Maybe the Dem's Should Follow Nasa's Lead...
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NASA May Outsource
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· Score: 1
This move by NASA is just another great example that government run health care would be a bad idea. NASA finally realized its history of supporting communism/socialism doomed man kinds' dream's of walking on other worlds and instead opts for the fix everything will of the free market! Obama, please look the complete failure of what NASA is, and realize too, that your Health Care package would probably do the same.
Is it coming to Cydia or are you saying it is already there, because I cannot find it when I search? Also the repository appulo.us doesn't exist. I just created my Google phone number a few days ago and I was wondering when I could use it on my iPhone. This is really, really messed up of Apple/ATT. I am really sick of them making the most retarded decisions regarding what applications I can install on MY device (thank God for Cydia).
Really though, this should be added to Cydia and thrown up on torrents for everyone to download and install (if you jailbroke).
Does anyone have a copy of the Google Voice Apps that they can share for everyone on a torrent somewhere?
Microsoft did exactly this when they created iPOD support for the XBOX 360. Apple never gave them the permission or ability to do it, but they reverse engineered the way music is stored on the iPOD and such. It was actually something they were advertising when the 360 came out -- iPOD support.
You guys will be glad we have these bad boys when WWIII starts in 2012. You know, the Mayan's predicted it.
Little do you sad people know but the attacks of 9/11 were actually perpetrated by the Chinese (they got plastic surgery to *look* like Arabs) to sink our economy, thereby causing the US to default on any future repayment to China, thereby giving the Chinese the excuse to invade America! Two things happened in the interim, most notably was the release of classified Chinese documents that mentioned the threats of "Team America World Police", which was so realistic in its portrayal of our counter-enemy operatives (you could hardly notice the strings) that they decided to wait until 2012, the fabled and shared Chinese/Mayan prophecy!
They also realized BASEketball wasn't a real sport and thought they could win a "cultural war" by beating us at the Olympics. God, you people are f**king ignorant. Get off your ass and read!
Is it just me, but I thought the actual stock (inventory count) of our jet fighters was classified... Now it's being blasted out all over the world that we only have 187 F-22s? In addition they state how many of the new planes we are ordering next year (100 F-35's I believe).
The real culprit, as the title suggests, is the composition of the diet, not the absolute calories it contains. It's a fascinating read, well researched, and worth the trip to the library.
Mod the parent up. This is absolutely true. You can eat as much as you want and lost weight or maintain your weight. Stop eating high fructose corn syrup, fatty foods, processed foods, and white processed grains. Eat as much as you want of everything else and stay active, and you should have no problem with weight.
Pepsi and Coke use High Fructose Syrup to sweeten their drinks in the US, but in Europe & Mexico, they use cane sugar. It's due to some stupid (and perhaps outdated) restriction on how much cane sugar can be imported or something like that. Not to mention that diet drinks contain aspartame which is a dangerous and once banned chemical that has clearly (in many, many many scientific studies) been linked to brain tumors and other issues. The United States Air force forbids it's pilots to drink diet drinks 2 hours before a flight due to risk of dizziness and seizure. In fact, between 78% and 85% of all FDA complaints were about aspartame ( http://www.janethull.com/askdrhull/article.php?id=043 ).
If you want to drink soda, go to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's and buy the more expensive (and a lot more tasty) Cola made with sugar cane. they're great as mixers too!:)
This was one of the first PC RPG's that I played. I was amazed at how expansive everything was, how you could climb anything, and how you could make your character a variety of classes. The day and night effects were great too, as well as how you could kill anyone. I never played Oblivion, but thinking of all the great Dagger Fall memories, maybe I should go buy it?
What do you old school Dagger Falls fans think of the newer Elder scrolls?
I have looked at Cacti, Nagios, and a few others, but I think rolling your own is easy enough and gives you the best flexibility. You could also use Nagios, or others, for example, and simply pull the results into your own system.
I built and managed a software system for me previous employer called the SMS (Server Management System). It basically tracked 50 of our web servers, database servers, and Endeca (full text search) farms at data centers spread around the country. It was pretty simple.
The system did push and pull operations. First, the system was built in PHP. In order to push commands to the servers I used PEAR SSH2 class for communication when it became stable. Another option (and what I did back in 2003) was to use exec and other command line functions in PHP in conjunction with a SETUID script (written in C) -- which gave the command line output from PHP "true" rootly powers. The problem was I had to enter a password for each server I wanted to connect to, and the PHP functions couldn't handle real time input/output, so I designed the system to work by creating an SSH2 key pair on my master monitoring server and put it's public key on each of our external servers for passwordless SSH.
The pull part of the system simply had a PHP script running on a cron per server, that would deliver information about the health of the server, its running processes, etc, to the main SMS server every 5 minutes. All load activity for all servers was logged as well to MySQL. The push operations were used to update those scripts, as well as restart Daemons on command, clear cache (such as after we did a database update), etc. It was a pretty robust system and really automated the functions of our company, to where we could perform a FULL Database Update to our 30 web servers simultaneously (using PHP and fork()), clear all cache, etc, in under an hour. We would the monitor the servers using the SMS's main screen which showed real time server stats (updated every 5 minutes, or you could "force" a push operation to get the status). If we needed to rollback the update, that was a simple mouse click away too.
I also had a hidden screen that let me run any series of commands as root on any number of servers. Everyone objected to it but I convinced my boss to let me put it in. All of our servers were a mouse click away from being "rm -rf *" 'ed. ROFL.
Anyway, I hope my little story about my system helps you out, in either avoiding what I did (LOL) or by giving you ideas.
Umm, those feelings are my opinion. And yes, elegance in design is something pretty big in computer science. There is an entire field devoted to UI and design of interfaces. Apples scores a lot in this area, and it make using the device a pleasure.
See, I think you dislike Apple as much as I do, and are upset to see a non-fanboy like myself actually admin, hey, Apple created a really nice device. These fanboys are right. Yes it has lots of issues. No device is perfect. But in my opinion, this is the best device that is currently out on the market. Period. End of story.
This is why I believe you to be a fanboy.
Well, that kind of destroys your entire argument because you 100% incorrect. Since I just got the iPhone, did a ton of research, talked to a bunch of people who owned all the different devices, and, as a matter of fact, I despise Apple.
The fact of the matter is, the web browser on the iPhone 3GS is the fastest from what I have read and from my own experience, and the majority of the features are simply better than anything that is out. The new android phone isn't even out in the US.
Will the iPhone be dethroned. Of course. And I hope it is HTC/Android, and then I will buy that.
But I am sorry, but try getting 30 hours of music out of HTC coupled with the same interface as the iPod app in the iPhone. I really want to see that.
I am not a Apple fan boy. I actually dislike Apple, but I must give credit where credit is due. Apple engineers made a great phone, but alas it is not as polished for a business device as I would like it be (has a bunch of quarks, like no on AC power versus batter power settings).
However, I demo'd a bunch of phones, including the G1, then decided on the iPhone. In my opinion it is simply the best device out there, and with the jailbreak, its nears perfection. The HTC Dream is a step in the right direction but the it is clunkier, has worse battery life (not "close to" the iPhone by any means) and the screen is plastic. The glass iPhone screen feels so great to the hand. It's so hard to go back. I read the reviews on the new Android phone coming out July/August, and they said the on-screen keyboard felt tacky and wasn't as nice as Apples due the the plastic screen. The latest Google device will have no pull out keyboard. Also, the G1 is slower, and I feel was rushed to market. It design is not as elegant.
Yes you can buy a dev kit and that is as close as your going to get, because mobile carriers do not want you flashing your own device. So it still has to be hacked. You can use your Andriod Dev Phone as your main phone if you wanted too, but its based off the G1, which mentioned above, is not as great as the iPhone. If Google makes a habit of releasing dev kits for each phone hardware iteration (without having to hack n flash) that will be a big plus versus the iPhone..
I have not noticed the auto-dimming features on the HTC Dream, so I cannot comment. But, it seems in this situation, a company that closely works on both the hardware and software integration of their product has produced a device that so far, not even HTC/Google has come to match.
. Just today I was using the iPod feature of the iPhone. I was amazed at the elegance. Shake the phone to pick a new random song, rotate to landscape to change the view to view by album art. It's the little polishing that is done that makes the difference. It makes using the device a joy. I can see why all the Apple fanboys always talk about this thing. If I was a fanboy, I would too!
The hardware on the iPhone is one of the best as well. The G1 uses HTC handsets. HTC handsets will not let you get 30 hours of music out of your device like the iPhone does. I love the little touches. The iPhone has accelerometers, and great auto dimming features. Say, for example, you are on a call, and you need to press a phone key (like press 1 for English). Well, the screen automatically dimmed already so you you can't see anything. But as soon as you go to touch the screen, the backlight pops on! You can see your key and press it. What actually happens is the accelerometers sense your other hand move slightly BEFORE you go to press the button with the other hand, and it turns on the backlight. Very cool. When I first got the phone and I saw this I thought it was some sort of black magic. HTC (also used on Windows Mobiles devices like my XV6700) hardware just doesn't come close.
I hope Android does get better and a good piece of hardware does come out to run it, because I am all about open systems (although Android isn't as open as Google likes you to think it is).
You can easily create a custom ringtone without jailbreaking. You can also put up your own wallpapers on the unlock screen as well. But jailbreaking let's you do a lot more.
Sorry, not to be mean, but I have used both devices and bought a 3GS. I am no Apple fan, but the iPhone has to be the most elegantly designed phone/mobile computer ever created. It blows android out the water, leaves Blackberry and Windows Mobile in the dust.
I have used Windows Mobile devices since 2003 and I must say, the iPhone is simply marvelous (note: I still hate Apple)
This program found here http://difrnt.com/blog/?p=25 will automatically copy the files out of the Windows Temp Directory when you do the restore on your iPhone in order to get the device. You don't need to perform a regular restore, just a DFU restore in order to obtain you iBEC and iBSS files (the guide tells you to restore once, normally, then once in DFU mode).
I live in Los Angeles, the South West Side (commonly referred to as The South Bay). I just ditched Verizon and switched to AT&T because I wanted the iPhone 3GS (it's a phone and iPod and I no longer have to use a CD Walkman when running outside)!
Well, I got home with my new iPhone 3GS, all excited, and decided to call Verizon to make sure they canceled my account when my number got ported over at the AT&T store. Well, lets just say they should use my call for a commercial against AT&T.... After getting in touch with an operator in under 1 minute (Verizon customer service is great), I attempted to ask a few simple questions (I ported over my number, is my account canceled, is it pro-rated, how much do I owe, etc...), but instead I am aggravated and embarrassed. The signal quality was horrible. Every other sentence was garbled and I had to keep asking the Verizon Rep to repeat herself. When I talked, she couldn't understand me either. I was like, "I am calling on my AT&T iPhone right now, I already switched, and I just want to make sure my account is canceled." I couldn't even make out what she was saying. Finally after repeating enough times I finally got the information I needed and said thank you and hung up.
Seriously, it's that bad at my house, and I live 4 blocks from the AT&T store. My Verizon service was great at home, but AT&T keeps switching between the Edge Network and 3G. First I have full bars, then I have 2, then I have none. WTF!?
I call up AT&T after hours support, and I get a human, right away (+1 AT&T, but their score has already lost 100 points today). He checks the tower near my house and says I should have full 3G signal and that it is very strong. He suggest I go back to the AT&T store to exchange my phone. So I go back to the store right away, and they can't give me a new 3GS because they are out of stock, but suggests going to the Apple store to switch it. However, he suggests I try a new SIM card first. So he replaces my old one and gives me a new one. I go back home, hard boot my phone (something the tech suggested), and my reception was better, but still muffled in some situations. Sometimes my internet connection would just stop working and pages would time out. App Store, Facebook, all wouldn't work. Ughh.
I call up the tech again, and he asks me how often I leave my house and how often I hard boot my phone. I tell him I leave my house all the time and I rarely turn off my phone completely and turn it back on. Why should I? Well he says that when I leave my house and come back, the tower information isn't updated so I need to hard boot my phone, at least ONCE a day, especially if I leave the house and come back. OK, really... REALLY!? The reception problem is still not as bad after getting the new SIM, but it is still an issue at my house. Driving around town seems to be OK.
In the end the tech submitted a ticket for service issues at the tower near my house. I dunno who to blame this on, AT&T, Apple, or both... Today i made a call and the reception was fine. Yesterday it was muffled. I am not sure WTF is going on anymore.
And for the last aggravation... I have the iPhone docked near my MS wireless mouse adapter and the iPhone radio interferes with my wireless mouse. If I am on a call I can hardly even move my mouse! WOW!
I hear what you are saying, but there is a chicken and egg problem here. All of these games run on emulators of last gen systems. I could see how a service *like* this could kill consoles, but not *this* service. The way this service works, there needs to be games and a system for which the games came out on. What do you want the developers to program their games for if this kills the consoles and no new consoles come out? PC (will we come full circle)? The console makers have to make the consoles, in which the developers then create games based around (using the hardware and software dev kits from Sony, MS, and Nintendo). That defines how the games will come out.
These guys are one step down the food chain and simply take the games that already came out for the consoles, and put them online. I don't see how anyone would object to this. It's very easy for Nintendo, or Sony. to only release certain titles on this network as to not interfere with their profit model.
Think of this...
You're at home, you log onto Gaikai, and see a PS2 RPG you always wanted to play. Awesome! So you start playing it on the PC. The next day, you have to fly out somewhere (business trip, home for the holidays), and while you're at the airport, you use your iPhone and continue playing your game. No need to copy your emulator files over, deal with incompatibilities, buggy software (there isn't even a ps2 emu for iPhone and I doubt its powerful enough). While on your trip, you decide to retire for the night. You bring up your laptop, and can once again resume your PS2 RPG.
I think this will open a whole new market for gaming to people who either never own consoles or people that do own consoles, and want to play last generation titles that they missed out on and no longer own the older system or don't; have it hooked up anymore (especially now that Sony took out PS2 backwards compatibility)
I would say read books (or e-books). I would start with Pavel Tsatsouline. He was responsible with bringing the Kettlebell to the mainstream American. In fact, I recommend you work out with a Kettlebell, as its offers true core strength training and it doesn't do muscle isolation, but works 2 or 3 muscles in one exercise. Isolation is not all its cracked up to be, however, I don't totally avoid isolation, but I try to do what Men's Health calls combo lifts or Kettlebell exercises. I have a bench and free weights and still do traditional exercises. You gotta mix it up or you body gets used to doing the same thing and you stop getting gains.
This book talks about how to really get strong by lifting, the do's and don't, etc. It's really an eye opener. It starts off talking about the 5-5-5 program. 1 set, 5 reps -- per exercise, and you do 5 exercises. Do this 5 days a week. You must lift HEAVY weights though for this program. Really heavy. To gauge if it is too heavy or not, you should be able to do 2 more reps or so after doing the 5. Don't actually do them, but if you can just do a few more, you are lifting the max weight for you, which is 70% to 90% of your 1RM (one rep max).
My friends laughed at me when I said I was doing this 5-5-5 program. But my body transformed to have proportionally sized but bigger arms, chest, legs etc, and I even got 6-pack abs -- something I tried for in my entire life. And I did this in only 3 to 4 months (of course I did 30 to 60 min of cardio too for fat burning). I did isolation like chest presses and such, but I also did pullups/chinups. Then, after two months, I swtiched to kettlebell and non-isolation based exercises (cleans, presses, Turkish Getups, etc).
I highly recommend this book.
I will tell you one secret. Its called Janda Sit ups (no you don't need to buy the device on the Internet). A Janda sit up (http://www.cbass.com/HardestSitup.htm) works by getting in sit up position, legs at a 90 degree angle, and then tensing your gluts (butt) and hamstrings -- then doing a sit up. You will find it is nearly impossible to do, so you can cheat my relaxing some tension in those muscles. However, doing this once a day, 5 times, for a few months, COUPLED with cardio WILL get you six pack abs.
Another good book that gave me A LOT of great direction (i read this when I first started working out Senior year of College) is The Men's Health Hard Body Plan : The Ultimate 12-Week Program for Burning Fat and Building Muscle. http://www.amazon.com/Mens-Health-Hard-Body-Plan/dp/1579542298. This book explains all the major muscles, how they work, what exercises work out what, which exercises in one workout give yo more gains, etc. It's a reall knowledgebase for working out.
It also talks about when you should eat food, what you should eat relevant to when you work out. It also has create myth busting tips and really really good workout examples for you to follow. Some of them are very tough and tiring, which is why you must eat right (the book also covers).
Hope this helps. Try searching the net for the Pavel videos on Kettlebell. It is a bit over the top but definitely worth it.
Actually, start with weight lifting and do not stretch first. After you work out a muscle (after your first set), then stretch that muscle between sets to get the blood flowing. OR, if you are building strength and only doing one set, stretch and move onto the next exercise. After doing weight lifting then more onto cardio.
Also, there is no actual need to stretch before doing cardio. I used to and stopped. FDA tests prove that stretching isn't necessary to prevent injuries that occur while running occur outside the normal range of motion -- something that stretching could not prepare you for (go ahead Google it)!
Now if you do Yoga, that is different, because you are not simply stretching, but increasing the strength of your ligaments and tendons, which is why for ultimate power, you need to do Yoga since your muscles are only as strong as the strength at which it is attached to your frame and other muscles!
Losing weight and keeping it off is not as easy as burn more calories than you take in. For the reasons above and also, not all calories are created equal. Calories from fat are different than normal calories, as the body has to work (takes longer) a lot more to break down fat.
Also, consider simple carbohydrates versus complex carbohydrates (whole wheat). Simple carbohydrates which are not immediately metabolized go straight into the mid section (for most white Caucasians). More complex carbohydrates don''t have this property and are healthier for you as they contain nutrients simple carbohydrates do not (read up on flax and wheat processing).
Also, for working out. There is NO excuse not to. Do one set of 5 for 5 exercises, 5 times a week. Its a myth you need to do 3 sets of x, perpetuated by the American body building community (read up on Pavel). Do this for two months then switch exercises. I guarantee you will become stronger than someone who does multiple sets -- and you'll lose fat too. You need to do both cardio and weight lifting. Period. But lifting weights burns more fat than cardio and keeps your metabolism higher longer. When weight lifting, the bigger the muscle the more calories you burn. So doing squats and dead lifts versus working out your biceps and triceps is going to burn a lot more calories.
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This move by NASA is just another great example that government run health care would be a bad idea. NASA finally realized its history of supporting communism/socialism doomed man kinds' dream's of walking on other worlds and instead opts for the fix everything will of the free market! Obama, please look the complete failure of what NASA is, and realize too, that your Health Care package would probably do the same.
OK, I found it.
Right now, only the 3rd party Application GV Mobile is available on Cydia. Download away and thumb your nose at ATT.
Is it coming to Cydia or are you saying it is already there, because I cannot find it when I search? Also the repository appulo.us doesn't exist. I just created my Google phone number a few days ago and I was wondering when I could use it on my iPhone. This is really, really messed up of Apple/ATT. I am really sick of them making the most retarded decisions regarding what applications I can install on MY device (thank God for Cydia).
Really though, this should be added to Cydia and thrown up on torrents for everyone to download and install (if you jailbroke). Does anyone have a copy of the Google Voice Apps that they can share for everyone on a torrent somewhere?
Microsoft did exactly this when they created iPOD support for the XBOX 360. Apple never gave them the permission or ability to do it, but they reverse engineered the way music is stored on the iPOD and such. It was actually something they were advertising when the 360 came out -- iPOD support.
Of course, M$ is too easy to ridicule.
You guys will be glad we have these bad boys when WWIII starts in 2012. You know, the Mayan's predicted it.
Little do you sad people know but the attacks of 9/11 were actually perpetrated by the Chinese (they got plastic surgery to *look* like Arabs) to sink our economy, thereby causing the US to default on any future repayment to China, thereby giving the Chinese the excuse to invade America! Two things happened in the interim, most notably was the release of classified Chinese documents that mentioned the threats of "Team America World Police", which was so realistic in its portrayal of our counter-enemy operatives (you could hardly notice the strings) that they decided to wait until 2012, the fabled and shared Chinese/Mayan prophecy!
They also realized BASEketball wasn't a real sport and thought they could win a "cultural war" by beating us at the Olympics. God, you people are f**king ignorant. Get off your ass and read!
Is it just me, but I thought the actual stock (inventory count) of our jet fighters was classified... Now it's being blasted out all over the world that we only have 187 F-22s? In addition they state how many of the new planes we are ordering next year (100 F-35's I believe).
Is there something wrong here?
The real culprit, as the title suggests, is the composition of the diet, not the absolute calories it contains. It's a fascinating read, well researched, and worth the trip to the library.
Mod the parent up. This is absolutely true. You can eat as much as you want and lost weight or maintain your weight. Stop eating high fructose corn syrup, fatty foods, processed foods, and white processed grains. Eat as much as you want of everything else and stay active, and you should have no problem with weight.
Soda tastes better in Europe.
:)
Pepsi and Coke use High Fructose Syrup to sweeten their drinks in the US, but in Europe & Mexico, they use cane sugar. It's due to some stupid (and perhaps outdated) restriction on how much cane sugar can be imported or something like that. Not to mention that diet drinks contain aspartame which is a dangerous and once banned chemical that has clearly (in many, many many scientific studies) been linked to brain tumors and other issues. The United States Air force forbids it's pilots to drink diet drinks 2 hours before a flight due to risk of dizziness and seizure. In fact, between 78% and 85% of all FDA complaints were about aspartame ( http://www.janethull.com/askdrhull/article.php?id=043 ).
If you want to drink soda, go to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's and buy the more expensive (and a lot more tasty) Cola made with sugar cane. they're great as mixers too!
This was one of the first PC RPG's that I played. I was amazed at how expansive everything was, how you could climb anything, and how you could make your character a variety of classes. The day and night effects were great too, as well as how you could kill anyone. I never played Oblivion, but thinking of all the great Dagger Fall memories, maybe I should go buy it?
What do you old school Dagger Falls fans think of the newer Elder scrolls?
Have they ever become unhireable?
Not at all. Instead, they move on to become development leads or even project managers, ruining even more projects and companies!
(my ex was in HR, and basically, US law forbids your old job from saying anything negative to your new employer)
I have looked at Cacti, Nagios, and a few others, but I think rolling your own is easy enough and gives you the best flexibility. You could also use Nagios, or others, for example, and simply pull the results into your own system.
I built and managed a software system for me previous employer called the SMS (Server Management System). It basically tracked 50 of our web servers, database servers, and Endeca (full text search) farms at data centers spread around the country. It was pretty simple.
The system did push and pull operations. First, the system was built in PHP.
In order to push commands to the servers I used PEAR SSH2 class for communication when it became stable. Another option (and what I did back in 2003) was to use exec and other command line functions in PHP in conjunction with a SETUID script (written in C) -- which gave the command line output from PHP "true" rootly powers. The problem was I had to enter a password for each server I wanted to connect to, and the PHP functions couldn't handle real time input/output, so I designed the system to work by creating an SSH2 key pair on my master monitoring server and put it's public key on each of our external servers for passwordless SSH.
The pull part of the system simply had a PHP script running on a cron per server, that would deliver information about the health of the server, its running processes, etc, to the main SMS server every 5 minutes. All load activity for all servers was logged as well to MySQL. The push operations were used to update those scripts, as well as restart Daemons on command, clear cache (such as after we did a database update), etc. It was a pretty robust system and really automated the functions of our company, to where we could perform a FULL Database Update to our 30 web servers simultaneously (using PHP and fork()), clear all cache, etc, in under an hour. We would the monitor the servers using the SMS's main screen which showed real time server stats (updated every 5 minutes, or you could "force" a push operation to get the status). If we needed to rollback the update, that was a simple mouse click away too.
I also had a hidden screen that let me run any series of commands as root on any number of servers. Everyone objected to it but I convinced my boss to let me put it in. All of our servers were a mouse click away from being "rm -rf *" 'ed. ROFL. Anyway, I hope my little story about my system helps you out, in either avoiding what I did (LOL) or by giving you ideas.
Umm, those feelings are my opinion. And yes, elegance in design is something pretty big in computer science. There is an entire field devoted to UI and design of interfaces. Apples scores a lot in this area, and it make using the device a pleasure.
See, I think you dislike Apple as much as I do, and are upset to see a non-fanboy like myself actually admin, hey, Apple created a really nice device. These fanboys are right. Yes it has lots of issues. No device is perfect. But in my opinion, this is the best device that is currently out on the market. Period. End of story.
This is why I believe you to be a fanboy. Well, that kind of destroys your entire argument because you 100% incorrect. Since I just got the iPhone, did a ton of research, talked to a bunch of people who owned all the different devices, and, as a matter of fact, I despise Apple.
The fact of the matter is, the web browser on the iPhone 3GS is the fastest from what I have read and from my own experience, and the majority of the features are simply better than anything that is out. The new android phone isn't even out in the US.
Will the iPhone be dethroned. Of course. And I hope it is HTC/Android, and then I will buy that.
But I am sorry, but try getting 30 hours of music out of HTC coupled with the same interface as the iPod app in the iPhone. I really want to see that.
Every test I have ever read said the iPhone browser is faster.
I am not a Apple fan boy. I actually dislike Apple, but I must give credit where credit is due. Apple engineers made a great phone, but alas it is not as polished for a business device as I would like it be (has a bunch of quarks, like no on AC power versus batter power settings).
However, I demo'd a bunch of phones, including the G1, then decided on the iPhone. In my opinion it is simply the best device out there, and with the jailbreak, its nears perfection. The HTC Dream is a step in the right direction but the it is clunkier, has worse battery life (not "close to" the iPhone by any means) and the screen is plastic. The glass iPhone screen feels so great to the hand. It's so hard to go back. I read the reviews on the new Android phone coming out July/August, and they said the on-screen keyboard felt tacky and wasn't as nice as Apples due the the plastic screen. The latest Google device will have no pull out keyboard. Also, the G1 is slower, and I feel was rushed to market. It design is not as elegant.
Yes you can buy a dev kit and that is as close as your going to get, because mobile carriers do not want you flashing your own device. So it still has to be hacked. You can use your Andriod Dev Phone as your main phone if you wanted too, but its based off the G1, which mentioned above, is not as great as the iPhone. If Google makes a habit of releasing dev kits for each phone hardware iteration (without having to hack n flash) that will be a big plus versus the iPhone..
I have not noticed the auto-dimming features on the HTC Dream, so I cannot comment. But, it seems in this situation, a company that closely works on both the hardware and software integration of their product has produced a device that so far, not even HTC/Google has come to match.
. Just today I was using the iPod feature of the iPhone. I was amazed at the elegance. Shake the phone to pick a new random song, rotate to landscape to change the view to view by album art. It's the little polishing that is done that makes the difference. It makes using the device a joy. I can see why all the Apple fanboys always talk about this thing. If I was a fanboy, I would too!
The hardware on the iPhone is one of the best as well. The G1 uses HTC handsets. HTC handsets will not let you get 30 hours of music out of your device like the iPhone does. I love the little touches. The iPhone has accelerometers, and great auto dimming features. Say, for example, you are on a call, and you need to press a phone key (like press 1 for English). Well, the screen automatically dimmed already so you you can't see anything. But as soon as you go to touch the screen, the backlight pops on! You can see your key and press it. What actually happens is the accelerometers sense your other hand move slightly BEFORE you go to press the button with the other hand, and it turns on the backlight. Very cool. When I first got the phone and I saw this I thought it was some sort of black magic. HTC (also used on Windows Mobiles devices like my XV6700) hardware just doesn't come close.
I hope Android does get better and a good piece of hardware does come out to run it, because I am all about open systems (although Android isn't as open as Google likes you to think it is).
You can easily create a custom ringtone without jailbreaking. You can also put up your own wallpapers on the unlock screen as well. But jailbreaking let's you do a lot more.
Sorry, not to be mean, but I have used both devices and bought a 3GS. I am no Apple fan, but the iPhone has to be the most elegantly designed phone/mobile computer ever created. It blows android out the water, leaves Blackberry and Windows Mobile in the dust.
I have used Windows Mobile devices since 2003 and I must say, the iPhone is simply marvelous (note: I still hate Apple)
Download the purplera1n tool and then unlock using ultraSnow using the guide here: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=4253
The only problem with this hack is that Winterboard still doesn't work. For that you will want to wait until the iPhone Dev Team releases their updates. The Dev team STRONGLY RECOMMENDS that you obtain your IBEC/IBSS files and described on http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/133799347/your-3gs-temporary-solution with a windows tutorial here: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=4399
This program found here http://difrnt.com/blog/?p=25 will automatically copy the files out of the Windows Temp Directory when you do the restore on your iPhone in order to get the device. You don't need to perform a regular restore, just a DFU restore in order to obtain you iBEC and iBSS files (the guide tells you to restore once, normally, then once in DFU mode).
AT&T reception in Los Angeles is like the fucking Bermuda Triangle
I live in Los Angeles, the South West Side (commonly referred to as The South Bay). I just ditched Verizon and switched to AT&T because I wanted the iPhone 3GS (it's a phone and iPod and I no longer have to use a CD Walkman when running outside)!
Well, I got home with my new iPhone 3GS, all excited, and decided to call Verizon to make sure they canceled my account when my number got ported over at the AT&T store. Well, lets just say they should use my call for a commercial against AT&T.... After getting in touch with an operator in under 1 minute (Verizon customer service is great), I attempted to ask a few simple questions (I ported over my number, is my account canceled, is it pro-rated, how much do I owe, etc...), but instead I am aggravated and embarrassed. The signal quality was horrible. Every other sentence was garbled and I had to keep asking the Verizon Rep to repeat herself. When I talked, she couldn't understand me either. I was like, "I am calling on my AT&T iPhone right now, I already switched, and I just want to make sure my account is canceled." I couldn't even make out what she was saying. Finally after repeating enough times I finally got the information I needed and said thank you and hung up.
Seriously, it's that bad at my house, and I live 4 blocks from the AT&T store. My Verizon service was great at home, but AT&T keeps switching between the Edge Network and 3G. First I have full bars, then I have 2, then I have none. WTF!?
I call up AT&T after hours support, and I get a human, right away (+1 AT&T, but their score has already lost 100 points today). He checks the tower near my house and says I should have full 3G signal and that it is very strong. He suggest I go back to the AT&T store to exchange my phone. So I go back to the store right away, and they can't give me a new 3GS because they are out of stock, but suggests going to the Apple store to switch it. However, he suggests I try a new SIM card first. So he replaces my old one and gives me a new one. I go back home, hard boot my phone (something the tech suggested), and my reception was better, but still muffled in some situations. Sometimes my internet connection would just stop working and pages would time out. App Store, Facebook, all wouldn't work. Ughh.
I call up the tech again, and he asks me how often I leave my house and how often I hard boot my phone. I tell him I leave my house all the time and I rarely turn off my phone completely and turn it back on. Why should I? Well he says that when I leave my house and come back, the tower information isn't updated so I need to hard boot my phone, at least ONCE a day, especially if I leave the house and come back. OK, really... REALLY!? The reception problem is still not as bad after getting the new SIM, but it is still an issue at my house. Driving around town seems to be OK.
In the end the tech submitted a ticket for service issues at the tower near my house. I dunno who to blame this on, AT&T, Apple, or both... Today i made a call and the reception was fine. Yesterday it was muffled. I am not sure WTF is going on anymore.
And for the last aggravation... I have the iPhone docked near my MS wireless mouse adapter and the iPhone radio interferes with my wireless mouse. If I am on a call I can hardly even move my mouse! WOW!
I hear what you are saying, but there is a chicken and egg problem here. All of these games run on emulators of last gen systems. I could see how a service *like* this could kill consoles, but not *this* service. The way this service works, there needs to be games and a system for which the games came out on. What do you want the developers to program their games for if this kills the consoles and no new consoles come out? PC (will we come full circle)? The console makers have to make the consoles, in which the developers then create games based around (using the hardware and software dev kits from Sony, MS, and Nintendo). That defines how the games will come out.
These guys are one step down the food chain and simply take the games that already came out for the consoles, and put them online. I don't see how anyone would object to this. It's very easy for Nintendo, or Sony. to only release certain titles on this network as to not interfere with their profit model.
Think of this...
You're at home, you log onto Gaikai, and see a PS2 RPG you always wanted to play. Awesome! So you start playing it on the PC. The next day, you have to fly out somewhere (business trip, home for the holidays), and while you're at the airport, you use your iPhone and continue playing your game. No need to copy your emulator files over, deal with incompatibilities, buggy software (there isn't even a ps2 emu for iPhone and I doubt its powerful enough). While on your trip, you decide to retire for the night. You bring up your laptop, and can once again resume your PS2 RPG.
I think this will open a whole new market for gaming to people who either never own consoles or people that do own consoles, and want to play last generation titles that they missed out on and no longer own the older system or don't; have it hooked up anymore (especially now that Sony took out PS2 backwards compatibility)
I would say read books (or e-books). I would start with Pavel Tsatsouline. He was responsible with bringing the Kettlebell to the mainstream American. In fact, I recommend you work out with a Kettlebell, as its offers true core strength training and it doesn't do muscle isolation, but works 2 or 3 muscles in one exercise. Isolation is not all its cracked up to be, however, I don't totally avoid isolation, but I try to do what Men's Health calls combo lifts or Kettlebell exercises. I have a bench and free weights and still do traditional exercises. You gotta mix it up or you body gets used to doing the same thing and you stop getting gains.
However, start out reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Bodybuilding-Strength-Training-Secrets/dp/B000QRXTVY
This book talks about how to really get strong by lifting, the do's and don't, etc. It's really an eye opener. It starts off talking about the 5-5-5 program. 1 set, 5 reps -- per exercise, and you do 5 exercises. Do this 5 days a week. You must lift HEAVY weights though for this program. Really heavy. To gauge if it is too heavy or not, you should be able to do 2 more reps or so after doing the 5. Don't actually do them, but if you can just do a few more, you are lifting the max weight for you, which is 70% to 90% of your 1RM (one rep max).
My friends laughed at me when I said I was doing this 5-5-5 program. But my body transformed to have proportionally sized but bigger arms, chest, legs etc, and I even got 6-pack abs -- something I tried for in my entire life. And I did this in only 3 to 4 months (of course I did 30 to 60 min of cardio too for fat burning). I did isolation like chest presses and such, but I also did pullups/chinups. Then, after two months, I swtiched to kettlebell and non-isolation based exercises (cleans, presses, Turkish Getups, etc).
I highly recommend this book.
I will tell you one secret. Its called Janda Sit ups (no you don't need to buy the device on the Internet). A Janda sit up (http://www.cbass.com/HardestSitup.htm) works by getting in sit up position, legs at a 90 degree angle, and then tensing your gluts (butt) and hamstrings -- then doing a sit up. You will find it is nearly impossible to do, so you can cheat my relaxing some tension in those muscles. However, doing this once a day, 5 times, for a few months, COUPLED with cardio WILL get you six pack abs.
Another good book that gave me A LOT of great direction (i read this when I first started working out Senior year of College) is The Men's Health Hard Body Plan : The Ultimate 12-Week Program for Burning Fat and Building Muscle. http://www.amazon.com/Mens-Health-Hard-Body-Plan/dp/1579542298. This book explains all the major muscles, how they work, what exercises work out what, which exercises in one workout give yo more gains, etc. It's a reall knowledgebase for working out. It also talks about when you should eat food, what you should eat relevant to when you work out. It also has create myth busting tips and really really good workout examples for you to follow. Some of them are very tough and tiring, which is why you must eat right (the book also covers).
Hope this helps. Try searching the net for the Pavel videos on Kettlebell. It is a bit over the top but definitely worth it.
Actually, start with weight lifting and do not stretch first. After you work out a muscle (after your first set), then stretch that muscle between sets to get the blood flowing. OR, if you are building strength and only doing one set, stretch and move onto the next exercise. After doing weight lifting then more onto cardio.
Also, there is no actual need to stretch before doing cardio. I used to and stopped. FDA tests prove that stretching isn't necessary to prevent injuries that occur while running occur outside the normal range of motion -- something that stretching could not prepare you for (go ahead Google it)!
Now if you do Yoga, that is different, because you are not simply stretching, but increasing the strength of your ligaments and tendons, which is why for ultimate power, you need to do Yoga since your muscles are only as strong as the strength at which it is attached to your frame and other muscles!
Mod Parent Up.
Losing weight and keeping it off is not as easy as burn more calories than you take in. For the reasons above and also, not all calories are created equal. Calories from fat are different than normal calories, as the body has to work (takes longer) a lot more to break down fat.
Also, consider simple carbohydrates versus complex carbohydrates (whole wheat). Simple carbohydrates which are not immediately metabolized go straight into the mid section (for most white Caucasians). More complex carbohydrates don''t have this property and are healthier for you as they contain nutrients simple carbohydrates do not (read up on flax and wheat processing).
Also, for working out. There is NO excuse not to. Do one set of 5 for 5 exercises, 5 times a week. Its a myth you need to do 3 sets of x, perpetuated by the American body building community (read up on Pavel). Do this for two months then switch exercises. I guarantee you will become stronger than someone who does multiple sets -- and you'll lose fat too. You need to do both cardio and weight lifting. Period. But lifting weights burns more fat than cardio and keeps your metabolism higher longer. When weight lifting, the bigger the muscle the more calories you burn. So doing squats and dead lifts versus working out your biceps and triceps is going to burn a lot more calories.