There are quite a few variations, but here are the ones I'm familiar with:
T23 ~1.13ghz 14.1" 1400x1050 used S2 SuperSavage IX/MX T30 ~1.6ghz 14.1" 1400x1050 used ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 16 MB AGP 4X T40/T40p ~2ghz 14.1" 1400x1050 uses ATI Mobility FireGL 9000 64 MB AGP 4X
Also, the older A31p had a 15" screen at 1600x1200 (UXGA) using a ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB. However, the A31p was rather large (it and the A30p were the only models with two ultrabays, IIRC) and required a laptop bag that was closer to a gurney than your typical wheeled affair.
I understand the desire for consistency in display pitch, but Apple seems stuck on the idea that no one wants a small hires display. After using a Thinkpad with a 14 inch SXGA+ (1400x1050) and a Zaurus with 640x480 on a 3.7 inch display for a couple of years, the usual 15-in XGA seems positively clunky. Hell, the Dell D800 my new employer gave me seems ridiculous -- who the hell wants to lug around a monster 8-lb 17-in screen and get only a wXGA display? Surely the market will support an iBook or PowerBook with a hires (SXGA on 12-14 or UXGA on 15-17in) display.
And no, I do not have extraordinary eyesight -- I wear glasses. It's just a matter of seeing more = more work done faster, and I don't think that's uncommon for mobile computer users.
I was going to let this alone and perhaps let the geocaching or other GPS gadget freaks answer it, but some of the discussion regarding durability and suspicious behavior by westerners leads me to throw my US$0.02 in.
It depends whether you're going to be walking or driving. I have had very good car-based mapping experiences using an older Mac, namely a G3-500 Pismo. I have found the Pismo and similar Lombard/Wallstreet units to be cheap, very functional, unobtrusive, and very durable -- almost to Panasonic Toughbook standards. Though I use both Mac and PC on a regular basis, ease of use pulls me to the Mac for GPS tools. I use mine with a remote usb-connected-and-powered Deluo GPS unit, which mounts on the dashboard or on the roof of the vehicle using a magnet on the bottom. The Deluo has no display or blinky lights to advertise its presence; it's just a 3cmSq bump with a cable. Get a car charger to keep the Mac powered up, use the nifty Control+Alt+Apple+8 to switch the display to "7337 mode" (inverse greyscale display), and you'll be about as unobtrusive as you can get. Less obtrusive than simply being a western guy in rural west Africa, anyway.
On the other hand, if you're going to be on foot, I heartily recommend ditching the laptop and taking an eTrex Voyager or similar model. It's very durable, gets good reception, fits in your shirt pocket out of sight while still receiving a signal, and runs all day long -- thanks in part to its black and white screen -- on two AA batteries. Make a list on paper of waypoints you expect to see, mark them on the eTrex unit using the little joystick when you get to each spot in sequence, and then put it back in your shirt pocket without making a scene. Take a few sets of rechargable AAs and a solar charger, and leave the computer at home for data dumps at the end of each day.
Better yet, take two or three eTrex units (US$60-90 used), and consider them disposable -- expect to have them all eventually stolen from you or seized by various police or military. You may face less hassle and risk if you appear only mildly irritated that a trinket is being taken, as opposed to hyperventiating over someone taking all your data. Eventually you can take the downloaded data and correlate the traces and waypoints using satellite maps or other starting points.
Symantec is confused. The buying spree for small companies such as Riptech, @stake, and Lyric all seemed to make basic sense for a security-focused company -- however badly it's been integrated -- but the Veritas merger is an odd broadening of coverage. (Disclaimer: my company was acquired by Symantec last year, and I quit recently because I could discern no coherent strategy.)
At first blush, it seemed inspired. Working in security consulting, I spend all day talking to people about security as an integral business requirement for systems and processes, as opposed to applying security as a blanket (extra processes or un-integrated technologies) over unknown or messed-up business processes. So the idea of data management and protection being rolled up together with C-I-A requirements in products and services that average-joe can comprehend seemed all goodness.
But really? Inspiration is a tall order for John Thompson, who can't even maintain an appropriate filter between brain and mouth long enough to avoid pissing off major clients, much less describe what the new company's strategy is. That man's head is solid bone. And the rest of the exec team isn't much better. Charlie (EVP Services) is a spluttering angry midget who can't manage to talk about the new company without devolving into his "sugar-high speech" about how we'll all re-live the glory days and get rich by frightening our clients into buying more product and services. Seriously. He's done that repeatedly. And what the hell does "Security + Availability = Information Integrity" mean? (Does Integrity - Availability = Security?) Utter nonsense; a marketing word-salad. It's embarrassing, really.
Now, if the SymExecs had their collective shit together, they would do a reset and realize that from the current position they could easily become a serious MS-contender by merging with a company that has platform/productivity apps. (Think Novell/Suse or Sun.) That would give them a basic platform or two, data storage, db/management, data protection, application dev platform, secure networking, client services, independent client productivity apps, profesional services at multiple levels, etc etc. But that ain't gonna happen. Maybe that would exceed "bold" and reach "foolish" but without some boldness, Symantec is going to suffocate under its own weight. Quoth Fast Company magazine a few years ago: "Size is not a strategy."
Ok, not quite. But I've been doing my part to promote OOo by installing it on every machine in my extended family (more than I'd care to count at the moment), but I don't remove the usual MS Office apps. And I don't proslytise about OOo. I just tell them: "When Word or Excel explodes or does something really weird, just save what you have and open it up in OpenOffice. It'll work every time, and it doesn't do weird stuff without letting you know what's happening." I gotta say, more than half come back and say "Holy crap, this saved my ass, and it's FREE???"
My 10y/12y niece and nephew are getting refurbed Tpad 600's (almost done today), and they actually asked for OOo and knew about the built-in PDF feature. It ain't the world, but a kid in school showing his friends an-app-that-just-works(tm) trumps a huge advertising budget every time. That's why MS poured so much advert money into dislodging Apple from US schools. (Of course, for MS, this is the dime-bag method. For OOo it's a bit more altruistic...)
Who was it who said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"? I find it a both curious and frightening twist that the main "irreducable complexity" tenet of the intelligent design cabal is basically "If we don't understand X, then the existential cause of X must be a supernatural being."
Nonsense. Actually, it's worse than nonsense, it's aggressive Luddites at the door. Next thing you know, they'll be blowing up museums of science & technology because they don't understand how to think about causal relationships, abuse basic logic, and can't accept that some things are not currently knowable. No, someone needs to remind these neoLuddites that curiosity is not evil, but willfull ignorance is.
Maybe this is misdirected, but I already have a working tablet "pc" running Linux (albeit tiny and arm-based). It's called a Zaurus. The whole SL-C series is essentially a tablet PC, with rotatable screen+changing orientation, and pen input with handwriting recognition and onscreen kb + pointer functions. It works rather well using the stock Sharp linux distro, and OpenZaurus is really quite slick for this tablet-type device.
Looking at this project, some areas that are incomplete include the swivel sensor and other doodads that have already been tackled by OZ. Seems like it would make sense to build on the OpenZaurus codebase, rather than start from scratch, especially for Debian.
I used to work for AWS/McCaw, and have been a customer of theirs for about 10 years. But I dumped them two weeks ago for T-mobile. Why? Rates, service, general disregard for customers. The billing systems were a disaster when I was there some years ago, and the errors are still pretty regular. But the final straw was data services. Late to the GSM game, AWS still has relatively high voice rates to defray the change in infrastructure from TDMA to GSM, and charges $85/mo for GPRS service. As I sit here in the not-a-hotspot park and type this on my zaurus (bluetooth->T610->GPRS->tmobile), I'm paying less than 1/4 of the AWS data rates for constant connectivity. Sorry guys, too little, too late.
Reading from the paperwork that I can discuss, the current plans indicate that @stake will cease to exist as a named entity on Oct 7, and become part of Symantec Security Services. They did not "buy the name" in the traditional sense, which is kind of odd, given their co-branding success with Norton.
Would you mind sharing more info on your experience with Intacs? (This goes for the 1st AC reply as well, as s/he seems happier with the results under similar conditions.) What was your condition, how long was it before your vision stabilized, and how long before you decided to have them removed? Would you recommend your Dr/clinic to others?
You must not have done very much reading if you think "cornea" is spelled "coronea."
No, it demonstrates that I'm prone to patterned mispellings and that I'm a crappy typist. Those are output issues, and have no bearing on my input (reading) ability.
I've been concerned with the potential complications from laser eye surgery, combined with the long-term effects. The recovery period seems to have non-trivial potential complications regarding tissue thickness, misalignment of the flap, problems with eye pressure (don't sneeze!), and the usual possibility of infection in the incision -- varying by procedure.
Long term, I have to think about the fact that I'm a relative young'un in my 30's, and will have to deal with continuing changes to my eyes for several decades. In this context, the loss of tissue thickness associated with laser re-shaping of the cornea may limit future correction. I'd hate to have it done once or twice, only to come back in my 60's and be told that I could not have further correction because the corneal tissue was too thin. Sure the technology will improve by then, but you'll be carrying around the results of today's technology. I.e., think about the people who had RK done a decade ago, and have to live with hard-to-correct starburst patterns and weakening of the eye structure that limits further correction.
Recently I've been doing a lot of reading about intracoroneal rings (ICRs) and intracoroneal ring segments (ICRS). These are implants around the edge of the coronea that function by squeezing or flattening the surface. (Imagine a contact lense with no middle.) The company that initially brought these to market (KeraVision Inc.) seems to have died, but these guys at Addition Technologies seem to have picked up the ball and market them as INTACS. More info here, of course.
There seem to be several compelling advantages of this technology:
no surgery in the line of sight (!)
no removal of tissue
very good correction results (~97% to 20/40, ~74% to 20/20, 53% to 20/16)
REVERSIBLE if the results are unsatisfactory (i.e. vision returns to original state within ~90 days or removal)
implants use a proven-stable PMMA material
minimal depth of incision (less infection risk)
adjustable (although I'm sure there would be issues with multiple circumferential incisions)
However, these are currently only approved for nearsightedness (myopia) of 1 to about 4 diopters, and no more than 1 diopter of astigmatism. In fact, a few early trials noted some minor induced astigmatism, but that seems to have been solved. My correction is purely astigmatism, for which there have been several investigational studies using segments of differing thicknesses and/or short-arc segments. But no approved procedure for astigmatism-only in the US. It looks as if I'll have to travel abroad for this procedure, or wait another few years for the FDA to get off its plodding ass and approve this.
Anyone who can share experiences re INTACS/ICRS in general? Regarding astigmatism in particular? Anyone know of a reputable doctor outside of the US (I've collected names of a few in the UK and FR) that performs advanced procedure such as this? Otherw than my astigmatism issue, this looks like a damn fine alternative to laser surgery for those with nearsightedness.
The gentleman asked for a generalization, and I gave him one based on personal history. ("This may or may not be useful for you... Based on my experience..." etc). You cited four counterexamples. Between you, me, and the rest of the crowd, he oughtta get a reasonable sample.
That said, I had exposure to a lot of other mid-sized Canadian corporate IT organizations (two major telcos, several banks, hospitals, a 1/2 dozen ministries, etc), and I perceived a level of commonality in the risk aversion of most of them. All's I can say is what I experienced. You might also note that I don't have a lot of positive things to say about US or British-style technology management as it was represented here. And while I experienced some negative aspects of Australian management styles in this particular Canadian context, if I were to make a broad generalization from my short experiences in Sydney it would be very, very positive.
This may or may not be useful for you, but I worked for ~three years for a mid-sized Canadian corporation with offices located in the US.
The honeymoon: After getting dot-bombed twice, I was brought in for an interview via a personal referral, and it seemed like a good fit. I told them I was a little jittery about the technology economy, and to describe how they were doing. The response was something along the lines of "We've been making a small but dependable profit every year for the past thirty-plus years." I started work the next week. While primarily Canadian-run, the inclusion of British and Australians in the management mix gave a bit more of a truly international feel to the organization. The place was eerily quiet and very businesslike, which was a welcome change from the Brownian-motion style US/.com management of the previous few years.
The serious relationship: They kept me busy on a number of good technology projects, but the risk-averse environment began to grate on me. The Canadian management was interested in the *idea* of new clients, but was so entrenched in the repeat-business-by-reputation model that they consistently failed to track new opportunities. Even really good and profitable ventures with low risk that landed in their laps tended to be neglected. For example, I spent quite a bit of effort on a business plan for expansion of an existing line of work, only to have it neglected rather than rejected outright. Still, there were interesting work opportunities, and we plodded along with them. I resisted slowing my personal pace of business and technical exploration, but eventually reached something of a tolerable balance.
The divorce: The US operation began to lose money, and a new manager was brought in to build business. Instead, the uber-conservative atmosphere stymied new ventures at a higher level than had affected me directly. Low/med risk down here in the US was perceived as high-risk north of the border. The new manager (a low-wattage guy who was long on vision and short on follow-thru) then just resorted to layoffs. Now, a decent US-ian approach might have been to face up to the numbers, lay off a bunch of people with a semi-reasonable severance, and be done with it. Instead, in the Canadian corporate atmosphere I knew, having to do a layoff was a point of shame (which it should be, since any layoff is a tacit admission of management failure). But instead of getting it over with, they drew it out, firing an average of 1% a week for a year, on a seemingly random basis. The last straw for me was an ill-timed complaint that I made about not receiving my allotted training budget for the past two years. I was shooed out the door, only to be brought back as a consultant within a week. I finished my work shortly thereafter, and bowed out as gracefully as I could.
Would I work for a Canadian company again? Maybe, but probably not. These few years seemed to combine all the worst features of risk-verse Canadians, tall-poppy-averse Australians, form-over-substance-obsessed British, and blinded-by-your-own-BS-management Americans. But it was tolerable, we made a little money, and the company is still in business and probably will be for some time to come. Based on my experience, I would say a medium-sized Canadian corporation might be nice place to park yourself if you want a quiet, staid environment for a few years. But be careful that you don't take root and slow down to a point that you can't re-enter the US or other fast-paced market in the future.
Ok, this is fantastic news. I'll be taking my work laptop and switching over to linux as my primary OS by the end of the week. (And yes, I realize I'm lucky to have an IT dept that will still support me after I do such a thing.) I'm not a zealot about such things; imho Outlook and IE genuinely suck on their own functional/security merits. The only thing I'll miss from a windows client perspective is Visio (yeah, I think MS does make/maintain some good products), but then there's always VMware.
BUT here's the obvious question: When will there be a viable challenger to Exchange Server? Am I missing something big? Last time I looked, most of the messaging solutions were missing a decent calendaring/schedule solution. Oracle's Collaboration Server is so involved/overkill (9cds for a basic install, iirc) that it's out of reach for most small/med orgs, and makes Notes look svelte. Groupwise was pretty obtuse & closed when I last looked. Open Groupware looks interesting (especially with the knoppix-ogo distro), but feels like Openoffice build 635... i.e. not fully baked.
When is a project going to come up with messaging, calendaring (via ical, mapi, etc etc), a repository that isn't as horrid as exchange public folders (maybe something modeled after/improving upon Opentext's Livelink), flexible event notifications (maybe simple stuff like alerts via email/SMS???). I have hopes for IBM's recent office tools announcement, but we'll see. A turnaround for Groupwise? Maybe? Options, I want options, dammit!
Yeah, gotta agree with your appraisal -- the advanced functions and networkability is great, but the basic pim features are weak. The basic address book is crap, and after a couple of months of fiddling I still can't get TKCAddress to import anything at all. But I've got the to-do list problem licked. Until 6 months ago, I stuck with my palm-based Handera 330 for one main reason: Brainforest, an excellent hierarchical tree manager that you could configure for use as a multilevel to-do list (1/x complete), project manager (x% complete), etc etc.
After looking long and hard, I found StageOne on the Z to be everything that Brianforest was, and more. In addition to a really nice UI, it includes nice features for use as a contact manager (time/date marked items), html import/export -- great for brainstorming the outline of a document, then brining it into a word processor for actual writing, and the list goes on. Yeah, it's payware but I've gotten an order of magnitude more value from my $12. (Std disclaimer - I have nothing to do with the author of Stageone, blah blah...)
It seems much nicer than the few other options I've tried on the Z. Layout is great, screen resizing works, and it's quite stable. My only gripe is lack of keyboard shortcuts for new-item and grab&move-item functions. Gotta keep grabbing the stylus between each item. (If the author reads this, I suggest using similar hierarchy management keys as MSWord: shift+up/dnarrow to grab/move; shift+rt/lfarrow to pro/demote; return for new line, etc.)
The Magna's close enough to a true cruiser that I can see your preference for the t-bag. If there were a seatback on my Caponord and I put a t-bag on it, the top would probaby be about 6' off the ground. That's why I decided to get the saddlebags but forgo even a topcase. The ride's fantastic, but the CG's a little high. And yes, it's a little awkward with an unbalanced load -- hence the lumbar pack for a small load. Any thing bigger gets packed in the saddlebags. However, I tend not to have trouble with loads that aren't perfectly balanced,. I guess all those miles tooling around DC on my CJ360T (2-into-1 Howitzer of an exhaust hanging off one side of a featherweight bike) paid off...
The stats are due to living in CA for a while and doing some fix-er-up/curbstone work I did up to a few years ago: buying bikes, riding one of them while I fixed the next one, then selling the rider. I've had seven GL1000 goldwings, three CX500's, and a heap of other not-very-interesting bikes. (With the exception of two MG Centauro bikes and the Aprilia -- I consider those "interesting.") Anything I rode regularly for more than a couple of months qualified as "mine." God knows how many uncounted junkers and ratbikes... I still have my first GL1000, which I put about 120K on. It's looking a little sad, but I use what little time I have these days for riding, not much for tinkering.
Similarly, always a pleasure to discuss differences of opinion (without having to resort to the word "stupid" as in the "hungus" reply above). If you're ever in the PacNW, look me up.
As the topic is carrying a laptop while engaging in physical activities beyond merely walking, I offer a cautionary tale, and a product opinion:
A laptop bag with a shoulder strap will tend to shift as you move, which is alright while walking, but intolerable on a bicycle or motorcycle. Because of this, I purchased a triangular shoulder bag -- the kind with a single large padded strap over the right shoulder, and a small side strap on the left to prevent the bag from shifting. Several laptop bag makers offerthis style of bag.
It worked great until I was hit by a car while on my bike, and landed on top of the bag. The resulting tension concentrated on the single strap of the bag and broke my collarbone in two places (at the edges of the wide strap). I now have a 7" scar, a nice metal plate, and 8 screws in my collarbone to help me remember the event. No more shoulder-bags for me, and most laptop backpacks are uncomfortable (the strap presses on the bolt-heads).
I now use a Mountainsmith lumbar pack (a slightly more dignified version of a giant fannypack). This offers all of the no-shifting benefits of the backpack, without much risk of additional upper body injury if I feel the need to fling myself in front of a car again. As an added bonus the pack offers a small degree of back protection. The "Passage" model is/was designed for a 15" laptop + almost 2" of papers, has both a briefcase-style handle and shoulder strap that stows away. When I'm on the motorcycle, I use both the waist and shoulder strap, just in case one fails. I'd hate to see $2500 of equipment go skittering down the road without me. The Passage bag is very well made, has held up perfectly for more than a year, and provided adequate protection for the laptop in a few minors bumps/drops. It's available here, here, and some other places.
Jon
(Oh, and yes, the laptop survived the accident above -- inside an Otterbox.)
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IANAL (but I've paid for their kids' dental work and sailboat), but there are two issues here: I think you have excellent grounds for proving damages to your reputation in the industry (from both the consultancy and your employer), in addition to wrongful termination if you were let go with prejudice (fired for false or misrepresented cause and denied unemployment). However, the real money is in the first part, so go for a libel/slander lawyer with knowledge of labor, not a labor lawyer who's heard of slander and will sue to get your job back. What you really should want from this is to (a) clear your name, (b) collect monetary damages, and (c) walk away. Dunno about FL law, but you should get all your lawyer fees back as well if you file the suit properly...
I have (unfortunately) some experience in picking a lawyer for similarly hostile and unpleasant situations. In a recent situation that involved an insurance company, I turned to my own insurance carrier (home, personal liability, auto etc) and asked to be put in touch with a couple of senior examiner/adjusters. When I reached them (no easy task), I asked them the following question:
"Who is the meanest son-of-a-bitch you never want to be across a table from?"
Both people gave me the same name, and I hired that person as my lawyer. Yeah, the hourly rate was kinda frightening, but when your lawyer scares the piss out of the other party simply by name, the proceedings tend to be much shorter, and more to your advantage.
How does that apply to your case? Call a libel/slander *defense* lawyer, and ask him/her the question above. Two votes for one name, and voila, you have your counsel.
My personal advice is not to be shy about this. There's a time to shrug and walk away from an employer who lays you off for stupid reasons (I did a few months ago), and there's a time to fight like hell against something that could drown your career. This seems to me like the latter. What will you say in a few years, when a potential employer asks "If you weren't a security risk, why didn't you fight it?"
I'm a consultant, and most of my work does not require me to be physically onsite -- although my clients prefer it. So what should I do in response to a disappearance of nearly 1 in 10 positions overseas?
Maybe I should move to Bangalore, use my established clients to continue work in the US, and use the drop in my own housing/personal/family expenses to remain competitive. My old college roomie did a version of this -- telecommuting to consulting gigs in Los Angeles from a very nice house in Arkansas. I can think of half a dozen places to go that wouldn't suck at all. Hell, given the way the state & federal economy's been run into the ground here in the US ($450B+ deficit!), maybe my kids will get a better public education abroad.
Then again, I find that if I drop the price for my services below a certain level, then the client no longer respects the work as coming from an expert (and thus exclusive) source. It's sad to think that I tend to get the most abuse from clients to whom I've given cut rates. Maybe I should raise my rates? If I keep my fees well above the internationally-outsourced folks, but below the top decile (easy targets for that 8%), I should be in good shape, no?
I'm expecting delivery of my Zaurus C750 today(!). After a long and relatively constructive affair with PalmOS devices, I decided to bite the bullet and get a device that I could actually do some work on (text & spreadsheet documents, email, browsing), rather than just coordinating the work. The last straw was HandEra EOL'ing their PalmOS hardware just as I was looking forward to turning in my 330 for an upgraded version with a color screen.
But Sony has never been a viable alternative from my POV. Why? All that proprietary crap. I don't want to get into a PalmOS vs Linux/Qtopia debate (I like both), but the Sony custom menu-scrolling-rolodex thing is just horrid (my def of "horrid" is that it slows down usability and doesn't even look cool), and the screen resolution breaks some of my most useful apps. The hardware is the same: Memory sticks are a "non-starter" as those inside the beltway might say. Sony-only accessories? Nah. I really dig having two standard (CF and mmc/sd) ports, and I'd be hard pressed to give that up. It's nice having extra memory, a communications device, AND a keyboard at the same time, ok? So the 5600 Zaurus seemed like the natural progression. Then the C7x0 series came out, and I could resist no more.
Now, am I sorry I didn't wait for the PEG UX50? Not at all. The UX50 will likely be in the same price range ($650+/-) as the C750/760's and has the same swivel-screen keyboard setup. Nifty. But the screen resolution of the UX50 is half that of the C7x0, it's got only a small fraction of the user memory, you can't expand with standard devices (CF memory, modem, serial, external monitor, etc), tho the built-in wifi i nice. A 0.3 Mpixel camera is the same as the PalmPix, no? I have one; it's useless. The screen swivels in the UX50, but does not switch display orientation. The only advantage I can see is that it *might* be available in the US with direct manufacturer support before Sharp starts selling the Zaurus here.
As long as my pulsing temples don't cause me to go cross-eyed and drop the shells while I reload, I think I'm managing my anger quite well.
I am a tree... I am a tree swaying in the wind... My leaves rustle in the breeze... I am peaceful... My roots are strong and slowly break through all obstacles before me... I am at one with my environment as I absorb nutrients from the bodies beneath me...
There are vendors in the US that sell polarized license plate covers that are clear from a straight-on view, but obscure the plate numbers (and letters too!) from an angled view. This pretty much takes care of any road-side or overhead cameras. Use of these plate covers are often illegal or at least questionable, but infrequently cited. Y'all law-abiding folks in the northern reaches of the EU and elsewhere might not understand this, but people here in the western US occasionally drive their vehicles with no plates at all for weeks at a time -- blatantly illegal -- w/o getting cited. (But don't try this if your skin is anything but pearly white or while wearing a religious headcovering, or John Ashcroft will personally declare you an "enemy combatant" and revoke your citizenship. Welcome to America as we deconstruct it.)
Here in WA USA, there is a license plate re-issuance schedule to make sure that you have shiny new plates on the front every few years. This is purely for the benefit of the laser-speed-gun-weilding state troopers. However, a light misting from a can of white spray-paint takes care of that... Subtlety is always a good option when stealth mode is impractical.
And speaking of impractical stealth mode, I'm looking forward to advances in flexible LCD technology, so that I can put a transparent screen over my plates. Every few minutes, the 3 and 6 turn into 8's, the 5 into a 9, and an extra digit shows up in the blank space... Perhaps I can also use it to send a scrolling message to the cell-phone idiot in the 2cm-penis-compensation SUV behind me? Of course, if we're going to go for an active response instead of a passive one, I should just plug a.38 slug into the roadside camera.
Driving the bike and shooting left-handed oughtta be interesting, but I don't think showing up for work with powder burns on my right sleeve and stinking of sulfur qualifies as "subtle."
What a waste of technology! Think about it: They're going to go to the effort of doing a brute-force identification of weeds (i.e. looking at every plant in every row, instead of using a broadly-targeted agent). But then they fall back on an old-school method of killing the weed -- by poisoning. Yeah, targeted poisoning, but it's a refinement of an undesirable technology.
Now, it seems to me that if you're going to the effort of imaging the leaves of virtually every stalk coming out of the ground, you ought to take the opportunity to do something very selective and low-impact to the surrounding plants. Like pull the damn thing out, roots and all. No expense of chemical agents, no breeding of resistant weed species, and it produces a product that people are willing to pay a premium for. I'm pretty sure that having weeds pulled robotically would not impact the qualification of a product as "organic.":)
Just my $0.02US, but I'd sooner feed my kids methodically/robotically well-managed organic food than feed them foodstuffs protected by well-targeted herbicides and pesticides. Why play that lottery if you have the technological means to avoid it?
As a US citizen, I'm depressed (I should be outraged) at this sad state of affairs. However in-your-face this particular presentation was to be, the stated goal was to expose the flaws of the system through hand-on research & controlled experimentation. Research. It was NOT to distribute hacking tools for actual implementation to facilitate illegal or illicit purposes. But ballsy kids in an academic environment who want to improve the technology and processes that surround them? They're stymied by corporate protecionism ensconsed in federal law. That's sad. It's wrong, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual. But the real tragedy is that it depresses the level of creativity in academia and creates fear for those that think too hard.
As a security professional, the fact that any cheeseball company can successfully hide their shoddy product behind a federal law is an embarassment. It induces even more cognitive dissonance when I work with federal and state goverment security staff who are well aware of good security principles, and then think about laws such as the DMCA which are diametrically opposed to known-good principles of improving security technology and processes.
It's a lose-lose proposition: News of an exploit always gets out, and is propogated fastest within the community which has little fear of the DMCA. But invocation of the DMCA causes relatively-innocent people -- those that were willing to stand up and state their names -- to tremble and retreat. As I said: it's wrong, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual. I spend my days educating people about the dangers of security by obscurity, and exposing the risks associated with snake-oil solutions such as Blackboard's "secure" transactions. I'm doing my part to educate as many people as I can, but with Grand Moff Ashcroft at the legal helm of the country (and with US federal/foreign policy changed to match the prosecutorial principles of "pre-crime"), I'm afraid it's like spitting into the Mojave.
The first time that some predator clones the card of a victim (or a patsy) in order to gain access to a building and rape/murder someone, I wonder... Will the appropriate law enforcement be able to effectively investigate/prosecute such a crime if the computing research community is prohibited from supporting them? Would Blackboard be content to sit on known security flaws and let a patsy get convicted? Again: wrong, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual. It ought to be illegal to *withhold* security flaws, at least from those who depend on/are subject to them. Feh.
Slashdot Mirror
There are quite a few variations, but here are the ones I'm familiar with:
T23 ~1.13ghz 14.1" 1400x1050 used S2 SuperSavage IX/MX
T30 ~1.6ghz 14.1" 1400x1050 used ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 16 MB AGP 4X
T40/T40p ~2ghz 14.1" 1400x1050 uses ATI Mobility FireGL 9000 64 MB AGP 4X
Also, the older A31p had a 15" screen at 1600x1200 (UXGA) using a ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB. However, the A31p was rather large (it and the A30p were the only models with two ultrabays, IIRC) and required a laptop bag that was closer to a gurney than your typical wheeled affair.
J
I understand the desire for consistency in display pitch, but Apple seems stuck on the idea that no one wants a small hires display. After using a Thinkpad with a 14 inch SXGA+ (1400x1050) and a Zaurus with 640x480 on a 3.7 inch display for a couple of years, the usual 15-in XGA seems positively clunky. Hell, the Dell D800 my new employer gave me seems ridiculous -- who the hell wants to lug around a monster 8-lb 17-in screen and get only a wXGA display? Surely the market will support an iBook or PowerBook with a hires (SXGA on 12-14 or UXGA on 15-17in) display.
And no, I do not have extraordinary eyesight -- I wear glasses. It's just a matter of seeing more = more work done faster, and I don't think that's uncommon for mobile computer users.
I was going to let this alone and perhaps let the geocaching or other GPS gadget freaks answer it, but some of the discussion regarding durability and suspicious behavior by westerners leads me to throw my US$0.02 in.
It depends whether you're going to be walking or driving. I have had very good car-based mapping experiences using an older Mac, namely a G3-500 Pismo. I have found the Pismo and similar Lombard/Wallstreet units to be cheap, very functional, unobtrusive, and very durable -- almost to Panasonic Toughbook standards. Though I use both Mac and PC on a regular basis, ease of use pulls me to the Mac for GPS tools. I use mine with a remote usb-connected-and-powered Deluo GPS unit, which mounts on the dashboard or on the roof of the vehicle using a magnet on the bottom. The Deluo has no display or blinky lights to advertise its presence; it's just a 3cmSq bump with a cable. Get a car charger to keep the Mac powered up, use the nifty Control+Alt+Apple+8 to switch the display to "7337 mode" (inverse greyscale display), and you'll be about as unobtrusive as you can get. Less obtrusive than simply being a western guy in rural west Africa, anyway.
On the other hand, if you're going to be on foot, I heartily recommend ditching the laptop and taking an eTrex Voyager or similar model. It's very durable, gets good reception, fits in your shirt pocket out of sight while still receiving a signal, and runs all day long -- thanks in part to its black and white screen -- on two AA batteries. Make a list on paper of waypoints you expect to see, mark them on the eTrex unit using the little joystick when you get to each spot in sequence, and then put it back in your shirt pocket without making a scene. Take a few sets of rechargable AAs and a solar charger, and leave the computer at home for data dumps at the end of each day.
Better yet, take two or three eTrex units (US$60-90 used), and consider them disposable -- expect to have them all eventually stolen from you or seized by various police or military. You may face less hassle and risk if you appear only mildly irritated that a trinket is being taken, as opposed to hyperventiating over someone taking all your data. Eventually you can take the downloaded data and correlate the traces and waypoints using satellite maps or other starting points.
J
Symantec is confused. The buying spree for small companies such as Riptech, @stake, and Lyric all seemed to make basic sense for a security-focused company -- however badly it's been integrated -- but the Veritas merger is an odd broadening of coverage. (Disclaimer: my company was acquired by Symantec last year, and I quit recently because I could discern no coherent strategy.)
At first blush, it seemed inspired. Working in security consulting, I spend all day talking to people about security as an integral business requirement for systems and processes, as opposed to applying security as a blanket (extra processes or un-integrated technologies) over unknown or messed-up business processes. So the idea of data management and protection being rolled up together with C-I-A requirements in products and services that average-joe can comprehend seemed all goodness.
But really? Inspiration is a tall order for John Thompson, who can't even maintain an appropriate filter between brain and mouth long enough to avoid pissing off major clients, much less describe what the new company's strategy is. That man's head is solid bone. And the rest of the exec team isn't much better. Charlie (EVP Services) is a spluttering angry midget who can't manage to talk about the new company without devolving into his "sugar-high speech" about how we'll all re-live the glory days and get rich by frightening our clients into buying more product and services. Seriously. He's done that repeatedly. And what the hell does "Security + Availability = Information Integrity" mean? (Does Integrity - Availability = Security?) Utter nonsense; a marketing word-salad. It's embarrassing, really.
Now, if the SymExecs had their collective shit together, they would do a reset and realize that from the current position they could easily become a serious MS-contender by merging with a company that has platform/productivity apps. (Think Novell/Suse or Sun.) That would give them a basic platform or two, data storage, db/management, data protection, application dev platform, secure networking, client services, independent client productivity apps, profesional services at multiple levels, etc etc. But that ain't gonna happen. Maybe that would exceed "bold" and reach "foolish" but without some boldness, Symantec is going to suffocate under its own weight. Quoth Fast Company magazine a few years ago: "Size is not a strategy."
J
Ok, not quite. But I've been doing my part to promote OOo by installing it on every machine in my extended family (more than I'd care to count at the moment), but I don't remove the usual MS Office apps. And I don't proslytise about OOo. I just tell them: "When Word or Excel explodes or does something really weird, just save what you have and open it up in OpenOffice. It'll work every time, and it doesn't do weird stuff without letting you know what's happening." I gotta say, more than half come back and say "Holy crap, this saved my ass, and it's FREE???"
My 10y/12y niece and nephew are getting refurbed Tpad 600's (almost done today), and they actually asked for OOo and knew about the built-in PDF feature. It ain't the world, but a kid in school showing his friends an-app-that-just-works(tm) trumps a huge advertising budget every time. That's why MS poured so much advert money into dislodging Apple from US schools. (Of course, for MS, this is the dime-bag method. For OOo it's a bit more altruistic...)
J
Who was it who said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"? I find it a both curious and frightening twist that the main "irreducable complexity" tenet of the intelligent design cabal is basically "If we don't understand X, then the existential cause of X must be a supernatural being."
Nonsense. Actually, it's worse than nonsense, it's aggressive Luddites at the door. Next thing you know, they'll be blowing up museums of science & technology because they don't understand how to think about causal relationships, abuse basic logic, and can't accept that some things are not currently knowable. No, someone needs to remind these neoLuddites that curiosity is not evil, but willfull ignorance is.
J
Maybe this is misdirected, but I already have a working tablet "pc" running Linux (albeit tiny and arm-based). It's called a Zaurus. The whole SL-C series is essentially a tablet PC, with rotatable screen+changing orientation, and pen input with handwriting recognition and onscreen kb + pointer functions. It works rather well using the stock Sharp linux distro, and OpenZaurus is really quite slick for this tablet-type device.
Looking at this project, some areas that are incomplete include the swivel sensor and other doodads that have already been tackled by OZ. Seems like it would make sense to build on the OpenZaurus codebase, rather than start from scratch, especially for Debian.
-J
I used to work for AWS/McCaw, and have been a customer of theirs for about 10 years. But I dumped them two weeks ago for T-mobile. Why? Rates, service, general disregard for customers. The billing systems were a disaster when I was there some years ago, and the errors are still pretty regular. But the final straw was data services. Late to the GSM game, AWS still has relatively high voice rates to defray the change in infrastructure from TDMA to GSM, and charges $85/mo for GPRS service. As I sit here in the not-a-hotspot park and type this on my zaurus (bluetooth->T610->GPRS->tmobile), I'm paying less than 1/4 of the AWS data rates for constant connectivity. Sorry guys, too little, too late.
Jon
Just to clarify, no.
Reading from the paperwork that I can discuss, the current plans indicate that @stake will cease to exist as a named entity on Oct 7, and become part of Symantec Security Services. They did not "buy the name" in the traditional sense, which is kind of odd, given their co-branding success with Norton.
Would you mind sharing more info on your experience with Intacs? (This goes for the 1st AC reply as well, as s/he seems happier with the results under similar conditions.) What was your condition, how long was it before your vision stabilized, and how long before you decided to have them removed? Would you recommend your Dr/clinic to others?
thanks
Jon
You must not have done very much reading if you think "cornea" is spelled "coronea."
No, it demonstrates that I'm prone to patterned mispellings and that I'm a crappy typist. Those are output issues, and have no bearing on my input (reading) ability.
Have you anything constructive to share?
-J
I've been concerned with the potential complications from laser eye surgery, combined with the long-term effects. The recovery period seems to have non-trivial potential complications regarding tissue thickness, misalignment of the flap, problems with eye pressure (don't sneeze!), and the usual possibility of infection in the incision -- varying by procedure.
Long term, I have to think about the fact that I'm a relative young'un in my 30's, and will have to deal with continuing changes to my eyes for several decades. In this context, the loss of tissue thickness associated with laser re-shaping of the cornea may limit future correction. I'd hate to have it done once or twice, only to come back in my 60's and be told that I could not have further correction because the corneal tissue was too thin. Sure the technology will improve by then, but you'll be carrying around the results of today's technology. I.e., think about the people who had RK done a decade ago, and have to live with hard-to-correct starburst patterns and weakening of the eye structure that limits further correction.
Recently I've been doing a lot of reading about intracoroneal rings (ICRs) and intracoroneal ring segments (ICRS). These are implants around the edge of the coronea that function by squeezing or flattening the surface. (Imagine a contact lense with no middle.) The company that initially brought these to market (KeraVision Inc.) seems to have died, but these guys at Addition Technologies seem to have picked up the ball and market them as INTACS. More info here, of course.
There seem to be several compelling advantages of this technology:
However, these are currently only approved for nearsightedness (myopia) of 1 to about 4 diopters, and no more than 1 diopter of astigmatism. In fact, a few early trials noted some minor induced astigmatism, but that seems to have been solved. My correction is purely astigmatism, for which there have been several investigational studies using segments of differing thicknesses and/or short-arc segments. But no approved procedure for astigmatism-only in the US. It looks as if I'll have to travel abroad for this procedure, or wait another few years for the FDA to get off its plodding ass and approve this.
Anyone who can share experiences re INTACS/ICRS in general? Regarding astigmatism in particular? Anyone know of a reputable doctor outside of the US (I've collected names of a few in the UK and FR) that performs advanced procedure such as this? Otherw than my astigmatism issue, this looks like a damn fine alternative to laser surgery for those with nearsightedness.
-Jon
The gentleman asked for a generalization, and I gave him one based on personal history. ("This may or may not be useful for you... Based on my experience..." etc). You cited four counterexamples. Between you, me, and the rest of the crowd, he oughtta get a reasonable sample.
That said, I had exposure to a lot of other mid-sized Canadian corporate IT organizations (two major telcos, several banks, hospitals, a 1/2 dozen ministries, etc), and I perceived a level of commonality in the risk aversion of most of them. All's I can say is what I experienced. You might also note that I don't have a lot of positive things to say about US or British-style technology management as it was represented here. And while I experienced some negative aspects of Australian management styles in this particular Canadian context, if I were to make a broad generalization from my short experiences in Sydney it would be very, very positive.
Your mileage may (and surely will) vary...
Jon
This may or may not be useful for you, but I worked for ~three years for a mid-sized Canadian corporation with offices located in the US.
The honeymoon: After getting dot-bombed twice, I was brought in for an interview via a personal referral, and it seemed like a good fit. I told them I was a little jittery about the technology economy, and to describe how they were doing. The response was something along the lines of "We've been making a small but dependable profit every year for the past thirty-plus years." I started work the next week. While primarily Canadian-run, the inclusion of British and Australians in the management mix gave a bit more of a truly international feel to the organization. The place was eerily quiet and very businesslike, which was a welcome change from the Brownian-motion style US/.com management of the previous few years.
The serious relationship: They kept me busy on a number of good technology projects, but the risk-averse environment began to grate on me. The Canadian management was interested in the *idea* of new clients, but was so entrenched in the repeat-business-by-reputation model that they consistently failed to track new opportunities. Even really good and profitable ventures with low risk that landed in their laps tended to be neglected. For example, I spent quite a bit of effort on a business plan for expansion of an existing line of work, only to have it neglected rather than rejected outright. Still, there were interesting work opportunities, and we plodded along with them. I resisted slowing my personal pace of business and technical exploration, but eventually reached something of a tolerable balance.
The divorce: The US operation began to lose money, and a new manager was brought in to build business. Instead, the uber-conservative atmosphere stymied new ventures at a higher level than had affected me directly. Low/med risk down here in the US was perceived as high-risk north of the border. The new manager (a low-wattage guy who was long on vision and short on follow-thru) then just resorted to layoffs. Now, a decent US-ian approach might have been to face up to the numbers, lay off a bunch of people with a semi-reasonable severance, and be done with it. Instead, in the Canadian corporate atmosphere I knew, having to do a layoff was a point of shame (which it should be, since any layoff is a tacit admission of management failure). But instead of getting it over with, they drew it out, firing an average of 1% a week for a year, on a seemingly random basis. The last straw for me was an ill-timed complaint that I made about not receiving my allotted training budget for the past two years. I was shooed out the door, only to be brought back as a consultant within a week. I finished my work shortly thereafter, and bowed out as gracefully as I could.
Would I work for a Canadian company again? Maybe, but probably not. These few years seemed to combine all the worst features of risk-verse Canadians, tall-poppy-averse Australians, form-over-substance-obsessed British, and blinded-by-your-own-BS-management Americans. But it was tolerable, we made a little money, and the company is still in business and probably will be for some time to come. Based on my experience, I would say a medium-sized Canadian corporation might be nice place to park yourself if you want a quiet, staid environment for a few years. But be careful that you don't take root and slow down to a point that you can't re-enter the US or other fast-paced market in the future.
Jon
Ok, this is fantastic news. I'll be taking my work laptop and switching over to linux as my primary OS by the end of the week. (And yes, I realize I'm lucky to have an IT dept that will still support me after I do such a thing.) I'm not a zealot about such things; imho Outlook and IE genuinely suck on their own functional/security merits. The only thing I'll miss from a windows client perspective is Visio (yeah, I think MS does make/maintain some good products), but then there's always VMware.
BUT here's the obvious question: When will there be a viable challenger to Exchange Server? Am I missing something big? Last time I looked, most of the messaging solutions were missing a decent calendaring/schedule solution. Oracle's Collaboration Server is so involved/overkill (9cds for a basic install, iirc) that it's out of reach for most small/med orgs, and makes Notes look svelte. Groupwise was pretty obtuse & closed when I last looked. Open Groupware looks interesting (especially with the knoppix-ogo distro), but feels like Openoffice build 635... i.e. not fully baked.
When is a project going to come up with messaging, calendaring (via ical, mapi, etc etc), a repository that isn't as horrid as exchange public folders (maybe something modeled after/improving upon Opentext's Livelink), flexible event notifications (maybe simple stuff like alerts via email/SMS???). I have hopes for IBM's recent office tools announcement, but we'll see. A turnaround for Groupwise? Maybe? Options, I want options, dammit!
-Jon
Yeah, gotta agree with your appraisal -- the advanced functions and networkability is great, but the basic pim features are weak. The basic address book is crap, and after a couple of months of fiddling I still can't get TKCAddress to import anything at all. But I've got the to-do list problem licked. Until 6 months ago, I stuck with my palm-based Handera 330 for one main reason: Brainforest, an excellent hierarchical tree manager that you could configure for use as a multilevel to-do list (1/x complete), project manager (x% complete), etc etc.
After looking long and hard, I found StageOne on the Z to be everything that Brianforest was, and more. In addition to a really nice UI, it includes nice features for use as a contact manager (time/date marked items), html import/export -- great for brainstorming the outline of a document, then brining it into a word processor for actual writing, and the list goes on. Yeah, it's payware but I've gotten an order of magnitude more value from my $12. (Std disclaimer - I have nothing to do with the author of Stageone, blah blah...)
It seems much nicer than the few other options I've tried on the Z. Layout is great, screen resizing works, and it's quite stable. My only gripe is lack of keyboard shortcuts for new-item and grab&move-item functions. Gotta keep grabbing the stylus between each item. (If the author reads this, I suggest using similar hierarchy management keys as MSWord: shift+up/dnarrow to grab/move; shift+rt/lfarrow to pro/demote; return for new line, etc.)
Jon
The Magna's close enough to a true cruiser that I can see your preference for the t-bag. If there were a seatback on my Caponord and I put a t-bag on it, the top would probaby be about 6' off the ground. That's why I decided to get the saddlebags but forgo even a topcase. The ride's fantastic, but the CG's a little high. And yes, it's a little awkward with an unbalanced load -- hence the lumbar pack for a small load. Any thing bigger gets packed in the saddlebags. However, I tend not to have trouble with loads that aren't perfectly balanced,. I guess all those miles tooling around DC on my CJ360T (2-into-1 Howitzer of an exhaust hanging off one side of a featherweight bike) paid off...
The stats are due to living in CA for a while and doing some fix-er-up/curbstone work I did up to a few years ago: buying bikes, riding one of them while I fixed the next one, then selling the rider. I've had seven GL1000 goldwings, three CX500's, and a heap of other not-very-interesting bikes. (With the exception of two MG Centauro bikes and the Aprilia -- I consider those "interesting.") Anything I rode regularly for more than a couple of months qualified as "mine." God knows how many uncounted junkers and ratbikes... I still have my first GL1000, which I put about 120K on. It's looking a little sad, but I use what little time I have these days for riding, not much for tinkering.
Similarly, always a pleasure to discuss differences of opinion (without having to resort to the word "stupid" as in the "hungus" reply above). If you're ever in the PacNW, look me up.
Jon
As the topic is carrying a laptop while engaging in physical activities beyond merely walking, I offer a cautionary tale, and a product opinion:
A laptop bag with a shoulder strap will tend to shift as you move, which is alright while walking, but intolerable on a bicycle or motorcycle. Because of this, I purchased a triangular shoulder bag -- the kind with a single large padded strap over the right shoulder, and a small side strap on the left to prevent the bag from shifting. Several laptop bag makers offer this style of bag.
It worked great until I was hit by a car while on my bike, and landed on top of the bag. The resulting tension concentrated on the single strap of the bag and broke my collarbone in two places (at the edges of the wide strap). I now have a 7" scar, a nice metal plate, and 8 screws in my collarbone to help me remember the event. No more shoulder-bags for me, and most laptop backpacks are uncomfortable (the strap presses on the bolt-heads).
I now use a Mountainsmith lumbar pack (a slightly more dignified version of a giant fannypack). This offers all of the no-shifting benefits of the backpack, without much risk of additional upper body injury if I feel the need to fling myself in front of a car again. As an added bonus the pack offers a small degree of back protection. The "Passage" model is/was designed for a 15" laptop + almost 2" of papers, has both a briefcase-style handle and shoulder strap that stows away. When I'm on the motorcycle, I use both the waist and shoulder strap, just in case one fails. I'd hate to see $2500 of equipment go skittering down the road without me. The Passage bag is very well made, has held up perfectly for more than a year, and provided adequate protection for the laptop in a few minors bumps/drops. It's available here, here, and some other places.
Jon
(Oh, and yes, the laptop survived the accident above -- inside an Otterbox.)
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IANAL (but I've paid for their kids' dental work and sailboat), but there are two issues here: I think you have excellent grounds for proving damages to your reputation in the industry (from both the consultancy and your employer), in addition to wrongful termination if you were let go with prejudice (fired for false or misrepresented cause and denied unemployment). However, the real money is in the first part, so go for a libel/slander lawyer with knowledge of labor, not a labor lawyer who's heard of slander and will sue to get your job back. What you really should want from this is to (a) clear your name, (b) collect monetary damages, and (c) walk away. Dunno about FL law, but you should get all your lawyer fees back as well if you file the suit properly...
I have (unfortunately) some experience in picking a lawyer for similarly hostile and unpleasant situations. In a recent situation that involved an insurance company, I turned to my own insurance carrier (home, personal liability, auto etc) and asked to be put in touch with a couple of senior examiner/adjusters. When I reached them (no easy task), I asked them the following question:
"Who is the meanest son-of-a-bitch you never want to be across a table from?"
Both people gave me the same name, and I hired that person as my lawyer. Yeah, the hourly rate was kinda frightening, but when your lawyer scares the piss out of the other party simply by name, the proceedings tend to be much shorter, and more to your advantage.
How does that apply to your case? Call a libel/slander *defense* lawyer, and ask him/her the question above. Two votes for one name, and voila, you have your counsel.
My personal advice is not to be shy about this. There's a time to shrug and walk away from an employer who lays you off for stupid reasons (I did a few months ago), and there's a time to fight like hell against something that could drown your career. This seems to me like the latter. What will you say in a few years, when a potential employer asks "If you weren't a security risk, why didn't you fight it?"
Jon Espenschied
I'm a consultant, and most of my work does not require me to be physically onsite -- although my clients prefer it. So what should I do in response to a disappearance of nearly 1 in 10 positions overseas?
Maybe I should move to Bangalore, use my established clients to continue work in the US, and use the drop in my own housing/personal/family expenses to remain competitive. My old college roomie did a version of this -- telecommuting to consulting gigs in Los Angeles from a very nice house in Arkansas. I can think of half a dozen places to go that wouldn't suck at all. Hell, given the way the state & federal economy's been run into the ground here in the US ($450B+ deficit!), maybe my kids will get a better public education abroad.
Then again, I find that if I drop the price for my services below a certain level, then the client no longer respects the work as coming from an expert (and thus exclusive) source. It's sad to think that I tend to get the most abuse from clients to whom I've given cut rates. Maybe I should raise my rates? If I keep my fees well above the internationally-outsourced folks, but below the top decile (easy targets for that 8%), I should be in good shape, no?
J
Oh, my heart skipped a beat there.
I'm expecting delivery of my Zaurus C750 today(!). After a long and relatively constructive affair with PalmOS devices, I decided to bite the bullet and get a device that I could actually do some work on (text & spreadsheet documents, email, browsing), rather than just coordinating the work. The last straw was HandEra EOL'ing their PalmOS hardware just as I was looking forward to turning in my 330 for an upgraded version with a color screen.
But Sony has never been a viable alternative from my POV. Why? All that proprietary crap. I don't want to get into a PalmOS vs Linux/Qtopia debate (I like both), but the Sony custom menu-scrolling-rolodex thing is just horrid (my def of "horrid" is that it slows down usability and doesn't even look cool), and the screen resolution breaks some of my most useful apps. The hardware is the same: Memory sticks are a "non-starter" as those inside the beltway might say. Sony-only accessories? Nah. I really dig having two standard (CF and mmc/sd) ports, and I'd be hard pressed to give that up. It's nice having extra memory, a communications device, AND a keyboard at the same time, ok? So the 5600 Zaurus seemed like the natural progression. Then the C7x0 series came out, and I could resist no more.
Now, am I sorry I didn't wait for the PEG UX50? Not at all. The UX50 will likely be in the same price range ($650+/-) as the C750/760's and has the same swivel-screen keyboard setup. Nifty. But the screen resolution of the UX50 is half that of the C7x0, it's got only a small fraction of the user memory, you can't expand with standard devices (CF memory, modem, serial, external monitor, etc), tho the built-in wifi i nice. A 0.3 Mpixel camera is the same as the PalmPix, no? I have one; it's useless. The screen swivels in the UX50, but does not switch display orientation. The only advantage I can see is that it *might* be available in the US with direct manufacturer support before Sharp starts selling the Zaurus here.
Just my $0.02US.
J
As long as my pulsing temples don't cause me to go cross-eyed and drop the shells while I reload, I think I'm managing my anger quite well.
I am a tree...
I am a tree swaying in the wind...
My leaves rustle in the breeze...
I am peaceful...
My roots are strong and slowly break through all obstacles before me...
I am at one with my environment as I absorb nutrients from the bodies beneath me...
J
A couple'o thoughts:
.38 slug into the roadside camera.
There are vendors in the US that sell polarized license plate covers that are clear from a straight-on view, but obscure the plate numbers (and letters too!) from an angled view. This pretty much takes care of any road-side or overhead cameras. Use of these plate covers are often illegal or at least questionable, but infrequently cited. Y'all law-abiding folks in the northern reaches of the EU and elsewhere might not understand this, but people here in the western US occasionally drive their vehicles with no plates at all for weeks at a time -- blatantly illegal -- w/o getting cited. (But don't try this if your skin is anything but pearly white or while wearing a religious headcovering, or John Ashcroft will personally declare you an "enemy combatant" and revoke your citizenship. Welcome to America as we deconstruct it.)
Here in WA USA, there is a license plate re-issuance schedule to make sure that you have shiny new plates on the front every few years. This is purely for the benefit of the laser-speed-gun-weilding state troopers. However, a light misting from a can of white spray-paint takes care of that... Subtlety is always a good option when stealth mode is impractical.
And speaking of impractical stealth mode, I'm looking forward to advances in flexible LCD technology, so that I can put a transparent screen over my plates. Every few minutes, the 3 and 6 turn into 8's, the 5 into a 9, and an extra digit shows up in the blank space... Perhaps I can also use it to send a scrolling message to the cell-phone idiot in the 2cm-penis-compensation SUV behind me? Of course, if we're going to go for an active response instead of a passive one, I should just plug a
Driving the bike and shooting left-handed oughtta be interesting, but I don't think showing up for work with powder burns on my right sleeve and stinking of sulfur qualifies as "subtle."
Jon
What a waste of technology! Think about it: They're going to go to the effort of doing a brute-force identification of weeds (i.e. looking at every plant in every row, instead of using a broadly-targeted agent). But then they fall back on an old-school method of killing the weed -- by poisoning. Yeah, targeted poisoning, but it's a refinement of an undesirable technology.
:)
Now, it seems to me that if you're going to the effort of imaging the leaves of virtually every stalk coming out of the ground, you ought to take the opportunity to do something very selective and low-impact to the surrounding plants. Like pull the damn thing out, roots and all. No expense of chemical agents, no breeding of resistant weed species, and it produces a product that people are willing to pay a premium for. I'm pretty sure that having weeds pulled robotically would not impact the qualification of a product as "organic."
Just my $0.02US, but I'd sooner feed my kids methodically/robotically well-managed organic food than feed them foodstuffs protected by well-targeted herbicides and pesticides. Why play that lottery if you have the technological means to avoid it?
As a US citizen, I'm depressed (I should be outraged) at this sad state of affairs. However in-your-face this particular presentation was to be, the stated goal was to expose the flaws of the system through hand-on research & controlled experimentation. Research. It was NOT to distribute hacking tools for actual implementation to facilitate illegal or illicit purposes. But ballsy kids in an academic environment who want to improve the technology and processes that surround them? They're stymied by corporate protecionism ensconsed in federal law. That's sad. It's wrong, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual. But the real tragedy is that it depresses the level of creativity in academia and creates fear for those that think too hard.
As a security professional, the fact that any cheeseball company can successfully hide their shoddy product behind a federal law is an embarassment. It induces even more cognitive dissonance when I work with federal and state goverment security staff who are well aware of good security principles, and then think about laws such as the DMCA which are diametrically opposed to known-good principles of improving security technology and processes.
It's a lose-lose proposition: News of an exploit always gets out, and is propogated fastest within the community which has little fear of the DMCA. But invocation of the DMCA causes relatively-innocent people -- those that were willing to stand up and state their names -- to tremble and retreat. As I said: it's wrong, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual. I spend my days educating people about the dangers of security by obscurity, and exposing the risks associated with snake-oil solutions such as Blackboard's "secure" transactions. I'm doing my part to educate as many people as I can, but with Grand Moff Ashcroft at the legal helm of the country (and with US federal/foreign policy changed to match the prosecutorial principles of "pre-crime"), I'm afraid it's like spitting into the Mojave.
The first time that some predator clones the card of a victim (or a patsy) in order to gain access to a building and rape/murder someone, I wonder... Will the appropriate law enforcement be able to effectively investigate/prosecute such a crime if the computing research community is prohibited from supporting them? Would Blackboard be content to sit on known security flaws and let a patsy get convicted? Again: wrong, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual. It ought to be illegal to *withhold* security flaws, at least from those who depend on/are subject to them. Feh.
J