> I, for one, like the idea that I can have desktop quality applications running independent of platform on my browser - and wouldn't mind if this became the standard
The browser is your platform, that's the whole concept behind moving everything to web based. That's a good thing if you take the traditional view that the OS is the platform - now you can run any old OS you like (with a standards compliant browser) and you'll be able to run the apps.
This doesn't make you platform independent though, it makes you OS independent - all you've done is just redefined 'platform'. While apps only use standards you maintain independence. As soon as they use non-standard extensions you are no longer independent and now you are limited again. In this case you are limited to Chrome.
In this respect it's really no different to ActiveX. Just because google have published the workings of this doesn't make it a standard and there is really no reason for all other browsers to implement it. And if it isn't a standard and isn't available in all browsers people working with it will be forcing their choice of platform on their users and we're back to where we started. Why don't we all just run Windows and use ActiveX?
I bought one several years ago (Top2048, don't think it's a current model now). Forget what it cost but probably in the region of 100 USD. Build quiality is good. Software isn't great or well translated, but at the end of the day it does what it's supposed to. In terms of writing eproms I've never had any problems with it. Ultimately writing an eprom isn't a particularly difficult concept so I see no reason a Chinese factory can't mass produce a cheap a programmer. Or put another way, why on earth do branded ones from the West cost so much money?
Richard.
WTF are you talking about? What do the rights and privacy of others have to do with the ability of my university to wipe my phone? And as for not "handle being responsible with your position in student government", this doesn't make any sense at all. I have no position in student government (whatever that even means) and I'm not sure what part of what I said had anything to do with my responsibility to it.
Can I suggest if English is not your first language, and you don't understand what you read, you don't waste your time (and mine) writing incomprehensible replies to it.
Yes, give us the option to ignore them! My uni (I'm a student, not staff) requires permission to wipe my phone and force me to pin protect it, etc. The whole works.
Why? So nobody could steal my phone and access all the internal spam I get about alcoholic events and recruitment for societies so odd that they apparently don't have the 3 members needed to fill their committee posts.
So instead of using the built in exchange support I use a third party that ignores these. I run a cyanogen based rom that I build myself from source so I could just modify the built in exchange support, but life's too short - Android should already be ignoring them for me.
For example 360 hack isn't the same, you can't run your own code or modify memory on it - it merely allows you to play pirat^H^H^H^H^H backups. This will be a lot more serious hack.
Not true. The 360 has been hacked wide open. You can run your own code or do pretty much anything with it. The vulnerability has already been patched by MS so only boxes made before about July 2009 (and also not updated since) can be hacked, but there must be millions of them about (I've got 2 right here next to me). Obviously MS can detect it if you play online and you'll get banned from their service, Sony will presumably be able to do the same.
I was concerned for a moment there about declining standards at the Guardian, but you'll be pleased to know the phrase "in lieu" does not appear anywhere in their article.
This nice webpage allows you to generate your own, but the ones shown are genuine ones, I've seen both these billboards around my own town, and it's not like I live in London.
> Honestly, does anyone know? This is just stupid and it completely inhibits progress.
Patents maybe, but how on earth does a trademark stop progress?
And for that matter what wrong with trademarks? Sure, in this case they aren't doing a lot with the brand, but they coined the term, registered it properly years ago and used it for products that these new ones are very similar to. The potential for confusion is there, especially if psion might be planning on making further use of their brand.
This appears to be trademark law working as it's designed to, so while this is an interesting story, it doesn't seem like one we should all be whining about.
I can recommend IBM (UK). Didn't do it myself, but I knew several people who did. Of course they switched to part time, they didn't join as part timers.
With the subtle difference is that they are not actually suspending the system to RAM/disk (in order to avoid accumulating garbage, as they say).
They are resuming a special suspended "freshly booted" state.
::snip::
The main implication is that the first time you boot, and after each system update (and you know that, given microsoft's track of security, you're still going to have patches coming often) or any other change that might render the pre-suspended image obsolete, you can't do this. You have to go through a slow boot, rebuild a pre-suspended state, and only after that it'll work.
That not quite true - look at the flow chart of how it works (read: RTFA). It does use a pre-prepared suspend image, but that's not one it keeps hanging around for months to reuse. It creates a new each time you shutdown.
It doesn't actually shutdown your computer, it restarts it and suspends it once it comes back up. So if you shutdown after applying an update the next time you "boot" you will have the update applied as normal.
The downside is that everytime you shutdown you actually go through a full length cold boot + suspend. It's just shifted the startup time onto your previous shutdown time.
Could someone explain how these projects have any kind of public support at all?
They don't have support, but what can we do?
One problem with these things is they don't get reported all that well in a way that the uneducated masses will understand.
The real problem, however, is that in a parliamentary democracy you delegate your responsibility to act to a small number of people who do not live in the real world. Or worse, you voted for a different MP who didn't win so your will has been delegated to some other idiot by default. You can write to them to tell them how you would like them to act, and they write back with a generic response explaining why you are wrong, though without managing to address any issues you actual raised.
When it comes to the time for you to evaluate their performance (i.e. next election) you choose to not vote for them again because they are still a bunch of retards, but they make all kinds of promises to the gullible and they stay in power.
What can you do between elections? We still have some limited rights to protest in the country (though diminished because of the threat of terrorism). So something like 2% of the entire countries population descends on the capital to march together to try and indicate a lack of support for going to war. That didn't work out too well.
The change of career was no problem. In the UK they do an accelerated medical degree. It's one year shorter than a normal one (condensed rather than missing anything important out), for graduates. The theory being that having done one degree already you're older, smarter and hopefully more capable than the average 18 year old undergrad. Also, the more varied backgrounds brings extra skills to the job, which they want to encourage.
Even so, most medical schools that offer this course (by no means all of them) usually want to see a good bit of bio/chem education. However at Nottingham uni they will accept any degree, although they there is a big entrace exam and you need to come in the top 20% (IIRC) to be considered for an interview. So even if you didn't formally study the subjects you need to have studied them somewhere before you can do that. It's really about proving capability to and willingness learn to the required level, plus a bit of basic background science.
Some relevant experience is required, but it doesn't have to be a lot. I spent 6 months working weekends as a health care assistant at a local hospital, while still doing my IT day job for the rest of the week and studying for the exam (from not having done any bio/chem since I was 16). That feat gives you something to talk about in the interview!
I did know my original path for a long time, I chose it all at my first academic options (age 13 in the UK), and followed it through. If only I'd stopped to think along the way! Though I did have some experiences along that journey that probably pushed me towards this. Here, because it was a graduate entry course, they didn't expect you to have always wanted to do medicine. It certainly helps your application if you can explain why you now want to do it of course.
Of course I could have applied for the normal undergrad course, and that would have been a very different experience I suppose, but I didn't want to go that route.
I hope your change goes well, mine has so far, I haven't looked back!
I'd probably agree with them.
Even if you dont find it boring to begin with you really need to ask yourself the question "where will I be in five/ten/twenty years?". For the majority going into software engineering or IT the answer is "prettymuch the same thing I was doing two weeks after I graduated college". After 8 years in the job, including the 3 years I worked at a major IT company during my sponsored degree, I agree with your both.
I was always interested in computers and made the mistake of thinking it'd make a good career. I'm now back at uni. getting a degree in medicine. At least that way I'll be doing something useful, even if it turns out to be boring in another 8 years.
"If no sexual offence is being committed it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offence for having an image of something which was not an offence"
In the UK the age of consent is 16, so you can have sex at this age. However if you video it then it becomes child porn, and presumably by definition the people appearing in the video have become exploited and abused, even if it was them who set up the camera.
It's never made much sense to me that you can legally have sex with a 16 year old, but you can't look at a picture of one naked.
(p.s. just in case there is any doubt - i'm not a paedophile, it's just an interesting legal point!)
I did my degree in Computer Science and worked for 8 years in the industry. Decided it just wasn't what I wanted out of life, and didn't believe there was likely to be sufficient work in the industry in the west to last my career.
So I finally got the nerve to do something about it. Worked hard outside my day job on Biology & Chemistry, and got myself into medical school. I've almost finished my first year and I've not looked back yet. Admittedly I'm posting on slashdot right now from a university computer, but I always said I'd keep some form of IT as a hobby, just no interest in working in it. I'd rather do something more worthwhile.
I was also pretty fed up with the idea of working for shareholders in the corporate money machine. I suppose a doctor in the US probably still would be (as well as doing something useful) but I'm in the UK where we have universal healthcare so I don't have to worry about that aspect either.
Anyway, I strongly recommend a change. If there is something else you'd like to do, go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you knew it was coming and here it is: http://xkcd.com/552/
> I, for one, like the idea that I can have desktop quality applications running independent of platform on my browser - and wouldn't mind if this became the standard
The browser is your platform, that's the whole concept behind moving everything to web based. That's a good thing if you take the traditional view that the OS is the platform - now you can run any old OS you like (with a standards compliant browser) and you'll be able to run the apps.
This doesn't make you platform independent though, it makes you OS independent - all you've done is just redefined 'platform'. While apps only use standards you maintain independence. As soon as they use non-standard extensions you are no longer independent and now you are limited again. In this case you are limited to Chrome.
In this respect it's really no different to ActiveX. Just because google have published the workings of this doesn't make it a standard and there is really no reason for all other browsers to implement it. And if it isn't a standard and isn't available in all browsers people working with it will be forcing their choice of platform on their users and we're back to where we started. Why don't we all just run Windows and use ActiveX?
Richard.
I bought one several years ago (Top2048, don't think it's a current model now). Forget what it cost but probably in the region of 100 USD. Build quiality is good. Software isn't great or well translated, but at the end of the day it does what it's supposed to. In terms of writing eproms I've never had any problems with it. Ultimately writing an eprom isn't a particularly difficult concept so I see no reason a Chinese factory can't mass produce a cheap a programmer. Or put another way, why on earth do branded ones from the West cost so much money? Richard.
WTF are you talking about? What do the rights and privacy of others have to do with the ability of my university to wipe my phone? And as for not "handle being responsible with your position in student government", this doesn't make any sense at all. I have no position in student government (whatever that even means) and I'm not sure what part of what I said had anything to do with my responsibility to it.
Can I suggest if English is not your first language, and you don't understand what you read, you don't waste your time (and mine) writing incomprehensible replies to it.
Yes, give us the option to ignore them! My uni (I'm a student, not staff) requires permission to wipe my phone and force me to pin protect it, etc. The whole works.
Why? So nobody could steal my phone and access all the internal spam I get about alcoholic events and recruitment for societies so odd that they apparently don't have the 3 members needed to fill their committee posts.
So instead of using the built in exchange support I use a third party that ignores these. I run a cyanogen based rom that I build myself from source so I could just modify the built in exchange support, but life's too short - Android should already be ignoring them for me.
Richard.
For example 360 hack isn't the same, you can't run your own code or modify memory on it - it merely allows you to play pirat^H^H^H^H^H backups. This will be a lot more serious hack.
Not true. The 360 has been hacked wide open. You can run your own code or do pretty much anything with it. The vulnerability has already been patched by MS so only boxes made before about July 2009 (and also not updated since) can be hacked, but there must be millions of them about (I've got 2 right here next to me). Obviously MS can detect it if you play online and you'll get banned from their service, Sony will presumably be able to do the same.
I was concerned for a moment there about declining standards at the Guardian, but you'll be pleased to know the phrase "in lieu" does not appear anywhere in their article.
And here is another fine example... http://jamesholden.net/billboard/
This nice webpage allows you to generate your own, but the ones shown are genuine ones, I've seen both these billboards around my own town, and it's not like I live in London.
> Honestly, does anyone know? This is just stupid and it completely inhibits progress.
Patents maybe, but how on earth does a trademark stop progress?
And for that matter what wrong with trademarks? Sure, in this case they aren't doing a lot with the brand, but they coined the term, registered it properly years ago and used it for products that these new ones are very similar to. The potential for confusion is there, especially if psion might be planning on making further use of their brand.
This appears to be trademark law working as it's designed to, so while this is an interesting story, it doesn't seem like one we should all be whining about.
I can recommend IBM (UK). Didn't do it myself, but I knew several people who did. Of course they switched to part time, they didn't join as part timers.
With the subtle difference is that they are not actually suspending the system to RAM/disk (in order to avoid accumulating garbage, as they say). They are resuming a special suspended "freshly booted" state.
::snip::
The main implication is that the first time you boot, and after each system update (and you know that, given microsoft's track of security, you're still going to have patches coming often) or any other change that might render the pre-suspended image obsolete, you can't do this. You have to go through a slow boot, rebuild a pre-suspended state, and only after that it'll work.
That not quite true - look at the flow chart of how it works (read: RTFA). It does use a pre-prepared suspend image, but that's not one it keeps hanging around for months to reuse. It creates a new each time you shutdown.
It doesn't actually shutdown your computer, it restarts it and suspends it once it comes back up. So if you shutdown after applying an update the next time you "boot" you will have the update applied as normal.
The downside is that everytime you shutdown you actually go through a full length cold boot + suspend. It's just shifted the startup time onto your previous shutdown time.
Could someone explain how these projects have any kind of public support at all?
They don't have support, but what can we do?
One problem with these things is they don't get reported all that well in a way that the uneducated masses will understand.
The real problem, however, is that in a parliamentary democracy you delegate your responsibility to act to a small number of people who do not live in the real world. Or worse, you voted for a different MP who didn't win so your will has been delegated to some other idiot by default. You can write to them to tell them how you would like them to act, and they write back with a generic response explaining why you are wrong, though without managing to address any issues you actual raised.
When it comes to the time for you to evaluate their performance (i.e. next election) you choose to not vote for them again because they are still a bunch of retards, but they make all kinds of promises to the gullible and they stay in power.
What can you do between elections? We still have some limited rights to protest in the country (though diminished because of the threat of terrorism). So something like 2% of the entire countries population descends on the capital to march together to try and indicate a lack of support for going to war. That didn't work out too well.
So what exactly do you suggest we do?
The change of career was no problem. In the UK they do an accelerated medical degree. It's one year shorter than a normal one (condensed rather than missing anything important out), for graduates. The theory being that having done one degree already you're older, smarter and hopefully more capable than the average 18 year old undergrad. Also, the more varied backgrounds brings extra skills to the job, which they want to encourage. Even so, most medical schools that offer this course (by no means all of them) usually want to see a good bit of bio/chem education. However at Nottingham uni they will accept any degree, although they there is a big entrace exam and you need to come in the top 20% (IIRC) to be considered for an interview. So even if you didn't formally study the subjects you need to have studied them somewhere before you can do that. It's really about proving capability to and willingness learn to the required level, plus a bit of basic background science. Some relevant experience is required, but it doesn't have to be a lot. I spent 6 months working weekends as a health care assistant at a local hospital, while still doing my IT day job for the rest of the week and studying for the exam (from not having done any bio/chem since I was 16). That feat gives you something to talk about in the interview! I did know my original path for a long time, I chose it all at my first academic options (age 13 in the UK), and followed it through. If only I'd stopped to think along the way! Though I did have some experiences along that journey that probably pushed me towards this. Here, because it was a graduate entry course, they didn't expect you to have always wanted to do medicine. It certainly helps your application if you can explain why you now want to do it of course. Of course I could have applied for the normal undergrad course, and that would have been a very different experience I suppose, but I didn't want to go that route. I hope your change goes well, mine has so far, I haven't looked back!
"If no sexual offence is being committed it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offence for having an image of something which was not an offence"
In the UK the age of consent is 16, so you can have sex at this age. However if you video it then it becomes child porn, and presumably by definition the people appearing in the video have become exploited and abused, even if it was them who set up the camera.
It's never made much sense to me that you can legally have sex with a 16 year old, but you can't look at a picture of one naked.
(p.s. just in case there is any doubt - i'm not a paedophile, it's just an interesting legal point!)
I did my degree in Computer Science and worked for 8 years in the industry. Decided it just wasn't what I wanted out of life, and didn't believe there was likely to be sufficient work in the industry in the west to last my career.
So I finally got the nerve to do something about it. Worked hard outside my day job on Biology & Chemistry, and got myself into medical school. I've almost finished my first year and I've not looked back yet. Admittedly I'm posting on slashdot right now from a university computer, but I always said I'd keep some form of IT as a hobby, just no interest in working in it. I'd rather do something more worthwhile.
I was also pretty fed up with the idea of working for shareholders in the corporate money machine. I suppose a doctor in the US probably still would be (as well as doing something useful) but I'm in the UK where we have universal healthcare so I don't have to worry about that aspect either.
Anyway, I strongly recommend a change. If there is something else you'd like to do, go for it.