That's along the lines of just what I was thinking. I feel like Hari Seldon in Asimov's Foundation series. You can see little signs that things are falling apart all over the place. For instance, I was in Lowes yesterday and I noticed they now sell booklets on how to raise chickens and goats. Apparently there are so many suburbanites doing this that they rate their own book sections. Last month I set a recliner and couch out at the curb for the monthly bulk-trash pickup. I left home for a few hours, and when I returned, I discovered two guys with an old pickup parked in front of my house tearing into the furniture to get the metal out of it (the springs, recliner base, etc). They didn't want the furniture, they just wanted the metal. They promised me they would not leave a mess, and they were good on their promise. They worked pretty hard to get the metal out, and I tried to imagine any situation whereby the metal would be worth more than earning wages at a minimum wage job. But then, there probably aren't as many minimum wage jobs to go around as I was thinking. I drive around at night and I see a lot of streetlamps out, and business signs that are only partially lit. Little signs of decay everywhere. And I live in a state that is "booming" with (supposedly) only 4% unemployment.
I don't know why anyone would want to hop in a car with someone of dubious character, who may or may not have proper insurance, who may or may not have a proper driver's licence, who might be driving a jalopy in any sort of condition, but hey, people hitchhike all the time so to each his own.
Meanwhile, Uber will do fine until the first woman gets raped by an Uber driver, or until the first few Uber drivers get robbed or killed.
This is not a surprise. Detroit makes it's money from marketing cars that are: a)"fun to drive" b)"tough" c)"stylish" d)"pretentious or class-conscious" e)some combination of the above. Safety, functionality, and reliability are boring (didn't Lee Iacocca once say, "safety doesn't sell"?).
This is unfortunate, because I think Detroit is missing out on a great opportunity. Somebody, somewhere is going to start making autonomous cars, and people will start buying them. Detroit will find itself playing catch-up, or get relegated to irrelevancy.
Personally, I think if autonomous cars can be proven to be safe and reliable, there will be a virtual tsunami of adoption by the buying public.
The only reason Google is doing this is they're about to get hammered for having a nearly all-male workforce. Truly, Google could care less whether this program actually accomplishes anything or whether more women get into coding. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, they can always say they've poured a few million dollars into the effort and they tried.
Frankly, I could care less whether the program works or not, or even the fact that it is aimed squarely at women. This is because a lot of coders out there today have no clue how computers work, and barely understand what they're doing. The whole idea that all we need to do is encourage people to code and we'll magically get more coders is ludicrous. Steinway could start a program to get more kids interested in playing the piano, and the result would be a million kids who could play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", and little else, and perhaps a handful of Harry Connick Jrs. Like surgery, or music, or higher math, or prose, it takes a certain amount of talent to be really good at programming, and there are only so many people who have that talent.
For a few million dollars Google has bought themselves a lot of good will, and probably staved off a lawsuit or two, without changing much of anything.
Oh boy. Did I screw up. I meant to say, "I am not in favor of net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am in favor of net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued." Good grief. Commence egg throwing, fellow slashdotters.
I had the privilege of seeing the late, great Admiral Grace Hopper speak back in the early 80's. Something she said at that talk always stuck with me. In those days we began talking about "information science" (in fact my degree is in Computer and Information Science). She emphasized the importance of attaching value to information. "For example," she said. "Imagine there are two pieces of information headed to the computer's operating system. One piece of information says that a valve in the plant is over-pressure and may rupture at any minute, causing great damage and possible loss of life. The other piece of information says that Joe Blow did not get the proper insurance deduction taken out of his paycheck last week. Clearly one piece of information has more value than another, and so one piece of information should be processed first."
Cisco does have a point. It can be argued that certain bits of information are more valueable or important than others. The problem is not that we should weight bits, but how we're going about doing it. If the only criteria for assigning value is based on the bit generator's ability to pay, then we will build a very unfair and dangerous system. I am not against net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am against net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued. Cisco says that video bits are more important than email bits. I agree with that. But if Cisco says that Netflix bits are more important than, say, Hulu bits, I will not agree with that.
It is not surprising that Cisco would make such a statement, regardless of how any of us feel about how bits are valued. They stand to make a lot of money designing and selling systems that weight and prioritize bits.
Anyone who scratches their heads at the lack of free wifi in airports is obviously too young to remember pay toilets. Talk about a captive audience. But airports eventually moved away from those. Hopefully pay-wifi will disappear too.
Very often, when you try to get a single device to do two jobs, it does neither job very well. I suspect the Surface is in this category. I have yet to see one in the wild, and I do not know anyone interested in purchasing one. I really don't want one either. I'm not saying the Surface is bad -- I'm pretty indifferent to it -- but I wonder if the market is as lucrative as MS thinks it is.
I've been out of school a long time, but the market for CS people was pretty hot in the mid-80s and this was the pattern I observed: People would head down the CS path, thinking they would cash in on the great opportunities. However, a lot of them would switch majors after their first programming class, and more would drop after their first advanced class (data structures, or something like that), I have had many, many people tell me over the years that they took some programming and didn't like it. It's just not something everyone can do, or that everyone likes.
I can see how this would work for blackphone-to-blackphone communication. What about people who call me or text me who don't have a blackphone? Those calls and texts are not going to be encrypted.
I think the market for this thing will be limited, at least for the immediate future.
You would have to be pretty naive to have gone all this time believing that CDs would last forever. Sure, all the salespeople back in the 80s and 90s told us this, but they only knew what they had heard or been told, and to be fair, they were drawing a comparison to casette tapes.
I don't know anyone who has a CD collection, who has not ripped them to some sort of digital format. True, if they were ripped to mp3s there was some loss, but most people couldn't tell you the difference anyway. I know I can't tell a difference. My hearing just isn't that sensitive I guess. I also can't tell much of a difference between Pepsi and Coke.
But yes, thank you Ms. Adrienne LaFrance for informing me that CDs deteriorate. However, it is not necessary to point out the blatantly obvious; pointing out the merely obvious will suffice. And I am SO happy that the Library of Congress is spending lots of taxpayer money studying this problem. While they are at it, they may want to investigate why metal corrodes and why bananas turn brown.
Semantics. You're auctioning off the use of property that isn't yours. Nobody is using my driveway right now. Does that mean some park monkey can auction off it's use while I'm gone?
No, if I sold a used book to a friend I would not report that, but if I start selling lots of books and video games to the highest bidder? Yes, I think the IRS would say I need to report that.
I'm sure the city and private owners will have no trouble with you auctioning off property that isn't yours. The state and IRS will also not have any problem with you collecting this extra income under the table.
That was my question too. I'm glad I'm not the only one. More pretentious bullsh*t from Gartner masquerading as useful information. Do you care? Does anyone care? Perhaps the manufacturers care, but surely they are well aware of their sales numbers and are capable of populating a simple spreadsheet as well as Gartner can.
Gartner: experts at telling you what you already know -- with charts.
The auto manufacturer is responsible for safety recalls for a very long time, if not forever. I've gotten safety recalls for cars that I haven't owned in years and that are way past the warranty period. I was the last known owner, so I got the letter.
This kind of thing is very much like a safety recall for cars, except it is for an operating system.
I like TBBT, but I do have one criticism of it. I know a lot of you are saying it makes fun of nerds, rather than idolizing them, and I think someone even went so far as to call it "blackface for nerds", or something like that. But the show is a sitcom and ALL sitcoms rely on caricatures and clownish antics. TBBT is no different. I don't criticize them for that.
My problem with TBBT is that it's been going on a little too long. The actors are getting into middle age. Jim Parsons is over 40. Johnny Galecki and Mayim Blaik are almost there. The others are all approaching their mid-30s. Most people, by this age, are raising families, getting mortgages, etc. Maybe not everyone, but among professionals this is certainly the case. Certainly, by middle age, most people have moved beyond paintball and hanging out at the comic book store. The show is becoming a little too unrealistic.
I don't understand why you need an app. Can't you just ignore the phone while you're driving? I have no trouble doing this. I regularly have to sit in meetings that last one or two hours where I ignore my phone. That's far longer than the amount of time I have to spend in my car. If you can't ignore your phone for awhile, perhaps what you need is a psychiatrist, and not an app.
This should never have made it to/. There's nothing in the summary or TFA that explains what we're all supposed to be upset about. It looks like the forwarded emails I get from angry, elderly acquaintances who have nothing better to do all day, since retirement, except to get all outraged over perceived problems which are always just around the corner, but never seem to actually occur.
Slashdot Mirror
That's along the lines of just what I was thinking. I feel like Hari Seldon in Asimov's Foundation series. You can see little signs that things are falling apart all over the place. For instance, I was in Lowes yesterday and I noticed they now sell booklets on how to raise chickens and goats. Apparently there are so many suburbanites doing this that they rate their own book sections. Last month I set a recliner and couch out at the curb for the monthly bulk-trash pickup. I left home for a few hours, and when I returned, I discovered two guys with an old pickup parked in front of my house tearing into the furniture to get the metal out of it (the springs, recliner base, etc). They didn't want the furniture, they just wanted the metal. They promised me they would not leave a mess, and they were good on their promise. They worked pretty hard to get the metal out, and I tried to imagine any situation whereby the metal would be worth more than earning wages at a minimum wage job. But then, there probably aren't as many minimum wage jobs to go around as I was thinking. I drive around at night and I see a lot of streetlamps out, and business signs that are only partially lit. Little signs of decay everywhere. And I live in a state that is "booming" with (supposedly) only 4% unemployment.
I don't know why anyone would want to hop in a car with someone of dubious character, who may or may not have proper insurance, who may or may not have a proper driver's licence, who might be driving a jalopy in any sort of condition, but hey, people hitchhike all the time so to each his own.
Meanwhile, Uber will do fine until the first woman gets raped by an Uber driver, or until the first few Uber drivers get robbed or killed.
This is not a surprise. Detroit makes it's money from marketing cars that are: a)"fun to drive" b)"tough" c)"stylish" d)"pretentious or class-conscious" e)some combination of the above. Safety, functionality, and reliability are boring (didn't Lee Iacocca once say, "safety doesn't sell"?).
This is unfortunate, because I think Detroit is missing out on a great opportunity. Somebody, somewhere is going to start making autonomous cars, and people will start buying them. Detroit will find itself playing catch-up, or get relegated to irrelevancy.
Personally, I think if autonomous cars can be proven to be safe and reliable, there will be a virtual tsunami of adoption by the buying public.
The only reason Google is doing this is they're about to get hammered for having a nearly all-male workforce. Truly, Google could care less whether this program actually accomplishes anything or whether more women get into coding. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, they can always say they've poured a few million dollars into the effort and they tried.
Frankly, I could care less whether the program works or not, or even the fact that it is aimed squarely at women. This is because a lot of coders out there today have no clue how computers work, and barely understand what they're doing. The whole idea that all we need to do is encourage people to code and we'll magically get more coders is ludicrous. Steinway could start a program to get more kids interested in playing the piano, and the result would be a million kids who could play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", and little else, and perhaps a handful of Harry Connick Jrs. Like surgery, or music, or higher math, or prose, it takes a certain amount of talent to be really good at programming, and there are only so many people who have that talent.
For a few million dollars Google has bought themselves a lot of good will, and probably staved off a lawsuit or two, without changing much of anything.
"Passing" the Turing Test is about as valid as Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
Dear God! I can't get in my preorder for the Lego movie? Oh, the humanities!
The fact that this is a problem says a lot more about our society than it does about either Amazon or Warner Brothers.
Oh boy. Did I screw up. I meant to say, "I am not in favor of net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am in favor of net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued." Good grief. Commence egg throwing, fellow slashdotters.
I had the privilege of seeing the late, great Admiral Grace Hopper speak back in the early 80's. Something she said at that talk always stuck with me. In those days we began talking about "information science" (in fact my degree is in Computer and Information Science). She emphasized the importance of attaching value to information. "For example," she said. "Imagine there are two pieces of information headed to the computer's operating system. One piece of information says that a valve in the plant is over-pressure and may rupture at any minute, causing great damage and possible loss of life. The other piece of information says that Joe Blow did not get the proper insurance deduction taken out of his paycheck last week. Clearly one piece of information has more value than another, and so one piece of information should be processed first."
Cisco does have a point. It can be argued that certain bits of information are more valueable or important than others. The problem is not that we should weight bits, but how we're going about doing it. If the only criteria for assigning value is based on the bit generator's ability to pay, then we will build a very unfair and dangerous system. I am not against net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am against net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued. Cisco says that video bits are more important than email bits. I agree with that. But if Cisco says that Netflix bits are more important than, say, Hulu bits, I will not agree with that.
It is not surprising that Cisco would make such a statement, regardless of how any of us feel about how bits are valued. They stand to make a lot of money designing and selling systems that weight and prioritize bits.
Anyone who scratches their heads at the lack of free wifi in airports is obviously too young to remember pay toilets. Talk about a captive audience. But airports eventually moved away from those. Hopefully pay-wifi will disappear too.
That will teach those mathematicians.
Not to mention the entire Greek population.
Very often, when you try to get a single device to do two jobs, it does neither job very well. I suspect the Surface is in this category. I have yet to see one in the wild, and I do not know anyone interested in purchasing one. I really don't want one either. I'm not saying the Surface is bad -- I'm pretty indifferent to it -- but I wonder if the market is as lucrative as MS thinks it is.
I've been out of school a long time, but the market for CS people was pretty hot in the mid-80s and this was the pattern I observed: People would head down the CS path, thinking they would cash in on the great opportunities. However, a lot of them would switch majors after their first programming class, and more would drop after their first advanced class (data structures, or something like that), I have had many, many people tell me over the years that they took some programming and didn't like it. It's just not something everyone can do, or that everyone likes.
I can see how this would work for blackphone-to-blackphone communication. What about people who call me or text me who don't have a blackphone? Those calls and texts are not going to be encrypted.
I think the market for this thing will be limited, at least for the immediate future.
Heh, I like the "firstworldproblems" tag.
You would have to be pretty naive to have gone all this time believing that CDs would last forever. Sure, all the salespeople back in the 80s and 90s told us this, but they only knew what they had heard or been told, and to be fair, they were drawing a comparison to casette tapes.
I don't know anyone who has a CD collection, who has not ripped them to some sort of digital format. True, if they were ripped to mp3s there was some loss, but most people couldn't tell you the difference anyway. I know I can't tell a difference. My hearing just isn't that sensitive I guess. I also can't tell much of a difference between Pepsi and Coke.
But yes, thank you Ms. Adrienne LaFrance for informing me that CDs deteriorate. However, it is not necessary to point out the blatantly obvious; pointing out the merely obvious will suffice. And I am SO happy that the Library of Congress is spending lots of taxpayer money studying this problem. While they are at it, they may want to investigate why metal corrodes and why bananas turn brown.
Hmmm. I might have something to do with the fact that you never see job postings that read:
Taxonomist Needed!
Immediate Opening!
High Pay! Great Benefits!
But it might be just as dangerous as the other kind.
Semantics. You're auctioning off the use of property that isn't yours. Nobody is using my driveway right now. Does that mean some park monkey can auction off it's use while I'm gone?
No, if I sold a used book to a friend I would not report that, but if I start selling lots of books and video games to the highest bidder? Yes, I think the IRS would say I need to report that.
I'm sure the city and private owners will have no trouble with you auctioning off property that isn't yours. The state and IRS will also not have any problem with you collecting this extra income under the table.
That was my question too. I'm glad I'm not the only one. More pretentious bullsh*t from Gartner masquerading as useful information. Do you care? Does anyone care? Perhaps the manufacturers care, but surely they are well aware of their sales numbers and are capable of populating a simple spreadsheet as well as Gartner can.
Gartner: experts at telling you what you already know -- with charts.
More earthquakes in Oklahoma. Thanks Obama!
The auto manufacturer is responsible for safety recalls for a very long time, if not forever. I've gotten safety recalls for cars that I haven't owned in years and that are way past the warranty period. I was the last known owner, so I got the letter.
This kind of thing is very much like a safety recall for cars, except it is for an operating system.
I like TBBT, but I do have one criticism of it. I know a lot of you are saying it makes fun of nerds, rather than idolizing them, and I think someone even went so far as to call it "blackface for nerds", or something like that. But the show is a sitcom and ALL sitcoms rely on caricatures and clownish antics. TBBT is no different. I don't criticize them for that.
My problem with TBBT is that it's been going on a little too long. The actors are getting into middle age. Jim Parsons is over 40. Johnny Galecki and Mayim Blaik are almost there. The others are all approaching their mid-30s. Most people, by this age, are raising families, getting mortgages, etc. Maybe not everyone, but among professionals this is certainly the case. Certainly, by middle age, most people have moved beyond paintball and hanging out at the comic book store. The show is becoming a little too unrealistic.
I don't understand why you need an app. Can't you just ignore the phone while you're driving? I have no trouble doing this. I regularly have to sit in meetings that last one or two hours where I ignore my phone. That's far longer than the amount of time I have to spend in my car. If you can't ignore your phone for awhile, perhaps what you need is a psychiatrist, and not an app.
This should never have made it to /. There's nothing in the summary or TFA that explains what we're all supposed to be upset about. It looks like the forwarded emails I get from angry, elderly acquaintances who have nothing better to do all day, since retirement, except to get all outraged over perceived problems which are always just around the corner, but never seem to actually occur.
Now syphons work due to gravity instead of atmospheric pressure. Thanks Obama.