True, that, this actually makes it an international problem, since it allows anyone to spy on all of us, depending on local legislation that affects non-local traffic. Amazing, isn't it. In the end it all boils down to the amount of effort a country will do to decode all the network traffic. Did you know that the former eastern republic of Germany (calling themselves 'Democratic', by the way, always be afraid of governments that need to explicitly state they are democratic) had racks and racks of tape recorders with some sort of analog speech recognition that would start as soon as someone at some phone line would say a 'dangerous' word? This was not even computer-based, as computers didn't really exist at the time (until the end of the DDR, the only computer to come out of it was a copied Acorn as far as I know). Still, they wanted to do this amount of effort, and they did. This goes to say that anything that can go wrong with your privacy, will go wrong.
How many 100% US-made products are actually exported, compared to the amount of imported products? The US is more dependent on the rest of the world than the other way around. In India, where outsourcing started, there are already companies that are completely independent of the US companies they started working for. The only influence the US has is monetary, but with the huge US debts, and the decreasing strength of the US dollar, this will weaken. The current isolating policy the US government seems to want will not help this matter. That's all that I'm trying to say.
Notice that they mention that it doesn't work in fog or on snowy roads! As others mentioned here, that makes it actually a higher danger for those who will solely rely on the system (as anyone will do after using it for a while).
Also, when using skype, how can one check if it is from a foreign country or not. Easy way out is to assume anyone using skype is likely to be a foreign national, with dangerous ideas anyway. In the tags it said 'communication' but I read 'communism' as this scheme seems to be destined to scare the US people from talking to foreigners and hearing their ideas from the free world.
But, I have a better solution. Just let all foreign nationals get the message that is made here and stop communicating to and via the US. The US want to be isolated? Let them have it! It is not like one needs to go to the US to get a job there, as most jobs for foreign nationals are by now already outsourced to those countries themselves. The US dollar as a currency is not so important anymore nowadays either. The economic and technological downfall that will follow will hopefully put the US politics in a course where it's supposed to be, to lead their people into progress as a democratic and open country. Sweet dreams, unfortunately.
Citroen has this system already in production cars. Note, that it is not even the top-of-the-line car, just the mid-sized model. I think this system will be the first of the technologies mentioned here to become standardized. There also exists a system that measures the blinking of your eyes, probably by Mercedes, not sure.
It was probably top gear who once tested the difference in drunk and tired driving on an oval test track. In that case, driving drunk still managed to keep lanes, but driving tired really had the guy swoop around lanes. This doesn't mean that drunk driving is better, being drunk you can concentrate on slow changes, and therefore drive straight and easy curves quite well, but as soon as something unexpected shows up (you're not alone on the street, you know), you don't have the reaction speed required to avoid an accident. But still it showed very well how dangerous tired driving is, many bus and truck accidents by drivers who didn't take enough stops will tell you the same. This week, here in Germany a 20-something couple was found in the bushes at the side of the autobahn after they had lost track on the completely empty road, driving a 4 hour distance after a party at 3 am. Because of the bushes, it took a week to find them, and since it happened in the early morning no-one saw it happening. I think everyone has drowsed away at the steering wheel at some point, me included, and everyone realizes the dangers.
As for the alcohol measurement (we had an article on exactly the same subject a few months ago, but it was Toyota then if I remember correctly), it might be indeed problematic and too invasive, difficult to accept socially. I guess lease and rental cars might get it, but they have the support infrastructure to cope with unwanted motor-locking caused by this system in special occasions.
And, someone falling into the toilet also needs to be thin enough to fit in it. Thinking of the average slashdot public, I guess we have a non-issue here;)
ah, I couldn't read that part because the letters were wiped all blurry there because someone moved his finger of that part of the text. (Disclaimer: as someone who prints very infrequently, I recently bought an inkjet, and on the same day found out why I had decided years ago that my next printer would be a laser printer. The clearly distinguishable unhealthy smell of these things and the price tag for a color all-in-one held me from it, though.)
Yes but will it also be able to have them put enough money and urgency in the project? Why do bridges in the 'western world' hardly collaps in this day and age? Because most governments there have healthy plans to check on the quality of these things, learning from earlier mistakes. Then again, the money has to come from somewhere and at some point the government should decide if they spend their money for military attacks on random countries and nationwide public surveillance, or on the health and safety of their own population. Damn that is a difficult decision!
I completely agree, I would probably also be paranoid in his position, so I can understand his behavior, but it is not very good to put someone with this background on that position. I hope germany will recover afterwards, but chances of getting your privacy back after privacy-diminishing laws have been installed are small.
In Holland it is soscastoa, and I still use it for my current work as scientific staff member. Things like this stay with you forever, so there is no better way. Also, I noticed when helping people after school that had troubles with math, that anyhting involving fractions is very difficult for those who just aren't predestined geeks. Still, even those need to get through math, and all the more help in the beginning will bring them further in math as they would have thought themselves. Actually this is true for boys and girls.
Real life example: I taught one girl who had very bad grades for math and physics. I helped her for a while, and noticed that at the start she had no clue what to do at all, but, after a short explanation she picked it up amazingly fast. It was really just the first few principles that were hard for her to understand, and normally she would just give it up there. I am no miracle math teacher, but explained with a lot of patience, and then she could do it without an effort at all. Dangerous consequence of that again was that she immediately getting lazy about it:) She had no problems getting through the exams in any case. What I conclude from this is that maybe teachers are expecting only the boys to pick it up, and keep their explanation too much technical. And books as these, as silly as they may seem (the cover looks horrid to me), might just be the little push in the back that is needed.
Yes, and as usual, fighting back can be done on the cheap. One of these robots probably costs up to 100.000 dollars? Tested, certified, etc. At least the early ones will. A small attack robot just for guerilla porpuses can be made for less than 500 dollars, I would guess. A relatively robust RC vehicle and some self-made explosives.
Indeed, no mousing without a middle button!
The mapping I have now is the two big buttons as left/right click, and the small one on the right as middle button.
I tried using the 'fake middle button' setting, where clicking left and right simultaneously performs a middle click. but I couldn't get that to work.
The point is that at my current setting there is only one button left, and no scrolling is possible (or only one way: up or down). But then again, during UT you don't need the middle button so I could make an xmodmap script to be started before running UT.
Also another question: I still have my normal mouse coupled, but with the middle button remapped to my marble mouse the middle button of the normal mouse doesn't work anymore. I now have a 'leftmouse' and 'rightmouse' alias coupled to xmodmap, is there also a way to get the middle button mapped to both mice simultaneously?
I'm not sure, they gave in to the biometric passports, and we have Schäuble now here, who will do anything to stop "terrorists" and give him a reason to spy on the german people. It's a delicate balance in Germany now. Glad to see it went to the right side this time.
Indeed a lovely trackball. Also makes you wonder how well the article submitter did a search. In the time that he wrote this submission, he could have just went to the logitech site and found the marble mouse. How could he not have found it? It is a trackball that is not to be moved by your thumb (I a get sore thumb just from the idea). And can be used for both hands. Also it doesn't cost as much as the kensington ones. I can't tell you if it is better than the Kensington because I don't own the Kensington. Since they have a different form, and for me it is very easy to lay my hand around the marble mouse in a steady and relaxed position, I can't imagine that with the square kensington.
I bought mine just to try out something different. The first two weeks were horrid, it is especially difficult if you have some drop-down menu with sub-menus, you'll spend 3 times just to get there. My hand seemed to hurt more than before during that time, but it went away pretty fast. By now it is as comfortable for me as a normal mouse, actually a bit more comfortable. I keep it on the left side of my keyboard and my mouse unused on the right side, except when I play ut, it really misses the scroll wheel there (suggestions?), and I end up randomly moving the direction. Maybe it needs getting used to in games, but when you constantly lose, you end up going back to the mouse instead:) It's good for a nice surprise too: I had several people at my desk that were trying to move the mouse pointer by moving the whole device around:)
What I also wonder: how come there are about 600 answers and only a few mention this mouse, which is actually the only real answer to what this guy was asking for?
Problem is, the second amendment will not save you from the erosion of all your other rights. As law after law are introduced to limit your freedom of speech and all other freedoms that make a good democracy, at the moment that the second amendment is the last one standing, who will you shoot to bring the others back? Example: How will the right to carry a gun help you on an airplane if you are one of the people that accidentally got on the no-fly list? Again, who will you shoot? Say you'd start a new civil war as soon as the government becomes too oppressive, even then the amount of arms available to the public is in no relation to the arms capacity of the military. The 'good' side may be that guerrilla tactics are still a proven method to fight an army, no matter how big its firepower, but really, can you imagine something like that actually happening?
I am not so much in favor of carrying guns, but that is a matter of taste, and if you think it is an important one, I respect that, there are reasons that this right exists. I do like my constitutional freedoms as much as you do, though, and think that whatever your freedoms are, you should do your best to keep all of them, not just the selection that first comes to mind. They all exist for a reason, and it is the combination that gives it its power.
If all people would react as parent did here, I would indeed not think of myself as slashdot audience. However, luckily there are a bunch of slashdot users that understand that slashdot has a mix of topics, and a mixed audience. Someone that knows about the topic at hand and is not too short-sighted to explain to the interested readers that are not acquainted to the current topic what it is about, that seems to me slashdot's target audience. The main reason why I come here is that I tend to learn new stuff from some of the more insightful comments, not because I already know everything of cpu schedulers so I can bash other users without having to explain it to them.
Are astronauts fully conscious during take-off? Are you actually able to do anything at all under these high g-forces? Then again, doing work that requires skill and concentration the next day (and in-space time is limited, so you can't really take an easy day) with a hangover might be not so stimulating.
I get what you mean. I also have the feeling, as things as absurd as this seem to come up ever more frequently, that reality has become mixed with a heap of April Fools jokes. Unfortunately without the joke part, instead unhealthy more of the fools part.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations! You just summarized 99% of the internet!
since when is clicking on a link deemed inappropriate? Isn't that what links are for?
True, that, this actually makes it an international problem, since it allows anyone to spy on all of us, depending on local legislation that affects non-local traffic. Amazing, isn't it. In the end it all boils down to the amount of effort a country will do to decode all the network traffic. Did you know that the former eastern republic of Germany (calling themselves 'Democratic', by the way, always be afraid of governments that need to explicitly state they are democratic) had racks and racks of tape recorders with some sort of analog speech recognition that would start as soon as someone at some phone line would say a 'dangerous' word? This was not even computer-based, as computers didn't really exist at the time (until the end of the DDR, the only computer to come out of it was a copied Acorn as far as I know). Still, they wanted to do this amount of effort, and they did. This goes to say that anything that can go wrong with your privacy, will go wrong.
How many 100% US-made products are actually exported, compared to the amount of imported products? The US is more dependent on the rest of the world than the other way around. In India, where outsourcing started, there are already companies that are completely independent of the US companies they started working for. The only influence the US has is monetary, but with the huge US debts, and the decreasing strength of the US dollar, this will weaken. The current isolating policy the US government seems to want will not help this matter. That's all that I'm trying to say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCsIdYUIHp0
Notice that they mention that it doesn't work in fog or on snowy roads! As others mentioned here, that makes it actually a higher danger for those who will solely rely on the system (as anyone will do after using it for a while).
But, I have a better solution. Just let all foreign nationals get the message that is made here and stop communicating to and via the US. The US want to be isolated? Let them have it! It is not like one needs to go to the US to get a job there, as most jobs for foreign nationals are by now already outsourced to those countries themselves. The US dollar as a currency is not so important anymore nowadays either. The economic and technological downfall that will follow will hopefully put the US politics in a course where it's supposed to be, to lead their people into progress as a democratic and open country. Sweet dreams, unfortunately.
It was probably top gear who once tested the difference in drunk and tired driving on an oval test track. In that case, driving drunk still managed to keep lanes, but driving tired really had the guy swoop around lanes. This doesn't mean that drunk driving is better, being drunk you can concentrate on slow changes, and therefore drive straight and easy curves quite well, but as soon as something unexpected shows up (you're not alone on the street, you know), you don't have the reaction speed required to avoid an accident. But still it showed very well how dangerous tired driving is, many bus and truck accidents by drivers who didn't take enough stops will tell you the same. This week, here in Germany a 20-something couple was found in the bushes at the side of the autobahn after they had lost track on the completely empty road, driving a 4 hour distance after a party at 3 am. Because of the bushes, it took a week to find them, and since it happened in the early morning no-one saw it happening. I think everyone has drowsed away at the steering wheel at some point, me included, and everyone realizes the dangers.
As for the alcohol measurement (we had an article on exactly the same subject a few months ago, but it was Toyota then if I remember correctly), it might be indeed problematic and too invasive, difficult to accept socially. I guess lease and rental cars might get it, but they have the support infrastructure to cope with unwanted motor-locking caused by this system in special occasions.
And, someone falling into the toilet also needs to be thin enough to fit in it. Thinking of the average slashdot public, I guess we have a non-issue here ;)
ah, I couldn't read that part because the letters were wiped all blurry there because someone moved his finger of that part of the text. (Disclaimer: as someone who prints very infrequently, I recently bought an inkjet, and on the same day found out why I had decided years ago that my next printer would be a laser printer. The clearly distinguishable unhealthy smell of these things and the price tag for a color all-in-one held me from it, though.)
Yes but will it also be able to have them put enough money and urgency in the project? Why do bridges in the 'western world' hardly collaps in this day and age? Because most governments there have healthy plans to check on the quality of these things, learning from earlier mistakes. Then again, the money has to come from somewhere and at some point the government should decide if they spend their money for military attacks on random countries and nationwide public surveillance, or on the health and safety of their own population. Damn that is a difficult decision!
I completely agree, I would probably also be paranoid in his position, so I can understand his behavior, but it is not very good to put someone with this background on that position. I hope germany will recover afterwards, but chances of getting your privacy back after privacy-diminishing laws have been installed are small.
Real life example: I taught one girl who had very bad grades for math and physics. I helped her for a while, and noticed that at the start she had no clue what to do at all, but, after a short explanation she picked it up amazingly fast. It was really just the first few principles that were hard for her to understand, and normally she would just give it up there. I am no miracle math teacher, but explained with a lot of patience, and then she could do it without an effort at all. Dangerous consequence of that again was that she immediately getting lazy about it :) She had no problems getting through the exams in any case. What I conclude from this is that maybe teachers are expecting only the boys to pick it up, and keep their explanation too much technical. And books as these, as silly as they may seem (the cover looks horrid to me), might just be the little push in the back that is needed.
Can I bring my own carbon-nanotube enhanced paper?
Parent: "Hey, would you like to .."
14-yo: "You hate me, don't you! I wish I wasn't born!"
Yes, and as usual, fighting back can be done on the cheap. One of these robots probably costs up to 100.000 dollars? Tested, certified, etc. At least the early ones will. A small attack robot just for guerilla porpuses can be made for less than 500 dollars, I would guess. A relatively robust RC vehicle and some self-made explosives.
Just make sure you shut down the allofmp3 browser window when it comes rolling through your street.
The point is that at my current setting there is only one button left, and no scrolling is possible (or only one way: up or down). But then again, during UT you don't need the middle button so I could make an xmodmap script to be started before running UT.
Also another question: I still have my normal mouse coupled, but with the middle button remapped to my marble mouse the middle button of the normal mouse doesn't work anymore. I now have a 'leftmouse' and 'rightmouse' alias coupled to xmodmap, is there also a way to get the middle button mapped to both mice simultaneously?
I'm not sure, they gave in to the biometric passports, and we have Schäuble now here, who will do anything to stop "terrorists" and give him a reason to spy on the german people. It's a delicate balance in Germany now. Glad to see it went to the right side this time.
I bought mine just to try out something different. The first two weeks were horrid, it is especially difficult if you have some drop-down menu with sub-menus, you'll spend 3 times just to get there. My hand seemed to hurt more than before during that time, but it went away pretty fast. By now it is as comfortable for me as a normal mouse, actually a bit more comfortable. I keep it on the left side of my keyboard and my mouse unused on the right side, except when I play ut, it really misses the scroll wheel there (suggestions?), and I end up randomly moving the direction. Maybe it needs getting used to in games, but when you constantly lose, you end up going back to the mouse instead :) It's good for a nice surprise too: I had several people at my desk that were trying to move the mouse pointer by moving the whole device around :)
What I also wonder: how come there are about 600 answers and only a few mention this mouse, which is actually the only real answer to what this guy was asking for?
Is he wearing turtleneck with pinguins printed on it? Trying to get support from Mac and linux users all I guess, all 25 of them anyways.
you: RAMPAGE!
I am not so much in favor of carrying guns, but that is a matter of taste, and if you think it is an important one, I respect that, there are reasons that this right exists. I do like my constitutional freedoms as much as you do, though, and think that whatever your freedoms are, you should do your best to keep all of them, not just the selection that first comes to mind. They all exist for a reason, and it is the combination that gives it its power.
If all people would react as parent did here, I would indeed not think of myself as slashdot audience. However, luckily there are a bunch of slashdot users that understand that slashdot has a mix of topics, and a mixed audience. Someone that knows about the topic at hand and is not too short-sighted to explain to the interested readers that are not acquainted to the current topic what it is about, that seems to me slashdot's target audience. The main reason why I come here is that I tend to learn new stuff from some of the more insightful comments, not because I already know everything of cpu schedulers so I can bash other users without having to explain it to them.
Are astronauts fully conscious during take-off? Are you actually able to do anything at all under these high g-forces? Then again, doing work that requires skill and concentration the next day (and in-space time is limited, so you can't really take an easy day) with a hangover might be not so stimulating.
I get what you mean. I also have the feeling, as things as absurd as this seem to come up ever more frequently, that reality has become mixed with a heap of April Fools jokes. Unfortunately without the joke part, instead unhealthy more of the fools part.