Um, it seems like most people don't realize that virtually everthing in a modern car is computer-controlled. Which means implementing this feature is a simple software adjustment. Heck, I can even illustrate it with one line of code:
if accel_level > 0.2 and brake_level > 0.2: accel_level = 0
Okay I'm sure it's not quite so easy in the car's programming, but what I am sure of is that it's not expensive... you can already get it standard in a $12000 Nissan for fuck's sake. From TFA it looks like that the cheapest Toyotas have it as well.
I never post anymore but there is such massive ignorance on this thread I just couldn't help it. Anybody bitching about this being an expensive government imposition either doesn't know what they are talking about or is just pushing their own political agenda. (Or both.)
Why is it that a company that can build something cool like that is the same one that says it'd take at least 6 freakin' weeks to build me a new Civic? That was AFTER the dealer tried to string me along of course. (Didn't work - I bought a Nissan instead.)
Dear goodness I hope if/when they ever start mass-producing these that buying one isn't like buying a car. "Sorry we don't have that model and colour in stock right now but we do have the deluxe model Asimo with Chrome finishing. Oh and be sure to get the undercoating and rustproofing package on your Asimo for long-lasting protection."
No, stay away from the DIR-655 - especially for wireless! Getting literally dozens of Wireless Resets every day. I'm not the only one with this problem either - Google it, lots of reports. Tried tweaking lots of settings and using a channel scanner and picking the least-used channel but nothing helps.
Pity 'cause it would be a decent router otherwise.
I still haven't forgiven EA for the Spore DRM fiasco, so this means PopCap games (future and past) are off-limits for me now. Pity, I almost always enjoy their type of casual/puzzle games. Played the hell out of PvZ after getting it cheap during the last Steam sale, and still playing the Peggle games after several years.
Don't blame them for selling, just wish it was to a better company.
Reminds me of the U-Force I got for the original NES - that was over 20 years ago! Still have it in its original box, actually. Maybe in another 25 years it'll be worth something... it certainly wasn't when it came out! It sorta worked for Punch-Out, and not at all for anything else.
I can't remember if the U-Force was what would now be called "multi-touch"... probably not. Didn't RTFA, but at any rate I assume (and would hope) the one in the article works a lot better!
10 years ago when I went through University, the core of the mandatory Assembly programming course was taught on the PDP-11 architecture, then 30 and now 40 years old.
Granted it's not quite the same. We used emulators and not the real things. Also it was for different motivations. The prof felt it was simpler to teach the cleaner PDP-11 instruction set than the 80x86 or 680x0, although the course did eventually also extend to both. Also he happened to be an expert in systems like the PDP-11.
However the idea of using old systems as teaching aids is hardly new - or news IMO.
20 years ago when I got my first modem (wow it's been that long, I feel old) McAfee was *the* virus scanner. Sysops used it to scan uploads and users used it to scan downloads. Of course back then it was a small command line app that fit on one floppy and ran in 256KB (yes, K) of memory, not the massive piece of bloatware it is now. It was also free... paid versions didn't appear until Windows took over IIRC.
Never would have guessed that they woulda end up developing into a software giant worth $7.7B. And sold to Intel of all companies.
Heard a guy on the business channel speculating that Intel might be wanting it to develop on-chip virus scanners. Sounds like a promising application if it'll speed it up. As it is now scanners as no faster now as it was 20 years ago, but back then we only had 30MB drives to scan so it ran a full scan in under 30 seconds. Now we have 300GB or more and it takes about 3 hours... no wonder people hate virus scanners.
"Oh shit, my speech, I forgot all about it! I shouldn't have stayed out drinking until 2am last night..." "Must find inspiration, quickly..." *sees chip bag in garbage* "Ah, a chip bag! Maybe I can use this somehow..." *scrawls some notes* "Hey this might just work..." *15 minutes of feverish writing* "YES! An entire speech on linked open data based on a bag of chips. My career is safe!" "Hey, maybe I'll even get a few cases from Utz as a thank you for mentioning them..."
My first computer was an Atari 400. Beeped every time I typed a key.
You get used to it. It was weird changing to something without it actually.
Re:your first sentence is technically flawed
on
Ubuntu on a Dime
·
· Score: 1
Seriously, go to salvation army for your ultra-cheap computing needs.
Better yet, get stuff for free. Nowadays if you pay $10 for a CRT you are paying $10 too much. From a local Freecycle group or craigslist or whatever you can get one CRT (or many) for nothing except the price of gas for the pickup. You can also find half-decent systems and parts too. For those it takes a bit more luck to be selected as the recipient, but there's so much out there nowadays that it's not that hard, just takes a bit of patience.
I was able to build a MythTV front-end box for my bedroom entirely out of free stuff. Heck, if I didn't already have the TV and entertainment centre I could have easily got those for free too! I'm not in any financial difficulty, but why waste money paying for items that people are not only giving away but also glad to get rid of?
The science behind this involves something called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome which basically means a person's "body clock" is "late" by a few hours... it's something that occurs with many teenagers and usually sorts itself out, but not always. (I didn't RTFA so I dunno if it mentions this or not.)
I was diagnosed as potentially having this condition in my late 20s by a sleep therapist. Never had a full evalulation on it specifically because treatment of the psychological and physical issues greatly reduced my problems. However, I suspect I had it and indeed probably still do (5 years later), because I've always been very prone to being a night owl. Though I now get up at 6am for work (something once impossible) I can still easily stay up past midnight, and the odd time I do manage to get to bed early enough for 7-8 hours sleep I'm still super tired at 6am. On weekends if I don't set an alarm I will sleep past 10am just about every time.
Most of my best coding has been done after midnight... always like to joke at work that I'd be at least twice as productive if they let me work 8pm-4am. Of course I never actually would do that, that schedule would suck on many other levels.
Again, computations running on the GPU will have no impact on what you see.
True, but if it did it'd be way cooler than the hourglass cursor! A program could use its calculation memory space as the display buffer for its own window while it runs. Auto-visualization!
The same is true in golf. Watch the slow-mo swing replays on PGA Tour event coverage and you'll quickly see no two golfers swing the club exactly the same way. Many have similar approaches but there are always subtle variations. But they all have the same thing in common: when the club head contacts the ball it is doing so in the centre of the club face aligned square on to the target, at least far more often than is the case for average golfers.
The most unique swing is probably that of Jim Furyk, who has a noticable jerky motion in mid-swing that defies the conventional wisdom of minimizing extra movement. He's one of the tour's best players. It works for him, but it probably wouldn't work for anybody, else unless they grew up with it. Conversely, if he tried to change it he'd probably fall right off the tour in a hurry.
Back on topic, I type 70-90wpm using an approach that's basically four-fingers (2 per hand) plus the thumb for spacebar. I started typing when I was 6 and that's how I taught myself to type. I have no desire to change my approach. It works well, and I don't need to go any faster, so why mess with it?
Damnit, why didn't the summary come with a SPOILER warning? After reading the Steam update I really really wish I'd had the chance to figure out what it means on my own. The Steam update note is such a brilliantly crafted two-liner that at first glance it looks like a regular bugfix note... until you digest it for a second and realise that it doesn't make any sense in that respect, and then it just begs you to start playing the game again to find out what's actually changed.
But of course like most Slashdotters I read the whole summary first and couldn't help seeing some of the comments in the process, so at that point it was too late to know that they've revealed too much! I stopped reading as soon as I realised to limit the damage, but now that I kinda know where to look, and know that it's the first piece of a much bigger puzzle, it just isn't going to be the same as getting to unravel it on completely my own.
*sigh*... if only I hadn't been out the last two evenings, then I would have seen the Steam announcement on their feed when it came out.:-(
Check with your current employer's benefits provider. A lot of them have a special plan that they let people who were previously covered by an employer's group plan join. Often the cost is much less and no medical questionnaire is needed. The kicker is you have to sign up within a short time after you lose your employer coverage, e.g. within 1 month.
Sadly I didn't discover this until much later when I went into contracting, so it was too late for me to do this at my last employer's health insurer. If I'd known I would have signed up for it immediately. So do your research and find out beforehand. If your company's insurer doesn't do this you may be able to find a different insurer who will does; from what I've seen most of them don't seem to care if you were previously with someone else.
Disclaimer: I'm in Canada, these types of plans may not extend elsewhere.. (Oh and despite what so many others in this thread seem to be saying, not all healthcare is free in Canada. True if you fall and break your arm you won't have to pay for the surgery or hospital stay, but (generally) you will have to pay for the ambulance, resulting perscriptions, physio after the fact, the time you take off work, etc. Those costs add up, and that's why we also have health private plans here.)
Sharing stuff with news organizations in 1986 wasn't like it is today. Noawadays you can send stuff to news agencies via the web, email, Twitter, etc. and the network's usage rights are implied to be given by the mere use of their submission mechanism. However, back then they would have had to specially negotiate usage rights, exclusivity, compensation (yes you typically would actually get paid for submitting stuff), etc. They might even want the guy to prove he actually shot the thing. He'd definitely have forms to sign and would have to bring in the tape, and it would all have be done without the benefit of email or fax, too.
So perhaps it was simply too difficult to work all this out logistically, or maybe the guy wanted more money, or just simply didn't want to go through with all the rigamarole... I wouldn't blame him if it were any of these.
You're right, my bad. There's another compatibility setting that can be altered to up the speed, and I got it crossed up with the frequency. That does default to 2.4GHz though.
Here's the problem though: My router is draft-N and it does both, but the default setting is 2.4GHz "for maximum compatibility". It has to be manually set to 5Mhz, and of course that setting is buried in the router config pages. Being a good geek I went through all the settings and made this change right away (since it doubles the maximum speed) but most users aren't going to know that they can change it. I expect the same would apply for most other routers designed for the masses.
Ditto thumbs-up for Consolas. I use it not just for coding but anywhere that a fixed-width font is called for (terminal windows, non-HTML email, etc.). It's so nice to finally have a proportional font included on a Windows system that doesn't look like it's been scanned from a 1970s dot-matrix printer.
No way! Like most decent developers, I consider my code to be an artistic work, which means that if I write it with the indent at 4 spaces then damnit I want the world to see it exactly as I wrote it. You don't get to move Mona Lisa around inside the frame, so why should you think you can change the appearance of my masterpiece?!
Slashdot Mirror
Um, it seems like most people don't realize that virtually everthing in a modern car is computer-controlled. Which means implementing this feature is a simple software adjustment. Heck, I can even illustrate it with one line of code:
if accel_level > 0.2 and brake_level > 0.2: accel_level = 0
Okay I'm sure it's not quite so easy in the car's programming, but what I am sure of is that it's not expensive... you can already get it standard in a $12000 Nissan for fuck's sake. From TFA it looks like that the cheapest Toyotas have it as well.
I never post anymore but there is such massive ignorance on this thread I just couldn't help it. Anybody bitching about this being an expensive government imposition either doesn't know what they are talking about or is just pushing their own political agenda. (Or both.)
Why is it that a company that can build something cool like that is the same one that says it'd take at least 6 freakin' weeks to build me a new Civic? That was AFTER the dealer tried to string me along of course. (Didn't work - I bought a Nissan instead.)
Dear goodness I hope if/when they ever start mass-producing these that buying one isn't like buying a car. "Sorry we don't have that model and colour in stock right now but we do have the deluxe model Asimo with Chrome finishing. Oh and be sure to get the undercoating and rustproofing package on your Asimo for long-lasting protection."
No, stay away from the DIR-655 - especially for wireless! Getting literally dozens of Wireless Resets every day. I'm not the only one with this problem either - Google it, lots of reports. Tried tweaking lots of settings and using a channel scanner and picking the least-used channel but nothing helps.
Pity 'cause it would be a decent router otherwise.
I still haven't forgiven EA for the Spore DRM fiasco, so this means PopCap games (future and past) are off-limits for me now. Pity, I almost always enjoy their type of casual/puzzle games. Played the hell out of PvZ after getting it cheap during the last Steam sale, and still playing the Peggle games after several years.
Don't blame them for selling, just wish it was to a better company.
Reminds me of the U-Force I got for the original NES - that was over 20 years ago! Still have it in its original box, actually. Maybe in another 25 years it'll be worth something... it certainly wasn't when it came out! It sorta worked for Punch-Out, and not at all for anything else.
I can't remember if the U-Force was what would now be called "multi-touch"... probably not. Didn't RTFA, but at any rate I assume (and would hope) the one in the article works a lot better!
You went further than me... I didn't even click the link once I saw that it was Fox News!
Thanks for BBC link.
10 years ago when I went through University, the core of the mandatory Assembly programming course was taught on the PDP-11 architecture, then 30 and now 40 years old.
Granted it's not quite the same. We used emulators and not the real things. Also it was for different motivations. The prof felt it was simpler to teach the cleaner PDP-11 instruction set than the 80x86 or 680x0, although the course did eventually also extend to both. Also he happened to be an expert in systems like the PDP-11.
However the idea of using old systems as teaching aids is hardly new - or news IMO.
20 years ago when I got my first modem (wow it's been that long, I feel old) McAfee was *the* virus scanner. Sysops used it to scan uploads and users used it to scan downloads. Of course back then it was a small command line app that fit on one floppy and ran in 256KB (yes, K) of memory, not the massive piece of bloatware it is now. It was also free... paid versions didn't appear until Windows took over IIRC.
Never would have guessed that they woulda end up developing into a software giant worth $7.7B. And sold to Intel of all companies.
Heard a guy on the business channel speculating that Intel might be wanting it to develop on-chip virus scanners. Sounds like a promising application if it'll speed it up. As it is now scanners as no faster now as it was 20 years ago, but back then we only had 30MB drives to scan so it ran a full scan in under 30 seconds. Now we have 300GB or more and it takes about 3 hours... no wonder people hate virus scanners.
"Oh shit, my speech, I forgot all about it! I shouldn't have stayed out drinking until 2am last night..."
"Must find inspiration, quickly..."
*sees chip bag in garbage*
"Ah, a chip bag! Maybe I can use this somehow..."
*scrawls some notes*
"Hey this might just work..."
*15 minutes of feverish writing*
"YES! An entire speech on linked open data based on a bag of chips. My career is safe!"
"Hey, maybe I'll even get a few cases from Utz as a thank you for mentioning them..."
That psychic at Lisa's Wedding wasn't far off! This partnership means we're halfway towards CNNBCBS (A Division of ABC).
So are they going to call it "CNNBS"?
That would be appropriate, since CNN has been spewing nothing but BS for years now.
EVERY user interface element BEEPS.
My first computer was an Atari 400. Beeped every time I typed a key.
You get used to it. It was weird changing to something without it actually.
Seriously, go to salvation army for your ultra-cheap computing needs.
Better yet, get stuff for free. Nowadays if you pay $10 for a CRT you are paying $10 too much. From a local Freecycle group or craigslist or whatever you can get one CRT (or many) for nothing except the price of gas for the pickup. You can also find half-decent systems and parts too. For those it takes a bit more luck to be selected as the recipient, but there's so much out there nowadays that it's not that hard, just takes a bit of patience.
I was able to build a MythTV front-end box for my bedroom entirely out of free stuff. Heck, if I didn't already have the TV and entertainment centre I could have easily got those for free too! I'm not in any financial difficulty, but why waste money paying for items that people are not only giving away but also glad to get rid of?
The science behind this involves something called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome which basically means a person's "body clock" is "late" by a few hours... it's something that occurs with many teenagers and usually sorts itself out, but not always. (I didn't RTFA so I dunno if it mentions this or not.)
I was diagnosed as potentially having this condition in my late 20s by a sleep therapist. Never had a full evalulation on it specifically because treatment of the psychological and physical issues greatly reduced my problems. However, I suspect I had it and indeed probably still do (5 years later), because I've always been very prone to being a night owl. Though I now get up at 6am for work (something once impossible) I can still easily stay up past midnight, and the odd time I do manage to get to bed early enough for 7-8 hours sleep I'm still super tired at 6am. On weekends if I don't set an alarm I will sleep past 10am just about every time.
Most of my best coding has been done after midnight... always like to joke at work that I'd be at least twice as productive if they let me work 8pm-4am. Of course I never actually would do that, that schedule would suck on many other levels.
Again, computations running on the GPU will have no impact on what you see.
True, but if it did it'd be way cooler than the hourglass cursor! A program could use its calculation memory space as the display buffer for its own window while it runs. Auto-visualization!
The same is true in golf. Watch the slow-mo swing replays on PGA Tour event coverage and you'll quickly see no two golfers swing the club exactly the same way. Many have similar approaches but there are always subtle variations. But they all have the same thing in common: when the club head contacts the ball it is doing so in the centre of the club face aligned square on to the target, at least far more often than is the case for average golfers.
The most unique swing is probably that of Jim Furyk, who has a noticable jerky motion in mid-swing that defies the conventional wisdom of minimizing extra movement. He's one of the tour's best players. It works for him, but it probably wouldn't work for anybody, else unless they grew up with it. Conversely, if he tried to change it he'd probably fall right off the tour in a hurry.
Back on topic, I type 70-90wpm using an approach that's basically four-fingers (2 per hand) plus the thumb for spacebar. I started typing when I was 6 and that's how I taught myself to type. I have no desire to change my approach. It works well, and I don't need to go any faster, so why mess with it?
Damnit, why didn't the summary come with a SPOILER warning? After reading the Steam update I really really wish I'd had the chance to figure out what it means on my own. The Steam update note is such a brilliantly crafted two-liner that at first glance it looks like a regular bugfix note... until you digest it for a second and realise that it doesn't make any sense in that respect, and then it just begs you to start playing the game again to find out what's actually changed.
But of course like most Slashdotters I read the whole summary first and couldn't help seeing some of the comments in the process, so at that point it was too late to know that they've revealed too much! I stopped reading as soon as I realised to limit the damage, but now that I kinda know where to look, and know that it's the first piece of a much bigger puzzle, it just isn't going to be the same as getting to unravel it on completely my own.
*sigh*... if only I hadn't been out the last two evenings, then I would have seen the Steam announcement on their feed when it came out. :-(
P.S. The Lone Gunmen are dead!
Check with your current employer's benefits provider. A lot of them have a special plan that they let people who were previously covered by an employer's group plan join. Often the cost is much less and no medical questionnaire is needed. The kicker is you have to sign up within a short time after you lose your employer coverage, e.g. within 1 month.
Sadly I didn't discover this until much later when I went into contracting, so it was too late for me to do this at my last employer's health insurer. If I'd known I would have signed up for it immediately. So do your research and find out beforehand. If your company's insurer doesn't do this you may be able to find a different insurer who will does; from what I've seen most of them don't seem to care if you were previously with someone else.
Disclaimer: I'm in Canada, these types of plans may not extend elsewhere.. (Oh and despite what so many others in this thread seem to be saying, not all healthcare is free in Canada. True if you fall and break your arm you won't have to pay for the surgery or hospital stay, but (generally) you will have to pay for the ambulance, resulting perscriptions, physio after the fact, the time you take off work, etc. Those costs add up, and that's why we also have health private plans here.)
Hey, maybe it means malware developers are finally embracing Open Source!
Sharing stuff with news organizations in 1986 wasn't like it is today. Noawadays you can send stuff to news agencies via the web, email, Twitter, etc. and the network's usage rights are implied to be given by the mere use of their submission mechanism. However, back then they would have had to specially negotiate usage rights, exclusivity, compensation (yes you typically would actually get paid for submitting stuff), etc. They might even want the guy to prove he actually shot the thing. He'd definitely have forms to sign and would have to bring in the tape, and it would all have be done without the benefit of email or fax, too.
So perhaps it was simply too difficult to work all this out logistically, or maybe the guy wanted more money, or just simply didn't want to go through with all the rigamarole... I wouldn't blame him if it were any of these.
You're right, my bad. There's another compatibility setting that can be altered to up the speed, and I got it crossed up with the frequency. That does default to 2.4GHz though.
Nope, Slashdot is actually an exception to the three-phase model, because this is what happens:
1) Post a message to Slashdot
2) Get Slashdotted
3) Spend all potential profits on bandwidth charges
Here's the problem though: My router is draft-N and it does both, but the default setting is 2.4GHz "for maximum compatibility". It has to be manually set to 5Mhz, and of course that setting is buried in the router config pages. Being a good geek I went through all the settings and made this change right away (since it doubles the maximum speed) but most users aren't going to know that they can change it. I expect the same would apply for most other routers designed for the masses.
Ditto thumbs-up for Consolas. I use it not just for coding but anywhere that a fixed-width font is called for (terminal windows, non-HTML email, etc.). It's so nice to finally have a proportional font included on a Windows system that doesn't look like it's been scanned from a 1970s dot-matrix printer.
No way! Like most decent developers, I consider my code to be an artistic work, which means that if I write it with the indent at 4 spaces then damnit I want the world to see it exactly as I wrote it. You don't get to move Mona Lisa around inside the frame, so why should you think you can change the appearance of my masterpiece?!