iRobot

Shame so much talent is wasted creating so much shit all with the ultimate object of dumbing down the populous to a bunch of media consumers.

+1, Really not sure why these reviewers are going on about its rendering capabilities, its quite adequate for learning python or C++ on and totally overkill for any embedded projects (Think Arduino on steroids).

Once some optimisation work is done I think people will be amazed by what it can do.

My first Pascal program should be in there somewhere.

Just donated $20, and I'll definitely buy it.

Read a few sci-fi novels where they are describing exactly this kind of stuff on the bridge, this makes them all feel so much real.

Ouch..

Throw enough shit and some of it may stick..

Someone's really got it in for Amazon, this is the third post in two days.

Not everyone lives in cities surrounded by mega bookshop/cafes, prior to Amazon, if I wanted a book I had to order it from the library, pay $2 and pick it up after a 50 minute drive to town. ditto if I wanted to buy a book it was $15-$30 and a 50 minute drive and a really small choice unless I ordered and waited another 2 weeks. (Prices converted from NZ$ to US$) - Amazon delivered actual real books from the US to NZ for less than that and the kindle moves me now to a level playing field with the rest of the world and no trees cut down or gas guzzled in the process.

Seriously I've been stuffed ridged on price for the past 30 years by book sellers and publishers, and as much as I hate corporate evil, I dont consider amazon has done anything evil (yet), and if anything they have delivered payback in the form of a large kick in the nuts to the big publishing houses. If these people envy Amazons business model then make a better one and stop fucking whinging!

I spotted him at McDonalds once.. Work that one in to your rumours

One of these posts was from an AI. Can you tell which one?

I'm guessing made up numbers again, probably some AI researcher getting nowhere and trying to come up with excuses their CPU is too slow or they need more RAM.

And anyway, isnt most of the brain used for other things like making sure you dont fall over everytime you walk. etc

My answer would be 426.4

Wearing my Chronos now, the main drawback in developing for it is everything is seven-segment displays so info has to be pretty basic, still it was a nice watch for $50

Get in before the i-watch and the patent nightmares

A Few times I have prised out the Eprom off the motherboard and re-flashed it with my own small programs for a super-fast embedded system or game. (the eprom is ussally the only socketed item on the motherboard apart from the CPU)

The main problem is not overwritting the BIOS routines which, unless you rewrite them all (like linux of windows do) you still need to use (nothing here has really changed since 1981 and you can use anything that produces 16 bit code such as Turbo C, Assembler or Pascal)

Usually there is plenty of spare EPROM space you can find and as your running in 16 bit mode this is enough for something like space invaders :-)

PC Motherboards can usually be blagged for nothing, so its a great way to do low level experimenting.

"launch its own "clean" alternative"

If I lived in Iran I don't think I would be renewing my ISP plan any time soon.

Slightly off topic, but relevant in this discussion.

I worked in IT in local and central government in the UK, all departments of which I was in would have completely ignored these guidelines for their own petty reasons of security, people skills, costs(!), supplier lock-ins etc

Neither does this address bigger picture stuff such as supplier favouritism, lack of single systems across multiple councils (eg council taxes) open hostility to open source, total lack of fair tendering or the fact most IT spending is authorised by people who's only qualification is they studied history at the same college in Oxford as the CEO or go to the same golf club.

I could name several examples of the above from the security services but would probably be immediately arrested because of that pile of steaming shit called `the official secrets act'

Nothing to discus, I just agree

I'm guessing nothing has really changed.. Rasberry pi ?

At first glance I thought it was referring to a rival for the itunes marketplace for jailbroken ipads...

..but who would want to do that! Silly me!

gmail security is really only good between gmail accounts and is definitely stored in plain text in the googlesphere use PGP if you need to guarantee email privacy.

.. and a really great reason for using open source programs

Its amazing, how many people you talk to who thinks all this is BS and the system is totally screwed, however it always translates to fuck-all votes at the polls.

The US president really has fuck all power to change anything, the poor man would wither and die under his innability to do anything.

I vote IBM's Watson for president AND for every public role, ALL politicians are bent IMHO

But I already have, human dudes

No Pilot = No Hijakers

... unless your a good hacker of course ;-)

The second they launch a stable version I can use to replace windows XP embedded will be a real milestone.

Lots of plant touchscreens and industrial computers run a stripped down version of windows NT 3.51, win2k or XP (XP embedded is just a stripped down XP) which dont need any bells and whistles, just a solid network connection and the ability to run the win32 api. I have over 30 of these panel pc's around various factories running touch screen apps in place of explorer.exe so the desktop is not important to me and the demand is expanding all the time.

Thanks for the time and effort lads, I'm downloading it now to give it a go :-)

Wow, your so disillusioned (funny it isnt) ;-)

Ironically, the second someone invents AI, every programmer will be out of a job!

(So lets enjoy it while we can!)

The conclusions are unfortunately correct, it is the student who is being made to pay for this policy. Bad course modules and bad degrees de-value the whole system and do NOT help those who scrape through but who are then unable to follow the level of skill required through to the workplace.

As an employer who has interviewed and employed countless computer degree candidates, this has simply devalued the word 'degree' to a point where it may no longer get you even to the interview ahead of say a non-degree candidate with a tangible track record of real project work or experience behind them.

This is not just a British phenomenon.