Indeed. I saw the Google phone in the store alongside many others (Tokyo) and to me the killer was Google maps. I bet it could speak if connected to the car speakers and a slick software update is downloaded.
Whatever I didn't bother reading TFA. Just tell me please someone, is there an open source way to push email from my ubuntu server to an iPhone should I choose to get one? I heard you must use either some Exchange thing or mac.com IIRC. That's silly. I would probably only buy an iPhone if there is a way, and that is the only thing I care about related to the two keywords Exchange and Apple.
At the risk of sounding fanboyish here is a real-world question. Recently here there was an interview with an impressive female security researcher, sorry I forget the name but talking about VMM security. She said she has a Mac and uses no antivirus software, instead she uses IIRC three vmware style windows instances called red, green and yellow. The innermost one is for Internet banking, the outermost one is used for ordinary websurfing and is zeroed each time it is launched. What do you think about this kind of approach?
FWIW you can turn on GPS so when you lose your phone NTT DoCoMo can help you find it. Also for the very difficult to use but visually impressive map application. All said and done Palm is evil and I won't buy from them anymore but if you could just trust them this would otherwise be useful. In the end it makes the device LESS useful since you can't trust them. I think expecting location privacy from a cellphone is a mistaken endeavor. How can you prove it unless you run your own firewall on the phone?
Actually there is an energy drink called VAAM on sale in Japan. VAAM is the high-energy storage molecule used by wasps and apparently it gives humans a boost too when exercising. It hit me too strong so I don't drink it. Probably too expensive but the bees would love if they could get their feelers on some VAAM.
- Could an x-ray or terahertz wave guide be included somehow in the adhesive used - Would striking rocks against each other, or a cigarette lighter flint etc. also generate x-rays. Maybe best to stay away from sparky things? - That finger x-ray image looks dangerous. My grandfather had terrible burns that never healed on his fingertips because dentists used to hold the x-ray film in their patients' mouths while taking x-rays, in the olden days.
Surprised at the lack of comments, considering the patches cover arbitrary code execution due to many vulnerabilities that even arise when reading png images or xml files!
Luckily there seem to be more talented security researchers and programmers who like the Mac than there are crackers who find it worth the effort.
FWIW take a look at this study (http://www.aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html) which shows after weeding out people who are affected by fake situations, that this is a real health issue. An M.D. is involved in the paper. After weeding out people who got faked out by placebos and "active challenges", they got 100% positive, 0% negative. (I just briefly flipped through the paper so read it more carefully please.)
Read their paper. It is very cool! It isn't a photograph but seems to be using micro lenses positioned a focal length away from their matrix of matrix codes, to define a kind of light field where you can acquire information at arbitrary magnification by stepping farther away from the object. Limited only by your camera's resolution I suppose. They even have a prototype lens array based on ANTARCTIC KRILL eye which looks like a bulging disc shaped eye covering 180 degrees horizontally and a good number of degrees up and down too. I'd like to know just how much info can be stored, you could store tons of info on a single surface and scan it with your mobile phone. Of course, can't really think of a good use for it since most people just shoot a photo of the QR code on a poster and go to the web site... if anything the ease of use of the app on the phone, and ease of acquiring the image, are the main issues. So the guy's (bbc video) suggestion that qr codes are unseemly is silly. The point is you can acquire the code from far away and without trying hard to position it in the screen, if I understand correctly. Might be able to boost info density by using a hologram and laser to interogate it though I'd think.. any optical engineer care to say?
I'm considering a new software development business and am seriously thinking not to use iPhone due to the business risk being discussed here.
Also regarding business purchases, I have long been an Apple fan even when Apple has screwed its customers over and over, I moved to linux and then to windows if you can imagine that. I'm about ready to move back to Mac, or at least Parallels on Macbook, but this iPhone stuff is bugging me. Maybe I can do without? I am thinking.
It also happens to be the reason holding me from buying an iPhone too. Colleagues have them, and they are neat for being able to access email when outside, but the Google phone also hit the stores here and I am mainly worried about closed apps -> not being able to hack, app review -> not an open market/might not be able to sell app, and finally risk of massive roaming charges.
If they really were self-replicating they might compete with life already there, unless very firmly under human control.
That said it is a nice idea since small payload = small investment, but we will probably need some civilian teams compete in an X-prize for progressively more powerful airborne / hunting bots on our own planet. I don't think I would like what they come up with to become common Earth-side. They sound very annoying and dangerous.
Some years ago I met a Canadian company that makes tracking stations that go along with RFID tags and you track disease through the cattle herd on a per animal basis, all the way to after slaughtered and the meat is closely examined. Also they made a cool gadget with a needle to stick in a pig (live I believe) for similar kind of tracking.
Basically this guy told me everyone is just waiting for the other shoe to drop (a la BSE) in the U.S. because of the horrible unregulated state of the herds and the strong meat processing lobby or whatever it is. This is a guy who has tried for years to sell tracking systems to the U.S. and lots of places but only the U.S. never wanted it. Perhaps things have changed slightly since then (maybe 5 years ago) but probably not at all. It makes me think U.S. beef is much more dangerous than people think which is scary to me being American. Of course living in Japan I also remember when Japan halted all beef imports, and how the U.S. suppliers kept shipping spinal cords etc. along in the same batch against the rules. Harsh to say it but all this makes the U.S. food supply sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
I have no idea if this has anything to do with the story, hopefully it will just provide an anecdotal counterbias to the meat lobby spin, the dept of agriculture spin and the large corporate farm spin and the tiny farm spin.
Recently I heard of a study that showed a major change in the way ocean water flows from one hemisphere to the other is a significant factor in warming data. I'd believe small variations but not the entire field coming from the ocean. That said it might need to be considered regarding aerospace and naval systems.
I wonder how they got the name, sounds a bit like tomorrow or something Spanish..
I found it funny as the word morro in Japanese is how you describe getting a fatal sword thrust to your heart / neck, i.e. "to suffer a fatal blow that hits you right in a critical place" is a way to translate it.
Of course as others note, M$ selling AV is itself a funny proposition.
From that page on apple's site about twitter clearly Apple thinks they have a similar dna.
What could it be used for? Well here's an idea called "Screw the RIAA".
In this monetization possibility (or fantasy you decide), Apple makes twitter groups for every rock band performance in the world, and anybody can twit on it about going there, the band can put special info and links to its site on it, you can basically start an indie craze from nothing.
Now Twitter makes me gag and I would hate using it or being forced to read it. But, it might be neat if you opened it to a lot of people per channel and used it to focus interest, the way usenet groups used to, and you can maybe make anybody with an Apple iphone etc. become a potential uploader to some flash crowd twitter group.
These band appearances and twitter threads lead people to the band's site for info, and to iTunes to download the band's stuff for money, and this is a realization of the model that everyone has talked about for ages about how to screw the RIAA and get bands to communicate and sell directly to their fans. Same could go for films, books, etc.
Only thing is, I don't see any reason why you couldn't build the same thing (twitter lookalike, easy, and iTunes type sales portal, not so easy). I suppose having the hardware and iTunes associations already, and the mass and early to market edge, might be enough to make Apple take a chunk out of the RIAA's sales and give authors a higher income. That and the advertising for ipods, iphones and iTunes, would be neat and might be worth the cash.
Clearly you did not think of a search interface that would allow the Internet Public to go through 150,000 submissions efficiently without hitting the Google I'm Feeling Lucky barrier as I call it, where if you don't get on the top page you are nobody.
Now you are in trouble and maybe being forced to disclose ahead of time some neat multi-dimensional collaborative interface that isn't out of alpha let alone beta yet, which could be a competitive disadvantage.
Here's what I recommend: - Take a random sampling and see what percentage are good-looking. You could make something to filter spam but maybe not worth it. - Get some authority to expand the prize or create runnerups, and announce this. - Hire more people or, try this (which should be up your alley): Ask for people inside and outside Google to join a submission voting group. You could make subgroups of engineers, professional philanthropy advisors, academics, government, writers, etc. Distribute each submission through at least 1 of each group, and tally the votes. - Consider Galaxyzoo.org which has a quarter million galaxies to classify and got 70,000 classifications per hour from volunteers within 24 hours. - Opening things up to the web mean they can be gamed by low income people or robots. Use people where you can, and grade participants so outliers can be disqualified. - Tell everyone what you are doing.
Nice idea though it will be tough to beat Google, which already has a handle on a bunch of bits of that video, and they already understand about leveraging search in a front end processor. But there is an opening and it naturally would leverage community and open source.
I just typed into google, get me today's sky chart from skyandtelescope. Didn't quite work, 3rd link or so tells me about S&T's sky chart applet.
Actually, Google is quite dumb still!
And !! that's nasty, I just tried "get me today's sky chart" and hey the top link which sounds good gives me some phishing crap screen. You don't want to be indiscriminately pulling shit off google search results and depending on it, pasting it into insecure apps, or sending it to people. So there is no concept of security yet.
Like another poster I'd like some useful natural language parsing, so we need a good basic engine. It could be upgraded over the web and continuously developed, great. Community can add patterns a la ALICE (what was that darpa agent language again).
On top of this, the equation the Taskfox people are saying is to replace desktop apps with cloud-based scriptable apps in firefox. But guess what? There's a reason I (kicking and screaming) moved from Firebird email and Gmail to Outlook. (Which I hate, but will probably have to buy Outlook 2007. Ouch.) What needs to be done is also script the desktop, and replace as needed commercial apps with free, dynamically pluggable over the net, open source apps. Also consider, though I have not developed with firefox, if firefox provided on the desktop a server that could be called by small widgets or large miniapps, it could be pretty easy for the community to quickly take over the desktop and make it completely scriptable / accessible. What we really want is to be able to empower everything we have, not just firefox.
My two cents. I'll try ubiquity or task fox and see if I can contribute anything when I have time.
If you love coding and that is what you want to do, then what you must do is put all of your time into studying and coding. It will be a continuous journey of learning and self development. You are not guaranteed good pay but maybe that is not the most important thing.
However you can get a job being "involved with software" without being lead programmer. You can do documentation, testing, sales assistant, etc. There are many needs for people who are responsible and details oriented. Also you can leverage domain-specific knowledge (or enthusiasm) to get involved in projects. For example if you know a lot about shipbuilding you might be in a position to be a consultant on a project related to that industry.
Two things to consider. Being on the side that interfaces with the client is very important and cannot be outsourced away from the client. And even if you do turn into a stellar programmer, you still will end up focusing on a certain domain. As others have said a helpdesk job is something that will give you experience but not in coding. It would just be a salary. If you want to learn, then first put in the time yourself and learn from the net and by doing. Even if you get hired by someone you are expected to teach yourself usually. But I think you can contribute greatly to projects both open source and commercial if you do not demand to be a coder. Another thing to note. I happen to sell a software package that uses consultants who configure it to meet a client's needs. They are not coders but configurators, in other words technical consultants who get trained on that package. They do not have coding experience so you could do a similar job too.
Just to keep the record straight, I have a Panasonic P905i (carrier is NTT DoCoMo) which is great but it is easy to rack up serious monthly bills, I pay well over US$100 for mine (and forget roaming.. I spent $500 in a week in Europe). Of course with that I get everything the poster said, plus unlimited internet. There are some expensive streaming media channels too I don't subscribe too. The iPhone is quite nice looking, in particular the ability to get all your email on it is great. The P905I has a neat large screen that can fold out horizontally but still the email client only lets you see the top 15 lines or so of an email, which is silly. Anyway, the iPhone looks neat in other people's hands but not sure it is more compelling for me personally than if I had say a full keyboard. The things that have kept me getting anything besides the P905i are not wanting to have to use an onscreen keyboard to dial, wanting a good size screen, needing to roam overseas, etc. Also I got $100 off the list price from having a docomo phone for a couple years. But most women are buying KDDI's au brand which is cheaper and cuter. Businessmen are mostly docomo, I believe.
Hi, You are right, and the Clarity is really oool. I saw presentations by the FC divisions of Honda, Nissan and Toyota today at the FC Expo. 2015 is the date they are aiming at to realize a serious Hydrogen market (though this will be a bit tough). Some important issues are starting in subzero weather (the water freezes... but they have gotten pretty far on this), anode deterioration when frequent start/stop develops an eletrolytiC gradient, and other things. They want to bring the expense down by 90% too. These guys are heroes and as you say already being used in buses and autos - there are 70 hydrogen stations in the U.S. so they are being used in southern California. I saw a photo of a solar powered hydrogen station. It is definitely not vaporware anymore, more like alpha-beta stage.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. I saw the Google phone in the store alongside many others (Tokyo) and to me the killer was Google maps. I bet it could speak if connected to the car speakers and a slick software update is downloaded.
Whatever I didn't bother reading TFA. Just tell me please someone, is there an open source way to push email from my ubuntu server to an iPhone should I choose to get one? I heard you must use either some Exchange thing or mac.com IIRC. That's silly. I would probably only buy an iPhone if there is a way, and that is the only thing I care about related to the two keywords Exchange and Apple.
At the risk of sounding fanboyish here is a real-world question. Recently here there was an interview with an impressive female security researcher, sorry I forget the name but talking about VMM security. She said she has a Mac and uses no antivirus software, instead she uses IIRC three vmware style windows instances called red, green and yellow. The innermost one is for Internet banking, the outermost one is used for ordinary websurfing and is zeroed each time it is launched. What do you think about this kind of approach?
FWIW you can turn on GPS so when you lose your phone NTT DoCoMo can help you find it. Also for the very difficult to use but visually impressive map application. All said and done Palm is evil and I won't buy from them anymore but if you could just trust them this would otherwise be useful. In the end it makes the device LESS useful since you can't trust them. I think expecting location privacy from a cellphone is a mistaken endeavor. How can you prove it unless you run your own firewall on the phone?
Actually there is an energy drink called VAAM on sale in Japan. VAAM is the high-energy storage molecule used by wasps and apparently it gives humans a boost too when exercising. It hit me too strong so I don't drink it. Probably too expensive but the bees would love if they could get their feelers on some VAAM.
You mean like this red ribbon prototype?
Quick answer:
Introduction to Information & Communication Technology - Using Free Software and Open Technologies
Edited By: Will Brady
http://openbookproject.net/courses/intro2ict/index.xhtml
The Non-nerds Guide to Computers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-nerds_Guide_to_Computers
But seriously spend half an hour going through results of Google search on these terms: open textbooks computing
You will have to go through the texts yourself but there are many out there at many different levels.
Here are the main resources.
Wikibooks
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Computing
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-nerds_Guide_to_Computers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Computers_for_Beginners
Flat World Knowledge
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
MIT Open Courseware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/index.htm
Make Textbooks Affordable open textbooks
http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/statement.asp?id2=37833
Student PIRGs
http://www.studentpirgs.org/open-textbooks-catalog#computersci
List at Walla Walla Community College
http://www.wwcc.edu/CMS/index.php?id=2835
The Assayer free books list
http://theassayer.org/
http://www.theassayer.org/cgi-bin/asbrowsesubject.cgi?class=Q#freeclassQAc
California Learning Resource Network (only math and science)
http://clrn.org/FDTI/index.cfm
OER Consortium
http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/#Computer
Open Book Project
http://openbookproject.net/
http://www.openbookproject.net/courses/
Introduction to Information & Communication Technology - Using Free Software and Open Technologies
Edited By: Will Brady
http://openbookproject.net/courses/intro2ict/index.xhtml
O'Reilly Open Books
http://oreilly.com/openbook/
Textbook Revolution
http://www.textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Book:Lists/Subjects/Computer_Science
http://www.opentextbook.org/
http://freelearning.bccampus.ca/openTextbook.php?page_id=221&bookmark=Computing
Thanks, I had no idea about that guy. Would like to know if a serious institute is researching this area though myself.
Check out this nice article:
http://pages.towson.edu/ladon/wg/candywww.htm#SciAmer
(also see the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence)
Article says sugar's light emission on crystal breaking is lightning on a small scale, charge separation causing electrons to jump and nitrogen emission. Doesn't describe x-rays or use of vacuum.
I am wondering:
- Could an x-ray or terahertz wave guide be included somehow in the adhesive used
- Would striking rocks against each other, or a cigarette lighter flint etc. also generate x-rays. Maybe best to stay away from sparky things?
- That finger x-ray image looks dangerous. My grandfather had terrible burns that never healed on his fingertips because dentists used to hold the x-ray film in their patients' mouths while taking x-rays, in the olden days.
Surprised at the lack of comments, considering the patches cover arbitrary code execution due to many vulnerabilities that even arise when reading png images or xml files!
Luckily there seem to be more talented security researchers and programmers who like the Mac than there are crackers who find it worth the effort.
I still want a mac though!
FWIW take a look at this study (http://www.aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html) which shows after weeding out people who are affected by fake situations, that this is a real health issue. An M.D. is involved in the paper. After weeding out people who got faked out by placebos and "active challenges", they got 100% positive, 0% negative. (I just briefly flipped through the paper so read it more carefully please.)
Read their paper. It is very cool! It isn't a photograph but seems to be using micro lenses positioned a focal length away from their matrix of matrix codes, to define a kind of light field where you can acquire information at arbitrary magnification by stepping farther away from the object. Limited only by your camera's resolution I suppose. They even have a prototype lens array based on ANTARCTIC KRILL eye which looks like a bulging disc shaped eye covering 180 degrees horizontally and a good number of degrees up and down too. I'd like to know just how much info can be stored, you could store tons of info on a single surface and scan it with your mobile phone. Of course, can't really think of a good use for it since most people just shoot a photo of the QR code on a poster and go to the web site... if anything the ease of use of the app on the phone, and ease of acquiring the image, are the main issues. So the guy's (bbc video) suggestion that qr codes are unseemly is silly. The point is you can acquire the code from far away and without trying hard to position it in the screen, if I understand correctly. Might be able to boost info density by using a hologram and laser to interogate it though I'd think.. any optical engineer care to say?
I'm considering a new software development business and am seriously thinking not to use iPhone due to the business risk being discussed here.
Also regarding business purchases, I have long been an Apple fan even when Apple has screwed its customers over and over, I moved to linux and then to windows if you can imagine that. I'm about ready to move back to Mac, or at least Parallels on Macbook, but this iPhone stuff is bugging me. Maybe I can do without? I am thinking.
It also happens to be the reason holding me from buying an iPhone too. Colleagues have them, and they are neat for being able to access email when outside, but the Google phone also hit the stores here and I am mainly worried about closed apps -> not being able to hack, app review -> not an open market/might not be able to sell app, and finally risk of massive roaming charges.
...It will be coolest to have a car that's partly deflated.
If they really were self-replicating they might compete with life already there, unless very firmly under human control.
That said it is a nice idea since small payload = small investment, but we will probably need some civilian teams compete in an X-prize for progressively more powerful airborne / hunting bots on our own planet. I don't think I would like what they come up with to become common Earth-side. They sound very annoying and dangerous.
Some years ago I met a Canadian company that makes tracking stations that go along with RFID tags and you track disease through the cattle herd on a per animal basis, all the way to after slaughtered and the meat is closely examined. Also they made a cool gadget with a needle to stick in a pig (live I believe) for similar kind of tracking.
Basically this guy told me everyone is just waiting for the other shoe to drop (a la BSE) in the U.S. because of the horrible unregulated state of the herds and the strong meat processing lobby or whatever it is. This is a guy who has tried for years to sell tracking systems to the U.S. and lots of places but only the U.S. never wanted it. Perhaps things have changed slightly since then (maybe 5 years ago) but probably not at all. It makes me think U.S. beef is much more dangerous than people think which is scary to me being American. Of course living in Japan I also remember when Japan halted all beef imports, and how the U.S. suppliers kept shipping spinal cords etc. along in the same batch against the rules. Harsh to say it but all this makes the U.S. food supply sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
I have no idea if this has anything to do with the story, hopefully it will just provide an anecdotal counterbias to the meat lobby spin, the dept of agriculture spin and the large corporate farm spin and the tiny farm spin.
Recently I heard of a study that showed a major change in the way ocean water flows from one hemisphere to the other is a significant factor in warming data. I'd believe small variations but not the entire field coming from the ocean. That said it might need to be considered regarding aerospace and naval systems.
I wonder how they got the name, sounds a bit like tomorrow or something Spanish..
I found it funny as the word morro in Japanese is how you describe getting a fatal sword thrust to your heart / neck, i.e. "to suffer a fatal blow that hits you right in a critical place" is a way to translate it.
Of course as others note, M$ selling AV is itself a funny proposition.
"xxx Infected with virus - don't risk your media! xxx" on a piece of tape across the lid.
VmWare is another possibility but nobody ever guaranteed it.
From that page on apple's site about twitter clearly Apple thinks they have a similar dna.
What could it be used for? Well here's an idea called "Screw the RIAA".
In this monetization possibility (or fantasy you decide), Apple makes twitter groups for every rock band performance in the world, and anybody can twit on it about going there, the band can put special info and links to its site on it, you can basically start an indie craze from nothing.
Now Twitter makes me gag and I would hate using it or being forced to read it. But, it might be neat if you opened it to a lot of people per channel and used it to focus interest, the way usenet groups used to, and you can maybe make anybody with an Apple iphone etc. become a potential uploader to some flash crowd twitter group.
These band appearances and twitter threads lead people to the band's site for info, and to iTunes to download the band's stuff for money, and this is a realization of the model that everyone has talked about for ages about how to screw the RIAA and get bands to communicate and sell directly to their fans. Same could go for films, books, etc.
Only thing is, I don't see any reason why you couldn't build the same thing (twitter lookalike, easy, and iTunes type sales portal, not so easy). I suppose having the hardware and iTunes associations already, and the mass and early to market edge, might be enough to make Apple take a chunk out of the RIAA's sales and give authors a higher income. That and the advertising for ipods, iphones and iTunes, would be neat and might be worth the cash.
Clearly you did not think of a search interface that would allow the Internet Public to go through 150,000 submissions efficiently without hitting the Google I'm Feeling Lucky barrier as I call it, where if you don't get on the top page you are nobody.
Now you are in trouble and maybe being forced to disclose ahead of time some neat multi-dimensional collaborative interface that isn't out of alpha let alone beta yet, which could be a competitive disadvantage.
Here's what I recommend:
- Take a random sampling and see what percentage are good-looking. You could make something to filter spam but maybe not worth it.
- Get some authority to expand the prize or create runnerups, and announce this.
- Hire more people or, try this (which should be up your alley): Ask for people inside and outside Google to join a submission voting group. You could make subgroups of engineers, professional philanthropy advisors, academics, government, writers, etc. Distribute each submission through at least 1 of each group, and tally the votes.
- Consider Galaxyzoo.org which has a quarter million galaxies to classify and got 70,000 classifications per hour from volunteers within 24 hours.
- Opening things up to the web mean they can be gamed by low income people or robots. Use people where you can, and grade participants so outliers can be disqualified.
- Tell everyone what you are doing.
Nice idea though it will be tough to beat Google, which already has a handle on a bunch of bits of that video, and they already understand about leveraging search in a front end processor. But there is an opening and it naturally would leverage community and open source.
I just typed into google,
get me today's sky chart from skyandtelescope.
Didn't quite work, 3rd link or so tells me about S&T's sky chart applet.
Actually, Google is quite dumb still!
And !! that's nasty, I just tried "get me today's sky chart" and hey the top link which sounds good gives me some phishing crap screen. You don't want to be indiscriminately pulling shit off google search results and depending on it, pasting it into insecure apps, or sending it to people. So there is no concept of security yet.
Like another poster I'd like some useful natural language parsing, so we need a good basic engine. It could be upgraded over the web and continuously developed, great. Community can add patterns a la ALICE (what was that darpa agent language again).
On top of this, the equation the Taskfox people are saying is to replace desktop apps with cloud-based scriptable apps in firefox. But guess what? There's a reason I (kicking and screaming) moved from Firebird email and Gmail to Outlook. (Which I hate, but will probably have to buy Outlook 2007. Ouch.) What needs to be done is also script the desktop, and replace as needed commercial apps with free, dynamically pluggable over the net, open source apps. Also consider, though I have not developed with firefox, if firefox provided on the desktop a server that could be called by small widgets or large miniapps, it could be pretty easy for the community to quickly take over the desktop and make it completely scriptable / accessible. What we really want is to be able to empower everything we have, not just firefox.
My two cents. I'll try ubiquity or task fox and see if I can contribute anything when I have time.
If you love coding and that is what you want to do, then what you must do is put all of your time into studying and coding. It will be a continuous journey of learning and self development. You are not guaranteed good pay but maybe that is not the most important thing.
However you can get a job being "involved with software" without being lead programmer. You can do documentation, testing, sales assistant, etc. There are many needs for people who are responsible and details oriented. Also you can leverage domain-specific knowledge (or enthusiasm) to get involved in projects. For example if you know a lot about shipbuilding you might be in a position to be a consultant on a project related to that industry.
Two things to consider. Being on the side that interfaces with the client is very important and cannot be outsourced away from the client. And even if you do turn into a stellar programmer, you still will end up focusing on a certain domain. As others have said a helpdesk job is something that will give you experience but not in coding. It would just be a salary. If you want to learn, then first put in the time yourself and learn from the net and by doing. Even if you get hired by someone you are expected to teach yourself usually. But I think you can contribute greatly to projects both open source and commercial if you do not demand to be a coder. Another thing to note. I happen to sell a software package that uses consultants who configure it to meet a client's needs. They are not coders but configurators, in other words technical consultants who get trained on that package. They do not have coding experience so you could do a similar job too.
Just to keep the record straight, I have a Panasonic P905i (carrier is NTT DoCoMo) which is great but it is easy to rack up serious monthly bills, I pay well over US$100 for mine (and forget roaming.. I spent $500 in a week in Europe). Of course with that I get everything the poster said, plus unlimited internet. There are some expensive streaming media channels too I don't subscribe too. The iPhone is quite nice looking, in particular the ability to get all your email on it is great. The P905I has a neat large screen that can fold out horizontally but still the email client only lets you see the top 15 lines or so of an email, which is silly. Anyway, the iPhone looks neat in other people's hands but not sure it is more compelling for me personally than if I had say a full keyboard. The things that have kept me getting anything besides the P905i are not wanting to have to use an onscreen keyboard to dial, wanting a good size screen, needing to roam overseas, etc. Also I got $100 off the list price from having a docomo phone for a couple years. But most women are buying KDDI's au brand which is cheaper and cuter. Businessmen are mostly docomo, I believe.
Hi,
You are right, and the Clarity is really oool.
I saw presentations by the FC divisions of Honda, Nissan and Toyota today at the FC Expo. 2015 is the date they are aiming at to realize a serious Hydrogen market (though this will be a bit tough). Some important issues are starting in subzero weather (the water freezes... but they have gotten pretty far on this), anode deterioration when frequent start/stop develops an eletrolytiC gradient, and other things. They want to bring the expense down by 90% too. These guys are heroes and as you say already being used in buses and autos - there are 70 hydrogen stations in the U.S. so they are being used in southern California. I saw a photo of a solar powered hydrogen station. It is definitely not vaporware anymore, more like alpha-beta stage.