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Comment Re:Laywer fight (Score 4, Interesting) 357

Just to add,

This isn't a future issue. I have prescription frames that I use with my Google Glass. Those glasses are my only glasses with my current prescription. The Google Glass is actually one arm of the frame, so you can't remove it and still use the glasses. To tell me that I can not wear the Google Glass in the theatre means that it would eliminate my mechanism to correct my near-sightedness.

I am happy to turn the Glass off at a movie. I do the same at other performances that do not allow videos/photos. My cellphone is turned off. Why do I have to remove my glasses completely? It is okay though. I will stay at home instead. Someday we all will have something similar to Google Glass. It may not seem like it and it may have to come from someone other than Google, but the experience and benefits will one day compel us all as the cell phone does today.

Comment Make it right... (Score 2) 179

I am not sure how you can fix the impact AT&T has had on their prior customers. I simply had to leave their service after my throttled connection wouldn't allow for me to use GPS while traveling.

How do you put right what they did wrong? A fine won't do it, since innocent shareholders will suffer. Forcing them to adopt unmetered accounts won't fix the fact I am now on Verizon's network unable to use the service as it is sold. Tossing a few dollars to me won't make up for what I have had to deal with regarding Verizon's war on their customers.

This should be the turning point for AT&T, which is that the only way to make this right is to have them deal with the same issues we all dealt with. That is, they should enact regulation and then split the company apart and force them to compete with themselves.

Comment Re:Minimal maintenance? (Score 1) 194

I have one of these for my 1 year old's bedroom for when mommy is working late.

It doesn't save the login so you have to login to it frequently, which is a problem when it is used to auto-answer for a child that can barely talk. The hardware is great and it functions, but the software on it is weak. It also frequently drops from the wifi enough that I have a mesh router bridging it into the mesh to avoid the wifi portions.

Comment Re:Actually read the book! (Score 1) 144

I listened to "Man in the High Castle" a while back. When I got to the end of the book it felt like Audible has messed up and not included the entire contents. Over the next few days I listened to it again to try to understand what special meaning was missing. And nope, it didn't really have any special meaning for me.

Revisionist histories are interesting, but shouldn't get praise because of their nature. In this case it was very interesting to read about the new US. Still, it didn't have any particular meaning that goes much more in depth. Most of the Nazis were as shallow in development as you could find in a Sunday morning History Channel show. The Japanese did seem a little better, but it seemed more like a description of an action scene instead of a complicated reality.

My guess is that it won't get many new fans based on the mini-series unless they substantially adjust the content. Approachable by Dick's standards, but with so many other good books out there it is hard to understand why Amazon would give this book a mini-series. Personally it wouldn't be high on my list of translations to the screen.

Comment Re:Visualing this? (Score 4, Interesting) 155

You are making this too complicated.

They drive a truck with a wireless mast and a flat bed to your neighborhood. It will simply deliver all the packages one at a time based on GPS to your home. The driver of the truck will monitor and manually adjust as needed. A single person will have a 20-30 second job and then wait for the drone to buzz when the next package is at a home. With a good range on the truck you can cover several miles with one person without the need for utilizing a delivery service. A single person may also be able to handle 4-6 drones at once. They hover until the driver is able to deliver the package to the door.

Once delivered they will do the normal confirmation email. Regarding cranes and other items, it is required to register and have a beacon light on masts of a certain height. It will just need to be entered as a no-fly zone or a minimum elevation zone. Regardless, the drones don't just go from A-B. They can sense nearby objects. If one happens to be taken out, the driver just drives to the location to retrieve it. Maybe has a ladder... Nothing really complicated.

Comment Re:Google should talk with Tesla (Score 2) 236

As Google expands beyond Web search and seeks a foothold in the automotive market, the company's eagerness has begun to reek of arrogance to some in Detroit, who see danger as well as promise in Silicon Valley.

Danger to their present business models, you mean.

Personally, I think that Tesla would be an excellent company to talk with. Elon Musk speaks their language.

I think the problem is that Google missed their opportunity to buy GM outright during the crash. My impression is that the only way to drag GM to the future is through eliminating the people that would say "Yahoo does well enough, why do we need a new search engine?". The second question to ask is whether the people that worked for GM for 25 years would be willing to work for Google-GM. My guess is that the answer is yes...

Comment Re:As a long-time Glass user, he's a bit off (Score 2) 166

+1 to this comment.

I have a 1 year old that loves reacting to a camera. Hold out a cellphone and she smiles. Hold out a lense and she stops doing whatever and watches the camera. With Glass I have captured tons of videos with her in unique and interesting ways that tell a better story of her. Try recording this with a regular camera:
http://youtu.be/scEJJK7cxGg
or here:
http://youtu.be/jDLCQJluNAQ

The problem is that it took me nearly two weeks to get adjusted to Google Glass. My battery regularly lasts all day without charging after the XE17 upgrade. I live in South Carolina and have NEVER run into anyone wearing them in the wild. Still, nobody ever seems uncomfortable around them and there has only been a handful of people actually ask me about them.

Now if they would get the video calls back into them....

Comment Alternative and more on those mentioned... (Score 1) 104

It seems pretty common to complain about the resolution. There are other projects that appear to have resolved the issue: http://www.avegant.com/ And their kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... And for Abrash's book: http://amzn.com/1576101746 And a good story on Carmack's background: http://amzn.com/0812972155 Abrash's book is dated, but still pretty common.

Comment Posting to Facebook (Score 1) 362

If you post the associated "Show me how my Representative Voted" link, please consider sponsoring the post that it shows up on your friend's feeds. The reason is that often these articles are repeated with multiple sources leading to them not reaching the importance criteria to display on other's feeds. It is too important of an issue to allow $7 in sponsorship fees to bury the message.

Comment Re:Who's going to administer that? (Score 1) 151

Maddog has brought these devices around to several conferences (I believe an AMD Geode?). It is a few kilowatts an hour for a mesh network. As Jon says, the idea is to take a few individuals in the area and train them to install the devices and ensure the backhaul experience is good. The subscribers in the area pay a small maintenance fee to the individual that provides the service, which is aiming to provide a network where the infrastructure isn't available. In other words, you are describing an Internet Connection per a single apartment building. Maddog is describing a single Internet Connection shared amongst hundreds with the available bandwidth pretty low for each user. It will allow for individuals to get to websites (designed for 56k) and some locally hosted instructional material that is on the mesh network. It isn't for Hulu or Netflix. Many of the users will only have cell phones with wifi for access. Jon is really passionate about this topic and he has done his legwork. It would not suprise me at all to see this project a success.

Comment Re:Why compromise? (Score 5, Informative) 128

In OpenCL you need to copy items from the system memory to the GPU's memory and then load the kernel on the GPU to start execution. Then you must copy the data back from the GPU's memory at the end after execution. AMD is saying that you can instead pass a pointer to the data in the main memory instead of actually making copies of the data.

This should reduce some of the memory shifting on the system and speed up OpenCL execution. It will also eliminate some of the memory constraints on OpenCL regarding what you can do on the GPU. On a larger scale it will open up some opportunities for optimizing work.

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