I guess the biggest question would be - why a smartphone specifically?
Assuming you have some sort of decent Internet access at school, at something available at home, why not just get a VoIP line (a' la Vonage, MagicJack, etc)? You'd have a single number that would cross borders with you easily, and it would be one heck of a lot cheaper.
Yay! Now I can burn through my monthly allotment in 33 minutes and 20 seconds, and incur overage charges at 50 cents a minute for the remaining 43,167.67 minutes of the month!
Does speed really matter if your monthly allotment is that low?
Seriously, I've seen a few people under 21 not sitting at computers, for very brief periods, but most of them spend a significant amount of time at computers, where things like Pandora work quite well to introduce them to music. And when they leave their computers, they have their iPhones, Droids, or Blackberries that can stream them music from Pandora, Last.fm, etc.
Works pretty well on us 40+ers, too. I know my car stereo works, but I don't discover music over it. Can't stand the ads any more. The radio is where I get my NEWS. My computer is where I get my music.
Most apps written for the Blackberry are pretty well-behaved. Those that aren't get uninstalled pretty quickly. You learn pretty quickly which ones to ALT-TAB out of (leaving them in the background) and which ones to use the EXIT option on the menu to get out of (shutting them down).
I have a Geocaching application called Blackstar that runs the GPS whether it's in the foreground or background. That thing can gobble my battery dry from full charge in about 3 hours. I make darned sure to exit out of that app unless I intend to go back into it quickly. And that's exactly how it should work - I should decide whether to leave it running or not. Re-engaging a GPS lock takes a minute, so I should be able to hop out and log a cache on the web browser while it maintains my location (or I can choose to exit the app to save battery if I know I won't use it again for a few minutes).
On the other hand, Google Maps shuts down the GPS and falls back to cell tower triangulation unless it is running in the foreground. Most apps that use powergobblers like the GPS will shut them down when you aren't actually using them at the moment. I'd really have to work hard to need to recharge my phone more often than once every 24 hours, and even with a bunch of (well-behaved) background apps running I still usually get 48+ hours of normal use between charges.
I also have a car charger cable in my car, so if the battery starts to run down quickly I can add some juice. Mine uses mini-USB so very inexpensive car chargers are very easy to find, but I'm sure they make Apple-connector car chargers pretty cheaply by now, don't they?
PS: I think there's a difference between multi-tasking and a windowed interface that might be part of your issue with it, if I read your post correctly.
The stated use is to allow a chat window to be always present.
That's not entirely accurate. The intended use of multitasking is to have a chat
application
always running (eg. logged into an instant messenger server, able to receive a message and notify you in real time). Not actually visible at all times, but running in the background.
All actual applications would still run in full-screen.
You'd be able to, say, continue talking on the phone while you switched over to the IM app and replied to the instant message you just received.
Or go check something on the Web while in the middle of an IM conversation but still receive the messages from the person on the other end while you are surfing (you'd just have to switch back to the IM application to read and reply).
Or click/select the URL you just got over IM and check out the YouTube video they wanted you to see, without losing the connection to the IM server so you can continue your conversation as soon as the video is done.
Or surf to a web site that does streaming music, and then go back to another application and leave that music running while you work on a document, or chat on IM, or whatever.
Sure, it's not useful for everyone, but for those of us who like it the lack of it is a deal-breaker.
I can only give an example based on the Blackberry, the iPhone implementation (if it ever happens) may be entirely different.
There is a section of the home screen devoted to a "notification area" (similar to the one found in Windows, at least in concept). Any application that wants to handle push-type notifications registers with the OS, so notifications (ringtones, number of vibrations, whether it blinks the LED, etc) are all handled through the same place you choose your ringtones for calls.
If I'm running the native apps for IM, I'll get my notification plus an icon with a little red star appears on the home screen. Most of the native apps also allow the icons to show in the top bar. I then know to ALT-TAB to the IM application running in the background and read my incoming message, and reply to it if I like. Most third-party applications lack the notification icon, but usually change their application icon on the home screen and also vibrate or beep based on how I've set them up in the notifications profile.
There are several useful problems solved by multi-tasking, at least for me:
1. I run an RSS reader, and that is programmed to go out every 8 hours and pull all the news articles from all of my news sources. That way, if I end up in a no-service area, I still have relatively recent news. 2. Instant messenger, which has the same "push-style" notifications as SMS, but can be done from any IM client (currently logged in to AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN) and doesn't incur SMS charges. I also use SMS for those friends of mine who don't get charged per-message. 3. Google Maps / "Me" multitasking. I like being able to exit out of Google Maps to go check something and know the GPS is still running, and when I go back into Google Maps it's right where I was before with the GPS running and my street route intact. Same is true of web browsing - I can start loading a complex page, then hop over and do something else while it's loading.
Multitasking can make up, in large part, for the deficiencies of the Blackberry I have - it's an EDGE-only phone, so I can't surf the web as fast as a 3G iPhone. But I can have it pull data while I'm doing something else. Nothing can make up for the teeny little screen as compared to the gloriously
Battery life is less important to me. Even with a bunch of background apps running gathering data for me, I still get a solid two days of actual use out of it, and it's a 16-month-old phone on the stock battery. If an app goes misbehavin', I uninstall it and move on. Having all the information I want at my fingertips, even if I've lost service (which happens all the time inside my workplace) is far more important.
Not just "fear". The IT department at my company has tested, and they KNOW anything newer than IE6 is incompatible with a decent array of intranet applications, including the company intranet (which was built on a commercial CMS that has since folded, so all that information has to be moved to a new CMS). They've also had to go out and find the usual rash of departmental applications that people wrote in Excel with VBScript, or Access, with a FrontPage front end, and figure out how many of those would survive an IE6 upgrade, and the answer to that question is also pretty grim. And I sincerely doubt they got 'em all. Not to mention the number of canned applications that perform really useful tasks, but not useful enough to make it worthwhile to spend money to upgrade them, so they've been slowly aging like bad cheese, but replacing their functionality is difficult or expensive.
Add into that the number of machines that are already pretty marginal for XP with IE6, throw in IE8 and it might be the straw that broke the eight-year-old camel's back, necessitating a bunch of upgrades. They've already had to hold off on hardware upgrades for two years running because the economy blows steaming monkey chunks, and a lot of the machines are struggling.
Upgrading the browser is relatively easy - SMS push, done. Replacing/upgrading the hardware is a little harder. Replacing all the applications that both IS and the business have implemented over the years that are all dependent on IE6 is a multi-million dollar project.
And, lest we forget, the economy blows steaming monkey chunks. So how many more people do you lay off to get the money to upgrade all these apps? None, you say? Righty-ho, IS will get right on working on business-critical stuff with their reduced remaining staff, then.
So they've put their money into security upgrades of the core infrastructure, improvements to AV and the firewall grid, and making sure company-confidential information doesn't reside on laptop or even desktop hard drives, and making sure access to important stuff like credit cards is only stored on an encrypted network inaccessible from the world of mere mortal desktops. If a desktop machine is compromised, the combination of hardware firewalls, software firewalls, antivirus, antimalware, and the Proxy Nazi will hopefully isolate it, and remote reimage means IS can reach out and nuke any machine that suddenly gets suspicious.
They want to go Windows Seven and IE8, but that's going to be a year or two to coordinate, and they'll have to incur a lot of wrath breaking tons of critical business apps (many of which they know they are still unaware of) or spending money upgrading them (if that's even possible). They'll also have to replace a good bit of hardware.
All of our important data is on mainframes and midrange servers, or the SAN, and that's all firewalled up the wazoo. Most people get nothing but Telnet access to that kind of hardware. Credit card data is on its own network and NO ONE gets to that except a very small list.
Do we all want to see IE6 go the way of the dodo? Hell, YES. And there is a plan to do that.
Does it make sense to make that our primary goal in terms of securing our data? No. Centralized security and a "just enough permissions" model is far cheaper, and more effective.
The story said it was a coffee table, in other words a low table that would require no climb, even for a 3-year-old. It would also probably be just about chest level for the 3-year-old, so the gun could have gone off almost immediately if the child walked up to it and touched the trigger and if the business end was pointed at the child it would have been a chest shot.
I agree the "investigated a prowler then, oopsie!, left my gun on the table, loaded and cocked with the safety off" is negligence to the extreme where it's almost easier to accept malice as an explanation. This certainly bears investigation, and the result may be a:
- finding of intent (Murder charge), or
- finding of severe negligence (take away his right to possess guns, possible homicide charges), or
- finding that this was a tragic mistake, accept that the death of his stepchild is sufficient punishment, make him take a few gun safety courses, and suspend his concealed carry for a while if he has one.
The only relevance of the Wii controller is that Mom might not have noticed the gun on the table, assuming it was the controller that might have rested there normally. She might not have even noticed the kid playing with it, since having the kid play with a gun-like object was not out of the ordinary. The Wii controller is a contributing factor, but a very minor one.
The real issue is an unprotected handgun, which even those of us who support the right to bear arms cannot defend.
Well, for one, ensuring no repeat performance in the same household?
Sorry, but one of the consequences of handling a firearm negligently is that, regardless of other punishments, you have demonstrated that you lack the necessary sense of responsibility to do so again. The tragedy of losing a stepchild may or may not be enough punishment, I don't know the dude and I don't know whether he is remorseful about it. But assuming he is, there's still the preventative aspect to consider.
Any license to carry a firearm should be revoked, at the very least, pending an investigation, and his firearms should be removed from his control until that investigation is complete. That is a very reasonable preventative, not punitive, step. Depending on the outcome of that investigation, he might have his right to possess firearms reinstated, or he might not. As a parent, I'm gonna go with "not". As a believer in the right to carry firearms, I'm gonna go with "not". As a firm believer in the rule of law, I'm gonna go with "let a jury decide based on the actual facts that I don't have right now, and meanwhile I'll hope for 'not'".
This isn't an "oopsie! Lesson learned! Sorry!" kind of incident. This is a "someone made a big mistake and we need to reexamine whether he's likely to repeat that mistake" kind of incident.
The Wii controller in question looked like a gun. A real gun was left on the table. The little girl was shot in the chest. Those are the facts, everything after this sentence is conjecture.
I'm gonna go with "child reaches for something that looks like the Wii controller, grasps it while the business end is pointed at her chest, and squeezes it in the act of trying to pick it up, likely with her thumb on the trigger and her fingers around the upper part of the handle." But if it was lying on the table, it could just as easily have been with one hand on the barrel and pushed the trigger with the other hand. If she was used to the Wii making fun noises when she pulled the trigger on the controller, then she may have simply been trying to "push the button" on the controller to make it make fun noises, and grasped the nearest bit (the barrel) to hold it in place. Regardless of the exact circumstances, it would have been very easy for her to trigger that gun so it shot her in the chest without actually picking it up. It was on a coffee table, and she was three years old. The gun, at rest, pointed at approximately chest level for her.
I sincerely doubt she'd pick up the gun. It weighs a considerable amount for a three-year-old girl, and the act of shooting oneself in the chest with a loaded pistol is not terribly easy for an adult.
The Online Care service will allow eligible members to engage in immediate live encounters with credentialed physicians from the Blues plans' established provider networks.
I'd probably pay the standard fee just for the opportunity to talk to an actual MD. I met my doctor once. Once. She's been my primary care physician for 5 years now, I've been in the office 5 times for routine physicals and 2-3 times for specific issues, and the only time I ever saw her was when I went in for a biopsy. She watched as an intern did the biopsy.
I've gotten used to the comma and period and the others, it's one thumb for alt and the other for the key. I don't really find it slows me down, but it all boils down to what you get used to, I suppose.
Maybe, but I had an iPod Touch for a few months before getting my Blackberry, and I never could master the iPod's soft keyboard. Took to the Blackberry keyboard like a duck takes to water.
I suspect it's just more about what's comfortable, what form of feedback you prefer, finger size, dexterity, etc. I just like to be able to feel keys under my fingers, and I have trouble finding keys based on sight because my fingers cover up too much.
I'm just glad the market has both. We're both happy. LOL.
Focus on the preservation of the imagery first, obviously, because once that's gone it's gone forever.
The cheapest option is a large-megapixel digicam known for good image quality. SLR would probably be a good bet. You can take multiple images and stitch them together without too much trouble, so you can get reasonably fine detail with a little work even with a $200 consumer camera. Or, alternatively, hire a professional photographer and have him/her take really high resolution photos of the maps. The advantage of this approach is that you don't have to take the maps anywhere or do anything special with them. Just lay them out on a low table or the floor and align a camera over them, and take heavily-overlapping shots.
Large-format scanners might cost some serious coin even to use for a one-time project like this, but would probably yield better results with less effort.
You might check with local companies that deal in maps and cartography, they might be able to recommend ways of saving the imagery, and some might even offer to help out if the maps may be of commercial interest (they might even share the proceeds with you in addition to giving you high-res digital images).
But I'd say if the maps are truly delicate, your first focus should be to take the highest-resolution images you can of them now, even if it's multiple images per map that need to be stitched. That way, you have *something* preserved in case one or more of the maps is destroyed or deteriorates further before you can preserve it.
If there are particularly interesting features of the map, use the MACRO feature on your camera - most stitching programs can integrate images at different scales and preserve a lot of detail. I used the "Hugin" pano toolkit (free) to stitch together about 100 random photos I took at the top of the Eiffel Tower into an impressive contiguous 360 panoramic shot, and it was literally a "here are the pictures, figure it out" process. The pictures were all taken at different zoom levels, different angles, and all sorts of issues, yet it looked like a Google Street View 360 image. This was 5 years ago, I can't imagine how much better the technology is today.
The geolocation shouldn't be all that hard - it's a matter of choosing a few points on the map and identifying their coordinates accurately. Of course, if there are few/no reference points it gets a lot harder. http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is a good starting point to a group that does free, open-source mapping. They or some of their related sites might possibly have a tool that does what you want. Also, a professional cartographer may be able to help you out as well.
My wife signed up for "Amazon Prime" and unbeknownst to her they turned it on as part of that process. She was looking at netbooks and wanted to add a few favorites to her shopping cart so she could compare them, and damn if the "Buy Now" button doesn't look a whole lot like the "Add To Cart" button.
Thankfully, when she called me in a panic after trying to cancel the order NOT ONE MINUTE AFTER PLACING IT and getting the "order is in process and cannot be canceled" message, we determined that the one she picked was pretty much the ideal netbook for her anyway. But we turned it off almost immediately thereafter (fortunately they allow you to turn it off, or I would literally stop shopping at Amazon's site for fear of accidentally buying things).
I cannot imagine for the life of me why anyone would want a single, large, shiny button (actually, no, two of them) on the information page that commit you to buying something the instant you click it. I'm sure there's a good reason (other than Amazon wanting to sell more stuff via accidental clicks), but I can't think of it.
and there are no number or punctuation keys AT ALL [wordpress.com] which makes typing just about anything quite a pain.
Sure there are, in fact they are screen-printed on the actual keys. The number keys share function with W-E-R, S-D-F, and Z-X-C. You just have to press the ALT key. Either press-and-release ALT then press the key you want (thumb typing), or hold ALT and press the key you want (multiple-finger typing).
Granted, having real keys for those functions would be nicer, but they work fine.
Interestingly, I have the exact opposite experience to yours - I can whoosh along with text using the big meatiness of my thumbs on the Blackberry keyboard (I have yet to mash more than one key at a time, and I can literally use the meat of my thumb to type if I choose), but put me in front of the iPhone/iPodTouch soft keyboard and I have to use the tip of my right pinkie - it's the only thing small enough to accurately hit the key I want and backed up by enough precision, and even then I miss a significant percentage of the time.
But anyway, that's just my experience and preference. All that matters is what works best for you.
Exactly. Each person needs to physically experience the phone they want before they buy it if they expect to use it for serious data entry. Otherwise, you run into situations like this one - you have a clear preference for one keyboard for a specific reason, and I have a clear preference for another keyboard for the exact same reason. The "hardness" of the BB keyboard prevents me from pressing more than one key at a time, and the tactile feedback is, to me, utterly necessary. I don't want to have to look at my phone to type everything.
These 'tests' really require a decent sample size of users and a decent sample size of devices with said screens.
No. Sorry, but no.
These 'tests' really require that you as a consumer go into a phone store, narrow down the selection based on what features you need, then grab each and every surviving model in your own sweaty paws, and spend 10 minutes with each. This will quickly narrow down the choices. Take your two finalists and spend a quality half hour with each. Thank the salesperson for his/her Jobesian patience, then buy the one that works best for you based on actually using it for a while.
If you don't plan on using your phone for heavy-duty text entry, grab whatever appeals to you and make sure you can get basic stuff done with it. If you plan on using it heavily, get to know the keyboards and which one works for you. Pack a lunch. Bring some goodies to share with the sales rep. They'll appreciate the gesture.
Finger length and thickness, dexterity, need for screen space, and several hundred other factors all go into what phone is best for each individual. Having 1,000 jamokes all tell you that 65% of them prefer the keyboard on "Brand X" will be almost meaningless to any individual phone user.
Sing it with me, "One of these things is not like the others..."
Yes, I'm sure the Eris can tether, but not all of us want to lug around a netbook for the occasional support email.
I respect your choice of phones for your usage pattern, and I'm sure it works great. For you.
PS: "another" point of failure to cope with, for me, would be to lug a netbook AND a phone AND depend on a cable or Bluetooth to connect the two. Battery goes dead on one or the other, I'm screwed. One integrated phone with a usable keyboard means all my needs are met with one point of failure - my phone.
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I guess the biggest question would be - why a smartphone specifically?
Assuming you have some sort of decent Internet access at school, at something available at home, why not just get a VoIP line (a' la Vonage, MagicJack, etc)? You'd have a single number that would cross borders with you easily, and it would be one heck of a lot cheaper.
Yay! Now I can burn through my monthly allotment in 33 minutes and 20 seconds, and incur overage charges at 50 cents a minute for the remaining 43,167.67 minutes of the month!
Does speed really matter if your monthly allotment is that low?
The drugs in your system have not reached therapeutic levels. Take another hit and try again.
[Abort] [Rehuff] [Ignore]
people under 21 who are not sitting at computers
Mobile phones?
Seriously, I've seen a few people under 21 not sitting at computers, for very brief periods, but most of them spend a significant amount of time at computers, where things like Pandora work quite well to introduce them to music. And when they leave their computers, they have their iPhones, Droids, or Blackberries that can stream them music from Pandora, Last.fm, etc.
Works pretty well on us 40+ers, too. I know my car stereo works, but I don't discover music over it. Can't stand the ads any more. The radio is where I get my NEWS. My computer is where I get my music.
Most apps written for the Blackberry are pretty well-behaved. Those that aren't get uninstalled pretty quickly. You learn pretty quickly which ones to ALT-TAB out of (leaving them in the background) and which ones to use the EXIT option on the menu to get out of (shutting them down).
I have a Geocaching application called Blackstar that runs the GPS whether it's in the foreground or background. That thing can gobble my battery dry from full charge in about 3 hours. I make darned sure to exit out of that app unless I intend to go back into it quickly. And that's exactly how it should work - I should decide whether to leave it running or not. Re-engaging a GPS lock takes a minute, so I should be able to hop out and log a cache on the web browser while it maintains my location (or I can choose to exit the app to save battery if I know I won't use it again for a few minutes).
On the other hand, Google Maps shuts down the GPS and falls back to cell tower triangulation unless it is running in the foreground. Most apps that use powergobblers like the GPS will shut them down when you aren't actually using them at the moment. I'd really have to work hard to need to recharge my phone more often than once every 24 hours, and even with a bunch of (well-behaved) background apps running I still usually get 48+ hours of normal use between charges.
I also have a car charger cable in my car, so if the battery starts to run down quickly I can add some juice. Mine uses mini-USB so very inexpensive car chargers are very easy to find, but I'm sure they make Apple-connector car chargers pretty cheaply by now, don't they?
Darnit, "application" was supposed to be in bold above, not quotes. Stupid fingers. Stupid brain telling them what to do.
PS: I think there's a difference between multi-tasking and a windowed interface that might be part of your issue with it, if I read your post correctly.
The stated use is to allow a chat window to be always present.
That's not entirely accurate. The intended use of multitasking is to have a chat
application
always running (eg. logged into an instant messenger server, able to receive a message and notify you in real time). Not actually visible at all times, but running in the background.
All actual applications would still run in full-screen.
You'd be able to, say, continue talking on the phone while you switched over to the IM app and replied to the instant message you just received.
Or go check something on the Web while in the middle of an IM conversation but still receive the messages from the person on the other end while you are surfing (you'd just have to switch back to the IM application to read and reply).
Or click/select the URL you just got over IM and check out the YouTube video they wanted you to see, without losing the connection to the IM server so you can continue your conversation as soon as the video is done.
Or surf to a web site that does streaming music, and then go back to another application and leave that music running while you work on a document, or chat on IM, or whatever.
Sure, it's not useful for everyone, but for those of us who like it the lack of it is a deal-breaker.
I can only give an example based on the Blackberry, the iPhone implementation (if it ever happens) may be entirely different.
There is a section of the home screen devoted to a "notification area" (similar to the one found in Windows, at least in concept). Any application that wants to handle push-type notifications registers with the OS, so notifications (ringtones, number of vibrations, whether it blinks the LED, etc) are all handled through the same place you choose your ringtones for calls.
If I'm running the native apps for IM, I'll get my notification plus an icon with a little red star appears on the home screen. Most of the native apps also allow the icons to show in the top bar. I then know to ALT-TAB to the IM application running in the background and read my incoming message, and reply to it if I like. Most third-party applications lack the notification icon, but usually change their application icon on the home screen and also vibrate or beep based on how I've set them up in the notifications profile.
There are several useful problems solved by multi-tasking, at least for me:
1. I run an RSS reader, and that is programmed to go out every 8 hours and pull all the news articles from all of my news sources. That way, if I end up in a no-service area, I still have relatively recent news.
2. Instant messenger, which has the same "push-style" notifications as SMS, but can be done from any IM client (currently logged in to AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN) and doesn't incur SMS charges. I also use SMS for those friends of mine who don't get charged per-message.
3. Google Maps / "Me" multitasking. I like being able to exit out of Google Maps to go check something and know the GPS is still running, and when I go back into Google Maps it's right where I was before with the GPS running and my street route intact. Same is true of web browsing - I can start loading a complex page, then hop over and do something else while it's loading.
Multitasking can make up, in large part, for the deficiencies of the Blackberry I have - it's an EDGE-only phone, so I can't surf the web as fast as a 3G iPhone. But I can have it pull data while I'm doing something else. Nothing can make up for the teeny little screen as compared to the gloriously
Battery life is less important to me. Even with a bunch of background apps running gathering data for me, I still get a solid two days of actual use out of it, and it's a 16-month-old phone on the stock battery. If an app goes misbehavin', I uninstall it and move on. Having all the information I want at my fingertips, even if I've lost service (which happens all the time inside my workplace) is far more important.
To me.
Maybe not for you.
Not just "fear". The IT department at my company has tested, and they KNOW anything newer than IE6 is incompatible with a decent array of intranet applications, including the company intranet (which was built on a commercial CMS that has since folded, so all that information has to be moved to a new CMS). They've also had to go out and find the usual rash of departmental applications that people wrote in Excel with VBScript, or Access, with a FrontPage front end, and figure out how many of those would survive an IE6 upgrade, and the answer to that question is also pretty grim. And I sincerely doubt they got 'em all. Not to mention the number of canned applications that perform really useful tasks, but not useful enough to make it worthwhile to spend money to upgrade them, so they've been slowly aging like bad cheese, but replacing their functionality is difficult or expensive.
Add into that the number of machines that are already pretty marginal for XP with IE6, throw in IE8 and it might be the straw that broke the eight-year-old camel's back, necessitating a bunch of upgrades. They've already had to hold off on hardware upgrades for two years running because the economy blows steaming monkey chunks, and a lot of the machines are struggling.
Upgrading the browser is relatively easy - SMS push, done. Replacing/upgrading the hardware is a little harder. Replacing all the applications that both IS and the business have implemented over the years that are all dependent on IE6 is a multi-million dollar project.
And, lest we forget, the economy blows steaming monkey chunks. So how many more people do you lay off to get the money to upgrade all these apps? None, you say? Righty-ho, IS will get right on working on business-critical stuff with their reduced remaining staff, then.
So they've put their money into security upgrades of the core infrastructure, improvements to AV and the firewall grid, and making sure company-confidential information doesn't reside on laptop or even desktop hard drives, and making sure access to important stuff like credit cards is only stored on an encrypted network inaccessible from the world of mere mortal desktops. If a desktop machine is compromised, the combination of hardware firewalls, software firewalls, antivirus, antimalware, and the Proxy Nazi will hopefully isolate it, and remote reimage means IS can reach out and nuke any machine that suddenly gets suspicious.
They want to go Windows Seven and IE8, but that's going to be a year or two to coordinate, and they'll have to incur a lot of wrath breaking tons of critical business apps (many of which they know they are still unaware of) or spending money upgrading them (if that's even possible). They'll also have to replace a good bit of hardware.
All of our important data is on mainframes and midrange servers, or the SAN, and that's all firewalled up the wazoo. Most people get nothing but Telnet access to that kind of hardware. Credit card data is on its own network and NO ONE gets to that except a very small list.
Do we all want to see IE6 go the way of the dodo? Hell, YES. And there is a plan to do that.
Does it make sense to make that our primary goal in terms of securing our data? No. Centralized security and a "just enough permissions" model is far cheaper, and more effective.
The story said it was a coffee table, in other words a low table that would require no climb, even for a 3-year-old. It would also probably be just about chest level for the 3-year-old, so the gun could have gone off almost immediately if the child walked up to it and touched the trigger and if the business end was pointed at the child it would have been a chest shot.
I agree the "investigated a prowler then, oopsie!, left my gun on the table, loaded and cocked with the safety off" is negligence to the extreme where it's almost easier to accept malice as an explanation. This certainly bears investigation, and the result may be a:
- finding of intent (Murder charge), or
- finding of severe negligence (take away his right to possess guns, possible homicide charges), or
- finding that this was a tragic mistake, accept that the death of his stepchild is sufficient punishment, make him take a few gun safety courses, and suspend his concealed carry for a while if he has one.
The only relevance of the Wii controller is that Mom might not have noticed the gun on the table, assuming it was the controller that might have rested there normally. She might not have even noticed the kid playing with it, since having the kid play with a gun-like object was not out of the ordinary. The Wii controller is a contributing factor, but a very minor one.
The real issue is an unprotected handgun, which even those of us who support the right to bear arms cannot defend.
Well, for one, ensuring no repeat performance in the same household?
Sorry, but one of the consequences of handling a firearm negligently is that, regardless of other punishments, you have demonstrated that you lack the necessary sense of responsibility to do so again. The tragedy of losing a stepchild may or may not be enough punishment, I don't know the dude and I don't know whether he is remorseful about it. But assuming he is, there's still the preventative aspect to consider.
Any license to carry a firearm should be revoked, at the very least, pending an investigation, and his firearms should be removed from his control until that investigation is complete. That is a very reasonable preventative, not punitive, step. Depending on the outcome of that investigation, he might have his right to possess firearms reinstated, or he might not. As a parent, I'm gonna go with "not". As a believer in the right to carry firearms, I'm gonna go with "not". As a firm believer in the rule of law, I'm gonna go with "let a jury decide based on the actual facts that I don't have right now, and meanwhile I'll hope for 'not'".
This isn't an "oopsie! Lesson learned! Sorry!" kind of incident. This is a "someone made a big mistake and we need to reexamine whether he's likely to repeat that mistake" kind of incident.
The Wii controller in question looked like a gun. A real gun was left on the table. The little girl was shot in the chest. Those are the facts, everything after this sentence is conjecture.
I'm gonna go with "child reaches for something that looks like the Wii controller, grasps it while the business end is pointed at her chest, and squeezes it in the act of trying to pick it up, likely with her thumb on the trigger and her fingers around the upper part of the handle." But if it was lying on the table, it could just as easily have been with one hand on the barrel and pushed the trigger with the other hand. If she was used to the Wii making fun noises when she pulled the trigger on the controller, then she may have simply been trying to "push the button" on the controller to make it make fun noises, and grasped the nearest bit (the barrel) to hold it in place. Regardless of the exact circumstances, it would have been very easy for her to trigger that gun so it shot her in the chest without actually picking it up. It was on a coffee table, and she was three years old. The gun, at rest, pointed at approximately chest level for her.
I sincerely doubt she'd pick up the gun. It weighs a considerable amount for a three-year-old girl, and the act of shooting oneself in the chest with a loaded pistol is not terribly easy for an adult.
It's a good thing they are not, then.
The Online Care service will allow eligible members to engage in immediate live encounters with credentialed physicians from the Blues plans' established provider networks.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bluecross-blueshield-of-western-new-yorkblueshield-of-northeastern-new-york-and-american-well-bring-online-care-to-new-york-state-87223392.html
I'd probably pay the standard fee just for the opportunity to talk to an actual MD. I met my doctor once. Once. She's been my primary care physician for 5 years now, I've been in the office 5 times for routine physicals and 2-3 times for specific issues, and the only time I ever saw her was when I went in for a biopsy. She watched as an intern did the biopsy.
Agreed, the % is a particular pain at times. :)
I've gotten used to the comma and period and the others, it's one thumb for alt and the other for the key. I don't really find it slows me down, but it all boils down to what you get used to, I suppose.
Maybe, but I had an iPod Touch for a few months before getting my Blackberry, and I never could master the iPod's soft keyboard. Took to the Blackberry keyboard like a duck takes to water.
I suspect it's just more about what's comfortable, what form of feedback you prefer, finger size, dexterity, etc. I just like to be able to feel keys under my fingers, and I have trouble finding keys based on sight because my fingers cover up too much.
I'm just glad the market has both. We're both happy. LOL.
Focus on the preservation of the imagery first, obviously, because once that's gone it's gone forever.
The cheapest option is a large-megapixel digicam known for good image quality. SLR would probably be a good bet. You can take multiple images and stitch them together without too much trouble, so you can get reasonably fine detail with a little work even with a $200 consumer camera. Or, alternatively, hire a professional photographer and have him/her take really high resolution photos of the maps. The advantage of this approach is that you don't have to take the maps anywhere or do anything special with them. Just lay them out on a low table or the floor and align a camera over them, and take heavily-overlapping shots.
Large-format scanners might cost some serious coin even to use for a one-time project like this, but would probably yield better results with less effort.
You might check with local companies that deal in maps and cartography, they might be able to recommend ways of saving the imagery, and some might even offer to help out if the maps may be of commercial interest (they might even share the proceeds with you in addition to giving you high-res digital images).
But I'd say if the maps are truly delicate, your first focus should be to take the highest-resolution images you can of them now, even if it's multiple images per map that need to be stitched. That way, you have *something* preserved in case one or more of the maps is destroyed or deteriorates further before you can preserve it.
If there are particularly interesting features of the map, use the MACRO feature on your camera - most stitching programs can integrate images at different scales and preserve a lot of detail. I used the "Hugin" pano toolkit (free) to stitch together about 100 random photos I took at the top of the Eiffel Tower into an impressive contiguous 360 panoramic shot, and it was literally a "here are the pictures, figure it out" process. The pictures were all taken at different zoom levels, different angles, and all sorts of issues, yet it looked like a Google Street View 360 image. This was 5 years ago, I can't imagine how much better the technology is today.
The geolocation shouldn't be all that hard - it's a matter of choosing a few points on the map and identifying their coordinates accurately. Of course, if there are few/no reference points it gets a lot harder. http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is a good starting point to a group that does free, open-source mapping. They or some of their related sites might possibly have a tool that does what you want. Also, a professional cartographer may be able to help you out as well.
That doesn't eliminate the possibility of them being replaced when you post the picture to Facebook or Picasa or whatever.
Heck, Comcast could make a mint by intercepting pictures and... umm, I'd better shut the hell up. I think I've said enough already.
The USPTO may find itself the butt of many jokes if SCOTUS invalidates 99% of software patents in their Bilski ruling.
-1 unnecessary condition.
Fix 1:
The USPTO may find itself the butt of many jokes
-1 incorrect tense.
Fix 2:
The USPTO has found itself the butt of many jokes
Then I shall trump them with a CTRL-right-click! :)
My wife signed up for "Amazon Prime" and unbeknownst to her they turned it on as part of that process. She was looking at netbooks and wanted to add a few favorites to her shopping cart so she could compare them, and damn if the "Buy Now" button doesn't look a whole lot like the "Add To Cart" button.
Thankfully, when she called me in a panic after trying to cancel the order NOT ONE MINUTE AFTER PLACING IT and getting the "order is in process and cannot be canceled" message, we determined that the one she picked was pretty much the ideal netbook for her anyway. But we turned it off almost immediately thereafter (fortunately they allow you to turn it off, or I would literally stop shopping at Amazon's site for fear of accidentally buying things).
I cannot imagine for the life of me why anyone would want a single, large, shiny button (actually, no, two of them) on the information page that commit you to buying something the instant you click it. I'm sure there's a good reason (other than Amazon wanting to sell more stuff via accidental clicks), but I can't think of it.
M4f1@
and there are no number or punctuation keys AT ALL [wordpress.com] which makes typing just about anything quite a pain.
Sure there are, in fact they are screen-printed on the actual keys. The number keys share function with W-E-R, S-D-F, and Z-X-C. You just have to press the ALT key. Either press-and-release ALT then press the key you want (thumb typing), or hold ALT and press the key you want (multiple-finger typing).
Granted, having real keys for those functions would be nicer, but they work fine.
Interestingly, I have the exact opposite experience to yours - I can whoosh along with text using the big meatiness of my thumbs on the Blackberry keyboard (I have yet to mash more than one key at a time, and I can literally use the meat of my thumb to type if I choose), but put me in front of the iPhone/iPodTouch soft keyboard and I have to use the tip of my right pinkie - it's the only thing small enough to accurately hit the key I want and backed up by enough precision, and even then I miss a significant percentage of the time.
But anyway, that's just my experience and preference. All that matters is what works best for you.
Exactly. Each person needs to physically experience the phone they want before they buy it if they expect to use it for serious data entry. Otherwise, you run into situations like this one - you have a clear preference for one keyboard for a specific reason, and I have a clear preference for another keyboard for the exact same reason. The "hardness" of the BB keyboard prevents me from pressing more than one key at a time, and the tactile feedback is, to me, utterly necessary. I don't want to have to look at my phone to type everything.
These 'tests' really require a decent sample size of users and a decent sample size of devices with said screens.
No. Sorry, but no.
These 'tests' really require that you as a consumer go into a phone store, narrow down the selection based on what features you need, then grab each and every surviving model in your own sweaty paws, and spend 10 minutes with each. This will quickly narrow down the choices. Take your two finalists and spend a quality half hour with each. Thank the salesperson for his/her Jobesian patience, then buy the one that works best for you based on actually using it for a while.
If you don't plan on using your phone for heavy-duty text entry, grab whatever appeals to you and make sure you can get basic stuff done with it. If you plan on using it heavily, get to know the keyboards and which one works for you. Pack a lunch. Bring some goodies to share with the sales rep. They'll appreciate the gesture.
Finger length and thickness, dexterity, need for screen space, and several hundred other factors all go into what phone is best for each individual. Having 1,000 jamokes all tell you that 65% of them prefer the keyboard on "Brand X" will be almost meaningless to any individual phone user.
iPhone users
buy a netbook and tether.
Sing it with me, "One of these things is not like the others..."
Yes, I'm sure the Eris can tether, but not all of us want to lug around a netbook for the occasional support email.
I respect your choice of phones for your usage pattern, and I'm sure it works great. For you.
PS: "another" point of failure to cope with, for me, would be to lug a netbook AND a phone AND depend on a cable or Bluetooth to connect the two. Battery goes dead on one or the other, I'm screwed. One integrated phone with a usable keyboard means all my needs are met with one point of failure - my phone.