I have a new idea: Copyright is a lousy idea and we need to banish the notion of copyright completely. Patents need a kick in the head as well. I am probably the first person ever to say that. My opinions are so valuable.
From best to worst, phones I have had for more than 4 months, used daily to type way too much text
I had a Sidekick 1 (color) when they first came out (2002 or 2003) The keyboard is the fastest I have used in a small formfactor, the later versions they screwed up everything that was right in favor of making it thinner (the keyboard is now more "set in" so your thumbs are down in a canyon when typing, so it is MUCH slower. This device had a wide keyboard, rubber keys (aka non-slip) with plenty of travel, very effectively backlit keyboard, plenty of space between keys... I could easily out type most of my family/friends if they were on a computer and I was on this thing.
Treo 650 The keys are nice and raised, there is a lot of keyboard travel, so there are fewer "did I hit that key or not" moments... The keyboard is MUCH too narrow. I would have to guess my WPM was about 50% of the sidekick
Blackberry Bold The keys are way too flat, but it is nice and wide. Almost no key travel I would guess wpm about 90% the treo (I currently use the BB)
iPhone - I had it for about 7 months, so I was well past my new user curve, and the keyboard was still a joke. I would guess that ACCURATE typing (aka auto-correct turned off, because it is so bad) is maybe 10% as fast as my blackberry.
So in all,I have gone down in typing speed significantly with each device because I guess I am the only one who actually likes typing things out on a phone or something? Or maybe because keyboards and usability don't sell, shininess and thinness sell. Pity. Each phone that was a step down in typing speed was A LOT more shiny than the last, so I guess that is what the phone industry is after.
youtube (used to or maybe still does) work from Wii with Opera, however their flash version is hella old and flash video is limited to about 30 minutes at a time before it exits semi-gracefully. I have used an excellent piece of software that might have also had a trojan (my poor windows virtual box died shortly after I discovered this awesome software). It was called PlayOn, ran a service on your windows box, streamed netflix to the server box, then re-streamed it to the Wii in flash 6 or whatever. Worked fine, but often crashed after 30 minutes due to Wii memory... Fortunately Netflix holds your place, so all you had to do was restart the browser and it auto-resumed at the right place.
It seems if this is the only problem, the Disc is probably just a simple video streaming client with actual garbage collection, to compensate for the tiny memory footprint of a Wii.
Children today are encouraged to speak their feelings, to elaborate on their dreams and their worries, the technology and culture to do so are omnipresent.
Women didn't suddenly develop personal politics the instant the 19th amendment was passed, they were simply more allowed to exercise it.
Children are more deep, complex, disturbed, ADD, Autistic, sexual, etc etc, because they are allowed to communicate in a more meaningful way than they were before.
In a "Don't speak unless spoken to" culture, it takes a fool to wonder why nobody knew what children were thinking.
Diesel engine is often only connected to the generator so it can be in its most efficient revolution speed the whole time and (because of the constant speed) have a very long life. (bolding mine)
There are plenty of light weight > 1kw diesel generators that are fine for hobbyist series hybrids, but conspiracy nuts and other skeptics would say... Electric motors last for a long ass time... Diesel motors last for a long ass time, especially when used to power generators... So what is the Detroit going to do for a business model when they sell a product with a 25 year duty life vs a 6 year duty life? certainly they cannot raise the prices of vehicles by 400% America would implode. So their only choice is to figure out how to build something that seems better, but will still fall apart in 6 years.
to many self-important parents and educators, "Talks about trains for 20 days because he doesn't care what I am saying" is the same as "Can't focus on what I am saying" I am NOT trying to compare the two diagnosis criteria lists, what I am trying to say is that from a culture standpoint it is not that far fetched to think that many people were never diagnosed correctly...
Especially Dark Knight, Avatar, The Lord of The Rings, Spiderman, The Lion King, I am Legend, Iron Man, King Kong, James Bond, The Chronicles of Narnia... Sorry I just got tired of listing the top grossing films of all time, which were old rehashed plots and characters.
And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria? Here are a few that jump out:
stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
vs
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat when sitting still is expected.
Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
vs
marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction
Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
If you are looking for ADD and you see a kid that monologues all the time, is highly focused on trains but doesn't care about spelling tests, doesn't stop moving his hands, doesn't seem to hear what you are saying... then you see ADD... If you are looking for Autism too, then you might see Autism.
I have been "autistic" my whole life (diagnosed, by a real doctor (1983), confirmed by several therapists(1986, 1990, 2005) )
I also have a very high IQ and an eidetic memory for relative location (like puzzles and spatial problems) and conversational dialog (also tested by actual professionals).
I struggled with depression as a teenager, and I can tell you that Prozac is my kryptonite. I struggled at math and even basic reading while on the happy pills. I decided I would rather be sad and smart, then happy and dumb, and then by the time the awful joke that humanity plays on itself "adolescence" was over, the depression was resolved anyway.
I can't write code or solve problems when I am drunk or on happy pills or on pain pills (have tried on all 3) and it is infuriating. People always assume I am some moralist because I abstain from alcohol, and I have found that "I don't drink because it makes me feel stupid" does not go over well.
I have extreme fear of that exact scenario, because everything I have ever done to alter my mental state has resulted in profound temporary loss of unusual abilities that I use like a survival crutch, make my living off of them, build my relationships around them, etc.
In the US you have unlimited bandwidth, choked to a certain speed, in the UK you pay for a certain amount of data transfer, and from what I understand can be charged for overages or cut off.
So there you go, I have no financial incentive to close my wireless access point. It is firewalled from my real network (I.E. my wired network containing all of my desktops, fileservers, and media boxes), is completely open... the SSID is FREEINTERNET.
of course I live in a small neighborhood in the boonies, it would probably not be so easy to siphon bandwidth from me if I lived in apartments or a city.
At one point in time I have a DNS camped EULA page that required you to agree to not engage in illegal activity on my connection before my DNS would work right (like hotels have) but my wife made me turn it off cause every time her netbook went in sleep mode she would have to re-click it.
The Printing press made READING accessible to everyone (eventually), "web2.0" or whatever is making WRITING accessible to everyone, it is a giant leap, but unfortunately leads to a lot of crap published, like the article linked in parent.
Another Texas town, Denton, twitters every single arrest and has for months(maybe a year)... For at least 7 years (that I know of) they have posted every pic of every arrest on their website, with detailed charges too.
I could do that with an android phone, YOU could do it with an android phone... but can Johnny CEO? Some of my business users don't know what a VPN is, but they opened the package that their BB came in (straight from the carrier) and then immediately used it to look at live sales data on an intranet site... I am just saying; there is power there that is not shaking any time soon, and that power is based on the same limited functionality base that gets criticized by us techies.
personal responsibility and self control are not something most large corporations (i.e. many users and many dollars) can afford to rely on.
If you drop your iPhone in a bar, could somebody get sensitive FTC regulated data off of it, could they do it before you realized it was gone? My BB is encrypted and locked with a strong password... Sure they could break it, but probably not in time to beat the wipe. Unless they were serious industrial espionage and decided to brute force it in a cellular deadzone.
If your bank said "Sure, we trust our tellers not to pocket the money, so at the end of the day they just log on to yahoo mail and email us how much money we should have in our cash drawer" you would find a new bank.
I am not saying you can't do some of that stuff on other phones, I am just saying that corporations, who are legally required to care about security and control, have no real choice in the matter... for now.
BB is essential for cwhoreporate systems, because NO OTHER PHONE ON THE MARKET ANYWHERE matches its functionality... they can issue you a phone, then enforce strong passwords, content filtering, disable cameras so you don't end up sending pictures of your Christmas party indiscretion to your whole team, etc etc. Hell I can see my internal websites (not published to the internets) on my BB because it is basically VPN'd 24x7 to my work network.
In short, if you use your phone for email and dicking around, then the BB is one of the worst smartphones for you... if you are a corporate entity that wants to have certain employees "connected" at all times, then there is no other choice. The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry.
70% is better than 0%, but yes speaking as a former blue collar worker, if I made 1 dollar less in December than I did in November, my battleship would have sunk.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a new idea: Copyright is a lousy idea and we need to banish the notion of copyright completely. Patents need a kick in the head as well. I am probably the first person ever to say that. My opinions are so valuable.
That's right, because nobody markets books, or pays authors, or runs press tours, or edits books...
riiiight, because they are going to charge $14.99 for an eBook that has a 4 year old discount paperback out..:eyeroll:
They want the option for the new $36 hardcover big author titles to at least make half the money on an eBook format.
If they want to control their pricing then they should be able to... If that prices them out of the market then that is their business.
This is how half my friend's statuses look in Facebook.
From best to worst, phones I have had for more than 4 months, used daily to type way too much text
I had a Sidekick 1 (color) when they first came out (2002 or 2003) The keyboard is the fastest I have used in a small formfactor, the later versions they screwed up everything that was right in favor of making it thinner (the keyboard is now more "set in" so your thumbs are down in a canyon when typing, so it is MUCH slower. This device had a wide keyboard, rubber keys (aka non-slip) with plenty of travel, very effectively backlit keyboard, plenty of space between keys... I could easily out type most of my family/friends if they were on a computer and I was on this thing.
Treo 650 The keys are nice and raised, there is a lot of keyboard travel, so there are fewer "did I hit that key or not" moments... The keyboard is MUCH too narrow. I would have to guess my WPM was about 50% of the sidekick
Blackberry Bold The keys are way too flat, but it is nice and wide. Almost no key travel I would guess wpm about 90% the treo (I currently use the BB)
iPhone - I had it for about 7 months, so I was well past my new user curve, and the keyboard was still a joke. I would guess that ACCURATE typing (aka auto-correct turned off, because it is so bad) is maybe 10% as fast as my blackberry.
So in all,I have gone down in typing speed significantly with each device because I guess I am the only one who actually likes typing things out on a phone or something? Or maybe because keyboards and usability don't sell, shininess and thinness sell. Pity. Each phone that was a step down in typing speed was A LOT more shiny than the last, so I guess that is what the phone industry is after.
youtube (used to or maybe still does) work from Wii with Opera, however their flash version is hella old and flash video is limited to about 30 minutes at a time before it exits semi-gracefully. I have used an excellent piece of software that might have also had a trojan (my poor windows virtual box died shortly after I discovered this awesome software). It was called PlayOn, ran a service on your windows box, streamed netflix to the server box, then re-streamed it to the Wii in flash 6 or whatever. Worked fine, but often crashed after 30 minutes due to Wii memory... Fortunately Netflix holds your place, so all you had to do was restart the browser and it auto-resumed at the right place.
It seems if this is the only problem, the Disc is probably just a simple video streaming client with actual garbage collection, to compensate for the tiny memory footprint of a Wii.
weird, that is the most bizarre troll mod down I have ever had.
Children today are encouraged to speak their feelings, to elaborate on their dreams and their worries, the technology and culture to do so are omnipresent.
Women didn't suddenly develop personal politics the instant the 19th amendment was passed, they were simply more allowed to exercise it.
Children are more deep, complex, disturbed, ADD, Autistic, sexual, etc etc, because they are allowed to communicate in a more meaningful way than they were before.
In a "Don't speak unless spoken to" culture, it takes a fool to wonder why nobody knew what children were thinking.
Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS) also referred to as "The black shakes"
At least that's what Henry Rollins told me.
Diesel engine is often only connected to the generator so it can be in its most efficient revolution speed the whole time and (because of the constant speed) have a very long life. (bolding mine)
There are plenty of light weight > 1kw diesel generators that are fine for hobbyist series hybrids, but conspiracy nuts and other skeptics would say... Electric motors last for a long ass time... Diesel motors last for a long ass time, especially when used to power generators... So what is the Detroit going to do for a business model when they sell a product with a 25 year duty life vs a 6 year duty life? certainly they cannot raise the prices of vehicles by 400% America would implode. So their only choice is to figure out how to build something that seems better, but will still fall apart in 6 years.
to many self-important parents and educators, "Talks about trains for 20 days because he doesn't care what I am saying" is the same as "Can't focus on what I am saying" I am NOT trying to compare the two diagnosis criteria lists, what I am trying to say is that from a culture standpoint it is not that far fetched to think that many people were never diagnosed correctly...
Especially Dark Knight, Avatar, The Lord of The Rings, Spiderman, The Lion King, I am Legend, Iron Man, King Kong, James Bond, The Chronicles of Narnia... Sorry I just got tired of listing the top grossing films of all time, which were old rehashed plots and characters.
that is just my point.
Autism is not ADD, however Autism diagnosis is very clearly rising. The rate of autism in adults is the same as in children. Yet Autism diagnosis is going WAY up.
And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria? Here are a few that jump out:
stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
vs
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat when sitting still is expected.
Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
vs
marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction
Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
If you are looking for ADD and you see a kid that monologues all the time, is highly focused on trains but doesn't care about spelling tests, doesn't stop moving his hands, doesn't seem to hear what you are saying... then you see ADD... If you are looking for Autism too, then you might see Autism.
AD(H)D vs Autism/Asperger's
no, it's the old ADD, just properly diagnosed this time.
I have been "autistic" my whole life (diagnosed, by a real doctor (1983), confirmed by several therapists(1986, 1990, 2005) )
I also have a very high IQ and an eidetic memory for relative location (like puzzles and spatial problems) and conversational dialog (also tested by actual professionals).
I struggled with depression as a teenager, and I can tell you that Prozac is my kryptonite. I struggled at math and even basic reading while on the happy pills. I decided I would rather be sad and smart, then happy and dumb, and then by the time the awful joke that humanity plays on itself "adolescence" was over, the depression was resolved anyway.
I can't write code or solve problems when I am drunk or on happy pills or on pain pills (have tried on all 3) and it is infuriating. People always assume I am some moralist because I abstain from alcohol, and I have found that "I don't drink because it makes me feel stupid" does not go over well.
I have extreme fear of that exact scenario, because everything I have ever done to alter my mental state has resulted in profound temporary loss of unusual abilities that I use like a survival crutch, make my living off of them, build my relationships around them, etc.
I used ChilliSpot on the OpenWRT distro running on a LinkSys WRT54g , but I wrote my own CGI and web page for it, so it basically always authenticated if you hit "ok". Here is a decent howto although it is outdated, The downloads were moved to here
I am american you insensitive clod. The world is: Los Angeles, New York, England, China, and "other"
In the US you have unlimited bandwidth, choked to a certain speed, in the UK you pay for a certain amount of data transfer, and from what I understand can be charged for overages or cut off.
So there you go, I have no financial incentive to close my wireless access point. It is firewalled from my real network (I.E. my wired network containing all of my desktops, fileservers, and media boxes), is completely open... the SSID is FREEINTERNET.
of course I live in a small neighborhood in the boonies, it would probably not be so easy to siphon bandwidth from me if I lived in apartments or a city.
At one point in time I have a DNS camped EULA page that required you to agree to not engage in illegal activity on my connection before my DNS would work right (like hotels have) but my wife made me turn it off cause every time her netbook went in sleep mode she would have to re-click it.
The Printing press made READING accessible to everyone (eventually), "web2.0" or whatever is making WRITING accessible to everyone, it is a giant leap, but unfortunately leads to a lot of crap published, like the article linked in parent.
Speech you do no agree with is the most important speech to protect; because it is the easiest to suppress.
Another Texas town, Denton, twitters every single arrest and has for months(maybe a year)... For at least 7 years (that I know of) they have posted every pic of every arrest on their website, with detailed charges too.
I could do that with an android phone, YOU could do it with an android phone... but can Johnny CEO? Some of my business users don't know what a VPN is, but they opened the package that their BB came in (straight from the carrier) and then immediately used it to look at live sales data on an intranet site... I am just saying; there is power there that is not shaking any time soon, and that power is based on the same limited functionality base that gets criticized by us techies.
personal responsibility and self control are not something most large corporations (i.e. many users and many dollars) can afford to rely on.
If you drop your iPhone in a bar, could somebody get sensitive FTC regulated data off of it, could they do it before you realized it was gone? My BB is encrypted and locked with a strong password... Sure they could break it, but probably not in time to beat the wipe. Unless they were serious industrial espionage and decided to brute force it in a cellular deadzone.
If your bank said "Sure, we trust our tellers not to pocket the money, so at the end of the day they just log on to yahoo mail and email us how much money we should have in our cash drawer" you would find a new bank.
I am not saying you can't do some of that stuff on other phones, I am just saying that corporations, who are legally required to care about security and control, have no real choice in the matter... for now.
BB is essential for cwhoreporate systems, because NO OTHER PHONE ON THE MARKET ANYWHERE matches its functionality... they can issue you a phone, then enforce strong passwords, content filtering, disable cameras so you don't end up sending pictures of your Christmas party indiscretion to your whole team, etc etc. Hell I can see my internal websites (not published to the internets) on my BB because it is basically VPN'd 24x7 to my work network.
In short, if you use your phone for email and dicking around, then the BB is one of the worst smartphones for you... if you are a corporate entity that wants to have certain employees "connected" at all times, then there is no other choice. The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry.
70% is better than 0%, but yes speaking as a former blue collar worker, if I made 1 dollar less in December than I did in November, my battleship would have sunk.