This. I have a friend who had a great (he thought) idea and went to a bunch of different venture capitalists to try to raise funding. The first few he walked in with an NDA and asked them to sign- they told him to GTFO with your little NDA, nobody here cares. The only question they were interested in answering was whether he was the kind of individual who could execute on his idea.

Actually, the kindle paperwhite doesn't use backlight, it uses a light guide, or kind of a flattened fiber optic cable that redirects the light down onto the page.. Maybe not exactly like direct lighting but closer than led backlight. Or so they say.

Leap Motion is cool. SoftKinetic is cooler. Kinect 1 uses structured light, or a grid of IR beams to calculate depth with parallax- SoftKinect actually uses photon time of flight (!!). Blows kinect out of the water for fidelity. Joint, fingers no problem in near mode. I have developed apps with both, and I can't for the life of me figure out why nobody has every heard of SoftKinetic. Not MS backed I guess.

Some questions/thoughts that to me show it is a mock/fake/whatever:
1. Where are the rudder pedals? In the BBC video the pilot's legs were clearly bent with his knees pointing up in the air. That means his feet were pretty much flat on the cockpit floor and I didn't see rudder pedals there. Maybe the edge of one in the cockpit photo here.
2. Again back to the knees- with his knees up in the air like that his legs are clearly blocking access to the two front panels on the left and right. The pilot couldn't even SEE those panels. I dunno, but I'm guessing there's stuff a pilot might need there at some point.
3. A last thought on the knees. I'm not a doctor, but I think that to pull heavy G's that may not be the most optimal body position.
4. Finally, that thing is SMALL. Like, tiny. What is this aircraft for anyways? It sure can't carry any ordinance.
5. The vids of the thing flying? Looks, behaves and sounds a lot like this RC F-16

So I totally agree this thing is a mock up, or prototype, or fake or whatever. What make's them look like idiots is it appears they are trying to pass it off as the real deal, and certainly implying it is functional and 'defending Iran'.

I don't really get articles like this. Just because win8 CAN be used on on touchscreen doesn't mean that will be the only way to interact with that device. Everyone loves to bash MS for their lack of foresight, how they are going to alienate all their customers, etc., etc. But they created an OS that was flexible enough to run on mobile devices in just that start menu mode (metro) or upgrade win7 for use in workstations or desktop pcs. Kinda cool I think. Have the bashers USED win8? Maybe, maybe not. I use it all day, every day. It appears to me to be a nice desktop upgrade to windows 7, nothing more. Why? Because I use it as a DESKTOP not a touch device. I never see the start screen unless I want to see it. This is the same start screen that guys like David Pogue claim will take over your computer. Gorilla Arm? Give me a break. Who uses touchscreens to develop code, write word documents or get business work done? Touchscreens are not desktop pc replacements. They are great for certain things, but they do NOT replace the workstation.

Nice! Someone was thinking about humanity. I mean really! Build the evil death star??

I think it's a hoax as well. Imagine you live in China, and somehow got the emails of a bunch of developers. You don't have much money maybe and you just LOVE the N9! Might you not send such an email to try to fool the devs into providing their apps for free? Just saying.

But but but.... where are the boobs that were flashed to get the beads?! She must have been smashed to end up on mars.

Great comments. I like the idea of trying to make my current job more like the things I like about the new offer. They have expressed willingness to work with me to get into new areas, without jumping with both feet into a new position- they want to make sure that they are happy with where I am, and that I am happy with where I'm going. They have really been great with the working with me- so I feel like they would do what they could to make the job what I want it to be.

Paywise, it's actually more of a 15% increase, with options (it's a startup). So there could be a financial windfall. I haven't asked my company to match that because it feels a bit like blackmail to me.

I don't know what my backup plan would be though if I left for the new gig and didn't like it. It would be hard to go back, and I'm not sure that I would want to, without feeling like it was a step forward and not back. But I also don't know what else I would want to be doing... so I need to think on that one some more :)

Thanks!

Ah. Well the problem arises because I like a fun job, and I like money- probably like most people I suspect. That's what makes this difficult- if it was obvious to me which of those were more important in my life the decision would be much easier.

I worked with a friend a while back while he was trying to scare up funds from VCs for an idea he wanted to turn into a company. He went in with the expectation that they would sign his NDA. They told him GTFO with your little NDA. He soon discovered that from the perspective of the VC's an idea itself is generally of very little value- it is the ability to execute and bring something to market based on that idea that has real value. At least this is what they explained to him as he tried to explain to them about his valuable idea and dire need for an NDA.

The VC's were not interested in in his idea beyond the point of ensuring it was valid and had potential. They were really interested in whether HE could bring it to market. He didn't get the funds, so I guess not.

On the other hand though, I work for a software company where nobody will talk to us about the work they want us to do unless we sign an NDA. I can't speak for other companies, maybe it's just us. But for me, I kind of agree with the VC's. I have some good ideas too, but have I produced anything from them? Not yet! :)

But these are good too :)

How to Avoid Huge Ships

For some reason I have a false sense of security now- if this is the kind of 'exploit' that gets reported and /.ed and that I need to worry about, life is good! I mean really- you have to have Win7 x64, with Safari AND then navigate to a site that serves up a bogus iframe height, AND uses the exploit to make bad on your machine. I can't imagine this affects too many people. Also, why is this a 'Windows Remote' exploit? Safari would seem to not handle the iframe exception, whereas IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera DO? If this were a true windows exploit I would expect it to occur regardless of the browser. And what other kind of exploit (as it's defined ITA) is there besides a remote one? A local exploit, where someone turns off my machine? I read 'remote' and think RDP... which is not the case here at all.

This is a weird question. Like we are all just hopelessly stuck on this crappy Windows system, and while we are secretly dying to move to another OS there are just some reasons we can't get past to do it. Huh? How about why aren't all the other OS users moving to Windows? What is it about the linux command line you love so much you just can't walk away? Or about MacOS that grips you so you cant move to Windows? Or the lack of gaming everywhere else, etc, etc. Just sayin' that's a more interesting question.