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User: Atryn

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Comments · 464

  1. Re:Not safe on California To License Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    Not at all. Airline statistics tell a big story. They are incredibly safe now. Not too many computers are flying the plane into a mountain.

    Wow, I lol'd at this... How could you possibly compare these two? Airspace has an incredibly consistent, standardized and mostly centralized air-traffic control system. you have ~7,000 aircraft simultaneously in the entire US Airspace. We have over 242 Million registered vehicles in the United States. I couldn't find data on how many are in operation simultaneously, but I think it is safe to say you can find over 7000 in operation simultaneously during rush hour in any average city on the interstates there alone.

    Add to that the room/flexibility to maneuver in a vehicle on a road system, parking lot, parking garage, shoulder, dirt road, etc. compared to "air space".

    Both have weather hazards, granted. Except that often when weather is rough, planes don't fly there (route around it). Motor vehicles don't work that way.

    I'm sure I have BARELY scratched the surface here. Maybe we should instead be debating what I meant by "quite a long time". I'd say a significant number of autonomous vehicles in operation in the U.S. is at least a decade away, maybe two.

  2. Re:Should be done in upstate new york, too on California To License Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    While they may go for years without addressing serious problems and safety issues, or doing complex things like resurfacing roads...

    Why can't they have autonomous vehicles resurface roads? That seems like an ideal situation for efficiency... controlled environment since the lanes are usually blocked off anyway, repetitive and standard task, etc. Its always been something done at a bad time of day for humans anyway and you might reduce union problems (once you get over the obvious initial ones to implement it to begin with)...

  3. Re:Not safe on California To License Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles, with ONE accident. That's far, far safer than the average human driver.

    Where are you getting that the average human driver has an at least one accident every few hundred thousand miles? I wouldn't call this "far, far safer" yet. It has the potential to be.

    Also, most of the tests have been in still fairly controlled environments. Meaning, the car wasn't woken up in the middle of the night to get a pregnant woman to the hospital quickly over dirt roads, past nighttime street-racers, etc... Loads of "special cases" exist in the world of cars. It will be quite a long time before we have a really solid understanding of their viability. Right now, a "typical commute" is probably the safest use, or even for standard-route delivery vehicles without a high time sensitivity. Even better if certain roads / routes / lanes get set aside for autonomous vehicles only, which would make them even safer and more efficient.

  4. Re:In all seriousness on Saudi Aramco Reveals Cyber Attack Hit 30,000 Workstations · · Score: 2

    if you are going to quote Iranian officials saying that they will erase Israel from the map, you'd be a fool if you do not place it as verbal showcasing intended as something to gather support from Arabic populations.

    Well, that is another mass stereotyping of "Arabic populations"... But the mere fact that this is perceived as a viable strategy across such a large population (calling for the violent annihilation of another population) kinda makes me lean towards none of "them" having a bomb.

  5. Re:More likely case on Intel Team Takes On Car Hackers · · Score: 1

    To be frank I'm surprised nobodies 'stolen' a car at defcon or black hat yet for one of the demo's.

    It would have been highly amusing if Gen. Alexander's car had refused to either arrive or depart Defcon this year... Or whatever car he was being chauffeured in.

  6. Re:I died because of Farmville?!?!? on Intel Team Takes On Car Hackers · · Score: 1

    ...Angry Birds: Cruisin' Down the Highway.

    I prefer a multi-player FPS type game... imagine an augmented reality interface where you can see the virtual turrets mounted on your hood and aim them at other cars logged into the game. You could see those cars taking damage and then eventually being "destroyed". Of course, you also have to watch your six and consider your shield levels as well. If you had passengers in the car, maybe they could man the rear guns or monitor system health and repairs...

    I think I just made family road-trips much more fun...

  7. Re:CAN is cool, but... on Intel Team Takes On Car Hackers · · Score: 1

    The as-yet-unpublished research was presented to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration, established to investigate the safety and security of automobile electronics following the large-scale recall of malfunctioning cars in 2010.

    LOL... or, one manufacturer might use such exploits to create a series of improbable events labeled "malfunctions" which damages their competitor's sales and forces large scale and costly recalls. Hmmm... Industrial Espionage just moved up a tick in the automotive industry... distributed industrial sabotage.... trademark pending?

  8. Re:EVIL-TOS: Not allowed to host any type of serve on Google Announces Plans, Pricing For Kansas City Fiber Network · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The self-driving car is laughable. Google is not going to become an auto manufacturer. Google is not going to become a technology provider to an existing auto manufacturer. The existing manufacturers suffer from Not Invented Here Syndrome worse than almost any other industry. They're the very definition of hidebound, and it's no surprise, as they've been exposed to the kind attentions of the aforementioned institutional investors for generations now. I give Google's project another year before they pull the plug, and that's optimistic.

    Google's objective isn't to become an auto-manufacturer or to become a supplier to them. Their objective isn't to directly make money on this at all.

    Their objective is to free up the billions of eyeball-hours spent on driving so they can be used for something else....

  9. Re:Who's he kidding? on NSA Chief To Address Hackers At DEF CON · · Score: 1

    Simce when do black hats respect privacy? See? Shared values.

    +1

    Yes, I think both communities generally agree... the privacy of *my* information should be respected but *your* information wants to be free!

  10. Re:Device naked on NSA Chief To Address Hackers At DEF CON · · Score: 1

    just imagine a NSA phone lost at DEF CON ... :)

    That sounds almost as bad as an iPhone prototype left at a bar... But I'm sure Apple will take precedence on government resources to "recover" their device...

  11. Re:Shared value ? on NSA Chief To Address Hackers At DEF CON · · Score: 1

    I treasure my privacy too much to break my anonymity (and no, I'm not part of that "anonymous" movement either)

    Nice low UID there... I would assume they identified THOSE first... ;)

  12. Re:Shared value ? on NSA Chief To Address Hackers At DEF CON · · Score: 1

    What type of "value" they really think they truly share with us? ... Keep track of every-single-thing on every-single-person on earth?

    Well, they did say "...the fact that information increases value by sharing..." -- Just think how much value they are creating by sharing all information about every single person on earth with every federal agency who needs/wants it?

  13. Re:I thought pinball died on Neuroscience May Cure Videogames Industry's Obsession With Guns · · Score: 1

    I apologize for not stating up front that I was referring to the English-speaking market.

    Actually, it sounds like you are referring to the male 12-25 year old U.S. Windows-based user demographic. (maybe you meant that last part by "PC"?)

    I was referring to games that people in my family play. I wasn't suggesting these markets are LARGER than the violent games market, but you seemed to imply they don't exist. Have you been to the game section of an Apple store lately? How about the Mac App store? Any idea how much Zynga brings in on non-violent games? Facebook games? I noticed you ignored several examples I gave as well.

    Maybe you meant the "gaming market consisting of games I like"?

  14. Re:What other than FPS, RTS, and MMORPG? on Neuroscience May Cure Videogames Industry's Obsession With Guns · · Score: 1

    What genres are there on PCs other than FPS (violent), RTS (violent), and MMORPG (violent and spiritistic more often than not)?

    Puzzles come to mind... Ever play Myst? The series did quite well.

    How about the multitude of pinball games?

    SimCity? The Sims? Railroaders? Civilization (I suppose you could say that one has violence, but I mean to highlight the "building" style games)

    Solitaire? Minesweeper? Mahjong?

  15. Re:Tons of augmented reality uses for stuff like t on How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind · · Score: 1

    Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.

    Read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez for some of the best use of this technology I have seen in recent fiction. Noting, of course, that Google was credited on the project (along with others)...

    This page also discusses the technology used in the books.

    This page and this page are examples of the sort of dialogue ensuing from these books. Everyone I have suggested them to is now dreaming of life in D-Space. ;)

    What is amazing is that he wrote the first book in 2004 and saw so much of this coming... It reminds me of Ender's Game and its predictions of the common use of tablets, web forums, anytime/anywhere connectivity, adaptive learning systems, etc... even though it was written in the 80s.

  16. Re:Ehrm on How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A computer (and google) are like a shovel. A shovel is an extension to your hand, Google is an extension of your mind.

    It's a tool. We've had tools for thousands of years.

    That's a terrible analogy. Using the shovel does not impact the next person who uses "the" shovel or "a" shovel.

    It would make more sense to say that we are becoming an extension of Google's mind than the other way around. Everything you do with Google has the potential to influence Google's perception of the world, access to information (not just data because we ADD relevant context) and value to other users.

    If the shovel told you where to dig based on what it had learned from the thousands of other people who had recently dug using it, that would be a closer analogy.

  17. Re:Not fear - disgust on Women Arrested For Refusing TSA Search of Children · · Score: 2

    The current procedures are so full of holes that there is no justification that the unreasonable searches are in any way necessary.

    While I don't disagree with your sentiment at all, I think you are missing the value of the various security measures. You don't have to apply the most complete security measures to 100% of a given population. You just need to create an environment where there is a significant chance any individual passenger *might* be subjected to a more complete procedure. The deterrent effect is not that a terrorist definitely will be caught, it is that there is a high enough likelihood of getting caught as to not be worth the risk.

    If you are a bomber are you going to go to the airport and "hope" you don't get the explosives test?

  18. Re:Cognitive dissonance endgame on Aussie Climate Scientists Receiving Death Threats · · Score: 1

    I haven't seen anyone making those sorts of claims. Even if they were, the slashdot community couldn't as a whole be blamed for it and maybe those comments are spurring more discourse and therefore enhancing the discussion. So really, just blow it off and ignore it... After all, if you have seen comments like these, then its too late and there's nothing to do about it anyway.

  19. Re:Implicated? Yeah, and then what. on Research Suggests Tobacco Companies Add Weight Loss Drugs · · Score: 2

    Then they stopped.

    It was my understanding that those PSA's (which were in many states) were funded out of the original big tobacco lawsuit settlement the states reached with the companies a decade or so ago. Eventually the settlement money ran out. I'm not sure that in most states the PSA's were ever funded with the taxes (though yours might have been)...

    More info on it Here... Check out the Public Education Fund which apparently only lasted 3 years (2000-2003).

  20. Re:If you steal a laptop on O'Reilly Author's Laptop Rescued By 'Twitter Posse' and Prey · · Score: 1

    Advising users to preemptively install something like this might help. Does anyone know of any drawbacks to installing Prey?

    Pretty much anything associated with the drawbacks of vigilantism would come to mind... I think the concern expressed here is with regards to advising end users that they should consider taking down criminals themselves simply by equipping them with the means to find those criminals.

  21. Re:What the FUCK, Apple? on Apple Logging Locations of All iPhone Users · · Score: 1

    It's a location cache. When Maps (or any other app) requests your current location, the iPhone is able to provide it almost immediately because of this cache, without hitting the network or GPS. It's very convenient.

    A "location cache" that was being used to speed up requests for "current location" wouldn't need to store a year's worth of location history.

  22. Re:old machinery on Computer Crashed New Orleans Real Estate Market · · Score: 1

    I sat in the offices of the water / wastewater folks before Katrina and they described to me quite clearly what would happen if there was a direct hit of a category 3 hurricane. So clearly, in fact, that when Katrina was happening my wife and I were sitting at home as I described to her what to wait for. This was a KNOWN problem and a KNOWN risk. Maybe every citizen involved didn't make the actual choice to improve the system, but as a community they chose who they elected and likewise didn't allocate resources to address the issue before the storm.

    Incidentally, I also met with JPPS about on month prior and was working with them on a system to allow tracking, allocation and remote management of their bus fleet for evacuation purposes if a storm like this hit. We didn't get the system in before the storm and we watched the buses on TV sitting in water never used for evacuation.

    Its a matter of priorities vs. politics. There is plenty of the latter and too little of the former. But then, that's just my opinion from working with the gov't there and why *I* do not choose to live there.

    And yes, the food and culture are great. But their quality isn't dependent on a poor system of governance, corrupt officials or weak educational system.

  23. Re:Oh, just great on Researchers Find a 'Liberal Gene' · · Score: 1

    I'd say he was a very poor communicator since nobody can agree on what he was saying.

  24. Re:Bull on Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 · · Score: 1

    coal use should be illegal in any country that wants to call itself civilized

    Well, we have a long way to go before we stop using Coal in the USA. Map of coal fired power plants in the USA

  25. Re:some ideas Re:I agree on 'The Laws Are Written By Lobbyists,' Says Google's Schmidt · · Score: 1

    Almost every campaign I've heard so far in my life of 28 years is toting party line, not individuality.

    I'd say you aren't paying attention. The parties have many different "party lines" but no "party platform". For example, Jon Stewart was just providing an example this week of a Democratic campaign ad that was anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi, pro-gun, etc. That's not exactly "party-line". In the primaries you vote for which individual you want to represent the party in your district. In the general election, you still can vote for anyone, as evidenced by the republican's write-in campaign in Alaska after their incumbent lost the primary.