Hmmm... I have no idea WTF you mean by Google maps not having these options.
Sure, the transit truck isn't there, but right now, this very minute, they have options for car, transit, walking, cycling, and even planes.
It even tells you about toll roads, and lets you drag around the route to avoid certain things.
If you think those options don't exist, then it's entirely because you haven't looked at it lately and have no idea of what the hell you're talking about. Google maps has had these things for quite some time.
Do you walk much in big cities and use crosswalks?
Because in all honesty, I see a tremendous amount of drivers who don't even look for pedestrians and just race through the intersection. I've been crossing on a light and had some asshole turn right on red practically run me over, and I know damned well people actually do get run over.
And some of these drivers are then yelling at the pedestrian for being in the way, because they're too stupid to realize just who is in whose way.
Maybe the problem isn't about teaching children common sense, but in realizing that many drivers are practically homicidal in the way they drive a car.
Because, I'm sorry... but if I'm crossing a cross-walk on a walk signal, and you're turning right on red through the crosswalk, it's not ME who is at fault.
You can look all you want, but when drivers don't seem to be aware of (or care about) pedestrians, that's the real damned problem.
A tremendous amount of people turn into assholes and morons when they get behind the wheel.
Part of this is the need for people to believe there is hope, and therefore want to believe desperately that some magic bullet will come along.
But, I fear the biggest problem is the corporatization of the surrounding charities.
Things like the Pink Ribbon stuff is increasingly about for-profit marketing, and less about actually generating money for research.
So, people put lots of hype into marketing the future cure because it can be fairly lucrative. Cancer "charities" can be a big business these days, because they capitalize on fear and hope.
And much of what happens is more about PR and profits than any actual medicine.
And by the same token, I've seen a few examples of where someone was clearly using a cheap consumer GPS instead of one designed to actually deal with trucks.
And then you get a large truck on a road (or bridge) not rated for it, and in which it can't move.
My in-laws routinely see semi trucks trying to go down their small dirt road, because something is telling them to take turns no sane person would take those trucks on -- there's even big signs saying "No Trucks except local delivery".
Lack of willingness to pay for the proper kind of GPS could lead to property damage and fines, because you can't just bash your way through and say you were just following your GPS when you also ignored the signs saying your truck can't go somewhere.
Don't know about safer, but I know a lot of places where trying to make a left hand turn can be a major pain in the ass... I was at a traffic light not so long ago that had two left turning lanes, with room for about 20 cars in each lane.
The advanced left turn gave enough room for about 3 cars from each lane to get through the intersection before the light changed -- assuming the front-most car stomped on it as soon as the light changed. Which left a lot of cars still not through the intersection.
Don't know if it was a time of day thing which wasn't working, or what. But it was annoying as hell... it could literally take 20 minutes to get through.
But people have been avoiding left hand turns in many places for quite some time.
Hell, I've been through a few places where there are no left turning lanes, so if someone is trying to turn left traffic grinds to a halt.
I can only imagine in a city like New York this is even worse, and then racing to make the left and not seeing a pedestrian could be a huge deal.
There's been several times where I'd like to have my navigation unit let me select this. Left turns in crowded cities can be a royal nuisance.
So are privacy and security baked into this or any of the other crap in this "Internet of Things"? Or are we continuing to write insecure garbage which will ignore these very important things?
As long as IoT is a marketing term about what this bold new future will bring us (more shit to buy, less security).. I am of the opinion that this is a solution in search of a problem.
Consumers aren't saying "gee, what we really want is a bunch of pieces which screw up our privacy and security because people are too lazy and greedy to build it in".
People who want to sell us on this idea are driving this.
Sorry, but this stuff is basically proof of concept of "wouldn't it be cool if" while paying zero attention to the real world issues which will need to be solved before this will ever be a viable thing.
Right now it's just marketing hype, and a bunch of glassy eyed futurists trying to tell us how a technology nobody is asking for is going to revolutionize the world.
I don't see a single application for IoT that means I as a consumer want this or trust this. In fact, I see lots of evidence this is poorly thought out, thrown together, and not anything which will benefit anybody but the people selling it.
I very much doubt a significant majority of websites use Java. Javascript, maybe.
And you know what? If you hit a website which requires you run unsecure shit which allows arbitrary code execution? Maybe you should realize that's a good time to leave it disabled and find another site.
If you're letting every site on the planet run Java, Javascript, and Flash... well, congratulations, you're who they make zero day exploits for.
I haven't seen a non-work related website requiring actual Java in years.
I consider those "please enable cookies and disable all security" warnings as a sure sign of either a badly done website, or one which is so focused on marketing and analytics that I don't give a crap if I can't reach their site.
It's your security, either you take ownership of it, or you throw your hands up and decide that the world will end if you don't allow some website to run Java. You can't have it both ways.
Why? It's entirely easy to go your entire life and not feel compelled to educate yourself about bees. Maybe I even knew this at one time. I have no idea.
But in the same way I know almost nothing about flower arranging or weaving... knowing the difference between bees hasn't been something germane to my life experience.
Quick, without googling it, tell me 10 techniques a blacksmith would use. (And, no, I don't know either;-)
Flash memory -- the type of memory used by most portable devices -- could provide an alternative to conventional RAM for big-data applications. It's about a tenth as expensive, and it consumes about a tenth as much power.
The problem is that it's also a tenth as fast. But at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in June, MIT researchers presented a new system that, for several common big-data applications, should make servers using flash memory as efficient as those using conventional RAM, while preserving their power and cost savings.
The researchers also presented experimental evidence showing that, if the servers executing a distributed computation have to go to disk for data even 5 percent of the time, their performance falls to a level that's comparable with flash, anyway.
So, power saving, good performance, and cheaper.
The world hasn't changed, but for a specific kind of problem, this is kind of interesting. This sounds like they've made huge scale computing cheaper for some classes of problem.
I bet the people who solve those problems will care.
Well, I actually wonder if this isn't something new.
So, think about it, because (I think) this kind of extends a Von Neumann architecture.
âoeBut there may be many applications that can take advantage of this new style of architecture. Which companies recognize: Everybodyâ(TM)s experimenting with different aspects of flash. Weâ(TM)re just trying to establish another point in the design space.â
It gives you a larger degree of parallelism because all the little doohickies are using their local storage to do some of your tasks.
To me it sounds like they've created something which helps with parallelism on huge data sets.
My guess is your cheap quad core isn't as cheap or suited to these tasks as you think.
Well, part of becoming old and cynical is that we often get told we'll see profound progress "real soon now"... usually in 5-10 years, and which doesn't actually happen.
Yay, progress! We're all in favor of it. But if every breakthrough I've seen on Slashdot which was meant to revolutionize things in 5-10 years had come true... batteries would be a zillion times faster, CPUs would be infinitely fast, and we'd actually have flying frickin' cars.
I personally am not upset we didn't get the giant one step. But I also look at things which are going to "revolutionize" anything and think "I will believe it when I see it".
Batteries keeping pace with Moore's law? Well, that's a pretty big claim.
Maybe in 5-10 years. Which never actually seems to happen.
Which I think is the entire point being made in this thread.
I came here to ask that very question... according to this:
Black phosphorus is the most stable form; the atoms are linked together in puckered sheets, like graphite. Because of these structural similarities black phosphorus is also flaky like graphite and possesses other similar properties.
But I have no idea what "most stable" means in a relative sense.
I don't think of graphite as being something which bursts into flames, so maybe it's not so far fetched.
Yeah, it essentially sounds like they've patented magic here.
I didn't realize you could patent tech you can't create and which has huge gaping holes of "and a series of scientific breakthroughs happen here in the middle but we don't know how".
This patent seems to rely on step 2 of the underpants gnomes business plan -- which means it's not so much a patent as a concept with some wishful thinking and creative writing.
Can I patent my anti-gravity device if I don't know how to do anti-gravity?
So, hopefully you are doing this on stuff so old you don't have to worry about your support contract, hopefully you can figure out how to legally do this without violating someone's copyright (it's a derivative work), and hopefully you don't introduce any new errors or security holes.
This sounds cool, but you're in a gray area in terms of legality I should think.
I guess if it works it's cool, I'm just not clear on how you can prove that the two are 100% the same.
You know, many things are approachable by someone of "average" intelligence and background if you try hard enough.
The problem becomes that so much of the populace is outright anti-science, that who are you targeting?
Honestly, it's not the average person to worry about... it's the people who outright reject that any of this stuff is real and think that "just a theory" means their opinion is just as valid.
The YouTube-ification of science would be quite sad, and probably counter productive as people try to get edgy and appeal to a youth audience.... yo yo yo boi, MC Flava Physix in da house to explain quantum entanglement might be funny once, but we don't need it to be a recurring thing.
These people aren't writing papers for the drooling masses. They're writing them for other people educated in the field.
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos.
Way too much crap of "must work like this proprietary project", and too many uses of other proprietary things.
How the hell ISO allowed it to ever be identified as a standard still perplexes me.
Which means it's good when people see OOXML for what it is -- a proprietary format, which is inadequately documented, and has things which limit other people from using it.
Even Microsoft doesn't adhere to any standard interpretation of OOXML, because there isn't one.
So how do you respond to things like Mars One, which more or less seems to be a suicide mission in which people will be shipped to Mars, and assuming they make it that far will basically be on their own to survive?
Mars One seems to be using the business model of the underpants gnomes, and leaving a lot of things unanswered.
Apparently people dying on another planet will make for good TV.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm ... I have no idea WTF you mean by Google maps not having these options.
Sure, the transit truck isn't there, but right now, this very minute, they have options for car, transit, walking, cycling, and even planes.
It even tells you about toll roads, and lets you drag around the route to avoid certain things.
If you think those options don't exist, then it's entirely because you haven't looked at it lately and have no idea of what the hell you're talking about. Google maps has had these things for quite some time.
Do you walk much in big cities and use crosswalks?
Because in all honesty, I see a tremendous amount of drivers who don't even look for pedestrians and just race through the intersection. I've been crossing on a light and had some asshole turn right on red practically run me over, and I know damned well people actually do get run over.
And some of these drivers are then yelling at the pedestrian for being in the way, because they're too stupid to realize just who is in whose way.
Maybe the problem isn't about teaching children common sense, but in realizing that many drivers are practically homicidal in the way they drive a car.
Because, I'm sorry ... but if I'm crossing a cross-walk on a walk signal, and you're turning right on red through the crosswalk, it's not ME who is at fault.
You can look all you want, but when drivers don't seem to be aware of (or care about) pedestrians, that's the real damned problem.
A tremendous amount of people turn into assholes and morons when they get behind the wheel.
Part of this is the need for people to believe there is hope, and therefore want to believe desperately that some magic bullet will come along.
But, I fear the biggest problem is the corporatization of the surrounding charities.
Things like the Pink Ribbon stuff is increasingly about for-profit marketing, and less about actually generating money for research.
So, people put lots of hype into marketing the future cure because it can be fairly lucrative. Cancer "charities" can be a big business these days, because they capitalize on fear and hope.
And much of what happens is more about PR and profits than any actual medicine.
And by the same token, I've seen a few examples of where someone was clearly using a cheap consumer GPS instead of one designed to actually deal with trucks.
And then you get a large truck on a road (or bridge) not rated for it, and in which it can't move.
My in-laws routinely see semi trucks trying to go down their small dirt road, because something is telling them to take turns no sane person would take those trucks on -- there's even big signs saying "No Trucks except local delivery".
Lack of willingness to pay for the proper kind of GPS could lead to property damage and fines, because you can't just bash your way through and say you were just following your GPS when you also ignored the signs saying your truck can't go somewhere.
Don't know about safer, but I know a lot of places where trying to make a left hand turn can be a major pain in the ass ... I was at a traffic light not so long ago that had two left turning lanes, with room for about 20 cars in each lane.
The advanced left turn gave enough room for about 3 cars from each lane to get through the intersection before the light changed -- assuming the front-most car stomped on it as soon as the light changed. Which left a lot of cars still not through the intersection.
Don't know if it was a time of day thing which wasn't working, or what. But it was annoying as hell ... it could literally take 20 minutes to get through.
But people have been avoiding left hand turns in many places for quite some time.
Hell, I've been through a few places where there are no left turning lanes, so if someone is trying to turn left traffic grinds to a halt.
I can only imagine in a city like New York this is even worse, and then racing to make the left and not seeing a pedestrian could be a huge deal.
There's been several times where I'd like to have my navigation unit let me select this. Left turns in crowded cities can be a royal nuisance.
So are privacy and security baked into this or any of the other crap in this "Internet of Things"? Or are we continuing to write insecure garbage which will ignore these very important things?
As long as IoT is a marketing term about what this bold new future will bring us (more shit to buy, less security) .. I am of the opinion that this is a solution in search of a problem.
Consumers aren't saying "gee, what we really want is a bunch of pieces which screw up our privacy and security because people are too lazy and greedy to build it in".
People who want to sell us on this idea are driving this.
Sorry, but this stuff is basically proof of concept of "wouldn't it be cool if" while paying zero attention to the real world issues which will need to be solved before this will ever be a viable thing.
Right now it's just marketing hype, and a bunch of glassy eyed futurists trying to tell us how a technology nobody is asking for is going to revolutionize the world.
I don't see a single application for IoT that means I as a consumer want this or trust this. In fact, I see lots of evidence this is poorly thought out, thrown together, and not anything which will benefit anybody but the people selling it.
Get off my damned lawn.
I very much doubt a significant majority of websites use Java. Javascript, maybe.
And you know what? If you hit a website which requires you run unsecure shit which allows arbitrary code execution? Maybe you should realize that's a good time to leave it disabled and find another site.
If you're letting every site on the planet run Java, Javascript, and Flash ... well, congratulations, you're who they make zero day exploits for.
I haven't seen a non-work related website requiring actual Java in years.
I consider those "please enable cookies and disable all security" warnings as a sure sign of either a badly done website, or one which is so focused on marketing and analytics that I don't give a crap if I can't reach their site.
It's your security, either you take ownership of it, or you throw your hands up and decide that the world will end if you don't allow some website to run Java. You can't have it both ways.
Why? It's entirely easy to go your entire life and not feel compelled to educate yourself about bees. Maybe I even knew this at one time. I have no idea.
But in the same way I know almost nothing about flower arranging or weaving ... knowing the difference between bees hasn't been something germane to my life experience.
Quick, without googling it, tell me 10 techniques a blacksmith would use. (And, no, I don't know either ;-)
Big slow cheap with low power consumption;
So, power saving, good performance, and cheaper.
The world hasn't changed, but for a specific kind of problem, this is kind of interesting. This sounds like they've made huge scale computing cheaper for some classes of problem.
I bet the people who solve those problems will care.
Well, I actually wonder if this isn't something new.
So, think about it, because (I think) this kind of extends a Von Neumann architecture.
It gives you a larger degree of parallelism because all the little doohickies are using their local storage to do some of your tasks.
To me it sounds like they've created something which helps with parallelism on huge data sets.
My guess is your cheap quad core isn't as cheap or suited to these tasks as you think.
Well, part of becoming old and cynical is that we often get told we'll see profound progress "real soon now" ... usually in 5-10 years, and which doesn't actually happen.
Yay, progress! We're all in favor of it. But if every breakthrough I've seen on Slashdot which was meant to revolutionize things in 5-10 years had come true ... batteries would be a zillion times faster, CPUs would be infinitely fast, and we'd actually have flying frickin' cars.
I personally am not upset we didn't get the giant one step. But I also look at things which are going to "revolutionize" anything and think "I will believe it when I see it".
Batteries keeping pace with Moore's law? Well, that's a pretty big claim.
Maybe in 5-10 years. Which never actually seems to happen.
Which I think is the entire point being made in this thread.
I came here to ask that very question ... according to this:
But I have no idea what "most stable" means in a relative sense.
I don't think of graphite as being something which bursts into flames, so maybe it's not so far fetched.
LOL ... is that a real fact, or one of those stupid internet facts?
Yeah, it essentially sounds like they've patented magic here.
I didn't realize you could patent tech you can't create and which has huge gaping holes of "and a series of scientific breakthroughs happen here in the middle but we don't know how".
This patent seems to rely on step 2 of the underpants gnomes business plan -- which means it's not so much a patent as a concept with some wishful thinking and creative writing.
Can I patent my anti-gravity device if I don't know how to do anti-gravity?
In fairness, on behalf of all of us who aren't entomologists ... I had no idea of the difference either.
This gives a rundown of what the differences are.
I bet the majority of people don't know they're different things.
Well, you apparently would be an authority on assholes, idiot.
Seriously, do you get punched in real life? Or do you only act like an asshole on the internet?
These days, copyright means whatever the hell corporations tell government it means, and it's a constantly moving target.
I'm not convinced the BSA would agree.
Yeah, it's full of snide assholes posting as Anonymous Coward who don't have anything intelligent to add.
So, hopefully you are doing this on stuff so old you don't have to worry about your support contract, hopefully you can figure out how to legally do this without violating someone's copyright (it's a derivative work), and hopefully you don't introduce any new errors or security holes.
This sounds cool, but you're in a gray area in terms of legality I should think.
I guess if it works it's cool, I'm just not clear on how you can prove that the two are 100% the same.
Why, no. It would be a Beorat cluster.
Do try to keep up. ;-)
Ah, but just think about it ... hook this puppy up to your webcam, and you can stare at yourself with flowing locks.
It'll be like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter. People will just wile away their lives basking in the glory of having Fabio hair.
Bastards ... now I can't get this out of my head!!
You know, many things are approachable by someone of "average" intelligence and background if you try hard enough.
The problem becomes that so much of the populace is outright anti-science, that who are you targeting?
Honestly, it's not the average person to worry about ... it's the people who outright reject that any of this stuff is real and think that "just a theory" means their opinion is just as valid.
The YouTube-ification of science would be quite sad, and probably counter productive as people try to get edgy and appeal to a youth audience .... yo yo yo boi, MC Flava Physix in da house to explain quantum entanglement might be funny once, but we don't need it to be a recurring thing.
These people aren't writing papers for the drooling masses. They're writing them for other people educated in the field.
Let's not drag the science community down to the level of YouTube cat videos.
Calling OOXML a "standard" was always a bad joke.
Way too much crap of "must work like this proprietary project", and too many uses of other proprietary things.
How the hell ISO allowed it to ever be identified as a standard still perplexes me.
Which means it's good when people see OOXML for what it is -- a proprietary format, which is inadequately documented, and has things which limit other people from using it.
Even Microsoft doesn't adhere to any standard interpretation of OOXML, because there isn't one.
So how do you respond to things like Mars One, which more or less seems to be a suicide mission in which people will be shipped to Mars, and assuming they make it that far will basically be on their own to survive?
Mars One seems to be using the business model of the underpants gnomes, and leaving a lot of things unanswered.
Apparently people dying on another planet will make for good TV.
Yeah, that will be an epic fail.
It would be a hilarious test to watch. But an autonomous car in a bad winter snow storm? I don't see that working out very well.
And then you have a car which is either only usable part of the year, or in certain places.