Such a reverse-engineering job would be of obvious commercial interest (especially to parties who work in countries with lax regulatory regimes), so there is an obvious incentive to do it.
So you want to RE a proprietary solution specifically to sell it in a region which is known for its "loose" ethics toward piracy?
Do you see the large, glaring issue with that or do I need to paint it day-glo orange?
*A non-physical-clickwheel would be harder to use blindly, as in a pocket.
Not necessarily.
Consider a large-screen iPod where the whole screen is a click wheel - when you press up, down, left, or right, the whole screen pivots the way the wheel currently does now.
Additionally, build in "gesture" recognition so the unit can determine when you are drawing a circle and interpret the motion, regardless whether or not your finger is rotating around an absolute origin or within some artificial radial boundary.
We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.
This goes so against my usual feelings on how big companies treat the general populace, but...
With all the companies that make huge promises but never actually delivering, I willing to let it slide when a company delivers something pretty close to the original promise, even if it is just a little late.
I'm a little confused. The last time I had a Blackberry was in 1999. At that time, the holster had a little metal bar on one side. There was some sort of magnetic switch in the unit that could detect when the unit was removed from the holster - if you had a message waiting and the device was removed from the holster, it would automatically open up to the most recent message and send notification to the sender that the message was received.
The details might be a little fuzzy, but I specifically remember coworkers removing the bar from their holsters so that when the boss sent them a message, he couldn't tell when they actually received it (with the bar removed, the recipient would get notified that a message was received (ie - vibrate), remove the unit from the holster and see who the message was from without actually opening the message - hence, on the boss's blackberry, the message status would remain "unread").
This sound like the same exact trigger, but with a slightly different resulting action (instead of "open most recent message" it is "run pickpocket app").
I thought about keeping things electronically, but then I realize I'd have to take time to scan them and file them and that would take a lot more time, over all, than just dropping them in folders.
That's what I thought until I actually tried it.
I have an Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner which I use on all my documents. It scans both sides of a page at the same time, can hold 15 pages (I think) in its feeder tray, and takes 5 or 6 seconds to scan a page. Since it scans both sides of a page at the same time, this actually ends up being 5 or 6 seconds per two pages.
It is small enough to sit on my desk and its "on" switch is the loading tray flap - flap closed is "off".
When I want to scan something, I open the flap, load the tray with the document, and hit the "scan" button.
It quickly scans all the pages and sends the scan to a program called Readiris Pro (v11) - this program will OCR the document and save it into my digital cabinet as a PDF "Image + Text". This is a really cool format because there are actually two "layers" to each page - the actual scan of the page (so it looks right) and then a text layer below that has all the OCR information. What this means is that, although you are looking at a raster image, you can search the PDF for specific information and copy and paste text right out of the document.
Let me clarify that with an example:
Let's say you have a PDF of a utility bill. The PDF you are looking at is a scan of the bill itself - not a text-based representation. However, you can grab the "text" cursor and copy your account number right from the image! Obviously, you are not copying from the image, but from the text layer that has all the OCR'd text positioned correctly on the page, but hidden from view.
Since all the text has been OCR'd, the PDFs are now searchable. Since my digital cabinet is just a collection of folders based on category (Utility, Financial, etc), I use another program (DEVONthink Personal) to index it. Let's say I am talking with my insurance company and they have a question about a claim. I can type in the claim number into DEVONthink and, boom, all the documents which reference that claim will be displayed. Simply clicking on an entry in the result list will bring up the document itself and highlight where the claim number appears on the page. BTW, if a provider allows PDF downloads of actual bills, I can drop them directly into the digital cabinet and they will be indexed along with my other documents.
Yes - this cost a little much to set up ($300 for the scanner (on sale), $90 total for DEVONthink and Readiris Pro), but I was able to sell the full copy of Adobe Acrobat that came with the scanner on eBay for $175, so the actual cost was closer to $225.
It's probably not for everybody, but I am certainly happy with the process.
I don't know why anyone would mod the parent as flamebait. Think about it for a moment. During any time in U.S. history can you think of any other president about which such comments have been raised?
A lot of "history" is recounted via the media. There may have been the same comments back in the early 1940s, but no newspapers would give credence to them via publication. For comparison, if the New York Times then had the same cavalier attitude they have now, they probably would have published the location and planned route of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) during the summer of 1945.
We want to blame the guy in charge for the stte of affairs, but in this case, many of the changes we've seen have been directly related to the over-reaction to terrorist threat... cues taken from Bush himself. But there's more to it than that I think. But it certainly seems to have started at the top.
If that's so, perhaps you can provide a link to the Bush equivalent of Executive Order 9066?
Do you mean the quality of the hardware components chip for chip, USB plug for USB plug etc.... it would surprise me if Apple hardware turned up better in such a comparison since Apple sources these components from the same manufacturers as everybody else.
This truism is always brought up in this (and similar) conversations, but I don't buy it.
No manufacturing process has a 0% failure rate. As such, you can "buy" quality by negotiating a price with smaller failure tolerances:
$x per unit with failure tolerance A. $2x per unit with a failure tolerance of A/2.
Now, I am not saying that Apple does this, but saying that two companies that use the same source will have the same quality is not a straight forward as you think it is.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's the company you have to worry about. It's the person they send your drive to after they refurbish it you should be concerned about.
Evidently, the only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
Gee I wonder what is causing the Global warming on those planets?
It is obviously man-made from all the emissions from those probes we keep sending there.
Such a reverse-engineering job would be of obvious commercial interest (especially to parties who work in countries with lax regulatory regimes), so there is an obvious incentive to do it.
So you want to RE a proprietary solution specifically to sell it in a region which is known for its "loose" ethics toward piracy?
Do you see the large, glaring issue with that or do I need to paint it day-glo orange?
he's not competent to judge the strength of the material he was relying on
That prerequisite doesn't seem to stop anyone here...
- Tony
*A non-physical-clickwheel would be harder to use blindly, as in a pocket.
Not necessarily.
Consider a large-screen iPod where the whole screen is a click wheel - when you press up, down, left, or right, the whole screen pivots the way the wheel currently does now.
Additionally, build in "gesture" recognition so the unit can determine when you are drawing a circle and interpret the motion, regardless whether or not your finger is rotating around an absolute origin or within some artificial radial boundary.
- Tony
Which is why I always use example.com.
Kinda the same way that the Federal "Do Not Call" list is "a devastating loss of personal freedom for all U.S. citizens".
And, by "all U.S. citizens", they both mean telemarketers and spammers.
- Tony
Every single damn time I think of the Saga of Jeri and Jack Ryan
I don't seem to remember seeing any assistance from the Borg during the liberation of that Russian submarine or Project Reciprocity.
...and, as part of our corporate policy, any employee you request browsing history on will get a copy of YOUR browsing history.
I would guess that would limit requests.
- Tony
Interesting that they break down the future of hydropower not by its advantages
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Maybe if we adopted stringent population controls like china did, we'd be better off.
Except, according to TFA, a full 40% of the US population growth is due to immigration (legal and illegal).
- Tony
We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.
This goes so against my usual feelings on how big companies treat the general populace, but...
With all the companies that make huge promises but never actually delivering, I willing to let it slide when a company delivers something pretty close to the original promise, even if it is just a little late.
- Tony
I don't know if this "design principle" is funny or profound (from "Warning Messages"):
Doing so is counter to the encouraging tone of Windows Vista and makes using your program feel like a hazardous activity.
- Tony
I'm a little confused. The last time I had a Blackberry was in 1999. At that time, the holster had a little metal bar on one side. There was some sort of magnetic switch in the unit that could detect when the unit was removed from the holster - if you had a message waiting and the device was removed from the holster, it would automatically open up to the most recent message and send notification to the sender that the message was received.
The details might be a little fuzzy, but I specifically remember coworkers removing the bar from their holsters so that when the boss sent them a message, he couldn't tell when they actually received it (with the bar removed, the recipient would get notified that a message was received (ie - vibrate), remove the unit from the holster and see who the message was from without actually opening the message - hence, on the boss's blackberry, the message status would remain "unread").
This sound like the same exact trigger, but with a slightly different resulting action (instead of "open most recent message" it is "run pickpocket app").
- Tony
I thought about keeping things electronically, but then I realize I'd have to take time to scan them and file them and that would take a lot more time, over all, than just dropping them in folders.
That's what I thought until I actually tried it.
I have an Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner which I use on all my documents. It scans both sides of a page at the same time, can hold 15 pages (I think) in its feeder tray, and takes 5 or 6 seconds to scan a page. Since it scans both sides of a page at the same time, this actually ends up being 5 or 6 seconds per two pages.
It is small enough to sit on my desk and its "on" switch is the loading tray flap - flap closed is "off".
When I want to scan something, I open the flap, load the tray with the document, and hit the "scan" button.
It quickly scans all the pages and sends the scan to a program called Readiris Pro (v11) - this program will OCR the document and save it into my digital cabinet as a PDF "Image + Text". This is a really cool format because there are actually two "layers" to each page - the actual scan of the page (so it looks right) and then a text layer below that has all the OCR information. What this means is that, although you are looking at a raster image, you can search the PDF for specific information and copy and paste text right out of the document.
Let me clarify that with an example:
Let's say you have a PDF of a utility bill. The PDF you are looking at is a scan of the bill itself - not a text-based representation. However, you can grab the "text" cursor and copy your account number right from the image! Obviously, you are not copying from the image, but from the text layer that has all the OCR'd text positioned correctly on the page, but hidden from view.
Since all the text has been OCR'd, the PDFs are now searchable. Since my digital cabinet is just a collection of folders based on category (Utility, Financial, etc), I use another program (DEVONthink Personal) to index it. Let's say I am talking with my insurance company and they have a question about a claim. I can type in the claim number into DEVONthink and, boom, all the documents which reference that claim will be displayed. Simply clicking on an entry in the result list will bring up the document itself and highlight where the claim number appears on the page. BTW, if a provider allows PDF downloads of actual bills, I can drop them directly into the digital cabinet and they will be indexed along with my other documents.
Yes - this cost a little much to set up ($300 for the scanner (on sale), $90 total for DEVONthink and Readiris Pro), but I was able to sell the full copy of Adobe Acrobat that came with the scanner on eBay for $175, so the actual cost was closer to $225.
It's probably not for everybody, but I am certainly happy with the process.
- Tony
Apple can't figure out how to put the proper amount of thermal paste on a CPU.
As opposed to Dell, who apparently uses too much thermite paste in its batteries.
- Tony
I don't know why anyone would mod the parent as flamebait. Think about it for a moment. During any time in U.S. history can you think of any other president about which such comments have been raised?
A lot of "history" is recounted via the media. There may have been the same comments back in the early 1940s, but no newspapers would give credence to them via publication. For comparison, if the New York Times then had the same cavalier attitude they have now, they probably would have published the location and planned route of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) during the summer of 1945.
We want to blame the guy in charge for the stte of affairs, but in this case, many of the changes we've seen have been directly related to the over-reaction to terrorist threat... cues taken from Bush himself. But there's more to it than that I think. But it certainly seems to have started at the top.
If that's so, perhaps you can provide a link to the Bush equivalent of Executive Order 9066?
Never before have civil rights been violated as bad as this.
Oh, wait...
The guy who makes up the names is on vacation.
</obFamilyGuy>
But it has to be better, it has "Open" in its name.
My sister is a teacher and they have a simple rule with regards to cell phones:
If you use it (either for talking or texting) during school hours, it gets confiscated and the parent must come down to the school to retrieve it.
It's amazing how well this works:
"Billy, if I have to leave work early one more time to come down here, we're taking the phone away from you."
- Tony
Do you mean the quality of the hardware components chip for chip, USB plug for USB plug etc.... it would surprise me if Apple hardware turned up better in such a comparison since Apple sources these components from the same manufacturers as everybody else.
This truism is always brought up in this (and similar) conversations, but I don't buy it.
No manufacturing process has a 0% failure rate. As such, you can "buy" quality by negotiating a price with smaller failure tolerances:
$x per unit with failure tolerance A.
$2x per unit with a failure tolerance of A/2.
Now, I am not saying that Apple does this, but saying that two companies that use the same source will have the same quality is not a straight forward as you think it is.
- Tony
Hey, at least we have a good idea of what the packaging will look like.
- Tony