Assistance doesn't have to be in the form of a brave standby team rushing to the launch pad and blasting off to a daring rescue mission. The best way to safeguard a Mars mission, given the distance from Earth, is in redundancy. Multiple settlements within driving distance. Separate backup stores of food, oxygen, water and supplies, on the surface and/or perhaps orbiting Mars so they can be delivered anywhere as needed (these can be sent there before the actual mission blasts off). Backup life support, generators, shelters, everything. It's possible to send the stuff they need to survive in advance, to be used until a rescue mission does get there. Only in cases where the crew is incapacitated (bad case of the Martian flu perhaps) or an immediate liftoff and return home is required would they actually be in trouble: even if they have a working ascent module and return ship, the planet's alignment with Earth might be such that the trip would take too long or too much fuel.
I hate nav nipples and prefer touchpads, but I agree: give me physical buttons! The button-less pads appear to become more popular, probably because they are cheaper. Last year I bought an MSI GS60 gaming laptop. Thin and light for its power and size, and I am very happy with it except for the godawful touchpad.
As a landlord, I'd welcome any service that lets me vet renters before I enter into a contract with them. I've had my share of idiots and deadbeats in my property, and in the Netherlands there's always the danger of a tenant going to the rent control committee and getting their rent lowered to the point where I start losing money (governments expects homeowners and landlords to pay market prices for their properties, yet magically provide low income tenants with apartments at rents well below market or even break-even levels. A "decree economy" at its finest, but of course in practise it doesn't work that way).
With that said, I do not in the slightest expect this service to yield any form of useful info from tenants' social media data. I do things the old fashioned way, by doing an interview and going by gut feeling.
It's not an either-or choice. There are cases where an app is the better choice, and cases where a website is not only cheaper but yields a better experience. And the disctinction between the two is blurring; with more possibilities for data crunching, networking and storage in the browser client-side.
I'm not sure their expectations were unrealistic, though I agree with the notion that they went on a blind buying spree. Nest was a good product, and in their position I would have focused on 2 things:
1) more beautiful and intuitive home automation devices. The demand is there, and even without much innovation they could have turned out some good devices, building on solid design and a strong brand name. Dropcam might have been such a device... but not at the price.
2) a strategy for integrated home automation. This is a growing market fully in the hype cycle, with a lot of contenders but few real mature products and tons of room for improvement. Revolv wasn't the right product and would never have been made into the right one. Perhaps they were just looking to buy expertise rather than a product, but in my experience that rarely works.
They overpaid for Dropcam. With Revolv they didn't just back the wrong horse; they bet in the wrong race on something that doesn't even resemble a horse. But that's no surprise. Google doesn't "get" home automation and IoT any more than other companies like Apple do.
Seeing the odd horrible picture probably won't hurt anyone. But having to make a decision to censor or not, thinking about the intent and the context, that is a heavier burden. Now multiply that by a thousand and make it someone's job... It's a well-known problem in police departments that have to go through and catalogue child pornography collections; people on that job don't last very long as a rule.
If they offer it at a lower price with ads, they probably require a network connection. Maybe with a provision to let you disconnect it for a certain period of time so you can continue to view if your network is out... but in that case they'll probably just cache the ads and still show them.
Depends... It'll probably be too tempting to do this:
Current ad free TV: $599
Future ad-supported TV: $499
Future ad-free TV: $799
Margins on TVs are pretty thin, so they'd have to make a LOT of money from the ads to be able to offer the equipment at a meaningful discount. And the best way to ensure more ad revenue is to entice more people to get the ad-supported version. So increasing the price of the regular equipment gives them a higher profit margin on that equipment, it makes the ad laden version that much more attractive, and it increases overall ad revenue.
Besides, what kind of ads would you expect and tolerate? The little popovers that some thrice-cursed studios already ad to their programming? Interstitials in streaming content (sending a Pause command to Netflix while shoving an ad down your throat)?. Popups that have to be clicked off? Once very hour? Twice? 6 times? Just look at the current state of the web and of network television, and you can see how advertisers will turn ANY channel to shit if you let them.
Seller beware. I wouldn't want that happen to me either any more than finding out that my numbers in the national lottery were off by one from those winning millions. And in both cases I'd blame no one but myself. Besides, the value of a piece like that is probably historic rather than monetary. You'll get more than 10 quid but more than 100?
That's probably a misunderstanding due to the phrasing of the quote in the summary. Apple did exactly the opposite of what that sentence implies, and applied their ideas about hardware to their software as well: a one size fits all approach with few choices, but offering a great experience if those choices happen to more or less fit your preferences.
a scheduling feature that will hold notifications during weekends and other specified off-work periods.
Meh. I like having access to work email after hours. Taking a quick peek at my inbox early morning or Sunday evening helps me plan my day around any high priority stuff. At my previous client, emailing during free time was getting out of hand especially after their BYOD scheme was rolled out. Interestingly, no one held the expectation that emails would be read or replied to after hours, not even management, but even so they saw the potential issues early on. Rather than implement email blocks or other technical solutions, they went for a behavioural approach. First they posted instructions on how to "mute" email during weekends so the phone won't beep on every incoming mail (I have that setting on permanently). And they adopted a simple, effective policy, with management supporting and leading by example: "after hours, read, don't reply".
Never mind the working models, patent law already excludes simple ideas that are "obvious to someone skilled in the art". You have a small portable device / computer + a radio = a PDA that can make calls. The idea is obvious even to laymen, and has appeared in speculative fiction long before this patent was filed.
I'd be in favour of a tiered patent system. Cute ideas like XOR mouse cursors, one click shopping buttons, rounded corners or making calls on a PDA get you a tier 1 patent, meaning you don't get a monopoly, you get a head start on the competition with a patent that is valid for perhaps 3 years. Do the research and come up with genuinely new things like medicine or new hard disk technology, and bring a working model, then you can apply for a higher tier patent that grants you a longer monopoly. The higher the tier, the stronger the challenge and the closer the scrutiny (and the price goes up). I also like the idea someone suggested, of making patent applications free... if it gets accepted. But if it is rejected, you pay.
But we'd already improve things a lot if we just start applying existing patent law and test for prior art and obviousness.
The point of reforming patent law would not be to make the "right" side win, but to ensure these stupid cases never even come to court. And then the lawyers do lose. Which is why you shouldn't expect any serious reform anytime soon. That tagline is right: America is run by lawyers.
Worse: some PHB will mix up cause and effect, and spike the coffee machines on the coder's floor with anti-anxiety pills and Metoprolol, in an effort to reduce stress and heart rates thus improving software quality.
In most European countries, it's pretty easy to purchase illegal firearms, despite strict gun control these things are smuggled in quantity. No need for the dark web, though you kind of have to know where to go and whom to ask, or you'll be scammed just as quickly.
You can mix & match with the right selection of components. I use the following, and I won't hesitate to recommend it:
- For generic Home Automation stuff, use Z-Wave: a non-open radio protocol that has proven to be pretty robust. Z-Wave devices form a mesh network so range generally isn't a problem. And with the latest version of the standard, some security has been added as well. There are tons of items out there: switches, dimmers, thermostats, locks, sensors, remotes, and so on, from many brands, in many ranges of prices and quality.
- You need a Z-Wave hub, and again you have several choices that do not require the cloud: Homeseer (reliable but you get nickle & dimed to death for addons, and it's less accessible to tinkering), Vera (pretty reliable, and best of all it is open to tinkering. You can write your own plugins for this hub and there is an active community of plugin developers), or OpenHAB + a Z-Wave stick (Open! But using it is still somewhat reminiscent of installing Linux in its early days). I am currently using a Vera hub
- Your hub needs to be able to address non Z-wave devices. Most hubs do this with plugins, allowing you to include these in your setup: WiFi-enabled thermostats, Philips Hue bulbs, Alarm systems, anything networked that has an API, really.
- For your DYI devices, use Arduino + a NRF24L01 radio module running the MySensors libraries. MySensors is an open DYI project using Arduinos, having them form a reliable mesh radio network (way better than WiFi), and you can build pretty much anything you can imagine with it, usig the libraries and a handful of lines of code. MySensors interfaces nicely with Vera, there's a plugin that will expose MySensors devices like switches and sensors as native Vera devices, allowing you to use them in scenes. For the MySensors gateway to be used with Vera, I recommend using an Ethernet Arduino for maximum reliability.
Oh, and for anything that needs to be somewhat reliable, avoid WiFi devices. WiFi is not a very good HA platform.
If you send a counter-notice, your online service provider is required to replace the disputed content unless the complaining party sues you within fourteen business days of your sending the counter-notice. (Your service provider may replace the disputed material after ten business days if the complaining party has not filed a lawsuit, but it is required to replace it within fourteen business days.)
The owner of the video (i.e. the guy that posted it to Youtube) can and hopefully will file a counter-notice. Youtube is then obliged by law to reinstate the deleted material in a reasonable time frame. The ball is then in Fox' court; their recourse is to file a copyright infringement suit. In reality, the threat of being suid in court by Fox is enough to deter the owner of the video to file a counter-notice... if it was me, I would think long and hard before entering into such a battle (in the US anyway... here in NL I'd be happy to go mano a mano)
Only problem is: people can test positive for a few weeks after having used drugs. And while no one wants to hire an addict, many of those people are just recreational users who take something in the weekend, i.e. when it's no one's business what they get up to. I don't care what my heart surgeon drops in the weekend as long as he is sober come Monday.
I had a chat with a colleague from the US about this, when I admitted I smoke pot (a couple times a year). He asked if I wasn't afraid to test positive in a random drug test, and he was surprised to hear we have no drug testing at all; in the Netherlands, it is unheard of in an office environment. Medical tests in general may only be used to look for conditions that impair your ability to carry out your assigned duties. Testing positive once is not considered proof that you have a condition preventing you from working well, and cannot be considered proof that you are more likely to report to work under the influence. Tests in the workplace are rare, and pre-hiring drug screens are not allowed at all (you can't pose a safety risk if they haven't hired you yet). On-the-job testing is allowed, but only in the context of safety, and testing positive might result in being sent home, not in being fired straightaway. Only in a few exceptional cases like pilots or air traffic controllers are employers allowed (or even obliged) to keep to a zero-drugs policy. Alcohol tests are treated slightly different, because they are much more accurate in measuring actual influence at the time of the test (i.e. during work).
In most cases of recreational drug users, you'll never know if they took anything during the weekend if you don't test... so what is the problem? If they take too much, or use on the job, you will notice it... and you can take action in those cases. The law here does allow for disciplinary action in such cases, and allows for on-the-job drug testing of that employee if he is noticeably impaired, or during a rehabilitation course.
You could argue that in some cases it is critical to check the mental well-being of workers, for example we wouldn't want intoxicated software engineers developing code for pacemakers or heart monitors. My arguments against drug screens in such cases: 1) drug screens only tell you that someone has used drugs in the past days / weeks, but say nothing about how fucked up they are right this minute, nor how often they take them. 2) if your software quality control cannot catch errors introduced by intoxicated (tired, worried, overworked, momentarily dense, distracted, malicious) employees, then maybe you shouldn't be developing software for medical devices.
Something shady like visiting a bar, going to a drunken dorm blowout, picking up some (legal) weed or (legal) porn, visiting the "wrong" political rally, and so on. It's one thing if you bump into a colleague in the dodgy rubber fetish section at the videostore, it's quite another if your current and future friends, family, employers, interested law enforcement officers can place you there until the end of time.
Slashdot Mirror
No, there are molecules everywhere...
Assistance doesn't have to be in the form of a brave standby team rushing to the launch pad and blasting off to a daring rescue mission. The best way to safeguard a Mars mission, given the distance from Earth, is in redundancy. Multiple settlements within driving distance. Separate backup stores of food, oxygen, water and supplies, on the surface and/or perhaps orbiting Mars so they can be delivered anywhere as needed (these can be sent there before the actual mission blasts off). Backup life support, generators, shelters, everything. It's possible to send the stuff they need to survive in advance, to be used until a rescue mission does get there. Only in cases where the crew is incapacitated (bad case of the Martian flu perhaps) or an immediate liftoff and return home is required would they actually be in trouble: even if they have a working ascent module and return ship, the planet's alignment with Earth might be such that the trip would take too long or too much fuel.
I hate nav nipples and prefer touchpads, but I agree: give me physical buttons! The button-less pads appear to become more popular, probably because they are cheaper. Last year I bought an MSI GS60 gaming laptop. Thin and light for its power and size, and I am very happy with it except for the godawful touchpad.
As a landlord, I'd welcome any service that lets me vet renters before I enter into a contract with them. I've had my share of idiots and deadbeats in my property, and in the Netherlands there's always the danger of a tenant going to the rent control committee and getting their rent lowered to the point where I start losing money (governments expects homeowners and landlords to pay market prices for their properties, yet magically provide low income tenants with apartments at rents well below market or even break-even levels. A "decree economy" at its finest, but of course in practise it doesn't work that way).
With that said, I do not in the slightest expect this service to yield any form of useful info from tenants' social media data. I do things the old fashioned way, by doing an interview and going by gut feeling.
It's not an either-or choice. There are cases where an app is the better choice, and cases where a website is not only cheaper but yields a better experience. And the disctinction between the two is blurring; with more possibilities for data crunching, networking and storage in the browser client-side.
I'm not sure their expectations were unrealistic, though I agree with the notion that they went on a blind buying spree. Nest was a good product, and in their position I would have focused on 2 things:
1) more beautiful and intuitive home automation devices. The demand is there, and even without much innovation they could have turned out some good devices, building on solid design and a strong brand name. Dropcam might have been such a device... but not at the price.
2) a strategy for integrated home automation. This is a growing market fully in the hype cycle, with a lot of contenders but few real mature products and tons of room for improvement. Revolv wasn't the right product and would never have been made into the right one. Perhaps they were just looking to buy expertise rather than a product, but in my experience that rarely works.
They overpaid for Dropcam. With Revolv they didn't just back the wrong horse; they bet in the wrong race on something that doesn't even resemble a horse. But that's no surprise. Google doesn't "get" home automation and IoT any more than other companies like Apple do.
Seeing the odd horrible picture probably won't hurt anyone. But having to make a decision to censor or not, thinking about the intent and the context, that is a heavier burden. Now multiply that by a thousand and make it someone's job... It's a well-known problem in police departments that have to go through and catalogue child pornography collections; people on that job don't last very long as a rule.
If they offer it at a lower price with ads, they probably require a network connection. Maybe with a provision to let you disconnect it for a certain period of time so you can continue to view if your network is out... but in that case they'll probably just cache the ads and still show them.
Depends... It'll probably be too tempting to do this:
Current ad free TV: $599
Future ad-supported TV: $499
Future ad-free TV: $799
Margins on TVs are pretty thin, so they'd have to make a LOT of money from the ads to be able to offer the equipment at a meaningful discount. And the best way to ensure more ad revenue is to entice more people to get the ad-supported version. So increasing the price of the regular equipment gives them a higher profit margin on that equipment, it makes the ad laden version that much more attractive, and it increases overall ad revenue.
Besides, what kind of ads would you expect and tolerate? The little popovers that some thrice-cursed studios already ad to their programming? Interstitials in streaming content (sending a Pause command to Netflix while shoving an ad down your throat)?. Popups that have to be clicked off? Once very hour? Twice? 6 times? Just look at the current state of the web and of network television, and you can see how advertisers will turn ANY channel to shit if you let them.
Seller beware. I wouldn't want that happen to me either any more than finding out that my numbers in the national lottery were off by one from those winning millions. And in both cases I'd blame no one but myself. Besides, the value of a piece like that is probably historic rather than monetary. You'll get more than 10 quid but more than 100?
That's probably a misunderstanding due to the phrasing of the quote in the summary. Apple did exactly the opposite of what that sentence implies, and applied their ideas about hardware to their software as well: a one size fits all approach with few choices, but offering a great experience if those choices happen to more or less fit your preferences.
Meh. I like having access to work email after hours. Taking a quick peek at my inbox early morning or Sunday evening helps me plan my day around any high priority stuff. At my previous client, emailing during free time was getting out of hand especially after their BYOD scheme was rolled out. Interestingly, no one held the expectation that emails would be read or replied to after hours, not even management, but even so they saw the potential issues early on. Rather than implement email blocks or other technical solutions, they went for a behavioural approach. First they posted instructions on how to "mute" email during weekends so the phone won't beep on every incoming mail (I have that setting on permanently). And they adopted a simple, effective policy, with management supporting and leading by example: "after hours, read, don't reply".
A lawyer's allegiance is not to the truth but to their clients. That is their role in the legal system.
Not sure what you mean by taking out a court
Nuke from orbit?
I already posted a comment, else I'd mod you up just for spelling "rogue" correctly.
Never mind the working models, patent law already excludes simple ideas that are "obvious to someone skilled in the art". You have a small portable device / computer + a radio = a PDA that can make calls. The idea is obvious even to laymen, and has appeared in speculative fiction long before this patent was filed.
I'd be in favour of a tiered patent system. Cute ideas like XOR mouse cursors, one click shopping buttons, rounded corners or making calls on a PDA get you a tier 1 patent, meaning you don't get a monopoly, you get a head start on the competition with a patent that is valid for perhaps 3 years. Do the research and come up with genuinely new things like medicine or new hard disk technology, and bring a working model, then you can apply for a higher tier patent that grants you a longer monopoly. The higher the tier, the stronger the challenge and the closer the scrutiny (and the price goes up). I also like the idea someone suggested, of making patent applications free... if it gets accepted. But if it is rejected, you pay.
But we'd already improve things a lot if we just start applying existing patent law and test for prior art and obviousness.
The point of reforming patent law would not be to make the "right" side win, but to ensure these stupid cases never even come to court. And then the lawyers do lose. Which is why you shouldn't expect any serious reform anytime soon. That tagline is right: America is run by lawyers.
Worse: some PHB will mix up cause and effect, and spike the coffee machines on the coder's floor with anti-anxiety pills and Metoprolol, in an effort to reduce stress and heart rates thus improving software quality.
In most European countries, it's pretty easy to purchase illegal firearms, despite strict gun control these things are smuggled in quantity. No need for the dark web, though you kind of have to know where to go and whom to ask, or you'll be scammed just as quickly.
You can mix & match with the right selection of components. I use the following, and I won't hesitate to recommend it:
- For generic Home Automation stuff, use Z-Wave: a non-open radio protocol that has proven to be pretty robust. Z-Wave devices form a mesh network so range generally isn't a problem. And with the latest version of the standard, some security has been added as well. There are tons of items out there: switches, dimmers, thermostats, locks, sensors, remotes, and so on, from many brands, in many ranges of prices and quality.
- You need a Z-Wave hub, and again you have several choices that do not require the cloud: Homeseer (reliable but you get nickle & dimed to death for addons, and it's less accessible to tinkering), Vera (pretty reliable, and best of all it is open to tinkering. You can write your own plugins for this hub and there is an active community of plugin developers), or OpenHAB + a Z-Wave stick (Open! But using it is still somewhat reminiscent of installing Linux in its early days). I am currently using a Vera hub
- Your hub needs to be able to address non Z-wave devices. Most hubs do this with plugins, allowing you to include these in your setup: WiFi-enabled thermostats, Philips Hue bulbs, Alarm systems, anything networked that has an API, really.
- For your DYI devices, use Arduino + a NRF24L01 radio module running the MySensors libraries. MySensors is an open DYI project using Arduinos, having them form a reliable mesh radio network (way better than WiFi), and you can build pretty much anything you can imagine with it, usig the libraries and a handful of lines of code. MySensors interfaces nicely with Vera, there's a plugin that will expose MySensors devices like switches and sensors as native Vera devices, allowing you to use them in scenes. For the MySensors gateway to be used with Vera, I recommend using an Ethernet Arduino for maximum reliability.
Oh, and for anything that needs to be somewhat reliable, avoid WiFi devices. WiFi is not a very good HA platform.
If you send a counter-notice, your online service provider is required to replace the disputed content unless the complaining party sues you within fourteen business days of your sending the counter-notice. (Your service provider may replace the disputed material after ten business days if the complaining party has not filed a lawsuit, but it is required to replace it within fourteen business days.)
Perhaps an actual lawyer can chime in?
The owner of the video (i.e. the guy that posted it to Youtube) can and hopefully will file a counter-notice. Youtube is then obliged by law to reinstate the deleted material in a reasonable time frame. The ball is then in Fox' court; their recourse is to file a copyright infringement suit. In reality, the threat of being suid in court by Fox is enough to deter the owner of the video to file a counter-notice... if it was me, I would think long and hard before entering into such a battle (in the US anyway... here in NL I'd be happy to go mano a mano)
Quite. Islam is an exponent of that culture, not the other way around. That's how religions work.
Only problem is: people can test positive for a few weeks after having used drugs. And while no one wants to hire an addict, many of those people are just recreational users who take something in the weekend, i.e. when it's no one's business what they get up to. I don't care what my heart surgeon drops in the weekend as long as he is sober come Monday.
I had a chat with a colleague from the US about this, when I admitted I smoke pot (a couple times a year). He asked if I wasn't afraid to test positive in a random drug test, and he was surprised to hear we have no drug testing at all; in the Netherlands, it is unheard of in an office environment. Medical tests in general may only be used to look for conditions that impair your ability to carry out your assigned duties. Testing positive once is not considered proof that you have a condition preventing you from working well, and cannot be considered proof that you are more likely to report to work under the influence. Tests in the workplace are rare, and pre-hiring drug screens are not allowed at all (you can't pose a safety risk if they haven't hired you yet). On-the-job testing is allowed, but only in the context of safety, and testing positive might result in being sent home, not in being fired straightaway. Only in a few exceptional cases like pilots or air traffic controllers are employers allowed (or even obliged) to keep to a zero-drugs policy. Alcohol tests are treated slightly different, because they are much more accurate in measuring actual influence at the time of the test (i.e. during work).
In most cases of recreational drug users, you'll never know if they took anything during the weekend if you don't test... so what is the problem? If they take too much, or use on the job, you will notice it... and you can take action in those cases. The law here does allow for disciplinary action in such cases, and allows for on-the-job drug testing of that employee if he is noticeably impaired, or during a rehabilitation course.
You could argue that in some cases it is critical to check the mental well-being of workers, for example we wouldn't want intoxicated software engineers developing code for pacemakers or heart monitors. My arguments against drug screens in such cases: 1) drug screens only tell you that someone has used drugs in the past days / weeks, but say nothing about how fucked up they are right this minute, nor how often they take them. 2) if your software quality control cannot catch errors introduced by intoxicated (tired, worried, overworked, momentarily dense, distracted, malicious) employees, then maybe you shouldn't be developing software for medical devices.
Something shady like visiting a bar, going to a drunken dorm blowout, picking up some (legal) weed or (legal) porn, visiting the "wrong" political rally, and so on. It's one thing if you bump into a colleague in the dodgy rubber fetish section at the videostore, it's quite another if your current and future friends, family, employers, interested law enforcement officers can place you there until the end of time.