I mean: can I write programs using a virtual keyboard? Traditionally we programmers need more symbols than the number of keys on a keyboard so we use Shift quite a lot. I see no problems for adding shift to a haptic keyboard, but I see some more problems in implementing a swype programmer's layout (it's going to be quite large and maybe programming language dependent). Furthermore we lose the ability to type and look at the screen at the same time and that impacts productivity as layout is important for programming.
A possible outcome would be having to plug in a usb keyboard, but that's going to kill the laptop as a programming device (you don't want to bring a keyboard with you as you move from your office to a customer's one).
I wonder if we'll end up with computers for consumers (haptic keyboard) and computer for programmers (traditional keyboard). If we do I expect to have to pay a lot more for a new one as they're going to be specialized devices. At least we might be able to regain a more sensible screen format than the 16:9 we're being forced to use today. A 16:9 display has less vertical space than a same width 4:3 one and that matters on laptops because there are limits to the width of what you can comfortably carry around.
Partially out topic: I'd love to have a touchscreen on my laptop to be able to push some buttons with my fingers (the Preview one below this textarea) or touch some links directly on the screen. It would be a good complement to the mouse or the touchpad. So I can see haptic devices as a mouse killer (but not for games).
The are languages such as Ruby that don't require you to type () and even ; because the parser can figure out where an expression ends. Actually sometimes you need the () to disambiguate alternative interpretations of argument lists (e.g. nested method calls) but generally speaking, typing only one . with no () is so much better than the two [] or the two -> followed by (). And don't forget the;. When I look at Java I can't understand why they designed a language that needs us to type the;. When I look at Obj-C, well... it's just so ugly and apparently redundant.
I can put two windows sideways on my 4:3 1680x1050 notebook screen. Let's suppose I have to buy a new notebook.
I'll get a 16:9 screen but I won't get wider side-by-side windows because I don't want one of those new surfboard-sized notebooks, so the horizontal width of the screen (in cm/inches) is going to be about the same. However I'll miss some cm/inches at the top and end up with a smaller display area. That's bad.
If this comes to pass, then corporations will soon have more rights than people do.
They already do. They can't directly vote but they make many people vote for them. They can't go to jail. Sometimes one of their managers is jailed but the company stays free. The worst it can happen to companies is to close business, much like dying for you and me. However they have other options, such as going bankrupt and/or start over with a different name but keeping all their old business and employees.
Maybe we should think about becoming corporations ourselves;-)
in which you have both morale and law on your side.
I understand your point and I generally agree with you. However your final line made me think about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You might be overly optimistic because many of points of that declaration are not taken fully into account by the laws or the common practices of even the major countries of the world.
Administrators don't want antennas close to homes but they probably want their citizens to be able to use mobile phones inside their homes. One would think about upping the power but you can't have too high levels close to the antennas.
Furthermore the higher bandwidth you want, the smaller you have to keep the cell radius. I wonder if they'll be able to use anything more than 2G there but I'm sure people will be blaming the operators.
I don't see that there's any niche for a netbook.. unless you really really want a proper laptop and you can't afford one.. because netbooks are just cheap laptops.
I just came back from a one month vacation in Australia. I had my netbook with me and I used it mainly to check mail (thunderbird with local folders backed up almost daily on a usb pen drive with rsync) and to upload pictures and notes of my travel to my website. However I also did some work for a couple of customers of mine who sent me mail about some bugs to fix. I wrote the code, tested it and pushed it into a git repository. I wouldn't be able to do that with an iPad and taking my notebook with me (I got one, I'm that wealthy) would have been very inconvenient as it's twice as large as the netbook and almost three times as heavy. I never ever considered to put it into my backpack.
With this experience in mind I do believe that there is a niche for netbooks. Probably it's going to be a very small one because of what most people's computing needs are, but I'm happy we have cheap netbooks that are powerful enough to work on them (but I concede that I'm more productive with the notebook).
I think I understand your feelings but the practice of awarding default judgements without inspecting proofs seems as bad as not showing up in courts.
The keyword is justice: the judge should have checked the post on the web site and noticed that the urls don't match. After all that was about 11 M$, not 11$.
Suppose the New York Post gets mistakenly sued for something written on the New York Times: would we excuse the judge for not looking at the incriminated newspaper page and not noticing they are suing the wrong company, even if the NYP didn't show up in court?
I spent the last month on vacation in Australia. I got a SIM card mailed to me in Italy on June when I registered on the Internet with http://www.vipbackpackers.com/ (they have a discount card for hostels, tours, bus, etc). I gave them my address and credit card. The SIM card worked well.
It's easier to sell to dumb people than to smart people. Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign praising the virtues of being stupid is an eye-opener. Companies like customers to "be stupid" and they only need a few smart people to get their business going. A more stupid society is good for business. It's not an evil ploy, it's just that years and years of profit oriented marketing have inevitably changed the society. Good for us (I'm not a kid anymore), it will be easier to maintain an edge over the new generations;-)
IQ tests are about solving logical puzzles. If there is some pressure about scoring well in those puzzles kids get trained to do well in puzzles and each generation does better than the previous one. That doesn't mean they are any smarter than their older brothers or parents. They're just better puzzle solvers. It reminds me about new generations of mouses running faster inside wheels: it's an improvement about as useful as scoring better in IQ tests:-)
The Internet is at least in the 1 billion cores range. The way to use many of them for a parallel computation has been demonstrated by Seti@home, Folding@home and even by botnets. They might not be the most efficient implementations when you have full control of the cores but they show the way to go when the availability of the cores and the communication between them is unreliable, when they have different times and different clocks and when they might be preempted to do different tasks.
They'll keep selling Macs because it's the only platform you can use to write an i* app.
You won't be able to write them on i*s because they are locked down devices by design and that doesn't play well with the needs of a developer.
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Did you install AdBlock? My facebook never had any ads :-)
But yes, it would be interesting to know how they're making those money.
I mean: can I write programs using a virtual keyboard? Traditionally we programmers need more symbols than the number of keys on a keyboard so we use Shift quite a lot. I see no problems for adding shift to a haptic keyboard, but I see some more problems in implementing a swype programmer's layout (it's going to be quite large and maybe programming language dependent). Furthermore we lose the ability to type and look at the screen at the same time and that impacts productivity as layout is important for programming.
A possible outcome would be having to plug in a usb keyboard, but that's going to kill the laptop as a programming device (you don't want to bring a keyboard with you as you move from your office to a customer's one).
I wonder if we'll end up with computers for consumers (haptic keyboard) and computer for programmers (traditional keyboard). If we do I expect to have to pay a lot more for a new one as they're going to be specialized devices. At least we might be able to regain a more sensible screen format than the 16:9 we're being forced to use today. A 16:9 display has less vertical space than a same width 4:3 one and that matters on laptops because there are limits to the width of what you can comfortably carry around.
Partially out topic: I'd love to have a touchscreen on my laptop to be able to push some buttons with my fingers (the Preview one below this textarea) or touch some links directly on the screen. It would be a good complement to the mouse or the touchpad. So I can see haptic devices as a mouse killer (but not for games).
The French system finds parking spots on the streets, not in car parks. It's a different and IMHO a much harder problem.
Don't know about coders but it seems they do crappy testing.
Mod parent up! If 80% of the chess players were women we'll have a female world champion and we'd be wondering why men can't play that well.
The are languages such as Ruby that don't require you to type () and even ; because the parser can figure out where an expression ends. Actually sometimes you need the () to disambiguate alternative interpretations of argument lists (e.g. nested method calls) but generally speaking, typing only one . with no () is so much better than the two [] or the two -> followed by (). And don't forget the ;. When I look at Java I can't understand why they designed a language that needs us to type the ;. When I look at Obj-C, well... it's just so ugly and apparently redundant.
I can put two windows sideways on my 4:3 1680x1050 notebook screen. Let's suppose I have to buy a new notebook. I'll get a 16:9 screen but I won't get wider side-by-side windows because I don't want one of those new surfboard-sized notebooks, so the horizontal width of the screen (in cm/inches) is going to be about the same. However I'll miss some cm/inches at the top and end up with a smaller display area. That's bad.
Show your friends this picture http://dvice.com/assets_c/2009/10/net-neutrality-thumb-550xauto-27419.jpg This is what Net Neutrality protects them from.
If this comes to pass, then corporations will soon have more rights than people do.
They already do. They can't directly vote but they make many people vote for them. They can't go to jail. Sometimes one of their managers is jailed but the company stays free. The worst it can happen to companies is to close business, much like dying for you and me. However they have other options, such as going bankrupt and/or start over with a different name but keeping all their old business and employees.
Maybe we should think about becoming corporations ourselves ;-)
in which you have both morale and law on your side.
I understand your point and I generally agree with you. However your final line made me think about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You might be overly optimistic because many of points of that declaration are not taken fully into account by the laws or the common practices of even the major countries of the world.
Administrators don't want antennas close to homes but they probably want their citizens to be able to use mobile phones inside their homes. One would think about upping the power but you can't have too high levels close to the antennas. Furthermore the higher bandwidth you want, the smaller you have to keep the cell radius. I wonder if they'll be able to use anything more than 2G there but I'm sure people will be blaming the operators.
Reversing the polarity is easier.
Please mod parent up, Do we have Score: 6, Insightful?
I don't see that there's any niche for a netbook.. unless you really really want a proper laptop and you can't afford one.. because netbooks are just cheap laptops.
I just came back from a one month vacation in Australia. I had my netbook with me and I used it mainly to check mail (thunderbird with local folders backed up almost daily on a usb pen drive with rsync) and to upload pictures and notes of my travel to my website. However I also did some work for a couple of customers of mine who sent me mail about some bugs to fix. I wrote the code, tested it and pushed it into a git repository. I wouldn't be able to do that with an iPad and taking my notebook with me (I got one, I'm that wealthy) would have been very inconvenient as it's twice as large as the netbook and almost three times as heavy. I never ever considered to put it into my backpack.
With this experience in mind I do believe that there is a niche for netbooks. Probably it's going to be a very small one because of what most people's computing needs are, but I'm happy we have cheap netbooks that are powerful enough to work on them (but I concede that I'm more productive with the notebook).
I think I understand your feelings but the practice of awarding default judgements without inspecting proofs seems as bad as not showing up in courts.
The keyword is justice: the judge should have checked the post on the web site and noticed that the urls don't match. After all that was about 11 M$, not 11$.
Suppose the New York Post gets mistakenly sued for something written on the New York Times: would we excuse the judge for not looking at the incriminated newspaper page and not noticing they are suing the wrong company, even if the NYP didn't show up in court?
Is this going to harm or benefit the career of the judge? And suing the wrong company shouldn't invalidate the judgment?
I spent the last month on vacation in Australia. I got a SIM card mailed to me in Italy on June when I registered on the Internet with http://www.vipbackpackers.com/ (they have a discount card for hostels, tours, bus, etc). I gave them my address and credit card. The SIM card worked well.
We have had to show photo id for as long as I can remember in Austraila when getting a new phone or sim card.
A photo-id is required for buying SIM cards in Italy but not for phones unless they contain a SIM card, which is not always the case here.
Obviously we won't: we don't have scales to cut a pole at 10 foot here :-)
They should have done it with JavaScript and JPEGs instead of using Silverlight, which doesn't work on my Linux.
Good enough as first bashing? .-)
It's easier to sell to dumb people than to smart people. Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign praising the virtues of being stupid is an eye-opener. Companies like customers to "be stupid" and they only need a few smart people to get their business going. A more stupid society is good for business. It's not an evil ploy, it's just that years and years of profit oriented marketing have inevitably changed the society. Good for us (I'm not a kid anymore), it will be easier to maintain an edge over the new generations ;-)
IQ tests are about solving logical puzzles. If there is some pressure about scoring well in those puzzles kids get trained to do well in puzzles and each generation does better than the previous one. That doesn't mean they are any smarter than their older brothers or parents. They're just better puzzle solvers. It reminds me about new generations of mouses running faster inside wheels: it's an improvement about as useful as scoring better in IQ tests :-)
The Internet is at least in the 1 billion cores range. The way to use many of them for a parallel computation has been demonstrated by Seti@home, Folding@home and even by botnets. They might not be the most efficient implementations when you have full control of the cores but they show the way to go when the availability of the cores and the communication between them is unreliable, when they have different times and different clocks and when they might be preempted to do different tasks.
They'll keep selling Macs because it's the only platform you can use to write an i* app. You won't be able to write them on i*s because they are locked down devices by design and that doesn't play well with the needs of a developer.
Will anybody with an empty battery sue the state under the assumption that the plate-ads consumed that bit of power that prevented the car to start?
More about litigations: will anybody sue the state when the plate will display an ad of a competitor of the car owner's company?