I have to agree with unothod0x. I have a Lite-On 48x24x48 CD-RW drive. If I burn any CD-R (tried using Memorex, Sony, and Maxell rated 24x up to 48x) at any speed higher than 4x my car CD player will not recognize the disk at all. At speeds of 4x or lower there seems to be no difference on that player. On my home stereo system, the CD player can read disks burned up to 12x, with some skipping, no skipping if burned at 4x or below. My APEX DVD player will only recognize VCDs burned at 8x or less. YMMV
The only way that we can eliminate "bad drivers" is to go to totally automated vehicles. I will be the first to admit that we are no where near ready for that kind of a system, however, projects like the one in the article are the first baby steps in setting up the infrastructure that will be necessary for such a system. There is a definate 'chicken and egg' problem with such a system. Vehicle manufacturers will not be able to implement a system without a smart infrastructure, and traffic and civil engineers can not install a smart infrastructure overnight, due to cost, design, and available technology issues. Getting to an efficient, safe, and publicly acceptable system will require a lot of bootstrapping, or implementing basic systems to enable the implementation of more advanced systems that will eventually let us develop the final system we need.
Eventually we will see restricted access lanes that only properly equipped vehicles can use (probably large trucks only at first and only in the most congested urban regions). Similar to current High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, these lanes will run much faster and less congested than the 'normal' lanes beside them. This will encourage the general public to purchase the technology and increase the market penetration. As more and more vehicles have the technology available that will encourage the engineers and politicians to install more lane miles of automated highways. Eventually the cycle will move into a strong positive reinforcement system and we can see fantastic improvements in the efficiency of our road system.
As long as human beings are allowed to operate thier vehicles independantly there will be property damage, injuries, and deaths at a continued horrific rate. Even the best drivers can have a bad day, or a bad moment, when they are distracted, let alone all the fools who will get in a car impared, or who are just poor drivers to begin with and don't even realize it. There are those who will reply, I'm sure, something along the lines of, "I'm never gonna trust my life to something that will BSOD and kill me." My response to that is, that every day you get in a car you are trusting your life to the million other drivers you share the road with who are far more likely to 'fail' in an unsafe manner than even the worst system that Microsoft could come up with. If we work hard and implement a 'fail-safe' system (No, this is not a system that can't fail, no such thing. It means that when the system fails it fails into a 'safe' mode.) then we can not help but tremendously reduce the amount of damage being caused on our roads today. Even if an automated system resulted in 100 deaths per day in the U.S., we would still be better off than the most recent national traffic statistics. Of course, that would lead to the liability issues, which are the real thing that will probably kill this type of system.
Let's take a look at your analogy. Most homes have a lock on the door to the outside. Most people will keep these locked when they are out of the house, but a significant number leave it unlocked when they are home. Think of that as your main login/password. Once you get inside the home, many of your most important doorways don't have doors, let alone locks...kitchen, living room, dining room. Those that do have doors, most don't have locks...bedrooms, refridgerator, closets. In fact, once you get inside the house the only doors that usually have a lock are on the bathroom and gun cabinet (what that says about psycology is another thread entirely). Many of us don't even close the doors that are there, let alone lock the lockable ones.
Now imagine having to unlock and open a door every time you wanted to change rooms in your house. Imagine that, to maintain proper security, those locks were grouped into 'privalege and rights' groups and keys for one set of rights were different than keys for another. The kitchen key would let you into the kitchen, but wouldn't open the fridge. The master bedroom key let's you into both the master bedroom and master bath, but is a different key from the living room.
For useability this would be lousy, within a day you'd be ripping our locks and doors just so you could live your life more comfortably. This is just the situation for most non-tech computer users. They ask why they have to have a different login/password just to install a new game of solitare. Why do they need a different login to check their email. Why do they need a... to open their AIM chat, etc. And when a 'computer security expert' tries to tell them that it's because if they don't have locks on their fridge then anyone who has access to their kitchen through the front door can drink all their beer, they just shake their head and say that's just silly.
Worse yet... a Bush (as in President) pop-up appearing right next to a bush (as in sexy teen virgins) pop-up from the same website. Seeing those two pictures side by side could give you definate sexual dysfunction.
Nice little fallacy that you have going there. The U.S. is still keeping effective controls on its nuclear weapons. For a fraction of those Martian trip megazillions (really Moon Trip Billions, but you're too busy to RTFA). In addition, we can still do the moon trip and without monetary input from the rest of the world. No matter how many megazillions the U.S. throws at the problem, there is no effective way for us to control the nuclear weapons of 1)The states of the former Soviet Russia, 2)China, 3)North Korea, 4)The NATO (now EU) nations, 5)Iran, etc... Unless of course you liked our solution in Iraq, which not many outside the President's administration do.
The point being that there is no way for the U.S. to control the actions and operations of another country without the unwarranted and ultimately useless use of force within those countries. Now we will hear from all of the people saying, "If only the U.S. would sign and obey more nuclear ban treaties...yadayadayada." Treaties only work when everyone with the capability signs them and all signers follow the agreements. The U.S. under Clinton signed and kept the agreement to several, increasingly demanding, treaties with North Korea. Yet when Bush refused to continue the process of extortion, lo and behold the N. Koreans had been breaking the treaty all along and had a full fledged nuclear weapons research program already underway to threaten us with. Treaties are only useful amoung honorable men. I don't see many, and certainly not enough, of those in postions of power around the world.
I was really excited when I first saw the ads for The Mind Drive, and then when it came into the store where I was working I spent a lot of time playing with it, trying to "tune my mind" to make it work better. Then a coworker put a piece of wet paper over the finger sensor and got basically identical results to what I was getting after playing several hours...
But beyond support, is the problem of liability. Unfortunately there is ample history of people in the U.S. using products in ways they were not intended and then sueing the manufacturer for "letting them" hurt themselves. When we have product warnings already about not sticking your head inside a Gamecube console, about not eating the silicon drying agent, etc., etc., etc.... I can't see companies making it any easier to "modify" thier products.
The biggest problem with this idea is that allowing your product to be easily changed by the end user is a recipe for technical support disaster. That's why every branded PC you buy these days doesn't just come with a disk to reinstall the OS, it comes with a "System Restore" CD. So that when you call Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachine, etc. with a problem, they walk you through the few simple things to determine if it is a hardware or software problem. As soon as they feel they can eliminate a hardware failure, the next suggestion is use the restore CD, simply because they can't afford to spend the time trying to figure out what you did to your PC to mess it up.
If your toaster becomes deliberately (by the manufacturer) "hackable" then they can no longer have those big warnings that tinkering with the device voids the warranty, and they will also have to hire a massive support group to get all those messed up toasters working again.
No, that's called better training for, and screening of, pilots. If you are a pilot that is stupid enough to believe that opening the door to someone who is threatening to kill your passengers one-by-one is going to result in fewer deaths, you are not someone I want in the cockpit of any plane I'm on.
On a tack different from the other posters in this thread...
Almost anyone I know and consider a minimally competent computer user, can find out all of the information you just asked for in a matter of minutes if they find that they need it, as well as almost anything that would be considered "basic" knowledge on almost any subject they need information on. Conversely most of the non-competent computer users I have to deal with daily can't even be bothered to read the Message/Error/Ad box that pops up in the middle of thier screen, before clicking the OK button, and then calling me to "fix it" because they don't know what they did.
If all goes well, no person needs to count your paper ballot, but you
could do routine 5% sampling fairly cost-effectively just to double-check.
You must do a routine recount from at least as many of the machines as represents the margin of the election, and make sure you have a good way to randomly select which machines are recounted. Otherwise you have no way of telling if corrupted (intentionally or not) electronically counted ballots affected the outcome enough to change the election.
Slashdot Mirror
You (and she) are right...
I mean really that's what kids are for!
I have to agree with unothod0x. I have a Lite-On 48x24x48 CD-RW drive. If I burn any CD-R (tried using Memorex, Sony, and Maxell rated 24x up to 48x) at any speed higher than 4x my car CD player will not recognize the disk at all. At speeds of 4x or lower there seems to be no difference on that player. On my home stereo system, the CD player can read disks burned up to 12x, with some skipping, no skipping if burned at 4x or below. My APEX DVD player will only recognize VCDs burned at 8x or less. YMMV
So, what you are saying is that the first experiment proved that time is warped...
And this experiment is to prove that, in fact, space-time is actually totally bent?
The only way that we can eliminate "bad drivers" is to go to totally automated vehicles. I will be the first to admit that we are no where near ready for that kind of a system, however, projects like the one in the article are the first baby steps in setting up the infrastructure that will be necessary for such a system. There is a definate 'chicken and egg' problem with such a system. Vehicle manufacturers will not be able to implement a system without a smart infrastructure, and traffic and civil engineers can not install a smart infrastructure overnight, due to cost, design, and available technology issues. Getting to an efficient, safe, and publicly acceptable system will require a lot of bootstrapping, or implementing basic systems to enable the implementation of more advanced systems that will eventually let us develop the final system we need.
Eventually we will see restricted access lanes that only properly equipped vehicles can use (probably large trucks only at first and only in the most congested urban regions). Similar to current High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, these lanes will run much faster and less congested than the 'normal' lanes beside them. This will encourage the general public to purchase the technology and increase the market penetration. As more and more vehicles have the technology available that will encourage the engineers and politicians to install more lane miles of automated highways. Eventually the cycle will move into a strong positive reinforcement system and we can see fantastic improvements in the efficiency of our road system.
As long as human beings are allowed to operate thier vehicles independantly there will be property damage, injuries, and deaths at a continued horrific rate. Even the best drivers can have a bad day, or a bad moment, when they are distracted, let alone all the fools who will get in a car impared, or who are just poor drivers to begin with and don't even realize it. There are those who will reply, I'm sure, something along the lines of, "I'm never gonna trust my life to something that will BSOD and kill me." My response to that is, that every day you get in a car you are trusting your life to the million other drivers you share the road with who are far more likely to 'fail' in an unsafe manner than even the worst system that Microsoft could come up with. If we work hard and implement a 'fail-safe' system (No, this is not a system that can't fail, no such thing. It means that when the system fails it fails into a 'safe' mode.) then we can not help but tremendously reduce the amount of damage being caused on our roads today. Even if an automated system resulted in 100 deaths per day in the U.S., we would still be better off than the most recent national traffic statistics. Of course, that would lead to the liability issues, which are the real thing that will probably kill this type of system.
I expect this to fly off the shelves into every god-fearing Xtian home in the U.S. until...
Mel releases 'The Passion' on DVD and this player will only show the opening and closing credits.
Let's take a look at your analogy. Most homes have a lock on the door to the outside. Most people will keep these locked when they are out of the house, but a significant number leave it unlocked when they are home. Think of that as your main login/password. Once you get inside the home, many of your most important doorways don't have doors, let alone locks...kitchen, living room, dining room. Those that do have doors, most don't have locks...bedrooms, refridgerator, closets. In fact, once you get inside the house the only doors that usually have a lock are on the bathroom and gun cabinet (what that says about psycology is another thread entirely). Many of us don't even close the doors that are there, let alone lock the lockable ones.
Now imagine having to unlock and open a door every time you wanted to change rooms in your house. Imagine that, to maintain proper security, those locks were grouped into 'privalege and rights' groups and keys for one set of rights were different than keys for another. The kitchen key would let you into the kitchen, but wouldn't open the fridge. The master bedroom key let's you into both the master bedroom and master bath, but is a different key from the living room.
For useability this would be lousy, within a day you'd be ripping our locks and doors just so you could live your life more comfortably. This is just the situation for most non-tech computer users. They ask why they have to have a different login/password just to install a new game of solitare. Why do they need a different login to check their email. Why do they need a
If they're psychic, won't they know you are coming and avoid you? Or did you mean psycotic?
So, pick you up at 8 then?
So what you're saying is that you do the same thing at home as at work?
Or *oh my god* ricin producing castor bean plants!
Worse yet... a Bush (as in President) pop-up appearing right next to a bush (as in sexy teen virgins) pop-up from the same website. Seeing those two pictures side by side could give you definate sexual dysfunction.
'nuff said.
Nice little fallacy that you have going there. The U.S. is still keeping effective controls on its nuclear weapons. For a fraction of those Martian trip megazillions (really Moon Trip Billions, but you're too busy to RTFA). In addition, we can still do the moon trip and without monetary input from the rest of the world. No matter how many megazillions the U.S. throws at the problem, there is no effective way for us to control the nuclear weapons of 1)The states of the former Soviet Russia, 2)China, 3)North Korea, 4)The NATO (now EU) nations, 5)Iran, etc... Unless of course you liked our solution in Iraq, which not many outside the President's administration do.
The point being that there is no way for the U.S. to control the actions and operations of another country without the unwarranted and ultimately useless use of force within those countries. Now we will hear from all of the people saying, "If only the U.S. would sign and obey more nuclear ban treaties...yadayadayada." Treaties only work when everyone with the capability signs them and all signers follow the agreements. The U.S. under Clinton signed and kept the agreement to several, increasingly demanding, treaties with North Korea. Yet when Bush refused to continue the process of extortion, lo and behold the N. Koreans had been breaking the treaty all along and had a full fledged nuclear weapons research program already underway to threaten us with. Treaties are only useful amoung honorable men. I don't see many, and certainly not enough, of those in postions of power around the world.
I was really excited when I first saw the ads for The Mind Drive, and then when it came into the store where I was working I spent a lot of time playing with it, trying to "tune my mind" to make it work better. Then a coworker put a piece of wet paper over the finger sensor and got basically identical results to what I was getting after playing several hours...
Once again I felt like a geek/nerd/fool...
Slashdot isn't trying to do it, it's just an unfortunate side effect... bull in a china shop syndrome...
But 100 hours of hand grinding the mirror just to spy on a lady getting undressed? Oh yeah, this was before the Internet and pr0n.
But beyond support, is the problem of liability. Unfortunately there is ample history of people in the U.S. using products in ways they were not intended and then sueing the manufacturer for "letting them" hurt themselves. When we have product warnings already about not sticking your head inside a Gamecube console, about not eating the silicon drying agent, etc., etc., etc.... I can't see companies making it any easier to "modify" thier products.
Just ask Wonko the Sane....
Are you referring to a slashdot thread as a "polite conversation"?
You need to get out more.
The biggest problem with this idea is that allowing your product to be easily changed by the end user is a recipe for technical support disaster. That's why every branded PC you buy these days doesn't just come with a disk to reinstall the OS, it comes with a "System Restore" CD. So that when you call Dell, HP, Gateway, eMachine, etc. with a problem, they walk you through the few simple things to determine if it is a hardware or software problem. As soon as they feel they can eliminate a hardware failure, the next suggestion is use the restore CD, simply because they can't afford to spend the time trying to figure out what you did to your PC to mess it up.
If your toaster becomes deliberately (by the manufacturer) "hackable" then they can no longer have those big warnings that tinkering with the device voids the warranty, and they will also have to hire a massive support group to get all those messed up toasters working again.
Yeah, and then he could get celebrity endorsements for every animal. That would be cool.
They might have a chance if instead it is your friend's good band...
No, that's called better training for, and screening of, pilots. If you are a pilot that is stupid enough to believe that opening the door to someone who is threatening to kill your passengers one-by-one is going to result in fewer deaths, you are not someone I want in the cockpit of any plane I'm on.
On a tack different from the other posters in this thread...
Almost anyone I know and consider a minimally competent computer user, can find out all of the information you just asked for in a matter of minutes if they find that they need it, as well as almost anything that would be considered "basic" knowledge on almost any subject they need information on. Conversely most of the non-competent computer users I have to deal with daily can't even be bothered to read the Message/Error/Ad box that pops up in the middle of thier screen, before clicking the OK button, and then calling me to "fix it" because they don't know what they did.
Dude, if you need a reason to party, you shouldn't be partying.
You must do a routine recount from at least as many of the machines as represents the margin of the election, and make sure you have a good way to randomly select which machines are recounted. Otherwise you have no way of telling if corrupted (intentionally or not) electronically counted ballots affected the outcome enough to change the election.