You are of course absolutely correct... Except you are missing who-is-who: You are not the end-user. You are the product!:-)
Advertisers are the end-user, they pay for your apps, for your Gmail, and for each and every search you do on Google search... Your phone is just an extension of this package.
I still agree with you and think Google have made a horrible implementation in Android: We SHOULD be able to deny an app full internet access. The app should still function, but just get a "not connected" exception. Ads should be presented through *restricted* access to a *limited* number of white-listed servers (also 3rd party). These server can of course go bad, but at least they are easily black-listed.
The issue with Android is it is an advertising platform. But imho with a strangely bad implementation... At least in hindsight.
I like my HTC, but sincerely hate all the programs that "require" full internet access. The reason given is ads, which I am often alright with: I get stuff "for free" that I don't care enough to pay for (games, rarely used tools, apps I can easily live without). The problem is one newer knows what else they use this unrestricted access to. Much of this doubt could be removed if Google maintained a white-list of ad servers (also 3rd party). That way most programs would not require full internet access, but only *restricted* access to a *limited* amount of servers.
These servers can of course be hacked etc. but at least they can easily be black-listed, leaving a more well-defined security risk.
I newer understood why Google didn't implement it this way. Where they trying to "hide" that Android is made to open a new revenue source for them? Trying to make people believe they were "selling" a phone OS? Or did they sincerely not consider the risks of this implementation?
Blocking the ads is essentially stealing from the app developers (or more correctly; depriving them of income). I don't want to do that, but I would like a firewall.
No physical buttons! This is important, because it means that button presses must be made by interpreting the users gestures. And with interpretation comes misinterpretation. Software sometimes guesses wrong. And if it does that in an "unpredictable" or "random" way (I know it is an algorithm, but "random" from the user point of view) the user will (consciously or unconsciously) adapt by change his behavior - i.e. by emphasizing or repeating the gesture. This is annoying.
With a physical button there is no interpretation. You can feel it has been pressed. It may be by accident, but you know you're the one responsible for the click.
Another problem in my opinion is there is no weight. This is usually described as a feature, but in my experience the weight of the mouse gives stability and increases precision and for me this helps to reduce fatigue - I tend to overshoot or jitter and have to correct myself or do things slower when I don't have a physical object to give mass in my hand.
And finally; no scrollwheel. I don't notice that I use it, but whenever I encounter an old mouse without the wheel I realize how much I depend on it.
While I would like to agree, I don't really think format matters as long as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war is going on. I would rather have a consumer demand that the music retains the full dynamic range. Quiet should be quite - please DON'T try to decide at what volume I hear the music. I have a volume control, I can turn it up myself thank you very much.
The newest CDs of the bands I listen to (which I admit are rather loud, but also melodic) sound imho like crap. The individual numbers are good - but I can not listen to them in sequence. All appears have equal volume - even the quiet ones! It really tires my ears. Also the sound doesn't seem as "sharp" to me, it its loud and overwhelming - but there is no "kick" in it, even when it shift from a "quiet" passage to a "massive" one, it's just noise...:(
In quantum optics when you need to silence the vacuum noise from the "dark" port of a beam splitter. You make a squeezed light source, point it at the dark port and decrease the power to just *below* laser threshold. It does not emit light, but it still squeezes the vacuum state along the path of the beam-without-light, i.e. a "coherent beam of darkness"...
I've always found that phenomena slightly eerie...:-)
The download of Skype takes ~8.5MB, when installed it eats ~14MB of my meager phone storage.
I've seen comments that it requires a lot of CPU, introducing noise in the transmission for low-end android phones (I didn't try to make a call myself).
For comparison, Nimbuzz - which also use the Skype network - takes ~4.5MB to download and uses ~9.6MB of storage after install.
Also I wasn't able to find a "close" function in Skype! I could of course kill the app, but that should *not* be necessary. Another option is to log out, which requires entering the password at next login, also not convenient.
All in all I decided to uninstall skype, and keep using Nimbuzz for the rare times I need VoIP on my mobile.
In my experience it has nothing to do with egos or competition.
But it is damn hard to publish something that doesn't work!
I was recently involved i developing a microfluidic system for diagnostics. Every milestone and sub-problem was solved. But when the final injection molded devices were tested, they failed due to an sort of interesting non-obvious combination of factors. Two issues with publishing this; the problems were very specific to our system and the conclusion could be written in 5 lines of text.
It would have been like a movie with huge setup, but within the first 3 minutes the hero stumble, break his neck, and dies. End credits. It was a EU founded research project, no more money no more time. You can't get founding to continue a failed project. End of story.
But my point is, in all my experience as scientist. I've never seen one of my colleagues say "we should hide this", but I've often heard "I would like to tell about this, but I don't know of a paper that would accept it".
Also when something fails we need to carry on, but now we're behind schedule...
Oh geez, this is bad. If Firefox becomes more Google-dependent THERE GOES ADBLOCK and there goes the whole pleasant web experience. This may be more important than people realize.
I have it myself. I usually joke that I'm allergic to crossing the street. The reason; when I look left and right for cars, I will most probable look towards sunlight at some point. The effect is an increased probability that I sneeze while crossing the street:-)
In Denmark, an unlocked HTC Hero costs ~620 USD. (including the Danish 25% VAT).
Most people I know (myself included) buy phones unlocked (because my (current/prefered) phone company don't sell phones - but I like their simple "~10 USD/month for up to 1GB" data plan).
Using the "US to Danish price" conversion (multiply by 1.25, add some) it will cost around 670-700 USD in Denmark (of course payed in DKK).
The price does not surprise me. I am planning to replace my phone ½ year from now (then my current phone will have survived 2+ years). It will probably be an Android based, in that price range.
For comparison, in Denmark, an iPhone (unlocked 3GS/32GB) costs ~1100 USD.
With the right tools, though, you can reliably produce glass needles fine enough to sample the contents of a single cell.(Or, presumably, sample your tears right through your eyelid without alerting you.)
I couldn't decide whether to mod you Informative or Funny. Modding you Funny would have been Redundant, but Informative would have been really Funny...
In the end I realized: I'm at work! I don't have time for this!
Old documents, saved in 'almost like ascii' is still 'readable'. I once salvaged a document from some obscure ancient word processor by opening it in a text editor. I also found some "images" (more like icons) on the same disk (a copy of a floppy), even these I could "read" (by changing the page width of my text editor to fit the width of the uncompressed image).
Maybe slightly off-topic, but it reminds me of the bad Babylon 5 spin-off focusing on the rangers. I saw the pilot (the plot was something with someone had a really anal interpretation of the rangers' slogan "we live for the one, we die for the one" - with emphasis on "die")
They had this space ship, with a holo-deck like weapons-control-system. The combat officer literally had to punch and kick at the opponent (punches fires lasers, kicks fires "missiles" (or their future equivalent))... Not only had they actually reduced the capabilities of the weapon systems to the stamina of the officer (why, luckily, were a fit, well trained woman), but the sensors was also reduced to the human field-of-view.
Anyhow, back to reality. For combining training with fun, this sounds like a fantastic idea! As long as the game is "RPG like" and does not depend on your reflexes like a FPS. Because then this equipment will only be used until the first encounter...
(Though it would be really good training with all the running in BF2/CoD etc.)
In Denmark we had the problem with the Legionella bacteria a couple of years ago. In order to save heat/oil/electricity, most had turned the hot water temperature down and the bacteria was able to survive somewhere in the hot water system (a problem in larger departments, where there is a central water heater, long pipelines, and the individual resident can not control the temperature of incoming water).
Especially old people were in danger when inhaling water aerosols containing bacteria. The problem was of course unnoticed for several years, but is estimated to have caused several deaths.
Solution to the problem; the water temperature in the hot water system should not go below a certain threshold.
What about programs that continuously access the hard drive. My pet peeve is the ZoneAlarm software firewall. For some reasons it reads the same file repeatedly over and over again. Not only that, but it also continuously write a completely unusable log-file (every time I actually could use a log file, it has turned out not to record the particular information I needed to debug whatever network problem I had).
In the end I've stopped using ZoneAlarm, I couldn't take the never ending "tick-tick-tick" of the hdd. Now I'm relying on my router (And XP's own "firewall").
(I did try to create a RAM disk and set ZoneAlarm to log to that - it didn't work - I seem to remember the reason being twofold, first the repeated reading of the datafile, and second, that the.ini file containing the path to the log file was written on the same drive as the log file, i.e. whenever I rebooted it would reset to the default place on the harddrive...)
It would be nice to have some kind of 'override' - "whatever this program is writing, it is of so low importance that it can be kept in the cache for +5 minutes before written to disk, regardless of what the program claims"
Wasn't "gray goo" a hypothetical scenario for self assembly? A matter that were able to convert and absorb anything.
Personally I don't believe in the possibility of a "gray goo".
I do however believe in the green stuff... Just take a walk in the forest and you'll see self assembling nano machinery on a scale capable of covering a whole planet!:-)
Whenever I replies to/writes a sensitive or important email, I clear the To/Cc fields, completely, and only add the addresses just before I'm sending.... This, of course, should be after I've proofread it several times, and preferable waited a day:-)
I've started using OpenDNS since Denmark started censoring the Piratebay. The easiest way to circumvent the block.
(TPB: My #1 source to bad 80's movies! (which I personally don't think is illegal to download, I'm assuming; since no one apparently want to sell them, it must be because they are worthless (which, honestly, most of them are:-)))
Slashdot Mirror
You are of course absolutely correct... Except you are missing who-is-who: You are not the end-user. You are the product! :-)
Advertisers are the end-user, they pay for your apps, for your Gmail, and for each and every search you do on Google search... Your phone is just an extension of this package.
I still agree with you and think Google have made a horrible implementation in Android: We SHOULD be able to deny an app full internet access. The app should still function, but just get a "not connected" exception. Ads should be presented through *restricted* access to a *limited* number of white-listed servers (also 3rd party). These server can of course go bad, but at least they are easily black-listed.
The issue with Android is it is an advertising platform. But imho with a strangely bad implementation... At least in hindsight.
I like my HTC, but sincerely hate all the programs that "require" full internet access. The reason given is ads, which I am often alright with: I get stuff "for free" that I don't care enough to pay for (games, rarely used tools, apps I can easily live without). The problem is one newer knows what else they use this unrestricted access to. Much of this doubt could be removed if Google maintained a white-list of ad servers (also 3rd party). That way most programs would not require full internet access, but only *restricted* access to a *limited* amount of servers.
These servers can of course be hacked etc. but at least they can easily be black-listed, leaving a more well-defined security risk.
I newer understood why Google didn't implement it this way. Where they trying to "hide" that Android is made to open a new revenue source for them? Trying to make people believe they were "selling" a phone OS? Or did they sincerely not consider the risks of this implementation?
Blocking the ads is essentially stealing from the app developers (or more correctly; depriving them of income). I don't want to do that, but I would like a firewall.
Reminds me of my fingerworks plate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks - "we have reinvented the mouse". Nice, but the same basic problem.
No physical buttons! This is important, because it means that button presses must be made by interpreting the users gestures. And with interpretation comes misinterpretation. Software sometimes guesses wrong. And if it does that in an "unpredictable" or "random" way (I know it is an algorithm, but "random" from the user point of view) the user will (consciously or unconsciously) adapt by change his behavior - i.e. by emphasizing or repeating the gesture. This is annoying.
With a physical button there is no interpretation. You can feel it has been pressed. It may be by accident, but you know you're the one responsible for the click.
Another problem in my opinion is there is no weight. This is usually described as a feature, but in my experience the weight of the mouse gives stability and increases precision and for me this helps to reduce fatigue - I tend to overshoot or jitter and have to correct myself or do things slower when I don't have a physical object to give mass in my hand.
And finally; no scrollwheel. I don't notice that I use it, but whenever I encounter an old mouse without the wheel I realize how much I depend on it.
While I would like to agree, I don't really think format matters as long as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war is going on. I would rather have a consumer demand that the music retains the full dynamic range. Quiet should be quite - please DON'T try to decide at what volume I hear the music. I have a volume control, I can turn it up myself thank you very much.
The newest CDs of the bands I listen to (which I admit are rather loud, but also melodic) sound imho like crap. The individual numbers are good - but I can not listen to them in sequence. All appears have equal volume - even the quiet ones! It really tires my ears. Also the sound doesn't seem as "sharp" to me, it its loud and overwhelming - but there is no "kick" in it, even when it shift from a "quiet" passage to a "massive" one, it's just noise... :(
It shoots a coherent beam of darkness!
In quantum optics when you need to silence the vacuum noise from the "dark" port of a beam splitter. You make a squeezed light source, point it at the dark port and decrease the power to just *below* laser threshold. It does not emit light, but it still squeezes the vacuum state along the path of the beam-without-light, i.e. a "coherent beam of darkness"...
I've always found that phenomena slightly eerie... :-)
"The ultimate scientist?" Is anyone really not aware of how much mystical bullshit he wrote?
Exactly! As my physics teacher once said: Newton was not the "first scientist" he was the "last alchemist".
The download of Skype takes ~8.5MB, when installed it eats ~14MB of my meager phone storage.
I've seen comments that it requires a lot of CPU, introducing noise in the transmission for low-end android phones (I didn't try to make a call myself).
For comparison, Nimbuzz - which also use the Skype network - takes ~4.5MB to download and uses ~9.6MB of storage after install.
Also I wasn't able to find a "close" function in Skype! I could of course kill the app, but that should *not* be necessary. Another option is to log out, which requires entering the password at next login, also not convenient.
All in all I decided to uninstall skype, and keep using Nimbuzz for the rare times I need VoIP on my mobile.
The digitizer has 2450 dpi resolution. The screen is 1024x786 with 64 grey levels.
It look like a concept I could use. For lab journals etc - snap an image, write a note.
So let me see, if I understand this correctly: :)
Time has the ballistic and aerodynamic properties of a medieval wooden projectile?
In my experience it has nothing to do with egos or competition.
But it is damn hard to publish something that doesn't work!
I was recently involved i developing a microfluidic system for diagnostics. Every milestone and sub-problem was solved. But when the final injection molded devices were tested, they failed due to an sort of interesting non-obvious combination of factors. Two issues with publishing this; the problems were very specific to our system and the conclusion could be written in 5 lines of text.
It would have been like a movie with huge setup, but within the first 3 minutes the hero stumble, break his neck, and dies. End credits. It was a EU founded research project, no more money no more time. You can't get founding to continue a failed project. End of story.
But my point is, in all my experience as scientist. I've never seen one of my colleagues say "we should hide this", but I've often heard "I would like to tell about this, but I don't know of a paper that would accept it".
Also when something fails we need to carry on, but now we're behind schedule...
Oh geez, this is bad. If Firefox becomes more Google-dependent THERE GOES ADBLOCK and there goes the whole pleasant web experience. This may be more important than people realize.
Adblockers are slowly starting to work just fine in google chrome https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?q=adblock :-)
And here I was waiting out for the Wii2 (Wii-ii?)
Allergic to sunlight? Are you sure it's not just PSR? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex
I have it myself. I usually joke that I'm allergic to crossing the street. The reason; when I look left and right for cars, I will most probable look towards sunlight at some point. The effect is an increased probability that I sneeze while crossing the street :-)
In Denmark, an unlocked HTC Hero costs ~620 USD. (including the Danish 25% VAT).
Most people I know (myself included) buy phones unlocked (because my (current/prefered) phone company don't sell phones - but I like their simple "~10 USD/month for up to 1GB" data plan).
Using the "US to Danish price" conversion (multiply by 1.25, add some) it will cost around 670-700 USD in Denmark (of course payed in DKK).
The price does not surprise me. I am planning to replace my phone ½ year from now (then my current phone will have survived 2+ years). It will probably be an Android based, in that price range.
For comparison, in Denmark, an iPhone (unlocked 3GS/32GB) costs ~1100 USD.
Drawing thin glass needles by hand is hard.
With the right tools, though, you can reliably produce glass needles fine enough to sample the contents of a single cell.(Or, presumably, sample your tears right through your eyelid without alerting you.)
I couldn't decide whether to mod you Informative or Funny. Modding you Funny would have been Redundant, but Informative would have been really Funny...
In the end I realized: I'm at work! I don't have time for this!
... Efficiency is the enemy of redundancy!
Old documents, saved in 'almost like ascii' is still 'readable'. I once salvaged a document from some obscure ancient word processor by opening it in a text editor. I also found some "images" (more like icons) on the same disk (a copy of a floppy), even these I could "read" (by changing the page width of my text editor to fit the width of the uncompressed image).
As long as the storage space keep growing...
Maybe slightly off-topic, but it reminds me of the bad Babylon 5 spin-off focusing on the rangers. I saw the pilot (the plot was something with someone had a really anal interpretation of the rangers' slogan "we live for the one, we die for the one" - with emphasis on "die")
They had this space ship, with a holo-deck like weapons-control-system. The combat officer literally had to punch and kick at the opponent (punches fires lasers, kicks fires "missiles" (or their future equivalent)) ... Not only had they actually reduced the capabilities of the weapon systems to the stamina of the officer (why, luckily, were a fit, well trained woman), but the sensors was also reduced to the human field-of-view.
Anyhow, back to reality. For combining training with fun, this sounds like a fantastic idea! As long as the game is "RPG like" and does not depend on your reflexes like a FPS. Because then this equipment will only be used until the first encounter...
(Though it would be really good training with all the running in BF2/CoD etc.)
In Denmark we had the problem with the Legionella bacteria a couple of years ago. In order to save heat/oil/electricity, most had turned the hot water temperature down and the bacteria was able to survive somewhere in the hot water system (a problem in larger departments, where there is a central water heater, long pipelines, and the individual resident can not control the temperature of incoming water).
Especially old people were in danger when inhaling water aerosols containing bacteria. The problem was of course unnoticed for several years, but is estimated to have caused several deaths.
Solution to the problem; the water temperature in the hot water system should not go below a certain threshold.
You can call it "tips" if you want. However, taking money to prioritize is called bribing! It must be discouraged since it will corrupt any system.
What about programs that continuously access the hard drive. My pet peeve is the ZoneAlarm software firewall. For some reasons it reads the same file repeatedly over and over again. Not only that, but it also continuously write a completely unusable log-file (every time I actually could use a log file, it has turned out not to record the particular information I needed to debug whatever network problem I had).
In the end I've stopped using ZoneAlarm, I couldn't take the never ending "tick-tick-tick" of the hdd. Now I'm relying on my router (And XP's own "firewall").
(I did try to create a RAM disk and set ZoneAlarm to log to that - it didn't work - I seem to remember the reason being twofold, first the repeated reading of the datafile, and second, that the .ini file containing the path to the log file was written on the same drive as the log file, i.e. whenever I rebooted it would reset to the default place on the harddrive...)
It would be nice to have some kind of 'override' - "whatever this program is writing, it is of so low importance that it can be kept in the cache for +5 minutes before written to disk, regardless of what the program claims"
Wasn't "gray goo" a hypothetical scenario for self assembly? A matter that were able to convert and absorb anything.
Personally I don't believe in the possibility of a "gray goo".
I do however believe in the green stuff... Just take a walk in the forest and you'll see self assembling nano machinery on a scale capable of covering a whole planet! :-)
Whenever I replies to/writes a sensitive or important email, I clear the To/Cc fields, completely, and only add the addresses just before I'm sending. ... This, of course, should be after I've proofread it several times, and preferable waited a day :-)
Works in all email clients!
I've started using OpenDNS since Denmark started censoring the Piratebay. The easiest way to circumvent the block.
(TPB: My #1 source to bad 80's movies! (which I personally don't think is illegal to download, I'm assuming; since no one apparently want to sell them, it must be because they are worthless (which, honestly, most of them are :-)))
In Europa we have 230V for "small items", high power items like stoves etc usually uses 400V.
It took a couple of days getting used to the awesome bar (I also had the problem that "sl" for slashdot gave a lot of irrelevant sites).
:-)
However, either it learns, or I'm unconsciously getting better typing the right words.
And best of all - you can delete the items displayed by hovering above them and pressing "delete".
So you *can* clean the embarrassing porn links away