It's a compromise language. Compromises are, in fact, a good thing but purists hate them. Of course. That's what purism *is*. But really, who cares if it's cool? We're geeks, I thought we were supposed to be opposed to "cool" anyway?
It's a known quantity and before you dismiss it you should consider the truly vast amount of software that's been successfully implemented in Java.
Personally I like it. It has it's niggles (if I were king I'd change oh so many things) but it keeps on succeeding like most good compromises.
In general you have to pay for WiFi in chain cafes (Starbucks and the like). However, many of the independents and smaller chains offer it for free.
There's free WiFi and power points in the cafe at the British Library.
The cafe in Foyles bookstore (a geek venue in its own right) on Charing Cross Road is pretty geek friendly. It's handy for the computer section, there's often free live Jazz playing, and (when it works which is not always) there's free WiFi. Oh and the cake is good there.
Tottenham Court Road is the local centre for technology shopping in the area if you find you've forgotten to bring something vital.
The National Film Theatre under the south arches of Waterloo Bridge has the broadest arts cinema coverage in the capital. The Electric Cinema in Notting Hill Gate is the comfiest cinema in the capital.
For non-geeky but interesting things to do while you're here pick up a copy of Time Out. I'd recommend the 100 club on Oxford Street on Monday nights though.
I don't think I'd call fish and chips especially authentic. Sure, we do eat 'em, but curry is more "authentically" British these days. If you want very high quality eating then The Fat Duck is a three Michelin starred restaurant a short trip outside London. It serves some of the best food in the world and has a certain amount of geek cred to go with it.
Couldn't agree more. Witness the fact that a second hand 5mx on eBay still fetches £70 to £80, which isn't bad for an obsolete device. Something like you describe would be very high up my wishlist for gadgets today - there are a very few clamshell devices, but nothing with a comparable keyboard.
As a close second best I'd love Lenovo to do a Netbook (or a "kneetop" as I tend to term them) under the Thinkpad brand with a Trackpoint instead of a touchpad. Ah, wishful thinking...
Consult the court documents if you actually care. Since he's not yet fled, shows no signs of fleeing, and is currently under house arrest it seems to have been a reasonable decision.
Get back to me when you can cite the court documents rather than angrily telling me how unjust it is without any supporting evidence. I have more respect for courts than you do.
Similarly, why is Bernie Madoff still walking around free?
Because he has not been tried and found guilty of a crime. He is charged with a crime, yes, but that is not the same thing, and he is judged not to be a flight risk, which is the pertinent factor in deciding whether he should be held on remand.
Justice is not about punishing people who you think are probably guilty of a crime, or look guilty of a crime, or that someone told you was guilty of a crime. It's about checking the facts in a court of law and handing out the punishment if and only if the accused is proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty of the crime.
Too many people wail about a lack of justice when they actually are complaining that the court is being properly impartial.
I'm a programmer and I don't recall ever receiving any royalties for code that I wrote. Most software is bespoke - written to order - to which copyright applies only as a technicality.
Shrink wrap software is a tiny, tiny exception against the general case.
There is a good public interest case for copyright protection as a short term measure, but no good case for protection beyond the "artist's" lifetime - and personally I think anything above a decade or so is excessive.
I know my spelling / grammar aren't up to many peoples standards, but I had other people clean things up.
Good. I don't want to be an asshole about it. Bad spelling/grammar aren't moral failings; they have practical effects that can usually be eliminated with some decent proof reading. As I note, there's no obligation upon anyone to give that kind of attention to a Slashdot post. Nor do I claim complete perfection in this area on my own part.
I wish you could see your post through my eyes though - it's almost physically jarring.
I'm sorry but many really good engineers can't write.
I'm not sure about the "many". I've noticed a strong correlation between "good spelling/writing" and "good engineer" But certainly some good engineers really can't write and you're clearly a good engineer. I don't think that's in question.
But you're not trying to be just a good engineer. You're trying to be a good businessman too. You obviously have some talent for business - your successes even where partial show that - but I wonder if some of the problems you encounter actually arise from deficient soft-skills akin to writing?
He's not necessarily giving of his best in a Slashdot post of course - but yes, this was my first thought too.
Rightly or wrongly a lot of people use basic literacy skills as a first pass filter for the quality of their contacts. I can't help wondering if that VC passed on his product because of some deficiencies in the presentation.
There are lots of holes in the case. Here's one: - Was the mosquito flying around & sucking blood from pedestrians BEFORE it entered the car?
According to the article he's already admitted to being in the car. So in what way is that a hole in the case?
No, you shouldn't presume a party to be guilty unless they're proven guilty in a court of law. That has nothing whatsoever to the strength of the particular case as reported and everything to do with justice.
Ah yes, that must explain why Apache is doing so terribly in terms of market penetration...
Most non-technical people have never heard of "patching" and the technical ones all know about Apache.
The GIMP certainly has a stupid name, but I sincerely doubt that it affects its take up anything like as much as the shere existing mindshare of PhotoShop. In fact I'll bet that the GimpShop hack improves its prominence more than a "pure" name change, and I'll bet that most of that is down to the obvious connection with PhotoShop not the sanitization of the user interface.
As other posters have noted, the survey was only of three cities.
Even aside from that, for most people it's something of an academic point because unless you have infinite funds and patience you will be constrained to a few networks. Free ones are relatively uncommon.
It can still be useful though - just today I was able to work around a broadband outage in my office in Knightsbridge by buying a day's connection to the local BTOpenZone access point. Mind you, it was irritating that to circumvent a problem with BT's flakey internet I had to buy a service from BT themselves at an extortionate £10 for 24 hours, but still better than no connectivity for a day.
I apologise; I skimmed through this and then dismissed it with the "minus the keyboard2 jibe earlier. I didn't grok that you were saying that the N810 has a keyboard and that the N800 is the keyboardless and thus cheaper alternative.
Yes, this looks exactly what I'm after - I knew about the N800 and assumed that the N810 was just an upgrade upon that, but for me the minor addition of a keyboard makes it exactly what I'm after. I'll certainly get one. It's a shame it's not a clamshell, but bloody hell, it ticks everything else on my wishlist so I'm not going to complain too loudly about that.
Yep, that's probably the closest thing to what I'm looking for that's currently available, but is just "not quite" in various ways: mediocre keyboard, symbian OS. limited memory, under-powered, and so on. Give it a better keyboard and a bit more memory and I'd probably bite though.
A pal of mine had the Nokia 9000 brick and swore by (and occasionally at) it so I'm keeping an eye out for successors in that lineage.
In fact I think that's the "real" answer to my question - capable mobiles killed the pocket organiser and so that's currently seen as a no-go area for new products. Personally I hope they come back; or that someone puts out a clamshell qwerty phone with a mainstream OS.
Well nothing, but which of these features is missing from a cheap laptop? I just don't get why that particular size is such a big deal. If it's the price I sort of get it, but I'm still a bit skeptical given that the range of netbook prices substantially overlaps the bottom end of laptops.
I am using a laptop as a desktop replacement. It's not working out for me with the non-standard keyboard, hitting the touch-pad when I type, etc.
Thinkpad! Gorgeous keyboards, sanely laid out. The trackpoint is a winner. You can disable the touchpad in BIOS if you're unlucky enough to have one. I actively prefer my Thinkpads to desktop machines and use them as such. Sadly they don't do a jacket pocket sized one (though I believe they did once upon a time).
The Psion clamshells seemed pretty popular in their day. I don't understand why that form factor went away and didn't come back! One of these with a color screen, a modern processor, WiFi and running Linux would definitely appeal to me.
Netbooks at the moment seem like the worst of both worlds - too large to be conveniently portable, too underpowered to do serious work, too small to be productive for heavily keyboard oriented stuff. They're light at least - but I don't really follow why that's a big deal. Obviously I'm wrong because Netbooks are popular. I just don't quite understand it.
...though I probably won't read it. I think that Douglas's style was inimitable - and it's painful when people try. Some people love the books for the story though, and before he died Douglas himself said that he might write another lighter sequel - that he was in a bad place when he wrote Mostly Harmless and that it was too dark as a result.
He left a wife and daughter and I presume he would have wanted them to be ok; why shouldn't his wife do this? The works he was directly involved in are still there and will be no less enjoyable. I disliked the film, but it's still better to have the original stuff and a film that some people will like than just the originals so I feel the same way about this proposed sequel.
People are too precious about these things. If you don't want 'em don't buy 'em. I'm with you. But don't try to tell the heirs about their responsibilities to a dead man if they're not suppressing anything.
By all accounts Eoin Colfer is a good author. It's up to him to make something worthwhile of the new book regardless of whose footsteps he's following in.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a compromise language. Compromises are, in fact, a good thing but purists hate them. Of course. That's what purism *is*. But really, who cares if it's cool? We're geeks, I thought we were supposed to be opposed to "cool" anyway?
It's a known quantity and before you dismiss it you should consider the truly vast amount of software that's been successfully implemented in Java.
Personally I like it. It has it's niggles (if I were king I'd change oh so many things) but it keeps on succeeding like most good compromises.
Joe McCarthy. You probably don't want him on your side of the argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
In general you have to pay for WiFi in chain cafes (Starbucks and the like). However, many of the independents and smaller chains offer it for free.
There's free WiFi and power points in the cafe at the British Library.
The cafe in Foyles bookstore (a geek venue in its own right) on Charing Cross Road is pretty geek friendly. It's handy for the computer section, there's often free live Jazz playing, and (when it works which is not always) there's free WiFi. Oh and the cake is good there.
Tottenham Court Road is the local centre for technology shopping in the area if you find you've forgotten to bring something vital.
The National Film Theatre under the south arches of Waterloo Bridge has the broadest arts cinema coverage in the capital. The Electric Cinema in Notting Hill Gate is the comfiest cinema in the capital.
For non-geeky but interesting things to do while you're here pick up a copy of Time Out. I'd recommend the 100 club on Oxford Street on Monday nights though.
Riiight.
I don't think I'd call fish and chips especially authentic. Sure, we do eat 'em, but curry is more "authentically" British these days. If you want very high quality eating then The Fat Duck is a three Michelin starred restaurant a short trip outside London. It serves some of the best food in the world and has a certain amount of geek cred to go with it.
an irrational fear of death
Irrational?
Couldn't agree more. Witness the fact that a second hand 5mx on eBay still fetches £70 to £80, which isn't bad for an obsolete device. Something like you describe would be very high up my wishlist for gadgets today - there are a very few clamshell devices, but nothing with a comparable keyboard.
As a close second best I'd love Lenovo to do a Netbook (or a "kneetop" as I tend to term them) under the Thinkpad brand with a Trackpoint instead of a touchpad. Ah, wishful thinking...
{quote}Why is he not deemed a flight risk?{quote}
Consult the court documents if you actually care. Since he's not yet fled, shows no signs of fleeing, and is currently under house arrest it seems to have been a reasonable decision.
Get back to me when you can cite the court documents rather than angrily telling me how unjust it is without any supporting evidence. I have more respect for courts than you do.
Similarly, why is Bernie Madoff still walking around free?
Because he has not been tried and found guilty of a crime. He is charged with a crime, yes, but that is not the same thing, and he is judged not to be a flight risk, which is the pertinent factor in deciding whether he should be held on remand.
Justice is not about punishing people who you think are probably guilty of a crime, or look guilty of a crime, or that someone told you was guilty of a crime. It's about checking the facts in a court of law and handing out the punishment if and only if the accused is proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty of the crime.
Too many people wail about a lack of justice when they actually are complaining that the court is being properly impartial.
Parent AC is correct. They're not common yet, but on the back of Oyster will probably become so.
I'm a programmer and I don't recall ever receiving any royalties for code that I wrote. Most software is bespoke - written to order - to which copyright applies only as a technicality.
Shrink wrap software is a tiny, tiny exception against the general case.
There is a good public interest case for copyright protection as a short term measure, but no good case for protection beyond the "artist's" lifetime - and personally I think anything above a decade or so is excessive.
I know my spelling / grammar aren't up to many peoples standards, but I had other people clean things up.
Good. I don't want to be an asshole about it. Bad spelling/grammar aren't moral failings; they have practical effects that can usually be eliminated with some decent proof reading. As I note, there's no obligation upon anyone to give that kind of attention to a Slashdot post. Nor do I claim complete perfection in this area on my own part.
I wish you could see your post through my eyes though - it's almost physically jarring.
I'm sorry but many really good engineers can't write.
I'm not sure about the "many". I've noticed a strong correlation between "good spelling/writing" and "good engineer" But certainly some good engineers really can't write and you're clearly a good engineer. I don't think that's in question.
But you're not trying to be just a good engineer. You're trying to be a good businessman too. You obviously have some talent for business - your successes even where partial show that - but I wonder if some of the problems you encounter actually arise from deficient soft-skills akin to writing?
This post in the meta-discussion on Hacker News might be insightful.
Good luck with your future endeavours; it certainly sounds like you've earned it!
He's not necessarily giving of his best in a Slashdot post of course - but yes, this was my first thought too.
Rightly or wrongly a lot of people use basic literacy skills as a first pass filter for the quality of their contacts. I can't help wondering if that VC passed on his product because of some deficiencies in the presentation.
There are lots of holes in the case. Here's one: - Was the mosquito flying around & sucking blood from pedestrians BEFORE it entered the car?
According to the article he's already admitted to being in the car. So in what way is that a hole in the case?
No, you shouldn't presume a party to be guilty unless they're proven guilty in a court of law. That has nothing whatsoever to the strength of the particular case as reported and everything to do with justice.
Quite. Those who tagged this article with "moron" are the sort of invertebrates who give developers a bad name.
Ah yes, that must explain why Apache is doing so terribly in terms of market penetration...
Most non-technical people have never heard of "patching" and the technical ones all know about Apache.
The GIMP certainly has a stupid name, but I sincerely doubt that it affects its take up anything like as much as the shere existing mindshare of PhotoShop. In fact I'll bet that the GimpShop hack improves its prominence more than a "pure" name change, and I'll bet that most of that is down to the obvious connection with PhotoShop not the sanitization of the user interface.
Not in North America ... we tend to pronouce all those letters
Just for your information then, "herb" has an H in it. Also I look forward to hearing your pronunciation of "meringue".
As other posters have noted, the survey was only of three cities.
Even aside from that, for most people it's something of an academic point because unless you have infinite funds and patience you will be constrained to a few networks. Free ones are relatively uncommon.
It can still be useful though - just today I was able to work around a broadband outage in my office in Knightsbridge by buying a day's connection to the local BTOpenZone access point. Mind you, it was irritating that to circumvent a problem with BT's flakey internet I had to buy a service from BT themselves at an extortionate £10 for 24 hours, but still better than no connectivity for a day.
I apologise; I skimmed through this and then dismissed it with the "minus the keyboard2 jibe earlier. I didn't grok that you were saying that the N810 has a keyboard and that the N800 is the keyboardless and thus cheaper alternative.
Yes, this looks exactly what I'm after - I knew about the N800 and assumed that the N810 was just an upgrade upon that, but for me the minor addition of a keyboard makes it exactly what I'm after. I'll certainly get one. It's a shame it's not a clamshell, but bloody hell, it ticks everything else on my wishlist so I'm not going to complain too loudly about that.
Thanks!
Yep, that's probably the closest thing to what I'm looking for that's currently available, but is just "not quite" in various ways: mediocre keyboard, symbian OS. limited memory, under-powered, and so on. Give it a better keyboard and a bit more memory and I'd probably bite though.
A pal of mine had the Nokia 9000 brick and swore by (and occasionally at) it so I'm keeping an eye out for successors in that lineage.
In fact I think that's the "real" answer to my question - capable mobiles killed the pocket organiser and so that's currently seen as a no-go area for new products. Personally I hope they come back; or that someone puts out a clamshell qwerty phone with a mainstream OS.
Well yes, but "minus the keyboard" is quite a big difference.
Well nothing, but which of these features is missing from a cheap laptop? I just don't get why that particular size is such a big deal. If it's the price I sort of get it, but I'm still a bit skeptical given that the range of netbook prices substantially overlaps the bottom end of laptops.
I am using a laptop as a desktop replacement. It's not working out for me with the non-standard keyboard, hitting the touch-pad when I type, etc.
Thinkpad! Gorgeous keyboards, sanely laid out. The trackpoint is a winner. You can disable the touchpad in BIOS if you're unlucky enough to have one. I actively prefer my Thinkpads to desktop machines and use them as such. Sadly they don't do a jacket pocket sized one (though I believe they did once upon a time).
The Psion clamshells seemed pretty popular in their day. I don't understand why that form factor went away and didn't come back! One of these with a color screen, a modern processor, WiFi and running Linux would definitely appeal to me.
Netbooks at the moment seem like the worst of both worlds - too large to be conveniently portable, too underpowered to do serious work, too small to be productive for heavily keyboard oriented stuff. They're light at least - but I don't really follow why that's a big deal. Obviously I'm wrong because Netbooks are popular. I just don't quite understand it.
You're saying they can stop stuff like the tubgirl picture from lodging in my brain? Where can I get one?
...though I probably won't read it. I think that Douglas's style was inimitable - and it's painful when people try. Some people love the books for the story though, and before he died Douglas himself said that he might write another lighter sequel - that he was in a bad place when he wrote Mostly Harmless and that it was too dark as a result.
He left a wife and daughter and I presume he would have wanted them to be ok; why shouldn't his wife do this? The works he was directly involved in are still there and will be no less enjoyable. I disliked the film, but it's still better to have the original stuff and a film that some people will like than just the originals so I feel the same way about this proposed sequel.
People are too precious about these things. If you don't want 'em don't buy 'em. I'm with you. But don't try to tell the heirs about their responsibilities to a dead man if they're not suppressing anything.
By all accounts Eoin Colfer is a good author. It's up to him to make something worthwhile of the new book regardless of whose footsteps he's following in.