Everyone's comment in this thread is correct per se, "you need precise language to describe math", "you didn't work hard enough to read the article", "you are lazy", "wikipedia is not for teaching", etc.
You are all correct.
However, I would like a resource that helps me understand the math *without* becoming an expert. Or at least better tools. Look - it's been 13 years since College. I don't remember all the terminology. However, there are many times when I would like to dive deep into a field of mathematics, or at least refresh my knowledge (stats is a good example). I find wikipedia less than helpful in this regard -or least that grokking the page takes a ton of time and effort.
Gah. Yet another unintelligible wikipedia mathematics article. For once I did like to see an article that does a great job *teaching* about a subject. Perhaps wikipedia isn't the right home for this sort of content, but my general feeling whenever reading something is wikipedia is that the content was drafted by a bunch of overly precise wankers focusing on the absolute right terminology without focusing on helping the reader understand the content.
no... my company builds an HD encoder / modulator that takes VGA/component in and outputs QAM. zeevee.com. Unfortunately still a bit too expensive for residential installs.
The twisted folks have been working on web frameworks for years (nevow/athena comes to mind). One problem with twisted is that the core devs don't focus much on marketing (ala RoR) so not many people know about it. These guys had a good comet implementation before the phrase was coined.
Ok, so I know it isn't cool to on slashdot to pimp your own products, but you might try getting a ZvBox (http://zeevee.com) if you want to get any content to your TV. This works because it snarfs the your video output and transmits HD quality video to your HDTV. And yes, it requires a PC. And yes, it is expensive (we are working on lowering the price). But, since a PC can play any content it truly is a universal solution.
Many phones give you the ability to request to be notified when the SMS is delivered. I believe this is end to end delivery, not just to the SMSC. Of course, this feature may not work across networks.
Re:$10/month from the cable company and you're don
on
The Trouble With TiVo
·
· Score: 1
Why I use a comcast DVR:
it has two recorders which my mythTV box doesn't support
DVR's contain parts that can *fail* so the rental model isn't that bad for the consumer given the life of a disk. Also consider that a DVR's disk gets a lot of use.
The software works well enough for recording shows. Yes, it doesn't work as well as Tivo or Myth but it works *ok*. And for most people at the end of the day that will be enough.
I already pay for the TV listings with my comcast cable bill
Wiring my living room for internet access to pull channel listings is non trivial (I used a wireless adapter for my mythTV box but it wasn't perfect and required some care and feeding)
My Wife can understand the integrated remote (maybe tivo does this well but it is nice that the same remote that does DVR also changes the channels)
Seriously - unless there is a Tivo feature that you can't live without why on earth would you buy one?
The whole point of modern web apps is doing *real* development with javascript so I wouldn't pass it off so lightly. And I challenge you to really know javascript in 24 hours - perhaps you would like to look at the Mochikit or prototype source code?
The article stresses that schools should focus more on life time learning rather than specific skills. This is great in theory but IMO an interest in life long learning comes down to your own motivation and enthusiasm. There are lots of people who just don't want to spend time learning after school.
On the subject of "thinker" vs "tradesman", this is a somewhat silly argument. Any good engineering school will help you learn how to use your basic skills to attack problems while also giving you the tools to learn about the real life engineering projects.
The source and engine are also available for Numbler, a collaborate spreadsheet similar to google spreadsheet.
you can get the source and play with it at http://code.google.com/p/numbler/. We haven't made a formal announcement of this yet so the docs are still quite raw.
Yes, you are right. it is all about the money, for a couple of of reasons.
A) Wireless companies are expensive to operate and thus the main focus is on operational effeciency - how to maintain towers, basestations, manage customer churn, deal with handset procurement, etc. The CEO's of wireless companies focus on these issues, for good reason I suppose. B) Wireless companies have employees who would like to open up their infrastructure, provide open services, open API's, etc. However, these people are few and far between and are not empowered to make big decisions. They are also ignored by exec management.
The end result is that people in camp B are largely ignored by people in camp A. Camp B people get discouraged and leave the company - resulting in a brain drain. Camp B people either leave the industry or go work for one of the company's that supplies the telecom industry.
Beancounters run the wireless business, not the innovators. IMO, the only way to bridge this gap will for some sort of visionary like Steve Jobs to create a seachange by totally changing how the industry works. If this is not possible I think the only way is to impose regulations on the wireless industry forcing the carriers to open up their networks.
How do I know this? I used to work for Orange, one of the large European carriers. You can not possible *imagine* the stupidity, waste, and ignorance that is structurally built into the carrier mentality. Right before I left they were still trying to figure out how to built a instant messaging service where they could bill per message! The truly *sad* part is that carriers would probably be much more profitable if they opened up their networks and stopped spending tons of money trying to control every last bit of content that gets down to your mobile phone.
What a good bit of the debate does not discuss is that a number of players, Verizon in particular, want to bring TV into your house over IP (via a fiber connection) in order to compete against cable. This is the holy grail of the telecoms industry: bundled services.
In general, competition for cable is a good thing. However, what is not often discussed is that TV content would come over a dedicated connection from verizon that you the subscriber would not have access to directly (at least, this is my understanding). The really really bad thing about this is that it would let verizon do what companies in the mobile space are doing: mixing transport (delivering the bits) with content control. In the mobile space this has been a terrific failure for most customers as the wireless companies control the delivery channel and the portals (what applications and ring tones are available).
I think the critical issue here is that we need to insist that the delivery pipe from verizon is a level playing field and that others can delivery TV content if they so choose. The pipe would still be seperate from normal internet access but I would be able to choose my HDTV provider who would let me pick the "geek" bundle of channels (plus oxygen for the wife) and who would undercut both verizon and comcast.
Verizon and the cable companies are natural monopolies: there is no way around that. Verizon is sinking tons of money into deploying FIOS: they should be compensated for that deployment. However, that compensation should not comes with strings attached - they should bill the customer for access to a high speed pipe dedicated to video and that's it.
We built the Number API for this exact purpose. Check out the API doc for details. Essentially you can use a simple REST based API to get and set spreadsheet cells.
Well, I haven't gotten a chance to try the google sheet out yet but at Numbler we built a number of tools to help you protect cells and avoid overriding other users changes.
The big difference between the existing competitors in the online spreadsheet market is whether the work is done on the client or the server.
Disclaimer: I built http://numbler.com/ what I believe was the first real-time collaborative web based spreadsheet (if being the first really matters with google in the market).
At Numbler we made the decision to have the calculation work on the backend with the understanding that this would be perceived as slightly slower than a javascript implementation. However, this enables us to do real-time updates to other clients via COMET style HTTP requests (for the technically minded, we use the athena toolkit from divmod nevow, http://divmod.org./ The upside side of a server based implementation is the collaborative capabilities that you can build into your application. The downside is responsiveness. However, if you want a highly responsive spreadsheet application you probably should be using a desktop package anyway, excel, gnumeric, OO, etc.
Neither Numbler, editgrid, irows, google, or anyone else is going to be a serious competitor for someone who needs to do real number crunching (and hopefully that should be obvious). However, if you want to co-edit your spreadsheets with other people on the internet web-based (and server side calc) is truly the way to go.
this was developed from a product that Google bought in either 2004 or early 05. I think if you check the press release archives you might find something.
Doesn't the head function as a radiator in some capacity? I would think that having the brain internalized would necessitate another mechanism to cool that part of the body.
Skype works behind firewalls because it can relay calls off another node that is *not* behind a firewall. If corporate goon A calls corporate goon B where both are behind a firewall, the call is going to be routed through a *random* box on the internet. It could be a PC in a college residential network or some dude's box in kerplexistan. While this solution does work it has a number of problems:
1) If the number of machines without firewalls starts to fall dramatically skype users are SOL. This could happen if most PC's have an automatic firewall enabled or broadband providers start shipping modems with built in firewalls. 2) I don't know about you but it's a bit odd routing my voice traffic through non authenticated computers - encryption be damned. 3) Routing around firewalls provides a *good* calling experience but not reliable. Skype calls can drop on you randomly. You also can have trouble connecting when you want to call. While skype is great for people who want high quality calls that work most of the time, it isn't really great when you try on rely on it.
I use skype and think it is a great product... but I don't quite understand how it people think it is worth so much money as a company.
Modern phone operating systems have security features built in where the application installer will only allow *signed* applications to be installed. A virus / trojan wouldn't get signed because it has to go through an acceptance program.
The first Microsoft smartphone product had this feature turned on - normal joe's couldn't install software that hadn't been signed (the signing process usually costs $$ although recent efforts have reduced the cost).
Symbian *has* the same functionality. In fact, most commercial symbian software should now be signed, see Symbian Signed Symbian also has the functionality to disallow users to install unsigned programs. It is just that this feature is turned off by default (at least on the phones that I have seen).
Theoretically, all an operator needs to due is send an OTA message to turn on signing verification. This is easily done on a windows mobile and presumable via WAP push on Symbian. We probably will see operators start to turn on signing requirements by default on symbian phones (hopefully with the capability for users to turn it off so they can install freeware if they so choose).
It's been interesting over the last couple of months to see the new google services and how well they integrate with each other.
for instance, I use google local and at some point it squirreled away a cookie of my location. This information is used by google maps and also the movie reviews.
when I type movie: Hotel Rwanda it brings me to a listing of show times and links in my town. Another click on "7:40" brings me to the another site (movietickets.com, fandago.com, etc) where I can order a ticket. The point is: two clicks to getting movie tickets. Why would I go to any other site at this point? it's so easy with google, especially when I type it into the built in toolbar on my browser.
At this point it seems like any horizontal web app is a possible target for google.
I couldn't disagree more. Sure, harden the damn device. But remember the *customer* still purchased the device and should have ultimate control over it. This is the same problem in the mobile industry where the carriers want to control what customers can do with their handset that they *purchased*.
We need to give people an option to disable all protections while tell them that they product will no longer be supported. What happens when I want to mod my car? I can do it although I void my warranty.
The only exception would be if I am renting a piece of hardware (aka a cable box). In that case I don't have rights to it.
Go to college. Focus on the fundamentals. Don't take excessive crap classes that you can learn from a book.
If you can, take some of the intro EE classes. The logic classes are easier. I regret not taking any of the signals and systems classes.
Take stats - your most useful math class for the real world.
Take an economics or a business class. If you don't have time during your 4 years do it after school. I took macro economics at the Harvard extension school.
Most importantly, learn how to learn. A good engineer can pick up a new tool (language, application environment, design pattern, etc) in a week or so.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone's comment in this thread is correct per se, "you need precise language to describe math", "you didn't work hard enough to read the article", "you are lazy", "wikipedia is not for teaching", etc.
You are all correct.
However, I would like a resource that helps me understand the math *without* becoming an expert. Or at least better tools. Look - it's been 13 years since College. I don't remember all the terminology. However, there are many times when I would like to dive deep into a field of mathematics, or at least refresh my knowledge (stats is a good example). I find wikipedia less than helpful in this regard -or least that grokking the page takes a ton of time and effort.
Gah. Yet another unintelligible wikipedia mathematics article. For once I did like to see an article that does a great job *teaching* about a subject. Perhaps wikipedia isn't the right home for this sort of content, but my general feeling whenever reading something is wikipedia is that the content was drafted by a bunch of overly precise wankers focusing on the absolute right terminology without focusing on helping the reader understand the content.
no... my company builds an HD encoder / modulator that takes VGA/component in and outputs QAM. zeevee.com. Unfortunately still a bit too expensive for residential installs.
The twisted folks have been working on web frameworks for years (nevow/athena comes to mind). One problem with twisted is that the core devs don't focus much on marketing (ala RoR) so not many people know about it. These guys had a good comet implementation before the phrase was coined.
Ok, so I know it isn't cool to on slashdot to pimp your own products, but you might try getting a ZvBox (http://zeevee.com) if you want to get any content to your TV. This works because it snarfs the your video output and transmits HD quality video to your HDTV. And yes, it requires a PC. And yes, it is expensive (we are working on lowering the price). But, since a PC can play any content it truly is a universal solution.
Many phones give you the ability to request to be notified when the SMS is delivered. I believe this is end to end delivery, not just to the SMSC. Of course, this feature may not work across networks.
Seriously - unless there is a Tivo feature that you can't live without why on earth would you buy one?
The whole point of modern web apps is doing *real* development with javascript so I wouldn't pass it off so lightly. And I challenge you to really know javascript in 24 hours - perhaps you would like to look at the Mochikit or prototype source code?
The article stresses that schools should focus more on life time learning rather than specific skills. This is great in theory but IMO an interest in life long learning comes down to your own motivation and enthusiasm. There are lots of people who just don't want to spend time learning after school.
On the subject of "thinker" vs "tradesman", this is a somewhat silly argument. Any good engineering school will help you learn how to use your basic skills to attack problems while also giving you the tools to learn about the real life engineering projects.
The source and engine are also available for Numbler, a collaborate spreadsheet similar to google spreadsheet.
you can get the source and play with it at http://code.google.com/p/numbler/. We haven't made a formal announcement of this yet so the docs are still quite raw.
Yes, you are right. it is all about the money, for a couple of of reasons.
A) Wireless companies are expensive to operate and thus the main focus is on operational effeciency - how to maintain towers, basestations, manage customer churn, deal with handset procurement, etc. The CEO's of wireless companies focus on these issues, for good reason I suppose.
B) Wireless companies have employees who would like to open up their infrastructure, provide open services, open API's, etc. However, these people are few and far between and are not empowered to make big decisions. They are also ignored by exec management.
The end result is that people in camp B are largely ignored by people in camp A. Camp B people get discouraged and leave the company - resulting in a brain drain. Camp B people either leave the industry or go work for one of the company's that supplies the telecom industry.
Beancounters run the wireless business, not the innovators. IMO, the only way to bridge this gap will for some sort of visionary like Steve Jobs to create a seachange by totally changing how the industry works. If this is not possible I think the only way is to impose regulations on the wireless industry forcing the carriers to open up their networks.
How do I know this? I used to work for Orange, one of the large European carriers. You can not possible *imagine* the stupidity, waste, and ignorance that is structurally built into the carrier mentality. Right before I left they were still trying to figure out how to built a instant messaging service where they could bill per message! The truly *sad* part is that carriers would probably be much more profitable if they opened up their networks and stopped spending tons of money trying to control every last bit of content that gets down to your mobile phone.
What a good bit of the debate does not discuss is that a number of players, Verizon in particular, want to bring TV into your house over IP (via a fiber connection) in order to compete against cable. This is the holy grail of the telecoms industry: bundled services.
In general, competition for cable is a good thing. However, what is not often discussed is that TV content would come over a dedicated connection from verizon that you the subscriber would not have access to directly (at least, this is my understanding). The really really bad thing about this is that it would let verizon do what companies in the mobile space are doing: mixing transport (delivering the bits) with content control. In the mobile space this has been a terrific failure for most customers as the wireless companies control the delivery channel and the portals (what applications and ring tones are available).
I think the critical issue here is that we need to insist that the delivery pipe from verizon is a level playing field and that others can delivery TV content if they so choose. The pipe would still be seperate from normal internet access but I would be able to choose my HDTV provider who would let me pick the "geek" bundle of channels (plus oxygen for the wife) and who would undercut both verizon and comcast.
Verizon and the cable companies are natural monopolies: there is no way around that. Verizon is sinking tons of money into deploying FIOS: they should be compensated for that deployment. However, that compensation should not comes with strings attached - they should bill the customer for access to a high speed pipe dedicated to video and that's it.
We built the Number API for this exact purpose. Check out the API doc for details. Essentially you can use a simple REST based API to get and set spreadsheet cells.
Well, I haven't gotten a chance to try the google sheet out yet but at Numbler we built a number of tools to help you protect cells and avoid overriding other users changes.
The big difference between the existing competitors in the online spreadsheet market is whether the work is done on the client or the server.
Disclaimer: I built http://numbler.com/ what I believe was the first real-time collaborative web based spreadsheet (if being the first
really matters with google in the market).
At Numbler we made the decision to have the calculation work on the backend with the understanding that this would be perceived as slightly slower than a javascript implementation. However, this enables us to do real-time updates to other clients via COMET style HTTP requests (for the technically minded, we use the athena toolkit from divmod nevow, http://divmod.org./ The upside side of a server based implementation is the collaborative capabilities that you can build into your application. The downside is responsiveness. However, if you want a highly responsive spreadsheet application you probably should be using a desktop package anyway, excel, gnumeric, OO, etc.
Neither Numbler, editgrid, irows, google, or anyone else is going to be a serious competitor for someone who needs to do real number crunching (and hopefully that should be obvious). However, if you want to co-edit your spreadsheets with other people on the internet web-based (and server side calc) is truly the way to go.
this was developed from a product that Google bought in either 2004 or early 05. I think if you check the press release archives you might find something.
Doesn't the head function as a radiator in some capacity? I would think that having the brain internalized would necessitate another mechanism to cool that part of the body.
Skype works behind firewalls because it can relay calls off another node that is *not* behind a firewall. If corporate goon A calls corporate goon B where both are behind a firewall, the call is going to be routed through a *random* box on the internet. It could be a PC in a college residential network or some dude's box in kerplexistan. While this solution does work it has a number of problems:
1) If the number of machines without firewalls starts to fall dramatically skype users are SOL. This could happen if most PC's have an automatic firewall enabled or broadband providers start shipping modems with built in firewalls.
2) I don't know about you but it's a bit odd routing my voice traffic through non authenticated computers - encryption be damned.
3) Routing around firewalls provides a *good* calling experience but not reliable. Skype calls can drop on you randomly. You also can have trouble connecting when you want to call. While skype is great for people who want high quality calls that work most of the time, it isn't really great when you try on rely on it.
I use skype and think it is a great product... but I don't quite understand how it people think it is worth so much money as a company.
You can use XMLHTTP to push data from the server to the client. The only thing necessary is for the client to *initiate* the original connection.
There are a number of fantastic google maps hacks site popping up.
You might want to check out placeshare.org to see a simple site that does flikr style tagging with user managed locations.
There are a couple other sites that are moving in the same direction... there were some excellent demo's at the where2.0 conference yesterday.
Modern phone operating systems have security features built in where the application installer will only allow *signed* applications to be installed. A virus / trojan wouldn't get signed because it has to go through an acceptance program.
The first Microsoft smartphone product had this feature turned on - normal joe's couldn't install software that hadn't been signed (the signing process usually costs $$ although recent efforts have reduced the cost).
Symbian *has* the same functionality. In fact, most commercial symbian software should now be signed, see Symbian Signed Symbian also has the functionality to disallow users to install unsigned programs. It is just that this feature is turned off by default (at least on the phones that I have seen).
Theoretically, all an operator needs to due is send an OTA message to turn on signing verification. This is easily done on a windows mobile and presumable via WAP push on Symbian. We probably will see operators start to turn on signing requirements by default on symbian phones (hopefully with the capability for users to turn it off so they can install freeware if they so choose).
I found this to be a very enjoyable book with many fresh concepts. You don't need to read the first book.
It's been interesting over the last couple of months to see the new google services and how well they integrate with each other.
for instance, I use google local and at some point it squirreled away a cookie of my location. This information is used by google maps and also the movie reviews.
when I type movie: Hotel Rwanda it brings me to a listing of show times and links in my town. Another click on "7:40" brings me to the another site (movietickets.com, fandago.com, etc) where I can order a ticket. The point is: two clicks to getting movie tickets. Why would I go to any other site at this point? it's so easy with google, especially when I type it into the built in toolbar on my browser.
At this point it seems like any horizontal web app is a possible target for google.
I couldn't disagree more. Sure, harden the damn device. But remember the *customer* still purchased the device and should have ultimate control over it. This is the same problem in the mobile industry where the carriers want to control what customers can do with their handset that they *purchased*.
We need to give people an option to disable all protections while tell them that they product will no longer be supported. What happens when I want to mod my car? I can do it although I void my warranty.
The only exception would be if I am renting a piece of hardware (aka a cable box). In that case I don't have rights to it.
Go to college. Focus on the fundamentals. Don't take excessive crap classes that you can learn from a book.
If you can, take some of the intro EE classes. The logic classes are easier. I regret not taking any of the signals and systems classes.
Take stats - your most useful math class for the real world.
Take an economics or a business class. If you don't have time during your 4 years do it after school. I took macro economics at the Harvard extension school.
Most importantly, learn how to learn. A good engineer can pick up a new tool (language, application environment, design pattern, etc) in a week or so.