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Comment Re:It's been a lot longer than 2007 (Score 1) 218

The FAA are like a Home Owner Association.They'll use the catch-all clause "Every resident must not cause a nuisance or annoyance to the other residents." if they see something they don't like. Most of it is common sense like: all aircraft flights above 500 feet might have an approved flight plan. Any piloted flying vehicle must be air-worthiness approved and have a maintenance log. Any remote control model must remain in line of sight of the operator".

But then they have a problem with remote controlled vehicles with cameras, because they are out of line-of-sight,, but the operator can still see using the remote camera. That goes into a sort of gray-area, so they haven't made any rules up yet. Perhaps there should be a camera on a pole behind the model so the operator can see the state of the model relative to the surroundings.

Comment Re:What's awesome... (Score 1) 65

I'm not sure they can discriminate between a predator and non-predator. They go by smell to find food and partners. Just about anything that is a dark shadow or moves relative to the background is a potential predator - either they get squished or eaten,

They do vision by a method called "optic flow". Imagine everything you see is projected onto a hemispherical dome (like one of those IMAX theaters). The only way you can tell how the camera is moving is whether the picture rotates around a single point, a particular area of the picture gets larger or smaller and any combination of the two. How quickly different parts of the picture move tells them how near it is.

Comment Re:A possum playing possum (Score 1) 270

The interesting thing about the home computers vs the IBM PC and clones was that the home computes (Atari ST, Amiga, Apple) were ahead of the IBM PC in terms of connectors (MIDI) and display capability (GUI's), but it only took a couple of graphics and audio boards (Soundblaster) for the PC to catch up.

I do have to wonder what the next two iterations are going to be? Wearable computing? Implantable computing?

Comment Re:Trolling? (Score 1) 270

I would go for the Wacom style art tablet with a built-in screen, but still with a keyboard. That allows for additional interaction including tilt, pressure, and multiple stylus pens to be used simultaneously. I've tried explaining how to use a computer to some of my more senior relatives, and they immediately get all annoyed and panicky when I tell them to "grab the mouse, and pull it towards them". They panic at the thought there is a rodent on the table.

Comment Re:Seems fishy (Score 3, Interesting) 136

Why do you think it is purely luck? When you have these wild discussion parties - things like "is a bright blob of pixels on a Mars Rover image a cosmic ray, a high-voltage dust-devil, light contamination of a camera box, a gas geyser", you will have an incredible combination of experts - everyone from geologists, ranchers, hill-hikers, photographers, astronomers. Geologists will tell you want can and can't come from the ground, ranchers and hill-hikers will tell you things they have seen and never seen, photographers will tell you what visual artifacts can appear on a camera, and astronomers tell you what can fall from the sky and can't, and what those falling things look like.

It's like solving a giant logic problem where everyone can cross off or tick what what they know. Eventually the set of possible answers reduces down to one or two.

Comment Re:Ability to design and write software... (Score 1) 581

Being able to program is only a small part of being a programmer or engineer or developer. First skill = being able to handle ambiguous specifications or even being able to extract them from the client or other engineers tactfully. Second skill = being able to write and document well structured code. Third skill = being able to herd a team of junior programmers towards the same goal.

Sometimes employers use different terms; software developer, application developer, programmer, junior programmer, senior programmer, senior engineer.

Comment Re:Tradeoffs (Score 2) 581

Highly-paid people still need to eat, drink (bars, cafes, restaurants), buy clothes, shoes (stores, sales assistants, sales managers), maintain their appearance (hairdressers, barbers, estheticians), keep healthy (fitness centres, doctors, dentists), and then they'll want to live somewhere pleasant (architects, landscape gardners), may want to explore their inner self (yoga instructors, meditation), learn new skills (community college), may want to be driven somewhere (taxi drivers, chaffeurs, limo services), want their homes upgraded (builders, painters, interior decorators).

Comment Re:Right! (Score 1) 581

Programming is always becoming obsolete. Every time a new compiler, API comes out there's a boom time where programmers in a particular field are in demand, then once all that infra-structure has been built, applications have been ported, the industry moves onto the next level. In the early 1990's, you could get a job with knowledge of C, X-windows, X-toolkit and GLX, X.25 and ISDN were also in demand. By the late 1990's, you needed to know C++, Win32, MFC, Then web page design took off around 2000, so a new path opened up as web page designer. That needed knowledge of HTML, ActiveX. Now, big data is another path that has opened, and that requires knowledge of things like Reduction, Hadoop, So there is a constant need to retrain as you go along.

Comment Re:San Fran = the new Detroit (Score 1) 371

I've seen documentaries on the operation of modern car making plants. Car components are ordered automatically, they are then distributed to the correct area of the factory by automatic trolley systems. Robots lift up the parts, weld them in place. Windows are put in place by robot. Spray-painting is done by machine. Humans do things like final testing.

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