Phones, anyone? Display is one of the most power-hungry components in a mobile phone, where battery life is absolutely critical. Oddly enough, I have seen only one phone with e-paper display, and that one was really lame.
I fear the day when the singularity occurs and we peons are forced to play machine generated levels like this this for the amusement of our robotic overlords.
I wish there were more comments on this story like this one of yours.
Now another interesting question is how we can possibly make the government consider your suggestions. On their own, they will probably optimize for control and low cost, not for citizen convenience or privacy.
The amount of paperwork and legwork to get anything government-related done is untolerable in this day and age. We should have been enjoying electronic government for at least 15 years by now. Finally someone up there is getting it.
Now half of the posts here will be about the stupid "personal webpage" phrasing that has nothing to do with the actual idea, and the other half will be about an Orwellian apocalypse. Which may be well-grounded, as British government earned some bad reputation in regards to privacy.
However, I would still argue that this is a step in the right direction, and it is inevitable in the long run. We as a technical community should suggest ways to protect privacy with proper modern protocols, not with the obscurity of 18th century style paperwork.
I also hope that the governments in other countries will follow the example.
The argument from those people was that garbage collection spoils you. Maybe some other convenient features / syntactic sugar might also pose a threat. I never believed that. I think that learning additional languages / paradigms can make you a better programmer.
As a programmer who started with old-school BASIC (numbered lines, etc), I was overjoyed with better elements of structured programming in Turbo Basic, and totally excited with C when I learned it. It felt like having my hands untied. So I would state the contrary: you cannot fully appreciate the structured programming unless you went through the GOTO hell.
I hear a lot of similar FUD from some people, like "you can't grok OOP if you started with C", or "anyone who touched.NET or Java is lost for C++..." It boils down to "people are idiots, they can't possibly learn anything new, they are either indoctrinated at birth in My True Way, or lost and hopeless." Who in their right mind would take that seriously?
The original poster probably meant CPM (characters per minute), not WPM. That's a measure some typing software uses, and that sounds much more plausible. Or maybe she's a genius.
Obligatory anecdotal evidence: I type at about 120 CPM with my version of hunt-and-peck (still using all fingers and some motor memory). I tried learning to touch type several times, eventually getting to almost the same speed. However, I figured as a programmer I am too often distracted with special characters and navigation, and also I spend most of my time thinking rather than typing, so touch typing doesn't really help much. Having to learn and switch between two layouts for different languages didn't help, either. So I switched back to my intuitive method, because it is less stressful and more comfortable for me, and it does the job just fine.
So, my 2 cents worth of advice to the OP: don't bother, unless you really have to type a lot of prose every day. You're doing fine already, or even great, if WPM is really what you meant.
Yes, I wish we could use a simple term like "freeware" to mean "software that is truly free" (I know, it's already taken for "free as in beer"). All these OSS / FOSS / FLOSS / SCHMOSS acronyms are getting really tiresome. Unfortunately, we have to use them in our current situation, to avoid confusion.
Hmm, maybe "freedomware"? Sounds stupid enough to stick with the blogosphere. Just a thought.
The mods sometimes do mod a good joke "Informative" or "Insightful" to add more fun to it, in this case suggesting the classic Asteroids game physics were real. I'm not sure who is "Clueless" or "Humorless" in this case.
1. Use your advantages where they matter. It helps to be geographically close to the client, or to have the security clearance, or hell even to speak proper English in some cases.
2. Try to become a top-notch professional who is hard to replace even given worldwide supply of candidates. This is probably not a solution for everyone, but still a point for a brainstorming session.
On the other hand, the inventor of the Insert key deserves a mousetrap being put right under the light switch in their room.
I would reserve that honor for the creators of Power / Sleep / Wake buttons in that same keys block.
I also understand your thoughts on the Ins key, it can be annoying when pressed unintentionally, same as the Caps Lock, and well, a lot of other keys, too. However, when I work on a MacBook that doesn't have the Ins key, I do miss it sometimes - mainly in applications like Midnight Commander and some old games that use it as a shortcut for some frequent functions.
And back on topic, the magic SysRq key is sometimes very useful on Linux, and being combined with PrtScr and located away from other keys, I see no need to remove it.
But wait, aren't there also some phones out there that cost under $100 unlocked? Licensing is surely a part of it, but there must be more to this story, like having little competition so far, and charging what the market can bear. I would agree with GP logic and guess that $300 could be a realistic price for a device like iPhone or Nexus One, possibly with a few tradeoffs.
Maybe someone like Samsung will bring it to us - they have an $165 (unlocked) Corby touchphone with a proprietary OS, and some $450-500 Android phones. They might build something in between.
In the article, "not really" serves to state the obligatory "We're totally not giving this a shining review because of our exclusive first reviewer deal, and we are being totally 100% neutral here. We'll even throw in a rant or two." The summary picks up the "not really" line just to be more of a click bait. It's just web writing as usual, you can simply ignore the wording and focus on the facts.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but I've just found two interesting links on ozone depletion caused by rockets. Apparently, there is something to consider here.
Talking about LEO space tourism, I wonder what is the environmental footprint of that, and is it worth it? What will it do in terms of toxic exhaust? It may be mostly water in theory, but there are always by-products. And how will that affect the ozone layer?
Scientific and engineering missions that we have now are probably worth it, given their practical and scientific value - but frequent tourist launches? Wouldn't that be like a light version of dropping nukes for the lulz?
Slashdot Mirror
Phones, anyone? Display is one of the most power-hungry components in a mobile phone, where battery life is absolutely critical. Oddly enough, I have seen only one phone with e-paper display, and that one was really lame.
They used wisdom teeth that had been frozen for three years after being removed from a 10-year-old girl.
Achievement Unlocked
I fear the day when the singularity occurs and we peons are forced to play machine generated levels like this this for the amusement of our robotic overlords.
...Or levels like this. Oh, wait...
The Chinese have no interest in going to the Moon
...Except for a manned lunar mission by 2024.
The big problem is what happens under 16nm.
Maybe 3D chip stacking will help prolong Moore's law for a while, instead of further miniaturization.
Volkswagen Golf is the standard unit, I believe.
I wish there were more comments on this story like this one of yours.
Now another interesting question is how we can possibly make the government consider your suggestions. On their own, they will probably optimize for control and low cost, not for citizen convenience or privacy.
The amount of paperwork and legwork to get anything government-related done is untolerable in this day and age. We should have been enjoying electronic government for at least 15 years by now. Finally someone up there is getting it.
Now half of the posts here will be about the stupid "personal webpage" phrasing that has nothing to do with the actual idea, and the other half will be about an Orwellian apocalypse. Which may be well-grounded, as British government earned some bad reputation in regards to privacy.
However, I would still argue that this is a step in the right direction, and it is inevitable in the long run. We as a technical community should suggest ways to protect privacy with proper modern protocols, not with the obscurity of 18th century style paperwork.
I also hope that the governments in other countries will follow the example.
The argument from those people was that garbage collection spoils you. Maybe some other convenient features / syntactic sugar might also pose a threat. I never believed that. I think that learning additional languages / paradigms can make you a better programmer.
As a programmer who started with old-school BASIC (numbered lines, etc), I was overjoyed with better elements of structured programming in Turbo Basic, and totally excited with C when I learned it. It felt like having my hands untied. So I would state the contrary: you cannot fully appreciate the structured programming unless you went through the GOTO hell.
I hear a lot of similar FUD from some people, like "you can't grok OOP if you started with C", or "anyone who touched .NET or Java is lost for C++..." It boils down to "people are idiots, they can't possibly learn anything new, they are either indoctrinated at birth in My True Way, or lost and hopeless." Who in their right mind would take that seriously?
The original poster probably meant CPM (characters per minute), not WPM. That's a measure some typing software uses, and that sounds much more plausible. Or maybe she's a genius.
Obligatory anecdotal evidence: I type at about 120 CPM with my version of hunt-and-peck (still using all fingers and some motor memory). I tried learning to touch type several times, eventually getting to almost the same speed. However, I figured as a programmer I am too often distracted with special characters and navigation, and also I spend most of my time thinking rather than typing, so touch typing doesn't really help much. Having to learn and switch between two layouts for different languages didn't help, either. So I switched back to my intuitive method, because it is less stressful and more comfortable for me, and it does the job just fine.
So, my 2 cents worth of advice to the OP: don't bother, unless you really have to type a lot of prose every day. You're doing fine already, or even great, if WPM is really what you meant.
It's uncanny valley effect. Digg button is missing.
Motorola should send Google flowers, or something.
Yes, I wish we could use a simple term like "freeware" to mean "software that is truly free" (I know, it's already taken for "free as in beer"). All these OSS / FOSS / FLOSS / SCHMOSS acronyms are getting really tiresome. Unfortunately, we have to use them in our current situation, to avoid confusion.
Hmm, maybe "freedomware"? Sounds stupid enough to stick with the blogosphere. Just a thought.
The mods sometimes do mod a good joke "Informative" or "Insightful" to add more fun to it, in this case suggesting the classic Asteroids game physics were real. I'm not sure who is "Clueless" or "Humorless" in this case.
Do you really have problems with people throwing beer bottles at you?
Yeah, why would anyone have problems with that?
Mod parent +1, Constructive. My 2 cents:
1. Use your advantages where they matter. It helps to be geographically close to the client, or to have the security clearance, or hell even to speak proper English in some cases.
2. Try to become a top-notch professional who is hard to replace even given worldwide supply of candidates. This is probably not a solution for everyone, but still a point for a brainstorming session.
On the other hand, the inventor of the Insert key deserves a mousetrap being put right under the light switch in their room.
I would reserve that honor for the creators of Power / Sleep / Wake buttons in that same keys block.
I also understand your thoughts on the Ins key, it can be annoying when pressed unintentionally, same as the Caps Lock, and well, a lot of other keys, too. However, when I work on a MacBook that doesn't have the Ins key, I do miss it sometimes - mainly in applications like Midnight Commander and some old games that use it as a shortcut for some frequent functions.
And back on topic, the magic SysRq key is sometimes very useful on Linux, and being combined with PrtScr and located away from other keys, I see no need to remove it.
But wait, aren't there also some phones out there that cost under $100 unlocked? Licensing is surely a part of it, but there must be more to this story, like having little competition so far, and charging what the market can bear. I would agree with GP logic and guess that $300 could be a realistic price for a device like iPhone or Nexus One, possibly with a few tradeoffs.
Maybe someone like Samsung will bring it to us - they have an $165 (unlocked) Corby touchphone with a proprietary OS, and some $450-500 Android phones. They might build something in between.
In the article, "not really" serves to state the obligatory "We're totally not giving this a shining review because of our exclusive first reviewer deal, and we are being totally 100% neutral here. We'll even throw in a rant or two." The summary picks up the "not really" line just to be more of a click bait. It's just web writing as usual, you can simply ignore the wording and focus on the facts.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but I've just found two interesting links on ozone depletion caused by rockets. Apparently, there is something to consider here.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/01/space_rockets_kill_ozone/
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a909005018
Talking about LEO space tourism, I wonder what is the environmental footprint of that, and is it worth it? What will it do in terms of toxic exhaust? It may be mostly water in theory, but there are always by-products. And how will that affect the ozone layer?
Scientific and engineering missions that we have now are probably worth it, given their practical and scientific value - but frequent tourist launches? Wouldn't that be like a light version of dropping nukes for the lulz?
They were probably thinking,
"I am the eggman,
They are the eggmen,
I am the walrus!
Goo-goo-goojoob!"
At least I hope so.
IQ1 = 99; IQ2 = -100; IQsum = Profit!
Maybe that's the kind of hidden gems they're shooting for with all these committees?..