Comment Re:Not surprised (Score 1) 252
[citation needed]
Comment Re:You'll Have To Claw That Oil Out Of My Cold Dea (Score -1, Troll) 589
I didn't realize Ruch Limbaugh was on Slashdot...
Comment Re:The Real Problem (Score 1) 417
Taxi drivers will try to stop it, it's true. I suggest to them that they demonstrate superior service. If they can, people will use human services over automated driving services.
Now, as a city resident (cyclist, pedestrian) who has been hit by taxis I'm going to root for their destruction in totality. Fuck them, and fuck everything about them.
Comment Re:People moving just the start (Score 1) 417
I live in Washington DC, and I live a life surprisingly like your description of Tokyo life. And friends of mine who live in NY live it more so. The city life is great, and you *can* have it in America. You just have to live in (or near) a real city.
Nokia Exec: Young People Fed Up With iPhone and Android 532
jfruhlinger writes "Nokia's Windows Phones haven't hit the U.S., but at least one company executive thinks they'll be a slam dunk, since young people have soured on the iPhone and find Android baffling. Of course, much of the Internet commentariat found his remarks even more baffling. Is he right, is he delusional, or is he just trying to build buzz for his company's products the best he can?"
Comment Gimbals (Score 3, Interesting) 325
Dumb question, I suppose. But, given that the earth rotates, and given that the flywheels will have a huge angular momentum, are they gimbaled? The article says they're suspended in a vacuum, levitated on a magnetic field, which is cool. But if they're not gimbaled a huge amount of energy will be wasted fighting precession as the earth rotates.
I assume the people making these things are smart and know their shit. I'm just curious how a problem like this is solved. If not gimbals, what?
Comment We are not the audience. (Score 1) 277
Every post here is (understandably) negative. But, come on kids, we are not the audience here. Programmers are not the audience. Hackers are not the audience. Gamers are not the audience.
People who spend all day on facebook, gmail and last.fm are the audience. And this is probably a very good solution for them.
SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon Make It To Orbit 200
jnaujok writes "This morning the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:43 Eastern time, after an earlier launch had been scrubbed because of a bad telemetry feed. A little over 9 minutes later, the Dragon capsule separated from the second stage into its intended orbit. Part of the COTS (Commercial access To Space) program, this is the first test of the Dragon capsule by SpaceX to prove it can be used to ferry supplies to the ISS. The Dragon capsule will make two or three orbits before returning to Earth about four hours after launch."
Many More Android Apps Leaking User Data 299
eldavojohn writes "After developing and using TaintDroid, several universities found that of 30 popular free Android apps, half were sharing GPS data and phone numbers with advertisers and remote servers. A few months ago, one app was sending phone numbers to a remote server in China but today the situation looks a lot more pervasive. In their paper (PDF), the researchers blasted Google saying 'Android's coarse grained access control provides insufficient protection against third-party applications seeking to collect sensitive data.' Google's response: 'Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer. We also provide developers with best practices about how to handle user data. We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust.'"
Robots Taught to Deceive 239
An anonymous reader found a story that starts "'We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered,' said Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing."
Comment Re:Yeah... (Score 1) 589
If only there were some motive force to life other than money. If only!
Hints of Life Found On Saturn's Moon Titan 227
Calopteryx writes "New Scientist reports that in 2005, researchers predicted two potential signatures of life on Titan. Now, thanks to research done with the help of the Cassini spacecraft, both have been seen, although non-biological chemical reactions could also be behind the observations. NASA's writeup has further details: 'One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus [abstract] that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene. This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.'"
Comment Re:And Adobe can't do this, why? (Score 1) 356
Actually, adobe is. I can't recal the name of the project, but Adobe's writing a canvas-based flash renderer in JS.
Canvas is actually the right way to go, because despite all the comments in this thread about how HTML-5 is "officially as powerful as flash" now, the fact is flash does still have some advantages, like bitmap filters.
Those can be implemented from scratch in a canvas-based renderer, whereas any attempts via dynamic SVG will be subject to whatever support SVG has for filters.
In short, by implementing a from-scratch canvas-based renderer, Adobe gets full control over the pixel pipeline, which allows them to get pixel-perfect rendering. Flash is, believe it or not, a very high quality renderer, and Adobe likely doesn't want to lose that.
China To Tap Combustible Ice As New Energy Source 185
lilbridge writes "Huge reserves of "combustible ice" — frozen methane and water — have been discovered in the tundra of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. Estimates show that there is enough combustible ice to provide 90 years worth of energy for China. Burning the combustible ice may be a far better alternative than letting it just melt, releasing tons of methane into the air."
Comment Re:reasons this may not catch on in the US (Score 1) 533
Hey, I just want to thank you for a good & sensible writeup.
I am one of those people who architect his life about sensible transportation. I recently bought a house in washington dc, and ride my bike to work daily. I've been a bicycle commuter for 10 years, and have made my living arrangements favor bike commuting accordingly. It's actually pretty wonderful, I spend 15 minutes on my bike every morning and evening to get to work ( and if necessary, to stop at the grocery store on my way home ).
Frankly, it's an absolute joy. My colleagues bitch and moan about traffic, yet they insist on living as far as possible from where they work and spend more than half of every day.
Anyway, I had to comment simply because so many internet discussion threads about cycling tend to devolve into name calling and internet-tough-guy-ism.
