...just teach him to bully the other kid in his class to do it for him, and pay him with a biscuit from his lunchbox. When he grows up, he'll be ready for outsourcing the people he works with.
How about a Leapfrog Leapster or similar? i'd be wary of getting into the DS too much. Doesn't really encourage interaction with the outside world and sounds a bit like a trigger for autism.
If you must, why not let them play with a simple drawing app or flash game (I'd suggest Cbeebies in the UK) on your machine? Preferably a machine that isn't an expensive laptop and has an external, disposable mouse and keyboard? Or one of those jumbo child's trackballs?
Two is too young for real mouse and keyboard control, although they might be enthralled by pictures on the screen. I'd argue that spending the money on some books and other play equipment (cheap and good: some big plastic "tweezers" and some little plastic objects to pick up - develops the quite specialised muscles and coordination they'll need to hold a pen for writing later on really well) would be a better course of action though.
Buying them their own laptop's a dumb idea if you expect them to take care of it. It'll get pulled off the table or have the lid shut with an object on the keyboard, and it'll die. Also, if you're giving them access to the charger, they might pull the AC cable out and stick it in their mouth, which wouldn't do them any good. Or they might accidentally short the battery and cause a fire. Or tip their juice over it. Or (as just happened to my other half's brand new Palm Centro) decide they like it so much they're going to dip it in the bath to clean it. I could go on. They're just not toddler-proof/friendly/suitable.
I've a two year old and a five year old. I wouldn't buy either a "real" laptop although my five year old likes sitting on my lap and playing simple kids web games sometimes, and can use a mouse and a keyboard. She'd rather draw with a pen, though, and learning to read and write is something best done on paper. My two year old is currently literally jumping up and down with sheer joy at the marble run we've just bought her.
My advice? If you want a netbook for yourself, buy one. If you want a toy for your kids, buy something else.
Having said all this, an iPhone is great for distracting small children by showing them pics of the family!
? Voice navigation? Dragon Dictate then Naturally Speaking has been around for *years* and if you watch someone who's taken the time to train it use it, it's unbelievably good. I've seen partners in legal firms talk at full tilt, completely naturally, and have it pick it up with 100% accuracy. The later versions can even be fed, via OCR, pages and pages of your firms' documentation, which they will then analyse to pickup on company jargon, terminology, etc.
It's a solved problem, and has been for years. You just need to put in some time to train it.
You can buy an HTC running WinMo and install Android on it, if that helps?
Check out xda-developers.com.
When I last looked into it, it was getting fairly feature-complete on the Kaiser. As soon as it's ported to one of the new and seriously cool HTC handsets it's going to get a lot more popular, at present I think that the fat form factor of the G1 is a major stumbling block.
The G1 hardware is pretty similar to other HTC WinMo phones in terms of chipset etc.
"How about using the tilt of the device as input, making it feel like you are using a steering wheel in a racing game"
Man, I had a Quickshot joystick back in the 80s that worked this way with my ZX Spectrum. Used mercury tilt switches. It was cool'n'all but sucked in use.
Asphalt racing on the iPhone looks nice graphically, but steering the car by tilting or by using the onscreen, non-tactile steering wheel, also sucks.
If you want to be able to reliably press buttons whilst directing your attention at the action, you need physical feedback. And this is without considering the problem of how you look at the action if your fat fingers are all over the screen.
Don't get me wrong, there are some great games that work brilliantly on the iPhone, but they are typically ones that don't need this sort of control.
It's a promo picture: it's practically a logo. Head and shoulders photo alphablended with a neat background. It's not like they were misleading anyone. Do you think the AP logo on their website is a photo? It's a graphical design rather than photo reportage we're talking about here.
the TV doesn't require it, but the media source may: e.g. an HDMI-out Bluray player won't output high def unless it's to an HDCP-compliant monitor, to stop HD rips.
Similarly in the UK our main satellite provider, Sky, have their latest boxes disable analogue HD out for the same reason.
It's everywhere, and has been for a couple of years.
No. A company is a legal entity to deliver profit to shareholders. A well-run company would hopefully do this whilst treating employees fairly, because doing so enriched the company long-term, e.g. lower churn, higher productivity. However, if there's a firesale on, this may not make commercial sense...
This is using the Path Intelligence mini cell box.
Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that listens in on the whisperings of their mobile phones.
The technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.
The device cannot access personal details about a person's identity or contacts, but privacy campaigners expressed concern about potential intrusion should the data fall into the wrong hands.
The surveillance mechanism works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation - measuring the phone's distance from three receivers.
It has already been installed in two shopping centres, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, and three more centres will begin using it next month, Times Online has learnt.
The company that makes the dishes, which measure 30cm (12 inches) square and are placed on walls around the centre, said that they were useful to centres that wanted to learn more about the way their customers used the store.
A shopping mall could, for example, find out that 10,000 people were still in the store at 6pm, helping to make a case for longer opening hours, or that a majority of customers who visited Gap also went to Next, which could useful for marketing purposes.
In the case of Gunwharf Quays, managers were surprised to discover that an unusually high percentage of visitors were German - the receivers can tell in which country each phone is registered - which led to the management translating the instructions in the car park.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) expressed cautious approval of the technology, which does not identify the owner of the phone but rather the handset's IMEI code - a unique number given to every device so that the network can recognise it.
But an ICO spokesman said, "we would be very worried if this technology was used in connection with other systems that contain personal information, if the intention was to provide more detailed profiles about identifiable individuals and their shopping habits."
Only the phone network can match a handset's IMEI number to the personal details of a customer.
Path Intelligence, the Portsmouth-based company which developed the technology, said its equipment was just a tool for market research. "There's absolutely no way we can link the information we gather back to the individual," a spokeswoman said. "There's nothing personal in the data."
Liberty, the campaign group, said that although the data do not meet the legal definition of 'personal information', it "had the potential" to identify particular individuals' shopping habits by referencing information held by the phone networks.
The receivers together cost about £20,000 to rent per month. About 20 the units, which are unobtrusive, cream-coloured boxes about the size of a satellite dish, would be needed to cover the Bluewater shopping centre.
Bluewater, in Kent, said it had no plans to deploy the equipment. A spokesman for Gunwharf Quays was not available for comment.
Owners of large buildings currently have to rely on manual surveys to find out how customers use the space, which can be relevant to questions of design such as where the toilets should be located or which stores should be placed next to one another.
Other types of wireless technology, such as wi-fi and Bluetooth, can be used to locate devices, but the regular phone network signal is preferable because it is much more powerful and fewer receivers are needed to monitor a given
I'd have gone for "rack should be wrapped in gold foil with a ribbon like an expensive chocolate bar" or "sheets of pure diamond/transparent aluminium" myself, but good work anyway.
Taking the dull answer of "have a failover box somewhere else" would be an act of cowardice.
I thought they did, for pretty much all current smartphones. The radio's a black box with an API to interact with it. This is a sensible solution - people can't mess about the regulated spectrum with homebrew software radios, and your calls are handled by a dedicated module so you won't find your calls getting dropped when you have too many apps open etc.
In the UK, you DO own the phone. Whether you pay full price and go pay-as-you-go, or get it subsidised when tied to a monthly contract (the more expensive the monthly package you pay per month the less the handset costs) - you own the phone. If you go the latter route, then you are tied in to a 12 or 18 month contract, most likely, but you own the handset outright. The network won't unlock it for free until your contract expires, but you aren't renting the handset - it is yours.
Slashdot Mirror
...just teach him to bully the other kid in his class to do it for him, and pay him with a biscuit from his lunchbox. When he grows up, he'll be ready for outsourcing the people he works with.
How about a Leapfrog Leapster or similar? i'd be wary of getting into the DS too much. Doesn't really encourage interaction with the outside world and sounds a bit like a trigger for autism.
Stick it in the bath? Eat the battery? Lick the power supply?
Two is too young for real mouse and keyboard control, although they might be enthralled by pictures on the screen. I'd argue that spending the money on some books and other play equipment (cheap and good: some big plastic "tweezers" and some little plastic objects to pick up - develops the quite specialised muscles and coordination they'll need to hold a pen for writing later on really well) would be a better course of action though.
Buying them their own laptop's a dumb idea if you expect them to take care of it. It'll get pulled off the table or have the lid shut with an object on the keyboard, and it'll die. Also, if you're giving them access to the charger, they might pull the AC cable out and stick it in their mouth, which wouldn't do them any good. Or they might accidentally short the battery and cause a fire. Or tip their juice over it. Or (as just happened to my other half's brand new Palm Centro) decide they like it so much they're going to dip it in the bath to clean it. I could go on. They're just not toddler-proof/friendly/suitable.
I've a two year old and a five year old. I wouldn't buy either a "real" laptop although my five year old likes sitting on my lap and playing simple kids web games sometimes, and can use a mouse and a keyboard. She'd rather draw with a pen, though, and learning to read and write is something best done on paper. My two year old is currently literally jumping up and down with sheer joy at the marble run we've just bought her.
My advice? If you want a netbook for yourself, buy one. If you want a toy for your kids, buy something else.
Having said all this, an iPhone is great for distracting small children by showing them pics of the family!
? Voice navigation? Dragon Dictate then Naturally Speaking has been around for *years* and if you watch someone who's taken the time to train it use it, it's unbelievably good. I've seen partners in legal firms talk at full tilt, completely naturally, and have it pick it up with 100% accuracy. The later versions can even be fed, via OCR, pages and pages of your firms' documentation, which they will then analyse to pickup on company jargon, terminology, etc.
It's a solved problem, and has been for years. You just need to put in some time to train it.
Where have you been? Surely you must have come across contention ratios? I thought anyone who knew what ADSL was understood how this worked?
...kill him and outsource his job.
OK: it's impractical unless, maybe, you're a three letter agency. Read up on built-into-the-drive-encryption to see how hard this problem is...
Not if you're using the built-in hardware encryption, it can't.
And IBM are not going to give anyone a recovery password without proof of ownership.
You can buy an HTC running WinMo and install Android on it, if that helps? Check out xda-developers.com. When I last looked into it, it was getting fairly feature-complete on the Kaiser. As soon as it's ported to one of the new and seriously cool HTC handsets it's going to get a lot more popular, at present I think that the fat form factor of the G1 is a major stumbling block. The G1 hardware is pretty similar to other HTC WinMo phones in terms of chipset etc.
Can we stop this now? My head hurts
Note to Alanis Morisette: Rain on your wedding day is only ironic if you're marrying a weatherman
Don't blame him, blame his aging Intel CPU..
Man, I had a Quickshot joystick back in the 80s that worked this way with my ZX Spectrum. Used mercury tilt switches. It was cool'n'all but sucked in use.
Asphalt racing on the iPhone looks nice graphically, but steering the car by tilting or by using the onscreen, non-tactile steering wheel, also sucks.
If you want to be able to reliably press buttons whilst directing your attention at the action, you need physical feedback. And this is without considering the problem of how you look at the action if your fat fingers are all over the screen.
Don't get me wrong, there are some great games that work brilliantly on the iPhone, but they are typically ones that don't need this sort of control.
It's a promo picture: it's practically a logo. Head and shoulders photo alphablended with a neat background. It's not like they were misleading anyone. Do you think the AP logo on their website is a photo? It's a graphical design rather than photo reportage we're talking about here.
Telephone sanitizers: 2nd class, and Management Consultants first?
the TV doesn't require it, but the media source may: e.g. an HDMI-out Bluray player won't output high def unless it's to an HDCP-compliant monitor, to stop HD rips.
Similarly in the UK our main satellite provider, Sky, have their latest boxes disable analogue HD out for the same reason.
It's everywhere, and has been for a couple of years.
Possible dumb question: won't you find that DRM video refuses to play on older machines that don't have the DRM?
No. A company is a legal entity to deliver profit to shareholders. A well-run company would hopefully do this whilst treating employees fairly, because doing so enriched the company long-term, e.g. lower churn, higher productivity. However, if there's a firesale on, this may not make commercial sense...
Shops track customers via mobile phone
Signals given off by phones allow shopping centres to monitor how long people stay and which stores they visit.
This is using the Path Intelligence mini cell box.
Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that listens in on the whisperings of their mobile phones.
The technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.
The device cannot access personal details about a person's identity or contacts, but privacy campaigners expressed concern about potential intrusion should the data fall into the wrong hands.
The surveillance mechanism works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation - measuring the phone's distance from three receivers. It has already been installed in two shopping centres, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, and three more centres will begin using it next month, Times Online has learnt.
The company that makes the dishes, which measure 30cm (12 inches) square and are placed on walls around the centre, said that they were useful to centres that wanted to learn more about the way their customers used the store.
A shopping mall could, for example, find out that 10,000 people were still in the store at 6pm, helping to make a case for longer opening hours, or that a majority of customers who visited Gap also went to Next, which could useful for marketing purposes.
In the case of Gunwharf Quays, managers were surprised to discover that an unusually high percentage of visitors were German - the receivers can tell in which country each phone is registered - which led to the management translating the instructions in the car park.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) expressed cautious approval of the technology, which does not identify the owner of the phone but rather the handset's IMEI code - a unique number given to every device so that the network can recognise it.
But an ICO spokesman said, "we would be very worried if this technology was used in connection with other systems that contain personal information, if the intention was to provide more detailed profiles about identifiable individuals and their shopping habits."
Only the phone network can match a handset's IMEI number to the personal details of a customer.
Path Intelligence, the Portsmouth-based company which developed the technology, said its equipment was just a tool for market research. "There's absolutely no way we can link the information we gather back to the individual," a spokeswoman said. "There's nothing personal in the data."
Liberty, the campaign group, said that although the data do not meet the legal definition of 'personal information', it "had the potential" to identify particular individuals' shopping habits by referencing information held by the phone networks.
The receivers together cost about £20,000 to rent per month. About 20 the units, which are unobtrusive, cream-coloured boxes about the size of a satellite dish, would be needed to cover the Bluewater shopping centre.
Bluewater, in Kent, said it had no plans to deploy the equipment. A spokesman for Gunwharf Quays was not available for comment.
Owners of large buildings currently have to rely on manual surveys to find out how customers use the space, which can be relevant to questions of design such as where the toilets should be located or which stores should be placed next to one another.
Other types of wireless technology, such as wi-fi and Bluetooth, can be used to locate devices, but the regular phone network signal is preferable because it is much more powerful and fewer receivers are needed to monitor a given
iPhone? He wouldn't be able to infringe using copy and paste, or record video.
Taking the dull answer of "have a failover box somewhere else" would be an act of cowardice.
I thought they did, for pretty much all current smartphones. The radio's a black box with an API to interact with it. This is a sensible solution - people can't mess about the regulated spectrum with homebrew software radios, and your calls are handled by a dedicated module so you won't find your calls getting dropped when you have too many apps open etc.
In the UK, you DO own the phone. Whether you pay full price and go pay-as-you-go, or get it subsidised when tied to a monthly contract (the more expensive the monthly package you pay per month the less the handset costs) - you own the phone. If you go the latter route, then you are tied in to a 12 or 18 month contract, most likely, but you own the handset outright. The network won't unlock it for free until your contract expires, but you aren't renting the handset - it is yours.
anyone know which insightful greybeard wrote the original?