Now if we can put this functionality into a Mini-iPod...
Better yet, a regular iPod for more storage!
On a more serious note, it might be interesting to have the iPod select music based on an external input, which in this case might be heart rate. One genre when you're walking, one when you're jogging, another when you're engaged in some highly aerobic activity...
The only thing dumber than the notion that unregulated P2P doesn't affect CD sales is the notion that unregulated P2P actually helps them.
Any ideas on how AutoCAD became the dominant CAD software before they started using a dongle, went flat while they used it, and then basically gained the monopoly position a couple of years later?
Unauthorized copies of AutoCAD no doubt hurt AutodDesk's bottom line... for awhile. Thereafter, it became a bottomless bag of money.
At least based on this article in the NY Times (with all the usual privacy business that people complain about), it sounds like Dell and Intel may have some explaining to do about HOW they get this incredible performance numbers...
OK... here goes my Excellent Karma for the sake of being anal about scripture.
Few modern scholars still believe Solomon was the sole author of The Book of Ecclesiastes, where "there is nothing new under the sun" is most frequently cited (Ecc. 1:9). I can think of at least 3 instances in the first 7 chapters where a variation of "under the sun" occurs, and the overriding notion is one of "nothing new here, move along." It's usually accompanied with "chasing after the wind."
Proverbs is much more a collection of one-liner wisdom, as opposed to the somber, old-age reflection of Ecclesiastes.
In best Bible Nazi voice: "No points for you!"
(Points +/- for me to be determined by those even more anal than I.)
I can imagine some prejustice around here regarding a Brazilian lead due to the massive amounts of spam from that country, but it would be silly to assume you'll get viagra spam in the theater.
You haven't seen many "movie ads" lately, have you?
Your elderly parent lives two hours away. You're made aware that there's something wrong. Instead of calling your city's 911 and explaining that the problem isn't at your house but rather in such-and-such town, you have the number for her town's 911 by your phone in case of just such an emergency, getting help to her house faster.
Though I generally agree with what you're saying about the need for 10-digit access to the call centers, my experience is that I have called 911 and been able to connect to another city's appropriate emergency service. I was online with several friends, and one of them told the rest of us that her ex (under a restraining order) had just come to the door and was threatening her. I called my local 911, explained the situation, and they connected me to the local police department for her city.
In just a minute or so, I was connected, reported the incident, and several minutes after that, the police arrived and escorted Mr. Jerk out the door. Keep in mind, this was several years ago, and the primary delay was in explaining to them what online chat was. These days, I would think many 911 operators would understand the situation more easily than they did back in 1998.
Yes, there were scenes that were left out, as you'd expect in any such translation (well, except I found myself wishing that the closing scenes of LOTR were left on the cutting room floor), but if you'd read the book, and then went to see the movie, the rise and fall of emotions paralleled almost perfectly.
According to the SecurtyFocus article, the operators had no way of knowing, because the data wasn't "live." This is a common problem with SCADA systems--the systems will display the "last known-good value" if something goes offline. However, the system should also visibly identify the data as "out of service" or "offline," and this didn't seem to happen. That could be an issue at the server, or it could be something blamed on the people commissioning the XA/21 system (assuming the display is configurable enough to allow you to program it at this level).
Even so, there should have been sufficient watchdog messages between the client, the server, and the field hardware for the XA/21 to broadcast a general alarm along the lines of "I can't talk to the stinking field, so we're all flying blind here, you morons!" This is exactly the same as software in my industry (HVAC fire/security systems for large buildings), where if you lose communication to a subsystem or the field, you have to raise alarms all over the place.
The real question is how you could lose such comm and the operators had no visible indication that they were relying on old data. This sounds like a missed requirement, if not insufficient testing.
Based on the PDF for the XA/21 system, it sounds like this wasn't related to some of the DCOM/OPC issues many (myself included) were speculating about. Thoough it's a SCADA control system (where Windows is common, though not universal), it's running on AIX (IBM or Motorola) or Solaris.
Interestingly enough, the sales literature describes it as having, "[an] established track record of field performance - over one million hours of online operation."
Shy of Multiple Inheritance (which can be a virtue or vice, depending on your perspective), there isn't much that Delphi lacks in comparison to C++. However, it leaps past C++ in terms of production cycles centered around Test Driven Development or XP, and it gives up nothing to VB in any category except marketing muscle and unwashed hordes of users.
Yes, Delphi is Pascal, but it is so much more than that.
I can't decide which is funnier... the fact that this was the first thing I thought of when I saw the article summary, or the notion that we've got 8 messages posted in a follow-up thread.
Rule #1: Treat people like adults, and they will generally act like adults and behave responsibly. When they don't (and it significantly impacts the business), see Rule #2.
Rule #2: Instead of managing for the 2% that are going to take advantage of you as an employer, manage according to the needs and behavior of the 98%. However, when you find the 2%, fire them immediately (assuming that you have defined the rules clearly).
People like knowing that there are rules, and that people who cross the line will be punished. In addition, this creates a sense of peer-influence ("Hey, moron... do you see the rest of us surfing for sports scores when we've got a deadline looming?") that is much stronger than anything you can push down from the top.
"The movie you're about to watch hasn't been pirated, illegally copied, or otherwise acquired in an illegal manner. However, a crime has been committed. You'll notice that your wallet is now approximately $5 lighter than it should be, due to the criminal pricing scheme of the distributor of this movie.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to squash this worthless distribution scheme, primarily by ignoring it.
This video will self-destruct in approximately 48 hours (that is, if you don't destroy the disk in frustration sooner)."
"They [virus writers] just sit back and wait for patches [that fix old security holes] to appear, and then it is a race to write the first virus [that exploits the new vulnerabilities due to the patch]. We [Microsoft] want to get patch deployment down from days or weeks to hours [which, by his logic, would result in the virus writers having to wait just a couple of days, or even hours, before the virus writers would have fresh vulnerabilities to exploit]."
The funny part of this is, I wrote this message, expecting it to be modded as "Flamebait" or (hopefully) "Funny." I didn't really think it was that insightful to point out the inherent comedy of his comments.
Years ago, I put a second video card in a Mac running one of the post-4.2 but pre-9.x versions of the OS. Not only did the second monitor show up as a true second desktop, but a copy of the original MacDraw (which we got along with a toaster-Mac, i.e. 128K Mac) was even able to display graphics that spanned the two monitors!!!
They may not have known beans about how to sell and market what they built, but the original Mac team knew a heck of a lot about writing tight code that used the toolbox according to the guidelines. (Which made it even more annoying to know that they made special provisions in the OS for MS apps that didn't play according to the rules. Naturally, those apps didn't fare so well running under subsequent OS revs.)
The idea that the original MacDraw app would even run in a version of the OS that supported color monitors, much less secondary monitors, was amazing. Spanning monitors with a MacDraw window... I nearly fainted.
"They just sit back and wait for patches to appear, and then it is a race to write the first virus. We want to get patch deployment down from days or weeks to hours.
Is that so virus writers won't have to wait days or weeks before releasing a new version?
In addition to helping with the plethora of menus you've described, the Macintosh-style menu has a major advantage over the current Windows-style taskbar: Infinite height. More specifically, you cannot "miss" the menus by going to high.
In contrast, you have to hit the correct horizontal range, but also the correct vertical range, both for Windowed menus, and for taskbar buttons. If you move a long-term Mac user to Windows, they will constantly battle with this, as they're accustomed to just mousing up to the top of the screen, clicking, and then just scanning back and forth to find the right menu.
In Windows, this just is dramatically more challenging, so most users never develop that habit.
Food is another example. Have you ever eaten at a small town cafe in the south of France? The food is like heaven. The only places that produce exceptional meals in the US are $100 per plate uber expensive restaurants.
Isn't that rather like me telling you, "Have you ever eaten at any of the thousands of small-town shops sprinkled around the US?" To assume that the only "exceptional meals in the US" are those found at $100/plate restaurants is being just as arrogant and uninformed. Isn't it? The sheer geographic size of the US makes it unlikely that the average person could name some a specific culinary delights from each of the 50 states, though there's no doubt that each one has it's own specialties.
Likewise, have you eaten in one of the thousands of small places in Asia that serve a wide variety of different styles of food? You may have, but I haven't. Does that mean I dismiss it out of hand as bad? No, but for me, it certainly ranks as "irrelevant," because I'll probably never have the opportunity to eat there.
Same with the small cafes in France. I'm glad they're judged to be better than anywhere else on the planet, but until I travel to France, knowing that it's so great doesn't really affect me any more than your lack of knowledge about how good (or bad) a "Hot Brown" is when prepared in a small cafe in KY.
Contrary to popular belief, even though there are McDonald's covering much of this nation, there are other places to eat. Also, you should realize that the culture of the US is such that many people know little about what goes on in other states, much less in other nations.
You may think that's arrogant or self-centered, but for many US citizens, spending a bunch of time considering the nuances of culture outside of my back yard is just as important as French cuisine is to someone starving in an impoverished nation.
At my previous employer, the Network Admin built a rack for the modem pool out of Lego blocks, and glued them together once he got the design right. Naturally, it fit the modems perfectly, and it had the right level of "geek chic" for a technology company.
Needless to say, my current employer (a Fortune 100 company) would probably never stand for such a thing.
I seem to remember a Scientific American article from years ago that determined, via slow-motion photography, that each time the stone hits, it flips over. Anyone else heard of this?
Tim
Re:Heresy and Slashdot (was Proud to be a Heretic!
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
You're suggesting that Slashdot is the home of Linux? Granted, there are more than a couple of Linux supporters here, but this is also a forum for discussing a great deal of other issues.
At the moment, I really like what I see Apple doing with iPod/iTunes. What I've seen from them appeals to me as a consumer much more so than what I've seen from the competition. Even so, I don't want someone pushing the iRiver/OGG agenda to get squashed in the middle of the mini-iPod thread, simply because a fellow iPod fan doesn't like what he has to say.
I've got a pro-truth bias. If I'm wrong about something, I want someone to point it out to me, so I can stop being wrong. I don't want someone to moderate a dissenting opinion down as Flamebait, thus causing me to never see it (default viewing at +3), and me lose the opportunity of correction.
Years ago, my father instilled in me the notion that if something is true, further examination won't reveal it to be less true. This has served me well when discussing theology as well as technology, where "religious" debates abound.
I agree completely with browsing at -1, and generally do so only when I've got moderator points. I want to make sure that I see everything, just in case something new comes in, or in case I know enough about a topic to mod up something that has merit.
Slashdot Mirror
Now if we can put this functionality into a Mini-iPod...
/.
Better yet, a regular iPod for more storage!
On a more serious note, it might be interesting to have the iPod select music based on an external input, which in this case might be heart rate. One genre when you're walking, one when you're jogging, another when you're engaged in some highly aerobic activity...
Wait, this is
Nevermind.
Tim
Unauthorized copies of AutoCAD no doubt hurt AutodDesk's bottom line... for awhile. Thereafter, it became a bottomless bag of money.
Tim
Subsequent missing persons reports about this student have not implicated the professor in any wrongdoing.
Tim
Tim
(from background)
DOOOMED!
...that Apple made a huge blunder there (not supporting Real Networks). I'm sure they're kicking themselves over it.
Tim
OK... here goes my Excellent Karma for the sake of being anal about scripture.
Few modern scholars still believe Solomon was the sole author of The Book of Ecclesiastes, where "there is nothing new under the sun" is most frequently cited (Ecc. 1:9). I can think of at least 3 instances in the first 7 chapters where a variation of "under the sun" occurs, and the overriding notion is one of "nothing new here, move along." It's usually accompanied with "chasing after the wind."
Proverbs is much more a collection of one-liner wisdom, as opposed to the somber, old-age reflection of Ecclesiastes.
In best Bible Nazi voice: "No points for you!"
(Points +/- for me to be determined by those even more anal than I.)
Tim
Tim
In just a minute or so, I was connected, reported the incident, and several minutes after that, the police arrived and escorted Mr. Jerk out the door. Keep in mind, this was several years ago, and the primary delay was in explaining to them what online chat was. These days, I would think many 911 operators would understand the situation more easily than they did back in 1998.
Tim
Yes, there were scenes that were left out, as you'd expect in any such translation (well, except I found myself wishing that the closing scenes of LOTR were left on the cutting room floor), but if you'd read the book, and then went to see the movie, the rise and fall of emotions paralleled almost perfectly.
Tim
According to the SecurtyFocus article, the operators had no way of knowing, because the data wasn't "live." This is a common problem with SCADA systems--the systems will display the "last known-good value" if something goes offline. However, the system should also visibly identify the data as "out of service" or "offline," and this didn't seem to happen. That could be an issue at the server, or it could be something blamed on the people commissioning the XA/21 system (assuming the display is configurable enough to allow you to program it at this level).
Even so, there should have been sufficient watchdog messages between the client, the server, and the field hardware for the XA/21 to broadcast a general alarm along the lines of "I can't talk to the stinking field, so we're all flying blind here, you morons!" This is exactly the same as software in my industry (HVAC fire/security systems for large buildings), where if you lose communication to a subsystem or the field, you have to raise alarms all over the place.
The real question is how you could lose such comm and the operators had no visible indication that they were relying on old data. This sounds like a missed requirement, if not insufficient testing.
Tim
Based on the PDF for the XA/21 system, it sounds like this wasn't related to some of the DCOM/OPC issues many (myself included) were speculating about. Thoough it's a SCADA control system (where Windows is common, though not universal), it's running on AIX (IBM or Motorola) or Solaris.
Interestingly enough, the sales literature describes it as having, "[an] established track record of field performance - over one million hours of online operation."
I wonder if they'll revise the brochure now?
Tim
Hear, hear!
Shy of Multiple Inheritance (which can be a virtue or vice, depending on your perspective), there isn't much that Delphi lacks in comparison to C++. However, it leaps past C++ in terms of production cycles centered around Test Driven Development or XP, and it gives up nothing to VB in any category except marketing muscle and unwashed hordes of users.
Yes, Delphi is Pascal, but it is so much more than that.
Tim
I can't decide which is funnier... the fact that this was the first thing I thought of when I saw the article summary, or the notion that we've got 8 messages posted in a follow-up thread.
LOL...
Tim
Rule #1: Treat people like adults, and they will generally act like adults and behave responsibly. When they don't (and it significantly impacts the business), see Rule #2.
Rule #2: Instead of managing for the 2% that are going to take advantage of you as an employer, manage according to the needs and behavior of the 98%. However, when you find the 2%, fire them immediately (assuming that you have defined the rules clearly).
People like knowing that there are rules, and that people who cross the line will be punished. In addition, this creates a sense of peer-influence ("Hey, moron... do you see the rest of us surfing for sports scores when we've got a deadline looming?") that is much stronger than anything you can push down from the top.
Tim
"The movie you're about to watch hasn't been pirated, illegally copied, or otherwise acquired in an illegal manner. However, a crime has been committed. You'll notice that your wallet is now approximately $5 lighter than it should be, due to the criminal pricing scheme of the distributor of this movie.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to squash this worthless distribution scheme, primarily by ignoring it.
This video will self-destruct in approximately 48 hours (that is, if you don't destroy the disk in frustration sooner)."
Tim
The funny part of this is, I wrote this message, expecting it to be modded as "Flamebait" or (hopefully) "Funny." I didn't really think it was that insightful to point out the inherent comedy of his comments.
Tim
On this machine, running Win2K, I can miss the buttons by going too low. There is at least 2-3 pixels of space below each button.
I noticed this the first time I used Win95, and it's bugged me ever since.
Tim
P.S. It's even more annoying when you're using a trackpoint device.
Years ago, I put a second video card in a Mac running one of the post-4.2 but pre-9.x versions of the OS. Not only did the second monitor show up as a true second desktop, but a copy of the original MacDraw (which we got along with a toaster-Mac, i.e. 128K Mac) was even able to display graphics that spanned the two monitors!!!
They may not have known beans about how to sell and market what they built, but the original Mac team knew a heck of a lot about writing tight code that used the toolbox according to the guidelines. (Which made it even more annoying to know that they made special provisions in the OS for MS apps that didn't play according to the rules. Naturally, those apps didn't fare so well running under subsequent OS revs.)
The idea that the original MacDraw app would even run in a version of the OS that supported color monitors, much less secondary monitors, was amazing. Spanning monitors with a MacDraw window... I nearly fainted.
Tim
Is that so virus writers won't have to wait days or weeks before releasing a new version?
Tim
In addition to helping with the plethora of menus you've described, the Macintosh-style menu has a major advantage over the current Windows-style taskbar: Infinite height. More specifically, you cannot "miss" the menus by going to high.
In contrast, you have to hit the correct horizontal range, but also the correct vertical range, both for Windowed menus, and for taskbar buttons. If you move a long-term Mac user to Windows, they will constantly battle with this, as they're accustomed to just mousing up to the top of the screen, clicking, and then just scanning back and forth to find the right menu.
In Windows, this just is dramatically more challenging, so most users never develop that habit.
Tim
Isn't that rather like me telling you, "Have you ever eaten at any of the thousands of small-town shops sprinkled around the US?" To assume that the only "exceptional meals in the US" are those found at $100/plate restaurants is being just as arrogant and uninformed. Isn't it? The sheer geographic size of the US makes it unlikely that the average person could name some a specific culinary delights from each of the 50 states, though there's no doubt that each one has it's own specialties.
Likewise, have you eaten in one of the thousands of small places in Asia that serve a wide variety of different styles of food? You may have, but I haven't. Does that mean I dismiss it out of hand as bad? No, but for me, it certainly ranks as "irrelevant," because I'll probably never have the opportunity to eat there.
Same with the small cafes in France. I'm glad they're judged to be better than anywhere else on the planet, but until I travel to France, knowing that it's so great doesn't really affect me any more than your lack of knowledge about how good (or bad) a "Hot Brown" is when prepared in a small cafe in KY.
Contrary to popular belief, even though there are McDonald's covering much of this nation, there are other places to eat. Also, you should realize that the culture of the US is such that many people know little about what goes on in other states, much less in other nations.
You may think that's arrogant or self-centered, but for many US citizens, spending a bunch of time considering the nuances of culture outside of my back yard is just as important as French cuisine is to someone starving in an impoverished nation.
Tim
At my previous employer, the Network Admin built a rack for the modem pool out of Lego blocks, and glued them together once he got the design right. Naturally, it fit the modems perfectly, and it had the right level of "geek chic" for a technology company.
Needless to say, my current employer (a Fortune 100 company) would probably never stand for such a thing.
Tim
I seem to remember a Scientific American article from years ago that determined, via slow-motion photography, that each time the stone hits, it flips over. Anyone else heard of this?
Tim
You're suggesting that Slashdot is the home of Linux? Granted, there are more than a couple of Linux supporters here, but this is also a forum for discussing a great deal of other issues.
At the moment, I really like what I see Apple doing with iPod/iTunes. What I've seen from them appeals to me as a consumer much more so than what I've seen from the competition. Even so, I don't want someone pushing the iRiver/OGG agenda to get squashed in the middle of the mini-iPod thread, simply because a fellow iPod fan doesn't like what he has to say.
I've got a pro-truth bias. If I'm wrong about something, I want someone to point it out to me, so I can stop being wrong. I don't want someone to moderate a dissenting opinion down as Flamebait, thus causing me to never see it (default viewing at +3), and me lose the opportunity of correction.
Years ago, my father instilled in me the notion that if something is true, further examination won't reveal it to be less true. This has served me well when discussing theology as well as technology, where "religious" debates abound.
I agree completely with browsing at -1, and generally do so only when I've got moderator points. I want to make sure that I see everything, just in case something new comes in, or in case I know enough about a topic to mod up something that has merit.
Tim