I assume this is the same group (how many quantum computer groups are there likely to be in Bristol?) that did the whole "lets run Shors algorithm on a silicon etched chip" a couple years ago. So the new news right now is... Or is this a re-reporting of that historical event, or another paper about that historical work? I'm just trying to figure out the whole timeline thing here.
Hey/. editors, the recent interviews have been very interesting and all that, I'm just thinking interviewing the quantum group in Bristol would be even more interesting...
I think its a bizarre corruption of Ctrl-[ which does the same thing as hitting escape.
He could have done something weird with the imap command and STRG perhaps it means something in his environment. Like:imap STRG "escape key" or something like that would break you out of insert mode anytime you type STRG inside insert mode. Not so good if STRG is a reserved language word or your favorite variable name.
Personally, I live and die by perltidy and other source code reformatters, so I don't use tab at all when editing, and I could remap tab to escape inside vi like many other people do, but thats just going to confuse the F out of me on other peoples unmodified machines, so I don't do that.
I'd say the address space length that they used still makes it outrageously overengineered for the time, and we're lucky they had the vision that they did.
Not really. Don't forget there is a HUGE difference between the old classfull and VLSM/CIDR/classless numbering. That gain is the whole point of spending all that effort implementing netmasks. There really were not that many possible classfull lans compared to the number of minicomputer owning businesses in the world, etc.
For the post-92ish noobs, a really simple one line explanation is the netmask used to be stored inside the address itself, so for example if the first octet was 0 to 127, that meant that LAN had to be a (presumably giant bridged)/8, first octet 128-191 meant the netmask had to be a/16, not defaulted or was a pretty good guess, but operationally "had to be".
The early years of VLSM were pretty entertaining, old timers lecturing us how a LAN addressing scheme like 1.2.3.0/24 was "impossible" and so forth.
Without VLSM we would have to have done the ipv6 conversion years before the dotcom boom, rather than a decade or so after. Not entirely sure if we'd all be better off now, or not.
For example: It requires a lot of work with vendors to get them to fix buggy and still-unfinished code. 'We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported,'
In other words, business as usual in all other areas of IT. Glad to see there is nothing "special" about ipv6 deployment.
And while the current versions of most OSes support IPv6, they do not do so by default.
What are those OSes? Its been a long time since I turned on ipv6 at home. As I recall I had to do little other than turn it on. There is a difference between "activate" which is kind of like setting the sound mixer output to a comfortable level no big deal, vs searching on the internet to install 3rd party drivers and/or recompiling kernels.
The Mappers. If your app/OS has a menu-like structure, they have it memorized like a big city mass transit commuter has memorized their home city travel maps. They utterly despise dynamic menus and icons, because they can't talk with each other about a fundamentally non-constant geography. Changing the map, especially without telling them, makes them rage.
The Realists. "Emptying the virtual trash can" (the concept of which is a disease of Realists to begin with) should involve using the WASD FPS keys and mouse look to walk over to a photorealistic rendered trash can, then use the E key to pick up the bag, and WASD and mouse look to walk outside the kitchen door to the garbage cans and drop the bag in. Once a week on Thursday mornings you have to wake up early and log in before 6am to haul the garbage cans to the curb, if you're late, well, you gotta haul twice as much next week, mkay? Complete with sounds of crickets chirping, and a USB powered rotten vegetable smell emitter.
The Scripters. Wrote a puppet script to install and configure this app. Finances done in VI (vim) editing a scripting language that when run, outputs my balance/income/cashflow sheets (crazy as it sounds, been there, done that in the pre-Quicken era). If it can't be done with pipes, it can't be done. Master of the crontab, the concept of which is a great mystery to windows/mac users (whaddaya mean you ran the 5am report, you aren't even at work at 5am?)
Re:Has he ever actually talked to users?
on
The Condescending UI
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· Score: 5, Insightful
A delay that long would drive me completely bonkers. I don't need my eyes to catch it, I'm not reacting to the computer, the computer is supposed to react (preferably instantly) to me. It is my servant, not the other way around.
The basic concept is a bug not a feature. No one who reads old fashioned physical books does it for the experience of the delay while turning pages. For example, I cannot go to a convenience store without an unwashed slacker taking their time at cashier duty. That does not mean that adding a USB operated B.O. generator, inserting "like" in between every three words, making it really slow, having to wait in line, and taking 45 seconds to figure out the change coinage for $1.76 would be a huge improvement to the amazon.com web interface.
IF you're using firefox, that means you can use greasemonkey to write scripts. I am not conversant in greasemonkey enough to do this myself, but I triple dog dare you to write a greasemonkey script, that wraps/. inside it, and each time you scroll down via "pg down" or wheel, it freezes for 300 ms, displays an animation of an ancient roman scroll winding up and unwinding, makes a paper turning sound, and then finally displays the next page of/.. I will make a bet that within a week you throw a chair thru your monitor, or disable that script, or admit I was correct.
This is another example where horrific UI mistakes by OS designers are "OK" because there is no competition or choice, but a website would be laughed off the internet if it tried to implement something that awful.
I honestly am waiting for Windows to rename "control panel" to "shiny stuff" in windows 9.0
With the long term trend in the groupthink arena toward icon-ization, we are nearing the point where there will no longer be words or names. The inability to discuss the interface is an advantage for marketing, to some extent. It is 1984 new-speak like.
So, click on the shiny ball (color depends on your local theme). Then click on the paradichlorobenzene molecule, don't know what that is, well tough cookies. Then click on the smiley face. Ta da you're now upgraded. Whatever you do, don't click on the icon that looks like two mating centipedes. And the Cthulhu icon, thats not a good choice either. Who knows what any of this will do, and if it doesn't do what you wanted it to do, thats because you're using it wrong; the user is always to be blamed either for being too much of a power user or too much of a noob. Our UI did great in the focus groups; everyone knows focus groups are never wrong; after all they brought us Palin, Hillary, and Britney Spears; our UI is proven perfect QED.
Think about even simple stuff like replacing the "my pr0n" directory with a wordless ribbon-like icon... we probably won't be able to agree on an icon of exactly what body part, nor agree on female or male, nor even what species.
Miller's got some harsh words for Apple, too: 'And of course, there is the transgression of the century: Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book...these new tricks are horrible and offensive [and likened to Microsoft Bob]. They're not only condescending and overwrought, they're actually counter-functional.
Why is amazon.com cool, and apple junk?
If the design teams were switched, I would imagine the worlds biggest online retailer would be something like second life, no "grep" or "search" just have to walk endlessly around a virtual walmart, standing in virtual lines at the checkout counter, trying to sign virtual credit card receipt after being handed it by virtual slacker teen by waving the mouse around to make cursive signature, and empty because no one uses it, no one would ever put up with that garbage. If a website tried anything that stupid, it would be insta-replaced by a slightly more intelligent website. God only knows what stock trading websites would look like if OS UI designers made them. Imagine if/. were designed by the same gang of idiots, we'd have a cork background and have to use MS-Paint with virtual dry erase markers to hand draw our comments and then push pins inserted with mouse gestures. Overall, website UIs are much better than OS UIs, because they have to be.
I would theorize that the cost of setting up a computer OS and hardware business creates so much friction that competition cannot create a better UI. Sure, I could trivially do better than MS or Apple or Unity, but I cannot afford to try, so we get junk.
You want to see the future of OS UIs, go to websites. The future looks a lot like the google homepage, or Amazon.
I have the technology and skills to make a website UI as bad as an OS UI, but I'm not dumb enough to try it because market forces would crush me. Won't happen to multibillion dollar multinational corporations, so thats why their products are trash.
I've spent a decade in the firing line (developer exposed directly to users), and this goes directly against everything we've heard from the vast majority. Yes, your power users are going to be frustrated by simplified UI, sorry guys, you're not our main audience. The average user does not want to spend time learning the UI, they want to pick up the app, do what they need to do and move on with their life.
Not anymore. This has been the rallying cry my entire life, from the late mini-era thru the birth of PCs to today. For decades we've been telling ourselves all the growth means "most users will be noobs". All must bow their heads and bend their knees to the whim of the noob because only noobs matter. This cannot go on forever and is changing.
Standard/. car (err, motorcycle) analogy: Imagine the motorcycle is invented, and its the first form of 2 wheel transportation to exist (no bicycles). Noobs need training wheels. A whole industry and ecology springs up around training wheels and the assumption that all users are noobs. Plain training wheels, free/open training wheels, solid gold training wheels, really expensive and well designed training wheels, the whole thing. Everyone needs training wheels and its antisocial and unpractical to suggest a motorcycle could be used without them. "noob focus" is nearly total. Eventually, people realize they are simple not useful, are gaudy, and mostly just slow you down and get in the way. Bye bye training wheels to all but the 6 year old kids.
Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?
No.
Cool, now history can repeat, at great profit to those who know and understand history. We love that in the "computer" business. Or any business.
The Edsel disaster was a very large and very public example of a world market leader trying to sell a midrange product too cheap to be a luxury good and too expensive to be a daily driver commuter for the masses. A pretty good tech analogy would be an Android Streak 7 tablet... Not cheap enough to be competitive against "kindle with spam" and not nearly good enough to be an ipad killer.
One line summary is that finding a gap in the market, does NOT mean automatic profit if you attempt to fill that gap, no matter how big of a "market leader" you are.
other was a guy who is claiming he has retrofit kits (RF notch filters) that will eliminate the interference. It should be noted that, when asked how his kits would be fitted to the millions of GPS receivers already in the field, the latter person had absolutely no answer.
Run the numbers on the Q factor required and the maximum possible passband attenuation to keep the noise figure of the front end usable... If you know what "snake oil" is WRT crypto it sounds like this guy's offering sounds suspiciously like "frequency grease" WRT RF.
Note that if the problem is front end overload, his snakeoil/freqgrease might be a simple 10 dB attenuator, probably being sold at an immense markup. If would be easier to duct tape aluminum foil to the existing antenna until the incoming signals are knocked down enough that the FE is not overloading but optimistically there is still enough RF signal left to decode.
This is assuming its not at the RF technology level of those stickers you put on cell phones to magically do things that sound good.
The nearest GPS freq is 1575.42 MHz but is the L1 freq
Very close but not quite. The L1C signal is not a simple continuous carrier like the old transit sats from the 50s/60s. The data rate is somewhere around ten megabits and it modulation is BPSK. The exact answer requires more detail but the actual transmitted BW will end up maybe 10 megs higher and 10 megs lower than the center theoretical carrier. Which is getting uncomfortably close to the lightsquared signal.
So... that's 1565 or so, vs the interference at 1559. So you head over to minicircuits.com (a seller of many microwave components, including the high pass filter you are trying to purchase) and look for a coaxial filter with a curve showing almost 0 dB attenuation at 1565 and up to keep your noise figure usable, and at least 60 dB out of band attenuation at 1559. Then you realize why the EE types claim "its a law of physics" that this simply cannot be worked around. Oh and note the ones that don't even come close to making the grade are roughly the size weight and cost of a very small cell phone. Generically building a filter in that frequency range with those specs is impossible, but building the device to that exact frequency spec and stable over any temperature range makes it even more impossible.
Before the sorta knowledgeable DSP types jump in, yes, you can get filter curves like that using DSP. However you need a analog input clean enough to do the DSP on it... So, again, you're screwed. Just plug your 60 dBm 3rd order IMD preamp into your 32 bit A/D 10 GHz A/D converter and then process it. This is technobable of the finest level, components with specs like that Might exist in just 50 years or so, but they sure don't now.
Or to put it in a different way, people are not willing to spend more on a lesser known quantity. Lets face it, Apple have become very well known the last couple of years...
Folks in the PC market were trained for years that "yeah an intel mac is just a PC but you pay twice the cost of the hardware to get the OSX software".
OK... for the sake of this argument I'll say I believe that. Personally I think it's wrong, but its a very popular viewpoint. I'll run with it and pretend.
So, the $400 ipad comes out. I've been trained that means the hardware costs $200 and you're paying $200 for the fancy apple software. OK here comes this android thing that is all free and open and stuff. That means I'll still be paying $200 for the hardware, but it'll be free software like linux and so I expect to pay $200 for this android tablet. What you say? List price $600 for the android tablet? F it, I'm not paying any more than $250 for it at most, I'm getting a "fairer" deal with the ipad.
Actually this is a pretty good question. How come ipads are not dramatically more expensive than android tablets? A kindle Fire should cost about as much as a "Regular old Kindle".. right? Its just a different software load, at least to a non-technical user. But no, its like twice as much... F that, I'm either buying a plain Kindle or a full fledged ipad. Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?
I downloaded an app for Streak 7 that let me browse my directory tree, get to my SD card and move a pdf over to my tablet and view it with the acrobat viewer app I downloaded. When you can do that with an ipad with out hacking the tar out of it, I might think about upgrading.
I just use cloudreader, and upload stuff from whereever I get it up the http interface (make the right clicks on cloudreader and it acts as a http server for anything else on its network). Simple fast easy don't need to fiddle with SD cards.
The main reason to respond is your subtle Freudian slip there "I might think about upgrading". In other words, even to you, an ipad is an upgrade from android...
Note that every "non-glowing positive" comment about android tablets is automatically assumed to be a ipad fanboy. That was not my intent. All I'm saying is the original poster is completely wrong, the market has not shown a lack of interest in android tablets, its shown a lack of interest in OVERPRICED android tablets. There is intense staggering market demand when android tablets are closed out or discontinued at a reasonable price.
Some day my ipad-1 will die. Cracked, or the 43 step battery replacement procedure freaks me out, or whatever. I might buy another ipad, might buy an android tablet. But theres no way in heck I'm buying an overpriced android tablet. A properly priced android tablet, maybe... maybe. But I'm not paying 4 times what I think its worth.
The Golden Gate Bridge is about 6 inches long IIRC
Thats what I needed. I looked it up and the GGB is about nine thousand feet long, and a typical railcar is "about half a hundred feet" (there is no standard) so the GGB if it were a railcar bridge (maybe it has a rail deck, for all I know or care) then it would hold about 180 railcars, if I divided that in my head correctly (10K/50 = 200 minus 1K/50 = 20 means about 180, right?). I don't think there is any model railroad gauge where 180 railcars fits in 6 inches. Although that would look pretty cool if it ever existed.
slashdotted already? Oh here I got a cut and paste for my friends here:
Why Virtual Embassy Tehran?
Its harder to take hostages online, and our current prez Jimmy Carter the Second doesn't want to redo that, although he seems cool with "StagFlation II the adventure continues".
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Video Remarks to Virtual Embassy Tehran
"We have outlawed Tehran and the bombing begins in five minutes". Oh wait that was Ronnie's microphone test line from three decades ago. Well, different day, same old scare tactic to maintain control.
Former Iranian Embassy
Earlier this year, the State Department provided essential repairs for the former Iranian Embassy in Washington, DC, which was closed in 1980, to ensure the safety of mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems, and auditory and visual bugging and monitoring systems, along with an extensive array of external CCTV cameras monitored by the FBI. Also installed geiger counters for your protection.
What model railroad scale is the closest? I have no interest in CA, so I don't know if 1.5 acres makes that bigger than G scale or smaller than Z scale or something in between. The live steamers might want to turn it into a live steam park, if allowed. Around here, the live steam parks are not quite as elaborate as this sounds.
Because there are background checking companies that have a much easier time looking up the work and education history of US citizens, and a good company will use them for direct hires
They don't work. They're just like lie detectors. They are only effective if the victim believes in them and they freak out and confess. Keep them scared! Once you know they're fake, they're about as effective as being cursed by a shaman or a priest.
"Yes, Yes, OK may Cthulhu strike me down with his flaming tentacle of doom if I do not have 20 yrs experience in C++, whatever. Gimmie a bible to swear on too. Now do I get the job or what?"
You may want to consider hiring an outside firm to come in and do the audit for you. The last thing you need right now, on top of your daily workload, is to perform an audit. That, and a third party firm creates a sense of objectivity, and would eliminate the "The IT guy wants a new toy" response from the CFO.
And make sure not to hire an outside firm that consults on outsourcing IT support. Security firms are pretty good at general IT auditing in addition to strictly security related analysis.
My gut level guess is my house's IT infrastructure is more elaborate / complicated. Admittedly very little of my gross income depends on my home infrastructure. My guess is he's a noob to IT. "'a few problems away from a total meltdown" describes every IT infrastructure I've seen in the past 20 years, including fortune 500 corporates. Nothing new there.
I'm serious about the house analogy. Just treat it like a extremely advanced home lan, except you have more time, and outages are much more costly.
I keep all my docs and manuals and data in GIT since its just me, and I replicate it all over. If there were more than just me I'd probably put it on a wiki instance. At all costs, stay ahead of the curve. For example, one hour setting up munin / mrtg / nagios saves ten hours of outage time. If you're neck deep in that extra ten hours of outage and "can't" stop fighting fires, stay up all freaking night or whatever it takes to set up the monitoring system. Even if its just you, set up a ticketing system to keep track of "forgotten" stuff. RT is free and works better than most commercial packages. Once you get the fires put out, start building up the replication. Multiple DHCP servers... Multiple replicated databases. Multiple backup hosts. Probably can't buy new, the good news is for a small network you don't need much power, so old/junk computers are OK. Those are less reliable? Who cares, I have four LXC hosts, each of which cost $99, any two of which can run my primary and backup mysql DB image, and all four have a backup of the current running DB copied to them daily (and burned to cheap DVD) so I can't theoretically lose more than a days data.
In summary, copy advanced home users in all areas, monitoring is critical, replication is important. Back up everything so many times to so many places until you can't think of any more ways to back stuff up. And automate the heck out of all of it.
And keep spare parts for everything. Your DHCP server doesn't care if its on a three ghz six core or a one ghz single core, but your users will care if there is none working at all because you couldn't keep spare hardware in a closet. If people are not accusing you of being a techno-hoarder, you're doing it wrong.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
Its all in the price. Apparently a tablet that is worth about a quarter of an ipad sells really good at a quarter of an ipad price. Trying to sell "not as good as an ipad" for same or higher price doesn't work so well.
Slashdot Mirror
I assume this is the same group (how many quantum computer groups are there likely to be in Bristol?) that did the whole "lets run Shors algorithm on a silicon etched chip" a couple years ago. So the new news right now is ... Or is this a re-reporting of that historical event, or another paper about that historical work? I'm just trying to figure out the whole timeline thing here.
Hey /. editors, the recent interviews have been very interesting and all that, I'm just thinking interviewing the quantum group in Bristol would be even more interesting...
WTF is STRG?
I think its a bizarre corruption of Ctrl-[ which does the same thing as hitting escape.
He could have done something weird with the imap command and STRG perhaps it means something in his environment. Like :imap STRG "escape key" or something like that would break you out of insert mode anytime you type STRG inside insert mode. Not so good if STRG is a reserved language word or your favorite variable name.
Personally, I live and die by perltidy and other source code reformatters, so I don't use tab at all when editing, and I could remap tab to escape inside vi like many other people do, but thats just going to confuse the F out of me on other peoples unmodified machines, so I don't do that.
I'd say the address space length that they used still makes it outrageously overengineered for the time, and we're lucky they had the vision that they did.
Not really. Don't forget there is a HUGE difference between the old classfull and VLSM/CIDR/classless numbering. That gain is the whole point of spending all that effort implementing netmasks. There really were not that many possible classfull lans compared to the number of minicomputer owning businesses in the world, etc.
For the post-92ish noobs, a really simple one line explanation is the netmask used to be stored inside the address itself, so for example if the first octet was 0 to 127, that meant that LAN had to be a (presumably giant bridged) /8, first octet 128-191 meant the netmask had to be a /16, not defaulted or was a pretty good guess, but operationally "had to be".
The early years of VLSM were pretty entertaining, old timers lecturing us how a LAN addressing scheme like 1.2.3.0/24 was "impossible" and so forth.
Without VLSM we would have to have done the ipv6 conversion years before the dotcom boom, rather than a decade or so after. Not entirely sure if we'd all be better off now, or not.
For example: It requires a lot of work with vendors to get them to fix buggy and still-unfinished code. 'We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported,'
In other words, business as usual in all other areas of IT. Glad to see there is nothing "special" about ipv6 deployment.
And while the current versions of most OSes support IPv6, they do not do so by default.
What are those OSes? Its been a long time since I turned on ipv6 at home. As I recall I had to do little other than turn it on. There is a difference between "activate" which is kind of like setting the sound mixer output to a comfortable level no big deal, vs searching on the internet to install 3rd party drivers and/or recompiling kernels.
I like your list
I'd add some more categories
The Mappers. If your app/OS has a menu-like structure, they have it memorized like a big city mass transit commuter has memorized their home city travel maps. They utterly despise dynamic menus and icons, because they can't talk with each other about a fundamentally non-constant geography. Changing the map, especially without telling them, makes them rage.
The Realists. "Emptying the virtual trash can" (the concept of which is a disease of Realists to begin with) should involve using the WASD FPS keys and mouse look to walk over to a photorealistic rendered trash can, then use the E key to pick up the bag, and WASD and mouse look to walk outside the kitchen door to the garbage cans and drop the bag in. Once a week on Thursday mornings you have to wake up early and log in before 6am to haul the garbage cans to the curb, if you're late, well, you gotta haul twice as much next week, mkay? Complete with sounds of crickets chirping, and a USB powered rotten vegetable smell emitter.
The Scripters. Wrote a puppet script to install and configure this app. Finances done in VI (vim) editing a scripting language that when run, outputs my balance/income/cashflow sheets (crazy as it sounds, been there, done that in the pre-Quicken era). If it can't be done with pipes, it can't be done. Master of the crontab, the concept of which is a great mystery to windows/mac users (whaddaya mean you ran the 5am report, you aren't even at work at 5am?)
A delay that long would drive me completely bonkers. I don't need my eyes to catch it, I'm not reacting to the computer, the computer is supposed to react (preferably instantly) to me. It is my servant, not the other way around.
The basic concept is a bug not a feature. No one who reads old fashioned physical books does it for the experience of the delay while turning pages. For example, I cannot go to a convenience store without an unwashed slacker taking their time at cashier duty. That does not mean that adding a USB operated B.O. generator, inserting "like" in between every three words, making it really slow, having to wait in line, and taking 45 seconds to figure out the change coinage for $1.76 would be a huge improvement to the amazon.com web interface.
IF you're using firefox, that means you can use greasemonkey to write scripts. I am not conversant in greasemonkey enough to do this myself, but I triple dog dare you to write a greasemonkey script, that wraps /. inside it, and each time you scroll down via "pg down" or wheel, it freezes for 300 ms, displays an animation of an ancient roman scroll winding up and unwinding, makes a paper turning sound, and then finally displays the next page of /.. I will make a bet that within a week you throw a chair thru your monitor, or disable that script, or admit I was correct.
This is another example where horrific UI mistakes by OS designers are "OK" because there is no competition or choice, but a website would be laughed off the internet if it tried to implement something that awful.
I honestly am waiting for Windows to rename "control panel" to "shiny stuff" in windows 9.0
With the long term trend in the groupthink arena toward icon-ization, we are nearing the point where there will no longer be words or names. The inability to discuss the interface is an advantage for marketing, to some extent. It is 1984 new-speak like.
So, click on the shiny ball (color depends on your local theme). Then click on the paradichlorobenzene molecule, don't know what that is, well tough cookies. Then click on the smiley face. Ta da you're now upgraded. Whatever you do, don't click on the icon that looks like two mating centipedes. And the Cthulhu icon, thats not a good choice either. Who knows what any of this will do, and if it doesn't do what you wanted it to do, thats because you're using it wrong; the user is always to be blamed either for being too much of a power user or too much of a noob. Our UI did great in the focus groups; everyone knows focus groups are never wrong; after all they brought us Palin, Hillary, and Britney Spears; our UI is proven perfect QED.
Think about even simple stuff like replacing the "my pr0n" directory with a wordless ribbon-like icon... we probably won't be able to agree on an icon of exactly what body part, nor agree on female or male, nor even what species.
and each additional command you learn will double your productivity again.
learning VI is like learning skyrim dragon shouts. Very good!
Miller's got some harsh words for Apple, too: 'And of course, there is the transgression of the century: Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book...these new tricks are horrible and offensive [and likened to Microsoft Bob]. They're not only condescending and overwrought, they're actually counter-functional.
Why is amazon.com cool, and apple junk?
If the design teams were switched, I would imagine the worlds biggest online retailer would be something like second life, no "grep" or "search" just have to walk endlessly around a virtual walmart, standing in virtual lines at the checkout counter, trying to sign virtual credit card receipt after being handed it by virtual slacker teen by waving the mouse around to make cursive signature, and empty because no one uses it, no one would ever put up with that garbage. If a website tried anything that stupid, it would be insta-replaced by a slightly more intelligent website. God only knows what stock trading websites would look like if OS UI designers made them. Imagine if /. were designed by the same gang of idiots, we'd have a cork background and have to use MS-Paint with virtual dry erase markers to hand draw our comments and then push pins inserted with mouse gestures. Overall, website UIs are much better than OS UIs, because they have to be.
I would theorize that the cost of setting up a computer OS and hardware business creates so much friction that competition cannot create a better UI. Sure, I could trivially do better than MS or Apple or Unity, but I cannot afford to try, so we get junk.
You want to see the future of OS UIs, go to websites. The future looks a lot like the google homepage, or Amazon.
I have the technology and skills to make a website UI as bad as an OS UI, but I'm not dumb enough to try it because market forces would crush me. Won't happen to multibillion dollar multinational corporations, so thats why their products are trash.
You really only need the "i" and "esc" keys. And "esc-:wq". with those three things you can use vi.
I've spent a decade in the firing line (developer exposed directly to users), and this goes directly against everything we've heard from the vast majority. Yes, your power users are going to be frustrated by simplified UI, sorry guys, you're not our main audience. The average user does not want to spend time learning the UI, they want to pick up the app, do what they need to do and move on with their life.
Not anymore. This has been the rallying cry my entire life, from the late mini-era thru the birth of PCs to today. For decades we've been telling ourselves all the growth means "most users will be noobs". All must bow their heads and bend their knees to the whim of the noob because only noobs matter. This cannot go on forever and is changing.
Standard /. car (err, motorcycle) analogy: Imagine the motorcycle is invented, and its the first form of 2 wheel transportation to exist (no bicycles). Noobs need training wheels. A whole industry and ecology springs up around training wheels and the assumption that all users are noobs. Plain training wheels, free/open training wheels, solid gold training wheels, really expensive and well designed training wheels, the whole thing. Everyone needs training wheels and its antisocial and unpractical to suggest a motorcycle could be used without them. "noob focus" is nearly total. Eventually, people realize they are simple not useful, are gaudy, and mostly just slow you down and get in the way. Bye bye training wheels to all but the 6 year old kids.
Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?
No.
Cool, now history can repeat, at great profit to those who know and understand history. We love that in the "computer" business. Or any business.
The Edsel disaster was a very large and very public example of a world market leader trying to sell a midrange product too cheap to be a luxury good and too expensive to be a daily driver commuter for the masses. A pretty good tech analogy would be an Android Streak 7 tablet... Not cheap enough to be competitive against "kindle with spam" and not nearly good enough to be an ipad killer.
One line summary is that finding a gap in the market, does NOT mean automatic profit if you attempt to fill that gap, no matter how big of a "market leader" you are.
I'm an electrical engineer
Good
other was a guy who is claiming he has retrofit kits (RF notch filters) that will eliminate the interference. It should be noted that, when asked how his kits would be fitted to the millions of GPS receivers already in the field, the latter person had absolutely no answer.
Run the numbers on the Q factor required and the maximum possible passband attenuation to keep the noise figure of the front end usable... If you know what "snake oil" is WRT crypto it sounds like this guy's offering sounds suspiciously like "frequency grease" WRT RF.
Note that if the problem is front end overload, his snakeoil/freqgrease might be a simple 10 dB attenuator, probably being sold at an immense markup. If would be easier to duct tape aluminum foil to the existing antenna until the incoming signals are knocked down enough that the FE is not overloading but optimistically there is still enough RF signal left to decode.
This is assuming its not at the RF technology level of those stickers you put on cell phones to magically do things that sound good.
The nearest GPS freq is 1575.42 MHz but is the L1 freq
Very close but not quite. The L1C signal is not a simple continuous carrier like the old transit sats from the 50s/60s. The data rate is somewhere around ten megabits and it modulation is BPSK. The exact answer requires more detail but the actual transmitted BW will end up maybe 10 megs higher and 10 megs lower than the center theoretical carrier. Which is getting uncomfortably close to the lightsquared signal.
So... that's 1565 or so, vs the interference at 1559. So you head over to minicircuits.com (a seller of many microwave components, including the high pass filter you are trying to purchase) and look for a coaxial filter with a curve showing almost 0 dB attenuation at 1565 and up to keep your noise figure usable, and at least 60 dB out of band attenuation at 1559. Then you realize why the EE types claim "its a law of physics" that this simply cannot be worked around. Oh and note the ones that don't even come close to making the grade are roughly the size weight and cost of a very small cell phone. Generically building a filter in that frequency range with those specs is impossible, but building the device to that exact frequency spec and stable over any temperature range makes it even more impossible.
Before the sorta knowledgeable DSP types jump in, yes, you can get filter curves like that using DSP. However you need a analog input clean enough to do the DSP on it... So, again, you're screwed. Just plug your 60 dBm 3rd order IMD preamp into your 32 bit A/D 10 GHz A/D converter and then process it. This is technobable of the finest level, components with specs like that Might exist in just 50 years or so, but they sure don't now.
Or to put it in a different way, people are not willing to spend more on a lesser known quantity. Lets face it, Apple have become very well known the last couple of years...
Folks in the PC market were trained for years that "yeah an intel mac is just a PC but you pay twice the cost of the hardware to get the OSX software".
OK... for the sake of this argument I'll say I believe that. Personally I think it's wrong, but its a very popular viewpoint. I'll run with it and pretend.
So, the $400 ipad comes out. I've been trained that means the hardware costs $200 and you're paying $200 for the fancy apple software. OK here comes this android thing that is all free and open and stuff. That means I'll still be paying $200 for the hardware, but it'll be free software like linux and so I expect to pay $200 for this android tablet. What you say? List price $600 for the android tablet? F it, I'm not paying any more than $250 for it at most, I'm getting a "fairer" deal with the ipad.
Actually this is a pretty good question. How come ipads are not dramatically more expensive than android tablets? A kindle Fire should cost about as much as a "Regular old Kindle".. right? Its just a different software load, at least to a non-technical user. But no, its like twice as much... F that, I'm either buying a plain Kindle or a full fledged ipad. Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?
I downloaded an app for Streak 7 that let me browse my directory tree, get to my SD card and move a pdf over to my tablet and view it with the acrobat viewer app I downloaded.
When you can do that with an ipad with out hacking the tar out of it, I might think about upgrading.
I just use cloudreader, and upload stuff from whereever I get it up the http interface (make the right clicks on cloudreader and it acts as a http server for anything else on its network). Simple fast easy don't need to fiddle with SD cards.
The main reason to respond is your subtle Freudian slip there "I might think about upgrading". In other words, even to you, an ipad is an upgrade from android...
Note that every "non-glowing positive" comment about android tablets is automatically assumed to be a ipad fanboy. That was not my intent. All I'm saying is the original poster is completely wrong, the market has not shown a lack of interest in android tablets, its shown a lack of interest in OVERPRICED android tablets. There is intense staggering market demand when android tablets are closed out or discontinued at a reasonable price.
Some day my ipad-1 will die. Cracked, or the 43 step battery replacement procedure freaks me out, or whatever. I might buy another ipad, might buy an android tablet. But theres no way in heck I'm buying an overpriced android tablet. A properly priced android tablet, maybe ... maybe. But I'm not paying 4 times what I think its worth.
The Golden Gate Bridge is about 6 inches long IIRC
Thats what I needed. I looked it up and the GGB is about nine thousand feet long, and a typical railcar is "about half a hundred feet" (there is no standard) so the GGB if it were a railcar bridge (maybe it has a rail deck, for all I know or care) then it would hold about 180 railcars, if I divided that in my head correctly (10K/50 = 200 minus 1K/50 = 20 means about 180, right?). I don't think there is any model railroad gauge where 180 railcars fits in 6 inches. Although that would look pretty cool if it ever existed.
slashdotted already? Oh here I got a cut and paste for my friends here:
Why Virtual Embassy Tehran?
Its harder to take hostages online, and our current prez Jimmy Carter the Second doesn't want to redo that, although he seems cool with "StagFlation II the adventure continues".
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Video Remarks to Virtual Embassy Tehran
"We have outlawed Tehran and the bombing begins in five minutes". Oh wait that was Ronnie's microphone test line from three decades ago. Well, different day, same old scare tactic to maintain control.
Former Iranian Embassy
Earlier this year, the State Department provided essential repairs for the former Iranian Embassy in Washington, DC, which was closed in 1980, to ensure the safety of mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems, and auditory and visual bugging and monitoring systems, along with an extensive array of external CCTV cameras monitored by the FBI. Also installed geiger counters for your protection.
investment is actually investment in people who will live out long careers in the sector
long careers? He means ageism might kick in at 35 instead of 30? Sign me up!
The Japanese probably want to eat the mammoth.
It would make a good iron chef episode.
I wonder if it tastes more like beef or chicken? My bet is on beef.
What model railroad scale is the closest? I have no interest in CA, so I don't know if 1.5 acres makes that bigger than G scale or smaller than Z scale or something in between. The live steamers might want to turn it into a live steam park, if allowed. Around here, the live steam parks are not quite as elaborate as this sounds.
1) Why can't an American lie?
Because there are background checking companies that have a much easier time looking up the work and education history of US citizens, and a good company will use them for direct hires
They don't work. They're just like lie detectors. They are only effective if the victim believes in them and they freak out and confess. Keep them scared!
Once you know they're fake, they're about as effective as being cursed by a shaman or a priest.
"Yes, Yes, OK may Cthulhu strike me down with his flaming tentacle of doom if I do not have 20 yrs experience in C++, whatever. Gimmie a bible to swear on too. Now do I get the job or what?"
You may want to consider hiring an outside firm to come in and do the audit for you. The last thing you need right now, on top of your daily workload, is to perform an audit. That, and a third party firm creates a sense of objectivity, and would eliminate the "The IT guy wants a new toy" response from the CFO.
And make sure not to hire an outside firm that consults on outsourcing IT support. Security firms are pretty good at general IT auditing in addition to strictly security related analysis.
My gut level guess is my house's IT infrastructure is more elaborate / complicated. Admittedly very little of my gross income depends on my home infrastructure.
My guess is he's a noob to IT. "'a few problems away from a total meltdown" describes every IT infrastructure I've seen in the past 20 years, including fortune 500 corporates. Nothing new there.
I'm serious about the house analogy. Just treat it like a extremely advanced home lan, except you have more time, and outages are much more costly.
I keep all my docs and manuals and data in GIT since its just me, and I replicate it all over. If there were more than just me I'd probably put it on a wiki instance. At all costs, stay ahead of the curve. For example, one hour setting up munin / mrtg / nagios saves ten hours of outage time. If you're neck deep in that extra ten hours of outage and "can't" stop fighting fires, stay up all freaking night or whatever it takes to set up the monitoring system. Even if its just you, set up a ticketing system to keep track of "forgotten" stuff. RT is free and works better than most commercial packages. Once you get the fires put out, start building up the replication. Multiple DHCP servers... Multiple replicated databases. Multiple backup hosts. Probably can't buy new, the good news is for a small network you don't need much power, so old/junk computers are OK. Those are less reliable? Who cares, I have four LXC hosts, each of which cost $99, any two of which can run my primary and backup mysql DB image, and all four have a backup of the current running DB copied to them daily (and burned to cheap DVD) so I can't theoretically lose more than a days data.
In summary, copy advanced home users in all areas, monitoring is critical, replication is important. Back up everything so many times to so many places until you can't think of any more ways to back stuff up. And automate the heck out of all of it.
And keep spare parts for everything. Your DHCP server doesn't care if its on a three ghz six core or a one ghz single core, but your users will care if there is none working at all because you couldn't keep spare hardware in a closet. If people are not accusing you of being a techno-hoarder, you're doing it wrong.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.
Its all in the price. Apparently a tablet that is worth about a quarter of an ipad sells really good at a quarter of an ipad price. Trying to sell "not as good as an ipad" for same or higher price doesn't work so well.