Yea, work here is doing that too. We had an open window of time to certify that we were tobacco free so we can save $80 a year (or something) off our insurance.
This is actually all that was needed: make the smokers pay the extra insurance premium out of their own pockets. It's not fair to deny people employment due to their lifestyle choices, but it's no more fair to make somebody else pay for the smokers' self-damaging behavior.
Creating and releasing an extremely popular and novel Linux-based OS has got to count for something, too.
Forking the Linux kernel to practically derail driver development for mobile devices counts for something as well. Here Samsung and Intel also serve as counterweights by running their own Tizen effort, which even sees some automotive use with Genivi. But the story of "Linux on mobile", between Google and Nokia, is a sad and confused one.
Ironically, it was Microsoft who developed MTP and pushed it through the standards committee. And now they extended it for Windows Phone, so regular MTP support is not enough to work with WP devices. This is perhaps the stupidest move in the whole Windows Phone story.
My Samsung TV menu keeps freezing randomly if I switch the interface language to Russian. Say what you will about Linux, but gettext isn't that incompetently programmed. This must be the work of the legions of Samsung's coders.
I also feel pity for all those Android OEMs. How could Google piss on them and release their own Nexus. And what's more, they own Motorola Mobility now... What? You are saying this is different because?..
Sigh. You have skipped through all the physical and physiological arguments for why cycling accidents tend to have a bigger potential for damage than accidents happening when running. And jumped straight to my anecdote which does not prove anything, indeed.
Something tells me that the Netherlands have more going for them than just the wide disregard for protection. The whole culture is much more bicycle-friendly. Somebody cited their law by which a motorist is guilty until proven innocent in a collision with a cyclist.
I don't really give a damn as to how many people are cycling: the city where I live is already more than friendly to cyclists, and the less idiots I share the roads with, the better. I'm just trying to persuade people to use the simple means of protecting themselves against accidents that are not uncommon, regardless of what your sense of invulnerability may tell you.
Also the whole "phone identifies itself as an external memory or a modem to a PC" makes me cringe. This used to be industry standard just a few years ago until apple perverted it.
Unfortunately, USB mass storage basically meant that the phone had to have a FAT block device partition to store the data, which prevented most of meaningful optimization.
Microsoft has pushed the MTP profile through standardization, in part, to have something more abstracted from the details of on-device storage medium. Then they did their "extend" thing for Windows Phone, so that their own standard MTP cannot be used to sync data with it. Apple is in their own realm of not interoperating with anything when they can avoid it, of course.
I won a door prize three years ago at age 30, going about 15mph on a straightaway in a bike lane. Guy opened the door straight into my face, and I hit the edge of his door with the top of my head.
Not to discuss the moral of this story, but what kind of a cockup arrangement could result in a bike lane immediately next to doors that swing outwards?
It's more dangerous to pedestrians for whom the regular narrow sidewalks are designed. Where bicycles are allowed, the paths are wider and often segregated with markings.
This. The kinetic energy of an impact increases roughly linearly with height and quadratically with speed. So a difference between 10 km/h and 20 km/h, or even a couple feet of extra height, can be a matter of life and death. Also, falls off your feet tend to be better controlled because our bodies train to deal with them for all our lives. With a bicycle, there's an added inconvenience of a dozen pounds of extensive metal constructs ramifying around your nether regions.
I always wear a helmet when cycling. I fell rather dramatically over the front wheel once (due to my own stupidity, a misjudged slope and some panic braking), broke the collar bone, was lucky to not have the bicycle land on me. The helmet was in place when I needed it.
Ah, but that's again up to living in a society that's not full of assholes.
There are places where I feel it safe to leave the helmet dangle off the handlebar, and throw my riding sunglasses into it for good measure. Not so much in dense urban areas, but vandalism against other people's property is uncommon around here.
As much as I hate to say it, I don't think that moving people from BlackBerry to Windows Phone will solve the problem she's describing.
What makes you "hate to say it", but then go on and do so? Moving to Windows Phone 8 will get them everything that Blackberry provides for the corporate-land and more. And it's looking increasingly like the #3 smartphone platform, with its share of loyal users at large. Whereas Blackberry is being pushed down to corporate holdouts and some local subcultures (cash-strapped UK teenagers?).
You can also replicate it quite closely with the Android interface is you like.
You can try, but it will fall apart in any number of ways. And this is only superficial similarity, what about integrated contacts, offline satnav (if we're talking Lumia) and other niceties.
Oddly, the U.S. embassy is already the most fenced-in, paranoidally guarded embassy in a quiet, prosperous European country where I live. In no other embassy you are frisked and escorted around the premises by armed military personnel.
On the consumer side, 90% of smart phone customers don't use even 15% of what their devices are capable of doing. For most consumers, the questions, "Can it go online?", "Can it make phone calls and send texts?", "Does it have some stupid little games I can put on it to pass the time when I'm bored?", and "Does it work reasonably well without being too confusing for me to figure out" are all they care about. That functionality has been available long before android 2.3 even hit the scene, never mind 4.0.
But, but, Nokia is doomed because they didn't get Microsoft to make Windows Phone 8 work on their current phones? This is the prevalent, +5 insightful modded opinion on Slashdot whenever a story mentioning Nokia is posted.
If you don't understand why taxis are legally required to pick up anyone hailing them,
I don't, at least I know it's not a universal requirement for taxis.
In Helsinki, Finland, taxis can be ordered by phone or SMS, or found at taxi ranks. You'd be lucky to hail one on the street, and I think it's against their regulations so only very "enterprising" drivers would do that.
Granted, added code to maintain is a given. Does that mean there should be no options whatsoever?
There should be options that matter to a sufficiently large share of users.
Any bugs which crop up AFTER an option is implemented are regressions, and almost certainly can be worked around, because one or the other of the two paths is still going to work. They are unlikely to be critical problems.
It's this attitude that produces so much buggy, overcomplicated software.
I think you know EXACTLY why your complaint rings completely hollow to a user. Add your UI change AS AN OPTION. If it catches on, fine; that means you were right. If it doesn't, fine; that means you were WRONG. Actually, no matter what, it will catch on with SOME subset of users, and not with others, and both groups can remain happy. Everybody is happy.
Except the developers, who now have to maintain and debug additional code paths and deal with an exponentially growing configuration space. And some users who see a lot of options they have no use for, or even no idea about, as a nuisance. Every option: 1) brings in a permanent maintenance cost; 2) increases complexity of the UI. Slashdot is full of people who don't mind complexity. In this wide world, there are a lot of others who are confounded by screenfuls upon screenfuls of options. So every option should better be justified, in that it addresses an important need for a lot of users.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, work here is doing that too. We had an open window of time to certify that we were tobacco free so we can save $80 a year (or something) off our insurance.
This is actually all that was needed: make the smokers pay the extra insurance premium out of their own pockets.
It's not fair to deny people employment due to their lifestyle choices, but it's no more fair to make somebody else pay for the smokers' self-damaging behavior.
Creating and releasing an extremely popular and novel Linux-based OS has got to count for something, too.
Forking the Linux kernel to practically derail driver development for mobile devices counts for something as well.
Here Samsung and Intel also serve as counterweights by running their own Tizen effort, which even sees some automotive use with Genivi.
But the story of "Linux on mobile", between Google and Nokia, is a sad and confused one.
Finland — I didn't even see "limited" data plans last month when I shopped for a plan, it was all about how much bandwidth you can use.
Ironically, it was Microsoft who developed MTP and pushed it through the standards committee.
And now they extended it for Windows Phone, so regular MTP support is not enough to work with WP devices. This is perhaps the stupidest move in the whole Windows Phone story.
My Samsung TV menu keeps freezing randomly if I switch the interface language to Russian.
Say what you will about Linux, but gettext isn't that incompetently programmed. This must be the work of the legions of Samsung's coders.
Heck, Google only has a Gold membership, and we know they like Linux.
Surely they like to take and modify, but playing along and contributing is another matter.
And yes, they own Motorola. But the OHA still exists. It'd be similar if Google, upon buying Moto, terminated the OHA and dropped the AOSP.
So what did Microsoft terminate and drop with regard to its Windows Phone partners?
So far all we have is ad-grabbing gossip on a second-rate website.
I also feel pity for all those Android OEMs. How could Google piss on them and release their own Nexus. And what's more, they own Motorola Mobility now...
What? You are saying this is different because?..
Sigh. You have skipped through all the physical and physiological arguments for why cycling accidents tend to have a bigger potential for damage than accidents happening when running. And jumped straight to my anecdote which does not prove anything, indeed.
Something tells me that the Netherlands have more going for them than just the wide disregard for protection. The whole culture is much more bicycle-friendly. Somebody cited their law by which a motorist is guilty until proven innocent in a collision with a cyclist.
I don't really give a damn as to how many people are cycling: the city where I live is already more than friendly to cyclists, and the less idiots I share the roads with, the better. I'm just trying to persuade people to use the simple means of protecting themselves against accidents that are not uncommon, regardless of what your sense of invulnerability may tell you.
Also the whole "phone identifies itself as an external memory or a modem to a PC" makes me cringe. This used to be industry standard just a few years ago until apple perverted it.
Unfortunately, USB mass storage basically meant that the phone had to have a FAT block device partition to store the data, which prevented most of meaningful optimization.
Microsoft has pushed the MTP profile through standardization, in part, to have something more abstracted from the details of on-device storage medium. Then they did their "extend" thing for Windows Phone, so that their own standard MTP cannot be used to sync data with it. Apple is in their own realm of not interoperating with anything when they can avoid it, of course.
I won a door prize three years ago at age 30, going about 15mph on a straightaway in a bike lane. Guy opened the door straight into my face, and I hit the edge of his door with the top of my head.
Not to discuss the moral of this story, but what kind of a cockup arrangement could result in a bike lane immediately next to doors that swing outwards?
It's more dangerous to pedestrians for whom the regular narrow sidewalks are designed. Where bicycles are allowed, the paths are wider and often segregated with markings.
Reminds me of the funniest bumper sticker, ever.
This. The kinetic energy of an impact increases roughly linearly with height and quadratically with speed. So a difference between 10 km/h and 20 km/h, or even a couple feet of extra height, can be a matter of life and death. Also, falls off your feet tend to be better controlled because our bodies train to deal with them for all our lives. With a bicycle, there's an added inconvenience of a dozen pounds of extensive metal constructs ramifying around your nether regions.
I always wear a helmet when cycling. I fell rather dramatically over the front wheel once (due to my own stupidity, a misjudged slope and some panic braking), broke the collar bone, was lucky to not have the bicycle land on me. The helmet was in place when I needed it.
Ah, but that's again up to living in a society that's not full of assholes.
There are places where I feel it safe to leave the helmet dangle off the handlebar, and throw my riding sunglasses into it for good measure. Not so much in dense urban areas, but vandalism against other people's property is uncommon around here.
As much as I hate to say it, I don't think that moving people from BlackBerry to Windows Phone will solve the problem she's describing.
What makes you "hate to say it", but then go on and do so?
Moving to Windows Phone 8 will get them everything that Blackberry provides for the corporate-land and more. And it's looking increasingly like the #3 smartphone platform, with its share of loyal users at large. Whereas Blackberry is being pushed down to corporate holdouts and some local subcultures (cash-strapped UK teenagers?).
How can poor people kick economic arse?
By being far more numerous than the rich people.
You can also replicate it quite closely with the Android interface is you like.
You can try, but it will fall apart in any number of ways. And this is only superficial similarity, what about integrated contacts, offline satnav (if we're talking Lumia) and other niceties.
Oddly, the U.S. embassy is already the most fenced-in, paranoidally guarded embassy in a quiet, prosperous European country where I live. In no other embassy you are frisked and escorted around the premises by armed military personnel.
Victory Gardens were a fact of life in World War I and II.
As were massive voluntary collection of recyclable materials and ride-share clubs.
We actually can do it, when pressed hard enough, especially if we realize the necessity.
On the consumer side, 90% of smart phone customers don't use even 15% of what their devices are capable of doing. For most consumers, the questions, "Can it go online?", "Can it make phone calls and send texts?", "Does it have some stupid little games I can put on it to pass the time when I'm bored?", and "Does it work reasonably well without being too confusing for me to figure out" are all they care about. That functionality has been available long before android 2.3 even hit the scene, never mind 4.0.
But, but, Nokia is doomed because they didn't get Microsoft to make Windows Phone 8 work on their current phones? This is the prevalent, +5 insightful modded opinion on Slashdot whenever a story mentioning Nokia is posted.
If you don't understand why taxis are legally required to pick up anyone hailing them,
I don't, at least I know it's not a universal requirement for taxis.
In Helsinki, Finland, taxis can be ordered by phone or SMS, or found at taxi ranks. You'd be lucky to hail one on the street, and I think it's against their regulations so only very "enterprising" drivers would do that.
Granted, added code to maintain is a given. Does that mean there should be no options whatsoever?
There should be options that matter to a sufficiently large share of users.
Any bugs which crop up AFTER an option is implemented are regressions, and almost certainly can be worked around, because one or the other of the two paths is still going to work. They are unlikely to be critical problems.
It's this attitude that produces so much buggy, overcomplicated software.
I think you know EXACTLY why your complaint rings completely hollow to a user. Add your UI change AS AN OPTION. If it catches on, fine; that means you were right. If it doesn't, fine; that means you were WRONG. Actually, no matter what, it will catch on with SOME subset of users, and not with others, and both groups can remain happy. Everybody is happy.
Except the developers, who now have to maintain and debug additional code paths and deal with an exponentially growing configuration space. And some users who see a lot of options they have no use for, or even no idea about, as a nuisance. Every option: 1) brings in a permanent maintenance cost; 2) increases complexity of the UI. Slashdot is full of people who don't mind complexity. In this wide world, there are a lot of others who are confounded by screenfuls upon screenfuls of options. So every option should better be justified, in that it addresses an important need for a lot of users.
Dear me, it looks like I have enraged a conspiracy nut. This naturally makes me a member of the conspiracy.