You can't use any of the "today's free app" applications without being logged into Amazon app store (meaning it must be installed on your device and your device must be connected to the internet.) This was as of last week, for 15+ apps I tested.
Amazon's primary driver to their market is a free app a day. The catch is that you cannot use these apps (at least none of the 30 differnet ones I tested) unless (a)you're online and logged into the amazon app store. They used to actually be free versions of paid apps, as Amazon still pretends they are, but now they are primarily crippled versions of apps you must pay extra for in order to use properly; yet, Amazon pretends that they're full versions that Amazon is giving your for free because they're *great.*
The developer terms are ridiculously one sided, and as a developer I pray that Amazon does NOT sell millions of these things to people who will only know that apps come from Amazon.
I was really excited about this thing until I read that you could only use the Amazon App Store.
That's not terribly surprising, this is Amazon after all, but it is still very very disappointing.
Amazon App Store is terrible, both for consumers (try using apps offline), and developers (too much to even start mentioning.)
This is the same reason I didn't get a NotionInk tablet when they came out either.
Yes, I can root the thing (and will likely be able to root the Amazon device) but I shouldn't have to and I try to avoid supporting companies who force me to hack their devices to use them the way I want.
The reason I don't have a personal iPad/iPad2 is because I detest the Apple walled garden, and Amazon is planning on doing exactly the same thing here. Don't be surprised if there is dedicated "trusted computing" hardware in the thing;)...
All true. The difficulty isn't in the voice recognition, the command grammars, or the 'AI' itself, it is in providing a solid process for pouring data in, and that is simply a matter of scale. If someone puts the money in, it happens.
...Siri is a decent aggregation of existing voice recognition, grammar based interactivity, and knowledge base retrieval. People, including ourselves, have been doing this for years. Our company does this in a more limited fashion, but technically very very similarly to allow Pentagon staff officers (and others) to navigate the GINORMOUS amounts of documentation that arise from large scale plans (thousands upon thousands of PDFs) - for example: "I need to see all of the documents produced in 2007 relating to humvee mine resistance testing" - "Sure, Dave, I can do that..." - and bingo 27 PDFs show up in a (rather special;) ) UI.
Siri is Apple's way of drawing attention from the fact that they do not have an iPhone 5, or an iPad 3. It is Apple's way of drawing attention away from the fact that Android phones are out 'innovating' them in the hardware arena. Apple knows that they are winning the individual phone brand battle, but starting to lose the mobile war; ergo, the purchase of Saab defense systems mapping software in order to cut themselves further from Google.
It is the PC market playing itself out all over again. Apple makes a great software platform, but is greedy about it and doesn't let other hardware manufacturer's use that platform (not to mention their greed in the App market - protecting us from ourselves? LOL), locks out Flash, locks out Java (because they're unstable and really not part of the web - LOL again.) All of these decisions work great for Apple in the short run (5 years or so - just like with the PC) - in the long run it literally kills them.
Siri is a distraction akin to "hey, hey! Look over here at this hand, not the hand holding virtually the same phone you've been buying for so long now..."
Yeah, I still "LOL" at the frothing at the mouth of every WebGL demo that comes out because there is no quality audio in HTML5/4/whatever.
I have known about the Audio nodes API for almost two years (before it was published as the "Web Audio API.") I was hoping something like that would be part of HTML5, it isn't.
Who cares if it works in Chrome? It needs to work in Firefox, Chrome, and IE.
What are you talking about? Are you suggesting generating and inserting HTML audio elements into the document to support the playback of a subset of samples? That's craziness. Why don't I just build the Sears Tower out of toothpicks for the next 1,000 years.
I would love to see an HTML 5 (or any JavaScript driven code for that matter) that could submit samples to audio playback that didn't lag or skip and didn't require a plugin.
I think HTML 5 is great, but missing that one thing to be a true 'killer platform.' Good audio control/synchronization (hell, I don't have to have sample level submission, but then let me know where in the playback it is...) would be amazing.
Hehe, ironically the most expensive computer in my house is a $6,000 BigMac;)... The significantly more powerful PC cost less than $3000 and crashes much less.
Still, I both loved and hated Steve - nothing but love for The Woz though! Apple IIgs changed my life.
Maybe you meant "superior writing skills" tongue in cheek (cheeky of you) but my skills in this regard are pretty average. BTW, I started looking through submissions posted by samzenpus and have noticed a bit of a trend...;)
9 character chunks? Should I spend a 1/2 hour writing a monkey class that emits 1 character chunks and simply monitor it for "Much Ado About Nothing"? I bet it could reproduce the work in less than a second with a single monkey.
9 characters of any particular Shakespearean work isn't slashworthy...
Now if he had a monkey emit the entire work that would be interesting in an examination of how long it took and how it occurred.
Only the masters of artificial wealth would complain that high frequency trading is a benefit to anyone instead of a very dangerous and slippery slope (Tuesday morning alliteration - ye Gods and little boarlets...)
...with literally 3 letters and 2 catalogs a day being shipped to my home address.
Of course, my wife spends money at a reedonkulous rate through catalogs like this, but my neighbors seem to get 'bundles' of mail every day just like we do as well.
1. I'm old. One 5 hour energy drink revvs up your basic 20 year old code monkey all day. I need a saline drip with caffeine in it all day to keep going.
- While that made me laugh, the truth is that most older software engineers fail to get 'revved' because they have done basically any task they're going to be assigned at some time in their past. The 'newness' of the task is gone. Now, there are ways to revive that newness but most people don't like assembling the same puzzle more than once.
2. I'm expensive. I have 30 years of experience in the 'biz and a masters degree in CS. I'm not cheap. You could hire two 25 year olds for what I'm asking.
- That's your call. If you price yourself out of the market, you're not likely to land a position unless you have something that is rare or 'epic rare':) to offer.
3. (and what I consider to be my greatest failing in the corporate world) I've seen all the tricks. I've been exposed to every nasty little mindgame management has at it's disposal. And sometimes I have the bad manners to call people on it.
- Again, this is a choice of your own. You are starting to sound like someone who has difficulty working outside of their sandbox and only wants a specific job with specific responsibilities for a specific salary working for specific people. Good luck finding a job like that in *any* economy. Again, it's your choice, and I'm not begrudging you (I like to point at people at the office and say "Lighten up, Francis..." just as much as you do probably.;)
This is called "having a bad attitude". So when I compete against 20-somethings in the worst economy since 1929 (I hesitate to say the worst economy ever), I lose.
- Maybe I'm alone on thinking this but the economy as relating to software engineers isn't bad. For the last 6 months several mid sized to larger companies, and one very large company in particular, have been hiring software engineers, field services guys, support staff, IT personnel, et cetera. I've seen plenty of job postings on LinkedIn in groups I belong to, and I know several software engineers who have left their positions for better opportunities elsewhere (the latter personnel moved around in the SF bay area (Marin specifically) and Atlanta (North and West side.) It honestly sounds like you're finding it difficult to find the perfect job. Maybe I'm wrong.
I should have made the leap to management when I had the chance, not because I would have loved management (I would have had to manage assholes like me, after all;), but because at 40 you have TWENTY YEARS LEFT. The years go by really, really fast. You should really start thinking about a soft place to land when you're 60 now, because if you aren't in line to be a VP or a Director you ain't gonna make it at this point.
- Yes, this is VERY VERY good advice. There comes a time in every engineers life where their experience outstrips their likelyhood of an appropriate 'recompense' shall we say. If you want to keep growing career-wise you have 3 choices.
1. Take up a leadership role, or a more critical leadership role - Yes, these jobs tends to really REALLY suck, but they are important and are the harbinger to your future at Initech or Intertrode. This doesn't preclude you from doing engineering work, for example I am the CTO of a small software company (around 20 people) and I report to the Board, participant in the management structure(s), am the primary software architect, and I get to do some of the engineering work (usually the stuff the 'kids' find scary like IOCompletionPorts/Memory Fragmentation.) The bigger the company, the less likely you'll get to work outside your defined 'role' though.
2. You can join a startup where your experience will hopefully help you with the 'wearing many hats' syndrome that prevails at these comp
Oh, how excited I was to get a GeFORCE256 card and talk about T&L in hardware in my home PC... Ironically I worked with an SGI RE2 about two feet away from me at the time and couldn't get as excited about it (have you ever worked with Irix? LOL.)
Just a note on OIT, with regards to DirectX: Since the fixed function pipeline was obsoleted in favor of the programmable shader based approach API implemented OIT has been orphaned as something of a strange hybrid between a crutch for people just getting into advanced topics and a luxury item.
DirectX is primarily focused on high-end games, and nowadays most games (it would seem) use some variation of Deferred Lighting. The type of deferred lighting you use would determine which, of the many, sorting approaches you would/could use to handle your non-opaque geometry (unless you can get away with a separate rendering path for your transparency handling - usually you'll have too many lights for this.) This somewhat precludes adding a magic 'OIT-enabled' flag unless its usage was bound by serious restrictions.
This is why, imho, OIT isn't bundled into DirectX. Microsoft was talking about possibly doing it before DirectX 11 (in 2008 iirc?) but it seemed to have dropped by the wayside, and I honestly think it is because virtually no one that DirectX is targeted for would use it.
I admire the guy's tenacity (double amputee at 11 months and still played rugby growing up) but I recall seeing him competing a few years ago in Europe (some track meet in Rome iirc) and he was no where near the fitness level of the other atheletes and yet was qualifying for heats (in other words - he was 'heavy' at the time.)
Now unless this is an unfortunate coincidence between the potentially fastest human ever having his legs amputated as a baby, it is an unfair advantage. The IAAF, contrary to the OP's assertion, claim that it provides him a clear and obvious advantage mechanically and say they have the data to back it up...
Slashdot Mirror
You can't use any of the "today's free app" applications without being logged into Amazon app store (meaning it must be installed on your device and your device must be connected to the internet.) This was as of last week, for 15+ apps I tested.
Amazon's primary driver to their market is a free app a day. The catch is that you cannot use these apps (at least none of the 30 differnet ones I tested) unless (a)you're online and logged into the amazon app store. They used to actually be free versions of paid apps, as Amazon still pretends they are, but now they are primarily crippled versions of apps you must pay extra for in order to use properly; yet, Amazon pretends that they're full versions that Amazon is giving your for free because they're *great.*
The developer terms are ridiculously one sided, and as a developer I pray that Amazon does NOT sell millions of these things to people who will only know that apps come from Amazon.
I was really excited about this thing until I read that you could only use the Amazon App Store.
That's not terribly surprising, this is Amazon after all, but it is still very very disappointing.
Amazon App Store is terrible, both for consumers (try using apps offline), and developers (too much to even start mentioning.)
This is the same reason I didn't get a NotionInk tablet when they came out either.
Yes, I can root the thing (and will likely be able to root the Amazon device) but I shouldn't have to and I try to avoid supporting companies who force me to hack their devices to use them the way I want.
The reason I don't have a personal iPad/iPad2 is because I detest the Apple walled garden, and Amazon is planning on doing exactly the same thing here. Don't be surprised if there is dedicated "trusted computing" hardware in the thing ;)...
All true. The difficulty isn't in the voice recognition, the command grammars, or the 'AI' itself, it is in providing a solid process for pouring data in, and that is simply a matter of scale. If someone puts the money in, it happens.
...Siri is a decent aggregation of existing voice recognition, grammar based interactivity, and knowledge base retrieval. People, including ourselves, have been doing this for years. Our company does this in a more limited fashion, but technically very very similarly to allow Pentagon staff officers (and others) to navigate the GINORMOUS amounts of documentation that arise from large scale plans (thousands upon thousands of PDFs) - for example: "I need to see all of the documents produced in 2007 relating to humvee mine resistance testing" - "Sure, Dave, I can do that..." - and bingo 27 PDFs show up in a (rather special ;) ) UI.
Siri is Apple's way of drawing attention from the fact that they do not have an iPhone 5, or an iPad 3. It is Apple's way of drawing attention away from the fact that Android phones are out 'innovating' them in the hardware arena. Apple knows that they are winning the individual phone brand battle, but starting to lose the mobile war; ergo, the purchase of Saab defense systems mapping software in order to cut themselves further from Google.
It is the PC market playing itself out all over again. Apple makes a great software platform, but is greedy about it and doesn't let other hardware manufacturer's use that platform (not to mention their greed in the App market - protecting us from ourselves? LOL), locks out Flash, locks out Java (because they're unstable and really not part of the web - LOL again.) All of these decisions work great for Apple in the short run (5 years or so - just like with the PC) - in the long run it literally kills them.
Siri is a distraction akin to "hey, hey! Look over here at this hand, not the hand holding virtually the same phone you've been buying for so long now..."
Seriously, as if they wouldn't abuse their position, yet again...
Yeah, I still "LOL" at the frothing at the mouth of every WebGL demo that comes out because there is no quality audio in HTML5/4/whatever.
I have known about the Audio nodes API for almost two years (before it was published as the "Web Audio API.") I was hoping something like that would be part of HTML5, it isn't.
Who cares if it works in Chrome? It needs to work in Firefox, Chrome, and IE.
What are you talking about? Are you suggesting generating and inserting HTML audio elements into the document to support the playback of a subset of samples? That's craziness. Why don't I just build the Sears Tower out of toothpicks for the next 1,000 years.
I would love to see an HTML 5 (or any JavaScript driven code for that matter) that could submit samples to audio playback that didn't lag or skip and didn't require a plugin.
I think HTML 5 is great, but missing that one thing to be a true 'killer platform.' Good audio control/synchronization (hell, I don't have to have sample level submission, but then let me know where in the playback it is...) would be amazing.
That's the one thing major thing missing from HTML5 + WebGL - Audio control. Add sample level audio control and we're golden.
i didnt need an $8,000 workstation
Hehe, ironically the most expensive computer in my house is a $6,000 BigMac ;)... The significantly more powerful PC cost less than $3000 and crashes much less.
Still, I both loved and hated Steve - nothing but love for The Woz though! Apple IIgs changed my life.
...you and The Woz created the Apple IIgs, and changed my life forever.
...game development.
WebGL is great, canvas is great, web sockets are great, Audio support is terrible.
If it becomes possible to feed samples into an audio player (or other more complicated synchronization methods) in HTML5, then you're pretty much set.
Maybe you meant "superior writing skills" tongue in cheek (cheeky of you) but my skills in this regard are pretty average. BTW, I started looking through submissions posted by samzenpus and have noticed a bit of a trend... ;)
It is shocking enough that it was written, much less 'approved.' Lol...
"I find myself making (or recognizing) more and more important decisions being made in developing for the web"
"Scalability Rules Read below for the rest of eldavojohn's review"
9 character chunks? Should I spend a 1/2 hour writing a monkey class that emits 1 character chunks and simply monitor it for "Much Ado About Nothing"? I bet it could reproduce the work in less than a second with a single monkey.
9 characters of any particular Shakespearean work isn't slashworthy...
Now if he had a monkey emit the entire work that would be interesting in an examination of how long it took and how it occurred.
of the exchanges.
Only the masters of artificial wealth would complain that high frequency trading is a benefit to anyone instead of a very dangerous and slippery slope (Tuesday morning alliteration - ye Gods and little boarlets...)
...with literally 3 letters and 2 catalogs a day being shipped to my home address.
Of course, my wife spends money at a reedonkulous rate through catalogs like this, but my neighbors seem to get 'bundles' of mail every day just like we do as well.
...so it's not like they're all powerful.
Surely their commercial advertising budgets (which are freaking astronomical and reedonkulous) could afford an intern for this.
1. I'm old. One 5 hour energy drink revvs up your basic 20 year old code monkey all day. I need a saline drip with caffeine in it all day to keep going.
- While that made me laugh, the truth is that most older software engineers fail to get 'revved' because they have done basically any task they're going to be assigned at some time in their past. The 'newness' of the task is gone. Now, there are ways to revive that newness but most people don't like assembling the same puzzle more than once.
2. I'm expensive. I have 30 years of experience in the 'biz and a masters degree in CS. I'm not cheap. You could hire two 25 year olds for what I'm asking.
- That's your call. If you price yourself out of the market, you're not likely to land a position unless you have something that is rare or 'epic rare' :) to offer.
3. (and what I consider to be my greatest failing in the corporate world) I've seen all the tricks. I've been exposed to every nasty little mindgame management has at it's disposal. And sometimes I have the bad manners to call people on it.
- Again, this is a choice of your own. You are starting to sound like someone who has difficulty working outside of their sandbox and only wants a specific job with specific responsibilities for a specific salary working for specific people. Good luck finding a job like that in *any* economy. Again, it's your choice, and I'm not begrudging you (I like to point at people at the office and say "Lighten up, Francis..." just as much as you do probably. ;)
This is called "having a bad attitude". So when I compete against 20-somethings in the worst economy since 1929 (I hesitate to say the worst economy ever), I lose.
- Maybe I'm alone on thinking this but the economy as relating to software engineers isn't bad. For the last 6 months several mid sized to larger companies, and one very large company in particular, have been hiring software engineers, field services guys, support staff, IT personnel, et cetera. I've seen plenty of job postings on LinkedIn in groups I belong to, and I know several software engineers who have left their positions for better opportunities elsewhere (the latter personnel moved around in the SF bay area (Marin specifically) and Atlanta (North and West side.) It honestly sounds like you're finding it difficult to find the perfect job. Maybe I'm wrong.
I should have made the leap to management when I had the chance, not because I would have loved management (I would have had to manage assholes like me, after all ;), but because at 40 you have TWENTY YEARS LEFT. The years go by really, really fast. You should really start thinking about a soft place to land when you're 60 now, because if you aren't in line to be a VP or a Director you ain't gonna make it at this point.
- Yes, this is VERY VERY good advice. There comes a time in every engineers life where their experience outstrips their likelyhood of an appropriate 'recompense' shall we say. If you want to keep growing career-wise you have 3 choices.
1. Take up a leadership role, or a more critical leadership role - Yes, these jobs tends to really REALLY suck, but they are important and are the harbinger to your future at Initech or Intertrode. This doesn't preclude you from doing engineering work, for example I am the CTO of a small software company (around 20 people) and I report to the Board, participant in the management structure(s), am the primary software architect, and I get to do some of the engineering work (usually the stuff the 'kids' find scary like IOCompletionPorts/Memory Fragmentation.) The bigger the company, the less likely you'll get to work outside your defined 'role' though.
2. You can join a startup where your experience will hopefully help you with the 'wearing many hats' syndrome that prevails at these comp
Offset by the resultant missing testosterone? ;)
The GeForce added transform and lighting
Nerdmode:on
Oh, how excited I was to get a GeFORCE256 card and talk about T&L in hardware in my home PC... Ironically I worked with an SGI RE2 about two feet away from me at the time and couldn't get as excited about it (have you ever worked with Irix? LOL.)
Nerdmode:off
Just a note on OIT, with regards to DirectX: Since the fixed function pipeline was obsoleted in favor of the programmable shader based approach API implemented OIT has been orphaned as something of a strange hybrid between a crutch for people just getting into advanced topics and a luxury item.
DirectX is primarily focused on high-end games, and nowadays most games (it would seem) use some variation of Deferred Lighting. The type of deferred lighting you use would determine which, of the many, sorting approaches you would/could use to handle your non-opaque geometry (unless you can get away with a separate rendering path for your transparency handling - usually you'll have too many lights for this.) This somewhat precludes adding a magic 'OIT-enabled' flag unless its usage was bound by serious restrictions.
This is why, imho, OIT isn't bundled into DirectX. Microsoft was talking about possibly doing it before DirectX 11 (in 2008 iirc?) but it seemed to have dropped by the wayside, and I honestly think it is because virtually no one that DirectX is targeted for would use it.
The mass alone is an advantage. One of the IAAF scientists stated that he has a 30% mechanical advantage in lifting his legs during a run.
...runners with natural ankles and feet.
I admire the guy's tenacity (double amputee at 11 months and still played rugby growing up) but I recall seeing him competing a few years ago in Europe (some track meet in Rome iirc) and he was no where near the fitness level of the other atheletes and yet was qualifying for heats (in other words - he was 'heavy' at the time.)
Now unless this is an unfortunate coincidence between the potentially fastest human ever having his legs amputated as a baby, it is an unfair advantage. The IAAF, contrary to the OP's assertion, claim that it provides him a clear and obvious advantage mechanically and say they have the data to back it up...