I think they've lost their connection to the hobbyist market. Most guys I know start at SparkFun or other similar hobbyist site. RadioShack has a long way to go to catch up to where the hobbyist market is these days. And even at that, I don't know that you can make a viable retail business at it. As a cell phone kiosk, they're now having to compete with Best Buy, Target and WalMart. So what is the business case for RadioShack then?
Right now, they've got a brand name and a lot of small retail locations. I just don't know what they should be doing with it. Maybe just close down and liquidate. That may be the best way for them to return value to their shareholders. I hate to see anyone fail, but it may just be their time.
I started doing some of the lessons. Like any good programmer, I set about trying to do things in a way that was not intended. I was most disappointed to see that my modifications didn't work in the sandbox. Instead I was just prodded to do things in the approved fashion. It's a wonder that anyone learns anything these days.
Yeah, it would also double the cost of cell service. You'll just have to get used to getting most of your data needs from WiFi sources. I've got WiFi at home, work, most places I go to eat. That's the more small low power towers. They just aren't run by the cell companies. Actually, look for Comcast to become a major player in this space. They've been rolling out hardware to customers that functions as a WiFi hotspot for their other customers. It would be a small matter for them to adapt that for use on the major cell networks. Imagine Comcast picking up an extra $2/month for every cell phone in the US, and they don't need to deploy any extra infrastructure to do it, either.
However, while it's perfectly fine to remove your Google Glass while driving, leaving your screaming kid at a gas station or duct taping their mouth shut is somewhat frowned upon. The safety of Google Glass while driving is unknown at this point. And, as other commenters have pointed out, it's better to legislate distracted driving in the abstract than to try and define every instance that could cause impairment.
Nope. Smoking is prohibited under the guise of aircraft safety, which does fall under federal regulation. And even if it didn't, at this point in time, no airline would allow it. The FAA has already cleared phones on safety grounds, so this law banning in flight calls (as opposed to in flight data communications) is probably on shaky ground. It may be mooted as I think most airlines will ban voice calls anyway.
There are wolves, bears, snakes, mountain lions, and alligators out there. There are plenty of things to eat you without introducing new problems. One more thing to consider is that these creatures don't respect boundaries on a map. If you introduce lions to the US, they'll probably find their way into Mexico and even further south.
Electricity is a funny thing. Had a problem with a piece of electronics that we make. The CPU wouldn't boot up if it was colder than about 20F. It turns out that the CPU has an internal voltage regulator that relies on an external capacitor. My engineer used an electrolytic cap, and at around 20F, the series resistance of the cap exceeded the tolerances of the CPU's voltage regulator and it went into a perpetual brown-out reset. Now, if the chip was up and running, it was happy and kept running, even if it got cold. So it's fixed now, but for some older hardware in the field with the problem, we don't send firmware updates between December and March. That's just one of many bits of stupid we've encountered over the years. In short, every piece of electronics you develop needs to be tested in the most absurd conditions you can find. And even that won't be enough. Never underestimate the creative stupidity of your customers.
I thought the hard part was convincing morons to pay $249 for a thermostat when you can buy something functionally equivalent at the hardware store for a tenth of the price.
They're judges. It's not their job to make policy. If they're all united against reform, then they all need to be removed from the court. Then again, the FISA court should be disbanded anyway. I can hardly think of anything more un-American than secret courts.
It's something that wouldn't have passed in the first place if it had been a stand alone bill. So while the problem may also be the cure, the damage may already be done. There may now be enough of a disruption to supply that incandescents are dead anyway.
Either way, I've got my stockpile and most of my house is converted to LEDs which I'm very happy with. CFLs still suck and should be banned.
I rather like Windows 8. The only thing I really want is to integrate Metro apps with the desktop and run them inside of a regular window, which will allegedly be added to Windows 9.
Also, when you go to 'All Programs' on the new start menu, it's a horrible mess. Sort it alphabetically and let each group start a new column. Otherwise, I'm very happy with 8.1.
Sleep? Nah. But caffeine is also one of the leading causes of diarrhea. So I'm off the stuff. Too bad, a cup of coffee or tea was a nice way to start the day.
My understanding is that soap does not kill bacteria, but rather removes them from the skin so they can rinse down the drain. A quick search seems to confirm this, but I haven't found a quality citation.
The biggest problem with wind is that it doesn't adjust to demand. Even in reliably windy areas, you sometimes get a calm day. At least with solar, you get peak output during peak energy demand (hot summer days, although the demand is shifted more to the late afternoon. There's a time lag as buildings and the air heat up. Peak production is 10am-4pm, peak demand Is noon-8pm). Ultimately, if you don't want to burn fossil fuels, nuclear is a very dependable strategy. Wind is fine if your alternative source can ramp up and down very quickly (natural gas). If you don't have that, nuke it.
From a legal standpoint, no, the DOJ can't prosecute someone for publishing information. That was covered in the Pentagon Papers cases 40 years ago. But you have to remember the reason he's holed up in an embassy. The government can find an assortment of other bullshit reasons to prosecute you. Any minor discrepancies on your customs forms when you entered the country? Tax problems? Ever pirated an MP3 or movie? If they want to get you, they can and will find a reason. For all the crimes that Al Capone committed, he was convicted of tax evasion.
Begging the question that it is substantially more likely. As the volume of data increases, the signal to noise ratio decreases. Lots of data is being generated that no one is looking at. As the volume increases, it becomes that much harder to search despite the fact that something 'incriminating' is more likely to be in there to find. The practical outcome of this, I think, is that most indiscretions will still go unnoticed, but if someone is really looking for something to bust your ass, they'll find it. So some behavior modification is likely, but less than most people suppose. Furthermore, pro-privacy technology is likely to keep pace with surveillance, along with following best practices. Like if you're up to no good, turn off your cell phone. Disable 3rd party cookies in your browser. Block ads.
Back when I was trying to write games, 20 years ago, I figured out pretty quickly to write the important parts in assembly and the rest in C. But not before I wrote a full screen graphics editor in assembly. That was about 1200 lines of awesomeness that took me about 7 months to write. Fortunately, most of the graphic work carried over to the main game itself. Recently, I did a recreation of that work in C#. What took me over 2 years to do in 1994-95 took me a weekend to do now. My how times have changed.
Also, the teacher's union is calling for smaller class sizes and higher pay. It should surprise no one that a union is calling for something that would enlarge itself and create higher paying jobs for its members.
Also, it's a really dumb idea. I felt a lot less safe back in 2002 when there were soldiers, most not old enough to drink, at the airport with semi-automatic assault rifles.
Yep. Many years ago, I was trying to fix a TV from the 70s. Full schematic glued to the inside of the set.
And to a certain extent, hardware has always been open source anyway. A motivated engineer can remove and identify components one by one and follow the wire traces on the circuit board. It's easier to reverse engineer a circuit board than a piece of software. Still, it's a lot easier if they give you the schematic up front. So I'd like to give a big shout out to SparkFun (www.sparkfun.com) electronics, who have made my life a lot easier.
You're also at the whim of the masses. Development platforms benefit tremendously from network effects. Success begets success. On the other hand, it was arguably Apple that killed Flash. HTML5 combined with their refusal to allow Flash on iOS devices was devastating to the platform. The popularity of the iPhone meant that everyone had to support it, and because that could be done in a generic fashion, there was no reason to build 2 versions of the same product, thus Flash died as a platform in a very quick fashion. Compare this with, say, Silverlight, which was an excellent platform, but everyone looked at it and said not interested, mainly because of the proprietary nature. I could give my users a superior experience with less effort, but it's not ubiquitous, so it's just not an option.
If you can identify frameworks that clearly don't have a future, you can improve your odds substantially. Just ask yourself, is it proprietary (Flash)? Is it ubiquitous (HTML/JavaScript)? Does it have a reputation as a clumsy and flawed platform (PHP)? Is it popular (jQuery)? If your answers are No, Yes, No, and Yes, you stand a pretty good chance of long term success. In my own shop, we've gone with C#/MVC and HTML/JavaScript/jQuery. Honestly, HTML and JavaScript is a pretty shitty platform. But sometimes popularity and ubiquity win the day. Meanwhile, it can safely be assumed that as long as Microsoft is around, C# will be well supported. Silverlight is a far superior platform, but it's a dead end and we want to be certain to avoid dead ends.
Luckily, TFA has a handy chart that also contains that information. The Nexus 10 and Surface 2 have similar specs and both are managed by the OS provider.
Nexus 10: 8.17 hours of battery Surface 2: 8.07 hours of battery.
The Nexus 10 gets 1.2% more battery life than the similar Surface 2. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for being so far below the industry norm. Just think of all the things a user might want to do with that extra 6 minutes of battery life.
While I do write some stored procedures, everything in the application is done through a data access layer like EntityFramework (we're a visual studio shop). Now, XSS attacks, escalation of privileges, and any number of other web based attacks are still a big deal. But SQL injection is the least of my worries. Is this different elsewhere?
I've found the start menu to be a complete non-issue. Where the damn thing totally breaks down is switching between the classic desktop and Metro apps. There's 2 competing UI mechanics going on that don't play well with each other. This isn't a huge problem right now because there are so few Metro apps, but it's going to get worse.
The bigger news today is that Windows Server 2012 R2 and Visual Studio 2013 are both out today as well.
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I think they've lost their connection to the hobbyist market. Most guys I know start at SparkFun or other similar hobbyist site. RadioShack has a long way to go to catch up to where the hobbyist market is these days. And even at that, I don't know that you can make a viable retail business at it. As a cell phone kiosk, they're now having to compete with Best Buy, Target and WalMart. So what is the business case for RadioShack then?
Right now, they've got a brand name and a lot of small retail locations. I just don't know what they should be doing with it. Maybe just close down and liquidate. That may be the best way for them to return value to their shareholders. I hate to see anyone fail, but it may just be their time.
I started doing some of the lessons. Like any good programmer, I set about trying to do things in a way that was not intended. I was most disappointed to see that my modifications didn't work in the sandbox. Instead I was just prodded to do things in the approved fashion. It's a wonder that anyone learns anything these days.
Yeah, it would also double the cost of cell service. You'll just have to get used to getting most of your data needs from WiFi sources. I've got WiFi at home, work, most places I go to eat. That's the more small low power towers. They just aren't run by the cell companies. Actually, look for Comcast to become a major player in this space. They've been rolling out hardware to customers that functions as a WiFi hotspot for their other customers. It would be a small matter for them to adapt that for use on the major cell networks. Imagine Comcast picking up an extra $2/month for every cell phone in the US, and they don't need to deploy any extra infrastructure to do it, either.
However, while it's perfectly fine to remove your Google Glass while driving, leaving your screaming kid at a gas station or duct taping their mouth shut is somewhat frowned upon. The safety of Google Glass while driving is unknown at this point. And, as other commenters have pointed out, it's better to legislate distracted driving in the abstract than to try and define every instance that could cause impairment.
Nope. Smoking is prohibited under the guise of aircraft safety, which does fall under federal regulation. And even if it didn't, at this point in time, no airline would allow it. The FAA has already cleared phones on safety grounds, so this law banning in flight calls (as opposed to in flight data communications) is probably on shaky ground. It may be mooted as I think most airlines will ban voice calls anyway.
And it's even more embarrassing when I realize that I'm the idiot that wrote it.
I generally agree that regulation should be minimal in any educational environment, but how do you differentiate?
There are wolves, bears, snakes, mountain lions, and alligators out there. There are plenty of things to eat you without introducing new problems. One more thing to consider is that these creatures don't respect boundaries on a map. If you introduce lions to the US, they'll probably find their way into Mexico and even further south.
Electricity is a funny thing. Had a problem with a piece of electronics that we make. The CPU wouldn't boot up if it was colder than about 20F. It turns out that the CPU has an internal voltage regulator that relies on an external capacitor. My engineer used an electrolytic cap, and at around 20F, the series resistance of the cap exceeded the tolerances of the CPU's voltage regulator and it went into a perpetual brown-out reset. Now, if the chip was up and running, it was happy and kept running, even if it got cold. So it's fixed now, but for some older hardware in the field with the problem, we don't send firmware updates between December and March. That's just one of many bits of stupid we've encountered over the years. In short, every piece of electronics you develop needs to be tested in the most absurd conditions you can find. And even that won't be enough. Never underestimate the creative stupidity of your customers.
I thought the hard part was convincing morons to pay $249 for a thermostat when you can buy something functionally equivalent at the hardware store for a tenth of the price.
They're judges. It's not their job to make policy. If they're all united against reform, then they all need to be removed from the court. Then again, the FISA court should be disbanded anyway. I can hardly think of anything more un-American than secret courts.
It's something that wouldn't have passed in the first place if it had been a stand alone bill. So while the problem may also be the cure, the damage may already be done. There may now be enough of a disruption to supply that incandescents are dead anyway.
Either way, I've got my stockpile and most of my house is converted to LEDs which I'm very happy with. CFLs still suck and should be banned.
I rather like Windows 8. The only thing I really want is to integrate Metro apps with the desktop and run them inside of a regular window, which will allegedly be added to Windows 9.
Also, when you go to 'All Programs' on the new start menu, it's a horrible mess. Sort it alphabetically and let each group start a new column. Otherwise, I'm very happy with 8.1.
Sleep? Nah. But caffeine is also one of the leading causes of diarrhea. So I'm off the stuff. Too bad, a cup of coffee or tea was a nice way to start the day.
My understanding is that soap does not kill bacteria, but rather removes them from the skin so they can rinse down the drain. A quick search seems to confirm this, but I haven't found a quality citation.
The biggest problem with wind is that it doesn't adjust to demand. Even in reliably windy areas, you sometimes get a calm day. At least with solar, you get peak output during peak energy demand (hot summer days, although the demand is shifted more to the late afternoon. There's a time lag as buildings and the air heat up. Peak production is 10am-4pm, peak demand Is noon-8pm). Ultimately, if you don't want to burn fossil fuels, nuclear is a very dependable strategy. Wind is fine if your alternative source can ramp up and down very quickly (natural gas). If you don't have that, nuke it.
From a legal standpoint, no, the DOJ can't prosecute someone for publishing information. That was covered in the Pentagon Papers cases 40 years ago. But you have to remember the reason he's holed up in an embassy. The government can find an assortment of other bullshit reasons to prosecute you. Any minor discrepancies on your customs forms when you entered the country? Tax problems? Ever pirated an MP3 or movie? If they want to get you, they can and will find a reason. For all the crimes that Al Capone committed, he was convicted of tax evasion.
Begging the question that it is substantially more likely. As the volume of data increases, the signal to noise ratio decreases. Lots of data is being generated that no one is looking at. As the volume increases, it becomes that much harder to search despite the fact that something 'incriminating' is more likely to be in there to find. The practical outcome of this, I think, is that most indiscretions will still go unnoticed, but if someone is really looking for something to bust your ass, they'll find it. So some behavior modification is likely, but less than most people suppose. Furthermore, pro-privacy technology is likely to keep pace with surveillance, along with following best practices. Like if you're up to no good, turn off your cell phone. Disable 3rd party cookies in your browser. Block ads.
Back when I was trying to write games, 20 years ago, I figured out pretty quickly to write the important parts in assembly and the rest in C. But not before I wrote a full screen graphics editor in assembly. That was about 1200 lines of awesomeness that took me about 7 months to write. Fortunately, most of the graphic work carried over to the main game itself. Recently, I did a recreation of that work in C#. What took me over 2 years to do in 1994-95 took me a weekend to do now. My how times have changed.
Also, the teacher's union is calling for smaller class sizes and higher pay. It should surprise no one that a union is calling for something that would enlarge itself and create higher paying jobs for its members.
Also, it's a really dumb idea. I felt a lot less safe back in 2002 when there were soldiers, most not old enough to drink, at the airport with semi-automatic assault rifles.
Yep. Many years ago, I was trying to fix a TV from the 70s. Full schematic glued to the inside of the set.
And to a certain extent, hardware has always been open source anyway. A motivated engineer can remove and identify components one by one and follow the wire traces on the circuit board. It's easier to reverse engineer a circuit board than a piece of software. Still, it's a lot easier if they give you the schematic up front. So I'd like to give a big shout out to SparkFun (www.sparkfun.com) electronics, who have made my life a lot easier.
You're also at the whim of the masses. Development platforms benefit tremendously from network effects. Success begets success. On the other hand, it was arguably Apple that killed Flash. HTML5 combined with their refusal to allow Flash on iOS devices was devastating to the platform. The popularity of the iPhone meant that everyone had to support it, and because that could be done in a generic fashion, there was no reason to build 2 versions of the same product, thus Flash died as a platform in a very quick fashion. Compare this with, say, Silverlight, which was an excellent platform, but everyone looked at it and said not interested, mainly because of the proprietary nature. I could give my users a superior experience with less effort, but it's not ubiquitous, so it's just not an option.
If you can identify frameworks that clearly don't have a future, you can improve your odds substantially. Just ask yourself, is it proprietary (Flash)? Is it ubiquitous (HTML/JavaScript)? Does it have a reputation as a clumsy and flawed platform (PHP)? Is it popular (jQuery)? If your answers are No, Yes, No, and Yes, you stand a pretty good chance of long term success. In my own shop, we've gone with C#/MVC and HTML/JavaScript/jQuery. Honestly, HTML and JavaScript is a pretty shitty platform. But sometimes popularity and ubiquity win the day. Meanwhile, it can safely be assumed that as long as Microsoft is around, C# will be well supported. Silverlight is a far superior platform, but it's a dead end and we want to be certain to avoid dead ends.
Luckily, TFA has a handy chart that also contains that information. The Nexus 10 and Surface 2 have similar specs and both are managed by the OS provider.
Nexus 10: 8.17 hours of battery
Surface 2: 8.07 hours of battery.
The Nexus 10 gets 1.2% more battery life than the similar Surface 2. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for being so far below the industry norm. Just think of all the things a user might want to do with that extra 6 minutes of battery life.
While I do write some stored procedures, everything in the application is done through a data access layer like EntityFramework (we're a visual studio shop). Now, XSS attacks, escalation of privileges, and any number of other web based attacks are still a big deal. But SQL injection is the least of my worries. Is this different elsewhere?
I've found the start menu to be a complete non-issue. Where the damn thing totally breaks down is switching between the classic desktop and Metro apps. There's 2 competing UI mechanics going on that don't play well with each other. This isn't a huge problem right now because there are so few Metro apps, but it's going to get worse.
The bigger news today is that Windows Server 2012 R2 and Visual Studio 2013 are both out today as well.