Android and iOS are limited in some senses, but that hasn't stopped massively widespread adoption of them either, and that includes on devices more than just phones. In some ways, what was old is new again. For the longest time the actual processing was done on a computer remote to the user, and the user's terminal was basically a dumb device that didn't really do that much. In some ways the Web has made that happen again. Admittedly not as thoroughly since there is client-side stuff going on, but by and large the content isn't kept locally and the local client device only has to be powerful enough to handle the end graphics and sound.
I expect that the business that most customers seeking a live-person for either entail things that aren't so readily done on an ATM, or else the people seeking a live teller have trouble using an ATM. My inlaws are both legally blind. They can't really use ATMs well. They tend to go in and talk to the teller.
The article (or at least the Slashdot synopsis) may be excessively editorializing it, but Intel is threatened by the reduction in the personal computer industry.
Consider that when PCs rose to prominence there were lots of architectures. Even after Wintel and Motorola/Apple dominated personal computers at home, business computing still had other architectures (MIPS, and Alpha immediately come to mind) to the extent that Microsoft felt the need to port their business OS to those platforms, rather than to force x86.
The end of the model that all software has to be compatible with x86/AMD64 and that the gatekeepers for software for new devices (Apple's and Google's respective repositories) require that the software work on their devices almost without respect to the underlying CPUs, plus the 'cloud' model and various other virtual machine models may abstract the software developer away from the physical hardware to the point that we might again see a proliferation of various architectures again. Intel has reigned supreme because it was difficult to port software or to write software to run on everything, but if that has changed then suddenly it doesn't matter what actual CPU is in the phone or tablet or even server, it'll just work when it's time for the software to run.
That's the threat to Intel's business-model, a loss of near-monopoly on processors because new devices don't need Intel's processors.
At least the cleanliness of the machine is something that can be inspected, kind of like how restaurant inspections already look into other kitchen machinery when they visit. If a restaurant machine is not sufficiently clean then it could result in that machine being forced to not operate until it has been sufficiently cleaned and reinspected, and even if the restaurant manages that while the inspector is present it still results in a demerit.
Yep, the longer I take for lunch, the longer I stay at the end of the day. If the work cafeteria isn't serving what I want then it's more time-efficient to walk over to the fast-food restaurant that's 400' away to get something quick than it is to get in the car, drive to a sit-down full-service restaurant, wait for the staff to provide service, eat, wait for the check, and then get back to the office.
Except that when I use an ATM to transact with the bank I'm not working with humans in-concert in real-time with the ATM, I'm working solely with the ATM.
This robot is part of a greater process, and apparently requires interaction with staff both prior to and after its portion of the job. A human in that role might have the ability to adjust work-flow, but apparently the robot is not yet configured to do so.
That's the thing, I've spent my entire career implementing and maintaining computing technology, including a huge amount of troubleshooting and repair where theoretically automated or maintenanceless systems should have not required my intervention.
I'm not going to say that is impossible for AI to do what I do, but AI is itself another layer of technology, subject to both failures in the underlying layers and failures in its own implementation. AI might be better at sorting-out some of its own problems, but there comes a point when the platform upon which its implemented is broken enough that it requires someone external to fix it.
Plus I'd like to see AI figure out how to OTDR and repatch around fiber cable that was chewed-through by rats when the LIU is mounted in a wall-mount enclosure behind an out-of-service boiler in a mechanical room of a 50 year old building that was built without even telephones in-mind originally.
Ex Deus Machina Velarans Alpha Complex KITT The Borg Ghost in the Machine The M5 KARR Moriarty Skynet Nanites The Holographic recreation of Garibaldi Toasters Flying Toasters Video Toasters Kiki Stockhammer
Given the rest of the article summary, presumably student. Which probably means that it's more difficult for students to make changes to the computer, and may prevent Microsoft corporate decisions through automatic updates to inadvertently change things that school admins have purposely set.
I have some rather fond memories of a summer computer repair course that the school district paid-for that recruited a couple of us from each high school to attend. The class itself was mostly meaningless when it came to the hands-on part as we all had a lot of personal experience already, so on the first day when we realized the trainer computers had NE2000-compatible ethernet cards, at lunch we went to one guy's house for Quake Test, and to my house for T-connectors, BNC cable, terminators, and TSRs for the NICs, and we networked the computers and played the demo of quake (without sound) for the duration of the hands-on portion of the class.
id was fairly smart, they probably made more sales because of how widely shared and eventually how widely pirated their games were since that distribution made their titles known. Everyone wanted to play Quake because so many people were already playing it.
Except being summoned by the gate agent when it's time to board your flight after everyone else has already boarded, and where there's still room in the overhead bin...
It also doesn't help that the official standard (or as official as that thing sitting at the ticket counter is) doesn't really match the form-factor of the bin either. We have a couple of bags that are thicker than the official standard but when placed in the overhead bin with the handle toward the outside of the plane, wheels toward the hatch and down, fit with enough room for a hat or a coat to be stuffed in on top. Once we were forced to gate-check these bags even though they fit the official width and height, just not the thickness, but they have fit easily in previous airplanes of the same series before.
The problem that I saw most were people with suitcases that when wheels-down were too tall, so they are too long and would prevent the door from closing, so they turn them sideways.
So do what I've wanted them to do for ages.. Give their first-class passengers free access to the swanky private lounges that they maintain, give them one or two free drink coupons for the privilege, and then have the gate agent come get them when it's time to board first-class. In the meantime keep the overhead bins in first-class closed so that people flying coach don't stuff their baggage in there on their way through.
Wife used to fly a lot for work and had a membership to the US Airways Club. It was nice. Free snacks and non-alcoholic drinks, reasonably-priced alcoholic drinks. Well insulated from noise. Interior decor comfortable, and good choices to minimize sound carrying from others in the lounge. Tons of electrical and even some with data jacks back from before Wifi was ubiquitous, plus better wifi than the airport has. Work cubicle areas for those who need to conduct business while they wait during a layover without causing a disturbance. Free magazines, and I don't just mean the crappy skymall stuff.
If a first-class ticket meant getting free admissions to the private lounges and the perks therein, it would be a lot more desirable to pay those prices.
Space stations in close orbit require regular attention to keep them from falling from orbit. A space station further out would not suffer this and would also be further from current patterns of orbital debris. Additionally a lagrange-point orbit would be a nice laboratory in preparation for deeper solar system missions where the personnel might even be able to be rescued if there's a problem, kind of how a lunar base might help us learn about missions to other planetary bodies where the outpost is close enough to rescue personnel if there's a problem.
Plus we've got this orbital altitude worked out. Let's push ourselves again.
There are manufacturing processes that do not work so well when gravity is a factor, for such things as Foam Metals. It's also possible that such habitats would be useful for orbiting platforms for workers that deal with the machines that would do space-based resource extraction, though admittedly that may be quite some time in the making.
I doubt that anyone actually involved thinks this will be inexpensive. To the contrary, this stuff will probably be very expensive, but research and development usually is expensive.
I'm curious if Falcon Heavy and a suitable capsule ever get man-rated, if a new space station could be constructed further out and cost-effectively crewed and resupplied. Something out as far as geostationary first, then possibly an Earth-Moon Lagrange point like L4 or L5 where simple stationkeeping wouldn't require much if any fuel. It's not going to be easy or cheap, but if launching the rockets needed to put payloads that far out becomes much less expensive than it historically has cost then it might not be entirely unfeasible.
How are they going to have all those people hanging off the outside of the train in the vacuum?
Just a theory, this is a way to put a stop to that and to make a form of longer distance mass-transit more appealing to middle-class Indians that might currently avoid it specifically due to the conditions on the conventional rail lines...
Sure, some replacement side mirrors can cost over $100. Replacement side mirrors may have significant markup though. Dealerships charge a lot more for parts than those parts need to cost, and aftermarket manufacturers of such parts have had to spend money to reverse-engineer to make functionally-identical parts that are not sold the same volume as original manufacturing for new cars.
That $100 side mirror assembly is probably a quarter that cost when factored over millions and millions of units across multiple vehicles from a given manufacturer for many model years of production. When an automaker is talking, those kinds of numbers are the ones to consider, not the replacement-cost numbers.
2. Mirrors have blind spots. Cameras don't.
If that's so then why does every backup-camera system and every owner's manual insist that the driver look around and not trust the camera's view?
Besides, I've had daily drivers as old as model-year 1978 and as new as model-year 2015. In every case the older vehicles were easier to see out of even with little mirrors that were mounted further back on the doors compared to modern vehicles with forward-mounted mirrors right at the A-pillars plus massive A-pillars to boot.
3. Side mirrors create drag, increasing fuel consumption.
How much drag? Is the drag caused by the inclusion of side mirrors greater than the drag caused by the basic automotive body styling? 'cause when I look at that Chevy Silverado, of course it's not the brick-shape but the little side mirrors that are really slowing the vehicle down.
4. Side mirrors limit car-to-car parking distance for self-parking cars.
That aforementioned car from 1978 had bodywork that was wider than the side mirrors stuck out. The widest part of the body was wider than the side mirrors.
Besides, how close do you want to trust these cars parking together? What happens if there's a flat tire and the vehicle leans over a little bit? Are you going to advocate for adding vehicle suspension stabilization too?
5. Rear view cameras and displays are already mandatory on all new cars, so the mirrors are redundant.
Rear view cameras are only necessary because trunk lids are half-again taller than they used to be on coupes and sedans, and the rear lower-window height is taller than it used to be on minivans and other wagon-bodied vehicles like SUVs, and because trucks all ride at 4x4 height even when they're only two wheel drive. Modern automotive design sucks when it comes to driver view. A-pillars and B-pillars are huge and create significant blind spots. Mirrors are poorly designed such that looking at the side mirror results in seeing the frame of that mirror in the reflection, losing on viewing angle. Windows are small and high so that drivers get poor lower visibility to the ground in front of them.
When vehicles are designed with giving the driver as much view as possible then active camera systems are unnecessary, but automotive designers have gotten lazy and are giving us crap when it comes to the actual driving experience itself.
That's what I'm wondering too. They're cheap to manufacture, very reliable (most vehicles go to the scrapper with their original mirrors still fitted) and short of adjustment to fit an individual driver, don't require any work on the part of the driver to use.
The only thing I would see being potentially useful would be figuring out how to aim the mirrors for a given driver without that driver having to do much beyond taking a seat. That would probably be a matter of figuring out where the driver's face is in three dimensions, and then adjusting the mirrors as appropriate. Only issue here is that most people seem to want to see the door handles in the side mirrors, while aiming wider than that is better practice for reducing blind-spots. Such a system might need to be tweakable so that the driver gets the mirrors as wide or narrow as wanted. Since some vehicles have memory to set the power mirrors while they set the power seat to the driver template preference this might not be that difficult to achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
Android and iOS are limited in some senses, but that hasn't stopped massively widespread adoption of them either, and that includes on devices more than just phones. In some ways, what was old is new again. For the longest time the actual processing was done on a computer remote to the user, and the user's terminal was basically a dumb device that didn't really do that much. In some ways the Web has made that happen again. Admittedly not as thoroughly since there is client-side stuff going on, but by and large the content isn't kept locally and the local client device only has to be powerful enough to handle the end graphics and sound.
I expect that the business that most customers seeking a live-person for either entail things that aren't so readily done on an ATM, or else the people seeking a live teller have trouble using an ATM. My inlaws are both legally blind. They can't really use ATMs well. They tend to go in and talk to the teller.
The article (or at least the Slashdot synopsis) may be excessively editorializing it, but Intel is threatened by the reduction in the personal computer industry.
Consider that when PCs rose to prominence there were lots of architectures. Even after Wintel and Motorola/Apple dominated personal computers at home, business computing still had other architectures (MIPS, and Alpha immediately come to mind) to the extent that Microsoft felt the need to port their business OS to those platforms, rather than to force x86.
The end of the model that all software has to be compatible with x86/AMD64 and that the gatekeepers for software for new devices (Apple's and Google's respective repositories) require that the software work on their devices almost without respect to the underlying CPUs, plus the 'cloud' model and various other virtual machine models may abstract the software developer away from the physical hardware to the point that we might again see a proliferation of various architectures again. Intel has reigned supreme because it was difficult to port software or to write software to run on everything, but if that has changed then suddenly it doesn't matter what actual CPU is in the phone or tablet or even server, it'll just work when it's time for the software to run.
That's the threat to Intel's business-model, a loss of near-monopoly on processors because new devices don't need Intel's processors.
At least the cleanliness of the machine is something that can be inspected, kind of like how restaurant inspections already look into other kitchen machinery when they visit. If a restaurant machine is not sufficiently clean then it could result in that machine being forced to not operate until it has been sufficiently cleaned and reinspected, and even if the restaurant manages that while the inspector is present it still results in a demerit.
Yep, the longer I take for lunch, the longer I stay at the end of the day. If the work cafeteria isn't serving what I want then it's more time-efficient to walk over to the fast-food restaurant that's 400' away to get something quick than it is to get in the car, drive to a sit-down full-service restaurant, wait for the staff to provide service, eat, wait for the check, and then get back to the office.
Except that when I use an ATM to transact with the bank I'm not working with humans in-concert in real-time with the ATM, I'm working solely with the ATM.
This robot is part of a greater process, and apparently requires interaction with staff both prior to and after its portion of the job. A human in that role might have the ability to adjust work-flow, but apparently the robot is not yet configured to do so.
Does dripping gear-oil count?
Beedeebeedeebeedee... fuck you, Buck!
(supposedly a real outtake from Mel Blanc when he was getting annoyed/tired after a long day in the recording studio)
That's the thing, I've spent my entire career implementing and maintaining computing technology, including a huge amount of troubleshooting and repair where theoretically automated or maintenanceless systems should have not required my intervention.
I'm not going to say that is impossible for AI to do what I do, but AI is itself another layer of technology, subject to both failures in the underlying layers and failures in its own implementation. AI might be better at sorting-out some of its own problems, but there comes a point when the platform upon which its implemented is broken enough that it requires someone external to fix it.
Plus I'd like to see AI figure out how to OTDR and repatch around fiber cable that was chewed-through by rats when the LIU is mounted in a wall-mount enclosure behind an out-of-service boiler in a mechanical room of a 50 year old building that was built without even telephones in-mind originally.
Ah yes, that Forbin project...
Ex Deus Machina
Velarans
Alpha Complex
KITT
The Borg
Ghost in the Machine
The M5
KARR
Moriarty
Skynet
Nanites
The Holographic recreation of Garibaldi
Toasters
Flying Toasters
Video Toasters
Kiki Stockhammer
Given the rest of the article summary, presumably student. Which probably means that it's more difficult for students to make changes to the computer, and may prevent Microsoft corporate decisions through automatic updates to inadvertently change things that school admins have purposely set.
I have some rather fond memories of a summer computer repair course that the school district paid-for that recruited a couple of us from each high school to attend. The class itself was mostly meaningless when it came to the hands-on part as we all had a lot of personal experience already, so on the first day when we realized the trainer computers had NE2000-compatible ethernet cards, at lunch we went to one guy's house for Quake Test, and to my house for T-connectors, BNC cable, terminators, and TSRs for the NICs, and we networked the computers and played the demo of quake (without sound) for the duration of the hands-on portion of the class.
id was fairly smart, they probably made more sales because of how widely shared and eventually how widely pirated their games were since that distribution made their titles known. Everyone wanted to play Quake because so many people were already playing it.
Neither will anyone else boarding in the adjacent rows.
Except being summoned by the gate agent when it's time to board your flight after everyone else has already boarded, and where there's still room in the overhead bin...
It also doesn't help that the official standard (or as official as that thing sitting at the ticket counter is) doesn't really match the form-factor of the bin either. We have a couple of bags that are thicker than the official standard but when placed in the overhead bin with the handle toward the outside of the plane, wheels toward the hatch and down, fit with enough room for a hat or a coat to be stuffed in on top. Once we were forced to gate-check these bags even though they fit the official width and height, just not the thickness, but they have fit easily in previous airplanes of the same series before.
The problem that I saw most were people with suitcases that when wheels-down were too tall, so they are too long and would prevent the door from closing, so they turn them sideways.
So have the cabin crew close the bins over the rows that aren't boarding, and have them stop passengers that are trying to open the closed bins.
So do what I've wanted them to do for ages.. Give their first-class passengers free access to the swanky private lounges that they maintain, give them one or two free drink coupons for the privilege, and then have the gate agent come get them when it's time to board first-class. In the meantime keep the overhead bins in first-class closed so that people flying coach don't stuff their baggage in there on their way through.
Wife used to fly a lot for work and had a membership to the US Airways Club. It was nice. Free snacks and non-alcoholic drinks, reasonably-priced alcoholic drinks. Well insulated from noise. Interior decor comfortable, and good choices to minimize sound carrying from others in the lounge. Tons of electrical and even some with data jacks back from before Wifi was ubiquitous, plus better wifi than the airport has. Work cubicle areas for those who need to conduct business while they wait during a layover without causing a disturbance. Free magazines, and I don't just mean the crappy skymall stuff.
If a first-class ticket meant getting free admissions to the private lounges and the perks therein, it would be a lot more desirable to pay those prices.
Not true, they do not size the overhead baggage compartments to the number of seats entirely correctly.
Space stations in close orbit require regular attention to keep them from falling from orbit. A space station further out would not suffer this and would also be further from current patterns of orbital debris. Additionally a lagrange-point orbit would be a nice laboratory in preparation for deeper solar system missions where the personnel might even be able to be rescued if there's a problem, kind of how a lunar base might help us learn about missions to other planetary bodies where the outpost is close enough to rescue personnel if there's a problem.
Plus we've got this orbital altitude worked out. Let's push ourselves again.
There are manufacturing processes that do not work so well when gravity is a factor, for such things as Foam Metals. It's also possible that such habitats would be useful for orbiting platforms for workers that deal with the machines that would do space-based resource extraction, though admittedly that may be quite some time in the making.
I doubt that anyone actually involved thinks this will be inexpensive. To the contrary, this stuff will probably be very expensive, but research and development usually is expensive.
I'm curious if Falcon Heavy and a suitable capsule ever get man-rated, if a new space station could be constructed further out and cost-effectively crewed and resupplied. Something out as far as geostationary first, then possibly an Earth-Moon Lagrange point like L4 or L5 where simple stationkeeping wouldn't require much if any fuel. It's not going to be easy or cheap, but if launching the rockets needed to put payloads that far out becomes much less expensive than it historically has cost then it might not be entirely unfeasible.
How are they going to have all those people hanging off the outside of the train in the vacuum?
Just a theory, this is a way to put a stop to that and to make a form of longer distance mass-transit more appealing to middle-class Indians that might currently avoid it specifically due to the conditions on the conventional rail lines...
1. Mirrors don't cost $0.50. A side mirror assembly can cost over $100.
Not quite.
Sure, some replacement side mirrors can cost over $100. Replacement side mirrors may have significant markup though. Dealerships charge a lot more for parts than those parts need to cost, and aftermarket manufacturers of such parts have had to spend money to reverse-engineer to make functionally-identical parts that are not sold the same volume as original manufacturing for new cars.
That $100 side mirror assembly is probably a quarter that cost when factored over millions and millions of units across multiple vehicles from a given manufacturer for many model years of production. When an automaker is talking, those kinds of numbers are the ones to consider, not the replacement-cost numbers.
2. Mirrors have blind spots. Cameras don't.
If that's so then why does every backup-camera system and every owner's manual insist that the driver look around and not trust the camera's view?
Besides, I've had daily drivers as old as model-year 1978 and as new as model-year 2015. In every case the older vehicles were easier to see out of even with little mirrors that were mounted further back on the doors compared to modern vehicles with forward-mounted mirrors right at the A-pillars plus massive A-pillars to boot.
3. Side mirrors create drag, increasing fuel consumption.
How much drag? Is the drag caused by the inclusion of side mirrors greater than the drag caused by the basic automotive body styling? 'cause when I look at that Chevy Silverado, of course it's not the brick-shape but the little side mirrors that are really slowing the vehicle down.
4. Side mirrors limit car-to-car parking distance for self-parking cars.
That aforementioned car from 1978 had bodywork that was wider than the side mirrors stuck out. The widest part of the body was wider than the side mirrors.
Besides, how close do you want to trust these cars parking together? What happens if there's a flat tire and the vehicle leans over a little bit? Are you going to advocate for adding vehicle suspension stabilization too?
5. Rear view cameras and displays are already mandatory on all new cars, so the mirrors are redundant.
Rear view cameras are only necessary because trunk lids are half-again taller than they used to be on coupes and sedans, and the rear lower-window height is taller than it used to be on minivans and other wagon-bodied vehicles like SUVs, and because trucks all ride at 4x4 height even when they're only two wheel drive. Modern automotive design sucks when it comes to driver view. A-pillars and B-pillars are huge and create significant blind spots. Mirrors are poorly designed such that looking at the side mirror results in seeing the frame of that mirror in the reflection, losing on viewing angle. Windows are small and high so that drivers get poor lower visibility to the ground in front of them.
When vehicles are designed with giving the driver as much view as possible then active camera systems are unnecessary, but automotive designers have gotten lazy and are giving us crap when it comes to the actual driving experience itself.
That's what I'm wondering too. They're cheap to manufacture, very reliable (most vehicles go to the scrapper with their original mirrors still fitted) and short of adjustment to fit an individual driver, don't require any work on the part of the driver to use.
The only thing I would see being potentially useful would be figuring out how to aim the mirrors for a given driver without that driver having to do much beyond taking a seat. That would probably be a matter of figuring out where the driver's face is in three dimensions, and then adjusting the mirrors as appropriate. Only issue here is that most people seem to want to see the door handles in the side mirrors, while aiming wider than that is better practice for reducing blind-spots. Such a system might need to be tweakable so that the driver gets the mirrors as wide or narrow as wanted. Since some vehicles have memory to set the power mirrors while they set the power seat to the driver template preference this might not be that difficult to achieve.
So office workers running errands and government employees using the shuttles to visit other departments are now rich people?