Thanx for the reply. I guess my experience is coloured by my working with the Win8.1 BT UIs and having to pair devices through the multiple methods which require multiple screens to reach the pairing UIs as well as how the BT APIs change the state of the desktop for the user (I'm still looking for an API that will allow me to do the discovery, pairing and connection without causing the current application to be lost).
If you have some suggestions on where to look for APIs that allow these operations (as well as I suspect other enumeration tasks) from an application without the user having to reset the application and desktop to where it was - I would be eternally grateful.
Seriously. It seems like Microsoft decides what are the systems that users should be working with and runs from there with no regard to what users are actually working with.
The biggest irony is that they don't seem to understand that the people who will have the biggest problem with what they are throwing out are developers. I can't imagine that Microsoft's own developers are running their own development systems on Windows 8.1 - I wouldn't be surprised if it were a dirty secret within Microsoft that application development takes place on Win7 (and maybe WinXP).
I understand the appeal of having one OS and UI for all devices but a Phone isn't a Tablet which isn't a laptop which isn't a desktop which isn't a server. And if you're a developer, requiring a touch screen hurts your productivity.
There are a number of markets/professions where the Google Glass would be ideal (a big one that I keep reading about is aircraft maintenance, have drawings and manuals available on command in front of the technician's eyes).
Rather than trying to come up with something that is designed for everybody on the planet, figure out who could get the most advantage out of it in the short term and, working with that demographic, develop the hardware, the UI and database operation and work with the users to understand exactly the human factors issues. A number of people indicated that the camera was the problem, but I suspect that there are much deeper issues that need to be addressed.
Once you have become indispensable in one area, others applications will start becoming obvious and the product will seem less "creepy" and intrusive for other areas.
I was going to say that I would think that the novel (my favourite Philip K. Dick novel/story) would probably be best suited for 3-4 episodes? Definitely longer than a feature length film but not so long as a typical 13 episode "premium" season.
The setting would be interesting because I always imagined the USA of the book to be worn out and dust blown. Probably as failed a society as "Blade Runner" but not as dense or monolithic. Hopefully a story that reflects that it takes place just a few years after the end of the war and not in a Sci-Fi future.
Anyway, would love to see it with Ridley Scott at the top of his game,
Things will start to get interesting when astronauts can create semiconductors in in space. I believe there are some demonstration technologies using ink-jet printers.
I would imagine it will be a long time before we can see the amazingly tiny devices that can be built on Earth, but I would expect that replacement electronics for communications and actuator drivers should be achievable in fairly short order. I would guess that replacement solar panel segments and power supply components (including batteries) would be on the menu as well.
This week, I got a real WTF when dealing with Microsoft products and the amazing amount of redundancy that is possible in the company.
We have a robot product that we can communicate to using Bluetooth SPP and we are creating an application that can control it remotely. We originally went with a serial interface (after pairing, recording the "com#" of the device and then passing it to our application), this is somewhat cumbersome so we wanted to pair from our app and connect directly (saving the user from doing those operations manually).
Logically, this would be one set of APIs, but it seems there are five depending on the OS - the only ones that are common are for Vista/Win7. I would think that right here there are four teams that are redundant - pick a single, consistent API, add it in Service Packs for all supported OSes and assign one team to the job.
I would expect there are many more examples out there of similar inefficiencies that somebody within Microsoft should be able to answer with the ability to make things easier for developers and make developers available for squishing bugs.
Sorry about the rant, but standard IO interface APIs should be just that, standard.
I saw an interesting graph in Aviation Week some time ago about the energy density of batteries versus the same mass of hydrocarbon fuel. The article was in relation to the idea of creating (plug-in) hybrid airliners.
The batteries used in the 787 store four orders of magnitude less energy than the equivalent mass of jet fuel.
I'm mentioning this because it looks like these batteries would bring the difference up to three orders of magnitude.
Still a ways to go before batteries can compete against hydrocarbon/fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, you didn't provide a lot of information in your post as to what the problems are.
As people have pointed out, there are a ton of USB to Serial solutions out there so having the modern hardware with the ability to communicate over RS-232 is generally not a problem (although, depending on the connections used, you might want to invest in a RS-232 breakout box and read up on RS-232 handshaking as many of the older devices do use hardware handshaking). I have a few hand wired 9 pin to 25 pin connectors with the CTS-RTS and DSR-DTR pins shorted together as they can simplify your life immeasurably.
In my experience, the biggest problem is retaining floppies & CDs with the original software on them (assuming that the developers are no longer supporting the product/are out of business). If the company is still in business, usually they're pretty good at providing updated software for their products. If they're not in business, then look to see if they were bought out by anybody. Chances are you'll find that the purchaser is still supporting the product, although it may be under another name.
Personally, the biggest issue that I see when I have encountered this type of situation is that the original programs are on floppies. If this is the case, you will need to find somebody with a Windows/95 machine that they're keeping together with spit, bailing wire, gaffer's tape and good intentions - you should be able to copy the program onto a USB key and then burn it on a CD/DVD for more permanent storage.
Once you have the program in a media that you can work with, you may have problems with the installation. You will probably have to create a virtual machine on your PC AND there may be 16 bit programs that you have to convert to 32 bit - here's a great resource that's saved me a couple of times: http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=10988
Finally, Google is your friend. Chances are the answers are out there for your particular equipment.
I imagine it has some scientific value for showing how well a highly trained and experienced individual goes through a stressful situation, but other than that?
Wouldn't the best answer for an individual be based on their driving habits and history?
If you tended to stay at the speed limit (or reasonably above according to traffic), were a defensive driver and were reasonably confident that you wouldn't cause an accident, wouldn't you want tracking on to show that it's the other guys fault?
Depending on your hubris level, the next step is a dashboard camera because clearly you are never going to cause an accident - right?
With the recent controversy regarding assault weapons in the US and the plans to reduce clip sizes, I'm wondering if you would think your, um, devices would be more dangerous if they could shoot multiple objects rather than just one at a time?
Interesting question and one I've thought about for a bit since the original question, from the other side came out.
I would say, bring in the team lead as an arbitrator. It's their job to direct the work and (hopefully) develop team members - this guy sounds like he needs a bit of development and level setting.
When I was at RIM, we used a broken quick sort method that the candidate was asked to fix. We didn't time how long it took the candidate to implement the fix, but it generally required the candidate to do some research as to what was wrong. One of the team leads created a simple app that tested the performance (ie speed) of the fix.
What was really interesting to me was the number of candidates who refused to do the test (50-60%) because they said it was "beneath them". The big problem was, RIM's HR (OD) that insisted we interview the candidatest that refused to do the test because we were losing potentially half the candidates that were responding to the job applications (this was when RIM was The Place To Be).
The best candidates were the ones that did the test and asked if we had any more. These candidates also tended to produce code that ran sort the fastest.
If I understand what was discovered in TFA (and press release noted by Trepidity), the etched scales reduce the internal reflections of the produced light which result in some of the produced light being lost in the structure of the LED and lens.
Does anybody know how much light is actually lost within the LED and lens? The article mentions that the extrated light is increased by 55% which implies that at least a third of the light produced by an LED is lost within the structure - would this be correct?
I would presume that this loss would be influenced by the shape of the LED lens - correct? I seem to remember that pin through hole LEDs are designed with the emitter at the focus of the curved lens to minimize reflected losses BUT this could be a huge advantage for SMT chip LEDs which tyically just have a flat surface for the lens.
Are there other applications in which this can be used as I would think that this could be useful in other applications? I would guess that adding the triangular "roof" structure would make it difficult to focus/direct the light produced by the LED. This would mean that the typical power dispersion patter of a typical LED would be evened out and the light output would be difficult to focus - correct?
I think I can honestly say that I have had Thinkpads for 20 years and I have never had a bad experience on them (other than having a six year old system at one point that could run Cygwin but basically nothing else - the story about how I got the replacement made me a legend at work) - they have travelled literally around the world at least twice and have almost as many frequent flyer miles as I do.
They're great road warrior machines, well built, well thought out (their docking ports are worth every penny) and, amazingly enough, they're probably the only brand that didn't loose their quality when they were bought out/sold (I'm still pissed at what happened to Alienware).
Hopefully they'll keep a few of the old ones around so I can stock up before they try to emulate Apple.
Disappointing because Elon Musk is doing more to make spaceflight exciting than probably anybody since the 1960s by being up front and centre about what he is doing. The Dragon 2 sounds quite interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing the evolving concept (especially in light of the experiments that SpaceX have been publicizing).
The Boeing entry, even though it is similar to SpaceX's just seems to be "corporate".
XCOR seems to be an (interesting) contender for sub-orbital while Scaled Composites & SS2 have kind of dropped off the radar and has been eclipsed by SpaceX showing that individuals can actually make it into space for real.
Nice to see progress and some renewed promise for space!
"In your Face, Aldrin!" "A quarter million miles, billions of dollars, and you won't believe what I just stepped in." "What's that monolith doing here?" "Man, you can't believe what a fart smells like in here." "Houston, has Aldrin told you about his crotch rot yet?" "Honey, I think I left the stove on." "Houston, you're not going to believe this, but there's a flag with the Hammer and Sickle standing here." "Man, I could use the fresh, relaxing taste of Coca-Cola." "Suck it, Aldrin!"
I would normally do that as well BUT that wasn't an option because the theraputic software only worked on Windows 95 and I could not find a set of CDs and a license I could use for that.
My daughter, who has a hearing defect, was prescribed a listening program that only worked on - Windows 95.
This was in the early days of Windows XP, so finding a Windows 95 machine (or a set of disks) was somewhat hard.
I did manage to find one at a local electronics consignment store which claimed to have gone through and sanitized the system from the previous owner.
My seven year old daughter looked at the "Videos" folder and found somebody's collection of something that we could only described as "Jamacian Dungeon Porn". To use the vernacular of the article, these videos were not "pristine" and really quite disturbing.
She was pretty freaked out by them at the time and, ten years later, she still says she remembers the screams although she can't remember what was on the videos.
As for the store caring? We got the impression they were most upset at the idea we didn't save a copy of the videos for them.
I'm sure our story (and the one in the article) are pretty rare, but I can see the probability of something like this with "reconditioned" equipment is no where near approaching zero.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanx for the reply. I guess my experience is coloured by my working with the Win8.1 BT UIs and having to pair devices through the multiple methods which require multiple screens to reach the pairing UIs as well as how the BT APIs change the state of the desktop for the user (I'm still looking for an API that will allow me to do the discovery, pairing and connection without causing the current application to be lost).
If you have some suggestions on where to look for APIs that allow these operations (as well as I suspect other enumeration tasks) from an application without the user having to reset the application and desktop to where it was - I would be eternally grateful.
myke
Seriously. It seems like Microsoft decides what are the systems that users should be working with and runs from there with no regard to what users are actually working with.
The biggest irony is that they don't seem to understand that the people who will have the biggest problem with what they are throwing out are developers. I can't imagine that Microsoft's own developers are running their own development systems on Windows 8.1 - I wouldn't be surprised if it were a dirty secret within Microsoft that application development takes place on Win7 (and maybe WinXP).
I understand the appeal of having one OS and UI for all devices but a Phone isn't a Tablet which isn't a laptop which isn't a desktop which isn't a server. And if you're a developer, requiring a touch screen hurts your productivity.
myke
There are a number of markets/professions where the Google Glass would be ideal (a big one that I keep reading about is aircraft maintenance, have drawings and manuals available on command in front of the technician's eyes).
Rather than trying to come up with something that is designed for everybody on the planet, figure out who could get the most advantage out of it in the short term and, working with that demographic, develop the hardware, the UI and database operation and work with the users to understand exactly the human factors issues. A number of people indicated that the camera was the problem, but I suspect that there are much deeper issues that need to be addressed.
Once you have become indispensable in one area, others applications will start becoming obvious and the product will seem less "creepy" and intrusive for other areas.
myke
Can't watch the free preview in Canada.
I was going to say that I would think that the novel (my favourite Philip K. Dick novel/story) would probably be best suited for 3-4 episodes? Definitely longer than a feature length film but not so long as a typical 13 episode "premium" season.
The setting would be interesting because I always imagined the USA of the book to be worn out and dust blown. Probably as failed a society as "Blade Runner" but not as dense or monolithic. Hopefully a story that reflects that it takes place just a few years after the end of the war and not in a Sci-Fi future.
Anyway, would love to see it with Ridley Scott at the top of his game,
myke
Things will start to get interesting when astronauts can create semiconductors in in space. I believe there are some demonstration technologies using ink-jet printers.
I would imagine it will be a long time before we can see the amazingly tiny devices that can be built on Earth, but I would expect that replacement electronics for communications and actuator drivers should be achievable in fairly short order. I would guess that replacement solar panel segments and power supply components (including batteries) would be on the menu as well.
myke
This week, I got a real WTF when dealing with Microsoft products and the amazing amount of redundancy that is possible in the company.
We have a robot product that we can communicate to using Bluetooth SPP and we are creating an application that can control it remotely. We originally went with a serial interface (after pairing, recording the "com#" of the device and then passing it to our application), this is somewhat cumbersome so we wanted to pair from our app and connect directly (saving the user from doing those operations manually).
Logically, this would be one set of APIs, but it seems there are five depending on the OS - the only ones that are common are for Vista/Win7. I would think that right here there are four teams that are redundant - pick a single, consistent API, add it in Service Packs for all supported OSes and assign one team to the job.
I would expect there are many more examples out there of similar inefficiencies that somebody within Microsoft should be able to answer with the ability to make things easier for developers and make developers available for squishing bugs.
Sorry about the rant, but standard IO interface APIs should be just that, standard.
myke
LOL.
Thanx for the tip.
I think I'll buy a Corvette that way.
myke
Digi-Key $3.48 and Mouser $3.49
Still could be something you can have a lot of fun with!
myke
I saw an interesting graph in Aviation Week some time ago about the energy density of batteries versus the same mass of hydrocarbon fuel. The article was in relation to the idea of creating (plug-in) hybrid airliners.
The batteries used in the 787 store four orders of magnitude less energy than the equivalent mass of jet fuel.
I'm mentioning this because it looks like these batteries would bring the difference up to three orders of magnitude.
Still a ways to go before batteries can compete against hydrocarbon/fossil fuels.
myke
It should have been used on the computer before submitting this article.
Disappointing,
myke
Hi Timothy,
Unfortunately, you didn't provide a lot of information in your post as to what the problems are.
As people have pointed out, there are a ton of USB to Serial solutions out there so having the modern hardware with the ability to communicate over RS-232 is generally not a problem (although, depending on the connections used, you might want to invest in a RS-232 breakout box and read up on RS-232 handshaking as many of the older devices do use hardware handshaking). I have a few hand wired 9 pin to 25 pin connectors with the CTS-RTS and DSR-DTR pins shorted together as they can simplify your life immeasurably.
In my experience, the biggest problem is retaining floppies & CDs with the original software on them (assuming that the developers are no longer supporting the product/are out of business). If the company is still in business, usually they're pretty good at providing updated software for their products. If they're not in business, then look to see if they were bought out by anybody. Chances are you'll find that the purchaser is still supporting the product, although it may be under another name.
Personally, the biggest issue that I see when I have encountered this type of situation is that the original programs are on floppies. If this is the case, you will need to find somebody with a Windows/95 machine that they're keeping together with spit, bailing wire, gaffer's tape and good intentions - you should be able to copy the program onto a USB key and then burn it on a CD/DVD for more permanent storage.
Once you have the program in a media that you can work with, you may have problems with the installation. You will probably have to create a virtual machine on your PC AND there may be 16 bit programs that you have to convert to 32 bit - here's a great resource that's saved me a couple of times: http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=10988
Finally, Google is your friend. Chances are the answers are out there for your particular equipment.
Good luck!
myke
Other than that?
I imagine it has some scientific value for showing how well a highly trained and experienced individual goes through a stressful situation, but other than that?
myke
Wouldn't the best answer for an individual be based on their driving habits and history?
If you tended to stay at the speed limit (or reasonably above according to traffic), were a defensive driver and were reasonably confident that you wouldn't cause an accident, wouldn't you want tracking on to show that it's the other guys fault?
Depending on your hubris level, the next step is a dashboard camera because clearly you are never going to cause an accident - right?
myke
That sounds *really* interesting - anybody know where the rest of the population can get Windows 3.1 licenses?
I doubt that Microsoft would be willing to release it into the wild - so where can we find them?
myke
Jörg,
With the recent controversy regarding assault weapons in the US and the plans to reduce clip sizes, I'm wondering if you would think your, um, devices would be more dangerous if they could shoot multiple objects rather than just one at a time?
myke
Interesting question and one I've thought about for a bit since the original question, from the other side came out.
I would say, bring in the team lead as an arbitrator. It's their job to direct the work and (hopefully) develop team members - this guy sounds like he needs a bit of development and level setting.
myke
Very insightful.
Somebody with points please mod the parent up.
myke
When I was at RIM, we used a broken quick sort method that the candidate was asked to fix. We didn't time how long it took the candidate to implement the fix, but it generally required the candidate to do some research as to what was wrong. One of the team leads created a simple app that tested the performance (ie speed) of the fix.
What was really interesting to me was the number of candidates who refused to do the test (50-60%) because they said it was "beneath them". The big problem was, RIM's HR (OD) that insisted we interview the candidatest that refused to do the test because we were losing potentially half the candidates that were responding to the job applications (this was when RIM was The Place To Be).
The best candidates were the ones that did the test and asked if we had any more. These candidates also tended to produce code that ran sort the fastest.
myke
If I understand what was discovered in TFA (and press release noted by Trepidity), the etched scales reduce the internal reflections of the produced light which result in some of the produced light being lost in the structure of the LED and lens.
Does anybody know how much light is actually lost within the LED and lens? The article mentions that the extrated light is increased by 55% which implies that at least a third of the light produced by an LED is lost within the structure - would this be correct?
I would presume that this loss would be influenced by the shape of the LED lens - correct? I seem to remember that pin through hole LEDs are designed with the emitter at the focus of the curved lens to minimize reflected losses BUT this could be a huge advantage for SMT chip LEDs which tyically just have a flat surface for the lens.
Are there other applications in which this can be used as I would think that this could be useful in other applications? I would guess that adding the triangular "roof" structure would make it difficult to focus/direct the light produced by the LED. This would mean that the typical power dispersion patter of a typical LED would be evened out and the light output would be difficult to focus - correct?
myke
I think I can honestly say that I have had Thinkpads for 20 years and I have never had a bad experience on them (other than having a six year old system at one point that could run Cygwin but basically nothing else - the story about how I got the replacement made me a legend at work) - they have travelled literally around the world at least twice and have almost as many frequent flyer miles as I do.
They're great road warrior machines, well built, well thought out (their docking ports are worth every penny) and, amazingly enough, they're probably the only brand that didn't loose their quality when they were bought out/sold (I'm still pissed at what happened to Alienware).
Hopefully they'll keep a few of the old ones around so I can stock up before they try to emulate Apple.
myke
Disappointing because Elon Musk is doing more to make spaceflight exciting than probably anybody since the 1960s by being up front and centre about what he is doing. The Dragon 2 sounds quite interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing the evolving concept (especially in light of the experiments that SpaceX have been publicizing).
The Boeing entry, even though it is similar to SpaceX's just seems to be "corporate".
XCOR seems to be an (interesting) contender for sub-orbital while Scaled Composites & SS2 have kind of dropped off the radar and has been eclipsed by SpaceX showing that individuals can actually make it into space for real.
Nice to see progress and some renewed promise for space!
myke
"In your Face, Aldrin!"
"A quarter million miles, billions of dollars, and you won't believe what I just stepped in."
"What's that monolith doing here?"
"Man, you can't believe what a fart smells like in here."
"Houston, has Aldrin told you about his crotch rot yet?"
"Honey, I think I left the stove on."
"Houston, you're not going to believe this, but there's a flag with the Hammer and Sickle standing here."
"Man, I could use the fresh, relaxing taste of Coca-Cola."
"Suck it, Aldrin!"
myke
I would normally do that as well BUT that wasn't an option because the theraputic software only worked on Windows 95 and I could not find a set of CDs and a license I could use for that.
myke
Fair comment and I did learn from it.
Back to isorox, drinkypoo and Opportunist - what kind of process do you go through when you get reconditioned computer equipment?
myke
My daughter, who has a hearing defect, was prescribed a listening program that only worked on - Windows 95.
This was in the early days of Windows XP, so finding a Windows 95 machine (or a set of disks) was somewhat hard.
I did manage to find one at a local electronics consignment store which claimed to have gone through and sanitized the system from the previous owner.
My seven year old daughter looked at the "Videos" folder and found somebody's collection of something that we could only described as "Jamacian Dungeon Porn". To use the vernacular of the article, these videos were not "pristine" and really quite disturbing.
She was pretty freaked out by them at the time and, ten years later, she still says she remembers the screams although she can't remember what was on the videos.
As for the store caring? We got the impression they were most upset at the idea we didn't save a copy of the videos for them.
I'm sure our story (and the one in the article) are pretty rare, but I can see the probability of something like this with "reconditioned" equipment is no where near approaching zero.
myke