7 projects, 2 of which are corporate mandates with no additional funding or 'resources' to do them, 4 other administrative tasks, plus an hour or so each day dedicated to HR-related corporate marionette-ing to satisfy the Political Correctness Police.
All for 2 shell scripts and a mainframe extract. That took 3 months to get done.
And this isn't even a government job.
Too bad.
I was hoping there might be an equivalent to C or even perl or Java that could be used.
While I develop on mainframes and *nix, I know absolutely nothing about mobile platforms. Obviously.
Why all the love for a single platform?
Is it so hard to write an app that will run on multiple platforms?
Rim, WinMobile,, Symbian, Android/Linux....
Why all the hate for other platforms? Most outsell the iPhone
OK just downloaded and it seems to include the navigation. Started it up and it accurately showed where I was, and after entering my work address it showed the most direct route there.
Too bad the Nokia site is so confusing. Themain page says only certain phones are compatible, but when you download the app for your phone, it does NOT say it is the one with free satnav.
Now I just need to verify that this IS satnav and not something else.
But that is for tomorrow, I need sleep.
Hey Nokia: Redesign your site. It is a mess of poorly designed pages, and confusing if not missing information.
Replying to myself, while I can update to v3.0 from the v2.0 the E75 came with, I do not think it is the free nav version. The OVI store is not well laid out.
However the new map data required is claiming a 127 minute download over wireless. Hope work doesn't call with a crashed DB.
Sigh. US gets screwed in phones and cars due to stupid regulations.
In the U.S., and I suspect Canada, cars are the instrument of death more often than guns are. Count then by gross total or per-capita population or per-capita car-owner/gun-owner, cars are more dangerous.
I know people that have been killed or injured by drivers distracted by lighting cigarettes, changing the radio or reaching for something that fell on the floor, like a CD or cassette. It is no different than if someone carelessly shoots a gun off without aiming or caring where it is pointing. Only luck prevents something bad happening. I have been injured while biking by idiots not paying attention while driving, had my car hit by other drivers changing the radio.
So no, this law does not go too far, in fact it does not go far enough. It should mandate that anyone found driving while distracted be charged with reckless endangerment of human life.
Any driver involved in an accident while their car was moving should immediately have their license suspended and car impounded until cause can be determined. If they are at fault charged and if convicted of a simple infraction their license revoked. If injury or worse is caused they should be jailed. They are a danger to others.
Everyone has a right to travel. No one has the right to endanger others. Those that do endanger others need to be held accountable for their actions, no matter how they do so: Car, knife, gun, chemical spill, whatever.
I pay ATT each month for a data plan. I do not use anywhere near what I pay for. Most of us do not, so we are subsidizing iPhone users.
I have considered dumping the plan, but the few times a month I use it, I need it.
I would be more than willing to sign up for a pay as you go plan, especially since I would likely be in the lowest usage tier. Let the heavy users pay the heavy freight.
Pay as you go is far more fair than the socialist model used now, where the greedy get a free ride on the backs of others.
Just remember to pay cash when traveling to the E.U. and other places where prostitution is legal or Janet Napolitano will know how you like to get your kink on.
Sooo, you like school-girl outfits and peanut butter? What, no marshmallows?
Mouse set up is just a symptom of many issues with Linux on the desktop.
For Linux to become a true alternative to Win*, the various distributions and the Linux community as a whole, need to pay attention to this kind of fairly mundane user interface issues.
While I am not an OS or Linux guru, I am fairly tech-savvy. I work in I.T. supporting VLDB on the technical end. (Multi-terabyte RDBMS in UDB and Oracle, on both Unix and Z/OS).
Yet Linux, even Ubuntu or pre-loaded SLED on a Lenovo laptop are too much work for me. While I like fiddling around with settings and getting things to work to my liking, I do not want to make a second job of it. When I am off work, I do not want a second job getting my home laptop and PCs to work.
When asking why things do not work and how to get them to work, you rarely get a straight answer from the community. Yes, I know humans are very unreliable when seeking answers, and there are 20 ways, at least, to do everything in Linux, but still... When a user wants to get a 5 button mouse to work, they do not want to be asked why would they want to do that, or told that 3 buttons should be all you need, or be handed twenty links, each of which has a different half-answer they need to piece together.
Yes, I have installed Windows from scratch, both on a laptop I bought with Linux installed, (Lenovo), and desktops I built myself, using copies of Windows bought commercially and installed out of the box. I even put the holographic sticker on after installation Which means they were not pre-built images fit to a certain hardware profile or to a specific PC. I have installed Ubuntu, SLED, OpenSuse and Fedora on laptops and desktops. So I know how easy it is to find, install and configure drivers for hardware components, both in Windows and Linux. Windows is far easier, and not just because all vendors support it. The actual interface with the OS and process itself is far, far easier in Windows.
Sure, this is largely a driver issue due to vendors not wanting to support Linux, or, as in the case of Broadcom, refusing to do so even though they have Linux drivers in the lab. Not every company is an Atheros or HP. But it is also an interface design issue that needs to be addressed. It is at least as important, if not more important, than support for the fanciest, newest video cards.
The folks that want to push desktop distros, like Canonical, SuSe, etc, need to pay far more attention to this.
I will keep an eye on the various Distros, and try them every year or so, maybe whenever Ubuntu releases an LTS version, but until the basic user interface is as easy to set up as Windows, I will stick with Windows.
I have been thinking lately, (don't let that scare you), that instead of the patent system granting exclusive rights, it should grant exclusive royalties.
In other words, it becomes a registration system that grantees payment of royalties to inventors for a specific period of time, paid by anyone that wants to use a patent.
So a patent holder can not restrict use of an invention. this allows others to use it as a base for further invention and innovation. It also removes, to a big extent, any reason for companies to fight patent awards, or try to steal or use patents without paying, which might lower the number of lawsuits, etc. Why risk paying lawyers when you can just use it cheaply and legally?.
I am not certain how to determine the royalty rate though. Could an auction system work? Or maybe a percentage of the cost to manufacture, which would be harder to fudge than percentage of profit?
One reform does need to be made, similar to what the parent mentions: You should not be able to file a patent application for anything that is already being produced and marketed by anyone, including yourself. If you forget to file and it is sold or produced before the patent application is filed, well, you screwed up. It should automatically be in the public domain, regardless of what ever kind of excuses or prior evidence you can mock up.
The world has changed since the 18th century when the basis for the U.S. patent system was formed. (I dunno about other systems). It is far easier to keep track of what people are making and selling in distant places than it was 300 years ago, and easier to assess royalties, etc. There seems to no longer need to be a simple ban on anyone else using a patent.
Yeah, lots of details lef tout, and probably lots of holes, and a bunch of new problems different than the current ones. But would it be an improvement over the current system? Maybe you patent gurus here can comment.
Just what a nation with no natural fuel resources, beyond wood and bamboo, needs: A huge, undefendable, centralized piece of critical infrastructure sitting right where everyone on the planet can reach it. Never mind the technological arguments for and against it. The logistical ones should stop it in its tracks.
Go ahead Japan, build it. Then piss off just one nut case, like Korea, Libya, or whoever else has, or is close to being able to, lob a ballistic rock into orbit.
These huge, centralized, monolithic technological marvels that claim to be the answers to various problems all have the same vulnerability. They can be taken out by one pissed off caveman with a good throwing arm.
Haven't the lessons given by the failure of every centralized planning scheme in history taught us anything? Why continue to ignore the lessons of evolution, free markets and decentralization?
Wait, sorry, I forgot. These are Homo Sap's we are talking about.
+1
Check the stats for the US.
Cars are misused to kill more people every year in the U.S. than guns are. Whether you look at just the grand total, or per-capita, or per-thousand owned.
It is about time we held people responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of the activity they were engaged in or the thing they were using.
Gun, car, knife, 2x4, all can cause injury or worse.
I remember back in the 1970's, (yeah, lawn, get off of it, yada...), being drunk was an EXCUSE to avoid responsibility for an accident, if not avoid vehicular man-slaughter charges.
You should be able to do anything you want, play with guns, cars, drugs, politics, RealDolls, whatever, but if you screw up, no excuses.
What penalty should apply in what situations can be debated, but at the very least, you should be held liable for cost of repair or replacement for any damage caused, and in the case of serious injury or death, imprisonment for the future protection of society.
Oops, sorry about that. I was texting while testing my MAC-9 sub-machine gun next door. Sorry about your family re-union, I had no idea other people were behind those shrubs what with the music and all.
Is that fine based on each occurrence or per body? Do you take Amex?
When I had the misfortune to get onto an SAP conversion project, after a while a few of us started thinking up things SAP stood for.
Sozialistische Arbeiter Programmierung Shutup And Program Stress And Pressure Stocks And Profits Stupid Ass Processing
I went back to mainframe after that. It's more open, less complicated, less prone to massive failures, easier to administer and code for. After all, SAP is just a giant rip-off of CICS ported to a distributed environment.
Training wheels first. Guardrails are for when you can go fast enough to go over the edge, like when you can't keep away from alt.teen.tranny.llama.binaries anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
7 projects, 2 of which are corporate mandates with no additional funding or 'resources' to do them, 4 other administrative tasks, plus an hour or so each day dedicated to HR-related corporate marionette-ing to satisfy the Political Correctness Police. All for 2 shell scripts and a mainframe extract. That took 3 months to get done. And this isn't even a government job.
Having sex is a barbaric action?
Only when done correctly
I understand that the bullies were unrepentant - they felt they had a "right" to hurt someone who didn't kowtow to them.
So you are saying they are Democrats?
Too bad. I was hoping there might be an equivalent to C or even perl or Java that could be used. While I develop on mainframes and *nix, I know absolutely nothing about mobile platforms. Obviously.
Why all the love for a single platform? Is it so hard to write an app that will run on multiple platforms? Rim, WinMobile,, Symbian, Android/Linux.... Why all the hate for other platforms? Most outsell the iPhone
Or did they retire that category?
OK just downloaded and it seems to include the navigation. Started it up and it accurately showed where I was, and after entering my work address it showed the most direct route there. Too bad the Nokia site is so confusing. Themain page says only certain phones are compatible, but when you download the app for your phone, it does NOT say it is the one with free satnav. Now I just need to verify that this IS satnav and not something else. But that is for tomorrow, I need sleep. Hey Nokia: Redesign your site. It is a mess of poorly designed pages, and confusing if not missing information.
Replying to myself, while I can update to v3.0 from the v2.0 the E75 came with, I do not think it is the free nav version. The OVI store is not well laid out. However the new map data required is claiming a 127 minute download over wireless. Hope work doesn't call with a crashed DB. Sigh. US gets screwed in phones and cars due to stupid regulations.
That is the EU site. I am in the US, and no mentioned there. I believe the OS versions are different.
Just checked and they do not offer it for the E75, one of their pricier, GPS enabled phones. Man, do I feel like an idiot for buying one now.
In the U.S., and I suspect Canada, cars are the instrument of death more often than guns are. Count then by gross total or per-capita population or per-capita car-owner/gun-owner, cars are more dangerous.
I know people that have been killed or injured by drivers distracted by lighting cigarettes, changing the radio or reaching for something that fell on the floor, like a CD or cassette. It is no different than if someone carelessly shoots a gun off without aiming or caring where it is pointing. Only luck prevents something bad happening.
I have been injured while biking by idiots not paying attention while driving, had my car hit by other drivers changing the radio.
So no, this law does not go too far, in fact it does not go far enough. It should mandate that anyone found driving while distracted be charged with reckless endangerment of human life.
Any driver involved in an accident while their car was moving should immediately have their license suspended and car impounded until cause can be determined. If they are at fault charged and if convicted of a simple infraction their license revoked. If injury or worse is caused they should be jailed. They are a danger to others.
Everyone has a right to travel. No one has the right to endanger others. Those that do endanger others need to be held accountable for their actions, no matter how they do so: Car, knife, gun, chemical spill, whatever.
I pay ATT each month for a data plan. I do not use anywhere near what I pay for. Most of us do not, so we are subsidizing iPhone users.
I have considered dumping the plan, but the few times a month I use it, I need it.
I would be more than willing to sign up for a pay as you go plan, especially since I would likely be in the lowest usage tier. Let the heavy users pay the heavy freight.
Pay as you go is far more fair than the socialist model used now, where the greedy get a free ride on the backs of others.
Just remember to pay cash when traveling to the E.U. and other places where prostitution is legal or Janet Napolitano will know how you like to get your kink on.
Sooo, you like school-girl outfits and peanut butter? What, no marshmallows?
Mouse set up is just a symptom of many issues with Linux on the desktop.
For Linux to become a true alternative to Win*, the various distributions and the Linux community as a whole, need to pay attention to this kind of fairly mundane user interface issues.
While I am not an OS or Linux guru, I am fairly tech-savvy. I work in I.T. supporting VLDB on the technical end. (Multi-terabyte RDBMS in UDB and Oracle, on both Unix and Z/OS).
Yet Linux, even Ubuntu or pre-loaded SLED on a Lenovo laptop are too much work for me. While I like fiddling around with settings and getting things to work to my liking, I do not want to make a second job of it. When I am off work, I do not want a second job getting my home laptop and PCs to work.
When asking why things do not work and how to get them to work, you rarely get a straight answer from the community. Yes, I know humans are very unreliable when seeking answers, and there are 20 ways, at least, to do everything in Linux, but still...
When a user wants to get a 5 button mouse to work, they do not want to be asked why would they want to do that, or told that 3 buttons should be all you need, or be handed twenty links, each of which has a different half-answer they need to piece together.
Yes, I have installed Windows from scratch, both on a laptop I bought with Linux installed, (Lenovo), and desktops I built myself, using copies of Windows bought commercially and installed out of the box. I even put the holographic sticker on after installation Which means they were not pre-built images fit to a certain hardware profile or to a specific PC. I have installed Ubuntu, SLED, OpenSuse and Fedora on laptops and desktops. So I know how easy it is to find, install and configure drivers for hardware components, both in Windows and Linux. Windows is far easier, and not just because all vendors support it. The actual interface with the OS and process itself is far, far easier in Windows.
Sure, this is largely a driver issue due to vendors not wanting to support Linux, or, as in the case of Broadcom, refusing to do so even though they have Linux drivers in the lab. Not every company is an Atheros or HP. But it is also an interface design issue that needs to be addressed. It is at least as important, if not more important, than support for the fanciest, newest video cards.
The folks that want to push desktop distros, like Canonical, SuSe, etc, need to pay far more attention to this.
I will keep an eye on the various Distros, and try them every year or so, maybe whenever Ubuntu releases an LTS version, but until the basic user interface is as easy to set up as Windows, I will stick with Windows.
I have been thinking lately, (don't let that scare you), that instead of the patent system granting exclusive rights, it should grant exclusive royalties.
In other words, it becomes a registration system that grantees payment of royalties to inventors for a specific period of time, paid by anyone that wants to use a patent.
So a patent holder can not restrict use of an invention. this allows others to use it as a base for further invention and innovation. It also removes, to a big extent, any reason for companies to fight patent awards, or try to steal or use patents without paying, which might lower the number of lawsuits, etc. Why risk paying lawyers when you can just use it cheaply and legally?.
I am not certain how to determine the royalty rate though. Could an auction system work? Or maybe a percentage of the cost to manufacture, which would be harder to fudge than percentage of profit?
One reform does need to be made, similar to what the parent mentions: You should not be able to file a patent application for anything that is already being produced and marketed by anyone, including yourself. If you forget to file and it is sold or produced before the patent application is filed, well, you screwed up. It should automatically be in the public domain, regardless of what ever kind of excuses or prior evidence you can mock up.
The world has changed since the 18th century when the basis for the U.S. patent system was formed. (I dunno about other systems). It is far easier to keep track of what people are making and selling in distant places than it was 300 years ago, and easier to assess royalties, etc. There seems to no longer need to be a simple ban on anyone else using a patent.
Yeah, lots of details lef tout, and probably lots of holes, and a bunch of new problems different than the current ones. But would it be an improvement over the current system? Maybe you patent gurus here can comment.
Just what a nation with no natural fuel resources, beyond wood and bamboo, needs: A huge, undefendable, centralized piece of critical infrastructure sitting right where everyone on the planet can reach it.
Never mind the technological arguments for and against it. The logistical ones should stop it in its tracks.
Go ahead Japan, build it. Then piss off just one nut case, like Korea, Libya, or whoever else has, or is close to being able to, lob a ballistic rock into orbit.
These huge, centralized, monolithic technological marvels that claim to be the answers to various problems all have the same vulnerability. They can be taken out by one pissed off caveman with a good throwing arm.
Haven't the lessons given by the failure of every centralized planning scheme in history taught us anything?
Why continue to ignore the lessons of evolution, free markets and decentralization?
Wait, sorry, I forgot. These are Homo Sap's we are talking about.
+1 Check the stats for the US. Cars are misused to kill more people every year in the U.S. than guns are. Whether you look at just the grand total, or per-capita, or per-thousand owned. It is about time we held people responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of the activity they were engaged in or the thing they were using. Gun, car, knife, 2x4, all can cause injury or worse. I remember back in the 1970's, (yeah, lawn, get off of it, yada...), being drunk was an EXCUSE to avoid responsibility for an accident, if not avoid vehicular man-slaughter charges. You should be able to do anything you want, play with guns, cars, drugs, politics, RealDolls, whatever, but if you screw up, no excuses. What penalty should apply in what situations can be debated, but at the very least, you should be held liable for cost of repair or replacement for any damage caused, and in the case of serious injury or death, imprisonment for the future protection of society.
Oops, sorry about that. I was texting while testing my MAC-9 sub-machine gun next door. Sorry about your family re-union, I had no idea other people were behind those shrubs what with the music and all. Is that fine based on each occurrence or per body? Do you take Amex?
Like bandwidth caps 'n stuff?
...challenge them to a race, treat girlfriends like crap and just generally act like a d0uche?
Commando Media behind the screen?
The last thing I need is a flash of Glenn Reynolds little blogger as he stands up after his last post.
When I had the misfortune to get onto an SAP conversion project, after a while a few of us started thinking up things SAP stood for.
Sozialistische Arbeiter Programmierung
Shutup And Program
Stress And Pressure
Stocks And Profits
Stupid Ass Processing
I went back to mainframe after that. It's more open, less complicated, less prone to massive failures, easier to administer and code for.
After all, SAP is just a giant rip-off of CICS ported to a distributed environment.
Training wheels first. Guardrails are for when you can go fast enough to go over the edge, like when you can't keep away from alt.teen.tranny.llama.binaries anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Wallen
Rim, Nokia, HTC, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, every phone maker is bringing out competing products, if they have not already.
There is maybe 1 more year of dominance by Apple here, then it's over.
If I was ATT, I would let Verizon overbid to get a share of the I-phone market, then promote competing products that have the same capabilities.
It would help if they upgraded their network more quickly to handle the traffic though.