How do you put music onto your phone without iTunes? Even the 3rd-party apps that let you "copy" files to the iPhone still require iTunes to be installed, and still can only copy files that iTunes permits, into locations iTunes allows.
There's 1000 of these apps, and they all suck. They can't get around the fact that the phone is locked. It isn't the same as having the device be a USB device.
- They don't give you access to the entire iPhone. You can only get files in and out of specific locations, usually that app's own directory. - You can only do it through this app, so it won't work on just any computer you plug into. - You have to have iTunes installed for this application to even work. - So it won't work on Linux - It won't copy files to another iPhone, or a flash drive, etc. - Can't access emails, address book, etc. From the page you linked to:
(Optional) If you jailbreak your iPhone you can access the real root of your iPhone and recover your address book, SMS, e-mails and more.
but then when the time comes to book a ticket they pick the airline with the cheapest fare.
I wonder if that is because there is no way for the customer to know. When I got to a web site to book a plane flight, it doesn't tell me any details about the amenities on the flight, or the airline. For example: I would pay more for an airline that had normal headphone jacks instead of selling me a proprietary headset for $5. But how would I know what airlines that is? Even if I found one, by the time I took another flight they would probably be bought-out and have their name and policies changed so I could never find them again.
You can't charge more for a feature you don't advertise.
The main "selling point" is really the number of other folks using one or the other.
That might be a good way to sell it to the public, but it is not the main benefit of a system. People should understand that a "degree" really does have meaning.
In America, every household appliance seems to use a different unit. My water heater is in BTUs, my electronic devices are in watts, and my air conditioner has na EER which is something stupid like BTUs per Watt - a horrible combination of systems. Even within one fieldd - say, cooking - they use different units. My microwave is in watts while my stove is in BTUs.
If we switched to Metric, this would become much simpler. And then you could compare your lawn mower, your car, your horse, and your TV all using the same units. Suddenly, things that were in the realm of complex math become accessible to the average person,
A note on expandability: Over time, we have gone from highly super modular devices, to cheaper, more specific, less expandable devices. The cheaper is a key part of that. In the 80s, you bought a motherboard with lots of expansion slots. Then you could add sound, better video, a newer drive controller, etc. Buying something with those on board was considered cheap and bad. Then in the 90s, every board had built-in audio, video, and IO. It was just so cheap and so ubiquitous that there was hardly a reason not to have it built-in. After 2000, it got to the point where hardly anyone even buys a sound card, and only specialized IO cards exist. Most laptops come with built-in webcams that are good enough for 99% of usages and are too cheap to not include, just for the 1% who want something better.
For many electronic devices, it is easier/cheaper to buy a newer one than to upgrade. That saddens me, but it is has become a fact of economics. So the "no ability to expand" might not be as bad a thing as you think. If it comes with a camera, a GPS, accelerometers, bluetooth, wi-fi, and sufficient storage... by the time the next generation of wi-fi comes out, it might be cheaper/easier just to buy a new iPad than to upgrade the current one.
That's odd. SSDs are far more reliable than hard drives. So either you did something very wrong, or they were defective and I hope you had them replaced since they would be under warranty. Did they tell you why it failed? Even large-scale MMOs run on SSDs and don't have reliability problems.
This is maps + Photosynth. If you aren't familiar with Photosynth, go watch it. THey took a bunch of random pictures from Flickr and built a 3D virtual tour of various famous monuments. Now they are taking intentional pictures and combining them. I predict that this is just the tip of a lot of really wowie things that will appear within the next decade. This + augmented realities can do a lot.
First of all, you should be placing the paper ballot into the box yourself. Then there is a count of the number of ballots that make it into the box. In some cases, the ballots may be numbered or tracked so that they can tell who lost the ballot or when. Then, the observers who watch the ballot box should have seen when it happened and why. And the people who remove the ballots from the box and count them are observed by watches from both (all) parties, plus anyone can register to become an independent observer who can watch but not interfere.
The reason people are against electronic voting is because it is hard to do the digital equivalent of watching the ballot box.
The difficulty is that stronger punishments require stronger proof. You must be be 100% sure that you have the right person. It would suck if you tossed-out the best and brightest because people were copying their work.
I'm glad you put "cheating" in quotes because delegating is not cheating. And using lower-level building blocks to create something new is not cheating.
You can't use those building blocks without knowing how they interconnect. You can't delegate unless you know who to delegate to, can tell them what must be done, and can verify the resulting work. Although it has been a looong time since I wrote my own quicksort. Or sort of any kind. But I could do it. And I ask those things as interview questions.
Those people will eventually be discovered, but I every time that happens it weakens the value of the diploma from that school. That's bad for the graduates who actually worked. The schools need to stop this kind of thing from happening - that diploma certifies that the person earned it. Not that they cheated their way through a program. If it happens enough, they should lose their accreditation.
The reply about public key encryption is right. But to expand on it, I've seen this called the "digital cash problem" and it is also the same thing as the offline verified voting problem. There's a whole series of problems that boil down to offline verification of something unique. It can be done, but it requires a public key infrastructure and good use of encryption. It's not trivial to do, but it could be done. It's just that... no commercial company so far has had any desire to do it.
All your points are good, but I think they apply regardless of whether or not you use exceptions. If you write the tedious logic that I gave in my example, you still have the same code to handle the return values. For microcontroller coding, just think of exceptions as an automatic if-then-else that is placed around every function call. If the function call succeeds the check is free. If the function call fails, the check is expensive. It's quite a nice trade-off.
Funny note: I work for a medical equipment manufacturer, who uses vxWorks and C++. They use exceptions in their coding, and most of their memory allocations are fixed due to memory constraints.
If the mechanical exceptions caused exceptions in the computer software
It's interesting you say that. In our app, mechanical exceptions are the one place where exceptions are not permitted to cascade upward. They are exceptions, in that they are very rare and we don't want to write the tedious code to check return values every time. Exceptions are just an easier way to handle the return_value pattern I showed in my example. It really doesn't change very much.
I have seen some books on using Java on microcontrollers. I have never done it, but I would curious to see how they approach it since Java has checked exceptions.
Fortunately, modern concepts like exceptions have eliminated the need for steps 2 through 5. It is very annoying to go back to old code and see: return_value = DoStep1(); if (return_value != success) then handle_error(return_Value); return_value = DoStep2(); if (return_value != success) then handle_error(return_Value); return_value = DoStep3(); if (return_value != success) then handle_error(return_Value); . . .
or worse: return_value = DoStep1(); if (return_value == success) {
return_value = DoStep2()
if (return_Value == success)... And so on, indented to the 500th column... }
instead of:
DoStep1(); DoStep2(); DoStep3(); upon failure, handle_error.
The idea is not only that automated testing is good, but that testable code is fundamentally better
One of the main goals of of Typemock is to eliminate that. TypeMock allows you to mock objects that were not designed to be mocked, and are not loosely coupled.
Not that big a deal???? That a commercial 3rd-party company has access to your passwords, bank account info, browsing habits, webmail accounts...???? Will the average user even understand that this is happening?
Do you know why a 20-character password is so hard? Because most systems limit passwords to 10 or 15 characters. Other than that, longer passwords are easier to remember.
Good, easy to remember, long passwords: "This is my work computer and those IT jerks keep making me change my password" "I hate this training system" "My mother's maiden name is Johnson"
Most people can easily memorize their name, their address, the characters in their favorite sports movie, the last 5 coaches of their favorite sports team... those longer things are actually _easier_ to remember than a single word with no context.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you put music onto your phone without iTunes? Even the 3rd-party apps that let you "copy" files to the iPhone still require iTunes to be installed, and still can only copy files that iTunes permits, into locations iTunes allows.
There's 1000 of these apps, and they all suck. They can't get around the fact that the phone is locked. It isn't the same as having the device be a USB device.
- They don't give you access to the entire iPhone. You can only get files in and out of specific locations, usually that app's own directory.
- You can only do it through this app, so it won't work on just any computer you plug into.
- You have to have iTunes installed for this application to even work.
- So it won't work on Linux
- It won't copy files to another iPhone, or a flash drive, etc.
- Can't access emails, address book, etc. From the page you linked to:
(Optional) If you jailbreak your iPhone you can access the real root of your iPhone and recover your address book, SMS, e-mails and more.
Also, I didn't think Dubner claims to be an economist.
Yes, you are right. :-)
I misread it as in the head is between the laser and the target.
lol, only if you take it out of context.
but then when the time comes to book a ticket they pick the airline with the cheapest fare.
I wonder if that is because there is no way for the customer to know. When I got to a web site to book a plane flight, it doesn't tell me any details about the amenities on the flight, or the airline. For example: I would pay more for an airline that had normal headphone jacks instead of selling me a proprietary headset for $5. But how would I know what airlines that is? Even if I found one, by the time I took another flight they would probably be bought-out and have their name and policies changed so I could never find them again.
You can't charge more for a feature you don't advertise.
The main "selling point" is really the number of other folks using one or the other.
That might be a good way to sell it to the public, but it is not the main benefit of a system. People should understand that a "degree" really does have meaning.
In America, every household appliance seems to use a different unit. My water heater is in BTUs, my electronic devices are in watts, and my air conditioner has na EER which is something stupid like BTUs per Watt - a horrible combination of systems. Even within one fieldd - say, cooking - they use different units. My microwave is in watts while my stove is in BTUs.
If we switched to Metric, this would become much simpler. And then you could compare your lawn mower, your car, your horse, and your TV all using the same units. Suddenly, things that were in the realm of complex math become accessible to the average person,
A note on expandability: Over time, we have gone from highly super modular devices, to cheaper, more specific, less expandable devices. The cheaper is a key part of that. In the 80s, you bought a motherboard with lots of expansion slots. Then you could add sound, better video, a newer drive controller, etc. Buying something with those on board was considered cheap and bad. Then in the 90s, every board had built-in audio, video, and IO. It was just so cheap and so ubiquitous that there was hardly a reason not to have it built-in. After 2000, it got to the point where hardly anyone even buys a sound card, and only specialized IO cards exist. Most laptops come with built-in webcams that are good enough for 99% of usages and are too cheap to not include, just for the 1% who want something better.
For many electronic devices, it is easier/cheaper to buy a newer one than to upgrade. That saddens me, but it is has become a fact of economics. So the "no ability to expand" might not be as bad a thing as you think. If it comes with a camera, a GPS, accelerometers, bluetooth, wi-fi, and sufficient storage... by the time the next generation of wi-fi comes out, it might be cheaper/easier just to buy a new iPad than to upgrade the current one.
That's odd. SSDs are far more reliable than hard drives. So either you did something very wrong, or they were defective and I hope you had them replaced since they would be under warranty. Did they tell you why it failed? Even large-scale MMOs run on SSDs and don't have reliability problems.
This is maps + Photosynth. If you aren't familiar with Photosynth, go watch it. THey took a bunch of random pictures from Flickr and built a 3D virtual tour of various famous monuments. Now they are taking intentional pictures and combining them. I predict that this is just the tip of a lot of really wowie things that will appear within the next decade. This + augmented realities can do a lot.
This has been done several times before, but the problem is that people register accounts just to spam the results.
But they can't get away with it.
First of all, you should be placing the paper ballot into the box yourself. Then there is a count of the number of ballots that make it into the box. In some cases, the ballots may be numbered or tracked so that they can tell who lost the ballot or when. Then, the observers who watch the ballot box should have seen when it happened and why. And the people who remove the ballots from the box and count them are observed by watches from both (all) parties, plus anyone can register to become an independent observer who can watch but not interfere.
The reason people are against electronic voting is because it is hard to do the digital equivalent of watching the ballot box.
When I saw the headline, I thought it was a dupe of the earlier article about Directed Energy Weapons but that Mosquito was the name of the type of missile.
if the target is between the lazer, and a person's eye.
How did the device see the mosquito in the first place if someone's head is in the way?
The difficulty is that stronger punishments require stronger proof. You must be be 100% sure that you have the right person. It would suck if you tossed-out the best and brightest because people were copying their work.
I'm glad you put "cheating" in quotes because delegating is not cheating. And using lower-level building blocks to create something new is not cheating.
You can't use those building blocks without knowing how they interconnect. You can't delegate unless you know who to delegate to, can tell them what must be done, and can verify the resulting work. Although it has been a looong time since I wrote my own quicksort. Or sort of any kind. But I could do it. And I ask those things as interview questions.
Those people will eventually be discovered, but I every time that happens it weakens the value of the diploma from that school. That's bad for the graduates who actually worked. The schools need to stop this kind of thing from happening - that diploma certifies that the person earned it. Not that they cheated their way through a program. If it happens enough, they should lose their accreditation.
The reply about public key encryption is right. But to expand on it, I've seen this called the "digital cash problem" and it is also the same thing as the offline verified voting problem. There's a whole series of problems that boil down to offline verification of something unique. It can be done, but it requires a public key infrastructure and good use of encryption. It's not trivial to do, but it could be done. It's just that... no commercial company so far has had any desire to do it.
I sure how Windows Embedded doesn't do this. I work for a company that uses it on devices that don't have Internet access.
All your points are good, but I think they apply regardless of whether or not you use exceptions. If you write the tedious logic that I gave in my example, you still have the same code to handle the return values. For microcontroller coding, just think of exceptions as an automatic if-then-else that is placed around every function call. If the function call succeeds the check is free. If the function call fails, the check is expensive. It's quite a nice trade-off.
Funny note: I work for a medical equipment manufacturer, who uses vxWorks and C++. They use exceptions in their coding, and most of their memory allocations are fixed due to memory constraints.
If the mechanical exceptions caused exceptions in the computer software
It's interesting you say that. In our app, mechanical exceptions are the one place where exceptions are not permitted to cascade upward. They are exceptions, in that they are very rare and we don't want to write the tedious code to check return values every time. Exceptions are just an easier way to handle the return_value pattern I showed in my example. It really doesn't change very much.
I have seen some books on using Java on microcontrollers. I have never done it, but I would curious to see how they approach it since Java has checked exceptions.
Fortunately, modern concepts like exceptions have eliminated the need for steps 2 through 5. It is very annoying to go back to old code and see:
... And so on, indented to the 500th column...
return_value = DoStep1();
if (return_value != success) then handle_error(return_Value);
return_value = DoStep2();
if (return_value != success) then handle_error(return_Value);
return_value = DoStep3();
if (return_value != success) then handle_error(return_Value);
.
.
.
or worse:
return_value = DoStep1();
if (return_value == success)
{
return_value = DoStep2()
if (return_Value == success)
}
instead of:
DoStep1();
DoStep2();
DoStep3();
upon failure, handle_error.
The idea is not only that automated testing is good, but that testable code is fundamentally better
One of the main goals of of Typemock is to eliminate that. TypeMock allows you to mock objects that were not designed to be mocked, and are not loosely coupled.
Not that big a deal???? That a commercial 3rd-party company has access to your passwords, bank account info, browsing habits, webmail accounts...???? Will the average user even understand that this is happening?
Excellent points.
Do you know why a 20-character password is so hard? Because most systems limit passwords to 10 or 15 characters. Other than that, longer passwords are easier to remember.
Good, easy to remember, long passwords:
"This is my work computer and those IT jerks keep making me change my password"
"I hate this training system"
"My mother's maiden name is Johnson"
Most people can easily memorize their name, their address, the characters in their favorite sports movie, the last 5 coaches of their favorite sports team... those longer things are actually _easier_ to remember than a single word with no context.
Do you realize that you just explained why scrum is a great estimation method? I'm gonna have to try that!