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User: jeffmeden

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  1. Re:Dual core smartphones on Dual-Core Chips Coming To All Smartphones In 2011 · · Score: 3, Funny

    You saw the headline... Dual core chips coming to ALL smartphones in 2011. That old blackberry I have from 2008 that's gathering dust? Yep, it will be dual core in 2011! Oh the cores!

  2. Re:Home button will stay on Apple May Remove the Home Button On the Next IPad · · Score: 1

    I never thought they'd ditch the monochrome screen and spinning platter storage, two REAL signatures of their design savvy...

  3. Re:The good and bad... on Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone · · Score: 1

    Let me reiterate: I fully accept that you are among the group that has a good case for simultaneous voice/data. However... To say that everyone, or a majority, or even more than a tiny slim little pocket of users fall into that category as well is a huge overstatement. It's like saying (get ready for the bad analogy) that every car sold needs 4 wheel drive. Sure, for those that use it well it is essential. But to say that a car is worthless without it is pretty short sighted.

  4. Re:The good and bad... on Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone · · Score: 1

    Who says they're "on hold"? With a bluetooth headset, or with the iPhone just plug in the earphones w/mic provided with the phone, and you can tap away while continuing the conversation. They certainly won't hear your fingers unless you're trying to bash a hole in the screen.

    I never even thought about simultaneous voice/data, until I realized one day that was exactly what I was doing. Talking with a friend, some topic came up and I pulled up the browser to do a search. Sure, if I'm sitting in the office or at home, the computer might be handier but if I'm - say - waiting on someone at a restaurant or client site, the computer isn't convenient and wifi is normally not available. (Few have "free wifi" around here, if they have it at all they have it locked down.)

    Now that I'm aware of it, I realized I use that "feature" all the time - it would be annoying not to have it.

    I guess my "let me prove you wrong with wikipedia" skills just aren't elite enough to warrant such a feature. In over 2 years of having a personal/work smartphone, the number of times I have said "here, use my phone, it works out here" (to people with "superior technology") has VASTLY outnumbered the occurrences which I have muttered "drat, can't download that right now, I'm on the phone".

  5. Re:The good and bad... on Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone · · Score: 1

    I beg to differ. As a Blackberry user with this limitation I find it incredibly annoying. This is my ONLY phone device and I frequently spent 4-6 hours / day in con-call meetings. When someone says "here... I'll send you that number (or whatever)..." I can't get it until hanging up.

    While I agree that the lack of simultaneous voice/data will not impact everyone, don't discount the importance of that in the business world.

    Apparently, the bajillion blackberry subscribers on Verizon and Sprint have, as you say, "discounted" that feature. Maybe it's because if you are mobile and serious about business, you have a usb or built-in 3g data device for your computer anyhow.

  6. Re:The good and bad... on Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone · · Score: 1

    I hear people constantly bringing this up, but I fail to see why it's such a big deal. Be honest, AT&T iPhone owners: how often do you really use this feature?

    My car broke down and I had to call my insurance company. They wanted to know the street address of my location. I was broke down outside a McDonald's. I had to leave my car, walk into the restaurant, and ask for the manager, since none of the underlings knew the street address. If I lived in a 3G area instead of Edge, I would have used that feature in a heartbeat.

    So your answer is... one time? and because you were too incompetent to conjure a street address based on local signage OR simply access it before making the call? Wow. Deal breaker.

  7. Re:The good and bad... on Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone · · Score: 1

    Want to reference an email in Gmail while on a phone call? Doesn't work. Want to look at Google Maps to give directions while you're on the phone with someone? Doesn't work. Yes, no data/voice simultaneously is a big deal.

    O rly. Do you think the caller really wants to sit there on 'hold' listening to your fingers plod away on your phone's screen as you navigate around checking your email and pinch zooming google maps? No. Hang up and call them back. Not to mention the fact that gmail and google maps both cache all the data they need, so unless something happened AS you were talking, the data is already on your phone and you don't really need to download any more.

    Yes, there are use cases where simultaneous voice and data are integral. No, those use cases are not experienced by more than 1% of smartphone users. I bet less than 10% even know this is a limitation, having never even bothered to try it before.

  8. Re:oy on The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'm a Philosophy student and I think I can speak with a certain degree of authority when I say that Ayn Rand isn't someone you seriously cite in academic philosophy. She just isn't credible - and I'm not talking in terms of political disagreement - her arguments on topics of philosophical import just aren't very good. I wasn't too happy with everything that was written before for Rand, such as your rather shallow evaluation of Feyerabend and your flippant remarks about epistemology which clearly demonstrate you have no idea what your are talking about, but second I hit "Ayn Rand" I just stopped reading.

    From Paul Krugman:

    There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

    Epic. If only that fit in a tweet.

  9. Re:oy on The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics · · Score: 1

    As far as I can tell people who get obsessed with Rand as a genius are just people who have never read Karl Popper.

    Shit, or John Popper for that matter. People who put Rand on a pedestal tend to be the same that think everything Arthur C Clarke wrote is going to come true, too. They wrote FICTION. Just because it sounded plausible to *you* doesn't make it fact, or even entirely believable to the general public.

  10. Re:Philosophy... otis redding style on The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics · · Score: 1

    the common-day philosopher tends to stare at their naval

    # watching all the ships come in, and then watching them go out again... /#

    As read by an Otis Redding cover band composed of robots... Otis preferred a more casual wording:

    "Watching the ships roll in / And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah"

  11. Re:offer it to people in prison there are some sma on Mars Journal Issue Inspires Hundreds of One-Way Trip Volunteers · · Score: 1

    I definitely wouldn't call their focus to survive into question... It's their tolerance of the survival of all the other colonists that has me worried!

  12. Re:sternobread on Disempowering the Singular Sysadmin? · · Score: 1

    With a team of administrators, you'll have no way of learning for certain who has done what.

    But you can. With a well built black-hole type logger, you can backtrack any change on any system to the person who made the first 'bad move'. If a person used sudo su - and later that system went dead, or they did sudo passwd someuser and then that user logged in and caused a mess, you will know who made the first bad move and they can be dealt with. It's not for safeguarding the admins from doing something stupid, it's to make them realize that if they do it they WILL get caught and dealt with appropriately. Without that, you can't really trust anyone and you might as well not even bother with sudo since all your admins probably just put `sudo su -` in their bashrc file anyway.

  13. Re:sternobread on Disempowering the Singular Sysadmin? · · Score: 1

    sudo logs are almost useless for system audit. Run sudo su - and have at it. There are no logs to follow what actions you perform. Go ahead and craft a sudoers file that eliminates all the ways to load up a shell. Have fun with that...

    The point isnt to stop someone from breaking the system... There is no way to do that and `sudo su -` for someone with sudo access is just one of MANY ways to totally f up the system. The point is to know whodunnit. Have sudo access logged to a black-hole system under even higher lock-and-key with no/limited remote way in. Then, send out a memo saying "anyone caught doing `sudo su -` or similarly stupid things on the system will be terminated with extreme prejudice."

    Only half of the solution can/should be technical. Good old human capital management (aka fear of firing) should take care of the rest.

  14. A movie, you say on New Cars Vulnerable To Wireless Theft · · Score: 4, Funny

    An interesting read, and certainly something that will no doubt be the subject of a new movie any day now.

    How about "gone in 60 microseconds"?

  15. Re:How does that work again? on Deferred IT Maintenance Is a Ticking Time Bomb · · Score: 2

    No one gets my jokes around here.

  16. Re:holy hell, who gave you mod points on Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage · · Score: 1

    I know, I know, modding for justice and all that. It just made me LOL to see the word "informative" ascribed to a blatant Timecube reference.

  17. Re:I can't wait to buy things!!! on Mac OS X 10.6.6 Introduces App Store · · Score: 1

    Does this mean that anyone without OSX 10.6.6 can't get the app store, and therefore can't access the traditional software downloads area from their Mac?

  18. holy hell, who gave you mod points on Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage · · Score: 1

    "Informative"? http://www.timecube.com/

    funny story, that site is actually blocked by our firewall, filed under "racism and hate"...

  19. Re:How does that work again? on Deferred IT Maintenance Is a Ticking Time Bomb · · Score: 2

    Don't blame the cloud... If it weren't around they would simply chant about outsourcing, virtualization, or right-sizing whilst marching to their doom.

  20. How does that work again? on Deferred IT Maintenance Is a Ticking Time Bomb · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And with sysadmins 'scrambling to keep systems up and running with budgets that barely cover the basics,' this 'IT debt' promises only to increase in the coming years, especially as IT continues to defer routine maintenance in favor of new 'cost-saving' initiatives, particularly around the cloud.

    The point of using "the cloud" (a hollow buzzword, I admit) is that you can offload the servers, software, and maintenance to a firm that specializes in such things. Theoretically, taking advantage of the cloud where it fits your organization will offset the "maintenance debt" problem. YMMV, of course.

  21. Re:I liked 2012 on NASA Names Best & Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time · · Score: 1

    Why was I thinking BBC? No idea. It was CBS's `Mercury Theatre On The Air`, for the record. Sorry.

  22. Re:I liked 2012 on NASA Names Best & Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time · · Score: 1

    And that is the film's fault? Really? So when the BBC broadcast Orson Welles' telling of "The war of the worlds" that had over a million people in a panic thinking there really was an invasion, it should have been considered "The worst radio drama ever to be aired"?

  23. Re:Sorry to nit pick one point on Android vs. iPhone — Who Wins In 2011? · · Score: 1

    True, but on the other hand, someone will probably eventually come out with an Apple-like Android device. They'll hire a rockstar UI team, that UI team will work on the Android UI and pre-select a bunch of applications that meet their criteria. They'll put together their own App Store that limits selection or makes suggestions based on the apps they have chosen as being well-written and consistent, and discourage you from choosing other apps to keep you away from the UI chaos. They will keep a narrow selection of devices with a predictable feature set at a slightly higher price, but and you'll know that an Android device from them has the same predictability that Apple has today and people will respond to that.

    Who? Not to be incredulous but unless they compete strong on price or come up with some hardware-dependent killer feature, the whole "shiny UI and comfy walled in app-garden" will only interest people who *already have an iPhone*...

    I just think (after spending a bunch of time using iDevices and Android phones) that the whole "Rock star UI" is a non-starter since people, for the most part, don't ever complain about Android being too hard/unpolished to use. They complain that the data plan is too expensive and the battery dies too fast. If you want to innovate, go after those two problems!

  24. Re:My favourite android hack on The 10 Best Android Hacks · · Score: 1

    Android has so little to do with how it was written, and so much to do with how it was modified by the handset maker (and possibly wireless carrier) that it's rarely fair to say ANYthing conclusive about Android after trying out just one handset. There are, no doubt, little problems here and there with any given handset, but your blame rests squarely on the handset maker (Sony) and their coding choices. Google clearly did not code a fundamentally flawed alarm clock app, or it would be the one making headlines now instead of Apple.

  25. Re:Customability? on The 10 Best Android Hacks · · Score: 1

    The third point was, by my reading, "achieve levels of pedantry heretofore not witnessed among mere mortals"... You sir have passed the test!