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Submission + - This 'SimCity 4' Region With 107 Million People Took Eight Months of Planning

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Peter Richie spent eight months planning and building a megacity in vanilla SimCity 4, and the end result is mind-boggling: 107.7 million people living in one massive, sprawling region.
"Traffic is a nightmare, both above ground and under," Richie said. "The massive amount of subway lines and subway stations are still congested during all times of the day in all neighborhoods of each and every mega-city in the region. The roadways are clogged at all times, but people still persist in trying to use them."

Comment Re:Rolling roadblocks (Score 1) 475

by RavenLrD20k (#47706603) Attached to: Google's Driverless Cars Capable of Exceeding Speed Limit

There was a social experiment done by GSU a while back that went on youtube, A Meditation on the Speed Limit, that did a rolling roadblock through Atlanta traffic during rush hour and recorded it. If you can get past the BS commentary from the students you can see that it actually created a dangerous situation where traffic volume increased exponentially for several miles behind the block. More cars in close proximity traveling the speed limit is a much higher danger than breaking the speed limit in a lower density situation, particularly when you have human emotions heavily involved. Not to mention said roadblocks are highly illegal, especially now that Georgia passed the "slowpoke law" that will slap $1K fines for obstructing the left hand lane.

Comment Re:Full face (Score 1) 126

by RavenLrD20k (#47664335) Attached to: Android Motorcycle Helmet/HUD Gains Funding
Shortly after I started riding about 3 years ago, one of the members of my Rider Group (national group so while I've chatted with him online, we hadn't had the opportunity to meet yet) went over the bars in a wreck while wearing a 3/4 helmet; slamming face first into the pavement. I've seen pictures of his face since the wreck. I wish I hadn't. Especially not right after the dinner I had that night. I was glad, and still am glad, I had decided to go with the full face helmet despite the Georgia heat and humidity. I'm on my second helmet after my first developed a crack in the foam. The only downside that I'm trying to come up with a solution for is increasing the airflow in the helmet while I'm sitting behind the windshield of my full dresser (Yamaha Venture Royale). There's the vented windshield option, but I'm thinking of something that increases the effectiveness of the fairing vents as they are.

Submission + - The President supports Net Neutrality (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Charliemopps
Charliemopps writes:

One of the issues around net neutrality is whether you are creating different rates or charges for different content providers. That's the big controversy here. So you have big, wealthy media companies who might be willing to pay more and also charge more for spectrum, more bandwidth on the Internet so they can stream movies faster. I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users. You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed.

— President Obama

Submission + - WSJ: Computer Programming Is a Trade; Let's Act Like It (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the story "Fortunately, it turns out that a computer-science degree isn't necessary to get a job in programming. Fourteen percent of the members of some teams at Google don't have a college degree, and 67% of the programming jobs in the U.S. are at nontech companies where other kinds of industry experience are more likely to be valued.

Computer programming, in other words, has become a trade. Like nursing or welding, it's something in which a person can develop at least a basic proficiency within weeks or months. And once budding coders learn enough to get their first jobs, they get onto the same path to upward mobility offered to their in-demand, highly paid peers."

Submission + - Wikipedia Denies DMCA Take-Down Request Because a Monkey Took the Selfie 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Back in 2011, an English photographer went to Indonesia on a photography shoot and had his camera temporarily stolen by a black macaque monkey. While the camera was in its possession, the monkey took various pictures, including a selfie that went viral and landed on Wikimedia Commons under the public domain. The photographer insisted that he owns the copyright and filed a DMCA take-down request, but Wikimedia denied the request, arguing, "To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they'd only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image. This means that there was no one on whom to bestow copyright, so the image falls into the public domain." Wikimedia's rejection of the monkey selfie DMCA take-down request is recorded in its first ever transparency report issued on Wednesday.

Submission + - Idiot Left Driver's Seat In Self-Driving Infiniti, On The Highway

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Self-driving cars are coming, that's nothing new. People are somewhat nervous about this technology, and that's also not news. But it appears self-driving cars are already hear, and one idiot was dumb enough to climb out of the driver's seat while his car cruised down the highway. The car in question is a new Infiniti Q50 which has Active Lane Control and adaptive cruise control. Both of which essentially turn the Q50 into an autonomous vehicle while at highway speeds. While impressive, taking yourself out of a position where you can quickly and safely regain control of the car if needed is simply dumb. After watching the video, it's abundantly clear why people should be nervous about autonomous vehicles. It's not the cars and tech we need to worry about, it's idiots like this guy.

Submission + - Google Wants Everyone to Have Stock Android on Every Phone (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Google has silently released a very significant update to its Google Now Launcher app. Previously limited to Nexus devices, the app now works with any smartphone or tablet running Android 4.1 or above and allows users to experience the stock Android interface rather than the manufacturer-imposed skin. This is the first step on a major push by Google to wrestle back control of Android from the likes of Samsung, HTC and LG.

Comment Re:Expert:Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People A (Score 1) 390

by RavenLrD20k (#47606197) Attached to: "Secret Serum" Used To Treat Americans With Ebola
A well-built car can last 20+ years at the cost of ~$10-20K (maintenance and fuel included, your mileage may vary) and facilitates a larger area with which to look and keep employment, with the option of displaying a sense of style for paying a bit more. In other words, a car can actually reinforce a higher standard of living and often is an optional expense. A long term prescription is often a matter of life and death that is extorted into a forced money sink that you must either pay or die that also brings with it a stigma that there is something quite literally wrong with you...that can also drain your bank of about $10-20K+ over the same 20 year period.
Science

Study: Dinosaurs "Shrank" Regularly To Become Birds 138

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-small dept.
An anonymous reader writes A new study suggests that large dinosaurs shrunk to small birds to survive over a period of around 50 million years. Aside from a few large species, most modern birds are predominantly tiny and look nothing at all like their prehistoric meat-eating ancestors. The evolutionary process that governed this transformation has not been well understood, but now researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia have put together a detailed family tree mapping the evolution of therapod dinosaurs to the agile flying birds we see today. Their results indicated that meat-eating dinosaurs underwent several distinct periods of miniaturization over the last 50 million years which took them down from an average weight of 163kg to just 0.8kg before finally becoming modern birds.

Comment Re: I like it. (Score 1) 306

by RavenLrD20k (#47575573) Attached to: Amazon's eBook Math

So why do the paperback versions of a $15 hardback book generally cost $7 - $8? Paperbacks as well as Hardbacks still need all of the above support personnel you speak of. At $9.99 Amazon is STILL coming in above the paperback price of most books.

I'm sorry, but the arguments that Scalzi puts forth above are absolute shit, and you have the hint of schill about you. There is no reason that the electric format should cost anywhere near the cost of a hardback. Hell, IMHO the electronic format should really be below the paperback price because of the lack of dead leaf being used for its production... but I can understand the industry's desire to hold on to their model and I feel, much as Amazon seems to, that $10 is a reasonable compromise.

If they REALLY want to milk the consumer they should use a similar model for E-books that they use for paperbacks; as in, release the first edition hardback at $15, wait a month for sales to start becoming stale, then release the paperback and E-book at the same time at the reduced rate.

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