If you really have a 3G phone, like one of Sprint's Vision-enabled phones such as my Samsung SPH-N400, it can run J2ME apps.
Using J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), you can easily program just about anything you want. Several POP/IMAP access programs exist; I tried Reqwireless and it worked (though not exactly how I hoped). If you have a J2ME phone, go to microjava.com and you can find email clients and tools to develop your own.
Re:requisite paranoid response
on
Droning On
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· Score: 2
Hey, if they put free 802.11 access points on these babies, none of US will complain!
Median starting salary from my school is supposed to be in the $56k range. I really consider that to be pretty good, considering most non-engineering people I know worked about 15 years to get to that level. Even two years ago, the average salary of IEEE members was about $91k. Right now, I'd be happy to take a job for less than $45k...no family, just me and my student loans.
I'm not sure where you get turned off by "the extra work" engineers have to do. See, my interest wasn't an "ooh, cool toys" interest, more of a "hey, I like doing this stuff and might do OK making a living out of it" interest. And the future upside is huge, you can do extremely well in consulting, and it only takes one timely patent.... Not to mention around half the graduates of my school are in management within ten years. Then you get to see the big picture, relax just a little, run a few projects or a side business at home, and put your kids through college.
Engineers make less money than lawyers and doctors on average. But tell that to Bernie Vonderschmitt, who graduated from my school, then went on to invent the FPGA and started Xilinx. Then he bought us a cafeteria, which I hope I never have to eat at again. Or Mike Hatfield, a 1985 graduate who just shelled out ten million dollars to build a performing arts center (performing arts? engineering? anyone's guess).
So the potential is, or was, there. But I'd still be happy with $45k/year engineering job.
If one of India's one billion people takes a half-rate job away from one of America's 300 million people, I don't see how that helps the country of India. That's an awful lot of people that unemployed Americans have to support under your theory.
If they are so concerned with bettering their country, then they should stay in India and work on technology to improve their own country's economic status. At least the benefit of their work would stay in India, rather than going to a large American corporation.
They have no lack of schools in India, right? All those people coming into America are so very skilled and experienced, right? If so, shouldn't they feel at least some loyalty to their own country? I'd say the best thing we could do for India is toss back all the skilled professionals we stole.
In addition, the technical and engineering community shot itself in the foot, by also abandoning the merit principle.
Engineering and IT became a place to get a little knowledge, make a quick buck. New engineering students were there for the money, and skated by on frat note files and smart friends. They were virtually guaranteed a high-paying job after college.
Suddenly employers noticed that all of their new American employees weren't getting the job done. Foreign workers provided a huge talent pool to skim for the best. The companies that could sponsor, did. The companies that couldn't or wouldn't, suffered with below-par workers and went into the red.
I have a 2002 degree in electrical engineering, and saw this happening during my last years of school. I was in it because of a genuine interest and desire to do engineering as a career, not because of the money. I busted my tail to get through the most challenging engineering school you'll find in the U.S. I'm still sitting with a temporary job unrelated to EE, and losing more of my engineering knowledge every day. If you don't use it (and I try to squeeze in hobby projects), you will lose it.
You can't force companies to hire substandard employees. At the same time, companies shouldn't write off all American engineering graduates because about two-thirds of them are opportunistic carpetbaggers.
A 14-incher? You can pick up a new Viewsonic 17" for $140.
Not to say that random little displays on computers aren't kind of cool, but for the same price I'd go for the wide-desktop-cool, instead of the glowy-blinky-cool.
You have experience writing some simple CNC programs. I am building a CNC router/miller/engraver, have you had any experience with the EMC program? I have a single-board computer I want to run my machine with, but EMC seems to be a little bulky. The SBC is only a 133MHz 5x86. I'd like to run it as a pure CNC controller over ethernet, without the Tk/EMC interface and backplotting. Unless I can boost the performance by slimming EMC to a non-graphical version, I'll have to write my own software.
Sorry, I'm using fluorescent and phosphorescent interchangeably here.
Both CRTs and VFDs use primarily zinc sulfides and oxides, with silver, copper, gold, aluminum, chlorine, manganese and other elements to get the right colors. Phosphorus and fluorine aren't typically used.
CRT: Fluorescent material glows when struck by electrons from a cathode in a vacuum tube.
VFD: Fluorescent material glows when struck by electrons from a cathode in a vacuum tube.
The only difference is that the CRT electrons are steered across the surface of the display with coils. The VFD simply places cathodes near a corresponding phosphorescent element.
It's kind of interesting, how these case displays seem to be so popular.
I have a vaccuum flourescent display on my machine right now. It's multi-colored and large, so large that it needs a separate case and power supply. It displays cpu stats, news, weather, even games!
Hopefully, these case kiddiez will discover the wonder of this thing called a "monitor." One thing at a time, I suppose.
Well, your script is useful if all the files are in the same directory, and you want to resize all of them. But what if you want to resize a few images from different directories across your system?
Since I have to use Windows at work, and don't mess much with images at home, I can't recommend one Unix graphics program over another. But on Windows, Irfanview is priceless. The batch convert program works incredibly well, and does a lot of things like color balance changes and format conversions. Also, the thumbnail view lets you take a directory of images and convert it straight to a web page with thumbnails, linked to full-size versions and with file sizes listed below the thumbnails. Irfanview is the best Windows program I have ever used.
As of very recently, the Sprint PCS Vision network is no longer usage-based.
Yep, unlimited internet access, 300 minutes, free nights and weekends, voice mail, free PCS-to-PCS on a two-year contract, all on a nice color phone with web browser, email, and text messaging. This costs exactly $40 per month, which is $10 more than the regular audio-only plan.
My Samsung N400 will arrive this week. I can buy a USB cable and hook my laptop up to the Vision network. Apparently, it works on Linux too; the phones simply identify as an ACM device and you dial #777 to set up the PPP connection. It doesn't take your minutes, it just hooks you into the always-on Vision connection (50-70kbps average, from what I hear).
Yes, that would be unlimited wireless internet. The Treo 300 uses the Vision network as well; looks like a pretty nice little setup.
Hopefully it all works. The EULA says that you're only supposed to use the Vision network on the phone itself, but they contradict that and sell a USB cable and software on their own web site. Also, a lot of the website claims that Vision is metered, but on the actual plan purchase page it's unlimited. Just need to update a lot of their website, apparently.
I'll check it out this week, and make sure it works. If you want to find out how it goes, let me know.
Since those boards are EBX, you can't stack them. They have a PC-104 bus on top, so you can stack regular PC-104 modules.
I don't think SMP is really possible with PC-104...it's just a peripheral bus, and each module would just be a separate computer. I'd say the best you could do would be a Beowulf cluster over ethernet.
You haven't even started working yet. Why are you concerned about working too many hours? You have no idea if your boss is a poor manager or not, and you have not yet been forced to work more than eight hours at this company.
No, no one will force you to work twelve hours a day. They can easily find someone else who will *willingly* do so, to feed their family and pay their debts.
Developer board? Bah. I never believed in developer boards, I've had some that fried the chip on powerup. I'd just make my own board....what's that? It's a ball-grid-array? Nevermind.
Anyway...notice that it has memory controllers too. That could be pretty useful. Still not a really powerful device; I could see these being useful for network-based home automation, with a touch-screen in every room (that run distributed.net or folding when idle).
Speaking of PC-104, I picked up a WinSystems board the other day for less than $50. This guy has a huge number of them on eBay, and has saturated the market. These board still go for over $500 each, and the John Carmack Armadillo project used one until they crashed their rocket. Has all the bells and whistles (IDE, floppy, vga, ethernet, LPT, 4 serial, keyboard, 48 I/O, SRAM or Diskonchip, watchdog), only an AMD 5x86 133Mhz chip though. I'm using mine for a networked CNC miller/router [to be constructed...]. Search eBay for pc104 and you will find them, I booted mine up the other day and it runs Linux fine.;-) They are actually an EBX board (6"x8") but have a PC-104 bus connector on top.
Now if only that other guy would hurry up and send my bridge driver chips...then I will have a trio of smoothly whirring stepper motors....
Whatever. "Proprietary metal contacts" give me a break. A battery is a battery...except for hearing aid batteries. I can't understand why anyone would think a hearing aid battery would work, those die out within days after being exposed to air.
And, guessing that this guy is not skilled at soldering, he probably had the iron on the battery for 5 minutes trying to get the wire on. That will kill a zinc-air pretty nicely, both by cooking it and accelerating the reaction rate.
Most batteries used in memory backup applications are lithium. That's because they actually last for a while. What this guy needs is a lithium battery, and someone who knows how to solder (if the phone isn't ruined already).
If this is, as you claim, a surveillance camera, why do you care about audio out? Are you going to sit there until something bad happens, and then say "Fear me O wrong-doer, behold the might of this camera! It moves, and allows bi-directional audio!"
Just, ummm, check all the cables, try new cables maybe. Everything else is best asked of the Pelco support team, which an earlier poster supplied an 800 number for.
Kind of interesting trend going on these past few months: there aren't any Ask Slashdot questions for a few days, and then suddenly there are a dozen poorly-thought-out ones.
Slashdot Mirror
You would be suprised about how many things rhyme with "dinger"...
For example, "dinger"...haha!
Heh.
Hmm.
If you really have a 3G phone, like one of Sprint's Vision-enabled phones such as my Samsung SPH-N400, it can run J2ME apps.
Using J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), you can easily program just about anything you want. Several POP/IMAP access programs exist; I tried Reqwireless and it worked (though not exactly how I hoped). If you have a J2ME phone, go to microjava.com and you can find email clients and tools to develop your own.
Hey, if they put free 802.11 access points on these babies, none of US will complain!
*closes italics*
I hate that.
Median starting salary from my school is supposed to be in the $56k range. I really consider that to be pretty good, considering most non-engineering people I know worked about 15 years to get to that level. Even two years ago, the average salary of IEEE members was about $91k. Right now, I'd be happy to take a job for less than $45k...no family, just me and my student loans.
I'm not sure where you get turned off by "the extra work" engineers have to do. See, my interest wasn't an "ooh, cool toys" interest, more of a "hey, I like doing this stuff and might do OK making a living out of it" interest. And the future upside is huge, you can do extremely well in consulting, and it only takes one timely patent.... Not to mention around half the graduates of my school are in management within ten years. Then you get to see the big picture, relax just a little, run a few projects or a side business at home, and put your kids through college.
Engineers make less money than lawyers and doctors on average. But tell that to Bernie Vonderschmitt, who graduated from my school, then went on to invent the FPGA and started Xilinx. Then he bought us a cafeteria, which I hope I never have to eat at again. Or Mike Hatfield, a 1985 graduate who just shelled out ten million dollars to build a performing arts center (performing arts? engineering? anyone's guess).
So the potential is, or was, there. But I'd still be happy with $45k/year engineering job.
If one of India's one billion people takes a half-rate job away from one of America's 300 million people, I don't see how that helps the country of India. That's an awful lot of people that unemployed Americans have to support under your theory.
If they are so concerned with bettering their country, then they should stay in India and work on technology to improve their own country's economic status. At least the benefit of their work would stay in India, rather than going to a large American corporation.
They have no lack of schools in India, right? All those people coming into America are so very skilled and experienced, right? If so, shouldn't they feel at least some loyalty to their own country? I'd say the best thing we could do for India is toss back all the skilled professionals we stole.
In addition, the technical and engineering community shot itself in the foot, by also abandoning the merit principle.
Engineering and IT became a place to get a little knowledge, make a quick buck. New engineering students were there for the money, and skated by on frat note files and smart friends. They were virtually guaranteed a high-paying job after college.
Suddenly employers noticed that all of their new American employees weren't getting the job done. Foreign workers provided a huge talent pool to skim for the best. The companies that could sponsor, did. The companies that couldn't or wouldn't, suffered with below-par workers and went into the red.
I have a 2002 degree in electrical engineering, and saw this happening during my last years of school. I was in it because of a genuine interest and desire to do engineering as a career, not because of the money. I busted my tail to get through the most challenging engineering school you'll find in the U.S. I'm still sitting with a temporary job unrelated to EE, and losing more of my engineering knowledge every day. If you don't use it (and I try to squeeze in hobby projects), you will lose it.
You can't force companies to hire substandard employees. At the same time, companies shouldn't write off all American engineering graduates because about two-thirds of them are opportunistic carpetbaggers.
A 14-incher? You can pick up a new Viewsonic 17" for $140.
Not to say that random little displays on computers aren't kind of cool, but for the same price I'd go for the wide-desktop-cool, instead of the glowy-blinky-cool.
You have experience writing some simple CNC programs. I am building a CNC router/miller/engraver, have you had any experience with the EMC program? I have a single-board computer I want to run my machine with, but EMC seems to be a little bulky. The SBC is only a 133MHz 5x86. I'd like to run it as a pure CNC controller over ethernet, without the Tk/EMC interface and backplotting. Unless I can boost the performance by slimming EMC to a non-graphical version, I'll have to write my own software.
Sorry, I'm using fluorescent and phosphorescent interchangeably here.
Both CRTs and VFDs use primarily zinc sulfides and oxides, with silver, copper, gold, aluminum, chlorine, manganese and other elements to get the right colors. Phosphorus and fluorine aren't typically used.
Apparently, you understand neither technology.
CRT: Fluorescent material glows when struck by electrons from a cathode in a vacuum tube.
VFD: Fluorescent material glows when struck by electrons from a cathode in a vacuum tube.
The only difference is that the CRT electrons are steered across the surface of the display with coils. The VFD simply places cathodes near a corresponding phosphorescent element.
So...not quite as different as you believe.
Glad to hear it. Send me an email and we'll work out the details. I'll be happy to work with you on that really cool invention you want to market.
Well, it actually does require software to give that info. It connects via serial port, see? It's not tied in to the chipset.
It's kind of interesting, how these case displays seem to be so popular.
I have a vaccuum flourescent display on my machine right now. It's multi-colored and large, so large that it needs a separate case and power supply. It displays cpu stats, news, weather, even games!
Hopefully, these case kiddiez will discover the wonder of this thing called a "monitor." One thing at a time, I suppose.
Well, your script is useful if all the files are in the same directory, and you want to resize all of them. But what if you want to resize a few images from different directories across your system?
Since I have to use Windows at work, and don't mess much with images at home, I can't recommend one Unix graphics program over another. But on Windows, Irfanview is priceless. The batch convert program works incredibly well, and does a lot of things like color balance changes and format conversions. Also, the thumbnail view lets you take a directory of images and convert it straight to a web page with thumbnails, linked to full-size versions and with file sizes listed below the thumbnails. Irfanview is the best Windows program I have ever used.
Well, guess what.
As of very recently, the Sprint PCS Vision network is no longer usage-based.
Yep, unlimited internet access, 300 minutes, free nights and weekends, voice mail, free PCS-to-PCS on a two-year contract, all on a nice color phone with web browser, email, and text messaging. This costs exactly $40 per month, which is $10 more than the regular audio-only plan.
My Samsung N400 will arrive this week. I can buy a USB cable and hook my laptop up to the Vision network. Apparently, it works on Linux too; the phones simply identify as an ACM device and you dial #777 to set up the PPP connection. It doesn't take your minutes, it just hooks you into the always-on Vision connection (50-70kbps average, from what I hear).
Yes, that would be unlimited wireless internet. The Treo 300 uses the Vision network as well; looks like a pretty nice little setup.
Hopefully it all works. The EULA says that you're only supposed to use the Vision network on the phone itself, but they contradict that and sell a USB cable and software on their own web site. Also, a lot of the website claims that Vision is metered, but on the actual plan purchase page it's unlimited. Just need to update a lot of their website, apparently.
I'll check it out this week, and make sure it works. If you want to find out how it goes, let me know.
Since those boards are EBX, you can't stack them. They have a PC-104 bus on top, so you can stack regular PC-104 modules.
I don't think SMP is really possible with PC-104...it's just a peripheral bus, and each module would just be a separate computer. I'd say the best you could do would be a Beowulf cluster over ethernet.
You haven't even started working yet. Why are you concerned about working too many hours? You have no idea if your boss is a poor manager or not, and you have not yet been forced to work more than eight hours at this company.
No, no one will force you to work twelve hours a day. They can easily find someone else who will *willingly* do so, to feed their family and pay their debts.
Developer board? Bah. I never believed in developer boards, I've had some that fried the chip on powerup. I'd just make my own board....what's that? It's a ball-grid-array? Nevermind.
;-) They are actually an EBX board (6"x8") but have a PC-104 bus connector on top.
Anyway...notice that it has memory controllers too. That could be pretty useful. Still not a really powerful device; I could see these being useful for network-based home automation, with a touch-screen in every room (that run distributed.net or folding when idle).
Speaking of PC-104, I picked up a WinSystems board the other day for less than $50. This guy has a huge number of them on eBay, and has saturated the market. These board still go for over $500 each, and the John Carmack Armadillo project used one until they crashed their rocket. Has all the bells and whistles (IDE, floppy, vga, ethernet, LPT, 4 serial, keyboard, 48 I/O, SRAM or Diskonchip, watchdog), only an AMD 5x86 133Mhz chip though. I'm using mine for a networked CNC miller/router [to be constructed...]. Search eBay for pc104 and you will find them, I booted mine up the other day and it runs Linux fine.
Now if only that other guy would hurry up and send my bridge driver chips...then I will have a trio of smoothly whirring stepper motors....
Whatever. "Proprietary metal contacts" give me a break. A battery is a battery...except for hearing aid batteries. I can't understand why anyone would think a hearing aid battery would work, those die out within days after being exposed to air.
And, guessing that this guy is not skilled at soldering, he probably had the iron on the battery for 5 minutes trying to get the wire on. That will kill a zinc-air pretty nicely, both by cooking it and accelerating the reaction rate.
Most batteries used in memory backup applications are lithium. That's because they actually last for a while. What this guy needs is a lithium battery, and someone who knows how to solder (if the phone isn't ruined already).
The more people moan and groan about engineering going down the tubes, the more likely it will become reality.
And don't talk about engineering careers ending...I'm still trying to start mine.
I would think that, if you really wanted people to know anything about the device, you would have linked to cellsocket.com.
It's all fun and games until someone makes a robotic great white shark.
Or is that when the fun and games begin? I don't know....
If this is, as you claim, a surveillance camera, why do you care about audio out? Are you going to sit there until something bad happens, and then say "Fear me O wrong-doer, behold the might of this camera! It moves, and allows bi-directional audio!"
Just, ummm, check all the cables, try new cables maybe. Everything else is best asked of the Pelco support team, which an earlier poster supplied an 800 number for.
Kind of interesting trend going on these past few months: there aren't any Ask Slashdot questions for a few days, and then suddenly there are a dozen poorly-thought-out ones.
Don't forget Rob@t.