This is an absolutely valid point. The software seems to not detect this aberrant input signal behavior. A lesson for software coders everywhere: validate your inputs, restrict your outputs... where it is possible to do so. In this case it might be possible to actually manually create these inputs, so a second sensor system should be implemented in tandem to verify this command, and simply ignore the one that shows 'odd' data. Maybe NASA will find this. Who knows. I do know that this is a huge problem for many systems, not just cars. It would not take much to get a microwave oven to detect some dangerous situations and shut down, still, we don't see such as generally available.
If the vehicle has that much computer controlled functionality, why doesn't the black box tell which pedals were pressed at the time of impact and for the moments before impact? The black box system is arguably an invasion of privacy, but in this case it would go a long way toward fixing the problem(s) and perhaps saving lives.
Dude, you can wear shit on your head and call it a fucking hat for all anyone cares, just don't expect to be popular. Likewise, don't think you can take it to the local cleaners and get it cleaned for $2.49. You're going to have to buy special shit-hat cleaner, and probably a special shit-hat drying stand. But hey, you have personal choice.
I wasn't being snide, simply pointing out that there are issues with iShit that everyone seems more than happy to overlook. Just because you personally think the coolaid tastes good doesn't mean that it has no poison in it.
Go ahead, celebrate their success and your personal choice to use them, but also be honest an admit that what they've done is not all good for the entire market; that what Apple has done is not pushing the boundaries of anything but their own profit margins. There are a few things they have not done:
Participated in promulgating open standards Created devices that use and promote open standards Paid all their licensing fees (apparently) Created technology that improves the markets they participate in (to argue you must show that without Apple that technology would never have happened)
Both Apple and Microsoft fail in many of the same ways when it comes to innovation and improving the market. None of this is snide anti-fanboi rhetoric, it's simple observation. If you try hard, perhaps get some help, you might be able to do this too.
I alwyas find it "interesting" when people credit Apple for inventing stuff. They successfully packaged current tech with overpriced proprietary lock-in service. That may technically be innovative but I will argue that its not good for all the market and adding DRM to anything is definitely in the evil category. So go ahead, celebrate the marketing success but see the damage they've done for what it really is. Your same thinking can be applied to Microsoft. Neither are ultimately good for the consumer at large.
Actually, NO. I was quite happy with a generic 2GB MP3 player made by many different manufacturers. Some of them came with decent features, tactile controls, and did other things like voice record etc. They did not come with lock-in, suited my needs, and the cost was somewhere around... oh $12.00 USD. I could afford to put 3 of them in my brief case if I wanted. All I needed was a USB port and some headphones. No hacking required, no big price tag, no lock-in. Just music from a small device with headphones. There are and were many such devices. I strongly suspect that people who go gaga about iCrap will only be happy in death if they get a designer cancer.
Whoa there Nelly. Once you remove the coolness factor from it, It's not just an MP3 player, it's a proprietary lock-in MP3 player that costs way more than it needs to. The iPad will be the same. The cool factor is nothing short of sales magic. The first time I saw an iPhone, I thought to myself that it's clever and works fairly well. Then I tried to make a phone call. Ooops. Then I looked at the music capabilities... another ooops. Every time the device added lock-in or required that I jump through hoops to use it with Linux, it's coolness factor dropped by at least half. In the end it doesn't do enough to make it worth the extra cost.
The iPad will be the same, or at least has started out with all the same flashing lights and bragging. Maybe in 6 months when normal people get a look at one they will see it as the same 'magical' do-nothing-special device that the iPod and iPhone turned out to be. If there is any lock-in or I'm required to jump through hoops to use one with my home network, then Apple can keep them. All of them. I'm not likely to buy a hammer that requires I buy special gloves from the same company to use it, or restricts which nails I can use it to hit. You can go gaga all you want about how cool it is but if you do I'm taking you off the Christmas party invite list.
I agree with this. Oracle will have to do some serious sucking up to the world to convince anyone they are not out to destroy everything that MS licensing was unable to touch. I'm not saying that Oracle sucks, just that their business model is not really where the world has been migrating to lately. For more or less all the reasons that MS products are not looking so good these days to many people, Oracle products (including the products they buy) will also not look good. There is reason to think this looks like a sinking ship taking on ballast weights.... IMO
You are not correct. Any animal has the ability to modify its behavior and override instinct/desires when it is suitably expedient to do so. My dog may bark at you when you walk past my fence, but he will not do so when he knows I'm watching. This is much the same as *most* criminals - they do not commit crimes if they know someone who will get them punished is watching.
Molesting children is corrosive to society, as adjudged by the majority. Killing them does not ensure this trait is bred out of the community as it is not shown to be an inherited trait. The appropriate thing to do is treat the problem responsibly. You do realize that you're suggesting we shoot priests in the head with a gun, right?
I'm not sure how well that will go down, but I might buy one of the tee shirts that will be sold afterwards.
Not only that, but you could do it with a virus which is very picky about which computers it makes such changes to. Indeed, you could have a virus out in the wild today that is just waiting to find its way to your hard drive where it will find your name or some other piece of information before it begins doing what it was programmed to do. Since the virus is essentially a static file (non aggressive) on all other computers, the chance it would get wiped by antivirus software is much less.
I look forward to the day that people are forced to stop downloading/pirating music and videos. It would be awesome to see the look on legislators faces when they are told: look, no increase in profits. Told you so, there was no loss in profits to begin with. Now, undo all that crap that you did to protect a dying industry that doesn't even know it's own customer base well enough to stay in business. If you don't undo it, I'm going to get all my pirate friends to spend their efforts on getting you unelected rather than on worrying about downloading things. See, on the one hand you get a nice summer vacation from the entertainment industry and on the other hand, you lose your job. You pick.
Yes, and Monsanto employees and representatives should attempt to avoid walking on the target range of farmers accused of innocent infringement, though I think it would improve the world if they couldn't help themselves but to sit on target ranges more often. Our very own former Vice President set a precedent for the accidental shooting of people in hunting parties and on target ranges. In case the FBI is listening, I'm not advocating that people shoot at Monsanto employees and lawyers. Indeed, I think those people should shoot themselves and save us the misery they cause. I just think it would be more convenient if more farmers had their own shooting ranges.
And of course, the other end of the story, interns that end up with large medical bills, difficulty seeing out of both eyes, and other maladies the befall those who snitch for a living. I'm sure they've figured out how to make such snitching legal, but they are headed down the path of the 'war on drugs' that most of the USA has engaged in. To my knowledge, it has done nothing to stem the drug problem or the flow of drugs. It has on the other hand improved the technology that drug dealers use, in an ever spiraling war of attrition. Apparently this wasteful 'war on drugs' (life, money, resources) has not even been good as an example of what NOT to do. It's frustrating to see. Yeah, I know it's not quite the same thing, but close enough. The courts didn't help, so naturally the next step is to hire spies and snitches. What could possibly go wrong?
Tactile feedback does not sell new technology. What's more, waving your hands about in front of the screen is absolutely certain to be less confusing to your average computer user than a keyboard and mouse, which are more or less clearly labeled. We already have trouble with locating the 'any' key. There is no telling what kind of issues this technology might bring.
Tech support: ok, ma'am, slow down, just tell me what happened and we'll get this problem sorted out. Customer: Well, I was reading email when my sister phoned. We were talking away when the next thing I know, the screen on my computer was all jumbled up with funny letters, and now I can't find any of my emails. They're all GONE. Tech support: Ms Bonneti, do you and your sister talk with your hands? Customer: What does that have to do with anything?
Yes, changing the law is one solution. 55 mph speed limits worked well. IMO it's much more realistic to force efficiency on users by using the law to make manufacturers make it easier to be efficient. Technology in the vehicles will do that, and is doing that already. The better our technology, the better our efficiency. I would like to see electric vehicle racing as a way to drive that technology further and faster.
Why should technology not be in the sport of motor racing? It's technology that will push our passenger vehicles from 30-ish mpg to much more than that. Sure other vehicles can do more now, but lets take that ever popular SUV of USA. How do we get it making 75 mpg? Technology. The things that motor sports racing have done in the past have trickled down to passenger vehicles. If you want a damned flying car, it's going to need some technology! I say up with car geek competitions! Up in the air damnit!
You are describing the resources vs number and type of bugs. With enough resources, both problems would be addressed: if $file.size > 32Gb then err_msg and return. In this case, global replace is probably more work to fix. Still, it comes down to resources and the squeaky wheel syndrome.
Lets not ignore or forget that in many commercial situations, the propensity for Marketing and Sales groups to describe the problems opposite of how I did. That is to say they will promise the hard fix before the easy one to get the sale. This in turn negatively affects the resources vs. problems algebra.
3(-2x + 1) = -6x - 7 looks good on paper so far... Sure, global replace is easy says the salesman, the dev teams are working on it already.
Exactly. Most coders have to use the code they write. Leaving bugs is not something you do if you know they are there. Sure some people do that, but not the ones that want to get it right - at least for their own use. This is why some open source software is not infinitely usable - it did what the original author needed, and was not intended particularly to solve everyone's silly problems. The example of the 'A' key is probably something that was going to work soon, but the need for it never materialized and someone forgot to disable the code that checks for the letter 'A' - and since it was not implemented, nobody checked it.
The first time I had code in production, running 24/7 I was kind of upset that I didn't need to look at it everyday, then amazed that it was working so well. Then, months later when I did have to go look at why it seemed to be not working right, I learned how important documentation and comments are. At this point I stopped being amazed that it worked well, but that it worked at all. Bugs are not left on purpose, only when there is not time or resources to fix them.
In a word, No. There are many types of 'virtualization' and more than one approach to de-duplication. In a system as engineered as one with de-duplication, you should have replication as part of the data integrity processes. If the file is corrupted in all the main copies (everywhere it exists, including backups) then the scenario you describe would be correct. This is true for any individual file that exists on computer systems today. De-duplication strives to reduce the number of copies needed across some defined data 'space' whether that is user space, or server space, or storage space etc.
This is a problem in many aspects of computing. Imagine you have a business with 50 users. Each must use a web application which has many graphics. The browser caches of each user has copies of each of those graphics images. When the cache is backed up, the backup is much larger than it needs to be. You can do several things to reduce backup times, storage space, and user quality of service
1 - disable caching for that site in the browser and cache them on a single server locally located 2 - disable backing up the browser caches, or back up only one 3 - enable deduplication in the backup and storage processes 4 - implement all or several of the above
The problems are not single ended and the answers or solutions will also not be single ended or faceted. That is no one solution is the answer to all possible problems. This one has some aspects to it that are appealing to certain groups of people. You average home user might not be able to take advantage of this yet. Small businesses though might need to start looking at this type of solution. Think how many people got the same group email message with a 12MB attachment. How many times do all those copies get archived? In just that example you see the waste that duplicated data represents. Solutions such as this offer an affordable way to positively affect bottom lines in fighting those types of problems problems.
Actually, I have left stuff sitting on the checkout counter because I didn't see the sticker before then. For those that shop at Walmart, you may have luck finding alternate suppliers of similar goods at Target, JCPenny, and others. If you're willing to shop around for price then shopping around for country of origin shouldn't be too big a deal for you. Try Home Depot and others for goods they typically sell. Locally I'm able to find goods from South America, Afghanistan and others etc. There are some stores like World Market etc. that sell goods from other countries. I believe that there are even a couple of web sites that tell you where you can look for goods that are not from China. Please never forget that every dollar you spend with a local supplier of goods is a dollar generated to the economy that will do you the most good... your own.
The US government checks roughly 1% of goods from China for dangers etc. If we reject even 10% of goods it makes a big difference by removing the margins that make selling here profitable. If we can get the Chinese government to ensure workers there are protected as well as workers here they would have no margin per se'. There are many ways to help convince the Chinese people that they need to do something about the totalitarian like regime that they have in charge. A semi-polite exchange with Google is a bit better than a militaristic exchange, and since technology theft is a major danger from China, Google is a good place to start with the political wrangling, IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll settle for unruly code if it deprecates and banishes flash... hands down
This is an absolutely valid point. The software seems to not detect this aberrant input signal behavior. A lesson for software coders everywhere: validate your inputs, restrict your outputs... where it is possible to do so. In this case it might be possible to actually manually create these inputs, so a second sensor system should be implemented in tandem to verify this command, and simply ignore the one that shows 'odd' data. Maybe NASA will find this. Who knows. I do know that this is a huge problem for many systems, not just cars. It would not take much to get a microwave oven to detect some dangerous situations and shut down, still, we don't see such as generally available.
I prefer to posit that the young canine will have some carnal knowledge on the morning after.
If the vehicle has that much computer controlled functionality, why doesn't the black box tell which pedals were pressed at the time of impact and for the moments before impact? The black box system is arguably an invasion of privacy, but in this case it would go a long way toward fixing the problem(s) and perhaps saving lives.
Dude, you can wear shit on your head and call it a fucking hat for all anyone cares, just don't expect to be popular. Likewise, don't think you can take it to the local cleaners and get it cleaned for $2.49. You're going to have to buy special shit-hat cleaner, and probably a special shit-hat drying stand. But hey, you have personal choice.
I wasn't being snide, simply pointing out that there are issues with iShit that everyone seems more than happy to overlook. Just because you personally think the coolaid tastes good doesn't mean that it has no poison in it.
Go ahead, celebrate their success and your personal choice to use them, but also be honest an admit that what they've done is not all good for the entire market; that what Apple has done is not pushing the boundaries of anything but their own profit margins. There are a few things they have not done:
Participated in promulgating open standards
Created devices that use and promote open standards
Paid all their licensing fees (apparently)
Created technology that improves the markets they participate in (to argue you must show that without Apple that technology would never have happened)
Both Apple and Microsoft fail in many of the same ways when it comes to innovation and improving the market. None of this is snide anti-fanboi rhetoric, it's simple observation. If you try hard, perhaps get some help, you might be able to do this too.
I alwyas find it "interesting" when people credit Apple for inventing stuff. They successfully packaged current tech with overpriced proprietary lock-in service. That may technically be innovative but I will argue that its not good for all the market and adding DRM to anything is definitely in the evil category. So go ahead, celebrate the marketing success but see the damage they've done for what it really is. Your same thinking can be applied to Microsoft. Neither are ultimately good for the consumer at large.
Actually, NO. I was quite happy with a generic 2GB MP3 player made by many different manufacturers. Some of them came with decent features, tactile controls, and did other things like voice record etc. They did not come with lock-in, suited my needs, and the cost was somewhere around... oh $12.00 USD. I could afford to put 3 of them in my brief case if I wanted. All I needed was a USB port and some headphones. No hacking required, no big price tag, no lock-in. Just music from a small device with headphones. There are and were many such devices. I strongly suspect that people who go gaga about iCrap will only be happy in death if they get a designer cancer.
Whoa there Nelly. Once you remove the coolness factor from it, It's not just an MP3 player, it's a proprietary lock-in MP3 player that costs way more than it needs to. The iPad will be the same. The cool factor is nothing short of sales magic. The first time I saw an iPhone, I thought to myself that it's clever and works fairly well. Then I tried to make a phone call. Ooops. Then I looked at the music capabilities... another ooops. Every time the device added lock-in or required that I jump through hoops to use it with Linux, it's coolness factor dropped by at least half. In the end it doesn't do enough to make it worth the extra cost.
The iPad will be the same, or at least has started out with all the same flashing lights and bragging. Maybe in 6 months when normal people get a look at one they will see it as the same 'magical' do-nothing-special device that the iPod and iPhone turned out to be. If there is any lock-in or I'm required to jump through hoops to use one with my home network, then Apple can keep them. All of them. I'm not likely to buy a hammer that requires I buy special gloves from the same company to use it, or restricts which nails I can use it to hit. You can go gaga all you want about how cool it is but if you do I'm taking you off the Christmas party invite list.
I agree with this. Oracle will have to do some serious sucking up to the world to convince anyone they are not out to destroy everything that MS licensing was unable to touch. I'm not saying that Oracle sucks, just that their business model is not really where the world has been migrating to lately. For more or less all the reasons that MS products are not looking so good these days to many people, Oracle products (including the products they buy) will also not look good. There is reason to think this looks like a sinking ship taking on ballast weights.... IMO
You are not correct. Any animal has the ability to modify its behavior and override instinct/desires when it is suitably expedient to do so. My dog may bark at you when you walk past my fence, but he will not do so when he knows I'm watching. This is much the same as *most* criminals - they do not commit crimes if they know someone who will get them punished is watching.
Molesting children is corrosive to society, as adjudged by the majority. Killing them does not ensure this trait is bred out of the community as it is not shown to be an inherited trait. The appropriate thing to do is treat the problem responsibly. You do realize that you're suggesting we shoot priests in the head with a gun, right?
I'm not sure how well that will go down, but I might buy one of the tee shirts that will be sold afterwards.
So, here's a new motto up for grabs: Don't be evil... unless you can pay the MS licensing fees?
Not only that, but you could do it with a virus which is very picky about which computers it makes such changes to. Indeed, you could have a virus out in the wild today that is just waiting to find its way to your hard drive where it will find your name or some other piece of information before it begins doing what it was programmed to do. Since the virus is essentially a static file (non aggressive) on all other computers, the chance it would get wiped by antivirus software is much less.
I look forward to the day that people are forced to stop downloading/pirating music and videos. It would be awesome to see the look on legislators faces when they are told: look, no increase in profits. Told you so, there was no loss in profits to begin with. Now, undo all that crap that you did to protect a dying industry that doesn't even know it's own customer base well enough to stay in business. If you don't undo it, I'm going to get all my pirate friends to spend their efforts on getting you unelected rather than on worrying about downloading things. See, on the one hand you get a nice summer vacation from the entertainment industry and on the other hand, you lose your job. You pick.
Yes, and Monsanto employees and representatives should attempt to avoid walking on the target range of farmers accused of innocent infringement, though I think it would improve the world if they couldn't help themselves but to sit on target ranges more often. Our very own former Vice President set a precedent for the accidental shooting of people in hunting parties and on target ranges. In case the FBI is listening, I'm not advocating that people shoot at Monsanto employees and lawyers. Indeed, I think those people should shoot themselves and save us the misery they cause. I just think it would be more convenient if more farmers had their own shooting ranges.
And of course, the other end of the story, interns that end up with large medical bills, difficulty seeing out of both eyes, and other maladies the befall those who snitch for a living. I'm sure they've figured out how to make such snitching legal, but they are headed down the path of the 'war on drugs' that most of the USA has engaged in. To my knowledge, it has done nothing to stem the drug problem or the flow of drugs. It has on the other hand improved the technology that drug dealers use, in an ever spiraling war of attrition. Apparently this wasteful 'war on drugs' (life, money, resources) has not even been good as an example of what NOT to do. It's frustrating to see. Yeah, I know it's not quite the same thing, but close enough. The courts didn't help, so naturally the next step is to hire spies and snitches. What could possibly go wrong?
Tactile feedback does not sell new technology. What's more, waving your hands about in front of the screen is absolutely certain to be less confusing to your average computer user than a keyboard and mouse, which are more or less clearly labeled. We already have trouble with locating the 'any' key. There is no telling what kind of issues this technology might bring.
Tech support: ok, ma'am, slow down, just tell me what happened and we'll get this problem sorted out.
Customer: Well, I was reading email when my sister phoned. We were talking away when the next thing I know, the screen on my computer was all jumbled up with funny letters, and now I can't find any of my emails. They're all GONE.
Tech support: Ms Bonneti, do you and your sister talk with your hands?
Customer: What does that have to do with anything?
click.....
It was just supposed to "look good" to go with the story, but I guess having a bug was just as good :-)
Yes, changing the law is one solution. 55 mph speed limits worked well. IMO it's much more realistic to force efficiency on users by using the law to make manufacturers make it easier to be efficient. Technology in the vehicles will do that, and is doing that already. The better our technology, the better our efficiency. I would like to see electric vehicle racing as a way to drive that technology further and faster.
Why should technology not be in the sport of motor racing? It's technology that will push our passenger vehicles from 30-ish mpg to much more than that. Sure other vehicles can do more now, but lets take that ever popular SUV of USA. How do we get it making 75 mpg? Technology. The things that motor sports racing have done in the past have trickled down to passenger vehicles. If you want a damned flying car, it's going to need some technology! I say up with car geek competitions! Up in the air damnit!
You are describing the resources vs number and type of bugs. With enough resources, both problems would be addressed: if $file.size > 32Gb then err_msg and return. In this case, global replace is probably more work to fix. Still, it comes down to resources and the squeaky wheel syndrome.
Lets not ignore or forget that in many commercial situations, the propensity for Marketing and Sales groups to describe the problems opposite of how I did. That is to say they will promise the hard fix before the easy one to get the sale. This in turn negatively affects the resources vs. problems algebra.
3(-2x + 1) = -6x - 7 looks good on paper so far... Sure, global replace is easy says the salesman, the dev teams are working on it already.
Exactly. Most coders have to use the code they write. Leaving bugs is not something you do if you know they are there. Sure some people do that, but not the ones that want to get it right - at least for their own use. This is why some open source software is not infinitely usable - it did what the original author needed, and was not intended particularly to solve everyone's silly problems. The example of the 'A' key is probably something that was going to work soon, but the need for it never materialized and someone forgot to disable the code that checks for the letter 'A' - and since it was not implemented, nobody checked it.
The first time I had code in production, running 24/7 I was kind of upset that I didn't need to look at it everyday, then amazed that it was working so well. Then, months later when I did have to go look at why it seemed to be not working right, I learned how important documentation and comments are. At this point I stopped being amazed that it worked well, but that it worked at all. Bugs are not left on purpose, only when there is not time or resources to fix them.
Perhaps we can hope this idea spreads out of Israel in the same manner some other ideas did, but quicker.
In a word, No. There are many types of 'virtualization' and more than one approach to de-duplication. In a system as engineered as one with de-duplication, you should have replication as part of the data integrity processes. If the file is corrupted in all the main copies (everywhere it exists, including backups) then the scenario you describe would be correct. This is true for any individual file that exists on computer systems today. De-duplication strives to reduce the number of copies needed across some defined data 'space' whether that is user space, or server space, or storage space etc.
This is a problem in many aspects of computing. Imagine you have a business with 50 users. Each must use a web application which has many graphics. The browser caches of each user has copies of each of those graphics images. When the cache is backed up, the backup is much larger than it needs to be. You can do several things to reduce backup times, storage space, and user quality of service
1 - disable caching for that site in the browser and cache them on a single server locally located
2 - disable backing up the browser caches, or back up only one
3 - enable deduplication in the backup and storage processes
4 - implement all or several of the above
The problems are not single ended and the answers or solutions will also not be single ended or faceted. That is no one solution is the answer to all possible problems. This one has some aspects to it that are appealing to certain groups of people. You average home user might not be able to take advantage of this yet. Small businesses though might need to start looking at this type of solution. Think how many people got the same group email message with a 12MB attachment. How many times do all those copies get archived? In just that example you see the waste that duplicated data represents. Solutions such as this offer an affordable way to positively affect bottom lines in fighting those types of problems problems.
then laminate it.
Will you please post the video of this process on Youtube?
Actually, I have left stuff sitting on the checkout counter because I didn't see the sticker before then. For those that shop at Walmart, you may have luck finding alternate suppliers of similar goods at Target, JCPenny, and others. If you're willing to shop around for price then shopping around for country of origin shouldn't be too big a deal for you. Try Home Depot and others for goods they typically sell. Locally I'm able to find goods from South America, Afghanistan and others etc. There are some stores like World Market etc. that sell goods from other countries. I believe that there are even a couple of web sites that tell you where you can look for goods that are not from China. Please never forget that every dollar you spend with a local supplier of goods is a dollar generated to the economy that will do you the most good... your own.
The US government checks roughly 1% of goods from China for dangers etc. If we reject even 10% of goods it makes a big difference by removing the margins that make selling here profitable. If we can get the Chinese government to ensure workers there are protected as well as workers here they would have no margin per se'. There are many ways to help convince the Chinese people that they need to do something about the totalitarian like regime that they have in charge. A semi-polite exchange with Google is a bit better than a militaristic exchange, and since technology theft is a major danger from China, Google is a good place to start with the political wrangling, IMO.