Apologies on using the term "commercial chips." There are several companies that make good coin selling chips with open designs. I should have said chips for which the designs are closed.
My initial question was about the status of the software and hardware in terms of openness. I mean, I still buy non-open hardware all the time, especially on my primary machines, however in terms of buying a secondary device just for gaming, I would actually be much more likely to fork over my money for a device running both FOSS and with open hardware.
For now I'd either go with Android, bank on Google and Java and that environment, or wait for MeeGo to grow up a bit and then develop what amounts to a standard Linux system (linux, GNU coreutils, etc...).
Either way you'll need to write some code for touchscreen UIs, but at least both platforms are pretty darn open.
WebOS has some open stuff in the base layer, but their entire GUI layer is pretty much closed, right? So why would anyone choose to develop for it? I mean, if you want a closed-source environment, why wouldn't you just go with Apple's offerings?
I've been looking at their site and wikipedia and I haven't dug much up. There are a number of commercial chips in there, so the hardware is largely closed.
They're using a "PowerVR SGX530" in there, and IIRC the PowerVR chips don't usually have FOSS drivers, so you might be SOL on that software front.
Anyone have links or notes for the rest of the drivers?
So here's a little more background for those who haven't followed development of it closely:
MeeGo is the arranged marriage of Intel's Moblin + Nokia's Maemo.
MeeGo is still under heavy development, and although source and builds are available, everything is still experimental.
The steering group is "planning [a] release of MeeGo version 1 in the second quarter of 2010", according to the FAQ. It'll be here soon; don't start making plans to run it as your daily OS until v1.0 is actually released.
To give a taste of how raw development of the OS is right now, even basic tutorials on how to write a "Hello, World" application aren't useful to the community yet as most tutorials depend upon the MeeGo SDK, a component that hasn't yet been released by Intel.
But what you care about most is: "Will it run on my hardware?"
The best place to determine that is on the Devices page on the MeeGo Wiki. If you find that you can run the current development images on a different piece of hardware, please make a note of it on that page.
FYI, Flash support won't be built into Froyo. You download the Flash plug-in from the Marketplace as you would any other app.
Ah, good. I wish that the article had been more clear about what they meant re:Flash support in Android.
I guess I assumed that Google was going to try to integrate Adobe Flash code into the browser/platform more tightly, the same way they did with Chrom[e|ium] on the desktop. Thank goodness that's not happening.
As other people have pointed out, there's also Fennec (although I don't know how well that runs on Android devices with more meager hardware).
Someone obviously did their homework here W.R.T. software licenses. My guess is that the name mentioned at the bottom of the license page (Anders '4ZM' Sundman) is someone who works with FLOSS licenses often, and (like many of us on/.) can easily rattle these concerns off pretty easily.
Still, I'm impressed that PETA would allow that kind of critical analysis on the license page. Usually advocacy groups concentrate on the advantages of their position, and avoid active pro/con debate, at least on official pages.
I'm also intrigued that PETA put up a 2nd license on the page -- the so-called wHPL license. The basic difference between the HPL and the wHPL is that the former is written to protect Humans + Animals, and the latter is just written to protect Humans. While PETA offering users a choice between the two is admirable, I am curious as to why they would author the 2nd license at all.
Don't get me wrong, protecting humans is a great and noble cause, but if PETA believes that the furry (and not-so-furry) critters deserve equal protection as humans, then why would they provide a license that allows users to protect humans while, at the same time, roasting up Bambi et al. for some shish-kabobs?
I see two possible motivations here
More groups/programmers will sign on to using the wHPL than the more restrictive license; PETA can then apply the more restrictive license if they make derivative works (I assume that they're compatible)
PETA might hope to get programmers to start using the wHPL initially, and then might be encouraged to move to the HPL eventually.
I may not agree with PETA on many things, but it's certainly nice to see such frank self-analysis accompanying a software license. Kudos to them.
Okay, sure, Google cuts some deal with Adobe to suck up the Adobe Flash Player code and bake it into builds of Chrome. Or Chromium (whichever one is their proprietary version of the browser).
But why would they describe that support as existing in Android? I thought that Android was Google's FOSS-licensed, linux-kernel-based OS.
When Google, HTC, and other people release a phone running Android, they invariably pile all kinds of proprietary stuff on top. Other options would be nice, but they don't seem too interested in that.
Maybe it's just this particular news site being imprecise, but I'm concerned that Google is trying to peg Flash support via this browser to all Android phones. I mean, it's great for people who want to run the software, but it's shifting Android away from a FOSS project to Yet Another Proprietary Stack.
C'mon Google, you're chock full of smart engineers who want an open web, so please make sure that Android stays an open stack.
At one point I asked "Why does drug X do Y to me, when one of the side effects is clearly marked as the opposite of Y?"
Those listed side effects are basically everything that someone during the clinical trials reported as a problem while taking the drug. They often bear absolutely no relevance to what that drug is likely to cause, or would be expected to cause, based on its pharmacology.
But why didn't anyone tell me that?
Why can't the doctors give me more information?
Some might say that I'm asking too much of doctors, but as a computer scientist I am saddened that doctors don't have (or aren't applying/sharing with patients?) a database of knowledge about drugs, interactions, possible symptoms, etc...
If the doctor doesn't know about something, why don't they want to know more from me? Why don't they say "Well, we have no idea why this occurred, but could we please take your data and try to use it to find out for other people?" or even "we'd like to run more tests. It might hurt a bit, but it could help us to get a better picture, and in aggregate could advance medicine."
You mean a multi-billion investment fund will take my advice where to invest their clients' money? I should just email them after having read some books?
Well, they very well might, if they feel like it. In fact, anyone can go and trade their own money whenever they feel like it.
But while I can go and purchase grass seed for my lawn and paint for my house every year, I can't go down to the fix-it-yourself pharmacy and buy whatever drugs I need to fix myself up when I like.
It's weird: I can't decide to self-medicate if I think that doctors charge too much, because... only doctors are allowed to prescribe medicine.
I'm not a die-hard libertarian, but here's a compelling argument that a friend posed to me: Either the government should let people make their own choices W.R.T. insurance, doctors, application of drugs, etc... or they should provide the whole service, insurance, doctors, drugs and all.
Or perhaps the city will let me design a bridge?
But lots of people use that bridge. I don't have to use you unless I want to...
Or maybe I could learn to fly on Microsoft Flight Simulator and give my airline pilot advice during the next turbulent flight I encounter?
Again, if that plane goes down it affects all the people in the plane and in the crash path of the plane. If you or I go down, it largely only affects you or me.
Heck, we already have laws dealing with DUI, driving while incapacitated, etc... to address the very issue of people misusing drugs.
Maybe I should barge in and tell the magistrate in court what they should do - I've seen Perry Mason do it and read some books.
Again, the magistrate has been elected to that position as it is to the benefit of us all. But if Joe Blow wants to pour some Iodine, Betadine, or high-concentration Caffeine over his open wound, who am I to stop him? (absent mentally unstable people, who I think we already deal with).
It's very good advice. People are not specialists. You can't be a stock broker or a computer programmer and expect to be a doctor too. It's nice to be able to read up information but don't presume you will understand it, let alone be able apply it.
It's not the point that I will apply it. It's that there are so many roadblocks to allow me to even start to get there.
There are many such sites. In the UK the NHS has sites with information for patients. In the US the CDC (among other agencies) has similar sites. There is also WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/ [webmd.com]
Those sites are good starts, but nothing compared to the resources available to doctors. And I've had doctors routinely tell me to disregard whatever I read online...
It's usually helpful to start with your local Health Ministry websites and work from there. As said in the UK, this would be NHS. There's also the Health on the Net Foundation which 'certifies' sites which contain credible medical information. http://www.hon.ch/ [www.hon.ch]
Good places to start, true.
The knowledge is there already or do you want you doctor to spell it all out for you. Should he also take you down to your local library to point out the right section for you?
I'm a programmer. You and I have the same opportunities to write programs, buy hardware, and rock out with computers. But as a doctor, you have so many more opportunities and resources in medicine...
Here's the biggest thing for me: I hate the fact that Doctors present medicine as so exacting a science -- as if it's something that can explain everything that's wrong with people.
Countless times doctors have admitted that they cannot explain my symptoms. At one point I a
...if Medicine wasn't such a members-only club. There's the "In" crowd and then there's the "Rest" of us.
Take other fields.... writing, education, programming, painting, online stock trading -- anyone can hop online or go down to their local bookstore, get How-To books, and start to do actual work in hundreds of different fields. But not in medicine.
Sure, you can learn some First Aid, and maybe even some more advanced techniques, but eventually you'll have to go to medical school to become a nurse or doctor, or at least attend weekly courses to become an EMT. And there are some safety reasons for training people in this fashion, as well as restricting access to certain drugs to only those people who demonstrably know their effects and interactions.
But just because there are some good reasons, some of the time, to lock up some medical knowledge or access to the tools of the trade, doesn't mean that there won't be hundreds if not thousands of motivated individuals that want to try to tackle their own medical problems the same way they do home improvement projects.
Quoth the doctor:
"I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
So here's one for you: Why can't you fight that misinformation before the patient even steps foot in the exam room? Why don't doctors create peer-reviewed, well-written websites to counter all of the confusion and pseudo-science currently available online? Won't patients gravitate to the more prestigious sites, especially if doctors point them there?
But I don't think that doctors want patients to ever try to self-diagnose, so they won't ever put this information online. Whether or not the doctors have the patient's best interests in mind, this creates a rift between the two parties, and does little to advance patient-centered health care.
Note: Delphi is not a language. Delphi is an IDE, Object Pascal is the language that it supports.
Maybe Delphi is also the name of the IDE, however there's a boatload of evidence for it being the name of a language/dialect:
From Wikipedia/Object Pascal
Borland used the name Object Pascal for the programming language in the first versions of Delphi, but later renamed it to the Delphi programming language...Object Pascal [is often confused] with Delphi source code.
Geohot promised a workaround for Sony's removal of the "install other OS" feature in PS3 firmware 3.21 and now Geohot has delivered...Geohot even says that the custom firmware might actually enable the other OS feature on the PS3 Slim, but he hasn't yet had a chance to try it out.
Okay, Airforce, here's your strategy:
1) Hire Hotz (Geohot), have him make the OtherOS feature work on PS3 slim hardware, and then 2) buy a few extra units to safeguard against Sony throwing another firmware/hardware update into the mix.
As a bonus prize you make a bunch of geeky hardware/software -hacker-types pleased with what you're funding, and goodness knows that you're always looking to recruit geeks for your cyber warfare divisions.
We've been using Delphi to develop our project [but] 1. No 64bit compiler. 2. No mobile platform support (except maybe.NET for WinCE devices, but those are dying out due to iPhone/BB/Android and even WinMo7 which is turning into an even more simplified iPhoneish design).
According to Wikipedia, Free Pascal seems to have 64 support on Linux, OSX, and Windows.
As for mobile platforms, Free Pascal appears to be able to target the iPhone, but Jobs squashed any chance for fun there, eh? WinCE is supported (no idea on WinMo), and with Linux support you should be able to target Maemo/Meego devices with very little extra effort.
Android, WebOS, and Symbian? No idea there... but probably too much pain to be worth it to write something.
I guess a bigger question would be why one would want to target the mobile platforms with Pascal/Delphi at all. I did a little Pascal programming back in the day and didn't really see too much to love when compared to other environments.
But in the end, I guess it doesn't really matter, especially if general-purpose Linux-based OSes like Meego actually take off on mobile phones. Then all you have to do is target a Linux-based stack, add a couple of different front-ends for your application (one mouse/keyboard based, one touch-based), and you're off to the races.
Yeah, their site doesn't work unless you enable Flash. Pretty funny after the whole "get rid of proprietary formats" and "free your documents online" thing...
It turns out, however, that Facebook is not using HTML5 at all. The company told ReadWriteWeb that, "All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we're playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos. It will load them full-screen, similar to what it does for YouTube videos."
I don't think that the iPad, using Safari, supports native "h264 format" [sic], seeing as how AFAIK h.264 is just a stream of data.
So rather than using HTML5, Facebook is actually detecting that the iPad's Safari browser is in the mix, and is transcoding the original video format to MP4 on the fly.
Transcoding? It doesn't appear they're transcoding anything. It sounds like they're taking a video (pre) encoded as an h.264 stream, slapping an MP4 container around it, and throwing that file at Safari. Safari knows how to deal with the container and the video codec, and plays it back.
Write. Better. Articles! This is almost as bad as the article that tried to claim that HTML5 was a video format.
What I find especially interesting is that a social networking site like Facebook is willing to provide raw video files to iPad uses without wrapping any kind of player or anything else around them. This allows the iPad users to download the files directly, providing an easy method of liberating content from Facebook. I'm not really sure why Facebook would allow users to "escape" like this.
new hardware expirementation [sic] including SSD and ARM,
Oh great, Microsoft isn't content with their proprietary OS and office suite; they now wants to sell us hardware, but not just any hardware. This hardware is so special that it expires after a period of time.
(re: hands-free ban) That's a typo in the article.
Some typos are undetectable. Some are a bit funny. Some basically change the fundamental premise of the whole kit and kaboodle.
I we all know which category this fuck-up falls in.
Or, looking at it another way, CB doesn't rely on a central transmitter to manage communications. You could track if someone was using their mobile phone at the time of an accident. Not so with CB radios.
Okay, so perhaps it's a little harder to determine if a CB was used at the time of an accident than a cell phone, but that doesn't change the basic point that using one vs. the other is darn near exactly the same, right down to having to locate the handset, choose a channel (vs. dialing a number), and then occupying one of your hands with it.
Heck, I could wire up a CB handset to a cell phone so that each channel corresponded to a commonly-dialed # and then could make cell phone calls with it. I think the biggest reason why CB radios aren't mentioned in legislation is that nobody, probably not even truck drivers as much anymore, are using them.
No, it wasn't. Some business in Australia unconnected with the Wikimedia crowd decided to put up their own wiki (running MediaWiki, like half of the other wikis out there). Good for them.
Why didn't Slashdot cover it when Penny Arcade got their own Wikipedia ? Oh wait, it was because that didn't happen, the same way Australia didn't get their own Wikipedia for technology.
Anyhow, if someone's going to give the Land Down Under their own honest-to-goodness Wikipedia wiki, I think it should be about ways to get rid of invasive species. Any Aussies here? You've got what: rabbits, poisonous toads, some kind of insect, and.... what else?
The Transportation Department says it wants to send the message: 'Phone in One Hand. Ticket in the Other,' and plans on ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists
Wasn't the whole idea that people could use hands-free phones so that they could keep both hands on the wheel? I mean, come on, NY, what gives?
In any case, I believe that CB radios are legal everywhere, and I don't see much of a difference between operating one of those and operating a cell phone, I'm just saying....
I believe that in one of the last suits, Samba (and thus the rest of us) had a pretty big win in which Microsoft agreed to hand over a lot of technical documentation. I believe that there was even some part of the agreement that basically defused a number of patents that might have been brought to bear against Samba and other FOSS, but I can't remember the particulars off the top of my head.
So sometimes the EU's suits do bear good fruits. Which we can pick up for Free and enjoy deliciously!
Microsoft employs many eminent and standards-aware people of unimpeachable record – they also obviously “get it”
Actually, Microsoft employs many people who were previously of unimpeachable record. When these obviously intelligent and "eminent" persons get in bed with Microsoft and then don't cry foul at the first, second, third, or fourth time that Microsoft willfully and intentionally manipulates standards bodies, then how can we possibly consider their record anything but stained?
I know several people who work for Microsoft, and while I am happy that these friends still have work, especially in this time of massive layoffs, I wish that they had an opportunity to apply their skills at a company not so unbelievably hostile to standards groups.
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Apologies on using the term "commercial chips." There are several companies that make good coin selling chips with open designs. I should have said chips for which the designs are closed.
My initial question was about the status of the software and hardware in terms of openness. I mean, I still buy non-open hardware all the time, especially on my primary machines, however in terms of buying a secondary device just for gaming, I would actually be much more likely to fork over my money for a device running both FOSS and with open hardware.
For now I'd either go with Android, bank on Google and Java and that environment, or wait for MeeGo to grow up a bit and then develop what amounts to a standard Linux system (linux, GNU coreutils, etc...).
Either way you'll need to write some code for touchscreen UIs, but at least both platforms are pretty darn open.
WebOS has some open stuff in the base layer, but their entire GUI layer is pretty much closed, right? So why would anyone choose to develop for it? I mean, if you want a closed-source environment, why wouldn't you just go with Apple's offerings?
I've been looking at their site and wikipedia and I haven't dug much up. There are a number of commercial chips in there, so the hardware is largely closed.
They're using a "PowerVR SGX530" in there, and IIRC the PowerVR chips don't usually have FOSS drivers, so you might be SOL on that software front.
Anyone have links or notes for the rest of the drivers?
So here's a little more background for those who haven't followed development of it closely:
MeeGo is the arranged marriage of Intel's Moblin + Nokia's Maemo.
MeeGo is still under heavy development, and although source and builds are available, everything is still experimental.
The steering group is "planning [a] release of MeeGo version 1 in the second quarter of 2010", according to the FAQ. It'll be here soon; don't start making plans to run it as your daily OS until v1.0 is actually released.
To give a taste of how raw development of the OS is right now, even basic tutorials on how to write a "Hello, World" application aren't useful to the community yet as most tutorials depend upon the MeeGo SDK, a component that hasn't yet been released by Intel.
But what you care about most is: "Will it run on my hardware?"
The best place to determine that is on the Devices page on the MeeGo Wiki. If you find that you can run the current development images on a different piece of hardware, please make a note of it on that page.
FYI, Flash support won't be built into Froyo. You download the Flash plug-in from the Marketplace as you would any other app.
Ah, good. I wish that the article had been more clear about what they meant re:Flash support in Android.
I guess I assumed that Google was going to try to integrate Adobe Flash code into the browser/platform more tightly, the same way they did with Chrom[e|ium] on the desktop. Thank goodness that's not happening.
As other people have pointed out, there's also Fennec (although I don't know how well that runs on Android devices with more meager hardware).
Someone obviously did their homework here W.R.T. software licenses. My guess is that the name mentioned at the bottom of the license page (Anders '4ZM' Sundman) is someone who works with FLOSS licenses often, and (like many of us on /.) can easily rattle these concerns off pretty easily.
Still, I'm impressed that PETA would allow that kind of critical analysis on the license page. Usually advocacy groups concentrate on the advantages of their position, and avoid active pro/con debate, at least on official pages.
I'm also intrigued that PETA put up a 2nd license on the page -- the so-called wHPL license. The basic difference between the HPL and the wHPL is that the former is written to protect Humans + Animals, and the latter is just written to protect Humans. While PETA offering users a choice between the two is admirable, I am curious as to why they would author the 2nd license at all.
Don't get me wrong, protecting humans is a great and noble cause, but if PETA believes that the furry (and not-so-furry) critters deserve equal protection as humans, then why would they provide a license that allows users to protect humans while, at the same time, roasting up Bambi et al. for some shish-kabobs?
I see two possible motivations here
I may not agree with PETA on many things, but it's certainly nice to see such frank self-analysis accompanying a software license. Kudos to them.
Okay, sure, Google cuts some deal with Adobe to suck up the Adobe Flash Player code and bake it into builds of Chrome. Or Chromium (whichever one is their proprietary version of the browser).
But why would they describe that support as existing in Android? I thought that Android was Google's FOSS-licensed, linux-kernel-based OS.
When Google, HTC, and other people release a phone running Android, they invariably pile all kinds of proprietary stuff on top. Other options would be nice, but they don't seem too interested in that.
Maybe it's just this particular news site being imprecise, but I'm concerned that Google is trying to peg Flash support via this browser to all Android phones. I mean, it's great for people who want to run the software, but it's shifting Android away from a FOSS project to Yet Another Proprietary Stack.
C'mon Google, you're chock full of smart engineers who want an open web, so please make sure that Android stays an open stack.
No, this [webmproject.org] is the link you're looking for.
Okay, I think that MrHanky might actually be spot-on this time (and not those kinds of spots...he leaves those all the time).
I mean, have you heard of the WebM project before? From the WebM FAQ:
Are VP8 or WebM subject to change?
The VP8 and WebM specifications as released on May 19th, 2010 are final.
Correct me if I'm missing something, but this looks like breaking news as of today...
And most critically:
WebM and VP8 are open-source. How do I get the source and contribute code?
The code, specifications and development guidelines are available on our Code page.
See that? VP8 [is] open-source. How could they possibly say that unless.... Google just released VP8?
Nicely done, Google, nicely done!
At one point I asked "Why does drug X do Y to me, when one of the side effects is clearly marked as the opposite of Y?"
Those listed side effects are basically everything that someone during the clinical trials reported as a problem while taking the drug. They often bear absolutely no relevance to what that drug is likely to cause, or would be expected to cause, based on its pharmacology.
But why didn't anyone tell me that?
Why can't the doctors give me more information?
Some might say that I'm asking too much of doctors, but as a computer scientist I am saddened that doctors don't have (or aren't applying/sharing with patients?) a database of knowledge about drugs, interactions, possible symptoms, etc...
If the doctor doesn't know about something, why don't they want to know more from me? Why don't they say "Well, we have no idea why this occurred, but could we please take your data and try to use it to find out for other people?" or even "we'd like to run more tests. It might hurt a bit, but it could help us to get a better picture, and in aggregate could advance medicine."
I'd love to respond, but right now my eyes are feeling strained by having all of that text in just one paragraph.
If you could please reformat that a bit, I'll take a crack at it.
I'm a doctor.
Cool.
You mean a multi-billion investment fund will take my advice where to invest their clients' money? I should just email them after having read some books?
Well, they very well might, if they feel like it. In fact, anyone can go and trade their own money whenever they feel like it.
But while I can go and purchase grass seed for my lawn and paint for my house every year, I can't go down to the fix-it-yourself pharmacy and buy whatever drugs I need to fix myself up when I like.
It's weird: I can't decide to self-medicate if I think that doctors charge too much, because... only doctors are allowed to prescribe medicine.
I'm not a die-hard libertarian, but here's a compelling argument that a friend posed to me:
Either the government should let people make their own choices W.R.T. insurance, doctors, application of drugs, etc... or they should provide the whole service, insurance, doctors, drugs and all.
Or perhaps the city will let me design a bridge?
But lots of people use that bridge. I don't have to use you unless I want to...
Or maybe I could learn to fly on Microsoft Flight Simulator and give my airline pilot advice during the next turbulent flight I encounter?
Again, if that plane goes down it affects all the people in the plane and in the crash path of the plane. If you or I go down, it largely only affects you or me.
Heck, we already have laws dealing with DUI, driving while incapacitated, etc... to address the very issue of people misusing drugs.
Maybe I should barge in and tell the magistrate in court what they should do - I've seen Perry Mason do it and read some books.
Again, the magistrate has been elected to that position as it is to the benefit of us all. But if Joe Blow wants to pour some Iodine, Betadine, or high-concentration Caffeine over his open wound, who am I to stop him? (absent mentally unstable people, who I think we already deal with).
It's very good advice. People are not specialists. You can't be a stock broker or a computer programmer and expect to be a doctor too. It's nice to be able to read up information but don't presume you will understand it, let alone be able apply it.
It's not the point that I will apply it. It's that there are so many roadblocks to allow me to even start to get there.
There are many such sites. In the UK the NHS has sites with information for patients. In the US the CDC (among other agencies) has similar sites. There is also WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/ [webmd.com]
Those sites are good starts, but nothing compared to the resources available to doctors. And I've had doctors routinely tell me to disregard whatever I read online...
It's usually helpful to start with your local Health Ministry websites and work from there. As said in the UK, this would be NHS.
There's also the Health on the Net Foundation which 'certifies' sites which contain credible medical information. http://www.hon.ch/ [www.hon.ch]
Good places to start, true.
The knowledge is there already or do you want you doctor to spell it all out for you. Should he also take you down to your local library to point out the right section for you?
I'm a programmer. You and I have the same opportunities to write programs, buy hardware, and rock out with computers. But as a doctor, you have so many more opportunities and resources in medicine...
Here's the biggest thing for me: I hate the fact that Doctors present medicine as so exacting a science -- as if it's something that can explain everything that's wrong with people.
Countless times doctors have admitted that they cannot explain my symptoms. At one point I a
...if Medicine wasn't such a members-only club. There's the "In" crowd and then there's the "Rest" of us.
Take other fields.... writing, education, programming, painting, online stock trading -- anyone can hop online or go down to their local bookstore, get How-To books, and start to do actual work in hundreds of different fields. But not in medicine.
Sure, you can learn some First Aid, and maybe even some more advanced techniques, but eventually you'll have to go to medical school to become a nurse or doctor, or at least attend weekly courses to become an EMT. And there are some safety reasons for training people in this fashion, as well as restricting access to certain drugs to only those people who demonstrably know their effects and interactions.
But just because there are some good reasons, some of the time, to lock up some medical knowledge or access to the tools of the trade, doesn't mean that there won't be hundreds if not thousands of motivated individuals that want to try to tackle their own medical problems the same way they do home improvement projects.
Quoth the doctor:
"I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
So here's one for you: Why can't you fight that misinformation before the patient even steps foot in the exam room? Why don't doctors create peer-reviewed, well-written websites to counter all of the confusion and pseudo-science currently available online? Won't patients gravitate to the more prestigious sites, especially if doctors point them there?
But I don't think that doctors want patients to ever try to self-diagnose, so they won't ever put this information online. Whether or not the doctors have the patient's best interests in mind, this creates a rift between the two parties, and does little to advance patient-centered health care.
Note: Delphi is not a language. Delphi is an IDE, Object Pascal is the language that it supports.
Maybe Delphi is also the name of the IDE, however there's a boatload of evidence for it being the name of a language/dialect:
From Wikipedia/Object Pascal
Borland used the name Object Pascal for the programming language in the first versions of Delphi, but later renamed it to the Delphi programming language...Object Pascal [is often confused] with Delphi source code.
Paradigm: imperative, structured, object-oriented, functional (Delphi dialect only)
Or the Article Summary:
...one of its other approved languages — Java, Pascal/Delphi...
So yeah, looks like a language to me.
According to Engadget,
Geohot promised a workaround for Sony's removal of the "install other OS" feature in PS3 firmware 3.21 and now Geohot has delivered...Geohot even says that the custom firmware might actually enable the other OS feature on the PS3 Slim, but he hasn't yet had a chance to try it out.
Okay, Airforce, here's your strategy:
1) Hire Hotz (Geohot), have him make the OtherOS feature work on PS3 slim hardware, and then
2) buy a few extra units to safeguard against Sony throwing another firmware/hardware update into the mix.
As a bonus prize you make a bunch of geeky hardware/software -hacker-types pleased with what you're funding, and goodness knows that you're always looking to recruit geeks for your cyber warfare divisions.
We've been using Delphi to develop our project [but] .NET for WinCE devices, but those are dying out due to iPhone/BB/Android and even WinMo7 which is turning into an even more simplified iPhoneish design).
1. No 64bit compiler.
2. No mobile platform support (except maybe
According to Wikipedia, Free Pascal seems to have 64 support on Linux, OSX, and Windows.
As for mobile platforms, Free Pascal appears to be able to target the iPhone, but Jobs squashed any chance for fun there, eh? WinCE is supported (no idea on WinMo), and with Linux support you should be able to target Maemo/Meego devices with very little extra effort.
Android, WebOS, and Symbian? No idea there... but probably too much pain to be worth it to write something.
I guess a bigger question would be why one would want to target the mobile platforms with Pascal/Delphi at all. I did a little Pascal programming back in the day and didn't really see too much to love when compared to other environments.
But in the end, I guess it doesn't really matter, especially if general-purpose Linux-based OSes like Meego actually take off on mobile phones. Then all you have to do is target a Linux-based stack, add a couple of different front-ends for your application (one mouse/keyboard based, one touch-based), and you're off to the races.
Heh. If you get to the end of the high quality introduction, you're presented with a link to the people that drew all of the images:
http://www.specialagentproductions.com/
Yeah, their site doesn't work unless you enable Flash. Pretty funny after the whole "get rid of proprietary formats" and "free your documents online" thing...
It turns out, however, that Facebook is not using HTML5 at all. The company told ReadWriteWeb that, "All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we're playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos. It will load them full-screen, similar to what it does for YouTube videos."
I don't think that the iPad, using Safari, supports native "h264 format" [sic], seeing as how AFAIK h.264 is just a stream of data.
So rather than using HTML5, Facebook is actually detecting that the iPad's Safari browser is in the mix, and is transcoding the original video format to MP4 on the fly.
Transcoding? It doesn't appear they're transcoding anything. It sounds like they're taking a video (pre) encoded as an h.264 stream, slapping an MP4 container around it, and throwing that file at Safari. Safari knows how to deal with the container and the video codec, and plays it back.
Write. Better. Articles! This is almost as bad as the article that tried to claim that HTML5 was a video format.
What I find especially interesting is that a social networking site like Facebook is willing to provide raw video files to iPad uses without wrapping any kind of player or anything else around them. This allows the iPad users to download the files directly, providing an easy method of liberating content from Facebook. I'm not really sure why Facebook would allow users to "escape" like this.
new hardware expirementation [sic] including SSD and ARM,
Oh great, Microsoft isn't content with their proprietary OS and office suite; they now wants to sell us hardware, but not just any hardware. This hardware is so special that it expires after a period of time.
Just so the history books understand my rant, the title used to be:
Aussie Tech-Focused Wikipedia Launched
...and now it's magically changed to
Aussie Tech-Focused Wiki Launched
See, there's no "Updated on date blah blah by timothy: line as there is in most updated slashdot articles.
Maybe Slashdot needs its own Wikiped... I mean, Wiki. Then we'd get version control for free!
(re: hands-free ban) That's a typo in the article.
Some typos are undetectable. Some are a bit funny. Some basically change the fundamental premise of the whole kit and kaboodle.
I we all know which category this fuck-up falls in.
Or, looking at it another way, CB doesn't rely on a central transmitter to manage communications. You could track if someone was using their mobile phone at the time of an accident. Not so with CB radios.
Okay, so perhaps it's a little harder to determine if a CB was used at the time of an accident than a cell phone, but that doesn't change the basic point that using one vs. the other is darn near exactly the same, right down to having to locate the handset, choose a channel (vs. dialing a number), and then occupying one of your hands with it.
Heck, I could wire up a CB handset to a cell phone so that each channel corresponded to a commonly-dialed # and then could make cell phone calls with it. I think the biggest reason why CB radios aren't mentioned in legislation is that nobody, probably not even truck drivers as much anymore, are using them.
Aussie Tech-Focused Wikipedia Launched
No, it wasn't. Some business in Australia unconnected with the Wikimedia crowd decided to put up their own wiki (running MediaWiki, like half of the other wikis out there). Good for them.
Why didn't Slashdot cover it when Penny Arcade got their own Wikipedia ? Oh wait, it was because that didn't happen, the same way Australia didn't get their own Wikipedia for technology.
Anyhow, if someone's going to give the Land Down Under their own honest-to-goodness Wikipedia wiki, I think it should be about ways to get rid of invasive species. Any Aussies here? You've got what: rabbits, poisonous toads, some kind of insect, and.... what else?
The Transportation Department says it wants to send the message: 'Phone in One Hand. Ticket in the Other,' and plans on ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists
Wasn't the whole idea that people could use hands-free phones so that they could keep both hands on the wheel? I mean, come on, NY, what gives?
In any case, I believe that CB radios are legal everywhere, and I don't see much of a difference between operating one of those and operating a cell phone, I'm just saying....
I believe that in one of the last suits, Samba (and thus the rest of us) had a pretty big win in which Microsoft agreed to hand over a lot of technical documentation. I believe that there was even some part of the agreement that basically defused a number of patents that might have been brought to bear against Samba and other FOSS, but I can't remember the particulars off the top of my head.
So sometimes the EU's suits do bear good fruits.
Which we can pick up for Free and enjoy deliciously!
Too bad we're just preaching to the choir here...
The article says
Microsoft employs many eminent and standards-aware people of unimpeachable record – they also obviously “get it”
Actually, Microsoft employs many people who were previously of unimpeachable record. When these obviously intelligent and "eminent" persons get in bed with Microsoft and then don't cry foul at the first, second, third, or fourth time that Microsoft willfully and intentionally manipulates standards bodies, then how can we possibly consider their record anything but stained?
I know several people who work for Microsoft, and while I am happy that these friends still have work, especially in this time of massive layoffs, I wish that they had an opportunity to apply their skills at a company not so unbelievably hostile to standards groups.