im sorry YOU were inconvenienced because I cant afford a 1 way ticket and work the system because they system is trying to work me....
Then when you check in, DON'T check in all the way. Don't put yourself on the passenger manifest of the flight you're not taking. Make some excuse like you're not sure if you'll have time to make the connection or something or you walk slowly.
In fact, missing through passengers in this day and age can easily get an airport shut down at the wrong times.
Perhaps you'll like it if you miss your holiday connection because someone else pulled the same trick? I'm sure you'll enjoy spending Thanksgiving or Christmas at an airport waiting for the next flight because your previous one was delayed from a missing passenger and you missed your connection. After all, what goes around, comes around - making travelling miserable for others mean they'll just make it miserable for you, too.
HP in trying to save itself with its new memristor memory applied in a new type of computer with a "new" OS. Hence, it will potentially disrupt the PC markets again as IBM, Microsoft and Apple did. The question is how that new memory implementation proceeds.
Most likely, and the most obvious, least risk path is to not try to be revolutionary with it. You have a storage element. Use it as that - make your non-volatile memory out of it. I mean, flash memory has its uses, but also its limitations that limit its uses (like limited lifespan). Memristor doesn't have lifespan issues so why not use it as extremely fast storage media? We're hitting the limits of flash memory density vs. lifespan, so this technology can be immediately put to use to increase storage capacities and system performance in a traditional computer.
That's the way to proceed first - a revolutionary OS that uses memristors as "RAM" with persistence is innovative, but high risk and requires a lot of outside thinking. Replacing SSD storage with memristor instead of flash, not as risky and lets us explore the technology in the meantime. And yes, it'll disrupt industry because the traditional flash producers now have a product with a distinct disadvantage.
Far too often products failed because they failed to take in market inertia - be too different and people shun it because it's different. (Especially if they can't tell it's different because of bugs or different because of technology).
As the technology matures, the other applications will come out.
It was called "role playing" instead of "roll playing" for a reason.:)
This. I mean, it's one reason I prefer the Paranoia series - because yes, you can make a die roll, but that's merely a suggestion - the GM has the real power to decide what REALLY happens. Roll failed? Well, what's more fun - it failed, or it succeeded, but in unexpected ways?
It's one reason the game basically says "GM fiat" is the best armor you can equip yourself with (or worst, depending), as with weapons and such.
Otherwise the game really just boils down to a "press your luck" style game where gameplay revolves around your luck with rolling dice. Gee, they make board games that do just that.
Heck, one GM I know enforced "practicality" rules - if you wore your armor too long without cleaning it, he would impose "stink" on you. Perhaps it was good (you reek so badly your enemy passes out), or bad (your stench made everyone in your party sick).
The goal is to have fun, not run some scripted activity.
There's been a marked trend here in the UK for people to have warmer and warmer houses. The thermostat in mine's set to 18C (64F), as it has been for the last 30 years. Meanwhile my friends' houses get warmer and warmer - up to 25C in some cases (77F). There's a perinneal struggle in the office at work too, with my preference for the temperature to be set to 18C, while the boss would rather have 25C. So we have a compromise of 22C, which is still warmer than the neighbouring IT classrooms (yes, I work in a school). Those classrooms are set to 19C or 20C.
Dang, that's warm. I'd have to have fans going if 25C was the standard temperature (I still have a fan at my desk because the office is that warm at 22C). A lot of people dislike it because they get cold but I have to have the fan or I end up hot and sweaty.
Heck, now that's below zero outside, the office is cool enough I can turn the fan off.
First off, In the late 90's Tektronix made a series of digital oscilloscopes that ran an embedded version of Windows 98.
Not unusual - a large amount of test equipment, especially higher end gear, run Windows today. Basically because the equipment is expensive enough they don't have to save cost by using low-powered SoCs and can just dump a full PC on it, getting you the speed and flexibility.
I have used a logic analyzer that used Windows 2000 embedded, and seen ones based on XP embedded and Windows 7 embedded. All the fancy work is done in hardware, it's just the display and interactions are using Windows.
Usually they come with APIs as well so the UI can be extended to include stuff like automated testing, qualification testing and other roles where you just run the test suite directly on the scope rather than having to set up a test PC that talks to the scope over GPIB (or LXI or whatever) and gather data. Required especially for production pass/fail usage.
A decent vector oscilloscope display uses the Z blanking input to turn off the beam when not drawing a line. I see no mention of this in the writeup, and consequently there are ghost lines all over the screen. It would look a whole lot nicer if the Z input were put to use.
Yes but that requires a 3rd output. Instead, he uses the fact that vector display brightness is dependent on how fast you sweep the beam, so "off" lines are simply swept fast while lines meant to be shown are swept far slower.
Incidentally, this won't work on modern digital scopes - unless they have "analog" intensity-graded displays (goes by various names, including DPO (Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope) on Tek)). What these do is simulate analog scope behavior by making parts of waveforms that get "swept" multiple times brighter so the more often a wave is regular, the brighter it is. Odd events are shown dimly. Of course, with a digital scope you can invert it so the rare event is bright and the common event is dimmed out.
It can still be a mess because the quality then depends on how fast your digital scope can update the display (update rate) - older scopes have troubles updating at 100 waveforms/s, and even modern budget ones often only do less than 1,000 updates/second. But you can get scopes that easily do 30,000 updates/sec or even 1M updates/sec (this is how fast the scope circuits can trigger and update the internal framebuffers and display buffers and all the other things, it has nothing to do with the LCD update rate). Even then it's just a rough approximation.
Apple must get your purchase history, or there would be no way to transfer the money to the merchant. They might only get the total amount and merchant ID, but that's pretty significant for profiling.
Nope. That's Google Wallet, not Apple Pay.
All Apple Pay is a very fancy secure credit card - basically by enrolling, your iPhone gets issued a virtual credit card number which is tied to it.
When you use Apple Pay, that virtual credit card is what's used and it's a matter between the user's bank, the merchant's bank, and the card network to sort it out. Apple stays out of it other than at set up where Apple has to talk to the bank to enroll a card and get the virtual card number back.
Apple doesn't bill anyone anything. Banks get all the same information they always got - they just need to link the virtual cards up to the cardholder.
Perhaps the real issue is that banks want MORE information from Apple - like the user's email address (Apple ID), location information, how many other cards are enrolled and type, and perhaps even other card usage information (while Apple doesn't have this information, the iPhone does track so you can check all the transactions you did via Apple Pay and compare with your statement, so I'm guessing they want Apple to download that information and share it).
I like cold, I sleep without a blanket (just a sheet), I walk outdoors without a jacket most of the year, but the only problem I never solved is hands and feet. Exposed to cold, their temperature tend to adjust to external temperature, which hurts with temperature below 10 degree Celsius.
Great to know there are other people like me who are cold-blooded. If the temperatures are above 10C, a shirt and pants is sufficient for me to go outside. Below 10C in the mornings I have a jacket on, but during the day I go without. This lasts me until 5C or so. Below that I need a sweater and I just use the sweater when going out.
I generally sleep on top (a sheet can be quite hot), though for the winters, I go under the sheets. But I have to be careful because I sometimes wake up in a pool of sweat.
I plain prefer to cold. I'm with airplanes - I perform better in the cold. At my desk is a fan that's on practically all day everyday - in the summer (A/C not cool enough) and in the winter (they turn on the bloody heater).
They would rather see the assets destroyed and burned than one of their competitors getting a free lunch.
True, but the bankruptcy court is also working for the interest of creditors.
Just because the networks have veto power doesn't mean the courts can't overrule that. If a good bid comes in that gets vetoed and no one else puts in as good a bid, the courts may just allow the sale because their job is to recover as much money as possible.
So yeah, the networks may veto an all out buy to set up Aereo 2, but if another one comes in to buy bits of equipment and such of similar value, they may not have their veto respected especially if the courts can't recover similar value elsewhere.
Yet another quirky browser to support. More idiots using -yetanotherbrowserspecificcsstag: 0px;
Not really, it's still based on Trident, which is what IE's rendering engine is.
And it's not a bad thing - I mean, remember when IE6 was king? Now we have multiple rendering engines (Blink (Chrome, Opera), WebKit (Safari, dozens other), Trident (IE), Gecko (Firefox)) which serve to keep each one honest and standardized.
Heck, when you think about it, WebKit has almost become the de-facto web renderer on the Internet, taking over from IE by being everywhere. How and when did Apple take over from Microsoft in that regard?
Or maybe they need to change the user-agent string from "KHTML, like Gecko" to just be "KHTML" and everyone else has to say "Like WebKit/KHTML".
If your data is valuable, you will need to mirror the drives or use RAID. So one limitation is how quickly you can add a drive to your mirror system.
It would take 11 hours to fully mirror from one 6 TByte WD drive to another, if your system can actually manage to sustain 138Mbytes per second as shown on page 5 of the article. Obviously, the transfer will be slower, if the data is actually used for something.
If a disk dies, at best you are looking at half a day before the system is fully redundant again. Probably multiple days in the real world.
Which is why you RAID them in most sane instances. And given that restore times are in the 24-48 hour range for these devices, you probably want RAID6 unless you're already bald.
RAID5 is great and all, but once a hard drive fails and you go non-redundant, waiting for the array to rebuild and hoping no other drive goes bad in the meantime is quite stressful. RAID6, well, at least you have a better chance of getting the array fully operational before another drive goes, and if it does, you still have your data.
And we all know it's impossible for anyone who is rational to be religious too, right?
Sadly it has become that way.
However, I wonder which way it really flows. Amongst my engineering colleagues I have never seen open anti-religious sentiments per se. However, I have had a few too many bad encounters with christians who jump down my throat as soon as they find out I'm an engineer, assuming I am anti-religous (I sort of am these days, but that is besides the point). Certain religions have become anti-science, more so than most sciences have become anti-religion.
Less religion, more cultural, I think. And in general, it seems to be based on those who wish the world was a theocracy than a democracy.
Religion and science are generally quite orthogonal - science is concerned with the "HOW" of the world (e.g., how was the universe created) while religion is concerned with the "WHY" of the world (e.g., why was the universe created).
And I suspect more to the point that it's groups like the Discovery Institute whose goal is to infect schools with religion (specifically their form of Christian beliefs) because the whole secular separation of church and state is what caused today's societal ills. "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design" or whatever it is today is merely just a stepping stone to getting religion back into the classroom so once students are raised as proper Christian children, things like crime and vulgarity will go away, "just like the old days".
Secular topics like science and such get in the way with proper Christian teachings of the Bible.
There are places where people are far more religious and such things are less of an issue (most of Europe is highly religious - Italy's practically all Catholic, while Greece is practically all Orthodox, etc.)
âoeImagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.â
It's a problem for a few Chinese companies I've seen - their whole company email is hosted on Gmail. (Not Google Apps, Gmail). It's not unusual to see contacts along the lines of Username-Company@gmail.com. Think what you will, but it's a completely logical thing - why spend money on email when someone gives it for free?
The regular Chinese consumer, though I've seen uses qq.com or other strange all-numeric free email providers.
I more or less posted this on the last thread, I can't speak for Xbox One as I do not have one, but the PS4, it's games, disc or download work just fine without a network connection as long as THE GAME doesn't require an internet connection.
During the outage I only had 2 games I was unable to play, Destiny (where online is kinda the point) and Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare because for whatever reason EA requires a network connection on that game even though it has a local play mode. The rest worked, regardless of whether or not they were on disc or downloaded.
Xbox Live is similar - the console you download a game on is marked as the primary console for that download, and thus that game can be played offline. TO play it elsewhere requires signing in.
Even a disc-based game works fine - it won't be able to download an update, but it will let you install and play it offline just fine.
Now, last I checked, PvZ was mostly a multiplayer game, so it requires online access for matchmaking and all that fun stuff (and required membership). I know because I wanted to buy it, but lack of a single player mode basically turned me off it.
You would need a global sat network to monitor (in real time) the pings from the aircraft transmitter/locator so you would know exactly where to find the wreck. And a power sensor and battery backup so you'd know if the aircraft power went down. And a decompression sensor. And mandatory for all civilian aircraft.
And yet, GA aircraft have that functionality. It's contained within a box that costs around $200 (plus around $80 annually).
Inside the box is a GPS receiver and a GlobalSat or Iridium satellite modem.
Check out Spot - just one of the few global satellite tracking devices out there.
Of course, not sufficient for navigational purposes (you still require an ELT), but many pilots carry a PLB (using SARSAT 406MHz monitoring network) or a SPOT device.
PLBs are common these days too, and effectively "free" since you buy it once (maybe $400 or so) and they communicate with SARSAT when activated. Of course, they don't do tracking and have to be manually activated, while SPOT lets you send a "ping" every 10 minutes or so or more frequently if you push the emergency button.
So yes, the technology already exists for tracking, and is fairly cheap for consumer purposes. The global network exists - be it GlobalStar or Iridium, and GPS. And no, it doesn't require ship power for it - a SPOT only uses 4 AA batteries for 10-20 hours.
And I believe you can even mark up your flight plan to indicate you're carrying such a device so SAR can use it to narrow down your location ahead of time (or even to see if you forgot to close your flight plan if you reported landing).
Perhaps airlines could equip their pilots with such things - they're battery powered, and can be tossed on the glareshield and activated.
Easier solution: if you are drunk, do not consent to the breathalyzer/blood test. They can still try to convict you, but it's a lot harder without the forensic evidence. That can also try to phone a judge and get a warrant, but that takes time and judges don't like being woken up -- if they have a warrant, you have to comply. And don't let them try any of this "implied consent" nonsense, the US Supreme Court has recently affirmed that a motorist can withdraw/refuse consent to any test at any point, see Missouri v. McNeely explicitly holding that neither implied consent nor exigency allows the police to compel a DUI test without first obtaining a warrant.
Of course, you can have your license suspended for refusing the test (i.e. the right to refuse consent to the test does not confer immunity from the consequences) but that's all civil. You'll have a much better chance at avoiding the criminal conviction and subsequent stint in jail.
Yeah, but when DUIs are decriminalized, it's the exact same penalty - refuse to blow is the same as blowing 0.05 or higher. Impounded vehicle and all that fun stuff. The only thing that can get you out is if you can prove the equipment was faulty (requires you to blow), or if you blow and end up under 0.05.
So yeah, if DUIs are felony offenses, you are better off not blowing. If DUIs are mere civil penalties, then blowing is your better option.
And no, if you kill someone, it's still manslaughter. But if you're pulled over, it's a civil offense that just means impounded vehicle, demerit points and increased insurance rates. Maybe even an interlock if the insurance company demands it.
But it's a win-win-win - the courts are tied up less (it's like arguing a parking fine), more drunks are pulled off the road, and more drunks are penalized for their actions. Before, all police did was toss them in a drunk tank to recover for the night, and that was as bad as it got because the paperwork beyond got immense. But now offenders are punished since it's far easier to put a fine and impound the car than to file felony charges.
As indicated in the article, this is probably due to malware. The list of sites affected is large while the number of released account details is small. Malware usually doesn't even need to keylog anymore, it can just fetch passwords from the browser password store.
With this in mind, changing your password now will likely not have a major effect (unless you are on the list). Since most people don't have the malware, and those that do will probably still have it when they update their account. Just wait a bit until the anti-virus programs update to find the source, and change the passwords after it is removed.
Or to be honest, it was the result of a phishing attack, and less so a malware attack.
The only reason "other retailers" are involved is because after phishing for one, they simply tried the same username/password combo on other sites, and bingo, people reused passwords!
Generally, the rule of thumb is, if you can't live without it, you are allowed one reset of the circuit breaker. Either it immediately re-trips, or it starts working again and you have some time to plan an emergency landing.
Actually, that rule has changed. If the breaker has tripped for ANY reason, DO NOT RESET IT. If it wasn't essential to the flight, continue on. If it was, land ASAP.
Get on the ground, then have maintenance figure it out.
It tripped for a reason, and if it was because of a circuit short, do you really want to stress that circuit some more? (There have been a few accidents where resetting it has caused more issues because the already stressed circuit causes failures elsewhere, even after the faulty component was replaced).
The old rule was yes, you get ONE reset out of it. The new rule is no resets at all because maintenance should check the entire circuit to ensure the wiring and all that are still OK because they were stressed. (that includes the breaker itself which may need changing too).
Of course, back when I was taking flight training, I had a breaker that kept tripping (I found a tripped breaker, then reset it - back in the one-reset days). Basically I found a tripped breaker in my preflight, then when I finished that and got in, it tripped again which basically mean to scrub the flight. My flight instructor tried and he couldn't get the breaker to stay in either. In the end, it turned out that the alternator field coil controller had failed. But basically since it failed, resetting wasn't going to accomplish anything. Aircraft circuits don't change, so transient faults are rarely transient - I mean, if your avionics never tripped the breaker before, then the breaker trips without anything changing, something has gone wrong, especially if it's worked for years before.
Another mitigation strategy would be to allow players to directly connect to each other rather than go through a central server. We were able to do this a couple of decades ago, but now we can't? Or rather, it's because the companies want to continue to control what you do after the sale, to sell you the parts of the game they "forgot" to put on the disk.
Well, two reasons.
1) NAT and/or firewalling makes direct connections hard, if not impossible. No, IPv6 is not a solution because you can't guarantee there's no firewall in place. In fact, it makes things worse - it's trivially easy to detect NAT (look up IP versus external IP), but difficult to detect a firewall. In fact, you can appear to be completely connectable until you actually try to connect and then fail hard (this happens a lot back in the days of StarCraft and Battle.net). And this will cause lots of issues when IPv6 gets finally deployed because it's better to have hidden breakage than obvious breakage. (And there are some benefits of NAT too even for IPv6 that aren't firewall related - like inside/outside IP numbering independence - I'm sure many neckbeards would cringe if they had to renumber a modern LAN... and clueless users).
2) Matchmaking services. There are typically three types of gamers - one (like me) prefers to not play online. Another who prefers to play online with friends, and the third is someone who wants to play against (or with) others, any time of the day.
Sure you could try to do what PC games do and offer a huge list of servers, but then it becomes a bit hit and miss - perhaps you accidentally log into one where everyone is super skilled and get pwned in 2 seconds, or you log into one where it's all newbies, etc. And perhaps you want a full 16x16 team free-for-all and you only see servers half-populated.
Matchmaking means everyone gets ranked and when you click Play, the servers look for newly available people of approximately the same skill so you can be in the game within 2 minutes, no trying to hunt for a suitable server, no trying to find or gather friends who may be offline, etc. Just click and you're in.
3) Online leaderboards require servers that are vetted and a central lobby so players can be ranked. Because bragging rights are human nature, and it's not something you can do in a less controlled environment.
The phone is designed with the Asian market in mind. Phablets are insanely popular there among women, who put a cover on them and carry them in their purses. The problem is that if you get a text, you have to pull the phone out of your purse and flip open the cover to read it. A cover with a cutout for the screen is one solution, but still requires taking out the phone to read the text. Putting a display on the edge allows you to read the text while the phone is still in the purse.
In other words, it's a problem the consumer created y being greedy. Just like smartwatches, it's a solution that is more easily solved by going less for "status" and "conspicuous consumption" and more for "what do I really need".
And iPhone sales bear it out - the iPhone 6 Plus is insanely popular in Asia, while the iPhone 6 is the bigger seller in North America and Europe. It's not that American and European hands are smaller, but that practicality plays a strong role in what people buy.
As phones get bigger (because in Asia, bigger numbers are better - they practically are a textbook illustration of measurebator - one who is not happy unless their numbers are bigger), things like this become necessary.
I mean, a smartphone in the pocket, or on the waist works, but for the phablets (because bigger screen is better, right?) it won't fit anymore, so they put it away in their purse. But now it's a pain to stay in touch because they have to dig it out just to communicate (or #FOMO!), hence smartwatches or things like this.
Granted, though, at least Samsung should be congratulated for basically inventing markets where none existed. Release large screen phones creates demand for things that make large screen phones usable again (instead of say, buying a smaller phone).
I've been a fan of physical game carts/discs that are 100% playable offline. Getting a new PS4 or Xbox One that "bundles" a download code for a game is a rip off if you have to download the game and have it call home every time you want to play. So when the online component is down, you can't download or play the downloaded game since it can't phone home. That's ridiculous. I skipped the Xbox One and PS4 for reasons like this. Even more so: 10 years from now when the authentication server goes offline, your Xbox One or PS4 game is dead. Whereas, I can still pop in my favorite NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, PSOne, Saturn, DreamCast, GCN, and PS2 games without any worry for an internet connection. (And select PS3 and Xbox 360 games.) Vote with your money, people.
Uh, on both Xbox Live and PSN, there is offline play even on downloaded games. On Xbox Live, the console that buys the game and downloads it gets to play it offline without signing into Xbox Live. That license can be changed to a new console once a year. Of course, any console can play the game if the user is signed into Xbox Live.
For PSN, you can authorize a PS4 and that PS4 can play it offline as well. All other PS4s have to be signed in. You can change the authorized PS4 as well.
Actually, in a brave experiment, we've actually decriminalized DUIs - because finding DUI requires getting a felony conviction including all the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt rules and all that. It's a complex enough conviction that DUI convictions are low.
Instead, what happens is there's a system of fines which are civil in nature, and beyond the first you get your car impounded instantly for a day, then a week, and a month. And all you have to do is blow 0.05.
Far lower requirements to lock someone up for a day and it apparently has an effect. Getting a criminal conviction takes time and courts, giving people fines and raising their insurance and impounding their cars is more of a bylaw style offense and can be instantly implemented.
DO it enough times and the insurance company mandates interlocks, which for some is a death sentence because their license is marked as having to drive an interlocked vehicle. Which means they are no longer able to drive a company vehicle (because no company wants to pay for an interlock installation), be it a car, truck, bus, whatever.
And we're not talking about cheap fines - $400 is cheap, but impound, towing and other fees bring that up to $1000 or so.
That may be the way to do it - then add get your license suspended enough times and you lose it. Go through Driver's Ed and take the tests all over again. (We have graduated licensing, so that's another year of having to be supervised followed by a couple of years of solo but under heavy restrictions including zero tolerance for impaired driving and only a single passenger, etc).
Getting convictions is hard, cycling through people is a lot easier. And having to get to work without a car gets the message across. And having your insurance rates go up because they're told of the incident to which they can apply their own actuarial tables and jack up your rates. That also means a checkpoint can easily detain 10+ people in one night with little to no paperwork since no formal charges will be laid.
Entire field is a bit young and I always thought that 'computer science' is a bit awkward term. But IME everyone agrees that it's study of algorithms and their implementation in computing devices. It's basically applied math.
It's a more misunderstanding of science and engineering. Computer science is like other sciences - biology, physics, chemistry, etc. They're concerned about studying the theory of their branch of science, so for computer science, it's about computability - can you do something? And in what kind of time/space constraints?
But you don't ask a biologist to heal you, or a physicist to build you a bridge, or a chemist to manufacture gasoline. So you shouldn't ask a computer scientist to write you an app. Engineering is the application of science - and in more than a few places, the engineering degree is marked as applied science.
The computer engineer takes the research done by computer scientists and applies it with standard engineering compromises to produce something. Most people who do "computer science" actually do "computer engineering".
Want to see the differences illustrated more clearly? Try comparing the periodicals produced by computer science groups like the ACM, versus those by engineering groups like the IEEE.
Which is why USB ports should be disabled on computers that interact with the reactor.
And when something in the control system needs to be updated to handle a new piece of equipment, what are you going to do...?
Stuxnet has proven air-gaps are not invulnerable - and it used multiple vulnerabilities. It existed on a PC that was infected and merely infected a USB drive that was plugged in which then was plugged into a control PC used to reload PLCs.
Of course, that control computer was vulnerable because being air gapped, it wasn't updated to handle vulnerabilities so all it needed was ancient vulnerabilities.
It doesn't matter if it was a CD - the malware could ensure it got loaded on the CD as well so when it was stuck into the control PC, boom, infected.
Unless the control system is completely static and nothing is ever going to change on it, there has to be a way to update it. And guess what - that PC on the air-gapped network has to get data onto it. And since it's air-gapped, it will be vulnerable to 10+ year old vulnerabilities because it hasn't had a software update since it was first installed. Oh yeah, you could install updates, but that's a vulnerability because the way you get that data across the air-gap is a vulnerability.
And reasons for updating include general part obsolescence (you may be able to buy parts for 10 years, then what? Justify spending millions of dollars shutting down the factory, rip out the obsolete parts and replace the control system with a brand new one? Or just spend a few thousand, get the replacement part, and update the control system appropriately?)
The whole eye. Our eyes actually cannot detect a static edge, only transitions. The reason we can see non-moving objects is that the oscillations of the eye provide the transitions. There's a simple experiment from long ago which illustrates this vividly: put a black square on a white background, track a subject's eye motion and move that target with the eye motion so that the image is always hitting the retina at the same location, and voila, the subject cannot see that target.
The other reason is the "sensors" we have are quite poor - the eyeball itself is actually a very low resolution device - the high resolution center part of the eye covers such a narrow field of view that it's practically useless if it was a fixed camera, while the peripheral vision is so low res it's unusable.
Instead, what happens is we evolved a gigantic amount of wetware to process the image into a high-resolution image we perceive - the brain does a lot of visual processing, and the eyes rapidly move (or oscillate) to move the sharp high-res center vision around to give you a much higher "virtual resolution" than the actual Mk. 1 Eyeball can achieve.
Of course, this visual processing comes at a price - optical illusions abound because it's very easy to trick the wetware into seeing things that aren't there, because the information is often interpolated, shifted in time, etc.
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Then when you check in, DON'T check in all the way. Don't put yourself on the passenger manifest of the flight you're not taking. Make some excuse like you're not sure if you'll have time to make the connection or something or you walk slowly.
In fact, missing through passengers in this day and age can easily get an airport shut down at the wrong times.
Perhaps you'll like it if you miss your holiday connection because someone else pulled the same trick? I'm sure you'll enjoy spending Thanksgiving or Christmas at an airport waiting for the next flight because your previous one was delayed from a missing passenger and you missed your connection. After all, what goes around, comes around - making travelling miserable for others mean they'll just make it miserable for you, too.
Most likely, and the most obvious, least risk path is to not try to be revolutionary with it. You have a storage element. Use it as that - make your non-volatile memory out of it. I mean, flash memory has its uses, but also its limitations that limit its uses (like limited lifespan). Memristor doesn't have lifespan issues so why not use it as extremely fast storage media? We're hitting the limits of flash memory density vs. lifespan, so this technology can be immediately put to use to increase storage capacities and system performance in a traditional computer.
That's the way to proceed first - a revolutionary OS that uses memristors as "RAM" with persistence is innovative, but high risk and requires a lot of outside thinking. Replacing SSD storage with memristor instead of flash, not as risky and lets us explore the technology in the meantime. And yes, it'll disrupt industry because the traditional flash producers now have a product with a distinct disadvantage.
Far too often products failed because they failed to take in market inertia - be too different and people shun it because it's different. (Especially if they can't tell it's different because of bugs or different because of technology).
As the technology matures, the other applications will come out.
This. I mean, it's one reason I prefer the Paranoia series - because yes, you can make a die roll, but that's merely a suggestion - the GM has the real power to decide what REALLY happens. Roll failed? Well, what's more fun - it failed, or it succeeded, but in unexpected ways?
It's one reason the game basically says "GM fiat" is the best armor you can equip yourself with (or worst, depending), as with weapons and such.
Otherwise the game really just boils down to a "press your luck" style game where gameplay revolves around your luck with rolling dice. Gee, they make board games that do just that.
Heck, one GM I know enforced "practicality" rules - if you wore your armor too long without cleaning it, he would impose "stink" on you. Perhaps it was good (you reek so badly your enemy passes out), or bad (your stench made everyone in your party sick).
The goal is to have fun, not run some scripted activity.
Dang, that's warm. I'd have to have fans going if 25C was the standard temperature (I still have a fan at my desk because the office is that warm at 22C). A lot of people dislike it because they get cold but I have to have the fan or I end up hot and sweaty.
Heck, now that's below zero outside, the office is cool enough I can turn the fan off.
Not unusual - a large amount of test equipment, especially higher end gear, run Windows today. Basically because the equipment is expensive enough they don't have to save cost by using low-powered SoCs and can just dump a full PC on it, getting you the speed and flexibility.
I have used a logic analyzer that used Windows 2000 embedded, and seen ones based on XP embedded and Windows 7 embedded. All the fancy work is done in hardware, it's just the display and interactions are using Windows.
Usually they come with APIs as well so the UI can be extended to include stuff like automated testing, qualification testing and other roles where you just run the test suite directly on the scope rather than having to set up a test PC that talks to the scope over GPIB (or LXI or whatever) and gather data. Required especially for production pass/fail usage.
Yes but that requires a 3rd output. Instead, he uses the fact that vector display brightness is dependent on how fast you sweep the beam, so "off" lines are simply swept fast while lines meant to be shown are swept far slower.
Incidentally, this won't work on modern digital scopes - unless they have "analog" intensity-graded displays (goes by various names, including DPO (Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope) on Tek)). What these do is simulate analog scope behavior by making parts of waveforms that get "swept" multiple times brighter so the more often a wave is regular, the brighter it is. Odd events are shown dimly. Of course, with a digital scope you can invert it so the rare event is bright and the common event is dimmed out.
It can still be a mess because the quality then depends on how fast your digital scope can update the display (update rate) - older scopes have troubles updating at 100 waveforms/s, and even modern budget ones often only do less than 1,000 updates/second. But you can get scopes that easily do 30,000 updates/sec or even 1M updates/sec (this is how fast the scope circuits can trigger and update the internal framebuffers and display buffers and all the other things, it has nothing to do with the LCD update rate). Even then it's just a rough approximation.
Nope. That's Google Wallet, not Apple Pay.
All Apple Pay is a very fancy secure credit card - basically by enrolling, your iPhone gets issued a virtual credit card number which is tied to it.
When you use Apple Pay, that virtual credit card is what's used and it's a matter between the user's bank, the merchant's bank, and the card network to sort it out. Apple stays out of it other than at set up where Apple has to talk to the bank to enroll a card and get the virtual card number back.
Apple doesn't bill anyone anything. Banks get all the same information they always got - they just need to link the virtual cards up to the cardholder.
Perhaps the real issue is that banks want MORE information from Apple - like the user's email address (Apple ID), location information, how many other cards are enrolled and type, and perhaps even other card usage information (while Apple doesn't have this information, the iPhone does track so you can check all the transactions you did via Apple Pay and compare with your statement, so I'm guessing they want Apple to download that information and share it).
Great to know there are other people like me who are cold-blooded. If the temperatures are above 10C, a shirt and pants is sufficient for me to go outside. Below 10C in the mornings I have a jacket on, but during the day I go without. This lasts me until 5C or so. Below that I need a sweater and I just use the sweater when going out.
I generally sleep on top (a sheet can be quite hot), though for the winters, I go under the sheets. But I have to be careful because I sometimes wake up in a pool of sweat.
I plain prefer to cold. I'm with airplanes - I perform better in the cold. At my desk is a fan that's on practically all day everyday - in the summer (A/C not cool enough) and in the winter (they turn on the bloody heater).
True, but the bankruptcy court is also working for the interest of creditors.
Just because the networks have veto power doesn't mean the courts can't overrule that. If a good bid comes in that gets vetoed and no one else puts in as good a bid, the courts may just allow the sale because their job is to recover as much money as possible.
So yeah, the networks may veto an all out buy to set up Aereo 2, but if another one comes in to buy bits of equipment and such of similar value, they may not have their veto respected especially if the courts can't recover similar value elsewhere.
Not really, it's still based on Trident, which is what IE's rendering engine is.
And it's not a bad thing - I mean, remember when IE6 was king? Now we have multiple rendering engines (Blink (Chrome, Opera), WebKit (Safari, dozens other), Trident (IE), Gecko (Firefox)) which serve to keep each one honest and standardized.
Heck, when you think about it, WebKit has almost become the de-facto web renderer on the Internet, taking over from IE by being everywhere. How and when did Apple take over from Microsoft in that regard?
Or maybe they need to change the user-agent string from "KHTML, like Gecko" to just be "KHTML" and everyone else has to say "Like WebKit/KHTML".
Which is why you RAID them in most sane instances. And given that restore times are in the 24-48 hour range for these devices, you probably want RAID6 unless you're already bald.
RAID5 is great and all, but once a hard drive fails and you go non-redundant, waiting for the array to rebuild and hoping no other drive goes bad in the meantime is quite stressful. RAID6, well, at least you have a better chance of getting the array fully operational before another drive goes, and if it does, you still have your data.
Less religion, more cultural, I think. And in general, it seems to be based on those who wish the world was a theocracy than a democracy.
Religion and science are generally quite orthogonal - science is concerned with the "HOW" of the world (e.g., how was the universe created) while religion is concerned with the "WHY" of the world (e.g., why was the universe created).
And I suspect more to the point that it's groups like the Discovery Institute whose goal is to infect schools with religion (specifically their form of Christian beliefs) because the whole secular separation of church and state is what caused today's societal ills. "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design" or whatever it is today is merely just a stepping stone to getting religion back into the classroom so once students are raised as proper Christian children, things like crime and vulgarity will go away, "just like the old days".
Secular topics like science and such get in the way with proper Christian teachings of the Bible.
There are places where people are far more religious and such things are less of an issue (most of Europe is highly religious - Italy's practically all Catholic, while Greece is practically all Orthodox, etc.)
It's a problem for a few Chinese companies I've seen - their whole company email is hosted on Gmail. (Not Google Apps, Gmail). It's not unusual to see contacts along the lines of Username-Company@gmail.com. Think what you will, but it's a completely logical thing - why spend money on email when someone gives it for free?
The regular Chinese consumer, though I've seen uses qq.com or other strange all-numeric free email providers.
And yet, GA aircraft have that functionality. It's contained within a box that costs around $200 (plus around $80 annually).
Inside the box is a GPS receiver and a GlobalSat or Iridium satellite modem.
Check out Spot - just one of the few global satellite tracking devices out there.
Of course, not sufficient for navigational purposes (you still require an ELT), but many pilots carry a PLB (using SARSAT 406MHz monitoring network) or a SPOT device.
PLBs are common these days too, and effectively "free" since you buy it once (maybe $400 or so) and they communicate with SARSAT when activated. Of course, they don't do tracking and have to be manually activated, while SPOT lets you send a "ping" every 10 minutes or so or more frequently if you push the emergency button.
So yes, the technology already exists for tracking, and is fairly cheap for consumer purposes. The global network exists - be it GlobalStar or Iridium, and GPS. And no, it doesn't require ship power for it - a SPOT only uses 4 AA batteries for 10-20 hours.
And I believe you can even mark up your flight plan to indicate you're carrying such a device so SAR can use it to narrow down your location ahead of time (or even to see if you forgot to close your flight plan if you reported landing).
Perhaps airlines could equip their pilots with such things - they're battery powered, and can be tossed on the glareshield and activated.
Yeah, but when DUIs are decriminalized, it's the exact same penalty - refuse to blow is the same as blowing 0.05 or higher. Impounded vehicle and all that fun stuff. The only thing that can get you out is if you can prove the equipment was faulty (requires you to blow), or if you blow and end up under 0.05.
So yeah, if DUIs are felony offenses, you are better off not blowing. If DUIs are mere civil penalties, then blowing is your better option.
And no, if you kill someone, it's still manslaughter. But if you're pulled over, it's a civil offense that just means impounded vehicle, demerit points and increased insurance rates. Maybe even an interlock if the insurance company demands it.
But it's a win-win-win - the courts are tied up less (it's like arguing a parking fine), more drunks are pulled off the road, and more drunks are penalized for their actions. Before, all police did was toss them in a drunk tank to recover for the night, and that was as bad as it got because the paperwork beyond got immense. But now offenders are punished since it's far easier to put a fine and impound the car than to file felony charges.
Or to be honest, it was the result of a phishing attack, and less so a malware attack.
The only reason "other retailers" are involved is because after phishing for one, they simply tried the same username/password combo on other sites, and bingo, people reused passwords!
Actually, that rule has changed. If the breaker has tripped for ANY reason, DO NOT RESET IT. If it wasn't essential to the flight, continue on. If it was, land ASAP.
Get on the ground, then have maintenance figure it out.
It tripped for a reason, and if it was because of a circuit short, do you really want to stress that circuit some more? (There have been a few accidents where resetting it has caused more issues because the already stressed circuit causes failures elsewhere, even after the faulty component was replaced).
The old rule was yes, you get ONE reset out of it. The new rule is no resets at all because maintenance should check the entire circuit to ensure the wiring and all that are still OK because they were stressed. (that includes the breaker itself which may need changing too).
Of course, back when I was taking flight training, I had a breaker that kept tripping (I found a tripped breaker, then reset it - back in the one-reset days). Basically I found a tripped breaker in my preflight, then when I finished that and got in, it tripped again which basically mean to scrub the flight. My flight instructor tried and he couldn't get the breaker to stay in either. In the end, it turned out that the alternator field coil controller had failed. But basically since it failed, resetting wasn't going to accomplish anything. Aircraft circuits don't change, so transient faults are rarely transient - I mean, if your avionics never tripped the breaker before, then the breaker trips without anything changing, something has gone wrong, especially if it's worked for years before.
Well, two reasons.
1) NAT and/or firewalling makes direct connections hard, if not impossible. No, IPv6 is not a solution because you can't guarantee there's no firewall in place. In fact, it makes things worse - it's trivially easy to detect NAT (look up IP versus external IP), but difficult to detect a firewall. In fact, you can appear to be completely connectable until you actually try to connect and then fail hard (this happens a lot back in the days of StarCraft and Battle.net). And this will cause lots of issues when IPv6 gets finally deployed because it's better to have hidden breakage than obvious breakage. (And there are some benefits of NAT too even for IPv6 that aren't firewall related - like inside/outside IP numbering independence - I'm sure many neckbeards would cringe if they had to renumber a modern LAN... and clueless users).
2) Matchmaking services. There are typically three types of gamers - one (like me) prefers to not play online. Another who prefers to play online with friends, and the third is someone who wants to play against (or with) others, any time of the day.
Sure you could try to do what PC games do and offer a huge list of servers, but then it becomes a bit hit and miss - perhaps you accidentally log into one where everyone is super skilled and get pwned in 2 seconds, or you log into one where it's all newbies, etc. And perhaps you want a full 16x16 team free-for-all and you only see servers half-populated.
Matchmaking means everyone gets ranked and when you click Play, the servers look for newly available people of approximately the same skill so you can be in the game within 2 minutes, no trying to hunt for a suitable server, no trying to find or gather friends who may be offline, etc. Just click and you're in.
3) Online leaderboards require servers that are vetted and a central lobby so players can be ranked. Because bragging rights are human nature, and it's not something you can do in a less controlled environment.
In other words, it's a problem the consumer created y being greedy. Just like smartwatches, it's a solution that is more easily solved by going less for "status" and "conspicuous consumption" and more for "what do I really need".
And iPhone sales bear it out - the iPhone 6 Plus is insanely popular in Asia, while the iPhone 6 is the bigger seller in North America and Europe. It's not that American and European hands are smaller, but that practicality plays a strong role in what people buy.
As phones get bigger (because in Asia, bigger numbers are better - they practically are a textbook illustration of measurebator - one who is not happy unless their numbers are bigger), things like this become necessary.
I mean, a smartphone in the pocket, or on the waist works, but for the phablets (because bigger screen is better, right?) it won't fit anymore, so they put it away in their purse. But now it's a pain to stay in touch because they have to dig it out just to communicate (or #FOMO!), hence smartwatches or things like this.
Granted, though, at least Samsung should be congratulated for basically inventing markets where none existed. Release large screen phones creates demand for things that make large screen phones usable again (instead of say, buying a smaller phone).
Uh, on both Xbox Live and PSN, there is offline play even on downloaded games. On Xbox Live, the console that buys the game and downloads it gets to play it offline without signing into Xbox Live. That license can be changed to a new console once a year. Of course, any console can play the game if the user is signed into Xbox Live.
For PSN, you can authorize a PS4 and that PS4 can play it offline as well. All other PS4s have to be signed in. You can change the authorized PS4 as well.
Actually, in a brave experiment, we've actually decriminalized DUIs - because finding DUI requires getting a felony conviction including all the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt rules and all that. It's a complex enough conviction that DUI convictions are low.
Instead, what happens is there's a system of fines which are civil in nature, and beyond the first you get your car impounded instantly for a day, then a week, and a month. And all you have to do is blow 0.05.
Far lower requirements to lock someone up for a day and it apparently has an effect. Getting a criminal conviction takes time and courts, giving people fines and raising their insurance and impounding their cars is more of a bylaw style offense and can be instantly implemented.
DO it enough times and the insurance company mandates interlocks, which for some is a death sentence because their license is marked as having to drive an interlocked vehicle. Which means they are no longer able to drive a company vehicle (because no company wants to pay for an interlock installation), be it a car, truck, bus, whatever.
And we're not talking about cheap fines - $400 is cheap, but impound, towing and other fees bring that up to $1000 or so.
That may be the way to do it - then add get your license suspended enough times and you lose it. Go through Driver's Ed and take the tests all over again. (We have graduated licensing, so that's another year of having to be supervised followed by a couple of years of solo but under heavy restrictions including zero tolerance for impaired driving and only a single passenger, etc).
Getting convictions is hard, cycling through people is a lot easier. And having to get to work without a car gets the message across. And having your insurance rates go up because they're told of the incident to which they can apply their own actuarial tables and jack up your rates. That also means a checkpoint can easily detain 10+ people in one night with little to no paperwork since no formal charges will be laid.
It's a more misunderstanding of science and engineering. Computer science is like other sciences - biology, physics, chemistry, etc. They're concerned about studying the theory of their branch of science, so for computer science, it's about computability - can you do something? And in what kind of time/space constraints?
But you don't ask a biologist to heal you, or a physicist to build you a bridge, or a chemist to manufacture gasoline. So you shouldn't ask a computer scientist to write you an app. Engineering is the application of science - and in more than a few places, the engineering degree is marked as applied science.
The computer engineer takes the research done by computer scientists and applies it with standard engineering compromises to produce something. Most people who do "computer science" actually do "computer engineering".
Want to see the differences illustrated more clearly? Try comparing the periodicals produced by computer science groups like the ACM, versus those by engineering groups like the IEEE.
And when something in the control system needs to be updated to handle a new piece of equipment, what are you going to do...?
Stuxnet has proven air-gaps are not invulnerable - and it used multiple vulnerabilities. It existed on a PC that was infected and merely infected a USB drive that was plugged in which then was plugged into a control PC used to reload PLCs.
Of course, that control computer was vulnerable because being air gapped, it wasn't updated to handle vulnerabilities so all it needed was ancient vulnerabilities.
It doesn't matter if it was a CD - the malware could ensure it got loaded on the CD as well so when it was stuck into the control PC, boom, infected.
Unless the control system is completely static and nothing is ever going to change on it, there has to be a way to update it. And guess what - that PC on the air-gapped network has to get data onto it. And since it's air-gapped, it will be vulnerable to 10+ year old vulnerabilities because it hasn't had a software update since it was first installed. Oh yeah, you could install updates, but that's a vulnerability because the way you get that data across the air-gap is a vulnerability.
And reasons for updating include general part obsolescence (you may be able to buy parts for 10 years, then what? Justify spending millions of dollars shutting down the factory, rip out the obsolete parts and replace the control system with a brand new one? Or just spend a few thousand, get the replacement part, and update the control system appropriately?)
The other reason is the "sensors" we have are quite poor - the eyeball itself is actually a very low resolution device - the high resolution center part of the eye covers such a narrow field of view that it's practically useless if it was a fixed camera, while the peripheral vision is so low res it's unusable.
Instead, what happens is we evolved a gigantic amount of wetware to process the image into a high-resolution image we perceive - the brain does a lot of visual processing, and the eyes rapidly move (or oscillate) to move the sharp high-res center vision around to give you a much higher "virtual resolution" than the actual Mk. 1 Eyeball can achieve.
Of course, this visual processing comes at a price - optical illusions abound because it's very easy to trick the wetware into seeing things that aren't there, because the information is often interpolated, shifted in time, etc.