I don't think I'd set anyone up for doing something they wouldn't already do. A responsible person would take the laptop to the owner/register at the coffee shop and report that they havent seen the owner for a while. A non-honest person would walk in, quickly grab it, and scurry off. Use of hidden cameras could easily show which a person was being- responsible, or malicious.
That's the thing though- from what I've seen (from my friends that have had their laptops stolen and they were able to recover) is that laptop thieves aren't very smart. Just as you or I might if we stole a car, immediately drive it into a faraday cage to prevent it phoning home, and then carefully going over it, swapping VIN numbers with legit-seeming ones, swapping any electronic ignition and keys, making sure there were no tracking devices, removing the license plate and anything immediately identifiable like a bumper sticker - a huge number of car thieves do nothing of the sort.
Some teens that stole one of my friend's Vespa scooters were in their front yard with a chistle and a large hammer trying to bash the ignition column apart, and then all scattered when a cop just drove by on patrol- and easy catch for the cop.
Most of the people who steal laptops first and foremost log into their email and Facebook... and if you have a key logger and a way to capture their face on camera, that's a pretty strong way of identifying who stole it almost instantly.
Recently I had an extra laptop. I had the idea (but didn't execute on it) to go to coffee shops with it, with tracking software installed in the background. I would then leave the laptop frequently while "going to the bathroom". Eventually in theory the laptop would be stolen, I would be able to trace it, track the person down, call the authorities and get it back. One less laptop thief running around (or at least unknown to police) and a fun time.
Unfortunately, I didn't follow through on it.
The most popular answer of the time was a Pentax K-1000. There was a good discussion recommending I go digital (which I did in 2006 with a Nikon D-200). There was a recommendation to use exclusively slide film. Someone else pointed out to start with a lens system and then find the body you need- which I feel is great advice, but not something a beginner will really be able to use.
Also note that the GPL isn't compatible with the iOS store due to restrictions placed on what the user can do with the software (can't copy the binaries and send to a friend). Additionally iCoder hasn't posted/distributed/responded to requests for the code.
The 30% margin that Apple is asking here seems comparable to the retail margin that exists with standard physical retail channels that Microsoft and Adobe both participate heavily in. Add in that Apple is taking care of the servers/bandwidth, credit card transactions and provides a place for the apps to be found and it seems to be a good place for Adobe and Microsoft to have their software. Additionally, I have to wonder if Apple is placing any anti-piracy measures in there on top of whatever the developers currently have in place. In short, I think Adobe and Microsoft would be unsure to not participate in their App Store, otherwise they have the possibility of The Gimp being the #1 image editor over Photoshop in the rankings.
Have you been on CNN.com lately? Today one of their front page stories was about Bristol Palin being a role model. That isn't journalism either. At least Wikileaks presents new facts and research.
Ten years ago I had a 1.5mb cable modem from Comcast (actually I think I got my first cable line in 1998).
Today I have a 20mb cable modem from RCN (which costs nearly 2x as much as the 1.5mb line I used to have).
Each of these were the fastest consumer lines available to me.
100mb in 10 years sounds rather unambitious really. Consumer usage (I'm assuming) is probably growing at a rate akin to Moore's Law. There would be 6 and 2/3 cycles of Moore's Law in 10 years. My 20mb line should turn into a 1300mb line in 10 years at this rate and consumer usage will probably meet the demands. Unfortunately by this logic I should have a 96mb line available already, which isn't true at least where I live
"Not cookie based, not IP based, but stop it you creeps angry phone call based. It ain't a pure useful service, and it ain't a pure privacy invasion. But I sure wish they'd go away and have had the decency to never start up in the first place."
Please tell me that the writer is either a non-native English speaker, or they didn't read that twice?
I think they are either trying to be overly ambitious and unrealistic with themselves, or knowingly going to the press with absurdly low pricing to get headlines and discussion (like this) happening- but when/if it comes to light the price will be 2-3x of this. OLPC has got some lofty goals, but I don't know if they fully saw netbooks coming (competition) and have obviously before have came out with announcements of unrealistic pricing ($100 laptop) and when they released they were 2x that.
We developed our initial product (imVOX... http://imvox.com/ in.NET for Windows, but then we wanted to move over to OS X and Linux as well. Instead of rewriting completely in Java or C (which we didn't have the time or money for on our schedule), we thought to use Mono. Otherwise creating 3 separate code bases to maintain and debug with a small team, Mono seemed to do the trick (for now).
By no means do we claim that.NET/Mono or C# is the best thing in the world- but similar to using Rails, we needed rapid application development to get a shippable product out the door in order to raise more money. We didn't have time to write it in C on 3 platforms from the first day. I think this makes sense. When someone loads us up with cash- we'll probably re-write in C++ or something, but not today.
I'll second many parts of this review. I'm feeling that more and more of the 'review' websites were paid off to give perfect reviews of this game.
First, there's the bugs. The camera is nothing but annoying. I started as an elf and went on a rampage through his manor. My character was screaming half the time about killing humans, even when he was killing guard dogs. Didn't make sense. There's more little things like this throughout.
The "this can be played like four games" thing that they were spinning the other week is totally bunk. It doesn't come off as that- it seems instead scattered and inconsistent.
The graphics aren't bad, but they certainly aren't good. The way they just blurred the backgrounds (which you can sometimes see in focus around people's hair and stuff) instead of doing real DoF like most modern games. Kinda a cheap way out. The faces generally look pretty good, but the scenery really isn't anything amazing.
This game is NOT Baldur's Gate. The AD&D rules held Baldur's Gate together really well. It made it a little unshocking when you'd get a new spell, but it was a comfort that I enjoyed. It also made it so that things had real numbers behind them. The Talent Tree sucks and is hard to tell what in the world I should do. Also- unlike AD&D your stats constantly increase per level. I initially assumed that they'd stay firm like AD&D or at least close like Fallout 3.
While it might have made the dialogue even longer, I really voice they had voiced the PC's parts. Otherwise you seem mute and without character or life. A lot of the characters are supposed to be 'likable', but I didn't find that to be true at all. There is no Minsk and I constantly disagree with the actions of my character, let alone the party.
I definitely miss finding 'good stuff' in the chests, and the battles just didn't seem tactical enough. I wish I could make it actually stop after each turn like Baldur's Gate for those battles that MUST be executed perfectly. Feels much more 'hack and slash'. It being a game that's born out of AD&D (somewhat) I was also disturbed at first with the death system. I guess it does stop just me resurrecting people or carrying pheonix downs or similar.
Not a bad game, but some of these 'pro reviewers' were definitely paid off. Not perfect. BG:2 was perfect. This is more like a 7/10.
I learned to type before I could handwrite, and to this day doing anything more than writing a few notes on a whiteboard or filling out a 1-page form is difficult and my hand cramps up, and my writing is almost always horrid.
I am 26. My father got a C64 right before I turned two. I wanted to start playing with it immediately, but of course to do so often required some very basic typing (LOAD * 8,1). My father also worked at a company that was fairly early in having everyone with a terminal on their desk with an AS/400 style mainframe system. I remember when I was 4 having him show me how to send network messages to his terminal (yes, I was basically IM'ing my dad from another room in 1986 when I was 4). I clearly remember running to another room asking him how to spell eat, because I wanted to type "Go Eat Worms" but at first typed "Go Ate Worms" and it didn't look quite right to me. We got our first x86 system when I was 6, and by this time I was already very proficient typing and could probably get 30-45wpm depending on if I knew how to spell the words or not (hey, I was 6!).
Consequently, I barely ever learned to write. Yea, I forced myself to do some of it in grade-school because I had to, but it was never neat and I always much preferred to type things when I could. Learning cursive seemed backwards. Why weren't the other students being taught how to type at the time instead? It didn't make sense to me. In high school I started carrying a laptop frequently to class- running Zipslack.
To this day I hate writing by hand. The only real downside is that I'm starting to feel the pain from typing for ~24 years and my wrists and thumbs and hurting.
I suppose 15 years ago version/source control wasn't 'quite' as popular for all projects. Today with Git, it would be hard to lose all of the code as every checkout has the complete codebase.
Umm, I'm wondering if Apple is going to just mega-halfass what's needed to Jailbreak the firmware over there. I mean SOMEONE is going to figure out how to enable it. "opps" Apple can just blame it on "hackers"
It's not like we haven't jailbroken every version of the OS over here within days of its release. Just disable the wifi in firmware. Someone will hack it.
SOME of the bugs were fixed, but unfortunately it will still a super buggy and sometimes unstable game. I'm glad to see them releasing it, but of course source would have been nice (so we could fix the bugs on it!)
I loved this game at the same time. It was a little more hardcore than Oblivion in many ways. Big stuff would just kill you (no equal leveling) and if you were vampire you lasted pretty much NO time during the day. Climbing everything, as buggy as it was- was pretty awesome too. Some stuff however was just outright glitched. It was the type of thing that drove me initially CRAZY when I was 11 playing it, because I'd spend hours just walking sometimes to 'see what was out there' on some islands or whatever. This game proved that bigger isnt' always better, because its impossible to populate everything with interesting stuff.
I hope that's not the case. I'm living in the house (soon) with one of the guys running the Boston group:)
But the workshop in the basement is mainly just for woodworking and electronics- at least so far.
The concept isn't to doing ground-breaking research per-se, but to bring everyday biology to the masses. Rarely are people doing research in universities or with biotech firms interested in teaching and making available techniques cheaply to the masses and making it something that everyone can access. Also a severe leaning toward open source isn't common with 'big bio' research either.
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I don't think I'd set anyone up for doing something they wouldn't already do. A responsible person would take the laptop to the owner/register at the coffee shop and report that they havent seen the owner for a while. A non-honest person would walk in, quickly grab it, and scurry off. Use of hidden cameras could easily show which a person was being- responsible, or malicious.
That's the thing though- from what I've seen (from my friends that have had their laptops stolen and they were able to recover) is that laptop thieves aren't very smart. Just as you or I might if we stole a car, immediately drive it into a faraday cage to prevent it phoning home, and then carefully going over it, swapping VIN numbers with legit-seeming ones, swapping any electronic ignition and keys, making sure there were no tracking devices, removing the license plate and anything immediately identifiable like a bumper sticker - a huge number of car thieves do nothing of the sort.
Some teens that stole one of my friend's Vespa scooters were in their front yard with a chistle and a large hammer trying to bash the ignition column apart, and then all scattered when a cop just drove by on patrol- and easy catch for the cop.
Most of the people who steal laptops first and foremost log into their email and Facebook... and if you have a key logger and a way to capture their face on camera, that's a pretty strong way of identifying who stole it almost instantly.
Recently I had an extra laptop. I had the idea (but didn't execute on it) to go to coffee shops with it, with tracking software installed in the background. I would then leave the laptop frequently while "going to the bathroom". Eventually in theory the laptop would be stolen, I would be able to trace it, track the person down, call the authorities and get it back. One less laptop thief running around (or at least unknown to police) and a fun time. Unfortunately, I didn't follow through on it.
I asked this question many moons ago, and at that point was considering only a 35mm film camera.
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/03/12/09/216255/best-35mm-slr-camera-for-beginners
The most popular answer of the time was a Pentax K-1000. There was a good discussion recommending I go digital (which I did in 2006 with a Nikon D-200). There was a recommendation to use exclusively slide film. Someone else pointed out to start with a lens system and then find the body you need- which I feel is great advice, but not something a beginner will really be able to use.
And companies. Don't forget companies! They have the same rights as people too!
Also note that the GPL isn't compatible with the iOS store due to restrictions placed on what the user can do with the software (can't copy the binaries and send to a friend). Additionally iCoder hasn't posted/distributed/responded to requests for the code.
The 30% margin that Apple is asking here seems comparable to the retail margin that exists with standard physical retail channels that Microsoft and Adobe both participate heavily in. Add in that Apple is taking care of the servers/bandwidth, credit card transactions and provides a place for the apps to be found and it seems to be a good place for Adobe and Microsoft to have their software. Additionally, I have to wonder if Apple is placing any anti-piracy measures in there on top of whatever the developers currently have in place. In short, I think Adobe and Microsoft would be unsure to not participate in their App Store, otherwise they have the possibility of The Gimp being the #1 image editor over Photoshop in the rankings.
Have you been on CNN.com lately? Today one of their front page stories was about Bristol Palin being a role model. That isn't journalism either. At least Wikileaks presents new facts and research.
Yea, Roland has had good instruments and samples for quite some time and when arranged properly they totally do the trick.
I guess it is no longer Apple Computers, but is just Apple Inc now.
Ten years ago I had a 1.5mb cable modem from Comcast (actually I think I got my first cable line in 1998).
Today I have a 20mb cable modem from RCN (which costs nearly 2x as much as the 1.5mb line I used to have).
Each of these were the fastest consumer lines available to me.
100mb in 10 years sounds rather unambitious really. Consumer usage (I'm assuming) is probably growing at a rate akin to Moore's Law. There would be 6 and 2/3 cycles of Moore's Law in 10 years. My 20mb line should turn into a 1300mb line in 10 years at this rate and consumer usage will probably meet the demands.
Unfortunately by this logic I should have a 96mb line available already, which isn't true at least where I live
"Not cookie based, not IP based, but stop it you creeps angry phone call based. It ain't a pure useful service, and it ain't a pure privacy invasion. But I sure wish they'd go away and have had the decency to never start up in the first place."
Please tell me that the writer is either a non-native English speaker, or they didn't read that twice?
No joke. I'd call my friend that's trying to cross the border and let them know they couldn't be seen. Duh.
I think they are either trying to be overly ambitious and unrealistic with themselves, or knowingly going to the press with absurdly low pricing to get headlines and discussion (like this) happening- but when/if it comes to light the price will be 2-3x of this. OLPC has got some lofty goals, but I don't know if they fully saw netbooks coming (competition) and have obviously before have came out with announcements of unrealistic pricing ($100 laptop) and when they released they were 2x that.
We developed our initial product (imVOX... http://imvox.com/ in .NET for Windows, but then we wanted to move over to OS X and Linux as well. Instead of rewriting completely in Java or C (which we didn't have the time or money for on our schedule), we thought to use Mono. Otherwise creating 3 separate code bases to maintain and debug with a small team, Mono seemed to do the trick (for now).
By no means do we claim that .NET/Mono or C# is the best thing in the world- but similar to using Rails, we needed rapid application development to get a shippable product out the door in order to raise more money. We didn't have time to write it in C on 3 platforms from the first day. I think this makes sense. When someone loads us up with cash- we'll probably re-write in C++ or something, but not today.
I'll second many parts of this review. I'm feeling that more and more of the 'review' websites were paid off to give perfect reviews of this game.
First, there's the bugs. The camera is nothing but annoying. I started as an elf and went on a rampage through his manor. My character was screaming half the time about killing humans, even when he was killing guard dogs. Didn't make sense. There's more little things like this throughout.
The "this can be played like four games" thing that they were spinning the other week is totally bunk. It doesn't come off as that- it seems instead scattered and inconsistent.
The graphics aren't bad, but they certainly aren't good. The way they just blurred the backgrounds (which you can sometimes see in focus around people's hair and stuff) instead of doing real DoF like most modern games. Kinda a cheap way out. The faces generally look pretty good, but the scenery really isn't anything amazing.
This game is NOT Baldur's Gate. The AD&D rules held Baldur's Gate together really well. It made it a little unshocking when you'd get a new spell, but it was a comfort that I enjoyed. It also made it so that things had real numbers behind them. The Talent Tree sucks and is hard to tell what in the world I should do. Also- unlike AD&D your stats constantly increase per level. I initially assumed that they'd stay firm like AD&D or at least close like Fallout 3.
While it might have made the dialogue even longer, I really voice they had voiced the PC's parts. Otherwise you seem mute and without character or life. A lot of the characters are supposed to be 'likable', but I didn't find that to be true at all. There is no Minsk and I constantly disagree with the actions of my character, let alone the party.
I definitely miss finding 'good stuff' in the chests, and the battles just didn't seem tactical enough. I wish I could make it actually stop after each turn like Baldur's Gate for those battles that MUST be executed perfectly. Feels much more 'hack and slash'. It being a game that's born out of AD&D (somewhat) I was also disturbed at first with the death system. I guess it does stop just me resurrecting people or carrying pheonix downs or similar.
Not a bad game, but some of these 'pro reviewers' were definitely paid off. Not perfect. BG:2 was perfect. This is more like a 7/10.
I learned to type before I could handwrite, and to this day doing anything more than writing a few notes on a whiteboard or filling out a 1-page form is difficult and my hand cramps up, and my writing is almost always horrid.
I am 26. My father got a C64 right before I turned two. I wanted to start playing with it immediately, but of course to do so often required some very basic typing (LOAD * 8,1). My father also worked at a company that was fairly early in having everyone with a terminal on their desk with an AS/400 style mainframe system. I remember when I was 4 having him show me how to send network messages to his terminal (yes, I was basically IM'ing my dad from another room in 1986 when I was 4). I clearly remember running to another room asking him how to spell eat, because I wanted to type "Go Eat Worms" but at first typed "Go Ate Worms" and it didn't look quite right to me. We got our first x86 system when I was 6, and by this time I was already very proficient typing and could probably get 30-45wpm depending on if I knew how to spell the words or not (hey, I was 6!).
Consequently, I barely ever learned to write. Yea, I forced myself to do some of it in grade-school because I had to, but it was never neat and I always much preferred to type things when I could. Learning cursive seemed backwards. Why weren't the other students being taught how to type at the time instead? It didn't make sense to me. In high school I started carrying a laptop frequently to class- running Zipslack.
To this day I hate writing by hand. The only real downside is that I'm starting to feel the pain from typing for ~24 years and my wrists and thumbs and hurting.
I suppose 15 years ago version/source control wasn't 'quite' as popular for all projects. Today with Git, it would be hard to lose all of the code as every checkout has the complete codebase.
Umm, I'm wondering if Apple is going to just mega-halfass what's needed to Jailbreak the firmware over there. I mean SOMEONE is going to figure out how to enable it. "opps" Apple can just blame it on "hackers"
It's not like we haven't jailbroken every version of the OS over here within days of its release. Just disable the wifi in firmware. Someone will hack it.
SOME of the bugs were fixed, but unfortunately it will still a super buggy and sometimes unstable game. I'm glad to see them releasing it, but of course source would have been nice (so we could fix the bugs on it!) I loved this game at the same time. It was a little more hardcore than Oblivion in many ways. Big stuff would just kill you (no equal leveling) and if you were vampire you lasted pretty much NO time during the day. Climbing everything, as buggy as it was- was pretty awesome too. Some stuff however was just outright glitched. It was the type of thing that drove me initially CRAZY when I was 11 playing it, because I'd spend hours just walking sometimes to 'see what was out there' on some islands or whatever. This game proved that bigger isnt' always better, because its impossible to populate everything with interesting stuff.
Sorry, had to ask. The Linux world always bitches when something ignores them. Just seemed right.
I hope that's not the case. I'm living in the house (soon) with one of the guys running the Boston group :)
But the workshop in the basement is mainly just for woodworking and electronics- at least so far.
The concept isn't to doing ground-breaking research per-se, but to bring everyday biology to the masses. Rarely are people doing research in universities or with biotech firms interested in teaching and making available techniques cheaply to the masses and making it something that everyone can access. Also a severe leaning toward open source isn't common with 'big bio' research either.
We must ban anti-cancer drugs. The terrorists might use them. Terrorists could hurt children. Think of the children!
Why have there been so few mechanical turk jokes?