admin a Linux box is easy, what he has done is not.
The website gives it away: "I was working on a client project back in 2009, a Craigslist aggregator which I wrote in Catalyst, and spent a large portion of my vacation in Mexico trying to get it to work on the client's IIS server. It was a nightmare. At the time, I'd already heard of Heroku, a simple deployment solution for Ruby-based web apps, and I thought: why Ruby and not us? I spent weeks researching Heroku, and the work on Phenona had begun."
Really? When he was 13 he was working on a Craigslist aggregator that he wrote in Catalyst and he spent a large portion of his Mexico vacation working on it?
Does that sound realistic to anyone? Not to mention the website reads like it's done by a grad student with a English minor rather than a 15 yr old right out of Freshman English. I'd almost believe it if he went to private school but according to his website he attends Inglemoor High School, a public school.
His father found a genius way to pay for his college or at least get him a great job someday: write a neat program, then convince struggling business to "buy" it for the publicity by claim 15 yr wrote the program. Now someone will hire him because he's some sort of programming genius.
You do realize there isn't even a video of this thing lifting off the ground, right? Only video they have is one showing blades spinning with smoke going through it.
I could attach two fans to a chair, doesn't mean it goes an estimated 190mph or above 10,000 ft.
Before showing up on/. I'd like to see some evidence of it working, and that means a video of it lifting off the ground to at least 10 feet.
Apparently you're right, hoverbike is complete vaporware, there's not one video or photo of this thing more than 3 feet off the ground yet it's "able to reach an estimated height of more than 10,000 feet and reach an indicated airspeed of 150 knots (278 km/h or 173 mph)"
Videos coming soon: "We did hope to film the last test flight un-tethered, but unfortunately we needed to rebuild the propeller gearboxes due to unforeseen localized stress on a section of the mounting points" READ It crashed
Come on gizmag, I'd expect better than this, I can attach giant propellers to a seat too, would you do a whole story on it?
"So until smart phones get their act together I think there will be scope for the likes of the Vita & 3DS."
The 3DS will do fine but the Vita will flop, as has all recent portable game systems released by Sony. Their market now plays games on smartphones while the market for the 3DS are usually too young for expensive smartphones and people will buy it for the innovative 3D.
It comes down to this: new game came out, you can either buy $200 portable system and pay $40 for the game or download it to your iOS device for $10. Guess what most people will do?
Thank you, finally someone explains it perfectly. The real question is how did this even make it to the news? Seems rather obvious that wireless syncing would become a feature at some point. He should be happy he sold 50,000 copies at $10 a pop.
Only difference is the school had a better excuse. If the tech said he was writing a book on female Mac users and the repair TOS had on it somewhere that he could take pictures it would have been legal.
Created the internet? I'm sorry, but the Internet has been popular for over 20 years, when these 37 yr olds were still teenage kids. None of them "created" the Internet. They might have made some of the more popular websites that came out late 90s like google, amazon, paypal, etc, but they did not create the Internet. It was there, they just made it more useful.
Of course you would be in your rights, but since when has that stopped people from suing?
if you have money for lawsuits then post them or reply or make phone calls. If you don't, just delete them.
I made the unfortunate mistake of getting lastname@popularfreewebmail.com many years ago. I get bombarded with emails from friends, neighbors and teachers, talking about how Timmy did on a test or the barbecue next month. I use to reply and get "oh sorry!" back, but now I just delete them, it's just too risky
neighbors call, and what people asking directions? They have cellphones and they don't stop at my house, there's plenty of businesses to go to. Police? Do you have police ringing your bell a lot? I wish the postman would ring, but they only leave notes and run away or just leave the package and don't even bother to ring.
Only person I want to ring is the pizza guy but since I'm home when he rings I don't need a doorbell that calls me.
Everything you just described could be done over wifi VoIP without the expensive monthly 3G bill.
Why not just tape a prepaid cellphone to the door with your number in the speed dial and a note that says "hold 1 to call someone to the door"? Wow... did I just invent something?! Now I just need a 13... no, make that an 11 yr old kid to peddle it....
I've never had a landline. No, seriously. Cellphones have been affordable for 10+ years now, many people under 35 have never needed a landline, they left home at 18 and got a cellphone and that's all they've ever used. My parents and grandparents have landlines but that's because they're old.
Wonder how hard it would be to wire a doorbell to a Droid running Skype? Oh, wait, nevermind, I never answer my doorbell anyway since friends and family call before they arrive. Only people ringing the doorbell are salesmen who can't read the giant no soliciting sign.
Agreed: this is not practical or needed, and that's why no one has "invented" it in the past. Who wants to pay $50 a month for a doorbell? For that matter, who uses doorbells anymore? Friends and family call before they arrive and I'm already home when the pizza guy rings. I can't think of any reason I would need a doorbell that calls my cellphone. The "stops burglars" argument is very weak, I could get a alarm system for the house that would cost half as much monthly than a 3G doorbell would cost. I know they're claiming 20,000+ orders already but I don't buy it, this is a press release remember, I've published press releases and seen writers publish it without even calling or emailing the company to see if they exist.
"But if he is 38, that doesn't make him magically too old to tell what all the teens are doing..... "
Yes, it does. Unless he's a researcher studying teens, 38 years old makes you too old to tell what teenagers are doing. His teenage kids should have written the article, they would have better insight into what teenagers think of MMORPGs.
and this part threw me for a loop: " In the later part of the 90's I was working in a high stress industry that required long hours and a good part of my soul, but it paid really well. As friends of mine started to migrate away to new internet start up firms in droves, I was tempted to follow them for the promises of a better work environment and fat stacks of quick cash. Luckily, I had a fiancee..."
Um, how old is this guy? A 30 yr old would be in his teens in the later part of the 90s, not exactly fiancee age with friends joining internet firms.
Don't get me wrong, 38 isn't too old to be playing MMORPGs, but perhaps he's not the best judge of if the bubble is bursting or not. Perhaps the MMORPG bubble is bursting for almost 40-somethings like himself, the article would be more believable if it came from a 20-something with some actual numbers showing a decline in players
"0.5% yeah right. Some of us live out in BFE where there is no internet beyond dialup"
No access to broadband? No access to 3G? Yeah, I'd say you're the last 0.5% of the population, and that the other 99.5% have access to either broadband or 3G.
When Starcraft 2 came out last year I felt cheated that it only contained the Terran campaign but was still eager to shell out $$$ for the Zerg and Protoss additional campaigns. Now I don't care, they've taken too long, I definitely won't be standing in line at midnight to buy Heart of the Swarm. In fact, unless it's cheap (~$20), I'll probably just wait and find a copy of it somewhere.
I've just had a quick look at the nVidia GPU comparison page over at wikipedia, and the NVS 140M sports the infamous G86M chip, which was known to be faulty. You remember all the flak nVidia got due to the 8400M/8600M fiasco, don't you?
8400M/8600M fiasco: "Some chips of the GeForce 8 series (concretely those from the G84 and G86 series) may suffer from an overheating problem. NVIDIA states this issue should not affect many chips,[37] whereas others assert that all of the chips in these series are potentially affected.[37] NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett were involved in a lawsuit filed on September 9, 2008 alleging that their knowledge of the flaw, and their intent to hide it, resulted in NVIDIA losing 31% on the stock markets.[38]
The reason for the high failure rate was because of improper selection of the underfill material for the chip. Underfill materials are a type of glue that keeps the silicon die firmly attached to the packaging material, which is where the connection to the actual pins takes place. On the affected chips, the working temperature of the underfill material was too low for the task and allowed the chip to move slightly if temperature was raised above a certain level, weakening the solder joints by which the die is attached. This eventually leads to a catastrophic failure, although the way the chip fails is quite random."
I will never buy another NVIDIA powered laptop after this:
"As part of a December 2010 settlement agreement, NVIDIA agreed to provide all owners of laptops containing a defective NVIDIA GPU with a laptop of similar kind and value. In February, NVIDIA announced that a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 would be provided as a replacement to all laptops — from $2500 dual-core tablet PCs to $2000 17" entertainment notebooks. "
That's the most f***** up thing I've ever heard. That's like Porsche replacing my car with an Escort when the engine explodes. Any positive stories about NVIDIA should be banned from Slashdot after that.
"It more then satisfied the 'calculus for babies' requirements of Business and Comp Sci."
Are you kidding? I don't know about business but where I went to school the Comp Sci major included a minor in Math because you had to take that much math, as much if not more than the engineers. IF I recall it was Cal I, II, III, Differential Equations and Linear Algebra for Comp Sci. Of course this was an engineering school, there was no "Math for Dummies", Comp Sci and engineers sat next to each other in the same calculus courses. Closest thing they had to "Math for Dummies" was an accelerated Algebra/Trig/Everything-Before-Calculus one semester course. If you couldn't pass that you couldn't go to the school because there was no math course below that.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is Obama failed at math. According to the article there are 1.9 million engineers in the US and there is an unemployment rate of 4.5% across all engineers. That means there's roughly 85,000 engineers without jobs, and Obama wants to train 10,000 NEW engineers?
Obama, you already have 85,000 engineers looking for jobs, you don't need 10,000 more unless you want 95,000 engineers looking for jobs
admin a Linux box is easy, what he has done is not.
The website gives it away:
"I was working on a client project back in 2009, a Craigslist aggregator which I wrote in Catalyst, and spent a large portion of my vacation in Mexico trying to get it to work on the client's IIS server. It was a nightmare. At the time, I'd already heard of Heroku, a simple deployment solution for Ruby-based web apps, and I thought: why Ruby and not us? I spent weeks researching Heroku, and the work on Phenona had begun."
Really? When he was 13 he was working on a Craigslist aggregator that he wrote in Catalyst and he spent a large portion of his Mexico vacation working on it?
Does that sound realistic to anyone? Not to mention the website reads like it's done by a grad student with a English minor rather than a 15 yr old right out of Freshman English. I'd almost believe it if he went to private school but according to his website he attends Inglemoor High School, a public school.
His father found a genius way to pay for his college or at least get him a great job someday: write a neat program, then convince struggling business to "buy" it for the publicity by claim 15 yr wrote the program. Now someone will hire him because he's some sort of programming genius.
"The reason for the tethers and the 3 feet max,"
/. I'd like to see some evidence of it working, and that means a video of it lifting off the ground to at least 10 feet.
You do realize there isn't even a video of this thing lifting off the ground, right? Only video they have is one showing blades spinning with smoke going through it.
I could attach two fans to a chair, doesn't mean it goes an estimated 190mph or above 10,000 ft.
Before showing up on
Apparently you're right, hoverbike is complete vaporware, there's not one video or photo of this thing more than 3 feet off the ground yet it's "able to reach an estimated height of more than 10,000 feet and reach an indicated airspeed of 150 knots (278 km/h or 173 mph)"
Only video they have is from February of smoke through the rotors, so they know how to upload videos they just don't have any videos of this thing off the ground.
Videos coming soon:
"We did hope to film the last test flight un-tethered, but unfortunately we needed to rebuild the propeller gearboxes due to unforeseen localized stress on a section of the mounting points"
READ It crashed
Come on gizmag, I'd expect better than this, I can attach giant propellers to a seat too, would you do a whole story on it?
"So until smart phones get their act together I think there will be scope for the likes of the Vita & 3DS."
The 3DS will do fine but the Vita will flop, as has all recent portable game systems released by Sony. Their market now plays games on smartphones while the market for the 3DS are usually too young for expensive smartphones and people will buy it for the innovative 3D.
Smartphone gaming is the future. Apparently you guys have a bit of a problem with touchscreens but hundreds of millions of iOS devices have been sold, the public has spoken. Call of Duty: Zombies was one of the most popular iOS games of 2010 and it features those two onscreen joysticks you hate so much.
It comes down to this: new game came out, you can either buy $200 portable system and pay $40 for the game or download it to your iOS device for $10. Guess what most people will do?
Thank you, finally someone explains it perfectly. The real question is how did this even make it to the news? Seems rather obvious that wireless syncing would become a feature at some point. He should be happy he sold 50,000 copies at $10 a pop.
Only difference is the school had a better excuse. If the tech said he was writing a book on female Mac users and the repair TOS had on it somewhere that he could take pictures it would have been legal.
So these are college girls? But the article called them women? It's not the same, hasn't anyone seen girls gone wild?
Created the internet? I'm sorry, but the Internet has been popular for over 20 years, when these 37 yr olds were still teenage kids. None of them "created" the Internet. They might have made some of the more popular websites that came out late 90s like google, amazon, paypal, etc, but they did not create the Internet. It was there, they just made it more useful.
Of course you would be in your rights, but since when has that stopped people from suing?
if you have money for lawsuits then post them or reply or make phone calls. If you don't, just delete them.
I made the unfortunate mistake of getting lastname@popularfreewebmail.com many years ago. I get bombarded with emails from friends, neighbors and teachers, talking about how Timmy did on a test or the barbecue next month. I use to reply and get "oh sorry!" back, but now I just delete them, it's just too risky
neighbors call, and what people asking directions? They have cellphones and they don't stop at my house, there's plenty of businesses to go to. Police? Do you have police ringing your bell a lot? I wish the postman would ring, but they only leave notes and run away or just leave the package and don't even bother to ring.
Only person I want to ring is the pizza guy but since I'm home when he rings I don't need a doorbell that calls me.
Everything you just described could be done over wifi VoIP without the expensive monthly 3G bill.
Why not just tape a prepaid cellphone to the door with your number in the speed dial and a note that says "hold 1 to call someone to the door"? Wow... did I just invent something?! Now I just need a 13... no, make that an 11 yr old kid to peddle it....
I've never had a landline. No, seriously. Cellphones have been affordable for 10+ years now, many people under 35 have never needed a landline, they left home at 18 and got a cellphone and that's all they've ever used. My parents and grandparents have landlines but that's because they're old.
Wonder how hard it would be to wire a doorbell to a Droid running Skype? Oh, wait, nevermind, I never answer my doorbell anyway since friends and family call before they arrive. Only people ringing the doorbell are salesmen who can't read the giant no soliciting sign.
Agreed: this is not practical or needed, and that's why no one has "invented" it in the past. Who wants to pay $50 a month for a doorbell? For that matter, who uses doorbells anymore? Friends and family call before they arrive and I'm already home when the pizza guy rings. I can't think of any reason I would need a doorbell that calls my cellphone. The "stops burglars" argument is very weak, I could get a alarm system for the house that would cost half as much monthly than a 3G doorbell would cost. I know they're claiming 20,000+ orders already but I don't buy it, this is a press release remember, I've published press releases and seen writers publish it without even calling or emailing the company to see if they exist.
Scary thought: 8 year old doesn't remember a time before PSP or DS... or PS3, Wii and Xbox360....ugh, let's not talk about 8 yr olds....
"But if he is 38, that doesn't make him magically too old to tell what all the teens are doing..... "
Yes, it does. Unless he's a researcher studying teens, 38 years old makes you too old to tell what teenagers are doing. His teenage kids should have written the article, they would have better insight into what teenagers think of MMORPGs.
and this part threw me for a loop:
" In the later part of the 90's I was working in a high stress industry that required long hours and a good part of my soul, but it paid really well. As friends of mine started to migrate away to new internet start up firms in droves, I was tempted to follow them for the promises of a better work environment and fat stacks of quick cash. Luckily, I had a fiancee..."
Um, how old is this guy? A 30 yr old would be in his teens in the later part of the 90s, not exactly fiancee age with friends joining internet firms.
This thread on a WoW forum has a Medawky (same name as author of this article) turning 35 back in 2008 making him 38 now. Medawky is also the name of a high level (82 is high, right?) WoW character which leads me to believe it's the same guy
Don't get me wrong, 38 isn't too old to be playing MMORPGs, but perhaps he's not the best judge of if the bubble is bursting or not. Perhaps the MMORPG bubble is bursting for almost 40-somethings like himself, the article would be more believable if it came from a 20-something with some actual numbers showing a decline in players
I didn't understand it either, 1280x800 10" screen? My touchscreen laptop is 1280x768 and only 8.9", what's the big deal? Then I saw this video comparing the Pixel Qi to an iPad outdoors.
Anyone else notice every Bitcoin reference is by a Anonymous Coward? SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
"0.5% yeah right. Some of us live out in BFE where there is no internet beyond dialup"
No access to broadband? No access to 3G? Yeah, I'd say you're the last 0.5% of the population, and that the other 99.5% have access to either broadband or 3G.
You have plenty of time, Heart of the Swarm won't come out until 2012 at the earliest.
When Starcraft 2 came out last year I felt cheated that it only contained the Terran campaign but was still eager to shell out $$$ for the Zerg and Protoss additional campaigns. Now I don't care, they've taken too long, I definitely won't be standing in line at midnight to buy Heart of the Swarm. In fact, unless it's cheap (~$20), I'll probably just wait and find a copy of it somewhere.
I've just had a quick look at the nVidia GPU comparison page over at wikipedia, and the NVS 140M sports the infamous G86M chip, which was known to be faulty. You remember all the flak nVidia got due to the 8400M/8600M fiasco, don't you?
8400M/8600M fiasco:
"Some chips of the GeForce 8 series (concretely those from the G84 and G86 series) may suffer from an overheating problem. NVIDIA states this issue should not affect many chips,[37] whereas others assert that all of the chips in these series are potentially affected.[37] NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett were involved in a lawsuit filed on September 9, 2008 alleging that their knowledge of the flaw, and their intent to hide it, resulted in NVIDIA losing 31% on the stock markets.[38] The reason for the high failure rate was because of improper selection of the underfill material for the chip. Underfill materials are a type of glue that keeps the silicon die firmly attached to the packaging material, which is where the connection to the actual pins takes place. On the affected chips, the working temperature of the underfill material was too low for the task and allowed the chip to move slightly if temperature was raised above a certain level, weakening the solder joints by which the die is attached. This eventually leads to a catastrophic failure, although the way the chip fails is quite random."
I will never buy another NVIDIA powered laptop after this:
"As part of a December 2010 settlement agreement, NVIDIA agreed to provide all owners of laptops containing a defective NVIDIA GPU with a laptop of similar kind and value. In February, NVIDIA announced that a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 would be provided as a replacement to all laptops — from $2500 dual-core tablet PCs to $2000 17" entertainment notebooks. "
That's the most f***** up thing I've ever heard. That's like Porsche replacing my car with an Escort when the engine explodes. Any positive stories about NVIDIA should be banned from Slashdot after that.
"It more then satisfied the 'calculus for babies' requirements of Business and Comp Sci."
Are you kidding? I don't know about business but where I went to school the Comp Sci major included a minor in Math because you had to take that much math, as much if not more than the engineers. IF I recall it was Cal I, II, III, Differential Equations and Linear Algebra for Comp Sci. Of course this was an engineering school, there was no "Math for Dummies", Comp Sci and engineers sat next to each other in the same calculus courses. Closest thing they had to "Math for Dummies" was an accelerated Algebra/Trig/Everything-Before-Calculus one semester course. If you couldn't pass that you couldn't go to the school because there was no math course below that.
"I tried being an engineer, but couldn't get accepted..."
and now you're an Anonymous Coward on slashdot. Next!