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Comment Re:How many gas stations were there... (Score 1) 194

I may be shortsighted, or... there is no advantage to this car over conventional electric or hybrid at this point and will likely stay that way. Sure internal combustion engines (ICE) took off, but how many other inventions since then haven’t? Are you still riding around in your Stanley Steamer?

The 5 minute fueling is no advantage if there is nowhere to refill. Hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain, should these become common no doubt we will start to here stories about hydrogen leaks and is unlikely they will be able to add an ordorant as it may poison the catalyst.

Not everything succeeds, cars are expensive, make wise choices, not just OMG it’s cool and green.

Comment Not For Me (Score 1, Insightful) 194

Let’s see, my Volkswagen Passat, which I paid 18K, for will go 450 miles and refuel just about anywhere.

Green is nice and all, but why even bother rolling something out that is obviously not ready for primetime? At least Hybrids can refuel anywhere even if over priced. I’ll go all electric or hybrid once the economics are in place, and I have no problem with early adopters, but getting one of these seems to be for masochists only at this point. Give me a range of 500+ miles, or the ability to fuel at home (maybe natural gas to hydrogen conversion – though that somewhat defeats the purpose).

Remember, Hydrogen is really just a battery when you think about it, the power still has to come from somewhere else like coal (though ideally wind or solar). In most cases hydrogen is generated from natural gas, generating, you guessed it, carbon dioxide in the process.

Comment Here we go again (Score 1) 226

I don’t recall seeing boot camps for Electrical Engineers or boot Camps for Medical Doctors. I remember back in the late 70s when I first started coding on an Apple ][ people regarded me with awe for being able to write a print statement in a for loop. In those days everyone probably could learn to code simple text based game and recipe organizers, but they didn’t. Now that we need stable object oriented code that actually takes some discipline to write we’ve decided everyone should do – it is the path too quick riches after all.

I’m not saying our discipline is too hard for a person with an average IQ, but it deserves the same respect as any other technical field. There is enough bad code to fix from people that spent 4-8 years learning to code, I don’t think boot camp graduates will write better code. If anything we should be toughening the academic standards for writing maintainable code and take the time to be sure the lessons have sunk in, not shortening the time we learn to code – I can only imagine that leads to a quick and dirty solutions.

Of course maybe this is not really about true web development, but about just being able to fire up something like Cold-Fusion and churn out volumes of similar looking websites -- you know to keep costs down.

Comment Ignore away (Score 1) 642

So your point is you would ignore the list, so it shouldn't be available to anyone? Or because you think people like parents who may not agree with your stance on violence might use it -- again removing their role as a parent, because evidently gamers in the Slashdot community know better.

I could have thought I specifically said as long as it is not censorship. So why bring in Australia's practices to this discussion? Rating will lead to censorship? Not sure that follows.

Comment And you probably not a parent (Score 1) 642

The things you mention should be covered in gaming review sites. Now maybe you think the magazines should just list these elements as well, but here is the situation, my 8 or 10 year old has requested I buy some innocuous sounding racing game. I’m at the store, I but it. We get it home and there are big busted ladies jumping around and possibly occasionally losing their tops.

Now you may have decided I’m a prude and that it’s OK for my 8 or 10 year to see these things, but really that isn’t your call. I didn’t ask for censorship, I just asked for informative labeling on the product similar to food.

How to achieve that fair labeling may be neigh-on-impossible, but there is nothing I see wrong with the goal.

Of course you may worry that if these elements are labeled then people like me might hurt sales of games with titillating sex and violence thus making for fewer of these available – because a pretty good number of Slashdotters think people should be mature enough to handle nudity, sex, and violence at all ages and that parents isolate their children too much, or that the parents should invest time researching a game before buying (which I concede to some small degree as a fair point). Still I would contend we should make it easier for people to make informed decisions, especially parents.

Comment Whole list of possibly offensive content? (Score 3, Interesting) 642

I would give Negative grades for each of the following:

Violence
Nudity
Sexism
Racism/Stereotyping (including slights to LGBT society)
Culturally insensitive
Religiously Intolerant
Religious Indoctrination
Politically Driven Agenda
Historically Inaccurate

Positive Grades for These:

Educational
Social Responsible
Mentally Stimulating
Historically Accurate

And an overall aggregate score

Granted things like Politically Driven Agenda would be hotly contested every time and couldn’t possibly work in the real world, but this would be a near ideal list. As long as it isn’t censorship what’s wrong with full disclosure. If a game would be embarrassed to be labeled Sexism Level 4, then maybe they need to dial back the bikini babes at the race start. I wouldn't want to get too carried away with categories, others may suggest a few more, but if we keep it to under 20 that shouldn't be too over the top, more like a list of ingredients in prepackaged food.

Comment Yep, tired of the wait (Score 1) 154

I had initially been interested in Google Glass initially as well, though I didn't really expect to buy one soon. I figured I'd wait a generation or two and for the resolution to be Full-HD and all the kinks worked out. I had expressed my curiosity about Google Glass to my wife who flat out said no way because of the nerdy look in public. Still I followed the progress passively and it never came and it never came. I figured we be on generation 3 by now.

Now Oculus Rift is on my radar – my wife is less skeptical (mostly because I will be in the basement when I get my geek on). This one too is beginning to drag out, though supposedly now only months away.

These companies seem very hesitant to bring first generation products to market, evidently worried anything less than perfection will doom long term adoption. Seems to me Google Glass should have had a for-businesses version first that acclimated the public to its appearance. There would seem to be literally hundreds of uses business could put these things too, whereas there doesn't seem to be a killer-app for the general public yet.

As for Oculus Rift gaming is already a killer-app not to mention tele-sight-seeing and 360 degree immerse movies.

I wouldn't be surprised in the long run to see Google Glass conquer business uses, and Oculus Rift conquer entertainment uses.

Comment Nice and all, but where's the beef? (Score 3, Interesting) 127

I remember back in the 80's all the excitement about building faster and faster super computers to solve all sorts of grand challenge problems and how a teraflop would just about be nirvana for science. Around 2000 teraflops came and went and then petaflops became the new nirvana for science where we would be able to solve grand challenge problems. Now exaflop is the new nirvana that will solve grand challenge science problems once again. Seems raw computing power hasn't given us the progress in science we predicted. Sure it's been used for stuff, but it hasn't helped us crack nuclear fusion for instance, one of its often hyped goals.

Where's the score card on how much progress has been made because of super computing? I know drug design is one very useful application, but what are other areas that have been transformed?

Comment Terrorism goes for the Win! (Score 5, Insightful) 316

I literally get sick to my stomach every time I see these kinds of proposals. I know us turning into a police state is not the goal of radical Islam, but having us live in fear is and which this will promulgate as a constant reminder.

We use to want to defeat authoritarian regimes by being a beacon of freedom that their citizens aspired to – thus defeating them without having to have boots on the ground. It worked well against the Soviet Union and given enough time will work against radical Islam, that is if we don’t turn into something their people don’t admire and aspire to be.

Just quit playing their game, seriously, leave things alone to sort themselves out. I’m not completely isolationist, groups like ISIS certainly deserve a thumping. I’m not blind that some intervention is called for in extreme cases.

How about we get to UN to quit backsliding on basic freedoms, instead of worrying about the sensitivities of religions? How about to be full fledged member of the UN your people have to have freedom of speech and religion? Political systems and economic systems are up to whoever is in charge, but quit letting theocracies to get a pass on human rights. Do this and within a generation religious radicalism will be a thing of the past.

Comment Nice, but seems we could have better. (Score 0) 30

This looks promising for third world markets, but it seems we could/should have something much better here already. Why not some mini LIDAR or other depth ranging technology that sends info to an array of vibrators that encircle the chest, thus giving a crude 3D representation (even behind) instead of one fixed line that must be manually scanned?

Why not send a 40 khz signal out, then down convert it to 5-10khz on return and feed it directly to the blind persons ears (I suggest this in addition to the scheme outlined above) to echo locate instead of having the blind having to constantly click with their tongues to do a crude echo locate as some do?

My main point is there should be lots of ways more accurate and immersive than this, that while more expensive are still affordable, doable, and practical (especially considering what we already spend on other aids and help animals).

We seem to have been on the verge of artificial eyes for decades. How about we dump representing 2D images and present Depth in place of Brightness. Crude 3D might be much better for navigating in the world as a blind person instead of crude 2D vision. This could even be switchable between 2D and 3D, or 2D in one eye and depth in the other.

Comment Doesn’t have to be a true robot (Score 1) 203

Surely a remote control device of some sort should suffice, be smaller, faster and good enough if not perfect.

I’m amazed the windows aren't pre-designed for some kind of semi-automatic, rc-controled cleaning device.

There may then be some difficult areas that occasionally need a human crew on the outside, but if you could get this down to 5% or even 20% it would be a big safety win.

I imagine a range of remote units. Some very dumb and cleaning the bulk of the windows, then bigger more expensive units that do the less frequent more intricate edge work.

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