I've used Linksys WRT54GS models (now WRT54GL) reflashed with Sveasoft firmwares running PPTP between my home in Montreal & my home in Boston. They were stable for months on end, allowed me to see file shares, remotely control machines, indeed do everything as if it was a local network. Tech support to family members was trivial, the extra traffic overhead negligible, and using the traffic-shaping features I got better performance out of my broadband connections after installing the routers & adding the 24/7 VPN then I did before without the traffic-shaping. Indeed it made my Vonage service reliable even when I had huge packet-loss for a while (corroded cable connection on the outside of the Boston house.)
As soon as the next version of the Sveasoft firmware is stable I'll be joining into a larger VPN with a bunch of buddies sharing file space for common projects and reciprocal backups.
Oh, and in light of all of the Sveasoft-violates-GPL/I-hate-Sveasoft snarking I find it telling that the Free Software Foundation, holder of the GPL, gave Sveasoft a green light.
Last I looked MS's "XML" was full of big undocumented binary blobs it liberally shat, I mean salted, the file with. As MS's file formats are often pretty literal representations of their application's internal state it's likely doing a half-structured-XML/half-DOC-blob save is indeed faster then doing a full conversion to more interoperable XML.
Or mebbe they've cleaned up their XML so it's now the beatifully structured text marvel many expected when MS said they were using XML as a peer format in Office 2003.
Ever notice how people who want to buy a cellphone keep complaining that they can't just get a bloody phone? Lots of people don't want a digicam/game/text/browsing/fishing rod/floor wax device, they want an f'ing phone.
For the same reason that [insert disliked pop star here] does so well: It's what sells.
Not just the phones (the phones in the US are hugely subsidized to avoid sticker-shock); it's the add-on services that make the $$$. A simple cell plan makes diddly on return, but internet access, ringtones, games, text messages, online shopping, music downloads, tv show downloads, all of those are some serious PROFIT. So nobody gives a damn about the "I just want a phone" crowd, they have little influence because they have little economic clout with the cell companies. However the kids & gadget hounds paying top dollar for a digicam/game/text/browsing/fishing rod/floor wax device do.
BTW, I got myself a new phone this week, and there were several models of "just a phone" at the store. Indeed the one I chose is "just a phone" but for a camera (eh) & apparently a built-in radio, which requires the earpiece to use (whatever.) Those two extras are only on my phone because I insisted on a model with Bluetooth. But it seems pretty sane to use, folds up, fits in my pocket, and the price was right. The model down from it was sans camera, radio, and Bluetooth, not a floor waxer or dessert topper to be seen on it.
A foot pedal is excellent until you try and drag the whole kit to school. Then back home. Then back again. Then home. Repeat. Then an integrated hand crank becomes easier to handle (so to speak.) Also these things are expected to run a few HOURS on a good cranking, not "having to stop using the computer every few minutes to crank it back up." If these kids can walk to school they can crank for 10 or so minutes to get their laptop running before class, and the same at home when they're in for the night.
Regrding the electrical supply, I expect the problem isn't so much technical as regulatory. There are fairly specific rules, which are defacto laws, regarding where & what sort of power supplies can be integrated into consumer products. While these rules come from the 1st world nations (many countries just ditto US or EU or whomever for whole blocks of construction & product codes) they apply as well to 3rd world nations - it IS a global market, global standards, and everyone deserves safe products. So what sort of electrical supply is installed, and how it plugs in, isn't entirely up to designers.
On a tangent, there used to be a metal bar in second generation IBM PC's called the "Rube Goldberg connector". Underwriters Laboratories & such required that power-supplies be placed in the rear of PCs, so that was where the "Big Red Switch" was also located, as part of the power supply. However this was awkward to get at, so IBM innovated and put a button on front. They still used the equivalent of the "BRS" internally, all they did was run a small metal bar (wire coathanger gauge, but a bit stiffer) from the front power button across the inside of the PC to the power supply.
Lastly, it is interesting to note that there is only one existing glabal standard for power, adopted in every nation: Power Over Ethernet. Same plug, same supply, same logic, all over the planet, for the few folks that use it.
Frankly after the Vioxx debacle any science from Merck must be viewed with suspicion. The New England Journal of Medicine recently expressed, then re-expressed, well grounded serious concerns about ethics and veracity at Merck, concerns which continue to this day.
There are many fine folks working at Merck. Unfortunately it is also obvious there are persons and practices, in research and management, that have compromised both good science and public health.
Until there is a full accounting, and a house-cleaning, at Merck, I strongly urge everyone to regard statements from Merck with a greater degree of skepticism that they would regard other material from like businesses. Merck has an agenda, and that agenda has apparently not been one of honesty or integrity of late.
No, the point of the very complete book, which is the putative topic, is synchronization by NTP, which predates, and is entirely separate from, HTTP. I know I'm being pedantic but it irks me when folks, particularly technical persons who should know better, blithely refer to "the web" (perpetuating the miscomprehension of the online environment) and thus ignore/devalue the many non "web" parts of it.
What can you do? Tell folks they can either put the other clocks and clock-driven systems on some sort of regularly updated, highly accurate, time synchronization system or come to grips with the fact that the $20 clocks on the classroom walls aren't perfectly accurate. My suggestion is to hand them a catalog with some better clocks in it and ask what parts of their budgets / paychecks they'd be willing to contribute towards rectifying this obviously intolerable situation...
Backup? A 10 Million, er, I mean, BILLION, dollar company?
Yeah, thumb drives, there's an idea.
No, wait, gotta sex it up....
Thumb Drives with Biometrics!
Riiiggghhhttt......
Honey, yer wastin' yours & everyone ele's time with this DOA idea.
Encryption? At the source. Not some lame-ass "biometric" solution grafted onto a thumb drive, if some crazy Pacific Rim factory has pumped out such an inane idea yet . Then who gives a rats ass, your 1 GB, or 2 GB, or whatever, is properly encrypted. But if that's your local branch's disaster recovery strategy well, I'm scared.
For the sake of all of our investments please post your employer, so we can all move our funds to some other 10 billion dollar business that has legitmate disaster recovery strategies.
Hey Cliff, was there REALLY nothing better in the "Ask Slashdot" queue?!
The LAST thing I want to do on the subway is put on some overpriced eyewear and NOT see what my fellow passengers are doing!
Look, there are times & place video is appropriate & useful and times it is not. I'd love to be able to lean back in a comfortable seat and watch something, put my body in a position that is not looking-at-the-screen-on-the-wall/desk/stand. Heck give me a small wireless keyboard and I'll geek from the backyard hammock on a nice day. Airline seat? ANYTHING to avoid the salesdroid on one side, have-you-found-jaysus nutter on the other, and the screaming baby behind.
But on the subway? No. Driving? No. While 'speed walking' the neighborhood? No (my iPod-anesthetized neighbors blissfully unaware of the activity around them are already bad enough!)
Anyway, any bets how long 'till we hear the sounds of Battlestar Galactica from the adjoining stall as a co-worker takes a suspiciously long bathroom break?
.. you can mess with the color quality and resolution of an image to make it look like my family picture is really some image a green gelatinous blob that eats people.
Clearly you've never been part of a large family reunion...
A green gelatinous blob that eats people would be preferable to some of my more distant relatives. Indeed, I think we had one attend once, at least it didn't offer to show me it's new tatoo in a place I'd just as soon skip seeing on any relative!
Hmm, now I'm tempted to Photoshop some of the reunion group shots, see if I cut the resolution and color palette down I'll find anything I can sell to the tabloids. Blur large Aunt Marge in her "party dress & party teeth" and it'll rival Hollywood's best SFX!
Look up a coupla years old, poorly regarded, cosmological theory, and report it as big new news. Apply some kitchen math to the big numbers thrown around to get something authoritative sounding (986 billion sounds sooo much better then, say, a trillion.) Then solicit some quotes to sex the whole thing up, oh and completely get that wrong by placing Tufts University in Maryland instead of Massachusetts (James Randerson took some good notes there! Gotta hand it to those eagle-eyed Guardian fact-checkers!)
In short, an embarrassing load of shit that everyone involved in the publication of should be rightfully appalled by. Welcome to the high quality world of "science correspondent".
No, the non-profit agency is running Win98, and has in a melange of MS Word versions (they always have a final-format meeting where they fix the margins from each contributor to the grant application so they all match.) However exactly what version of MS Word this final version is created on varies depending on who does the cleanup.
I've no idea what the state is running, for OS or MS Word version. Their only requirement is that materials be in MS Word "DOC" format, no version or platform specified. I expect they're running, or at least has someone who is running, recent versions. Keep in mind that MS didn't change "DOC" file formats for their 2003 release.
Again however, contrary to some of the FUD, recent versions of MS Word are likely to be able to read the MS Word "DOC" files submitted to them regardless of source version or platform. These are fairly basic documents; typically without embedded material, stylesheets, etc. and so margin & minor layout issues aside they typically open "well enough".
... there are subtle incompatibilities between versions of MS Word...
MS Word can open MS Word.DOC files, backwards & cross-platform, albeit with some errors in some combinations of versions & platforms & features used. I made that clear. However some people prefer to overstate these incompatibilities and exaggerate them as "unable", when in fact it is almost always "imperfectly".
Third party tools, as you noted, are markedly less successful at reverse engineering these formats, to the degree that many simply can't usefully extract material.
There is a huge range of difference between saying MS Word can't at all, can't without some problems, and can't do so perfectly; and a 3rd party tool can't at all, can't without some problems, and can't do so perfectly. Apparently this complexity confuses you.
In the context I'm writing about the minor problems MS Word has opening previous & other-platform MS Word "doc" files isn't relevant. As you responded to my clarification it should have been obvious the files involved are only the most basic ones and the tool is MS Word, not 3rd party ones.
That 3rd party tools often choke on MS Word files is the point of these open formats, and an issue already blindingly obvious to everyone reading this thread. So thank you for restating the obvious and adding a lot of irrelevant trivia, now please try and contribute usefully in the future.
Oh, and to add to your History of MS Word, make you feel all warm & informed, the file format differences between older version of Word on the Mac & Word under Windows are primarily because of the differing text conventions between the two platforms. The pseudo-code used to generate MS Word was for many versions almost identical on both platforms. It was based on Apple's MacApp tool, which MS continued to develop in-house for many years after Apple dropped it, and upon which MS Word was based. It is only in recent versions of Word that they have evolved into separate code bases unique to each platform.
Yes the binary formats these old versions of Word emit are nearly impenetrable, but again the differences in these binary excretions are platform-relevant, not MS just mucking about. They could have indeed created a single 'standard' for the files but instead chose to have each flavor imported, a decision probably based on short-sightedness, expediency & (surprise!) lock-in.
My sweetheart works for a non-profit health agency; not the state DPH but as a vendor (and grant recipient) of the state. His agency is the one actually giving pelvic exams, basic health care, getting folks into shelters & detox programs, out on the street distributing bleach kits. They have had to invest in MS Word for all of the office staff so they can communicate with the state. They've no specific need for MS Word beyond incoming staff having some proficiency with it, rather they have to pay the "MS Tax" in order to do business with the state.
The requirement is MS Word "doc" format, not any specific version. While there are subtle incompatibilities between versions of MS Word they're often grossly overstated. These are about as vanilla documents as you can get with at most a few tables, no fancy embedding or formatting, any slightly-off margins aren't a concern. Having heard about some of the grants he has reviwed while on panels they're happy to see paragraphs, pages, and spellchecking.
MS Word isn't going away, at least, not any time soon.
My sweetheart works for a non-profit health agency in Massachusetts. Nearly all of his paperwork is in MS Word. Not that he has any particular feelings for or against MS Word, but because the Massachusetts Department of Public Health requires this.
Nearly every grant application, mandated report, etc. must be in MS Word "doc" format. Not plain text, not HTML, not SGML or XML or anything else, MS Word "doc" format. If it's not in MS Word "doc" format the state won't accept it and your grant application won't be received, your mandated reports not accepted, etc.
Sure other levels of state government are talking about adopting ODF, but that is just theory, until the state converts all of it's huge library of forms and applications, the paperwork that it all runs on, to something other then MS Word "doc", this is all theory. For that there will need to be a huge transition, and this sort of plugin is what can make it possible.
In the meantime all of the elaborate integration many of us take for granted, and that there are islands of in the state, and pockets of in state contractors, affiliated agencies, and the huge range of state-government dependent organizations, will be able to continue using MS Word in their established workflows.
Back to my sweetheart's agency, they do have a considerable investment in MS Word. Not just in licenses, they know MS Word. Their staff aren't computer geeks, indeed most of them only tolerate the crappy PCs they have now (running Windows 98) because they have to. But at least their fingers are trained to the keystrokes, they know the menu options, the more ambitious can even do a mail merge, lay out a flyer, etc.
Yes readers of/. think nothing of staring at an unfamiliar screen and working out how to do something with it; for a case manager trying to find a spot in a detox program for a 65 year old homeless woman who wants to get clean that is just not a hassle they want. Therefore anything that eases adopting open formats is a huge benefit, and critical to the process being painless and positive.
While many would like to hurt MS more of us really just want a level field and files that can be properly read a hundred years from now. Let applications and vendors come & go, lets at least have some durable file formats.
I remember when PointCast hit our network - every dingdong was running it to look 'kewl', instead it just sat there sucking up our (then) expensive bandwidth day & night.
Later on we became a "PointCast Partner" which never seemed to amount ot much.
What I want is a combination of news.google.com headlines & After Dark's Headlines module, just to keep me on my toes of real-news vs. fake-news (aside from Fox News)
It happened to her 10 years ago, in Toronto, at a PR firm. Her PC speakers were on the fritz for a few months, she asked a coworker to check her speaker cables for her as she was wearing a skirt that day. He found the speaker cables had indeed come unplugged, and there was a camera mounted below her desk staring directly up her skirt. The camera cable, along with a mass of others, snaked along the wall, with that particular one disappearing into a filing cabinet which was discovered to have a VCR in the bottom of it.
Much ruckus was made, everyone was appalled, and word quickly spread throughout the building. The police were called, they dusted for finger prints, and almost every man in the office volunteered theirs for comparison. The one who didn't, and everyone's immediate suspect, was creepy overly-friendly IT guy who no woman was comfortable with and was well known to be unhealthily interested in my relative, and he declined to offer his fingerprints. Everyone else was cleared, IT guy quit, she had her desk replaced with a table she could easily see under.
I only know the story as it came up over a Pad Thai dinner in Toronto's gay neighborhood, where she was asking my lover and I about friends of ours who are in the porn industry. Two had stopped by our table, and afterwards their professions had come up, and after that topic had run it's course she noted how she had once been covertly filmed and how the experience deeply disturbed her. There aren't a lot more details in respect of her privacy, and it was only a minute or two discussion anyway, we'd soon moved on to the topic of good dessert places nearby.
My point is that all of the "I'd use a camera to sneakily check out chicks" crap is skeevy. It's not just that they're puerile and juvenile, it's a pervasive attitude on many tech sites, and Slashdot in general, that those sorts of comments are acceptable. They're not; they're not funny, they're not even clever, they're only profoundly disturbing in how they view women, and yes, this sort of tacitly approved attitude does drive women away.
There are lots of healthy adult men who are on Slashdot. There is also a huge adolescent, either chronologically or emotionally, crowd, and they're modding up disturbing things as "funny". So spying on female "friends" and coworkers is entertaining, titillating, acceptable? Are these fellas so stunted that they have no real female "friends" and family that they would be outraged if this happened to, have they no empathy of what a traumatizing violation this would be?
"I'd buy him a beer", "what a boring single view", "its another way of showing affection" etc. - I just read those and wonder what sort of dysfunctional freaks these are. These aren't people I ever want to associate with; professionally, intellectually, absolutely not socially. They're contemptible, and apparently not even aware of that. And everyone who ignores, or even mods that sort of stuff up, is participating in the hostile atmosphere.
I worked for the Boston Museum of Science's Lyman Library when I was in high school. One afternoon someone came in and asked for "Chariots of the Gods". I'd not heard of it (I volunteeered in the Planetarium, and knew Erich von Daniken's premise, just didn't recognize the title right off) so I walked them over to the card catalog to look up where the book was shelved.
On the way I passed my boss, who had overheard the request. He gave me a nod, and directed me to Humor, where he'd shelved the von Daniken books. I do recall someone once complaining about the von Daniken's being in that section, Les's comment was we were a science library and they'd be shelved there or nowhere.
I really wish the Scifi Channel would stop with the psuedoscience-as-science bs, talking-from-the-dead scam, and big-bug-o-the-week movies, and get on with telling some really good SF: Strong stories with powerful ideas. Stargate et al is nice light comedy in the SF genre, but von Daniken presented as legitimate, well, give me a snarky G'aould any day.
ALL Apple cameras have a light, mod above down
on
Apple's All-Seeing Screen
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This practice continues to this day at Apple, putting in hardwired signal LEDs to indicate when a camera is active.
The green LED next to your built-in iSight camera will light, indicating that it's capturing video.
and
Turning off your built-in iSight camera
To turn off the built-in iSight camera, just close the active iChat window. The green LED next to the camera will go dark, indicating that the built-in iSight camera is off and no longer capturing video.
?
Just cause there's not a big LED sticking out from the bezel doesn't mean it's not there, and is glowing through when the camera is active. This is Apple after all, a manufacturer that makes sure all of their "throbbing" LEDs are synchronized on both Mac & monitor, and that their iMac's "sleeping" throbber is appropriately dimmed at night. They're not going to ruin their clean lines with an LED sticking out, they'll just make sure it shows up when needed.
Guess the joke is really on you, and whomever modded your misinformation as "informative".
Enough w/ the creepy stalker stuff, and "on" LEDs
on
Apple's All-Seeing Screen
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
First for all of those posting "Heeeey, way to spy on chicks!": You're why many women dislike/. You're not funny; you're sad, creepy, and need to get a life.
I'll also point out a relative of mine had this happen to her. She's a pretty, vivacious, young woman, married, was then working in a public relations firm. The IT fellow was always a little too attentive for her comfort, to the degree she actively avoided calling him for issues.
Eventually she needed her speakers for a project, but rather then call in creepy IT guy she asked office clever guy to take a look, it was probably just a loose wire or something. That was indeed the issue, however he also discovered an additional cable, running to a camera, mounted under her desk staring into her crotch, feeding into a nearby cabinet with a VCR.
Much hullaballoo ensued, everyone in the building heard of it within a few minutes, much to the ire of the police. There were fingerprints, and all of the fellas in the office but for creepy IT guy offered theirs for comparison. none of the supplied prints matched, IT guy quit, relative had her desk replaced with a table.
That's who you sound like when you post stuff like that.
The good news is Steve Jobs has been here before. I remember NeXT bringing around one of their boxes to demo at my local http://www.acm.org/">ACM chapter. It came with a nifty built-in microphone, to which someone immediately noted "great for spying!" The NeXT rep gave a smile and pointed to the red LED next to the microphone, hardwired to light up whenever the microphone was active.
This practice continues to this day at Apple, putting in hardwired signal LEDs to indicate when a camera is active. My expectation is that this will continue. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were to even include a camera-active screen mode to brighten it for a better picture when the camera is active, possibly swapping in a white background.
Contact whatever local government entity it is that might handle problems like this. You might be surprised to discover that sometimes even small towns have an ombudsman or such for this.
Contact your local Better Business Bureau. Verizon will notice when they show up in the Top-10-Complaints-For-Our-Area news stories on slow days.
Contact your State Public Utilities Commission (or equivalent). Verizon is a monopoly, enjoys all sorts of privileges, make them treat their customers with some respect.
Contact your State Department of Consumer Affairs (or equivalent). Verizon is selling you are service which they are no longer delivering, get some state employee with a direct number to Verizon's complaints office on the case.
Kick 'em to the curb. Who do you hate less? Your phone company, your cable company, or some other sort of ISP? Grit your teeth and see if the grass really is greener on the other side.
Get your own domain with your own mail servers and your own filters and not be dependent on any unresponsive monopoly. No more lock-in to them, no more stealth filtering, no inane challenge/response systems, unless you activate them.
And finally, start calling "real people" at Verizon. Put your detective skills to work and post the direct numbers for the these folks. Trust me, they'll toast the ass of whomever has made this mess when their collective secretaries start fielding calls about it!
Do you honestly think that pot you buy today is directly comparable to "Marijuana that people have used for thousands of years"?
No darling, it's an order of magnitude 'stronger' (higher THC) then a generation ago. That would be mid-1980s. That pot was itself an order of magnitude 'stronger' then a generation before.
With that in mind do you think comparing what is on the market today with that of 40 years ago is particularly accurate? Wouldn't you be just a bit concerned about any neuropharmacological agent that was delivered in a random dose, from implicitly suspect sources, that had been bred up so quickly with such little good research?
What you put into your body is your concern, but keep in mind what you're playing with is not your grandparent's, or even your parent's, pot.
Gawd I hate that trite, inane, argument: "Natural is better for us".
Why?
Do you think most plants want all of their bits eaten? No. They employ sophisticated biochemical warfare to prevent this, it's just we've bred that out of most of our food crops, or learned to break down the nasty stuff with heat, or in some cases developed tolerances.
Meats? Do you think we evolved to eat huge hunks of meat with the majority of our meals? No, we desire it but it isn't particularly healthy for most of us. Same for sweets, same for large quantities of simple carbs, etc.
Heck, lead & arsenic are as "natural" as you can get, I don't recommend going around snacking on their from-Mother-Earth-goodness!
Ask any food chemist they'll tell you they'll tell you they're more comfortable with the artificial ingredients then the 'natural' ones. Typically the artificial has had to have been tested in epidemiological studies, is of an assured quality, and typically consists of just the chemicals required. The natural ingredients are a cocktail of whatever random biological & chemical processes that begot it, is exempted from specific testing beyond obviously striking folks down, and varies by season, location, and whatever was fed into / sprayed on / absorbed into it.
You can go on eating your twigs & leaves for medicines (for all the good they do you, St. Johns Wort none at all, Echinacia none at all, etc.), I'll take the products of a sophisticated biotechnology. It's not perfect but it has done more to save lives & improve human health then all of the "it's natural!" fuzzythink ever has.
I'm sure you think your idea is novel, and to you it doubtless is. However it is not new to anyone interested in railroads (or subways), not by a century, and has a number of good reasons why it has not been adopted. If you're truly interested in following up I suggest you hit one of the many excellent railfan websites or newsgroups where folks more interested then I will be more then happy to go into the whole topic with you.
In the meantime I'll refrain to simply pointing out that the goal of this fuel-cell/electric train is to avoid the costs of full line electrification, be it catenary or 3rd rail. The lines this is designed for don't have the sort of traffic to justify such, and which is why this vehicle is such a promising get-the-clean-service/not-require-the-huge-capitol -investment experiment.
Slashdot Mirror
I've used Linksys WRT54GS models (now WRT54GL) reflashed with Sveasoft firmwares running PPTP between my home in Montreal & my home in Boston. They were stable for months on end, allowed me to see file shares, remotely control machines, indeed do everything as if it was a local network. Tech support to family members was trivial, the extra traffic overhead negligible, and using the traffic-shaping features I got better performance out of my broadband connections after installing the routers & adding the 24/7 VPN then I did before without the traffic-shaping. Indeed it made my Vonage service reliable even when I had huge packet-loss for a while (corroded cable connection on the outside of the Boston house.)
As soon as the next version of the Sveasoft firmware is stable I'll be joining into a larger VPN with a bunch of buddies sharing file space for common projects and reciprocal backups.
Oh, and in light of all of the Sveasoft-violates-GPL/I-hate-Sveasoft snarking I find it telling that the Free Software Foundation, holder of the GPL, gave Sveasoft a green light.
Last I looked MS's "XML" was full of big undocumented binary blobs it liberally shat, I mean salted, the file with. As MS's file formats are often pretty literal representations of their application's internal state it's likely doing a half-structured-XML/half-DOC-blob save is indeed faster then doing a full conversion to more interoperable XML.
Or mebbe they've cleaned up their XML so it's now the beatifully structured text marvel many expected when MS said they were using XML as a peer format in Office 2003.
Not just the phones (the phones in the US are hugely subsidized to avoid sticker-shock); it's the add-on services that make the $$$. A simple cell plan makes diddly on return, but internet access, ringtones, games, text messages, online shopping, music downloads, tv show downloads, all of those are some serious PROFIT. So nobody gives a damn about the "I just want a phone" crowd, they have little influence because they have little economic clout with the cell companies. However the kids & gadget hounds paying top dollar for a digicam/game/text/browsing/fishing rod/floor wax device do.
BTW, I got myself a new phone this week, and there were several models of "just a phone" at the store. Indeed the one I chose is "just a phone" but for a camera (eh) & apparently a built-in radio, which requires the earpiece to use (whatever.) Those two extras are only on my phone because I insisted on a model with Bluetooth. But it seems pretty sane to use, folds up, fits in my pocket, and the price was right. The model down from it was sans camera, radio, and Bluetooth, not a floor waxer or dessert topper to be seen on it.
Regrding the electrical supply, I expect the problem isn't so much technical as regulatory. There are fairly specific rules, which are defacto laws, regarding where & what sort of power supplies can be integrated into consumer products. While these rules come from the 1st world nations (many countries just ditto US or EU or whomever for whole blocks of construction & product codes) they apply as well to 3rd world nations - it IS a global market, global standards, and everyone deserves safe products. So what sort of electrical supply is installed, and how it plugs in, isn't entirely up to designers.
On a tangent, there used to be a metal bar in second generation IBM PC's called the "Rube Goldberg connector". Underwriters Laboratories & such required that power-supplies be placed in the rear of PCs, so that was where the "Big Red Switch" was also located, as part of the power supply. However this was awkward to get at, so IBM innovated and put a button on front. They still used the equivalent of the "BRS" internally, all they did was run a small metal bar (wire coathanger gauge, but a bit stiffer) from the front power button across the inside of the PC to the power supply.
Lastly, it is interesting to note that there is only one existing glabal standard for power, adopted in every nation: Power Over Ethernet. Same plug, same supply, same logic, all over the planet, for the few folks that use it.
There are many fine folks working at Merck. Unfortunately it is also obvious there are persons and practices, in research and management, that have compromised both good science and public health.
Until there is a full accounting, and a house-cleaning, at Merck, I strongly urge everyone to regard statements from Merck with a greater degree of skepticism that they would regard other material from like businesses. Merck has an agenda, and that agenda has apparently not been one of honesty or integrity of late.
What can you do? Tell folks they can either put the other clocks and clock-driven systems on some sort of regularly updated, highly accurate, time synchronization system or come to grips with the fact that the $20 clocks on the classroom walls aren't perfectly accurate. My suggestion is to hand them a catalog with some better clocks in it and ask what parts of their budgets / paychecks they'd be willing to contribute towards rectifying this obviously intolerable situation...
Yeah, thumb drives, there's an idea.
No, wait, gotta sex it up....
Thumb Drives with Biometrics!
Riiiggghhhttt......
Honey, yer wastin' yours & everyone ele's time with this DOA idea.
Encryption? At the source. Not some lame-ass "biometric" solution grafted onto a thumb drive, if some crazy Pacific Rim factory has pumped out such an inane idea yet . Then who gives a rats ass, your 1 GB, or 2 GB, or whatever, is properly encrypted. But if that's your local branch's disaster recovery strategy well, I'm scared.
For the sake of all of our investments please post your employer, so we can all move our funds to some other 10 billion dollar business that has legitmate disaster recovery strategies.
Hey Cliff, was there REALLY nothing better in the "Ask Slashdot" queue?!
Look, there are times & place video is appropriate & useful and times it is not. I'd love to be able to lean back in a comfortable seat and watch something, put my body in a position that is not looking-at-the-screen-on-the-wall/desk/stand. Heck give me a small wireless keyboard and I'll geek from the backyard hammock on a nice day. Airline seat? ANYTHING to avoid the salesdroid on one side, have-you-found-jaysus nutter on the other, and the screaming baby behind.
But on the subway? No. Driving? No. While 'speed walking' the neighborhood? No (my iPod-anesthetized neighbors blissfully unaware of the activity around them are already bad enough!)
Anyway, any bets how long 'till we hear the sounds of Battlestar Galactica from the adjoining stall as a co-worker takes a suspiciously long bathroom break?
A green gelatinous blob that eats people would be preferable to some of my more distant relatives. Indeed, I think we had one attend once, at least it didn't offer to show me it's new tatoo in a place I'd just as soon skip seeing on any relative!
Hmm, now I'm tempted to Photoshop some of the reunion group shots, see if I cut the resolution and color palette down I'll find anything I can sell to the tabloids. Blur large Aunt Marge in her "party dress & party teeth" and it'll rival Hollywood's best SFX!
In short, an embarrassing load of shit that everyone involved in the publication of should be rightfully appalled by. Welcome to the high quality world of "science correspondent".
I've no idea what the state is running, for OS or MS Word version. Their only requirement is that materials be in MS Word "DOC" format, no version or platform specified. I expect they're running, or at least has someone who is running, recent versions. Keep in mind that MS didn't change "DOC" file formats for their 2003 release.
Again however, contrary to some of the FUD, recent versions of MS Word are likely to be able to read the MS Word "DOC" files submitted to them regardless of source version or platform. These are fairly basic documents; typically without embedded material, stylesheets, etc. and so margin & minor layout issues aside they typically open "well enough".
Third party tools, as you noted, are markedly less successful at reverse engineering these formats, to the degree that many simply can't usefully extract material.
There is a huge range of difference between saying MS Word can't at all, can't without some problems, and can't do so perfectly; and a 3rd party tool can't at all, can't without some problems, and can't do so perfectly. Apparently this complexity confuses you.
In the context I'm writing about the minor problems MS Word has opening previous & other-platform MS Word "doc" files isn't relevant. As you responded to my clarification it should have been obvious the files involved are only the most basic ones and the tool is MS Word, not 3rd party ones.
That 3rd party tools often choke on MS Word files is the point of these open formats, and an issue already blindingly obvious to everyone reading this thread. So thank you for restating the obvious and adding a lot of irrelevant trivia, now please try and contribute usefully in the future.
Oh, and to add to your History of MS Word, make you feel all warm & informed, the file format differences between older version of Word on the Mac & Word under Windows are primarily because of the differing text conventions between the two platforms. The pseudo-code used to generate MS Word was for many versions almost identical on both platforms. It was based on Apple's MacApp tool, which MS continued to develop in-house for many years after Apple dropped it, and upon which MS Word was based. It is only in recent versions of Word that they have evolved into separate code bases unique to each platform.
Yes the binary formats these old versions of Word emit are nearly impenetrable, but again the differences in these binary excretions are platform-relevant, not MS just mucking about. They could have indeed created a single 'standard' for the files but instead chose to have each flavor imported, a decision probably based on short-sightedness, expediency & (surprise!) lock-in.
My sweetheart works for a non-profit health agency in Massachusetts. Nearly all of his paperwork is in MS Word. Not that he has any particular feelings for or against MS Word, but because the Massachusetts Department of Public Health requires this.
Nearly every grant application, mandated report, etc. must be in MS Word "doc" format. Not plain text, not HTML, not SGML or XML or anything else, MS Word "doc" format. If it's not in MS Word "doc" format the state won't accept it and your grant application won't be received, your mandated reports not accepted, etc.
Sure other levels of state government are talking about adopting ODF, but that is just theory, until the state converts all of it's huge library of forms and applications, the paperwork that it all runs on, to something other then MS Word "doc", this is all theory. For that there will need to be a huge transition, and this sort of plugin is what can make it possible.
In the meantime all of the elaborate integration many of us take for granted, and that there are islands of in the state, and pockets of in state contractors, affiliated agencies, and the huge range of state-government dependent organizations, will be able to continue using MS Word in their established workflows.
Back to my sweetheart's agency, they do have a considerable investment in MS Word. Not just in licenses, they know MS Word. Their staff aren't computer geeks, indeed most of them only tolerate the crappy PCs they have now (running Windows 98) because they have to. But at least their fingers are trained to the keystrokes, they know the menu options, the more ambitious can even do a mail merge, lay out a flyer, etc.
Yes readers of /. think nothing of staring at an unfamiliar screen and working out how to do something with it; for a case manager trying to find a spot in a detox program for a 65 year old homeless woman who wants to get clean that is just not a hassle they want. Therefore anything that eases adopting open formats is a huge benefit, and critical to the process being painless and positive.
While many would like to hurt MS more of us really just want a level field and files that can be properly read a hundred years from now. Let applications and vendors come & go, lets at least have some durable file formats.
I remember when PointCast hit our network - every dingdong was running it to look 'kewl', instead it just sat there sucking up our (then) expensive bandwidth day & night.
Later on we became a "PointCast Partner" which never seemed to amount ot much.
What I want is a combination of news.google.com headlines & After Dark's Headlines module, just to keep me on my toes of real-news vs. fake-news (aside from Fox News)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060427. html is the Public Broadcasting Service, a completely diferent organization then Infoworld or National Public Radio.
It happened to her 10 years ago, in Toronto, at a PR firm. Her PC speakers were on the fritz for a few months, she asked a coworker to check her speaker cables for her as she was wearing a skirt that day. He found the speaker cables had indeed come unplugged, and there was a camera mounted below her desk staring directly up her skirt. The camera cable, along with a mass of others, snaked along the wall, with that particular one disappearing into a filing cabinet which was discovered to have a VCR in the bottom of it.
Much ruckus was made, everyone was appalled, and word quickly spread throughout the building. The police were called, they dusted for finger prints, and almost every man in the office volunteered theirs for comparison. The one who didn't, and everyone's immediate suspect, was creepy overly-friendly IT guy who no woman was comfortable with and was well known to be unhealthily interested in my relative, and he declined to offer his fingerprints. Everyone else was cleared, IT guy quit, she had her desk replaced with a table she could easily see under.
I only know the story as it came up over a Pad Thai dinner in Toronto's gay neighborhood, where she was asking my lover and I about friends of ours who are in the porn industry. Two had stopped by our table, and afterwards their professions had come up, and after that topic had run it's course she noted how she had once been covertly filmed and how the experience deeply disturbed her. There aren't a lot more details in respect of her privacy, and it was only a minute or two discussion anyway, we'd soon moved on to the topic of good dessert places nearby.
My point is that all of the "I'd use a camera to sneakily check out chicks" crap is skeevy. It's not just that they're puerile and juvenile, it's a pervasive attitude on many tech sites, and Slashdot in general, that those sorts of comments are acceptable. They're not; they're not funny, they're not even clever, they're only profoundly disturbing in how they view women, and yes, this sort of tacitly approved attitude does drive women away.
There are lots of healthy adult men who are on Slashdot. There is also a huge adolescent, either chronologically or emotionally, crowd, and they're modding up disturbing things as "funny". So spying on female "friends" and coworkers is entertaining, titillating, acceptable? Are these fellas so stunted that they have no real female "friends" and family that they would be outraged if this happened to, have they no empathy of what a traumatizing violation this would be?
"I'd buy him a beer", "what a boring single view", "its another way of showing affection" etc. - I just read those and wonder what sort of dysfunctional freaks these are. These aren't people I ever want to associate with; professionally, intellectually, absolutely not socially. They're contemptible, and apparently not even aware of that. And everyone who ignores, or even mods that sort of stuff up, is participating in the hostile atmosphere.
On the way I passed my boss, who had overheard the request. He gave me a nod, and directed me to Humor, where he'd shelved the von Daniken books. I do recall someone once complaining about the von Daniken's being in that section, Les's comment was we were a science library and they'd be shelved there or nowhere.
I really wish the Scifi Channel would stop with the psuedoscience-as-science bs, talking-from-the-dead scam, and big-bug-o-the-week movies, and get on with telling some really good SF: Strong stories with powerful ideas. Stargate et al is nice light comedy in the SF genre, but von Daniken presented as legitimate, well, give me a snarky G'aould any day.
See the lines:
and ?Just cause there's not a big LED sticking out from the bezel doesn't mean it's not there, and is glowing through when the camera is active. This is Apple after all, a manufacturer that makes sure all of their "throbbing" LEDs are synchronized on both Mac & monitor, and that their iMac's "sleeping" throbber is appropriately dimmed at night. They're not going to ruin their clean lines with an LED sticking out, they'll just make sure it shows up when needed.
Guess the joke is really on you, and whomever modded your misinformation as "informative".
I'll also point out a relative of mine had this happen to her. She's a pretty, vivacious, young woman, married, was then working in a public relations firm. The IT fellow was always a little too attentive for her comfort, to the degree she actively avoided calling him for issues.
Eventually she needed her speakers for a project, but rather then call in creepy IT guy she asked office clever guy to take a look, it was probably just a loose wire or something. That was indeed the issue, however he also discovered an additional cable, running to a camera, mounted under her desk staring into her crotch, feeding into a nearby cabinet with a VCR.
Much hullaballoo ensued, everyone in the building heard of it within a few minutes, much to the ire of the police. There were fingerprints, and all of the fellas in the office but for creepy IT guy offered theirs for comparison. none of the supplied prints matched, IT guy quit, relative had her desk replaced with a table.
That's who you sound like when you post stuff like that.
The good news is Steve Jobs has been here before. I remember NeXT bringing around one of their boxes to demo at my local http://www.acm.org/">ACM chapter. It came with a nifty built-in microphone, to which someone immediately noted "great for spying!" The NeXT rep gave a smile and pointed to the red LED next to the microphone, hardwired to light up whenever the microphone was active.
This practice continues to this day at Apple, putting in hardwired signal LEDs to indicate when a camera is active. My expectation is that this will continue. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were to even include a camera-active screen mode to brighten it for a better picture when the camera is active, possibly swapping in a white background.
No darling, it's an order of magnitude 'stronger' (higher THC) then a generation ago. That would be mid-1980s. That pot was itself an order of magnitude 'stronger' then a generation before.
With that in mind do you think comparing what is on the market today with that of 40 years ago is particularly accurate? Wouldn't you be just a bit concerned about any neuropharmacological agent that was delivered in a random dose, from implicitly suspect sources, that had been bred up so quickly with such little good research?
What you put into your body is your concern, but keep in mind what you're playing with is not your grandparent's, or even your parent's, pot.
Why?
Do you think most plants want all of their bits eaten? No. They employ sophisticated biochemical warfare to prevent this, it's just we've bred that out of most of our food crops, or learned to break down the nasty stuff with heat, or in some cases developed tolerances.
Meats? Do you think we evolved to eat huge hunks of meat with the majority of our meals? No, we desire it but it isn't particularly healthy for most of us. Same for sweets, same for large quantities of simple carbs, etc.
Heck, lead & arsenic are as "natural" as you can get, I don't recommend going around snacking on their from-Mother-Earth-goodness!
Ask any food chemist they'll tell you they'll tell you they're more comfortable with the artificial ingredients then the 'natural' ones. Typically the artificial has had to have been tested in epidemiological studies, is of an assured quality, and typically consists of just the chemicals required. The natural ingredients are a cocktail of whatever random biological & chemical processes that begot it, is exempted from specific testing beyond obviously striking folks down, and varies by season, location, and whatever was fed into / sprayed on / absorbed into it.
You can go on eating your twigs & leaves for medicines (for all the good they do you, St. Johns Wort none at all, Echinacia none at all, etc.), I'll take the products of a sophisticated biotechnology. It's not perfect but it has done more to save lives & improve human health then all of the "it's natural!" fuzzythink ever has.
In the meantime I'll refrain to simply pointing out that the goal of this fuel-cell/electric train is to avoid the costs of full line electrification, be it catenary or 3rd rail. The lines this is designed for don't have the sort of traffic to justify such, and which is why this vehicle is such a promising get-the-clean-service/not-require-the-huge-capitol -investment experiment.