I'm a fan of remotes, so I can tell you: 1.) I've been using Omniremote on my Palm Pilot for years. The nifty thing is that once you buy the remote, an SDK is freely available, so can write your own plam software that controls device. The downside is that the range is short unless you buy an IR booster. You do NOT want to have this as your only remote, because, without dedicated buttons, it is impossible to use in the dark, without looking at it, and the backlight is tedious to turn on.
2.) The remote with the best U.I. that I have found is the Harmony Remote. It is very MS-Windows centric, but you can just give it model numbers and it downloads via USB the commands into stand-alone remote with a truly terrific interface. It understands like commands like "Watch DVDs" require commands to multiple devices. It has enough smarts to keep track of the state of all the relevant devices. It has a convenient interface is someone happens to walk in front of a device at the wrong time. If you are buying just one remote, this is the one to buy. Most of the operations are on a clickable thumbwheel with an automaticly backlit display, but it has just enough well chosen, well shaped buttons, that it is a joy to use.
3.) Although not stand-alone, I use a ZephIR on the USB of my Mac. Although it doesn't have the great interface of the harmony remote, and it also has a convenient web based database of equipment models. And like the harmony remote, you can upload the definitions of your own equipment. I uploaded the controls for my Toto Zoe Bidet, to the ZephIR, and I can definately control the the spritz on my lap bottom from my Mac laptop.
None of these remotes will let me bring up a TV schedule on a web page, then click in a show's box to queue it for programming into a VCR. Ideally, it should manage multiple VCRs, each with its own native time recording interface, and look for alternate viewing times to get everything I selected on some tape.
I had no trouble with this on a Compaq running Win2K Server, using the CD that came in the box. The manufacturer was Cygnion, and apparently the phones were actually manufactured by Ericson. The voice recognition is licensed from Lernout and Hauspie, as I remember.
I work with a firm that takes a Mac, a bunch of third party PCI cards, and some custom hardware and software, and sells the whole thing as a bundled system to run one application. The PCI cards are manufactured by vendors that don't like supporting the Mac at all, and do it poorly. So, we use a mix of their libraries, and our own driver code.
To stay in bisiness, we need to buy components to build our systems.
If we can't boot into OS 9, we can't get at the hardware. Sure, we can re-write our drivers for OS X, but it is going to be a pain to reverse engineer our card vendors' libraries.
This is not the first time there there has been a suspicious cluster of violent deaths of scientists reported in the British press. Last time, it was programmers. See Comp.Risks, RISKS DIGEST 6.67 : and Who's killing Star Wars Scientists? For those interested in a book which follows a plot with a striking similarity to the Marconi incidents, try The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem.It is a shame that noone will ever read this because I posted so late.
Re:Havard Classics considered obselete-by Harvard
on
Geek Gift Ideas 2001
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The gist of the article is that much has changed in the world since the Harvard Classics were chosen, and that we shouldn't be bound by the errors of the past. Oh, and on the Harvard Magazine home page, they are collecting suggestions for what a revised, modern, list of Harvard Classics should look like.
There is a certain amount of knee-jerk political correctness in the article, but it is definately worth a read.
Whenever a company lawyer asks me to sign a contract assigning the rights to my writing to the company, I ask him:
This contract that you are asking me to sign; it, itself, is an instance of intellectual property. Who owns it? You, Mr. Lawyer, can you re-use the words of this contract in other contracts you produce?
Always, the lawyer is asking me to enter into an agreement, to sign away a piece of my mind, that the lawyer himself would not agree to with respect to his own work.
So, how do I get hired?
Well, I recognize that my employer needs to receive value for the money he is paying me, but I won't give up the rights to my own writing. So, I assign the rights to my paid work as a unified piece of writing, in exchange for my pay, but I negotiate an irrevocable license to use components of my writings in other works.
My employers agree to my terms, because they know that when they hire me, they get the benefit of my past body of work, and it is only fair that I add to that body of work while I work for them.
This is pretty much the same deal that lawyers get; the lawyer's customer buys a contract, but the lawyer retains the right to use the paragraphs of that contract in other contracts.
Interview spoiled #prgma joke. Here it is:
on
RMS The Coder
·
· Score: 3
The LinuxCare interview spoiled RMS's #pragma joke. The interview said:
Richard: the C specification which said #pragma was supposed to do something about implementation design.
I'm sure this is a misquote. I'm sure that what he actuially said was: the C specification said #pragma was supposed to do something that was implementation defined.
What that version of the C compiler did was, if it processed a #pragma, it did something implementation defined all right: it exec()ed Rogue.
Imagine: you're compiling an innocent C program, that happens to have a #pragma line on it, and suddenly the compile is gone, and your screen is running Rogue!
Ruputer: A Seiko Watch you program with gcc
on
Geek Christmas Ideas
·
· Score: 3
http://www.ruputer.com/ is the home page for a Seiko made watch that runs a flavor of DOS, and has a publicly available SDK based on gcc. The truly geeky will just decode the Japanese home page, but if you want it the easy way: http://www.ruputer.com/english/ is the english language version of the site, and their U.S. distributer is http://www.onhandpc.com/ The ruputer has a speaker, and an IrDA compatible infrared port.
This is just the reprint of the text from a Doonesbury strip: note the G. Trudeau byline. "Bite the Wax Tadpole" is also a hoax. See http://www.snopes.com/humor/misxlate/madonna.htm for more information on the Madonna hoaz, and http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.htm for the "Bite the Wax Tadpole" hoax.
Slashdot Mirror
Small meteors burn up in the upper atmosphere.
Therefore, the problem isn't deflecting a meteor, but converting a big one into lots of small ones.
This seems like a perfect use for a nuclear bomb.
If the meteor is a dust swarm, then it will already burn up, and we don't need to do anything.
How am I wrong?
1.) I've been using Omniremote on my Palm Pilot for years. The nifty thing is that once you buy the remote, an SDK is freely available, so can write your own plam software that controls device. The downside is that the range is short unless you buy an IR booster. You do NOT want to have this as your only remote, because, without dedicated buttons, it is impossible to use in the dark, without looking at it, and the backlight is tedious to turn on.
2.) The remote with the best U.I. that I have found is the Harmony Remote. It is very MS-Windows centric, but you can just give it model numbers and it downloads via USB the commands into stand-alone remote with a truly terrific interface. It understands like commands like "Watch DVDs" require commands to multiple devices. It has enough smarts to keep track of the state of all the relevant devices. It has a convenient interface is someone happens to walk in front of a device at the wrong time. If you are buying just one remote, this is the one to buy. Most of the operations are on a clickable thumbwheel with an automaticly backlit display, but it has just enough well chosen, well shaped buttons, that it is a joy to use.
3.) Although not stand-alone, I use a ZephIR on the USB of my Mac. Although it doesn't have the great interface of the harmony remote, and it also has a convenient web based database of equipment models. And like the harmony remote, you can upload the definitions of your own equipment. I uploaded the controls for my Toto Zoe Bidet, to the ZephIR, and I can definately control the the spritz on my lap bottom from my Mac laptop.
None of these remotes will let me bring up a TV schedule on a web page, then click in a show's box to queue it for programming into a VCR. Ideally, it should manage multiple VCRs, each with its own native time recording interface, and look for alternate viewing times to get everything I selected on some tape.
I had no trouble with this on a Compaq running Win2K Server, using the CD that came in the box. The manufacturer was Cygnion, and apparently the phones were actually manufactured by Ericson. The voice recognition is licensed from Lernout and Hauspie, as I remember.
To stay in bisiness, we need to buy components to build our systems.
If we can't boot into OS 9, we can't get at the hardware. Sure, we can re-write our drivers for OS X, but it is going to be a pain to reverse engineer our card vendors' libraries.
This is not the first time there there has been a suspicious cluster of violent deaths of scientists reported in the British press. Last time, it was programmers. See Comp.Risks, RISKS DIGEST 6.67 : and Who's killing Star Wars Scientists?
For those interested in a book which follows a plot with a striking similarity to the Marconi incidents, try The Chain of Chance
by Stanislaw Lem.It is a shame that noone will ever read this because I posted so late.
Revising a monument from a more humane and confident time by Adam Kirsch
The gist of the article is that much has changed in the world since the Harvard Classics were chosen, and that we shouldn't be bound by the errors of the past. Oh, and on the Harvard Magazine home page, they are collecting suggestions for what a revised, modern, list of Harvard Classics should look like.
There is a certain amount of knee-jerk political correctness in the article, but it is definately worth a read.
This contract that you are asking me to sign; it, itself, is an instance of intellectual property. Who owns it? You, Mr. Lawyer, can you re-use the words of this contract in other contracts you produce?
Always, the lawyer is asking me to enter into an agreement, to sign away a piece of my mind, that the lawyer himself would not agree to with respect to his own work.
So, how do I get hired?
Well, I recognize that my employer needs to receive value for the money he is paying me, but I won't give up the rights to my own writing. So, I assign the rights to my paid work as a unified piece of writing, in exchange for my pay, but I negotiate an irrevocable license to use components of my writings in other works.
My employers agree to my terms, because they know that when they hire me, they get the benefit of my past body of work, and it is only fair that I add to that body of work while I work for them.
This is pretty much the same deal that lawyers get; the lawyer's customer buys a contract, but the lawyer retains the right to use the paragraphs of that contract in other contracts.
Richard: the C specification which said #pragma was supposed to do something about implementation design.
I'm sure this is a misquote. I'm sure that what he actuially said was: the C specification said #pragma was supposed to do something that was implementation defined.
What that version of the C compiler did was, if it processed a #pragma, it did something implementation defined all right: it exec()ed Rogue.
Imagine: you're compiling an innocent C program, that happens to have a #pragma line on it, and suddenly the compile is gone, and your screen is running Rogue!
http://www.ruputer.com/ is the home page for a Seiko made watch that runs a flavor of DOS, and has a publicly available SDK based on gcc. The truly geeky will just decode the Japanese home page, but if you want it the easy way: http://www.ruputer.com/english/ is the english language version of the site, and their U.S. distributer is http://www.onhandpc.com/ The ruputer has a speaker, and an IrDA compatible infrared port.
This is just the reprint of the text from a Doonesbury strip: note the G. Trudeau byline. "Bite the Wax Tadpole" is also a hoax. See http://www.snopes.com/humor/misxlate/madonna.htm for more information on the Madonna hoaz, and http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.htm for the "Bite the Wax Tadpole" hoax.