"Think it through. I don't think I need to explain how."
Actually I think you need to think it through and an explanation on how he could do all 12 hours by just doing 1 hour is necessary.
My question is when does the next minute begin? When he finishes cleaning everything off or when he begins wiping it off? I'd probably buy this if they offered it as a computer program and set it up on a tablet inside a box.
"Other than that, I hope the patents are challenged and that each and every one of them are invalidated"
they were challenged, twice, and they passed each time. RTFA: "... two groundbreaking patents, including one that has passed two separate reexaminations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and resulted in a $565 million federal court judgment in 2004."
Microsoft threw their billions at them and lost big. Guess we better all line up and get screwed because all those companies combined do not have the money Microsoft has.
It still amazes me that companies can own patents on the most basic things on the internet.
"Bring on the clones. We don't have to play the crappy ones."
Especially when there is no original for that system: there is no flOw for the iPhone or Touch, so what's a person to do? I'm very disappointed the creator of flOw didn't just ask for the game and start charging for it instead of just taking it down... actually I'm shocked, because all this free publicity probably would have made sales go through the roof. I'd buy it after reading the article.
that'll work until they have a camera on the other side
Enemy of the State. Things have changed so much that they could make it now and be more realistic without satellites tracking individual people, just link stoplight cameras, speed cameras, store surveillance cameras and Predators. Hell throw in a few camera phones for good measure. Surveillance has come a very long way in just 11 years.
"iPhone, and other net-connected services, people will burn-out, and sales will plummet."
burn out from paying 99 cents for iPhone apps? Doubtful, but I must admit with so many 99 cent apps I'm now to the point where I won't even pay 99 cents if the app doesn't have a free version to test first.
Who can claim copyright on their wedding? Apparently it's the groom who took down the video. Why would you tell the world you got married, then try to take it back? Looks like the video is still up, my guess is the video in this post wasn't the original. Next stop: plastic surgeon to fix his wife's beak. Looks like being a software guru doesn't get the chicks after all.
"$8/hr for an IT internship is close to minimum wage here in New York, so that makes me question what kind of internship this is.
What's the description of your internship? If you're getting paid this little, I'm going to assume that you're taking a help desk role (I hope you're not)."
$8 an hour? Where are you, India? The minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr, so you're just barely getting minimum wage, which is usually reserved for high school dropouts, ex-convicts or others with little or no education or experience. To accept such a low rate while in college and after getting your A+ and Network+ is quite a smack in the face. I know the economy is bad but keep looking, you should be able to find at least $13-$15/hr.
" schools look for any excuse to fire teachers who have been around the longest, because they cost the most money. Then they can hire a new teacher for a lot cheaper."
"The end result is that such devices have INCREDIBLE battery life.
Over and over I hear how important this is. Why is it important?... how hard is it to plug in your e-book reader overnight?"
It's not, but it seems like everything has to be plugged in every night. We have laptops and cellphones and mp3 players and now our books? All requiring nightly charging. It becomes a chore. Wouldn't it be nice to use something several minutes a day for a few weeks before having to charge it? And another thing: long battery life means I can leave it unplugged for longer. If I don't charge my laptop for a week there's practically no power left. I'd love to leave the mp3 player or ebook sit for a month, come back and see it still has 10+ hrs of usage left.
"It's totally insane (and probably hernia-inducing), and I so don't want to get mugged, but it lasted for 6+ hours while on a long train ride recently."
"But if one could dictate e-mails and such into it, then a 12" tablet might start to replace PCs and netbooks..."
Then you need Google Mobile App for iPhone with Voice Search. The example he uses is not sped up, it really does recognize what you said within a second and searches. I have no idea how it works so incredibly fast but I desperately wish my PC had Voice Search. If MS could build this into Windows 7 somehow I could seriously see myself dictating e-mails. Nice to see voice recognition technology come so far, gives me hope that we'll be speaking to our PCs Star Trek style within the next ten years.
Unfortunately it doesn't work outside of google on the iPhone.
"At the $250 price level, the larger screen would have been worth it; at $500, no way."
Let's not forget there's a huge legal battle going on too, and these companies aren't exactly dell, they don't have billions to fight off in court, if they go under and something breaks on your $500 JooJoo how do you get your money back from a defunct company in Taiwan? And how does this Taiwan company think they own it? If I went to some guy and said "hey i want you to build this for me, here's the design and schematic", and he said screw off, built it himself and sold a million copies, I think I'd have some legal recourse.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven. Runs proprietary code so who knows what you can really do with it. It's like a large iPod Touch at double the price with no developers and made in Taiwan, what good is it really? How come I can buy a fake iPod touch for $50 but this thing is $500 and really just a larger iPod Touch? Something doesn't add up.
Agreed. Have they thought how much it'll cost to replace him? He's been there 10+ years, he built the network they're on, he knows everything there is to know about the system, how do you replace that? They're probably going to hire whoever pretends to know what they're doing the most and get nothing done. How do you know the next guy won't do something far worse? This is a witch hunt that will end up costing the school district hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of embarrassment.
"Two days in jail seems fitting, for the crime of annoying the hell out of every other moviegoer in the theater who paid $$ to watch a cheesy vampire emo movie."
THANK YOU!!!
"...a few other family members singing “Happy Birthday” to her 29-year-old sister at the theater."
29? seeing a cheesy emo whoa-is-me teenage vampire movie?...is she slow? Maybe that's why they were taping it, might be the last time her sister will see a movie since the large brain tumor is seriously impacting her judgement ability.
sister: hey everybody let's go see twilight movie!!!!
family: no, we really can't, it's a very poor movie
sister: awww but i wanna i wanna i wanna
family: well.... ok, we love you and want to make the last few months of your life as happy as possible
sister: YAAAAAAAA!! I SEE SPARKLE VAMPIRES!
"Just what we need - more people thinking that since they can play games they can do it in real life."
The description leaves out that he beat 25,000 other Gran Turismo players in a online contest sponsored by a magazine for which the grand prize was to race in a real race car. When he won and actually drove well, then he became a pro race driver.
So really, the gaming only gave him the opportunity to try to race for free. It could have been a contest for anything really, could have won a pie eating contest with the prize being racing. The description and article are a bit misleading. I might be great at trama center, I might even win a contest against thousands of other people, but until I'm given a real scalpel, perform surgeries and save patients, medical doctor I am not.
Winning race car contest != great race car driver in real life
"My $1,000 colour laser printer came with full-capacity toner cartridges."
$1,000?! Buddy you bought the printer and ten toner packs for that price, you better believe they should give you full toners with a $1,000 color laser printer.
My $99 color laser printer came with toners two-thirds full but no complaints, it'll be awhile before I print 1,000 pages (two reams of paper!) and by the time I run out there will probably be another $99 color laser printer that's twice as fast, heck I still haven't used all of the starter toner in my $50 b&w laser printers.
"it would be nice if there were a non-evil [nytimes.com] product to make it with."
Lego is not evil. The generic blocks are evil. I bought a box of the Best-Lock blocks mentioned in the article, which are supposedly "blocks compatible with Lego's", because the Star Wars kit they sold was about a quarter of what the Lego kit sold for.
It was absolute crap. I tried to build the kit following the instructions but the blocks don't fit well and the design instructions didn't overlap pieces so entire walls would not be connected to neighboring pieces and a slight touch would bring it crashing down. Best-Lock is absolutely horrible and I'll never buy another best-lock anything.
I can understand why Lego sued, if I made a successful children's toy and I saw competitors bringing crappy copies to the market I'd sue too.
I've done a lot of independant contractor work and I've hired dozens of contractors, so I'll put my two cents in.
As a independent contractor he gets to choose if he wants to work or not. If he wants to go out of town then go for it, but if they call and you're not available they're going to get someone else. You're not "on call", they just let you know "hey we have some work here if you want it, if not no problem".
Being an independant contracotr for a business just means you are someone they know with a particular skill and they will let you know when they need your expertise in the future. It's the job equivalent of "fuck buddy".
If he got paid for being "on call" as a independent contractor then we'd all have to pay plumbers, lawn mowing guy, electrician, mechanics, and all the other "use you when I need you" people in our lives for being "on call".
Slashdot Mirror
"Think it through. I don't think I need to explain how."
Actually I think you need to think it through and an explanation on how he could do all 12 hours by just doing 1 hour is necessary.
My question is when does the next minute begin? When he finishes cleaning everything off or when he begins wiping it off? I'd probably buy this if they offered it as a computer program and set it up on a tablet inside a box.
"Other than that, I hope the patents are challenged and that each and every one of them are invalidated"
they were challenged, twice, and they passed each time. RTFA: "... two groundbreaking patents, including one that has passed two separate reexaminations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and resulted in a $565 million federal court judgment in 2004."
Microsoft threw their billions at them and lost big. Guess we better all line up and get screwed because all those companies combined do not have the money Microsoft has.
It still amazes me that companies can own patents on the most basic things on the internet.
"Bring on the clones. We don't have to play the crappy ones."
Especially when there is no original for that system: there is no flOw for the iPhone or Touch, so what's a person to do? I'm very disappointed the creator of flOw didn't just ask for the game and start charging for it instead of just taking it down... actually I'm shocked, because all this free publicity probably would have made sales go through the roof. I'd buy it after reading the article.
"Turn your head"
that'll work until they have a camera on the other side
Enemy of the State. Things have changed so much that they could make it now and be more realistic without satellites tracking individual people, just link stoplight cameras, speed cameras, store surveillance cameras and Predators. Hell throw in a few camera phones for good measure. Surveillance has come a very long way in just 11 years.
"iPhone, and other net-connected services, people will burn-out, and sales will plummet."
burn out from paying 99 cents for iPhone apps? Doubtful, but I must admit with so many 99 cent apps I'm now to the point where I won't even pay 99 cents if the app doesn't have a free version to test first.
Who can claim copyright on their wedding? Apparently it's the groom who took down the video. Why would you tell the world you got married, then try to take it back? Looks like the video is still up, my guess is the video in this post wasn't the original. Next stop: plastic surgeon to fix his wife's beak. Looks like being a software guru doesn't get the chicks after all.
who can claim copyright on their wedding?
"$8/hr for an IT internship is close to minimum wage here in New York, so that makes me question what kind of internship this is. What's the description of your internship? If you're getting paid this little, I'm going to assume that you're taking a help desk role (I hope you're not)."
$8 an hour? Where are you, India? The minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr, so you're just barely getting minimum wage, which is usually reserved for high school dropouts, ex-convicts or others with little or no education or experience. To accept such a low rate while in college and after getting your A+ and Network+ is quite a smack in the face. I know the economy is bad but keep looking, you should be able to find at least $13-$15/hr.
" schools look for any excuse to fire teachers who have been around the longest, because they cost the most money. Then they can hire a new teacher for a lot cheaper."
Why would they take advice from a bankrupt company?
"The end result is that such devices have INCREDIBLE battery life. Over and over I hear how important this is. Why is it important?... how hard is it to plug in your e-book reader overnight?"
It's not, but it seems like everything has to be plugged in every night. We have laptops and cellphones and mp3 players and now our books? All requiring nightly charging. It becomes a chore. Wouldn't it be nice to use something several minutes a day for a few weeks before having to charge it? And another thing: long battery life means I can leave it unplugged for longer. If I don't charge my laptop for a week there's practically no power left. I'd love to leave the mp3 player or ebook sit for a month, come back and see it still has 10+ hrs of usage left.
"It's totally insane (and probably hernia-inducing), and I so don't want to get mugged, but it lasted for 6+ hours while on a long train ride recently."
You need a laptop with a 12 hour battery, or dell claims 19 hrs from their laptop.
How do your laptops only last 2 hrs? A netbook with a decent battery should last 6 hrs by itself.
"But if one could dictate e-mails and such into it, then a 12" tablet might start to replace PCs and netbooks..."
Then you need Google Mobile App for iPhone with Voice Search. The example he uses is not sped up, it really does recognize what you said within a second and searches. I have no idea how it works so incredibly fast but I desperately wish my PC had Voice Search. If MS could build this into Windows 7 somehow I could seriously see myself dictating e-mails. Nice to see voice recognition technology come so far, gives me hope that we'll be speaking to our PCs Star Trek style within the next ten years.
Unfortunately it doesn't work outside of google on the iPhone.
"Apple has released a device with only 4GB."
He meant new device "of that size", not tiny mp3 players produced many years ago because obviously there's been many iPods with far less than 4gb.
"The incentive is it's be a nice toy to have. And $500 bucks for some people isn't exactly breaking the bank."
But there's soooo many other similar proven toys that cost less than $500, like the iPod Touch, Nokia n900, iPhone, or even a slew of nice laptops.
oh good a car analogy, I was waiting for that. Now it all makes sense, thank you.
"At the $250 price level, the larger screen would have been worth it; at $500, no way."
Let's not forget there's a huge legal battle going on too, and these companies aren't exactly dell, they don't have billions to fight off in court, if they go under and something breaks on your $500 JooJoo how do you get your money back from a defunct company in Taiwan? And how does this Taiwan company think they own it? If I went to some guy and said "hey i want you to build this for me, here's the design and schematic", and he said screw off, built it himself and sold a million copies, I think I'd have some legal recourse.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven. Runs proprietary code so who knows what you can really do with it. It's like a large iPod Touch at double the price with no developers and made in Taiwan, what good is it really? How come I can buy a fake iPod touch for $50 but this thing is $500 and really just a larger iPod Touch? Something doesn't add up.
"Don't fire him because you're stupid."
Agreed. Have they thought how much it'll cost to replace him? He's been there 10+ years, he built the network they're on, he knows everything there is to know about the system, how do you replace that? They're probably going to hire whoever pretends to know what they're doing the most and get nothing done. How do you know the next guy won't do something far worse? This is a witch hunt that will end up costing the school district hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of embarrassment.
"It could also lessen the life of the computer. A computer that is shutdown at night would likely last longer than one crunching numbers every night."
Very true. A computer fan spinning at 100% 24/7 is far more likely to suffer a early death due to dust and hair, as you can see from these photos:
Dust in computer
What can happen to the Computers of Pet Owners; with Dirty Pictures
Computer Killers – Pet Hair, Dust and Cigarette Smoke
If the computer is shutdown or in low power the fan isn't spinning so it's not sucking in dust and dirt.... or bugs
"Two days in jail seems fitting, for the crime of annoying the hell out of every other moviegoer in the theater who paid $$ to watch a cheesy vampire emo movie."
...is she slow? Maybe that's why they were taping it, might be the last time her sister will see a movie since the large brain tumor is seriously impacting her judgement ability.
THANK YOU!!!
"...a few other family members singing “Happy Birthday” to her 29-year-old sister at the theater."
29? seeing a cheesy emo whoa-is-me teenage vampire movie?
sister: hey everybody let's go see twilight movie!!!!
family: no, we really can't, it's a very poor movie
sister: awww but i wanna i wanna i wanna
family: well.... ok, we love you and want to make the last few months of your life as happy as possible
sister: YAAAAAAAA!! I SEE SPARKLE VAMPIRES!
"This seems like a good test case."
I think it already proves no one should see any Twilight movies.
"Just what we need - more people thinking that since they can play games they can do it in real life."
The description leaves out that he beat 25,000 other Gran Turismo players in a online contest sponsored by a magazine for which the grand prize was to race in a real race car. When he won and actually drove well, then he became a pro race driver.
So really, the gaming only gave him the opportunity to try to race for free. It could have been a contest for anything really, could have won a pie eating contest with the prize being racing. The description and article are a bit misleading. I might be great at trama center, I might even win a contest against thousands of other people, but until I'm given a real scalpel, perform surgeries and save patients, medical doctor I am not.
Winning race car contest != great race car driver in real life
"My $1,000 colour laser printer came with full-capacity toner cartridges."
$1,000?! Buddy you bought the printer and ten toner packs for that price, you better believe they should give you full toners with a $1,000 color laser printer.
My $99 color laser printer came with toners two-thirds full but no complaints, it'll be awhile before I print 1,000 pages (two reams of paper!) and by the time I run out there will probably be another $99 color laser printer that's twice as fast, heck I still haven't used all of the starter toner in my $50 b&w laser printers.
"it would be nice if there were a non-evil [nytimes.com] product to make it with."
Lego is not evil. The generic blocks are evil. I bought a box of the Best-Lock blocks mentioned in the article, which are supposedly "blocks compatible with Lego's", because the Star Wars kit they sold was about a quarter of what the Lego kit sold for.
It was absolute crap. I tried to build the kit following the instructions but the blocks don't fit well and the design instructions didn't overlap pieces so entire walls would not be connected to neighboring pieces and a slight touch would bring it crashing down. Best-Lock is absolutely horrible and I'll never buy another best-lock anything.
I can understand why Lego sued, if I made a successful children's toy and I saw competitors bringing crappy copies to the market I'd sue too.
"Sorry, this is /. It's gotta be a car analogy."
Like fining the dealership who sold you a car that you used to run over someone.
Or suing the govt for giving you a license.
Or suing the store that sold you the vodka you were drunk on.
story is completely bogus, there's no facts or proof of anything and it makes zero sense.
I've done a lot of independant contractor work and I've hired dozens of contractors, so I'll put my two cents in.
As a independent contractor he gets to choose if he wants to work or not. If he wants to go out of town then go for it, but if they call and you're not available they're going to get someone else. You're not "on call", they just let you know "hey we have some work here if you want it, if not no problem".
Being an independant contracotr for a business just means you are someone they know with a particular skill and they will let you know when they need your expertise in the future. It's the job equivalent of "fuck buddy".
If he got paid for being "on call" as a independent contractor then we'd all have to pay plumbers, lawn mowing guy, electrician, mechanics, and all the other "use you when I need you" people in our lives for being "on call".