is there ever a good answer to distracting kids so you can do laundry, make food, take a shower or other necessary tasks?
Playpens with TVs?
For our kids that works about as well as caging any animal. They scream and cry and carry on. Would you want your managers to put you in a cage at work. (Granted hopefully you're better at looking after yourself than an infant).
My son wouldn't talk till he was over 2 years old. We were starting to worry. Then he discovered Thomas the Tank Engine. Suddenly he wanted to say the names of the engines and he learnt his colours too. That led to shapes. At 3 he's now on to identifying numbers on the sides of the engines, he's got an incredible imagination. With no prompting he drew a passable clown face on his face when momentarily left alone with a texter (and showed how he'd close his eyes when he was warned that he could poke his eyes out). He's been to the circus exactly twice. I'll bet he got that from TV. He knows some letters because he's learnt H is for horn for example when we play Trainz with Thomas characters, or that you hit W to go forward. He has limited mouse and keyboard skills but his comprehension impresses me. He goes to preschool now so that's helping his social development. He is not allowed to sit there and do nothing but watch TV. My wife plays and draws and bakes cookies and everything else you would expect a young child do.
My daughter's developing speech sooner. She's not 18 months old yet but she's asking for certain objects with abbreviated words "bub" for bubble etc. She loves TV shows too. She usually prefers to watch with her brother and she's a very social little creature indeed.
Young children may not have the skills to understand at high level concepts, but they sure as hell can follow a kids TV show. And as long as it's not all they do, I think it's very important to their development.
Every option you add is another option to maintain.
That's easy then. Add no options. While you're at it since every piece of functionality has to be maintained, take away ALL the functionality. You now have the perfect zero maintainence app. It does nothing.
No, from an advertising standpoint, this is customer-friendly. Assuming you're going to be showered by ads anyway in today's media, do you want to be showered by ads 90% of which don't interest you? Or do you want ads which interest you 75% of the time?
If the ads are all lies, this is akin to asking me if I'd rather be showered with pig manure or cow manure given that I prefer beef. I don't want either targeted or untargeted ads that I have not solicited.
I have a Nexus One. For whatever reason, Adobe Flash has no "move to SD card" option on my phone. Maybe on all Android phones.
If your phone is rooted and you have a backup you could try integrating the update to the ROM with Titanium Backup.
I used this on Acer Liquid Metal. If I go to a flash site it's still reporting 10.3, but the player settings for 11 work and Youtube works. That does not mean it will work on your phone, or that I won't have problems down the line with mine. Use at your own risk.
Is it just me, or are most of the technological innovations in the last decade mainly about monetizing consumer behavior tracking?
It's not just you, but I think you're putting it too nicely. Monetize is the wrong word (and I hate it because it's an unnecessary made up marketing word to boot). The correct word is exploit. Companies have become very customer hostile, while continuing to play up marketing that tells you how fantastic they are and how wonderful your life will be if you use their services. So there's also issues of hypocrisy and false advertising. These issues have always existed of course, but the abuse has gotten way out of hand. When is the last time you heard of a company being punished for false or misleading advertising? The worst part? Some customers defend such bad behaviour if it's their favourite company or if they think they aren't personally affected.
If new laws are needed to cover emerging technologies, they should be considered by appropriate legislative and regulatory bodies. Then people can comply with the law or face the consequences. But if laws can be twisted to cover any behavior we don't like, it makes it difficult for anyone to be sure they are in compliance with the law.
But how can you know if a new law is required to cover a new technology without a judicial test of the existing laws? That is what the courts are designed to do: test and apply the laws to a given situation. Let this go to trial. If the courts shoot down the lawsuit due to these laws not applying, then you can go ahead and get new legislation passed.
That is why I wholeheartedly disagree. As far as possible the law should be based on the intent of the offender and consequences to victims, not on which technology de jour was used to commit it. Then we wouldn't need judges with degrees in IT as well as law to make a sound judgement. In general tech is just the enabler. The issue here is privacy, not whether HTTP cookies, like buttons, FTP, gopher or carrier pidgeon was used to transfer the information.
I use to use the Nvidia Stereo driver for Microsoft Flight Sim occassionally and they were nothing but a royal PAIN. You had to match the 3D Stereo driver version to the main graphics driver version, but they only put out the Stereo driver for a select few versions. So if there was a bug with your graphics card or a particular game on the lastest compatible main driver you were stuck with that main driver for ages (like a year or more). You could upgrade the driver but if you did you lost the 3D. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. In the end it wasn't worth it and I gave up.
* based on realtime, forcing you to revisit the game to not spoil your crop = PAIN IN THE ARSE - If I can't automate that, not interested! * regular calls to spam your friends, for in-game reward = HELL NO. I want to keep my friends * regular calls to exchange your real world money for in-game currency = FUCK OFF, I don't buy virtual crap. If you sell me the game that is a real world item. If you start trying to sell me in game items I walk away * randomized in-game reward whenever you start the game = WOOOHOOO write a script to start the game daily;-) * essentially free of challenge, all the game requires is clicking on stuff to get rewards = Same as any video game I've played. Just gotta click the right stuff.
No wonder I've never been interested in farmville.
Speaking as a team lead for tier 2 support group, that's part of the premium service desk for managed IT outsourcing (ASA 30 seconds, 70% FTR kind of thing), this made me laugh my butt off.
Yes, we get crap-tons of calls from users about mobile devices. Tom is out of touch with "real" users, he's suffering (benefiting?) from massive selection bias here. His sample base is nowhere near representative of your average corporate IT user.
He's just insourcing his help desk tasks to his scientists, engineers, managers and clerical workers. Yes at NASA nobel prize winners have to do their own IT tech support. That'll cut the budget! Not a waste of their abilities at all.
FUCKWIT.
With idiocy like this, no wonder NASA is circling the drain. What a crying shame!
...but seriously, neat idea but hardly for everyday use. The seams are horrible in the resulting panorama. I presume each camera is using it's own auto exposure. What you need to overcome this is for all the cameras to communicate and decide upon a single exposure. Also might be difficult for the photographer to look natural when the shot is taken, but still catch the ball.
K&R was, and remains, the shining example of what a programming language reference book should be. C, while a perfectly fine language for it's time, almost surely would have been replaced by some other ALGOL-family language had C never existed. However I can confidently state that my understanding of computer programming would have been far poorer without that small little book. I am sure thousands of others feel the same.
I don't understand that. I like the language. I have great respect for the man. (Mentioning him in the same sentence as that glorified arrogant marketing mogul annoys me). But as far as the documentation goes, it is abysmal. I've taught C at university level and let me just say I couldn't think of a worse beginner's book. It is just barely passable as a reference. But the language, despite it's shortcomings. THAT is GOLD!!!
/* syousef 14-Oct-2011 Corrections and improvment to original code */ #include #include int main(int argc, char **argv) {
printf("Goodbye cruel world\n");/* The world can be a cruel place */
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);/* A successful man deserves a successful exit! */ }
My computer science professors, back in the mid 1980's, were highly suspicious of any computer book thicker than "The C Programming Language." I understand now how they respected Dennis' gift for concision.
I like C. I have taught C at University. I have great respect for Ritchie. But "The C Programming Language" is a gift of CONFUSION, not concision. Worst book for a beginner. Not that great as a reference. But the language itself is a thing of beauty despite the fact that you have enough rope to hang yourself and all your colleagues ten times over.
How retarded they are mad at him for not leaving it on the moon. So instead of it sitting on the moon collecting space dust it's on earth and he wants to sell it, big deal? At some point it has to simply not be worth your time to bother with. It's not like there is some sort of statement you're trying to make because we aren't ever sending anyone back to the moon again. So no one will ever be able to repeat his 'crime' of bringing back moon garbage. I swear bureaucratic astound me at how they love to enforce trivial things.
It's the precedent of the thing. What if every man they put on the moon today stole a camera? Wait a second, there aren't any moon missions.
Well it's the principle of the thing. They can't let an employee get way with theft 40 years ago, or others who work in similar jobs will....oh wait....whole moon program is shut down.
Well it's the budget! That's the thing! The budget cuts mean they could use the money selling that camera themselves. And the cost of recovering it justifies a few jobs.
My how NASA has fallen. From moon landings and a continuous manned presence in space to suing an old geezer over a camera while the voyager command computers sit in the corner barely maintained.
"I am William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?” Two thousand against ten?” – the veteran shouted. No! We will run – and live!” Yes!” Wallace shouted back. Fight and you may die. Run and you will live WITHOUT GPS at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here as young men and GET A SATELLITE LOCK? Tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our GPS SIGNAL!”
Slashdot Mirror
is there ever a good answer to distracting kids so you can do laundry, make food, take a shower or other necessary tasks?
Playpens with TVs?
For our kids that works about as well as caging any animal. They scream and cry and carry on. Would you want your managers to put you in a cage at work. (Granted hopefully you're better at looking after yourself than an infant).
This is just nonsense.
My son wouldn't talk till he was over 2 years old. We were starting to worry. Then he discovered Thomas the Tank Engine. Suddenly he wanted to say the names of the engines and he learnt his colours too. That led to shapes. At 3 he's now on to identifying numbers on the sides of the engines, he's got an incredible imagination. With no prompting he drew a passable clown face on his face when momentarily left alone with a texter (and showed how he'd close his eyes when he was warned that he could poke his eyes out). He's been to the circus exactly twice. I'll bet he got that from TV. He knows some letters because he's learnt H is for horn for example when we play Trainz with Thomas characters, or that you hit W to go forward. He has limited mouse and keyboard skills but his comprehension impresses me. He goes to preschool now so that's helping his social development. He is not allowed to sit there and do nothing but watch TV. My wife plays and draws and bakes cookies and everything else you would expect a young child do.
My daughter's developing speech sooner. She's not 18 months old yet but she's asking for certain objects with abbreviated words "bub" for bubble etc. She loves TV shows too. She usually prefers to watch with her brother and she's a very social little creature indeed.
Young children may not have the skills to understand at high level concepts, but they sure as hell can follow a kids TV show. And as long as it's not all they do, I think it's very important to their development.
Every option you add is another option to maintain.
That's easy then. Add no options. While you're at it since every piece of functionality has to be maintained, take away ALL the functionality. You now have the perfect zero maintainence app. It does nothing.
Monkeys- all results are "banana"
No, with Balmer in charge, some of them are to do with chairs and dancing.
I already know the future. Fail, of the epic kind.
I prefer fail of the EEPROM kind.
No, from an advertising standpoint, this is customer-friendly. Assuming you're going to be showered by ads anyway in today's media, do you want to be showered by ads 90% of which don't interest you? Or do you want ads which interest you 75% of the time?
If the ads are all lies, this is akin to asking me if I'd rather be showered with pig manure or cow manure given that I prefer beef. I don't want either targeted or untargeted ads that I have not solicited.
I have a Nexus One. For whatever reason, Adobe Flash has no "move to SD card" option on my phone. Maybe on all Android phones.
If your phone is rooted and you have a backup you could try integrating the update to the ROM with Titanium Backup.
I used this on Acer Liquid Metal. If I go to a flash site it's still reporting 10.3, but the player settings for 11 work and Youtube works. That does not mean it will work on your phone, or that I won't have problems down the line with mine. Use at your own risk.
I want a Dennis Ritchie week!
I want people to stop mentioning Dennis Ritchie in the same sentence as that glorified marketing muppet.
Is it just me, or are most of the technological innovations in the last decade mainly about monetizing consumer behavior tracking?
It's not just you, but I think you're putting it too nicely. Monetize is the wrong word (and I hate it because it's an unnecessary made up marketing word to boot). The correct word is exploit. Companies have become very customer hostile, while continuing to play up marketing that tells you how fantastic they are and how wonderful your life will be if you use their services. So there's also issues of hypocrisy and false advertising. These issues have always existed of course, but the abuse has gotten way out of hand. When is the last time you heard of a company being punished for false or misleading advertising? The worst part? Some customers defend such bad behaviour if it's their favourite company or if they think they aren't personally affected.
If new laws are needed to cover emerging technologies, they should be considered by appropriate legislative and regulatory bodies. Then people can comply with the law or face the consequences. But if laws can be twisted to cover any behavior we don't like, it makes it difficult for anyone to be sure they are in compliance with the law.
But how can you know if a new law is required to cover a new technology without a judicial test of the existing laws? That is what the courts are designed to do: test and apply the laws to a given situation. Let this go to trial. If the courts shoot down the lawsuit due to these laws not applying, then you can go ahead and get new legislation passed.
That is why I wholeheartedly disagree. As far as possible the law should be based on the intent of the offender and consequences to victims, not on which technology de jour was used to commit it. Then we wouldn't need judges with degrees in IT as well as law to make a sound judgement. In general tech is just the enabler. The issue here is privacy, not whether HTTP cookies, like buttons, FTP, gopher or carrier pidgeon was used to transfer the information.
I judge everybody based upon their use of oxford commas.
You're currently failing.
Well then I judge you by your use of capitalization. You're currently failing. Oxford is a proper noun.
I use to use the Nvidia Stereo driver for Microsoft Flight Sim occassionally and they were nothing but a royal PAIN. You had to match the 3D Stereo driver version to the main graphics driver version, but they only put out the Stereo driver for a select few versions. So if there was a bug with your graphics card or a particular game on the lastest compatible main driver you were stuck with that main driver for ages (like a year or more). You could upgrade the driver but if you did you lost the 3D. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. In the end it wasn't worth it and I gave up.
* based on realtime, forcing you to revisit the game to not spoil your crop = PAIN IN THE ARSE - If I can't automate that, not interested! ;-)
* regular calls to spam your friends, for in-game reward = HELL NO. I want to keep my friends
* regular calls to exchange your real world money for in-game currency = FUCK OFF, I don't buy virtual crap. If you sell me the game that is a real world item. If you start trying to sell me in game items I walk away
* randomized in-game reward whenever you start the game = WOOOHOOO write a script to start the game daily
* essentially free of challenge, all the game requires is clicking on stuff to get rewards = Same as any video game I've played. Just gotta click the right stuff.
No wonder I've never been interested in farmville.
Call it SHIT if you want, just don't cut the fucking budget!
Speaking as a team lead for tier 2 support group, that's part of the premium service desk for managed IT outsourcing (ASA 30 seconds, 70% FTR kind of thing), this made me laugh my butt off.
Yes, we get crap-tons of calls from users about mobile devices. Tom is out of touch with "real" users, he's suffering (benefiting?) from massive selection bias here. His sample base is nowhere near representative of your average corporate IT user.
He's just insourcing his help desk tasks to his scientists, engineers, managers and clerical workers. Yes at NASA nobel prize winners have to do their own IT tech support. That'll cut the budget! Not a waste of their abilities at all.
FUCKWIT.
With idiocy like this, no wonder NASA is circling the drain. What a crying shame!
...but seriously, neat idea but hardly for everyday use. The seams are horrible in the resulting panorama. I presume each camera is using it's own auto exposure. What you need to overcome this is for all the cameras to communicate and decide upon a single exposure. Also might be difficult for the photographer to look natural when the shot is taken, but still catch the ball.
Good to see people trying different things.
K&R was, and remains, the shining example of what a programming language reference book should be. C, while a perfectly fine language for it's time, almost surely would have been replaced by some other ALGOL-family language had C never existed. However I can confidently state that my understanding of computer programming would have been far poorer without that small little book. I am sure thousands of others feel the same.
I don't understand that. I like the language. I have great respect for the man. (Mentioning him in the same sentence as that glorified arrogant marketing mogul annoys me). But as far as the documentation goes, it is abysmal. I've taught C at university level and let me just say I couldn't think of a worse beginner's book. It is just barely passable as a reference.
But the language, despite it's shortcomings. THAT is GOLD!!!
In spirit of UNIX and C.
rm
/* syousef 14-Oct-2011 Corrections and improvment to original code */ /* The world can be a cruel place */ /* A successful man deserves a successful exit! */
#include
#include
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
printf("Goodbye cruel world\n");
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
My computer science professors, back in the mid 1980's, were highly suspicious of any computer book thicker than "The C Programming Language." I understand now how they respected Dennis' gift for concision.
I like C. I have taught C at University. I have great respect for Ritchie. But "The C Programming Language" is a gift of CONFUSION, not concision. Worst book for a beginner. Not that great as a reference. But the language itself is a thing of beauty despite the fact that you have enough rope to hang yourself and all your colleagues ten times over.
Dennis Richie was one of the giants who Steve Jobs stood on the shoulders of.
Steve Jobs stood on everyone he could reach with his feet. Don't put the 2 in the same sentence, it's disrespectful to Ritchie.
he gave us more than a few pointers
But now C is dead.
Nothing says there's a problem. It's just an interesting little tidbit.
Rather like saying "There will be weather today."
See if they'd used GPLv3 it would be. "There will be weather today...and I know this because....and you can work it out for yourself like so">
How retarded they are mad at him for not leaving it on the moon. So instead of it sitting on the moon collecting space dust it's on earth and he wants to sell it, big deal? At some point it has to simply not be worth your time to bother with. It's not like there is some sort of statement you're trying to make because we aren't ever sending anyone back to the moon again. So no one will ever be able to repeat his 'crime' of bringing back moon garbage. I swear bureaucratic astound me at how they love to enforce trivial things.
It's the precedent of the thing. What if every man they put on the moon today stole a camera? Wait a second, there aren't any moon missions.
Well it's the principle of the thing. They can't let an employee get way with theft 40 years ago, or others who work in similar jobs will....oh wait....whole moon program is shut down.
Well it's the budget! That's the thing! The budget cuts mean they could use the money selling that camera themselves. And the cost of recovering it justifies a few jobs.
My how NASA has fallen. From moon landings and a continuous manned presence in space to suing an old geezer over a camera while the voyager command computers sit in the corner barely maintained.
"I am William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?” Two thousand against ten?” – the veteran shouted. No! We will run – and live!” Yes!” Wallace shouted back. Fight and you may die. Run and you will live WITHOUT GPS at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here as young men and GET A SATELLITE LOCK? Tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our GPS SIGNAL!”