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This happened a number of years ago when ReplayTV offered a feature that automatically skipped commercials. A bunch of studios sued them. The result was that the new DVRs required the users to press a "scene skip" button on the remote to skip over the commercial break. ReplayTV was later bought by DirectTV.
I too will wait for BTRFS to mature. I tried BTRFS on a decent SSD and found the performance to be terrible compared to XFS, which is my current filesystem of choice. I found that the performance was especially bad when I tried to move my Cyrus IMAP server over to it. The other thing that bothered me is that I could find little information on what happens when space runs low. While writes are supposed to be extremely fast, I found that not to be the case when restoring the 100K plus email files onto the partition. This was with a fairly decent Intel SSD. Granted, this was with the OpenSUSE 3.1.10 kernel but I think I'll wait a while longer before trying it again.
The tools for BTRFS look interesting, but then again I think I'll wait until they mature some more. At this point the best filesystem tools I have found are the ones for XFS, especially tools like xfs_dump, xfs_restore, xfs_fsr and xfs_db. Also, out of all of the filesysems I have tried, XFS seems to be the fastest in most cases, especially with the recent changes to reduce meta-data writes. I have also found it to be quite fault tolerant with fast recovery.
I recently got a Nest thermostat and must say I'm quite pleased with it and have noticed a noticeable reduction in my heating bill with its auto-away feature. The fact that I can control it via my Android phone is even better. I had an old Honeywell thermostat that could also estimate how long it took things to reach temp but had to replace it years ago since it didn't support my multi-stage furnace. The Nest is extremely well made. Be sure to also check out the Nest teardown.
DP Review has a review of this camera. It sounds like it has a long way to go. Due to the way lightfield works, the final resolution is fairly low, in this case only 1024x1024. I don't know if there's really a way around it, since they're substituting resolution for the depth of field focus feature.
To follow up, this is mostly useful for seeing young children who would otherwise be below what I can see out the rear window. I also have found it useful when backing out since my dog will often move in back of the car (wanting to hop in the back for a ride). I also think this is useful for older drivers who find it difficult to turn their heads around to see behind them.
I imagine that most of these accidents are with young children behind cars since they can be difficult to find and don't necessarily know to get out of the way.
They used to do this and people were getting killed left and right on the highways in accidents which today are easily survivable. For example, in the 1960s seat-belts were optional and not very common. My father had to specially order them for his cars because they were not standard. Collapsible steering columns, crumple zones, safety glass, etc. were all mandated because it cuts down on deaths and serious injury. I suspect having this feature will lower insurance costs, perhaps enough to cover the additional cost. Many of the safety features save money by lowering the cost of people in emergency rooms.
I think the price is severely overestimated.
The cost of cameras is quite cheap for the low resolution required as is the cost of small LCD displays. The cost of a decent cellphone camera is around $10 and LCD's in the quantity required are probably less than $20 with maybe $5 for the drive electronics. The camera can be lower quality since it doesn't need to handle very high resolution or internal focusing and the lens can be quite cheap as well. Add in the cost for the housing and lens and wiring and you may have $60-$80. The added advantage is that it makes parallel parking easier. My car came with it with the GPS unit and I find it useful since I can see my own bumper, making it easier to squeeze into spots where I otherwise can't see the hood of the car behind me very well. It still doesn't replace a rear-view mirror or turning your head around to see what's behind you since it's impossible to properly judge distance with the fisheye lens on it. In fact, a quick google search shows rear-view camera add-on kits for cars for under $100. If it's built in to the car it can be cheaper since the LCD housing and mounting hardware would be integrated into the dash.
I just returned an OCZ Agility 3 due to it dying after 2 weeks of light use as my Linux root partition running XFS. Since their office was local I drove it there to save shipping charges and had to laugh in their lobby since they're touting reliability. Sadly Sandforce has gained a reputation for not being the most reliable controller out there. I have never had a hard drive fail except after years of use until this one died. Fortunately it's being replaced under warranty.
Also, unlike other drives I've had fail, this one died suddenly and completely. Suddenly Linux couldn't access the root filesystem and after rebooting the drive could not be found by the SATA controller. Fortunately I had my old Western Digital Velociraptor drive I had replaced so I swapped that back in.
I have another Sandforce SSD that would often not show up when my computer woke up from standby until after a firmware update. Intel might be better, having written their own firmware, but at this point I think SSDs have a way to go in terms of reliability. There's no excuse for the issues that have been reported with the various Sandforce drives. The problem is either insufficient Q/A testing of the firmware or management pushing out the firmware before it's ready. It's also possible that there might be some hardware glitch causing these drives to fail.
-Aaron
It was never a problem for me since the GPS in my phone caches data along the route. You might as well say that your phone GPS is useless because there are areas you don't get any signal. It's not as if the GPS dies when you get a phone call... in my case it happily kept right on going.
Long before the IPhone my old Verizon BREW phone had an app store where I could purchase an app and it would be automatically downloaded and installed.
Actually the losses in the inverter are fairly low. I read some papers describing the efficiency of the inverter design being over 90% efficient. One interesting paper I found can be found at http://www.midmichigansae.org/documents/DrGoverPresentationSAEApril20.pdf
The problem arises when a kid has to do 100 math problems and can easily do it in his head. It's time to move on to more advanced topics rather than waste time on useless busywork. I agree that there are times where showing your work is important, but there is also a time where it's pointless and time to move on. I was the kid who would finish a test in a fraction the time it took most of the rest of the class to finish, bored out of my mind at the pointless busywork and repetition while some of the other kids struggled. I rarely did math homework at home. Usually I'd finish it in class while the teacher was trying to explain it to the other kids. If a kid fully understands what he's doing and can take shortcuts to solve the problem correctly, all the better. Have the kid describe his shortcuts, not show the expected 'work', and only describe it for a few problems and do the rest as needed, otherwise the only thing being taught to the kid is frustration, especially if the teacher knows that the kid knows the material.
As a programmer I am careful to document my code so that others can jump in and work on it because it's required. The amount of documentation reflects the complexity of what is being done and the target audience. This is especially important since I work on bootloader code for some very complex chips which is sent to customers to modify. The amount of documentation also reflects if that part of the code is expected to be used or modified by a customer or if it's used internally. Internal code can expect a much more experienced programmer than code customers are expected to use and modify. It all depends on the target audience. If my target audience is for someone who's more knowledgeable and experienced then the amount of documentation can be less.
I always hated the "show your work" because I could usually do it in my head a lot faster so I never bothered. I always got poor grades on the homework because of this but was always the top in my class when it came to the tests. It drove the teachers crazy, especially since I could often skip a few steps doing it in my head, often faster than the teacher. While in high school I had a fancy graphing calculator though it was rarely allowed for tests.
I think that there are times when calculators should not be allowed and other times when they should be. In 3rd grade we had to memorize multiplication tables which has been useful ever since then. Kids who never learned this are severely disadvantaged later IMO. On the other hand, I was bored out of my mind in later grades doing nothing but addition/subtraction/multiplication/division over and over, especially addition and subtraction. I'd love to see more focus on creative problem solving than repetition in later grades.
If you rely on a computer for everything you're severely handicapped over those who are not.
I can see some use for computers in the classroom but I think it's limited as well. They're a useful tool, but shouldn't be depended upon as a crutch.
-Aaron
Interesting... I bought a cheap $8.53 USB audio adapter from Amazon and it works great in Linux...
The C-Media chipset works well.
To give of yourself, you must first know yourself.