Sorta. The govt is like any other entity that pays a contractor for copyrightable works. By default, the govt retains the copyright for any works done by the contractor for the govt. Some contracts can grant the contractor either limited/full or shared/exclusive rights depending on how the work is performed and who pays for what.
Note that just because it belongs to the US govt, it doesn't mean that the public has access to it. Many works are either classified, or very commonly, deemed FOUO (For Official Use Only) which restricts access to software.
The whole thing is just stupid. Oh where to start...
- self destruct, great, so if you want to destroy someones data, just grab their memory stick and intentional use bogus passwords. Now that's brilliant. A MS with a builtin self DOS.
- No security support in hardware, just desolder the actual memory and stick it into your favourite $15 MS. Brilliant.
- So smug in their design they don't even encrypt the data. Outstanding.
- Software designed apparently by a 12 yo. Oh wait, a 12yo probably wouldn't have made it so dumb. Maybe it was a 6yo, were there identifiers named after Spongebob characters?
Actually, the bigger problem is that so many govt agencies approved of this thing, apparently, without it going through any type of remotely rigorous testing and verification. As much as our US govt agencies get ripped for doing stupid stuff, it's clear that they don't have the market cornered on such activity.
Hey, I have a secure self destructing bridge to sell to....
The point isn't that PowerPoint is bad, it's in how it's used. The thing they stress in the article is that the PPP and the spoken words should not be exactly the same, basically that the presenter should not simply read their slides. It doesn't mention using the slides as adjuncts to what is spoken, which presumably would be fine assuming the presenter leaves slices of time for the audience to consume the contents of their slides and then mentally switch back to the presenter again. I think that anecdotally most of us are already aware of this fact, presentations where the presentor simply regurgitates their slides tend to be the most boring and least useful (until you figure out that is what they're doing and totally switch mental energies to other things knowing that you can always review the slides later, aka day dreaming).
I, like others have posted, typically don't tell the interviewee how they did. The standard line I use for those that inquire is "after the interview, I make an assessment of your skill level and appropriateness for the job, I then give this to the hiring manager (which sometimes is myself) and it's up to them to figure out if those variables meet their criteria". While it would be nice to tell everyone how they did, from a practical standpoint it often leads to bigger troubles (I know this from experience). One other aspect is that this day and age, one has to be very careful about what you tell a candidate, it could be that "you didn't think they were a good fit", which often means that you thought they were a putz, but of course you can't say that (that they were a putz). So I just leave the legaleeze to those that are trained in it (HR).
BTW, I never "toy" with candidates. AAMOF, I try to go out of my way to keep them relaxed and not discouraged if things aren't going well. The point of the interview is to try to assess their abilities and appropriateness for the job, not to make myself feel superiour or have a team of folks that "interview well" but can't code worth a darn. I also don't want to exclude people because they "don't interview well". Some folks just get nervous, and I would hate to pass on someone good just because of that (after all, how many of us know other techies that are awesome at what they do, but have a few issues with their "social graces").
Most of the cameras are all relatively high end stuff:
1. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
2. NIKON D50
3. Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL
4. Canon EOS 20D
5. NIKON D70
6. NIKON D70s
7. Canon PowerShot S2 IS
8. Canon EOS 30D
9. Sony CYBERSHOT
10. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Don't know if this is really useful for the "average" consumer, but does give an interesting view of who posts on Flickr. It would be interesting to compare this with other sites like pbase and see how the camera distribution changes as the demographics of the users (and the intended audience of the site) changes.
When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD,'
They don't mention exactly what they watched it on. If it wasn't some 1080p wonderdisplay, then it brings out what I think the major failing of these hd formats will be (at least this first gen). The great thing about dvd was that you saw immediate benefits both from the medium and the content on your _standard_tv_. You didn't need the latest lcd/dlp/plasma display to appreciate what you were getting. The jump from tape -> dvd was massive, both in quantity and quality of content and the convenience of the medium itself, and it was available to anyone. Now we have only an incremental increated in the convenience of the medium (saves having multi-disk sets) which really doesn't mean much for most viewers and the improvements in quality only applies to a much smaller audience.
They could probably increase the database of connected items by extracting links from Wikipedia as well as various online dictionaries.
But isn't the power of something like cyc the fact that the connections have attributes, not just the fact that they are connected? A wikipedia article might have a link to something related, but unless you start employing nlp techniques to examine the text around the link, you wouldn't have any context and therefore wouldn't really provide much value above the wikipedia article anyway.
What is this guy French or something? It smacks more of punishing Apple for being successful vs actually providing some interesting arguments. Many open and designed by commitee efforts have wasted a lot of money and failed (same as closed and proprietary). Being open, in and of itself, doesn't guarantee the consumer that they'll derive the slightest "benefit". Why should Apple reap some benefits for "doing it right"? Isn't that the point of patents, that an inventor be rewarded for innovation (even if innovation is defined by the market and not technology), but over time the market be opened to allow competitors? That seems like the proper way vs saying that we should legalize cloning of products. Watch, if some "little guy" came up with something cool and big corp copies it, then everyone screams about protection. True, once you get the lawyers involved, the little guy gets hosed simply due to finances, but the issue is to fix what's broken vs tossing the baby out with the bath water. Make patents long enough to reward inventors but short enough to eventually allow competition. Make proprietary schemes covered by the same contraints as process, an inventor of a propritary process/item can enjoy exclusive use for a set period of time, after which they must open it up. This gives them time and a fixed date and an incentive to continue to innovate.
Head to head against Winders and *nix
on
MacBook Pro Reviewed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Another side effect of Apple switching to Intel chippies will be the increased number of comparisons of common apps (both functional and specific packages) across OS's. Before, it was always a bit sketchy comparing Win/*nix apps against OSX apps due to hardware differences. Now that the hardware is starting to become more "common", direct comparisions will take on more meaning.
Whether this is good or bad for Apple, we shall see.
Some other interesting features above and beyond simple searching could be:
- merge with semantic web work to be able to search on higher level concepts (e.g. if I type "bubble sort" it returns all bubble sorting code even if it doesn't explicitly say "bubble sort" anywhere).
- "community" features that allow developers to leave comments on code (no, not comments _in_ code, but on code, similar to epinions et al).
- if this index is available via api like the main google index, then people could do things like have automated lint type tools.
- code chain. If I search for some code, then it'd be nice to be able to then peruse that codes hierarchy within the search engine (vs having to download it or cvs over to it).
What Amazon has that others don't that may allow them to compete effectively against the iPod/iTMS:
- An established, well trafficed website. People already go to Amazon to shop for music and videos, allowing them to immediately download instead of purchasing a cd/dvd is an obvious evolutionary step. They don't need to try to drive people to use their service, people already do.
- Purchase hardware directly from them. If they do indeed sell a hardware player as well, then this makes it even easier for the consumer. "Hey, I'm thinking of buying a mp3 player, I'll go over to Amazon and check them out". And lo and behold, you can purchase the Amazon player and get whatever music you order pre-loaded onto the sucker in one fell swoop. Even Apple doesn't offer this level of service.
- Amazon already has relationships with the music industry and they are "established" enough to be a credible (in the eyes of the industry) alternative. Remember, Jobs and the music industry don't exactly see eye-2-eye on issues like pricing. I bet the music industry execs are chomping at the bit to play with someone who will bow more to their desires in order to establish a foothold.
Not to say that this Amazon player is a shoo-in, but I think it's probably the most credible challenge to the Apple "monopoly" that has come around in a while. It will indeed be interesting to see if they can gain some measure of success vs the iPod/iTMS steamroller, or if they just end up sucking up all the after rans, in effect winnowing the market to two players.
So many places i know now are running blackberry and so many people i know have blackberry devices i think it will take a long time if it ever does occur for people to switch over to Windows SmartPhones.
I don't know that I entirely agree. While Crackberries are quite popular, I think that there is still a significant number of companies that don't have a mobile email solution that would jump at the opportunity to do it as a "single" solution. As well, as companies look to upgrade, having the all-in-one solution could be quite enticing. The biggest bonus for M$ is that I don't think they are necessarily counting on driving significant additional short term exchange licenses due to this manuver, so they can afford to wait and slowly take on marketshare. Remember, people wouldn't be buying "Windows Smartphones", they're buying mobile email solutions that also allow them to do voice. If a Windows Smartphone fits the bill, then so be it.
How about human politeness
on
Polite Cell Phones
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It seems to me that most of the "rudeness" of phones stems from peoples strange addictions to ringtones. I just leave my phone on silent/vibrate all the time, and just never worry about disturbing anyone. It's sad that so much energy has to be expended to deal with such an issue. Plus, many of those strategies sound iffy at best since, for instance, many women keep their cell phones in their purse/bag, rendering any attempt to guage light or sound pretty much useless. Plus, as far as sound is concerned, how many people are going to feel a bit disturbed by the fact that their phone is now ALWAYS "listening".
That being said I see two useful features (which may have been mentioned in the article that I admit I haven't read). One, simply have the phone check your calendar to see if you have a meeting scheduled. Two, provide some type of "snooze" button. Right now, if you decline a call because you're in a meeting, you still get an annoying beep when they leave a message, or the same damn "ringing" 10 min later when they call again. Why not have a single button basically put the phone in silent mode for the next half/hour/n minutes?
While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms
So what, are they going to offer the same content without DRM? Think not. How does DRM play in here? If iTMS has DRM it's because the copyright holder has agreed to allow iTMS to distribute content based on the DRM. Being OS isn't going to help this new system out in that regard. Now they may cater to those who are searching for content that is not DRM'ed, but that's content.
Some applications that might now be possible using this 60 GHz technology include wireless personal-area networks (PANs) for intra-office communications in the 10m and below range.
So range is still a big problem. I'm sure that 10m is in an "ideal" environment as well, so they'll have to work out how to improve the range of this system. I guess the "easy" way would be to simply have repeaters everywhere, I'm sure the folks like Cisco are drooling at that prospect. Also wonder how it will do with interference, and if anyone else has any plans to utilize that area of the spectrum?
I think that for personal use, this is pretty much nothing but eye-candy. However, I can see some pretty decent commercial uses (note not necessarily in it's current configuration). Keyboards that are able to adapt to the application their running in a kiosk environment (where the core qwerty keys remain fixed, but the others change as needed) for example. One BIG use would be..... the keyboard as a display. Imagine one of these keyboards in a kiosk where it's actually displaying content as it treats the keys as a miniature multi-segmented display. It would be quite catchy and you could drive a significant bit of content through it. Picture the main interface display being the keyboard (say something simple like some type of ATM), with the standard display containing other information, or perhaps a "guide", or showing more details.
No credibility
on
The New Boom
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
They suggest that this latest boom, fueled by Google's ascent, is under steadier footing than last time
Oh man, they're actually stating that this bubble/boom/bulge/b???? is on steadier footing but is being fueled by Googles ascent? My, what short memories we have. If anything, the latest b???? appears to be more of an aftershock, related to it's predecessor, just to a lessor degree, but the same root causes and issues.
Gee, let's hope that this makes Sony produce more quality products, with more functionality. Why are they ignoring their customers?
How is this insightful in the slightest?
From the article:
Ten months after a major management reshuffle that saw Howard Stringer appointed chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), the company reported sales and operating revenue of ¥2.4 trillion ($20 billion as of the last day of the period being reported) for the three months to December, up 10% from a year earlier. Net income was ¥168.9 billion, up 18%
It would appear that they are producing what customers want, hence whey things are picking up.
How about discreet examples of how Sony producing Aibo's has caused them to "ignore their customers"?
Oh wait, I know, you mean the whole Memory Stick thing, right? Yup, now that Qualia is gone, I'm sure they can now focus on adding CF slots to their cell phones, after all, those Memory Sticks are like twice as expensive as those mini-SD cards (ooops, or maybe not).
It seems to me that this just points out the way overblown hype against bacteria. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people use keyboards every single day, and anecdotally, it doesn't seem like people are getting infections or having other issues (other than things like carpal) at a higher rate in the computer age due to the amount of bacteria found on keyboards (and believe me, it isn't because of increased personal hygene). Now if they further extrapolate and say that while most of the current bacteria is harmless, that keyboards represent excellent carriers in the future for more harmful bacteria, well, that's a more interesting story. But then again, doesn't that just say that you should keep your kb as grundgy as possible to keep those "good" bacteria in and the "bad" bacteria out?
Hmm, interesting yes, amazing, I'm afraid not. It did require some skill to make it a clean fit, but the geiger counter case was so large, I can't really consider it a technological feat to have done this. Now had he did this and kept a working geiger counter (recording the sounds and playing them back on the ipod to allow the ipod display to properly show levels, or something like that), now THAT would be cool.
Next thing you know someone will put one in the keypad of their microwave (you enter time via song lengths, i.e. big meals you'd set to "Freebird"), or stick one in an original walkman case. I know, how about someone sticks a shuffle inside a Gen1 iPod? oooh, aaaah.
The Phantom game service is still very much something Infinium Labs wants to pursue in the future and Infinium Labs CEO Greg Koler believes the release of the Lapboard is "the perfect stepping stone and bridges the subsequent launch of the full service further down the line."
Perfect stepping stone! Subsequent launch, further down the line. Man, this guy just cracks me up. Did he actually make this quote with a straight face? Because I couldn't stop myself from laughing just reading it.
Oh, and anyone else amused by the fact that they have apparently been working on this keyboard for over three years now, but yet it's STILL going to take them another 6 months to get it into peoples hands! If they were that far behind with the keyboard, just imagine where they are with the rest of the system:)
I think you meant to say "the real exploitation of space can begin". Think high velocity spacecraft junk is a problem now, wait till you have disposable camera wrappers and discarded "Welcome to Space!" flyers zooming around up there.
On page two they talk about Adam Curry deleting references to other people's work on pod casting and bogging. He deleted Kevin Marks's accomplishments and largely credited himself more. A way to weed out conflict of interest is needed for wikipedia.
Actually that's the simplified version. If what Curry says is correct, and he simply edited because what was written didn't jive with what he remembered the facts to be, then we have a stickier issue. I think a medium like wikipedia is great for more authoritative content (the meaning of words, the speed of light) but is more problematic at "historical" or perceptual "facts". Maybe Curry is being absolutely honest, he really didn't remember those things and he edited accordingly. What do you do when two "rememberances" differ? What do you do when they differ in some significant form and both parties stick to their guns?
Perhaps a better approach is to not take a "winner takes all" approach to what's written and to somehow factor in uncertainty directly into wikipedia. This would be the most honest approach, acknowledge that there is a fudge factor involved. Mark edits as being "non reviewed" until postively reviewed by some number of people. Allow for differing viewpoints directly in the article itself.
I think that until they do something like the above, any future with wikipedia is not a positive one (regardless of how well the site itself does, it'll either pollute us with a bunch of crap, or it will fail, either solution is not good).
Slashdot Mirror
Sorta. The govt is like any other entity that pays a contractor for copyrightable works. By default, the govt retains the copyright for any works done by the contractor for the govt. Some contracts can grant the contractor either limited/full or shared/exclusive rights depending on how the work is performed and who pays for what.
Note that just because it belongs to the US govt, it doesn't mean that the public has access to it. Many works are either classified, or very commonly, deemed FOUO (For Official Use Only) which restricts access to software.
Yes, it's absolutely a bunch of pop-psy junk.
...
And I will summon Allah's hand to strike down any infidels that disagree!
Now back to coding
The whole thing is just stupid. Oh where to start ...
....
- self destruct, great, so if you want to destroy someones data, just grab their memory stick and intentional use bogus passwords. Now that's brilliant. A MS with a builtin self DOS.
- No security support in hardware, just desolder the actual memory and stick it into your favourite $15 MS. Brilliant.
- So smug in their design they don't even encrypt the data. Outstanding.
- Software designed apparently by a 12 yo. Oh wait, a 12yo probably wouldn't have made it so dumb. Maybe it was a 6yo, were there identifiers named after Spongebob characters?
Actually, the bigger problem is that so many govt agencies approved of this thing, apparently, without it going through any type of remotely rigorous testing and verification. As much as our US govt agencies get ripped for doing stupid stuff, it's clear that they don't have the market cornered on such activity.
Hey, I have a secure self destructing bridge to sell to
The point isn't that PowerPoint is bad, it's in how it's used. The thing they stress in the article is that the PPP and the spoken words should not be exactly the same, basically that the presenter should not simply read their slides. It doesn't mention using the slides as adjuncts to what is spoken, which presumably would be fine assuming the presenter leaves slices of time for the audience to consume the contents of their slides and then mentally switch back to the presenter again. I think that anecdotally most of us are already aware of this fact, presentations where the presentor simply regurgitates their slides tend to be the most boring and least useful (until you figure out that is what they're doing and totally switch mental energies to other things knowing that you can always review the slides later, aka day dreaming).
I, like others have posted, typically don't tell the interviewee how they did. The standard line I use for those that inquire is "after the interview, I make an assessment of your skill level and appropriateness for the job, I then give this to the hiring manager (which sometimes is myself) and it's up to them to figure out if those variables meet their criteria". While it would be nice to tell everyone how they did, from a practical standpoint it often leads to bigger troubles (I know this from experience). One other aspect is that this day and age, one has to be very careful about what you tell a candidate, it could be that "you didn't think they were a good fit", which often means that you thought they were a putz, but of course you can't say that (that they were a putz). So I just leave the legaleeze to those that are trained in it (HR).
BTW, I never "toy" with candidates. AAMOF, I try to go out of my way to keep them relaxed and not discouraged if things aren't going well. The point of the interview is to try to assess their abilities and appropriateness for the job, not to make myself feel superiour or have a team of folks that "interview well" but can't code worth a darn. I also don't want to exclude people because they "don't interview well". Some folks just get nervous, and I would hate to pass on someone good just because of that (after all, how many of us know other techies that are awesome at what they do, but have a few issues with their "social graces").
Most of the cameras are all relatively high end stuff:
1. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
2. NIKON D50
3. Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL
4. Canon EOS 20D
5. NIKON D70
6. NIKON D70s
7. Canon PowerShot S2 IS
8. Canon EOS 30D
9. Sony CYBERSHOT
10. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Don't know if this is really useful for the "average" consumer, but does give an interesting view of who posts on Flickr. It would be interesting to compare this with other sites like pbase and see how the camera distribution changes as the demographics of the users (and the intended audience of the site) changes.
When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD,'
They don't mention exactly what they watched it on. If it wasn't some 1080p wonderdisplay, then it brings out what I think the major failing of these hd formats will be (at least this first gen). The great thing about dvd was that you saw immediate benefits both from the medium and the content on your _standard_tv_. You didn't need the latest lcd/dlp/plasma display to appreciate what you were getting. The jump from tape -> dvd was massive, both in quantity and quality of content and the convenience of the medium itself, and it was available to anyone. Now we have only an incremental increated in the convenience of the medium (saves having multi-disk sets) which really doesn't mean much for most viewers and the improvements in quality only applies to a much smaller audience.
They could probably increase the database of connected items by extracting links from Wikipedia as well as various online dictionaries.
But isn't the power of something like cyc the fact that the connections have attributes, not just the fact that they are connected? A wikipedia article might have a link to something related, but unless you start employing nlp techniques to examine the text around the link, you wouldn't have any context and therefore wouldn't really provide much value above the wikipedia article anyway.
What is this guy French or something? It smacks more of punishing Apple for being successful vs actually providing some interesting arguments. Many open and designed by commitee efforts have wasted a lot of money and failed (same as closed and proprietary). Being open, in and of itself, doesn't guarantee the consumer that they'll derive the slightest "benefit". Why should Apple reap some benefits for "doing it right"? Isn't that the point of patents, that an inventor be rewarded for innovation (even if innovation is defined by the market and not technology), but over time the market be opened to allow competitors? That seems like the proper way vs saying that we should legalize cloning of products. Watch, if some "little guy" came up with something cool and big corp copies it, then everyone screams about protection. True, once you get the lawyers involved, the little guy gets hosed simply due to finances, but the issue is to fix what's broken vs tossing the baby out with the bath water. Make patents long enough to reward inventors but short enough to eventually allow competition. Make proprietary schemes covered by the same contraints as process, an inventor of a propritary process/item can enjoy exclusive use for a set period of time, after which they must open it up. This gives them time and a fixed date and an incentive to continue to innovate.
Another side effect of Apple switching to Intel chippies will be the increased number of comparisons of common apps (both functional and specific packages) across OS's. Before, it was always a bit sketchy comparing Win/*nix apps against OSX apps due to hardware differences. Now that the hardware is starting to become more "common", direct comparisions will take on more meaning.
Whether this is good or bad for Apple, we shall see.
Some other interesting features above and beyond simple searching could be:
- merge with semantic web work to be able to search on higher level concepts (e.g. if I type "bubble sort" it returns all bubble sorting code even if it doesn't explicitly say "bubble sort" anywhere).
- "community" features that allow developers to leave comments on code (no, not comments _in_ code, but on code, similar to epinions et al).
- if this index is available via api like the main google index, then people could do things like have automated lint type tools.
- code chain. If I search for some code, then it'd be nice to be able to then peruse that codes hierarchy within the search engine (vs having to download it or cvs over to it).
What Amazon has that others don't that may allow them to compete effectively against the iPod/iTMS:
- An established, well trafficed website. People already go to Amazon to shop for music and videos, allowing them to immediately download instead of purchasing a cd/dvd is an obvious evolutionary step. They don't need to try to drive people to use their service, people already do.
- Purchase hardware directly from them. If they do indeed sell a hardware player as well, then this makes it even easier for the consumer. "Hey, I'm thinking of buying a mp3 player, I'll go over to Amazon and check them out". And lo and behold, you can purchase the Amazon player and get whatever music you order pre-loaded onto the sucker in one fell swoop. Even Apple doesn't offer this level of service.
- Amazon already has relationships with the music industry and they are "established" enough to be a credible (in the eyes of the industry) alternative. Remember, Jobs and the music industry don't exactly see eye-2-eye on issues like pricing. I bet the music industry execs are chomping at the bit to play with someone who will bow more to their desires in order to establish a foothold.
Not to say that this Amazon player is a shoo-in, but I think it's probably the most credible challenge to the Apple "monopoly" that has come around in a while. It will indeed be interesting to see if they can gain some measure of success vs the iPod/iTMS steamroller, or if they just end up sucking up all the after rans, in effect winnowing the market to two players.
So many places i know now are running blackberry and so many people i know have blackberry devices i think it will take a long time if it ever does occur for people to switch over to Windows SmartPhones.
I don't know that I entirely agree. While Crackberries are quite popular, I think that there is still a significant number of companies that don't have a mobile email solution that would jump at the opportunity to do it as a "single" solution. As well, as companies look to upgrade, having the all-in-one solution could be quite enticing. The biggest bonus for M$ is that I don't think they are necessarily counting on driving significant additional short term exchange licenses due to this manuver, so they can afford to wait and slowly take on marketshare. Remember, people wouldn't be buying "Windows Smartphones", they're buying mobile email solutions that also allow them to do voice. If a Windows Smartphone fits the bill, then so be it.
It seems to me that most of the "rudeness" of phones stems from peoples strange addictions to ringtones. I just leave my phone on silent/vibrate all the time, and just never worry about disturbing anyone. It's sad that so much energy has to be expended to deal with such an issue. Plus, many of those strategies sound iffy at best since, for instance, many women keep their cell phones in their purse/bag, rendering any attempt to guage light or sound pretty much useless. Plus, as far as sound is concerned, how many people are going to feel a bit disturbed by the fact that their phone is now ALWAYS "listening".
That being said I see two useful features (which may have been mentioned in the article that I admit I haven't read). One, simply have the phone check your calendar to see if you have a meeting scheduled. Two, provide some type of "snooze" button. Right now, if you decline a call because you're in a meeting, you still get an annoying beep when they leave a message, or the same damn "ringing" 10 min later when they call again. Why not have a single button basically put the phone in silent mode for the next half/hour/n minutes?
While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms
So what, are they going to offer the same content without DRM? Think not. How does DRM play in here? If iTMS has DRM it's because the copyright holder has agreed to allow iTMS to distribute content based on the DRM. Being OS isn't going to help this new system out in that regard. Now they may cater to those who are searching for content that is not DRM'ed, but that's content.
Some applications that might now be possible using this 60 GHz technology include wireless personal-area networks (PANs) for intra-office communications in the 10m and below range.
So range is still a big problem. I'm sure that 10m is in an "ideal" environment as well, so they'll have to work out how to improve the range of this system. I guess the "easy" way would be to simply have repeaters everywhere, I'm sure the folks like Cisco are drooling at that prospect. Also wonder how it will do with interference, and if anyone else has any plans to utilize that area of the spectrum?
I think that for personal use, this is pretty much nothing but eye-candy. However, I can see some pretty decent commercial uses (note not necessarily in it's current configuration). Keyboards that are able to adapt to the application their running in a kiosk environment (where the core qwerty keys remain fixed, but the others change as needed) for example. One BIG use would be ..... the keyboard as a display. Imagine one of these keyboards in a kiosk where it's actually displaying content as it treats the keys as a miniature multi-segmented display. It would be quite catchy and you could drive a significant bit of content through it. Picture the main interface display being the keyboard (say something simple like some type of ATM), with the standard display containing other information, or perhaps a "guide", or showing more details.
They suggest that this latest boom, fueled by Google's ascent, is under steadier footing than last time
Oh man, they're actually stating that this bubble/boom/bulge/b???? is on steadier footing but is being fueled by Googles ascent? My, what short memories we have. If anything, the latest b???? appears to be more of an aftershock, related to it's predecessor, just to a lessor degree, but the same root causes and issues.
Gee, let's hope that this makes Sony produce more quality products, with more functionality. Why are they ignoring their customers?
How is this insightful in the slightest?
From the article:
Ten months after a major management reshuffle that saw Howard Stringer appointed chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), the company reported sales and operating revenue of ¥2.4 trillion ($20 billion as of the last day of the period being reported) for the three months to December, up 10% from a year earlier. Net income was ¥168.9 billion, up 18%
It would appear that they are producing what customers want, hence whey things are picking up.
How about discreet examples of how Sony producing Aibo's has caused them to "ignore their customers"?
Oh wait, I know, you mean the whole Memory Stick thing, right? Yup, now that Qualia is gone, I'm sure they can now focus on adding CF slots to their cell phones, after all, those Memory Sticks are like twice as expensive as those mini-SD cards (ooops, or maybe not).
It would appear that Steve's Reality Distortion field is effective even against the evil empire!.
It seems to me that this just points out the way overblown hype against bacteria. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people use keyboards every single day, and anecdotally, it doesn't seem like people are getting infections or having other issues (other than things like carpal) at a higher rate in the computer age due to the amount of bacteria found on keyboards (and believe me, it isn't because of increased personal hygene). Now if they further extrapolate and say that while most of the current bacteria is harmless, that keyboards represent excellent carriers in the future for more harmful bacteria, well, that's a more interesting story. But then again, doesn't that just say that you should keep your kb as grundgy as possible to keep those "good" bacteria in and the "bad" bacteria out?
Hmm, interesting yes, amazing, I'm afraid not. It did require some skill to make it a clean fit, but the geiger counter case was so large, I can't really consider it a technological feat to have done this. Now had he did this and kept a working geiger counter (recording the sounds and playing them back on the ipod to allow the ipod display to properly show levels, or something like that), now THAT would be cool.
Next thing you know someone will put one in the keypad of their microwave (you enter time via song lengths, i.e. big meals you'd set to "Freebird"), or stick one in an original walkman case. I know, how about someone sticks a shuffle inside a Gen1 iPod? oooh, aaaah.
The Phantom game service is still very much something Infinium Labs wants to pursue in the future and Infinium Labs CEO Greg Koler believes the release of the Lapboard is "the perfect stepping stone and bridges the subsequent launch of the full service further down the line."
:)
Perfect stepping stone! Subsequent launch, further down the line. Man, this guy just cracks me up. Did he actually make this quote with a straight face? Because I couldn't stop myself from laughing just reading it.
Oh, and anyone else amused by the fact that they have apparently been working on this keyboard for over three years now, but yet it's STILL going to take them another 6 months to get it into peoples hands! If they were that far behind with the keyboard, just imagine where they are with the rest of the system
and the "real" exploration of space can begin.
I think you meant to say "the real exploitation of space can begin". Think high velocity spacecraft junk is a problem now, wait till you have disposable camera wrappers and discarded "Welcome to Space!" flyers zooming around up there.
On page two they talk about Adam Curry deleting references to other people's work on pod casting and bogging. He deleted Kevin Marks's accomplishments and largely credited himself more. A way to weed out conflict of interest is needed for wikipedia.
Actually that's the simplified version. If what Curry says is correct, and he simply edited because what was written didn't jive with what he remembered the facts to be, then we have a stickier issue. I think a medium like wikipedia is great for more authoritative content (the meaning of words, the speed of light) but is more problematic at "historical" or perceptual "facts". Maybe Curry is being absolutely honest, he really didn't remember those things and he edited accordingly. What do you do when two "rememberances" differ? What do you do when they differ in some significant form and both parties stick to their guns?
Perhaps a better approach is to not take a "winner takes all" approach to what's written and to somehow factor in uncertainty directly into wikipedia. This would be the most honest approach, acknowledge that there is a fudge factor involved. Mark edits as being "non reviewed" until postively reviewed by some number of people. Allow for differing viewpoints directly in the article itself.
I think that until they do something like the above, any future with wikipedia is not a positive one (regardless of how well the site itself does, it'll either pollute us with a bunch of crap, or it will fail, either solution is not good).