Re:Idiocy - bluetooth just taking off
on
Is Bluetooth Dead?
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· Score: 1
Bluetooth is failing in the States for the same reason it's taking off in Europe: cellphones. I'm in both places quite a bit and can speak from painful experience that our phones here are crippled Euro phones.
My Siemens S56 is an ATT/Cingular-spec crippled S55. Can't read the address book using Siemens own Data Suite via Bluetooth. Can't access the internet either. But this works with an S55 and with IrDA Nokias.
Beyond such simple things, the bandwidth of WiFi is a killer app compared to Bluetooth. Forget the cables; neither has cables. But my Sony UX50 palmtop synchronizes (loading large files) much faster with WiFi than with Bluetooth... so why use Bluetooth?
Maybe not the movies they're producing, nor the records produced by RIAA memebers, but between the MPAA and the RIAA we have some high satire worthy of Jonathan Swift. Valenti and RIAA President Cary Sherman will be remembered long after "House of the Dead" and Brittney Spears have been left in the dustbin of pop history. And isn't that what art's about?
I have a very difficult time understanding how VeriSign stays in business at all
Ya know, at the risk of needing asbestos undies, most of my domains are through Verisign for several reasons. First off, the bulk existed a long time ago and it's easiest to simply not move them. $35/year doesn't equate to enough time to be worth the effort. Second, although Verisign (Network Solutions) used to really really suck, their customer service and admin stuff have really improved to the point where I consider them among the best. And lastly, it makes it real easy to move between pre-existing accounts and people.
My most recent registrations were with GoDaddy, partly due to Verisign's surreal concept of community, and this latest action didn't help their cause, but just because they cost the most doesn't mean switching from them is necessarily the best business decision.
Why run Java on a coffeemaker?
on
Java vs .NET
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· Score: 1
Except that assembly and C++ are not binary compatible across multiple embedded devices.
You mention embedded devices and then mention cellphones, devices that now come with internet, games, email, etc. and are no longer embedded devices.
My real life does involve work with embedded devices. Java is too fat and too slow for them. We use assembly or C++ for them, comfortable that the same libraries we create will run on the vast majority of our devices... because chips are pretty standard.
For example, Atmel processors - there's a huge variety, good pricing, and other than having to configure the ports/pins, they all work pretty much the same. And there are several other vendors that provide language-compatible chips.
So building the embedded system, we're better off without Java because we have the flexibility we need at a hugely lower cost. As for third-party apps, our systems are, as you said, embedded. They're practically invisible. They don't support third-party apps.
Sony learned through failure. The Hand units came with keyboards, the Tungsten W/C have keyboards, and the Sony TG50 has a membrane-board as do the pivoting NX-series. The difference is that the previous Sony units had essentially unusable keyboards for most people.
RIM Blackberry, Hand units, the Palms, the HP 95/100/200LX series, IBM PC110... all had buttons you could feel and depress. The TG50 has lumps that give little tactile feedback as to location or depression, and is smaller. Looks like Sony finally got the clue.
Well, we have two ipaqs and two Palms. My daily driver is a Palm IIIc, a 20MHz 8MB 160x160 psuedo-antique, while the much newer, faster, hi-rez, 32MB iPaqs sit unused. (The wife has the Zire 71.)
The short answer is, I want what works best on the road for on-the-fly PDA functions. That's Palm. Not Linux, not WinCE, just Palm. And I say this as a developer for all three, whose current day-job is embedded Linux and who has done commercial WinCE work.
The same thing you like about Linux over Windows (excepting open-source, i.e. efficiency, lack of bloat), you dislike about Palm over Linux. It's a specialized system for a specialized purpose, and it works exceptionally well for that. One OS is not ideal for every platform and application!
If you're that lazy that it's cost effective to purchase such a remote, you really need to get outside. You can buy a pair of nice rollerbaldes or a small home gym for the price of that remote.
Actually I have a high-end remote with IR-RF-IR precisely so I can exercise... downstairs in my dedicated exercise room (weights, bowflex, Gold's gym setup, elliptical, exerbike, aero-stuff) while watching and controlling the AV system upstairs in the living room, all with a single remote.
If you don't need a decent remote, is it because you don't exercise enough? <grin>
His approach is to intentionally throttle down the connection to the incoming SMTP if it's SPAM. But most spam currently is sent from Windows or through open relays on Windows... which means they're running Windows.
Windows ain't quick. Is it possible to make it slower?
On the bright side, Corinna Beck is real. I telephoned the BSA 202-872-5500, waded through the directory (hit 3 and then type in "BECK", 2325, and asked her if she could clarify their policy on issuing warnings to web sites with the word "office" on them.
She put me on hold and didn't pick up again before I gave up, but at least she exists.
The big problem I have now, new in the last two months or so, is that many of the spams are now uuencoded text bodies... so the filters don't work on them. They are reconstituted by the client (Eudora in my case), after passing through the filters.
Unfortunately the filters (e.g. Spam Weasel, Eudora,etc.) don't have an "automatically reject if no text components" option.
Since I do use Opera as my primary browser, and have since it came out, I tried clicking on the MSN link to see what would happen. Nothing. Took me a bit to remember why.
I have well over 100 msn sites loopbacked in my hosts file (along with lots of advertising and pop up sites) on all computers, using Andrew Short's file as a starting point (http://remember.mine.nu). I can always try Mozilla if a site doesn't look right, but I'm not going to reboot for the rare useful content on MSN!
Maybe a year before Swing came out I wrote a UI in Java that demonstrated a critical problem with AWT - it was single-threaded but some control elements - different ones each time - would fail to display. Because I was with a very prestigous company, I was able to speak to a JavaSoft engineer... who said, "Yes that's a problem, and we have no schedule to fix it." But this hadn't been a lab experiment, so Java was out as a platform.
Last month I wrote a digital photo gallery creator (http://pictpage.sourceforge.net) in Java using Swing. Guess what... same type of problem, different area. Some JPEG operations sometimes fail... but retrying them repeatedly generally fixes it. Seriously. As long as you can determine that it -needs- retrying. Look for the method bufferedImageSanityCheck() in my source for how I did that.
So no, Java is not ready for Prime Time on the Client. As a long-time programmer, I blame myself before I blame the tools, but with Java that's no longer a safe assumption. Pity too because I really like the language - but I can't trust the implementation.
The gist of the article is that MP3 and other compressed sounds are missing data and that in turn could harm your hearingSimilarly, the article lacked evidence, facts and even decent hypothesis... it was so devoid of intellect that my brain has frozen up.
I'm not a Windows basher. I bash 'em all. Windows has issues, so does the Mac OS pre-X, and 10.0, 10.1, I'm not a fan of 10.2 either and Mac charged full price for the upgrade from 10.0. I like Linux in concept but got really annoyed by libc versioning issues and other annoyances that other OSes simply take care of. And while I'm a technologist and developer, I don't want to have to keep an encyclopedic knowledge of the low level bits of the OS just to configure a mail server, for example.
A lot of this is historical. I started with the Commodore PET, to the 64, CP/M, DOS, I made money programming for the HP 95/100/200LX, did "object-oriented assembly" for Geos, loved writing for OS/2, and play with a Palm these days. Every OS has issues. Which brings us back to the question... why do I primarily run Windows?
It's where the shallow learning curve to do "enough" is, where the rest of the family is, and where all the money is. I have to sell my work, prostitute myself for a dollar. There are a lot more opportunities to get that dollar on the Windows platform. Sure, Linux is the purer OS, the more reliable, but what I need is customers who will pay actual money... and they run Windows. So I do too.
Hey, I may be easy, but don't call me "cheap". Call me "economical".
It always amazes me how/. becomes a piranah feeding frenzy of myopic negativity so often. Yeah it's limited to Windows, Broadband, it's not free and open source, it's not theatre quality, etc. Great, lots of things it's not.
It doesn't have to be. Why not look at what it is?
It is convenient for people who have broadband and don't live near a video store. And it is a lot quicker than NetFlix, with no shipping issues.
Quality? It won't be replacing the DVD for family videos, but for a bored college student on a Sunday afternoon, or as a pacifier to keep the teenager engaged and quiet, it's probably sufficient.
Cost? Less than renting a DVD, at least at my local stores. And I save the time, gas, and parking costs.
It will never replace DVDs, but the beauty of economics is, it doesn't have to. It just has to make money, and with the limitations of store clerks, on-hand stock, multiple geographic franchise outlets, and wear-and-tear eliminated, that might not be a very high bar.
Any bets on how long before they have a porn division, going after the known market for low-quality high-cost shorts?
If I was actually in the US, I wouldn't be paying money for a piss-poor quality, streamed, first-run movie when I could see it in the theater with a giant screen and good sound for under $10.
Have you been to a U.S. theatre? They kinda suck. Real bad. Sticky, lots of noisey people, coughing, conversations, cell phones, crumpling loud wrappers... and it costs $10/person, plus parking, time spent in line, etc.
I don't go to theatres hardly ever. Twice in the last three years. I'd much rather watch 'em on my home theatre system.
As for quality, yeah, it's a bugaboo, but people still watch television rather than DVDs, they still rent VHS, listen to the radio rather than CDs, MP3 is popular... quality loses out to convenience much of the time. MovieLink doesn't have to replace rentals for everyone, just for enough to make a profit.
Yes the phone company charges to be unlisted... but they don't care what name IS listed. You can list a different name than/instead of your billing name for free. We do. And not listing your address is free also.
So my phone number is in the phone book, but nobody can find it.
Even being unlisted won't help against telemarketers though... their lists are completely different, organized by number and location rather than by name.
Anybody qualified enough to be commenting on SPAM should be aware that simply by opening the email you may have verified the address as valid (if it contains an external image).
Doesn't that cost you credibility since you believe that? My firewall is set up to deny external linkage (any non-mail ports) to my (non-Microsoft) email client. And my (non-Microsoft) email client is set to not use HTML linkages also.
He probably is set up to automatically execute HTML, and perhaps even JavaScript and to return reciepts... but you don't know that.
Your argument is flawed... just because I run a server and can block mail coming through it doesn't mean I wield power any more than my power to turn off my television does.
Use of the blackhole lists is voluntary. No ISP is being forced to use them. They make a business decision to do so because their customers appreciate reduced spam. So there is no real power, only consensual action.
If you don't bathe regularly and practice poor oral hygiene, you will find yourself ostracized by people who might otherwise be your friends, co-workers, mates, etc... even if you don't fully understand why you're being ostracized or how to use deoderant. If you don't eliminate open relays, you will be ostracized by people who otherwise might be glad to receive your messages... even if you don't understand why you're being ostracized or how to set up POP-authetication.
It's that simple. He doesn't have the power to force his connections upon me.
Even as we "speak", terrorists are signing up for MSCE courses. Be on guard!
Yeah, the more Microsoft-pushing consultants out there, the quicker our civilization will be brought to its knees! Forget DoS attacks - the terrorists are far more subtle than that. Through Windows they can impose a DoPP (denial of processing power) attack on nearly every computer in the land!
First, realize that we have malicious and creative hackers educated in the most creative society and the one with the longest P.C. history. Not the most wired anymore, but due to creativity and culture I'd expect our hackers are among the best. And if the Isreali, Korean, or Indian hackers are better, well, they too have been attacking our corporates, gov't, etc for years. Many teenagers are terrors, if not formally terrorists, for a few energetic years. Anything sensitive already has a LOT of firewalls, failsafes, and protections in place. So I disagree with the premise that there's all that much unprotected and tied-in-together, just waiting for a malicious attack.
Second, I disagree with the premise that these terrorists pose a reasonable threat in this arena. Their backgrounds tend towards zealotry (of a different sort than common here on/.) and probably wouldn't be compatible with the years of experimentation, playing, and studying needed to master systems hacking. I'm involved with computer security and I have a pilot's license; flying is much much simpler and easier. I also have a physics degree and can comfortably state that building nuclear bombs is, relative to successful system hacking on well-protected sites today, easy. (Realize that nuclear bombs have existed for more than fifty years!)
I disagree. Good C++ source is cross-platform and plenty fast once compiled. Most of the cross-platform bits that care about the platform resolve to rather quick API calls. There are two sources of slowness: the compiling and the binding.
The compile time problem could be fixed, but Java's problem, similar to Smalltalk's, is that the code can't -really- be compiled to the machine-code level that C++ can be due to the extremely late binding. As compiler technology has advanced, this has become a more solvable problem, but it's a big implementation project (read "expensive.") The real problem is lack of financial incentive for Sun to solve the problems.
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Bluetooth is failing in the States for the same reason it's taking off in Europe: cellphones. I'm in both places quite a bit and can speak from painful experience that our phones here are crippled Euro phones.
My Siemens S56 is an ATT/Cingular-spec crippled S55. Can't read the address book using Siemens own Data Suite via Bluetooth. Can't access the internet either. But this works with an S55 and with IrDA Nokias.
Beyond such simple things, the bandwidth of WiFi is a killer app compared to Bluetooth. Forget the cables; neither has cables. But my Sony UX50 palmtop synchronizes (loading large files) much faster with WiFi than with Bluetooth... so why use Bluetooth?
Maybe not the movies they're producing, nor the records produced by RIAA memebers, but between the MPAA and the RIAA we have some high satire worthy of Jonathan Swift. Valenti and RIAA President Cary Sherman will be remembered long after "House of the Dead" and Brittney Spears have been left in the dustbin of pop history. And isn't that what art's about?
Ya know, at the risk of needing asbestos undies, most of my domains are through Verisign for several reasons. First off, the bulk existed a long time ago and it's easiest to simply not move them. $35/year doesn't equate to enough time to be worth the effort. Second, although Verisign (Network Solutions) used to really really suck, their customer service and admin stuff have really improved to the point where I consider them among the best. And lastly, it makes it real easy to move between pre-existing accounts and people.
My most recent registrations were with GoDaddy, partly due to Verisign's surreal concept of community, and this latest action didn't help their cause, but just because they cost the most doesn't mean switching from them is necessarily the best business decision.
You mention embedded devices and then mention cellphones, devices that now come with internet, games, email, etc. and are no longer embedded devices.
My real life does involve work with embedded devices. Java is too fat and too slow for them. We use assembly or C++ for them, comfortable that the same libraries we create will run on the vast majority of our devices... because chips are pretty standard.
For example, Atmel processors - there's a huge variety, good pricing, and other than having to configure the ports/pins, they all work pretty much the same. And there are several other vendors that provide language-compatible chips.
So building the embedded system, we're better off without Java because we have the flexibility we need at a hugely lower cost. As for third-party apps, our systems are, as you said, embedded. They're practically invisible. They don't support third-party apps.
Sony learned through failure. The Hand units came with keyboards, the Tungsten W/C have keyboards, and the Sony TG50 has a membrane-board as do the pivoting NX-series. The difference is that the previous Sony units had essentially unusable keyboards for most people.
RIM Blackberry, Hand units, the Palms, the HP 95/100/200LX series, IBM PC110... all had buttons you could feel and depress. The TG50 has lumps that give little tactile feedback as to location or depression, and is smaller. Looks like Sony finally got the clue.
Well, we have two ipaqs and two Palms. My daily driver is a Palm IIIc, a 20MHz 8MB 160x160 psuedo-antique, while the much newer, faster, hi-rez, 32MB iPaqs sit unused. (The wife has the Zire 71.)
The short answer is, I want what works best on the road for on-the-fly PDA functions. That's Palm. Not Linux, not WinCE, just Palm. And I say this as a developer for all three, whose current day-job is embedded Linux and who has done commercial WinCE work.
The same thing you like about Linux over Windows (excepting open-source, i.e. efficiency, lack of bloat), you dislike about Palm over Linux. It's a specialized system for a specialized purpose, and it works exceptionally well for that. One OS is not ideal for every platform and application!
If you don't need a decent remote, is it because you don't exercise enough? <grin>
His approach is to intentionally throttle down the connection to the incoming SMTP if it's SPAM. But most spam currently is sent from Windows or through open relays on Windows... which means they're running Windows.
Windows ain't quick. Is it possible to make it slower?
On the bright side, Corinna Beck is real. I telephoned the BSA 202-872-5500, waded through the directory (hit 3 and then type in "BECK", 2325, and asked her if she could clarify their policy on issuing warnings to web sites with the word "office" on them.
She put me on hold and didn't pick up again before I gave up, but at least she exists.
His answers seemed frank and honest, a nice touch. Makes me wonder if he'll find himself out-of-work next week.
- The Blue Screen Of Death
- The 200-page EULA in a 5-line scroll-pane
- Solitaire as a Productivity Application
- FUD as a revenue-centre
Didn't they invent Al Gore also?The big problem I have now, new in the last two months or so, is that many of the spams are now uuencoded text bodies... so the filters don't work on them. They are reconstituted by the client (Eudora in my case), after passing through the filters.
Unfortunately the filters (e.g. Spam Weasel, Eudora,etc.) don't have an "automatically reject if no text components" option.
Since I do use Opera as my primary browser, and have since it came out, I tried clicking on the MSN link to see what would happen. Nothing. Took me a bit to remember why.
I have well over 100 msn sites loopbacked in my hosts file (along with lots of advertising and pop up sites) on all computers, using Andrew Short's file as a starting point (http://remember.mine.nu). I can always try Mozilla if a site doesn't look right, but I'm not going to reboot for the rare useful content on MSN!
Maybe a year before Swing came out I wrote a UI in Java that demonstrated a critical problem with AWT - it was single-threaded but some control elements - different ones each time - would fail to display. Because I was with a very prestigous company, I was able to speak to a JavaSoft engineer... who said, "Yes that's a problem, and we have no schedule to fix it." But this hadn't been a lab experiment, so Java was out as a platform.
Last month I wrote a digital photo gallery creator (http://pictpage.sourceforge.net) in Java using Swing. Guess what... same type of problem, different area. Some JPEG operations sometimes fail... but retrying them repeatedly generally fixes it. Seriously. As long as you can determine that it -needs- retrying. Look for the method bufferedImageSanityCheck() in my source for how I did that.
So no, Java is not ready for Prime Time on the Client. As a long-time programmer, I blame myself before I blame the tools, but with Java that's no longer a safe assumption. Pity too because I really like the language - but I can't trust the implementation.
The gist of the article is that MP3 and other compressed sounds are missing data and that in turn could harm your hearingSimilarly, the article lacked evidence, facts and even decent hypothesis... it was so devoid of intellect that my brain has frozen up.
Time for television.
I'm not a Windows basher. I bash 'em all. Windows has issues, so does the Mac OS pre-X, and 10.0, 10.1, I'm not a fan of 10.2 either and Mac charged full price for the upgrade from 10.0. I like Linux in concept but got really annoyed by libc versioning issues and other annoyances that other OSes simply take care of. And while I'm a technologist and developer, I don't want to have to keep an encyclopedic knowledge of the low level bits of the OS just to configure a mail server, for example.
A lot of this is historical. I started with the Commodore PET, to the 64, CP/M, DOS, I made money programming for the HP 95/100/200LX, did "object-oriented assembly" for Geos, loved writing for OS/2, and play with a Palm these days. Every OS has issues. Which brings us back to the question... why do I primarily run Windows?
It's where the shallow learning curve to do "enough" is, where the rest of the family is, and where all the money is. I have to sell my work, prostitute myself for a dollar. There are a lot more opportunities to get that dollar on the Windows platform. Sure, Linux is the purer OS, the more reliable, but what I need is customers who will pay actual money... and they run Windows. So I do too.
Hey, I may be easy, but don't call me "cheap". Call me "economical".
It always amazes me how /. becomes a piranah feeding frenzy of myopic negativity so often. Yeah it's limited to Windows, Broadband, it's not free and open source, it's not theatre quality, etc. Great, lots of things it's not.
It doesn't have to be. Why not look at what it is?
It is convenient for people who have broadband and don't live near a video store. And it is a lot quicker than NetFlix, with no shipping issues.
Quality? It won't be replacing the DVD for family videos, but for a bored college student on a Sunday afternoon, or as a pacifier to keep the teenager engaged and quiet, it's probably sufficient.
Cost? Less than renting a DVD, at least at my local stores. And I save the time, gas, and parking costs.
It will never replace DVDs, but the beauty of economics is, it doesn't have to. It just has to make money, and with the limitations of store clerks, on-hand stock, multiple geographic franchise outlets, and wear-and-tear eliminated, that might not be a very high bar.
Any bets on how long before they have a porn division, going after the known market for low-quality high-cost shorts?
Have you been to a U.S. theatre? They kinda suck. Real bad. Sticky, lots of noisey people, coughing, conversations, cell phones, crumpling loud wrappers... and it costs $10/person, plus parking, time spent in line, etc.
I don't go to theatres hardly ever. Twice in the last three years. I'd much rather watch 'em on my home theatre system.
As for quality, yeah, it's a bugaboo, but people still watch television rather than DVDs, they still rent VHS, listen to the radio rather than CDs, MP3 is popular... quality loses out to convenience much of the time. MovieLink doesn't have to replace rentals for everyone, just for enough to make a profit.
Yes the phone company charges to be unlisted... but they don't care what name IS listed. You can list a different name than/instead of your billing name for free. We do. And not listing your address is free also.
So my phone number is in the phone book, but nobody can find it.
Even being unlisted won't help against telemarketers though... their lists are completely different, organized by number and location rather than by name.
You use a client-side firewall like ZoneAlarm or Tiny.
You really shouldn't post on a technical board if you lack any technical knowledge.
Doesn't that cost you credibility since you believe that? My firewall is set up to deny external linkage (any non-mail ports) to my (non-Microsoft) email client. And my (non-Microsoft) email client is set to not use HTML linkages also.
He probably is set up to automatically execute HTML, and perhaps even JavaScript and to return reciepts... but you don't know that.
Your argument is flawed... just because I run a server and can block mail coming through it doesn't mean I wield power any more than my power to turn off my television does.
Use of the blackhole lists is voluntary. No ISP is being forced to use them. They make a business decision to do so because their customers appreciate reduced spam. So there is no real power, only consensual action.
If you don't bathe regularly and practice poor oral hygiene, you will find yourself ostracized by people who might otherwise be your friends, co-workers, mates, etc... even if you don't fully understand why you're being ostracized or how to use deoderant. If you don't eliminate open relays, you will be ostracized by people who otherwise might be glad to receive your messages... even if you don't understand why you're being ostracized or how to set up POP-authetication.
It's that simple. He doesn't have the power to force his connections upon me.
Yeah, the more Microsoft-pushing consultants out there, the quicker our civilization will be brought to its knees! Forget DoS attacks - the terrorists are far more subtle than that. Through Windows they can impose a DoPP (denial of processing power) attack on nearly every computer in the land!
I disagree with two of your premise...
/.) and probably wouldn't be compatible with the years of experimentation, playing, and studying needed to master systems hacking. I'm involved with computer security and I have a pilot's license; flying is much much simpler and easier. I also have a physics degree and can comfortably state that building nuclear bombs is, relative to successful system hacking on well-protected sites today, easy. (Realize that nuclear bombs have existed for more than fifty years!)
First, realize that we have malicious and creative hackers educated in the most creative society and the one with the longest P.C. history. Not the most wired anymore, but due to creativity and culture I'd expect our hackers are among the best. And if the Isreali, Korean, or Indian hackers are better, well, they too have been attacking our corporates, gov't, etc for years. Many teenagers are terrors, if not formally terrorists, for a few energetic years. Anything sensitive already has a LOT of firewalls, failsafes, and protections in place. So I disagree with the premise that there's all that much unprotected and tied-in-together, just waiting for a malicious attack.
Second, I disagree with the premise that these terrorists pose a reasonable threat in this arena. Their backgrounds tend towards zealotry (of a different sort than common here on
The compile time problem could be fixed, but Java's problem, similar to Smalltalk's, is that the code can't -really- be compiled to the machine-code level that C++ can be due to the extremely late binding. As compiler technology has advanced, this has become a more solvable problem, but it's a big implementation project (read "expensive.") The real problem is lack of financial incentive for Sun to solve the problems.