
Ten-year-old invents light-up crosswalks, IBM makes them real - DanLivesHere
http://grist.org/list/ten-year-old-invents-light-up-crosswalks-ibm-makes-them-real/
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rdl
I think we actually have those in some places in California. Not as perfectly
as she's describing, but a bunch of LED bumps installed at the edges, which
flash when someone's pressed a button.

Sensors and bigger stripes would be nice.

(It's a great idea, and especially if she never saw one before, shows a great
thought process.)

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ChuckMcM
Although having the stripes light up makes it even more visible. So its not
really a new idea, and IBM isn't really in the business of making road
signage, but as a marketing campaign it gets their message across in a nice
way that their main business (which is consulting) is willing to implement
"your" (and by that I mean the customer) bright ideas.

~~~
rdl
I'm curious about Cringely's ceaseless attacks on IBM. I wonder how legitimate
they are -- claiming that IBM is rapidly outsourcing almost everything, not
delivering as a consultancy, etc.

I only know IBM Labs people, who do complain about weird bureaucratic stuff,
but no worse than anywhere else, and a few barely-competent people who work as
"solutions architects", but they may just be outliers.

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abae
Cringley's attacks always struck me as being more hyperbole than substance. If
IBM was not 'delivering' as a consultancy then it's highly doubtful they would
be enjoying the growth and financial success that they are since it is their
Services organisations that have, year on year, been amongst the most
successful.

That said, IBM has changed and will continue to change. They constantly remix
their portfolio, adapt and evolve and that has been the only way they have
been able to survive over 100 years and prosper at a time when their
traditional competitors, such as HP, are failing. One can see how they made
the transition from a hardware-led business to a services-led business as a
good example of that constant transformation.

Lastly, why is 'outsourcing' necessarily perceived as a negative thing? I see
IBM and other multinational's ability to move work to the most effective --
from both a cost and skills perspective -- location as a very important tool
in maximising shareholder value and ensuring profitability now and in the
future. It's a fact that the world is evolving and, with it, labour
traditionally sourced in local markets can now be found in low cost countries
and hence in order to remain competitive globally companies must take
advantage of this. Unfortunately, this often leads in a rebalancing of
headcount in more developed (i.e. expensive) countries and this can sometimes
lead to 'layoffs' but this is a fact of life and, I think, the consequences of
ignoring it would be far worse for the other employees of the company as well
as shareholders and the marketplace.

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ahoyhere
"If IBM was not 'delivering' as a consultancy then it's highly doubtful they
would be enjoying the growth and financial success that they are…"

A priori reasoning doesn't work in Big Biz Land. As a (former) high-priced
consultant, who worked with many other high-priced consultants, inside Fortune
100 companies and out, let me assure you… the actual effectiveness of a
consulting co. has nothing to do with how many contracts they score or what
their profit is.

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abae
Then what do you propose is the measurement that can be applied to determine
the actual effectiveness of a consulting company?

Of course, it's true that GP is not a good measure, if taken alone, of the
delivered value just as revenue and signings do not necessarily make good
indicators. However, if one assumes that customers are able to gauge the
effectiveness of the consultancy they receive then measurements such as
backlog seem reasonable indicators of success; if clients are not receiving
value, they would be cancelling contracts and/or not resigning and hence
backlog would start to decline year on year. In the case of IBM, their
services backlog went up 1 percent year on year and sits around 140 billion
USD.

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ahoyhere
The only way to deal with very large companies is to think like Machievelli.

How to measure the success of a consulting company? Well, you have to ask
"What are they REALLY hiring the consultants for for?"

Probably a third of the jobs I was hired for, inside large companies (and
particularly corporate-y startups), were clearly (to me) about CYA. "Hey,
we're doing something, look at all the money we're spending on consultants!"
When you go in, as I did, trying to actually do a great job, this becomes
incredibly disheartening. One more reason I came to loathe consulting.
However, in that case, given the actual (unstated) goal, I was able to be very
"effective" for the client, despite the fact that no matter what I did, they
wasted endless hours of my & my partner's time at $500+/hr total. $2k on a
meeting? Sure, why not? Changing "project managers" every week? Hey, why not?
Putting a glorified secretary in charge of signing off on user interface
designs? Sounds grrreat!

And yet… for their purpose… I was a tool they used effectively. Bummer.

Wasn't just me, either. Do you remember that "shocking" post a while back by
an anonymous ex-McKinsey consultant? He detailed how McK hires kids out of
college with no experience and gives them jobs pumping out Powerpoints to
client specifications. That doesn't sound so bad, put that way, but he meant
that he was told what outcome the client wanted to see, and that he should
make the data (and the presentation) come to that conclusion. Given my
experience consulting, I wasn't at all surprised (although it's a different
type of consulting and I was never dishonest to a client).

We assume clients are rational actors, but they're not. They're people. And
people often do things for all the wrong reasons. They will pay somebody to
tell them what they want to hear; they'll pay somebody to look good; they'll
pay somebody to listen to them, to have somebody have to obey them and their
wishes on topics they know nothing about, because nobody listens to them
usually.

As notable consultant Jerry Weinberg wrote, "No matter how it looks at first,
it's always a people problem." And unfortunately it's not just "a people
problem" but "problem people."

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WalterBright
I've never assumed cars will stop for me if I step into a crosswalk, nor do I
ever assume they see me.

I simply wait on the edge until the cars stop. If they are stopped, it
prevents cars further back from going into the crosswalk.

It works better than anything else. After all, if I get hit, I get hurt, even
if I'm legally in the right. People who blithely step into a crosswalk and
assume cars will see and stop are fools.

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MichaelGG
I think her point was that even standing by the side, cars are not stopping.
So by having a light-up crosswalk that turns on as soon as you're on the edge,
maybe more cars will stop.

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rorrr
The real problem is the cars not stopping. All these idiots should get
tickets, points, and their insurance should go up.

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guard-of-terra
I am sorry but the idea is not new at all.

<http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/air-zebra/> And the implementation is in
the works - laws being passed to make those required.

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DanBC
Do you think you might be missing the point of the video?

EDIT: And your link is _nothing_ like the zebra crossing shown in the video.

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Firehed
It's not, but the problems it tries to solve are the same and it seems to do a
better job solving them.

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rickdale
Cool idea, I like that they didn't choose a random product to try an market,
but an actual real world application. As a driver more than a walking
pedestrian, I think these light-ups would be awesome on the road. Even during
the day. I consider myself to be a good driver, but this would definitely help
out.

I have to add that generally a 10 year old is not going to give you the next
big app idea. 10 year olds will have no more creative ideas than you or me.
But just like the lottery, it could happen.

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fallous
You may be right with regards to the next big app idea, but I'd disagree with
the idea that 10 year-olds are no more creative than adults. Over time people
tend to get less creative with regards to big ideas due to self-limiting based
on operating within the confines of existing systems.

When you've operated inside the box long enough, your mental models assume the
walls of the box even if they cease to exist simply because so many
assumptions about reality are based on prior experience.

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AYBABTME

        Over time people tend to get less creative with regards
        to big ideas due to self-limiting based on operating 
        within the confines of existing systems.
    

Is this your opinion, or are there research supporting this?

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pretoriusB
Yes there is, and no, not everything needs to be explained with references and
citations.

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AYBABTME
I have a different intuition and I'd like to know why I'm wrong, other than
what she/he thinks.

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dhughes
Aww damn it! This was my idea :(

I guess I'm not the only one to think of this. My plan was piezoelectric
crystals and some sort of electro-luminescent plastic or possibly solar
charged. Also for the road lines since rain makes them hard to see, age dims
the paint and snow cover them up pretty bad.

The only problem is I live in a winter environment and plows scrape the hell
out of the roads it would have to be embedded in the road.

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jghrng
While looking cool, it seems to me like this catches a pedestrian's attention
more than the one of the drivers. If pedestrians are distracted from traffic
right before crossing, this would make crosswalks less safe.

It should be more useful (but more expensive) to lighten up the actual
crosswalk signs on the road as soon as pedestrians are approaching.

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pretoriusB
> _While looking cool, it seems to me like this catches a pedestrian's
> attention more than the one of the drivers._

Obviously that's only because they see it for the first time in the video. In
actual use it will not catch their attention at all...

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jtchang
I believe outside San francisco city hall we have a crosswalk which lights up.
I believe it with with LEDs that flash. I like this on way better.

Does it turn off immediately when there is no one in the crosswalk?

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easy_rider
Couldn't some kind of luminescent paint be utilized instead?

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Sandman
That was my thought initially too, but I guess that if the crossing was
shining all the time, drivers would simply start ignoring it after a while.
The fact that the crossing lights up when pedestrians are allowed to cross
acts as a visual cue for the drivers to stop.

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revelation
What an incredibly "out of the box" idea we have here. Sorry, I don't want to
sound mean, but its a sad state of affairs when 10 year olds grow up fully
accustomed to a world where most public space is taken up by two ton
combustion engines. It cuts out all the vital critical thinking.

The question shouldn't be "how can we make crosswalks safer for pedestrians"
but "why are there cars and roads where pedestrians walk". Otherwise we end up
with things like the "bicycle lane".

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mvleming
I've thought a lot about how we can seperate bicyclists and pedestrians from
vehicles on the road. I think it would be amazing to have all roads completely
underground and replace the roads outside with parks, for example. I can just
see kids running up and down the grass 'streets' playing soccer with
skyscrapers all around.

With underground streets you could even collect the pollution the vehicles
emit and store it instead of releasing it into the atomsphere.

But the huge downside which I have no idea how I could make this practical
with is the construction costs. Maybe the first city to do this could get an
increase in tourism thus offsetting the costs?

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vacri
Vehicle tunnels need to be huge and require enormous amounts of power for
lighting and ventilation. It'd be more viable to put the pedestrians and
cyclists underground...

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Dylan16807
Surely lighting is not that big of a problem; they're already lighting the
roads all night long. You could even install skylights.

