eftpotrm

55 ms·

481.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
While I agree it's distasteful, a good percentage of Google's search users are surely looking for exactly that link to illegal copies though? By providing those links quickly and easily Google is arguably improving the quality of the sear
482.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
And we wonder why the rest of the world think us IT people are a bit strange :-) Never read that but pored over enough other arcane material in my time.
483.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
To go even more Hollywood, some friends and I sat around the student dining table many years back and brainstormed ways of doing a laser gallery shooting game (I don't know what they're called internationally - for UK brand names think Quas
484.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Extracting (appropriate) value, yes, but how and when becomes the issue. If the company is going through a cashflow issue - far from unheard of in a startup - insisting on extracting the full value of your pound of flesh there and then woul
485.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Even with that, I've known clients come back a while later (disclaimer - I was the grunt coder, not the boss) and insist there had been verbal agreement to put in large extra features, or that the feature they'd spent some time engaging wit
486.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Then I'm not sure you're the person to be working as a startup employee.
487.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Agreed. However, I find myself tripping up because I'm using the wrong language's syntax or intricacies of library functions often enough with the portfolio of languages I work with already. I need to know .Net for work. The idea of adding
488.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
I have a very ordinary Atom netbook in my desk drawer. With VS2010 (Express) and SQL Server 2008 (also Express) installed and being happily used periodically. SQL Server is a little slow if you're doing anything very ambitious with it but i
489.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
There's a false equivalency here though. Clearing away in my kitchen or keeping papers on my desk tidy both have clear benefits to them; by ensuring the items are in known locations they are quicker to find, by ensuring they aren't spread o
490.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Sorry, yes, I didn't mean to imply that. It became SCO Unix in the end.
491.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
> you don’t need anything more complex than something like X Windows I'm not sure X would be my prime example of simplicity...
492.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
The linked story was celebrating its 20th birthday 11 months ago. Why the post today?
493.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Er, yes....? I confess I'm surprised this is regarded as enough of a revelation to reach the front page. A relatively popular piece of hardware had an uncommon but far from unheard of variation. It's a few years before my time in the scene
494.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
I'd suspect that's why he used a Border Collie; they were bred for intelligence, in herding sheep specifically.
495.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Opening doors is one trick I definitely wouldn't teach pets! Many years ago my parents' cat started trying to open doors without any training from us. She clearly understood the process from her efforts, but couldn't grip the round handles.
496.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Agreed, I'm just saying that between noise, safety and simple powering concerns, I think the window for this being superior to current methods is very, very small.
497.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Yes, I did see the same videos. And I still think no wind is a useful simplifying assumption for them, particularly on power grounds. A constant wind I agree looks like it would be within their capabilities, though their route planning soft
498.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
24/7 robots are fine, but helicopters are _loud_, particularly those with the lifting power to do construction work. We're currently seeing small proof-of-concept machines lifting small, light parts, but the machines needed to lift useful c
499.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
I live next to a small industrial estate, my employers's campus location has houses the other side of the road and behind some trees from memory. Offices often have bars and restaurants around them which do good trade in the evening, someti
500.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
These things don't look very powerful, to put it mildly. GPS means outdoors which means wind which is a bit harder for a small, light hovering robot to handle. Indoor lets them demonstrate the principle with a useful simplifying assumption
501.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Lots of them working together means active traffic management becomes critical to prevent collisions. That'll be regulated because even if they're moving things the size of bricks rather than I beams, do you want to see what happens when tw
502.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Oh, you'd rather have a helicopter next door while you slept?
503.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Great fun, but I suspect NIMBY concerns would kill any practical application. Let's imagine they get the machines scaled to the point when they could build an actual habitable structure, and that they sort the power concerns that I suspect
504.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Hmm. If this sort of thing is happening with any regularity the other side of this argument is that there needs to be a clearer, simpler way for patents to be struck down. If it's not valid for one it's not valid for any and any other posit
505.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
I wouldn't want to be the publisher betting on a 73 year old with a history of missing deadlines hitting one in nine years time. And then, from the site: --- After Volume 5 has been completed, I will revise Volumes 1--3 again to bring them
506.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Racing too. Always amused me as an acronym :-)
507.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
... which is just another example of that which has long been implemented (and sometimes long been patented) still managing to attract protection. However, at least when there is a significant pre-established publication of the idea the 'tr
508.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Slashdot described the method and benefits for this many years ago, so could be cited as prior art.
509.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
I should stress that I'm probably an unusual data point in that I could touch-type tolerably well and quickly on a Psion 5, but.... From having owned both 9 and 10 inch Eees (still got the 10, lovely machine) - the 9 was perfectly manageabl
510.
by eftpotrm 16y ago
Oh, how I wish Netbooks hadn't become 'the next big thing'.... I love having computing available everywhere I go. Really useful. I type up notes live in meetings / presentations and never have to worry about transcribing them. I take my e

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