Okay, so I didn't say it was easy, it isn't trivial, but maybe that's the problem with "real engineers" is that the solution has become far more complex than it needs to be. Us engineering tech types (kind of like real engineers but get paid less) like to keep things simple.
Let's look at how us human types drive. We basically determine what is road and non-road. More specifically, what is our lane and what is not-our lane. We keep our speed at the speed limit (in theory). We don't hit anything directly ahead of us. We have to stay in our lane and on road.
Ok, so we know about the size, location and most important shade of color of the road. Anything that is drastically different than this is NOT road and we can't drive on it. Factor in some exceptions for known things like shadows and other vehicles on the road. Detecting the edge of a lane or the shape of a car in front of you is trivial for a visual system. You don't need to know if it's a sedan or a big rig, just don't hit it.
How do you as a human detect the edge of a road if the lanes are faded out? I can guarentee that a computer with a camera and a half assed algo for finding the edge of something can pick them out 1000% times fainter than you or I can.
To be fair, I do a lot of programming of visual inspection systems, so I have a bias on how easy these things are to work with. I've seen a computer inspect the solder joints on a part in light that was so dim that the part wasn't recognizable to the naked eye.
A few years back a group (don't remember specifics) got a car to pass the German driving test. Having taken the German driving test myself, I can attest to the fact that this is quite a feat. So I would have to believe that the DARPA contest last year would of been somewhat more challenging than your run of the mill Sunday drive.
Damn, this makes me want to fire up that spare P3 750 I've got at home and dig some CCDs out of the scrap bin here at work and get started on something like this for this weekends drive to KS to pick up my kids.
why is that a problem? use a simple graphics system to determine needed things, like other vehicles, edge of road, lanes, etc. use laser or radar to determin relative speed to other vehvicles. Simple modifications to the car for steering and speed control. I imagine I could do this for under $5k with off the shelf materials, and I'm not even a real engineer.
If we can't make a land based car that will drive it self, how much longer do I have to wait for my flying car then?
Seriously, I've put a good deal of thought into this, and it should be fairly simple to engineer a system that would drive your car during times that it would be appropriate to use a cruse control.
You are correct. Jail time is not fitting for this crime.
I'm thinking more along the lines of an overvoltage cattle prod, tube of KY and prime time tv...
but then again I've also spent 3 days running different spy sweepers on my wife's laptop (where does she find this crap?). Now, where did I put that slackware install CD?
What is really sad about this, is that it's general populas who buys stuff from spam, who buys stuff from pop ups, these are the root of the problem. As soon as these l/users stop buying stuff from these sources, they will fade away.
You know, you are absolutly correct. I've seen a lot of movies that really just plain sucked because someone didn't have someone else to go with. I usually wait until the movie is on DVD before watching it, especially if someone on slashdot likes it.
side note... I, Robot turned out to be much better than I had expected it to. OTOH, The Village stunk, I was really disapointed. Of course, I paid little attention to either movie of this double feature as I was at the drive in with the woman whom I just reciently made my wife.
I can think of some flip responses to that, but seriously, what does the military drill into your head about telephone courtisy that our mothers didn't try to?
When I was active duty (Army), we were required to answer the phone something along these lines
"Alpha company, 1st division, 32nd Armor. Specialist Snuffy speaking, this line is unsecure. Can I help you sir or ma'm?"
Mom only asked me to answer the phone that way a couple of times....
"All power corrupts and absolute power is even more fun... " - BOFH (Actually the PFY duing his BOFH exam...)
And people wonder why I run my own email server. I only host my kids and myself there, and you bet I read their email, just as I expect the IT guys to look through my email when times are slow here at work, and my ex g/f expected me to read her email (she didn't expect me to read about the times she was cheating on me, but that's in the past) and I expected her to read mine. Just the way things are, if you've got something to keep other's from reading, encrypt it or take other means to prevent it from being read. Sheesh.
Of course, then we have to find a way to pay for it all. But hey, people need wifi access at rest stops and such. I mean, what are you going to do if you're out of internet access range for a few hours?
I think it's a great idea. This last week I was on a trip with my dad, not a single place we stayed (friends or family or hotel) had a connection to the net. I was betting on the fact that at least one of the places we stopped would have WiFi or a lan I could plug into since I don't have a dial up account.
I guess what I'm saying that since my dad is older, and we stopped at nearly every rest stop along the route, having at least the option to check work email on the road would of been nice. Instead, I came back to 150 work emails, 200 spams and maybe 20 personal emails. I figure I'll have the mess sorted out by the end of the work week.
Anyone who hooks up through Slashdot Personals -- you **MUST** post about it! Karma be damned!
Slashot has personals now? Wow, it's been a while since I've been here. Actually, i did meet someone on/. a while back when she showed up on my fans list. We're just close friends now but it was really neat to e-date someone who was into computers and geeky stuff nearly as much as I am.
And the worst part is that the more the coffee you have, the less regular your sleeping habits become. You stop having good sleep, and therefore your waking hours become kinda blurry. At which point, you resort to more caffeine.
You say that like it's a Bad Thing(tm). I've always had the view that sleep is for the weak anyway.
I remember reading an article where 'they' were doing research for a drug that 'replaced' sleep - you could go 4 or 5 days with out the negative side effects. My first and only thought was 'Gimme - I wanna beta test'
There's plenty of info that the US Gov't has that I don't.
What? This is/. my friend, you must be new here. No place for admiting ignornace or even rational thought. Everyone here knows more than the most powerful infomation gathering groups in the world. Anything said here by anyone who disagrees with you should be read as absolute fact.
As I said before, my mind isn't made up.
What is this? Thinking before making a choice? Heavens, what is the world coming to? The times when people spew forth opinons as fact, on subjects they know next to nothing about may be coming to an end. *reads comments to your post* - okay, maybe not.:-)
I've ridden trains in Germany, and they're very nice. But what does that prove? People are always touting the efficiency of European public transporation vs. American, and smugly concluding that something is wrong with Americans.
I rode the trains, actually the strauss something or other when I was stationed in Germany. Nice set up, reasonably inexpensive and the walking distance was about 1/8 of a mile. Of course... I ended up getting a car. Was much cheaper in the long run and much, much easier on the back when my (now ex) wife wanted to spend $200.00 at the store.
The point I'm trying to make... sometimes it makes sense to take the bus, or train or strauss thingee... sometimes it makes more sense to drive your own car, like when my (now ex) wife went into labor and the Hiedelburg hospitial was an 30 min away (on A5, in the US it would prolly an hour).
I'm glad you've had good luck with Tmobile. I finally made the release me from my contract (back when they were voice stream). They had excellent customer service, but the freak'n phone didn't work anywhere I went. Didn't work at home or work. Hell, I was lucky if it worked in my car. I had to stand out side to get any sort of coverage.
I hear they have better coverage now, and that's a good thing for those of you that have it.
*sighs* I can't wait until vonage figures out a way to make cell phones... then I'll truly be happy.
Bad coverage areas, customer service people without a clue, and screwed up billing.
Funny... sounds like you were talking about Verizon there. I've yet to find a cell phone company who has their act together. In just over 2 years with Verizon, I've had my call plan changed with out my knowldge, over $900 in credits from billing, plan and equipment failures. Talk to one person, get one answer, when it's wrong on your bill, call back and get another answer and see it be wrong on your bill too.
The only good thing I can say? They are the first company I've not had receiption problems with. Works at work, at home, on the road. Everywhere I go, Yes, I can here you now. My friend has AT&T, and he's had pretty good luck with them so far.
What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your car runs out of gas? What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your bicycle gets a flat you can't fix? What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your shoe falls apart?
Ummm... walk home? 3 miles is nothing so I guess I'm missing the point...
So at least I know where the extra $10 comcast started charging me for my cable modem after I dropped cable for dish. I can see it now...
"To ensure the same high quality view pleasure during this Disney movie, we at Comisney (or Discast if you prefer) have raised the viewing price of this feature film from $7.50 to $17.50"
And they wonder why I'm dropping the cable modem tommorow for a wireless isp - half the cost ($24.95), more upstream bandwidth (1 Meg up/down) and no restrictions on servers...
We call Colorado "New California." Why is that? Lots of people move there from CA?
Yes, that started happening a lot several years ago when the prices in real estate properties were vastly different. You could buy 2 or 3 nice houses in CO for what you sold your CA home for. Of course, with lots of people willing to pay top dollar for a home, the prices here have skyrockted over the last several years, now the people that were born and raised in this area can't afford to live here. That's not as bad as the health freaks who won't let me smoke in a bar anymore, but that's a different battle.
You know, being in Ft. Collins, CO - I'm only about 30 minutes from Greeley, maybe I should offer this gentleman who's sueing a more... um... direct approach to his problems, for a small fee of course.
took a demo of one of these the other day in the Sprint store. Kind of neat technology, but come on, if you're going to watch tv in a car, at least hook up a decient DiVX or DVD player... sheesh...
You've made some good points here, but I think you missed one of mine. My admin time for both OSes are next to nothing. I do let windows download the patches it needs, install them after I've checked the out and do a reboot. I don't remember patching running patches on the linux box, but I'd imagine that it has it's own automated update procedue. My windows XP box that was orignally going to be a linux install runs more than any other box in the house with the home automation stuff I have it do and had an uptime of 60 days before I took it down for a hardware upgrade.
I don't have to deal with idiots (except for myself), so I don't have to deal with spyware and I run industial strength antivirus after a run in with Nimda last year.
Don't get me wrong, the more I use windows the more I like linux. If I had the time to spend, and if Linux met my every need, I'd never install another windows machine. I just don't honestly have the time or the skills to get these things working right. Funny thing, even my kids prefer linux... nothing like bringing them up right:-)
After spending 6 months working phone tech (sub-contracted company doing HP Tape drive support, left for a less stress more money job), I had more than my fair share of customers that wanted a quick hardware replacement, usually the tech or IT guys were the worst.
I almost got into phone fight with one tech who "Knew it was a hardware problem." and didn't want to "waste his time" going through the troubleshooing procedure again. Finally having enough (he was to the point of yelling at me) I asked him "Sir, I've fixed 300 tape drives this week, how many have you fixed?". Less than 10 minutes later his first full backup was underway and was simply a delighted customer.
Having seen the other side, I usually take the approach with the tech on the phone of "I've tried this, that AND the other thing, what other steps would you recommend I try before requesting an RMA?". Works wonders. I also ALWAYS ask to speak to their manager if they go the extra mile for me (used to be worth and extra $25 bonus for a call or $50 plus an atta boy for a letter or email). Had one gal tell me that I made her entire day, made me feel great to hear that (and have my phone issues resolved).
I'm not sure that I agree with your views on Linux. I have both linux and windows machines on my home network (windows and HPUX at work). I'm not a Newbe with *nix systems, nor am I a guru. I'm not afriad to RTFM or work at something to make it work right.
I can't count the hours I've "tried to get it to work" in linux, usually when dealing with a sound card issue (or a sound application) of some sort or the WiFi card on my laptop only to give up after a week of frustration only to have the same machine up, running and doing actual work in windows in under an hour. After all that frustraion, I'm now ashamed to say, that any piece of *nix software that doesn't have a binary install for the system I'm working on, I want to look for a different solution before I even try it.
I would MUCH rather run my entire network on Linux, but I've found that for some tasks, using windows just saves hours and frustation. With XP, my admin time is next to nothing (once ATI started producing decient drivers), but the same is said for my linux boxes as well.
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Okay, so I didn't say it was easy, it isn't trivial, but maybe that's the problem with "real engineers" is that the solution has become far more complex than it needs to be. Us engineering tech types (kind of like real engineers but get paid less) like to keep things simple.
Let's look at how us human types drive. We basically determine what is road and non-road. More specifically, what is our lane and what is not-our lane. We keep our speed at the speed limit (in theory). We don't hit anything directly ahead of us. We have to stay in our lane and on road.
Ok, so we know about the size, location and most important shade of color of the road. Anything that is drastically different than this is NOT road and we can't drive on it. Factor in some exceptions for known things like shadows and other vehicles on the road. Detecting the edge of a lane or the shape of a car in front of you is trivial for a visual system. You don't need to know if it's a sedan or a big rig, just don't hit it.
How do you as a human detect the edge of a road if the lanes are faded out? I can guarentee that a computer with a camera and a half assed algo for finding the edge of something can pick them out 1000% times fainter than you or I can.
To be fair, I do a lot of programming of visual inspection systems, so I have a bias on how easy these things are to work with. I've seen a computer inspect the solder joints on a part in light that was so dim that the part wasn't recognizable to the naked eye.
A few years back a group (don't remember specifics) got a car to pass the German driving test. Having taken the German driving test myself, I can attest to the fact that this is quite a feat. So I would have to believe that the DARPA contest last year would of been somewhat more challenging than your run of the mill Sunday drive.
Damn, this makes me want to fire up that spare P3 750 I've got at home and dig some CCDs out of the scrap bin here at work and get started on something like this for this weekends drive to KS to pick up my kids.
we didn't use minatures, so it didn't make a lick of difference where we played, as long as the cheetoes and mtn dew were close.
why is that a problem? use a simple graphics system to determine needed things, like other vehicles, edge of road, lanes, etc. use laser or radar to determin relative speed to other vehvicles. Simple modifications to the car for steering and speed control. I imagine I could do this for under $5k with off the shelf materials, and I'm not even a real engineer.
like I said, considerable thought.
If we can't make a land based car that will drive it self, how much longer do I have to wait for my flying car then?
Seriously, I've put a good deal of thought into this, and it should be fairly simple to engineer a system that would drive your car during times that it would be appropriate to use a cruse control.
Jail time is *never* the answer here.
You are correct. Jail time is not fitting for this crime.
I'm thinking more along the lines of an overvoltage cattle prod, tube of KY and prime time tv...
but then again I've also spent 3 days running different spy sweepers on my wife's laptop (where does she find this crap?). Now, where did I put that slackware install CD?
What is really sad about this, is that it's general populas who buys stuff from spam, who buys stuff from pop ups, these are the root of the problem. As soon as these l/users stop buying stuff from these sources, they will fade away.
Of course he gets ridiculed because he doesn't act
To me, makes more sense if you stop that sentence right there. Yup...
1200W subwoofer might be nice, but really the only thing that really makes a laptop a laptop is the ability to dual boot between slack and windoze.
Best think to keep in mind is that if you buy a used laptop, make sure it isn't stolen _BEFORE_ you shell out the cash for it.
You know, you are absolutly correct. I've seen a lot of movies that really just plain sucked because someone didn't have someone else to go with. I usually wait until the movie is on DVD before watching it, especially if someone on slashdot likes it.
side note... I, Robot turned out to be much better than I had expected it to. OTOH, The Village stunk, I was really disapointed. Of course, I paid little attention to either movie of this double feature as I was at the drive in with the woman whom I just reciently made my wife.
I can think of some flip responses to that, but seriously, what does the military drill into your head about telephone courtisy that our mothers didn't try to?
When I was active duty (Army), we were required to answer the phone something along these lines
"Alpha company, 1st division, 32nd Armor. Specialist Snuffy speaking, this line is unsecure. Can I help you sir or ma'm?"
Mom only asked me to answer the phone that way a couple of times....
Those who have power will use it.
"All power corrupts and absolute power is even more fun... " - BOFH (Actually the PFY duing his BOFH exam...)
And people wonder why I run my own email server. I only host my kids and myself there, and you bet I read their email, just as I expect the IT guys to look through my email when times are slow here at work, and my ex g/f expected me to read her email (she didn't expect me to read about the times she was cheating on me, but that's in the past) and I expected her to read mine. Just the way things are, if you've got something to keep other's from reading, encrypt it or take other means to prevent it from being read. Sheesh.
Of course, then we have to find a way to pay for it all. But hey, people need wifi access at rest stops and such. I mean, what are you going to do if you're out of internet access range for a few hours?
I think it's a great idea. This last week I was on a trip with my dad, not a single place we stayed (friends or family or hotel) had a connection to the net. I was betting on the fact that at least one of the places we stopped would have WiFi or a lan I could plug into since I don't have a dial up account.
I guess what I'm saying that since my dad is older, and we stopped at nearly every rest stop along the route, having at least the option to check work email on the road would of been nice. Instead, I came back to 150 work emails, 200 spams and maybe 20 personal emails. I figure I'll have the mess sorted out by the end of the work week.
Anyone who hooks up through Slashdot Personals -- you **MUST** post about it! Karma be damned!
/. a while back when she showed up on my fans list. We're just close friends now but it was really neat to e-date someone who was into computers and geeky stuff nearly as much as I am.
Slashot has personals now? Wow, it's been a while since I've been here. Actually, i did meet someone on
And the worst part is that the more the coffee you have, the less regular your sleeping habits become. You stop having good sleep, and therefore your waking hours become kinda blurry. At which point, you resort to more caffeine.
You say that like it's a Bad Thing(tm). I've always had the view that sleep is for the weak anyway.
I remember reading an article where 'they' were doing research for a drug that 'replaced' sleep - you could go 4 or 5 days with out the negative side effects. My first and only thought was 'Gimme - I wanna beta test'
There's plenty of info that the US Gov't has that I don't.
/. my friend, you must be new here. No place for admiting ignornace or even rational thought. Everyone here knows more than the most powerful infomation gathering groups in the world. Anything said here by anyone who disagrees with you should be read as absolute fact.
:-)
What? This is
As I said before, my mind isn't made up.
What is this? Thinking before making a choice? Heavens, what is the world coming to? The times when people spew forth opinons as fact, on subjects they know next to nothing about may be coming to an end. *reads comments to your post* - okay, maybe not.
I've ridden trains in Germany, and they're very nice. But what does that prove? People are always touting the efficiency of European public transporation vs. American, and smugly concluding that something is wrong with Americans.
I rode the trains, actually the strauss something or other when I was stationed in Germany. Nice set up, reasonably inexpensive and the walking distance was about 1/8 of a mile. Of course... I ended up getting a car. Was much cheaper in the long run and much, much easier on the back when my (now ex) wife wanted to spend $200.00 at the store.
The point I'm trying to make... sometimes it makes sense to take the bus, or train or strauss thingee... sometimes it makes more sense to drive your own car, like when my (now ex) wife went into labor and the Hiedelburg hospitial was an 30 min away (on A5, in the US it would prolly an hour).
I'm glad you've had good luck with Tmobile. I finally made the release me from my contract (back when they were voice stream). They had excellent customer service, but the freak'n phone didn't work anywhere I went. Didn't work at home or work. Hell, I was lucky if it worked in my car. I had to stand out side to get any sort of coverage.
I hear they have better coverage now, and that's a good thing for those of you that have it.
*sighs* I can't wait until vonage figures out a way to make cell phones... then I'll truly be happy.
Bad coverage areas, customer service people without a clue, and screwed up billing.
Funny... sounds like you were talking about Verizon there. I've yet to find a cell phone company who has their act together. In just over 2 years with Verizon, I've had my call plan changed with out my knowldge, over $900 in credits from billing, plan and equipment failures. Talk to one person, get one answer, when it's wrong on your bill, call back and get another answer and see it be wrong on your bill too.
The only good thing I can say? They are the first company I've not had receiption problems with. Works at work, at home, on the road. Everywhere I go, Yes, I can here you now. My friend has AT&T, and he's had pretty good luck with them so far.
What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your car runs out of gas? What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your bicycle gets a flat you can't fix? What do you do if you're 3 miles from home and your shoe falls apart?
Ummm... walk home? 3 miles is nothing so I guess I'm missing the point...
What would you do with a probably $100-$150 paperweight with just Ethernet/serial port connectivity?
Ummm.... VNC?
So at least I know where the extra $10 comcast started charging me for my cable modem after I dropped cable for dish. I can see it now...
"To ensure the same high quality view pleasure during this Disney movie, we at Comisney (or Discast if you prefer) have raised the viewing price of this feature film from $7.50 to $17.50"
And they wonder why I'm dropping the cable modem tommorow for a wireless isp - half the cost ($24.95), more upstream bandwidth (1 Meg up/down) and no restrictions on servers...
We call Colorado "New California."
Why is that? Lots of people move there from CA?
Yes, that started happening a lot several years ago when the prices in real estate properties were vastly different. You could buy 2 or 3 nice houses in CO for what you sold your CA home for. Of course, with lots of people willing to pay top dollar for a home, the prices here have skyrockted over the last several years, now the people that were born and raised in this area can't afford to live here. That's not as bad as the health freaks who won't let me smoke in a bar anymore, but that's a different battle.
You know, being in Ft. Collins, CO - I'm only about 30 minutes from Greeley, maybe I should offer this gentleman who's sueing a more... um... direct approach to his problems, for a small fee of course.
took a demo of one of these the other day in the Sprint store. Kind of neat technology, but come on, if you're going to watch tv in a car, at least hook up a decient DiVX or DVD player... sheesh...
You've made some good points here, but I think you missed one of mine. My admin time for both OSes are next to nothing. I do let windows download the patches it needs, install them after I've checked the out and do a reboot. I don't remember patching running patches on the linux box, but I'd imagine that it has it's own automated update procedue. My windows XP box that was orignally going to be a linux install runs more than any other box in the house with the home automation stuff I have it do and had an uptime of 60 days before I took it down for a hardware upgrade.
:-)
I don't have to deal with idiots (except for myself), so I don't have to deal with spyware and I run industial strength antivirus after a run in with Nimda last year.
Don't get me wrong, the more I use windows the more I like linux. If I had the time to spend, and if Linux met my every need, I'd never install another windows machine. I just don't honestly have the time or the skills to get these things working right. Funny thing, even my kids prefer linux... nothing like bringing them up right
After spending 6 months working phone tech (sub-contracted company doing HP Tape drive support, left for a less stress more money job), I had more than my fair share of customers that wanted a quick hardware replacement, usually the tech or IT guys were the worst.
I almost got into phone fight with one tech who "Knew it was a hardware problem." and didn't want to "waste his time" going through the troubleshooing procedure again. Finally having enough (he was to the point of yelling at me) I asked him "Sir, I've fixed 300 tape drives this week, how many have you fixed?". Less than 10 minutes later his first full backup was underway and was simply a delighted customer.
Having seen the other side, I usually take the approach with the tech on the phone of "I've tried this, that AND the other thing, what other steps would you recommend I try before requesting an RMA?". Works wonders. I also ALWAYS ask to speak to their manager if they go the extra mile for me (used to be worth and extra $25 bonus for a call or $50 plus an atta boy for a letter or email). Had one gal tell me that I made her entire day, made me feel great to hear that (and have my phone issues resolved).
I'm not sure that I agree with your views on Linux. I have both linux and windows machines on my home network (windows and HPUX at work). I'm not a Newbe with *nix systems, nor am I a guru. I'm not afriad to RTFM or work at something to make it work right.
I can't count the hours I've "tried to get it to work" in linux, usually when dealing with a sound card issue (or a sound application) of some sort or the WiFi card on my laptop only to give up after a week of frustration only to have the same machine up, running and doing actual work in windows in under an hour. After all that frustraion, I'm now ashamed to say, that any piece of *nix software that doesn't have a binary install for the system I'm working on, I want to look for a different solution before I even try it.
I would MUCH rather run my entire network on Linux, but I've found that for some tasks, using windows just saves hours and frustation. With XP, my admin time is next to nothing (once ATI started producing decient drivers), but the same is said for my linux boxes as well.