But according to Mehler, problems arise when the system needs clarification of what the driver wants, which often happens while they're trying to feed an address into a navigation system.

Which is why every GPS system I've ever used starts off with a disclaimer that tells you not to program the thing while you're driving. I travel for a living so the choice isn't whether I want a screen or not. It's whether the GPS is telling me directions out loud or I'm trying to read them off a piece of paper when I'm driving. And the rental car companies seem to think that the proper place for a GPS is somewhere down at the passenger's feet, so I bring my own and stick it on the windshield where it's in my peripheral vision. And I don't answer the phone if I'm driving.

If it's "smart" it should be smart enough not to pester you when you're trying to drive. It's not that we need smarter cars, we need smarter people.

So what was the outlet there for? If it's on a public building but not meant for public use, it should have been secured, either by locking it or having it shut off inside the building. Actually, the drinking fountain comment is a good point. Obviously, a drinking fountain is there for public use. But what if it's just a faucet? Is getting a drink from a drinking fountain okay, but not a faucet? Is charging a phone okay, but not a car? Where is the line here?

Other than the obviously boneheaded ignorance highlighted by the amounts involved, there needs to be more clarity on which public facilities are available to the public and which are reserved for the institution.

There was another sub called the I-25 that carried a seaplane. The seaplane was mostly for reconnaissance in support of the sub, but it did manage to drop a few incendiaries in Oregon in hopes of creating a wildfire. Nothing came of it and the I-25 was eventually sunk by a US destroyer.

The Japanese did try repeatedly to stage an effective attack on the US mainland. Some, like the balloon bombs were pretty inventive, but none of them amounted to much in the end.

What you say about bad specs is true, but Oracle shouldn't have taken a gig with bad specs. When a company asks for bids to do a project, the bidders need to look at the spec and make sure that they address the risks and assumptions in the bidding process. If there are still questions after winning the bid, then you need to make sure those are addressed right away. Taking the money and then realizing months down the road that the spec was junk is just poor management.

Projects don't fail just because one side dropped the ball. There's pretty much always plenty of blame to go around. Writing poor specs, accepting poor specs, undocumented assumptions and poor communications all go into making a mess like this.

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury. The title is from a poem by Sara Teasdale.

This post generated by the Wikipedia reference bot.

This immediately made me think of those news stories where someone is found after having died weeks before. If you set up a system to do your chatting for you, when are your friends and neighbors going to realize they haven't seen you in a while? After all, they just got an email from you this morning responding to the one they sent a week before.

Do we really want to completely isolate ourselves from even the most trivial human contact?

Yes, filing false DMCA is explicitly defined by the law as perjury and the EFF is currently pursuing a number of these cases. The problem is that perjury is defined as the "willful act of swearing a false oath" so they're just going to claim that they didn't know the takedown notices were wrong and that it was just a mistake.

Which raises the question, when did they find out the program kicked out false positives and did they continue to use it after that? IANAL, but if they used a program they knew would commit perjury, I can't see how it's different than committing the perjury themselves. I find it pretty implausible that a company that lives by its copyrights doesn't know -- and is not required to know -- what a legitimate copyright claim is.

It's going to be a lot easier to make a car play by the rules if the rules are easier. The easiest driving is on the interstates where there are no stop lights, crossroads, pedestrian crossings or sharp turns. It shouldn't be long until a robot can handle interstate driving better than most drivers. It's going to take a lot longer for it to distinguish between a gravel road and a dirt path crossing it. To say nothing of parking lots.

Yeah, it's a late post, but this one burns me. Metadata is data about the data, phone numbers are data. For instance, if I say that phone numbers are ten numeric digits comprised of a three-digit area code with a seven digit phone number, I'm talking about the metadata. If I say phone number 555-1212 called phone number 666-2323 and talked for fifteen minutes, I'm talking about data. Calling it "metadata" in this context is just trying to cloud the issue.

If the submitter found the cause of the problem with "a little scratching" I doubt that the ones who hired him are in the dark as to what the problem is. What they need is outside confirmation that absolves them of responsibility. It may be productive to create a list of best practices for IT managers (preferably one from a generally accepted outside source) and see how the guy stacks up. If you want places to look for this, I suggest you start with CIO Magazine and maybe get a book or two on the subject. (Here is one. There are plenty of others.)

Just keep in mind that, if it works out, you might find yourself making a career of this. There is no dearth of incompetent IT managers out there, nor of bosses looking for a good excuse to give them the axe. Whether they deserve it or not.

If you're going to crank out cheap guns, you'd do better with a trip to the local hardware store. You can get plans off the internet that will allow you to crank one out a lot faster and cheaper using stuff from the hardware store than shelling out top dollar for a printer that can crank out one of those plastic jobs and, being made of metal, are less likely to blow up in your hand as well.

As for having "no trace whatsoeever" the plans (if he had bothered to look at them) include a big metal block deliberately to make it traceable. Even if you left the block out, the bullets are metal and would still look like bullets in an x-ray. Just another politician trying to show he's up to date by getting panicked about whatever the press it panicking about this week.

Officer Sean Collier brings them up to four. So that officially bumps them up from multiple murderers to mass murderers. Can't see much of a distinction myself, although Officer Collier's family would probably disagree.

Better still, point to it and say loudly, "Hey Mister! You forgot your backpack." Then see what happens. Maybe he's just absent-minded and he'll come back for it. If he runs . . . not so much. You can bet the crowd -- and any police it might contain -- will be paying attention pretty quick.

Geez, I've been reading this page and it looks like knows exactly who these guys are, their political affiliations and motivations for the bombings. When I went to bed last night there weren't even decent pictures of these guys and we just got their names this mornings. Their high-school friends have no idea why they did this. Their father hasn't said -- and may not know -- why they did it. Neither brother has explained their motivations and one of them never will.

Give it time. We don't have nearly enough information yet, so if everyone could just vacate their pulpit-of-preference until we do we might be able to raise the signal-to-noise ratio around here.

Thanks.

The problem isn't terror, it's the fact that this numbnut is trying to conduct a running firefight in the city, trying to avoid the police he's been shooting and trying to place bombs where he can. He's an indiscriminate killer and may be wearing a suicide vest on top of that. There are police all over trying to catch this clown, but crowds of people will complicate their jobs and give the nutjob more targets. We're not staying inside from fear, we're trying to help them do their jobs.

Stepping out from the middle of an active firefight isn't being terrorized, it's common sense. When the manhunt is over -- and I don't expect it to take long -- we're going back to our lives. And I predict a record turnout for next year's marathon.