Please tell that to my IT department who think that poor performance is my fault because I'm 'overtaxing' the machine with 2 instances each of Word & Excel, 2 Citrix windows and IE7 with (shock) 7 tabs open (2 of which were empty).
Ouch, that's a minuscule workload which any computer less than eight years old should handle... Sounds like your IT department is lazy and/or incompetent:)
In my experience it's always quicker to reimage than to try to fix an ageing Windows install, no matter what the "you can always clean it up"-crowd says. Windows behaves strangely after being installed for some time. A reimaging is "free", if you can't persuade them to even try that I feel sorry for you.
I would argue that a hard drive wipe would not satisfy many of these people. They see 'new' in the next cube over and want one.
Depends on your users I guess, I work with grown-ups. I'm in the process of upgrading quite a few desktops at work, we have bought a few new ones and reinstalled/upgraded others. As long as the users experience a significant increase in performance from what they're used to they're very happy. We've also found that moving the OS to a cheap SSD (done in fifteen minutes with Ubuntu Live, partition resize and dd) makes the box a lot more responsive, and improves the user satisfaction immensely.
Another point: half decent computer equipment is dirt cheap compared to other costs related to keeping someone employed. Don't skimp on it, there's no reason why an employee which costs the company ~$90000/year or more should be frustrated with poor performance all day when a $100-$500 upgrade would make him/her happy. Same thing goes for peripherals like multiple monitors and specialised mice and keyboards, a perceived need is a real need as far as we're concerned. Any reasonable manager will agree with you if you put things into perspective in this manner, especially if the computer is the employees' main work tool. If your users feel like smashing their equipment in frustration you're definitely doing something wrong.
Considering PADI certification can be started, and completed, in a single weekend, it is not really a signifier of expertise.
Of course you're right, and I don't claim to be an expert:) PADI focuses on teaching conservative and simple rules that are easy to remember in order to enable you to dive recreationally in a safe manner, and without killing yourself in stupid ways. For anything more advanced (like cave diving, special gases, deep diving) you need to seek out special courses.
My courses (Open Water + Advanced OW) took seven full days combined, this is a far cry from what pro/navy divers must go through. Still I felt that I was safe to assert that for a five meter dive you don't have to worry about the bends on ascent if you're not boarding an airplane right away. If a diver with more experience have something to add I'd be delighted to increase my knowledge:)
Here's a question for the divers here: do you need special decompression routines if you dive at five meters for long periods?
PADI certified diver here. No, you don't, as this depth is too shallow to enable dangerous amounts of nitrogen to dissolve in your blood, at least in time spans you can reasonably stay there without getting trouble with hypothermia and exhaustion. Regular dive tables don't even extend to depths shallower than 10 meters, at which you can stay for more than three hours. I'm not certified to make dives that require decompression, that's pro/military territory, but I believe that 3-7 meters are actually common depths for making your last decompression stop.
On a side note: the bends are a real concern when traveling in aircraft; for instance it's highly discouraged to fly less than 24 hours even after a recreational dive that doesn't require decompression. The pressure in the cabin of a normal jet liner is maintained at a level which corresponds to about 2-3 kilometers above sea level. I'd guess that at least some people would have problems with a sudden decompression at up to 12000 meters, as susceptibility to getting the bends varies greatly from person to person. However, I doubt that it would be severe enough to kill you outright before you reach a lower altitude if you were unlucky enough to be sucked out of the plane. It might be a contributing factor (together with cold and trauma) to a fatal circulatory shock, though.
My problem is when I see apps like this [android.com] or this [android.com] that are obviously over-reaching.
I would be very surprised if the ZXing Barcode Scanner did anything underhanded, it's open source after all. They also explain why they prefer those permissions.
On a side note I'd love to be able to specify allow/ask/deny permissions for every feature the program wants to access, for instance I've metered internet access, and do not want apps to be able to use it freely.
The creators of one of the strictest DRM system? You've got to be kidding.
I would have modded you troll, but since I have no mod points I reply instead. I buy a lot of games, and Steam is by far the smoothest DRM system I've seen apart from no DRM at all. Oh shoot, just noticed that I'm replying to AC, who cares...
There can be a huge benefit when the developer actually customizes their layout to account for more screen real estate with lower DPI. Automatically scaling apps usually results in odd looking UI and wasted space.
I agree. Just ask any WinXP user with a vertical screen resolution of less than 800 px, in some system windows the 'Ok' and 'Cancel' buttons will not be visible due to fixed layout.
I still wish sites in general would realise that my browser handles large image files a lot better than their pathetic popups. They got it right for the second image, probably by mistake:)
While you can squeeze a vcard on a large one, ideally you want a smaller one to take up less space on the card, and to make it easier to read without error.
Yes, it's irritating that the VCard format is so verbose, even if it can be shaved down a little. It was designed to be perfectly human-readable, yet for instance all the data labels could easily be truncated to standard integers which you looked up in a table. There's no reason why such a file need to be intuitively human-readable.
Phones still interpret the VCard info slightly differently, which is annoying. Then again, the phone companies haven't even managed to agree on a standard for exchanging ICBM addresses (Why can't I just "send my location" to any phone / map software combination?), so I won't hold my breath for VCard-type info either.
So are people actually doing this? It makes sense that they should, although it would be more useful if a standard encoding scheme is used.
QR-codes are so standard that pretty much any modern smartphone can read them, although some may need a free application. ZXing Barcode Reader is a very good one for Android.
Where I work all employees have one. I generate the qr-images from vcard-formatted text with qrencode, but you can try it out quickly on the Nokia website. Make sure to choose QR-code at the bottom. It's quite handy:)
If you want to get sued when someone picks up your phone and dials 911 during an emergency.
Um, what? I know you guys are pretty trigger-happy when it comes to lawsuits, but could some Joe really sue you because a random device isn't what they thought it was?
Affordable motorcars can't be used to control a population. At least not directly...
Hitler didn't need neither motorcars nor mobile phones to do that:)
He actually promoted the cars to be able to use them for troop transport, which was also one of his goals when he initiated the Autobahn project. One could say that he promoted cars to ultimately be able to control other countries' populations.
If I have to use numbers only, I do use yyyy mm dd - it just makes sense.
Agreed. Where I live dd/mm/yyyy is the norm, but it does cause confusion at times when communicating with people from other countries. I always use yyyy-mm-dd in my own notes, and occasionally this format slips into written messages to other people as well. I've gotten a couple of comments ("huh, that's a curious date notation") but never experienced a misunderstanding. It *does* just make sense.
- With lossy compression you get all the downsides with limiting on what devices you can use it (supported formats) and you cannot really reencode it without losing even more quality.
Agreed. To clarify: If you reencode from one lossy format to another the result will be *really* bad, as in "listening over a bad analog phone connection". This is due to different psychoacoustic models cutting different information, leaving you with far too little in the second generation copy.
I don't know how you regard funerals over there, but where I live it would be considered a cause for calling the police (and they would come) if someone deliberately disrupted a funeral service, as WBC reportedly do on a regular basis. They would be taken into custody and fined.
If you only want the car for sitting then that might work, if you want it for driving then clearly for your pusposes it's bricked, it's not an objective description and has to bear some reference to the intended purpose.
The thread pertains to the misuse of the term "bricking" in the title case. To continue the inappropriate car analogy: saying that those TiVos will be bricked is like saying that your transmission is shot when you've really run out of gas. Bricking has a quite specific meaning when it comes to elecronics.
In the strictest sense of the term, bricking must imply that software error has rendered the device completely unrecoverable without some hardware replacement. However, it is common to use the term for a problem which can be rectified but only by a complex and difficult procedure, often requiring additional software.
Loss of funcionality simply isn't what the term means. An example: If you destroy the bootloader on an Android phone, it's bricked because you can't get it to boot without doing some serious magic way over of the capabilities of most people. If your phone turns on, but can't make calls because it has very poor reception due to some other problem, it's not bricked even if it's practically unusable for its primary purpose.
If you contact a phone hacker about your phone and tell him that it is bricked he'll be confused, and probably eventually be annoyed at you for wasting his time by misleading him. It's like referring to your whole PC case as the "hard drive" or the "CPU" - lots of people do, but it's simply the wrong term, and knowledgeable people will shake their heads and laugh at you. The term has a specific meaning even if you're not aware of it, no matter how many people call the PC case a "hard drive" the hard drive remains an internal component in your box.
Basically bricked means the device no longer useable for the purposes it was actually originally made for and getting it to functional state requires tools not even a regular geek has at his or her disposal.
No, I don't agree. I understand that the device will continue to function exactly as if you disconnected its data cable. Bricked would mean that it functions about as well as if you had disconnected its power cable.
The company discontinued a service, this does not mean that people can't switch the device on and use all of its offline functionality, ie it is *not* bricked. If they issued a remote update which erased all firmware with no possibility of recovery, now that would be bricking.
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Please tell that to my IT department who think that poor performance is my fault because I'm 'overtaxing' the machine with 2 instances each of Word & Excel, 2 Citrix windows and IE7 with (shock) 7 tabs open (2 of which were empty).
Ouch, that's a minuscule workload which any computer less than eight years old should handle... Sounds like your IT department is lazy and/or incompetent :)
In my experience it's always quicker to reimage than to try to fix an ageing Windows install, no matter what the "you can always clean it up"-crowd says. Windows behaves strangely after being installed for some time. A reimaging is "free", if you can't persuade them to even try that I feel sorry for you.
I would argue that a hard drive wipe would not satisfy many of these people. They see 'new' in the next cube over and want one.
Depends on your users I guess, I work with grown-ups. I'm in the process of upgrading quite a few desktops at work, we have bought a few new ones and reinstalled/upgraded others. As long as the users experience a significant increase in performance from what they're used to they're very happy. We've also found that moving the OS to a cheap SSD (done in fifteen minutes with Ubuntu Live, partition resize and dd) makes the box a lot more responsive, and improves the user satisfaction immensely.
Another point: half decent computer equipment is dirt cheap compared to other costs related to keeping someone employed. Don't skimp on it, there's no reason why an employee which costs the company ~$90000/year or more should be frustrated with poor performance all day when a $100-$500 upgrade would make him/her happy. Same thing goes for peripherals like multiple monitors and specialised mice and keyboards, a perceived need is a real need as far as we're concerned. Any reasonable manager will agree with you if you put things into perspective in this manner, especially if the computer is the employees' main work tool. If your users feel like smashing their equipment in frustration you're definitely doing something wrong.
Considering PADI certification can be started, and completed, in a single weekend, it is not really a signifier of expertise.
Of course you're right, and I don't claim to be an expert :)
PADI focuses on teaching conservative and simple rules that are easy to remember in order to enable you to dive recreationally in a safe manner, and without killing yourself in stupid ways. For anything more advanced (like cave diving, special gases, deep diving) you need to seek out special courses.
My courses (Open Water + Advanced OW) took seven full days combined, this is a far cry from what pro/navy divers must go through. Still I felt that I was safe to assert that for a five meter dive you don't have to worry about the bends on ascent if you're not boarding an airplane right away. If a diver with more experience have something to add I'd be delighted to increase my knowledge :)
Here's a question for the divers here: do you need special decompression routines if you dive at five meters for long periods?
PADI certified diver here. No, you don't, as this depth is too shallow to enable dangerous amounts of nitrogen to dissolve in your blood, at least in time spans you can reasonably stay there without getting trouble with hypothermia and exhaustion. Regular dive tables don't even extend to depths shallower than 10 meters, at which you can stay for more than three hours. I'm not certified to make dives that require decompression, that's pro/military territory, but I believe that 3-7 meters are actually common depths for making your last decompression stop.
On a side note: the bends are a real concern when traveling in aircraft; for instance it's highly discouraged to fly less than 24 hours even after a recreational dive that doesn't require decompression. The pressure in the cabin of a normal jet liner is maintained at a level which corresponds to about 2-3 kilometers above sea level. I'd guess that at least some people would have problems with a sudden decompression at up to 12000 meters, as susceptibility to getting the bends varies greatly from person to person. However, I doubt that it would be severe enough to kill you outright before you reach a lower altitude if you were unlucky enough to be sucked out of the plane. It might be a contributing factor (together with cold and trauma) to a fatal circulatory shock, though.
My problem is when I see apps like this [android.com] or this [android.com] that are obviously over-reaching.
I would be very surprised if the ZXing Barcode Scanner did anything underhanded, it's open source after all. They also explain why they prefer those permissions.
On a side note I'd love to be able to specify allow/ask/deny permissions for every feature the program wants to access, for instance I've metered internet access, and do not want apps to be able to use it freely.
The creators of one of the strictest DRM system? You've got to be kidding.
I would have modded you troll, but since I have no mod points I reply instead.
I buy a lot of games, and Steam is by far the smoothest DRM system I've seen apart from no DRM at all.
Oh shoot, just noticed that I'm replying to AC, who cares...
Assuming those still work :)
Unless they've just reimplemented them to honor the date, they still do. Mine do indeed show.
There can be a huge benefit when the developer actually customizes their layout to account for more screen real estate with lower DPI. Automatically scaling apps usually results in odd looking UI and wasted space.
I agree. Just ask any WinXP user with a vertical screen resolution of less than 800 px, in some system windows the 'Ok' and 'Cancel' buttons will not be visible due to fixed layout.
Since I don't have mod points at the moment: Word! Mod this guy up.
Thanks! Nice find.
I still wish sites in general would realise that my browser handles large image files a lot better than their pathetic popups. They got it right for the second image, probably by mistake :)
Android. It's fucking called Android.
Droid is a brand name for a number of Android-based smartphones sold in the US of A by Verizon Wireless.
The above post was brought to you by Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.
While you can squeeze a vcard on a large one, ideally you want a smaller one to take up less space on the card, and to make it easier to read without error.
Yes, it's irritating that the VCard format is so verbose, even if it can be shaved down a little. It was designed to be perfectly human-readable, yet for instance all the data labels could easily be truncated to standard integers which you looked up in a table. There's no reason why such a file need to be intuitively human-readable.
Phones still interpret the VCard info slightly differently, which is annoying. Then again, the phone companies haven't even managed to agree on a standard for exchanging ICBM addresses (Why can't I just "send my location" to any phone / map software combination?), so I won't hold my breath for VCard-type info either.
So are people actually doing this? It makes sense that they should, although it would be more useful if a standard encoding scheme is used.
QR-codes are so standard that pretty much any modern smartphone can read them, although some may need a free application. ZXing Barcode Reader is a very good one for Android.
Where I work all employees have one. I generate the qr-images from vcard-formatted text with qrencode, but you can try it out quickly on the Nokia website. Make sure to choose QR-code at the bottom. It's quite handy :)
Who pays $20 for cheap vodka?!
In Norway the cheapest Vodka (and about the cheapest liquor in general) you can legally buy costs about $62/L. Yay for sin taxes.
If you want to get sued when someone picks up your phone and dials 911 during an emergency.
Um, what? I know you guys are pretty trigger-happy when it comes to lawsuits, but could some Joe really sue you because a random device isn't what they thought it was?
If you're referring to the problem with Empathy
He's actually requesting that they employ the exit command from vi instead of the one from Emacs :)
Affordable motorcars can't be used to control a population. At least not directly...
Hitler didn't need neither motorcars nor mobile phones to do that :)
He actually promoted the cars to be able to use them for troop transport, which was also one of his goals when he initiated the Autobahn project. One could say that he promoted cars to ultimately be able to control other countries' populations.
Posting anonymously for an obvious reason.
We're still tracking you.
Please be aware that someone's on to you as well, they already took your name.
How exactly does Amazon know who's reading the physical device?
By comparing the 3G location of the device with the location of the owner's cell phone. Didn't you read the summary? :)
If I have to use numbers only, I do use yyyy mm dd - it just makes sense.
Agreed. Where I live dd/mm/yyyy is the norm, but it does cause confusion at times when communicating with people from other countries. I always use yyyy-mm-dd in my own notes, and occasionally this format slips into written messages to other people as well. I've gotten a couple of comments ("huh, that's a curious date notation") but never experienced a misunderstanding. It *does* just make sense.
- With lossy compression you get all the downsides with limiting on what devices you can use it (supported formats) and you cannot really reencode it without losing even more quality.
Agreed. To clarify: If you reencode from one lossy format to another the result will be *really* bad, as in "listening over a bad analog phone connection". This is due to different psychoacoustic models cutting different information, leaving you with far too little in the second generation copy.
so long as they do not make a public disturbance
I don't know how you regard funerals over there, but where I live it would be considered a cause for calling the police (and they would come) if someone deliberately disrupted a funeral service, as WBC reportedly do on a regular basis. They would be taken into custody and fined.
As an atheist, I recognize that posting in threads on the internet and prayer are very similar. :)
Except for this: when you post in a thread, somebody will get your message :)
In either case nobody will care.
If you only want the car for sitting then that might work, if you want it for driving then clearly for your pusposes it's bricked, it's not an objective description and has to bear some reference to the intended purpose.
The thread pertains to the misuse of the term "bricking" in the title case. To continue the inappropriate car analogy: saying that those TiVos will be bricked is like saying that your transmission is shot when you've really run out of gas. Bricking has a quite specific meaning when it comes to elecronics.
In the strictest sense of the term, bricking must imply that software error has rendered the device completely unrecoverable without some hardware replacement. However, it is common to use the term for a problem which can be rectified but only by a complex and difficult procedure, often requiring additional software.
Loss of funcionality simply isn't what the term means. An example: If you destroy the bootloader on an Android phone, it's bricked because you can't get it to boot without doing some serious magic way over of the capabilities of most people. If your phone turns on, but can't make calls because it has very poor reception due to some other problem, it's not bricked even if it's practically unusable for its primary purpose.
If you contact a phone hacker about your phone and tell him that it is bricked he'll be confused, and probably eventually be annoyed at you for wasting his time by misleading him. It's like referring to your whole PC case as the "hard drive" or the "CPU" - lots of people do, but it's simply the wrong term, and knowledgeable people will shake their heads and laugh at you. The term has a specific meaning even if you're not aware of it, no matter how many people call the PC case a "hard drive" the hard drive remains an internal component in your box.
Basically bricked means the device no longer useable for the purposes it was actually originally made for and getting it to functional state requires tools not even a regular geek has at his or her disposal.
No, I don't agree. I understand that the device will continue to function exactly as if you disconnected its data cable. Bricked would mean that it functions about as well as if you had disconnected its power cable.
The company discontinued a service, this does not mean that people can't switch the device on and use all of its offline functionality, ie it is *not* bricked. If they issued a remote update which erased all firmware with no possibility of recovery, now that would be bricking.