Well, french fries aren't... ok never mind. (This could turn into a Hercule Poirot routine.)
I mean, isn't this the same France that decided that since the eye is most sensitive to the middle part of the visible spectrum, that all cars should have lenses over them only allowing that part of the spectrum, requiring French drivers to make their way by dim, mucus-colored light? [1] Point being, they already have a history of making sweeping, ill-advised decisions involving automobiles. I wonder if this one will be rescinded when all the ramifications come to light.
[1] I just looked it up, and it's called "Selective yellow" and was mandatory for all illumination in French vehicles until the 1990's.
Ignoring for the moment that there is probably not enough bio-diesel by several magnitudes to meet the need, I wonder if bio-diesel would also be phased out.
Maybe you just have small hands but I found Blackberry phones to be completely useless. I can't type or even dial a phone number on them without a serious case of fat finger syndrome. It takes forever for me to type out the simplest things on a blackberry.
You have to type with the tip of your thumb rather than the pad. It's not that hard.
> So, I'm thinking either face-recognition or retinal scans...
Waayyyy too complicated and expensive and Charlie's Angels-ish. If all you're trying to do is identify which user performed which step, RFID is your friend. Have an RFID sensor integrated into the workstation, and require the user to "sign" their work with their badge before they can commit.
Look at people going to work every day using RFID badges. If you want something faster than logging in with A/D credentials (which would have been my first suggestion), swiping a badge is pretty much as fast as you're going to find.
Now, if people using each other's credentials is a concern, or security in general, then you're looking at using A/D credentials plus a badge ("something you know, and something you have"). I personally wouldn't go with biometrics until they've gotten cheaper and more foolproof. Maybe never.
I agree with you in general, but feel obligated to point out, the difference (and it is a small one) is, Blackberry had at one time a superior product. Whereas, Microsoft never did.
> That's only because it had a better OS and software. It isn't actually better than the iphone.
Right.... because.... got it! Because it's not an iphone. There, I've run circles around you logically. Now it's time for the penguin on your iphone to explode.
Active Synch does fine for the things Active Sync does. I liked having transparent access to intranet shares, and that I could easily transition from any environment to any other -- in 2005 -- by rolling over the item and pressing the button. For instance, in a calendar alert, roll to the Organizer, press, send him an email saying I'll be a little late. Some of these features are now available on other platforms, but Blackberry was there first, and they still do it better.
I can't speak for your environment, but BES here was one (1) server for the entire company (approx 20K employees, admittedly not all with blackberrys). That doesn't sound particularly resource-hungry. As to the pain in the ass part, I haven't administrated BES so I can't say for certain, but before outsource we had two people doing it part time (each backing up the other) and it was rock solid. Now we have an entire silo who can't do anything that had not previously been written down as a step-by-step procedure. But that's not Blackberry's fault.
They couldn't pay me to use or carry that monstrosity. Makes you wonder just what were they thinking...
I'd have to reluctantly agree. It doesn't look ergonomic. It looks like an odd compromise between having a physical keyboard and having a smartphone-sized screen.
Please add, older Blackberrys had the best physical, tactile keyboard in the industry, before or since, and experienced users could very nearly touch-thumb-type on them.
I went from a Blackberry Tour to an Android phone years ago when IT was outsourced and we apparently lost the ability to keep BES alive. Several years later, I'm still not as fast on the Android virtual keyboard than I was on the old Blackberry. I really miss that keyboard.
I'd go back to a Blackberry in a second (provided it has a good physical keyboard) if our offshore admins could keep BES operational for more than 18 hours straight. The smaller screen and fewer apps were more than made up, in an Enterprise environment, by the high degree of integration with the company intranet. It was something you couldn't play on as much as other devices, but it was something you could work on.
Um, ok, I was thinking direction vector rather than Euclidean vector, but you're right, velocity has both magnitude and direction, so I was using the term incorrectly. But I couldn't bring myself to use "speed". There's probably a better way to word it. Same direction, the only difference being we'll arrive at a bad place in a different time frame.
Did you ever get the weird lumps in the milk, that was the last time I ate cafeteria food and always brought my lunch after that.
Only once, and never ordered the milk again. (Maybe they were trying to drive us to the corporate sponsor, Coca Cola?) The cafeteria was a huge multipurpose room, and kids would buy the milk cartons to use as "hand grenades", throwing them high in the air across the room and learning important lessons about splash damage.
Similarly, had the hamburger once, didn't do that ever again. The burrito was... ok. The pizza was ghastly. (How can you ruin pizza??) The hot dog... I don't want to talk about it.
There was a McDonald's a few blocks away (original design, with the building between two giant yellow arches) and kids (including me) would break the prohibition against going off-campus during school hours to have lunch there. Not only was the food quality better, the prices were also. A regular hamburger made fresh with onion pickle ketchup and mustard was (in 1973) 20 cents, and the bone meal filler hamburger made hours earlier on a bun with nothing else at school was 25 cents.
> I think that the problem stems from the fact that it's difficult to attract "good" candidates to run for office.
Yes, although the reasons might be complex (privacy is certainly a factor) the adage "anyone truly qualified for the job wouldn't want it" would seem to apply.
I'm sorry, they just don't have the broad expertise in mass food preparation. Sure, they can grow crops and tax stuff, but can they make billions upon billions of Happy Meals? I think not. We clearly need to outsource this to McDonalds and Coca-Cola.
When I went to high school, (mid-seventies) CocaCola already had the drinks contract, (probably why I can't stand the stuff today) and the food was worse than anything McD's had ever produced up to that time. Recognizable bone meal in the hamburger. Looking back, I realize now that the food would be considered bargain dog food today.
I know we've talked about it in Slashdot, in the context of more and more electronics taking responsibility for control of the car, mesh car networks, Windows controlling and potentially driving your car, but really -- hyperbole aside, is car hacking a real thing? And if so, is it really an effective tool for terrorists? (Or is that -- "terrorist" -- what we're calling experimenters and hackers these days?)
I mean, if someone is being proactive about what might be a terrorist vector, I guess that's ok, but there's a feeling in the back of my head that this might be a solution looking for a problem.
I dunno, personally I'm thinking of switching to Democrat and voting for Joe Biden in the primary. He'd make one hilarious president. Assuming we survive him, we could look back and say "wow, that was amazing". It'd give stand-ups and political cartoon artists material for several seasons. It'd be the most entertaining presidency since Bill Clinton's second term, albeit for different reasons.
Carly, on the other hand, would grimly and with focused intention engineer a spectacular failure while speaking pointy-haired gibberish to the press. This is not nearly as funny.
Agreed. Even the most optimistic call it "losing your soul".
But really, speaking as a libertarian-leaning voter who often votes Republican, (but will vote Democrat if I think the social issues of the day are more important) I have to say, this (the current 'Pub candidates) is an abysmal lineup. You'd think the 'Pubs would have learned from the drumming they got in the last two presidential elections. But no, it's still not about the message, it's about whether the candidate has a good profile and enough money to run.
And one of them might win.
And that would tend to solidify the belief that it's not about the message.
What is she going to do? Orchestrate a merger between US and Canada, then rebrand everything from the US as Canada, and everything from Canada as US? Then sell off Canada again when she finally realizes it is a disaster?
I'm thinking she would do a lot of energetic changes, the final result being that the US would be a much smaller country.
In analogy with the mathematical Baire category theorem which exhaustively classifies certain topological spaces, I state the Baire political category theorem:
There are exactly two types of political fools: 1) those who believe Obama was a wonder turn for the better 2) those who believe Obama was a terrible turn for the worse
The proof is left to the reader...
I think I understand. It's not a turn, it's continuing along the same vector at a different velocity.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, french fries aren't... ok never mind. (This could turn into a Hercule Poirot routine.)
I mean, isn't this the same France that decided that since the eye is most sensitive to the middle part of the visible spectrum, that all cars should have lenses over them only allowing that part of the spectrum, requiring French drivers to make their way by dim, mucus-colored light? [1] Point being, they already have a history of making sweeping, ill-advised decisions involving automobiles. I wonder if this one will be rescinded when all the ramifications come to light.
[1] I just looked it up, and it's called "Selective yellow" and was mandatory for all illumination in French vehicles until the 1990's.
Ignoring for the moment that there is probably not enough bio-diesel by several magnitudes to meet the need, I wonder if bio-diesel would also be phased out.
the alternative to asking the cute neighbor for permission to take pictures of her laying out in the sun.
He should try asking. She might say yes. Stranger things have happened.
Maybe you just have small hands but I found Blackberry phones to be completely useless. I can't type or even dial a phone number on them without a serious case of fat finger syndrome. It takes forever for me to type out the simplest things on a blackberry.
You have to type with the tip of your thumb rather than the pad. It's not that hard.
> So, I'm thinking either face-recognition or retinal scans...
Waayyyy too complicated and expensive and Charlie's Angels-ish. If all you're trying to do is identify which user performed which step, RFID is your friend. Have an RFID sensor integrated into the workstation, and require the user to "sign" their work with their badge before they can commit.
Look at people going to work every day using RFID badges. If you want something faster than logging in with A/D credentials (which would have been my first suggestion), swiping a badge is pretty much as fast as you're going to find.
Now, if people using each other's credentials is a concern, or security in general, then you're looking at using A/D credentials plus a badge ("something you know, and something you have"). I personally wouldn't go with biometrics until they've gotten cheaper and more foolproof. Maybe never.
I agree with you in general, but feel obligated to point out, the difference (and it is a small one) is, Blackberry had at one time a superior product. Whereas, Microsoft never did.
> That's only because it had a better OS and software. It isn't actually better than the iphone.
Right.... because.... got it! Because it's not an iphone. There, I've run circles around you logically. Now it's time for the penguin on your iphone to explode.
Active Synch does fine for the things Active Sync does. I liked having transparent access to intranet shares, and that I could easily transition from any environment to any other -- in 2005 -- by rolling over the item and pressing the button. For instance, in a calendar alert, roll to the Organizer, press, send him an email saying I'll be a little late. Some of these features are now available on other platforms, but Blackberry was there first, and they still do it better.
I can't speak for your environment, but BES here was one (1) server for the entire company (approx 20K employees, admittedly not all with blackberrys). That doesn't sound particularly resource-hungry. As to the pain in the ass part, I haven't administrated BES so I can't say for certain, but before outsource we had two people doing it part time (each backing up the other) and it was rock solid. Now we have an entire silo who can't do anything that had not previously been written down as a step-by-step procedure. But that's not Blackberry's fault.
They couldn't pay me to use or carry that monstrosity. Makes you wonder just what were they thinking...
I'd have to reluctantly agree. It doesn't look ergonomic. It looks like an odd compromise between having a physical keyboard and having a smartphone-sized screen.
I'd be more interested in a Classic.
Please add, older Blackberrys had the best physical, tactile keyboard in the industry, before or since, and experienced users could very nearly touch-thumb-type on them.
I went from a Blackberry Tour to an Android phone years ago when IT was outsourced and we apparently lost the ability to keep BES alive. Several years later, I'm still not as fast on the Android virtual keyboard than I was on the old Blackberry. I really miss that keyboard.
I'd go back to a Blackberry in a second (provided it has a good physical keyboard) if our offshore admins could keep BES operational for more than 18 hours straight. The smaller screen and fewer apps were more than made up, in an Enterprise environment, by the high degree of integration with the company intranet. It was something you couldn't play on as much as other devices, but it was something you could work on.
Velocity is a vector
Um, ok, I was thinking direction vector rather than Euclidean vector, but you're right, velocity has both magnitude and direction, so I was using the term incorrectly. But I couldn't bring myself to use "speed". There's probably a better way to word it. Same direction, the only difference being we'll arrive at a bad place in a different time frame.
Did you ever get the weird lumps in the milk, that was the last time I ate cafeteria food and always brought my lunch after that.
Only once, and never ordered the milk again. (Maybe they were trying to drive us to the corporate sponsor, Coca Cola?) The cafeteria was a huge multipurpose room, and kids would buy the milk cartons to use as "hand grenades", throwing them high in the air across the room and learning important lessons about splash damage.
Similarly, had the hamburger once, didn't do that ever again. The burrito was... ok. The pizza was ghastly. (How can you ruin pizza??) The hot dog... I don't want to talk about it.
There was a McDonald's a few blocks away (original design, with the building between two giant yellow arches) and kids (including me) would break the prohibition against going off-campus during school hours to have lunch there. Not only was the food quality better, the prices were also. A regular hamburger made fresh with onion pickle ketchup and mustard was (in 1973) 20 cents, and the bone meal filler hamburger made hours earlier on a bun with nothing else at school was 25 cents.
> I think that the problem stems from the fact that it's difficult to attract "good" candidates to run for office.
Yes, although the reasons might be complex (privacy is certainly a factor) the adage "anyone truly qualified for the job wouldn't want it" would seem to apply.
Ok. I think I'm going to hang onto my old truck, thanks.
I'm sorry, they just don't have the broad expertise in mass food preparation. Sure, they can grow crops and tax stuff, but can they make billions upon billions of Happy Meals? I think not. We clearly need to outsource this to McDonalds and Coca-Cola.
When I went to high school, (mid-seventies) CocaCola already had the drinks contract, (probably why I can't stand the stuff today) and the food was worse than anything McD's had ever produced up to that time. Recognizable bone meal in the hamburger. Looking back, I realize now that the food would be considered bargain dog food today.
> To answer your second question: Terrorists? WTF are you smoking?
Whatever I'm smoking, it doesn't appear to be working. I was referring to this line in the article:
> in response to a growing threat from criminals and terrorists
Criminals, that's a given. You had a great example. Terrorists? I'm having a hard time seeing the connection.
Auto Industry Teams Up With Military To Stop Car Hacking
Yeah only good things can come from this.
Yeah.... it'd be like Monsanto and the IRS teaming up to make children's lunches healthier.
I know we've talked about it in Slashdot, in the context of more and more electronics taking responsibility for control of the car, mesh car networks, Windows controlling and potentially driving your car, but really -- hyperbole aside, is car hacking a real thing? And if so, is it really an effective tool for terrorists? (Or is that -- "terrorist" -- what we're calling experimenters and hackers these days?)
I mean, if someone is being proactive about what might be a terrorist vector, I guess that's ok, but there's a feeling in the back of my head that this might be a solution looking for a problem.
Dunno, it's just bizarre enough to be true.
I dunno, personally I'm thinking of switching to Democrat and voting for Joe Biden in the primary. He'd make one hilarious president. Assuming we survive him, we could look back and say "wow, that was amazing". It'd give stand-ups and political cartoon artists material for several seasons. It'd be the most entertaining presidency since Bill Clinton's second term, albeit for different reasons.
Carly, on the other hand, would grimly and with focused intention engineer a spectacular failure while speaking pointy-haired gibberish to the press. This is not nearly as funny.
Agreed. Even the most optimistic call it "losing your soul".
But really, speaking as a libertarian-leaning voter who often votes Republican, (but will vote Democrat if I think the social issues of the day are more important) I have to say, this (the current 'Pub candidates) is an abysmal lineup. You'd think the 'Pubs would have learned from the drumming they got in the last two presidential elections. But no, it's still not about the message, it's about whether the candidate has a good profile and enough money to run.
And one of them might win.
And that would tend to solidify the belief that it's not about the message.
What is she going to do? Orchestrate a merger between US and Canada, then rebrand everything from the US as Canada, and everything from Canada as US? Then sell off Canada again when she finally realizes it is a disaster?
I'm thinking she would do a lot of energetic changes, the final result being that the US would be a much smaller country.
In analogy with the mathematical Baire category theorem which exhaustively classifies certain topological spaces, I state the Baire political category theorem:
There are exactly two types of political fools:
1) those who believe Obama was a wonder turn for the better
2) those who believe Obama was a terrible turn for the worse
The proof is left to the reader...
I think I understand. It's not a turn, it's continuing along the same vector at a different velocity.
Alternately, it might be a testimony to the old saying that anyone truly qualified for the job wouldn't want it.