If you're developing for iOS, consider the Redpark serial cable: http://www.redpark.com/c2db9.html I have one and have personally made an LED blink from my very own custom-written iOS app. From what I'm told, this is the only general use serial cable which has ever made it through Apple's hardware approval process (which is prohibitively expensive for any "person" who isn't also a corporation). Alastair Allen gave a great workshop at OSCON in 2012 demonstrating to use of this serial cable with custom iOS apps: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/24068
Additionally, with the adoption of Bluetooth 4 in iOS devices, that is also another way to connect hardware to custom mobile phone software without having use the Apple hardware partner program.
This must be the inverse to Clay Shirky's rule that as soon as an organization is set up (or in this case: about to be destroyed), the goal for which the organization began shifts to second priority, and the new primary goal is the preservation/perpetuation of the organization.
I met Bob Cassily a few years in St. Louis (where I've lived for 5 years) and I asked him how they deal with lawsuits. He answered: "We have a huge liability policy." Having been there at least half a dozen times, I have to agree that it can be dangerous—if you're stupid. Yes, you can climb over the railing and onto the airplane wing where you might fall 5 stories onto the parking lot. But if you're dumb enough to climb over the railing, then maybe you're doing us all a favor by removing your genes from society. If you've ever seen this place in real life, you'll have to agree that it's just so incredible that it should be kept just as it is. It is absolutely astonishing!
Get a white-noise track and when "reminded" about the new rule, just answer that it's not music but a necessary and vanilla-flavored tool to avoid distractions and be more productive. "Think of it like high-tech earplugs—only better." Demonstrate the track if they need convincing. Then either actually use the white noise track (once you get used to it, it does a few extra brain cells available compared with music), or go back to enjoying your previously scheduled music programming (minus the desk-tapping, humming, or spontaneous burst into song to add the much-needed additional vocal accompaniment to what used to be an awesome part of the song before you started belting it out off-key).
If your music player is of the Apple persuasion capable of such things, get the app: White Noise [iTunes link to the light version]
MojoPac is a clever piece of software which will bypass any software keyloggers on a windows system and give you your own (Windows) environment with all your files and programs. It also presents only a black screen to the system (not to you) so any screenshots taken by keyloggers see only black. I have the results of a bunch of testing I've done with mojopack and keyloggers on my blog: http://ryrw.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-travel-invisibly.html
The marketing folks at Apple must be busting a gut at this news. For anyone who watched the keynote where Leopard pricing was announced, or has talked to anyone who is not an IT admin lately, you know that most common folk just want their computer to work. Remember the uproarious applause when Jobs announce the three different tires for OS X 10.5? "The home version: $129. The business version: $129. The ultimate version: $129. And they all have everything included."
This was clever satire of MS by Jobs a Co. but it's funny because it's true. Why wouldn't you want all the features? Even if they wouldn't use them all, people want to know they are there if they need them SO THAT they don't have to worry about installing something new. Remember RPM dependency hell? Why not just get everything you could need?
I think this move by MS is going to push Apple market share even higher. As their computers get more business friendly, IT puchase decision makers worth their salt are going to consider management cost more and more. As a consultant, I see a dramatic drop in what I make from a particular company when they get away from MS. This is only going to further the trend.
Step 1: Move down the street and transfer your existing 3 mbps service to your new adress @ $50/month.
Step 2: Set up an appointment for cable guys to come activate your service.
Step 3: Take the day off work to wait for cable guy. After 10 hours past the appointment, stop waiting. Call Charter the next day, complain and set up another appointment.
Step 4: Repeat step three.
Step 5: Repeat step four.
Step 6: Repeat step five.
Step 7: Repeat step six.
Step 8: When cable guys finally show up. You're connection will work in 24 hours.
Step 9: When you notice your 3 mbps connection is running at 386 kbps, call charter and spend 2 hours on tech support for them to realize they selected the wrong service from a drop down menu.
Step 10: Enjoy the new 5 mbps service that you're getting because, yes... once again, they chose the wrong type of service from the drop down menu.
Step 11: Don't forget to complain at ever step along the way ultimately resulting in an $80 credit that will last for 4 months at your new rate of $20/month.
For those not keeping score, the endgame resulted in 5 mbps internet connection at $20 per month with an $80 credit. And all it required was missing five days of work, lot's of frustration and unknown hours spent on the phone. Now, go and do likewise.
I do this all the time and my primary suppliers are eBay and lcdpart.com One thing to watch out for which has ruined a couple screens for me is the thin ribbon connectors whill break off if bent too many times. If those break off, you're completely screwed. So don't bend them more then you absolutely have to.
I'm an obsessive email archiver and thanks to Gmail, I can do it simply and easily cross platform. With gmail's smtp server, it saves all my outgoing mail no matter if I send it from my mail client on a Mac, Linux box, Windows machine, or someone else's computer through the web interface. Then, using Thunderbird on all three platforms, I can download both the incoming mail and the mail I sent (possibly from another computer). That way, all my computers have all the sent/received mail without any duplicates all the time. And if needed, when away from my computer, I can get to the most recent email archive through the Gmail web interface. Also, thanks to Thunderbird, I have a consistent mail interface between all my computers/platforms.
Moral of the story: Get a gmail account.
As for conversion, you can google for programs to convert your mail (or upload it to gmail) from pretty much any format into a Thunderbird compatible format.
It was also nice to get out of Outlook Express with it's 218 MB limit on folders. It was deleting email at random (presumably for years) without ever even mentioning it to me. Three cheers for Micros#%@!
Slashdot Mirror
If you're developing for iOS, consider the Redpark serial cable: http://www.redpark.com/c2db9.html I have one and have personally made an LED blink from my very own custom-written iOS app. From what I'm told, this is the only general use serial cable which has ever made it through Apple's hardware approval process (which is prohibitively expensive for any "person" who isn't also a corporation). Alastair Allen gave a great workshop at OSCON in 2012 demonstrating to use of this serial cable with custom iOS apps: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/24068 Additionally, with the adoption of Bluetooth 4 in iOS devices, that is also another way to connect hardware to custom mobile phone software without having use the Apple hardware partner program.
This must be the inverse to Clay Shirky's rule that as soon as an organization is set up (or in this case: about to be destroyed), the goal for which the organization began shifts to second priority, and the new primary goal is the preservation/perpetuation of the organization.
From here(s):
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536
I met Bob Cassily a few years in St. Louis (where I've lived for 5 years) and I asked him how they deal with lawsuits. He answered: "We have a huge liability policy." Having been there at least half a dozen times, I have to agree that it can be dangerous—if you're stupid. Yes, you can climb over the railing and onto the airplane wing where you might fall 5 stories onto the parking lot. But if you're dumb enough to climb over the railing, then maybe you're doing us all a favor by removing your genes from society. If you've ever seen this place in real life, you'll have to agree that it's just so incredible that it should be kept just as it is. It is absolutely astonishing!
QQ
Get a white-noise track and when "reminded" about the new rule, just answer that it's not music but a necessary and vanilla-flavored tool to avoid distractions and be more productive. "Think of it like high-tech earplugs—only better." Demonstrate the track if they need convincing. Then either actually use the white noise track (once you get used to it, it does a few extra brain cells available compared with music), or go back to enjoying your previously scheduled music programming (minus the desk-tapping, humming, or spontaneous burst into song to add the much-needed additional vocal accompaniment to what used to be an awesome part of the song before you started belting it out off-key).
If your music player is of the Apple persuasion capable of such things, get the app: White Noise [iTunes link to the light version]
Have you tried logarithms?
Signed,
literature grad student
It's the spin! The stars are the next to go. Robert Charles Wilson warned us about this!
MojoPac is a clever piece of software which will bypass any software keyloggers on a windows system and give you your own (Windows) environment with all your files and programs. It also presents only a black screen to the system (not to you) so any screenshots taken by keyloggers see only black. I have the results of a bunch of testing I've done with mojopack and keyloggers on my blog: http://ryrw.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-travel-invisibly.html
The marketing folks at Apple must be busting a gut at this news. For anyone who watched the keynote where Leopard pricing was announced, or has talked to anyone who is not an IT admin lately, you know that most common folk just want their computer to work. Remember the uproarious applause when Jobs announce the three different tires for OS X 10.5? "The home version: $129. The business version: $129. The ultimate version: $129. And they all have everything included."
This was clever satire of MS by Jobs a Co. but it's funny because it's true. Why wouldn't you want all the features? Even if they wouldn't use them all, people want to know they are there if they need them SO THAT they don't have to worry about installing something new. Remember RPM dependency hell? Why not just get everything you could need?
I think this move by MS is going to push Apple market share even higher. As their computers get more business friendly, IT puchase decision makers worth their salt are going to consider management cost more and more. As a consultant, I see a dramatic drop in what I make from a particular company when they get away from MS. This is only going to further the trend.
Step 1: Move down the street and transfer your existing 3 mbps service to your new adress @ $50/month.
Step 2: Set up an appointment for cable guys to come activate your service.
Step 3: Take the day off work to wait for cable guy. After 10 hours past the appointment, stop waiting. Call Charter the next day, complain and set up another appointment.
Step 4: Repeat step three.
Step 5: Repeat step four.
Step 6: Repeat step five.
Step 7: Repeat step six.
Step 8: When cable guys finally show up. You're connection will work in 24 hours.
Step 9: When you notice your 3 mbps connection is running at 386 kbps, call charter and spend 2 hours on tech support for them to realize they selected the wrong service from a drop down menu.
Step 10: Enjoy the new 5 mbps service that you're getting because, yes... once again, they chose the wrong type of service from the drop down menu.
Step 11: Don't forget to complain at ever step along the way ultimately resulting in an $80 credit that will last for 4 months at your new rate of $20/month.
For those not keeping score, the endgame resulted in 5 mbps internet connection at $20 per month with an $80 credit. And all it required was missing five days of work, lot's of frustration and unknown hours spent on the phone. Now, go and do likewise.
Google's next project: worldpeace.google.com
I do this all the time and my primary suppliers are eBay and lcdpart.com One thing to watch out for which has ruined a couple screens for me is the thin ribbon connectors whill break off if bent too many times. If those break off, you're completely screwed. So don't bend them more then you absolutely have to.
Moral of the story: Get a gmail account.
As for conversion, you can google for programs to convert your mail (or upload it to gmail) from pretty much any format into a Thunderbird compatible format.
It was also nice to get out of Outlook Express with it's 218 MB limit on folders. It was deleting email at random (presumably for years) without ever even mentioning it to me. Three cheers for Micros#%@!