A couple license plate readers would accomplish the same feat, without having to port-scan my personal property*. Probably a lot cheaper to do it that way, too.
Nope, computer-vision-based vehicle detection systems are more expensive -- in fact, the only reason why DOTs bother with bluetooth is that it's cheaper (it is not better).
By the way: vision-based VDS detects the whole vehicle (in the sense of "are the pixels in this rectangle we've superimposed on the image of the lane changing?"). One VDS camera can cover the whole width of the freeway (in each direction). Detecting license plates (let alone reading them) would probably be even more expensive because it would require either higher-resolution cameras, a camera for each lane, or both.
This data, in aggregate, gets monitored in real time by DOT employees (some of which are engineers) at a centralized traffic management center. They can use it to:
Clear accidents more quickly by noticing the backup and dispatching responders before it gets called in
Post messages on electronic signs advising travelers to take alternate routes (or, more usually, post travel time messages so that travelers can better inform their own routing decisions)
Use the 511 phone system to advise travelers
Tell news organizations about the traffic conditions (you didn't really think they all collected their own data, right?)
The same kinds of systems are used all over, in many states. Georgia, for example, uses it for vehicle detection in most of the Interstates outside of Metro Atlanta. (In Atlanta they use traditional computer-vision-based detection instead, because it was put in before Bluetooth detection became available and because it gives more detailed data (namely, lane-by-lane vehicle counts).)
I can only assume the reason the CFAA doesn't apply is that these systems don't "connect" to the vehicles' devices is any meaningful way, but rather merely passively listen to them as they go by.
It's great that we can be so connected, but ask yourself this...
The problem is not that a wearable allows you to be "connected," but rather that using it as an interface for "connection" misses the point. The point of wearable computing is context.
how urgent is that email from Amazon?
If, for example, the email is telling you that your order is waiting at the post office, your wearable should tell you that as you're about to travel past it.
Or that calendar invitation about a party next month?
Your wearable should file it as tentative in your calendar, maybe automatically accept or decline the invite based on conflicting engagements and a strong pattern of attendance (or lack thereof) for parties thrown by the same person in the past, and mention it to you next time you ask to review your appointments.
If you want to read emails while pretending to pay attention to someone...
Your wearable should only be displaying an email when one of the conversing parties says something like "hey, remember that email?" and then it ought to be displaying only the relevant one(s).
Smartphones are fundamentally interruptive, yes (they're designed to be a communications technology, after all!). Wearable computers, on the other hand, are designed to work more like "virtual secretaries:" to automatically figure out what you're doing and help you do it.
For example, if you're having a face-to-face conversation with somebody, your wearable should most emphatically not be facilitating a text message or something; instead, it should be using the (automatically detected) fact that you're conversing in order to automatically suppress all other messages and should be storing/outlining/cross-referencing the conversation instead. (This is something your smartphone can't do, because your smartphone isn't able to sense that you're having a conversation.)
This whole "Google Glass distracts people with text messages" BS is just an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that the technology took a detour through cell phones to get to its current state. It should really be considered a misfeature.
The fundamental issue is that the idea of "putting away" a wearable defeats its purpose, which is to augment your perceptions and memory. In a meeting, for example, your wearable is not supposed to be distracting you with other communications, it's supposed to be automatically recording the meeting minutes and cross-referencing topics for you! (In fact, your wearable ought to be able to figure out that you're in a meeting based on your calendar and/or GPS and/or recognizing the fact that you're talking to somebody and automatically set all your communications to "do not disturb" for the duration.)
It was more like: "Cool... Frikkn' Terminator vision!!!"
Google Glass doesn't do that kind of augmented reality. For that, you'd need a display that encompasses your entire field of view at the minimum, plus it's difficult to keep the augmented elements properly registered with the actual scene with a transparent display. (I.e., if you want to draw a circle around a person's head, the circle is going to lag their movement due to processing time unless you make your headgear opaque and re-display the whole screen with the same latency as the processing.) It's the kind of thing that produces not only figurative headaches for the developer, but literal ones (and/or vertigo) for the user.
Sometimes the "angry commuter horn" means you're drifting into their lane and half a second from side-swiping them... ignoring it is a bad idea in that case.
I'll bite. The current people spending like crazy won't even talk about responsible spending, they won't even talk.
Nobody will talk about responsible spending.
The Democrats won't because they like the spending (they just want to raise taxes to compensate.)
The Republicans -- even the Tea Partiers -- won't because they're beholden to their base, which is old hypocritical white folks with the attitude of "waaah, I'm sick of all you losers sucking on the government titty but DON'T YOU DARE FUCK WITH MY SOCIAL SECURITY!!!!"
Everybody else can't because they're not even at the negotiating table.
All right, but apart from thinking like others, not goofing off, pushing back on the schedule, and paying the technical debt, what have the Romans ever done for us?
I guess I don't know... I was working off the premise that Windows applications ought to (and do) have a "standard," consistent look-and-feel, but then I just looked through the UIs of the 10 or so applications I have open right now and pretty much every single one of them is different.
Maybe the follow-up question should be "why can't Microsoft be less schizophrenic about UI standards?"
The real question is, why can't the Visual Studio programmers just use Windows Forms or XAML or whatever the Hell it is every other Windows application developer is "supposed" to use these days, so that VS looks and works like a "normal" application?
The real issue here is the combination of online and in-person attacks.
If the issue is in-person bullying, just go home and maybe tomorrow they'll have forgotten about it (or change schools and start over with a new position in the pecking order).
If the issue is online bullying, just block the bully and you don't have to care anymore.
But if the issue is bullying in-person and online, then just going home or changing schools doesn't help because the online posts live on and remind everyone (or inform the bullies at the new school). And blocking the bully online doesn't help, because you can't block him from telling third parties to bully you.
I once worked on a piece of software, which was commercially sold, but developed by faculty/staff at a university, that was developed on top of another system written at a different university back in the '70s. It basically consisted of a command interpreter for a domain-specific language that was itself written in two other domain-specific languages. One of these languages existed basically to retrofit dynamic memory management into Fortran 77, and so the system contained it's own custom memory management system written in a combination of C and Fortran. At one point it had supported several different kinds of Unix (and some other old stuff like System/370), but by the time I got there it only ran on Windows.
There was no version control, it could only be built with the (out-of-business) Watcom C & Fortran compilers, and for probably the last 20 years the only people who had been programming it were engineers (not computer scientists).
In my experience, the cost of a piece of software tends to be negatively-correlated with its quality. Why? Because expensive software tends to be written for some niche market, which means that (a) there are less total funds available for paying programmers ($10,000 * 10 copies is less than $100 * 10,000 copies) and (b) the people doing the coding tend to be subject-matter experts, not people with formal comp sci or "software engineering" training. (As someone with degrees in civil engineering and comp sci, I can tell you that you do not want the average engineer to write your structural analysis program without hiring a comp sci guy to supervise him!)
I don't need to justify why decentralized services are a good idea; once you understand the design of the Internet it becomes self-evident. The onus is on entities like Google, Facebook and the NSA to explain why they deserve to be given centralized control.
For instance if every router was location aware and knew it's geographic location and the geographic location of the place it was
trying to reach it could send the encrypted packet in the general direction with the knowledge that each node would get it
one step physically closer to it's destination.
That's essentially equivalent to introducing a hierarchy. You're just basing your hierarchy on geographic location, and making it implicit instead of explicit. It may not be a bad idea, but it doesn't count as a solution for the problem I mentioned (which presupposes that you don't want to introduce a hierarchy).
Large hops is still a problem but large hops is really only a problem with stuff
that needs to be close to real-time. For email this isn't really much of a problem as even a 5-10 minute delay or longer isn't
really a big deal.
Consider them in the aggregate: it's not just that each packet traverses more routers, it's that each router has to route more packets. If you double the average number of hops in your network, you also double the load on the network.
Yes, it is. It's also more than that, but to say it imposes no restrictions on end users is false. An end user at law is a non-reseller; the only people it excludes are retail middlemen who possess the goods or services essentially in the form of a bailment. If you modify and redistribute a GPL software package, you're an end user, too.
"End user" in the context of people talking about the GPL means people who don't redistribute. You're using some other unusual and irrelevant definition.
There is no right to use under copyright law. Copyright law does not restrict what you do with a copy you legally possess, but that is not the same thing...
No, you're wrong. If you own a copy of a work you have a right under copyright law to read it if it's a book, or watch it if it's a movie, or listen to it if it's a sound recording, or use it if it's a piece of software. Some assholes once made an argument that you needed some kind of additional permission for software since it's necessarily copied into RAM for use, but 17 USC ss. 117 makes a special exception for software allowing that copy.
Everything else has to come to you in the form of redistribution, which is controlled exclusively by the copyright owner under whatever terms s/he wishes to impose.
But the copyright holder imposes those terms on the distributor, not the receiver (i.e., the end user).
except when they're presented and agreed to prior to the user receiving his copy of the software
There's no legal basis for that.
1. It is a contract of adhesion
2. It is after-the-fact (the agreement and transaction was concluded at the point of sale, before the contract terms were introduced)
3. Because of (2), there is no consideration (the user already has the right to use the software; what else does he get in return for subjecting himself to the EULA's terms?)
It's not even a valley and it is definitely not made of silicon.
Actually, I'm sure that silicon makes up about 30% of the land in Silicon Valley (just like it does everywhere else), and San Francisco Bay was a valley until the end of the last ice age (when it filled up with ocean).
Bullshit. Plenty of decentralized services (including, but not limited to HTTP, email, IRC, etc.) work just fine and centralizing them like Google attempted with XMPP has no conceivable benefit (except to the likes of advertisers and the NSA).
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, computer-vision-based vehicle detection systems are more expensive -- in fact, the only reason why DOTs bother with bluetooth is that it's cheaper (it is not better).
By the way: vision-based VDS detects the whole vehicle (in the sense of "are the pixels in this rectangle we've superimposed on the image of the lane changing?"). One VDS camera can cover the whole width of the freeway (in each direction). Detecting license plates (let alone reading them) would probably be even more expensive because it would require either higher-resolution cameras, a camera for each lane, or both.
This data, in aggregate, gets monitored in real time by DOT employees (some of which are engineers) at a centralized traffic management center. They can use it to:
The same kinds of systems are used all over, in many states. Georgia, for example, uses it for vehicle detection in most of the Interstates outside of Metro Atlanta. (In Atlanta they use traditional computer-vision-based detection instead, because it was put in before Bluetooth detection became available and because it gives more detailed data (namely, lane-by-lane vehicle counts).)
I can only assume the reason the CFAA doesn't apply is that these systems don't "connect" to the vehicles' devices is any meaningful way, but rather merely passively listen to them as they go by.
The problem is not that a wearable allows you to be "connected," but rather that using it as an interface for "connection" misses the point. The point of wearable computing is context.
If, for example, the email is telling you that your order is waiting at the post office, your wearable should tell you that as you're about to travel past it.
Your wearable should file it as tentative in your calendar, maybe automatically accept or decline the invite based on conflicting engagements and a strong pattern of attendance (or lack thereof) for parties thrown by the same person in the past, and mention it to you next time you ask to review your appointments.
Your wearable should only be displaying an email when one of the conversing parties says something like "hey, remember that email?" and then it ought to be displaying only the relevant one(s).
Smartphones are fundamentally interruptive, yes (they're designed to be a communications technology, after all!). Wearable computers, on the other hand, are designed to work more like "virtual secretaries:" to automatically figure out what you're doing and help you do it.
For example, if you're having a face-to-face conversation with somebody, your wearable should most emphatically not be facilitating a text message or something; instead, it should be using the (automatically detected) fact that you're conversing in order to automatically suppress all other messages and should be storing/outlining/cross-referencing the conversation instead. (This is something your smartphone can't do, because your smartphone isn't able to sense that you're having a conversation.)
This whole "Google Glass distracts people with text messages" BS is just an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that the technology took a detour through cell phones to get to its current state. It should really be considered a misfeature.
The fundamental issue is that the idea of "putting away" a wearable defeats its purpose, which is to augment your perceptions and memory. In a meeting, for example, your wearable is not supposed to be distracting you with other communications, it's supposed to be automatically recording the meeting minutes and cross-referencing topics for you! (In fact, your wearable ought to be able to figure out that you're in a meeting based on your calendar and/or GPS and/or recognizing the fact that you're talking to somebody and automatically set all your communications to "do not disturb" for the duration.)
Google Glass doesn't do that kind of augmented reality. For that, you'd need a display that encompasses your entire field of view at the minimum, plus it's difficult to keep the augmented elements properly registered with the actual scene with a transparent display. (I.e., if you want to draw a circle around a person's head, the circle is going to lag their movement due to processing time unless you make your headgear opaque and re-display the whole screen with the same latency as the processing.) It's the kind of thing that produces not only figurative headaches for the developer, but literal ones (and/or vertigo) for the user.
Well, if a large Futurama-style device is acceptable then you can just strap a smartphone to your arm right now...
Sometimes the "angry commuter horn" means you're drifting into their lane and half a second from side-swiping them... ignoring it is a bad idea in that case.
It's transparent and red? I think we've just discovered the Invisible Pink Unicorn equivalent of the devil...!
Nobody will talk about responsible spending.
The Democrats won't because they like the spending (they just want to raise taxes to compensate.)
The Republicans -- even the Tea Partiers -- won't because they're beholden to their base, which is old hypocritical white folks with the attitude of "waaah, I'm sick of all you losers sucking on the government titty but DON'T YOU DARE FUCK WITH MY SOCIAL SECURITY!!!!"
Everybody else can't because they're not even at the negotiating table.
All right, but apart from thinking like others, not goofing off, pushing back on the schedule, and paying the technical debt, what have the Romans ever done for us?
(Wait, what were we talking about again?)
A Beowulf cluster of grammar Nazis!
I guess I don't know... I was working off the premise that Windows applications ought to (and do) have a "standard," consistent look-and-feel, but then I just looked through the UIs of the 10 or so applications I have open right now and pretty much every single one of them is different.
Maybe the follow-up question should be "why can't Microsoft be less schizophrenic about UI standards?"
The real question is, why can't the Visual Studio programmers just use Windows Forms or XAML or whatever the Hell it is every other Windows application developer is "supposed" to use these days, so that VS looks and works like a "normal" application?
You're conflating "libertarian ideals" with the Libertarian Party. They're not the same thing.
Quit treating what is supposed to be a lesson on respecting authority as a game of hide-and-seek, you dumbass!
The real issue here is the combination of online and in-person attacks.
If the issue is in-person bullying, just go home and maybe tomorrow they'll have forgotten about it (or change schools and start over with a new position in the pecking order).
If the issue is online bullying, just block the bully and you don't have to care anymore.
But if the issue is bullying in-person and online, then just going home or changing schools doesn't help because the online posts live on and remind everyone (or inform the bullies at the new school). And blocking the bully online doesn't help, because you can't block him from telling third parties to bully you.
I once worked on a piece of software, which was commercially sold, but developed by faculty/staff at a university, that was developed on top of another system written at a different university back in the '70s. It basically consisted of a command interpreter for a domain-specific language that was itself written in two other domain-specific languages. One of these languages existed basically to retrofit dynamic memory management into Fortran 77, and so the system contained it's own custom memory management system written in a combination of C and Fortran. At one point it had supported several different kinds of Unix (and some other old stuff like System/370), but by the time I got there it only ran on Windows.
There was no version control, it could only be built with the (out-of-business) Watcom C & Fortran compilers, and for probably the last 20 years the only people who had been programming it were engineers (not computer scientists).
In my experience, the cost of a piece of software tends to be negatively-correlated with its quality. Why? Because expensive software tends to be written for some niche market, which means that (a) there are less total funds available for paying programmers ($10,000 * 10 copies is less than $100 * 10,000 copies) and (b) the people doing the coding tend to be subject-matter experts, not people with formal comp sci or "software engineering" training. (As someone with degrees in civil engineering and comp sci, I can tell you that you do not want the average engineer to write your structural analysis program without hiring a comp sci guy to supervise him!)
I don't need to justify why decentralized services are a good idea; once you understand the design of the Internet it becomes self-evident. The onus is on entities like Google, Facebook and the NSA to explain why they deserve to be given centralized control.
You "try again!"
That's essentially equivalent to introducing a hierarchy. You're just basing your hierarchy on geographic location, and making it implicit instead of explicit. It may not be a bad idea, but it doesn't count as a solution for the problem I mentioned (which presupposes that you don't want to introduce a hierarchy).
Consider them in the aggregate: it's not just that each packet traverses more routers, it's that each router has to route more packets. If you double the average number of hops in your network, you also double the load on the network.
"End user" in the context of people talking about the GPL means people who don't redistribute. You're using some other unusual and irrelevant definition.
No, you're wrong. If you own a copy of a work you have a right under copyright law to read it if it's a book, or watch it if it's a movie, or listen to it if it's a sound recording, or use it if it's a piece of software. Some assholes once made an argument that you needed some kind of additional permission for software since it's necessarily copied into RAM for use, but 17 USC ss. 117 makes a special exception for software allowing that copy.
But the copyright holder imposes those terms on the distributor, not the receiver (i.e., the end user).
Actually, I'm sure that silicon makes up about 30% of the land in Silicon Valley (just like it does everywhere else), and San Francisco Bay was a valley until the end of the last ice age (when it filled up with ocean).
Bullshit. Plenty of decentralized services (including, but not limited to HTTP, email, IRC, etc.) work just fine and centralizing them like Google attempted with XMPP has no conceivable benefit (except to the likes of advertisers and the NSA).