Nice, but doesn't seem a make-it-or-break-it thang to me, how is it useful to you?
-- Michael
btw I expect (but don't know) that this could be done in MacOS X with it's Quartz layer; might be an interesting thing to look into if you're hurtin' for the feature.
OK - Like 99.99% of the computer owning public I never owned an Amiga. Fifteen years ago I thought they were great and a pity the company was run into the ground but hey, life moved on.
Since then the industry has changed tremendously, we've been though how many generations of hardware, software, and even OSes. It's nice that an Amiga-legacy has come back but - to what?
Is there anything that Amiga now offers that Be didn't or MacOS X doesn't? Something that Wintel in it's messy but with 90% of the market way can't cough up some half-assed version of? The Linux/BSD/etc. can't reproduce?
Surely there aren't enough Amiga-fanatics out there to support a viable market for running old binaries? And all of those old kewl Amiga apps - they're old hat now - certianly there are better alternatives on other platforms by now aren't there?
What, exactly, does Amiga offer other then seeing an old friend again? I know nothing else is quite like it but after all these years is it really viable as an ongoing concern? Or is it like CP/M, just a joy to see it but of little real purpose other then the familiarity and the odd bit that can still be useful if only because nobody ever did it as well elsewhere?
Given how successful the original iMac was, and that this one is probably going to be, how come the vast majority of PC cases are just plain dull? Beyond a different colour, or a small curve somewhere, they are all essentially identical. There's got to be a market for mass-produced decent looking PC cases.
Are you trying to prove the point that the vast majority on PC cases are just boxes tarted up?
I believe the question is why aren't there more creative designs, ones that involve more then sticking swoopy curved bezels in old iMac colors on the basic PC box? Heck, Apple built their PC chassis with handles on the corners and a fold-out door with the motherboard and other components conveniently on it, not awkwardly mounted inside the frame.
IBM had a clever desktop pod with CD ROMs in it, Intel has the ever-giddier future design collection, but aside from the spate of iMac-wannabe's the PC chassis selection seems to be pretty moribund, snap-on bezels aside.
The future is here, only certain folks need apply
on
Space Tourist Standards
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
Y'know, I know a lot of great folks who dreamt of being Astronauts. They studied hard, went to prestigious schools and got degrees in all sorts of relevant things and have done amazing things - but lots of them realized that they would never be allowed to fly into space.
Y'see, those are America's "Heros" - they're to be "better" then the rest of us. Sure they're no longer white guys with buzzcuts but those folks are still the roll-models and still in control of the process. Women are now welcomed, a few non-Christians, even visible minorities, but that's it.
Nobody with an expressed political opinion contrary to the prevailing one. Nobody who is not from a mainstream religion or safely disinterested. And particularly nobody who isn't heterosexual or presumptively so. Nope, can't let them folks into space, they're just not, well, trustworthy, could upset some bible-belt politician, set a bad example, look like we, well, *condoned* such things.
So yeah, lots of my friends lost their dreams. They've done other things - one designs upgrades to the main engines, another does relevant medical research on astronauts, others have designed payloads or taken various support positions. A couple have watched colleagues go up on missions and known why they weren't candidates, that they were "unacceptable" because of who they loved.
So now its official: There are guidelines that, without spelling it out, make it clear who is to be allowed to officially build the future. Our Hero's are to be safe, non-controversial straight folks; apparently that is to be the American Way. The future is here, only certain folks need apply.
Great - wavelets are back again; however this time not for compression but for high-speed signaling and to avoid interference.
Cringely reports the folks are about to set their design in silicon so we'll find out then but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. On the other hand the basic theory is pretty easy to test and apparently they've convinced more then a few folks who've apparently done their due diligence.
If the signal propagates properly
If it can be discerned from ambient noise and other channel's interference
If the processing delay isn't too great
If the chipset is cheap enough
If the upstream folks roll it out
Etc.
ps To every first year student - think carefully before pointing out why this won't work. I expect that better minds then yours have had a look already so check your numbers and facts before posting please.
Yes, this may be no different from the airport hotel network (which I have not seen, however) but which corporate people travel most? Execs, of course - the people with some of the most interesting and valuable data. Of those execs, how many have clue #1 about desktop and/or network security? Very few, I am sure.
I'm sorry - have you ever worked in a modern large corporate environment? You seem to have less of a clue of what is going on these days then most of the execs.
which corporate people travel most? Execs, of course
Execs aren't the only ones who travel, Salesdroids travel more.
pgp encryption of sensitive data
PGP isn't used; indeed PKI is almost off most folk's radar. NT & 2K both have reasonably secure file systems when set up properly, other certificates and passwords are used for email.
good passwords (7 characters or more expiring every 30 days),
have the server service disabled (on NT machines), no running NetBIOS unless absolutely necessary, and then only when bound only to the interface needed, absolutely no web server (personal or otherwise)
Personal web server, good passwords, etc - well yeah, this is absolutely boilerplate stuff and indeed most laptops are so managed this isn't an issue at all.
connections to the Internet via VPN connection to corporate LAN, *then* through the corporate proxy.
You mean like I just described? VPN's are standard, the idea of using them for all connections is the one that has to be drilled home OR that one can only use such a connection for unimportant uses; check the weather / scores / flight info but nothing personal, private, or corporate.
802.11 what? no freaking way
Ok, so you really aren't anywhere near the point where you have any sort of real decision-making authority in a large environment.
802.11 - yeah everyone wants it. On the other hand it takes time and budgets and justifications and security reviews and site surveys such but it is rolling out.
These folks want to use the wireless in the airport public lounge or the ethernet jack in the SkyClub/RedTicket/GoldenKey lounge for premium travelers, as well as the port in their business class club floor hotel room and anywhere else they can get connected. These are the realities of business travel and are gonna happen; the trick is putting in policies and procedures and training so that they're not risks.
Companies like this ACT and even worse Monsanto are effectively playing god with the potential to destroy the entire human race and our ecosystem along with it.
Riiiggghht - those ACT organs are gonna leap out of the dish and come for us, likely on a dark and stormy night.
Y'know, so much of the debate becomes like yours: Silly over-generalizing by folks who can't be bothered to tell one issue from the next. I'm not a rahrah person but is an honest, realistic discussion too much to ask for?
By the way - look out the window: That look like a "natural" environment to you? If you're in NA seem many Chestnet groves? How about tallgrass praries? Old growth trees? Thought not.
What didn't get noted is that one can go to the same demos running Wintel and IE and get a working plugin automagically installed. This isn't just Linux/Mozilla but reasonably cross-platform. Next gotta check with MacOS & MacOS X.
Oh fer goodness sakes folks wake up to the realities of the modern biotech industry!
ACT is not the friendly non-profit down the street supported by charity and gov't grants and staffed with university-affiliated researchers. The charities don't have this money and the US gov't is trying to decide if it should tolerate or squash these folks and in the meantime is such a slow & conflicted funding mess they're not worth the bother. And academia - they've either lost many of their best and brightest to these shops or are desperately trying to form "partnerships" in order to keep in the loop and when it rains gravy to catch a few drops.*
Rather there's lots of hungry investors with deep pockets willing to invest and get these folks the best equipment and shield them from committees and reviews and university politics and such until they're ready to ship. All these folks have to do is get cracking and produce some encouraging results regularly which in ACTs case is what they are doing.
Were their previous results controversial? Yes - possibly overstated. Is this one - possibly again. They've grown *something*, possibly successfully, possibly not. Nobody knows exactly what yet but that's not ACTs point, theirs is that they've even gotten this far. When they find out if it works then they'll announce that too but they're just announcing all of their milestones as they go along.
So why are they doing this? PR. Not just the we-need-funds PR that so many folks are used to seeing (ACT seems fine that way) but also the Hey-the-21st-century-is-coming-at-you way so when ACT does have something to sell the market is ready to buy. Those nice comfortable theoretical debates are becoming much realer much faster then anyone imagined and it's in ACTs interest to have they and the market mature when a product is availiable.
Finally - why aren't the procedures and details being released? Because this is leading-edge privately funded research worth billions. If the public wants access to it then it can darn well pay for it. No money for uneasy biotech and too bizarre a regulatory climate and it'll happen anyway just without public participation and without sharing.
The Genie is out of the bottle kids. Either work with it to shape it to needs and values at its rate of growth or fail to keep up and lose all control.
-- Michael
* For the computer-centric folks this is the same as happened to CS departments in the 80's & 90's. All of the action moved out to industry along with the silly money. If you wanted in on the action you had to get off campus. Nobody has ethical concerns if Cisco announces a routing breakthrough unlike biotech announcing a grown organ but it's really the same business model applied to a different field.
Everyone's first response to this is going to be "What about wireless security?"
Well, what about it? How different is wireless from an airport different from that shared ethernet in the airport hotel? Or having folks check in from those ubiquitious web terminals in airports that half of the time have cache's full of info?
Yes, it is possible that sitting there in the terminal your stream will get intercepted. So understand/teach others that these aren't secure, that pluggin in in *any* public pace isn't gonna be secure and certainly not at a client's office etc. Use a tunnel back to the home/corporate proxy server or don't go near any important content and *don't* use any passwords.
But don't go getting all upset of wireless and airports, it's not really different from all of the others.
Apparently you are. Also apparently the 4 folks who moderated my posting up.
As to the rest of it - how about reading the book, seeing the film and listening to the interview before making assertions? Without that you're just whistling out yer butt.
... as good as this advice is, it doesn't involve e-mail, nor is there any likelihood of it being labeled "spam.
Yes, but you implied that the only way was spam or spamlike means - I'm pointing out that "Random meeting at the newsstand? Wrong number? Osmosis?" are not the only alternatives.
Blanket labels of "spam" for any e-mail that isn't a reply is overdoing it a little.
Stuffing my inbox or fax machine or yes my po box with material I've not solicited is spam. Commercials and billboards and print ads fine - but when I have to start actively avoiding these things, expending time and energy to dispose of them then it becomes an invasion.
If a resume is sent to something other then hr@company.com
or whatever the appropriate address is then it is spam. The only difference is that it is spam I can retaliate against and make sure the fucker never works in my town (something to consider.)
Surely your social circles aren't limited to folks in your same industry with a social horizon of one. Nor are you limited in other resources for changing careers - there are headhunters and consultants and employment ads and all sort of resources for any industry you care to name and none require blindly assaulting random & semi-random folks with resumes in the hope they'll provide a lead.
In fact I expect most folks are like me and not only will take what steps are convienent to assure you don't obtain a position and reinforce such antisocial behavior but will gladly hang you out to dry with you as their new favorite forged "from" address and name/address/phone number to supply to annoying websites and those impossible-to-get-off-of card decks and seminar/timeshare/meet-a-psychic invites.
Re:Mental Illness and the media.
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 2
On the other hand it is Nash's belief that he was instrumental in his own recovery. And this is doubtless true as in many cases where folks consciously learn to identify and reconcile their delusions. He also believes he "aged out" of his illness which some percentage of schizophrenics also do.
The point is this was a biography and should be expected to reflect the views of the subject and those around him. It is not a psychiatry documentary nor should it be expected to present anything more then a realistic portrayal of the person's and events within it.
Or would you prefer every production that refers to a no-longer-held or controversial beliefs stop for an extended expository educating the audience on the "correct" facts of the situation with long disclaimer (as is found in pharmacological advertising)?
[large rambling block of charactization of schizophrenia and how l wasn't respectful calling an author "maudlin" not bothered to be quoted]
Actually I have encountered schizophrenia, several times, with varying degrees of involvment up to and including a family member.
Care to get off your high horse and stop acting out your own issues in public?
While it may have been a lovely inspirationial story the actual story isn't the rather uncomplicated disneyfied one in the film. Furthermore when I hear a biographer interviewed I'd prefer they show some insight into the subject of their efforts as well as maintain a bit of objectivity, neither of which were in evidence in the Fresh Air interview (I can only imagine the edited-out bits.)
Plenty of biographers get mushy (or starry-eyed, or sexually aroused) over their subjects. Do you really think it's possible to spend such an inordinate amount of time writing/researching one person and stay objective?
I'm sorry, apparently your browser hiccuped and skipped the below sentence in my posting:
While biographers doubtless have opinions on their subjects I've never heard one get so maudlin or express such overt and unconditional adulation.
With no way to introduce yourself? How does this happen exactly? Random meeting at the newsstand? Wrong number? Osmosis?
Well, you see most folks have a "social circle." It's that set of people they're on good terms with, keep in touch with, do favors for, spend time with. When one hears of one of these folks in need of assistance one pauses for a moment and thinks if there's anything they can do; in this case if they know of a position or a connection for this person. In return these folks do the same.
Another popular strategy is "work buddies." These are the folks who you shared jokes with while waiting for photocopies, sat in small windowless rooms fighting the good fight, who respected or appreciated you at a former job. If you haven't completely alienated everyone you've ever worked with you'll likely have a few names in the address book you can drop a line to, see if they have any leads. Of course they'll expect the same in return; today or someday.
Finally there's the traditionial technique of "working the room." There are any number of events in most places for folks who are looking for positions to get together and share information. There are also places where the fishing is good: Try finding a users group meeting for products and tools you're familiar with. make a favorable impression and see if there's anyone in need of your skills. Go to trade shows in areas relevant to your field, chat up others and hand out resumes. Get involved in online discussions and projects you can contribute value to, perhaps impress a potential employer or someone who can recommend you to a potential employer.
Sure none of these are alien concepts?
Re:Soon to be seen in a grocery-store parking lot.
on
The Ultimate S.U.V.
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· Score: 2
Boo hoo - you didn't pick a good career or make yourself invaluable. Clearly this is all the world's fault and doubtless someday we'll all wise up to your real value (not!)
Coders don't live in caves. You're expected to contribute to your team and the company overall. If you can't/won't do that you're not valuable.
Best Practices and Great Code are valuable things, also a non-abrasive personality and ability to evangelize the standards you're so proud of.
If you're really are such a perfect coder you'd be able to get a job at the drop of the hat, co-workers would be pimping you to headhunters and new employers left and right, even in a bad market excellence is still respected - or lack thereof disdained.
Management is important and not for serving you. They're hired and promoted and retained because they contribute valuable skills and are difficult to replace. If your skills were as valuable and worthwhile you'd also be hired and promoted and retained.
The world isn't fair - if it were school teachers and artists would earn more, politicians who lie wouldn't get elected and litterers would be punished. f you persist in your "I'm under appreciated & its not fair" delusion you might want to check out the local homeless shelter and meet with many other folks of the same opinion.
No, this isn't blaming the victim - it's pointing out the facts of life to a whining bozo who thinks his position is the most important in the world. Guess what: the Admin Assistants think theirs is, the mailroom folks, the accountants and the marketing weasels, all theirs too, etc. You couldn't make schedules / get packages / have paychecks issued / get the darn product sold if it weren't for those folks, not would they have product without coders. It's notall about you.
Those phone calls and meetings and networking things are productive. No they're not writing lines of code but they keep the place running. Yeah - that 10 minute call may have done more for the company then your 8 hours of keyboarding. Those folks making the calls - their work and their skills may be more important and more irreplacable to the company then yours (oh yeah, apparently they were.)
As to other life decisions: yeah, folks who don't make 90k+ a year don't do any of them. Keep telling yourself that when you sit at home alone night after night. This would have nothing to do with your own qualities or lack thereof...
Get to a therapist and get to a career counselor. You need an attitude adjustment as well as a good dose of work-reality.
Hero worship & makeover
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I also heard Terri Gross interview Sylvia Nasar on Fresh Air yesterday and your quotes are about right.
However I felt Sylvia Nasar's defense of the film's intentional disregard of John Nash's sexual history to be disingenuous. Yes he may be bi or gay or straight or it may have been a mistake or experimentation or whatever but the arrest had a profound affect on his life, one certainly relevant to the film.
Frankly the author lost a great deal of creditability with me when she broke down in tears describing Nash's recent remarriage to his wife and kept babbling about how wonderful and beautiful a person he is. While biographers doubtless have opinions on their subjects I've never heard one get so maudlin or express such overt and unconditional adulation.
It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one. In the meantime both this book and the film appear deeply flawed by their attempts to present overly sympathetic views of their subject.
Lots of folks are posting "If you've nothing to hide then why destroy material?" (the implication being only criminals care about privacy, encryption, document trails, etc.).
Here's why:
It costs to maintain old material
Lawyers have learned to grab this stuff first off and supplying it costs a lot (not just for big cases, the ones that any business gets subjected to)
The less material you've got laying around the less you need to secure, the less chance of it getting pilfered
Finally there are required retention and documentation times for many industries as well as "best practices" by many professionial organizations and certifying bodies.
Don't ask here for information on those but rather your own corporate lawyers as well as run a memo through the various departments for their specific requirements.
The MIT Media Lab has apparently always aimed a little high--for example, the article states that their building was designed by I.M. Pei. The world's most famous architect? For a Media Lab?
Aim high and fly, aim low and crawl.
I.M. Pei is probably not the "world's most famous architect" - that would likely be Leonardo DaVinci. Even for current ones I expect Frank Gehry might more rightly hold that crown.
Yes, a quality building to emphasize the arrival of the new lab. On a campus with many mediocre buildings and a few great ones it was felt appropriate to include something more then average. That it was also dramatic & different met with the image Negroponte wants to project. Or should all buildings be cheap boxes from a catalog?
Nine comments posted and five are about the $8.75 and if it is hourly. If these same folks had read the article (which does explain this) instead of posting about their confusion we'd have all been spared their village idiocy.
Mod this however you want; I'm tired of the post-from-the-hip / can't-be-bothered-to-read-the-links / explain-to-me-the-nouns / can't-use-a-search-engine droolers.
First of all folks seem to think this would somehow be embedded in GPS - it wouldn't be. Nor would there necessarily be a canonical database of these, rather folks would likely subscribe or otherwise get access to many databases.
Your phone company might offer one as a premie for use with the phone. Of course it would likely have all of the restrictions that a phone company would impose (basically no content but for hotlinks to merchants and a few public services websites.)
Your local mainstream and alternative papers might offer their own with reviews and schedules and of course links. Stand in front of a bus stop and see its schedule, wander in front of a theater and see the show times and buy them with a click. Walk into a store and you can look up their advert or just get dumped to their website (or whoever paid for those coordinates on that database.)
Business and schools would use these to tag their own space. There'd likely be an IS database with notes on the hardware closet one is next to, directions for following a cable run through the building. University students would doubtless have their own databases with tips for which corners are good for sex and that the pizza in that cafe is rumored to have rat bits.
Credit cards would likely love these. Use Amex and you'd have access to the Amex database listing only merchants who take their cards and likely a copy of the Zagats guide or something.
Sure lots of graffiti could be a problem in some public databases, as with intrusive or inappropriate advertising. That's why I expect to see multiple databases with some sort of pruning or content enforcement mechanism (heck,/. moderation for tags.) The same as the web the useful ones would flourish, the others wither away, and need to find a funding source.
We've already seen something like this for the web. I've lost track of their names but a few years ago there was a spate of plugins that would allow folks to annotate webpages. If you had BrandA plugin when you went to a webpage with a note "attached" it could appear superimposed. They weren't actually on the webpage but served from the plugin's host database and left by other visitors. There was much outcry but what really killed the whole thing was the graffiti.
However I expect that there are ways around the graffiti problem (paying folks to keep the database clean or even moderation, and of course commercial ones) and we could see space tagging work be a breakthrough product for phones.
My own list of dream apps:
Restaurant reviews from the local papers
Traffic news relevant to my location
Public transit schedules from where I'm standing or the nearest station/stop with estimated times & delay notification
Find the nearest ATM on my network
Browse the website of the store I'm in and easily jump to their competition down the street's website
Advertise my need for a cab to my location and see who shows up first
Maintain a list of personal notes attached to places: Where we first kissed, the salesperson I liked here was "Sue" etc.
Share notes with my friends & family: The chocolate mousse in this place is gelatinous...
Stand outside a bar or sit on a train and look up if anyone I like has listed themselves as being nearby (by their choice on our circle-of-friends tagsite.)
Again, these wouldn't all be in big public databases but in a variety, some general public others subscription and some private.
Will we loose the current dial-up roaming service?
Will we loose the ability to use an email client while outside ATTBI?
Will we loose our "vanity" machine addresses (something.ne.mediaone.net)?
Will we loose simple connectivity and be required to use PPoE?
Will we loose home networks that have been ignored or tacitly
supported by M1/AT&T Broadband?
Will we loose Network servers that have been at-your-own-risk,
unsupported, and not to create excessive traffic, but *not* forbidden
for the former M1 folks?
Will we loose the ability to use Virtual Private Networking to/from
our homes (vital to many folks working from home)?
Will we loose the FrontPage Server Extensions that AT&T Broadband
advertises as being in their web package but work only erratically and
not at all for months on end (not my taste but some folks have wasted much time on these)?
Will we loose the top-notch fast-response world-class knowledgeable
and on-top-of-it-all current phone support folks (cycle your cable modem
and reboot your PC...)?
What about the discussions of Open Access and the ability to select
from a pool of ISPs?
Can we receive a guarantee of no more lost services and a stable
rate for an extended period of time after all of this?
So what are the benefits of XP in the corporate environment?
As noted the new interface may have some benefits but there's an associated learning curve (nothing matches the screenshots and yes that throws lots of folks.)
XP is 90-something percent backwards compatible but that few percent is where madness lies. Not all vendors certify or support their products on XP yet which leads into fingerpointing hell. For those that do it requires the latest version which means another rollout and likely more licensing costs (for something we may have had running fine, paid for and satified with under 2K.) Again, do the benefits outweigh the costs & risks?
XP undoubtably includes a newer driver set but its also not backwards compatible with all of the hardware currently running under 2K. Some percentage of cards / readers / scanners / printers / security devices / etc. won't work and will need to be identified and replaced.
There was a benefit going from DOS to Windows - it had a GUI and just as importantly unified printer and video drivers. Windows 95 offered many more services and greatly improved stability. Win98 et al was a less compelling upgrade but at least it meant yet more stability and new drivers. NT 3.51 was rocky but continued to improve, albeit with the Great Interface Shift. WinME went nowhere for most folks. Win2k does well enough though most places are still wrestling if/with ADS. XP - XP offers what? And is what it offers worth the costs?
Slashdot Mirror
Nice, but doesn't seem a make-it-or-break-it thang to me, how is it useful to you?
-- Michael
btw I expect (but don't know) that this could be done in MacOS X with it's Quartz layer; might be an interesting thing to look into if you're hurtin' for the feature.
Since then the industry has changed tremendously, we've been though how many generations of hardware, software, and even OSes. It's nice that an Amiga-legacy has come back but - to what?
Is there anything that Amiga now offers that Be didn't or MacOS X doesn't? Something that Wintel in it's messy but with 90% of the market way can't cough up some half-assed version of? The Linux/BSD/etc. can't reproduce?
Surely there aren't enough Amiga-fanatics out there to support a viable market for running old binaries? And all of those old kewl Amiga apps - they're old hat now - certianly there are better alternatives on other platforms by now aren't there?
What, exactly, does Amiga offer other then seeing an old friend again? I know nothing else is quite like it but after all these years is it really viable as an ongoing concern? Or is it like CP/M, just a joy to see it but of little real purpose other then the familiarity and the odd bit that can still be useful if only because nobody ever did it as well elsewhere?
Are you trying to prove the point that the vast majority on PC cases are just boxes tarted up?
I believe the question is why aren't there more creative designs, ones that involve more then sticking swoopy curved bezels in old iMac colors on the basic PC box? Heck, Apple built their PC chassis with handles on the corners and a fold-out door with the motherboard and other components conveniently on it, not awkwardly mounted inside the frame.
IBM had a clever desktop pod with CD ROMs in it, Intel has the ever-giddier future design collection, but aside from the spate of iMac-wannabe's the PC chassis selection seems to be pretty moribund, snap-on bezels aside.
Y'see, those are America's "Heros" - they're to be "better" then the rest of us. Sure they're no longer white guys with buzzcuts but those folks are still the roll-models and still in control of the process. Women are now welcomed, a few non-Christians, even visible minorities, but that's it.
Nobody with an expressed political opinion contrary to the prevailing one. Nobody who is not from a mainstream religion or safely disinterested. And particularly nobody who isn't heterosexual or presumptively so. Nope, can't let them folks into space, they're just not, well, trustworthy, could upset some bible-belt politician, set a bad example, look like we, well, *condoned* such things.
So yeah, lots of my friends lost their dreams. They've done other things - one designs upgrades to the main engines, another does relevant medical research on astronauts, others have designed payloads or taken various support positions. A couple have watched colleagues go up on missions and known why they weren't candidates, that they were "unacceptable" because of who they loved.
So now its official: There are guidelines that, without spelling it out, make it clear who is to be allowed to officially build the future. Our Hero's are to be safe, non-controversial straight folks; apparently that is to be the American Way. The future is here, only certain folks need apply.
Cringely reports the folks are about to set their design in silicon so we'll find out then but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. On the other hand the basic theory is pretty easy to test and apparently they've convinced more then a few folks who've apparently done their due diligence.
- If the signal propagates properly
- If it can be discerned from ambient noise and other channel's interference
- If the processing delay isn't too great
- If the chipset is cheap enough
- If the upstream folks roll it out
Etc.ps To every first year student - think carefully before pointing out why this won't work. I expect that better minds then yours have had a look already so check your numbers and facts before posting please.
802.11 - yeah everyone wants it. On the other hand it takes time and budgets and justifications and security reviews and site surveys such but it is rolling out.
These folks want to use the wireless in the airport public lounge or the ethernet jack in the SkyClub/RedTicket/GoldenKey lounge for premium travelers, as well as the port in their business class club floor hotel room and anywhere else they can get connected. These are the realities of business travel and are gonna happen; the trick is putting in policies and procedures and training so that they're not risks.
Riiiggghht - those ACT organs are gonna leap out of the dish and come for us, likely on a dark and stormy night.
Y'know, so much of the debate becomes like yours: Silly over-generalizing by folks who can't be bothered to tell one issue from the next. I'm not a rahrah person but is an honest, realistic discussion too much to ask for?
By the way - look out the window: That look like a "natural" environment to you? If you're in NA seem many Chestnet groves? How about tallgrass praries? Old growth trees? Thought not.
What didn't get noted is that one can go to the same demos running Wintel and IE and get a working plugin automagically installed. This isn't just Linux/Mozilla but reasonably cross-platform. Next gotta check with MacOS & MacOS X.
ACT is not the friendly non-profit down the street supported by charity and gov't grants and staffed with university-affiliated researchers. The charities don't have this money and the US gov't is trying to decide if it should tolerate or squash these folks and in the meantime is such a slow & conflicted funding mess they're not worth the bother. And academia - they've either lost many of their best and brightest to these shops or are desperately trying to form "partnerships" in order to keep in the loop and when it rains gravy to catch a few drops.*
Rather there's lots of hungry investors with deep pockets willing to invest and get these folks the best equipment and shield them from committees and reviews and university politics and such until they're ready to ship. All these folks have to do is get cracking and produce some encouraging results regularly which in ACTs case is what they are doing.
Were their previous results controversial? Yes - possibly overstated. Is this one - possibly again. They've grown *something*, possibly successfully, possibly not. Nobody knows exactly what yet but that's not ACTs point, theirs is that they've even gotten this far. When they find out if it works then they'll announce that too but they're just announcing all of their milestones as they go along.
So why are they doing this? PR. Not just the we-need-funds PR that so many folks are used to seeing (ACT seems fine that way) but also the Hey-the-21st-century-is-coming-at-you way so when ACT does have something to sell the market is ready to buy. Those nice comfortable theoretical debates are becoming much realer much faster then anyone imagined and it's in ACTs interest to have they and the market mature when a product is availiable.
Finally - why aren't the procedures and details being released? Because this is leading-edge privately funded research worth billions. If the public wants access to it then it can darn well pay for it. No money for uneasy biotech and too bizarre a regulatory climate and it'll happen anyway just without public participation and without sharing.
The Genie is out of the bottle kids. Either work with it to shape it to needs and values at its rate of growth or fail to keep up and lose all control.
-- Michael
* For the computer-centric folks this is the same as happened to CS departments in the 80's & 90's. All of the action moved out to industry along with the silly money. If you wanted in on the action you had to get off campus. Nobody has ethical concerns if Cisco announces a routing breakthrough unlike biotech announcing a grown organ but it's really the same business model applied to a different field.
Well, what about it? How different is wireless from an airport different from that shared ethernet in the airport hotel? Or having folks check in from those ubiquitious web terminals in airports that half of the time have cache's full of info?
Yes, it is possible that sitting there in the terminal your stream will get intercepted. So understand/teach others that these aren't secure, that pluggin in in *any* public pace isn't gonna be secure and certainly not at a client's office etc. Use a tunnel back to the home/corporate proxy server or don't go near any important content and *don't* use any passwords.
But don't go getting all upset of wireless and airports, it's not really different from all of the others.
Apparently you are. Also apparently the 4 folks who moderated my posting up.
As to the rest of it - how about reading the book, seeing the film and listening to the interview before making assertions? Without that you're just whistling out yer butt.
Yes, but you implied that the only way was spam or spamlike means - I'm pointing out that "Random meeting at the newsstand? Wrong number? Osmosis?" are not the only alternatives.
Stuffing my inbox or fax machine or yes my po box with material I've not solicited is spam. Commercials and billboards and print ads fine - but when I have to start actively avoiding these things, expending time and energy to dispose of them then it becomes an invasion.If a resume is sent to something other then hr@company.com or whatever the appropriate address is then it is spam. The only difference is that it is spam I can retaliate against and make sure the fucker never works in my town (something to consider.)
Surely your social circles aren't limited to folks in your same industry with a social horizon of one. Nor are you limited in other resources for changing careers - there are headhunters and consultants and employment ads and all sort of resources for any industry you care to name and none require blindly assaulting random & semi-random folks with resumes in the hope they'll provide a lead.
In fact I expect most folks are like me and not only will take what steps are convienent to assure you don't obtain a position and reinforce such antisocial behavior but will gladly hang you out to dry with you as their new favorite forged "from" address and name/address/phone number to supply to annoying websites and those impossible-to-get-off-of card decks and seminar/timeshare/meet-a-psychic invites.
The point is this was a biography and should be expected to reflect the views of the subject and those around him. It is not a psychiatry documentary nor should it be expected to present anything more then a realistic portrayal of the person's and events within it.
Or would you prefer every production that refers to a no-longer-held or controversial beliefs stop for an extended expository educating the audience on the "correct" facts of the situation with long disclaimer (as is found in pharmacological advertising)?
Actually I have encountered schizophrenia, several times, with varying degrees of involvment up to and including a family member.
Care to get off your high horse and stop acting out your own issues in public?
While it may have been a lovely inspirationial story the actual story isn't the rather uncomplicated disneyfied one in the film. Furthermore when I hear a biographer interviewed I'd prefer they show some insight into the subject of their efforts as well as maintain a bit of objectivity, neither of which were in evidence in the Fresh Air interview (I can only imagine the edited-out bits.)
I'm sorry, apparently your browser hiccuped and skipped the below sentence in my posting:
Does that clear things up a bit?
Well, you see most folks have a "social circle." It's that set of people they're on good terms with, keep in touch with, do favors for, spend time with. When one hears of one of these folks in need of assistance one pauses for a moment and thinks if there's anything they can do; in this case if they know of a position or a connection for this person. In return these folks do the same.
Another popular strategy is "work buddies." These are the folks who you shared jokes with while waiting for photocopies, sat in small windowless rooms fighting the good fight, who respected or appreciated you at a former job. If you haven't completely alienated everyone you've ever worked with you'll likely have a few names in the address book you can drop a line to, see if they have any leads. Of course they'll expect the same in return; today or someday.
Finally there's the traditionial technique of "working the room." There are any number of events in most places for folks who are looking for positions to get together and share information. There are also places where the fishing is good: Try finding a users group meeting for products and tools you're familiar with. make a favorable impression and see if there's anyone in need of your skills. Go to trade shows in areas relevant to your field, chat up others and hand out resumes. Get involved in online discussions and projects you can contribute value to, perhaps impress a potential employer or someone who can recommend you to a potential employer.
Sure none of these are alien concepts?
No, this isn't blaming the victim - it's pointing out the facts of life to a whining bozo who thinks his position is the most important in the world. Guess what: the Admin Assistants think theirs is, the mailroom folks, the accountants and the marketing weasels, all theirs too, etc. You couldn't make schedules / get packages / have paychecks issued / get the darn product sold if it weren't for those folks, not would they have product without coders. It's not all about you.
Those phone calls and meetings and networking things are productive. No they're not writing lines of code but they keep the place running. Yeah - that 10 minute call may have done more for the company then your 8 hours of keyboarding. Those folks making the calls - their work and their skills may be more important and more irreplacable to the company then yours (oh yeah, apparently they were.)
As to other life decisions: yeah, folks who don't make 90k+ a year don't do any of them. Keep telling yourself that when you sit at home alone night after night. This would have nothing to do with your own qualities or lack thereof...
Get to a therapist and get to a career counselor. You need an attitude adjustment as well as a good dose of work-reality.
However I felt Sylvia Nasar's defense of the film's intentional disregard of John Nash's sexual history to be disingenuous. Yes he may be bi or gay or straight or it may have been a mistake or experimentation or whatever but the arrest had a profound affect on his life, one certainly relevant to the film.
Frankly the author lost a great deal of creditability with me when she broke down in tears describing Nash's recent remarriage to his wife and kept babbling about how wonderful and beautiful a person he is. While biographers doubtless have opinions on their subjects I've never heard one get so maudlin or express such overt and unconditional adulation.
It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one. In the meantime both this book and the film appear deeply flawed by their attempts to present overly sympathetic views of their subject.
Here's why:
Finally there are required retention and documentation times for many industries as well as "best practices" by many professionial organizations and certifying bodies.
Don't ask here for information on those but rather your own corporate lawyers as well as run a memo through the various departments for their specific requirements.
Mod this however you want; I'm tired of the post-from-the-hip / can't-be-bothered-to-read-the-links / explain-to-me-the-nouns / can't-use-a-search-engine droolers.
Your phone company might offer one as a premie for use with the phone. Of course it would likely have all of the restrictions that a phone company would impose (basically no content but for hotlinks to merchants and a few public services websites.)
Your local mainstream and alternative papers might offer their own with reviews and schedules and of course links. Stand in front of a bus stop and see its schedule, wander in front of a theater and see the show times and buy them with a click. Walk into a store and you can look up their advert or just get dumped to their website (or whoever paid for those coordinates on that database.)
Business and schools would use these to tag their own space. There'd likely be an IS database with notes on the hardware closet one is next to, directions for following a cable run through the building. University students would doubtless have their own databases with tips for which corners are good for sex and that the pizza in that cafe is rumored to have rat bits.
Credit cards would likely love these. Use Amex and you'd have access to the Amex database listing only merchants who take their cards and likely a copy of the Zagats guide or something.
Sure lots of graffiti could be a problem in some public databases, as with intrusive or inappropriate advertising. That's why I expect to see multiple databases with some sort of pruning or content enforcement mechanism (heck, /. moderation for tags.) The same as the web the useful ones would flourish, the others wither away, and need to find a funding source.
We've already seen something like this for the web. I've lost track of their names but a few years ago there was a spate of plugins that would allow folks to annotate webpages. If you had BrandA plugin when you went to a webpage with a note "attached" it could appear superimposed. They weren't actually on the webpage but served from the plugin's host database and left by other visitors. There was much outcry but what really killed the whole thing was the graffiti.
However I expect that there are ways around the graffiti problem (paying folks to keep the database clean or even moderation, and of course commercial ones) and we could see space tagging work be a breakthrough product for phones.
My own list of dream apps:
- Restaurant reviews from the local papers
- Traffic news relevant to my location
- Public transit schedules from where I'm standing or the nearest station/stop with estimated times & delay notification
- Find the nearest ATM on my network
- Browse the website of the store I'm in and easily jump to their competition down the street's website
- Advertise my need for a cab to my location and see who shows up first
- Maintain a list of personal notes attached to places: Where we first kissed, the salesperson I liked here was "Sue" etc.
- Share notes with my friends & family: The chocolate mousse in this place is gelatinous...
- Stand outside a bar or sit on a train and look up if anyone I like has listed themselves as being nearby (by their choice on our circle-of-friends tagsite.)
Again, these wouldn't all be in big public databases but in a variety, some general public others subscription and some private.You must lead such a small bitter life.
I'm off to meet up with a half dozen friends and party some - won't miss you :) kiss kiss.
From my posting on attbroadband.ne.techtalk.general:
As noted the new interface may have some benefits but there's an associated learning curve (nothing matches the screenshots and yes that throws lots of folks.)
XP is 90-something percent backwards compatible but that few percent is where madness lies. Not all vendors certify or support their products on XP yet which leads into fingerpointing hell. For those that do it requires the latest version which means another rollout and likely more licensing costs (for something we may have had running fine, paid for and satified with under 2K.) Again, do the benefits outweigh the costs & risks?
XP undoubtably includes a newer driver set but its also not backwards compatible with all of the hardware currently running under 2K. Some percentage of cards / readers / scanners / printers / security devices / etc. won't work and will need to be identified and replaced.
There was a benefit going from DOS to Windows - it had a GUI and just as importantly unified printer and video drivers. Windows 95 offered many more services and greatly improved stability. Win98 et al was a less compelling upgrade but at least it meant yet more stability and new drivers. NT 3.51 was rocky but continued to improve, albeit with the Great Interface Shift. WinME went nowhere for most folks. Win2k does well enough though most places are still wrestling if/with ADS. XP - XP offers what? And is what it offers worth the costs?