Yeah, IT is admittedly upside down, where the front-line developers are now getting paid just as much or more than the middle management. I've been resisting getting pushed into management tracks several times for little or no additional pay, just the "privilege" of taking on additional responsibilities for motivating other people who are generally already very well-motivated and capable of being their own thought-leaders. I'm wondering when it might become a problem to want to "stay in the trenches", when I might top out my pay grade and no longer be competitive with young code monkeys. Maybe I should finally go get my PhD in something that interests me, or at least take some sort of MBA seminar (shudder).
Anyway, in my younger days I got into plenty of trouble for working too much. Fresh out of college when I could do my work-study at all hours, I would stay at the office all the time (admittedly they had much faster internet than I did at my rental condo with crappy dialup in a city 3 hours from all my hometown friends). Eventually I got into some trouble with the bored security officer for being suspicious.
Nowadays I work remotely from home and have too much of the other side of work-life balance, but I'm trying to savor it and enjoy spending time volunteering at my kids' schools before they graduate and move out. The job is a little bit too easy, all automation of existing production payment processing systems, and if we're working extra hours it's because we fucked up, and we fuck up less if we're not trying to tweak every goddamn thing all the time. So I feel like my career is at a standstill but it does pay the bills and gives me lots of flexibility for dealing with life and I'd be dumb to drop out for a more "challenging" job at this point. Typing this while working remotely (well, not really since it's 4th of July weekend) in a hostel in a foreign country with my family for the month.
Yeah, same here. We lost our nice office digs a couple of years ago, and the skeleton crew of 4-5 peeps 3000 miles away from HQ have been working from home since then. We still meet at a co-working space once a week when we can make it.
I don't have the discipline yet... I prefer being in a office with a constant supply of tea and people to communicate with in person. We get increasingly hostile towards each other when we're working remotely. Plus I'm having some sort of existential crisis by feeling like I'm in early retirement. But that said, it is nice being able to enjoy the home we just bought, and spend time raising the children at this critical juncture in our lives, just before we lose them.
Woo, had to scroll down FAR to find any mention of a CMS (content management system), but yes.
The closest I've ever worked for a news site was Disney, with the ESPN folks. They had bought go.com (formerly starwave.com, a Steve Ballmer venture capital spinoff from Microsoft). So they had some in-house thing in Java called GoPublish, which ran on Windows Server back in the day (they had just finished porting it to Linux when I left a few years ago), and all of the content was stored in Oracle DBs and indexed using Apache SOLR for searches.
Only a fraction of Disney sites used this CMS, though... I doubt ESPN was one of them, actually, since they were a more recent acquisition. Other parts of the org had more modern stuff, or at least stuff that was easier to maintain and deploy updates for. I never worked that closely with the editors and content writers, so I'm sure they had their own workflows and tools. Each branch pretty much had their own separate toolchain and were upgraded somewhat independently of each other... the ones with the most money would spearhead features into the new tools and the other branches would eventually follow on a more conservative upgrade schedule.
So, uh, good luck with your new responsibility trying to throw together a newsroom IT setup:P
Stick with whatever tool your team knows how to use well... switching tools too often isn't going to make up for the minor efficiency boosts for upgrading your ticketing system. That said, maybe you want to use a new project / product / major release to use as an opportunity to introduce (but not test -- you've already done testing using a throwaway project, hopefully) a new ticketing system.
Kanban has a triage process, where you spend a bit of time doing some housekeeping on your tickets to find and eliminate duplicates and mark low-impact as "won't fix".
Later on, when you notice some bugs getting lots of duplicates filed, you'll come to the conclusion that those are pretty high-visibility bugs, which might possibly be a useful metric the next time you prioritize.
Yep, people are always watching Harvard. They really need to watch what their students say, it could really reflect badly on their student population at large if some of them happened to be insufferable pricks. It'd be almost like saying they condoned that kind of behavior...
It goes a bit deeper than that... The best advice I follow was from fark.com , and it went like: "read conservative news sources when a Democrat is in power, read liberal news sources when a Republican is in power". And then just see if you can cope with whatever the bad news is.
News and propaganda are not indistinguishable. Just acknowledge that biases exist, and compensate for them. It's the way of the critical eye.
I'm enjoy the perspective of Jonathan Haidt, that conservatives and liberals are physiologically different and are simply different sides of the same coin. Diversity of opinion and approach to problem solving is a strength, not a weakness. We just have to rediscover how to communicate with each other.
'Murica seems to have Intellectual Property leadership, which is a great way for making money for doing nothing. That's even better than manufacturing. We're winning the culture wars... churning out "must-see" media and "premium" brand names and software.
The trouble is, this is imaginary property. Good thing we have the real Largest Army card to back up the imaginary property.
We also seem to have leadership in terms of lowest corruption. Might not seem so from our standpoint, but corruption is much, much worse in other countries. You can (and practically must) bribe police officers to get out of minor offenses in most eastern countries. This is slowly changing... more companies are starting to pursue intellectual property suits in China because they feel like they can get a fair trial there.
Climate change leadership is going to be an interesting thing... it's not going to affect the US too much, outside of Miami / New Orleans. There will likely be huge refugee crises for the countries surrounding Bangladesh and Denmark. No one drop can be held responsible for the flood, but I applaud Trump for stepping up and trying to be the most prominent drip.
Yes, I think there will certainly still be a longtime need for driver-assist AI trucks.
Before truckers, the secretary was the most common job in almost all 50 states. Computers and word processors knocked those secretaries off their seat... just a bit. http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...
AI should make trucking more pleasant. But it won't go away completely anytime soon... maybe just on the backhaul "trunk" networks.
Easy, just pay a dude to sit in the truck and provide "security". Also to take over if the AI encounters some kind of weather / construction / traffic condition that the computer can't navigate.
I sort of want to write a sci-fi about the future of mining drones. There's nothing to prevent corporations from using drones to "fight" over mineral-rich asteroids... what's to stop two different companies from sending drones to harvest from the same asteroid? Is it an act of war if one company's drone hijacks (well, "salvages") another drone's cargo? No one is out there to enforce this.
I envision a future where people are sent out to "lay claim" to asteroids and other resources. If they're alive, in only the loosest sense of the word (say cryogenically frozen) then it's clearly an act of war for a drone to come and disturb them from their slumber, which could be legally enforceable back on Earth.
Anyway, that, except for long-distance trucker drones.
Heh, yes, online streaming will become a newsworthy sensation of the times for people who live and discuss happenings in the moment. Cannes will become relegated to being the debut release venue for hipsters who lovingly handcraft their timeless masterpieces.
Well, I see the point of them carving out that niche for themselves in a bid to stay relevant.
Got a Google Voice number for free years ago that I can use for SMS without paying extra to my carrier. Also lets me send/receive SMS from the web interface using a real keyboard. Another bonus is that it transcribes my voicemail so I don't have to waste time listening to it.
Seems extra pointless to pay for SMS messages, since they're low priority traffic that piggyback on the cellular control protocol, so they don't really cost the networks anything in terms of bandwidth or extra equipment. But American marketing likes to get you to pay extra for whatever they can make you perceive as a "feature".
Yeah, geosynchronous satellites are way out there at about 6 Earth radii with 700ms ping times.
We're talking about all of the new low earth orbit mesh networks, though, that SpaceX and Facebook and Google and Virgin Atlantic have all expressed interest in launching, either as part of the Iridium 2 constellation or in competition with it.
Here's a visualization I've made of SpaceX's proposed 4000+ node constellation based on mission parameters that Elon Musk has announced publicly: https://youtu.be/neLPRMrhy80 Imagine trying to clear a comfortable launch window through that!
Not sure if he's really serious about it, or if it's just a bargaining chip to get better negotiations for the Iridium 2 launches. But the factory for these things is just down the road across town, so I suppose I could go check.
You're forgetting the other other big one: interest payments on national debt.
But even all of the "small beans" items are larger than they look... for example, the federal spending on education contributes only about 7% of the actual operating costs for a K-12 school, the majority of which is typically paid by State, County, City, and local taxes. But the feds make schools really work and jump through lots of hoops and administer tests to tick off the boxes that allows them to tap into that 7% of funding.
Anyway, http://www.usgovernmentspendin... does a better job including some of these other tax revenue streams into the total picture.
If anyone is interested in one-upping Steve Ballmer, have at it. Lots of source data from the White House Office of Management and Budget: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/brow... All the raw data is there in lots and lots of Excel spreadsheets. Not very well organized or visualized, but it's there.
I got interested in doing something like this after an engineering accounting class I took a decade ago: http://hairball.mine.nu/~rwa2/...
Eh, I watched Ex Machina and Chappie (and Wall-E and Big Hero 6) on the same transpacific flight, and I think they all belong... exploring different aspects of the same AI imagination. Maybe more on the level of Short Circuit, but it was still cute. Anyway, same director as District 9, and it's a neat and somewhat pragmatic vision of the not-too-distant future.
Well, in Japan, many of the people have gone to the services industry... entertainment and high-class "waitressing" and the like. When there's nothing to produce, people will just have to get, er, creative on how to extract money from those that still have it.
The US has a stranglehold on "Intellectual Property"... media distribution rights and patents. All imaginary stuff, but powerful. Especially when that imaginary stuff is backed and enforced by the world's largest military.
Military spending is also profitable because they can justify going sole source with their friends right in front of the taxpayers' faces.
Nice cozy guaranteed security clearance jobs for US citizens who can keep their records clean too.
There are a large number of books that they can use as a base for movies.
The reason is not that they are out of ideas, the reason is that they are lazy and just re-use what did work one more time.
Eh, being risk-averse is not lazy. The profits from these big blockbuster projects are fairly predictable.
Mass audiences prefer content that they are already familiar with. They like songs that sounds like songs they already like. They like stories and movies with plots they're already familiar with. People take comfort in being able to predict what's going to happen because they've seen something familiar. We don't like to be challenged with the new and unexpected, unless we feel really comfortable and safe and confident -- which most people don't.
I'd say it's a fair amount of work to meet people's existing expectations using established formulas and pacing, rather than going all creative and taking risks of pushing the envelope too far. Not the kind of safety net everyone appreciates, but whatever, it's just business.
I would add that it's a folly to dismiss Trump as stupid. He's "used car salesman" smart. There are a lot of interesting and effective negotiation tactics that are available when you can throw ethics and long-term credibility out of consideration. Trump has not only read but written Sun-Tzu Art-of-War style treatises on business dealings... how to portray yourself as rich when you are poor, stupid when you are shrewd, slow when you're moving fast. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit sort of stuff.
Some story I've heard quoted offhand (wish I could find the source) was about when he bought a yacht from someone. He had a minion go and thank the other guy's minions for selling it to him for a much larger price than he actually paid. The idea was to spread rumors that made it look like Trump was much richer than he actually was, and much more foolhardy with his money than he actually was, so other people would make mistakes negotiating with him later. This tactic plays well with a lot of the other numbers and statistics he makes up on the spot... he exaggerates everything he can, in order to make himself look better later. He made up that huge $4 billion figure for the Boeing Air Force One projects, so he can brag about saving a billion dollars later when it comes out closer to a more realistic figure. I think I've seen an article indicating he's already done this.
Everything else he's been doing indicates that he's clearing the tables to maximize leverage for new negotiations -- firing all US ambassadors on day 1, threatening sky-high import/export tariffs, putting gag orders and hiring freezes on all US government agencies. It's clear that to do anything, you'll have to suck up to Trump first, and bring money and favors to secure it. But this is a standard business negotiation tactic, pull every string you can towards you first and make everyone else fight and bargain to get back the slack.
So we can look forwards to some short term "wins". Hopefully we can keep him negotiating and dealing with our enemies, and our friends will be very understanding in the mean time.
Since they're a Chinese company, they have to collect their own user data since they don't have access to user data from the Apple / Google stores. So they likely have less info about you than most Western app devs.
I installed Meitu on an Android 7.1 device yesterday. It only asks for device permissions as it needs them. I denied giving it access to my phone functions and the app works fine without that telemetry. But if you're really paranoid, go ahead and play with it in Andyroid or something.
nah, andyroid has AOSP installed... I haven't tried using it for anything that needs graphics acceleration, but it'd probably be able to handle video stuff OK. Worth giving it a shot!
Slashdot Mirror
Gyroscopes... How do they work? What the hell are they really up to?
https://xkcd.com/332/
Yeah, IT is admittedly upside down, where the front-line developers are now getting paid just as much or more than the middle management. I've been resisting getting pushed into management tracks several times for little or no additional pay, just the "privilege" of taking on additional responsibilities for motivating other people who are generally already very well-motivated and capable of being their own thought-leaders. I'm wondering when it might become a problem to want to "stay in the trenches", when I might top out my pay grade and no longer be competitive with young code monkeys. Maybe I should finally go get my PhD in something that interests me, or at least take some sort of MBA seminar (shudder).
Anyway, in my younger days I got into plenty of trouble for working too much. Fresh out of college when I could do my work-study at all hours, I would stay at the office all the time (admittedly they had much faster internet than I did at my rental condo with crappy dialup in a city 3 hours from all my hometown friends). Eventually I got into some trouble with the bored security officer for being suspicious.
Nowadays I work remotely from home and have too much of the other side of work-life balance, but I'm trying to savor it and enjoy spending time volunteering at my kids' schools before they graduate and move out. The job is a little bit too easy, all automation of existing production payment processing systems, and if we're working extra hours it's because we fucked up, and we fuck up less if we're not trying to tweak every goddamn thing all the time. So I feel like my career is at a standstill but it does pay the bills and gives me lots of flexibility for dealing with life and I'd be dumb to drop out for a more "challenging" job at this point. Typing this while working remotely (well, not really since it's 4th of July weekend) in a hostel in a foreign country with my family for the month.
Yeah, same here. We lost our nice office digs a couple of years ago, and the skeleton crew of 4-5 peeps 3000 miles away from HQ have been working from home since then. We still meet at a co-working space once a week when we can make it.
I don't have the discipline yet... I prefer being in a office with a constant supply of tea and people to communicate with in person. We get increasingly hostile towards each other when we're working remotely. Plus I'm having some sort of existential crisis by feeling like I'm in early retirement. But that said, it is nice being able to enjoy the home we just bought, and spend time raising the children at this critical juncture in our lives, just before we lose them.
Woo, had to scroll down FAR to find any mention of a CMS (content management system), but yes.
The closest I've ever worked for a news site was Disney, with the ESPN folks. They had bought go.com (formerly starwave.com, a Steve Ballmer venture capital spinoff from Microsoft). So they had some in-house thing in Java called GoPublish, which ran on Windows Server back in the day (they had just finished porting it to Linux when I left a few years ago), and all of the content was stored in Oracle DBs and indexed using Apache SOLR for searches.
Only a fraction of Disney sites used this CMS, though... I doubt ESPN was one of them, actually, since they were a more recent acquisition. Other parts of the org had more modern stuff, or at least stuff that was easier to maintain and deploy updates for. I never worked that closely with the editors and content writers, so I'm sure they had their own workflows and tools. Each branch pretty much had their own separate toolchain and were upgraded somewhat independently of each other... the ones with the most money would spearhead features into the new tools and the other branches would eventually follow on a more conservative upgrade schedule.
So, uh, good luck with your new responsibility trying to throw together a newsroom IT setup :P
Stick with whatever tool your team knows how to use well... switching tools too often isn't going to make up for the minor efficiency boosts for upgrading your ticketing system. That said, maybe you want to use a new project / product / major release to use as an opportunity to introduce (but not test -- you've already done testing using a throwaway project, hopefully) a new ticketing system.
Kanban has a triage process, where you spend a bit of time doing some housekeeping on your tickets to find and eliminate duplicates and mark low-impact as "won't fix".
Later on, when you notice some bugs getting lots of duplicates filed, you'll come to the conclusion that those are pretty high-visibility bugs, which might possibly be a useful metric the next time you prioritize.
Yep, people are always watching Harvard. They really need to watch what their students say, it could really reflect badly on their student population at large if some of them happened to be insufferable pricks. It'd be almost like saying they condoned that kind of behavior...
It goes a bit deeper than that... The best advice I follow was from fark.com , and it went like: "read conservative news sources when a Democrat is in power, read liberal news sources when a Republican is in power". And then just see if you can cope with whatever the bad news is.
News and propaganda are not indistinguishable. Just acknowledge that biases exist, and compensate for them. It's the way of the critical eye.
I'm enjoy the perspective of Jonathan Haidt, that conservatives and liberals are physiologically different and are simply different sides of the same coin. Diversity of opinion and approach to problem solving is a strength, not a weakness. We just have to rediscover how to communicate with each other.
'Murica seems to have Intellectual Property leadership, which is a great way for making money for doing nothing. That's even better than manufacturing. We're winning the culture wars... churning out "must-see" media and "premium" brand names and software.
The trouble is, this is imaginary property. Good thing we have the real Largest Army card to back up the imaginary property.
We also seem to have leadership in terms of lowest corruption. Might not seem so from our standpoint, but corruption is much, much worse in other countries. You can (and practically must) bribe police officers to get out of minor offenses in most eastern countries. This is slowly changing... more companies are starting to pursue intellectual property suits in China because they feel like they can get a fair trial there.
Climate change leadership is going to be an interesting thing... it's not going to affect the US too much, outside of Miami / New Orleans. There will likely be huge refugee crises for the countries surrounding Bangladesh and Denmark. No one drop can be held responsible for the flood, but I applaud Trump for stepping up and trying to be the most prominent drip.
Yes, I think there will certainly still be a longtime need for driver-assist AI trucks.
Before truckers, the secretary was the most common job in almost all 50 states. Computers and word processors knocked those secretaries off their seat... just a bit.
http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...
AI should make trucking more pleasant. But it won't go away completely anytime soon... maybe just on the backhaul "trunk" networks.
Easy, just pay a dude to sit in the truck and provide "security". Also to take over if the AI encounters some kind of weather / construction / traffic condition that the computer can't navigate.
I sort of want to write a sci-fi about the future of mining drones. There's nothing to prevent corporations from using drones to "fight" over mineral-rich asteroids... what's to stop two different companies from sending drones to harvest from the same asteroid? Is it an act of war if one company's drone hijacks (well, "salvages") another drone's cargo? No one is out there to enforce this.
I envision a future where people are sent out to "lay claim" to asteroids and other resources. If they're alive, in only the loosest sense of the word (say cryogenically frozen) then it's clearly an act of war for a drone to come and disturb them from their slumber, which could be legally enforceable back on Earth.
Anyway, that, except for long-distance trucker drones.
Heh, yes, online streaming will become a newsworthy sensation of the times for people who live and discuss happenings in the moment. Cannes will become relegated to being the debut release venue for hipsters who lovingly handcraft their timeless masterpieces.
Well, I see the point of them carving out that niche for themselves in a bid to stay relevant.
Got a Google Voice number for free years ago that I can use for SMS without paying extra to my carrier. Also lets me send/receive SMS from the web interface using a real keyboard. Another bonus is that it transcribes my voicemail so I don't have to waste time listening to it.
Seems extra pointless to pay for SMS messages, since they're low priority traffic that piggyback on the cellular control protocol, so they don't really cost the networks anything in terms of bandwidth or extra equipment. But American marketing likes to get you to pay extra for whatever they can make you perceive as a "feature".
Yeah, geosynchronous satellites are way out there at about 6 Earth radii with 700ms ping times.
We're talking about all of the new low earth orbit mesh networks, though, that SpaceX and Facebook and Google and Virgin Atlantic have all expressed interest in launching, either as part of the Iridium 2 constellation or in competition with it.
Here's a visualization I've made of SpaceX's proposed 4000+ node constellation based on mission parameters that Elon Musk has announced publicly:
https://youtu.be/neLPRMrhy80
Imagine trying to clear a comfortable launch window through that!
Not sure if he's really serious about it, or if it's just a bargaining chip to get better negotiations for the Iridium 2 launches. But the factory for these things is just down the road across town, so I suppose I could go check.
You're forgetting the other other big one: interest payments on national debt.
But even all of the "small beans" items are larger than they look... for example, the federal spending on education contributes only about 7% of the actual operating costs for a K-12 school, the majority of which is typically paid by State, County, City, and local taxes. But the feds make schools really work and jump through lots of hoops and administer tests to tick off the boxes that allows them to tap into that 7% of funding.
Anyway, http://www.usgovernmentspendin... does a better job including some of these other tax revenue streams into the total picture.
If anyone is interested in one-upping Steve Ballmer, have at it. Lots of source data from the White House Office of Management and Budget:
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/brow...
All the raw data is there in lots and lots of Excel spreadsheets. Not very well organized or visualized, but it's there.
I got interested in doing something like this after an engineering accounting class I took a decade ago:
http://hairball.mine.nu/~rwa2/...
Also https://xkcd.com/657/
The big deal is that Primer was filmed for under $10k
Eh, I watched Ex Machina and Chappie (and Wall-E and Big Hero 6) on the same transpacific flight, and I think they all belong... exploring different aspects of the same AI imagination. Maybe more on the level of Short Circuit, but it was still cute. Anyway, same director as District 9, and it's a neat and somewhat pragmatic vision of the not-too-distant future.
Well, in Japan, many of the people have gone to the services industry...
Well, in Japan, they have just about the highest suicide rate in the developed world. Maybe we don't want to emulate them too closely.
Well, in Japan, they have just about the highest life expectancy in the developed world. Maybe we don't want to emulate them too closely.
Well, in Japan, many of the people have gone to the services industry... entertainment and high-class "waitressing" and the like. When there's nothing to produce, people will just have to get, er, creative on how to extract money from those that still have it.
The US has a stranglehold on "Intellectual Property" ... media distribution rights and patents. All imaginary stuff, but powerful. Especially when that imaginary stuff is backed and enforced by the world's largest military.
Military spending is also profitable because they can justify going sole source with their friends right in front of the taxpayers' faces.
Nice cozy guaranteed security clearance jobs for US citizens who can keep their records clean too.
There are a large number of books that they can use as a base for movies.
The reason is not that they are out of ideas, the reason is that they are lazy and just re-use what did work one more time.
Eh, being risk-averse is not lazy. The profits from these big blockbuster projects are fairly predictable.
Mass audiences prefer content that they are already familiar with. They like songs that sounds like songs they already like. They like stories and movies with plots they're already familiar with. People take comfort in being able to predict what's going to happen because they've seen something familiar. We don't like to be challenged with the new and unexpected, unless we feel really comfortable and safe and confident -- which most people don't.
I'd say it's a fair amount of work to meet people's existing expectations using established formulas and pacing, rather than going all creative and taking risks of pushing the envelope too far. Not the kind of safety net everyone appreciates, but whatever, it's just business.
Well stated, AC.
I would add that it's a folly to dismiss Trump as stupid. He's "used car salesman" smart. There are a lot of interesting and effective negotiation tactics that are available when you can throw ethics and long-term credibility out of consideration. Trump has not only read but written Sun-Tzu Art-of-War style treatises on business dealings... how to portray yourself as rich when you are poor, stupid when you are shrewd, slow when you're moving fast. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit sort of stuff.
Some story I've heard quoted offhand (wish I could find the source) was about when he bought a yacht from someone. He had a minion go and thank the other guy's minions for selling it to him for a much larger price than he actually paid. The idea was to spread rumors that made it look like Trump was much richer than he actually was, and much more foolhardy with his money than he actually was, so other people would make mistakes negotiating with him later. This tactic plays well with a lot of the other numbers and statistics he makes up on the spot... he exaggerates everything he can, in order to make himself look better later. He made up that huge $4 billion figure for the Boeing Air Force One projects, so he can brag about saving a billion dollars later when it comes out closer to a more realistic figure. I think I've seen an article indicating he's already done this.
Everything else he's been doing indicates that he's clearing the tables to maximize leverage for new negotiations -- firing all US ambassadors on day 1, threatening sky-high import/export tariffs, putting gag orders and hiring freezes on all US government agencies. It's clear that to do anything, you'll have to suck up to Trump first, and bring money and favors to secure it. But this is a standard business negotiation tactic, pull every string you can towards you first and make everyone else fight and bargain to get back the slack.
So we can look forwards to some short term "wins". Hopefully we can keep him negotiating and dealing with our enemies, and our friends will be very understanding in the mean time.
A Meitu spokesman actually replied to the ArsTechnica article on this:
http://arstechnica.com/securit...
Since they're a Chinese company, they have to collect their own user data since they don't have access to user data from the Apple / Google stores. So they likely have less info about you than most Western app devs.
I installed Meitu on an Android 7.1 device yesterday. It only asks for device permissions as it needs them. I denied giving it access to my phone functions and the app works fine without that telemetry. But if you're really paranoid, go ahead and play with it in Andyroid or something.
nah, andyroid has AOSP installed... I haven't tried using it for anything that needs graphics acceleration, but it'd probably be able to handle video stuff OK. Worth giving it a shot!
Or just install an android emulator like www.andyroid.net or the bluestacks one if that works for you.