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Comment Re: The FAA isn't doing jack (Score 1) 115

You have the right to use an open space reserve, but you don't have the right to do whatever you want there. You can reserve airspace for rocketry without a pilots certificate, but you have to call Oakland center first. Usually the FAA wants to arbitrate the use of the airspace for safety reasons. Most FARs are written in blood. This might seem unfair to drone operators, but regulations are changing.

Comment Re:Contradiction (Score 3, Interesting) 45

Not really. UCSB has eucalyptus running a small "cloud". That's essentially a scaled down version of AWS. HTCondor can be considered a cloud since it scales and processes can run anywhere in their network.

Of course /. has no shortage of posts about the ambiguity of the word cloud, but I prefer thd looser definition. Universities have been distributing computation for a while now on what could be described as a cloud.

Comment Re:I wish I'd thought of that (Score 2) 221

The only problem with keyless cars systems is that the car companies forgot to secure them. That can be fixed.

I'll flip it around on you. Here's my problem with traditional keys; They can be lost, they can be stolen, they can be copied and there isn't a way of logging access or revoking access. Many older vehicles can even be started(and stolen) with a minimal amount of knowledge and tools.

All your cars are connected to the internet or soon will be. If you work for Google you just swipe your badge and take a company car. If you lose your badge they can deactivate it remotely. Being able to revoke access to a car is incredibly powerful. We have 2 factor authentication for your google account. Why not your car?

Comment Don't really care (Score 3, Insightful) 1007

I say there are really 3 valid responses to creationists for an atheist.

1. Ignore them. It's a waste of time.
2. Listen to their premises and reject them for being logically inconsistent.
3. Listen to them and convert.

Getting uneasy and yelling at them is a serious waste of time. It won't get you anywhere. It also make you look like a jerk.
Let them believe what they want. It OK to have a debate, but if they start getting belligerent then respectfully remove yourself from the conversation.

I follow those guidelines for all free exchanges of ideas. I doubt MSU will allow this to get out of control. There is a lot of things that happen at my university that I don't agree with, but they don't affect me, so I let it go.

Comment Re:For Starters (Score 1) 320

Controlling a car is an NP-complete problem. We'll save lives by implementing the heuristics better and more consistently than a human mind can. There will be car error, but let's hope we can minimize that to almost zero. I doubt we will get rid of accidents entirely. Hopefully those accidents will be less deadly though.

You're not going to find a magic fix that prevents car accidents, but it's hard to prove that a car can always perform better than a human.

Comment Is counterfeiting really cheaper? (Score 1) 572

It's a shame that USB has UMS for storage and UVC for video, but there isn't a similar standard for COM ports.

With that said, it's a serial port. Come on guys!! Just make a pin compatible part and write your own driver. It would probably take about the same amount of time to reverse engineer FTDI. Can you even copyright an IC footprint?

Comment Re:Web server for printing... (Score 4, Interesting) 178

...because web protocols are universal and easy to use.

Ask yourself this question. Should I use a standard protocol with tons of tools an an ecosystem to support it or should I use a totally custom protocol to handle everything?

Why you'd need to write custom complicated protocols from scratch for everything always riddled me.

Maybe you think because theres less overhead it's better. IDK, but I reject that premise.

Disclaimer: I work with a bunch of stubborn hardware engineers that sometimes refuse to give up their false permises about software.

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