3D TV mostly failed because of physics: the 3D effect (depth budget) on a TV will always be vastly inferior to what you get in the cinema, even if your TV covers the same field of view as the screen in the cinema. Having to wear glasses didn't help, but 3D cinema still seems popular enough: when there's a choice,the 3D option is way more popular. Apparently wearing glasses isn't that big of a deal when the reward is big enough.
The first Second Life had a proximity voice chat at some point. I remember messing with it when I did a few trials with SL for a client. I also remember that it was an absolute bitch to get voice chat (and SL in general) to work through the corporate firewall.
I'd never lie on an application. Leave it blank or fill in the right info.
Some of that depends on the kind of company you're joining. In case of a small company or when you are applying for a unique position, your past salary may be a large part of what determines your future pay. But in a large firm, they will probably have a salary bandwidth for your position. Ask about that.
If this question would come up, I would fill it out but if it doesn't come up in a subsequent interview I would be sure to ask them 1) what is the salary range for this position, and 2) what are you prepared to offer me. If that amount doesn't meet your expectations, be very clear about that. Simple, for all involved.
It will be a replacement at some point. Avoiding accidents will not be the driver's job, but my expectation is that it will remain his responsibility; there's a difference. His insurance will have to cover it. Depending on your country's legislation of course, in some places insurance is tied to the driver, but over here it's tied to the owner of the car.
Any insurance company will take a long and hard look at the risk involved. What are the odds of an accident happening with any particular flavour of autopilot? If there is an accident, is there a manufacturer who can be held responsible? In the case of OSS, there is no entity to sue so insurance companies may well demand a much higher insurance premium for cars with OSS autopilots, unless statistics show that this autopilot is extremely safe. But in any case I will make this prediction: it won;t be too long before insurance premiums for human-driven cars will exceed those of self driving ones.
Actually I thought it was a pretty good list... but I did miss search engines in there. Now there's something that many of us use several times a day for a wide range of tasks, truly a world changer.
In some cases it looks like they did not choose the first instance of a certain idea or piece of technology, but the instance that popularized it. Hence MP3 instead of AAC or previous formats, and WoW instead of Nethack or Ultima Online. Photoshop? Not the first either.
Of course there's always going to be some discussion about lists like these. Personally I am missing VisiCalc on the list; a brilliant idea and bit of software that has persisted in many people's everday lives in more or less the same form, to this day.
Apparently the newer versions of Bluetooth combined with codecs like aptX deliver "CD quality sound", which is probably as good as what you're going to get from the jack of any smartphone. I've tried such a headset and it sounded pretty good, certainly good enough for travel. Apple appears to be using some proprietery codec (big surprise there), and their new Airpods are often reported as "sounding better than the wired earbuds included with the iPhone, but not by much." (Which isn't saying much; the quality of those wasn't great to begin with... but there are already other companies offering improved wireless earbuds compatible with the iPhone) At least in terms of wireless technology, progress has been made, but be careful to buy something that combines well with your particular phone.
The question is not "why can't we" but "why would we"? A matter of priorities. At the moment we (Earth) don't have a compelling reason to go back there, given the expense. The USA has already been there and prefers to spend their space exploration budget on other things. Russia isn't in a space race anymore. China and India might do it for the prestige. But if you want to do anything meaningful there, like run a science programme, prospecting, etc, you'd need to set up camp there; a short visit isn't going to accomplish much more than we already got from the Apollo missions.
Maybe this would be an interesting mission that's not too horribly expensive: land a small temporary habitat, rover, and supplies ahead of time, and have a small team stay there for a month or so. In that time you can do a great deal of science and exploration.
You need to have a cutoff date at some point. Though I'd understand if they announce a short extension, if 6 months before the deadline it becomes clear that 1 team will be a month late.
How exactly would you ban it? You'd have to shut down all BTC exchanges that deal in more or less decent real currencies worldwide. Making it harder for victims (in a particular country) to obtain Bitcoin might make collecting on these schemes harder and thus more unattractive to pull off in the first place, but even that doesn't seem feasible.
By the way, Bitcoin is traceable (by everyone) but anonymous.
That explains why they left the other nasties alone. After all Australia still has all of its 50 pound worms, 100 pound spiders, mosquitos the size of baseballs, snakes the size of oil pipelines, golfball sized versions of those fish that swim up your urinal tract, etc. All poisonous, spiky, slimy, smelly, and very very pissed off.
That's a good point: the banks in Europe did appear to need some help with their reserves. But at some point, the object was no longer to save the banks from collapse, but to improve their reserves so that they could start lending money to businesses and individuals again, thus kickstarting the economy. But proponents in favour of helicopter money argue that the effect of such QE on the economy is slow and limited, and that giving cash in the hands of people directly is a far more effective way to aid the economy.
Living on Mars is certainly not impossible, we have the technology. We just need to deal with risk, accidents and deaths, health issues, the incredible expense of getting a colony set up, and the idea of going without iPhones, health care, toilet paper and any form of luxury so we can pay for the ongoing resupply missions. So sure, it's a little impractical at the moment. But not impossible.
It's actually not a bad idea if you want a little inflation, and there are cases where you'd want it. This is Friedman's "helicopter money", where a central bank increases the money supply by giving every person a bit of cash, instead of the usual quantitive easing where they buy government securities. The idea behind this method is that it turns out that money generated through QE doesn't make its way into the real economy all that quickly, where it is expected that a one-off payment to citizens will (even if they decide to save or invest most of it). It was actually briefly considered in Europe, but naturally the banks oppose it since it means the helicopter will not be flying over their lawn anymore,and thus Draghi (president of the ECB and former Goldman Sachs exec) is never going to allow it.
You can't realistically adjust minimum wage for productivity. Productivity measures the output of a system vs. its operational cost. The productivity of a person isn't simply the productivity of that system divided by the nr. of employees in it. Else they'd have to pay the one janitor left in Amazon's fully automatic warehouse a couple of million a year, probably.
I've never been a Star Trek fan, it's an ok (collection of) series and I enjoyed most of the movies but it never really grabbed me to the point where I'd make sure to watch every episode. But for some reason I really got into Enterprise. Until the time travel story line, yes. Time travel is just the next level of flashbacks and foreshadowing; a device that can tremendously enrich a story and even be a central part of it, but it is very hard to do this well, and in most cases it ends up getting botched or serves as a crutch for weak uninspired writers. Especially in case of the obligatory "Back to present day Earth" episode or even season that so many SF series seem to require.
As for Star Trek:SJW: that has the potential of being unintentionally hilarious. But hasn't the franchise always dealt with "dramatic contemporary themes", as TFA suggests?
I'm not defending MS, as an IT guy I lay the blame for this crap at their feet. But if I were paying someone to manage my IT for me, I'd expect them to prevent this stuff rather than clean up after it. Out of interest, how were you handling updates and upgrades before MS forced them upon you in Windows 10?
Microsoft shouldn't be forcing these updates by default, sure. But they did, and it was hardly a secret so you could have taken action beforehand and disabled the updates before they caused disaster. By the way, removing programs only happens on major updates of Windows, which should be treated as any major upgrade: with tests, rollback plans, and contacting the vendors of mission critical software about known compatibility issues. Those updates certainly should not be automatic... or be allowed by an administrator to proceed automatically.
It's not as clear cut as all that; not all muslims interpret their texts in tbe same way. For instance last year a bunch of top Islamic leaders and scholars in Pakistan issued a fatwa to the effect that post-op transgenders are to be afforded full marriage and inheritance rights according to their "reassigned" gender. They do not recognise or allow gay marriage, but a man-turned-woman can marry a man and the other way around.
I interpreted that as meaning that he was not able to do that, rather than just being unwilling.
Which was probably exactly what he intended. Either Obama didn't know the law allowed a pardon before a conviction, which I find very hard to believe, or he intended to say he wouldn't while giving the impression that he couldn't. Technically correct (the best kind of correct), but rather sleazy. Then again, he did study law...
Does the pro / enterprise edition even do automatic updates or uninstalls? At least those versions allow you to disable it through a Group Policy. Or does your "business class" environment run on a bunch of Windows 10 Home machines?
Slashdot Mirror
3D TV mostly failed because of physics: the 3D effect (depth budget) on a TV will always be vastly inferior to what you get in the cinema, even if your TV covers the same field of view as the screen in the cinema. Having to wear glasses didn't help, but 3D cinema still seems popular enough: when there's a choice,the 3D option is way more popular. Apparently wearing glasses isn't that big of a deal when the reward is big enough.
The first Second Life had a proximity voice chat at some point. I remember messing with it when I did a few trials with SL for a client. I also remember that it was an absolute bitch to get voice chat (and SL in general) to work through the corporate firewall.
All the electronic hotel locks I have seen, ever, can be unlocked manually from the inside using a knob, with or without power
I'd never lie on an application. Leave it blank or fill in the right info.
Some of that depends on the kind of company you're joining. In case of a small company or when you are applying for a unique position, your past salary may be a large part of what determines your future pay. But in a large firm, they will probably have a salary bandwidth for your position. Ask about that.
If this question would come up, I would fill it out but if it doesn't come up in a subsequent interview I would be sure to ask them 1) what is the salary range for this position, and 2) what are you prepared to offer me. If that amount doesn't meet your expectations, be very clear about that. Simple, for all involved.
It will be a replacement at some point. Avoiding accidents will not be the driver's job, but my expectation is that it will remain his responsibility; there's a difference. His insurance will have to cover it. Depending on your country's legislation of course, in some places insurance is tied to the driver, but over here it's tied to the owner of the car.
Any insurance company will take a long and hard look at the risk involved. What are the odds of an accident happening with any particular flavour of autopilot? If there is an accident, is there a manufacturer who can be held responsible? In the case of OSS, there is no entity to sue so insurance companies may well demand a much higher insurance premium for cars with OSS autopilots, unless statistics show that this autopilot is extremely safe. But in any case I will make this prediction: it won;t be too long before insurance premiums for human-driven cars will exceed those of self driving ones.
Actually I thought it was a pretty good list... but I did miss search engines in there. Now there's something that many of us use several times a day for a wide range of tasks, truly a world changer.
In some cases it looks like they did not choose the first instance of a certain idea or piece of technology, but the instance that popularized it. Hence MP3 instead of AAC or previous formats, and WoW instead of Nethack or Ultima Online. Photoshop? Not the first either.
Of course there's always going to be some discussion about lists like these. Personally I am missing VisiCalc on the list; a brilliant idea and bit of software that has persisted in many people's everday lives in more or less the same form, to this day.
What about metallic diamonds? How much pressure does that take?
Apparently the newer versions of Bluetooth combined with codecs like aptX deliver "CD quality sound", which is probably as good as what you're going to get from the jack of any smartphone. I've tried such a headset and it sounded pretty good, certainly good enough for travel. Apple appears to be using some proprietery codec (big surprise there), and their new Airpods are often reported as "sounding better than the wired earbuds included with the iPhone, but not by much." (Which isn't saying much; the quality of those wasn't great to begin with... but there are already other companies offering improved wireless earbuds compatible with the iPhone) At least in terms of wireless technology, progress has been made, but be careful to buy something that combines well with your particular phone.
The question is not "why can't we" but "why would we"? A matter of priorities. At the moment we (Earth) don't have a compelling reason to go back there, given the expense. The USA has already been there and prefers to spend their space exploration budget on other things. Russia isn't in a space race anymore. China and India might do it for the prestige. But if you want to do anything meaningful there, like run a science programme, prospecting, etc, you'd need to set up camp there; a short visit isn't going to accomplish much more than we already got from the Apollo missions.
Maybe this would be an interesting mission that's not too horribly expensive: land a small temporary habitat, rover, and supplies ahead of time, and have a small team stay there for a month or so. In that time you can do a great deal of science and exploration.
You need to have a cutoff date at some point. Though I'd understand if they announce a short extension, if 6 months before the deadline it becomes clear that 1 team will be a month late.
Well it might work, but what exactly would be the legal basis to do this?
How exactly would you ban it? You'd have to shut down all BTC exchanges that deal in more or less decent real currencies worldwide. Making it harder for victims (in a particular country) to obtain Bitcoin might make collecting on these schemes harder and thus more unattractive to pull off in the first place, but even that doesn't seem feasible.
By the way, Bitcoin is traceable (by everyone) but anonymous.
That reminds me: every time you pronounce orang-utan as YURangetang (instead of OHrang OOtan), one of them dies...
That explains why they left the other nasties alone. After all Australia still has all of its 50 pound worms, 100 pound spiders, mosquitos the size of baseballs, snakes the size of oil pipelines, golfball sized versions of those fish that swim up your urinal tract, etc. All poisonous, spiky, slimy, smelly, and very very pissed off.
That's a good point: the banks in Europe did appear to need some help with their reserves. But at some point, the object was no longer to save the banks from collapse, but to improve their reserves so that they could start lending money to businesses and individuals again, thus kickstarting the economy. But proponents in favour of helicopter money argue that the effect of such QE on the economy is slow and limited, and that giving cash in the hands of people directly is a far more effective way to aid the economy.
Living on Mars is certainly not impossible, we have the technology. We just need to deal with risk, accidents and deaths, health issues, the incredible expense of getting a colony set up, and the idea of going without iPhones, health care, toilet paper and any form of luxury so we can pay for the ongoing resupply missions. So sure, it's a little impractical at the moment. But not impossible.
It's actually not a bad idea if you want a little inflation, and there are cases where you'd want it. This is Friedman's "helicopter money", where a central bank increases the money supply by giving every person a bit of cash, instead of the usual quantitive easing where they buy government securities. The idea behind this method is that it turns out that money generated through QE doesn't make its way into the real economy all that quickly, where it is expected that a one-off payment to citizens will (even if they decide to save or invest most of it). It was actually briefly considered in Europe, but naturally the banks oppose it since it means the helicopter will not be flying over their lawn anymore,and thus Draghi (president of the ECB and former Goldman Sachs exec) is never going to allow it.
Of course it wouldn't be a million but perhaps $1000 or a $300 Tricky Dick Fun Bill.
You can't realistically adjust minimum wage for productivity. Productivity measures the output of a system vs. its operational cost. The productivity of a person isn't simply the productivity of that system divided by the nr. of employees in it. Else they'd have to pay the one janitor left in Amazon's fully automatic warehouse a couple of million a year, probably.
I've never been a Star Trek fan, it's an ok (collection of) series and I enjoyed most of the movies but it never really grabbed me to the point where I'd make sure to watch every episode. But for some reason I really got into Enterprise. Until the time travel story line, yes. Time travel is just the next level of flashbacks and foreshadowing; a device that can tremendously enrich a story and even be a central part of it, but it is very hard to do this well, and in most cases it ends up getting botched or serves as a crutch for weak uninspired writers. Especially in case of the obligatory "Back to present day Earth" episode or even season that so many SF series seem to require.
As for Star Trek:SJW: that has the potential of being unintentionally hilarious. But hasn't the franchise always dealt with "dramatic contemporary themes", as TFA suggests?
The pictograms are for the advanced functions.
Tentacles? One would hope...
I'm not defending MS, as an IT guy I lay the blame for this crap at their feet. But if I were paying someone to manage my IT for me, I'd expect them to prevent this stuff rather than clean up after it. Out of interest, how were you handling updates and upgrades before MS forced them upon you in Windows 10?
Microsoft shouldn't be forcing these updates by default, sure. But they did, and it was hardly a secret so you could have taken action beforehand and disabled the updates before they caused disaster. By the way, removing programs only happens on major updates of Windows, which should be treated as any major upgrade: with tests, rollback plans, and contacting the vendors of mission critical software about known compatibility issues. Those updates certainly should not be automatic... or be allowed by an administrator to proceed automatically.
It's not as clear cut as all that; not all muslims interpret their texts in tbe same way. For instance last year a bunch of top Islamic leaders and scholars in Pakistan issued a fatwa to the effect that post-op transgenders are to be afforded full marriage and inheritance rights according to their "reassigned" gender. They do not recognise or allow gay marriage, but a man-turned-woman can marry a man and the other way around.
I interpreted that as meaning that he was not able to do that, rather than just being unwilling.
Which was probably exactly what he intended. Either Obama didn't know the law allowed a pardon before a conviction, which I find very hard to believe, or he intended to say he wouldn't while giving the impression that he couldn't. Technically correct (the best kind of correct), but rather sleazy. Then again, he did study law...
Does the pro / enterprise edition even do automatic updates or uninstalls? At least those versions allow you to disable it through a Group Policy. Or does your "business class" environment run on a bunch of Windows 10 Home machines?