Depends on how crowded the trains are. In the UK, there is a good intercity train network that takes you between cities in the South Coast and London within an hour. It's even possible to get between the South Coast and the Midlands within a couple of hours (Southampton -> Bristol/Birmingham).
When things work well, train carriages can be empty or full enough that everyone still has a seat, can sit down at a table and use Wi-Fi with their laptops/smartphones. and there are refreshment trolleys going up and down the train.
When something goes wrong like signalling problems, then everything falls apart. Passengers just start grabbing whatever train is available to take them that bit closer to where they want to go, ending up with crowding so bad that people are standing in the interconnects between carriages and next to the doors.
With the EuroTunnel, you can drive a car onto the train much like a ferry, and then move to the passenger compartment for the journey, then drive off at the end.
If Google used machine learning then all those Hitler parodies would be flagged as hate speech as well the that edition of the Sweet / Blockbuster which had one person wearing a swastika
That's what it does to my VM's as well. Performs an auto-update, uninstalls all the other browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera) and all other applications. I've probably spent hours getting them all installed plus updates, and in complete Microsoft arrogance, just uninstalls them and shoves them in a folder, as well as reinstalling Cortana, reformatting the main menu back to default, and locking up the VM. In a final act it leaves the VM in the blue window of death. Not even the spinning wheel of fate is visible.
Or "I was happy with this feature, and now they've added something that makes it unusable"
With the Android camera, originally you could use the panoramic photograph feature in combination with the zoom feature. You could be at the beach, zoom into a distant island, then use the panoramic mode to get a zoomed-in view of the island. Then you could see all the detail of the trees, mountains at your leisure. Now the zoom is snapped back to default and then you get to take the picture.
If that wasn't enough, now they add a video to your panoramic photograph which while it can be played forwards and backwards by tilting the phone, it takes up 10x as much memory. So what might just be a few megabytes that could be sent by Email, is now a 30 megabyte file that *has* to be uploaded to cloud storage.
It's an interesting question. Alexa must sample sound from the microphone and send it back to the servers for analysis. Then either a series of encoded syllables are sent back to be replayed using a speech synthesiser or sampled audio. The other option is somebody hacks into the unit and sends out audio files. This has been done in the past:
Not satisfied with having RFID scanners in your fridge freezer to tell you when items are getting close to their use-by-date, the tech visionaries want you to have voice activated fridges, cookers, kettles, dish washers and washing machines. Now the whole kitchen can laugh at you behind your back when you are out of the room.
Didn't the Atari 2600 use player-missile graphics? For the Atari series of computers, there were two or four sprites each represented as a band of bytes that stretched down all the scan-lines of the screen (256 in total but only between 16 to 192 visible on screen due to overscan). Each bit would correspond to one pixel. Then auxiliary bytes would set the X-coordinate, scale (x1, x2, x4) and colour. Collision detection was handled using simple bit masking. If any two bits of two different players overlapped, a "collision" was detected, and bits set in hardware registers. These could be polled and reset. These registers could also be updated during the horizontal blank interrupt to create multiple players at different positions down the screen.
If something went wrong, it could simply be that the bitmaps for the enemies were cleared to zero. They would still be there, but since no bits are set, no collision can occur. Then all the squares are flashing different colors, which seems like data is being written, but to a color register and not data.
With the jumping trick, it could be that the game only checks for a hardware collision when one entity or the other is stationary.
People have died simply from getting into a fight, being pushed backwards and hitting their head on the ground or just hitting another object, giving them a thunderclap headache (internal bleeding of a major blood vessel in the brain) and dying from a crushed brain.
If you wanted to simulate the heating of the Earth, you would need temperature, density, humidity, gas ratio levels (everything to run a fluid dynamic simulation in the atmosphere). But you also need to know the topology of the Earth for river flow. That would also require geology and the actual knowledge of every underground river. Then there are underwater volcanoes and fault lines in the oceans which have vents which allow in the inflow of cold water and venting of hot water carrying minerals. Another complication is the interaction of the Sun's magnetic field and the Earth's magnetic field since this has an affect on cosmic rays and their ability to influence cloud formation. There are also long period effects like the orbit and inclination of Earth's rotation axis which also affects climate.
Some simulations exist to model each of these, but there is no one single system.
The alternative explanation is that CO2 levels follow the growth of vegetation (warmer weather = humidity = rapid vegetation growth = more CO2). But there is also plankton which releases chemicals to boost cloud cover when temperatures get too warm. That cloud cover then reflects sunlight out to space.
Action movies are the best sellers for the CGI. Kids used to the spend their Saturday mornings watching slapstick movies like "The Three Stooges", Westerns, The Disney Club and other comedies like "Laurel and Hardy". Spaghetti Westerns were made in Italy (like "My name is Trinity") and had more comedy in them.
It was discussed here on slashdot years ago that scriptwriters had been told to make sure that their storylines were comprehensible to an average 12-year old.
But there are many movies presented at the Independent Film-maker festivals and in other countries that don't have all those special effects. Her indoors would normally flip the channel the minute there are people dressed as aliens or explosions, but she is absolutely gripped by a TV series that has time portals that allow the main character to get between present day and the past (World Wars) and the relationships they build up.
They had to move to CGI due to the various accidents that happened when doing things for real. Actors (Vic Morrow, Renee Chen and Myca Dinh Le), got killed when a helicopter got buffeted by explosions and sliced into them during the filming of an episode of the Twilight Zone
So it is far safer to just use hand weapons for a scene and composite in the gun smoke and bullet holes in the suitcase right where the directors wants them than to redo the scene each time until they get it "good enough".
Sometimes it is necessary if you work with software development. Practically essential to have Windows development experience with Visual Studio. But Microsoft have have even withdrawn their old ISO files for Windows 7/8 and 10 so the only option is Window Creator edition (December 2017). I tried installing this on VirtualBox, but it just locked up. So I've resorted to using a Windows 10 Pro ISO file I downloaded a long time ago. That's the catch now - I either use an old version that may have security risks or not use it at all.
Or just go looking around the second hand PC stores for a system with a Windows7 key. Quite literally, I would see shops and stores throwing the empty PC case along with the Windows license key glued on the side.
It started with Big Data. Once companies started collecting Terabytes of analytic data from mobile devices and sales, they suddenly had to find ways of extracting useful knowledge through data mining. Having data scientists wasn't enough, they had to do this automatically. This required statistics and various pattern matching techniques to derive conclusions ands facts.
The sames happened in bio-sciences and automating protein/drug interaction research. What required a lab of technicians all trying out experiments with various interactions could be automated by a machine that could analyze entire arrays of test tubes, pipettes and reactants in one go. The machine could analyze the results automatically, then decided on the next logical set of test to carry out. Labs then become a research director and a few technicians.
Machine learning and image processing became the next big thing. They could automate various art based production pipeline stages, allowing artists to do more interesting work. Then the idea of autonomous vehicles is the next big challenge; beyond workstations, networks, GUI interfaces, mobile devices.
Social Economics is an arts degree. It really covers the priorities of government spending. Do they reduce taxation for corporations or do they keep taxes the same and provide free education to people.
You need constant retraining in the tech industry. They say you will have five to eight different careers in your life. Career #1 is going to college/university as a student, or industry as an apprentice/intern. Then you become fully qualified as Career #2. That might last two to ten years, then you are in management, contracting or consultancy (Career #3). Some people might just leave the field altogether, go into another profession or back to university to do a MSc or PhD (Career #4). Then they do academic research work or back into industry (Career #5). Some people go back and do a MSc every five years, or whenever they can't find a job.
The tricky thing now is that in the UK is that there is a shortage of "senior software engineers". Companies have the project managers, team leaders and contractors, but they can't find "senior" developers to do the project management/mentoring/pair programming/training for juniors. Practically they want someone with every skill they are using, which is a unique combination of 10+ skills ranging from things like embedded C/microcontrollers to UNIX/big data/R/Scala or Windows/C#/C++/STL/Boost/Visual Studio/multithreading/TBB/Intel compilers. Unity/Unreal/CryEngine is mandatory for game development.
The next thing will be satellite phone connectivity for a smartphone courtesy of Elon Musk. Iridium and the other systems were like the first prototypes. They either offered high bandwidth and limited coverage or full coverage of the planet but limited bandwidth. With a true high-bandwidth satellite network, this would solve many problems.
Screens tend to crack when they hit the ground. Despite having a 0.5cm wallet, my phone was unlucky enough to hit a tiny concrete stub right next to a vending machine. Instant crack. Would cost $150 to repair.
If you want a top-end camera, then you need a top-end CPU/GPU for video processing. That requires more memory and compute power for video/image compression, plus better network speed. In the end that requires the top of the range phone.
Aircraft have continued to improve. Fly-by-wire systems. Lighter and stronger materials. Better fuel efficiency and quieter engines through advanced CFD modeling. More cost-effiective maintenance by having telemetry sent straight to the manufacturer. So parts can be sent to the next maintenance call before pilots report a problem. Some components are made from carbon-fibre for strength.
But the basic general shape of an aircraft hasn't changed. It's a slow refinement process. You'll notice that the tips of wings have little wings themselves or actually curved upwards. That's to reduce drag due to wingtip vortices. The flight-control software continues to get upgrades.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on how crowded the trains are. In the UK, there is a good intercity train network that takes you between cities in the South Coast and London within an hour. It's even possible to get between the South Coast and the Midlands within a couple of hours (Southampton -> Bristol/Birmingham).
When things work well, train carriages can be empty or full enough that everyone still has a seat, can sit down at a table and use Wi-Fi with their laptops/smartphones. and there are refreshment trolleys going up and down the train.
When something goes wrong like signalling problems, then everything falls apart. Passengers just start grabbing whatever train is available to take them that bit closer to where they want to go, ending up with crowding so bad that people are standing in the interconnects between carriages and next to the doors.
With the EuroTunnel, you can drive a car onto the train much like a ferry, and then move to the passenger compartment for the journey, then drive off at the end.
If Google used machine learning then all those Hitler parodies would be flagged as hate speech as well the that edition of the Sweet / Blockbuster which had one person wearing a swastika
That's what it does to my VM's as well. Performs an auto-update, uninstalls all the other browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera) and all other applications. I've probably spent hours getting them all installed plus updates, and in complete Microsoft arrogance, just uninstalls them and shoves them in a folder, as well as reinstalling Cortana, reformatting the main menu back to default, and locking up the VM. In a final act it leaves the VM in the blue window of death. Not even the spinning wheel of fate is visible.
Or "I was happy with this feature, and now they've added something that makes it unusable"
With the Android camera, originally you could use the panoramic photograph feature in combination with the zoom feature. You could be at the beach, zoom into a distant island, then use the panoramic mode to get a zoomed-in view of the island. Then you could see all the detail of the trees, mountains at your leisure. Now the zoom is snapped back to default and then you get to take the picture.
If that wasn't enough, now they add a video to your panoramic photograph which while it can be played forwards and backwards by tilting the phone, it takes up 10x as much memory. So what might just be a few megabytes that could be sent by Email, is now a 30 megabyte file that *has* to be uploaded to cloud storage.
It's an interesting question. Alexa must sample sound from the microphone and send it back to the servers for analysis. Then either a series of encoded syllables are sent back to be replayed using a speech synthesiser or sampled audio. The other option is somebody hacks into the unit and sends out audio files. This has been done in the past:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article...
Not satisfied with having RFID scanners in your fridge freezer to tell you when items are getting close to their use-by-date, the tech visionaries want you to have voice activated fridges, cookers, kettles, dish washers and washing machines. Now the whole kitchen can laugh at you behind your back when you are out of the room.
Some of the pavement art artists use perspective to make things look three-dimensional, but only from one angle:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d7/0...
Didn't the Atari 2600 use player-missile graphics? For the Atari series of computers, there were two or four sprites each represented as a band of bytes that stretched down all the scan-lines of the screen (256 in total but only between 16 to 192 visible on screen due to overscan). Each bit would correspond to one pixel. Then auxiliary bytes would set the X-coordinate, scale (x1, x2, x4) and colour. Collision detection was handled using simple bit masking. If any two bits of two different players overlapped, a "collision" was detected, and bits set in hardware registers. These could be polled and reset. These registers could also be updated during the horizontal blank interrupt to create multiple players at different positions down the screen.
If something went wrong, it could simply be that the bitmaps for the enemies were cleared to zero. They would still be there, but since no bits are set, no collision can occur. Then all the squares are flashing different colors, which seems like data is being written, but to a color register and not data.
With the jumping trick, it could be that the game only checks for a hardware collision when one entity or the other is stationary.
At least he would be able to afford to pay the fine.
People have died simply from getting into a fight, being pushed backwards and hitting their head on the ground or just hitting another object, giving them a thunderclap headache (internal bleeding of a major blood vessel in the brain) and dying from a crushed brain.
If you wanted to simulate the heating of the Earth, you would need temperature, density, humidity, gas ratio levels (everything to run a fluid dynamic simulation in the atmosphere). But you also need to know the topology of the Earth for river flow. That would also require geology and the actual knowledge of every underground river. Then there are underwater volcanoes and fault lines in the oceans which have vents which allow in the inflow of cold water and venting of hot water carrying minerals. Another complication is the interaction of the Sun's magnetic field and the Earth's magnetic field since this has an affect on cosmic rays and their ability to influence cloud formation. There are also long period effects like the orbit and inclination of Earth's rotation axis which also affects climate.
Some simulations exist to model each of these, but there is no one single system.
The alternative explanation is that CO2 levels follow the growth of vegetation (warmer weather = humidity = rapid vegetation growth = more CO2). But there is also plankton which releases chemicals to boost cloud cover when temperatures get too warm. That cloud cover then reflects sunlight out to space.
Action movies are the best sellers for the CGI. Kids used to the spend their Saturday mornings watching slapstick movies like "The Three Stooges", Westerns, The Disney Club and other comedies like "Laurel and Hardy". Spaghetti Westerns were made in Italy (like "My name is Trinity") and had more comedy in them.
It was discussed here on slashdot years ago that scriptwriters had been told to make sure that their storylines were comprehensible to an average 12-year old.
But there are many movies presented at the Independent Film-maker festivals and in other countries that don't have all those special effects. Her indoors would normally flip the channel the minute there are people dressed as aliens or explosions, but she is absolutely gripped by a TV series that has time portals that allow the main character to get between present day and the past (World Wars) and the relationships they build up.
They had to move to CGI due to the various accidents that happened when doing things for real. Actors (Vic Morrow, Renee Chen and Myca Dinh Le), got killed when a helicopter got buffeted by explosions and sliced into them during the filming of an episode of the Twilight Zone
So it is far safer to just use hand weapons for a scene and composite in the gun smoke and bullet holes in the suitcase right where the directors wants them than to redo the scene each time until they get it "good enough".
Sometimes it is necessary if you work with software development. Practically essential to have Windows development experience with Visual Studio. But Microsoft have have even withdrawn their old ISO files for Windows 7/8 and 10 so the only option is Window Creator edition (December 2017). I tried installing this on VirtualBox, but it just locked up. So I've resorted to using a Windows 10 Pro ISO file I downloaded a long time ago. That's the catch now - I either use an old version that may have security risks or not use it at all.
Or just go looking around the second hand PC stores for a system with a Windows7 key. Quite literally, I would see shops and stores throwing the empty PC case along with the Windows license key glued on the side.
Didn't that happen with the Java API?
It started with Big Data. Once companies started collecting Terabytes of analytic data from mobile devices and sales, they suddenly had to find ways of extracting useful knowledge through data mining. Having data scientists wasn't enough, they had to do this automatically. This required statistics and various pattern matching techniques to derive conclusions ands facts.
The sames happened in bio-sciences and automating protein/drug interaction research. What required a lab of technicians all trying out experiments with various interactions could be automated by a machine that could analyze entire arrays of test tubes, pipettes and reactants in one go. The machine could analyze the results automatically, then decided on the next logical set of test to carry out. Labs then become a research director and a few technicians.
Machine learning and image processing became the next big thing. They could automate various art based production pipeline stages, allowing artists to do more interesting work. Then the idea of autonomous vehicles is the next big challenge; beyond workstations, networks, GUI interfaces, mobile devices.
Social Economics is an arts degree. It really covers the priorities of government spending. Do they reduce taxation for corporations or do they keep taxes the same and provide free education to people.
You need constant retraining in the tech industry. They say you will have five to eight different careers in your life. Career #1 is going to college/university as a student, or industry as an apprentice/intern. Then you become fully qualified as Career #2. That might last two to ten years, then you are in management, contracting or consultancy (Career #3). Some people might just leave the field altogether, go into another profession or back to university to do a MSc or PhD (Career #4). Then they do academic research work or back into industry (Career #5). Some people go back and do a MSc every five years, or whenever they can't find a job.
The tricky thing now is that in the UK is that there is a shortage of "senior software engineers". Companies have the project managers, team leaders and contractors, but they can't find "senior" developers to do the project management/mentoring/pair programming/training for juniors. Practically they want someone with every skill they are using, which is a unique combination of 10+ skills ranging from things like embedded C/microcontrollers to UNIX/big data/R/Scala or Windows/C#/C++/STL/Boost/Visual Studio/multithreading/TBB/Intel compilers. Unity/Unreal/CryEngine is mandatory for game development.
The next thing will be satellite phone connectivity for a smartphone courtesy of Elon Musk. Iridium and the other systems were like the first prototypes. They either offered high bandwidth and limited coverage or full coverage of the planet but limited bandwidth. With a true high-bandwidth satellite network, this would solve many problems.
Screens tend to crack when they hit the ground. Despite having a 0.5cm wallet, my phone was unlucky enough to hit a tiny concrete stub right next to a vending machine. Instant crack. Would cost $150 to repair.
If you want a top-end camera, then you need a top-end CPU/GPU for video processing. That requires more memory and compute power for video/image compression, plus better network speed. In the end that requires the top of the range phone.
The Zanco Tiny?
Aircraft have continued to improve. Fly-by-wire systems. Lighter and stronger materials. Better fuel efficiency and quieter engines through advanced CFD modeling. More cost-effiective maintenance by having telemetry sent straight to the manufacturer. So parts can be sent to the next maintenance call before pilots report a problem. Some components are made from carbon-fibre for strength.
But the basic general shape of an aircraft hasn't changed. It's a slow refinement process. You'll notice that the tips of wings have little wings themselves or actually curved upwards. That's to reduce drag due to wingtip vortices. The flight-control software continues to get upgrades.