It was probably a single unfortunate event that sparked the recall.
Actually, recalls are typically not done unless there are multiple failures, and more expected. The risk of the *your* battery catching fire may be low... but it's not zero. And the costs associated with that risk could be fairly high (personal injury, property damage, data loss, work stoppage).
I see no moral problem in this. The company has already spent enough on the recall and obviously your battery has no value to them - there's more likely a cost for getting rid of it.
I'm not sure if large-scale Li ion battery recycling is worthwhile to them; but if it is profitable, then there *may* be a moral problem.
But if you do keep the old battery, please dispose of it properly when you're done with it. This means bringing it (or shipping it) to a battery recycling collection point, and potentially paying a small fee, depending on who you're dealing with.
As long as you can convince then that you just happen to like watching Finding Nemo with your pants down.
With some of the Finding Nemo fanfiction I've read^H^H^H^H heard about, you wouldn't even need to lie. You'd be pleasantly surprised how well Dory's lack of short-term memory becomes a useful plot device for introducing more fish to the gangbang.
Would save me a lot of awkward conversation lulls.
Sure, but it would also provide inspiration for epic conversation lulz.
So, John, I ran into Janet the other day at the pagan sex festival, where she and your wife performed unspeakable acts on a pentagram. Care for a smoke?
Or, alternatively: So, John, I herd u liek Christ, so I put some 'body of Christ' into the body of Janet.
I'm not sure you thought your cunning plan all the way through.
Me: Honey, where did I put my car keys? Her: I don't know dear, just fucking google it. Me: OK, according to Google they are on the keyhook next to the door... WTF? They aren't there! Her: Oh, that's right, dear, the Googol Housecrawling Spiders of Doom haven't been through since last Tuesday. That's where they were then.
Me: Fucking useless GoogleHouse app. At least they helpfully recorded the combination when I unlocked my safe.
Is LaTeX 3 out yet? Lack of support for hyperlinks is annoying.
The summary is a bit off, with the question about Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice. LaTeX is a document markup language (plus more), not a text editor. You can currently use Scientific Word as your text editor if you want, and have it write LaTeX files that can be read by Tex (typesetter).
So my question is:
By "support", does this mean Word is trying to supplant Tex as the dominant typesetter in academia? Or does this support just mean that Scientific Word (as a text editor) will be able to use more of the options available in LaTex, and will still be able to write LaTeX files?
Seconded. I had to leave the theater due to vertigo (I've got nasty seasonal allergies and some blockage in my ears, I think).
Never mind the fact that even without vertigo, it completely destroys immersion for me, and thus lessens my enjoyment. The next time I read a review of a movie that refers to a shaky cam, I'm making a point of *not* watching that movie.
... I guess now is not the best time to make that sarcastic comment, but before anyone says anything to that end, I think we can agree that the big problem for the american auto industry is not used car sales.
So you say... but it's pretty hard to deny that using DRM to lock down an engine when the car is resold would be a *very* effective way for the car companies to increase new car sales volume -- or at least service revenue, for the $299 "pre-owned authentication fee" that would be marketed as a way of ensuring that the used car you bought is not filled with cheap aftermarket replacement parts. And then they get to sell you the genuine $AUTOMAKER brand parts.
Great. Just great.
You, sir, have given GM et al just the idea it needs to be viable again -- at the expense of our freedom. Thanks a bunch. Now when I buy my next used car, I'm going to have to download a crack to the engine DRM, and then worry about it being remotely disabled when it's discovered that I cracked it. Or even worse, I'm going to get sued by the Automobile Manufacturers Association of America (the evil stepsister of AAA) and then prosecuted for illegally accessing a restricted system.
And, down the road, we'll have to deal with an automobile-as-a-service model, where I pay for the use of the car, but don't really own it (oh wait -- we have that already, it's called leasing).
Is it me, or are there far too many headlines regarding games on Slashdot recently?
I think it's seasonal, I remember the same thing last spring.
College students are out of classes, high school students are thinking about it. The spring sports seasons are wrapping up. More free time for kids/young adults = more game industry activity = more game industry discussion on teh intarwebs.
Even the flash games sites are pushing major releases this month.
This is without speculating on the changing demographics of the slashdot userbase.
And besides, what's the alternative? More politics articles? More 'inane ask slashdots'? IMO, there's less really interesting tech industry news right now, due to the economy.
This is what happens when transactions are done based on results of database queries and/or spreadsheet analysis. One error is made, someone attempts to reverse the batch of transactions to correct the error, and makes another error. Then someone else steps in, and compounds the problem. In the end, the only way to get it back to some semblance of the correct state is to go back and run the transactions in opposite amounts from the top of the stack (LIFO).
This is what happens when you have technical people (especially not-so-competent technical people) handling financial transactions.
Workflow for payments and other financial transactions should come from your source document (it doesn't have to be a literal document, it can be an authorization entry, etc). The accuracy of the data capture at this point is essential. If you use a key value to grab most of the data needed, validation needs to be very strong.
Source --> Data Capture --> Validation --> Set-up of transactions --> Validation --> Execution --> Data capture of results --> Validation --> Update file --> Validation.
I personally have seen many failures because of errors in validation, and the ensuing mess as well-meaning people try to correct the error. Nothing like 36 db entries and half a wasted day just to correct a single error that a user offshore made overnight, then compounded with the "helpful" input of his team members... and then the ensuing clusterfuck of explaining to the client what had happened, what we'd done to ensure it wouldn't happen again, and many, many apologies.
That part that I blokcquoted -- it's from the DARPA publication, that the author of the linked blogpost quoted.
You may want to have your sarcasm detector checked, have you had it serviced in the past two years?
OK, it wasn't *the best* attempt at humor, but surely you could detect the tongue-in-cheekiness of it?
IIRC, there was quite an uproar the past few times here that the term "cyber warfare" was used by a government entity (like the Air Force's Cyber Command)... I found it kind of humorous (the uproar, I mean).
And now that I've had to explain it, it's lost any possible chance of being funny (not that it had much to start with).
Well, if you read the actual report, instead of the executive summary, there's a lot more detail. Not a huge amount (how do you adequately describe the advanced research work of thousands of people in just 57 pages?), but enough to clue us in to the specifics.
I call fraud. From the supposed DARPA publication (emphasis mine):
-Networks: self-forming, robust, self-defending networks at the strategic and tactical level are the key to network-centric warfare; these networks will use spectrum far more efficiently and resist disruption if the GPS time signal is unavailable.
We all know that no government agency would refer to this as anything but cyberwarfare.
Hence, I am discounting the validity of the entire article.
Editors, please vet the articles a little more thoroughly. I don;t know who is responsible for the slip-up, but it's amazing this sham of an article was allowed through the tight-as-an-ant's-ass controls on the slashdot main page that we have come to love and respect.
I have found that if I am not in the right frame of mind before starting, the code takes much longer or is just plain wrong. If I am in the right head space, the task is quick and done before you know it.
It's not just coding, either -- anything requiring concentration and analytical thought benefits from being in the right frame of mind.
One of the tricks I learned from a former boss was to identify what gets me "in the mood", and then practice at streamlining the process until I could turn it on and off at will. He seemed to be a master of it, it still takes me a couple minutes -- and because it takes me a couple minutes, jumping in and out of the zone is a pain in the ass... which means I need to take even longer to make sure I'm not going to need to interrupt myself. So if I plan on needing to be in the zone for an hour, I'll need to make sure I have coffee or tea plus a glass of cold water handy, that I'm not going to need to go to the bathroom, etc. So I need to add even more to my ritual to avoid having to go through the ritual again.
The key, of course, is making sure that external disruptions are minimized... turn the phone ringer off, close the email & IM apps, etc.
I work in 50-minute zone bursts, with 20 minute breaks for correspondence, slashdot, etc... plus one 50-minute session for emails in the AM and another in the PM, and time as needed at the end of the day for additional correspondence and instructions to offshore teams. So in a normal day, I get between four and five sessions of productive zone-work done. The rest of the time is correspondence and some goofing (slashdot, mainly).
Anyway, to make a long story short, if I can reduce the ritual that I need to get in the zone, I could be much more productive, since interruptions (self-inflicted or otherwise) would result in less downtime.
As far as landmarks are concerned, that is a double-edge sword. I've often said that I rely on landmarks to get to places so if a building is torn down in the meantime, I might be up the creek.:)
Heh. I tend to use landmarks just to verify my route; the thinking is something like, "OK, so I've gone 3.5 miles NE, now there *should* be a hillcrest running parallel to my route off to my left -- it's there, good." I don't use buildings for landmarks, since they are more transient than large landscape features (and I don't tend to go places that are very flat).
Reminds me of my wedding -- my wife made the mistake of letting me write the directions from hotel to church, and from church to reception. My guests all got a good laugh at my expense (once they all got to the reception) because apparently "Turn right out of church lot, head NE on Main street, follow 6.2 mi; turn left on Mine Rd, follow 4.6 mi; turn right on Country Club Dr, follow 1.6 mi." are very poor directions for most people. I still don't understand how half the guests screwed that up -- all streets were clearly marked (I checked when we sent the invites & again a week before the wedding).
My sister decided it would be humorous to present me with an astrolabe the next day at lunch, so I could make the directions for the next even even more esoteric.
So you're dependent on an external accessory, that costs you cash to purchase and operate, for your navigational needs. What happens if you run out of battery power? What happens if the external provider of one of the necessary services stops providing that service?
You have a device to help you do something it's possible to do for yourself, with less effort than using your device. And since you're so out of practice with using your own ability for this, you're completely dependent on it.
Good for you. You can take pride in being crippled by dependence on your devices.
I hope you were being sarcastic. If not, I pity you.
why not have anyone be as involved in government as they wish?
Because then we'd get the exact same system, where those who thirst for political power get it?
The only difference is the routes used to acquire the power (or prestige, or whatever you want to call it).
True political power in an elected government doesn't come from having people vote for you, by the way. It comes from shaping what the people want in their elected officials, and what they vote on.
In the "open source government" model, you'll have informal power structures where those who want to be in charge, and have the tools necessary to get there, will rise to positions of power and asymmetrical influence.
Government, and administration of government, is much different than open-source software. It's a lot more expansive, and the rewards for gaming the system are far, far greater than with OSS.
I believe 100% that government should be open (in the sense it should be 100% transparent). I do not believe it should be open in terms of access to power... that way lies anarchy and abuse.
This is the future. We already approximate it with our mobile phones - technology will become ever more intimate as we approach the technology singularity.
Until we run out of the materials needed to maintain the ubiquity of technology (or they become scarce enough to be too expensive for ubiquitous use).
I'm no luddite, but there are tons of costs associated with technology... and I wonder how long we can support those costs, and what we're willing to do to ensure continued access to those requirements. Economic war? Physical war? Continued (or even more) dependence upon near-slave labor?
There are a myriad set of things necessary for things like GPS. What happens if we can no longer afford to support all of them? What do we pick and choose to let go? I envision a future where we justify agressive international action based upon our economic requirements to sustain an intrinsically unsustainable economy, simply because we are dependent on expensive technology for our every need and want.
In other words, enjoy it while it lasts... because it won't last forever.
IMO, that's a learned ability. I have the same knack, and I attribute it to a rural upbringing where I schlepped on foot or on a bike a lot. Did you also grow up dependent on exertion for getting around (via foot or on bike)?
I use landmarks to determine progress, but my location, the route, and the destination are mapped in my head. If the map is there, I can easily recalculate my route if there are detours or other unexpected changes to the route.
Also, I always know (unless in a maze of twisty passages all alike) my orientation -- whenever I'm new to a place, I'm always looking for the sun to verify, until it becomes second nature. I do this subconsciously -- my wife comments on it whenever we're on a road trip, which is the only reason I noticed.
Your function is incorrect. It is not cost per ownership, it is cost of ownership; it is f(own) = $x(own) + $y(own), where x is purchase cost and y equals maintenance cost (and both x and y, but y especially, are complex variables with plural component variables).
Since both costs $x(own) and $y(own) are zero when ownership is false, then f(own) = 0 when ownership is false.
"Deep into the experiment, WÃchter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place.""""
Now you know how birds feel.
It's not just how birds feel. People who spend the majority of their time outdoors, with the ability to see the sun, get the same feeling. Citydwellers have the unfortunate circumstance of generally not being able to judge direction by the location of the sun; people in rural areas don't have this problem.
I grew up in a rural area, but close to the ever-encroaching burbs. I spent most of my time outside (I know, anathema to most slashdotters)... and to this day I subconsciously know what way is north, no matter where I am... as long as I've gotten glimpse of the sun in the morning or night at some time from that location. This is why I never get lost outside (though dealing with indirect roads can make it umm, interesting getting to where I want to go.
If I had some kind of input for direction when inside, I'm pretty sure I'd have a good bump of direction inside as well... but since I don't, I find extensive underground systems annoying (like Grand Central Station in Manhattan).
IOW, the guy who wore the vibrating belt added a different sensory input. Humans already have the capacity for "mapmaking", it's not limited to birds. Ask any orienteer. We just have little reason to exercise it in today's world.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, recalls are typically not done unless there are multiple failures, and more expected. The risk of the *your* battery catching fire may be low... but it's not zero. And the costs associated with that risk could be fairly high (personal injury, property damage, data loss, work stoppage).
I'm not sure if large-scale Li ion battery recycling is worthwhile to them; but if it is profitable, then there *may* be a moral problem.
But if you do keep the old battery, please dispose of it properly when you're done with it. This means bringing it (or shipping it) to a battery recycling collection point, and potentially paying a small fee, depending on who you're dealing with.
With some of the Finding Nemo fanfiction I've read^H^H^H^H heard about, you wouldn't even need to lie. You'd be pleasantly surprised how well Dory's lack of short-term memory becomes a useful plot device for introducing more fish to the gangbang.
Sure, but it would also provide inspiration for epic conversation lulz.
So, John, I ran into Janet the other day at the pagan sex festival, where she and your wife performed unspeakable acts on a pentagram. Care for a smoke?
Or, alternatively: So, John, I herd u liek Christ, so I put some 'body of Christ' into the body of Janet.
SCUGA.
Self-contained underwater Google app.
I'm not sure you thought your cunning plan all the way through.
Me: Honey, where did I put my car keys?
Her: I don't know dear, just fucking google it.
Me: OK, according to Google they are on the keyhook next to the door... WTF? They aren't there!
Her: Oh, that's right, dear, the Googol Housecrawling Spiders of Doom haven't been through since last Tuesday. That's where they were then.
Me: Fucking useless GoogleHouse app. At least they helpfully recorded the combination when I unlocked my safe.
Fair use.
Which if you bothered to research at all, you'd know.
Is LaTeX 3 out yet? Lack of support for hyperlinks is annoying.
The summary is a bit off, with the question about Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice. LaTeX is a document markup language (plus more), not a text editor. You can currently use Scientific Word as your text editor if you want, and have it write LaTeX files that can be read by Tex (typesetter).
So my question is:
By "support", does this mean Word is trying to supplant Tex as the dominant typesetter in academia? Or does this support just mean that Scientific Word (as a text editor) will be able to use more of the options available in LaTex, and will still be able to write LaTeX files?
Seconded. I had to leave the theater due to vertigo (I've got nasty seasonal allergies and some blockage in my ears, I think).
Never mind the fact that even without vertigo, it completely destroys immersion for me, and thus lessens my enjoyment. The next time I read a review of a movie that refers to a shaky cam, I'm making a point of *not* watching that movie.
Only if you're hard of hearing.
Unless I'm mistaken, and the sound "patent" is actually spelled "copyright"
So you say... but it's pretty hard to deny that using DRM to lock down an engine when the car is resold would be a *very* effective way for the car companies to increase new car sales volume -- or at least service revenue, for the $299 "pre-owned authentication fee" that would be marketed as a way of ensuring that the used car you bought is not filled with cheap aftermarket replacement parts. And then they get to sell you the genuine $AUTOMAKER brand parts.
Great. Just great.
You, sir, have given GM et al just the idea it needs to be viable again -- at the expense of our freedom. Thanks a bunch. Now when I buy my next used car, I'm going to have to download a crack to the engine DRM, and then worry about it being remotely disabled when it's discovered that I cracked it. Or even worse, I'm going to get sued by the Automobile Manufacturers Association of America (the evil stepsister of AAA) and then prosecuted for illegally accessing a restricted system.
And, down the road, we'll have to deal with an automobile-as-a-service model, where I pay for the use of the car, but don't really own it (oh wait -- we have that already, it's called leasing).
I think it's seasonal, I remember the same thing last spring.
College students are out of classes, high school students are thinking about it. The spring sports seasons are wrapping up. More free time for kids/young adults = more game industry activity = more game industry discussion on teh intarwebs.
Even the flash games sites are pushing major releases this month.
This is without speculating on the changing demographics of the slashdot userbase.
And besides, what's the alternative? More politics articles? More 'inane ask slashdots'? IMO, there's less really interesting tech industry news right now, due to the economy.
This is what happens when transactions are done based on results of database queries and/or spreadsheet analysis. One error is made, someone attempts to reverse the batch of transactions to correct the error, and makes another error. Then someone else steps in, and compounds the problem. In the end, the only way to get it back to some semblance of the correct state is to go back and run the transactions in opposite amounts from the top of the stack (LIFO).
.
This is what happens when you have technical people (especially not-so-competent technical people) handling financial transactions.
Workflow for payments and other financial transactions should come from your source document (it doesn't have to be a literal document, it can be an authorization entry, etc). The accuracy of the data capture at this point is essential. If you use a key value to grab most of the data needed, validation needs to be very strong.
Source --> Data Capture --> Validation --> Set-up of transactions --> Validation --> Execution --> Data capture of results --> Validation --> Update file --> Validation
I personally have seen many failures because of errors in validation, and the ensuing mess as well-meaning people try to correct the error. Nothing like 36 db entries and half a wasted day just to correct a single error that a user offshore made overnight, then compounded with the "helpful" input of his team members... and then the ensuing clusterfuck of explaining to the client what had happened, what we'd done to ensure it wouldn't happen again, and many, many apologies.
Are you a "sometimes" troll or do you troll all the time?
That's a remarkably naive view.
Name me one open source project with over 10 contributors where there is not asymmetric influence by one or more key individuals.
That part that I blokcquoted -- it's from the DARPA publication, that the author of the linked blogpost quoted.
You may want to have your sarcasm detector checked, have you had it serviced in the past two years?
OK, it wasn't *the best* attempt at humor, but surely you could detect the tongue-in-cheekiness of it?
IIRC, there was quite an uproar the past few times here that the term "cyber warfare" was used by a government entity (like the Air Force's Cyber Command)... I found it kind of humorous (the uproar, I mean).
And now that I've had to explain it, it's lost any possible chance of being funny (not that it had much to start with).
Well, if you read the actual report, instead of the executive summary, there's a lot more detail. Not a huge amount (how do you adequately describe the advanced research work of thousands of people in just 57 pages?), but enough to clue us in to the specifics.
We all know that no government agency would refer to this as anything but cyberwarfare.
Hence, I am discounting the validity of the entire article.
Editors, please vet the articles a little more thoroughly. I don;t know who is responsible for the slip-up, but it's amazing this sham of an article was allowed through the tight-as-an-ant's-ass controls on the slashdot main page that we have come to love and respect.
It's not just coding, either -- anything requiring concentration and analytical thought benefits from being in the right frame of mind.
One of the tricks I learned from a former boss was to identify what gets me "in the mood", and then practice at streamlining the process until I could turn it on and off at will. He seemed to be a master of it, it still takes me a couple minutes -- and because it takes me a couple minutes, jumping in and out of the zone is a pain in the ass... which means I need to take even longer to make sure I'm not going to need to interrupt myself. So if I plan on needing to be in the zone for an hour, I'll need to make sure I have coffee or tea plus a glass of cold water handy, that I'm not going to need to go to the bathroom, etc. So I need to add even more to my ritual to avoid having to go through the ritual again.
The key, of course, is making sure that external disruptions are minimized... turn the phone ringer off, close the email & IM apps, etc.
I work in 50-minute zone bursts, with 20 minute breaks for correspondence, slashdot, etc... plus one 50-minute session for emails in the AM and another in the PM, and time as needed at the end of the day for additional correspondence and instructions to offshore teams. So in a normal day, I get between four and five sessions of productive zone-work done. The rest of the time is correspondence and some goofing (slashdot, mainly).
Anyway, to make a long story short, if I can reduce the ritual that I need to get in the zone, I could be much more productive, since interruptions (self-inflicted or otherwise) would result in less downtime.
Heh. I tend to use landmarks just to verify my route; the thinking is something like, "OK, so I've gone 3.5 miles NE, now there *should* be a hillcrest running parallel to my route off to my left -- it's there, good." I don't use buildings for landmarks, since they are more transient than large landscape features (and I don't tend to go places that are very flat).
Reminds me of my wedding -- my wife made the mistake of letting me write the directions from hotel to church, and from church to reception. My guests all got a good laugh at my expense (once they all got to the reception) because apparently "Turn right out of church lot, head NE on Main street, follow 6.2 mi; turn left on Mine Rd, follow 4.6 mi; turn right on Country Club Dr, follow 1.6 mi." are very poor directions for most people. I still don't understand how half the guests screwed that up -- all streets were clearly marked (I checked when we sent the invites & again a week before the wedding).
My sister decided it would be humorous to present me with an astrolabe the next day at lunch, so I could make the directions for the next even even more esoteric.
Well, I don't need the belt.
So you're dependent on an external accessory, that costs you cash to purchase and operate, for your navigational needs. What happens if you run out of battery power? What happens if the external provider of one of the necessary services stops providing that service?
You have a device to help you do something it's possible to do for yourself, with less effort than using your device. And since you're so out of practice with using your own ability for this, you're completely dependent on it.
Good for you. You can take pride in being crippled by dependence on your devices.
I hope you were being sarcastic. If not, I pity you.
Because then we'd get the exact same system, where those who thirst for political power get it?
The only difference is the routes used to acquire the power (or prestige, or whatever you want to call it).
True political power in an elected government doesn't come from having people vote for you, by the way. It comes from shaping what the people want in their elected officials, and what they vote on.
In the "open source government" model, you'll have informal power structures where those who want to be in charge, and have the tools necessary to get there, will rise to positions of power and asymmetrical influence.
Government, and administration of government, is much different than open-source software. It's a lot more expansive, and the rewards for gaming the system are far, far greater than with OSS.
I believe 100% that government should be open (in the sense it should be 100% transparent). I do not believe it should be open in terms of access to power... that way lies anarchy and abuse.
Until we run out of the materials needed to maintain the ubiquity of technology (or they become scarce enough to be too expensive for ubiquitous use).
I'm no luddite, but there are tons of costs associated with technology... and I wonder how long we can support those costs, and what we're willing to do to ensure continued access to those requirements. Economic war? Physical war? Continued (or even more) dependence upon near-slave labor?
There are a myriad set of things necessary for things like GPS. What happens if we can no longer afford to support all of them? What do we pick and choose to let go? I envision a future where we justify agressive international action based upon our economic requirements to sustain an intrinsically unsustainable economy, simply because we are dependent on expensive technology for our every need and want.
In other words, enjoy it while it lasts... because it won't last forever.
IMO, that's a learned ability. I have the same knack, and I attribute it to a rural upbringing where I schlepped on foot or on a bike a lot. Did you also grow up dependent on exertion for getting around (via foot or on bike)?
I use landmarks to determine progress, but my location, the route, and the destination are mapped in my head. If the map is there, I can easily recalculate my route if there are detours or other unexpected changes to the route.
Also, I always know (unless in a maze of twisty passages all alike) my orientation -- whenever I'm new to a place, I'm always looking for the sun to verify, until it becomes second nature. I do this subconsciously -- my wife comments on it whenever we're on a road trip, which is the only reason I noticed.
Your function is incorrect. It is not cost per ownership, it is cost of ownership; it is f(own) = $x(own) + $y(own), where x is purchase cost and y equals maintenance cost (and both x and y, but y especially, are complex variables with plural component variables).
Since both costs $x(own) and $y(own) are zero when ownership is false, then f(own) = 0 when ownership is false.
It's not just how birds feel. People who spend the majority of their time outdoors, with the ability to see the sun, get the same feeling. Citydwellers have the unfortunate circumstance of generally not being able to judge direction by the location of the sun; people in rural areas don't have this problem.
I grew up in a rural area, but close to the ever-encroaching burbs. I spent most of my time outside (I know, anathema to most slashdotters)... and to this day I subconsciously know what way is north, no matter where I am... as long as I've gotten glimpse of the sun in the morning or night at some time from that location. This is why I never get lost outside (though dealing with indirect roads can make it umm, interesting getting to where I want to go.
If I had some kind of input for direction when inside, I'm pretty sure I'd have a good bump of direction inside as well... but since I don't, I find extensive underground systems annoying (like Grand Central Station in Manhattan).
IOW, the guy who wore the vibrating belt added a different sensory input. Humans already have the capacity for "mapmaking", it's not limited to birds. Ask any orienteer. We just have little reason to exercise it in today's world.