Set up a subscription to OpenDNS. It is not perfect, as nothing really is, but it offers a very simple and powerful set of continually updated filters to allow you to select caegories of sites you do not wish them exposed to, and simple bypass codes that will allow you to override a block either personally or for the occaisional "false positive". The service also includes an active watch on currently infected sites, and helps prevent those types of attacks. You add the OpenDNS servers as forwarders in your router and instead of the "offending" site you get a message page saying OpenDNS has blocked this page, with a bypass code option for you to get around the more restrictive settings you place as default for the kids.
Someone developed this capability about 4 years ago (estimate) with the idea of using it to lock a pc or laptop when the user walks away from it in an open environment. Detecting presence of a user withing "keyboard range" of the device was almost a trivial matter, and detecting motion near the system was very little more complex.
What a wonderful idea - they should have done this 20 years ago!!! In as much as the technology to do anything these are planned to do is in 75% or so of the cellphone using public, who would have been the ones interested enough to use them back then. What will they think of next? Lamp, mounted right on the fenders of the carriages so we can see to drive them at night???
Raid5 still gives n-1 storage for N drives, even with the larger drives available, it is still a pretty efficient way to get fault tolerant storage. Mirroring (Raid 1) is also cheap given the size of the drives available vs their cost, but is about the least efficient storage, n/2 storage for N platters. If you are going to be backing up a high volume, fault tolerance makes sense, as does a soft de-dupe if you can set it up using something like Linux on an older PC chassis.
They are sending one scientist, one mountain guide, one unqualified but attractive lab assistant and the guide's pet duck into an extinct volcano to investigate.
Only the Pentagon could define half million dollar satellites as "disposable" and describe putting "a constellation of see-me satellites" in serveice or a two month period as having "no logistics costs"
People seem to miss the point about Democracy, citing it as the best form of government. The actual definition, and the reason it was selected for the fledgling nation of the United States, is that is was the "least bad" form of government.
Aristotle defined 3 types, and therefore 6 variants of government. The best, and the worst, are single person rule - a good, just and benevolent ruler can accomplish the most good as he has the fewest obstacles to enacting his decisions, a dictator or tyrant can do the most harm for the same reason. The secong "best" and second "worst" are rule by a small percentage of the population, as in an aristocracy - it is less efficient, both for good or bad, in that it requires getting concensus or at least a majority of the few to agree to enact a decision. The least good, and least bad, based on the effort needed to get anything enacted or done is rule my the majority of the people through voting/acclaimation/concensus, enacted through representatives. This is the hardest to enact a good policy, but also the hardest to get a bad policy enacted as well. The founding fathers determined that a government that could do the least to run people's lives based on the effort necessary to enact the laws and policies necessary would offer the greatest protection from the actions of that government in any negative way. They also apparently hoped and trusted that people would be intelligent enough to favor good policy when they heard it. Most interesting in the aristotle-defined definition of types of government is this ; the word we selected to define our chosen form is the one he used to define government by the people at its worst - A good "public" government was in his terms, a "Polity" - a bad one was a "Democracy"
The university network is there for a specific purpose - to provide the university with access to the sites and communications necessary to the function of the university, and to maintain the integrity and reliability of those connections. If you want to access things outside what the university defines as necessary to this function, you are welcome to do so, apparently, through the use of external connections. If you want free access to any pron site that strikes your fancy, you're asking for something that doesn't apply to the university's needs, and if it is not available to you through their network, it is a simple decision. buy it yourself, or whine much harder. As for the people telling you that the IT staff needs to be educated as to how to serve the student's needs, they need a lesson in exactly how much work is involved in cleaning up after the students that go blindly into the web trusting that they won't face any consequences, and the costs of providing an infrastructure that can support the campus without assuming the responsibility for every student's irresponsibility. If you have email, access to your university coursework, resources and search tools in a secure and dependable environment, the IT staff is doing their job admirably. If you want unrestricted access to anything on the net, regardless of its provenance, to download any movie or streaming video, pron or game site, tell mommy and daddy that you need the money to buy a 4G data device and pay for the bandwith/content you want.
I'm a Maine resident and I know Ms. Collins. If she is proposing a study, she will have taken the time to get good advice from people that have the background to design one that will result in some meaningful data. She does not have a record of spending frivolously, and she is particularly responsive to her constituents, so I would say that if this is being proposed by a member of congress, she is at least among the most likely to propose something meaningful, and have good guidance involved in the design. How far that gets in the current congress, who can say, but I would personally back her proposing this over many of the other "fine upstanding representatives" in the current house and senate.
Send a Makerbot instructions file to build the bride and groom as figures for a table decoration, similar to the "cake topper" type. Use a 3D modelling software that will allow you to do a display they can view online, and video a build of the actual Makerbot created cake topper of the Bride and Groom for the invitation itself.
Far too many IT managers get caught in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want the magic button to do what I want when I push it" trap in the company. Busy users don't care what it takes to keep their machines or the network running, they just want to do their jobs across the network, and have instant access to whatever they think is needed next. Department heads are among the worst in this light, as they have demands on their time and resources and anything that isn't in their direct control is just an impediment to getting their quota out. Projects they need are based on what it will do for them, and that it will require X resources, or X amount of time, and cost thousands for the server and systems they checked off as "ok" and promptly forgot about while talking to the vendor of the shiny new system until the date they plan to have it all installed (and of course, all installations take 30 minutes or less, including the server.)
Eventually, even the most innovative and proficient IT folks stop trying. The lack of technical peers in a small organization, and their efforts to accomplish often quite demanding tasks to make the "magic button" work is not hidden because the IT folks want to keep it to themselves - it of often "hidden" because no one else in the organization has any idea of what it means, and, quite simply, don't care.
Someone from the IRC must have watched the movie "Toys" recently, when the general goes after the red cross trucks in the video game.
With all the people that are in desperate need of help, why does the IRC consider this even something they should be concerned with at all?
Absolutely - if you can't trust the governments of the world, who can you trust? - Yahoo Serious as Albert Einstein (young)
Cloud storage is as secure as the promises made in writing by the storage vendor/host and subject to every change or government whim that there may be some potential for determining who has had a bomb implanted in their body in the guise of a colonoscopy so we had better review everyone's medical records for signs of constipation. It is a shame - the technology is reasonably well developed, the economics are there and the bandwidth and management tools are developing quickly to make this a default choice. The only thing completely lacking is the security that is required to entrust this data to the hosting company to begin with, and that is the first and most necessary element of the mix.
In answer to your question - Slowly, with extensive notes and with discussions with the people that the systems you are looking into may affect.
I've been the primary It person for a large printing firm for about 16 years, and I manage a staff of two now, with various personnel changes over the years.
Applications that look like a mess may have developed over a period, and as the person you replaced developed their skills and learned how to do things better. There have been several recent articles in some of the tech blogs about finding out why something was done a specific way the hard way, and learning to document everything before you make even simple changes is the safest course of action, and will get you back out of trouble. Don't be afraid to talk to the people that use specific systems or functions; sometimes you may find it is "because that is how we have always done it", but sometimes you will find that a specific practive avoids a common type of error or provides a specific check on a process.
Remember that what you have come into may look like a tangle, but it is also a working whole, even if some parts seem to be of the baling wire and bubble gum variety. Look at the whole when you replace a component, and see how the information and process flows both into and out of the portion you are improving, and be sure your new solutions integrate as well. Trust that you will make mistakes, and make backups, copies and notes that enable you to back out carefully, then when you have made successful changes, document the process you have completed and keep that as the core of your new documentation. Make one goal to never put the person that follows you in the same bewildering place. There is never time to go back and document, especially if you are on your own. Do it at the time you make the changes, and you will have it when you are finished, as well as have the path to back up and recognize where your change may have caused something to go wrong, as some things inevitably will.
Above all, prioritize, document, research and change things slowly. Your primary responsibility is not to improve the systems, it is to support the people that rely on them. Keep that foremost in mind as you make any changes and you'll do well.
How many admins does it take to change the light bulb in the monitor?
I would say more depends on your environment as far as the applications, level of demand, tolerance for downtime/repair time and responsiveness than on the simple number of systems you support.
I'm the IT manager for a company with around 500 employees, but only about 150-175 of them are really computer users as part of their job. We have 30+ servers in the "admin" network and another 12-15 in the departmental network that supports out prepress operation.
We run monitoring, process control, list processing and logistics systems, as well as the range of business applications and financials common to any organization. My current staff is two, including myself.
The main thing is how well your processes are constructed, how well monitored for pre-emptive response, and how well you manage the time and resources to fill the support needs of the company. No formula of X number of techs for Y number of users, Z number of computers and K of servers is going to give you anything like an accurate estimate, because it lacks the essential parameters for how much work the functions you are required to handle actually require.
Someone else stated it fairly succinctly - if you are able to meet the needs, you have enough people. If you don't have time to support and monitor the systems because you're too busy putting out fires, you could have 1. too few people, or mosre likely, 2. poor processes for getting the job done and staying aware of the conditions that cause the problems in the first place.
Its often easier to do the same thing more than do the better thing. It takes more insight into how to get the results the best and most efficient way to improve the process and get it done with better equipped, trained and directed staff. I'd start with a review of what gets the job done better, and staff for that.
I'm surprised that the senior officer of a company that does nearly all its business on the web could spout such an absurd comment with a straight face. Do the words "identity theft" not resonate at some level, or the fact that the information collected by these companies can be abused by anyone that wishes to take advantage of someone by knowing something about them?
Companies have long understood the absolute necessity of maintaining the privacy of their information to avoid making things easier for their competitors to use it against them. The entire industry of programming, service applications and other valuable intellectual property is based on the maintaining of valuable knowledge. How blithely foolish does someone have to be to fail to understand that if "knowledge is power", privacy is the only currency of value.
"Don't worry about what we collect, it's harmless unless you are doing something wrong...." I've faced enough discrimination, fought enough battles with healthcare companies over what they consider pre-existing conditions and dealt with enough credit scammers and spam to value my privacy far more than google seems to.
I wonder how the person would feel about his purchasing habits, social security number, home phone number, bank accounts, private club memberships and web browsing history posted as the new home page of Google.
After all, he's not doing anything wrong... what would he have to worry about?
I am wondering if the included software will allow for EEG "band-specific" information to be derived from these devices.
My daughter has ADD and could not use medications due to the severe side-effects she experienced, so we worked with some pioneering folks in the treatment uaing direct EEG bio-feedback training.
Simplistically, ADD is a neurological condition where the active, cognitive brainwave activity found in most people is essentially "drowned out" by a typically lesser "volume" band of brainwave activity. "Beta" brainwave frequencies normally increase in intensity when concentrating, and "Theta" decrease in "normal" people. For ADD people, the theta band increases significantly with concentration, and essentially disrupts the beta activity of concentration. Through the biofeedback which helped my daughter to increase beta activity and lower theta, or at least significantly control its increase, she developed much better ability to concentrate and focus at will, and the common negative behaviors associated with ADD diminished or dissappeared.
If this device offers the ability to track and display the core "bands" of brainwave frequencies commonly associated with the different types of activity, it could place this level of reinforcement of the "cognitive" frequencies in reach of many people that otherwise might not have the benefit.
I'd certainly enjoy using it for gaming myself, and just for the experimentation value - I see daydreams of remote telepresence with a brain-controlled robotic surrogate and lots of other possibilities. The benefit that my daughter was able to recieve from the recognition and self-regulation of the neurological patterning of the ADD was so life-changing for her that I would very much like to see this available at such a reasonable cost compared to the therapy sessions she required.
Obviously, this is nothing to do without proper direction from a therapist with experience, but the daily practice at home and as needed could d4efinitely improve the effectiveness for those that can benefit from this treatment.
There's no reason a virtual keyboard could not be integrated into the surface being used as the interface. Add a third 'edge' surface to activate the keyboard, perhaps the edge closest to the user, so a palm touch would convert the surface to act as the keyboard; with a kb displayed as the surface, there would be little difficulty in using a virtual; the system is already sensitized to pressure response so typing a key vs resting on it would be an easy transition. The touch surface could even be slightly textured to represent the divisions between keys, which is one of the common issues with virtual keyboards now. The laser-projected keyboard that is available as a blue-tooth peripheral is another approach; display a kb over the surface with the projection; activated by the 'bottom edge' touch perhaps.
This looks like a first pass concept at a real interface, and will take refining, but it covers a significant portion of the needs of the interactions with a quite simple but thorough approach.
Where can I get one to start trying this out:)
Pretty simple. Dialup to a wide area provider or one that has 800-number access. Earthlink or other similar providers like netzero come to mind.
Anywhere you are going to take a larger RV you are going to have some type of wired phone access, though cell/tethered smartphone is still going to be available in most of those areas and provide superior speed. All you need is a modem, a decent length phone cord and a LOT of patience.
I might suggest a remote access service on a PC left at home, like Teamviewer as a possibility. The teamviewer interface will work well enough on a dialup-speed connection to allow you to remote control the home unit for better browsing speed.
Gaming is pretty much out of the question on dialup at this point, and remote control of the home pc will have too much latency to keep up, but for the types of other access you are talking about, this will provide an acceptable solution and should be available pretty much anywhere you are going to go with an RV.
Several posters here have made the point I answered to espouse - It is not the language per se, but the concepts of organizing and structuring data, preparing logical flow and execution, and maintaining a standard of documentation and coding which others can interpret and verify that is the essence of the teaching. There are any number of "quick and dirty" languages, and the argument that there is excess capacity available to make up for their inefficiency is merely a cover to excuse the lack of clarity in these solutions. Analysis and interpretation of hard data requires the same rigor as gathering and validating that data, and none of the easy ways of manipulating the "for dummies" languages will meet the test of that exacting and essential process.
Teach python as a quick tool for making approximations; but first teach, through whatever language that meets the standards that science must hold itself to, the process of managing the idea and logic in code.
Computers are fast idiots; they do what we tell them to do at fantastic speed; not what we want them to do. Failing to understand that will produce results that never stand up to the level of accuracy needed.
I think experience has more to do with interest and application than with "time in grade". I am in a similar position, where I interview and select staff for the IT department I run, and I am myself a "senior geek" as someone put it in a previous post.
I look for depth of experience, and applicability to the environment. Some 20-somethings have a significant ability to dig into a problem and resolve it or develop a solution to a problem. Some 50+ folks with 30 years in the field have similar abilities, and some, just as frequently as the 20-somethings, patently do not.
The "fresh out of college, gung-ho, all the latest buzzwords in their iphone" categorization is a label, just as the "experienced veteran" is, and neither really do anything more than prevent someone from making a real assessment rather than assuming their first impression is the sole and impeccable truth. I look for interest, for willingness to learn, and for an understanding that the practical result is the focus, not the method used to get there.
The "real world" is very rarely well represented in the academic environment in my personal experience; it takes real hands-on with a meaningful task to get the kind of experience that is of value. By the same time, I know people that don't have 20 years of experience; they have 2 years of experience 10 times. There's more to it than just being there; making a difference is not a function of age, but of application.
Forget the preconception that someone just out of school doesn't know what they are doing, and that someone with 10 years in the trenches does; it bears just as little relation to reality as the assumption that someone fresh out of school knows the latest methods or has the most recent insight. Remember that it is not the first to try it, but the first to make it do something of value that is the one who succeeds.
Someone interested, willing to learn, and confident enough in their own experience to try, while still recognizing when it is time to seek help gets my vote every time. How old that person is has no place in the decision, or in my approach to seeking their value.
Slashdot Mirror
Set up a subscription to OpenDNS. It is not perfect, as nothing really is, but it offers a very simple and powerful set of continually updated filters to allow you to select caegories of sites you do not wish them exposed to, and simple bypass codes that will allow you to override a block either personally or for the occaisional "false positive". The service also includes an active watch on currently infected sites, and helps prevent those types of attacks. You add the OpenDNS servers as forwarders in your router and instead of the "offending" site you get a message page saying OpenDNS has blocked this page, with a bypass code option for you to get around the more restrictive settings you place as default for the kids.
Someone developed this capability about 4 years ago (estimate) with the idea of using it to lock a pc or laptop when the user walks away from it in an open environment. Detecting presence of a user withing "keyboard range" of the device was almost a trivial matter, and detecting motion near the system was very little more complex.
What a wonderful idea - they should have done this 20 years ago!!! In as much as the technology to do anything these are planned to do is in 75% or so of the cellphone using public, who would have been the ones interested enough to use them back then. What will they think of next? Lamp, mounted right on the fenders of the carriages so we can see to drive them at night???
Raid5 still gives n-1 storage for N drives, even with the larger drives available, it is still a pretty efficient way to get fault tolerant storage. Mirroring (Raid 1) is also cheap given the size of the drives available vs their cost, but is about the least efficient storage, n/2 storage for N platters. If you are going to be backing up a high volume, fault tolerance makes sense, as does a soft de-dupe if you can set it up using something like Linux on an older PC chassis.
They are sending one scientist, one mountain guide, one unqualified but attractive lab assistant and the guide's pet duck into an extinct volcano to investigate.
Only the Pentagon could define half million dollar satellites as "disposable" and describe putting "a constellation of see-me satellites" in serveice or a two month period as having "no logistics costs"
People seem to miss the point about Democracy, citing it as the best form of government. The actual definition, and the reason it was selected for the fledgling nation of the United States, is that is was the "least bad" form of government. Aristotle defined 3 types, and therefore 6 variants of government. The best, and the worst, are single person rule - a good, just and benevolent ruler can accomplish the most good as he has the fewest obstacles to enacting his decisions, a dictator or tyrant can do the most harm for the same reason. The secong "best" and second "worst" are rule by a small percentage of the population, as in an aristocracy - it is less efficient, both for good or bad, in that it requires getting concensus or at least a majority of the few to agree to enact a decision. The least good, and least bad, based on the effort needed to get anything enacted or done is rule my the majority of the people through voting/acclaimation/concensus, enacted through representatives. This is the hardest to enact a good policy, but also the hardest to get a bad policy enacted as well. The founding fathers determined that a government that could do the least to run people's lives based on the effort necessary to enact the laws and policies necessary would offer the greatest protection from the actions of that government in any negative way. They also apparently hoped and trusted that people would be intelligent enough to favor good policy when they heard it. Most interesting in the aristotle-defined definition of types of government is this ; the word we selected to define our chosen form is the one he used to define government by the people at its worst - A good "public" government was in his terms, a "Polity" - a bad one was a "Democracy"
The university network is there for a specific purpose - to provide the university with access to the sites and communications necessary to the function of the university, and to maintain the integrity and reliability of those connections. If you want to access things outside what the university defines as necessary to this function, you are welcome to do so, apparently, through the use of external connections. If you want free access to any pron site that strikes your fancy, you're asking for something that doesn't apply to the university's needs, and if it is not available to you through their network, it is a simple decision. buy it yourself, or whine much harder. As for the people telling you that the IT staff needs to be educated as to how to serve the student's needs, they need a lesson in exactly how much work is involved in cleaning up after the students that go blindly into the web trusting that they won't face any consequences, and the costs of providing an infrastructure that can support the campus without assuming the responsibility for every student's irresponsibility. If you have email, access to your university coursework, resources and search tools in a secure and dependable environment, the IT staff is doing their job admirably. If you want unrestricted access to anything on the net, regardless of its provenance, to download any movie or streaming video, pron or game site, tell mommy and daddy that you need the money to buy a 4G data device and pay for the bandwith/content you want.
I'm a Maine resident and I know Ms. Collins. If she is proposing a study, she will have taken the time to get good advice from people that have the background to design one that will result in some meaningful data. She does not have a record of spending frivolously, and she is particularly responsive to her constituents, so I would say that if this is being proposed by a member of congress, she is at least among the most likely to propose something meaningful, and have good guidance involved in the design. How far that gets in the current congress, who can say, but I would personally back her proposing this over many of the other "fine upstanding representatives" in the current house and senate.
Send a Makerbot instructions file to build the bride and groom as figures for a table decoration, similar to the "cake topper" type. Use a 3D modelling software that will allow you to do a display they can view online, and video a build of the actual Makerbot created cake topper of the Bride and Groom for the invitation itself.
Far too many IT managers get caught in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want the magic button to do what I want when I push it" trap in the company. Busy users don't care what it takes to keep their machines or the network running, they just want to do their jobs across the network, and have instant access to whatever they think is needed next. Department heads are among the worst in this light, as they have demands on their time and resources and anything that isn't in their direct control is just an impediment to getting their quota out. Projects they need are based on what it will do for them, and that it will require X resources, or X amount of time, and cost thousands for the server and systems they checked off as "ok" and promptly forgot about while talking to the vendor of the shiny new system until the date they plan to have it all installed (and of course, all installations take 30 minutes or less, including the server.) Eventually, even the most innovative and proficient IT folks stop trying. The lack of technical peers in a small organization, and their efforts to accomplish often quite demanding tasks to make the "magic button" work is not hidden because the IT folks want to keep it to themselves - it of often "hidden" because no one else in the organization has any idea of what it means, and, quite simply, don't care.
Someone from the IRC must have watched the movie "Toys" recently, when the general goes after the red cross trucks in the video game. With all the people that are in desperate need of help, why does the IRC consider this even something they should be concerned with at all?
Absolutely - if you can't trust the governments of the world, who can you trust? - Yahoo Serious as Albert Einstein (young) Cloud storage is as secure as the promises made in writing by the storage vendor/host and subject to every change or government whim that there may be some potential for determining who has had a bomb implanted in their body in the guise of a colonoscopy so we had better review everyone's medical records for signs of constipation. It is a shame - the technology is reasonably well developed, the economics are there and the bandwidth and management tools are developing quickly to make this a default choice. The only thing completely lacking is the security that is required to entrust this data to the hosting company to begin with, and that is the first and most necessary element of the mix.
In answer to your question - Slowly, with extensive notes and with discussions with the people that the systems you are looking into may affect. I've been the primary It person for a large printing firm for about 16 years, and I manage a staff of two now, with various personnel changes over the years. Applications that look like a mess may have developed over a period, and as the person you replaced developed their skills and learned how to do things better. There have been several recent articles in some of the tech blogs about finding out why something was done a specific way the hard way, and learning to document everything before you make even simple changes is the safest course of action, and will get you back out of trouble. Don't be afraid to talk to the people that use specific systems or functions; sometimes you may find it is "because that is how we have always done it", but sometimes you will find that a specific practive avoids a common type of error or provides a specific check on a process. Remember that what you have come into may look like a tangle, but it is also a working whole, even if some parts seem to be of the baling wire and bubble gum variety. Look at the whole when you replace a component, and see how the information and process flows both into and out of the portion you are improving, and be sure your new solutions integrate as well. Trust that you will make mistakes, and make backups, copies and notes that enable you to back out carefully, then when you have made successful changes, document the process you have completed and keep that as the core of your new documentation. Make one goal to never put the person that follows you in the same bewildering place. There is never time to go back and document, especially if you are on your own. Do it at the time you make the changes, and you will have it when you are finished, as well as have the path to back up and recognize where your change may have caused something to go wrong, as some things inevitably will. Above all, prioritize, document, research and change things slowly. Your primary responsibility is not to improve the systems, it is to support the people that rely on them. Keep that foremost in mind as you make any changes and you'll do well.
How many admins does it take to change the light bulb in the monitor? I would say more depends on your environment as far as the applications, level of demand, tolerance for downtime/repair time and responsiveness than on the simple number of systems you support. I'm the IT manager for a company with around 500 employees, but only about 150-175 of them are really computer users as part of their job. We have 30+ servers in the "admin" network and another 12-15 in the departmental network that supports out prepress operation. We run monitoring, process control, list processing and logistics systems, as well as the range of business applications and financials common to any organization. My current staff is two, including myself. The main thing is how well your processes are constructed, how well monitored for pre-emptive response, and how well you manage the time and resources to fill the support needs of the company. No formula of X number of techs for Y number of users, Z number of computers and K of servers is going to give you anything like an accurate estimate, because it lacks the essential parameters for how much work the functions you are required to handle actually require. Someone else stated it fairly succinctly - if you are able to meet the needs, you have enough people. If you don't have time to support and monitor the systems because you're too busy putting out fires, you could have 1. too few people, or mosre likely, 2. poor processes for getting the job done and staying aware of the conditions that cause the problems in the first place. Its often easier to do the same thing more than do the better thing. It takes more insight into how to get the results the best and most efficient way to improve the process and get it done with better equipped, trained and directed staff. I'd start with a review of what gets the job done better, and staff for that.
I'm surprised that the senior officer of a company that does nearly all its business on the web could spout such an absurd comment with a straight face. Do the words "identity theft" not resonate at some level, or the fact that the information collected by these companies can be abused by anyone that wishes to take advantage of someone by knowing something about them? Companies have long understood the absolute necessity of maintaining the privacy of their information to avoid making things easier for their competitors to use it against them. The entire industry of programming, service applications and other valuable intellectual property is based on the maintaining of valuable knowledge. How blithely foolish does someone have to be to fail to understand that if "knowledge is power", privacy is the only currency of value. "Don't worry about what we collect, it's harmless unless you are doing something wrong...." I've faced enough discrimination, fought enough battles with healthcare companies over what they consider pre-existing conditions and dealt with enough credit scammers and spam to value my privacy far more than google seems to. I wonder how the person would feel about his purchasing habits, social security number, home phone number, bank accounts, private club memberships and web browsing history posted as the new home page of Google. After all, he's not doing anything wrong... what would he have to worry about?
I am wondering if the included software will allow for EEG "band-specific" information to be derived from these devices. My daughter has ADD and could not use medications due to the severe side-effects she experienced, so we worked with some pioneering folks in the treatment uaing direct EEG bio-feedback training. Simplistically, ADD is a neurological condition where the active, cognitive brainwave activity found in most people is essentially "drowned out" by a typically lesser "volume" band of brainwave activity. "Beta" brainwave frequencies normally increase in intensity when concentrating, and "Theta" decrease in "normal" people. For ADD people, the theta band increases significantly with concentration, and essentially disrupts the beta activity of concentration. Through the biofeedback which helped my daughter to increase beta activity and lower theta, or at least significantly control its increase, she developed much better ability to concentrate and focus at will, and the common negative behaviors associated with ADD diminished or dissappeared. If this device offers the ability to track and display the core "bands" of brainwave frequencies commonly associated with the different types of activity, it could place this level of reinforcement of the "cognitive" frequencies in reach of many people that otherwise might not have the benefit. I'd certainly enjoy using it for gaming myself, and just for the experimentation value - I see daydreams of remote telepresence with a brain-controlled robotic surrogate and lots of other possibilities. The benefit that my daughter was able to recieve from the recognition and self-regulation of the neurological patterning of the ADD was so life-changing for her that I would very much like to see this available at such a reasonable cost compared to the therapy sessions she required. Obviously, this is nothing to do without proper direction from a therapist with experience, but the daily practice at home and as needed could d4efinitely improve the effectiveness for those that can benefit from this treatment.
There's no reason a virtual keyboard could not be integrated into the surface being used as the interface. Add a third 'edge' surface to activate the keyboard, perhaps the edge closest to the user, so a palm touch would convert the surface to act as the keyboard; with a kb displayed as the surface, there would be little difficulty in using a virtual; the system is already sensitized to pressure response so typing a key vs resting on it would be an easy transition. The touch surface could even be slightly textured to represent the divisions between keys, which is one of the common issues with virtual keyboards now. The laser-projected keyboard that is available as a blue-tooth peripheral is another approach; display a kb over the surface with the projection; activated by the 'bottom edge' touch perhaps. This looks like a first pass concept at a real interface, and will take refining, but it covers a significant portion of the needs of the interactions with a quite simple but thorough approach. Where can I get one to start trying this out :)
Pretty simple. Dialup to a wide area provider or one that has 800-number access. Earthlink or other similar providers like netzero come to mind. Anywhere you are going to take a larger RV you are going to have some type of wired phone access, though cell/tethered smartphone is still going to be available in most of those areas and provide superior speed. All you need is a modem, a decent length phone cord and a LOT of patience. I might suggest a remote access service on a PC left at home, like Teamviewer as a possibility. The teamviewer interface will work well enough on a dialup-speed connection to allow you to remote control the home unit for better browsing speed. Gaming is pretty much out of the question on dialup at this point, and remote control of the home pc will have too much latency to keep up, but for the types of other access you are talking about, this will provide an acceptable solution and should be available pretty much anywhere you are going to go with an RV.
Several posters here have made the point I answered to espouse - It is not the language per se, but the concepts of organizing and structuring data, preparing logical flow and execution, and maintaining a standard of documentation and coding which others can interpret and verify that is the essence of the teaching. There are any number of "quick and dirty" languages, and the argument that there is excess capacity available to make up for their inefficiency is merely a cover to excuse the lack of clarity in these solutions. Analysis and interpretation of hard data requires the same rigor as gathering and validating that data, and none of the easy ways of manipulating the "for dummies" languages will meet the test of that exacting and essential process. Teach python as a quick tool for making approximations; but first teach, through whatever language that meets the standards that science must hold itself to, the process of managing the idea and logic in code. Computers are fast idiots; they do what we tell them to do at fantastic speed; not what we want them to do. Failing to understand that will produce results that never stand up to the level of accuracy needed.
I think experience has more to do with interest and application than with "time in grade". I am in a similar position, where I interview and select staff for the IT department I run, and I am myself a "senior geek" as someone put it in a previous post. I look for depth of experience, and applicability to the environment. Some 20-somethings have a significant ability to dig into a problem and resolve it or develop a solution to a problem. Some 50+ folks with 30 years in the field have similar abilities, and some, just as frequently as the 20-somethings, patently do not. The "fresh out of college, gung-ho, all the latest buzzwords in their iphone" categorization is a label, just as the "experienced veteran" is, and neither really do anything more than prevent someone from making a real assessment rather than assuming their first impression is the sole and impeccable truth. I look for interest, for willingness to learn, and for an understanding that the practical result is the focus, not the method used to get there. The "real world" is very rarely well represented in the academic environment in my personal experience; it takes real hands-on with a meaningful task to get the kind of experience that is of value. By the same time, I know people that don't have 20 years of experience; they have 2 years of experience 10 times. There's more to it than just being there; making a difference is not a function of age, but of application. Forget the preconception that someone just out of school doesn't know what they are doing, and that someone with 10 years in the trenches does; it bears just as little relation to reality as the assumption that someone fresh out of school knows the latest methods or has the most recent insight. Remember that it is not the first to try it, but the first to make it do something of value that is the one who succeeds. Someone interested, willing to learn, and confident enough in their own experience to try, while still recognizing when it is time to seek help gets my vote every time. How old that person is has no place in the decision, or in my approach to seeking their value.