Comment Re: A rare item. (Score 1) 507
Surely a PCMCIA card providing USB ports or a CD-ROM would be easier than using floppies.
Submission + - SPAM: Hydrogen fuel cell to charge your mobile phone
dreemteem writes: "Taiwanese researchers have built a new mobile-phone recharger based on fuel cell technology they say will cost little once manufacturing partners are on board.
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Heart patient with no pulse (straitstimes.com) 2
laggist writes: "Heart patient in Singapore implanted with artificial heart that pumps blood continuously, allowing her to be very alive without a pulse.
From the article: '.. the petite Madam Salina, who suffers from end-stage heart failure, would not have been able to use the older and bulkier models because they can only be implanted in patients 1.7m or taller. The 30-year-old administrative assistant is the first recipient here to get a new artificial heart that pumps blood continuously, the reason why there are no beats on her wrist.'"
From the article: '.. the petite Madam Salina, who suffers from end-stage heart failure, would not have been able to use the older and bulkier models because they can only be implanted in patients 1.7m or taller. The 30-year-old administrative assistant is the first recipient here to get a new artificial heart that pumps blood continuously, the reason why there are no beats on her wrist.'"
Submission + - iKraft iBackflips on iSnack
lordlod writes: "After just five days of non-stop ridicule iKraft has decided that the bastard child of combining Apple and O'Reilly's marketing might not actually work for a spread. So iSnack 2.0 is being retired.
Not that they have any better ideas themselves, another competition will be run allowing people to vote on the least atrocious name. Fortunately they have made enough product with the iSnack 2.0 name that we get to mock them for months until it sells out."
Not that they have any better ideas themselves, another competition will be run allowing people to vote on the least atrocious name. Fortunately they have made enough product with the iSnack 2.0 name that we get to mock them for months until it sells out."
Submission + - "Telepresence" robots already in hospitals and bus (hplusmagazine.com)
destinyland writes: "31 Michigan hospitals are already treating stroke patients using real "robot surrogates" — the InTouch Health RP-7i, controlled remotely by a doctor using a joystick. The "telepresence" robot helps them administer a crucial treatment protocol 20 times more often than the national average, and it's part of a growing trend. NextGen research predicts the number of robots will triple to 25 million units within the next six years, with a larger share being these "telepresence" bots. One motion-detection robot can even email photographs of intruders, while a robotics CEO is already using a surrogate to eliminate his need to commute. Instead, "his robot sits next to his desk at the office, available for anyone to approach and ask him a question.""
Submission + - Guns Allowed in Arizona Bars Starting Wednesday (foxnews.com)
suraj.sun writes: "Under the law, backed by the National Rifle Association, the 138,350 people with concealed-weapons permits in Arizona will be allowed to bring their guns into bars and restaurants that haven't posted signs banning them.
Those carrying the weapons aren't allowed to drink alcohol.
The new law has Shields and other bar owners and workers wondering: What's going to happen when guns are allowed in an atmosphere filled with booze and people with impaired judgment?
"Somebody can pull the trigger, then a bullet comes out, and people get hurt and killed," said Brad Henrich, owner of Shady's, a popular neighborhood bar that sees occasional minor scuffles. "The idea of anyone coming in with guns in a place that serves alcohol just seems ludicrous."
An 8 1/2-by-11-inch sign that says "No Firearms Allowed" and shows a red slash over a gun now hangs next to Henrich's liquor license. If a bar owner does not post such a state-approved sign, people with concealed weapons are allowed in with their guns.
Foxnews : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,557503,00.html"
Those carrying the weapons aren't allowed to drink alcohol.
The new law has Shields and other bar owners and workers wondering: What's going to happen when guns are allowed in an atmosphere filled with booze and people with impaired judgment?
"Somebody can pull the trigger, then a bullet comes out, and people get hurt and killed," said Brad Henrich, owner of Shady's, a popular neighborhood bar that sees occasional minor scuffles. "The idea of anyone coming in with guns in a place that serves alcohol just seems ludicrous."
An 8 1/2-by-11-inch sign that says "No Firearms Allowed" and shows a red slash over a gun now hangs next to Henrich's liquor license. If a bar owner does not post such a state-approved sign, people with concealed weapons are allowed in with their guns.
Foxnews : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,557503,00.html"
Submission + - Amazon's cloud: 50,000 VMs a day and counting? (cio.com.au)
Dan Jones writes: This story may interest the Slashdot crowd. It has been estimated that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is provisioning some 50,000 EC2 server instances per day or more than 18 million per year. But that may not be entirely accurate. A single Amazon Machine Image (the virtual machine) may be launched multiple times as an EC2 instance, thereby indicating that the true number of individual Amazon servers may be lower, perhaps much lower, than 50,000 per day. So, even if it's out by a factor of 10 that's still 1.8 million VMs per year. Is that sustainable? By way of comparison, In February of this year, Amazon announced S3 contained 40 billion objects. By August, the number was 64 billion objects. This indicates a growth of 4 billion S3 objects per month, giving a daily growth total of about 133 million new S3 objects per day. How big can the cloud get before it starts raining?
Submission + - Google Sidewiki impacts your Customer Satisfaction (satisfactionsecrets.com)
adele2009 writes: "Google's new universal commenting system called Sidewiki is about to cause a major change to customer satisfaction, marketing, product launches, and public relations. Any company or organization that has a web site is impacted. Every organization will need to develop a social media strategy and strengthen their customer satisfaction strategy."
Comment PyGoWave (Score 3, Informative) 132
If you're itching to try out Google Wave like I am, a bunch of developers have already launched their own wave server implementation. A combination of Python + Django Framework + Javascript. You can create an account and have a play around, or you can download and run your own. Note that its still in early alpha state.
Submission + - Identity theft is not a crime in Canada (www.cbc.ca)
innocent_white_lamb writes: "What if someone racks up thousands of dollars of bills in your name and you don't find out until a year later when the collection agencies start hounding you?
If you live in Canada, you're out of luck. Canadian criminal laws don't apply to identity theft discovered after one year has gone by, even if you have the perp's confession on tape.
This is the story of one guy who is on the hook for thousands of dollars after leaving his id somewhere that an ex-roommate could find it a few years ago. He can't even get information from the credit card and collection agencies about what he may or may not owe them, because his (real) phone number and address differs from what that they have on file from the fraudster.
The word "screwed" comes to mind.
He has paid $5000 toward the fraudster's debt so far, but owes at least $15,000 more and that's just the amount that he knows about so far.
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/09/28/bc-identitytheft.html"
If you live in Canada, you're out of luck. Canadian criminal laws don't apply to identity theft discovered after one year has gone by, even if you have the perp's confession on tape.
This is the story of one guy who is on the hook for thousands of dollars after leaving his id somewhere that an ex-roommate could find it a few years ago. He can't even get information from the credit card and collection agencies about what he may or may not owe them, because his (real) phone number and address differs from what that they have on file from the fraudster.
The word "screwed" comes to mind.
He has paid $5000 toward the fraudster's debt so far, but owes at least $15,000 more and that's just the amount that he knows about so far.
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/09/28/bc-identitytheft.html"
Submission + - Leaked: Sony's Motion Control Plans, PS2 Emulator
daggar phoenix writes: "A leaked document appearing to contain confidential notes from an August 5 meeting between Sega and Sony Computer Entertainment America may have revealed a release date for the platform holderâ(TM)s motion sensing controller, as well as plans to launch a PS2 emulator for PS3."
Submission + - SPAM: Android Application Development
stoolpigeon writes: "Google's mobile OS Android has received plenty of press. As with a lot of Google products, there was much anticipation before any devices were even available. Now a number of phones are available, with many more coming out world-wide in the near future. Part of the lure of Android is the openness of the platform and the freely available tools for development. The SDK and accompanying Eclipse plug-in give the would be creator of the next great Android application everything they need to make their idea reality. The bar to entry in the official Google Android Marketplace is very low and it doesn't seem to be much of a stretch to predict that the number of developers working on Android is only going to grow. As with any hot technology the number of books will grow as well and O'Reilly's Android Application Development has jumped into the fray, promising to help budding Android developers what they need to get started.
The book begins with a brief introduction to Android followed by detailed instructions on procuring and installing the Android SDK. Space is given to Windows, Linux and Mac. The install is relatively simple on all three platforms, extra information is provided for Ubuntu users but no others distributions. Extra care is taken to help Windows users with items they may not use regularly, such as environmental variables. This is all pretty basic and gives the book very much of a 'for beginners' feel. Before I had the book I had already installed the SDK and Eclipse plug-in on Windows, Ubuntu and Fedora without any issues beyond getting a current version of Eclipse for the Ubuntu machine. The version I already had from the Ubuntu repositories was not able to run the plug-in. It's a short chapter and if someone really struggles with it, they probably should shift their focus from learning to code to learning how to use their platform of choice. This does set the tone though, that this is a book for those who are very new to development.
Chapter two steps the reader through the ever present "Hello World" and gives an overview of the structure of Android applications. Chapter three introduces the example application that will be used for the rest of the book. There is a lot of repetition here on just what directories and files make up the guts of an Android program. I was quickly worried ( the first four chapters are only fifty-six pages in ) that maybe four authors had been too many. The repetition made it feel as if separate work had been combined without enough editing to remove what was redundant. Fortunately this got better, though there was still a strange proclivity to list files while referring to earlier chapters that explained their purpose. This would be helpful to anyone jumping right into the middle of the book, but the index also serves the same purpose and saves space for more valuable content, as opposed to explaining the purpose of AndroidManifest.xml repeatedly.
Once I moved into the fifth chapter, Debugging Android Applications and the following chapters, things got better. The pace picked up and the repetition dropped off for the most part. The book did not become incredibly difficult, trying to be everything to everyone, but did maintain an introductory style. At the same time the example application makes use of many Android features that are likely to be used by developers. How to set up and use tools was covered step by step. This is very nice but did cause some issues for the authors due to the rapid pace of development on Android. A visit to the book's errata page will show that many readers struggled with changes to the SKD tool set that came out very shortly after the book. The authors say that future editions will fix these issues, but this creates a dilemma for that reader needing introductory level materials. They are more dependent upon the book than a more advanced user and so these issues can be very trying. Based on the responses to the errata posts it became trying for the authors as well. This isn't a knock on the book itself but rather a limitation of the delivery method.
Once the reader is digging down into the example application the team approach to writing the book does become an asset. The authors bring a number of skills to the table that closely resemble the players that would be necessary to a team developing a real-world application. The reader is now being pulled into an example that benefits from the knowledge of each and does a good job of exploring the range of options an Android developer has available. This includes core functionality, UI options and how to best take advantage of the platform while at the same time taking performance and user expectations into account. I felt like I was getting something beyond the excellent documentation provided by Google. This is where I felt the book stood strongest.
Working with a single, large example application was a move that probably helped move things along on writing the book and I think it's an interesting approach. The problem is of course, that means that this example must be right. Right for the task and technically correct. Small issues in the code are inevitable but now their impact is book wide. The changes to the platform just made it just that much more difficult to sort out. On the whole I still found this to be a better approach primarily due to the fact that it gives the features highlighted a better sense of context. Stand-alone examples are often good at highlighting technical features but completely ignore the issues necessary to using the feature in a larger piece of code.
I'm a fan of O'Reilly books. Interestingly enough this doesn't mean that I'll gloss over issues with what they produce. The result is actually the inverse, in that I go into all their titles with a high level of expectation with regards to quality on every level. This may mean that though I strive to be neutral when I look at a book, I'm probably a little tougher on O'Reilly titles. This made my rough start with Android Application Development a bit jarring. The repetition and what felt like sloppy editing are not what I expect. I was quickly given a sense that this book may have been rushed to publication a little sooner than it should have been. As I moved deeper into the book, things improved and while I think there were still editorial issues, things did seem to smooth out to some degree.
There is an interesting tension that exists purely do to the nature of print books. I don't like to bring up print versus electronic in reviews as I don't think it is on topic, but here it is unavoidable. The book is aimed at people that need a little more hand holding and help getting going. It does a good job of providing step by step instructions, the problem is that some of those steps have changed. I don't think anything in the code itself needs to be different, but the tools have changed enough that getting the code to run in a development environment against the new SDK is different. That means that portion of the book is no longer of as much value without going to other sources to find the new steps.
That said, warts and all I found this to be a helpful way to get my feet wet with Android. I really look forward to future versions as I think just a little more time and work will move this from my 'good' list to my 'great' list. Making things a little tighter and cleaning up the few typos and errors would certainly make this an 8 instead of an 7, which is really substantial in my mind. I'm no super developer and I need stuff like this, that can take things a little more slowly and make it all clear. I think this guide is great for those of us in that category as long as the reader is o.k. with hopping to external sources for the information they'll need to get the newer tool set working.
Title: Android Application Development
Author: Rick Rogers, John Lombardo, Zigurd Mednieks, Blake Meike
Publisher: O'Reilly Media Inc.
Pages: 332
ISBN: 978-0-596-52147-9
Rating: 7/10
Tagline: Programming with the Google SDK.
Reviewer: JR Peck"
The book begins with a brief introduction to Android followed by detailed instructions on procuring and installing the Android SDK. Space is given to Windows, Linux and Mac. The install is relatively simple on all three platforms, extra information is provided for Ubuntu users but no others distributions. Extra care is taken to help Windows users with items they may not use regularly, such as environmental variables. This is all pretty basic and gives the book very much of a 'for beginners' feel. Before I had the book I had already installed the SDK and Eclipse plug-in on Windows, Ubuntu and Fedora without any issues beyond getting a current version of Eclipse for the Ubuntu machine. The version I already had from the Ubuntu repositories was not able to run the plug-in. It's a short chapter and if someone really struggles with it, they probably should shift their focus from learning to code to learning how to use their platform of choice. This does set the tone though, that this is a book for those who are very new to development.
Chapter two steps the reader through the ever present "Hello World" and gives an overview of the structure of Android applications. Chapter three introduces the example application that will be used for the rest of the book. There is a lot of repetition here on just what directories and files make up the guts of an Android program. I was quickly worried ( the first four chapters are only fifty-six pages in ) that maybe four authors had been too many. The repetition made it feel as if separate work had been combined without enough editing to remove what was redundant. Fortunately this got better, though there was still a strange proclivity to list files while referring to earlier chapters that explained their purpose. This would be helpful to anyone jumping right into the middle of the book, but the index also serves the same purpose and saves space for more valuable content, as opposed to explaining the purpose of AndroidManifest.xml repeatedly.
Once I moved into the fifth chapter, Debugging Android Applications and the following chapters, things got better. The pace picked up and the repetition dropped off for the most part. The book did not become incredibly difficult, trying to be everything to everyone, but did maintain an introductory style. At the same time the example application makes use of many Android features that are likely to be used by developers. How to set up and use tools was covered step by step. This is very nice but did cause some issues for the authors due to the rapid pace of development on Android. A visit to the book's errata page will show that many readers struggled with changes to the SKD tool set that came out very shortly after the book. The authors say that future editions will fix these issues, but this creates a dilemma for that reader needing introductory level materials. They are more dependent upon the book than a more advanced user and so these issues can be very trying. Based on the responses to the errata posts it became trying for the authors as well. This isn't a knock on the book itself but rather a limitation of the delivery method.
Once the reader is digging down into the example application the team approach to writing the book does become an asset. The authors bring a number of skills to the table that closely resemble the players that would be necessary to a team developing a real-world application. The reader is now being pulled into an example that benefits from the knowledge of each and does a good job of exploring the range of options an Android developer has available. This includes core functionality, UI options and how to best take advantage of the platform while at the same time taking performance and user expectations into account. I felt like I was getting something beyond the excellent documentation provided by Google. This is where I felt the book stood strongest.
Working with a single, large example application was a move that probably helped move things along on writing the book and I think it's an interesting approach. The problem is of course, that means that this example must be right. Right for the task and technically correct. Small issues in the code are inevitable but now their impact is book wide. The changes to the platform just made it just that much more difficult to sort out. On the whole I still found this to be a better approach primarily due to the fact that it gives the features highlighted a better sense of context. Stand-alone examples are often good at highlighting technical features but completely ignore the issues necessary to using the feature in a larger piece of code.
I'm a fan of O'Reilly books. Interestingly enough this doesn't mean that I'll gloss over issues with what they produce. The result is actually the inverse, in that I go into all their titles with a high level of expectation with regards to quality on every level. This may mean that though I strive to be neutral when I look at a book, I'm probably a little tougher on O'Reilly titles. This made my rough start with Android Application Development a bit jarring. The repetition and what felt like sloppy editing are not what I expect. I was quickly given a sense that this book may have been rushed to publication a little sooner than it should have been. As I moved deeper into the book, things improved and while I think there were still editorial issues, things did seem to smooth out to some degree.
There is an interesting tension that exists purely do to the nature of print books. I don't like to bring up print versus electronic in reviews as I don't think it is on topic, but here it is unavoidable. The book is aimed at people that need a little more hand holding and help getting going. It does a good job of providing step by step instructions, the problem is that some of those steps have changed. I don't think anything in the code itself needs to be different, but the tools have changed enough that getting the code to run in a development environment against the new SDK is different. That means that portion of the book is no longer of as much value without going to other sources to find the new steps.
That said, warts and all I found this to be a helpful way to get my feet wet with Android. I really look forward to future versions as I think just a little more time and work will move this from my 'good' list to my 'great' list. Making things a little tighter and cleaning up the few typos and errors would certainly make this an 8 instead of an 7, which is really substantial in my mind. I'm no super developer and I need stuff like this, that can take things a little more slowly and make it all clear. I think this guide is great for those of us in that category as long as the reader is o.k. with hopping to external sources for the information they'll need to get the newer tool set working.
Title: Android Application Development
Author: Rick Rogers, John Lombardo, Zigurd Mednieks, Blake Meike
Publisher: O'Reilly Media Inc.
Pages: 332
ISBN: 978-0-596-52147-9
Rating: 7/10
Tagline: Programming with the Google SDK.
Reviewer: JR Peck"
Submission + - Warner & YouTube Reach Licensing Deal (appscout.com)
adeelarshad82 writes: "Almost a year after Warner Music Group (WMG) ordered that all of its videos be pulled from YouTube, the two companies have reached a licensing agreement that will return the music label's content to the Google-owned video site. Under this new, multi-year global agreement, you will be able to discover, watch and share Warner music on the site. The partnership covers the full Warner catalog and includes user-generated content containing WMG acts."
Submission + - Google opening Wave to 100,000 beta testers (cnn.com)
bradgoodman writes: "CNN reports that Google Wave, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday. Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs out of the application before a public release by the end of the year, according to the Google Wave Web site."
Firefox To Get Multi-Process Browsing 383
An anonymous reader writes with news that multi-process browsing will be coming to Firefox. The project is called Electrolysis, and the developers "have already assembled a prototype that renders a page in a separate process from the interface shell in which it is displayed." Mozilla's Benjamin Smedberg says they're currently "[sprinting] as fast as possible to get basic code working, running simple testcase plugins and content tabs in a separate process," after which they'll fix everything that breaks in the process. Further details of their plan are available on the Mozilla wiki, and a summary is up at TechFragments.
