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Comment Whos fault? HTC or Verizon? (Score 1) 143

I have the HTC Thunderbolt, unlocked running BAMF. According to the verizon rep, the bootloader lockdown was at the request of HTC. Additionally, the warranty is handled by the manufacturer, and would be void by them, not verizon. He told me that I could return the phone, and verizon only does some cursory testing to see if it turns on, functions, etc. The fact it was rooted wouldn't be detected until handed to HTC.
Now this is all assuming Verizon isn't lying to me. It could very well be all false. But it seems like they're trying to pin the fault on locked down phones to the manufacturer, NOT themselves. Aren't there some Android phones, made by Verizon that are unlocked?

Comment Teen Tech Fest anyone? (Score 1) 116

I was one of those lucky high school tech nerds that attended Teen Tech Fest 2000 sponsored by AcePlanet and Microsoft. It was its first and last year, since AcePlanet went belly up like many other startups of the time. AcePlanet was going to do annual computer-themed summer camps for kids, but I guess there wasn't enough money in it.

Already being already an F/OSS person, it was a very fun camp. Despite being Microsoft sponsored (and getting a free copy of VS6 and tour of the MS campus), many of the kids there were very open source users and programmers. Many to this day I still talk to and are in tech related industries, including a few working at Google and Intel.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Drupal heading for space (drupalinspace.com)

Falc0n writes: "Not to be outdone by various other weather balloon projects, this week at drupalcon, a group of crazy drupalists decided to become engineers and take on a project to launch drupal into space. Its currently using APRS on the ham radio frequency to track its progress. You can track its progress live. More information can be found at drupalinspace.com."

Submission + - Drupal 7 released (drupal.org)

dzogchen writes: Drupal 7 arrived today after a multi year development cycle that saw huge growth in the use of CMS software in general. Release parties are scheduled around the world.

Comment Mini Options! (Score 4, Interesting) 169

Actually I find this potentially quite cool. Not as much for the power source, but the size. Since most mATX boards don't come with mini PCIe slots, if you want to use an SSD drive you need a 2.5" drive or a PCIe card with a mini-slot on it. Both are much larger than a DIMM option.

And with 50gb, this would be very useful in a media box streaming from a server. Now only if the price could come down.
Cellphones

Journal Journal: Rumor: 500 Kin Phones 9

When Microsoft's Kin was released a month ago, it came with the usual sequence of tittilating leaks (project Pink), a swell of coverage leading to liveblogging of the release press conference, and an advertising blitz impressive in its scope. Since it's supposed to be a social phone of course it has numerous fansites including Facebook and Twitter. Of course there's a Wikipe

Comment Ham Radio + GPS = Fun! (Score 4, Interesting) 368

My 4x4 group (hot4x4.ca) uses VHF almost exclusively due to its reach above and beyond CB. Cell phones usually don't work where we travel either. Depending on the terrain, we can reach over 75kms from each other on just the 2m band w/o a repeater. This only requires a technician (basic) license as well.
Add in the APRS + Garmin GPS, and your rig turns into a mobile GPS transmitter. We then can track each other, which makes it really easy to find each other. APRS also allows us to send text messages via a p2p network of Ham Radios. Example: we had guys in Reno who we needed to contact because we broke a part on the Rubicon. Couldn't reach them via radio, but with APRS, our txt msgs could be relayed.
None of this requires anything but the first class license. Its an awesome hobby and there is a lot you can do with it, in addition to Geek cred and ecomm or search/rescue.
Media (Apple)

Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open 1713

Reader oxide7 is one of the many to note that the heaviest speculation is mostly over (still waiting on the price, though) about Apple's anticipated new device (though there are surely plenty of questions about the device's hardware capabilities and the scope of its software and content marketplace): "At an event in San Francisco Apple released its anticipated iPad.'[It's] Way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal,' said Jobs." The (0.5") skinny: 1.5 lbs, multitouch, up to 64GB of flash, 9.7" screen, and a 1Ghz "Apple A4" chip (more about the A4 in Engadget's developing story). The iPad is closer in concept to an expanded iPhone (OS and all) than a miniaturized laptop, though it doesn't have quite as much connectivity as you might expect, with no 3G connection built in. (You'll have to make do with 802.11n, Bluetooth, and tethering.) Live coverage is ongoing at gdgt live, Engadget, and Gizmodo, as well as various others. Update by timothy, 19:58 GMT: Got the 3G part wrong; 3G is indeed an option. Prices run from $499 (16GB flash, WiFi but no 3G) to $829 (WiFi and 3G, 64GB flash). Should start shipping in 60 days (WiFi only), in 90 days for 3G. Surprsingly, no built-in camera.
Social Networks

WordPress.com Implements the Twitter API 39

This morning Matt Mullenweg announced on his blog that WordPress.com has enabled posting and reading blogs via the Twitter API. Now any Twitter app that supports a custom API URL (Tweetie is one such) can be used to either post updates to a WordPress.com blog, or to read updates from blogs to which one has subscribed. Dave Winer calls the move by Automattic, WordPress.com's parent company, "deeply insidious," and notes that 10 years ago he did a similar thing in his Manila blogging platform when the Blogger API came out. Winer opines that Automattic's move has made the Twitter API into an open standard, due to WordPress.com's large base. Winer notes (in a comment on the above-linked post), "The fun starts if they [WordPress] relax some of the limits of the Twitter API and fix some of the glaring problems."

Comment Re:Don't know too much about Magento, but do know (Score 1) 124

Thats just false.

If you're a small company selling some products, ubercart and drupal is for you. You can see a good list of sites using it now.

the ONLY time I'd recommend someone spending money to develop their own ecommerce system is if they have something extremely customized--$million+ sites... NewEgg for example... and even then, the amount of money and time to make a 'custom' cart system could be cut by spending that time on extending the drupal and ubercart frameworks.

Comment Drupal + Ubercart (Score 1) 124

A big piece missing from Magento is the content management portion. There has been talk about integrating Magento as a third party add-on to drupal, but its so different in how it handles content, that it doesn't really work.

A decent alternative is Ubercart and Drupal. Ubercart, while not the best example of -good- drupal code, it is getting better, and d7uc is planning on bringing much of the code to drupal standards. One big plus about ubercart is its extensibility. Despite it being a bloated shopping system (built for a mom-and-pop shop, similar to magento), it is easy to override functions and get it to do what you want. Ubercart is also used extensively on major websites, almost everything that uses drupal 6 and ecommerce.

In the dark days of ubercart, or when I'm banging my head on a problem that cannot be easily solved with it, I've looked to magento, but then came running back.

Comment Re:Security! (Score 1) 122

As opposed to building your own website, or using RoR/Plone to build a site, which cannot be easily checked for security updates? no thanks.

Drupal has a dedicated security team which is proactive on maintaining secure code. One reason the white house gave for using drupal is because of its diligence to security.

Drupal also encourages and has best practices that -most- modules (especially the most popular ones) will weed out the most obvious security issues such as input sanitization, SQL injection, etc. While its not perfect, its -much- more secure than your own implementation.

When your code is exposed to the web, you always must be on watch. No code is perfectly secure, and to think otherwise is naive.

Comment Re:Drupal is for coders (Score 1, Informative) 122

Acquia is not a fork, its a distribution of drupal core + the most popular contrib modules
Drupal core can be thought similar to the Linux Kernel, whereas modules represent the packages that make up a distribution of drupal.

Mollom and TinyMCE work great together

With ultimate flexibility comes an interesting learning curve. But thats what documentation is for.

Wonder if a module is used in drupal? you can look at its usage statistics. Want to do something in drupal? if you google it, usually someone else has already done it and in many cases have a screencast to go along with it.

"How will Acquia keep up with the rapid evolution of Drupal core and modules?"
This question addresses the upgrade path for a site. Like linux (or windows), modules are constantly evolving. Its hard for corporate customers to know if the new version will break things. By using a distribution like Acquia drupal, they do the testing to make sure everything works together.

From your comments, it sounds like your experience with drupal is somewhat new. Spend some time on IRC, going to drupal meetups, drupalcon, or take a lullabot course.

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