Add a full-windshield heads-up display, subtract the rendering and let it match the scenery to a database - voila! ultimate guidance system. It could flash imaginary arrows and highlight things. When you're low on gas it could put a big red box around the nearest gas station in sight, or provide big red arrows to show you where to go, or even tell if you've been ignoring it too long and there are none within the range of the gas you have left:) Looking for someplace to eat, or little Johnny *really* has to go? It can show you where to find a restaurant of the type of your choice or find the nearest rest stop.
I give it another ten years before this kind of equipment (not the article, but what I mentioned) becomes affordable in the US.
I think the problem is the potential abuse of an all-seeing government. But I could be wrong.
Another issue is the idea that others know better than me how to drive safely. I take exception to this but I've seen some incredibly bad driving so maybe this is a largely valid assumption after all. *shrug*
which car is going to be more likely to avoid ramming the car ahead of them?
Assuming they've allowed adequate following distance as a safe and prudent driver, they will both be likely to avoid ramming into the car in front of them. This is my whole point. Safe driving practices are the crux of the issue, and this does not necessarily mean driving slowly.
I see bad drivers going fast all the time. That doesn't make driving fast bad. Driving fast and then tailgating the person in front of you at a four-foot distance in your SUV to hint that you want them to get out of the way is a recipe for disaster.
I'm extremely careful and wary of speed traps. There's a smart way to speed and less smart ways to speed, and the smart way doesn't involve a radar detector. That's a crutch that will get you in trouble.
You're right, it is anecdotal, and I will continue the anecdote. I have been told by people who ride in the car with me that I seem to them an extremely safe driver. You know what? A car operated properly at a high speed is not dangerous. What's dangerous is improper operation.
Driving faster requires a larger following distance, but most people follow way too close at any speed. Simply reducing speed limits will not really make the roads any safer. I don't know what will, except for people taking a more considerate and intelligent approach to driving.
For a camera to see you, you have to be able to see it. It may be really small or really far away, or hidden behind a mirror or dark glass, but you can always tell it would be a possibility.
Additionally, for high quality images (i.e. useful images) the cameras must be closer/less obscured/more expensive and are less hideable.
These issues do not much affect radio-frequency waves.
What it comes down to is that maybe you think this kind of tracking is okay, after all, it is aiming to enforce the law, but just remember that the enforcers are people, and people not only make innocent mistakes, but sometimes maliciously misuse systems to which they have access. Even if you percieve the government or law enforcement as good, there are always bad eggs in the system somewhere. It just doesn't occur to most people until they get screwed.
Speeding is not necessarily dangerous. I'm something of a 'fast' driver and have a squeaky clean record after almost six years of driving. What's more important is driving safely, I.E. using turn signals, not cutting people off or weaving between lanes, etc. The worst offenses in bad driving can be perpetrated at almost any speed, and I see them all the time in my current place of residence, New Orleans.
I do recognize that energy is a function of mass linearly and of velocity geometrically, but cars are going 'fast' anyway so the difference between 60 mph and 70 mph in an accident is going to be pretty minimal. Furthermore I see a much more dangerous part of that equation increasing regularly with the popularity of SUVs. As I drive a small car I'm not too happy with this trend, and I'm certainly not going to take the wrong way out and join it.
Doubling the mass of a vehicle at the same speed does double the energy imparted by it in a collision.
As usual governments would have it easier if they knew everything that was going on, but I'm not in any way for that and will always prefer reducing the size of government. The citizens of the UK seem to really be getting the short end of the stick in terms of governmental monitoring, but I think (and hope!) you'd see quite the uproar if the US gov't ever tried something like this.
Tell me, do you know what a bitmap is? Do you have any idea what the difference between a vector and a bitmap is?
Until GUIs start being made more with vectors and less with bitmaps they are ALWAYS going to be memory hogs. Some of the 'lighter' GUIs mentioned in the comments around here do just that.
Maybe you do write GUIs, and I'm an arse. Do you? If so how do you not understand this?
I got a nice hand-me-down pocketpc machine runding Windows PocketPC and went looking for software. It all costs money. To someone who uses GPL software on OS X and linux 99% of the time it's fabulously annoying.
It's the old shareware thing. People want money for crappy little utilities that may or may not still be available when the author gets bored. When people open-source (more specifically, use the GPL on) their software and release it, all they want back are bug reports and maybe contributions. This allows the software to improve and stick around even if the author loses interest.
I'm still lacking basic utilities on my pocketpc and wishing it were an iPaq so I could install Familiar Linux on it. I wish I had a clue about programming for Windows PocketPC or Mobile or CE or whatever the name-of-the day is so that I could maybe start trying to write stuff for it...
I couldn't get Inferno to do much of anything besides load up and sit there. The lack of a good shell (like bash) was something of a hindrance. I gave up.
Hazy? That is one of the least hazy rules there is.
If you want a possessive, use 's
If you want a plural DO NOT use the apostrophe. Simple.
The only exception that I know of is its vs it's, and since in a contraction you eliminate a letter, you have to show that the letter went somewhere, requiring an apostrophe. Therefore its is possessive and it's means it is.
If you're a non-native speaker this is somewhat forgivable, but please don't tell me that English is your first language.
I run massively long calculations on my desktop, which just happens to be faster (per simulation) than our $60,000 SGI server. Of course, that has 8 CPUs and with parallelization can run 5 or 6 jobs maxed out, but when I have a simulation I want done faster (rather than several to do at once) I do in fact use my Linux desktop.
Much of an MS-hater as I am (and oh, I am), just try that on a resume or other such application that requires MS or other closed formats.
I mean, maybe you don't want to work for a company with such policies anyway, but often HR is quite separate from where you'll actually be working... if you get the job.
Not that I have real world experience, being a professional student at this point. I'm just pessimistic and cynical when it comes to cracking the MS stranglehold.
It's definitely more along the lines of abuet or aboet, similar to the posts below. A canadian colleauge of mine was visiting recently, and I noticed it and thankfully was able to restrain my laughter. Speaking (to some degree, mostly just English though) English, Chinese, and German, I have some appreciation for cultural variation in languages, but for some reason this part of canadian dialect I just find endlessly amusing. It's so subtle but once you notice it it's hard not to afterward.
I understand your analogy but I really think that the use of "could care less" is mindless parroting of a phrase that has become common without thinking about it. The sarcasm doesn't really work there. Sarcasm in this case would be "I'm worrying about it constantly." Look at the whole line from the parent:
They can still play their unprotected MP3s with their iPod so they could care less.
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My suggestion was just kind of thrown out there to stimulate discussion and I'm glad to see someone has discussed :)
I mean, most of us get a lot of email but maybe less than every day, how about a digest every week saying the same? Distributed patent-invalidation?
See my comment further down about speeding in a populous area.
Had anyone else noticed this? How did it get past PR?
I give it another ten years before this kind of equipment (not the article, but what I mentioned) becomes affordable in the US.
Another issue is the idea that others know better than me how to drive safely. I take exception to this but I've seen some incredibly bad driving so maybe this is a largely valid assumption after all. *shrug*
Speeding through busy/populated areas != competent driving
Assuming they've allowed adequate following distance as a safe and prudent driver, they will both be likely to avoid ramming into the car in front of them. This is my whole point. Safe driving practices are the crux of the issue, and this does not necessarily mean driving slowly.
I see bad drivers going fast all the time. That doesn't make driving fast bad. Driving fast and then tailgating the person in front of you at a four-foot distance in your SUV to hint that you want them to get out of the way is a recipe for disaster.
Speeding in a busy, non-freeway environment is most definitely quite dangerous, and can lead to said pedestrian situation.
I'm extremely careful and wary of speed traps. There's a smart way to speed and less smart ways to speed, and the smart way doesn't involve a radar detector. That's a crutch that will get you in trouble.
Oh, and in my somewhat emotionally-driven response I neglected to correct you. The word I was looking for was "defensive."
Driving faster requires a larger following distance, but most people follow way too close at any speed. Simply reducing speed limits will not really make the roads any safer. I don't know what will, except for people taking a more considerate and intelligent approach to driving.
Additionally, for high quality images (i.e. useful images) the cameras must be closer/less obscured/more expensive and are less hideable.
These issues do not much affect radio-frequency waves.
What it comes down to is that maybe you think this kind of tracking is okay, after all, it is aiming to enforce the law, but just remember that the enforcers are people, and people not only make innocent mistakes, but sometimes maliciously misuse systems to which they have access. Even if you percieve the government or law enforcement as good, there are always bad eggs in the system somewhere. It just doesn't occur to most people until they get screwed.
I do recognize that energy is a function of mass linearly and of velocity geometrically, but cars are going 'fast' anyway so the difference between 60 mph and 70 mph in an accident is going to be pretty minimal. Furthermore I see a much more dangerous part of that equation increasing regularly with the popularity of SUVs. As I drive a small car I'm not too happy with this trend, and I'm certainly not going to take the wrong way out and join it.
Doubling the mass of a vehicle at the same speed does double the energy imparted by it in a collision.
As usual governments would have it easier if they knew everything that was going on, but I'm not in any way for that and will always prefer reducing the size of government. The citizens of the UK seem to really be getting the short end of the stick in terms of governmental monitoring, but I think (and hope!) you'd see quite the uproar if the US gov't ever tried something like this.
Until GUIs start being made more with vectors and less with bitmaps they are ALWAYS going to be memory hogs. Some of the 'lighter' GUIs mentioned in the comments around here do just that.
Maybe you do write GUIs, and I'm an arse. Do you? If so how do you not understand this?
Sounds pretty cool. Now all we need is a standard protocol or something that works across devices. Is Kiyon's solution strictly proprietary?
I let the smoke out of a few logic chips in electronics lab a couple of years ago. The rumors are true! They stop working once you let the smoke out!
Damn straight!
It's the old shareware thing. People want money for crappy little utilities that may or may not still be available when the author gets bored. When people open-source (more specifically, use the GPL on) their software and release it, all they want back are bug reports and maybe contributions. This allows the software to improve and stick around even if the author loses interest.
I'm still lacking basic utilities on my pocketpc and wishing it were an iPaq so I could install Familiar Linux on it. I wish I had a clue about programming for Windows PocketPC or Mobile or CE or whatever the name-of-the day is so that I could maybe start trying to write stuff for it...
Maybe I'm just not leet enough.
If you want a possessive, use 's
If you want a plural DO NOT use the apostrophe. Simple.
The only exception that I know of is its vs it's, and since in a contraction you eliminate a letter, you have to show that the letter went somewhere, requiring an apostrophe. Therefore its is possessive and it's means it is.
If you're a non-native speaker this is somewhat forgivable, but please don't tell me that English is your first language.
I run massively long calculations on my desktop, which just happens to be faster (per simulation) than our $60,000 SGI server. Of course, that has 8 CPUs and with parallelization can run 5 or 6 jobs maxed out, but when I have a simulation I want done faster (rather than several to do at once) I do in fact use my Linux desktop.
I mean, maybe you don't want to work for a company with such policies anyway, but often HR is quite separate from where you'll actually be working... if you get the job.
Not that I have real world experience, being a professional student at this point. I'm just pessimistic and cynical when it comes to cracking the MS stranglehold.
Windows free since 2000
It's definitely more along the lines of abuet or aboet, similar to the posts below. A canadian colleauge of mine was visiting recently, and I noticed it and thankfully was able to restrain my laughter. Speaking (to some degree, mostly just English though) English, Chinese, and German, I have some appreciation for cultural variation in languages, but for some reason this part of canadian dialect I just find endlessly amusing. It's so subtle but once you notice it it's hard not to afterward.
They can still play their unprotected MP3s with their iPod so they could care less.
Sarcasm does not make sense here.