I bought a replacement Model M keyboard with USB from Unicomp. This is the original IBM keyboard, just newer. From their website: "The buckling spring “Model M” keyboard, invented by IBM in the 80’s; popularized by Lexmark in the early 90’s; and manufactured by Unicomp for the past 15 years is regaining its status as one of the best keyboards in the market."
Same original design. Very sturdy; you could probably cleave your way through the zombie apocalypse with this thing, and it would keep working. You can get them in either PS2 or USB. Mine's a USB version, and I love it.
It's interesting to draw a comparison between this guy making his own watch as an "art project" and Woz's Nixie tube watch which he says he has worn on flights. Did the TSA just let Woz through because he was Woz?
While not a perfect match to the above, I think the story of the king's toaster is a good example of the difference between an "engineer" and a "scientist". I originally saw this on USENET in the 1990s, so the technology is a little dated:
A great king summoned two of his advisors, and showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One adviser, an engineer, answered first: "It is a toaster," he said.
The king asked, "But how would you design an embedded computer for it?"
The engineer replied, "Using a 4-bit micro-controller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the toaster and start the timer. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second adviser, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete."
The adviser suggested a future-oriented embedded computer innovation, with a forward-ready platform: "Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't want the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface.
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap."
The king had the computer scientist thrown in the moat, and they all lived happily ever after.
I'm a long-time Doctor Who fan. I like the new series, but maybe not as much as the classic series. The actors are good, but I think the writing and stories aren't as strong. I've heard Lalla Ward mention in classic episode commentaries, for example, that it would do a world of good in the new series to cut their budget in half, so they learn to focus on making the stories tight (and not rely on special effects as much). The linked blog also mentions that some stories in the new series did really well because they had small budgets and had to keep the story tight and within that budget.
Now that we're coming up on the 50th anniversary season, I'd really like to see some hard references to the classic series. I came up with a great idea a few weeks ago that I'd love to see. With 7 Doctors in the original series, you can have 7 episodes to use as references. (Or 8 if you include McGann.) Imagine a series arc like this:
Story 1 : The episode starts with the Doctor, Clara (the new companion they'll introduce at the Christmas episode), and "Colin" (new companion.. see later) discovering a strangely quiet space museum on the planet Xeros. Exploring the museum, they discover themselves on display in the museum, with the TARDIS nearby!
The Doctor realizes the TARDIS must have jumped a time track when they materalised. Thus they temporarily occupy a fourth dimension. This lets them be simultaneously in the cases in one reality and standing, looking at themselves in the fourth dimension. The Doctor adds that is why everything seems familiar, yet unfamiliar - for example, why he can remember meeting Clara but is fuzzy on meeting Colin - they're experiencing time out of order and things are all mixed up.
From there, the rest of the story is a one-hour version of 'The Space Museum' (1st Doctor). It was a good story, and would translate well to the current series, but needs editing down.
(The "Next Time on Doctor Who" trailer is not actually from the following story, but a re-cut trailer from a classic story. Same for the rest of the season.)
Story 2 : The TARDIS arrives on Earth in the year 3000 and the travellers quickly discover a base where scientists commanded by Leader Clent are using an ioniser device to combat the advance of a new Ice Age. The scientists uncover Martians (Ice Warriors) frozen in the glacier ice. The Doctor warns that the Ice Warriors are dangerous enemies. He also comments how similar this is to the first time he met them, also in Earth's future, but Colin suggests this is deja vu from jumping time tracks from the earlier episode.
This story re-introduces the Ice Warriors from the classic series, and in fact is a one-hour version of 'The Ice Warriors' (2nd Doctor).
Story 3 : The Doctor and his companions make a test flight in the TARDIS, trying to jump back to their original time track, and arrive on the planet Peladon. Seeking shelter, they enter the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor is mistaken for an Earth dignitary (Clara and Colin as his aids) summoned to act as Chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation.
The rest of the episode plays out similarly to 'Curse of Peladon' (3rd Doctor) but edited down to one hour. Sort of a cheesy episode, but can be improved through editing and some minor re-writes. I'd change the antagonist to one of the delegates, probably Alpha Centauri. The Doctor believes he knows who was causing trouble, but would end up being wrong. Instead, Colin and Clara ferret out the bad guys. The Doctor is really confused by now, especially since things seem familiar, yet unfamiliar (a theme repeated throughout this season).
Story 4 : The Doctor, Clara and Colin arrive on a desolate and apparently deserted Earth in our far future. They soon find a group of shipwrecked astronauts from a human colony in the Galactic Federation, lured there by a fake distress call. The astronauts suspect the Doctor of luring them. One of
I know you asked for math-reads, but you also asked for books like Stephenson. I just finished reading Ready Player One which I found to be a lot like Gibson and Stephenson, but better. (For example, RPO actually has an ending.) It has a good cyberpunk feel, and a realistic world. The way he described the dystopian near-future society reminded me of Stephenson's Diamond Age or Snow Crash, or Gibson's Virtual Light trilogy.
I have been paid for writing open source software but only in the following context:
Open source project X almost meets our needs, however it is missing the following 3 features. I could spend two weeks implementing those features (but we will need to contribute it back to the project) or two months implementing the library from scratch, which do you prefer?
While I always like to see people contribute their open source work such (bug fixes, enhancements) back to the community, it's important to realize this is not strictly required except for only a few licenses. With most licenses, you only need to provide a copy of the source code when you distribute the binary.
So a better way to market this might be "If we make changes to open source project X, you'll get a copy of the source code and our changes. You can use that to make changes on your own later - or hire us again to make further improvements." In my experience, companies like having the source IN CASE they need/want to make changes later, but will prefer to outsource that work to the person who did it the first time.
Bruce, I'm doing a study of usability in open source software - how user interfaces can be designed in Free / open source programs so the program is easy to use by real people. So my question is twofold:
What Free / open source program really got it right with usability? What qualities make for good usability in Free / open source software?
Agree, check the rules first. You don't want to get fired for doing the wrong thing. My understanding of lost property is that for values above a certain dollar amount, you need to return it or make reasonable assurances of being able to return it. (For items of low/no dollar value, I understand it is considered de minimis - but the TI-83 sells new for about $100, which I don't consider de minimis.) You said you "would feel wrong for selling them" so you seem to know there's an issue of proper ownership here.
I understand wanting to do something nerd-worthy with this old gear. And I'd bet that no one will come looking for them again anyway. But the right thing to do here is to hand them over to authorities. Start with your school administration, probably your campus police (if you have one) or whatever department seems connected with legal issues. Let them tell you what to do next.
Maybe you'll be lucky and they'll come back with "we don't consider this to be valuable property, do what you want". In that case, you can do nerd-worthy things with them, or donate them, or sell them. But you'll have someone in authority giving you permission to do so.
More likely is they'll take them and store them somewhere, and you'll never see them again. Which is too bad, but it's still the right thing to do.
I used to run Windows on my home computer until I decided to switch to Linux full-time in 1998. Mostly RedHat and Fedora. I was fortunate that I could also run Linux on the desktop at my work, and I did so until 2009. That's when our new director put his foot down and pretty much pushed me to run Windows at work.
I have to say, Windows is a dumb desktop. Microsoft may have updated the bells and whistles, but it's still painful to use. Inconsistencies everywhere, making a very strange user interface. Applying updates is hard. Functionality I just expected to be there was missing, but you could "easily" get add-ons by buying expensive software or getting the "premium" edition of Windows.
I switched jobs two years ago, and glad to say I'm running Linux at work again, with the occasional (about monthly) boot into Windows to use a videoconference client that requires Silverlight.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: The irony is that Adobe does not see that by dropping support for platforms, fewer developers will want to use Flash because it is no longer "cross-platform." And if fewer developers want to use Flash, then fewer people will consume Flash content... and eventually Adobe will decide to drop support on yet another platform because fewer people are consuming Flash there. The cycle feeds itself. It's only a matter of time before Flash goes away entirely.
This is not a trend Adobe will want. Adobe seems to be focusing on "the PC", but the market is increasingly moving to "mobile"... I think we can see where this is going.
> Apparently, the catchy new name they've settled on is 'Windows 8 style UI'
I'm no Microsoft fan, but TFS is wrong. Both linked articles aren't that long, so it's not hard to find what they've actually said. Microsoft has dropped "Metro" and is looking for a new name. Until they figure out a new name, they have asked developers to stop referring to the interface as "Metro" and use "Windows 8 style UI" instead. But the point is, Microsoft has not settled on this as a new name.
From the BBC article:
Instead of Metro, Microsoft has told developers to simply refer to the blocky display as a "Windows 8 style UI" for the time being.
From the Verge article:
Until then, employees have been advised to refer to the Metro style user interface as the "Windows 8 style UI."
The summary was missing something important: a list of games from 38 Studios. So here you are. I haven't heard of Kingdoms of Amalur, or Project Copernicus (unreleased). Sorry they went out of business, but it is a tough industry and they clearly weren't delivering.
The author took 4 pages (you start on page "1" and click through 3 other pages... ads at each step) and basically he says this:
Open a spreadsheet. Enter in all the shows that you like to watch on cable. For shows that are available on HuluPlus, assume you'll subscribe to HuluPlus ($8/mo). For a show that is available on Amazon, enter it's cost per episode (less than $2). Same if your show is only available on iTunes or some other media center. Add up the costs, calculate a "monthly" cost to stream your shows. Compare to your monthly cost for cable TV.
That's pretty much what the article is about. I've just saved you a bunch of clicks and ads.
It is what I have been saying about my own television watching. When my wife & I moved two years ago, we opted not to sign up for cable TV, choosing to stream everything instead. We have Netflix for movies and "TV on DVD", HuluPlus for most of our current shows, Amazon for a few others. We bought a Roku ($99) to stream everything to our television - and it effectively paid for itself over a couple of months. Our monthly cost for all that is way less than the monthly cost of cable TV. And as long as the math continues to be in our favor, we'll keep streaming.
I read about this on BBC News this morning, and two things struck me:
1. "In tests Mr Brocious conducted with Forbes news site, the system did not prove entirely successful - only one of the three doors, at three hotels in New York, opened." So it doesn't work everywhere, but it's a good proof of concept. From the above ExtremeTech article: "Brocious found that he could simply read this 32-bit key out of the lock’s memory. No authentication is required... By playing this 32-bit code back to the lock... it opens." While Brocious seems to have taken this only to the demonstration stage, I'm sure others (CIA? MI5?) have made this method more reliable. It just seemed to me that Brocious is assuming this method applies everywhere, and possibly oversold it.
2. He didn't share this with the hotel lock vendor, Onity. While he's certainly not required to share that info with Onity, it seems a bit shady to only release the information publicly at a blackhat conference, and force the vendor to respond to it after the hack is "in the wild." I wonder if he was worried that if he shared the vulnerability with Onity beforehand that it would take away some of the "thunder" from his presentation. Or maybe it's simply less cool to say to a blackhat convention "I shared this with the vendor, and they're working on it."
First problem is blind people. Second problem is what language the ballot is printed in - there is no official language for the US so every language has to be given equal weight. The language problem has already been decided in courts to the extent that if you ask for a ballot in Swahili the polling place workers are required to have one on hand and to give it to you. If they do not have such a ballot they have to make one up immediately so you can vote. Failure to do so is a violation of the Voting Rights Act and the county may be subject to a huge fine.
... Voting on paper isn't handicapped-friendly and it isn't language-friendly, so it is gone. Pretty much a done deal for most of the US now.
If you need assistance due to the inability to read English or have a physical inability to mark a ballot you may obtain the assistance of any individual you choose with the exception of the following: your employer, agent of your employer, officer or agent of your union, or a candidate for election. Alternatively, you may obtain the aid of two election judges who are members of different political parties. See Minnesota Statutes, Section 204C.15 for more information.
If you can’t easily leave your car, you can ask for the ballot to be brought out to you in your car. Two election judges from different political parties will bring the voting materials out and assist you.
If a voter needs assistance because of a disability, inability to read or write, difficulty with English, or other reasons, the voter has several options. The voter may:... 3. Use the AutoMARK: Each polling place must have at least one voting machine accessible to disabled individuals, called the AutoMARK. It allows blind voters and those who have trouble marking the ballot themselves to vote independently by allowing voters to indicate their choices using a touch screen or headphones in combination with a keypad marked in Braille. The voter enters their choices and the AutoMARK prints the ballot for them. It does not count the votes or retain their choices. The voter then deposits their ballot into the optical scan ballot counter along with everyone else's.
So we do accommodate the blind (my father-in-law is blind) in several ways. Also, if you have difficulty with English you are allowed to bring someone in to translate your options for you. If you prefer Klingon, for example, feel free to have Mark Okrand there in person with you.
Welcome to generational differences. I hope you enjoy your stay. And yes, this exists pretty much everywhere - although maybe not to the point you describe here. Depends on the people you hire, too. But speaking generally, it's a generational thing.
Every generation approaches their work in a different way. I spoke about this a few years ago at Penguicon in my Linux in the Enterprise (Powerpoint) talk. Although my slides don't have a lot of text on them, so you may not get much benefit by looking at the slides on their own. You can also find more on my blog.
In my Penguicon talk, it was about how to pitch Linux to the higher-ups. I mentioned 3 generations that might be your manager. In your case, you are likely experiencing only 2 of these groups:
My generation (the "Star Wars generation") in their 30's and 40's
The "boomer generation" in their 50's and 60's
Folks in their 30's and 40's tend to be very conservative. I don't mean to say politically conservative but conservative in their actions. Other slashdotters who are about my age likely saw one of their parents get laid off from their jobs while we were growing up. If your parents weren't laid off, I'm sure one or more of your friends' parents were. And while we may not recognize it, that caused many of my generation to think conservatively. We don't want to see that happen to us. So we tend to view things in terms of risk. Many in my generation are risk-averse, so you really need to be careful in how you introduce new technology and new concepts to them. Approach it as a way to reduce risk or to make things easier. Don't just jump in and expect them to follow, because they're waiting to see what you'll make of it before they touch it. Will this be something that "sticks" or will it be another flash-in-the-pan that goes away after a little while, so a waste of time to learn?
The boomer generation is different. That generation is often motivated by societal change. Witness the societal upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s. And they definitely didn't grow up with technology, they probably "fell into it" and got their start working on mainframes. If they are honest, they may tell you they're more interested in society and social networks (this the generation that Classmates.com was built for) and less motivated by technology. Since they didn't grow up with technology, the boomer generation may not always be comfortable with the rate of change in technology - even those who work in technology. In general, don't expect boomers to share your enthusiasm for new technology. You may need to walk these folks through it. Draw parallels for them, show how this new thing is basically like this other older thing, but with a few improvements.
If you look at your coworkers' behaviors as a symptom of generational differences, you'll be pretty far along.
Your generation, by the way, is often very self-motivated to go search stuff out on their own. (You mentioned this in your post.) Kids in your generation don't often stop to bring other people into what they are doing, they just do their own research. (Sound familiar?) And your generation typically is not interested in going through the same "levels" that previous generations were content to follow. So while you didn't mention this in your post, I'll give it as a caution: if you find that your boss's boss is an expert in some area that you're working on, you probably will just send an email to pick his/her brain on the topic. You wouldn't think anything of it; that's the expert, so you asked. Your boss's boss will probably answer you, too, because that person is probably a boomer - and remember, boomers tend to be motivated by social networking. So your boss's boss will find it hard to resist having that dialogue with you.
We are doing all that already in Minnesota. I don't know how you'd request to get access to ballots to scan them independently (probably granted by the courts, for example: during a contested recount) but in theory if you could get them, you could easily scan the ballots using your own software for an independent check. This is also dead simple for election officials to recount manually, like in our contested Senate race in 2008 (if it's too close, state law forces a manual recount.)
You may want to look at a few example ballots from Minnesota. Here's the 2012 general election sample ballot: PDF. The green numbers are explanatory notes - ignore them if you just want to see the ballot. This ballot is missing the feeder marks on either side of the page, which helps the scanner. And (obviously) the names and other text are just placeholders.
You can see that our "bubble sheet" ballots are pretty straightforward. Voters just fill in the ovals next to their choices. You can even opt for write-in. I believe these ballots are 11x17, so a pretty standard size.
Maybe this is a naive question, but what's wrong with bubble sheet voting ballots? Like those "A-B-C-D-E" forms you filled out when you took the SAT in high school. That's basically what we use in Minnesota, but just a little different because voting isn't just "A-B-C-D-E".
Everyone knows how to fill out bubble sheets, so they're dead simple to use. When you've voted, you insert them into a scanner (it's also a locked box, old-fashioned key-and-lock, so no one except election officials can access they ballots once they're inserted). The scanner checks for simple stuff like "Did you vote for more than one presidential candidate?" and immediately spits your ballot out if it finds a problem. I made a mistake on my ballot once, and there's a simple, established procedure where they destroy your invalid ballot in front of you and issue you another ballot so you can vote again. It's easy.
And bubble sheets are anonymous. No worrying about "Can someone figure out how I voted?"
Above all, bubble sheets are auditable. While the scanners can easily keep track of how many votes for Obama v Romney, election officials can always go back to manually count the bubble sheets in the case of a recount. You may have heard about our 2008 recount - they manually recounted the bubble sheets.
Been there. In 1995 or 1996, I was working in my first job, as a systems administrator for a small geographics company. Our main business was in generating custom maps for large businesses that needed to visualize the geophysical data for a certain area. For example, one typical customer was a large local bank that needed us to generate custom maps to show all the residential addresses they loaned money to in the metro area over the previous year, so they could show there was no discrimination in who they loaned to.
Back to the point: we could make custom maps. One day, my supervisor and I were talking about "The Web" and all the cool things you could find there. We had the great idea to use "The Web" to advertise our business. So we pitched an idea to our vice president: Let's set up a server that lets people type in their address in a "Web Browser", then we can pass that to our mapping system and create a simple "line drawing" map of their immediate area. Just stuff our server could complete in about 5 seconds or so. We figured the "Web Page" could also tell the visitor about the other things we do. Basically, give away a few small maps in exchange for getting more customers for our big stuff.
The vice president considered, then rejected the idea, saying that free maps on the Internet wasn't our business.
Only a year later, companies like MapQuest arrived on the scene, offering free maps supported by advertising. It was the start of a new business model. I don't want to say that our little company could have become MapQuest... but yeah, we really could have. I'll note that the first versions of these mapping "Web Sites" provided little more than a line-drawing of a location, and a route to get from point A to point B.
I believe that company went out of business a few years after I left. Surprisingly, they weren't able to adapt to this new model where people could get free maps on the Internet.
Adobe will not develop and test Flash player for Android 4.1 and will now focus on a PC browsing and apps. In a blog post, they wrote, 'Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as we have not continued developing and testing Flash Player for this new version of Android and its available browser options
First, Adobe stopped developing Flash for Linux, now they are dropping Android. The irony is that Adobe does not see that by dropping support for platforms, fewer developers will want to use Flash, because it is no longer "cross-platform." And if fewer developers want to use Flash, then fewer people will consume Flash content... and eventually Adobe will decide to drop support for another platform because fewer people are consuming Flash there. The cycle feeds itself. It's only a matter of time before Flash goes away entirely.
This is not a trend Adobe will want. Adobe is focusing on "the PC", but the market is increasingly moving to "mobile"... I think we can see where this is going.
Does it? Didn't realize. I never really looked for it. As I said, we get most of our news from bbc.co.uk and other sources, even before we got our Roku. Unless you count The Daily Show, which we do watch on Hulu.
In the announcement they said GRUB 2.00 supports FreeDOS as a boot protocol. I'll have to test that out to see what they mean - it's not that hard to boot DOS. But I am thrilled that the GRUB developers recognized us with explicit support. And of course, all the extra technical details they've added in the 2.00 release. Thanks!
Also, I saw that GRUB 2.00 supports a few other "alternative" operating systems, including Ntldr/bootmgr (to load Windows bootloader) and Darwin 11 (Mac OS X Lion.)
I go into it in more depth in another comment, but I recommend Roku plus streaming.
I don't recommend a refurb Roku, since you can get a new Roku on Amazon for $60-90 anyway. It just depends what model you want. (The higher models let you watch movies saved to a USB fob drive.)
And you aren't tied to just one Roku box. We have one Roku in the living room to watch TV together, and I have another in the basement so I can watch TV while on the exercise bike. And of course, you can always stream Hulu+ or Netflix on an iPad from anywhere.
You don't get news programming with this - but as someone else pointed out, it's great! We got most of our news from bbc.co.uk and other sources, even before we got our Roku. Cable news is really bad.
Don't know about sports options, since I don't watch that.
Slashdot Mirror
As a result of Apple's actions, they have their own map service they are improving ...
"A man using iOS Maps walks into a bar. Or maybe it's a church, or maybe a school, I'm not sure."
I bought a replacement Model M keyboard with USB from Unicomp. This is the original IBM keyboard, just newer. From their website: "The buckling spring “Model M” keyboard, invented by IBM in the 80’s; popularized by Lexmark in the early 90’s; and manufactured by Unicomp for the past 15 years is regaining its status as one of the best keyboards in the market."
Same original design. Very sturdy; you could probably cleave your way through the zombie apocalypse with this thing, and it would keep working. You can get them in either PS2 or USB. Mine's a USB version, and I love it.
It's interesting to draw a comparison between this guy making his own watch as an "art project" and Woz's Nixie tube watch which he says he has worn on flights. Did the TSA just let Woz through because he was Woz?
While not a perfect match to the above, I think the story of the king's toaster is a good example of the difference between an "engineer" and a "scientist". I originally saw this on USENET in the 1990s, so the technology is a little dated:
I'm a long-time Doctor Who fan. I like the new series, but maybe not as much as the classic series. The actors are good, but I think the writing and stories aren't as strong. I've heard Lalla Ward mention in classic episode commentaries, for example, that it would do a world of good in the new series to cut their budget in half, so they learn to focus on making the stories tight (and not rely on special effects as much). The linked blog also mentions that some stories in the new series did really well because they had small budgets and had to keep the story tight and within that budget.
Now that we're coming up on the 50th anniversary season, I'd really like to see some hard references to the classic series. I came up with a great idea a few weeks ago that I'd love to see. With 7 Doctors in the original series, you can have 7 episodes to use as references. (Or 8 if you include McGann.) Imagine a series arc like this:
Story 1 : The episode starts with the Doctor, Clara (the new companion they'll introduce at the Christmas episode), and "Colin" (new companion .. see later) discovering a strangely quiet space museum on the planet Xeros. Exploring the museum, they discover themselves on display in the museum, with the TARDIS nearby!
The Doctor realizes the TARDIS must have jumped a time track when they materalised. Thus they temporarily occupy a fourth dimension. This lets them be simultaneously in the cases in one reality and standing, looking at themselves in the fourth dimension. The Doctor adds that is why everything seems familiar, yet unfamiliar - for example, why he can remember meeting Clara but is fuzzy on meeting Colin - they're experiencing time out of order and things are all mixed up.
From there, the rest of the story is a one-hour version of 'The Space Museum' (1st Doctor). It was a good story, and would translate well to the current series, but needs editing down.
(The "Next Time on Doctor Who" trailer is not actually from the following story, but a re-cut trailer from a classic story. Same for the rest of the season.)
Story 2 : The TARDIS arrives on Earth in the year 3000 and the travellers quickly discover a base where scientists commanded by Leader Clent are using an ioniser device to combat the advance of a new Ice Age. The scientists uncover Martians (Ice Warriors) frozen in the glacier ice. The Doctor warns that the Ice Warriors are dangerous enemies. He also comments how similar this is to the first time he met them, also in Earth's future, but Colin suggests this is deja vu from jumping time tracks from the earlier episode.
This story re-introduces the Ice Warriors from the classic series, and in fact is a one-hour version of 'The Ice Warriors' (2nd Doctor).
Story 3 : The Doctor and his companions make a test flight in the TARDIS, trying to jump back to their original time track, and arrive on the planet Peladon. Seeking shelter, they enter the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor is mistaken for an Earth dignitary (Clara and Colin as his aids) summoned to act as Chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation.
The rest of the episode plays out similarly to 'Curse of Peladon' (3rd Doctor) but edited down to one hour. Sort of a cheesy episode, but can be improved through editing and some minor re-writes. I'd change the antagonist to one of the delegates, probably Alpha Centauri. The Doctor believes he knows who was causing trouble, but would end up being wrong. Instead, Colin and Clara ferret out the bad guys. The Doctor is really confused by now, especially since things seem familiar, yet unfamiliar (a theme repeated throughout this season).
Story 4 : The Doctor, Clara and Colin arrive on a desolate and apparently deserted Earth in our far future. They soon find a group of shipwrecked astronauts from a human colony in the Galactic Federation, lured there by a fake distress call. The astronauts suspect the Doctor of luring them. One of
I know you asked for math-reads, but you also asked for books like Stephenson. I just finished reading Ready Player One which I found to be a lot like Gibson and Stephenson, but better. (For example, RPO actually has an ending.) It has a good cyberpunk feel, and a realistic world. The way he described the dystopian near-future society reminded me of Stephenson's Diamond Age or Snow Crash, or Gibson's Virtual Light trilogy.
I have been paid for writing open source software but only in the following context: Open source project X almost meets our needs, however it is missing the following 3 features. I could spend two weeks implementing those features (but we will need to contribute it back to the project) or two months implementing the library from scratch, which do you prefer?
While I always like to see people contribute their open source work such (bug fixes, enhancements) back to the community, it's important to realize this is not strictly required except for only a few licenses. With most licenses, you only need to provide a copy of the source code when you distribute the binary.
So a better way to market this might be "If we make changes to open source project X, you'll get a copy of the source code and our changes. You can use that to make changes on your own later - or hire us again to make further improvements." In my experience, companies like having the source IN CASE they need/want to make changes later, but will prefer to outsource that work to the person who did it the first time.
Bruce, I'm doing a study of usability in open source software - how user interfaces can be designed in Free / open source programs so the program is easy to use by real people. So my question is twofold:
What Free / open source program really got it right with usability? What qualities make for good usability in Free / open source software?
Agree, check the rules first. You don't want to get fired for doing the wrong thing. My understanding of lost property is that for values above a certain dollar amount, you need to return it or make reasonable assurances of being able to return it. (For items of low/no dollar value, I understand it is considered de minimis - but the TI-83 sells new for about $100, which I don't consider de minimis.) You said you "would feel wrong for selling them" so you seem to know there's an issue of proper ownership here.
I understand wanting to do something nerd-worthy with this old gear. And I'd bet that no one will come looking for them again anyway. But the right thing to do here is to hand them over to authorities. Start with your school administration, probably your campus police (if you have one) or whatever department seems connected with legal issues. Let them tell you what to do next.
Maybe you'll be lucky and they'll come back with "we don't consider this to be valuable property, do what you want". In that case, you can do nerd-worthy things with them, or donate them, or sell them. But you'll have someone in authority giving you permission to do so.
More likely is they'll take them and store them somewhere, and you'll never see them again. Which is too bad, but it's still the right thing to do.
I used to run Windows on my home computer until I decided to switch to Linux full-time in 1998. Mostly RedHat and Fedora. I was fortunate that I could also run Linux on the desktop at my work, and I did so until 2009. That's when our new director put his foot down and pretty much pushed me to run Windows at work.
I have to say, Windows is a dumb desktop. Microsoft may have updated the bells and whistles, but it's still painful to use. Inconsistencies everywhere, making a very strange user interface. Applying updates is hard. Functionality I just expected to be there was missing, but you could "easily" get add-ons by buying expensive software or getting the "premium" edition of Windows.
I switched jobs two years ago, and glad to say I'm running Linux at work again, with the occasional (about monthly) boot into Windows to use a videoconference client that requires Silverlight.
So there's another side of the story for you.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: The irony is that Adobe does not see that by dropping support for platforms, fewer developers will want to use Flash because it is no longer "cross-platform." And if fewer developers want to use Flash, then fewer people will consume Flash content ... and eventually Adobe will decide to drop support on yet another platform because fewer people are consuming Flash there. The cycle feeds itself. It's only a matter of time before Flash goes away entirely.
This is not a trend Adobe will want. Adobe seems to be focusing on "the PC", but the market is increasingly moving to "mobile" ... I think we can see where this is going.
> Apparently, the catchy new name they've settled on is 'Windows 8 style UI'
I'm no Microsoft fan, but TFS is wrong. Both linked articles aren't that long, so it's not hard to find what they've actually said. Microsoft has dropped "Metro" and is looking for a new name. Until they figure out a new name, they have asked developers to stop referring to the interface as "Metro" and use "Windows 8 style UI" instead. But the point is, Microsoft has not settled on this as a new name.
From the BBC article:
Instead of Metro, Microsoft has told developers to simply refer to the blocky display as a "Windows 8 style UI" for the time being.
From the Verge article:
Until then, employees have been advised to refer to the Metro style user interface as the "Windows 8 style UI."
The summary was missing something important: a list of games from 38 Studios. So here you are. I haven't heard of Kingdoms of Amalur, or Project Copernicus (unreleased). Sorry they went out of business, but it is a tough industry and they clearly weren't delivering.
> When I had hulu+, it was only $4 a month not $8... And I just canceled it about a month or two ago... ?
Not sure what deal you were getting, but the Hulu Plus page shows the cost at $7.99/month. That's what I'm paying.
The author took 4 pages (you start on page "1" and click through 3 other pages ... ads at each step) and basically he says this:
Open a spreadsheet. Enter in all the shows that you like to watch on cable. For shows that are available on HuluPlus, assume you'll subscribe to HuluPlus ($8/mo). For a show that is available on Amazon, enter it's cost per episode (less than $2). Same if your show is only available on iTunes or some other media center. Add up the costs, calculate a "monthly" cost to stream your shows. Compare to your monthly cost for cable TV.
That's pretty much what the article is about. I've just saved you a bunch of clicks and ads.
It is what I have been saying about my own television watching. When my wife & I moved two years ago, we opted not to sign up for cable TV, choosing to stream everything instead. We have Netflix for movies and "TV on DVD", HuluPlus for most of our current shows, Amazon for a few others. We bought a Roku ($99) to stream everything to our television - and it effectively paid for itself over a couple of months. Our monthly cost for all that is way less than the monthly cost of cable TV. And as long as the math continues to be in our favor, we'll keep streaming.
I read about this on BBC News this morning, and two things struck me:
1. "In tests Mr Brocious conducted with Forbes news site, the system did not prove entirely successful - only one of the three doors, at three hotels in New York, opened." So it doesn't work everywhere, but it's a good proof of concept. From the above ExtremeTech article: "Brocious found that he could simply read this 32-bit key out of the lock’s memory. No authentication is required ... By playing this 32-bit code back to the lock ... it opens." While Brocious seems to have taken this only to the demonstration stage, I'm sure others (CIA? MI5?) have made this method more reliable. It just seemed to me that Brocious is assuming this method applies everywhere, and possibly oversold it.
2. He didn't share this with the hotel lock vendor, Onity. While he's certainly not required to share that info with Onity, it seems a bit shady to only release the information publicly at a blackhat conference, and force the vendor to respond to it after the hack is "in the wild." I wonder if he was worried that if he shared the vulnerability with Onity beforehand that it would take away some of the "thunder" from his presentation. Or maybe it's simply less cool to say to a blackhat convention "I shared this with the vendor, and they're working on it."
First problem is blind people. Second problem is what language the ballot is printed in - there is no official language for the US so every language has to be given equal weight. The language problem has already been decided in courts to the extent that if you ask for a ballot in Swahili the polling place workers are required to have one on hand and to give it to you. If they do not have such a ballot they have to make one up immediately so you can vote. Failure to do so is a violation of the Voting Rights Act and the county may be subject to a huge fine.
... Voting on paper isn't handicapped-friendly and it isn't language-friendly, so it is gone. Pretty much a done deal for most of the US now.
Here's what the State of Minnesota says about accessible voting:
If you need assistance due to the inability to read English or have a physical inability to mark a ballot you may obtain the assistance of any individual you choose with the exception of the following: your employer, agent of your employer, officer or agent of your union, or a candidate for election. Alternatively, you may obtain the aid of two election judges who are members of different political parties. See Minnesota Statutes, Section 204C.15 for more information.
If you can’t easily leave your car, you can ask for the ballot to be brought out to you in your car. Two election judges from different political parties will bring the voting materials out and assist you.
Also, Assistance with voting:
If a voter needs assistance because of a disability, inability to read or write, difficulty with English, or other reasons, the voter has several options. The voter may: ... 3. Use the AutoMARK: Each polling place must have at least one voting machine accessible to disabled individuals, called the AutoMARK. It allows blind voters and those who have trouble marking the ballot themselves to vote independently by allowing voters to indicate their choices using a touch screen or headphones in combination with a keypad marked in Braille. The voter enters their choices and the AutoMARK prints the ballot for them. It does not count the votes or retain their choices. The voter then deposits their ballot into the optical scan ballot counter along with everyone else's.
So we do accommodate the blind (my father-in-law is blind) in several ways. Also, if you have difficulty with English you are allowed to bring someone in to translate your options for you. If you prefer Klingon, for example, feel free to have Mark Okrand there in person with you.
Welcome to generational differences. I hope you enjoy your stay. And yes, this exists pretty much everywhere - although maybe not to the point you describe here. Depends on the people you hire, too. But speaking generally, it's a generational thing.
Every generation approaches their work in a different way. I spoke about this a few years ago at Penguicon in my Linux in the Enterprise (Powerpoint) talk. Although my slides don't have a lot of text on them, so you may not get much benefit by looking at the slides on their own. You can also find more on my blog.
In my Penguicon talk, it was about how to pitch Linux to the higher-ups. I mentioned 3 generations that might be your manager. In your case, you are likely experiencing only 2 of these groups:
Folks in their 30's and 40's tend to be very conservative. I don't mean to say politically conservative but conservative in their actions. Other slashdotters who are about my age likely saw one of their parents get laid off from their jobs while we were growing up. If your parents weren't laid off, I'm sure one or more of your friends' parents were. And while we may not recognize it, that caused many of my generation to think conservatively. We don't want to see that happen to us. So we tend to view things in terms of risk. Many in my generation are risk-averse, so you really need to be careful in how you introduce new technology and new concepts to them. Approach it as a way to reduce risk or to make things easier. Don't just jump in and expect them to follow, because they're waiting to see what you'll make of it before they touch it. Will this be something that "sticks" or will it be another flash-in-the-pan that goes away after a little while, so a waste of time to learn?
The boomer generation is different. That generation is often motivated by societal change. Witness the societal upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s. And they definitely didn't grow up with technology, they probably "fell into it" and got their start working on mainframes. If they are honest, they may tell you they're more interested in society and social networks (this the generation that Classmates.com was built for) and less motivated by technology. Since they didn't grow up with technology, the boomer generation may not always be comfortable with the rate of change in technology - even those who work in technology. In general, don't expect boomers to share your enthusiasm for new technology. You may need to walk these folks through it. Draw parallels for them, show how this new thing is basically like this other older thing, but with a few improvements.
If you look at your coworkers' behaviors as a symptom of generational differences, you'll be pretty far along.
Your generation, by the way, is often very self-motivated to go search stuff out on their own. (You mentioned this in your post.) Kids in your generation don't often stop to bring other people into what they are doing, they just do their own research. (Sound familiar?) And your generation typically is not interested in going through the same "levels" that previous generations were content to follow. So while you didn't mention this in your post, I'll give it as a caution: if you find that your boss's boss is an expert in some area that you're working on, you probably will just send an email to pick his/her brain on the topic. You wouldn't think anything of it; that's the expert, so you asked. Your boss's boss will probably answer you, too, because that person is probably a boomer - and remember, boomers tend to be motivated by social networking. So your boss's boss will find it hard to resist having that dialogue with you.
And in doing so, you will have piss
We are doing all that already in Minnesota. I don't know how you'd request to get access to ballots to scan them independently (probably granted by the courts, for example: during a contested recount) but in theory if you could get them, you could easily scan the ballots using your own software for an independent check. This is also dead simple for election officials to recount manually, like in our contested Senate race in 2008 (if it's too close, state law forces a manual recount.)
You may want to look at a few example ballots from Minnesota. Here's the 2012 general election sample ballot: PDF. The green numbers are explanatory notes - ignore them if you just want to see the ballot. This ballot is missing the feeder marks on either side of the page, which helps the scanner. And (obviously) the names and other text are just placeholders.
You can see that our "bubble sheet" ballots are pretty straightforward. Voters just fill in the ovals next to their choices. You can even opt for write-in. I believe these ballots are 11x17, so a pretty standard size.
Maybe this is a naive question, but what's wrong with bubble sheet voting ballots? Like those "A-B-C-D-E" forms you filled out when you took the SAT in high school. That's basically what we use in Minnesota, but just a little different because voting isn't just "A-B-C-D-E".
Everyone knows how to fill out bubble sheets, so they're dead simple to use. When you've voted, you insert them into a scanner (it's also a locked box, old-fashioned key-and-lock, so no one except election officials can access they ballots once they're inserted). The scanner checks for simple stuff like "Did you vote for more than one presidential candidate?" and immediately spits your ballot out if it finds a problem. I made a mistake on my ballot once, and there's a simple, established procedure where they destroy your invalid ballot in front of you and issue you another ballot so you can vote again. It's easy.
And bubble sheets are anonymous. No worrying about "Can someone figure out how I voted?"
Above all, bubble sheets are auditable. While the scanners can easily keep track of how many votes for Obama v Romney, election officials can always go back to manually count the bubble sheets in the case of a recount. You may have heard about our 2008 recount - they manually recounted the bubble sheets.
Been there. In 1995 or 1996, I was working in my first job, as a systems administrator for a small geographics company. Our main business was in generating custom maps for large businesses that needed to visualize the geophysical data for a certain area. For example, one typical customer was a large local bank that needed us to generate custom maps to show all the residential addresses they loaned money to in the metro area over the previous year, so they could show there was no discrimination in who they loaned to.
Back to the point: we could make custom maps. One day, my supervisor and I were talking about "The Web" and all the cool things you could find there. We had the great idea to use "The Web" to advertise our business. So we pitched an idea to our vice president: Let's set up a server that lets people type in their address in a "Web Browser", then we can pass that to our mapping system and create a simple "line drawing" map of their immediate area. Just stuff our server could complete in about 5 seconds or so. We figured the "Web Page" could also tell the visitor about the other things we do. Basically, give away a few small maps in exchange for getting more customers for our big stuff.
The vice president considered, then rejected the idea, saying that free maps on the Internet wasn't our business.
Only a year later, companies like MapQuest arrived on the scene, offering free maps supported by advertising. It was the start of a new business model. I don't want to say that our little company could have become MapQuest ... but yeah, we really could have. I'll note that the first versions of these mapping "Web Sites" provided little more than a line-drawing of a location, and a route to get from point A to point B.
I believe that company went out of business a few years after I left. Surprisingly, they weren't able to adapt to this new model where people could get free maps on the Internet.
First, Adobe stopped developing Flash for Linux, now they are dropping Android. The irony is that Adobe does not see that by dropping support for platforms, fewer developers will want to use Flash, because it is no longer "cross-platform." And if fewer developers want to use Flash, then fewer people will consume Flash content ... and eventually Adobe will decide to drop support for another platform because fewer people are consuming Flash there. The cycle feeds itself. It's only a matter of time before Flash goes away entirely.
This is not a trend Adobe will want. Adobe is focusing on "the PC", but the market is increasingly moving to "mobile" ... I think we can see where this is going.
Does it? Didn't realize. I never really looked for it. As I said, we get most of our news from bbc.co.uk and other sources, even before we got our Roku. Unless you count The Daily Show, which we do watch on Hulu.
In the announcement they said GRUB 2.00 supports FreeDOS as a boot protocol. I'll have to test that out to see what they mean - it's not that hard to boot DOS. But I am thrilled that the GRUB developers recognized us with explicit support. And of course, all the extra technical details they've added in the 2.00 release. Thanks!
Also, I saw that GRUB 2.00 supports a few other "alternative" operating systems, including Ntldr/bootmgr (to load Windows bootloader) and Darwin 11 (Mac OS X Lion.)
I go into it in more depth in another comment, but I recommend Roku plus streaming.
I don't recommend a refurb Roku, since you can get a new Roku on Amazon for $60-90 anyway. It just depends what model you want. (The higher models let you watch movies saved to a USB fob drive.)
And you aren't tied to just one Roku box. We have one Roku in the living room to watch TV together, and I have another in the basement so I can watch TV while on the exercise bike. And of course, you can always stream Hulu+ or Netflix on an iPad from anywhere.
You don't get news programming with this - but as someone else pointed out, it's great! We got most of our news from bbc.co.uk and other sources, even before we got our Roku. Cable news is really bad.
Don't know about sports options, since I don't watch that.