Or, to answer the guys question rather than go on for paragraphs about how great a humanitarian you are:
Many of those devices listed have USB charge cables. I bought my Nintndo DS cable for about $5.00. A little Googling shows that the following have USB cable chargers: Nokia N810, LG Chocolate, And the Sony Ericsson Z310a.
For the mouse, I'd recommend looking at at some of Logitech's non-Bluetooth wireless mice. The one I use goes at leas 6 months of constant use between charges, so I don't need a cable lying around. There is a dongle, but it's teeny (sticks out about 3mm from the slot if you're worried about appearances).
For the Cannon and the Thinkpad adapters, a little pegboard under your desk and you're set.
If a site has a HTTPS form on an HTTP page, just click "submit" with bogus information (or no info). They "error" please enter your info again" page will be HTTPS, which you can then verify the cert, etc.
Or just try adding the "s" to all http pages. Works 9 of 10 times.
Agreed. I was much happier when this stuff was hidden in a dark corner of Slashdot Labs.
If they'd pull idle off the front page and off the newsfeed I'd even be willing to use all of those mod points responsibly instead of throwing them around randomly.
Wouldn't using a...you know... -debugger- be more efficient at doing that? Breakpoints, watching variables, etc?
All you get on some embedded systems is serial output. No watch variables or breakpoints, just whatever text you can manage to dump out the serial port.
In addition logging function calls can quickly narrow down -where- to put your breakpoint and what variables to watch.
Yeah, it does really vary. I admit to doing this myself, though when I'm coding with others they despise me for crufting up the code. (Though coding with others often leads to conditions where logs are needed more often anyway...)
During development and testing I log all non looping function calls, object creation/destroy and memory management, though I cull it as development proceeds (or just switch it all off).
This is overkill but I got in the habit when maintaining someone else's code on a Project of Madness. At worst it helps me track down quickly where to start the debugger.
Virtually always log all of my IO, keyboard, network, etc during development. There are some excellent tools out there (particularly used in game development) that can record and play back all IO to get you back to a bug.
Don't overdo it, especially of you're logging over a network. I once worked on a net-based video player (think YouTube with video editing). The CEO took it upon himself late one night (honsetly) to add a lot more logging, not just errors, but status of everything, how long things took to load, including creepy ad tracking-type info like what buttons were most popular, etc, etc. Almost immediately the servers which were made to handle tons of bandwidth were getting hit hard by the clients. The logs where hilarious to watch as the clients started reporting "sever taking too long to respond, retrying" errors which quickly escalated into a DOS attack. I moved on from the company soon after, they are now defunct.
It depends on the project, environment, and your style and skill where the sweet spot it.
I'm not going to say something as unlikely that I'm storming out and never coming back, but... I'm certainly going to cut down my reading. Which cuts down my posting, and the discussions are what/. is all about.
I mean, what the hell is going on today? I read Slashdot from a newsreader. Since it's a newsfeed and/. doesn't offer me any way to filter the posts in rss I get a certain amount of cruft. I usually try to read some stories that don't relate directly to my job, but might be interesting or useful. But I think I'm done with that. If idle.slashdot posts are going in the feed, they've just crossed that noise-to-signal ratio where I'm only going to click through to stories that I'm 100% sure are worth my time.
If I want to fuck off I've got the whole rest of the Internet right next door. Slashdot doesn't need to help me, or anyone who reads it to waste time.
And what's with these emails above? I've got two problems with this. One is frankly, should you grow up a little bit, at least in your public face, and not make fun of these poor idiots? Yeah, sure, giggle giggle, it's fun in private, but this is like egging the short bus.
And secondly, doesn't everyone have examples exactly like this? The second person's email is de rigeur for the Internet and provides no amusement. Hasn't anyone ever read an unmoderated forum? And the first is clueless, but I worked at a small web design agency back in the 90's and every phone had AOL's toll free number stuck on a post-it to deal with the many calls we got exactly like that. "Hello, I'd like to buy an internet please." "Sure thing, but we're not a sales office. Please call 1-888-265-8001 and they'll fix you right up."
Or we could have argued with an ignorant person, also known as wresting with a pig.
I think the second email was a valid criticism of the way samzenpus dealt with the first writer.
Most 8 year olds I know are good at making up a pretext for getting what they want.
A: I really wanna shoot down a satellite!
B: You can't do that, it'll make you look like a violent war provocateur.
A: But! But! But! What if it was a dangerous satellite. Like it was going to kill everyone or something. And we had to shoot it down to save everyone! And it had racing stripes and a turret on top and played the A-Team theme song!
B: Well.... Okay, but only if it's a dangerous satellite.
A: Yay! Mom! Dad says we can shoot down a satellite!
For the average consumer they don't need to mention the iPhone. I was at a bar last week and there was a TV on. Several times there was a commercial for a phone that wasn't the iPhone (but had a touch screen motion sensing, etc.) and twice I heard people make comments on the iPhone when they saw the ad. The iPhone has such huge mindshare that even an ad selling something similar to an iPhone is selling the iPhone.
If anyone is going to really compete with the iPhone in the next several years they're going to have to reuse the old Honneywell slogan: The other touchscreen phone.
Then shouldn't we be putting our efforts into getting them to be able to, ya know, feed themselves before we help them be leet haxors (or word processing office temps)?
Someone will respond "Ah, but computers will set them free!"
And I will respond "Gee, thanks Neo, do you have anything to support that other than a bunch of handy wavy digihippy magic? There are a number of reasons we invented agriculture several thousand years before we harnessed electricity."
It's projects like "lets wire the 3rd world" that show just how ignorant and misguided we are. The idea somehow that data will fill the stomach and cure the disease of the world is a Utopian fantasy of people who have never been starving or even met someone who is. Hell, most of us don't even have passports so it's easy to tell the rest of the world what to do when you have never experienced it.
It's irresponsible to dump our toxic waste on poor countries. Just because they were once useful products to us don't mean they're useful to them, and expecting dirt poor countries to clean up messes that we aren't willing to deal with is arrogant and destructive.
Might as well send them all of our uranium waste and asbestos while we're at it.
I don't even have to go outside to get a large number of samples. From where I sit (in downtown San Francisco) I get 47 wireless networks, 4 of them are unencrypted. (and of those I know two require log-ins.) Or 8.5% are open.
All of this is anecdotal. When I visit my family in Rural Middleparts 100% of the wireless networks are open (1 of 1). Meanwhile in Tokyo something close to 5% or more of networks are open. If it's that high, it's impossible to find a place to connect there because everyone has data plans from their phone company.
I'd love to see some research that shows by area the level of openness and quality of encryption.
Much like Hollywood, If you can get a basic concept together and get in front of the right eyes, you're in. Brush off your social skills, practice hobnobbing, chatting people up, and getting into networks. Go to GDC at very least, if not other industry events. Find the companies most likely to publish a game like yours, find out who the producers, CEOs, art directors, etc etc are and... uh... stalk them. Not really, but know what they look like and make and effort to meet them. Avoid the big names like Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, John Carmack, etc. They have tons of groupies to fight through. But there are plenty of influential people at game companies who are anonymous and would be happy to talk shop for a bit at an open bar at a convention, especially of they are flattered by being recognized.
Subscribe to Game Developer magazine and become visible on their forums. I'm only peripherally involved with game development these days, but I still read it cover to cover. It's one of the few industry mags that has useful insightful information from the front lines.
Though it's still a one in a million chance. Frankly, self publish or forget it. There are lots of venues right now (competitions and the like) for a self published game to get exposure. And put the effort into the art and sound. There are tons and tons of shitty looking games in this space, so do everything you can to stand out. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the first impression is visuals and sound, not gameplay. Not everyone who could help you out is going to have a chance to play it, so a compelling screen shot goes a long way. I've seen a games sold on a video mocked up in Premiere and on concept art alone without having a line of code.
Yes, I have given some contradictory advice. But it is a crowded business, getting more crowded every day. There is no one path to success. You need to shotgun it, turn yourself into a blunderbuss loaded with your game. Make it your daily passion and put yourself out there to get noticed. If you don't believe in your idea enough to do that, then file it under "dreams" and move on.
Disclosure: For several years I had the job title "Game Designer" for a small company of industry veterans.
Well since my $100 Radio Shack CD player I bought in 1990 could do it in real-time I'm guessing that the requirements are pretty low. In fact a lot of hardware already uses it.
If you read the rest of the page you find out it's very ingenious and efficient at doing what it does.
While it's certainly not new (it's from 1960) or unused (hell, my phone uses it to read QR codes) I'm sure its something that has been under the radar of a lot of Slashdot readers, so I'll avoid making a "slow news day" snark.
InDesign/PageMaker are designed for short documents, doing layout a single page at a time.
PageMaker is no logner maintained. It's replacement, InDesign is up to version three and, while not perfect, it absolutely has the tools to do long documents. I've used it for my one book and it was better than I could have hoped.
I can't say if it's a good replacement for LaTeX as I've never used it.
Another popular option (some would say the defacto standard) for professional layout of long documents is QuarkXpress which is more mature than InDesign.
I'm sorry, but the Moon is a registered trademark according to the USPTO. Seriously. 9482 entries with "Moon"
Though to be fair most of those are innovative new ways to drop your pants. The rest are owned by the Chattanooga Bakery for it's chocolate dipped gram cracker and marshmallow snacks.
Older machines are often built better than newer faster stuff.
Cite please. All of my equipment has only become more reliable with each generation. (With the exception of my TI 99-4a. No moving parts, would probably survive an EMP.) Unless you're buying bargain basement stuff, but since this stuff is my business and livelihood it would be foolish to do that.
Somewhere I still have a few hard drives that have charts on the case where the manufacturer's QC would write the bad sectors it shipped with in pen. But they stopped doing that for some reason.
Using old hardware is rarely worth it. It uses more power, is a maintenance nightmare (Where can I find a replacement motherboard that will work in this old thing?) and software support has ended, meaning if you don't have drivers you are SOL, you have to live with any bugs that exist (or fix them yourself) and no one develops new applications to run on them. Even if you're running a soft firewall or basic server you're still better off with a new machine simply for the power savings.
The only time when it makes sense is when you have some mission critical software that won't run on anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, to answer the guys question rather than go on for paragraphs about how great a humanitarian you are:
Many of those devices listed have USB charge cables. I bought my Nintndo DS cable for about $5.00. A little Googling shows that the following have USB cable chargers:
Nokia N810, LG Chocolate, And the Sony Ericsson Z310a.
For the mouse, I'd recommend looking at at some of Logitech's non-Bluetooth wireless mice. The one I use goes at leas 6 months of constant use between charges, so I don't need a cable lying around. There is a dongle, but it's teeny (sticks out about 3mm from the slot if you're worried about appearances).
For the Cannon and the Thinkpad adapters, a little pegboard under your desk and you're set.
If a site has a HTTPS form on an HTTP page, just click "submit" with bogus information (or no info). They "error" please enter your info again" page will be HTTPS, which you can then verify the cert, etc.
Or just try adding the "s" to all http pages. Works 9 of 10 times.
Agreed. I was much happier when this stuff was hidden in a dark corner of Slashdot Labs.
If they'd pull idle off the front page and off the newsfeed I'd even be willing to use all of those mod points responsibly instead of throwing them around randomly.
All you get on some embedded systems is serial output. No watch variables or breakpoints, just whatever text you can manage to dump out the serial port.
In addition logging function calls can quickly narrow down -where- to put your breakpoint and what variables to watch.
Yeah, it does really vary. I admit to doing this myself, though when I'm coding with others they despise me for crufting up the code. (Though coding with others often leads to conditions where logs are needed more often anyway...)
During development and testing I log all non looping function calls, object creation/destroy and memory management, though I cull it as development proceeds (or just switch it all off).
This is overkill but I got in the habit when maintaining someone else's code on a Project of Madness. At worst it helps me track down quickly where to start the debugger.
Virtually always log all of my IO, keyboard, network, etc during development. There are some excellent tools out there (particularly used in game development) that can record and play back all IO to get you back to a bug.
Don't overdo it, especially of you're logging over a network. I once worked on a net-based video player (think YouTube with video editing). The CEO took it upon himself late one night (honsetly) to add a lot more logging, not just errors, but status of everything, how long things took to load, including creepy ad tracking-type info like what buttons were most popular, etc, etc. Almost immediately the servers which were made to handle tons of bandwidth were getting hit hard by the clients. The logs where hilarious to watch as the clients started reporting "sever taking too long to respond, retrying" errors which quickly escalated into a DOS attack. I moved on from the company soon after, they are now defunct.
It depends on the project, environment, and your style and skill where the sweet spot it.
Wow.
I'm not going to say something as unlikely that I'm storming out and never coming back, but... I'm certainly going to cut down my reading. Which cuts down my posting, and the discussions are what /. is all about.
I mean, what the hell is going on today? I read Slashdot from a newsreader. Since it's a newsfeed and /. doesn't offer me any way to filter the posts in rss I get a certain amount of cruft. I usually try to read some stories that don't relate directly to my job, but might be interesting or useful. But I think I'm done with that. If idle.slashdot posts are going in the feed, they've just crossed that noise-to-signal ratio where I'm only going to click through to stories that I'm 100% sure are worth my time.
If I want to fuck off I've got the whole rest of the Internet right next door. Slashdot doesn't need to help me, or anyone who reads it to waste time.
And what's with these emails above? I've got two problems with this. One is frankly, should you grow up a little bit, at least in your public face, and not make fun of these poor idiots? Yeah, sure, giggle giggle, it's fun in private, but this is like egging the short bus.
And secondly, doesn't everyone have examples exactly like this? The second person's email is de rigeur for the Internet and provides no amusement. Hasn't anyone ever read an unmoderated forum? And the first is clueless, but I worked at a small web design agency back in the 90's and every phone had AOL's toll free number stuck on a post-it to deal with the many calls we got exactly like that. "Hello, I'd like to buy an internet please." "Sure thing, but we're not a sales office. Please call 1-888-265-8001 and they'll fix you right up."
Or we could have argued with an ignorant person, also known as wresting with a pig.
I think the second email was a valid criticism of the way samzenpus dealt with the first writer.
Most 8 year olds I know are good at making up a pretext for getting what they want.
A: I really wanna shoot down a satellite!
B: You can't do that, it'll make you look like a violent war provocateur.
A: But! But! But! What if it was a dangerous satellite. Like it was going to kill everyone or something. And we had to shoot it down to save everyone! And it had racing stripes and a turret on top and played the A-Team theme song!
B: Well.... Okay, but only if it's a dangerous satellite.
A: Yay! Mom! Dad says we can shoot down a satellite!
For the average consumer they don't need to mention the iPhone. I was at a bar last week and there was a TV on. Several times there was a commercial for a phone that wasn't the iPhone (but had a touch screen motion sensing, etc.) and twice I heard people make comments on the iPhone when they saw the ad. The iPhone has such huge mindshare that even an ad selling something similar to an iPhone is selling the iPhone.
If anyone is going to really compete with the iPhone in the next several years they're going to have to reuse the old Honneywell slogan: The other touchscreen phone.
Then shouldn't we be putting our efforts into getting them to be able to, ya know, feed themselves before we help them be leet haxors (or word processing office temps)?
Someone will respond "Ah, but computers will set them free!"
And I will respond "Gee, thanks Neo, do you have anything to support that other than a bunch of handy wavy digihippy magic? There are a number of reasons we invented agriculture several thousand years before we harnessed electricity."
It's projects like "lets wire the 3rd world" that show just how ignorant and misguided we are. The idea somehow that data will fill the stomach and cure the disease of the world is a Utopian fantasy of people who have never been starving or even met someone who is. Hell, most of us don't even have passports so it's easy to tell the rest of the world what to do when you have never experienced it.
It's irresponsible to dump our toxic waste on poor countries. Just because they were once useful products to us don't mean they're useful to them, and expecting dirt poor countries to clean up messes that we aren't willing to deal with is arrogant and destructive.
Might as well send them all of our uranium waste and asbestos while we're at it.
I don't even have to go outside to get a large number of samples. From where I sit (in downtown San Francisco) I get 47 wireless networks, 4 of them are unencrypted. (and of those I know two require log-ins.) Or 8.5% are open.
All of this is anecdotal. When I visit my family in Rural Middleparts 100% of the wireless networks are open (1 of 1). Meanwhile in Tokyo something close to 5% or more of networks are open. If it's that high, it's impossible to find a place to connect there because everyone has data plans from their phone company.
I'd love to see some research that shows by area the level of openness and quality of encryption.
Much like Hollywood, If you can get a basic concept together and get in front of the right eyes, you're in. Brush off your social skills, practice hobnobbing, chatting people up, and getting into networks. Go to GDC at very least, if not other industry events. Find the companies most likely to publish a game like yours, find out who the producers, CEOs, art directors, etc etc are and ... uh ... stalk them. Not really, but know what they look like and make and effort to meet them. Avoid the big names like Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, John Carmack, etc. They have tons of groupies to fight through. But there are plenty of influential people at game companies who are anonymous and would be happy to talk shop for a bit at an open bar at a convention, especially of they are flattered by being recognized.
Subscribe to Game Developer magazine and become visible on their forums. I'm only peripherally involved with game development these days, but I still read it cover to cover. It's one of the few industry mags that has useful insightful information from the front lines.
Though it's still a one in a million chance. Frankly, self publish or forget it. There are lots of venues right now (competitions and the like) for a self published game to get exposure. And put the effort into the art and sound. There are tons and tons of shitty looking games in this space, so do everything you can to stand out. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the first impression is visuals and sound, not gameplay. Not everyone who could help you out is going to have a chance to play it, so a compelling screen shot goes a long way. I've seen a games sold on a video mocked up in Premiere and on concept art alone without having a line of code.
Yes, I have given some contradictory advice. But it is a crowded business, getting more crowded every day. There is no one path to success. You need to shotgun it, turn yourself into a blunderbuss loaded with your game. Make it your daily passion and put yourself out there to get noticed. If you don't believe in your idea enough to do that, then file it under "dreams" and move on.
Disclosure: For several years I had the job title "Game Designer" for a small company of industry veterans.
How can anyone be a "former" astronaut? I thought once an astronaut, always an astronaut. It's not like they can take going into space away from you.
Well since my $100 Radio Shack CD player I bought in 1990 could do it in real-time I'm guessing that the requirements are pretty low. In fact a lot of hardware already uses it.
If you read the rest of the page you find out it's very ingenious and efficient at doing what it does.
While it's certainly not new (it's from 1960) or unused (hell, my phone uses it to read QR codes) I'm sure its something that has been under the radar of a lot of Slashdot readers, so I'll avoid making a "slow news day" snark.
So what you're saying is that we should be allowed to snoop all we want as long as it's email that is marked as "read".
Hmm.
PageMaker is no logner maintained. It's replacement, InDesign is up to version three and, while not perfect, it absolutely has the tools to do long documents. I've used it for my one book and it was better than I could have hoped.
I can't say if it's a good replacement for LaTeX as I've never used it.
Another popular option (some would say the defacto standard) for professional layout of long documents is QuarkXpress which is more mature than InDesign.
10 years ago if you had said "I'll just Google it" to anyone they would have looked at you like a cuckoo just popped out of your forehead.
If the internet had shown us anything besides porn, it's that any word can be verbed.
Though to be fair most of those are innovative new ways to drop your pants. The rest are owned by the Chattanooga Bakery for it's chocolate dipped gram cracker and marshmallow snacks.
Now I have to get married to find an employee worth trusting?
If only my last client had used their money to pay me what they owed rather than filing a bunch of software patents...
Well they'd still be out of business, but I wouldn't have to wait in line for their bankruptcy handouts.
I don't know, but it isn't the service called Highly Predictive Blacklisting that the article is about.
Apparently news reporting is still good for something. I never would have guessed.
If the OP is going for greater than 5-nines availability they should buy new computers rather than using the dusty boxes they found in basement.
Cite please. All of my equipment has only become more reliable with each generation. (With the exception of my TI 99-4a. No moving parts, would probably survive an EMP.) Unless you're buying bargain basement stuff, but since this stuff is my business and livelihood it would be foolish to do that.
Somewhere I still have a few hard drives that have charts on the case where the manufacturer's QC would write the bad sectors it shipped with in pen. But they stopped doing that for some reason.
Using old hardware is rarely worth it. It uses more power, is a maintenance nightmare (Where can I find a replacement motherboard that will work in this old thing?) and software support has ended, meaning if you don't have drivers you are SOL, you have to live with any bugs that exist (or fix them yourself) and no one develops new applications to run on them. Even if you're running a soft firewall or basic server you're still better off with a new machine simply for the power savings.
The only time when it makes sense is when you have some mission critical software that won't run on anything else.
I purchased a Sony laptop two weeks ago as a home user. It came with Vista installed, but included XP install DVDs at no extra cost.
No it's not pre-installed but it's a hands free 20 minutes install. You would spend that long uninstalling all the crap the vendor put on it anyway.
Speaking of which... Pleasantly Sony also offers the "no preinstalled crap" option for free.
To the owner of the laptop? The hardware cost.
Go and smash someone's laptop, but not so badly the hard drive is compromised.
Are they going to say "Ah, my data is safe. Thank goodness!"?
Or are they going to come after you for the replacement cost of the laptop?
Yeah, the former. While the data on many people's laptops is where they value is, most people don't think that way yet. Obviously.