I've always been a fan of the "subnotebook." I had the first model of the Toshiba Libretto, the size of VHS cassette, circa 1998. The odd person would laugh at its size, but meanwhile I was using it at restaurants, comfortably on a plane while eating a meal, and so forth.
(One time on a plane the stewardess pointed at my lap and said, "wow, that's the smallest one of those I've ever seen!" Man, did she ever turn red when she realized how that sounded. I held up the laptop to make it quite clear what she was referring to:S)
When Toshiba announced a new version of the Libretto, I jumped on buying one. Updated specs, wifi, bluetooth, 2ghz, yadda, yadda, yadda. I even bought the three year SystemGuard with it; even if a drink spilled on it, they would cover me.
Unfortuantely, I had a few hardware problems with it, post warrantee, but within the 3-year system guard. I had it to two different service depots, where it sat for months. When I got it back, nothing was done to it. Dropped it off again. The bluetooth and wifi weren't working. The DVD dock never did work right. I wrote a frustrated noted to the President of Toshiba Canada, and have been playing phone tag with someone ever since, trying to get this damn laptop working again. It's a good chunk of a year I've been without it.
I see these EEE PC's kicking around for a few hundred dollars. I could have bought a few of them, with what I spent on the Libretto (and not been without a tiny laptop for months). The System Guard warrantee alone would have paid for one. If I can't get half decent service on a more expensive "subnotebook," which I mainly use for wireless web access, email, word processing, and other lightweight tasks, I might as well pick up cheap and semi-disposable netbooks.
Toshiba, if you're listening, I would love to regain my trust and dedication to your brand; when I had a big company, we bought dozens of your laptops, but I don't think I'd ever touch them again, after this terrible service experience...
If I don't get some resolution before my System Guard is up this December, I'll likely just dispose of the Libretto on eBay, and pick up an EEE PC. A sad demise for a rather pioneering legacy by Toshiba. If the EEE PC dies outside the warrantee period, I'll just grab another one, or whatever else has come out since. It really is becoming a commodity item, which I welcome.
Youre a vice president in a bank ? Heres another recent comment by you:
I'm sorry, I don't think we've met. Yes, I don't like Vista. But it's not a religious stance against Microsoft. In fact, I hold 4 Microsoft certifications (MCSE, MCSD VB6, MCSD C#.Net, MCDBA) and work on Microsoft products all day every day. In fact, I did a 6 month contract programming job for Microsoft themselves as a side job.
Certainly a very busy man.
Looks like somebody forgot their Lithium pill today.
As mentioned in another post, as best as I can tell from the news articles, this is a Google Earth view of the area he went down. The Minaret Lake area is where the hiker found his ID and money, and the Minaret Peak is near where his plane hit.
From what I've been able to piece together from various news stories, the hiker was hiking around Minaret's Lake when he found the items, and Minaret's Peak may have been the location of the crash.
Here's an image from Google Earth of the possible area, looking South-West-ish, which would have been the direction Fossett was heading. The Minaret's do kinda jump up quickly, could have just been an accidental controlled flight into terrain...
I see a few smudges here and there, but nothing that looks definitively like a plane (the Google data could be pre-crash, as well, who knows).
No one is going to use a third party mail app, or music app, or other app that competes with your offerings, unless it is substantially better. Compete on your merits.
I'm a big Mac fan; switched to a MacBook and there's no going back. I love OS X, the hardware, the general approach and leadership of Jobs.
But this app store stuff is ridiculous. It's reminiscent of MS in the early days. "We encourage your development on our platform, until we get into the space." Just like MS started picking off app areas one by one, killing third party vendors supporting their platform (Spreadsheet, Word Processors, even TCP/IP stacks), Apple is going to cannibalize themselves if they keep this approach up. Even as a Mac Fanboi, I'm thinking this is outrageous and has to stop.
I'm also a developer, and was seriously considering dedicating myself to iPhone apps, but am putting that on hold until I see some change in policies. (Or at least more visibility as to the policy.)
If Opera (who makes a fast browser with no visible memory/cpu problems) can't make a mobile browser that doesn't die on "out of memory" on *every* page on my HTC SmartPhone, then what chance does Mozilla (the king of memory leaks and runaway CPU) have? I'd sure love to see a lean, mean, mobile Mozilla, but I have some serious doubts if they can pull it off.
The latest Opera mobile truly is unusable on my Windows Mobile smart phone (due to the out-of-memory-thing) which was quite disappointing to me. I've yet to come across a good mobile browsing experience, other than on an iPhone (which I won't buy due to price, lack of open app distribution, and insane data plans from Rogers). Sigh...
I feel the same way about Forth... (I wonder if we were dating her at the same time?)
Some of the cool things I remember:
The version I used (the standard one, I think) came as a little bit of assembly for the core interpreter (which basically just reads an address, and calls it; reads and address, and calls it, etc...) and the rest was written in Forth itself. The interpreter/environment more or less was built on itself.
In the days when floppies were the standard, it used a fairly direct mapping between 1k blocks on the disk, and 64x16 screens. You'd write your forth more or less free-form (formatted how you want) on that 64x16 page, and it would be written directly as a disk block. If you used the word '-->' (just another forth defined word) it would load and execute the next consecutive disk block. Fairly elegant.
Because it's basically a stack based language of calls, it was fast to compile, fast to run, even on the 1mhz machines of the day.
The stack-ed-ness of it did lead to the code seeming a bit cryptic (moreso than Postscript, say). But the preferred style was to break things into fairly small "words" that you pulled together in other words; divide and conquer...
The old > keywords were neat constructs, too. One chunk told a word how to allocate memory, and the other chunk told how to perform operations on that memory at runtime. Clunky in today's world of automated garbage collection, but in its day, it was elegant and very fast.
I checked in on Forth a decode or so ago, and it seemed to have gotten away from its elegant roots a bit, and was a bit more fragmented. I believe it was popular with the robot crowd (people making them, not the robots themselves:), although in these days of dirt cheap ARM chips and the like, it's hard to imagine they would need the efficiency of Forth.
I think a big part of its charm is much like the interpreted/byte-coded languages that are so popular now. You could build things incrementally. And compiling/interpreting forth was so trivial. Nowadays, with great compilers for higher level languages and blinding fast interpreters/jits, the ease of Forth's compilation isn't that much of a differentiator, nor is its efficient interpretation.
These days I'm sticking with Python/Django, which has a lot of appeal. But there's a certain charm about Forth that I'll never forget.
The whole bulb-based generation of projectors always amazed me, with the astounding costs of replacement bulbs.
Does anyone know what drives that? Is it simply that they are associated with devices that used to cost several thousand? When my sharp projector's bulb blew, I looked around, and it is cheaper to buy a new projector than replace a freakin' bulb. And this new generation of projectors are selling for half of that.
I actually disassembled the bulb assembly on my Sharp, and dug the core element out of the epoxy, finding some identifying marks on it. It seems that very similar bulbs are sold for $20-$30 for use in fishtanks and hydroponics (seems that type of bulb element is popular among the pot growers:). They're also used in modestly priced headlights.
When I find something close to the same element, I will likely buy one, and try fixing the old bulb. The two questions I have, would be the type of epoxy to use, and the type of solder to use on the element's contacts; do they have to be special to deal with the high temperatures involved, or will standard epoxy/solder work? Also, it's hard to nail down what the specific "color temperature" was for the old projector, but I think getting a fairly bright/wide one will do, even if it's slightly off.
Anyhow, I'm glad to see the trend to smaller, lighter, and most importantly *cheaper* projection technologies.
*After* earning their actual degree, Lawyers have to pass the gruelling bar exam. Doctors have to do the medical board exams and a guelling internship. Engineers have to get their certifications.
IT graduates, just have to carry their piece of paper home. Sure you can get your Microsoft and other vendor-sponsored certifications, but these are generally jokes-marketing tools. At the very best they qualify you for some specific experience with some specific products, and don't thoroughly test your general IT skills. I've seen Cisco certified engineers leave me with bottlenecks due to looping routes, and generally trashed my network. I've seen MSCE's that are totally useless.
It always strikes me odd, that an engineer building anything has to build to standards, which are externally verified and permits obtained through inspections, etc.. Software engineers and IT staff can implement mission-critical systems without any standards or oversight. I know the software/computer hardware world makes things so incredibly flexible that it'd be hard to defines standards to regulate against; that's likely the problem. (If I want a bridge, everyone can pretty much agree upon what is wanted, a copy of something that has been done before, and approved, standardized. Not so much for a new application. For IT infrustructures, a case could be made for more standardization, I guess.)
But this flexibility it also results in some pretty horrible work being done out there.
Also, the standards in other fields allow for greater accountability. If an engineer, Doctor, lawyer, is incompetent and not providing the standard of care their industry demands, you can sue them for such. (I'm likely to sue my former lawyer for incompetence and ignorance of the law and my case.) But try suing a software engineer or IT person. There's just no clear standards of competence with which to judge him or her.
Having tests to weed through some bad ones, makes sense, and I see why it comes about. It's not perfect, but it tries to address a shortcoming in our field.
I've had one of my ideas take off into a big.COM investment, hundred employees, etc., etc... Died a.COM death.
A lot of work and inspiration went into it, but a lot of it was timing and luck, getting the investment and such.
Since then, I've had a lot of better ideas, but not been the type to be able to stir up investment, nor fund things myself...
I've had a number of people approach me with their own ideas, wanting to draw on my experience and talents. After a free "lunch meeting," I'll offer some week-long consulting on the idea for a couple of grand. Most will refuse. They want your input and your time for free. A couple of freakin' thousand for an initial review and commentary, and they will balk at that. It shows the lack of "putting your money where your mouth is" that a lot of the "I got a great idea!" guys actually have. Nine out of ten times, this is the case. And it is actually a pretty good self-regulating filter for the fly-by-night'ers.
That being said, I will shortly (if all goes well) being doing a number of months work for a fellow who has a good solid idea, an initial product, connections in the industry, some good business judgment, and willingness to invest in his own idea. Even though it's not "my baby," it's refreshing to see someone this committed to their idea, and I'm looking forward to a successful (and probably ongoing) relationship.
Hypthotically speaking, from what I've heard about the game, even my youngest (6) would enjoy the game (and would even progress this past weekend to the start tribes level herself). My second youngest would also love the game, and make it even further than that, loving the game. My 15 year old would also enjoy many hours in the game. Myself and my girlfriend would also have truly enjoyed the game, and make it to the tribes level, although not as far as my kids, and are looking forward to playing it further. All ages would seem to enjoy the game, and find value in it. Hypothetically.
If it were sale for $30, and no silly DRM, we would have bought a copy, but we didn't. The online game play looks very interesting, but with the DRM we won't bother to find that out, sadly. The torrented version (I hear) plays fine for single player, with no authentication hassles.
I bought Half-Life 2 a few years back, when I was living in a small cottage. Years later, no chance in hell of finding the box, my son asked me to play the game. After failing to find the original discs, I started a torrent going (I mean at least I could, hypothetically), but remembered that along with the lost boxed copy of Half-Life was an associated Steam account. I guessed at my probable username/password, and got in successfully. I realized I could now not just download patches (which used to take forever on my satellite internet in the boonies:), but I could also install the whole game from scratch. On multiple computers in the house. (With four kids, mobility between the PC's is very helpful). I ended up installing it on four different computers. We never used (and presumably couldn't) use more than one copy at once. That's fine. We weren't looking to abuse our purchase. We weren't looking to run more than one copy at once. We just wanted to play our one copy, when and where we wanted, and Steam allowed just that, and with very fast downloads. We had many, many hours of enjoyment going through the levels together, taking turns. If they had chosen EA/Spore-like DRM, this would have never happened. That has a *huge* amount of value to me.
Plus, there was a fair bit of additional content (forgotten highway, Counterstrike, etc...) that weren't in my original box. And some pretty reasonably prices for some additional promotional games they had running.
To even lump Steam into the pile of steaming DRM out there seems insane to me, when I see someone criticize it. It lets me download and play the game I bought, anywhere, anytime, even though it's a big honkin' game.
I wish EA would wake up and smell the roses. Steam has proven that license management doesn't have to be offensive to users, but they still persist. Such a waste, especially for such a cool game. Sure, check my account's validity and in-use status when I run it (no two-copies-at-once for a single account) but let me download and run it from anywhere. I'm happy, you're happy. It's not freakin' rocket science in this day and age...
Another poster points out how benign the actual agreement is; so the upshot of this is a first-time clickthrough.
Why haven't people revolted against the "you're submitting a secure form" for the first time or "you're navigating to an insecure site" for the first time warnings and crap that Mozilla and others have had for ages. They're *far* more annoying than an Eula, IMHO, as there seems to be a few of them...
Such a non-issue, I doubt it'll hurt them seriously. And for those seriously freaked out, Iceweasel is an easy workaround, that makes everyone happy.
I'm just impressed that they were able to get it working reliably enough to transfer that much data...
I always though the incredibly crappy quality/speed of cell phone data technology was a bit self-limiting on over-billing.
Maybe it's getting better.
I still think that cell phones/carriers should be mandated to have an accurate, real time billing meter being showed when it's being used. Like a taxi meter. When you're in your home area, with a plan, it confirms you're not paying extra. If you go over your plan minutes, it lets you know you're being billed. If you roam, it tells you you're being charged. Letting people know what they're racking up is only fair, and should be mandated. It is against the whole methodology used by all cell carriers, but the government should regulate and mandate this as a basic consumer protection.
I mentioned this in another thread, this is a more relevant one. I'm excited and ready to switch, but...:
Sigh...
I used to use Opera heavily (still do on occasion). When I zoom in/zoom out, it zooms the whole page, including images, as expected. Very handy, and easy to scale pages for appropriate viewing on a given device, browser windows, etc..
That was always a big beef of mine with Firefox, it never did it. But FireFox 3 added image scaling, whoohooo!
Now Chrome comes along. I love the process separation, Task manager, JavaScript speed. I'm ready to convert. But there's no scaling of images, just a lame-ass IE-ish text-size scaling.
Come on, it's 2008, it's not *that* hard to display an image scaled down (or up). In fact, the API calls you're using will likely do that for you. (And even if they didn't, there's probably a couple of thousand of open source libraries to do it for you; and coding image scaling yourself is fairly trivial...) I just don't get why browser manufacturers leave this out so frequently...
Pleeeeaaasse, Google, add this feature, and I'll convert.
I used to use Opera heavily (still do on occasion). When I zoom in/zoom out, it zooms the whole page, including images, as expected. Very handy, and easy to scale pages for appropriate viewing on a given device, browser windows, etc..
That was always a big beef of mine with Firefox, it never did it. But FireFox 3 added image scaling, whoohooo!
Now Chrome comes along. I love the process separation, Task manager, JavaScript speed. I'm ready to convert. But there's no scaling of images, just a lame-ass IE-ish text-size scaling.
Come on, it's 2008, it's not *that* hard to display an image scaled down (or up). In fact, the API calls you're using will likely do that for you. (And even if they didn't, there's probably a couple of thousand of open source libraries to do it for you; and coding image scaling yourself is fairly trivial...) I just don't get why browser manufacturers leave this out so frequently...
Pleeeeaaasse, Google, add this feature, and I'll convert.
Until you find out how much they are willing to offer. Just tell them "there is no set price, but you're open to offers."
I've received inquiries like this all the time for some domains I own. The typical offer is about $100.
Foreign entities that happen to match your name (unless your name is Coke or Nike) are unlikely to be multinational fortune 500 companies.
It never hurts to ask for offers, but in all likelihood, you're not going to get rich, nor is it even going to be worth the technical trouble involved in a transition.
Buried in those screen shots is a view of the Google Task Manager, showing how much memory and CPU usage each site is using.
I thought a Google browser could be pretty compelling; nice integration with google apps, no doubt, adherence to standards, hopefully a quick response on fixing compatibility issues as they are found.
But that Task Manager alone is likely to sell me. As much as I love Firefox 3, it's performance turns into a complete dog at times. (Not so much memory-wise, but CPU-wise.) With all pages supposedly idle, my CPU usage often goes up and stays there (not the 100% as per one common bug out there, but 20% or so, enough to be annoying).
I can close all tabs, and the CPU usage still stays there, until I restart.
If Google's Task Manager truly shows the source of any such slowdown (or doesn't posses the slowdown to start with), that's a browser-changing feature in my book. (And, generally knowing how much of CPU/mem pig each site can be, is very useful info as well.)
I had all my bills coming out of my account pre-authorized, years ago...
I got into a dispute with an ISP (I think it was, it was a long time ago, my memory is a bit hazy). I no longer wanted their service, and they kept billing me. So I called my bank to cancel my pre-authorization. They told me I couldn't do this without the permission of the billing party!
Now, there's a chance that this was incorrect information, but I've avoided pre-auth since then. If one party (the biller) suddenly has full rein on what they take from your bank account, and you have no recourse, and can not *stop* this pre-auth, then you are truly screwed in any dispute...
I was quite surprised. They even took two significant extra "setup" charges for a separate business I had, out of my personal account, that I swear I never authorized. They claimed my pre-auth allowed that.
Anyhow, the main point is, watch out what rights you are assigning in perpetuity when you sign any pre-authorization...
I used to be a huge MythTV fan, ran a family server for years, kept up with all the updates and tweaks, despite the constant hassle.
Then, on a whim, I tried the demo of SageTV (from SageTV.com). Trivial installation. Support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS (for *both* server and client). Slick look and feel. Extensible by third party add-ons. And it *just* *works*. The relatively low purchase prices get you listings (no fighting with zap2it importing, or now the per-year listings. Lost cost, but still a cost.)
The PlaceShift licenses (about $30, I think) allow add-on viewing stations, which can be any operating system, or even a $99 standalone box.
Sorry if this sounds like an ad; normally I'd lean towards the open source solution. But I found the Myth UI a bit lagging, somewhat awkward, and could never get additional viewing stations to perform well enough for normal use.
SageTV just works. It does an adaptive-bandwidth streaming thing for viewing over the web, too, which works surprisingly well.
Just an option to consider, since they have a free trial. (Time limited for the server/client, I think, and plastered with "trial" on the screen for their "placeshifter.")
The third party web interface is far better than Myth's, IMO, too.
One main reason I went with it, was some of the DVB-decoding software I use works a lot better on Windows, so Myth wasn't an option. But if I were do another Linux-based server, I'd seriously consider Myth again. and It seems to be somewhat of a one-man tech operation, which is probably why it's so successful and works so well:)
I bought a webcam from Staples, found the quality poor, and returned it. I could have sworn I did a factory reset, but six months later I started received emailed videos from some families rec room.:S (At the time, I was out of the country, and thought someone had stolen my home security video system, and was a bit freaked out...) But it turns out someone bought the refurb camera I returned, which still had my email notification in it.
So unintentionally, I was being email bombed by videos from someone else's house. I contacted the ISP of the originating videos repeatedly (Eastlink), which repeatedly ignored me. It took me going to the CTV and getting the story on national news to embarrass Eastlink into immediately contacting the people and resolving the problem. (Staples contacted me upon seeing the story, was incredibly apologetic, claimed they were putting new refurb policies in place, and said they could have tracked down the buyer for me. I didn't realized they could have done this; it would have been an easier route than the media...)
Contacting the media really worked to get the attention of the ISP. They did make me sound like a bit of pervert (sheeesh, it was a mistake, I wanted the videos stopped from the start!), but at least it had the desired result...
Therapist suggested patient buy a used cell phone, and talk into phone (without turning it on or calling anyone) whenever the need arose to talk to the voices. It worked well, since of course society generally considers it normal to talk into cell phones.
I sure hope that story is apoc... ummm. apocryph... ummm... is of dubious authenticity.
Voices in your head is a serious sign of schizophrenia, which can result in some very dangerous behaviour. It should be treated, not just by covering one symptom.
It's like dealing with Billy's constant desire to shoot things, by giving him a water gun. The problem is still there, and will likely result in a tragedy if not dealt with.
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I've always been a fan of the "subnotebook." I had the first model of the Toshiba Libretto, the size of VHS cassette, circa 1998. The odd person would laugh at its size, but meanwhile I was using it at restaurants, comfortably on a plane while eating a meal, and so forth.
(One time on a plane the stewardess pointed at my lap and said, "wow, that's the smallest one of those I've ever seen!" Man, did she ever turn red when she realized how that sounded. I held up the laptop to make it quite clear what she was referring to :S)
When Toshiba announced a new version of the Libretto, I jumped on buying one. Updated specs, wifi, bluetooth, 2ghz, yadda, yadda, yadda. I even bought the three year SystemGuard with it; even if a drink spilled on it, they would cover me.
Unfortuantely, I had a few hardware problems with it, post warrantee, but within the 3-year system guard. I had it to two different service depots, where it sat for months. When I got it back, nothing was done to it. Dropped it off again. The bluetooth and wifi weren't working. The DVD dock never did work right. I wrote a frustrated noted to the President of Toshiba Canada, and have been playing phone tag with someone ever since, trying to get this damn laptop working again. It's a good chunk of a year I've been without it.
I see these EEE PC's kicking around for a few hundred dollars. I could have bought a few of them, with what I spent on the Libretto (and not been without a tiny laptop for months). The System Guard warrantee alone would have paid for one. If I can't get half decent service on a more expensive "subnotebook," which I mainly use for wireless web access, email, word processing, and other lightweight tasks, I might as well pick up cheap and semi-disposable netbooks.
Toshiba, if you're listening, I would love to regain my trust and dedication to your brand; when I had a big company, we bought dozens of your laptops, but I don't think I'd ever touch them again, after this terrible service experience...
If I don't get some resolution before my System Guard is up this December, I'll likely just dispose of the Libretto on eBay, and pick up an EEE PC. A sad demise for a rather pioneering legacy by Toshiba. If the EEE PC dies outside the warrantee period, I'll just grab another one, or whatever else has come out since. It really is becoming a commodity item, which I welcome.
Looks like somebody forgot their Lithium pill today.
As mentioned in another post, as best as I can tell from the news articles, this is a Google Earth view of the area he went down. The Minaret Lake area is where the hiker found his ID and money, and the Minaret Peak is near where his plane hit.
From what I've been able to piece together from various news stories, the hiker was hiking around Minaret's Lake when he found the items, and Minaret's Peak may have been the location of the crash.
Here's an image from Google Earth of the possible area, looking South-West-ish, which would have been the direction Fossett was heading. The Minaret's do kinda jump up quickly, could have just been an accidental controlled flight into terrain...
I see a few smudges here and there, but nothing that looks definitively like a plane (the Google data could be pre-crash, as well, who knows).
Here's a site with a photo of the wreckage. Doesn't look like it was survivable...
No one is going to use a third party mail app, or music app, or other app that competes with your offerings, unless it is substantially better. Compete on your merits.
I'm a big Mac fan; switched to a MacBook and there's no going back. I love OS X, the hardware, the general approach and leadership of Jobs.
But this app store stuff is ridiculous. It's reminiscent of MS in the early days. "We encourage your development on our platform, until we get into the space." Just like MS started picking off app areas one by one, killing third party vendors supporting their platform (Spreadsheet, Word Processors, even TCP/IP stacks), Apple is going to cannibalize themselves if they keep this approach up. Even as a Mac Fanboi, I'm thinking this is outrageous and has to stop.
I'm also a developer, and was seriously considering dedicating myself to iPhone apps, but am putting that on hold until I see some change in policies. (Or at least more visibility as to the policy.)
If Opera (who makes a fast browser with no visible memory/cpu problems) can't make a mobile browser that doesn't die on "out of memory" on *every* page on my HTC SmartPhone, then what chance does Mozilla (the king of memory leaks and runaway CPU) have? I'd sure love to see a lean, mean, mobile Mozilla, but I have some serious doubts if they can pull it off.
The latest Opera mobile truly is unusable on my Windows Mobile smart phone (due to the out-of-memory-thing) which was quite disappointing to me. I've yet to come across a good mobile browsing experience, other than on an iPhone (which I won't buy due to price, lack of open app distribution, and insane data plans from Rogers). Sigh...
Oh, how could I forget... Forth did find a home as a powerful and efficient firmware language in OpenFirmware
I feel the same way about Forth... (I wonder if we were dating her at the same time?)
Some of the cool things I remember:
The version I used (the standard one, I think) came as a little bit of assembly for the core interpreter (which basically just reads an address, and calls it; reads and address, and calls it, etc...) and the rest was written in Forth itself. The interpreter/environment more or less was built on itself.
In the days when floppies were the standard, it used a fairly direct mapping between 1k blocks on the disk, and 64x16 screens. You'd write your forth more or less free-form (formatted how you want) on that 64x16 page, and it would be written directly as a disk block. If you used the word '-->' (just another forth defined word) it would load and execute the next consecutive disk block. Fairly elegant.
Because it's basically a stack based language of calls, it was fast to compile, fast to run, even on the 1mhz machines of the day.
The stack-ed-ness of it did lead to the code seeming a bit cryptic (moreso than Postscript, say). But the preferred style was to break things into fairly small "words" that you pulled together in other words; divide and conquer...
The old > keywords were neat constructs, too. One chunk told a word how to allocate memory, and the other chunk told how to perform operations on that memory at runtime. Clunky in today's world of automated garbage collection, but in its day, it was elegant and very fast.
I checked in on Forth a decode or so ago, and it seemed to have gotten away from its elegant roots a bit, and was a bit more fragmented. I believe it was popular with the robot crowd (people making them, not the robots themselves :), although in these days of dirt cheap ARM chips and the like, it's hard to imagine they would need the efficiency of Forth.
I think a big part of its charm is much like the interpreted/byte-coded languages that are so popular now. You could build things incrementally. And compiling/interpreting forth was so trivial. Nowadays, with great compilers for higher level languages and blinding fast interpreters/jits, the ease of Forth's compilation isn't that much of a differentiator, nor is its efficient interpretation.
These days I'm sticking with Python/Django, which has a lot of appeal. But there's a certain charm about Forth that I'll never forget.
The whole bulb-based generation of projectors always amazed me, with the astounding costs of replacement bulbs.
Does anyone know what drives that? Is it simply that they are associated with devices that used to cost several thousand? When my sharp projector's bulb blew, I looked around, and it is cheaper to buy a new projector than replace a freakin' bulb. And this new generation of projectors are selling for half of that.
I actually disassembled the bulb assembly on my Sharp, and dug the core element out of the epoxy, finding some identifying marks on it. It seems that very similar bulbs are sold for $20-$30 for use in fishtanks and hydroponics (seems that type of bulb element is popular among the pot growers :). They're also used in modestly priced headlights.
When I find something close to the same element, I will likely buy one, and try fixing the old bulb. The two questions I have, would be the type of epoxy to use, and the type of solder to use on the element's contacts; do they have to be special to deal with the high temperatures involved, or will standard epoxy/solder work? Also, it's hard to nail down what the specific "color temperature" was for the old projector, but I think getting a fairly bright/wide one will do, even if it's slightly off.
Anyhow, I'm glad to see the trend to smaller, lighter, and most importantly *cheaper* projection technologies.
*After* earning their actual degree, Lawyers have to pass the gruelling bar exam. Doctors have to do the medical board exams and a guelling internship. Engineers have to get their certifications.
IT graduates, just have to carry their piece of paper home. Sure you can get your Microsoft and other vendor-sponsored certifications, but these are generally jokes-marketing tools. At the very best they qualify you for some specific experience with some specific products, and don't thoroughly test your general IT skills. I've seen Cisco certified engineers leave me with bottlenecks due to looping routes, and generally trashed my network. I've seen MSCE's that are totally useless.
It always strikes me odd, that an engineer building anything has to build to standards, which are externally verified and permits obtained through inspections, etc.. Software engineers and IT staff can implement mission-critical systems without any standards or oversight. I know the software/computer hardware world makes things so incredibly flexible that it'd be hard to defines standards to regulate against; that's likely the problem. (If I want a bridge, everyone can pretty much agree upon what is wanted, a copy of something that has been done before, and approved, standardized. Not so much for a new application. For IT infrustructures, a case could be made for more standardization, I guess.)
But this flexibility it also results in some pretty horrible work being done out there.
Also, the standards in other fields allow for greater accountability. If an engineer, Doctor, lawyer, is incompetent and not providing the standard of care their industry demands, you can sue them for such. (I'm likely to sue my former lawyer for incompetence and ignorance of the law and my case.) But try suing a software engineer or IT person. There's just no clear standards of competence with which to judge him or her.
Having tests to weed through some bad ones, makes sense, and I see why it comes about. It's not perfect, but it tries to address a shortcoming in our field.
I've had one of my ideas take off into a big .COM investment, hundred employees, etc., etc... Died a .COM death.
A lot of work and inspiration went into it, but a lot of it was timing and luck, getting the investment and such.
Since then, I've had a lot of better ideas, but not been the type to be able to stir up investment, nor fund things myself...
I've had a number of people approach me with their own ideas, wanting to draw on my experience and talents. After a free "lunch meeting," I'll offer some week-long consulting on the idea for a couple of grand. Most will refuse. They want your input and your time for free. A couple of freakin' thousand for an initial review and commentary, and they will balk at that. It shows the lack of "putting your money where your mouth is" that a lot of the "I got a great idea!" guys actually have. Nine out of ten times, this is the case. And it is actually a pretty good self-regulating filter for the fly-by-night'ers.
That being said, I will shortly (if all goes well) being doing a number of months work for a fellow who has a good solid idea, an initial product, connections in the industry, some good business judgment, and willingness to invest in his own idea. Even though it's not "my baby," it's refreshing to see someone this committed to their idea, and I'm looking forward to a successful (and probably ongoing) relationship.
Hypthotically speaking, from what I've heard about the game, even my youngest (6) would enjoy the game (and would even progress this past weekend to the start tribes level herself). My second youngest would also love the game, and make it even further than that, loving the game. My 15 year old would also enjoy many hours in the game. Myself and my girlfriend would also have truly enjoyed the game, and make it to the tribes level, although not as far as my kids, and are looking forward to playing it further. All ages would seem to enjoy the game, and find value in it. Hypothetically.
If it were sale for $30, and no silly DRM, we would have bought a copy, but we didn't. The online game play looks very interesting, but with the DRM we won't bother to find that out, sadly. The torrented version (I hear) plays fine for single player, with no authentication hassles.
I bought Half-Life 2 a few years back, when I was living in a small cottage. Years later, no chance in hell of finding the box, my son asked me to play the game. After failing to find the original discs, I started a torrent going (I mean at least I could, hypothetically), but remembered that along with the lost boxed copy of Half-Life was an associated Steam account. I guessed at my probable username/password, and got in successfully. I realized I could now not just download patches (which used to take forever on my satellite internet in the boonies :), but I could also install the whole game from scratch. On multiple computers in the house. (With four kids, mobility between the PC's is very helpful). I ended up installing it on four different computers. We never used (and presumably couldn't) use more than one copy at once. That's fine. We weren't looking to abuse our purchase. We weren't looking to run more than one copy at once. We just wanted to play our one copy, when and where we wanted, and Steam allowed just that, and with very fast downloads. We had many, many hours of enjoyment going through the levels together, taking turns. If they had chosen EA/Spore-like DRM, this would have never happened. That has a *huge* amount of value to me.
Plus, there was a fair bit of additional content (forgotten highway, Counterstrike, etc...) that weren't in my original box. And some pretty reasonably prices for some additional promotional games they had running.
To even lump Steam into the pile of steaming DRM out there seems insane to me, when I see someone criticize it. It lets me download and play the game I bought, anywhere, anytime, even though it's a big honkin' game.
I wish EA would wake up and smell the roses. Steam has proven that license management doesn't have to be offensive to users, but they still persist. Such a waste, especially for such a cool game. Sure, check my account's validity and in-use status when I run it (no two-copies-at-once for a single account) but let me download and run it from anywhere. I'm happy, you're happy. It's not freakin' rocket science in this day and age...
Another poster points out how benign the actual agreement is; so the upshot of this is a first-time clickthrough.
Why haven't people revolted against the "you're submitting a secure form" for the first time or "you're navigating to an insecure site" for the first time warnings and crap that Mozilla and others have had for ages. They're *far* more annoying than an Eula, IMHO, as there seems to be a few of them...
Such a non-issue, I doubt it'll hurt them seriously. And for those seriously freaked out, Iceweasel is an easy workaround, that makes everyone happy.
I'm just impressed that they were able to get it working reliably enough to transfer that much data...
I always though the incredibly crappy quality/speed of cell phone data technology was a bit self-limiting on over-billing.
Maybe it's getting better.
I still think that cell phones/carriers should be mandated to have an accurate, real time billing meter being showed when it's being used. Like a taxi meter. When you're in your home area, with a plan, it confirms you're not paying extra. If you go over your plan minutes, it lets you know you're being billed. If you roam, it tells you you're being charged. Letting people know what they're racking up is only fair, and should be mandated. It is against the whole methodology used by all cell carriers, but the government should regulate and mandate this as a basic consumer protection.
I mentioned this in another thread, this is a more relevant one. I'm excited and ready to switch, but...:
Sigh...
I used to use Opera heavily (still do on occasion). When I zoom in/zoom out, it zooms the whole page, including images, as expected. Very handy, and easy to scale pages for appropriate viewing on a given device, browser windows, etc..
That was always a big beef of mine with Firefox, it never did it. But FireFox 3 added image scaling, whoohooo!
Now Chrome comes along. I love the process separation, Task manager, JavaScript speed. I'm ready to convert. But there's no scaling of images, just a lame-ass IE-ish text-size scaling.
Come on, it's 2008, it's not *that* hard to display an image scaled down (or up). In fact, the API calls you're using will likely do that for you. (And even if they didn't, there's probably a couple of thousand of open source libraries to do it for you; and coding image scaling yourself is fairly trivial...) I just don't get why browser manufacturers leave this out so frequently...
Pleeeeaaasse, Google, add this feature, and I'll convert.
Sigh...
I used to use Opera heavily (still do on occasion). When I zoom in/zoom out, it zooms the whole page, including images, as expected. Very handy, and easy to scale pages for appropriate viewing on a given device, browser windows, etc..
That was always a big beef of mine with Firefox, it never did it. But FireFox 3 added image scaling, whoohooo!
Now Chrome comes along. I love the process separation, Task manager, JavaScript speed. I'm ready to convert. But there's no scaling of images, just a lame-ass IE-ish text-size scaling.
Come on, it's 2008, it's not *that* hard to display an image scaled down (or up). In fact, the API calls you're using will likely do that for you. (And even if they didn't, there's probably a couple of thousand of open source libraries to do it for you; and coding image scaling yourself is fairly trivial...) I just don't get why browser manufacturers leave this out so frequently...
Pleeeeaaasse, Google, add this feature, and I'll convert.
Until you find out how much they are willing to offer. Just tell them "there is no set price, but you're open to offers."
I've received inquiries like this all the time for some domains I own. The typical offer is about $100.
Foreign entities that happen to match your name (unless your name is Coke or Nike) are unlikely to be multinational fortune 500 companies.
It never hurts to ask for offers, but in all likelihood, you're not going to get rich, nor is it even going to be worth the technical trouble involved in a transition.
How many other people, on Page 8, truly expected one more text bubble, "Flash, I'm looking at *you*..."
Buried in those screen shots is a view of the Google Task Manager, showing how much memory and CPU usage each site is using.
I thought a Google browser could be pretty compelling; nice integration with google apps, no doubt, adherence to standards, hopefully a quick response on fixing compatibility issues as they are found.
But that Task Manager alone is likely to sell me. As much as I love Firefox 3, it's performance turns into a complete dog at times. (Not so much memory-wise, but CPU-wise.) With all pages supposedly idle, my CPU usage often goes up and stays there (not the 100% as per one common bug out there, but 20% or so, enough to be annoying).
I can close all tabs, and the CPU usage still stays there, until I restart.
If Google's Task Manager truly shows the source of any such slowdown (or doesn't posses the slowdown to start with), that's a browser-changing feature in my book. (And, generally knowing how much of CPU/mem pig each site can be, is very useful info as well.)
I had all my bills coming out of my account pre-authorized, years ago...
I got into a dispute with an ISP (I think it was, it was a long time ago, my memory is a bit hazy). I no longer wanted their service, and they kept billing me. So I called my bank to cancel my pre-authorization. They told me I couldn't do this without the permission of the billing party!
Now, there's a chance that this was incorrect information, but I've avoided pre-auth since then. If one party (the biller) suddenly has full rein on what they take from your bank account, and you have no recourse, and can not *stop* this pre-auth, then you are truly screwed in any dispute...
I was quite surprised. They even took two significant extra "setup" charges for a separate business I had, out of my personal account, that I swear I never authorized. They claimed my pre-auth allowed that.
Anyhow, the main point is, watch out what rights you are assigning in perpetuity when you sign any pre-authorization...
I used to be a huge MythTV fan, ran a family server for years, kept up with all the updates and tweaks, despite the constant hassle.
Then, on a whim, I tried the demo of SageTV (from SageTV.com). Trivial installation. Support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS (for *both* server and client). Slick look and feel. Extensible by third party add-ons. And it *just* *works*. The relatively low purchase prices get you listings (no fighting with zap2it importing, or now the per-year listings. Lost cost, but still a cost.)
The PlaceShift licenses (about $30, I think) allow add-on viewing stations, which can be any operating system, or even a $99 standalone box.
Sorry if this sounds like an ad; normally I'd lean towards the open source solution. But I found the Myth UI a bit lagging, somewhat awkward, and could never get additional viewing stations to perform well enough for normal use.
SageTV just works. It does an adaptive-bandwidth streaming thing for viewing over the web, too, which works surprisingly well.
Just an option to consider, since they have a free trial. (Time limited for the server/client, I think, and plastered with "trial" on the screen for their "placeshifter.")
The third party web interface is far better than Myth's, IMO, too.
One main reason I went with it, was some of the DVB-decoding software I use works a lot better on Windows, so Myth wasn't an option. But if I were do another Linux-based server, I'd seriously consider Myth again. :)
and
It seems to be somewhat of a one-man tech operation, which is probably why it's so successful and works so well
I bought a webcam from Staples, found the quality poor, and returned it. I could have sworn I did a factory reset, but six months later I started received emailed videos from some families rec room. :S (At the time, I was out of the country, and thought someone had stolen my home security video system, and was a bit freaked out...) But it turns out someone bought the refurb camera I returned, which still had my email notification in it.
So unintentionally, I was being email bombed by videos from someone else's house. I contacted the ISP of the originating videos repeatedly (Eastlink), which repeatedly ignored me. It took me going to the CTV and getting the story on national news to embarrass Eastlink into immediately contacting the people and resolving the problem. (Staples contacted me upon seeing the story, was incredibly apologetic, claimed they were putting new refurb policies in place, and said they could have tracked down the buyer for me. I didn't realized they could have done this; it would have been an easier route than the media...)
Contacting the media really worked to get the attention of the ISP. They did make me sound like a bit of pervert (sheeesh, it was a mistake, I wanted the videos stopped from the start!), but at least it had the desired result...
Therapist suggested patient buy a used cell phone, and talk into phone (without turning it on or calling anyone) whenever the need arose to talk to the voices. It worked well, since of course society generally considers it normal to talk into cell phones.
I sure hope that story is apoc... ummm. apocryph... ummm... is of dubious authenticity.
Voices in your head is a serious sign of schizophrenia, which can result in some very dangerous behaviour. It should be treated, not just by covering one symptom.
It's like dealing with Billy's constant desire to shoot things, by giving him a water gun. The problem is still there, and will likely result in a tragedy if not dealt with.
#3 - Find a local swimming pool, strap on a pair of rollerblades, get a bicycle.
Okay, I'm on the bike wearing my rollerblades, at the local swimming pool. But I'm not sure I get this sport. What do I do next?