Re: Google branded; People fully immersed in a traditional closed-architecture business model may have trouble wrapping their brains around Android.
The i-phone is a device created by a manufacturer. It has a gui and an app store and a bazillion apps and these things only run on the device from this manufacturer. Sales of the device are easy to track -- Apple sells a certain number of phones, and that is the sum total of i-phones sold.
Android is not a device. Trivially it's an operating system, but it's also a set of expectations -- app store, gui, and so forth. To compare the two, you have to agree about what you're comparing. If you're comparing Apple's phone with Google's phone, Apple has sold a crapload more phones than Google. Hands down, end of story.
If you're comparing phones running Apple's OS with Google's OS, the numbers change but things get murky. What do you compare the 4G to? Android 2.1? 2.2? If a phone runs the Android OS but has a GUI customized by the vendor, does it count?
The background image on my home computer is my daughter, 13 years old at the time, firing my Ruger Super Blackhawk (.44 magnum). She started with.22 and worked her way up to.380,.38, 9mm, and finally the.44. She prefers my wife's Lady Smith (.38) but will fire the hand cannon at the range to impress boyfriends.
I join the others questioning why you didn't start the kid out with a.22. I would never think of handing a kid the.44 Magnum or the Enfield in.303 (a real bruiser) without first a lot of practice with the Single Six or 10/22, and then only if they really wanted to. Seriously, were you deliberately trying to scare the kid? Sounds like you succeeded.
...is that the article immediately following talks about Google's new free app development kit for Android. Google seems to be doing well, so far, with "free".
The unpronounceable glyph now known as Prince may be a musical genius, (which might be a separate discussion) but he's not a technologist.
His analogy is faulty, as is so common with people who don't understand technology. MTV is a cable channel that used to provide music content. The Internet is not like MTV, it's more like the cable itself. The Internet is not a content provider. It's a transport mechanism. It'll be significant until a newer, better mechanism comes along.
In other words, this is yet another entertainer blowing smoke, and only getting air time at all because of his status as an entertainer. Who's surprised?
Find an organization that needs computer equipment. I've donated a lot of working equipment to a local homeschool coop. Other possibilities are: Charter schools, underprivileged/low-income, churches, non-profit organizations.
But please don't waste their time passing off stuff that doesn't work. If it's junk, then junk it. (Or recycle, whatever your location has available.)
In Portland, there's Freegeeks. They'll take pretty much anything that works.
You know that to leave MIT your final test is to move a burning chalice off a pedestal, forever burning B = mu(H) into your left forearm and J = sigma(E) on your right forearm.
Be careful, if you have those marks and haven't earned them the MIT ninjas will visit you in the dead of night...
Ok, given that, having a cricket bat in the closet can result in a "dangerous weapon" charge being added to the list. Which makes me suspect even more that it was just added for negotiation purposes.
Hmm. So, by that rather loose definition, I wonder if a device intended to capture police communication and tweeting same could be considered a weapon?
> And our gun laws are stupid enough that even a person who is fully licensed and has their weapons stored in a safe and responsible manner could probably be charged if the police really wanted to do it.
...which might really have happened in this case, if the article is accurate. It only says "possession of dangerous weapons" which is an odd way of putting it if there was something illegal about the possession, or something exceptional about the weapons.
Googling his name and filtering out (as best I can) the plethora of reprints of this article, it looks like the "explosives" were deliberate acquisition of ingredients to see what it would take to provoke a response. I guess he found out.
As far as "weapons" was concerned, I don't know enough about Canadian law -- what is and is not classed as a "weapon" -- to speculate. But his linkedin says he's a licensed private investigator, and in many areas where it's otherwise impossible, a valid PI license sometimes allows a person to carry concealed. So, he could have legally owned a firearm.
I suspect that to a certain extent this is another example of the "kitchen sink" approach to high-profile arrests, and some of these charges will be dropped in plea negotiations.
Or, I dunno, he could really be a nut. But I don't think so. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Ok, prepare for some really draconic cracking-down, which will inevitably include some false positives that will ruin some people's lives, and as hollywood continues to lose money, (because their business plan is no longer valid) things will become more and more draconian, until the only revenue stream that's keeping the traditional studios alive will be from litigation or government relief. I can hardly wait.
> So I think the key factors that need to be considered are: how much damage a moratorium does to the local economy, the likelihood of a second spill during the next several months (and how much that likelihood can be reduced through simply properly enforcing existing regulation), and the potential damage to the local economies in the event of a second spill.
Right. This is an excellent example of "managed risk". Impact of not drilling, vs likelihood of another blowout, vs impact of another blowout. If the first part is big enough, and the second part is small enough, it might make sense to risk the third part. How many years ago was the last deep sea blowout? What is the real probability of it happening again in the next six months?
It's a tricky equation which probably can't be solved (correctly) by big emotional gestures.
It seems like this makes having a wifi option on your smartphone even more important. In my opinion, the fact that 3G is butt slow on both AT&T and Verizon is reason enough, but now that data plans have a potential to cost a lot of money, using local wifi makes even more sense.
I wasn't sure from the beginning (in the old Treo days) that data over cell was ever a good idea. The data rate was feeble and the cost of an unlimited data plan for a single phone was, and still is, -- let's face it -- as much as the cost of a much faster connection for every computer in your house.
But I believed the marketing, that each generation was faster (it was, in very small increments) and pretty soon we'd all have portable broadband everywhere there was a cell site, despite stories here and there that the major carriers hadn't built up anything like the infrastructure they would need to provide this service to significant numbers.
Now the systems are overloaded, the response is still crap compared to wifi, and it's about to get a lot more expensive.
I'm thinking it's time to Just Say No. Wifi has enough saturation that it will be my first choice from now on (which means I need to dump the Blackberry Tour, which is cell only) with the data plan a last resort.
They tried, they failed, the prices are going UP instead of DOWN. Time to find another solution.
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Re: Google branded; People fully immersed in a traditional closed-architecture business model may have trouble wrapping their brains around Android.
The i-phone is a device created by a manufacturer. It has a gui and an app store and a bazillion apps and these things only run on the device from this manufacturer. Sales of the device are easy to track -- Apple sells a certain number of phones, and that is the sum total of i-phones sold.
Android is not a device. Trivially it's an operating system, but it's also a set of expectations -- app store, gui, and so forth. To compare the two, you have to agree about what you're comparing. If you're comparing Apple's phone with Google's phone, Apple has sold a crapload more phones than Google. Hands down, end of story.
If you're comparing phones running Apple's OS with Google's OS, the numbers change but things get murky. What do you compare the 4G to? Android 2.1? 2.2? If a phone runs the Android OS but has a GUI customized by the vendor, does it count?
The background image on my home computer is my daughter, 13 years old at the time, firing my Ruger Super Blackhawk (.44 magnum). She started with .22 and worked her way up to .380, .38, 9mm, and finally the .44. She prefers my wife's Lady Smith (.38) but will fire the hand cannon at the range to impress boyfriends.
I join the others questioning why you didn't start the kid out with a .22. I would never think of handing a kid the .44 Magnum or the Enfield in .303 (a real bruiser) without first a lot of practice with the Single Six or 10/22, and then only if they really wanted to. Seriously, were you deliberately trying to scare the kid? Sounds like you succeeded.
I always thought the Lightsaber looked too much like a large version of Dr Who's sonic screwdriver. Maybe the BBC should sue Lucasfilms?
Barcodes. They're making a comeback.
The unpronounceable glyph now known as Prince may be a musical genius, (which might be a separate discussion) but he's not a technologist.
His analogy is faulty, as is so common with people who don't understand technology. MTV is a cable channel that used to provide music content. The Internet is not like MTV, it's more like the cable itself. The Internet is not a content provider. It's a transport mechanism. It'll be significant until a newer, better mechanism comes along.
In other words, this is yet another entertainer blowing smoke, and only getting air time at all because of his status as an entertainer. Who's surprised?
Um, you do know what the "B" in "BP" stands for, right?
Or are those all in our imagination?
Find an organization that needs computer equipment. I've donated a lot of working equipment to a local homeschool coop. Other possibilities are: Charter schools, underprivileged/low-income, churches, non-profit organizations.
But please don't waste their time passing off stuff that doesn't work. If it's junk, then junk it. (Or recycle, whatever your location has available.)
In Portland, there's Freegeeks. They'll take pretty much anything that works.
I think his brother works over at The Good Guys.
You know that to leave MIT your final test is to move a burning chalice off a pedestal, forever burning B = mu(H) into your left forearm and J = sigma(E) on your right forearm.
Be careful, if you have those marks and haven't earned them the MIT ninjas will visit you in the dead of night...
Ok, given that, having a cricket bat in the closet can result in a "dangerous weapon" charge being added to the list. Which makes me suspect even more that it was just added for negotiation purposes.
Hmm. So, by that rather loose definition, I wonder if a device intended to capture police communication and tweeting same could be considered a weapon?
> And our gun laws are stupid enough that even a person who is fully licensed and has their weapons stored in a safe and responsible manner could probably be charged if the police really wanted to do it.
Googling his name and filtering out (as best I can) the plethora of reprints of this article, it looks like the "explosives" were deliberate acquisition of ingredients to see what it would take to provoke a response. I guess he found out.
As far as "weapons" was concerned, I don't know enough about Canadian law -- what is and is not classed as a "weapon" -- to speculate. But his linkedin says he's a licensed private investigator, and in many areas where it's otherwise impossible, a valid PI license sometimes allows a person to carry concealed. So, he could have legally owned a firearm.
I suspect that to a certain extent this is another example of the "kitchen sink" approach to high-profile arrests, and some of these charges will be dropped in plea negotiations.
Or, I dunno, he could really be a nut. But I don't think so. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Ok, prepare for some really draconic cracking-down, which will inevitably include some false positives that will ruin some people's lives, and as hollywood continues to lose money, (because their business plan is no longer valid) things will become more and more draconian, until the only revenue stream that's keeping the traditional studios alive will be from litigation or government relief. I can hardly wait.
> Don't know. What we do know is that the US has fewer safety regulations then other countries.
References, please. Compare and contrast with, oh, Russia, for example.
Managed risk is a little more involved than "hoping that it doesn't happen again". That's rhetoric of the "big emotional gesture" variety.
> So I think the key factors that need to be considered are: how much damage a moratorium does to the local economy, the likelihood of a second spill during the next several months (and how much that likelihood can be reduced through simply properly enforcing existing regulation), and the potential damage to the local economies in the event of a second spill.
Right. This is an excellent example of "managed risk". Impact of not drilling, vs likelihood of another blowout, vs impact of another blowout. If the first part is big enough, and the second part is small enough, it might make sense to risk the third part. How many years ago was the last deep sea blowout? What is the real probability of it happening again in the next six months?
It's a tricky equation which probably can't be solved (correctly) by big emotional gestures.
It seems like this makes having a wifi option on your smartphone even more important. In my opinion, the fact that 3G is butt slow on both AT&T and Verizon is reason enough, but now that data plans have a potential to cost a lot of money, using local wifi makes even more sense.
I wasn't sure from the beginning (in the old Treo days) that data over cell was ever a good idea. The data rate was feeble and the cost of an unlimited data plan for a single phone was, and still is, -- let's face it -- as much as the cost of a much faster connection for every computer in your house.
But I believed the marketing, that each generation was faster (it was, in very small increments) and pretty soon we'd all have portable broadband everywhere there was a cell site, despite stories here and there that the major carriers hadn't built up anything like the infrastructure they would need to provide this service to significant numbers.
Now the systems are overloaded, the response is still crap compared to wifi, and it's about to get a lot more expensive.
I'm thinking it's time to Just Say No. Wifi has enough saturation that it will be my first choice from now on (which means I need to dump the Blackberry Tour, which is cell only) with the data plan a last resort.
They tried, they failed, the prices are going UP instead of DOWN. Time to find another solution.
That explains why I'm holding down the fort by myself. The Macheads must be waiting in line at the iStore.
Another reason to buy HP's overpriced printer ink.
SECURITY HOLE? This is going to be the greatest corporate espionage tool since the camera phone!