These are the kind of energy the world has to seriously consider. Something that solves one problem (reducing the amount of rubbish that ends up in landfills), while also producing useful energy.
Why not reduce the amount of rubbish to begin with simply by not manufacturing so much stuff?
Energy is spent and pollution created by making a product. Energy is spent and pollution created by transporting a product. The product gets used. The product is then magically transformed into "waste" when we don't want the product anymore. Energy is spend and pollution is created by transporting the waste to a waste disposal site. The waste now continues to pollute for years into the future.
Conservation doesn't just mean using less energy, it means using less stuff. Conservation is efficient, conservation is sustainable. Unfortunately, conservation is also an anathema to society. Wouldn't our energies be better expended trying to alter society's energy priorities rather than trying to enable its existing practices by altering the end product?
I have the RAZR2 (V8). You can operate the phone entirely through voice commands, including dialing people in the phonebook and just dialing phone numbers.
For a blind user, inputting data is not the hard part. The difficulty is getting feedback from the device. I'm curious if this "Talking Phone" mode had pre-recorded voice sounds for each menu item or if it's capable of, say, pronouncing the names in your contact list like "true" text-to-speech.
Also, what if the phone mis-recognized your voice and inputted the wrong command? How would the user know? I wonder how many times sighted users of this feature have seen the screen bounce to the wrong menu item and thought "That's not what I said, you stupid phone!"
Someone has already mentioned text-to-speech cell phone software put out by Nuance called Talks (http://www.nuance.com/talks/). I used to work at the Lighthouse for the Blind in New Orleans as their technology specialist. A number of my blind coworkers and clients used this software on a variety of phones and they've done nothing but sing its praises. IMHO, the best thing that could be done is to port this software to a wider variety of handsets.
Sighted users don't need to re-learn how to read in order to switch to a different phone model. Neither should blind users.
Hear hear.
This is a heavy-handed approach that in the long run is probably going to cost more for everyone to implement and enforce than, say, our (UMass') approach which is to simply turn off the network jack associated with the misbehaving computer. Not only does this conveniently remove the problem machine from the network, but it also encourages the user to educate him/herself and be more proactive about computer security. As an added bonus, it also makes it more likely that good security practices will spread to other users within the dorm complex. Students who live in the dorms tend to, you know, talk to each other and stuff.
Seriously, it's always been a more efficient enforcement practice in general to dictate what the outcome of a certain situation must be rather than prescribe very specific conditions or methods by which an individual must achieve the desired result. Saying that the user is responsible for creating a secure computing environment implies both responsibility and flexibility, and even allows the user to be creative and innovative in achieving such goals. Saying that the user is responsible for running 95, 98, Me or XP does NOT by any means imply that a secure system will be the result.
Any operating system can get hacked. The biggest security risk in any computer network is, and always has been, the system administrator. Don't you forget it.
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These are the kind of energy the world has to seriously consider. Something that solves one problem (reducing the amount of rubbish that ends up in landfills), while also producing useful energy.
Why not reduce the amount of rubbish to begin with simply by not manufacturing so much stuff?
Energy is spent and pollution created by making a product. Energy is spent and pollution created by transporting a product. The product gets used. The product is then magically transformed into "waste" when we don't want the product anymore. Energy is spend and pollution is created by transporting the waste to a waste disposal site. The waste now continues to pollute for years into the future.
Conservation doesn't just mean using less energy, it means using less stuff. Conservation is efficient, conservation is sustainable. Unfortunately, conservation is also an anathema to society. Wouldn't our energies be better expended trying to alter society's energy priorities rather than trying to enable its existing practices by altering the end product?
I have the RAZR2 (V8). You can operate the phone entirely through voice commands, including dialing people in the phonebook and just dialing phone numbers.
For a blind user, inputting data is not the hard part. The difficulty is getting feedback from the device. I'm curious if this "Talking Phone" mode had pre-recorded voice sounds for each menu item or if it's capable of, say, pronouncing the names in your contact list like "true" text-to-speech.
Also, what if the phone mis-recognized your voice and inputted the wrong command? How would the user know? I wonder how many times sighted users of this feature have seen the screen bounce to the wrong menu item and thought "That's not what I said, you stupid phone!"
Someone has already mentioned text-to-speech cell phone software put out by Nuance called Talks (http://www.nuance.com/talks/). I used to work at the Lighthouse for the Blind in New Orleans as their technology specialist. A number of my blind coworkers and clients used this software on a variety of phones and they've done nothing but sing its praises. IMHO, the best thing that could be done is to port this software to a wider variety of handsets.
Sighted users don't need to re-learn how to read in order to switch to a different phone model. Neither should blind users.
Hear hear. This is a heavy-handed approach that in the long run is probably going to cost more for everyone to implement and enforce than, say, our (UMass') approach which is to simply turn off the network jack associated with the misbehaving computer. Not only does this conveniently remove the problem machine from the network, but it also encourages the user to educate him/herself and be more proactive about computer security. As an added bonus, it also makes it more likely that good security practices will spread to other users within the dorm complex. Students who live in the dorms tend to, you know, talk to each other and stuff. Seriously, it's always been a more efficient enforcement practice in general to dictate what the outcome of a certain situation must be rather than prescribe very specific conditions or methods by which an individual must achieve the desired result. Saying that the user is responsible for creating a secure computing environment implies both responsibility and flexibility, and even allows the user to be creative and innovative in achieving such goals. Saying that the user is responsible for running 95, 98, Me or XP does NOT by any means imply that a secure system will be the result. Any operating system can get hacked. The biggest security risk in any computer network is, and always has been, the system administrator. Don't you forget it.