1Password not only works on the Mac, but it also syncs fairly easy with the same named application on your iPhone. So you have all your passwords encrypted with you, all the time!
Whatever you do, document it well (on acid-free PAPER!), and Keep It Simple (Stupid).
If you document the way to extract pictures from a 1 pin serial port device, some clever programmer is able to write a program to extract the pictures. Don't use advanced compression, although I'm fairly sure JPEG will still be around, but simple byte-arranged (RGB-RGB) pixels can always be retrieved, if documented properly.
I think in that way someone should be able to retrieve pictures in a 100 years time.
On the other hand, PCs and Macs have been around for 25+ years, and some of their old filesystems are still supported. FAT16 *seems* to be a fairly open standard, even though it officially is not.
I ordered 'first-day' and received my OLPC laptop before christmas. I also received various 'welcome' and 'your xo laptop just shipped' messages. Maybe I was just lucky?
Surely you have the confirmation or CC/PayPal e-mail to convince them you paid?
I guess it must be my Leatherman. Bought in 1992, still in daily use today. Although, my digital multimeter is from 1981 and still going strong as well.
So, the give-one get-one program 'only' sold 45000 laptops so far... In the US of A. Whereas the 2nd laptop is meant to be given to the third world, the first laptop is only sold in a minority of the first world. When are companies, backed by the United Nations for crying out loud, learn that there are whole continents of potential customers, and that a FedEx to outside the US of A is just a credit card away?
I would think with a project that's 7 years in the making, that they settle on a stable technology in an early stage. Cell processors are nice, but were they available, oh let's say: last summer?
The early stages of the analysis are often in dedicated hardware, because general purpose processors are not fast enough. You need to connect those systems together as well. Then you need to debug these software beasts, since they need to make a good mathematical analysis 30 million times a second. And with 7000 people waiting for results, you don't want to be caught with a bug...
One more thing on processors:
There's always a better processor on the horizon. Wasn't it NASA that still uses 8086 processors in their Space Shuttle?
Two things:
it is NOT an LCD. That's the whole point. You just can't compare them. And, the ilaid is just 389 grams, compare that to your laptop. The display can stay on for days...theoretically, without consuming power. The software of the iliad is just not that good yet.
If you're happy sitting in the park, in the sunshine, with your laptop, reading a book on it, good for you. I must say I find holding the --bloody expensive, I agree on that-- iLiad while reading a book a lot more comfortable than holding my laptop.
I see there are no pictures on Flickr comparing a colour LCD with E-Ink. When the sun is shining over here I'll fix that.
The quality of these b&w displays is phenomenal. The difference with colour or b&w LCDs is striking, especially outside and in full sunlight.
One reason they're not so popular might be that E-Ink is prohibitely expensive; they have a monopoly on the digital ink liquid. Also a lot of people tend to think colour is very important, neglecting the fact that 99.9% of their book library is monochrome.
Every time I read a story like this, first in the US, now in the UK, I get the feeling the guy should have gotten a better lawyer. I know most judges are technically handicapped, so it's the case of the defense lawyer to explain the situation. IMHO it goes like this:
a) my laptop opens, opens its network 'eyes' and sees addresses. Compare this to a street you're driving through: you can see all the houses.
b) it sees the network 'linksys bladibla' and asks for permission to connect, this can be compared to knocking at someone's door.
c) the wireless router's dhcp server responds by giving me an ip number to use for the connection, including ways to connect to the outside world, dns servers and everything. This is like opening the door, saying hello, enter my house, there is the TV, make yourself at home, have a cookie.
Now, if any person in my house would commit a crime, break a glass, not flush the toilet or something, I would have the option of showing him out the door, calling the police etc. But the next time anyone knocks at the door, it's my responsibility to keep the door shut and not inviting him in.
Is there something seriously flawed in my comparison to DHCP and inviting someone in?
I know there are other brands, such as HP and Casio, but ignore these. These calculators are either crappy cheap ripoffs (Casio, even the color ones), or incredibly complicated unreliable overspeced computers (HP).
I still use my HP28s http://www.rskey.org/detail.asp?manufacturer=Hewle tt-Packard&model=HP-28S which I bought in university in, oh, 1989 I think. Very, very reliable calculator. And very easy to write programs for. The symbolic differentiation and numerical integration come in handy sometimes. The fact that it has two separate keyboards makes typing in formulas easy. And the clamshell prevents damage to the screen, so I can just throw it in my backpack. I don't think they make calculators as sturdy as these anymore...
Apparently, while I was typing my piece, aldheorte gave a pointer to http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/s yntax-across-languages/. That pretty much does what I want, but in a non-dynamic way.
And there are 'subtle' differences between procedural languages like C, and object-oriented languages like Smalltalk...
It's a nice idea, but I wonder if a wiki is the right way to go about it. I was toying with the ideas years ago, to have a table for many similar constructs in various procedural languages. e.g, how to do a print, while loop, for loop, if-then-else statement in various languages. With examples of their use.
Korn shell:
The for-loop in the shell iterates over lines in a list or file. It can be simulated using a while loop:
[var] = [startvalue]
while test [var] < [endvalue]
do
statements
[var]=`expr [var] + [incrementvalue]`
done
Since some languages have the same token for different tasks, you would need cross-references in various positions. E.g. in perl:
for (i=0 ; i<n ; i++) or
for $var (@array), this would translate to foreach in other languages
The way I picture it, is a mainmenu where you select the languages you want to compare. Then you get a list of the statements side by side. Or you can search for a particular token.
If you have a couple of hundred Macs to update, you not only have to worry about the OS, but also the applications. That's where the third-party file distribution application help you. There is the open source 'rsync' ofcourse, but that doesn't really help you with the packaging of say, the upgrade of Adobe Photoshop 7 to CS, nor the distribution of it. The program I'm most fond of is FileWave http://www.filewave.com/. With this you can distribute any software package, update, document to any number of Macs, with any different number of persons or workgroups. It's quite costly, but if the number of Macs exceeds the hundred and/or you have different, far stretched locations, it could save you a bundle. Once the package is distributed, also to any laptop users, you can set a time in the future to activate the new package, and optionally deactivate the old package. This way you can distribute the software in advance, handy on slow uplinks, but activate it all at the same time.
Collections of short stories, in which one is set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, marketed as a part of that series. If you're such a great author, your short stories won't need the prop. If you're not, don't bother writing them. Moron.
I take exception to this 'rule' with the Man-Kzin Wars by Larry Niven. The stories by Pournelle, Poul Anderson, and Dean Ing are often much better than those by Niven.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice and eloquent reply, thank you. I'll look at RoR again after messing about with Capistrano years ago.
1Password not only works on the Mac, but it also syncs fairly easy with the same named application on your iPhone. So you have all your passwords encrypted with you, all the time!
nice, thanks for re-sharing
One would think slashdot would prefer critical thinking over any particular value set, but oh well.
Wait, just how long have you been a /. reader? You just sounded like a newbee ;-)
So, has anyone ever seen Windows NT 1.0? or 2.0?
Microsoft had a big ad campaign last year celebrating their conquest and migration of the London stock exchange to Windoze from unix.
I hope that the linux based NYSE doesn't get this problem. Bad for publicity.
See also:
http://tipotheday.com/2008/09/08/microsofts-foot-in-mouth-london-stock-exchange/
Whatever you do, document it well (on acid-free PAPER!), and Keep It Simple (Stupid).
If you document the way to extract pictures from a 1 pin serial port device, some clever programmer is able to write a program to extract the pictures. Don't use advanced compression, although I'm fairly sure JPEG will still be around, but simple byte-arranged (RGB-RGB) pixels can always be retrieved, if documented properly.
I think in that way someone should be able to retrieve pictures in a 100 years time.
On the other hand, PCs and Macs have been around for 25+ years, and some of their old filesystems are still supported. FAT16 *seems* to be a fairly open standard, even though it officially is not.
just my 2 cents...
Wow, these are much better than the ones I took last year. Hee, first post?
Nice article. I think I make a signature out of one of your sentences:
"Refactoring is the OOP version of renumbering a BASIC program by hand."
I ordered 'first-day' and received my OLPC laptop before christmas. I also received various 'welcome' and 'your xo laptop just shipped' messages. Maybe I was just lucky? Surely you have the confirmation or CC/PayPal e-mail to convince them you paid?
I guess it must be my Leatherman. Bought in 1992, still in daily use today. Although, my digital multimeter is from 1981 and still going strong as well.
Unfortunately there's a saying:
"Every country gets the leader it deserves."
That holds true for Russia, as well as the US of A.
I for one hope the Russians, like the Italians, will get their act together and discard their despots.
So, the give-one get-one program 'only' sold 45000 laptops so far... In the US of A. Whereas the 2nd laptop is meant to be given to the third world, the first laptop is only sold in a minority of the first world. When are companies, backed by the United Nations for crying out loud, learn that there are whole continents of potential customers, and that a FedEx to outside the US of A is just a credit card away?
Why oh why is this offer 'only in America'???
Nicholas?
Most 'Pocket'books don't fit in my pockets either. So that means you simply never read plain-paper books?
I would think with a project that's 7 years in the making, that they settle on a stable technology in an early stage. Cell processors are nice, but were they available, oh let's say: last summer?
The early stages of the analysis are often in dedicated hardware, because general purpose processors are not fast enough. You need to connect those systems together as well. Then you need to debug these software beasts, since they need to make a good mathematical analysis 30 million times a second. And with 7000 people waiting for results, you don't want to be caught with a bug...
One more thing on processors:
There's always a better processor on the horizon. Wasn't it NASA that still uses 8086 processors in their Space Shuttle?
Two things: it is NOT an LCD. That's the whole point. You just can't compare them.
And, the ilaid is just 389 grams, compare that to your laptop. The display can stay on for days...theoretically, without consuming power. The software of the iliad is just not that good yet.
If you're happy sitting in the park, in the sunshine, with your laptop, reading a book on it, good for you. I must say I find holding the --bloody expensive, I agree on that-- iLiad while reading a book a lot more comfortable than holding my laptop.
I see there are no pictures on Flickr comparing a colour LCD with E-Ink. When the sun is shining over here I'll fix that.
There are two commercial black & white e-paper devices available to my knowledge. I happen to have one.d er/
The iRex iLiad http://www.irextechnologies.com/ is the one I have, but Sony also makes one http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/rea
The quality of these b&w displays is phenomenal. The difference with colour or b&w LCDs is striking, especially outside and in full sunlight.
One reason they're not so popular might be that E-Ink is prohibitely expensive; they have a monopoly on the digital ink liquid.
Also a lot of people tend to think colour is very important, neglecting the fact that 99.9% of their book library is monochrome.
Every time I read a story like this, first in the US, now in the UK, I get the feeling the guy should have gotten a better lawyer. I know most judges are technically handicapped, so it's the case of the defense lawyer to explain the situation. IMHO it goes like this:
a) my laptop opens, opens its network 'eyes' and sees addresses. Compare this to a street you're driving through: you can see all the houses.
b) it sees the network 'linksys bladibla' and asks for permission to connect, this can be compared to knocking at someone's door.
c) the wireless router's dhcp server responds by giving me an ip number to use for the connection, including ways to connect to the outside world, dns servers and everything. This is like opening the door, saying hello, enter my house, there is the TV, make yourself at home, have a cookie.
Now, if any person in my house would commit a crime, break a glass, not flush the toilet or something, I would have the option of showing him out the door, calling the police etc. But the next time anyone knocks at the door, it's my responsibility to keep the door shut and not inviting him in.
Is there something seriously flawed in my comparison to DHCP and inviting someone in?
I still use my HP28s http://www.rskey.org/detail.asp?manufacturer=Hewl
I don't think they make calculators as sturdy as these anymore...
That's a neat gesture. Thanks!
Apparently, while I was typing my piece, aldheorte gave a pointer to http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/s yntax-across-languages/.
That pretty much does what I want, but in a non-dynamic way.
And there are 'subtle' differences between procedural languages like C, and object-oriented languages like Smalltalk...
For example:
for loop
Since some languages have the same token for different tasks, you would need cross-references in various positions. E.g. in perl:
for (i=0 ; i<n ; i++) or
for $var (@array), this would translate to foreach in other languages
The way I picture it, is a mainmenu where you select the languages you want to compare. Then you get a list of the statements side by side. Or you can search for a particular token.
Does anyone know if such a site exists?
Actually, I think MS Word -the Windows version- resembled MacWrite more than it did WordPerfect.
If you have a couple of hundred Macs to update, you not only have to worry about the OS, but also the applications. That's where the third-party file distribution application help you. There is the open source 'rsync' ofcourse, but that doesn't really help you with the packaging of say, the upgrade of Adobe Photoshop 7 to CS, nor the distribution of it. The program I'm most fond of is FileWave http://www.filewave.com/. With this you can distribute any software package, update, document to any number of Macs, with any different number of persons or workgroups. It's quite costly, but if the number of Macs exceeds the hundred and/or you have different, far stretched locations, it could save you a bundle. Once the package is distributed, also to any laptop users, you can set a time in the future to activate the new package, and optionally deactivate the old package. This way you can distribute the software in advance, handy on slow uplinks, but activate it all at the same time.
u s/, but I have no experience with that.
There is also NetOctopus http://www.netopia.com/software/products/netoctop
Couple this with ARD for remote support.
Collections of short stories, in which one is set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, marketed as a part of that series. If you're such a great author, your short stories won't need the prop. If you're not, don't bother writing them. Moron. I take exception to this 'rule' with the Man-Kzin Wars by Larry Niven. The stories by Pournelle, Poul Anderson, and Dean Ing are often much better than those by Niven.