentational and Representational in everything up to modern anime and The Image Factory : Fads and Fashions in Japan). The idea of representational versus presentational is pretty well established.
Hmmm. I'm not exactly sure what you mean. That the Japanese would appreciate a seemingly open-ended style of play of RTS games?
I guess the same could be said of Street Fighter. RTS games have an explicit goal window: annihilate the other side. The whole strategy and rest is technique for accomplishing that goal. By no means does this imply a limited experience or that these games are inferior. Hell, Sirlin would say that they exemplify good gaming design. But the ultimate step ("killing the other guys last unit" "reducing the other player to 0 health") is obvious.
Anyway, these are just rules of thumb on culture, not hard and fast rules.
This is the great divide in Japanese versus Western cinema as well. Western/American cinema is representational in that it follows a definable logic, that there are rules that the entertainment follows. One of the greatest crimes an artist can do is "cheat" (i.e. break the rules). The killer chasing the coed is trapped in the sewer, now he's in front of her! This would cause Western audiences to throw a fucking fit. Even the highly fantastic (The Matrix) are judged about being "fair" to their own logic.
In Japan it is the opposite: logic is derived from what is presented to the audience. So if a character walks through a door in his house and ends up on Moon, that is fine since the director is trying to say something. American audiences will expect some sort of rationale for it happening (i.e. that he has some sort of To-the-Moon teleportation door in his house). Japanese art design is authoritative from the creative design of the artist.
This thirst for "realism" based upon some ruleset drives the Western aesthetic. Look at the games listed as most popular in the US: crime, sports, shooters. These are genres that attempt to capture some authenticity of an experience.
On the other side you have the Incomprehensible Japanese Videogame Plot: starts reasonably, long character expository dialogue, wierd imagery, enemies dying, enemies revealing their "true form" . The Japanese game is a vehicle for the gamer to experience the designer's 'vision'. The gamer is along for a ride, and his role suppletory to that. The gaming experience improves by how much the gamer can live up to the creator's designs: how well he can sneak and run around in a box as Snake, how totally he can learn the techniques of Forrest Law, etc.
The US saddles the player with the primary responsibility. He is the engine of the storytelling (generally. Only recently have open-ended games allowed a full realization of this).
RMS's talk of a Free World devoid of any contamination by non-free dependency sounds eerily like Juche. I guess self-reliance is nice and all but all the talk of "rescuing Java programs" from "shackles" seems to remove one of the most basic freedoms: the freedom of choice. I myself must not only be free but must all of my friends must be free as well? And if they aren't, I really shouldn't because that's just accepting their unacceptable lifestyle?
That just doesn't sit well with me.
A guy in the May Esquire suggested this
on
RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
and not for the reason you expect.
He sees it (charging over 20 bucks a cd) as a litmis test for finding the artists who are making music worth while to buy at a higher price. A "tax on shitty taste" he calls it. Not only would it weed out the weak but force artists to give you more bang for your buck (instead of DMX squozing out an album every 8 months like he did).
Besides, if you are only interested in one song from an album, isn't a buck in change better than 13+ dollars for the same fitness?
Of course there are other options. Say secondspin.com which is an online used cd/dvd store. Just bought a disc there for a 1.99 that is out of print. Even counting in S&H I got music for half the price of iTunes.
Remember though that economics were a major modivation for most classic (European) exploration: faster routes to India, gold, cotton. Of course the many of the other reasons (e.g. converting all the savages ala the White Man's Burden) weren't any better.
Yeah, Hillary and Norgay didn't climb Everest for money, but setting a permanent base on Mars is a little more of a feat than that. Dollars, God, or Empire-building cold wars between nations seem to be the only real good ways of getting a lot of people behind these efforts. And of all of those, I think we'd agree that money is the most neutral.
Innovative? I'd have to say Linux's strength is that it isn't innovative in its design. It instead replicates tried and accepted OS paradigms. It's monolithic (although that's changing. Although it definitely isn't a microkernel like OSX or Hurd), it eschews object orientated programming, etc. OTOH NT and all of its derivatives do try to absorb some of those features; exponentially increasing its complexity (and resulting in all of those pitfalls). In some ways its a 16 part screwdriver.
Innovation in technology isn't necessarily a great thing. For every Macintosh you have your NeXT. Heck, even the Mac was just derivative of PARC's work. Linux plays it conservative and just does what it does.
that women would never want to open the hood to their car, or that women came up with the concept (that women would never want to open the hood)?
Of course, from the article: The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
Bull. This is up there with the three bits (or whatever) of encryption on DVDs as the lamest attempt at obfuscation. The next day, after hitting the showroom, Autozone would have a 3 dollar wrench to open this bastard. And I bet anyone with an IQ over 10 could pop this badboy off with a screwdriver and a little leverage. That's probably all this Volvo mechanic would do after tiring of this Feature.
A clumsy kludge that has no point other than being a big pain in the ass. Really, does having access to you're car's naughty bits in any way effect driving? This is the New Coke of car innovations.
Besides, the only Swedish vehicle worth sitting in is a Saab Draken.;)
'Discover what pseudonyms your candidate uses online....'
BS, I say. There are many reasons why people take nom de plumes and pseudonyms, but all come back to the fact that "-and I just wanted a certain level of anonymity". Not fullblown anonymity, just enough to make your online personal dealings disjoint from any sort of RL responsibilities you have.
There's a reason why you're not supposed to talk about religion, politics, and all that stuff on first dates or job interviews: because it's inappropriate (unless the job is, obviously, at a church, for a political party, etc.). Employees are expected to leave their personal lives at the door when at the job. But employers should feel peachy about betraying that same confidence?
When writing some free COM app or TPS report coversheet, what does an employee's view on gay marriage, Palestine, or the RIAA have to do with anything? And even if the employer was doing something as inoccuous as suggested in the article and just "seeing if they are passionate without compromise"... who here doesn't think they could find something they'd hold against you?
Candidates are looking for jobs, not friends. Neither should employers.
Ok, so the trailer clearly has Appleseed at a 4/17 Japanese date. So where does that put the US release. Or is there even a distributor yet? It'd be nice to see this even in a limited release.
Really, the fact that all tools are under a single window hasn't seemed to hurt the Adobe family of products from being wildass popular. So what, other than being different for the sake of being different, is the point? Copying popular Windows/Mac apps isn't a bad thing if it is what people really like about the user experience.
Folks seem to like the "one window to bind them" approach. Additionally I (and probably others) can't stand to use GIMP with its bazillion windows cluttering my taskbar (as it gets in the way of quickly ALT-TABing throug different apps).
Also, would it kill them to mirror the prebuilt binary/installer packages on a machine larger than a Casio calculator? I spend more time trying to get Gimp on Windows than using it.
Of course it was one of those "Go to our other site and reenter all your info there" things. But I got to apply for a half dozen jobs and got an interview email within a day. Oh and this was last June (2003) so it was post-boom.
Strangest thing: At my interview I found out that a guy I went to grad school (I just graduatated) was here (they had me eat lunch with him). On top of that a guy who I knew from High School and I hadn't seen in 6 years just moved into the department in the building next to mine. It started to cross that threshold into creepy.
But, yes, I did get hits off of Monster. Of course the best were usually those that required you to (as above) to fill in information again on their site. It seems to keep the resume-flooders away. But I didn't even know my current employer existed until I went browsing.
Visible from Earth
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Screw shooting me into the Sun, shoot me to the moon on the non-Dark Side. That way generations of my progeny can look up on a starless night and see my cold grimacing corpse smiling down on them.
anyway? My first experience with Dark Matter and Energy was all that it was "well, things are going faster and so people just postulated this idea." I wasn't told that anyone really believed in it (unlike terracentrism or whatnot).
My prof mentioned it was like that Far Side where it has the equation on the chalkboard that said "Here a miracle occurs".
the system alerts the driver by lighting a warning icon on the outside rearview mirror for that side of the vehicle.
I dunno. I actually think a lot of accidents are caused by lack of focus resulting in twisting and turning around too. Folks focused on the guy behind them not seeing that the car before them has its breaks on.
I've always been of the mind that a HUD is the way to go: not only for this collision information, but for things usually hidden behind the steering wheel (tac, speed, fuel). I think the integration of radio controls into the steering wheel is a great step in keeping people focused where all the kinetic energy of the car is going.
And, really, do you need to look at a rearview mirror if you have an icon before you saying "clear to left"?
Consider my (anecdotal) experience: of my fellow 2003 CS Master's and PhD graduates (from a Big Ten school) I knew exactly one on the day of graduation who had a job...
and it was IT. Yeah, there was some programming involved but it wasn't CS (and it definitely wasn't R&D). I've kept in touch with my fellow grads and I only know one who is actually employed in CS (as a prof at the small midwestern college he got his undergrad from). The rest of us are in various degrees of software wrangling.
When folks talk about the golden pastures of CS and the first principles (algorithms, finite automata, OS, arch) they don't seem to realize how few CS thinkers the world needs (or can employ). Somebody before compared CS and IT as the difference between desgining cars and changing the oil. Well, no shit. But riddle me this: how many vacancies are there in the world of auto engineering? Hell, how many jobs are there total? Pure CS is the domain of universities. The other 0.1% are from the giant computer firms and the government... who end up hiring those same uni profs anyway.
The fact is the only dollar making value of most CS degrees is to change people's oil. No one's paying folks to stand on street corners doing algorithm analysis. That's why so many CS undergrads are trying to get into grad school: they think it'll let them escape codemonkeydom or unemployment. But then they're just trying to get a piece of a niche field.
Slashdot Mirror
best known for being the setting of such uplifting police dramas as The Wire and Homicide and who's most famous football player killed a guy at a Super Bowl party^W^W^W^W^W^W^W just happened to be standing there when three of his buddies killed a guy.
But that's why we love Ballmer, right?
was the Clear Channel CEO saying that all content, including pay cable and satelite radio, should be held to the same standard as public broadcast. His rationale: for the kids.
*pfff* Sorry but there's a reason why there is "public" standards on "public" channels. This wasn't about any sort of moral or ethical standard. This guy was just pissy because all adults were voting with their $$$ and going off to adult-level content on HBO or XM radio that he, as bound by public broadcast, could never provide.
So his whole thing is to level the playing field by screwing everybody else. What a nimrod.
The big question is, will other states begin to emulate Indiana by tossing human grading?
Actually everybody else's heard of an Indian computer that will grade the same paper at a tenth of the cost that will be released in a few months.
We must stop the outsourcing of jobs that can be handled by capable AMERICAN computers! When will this end?!?
Finnegin's Wake a book so good I can't remember how to spell it :p
I'm wondering if the use of university as a standard educational step, a High School v. 2, instead of an institution if you are so inclined to study an advanced field may have something to do with it.
Not that there are too many philosophy or business majors out there, but because someone has to teach them. Instead of putting money into RA's, grad students must be pooled into TAs and untenured professors (probably those with the most recent education, more reason to do cutting edge research, and none of the mental roadblocks to do it) have their time eaten up teaching them.
Especially in the new liberal education where everybody has to have some computer skills, etc. So instead of two sections of 30 non-chem chemistry courses, you have 25 totally 300+. Same resources, spred thinner.
People (read: parents and some academics) might not like the idea that college isn't a panecea or that going to college and not reading James Joyce doesn't hurt you in our adult life (everybody here remembers the major themes of Finnegin's Wake right?). Modern society works partly because people can specialize. So let them do so: let the physicists hack physics, not intro courses or three class workloads, etc.
Naturally this may play back to the crappy K through 12 making people think that college is necessary... eh, just a thought.
is any more political than your average FPS cyberpunk anti-corporation plot. Sure, you're fighting the agents of oppression with graffiti and actively "fighting" police (since you don't kill anyone)... but is that much different than Deus Ex (other than BS-2000 and Cibo Matto being on the soundtrack)?
It is less political than more of an attitude (authorities are to be distrusted, corporations are greedy, etc.). Unless a game made a specific call to a political item (say Echo the Dolphin and the environment or that one about the animal testing where you swing the invulnerable rabbit like a mace) I can't really see calling these games political.
And maybe its just me, but I haven't questioned my own beliefs after playing a game.
You seem to be missing what representational means. Presentational means tempo-switching in terms of rules of the game. When Neo wakes up in the trainstation after being blown out of reality after being woken up from the Matrix's fake reality it occurs within the rules of the movie regardless of it disproving what the audience initially believed. Because there was a reason: the Matrix is an illusion or Neo is trapped between worlds, etc. The rules aren't RL realistic, but they are rules and have an inherent logic.
Compare that to the similar Oshii's Avalon where Ash escapes from a video game into the real world. After the climax, the real world audience in the theater hall disappears and is replaced by the Ghost. Even the gritty realism of Beat Takashi's work is defined by the nonsensical (a bar full of men instantly cut to all of them standing stoically as they fire point blank at each other. Sonatine). The same could be said of the ending to Final Fantasy VII.
Of course this is all ancedotal. We could debate subjectives and you could just dismiss my examples as "absolutely not" true, "poor examples", and "untrue in general".
I'd suggest then reading the cultural works of noted scholar Donald Richie (A Hundred Years of Japanese Film where he talks of the Presentational and Representational in everything up to modern anime and The Image Factory : Fads and Fashions in Japan). The idea of representational versus presentational is pretty well established.
Hmmm. I'm not exactly sure what you mean. That the Japanese would appreciate a seemingly open-ended style of play of RTS games?
I guess the same could be said of Street Fighter. RTS games have an explicit goal window: annihilate the other side. The whole strategy and rest is technique for accomplishing that goal. By no means does this imply a limited experience or that these games are inferior. Hell, Sirlin would say that they exemplify good gaming design. But the ultimate step ("killing the other guys last unit" "reducing the other player to 0 health") is obvious.
Anyway, these are just rules of thumb on culture, not hard and fast rules.
This is the great divide in Japanese versus Western cinema as well. Western/American cinema is representational in that it follows a definable logic, that there are rules that the entertainment follows. One of the greatest crimes an artist can do is "cheat" (i.e. break the rules). The killer chasing the coed is trapped in the sewer, now he's in front of her! This would cause Western audiences to throw a fucking fit. Even the highly fantastic (The Matrix) are judged about being "fair" to their own logic.
In Japan it is the opposite: logic is derived from what is presented to the audience. So if a character walks through a door in his house and ends up on Moon, that is fine since the director is trying to say something. American audiences will expect some sort of rationale for it happening (i.e. that he has some sort of To-the-Moon teleportation door in his house). Japanese art design is authoritative from the creative design of the artist.
This thirst for "realism" based upon some ruleset drives the Western aesthetic. Look at the games listed as most popular in the US: crime, sports, shooters. These are genres that attempt to capture some authenticity of an experience.
On the other side you have the Incomprehensible Japanese Videogame Plot: starts reasonably, long character expository dialogue, wierd imagery, enemies dying, enemies revealing their "true form" . The Japanese game is a vehicle for the gamer to experience the designer's 'vision'. The gamer is along for a ride, and his role suppletory to that. The gaming experience improves by how much the gamer can live up to the creator's designs: how well he can sneak and run around in a box as Snake, how totally he can learn the techniques of Forrest Law, etc.
The US saddles the player with the primary responsibility. He is the engine of the storytelling (generally. Only recently have open-ended games allowed a full realization of this).
RMS's talk of a Free World devoid of any contamination by non-free dependency sounds eerily like Juche. I guess self-reliance is nice and all but all the talk of "rescuing Java programs" from "shackles" seems to remove one of the most basic freedoms: the freedom of choice. I myself must not only be free but must all of my friends must be free as well? And if they aren't, I really shouldn't because that's just accepting their unacceptable lifestyle?
That just doesn't sit well with me.
and not for the reason you expect.
He sees it (charging over 20 bucks a cd) as a litmis test for finding the artists who are making music worth while to buy at a higher price. A "tax on shitty taste" he calls it. Not only would it weed out the weak but force artists to give you more bang for your buck (instead of DMX squozing out an album every 8 months like he did).
Besides, if you are only interested in one song from an album, isn't a buck in change better than 13+ dollars for the same fitness?
Of course there are other options. Say secondspin.com which is an online used cd/dvd store. Just bought a disc there for a 1.99 that is out of print. Even counting in S&H I got music for half the price of iTunes.
Remember though that economics were a major modivation for most classic (European) exploration: faster routes to India, gold, cotton. Of course the many of the other reasons (e.g. converting all the savages ala the White Man's Burden) weren't any better.
Yeah, Hillary and Norgay didn't climb Everest for money, but setting a permanent base on Mars is a little more of a feat than that. Dollars, God, or Empire-building cold wars between nations seem to be the only real good ways of getting a lot of people behind these efforts. And of all of those, I think we'd agree that money is the most neutral.
Isn't this where they were going to send Hannibal Lector (or at least offered to since it was a ruse) in Silence of the Lambs?
How... delicious! *makes Lector Fava Beans sound*
P.S. You're not a Cassandra if people believe you
Wait, we're believing this guy now?
Then why did we go to all of the trouble of getting this giant wooden horse in here?
*greek hoplite stabs sielwolf*
Oh crap.
*sielwolf dies*
Innovative? I'd have to say Linux's strength is that it isn't innovative in its design. It instead replicates tried and accepted OS paradigms. It's monolithic (although that's changing. Although it definitely isn't a microkernel like OSX or Hurd), it eschews object orientated programming, etc. OTOH NT and all of its derivatives do try to absorb some of those features; exponentially increasing its complexity (and resulting in all of those pitfalls). In some ways its a 16 part screwdriver.
Innovation in technology isn't necessarily a great thing. For every Macintosh you have your NeXT. Heck, even the Mac was just derivative of PARC's work. Linux plays it conservative and just does what it does.
that women would never want to open the hood to their car, or that women came up with the concept (that women would never want to open the hood)?
;)
Of course, from the article: The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
Bull. This is up there with the three bits (or whatever) of encryption on DVDs as the lamest attempt at obfuscation. The next day, after hitting the showroom, Autozone would have a 3 dollar wrench to open this bastard. And I bet anyone with an IQ over 10 could pop this badboy off with a screwdriver and a little leverage. That's probably all this Volvo mechanic would do after tiring of this Feature.
A clumsy kludge that has no point other than being a big pain in the ass. Really, does having access to you're car's naughty bits in any way effect driving? This is the New Coke of car innovations.
Besides, the only Swedish vehicle worth sitting in is a Saab Draken.
(or whatever that Watchmen quote is)
'Discover what pseudonyms your candidate uses online....'
BS, I say. There are many reasons why people take nom de plumes and pseudonyms, but all come back to the fact that "-and I just wanted a certain level of anonymity". Not fullblown anonymity, just enough to make your online personal dealings disjoint from any sort of RL responsibilities you have.
There's a reason why you're not supposed to talk about religion, politics, and all that stuff on first dates or job interviews: because it's inappropriate (unless the job is, obviously, at a church, for a political party, etc.). Employees are expected to leave their personal lives at the door when at the job. But employers should feel peachy about betraying that same confidence?
When writing some free COM app or TPS report coversheet, what does an employee's view on gay marriage, Palestine, or the RIAA have to do with anything? And even if the employer was doing something as inoccuous as suggested in the article and just "seeing if they are passionate without compromise"... who here doesn't think they could find something they'd hold against you?
Candidates are looking for jobs, not friends. Neither should employers.
Ok, so the trailer clearly has Appleseed at a 4/17 Japanese date. So where does that put the US release. Or is there even a distributor yet? It'd be nice to see this even in a limited release.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Docking doesn't count as "all new" re: the GUI.
Really, the fact that all tools are under a single window hasn't seemed to hurt the Adobe family of products from being wildass popular. So what, other than being different for the sake of being different, is the point? Copying popular Windows/Mac apps isn't a bad thing if it is what people really like about the user experience.
Folks seem to like the "one window to bind them" approach. Additionally I (and probably others) can't stand to use GIMP with its bazillion windows cluttering my taskbar (as it gets in the way of quickly ALT-TABing throug different apps).
Also, would it kill them to mirror the prebuilt binary/installer packages on a machine larger than a Casio calculator? I spend more time trying to get Gimp on Windows than using it.
Ok... that's it... #def rant 0.
Of course it was one of those "Go to our other site and reenter all your info there" things. But I got to apply for a half dozen jobs and got an interview email within a day. Oh and this was last June (2003) so it was post-boom.
Strangest thing: At my interview I found out that a guy I went to grad school (I just graduatated) was here (they had me eat lunch with him). On top of that a guy who I knew from High School and I hadn't seen in 6 years just moved into the department in the building next to mine. It started to cross that threshold into creepy.
But, yes, I did get hits off of Monster. Of course the best were usually those that required you to (as above) to fill in information again on their site. It seems to keep the resume-flooders away. But I didn't even know my current employer existed until I went browsing.
Screw shooting me into the Sun, shoot me to the moon on the non-Dark Side. That way generations of my progeny can look up on a starless night and see my cold grimacing corpse smiling down on them.
Yes!
anyway? My first experience with Dark Matter and Energy was all that it was "well, things are going faster and so people just postulated this idea." I wasn't told that anyone really believed in it (unlike terracentrism or whatnot).
My prof mentioned it was like that Far Side where it has the equation on the chalkboard that said "Here a miracle occurs".
the system alerts the driver by lighting a warning icon on the outside rearview mirror for that side of the vehicle.
I dunno. I actually think a lot of accidents are caused by lack of focus resulting in twisting and turning around too. Folks focused on the guy behind them not seeing that the car before them has its breaks on.
I've always been of the mind that a HUD is the way to go: not only for this collision information, but for things usually hidden behind the steering wheel (tac, speed, fuel). I think the integration of radio controls into the steering wheel is a great step in keeping people focused where all the kinetic energy of the car is going.
And, really, do you need to look at a rearview mirror if you have an icon before you saying "clear to left"?
I'm glad to see the JAXP tools finally embracing DOM level 3 and SAX 2.0.1. All sort of XML Schema goodness involved there.
Of course Apache's Xerces-J has this support for a while with 2.5 (2.6)? Yeah it should be portable but, eh, why switch horses midstream?
but they are pretty close.
Consider my (anecdotal) experience: of my fellow 2003 CS Master's and PhD graduates (from a Big Ten school) I knew exactly one on the day of graduation who had a job...
and it was IT. Yeah, there was some programming involved but it wasn't CS (and it definitely wasn't R&D). I've kept in touch with my fellow grads and I only know one who is actually employed in CS (as a prof at the small midwestern college he got his undergrad from). The rest of us are in various degrees of software wrangling.
When folks talk about the golden pastures of CS and the first principles (algorithms, finite automata, OS, arch) they don't seem to realize how few CS thinkers the world needs (or can employ). Somebody before compared CS and IT as the difference between desgining cars and changing the oil. Well, no shit. But riddle me this: how many vacancies are there in the world of auto engineering? Hell, how many jobs are there total? Pure CS is the domain of universities. The other 0.1% are from the giant computer firms and the government... who end up hiring those same uni profs anyway.
The fact is the only dollar making value of most CS degrees is to change people's oil. No one's paying folks to stand on street corners doing algorithm analysis. That's why so many CS undergrads are trying to get into grad school: they think it'll let them escape codemonkeydom or unemployment. But then they're just trying to get a piece of a niche field.