>complaint that some Kyocera phone features that come from its use of the Android operating system infringe Microsoft's patents.
Wouldn't that mean Microsoft should be going after Google, and not Kyocera? Google produces the software, after all.
Good point, but (given that IANAL) when you litigate issues like this, you don't go after the company with truckloads of cash that's highly motivated to fight it to the last breath in court. You pick a smaller target that's more likely to settle. Not only getting you the cash, but also establishing a precedent.
Well, the number is probably an estimate based on a sample and some assumptions. That's the way these kind of statistics are usually generated. Of course, the sample may not be representative, and the assumptions may be (almost certainly are) wildly optimistic.
I don't believe the number either, but in the name of intellectual honesty, I should mention that head hunters have said recently that in my area at least (pacific northwest) unemployment among IT professionals seeking work is down around 2%. There does seem to be (at least here) an uptick in IT positions. And believe me, nobody is more surprised than I.
So, you get a david cameron rubber mask and you buddy gets a genuine Prince of Wales rubber face thingy. Happy robbings on cctv.
Yyyyyyes, true, but in all fairness, going at least by the frequency of robbers caught in the US because their faces were captured on PC webcams, robbers tend to be idiots. At least, a significant number appear so.
I thought, the 545K number should be easy to substantiate, but googling doesn't find much. Except, an article saying that there are "as much as" 545,000 unfilled IT jobs... in the UK. Could Obama have been reading the wrong newspaper?
f) Done. Owner will pull clothes out of tub to wear as necessary.
Seems like you could do this with one of those Linux controller boards.
Seriously, could part of the issue be that they're trying to make the problem too hard? Most clothes are colorfast these days, so separating whites and colors is no longer necessary. You still need to wash certain items in cold water with special detergent, but if you can't tell via tactile sensation (this is soft and fluffy, wash separately) then as someone else suggested, a washable rfid should be enough to make that decision. Or, you could make the decision not to buy things like that. I have about three sweaters that need to be washed separately. I have one sweater that can be washed with jeans. I wear that one a lot.
So, for most of us, robots to do laundry would probably be a simple matter. We could afford them by getting jobs doing delicate laundry for rich people.
> Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Latitude, by a wide margin. As a built-in to Maps, Latitude was a very useful resource. When Google pulled it from Maps, where it arguably belonged, and hammered it into Google Plus to try to drive users there, I tried to continue using the feature, but all the fluff and baggage in G+ made it a terrible user experience. I switched to Waze, even though it's more clunky to use, but dropped that a couple years ago when Google bought them out. For now, I just do without the feature.
When daughter was in school I would use Latitude as added confirmation that she had gotten home safely. Now that she's an adult I arguably don't need it anymore, but I miss the security of knowing where she is.
Somewhat less important but still worth mentioning is Google Talk. My circle of friends were early adopters and have a long history with the tool. I still use whatever they call it now... Hangouts?...on the Android phone but still use Talk on the desktop because I really can't stand the Desktop version of Hangouts. Looks and useability have taken a big step backwards. I occasionally get email from Google "we notice you're still using Talk. Please switch to Hangouts". So far I've been able to ignore it.
Sometimes it seems like Google is their own worst enemy. They come out with well-written, useable apps that fill a real need, and then just when you develop a dependence, crap all over them. And so, for instance, instead of using the Latitude features of G+ to broadcast my location, I use Facebook's "check in" feature. It doesn't work as well, but I don't have any other reason to use G+ (only, like, three of my friends have accounts) and I'm already a Facebook user. I still use Google Maps occasionally, it's a good app. It'd be a better app if Latitude still worked.
Good for Heinlein and Pohl (Gateway-wasnt that going to be on TV?) and Andy Weir (The Martian). Too bad there is nothing on the radar for the more lengthy series like Ringworld or Asimov's Foundation.
...they have to say things like "Windows (whatever upcoming version) will be Microsoft's mobile breakthrough". They wouldn't be doing their job if they said "Yeah, we're releasing Windows 10 on phones and expect adoption to remain in the single digits. Developers shouldn't bother."...which will probably be closer to the truth.
Predestination was a "decent' attempt at "All you Zombies" and was very watchable.
All the other attempts kind of sucked out loud with a bamboo umbrella.
Pretty much. I really liked Predestination, loved that they kept the original time frame even though it led to some retro-futuristic anachronisms, and didn't begrudge them adding somewhat to the story. Did you notice that one of the characters was holding a copy of "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress"?
I hesitate to call *all* the others crap only because parts of "the puppet masters" were fairly close to the original material, if you see the story as occurring in the present day rather than near-future. What annoyed me most was that the brilliant solution in the book was watered down for "american audiences" who might not understand epidemiology. I really wish script writers would stop treating us like idiots.
As to other adaptions of his works, wasn't Space Cadet adapted into a TV series in the early days of television?
Good point about the home shopping network, but I guess my feeling is that it's the grandparents' money, they earned it, and if they want to blow it, that should be their decision.
True story. My grandfather confessed an idea of doing some traveling -- cross country road trip, international travel, cruises. I said, why don't you do that? He said, they're saving their money to pass along to their children (my mom and aunt).
You know what? Screw that. I lobbied hard for the grandparents to get out and do what they've always wanted to do, now that they're retired but still fairly mobile. To hell with inheritance. Their kids (who were adults in their forties at the time) could damn well learn to fend for their silly selves.
The grandparents did partially take my advice, and traveled some before illness took my grandfather. I'm glad they got to do at least some of the items on their bucket list. And I'm really ok with the fact that their daughters had less to fight over when they passed.
We only have one child. At a very early age, about the time she could memorize the home address and house phone number, we decided on a passphrase.
The phrase is fairly random, not anything that could be gleaned from facebook accounts or other personal records. It's multiple words, (like the XKCD "correct horse battery staple") so one of us could say part of the phrase and the other could say the other part, which authenticates both parties.
Once a month or so, when I picked her up from school or dropped her off from an event, or some other time when we were alone, I would say "what's the passphrase" and she'd repeat it to me. Now 17 years later, she still remembers the phrase, and only her, my wife and I know it.
We've never needed it.
But if I get a call from someone saying "daddy I need money right now or they're going to put me in prison" or some other permutation of the scam, I would ask "What do you need to say?" (The answer is not "please".)
This solution is really easy to implement and requires no technology. (Which is probably why it doesn't show up on Slashdot.)
Were I to do it over again, I'd have all of us memorize two passphrases, one that means "I am me and I am making this request" and "I am me but I am being coerced into making this request". I still might do that.
Hopefully, when my daughter has kids, she'll teach them a passphrase. (And share it with the grandparents.)
Where did I get this idea? I am a little embarrassed to say. It was from a Hardy Boys novel, circa early 1960's. The father, who is himself a detective, always puts a tiny mark under his signature. The signature authenticates him, and the mark means "I'm ok". If his signature does not contain the mark, it is either a forgery, or he's being coerced into signing.
I had to do this recently for a really old computer, and the easiest and fastest method was to buy an IDE to USB adapter, pull the drive, connect it to the adapter, plug the USB side into a modern machine, and copy the files over.
A family member had been putting every photo he or anyone else in his immediate family had ever taken, onto this really ancient computer that was old when he bought his first digital camera. Kids, grandkids, vacations, irreplaceable stuff. He brought the computer to me when it failed, asking if I could pull the photos. I thought his data was gone, but interestingly, in this case it wasn't the hard drive that had failed, but something else in the machine. (I didn't care what...) I pulled the drive, connected it to my machine, pulled the photos, burned them to several DVDs, marked the old drive with a sharpie, and put it on my backup shelf "just in case". Recycled the computer. About two hours work end to end, including trying to figure out how to remove the drive with no documentation for the machine.
So, I wouldn't even bother trying to figure out some kind of historic file transfer protocol or how to handle ancient removable media. Assuming the drive interface doesn't predate IDE (also known as ATA or PATA), reading it directly is the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
>complaint that some Kyocera phone features that come from its use of the Android operating system infringe Microsoft's patents.
Wouldn't that mean Microsoft should be going after Google, and not Kyocera? Google produces the software, after all.
Good point, but (given that IANAL) when you litigate issues like this, you don't go after the company with truckloads of cash that's highly motivated to fight it to the last breath in court. You pick a smaller target that's more likely to settle. Not only getting you the cash, but also establishing a precedent.
In other words, experienced IT professionals willing to accept post-dotcombust and post-H1B salaries.
Well, the number is probably an estimate based on a sample and some assumptions. That's the way these kind of statistics are usually generated. Of course, the sample may not be representative, and the assumptions may be (almost certainly are) wildly optimistic.
I don't believe the number either, but in the name of intellectual honesty, I should mention that head hunters have said recently that in my area at least (pacific northwest) unemployment among IT professionals seeking work is down around 2%. There does seem to be (at least here) an uptick in IT positions. And believe me, nobody is more surprised than I.
So, you get a david cameron rubber mask and you buddy gets a genuine Prince of Wales rubber face thingy.
Happy robbings on cctv.
Yyyyyyes, true, but in all fairness, going at least by the frequency of robbers caught in the US because their faces were captured on PC webcams, robbers tend to be idiots. At least, a significant number appear so.
That's just the Slashdot headline writer's imagination.
Wouldn't be the first time.
> So, put them in the corner in the bedroom
Because nothing deters criminals more than a naked, pale 57-year-old British guy.
With black socks and garters. Oh, man, now I'll never get that image out of my mind.
I thought, the 545K number should be easy to substantiate, but googling doesn't find much. Except, an article saying that there are "as much as" 545,000 unfilled IT jobs ... in the UK. Could Obama have been reading the wrong newspaper?
But they're so SHINY...
MSFT executives can't be made to understand why this might be a bad idea.
You first.
Thank god for illegal immigrants then.
What would society do without slave labor. We'd actually have to pay the going rate for the job, and who could afford that?
a) Dump everything in the wash
b) Wash on heavy load, warm
c) Put everything in the dryer
d) Dry on automatic
e) Put dry clothes in laundry tub
f) Done. Owner will pull clothes out of tub to wear as necessary.
Seems like you could do this with one of those Linux controller boards.
Seriously, could part of the issue be that they're trying to make the problem too hard? Most clothes are colorfast these days, so separating whites and colors is no longer necessary. You still need to wash certain items in cold water with special detergent, but if you can't tell via tactile sensation (this is soft and fluffy, wash separately) then as someone else suggested, a washable rfid should be enough to make that decision. Or, you could make the decision not to buy things like that. I have about three sweaters that need to be washed separately. I have one sweater that can be washed with jeans. I wear that one a lot.
So, for most of us, robots to do laundry would probably be a simple matter. We could afford them by getting jobs doing delicate laundry for rich people.
So what's the bittorrent name for the file? I've got to grab it just in case the Hindu fanatics win.
This is the internet. The fastest way to make anything ubiquitous that can be electronically transferred, is to attempt to ban it.
I would expect bittorrent links pretty much everywhere by right about.... now.
> Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Latitude, by a wide margin. As a built-in to Maps, Latitude was a very useful resource. When Google pulled it from Maps, where it arguably belonged, and hammered it into Google Plus to try to drive users there, I tried to continue using the feature, but all the fluff and baggage in G+ made it a terrible user experience. I switched to Waze, even though it's more clunky to use, but dropped that a couple years ago when Google bought them out. For now, I just do without the feature.
When daughter was in school I would use Latitude as added confirmation that she had gotten home safely. Now that she's an adult I arguably don't need it anymore, but I miss the security of knowing where she is.
Somewhat less important but still worth mentioning is Google Talk. My circle of friends were early adopters and have a long history with the tool. I still use whatever they call it now... Hangouts? ...on the Android phone but still use Talk on the desktop because I really can't stand the Desktop version of Hangouts. Looks and useability have taken a big step backwards. I occasionally get email from Google "we notice you're still using Talk. Please switch to Hangouts". So far I've been able to ignore it.
Sometimes it seems like Google is their own worst enemy. They come out with well-written, useable apps that fill a real need, and then just when you develop a dependence, crap all over them. And so, for instance, instead of using the Latitude features of G+ to broadcast my location, I use Facebook's "check in" feature. It doesn't work as well, but I don't have any other reason to use G+ (only, like, three of my friends have accounts) and I'm already a Facebook user. I still use Google Maps occasionally, it's a good app. It'd be a better app if Latitude still worked.
Good for Heinlein and Pohl (Gateway-wasnt that going to be on TV?) and Andy Weir (The Martian). Too bad there is nothing on the radar for the more lengthy series like Ringworld or Asimov's Foundation.
Be careful what you wish for.
This will also be the year I win the lottery!
Come on 123456!
It has to win eventually.
Predestination was a "decent' attempt at "All you Zombies" and was very watchable.
All the other attempts kind of sucked out loud with a bamboo umbrella.
Pretty much. I really liked Predestination, loved that they kept the original time frame even though it led to some retro-futuristic anachronisms, and didn't begrudge them adding somewhat to the story. Did you notice that one of the characters was holding a copy of "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress"?
I hesitate to call *all* the others crap only because parts of "the puppet masters" were fairly close to the original material, if you see the story as occurring in the present day rather than near-future. What annoyed me most was that the brilliant solution in the book was watered down for "american audiences" who might not understand epidemiology. I really wish script writers would stop treating us like idiots.
As to other adaptions of his works, wasn't Space Cadet adapted into a TV series in the early days of television?
No redundancies?
Redundancies cost money.
"just to cause damage."
Or perhaps, to see how much damage it would cause, and how long it would take for the city to recover.
Good point about the home shopping network, but I guess my feeling is that it's the grandparents' money, they earned it, and if they want to blow it, that should be their decision.
True story. My grandfather confessed an idea of doing some traveling -- cross country road trip, international travel, cruises. I said, why don't you do that? He said, they're saving their money to pass along to their children (my mom and aunt).
You know what? Screw that. I lobbied hard for the grandparents to get out and do what they've always wanted to do, now that they're retired but still fairly mobile. To hell with inheritance. Their kids (who were adults in their forties at the time) could damn well learn to fend for their silly selves.
The grandparents did partially take my advice, and traveled some before illness took my grandfather. I'm glad they got to do at least some of the items on their bucket list. And I'm really ok with the fact that their daughters had less to fight over when they passed.
We only have one child. At a very early age, about the time she could memorize the home address and house phone number, we decided on a passphrase.
The phrase is fairly random, not anything that could be gleaned from facebook accounts or other personal records. It's multiple words, (like the XKCD "correct horse battery staple") so one of us could say part of the phrase and the other could say the other part, which authenticates both parties.
Once a month or so, when I picked her up from school or dropped her off from an event, or some other time when we were alone, I would say "what's the passphrase" and she'd repeat it to me. Now 17 years later, she still remembers the phrase, and only her, my wife and I know it.
We've never needed it.
But if I get a call from someone saying "daddy I need money right now or they're going to put me in prison" or some other permutation of the scam, I would ask "What do you need to say?" (The answer is not "please".)
This solution is really easy to implement and requires no technology. (Which is probably why it doesn't show up on Slashdot.)
Were I to do it over again, I'd have all of us memorize two passphrases, one that means "I am me and I am making this request" and "I am me but I am being coerced into making this request". I still might do that.
Hopefully, when my daughter has kids, she'll teach them a passphrase. (And share it with the grandparents.)
Where did I get this idea? I am a little embarrassed to say. It was from a Hardy Boys novel, circa early 1960's. The father, who is himself a detective, always puts a tiny mark under his signature. The signature authenticates him, and the mark means "I'm ok". If his signature does not contain the mark, it is either a forgery, or he's being coerced into signing.
I had to do this recently for a really old computer, and the easiest and fastest method was to buy an IDE to USB adapter, pull the drive, connect it to the adapter, plug the USB side into a modern machine, and copy the files over.
A family member had been putting every photo he or anyone else in his immediate family had ever taken, onto this really ancient computer that was old when he bought his first digital camera. Kids, grandkids, vacations, irreplaceable stuff. He brought the computer to me when it failed, asking if I could pull the photos. I thought his data was gone, but interestingly, in this case it wasn't the hard drive that had failed, but something else in the machine. (I didn't care what...) I pulled the drive, connected it to my machine, pulled the photos, burned them to several DVDs, marked the old drive with a sharpie, and put it on my backup shelf "just in case". Recycled the computer. About two hours work end to end, including trying to figure out how to remove the drive with no documentation for the machine.
So, I wouldn't even bother trying to figure out some kind of historic file transfer protocol or how to handle ancient removable media. Assuming the drive interface doesn't predate IDE (also known as ATA or PATA), reading it directly is the way to go.