If this guy doesn't have any hands, then I'll be impressed. But I don't see how using a device with a built in keyboard (virtual) to type a document is a big deal.
If he wants to spend 3x as long to type a document, that's on him. And I say this as an iPad owner. In general, the consensus is correct, it's for consumption not production, bar some niche areas (of which, writing a constitution is not one of them).
It's been a good 10 years, but I don't remember having to lug around text books in college. I'm pretty sure we took notes in class and kept the books at home.
Also, I own (and love) my iPad, but it's hard to pay attention to ANYTHING when you have one because right in your hands you have the internet and 1,000s of apps at your disposal. I can't read something for 5 minutes before switching to something else. I can't imagine how little I'd get done if I had one of these in class.
Re:So much for plan B...
on
Nokia Sells Qt
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
'Kinda risky' is putting it mildly. Watching Nokia is like watching an alcoholic drinking themselves to death. It's tragic.
I doubt it's death, so much as transformation. Before the announcement Nokia was an innovator producing distinct hardware & software. After the announcement they become one of Microsoft's bitches pumping out handsets which are substantially similar to the likes coming out from LG / Samsung / HTC. Perhaps it's cheaper to do, but at the end of the day Nokia's brand will be severely tarnished.
It's also worth noting that Nokia is the only manufacturer to bet the farm on a single phone OS vendor. LG, Samsung and HTC all have their fingers in many pies (e.g. WP7, Android, Bada, Brew). It seems like a good way to hedge if the WP7 ship sinks which is entirely possible.
It's death of Nokia as a respected brand, sooner or later it will be death of Nokia entirely.
I'll argue that Nokia was already on it's death bed (as a respected brand), they were completely missing in the smart phone market, which is the market you need to be in if you want to be a respected cell phone manufacturer brand. Yes, they were working on neat products, but it seemed that they were quite a bit away from shipping (and being new, they carried a lot of risk as well).
I think that Nokia was forced to going third party, where the choices are Android and WP7. think going with WP7 was a good idea. It's a shipped product that looks pretty slick and is well reviewed. Yes, it's not exclusive to Nokia, but it's not too popular compared to Android, so I think it will still give the Nokia phones a more exclusive feel as when compared to Android. That, and they got a ton of cash for choosing WP7, which they will hopefully use to develop neat hardware.
Microsoft has relaxed a strict rule and will let employees moonlight and keep the resulting intellectual property
A company letting their employees do what the want in their own free time. They deserve the Nobel peace price!
Seriously, is it common (in the states) to "own" your employees even when they are not at work?
This is absolutely the norm. Some places are worse than others, making you sign a "everything you do belongs to us" agreement (how enforceable that is I don't know, IANAL). Most places just don't want you to compete with them, so anything you do on your time related to their industry belongs to them. In this case we're talking software, so MS is relaxing that restriction for wp7 apps.
[quote]Over at Google Code, Issue 9392 — SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact — carries a priority of 'Medium,' even though it has 600+ comments and has been starred by 3,600+ people.[/quote]
It is important to many people, but not a performance or security related issue. Yep, medium priority.
I'd say sending a text to the wrong person is a big security flaw.
Why spend twice as much as you need to? If you're halfway competent at your job, you will have Linux machines (definitely not MS if you want to manage cost). Open Office for your basic office work (regardless of whether the individual workstations are Windows or Linux). MySQL or PostgreSQL controlling your database(s). Apache as your web server. Today, this is all simple, cheap to implement, there is plenty of support FREELY available (unlike Dell or Oracle or any company that uses MS-based solutions), and it all works, just fine.
These days, bloated Microsoft solutions, Oracle, long-term service contracts, etc. are just plain foolish, unless you have lots of money to just toss around.
For 20 people, you only need 1 good server for all your internal needs, unless it's a software development house and the server gets hit heavily. 20 people? No need for video streaming. Just link to the video file.
Of course for serving web pages OUTWARD, to the public, you should have a separate server. That's another matter and has as much to do with security as anything else. But it can still be set up with Apache, which is relatively simple and is the most used server software in the world. Yes, even counting Microsoft.
I'd think the cost of a couple of dozen Windows licenses & office Licenses would be dwarfed by the training cost for OO and Linux, plus the salary premium of a Linux admin vs Windows admin (and depending on region, the extra time required to find a qualified Linux admin when the current one leaves).
I do agree that they should go with an open source database, because licensing tends to be expensive and MySQL devs are a dime a dozen and even if you can't find one, it's not much of a leap to go from Oracle or SQL Server to MySQL. And if they require a little training, it's localized to one or two people.
The attack requires the ASP.NET error page that shows exception information to be enabled. No sane person will leave it like this in production let alone that it is turned off by default.
No sane person runs IIS to begin with, so that hurdle has been cleared.
Wow, is this a post from 10 years ago? If not, you should really keep up with technology; IIS has matured quite a bit.
Microsoft may be interested in open source, but the real question is, is the real open source interested in Microsoft? Tainting the water is a bad thing. Patent battles are going on like crazy today. It probably isn't a good thing to get open source involved in that if at all possible.
And, Microsoft's seemingly over night change of heart can be changed over night again. There's no historical evidence that they should be trusted.
Microsoft's version/vision of open source is much different than the official definition of open source. Even if they are making happy with something it isn't true open source.
We might not want to trust Microsoft at all, ever, because of their preexisting policy of embrace, extend, extinguish.
The few instances where some code was contributed are infinitesimally tiny overall. The size of open source code universe makes those Microsoft contributions look like an amoeba compared to the sun.
Except it hasn't been overnight... if you follow some of the Microsoft guys on Twitter you'll see that they are actively trying to change Microsoft's way of thinking.
As a side note, personally I don't think there is an ulterior motive to Microsoft's change of heart with Open Source. Microsoft's found a happy medium between closed source and open source. Notice that software it sells (to end users) remains closed source, while software (or more accurately, libraries) available to developers are being opened up. Opening up the libraries makes developers happy and helps them contribute code or ideas back into the libraries, which Microsoft can go use in their services and software.
I'm in the same boat... I bought an iPad because finally someone made a portable computer in the form factor I wanted. The hardware is beautiful, but the lack of multitasking (yes, I know I'll get it soon... But it will probably still suck), lack of flash (I guess I can forgive that on a phone, but not on a laptop replacement) and subpar browser (even slashdot doesn't work 100% right), with lack of alternatives has really turned me off to apple. Also, after experiencing how android beautifully reflows text, it really makes safari seem archaic. This is not the feeling I want less than 6 months after plopping down $600 for a device...
Wasn't teaching associated with books long before "social networking?"
Re:Not remotely similar to the Microsoft situation
on
The Case For Oracle
·
· Score: 1
"I'd hate to see a C# to Dalvik compiler, but I can see that being the most logical step."
What's there to hate, exactly... I can understand you wanting to see your preferred language compile for Dalvik, but I can't understand why you'd hate to see a language that you don't particularly like work with Dalvik.
As an owner of a 2009 Mercedes, let me tell you, its not electronics, but unintuitive Mercedes design...
For instance, if you want to lower the volume on the navigation, you have to wait for it to speak and then lower the volume through the steering wheel. Every other car on the planet has a setting for navigation volume.
Well, these days for many people making phone calls is not #1 on their list for their portable devices (we call them cell phones for traditional reasons). Most of us don't want to carry around additional devices, so we appreciate modern cell phones that consolidate cell phone, pda and mp3 player into one device.
Still, it should always be function over form. Even if making calls isn't my #1 priority (which it isn't); when I DO make a call, I want it to not be dropped.
I don't understand why you'd even consider staying at a company that seems to be going down the gutter anyway...
You seem to be a valuable employee; if it shined through on Slashdot it'll shine through in your resume and interviews. The economy's not THAT bad, start sending out your resume because this job isn't going lead you anywhere good.
Frankly, bombing some barren island in the middle of nowhere wouldn't have had the same effect. You might have a few witnesses seeing a big fireball and a bright flash, but I don't think the power of the weapon would have hit home, so to speak, without actually seeing the majority of a city simply wiped off the map. Without such a demonstration, all the bomb's destructive power is basically just a bunch of numbers too big for the human mind to make sense of.
I seem to recall hearing that a demonstration was ruled out because they feared that a detonation failure would give the Japanese access to cutting edge weaponry (seems unlikely, but I can see that there still is a remote risk).
Is it possible that people that smoke enjoy smoking because they are a bit anxious? If so, couldn't we account for the lower score being attributed to not being less smart than a non-smoker, but being more anxious while taking the test than someone who is less anxious?
Every now and then I use bing since my work defaults to that but it does not compare in terms of search results.
Interesting, I find the results comparable. Mentally I default to google because I "google" things.
That's why I think bing is investing so much in the product-search rather than the general-purpose search. Google already won the general purpose search; but I think the product search is still up for grabs.
Slashdot Mirror
If this guy doesn't have any hands, then I'll be impressed. But I don't see how using a device with a built in keyboard (virtual) to type a document is a big deal.
If he wants to spend 3x as long to type a document, that's on him. And I say this as an iPad owner. In general, the consensus is correct, it's for consumption not production, bar some niche areas (of which, writing a constitution is not one of them).
It's been a good 10 years, but I don't remember having to lug around text books in college. I'm pretty sure we took notes in class and kept the books at home.
Also, I own (and love) my iPad, but it's hard to pay attention to ANYTHING when you have one because right in your hands you have the internet and 1,000s of apps at your disposal. I can't read something for 5 minutes before switching to something else. I can't imagine how little I'd get done if I had one of these in class.
'Kinda risky' is putting it mildly. Watching Nokia is like watching an alcoholic drinking themselves to death. It's tragic.
I doubt it's death, so much as transformation. Before the announcement Nokia was an innovator producing distinct hardware & software. After the announcement they become one of Microsoft's bitches pumping out handsets which are substantially similar to the likes coming out from LG / Samsung / HTC. Perhaps it's cheaper to do, but at the end of the day Nokia's brand will be severely tarnished.
It's also worth noting that Nokia is the only manufacturer to bet the farm on a single phone OS vendor. LG, Samsung and HTC all have their fingers in many pies (e.g. WP7, Android, Bada, Brew). It seems like a good way to hedge if the WP7 ship sinks which is entirely possible.
It's death of Nokia as a respected brand, sooner or later it will be death of Nokia entirely.
I'll argue that Nokia was already on it's death bed (as a respected brand), they were completely missing in the smart phone market, which is the market you need to be in if you want to be a respected cell phone manufacturer brand. Yes, they were working on neat products, but it seemed that they were quite a bit away from shipping (and being new, they carried a lot of risk as well).
I think that Nokia was forced to going third party, where the choices are Android and WP7. think going with WP7 was a good idea. It's a shipped product that looks pretty slick and is well reviewed. Yes, it's not exclusive to Nokia, but it's not too popular compared to Android, so I think it will still give the Nokia phones a more exclusive feel as when compared to Android. That, and they got a ton of cash for choosing WP7, which they will hopefully use to develop neat hardware.
Microsoft has relaxed a strict rule and will let employees moonlight and keep the resulting intellectual property
A company letting their employees do what the want in their own free time. They deserve the Nobel peace price!
Seriously, is it common (in the states) to "own" your employees even when they are not at work?
This is absolutely the norm. Some places are worse than others, making you sign a "everything you do belongs to us" agreement (how enforceable that is I don't know, IANAL). Most places just don't want you to compete with them, so anything you do on your time related to their industry belongs to them. In this case we're talking software, so MS is relaxing that restriction for wp7 apps.
[quote]Over at Google Code, Issue 9392 — SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact — carries a priority of 'Medium,' even though it has 600+ comments and has been starred by 3,600+ people.[/quote]
It is important to many people, but not a performance or security related issue. Yep, medium priority.
I'd say sending a text to the wrong person is a big security flaw.
Why spend twice as much as you need to? If you're halfway competent at your job, you will have Linux machines (definitely not MS if you want to manage cost). Open Office for your basic office work (regardless of whether the individual workstations are Windows or Linux). MySQL or PostgreSQL controlling your database(s). Apache as your web server. Today, this is all simple, cheap to implement, there is plenty of support FREELY available (unlike Dell or Oracle or any company that uses MS-based solutions), and it all works, just fine. These days, bloated Microsoft solutions, Oracle, long-term service contracts, etc. are just plain foolish, unless you have lots of money to just toss around. For 20 people, you only need 1 good server for all your internal needs, unless it's a software development house and the server gets hit heavily. 20 people? No need for video streaming. Just link to the video file. Of course for serving web pages OUTWARD, to the public, you should have a separate server. That's another matter and has as much to do with security as anything else. But it can still be set up with Apache, which is relatively simple and is the most used server software in the world. Yes, even counting Microsoft.
I'd think the cost of a couple of dozen Windows licenses & office Licenses would be dwarfed by the training cost for OO and Linux, plus the salary premium of a Linux admin vs Windows admin (and depending on region, the extra time required to find a qualified Linux admin when the current one leaves). I do agree that they should go with an open source database, because licensing tends to be expensive and MySQL devs are a dime a dozen and even if you can't find one, it's not much of a leap to go from Oracle or SQL Server to MySQL. And if they require a little training, it's localized to one or two people.
They also charge for that feature. I am sure for enough money google could do the same.
I know... what's interesting is that it seems that either you pay upfront or in the rear; either way you pay.
Microsoft promises to take legal responsibiliy in the case of patent lawsuits resulting from use of their platform. Interesting times we live in...
From my understanding there is a lot of interest in F# in financial areas.
Can you cite some sources for this?
The attack requires the ASP.NET error page that shows exception information to be enabled. No sane person will leave it like this in production let alone that it is turned off by default.
No sane person runs IIS to begin with, so that hurdle has been cleared.
Wow, is this a post from 10 years ago? If not, you should really keep up with technology; IIS has matured quite a bit.
Microsoft may be interested in open source, but the real question is, is the real open source interested in Microsoft? Tainting the water is a bad thing. Patent battles are going on like crazy today. It probably isn't a good thing to get open source involved in that if at all possible.
And, Microsoft's seemingly over night change of heart can be changed over night again. There's no historical evidence that they should be trusted.
Microsoft's version/vision of open source is much different than the official definition of open source. Even if they are making happy with something it isn't true open source.
We might not want to trust Microsoft at all, ever, because of their preexisting policy of embrace, extend, extinguish.
The few instances where some code was contributed are infinitesimally tiny overall. The size of open source code universe makes those Microsoft contributions look like an amoeba compared to the sun.
Except it hasn't been overnight... if you follow some of the Microsoft guys on Twitter you'll see that they are actively trying to change Microsoft's way of thinking.
As a side note, personally I don't think there is an ulterior motive to Microsoft's change of heart with Open Source. Microsoft's found a happy medium between closed source and open source. Notice that software it sells (to end users) remains closed source, while software (or more accurately, libraries) available to developers are being opened up. Opening up the libraries makes developers happy and helps them contribute code or ideas back into the libraries, which Microsoft can go use in their services and software.
I'm in the same boat... I bought an iPad because finally someone made a portable computer in the form factor I wanted. The hardware is beautiful, but the lack of multitasking (yes, I know I'll get it soon... But it will probably still suck), lack of flash (I guess I can forgive that on a phone, but not on a laptop replacement) and subpar browser (even slashdot doesn't work 100% right), with lack of alternatives has really turned me off to apple. Also, after experiencing how android beautifully reflows text, it really makes safari seem archaic. This is not the feeling I want less than 6 months after plopping down $600 for a device...
Universal health care, cure French girls, good restaurants, great culture (ok ok immigration problems but hey, habla espagnol?)
France is not as bad as depicted, especially when you compare CURRENT standards of living in the US, not the ones that were true 5-10 years ago
Except that based on other comments he's made, I don't think he's American, so it's irrelevant what American standards are...
Wasn't teaching associated with books long before "social networking?"
"I'd hate to see a C# to Dalvik compiler, but I can see that being the most logical step."
What's there to hate, exactly... I can understand you wanting to see your preferred language compile for Dalvik, but I can't understand why you'd hate to see a language that you don't particularly like work with Dalvik.
As an owner of a 2009 Mercedes, let me tell you, its not electronics, but unintuitive Mercedes design...
For instance, if you want to lower the volume on the navigation, you have to wait for it to speak and then lower the volume through the steering wheel. Every other car on the planet has a setting for navigation volume.
Still, it should always be function over form
So, a phone that's the size of a loaf of bread is better than a phone that fits in your pocket if it is slightly more functional?
No, but this is already a solved problem... I haven't had reception problems in years, and none of those phones were "slices of bread."
Well, these days for many people making phone calls is not #1 on their list for their portable devices (we call them cell phones for traditional reasons). Most of us don't want to carry around additional devices, so we appreciate modern cell phones that consolidate cell phone, pda and mp3 player into one device.
Still, it should always be function over form. Even if making calls isn't my #1 priority (which it isn't); when I DO make a call, I want it to not be dropped.
"They could endow a trust fund for SourceForget.net. And if they had ideas for a better forge, they could make code submissions to SourceForge.net."
Why? Why can there only be one open source code repository?
Further, ultimately, as a developer, do you even care what repository the code comes from? I just google what I need, and wherever I land, I land.
I don't understand why you'd even consider staying at a company that seems to be going down the gutter anyway...
You seem to be a valuable employee; if it shined through on Slashdot it'll shine through in your resume and interviews. The economy's not THAT bad, start sending out your resume because this job isn't going lead you anywhere good.
"Stand-alone PDAs don't exist any more"
True,now we call them "ipads"
Frankly, bombing some barren island in the middle of nowhere wouldn't have had the same effect. You might have a few witnesses seeing a big fireball and a bright flash, but I don't think the power of the weapon would have hit home, so to speak, without actually seeing the majority of a city simply wiped off the map. Without such a demonstration, all the bomb's destructive power is basically just a bunch of numbers too big for the human mind to make sense of.
I seem to recall hearing that a demonstration was ruled out because they feared that a detonation failure would give the Japanese access to cutting edge weaponry (seems unlikely, but I can see that there still is a remote risk).
Is it possible that people that smoke enjoy smoking because they are a bit anxious? If so, couldn't we account for the lower score being attributed to not being less smart than a non-smoker, but being more anxious while taking the test than someone who is less anxious?
Every now and then I use bing since my work defaults to that but it does not compare in terms of search results.
Interesting, I find the results comparable. Mentally I default to google because I "google" things.
That's why I think bing is investing so much in the product-search rather than the general-purpose search. Google already won the general purpose search; but I think the product search is still up for grabs.