Comment Yay, Waterfall! (Score 1) 432
Summary: Author wants us all to start using Waterfall Methodology because he is totally unaware of how it worked out in the 80's and 90's.
Submission + - Making Wireless Carriers Play Together 1
An anonymous reader writes: Ok, so the idea of opening all Wi-Fi networks in a misthought utopian vision didn’t go over so well. But no one discussed the best part of open Wi-Fi networks: bonding different Wi-Fi and mobile carriers to get the best price and decent performance. We could save money and avoid lock in by bouncing to whoever gives us the best rate, and, when we need speed, jump on all of them at once for a network bonded boost.
Submission + - Kickstarter Technology Projects Ship
An anonymous reader writes: Shocking Kickstarter news this morning, not only did I actually I receive my Brydge this morning, but a Kickstarter software project shipped on time! Connectify Dispatch, the load balancing software for Windows, was released today as well. Perhaps the Kickstarter model of funding technology is not nearly as doomed as some naysayers here would have it. Why are so many here hostile to crowdsourcing? Shouldn’t we be glad to have Venture Capitalists cut out of the loop so that companies actually listen to us?
Submission + - Bruce Willis 'considering iTunes legal action' against Apple (telegraph.co.uk)
oobayly writes: It appears that Bruce "Die Hard" Willis isn't too impressed that he can't include his iTunes collection in his estate when he dies.
Bruce Willis, the Hollywood actor, is said to be considering legal action against Apple so he can leave his iTunes music collection to his three daughters.
Such a high profile individual complaining about the ability to own your digital music can only be a good thing, right? I suggest that also assaulting Cupertino in a dirty white vest would do the job.
Submission + - Home Automation Gets Easy (tuaw.com)
An anonymous reader writes: If This Then That (IFTTT.com) the easy to use web scripting tool, is now integrated with Belkin’s WeMo home automation switches.
Whoever the person was at Belkin who had the brilliant thought to integrate WeMo with IFTTT should get a big raise. Plug a fan into a WeMo switch, then set up an IFTTT recipe to turn the fan on if the local outside temperature goes above 85 F (I tried this — it works). Have IFTTT call you whenever someone enters the house (it works). And if you want to shut that fan off, you can either write another recipe or just use the WeMo app to shut it off remotely. There are even examples online when your Internet becomes unreliable.
Whoever the person was at Belkin who had the brilliant thought to integrate WeMo with IFTTT should get a big raise. Plug a fan into a WeMo switch, then set up an IFTTT recipe to turn the fan on if the local outside temperature goes above 85 F (I tried this — it works). Have IFTTT call you whenever someone enters the house (it works). And if you want to shut that fan off, you can either write another recipe or just use the WeMo app to shut it off remotely. There are even examples online when your Internet becomes unreliable.
Comment Re:Completely Backwards (Score 1) 95
Well, yes that's why Kickstarter works the way it does. It's not some crazy pure democracy thing, where each person gets to declare how their $50 is to be spent.
What happens, is the team posts its vision, along with a detailed list of what you get at each backing level. Potential backers can basically take it, leave it, or say what they really want. If enough people want something different, the team can add things to the project (but never remove them, because of course, someone else may have already backed for a particular feature). If not enough people back to get the minimum level, the project is cancelled, and the backers are not charged anything.
I'm really surprised at the hostility here to it... the best alternative we have to this is the facebook/twitter model: VC's fund it, it's free to use, and they don't give a damn what you think, ignore your feedback, and sell all of your information. This seems like a refreshing change of pace.
What happens, is the team posts its vision, along with a detailed list of what you get at each backing level. Potential backers can basically take it, leave it, or say what they really want. If enough people want something different, the team can add things to the project (but never remove them, because of course, someone else may have already backed for a particular feature). If not enough people back to get the minimum level, the project is cancelled, and the backers are not charged anything.
I'm really surprised at the hostility here to it... the best alternative we have to this is the facebook/twitter model: VC's fund it, it's free to use, and they don't give a damn what you think, ignore your feedback, and sell all of your information. This seems like a refreshing change of pace.
Comment Completely Backwards (Score 4, Insightful) 95
You have it all backwards. The Kickstarter model gives an opportunity to get products built that *customers* want, and are willing to pay for, without having venture capitalist in the middle, funding everything and demanding their return. The backers' relationship to the project is that they are *paying customer*, which is less than being the owner of the company, but much, much more than just being a *user* of a free service like Twitter or Facebook.
Submission + - App.net's Crowdfunders: Taken For A Ride? (infoworld.com)
snydeq writes: "At least 10,000 people believe in App.net's vision of a messaging platform for Web apps — but it's unclear whether those people will be peers or sharecroppers, writes Simon Phipps. 'Last week App.net reached the milestone of 10,000 users who signed up for a new — mostly yet to be written — social network that looks like an early reimplementation of Twitter. Signing up people to claim user names on an (not vaporware) alpha Web service may not seem surprising or novel, but this time there's a difference: Everyone who signed up for App.net paid $50 for the privilege,' Phipps writes. 'App.net has used the crowdfunding approach, but it's not the same kind of project. While superficially similar — there's an offer of immediate use of its Twitter-clone service and reservation of the user ID of your choice — it's much more speculative. It's crowdsourcing the seed capital for a new venture, crowdsourcing the design, crowdsourcing the testing, and crowdsourcing most of the software that interacts with the venture, all without actually giving anyone but the founder a true stake in the outcome.'"
Comment Re:Dedicated emergency networks? (Score 1) 97
Congress has been selling off the frequencies that were reserved for first responders and Federal users to the cell phone companies (see the 1800 MHz band, as an example). They don't really have these dedicated networks anymore. Most of what's left is narrowband (6.25KHz channels) that are of no use for data.
Submission + - 10 Internet Connections at Same Time (connectify.me) 4
An anonymous reader writes: As a follow up to the story about Verizon being forced to allow tethering, the engineers at Connectify climbed on the roof and made a video showing an 85Mbps download rate through a combination of a tethered Verizon mobile phone and ALL of the available open Wi-Fi networks. It’s a darn shame that they cancelled the unlimited 3G on the Kindle, tether 20 of those bad boys and you could have had a real Internet connection.
Comment Link aggregation to get around caps (Score 1) 228
Alex Gizis of Connectify here. Sorry to pitch you here, but this is one of the reasons that we created Connectify Dispatch. By using link aggregation to divide your traffic across a couple different links you can assemble a fast download speed even in the presence of throttling. We use real-time throughput stats to decide how to divvy up the traffic. Plus the pretty graphs give you a sense of what we're doing and why (bandwidth, latency and reliability of each link, mostly). On Kickstarter now: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/523076551/dispatch-the-internet-faster
Submission + - 2 Years Since Landing on Slashdot (connectify.me)
agizis writes: "We want to take a moment during our birthday week to thank the Slashdot community. Slashdot was instrumental in helping us bring Connectify to tens-of-thousands of early-adopters who downloaded the first Connectify Beta, way back in 2009. The day we consider our oebirthday is October 27th, 2009. On that day, Connectify went from being an app that a few of us used on business trips, to a piece of software used by thousands of people around-the-world. A short post on Slashdot was the turning-point for Connectify, and the blogs and sites that quickly picked up on our application from there helped Connectify grow by leaps-and-bounds in a matter of days.
Thank you, Slashdot."
Thank you, Slashdot."
Submission + - Perl sucks: we have proof (knowing.net)
locust writes: Hot off the presses from oopsla:
Researchers at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have proven what a lot of us have already suspected: using perl is no better than using a language where the syntax and semantics are picked at random. The full paper is here
Let the flame wars begin.
Researchers at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have proven what a lot of us have already suspected: using perl is no better than using a language where the syntax and semantics are picked at random. The full paper is here
Let the flame wars begin.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: New X-Box in My Dorm, Help 5
An anonymous reader writes: I pulled the trigger on Microsoft's back to school offer and picked up the Windows 7 laptop with free X-Box 360. Unfortunately, now that I've arrived back at school, I'm stuck. My [Anonymous Philadelphia Area] University has gone to an all WiFi network, and they only allow us one MAC address on the network per student. I know that if it were an Ethernet network, I could just buy myself a router, but that doesn't work for Wi-Fi. And they don't allow wireless routers, even if I could do some kind of MAC spoofing on one of these. Is there a good solution, or do I need to drop Calc 3 and sign up for Advanced Networking just to feed my gaming jones after class.
I really don't want to choose between the laptop and the X-Box, because I just might choose the X-Box. So what do you think, Slashdot, how can I get multiple machines onto a Wi-Fi network that only allows a single MAC address?
I really don't want to choose between the laptop and the X-Box, because I just might choose the X-Box. So what do you think, Slashdot, how can I get multiple machines onto a Wi-Fi network that only allows a single MAC address?
Submission + - Connectify Subverts Dorm Room Limitations (connectify.me)
hazydave writes: "Connectify 3.0 is a new version of an application that creates a virtual Wifi hotspot on a Windows 7 PC. When he made the Dean's List last fall, I set the previous version up on my son's PC, to let him hook up his iPod Touch or X-Box 360 via Wi-Fi. Looks like the Connectify people have realized this use, they say: "Many Schools and private institutions have restrictive limits on the amount of devices an individual can have registered to their wireless networks. In this day and age, these quotas are quickly exceeded by the wide variety of Wi-Fi enabled devices (such as smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and gaming systems) we use on a regular basis. With Connectify running on a laptop or desktop PC, you can circumvent these limits and securely connect any number of devices to your personal Wi-Fi network." For the kid, the dorms at Richard Stockton College allow only a single wired connection, and wireless routers or APs are specifically illegal. The new version has apparently been well tested with most gaming systems and other non-PC devices. They're also running a back-to-school promotion, complete with a marketing video and a discount on the "pro" version of the software. Worth checking out... hope the RAs don't start to get wise to it."
