ALL the functions? The iPhone function that I most appreciate is the touch screen and the intuitive gestural touch interface. Will the HTC Wizard have that?
The Wizard has had that for three years now. Most smart phones have, regardless of the operating system they are based on. Heck, PalmOS has had that since the mid 1990s on their PDAs, Windows Mobile just copied it making it slightly more intuitive, and iPhone is just the latest revision of the same idea.
Now having said that, after living with touchscreens for more than 10 years on the devices I've owned- I really appreciate the Wizard's slide out keyboard and hardware "send" and "end" keys. I don't use the keyboard that often- the touch screen is enough for most tasks- but the send and end keys are to me a must on any cell phone. The soft keys help a lot too. The 5-way DPad is the same as is on the iPhone and is great for games.
I believe that slowing down traffic in urban areas is State Law, came in with the 65MPH speed limit, but ODOT does have some leeway with regards to that (for instance Salem North Metro is 60). As for increasing to 60/70, that would take an act of the legislature for sure- you'd have to convince the legislators that it's a good idea (rather than just the engineers) and I'm sure some parts of the freeway would have to stay 55 (Terwilinger Curves is only rated for 50 on ice, for example).
When construction is finished, I know the south end of 205 will be 65 and three lanes each way.
How well does it transfer calls from cellular to wi-fi?
That part is still vaporware. They're promising the ROM upgrade later in the summer. Given the fact that this is a Microsoft operating system they're trying to bung it into, I expect it around Christmas.
How's the screen resolution?
A bit lower than the iPhone officially, at 320x240, but the smaller screen makes up for the difference. I download and watch TV on my way to work all the time, using TCMP as my media player (because it offers that all important 30 second skip forward when watching shows recorded from basic cable channels or broadcast) and BeyondTV at home capturing the shows off of DirectTV.
Of course, you could have an HTC Wizard (T-Mobile MDA) that has all of the functions the iPhone does plus soon-to-come (sometime this summer) free calls over WIFI hotspots (and a free WIFI router for your home for signing up) for the same $500, and the replacement batteries aren't soldered in and are only $50.
"Pay them enough" reasoning is BS: the fact that I could sleep with the entire Swedish bikini team at once if I "paid them enough" is immaterial if I just plain cannot afford the price, OK?
I think Bill Gates could find a way to afford the price- given that a Vista UPGRADE DOWNLOAD costs $159.
We are already buying Japanese cars and Chinese TVs with your "pay enough" attitude.
I wouldn't know- I watch a Zenith and drive a Ford.
If you don't like lines of code, I'm certainly not tied to it. My point is that writing software is more like writing a novel than building a bridge- and should be paid like it. Doesn't matter one whit to me how the profit sharing is done- only that it actually IS done instead of the race to the bottom of the wage scale.
The United States of America, 2005. But then again, that's using a method of calculating inflation that assumes people are homeowners instead of renters- a method that was officially abandoned by the government in 1982 to make the inflation numbers look better.
Either that or just offer 7 figures instead. If 6 figures isn't enough, and you're looking for NBA style talent in the computing world, then obviously you need NBA style salaries.
And how are you going to calculate how much to pay them? Lines of code? Lines of documentation? What about after 10 years and the software has been rewritten one line at a time? Do their checks decrease slowly? How can the developer prove that the royalty is correct? Does this royalty include support fees or just initial sales? This model doesn't work. Engineers who design bridges don't get a portion of the tolls. It doesn't work in other industries, and I've never heard of a developer who complained they wanted royalties. If you want a piece of the action then buy stock. Or work for a startup and give up salary in exchange for options. Or work for a company that engages in profit-sharing.
Well, that's the point isn't it. If you want to retain engineers, give them a reason to stick around. A slowly decreasing royalty would encourage developers to contribute new and debugged lines of code to keep their percentage of the work done high. Microsoft's own software, SourceSafe, can give lines of code counts per developer. Support fees are for helpdesk people. And writing software is more like writing a book than it is like designing bridges anyway; same idea applies.
Your other ideas are good too- the entire point though is that people who produce things deserve more than management- which doesn't.
I utterly disagree that attacks on the rest of us are mere collateral damage -- regardless of whether there is internal conflict, it can't be denied that the extremist element is openly and intentionally at war with -- well, literally everyone else. If the moderates simply rolled over tomorrow and surrendered, and the internal conflict you describe was instantly resolved, we'd still be unbelievers in the "Land of War" and considered fair game.
Partially true- but I'd point to the original US Treaty with the Barbary Pirates. Thomas Jefferson convinced them to leave us alone because of separation of Church and State- we weren't a Christian nation, and therefore were NOT necessarily a primary target of Islam (unlike, say, French or English ships at the time). Since then, we've prove ourselves to be on the side of the moderates- thus, when it can hurt the interests of the moderates, we get attacked (such as the World Trade Center was almost an ideal target in this way- with the way the Saudi Royal Family has been investing in America).
Eventually, of course, like the Pope would rather be head of a church of 1000 telling the truth as he sees it than the head of the church of a billion lying all the time, the extreme Islamics would much rather be alone in a world of perfect justice ruled by Allah from Mecca. I agree, if the extremists are allowed to win in these wars of reformation- we will not remain a secondary target for long.
Nevertheless, I appreciate that you took the time to explain further. Your explanation raises a complex facet that I have rarely and inadequately considered.
I wish the people whose job it is to understand our enemies to better combat them would look at this- for instance, it seems obvious to me that we should have no troops in Baghdad itself, but ALL of our soldiers at this point should be providing border security while the provisional government sorts itself out internally. If that means we're just providing a wall around a civil war, well, democracy is supposed to be about what the people want.
When you look at the lifecycle of religions, and realize the fact that Mohammed lived in the 600s, it's pretty easy to make a comparison between what is going on in Islam today (the fight between scholarly, moderate groups and anarchistic, individual interpretation groups) and what was happening in Europe during the Hundred Year's War. Our so-called "War on Terror" is just like what the Islamics were experiencing during that time- any attacks on us are purely collateral damage, the real war is between moderates and hard liners within Islam itself (and on a sub note, between individual groups of hardliners). Kind of like Europe was torn between Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists 400 years ago.
I'm not trying to minimalize the danger- I should think 9-11 made it quite obvious how dangerous a religious reformation can be to outsiders. But thus my comment about being able to shut down borders- and let the religious fight it out amongst themselves.
I like Creeping- making somebody violating the law a "Creeper". Better than the "slower" in my original.
As for trucks going uphill- well, that's why to me this has to be a VARIABLE speed limit sign. If all of the traffic in the truck lane (and we have truck lanes in Oregon- they're limited to the right hand lane except when passing) is going 35, then obviously the minimum speed limit should adjust itself to 15.
Participation in the WTO is voluntary. Countries can withdraw if it doesn't meet their needs.
And how do they get back the ability to produce enough goods to meet the needs and wants of their population after the WTO has put all their local manufacturers and farmers out of business?
Yes- a long, long time ago (it's amazing- that video was shot in 1970, the same year I was born, and wasn't posted to the internet until 1992- and the media guys still get questions about it every so often).
I noticed that a recent humpback that washed up on shore two months ago got a bulldozer instead of dynamite...
You work for ODOT? (the other??) I live and work in Oregon and have some experience, believe it or not, programming for traffic counters. It isn't a difficult task to figure these sorts of things out. The difficult task is to get all the traffic counters together talking on a network as most states don't have an ip network running next to all their roads that they can just plug the counters into. That would be the high infrastructure cost. However the better counter companies offer wireless connections, ethernet...so on.
True. We are lucky to have the frame relay network here in Oregon running down all the freeways- that's how Tripcheck communicates with all of those traffic counters, loop detectors, cameras, weather stations, and ramp meters throughout the state (I work upstairs from TMOC in the Flanders building, where are you?).
If you know how far apart two counters are, then watching a single car move down the road, and even change lanes isn't a big deal. Heck, most of the good classifying counters already do many of those things quite well across multiple loops.
Yep, that's how Tripcheck's Portland Speed Map works. The loop detectors for the ramp meters track the speed of traffic, and report it back, which is then used to adjust the period of the green lights on the ramp meters.
Actually, I know there are people who've been doing this sort of things for cities for years, and I didn't really find anything new or ground breaking in this piece at all.
I know a couple of land use planners who might disagree with that- especially if there is an accident on Boone Bridge....but then again I work in Region One Headquarters, where the aging nature of Portland Metro's "Champagne glass" freeway system and lack of building I-219 properly when we had the chance 30 years ago is becoming quite apparent. One accident on Boone Bridge can tie up traffic on I-5, I-205, I-217, and I-84 VERY quickly- and it happens once or twice a month.
A similar problem exists with the I-5 Lift Span to Vancouver, but that's got an obvious pair of workarounds (either the Rainer/Longview Bridge up Route 30, or the I-205 Bridge). There simply isn't a similar workable option for Boone Bridge- Canby Ferry is too small to handle the traffic, and 99 West through Newberg or 205/99 East through Oregon City is often a part of the traffic jam.
First of all, as an Oregon resident, I think you guys do good work, mostly; thanks.
I don't deserve the credit for most of that- I'm a software engineer working in central services, mainly on the business end of things. Closest I got was writing the software for Office of Civil Rights to check up on the contractors working on OTIA III to make sure local companies were getting the bridge building business and paying the right rates to their employees.
Another idea I've heard of for solving the traffic jam problem is, rather than minimum speed limits, just have a variable maximum speed limit. Basically, replace all the signs that say "55" with electronic signs that would say "55" most of the time, but if there's an accident, you lower the limit a few miles before the accident, say to 50 then 45 then 40. So by the time you get there, everybody is already going slower anyway, and traffic can flow smoothly (at a slower speed) instead of everybody bunching up and trying to change lanes. Obviously the difficulty here is the cost of replacing all the signs.
We do something similar to avoid a full stoppage for certain maintenance tasks. For instance, when they needed to shut down eastbound I-84 for a half hour to clear a rockfall near Hood River, we just put out 2 Incident Response trucks, driving side by side at 30 miles an hour starting at Troutdale. By the time they got to Hood River, the work was done, so they just pulled off and let traffic return to normal. No need to actually close the road, the rolling slowdown was enough to clear traffic to get the work done.
Are you familiar with this page?
Very familiar with it- I often practice anti-traffic while driving. Another useful page for anybody in Oregon is Tripcheck- great for avoiding traffic foulups in the Northern Willamette Valley or checking on weather, construction, or OnStar reported problems elsewhere in the state. Also check out the new Transportation Options Tab- until I saw that I thought Oregon Public Transportation was really bad, I didn't know how many options we really had.
By the way, what's your opinion of increasing the speed limit on I-205 from 55 to 65? Traffic permitting, the left lane usually averages 65 normally anyway, and it doesn't appear to be a problem. Do you believe there would be significantly more accidents if the limit were increased?
I don't believe there would be significantly more accidents, but for most of I-205 it'd be against our current policy of slowing down traffic in urban areas. I believe that there is a plan in the works for the southern end, but they're waiting to finish the third lane between I-5 and Oregon City first (that's the construction mess you see at the Tualatin interchange currently, increasing traffic flows for the I-5/205 interchange and earthquake upgrades for the overpasses in that area).
MINIMUM, not MAXIMUM. As in, if you're moving FASTER than the MINIMUM speed limit, you also avoid the ticket. It's only if you are going slower that you get a ticket.
I work for "the other ODOT"- Oregon. I can think of a way this software can be used to do exactly that: Variable Sign Minimum Speed Limits. Based on the real speed of the traffic (as detected by this software), subtract 20 mph- and light up the variable minimum speed limit signs with that speed limit. This would then allow the police to actually enforce a minimum speed limit; you could even have radar detectors in the signs that take a digital picture and transmit to cops waiting down the road for the "slower".
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ALL the functions? The iPhone function that I most appreciate is the touch screen and the intuitive gestural touch interface. Will the HTC Wizard have that?
The Wizard has had that for three years now. Most smart phones have, regardless of the operating system they are based on. Heck, PalmOS has had that since the mid 1990s on their PDAs, Windows Mobile just copied it making it slightly more intuitive, and iPhone is just the latest revision of the same idea.
Now having said that, after living with touchscreens for more than 10 years on the devices I've owned- I really appreciate the Wizard's slide out keyboard and hardware "send" and "end" keys. I don't use the keyboard that often- the touch screen is enough for most tasks- but the send and end keys are to me a must on any cell phone. The soft keys help a lot too. The 5-way DPad is the same as is on the iPhone and is great for games.
I believe that slowing down traffic in urban areas is State Law, came in with the 65MPH speed limit, but ODOT does have some leeway with regards to that (for instance Salem North Metro is 60). As for increasing to 60/70, that would take an act of the legislature for sure- you'd have to convince the legislators that it's a good idea (rather than just the engineers) and I'm sure some parts of the freeway would have to stay 55 (Terwilinger Curves is only rated for 50 on ice, for example). When construction is finished, I know the south end of 205 will be 65 and three lanes each way.
Do you happen to have one in your hand right now?
Yes.
How well does it transfer calls from cellular to wi-fi?
That part is still vaporware. They're promising the ROM upgrade later in the summer. Given the fact that this is a Microsoft operating system they're trying to bung it into, I expect it around Christmas.
How's the screen resolution?
A bit lower than the iPhone officially, at 320x240, but the smaller screen makes up for the difference. I download and watch TV on my way to work all the time, using TCMP as my media player (because it offers that all important 30 second skip forward when watching shows recorded from basic cable channels or broadcast) and BeyondTV at home capturing the shows off of DirectTV.
Of course, you could have an HTC Wizard (T-Mobile MDA) that has all of the functions the iPhone does plus soon-to-come (sometime this summer) free calls over WIFI hotspots (and a free WIFI router for your home for signing up) for the same $500, and the replacement batteries aren't soldered in and are only $50.
Portland, Oregon. But yes, most programmers I know are indeed either contract or government workers.
Ok, give me your manager's e-mail and I'll offer to take your job for $50k.
"Pay them enough" reasoning is BS: the fact that I could sleep with the entire Swedish bikini team at once if I "paid them enough" is immaterial if I just plain cannot afford the price, OK?
I think Bill Gates could find a way to afford the price- given that a Vista UPGRADE DOWNLOAD costs $159.
We are already buying Japanese cars and Chinese TVs with your "pay enough" attitude.
I wouldn't know- I watch a Zenith and drive a Ford.
If you don't like lines of code, I'm certainly not tied to it. My point is that writing software is more like writing a novel than building a bridge- and should be paid like it. Doesn't matter one whit to me how the profit sharing is done- only that it actually IS done instead of the race to the bottom of the wage scale.
The United States of America, 2005. But then again, that's using a method of calculating inflation that assumes people are homeowners instead of renters- a method that was officially abandoned by the government in 1982 to make the inflation numbers look better.
I don't know a single software engineer that has earned HALF that since 1999. Are you sure those numbers aren't old?
Decent is usually a ratio when it comes to pay: Wages/standard of living. The United States with 8% inflation has been going down for a while now.
Either that or just offer 7 figures instead. If 6 figures isn't enough, and you're looking for NBA style talent in the computing world, then obviously you need NBA style salaries.
Why should any American become a software engineer when they can make more money as a plumber?
And how are you going to calculate how much to pay them? Lines of code? Lines of documentation? What about after 10 years and the software has been rewritten one line at a time? Do their checks decrease slowly? How can the developer prove that the royalty is correct? Does this royalty include support fees or just initial sales? This model doesn't work. Engineers who design bridges don't get a portion of the tolls. It doesn't work in other industries, and I've never heard of a developer who complained they wanted royalties. If you want a piece of the action then buy stock. Or work for a startup and give up salary in exchange for options. Or work for a company that engages in profit-sharing.
Well, that's the point isn't it. If you want to retain engineers, give them a reason to stick around. A slowly decreasing royalty would encourage developers to contribute new and debugged lines of code to keep their percentage of the work done high. Microsoft's own software, SourceSafe, can give lines of code counts per developer. Support fees are for helpdesk people. And writing software is more like writing a book than it is like designing bridges anyway; same idea applies.
Your other ideas are good too- the entire point though is that people who produce things deserve more than management- which doesn't.
Do it the same way you retain a CEO- pay them what they're worth. For closed source software, that means cutting royalty checks for code contributed.
I utterly disagree that attacks on the rest of us are mere collateral damage -- regardless of whether there is internal conflict, it can't be denied that the extremist element is openly and intentionally at war with -- well, literally everyone else. If the moderates simply rolled over tomorrow and surrendered, and the internal conflict you describe was instantly resolved, we'd still be unbelievers in the "Land of War" and considered fair game.
Partially true- but I'd point to the original US Treaty with the Barbary Pirates. Thomas Jefferson convinced them to leave us alone because of separation of Church and State- we weren't a Christian nation, and therefore were NOT necessarily a primary target of Islam (unlike, say, French or English ships at the time). Since then, we've prove ourselves to be on the side of the moderates- thus, when it can hurt the interests of the moderates, we get attacked (such as the World Trade Center was almost an ideal target in this way- with the way the Saudi Royal Family has been investing in America).
Eventually, of course, like the Pope would rather be head of a church of 1000 telling the truth as he sees it than the head of the church of a billion lying all the time, the extreme Islamics would much rather be alone in a world of perfect justice ruled by Allah from Mecca. I agree, if the extremists are allowed to win in these wars of reformation- we will not remain a secondary target for long.
Nevertheless, I appreciate that you took the time to explain further. Your explanation raises a complex facet that I have rarely and inadequately considered.
I wish the people whose job it is to understand our enemies to better combat them would look at this- for instance, it seems obvious to me that we should have no troops in Baghdad itself, but ALL of our soldiers at this point should be providing border security while the provisional government sorts itself out internally. If that means we're just providing a wall around a civil war, well, democracy is supposed to be about what the people want.
Islamic Reformation?
When you look at the lifecycle of religions, and realize the fact that Mohammed lived in the 600s, it's pretty easy to make a comparison between what is going on in Islam today (the fight between scholarly, moderate groups and anarchistic, individual interpretation groups) and what was happening in Europe during the Hundred Year's War. Our so-called "War on Terror" is just like what the Islamics were experiencing during that time- any attacks on us are purely collateral damage, the real war is between moderates and hard liners within Islam itself (and on a sub note, between individual groups of hardliners). Kind of like Europe was torn between Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists 400 years ago.
I'm not trying to minimalize the danger- I should think 9-11 made it quite obvious how dangerous a religious reformation can be to outsiders. But thus my comment about being able to shut down borders- and let the religious fight it out amongst themselves.
I like Creeping- making somebody violating the law a "Creeper". Better than the "slower" in my original. As for trucks going uphill- well, that's why to me this has to be a VARIABLE speed limit sign. If all of the traffic in the truck lane (and we have truck lanes in Oregon- they're limited to the right hand lane except when passing) is going 35, then obviously the minimum speed limit should adjust itself to 15.
Participation in the WTO is voluntary. Countries can withdraw if it doesn't meet their needs.
And how do they get back the ability to produce enough goods to meet the needs and wants of their population after the WTO has put all their local manufacturers and farmers out of business?
Yes- a long, long time ago (it's amazing- that video was shot in 1970, the same year I was born, and wasn't posted to the internet until 1992- and the media guys still get questions about it every so often).
I noticed that a recent humpback that washed up on shore two months ago got a bulldozer instead of dynamite...
You work for ODOT? (the other??) I live and work in Oregon and have some experience, believe it or not, programming for traffic counters. It isn't a difficult task to figure these sorts of things out. The difficult task is to get all the traffic counters together talking on a network as most states don't have an ip network running next to all their roads that they can just plug the counters into.
That would be the high infrastructure cost. However the better counter companies offer wireless connections, ethernet...so on.
True. We are lucky to have the frame relay network here in Oregon running down all the freeways- that's how Tripcheck communicates with all of those traffic counters, loop detectors, cameras, weather stations, and ramp meters throughout the state (I work upstairs from TMOC in the Flanders building, where are you?).
If you know how far apart two counters are, then watching a single car move down the road, and even change lanes isn't a big deal. Heck, most of the good classifying counters already do many of those things quite well across multiple loops.
Yep, that's how Tripcheck's Portland Speed Map works. The loop detectors for the ramp meters track the speed of traffic, and report it back, which is then used to adjust the period of the green lights on the ramp meters.
Actually, I know there are people who've been doing this sort of things for cities for years, and I didn't really find anything new or ground breaking in this piece at all.
Neither did I really....
I know a couple of land use planners who might disagree with that- especially if there is an accident on Boone Bridge....but then again I work in Region One Headquarters, where the aging nature of Portland Metro's "Champagne glass" freeway system and lack of building I-219 properly when we had the chance 30 years ago is becoming quite apparent. One accident on Boone Bridge can tie up traffic on I-5, I-205, I-217, and I-84 VERY quickly- and it happens once or twice a month.
A similar problem exists with the I-5 Lift Span to Vancouver, but that's got an obvious pair of workarounds (either the Rainer/Longview Bridge up Route 30, or the I-205 Bridge). There simply isn't a similar workable option for Boone Bridge- Canby Ferry is too small to handle the traffic, and 99 West through Newberg or 205/99 East through Oregon City is often a part of the traffic jam.
First of all, as an Oregon resident, I think you guys do good work, mostly; thanks.
I don't deserve the credit for most of that- I'm a software engineer working in central services, mainly on the business end of things. Closest I got was writing the software for Office of Civil Rights to check up on the contractors working on OTIA III to make sure local companies were getting the bridge building business and paying the right rates to their employees.
Another idea I've heard of for solving the traffic jam problem is, rather than minimum speed limits, just have a variable maximum speed limit. Basically, replace all the signs that say "55" with electronic signs that would say "55" most of the time, but if there's an accident, you lower the limit a few miles before the accident, say to 50 then 45 then 40. So by the time you get there, everybody is already going slower anyway, and traffic can flow smoothly (at a slower speed) instead of everybody bunching up and trying to change lanes. Obviously the difficulty here is the cost of replacing all the signs.
We do something similar to avoid a full stoppage for certain maintenance tasks. For instance, when they needed to shut down eastbound I-84 for a half hour to clear a rockfall near Hood River, we just put out 2 Incident Response trucks, driving side by side at 30 miles an hour starting at Troutdale. By the time they got to Hood River, the work was done, so they just pulled off and let traffic return to normal. No need to actually close the road, the rolling slowdown was enough to clear traffic to get the work done.
Are you familiar with this page?
Very familiar with it- I often practice anti-traffic while driving. Another useful page for anybody in Oregon is Tripcheck- great for avoiding traffic foulups in the Northern Willamette Valley or checking on weather, construction, or OnStar reported problems elsewhere in the state. Also check out the new Transportation Options Tab- until I saw that I thought Oregon Public Transportation was really bad, I didn't know how many options we really had.
By the way, what's your opinion of increasing the speed limit on I-205 from 55 to 65? Traffic permitting, the left lane usually averages 65 normally anyway, and it doesn't appear to be a problem. Do you believe there would be significantly more accidents if the limit were increased?
I don't believe there would be significantly more accidents, but for most of I-205 it'd be against our current policy of slowing down traffic in urban areas. I believe that there is a plan in the works for the southern end, but they're waiting to finish the third lane between I-5 and Oregon City first (that's the construction mess you see at the Tualatin interchange currently, increasing traffic flows for the I-5/205 interchange and earthquake upgrades for the overpasses in that area).
MINIMUM, not MAXIMUM. As in, if you're moving FASTER than the MINIMUM speed limit, you also avoid the ticket. It's only if you are going slower that you get a ticket.
I work for "the other ODOT"- Oregon. I can think of a way this software can be used to do exactly that: Variable Sign Minimum Speed Limits. Based on the real speed of the traffic (as detected by this software), subtract 20 mph- and light up the variable minimum speed limit signs with that speed limit. This would then allow the police to actually enforce a minimum speed limit; you could even have radar detectors in the signs that take a digital picture and transmit to cops waiting down the road for the "slower".