This will settle once and for all whether or not Google's motto represents true company ethics, or pandering. Go, Google! Set a true example for the modern corporate world to follow!
Well, it was interesting to see the times he posted, but of course everyone here knows that learning a keyboard takes practice. Months of practice.
By the end of it, I could type 100wpm on my Zaurus C760 - almost as fast as with a real keyboard. I could type about 60 on my treo 650. I've got an n900 now, and I've been hanging around 50. So there are substantial variances in keyboard quality and layout (at least on these devices).. but what was more interesting were the learning curves. My speed doubled on the Treo in the first week. It over doubled on the C760 (slowly, over its 5 year lifespan). But I'm not getting any faster on the n900, sadly.
All of this aside.. the main problem with on-screen keyboards?
They take up half (or more) of your display!
This is one point I'm amazed people are able to get beyond. Sure - it's a rare use case... but terminals are unusable with an on-screen keyboard. More commonly, web forms are confusing. I can't even imagine trying to work on a document or spreadsheet. The screen constantly changes as you need to enter data!
I believe that if you can get by under those conditions, the speed difference between hardware and virtual keyboards is mostly irrelevant. How much data entry are you really doing?
If this is true and accurate, this may be one of the biggest energy science advances since nuclear fission. A >75% efficient solar cell that can be manufactured for, say, $100/kW?
I want to believe this is true, and commercialization is just around the corner... because if it is, this could solve our coal-power CO2 emissions overnight.
A 3x4 meter panel of this stuff would run an average North-American home year-round (heating, A/C, hot water), and it sounds like it could cost $1-2k. Even with $5k worth of support hardware (batteries, inverter/charge controller, transfers) this system would pay for itself in under 5 years.
The right, the left, and the feds are all agreeing on something...
They are going to be skinned alive and rolled in rock salt if they go to court soon.
As Bender would say,"There boned"
Sad thing is I bet the IT flunkies take the brunt of it and not the school admins.
What really bothers me is what made them think this was OK?
I don't think it's sad the "IT flunkies" will take the brunt of it at all.
As an "IT flunkie" myself, I've been fired for gross insubordination once. If you are asked to do something morally questionable, say no. If you are asked to do something morally despicable, yell no. If you get fired for it, leave. Find work elsewhere.
In my opinion, if you choose to "just obey orders" then suffer the consequences. Have a little backbone and take personal responsibility for your actions.
If I were working in IT at this school and found out about this system, I would write a letter explaining my intent to document it for the police, sign and date it, and send it to the school administrator with registered mail. Then I would detail the system to the police. End of story.
I agree with you 100%. Anyone who spends >$250 on a MID/smartphone to make phone calls is an idiot.
And on that note... check out the n900. I got one a couple months ago, and it's exactly what you're describing. It runs Debian ("Maemo"; though this may change to a Maemo/Moblin hybrid called Meego), full X11 with gtk/Qt, and a mobile version of firefox with flash. It includes skype out-of-the-box (including contact dialing from the main contacts system). It is outstanding.
The problem is that we all have a different definition of "safe."
When I was growing up, my parents had a definition that included things like: good nutrition, outdoor exercise, avoiding physical violence, good hygene, "look both ways before crossing the street," etc.
Today's parents seem to be almost monomaniacally focused on sex and terror.
I don't know what that means long-term, but I don't think the Australian government, Yahoo, or Google should be helping us find out..
If a public servant uses illegally obtained information (ie. warrantless wiretap), all evidence derived from that is "poisoned." That is, during the trial, if any information can be linked with illegal surveillance, violation of the 5th amendment, etc., it is "poisoned fruit" and must be discarded.
If a case is declared a mistrial, everyone responsible for poisoning the evidence is given a warning.
On the third warning, the servant(s) are permanently released from their position(s), and cannot re-apply for 2 years.
Everyone wins - the guilty are more likely to be found and convicted (higher standard of evidence), the innocent are spared, and revolution is postponed (the constitution is obeyed).
Maemo and Android don't really compete in the same markets (yet). You can use either to accomplish many of the same tasks, but while Android is a great phone and java execution environment, Maemo is a desktop OS (Linux + GNU + X11) with small-screen widgets. The latest Maemo device (the n900) happens to have a phone onboard, but it's almost periphery.
I strongly suspect that someone will build a nice clean Android environment for Maemo soon, and the point will be moot. If you want an easy-to-use smartphone, buy Android. If you want a pocket computer with radios onboard (the real future, I believe), go Maemo.
...or the DNS cache gets poisoned, as I once saw. (Thankfully, SSH does a reverse lookup as well and checks the result matches the input, and bails if they don't.)
So long as he's already authenticated the server in the past, DNS poisoning is useless (even aside from reverse DNS validation). The moment he tries to reconnect to the (wrong) host the key check will fail.
I presume that youths will be denied licenses to the Internet.
Contrary to what the idiot think-of-the-children crowd would have you believe, young people are thinking humans, and need access to the Internet to learn and communicate. That all they think about is porn is a testament to how shallow and ignorant they are, and it is the children of these people who need 'net access the most.
A nation that bans is minors from the 'net will not be able to compete on the world stage in 20 years.
I believe it's time to declare Internet access to be a fundamental human right which cannot be legally denied except through standard criminal punishments (ie. jail).
Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Right to freedom of movement. Right to own property. Right to remain silent. Right to expression.
I humbly suggest we add: right to connect to the Internet.
The Internet is no longer a whizbang gadget with potential; it is the way we communicate. It is used for banking, entertainment, conversation, research, coordination, purchases, government facilities, mapping/navigation, finding employment...
The concept that this can be denied to someone without due course of law is utterly unacceptable.
All of this complexity makes me appreciate the beauty and simplicity of my n900. It doesn't suspend at all. It simply slows the processor clock to reduce battery usage while the screen is off. A heavy load task will encourage the CPU to upclock again if it needs it.
Sure, battery life isn't as good as Android's. But really... how often are you without a USB charge port for longer than 48 hours?
Ok, I talked it up a little. But I've gone far past the honeymoon phase... I already rewrote my sudoers (so I can just sudo su - with a password), changed the hostname, set up openvpn, cleaned up the filesystem layout, and recently I've been playing with the sound engine, trying to hack in a more useful equalizer.
It has some issues, sure... but amazingly few for a device only 2 months old. I have confidence Nokia will address them in the upcoming updates, and if not... hey... more hacking.:)
I know it's too late for this response now, but hope you read it anyway.:)
I had a c760, and it was the device I wanted to love, so much. I built custom distros, ran pdaXrom, openzaurus/angstrom, the stock rom... you name it. Had a wifi card, bluetooth card, 2gb SD card.. It was way ahead of its time.
And that was my problem with it. It just.. didn't.. work.. properly. It froze, it failed to resume, it had no onboard radios (so you were stuck with either 802.11 or BT). It didn't have enough RAM, and it had a useless 256mb ROM that constantly corrupted itself. Sharp utterly abandoned the product. Linux 2.6 support was too little, too late (due to all custom hardware with little driver porting incentive).
I also hated ipkg... yes.:)
It was a valiant attempt, but filled me with sorrow. The N900, on the other hand, is the Zaurus Done Right.
Though this isn't directly related to running OSX on the n900, I just wanted to add that.. I'm not surprised.
A while back I posted a story that was rejected, asking if any fellow/.'ers had any experience with the n900 from a Unix admin's perspective. To me it seemed like a dream-come-true device: high-res screen, fast CPU, lots of ram... and most importantly, running Debian.
I had to find out, so I bought one about 3 weeks ago. It really, truly is a dream-come-true device.
I swear I'm not affiliated with Nokia in any way; I'm a Unix admin for a largish web firm. But if anyone else is wondering, yes it runs a Debian-derived OS. Yes, you can SSH into it as root, over 3G/GPRS, even if the phone is "off." Yes, crond works. Yes it runs native X11 and you can run your X11 apps (ie. directory manager, xterms, vncviewer, pidgin, openoffice/koffice, etc). Yes it's stable. The keyboard is usable, the UI is quick, and task switching is a breeze. The filesystem layout is mostly sensible, and you can apt-get dist-upgrade to get updates directly from Nokia (and other repositories)!
That blew me away when I first saw it so let me say it again: Nokia is using apt to send updates OTA to the phone! Proper version tagging and dependency management, on a phone!
It doesn't suspend like the crappy Zaurus did... when you hit the power switch, it shuts off the screen and (I believe) encourages the processor to drop to a very slow cycle rate (unless something heavy is running). So your apps continue to run. Battery life is ~16-24h with a constant GSM data/wifi connection, so you must charge every night. But it's so worth it.
Everything about it is done the way this 15-year Linux/Solaris admin thinks it should be done.
So, back (slightly) on-topic.. it doesn't surprise me in the least that they got OSX to boot under an emulator. The n900 is quite literally a pocket Debian workstation that happens to have a GSM radio onboard.
I couldn't deal with that myself. While I've never actually fired a real firearm, I play a lot of milsim paintball, and I get totally freaked out walking around with a charged gun without the safety on (unless suited up). The first thing I reach for when I've executed a mission is the safety, and I only go off safe when there's a possibility of danger.
I always keep my finger off the trigger unless I'm preparing to engage a threat.
I guess, needless to say, it's different in the realworld, where you just don't know when/where those threats will come from.
It's not right that everyone in the airplane has to put up with your stench if you haven't quit smoking yet. However who is harmed, apart from yourself, if you wear headphones and crank up the volume?
Was with you right up until this point. Then ya blew it.
I happen to find the sound of someone else's loud headphones far more annoying than the smell of smoke. No, I am not a smoker, but I hang around people who do.
So I'll tell ya what.
I'll tolerate your loud headphone music if you tolerate the smell of other peoples' smoke.
That way, we all win.
The danger comes in precisely when people's annoyances develop into calls for law, which is what you've just done for smoking.
Presumably I'm one of those stupid people you're referring to, because I don't think I've read a single post on/. as nauseating as this.
This is about the worst justification for the nanny state I have ever heard.
I cannot believe that you can, with a straight face, justify a TEN YEAR prison sentence for no-other-harm-caused driving with a BAC over some arbitrary and low percentage (0.05% presumably). Honestly I cannot believe it.
Do you have any concept... any perception... of what TEN YEARS is? You think it is morally acceptable to take 10 years from someone for the mistake of driving > 0.05% BAC?
Reflect on life for a moment. Because if everyone thought like you, this world would be unlivable.
Slashdot Mirror
Even with 365 days a year, there is 50% probability that two people will have the same birthday in any random group of 23 people.
Typical. How US-centric of you.
This will settle once and for all whether or not Google's motto represents true company ethics, or pandering. Go, Google! Set a true example for the modern corporate world to follow!
Well, it was interesting to see the times he posted, but of course everyone here knows that learning a keyboard takes practice. Months of practice.
By the end of it, I could type 100wpm on my Zaurus C760 - almost as fast as with a real keyboard. I could type about 60 on my treo 650. I've got an n900 now, and I've been hanging around 50. So there are substantial variances in keyboard quality and layout (at least on these devices) .. but what was more interesting were the learning curves. My speed doubled on the Treo in the first week. It over doubled on the C760 (slowly, over its 5 year lifespan). But I'm not getting any faster on the n900, sadly.
All of this aside.. the main problem with on-screen keyboards?
They take up half (or more) of your display!
This is one point I'm amazed people are able to get beyond. Sure - it's a rare use case... but terminals are unusable with an on-screen keyboard. More commonly, web forms are confusing. I can't even imagine trying to work on a document or spreadsheet. The screen constantly changes as you need to enter data!
I believe that if you can get by under those conditions, the speed difference between hardware and virtual keyboards is mostly irrelevant. How much data entry are you really doing?
If this is true and accurate, this may be one of the biggest energy science advances since nuclear fission. A >75% efficient solar cell that can be manufactured for, say, $100/kW?
I want to believe this is true, and commercialization is just around the corner... because if it is, this could solve our coal-power CO2 emissions overnight.
A 3x4 meter panel of this stuff would run an average North-American home year-round (heating, A/C, hot water), and it sounds like it could cost $1-2k. Even with $5k worth of support hardware (batteries, inverter/charge controller, transfers) this system would pay for itself in under 5 years.
Ah. :) In that case, agree 100%.
The right, the left, and the feds are all agreeing on something... They are going to be skinned alive and rolled in rock salt if they go to court soon. As Bender would say,"There boned" Sad thing is I bet the IT flunkies take the brunt of it and not the school admins. What really bothers me is what made them think this was OK?
I don't think it's sad the "IT flunkies" will take the brunt of it at all.
As an "IT flunkie" myself, I've been fired for gross insubordination once. If you are asked to do something morally questionable, say no. If you are asked to do something morally despicable, yell no. If you get fired for it, leave. Find work elsewhere.
In my opinion, if you choose to "just obey orders" then suffer the consequences. Have a little backbone and take personal responsibility for your actions.
If I were working in IT at this school and found out about this system, I would write a letter explaining my intent to document it for the police, sign and date it, and send it to the school administrator with registered mail. Then I would detail the system to the police. End of story.
I agree with you 100%. Anyone who spends >$250 on a MID/smartphone to make phone calls is an idiot.
And on that note... check out the n900. I got one a couple months ago, and it's exactly what you're describing. It runs Debian ("Maemo"; though this may change to a Maemo/Moblin hybrid called Meego), full X11 with gtk/Qt, and a mobile version of firefox with flash. It includes skype out-of-the-box (including contact dialing from the main contacts system). It is outstanding.
The problem is that we all have a different definition of "safe."
When I was growing up, my parents had a definition that included things like: good nutrition, outdoor exercise, avoiding physical violence, good hygene, "look both ways before crossing the street," etc.
Today's parents seem to be almost monomaniacally focused on sex and terror.
I don't know what that means long-term, but I don't think the Australian government, Yahoo, or Google should be helping us find out..
I have a proposal.
If a public servant uses illegally obtained information (ie. warrantless wiretap), all evidence derived from that is "poisoned." That is, during the trial, if any information can be linked with illegal surveillance, violation of the 5th amendment, etc., it is "poisoned fruit" and must be discarded.
If a case is declared a mistrial, everyone responsible for poisoning the evidence is given a warning.
On the third warning, the servant(s) are permanently released from their position(s), and cannot re-apply for 2 years.
Everyone wins - the guilty are more likely to be found and convicted (higher standard of evidence), the innocent are spared, and revolution is postponed (the constitution is obeyed).
Game over. :(
Maemo and Android don't really compete in the same markets (yet). You can use either to accomplish many of the same tasks, but while Android is a great phone and java execution environment, Maemo is a desktop OS (Linux + GNU + X11) with small-screen widgets. The latest Maemo device (the n900) happens to have a phone onboard, but it's almost periphery.
I strongly suspect that someone will build a nice clean Android environment for Maemo soon, and the point will be moot. If you want an easy-to-use smartphone, buy Android. If you want a pocket computer with radios onboard (the real future, I believe), go Maemo.
You're in for a treat. The n900 is everything you think it'll be, and more. :)
If you're not already there, check out talk.maemo.org. Lots of active threads and great resources. Welcome to the club. :p
So long as he's already authenticated the server in the past, DNS poisoning is useless (even aside from reverse DNS validation). The moment he tries to reconnect to the (wrong) host the key check will fail.
I presume that youths will be denied licenses to the Internet.
Contrary to what the idiot think-of-the-children crowd would have you believe, young people are thinking humans, and need access to the Internet to learn and communicate. That all they think about is porn is a testament to how shallow and ignorant they are, and it is the children of these people who need 'net access the most.
A nation that bans is minors from the 'net will not be able to compete on the world stage in 20 years.
I believe it's time to declare Internet access to be a fundamental human right which cannot be legally denied except through standard criminal punishments (ie. jail).
Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Right to freedom of movement. Right to own property. Right to remain silent. Right to expression.
I humbly suggest we add: right to connect to the Internet.
The Internet is no longer a whizbang gadget with potential; it is the way we communicate. It is used for banking, entertainment, conversation, research, coordination, purchases, government facilities, mapping/navigation, finding employment...
The concept that this can be denied to someone without due course of law is utterly unacceptable.
All of this complexity makes me appreciate the beauty and simplicity of my n900. It doesn't suspend at all. It simply slows the processor clock to reduce battery usage while the screen is off. A heavy load task will encourage the CPU to upclock again if it needs it.
Sure, battery life isn't as good as Android's. But really... how often are you without a USB charge port for longer than 48 hours?
Ok, I talked it up a little. But I've gone far past the honeymoon phase... I already rewrote my sudoers (so I can just sudo su - with a password), changed the hostname, set up openvpn, cleaned up the filesystem layout, and recently I've been playing with the sound engine, trying to hack in a more useful equalizer.
It has some issues, sure... but amazingly few for a device only 2 months old. I have confidence Nokia will address them in the upcoming updates, and if not... hey ... more hacking. :)
I know it's too late for this response now, but hope you read it anyway. :)
I had a c760, and it was the device I wanted to love, so much. I built custom distros, ran pdaXrom, openzaurus/angstrom, the stock rom... you name it. Had a wifi card, bluetooth card, 2gb SD card.. It was way ahead of its time.
And that was my problem with it. It just.. didn't.. work.. properly. It froze, it failed to resume, it had no onboard radios (so you were stuck with either 802.11 or BT). It didn't have enough RAM, and it had a useless 256mb ROM that constantly corrupted itself. Sharp utterly abandoned the product. Linux 2.6 support was too little, too late (due to all custom hardware with little driver porting incentive).
I also hated ipkg... yes. :)
It was a valiant attempt, but filled me with sorrow. The N900, on the other hand, is the Zaurus Done Right.
Though this isn't directly related to running OSX on the n900, I just wanted to add that.. I'm not surprised.
A while back I posted a story that was rejected, asking if any fellow /.'ers had any experience with the n900 from a Unix admin's perspective. To me it seemed like a dream-come-true device: high-res screen, fast CPU, lots of ram... and most importantly, running Debian.
I had to find out, so I bought one about 3 weeks ago. It really, truly is a dream-come-true device.
I swear I'm not affiliated with Nokia in any way; I'm a Unix admin for a largish web firm. But if anyone else is wondering, yes it runs a Debian-derived OS. Yes, you can SSH into it as root, over 3G/GPRS, even if the phone is "off." Yes, crond works. Yes it runs native X11 and you can run your X11 apps (ie. directory manager, xterms, vncviewer, pidgin, openoffice/koffice, etc). Yes it's stable. The keyboard is usable, the UI is quick, and task switching is a breeze. The filesystem layout is mostly sensible, and you can apt-get dist-upgrade to get updates directly from Nokia (and other repositories)!
That blew me away when I first saw it so let me say it again: Nokia is using apt to send updates OTA to the phone! Proper version tagging and dependency management, on a phone!
It doesn't suspend like the crappy Zaurus did... when you hit the power switch, it shuts off the screen and (I believe) encourages the processor to drop to a very slow cycle rate (unless something heavy is running). So your apps continue to run. Battery life is ~16-24h with a constant GSM data/wifi connection, so you must charge every night. But it's so worth it.
Everything about it is done the way this 15-year Linux/Solaris admin thinks it should be done.
So, back (slightly) on-topic.. it doesn't surprise me in the least that they got OSX to boot under an emulator. The n900 is quite literally a pocket Debian workstation that happens to have a GSM radio onboard.
I couldn't deal with that myself. While I've never actually fired a real firearm, I play a lot of milsim paintball, and I get totally freaked out walking around with a charged gun without the safety on (unless suited up). The first thing I reach for when I've executed a mission is the safety, and I only go off safe when there's a possibility of danger.
I always keep my finger off the trigger unless I'm preparing to engage a threat.
I guess, needless to say, it's different in the realworld, where you just don't know when/where those threats will come from.
...defined.
Our species fails it here... big time.
A cow is a machine that converts grass to milk.
A programmer is a machine that converts coffee to code.
So I think what you're saying is that on occasion, we should eat programmers...?
This just keeps getting worse and worse. :(
It's not right that everyone in the airplane has to put up with your stench if you haven't quit smoking yet. However who is harmed, apart from yourself, if you wear headphones and crank up the volume?
Was with you right up until this point. Then ya blew it.
I happen to find the sound of someone else's loud headphones far more annoying than the smell of smoke. No, I am not a smoker, but I hang around people who do.
So I'll tell ya what.
I'll tolerate your loud headphone music if you tolerate the smell of other peoples' smoke.
That way, we all win.
The danger comes in precisely when people's annoyances develop into calls for law, which is what you've just done for smoking.
Man, wow.
Presumably I'm one of those stupid people you're referring to, because I don't think I've read a single post on /. as nauseating as this.
This is about the worst justification for the nanny state I have ever heard.
I cannot believe that you can, with a straight face, justify a TEN YEAR prison sentence for no-other-harm-caused driving with a BAC over some arbitrary and low percentage (0.05% presumably). Honestly I cannot believe it.
Do you have any concept ... any perception ... of what TEN YEARS is? You think it is morally acceptable to take 10 years from someone for the mistake of driving > 0.05% BAC?
Reflect on life for a moment. Because if everyone thought like you, this world would be unlivable.
This country is turning more and more into the US every day!
er, wait a minute. :p