I've only been reading a little bit from news sources, but it sounds like they were friends outside of work, and he wanted to sleep with her. She didn't want to sleep with him, and there wasn't any repercussions. Whatever happened, they dealt with it, and it sounds like they don't bear each other ill will. The ethics violations he and the board refer to, are officially accounting irregularities he used to cover up his time with this woman.
It's hard to tell from the little bit we know about the case, but it sounds pretty normal. Are people in companies simply never supposed to be attracted to each other? If you spend 16 hours a day at work, which becomes the drive of your life and your social circle, are you to avoid any personal emotional contact at all? There are real cases of people abusing positions of power to force people to have sex with them or face termination. While we don't know all of the details, this sounds like a doofy unrequited interoffice romance. That really should not be enough to fire someone.
There is a weird thing where the mind tends to put experiences in tiers. If everything is a cardboard cutout, it will all flow together and work OK. You did "cardboard cutout" well. The moment you start mingling real 3D objects in there, the brain starts seeing 3D objects and poorly rendered 3D objects (those aforementioned cutouts).
The same can be said of poorly done bump or normal maps, poorly digitized textures, etc. If something is either really good, or intentionally missing, the mind tends to give it a pass. If something is just mediocre or bad, the mind deducts points. Limbo, lacking most of the visual trappings of a modern game, looks really good.
Similar to how the highly detailed pixels added to the visual charm of 16-bit Role Playing Games, Doom did the graphics level that it was shooting for surprisingly well.
I wonder about real-time raytracing. Really accurate lighting models would be very helpful in proper looks, but they would also expose shortcomings in the current crop of essentially flat models. Detail would need to be built into the model, instead of baked into a small and fast effects layer. Effects like furs and broken glass would need to be done in massively more computationally expensive ways. And quite frankly, to get to true realism we need fast and accurate mocap, animation systems that take into account balance and musculature systems, accurate 3D scanners that can replace artists for modeling, skinning, and rigging, and a whole host of further advancements. Looking at a game like Red Dead Redemption, there are dozen things that you could fix for more realism before needing to get to raytracing. I've wanted a changeover to raytracing for years, but now I'm not sure that's the best use of computing power.
In her early onset of Alzheimer's, I used to say shocking things about my life to my Grandmother. She'd be surprised, righteously indignant, and secretly curious. She'd ask all sorts of questions. Fifteen minutes later, we'd do it all again.
When I left from these visits, she'd be absolutely glowing. She'd be awake, excited, and extremely happy. And she had no idea what happened. Next time in, I could make the shocking revelations again with the same effect.
Once you play up to the camera, it stops being a documentary and becomes a drama.
How is this different than most documentaries? You edit and cut and adjust and add music to make the viewer feel something that you find interesting. Even if you don't have a host hamming it up, everyone there is aware that they're on film. And once it leaves them, it is a %100 edited and created construct.
A documentary isn't completely objective or real. A documentary is what the filmmaker decides to make it into. The only thing that would be truly real is a raw feed of hidden security camera video.
The biggest thing you can do for the health of your network is de-prioritizing torrent traffic. And while bittorrent is an amazing protocol that is capable of being a very efficient distribution platform for legal content, nearly all of the actual traffic out there is illegal. This would also let you filter spammers and other problem users.
You can pay the postal service extra to have your packages arrive quicker. And while we seem to be afraid of Google paying Verizon to delay playback on Vimeo files, online providers seem to want a cut of Google's profits on Youtube videos in exchange for a high speed lane for their content. And you do have to start building up exceptions for pure net neutrality: torrents and suspected illegal downloads should be lower in the priority queue than raw HTTP, VOIP should get special access, streaming video can be squeezed up to a point, then shouldn't be squeezed at all, etc. ESPN already charges your ISP to have access to ESPN3. Should Vontage get priority over Skype, being a more pure VOIP?
It's not rocket science, but it's not a one-line fix.
Who the fuck gave them the right to provide a "legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers."?
Everyone has the right to provide legislative frameworks for consideration by lawmakers. It's an open democracy with reasonably free speech. The consideration given by lawmakers is frequently just "no" or possibly "No!"
Google and Verizon are big, and as such lawmakers might pay more attention than, say, some random plumber in Mississippi. But they're not deciding anything, just putting their opinion out there.
When colonizing the west, it could take months to get from where you started to where you're going. You had better be sure when you got where you were going that it was self-sustainable.
Space would be similar. Getting a colony on Mars or a large asteroid would not be easy. It would probably be at the bounds of our technology and knowledge, and it would certainly be a PITFA.
Transportation would be a part of that. But, at least to me, the bigger challenge is making colonies that don't require any material from Earth in order to grow.
Yes. Asking if you would like to "download the latest versions and update" is a prior step to syncing. It then starts downloading, which can be cancelled. It's pretty easy to not update your iPhone. My girlfriend did that for about a year, just because she didn't feel like dealing with the new updates.
I've actually found that KMart is a treasure trove of hard-to-find or out-of-print games. They seem to update their shelves so infrequently (and nobody buys them anyway) that rare titles seem to be plentiful. Sears can also be a veritable gold mine of out-of-print games.
Shouldn't we be taxing H1-B applications to increase funding for local schools? After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels. Having come through the California school system myself, I'm a bit shocked that computers can add.
Taxing companies that bring over immigrant workers to pay for border patrol paranoia seems foolish. Tax them to help increase local talent levels. Or require the people to become permanent citizens, thereby permanently increasing the local talent levels.
I'd argue that computers in pre-GUI times had a much lower learning curve to get to the point of programming. You mucked about in BASIC to change a program to do what you wanted it to do.
Now to muck about with a quick flash game, you have to decompile it, edit it in miles of Actionscript and timeline coding, and recompile it. Further, it is helpful if you understand http, xml, javascript, and basic networking to get anything done.
Writing a game in BASIC was easy. Writing a modern game in XNA takes C#, 3D experience, miles of tutorials, etc.
Say what you will about GUI's making things "easier" so that kids don't have to learn. The complexity of modern computing has thrown a huge wall up between the end user and real programming. I bet if you took any of the MIT genius kids from the late 70's and threw them in front of a modern computer, they'd be baffled too.
Also, all of the information we've seen so far doesn't seem to give away positions, passwords, or anything genuinely secure. This is mostly a data file on everything that has happened so far. You might be able to skim some normal operating behavior from it, but the Afghans already know that: they were there.
This feels more like an example of the military not wanting embarrassing information to get in the hands of the general public.
I forget which car company it was, but one decided they wanted to reduce the number of fatalities of pedestrians involved in accidents with their cars.
The solution, I believe, was to lower the bumper slightly on their new cars, and add a hollow spot under the front of the hood. The lowered bumper struck the pedestrian below the waist, causing the pedestrian to roll up onto the hood of the car. The hollow spot under the hood served as an airbag for the pedestrian, reducing trauma.
Other than a small amount of engineering (which yes, isn't free. But had to happen on new models anyway), the total cost to the end car buyer was basically zero dollars.
You're cutting your driving close enough that a quarter-second automatic transmission shift almost caused accidents? There's your problem right there. Have you considered semi-automatic or paddle shifting?
I don't know. I live in a part of the world where Ice happens 6 months out of the year. And I can brake on Ice. But I can't brake on ice anything like my car's ABS can brake on ice. I can steer on ice. But a good EST system will keep the car moving in the direction the wheels are pointing, which I can't do. I've driven a friend's car, which does a nice steering and suspension stiffening thing as the car goes faster, and adjusts the suspension pressure to avoid tipping during cornering.
I like the analogy of fighter jets. Modern jets basically have the computer keep the jet pointed in the direction that the pilot expects. The pilot tells the computer where to go in a way that's reminiscent of a normal plane, and the computer invisibly makes everything work in a way that humans couldn't do. The invisibleness makes it good.
I don't know. I still just want cruise control that doesn't need me to tell it to slow down because someone is coming up in front of us. And considering how many people I've been a meatspace blind-spot avoidance system for, I wouldn't mind one of those floating around. Incremental betterness.
The other thing about Zero is "We have systems in place for every known common condition." Rollovers? EST. Blind-spot? Blind spot avoidance. Turning into the same lane at the same time? Inter-car communication. Hitting pedestrians? Hollow spot under the hood. Make a big list of every fail condition in a car, and pair each fail condition with a safety feature that counteracts it.
It is definitely an appealing goal, and one which seems overdue. Suddenly Volvo seems relevant again.
* Location Location Location. Police publish city theft statistics. Look them up before moving anywhere. And the higher-traffic your specific location, the less likely it will get broken into. Those sleepy quiet corners are perfect places to steal from. * Be on the 2nd floor or above. I've had friends get things stolen from due to a 3rd floor bathroom window being open, but it's far less likely than first - floor break ins. * House Construction. I've had people steal because the back door was so old they could pry off a few nails and step through. You can remove putty from windows and take those out of the frame. Older locks are trivial to pick, but all locks are reasonably easy to get through. An old-fashioned deadbolt that is always used can be helpful. Of course, another had her TV stolen because they battering rammed a hole into a perfectly good wall. It happens. * Be obvious. A camera that the criminal can't see doesn't make them think twice. Motion-sensing lights are always a good choice, but people have gotten used to them. Put up some wifi web cams in highly visible interior locations. Be unexpected, be visible about your protections, make the criminal feel like they don't know what is going on. * Don't give juicy targets. Keep the TV far enough away from the window that people can't see it. Use privacy or cafe curtains during the day. Buy cars that are less frequently stolen. Use cable instead of satellite TV. * Get renter's insurance. Theft happens: you can deter it, but you can't prevent it. Your stuff is just that: stuff. It can go away at any moment. Renter's insurance will let you get the financial value back if that happens. Or the building burns down, the water causes the ceiling to collapse, etc.
In the grand scheme of things, people won't break into your home simply because they don't want to. Locks are easy to pick, 90% of home security systems are defeated by disabling power, etc. You can always get mugged in the street in the morning. It isn't some grandiose robbery plan to thwart your employer and take over the world. It's probably just some random 30 year olds short of cash walking down the street who noticed you had Xbox and iPhone boxes in your trash. There isn't a lot you can really do about it. All you can do is choose your location carefully, and make yourself a less attractive target than your neighbors.
Re:I Guess I Don't Exist Then ...
on
Why Wave Failed
·
· Score: 1
Chatting has had encryption for years. You can collaborate over IM, and online sharing tools. Embedding into a web page makes it into a less robust wiki. It's a wiki at that point. Everything these days is easily extensible.
When it came down to it, real-world uses were collaborative document creation and chatboxes. There are already tools for both.
Re:I Guess I Don't Exist Then ...
on
Why Wave Failed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why wave failed: Because it didn't do anything. It was a glorified chat box. Document collaboration is neat, but you've been able to do that with Google Docs and others for years. Realtime document collaboration? I can think of some times when that would be neat, but most documents have one owner. Besides, you would need to be able to edit MS Office documents realtime for that to be useful. It the "innovations" you bring to the table are drag 'n drop and live typing updating, it might be time to throw in the towel.
I'm glad Google has released a ton of things that haven't caught on. The things that has caught on, like Google Voice or maps or Android, has become incredibly useful. And there are parts of the world where Orkut is essential. But Wave was one of those failed experiments. It just didn't push far enough.
You know what happens when we lie about our business activities? We get them taken away.
If the Feds are going to lie to the American Public about fundamental, important tennants of their new airport security theater, then we should take their toys away. "I'm sorry, you needed what? You should have thought about that before you lied about it."
Of course the naked photos will never leak. Wait, that's first thing that happened. Well, the public seems comfortable with the idea. Wait, even DUBAI banned them as intrusive.
Not to be too pedantic, but isn't that what the internet is? You control something, you produce input, you get output back in. The human-to-computer interface is largely hands and keys, and the computer-to-human interface is a screen.
You can attach to neurons in the brain to get those keystrokes, though I suspect that won't be that much faster than actually typing. And you can put data back in with this kind of straight neuron stimulation, or the visual kind.
But in the grand scheme of things, what you've described could also describe a modern cellphone. You get the advantages of upgradability and flexibility, without the drawbacks of foreign-body rejection and that pesky cross-skin barrier. Oh, and the ridiculously high costs of brain surgery.
I'm not convinced connecting directly to the brain would really be that much faster. Really, how long does it take you to think of a sentence, one letter at a time? What about getting input back in? Is reading really all that slow? If reading is too slow for us, why haven't we moved on to those lightning-fast screen readers?
Slashdot Mirror
There isn't any leeway, especially at the top.
And this is why kids get kicked out of schools for having a butter knife in their lunch box.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/08/10/businessinsider-backlash-against-hewlett-packard-grows-it-seems-mark-hurd-fired-because-company-scared-of-bad-pr-over-bogus-sexual-harassment-allegation-2010-8.DTL
http://chattahbox.com/business/2010/08/09/hps-sexual-harassment-accuser-jodie-fisher-skin-flick-actress/
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2010-08-06-hp-ceo-hurd-resigns_N.htm
I've only been reading a little bit from news sources, but it sounds like they were friends outside of work, and he wanted to sleep with her. She didn't want to sleep with him, and there wasn't any repercussions. Whatever happened, they dealt with it, and it sounds like they don't bear each other ill will. The ethics violations he and the board refer to, are officially accounting irregularities he used to cover up his time with this woman.
It's hard to tell from the little bit we know about the case, but it sounds pretty normal. Are people in companies simply never supposed to be attracted to each other? If you spend 16 hours a day at work, which becomes the drive of your life and your social circle, are you to avoid any personal emotional contact at all? There are real cases of people abusing positions of power to force people to have sex with them or face termination. While we don't know all of the details, this sounds like a doofy unrequited interoffice romance. That really should not be enough to fire someone.
If you think Wolfenstein 3D is ugly, you should play Chex Quest. Yes, those are "evil cereal eating creatures from another dimension."
http://www.kongregate.com/games/mike_id/doom-1
There is a weird thing where the mind tends to put experiences in tiers. If everything is a cardboard cutout, it will all flow together and work OK. You did "cardboard cutout" well. The moment you start mingling real 3D objects in there, the brain starts seeing 3D objects and poorly rendered 3D objects (those aforementioned cutouts).
The same can be said of poorly done bump or normal maps, poorly digitized textures, etc. If something is either really good, or intentionally missing, the mind tends to give it a pass. If something is just mediocre or bad, the mind deducts points. Limbo, lacking most of the visual trappings of a modern game, looks really good.
Similar to how the highly detailed pixels added to the visual charm of 16-bit Role Playing Games, Doom did the graphics level that it was shooting for surprisingly well.
I wonder about real-time raytracing. Really accurate lighting models would be very helpful in proper looks, but they would also expose shortcomings in the current crop of essentially flat models. Detail would need to be built into the model, instead of baked into a small and fast effects layer. Effects like furs and broken glass would need to be done in massively more computationally expensive ways. And quite frankly, to get to true realism we need fast and accurate mocap, animation systems that take into account balance and musculature systems, accurate 3D scanners that can replace artists for modeling, skinning, and rigging, and a whole host of further advancements. Looking at a game like Red Dead Redemption, there are dozen things that you could fix for more realism before needing to get to raytracing. I've wanted a changeover to raytracing for years, but now I'm not sure that's the best use of computing power.
In her early onset of Alzheimer's, I used to say shocking things about my life to my Grandmother. She'd be surprised, righteously indignant, and secretly curious. She'd ask all sorts of questions. Fifteen minutes later, we'd do it all again.
When I left from these visits, she'd be absolutely glowing. She'd be awake, excited, and extremely happy. And she had no idea what happened. Next time in, I could make the shocking revelations again with the same effect.
Once you play up to the camera, it stops being a documentary and becomes a drama.
How is this different than most documentaries? You edit and cut and adjust and add music to make the viewer feel something that you find interesting. Even if you don't have a host hamming it up, everyone there is aware that they're on film. And once it leaves them, it is a %100 edited and created construct.
A documentary isn't completely objective or real. A documentary is what the filmmaker decides to make it into. The only thing that would be truly real is a raw feed of hidden security camera video.
The biggest thing you can do for the health of your network is de-prioritizing torrent traffic. And while bittorrent is an amazing protocol that is capable of being a very efficient distribution platform for legal content, nearly all of the actual traffic out there is illegal. This would also let you filter spammers and other problem users.
You can pay the postal service extra to have your packages arrive quicker. And while we seem to be afraid of Google paying Verizon to delay playback on Vimeo files, online providers seem to want a cut of Google's profits on Youtube videos in exchange for a high speed lane for their content. And you do have to start building up exceptions for pure net neutrality: torrents and suspected illegal downloads should be lower in the priority queue than raw HTTP, VOIP should get special access, streaming video can be squeezed up to a point, then shouldn't be squeezed at all, etc. ESPN already charges your ISP to have access to ESPN3. Should Vontage get priority over Skype, being a more pure VOIP?
It's not rocket science, but it's not a one-line fix.
Who the fuck gave them the right to provide a "legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers."?
Everyone has the right to provide legislative frameworks for consideration by lawmakers. It's an open democracy with reasonably free speech. The consideration given by lawmakers is frequently just "no" or possibly "No!"
Google and Verizon are big, and as such lawmakers might pay more attention than, say, some random plumber in Mississippi. But they're not deciding anything, just putting their opinion out there.
When colonizing the west, it could take months to get from where you started to where you're going. You had better be sure when you got where you were going that it was self-sustainable.
Space would be similar. Getting a colony on Mars or a large asteroid would not be easy. It would probably be at the bounds of our technology and knowledge, and it would certainly be a PITFA.
Transportation would be a part of that. But, at least to me, the bigger challenge is making colonies that don't require any material from Earth in order to grow.
Yes. Asking if you would like to "download the latest versions and update" is a prior step to syncing. It then starts downloading, which can be cancelled. It's pretty easy to not update your iPhone. My girlfriend did that for about a year, just because she didn't feel like dealing with the new updates.
I've actually found that KMart is a treasure trove of hard-to-find or out-of-print games. They seem to update their shelves so infrequently (and nobody buys them anyway) that rare titles seem to be plentiful. Sears can also be a veritable gold mine of out-of-print games.
Shouldn't we be taxing H1-B applications to increase funding for local schools? After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels. Having come through the California school system myself, I'm a bit shocked that computers can add.
Taxing companies that bring over immigrant workers to pay for border patrol paranoia seems foolish. Tax them to help increase local talent levels. Or require the people to become permanent citizens, thereby permanently increasing the local talent levels.
I'd argue that computers in pre-GUI times had a much lower learning curve to get to the point of programming. You mucked about in BASIC to change a program to do what you wanted it to do.
Now to muck about with a quick flash game, you have to decompile it, edit it in miles of Actionscript and timeline coding, and recompile it. Further, it is helpful if you understand http, xml, javascript, and basic networking to get anything done.
Writing a game in BASIC was easy. Writing a modern game in XNA takes C#, 3D experience, miles of tutorials, etc.
Say what you will about GUI's making things "easier" so that kids don't have to learn. The complexity of modern computing has thrown a huge wall up between the end user and real programming. I bet if you took any of the MIT genius kids from the late 70's and threw them in front of a modern computer, they'd be baffled too.
Also, all of the information we've seen so far doesn't seem to give away positions, passwords, or anything genuinely secure. This is mostly a data file on everything that has happened so far. You might be able to skim some normal operating behavior from it, but the Afghans already know that: they were there.
This feels more like an example of the military not wanting embarrassing information to get in the hands of the general public.
I forget which car company it was, but one decided they wanted to reduce the number of fatalities of pedestrians involved in accidents with their cars.
The solution, I believe, was to lower the bumper slightly on their new cars, and add a hollow spot under the front of the hood. The lowered bumper struck the pedestrian below the waist, causing the pedestrian to roll up onto the hood of the car. The hollow spot under the hood served as an airbag for the pedestrian, reducing trauma.
Other than a small amount of engineering (which yes, isn't free. But had to happen on new models anyway), the total cost to the end car buyer was basically zero dollars.
You're cutting your driving close enough that a quarter-second automatic transmission shift almost caused accidents? There's your problem right there. Have you considered semi-automatic or paddle shifting?
I don't know. I live in a part of the world where Ice happens 6 months out of the year. And I can brake on Ice. But I can't brake on ice anything like my car's ABS can brake on ice. I can steer on ice. But a good EST system will keep the car moving in the direction the wheels are pointing, which I can't do. I've driven a friend's car, which does a nice steering and suspension stiffening thing as the car goes faster, and adjusts the suspension pressure to avoid tipping during cornering.
I like the analogy of fighter jets. Modern jets basically have the computer keep the jet pointed in the direction that the pilot expects. The pilot tells the computer where to go in a way that's reminiscent of a normal plane, and the computer invisibly makes everything work in a way that humans couldn't do. The invisibleness makes it good.
I don't know. I still just want cruise control that doesn't need me to tell it to slow down because someone is coming up in front of us. And considering how many people I've been a meatspace blind-spot avoidance system for, I wouldn't mind one of those floating around. Incremental betterness.
The other thing about Zero is "We have systems in place for every known common condition." Rollovers? EST. Blind-spot? Blind spot avoidance. Turning into the same lane at the same time? Inter-car communication. Hitting pedestrians? Hollow spot under the hood. Make a big list of every fail condition in a car, and pair each fail condition with a safety feature that counteracts it.
It is definitely an appealing goal, and one which seems overdue. Suddenly Volvo seems relevant again.
Other great deterrents:
* Location Location Location. Police publish city theft statistics. Look them up before moving anywhere. And the higher-traffic your specific location, the less likely it will get broken into. Those sleepy quiet corners are perfect places to steal from.
* Be on the 2nd floor or above. I've had friends get things stolen from due to a 3rd floor bathroom window being open, but it's far less likely than first - floor break ins.
* House Construction. I've had people steal because the back door was so old they could pry off a few nails and step through. You can remove putty from windows and take those out of the frame. Older locks are trivial to pick, but all locks are reasonably easy to get through. An old-fashioned deadbolt that is always used can be helpful. Of course, another had her TV stolen because they battering rammed a hole into a perfectly good wall. It happens.
* Be obvious. A camera that the criminal can't see doesn't make them think twice. Motion-sensing lights are always a good choice, but people have gotten used to them. Put up some wifi web cams in highly visible interior locations. Be unexpected, be visible about your protections, make the criminal feel like they don't know what is going on.
* Don't give juicy targets. Keep the TV far enough away from the window that people can't see it. Use privacy or cafe curtains during the day. Buy cars that are less frequently stolen. Use cable instead of satellite TV.
* Get renter's insurance. Theft happens: you can deter it, but you can't prevent it. Your stuff is just that: stuff. It can go away at any moment. Renter's insurance will let you get the financial value back if that happens. Or the building burns down, the water causes the ceiling to collapse, etc.
In the grand scheme of things, people won't break into your home simply because they don't want to. Locks are easy to pick, 90% of home security systems are defeated by disabling power, etc. You can always get mugged in the street in the morning. It isn't some grandiose robbery plan to thwart your employer and take over the world. It's probably just some random 30 year olds short of cash walking down the street who noticed you had Xbox and iPhone boxes in your trash. There isn't a lot you can really do about it. All you can do is choose your location carefully, and make yourself a less attractive target than your neighbors.
Chatting has had encryption for years.
You can collaborate over IM, and online sharing tools.
Embedding into a web page makes it into a less robust wiki. It's a wiki at that point.
Everything these days is easily extensible.
When it came down to it, real-world uses were collaborative document creation and chatboxes. There are already tools for both.
Why wave failed: Because it didn't do anything. It was a glorified chat box. Document collaboration is neat, but you've been able to do that with Google Docs and others for years. Realtime document collaboration? I can think of some times when that would be neat, but most documents have one owner. Besides, you would need to be able to edit MS Office documents realtime for that to be useful. It the "innovations" you bring to the table are drag 'n drop and live typing updating, it might be time to throw in the towel.
I'm glad Google has released a ton of things that haven't caught on. The things that has caught on, like Google Voice or maps or Android, has become incredibly useful. And there are parts of the world where Orkut is essential. But Wave was one of those failed experiments. It just didn't push far enough.
The UK doesn't do full-body scanning on anyone under 18, for this very reason.
You know what happens when we lie about our business activities? We get them taken away.
If the Feds are going to lie to the American Public about fundamental, important tennants of their new airport security theater, then we should take their toys away. "I'm sorry, you needed what? You should have thought about that before you lied about it."
Of course the naked photos will never leak. Wait, that's first thing that happened. Well, the public seems comfortable with the idea. Wait, even DUBAI banned them as intrusive.
Not to be too pedantic, but isn't that what the internet is? You control something, you produce input, you get output back in. The human-to-computer interface is largely hands and keys, and the computer-to-human interface is a screen.
You can attach to neurons in the brain to get those keystrokes, though I suspect that won't be that much faster than actually typing. And you can put data back in with this kind of straight neuron stimulation, or the visual kind.
But in the grand scheme of things, what you've described could also describe a modern cellphone. You get the advantages of upgradability and flexibility, without the drawbacks of foreign-body rejection and that pesky cross-skin barrier. Oh, and the ridiculously high costs of brain surgery.
I'm not convinced connecting directly to the brain would really be that much faster. Really, how long does it take you to think of a sentence, one letter at a time? What about getting input back in? Is reading really all that slow? If reading is too slow for us, why haven't we moved on to those lightning-fast screen readers?