Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

[Vayutuvan]

> That was allegedly going to be the Mahdi's next disruption
The original Apple and Mac desktops were also big in edu market. But their premium price and closed nature did them in after IBM PC/MSDOS combo circa 1980-85. RMS and the FLOSS did their part in the midis (or departmental computers - PDPs, Vixen, DG Eclipse) market.

[Raja Bose]

They made a comeback with the jellybean style Mac and then the iPad. FruitCo provides discounted HW to schools but their presence in universities was weaker - one of the old FruitCo/NeXT guys whose name escapes me at the moment was big into pushing the NeXT cube to education markets. Ofcourse NeXT cube was a total flop due to bad value proposition despite Mahdi's best reality distortion field attempt ever. At college level, pretty much every injineering department was part of MSDNAA where you could get Mickey's software, OS, tools for free as a talib. Chacha is pushing ChromeBooks into schools in massa to make its services popular amongst the nanhas. Net net education is big business.

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Google's Project Loon proposes internet distributed by hot air balloon (video)



This exactly looks like something Astro Teller would incubate....somewhat loony, somewhat crazy, not totally practical I wonder if Eric Brewer is involved in the project - he was doing stuff like this back in the mid 2000s after getting KLPD'ed by dot-com crash (he was co-founder of Inktomi).

[vishvak]

And to think that most of these things are assembled geographically much closer to us than to the USA. It has got to be the duties.

Yes. Duties, taxes and currency exchange fudge factor accounted for. Prices in desh are comparable to EU, but in some cases EU taxes are higher on the same chinni made junk is what I noticed. Prices are good in HK though.

EU and China are using anti-dumping tax on steel/wine as some kind of trade war.

[Anujan]

This exactly looks like something Astro Teller would incubate....somewhat loony, somewhat crazy, not totally practical I wonder if Eric Brewer is involved in the project - he was doing stuff like this back in the mid 2000s after getting KLPD'ed by dot-com crash (he was co-founder of Inktomi).

Why is this not practical? How practical is it to strap a GPS and video cameras on a car, drive it around, extract street view imagery from it, fly a plane with a camera over the same places take pictures and map terrain, take satellite pictures of the same places, make a street level road map with vector graphics, correlate imagery from the base-level street map, car, plane, satellite and terrain and serve it with high accuracy for million;s of users for most of the world? If someone proposed this idea, would you think that it is possible?

Is flying balloons more practical or less practical than that?

On the bright side, if this succeeds, new Zealand would be a good market for Xbox one with the once per 24 hour net connection requirement and all

[Raja Bose]

Why is this not practical? How practical is it to strap a GPS and video cameras on a car, drive it around, extract street view imagery from it, fly a plane with a camera over the same places take pictures and map terrain, take satellite pictures of the same places, make a street level road map with vector graphics, correlate imagery from the base-level street map, car, plane, satellite and terrain and serve it with high accuracy for million;s of users for most of the world? If someone proposed this idea, would you think that it is possible?

Is flying balloons more practical or less practical than that?

Its much less practical. The reason is it just doesn't scale with respect to availability and reliability. This whole floating mesh network in the sky is not a new idea - its been done before, including of all places in TN and NE India. In TN it was Eric Brewer's team which did it as part of a larger rural internet effort (probably massa gobermint funded). And lets not even go to scenarios where the density of balloons is so high (which it needs to be in order to be effective) that countries go crazy issuing NOTAMs left, right and center becoz all things which go up must come down. There are more cost effective ways to push internet access, this is not one of them. Floating mesh networks have their use not in the air but in the water. They are used by all sorts of O&G folks, weather folks, environmental agencies to monitor everything from pollution, behavior of water currents, wildlife monitoring etc.

On the bright side, if this succeeds, new Zealand would be a good market for Xbox one with the once per 24 hour net connection requirement and all

Chacha is just doing this to sell more ChromeBooks. Its not like New Zealand doesn't have internet access or bad internet access on the turd word level. Its even funnier that people are going "ZOMG!!!!XBox needs internet connection!!! UNUSABLE!!!!" I wonder how do they use all those wonderphool cloud services since every cloud company from Chacha to Takla is harping on "Cloud is the Future!!!" message. According to a chaiwallah less than 0.5% of XBox users (or any game console users) don't have access to internet - these are mostly people in the military. So, its basically the equivalent of complaining ZOMG!!! Now NSA can spy on my living room thru Kinect!! I would be more concerned about the used games policy and DRM (like Steam) than some crazy "How would I use my XBox when I am stuck on a mountain top with no electricity and a smelly goat for company" scenarios that the average tech blog geek is whining about today.

[Singha]

drool slurp slurp

http://sports.tomtom.com/en/

[SaiK]

cost?

[Singha]

unknown at this point. expected to go on sale in the autumn. will directly compete with products from polar, suunto, nike sportwatch(has tom tom inside!) and garmin.
looking at feature set would be around 100-130 range - similar to the lowest end Garmin forerunner 10 model.

[Raja Bose]

^^^When it comes out you should test drive and post a review here!

[Singha]

I have already flown to tree top level and started radar evading zig zag moves to break SHQ amraam lock for that
one hand protecting my musharaff, one hand on the ejection cord.

soon brothers soon...(I hope)

[Suraj]

DC Rainmaker writes some really good reviews of triathlon related GPS and related equipment. I bought my Garmin Edge 500 for my bike after reading his review.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews

[Vayutuvan]

RB
> Floating mesh networks have their use not in the air but in the water.

That seems to be a great idea as a backup to and a enhancement of the submarine cable. Are they anchored are do they go along the oceanic currents? I would assume the former as that is easier to deal with. Of course, RAS (an old IBM acronym - not seen in recent times - expands to Reliability, Accessibility, and Serviceability) impact on cost has to be considered. Powering them could be a problem - nuclear is out - and supplying power via a cable would defeat the purpose.

By the way, something that floats along the currents can be used for large scale data transfers and batch syncing of distributed data bases during the night.

[Raja Bose]

They can be both anchored and free floating - it depends on the application. All are powered from solar and water currents. There's at least one floating somewhere in the bay area here too - if you see a whole bunch of buoys concentrated around a region in a rough pattern, you might have found it.

Floating sensor networks were literally the lifeline floated out to the academic sensor network community (famously incestuous and tunnel visioned) which focused exclusively and myopically on wet dreams about ad-hoc networks and battery life. In the end despite that they failed to do anything meaningful and industry had to innovate.

[prahaar]

I heard that these mesh networks in water are a very in-demand items for personal security of high-net-worth individuals. I believe, at least our installations of national importance that are next to water bodies should incorporate these.

[Raja Bose]

I heard that these mesh networks in water are a very in-demand items for personal security of high-net-worth individuals. I believe, at least our installations of national importance that are next to water bodies should incorporate these.

Try jumping into Lake Washington near Billu Dada's lair and see what happens. I know someone who did just that and lived to tell the tale.

[prahaar]

I heard that these mesh networks in water are a very in-demand items for personal security of high-net-worth individuals. I believe, at least our installations of national importance that are next to water bodies should incorporate these.

Try jumping into Lake Washington near Billu Dada's lair and see what happens. I know someone who did just that and lived to tell the tale.

I had had a brief chat with someone who is into building that stuff, he said, initially they were extremely hopeful of getting sarkari contracts (he is well connected in that domain), but strangely he said sarkaari procedures are too slow/inflexible, so they ended up with this market (it was not planned).

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Edited once.

[Anujan]

Liquid robotics is a company that makes ocean loitering sensor and network meshes. Its claim to fame is that James Gosling, the guy who invented Java, works for it. Check out their website.

The reason I asked the question about balloons is that high reward from R&D is not possible without high risks. If a project can be ruled as impractical from just a cursory glance, surely the fellows working on it can't be all idiots. Especially when they stake their careers and credibility on it.

Are self driving cars fat fetched? It is legal in a few states now. National highway and transportation safety thinks it is the future. At this point it looks a lot less risky and more credible than it looked when the project was started. Once it demonstrates more credibility expect "invented in amreeka we need more high tech jerbs !!!" types pile on, pass legislation and funding and for the support to gain momentum. Then the VCs come in and it acquires a life of its own. Then fruitco will sue everyone because Mahdi dreamt of it first.

I would have ruled it far fetched seeing the results of DARPA grand challenge.

[Raja Bose]

Its a cool project no doubt but its neither idiotic nor practical since it doesn't scale. Its just that the approach they are taking with balloons has already been tested in the field and the shortcomings are known when it comes to large scale field deployments - floating 1 or 2 or even 12 balloons is not a problem, the technology is feasible and known but it doesn't scale. If they can find a way to make it practical, more power to them but for that it won't be an exercise in some evolutionary technological improvement. Till then colour me skeptical. Astro is an interesting guy (attend some of his talks if possible) and I am sure a great guy to work with. But let's just say he is a bit too wild (with a name like Astro and his looks he has to be! )

Self driving cars face a different challenge which has nothing to do with technology. Even back in 2009 this abdul and a bunch of other abduls as part of a collaboration got a loaner from Beemer research (they used to be in Palo Alto downtown back then) where the car could drive itself, read road signs (it could actually read freakin small road signs at 70mph), check lanes and all that stuff - it drove us down to Monterey and back with zero driver input except starting and stopping the car. So the technology is all there. In terms of accessibility and feasibility, more than the Grand Challenge, the Urban Challenge proved that.

The challenge with allowing self driving cars on the road on a large scale is that the following legal question has to be answered conclusively first:

"If a car is involved in an accident while in self-driving mode, who is liable?"

Once that is answered satisfactorily, there is no reason why we cannot have self-driving cars. We already have self-driving carts in factories, our airplanes fly themselves most of the time, our ships drive themselves most of the time.

[Vayutuvan]

> Honda loyalty gift

Marten, probably you would know that would be an oxymoron in the States. Back in mid 80swe walk into a Honda showroom and nobody comes to us -all the sales droids were just lounging around with smirks on their faces. As it was my first car buy, I was totally prepared to negotiate. What a total KL.D. After waiting for sometime, I meekly approached one of the droids and asked him whether somebody is going to come and tell me about the Civic as I am motivated buyer and want to close a deal. The guy tells me "Sir what is there to tell? The car sells itself". All my preparations and warnings to my SHQ to not talk about her fervent wish to get a Burgundy were all in vain. Honda is the iGizmo of the car world (or Marlboro of theciggy world)

[Mort Walker]

"If a car is involved in an accident while in self-driving mode, who is liable?"

You bought it and it is your property, so you are liable.

Feds: Autonomous Cars Not Ready for Prime Time

"Today, we can already do it in low-chaos environments," Alan Taub of General Motors told Design News in 2012. "But if you try to go to Bombay, with very heavy congestion, people not driving in their lanes, and a mixture of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, our ability is limited."

[Mort Walker]

Marten, probably you would know that would be an oxymoron in the States. Back in mid 80swe walk into a Honda showroom and nobody comes to us -all the sales droids were just lounging around with smirks on their faces. As it was my first car buy, I was totally prepared to negotiate. What a total KL.D. After waiting for sometime, I meekly approached one of the droids and asked him whether somebody is going to come and tell me about the Civic as I am motivated buyer and want to close a deal. The guy tells me "Sir what is there to tell? The car sells itself". All my preparations and warnings to my SHQ to not talk about her fervent wish to get a Burgundy were all in vain. Honda is the iGizmo of the car world (or Marlboro of theciggy world)

This was true of other Japanese auto dealerships as well. I test drove a Nissan Sentra and Toyota Corolla (which I later bought) in the mid-80s and salesmen wouldn't give you the time of the day. Later I learned from a friend, who was a Honda salesman turned EE, that in the days before the internet, they assiduously avoided customers who walked in to the dealership carrying a folder. I think that pretty much described any desi or gora engineer!

[Raja Bose]

"If a car is involved in an accident while in self-driving mode, who is liable?"

You bought it and it is your property, so you are liable.

If my iPhone's original FruitCo certified pixie dust sprinkled battery explodes, am I liable? Its not that simple.

[Mort Walker]

^^^:) Good idea. I've only had one experience in a luxury car dealership. Lexus and it was a different deal. Didn't really have to haggle, they stated a price and if you want it buy it or walk away. In desh, I was at a Honda dealership and nobody gives you a full tank of gas after you buy a new car! What gives?

[Mort Walker]

If my iPhone's original FruitCo certified pixie dust sprinkled battery explodes, am I liable? Its not that simple.

A car and a toy are different categories my friend. If your iPhone blows up on a plane or in an airport. You will be held liable first, then how did it happen will come later.

A car is one of those dual use type of devices, you can use it as a transportation device or plow in to a crowd of people. Your choice, and to drive a car you must be licensed as a privilege from the state.

[Raja Bose]

^^^Except the car is not being operated by me - that is the crux of the matter. As a user, I will claim that the algorithms of the self-driving car failed - its the manufacturer's fault.

[Mort Walker]

^^^Except the car is not being operated by me - that is the crux of the matter. As a user, I will claim that the algorithms of the self-driving car failed - its the manufacturer's fault.

That is true if you are simply a passenger and the car is fully autonomous. We aren't there yet. So, you are still the operator of the vehicle licensed by the state. You will be liable first. Yes, the injured party can claim manufacturer's defect, but you too will be held liable since you didn't override the fault as operator.

[Singha]

I see atleast 2 decades before tech improves and insurance cos are willing to play ball.
without insurance , this thing isnt going on-road no matter what the tech level.

in aviation, which is actually a far more 'controlled' space, UK just tested a small jet in self pilot mode (with standby pilots in cockpit). there public sentiment will mean standby pilots will always need to be on board for decades from now.

same for totally automated robotic surgery with no doctor present as when padme amidala delivered luke skywalker...folks will run from that too.

[Raja Bose]

^^^Except the car is not being operated by me - that is the crux of the matter. As a user, I will claim that the algorithms of the self-driving car failed - its the manufacturer's fault.

That is true if you are simply a passenger and the car is fully autonomous. We aren't there yet. So, you are still the operator of the vehicle licensed by the state. You will be liable first. Yes, the injured party can claim manufacturer's defect, but you too will be held liable since you didn't override the fault as operator.

You didn't read my original post properly. I am talking in the context of a self-driving car i.e. a car which is completely autonomous. How would you address the question I had asked originally? Till that can be answered satisfactorily, self-driving cars cannot become mainstream. All it takes is 1 accident and that is only a question of when rather than if. Otherwise we would have self-driving cars already on the roads especially in the high-end luxury segment from any of the CE4A members.

[Singha]

some movies show cars or rather glass bubbles with seats inside moving on special tracks in convoys and these exit at certain points to other lines or to stop at stations . a sort of personal metro rail if you will. economically unviable though...except on airport car park to terminal runs where some might already exist like heathrow on small scale with 21 vehicles..even in air ports the large capacity typical metro wagons rule

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit

[Neela]

A long time ago I said Intel will come back and beat crush ARM eventually in the hardware/process/architecture side.
Although benchmarking companies are known to be slimy creatures, you still have to look at their comparison results to get an idea.Here is one comparing Intel Clover trail with ARM equivalents.



Just compare Clover Trail against ARM A15 x2 ( both having dual cores) in the 2nd and 3rd column . Take only RAM and CPU (this should cover more than 50% of normal usage for most people ) . Fact - TSMC is way behind Intel .

[Raja Bose]

ChipZ has always been the guru of process, TSMC kis khet ki mooli hai!

[Yogi_G]

The Soviet buran took off, went into space and landed, all on its own, in the 80's with some good amount of tail winds also. It seems there was not enough memory to go around limited by budgets so the total number of things it did was limited by that. Autonomous take off and landing technology has been around for more than 20 years but even in the highly regulated and predictive air space machine driving/flying has still not "taken off".

[Mort Walker]

You didn't read my original post properly. I am talking in the context of a self-driving car i.e. a car which is completely autonomous. How would you address the question I had asked originally? Till that can be answered satisfactorily, self-driving cars cannot become mainstream. All it takes is 1 accident and that is only a question of when rather than if. Otherwise we would have self-driving cars already on the roads especially in the high-end luxury segment from any of the CE4A members.

Oh, I did read your post and that is why I posted the link from EDN that came out earlier this month when the NHTSA put the brakes on self driving cars today. I wish you would have commented on that very short article since it deals with technologies you are familiar with. We are still some ways away in the US, but that said, nothing is 100% with new technologies and there is always some risk. Imagine if combustion engines came out today...the US government EPA and DoE would not approve the dangerous fuel known as gasoline.

[Vayutuvan]

Would like to see a future with networked linked autonomous cars that are orderly in "traffic" and "delivered" based on destination inputs. No "Total Recall" nightmares with Arnie mama ripping off the dummy autopilot which actually "drives" using a joystick-like thingie? LOL

That movie was a lot of fun - very different from the blade runner.
The idea that has the most viability is autonomous convoys where cars join convoys and split off. As long as one is in a convoy, the car would be in autopilot mode. If somebody leaves the convoy it split into two momentarily and rejoin into either a longer convoy or a shorter one. Think of scenario just befor exit and just after entry ramps. Would work well on high density corridors like Boston-ny-dc or middle us where the exits are spread further apart. The only problem with the latter is to fond enough vehicles to form convoys.

[Raja Bose]

You didn't read my original post properly. I am talking in the context of a self-driving car i.e. a car which is completely autonomous. How would you address the question I had asked originally? Till that can be answered satisfactorily, self-driving cars cannot become mainstream. All it takes is 1 accident and that is only a question of when rather than if. Otherwise we would have self-driving cars already on the roads especially in the high-end luxury segment from any of the CE4A members.

Oh, I did read your post and that is why I posted the link from EDN that came out earlier this month when the NHTSA put the brakes on self driving cars today. I wish you would have commented on that very short article since it deals with technologies you are familiar with. We are still some ways away in the US, but that said, nothing is 100% with new technologies and there is always some risk. Imagine if combustion engines came out today...the US government EPA and DoE would not approve the dangerous fuel known as gasoline.

There is really nothing new to comment there. Level 1 and 2 are already in consumers' hands. Both Level 3 and 4 face the same problem of liability. Till date, there has never been a technology which has not failed at least once in the field. Same will happen with self-driving cars in which case who is liable?

Your argument about gasoline seems valid at 1st glance but is invalid. EPA and DoE would be comparing gasoline to coal and wood burning engines and would approve it as safer, more fuel efficient, less polluting. All comparisons are relative, not absolute becoz most (not all) technologies evolve in a continuous fashion based on existing technologies and what we learn from them.

[Mort Walker]

A long time ago I said Intel will come back and beat crush ARM eventually in the hardware/process/architecture side.
Although benchmarking companies are known to be slimy creatures, you still have to look at their comparison results to get an idea.Here is one comparing Intel Clover trail with ARM equivalents.

Just compare Clover Trail against ARM A15 x2 ( both having dual cores) in the 2nd and 3rd column . Take only RAM and CPU (this should cover more than 50% of normal usage for most people ) . Fact - TSMC is way behind Intel .

Intel has a lot of assets in R&D and fab, so they are the proverbial 700 pound gorilla even though they started late to get their mobile SoCs in significant numbers for the CE industry. ARM is purely an intellectual property company where Sammy, QCOM, Apple and others have licensed ARM architecture cores in their SoCs. TSMC is primarily a fab house and I didn't think they designed their own SoCs. AAPL has invested a lot of money in TSMC to bring them up to production for 14nm. There aren't any real parallels to Intel with the exception of AMD, but they are behind in mobile SoCs.

The real question is how power efficient are the ATOMs in comparison to SoCs with ARM architecture cores?

[Mort Walker]

There is really nothing new to comment there. Level 1 and 2 are already in consumers' hands. Both Level 3 and 4 face the same problem of liability. Till date, there has never been a technology which has not failed at least once in the field. Same will happen with self-driving cars in which case who is liable?

Your argument about gasoline seems valid at 1st glance but is invalid. EPA and DoE would be comparing gasoline to coal and wood burning engines and would approve it as safer, more fuel efficient, less polluting. All comparisons are relative, not absolute becoz most (not all) technologies evolve in a continuous fashion based on existing technologies and what we learn from them.

As long as the car, autonomous or not, requires an operator and the way non-commercial driver's licenses are issued by the state, the "driver" will be held liable as well. Gasoline is a more combustible fuel than paper or coal, in comparable weights, and requires a more hazardous refining process. I was making the point that government entities tend to over regulate a potential viable technology.

[Raja Bose]

When the cruise control failed in some cars (American or Japanese I forget), who was held liable?

[Mort Walker]

^^^In an accident, the driver is held liable first. After that it will be the manufacturer. In the example you brought up, a couple of years ago Toyota Camry, Prius, and other models were blamed for defective cruise control. In the instance the accident didn't involve other vehicles, the insurance companies will look for other causes of the accident so they don't have to pay out. Eventually, NHTSA (and maybe NTSB) evaluated those vehicle types and were given a clean rating. If others in other cars were involved, I can assure you, the operator of the defective vehicle will be held liable first. That is why you have car insurance.

Similar thing happened with the Ford Explorer over 10 years ago, but with different outcome. Tyre blow out caused roll overs and loss of life and accidents. Insurance company of operator/owner pays out first. After that insurance companies and other parties look for further damages from deeper pockets. They can sue the operator as well, but the insurance company will protect you to a certain degree. Ford blamed the tyre manufacturer and the tyre company blamed Ford. At the end of it Ford was found at fault for a faulty design and they under pressurized the tyres to keep the SUV from rolling over. The point is, the blame is placed on the operator/owner first, then the manufacturer. In most instances it comes down to who has the money to continue litigation and who has the deeper pockets.

[Mort Walker]

^^^Yes. Even today if you run over a pedestrian and it was the caused by faulty brake design (which has really happened to GM vehicles in the late 70s and early 80s), you will be taken up before a judge. The car company will blame you or the owner for not servicing the brakes. The police and insurance companies will first determine if there was negligence on the operator/owner. From there the car insurance company may help and after that, depending on which state and county you're in, the judge and prosecuter (DA) may proceed against you.