1. As you said, it'd likely come from the marketing department. Look at any box or ad out there and it should be easy to see that they're not going to provide all the yes/no's needed to make an informed decision. Ex. Newegg nearly always has more info and pictures than the box the product arrives in, and sometimes they have more than the product manual.
2. This is one of the "features" that keep big retailers in power. Or, rather, the lack of mfr provided media. They can differentiate themselves some by the quality and quantity of information they provide about their products. You expect them to define the standard that will make it easier for startups to compete with them?
3. See #1... if this ever did happen, I'd continue to shop at places that add their own info/media. I do not trust the manufacturers marketing department to tell me that, for example, the eSATA port on their device doesn't support port multiplier. They'll list the features it does have (8 really fast USB ports!), instead of their limitations (7x USB 2.0 ports, 1x USB 3.0 port).
A standard info pack would be nice, and would be welcome to set a baseline of information. It doesn't solve the original posters problem, nor does it solve the 3d model problem (that won't be required for a LONG LONG time, and a 3d model is unlikely to let you differentiate between types of ports (ex. dual use USB+eSATA port; or hdmi vrs display port; they still need specs and good labels on the pics, and that's a convenience that the big retailers currently add themselves)).
Maybe someday, but the online retailers are the wrong trees at which to bark:-)
All too often when I shop on Amazon, products won't have adequate pictures that allow me to see a product from all angles and zoom factors. Many products don't even bother to list full specs. Just today I was shopping for a new projector, but many of them don't list the supported connection types, so it would be nice to be able to rotate and zoom a 3D model of the projector and visually verify that it has what I need.
If {online retailer} can't be bothered to snap a few pictures with their camera phone and/or copy/paste the product specs, what makes you think they'll bother to obtain a full blown interactive 3d representation of the device? This is why this is doomed (for online shopping at least).
Newegg (my personal favorite retailer of electronic goods except for cables, which is then monoprice) already does nice 2d pictures with zoom support so you can zoom in and see what connections are there, and you can often make out the tiny little labels even. Sometimes, they also have a 360 degree view, which is really just a series of pics shot around the product, and a slider that lets you change the pictures in order via flash (but could easily be done in JS or HTML5 etc). There is very very very little benefit to a complete 3d model over these, and it's a lot more work, it's more expensive to produce, it's less compatible with existing browsers, it's higher bandwidth, and more difficult/complicated to use, and it will likely be lower resolution.
Still photos are by far the easiest thing for a retailer to add. Snap, and attach to the product profile. You're complaining (and I agree) that there aren't enough of these already... you're delusional if you think a 3d model will show up on all those products that don't even list the basic specs or more than one pic.
360 degree photos are also quite easy, especially for a big retailer that can setup one rig to do them (ex. a single camera, product on a lazy susan, spin it while shooting a movie or taking pics, paste result to 360 degree image maker or just make it a gif), and very few products have these even some of the best retailer sites.
3d online shopping - not going to happen. Stop expecting fancy new tech to solve operational issues that have simple solutions in place that aren't being used.
3d models on the manufacturer page - I can definitely imagine this showing up on high priced items.
There's no need for separate stacks. Overall, everything falls into a stack. If two things are "equal" top top priority, then the guy(s) managing the stack has to pick which goes first.
For the multiple specialists/teams/projects/etc, those get handled in a project view. Just show the same stack, but hide items not relevant to that team... that's the stack for that development resource. Works all the way down to individual level... assign things to people, and when a person views the stack, they can just view items assigned to them, and they see them as a subset of the global order.
Multiple distinct stacks just confuse things. I'll concede to them being ok or even necessary if the projects are distinct enough (thinking Sears hardware versus Sears clothing), but as long as there is one boss up the chain somewhere responsible for the decisions in the end, one stack makes everything easier.
I could probably use my old ATI Rage (Pro? 128? ) from '98.... would the old video card support its 1920 x 1080 resolution... But if I hadn't upgraded the videocard a 2 years ago, I don't think any of my older ones would have supported the max / native resolution
Sorry for the poor choice of sites for specs... was the first google links that had them.
ATI Rage 128PRO 32MB Video Card - PCI Maximum Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 85hz
Same for a "Rage 128", non pro. The "Rage XL" and "3d Rage Pro" would not do 1900xanything - they max at 1600x1200, and that's probably only because there were no 1900x1200 screens then.
Excellent analogy. So, are other companies allowed to create replacement parts as they are for cars? Also, I'm not sure car companies are allowed to simply stop making replacement parts after only a few years, but I'm pretty sure none of them do/did simply stop after only a few years.
Besides, the thing that really kicks me in the pants is that they'd even attempt to stop homebrew. They should be encouraging it. I would honestly buy one in a heartbeat if I knew I could get some free apps for it that would make it more useful to me, and/or develop them myself. Ditto on the PS3 - I'd really wanted it to be a decent media server, but it simply isn't. If it were free to program for it, I'm 100% confident that there'd be some good music jukeboxes for it, for example, and most video codecs would be well supported, and it'd have samba and/or cifs support and maybe nfs too.
I agree that'd basically fix it, but "agile" itself isn't necessary.
Just move to a stack instead of (or in addition to) priority numbers. IMO, priority numbers are nearly worthless. Put someone in charge of the stack order, and you're done.
This will open up one new problem... you'll have to have the discussion/argument about how you operate on a stack about once every 3 months, and defend that position absolutely. You may allow priorities to be tagged on stuff for PM/reporting purposes, but make them absolutely aware that development completely ignores priority (and, if possible, remove it from display to developers).
It's a pretty simple argument: You can not have two projects that are both the top most must be done now items. One MUST be more important than the other. They (management) can yell and fuss and scream all they want but, until they commit to changing the stack order, it's just hot air and can be completely ignored.
"This other thing MUST be a TOP TOP TOP priority NOW!" - ok sir, then just drag it up to the top and make it so.
"But this other thing must ALSO be TOP TOP priority!!!" - sir, do you hear what you just said? Here, just make these a simple list in the order you want them done.
If people are doing double duty as production support and development, which will always happen to some degree, make sure to place one above the other (preferably production support - if current system isn't running and supporting your custom base, new features don't matter).
Heheh, damn my old memory! I screwed up the initial drop amount, and the original question!
In the parking lot, the question was not how much to pick a penny up from the lot, but how much would I have to pay you (coworker) to pick a penny out of the urinal? There was a common thread to the answers (got to a low of $20, and up to thousands), but one guy wouldn't do it for any amount. So we focused on that... what about a million dollars? Answer: OF COURSE! So then it was just a matter of negotiating the price down... we'd all do it for some amount. What about the call takers?
The initial drop was 51 cents - two quarters and a penny. Easy way to see if someone would pick up a penny out of the urinal for 50 cents without asking them. We have no idea how long it took, but it was less than 30 minutes. The rest followed from there.
On returning from a lunch break, my coworkers and I were talking about if anyone would pick up a penny in the parking lot. Most would not, some would. So the question - how much would someone have to pay you to pick up a penny (for those that normally would not). We worked in IT at a call center. We came up with an testing idea...
The bathroom was filthy - it's a call center. We put a two quarters in each urinal. Then we went back to check on it 30 minutes later. How long would it take for those piss covered quarters to be picked out of the urinals?
First check (30min), they were all gone.
So we just put a single quarter in there, and re-checked in 15 minutes. It was gone already.
So we put a dime in one, a nickle and 2 pennies in another, and a penny in another. In 15 minutes, the dime and nickle were gone, but the pennies remained. We checked again about 20minutes later, and the group of pennies was gone, but the lone penny remained. We were working too, and if memory serves, we missed the next scheduled check, but the all change was gone on the next check.
We continued playing with amounts throughout the following days. Quarters went very very quickly, as if no one had any reservations on fishing them out of a well used urinal. We had been thinking that, just maybe, we got unlucky with the timing, and the cleaning staff was grabbing them... but we were all eventually 100% convinced that was not the case - they went to fast, and too often, and cleaning staff didn't make rounds anywhere near that much.
We spent about 2 weeks of randomly tossing loose change in urinals and cracking up about how it vanished so quickly into the hands of call takers - all using shared phones, keyboards, mice, etc. We were having a swell old time with it.
Then one day, we were in the common breakroom, and one of us bought a soda with a dollar. They got back 30 cents in change (a quarter and a nickle), and readily picked it up and pocketed it. Two and two became four in my head.... I asked my coworker where he thought that change came from.
We stopped putting change in the urinal that day, and took a long hiatus from grabbing the change from the vending machine.
If you ever see someone leaving their change in a vending machine, think twice before you judge them:-)
The article says he tested with just 3 cities. As you noted, it's a lot of data. It's a hell of a lot more data if you consider the whole world. I'm VERY curious if this would work at all if your local cache of tiles had all of them?
I suspect that the number of potential matches would increase significantly if the test were repeated with the whole db... so you have to have a starting point for this to work (maybe geoip and assume they're looking locally), and at that point, what's it really worth?
Don't get me wrong... it's still a great example and could still be used to get a lot more information than one may like/imagine, but I think the demo is flawed in a way that favors it working a lot better than it would really work.
It'd also be easy to thwart by making each scale-size image the same file size (pick max file size for a tile at scale X; null pad out all other images to match that size; don't do additional inline compression on the image requests). You'd then be able to tell what zoom level one is at, but that's all (AFAICT from the article - sorry, I read it)
Here is an even simpler solution. Rather than making every single rider on the bus avert their gaze, how about asking the one black lady in front to leave. You piss off one person rather than everyone else. You have rights, but your rights do not come at the expense of everyone else's.
I won't say FTFY either, but it's pretty easy to swap in some words to make someones statement seem quite different than they intended.
Your rights do come at the expense of everyone putting up with whatever odd thing it is you do that isn't directly harming anyone but pisses them off nonetheless.
Wait a minute here. Are you saying the kids should be in segregated areas but the guy looking at porn should be allowed to view it wherever he wants?
Damn! Your priorities are fucked up.
What?!? Why not coral kids into a limited area? They're not allowed in bars. They're not allowed to go to war. They're forced to go to school. They're not allowed to work before a certain age (with few exceptions). They're not allowed to sell/distribute images of their naked selves (with few exceptions). They can't run for public office. They can't vote. They're simply not completely free... they're children. Don't let them into the "grown up area" until they're grown up.
Just as one wouldn't expect to wear a "All niggers must fucking hang" T-Shirt in a public place without starting a confrontation so too should this troll have expected that blasting hardcore porn in the middle of a high traffic area would cause some problems.
Just as one wouldn't expect to wear a "All slave owners should rot in prison" T-Shirt in a public place in the 1900's without starting a confrontation.
Sorry, but starting a confrontation has nothing to do with what is actually decent nor with free speech. You may consider porn to be indecent, but there were plenty of things considered indecent not many years ago that pass for the norm now.
Whether not not watching porn in a public place constitutes "free speech", per se, I'm not sure... but I don't think that was the spirit of what was being said. What was being said is that we should not censor information based on one or another persons belief system. That seems like an obvious slippery slope to go down. Please re-read the summary.
That being said, the integration of computers into libraries has not always been done in the most ideal way. There are often tables for book reading with 3 small walls to add some privacy. One would only be subjected to what someone else is reading if they were looking over that persons shoulder or they were reading aloud. A similar solution for the PC's wouldn't be a bad idea - maybe even put the monitor on an angled surface so it's not even facing directly out and slap some cheap privacy filter on top of the screen?
Anyway, it doesn't matter... the guy should be allowed to view any constitutionally protected information he likes. Whether or not he draws the ire and hatred of others is another issue altogether.
Tried tweaking Windows 7 start menu so she could find the handful of apps she'll actually end up using... near impossible
That's easy. Open the app once and it's there. Then just right clik the start menu icon it just put there and select "pin to start menu." It's almost like you do it in kde.
But you can't (AFAICT) organize those into folders. And there was a maximum number of items you can have on there (though I'm sure there's a registry tweak to change that). I tried modifying the start menu itself, and broke things badly... rolled back system changes to fix it.
The ability to use the software you have as long as you like an however you want... well, that seems like a pretty damn good thing too.
Maybe, but it isn't true. When I got XP several years ago, half my software no longer worked.
That's what I meant... I meant that software would not keep working on windows, but would on Linux.
And try running Amarok or XMMS on Windows!
Yep, I also included Clementine, which is an Amarok 1.4 fork. Told her to use that as her primary music player. Put iTunes on there cause she has an iPod though, and I know she and her friends and coworkers and such would want it on there.
I'm still naively hoping a holy grail of backup solutions will appear. BackupPC + rsnapshot has been doing ok for my linux boxes, but it's still very rudimentary, and getting those to work on Windows is painful and incomplete (ex. can't backup locked system files). Apples time machine is the closest thing I've seen to what an ideal desktop solution would be. I don't know why there aren't better ones for Linux (use inotify + rsnapshot + nautilus/dolphin integration + command line tools to see history + something bootable to restore files from). And it blows me away that there aren't better ones for Windows.
FWIW, I NEVER do this for anyone. This was an exception and done as a Christmas gift. I don't think gifts should be painful. Plus she has no idea what to do on a computer, and extremely little use for it (she's not on facebook even, and her mom is still on AOL dialup (on a windows box I'm 100% sure is ridden with viri)), so I wanted to make sure it'd be relatively locked down and very easy to use.
A Windows 7 setup disk you must install onto the PC (or vm) is NOT the same as a bootable and fully functional OS that runs FROM a USB key and needs no additional drivers or setup or anything to work.
Right... Once censorship starts, it always stops eventually. There was censorship in the past that has gone away, and come back again, and gone away again, etc.
I took "it doesn't ever stop" to be the same as "it never stops", and that's just wrong. Granted, it'll probably keep getting worse for a while, but eventually it'll piss off enough people to get significant push back to remove it and we can start the cycle over again.
Surprisingly, I actually found the annotations one to be kinda novel.
Your example of using a yellow highlighter DOES change the document, as does scribbling on it. Making a copy and marking that up is still marking up right in the full document. I'm not familiar enough with Acrobat's annotations to know if it makes them in a separate file... if so, that could well be prior art.
I'm not familiar with the exact patent, nor with B&N's annotations, but I am intimately familiar with Kindle annotations. They're stored in a separate file with pointers to the positions in the file they are annotating. When I first saw that, I really liked the idea. In hindsight, it seems kinda obvious, but the straight forward approach would have been appending the annotations to the end of the file or embedding them in the file (ex. as html div tagged data with a custom css class that displays that text differently).
Storing annotations outside the doc is actually a bit more complex in rendering and such, but it's awesome to be able to delete a book/file and keep the annotations... and they come right back if you download the book again (cause they were never gone). It's also great in that the book file keeps the same content, so deduping will still work on it if stored on a server, for instance. Sharing annotations is easier this way as well, as you don't have to extract them from the file or send the whole book.
That said, software patents should never be allowed. But, in a world that does allow them, this one seems to have some teeth to it. On face value, the others are all ridiculous.
For most users, the fact that a whole bunch of stuff works right out of the box with little or no effort to bring it up is a huge selling point.
I honestly thought that was the start of a list of things you could say in favor of a linux desktop, but, by the end of your paragraph, I'm starting to think you actually meant Windows just works right out of the box. Is that what you meant? And, if so, have you setup either Ubuntu or Windows from near scratch recently (near scratch, as in, bought a new pc even)?
Anecdotal story, but I recently setup a netbook for the girlfriend... took me weeks (prodding it here and there and letting it churn). Took me two days just to get Windows updates caught up (for the first time)... the download was plenty fast, but all the reboots and suddenly there's more to update were just crazy. Removing the bloatware... more time (and it was an asus, which supposedly doesn't ship with too much bloatware in comparison to most). Adding bog standard programs she'd need... tons more time (B&N reader; itunes; vlc; firefox; chrome; thundirbird; nero; sims3; PvZ; etc). And most of those have some silly updates that, for some reason, didn't come with it to begin with. Importing the music and video collection... holy crap that took a long time. Setting up backups... uh, WTH? why isn't there something easy to use for that shit yet? Tried tweaking Windows 7 start menu so she could find the handful of apps she'll actually end up using... near impossible (I ended up following a suggestion from MS and creating a folder/drawer thing on the start bar that listed shortcuts I put there - what a hack). Then many hours poking at the bluetooth a2dp support, and I just gave up on that one (so she could wirelessly stream to the receiver... and, fwiw, that worked plug-n-play from my linux desktop).
And, I know this isn't really MS's fault, but to top it off... I bought Sims 3 for her (she love it); It installed, updated, and ran fine (a tad slow, but fine). A week later, and every time you start it, it freezes on the "update" screen and won't let you even click cancel! Found a work-around... disable the network, and it'll start up and run. You can feel free to say that would happen on other OS's, but I can't recall any software I got from freebsd ports, gentoo portage, debian apt repos, ubuntu repos, fedora/redhat rpm repos, etc that ended up in that situation. Even proprietary stuff like Quake 3 for Linux that I bought way back in the day... community came out with patches to keep it working.
"The ability to buy almost any software title and have it work on Windows...", I totally agree that's a huge selling point.
The ability to use the software you have as long as you like an however you want... well, that seems like a pretty damn good thing too.
Being able to search/browse in one software interface (ex. synaptic), select some stuff, and click go and they'll all be installed AND UP TO DATE WHEN INSTALLED is a HUGE selling point. And debian-based distro's update - "sudo apt-get update && sudo reboot", go to sleep (or just get coffee... doesn't take that long), and it's done.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not entirely knocking Windows. There's a reason they have so much market share, and it's not entirely due to their monopoly practices. I bought the damn thing knowing what it was, and it's what I wanted for this situation. It's the first copy of windows I've bought or used in about a decade (besides a corporate copy or two for occasional use on a vm), but the experience cemented my belief that, even though Ubuntu is jacking the shit out of what I want, it's still far more appropriate for my usage than Windows, and I can always distro hop again.
The whole "let's stop nuclear proliferation" is desperately overdue for an honest update. It's barely accurate and, as you pointed out, is really about "it dilutes our own power, and it is scary in the hands of non-allies".
I'm all for trying to keep other countries from getting nukes, but that's for my completely selfish reasons. If I were Iranian and stuck in Iran, I'd want (my country to have) nukes too. Nuclear proliferation is bad.... for anyone that already has nukes or is protected by a country that has them.
...because I actually downloaded it a second time after an update...
...I'm very afraid if you need a smartphone and a custom app in order to divide a number by ten....
Ok, granted you are correct, but you also downloaded it... TWICE! I haven't downloaded any of the apps mentioned, and they look like crap apps I would never pay for, but I can't claim I've never tried out some free simple thing cause I was curious, as I'm guessing was the case with you. Now, if that tithe calculator required access to your phone book, net access, phone status, location data, etc, then it's stupid to install it... but then it gets into the realm of the user being able to interpret the security warnings.
I think there's definitely something about the (perceived) walled garden aspect of app stores that raises the false sense of security. Besides, it's just some goofy little app... what harm could it do? right?
People need to know about this stuff. It's not because Android or the app store security model is being bashed, but because everyone will soon need to be just as careful picking/installing apps on their phones as they should do on a PC, and perhaps more-so.
If it performs anything like the video shows, I'll pass. Reminds me of working on my old G1 when I was near max capacity on the system partition (wasn't rooted; couldn't move apps to SD card; ran like SHIT).
Don't get me wrong... I'm sure it was a fun tech demo. It's just awful in many respects.
IMO, what would be far cooler would be to:
* connect phone to projector (either a better one so it's usable with lights on and on a 120" screen, or a portable laser or LCD one) * turn the camera on the phone into an IR camera (remove the existing filter; add a few layers of exposed 35mm film) * use IR pens to treat it as a whiteboard (these already exist, btw)
All the parts exist off the shelf. The camera would take a little tweaking. To market it, maybe sell an external IR camera add-on. You could have a portable digital whiteboard with any smartphone that has video out + a $200 lcd projector + ~$10 IR pen. At that point (ie. software done) it'd be trivial to sell it for laptops and netbooks as well.
Where do these billing figures come from!?!? Five dollars to print and mail a bill!? That's absurd. Cents to email? even that is absurd.
There is a fixed cost to billing and to collections and all that other running-a-business stuff, but it really has zero to do with the data plan someone is on. There is a cost in setting up the plan (some manhours for some clerk somewhere and maybe a salesperson), but the recurring overhead in billing for data is fractional cents.
FWIW, I agree that there is a question of how much ATT has to pay for adding a customer who barely uses their dataplan, and that must be covered somehow. Postage is dirt cheap in bulk, but assuming it has a significant impact, maybe they should stop sending all the glossy ads along with the bill, eh? Speaking of which, I have a hunch that those ads pay for themselves and the postage, making the point moot.
If you're going to be an smart ass and try to belittle someones intelligence with a statement like "In words of one syllable or less....", at least follow that up with one syllable words.
Top Gear is over the top on lots of stuff, and I think that's blatantly obvious (disclaimer: I love the show). But to call it a "hatchet job" is also overly exaggerated.
Sure, they staged the filming of the Tesla running out of battery, but the point that it would have run out very quickly was absolutely true. Sure, they were driving it like maniacs, and that's part of the point. Driving any car like that will result in far higher fuel consumption than the advertised average mpg (or miles per charge). But that's what they were saying... for a sports car, it sure doesn't last long on its available fuel capacity, and recharges take a LONG time.
I'm also looking forward to a Top Gear review of this car. Personally, I'm hoping it's one of their challenges and it pits it against a few other electric cars.... that could be fun. Maybe a sort of cannonball run in all electrics across ?somewhere?, so they have to make sure they pitstop at places that can charge them and deal with the charge times, and a Robin Reliant as the emergency car that they are forced to use if their car is stranded (which would probably win the "race").
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I don't think you've thought this through.
1. As you said, it'd likely come from the marketing department. Look at any box or ad out there and it should be easy to see that they're not going to provide all the yes/no's needed to make an informed decision. Ex. Newegg nearly always has more info and pictures than the box the product arrives in, and sometimes they have more than the product manual.
2. This is one of the "features" that keep big retailers in power. Or, rather, the lack of mfr provided media. They can differentiate themselves some by the quality and quantity of information they provide about their products. You expect them to define the standard that will make it easier for startups to compete with them?
3. See #1... if this ever did happen, I'd continue to shop at places that add their own info/media. I do not trust the manufacturers marketing department to tell me that, for example, the eSATA port on their device doesn't support port multiplier. They'll list the features it does have (8 really fast USB ports!), instead of their limitations (7x USB 2.0 ports, 1x USB 3.0 port).
A standard info pack would be nice, and would be welcome to set a baseline of information. It doesn't solve the original posters problem, nor does it solve the 3d model problem (that won't be required for a LONG LONG time, and a 3d model is unlikely to let you differentiate between types of ports (ex. dual use USB+eSATA port; or hdmi vrs display port; they still need specs and good labels on the pics, and that's a convenience that the big retailers currently add themselves)).
Maybe someday, but the online retailers are the wrong trees at which to bark :-)
Right example, WRONG conclusion!
All too often when I shop on Amazon, products won't have adequate pictures that allow me to see a product from all angles and zoom factors. Many products don't even bother to list full specs. Just today I was shopping for a new projector, but many of them don't list the supported connection types, so it would be nice to be able to rotate and zoom a 3D model of the projector and visually verify that it has what I need.
If {online retailer} can't be bothered to snap a few pictures with their camera phone and/or copy/paste the product specs, what makes you think they'll bother to obtain a full blown interactive 3d representation of the device? This is why this is doomed (for online shopping at least).
Newegg (my personal favorite retailer of electronic goods except for cables, which is then monoprice) already does nice 2d pictures with zoom support so you can zoom in and see what connections are there, and you can often make out the tiny little labels even. Sometimes, they also have a 360 degree view, which is really just a series of pics shot around the product, and a slider that lets you change the pictures in order via flash (but could easily be done in JS or HTML5 etc). There is very very very little benefit to a complete 3d model over these, and it's a lot more work, it's more expensive to produce, it's less compatible with existing browsers, it's higher bandwidth, and more difficult/complicated to use, and it will likely be lower resolution.
Still photos are by far the easiest thing for a retailer to add. Snap, and attach to the product profile. You're complaining (and I agree) that there aren't enough of these already... you're delusional if you think a 3d model will show up on all those products that don't even list the basic specs or more than one pic.
360 degree photos are also quite easy, especially for a big retailer that can setup one rig to do them (ex. a single camera, product on a lazy susan, spin it while shooting a movie or taking pics, paste result to 360 degree image maker or just make it a gif), and very few products have these even some of the best retailer sites.
3d online shopping - not going to happen. Stop expecting fancy new tech to solve operational issues that have simple solutions in place that aren't being used.
3d models on the manufacturer page - I can definitely imagine this showing up on high priced items.
There's no need for separate stacks. Overall, everything falls into a stack. If two things are "equal" top top priority, then the guy(s) managing the stack has to pick which goes first.
For the multiple specialists/teams/projects/etc, those get handled in a project view. Just show the same stack, but hide items not relevant to that team... that's the stack for that development resource. Works all the way down to individual level... assign things to people, and when a person views the stack, they can just view items assigned to them, and they see them as a subset of the global order.
Multiple distinct stacks just confuse things. I'll concede to them being ok or even necessary if the projects are distinct enough (thinking Sears hardware versus Sears clothing), but as long as there is one boss up the chain somewhere responsible for the decisions in the end, one stack makes everything easier.
I could probably use my old ATI Rage (Pro? 128? ) from '98 .... would the old video card support its 1920 x 1080 resolution ... But if I hadn't upgraded the videocard a 2 years ago, I don't think any of my older ones would have supported the max / native resolution
FWIW, yes, it would support it: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2174312&CatId=695
Sorry for the poor choice of sites for specs... was the first google links that had them.
ATI Rage 128PRO 32MB Video Card - PCI
Maximum Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 85hz
Same for a "Rage 128", non pro.
The "Rage XL" and "3d Rage Pro" would not do 1900xanything - they max at 1600x1200, and that's probably only because there were no 1900x1200 screens then.
Excellent analogy. So, are other companies allowed to create replacement parts as they are for cars? Also, I'm not sure car companies are allowed to simply stop making replacement parts after only a few years, but I'm pretty sure none of them do/did simply stop after only a few years.
Besides, the thing that really kicks me in the pants is that they'd even attempt to stop homebrew. They should be encouraging it. I would honestly buy one in a heartbeat if I knew I could get some free apps for it that would make it more useful to me, and/or develop them myself. Ditto on the PS3 - I'd really wanted it to be a decent media server, but it simply isn't. If it were free to program for it, I'm 100% confident that there'd be some good music jukeboxes for it, for example, and most video codecs would be well supported, and it'd have samba and/or cifs support and maybe nfs too.
I agree that'd basically fix it, but "agile" itself isn't necessary.
Just move to a stack instead of (or in addition to) priority numbers. IMO, priority numbers are nearly worthless. Put someone in charge of the stack order, and you're done.
This will open up one new problem... you'll have to have the discussion/argument about how you operate on a stack about once every 3 months, and defend that position absolutely. You may allow priorities to be tagged on stuff for PM/reporting purposes, but make them absolutely aware that development completely ignores priority (and, if possible, remove it from display to developers).
It's a pretty simple argument: You can not have two projects that are both the top most must be done now items. One MUST be more important than the other. They (management) can yell and fuss and scream all they want but, until they commit to changing the stack order, it's just hot air and can be completely ignored.
"This other thing MUST be a TOP TOP TOP priority NOW!" - ok sir, then just drag it up to the top and make it so.
"But this other thing must ALSO be TOP TOP priority!!!" - sir, do you hear what you just said? Here, just make these a simple list in the order you want them done.
If people are doing double duty as production support and development, which will always happen to some degree, make sure to place one above the other (preferably production support - if current system isn't running and supporting your custom base, new features don't matter).
Heheh, damn my old memory! I screwed up the initial drop amount, and the original question!
In the parking lot, the question was not how much to pick a penny up from the lot, but how much would I have to pay you (coworker) to pick a penny out of the urinal? There was a common thread to the answers (got to a low of $20, and up to thousands), but one guy wouldn't do it for any amount. So we focused on that... what about a million dollars? Answer: OF COURSE! So then it was just a matter of negotiating the price down... we'd all do it for some amount. What about the call takers?
The initial drop was 51 cents - two quarters and a penny. Easy way to see if someone would pick up a penny out of the urinal for 50 cents without asking them. We have no idea how long it took, but it was less than 30 minutes. The rest followed from there.
True story...
On returning from a lunch break, my coworkers and I were talking about if anyone would pick up a penny in the parking lot. Most would not, some would. So the question - how much would someone have to pay you to pick up a penny (for those that normally would not). We worked in IT at a call center. We came up with an testing idea...
The bathroom was filthy - it's a call center. We put a two quarters in each urinal. Then we went back to check on it 30 minutes later. How long would it take for those piss covered quarters to be picked out of the urinals?
First check (30min), they were all gone.
So we just put a single quarter in there, and re-checked in 15 minutes. It was gone already.
So we put a dime in one, a nickle and 2 pennies in another, and a penny in another. In 15 minutes, the dime and nickle were gone, but the pennies remained. We checked again about 20minutes later, and the group of pennies was gone, but the lone penny remained. We were working too, and if memory serves, we missed the next scheduled check, but the all change was gone on the next check.
We continued playing with amounts throughout the following days. Quarters went very very quickly, as if no one had any reservations on fishing them out of a well used urinal. We had been thinking that, just maybe, we got unlucky with the timing, and the cleaning staff was grabbing them... but we were all eventually 100% convinced that was not the case - they went to fast, and too often, and cleaning staff didn't make rounds anywhere near that much.
We spent about 2 weeks of randomly tossing loose change in urinals and cracking up about how it vanished so quickly into the hands of call takers - all using shared phones, keyboards, mice, etc. We were having a swell old time with it.
Then one day, we were in the common breakroom, and one of us bought a soda with a dollar. They got back 30 cents in change (a quarter and a nickle), and readily picked it up and pocketed it. Two and two became four in my head.... I asked my coworker where he thought that change came from.
We stopped putting change in the urinal that day, and took a long hiatus from grabbing the change from the vending machine.
If you ever see someone leaving their change in a vending machine, think twice before you judge them :-)
The article says he tested with just 3 cities. As you noted, it's a lot of data. It's a hell of a lot more data if you consider the whole world. I'm VERY curious if this would work at all if your local cache of tiles had all of them?
I suspect that the number of potential matches would increase significantly if the test were repeated with the whole db... so you have to have a starting point for this to work (maybe geoip and assume they're looking locally), and at that point, what's it really worth?
Don't get me wrong... it's still a great example and could still be used to get a lot more information than one may like/imagine, but I think the demo is flawed in a way that favors it working a lot better than it would really work.
It'd also be easy to thwart by making each scale-size image the same file size (pick max file size for a tile at scale X; null pad out all other images to match that size; don't do additional inline compression on the image requests). You'd then be able to tell what zoom level one is at, but that's all (AFAICT from the article - sorry, I read it)
Here is an even simpler solution. Rather than making every single rider on the bus avert their gaze, how about asking the one black lady in front to leave. You piss off one person rather than everyone else. You have rights, but your rights do not come at the expense of everyone else's.
I won't say FTFY either, but it's pretty easy to swap in some words to make someones statement seem quite different than they intended.
Your rights do come at the expense of everyone putting up with whatever odd thing it is you do that isn't directly harming anyone but pisses them off nonetheless.
Wait a minute here. Are you saying the kids should be in segregated areas but the guy looking at porn should be allowed to view it wherever he wants?
Damn! Your priorities are fucked up.
What?!? Why not coral kids into a limited area? They're not allowed in bars. They're not allowed to go to war. They're forced to go to school. They're not allowed to work before a certain age (with few exceptions). They're not allowed to sell/distribute images of their naked selves (with few exceptions). They can't run for public office. They can't vote. They're simply not completely free... they're children. Don't let them into the "grown up area" until they're grown up.
Just as one wouldn't expect to wear a "All niggers must fucking hang" T-Shirt in a public place without starting a confrontation so too should this troll have expected that blasting hardcore porn in the middle of a high traffic area would cause some problems.
Just as one wouldn't expect to wear a "All slave owners should rot in prison" T-Shirt in a public place in the 1900's without starting a confrontation.
Sorry, but starting a confrontation has nothing to do with what is actually decent nor with free speech. You may consider porn to be indecent, but there were plenty of things considered indecent not many years ago that pass for the norm now.
Whether not not watching porn in a public place constitutes "free speech", per se, I'm not sure... but I don't think that was the spirit of what was being said. What was being said is that we should not censor information based on one or another persons belief system. That seems like an obvious slippery slope to go down. Please re-read the summary.
That being said, the integration of computers into libraries has not always been done in the most ideal way. There are often tables for book reading with 3 small walls to add some privacy. One would only be subjected to what someone else is reading if they were looking over that persons shoulder or they were reading aloud. A similar solution for the PC's wouldn't be a bad idea - maybe even put the monitor on an angled surface so it's not even facing directly out and slap some cheap privacy filter on top of the screen?
Anyway, it doesn't matter... the guy should be allowed to view any constitutionally protected information he likes. Whether or not he draws the ire and hatred of others is another issue altogether.
Tried tweaking Windows 7 start menu so she could find the handful of apps she'll actually end up using... near impossible
That's easy. Open the app once and it's there. Then just right clik the start menu icon it just put there and select "pin to start menu." It's almost like you do it in kde.
But you can't (AFAICT) organize those into folders. And there was a maximum number of items you can have on there (though I'm sure there's a registry tweak to change that). I tried modifying the start menu itself, and broke things badly... rolled back system changes to fix it.
The ability to use the software you have as long as you like an however you want... well, that seems like a pretty damn good thing too.
Maybe, but it isn't true. When I got XP several years ago, half my software no longer worked.
That's what I meant... I meant that software would not keep working on windows, but would on Linux.
And try running Amarok or XMMS on Windows!
Yep, I also included Clementine, which is an Amarok 1.4 fork. Told her to use that as her primary music player. Put iTunes on there cause she has an iPod though, and I know she and her friends and coworkers and such would want it on there.
I'm still naively hoping a holy grail of backup solutions will appear. BackupPC + rsnapshot has been doing ok for my linux boxes, but it's still very rudimentary, and getting those to work on Windows is painful and incomplete (ex. can't backup locked system files). Apples time machine is the closest thing I've seen to what an ideal desktop solution would be. I don't know why there aren't better ones for Linux (use inotify + rsnapshot + nautilus/dolphin integration + command line tools to see history + something bootable to restore files from). And it blows me away that there aren't better ones for Windows.
FWIW, I NEVER do this for anyone. This was an exception and done as a Christmas gift. I don't think gifts should be painful. Plus she has no idea what to do on a computer, and extremely little use for it (she's not on facebook even, and her mom is still on AOL dialup (on a windows box I'm 100% sure is ridden with viri)), so I wanted to make sure it'd be relatively locked down and very easy to use.
A Windows 7 setup disk you must install onto the PC (or vm) is NOT the same as a bootable and fully functional OS that runs FROM a USB key and needs no additional drivers or setup or anything to work.
Right... Once censorship starts, it always stops eventually. There was censorship in the past that has gone away, and come back again, and gone away again, etc.
I took "it doesn't ever stop" to be the same as "it never stops", and that's just wrong. Granted, it'll probably keep getting worse for a while, but eventually it'll piss off enough people to get significant push back to remove it and we can start the cycle over again.
Surprisingly, I actually found the annotations one to be kinda novel.
Your example of using a yellow highlighter DOES change the document, as does scribbling on it. Making a copy and marking that up is still marking up right in the full document. I'm not familiar enough with Acrobat's annotations to know if it makes them in a separate file... if so, that could well be prior art.
I'm not familiar with the exact patent, nor with B&N's annotations, but I am intimately familiar with Kindle annotations. They're stored in a separate file with pointers to the positions in the file they are annotating. When I first saw that, I really liked the idea. In hindsight, it seems kinda obvious, but the straight forward approach would have been appending the annotations to the end of the file or embedding them in the file (ex. as html div tagged data with a custom css class that displays that text differently).
Storing annotations outside the doc is actually a bit more complex in rendering and such, but it's awesome to be able to delete a book/file and keep the annotations... and they come right back if you download the book again (cause they were never gone). It's also great in that the book file keeps the same content, so deduping will still work on it if stored on a server, for instance. Sharing annotations is easier this way as well, as you don't have to extract them from the file or send the whole book.
That said, software patents should never be allowed. But, in a world that does allow them, this one seems to have some teeth to it. On face value, the others are all ridiculous.
Once censorship starts it doesn't never stop.
FTFY
For most users, the fact that a whole bunch of stuff works right out of the box with little or no effort to bring it up is a huge selling point.
I honestly thought that was the start of a list of things you could say in favor of a linux desktop, but, by the end of your paragraph, I'm starting to think you actually meant Windows just works right out of the box. Is that what you meant? And, if so, have you setup either Ubuntu or Windows from near scratch recently (near scratch, as in, bought a new pc even)?
Anecdotal story, but I recently setup a netbook for the girlfriend... took me weeks (prodding it here and there and letting it churn). Took me two days just to get Windows updates caught up (for the first time)... the download was plenty fast, but all the reboots and suddenly there's more to update were just crazy. Removing the bloatware... more time (and it was an asus, which supposedly doesn't ship with too much bloatware in comparison to most). Adding bog standard programs she'd need... tons more time (B&N reader; itunes; vlc; firefox; chrome; thundirbird; nero; sims3; PvZ; etc). And most of those have some silly updates that, for some reason, didn't come with it to begin with. Importing the music and video collection... holy crap that took a long time. Setting up backups... uh, WTH? why isn't there something easy to use for that shit yet? Tried tweaking Windows 7 start menu so she could find the handful of apps she'll actually end up using... near impossible (I ended up following a suggestion from MS and creating a folder/drawer thing on the start bar that listed shortcuts I put there - what a hack). Then many hours poking at the bluetooth a2dp support, and I just gave up on that one (so she could wirelessly stream to the receiver... and, fwiw, that worked plug-n-play from my linux desktop).
And, I know this isn't really MS's fault, but to top it off... I bought Sims 3 for her (she love it); It installed, updated, and ran fine (a tad slow, but fine). A week later, and every time you start it, it freezes on the "update" screen and won't let you even click cancel! Found a work-around... disable the network, and it'll start up and run. You can feel free to say that would happen on other OS's, but I can't recall any software I got from freebsd ports, gentoo portage, debian apt repos, ubuntu repos, fedora/redhat rpm repos, etc that ended up in that situation. Even proprietary stuff like Quake 3 for Linux that I bought way back in the day... community came out with patches to keep it working.
"The ability to buy almost any software title and have it work on Windows...", I totally agree that's a huge selling point.
The ability to use the software you have as long as you like an however you want... well, that seems like a pretty damn good thing too.
Being able to search/browse in one software interface (ex. synaptic), select some stuff, and click go and they'll all be installed AND UP TO DATE WHEN INSTALLED is a HUGE selling point. And debian-based distro's update - "sudo apt-get update && sudo reboot", go to sleep (or just get coffee... doesn't take that long), and it's done.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not entirely knocking Windows. There's a reason they have so much market share, and it's not entirely due to their monopoly practices. I bought the damn thing knowing what it was, and it's what I wanted for this situation. It's the first copy of windows I've bought or used in about a decade (besides a corporate copy or two for occasional use on a vm), but the experience cemented my belief that, even though Ubuntu is jacking the shit out of what I want, it's still far more appropriate for my usage than Windows, and I can always distro hop again.
I'd give ya some mod points if I still had them.
The whole "let's stop nuclear proliferation" is desperately overdue for an honest update. It's barely accurate and, as you pointed out, is really about "it dilutes our own power, and it is scary in the hands of non-allies".
I'm all for trying to keep other countries from getting nukes, but that's for my completely selfish reasons. If I were Iranian and stuck in Iran, I'd want (my country to have) nukes too. Nuclear proliferation is bad.... for anyone that already has nukes or is protected by a country that has them.
...because I actually downloaded it a second time after an update...
...I'm very afraid if you need a smartphone and a custom app in order to divide a number by ten....
Ok, granted you are correct, but you also downloaded it... TWICE! I haven't downloaded any of the apps mentioned, and they look like crap apps I would never pay for, but I can't claim I've never tried out some free simple thing cause I was curious, as I'm guessing was the case with you. Now, if that tithe calculator required access to your phone book, net access, phone status, location data, etc, then it's stupid to install it... but then it gets into the realm of the user being able to interpret the security warnings.
I think there's definitely something about the (perceived) walled garden aspect of app stores that raises the false sense of security. Besides, it's just some goofy little app... what harm could it do? right?
People need to know about this stuff. It's not because Android or the app store security model is being bashed, but because everyone will soon need to be just as careful picking/installing apps on their phones as they should do on a PC, and perhaps more-so.
If it performs anything like the video shows, I'll pass. Reminds me of working on my old G1 when I was near max capacity on the system partition (wasn't rooted; couldn't move apps to SD card; ran like SHIT).
Don't get me wrong... I'm sure it was a fun tech demo. It's just awful in many respects.
IMO, what would be far cooler would be to:
* connect phone to projector (either a better one so it's usable with lights on and on a 120" screen, or a portable laser or LCD one)
* turn the camera on the phone into an IR camera (remove the existing filter; add a few layers of exposed 35mm film)
* use IR pens to treat it as a whiteboard (these already exist, btw)
All the parts exist off the shelf. The camera would take a little tweaking. To market it, maybe sell an external IR camera add-on. You could have a portable digital whiteboard with any smartphone that has video out + a $200 lcd projector + ~$10 IR pen. At that point (ie. software done) it'd be trivial to sell it for laptops and netbooks as well.
Where do these billing figures come from!?!? Five dollars to print and mail a bill!? That's absurd. Cents to email? even that is absurd.
There is a fixed cost to billing and to collections and all that other running-a-business stuff, but it really has zero to do with the data plan someone is on. There is a cost in setting up the plan (some manhours for some clerk somewhere and maybe a salesperson), but the recurring overhead in billing for data is fractional cents.
FWIW, I agree that there is a question of how much ATT has to pay for adding a customer who barely uses their dataplan, and that must be covered somehow. Postage is dirt cheap in bulk, but assuming it has a significant impact, maybe they should stop sending all the glossy ads along with the bill, eh? Speaking of which, I have a hunch that those ads pay for themselves and the postage, making the point moot.
If you're going to be an smart ass and try to belittle someones intelligence with a statement like "In words of one syllable or less....", at least follow that up with one syllable words.
Top Gear is over the top on lots of stuff, and I think that's blatantly obvious (disclaimer: I love the show). But to call it a "hatchet job" is also overly exaggerated.
Sure, they staged the filming of the Tesla running out of battery, but the point that it would have run out very quickly was absolutely true. Sure, they were driving it like maniacs, and that's part of the point. Driving any car like that will result in far higher fuel consumption than the advertised average mpg (or miles per charge). But that's what they were saying... for a sports car, it sure doesn't last long on its available fuel capacity, and recharges take a LONG time.
I'm also looking forward to a Top Gear review of this car. Personally, I'm hoping it's one of their challenges and it pits it against a few other electric cars.... that could be fun. Maybe a sort of cannonball run in all electrics across ?somewhere?, so they have to make sure they pitstop at places that can charge them and deal with the charge times, and a Robin Reliant as the emergency car that they are forced to use if their car is stranded (which would probably win the "race").