Welcome to the sweet world of Cloud. Where everything is cheap and available. Until it is not.. Lesson learned: If your business depends on specific tools or functionality, set up your own infrastructure.
Exactly.
It's the little things that really get to me. Logged into Google Docs not too long ago and discovered that all support for exporting as plain.doc files had been removed. No warning. Just gone.
"Just use.docx and join us in the 21st century!" I know. But the fact that the feature was taken away without asking, or even being told ahead of time... that's infuriating.
How many times have you kept a legacy piece of software around for a specific reason? Now imagine having it erased, along with all backup copies. Shitty, huh?
I use the hell out of Apple and Google products, but I'm really tired of hearing "Just trust us this time. This is the real cloud-based solution! We're not going to pull the rug out from under you again!"
I use the cloud for matters of convenience, not necessity. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Me either. The directions, including turn-by-turn, worked fine.
The reason I'm getting the Google version is for public transportation directions, which the Apple app doesn't do. (Navigating strange public transportation systems when you've just landed in a strange city and don't have a car is pretty high on the list for smartphone use cases in my opinion.)
Absolutely this.
I've tried the highest-rated transit apps, and the data from Google is usually more complete than what a 3rd party expects me to pay for (which is almost always free data sent out by transit agencies).
Also, there's no need to do the awkward switch out of Apple Maps when it comes time to find transit directions (and use a brand-new UI) and there's no need to learn a new app when traveling to a new city.
They thought they had Gilbert Gottfried in custody. An immediate trip to solitary seemed to be the only humane thing they could do for the rest of the prisoners.
Did fuel oil systems in WTC 7 contribute to its collapse?
No. The building had three separate emergency power systems, all of which ran on diesel fuel. The worst-case scenarios associated with fires being fed by ruptured fuel lines-or from fuel stored in day tanks on the lower floors-could not have been sustained long enough, could not have generated sufficient heat to weaken critical interior columns, and/or would have produced large amounts of visible smoke from the lower floors, which were not observed.
As background information, the three systems contained two 12,000 gallon fuel tanks, and two 6,000 gallon tanks beneath the building's loading docks, and a single 6,000 gallon tank on the 1st floor. In addition one system used a 275 gallon tank on the 5th floor, a 275 gallon tank on the 8th floor, and a 50 gallon tank on the 9th floor. Another system used a 275 gallon day tank on the 7th floor.
Several months after the WTC 7 collapse, a contractor recovered an estimated 23,000 gallons of fuel from these tanks. NIST estimated that the unaccounted fuel totaled 1,000 ±1,000 gallons of fuel (in other words, somewhere between 0 and 2,000 gallons, with 1,000 gallons the most likely figure). The fate of the fuel in the day tanks was unknown, so NIST assumed the worst-case scenario, namely that they were full on Sept. 11, 2001. The fate of the fuel of two 6,000 gallon tanks was also unknown. Therefore, NIST also assumed the worst-case scenario for these tanks, namely that all of the fuel would have been available to feed fires either at ground level or on the 5th floor.
The former has growth potential, is more valuable in the long-term and easier to monetize. The latter is valuable from a licensing / R&D perspective. Given his probable lack of resources and experience, it would probably be easier to sell his work to the highest bidder than spend years and tons of money developing it into something else that might equal the buyout value after expenses.
Just hope that your ability to access and work with your own data isn't compromised by an arbitrary increase in prices. (along with the ever-present danger of having apps you rely on discontinued and deactivated / have features removed)
You get the CLOUD, son. The CLOUD. All your data can be stored in the CLOUD. The processor is not relevant. Cycles per second doesn't matter when you data is instantly accessible in the CLOUD. At our fingertips. We can scan, parse, and not store any data. Promise.
SOLD!
Because when Google decides to do something like stop supporting.doc export in GoogleDocs, I want to be absolutely certain that feature is unavailable to me that very instant!
No legacy cruft in the CLOUD!
(sorry if you've been asked to submit that resumé in.doc not.docx - but... the CLOUD!!!!)
You have got to be kidding. I was in a meeting yesterday and 6 of us had iPhones on the table, only 1 had a case on it. Most tech people I know don't use cases because they know how to handle their phones and not drop them.
Wait, what? This is pure crazy.
Having tech-related knowledge doesn't make you immune to dropping things.
While some of what you say is absolutely true, keep in mind NIMBYism has been a major point of resistance for Metro.
The Purple Line was being built-out to Westwood about 25 years ago but NIMBYs killed it before the TBMs ever made it to the West Side. An unrelated methane explosion was used as ammunition against the plan.
Then we had County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky essentially ban subway construction.
The Valley? More NIMBYs. The Orange Line became a bus after people claimed their families could cross a wide boulevard, but not two light rail tracks.
Metro has been forced to avoid doing anything of note in huge sections of the city. There's a reason some of the more obvious routes have nothing, but we're extending a line to Azusa.
not always (or even frequently) a solution in much of the US. the infrastructure was NEVER designed for mass transit.
Yes it was!
Most major cities had extensive streetcar and interurban lines. It might surprise you that Los Angeles was once a model city for mass transit in the U.S. A massive network of electric trams began running in 1887 and continued on through 1961. The late 50s / early 60s marked the auto boom and death of comprehensive public transit in LA (and many other cities, as well) leaving only some bus routes behind. That began a period of planning designed to focus exclusively on the automobile.
The funny thing is that the whole "People will never stop using X! This city was built for it!" argument against mass transit that you hear today was used against cars 40 years ago - after nearly 80 years of mass transit shaping the city and lifestyle.
Now, LA has become the site of a transit renaissance. The period of time between the end of the Red Car's 74 year run and the completion of the last segment of the Red Line subway was 39 years.
Car-centric planning was a blip. Don't believe the hype that claims otherwise.
Again though, why would the B5 guys have worked any of that out? They don't have to worry about fuel efficiency, maximum output, or jerk/jolt, even if they did go to lengths to do all the physics right. Just make the wings a cool-looking shape, stick enough thrusters on each to make all the cool moves possible and you're done.
You're talking about a show that was supplied with high-res space imagery by fans at NASA... and then included that in exterior FX shots.
Not everyone takes the "it looks cool, good enough!" approach to making TV.
I feel like the decidedly suburban, car-centric approach to Maps in iOS 6 is something that can't be improved without a rethink. "Hard work" isn't enough if it's going in the wrong direction.
Google Maps offered an elegant and seamless approach to providing transit directions in iOS 1 to 5.
Apple Maps offers a clunky "solution" that kicks you out of the app, forces you to use whatever UI the 3rd party app maker uses for your local transit system and doesn't guarantee a minimum level of quality (a lot of the transit apps are pretty terrible). Traveling? Hope there's an app for that city and you feel like getting used to a new UI.
Apple claims 3rd party transit apps do a better job, but honestly, they often don't.
I've tried a large number for a few major U.S. cities. If you want to find out every single bus or train that passes nearby, they're just great, but I find them clunky as hell when it comes to route planning, and that's how I believe most people use them most of the time.
"Will I drive or take a train / bus?" is a question without a definite answer in most American cities due to the limited or growing transit systems. For example, L.A. is getting back to its mass transit roots, but there are a lot of trips that really demand a car.
With Google Maps, I can effortlessly switch between auto, transit, biking and walking for a proposed trip. One finger-press and it's done. Then I can see multiple routes on the map, or a plain, readable list. Total time, connections (if any), the next best time to go... It's really ideal and has been indispensable. It's honestly the thing that pushed me over the edge to buy the iPhone in the first place.
Then there's the classic spam for shitty bands that have never performed outside of their local pizza place but feel the need to spam an article with some ridiculous mention:
In Music
GarageBandThatFormedLastTuesday recorded a song called "Roth's Child" that was written about a month after their lead singer saw the trailer for "The Human Stain".
I think Twitter is a bit faster than that. Twitter users in Japan seem to respond really fast when they feel any moderate level of shaking; at times, if you follow enough Japanese people on Twitter, your entire timeline gets filled with people saying "oh hey, something's shaking" or "it's rocking" or "boobs!". So yes, you will get advanced warning if there are people closer to the epicentre than you posting on Twitter (and as long as they are not using a certain phone provider which got overloaded during the big earthquake/tsunami last year while all the other providers were fine).
I really can't believe that the reacting, tweeting, flagging, aggregating and alerting could happen in 20 seconds or less. Not a chance.
I find it extremely unlikely that tweets you're referring to were posted within 1/3 of a minute of the first shaking taking place.
Not to mention, that all of that aside, you still need a representative sample of people from a geographic area with public Twitter accounts. Unless you're OK with 8 people from the Salton Sea triggering an automated alert chain all the way to Santa Barbara. And you have to make sure no IP spoofing is going on to trigger a fake alert.
And then you have to make sure they're not dummy accounts. I don't have to tell you Twitter is absolutely filled with them.
"Sorry 3.8 million residents of L.A. who are without hot water / ability to cook until SoCal gas can come out and reopen all of your valves - a few people nonexistent people tweeted about an earthquake."
And then you still have no way to quantify the intensity of the shaking. A 5.5 is the same as a 7.2 in the minds of a Twitter user watching things fall from their shelves during the first 20 seconds of a quake.
If you don't have a rough approximation of how intense the quake is, you have no way to select the appropriate response.
This whole concept screams of another "WOW WEB 2.0 CROWDSOURCED USER CREATED CONTENT NONTRADITIONAL MEDIA" thing that moves forward based on the inertia of its own perceived specialness.
It will only report quakes that are already over. News reports, online reporting "Did You Feel It?" pages, etc already do a pretty good job of telling seismologists that something just happened.
Valuable earthquake detection would be detecting the P-Wave from a quake in progress, and automatically broadcasting a SAME Code, combined with some kind of equivilent forcibly pushed to every cell phone connected to a tower. Japan has something like this already. California is kinda, sorta working on it, but I'm pretty sure it's grossly underfunded and not really a priority.
Earthquake models suggest a quake on the northern or southern reaches of the San Andreas fault would reach Los Angeles in about 40 seconds. That's actually a huge chunk of time.
Let's assume:
- 20 seconds to detect a quake / automatically crosscheck with multiple sensors and transmit a warning to a predefined area.
- 5 to 10 seconds for devices to receive, decode and go into alert mode. Weather radios are always listening for SAME transmissions and can decode more or less instantly (assuming the user has programmed in their location). Cell networks could probably get the data there in the time it takes for a regular text message to arrive.
- That gives you 10 to 15 seconds to pull your car over, stop doing delicate surgery, stop fixing your roof, etc and find something to crawl under. It also gives you time to trigger automated fail safes. Gas valves can be set to close, emergency generators can be spun-up, fire pumps can activate, elevators can go to their recall floors and hold their doors open, while fire station doors can roll-up on their own and lock in place.
The same subpoena can't get the data out of RIM actually -- device to device communications are encrypted in such a way that RIM has no access to the contents.
Gonna chime in and agree with both of you here. eInk is superior to any other screen, as far as books are concerned.
I have an iPhone 4S and first generation Kindle. Maybe someday I'll go ahead and buy an iPad. But it will never take the place of a device with an eInk display. I have precisely zero desire to read a book on anything else (other than paper).
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to the sweet world of Cloud. Where everything is cheap and available. Until it is not..
Lesson learned: If your business depends on specific tools or functionality, set up your own infrastructure.
Exactly.
It's the little things that really get to me. Logged into Google Docs not too long ago and discovered that all support for exporting as plain .doc files had been removed. No warning. Just gone.
"Just use .docx and join us in the 21st century!" I know. But the fact that the feature was taken away without asking, or even being told ahead of time... that's infuriating.
How many times have you kept a legacy piece of software around for a specific reason? Now imagine having it erased, along with all backup copies. Shitty, huh?
I use the hell out of Apple and Google products, but I'm really tired of hearing "Just trust us this time. This is the real cloud-based solution! We're not going to pull the rug out from under you again!"
I use the cloud for matters of convenience, not necessity. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Seems like every time I sign up for a Google service and get used to it, within a couple years they pull the rug out from under me.
Apple is the same way - which is why I'm not relying on any of their services too heavily.
iTools became .Mac, which became MobileMe, which spawned iWork.com which shut down when MobileMe went away with the launch of iCloud.
Say what you want about Microsoft's shoddy products, at least they're consistent.
"Here is this new initative called Plays For Sure! "
*introduces the Zune*
"Plays for Sure is not supported on the Microsoft Zune®"
Me either. The directions, including turn-by-turn, worked fine.
The reason I'm getting the Google version is for public transportation directions, which the Apple app doesn't do. (Navigating strange public transportation systems when you've just landed in a strange city and don't have a car is pretty high on the list for smartphone use cases in my opinion.)
Absolutely this.
I've tried the highest-rated transit apps, and the data from Google is usually more complete than what a 3rd party expects me to pay for (which is almost always free data sent out by transit agencies).
Also, there's no need to do the awkward switch out of Apple Maps when it comes time to find transit directions (and use a brand-new UI) and there's no need to learn a new app when traveling to a new city.
Not funny yet
Sometimes humor is the only sane response to an insane situation.
They thought they had Gilbert Gottfried in custody. An immediate trip to solitary seemed to be the only humane thing they could do for the rest of the prisoners.
Citing 9/11 is interesting in light of the NIST report:
Did fuel oil systems in WTC 7 contribute to its collapse?
No. The building had three separate emergency power systems, all of which ran on diesel fuel. The worst-case scenarios associated with fires being fed by ruptured fuel lines-or from fuel stored in day tanks on the lower floors-could not have been sustained long enough, could not have generated sufficient heat to weaken critical interior columns, and/or would have produced large amounts of visible smoke from the lower floors, which were not observed.
As background information, the three systems contained two 12,000 gallon fuel tanks, and two 6,000 gallon tanks beneath the building's loading docks, and a single 6,000 gallon tank on the 1st floor. In addition one system used a 275 gallon tank on the 5th floor, a 275 gallon tank on the 8th floor, and a 50 gallon tank on the 9th floor. Another system used a 275 gallon day tank on the 7th floor.
Several months after the WTC 7 collapse, a contractor recovered an estimated 23,000 gallons of fuel from these tanks. NIST estimated that the unaccounted fuel totaled 1,000 ±1,000 gallons of fuel (in other words, somewhere between 0 and 2,000 gallons, with 1,000 gallons the most likely figure). The fate of the fuel in the day tanks was unknown, so NIST assumed the worst-case scenario, namely that they were full on Sept. 11, 2001. The fate of the fuel of two 6,000 gallon tanks was also unknown. Therefore, NIST also assumed the worst-case scenario for these tanks, namely that all of the fuel would have been available to feed fires either at ground level or on the 5th floor.
Has he developed a service or a feature?
The former has growth potential, is more valuable in the long-term and easier to monetize. The latter is valuable from a licensing / R&D perspective. Given his probable lack of resources and experience, it would probably be easier to sell his work to the highest bidder than spend years and tons of money developing it into something else that might equal the buyout value after expenses.
Who needs local apps and data?
Just hope that your ability to access and work with your own data isn't compromised by an arbitrary increase in prices. (along with the ever-present danger of having apps you rely on discontinued and deactivated / have features removed)
You get the CLOUD, son. The CLOUD. All your data can be stored in the CLOUD. The processor is not relevant. Cycles per second doesn't matter when you data is instantly accessible in the CLOUD. At our fingertips. We can scan, parse, and not store any data. Promise.
SOLD!
Because when Google decides to do something like stop supporting .doc export in GoogleDocs, I want to be absolutely certain that feature is unavailable to me that very instant!
No legacy cruft in the CLOUD!
(sorry if you've been asked to submit that resumé in .doc not .docx - but... the CLOUD!!!!)
I like Star Trek, and I tried to watch TNG again recently, and it sucks. The acting is shitty, the sets look crappy, and the stories are stupid.
Try DS9. MUCH better sets, better lighting, better stories and better ac... just watch it.
No, hardly anybody rides the train anymore.... Kinda hard to kill someone on a train if they're not riding it.
I can assure you that Amtraks' record ridership numbers disagree with you. 31.2 million passengers in FY2012.
You have got to be kidding. I was in a meeting yesterday and 6 of us had iPhones on the table, only 1 had a case on it. Most tech people I know don't use cases because they know how to handle their phones and not drop them.
Wait, what? This is pure crazy.
Having tech-related knowledge doesn't make you immune to dropping things.
While some of what you say is absolutely true, keep in mind NIMBYism has been a major point of resistance for Metro.
The Purple Line was being built-out to Westwood about 25 years ago but NIMBYs killed it before the TBMs ever made it to the West Side. An unrelated methane explosion was used as ammunition against the plan.
Then we had County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky essentially ban subway construction.
The Valley? More NIMBYs. The Orange Line became a bus after people claimed their families could cross a wide boulevard, but not two light rail tracks.
Metro has been forced to avoid doing anything of note in huge sections of the city. There's a reason some of the more obvious routes have nothing, but we're extending a line to Azusa.
Anyway, here is a nice look at the evolution of the plans.
No problem. ;)
Might I suggest putting a trash can fire next to the chillax office worker next time?
"My office is on fire, but it an't no thang."
Learn to take the bus.
not always (or even frequently) a solution in much of the US. the infrastructure was NEVER designed for mass transit .
Yes it was!
Most major cities had extensive streetcar and interurban lines. It might surprise you that Los Angeles was once a model city for mass transit in the U.S. A massive network of electric trams began running in 1887 and continued on through 1961. The late 50s / early 60s marked the auto boom and death of comprehensive public transit in LA (and many other cities, as well) leaving only some bus routes behind. That began a period of planning designed to focus exclusively on the automobile.
The funny thing is that the whole "People will never stop using X! This city was built for it!" argument against mass transit that you hear today was used against cars 40 years ago - after nearly 80 years of mass transit shaping the city and lifestyle.
Now, LA has become the site of a transit renaissance. The period of time between the end of the Red Car's 74 year run and the completion of the last segment of the Red Line subway was 39 years.
Car-centric planning was a blip. Don't believe the hype that claims otherwise.
Modern clean agent systems are kind of amazing. By amazing, I mean they don't kill you anymore. (Sorry Halon / CO2!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuEylKMvbjw
Again though, why would the B5 guys have worked any of that out? They don't have to worry about fuel efficiency, maximum output, or jerk/jolt, even if they did go to lengths to do all the physics right. Just make the wings a cool-looking shape, stick enough thrusters on each to make all the cool moves possible and you're done.
You're talking about a show that was supplied with high-res space imagery by fans at NASA... and then included that in exterior FX shots.
Not everyone takes the "it looks cool, good enough!" approach to making TV.
I feel like the decidedly suburban, car-centric approach to Maps in iOS 6 is something that can't be improved without a rethink. "Hard work" isn't enough if it's going in the wrong direction.
Google Maps offered an elegant and seamless approach to providing transit directions in iOS 1 to 5.
Apple Maps offers a clunky "solution" that kicks you out of the app, forces you to use whatever UI the 3rd party app maker uses for your local transit system and doesn't guarantee a minimum level of quality (a lot of the transit apps are pretty terrible). Traveling? Hope there's an app for that city and you feel like getting used to a new UI.
Apple claims 3rd party transit apps do a better job, but honestly, they often don't.
I've tried a large number for a few major U.S. cities. If you want to find out every single bus or train that passes nearby, they're just great, but I find them clunky as hell when it comes to route planning, and that's how I believe most people use them most of the time.
"Will I drive or take a train / bus?" is a question without a definite answer in most American cities due to the limited or growing transit systems. For example, L.A. is getting back to its mass transit roots, but there are a lot of trips that really demand a car.
With Google Maps, I can effortlessly switch between auto, transit, biking and walking for a proposed trip. One finger-press and it's done. Then I can see multiple routes on the map, or a plain, readable list. Total time, connections (if any), the next best time to go... It's really ideal and has been indispensable. It's honestly the thing that pushed me over the edge to buy the iPhone in the first place.
Of course, being a moto, it was if it never happened.
That was their policy on phone calls, if I remember correctly.
Anything nonsensical, unsourced, reaching reference under:
In Anime
In Western Animation
In Manga
In Comics
Then there's the classic spam for shitty bands that have never performed outside of their local pizza place but feel the need to spam an article with some ridiculous mention:
In Music
GarageBandThatFormedLastTuesday recorded a song called "Roth's Child" that was written about a month after their lead singer saw the trailer for "The Human Stain".
I think Twitter is a bit faster than that. Twitter users in Japan seem to respond really fast when they feel any moderate level of shaking; at times, if you follow enough Japanese people on Twitter, your entire timeline gets filled with people saying "oh hey, something's shaking" or "it's rocking" or "boobs!". So yes, you will get advanced warning if there are people closer to the epicentre than you posting on Twitter (and as long as they are not using a certain phone provider which got overloaded during the big earthquake/tsunami last year while all the other providers were fine).
I really can't believe that the reacting, tweeting, flagging, aggregating and alerting could happen in 20 seconds or less. Not a chance.
I find it extremely unlikely that tweets you're referring to were posted within 1/3 of a minute of the first shaking taking place.
Not to mention, that all of that aside, you still need a representative sample of people from a geographic area with public Twitter accounts. Unless you're OK with 8 people from the Salton Sea triggering an automated alert chain all the way to Santa Barbara. And you have to make sure no IP spoofing is going on to trigger a fake alert.
And then you have to make sure they're not dummy accounts. I don't have to tell you Twitter is absolutely filled with them.
"Sorry 3.8 million residents of L.A. who are without hot water / ability to cook until SoCal gas can come out and reopen all of your valves - a few people nonexistent people tweeted about an earthquake."
And then you still have no way to quantify the intensity of the shaking. A 5.5 is the same as a 7.2 in the minds of a Twitter user watching things fall from their shelves during the first 20 seconds of a quake.
If you don't have a rough approximation of how intense the quake is, you have no way to select the appropriate response.
This whole concept screams of another "WOW WEB 2.0 CROWDSOURCED USER CREATED CONTENT NONTRADITIONAL MEDIA" thing that moves forward based on the inertia of its own perceived specialness.
It will only report quakes that are already over. News reports, online reporting "Did You Feel It?" pages, etc already do a pretty good job of telling seismologists that something just happened.
Valuable earthquake detection would be detecting the P-Wave from a quake in progress, and automatically broadcasting a SAME Code, combined with some kind of equivilent forcibly pushed to every cell phone connected to a tower. Japan has something like this already. California is kinda, sorta working on it, but I'm pretty sure it's grossly underfunded and not really a priority.
Earthquake models suggest a quake on the northern or southern reaches of the San Andreas fault would reach Los Angeles in about 40 seconds. That's actually a huge chunk of time.
Let's assume:
- 20 seconds to detect a quake / automatically crosscheck with multiple sensors and transmit a warning to a predefined area.
- 5 to 10 seconds for devices to receive, decode and go into alert mode. Weather radios are always listening for SAME transmissions and can decode more or less instantly (assuming the user has programmed in their location). Cell networks could probably get the data there in the time it takes for a regular text message to arrive.
- That gives you 10 to 15 seconds to pull your car over, stop doing delicate surgery, stop fixing your roof, etc and find something to crawl under. It also gives you time to trigger automated fail safes. Gas valves can be set to close, emergency generators can be spun-up, fire pumps can activate, elevators can go to their recall floors and hold their doors open, while fire station doors can roll-up on their own and lock in place.
The same subpoena can't get the data out of RIM actually -- device to device communications are encrypted in such a way that RIM has no access to the contents.
Yeah, about that...
Gonna chime in and agree with both of you here. eInk is superior to any other screen, as far as books are concerned.
I have an iPhone 4S and first generation Kindle. Maybe someday I'll go ahead and buy an iPad. But it will never take the place of a device with an eInk display. I have precisely zero desire to read a book on anything else (other than paper).