in XP...if you just have an isolated ZIP file and need to navigate to it...it's slow, but perhaps manageable. If, however, you have multiple files in a single folder, especially if any of them are large, and you make the mistake of navigating to that folder in explorer with the folder sidebar open...much pain and suffering (aka waiting) ensues. given that i generally have a fairly large "downloads" directory which i use not infrequently, i've always found that I have to turn the zip integration off in order to get a reasonable response from my computer. perhaps they improved things in Vista and/or 7, I've only had cursory experience with either. but i find the speed of the XP implementation unacceptable.
beyond the speed, though, i would also have the quibble that they only go halfway towards treating the zip file as a folder. On the one hand, they present it as though it's a folder, but then they prevent you from doing actions that you can do in regular folders. If you didn't notice you were in a zip folder, you can be caught off guard...'wtf won't this work?!?' until you realize you're in a zip folder. this is probably b/c the zip format makes it difficult to support regular folder operations...which is well and good, but then why present a misleading paradigm to the user if it's not one you can fully support? I think they would have done better to not make it look like a folder (which it isn't) but something different (which it is). You can still have good native integration and support for something without trying to make different things look kinda-sorta-all-the-same.
actually, windows (at least in XP) zip support is a complete and utter travesty. winzip is a vast improvement. that said, there are free alternatives (i like 7zip at home, dunno what its commercial license is). even downloading cygwin and using teaching users to use command line unzip is an improvement upon windows zip support.
is a core i7 i just built out with Karmic as the OS. No dual-boot, going Ubuntu whole hog with XP in a VirtualBox to handle software I can't do without. It's been fairly painless thus far. My biggest issue is that I pulled the internal flash card reader from my old PC (SD, XD, CF, etc) and put it in the new one. Ubuntu no like off-brand card reader, no sir. After starting up with that device, Ubuntu gave me a very helpful "unable to enumerate USB device on port 3" in dmesg 2x per second. Indefinitely. Which really makes dmesg pretty useless. For the time being, the device is still in the box but unplugged from the motherboard. I'd love to find a solution, I've spent a while searching bug reports (and adding my voice to a couple), but the truth is that what I learned is that the USB support is still somewhat less robust than XP. Which is unfortunate. It's exactly those sorts of issues which make the appeal to the masses difficult. There is NO WAY most of the people I know would want to or know how to go searching for the solution (btw, another distro suggested switching the order of uhci and ehci, still looking to see where ubuntu has that configuration)...which makes me a little sad, I'd really like to see free OS's predominate, but the peripheral support still needs help. I'm okay, I'll either find a config to play with or I'll give up and probably get a new card reader than people vouche works, but it'd be nice if the reader which worked properly and well under XP didn't require heroics to work in Ubuntu. Ubuntu is better in so many other ways, it's just disappointing to see where it still has catching up to do. FWIW, I fully understand that the USB device I've got probably is slightly non-standard or something. I get that, but the thing is, in the real world, people have devices like that, and I think the real-world OS needs to do more than throw its hands up with dealing with slightly non-standard equipment and make a best effort to use it as is. It's like...Firefox, say. It is standards compliant, but that doesn't mean it switches to showing you raw HTML if the page doesn't comply...it makes a best effort to show you something useful. ESPECIALLY for peripherals, Ubuntu, and Linux broadly, need to do the same.
Oh, there was one other issue. My Gnome (I think), crashed, the screen got filled with a bunch of random blocks of color, things stopped responding (except the blocks would shift a bit when I moved the mouse around), and it logged me out. The login screen was fine, and I logged back in and things were back to normal. I was annoyed to have the crash, but I was pleased that it did handle it without requiring a reset or reboot. So, another bug, but at least a bug that was handled better than windows might have done.
You know, it occurs to me that this is partly why our air security is a mess: it is looking for too many things. Why is the TSA involved in looking for drugs, or parrots strapped to your crotch, or all those other things which DON'T endanger airplanes and passengers? Air security should focus solely on that, and leave law enforcement of other laws to the other relevant law-enforcement agencies. I think it's a clear example of a situation where being generalists is bad and where being a narrow specialist is good. When I'm on an airplane, I really could care less if the guy next to me is smuggling 10 billion dollars in his left shoe...I'm all for catching criminals, but I don't think the air-safety checkpoint is the best place to be doing it.
Can't speak for other places...but at least in Texas, it might be easy enough to win the small claims filing, but it isn't binding, on appeal, they can go to regular civil court and it's as though the small-claims case never even happened. And collecting on a small claims win can be difficult. Winning is one thing, getting money is another. So they could easily let you pay the fees for filing suit in small claims court, not bother showing, and then appeal when you win to regular court, which...if you don't get a lawyer for the appeal, they could win, and force you to eat the court costs and legal fees.
It sounds like a nice way to annoy them, but when you start looking at the practicalities, the class-action works out much better.
I specifically said for a narrowly defined function: actively trying to suss out secret information. There are many other functions which make them very different. Intent matters when determining what, if any, punitive response is required. Intent doesn't matter when figuring out what means people may use to gain access.
If I am trying to prevent leaks of some type of information, anyone who might be actively attempting to get that information SHOULD be grouped together in a gross classification scheme. Or, to put another spin on it, let's say that I find it offensive that you grouped "computer hackers" with "terrorists" and "criminals".... You should stop seeing the grouping as a set of moral equivalences and recognize them as functional equivalences for a narrowly defined function (actively trying to get secret information).
As for "enemy"...I find unwelcome publicity to be my enemy as well. Fortunately I'm a nobody so I've never had to face that enemy, but I sure wouldn't welcome it. Yes, perhaps in a military context another word like "adversary" might be more appropriate for this problem, but that's getting into semantics and PC. Semantics aside, a) it's a valid problem b) the classification scheme is useful and valid.
Perhaps I am missing something, but did you have a point beyond, "You're wrong"? Because it seems to me that you're thinking I'm going to adopt a different point of view because "javabandit said so"....
I very much understand what engineering is. And I recognize that formal engineering isn't necessary to program. But I think the analogy holds. Or do you think people building rope bridges in the Amazon are practicing formal engineering? It's very much possible to build a bridge without engineering skills...and it's possible for it to be solid, and functional. Similarly, it's possible to program without any knowledge of engineering, and to produce software which works, and does the job. So, no, programming isn't engineering. But a good programmer, or, I would say, a software engineer, isn't merely trying put things together to find something which works.
Neither, as you note, is programming science. Software engineering isn't science. No engineering is science. Engineering is the application of science. The "science" is computer science, and it's very much a science, probably closest to mathematics after perhaps physics. Software engineering is the application of engineering principles to utilize that science to create things. Programming is the activity of creation, and does not require knowledge of the science or the engineering to perform...but I'd have a lot more faith in the system if the creators had both. And, just as with a well designed bridge, I'd want the designer to have a good bit of talent/imagination as well....
I think I'll have to settle for mere words in my rebuttal: not to split hairs, but it sounds like you're describing "intelligence", not "imagination"...at least, that's how I'd define it. By the definition you seem to be implying, imagination is necessary for not just science (as you note), but for creating everything: science, history, literature.... I suppose you could say that I was agreeing with you when I said that the books required "competent" learners.:)
By imagination, in this context, what I mean is the ability to create good abstractions, to envision how different abstractions relate to one another. Having that ability can certainly help one to be an excellent programmer, but it is not necessary to be a competent one. There are plenty of large projects I've seen functioning, and well, where there are leaders with good "imagination" who design the abstractions, who task individual programmers to implement a particular function, and who then review the programming to make sure it didn't do anything stupid. The people who end up doing those implementations aren't idiots, they're competent programmers, but I wouldn't dare trust them to design a large system if I cared at all about getting a good result. I think on a small project, you often can't afford to have programmers who aren't also competent designers, or "imaginative", but on a large system it is often necessary--it is often simply too difficult to staff a large project with a full bevy of "imaginative" experts.
Finally, I'd like to note that I've met lots of people who are actually quite good at understanding abstract designs, but who are terrible (or just passable) at creating them themselves. They often make excellent team-members because they can work well with the design you give them--they're often excellent coders--and they're very capable of understanding the implications of how different inputs will effect the system. Do those people lack imagination? By your definition, probably not. By mine, yes. They have good abstract reasoning, but I would differentiate that from imagination. I view imagination as a creative activity, "imagining" something new, and abstract reasoning as a function of intelligence.
Wrong. That's how I end up seeing lots a crap code. *Designing software* is daydreaming with rules. Programming is a different activity. Programming is engineering. Engineering is not fundamentally about imagination, it is ENTIRELY about rules. You don't daydream a bridge, you engineer one. You might daydream some design features, but then you implement them with engineering. Books and lectures teach competent people how to be competent engineers. That is true for bridges and it is true for software. Books alone do not teach people how to be good designers, it's a talent which can be grown but can not be fully imparted. I think people who confuse the two do a TREMENDOUS disservice to the world.
It would be much more interesting (hot) if it were a young, attractive, innocent looking female rather than thuggish looking man with a large jaw and small brain. Really, why pick an avatar which plays to type?
there may be other advantages...but i'd suspect the 10-15 year development time for such projects plays a role. just b/c the state-of-the-art kept evolving during your projects development phase doesn't justify spending tons of money to keep revamping your system and software to take advantage of the new goodies.
That's amusing. Way to quote an "authoritative" source as a means for trying to prove a subtle point. FWIW, just because Wikipedia says something is a tautology does not make it so. The statement "a person is not legally guilty until a jury returns a verdict of guilty" is not a tautology, it is only true in a system which says you are "innocent until proven guilty". You could just as easily have a system in which the accused are presumed guilty, where the courts either find them innocent or affirm their guilt. That's not a meaningless distinction. I suppose it's heartening that the writer has so internalized the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" that they can't conceive of another mode, but it's important to remember that not all legal systems work that way and that it's an important principle to uphold and cherish.
And if it's just running hot like the MacBooks that were discoloring from the heat they generated? I didn't say anything about it suddenly bursting into flames. There's other failure modes than catastrophic, I'd imagine....
This was my first thought as well. How can they possibly distinguish between temperature spikes caused by the device malfunctioning and the environment outside the device? Also, will they provide a mechanism for the user to check their device logs? Otherwise, wouldn't I risk being denied coverage of my brand new iPod because it was sitting in a hot truck in arizona for 2 days before I ever saw it? If I risk getting denied coverage based on my device's environmental history, I want proof that my warranty is still valid when I purchase it.
Which, of course, and probably intentionally, ignores where I said that they often don't have time to go running outside when they are also having grade papers, organize lesson plans, and do all the other things they are required to do.
Spot On! I have many friends who are teachers, and I think it is abhorrent to say that they should not be allowed to use their phones on their breaks! To rebut something others were saying here and that I've seen elsewhere: Not all classrooms have landlines in them. Especially in this age of "portable" classrooms, not all classrooms are wired with phones and phone lines (probably partly b/c the need wasn't seen as being there since most teachers have cell phones anyway). Many teachers are stuck in those outbuildings all day, and it will often not be the case that a teacher can spare the time to go find a phone in the main office what with other duties of lesson prep, grading, etc. It is hard enough work for little enough pay without cutting teachers off from things they need to take care of, or from being able to be contacted by their loved ones in case of a family emergency. And there's no way they can just "step outside". If the jamming is going to be effective for all classrooms, especially the portable units, it's going to have to be covering a very large portion of the campus, including many outdoor spaces.
Exactly. When I started seeing the Reuters headlines yesterday about this study, I really wanted to give the editor a little shaking. Nutrition is not the end-all-and-be-all of health. There are MANY other factors in health. My whole life my family has tried to eat organic foods when available, and it has never been for nutritive value.
no one said it had to pass the resized displayed image. as you noted, it downloads the original image. why would it not pass the original image to the other application? that is the behaviour I expect, and that I've seen. and it doesn't involve my image editor going out to the web to re-get what is already on my machine, in my browser cache if not actually in memory.
That's a funny one. "Fake green"? Please do enlighten us with the definition of "fake green" light. No? Green light is green light. There's nothing "fake" about the green lasers which have been in use, or about the "greenness" of the emitted beam. Modifying the frequency of a beam of light doesn't result in a fake beam of light, just a different beam of light (different frequency, less power (after losses), generally a slightly distorted wave front). There's nothing wrong with the article, but the summary was incorrect.
Perhaps you missed earlier in the summary where it said, "Turns out that faking green lasers has been easy for years". The intention seemed to be to say that they are fake.
This brings up an important point. I think part of the problem of meetings is the schedule aspect: meetings rarely end early, they usually expand to fill the allotted time. It's nice to have a time-limit, but it's unfortunate that establishing the time-limit (say, 30 min) tends to seen as a necessity. It makes sense, though, particularly in the context of TFA. If you are on a manager's schedule, it does you no good to have a meeting end 15 min early...you end up with 15 "wasted" min before your next meeting. Makers, though, are jealous of their time and want the meeting to last no longer than necessary so that hopefully, they can get their heads back in what they were doing.
I'd be surprised if they couldn't use some small, lightweight, piezoelectric transducers and keep the weight down while keeping the blade balanced. I'd be floored if this was impossible to engineer.
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in XP...if you just have an isolated ZIP file and need to navigate to it...it's slow, but perhaps manageable. If, however, you have multiple files in a single folder, especially if any of them are large, and you make the mistake of navigating to that folder in explorer with the folder sidebar open...much pain and suffering (aka waiting) ensues. given that i generally have a fairly large "downloads" directory which i use not infrequently, i've always found that I have to turn the zip integration off in order to get a reasonable response from my computer. perhaps they improved things in Vista and/or 7, I've only had cursory experience with either. but i find the speed of the XP implementation unacceptable. beyond the speed, though, i would also have the quibble that they only go halfway towards treating the zip file as a folder. On the one hand, they present it as though it's a folder, but then they prevent you from doing actions that you can do in regular folders. If you didn't notice you were in a zip folder, you can be caught off guard...'wtf won't this work?!?' until you realize you're in a zip folder. this is probably b/c the zip format makes it difficult to support regular folder operations...which is well and good, but then why present a misleading paradigm to the user if it's not one you can fully support? I think they would have done better to not make it look like a folder (which it isn't) but something different (which it is). You can still have good native integration and support for something without trying to make different things look kinda-sorta-all-the-same.
actually, windows (at least in XP) zip support is a complete and utter travesty. winzip is a vast improvement. that said, there are free alternatives (i like 7zip at home, dunno what its commercial license is). even downloading cygwin and using teaching users to use command line unzip is an improvement upon windows zip support.
is a core i7 i just built out with Karmic as the OS. No dual-boot, going Ubuntu whole hog with XP in a VirtualBox to handle software I can't do without. It's been fairly painless thus far. My biggest issue is that I pulled the internal flash card reader from my old PC (SD, XD, CF, etc) and put it in the new one. Ubuntu no like off-brand card reader, no sir. After starting up with that device, Ubuntu gave me a very helpful "unable to enumerate USB device on port 3" in dmesg 2x per second. Indefinitely. Which really makes dmesg pretty useless. For the time being, the device is still in the box but unplugged from the motherboard. I'd love to find a solution, I've spent a while searching bug reports (and adding my voice to a couple), but the truth is that what I learned is that the USB support is still somewhat less robust than XP. Which is unfortunate. It's exactly those sorts of issues which make the appeal to the masses difficult. There is NO WAY most of the people I know would want to or know how to go searching for the solution (btw, another distro suggested switching the order of uhci and ehci, still looking to see where ubuntu has that configuration)...which makes me a little sad, I'd really like to see free OS's predominate, but the peripheral support still needs help. I'm okay, I'll either find a config to play with or I'll give up and probably get a new card reader than people vouche works, but it'd be nice if the reader which worked properly and well under XP didn't require heroics to work in Ubuntu. Ubuntu is better in so many other ways, it's just disappointing to see where it still has catching up to do. FWIW, I fully understand that the USB device I've got probably is slightly non-standard or something. I get that, but the thing is, in the real world, people have devices like that, and I think the real-world OS needs to do more than throw its hands up with dealing with slightly non-standard equipment and make a best effort to use it as is. It's like...Firefox, say. It is standards compliant, but that doesn't mean it switches to showing you raw HTML if the page doesn't comply...it makes a best effort to show you something useful. ESPECIALLY for peripherals, Ubuntu, and Linux broadly, need to do the same. Oh, there was one other issue. My Gnome (I think), crashed, the screen got filled with a bunch of random blocks of color, things stopped responding (except the blocks would shift a bit when I moved the mouse around), and it logged me out. The login screen was fine, and I logged back in and things were back to normal. I was annoyed to have the crash, but I was pleased that it did handle it without requiring a reset or reboot. So, another bug, but at least a bug that was handled better than windows might have done.
You know, it occurs to me that this is partly why our air security is a mess: it is looking for too many things. Why is the TSA involved in looking for drugs, or parrots strapped to your crotch, or all those other things which DON'T endanger airplanes and passengers? Air security should focus solely on that, and leave law enforcement of other laws to the other relevant law-enforcement agencies. I think it's a clear example of a situation where being generalists is bad and where being a narrow specialist is good. When I'm on an airplane, I really could care less if the guy next to me is smuggling 10 billion dollars in his left shoe...I'm all for catching criminals, but I don't think the air-safety checkpoint is the best place to be doing it.
Can't speak for other places...but at least in Texas, it might be easy enough to win the small claims filing, but it isn't binding, on appeal, they can go to regular civil court and it's as though the small-claims case never even happened. And collecting on a small claims win can be difficult. Winning is one thing, getting money is another. So they could easily let you pay the fees for filing suit in small claims court, not bother showing, and then appeal when you win to regular court, which...if you don't get a lawyer for the appeal, they could win, and force you to eat the court costs and legal fees. It sounds like a nice way to annoy them, but when you start looking at the practicalities, the class-action works out much better.
I specifically said for a narrowly defined function: actively trying to suss out secret information. There are many other functions which make them very different. Intent matters when determining what, if any, punitive response is required. Intent doesn't matter when figuring out what means people may use to gain access.
If I am trying to prevent leaks of some type of information, anyone who might be actively attempting to get that information SHOULD be grouped together in a gross classification scheme. Or, to put another spin on it, let's say that I find it offensive that you grouped "computer hackers" with "terrorists" and "criminals".... You should stop seeing the grouping as a set of moral equivalences and recognize them as functional equivalences for a narrowly defined function (actively trying to get secret information). As for "enemy"...I find unwelcome publicity to be my enemy as well. Fortunately I'm a nobody so I've never had to face that enemy, but I sure wouldn't welcome it. Yes, perhaps in a military context another word like "adversary" might be more appropriate for this problem, but that's getting into semantics and PC. Semantics aside, a) it's a valid problem b) the classification scheme is useful and valid.
Perhaps I am missing something, but did you have a point beyond, "You're wrong"? Because it seems to me that you're thinking I'm going to adopt a different point of view because "javabandit said so"....
I very much understand what engineering is. And I recognize that formal engineering isn't necessary to program. But I think the analogy holds. Or do you think people building rope bridges in the Amazon are practicing formal engineering? It's very much possible to build a bridge without engineering skills...and it's possible for it to be solid, and functional. Similarly, it's possible to program without any knowledge of engineering, and to produce software which works, and does the job. So, no, programming isn't engineering. But a good programmer, or, I would say, a software engineer, isn't merely trying put things together to find something which works.
Neither, as you note, is programming science. Software engineering isn't science. No engineering is science. Engineering is the application of science. The "science" is computer science, and it's very much a science, probably closest to mathematics after perhaps physics. Software engineering is the application of engineering principles to utilize that science to create things. Programming is the activity of creation, and does not require knowledge of the science or the engineering to perform...but I'd have a lot more faith in the system if the creators had both. And, just as with a well designed bridge, I'd want the designer to have a good bit of talent/imagination as well....
I think I'll have to settle for mere words in my rebuttal: not to split hairs, but it sounds like you're describing "intelligence", not "imagination"...at least, that's how I'd define it. By the definition you seem to be implying, imagination is necessary for not just science (as you note), but for creating everything: science, history, literature.... I suppose you could say that I was agreeing with you when I said that the books required "competent" learners. :)
By imagination, in this context, what I mean is the ability to create good abstractions, to envision how different abstractions relate to one another. Having that ability can certainly help one to be an excellent programmer, but it is not necessary to be a competent one. There are plenty of large projects I've seen functioning, and well, where there are leaders with good "imagination" who design the abstractions, who task individual programmers to implement a particular function, and who then review the programming to make sure it didn't do anything stupid. The people who end up doing those implementations aren't idiots, they're competent programmers, but I wouldn't dare trust them to design a large system if I cared at all about getting a good result. I think on a small project, you often can't afford to have programmers who aren't also competent designers, or "imaginative", but on a large system it is often necessary--it is often simply too difficult to staff a large project with a full bevy of "imaginative" experts.
Finally, I'd like to note that I've met lots of people who are actually quite good at understanding abstract designs, but who are terrible (or just passable) at creating them themselves. They often make excellent team-members because they can work well with the design you give them--they're often excellent coders--and they're very capable of understanding the implications of how different inputs will effect the system. Do those people lack imagination? By your definition, probably not. By mine, yes. They have good abstract reasoning, but I would differentiate that from imagination. I view imagination as a creative activity, "imagining" something new, and abstract reasoning as a function of intelligence.
Wrong. That's how I end up seeing lots a crap code. *Designing software* is daydreaming with rules. Programming is a different activity. Programming is engineering. Engineering is not fundamentally about imagination, it is ENTIRELY about rules. You don't daydream a bridge, you engineer one. You might daydream some design features, but then you implement them with engineering. Books and lectures teach competent people how to be competent engineers. That is true for bridges and it is true for software. Books alone do not teach people how to be good designers, it's a talent which can be grown but can not be fully imparted. I think people who confuse the two do a TREMENDOUS disservice to the world.
It would be much more interesting (hot) if it were a young, attractive, innocent looking female rather than thuggish looking man with a large jaw and small brain. Really, why pick an avatar which plays to type?
there may be other advantages...but i'd suspect the 10-15 year development time for such projects plays a role. just b/c the state-of-the-art kept evolving during your projects development phase doesn't justify spending tons of money to keep revamping your system and software to take advantage of the new goodies.
That's amusing. Way to quote an "authoritative" source as a means for trying to prove a subtle point. FWIW, just because Wikipedia says something is a tautology does not make it so. The statement "a person is not legally guilty until a jury returns a verdict of guilty" is not a tautology, it is only true in a system which says you are "innocent until proven guilty". You could just as easily have a system in which the accused are presumed guilty, where the courts either find them innocent or affirm their guilt. That's not a meaningless distinction. I suppose it's heartening that the writer has so internalized the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" that they can't conceive of another mode, but it's important to remember that not all legal systems work that way and that it's an important principle to uphold and cherish.
And if it's just running hot like the MacBooks that were discoloring from the heat they generated? I didn't say anything about it suddenly bursting into flames. There's other failure modes than catastrophic, I'd imagine....
This was my first thought as well. How can they possibly distinguish between temperature spikes caused by the device malfunctioning and the environment outside the device? Also, will they provide a mechanism for the user to check their device logs? Otherwise, wouldn't I risk being denied coverage of my brand new iPod because it was sitting in a hot truck in arizona for 2 days before I ever saw it? If I risk getting denied coverage based on my device's environmental history, I want proof that my warranty is still valid when I purchase it.
Which, of course, and probably intentionally, ignores where I said that they often don't have time to go running outside when they are also having grade papers, organize lesson plans, and do all the other things they are required to do.
Spot On! I have many friends who are teachers, and I think it is abhorrent to say that they should not be allowed to use their phones on their breaks! To rebut something others were saying here and that I've seen elsewhere: Not all classrooms have landlines in them. Especially in this age of "portable" classrooms, not all classrooms are wired with phones and phone lines (probably partly b/c the need wasn't seen as being there since most teachers have cell phones anyway). Many teachers are stuck in those outbuildings all day, and it will often not be the case that a teacher can spare the time to go find a phone in the main office what with other duties of lesson prep, grading, etc. It is hard enough work for little enough pay without cutting teachers off from things they need to take care of, or from being able to be contacted by their loved ones in case of a family emergency. And there's no way they can just "step outside". If the jamming is going to be effective for all classrooms, especially the portable units, it's going to have to be covering a very large portion of the campus, including many outdoor spaces.
Exactly. When I started seeing the Reuters headlines yesterday about this study, I really wanted to give the editor a little shaking. Nutrition is not the end-all-and-be-all of health. There are MANY other factors in health. My whole life my family has tried to eat organic foods when available, and it has never been for nutritive value.
no one said it had to pass the resized displayed image. as you noted, it downloads the original image. why would it not pass the original image to the other application? that is the behaviour I expect, and that I've seen. and it doesn't involve my image editor going out to the web to re-get what is already on my machine, in my browser cache if not actually in memory.
If they had any chutzpah, they'd put one in Cupertino! Really, if they're competitive, beard the lion in his den!
That's a funny one. "Fake green"? Please do enlighten us with the definition of "fake green" light. No? Green light is green light. There's nothing "fake" about the green lasers which have been in use, or about the "greenness" of the emitted beam. Modifying the frequency of a beam of light doesn't result in a fake beam of light, just a different beam of light (different frequency, less power (after losses), generally a slightly distorted wave front). There's nothing wrong with the article, but the summary was incorrect.
Perhaps you missed earlier in the summary where it said, "Turns out that faking green lasers has been easy for years". The intention seemed to be to say that they are fake.
This brings up an important point. I think part of the problem of meetings is the schedule aspect: meetings rarely end early, they usually expand to fill the allotted time. It's nice to have a time-limit, but it's unfortunate that establishing the time-limit (say, 30 min) tends to seen as a necessity. It makes sense, though, particularly in the context of TFA. If you are on a manager's schedule, it does you no good to have a meeting end 15 min early...you end up with 15 "wasted" min before your next meeting. Makers, though, are jealous of their time and want the meeting to last no longer than necessary so that hopefully, they can get their heads back in what they were doing.
I'd be surprised if they couldn't use some small, lightweight, piezoelectric transducers and keep the weight down while keeping the blade balanced. I'd be floored if this was impossible to engineer.