My doctor keeps telling me to keep off the expressos and Red Bull for my heart's sake. I'll use this to argue back; after all, how can I be an effective techie without my caffeine boosts?!
Having worked in accessibility for years I'd say that open source is the friend of accessibility. A document that can be easily read in any standards-compliant browser or application, or easily converted into accessible form (eg. speech), is most welcome.
The main problem is documents which can only be opened in the particular application that generated them. Microsoft documents are an example of this; although as they're so popular, pretty much all accessibility companion-style programs sit on top of Word and change the style of delivery (style, size, clarity, to speech, etc) appropriately.
So if everyone used open source, standards-compliant documents, there would be no need for the majority of accessibility programs. I think moving to open source document formats removes much of the accessibility problem at the source, rather than working round it, which is what most solutions do at the minute.
Blindfolded solving involves studying the cube first, memorising the layout, then being blindfolded and solving the cube. Must require a damn good memory as long as a fair whack of logic!
The only new thing about today's press release is that it's bigger than before and higher resolution. But yesterday they announced a colour version, which is a bit more newsworthy.
I wonder how much user testing they have tried with this product. It sounds like the helpful MS Office paperclip, or automatic spell checking as you go along - great ideas in theory but intrinsically flawed in practice.
Privacy or not, I cannot think of anything more irritating, to myself, colleagues and the person I'm talking to on the phone, than meaningless drivel coming out of my speakers in my voice.
I can hear it now: Me: Can you confirm that order please? Stationers: Two printer cartridges, twelve reams of paper, and one partridge in a pear tree.
I see the application. We're always wanting more and more storage. I use a digital SLR camera and I will certainly buy a 32GB, or whatever size, card as soon as it becomes affordable; at the moment I carry round several 1GB cards, so I will always need bigger and better memory.
And it's also worth noting that while flash storage media of this type may be expensive compared to microdrives, they are far more stable (I never use microdrives for my photography because dropping the camera will almost certainly break them permanently, while solid state flash memory can go through floods, fires, crashes and digestory systems and come through readable...)
And I can think of a dozen more applications to boot. Portable video players for one.
Why not wait until the end of the year to make an announcement when it will be news?
Maybe it's a little to do with Google's messenger launch just a few short days ago; it's remarkably similar to do with the timing of the Google/MSN satellite maps.
That's useful, yes, and I can see it being used. But only out of necessity.
The IR isn't the useful bit, ironically.
IRDA isn't useful as a wireless technology (we have bluetooth/wifi for that now, which are far superior), just as a quick and easy short range communications method.
And it's only useful as that because there's no standardised wired connection. If all laptops, mobile phones, printers etc. had a compact, standard wired port, with standard protocols, there'd be no need for the IR components at all.
Indeed... have you seen this?
(Summary: News clipping showing a black man pulling food through the water, captioned 'A young man wades through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store...'; and another clipping showing two white people pulling food through the water, captioned 'Two residents wade through chest deep flood water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...')
The Red Cross say they are launching their "biggest-ever natural disaster effort".
So... how much effort exactly did they put into the tsunami relief, where hundreds of thousands died, as opposed to a hundred or so.
Oh wait, they're Americans, of course.
But seriously, where was all this high tech communications equipment when communications were knocked out across most of South Asia (and barely restored now)? Mississippi isn't all that big, when you think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
My doctor keeps telling me to keep off the expressos and Red Bull for my heart's sake. I'll use this to argue back; after all, how can I be an effective techie without my caffeine boosts?!
It's all very well taking it apart and all, but have you installed Linux on it yet? Get your priorities right!
Having worked in accessibility for years I'd say that open source is the friend of accessibility. A document that can be easily read in any standards-compliant browser or application, or easily converted into accessible form (eg. speech), is most welcome.
The main problem is documents which can only be opened in the particular application that generated them. Microsoft documents are an example of this; although as they're so popular, pretty much all accessibility companion-style programs sit on top of Word and change the style of delivery (style, size, clarity, to speech, etc) appropriately.
So if everyone used open source, standards-compliant documents, there would be no need for the majority of accessibility programs. I think moving to open source document formats removes much of the accessibility problem at the source, rather than working round it, which is what most solutions do at the minute.
If every piece of spyware presented me with an EULA to agree to before installing itself I'd be much happier!
Blindfolded solving involves studying the cube first, memorising the layout, then being blindfolded and solving the cube. Must require a damn good memory as long as a fair whack of logic!
The only new thing about today's press release is that it's bigger than before and higher resolution. But yesterday they announced a colour version, which is a bit more newsworthy.
Information on this from the university itself can be found here (not much info, but more technical than the article)
I wonder how much user testing they have tried with this product. It sounds like the helpful MS Office paperclip, or automatic spell checking as you go along - great ideas in theory but intrinsically flawed in practice.
Privacy or not, I cannot think of anything more irritating, to myself, colleagues and the person I'm talking to on the phone, than meaningless drivel coming out of my speakers in my voice.
I can hear it now:
Me: Can you confirm that order please?
Stationers: Two printer cartridges, twelve reams of paper, and one partridge in a pear tree.
I see the application.
We're always wanting more and more storage. I use a digital SLR camera and I will certainly buy a 32GB, or whatever size, card as soon as it becomes affordable; at the moment I carry round several 1GB cards, so I will always need bigger and better memory.
And it's also worth noting that while flash storage media of this type may be expensive compared to microdrives, they are far more stable (I never use microdrives for my photography because dropping the camera will almost certainly break them permanently, while solid state flash memory can go through floods, fires, crashes and digestory systems and come through readable...)
And I can think of a dozen more applications to boot. Portable video players for one.
Why not wait until the end of the year to make an announcement when it will be news?
Maybe it's a little to do with Google's messenger launch just a few short days ago; it's remarkably similar to do with the timing of the Google/MSN satellite maps.
That's useful, yes, and I can see it being used. But only out of necessity.
The IR isn't the useful bit, ironically.
IRDA isn't useful as a wireless technology (we have bluetooth/wifi for that now, which are far superior), just as a quick and easy short range communications method.
And it's only useful as that because there's no standardised wired connection. If all laptops, mobile phones, printers etc. had a compact, standard wired port, with standard protocols, there'd be no need for the IR components at all.
Indeed... have you seen this?
(Summary: News clipping showing a black man pulling food through the water, captioned 'A young man wades through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store...'; and another clipping showing two white people pulling food through the water, captioned 'Two residents wade through chest deep flood water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...')
The Red Cross say they are launching their "biggest-ever natural disaster effort". So... how much effort exactly did they put into the tsunami relief, where hundreds of thousands died, as opposed to a hundred or so. Oh wait, they're Americans, of course. But seriously, where was all this high tech communications equipment when communications were knocked out across most of South Asia (and barely restored now)? Mississippi isn't all that big, when you think about it.
256 channels, 1024 camera angles, 4096 audio choices... but still nothing to watch.