"What interests me is that the Neanderthal genes never made it back into Sub-Saharan Africa"
That reminds me of an old joke about Jesus and the second coming:
Man #1: Why hasn't the second coming happened yet? Man #2: Have you been to Palestine? Man #1: Yes, I have Man #2: Would you go back? Man #1: No Man #2: Exactly!
I've shipped my machines thousands of miles via sea freight, and they always came out fine.
Everything else will be a problem. Be sure to get some heavy duty dessicants for your container, especially if you're shipping books, clothing, or upholstered furniture. Leather shoes mold up too, for some reason. The stuff in stores is crap. You need something like this:
Most people don't have an iota of creativity in them. None. Zero. Nada. The smartphone won't change that.
Are there creative geniuses being suppressed because of non-stop access to entertainment? Probably not. Being creative isn't just coming up with ideas, it's executing those ideas. Execution requires focus. If you're distracted by your phone, you'd be distracted by pretty much everything else as well.
I think that process discipline counts for more than creativity. If you read "how I write" books, a common theme is to dedicate X hours a day for writing, period. You can write or not write, but you have to sit there and do nothing else.
That sort of discipline is probably something they should teach in school, but they don't. Of course the phones don't help, but if you can't ignore your phone you won't be able to ignore anything else either (like windows solitaire, the bane of authors and writers everywhere).
Lets see: if you spew random words into people's ears they can't remember the words they're supposed to. This happens all the time in work: try to count a bunch of items when others are saying random numbers at you. It's fun, but hardly groundbreaking.
And they did this with 2nd graders and college students.
Why don't they use real professionals in these studies? 2nd graders have attention spans of gnats. College students have the attention span of big gnats. And the task is ridiculous.
Real multitasking happens in the classroom all the time, when students in lecture zone out when the professor drones on. Real multitasking happen at work. Ask any mom at home how they do it. Using idiots for subjects guarantees bad results.
My god, how much of psychology is based on college students?
You could actually wire the dock connector into the onboard power, or just use a standard inverter/charger.
The universal dock has a remote, and you can get an IR blaster or something to wire into your helicopter. The codes for the universal dock are out there, or you could just embed the remote that comes with the UD.
You can put the text you want as the album art, and make sure the iPod Touch doesn't sleep. You now have a big 3" screen that's plenty bright.
Why build some crappy open source thing that's hard to maintain? COTS is the way to go. Your time is too expensive to be farting around with this other stuff.
Nate Silver believes that Oregon is in-play. If you look at the actual numbers, a Republican win in Oregon is impossible, unless someone kills all the Democratic voters in Lane, Multnomah, and Washington county.
He also stated that blacks are being underreported because large numbers of them use cellphones as their only phones, which is why his results skew Democratic. No documentation on that factoid either...except that, because Nate Silver said it it must be true.
This is like one fortune teller saying another fortune teller's methodology is crap. All you can do is look at the data and say, WTF is this person thinking?
"as the sole means by which to determine a verdict"
Actually this is somewhat incorrect. By definition we bring our life experience and points of view with us. And really the jury can use any criteria at all if it wants to.
If you look at the numbers, the general election is usually decided by a few percent.
Those few percent aren't really worth reaching. A lot of them decide at the booth, making saturation advertising a desperate attempt to shove your name into their heads so it bubbles up to the top in a moment of indecision.
But, if you look at the numbers another way, the real key to winning the election is getting voters who already like you to vote. The party that wins is the party who's voters show up.
Will data mining help get people out and vote? Doubtful. Buying all the prime time slots and using them for nagging would probably be more useful...though data mining could identify and drive small donors to donate. Again, though, undecided voters probably don't donate to campaigns a whole lot. Why donate to a campaign if you're undecided?
Hey, do the icons have rounded corners? Does the phone button green, with a phone that faces upwards? Can that do pinch-to-zoom?
I'd argue that the era of touchscreens started with the Palm Pilot, which predates this phone by 6 years. There was the Newton as well, and the Palm Palm, was probably the first device with a large user base that had a touchscreen.
Actually, I have been on a jury, and pretty much everyone took their job pretty seriously and tried to do their best. I'm not sure where you get off saying this. Have you been on a jury before?
Did you know that you can eject people from a jury who are behaving they way you say?
This stereotype of jurors is probably hurting the legal system more than anything else. Just because you're a moron who doesn't take his responsibilities seriously doesn't mean everyone else doesn't either.
Actually, you're wrong. There are lots and lots of ways to design tablets. Just because you can't think beyond Samsung doesn't mean other people can't.
The basic shape of a tablet is somewhat dictated by the shape of the screen. However, look at the kindle/nook/kobos. Do they look like iPads? Not really. Do they work like iPads? Not really. Are they rectangles with rounded corners? Yep. Is Apple suing Amazon for violating trade dress? No.
Why do you feel sharp corners aren't viable? Why rounded and not, say, octagon-like? There's no real reason for not having corners. Apple's desktop used to have rounded corners on-screen until a few revisions back (the corners of the desktop were rounded, which wasted a few pixels). Physically, lots of things like books have corners. Corners are everywhere. Why aren't they on tablets?
Thickness can be increased for whatever reason you want. You design it, you can do what you want.
Icons are de facto standards, but the look and arrangement of icons is not.
If anything, this shows how good Apple's design is: people like you can't think of any other way to do it, because Apple's done it so well that every other way looks like crap.
Do you remember Windows Mobile (WinCE)? Metro? Symbian? There are many, many ways to do GUIs, phones, and mobile OSs. There are lots and lots of different cellphone designs. There used to be lots of different smartphone designs. There used to be lots of mobile UIs.
Now we have iOS and Metro.
Think of it: before the iPhone, would anyone have thought "of course, this is what a smartphone should be like?"
In America it's hard, because nobody really bought smartphones...they might have had a blackberry for business. They might have had a PalmOS device. Did anyone actually buy a Nokia 900 in the US? Then the iPhone came and kicked the crap out of everyone. And as I said before, it's so dominant that people seem to have forgotten that (1) it's not the Only Way, and (2) things Used to be Different.
Samsung is so desperate to be successful Apple that it's totally copying Apple. It should be flattering, because Samsung is following a path to success that's worked. It's sad, because as the saying goes, they're skating to where the puck was, not to where the puck is going. Samsung used to be accused of copying Sony back when Sony was worth copying. Go figure.
It could be that Samsung, at some level, has no idea that it's copying Apple so blatantly. I know that a large percentage of the public believes that Samsung didn't copy Apple and there's only one way to design a smartphone. I'd like to think Samsung management is smarter than those people.
However, it looks like institutionally Samsung just copies the dominant player then underprices everyone else until everyone else exits the market...all while spouting about its "innovation." So are they better or worse than a patent troll?
Toilets are great. Poor sanitation has arguably killed more people than wars.
That said, cheap, energy efficient air conditioning should be next on the list. AC is practically required for any kind of modern economy. Building a low-power AC would benefit millions - and reduce the amount of power infrastructure needed in developing countries, which in general would be a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
"What interests me is that the Neanderthal genes never made it back into Sub-Saharan Africa"
That reminds me of an old joke about Jesus and the second coming:
Man #1: Why hasn't the second coming happened yet?
Man #2: Have you been to Palestine?
Man #1: Yes, I have
Man #2: Would you go back?
Man #1: No
Man #2: Exactly!
I've shipped my machines thousands of miles via sea freight, and they always came out fine.
Everything else will be a problem. Be sure to get some heavy duty dessicants for your container, especially if you're shipping books, clothing, or upholstered furniture. Leather shoes mold up too, for some reason. The stuff in stores is crap. You need something like this:
http://www.s-cpp.com/products/cargo-device-protection/container-desiccants.html
Be sure to pack everything tightly, because your container will move around...maybe a lot.
Insure your goods. Be sure to take a picture of anything.
Copy your data and bring it with you. Your stuff will take weeks, and presumably you need your data before then.
You'll probably need transformers, AVRs, and UPSs at your destination if you're going to the third world. They'll cost a lot, so budget for that.
If the cat isn't dead now, it will be eventually. So you might as well assume it's dead and move on.
Most people don't have an iota of creativity in them. None. Zero. Nada. The smartphone won't change that.
Are there creative geniuses being suppressed because of non-stop access to entertainment? Probably not. Being creative isn't just coming up with ideas, it's executing those ideas. Execution requires focus. If you're distracted by your phone, you'd be distracted by pretty much everything else as well.
I think that process discipline counts for more than creativity. If you read "how I write" books, a common theme is to dedicate X hours a day for writing, period. You can write or not write, but you have to sit there and do nothing else.
That sort of discipline is probably something they should teach in school, but they don't. Of course the phones don't help, but if you can't ignore your phone you won't be able to ignore anything else either (like windows solitaire, the bane of authors and writers everywhere).
Gee, you think? Why not say something like:
"guns, bullets unpopular with shooting victims and their relatives."
He said it the best two years ago.
http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-really-wrong-with-blackberry-and.html
I mean seriously, he's going to travel 3000 miles with nothing but bacon. Sure it's corporate sponsored, but so what?
Go ahead and live the dream!
Bacon - is there anything it can't do?
So good it was banned by two religions.
Lets see: if you spew random words into people's ears they can't remember the words they're supposed to. This happens all the time in work: try to count a bunch of items when others are saying random numbers at you. It's fun, but hardly groundbreaking.
And they did this with 2nd graders and college students.
Why don't they use real professionals in these studies? 2nd graders have attention spans of gnats. College students have the attention span of big gnats. And the task is ridiculous.
Real multitasking happens in the classroom all the time, when students in lecture zone out when the professor drones on. Real multitasking happen at work. Ask any mom at home how they do it. Using idiots for subjects guarantees bad results.
My god, how much of psychology is based on college students?
iPod Touch + external battery + dock with remote
Problem solved.
You could actually wire the dock connector into the onboard power, or just use a standard inverter/charger.
The universal dock has a remote, and you can get an IR blaster or something to wire into your helicopter. The codes for the universal dock are out there, or you could just embed the remote that comes with the UD.
You can put the text you want as the album art, and make sure the iPod Touch doesn't sleep. You now have a big 3" screen that's plenty bright.
Why build some crappy open source thing that's hard to maintain? COTS is the way to go. Your time is too expensive to be farting around with this other stuff.
Nate Silver believes that Oregon is in-play. If you look at the actual numbers, a Republican win in Oregon is impossible, unless someone kills all the Democratic voters in Lane, Multnomah, and Washington county.
He also stated that blacks are being underreported because large numbers of them use cellphones as their only phones, which is why his results skew Democratic. No documentation on that factoid either...except that, because Nate Silver said it it must be true.
This is like one fortune teller saying another fortune teller's methodology is crap. All you can do is look at the data and say, WTF is this person thinking?
Program Fuji;
var pressure : longint;
function Get_Pressure : longint; := 1700000
Begin;
Get_Pressure
End;
Procedure Blow;
Writeln("boom");
End;
Begin := Get_Pressure;
pressure
if pressure > 1600000 Then
Blow;
End.
(* been around 20+ years since I last used Pascal. Does this even compile? *)
So...austistic people are basically constantly tripping? That would explain a lot.
"as the sole means by which to determine a verdict"
Actually this is somewhat incorrect. By definition we bring our life experience and points of view with us. And really the jury can use any criteria at all if it wants to.
We are living in the modern aesthetic, as defined by the Bauhaus et al back in the day.
There isn't anything inherently wrong with other aesthetics. Form should follow function, but that doesn't mean you can't embellish things a bit.
I mean, there's no reason to be a Nazi about it.
Digital stuff is totally plastic - look at something like Bombardier's Guild on the iPhone: it has a ridiculously fun steampunk look. Why not?
If you look at the numbers, the general election is usually decided by a few percent.
Those few percent aren't really worth reaching. A lot of them decide at the booth, making saturation advertising a desperate attempt to shove your name into their heads so it bubbles up to the top in a moment of indecision.
But, if you look at the numbers another way, the real key to winning the election is getting voters who already like you to vote. The party that wins is the party who's voters show up.
Will data mining help get people out and vote? Doubtful. Buying all the prime time slots and using them for nagging would probably be more useful...though data mining could identify and drive small donors to donate. Again, though, undecided voters probably don't donate to campaigns a whole lot. Why donate to a campaign if you're undecided?
Hey, do the icons have rounded corners? Does the phone button green, with a phone that faces upwards? Can that do pinch-to-zoom?
I'd argue that the era of touchscreens started with the Palm Pilot, which predates this phone by 6 years. There was the Newton as well, and the Palm Palm, was probably the first device with a large user base that had a touchscreen.
Touchscreen + phone is pretty obvious, I'd argue.
Actually, I have been on a jury, and pretty much everyone took their job pretty seriously and tried to do their best. I'm not sure where you get off saying this. Have you been on a jury before?
Did you know that you can eject people from a jury who are behaving they way you say?
This stereotype of jurors is probably hurting the legal system more than anything else. Just because you're a moron who doesn't take his responsibilities seriously doesn't mean everyone else doesn't either.
Actually, you first need a multi-touch screen and software to drive it. Then you can get around to patenting pinch to zoom.
If only we had thought to build a multi-touch screen into a cellphone, we'd all be rich!
It's only obvious after the fact. Have you ever tried pinching a resistive touchscreen?
The good thing is that Apple learned how to protect its look and feel from the Microsoft case. Trade dress, how about that.
Triple damages due to willful infringement. Ouch.
But that's only going to be a quarter of profit for Samsung. More important is the loss of face that Samsung just incurred.
From now on, all of Samsung's products will be as confusing as the galaxy note 10. They won't have Apple's UX to fall back on anymore.
Actually, you're wrong. There are lots and lots of ways to design tablets. Just because you can't think beyond Samsung doesn't mean other people can't.
The basic shape of a tablet is somewhat dictated by the shape of the screen. However, look at the kindle/nook/kobos. Do they look like iPads? Not really. Do they work like iPads? Not really. Are they rectangles with rounded corners? Yep. Is Apple suing Amazon for violating trade dress? No.
Why do you feel sharp corners aren't viable? Why rounded and not, say, octagon-like? There's no real reason for not having corners. Apple's desktop used to have rounded corners on-screen until a few revisions back (the corners of the desktop were rounded, which wasted a few pixels). Physically, lots of things like books have corners. Corners are everywhere. Why aren't they on tablets?
Thickness can be increased for whatever reason you want. You design it, you can do what you want.
Icons are de facto standards, but the look and arrangement of icons is not.
If anything, this shows how good Apple's design is: people like you can't think of any other way to do it, because Apple's done it so well that every other way looks like crap.
Do you remember Windows Mobile (WinCE)? Metro? Symbian? There are many, many ways to do GUIs, phones, and mobile OSs. There are lots and lots of different cellphone designs. There used to be lots of different smartphone designs. There used to be lots of mobile UIs.
Now we have iOS and Metro.
Think of it: before the iPhone, would anyone have thought "of course, this is what a smartphone should be like?"
In America it's hard, because nobody really bought smartphones...they might have had a blackberry for business. They might have had a PalmOS device. Did anyone actually buy a Nokia 900 in the US? Then the iPhone came and kicked the crap out of everyone. And as I said before, it's so dominant that people seem to have forgotten that (1) it's not the Only Way, and (2) things Used to be Different.
Samsung is so desperate to be successful Apple that it's totally copying Apple. It should be flattering, because Samsung is following a path to success that's worked. It's sad, because as the saying goes, they're skating to where the puck was, not to where the puck is going. Samsung used to be accused of copying Sony back when Sony was worth copying. Go figure.
It could be that Samsung, at some level, has no idea that it's copying Apple so blatantly. I know that a large percentage of the public believes that Samsung didn't copy Apple and there's only one way to design a smartphone. I'd like to think Samsung management is smarter than those people.
However, it looks like institutionally Samsung just copies the dominant player then underprices everyone else until everyone else exits the market...all while spouting about its "innovation." So are they better or worse than a patent troll?
Everything can be opened. WTF is the author talking about? Fucking iFixit has a teardown article on it.
I mean, jesus christ. If you don't like it don't buy it. Is that so fucking hard to understand?
My kids love to fly. If you want to re-experience the thrill of flying, have kids. For them it's a blast.
For everyone else, well, it's called AirBus for a reason.
Toilets are great. Poor sanitation has arguably killed more people than wars.
That said, cheap, energy efficient air conditioning should be next on the list. AC is practically required for any kind of modern economy. Building a low-power AC would benefit millions - and reduce the amount of power infrastructure needed in developing countries, which in general would be a good thing.
Google is your friend. Before you show your ignorance, verify it first with a simple search.