The problem is that no one really understands what Tesla was trying to do. A lot of radio engineers say that there would have been a loss of signal with distance that would limit the available power that could be transmitted, even assuming lossless conditions.
Imagine a light bulb at the other end of the room and you have a light meter. The further you get away from the light bulb, the lower the light level that falls on the meter and the reading goes down.... Distance is the problem.
Now fill the room with mirrors, wall, floor and ceiling, that are nearly perfectly reflective. Turn the light on. Now the light is going to be present wherever you are in the room, because the reflection is offsetting the losses of light to the wall, and you can, theoretically, collect the same amount of light wherever you are in the room.
I believe this was the principle Tesla was working on. He believed he had worked out a way for the power to be reflected around within the air so that, whever you were, you could effectively receive power from all directions even with a single transmitter like in the above example. How much would have been lost to absorption? Who knows. But Tesla was a long way ahead of others, not only in terms of theory, but in practical ways as well. If he felt it would have worked, it probably would have worked.
There might have been other problems that developed from it, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't have worked.
Even today, there's much about what Tesla was doing that we don't understand. It's very difficult to evaluate his ideas and concepts by standards that may not necessarily apply to him.
Science isn't complete unless you consider every aspect, and determining energy on a FPA is about as easy as calculating turbulence.
Easy enough to test though. Take the camera and the car. Take more pictures. If the car damaged the camera, then more damage will occur. Even if the car did damage the camera initially, but no more damage occurs, then the camera was already in the process of failing and just waiting for the right opportunity, but most likely it would mean, beyond reasonable doubt, that the camera was not damaged by the car.
Why argue science when a simple empirical test will give the correct answer?
It's Media Player. The SEEK bar is missing on "specific files" - Or, rather, specific files triggered this "feature"
Now Media player is like F(*^(& YouTube, where you can't do anything but Pause and Play as your rights as a consumer are eroded. The ONLY reason to have flags in the media player so you can't seek through it is to ensure that you have to watch the full video, which is something that content creators want over us.
I never thought they'd push this crap all the way to our desktop though.
Yes, I have a VR setup. It's hanging next to my "Beefed up" stock 15-year-old computer, that runs VR apps just fine... At least most of them. Anyone who games usually has such a "beefed up" computer already, unless they never made a gaming PC. Accusing me of not having played anything in VR just because I don't agree with your point of view is disingenuous though.
And Valve is just as bad as Oculus, though I couldn't tell you which one is worse.
Still, no such method to force VR to allow room scale concepts to be taken sitting down exists, though feel free to name one otherwise.
I'll wait.
After all, it is to my advantage if you can do so.
This is actually the real reason that VR is dying/failing. There's no recognition that VR needs to occur in a chair for most of us. There was this idea that people would make a VR room and walk around in it, and this was driven by the idiots at Oculus more than anyone, as a means to lock out competition. Well, it worked - the competition stayed outside and so did the customers.
Yet, there's absolutely NO way to "float" around a room-scale VR solution at all while seated. VR games lock you into a "step/jump" approach to movement, or force you to just not play at all, since it's "for your own good that you don't get sick"... What a load of crap. ANY time that an option or decision isn't available to you, it's an indication that the developers don't want you to have any choice.
Probably the only time we'll ever get a half decent title will be "VR Wheelchair Simulator" and I bet they will still try to make us "jump" from scene to scene.
Meanwhile the problems with optimizing the solution leaves developers VR-shy and we get even less choice.
Aside from this, there are problems - such as low resolution, poor tracking and the likes, but generally most of these can be forgiven. What can't be forgiven is this whole room-scale/Sitting difference that should never have existed before as anything other than a check-box on the controls that were handled by the VR platform itself and not the game. And this doesn't exist and will likely never exist.
Because, fundamentally, people don't like walled gardens. Not even VR ones.
1) - It's moot and depends entirely on the outcome and variables, none of which the AI is aware of.
2) - Sure - The AI doesn't ever decide to kill their entire family - Most of the time it will make better decisions than they will. Yet people still get drunk and put their family in the car and go driving all the time. Generally, even these people will choose AI over human.
3) - The engineers will almost certainly be required to protect the passengers over the pedestrian, since it's lawful to kill another to save yourself. Generally, what this argument will boil down to is whether AI can be allowed to take risks that might result in pedestrian injury - eg, can they overtake "close" if there's a risk that the pedestrian will step out in front like most drivers do? Can they drive faster than the road conditions allow based on "trust" that the road will still be there and there won't be pedestrians? People in cars don't like to be delayed, so there's an argument for increasing risk, but if you're not in control, then the AI might decide that a 3 hour commute instead of the usual 30 minutes, due to high levels of foot traffic in the area, is warranted.
So the moral questions may be irrelevant, and the risk will end up being worn by the passengers, who will have to ensure they take appropriate precautions - eg, Wear seatbelts, accept longer commute times, etc.
The real question is whether people will still choose AI when it's a much safer option, but is far less convenient than making your own driving decisions...
Oops, forgot the end of the story.... And the punchline.
So a few years l applied at the same place. During the interview, they remembered my name... So I recounted the story of what happened before.
They took it as a demonstration that I was responsible and once again offered me a job there. It was only a short role, but it was very important to me at the time.
So one Friday, I get two jobs, one after the other. I was made redundant on the Monday, with my wedding on Saturday, and landed two roles by Friday's end. Now, the problem was I had already accepted one of the roles, but it was a stop-gap role and I knew might not have led to long term employment.
Not much I could do - My obligation was to my new wife... So I accepted the better role and never looked back.
But I didn't want to let the other company down - they were expecting me to show Monday and I really had needed the work, and had committed to at least a short term with them - so my last Friday night conversation was to a long-term unemployed friend.
"Hey Kevin, sorry I couldn't invite you to the wedding, since we're really tight on the list and it's just close family only, but you know you've been looking for a job? Well, print out your resume, and do me a favor and show up for me on Monday at this address at 7am, and apologize for me since I have to take a job elsewhere, and take your resume with you, because I'm pretty sure they're going to offer you the job on the spot as they will be in a tight situation."
The outcome? He showed up and said the conversation went along the lines of;
"Are you David? I remember you looked different last week." "Nah, David can't show up, but didn't have a number to ring to tell you." "Was he sick? He should have just called." "No, he got another job late Friday, but he felt bad since he knew you needed him, so asked me to apologize for him and stand in if necessary." "I don't suppose you happen to have a resume on you?"
So my long-term unemployed friend who had done me a few favors in the past walks straight into a job that never would have given him a second glance otherwise since he hadn't worked for more than five years for personal reasons. Turned out to be a good fit and after working there for the full project, he stayed in the industry.
There are systems like this where I live, though they are not widely known. I've probably contributed tens of thousands of dollars to government finances through reporting bad drivers. It's a discretion thing - it takes a lot of effort to report another driver, and I have to make sure the evidence is on video and is in breach of the road laws. I also have to fill in a statement, which means attending a police station. Unless someone does something really bad in front of me, I just let it go.
This has two effects on me.
The first is I find myself ignoring minor infractions. If I let it go, I really let it go. It doesn't bother me when other drivers cut me off or pull out in front as long as I can stop in time and there's not much likelihood of an accident. I make space for others in my lane. People going around me doesn't bother me now. Knowing I'm not going to do anything about minor infractions takes away the stress of simply dealing with bad drivers on the road. Also if I don't catch it on camera, I still just let it go no matter what the circumstances.
The other effect is that the changes I see in my own driving has surprised me the most. Once you start openly judging other drivers, you question your own habits more. I'm far less likely to break rules myself now, and even find myself defending drivers whose driving is just bad, but not illegal. But if I'd see someone else fined for it, I'll avoid it entirely myself. Even if I think I can get away with it.
It's easy to have mixed feelings about it, because we deal with traffic cops, who often look for any slight breach to fine us, and really don't work in a fair way. The general public are far better judges on what should and shouldn't be ignored. And it frees up police resources. It doesn't take much of a change in attitude to improve road safety.
But doing something about it is better than getting home and having a whinge about some guy who nearly hit us and ran a red light.
So does this mean they will turn the OTA update servers online? The disruption wasn't just to ZTE's future business. It really caused problems for millions of ZTE phone users also.
It's easy to maintain the balance... FORCE the balance.
Eliminate the charge for services to those who effectively become human guinea pigs.
The corporates benefit from human trials for which they aren't held accountable more than a minimum level.
The patients benefit from free treatment.
However this will not occur and I think, in practice, this will just become a new way to fleece desperate people out of everything they own for a solution which is most likely going to kill them and there will be no balance.
Australia defined a standard about how big a feature had to be to be regarded as "coastline" - same with rivers mouths and the like. Once this was defined, then anything outside of this definition no longer counted, and the coastline was measured quite accurately, in a way that if measured in the future, could identify whether the coastline was shrinking or expanding.
It was quite an interesting and ambitious project at the time - the concept that a full PC could be manufactured for less than $1000. Many of us, at the time, said things like, "Think of all the cool things we could do with a laptop that only costs $100"... And you know, this was back when a laptop typically cost around $1000 or more, and was a complex computer.
Sure, it was ambitious, but it pushed the concept of a cheaper laptop for children far before anything in it's time, and first sub-$500 laptops came out.. Early small-screen devices with pretty good, if somewhat degraded performance.
And pretty soon the market realized that this was possible, and there was a market for it - cheaper laptops for kids and people who wouldn't otherwise use a computer.
So the market responded, and the capabilities that technology could bring changed. Smaller displays came out. Cheaper processors. Lower cost memory solutions. And people started buying these and pushing for embedded-able systems, and it happened.
Sure, OLPC as a product was a complete failure - they were like a pre-kickstarter project gone wrong - but they were the spark that lit the fire that continued to grow in intensity and they did succeed in one simply object just by existing - they re-aligned the market.
But, in a way, the vision they had wasn't lost. It was influenced, and it came to be... Just not with them.
So the end result was achieved by a failed project - which then brings up the question as to whether the project was to bring low-cost computers to children in third-world countries so they could change the world, or whether it was to sell laptops.
Because only one of those objectives wasn't achieved.
Of course, the Raspberry Pi was probably the spiritual successor to this concept and came out much later without the same fanfare and backslapping, but it did manage to succeed and change the world.
Most wouldn't have any idea how to help you comply or care about their obligations under law.... But if it's just AutoCAD files, you don't need AutoDESK. In fact, you can provide better files with competing CAD packages.
Corel Suite X8 and CorelCAD... Not only do they replace pretty much everything that Autodesk and Adobe make, but they even work together.
CorelCAD is pretty good too. Getting on towards being a Solidworks alternative since the 2018 version.
And both, while they do have license checks and online activation, work quite happily without a connection, and you can even get a license file from Corel for offline activation if you want....
And there's a really cost-effective home/student version available too....
I know Corel are talking about subscription only in the future, but so far, they are picking up ex-Adobe customers for not having one, and the home price on Amazon probably cuts down on piracy. Meanwhile if Corel ever goes subscription only with the CAD, then there's Draftsight and Graebert Ares Commander, which are alternative providers for the same software.
If you don't like subscription software, move to non-subscription software. It's cheap enough to do so, and CorelCAD gives AutoCAD a real run for it's money IMO. ( It's an Autocad clone, so there's no learning curve... Similar UI, Same commands, works with AutoLISP etc. )
The paper system is far to easy to control and rig.
A better solution is to use computers in a way that provides a reasonable amount of certainty.
The way to do this would be via something like blockchain and public keys. Then make the entire voting record public after each election, but in it's encrypted form.
Anyone could check that their vote wasn't tampered with, and the results would still be secret. There would be far less failure to accept the result of an election if people had more certainty that the outcome wasn't tampered with.
This would also allow voting from home via the Internet, so polling places and the associated problems with them would disappear.
After this... Who cares about the mechanics such as how the vote is tallied. That would be something that changes over time based on other factors and cultural drives.
Don't forget to add how no one even has to train to be a Jedi any more... They just learn to meditate and *poof* Instant Jedi.
At least we now know that Anakin didn't kill the younglings, because according to "The Last Jedi" there's no way a trained sith could defeat an idiot with a lightsaber, let alone a little kid, and especially not a bunch of kids... Obi Wan must have just lied about the video.
I'm not denying that there is a place for university courses and standardized testing. It's always been recognized. But if you're doing the same work as an engineer, for a similar period, then you're recognized as a PE in Australia after five years on the job.
I'm not arguing that one is better than the other - and readily admit that it's a lot easier if you can just get someone else to teach you - but if you're self-taught and applying it at a high level, every job is an exam and the pass-mark is 100%.
But calling me a technician is a little bit rude. All of our engineering work had to be done by us. This began with a design brief, and a project description. We'd design computers ( not assemble, design... ) and select the chips and chipset, measure up space and mounting points so we could design the circuit boards and begin putting together a new computer. No auto-routing - It was all done by hand to ensure we could achieve lower costs by using less layers - And we had to pre-calculate everything from power consumption to modes of failure. We had to create our own digital logic chips, and design of programmable logic was performed from data-sheets - not from high level applications.
When designing communications systems, we had to introduce error correction systems, and predict functionality of packet loss, and determine safe operating parameters with arbiter systems so that in the event of loss of control, the machine could be safely stopped.
When switching mains circuits, we had to calculate power factors and safe operating margins for all equipment, and unlike today when bugs are just a way of life, we had to demonstrate our computers would continue working under ALL conditions. A common test was for the boss ( a trained engineer and an expert ) to drop his keys onto our uncovered and uninsulated circuit boards and jingle them around, causing massive shorts, and our boards were not to fail in an unplanned method. All calculations had to be completed on time and any routines taking too long were trapped and reset, and the systems needed to come up from a reset without loss of data. Everything was designed to be redundant.Even code.
I'd suggest that's not the sort of stuff an engineer fresh out of uni could handle. Many struggled with the basics of electronics - especially timing circuits in digital systems. Most struggled with concepts such as building a UART from discrete logic, or constructing in-circuit emulators.
For those of us who did it the hard way, I'd suggest that the formal government recognition of our qualification as engineers was long overdue.
Kind of sad to take that kind of an attitude. As I mentioned, universities weren't capable of much more than "Heath Kit" lessons of the era - Yes, I did do some study at university prior to getting a job in a lab, even if I never completed a course. Meanwhile, mid-80's I was already building computers from scratch, writing the OS firmware and then finding ways to improve on the architecture of the era.
What exactly do you think I was going to learn at a university that I wasn't expected to already know in the field? The head of department at the university I did briefly attend had already provided me with exemptions in every electronic and computer hardware related unit that was a part of the course. Even they didn't expect me to demonstrate any further proficiency in those areas.
I get that you were trying for a mix of condescending and insulting with your 1 in 10,000 remark, but in reality, anyone who continues working as an engineer for five years in industry, without being fired for being incompetent, has demonstrated they know all of the appropriate calculations necessary to do their job. At that point, it's pretty much 1:1 and the kinds of mistakes that get made are usually the same kind of mistakes that even a uni-trained engineer will make.
Even now, I still have to verify engineering estimates and ensure that they are correct, and it's rare not to find engineering errors in a large project - some big enough to prevent project success.
Being self taught wasn't instead of learning - and if you like the subject, it's never a hard slug. Being self-taught was the price of entry just to get a job in some of those industries in the early days. Learning on the job and being taught on the job both occur from that point on. It's just like university, except the passing mark on a project is 100% or find another job. Or, to para-quote NASA, Failure is not an option.
The Australian government recognized that 5 years of practical on-the-job training is as good as 4 years of university training plus 4 years of on-the-job training. Because it takes 4 years to train someone to the level than an employer will even look at them. So allowing an additional year for a non-graduate engineer to be trained at an accelerated pace is reasonable.
After all, simply having the title "engineer" isn't sufficient - you have to be doing the same work as a graduate engineer would be expected to do. It's not like I got a free ride or anything. Some would regard having to complete the equivalent of four years of university in a single year to be even more onerous.
I'm not the only one either - I've worked with a lot of other non-graduate engineers as well as graduate engineers and they were all at a very high level. It's not uncommon, but maybe you just got a bad batch up in Canada or something.
Here's the qualification requirements;
3.2 Engineering stream
Experienced engineer means a Professional engineer with the undermentioned qualifications engaged in any particular employment where the adequate discharge of any portion of the duties requires qualifications of the employee as (or at least equal to those of) a member of Engineers Australia. The qualifications are as follows:
(a) membership of Engineers Australia;or
(b) having graduated in a four or five year course at a university recognised by Engineers Australia,four years’experience on professional engineering duties since becoming a Qualified engineer;or
(c) not having so graduated,five years of such experience.
Graduate engineer means a person who is the holder of a university degree (four or five year course) recognised by Engineers Australia or is the holder of a degree,diploma or other testamur which:
(d) has been issued by a technical university,an institute of technology,a European technical high school (technische hochschule) or polytechnic or other similar educational establishment;and
(e) is recognised by Engineers Australia as attaining a standard similar to a university degree;
As an industry trained engineer, I've been doing engineering for a few decades. From designing computers and electronics in the 80's to performing and presenting current scientific research, it's just been a part of my life, but previously, I could only refer to myself as an "Amateur Engineer". It's not that I'm not trained, I just wasn't trained in a university. Back in the 80's when I learned to design computers ( as an autodidact ) there simply wasn't a university path open for me as I was in high school at the time, and I was taken in by an R&D lab before I could study further and quickly gained skills and experience beyond what the universities were teaching at the time so never went back to university.
Still, not being able to refer to myself as an engineer caused many problem, especially when registering for government projects or work - where are best I could only call myself a "technician" despite having working in many roles where I was the lead engineer and managed other engineers. It made it pretty difficult finding new work at times also.
Now the Australian government has finally recognized that if you work as an engineer, doing the kind of work that an engineer would normally be expected to do, for a period of five cumulative years, you've proven your point and are recognized not only as an experienced engineer, but as a professional engineer.
Anyone might still be able to claim to be an engineer in Australia, but at least those who have spent years actually doing engineering as a career and were trained on-the-job have finally gained formal recognition as providers of professional services now, whether trained in a university or otherwise. And it's in legislation.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that no one really understands what Tesla was trying to do. A lot of radio engineers say that there would have been a loss of signal with distance that would limit the available power that could be transmitted, even assuming lossless conditions.
Imagine a light bulb at the other end of the room and you have a light meter. The further you get away from the light bulb, the lower the light level that falls on the meter and the reading goes down.... Distance is the problem.
Now fill the room with mirrors, wall, floor and ceiling, that are nearly perfectly reflective. Turn the light on. Now the light is going to be present wherever you are in the room, because the reflection is offsetting the losses of light to the wall, and you can, theoretically, collect the same amount of light wherever you are in the room.
I believe this was the principle Tesla was working on. He believed he had worked out a way for the power to be reflected around within the air so that, whever you were, you could effectively receive power from all directions even with a single transmitter like in the above example. How much would have been lost to absorption? Who knows. But Tesla was a long way ahead of others, not only in terms of theory, but in practical ways as well. If he felt it would have worked, it probably would have worked.
There might have been other problems that developed from it, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't have worked.
Even today, there's much about what Tesla was doing that we don't understand. It's very difficult to evaluate his ideas and concepts by standards that may not necessarily apply to him.
Science isn't complete unless you consider every aspect, and determining energy on a FPA is about as easy as calculating turbulence.
Easy enough to test though. Take the camera and the car. Take more pictures. If the car damaged the camera, then more damage will occur. Even if the car did damage the camera initially, but no more damage occurs, then the camera was already in the process of failing and just waiting for the right opportunity, but most likely it would mean, beyond reasonable doubt, that the camera was not damaged by the car.
Why argue science when a simple empirical test will give the correct answer?
GrpA
It's Media Player. The SEEK bar is missing on "specific files" - Or, rather, specific files triggered this "feature"
Now Media player is like F(*^(& YouTube, where you can't do anything but Pause and Play as your rights as a consumer are eroded. The ONLY reason to have flags in the media player so you can't seek through it is to ensure that you have to watch the full video, which is something that content creators want over us.
I never thought they'd push this crap all the way to our desktop though.
GrpA
Yes, I have a VR setup. It's hanging next to my "Beefed up" stock 15-year-old computer, that runs VR apps just fine... At least most of them. Anyone who games usually has such a "beefed up" computer already, unless they never made a gaming PC. Accusing me of not having played anything in VR just because I don't agree with your point of view is disingenuous though.
And Valve is just as bad as Oculus, though I couldn't tell you which one is worse.
Still, no such method to force VR to allow room scale concepts to be taken sitting down exists, though feel free to name one otherwise.
I'll wait.
After all, it is to my advantage if you can do so.
This is actually the real reason that VR is dying/failing. There's no recognition that VR needs to occur in a chair for most of us. There was this idea that people would make a VR room and walk around in it, and this was driven by the idiots at Oculus more than anyone, as a means to lock out competition. Well, it worked - the competition stayed outside and so did the customers.
Yet, there's absolutely NO way to "float" around a room-scale VR solution at all while seated. VR games lock you into a "step/jump" approach to movement, or force you to just not play at all, since it's "for your own good that you don't get sick"... What a load of crap. ANY time that an option or decision isn't available to you, it's an indication that the developers don't want you to have any choice.
Probably the only time we'll ever get a half decent title will be "VR Wheelchair Simulator" and I bet they will still try to make us "jump" from scene to scene.
Meanwhile the problems with optimizing the solution leaves developers VR-shy and we get even less choice.
Aside from this, there are problems - such as low resolution, poor tracking and the likes, but generally most of these can be forgiven. What can't be forgiven is this whole room-scale/Sitting difference that should never have existed before as anything other than a check-box on the controls that were handled by the VR platform itself and not the game. And this doesn't exist and will likely never exist.
Because, fundamentally, people don't like walled gardens. Not even VR ones.
1) - It's moot and depends entirely on the outcome and variables, none of which the AI is aware of.
2) - Sure - The AI doesn't ever decide to kill their entire family - Most of the time it will make better decisions than they will. Yet people still get drunk and put their family in the car and go driving all the time. Generally, even these people will choose AI over human.
3) - The engineers will almost certainly be required to protect the passengers over the pedestrian, since it's lawful to kill another to save yourself. Generally, what this argument will boil down to is whether AI can be allowed to take risks that might result in pedestrian injury - eg, can they overtake "close" if there's a risk that the pedestrian will step out in front like most drivers do? Can they drive faster than the road conditions allow based on "trust" that the road will still be there and there won't be pedestrians? People in cars don't like to be delayed, so there's an argument for increasing risk, but if you're not in control, then the AI might decide that a 3 hour commute instead of the usual 30 minutes, due to high levels of foot traffic in the area, is warranted.
So the moral questions may be irrelevant, and the risk will end up being worn by the passengers, who will have to ensure they take appropriate precautions - eg, Wear seatbelts, accept longer commute times, etc.
The real question is whether people will still choose AI when it's a much safer option, but is far less convenient than making your own driving decisions...
A cell battery is 3.6v... Not 5v
Oops, forgot the end of the story.... And the punchline.
So a few years l applied at the same place. During the interview, they remembered my name... So I recounted the story of what happened before.
They took it as a demonstration that I was responsible and once again offered me a job there. It was only a short role, but it was very important to me at the time.
So even a no-show can work in your favor.
GrpA
So one Friday, I get two jobs, one after the other. I was made redundant on the Monday, with my wedding on Saturday, and landed two roles by Friday's end. Now, the problem was I had already accepted one of the roles, but it was a stop-gap role and I knew might not have led to long term employment.
Not much I could do - My obligation was to my new wife... So I accepted the better role and never looked back.
But I didn't want to let the other company down - they were expecting me to show Monday and I really had needed the work, and had committed to at least a short term with them - so my last Friday night conversation was to a long-term unemployed friend.
"Hey Kevin, sorry I couldn't invite you to the wedding, since we're really tight on the list and it's just close family only, but you know you've been looking for a job? Well, print out your resume, and do me a favor and show up for me on Monday at this address at 7am, and apologize for me since I have to take a job elsewhere, and take your resume with you, because I'm pretty sure they're going to offer you the job on the spot as they will be in a tight situation."
The outcome? He showed up and said the conversation went along the lines of;
"Are you David? I remember you looked different last week."
"Nah, David can't show up, but didn't have a number to ring to tell you."
"Was he sick? He should have just called."
"No, he got another job late Friday, but he felt bad since he knew you needed him, so asked me to apologize for him and stand in if necessary."
"I don't suppose you happen to have a resume on you?"
So my long-term unemployed friend who had done me a few favors in the past walks straight into a job that never would have given him a second glance otherwise since he hadn't worked for more than five years for personal reasons. Turned out to be a good fit and after working there for the full project, he stayed in the industry.
GrpA
There are systems like this where I live, though they are not widely known. I've probably contributed tens of thousands of dollars to government finances through reporting bad drivers. It's a discretion thing - it takes a lot of effort to report another driver, and I have to make sure the evidence is on video and is in breach of the road laws. I also have to fill in a statement, which means attending a police station. Unless someone does something really bad in front of me, I just let it go.
This has two effects on me.
The first is I find myself ignoring minor infractions. If I let it go, I really let it go. It doesn't bother me when other drivers cut me off or pull out in front as long as I can stop in time and there's not much likelihood of an accident. I make space for others in my lane. People going around me doesn't bother me now. Knowing I'm not going to do anything about minor infractions takes away the stress of simply dealing with bad drivers on the road. Also if I don't catch it on camera, I still just let it go no matter what the circumstances.
The other effect is that the changes I see in my own driving has surprised me the most. Once you start openly judging other drivers, you question your own habits more. I'm far less likely to break rules myself now, and even find myself defending drivers whose driving is just bad, but not illegal. But if I'd see someone else fined for it, I'll avoid it entirely myself. Even if I think I can get away with it.
It's easy to have mixed feelings about it, because we deal with traffic cops, who often look for any slight breach to fine us, and really don't work in a fair way. The general public are far better judges on what should and shouldn't be ignored. And it frees up police resources. It doesn't take much of a change in attitude to improve road safety.
But doing something about it is better than getting home and having a whinge about some guy who nearly hit us and ran a red light.
So does this mean they will turn the OTA update servers online? The disruption wasn't just to ZTE's future business. It really caused problems for millions of ZTE phone users also.
It's easy to maintain the balance... FORCE the balance.
Eliminate the charge for services to those who effectively become human guinea pigs.
The corporates benefit from human trials for which they aren't held accountable more than a minimum level.
The patients benefit from free treatment.
However this will not occur and I think, in practice, this will just become a new way to fleece desperate people out of everything they own for a solution which is most likely going to kill them and there will be no balance.
Australia defined a standard about how big a feature had to be to be regarded as "coastline" - same with rivers mouths and the like. Once this was defined, then anything outside of this definition no longer counted, and the coastline was measured quite accurately, in a way that if measured in the future, could identify whether the coastline was shrinking or expanding.
eg: https://ebrary.net/10179/manag...
I don't think the project failed at all.
It was quite an interesting and ambitious project at the time - the concept that a full PC could be manufactured for less than $1000. Many of us, at the time, said things like, "Think of all the cool things we could do with a laptop that only costs $100"... And you know, this was back when a laptop typically cost around $1000 or more, and was a complex computer.
Sure, it was ambitious, but it pushed the concept of a cheaper laptop for children far before anything in it's time, and first sub-$500 laptops came out.. Early small-screen devices with pretty good, if somewhat degraded performance.
And pretty soon the market realized that this was possible, and there was a market for it - cheaper laptops for kids and people who wouldn't otherwise use a computer.
So the market responded, and the capabilities that technology could bring changed. Smaller displays came out. Cheaper processors. Lower cost memory solutions. And people started buying these and pushing for embedded-able systems, and it happened.
Sure, OLPC as a product was a complete failure - they were like a pre-kickstarter project gone wrong - but they were the spark that lit the fire that continued to grow in intensity and they did succeed in one simply object just by existing - they re-aligned the market.
But, in a way, the vision they had wasn't lost. It was influenced, and it came to be... Just not with them.
So the end result was achieved by a failed project - which then brings up the question as to whether the project was to bring low-cost computers to children in third-world countries so they could change the world, or whether it was to sell laptops.
Because only one of those objectives wasn't achieved.
Of course, the Raspberry Pi was probably the spiritual successor to this concept and came out much later without the same fanfare and backslapping, but it did manage to succeed and change the world.
GrpA
It's not AI we need to fear... It's AI alien vampire zombie serial killers wearing masks...
Most wouldn't have any idea how to help you comply or care about their obligations under law.... But if it's just AutoCAD files, you don't need AutoDESK. In fact, you can provide better files with competing CAD packages.
Corel Suite X8 and CorelCAD... Not only do they replace pretty much everything that Autodesk and Adobe make, but they even work together.
CorelCAD is pretty good too. Getting on towards being a Solidworks alternative since the 2018 version.
And both, while they do have license checks and online activation, work quite happily without a connection, and you can even get a license file from Corel for offline activation if you want....
And there's a really cost-effective home/student version available too....
I know Corel are talking about subscription only in the future, but so far, they are picking up ex-Adobe customers for not having one, and the home price on Amazon probably cuts down on piracy. Meanwhile if Corel ever goes subscription only with the CAD, then there's Draftsight and Graebert Ares Commander, which are alternative providers for the same software.
If you don't like subscription software, move to non-subscription software. It's cheap enough to do so, and CorelCAD gives AutoCAD a real run for it's money IMO. ( It's an Autocad clone, so there's no learning curve... Similar UI, Same commands, works with AutoLISP etc. )
The paper system is far to easy to control and rig.
A better solution is to use computers in a way that provides a reasonable amount of certainty.
The way to do this would be via something like blockchain and public keys. Then make the entire voting record public after each election, but in it's encrypted form.
Anyone could check that their vote wasn't tampered with, and the results would still be secret. There would be far less failure to accept the result of an election if people had more certainty that the outcome wasn't tampered with.
This would also allow voting from home via the Internet, so polling places and the associated problems with them would disappear.
After this... Who cares about the mechanics such as how the vote is tallied. That would be something that changes over time based on other factors and cultural drives.
Don't forget to add how no one even has to train to be a Jedi any more... They just learn to meditate and *poof* Instant Jedi.
At least we now know that Anakin didn't kill the younglings, because according to "The Last Jedi" there's no way a trained sith could defeat an idiot with a lightsaber, let alone a little kid, and especially not a bunch of kids... Obi Wan must have just lied about the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Vantage Robotics UAV. Pretty light and safe.
If some idiot throws sticks at it, there's more danger from the sticks that knocked it down than the drone itself.
In the Burning Chrome Anthology, this short story, of all of Gibson's work, had a greater impact on my research than any other story he wrote.
He only co-wrote it too. It was written by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They'll buy them tickets on a Russian or Chinese moon-shuttle service...
I'm not denying that there is a place for university courses and standardized testing. It's always been recognized. But if you're doing the same work as an engineer, for a similar period, then you're recognized as a PE in Australia after five years on the job.
I'm not arguing that one is better than the other - and readily admit that it's a lot easier if you can just get someone else to teach you - but if you're self-taught and applying it at a high level, every job is an exam and the pass-mark is 100%.
But calling me a technician is a little bit rude. All of our engineering work had to be done by us. This began with a design brief, and a project description. We'd design computers ( not assemble, design... ) and select the chips and chipset, measure up space and mounting points so we could design the circuit boards and begin putting together a new computer. No auto-routing - It was all done by hand to ensure we could achieve lower costs by using less layers - And we had to pre-calculate everything from power consumption to modes of failure. We had to create our own digital logic chips, and design of programmable logic was performed from data-sheets - not from high level applications.
When designing communications systems, we had to introduce error correction systems, and predict functionality of packet loss, and determine safe operating parameters with arbiter systems so that in the event of loss of control, the machine could be safely stopped.
When switching mains circuits, we had to calculate power factors and safe operating margins for all equipment, and unlike today when bugs are just a way of life, we had to demonstrate our computers would continue working under ALL conditions. A common test was for the boss ( a trained engineer and an expert ) to drop his keys onto our uncovered and uninsulated circuit boards and jingle them around, causing massive shorts, and our boards were not to fail in an unplanned method. All calculations had to be completed on time and any routines taking too long were trapped and reset, and the systems needed to come up from a reset without loss of data. Everything was designed to be redundant.Even code.
I'd suggest that's not the sort of stuff an engineer fresh out of uni could handle. Many struggled with the basics of electronics - especially timing circuits in digital systems. Most struggled with concepts such as building a UART from discrete logic, or constructing in-circuit emulators.
For those of us who did it the hard way, I'd suggest that the formal government recognition of our qualification as engineers was long overdue.
Kind of sad to take that kind of an attitude. As I mentioned, universities weren't capable of much more than "Heath Kit" lessons of the era - Yes, I did do some study at university prior to getting a job in a lab, even if I never completed a course. Meanwhile, mid-80's I was already building computers from scratch, writing the OS firmware and then finding ways to improve on the architecture of the era.
What exactly do you think I was going to learn at a university that I wasn't expected to already know in the field? The head of department at the university I did briefly attend had already provided me with exemptions in every electronic and computer hardware related unit that was a part of the course. Even they didn't expect me to demonstrate any further proficiency in those areas.
I get that you were trying for a mix of condescending and insulting with your 1 in 10,000 remark, but in reality, anyone who continues working as an engineer for five years in industry, without being fired for being incompetent, has demonstrated they know all of the appropriate calculations necessary to do their job. At that point, it's pretty much 1:1 and the kinds of mistakes that get made are usually the same kind of mistakes that even a uni-trained engineer will make.
Even now, I still have to verify engineering estimates and ensure that they are correct, and it's rare not to find engineering errors in a large project - some big enough to prevent project success.
Being self taught wasn't instead of learning - and if you like the subject, it's never a hard slug. Being self-taught was the price of entry just to get a job in some of those industries in the early days. Learning on the job and being taught on the job both occur from that point on. It's just like university, except the passing mark on a project is 100% or find another job. Or, to para-quote NASA, Failure is not an option.
The Australian government recognized that 5 years of practical on-the-job training is as good as 4 years of university training plus 4 years of on-the-job training. Because it takes 4 years to train someone to the level than an employer will even look at them. So allowing an additional year for a non-graduate engineer to be trained at an accelerated pace is reasonable.
After all, simply having the title "engineer" isn't sufficient - you have to be doing the same work as a graduate engineer would be expected to do. It's not like I got a free ride or anything. Some would regard having to complete the equivalent of four years of university in a single year to be even more onerous.
I'm not the only one either - I've worked with a lot of other non-graduate engineers as well as graduate engineers and they were all at a very high level. It's not uncommon, but maybe you just got a bad batch up in Canada or something.
Here's the qualification requirements;
3.2 Engineering stream
Experienced engineer means a Professional engineer with the undermentioned qualifications engaged in any particular employment where the adequate discharge of any portion of the duties requires qualifications of the employee as (or at least equal to those of) a member of Engineers Australia. The qualifications are as follows:
(a) membership of Engineers Australia;or
(b) having graduated in a four or five year course at a university recognised by Engineers Australia,four years’experience on professional engineering duties since becoming a Qualified engineer;or
(c) not having so graduated,five years of such experience.
Graduate engineer means a person who is the holder of a university degree (four or five year course) recognised by Engineers Australia or is the holder of a degree,diploma or other testamur which:
(d) has been issued by a technical university,an institute of technology,a European technical high school (technische hochschule) or polytechnic or other similar educational establishment;and
(e) is recognised by Engineers Australia as attaining a standard similar to a university degree;
As an industry trained engineer, I've been doing engineering for a few decades. From designing computers and electronics in the 80's to performing and presenting current scientific research, it's just been a part of my life, but previously, I could only refer to myself as an "Amateur Engineer". It's not that I'm not trained, I just wasn't trained in a university. Back in the 80's when I learned to design computers ( as an autodidact ) there simply wasn't a university path open for me as I was in high school at the time, and I was taken in by an R&D lab before I could study further and quickly gained skills and experience beyond what the universities were teaching at the time so never went back to university.
Still, not being able to refer to myself as an engineer caused many problem, especially when registering for government projects or work - where are best I could only call myself a "technician" despite having working in many roles where I was the lead engineer and managed other engineers. It made it pretty difficult finding new work at times also.
Now the Australian government has finally recognized that if you work as an engineer, doing the kind of work that an engineer would normally be expected to do, for a period of five cumulative years, you've proven your point and are recognized not only as an experienced engineer, but as a professional engineer.
Anyone might still be able to claim to be an engineer in Australia, but at least those who have spent years actually doing engineering as a career and were trained on-the-job have finally gained formal recognition as providers of professional services now, whether trained in a university or otherwise. And it's in legislation.