Is iPhone a "good" gaming platform? I doubt anyone would rank it "good" on any objective measure, BUT millions of people play games like Candy Crush on it every day, simply because they have it on them and was bored.
The Apple TV remote have accelerometer and gyroscope, simple Wii style games is entirely possible. Rotate the remote control sideways and you have a simple controller, touchpad as directional pad and buttons in the middle. More complex games can be handled with Bluetooth keyboard and even a mouse/touchpad.
Would it be a "good" gaming platform? I doubt it, but I also won't doubt that many people will play games on it simply because it is there. If one can just switch over during the commercials to tend your virtual farm for 30 seconds and flip back, why not?
Leap years and leap seconds are handled very differently.
The rules for leap years are according to a forumula that has been fixed for hundreds of years. Computers typically handle them as part of their conversion from internal "time elapsed since epoch" data formats to "human" date formats and otherwise don't care much about them. Even the simplified formula of "leap year every 4 years"
You must have missed the Y2K boom.
Even after that, programmers STILL cannot handle leap years properly, and gave us a 1-day outage of the PS3-PSN login on 29 Feb 2012 when the PS3 tried to sync the time from PSN on login and don't understand the result.
How many injury and/or operations does a usual sports player get in the course of his/her career? Basketball players, football players (both American and European), tennis players, skaters, swimmers, runners, etc, ALL suffer injuries over their career and not surprisingly some of them are repetitive injuries from practicing the same motion over and over. Where's the outrage over those? Where is "The Real Scars of American Sports"?
Heck, even *office workers* suffer RSI for using the mouse for too long!
Within graduate education world, I have personally met a large number of chinese nationals who barely could speak or write English, yet had perfect scores.
Are you sure they also cannot READ English? Because READING is all you need to get perfect scores in GRE.
I have met plenty of Chinese who can't speak or write English worth squat, and can't understand English spoken by the average American such as in the movies (cuz their teacher back in China mispronounced most of the words), BUT they can READ just fine.
Reading is the only thing you can learn with only a dictionary and extreme discipline to study.
Google doesn't care about the platform, they want screens in front of faces. Putting 100 android screens in front of 100 faces 1% of the time is making them money. Putting 50 iOS screens in front of 50 faces 2% of the time, is making them money.
As Lotus had learned from Microsoft - "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run", it is ALL ABOUT THE PLATFORM.
If your revenue stream depends on someone else's platform, then that someone can kill your revenue whenever they decide to eat your lunch too.
If iOS succeeded in taking over 90% of the phone market, then Google's revenue stream from smartphones would be held hostage by Apple.
The MMR vaccine fiasco is of course the classic example of this; there are still people acting on the assumption that the lies were true, and that's getting people killed.
Do you think the fiasco was caused by bad science, bad journalism, or bad politician?
The case against journalism is straightforward: much of the news articles, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, journalists has taken a turn towards darkness. The apparent endemicity of bad journalist behavior is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, journalists too often sculpt facts to fit their preferred narrative of the world or retrofit hypotheses to fit their data.
Unlike journalists, however, science will always have to bow to reality. So, yeah, bad science practice will eventually run aground when reality hits, no matter how many epicycles one add to the model. But bad journalism will persists as long as it attracts eyeballs.
Project Bookend is a secret (or 'was' a secret) initiative undertaken by the BOE to study what the fallout might be from a potential 'Brexit'
Good, so BOE management is doing their job, making plans for different scenarios that might happen. With the current situation in Europe, some countries might exit EU is not a very far-fetched scenario.
Calling this the "equivalent of the Manhattan project" is a major journalist FAIL here. The Manhattan Project is to build the bomb, not to study the fallout that might come from one. If the Project Bookend is a plan to make it happen, then the comparison might make some sense.
Yeah, I know, we can't expect much from journalists writing click-bait articles, but it should be called out nonetheless.
Or rather, how will the AI decide if it's safe to continue in the blizzard, or if it should pull over?
For an AI with non-urgent cargo, there is no real reason to continue in a blizzard. Only human drivers worrying about being trapped have a reason to keep moving.
When a blizzard is forecasted to approach, all the AI trucks will just go some predesignated waiting spot and sit it out.
Will be interested to see how AI deals with a mountain pass or city traffic; I think autonomous trucks will need human assistance for at least the foreseeable future.
The same way how AI or computer currently deals with other things that are beyond their ability... either avoid it, or signal for operator intervention.
Wouldn't be hard to imagine a team of drivers sitting in a control centers around the world to remotely handle any call-for-help from the auto-trucks. They would be able to see and hear what's around the truck, plus any information they needed, from the cameras/mics/sensors on the truck. The truck can have loudspeakers so the operator can talk to anyone (e.g. cops and other drivers) near the truck. They can remotely drive the truck if needed. In the worst case, they can park the truck at the side of the road and send a truck with a real driver to pick up the cargo, then send the empty truck back.
Or, for particularly tricky pass and roads, auto-trucks just completely avoid them, leaving them for real drivers. For non-urgent deliveries, it would be cheaper for the AI to take an AI-manageable roundabout route than to use a more-expensive human driver through the shorter route. For AI with infinite patience, they could be limited to use roads that are safe for trucks. Even if that just works for 70% of all trucking, that would make economic sense. Human drivers can work on the remaining 30%, until the AI slowly improves and eventually take over more and more of it.
Just like how drones are being piloted. Humans can take over when needed, while the AI can operate the remaining 99% of the boring times. Doesn't mean fighter pilots are all fired, but there won't be as many needed.
So, as a former trucker, would YOU like to drive a truck inside the truck, with all the hardships on the road, plus the risk of injury and death from accidents. OR would you like to drive it from an safe, air-conditioned control center near your home, where you can easily take breaks and go home everyday after an 8-hour shift?
Get your head out of the sand. In many places around the world, having an employment contract is the norm for *everyone*, including the janitor. And most employment contracts stated clearly what would be the compensation (usually 1 month or more advance notice, or equivalent payment in salary) if one side wishes to terminate the contract.
It is *very common* for larger companies to have standard employment contracts with 3 months of notice for contract termination. If you are in a more important position, or have unique knowledge/skills, you could negotiate longer notice (e.g. I have seen people with 6 months in some case).
Getting half a year of pay when you got fired isn't bad, huh?
A lot of content out there is benign, or crackable - what you want to make sure of is that you're connecting to the site you intended, and that the content you're getting is what's intended. What the content actually IS (cat memes) can be less important.
A lot of mails out there is benign also, doesn't mean we shouldn't use envelopes whenever we can.
If only sensitive stuff is encrypted, it helps NSA to locate where are the sensitive stuff.
Annual performance review time... Supervisor says. "You're doing great. Your raise is at the top of the range we're allowed to give. You got a bonus. But, there's a bunch of scary smart fresh-outs coming in. They don't sleep, they're incredibly productive, they're cheap (50% of my pay), they aren't married, they don't have kids. What are you going to do to differentiate yourself?"
It is time to take your money and walk away for some time. Let's those fresh-outs burn themselves out, then you can either come back or work as consultants fixing their messes.
1. The search results are only changing for non-mobile friendly devices IF the search originates from a mobile device, not for everyone.
Note to self: don't use Google on mobile devices, change their default search engine to DuckDuckGo.
I search Google for sites with the best content relevant to what I am looking for, I don't give a flying f**k whether the site have a "mobile friendly" version or not. I can read any webpage on my phone just fine, I can zoom in/out when needed.
I can get that they don't like the app, but at this cost they can just write an app.
Pearson is basically selling electronic textbooks that use iPad as the device. You can't "just write an app" for it. Or, sure, you can "just write an app" like you can just write a Kindle App yourself, good luck getting any content on it though.
I have seen Pearson's stuff on iPads (though it may not be what this contract is about), and the real value (if any) is in the contents. The iPad and the app is just the medium.
If the schools signed the contract without going through ALL of the contents first, then they are no different from ordering a ton of textbooks without reading any of it first, and then complain about it "not meeting their needs" when the distributor sent truckloads of the books to them. The fault lies entirely upon the buyer. It would have been the same if those are Kindles instead of iPads.
90%+ of comments here have been regarding lack of onboard pilots with commercial passenger flights.
Naturally, the first offboard pilot flights would be with cargo only. And that is way more relevant and less sexy discussion.
It is the same on stories about autonomous cars. 90%+ comments talk about how *they* prefer to be in control of the vehicle, while the most economically beneficial application is for trucks.
IF, and that's a big pessimistic if, eventually autonomous car is deemed unable to navigate local city streets, then what you will see are large parking lots springing up around highway exits, where robo-cars will park itself when it leaves the highway.
There, either the human driver takes over immediately and go away, or more likely, the car alert the sleeping driver to wake up. The driver, after sleeping all the way since he got on the highway, gets off and have a meal and refresh himself, then drove off.
OR, the passengers don't even know how to drive. Some other driver drove to the lot next the highway, get off, the car take over to get on the highway, reach the lot near destination, and some other driver came and drive the car to the destination. Think kids of divorced parent, or kids going to visit grandparents.
Same approach applies much more easily to trucks. Now truck drivers only need to go round and round between the last leg on both sides, letting the truck drive itself over the long haul. That means cheap transport, no need for long tiring trips away from home, and fewer accidents.
JUST automating the highway portion is going to give huge benefits, there is no need over worry about the last 1% of the trip.
The data here is on the very edge of reality, built on too many assumptions.
Data is data. Assumptions are the stuff of models and theories. Don't mix the two.
Data is nothing if you do not have any way to interpret it. Models and theories provide the context for interpreting the data.
It is like saying "bits are bits, assumptions are the stuff of encoding and decoding". Problem is, without any assumption to decode your bits, it would be as useful as any random noise. The fact that we can have a conversation here is because I (or rather, my browser) made the assumption that the bits are encoded with a certain pattern, and so did you.
Without any assumptions, models, or theories, the signals we received from Hubble would be no different from random noise.
Without the assumption that the photons came from a distant galaxy, we cannot form the image we can see. Without the assumption of what they saw were the result of the collision of two galaxies, it would just be a bunch of stars in a strange shape. Without the assumption of the current model of our universe, we cannot guess what would be the most probably original form of the two galaxies. Without the assumption of the Theory of Gravity, no one can make sense of what could have happened when two galaxies collide, and thus compare with this observation. Without the assumption of the model of gases and stars, we cannot reach the conclusion that gases should interact and slow down, while stars would not.
The problem is, with our currently best assumptions, models and theories, those that are able to explain most of our observable universe, we found that it would require the present of some undetectable matter in all the galaxies to make everything consistent -- hence "dark matter".
Yeah, you can claim that is too many levels of assumptions. Feel free to build up your own that could consistently match all the known data even better than the one commonly used.
Slashdot Mirror
Is iPhone a "good" gaming platform? I doubt anyone would rank it "good" on any objective measure, BUT millions of people play games like Candy Crush on it every day, simply because they have it on them and was bored.
The Apple TV remote have accelerometer and gyroscope, simple Wii style games is entirely possible. Rotate the remote control sideways and you have a simple controller, touchpad as directional pad and buttons in the middle. More complex games can be handled with Bluetooth keyboard and even a mouse/touchpad.
Would it be a "good" gaming platform? I doubt it, but I also won't doubt that many people will play games on it simply because it is there. If one can just switch over during the commercials to tend your virtual farm for 30 seconds and flip back, why not?
So, they have to hide from the Sun during the day like a vampire also?
Leap years and leap seconds are handled very differently.
The rules for leap years are according to a forumula that has been fixed for hundreds of years. Computers typically handle them as part of their conversion from internal "time elapsed since epoch" data formats to "human" date formats and otherwise don't care much about them. Even the simplified formula of "leap year every 4 years"
You must have missed the Y2K boom.
Even after that, programmers STILL cannot handle leap years properly, and gave us a 1-day outage of the PS3-PSN login on 29 Feb 2012 when the PS3 tried to sync the time from PSN on login and don't understand the result.
How many injury and/or operations does a usual sports player get in the course of his/her career? Basketball players, football players (both American and European), tennis players, skaters, swimmers, runners, etc, ALL suffer injuries over their career and not surprisingly some of them are repetitive injuries from practicing the same motion over and over. Where's the outrage over those? Where is "The Real Scars of American Sports"?
Heck, even *office workers* suffer RSI for using the mouse for too long!
Within graduate education world, I have personally met a large number of chinese nationals who barely could speak or write English, yet had perfect scores.
Are you sure they also cannot READ English? Because READING is all you need to get perfect scores in GRE.
I have met plenty of Chinese who can't speak or write English worth squat, and can't understand English spoken by the average American such as in the movies (cuz their teacher back in China mispronounced most of the words), BUT they can READ just fine.
Reading is the only thing you can learn with only a dictionary and extreme discipline to study.
Google doesn't care about the platform, they want screens in front of faces.
Putting 100 android screens in front of 100 faces 1% of the time is making them money.
Putting 50 iOS screens in front of 50 faces 2% of the time, is making them money.
As Lotus had learned from Microsoft - "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run", it is ALL ABOUT THE PLATFORM.
If your revenue stream depends on someone else's platform, then that someone can kill your revenue whenever they decide to eat your lunch too.
If iOS succeeded in taking over 90% of the phone market, then Google's revenue stream from smartphones would be held hostage by Apple.
The MMR vaccine fiasco is of course the classic example of this; there are still people acting on the assumption that the lies were true, and that's getting people killed.
Do you think the fiasco was caused by bad science, bad journalism, or bad politician?
The case against journalism is straightforward: much of the news articles, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, journalists has taken a turn towards darkness. The apparent endemicity of bad journalist behavior is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, journalists too often sculpt facts to fit their preferred narrative of the world or retrofit hypotheses to fit their data.
Unlike journalists, however, science will always have to bow to reality. So, yeah, bad science practice will eventually run aground when reality hits, no matter how many epicycles one add to the model. But bad journalism will persists as long as it attracts eyeballs.
But my manager was unapproachable -- asking for something to be done was the best way to make sure it didn't get done.
One has to wonder how you got hired in the first place.
Project Bookend is a secret (or 'was' a secret) initiative undertaken by the BOE to study what the fallout might be from a potential 'Brexit'
Good, so BOE management is doing their job, making plans for different scenarios that might happen. With the current situation in Europe, some countries might exit EU is not a very far-fetched scenario.
Calling this the "equivalent of the Manhattan project" is a major journalist FAIL here. The Manhattan Project is to build the bomb, not to study the fallout that might come from one. If the Project Bookend is a plan to make it happen, then the comparison might make some sense.
Yeah, I know, we can't expect much from journalists writing click-bait articles, but it should be called out nonetheless.
Or rather, how will the AI decide if it's safe to continue in the blizzard, or if it should pull over?
For an AI with non-urgent cargo, there is no real reason to continue in a blizzard. Only human drivers worrying about being trapped have a reason to keep moving.
When a blizzard is forecasted to approach, all the AI trucks will just go some predesignated waiting spot and sit it out.
Will be interested to see how AI deals with a mountain pass or city traffic; I think autonomous trucks will need human assistance for at least the foreseeable future.
The same way how AI or computer currently deals with other things that are beyond their ability... either avoid it, or signal for operator intervention.
Wouldn't be hard to imagine a team of drivers sitting in a control centers around the world to remotely handle any call-for-help from the auto-trucks. They would be able to see and hear what's around the truck, plus any information they needed, from the cameras/mics/sensors on the truck. The truck can have loudspeakers so the operator can talk to anyone (e.g. cops and other drivers) near the truck. They can remotely drive the truck if needed. In the worst case, they can park the truck at the side of the road and send a truck with a real driver to pick up the cargo, then send the empty truck back.
Or, for particularly tricky pass and roads, auto-trucks just completely avoid them, leaving them for real drivers. For non-urgent deliveries, it would be cheaper for the AI to take an AI-manageable roundabout route than to use a more-expensive human driver through the shorter route. For AI with infinite patience, they could be limited to use roads that are safe for trucks. Even if that just works for 70% of all trucking, that would make economic sense. Human drivers can work on the remaining 30%, until the AI slowly improves and eventually take over more and more of it.
Just like how drones are being piloted. Humans can take over when needed, while the AI can operate the remaining 99% of the boring times. Doesn't mean fighter pilots are all fired, but there won't be as many needed.
So, as a former trucker, would YOU like to drive a truck inside the truck, with all the hardships on the road, plus the risk of injury and death from accidents. OR would you like to drive it from an safe, air-conditioned control center near your home, where you can easily take breaks and go home everyday after an 8-hour shift?
Get your head out of the sand. In many places around the world, having an employment contract is the norm for *everyone*, including the janitor. And most employment contracts stated clearly what would be the compensation (usually 1 month or more advance notice, or equivalent payment in salary) if one side wishes to terminate the contract.
It is *very common* for larger companies to have standard employment contracts with 3 months of notice for contract termination. If you are in a more important position, or have unique knowledge/skills, you could negotiate longer notice (e.g. I have seen people with 6 months in some case).
Getting half a year of pay when you got fired isn't bad, huh?
But they would probably still get a golden parachute.
Because most CEOs are smart enough, or hired a lawyer smart enough, to make sure of that BEFORE he was hired.
You want a golden parachute? Then you fight for one written into your employment contract when you join the company.
This is why your phone needs to be set to upload videos to the cloud at all times.
Good luck making your would-be murderer understood that before you got killed.
A lot of content out there is benign, or crackable - what you want to make sure of is that you're connecting to the site you intended, and that the content you're getting is what's intended. What the content actually IS (cat memes) can be less important.
A lot of mails out there is benign also, doesn't mean we shouldn't use envelopes whenever we can.
If only sensitive stuff is encrypted, it helps NSA to locate where are the sensitive stuff.
Recycling that lithium is much easier and cheaper than mining new lithium, so they battery is going to have a decent trade in value.
If this were true, we would be seeing a big market for trading-in old lithium batteries. Where can I sell/trade-in my old notebook batteries?
Annual performance review time... Supervisor says. "You're doing great. Your raise is at the top of the range we're allowed to give. You got a bonus. But, there's a bunch of scary smart fresh-outs coming in. They don't sleep, they're incredibly productive, they're cheap (50% of my pay), they aren't married, they don't have kids. What are you going to do to differentiate yourself?"
It is time to take your money and walk away for some time. Let's those fresh-outs burn themselves out, then you can either come back or work as consultants fixing their messes.
1. The search results are only changing for non-mobile friendly devices IF the search originates from a mobile device, not for everyone.
Note to self: don't use Google on mobile devices, change their default search engine to DuckDuckGo.
I search Google for sites with the best content relevant to what I am looking for, I don't give a flying f**k whether the site have a "mobile friendly" version or not. I can read any webpage on my phone just fine, I can zoom in/out when needed.
I can get that they don't like the app, but at this cost they can just write an app.
Pearson is basically selling electronic textbooks that use iPad as the device. You can't "just write an app" for it. Or, sure, you can "just write an app" like you can just write a Kindle App yourself, good luck getting any content on it though.
I have seen Pearson's stuff on iPads (though it may not be what this contract is about), and the real value (if any) is in the contents. The iPad and the app is just the medium.
If the schools signed the contract without going through ALL of the contents first, then they are no different from ordering a ton of textbooks without reading any of it first, and then complain about it "not meeting their needs" when the distributor sent truckloads of the books to them. The fault lies entirely upon the buyer. It would have been the same if those are Kindles instead of iPads.
The role Apple plays is to be the click-bait to get you to click on the article and watch the ads. It worked perfectly.
Is that a joke? The series followed the book (thankfully) close enough that anyone can know what's coming by RTFB.
90%+ of comments here have been regarding lack of onboard pilots with commercial passenger flights.
Naturally, the first offboard pilot flights would be with cargo only. And that is way more relevant and less sexy discussion.
It is the same on stories about autonomous cars. 90%+ comments talk about how *they* prefer to be in control of the vehicle, while the most economically beneficial application is for trucks.
IF, and that's a big pessimistic if, eventually autonomous car is deemed unable to navigate local city streets, then what you will see are large parking lots springing up around highway exits, where robo-cars will park itself when it leaves the highway.
There, either the human driver takes over immediately and go away, or more likely, the car alert the sleeping driver to wake up. The driver, after sleeping all the way since he got on the highway, gets off and have a meal and refresh himself, then drove off.
OR, the passengers don't even know how to drive. Some other driver drove to the lot next the highway, get off, the car take over to get on the highway, reach the lot near destination, and some other driver came and drive the car to the destination. Think kids of divorced parent, or kids going to visit grandparents.
Same approach applies much more easily to trucks. Now truck drivers only need to go round and round between the last leg on both sides, letting the truck drive itself over the long haul. That means cheap transport, no need for long tiring trips away from home, and fewer accidents.
JUST automating the highway portion is going to give huge benefits, there is no need over worry about the last 1% of the trip.
The quote that bothers me somewhat is this one:
The data here is on the very edge of reality, built on too many assumptions.
Data is data. Assumptions are the stuff of models and theories. Don't mix the two.
Data is nothing if you do not have any way to interpret it. Models and theories provide the context for interpreting the data.
It is like saying "bits are bits, assumptions are the stuff of encoding and decoding". Problem is, without any assumption to decode your bits, it would be as useful as any random noise. The fact that we can have a conversation here is because I (or rather, my browser) made the assumption that the bits are encoded with a certain pattern, and so did you.
Without any assumptions, models, or theories, the signals we received from Hubble would be no different from random noise.
Without the assumption that the photons came from a distant galaxy, we cannot form the image we can see.
Without the assumption of what they saw were the result of the collision of two galaxies, it would just be a bunch of stars in a strange shape.
Without the assumption of the current model of our universe, we cannot guess what would be the most probably original form of the two galaxies.
Without the assumption of the Theory of Gravity, no one can make sense of what could have happened when two galaxies collide, and thus compare with this observation.
Without the assumption of the model of gases and stars, we cannot reach the conclusion that gases should interact and slow down, while stars would not.
The problem is, with our currently best assumptions, models and theories, those that are able to explain most of our observable universe, we found that it would require the present of some undetectable matter in all the galaxies to make everything consistent -- hence "dark matter".
Yeah, you can claim that is too many levels of assumptions. Feel free to build up your own that could consistently match all the known data even better than the one commonly used.