"while google in the US is rolling out gigabit, and the private sector in UK is doing the same...."
Google are not "rolling out gigabit". Google have realistically done nothing more than a very small-scale trial. Add together the population of everywhere Google Fiber covers or has promised to cover -- that's Kansas City, Austin, Provo, and one neighborhood in Palo Alto -- and make the erroneous assumption that every resident is covered, and you still have a "rollout" that touches only 3.3 million people in a nation of 313.9 million.
That's one percent of the population if you make an erroneous assumption, and far less than one percent in actual fact. More than 99% of the population has no access to Google Fiber, and is unlikely to have access to it in the next decade.
In fact, the vast majority of the US would *love* to have access to anything near 100mbps, because that, for most of us, would be a HUGE upgrade from what we have now. And even if it is available, it's typically accompanied by a ridiculous pricetag.
I'm in the 64th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the US, and I'm lucky to have 100mbps internet available to me -- but it's priced at US$115 per month (AU$127/month) BEFORE equipment charges, fees, taxes, etc. And that price tag also assumes I am paying at least another US$20 (AU$22) per month plus equipment charges, fees, and taxes for TV service, whether I want it or not. Last time I checked, the penalty for not having the TV service was higher than the cost of the TV service.
So realistically, just getting 100mbps internet in the US will set you back US$150 (AU$165) per month, if it's even available to you -- and chances are, it isn't. Gigabit in the US? It's a pipe dream for almost all of us.
This line in the photo caption at the top about sums up Saunders response, for me:
"Adams, appears to be a rare example of someone who has largely but not totally, recovered from Spasmodic Dysphonia, a mysterious disease in which parts of the brain controlling speech shut down or go haywire."
This, obviously has completely nothing to do with the article. It's a bit like if the Victoria Kennedy caption had noted she was divorced, a condition in which people are unable to properly relate and appropriately respond to one another's feelings -- and which she still seems to be suffering from. It's there not for the fact of the matter, but to try and cast an aspersion.
The implication is that Adams' commentary should be read and understood in the light of somebody who doesn't really know what they're saying.
It's a cheap shot, and it's pretty pathetic of Saunders or whichever editor inserted it into the piece.
No, it isn't. No intentionality is implied or required in bringing something somewhere, as we have learned to the detriment of our own species more than once.
Google "diseases brought to the new world", and note the many references even from university research using the word "brought" in the sense that I used it. Unless, of course, you believe early explorers practiced intentional germ warfare.
Survived three years, but we haven't been there for how long now? And that's on the moon, which is a relatively benign environment compared to the places unmanned probes have been sent to and thru.
It's also flat-out wrong on the first point. No, it is not the first time humans have ever brought life to another planetary body, even if by life you read an implication that they mean non-human life.
We've brought all manner of microscopic life with us -- much of it inside or on the surface of us -- when we were on the moon previously. Doubtless at least some amount has been sent as microscopic residue even on unmanned missions. OK, the vast majority of the lunar passengers also came back with us, and it's unlikely any of what we've unintentionally brought along has survived, but to say that we've never brought life to another planetary body? Demonstrably not true.
Thanks for the tip. I'm going to assume this ends up being an extra expense, though, and one that the insurance company then denies as frivolous, meaning we foot the whole bill for the ultrasound ourselves. That being the case, gritting one's teeth and bearing it sounds preferable to an extra few hundred bucks.
You wouldn't be so quick to dismiss us as whiners if you went through it yourself. And it's worse for my wife -- I've seen her have to be stuck a dozen or more times before they could hit a vein. In fact, her doctor's office sent her to the hospital to have somebody there do a stick, because several nurses at the doctor's office tried multiple times in multiple places and couldn't get one.
...that they don't have to play "Go Fish" in my arm every time I get an IV in, I'm all for it, unintended consequences be damned.
Had to go into the hospital for the first time in ages the other day, and it took about five or six sticks -- including the kind where you can see them feeling around for anything once the needle's already in you -- before they hit the vein. And I'm skinny, as well, at least in the places where they stick me. Can't begin to imagine what it's like if your veins are invisible.
Well, I regularly (like, many times per day, every day, for my job) open many PDFs, almost all of which are extremely complex (hundreds of pages of graphically and textually rich user manuals, product spec sheets, etc.)
There is no comparison at all in my mind: Google's engine is slower than *any* PDF reader I have used in the last five years. And it's slow at the initial download, is the ridiculous thing. Download the exact same thing as a file in Chrome, it does it in a matter of seconds. Wait for it to download and render, and it takes multiple minutes. And I'm very conscious of this because the stuff I need is usually right near the end of the file, so the whole thing has to download before I can get to it.
You're thinking to hard. All you need to do is build a list of all the servers used for the speed test, and then prioritize traffic to those servers. No packet inspection required. No filenames required. Just simplicity.
Do it for five or six of the most popular speed tests, and you're golden.
Seriously, I do not want Chrome's PDF renderer. It is ridiculously slow -- I can force a download of a PDF, get it pulled down, launch my own PDF reader and have it open in less than 1/4 the time it takes Chrome to download and render the PDF itself. It is also sorely lacking on features.
If this cannot be disabled, I for one will be removing Chrome from my machine, and I say that as somebody who has used it as my primary browser since it first came out. I am getting more and more fed up with the continuous feature creep and bloat in Chrome.
All of these speed tests are ludicrously easily-gamed, and are thus of next to no value in the real world. They don't tell you what speed you're getting on real-world websites, they tell you what speed you could theoretically get when your internet provider lifts caps on bandwidth, prioritizes your traffic over those of other users on the same cell tower / network for the duration of the test, etc.
And you're naive if you think some or all of the above doesn't already happen.
I'd like to refine this suggestion. Do it in a full simulator capable of recreating accident impact forces. Keep the car / controlled accident scenario, but let's not pansy about: set it to a collision that's double the actual speed they were driving while caught texting. (In other words, head-on collision with another vehicle doing the same speed.) And they have to send a certain number / length of texts with no typos in a certain time to get the car to stop without crashing, but they also have to stay in their lane and not have any violations of any kind, or there's an immediate crash.
I don't think you'd have a single repeat offender. Admittedly, half of them wouldn't be alive to repeat-offend, but if they have that little disregard for others' lives, why should we have any for theirs?
...which is the equivalent of 2,832 people being murdered in the US every year.
Actual US homicide rate, courtesy of the CDC: 16,259, of which 11,078 were using firearms.
So you have a 5.74x greater chance of being murdered in the USA than in New Zealand, assuming your figure was correct. (I didn't bother to check it.) And even if you ignore the firearm deaths completely in the US (but still include them for NZ), you still have 1.83x greater chance of being murdered in the USA.
So much for the whole "guns make you safer" thing. You're less safe in the US in terms of non-gun crime, and you're much, much less safe in terms of gun crime.
Total production of the Model S is expected to reach 24,000 units worldwide, by the end of the year. Three fires in 24,000 units for the Tesla is the same as 4,688 Toyota Corolla fires, if the total production here is accurate (and that's being slightly fair to Tesla, given that we haven't reached the end of the year yet.
Now, the Corolla has been on the market for 47 years. Let's be overly fair to Tesla again, and pretend the production has always been constant. That's still 100 Corolla fires a year, for 47 years, worldwide.
I think if 100 Corollas spontaneously burst into flames each year (and realistically, more like 2-300 given that production in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s will be far lower than in recent years)... we'd probably have heard about it by now. Don't you?
...for a bunch of "inventions" that are almost certainly blindingly obvious to anybody over the age of four, and under the age of 55. No, the patent system isn't broken at all, nuh uh. Why do you ask?
Indeed. In two decades of driving, I have had precisely zero driving-related injuries of any kind. (And in four decades of being driven or driving myself, I have been in precisely two accidents, neither involving injury to myself, and only one involving injuries to anybody -- all of which were extremely minor compared to those this single biker has received.)
It will show you every last *reported* injured biker. That's a very big and important distinction. Equally important is how many of those injuries were on public roads. Whether or not some kid on an off-road course injured himself is of little importance.
Because nobody brought it up. I did a find-in-page for "liability" after loading all comments, and it didn't appear once before my post.
As for your other comment, please point me to the many such driverless systems which have gone beyond PR whoring and are now on the street in the hands of the general public. Clearly, if the lawyers approved it and the tech is already available, there will be masses of them.
Oh, wait. There aren't. Because, as I said, it's a PR stunt and nothing more. It's all about making people believe your brand is on the cutting edge so you can sell them massively outdated tech at a premium, not about actually putting cutting edge tech into a car. If you got out and look at your brand new, shiny car, it's almost identical to what you were driving a decade or two ago, in terms of technology. It's just been repackaged once a year to make it glossier.
Point well made, but you misread. He said the drive *should* have taken five hours, but *actually* took three. In other words, his apparently-completely-incompetent-driver Dad was *averaging* two thirds over the legal limit, ie. 42 in a 25, 50 in a 30, 75 in a 45, 92 in a 55, and 117 in a 70. (I think that hits all the speed limits I see around these parts.)
And that's average, which given that he wasn't able to even remotely judge speed, means he'd likely have been going significantly faster / slower enroute than the average, not managing a consistent margin over the speed limit.
Which I still don't believe for one second. This story is either badly, badly exaggerated, or more likely just completely made up.
I'm amazed nobody has brought this up yet, and it's the reason you won't be seeing this in your car any time soon, if ever.
Who is liable when your self-parking car fails to self-park due to any of a million different reasons from a faulty sensor to an unaccounted-for scenario to malicious interference by a third party, and it crashes into my car -- or for that matter, ME?
With a regular car, the liability stops at its driver. (And then maybe, if the driver believes it wasn't their fault, they sue their mechanic or the manufacturer -- but mostly that doesn't happen, because it *was* the driver's fault, and court cases are expensive.)
But now the car is driving itself, and that means it is the manufacturer who's liable when it causes death, injury, or damage. If Ford puts this in a production car, they'd better be damned sure it is perfect, 100% reliable, and tamper-proof, and that if ongoing maintenance is required, that there is either a 100% reliable, tamper-proof system which alerts the owner and/or refuses to start the car if the self-driving system needs maintenance, or that the owner is comprehensively briefed on the maintenance schedule. Or more likely, both.
Otherwise, Ford is going to find itself on the receiving end of a whole lot of lawsuits it doesn't want. Which is why this "look at me" attention-whoring whizbang tech will stay in the lab, intended solely to get headlines and build reputation, but it won't be going in your car any time soon.
Slashdot Mirror
"while google in the US is rolling out gigabit, and the private sector in UK is doing the same...."
Google are not "rolling out gigabit". Google have realistically done nothing more than a very small-scale trial. Add together the population of everywhere Google Fiber covers or has promised to cover -- that's Kansas City, Austin, Provo, and one neighborhood in Palo Alto -- and make the erroneous assumption that every resident is covered, and you still have a "rollout" that touches only 3.3 million people in a nation of 313.9 million.
That's one percent of the population if you make an erroneous assumption, and far less than one percent in actual fact. More than 99% of the population has no access to Google Fiber, and is unlikely to have access to it in the next decade.
In fact, the vast majority of the US would *love* to have access to anything near 100mbps, because that, for most of us, would be a HUGE upgrade from what we have now. And even if it is available, it's typically accompanied by a ridiculous pricetag.
I'm in the 64th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the US, and I'm lucky to have 100mbps internet available to me -- but it's priced at US$115 per month (AU$127/month) BEFORE equipment charges, fees, taxes, etc. And that price tag also assumes I am paying at least another US$20 (AU$22) per month plus equipment charges, fees, and taxes for TV service, whether I want it or not. Last time I checked, the penalty for not having the TV service was higher than the cost of the TV service.
So realistically, just getting 100mbps internet in the US will set you back US$150 (AU$165) per month, if it's even available to you -- and chances are, it isn't. Gigabit in the US? It's a pipe dream for almost all of us.
This line in the photo caption at the top about sums up Saunders response, for me:
"Adams, appears to be a rare example of someone who has largely but not totally, recovered from Spasmodic Dysphonia, a mysterious disease in which parts of the brain controlling speech shut down or go haywire."
This, obviously has completely nothing to do with the article. It's a bit like if the Victoria Kennedy caption had noted she was divorced, a condition in which people are unable to properly relate and appropriately respond to one another's feelings -- and which she still seems to be suffering from. It's there not for the fact of the matter, but to try and cast an aspersion.
The implication is that Adams' commentary should be read and understood in the light of somebody who doesn't really know what they're saying.
It's a cheap shot, and it's pretty pathetic of Saunders or whichever editor inserted it into the piece.
No, it isn't. No intentionality is implied or required in bringing something somewhere, as we have learned to the detriment of our own species more than once.
Google "diseases brought to the new world", and note the many references even from university research using the word "brought" in the sense that I used it. Unless, of course, you believe early explorers practiced intentional germ warfare.
Survived three years, but we haven't been there for how long now? And that's on the moon, which is a relatively benign environment compared to the places unmanned probes have been sent to and thru.
And it's arguable that the "surviving" bacteria weren't anything of the kind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reports_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_Moon
It's also flat-out wrong on the first point. No, it is not the first time humans have ever brought life to another planetary body, even if by life you read an implication that they mean non-human life.
We've brought all manner of microscopic life with us -- much of it inside or on the surface of us -- when we were on the moon previously. Doubtless at least some amount has been sent as microscopic residue even on unmanned missions. OK, the vast majority of the lunar passengers also came back with us, and it's unlikely any of what we've unintentionally brought along has survived, but to say that we've never brought life to another planetary body? Demonstrably not true.
Thanks for the tip. I'm going to assume this ends up being an extra expense, though, and one that the insurance company then denies as frivolous, meaning we foot the whole bill for the ultrasound ourselves. That being the case, gritting one's teeth and bearing it sounds preferable to an extra few hundred bucks.
You wouldn't be so quick to dismiss us as whiners if you went through it yourself. And it's worse for my wife -- I've seen her have to be stuck a dozen or more times before they could hit a vein. In fact, her doctor's office sent her to the hospital to have somebody there do a stick, because several nurses at the doctor's office tried multiple times in multiple places and couldn't get one.
Yeah, not so much. I'm white, the nurses were both white. Try again, flamebait.
...that they don't have to play "Go Fish" in my arm every time I get an IV in, I'm all for it, unintended consequences be damned.
Had to go into the hospital for the first time in ages the other day, and it took about five or six sticks -- including the kind where you can see them feeling around for anything once the needle's already in you -- before they hit the vein. And I'm skinny, as well, at least in the places where they stick me. Can't begin to imagine what it's like if your veins are invisible.
Well, I regularly (like, many times per day, every day, for my job) open many PDFs, almost all of which are extremely complex (hundreds of pages of graphically and textually rich user manuals, product spec sheets, etc.)
There is no comparison at all in my mind: Google's engine is slower than *any* PDF reader I have used in the last five years. And it's slow at the initial download, is the ridiculous thing. Download the exact same thing as a file in Chrome, it does it in a matter of seconds. Wait for it to download and render, and it takes multiple minutes. And I'm very conscious of this because the stuff I need is usually right near the end of the file, so the whole thing has to download before I can get to it.
You're thinking to hard. All you need to do is build a list of all the servers used for the speed test, and then prioritize traffic to those servers. No packet inspection required. No filenames required. Just simplicity.
Do it for five or six of the most popular speed tests, and you're golden.
Seriously, I do not want Chrome's PDF renderer. It is ridiculously slow -- I can force a download of a PDF, get it pulled down, launch my own PDF reader and have it open in less than 1/4 the time it takes Chrome to download and render the PDF itself. It is also sorely lacking on features.
If this cannot be disabled, I for one will be removing Chrome from my machine, and I say that as somebody who has used it as my primary browser since it first came out. I am getting more and more fed up with the continuous feature creep and bloat in Chrome.
All of these speed tests are ludicrously easily-gamed, and are thus of next to no value in the real world. They don't tell you what speed you're getting on real-world websites, they tell you what speed you could theoretically get when your internet provider lifts caps on bandwidth, prioritizes your traffic over those of other users on the same cell tower / network for the duration of the test, etc.
And you're naive if you think some or all of the above doesn't already happen.
"if they have that little disregard for others' lives, why should we have any for theirs?"
I'd like to refine this suggestion. Do it in a full simulator capable of recreating accident impact forces. Keep the car / controlled accident scenario, but let's not pansy about: set it to a collision that's double the actual speed they were driving while caught texting. (In other words, head-on collision with another vehicle doing the same speed.) And they have to send a certain number / length of texts with no typos in a certain time to get the car to stop without crashing, but they also have to stay in their lane and not have any violations of any kind, or there's an immediate crash.
I don't think you'd have a single repeat offender. Admittedly, half of them wouldn't be alive to repeat-offend, but if they have that little disregard for others' lives, why should we have any for theirs?
...which is the equivalent of 2,832 people being murdered in the US every year.
Actual US homicide rate, courtesy of the CDC: 16,259, of which 11,078 were using firearms.
So you have a 5.74x greater chance of being murdered in the USA than in New Zealand, assuming your figure was correct. (I didn't bother to check it.) And even if you ignore the firearm deaths completely in the US (but still include them for NZ), you still have 1.83x greater chance of being murdered in the USA.
So much for the whole "guns make you safer" thing. You're less safe in the US in terms of non-gun crime, and you're much, much less safe in terms of gun crime.
Total production of the Model S is expected to reach 24,000 units worldwide, by the end of the year. Three fires in 24,000 units for the Tesla is the same as 4,688 Toyota Corolla fires, if the total production here is accurate (and that's being slightly fair to Tesla, given that we haven't reached the end of the year yet.
Now, the Corolla has been on the market for 47 years. Let's be overly fair to Tesla again, and pretend the production has always been constant. That's still 100 Corolla fires a year, for 47 years, worldwide.
I think if 100 Corollas spontaneously burst into flames each year (and realistically, more like 2-300 given that production in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s will be far lower than in recent years)... we'd probably have heard about it by now. Don't you?
Was just about to say the same thing, glad to see I'm not alone. Together we can eat our way out of this problem!
...for a bunch of "inventions" that are almost certainly blindingly obvious to anybody over the age of four, and under the age of 55. No, the patent system isn't broken at all, nuh uh. Why do you ask?
Indeed. In two decades of driving, I have had precisely zero driving-related injuries of any kind. (And in four decades of being driven or driving myself, I have been in precisely two accidents, neither involving injury to myself, and only one involving injuries to anybody -- all of which were extremely minor compared to those this single biker has received.)
It will show you every last *reported* injured biker. That's a very big and important distinction. Equally important is how many of those injuries were on public roads. Whether or not some kid on an off-road course injured himself is of little importance.
If you look at your 5-inch phone and 32-inch monitor from the same distance, you have a problem.
Because nobody brought it up. I did a find-in-page for "liability" after loading all comments, and it didn't appear once before my post.
As for your other comment, please point me to the many such driverless systems which have gone beyond PR whoring and are now on the street in the hands of the general public. Clearly, if the lawyers approved it and the tech is already available, there will be masses of them.
Oh, wait. There aren't. Because, as I said, it's a PR stunt and nothing more. It's all about making people believe your brand is on the cutting edge so you can sell them massively outdated tech at a premium, not about actually putting cutting edge tech into a car. If you got out and look at your brand new, shiny car, it's almost identical to what you were driving a decade or two ago, in terms of technology. It's just been repackaged once a year to make it glossier.
Point well made, but you misread. He said the drive *should* have taken five hours, but *actually* took three. In other words, his apparently-completely-incompetent-driver Dad was *averaging* two thirds over the legal limit, ie. 42 in a 25, 50 in a 30, 75 in a 45, 92 in a 55, and 117 in a 70. (I think that hits all the speed limits I see around these parts.)
And that's average, which given that he wasn't able to even remotely judge speed, means he'd likely have been going significantly faster / slower enroute than the average, not managing a consistent margin over the speed limit.
Which I still don't believe for one second. This story is either badly, badly exaggerated, or more likely just completely made up.
I'm amazed nobody has brought this up yet, and it's the reason you won't be seeing this in your car any time soon, if ever.
Who is liable when your self-parking car fails to self-park due to any of a million different reasons from a faulty sensor to an unaccounted-for scenario to malicious interference by a third party, and it crashes into my car -- or for that matter, ME?
With a regular car, the liability stops at its driver. (And then maybe, if the driver believes it wasn't their fault, they sue their mechanic or the manufacturer -- but mostly that doesn't happen, because it *was* the driver's fault, and court cases are expensive.)
But now the car is driving itself, and that means it is the manufacturer who's liable when it causes death, injury, or damage. If Ford puts this in a production car, they'd better be damned sure it is perfect, 100% reliable, and tamper-proof, and that if ongoing maintenance is required, that there is either a 100% reliable, tamper-proof system which alerts the owner and/or refuses to start the car if the self-driving system needs maintenance, or that the owner is comprehensively briefed on the maintenance schedule. Or more likely, both.
Otherwise, Ford is going to find itself on the receiving end of a whole lot of lawsuits it doesn't want. Which is why this "look at me" attention-whoring whizbang tech will stay in the lab, intended solely to get headlines and build reputation, but it won't be going in your car any time soon.