Where I work, we are strongly discouraged from loading any non-business-approved applications on our BlackBerry phones. As a consequence, I have never bothered visiting the Blackberry app store. If I had a business-approved iPhone I imagine it'd be the same way, but since BlackBerry's entire focus is on business I'd imagine these sorts of restrictions are hurting their app sales more so than for comparable devices.
I store my bookmarks in a PHP/MySQL application separate from my PC. When company comes over I switch the app from private to public view and clear my browser history. That's enough to keep out the casual "what's he been up to" jokers while allowing guests to check their web mail and/or E-bay. _Nobody_ uses my PC unsupervised though.
The nice part of being a PC parts packrat is that when company is coming over for an extended visit I can set them up a spare box with a bare-bones OS and a web browser, and just wipe it when they leave. Knoppix works great for that, also.
SOLE MATES. At MIT's Media Lab, where corporate sponsors fund prototypes of new digital technologies, computers are appearing in wildly unlikely places. As part of a project called Things That Think, researchers have embedded a computer in a Nike Inc. sneaker. Using a piezoelectric polymer to generate power from foot movement, a computer in the heel might act as a sort of personal secretary. When two people shake hands, for instance, the skin-to-skin contact would be detected by sensors in each person's shoe. That would trigger an exchange of information--the computers could perhaps swap electronic business cards and check calendars for a future meeting date. Modified eyeglasses and wristwatches might display the data.
Can't speak for the capacities of the Xbox, but Linux PS2 hackers have been able to write files to memory cards for a while. So there's some basis in fact for taking the controllers.
It's worth noting that IBM specifically named OpenServer and UnixWare for the patent infringement item, both proprietary apps never released under the GPL.
In any case, IBM releasing GPL'd code that uses its patents doesn't give away its patent rights. But if you're using the code yourself you're fine; the use you describe is GPL-compliant.
Absolutely. We have a new invisible enemy, and we're making the same insane self-defeating "prove we're doing something," "prove you're patriotic" mistakes we did back in the McCarthy era.
It's a shame this comparison isn't being made more often in the media.
One area where open-source is doing great is in monitoring projects, such as Big Brother, NetSaint , Nagios, and others. I'm curious as to why you went with a commercial product instead of a free (as in beer and speech) one.
It'll be interesting to see how they tune the Linux kernel for this, though. A lot of the issues in PC-based multimedia work are latency-related, so they'll probably be spending a lot of time working with kernel patches for that. The article doesn't give many specifics.
GRACE as a Battle Bot
on
Social Robot?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
She'd get along great with Gaak, the robot that escaped from its masters and made it to the parking lot. I see a wonderful romance developing, or at least a great Thelma-and-Louise chase scene.
On a related note, wouldn't a battle bot capable of social engineering the judges be a great thing? "I protest! My opponent is cheating!" "Never mind that broken wheel, t'is but a flesh wound!" Of course, she'd have be toughened up and given a weapon of some kind; sarcastic banter vs. a wedge is hardly a fair fight.
You've established that you're ready to leave the company if the offer is right. Yes, you get more money by taking the counter-offer. But here's what you lose:
- Your boss has to re-think any long-term plans that include your participation because a new offer with more money can come along at any time. The tough, interesting jobs are more likely to go to employees whom your boss can count on to stick around for a while.
- You've been given a lot more money up front, but it's going to be tempting for them to get some of it back in the form of fewer raises, bonuses, etc.
- If this increase puts you at market average wage, that means your current boss was comfortable paying you only 50% of what you were worth. Do you really want to work for your current employer?
Bah humbug. Nothing against ASCII itself, but I gave up on NetHack due to eyestrain. Then I found glhack on freshmeat.net which makes it much nicer to look it. Now I'm addicted again.
The current Linux version of Tribes 2 is more stable than the Windows version (I've never received the equivalent of an "Unhandled Exception" error). With a GeForce 2 MX card and current Linux drivers, frame rate is still about 20% less than under Windows, but I'll gladly sacrifice a bit of graphics for NO CRASHES.
The worst temp job I ever worked was for a company (Company "T") handling a rebate program for a major PC manufacturer (Company "M"). If software/hardware companies are still farming this work out, no wonder the rebate programs are so bad!
There were about 16 of us were in the cubicle farm doing data entry and taking calls from irate people wondering why their rebates were late. I estimated the temp churn at 25% per week. It's very likely that the person handling your rebate was on his/her first day.
This company was handling about 12 different rebate programs, using a slower-than-molasses database that could be crashed by pressing a single wrong key and required 4 hours to rebuild.
Since we were answering the phone as "Company M", we were not allowed to say "our computers are down" and thus had to B.S. our way through the call.
As most of our callers were salespeople, they smelt the B.S. instantly and jumped into either sarcasm ("yeah, the check's in the mail, right?") or hostility ("let me speak to the manager, NOW!") The "manager" job rotated among the team.
This hell was not entirely Company T's fault. Company T had to cut and mail the checks, but Company M hadn't sent us the money to pay the rebates! We were sitting on thousands of checks we couldn't send out because they wouldn't have cleared the bank.
Apart from finding "Douglas Adams" in the "If you like Pratchett you might like these guys" section of the FAQ, I found no reference to Pratchett's opinion of being compared to Douglas Adams. I looked at the FAQ here and here.
Excellent idea. Now that Douglas Adams has answered, please see if Terry Pratchett is willing to participate.
Reasoning:
- His books appeal to many geeks. - He was an active participant in the Usenet group alt.fan.pratchett last time I checked (a year or two ago, admittedly). So he'd be likely to support this kind of interview. - He recently toured the States to promote "The 5th Elephant". Ok, maybe that's not an entirely valid reason, but I got my photo taken with him in Minneapolis which was way cool. - I'm not interested in a flame war, but it would be very interesting to find out what (if any) opinion Pratchett has on Adams' writing style.
Do you show your love by deleting files on stranger's PCs? Is that the lesson you want your children to learn? Did the headline "One Billion Dollars Damage" escape your attention?
I read the review, but the link just went down; might have been slashdotted:)
If they wanted 100% Microsoft Office compatibility, they'd never release. It's a miracle that they have Access working at all; it has the most proprietary format of all the MS Office apps.
I hope they can make the majority of this work, though. It's very convenient to query databases and have the results pop up in a spreadsheet. In fact, if they can make the ODBC query part stable, I'd be ready to switch.
On the subject of bloat: Nearly 500 meg for an office suite? Spare me the pain of installing that on every PC in my office! I'd rather set up an Office "server" and run it remotely using X or Tarantella. How does the size of this suite compare to Office 2000?
Specifically this one, which I have seen at least twice in PC Gamer:
-- QUOTE -- Description: The ad looks back from inside the computer screen out to the room of a teenage boy. A girl who looks like she's 14 years old (definitely not over 16) is draped in a sexy pose over a chair wearing short shorts and a red tube top. The guy is grinning back at the computer screen while gripping his joystick. The caption for this ad reads, "You know you're going to score." ---END QUOTE---
I'm damn offended by that one, and I'm male. I don't care what the justification is for it. The imagery and text strongly imply under-age sex. That's irresponsible. I know it happens. It's still wrong to rub it in people's faces. Not many ads offend me, but this one does.
Inprise sounds manufactured, apparently trying to associate with ideas like "Internet", "Intranet," "Enterprise," etc. I program in Borland (Inprise) Delphi 4 and love it so don't get the idea I hate the company, just their new name.
This is a direct lift from an article in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, later know as the Annals of Improbable Research (http://www.improb.com).
I'm sure you meant well, but please, if you have this much information just post a link to it. Otherwise it takes up too much space in the message forums.
They're pretty damn vague about that in the article, aren't they? I mentioned a little earlier that I'd be happy paying $0.05 per search, rather than be accosted by ads. Or maybe pay $20 per year for unlimited search. The quality of the results and the time saved is worth it.
Ok, here's where I start talking way over my head. Let's say that a search engine is a public service (it's hard to get more public than the Internet). All the search engines I've seen (except Google) have been based on the model of commercial television, where you don't pay directly for the service, but you do have to put up with ads. A different model is public television and radio which (in the U.S.) severely restrict their ads, but request that their listeners donate money once a year, for which the patrons receive some kind of extra bonus (magazine, coffee mug, etc.) At the end of the scale is cable television, where you have to pay charges for your level of service each month, and extra charges for certain shows (pay-per-view), but you get exactly what you pay for and very few ads.
The key here is that the consumers choose the level of service they want. I like avoiding ads, so I avoid commercial television and listen to a lot of public radio.
Another public service that springs to mind is phones. Everyone (again, speaking for the U.S.) gets a phone book when they get basic phone service. They can look up phone numbers themselves. Or, for an extra charge, they can call the operator and have the operator look up a phone number for them. They save time and get more current information that way, but at a cost.
Google's got enough good word-of-mouth that I'll bet they could charge for their service and still retain a significant number of users. If they keep it flexible, maybe using one or more of the revenue models described above, they could keep people happy (they get to choose their level of service) and still tie in seamlessly with other sites and services.
Anyway, enough economic pontificating from this computer geek.
Exactly. For the high quality results that Google produces, I'd be happy to pay a few cents per search, rather than have to look at a screen 90% covered with ads and useless time- and bandwidth-wasting fluff.
The article doesn't mention anything about how these investors expect Google to make money. And they're expanding their staff to 100? I love Google, but they've got me worried.
My company has been running CTAR for 3 1/2 years, and it has never let us down. It can run as command line with TAR-like commands, or via a very well-designed character-mode menu. I've been backing up 8+ gigs at a time on our main SCO Unix server with no problems.
It's available for Linux as well as most varieties of Unix. $195 for the Linux version.
Slashdot Mirror
Where I work, we are strongly discouraged from loading any non-business-approved applications on our BlackBerry phones. As a consequence, I have never bothered visiting the Blackberry app store. If I had a business-approved iPhone I imagine it'd be the same way, but since BlackBerry's entire focus is on business I'd imagine these sorts of restrictions are hurting their app sales more so than for comparable devices.
I store my bookmarks in a PHP/MySQL application separate from my PC. When company comes over I switch the app from private to public view and clear my browser history. That's enough to keep out the casual "what's he been up to" jokers while allowing guests to check their web mail and/or E-bay. _Nobody_ uses my PC unsupervised though.
The nice part of being a PC parts packrat is that when company is coming over for an extended visit I can set them up a spare box with a bare-bones OS and a web browser, and just wipe it when they leave. Knoppix works great for that, also.
Can't speak for the capacities of the Xbox, but Linux PS2 hackers have been able to write files to memory cards for a while. So there's some basis in fact for taking the controllers.
It's worth noting that IBM specifically named OpenServer and UnixWare for the patent infringement item, both proprietary apps never released under the GPL.
In any case, IBM releasing GPL'd code that uses its patents doesn't give away its patent rights. But if you're using the code yourself you're fine; the use you describe is GPL-compliant.
Absolutely. We have a new invisible enemy, and we're making the same insane self-defeating "prove we're doing something," "prove you're patriotic" mistakes we did back in the McCarthy era.
It's a shame this comparison isn't being made more often in the media.
One area where open-source is doing great is in monitoring projects, such as Big Brother, NetSaint , Nagios, and others. I'm curious as to why you went with a commercial product instead of a free (as in beer and speech) one.
That is a truly ugly name for the project.
It'll be interesting to see how they tune the Linux kernel for this, though. A lot of the issues in PC-based multimedia work are latency-related, so they'll probably be spending a lot of time working with kernel patches for that. The article doesn't give many specifics.
She'd get along great with Gaak, the robot that escaped from its masters and made it to the parking lot. I see a wonderful romance developing, or at least a great Thelma-and-Louise chase scene.
On a related note, wouldn't a battle bot capable of social engineering the judges be a great thing? "I protest! My opponent is cheating!" "Never mind that broken wheel, t'is but a flesh wound!" Of course, she'd have be toughened up and given a weapon of some kind; sarcastic banter vs. a wedge is hardly a fair fight.
You've established that you're ready to leave the company if the offer is right. Yes, you get more money by taking the counter-offer. But here's what you lose:
- Your boss has to re-think any long-term plans that include your participation because a new offer with more money can come along at any time. The tough, interesting jobs are more likely to go to employees whom your boss can count on to stick around for a while.
- You've been given a lot more money up front, but it's going to be tempting for them to get some of it back in the form of fewer raises, bonuses, etc.
- If this increase puts you at market average wage, that means your current boss was comfortable paying you only 50% of what you were worth. Do you really want to work for your current employer?
Bah humbug. Nothing against ASCII itself, but I gave up on NetHack due to eyestrain. Then I found glhack on freshmeat.net which makes it much nicer to look it. Now I'm addicted again.
Hope it's updated to the new 3.4.0 soon.
The current Linux version of Tribes 2 is more stable than the Windows version (I've never received the equivalent of an "Unhandled Exception" error). With a GeForce 2 MX card and current Linux drivers, frame rate is still about 20% less than under Windows, but I'll gladly sacrifice a bit of graphics for NO CRASHES.
The worst temp job I ever worked was for a company (Company "T") handling a rebate program for a major PC manufacturer (Company "M"). If software/hardware companies are still farming this work out, no wonder the rebate programs are so bad!
There were about 16 of us were in the cubicle farm doing data entry and taking calls from irate people wondering why their rebates were late. I estimated the temp churn at 25% per week. It's very likely that the person handling your rebate was on his/her first day.
This company was handling about 12 different rebate programs, using a slower-than-molasses database that could be crashed by pressing a single wrong key and required 4 hours to rebuild.
Since we were answering the phone as "Company M", we were not allowed to say "our computers are down" and thus had to B.S. our way through the call.
As most of our callers were salespeople, they smelt the B.S. instantly and jumped into either sarcasm ("yeah, the check's in the mail, right?") or hostility ("let me speak to the manager, NOW!") The "manager" job rotated among the team.
This hell was not entirely Company T's fault. Company T had to cut and mail the checks, but Company M hadn't sent us the money to pay the rebates! We were sitting on thousands of checks we couldn't send out because they wouldn't have cleared the bank.
I lasted three weeks.
Thanks! That interview does compare Pratchett's writing with Adams'. Guess I'm still curious to know what Pratchett thinks of it all.
Apart from finding "Douglas Adams" in the "If you like Pratchett you might like these guys" section of the FAQ, I found no reference to Pratchett's opinion of being compared to Douglas Adams. I looked at the FAQ here and here.
Excellent idea. Now that Douglas Adams has answered, please see if Terry Pratchett is willing to participate.
Reasoning:
- His books appeal to many geeks.
- He was an active participant in the Usenet group alt.fan.pratchett last time I checked (a year or two ago, admittedly). So he'd be likely to support this kind of interview.
- He recently toured the States to promote "The 5th Elephant". Ok, maybe that's not an entirely valid reason, but I got my photo taken with him in Minneapolis which was way cool.
- I'm not interested in a flame war, but it would be very interesting to find out what (if any) opinion Pratchett has on Adams' writing style.
Do you show your love by deleting files on stranger's PCs? Is that the lesson you want your children to learn? Did the headline "One Billion Dollars Damage" escape your attention?
I read the review, but the link just went down; might have been slashdotted :)
If they wanted 100% Microsoft Office compatibility, they'd never release. It's a miracle that they have Access working at all; it has the most proprietary format of all the MS Office apps.
I hope they can make the majority of this work, though. It's very convenient to query databases and have the results pop up in a spreadsheet. In fact, if they can make the ODBC query part stable, I'd be ready to switch.
On the subject of bloat: Nearly 500 meg for an office suite? Spare me the pain of installing that on every PC in my office! I'd rather set up an Office "server" and run it remotely using X or Tarantella. How does the size of this suite compare to Office 2000?
Specifically this one, which I have seen at least twice in PC Gamer:
-- QUOTE --
Description: The ad looks back from inside the computer screen out to the room of a teenage boy. A girl who looks like she's 14 years old (definitely not over 16) is draped in a sexy pose over a chair wearing short shorts and a red tube top. The guy is grinning back at the computer screen while gripping his joystick. The caption for this ad reads, "You know you're going to score."
---END QUOTE---
I'm damn offended by that one, and I'm male. I don't care what the justification is for it. The imagery and text strongly imply under-age sex. That's irresponsible. I know it happens. It's still wrong to rub it in people's faces. Not many ads offend me, but this one does.
Inprise sounds manufactured, apparently trying to associate with ideas like "Internet", "Intranet," "Enterprise," etc. I program in Borland (Inprise) Delphi 4 and love it so don't get the idea I hate the company, just their new name.
This is a direct lift from an article in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, later know as the Annals of Improbable Research (http://www.improb.com).
I'm sure you meant well, but please, if you have this much information just post a link to it. Otherwise it takes up too much space in the message forums.
They're pretty damn vague about that in the article, aren't they? I mentioned a little earlier that I'd be happy paying $0.05 per search, rather than be accosted by ads. Or maybe pay $20 per year for unlimited search. The quality of the results and the time saved is worth it.
Ok, here's where I start talking way over my head. Let's say that a search engine is a public service (it's hard to get more public than the Internet). All the search engines I've seen (except Google) have been based on the model of commercial television, where you don't pay directly for the service, but you do have to put up with ads. A different model is public television and radio which (in the U.S.) severely restrict their ads, but request that their listeners donate money once a year, for which the patrons receive some kind of extra bonus (magazine, coffee mug, etc.) At the end of the scale is cable television, where you have to pay charges for your level of service each month, and extra charges for certain shows (pay-per-view), but you get exactly what you pay for and very few ads.
The key here is that the consumers choose the level of service they want. I like avoiding ads, so I avoid commercial television and listen to a lot of public radio.
Another public service that springs to mind is phones. Everyone (again, speaking for the U.S.) gets a phone book when they get basic phone service. They can look up phone numbers themselves. Or, for an extra charge, they can call the operator and have the operator look up a phone number for them. They save time and get more current information that way, but at a cost.
Google's got enough good word-of-mouth that I'll bet they could charge for their service and still retain a significant number of users. If they keep it flexible, maybe using one or more of the revenue models described above, they could keep people happy (they get to choose their level of service) and still tie in seamlessly with other sites and services.
Anyway, enough economic pontificating from this computer geek.
--
Carl Patten
Exactly. For the high quality results that Google produces, I'd be happy to pay a few cents per search, rather than have to look at a screen 90% covered with ads and useless time- and bandwidth-wasting fluff.
The article doesn't mention anything about how these investors expect Google to make money. And they're expanding their staff to 100? I love Google, but they've got me worried.
--
Carl Patten
My company has been running CTAR for 3 1/2 years, and it has never let us down. It can run as command line with TAR-like commands, or via a very well-designed character-mode menu. I've been backing up 8+ gigs at a time on our main SCO Unix server with no problems.
It's available for Linux as well as most varieties of Unix. $195 for the Linux version.