But will this new electronic paper combust at 451F like the old stuff? Or will the thought police simply be able to turn off electronic paper which displays ideas they don't like?;-)
However, always beware the law of unintended consequences. It seems likely to me that the costs for this will be passed on to us, one way or another. The mobile manufacturers aren't just going to redesign and retool for free.
I would personally rather see more features, better battery life or enhanced reception than plug standardization.
Anyway, the USB port standard is pretty marginal. I've found them not to be all that durable, especially if you have to plug/unplug items frequently - like one will likely do with a phone charger.
All that said, I actually do have enough USB-chargeable devices that I'd like to see airlines and auto-makers start offering USB charging ports.
So Google is starting to act like a real business?
on
Google Deprecates SOAP API
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Say it ain't so!
It would be interesting to know how many active API users there were, and at what rate new ones were signing up, if at all. It may well be that continuing to support that API wasn't considered a useful (read: profitable) part of their business.
Google is a publicly held corporation now. They have a responsibility to their shareholders to make decisions based on sound business practices. For a software company that means sending products into the end-of-life bin periodically.
In a fabulous dose of irony, I found that on Google's AJAX Search API page, their own embedded search example is showing a blog posting titled "Google quietly backrooms SOAP API for AJAX".
With their wireless offering, they're an ISP. As a search engine, news aggregator and portal site, they're an ICP (Internet Content Provider), and with their various software, they're an ISV (Independent Software Vendor). There is absolutely nothing at all surprising about their usage of the IEAK.
If anything, this is a feather in MSFT's cap, because Google's customization of IE7 amounts to no less than a tacit endorsement of the browser. I view this as more of a virtual atta-boy for MSFT finally releasing a browser that isn't completely sucktastic.
I'd be interested to know (but too lazy to find out) if Google customized the user-agent string. This, combined with all of their internet advertising, could yield them some interesting data-mining opportunities.
I was there too. I worked as a contractor at JPL for a little over 3 years, on various projects, building what I'll call "mission support software" in the interest of brevity.
What I learned after being there long enough (and it took me a long time) is that one of the main reasons computer security at NASA sucks is funding; or really a lack of it. Bear with me as I explain...
The IT security people (and really, IT people in general) are considered about the lowest form of life at places like JPL, because we are ancillary to the mission. We are overhead. Our work, while helpful, is not viewed as "critical" to mission success. This is an unfortunate and incorrect perception. Try launching anything remotely complex without a computer or a network to support the mission and see what happens.
Most of the science people at NASA just want to get their work done, get the mission to fly, get their science data back, and do their analyses. The problem is that they don't value network/computer security like IT people do. They just have their narrow view of their narrow area of responsibility. This tunnel vision prevents them from caring about security until Something Bad happens and they lose mission data. Then get ready to hear the screaming. IT people get fired. Heads roll. Memos are written. Policies changed.
And then everything goes back to exactly how it was, again.
Underlying all of this is the fact that IT, because of how it is perceived, is poorly funded and therefore understaffed. Without enough staff, they can't respond to all the incoming requests for IT work.
Remember those science people? They will not accept anything getting in their way, least of all some sorry excuses from the IT department about how they can't get to your server today.
Consider this conversation:
IT: "I'm sorry, we're backlogged right now and I won't be able to do that for you today."
ScienceGuy: "No, you'll fix my server today or the lab director (basically the president of JPL) will hear about it and you'll lose your job because I won't be able to talk to the Mars rover today."
IT: "Uh, ok. You're the 5th person to threaten my job today. Looks like I'm getting fired. What would you like me to do?"
ScienceGuy: "Just give me the root password and I'll do it myself. I use a Mac with OS X, so I am a Unix Genius."
IT: "Sure thing. The password is p198*#&$S(s. Have a great day!"
ScienceGuy: "Thanks for being a team player! I'll make sure to write a memo to your boss about how you helped us."
And so, in order to "stay out of the way" of the science people, the IT people have to give away a lot of system administration duties. For this they are rewarded.
Now, remember that those science people don't care about security? And they don't let anything get in their way? Think they'll do goofy things to make their server or data more easily accessible? You bet they will, regardless of the policies. And you know what? That is why places like JPL are so successful. The science people are dedicated, and will generally stop at nothing to make their missions successful. Most of them are what I would call True Believers. They really are there because they believe in what they do. Unfortunately, they often work within very limited budgets, and within the institutional limitations like limited funding for IT staff.
We could have an event where lots of people go buy products in this offensive packaging, split them all open, destroying the packaging fully, then simply return the items.
Have several thousand people do this once or twice a month, and it might make someone wake up.
I personally wouldn't mind if they made all this electronics packaging simple brown cardboard boxes. They could still make a fancy display unit that sits on the shelf in some clear, impervious plastic shell. Smaller, uniformly shaped cardboard boxes would take up less shelf/peg space than these giant plastic monstrosities, and would at least be recyclable through conventional means.
It seems you're reading the NASA budget request wrong.
Yes, it does look that way. Oh well, my mistake.
At any rate, one can compare any number of federal programs' budgets and attempt to consider their relative worth, as well as their relative size, but that is often a losing battle.
I was originally going to compare it to the army budget, but I knew that would invite too many trolls to the thread.;-)
...and I can tell you NASA is far from perfect. This is no different from any other organization, governmental or otherwise. I do have a certain empathy for them now though, because working there does give you a certain insight into why they do things the way they do. Given their limited resources, it's amazing how successful they are, most of the time.
It also doesn't hurt that the shuttle software engineers are a totally different breed. Or more to the point, the way they write software is totally different. This is a good writeup about why.
I don't know about the multi-head capabilities of the software currently, but I used to be the webmaster for a multimedia software company called Scala. They used to put out software for the Amiga, but of course that became a losing proposition. So now they make some pretty kick-ass multimedia software for the PC. Sorry, no Linux version available now. I do remember seeing one of our engineers hook up a quad-headed display card to a system and running iPlay successfully on it. Was pretty cool actually. The software has a great interface and really nice smooth transitions and such. Try a free demo of it...
Go to http://www.scala.com/ if you want more information.
Slashdot Mirror
Nuke it out of orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
"Sorry
Scrabble is temporarily unavailable due to maintenance. Please check back later."
Lame.
"you can't bring more than 3oz of breast milk onto your flight."
You can bring as much as you like, as long as it's in the original container.
Eternal salvation, or triple your money back!
It's On Demand because that's one of IBM's current catch phrases and they couldn't resist using it in their patent filing.
Decrease the demand for illicit content and hopefully less supply is created to meet the diminished demand.
But will this new electronic paper combust at 451F like the old stuff? Or will the thought police simply be able to turn off electronic paper which displays ideas they don't like? ;-)
However, always beware the law of unintended consequences. It seems likely to me that the costs for this will be passed on to us, one way or another. The mobile manufacturers aren't just going to redesign and retool for free.
I would personally rather see more features, better battery life or enhanced reception than plug standardization.
Anyway, the USB port standard is pretty marginal. I've found them not to be all that durable, especially if you have to plug/unplug items frequently - like one will likely do with a phone charger.
All that said, I actually do have enough USB-chargeable devices that I'd like to see airlines and auto-makers start offering USB charging ports.
Say it ain't so!
It would be interesting to know how many active API users there were, and at what rate new ones were signing up, if at all. It may well be that continuing to support that API wasn't considered a useful (read: profitable) part of their business.
Google is a publicly held corporation now. They have a responsibility to their shareholders to make decisions based on sound business practices. For a software company that means sending products into the end-of-life bin periodically.
In a fabulous dose of irony, I found that on Google's AJAX Search API page, their own embedded search example is showing a blog posting titled "Google quietly backrooms SOAP API for AJAX".
Screenshot here (Yeah, I'm using IE7, wannafightaboutit?)
Nothing to see here, move along...
e ak7/default.mspx
IEAK is old, old, old news. It's been available since the 16 bit IE for Windows 3.1, for crying out loud.
The most interesting part about this is that Google qualifies as every type of organization that can use the
IEAK, according to the IEAK home page. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/ie/i
With their wireless offering, they're an ISP. As a search engine, news aggregator and portal site, they're an ICP (Internet Content Provider), and with their various software, they're an ISV (Independent Software Vendor). There is absolutely nothing at all surprising about their usage of the IEAK.
If anything, this is a feather in MSFT's cap, because Google's customization of IE7 amounts to no less than a tacit endorsement of the browser. I view this as more of a virtual atta-boy for MSFT finally releasing a browser that isn't completely sucktastic.
I'd be interested to know (but too lazy to find out) if Google customized the user-agent string. This, combined with all of their internet advertising, could yield them some interesting data-mining opportunities.
I was there too. I worked as a contractor at JPL for a little over 3 years, on various projects, building what I'll call "mission support software" in the interest of brevity.
What I learned after being there long enough (and it took me a long time) is that one of the main reasons computer security at NASA sucks is funding; or really a lack of it. Bear with me as I explain...
The IT security people (and really, IT people in general) are considered about the lowest form of life at places like JPL, because we are ancillary to the mission. We are overhead. Our work, while helpful, is not viewed as "critical" to mission success. This is an unfortunate and incorrect perception. Try launching anything remotely complex without a computer or a network to support the mission and see what happens.
Most of the science people at NASA just want to get their work done, get the mission to fly, get their science data back, and do their analyses. The problem is that they don't value network/computer security like IT people do. They just have their narrow view of their narrow area of responsibility. This tunnel vision prevents them from caring about security until Something Bad happens and they lose mission data. Then get ready to hear the screaming. IT people get fired. Heads roll. Memos are written. Policies changed.
And then everything goes back to exactly how it was, again.
Underlying all of this is the fact that IT, because of how it is perceived, is poorly funded and therefore understaffed. Without enough staff, they can't respond to all the incoming requests for IT work.
Remember those science people? They will not accept anything getting in their way, least of all some sorry excuses from the IT department about how they can't get to your server today.
Consider this conversation:
IT: "I'm sorry, we're backlogged right now and I won't be able to do that for you today."
ScienceGuy: "No, you'll fix my server today or the lab director (basically the president of JPL) will hear about it and you'll lose your job because I won't be able to talk to the Mars rover today."
IT: "Uh, ok. You're the 5th person to threaten my job today. Looks like I'm getting fired. What would you like me to do?"
ScienceGuy: "Just give me the root password and I'll do it myself. I use a Mac with OS X, so I am a Unix Genius."
IT: "Sure thing. The password is p198*#&$S(s. Have a great day!"
ScienceGuy: "Thanks for being a team player! I'll make sure to write a memo to your boss about how you helped us."
And so, in order to "stay out of the way" of the science people, the IT people have to give away a lot of system administration duties. For this they are rewarded.
Now, remember that those science people don't care about security? And they don't let anything get in their way? Think they'll do goofy things to make their server or data more easily accessible? You bet they will, regardless of the policies. And you know what? That is why places like JPL are so successful. The science people are dedicated, and will generally stop at nothing to make their missions successful. Most of them are what I would call True Believers. They really are there because they believe in what they do. Unfortunately, they often work within very limited budgets, and within the institutional limitations like limited funding for IT staff.
How about a mass protest?
We could have an event where lots of people go buy products in this offensive packaging, split them all open, destroying the packaging fully, then simply return the items.
Have several thousand people do this once or twice a month, and it might make someone wake up.
I personally wouldn't mind if they made all this electronics packaging simple brown cardboard boxes. They could still make a fancy display unit that sits on the shelf in some clear, impervious plastic shell. Smaller, uniformly shaped cardboard boxes would take up less shelf/peg space than these giant plastic monstrosities, and would at least be recyclable through conventional means.
It seems you're reading the NASA budget request wrong.
;-)
Yes, it does look that way. Oh well, my mistake.
At any rate, one can compare any number of federal programs' budgets and attempt to consider their relative worth, as well as their relative size, but that is often a losing battle.
I was originally going to compare it to the army budget, but I knew that would invite too many trolls to the thread.
Considering that we give NASA less than we give the National Park Service, it's utterly dumbfoundingly breathtaking what they are able to accomplish.
It also doesn't hurt that the shuttle software engineers are a totally different breed. Or more to the point, the way they write software is totally different. This is a good writeup about why.
I don't know about the multi-head capabilities of the software currently, but I used to be the webmaster for a multimedia software company called Scala. They used to put out software for the Amiga, but of course that became a losing proposition. So now they make some pretty kick-ass multimedia software for the PC. Sorry, no Linux version available now. I do remember seeing one of our engineers hook up a quad-headed display card to a system and running iPlay successfully on it. Was pretty cool actually. The software has a great interface and really nice smooth transitions and such. Try a free demo of it... Go to http://www.scala.com/ if you want more information.