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Comment GAUNTLET keyboard (Score 1) 147

Get in touch with these guys: http://gauntletkeyboard.com/
They are working on a VERY EARLY prototype of a keyboard glove that looks very promising if you can look past the ugliness of the prototype.
Trying to get funding... http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1099959-help-me-get-10000-from-best-buy-for-my-invention/page__fromsearch__1
Why they don't just stick it on Kickstarter, I have no idea, but it is something I can across which could be of some use, I'm sure they would need a good test use case to show off it's benefits if this thing works.

Comment Is this a genuine case? (Score 1, Troll) 225

He claims that "MPlayerX will lose so many features if it adopted Sandboxing, it could not load the subtitle automatically, it could not play the next episode for you automatically, ". I dont see how a Sandbox would prevent these features from working, can anyone verify this to be true?

Comment Pipe dream? (Score 0) 66

There are already established players in the market, both the 'Premium' ISP iiNet and the 'Low cost' ISP Exetel both offer better priced plans.

"No ISP" (which really is an ISP because they will still have to handle billing, backhaul network & so on) are more expensive and without any of the extras or support of the other players.

As a tech who would be interested in helping my clients get on board with NBN (as I already do with ADSL), I would much rather resell an established player with full support than one that will not help me if there is a problem.

So far Exetel have been very good to me and my clients, they are not scared to pass your issue on to an engineer if it needs it and get it fixed in a matter of hours. Most of their staff are outsourced in Sri Lanka so you are not going to beat them on staffing costs. And damn, I don't know how they do it, but those Sri Lankans do a better job than most Australian based call centres. I'm not talking about one off cases of good service either, I have called dozens of times for different clients, and they are always good.

Submission + - Rapid website/database devlepment

Stoffeman writes: I’m planning on building a web based trading platform. The main users of the system will be suppliers as well as buyers of goods and the website a sort of platform for these to interact.

In the system’s first phase I only need to create a working demo to raise early capital for my company.

What would be the easiest way to get started. Microsoft Access / Sharepoint seems relatively easy but I want to know what options there are out there. I want a fully workable demo solution within days.

I have some old programming skills and could learn enough to set up system, but I don’t have the time to do it as I need to focus my time on the overall functionality and the general business model. The rest needs to be “quick and dirty” in the first phase to allow me to litmus-test my idea with potential customers and investors, yet it should contain a good amount of decent functionality. The demo system will not be used other than for demoing.

What would be the easiest and fastest route to take?

Comment It is more about Politics than Technical ability (Score 1) 515

You will find that it is more about the Office Politics than the technical ability. People who don't know ANYTHING but just rely on others will ahead further than you. You will learn that you need to play the game in making your boss look good, but not too good that they won't let you advance because they don't want to lose you, if you want to achieve advancement within the organisation you work for.

Comment You are over-thinking this (Score 1) 284

You are just running one restaurant, you don't need an over-technical solution.
Let's get realistic here. The best fall-over for a restaurant is that you need to train your staff how to use a manual (pen & paper) system in case there is any technical fault. The skills to use a manual ordering system in a restaurant is very important. Have a calculator at each register and ensure that there is a way that the tills can be opened by the person in charge at the time without the application. Your security system to watch over the tills should be independent from the servers used for your register software so that the tills don't become free reign if the server goes down.

If you really insist on redundancy from a technical level, use two physically separate servers. No Dual-PSUs, etc. this won't protect you from all faults. Only the HDD should be in a RAID mirror (not just because they are unreliable, but because it is a lot of work to rebuild a server from scratch if a drive fails), and only two servers (geographically separate if possible) will truly protect you for whatever goes wrong, so instead of buying a really expensive $10,000 server that has al the redundancies built in, buy 2x $1,500 servers (total $3000) that don't have this but are both powerful enough to do the job.

Then set up whatever fallover however you like and depending on your application requirements. Maybe the register application doesn't playa nice with SQL clustering or having two instances installed on the same network - I don't know your application. Maybe you have a parallel install of everything on the second server, and the SQL database mirrors/replicates every half an hour. Maybe you use VMware fallovers. Maybe you have a Cold Server (Microsoft don't charge license fees for a Cold Server so this will only cost you for hardware) and if the server goes down you have a set procedure for your staff that if they have a problem, for them to follow instructions to switch off the Main server and switch on the Cold server.

If you have the Main server constantly backing up the SQL Database to an external HDD, you could also include in your instructions to pull out plug with the "X" sticker from the front of the case and plug it into the box in the other room where it has an "X" on the similar looking box (really dumb it down for them) and then press "Y" (the power button) and have a script setup that automatically restores the database from the external drive when the server loads. The scripting for this would be so basic it would take you 5 minutes of looking up how to make a job in task scheduler, how to make a script run at startup and how to use the SQLCMD command to backup/restore a database.

Sure there would be manual steps and there is a small amount of downtime during those manual steps, but you will save thousands in not having to relicense Windows Server, SQL Server (if you are not using Express) and CALs.

relinquishing my mod points for this post.

Comment It was only a matter of time (Score 3, Interesting) 221

I mean really, how idiotic do these companies need to be to make a system where the full Credit Card information is TRANSMITTED over the air with no authentication. Even a token would be more acceptable.

The Credit Card system is quite happy to take a loss on all the money they have to pay back with protection guarantees when consumers get scammed, instead of actually tackling the problem by inventing a SECURE SYSTEM that is impervious to skimming methods.

This app does not add any additional functionality that scammers don't already have, but a good highlight of how damn simple it is to do, while Mastercard/Visa and the financial institutions who use them do nothing.

Comment Re:"Medical experiments" (Score 3, Interesting) 130

Exactly what I was going to post.

In all fairness, it probably has already been done by the Americans and Russians, whether as a secret experiment or a "side experiment" done by the scientists themselves.

I mean, how many people would go all the way to space and not do it given the chance, it would be like doubling what is already the most amazing experience of your life.

I hope an adult entertainment company buys a couple of tickets on a private space flight, for the enjoyment of the rest of us who will never get the chance but are curious to see.

Comment Re:So this now means that MU can go back online? (Score 1) 203

Megaupload's assets are frozen, but Carpathia might be willing to take it online for free to allow Megaupload to retrieve their data, and thus once Megaupload have secured a copy, the servers and data on Carpathia's end can be destroyed and thus Carpathia can put an end their losses.

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