Yeah, drive by wire would have saved my arm. That being said I'd prefer a hybrid system. It's nice to have proper road feel (go over a bump and you feel it in the steering wheel), but if some outside force moves the wheel dramatically then it decouples (sensing where the torque input is). Implementing such a system in an electric assisted steering assembly actually wouldn't be that difficult (often the wheel inputs to the electric assist which outputs to the rack, so it's just a matter of quickly decoupling the steering from the electric assist).
I didn't mean dropping it a gear in an emergency but rather driving in a lower gear at a slow speed so when you lift the accelerator you have the nice gradual braking. Decelerating in that way guarantees you have rolling friction rather than static friction of locking wheels. That's the aim of ABS, to have rolling friction rather than static locked wheels. Regardless of how fancy your ABS is, driving speed is what's going to make the biggest difference in braking distance.
I was recently in a car accident. An elderly man drove into us from the front passenger corner. We had nowhere to go as there was a tall meridian on the driver's side. Basically a case of: scrub off as much speed as possible by emergency braking and brace for impact.
When we were struck the steering wheel was forced to one side. Much like the auto system in the video. The difference was I didn't know that was going to happen (like the testers) so I didn't let go. The spinning wheel resulted in a broken radius and I now have a large plate and many screws in my arm holding it together. Are you expected to let go of the wheel when the alarm sounds? My guess is most people won't be able to react like that. No problem for the tester since he knows it's going to occur, in real life you most likely won't be able to react that quickly or your reaction will not be to let go.
Personally I'm a fan of systems like Mercedes has that primes the brakes for you when a possible collision is detected (so it's easier to apply full brake force). Auto braking is OK too, but there are too many factors in auto steering imho. Lane correction is one thing, this type of emergency steering is a whole other beast.
Pro tip... install appropriate tires prior to driving on ice.
This.
Proper tires make all the difference. I have a FWD Rav4. Stock "all season" tires would cause it to go into a traction control seizure on slippery inclines (it would just shudder until you turn the traction control off). With some proper winter tires (full studable winter, not "winter rated") it was great in the snow and ice. I tried to get it out of control on purpose and between ETC and ESC it would right itself every time (this was in northern Canada with plenty of snow and ice in -20C).
Still have to watch for breaking though. If you are carrying too much speed and hit ice antilock isn't going to save you. Driving slow and engine braking will.
Average Joe coder must be educated, not kept in the darkness.
No. Not really.
Not all developers need to be able to read advanced pointer usage and tricks for the sake of tricks is stupid. There must be a measurable performance difference or it has to be easily readable by the group developing. If it isn't easily readable and there is no performance justification then education isn't the issue, it's developer ego, "Well I can read it."
Yeah, good for you. But I don't care about that. I care about whoever ends up having to maintain your difficult to read code. Prematurely optimize code, and even with ok comments I guarantee it's going to take longer to maintain (even for the original developer). Clear and concise is the way to go except in pure performance based applications (such as an OS kernel, embedded device etc). And even in those applications you only cross the line from clear and concise when necessary. In high level code you should always go simple until it's proven a simple solution won't work. That also goes for architecture. Simpler the better.
As a musician I see this all the time. Complexity for the sake of being complex. It's just musician ego. The best musicians have tons of technical ability, but apply it tastefully (not having to show it off at every possible opportunity).
I never said Linus was wrong. In fact I was agreeing it is correct in the kernel. A kernel dev would have no problem reading and understanding his example. Your average joe coder might stumble over it.
This is simply a smaller-scale of the same kind of improvement that object-oriented is.
What? That doesn't make any sense in the context of replying to my comment.
I'm definitely a big fan of readability in code. Of course you have to know your intended audience. People reading kernel code are not the same audience as, I don't know, people writing a financial application in a high level language.
With the work I do I am able to favour readability over efficiency (then optimize if required.. no premature optimization). It makes maintenance so much easier (and let's face it, code spends most of its life being maintained). Code is already way harder to read than write and I don't want anything impeding new hires from jumping in and understanding the code. Of course there's a fine line. I'd never do something truly inefficient just to make it more readable, I'd just be very hesitant to introduce a difficult to understand hack for the sake of efficiency I may not need. Processors and memory are cheap, a developer's time isn't.
It's good to see Google is able to get patches out this quick. I've worked in small businesses that same day fixes were doable but a challenge and a government office with so much red tape pushing something to production that quick would have been impossible. I bet neither MS nor Apple could pull that off.
Looks like Google is keeping it's hacker culture alive rather than becoming a slow moving behemoth like their competitors.
"the real thing that surprised the world wasnt that they exist, but the fact that just about everyone (that can afford it) has decided they "need" one.
You can thank modern marketing for that one. Advancements everywhere! We are in the future!
In general, a person could read your email in transit though, so I can't see getting too upset about it. As usual, if it's private, encrypt it.
Exactly. But your average person doesn't understand the difference between sending something plaintext and encrypted. I guess you could use the analogy of a postcard vs a letter in an envelope. If you don't want the information you are sending read by others would you put it on a post card? Anyone along the delivery route (mailbox, sorting facilities, devliverer etc) can easily read what's on it. If you put it in an envelope it's protected (and in the case of mail and encrypted email protected by law.. depending on what country you live in).
What's the US legislation on reading non-encrypted transmissions? Is there an expectation of privacy when you are shouting across the internet?
And on the northern side of the US border it's around $5/US Gallon (3.78541L). So about $5.90/imp gallon (4.54609L). That's in CAD though. So $5.10USD for a US gallon, and ~$6/imp gallon.
Not quite as bad but like Europe and the UK this isn't something new. Come winter I'm sure we'll see prices spike to $1.50/L. Diesel is a premium over regular gas/petrol (US deals with that as well, but not to the same degree).
The funny thing is we're an oil producing country. We just don't refine or use any of the oil locally. We ship it as crude to the US where it's refined and used there and import the fuel we use.
Yeah, who knows. I just noticed I can't go backwards in my comment history. Only the most recent 24 are shown. There used to be a "older" link. I tried going back as far as possible (to find my first post under a user account rather than AC) and it error'd out at some point. I'd love to have page controls so I can actually go back in my posting history, but maybe that's too costly db-wise.
Kept most of the comments.. but you can only access them via the stories, and the old stories via???
Because of price elasticity. Price it lower more people (will potentially) buy. I think with how things are going with theatres and media sales it's a pretty safe bet.
E.g. Make crappy movies I'd never go to in the theatre or purchase on any medium $0.99 and I might decide it's decent popcorn fodder. Blockbuster that's just out? I'd be willing to pay more. But as long as I don't have advertisements etc shoved down my throat before getting to watch the film.
I think any worries about inviting the neighbourhood over or sending the file to someone else (if it's drm free) are just that, worries (with no basis in reality). Make it cheap enough and it's not worth someone's time or hassle to save a few bucks. I have a big TV, good sound system, comfortable seating, I can drink booze if I want to (cheaply at that), better popcorn (imho), I can order any type of food I want.. etc etc. The theatre has no draw to me. Why would I want to sit around with a bunch of strangers that talk and text during the movie?
The market has been ready for direct from studio downloads for almost a decade. The studios just have to get with it.
Really? Because if I bought a new $700 phone that can't take pictures as well as the previous iteration I spent about that much on I think I'd become rather incontinent (i.e. I would not have the ability to retain a bodily discharge voluntarily.. I would probably shit my pants).
Using AMD would mean more money in their own pockets.
Would it? Intel chips are priced higher, but with the current process being ahead of AMD's it should be cheaper to produce per chip (basically Intel has a high margin on their chips). Had Apple started going in the direction of AMD I'm sure Intel would have met or beat prices and still would have been making a profit.
And China is definitely the place to be with their expanding middle class and enormous population. Whether the "openness" makes it any more relevant than the current offerings.. I don't know. If they can make themselves relevant and price the phones right then they'll sell a lot of phones.
Previous company I worked at targeted China as a new market. Slow moving to build relationships (which I personally think makes more sense in business) but quite a market to be in especially if you are selling to a government agency. There is lots of money to be had in China if you know where to look and how to work there.
Provided that you're a large enough organization to qualify for the devkit. Otherwise, the only console you can dream of targeting is the 360's Xbox Live Indie Games environment.
Make something compelling and company size doesn't matter. The previous history of consoles there was nearly 0 interest in having indie titles, now indie gaming is really coming into its own and the big console companies are coming around to that.
I think Ouya would have been more successful in the era of PS2, Gamecube and XBox. Of course producing a console on the cheap didn't really become possible until the proliferation of SoC.
First, I whole heartedly agree is a horrible candidate to do the Foundation series justice. But the only reason Emmerich can do Foundation and some indie group can't is because of copyright. The people with big bucks can do pretty much whatever they want whereas indies can't afford to even think about getting rights to do so. I'm sure there are studios sitting on books/stories they've purchase just so other studios can't do them (with no plans to ever produce movies out of them).
That's the reality we live in right now with our mega corps. Not sure what to do with that singer you have in your rosters, but afraid she'll become a superstar elsewhere? Just make sure to have her tied down with a contract and run her in circles. Don't have time, interest or appropriate talent to produce a film? Buy the rights so someone else can't make it into the next blockbuster that over shadows your next formulaic super-action-rom-com-3D.
Copyright wasn't created to be used that way, just as patents weren't made to prevent innovation, but that's how they are being used by our "do anything to make bigger profits" corporations.
It's already changing. I can target Wii, PS3 and 360 with Unity. With the new release one will be able to target WiiU. Not only that, but Nintendo is licensing Unity so they can distribute it to developers (presumably as a defacto SDK for WiiU). It looks as though Nintendo has seen the light (plenty of indie developers out there creating great games that should be on the WiiU, if they want the WiiU to be relevant).
The Ouya looks cool (almost kickstarted it, but dragged my feet for various reasons and time ran out). The idea is cool, but I question how much traction it will get. Indie gamers have so many other platforms they can target and the mobile ones are a huge market. Since the Ouya will support Unity, then devs with enough time will port stuff (pretty trivial), but I don't see a lot of value in targeting a system which will have such a limited user base. Most gamers (especially the geeky ones kickstarting the Ouya) have other platforms I can target (definitely mobile, but most likely console(s)). So I'm not missing out on those potential gamer by not targeting the Ouya. The idea of the Ouya is great. The price point.. it's ok but not great for the performance and not low enough for it to be a impulse buy for your average person. It's barely cheaper than a Wii and who's heard of it beyond slashdotters?
We'll see. I'd like to see it do well. I'd like to see it do well as a console, but it may find success in another avenue (such as a media frontend).
There are a lot of climates in Canada. Some of the regions in BC that have cold winters have hot summers (i.e. hotter than Vancouver and area by far), but they are also sunnier year round. The terrain varies so greatly from west to east and south to north you are going to get huge variation in average temperature, humidity, rainfall, daylight etc etc. It's a huge country.
A few misconceptions about Canada (depending on where in Canada you consider.. it's a large country).
Nice climate - Vancouver and Victoria: drier than Seattle, rarely drops below freezing, snow is especially rare and is usually gone the day it arrives. I.e. winters are mild for North America. The summesr are also mild (temperatures above 30C are rare). Basically it's comfortable all year round and definitely not snow central.
Beach: If you have money you can live as close to the beach as you want. Affordable oceanfront isn't inexpensive if you want to be near a big city (Vancouver real estate is $$$$ in general), but I don't think that's an issue for Woz. You won't be swimming in the ocean most of the year but being close to the ocean isn't hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, drive by wire would have saved my arm. That being said I'd prefer a hybrid system. It's nice to have proper road feel (go over a bump and you feel it in the steering wheel), but if some outside force moves the wheel dramatically then it decouples (sensing where the torque input is). Implementing such a system in an electric assisted steering assembly actually wouldn't be that difficult (often the wheel inputs to the electric assist which outputs to the rack, so it's just a matter of quickly decoupling the steering from the electric assist).
Yes I meant median
I didn't mean dropping it a gear in an emergency but rather driving in a lower gear at a slow speed so when you lift the accelerator you have the nice gradual braking. Decelerating in that way guarantees you have rolling friction rather than static friction of locking wheels. That's the aim of ABS, to have rolling friction rather than static locked wheels. Regardless of how fancy your ABS is, driving speed is what's going to make the biggest difference in braking distance.
I was recently in a car accident. An elderly man drove into us from the front passenger corner. We had nowhere to go as there was a tall meridian on the driver's side. Basically a case of: scrub off as much speed as possible by emergency braking and brace for impact.
When we were struck the steering wheel was forced to one side. Much like the auto system in the video. The difference was I didn't know that was going to happen (like the testers) so I didn't let go. The spinning wheel resulted in a broken radius and I now have a large plate and many screws in my arm holding it together. Are you expected to let go of the wheel when the alarm sounds? My guess is most people won't be able to react like that. No problem for the tester since he knows it's going to occur, in real life you most likely won't be able to react that quickly or your reaction will not be to let go.
Personally I'm a fan of systems like Mercedes has that primes the brakes for you when a possible collision is detected (so it's easier to apply full brake force). Auto braking is OK too, but there are too many factors in auto steering imho. Lane correction is one thing, this type of emergency steering is a whole other beast.
Pro tip... install appropriate tires prior to driving on ice.
This.
Proper tires make all the difference. I have a FWD Rav4. Stock "all season" tires would cause it to go into a traction control seizure on slippery inclines (it would just shudder until you turn the traction control off). With some proper winter tires (full studable winter, not "winter rated") it was great in the snow and ice. I tried to get it out of control on purpose and between ETC and ESC it would right itself every time (this was in northern Canada with plenty of snow and ice in -20C).
Still have to watch for breaking though. If you are carrying too much speed and hit ice antilock isn't going to save you. Driving slow and engine braking will.
Average Joe coder must be educated, not kept in the darkness.
No. Not really.
Not all developers need to be able to read advanced pointer usage and tricks for the sake of tricks is stupid. There must be a measurable performance difference or it has to be easily readable by the group developing. If it isn't easily readable and there is no performance justification then education isn't the issue, it's developer ego, "Well I can read it."
Yeah, good for you. But I don't care about that. I care about whoever ends up having to maintain your difficult to read code. Prematurely optimize code, and even with ok comments I guarantee it's going to take longer to maintain (even for the original developer). Clear and concise is the way to go except in pure performance based applications (such as an OS kernel, embedded device etc). And even in those applications you only cross the line from clear and concise when necessary. In high level code you should always go simple until it's proven a simple solution won't work. That also goes for architecture. Simpler the better.
As a musician I see this all the time. Complexity for the sake of being complex. It's just musician ego. The best musicians have tons of technical ability, but apply it tastefully (not having to show it off at every possible opportunity).
Sorry, but I think Linus is right here.
I never said Linus was wrong. In fact I was agreeing it is correct in the kernel. A kernel dev would have no problem reading and understanding his example. Your average joe coder might stumble over it.
This is simply a smaller-scale of the same kind of improvement that object-oriented is.
What? That doesn't make any sense in the context of replying to my comment.
I'm definitely a big fan of readability in code. Of course you have to know your intended audience. People reading kernel code are not the same audience as, I don't know, people writing a financial application in a high level language.
With the work I do I am able to favour readability over efficiency (then optimize if required.. no premature optimization). It makes maintenance so much easier (and let's face it, code spends most of its life being maintained). Code is already way harder to read than write and I don't want anything impeding new hires from jumping in and understanding the code. Of course there's a fine line. I'd never do something truly inefficient just to make it more readable, I'd just be very hesitant to introduce a difficult to understand hack for the sake of efficiency I may not need. Processors and memory are cheap, a developer's time isn't.
It's good to see Google is able to get patches out this quick. I've worked in small businesses that same day fixes were doable but a challenge and a government office with so much red tape pushing something to production that quick would have been impossible. I bet neither MS nor Apple could pull that off.
Looks like Google is keeping it's hacker culture alive rather than becoming a slow moving behemoth like their competitors.
"the real thing that surprised the world wasnt that they exist, but the fact that just about everyone (that can afford it)
has decided they "need" one.
You can thank modern marketing for that one. Advancements everywhere! We are in the future!
97% of the water on the Earth is salt water. Of the 3% "fresh water" slightly over two thirds of it is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps.
In general, a person could read your email in transit though, so I can't see getting too upset about it. As usual, if it's private, encrypt it.
Exactly. But your average person doesn't understand the difference between sending something plaintext and encrypted. I guess you could use the analogy of a postcard vs a letter in an envelope. If you don't want the information you are sending read by others would you put it on a post card? Anyone along the delivery route (mailbox, sorting facilities, devliverer etc) can easily read what's on it. If you put it in an envelope it's protected (and in the case of mail and encrypted email protected by law.. depending on what country you live in).
What's the US legislation on reading non-encrypted transmissions? Is there an expectation of privacy when you are shouting across the internet?
And on the northern side of the US border it's around $5/US Gallon (3.78541L). So about $5.90/imp gallon (4.54609L). That's in CAD though. So $5.10USD for a US gallon, and ~$6/imp gallon.
Not quite as bad but like Europe and the UK this isn't something new. Come winter I'm sure we'll see prices spike to $1.50/L. Diesel is a premium over regular gas/petrol (US deals with that as well, but not to the same degree).
The funny thing is we're an oil producing country. We just don't refine or use any of the oil locally. We ship it as crude to the US where it's refined and used there and import the fuel we use.
Yeah, who knows. I just noticed I can't go backwards in my comment history. Only the most recent 24 are shown. There used to be a "older" link. I tried going back as far as possible (to find my first post under a user account rather than AC) and it error'd out at some point. I'd love to have page controls so I can actually go back in my posting history, but maybe that's too costly db-wise.
Kept most of the comments.. but you can only access them via the stories, and the old stories via???
Because of price elasticity. Price it lower more people (will potentially) buy. I think with how things are going with theatres and media sales it's a pretty safe bet.
E.g. Make crappy movies I'd never go to in the theatre or purchase on any medium $0.99 and I might decide it's decent popcorn fodder. Blockbuster that's just out? I'd be willing to pay more. But as long as I don't have advertisements etc shoved down my throat before getting to watch the film.
I think any worries about inviting the neighbourhood over or sending the file to someone else (if it's drm free) are just that, worries (with no basis in reality). Make it cheap enough and it's not worth someone's time or hassle to save a few bucks. I have a big TV, good sound system, comfortable seating, I can drink booze if I want to (cheaply at that), better popcorn (imho), I can order any type of food I want.. etc etc. The theatre has no draw to me. Why would I want to sit around with a bunch of strangers that talk and text during the movie?
The market has been ready for direct from studio downloads for almost a decade. The studios just have to get with it.
Well this is embarrassing. It's clear what's on my mind.
Really? Because if I bought a new $700 phone that can't take pictures as well as the previous iteration I spent about that much on I think I'd become rather incontinent (i.e. I would not have the ability to retain a bodily discharge voluntarily.. I would probably shit my pants).
Using AMD would mean more money in their own pockets.
Would it? Intel chips are priced higher, but with the current process being ahead of AMD's it should be cheaper to produce per chip (basically Intel has a high margin on their chips). Had Apple started going in the direction of AMD I'm sure Intel would have met or beat prices and still would have been making a profit.
And China is definitely the place to be with their expanding middle class and enormous population. Whether the "openness" makes it any more relevant than the current offerings.. I don't know. If they can make themselves relevant and price the phones right then they'll sell a lot of phones.
Previous company I worked at targeted China as a new market. Slow moving to build relationships (which I personally think makes more sense in business) but quite a market to be in especially if you are selling to a government agency. There is lots of money to be had in China if you know where to look and how to work there.
I can target Wii, PS3 and 360 with Unity.
Provided that you're a large enough organization to qualify for the devkit. Otherwise, the only console you can dream of targeting is the 360's Xbox Live Indie Games environment.
Like 2D Boy a team of 2 guys?
Make something compelling and company size doesn't matter. The previous history of consoles there was nearly 0 interest in having indie titles, now indie gaming is really coming into its own and the big console companies are coming around to that.
I think Ouya would have been more successful in the era of PS2, Gamecube and XBox. Of course producing a console on the cheap didn't really become possible until the proliferation of SoC.
You have a great idea for making TV shows and movies about Asimov's Foundation series? Sorry, you can't, his widow won't let you.
While I agree on principle, sometimes it's a good thing.
First, I whole heartedly agree is a horrible candidate to do the Foundation series justice. But the only reason Emmerich can do Foundation and some indie group can't is because of copyright. The people with big bucks can do pretty much whatever they want whereas indies can't afford to even think about getting rights to do so. I'm sure there are studios sitting on books/stories they've purchase just so other studios can't do them (with no plans to ever produce movies out of them).
That's the reality we live in right now with our mega corps. Not sure what to do with that singer you have in your rosters, but afraid she'll become a superstar elsewhere? Just make sure to have her tied down with a contract and run her in circles. Don't have time, interest or appropriate talent to produce a film? Buy the rights so someone else can't make it into the next blockbuster that over shadows your next formulaic super-action-rom-com-3D.
Copyright wasn't created to be used that way, just as patents weren't made to prevent innovation, but that's how they are being used by our "do anything to make bigger profits" corporations.
This will change, but only if Ouya is released.
It's already changing. I can target Wii, PS3 and 360 with Unity. With the new release one will be able to target WiiU. Not only that, but Nintendo is licensing Unity so they can distribute it to developers (presumably as a defacto SDK for WiiU). It looks as though Nintendo has seen the light (plenty of indie developers out there creating great games that should be on the WiiU, if they want the WiiU to be relevant).
The Ouya looks cool (almost kickstarted it, but dragged my feet for various reasons and time ran out). The idea is cool, but I question how much traction it will get. Indie gamers have so many other platforms they can target and the mobile ones are a huge market. Since the Ouya will support Unity, then devs with enough time will port stuff (pretty trivial), but I don't see a lot of value in targeting a system which will have such a limited user base. Most gamers (especially the geeky ones kickstarting the Ouya) have other platforms I can target (definitely mobile, but most likely console(s)). So I'm not missing out on those potential gamer by not targeting the Ouya. The idea of the Ouya is great. The price point.. it's ok but not great for the performance and not low enough for it to be a impulse buy for your average person. It's barely cheaper than a Wii and who's heard of it beyond slashdotters?
We'll see. I'd like to see it do well. I'd like to see it do well as a console, but it may find success in another avenue (such as a media frontend).
Varied.
There are a lot of climates in Canada. Some of the regions in BC that have cold winters have hot summers (i.e. hotter than Vancouver and area by far), but they are also sunnier year round. The terrain varies so greatly from west to east and south to north you are going to get huge variation in average temperature, humidity, rainfall, daylight etc etc. It's a huge country.
A few misconceptions about Canada (depending on where in Canada you consider.. it's a large country).
Nice climate - Vancouver and Victoria: drier than Seattle, rarely drops below freezing, snow is especially rare and is usually gone the day it arrives. I.e. winters are mild for North America. The summesr are also mild (temperatures above 30C are rare). Basically it's comfortable all year round and definitely not snow central.
Beach: If you have money you can live as close to the beach as you want. Affordable oceanfront isn't inexpensive if you want to be near a big city (Vancouver real estate is $$$$ in general), but I don't think that's an issue for Woz. You won't be swimming in the ocean most of the year but being close to the ocean isn't hard.
I tried 8 bit but since ASCII is a 7 bit encoding you end up with characters outside of ASCII:
5Æ 7FöG