From the article: It's better if you have your own laptop to take with you.
I'd go this one better: make sure it has the latest version of Windows on it, if not the last two or three on distinct partitions.
I'm not a freelancer, but I recently gave freelance web development a go while I was, ah, "between jobs." My one big client came back badmouthing the work I did two months after the project was completed, mainly because I telecommuted the entire project from home using my Mac OS X desktop. This slowed down the project initially, because they wanted to give me Windows remote access software (and weren't bright enough to get VNC working through their firewall) and have me work out major problems in person instead of on the phone.
A physical presence is everything to a client, followed closely by your willingness to conform to their needs instead of imposing your own. Your clients probably use Windows heavily. When working with them, you should too.
Less distractions. Right now you have to take your eyes off the road in order to see the keypad on your phone; this lets you keep your eyes on what's in front of you, the same way Heads-Up Displays in fighter jets do.
Geez, what a flamebaiter. Do you really think that inventing a device to detect where you've "touched" a hologram, regardless of where it's being projected, is easy? They'd have built them ten, fifteen years ago if it was as simple as you seem to think.
Give the inventor credit, he's not patenting the idea of "touching" a hologram, he's patenting an actual implementation of it. Just because Slashdot loves mocking patents on business processes and software doesn't mean that all patents fall into those categories.
I can see some advantages to a keyboard you wouldn't have to touch, but I don't think I could use it.
This technology is intended to produce keyboards and touchscreens where none can physically exist; it's not really supposed to replace physical keyboards, except when the "wow" factor is wanted.
Anybody see the lack of tactile feedback as a problem?
Only if they fail to combine it with some sort of visual and/or audio feedback -- such as making the number you press blink white and go "bing!" when you touch it.
The pictures are too obviously Photoshopped, though, so it's not like this is how the implementation will actually look. I'm rather disappointed that such a snazzy technology couldn't include a few photos of the actual product in action.
What you didn't mention, I notice, is any tool to organize your images. Presumably you organize them yourself, which is great, but the charm of iPhoto is that it keeps them organized by date (and by virtual "film roll") for you. Manipulation is built in, and it always keeps the original, which GraphicConverter (the only app you mentioned which isn't free, btw) doesn't automatically do. Plus it will automatically export images into files, webpages or QuickTime movies, which saves you a lot of trouble configuring batch edits in GC.
If that's more than you need, then great, although you're not missing anything by replacing a free application with shareware.
HP calculators have had infrared beaming for at least twelve years; my 48SX was top-of-the-line when I was a sophomore in high school, and supported the beaming of programs, equations (I guess, we never used it that way) and other goodies. Like the Palm handhelds, though, the range is too limited to be used for cheating. You have to have both units a few inches away from each other, too far unless you're communicating with someone on the same table as you--in which case you're better off just writing it down on paper.
I miss my HP, I really do. RPN took some getting used to, but I put that thing through its paces for almost four years--trigonometry, calculus and pre-calc, four years of Math Team (don't laugh, it's no geekier than Slashdot) and an AP exam. Once I got to college, though, the math classes got more proof-oriented and less numbers-oriented. If I'd been an engineering student, I'm sure it would have been invaluable, but as a mathematics major it got relegated further and further back in my desk drawer. Nowadays I can't even remember how to use most of the power functions, let alone graph a polar parametric equation or plot a vector field.
To be fair, TI calculators can do almost everything those HPs could, and for a lower price. If HP can still make a top-of-the-line today, though, I say more power to them.
I don't own one, but my brother does; IIRC, the iTrip can broadcast on one of four FM frequencies: 89.1, 89.3, 89.5, or 89.7. This is because frequencies that low are usually only taken by local college/community stations, and most commercial stations use a frequency from 90.1 on up.
Long says an obvious combination of search terms would include the terms "bash history", "temporary" and "password".
Hmph. When I searched for those phrases at Google, all I got were a bunch of Linux technical how-tos and code samples. If this guy wants to teach us how to be hackers using Google, he's going to have to be more helpful than that!
What's the big deal about this being the English Channel? Swimming across it, yes. It's over twenty miles and the water's friggin' cold and you get to lay down on dry land after it's over.
But skydiving across it? "Across" implies that you started on land, not at a point five miles above that land. He could just as easily skydived that much horizontal distance anywhere else in the world and it would have (probably) been just as much of an accomplishment
Just seems like a strange sort of headline to me, that's all. It's like this guy was just trying to think of a way to get across the English Channel that no one else had done yet, and this was all he could come up with.
No, it's like saying that even if a journalist is bold and persuasive and daring and insightful enough to investigate the news and uncover the truth, he is lacking in his ability to be a journalist if he has a poor command of the English language.
Because that journalist (presumably) reports in the English language. But if a programmer never need to write assembler, or read it, or even know its syntax, there's no earthly reason for him to learn it -- only the languages he's being hired to exercise.
After all, in five years Salon.com may be gone from the web, and since neither Google nor the Internet Archive have a paid subscription, this story will be forever lost to the ages.
So kudos for reposting this valuable information to Slashdot! Without the efforts of others like you, internet surfers in generations to come might never understand the importance of, well, the efforts of others like you.
Without hands-on experience with the fundamentals of computer science that person is lacking at the most basic level
That's like saying that a journalist is lacking in his ability to write if he's not fully competent in Latin. Just because someone doesn't know how to allocate memory doesn't mean he can't code in a language that does it for him automatically.
Re:full article text, no pass required
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Y'know, two days in a row I've tried to use Salon's day-pass. I really have. I get nothing but a redirect to the request to subscribe.
I don't like the idea of reposting an entire article on Slashdot, either, but there's no other way for some of us to read what's being talked about.
And those cards can be analog modems, cellular modems, wi-fi networking transmitters, portable hard drives, flash memory, and probably a dozen other things I can't think of right now.
All I want is a universal port on the bottom of my cell phone, kinda like that, so I can sync it to my PC, connect a camera lens, add some removable memory, attach a real keyboard for SMS messaging, or whatever else the geniuses at Belkin can think of, instead of waiting for Samsung or Nokia or Sony to build one for me. My Palm handheld has one of these, why can't my phone?
Hate to mention it, but Sony owns a movie studio or two.
They own a music studio or two, as well. That hasn't exactly moved the SACD format to take off. As long as it's just as cheap or cheaper to buy a portable DVD player that's fully compatible with the DVD player they have at home, consumers will stick to the format that they know.
This will allow the UMD to store up to two hours of DVD quality video
...and not one title worth watching. C'mon, does Sony really think that all the motion picture studios are going to line up to release films in this proprietary format when you can already buy DVD players at Wal-Mart for $70?
Wireless 802.11, USB 2.0, 7.1 channel Audio, and a 24bit 16x9 screen TFT LCD screen. Sony has called this device the 'Walkman for the 21st Century', and plans to allow the user to enjoy movies and music for the device, along with games.
wireless internet play... DVD audio and video... y'know, fully half the reason the Nintendo Game Boy series is so successful is because they make all their devices with a target price of $100, give or take. Portable DVD players are selling for $200-$300 these days, regardless of brand, and that's before you wed a powerful gaming engine and $50-$100 worth of wireless networking to it.
With those kinds of specs, I imagine it'll sell for something like $400 minimum, weigh almost as much as a laptop and suck batteries dry faster than James Bond opening a bra clasp. It's either baloney or it's a niche gadget, which is not something you want when you're marketing a gaming device.
"Wearing your tie too tight could put you at increased risk of blindness, say doctors."
So buy some shirts with an extra half-inch in the collar, guys.
Y'know, current trends in fashion notwithstanding, I like neckties. They break up an otherwise monotonous dress shirt, and give us white-collar male workers an easy way to add some multi-colored style to our two-color uniform. They just plain look professional. And they're only uncomfortable if you're wearing them wrong, or if your collar is too small.
"Xbox wrested the No. 2 video-game console position (behind Sony PlayStation 2) from Nintendo's GameCube in the U.S. and Europe and has sold more than 9.4 million consoles worldwide--more than forecast." From the article.
Regardless of how much money MS may lose on the hardware, the XBox is an unqualified success in the videogame market. Last I checked, it was still outselling Nintendo's GameCube.
Watching Microsoft explore new technology markets is like watching King Kong battling airplanes atop the Empire State Building. To win, the airplanes need to be lucky with every shot. King Kong only needs to be lucky once.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article: It's better if you have your own laptop to take with you.
I'd go this one better: make sure it has the latest version of Windows on it, if not the last two or three on distinct partitions.
I'm not a freelancer, but I recently gave freelance web development a go while I was, ah, "between jobs." My one big client came back badmouthing the work I did two months after the project was completed, mainly because I telecommuted the entire project from home using my Mac OS X desktop. This slowed down the project initially, because they wanted to give me Windows remote access software (and weren't bright enough to get VNC working through their firewall) and have me work out major problems in person instead of on the phone.
A physical presence is everything to a client, followed closely by your willingness to conform to their needs instead of imposing your own. Your clients probably use Windows heavily. When working with them, you should too.
There are no Pep Boys on Mars
No, but there are several very close by.
Just what we need, more distractions for drivers.
Less distractions. Right now you have to take your eyes off the road in order to see the keypad on your phone; this lets you keep your eyes on what's in front of you, the same way Heads-Up Displays in fighter jets do.
Geez, what a flamebaiter. Do you really think that inventing a device to detect where you've "touched" a hologram, regardless of where it's being projected, is easy? They'd have built them ten, fifteen years ago if it was as simple as you seem to think.
Give the inventor credit, he's not patenting the idea of "touching" a hologram, he's patenting an actual implementation of it. Just because Slashdot loves mocking patents on business processes and software doesn't mean that all patents fall into those categories.
I can see some advantages to a keyboard you wouldn't have to touch, but I don't think I could use it.
This technology is intended to produce keyboards and touchscreens where none can physically exist; it's not really supposed to replace physical keyboards, except when the "wow" factor is wanted.
...they do it just fine on the NYT article
Anybody see the lack of tactile feedback as a problem?
Only if they fail to combine it with some sort of visual and/or audio feedback -- such as making the number you press blink white and go "bing!" when you touch it.
The pictures are too obviously Photoshopped, though, so it's not like this is how the implementation will actually look. I'm rather disappointed that such a snazzy technology couldn't include a few photos of the actual product in action.
What you didn't mention, I notice, is any tool to organize your images. Presumably you organize them yourself, which is great, but the charm of iPhoto is that it keeps them organized by date (and by virtual "film roll") for you. Manipulation is built in, and it always keeps the original, which GraphicConverter (the only app you mentioned which isn't free, btw) doesn't automatically do. Plus it will automatically export images into files, webpages or QuickTime movies, which saves you a lot of trouble configuring batch edits in GC.
If that's more than you need, then great, although you're not missing anything by replacing a free application with shareware.
HP calculators have had infrared beaming for at least twelve years; my 48SX was top-of-the-line when I was a sophomore in high school, and supported the beaming of programs, equations (I guess, we never used it that way) and other goodies. Like the Palm handhelds, though, the range is too limited to be used for cheating. You have to have both units a few inches away from each other, too far unless you're communicating with someone on the same table as you--in which case you're better off just writing it down on paper.
I miss my HP, I really do. RPN took some getting used to, but I put that thing through its paces for almost four years--trigonometry, calculus and pre-calc, four years of Math Team (don't laugh, it's no geekier than Slashdot) and an AP exam. Once I got to college, though, the math classes got more proof-oriented and less numbers-oriented. If I'd been an engineering student, I'm sure it would have been invaluable, but as a mathematics major it got relegated further and further back in my desk drawer. Nowadays I can't even remember how to use most of the power functions, let alone graph a polar parametric equation or plot a vector field.
To be fair, TI calculators can do almost everything those HPs could, and for a lower price. If HP can still make a top-of-the-line today, though, I say more power to them.
I don't own one, but my brother does; IIRC, the iTrip can broadcast on one of four FM frequencies: 89.1, 89.3, 89.5, or 89.7. This is because frequencies that low are usually only taken by local college/community stations, and most commercial stations use a frequency from 90.1 on up.
Long says an obvious combination of search terms would include the terms "bash history", "temporary" and "password".
Hmph. When I searched for those phrases at Google, all I got were a bunch of Linux technical how-tos and code samples. If this guy wants to teach us how to be hackers using Google, he's going to have to be more helpful than that!
What's the big deal about this being the English Channel? Swimming across it, yes. It's over twenty miles and the water's friggin' cold and you get to lay down on dry land after it's over.
But skydiving across it? "Across" implies that you started on land, not at a point five miles above that land. He could just as easily skydived that much horizontal distance anywhere else in the world and it would have (probably) been just as much of an accomplishment
Just seems like a strange sort of headline to me, that's all. It's like this guy was just trying to think of a way to get across the English Channel that no one else had done yet, and this was all he could come up with.
Bureau of Indian Affairs - are these the people responsible for outsourcing IT jobs to India?
Ahh, Slashdot. Home of anonymous cowards who know lots about corrupt bureaucrats and nothing about anything else.
Two seconds at Google turned up this informational URL. Go learn something about your government that's actually true.
No, it's like saying that even if a journalist is bold and persuasive and daring and insightful enough to investigate the news and uncover the truth, he is lacking in his ability to be a journalist if he has a poor command of the English language.
Because that journalist (presumably) reports in the English language. But if a programmer never need to write assembler, or read it, or even know its syntax, there's no earthly reason for him to learn it -- only the languages he's being hired to exercise.
After all, in five years Salon.com may be gone from the web, and since neither Google nor the Internet Archive have a paid subscription, this story will be forever lost to the ages.
So kudos for reposting this valuable information to Slashdot! Without the efforts of others like you, internet surfers in generations to come might never understand the importance of, well, the efforts of others like you.
Without hands-on experience with the fundamentals of computer science that person is lacking at the most basic level
That's like saying that a journalist is lacking in his ability to write if he's not fully competent in Latin. Just because someone doesn't know how to allocate memory doesn't mean he can't code in a language that does it for him automatically.
Y'know, two days in a row I've tried to use Salon's day-pass. I really have. I get nothing but a redirect to the request to subscribe.
I don't like the idea of reposting an entire article on Slashdot, either, but there's no other way for some of us to read what's being talked about.
And I can swap, well, PCMCIA cards.
And those cards can be analog modems, cellular modems, wi-fi networking transmitters, portable hard drives, flash memory, and probably a dozen other things I can't think of right now.
All I want is a universal port on the bottom of my cell phone, kinda like that, so I can sync it to my PC, connect a camera lens, add some removable memory, attach a real keyboard for SMS messaging, or whatever else the geniuses at Belkin can think of, instead of waiting for Samsung or Nokia or Sony to build one for me. My Palm handheld has one of these, why can't my phone?
Hate to mention it, but Sony owns a movie studio or two.
They own a music studio or two, as well. That hasn't exactly moved the SACD format to take off. As long as it's just as cheap or cheaper to buy a portable DVD player that's fully compatible with the DVD player they have at home, consumers will stick to the format that they know.
...doesn't this sound a bit excessive to anybody?
Wireless 802.11, USB 2.0, 7.1 channel Audio, and a 24bit 16x9 screen TFT LCD screen. Sony has called this device the 'Walkman for the 21st Century', and plans to allow the user to enjoy movies and music for the device, along with games.
wireless internet play... DVD audio and video... y'know, fully half the reason the Nintendo Game Boy series is so successful is because they make all their devices with a target price of $100, give or take. Portable DVD players are selling for $200-$300 these days, regardless of brand, and that's before you wed a powerful gaming engine and $50-$100 worth of wireless networking to it.
With those kinds of specs, I imagine it'll sell for something like $400 minimum, weigh almost as much as a laptop and suck batteries dry faster than James Bond opening a bra clasp. It's either baloney or it's a niche gadget, which is not something you want when you're marketing a gaming device.
"Wearing your tie too tight could put you at increased risk of blindness, say doctors."
So buy some shirts with an extra half-inch in the collar, guys.
Y'know, current trends in fashion notwithstanding, I like neckties. They break up an otherwise monotonous dress shirt, and give us white-collar male workers an easy way to add some multi-colored style to our two-color uniform. They just plain look professional. And they're only uncomfortable if you're wearing them wrong, or if your collar is too small.
"Xbox wrested the No. 2 video-game console position (behind Sony PlayStation 2) from Nintendo's GameCube in the U.S. and Europe and has sold more than 9.4 million consoles worldwide--more than forecast." From the article.
Regardless of how much money MS may lose on the hardware, the XBox is an unqualified success in the videogame market. Last I checked, it was still outselling Nintendo's GameCube.
Watching Microsoft explore new technology markets is like watching King Kong battling airplanes atop the Empire State Building. To win, the airplanes need to be lucky with every shot. King Kong only needs to be lucky once.