I agree with you. I *do* research in agents (currently doing my PhD y MAS and I worked with autonomous agents, neural networks and intelligent agents before) and I am (from what I read in TFA... yes I did read it) that this is just a mix of neopetz with ALICE and some kind neural network to *try* to infer the "intentions" of the chatter.
The first thing I noted is that:
it is able to simultaneously connect to all major instant message services, such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ and AIM, so users only need one chat program even if they have multiple accounts.
But no IRC... in my opinion for all these kind of message services a simple available policy of "only daddy can add contacts to your contact list" will suffice. I believe these people didn't quite *understand* the problem.
Next, you have this quite blatant clame:
"Our technology allows the pet to 'understand' conversations so that no matter how something is said, it can detect the other person's intentions and determine where the discussion is heading," said Chong, Mor(f)'s managing director.
It would be interesting what kind of technology are they using; bayes networks?, simple statistical-probability inference? expert-systems based ? Call me skeptic but I will believe it when I see it working.
You just have to look at the current bibliography to see how decision-support systems (backed up by years of research) have limited success (under very specific conditions) and (the KEY issue) when all the "players" are willing to cooperate. Now when you are talking about an area where the pedophiles will try to disguise as much as they can... well...
Anyway, at the end I believe, as other people has wrote, the solution is not a technological one but a *cultural* one which should be done by the parents educating their sons. It is as easy as telling your son to meet their friends (the first time) at YOUR home, just LISTEN to your kids, and see what they are doing for Science's sake! [southpark-wii =oP]
In fact, when I read the title I thought the story was about some kind of hacking box. I do not remember what "color" is it but I do remember once reading some schematics for a box that modified the phase (or something similar) of the AC in your house when you plugged it and made your meter (only if it was analog of course) go backwards. The only thing I remember about the diagram is that it required a HUGE capacitor.
Finally a Proper envieronment!.I love Xfce. I use it mainly via Xubuntu. From the release visual tour I can see this version is really nice. However, "niceties" require processsing power to display (like the fancy icons or alpha blending). I am afraid Xfce could end like firefox (which started as the "lightweight" version of Mozilla and now is itself bloated).
The text editor (mousepad) is very nice, simply that, an easy to use text editor (without:icryptic^M^Mkey combinations^[:wq! required to edit a file). Recently I had to "downgrade" a notebook to only 256 MB and decided to install Xubuntu. It runs really fine and does whatever I need it to do.
You hit the nail with that one. I *am* a programmer. I like open source software and I appreciate the OS community/karma. However some (most of the OSS ?) programmers have this weird notion that you can not say their program is ugly or bad or does not work for X or Y or Z. Any kind of criticism (good or bad) will be answered with "why dont you make your own software" or "so what it is free" or even... "fuck off".
That state of the issues is very sad. You might think it is a problem of the open source community but, just one or two days ago there was a story running on slashdot asking "why are IT people always jerks"?.
Of course not all of them are like that... but there is a high concentration of jerks doing Open Source.
I could understand why *you* would not like to contribute with those kind of projects which to be sincere *really* need some help of UI designers and alike. Same thing with games... no graphic designer wants to "contribute" to the open source community (or it is very hard) but I am afraid it is because of the arrogance of developers.
Guiness should be named Irish Coffee... personally I named it "Irish Atole" because of the thickness. I personally LOVE it and because of it I cant drink anything but Bitters, Ales or Guiness without thinking I am drinking piss (Corona bear specially tastes like piss [and it is from Mexico =oP])
Hmm, as an Irishman I feel the need to reply to this. First off, no Irishman I know drinks more coffee than tea,
Hehe... yeah. In fact the actual "quote" from the Irish man I was going to write is that Irish drink MORE tea than English and english drink more coffee. I guess I am still sleeping (I am hungry thats sure). And yeah at least in Mexico I know Irish Coffee as a mix of Coffee and Whisky (btw why doesnt firefox recognize "Whisky" without e?... someone told me that the brands that sell Whiskey with the "e" are not real 100% Scottish)
I love honey nut cereal mixed with shredded wheat (it is the ONLY way I can stand eating wheat cereals without feeling that I am eating a cardboard box...) . I add some sliced bananas.
Of course I also get a cup of coffee and waffles (difficult to get in UK, the "normal" egg waffles with honey and butter and no the potato waffles they eat here...).
Something interesting is that in UK people often have something really light for breakfast (as parent said), unlike in Mexico where the breakfast my mom used to give us where two scrambled eggs with ham and some mashed refried beans as side order. Or the typical Moyetes (a french like bread sliced in half with refried beans and grated with cheese... oooh god).
Of course you could ask what about the [in]famous English breakfast (bacon, "yummy-looking" black pudding, eggs, some kind of horrible tomatoes, sausage, beans and if u are vegy, mushrooms) but as far as I have seen, it is not until 11:00 (lunch hour) that they take these. My gf used to work in a restaurant where they served "all day english breakfast". It is very "funny" to watch people ask for an english breakfast at 10:00 pm...
BTW, did you know that Irish drink more coffee than tea? well, that is something an Irish man told me maybe it is bollocks =oP
I have made myself that note already, but mostly because of the US requirement of gathering all kind of personal information about the passengers. No thanks... I preffer 100 times to pay 100 pounds more to go from Mexico to UK via Amsterdam instead of going trough Chicago...
The best you will get is to find an editor or two who share your opinion and stick with them.
Nah, the best you can do is to go to one of those review aggregate sites an look at the overall score (like metacritic.com or gamerankings.com ).
Of course sometimes I just do not understand why people like some kind of games... I got Wario Ware for GBA because It was supposed to be gggrrreat but I really dislike it, I find it to be a half assed game which *I* cold have done using BASICA...
And now with the wii you have WarioWare smooth moves which has also a really good score and I am sure is as stupid as the other...
Of course that could be the games that americans play... similarly as the games British play (who the heck likes a "virtual football manager" game? or a "who wants to be a millionarie" game?... well here in britain people buy them like hot cakes)
And considering that's the platform Torvalds develops on, you'd think they could at least release the video in a format he could watch from his own computer
Duh! Everyone knows Mr. Trovalds develops on a PPC/Linux machine but his home machine is still a Wintel one
couldn't help but think of the similarities between him and RMS. I couldn't decide if it was amazing how two similar people could end up going in two different directions, or if this was foreshadowing the future for RMS.
Interesting... I guess the main issue is that although they might share a similarity on the "hippiesque" attitude they are certainly different.
Anyway, I feel really sorry for Mr. Draper, there was a time during my early University years (1998) when I read a lot about the old school hacking/phreaking/cracking scene. I got amazed with them and even tried to reproduce the different circuits (boxes) built just for fun (although they did not worked in the Mexican TELMEX company... well the one with the diode to avoid a call to be charged did kind of worked =o)...
I would sugest The Hackers Crackdown for a really nice read about those times... I remember also reading some interviews made to "Dark Avenger" (a girl made the interview, which made it more interesting)... if you do not know who D.A. was, he was one of the best virus creators back when viruses did not need a user to click "Yes, install this virus on my computer" button...
Ah the old days... to think that some guys made loads of money with movies like Hackers, Sneakers, The Wizard among others commercializing in *some* way what this guy did...
Someone should rise some funds for these guy... I always thought of him as a genius
Hi, I am a Mexican living in the UK. Although I have not seen those shitty cartoons you are talking about (it would be interesting to see what kind of crap is Mexico exporting...) I was amazed at the demand of Mexican food (chile, tacos, quesadillas, tamales, etc) that exists in here. As every Mexican-wannabe restaurant I have been is just a Tex-Mex chicken-fajita bar.
As a Mexican I think it is really cool that people from over here are valuing our culture. And hey, Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world (after chinesse and another one I dont remember...) and if you go to the Europe mainline (France, Spain, Germany, etc) people will like you more if you speak in Spanish than if you speak in English (they tend to despise American english mostly... I have personal experience on that =o)
Does it allow you to make transparent area charts
Microsoft put the Transparency on that dialog to make you wish you were using a Mac. Transparency chart fills are not possible to create in Windows Excel, although you can view the effect in Windows if it was produced that way on a Mac.
- Jon ------- Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP That was a nice one... I would get 10% less at my undergrad Software Engineering course mark if I had shown a control which did NOTHING.
So hey Mac Office can do something Windows Office can't;-)
Or better yet, a class that trains students how to *create* a word processor (of course only for CS or Eng. courses, we dont want to make Economists heads explode =o).
That was the case of my "Software Tools 2" course took on my Software Engineering undergrad. The course general description was to "learn to use the excel spread-shit" but the teacher (in mutual consent with us students... the fact is that 80% of the students did not care what to learn [just wanted to pass] and the other 20% was easy to convince hoho).
During that course we learnt to parse formulas (using a stupid recursive algorithm) and we learnt the basic *core* function spreadsheets, and how they work. Of course we gave a quick review of the way Excel did things thus at the end students learnt the basic use of Excel and learnt how could they learn to use the rest of the program... (Isnt that a wonderful thing?... for one of the poorest beaner Mexican Schools?)
The probolem with trying to teach "how to use a word processor" is that you *must* get one application to teach.
I would love to take the same course I took these days. I guess it would be possible for the teacher to give to the students some pieces of code from an Open Source Word processor (like abiword, etc).
There are just as many idiots within IT as without it.
See, the thing with IT and computing/programming in general is that we are not "idiots" or "assholes", we become "jerks" because the standard "Geek" is typically a rejected member of its own society. It all begins when you are on basic or secondary school, and it is the system's fault.
When little johny geek is on basic school and even the teacher tells him he is a bit stupid because all he does is sit in front of his computer. Being smart is being a nerd or dumb or whatever. Then, it is this geek kid that develops a self righteous sense, because he *knows* he is better than a lot of other people. He MUST demonstrate at every chance how intelligent he is (and hence, some of these need to demonstrate how STUPID the others are).
Just look at the average slashdot answer, if someone makes an example saying something like "as if 6 bottles of water where launched to space" then you would have a hundred of answers telling him *why* it is not possible to launch to space a hundred of bottles of water and whatnot.
I know it is like this because I myself am a bit like that. But there is always going to be someone worst...
Now that you say that it makes sense. My father came to UK when he was 16 years old... that would be on 1955... sorry, it was my mistake, I always forget how pedantic slashdot people tend to be...
Once I read somewhere that the "original" way of driving is the way Britons do it. And that it was because of the French that always want to do things different who started to drive on the other side. And for some reason other countries started imitating them.
IIRC Japan also drive as UK and Australia (but Australia was part of the British empire at some point wasn't it?)
Well... one of the problems I have had since I arrived is metrics, in Mexico we use the metric system for everything but here in the UK they measure things in Stones, Feet (right now I am trying to figure out what length of curtaints ["blinds"] do I need because they sell them in 'feet'), Pints, etc.
Now, about the main question, I do not think it is at all difficult. One of the fears I had when I was planning to come to UK was the monetary system. My father came to the UK some years ago (15 maybe) and they still used that strange system where 12 shillings was a quarter and 8 quarters was a pound (I am just babbling what I remember... those are not accurate numbers)... fortunately Britain changed to a normal 100 cents = 1 pound (decimal system yahoo!). I they could do it with *money* then I am sure Americans can do it with metrics no?... now, to make Poms to drive at the *right* side of the road;-)
I dont like to study History. In fact, in primary, secondary and high school I was *really* bad at History (I can not just learn things by the book, I need to find some kind of reasoning).
Having said that, I am completely aware of the value of history, which , if known by the current people(for example) would prevent lots of deaths and war.
Now, what does your dead grandpa has to do with history?, well, history is not only what history books tell you. The history you read written on those books is what the WINNER of those events want you to believe.
As a simple example, take the Mexican revolution (I am aware, as I am Mexican). Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. And that, is one of the reasons why Mexicans are always in the middle of nothing, where nothing happens. It is a bit more complex than that but if you like, you could read this book review to know more about that.
You left software to do what? Has anyone else here been a developer and moved on?
I ask because I plan to do this myself, but the prospects are daunting.
Well, I think you can answer that question yourself. You should look for things (outside the computer) that you like to do. Me for example, I started to cook as a hobby and I am planning on starting a restaurant (might even start a REAL [no texmex] Mexican food restaurant in the UK).
And then, you could use your "computing" knowledge to help you in your new job (wannalearn.com).
Ha... I remember having to maintain a bunch of Acer PCs (386 and 486) at an office. They where deffinitely trash with their "easily removable" plastic cases without screws. More than once I ended with a piece of broken plastic in my hands.
I always tought that acer was a complete POS, at least in Mexico.
I have been trying to avoid buying/acquiring anything Sony related... but just recently I decided to buy a mobile. I was just looking for a simple small mobile without any other thing apart from calling (and the tycal games etc...) I went to Virgin, Carphone Warehouse, Orange among other places and the cheapest phone I could find was a Sony Ericsson J100i which I ended buying... it was only 14 pounds while any other was 20 pounds. And yes I am cheap, I only bought the mobile beacuse I need to be accessible for my girlfriend and supervisors...
Slashdot Mirror
The first thing I noted is that:
But no IRC... in my opinion for all these kind of message services a simple available policy of "only daddy can add contacts to your contact list" will suffice. I believe these people didn't quite *understand* the problem.
Next, you have this quite blatant clame:
It would be interesting what kind of technology are they using; bayes networks?, simple statistical-probability inference? expert-systems based ?
Call me skeptic but I will believe it when I see it working.
You just have to look at the current bibliography to see how decision-support systems (backed up by years of research) have limited success (under very specific conditions) and (the KEY issue) when all the "players" are willing to cooperate. Now when you are talking about an area where the pedophiles will try to disguise as much as they can... well...
Anyway, at the end I believe, as other people has wrote, the solution is not a technological one but a *cultural* one which should be done by the parents educating their sons. It is as easy as telling your son to meet their friends (the first time) at YOUR home, just LISTEN to your kids, and see what they are doing for Science's sake! [southpark-wii =oP]
Me neither.
In fact, when I read the title I thought the story was about some kind of hacking box. I do not remember what "color" is it but I do remember once reading some schematics for a box that modified the phase (or something similar) of the AC in your house when you plugged it and made your meter (only if it was analog of course) go backwards. The only thing I remember about the diagram is that it required a HUGE capacitor.
Finally a Proper envieronment!.I love Xfce. I use it mainly via Xubuntu. From the release visual tour I can see this version is really nice. However, "niceties" require processsing power to display (like the fancy icons or alpha blending). I am afraid Xfce could end like firefox (which started as the "lightweight" version of Mozilla and now is itself bloated).
:icryptic^M^Mkey combinations^[:wq! required to edit a file).
The text editor (mousepad) is very nice, simply that, an easy to use text editor (without
Recently I had to "downgrade" a notebook to only 256 MB and decided to install Xubuntu. It runs really fine and does whatever I need it to do.
You hit the nail with that one. I *am* a programmer. I like open source software and I appreciate the OS community/karma. However some (most of the OSS ?) programmers have this weird notion that you can not say their program is ugly or bad or does not work for X or Y or Z. Any kind of criticism (good or bad) will be answered with "why dont you make your own software" or "so what it is free" or even... "fuck off".
That state of the issues is very sad. You might think it is a problem of the open source community but, just one or two days ago there was a story running on slashdot asking "why are IT people always jerks"?.
Of course not all of them are like that... but there is a high concentration of jerks doing Open Source.
I could understand why *you* would not like to contribute with those kind of projects which to be sincere *really* need some help of UI designers and alike. Same thing with games... no graphic designer wants to "contribute" to the open source community (or it is very hard) but I am afraid it is because of the arrogance of developers.
Guiness should be named Irish Coffee... personally I named it "Irish Atole" because of the thickness. I personally LOVE it and because of it I cant drink anything but Bitters, Ales or Guiness without thinking I am drinking piss (Corona bear specially tastes like piss [and it is from Mexico =oP])
Hmm, as an Irishman I feel the need to reply to this. First off, no Irishman I know drinks more coffee than tea,
Hehe... yeah. In fact the actual "quote" from the Irish man I was going to write is that Irish drink MORE tea than English and english drink more coffee. I guess I am still sleeping (I am hungry thats sure). And yeah at least in Mexico I know Irish Coffee as a mix of Coffee and Whisky (btw why doesnt firefox recognize "Whisky" without e?... someone told me that the brands that sell Whiskey with the "e" are not real 100% Scottish)
I love honey nut cereal mixed with shredded wheat (it is the ONLY way I can stand eating wheat cereals without feeling that I am eating a cardboard box...) . I add some sliced bananas.
Of course I also get a cup of coffee and waffles (difficult to get in UK, the "normal" egg waffles with honey and butter and no the potato waffles they eat here...).
Something interesting is that in UK people often have something really light for breakfast (as parent said), unlike in Mexico where the breakfast my mom used to give us where two scrambled eggs with ham and some mashed refried beans as side order. Or the typical Moyetes (a french like bread sliced in half with refried beans and grated with cheese... oooh god).
Of course you could ask what about the [in]famous English breakfast (bacon, "yummy-looking" black pudding, eggs, some kind of horrible tomatoes, sausage, beans and if u are vegy, mushrooms) but as far as I have seen, it is not until 11:00 (lunch hour) that they take these. My gf used to work in a restaurant where they served "all day english breakfast". It is very "funny" to watch people ask for an english breakfast at 10:00 pm...
BTW, did you know that Irish drink more coffee than tea? well, that is something an Irish man told me maybe it is bollocks =oP
I have made myself that note already, but mostly because of the US requirement of gathering all kind of personal information about the passengers. No thanks... I preffer 100 times to pay 100 pounds more to go from Mexico to UK via Amsterdam instead of going trough Chicago...
In Mexico City central avenue (Eje 1) or Tepito market you can buy Autodesk Maya Unlimited 8.5 for $3.0 the DVD. And games are usually $1 for each CD.
That is why I laugh REALLY hard when I read that RIAA is going to start prosecuting P2P file downloaders in Mexico...
The best you will get is to find an editor or two who share your opinion and stick with them.
Nah, the best you can do is to go to one of those review aggregate sites an look at the overall score (like metacritic.com or gamerankings.com ).
Of course sometimes I just do not understand why people like some kind of games... I got Wario Ware for GBA because It was supposed to be gggrrreat but I really dislike it, I find it to be a half assed game which *I* cold have done using BASICA...
And now with the wii you have WarioWare smooth moves which has also a really good score and I am sure is as stupid as the other...
Of course that could be the games that americans play... similarly as the games British play (who the heck likes a "virtual football manager" game? or a "who wants to be a millionarie" game?... well here in britain people buy them like hot cakes)
And considering that's the platform Torvalds develops on, you'd think they could at least release the video in a format he could watch from his own computer
Duh! Everyone knows Mr. Trovalds develops on a PPC/Linux machine but his home machine is still a Wintel one
*runs*
couldn't help but think of the similarities between him and RMS. I couldn't decide if it was amazing how two similar people could end up going in two different directions, or if this was foreshadowing the future for RMS.
...
Interesting... I guess the main issue is that although they might share a similarity on the "hippiesque" attitude they are certainly different.
Anyway, I feel really sorry for Mr. Draper, there was a time during my early University years (1998) when I read a lot about the old school hacking/phreaking/cracking scene. I got amazed with them and even tried to reproduce the different circuits (boxes) built just for fun (although they did not worked in the Mexican TELMEX company... well the one with the diode to avoid a call to be charged did kind of worked =o)
I would sugest The Hackers Crackdown for a really nice read about those times... I remember also reading some interviews made to "Dark Avenger" (a girl made the interview, which made it more interesting)... if you do not know who D.A. was, he was one of the best virus creators back when viruses did not need a user to click "Yes, install this virus on my computer" button...
Ah the old days... to think that some guys made loads of money with movies like Hackers, Sneakers, The Wizard among others commercializing in *some* way what this guy did...
Someone should rise some funds for these guy... I always thought of him as a genius
I agree with you, the bastards at lovefilm want to charge £3 for a movie download appart of your rental fee...
Hi, I am a Mexican living in the UK. Although I have not seen those shitty cartoons you are talking about (it would be interesting to see what kind of crap is Mexico exporting...) I was amazed at the demand of Mexican food (chile, tacos, quesadillas, tamales, etc) that exists in here. As every Mexican-wannabe restaurant I have been is just a Tex-Mex chicken-fajita bar.
As a Mexican I think it is really cool that people from over here are valuing our culture. And hey, Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world (after chinesse and another one I dont remember...) and if you go to the Europe mainline (France, Spain, Germany, etc) people will like you more if you speak in Spanish than if you speak in English (they tend to despise American english mostly... I have personal experience on that =o)
using a Mac. Transparency chart fills are not possible to create in
Windows Excel, although you can view the effect in Windows if it was
produced that way on a Mac.
- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP That was a nice one... I would get 10% less at my undergrad Software Engineering course mark if I had shown a control which did NOTHING.
So hey Mac Office can do something Windows Office can't
Or better yet, a class that trains students how to *create* a word processor (of course only for CS or Eng. courses, we dont want to make Economists heads explode =o).
That was the case of my "Software Tools 2" course took on my Software Engineering undergrad. The course general description was to "learn to use the excel spread-shit" but the teacher (in mutual consent with us students... the fact is that 80% of the students did not care what to learn [just wanted to pass] and the other 20% was easy to convince hoho).
During that course we learnt to parse formulas (using a stupid recursive algorithm) and we learnt the basic *core* function spreadsheets, and how they work. Of course we gave a quick review of the way Excel did things thus at the end students learnt the basic use of Excel and learnt how could they learn to use the rest of the program... (Isnt that a wonderful thing?... for one of the poorest beaner Mexican Schools?)
The probolem with trying to teach "how to use a word processor" is that you *must* get one application to teach.
I would love to take the same course I took these days. I guess it would be possible for the teacher to give to the students some pieces of code from an Open Source Word processor (like abiword, etc).
There are just as many idiots within IT as without it.
See, the thing with IT and computing/programming in general is that we are not "idiots" or "assholes", we become "jerks" because the standard "Geek" is typically a rejected member of its own society. It all begins when you are on basic or secondary school, and it is the system's fault.
When little johny geek is on basic school and even the teacher tells him he is a bit stupid because all he does is sit in front of his computer. Being smart is being a nerd or dumb or whatever. Then, it is this geek kid that develops a self righteous sense, because he *knows* he is better than a lot of other people. He MUST demonstrate at every chance how intelligent he is (and hence, some of these need to demonstrate how STUPID the others are).
Just look at the average slashdot answer, if someone makes an example saying something like "as if 6 bottles of water where launched to space" then you would have a hundred of answers telling him *why* it is not possible to launch to space a hundred of bottles of water and whatnot.
I know it is like this because I myself am a bit like that. But there is always going to be someone worst...
Now that you say that it makes sense. My father came to UK when he was 16 years old... that would be on 1955... sorry, it was my mistake, I always forget how pedantic slashdot people tend to be...
Once I read somewhere that the "original" way of driving is the way Britons do it. And that it was because of the French that always want to do things different who started to drive on the other side. And for some reason other countries started imitating them.
IIRC Japan also drive as UK and Australia (but Australia was part of the British empire at some point wasn't it?)
Well... one of the problems I have had since I arrived is metrics, in Mexico we use the metric system for everything but here in the UK they measure things in Stones, Feet (right now I am trying to figure out what length of curtaints ["blinds"] do I need because they sell them in 'feet'), Pints, etc.
... now, to make Poms to drive at the *right* side of the road ;-)
Now, about the main question, I do not think it is at all difficult. One of the fears I had when I was planning to come to UK was the monetary system. My father came to the UK some years ago (15 maybe) and they still used that strange system where 12 shillings was a quarter and 8 quarters was a pound (I am just babbling what I remember... those are not accurate numbers)... fortunately Britain changed to a normal 100 cents = 1 pound (decimal system yahoo!). I they could do it with *money* then I am sure Americans can do it with metrics no?
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
I dont like to study History. In fact, in primary, secondary and high school I was *really* bad at History (I can not just learn things by the book, I need to find some kind of reasoning).
Having said that, I am completely aware of the value of history, which , if known by the current people(for example) would prevent lots of deaths and war.
Now, what does your dead grandpa has to do with history?, well, history is not only what history books tell you. The history you read written on those books is what the WINNER of those events want you to believe.
As a simple example, take the Mexican revolution (I am aware, as I am Mexican). Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. And that, is one of the reasons why Mexicans are always in the middle of nothing, where nothing happens. It is a bit more complex than that but if you like, you could read this book review to know more about that.
You left software to do what? Has anyone else here been a developer and moved on?
I ask because I plan to do this myself, but the prospects are daunting.
Well, I think you can answer that question yourself. You should look for things (outside the computer) that you like to do. Me for example, I started to cook as a hobby and I am planning on starting a restaurant (might even start a REAL [no texmex] Mexican food restaurant in the UK).
And then, you could use your "computing" knowledge to help you in your new job (wannalearn.com).
Ha... I remember having to maintain a bunch of Acer PCs (386 and 486) at an office. They where deffinitely trash with their "easily removable" plastic cases without screws. More than once I ended with a piece of broken plastic in my hands.
I always tought that acer was a complete POS, at least in Mexico.
Some nice instructions labels:
On a bag of Fritos: You could be a winner! No purchase nesessary. Details inside.
On a bar of Dial soap: Directions: Use like regular soap.
On some Swanson frozen dinners: Serving suggestion: Defrost.
On a hotel provided shower cap in a box: Fits one head.
On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert:(printed on bottom of the box) Do not turn upside down.
On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: Product will be hot after heating.
On packaging for a Rowenta iron: Do not iron clothes on body.
On Boot's Children's cough medicine: Do not drive car or operate machinery.
On Nytol sleep aid: Warning: may cause drowsiness.
On a Korean kitchen knife: Warning keep out of children.
On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights: For indoor or outdoor use only.
On a Japanese food processor: Not to be used for the other use.
On Sainsbury's peanuts: Warning: contains nuts.
On an American Airlines packet of nuts: Instructions: open packet, eat nuts.
On a Swedish chainsaw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals.
On a childs superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.
I have been trying to avoid buying/acquiring anything Sony related... but just recently I decided to buy a mobile. I was just looking for a simple small mobile without any other thing apart from calling (and the tycal games etc...) I went to Virgin, Carphone Warehouse, Orange among other places and the cheapest phone I could find was a Sony Ericsson J100i which I ended buying... it was only 14 pounds while any other was 20 pounds. And yes I am cheap, I only bought the mobile beacuse I need to be accessible for my girlfriend and supervisors...