Well, Internet in your car would replace standard/satellite radio and gps units. There is just too much money in those industries for it to not happen.
I still can't think of why not - most people I know already carry a 3g connection with them all the time. Why not actually use that in the car?
I already pair my iPhone to my car's stereo via bluetooth to listen to internet radio. Google is leading the charge to put free GPS units in everyone's cars. If I owned stock in any sort of GPS or terrestrial/satellite radio company, I would sell it now.
I am not an expert on these things, but I'll give an explanation of my best understanding of what they are talking about. Someone please correct me if I am wrong. I am basing a lot of this comment off this page (http://www.febo.com/pages/stability/).
The article is talking about "frequency stability", which is related to both accuracy and precision. When you are talking about keeping time, frequency stability effectively provides a ceiling on both accuracy and the precision you should use. In other words, if your clock is not more stable than some frequency F over some period of time tau, you should not use a precision greater than F, and you should not claim your clock is more accurate than F over the time period tau.
In other words, by claiming the "frequency stability" is better in one clock than another, they are making a statement about both accuracy and the sensible precision to use when referring to the clocks.
A lot of people responded to the GP post with similar skepticism as you.
I'm a stats person, and in my world GP is correct that "average" is a general term that includes both median and mean. The only time we use the word "average" is when we want to be purposefully vague: "something around the middle", not "add up all the numbers and divide by N".
But yes, most lay people use mean and average interchangeably because they believe the mean indicates the average well enough. As has been pointed out in this thread, though, this is never a guarantee, and more and more people have been using median to calculate an average.
AI, unlike in the pure sciences, has no "answer" and therefore cannot have a grand unifying theory. There will never be a single algorithm that works for every type of problem we want to solve. AI is an applied science.
Besides, this stuff barely counts as "AI" in the modern sense. MIT embarrasses itself by pushing out stories like this.
The sad fact is GPA and the school you went to really matter a lot when getting past HR. If you have a sub 3.0-3.2 GPA and/or went to a low ranked school you should try to bypass HR.
I would consider traveling to another University's job fair if you don't have good local ones. Here, you can talk directly to engineers/programmers who can gauge your skills far more precisely than HR can glean from your resume.
The Virtual Boy, Nintendo's first attempt at a 3D video game system, was an utter failure; I bought mine a year after its release for 30 dollars, marked down from 200.
I actually kind of liked playing games in 3D, it really does change the experience. But the system game me pretty severe headaches after an hour of playing. I'd like to see how they can avoid that this time around.
I think you are misunderstanding the term "democracy"; a democracy only determines what say citizens have in a country, not how "free" outsiders are to visit or study it. Projects like Ubuntu and Windows are not democracies, in the sense that I have no "vote" on decisions they have to make. Wikipedia is closer to being a democracy - more like a Democratic Republic (of course this is debatable).
You are right that I have every right to branch off an open source project like Ubuntu, but I can no longer call it "Ubuntu". This is analogous to a new country forming and reusing the constitution of another country, which has nothing to do with the word "democracy".
Instead of 2 choices (donor or non-donor), how about a third category: donor with preference to other donors. This takes the decision away from the government and to the owner of the organs.
I'm sure some people would be willing to donate to anyone, but the majority would choose the new third option.
A core is theoretically a fixed number of transistors, and Moore's law (depending on which version you quote) essentially states that the number of transistors per chip will double every 18 months. Therefore, a corollary to Moore's Law is that the number of cores could double every 18 months. I say could because engineers may decide to put more transistors in each core, which would slow down the core increase.
Also, there is another caveat: many applications will never be able to take advantage of an insane number of cores, so most chips may not follow this route. I actually believe the market for chips will split into two, and that this split has already began. There will be the chips that follow your core-doubling law. These will target gamers (replacing the GPU), scientists, and power-users (photographers, digital artists, etc). The second type of chip will settle on a few cores and will be extremely small/cheap/efficient. These will be the Atom processors of the future, and could provide more than enough power for the typical user.
I believe the cpu demand of most users has mostly plateaued in the past few years (my netbook has the same power as my computer from almost ten years ago), and that is why I wouldn't call chip-doubling a law. The demand for it in the mainstream simply isn't there (at least, yet).
I don't specifically know about the Pokemon case, but I see several Pokemon species have their own pages and the rest have their own sections on "List of Pokemon" pages. I suspect that the deletions were due to this notability guideline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual.2C_guidebook.2C_textbook.2C_or_scientific_journal). I agree that when articles get close to the line it becomes subjective, and some decisions are too deletionist - I'm personally on the fence in this case - but the vast majority of deletion cases are clear-cut.
I know there are a couple of comprehensive Pokemon wikis already, so I don't really see the problem. Comprehensive sources will always be better than Wikipedia. For example, tens of thousands of books have been written on WWII, but the total articles about WWII on Wikipedia would probably fit in under a dozen. Wikipedia should NOT be a superset of all information, otherwise it would become unmanageable and unwieldy. At over 3.3 million articles it's already pretty damn close.
It's funny, some comments in here complain that many articles have gotten stale and aren't well-maintained. Others, like yours, complain that there aren't enough articles. These two complaints are at odds with each other - a fixed number of editors can either maintain a smaller, more important set of articles, or can devote their time to starting and watching new articles. Your criticism is largely overblown too: there are, on average, over 1000 new articles a day. I'd like to see any print Encyclopedia do this in a year.
Frankly, I prefer less but higher-quality articles, because it minimizes the amount of misinformation (one of the biggest plagues in early Wikipedia). It helps minimize the number of esoteric articles from being started and then forgotten. The only real rule you need to know when starting an article is notability: the 22342342343 policies are only in place to remove subjectivity from the process. Common sense can get you most of the way there, but if you are in the habit of starting articles understanding the five "general notability guideline" will save you a lot of hassle. And only takes about five minutes.
"Which is why Wikipedia is doomed to a slow bit-rot into irrelevance."
Wikipedia is still one of the most popular websites on the internet - claiming it is dead or dying is premature and probably wrong. There are more than enough editors to maintain the vast majority of popular articles. More esoteric topical articles such as a living actress will become stale every now and then (this has always been true on Wikipedia), but established topics have, well... established articles. And these types of articles will make up the core of any encyclopedia.
I like analogies: Wikipedia is like a large city that has been planned and built in the last six years. Nothing will ever destroy the large, bustling downtown. For example, the "World War II" building is already constructed. A random bum can't come by and knock it down, but he can pee on the side of the door and annoy some people. Some passerby will clean it up in about 10 seconds. The younger, more active parts of town will constantly have new buildings coming up and being destroyed, but most visitors don't come to see these parts. And hey, if someone visits this part of town and sees a broken door, he can fix it in about 5 minutes. As long as the Wikipedia city is the best city in the world, the number of casual visitors like this will grow, not fall.
A headline about hospital workers stealing the blood of babies is much scarier than "database of fingerprints secretly kept by Texas A&M researchers", even if the privacy implications are far more benign.
When I worked for a government contractor (in aerospace) I don't recall a government body ever doing in-depth analysis of my code (which was partly controlling the plane). It was our job - someone would write code, a second person would review it, and then a third person would test it, and then we would release it. I'm sure the government was testing our planes, but not by tracing through our code.
Of course this may be different than your case, because I was working on planes without any humans on board.
"You seem to be comfortable with them being a large collection of bureaucrats who actually do nothing."
Funny, your conclusion is the exact opposite of my reasoning. I don't want a huge government organization peeking inside 100s of millions of lines of code. As I hinted at, I believe this would require 100s of engineers. I've worked for the government, and I've seen how badly this scales up. Plus it's just repeating the work of engineers who actually understand the code they write. Also, I'm sure private (especially foreign) companies don't want to trust the Government with their proprietary code - a single leak could hurt the entire organization's reputation. This is why hiring outside consultants on one-off cases makes more sense to me.
"So by your logic they should not employ traffic engineers to understand road design safety nor mechanical engineers to understand vehicle structural safety."
I have no problem with crash testing, but structural safety is the job of the car company. I don't know of any concrete law that say "cars have to be at least X structurally sound". So how would you propose this even be tested? These are the types of powers that introduce bureaucracy! I also don't mind some government organization testing highways, because this is the government's domain anyway. They built it, they SHOULD test it.
I totally disagree: the NHTSA shouldn't hire engineers. NHTSA should not do the job of Toyota's engineers and testers; they were created to set policy and propose safety laws. The NHTSA should hire economists, policy makers, and maybe some scientists. But the job of ensuring the nuts and bolts of a car are safe should fall on the car-maker, with strict repercussions if they fail.
My biggest problem with all this is what people on Slashdot should already know: looking through and understanding millions of lines of code would take an engineer a few lifetimes - how many engineers are we proposing NHTSA hires? They could learn Toyota's software system, but then what about Ford cars? Or BMW? All for a government organization with 600 employees...
In cases like this, NHTSA should force Toyota to hire a third party (objective) consultant to create a technical report. Maybe a small team of engineers could remain on staff to read and understand those reports.
Every article I have read that explains who committed the hacking, how, and why has been an opinion piece, and ends with "the opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of X". I have no problem with this per se, but we should all take it with a grain of salt; Slashdot should preface it's headline with "Theory:" or "Opinion:".
I prefer my news to be my news, and my conspiracy theories to be my entertainment.
"The gadget insurance company told Sky News Sunday that it saw a 50-percent rise in claims during the month Apple launched the latest version, the iPhone 3GS.'"
If true, this is statistically significant and strongly indicates that some insurance fraud is happening. The companies likely can't *prove* any single user is actually doing it, however - therefore, they are probably paying out most claims even though they know some of those claims are fraudulent.
I don't see any reason for skepticism, to me it's obvious this would happen (and is the reason why the annual premium of the insurance I looked into was 80% of the cost of the phone).
I recall when i built my first computer in 2000 that Kingston was a reliable brand at a reasonable price. Back in those pre-newegg days, buying computer parts was like the wild west, so brand was very important. The last memory card I bought from Kingston was cheap, but it stopped working within a few months. I read reviews of the card and realized it wasn't a fluke; Kingston had sold out.
I always find it sad when a company that I perceived as dependable and trustworthy sells out. I can understand why it happens: the CEO, in an effort to boost profits, cuts costs and loosens standards, effectively selling their brand name/good will for short-term profits. The CEO looks great; people are buying just as many of the product, but the margins are higher. By the time consumers realize the brand is now worth less (or even worthless), the CEO has cashed his bonus checks and can retire or move to another company.
I'm hoping that Toyota is bringing visibility to this problem. The extra profits Toyota made whoring out its brand will pale in comparison to its losses. Kingston is fortunate to be in an industry where brand name is no longer as important as turning up on the front page of slickdeals.
I have heard something similar, but I think it's more complex than a single court case (which is peanuts to these 100+ billion dollar companies; Google could drag that case out and retaliate with their own lawsuits). Worst-case scenario - things go back to the way they were. What's the harm in trying? I believe it was more like Apple saying "if you guys infringe on our multitouch patents it will permanently hurt our relationship". At this point, Google's relationship with Apple is already strained; they now believe they more to gain than to lose.
Both Google and Apple realize how valuable multitouch is - I personally would rather not switch away from having pinch-to-zoom in my applications, especially maps and the web browser.
I think more troubling in the SSD market has been poor design at the low end (see http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531 for more detail). 150 dollars for a 64 GB SSD is fine, but when random write speed is an order of magnitude slower than a standard hard drive that costs an order of magnitude less, something is severely wrong.
Early adopters such as myself got pretty screwed over. Until consumers can trust the technology, I don't think price matters. Manufacturers need to put effort into building a high quality product first - they need to design good controllers and firmware.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Internet in your car would replace standard/satellite radio and gps units. There is just too much money in those industries for it to not happen.
I still can't think of why not - most people I know already carry a 3g connection with them all the time. Why not actually use that in the car?
I already pair my iPhone to my car's stereo via bluetooth to listen to internet radio. Google is leading the charge to put free GPS units in everyone's cars. If I owned stock in any sort of GPS or terrestrial/satellite radio company, I would sell it now.
I am not an expert on these things, but I'll give an explanation of my best understanding of what they are talking about. Someone please correct me if I am wrong. I am basing a lot of this comment off this page (http://www.febo.com/pages/stability/).
The article is talking about "frequency stability", which is related to both accuracy and precision. When you are talking about keeping time, frequency stability effectively provides a ceiling on both accuracy and the precision you should use. In other words, if your clock is not more stable than some frequency F over some period of time tau, you should not use a precision greater than F, and you should not claim your clock is more accurate than F over the time period tau.
In other words, by claiming the "frequency stability" is better in one clock than another, they are making a statement about both accuracy and the sensible precision to use when referring to the clocks.
I'm actually curious, how do you enumerate a set of 3d points in better than O(n^2) time?
A lot of people responded to the GP post with similar skepticism as you.
I'm a stats person, and in my world GP is correct that "average" is a general term that includes both median and mean. The only time we use the word "average" is when we want to be purposefully vague: "something around the middle", not "add up all the numbers and divide by N".
But yes, most lay people use mean and average interchangeably because they believe the mean indicates the average well enough. As has been pointed out in this thread, though, this is never a guarantee, and more and more people have been using median to calculate an average.
AI, unlike in the pure sciences, has no "answer" and therefore cannot have a grand unifying theory. There will never be a single algorithm that works for every type of problem we want to solve. AI is an applied science.
Besides, this stuff barely counts as "AI" in the modern sense. MIT embarrasses itself by pushing out stories like this.
The sad fact is GPA and the school you went to really matter a lot when getting past HR. If you have a sub 3.0-3.2 GPA and/or went to a low ranked school you should try to bypass HR.
I would consider traveling to another University's job fair if you don't have good local ones. Here, you can talk directly to engineers/programmers who can gauge your skills far more precisely than HR can glean from your resume.
Not to mention that many people don't have CD players in their computers anymore.
The Virtual Boy, Nintendo's first attempt at a 3D video game system, was an utter failure; I bought mine a year after its release for 30 dollars, marked down from 200.
I actually kind of liked playing games in 3D, it really does change the experience. But the system game me pretty severe headaches after an hour of playing. I'd like to see how they can avoid that this time around.
"So you can use voice and data at the same time"
According to http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/htc-evo-4g-is-sprints-android-powered-knight-in-superphone-armo/, Sprint says it is "still in the testing phase". Not sure what this means, but it sounds like they haven't proven it is possible in their current design (or just bad PR).
My guess is it will end up being a pretty high priority.
I think you are misunderstanding the term "democracy"; a democracy only determines what say citizens have in a country, not how "free" outsiders are to visit or study it. Projects like Ubuntu and Windows are not democracies, in the sense that I have no "vote" on decisions they have to make. Wikipedia is closer to being a democracy - more like a Democratic Republic (of course this is debatable).
You are right that I have every right to branch off an open source project like Ubuntu, but I can no longer call it "Ubuntu". This is analogous to a new country forming and reusing the constitution of another country, which has nothing to do with the word "democracy".
Instead of 2 choices (donor or non-donor), how about a third category: donor with preference to other donors. This takes the decision away from the government and to the owner of the organs.
I'm sure some people would be willing to donate to anyone, but the majority would choose the new third option.
A core is theoretically a fixed number of transistors, and Moore's law (depending on which version you quote) essentially states that the number of transistors per chip will double every 18 months. Therefore, a corollary to Moore's Law is that the number of cores could double every 18 months. I say could because engineers may decide to put more transistors in each core, which would slow down the core increase.
Also, there is another caveat: many applications will never be able to take advantage of an insane number of cores, so most chips may not follow this route. I actually believe the market for chips will split into two, and that this split has already began. There will be the chips that follow your core-doubling law. These will target gamers (replacing the GPU), scientists, and power-users (photographers, digital artists, etc). The second type of chip will settle on a few cores and will be extremely small/cheap/efficient. These will be the Atom processors of the future, and could provide more than enough power for the typical user.
I believe the cpu demand of most users has mostly plateaued in the past few years (my netbook has the same power as my computer from almost ten years ago), and that is why I wouldn't call chip-doubling a law. The demand for it in the mainstream simply isn't there (at least, yet).
I don't specifically know about the Pokemon case, but I see several Pokemon species have their own pages and the rest have their own sections on "List of Pokemon" pages. I suspect that the deletions were due to this notability guideline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual.2C_guidebook.2C_textbook.2C_or_scientific_journal). I agree that when articles get close to the line it becomes subjective, and some decisions are too deletionist - I'm personally on the fence in this case - but the vast majority of deletion cases are clear-cut.
I know there are a couple of comprehensive Pokemon wikis already, so I don't really see the problem. Comprehensive sources will always be better than Wikipedia. For example, tens of thousands of books have been written on WWII, but the total articles about WWII on Wikipedia would probably fit in under a dozen. Wikipedia should NOT be a superset of all information, otherwise it would become unmanageable and unwieldy. At over 3.3 million articles it's already pretty damn close.
It's funny, some comments in here complain that many articles have gotten stale and aren't well-maintained. Others, like yours, complain that there aren't enough articles. These two complaints are at odds with each other - a fixed number of editors can either maintain a smaller, more important set of articles, or can devote their time to starting and watching new articles. Your criticism is largely overblown too: there are, on average, over 1000 new articles a day. I'd like to see any print Encyclopedia do this in a year.
Frankly, I prefer less but higher-quality articles, because it minimizes the amount of misinformation (one of the biggest plagues in early Wikipedia). It helps minimize the number of esoteric articles from being started and then forgotten. The only real rule you need to know when starting an article is notability: the 22342342343 policies are only in place to remove subjectivity from the process. Common sense can get you most of the way there, but if you are in the habit of starting articles understanding the five "general notability guideline" will save you a lot of hassle. And only takes about five minutes.
"Which is why Wikipedia is doomed to a slow bit-rot into irrelevance."
Wikipedia is still one of the most popular websites on the internet - claiming it is dead or dying is premature and probably wrong. There are more than enough editors to maintain the vast majority of popular articles. More esoteric topical articles such as a living actress will become stale every now and then (this has always been true on Wikipedia), but established topics have, well... established articles. And these types of articles will make up the core of any encyclopedia.
I like analogies: Wikipedia is like a large city that has been planned and built in the last six years. Nothing will ever destroy the large, bustling downtown. For example, the "World War II" building is already constructed. A random bum can't come by and knock it down, but he can pee on the side of the door and annoy some people. Some passerby will clean it up in about 10 seconds. The younger, more active parts of town will constantly have new buildings coming up and being destroyed, but most visitors don't come to see these parts. And hey, if someone visits this part of town and sees a broken door, he can fix it in about 5 minutes. As long as the Wikipedia city is the best city in the world, the number of casual visitors like this will grow, not fall.
A headline about hospital workers stealing the blood of babies is much scarier than "database of fingerprints secretly kept by Texas A&M researchers", even if the privacy implications are far more benign.
When I worked for a government contractor (in aerospace) I don't recall a government body ever doing in-depth analysis of my code (which was partly controlling the plane). It was our job - someone would write code, a second person would review it, and then a third person would test it, and then we would release it. I'm sure the government was testing our planes, but not by tracing through our code.
Of course this may be different than your case, because I was working on planes without any humans on board.
"You seem to be comfortable with them being a large collection of bureaucrats who actually do nothing."
Funny, your conclusion is the exact opposite of my reasoning. I don't want a huge government organization peeking inside 100s of millions of lines of code. As I hinted at, I believe this would require 100s of engineers. I've worked for the government, and I've seen how badly this scales up. Plus it's just repeating the work of engineers who actually understand the code they write. Also, I'm sure private (especially foreign) companies don't want to trust the Government with their proprietary code - a single leak could hurt the entire organization's reputation. This is why hiring outside consultants on one-off cases makes more sense to me.
"So by your logic they should not employ traffic engineers to understand road design safety nor mechanical engineers to understand vehicle structural safety."
I have no problem with crash testing, but structural safety is the job of the car company. I don't know of any concrete law that say "cars have to be at least X structurally sound". So how would you propose this even be tested? These are the types of powers that introduce bureaucracy! I also don't mind some government organization testing highways, because this is the government's domain anyway. They built it, they SHOULD test it.
I totally disagree: the NHTSA shouldn't hire engineers. NHTSA should not do the job of Toyota's engineers and testers; they were created to set policy and propose safety laws. The NHTSA should hire economists, policy makers, and maybe some scientists. But the job of ensuring the nuts and bolts of a car are safe should fall on the car-maker, with strict repercussions if they fail.
My biggest problem with all this is what people on Slashdot should already know: looking through and understanding millions of lines of code would take an engineer a few lifetimes - how many engineers are we proposing NHTSA hires? They could learn Toyota's software system, but then what about Ford cars? Or BMW? All for a government organization with 600 employees...
In cases like this, NHTSA should force Toyota to hire a third party (objective) consultant to create a technical report. Maybe a small team of engineers could remain on staff to read and understand those reports.
Every article I have read that explains who committed the hacking, how, and why has been an opinion piece, and ends with "the opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of X". I have no problem with this per se, but we should all take it with a grain of salt; Slashdot should preface it's headline with "Theory:" or "Opinion:".
I prefer my news to be my news, and my conspiracy theories to be my entertainment.
What good is 720p video on my 1024x600 monitor? Too bad they don't make 600p videos.
"The gadget insurance company told Sky News Sunday that it saw a 50-percent rise in claims during the month Apple launched the latest version, the iPhone 3GS.'"
If true, this is statistically significant and strongly indicates that some insurance fraud is happening. The companies likely can't *prove* any single user is actually doing it, however - therefore, they are probably paying out most claims even though they know some of those claims are fraudulent.
I don't see any reason for skepticism, to me it's obvious this would happen (and is the reason why the annual premium of the insurance I looked into was 80% of the cost of the phone).
I recall when i built my first computer in 2000 that Kingston was a reliable brand at a reasonable price. Back in those pre-newegg days, buying computer parts was like the wild west, so brand was very important. The last memory card I bought from Kingston was cheap, but it stopped working within a few months. I read reviews of the card and realized it wasn't a fluke; Kingston had sold out.
I always find it sad when a company that I perceived as dependable and trustworthy sells out. I can understand why it happens: the CEO, in an effort to boost profits, cuts costs and loosens standards, effectively selling their brand name/good will for short-term profits. The CEO looks great; people are buying just as many of the product, but the margins are higher. By the time consumers realize the brand is now worth less (or even worthless), the CEO has cashed his bonus checks and can retire or move to another company.
I'm hoping that Toyota is bringing visibility to this problem. The extra profits Toyota made whoring out its brand will pale in comparison to its losses. Kingston is fortunate to be in an industry where brand name is no longer as important as turning up on the front page of slickdeals.
I have heard something similar, but I think it's more complex than a single court case (which is peanuts to these 100+ billion dollar companies; Google could drag that case out and retaliate with their own lawsuits). Worst-case scenario - things go back to the way they were. What's the harm in trying? I believe it was more like Apple saying "if you guys infringe on our multitouch patents it will permanently hurt our relationship". At this point, Google's relationship with Apple is already strained; they now believe they more to gain than to lose.
Both Google and Apple realize how valuable multitouch is - I personally would rather not switch away from having pinch-to-zoom in my applications, especially maps and the web browser.
I think more troubling in the SSD market has been poor design at the low end (see http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531 for more detail). 150 dollars for a 64 GB SSD is fine, but when random write speed is an order of magnitude slower than a standard hard drive that costs an order of magnitude less, something is severely wrong.
Early adopters such as myself got pretty screwed over. Until consumers can trust the technology, I don't think price matters. Manufacturers need to put effort into building a high quality product first - they need to design good controllers and firmware.