Desktops have the option of swapping out programs before they hit that point though. A phone has limited memory and no swap, so Android is hyper-aggressive about crushing apps (particularly ones that see infrequent use) that are waiting in the background once you start doing other things. My personal litmus test for multitasking is that, on a desktop, I can generally set aside a program and be confident that it will keep churning along indefinitely. On my phone, anything sent to the background for even a minute will probably be punted while i'm looking something else up. It's most noticeable with browsers. Since they tend to be memory hungry they're often the first thing sobbing in the corner after Android has had it's say, and when you return to it you notice the page reloading rather than simply popping up from memory. Fortunately, most apps fall into two categories, one being "it doesn't need to do anything unless you're actually doing something with it" (apps) and the other being "it needs to maybe do something small all the time" (services). I don't personally know anyone who compiles code on their phone, or some other intensive background process. That type of thing would almost surely be nuked the second you glanced away from it. So maybe "multitasking lite" is a better description for Android.
Any process sent to the background has the kernel's sword of damocles hanging over it at all times - it can be killed instantly and without warning if android decides it needs the resources. That's not "for real" multitasking in my book. Android does a pretty good impression of multitasking, but it's not the same as a desktop OS. Its still my phone OS of choice, fwiw.
Probably not worth their time. Where I live, 10kph (~6mph) over is almost universal. Photo radar won't trigger until about 15kph (~9mph) over. A +15kph speeding ticket is about $140, so it makes sense that no cop would bother hauling someone over for $60-80. Especially when certain roads are such target rich environments that the cops don't even bother hiding.
Nope. It's gone for good. They stopped printing them in 2000 and any financial institution that receives one is asked to return it to the BoC for destruction. They're still legal tender and can still be held privately, but they're not officially in circulation. They were rarely used for anything other than money laundering anyways. The only time I ever saw them was in a bank vault in bundles.
The problem with them is that there's no way to turn them off. At least on my cell i can disable NFC and password (and track) the device. With cards you either have to permanently disable them or get a shielded wallet. I opted for the shielded wallet, but most people don't know why they would need one. Even my mom, who's been in the banking industry for 25 years, was surprised that my phone could pick up her CC through her purse. If people are so ignorant of the dangers that the whole act seems like magic, they're easy to take advantage of.
Of the "this book was written a long time ago by some goat herders and has some pretty wild ideas about magic sky fairies and superman zombies and other strange things but it tells us a lot about our culture and history" variety, you can eat as much as you like. It's the "this is how the universe works and don't you ever dare question it or yer lawd Jaaaaaaaysus Chriiiiiist will smite thine ass" that has a very low (mental) LD50 in children.
This style of development is not a panacea for gaming. Some of us don't like MOBA's (A game with one map and the second coming of the CS crowd are not selling points), some of us hate what TF2 became (grind to unlock gear! buy stupid crap! deal with screaming 12 year olds! fun!), and from the looks of things Tribes:Ascend is hemorrhaging players like it was shot in the head (which is what you get when you ignore the playerbase and try and bait-and-switch the game into a gear grind).
There's still a place for a well developed game with a reasonable price point and attentive developers. Sadly, there's more money to be made in catering to the masses and begging for their pennies.
More usefully, find who implemented it. Give them the standard mob options: 15 years, or 5 if you can prove you were just a grunt. Continue the chain until someone's getting 15 years.
Guilty until proven innocent on the grunt's part, eh? I suspect we would see a lot of grunts with tire tracks on their backsides. Meanwhile, the "We're responsible for the company until we're not responsible for the company" CxO's would still swim in champagne, ski in cocaine and float about on the breeze in their golden parachutes.
I'm hooked on Swype myself, but if you're looking for alternate layouts try the Hacker's Keyboard. You can switch between a whole list of layouts (mostly for different languages) but QWERTY and DVORAK are among the options. It's great for working a CLI too, since most Android keyboards don't have easily accessible escape, tab, ctrl keys.
Modern vehicles have to pass a 5mph crash test with no damage. Rolling into someone at a light should be fine. I once wrecked (in the "it was already scrap" sense) a late 90's Sunfire at a friend's farm and drove it ~15mph into a tree and it just bounced off. Hardly even scratched the bumper. We were pretty impressed with that car actually. It took a hell of a beating before it gave up. Taught us some interesting things too, like that you can tow a car by the trunk lid but not the hood;)
Once, while vacationing in the Canadian rockies, I saw an east asian tourist stop a female moose by yelling at it. He went out to take pictures of it from about 25 feet, and it would lower its head to charge. He yelled something at it, and it would look up at him for a moment. She put her head down three or four times - I thought I was going to watch someone die, but eventually the moose wandered off, the tourist having no idea how close he was to bodily harm for a few shots.
Slightly off topic, but just goes to show that sonetimes yelling does work.
The problem are the carriers, not Google. Once a carrier has sold you a device and locked you in to a contract, what incentive is there to keep your device up to date? It's just a money sink to them, and they'd much rather have you drooling over an early upgrade in part because of an OS upgrade too. Personally, i like sticking to Google's phones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar#Use_as_surveillance_device Short version: It's possible in theory, but the design is supposed to guarantee several forms of notification (both visible and audible) if someone is listening in. If you had physical access to the vehicle, you could disable the notifications though. So in crack-pot theory land, it's doable; in reality, it probably hasn't and won't ever happen.
IAAFM (former mechanic), and yes I had heard of this when OnStar was introduced. Now you two play nice:)
If I were buying a new phone today, the only other one i'd consider is the SGS3. I'm happy with the Nexus though.
Also, I doubt the Nexus will disappear overnight. It's more likely they'll be able to sell their current remaining stock, but not replenish it. And hell, you can always ship one down from Canada.
My provider likes to call me every few months and ask if i'd like their telephone service. I keep having to explain to them that me and my girlfriend are in our late twenties, we don't have a landline and we don't want one and even if my cell phone exploded in my pocket tomorrow, i'd probably just use Skype. Honestly I'm getting tempted to start threatening to cancel the cable too. It's something i've wanted to do for a long time, but being Canadian my options for cable-cutting are quite a bit, uh, shallower. The girlfriend likes certain sports and the occasional fit of channel surfing too (also, she's not very patient with finicky bits of technology), which just makes things even more difficult. If they keep pushing me though, I might just be tempted. The sad part is, I know no matter where I go (and there are really only 3 options where I live) i'd have to deal with the same shit.
It's a very (very) short range RFID chip. It can read/respond to RFID tags like those found on credit cards ("swipe to pay"), and so can become a replacement for your credit cards or other bank cards. The idea is, one day, instead of carrying a wallet you'll just carry your phone and pay for everything that way.
It has other uses too, like using an RFID tag to trigger certain behaviors in a phone (eg: putting one behind the phone cradle in your car, which triggers bluetooth, opens navigation, turns vibration off, etc etc) but they're secondary as far as the general public is concerned.
This post gave me deja-vu. I swear it was only a few years ago we were all sitting around complaining about Microsoft "arc-welding" IE to Windows and limiting customers' ability to change browsers. Only difference this time is that Apple doesn't have quite the same market stranglehold that Microsoft did/does. It does make one wonder though - given the mass shift away from desktop PCs towards more portible devices, and if Apple did come to utterly dominate the laptop/mobile market, how long would it take for Apple to wind up in a courtroom? If ever?
TFA explains it - if you're using YouTube, Google search, gmail, or any other google service, you're using Google+. It's just a big wrapper for the whole experience. No one cares if you aren't posting about drunken weekend escapades because your digital footprints are just as valuable without the meaningless banter that serves as an excuse to use the FaceTubes.
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Desktops have the option of swapping out programs before they hit that point though. A phone has limited memory and no swap, so Android is hyper-aggressive about crushing apps (particularly ones that see infrequent use) that are waiting in the background once you start doing other things. My personal litmus test for multitasking is that, on a desktop, I can generally set aside a program and be confident that it will keep churning along indefinitely. On my phone, anything sent to the background for even a minute will probably be punted while i'm looking something else up. It's most noticeable with browsers. Since they tend to be memory hungry they're often the first thing sobbing in the corner after Android has had it's say, and when you return to it you notice the page reloading rather than simply popping up from memory. Fortunately, most apps fall into two categories, one being "it doesn't need to do anything unless you're actually doing something with it" (apps) and the other being "it needs to maybe do something small all the time" (services). I don't personally know anyone who compiles code on their phone, or some other intensive background process. That type of thing would almost surely be nuked the second you glanced away from it. So maybe "multitasking lite" is a better description for Android.
Any process sent to the background has the kernel's sword of damocles hanging over it at all times - it can be killed instantly and without warning if android decides it needs the resources. That's not "for real" multitasking in my book. Android does a pretty good impression of multitasking, but it's not the same as a desktop OS. Its still my phone OS of choice, fwiw.
Android doesn't multitask apps "for real" either, just services. Which is fine because a phone wouldn't really work well with multiple tiny windows.
Not unless you're owned by Samsung.
Probably not worth their time. Where I live, 10kph (~6mph) over is almost universal. Photo radar won't trigger until about 15kph (~9mph) over. A +15kph speeding ticket is about $140, so it makes sense that no cop would bother hauling someone over for $60-80. Especially when certain roads are such target rich environments that the cops don't even bother hiding.
Nope. It's gone for good. They stopped printing them in 2000 and any financial institution that receives one is asked to return it to the BoC for destruction. They're still legal tender and can still be held privately, but they're not officially in circulation. They were rarely used for anything other than money laundering anyways. The only time I ever saw them was in a bank vault in bundles.
The problem with them is that there's no way to turn them off. At least on my cell i can disable NFC and password (and track) the device. With cards you either have to permanently disable them or get a shielded wallet. I opted for the shielded wallet, but most people don't know why they would need one. Even my mom, who's been in the banking industry for 25 years, was surprised that my phone could pick up her CC through her purse. If people are so ignorant of the dangers that the whole act seems like magic, they're easy to take advantage of.
I think it's more about context than dosage.
Of the "this book was written a long time ago by some goat herders and has some pretty wild ideas about magic sky fairies and superman zombies and other strange things but it tells us a lot about our culture and history" variety, you can eat as much as you like.
It's the "this is how the universe works and don't you ever dare question it or yer lawd Jaaaaaaaysus Chriiiiiist will smite thine ass" that has a very low (mental) LD50 in children.
This style of development is not a panacea for gaming. Some of us don't like MOBA's (A game with one map and the second coming of the CS crowd are not selling points), some of us hate what TF2 became (grind to unlock gear! buy stupid crap! deal with screaming 12 year olds! fun!), and from the looks of things Tribes:Ascend is hemorrhaging players like it was shot in the head (which is what you get when you ignore the playerbase and try and bait-and-switch the game into a gear grind).
There's still a place for a well developed game with a reasonable price point and attentive developers. Sadly, there's more money to be made in catering to the masses and begging for their pennies.
"Google slashes 10% of workforce in order to recoup costs from fines to keep shareholders happy"
Shit, like water, always runs downhill.
More usefully, find who implemented it. Give them the standard mob options: 15 years, or 5 if you can prove you were just a grunt. Continue the chain until someone's getting 15 years.
Guilty until proven innocent on the grunt's part, eh? I suspect we would see a lot of grunts with tire tracks on their backsides.
Meanwhile, the "We're responsible for the company until we're not responsible for the company" CxO's would still swim in champagne, ski in cocaine and float about on the breeze in their golden parachutes.
I'm hooked on Swype myself, but if you're looking for alternate layouts try the Hacker's Keyboard. You can switch between a whole list of layouts (mostly for different languages) but QWERTY and DVORAK are among the options. It's great for working a CLI too, since most Android keyboards don't have easily accessible escape, tab, ctrl keys.
Not really - you can't pick your race or class, most of the newb zones are poor, and there's no re-rolling.
They already have that genre, it's called JRPG/MMO.
Modern vehicles have to pass a 5mph crash test with no damage. Rolling into someone at a light should be fine. I once wrecked (in the "it was already scrap" sense) a late 90's Sunfire at a friend's farm and drove it ~15mph into a tree and it just bounced off. Hardly even scratched the bumper. We were pretty impressed with that car actually. It took a hell of a beating before it gave up. Taught us some interesting things too, like that you can tow a car by the trunk lid but not the hood ;)
Once, while vacationing in the Canadian rockies, I saw an east asian tourist stop a female moose by yelling at it. He went out to take pictures of it from about 25 feet, and it would lower its head to charge. He yelled something at it, and it would look up at him for a moment. She put her head down three or four times - I thought I was going to watch someone die, but eventually the moose wandered off, the tourist having no idea how close he was to bodily harm for a few shots.
Slightly off topic, but just goes to show that sonetimes yelling does work.
It would be more accurate to say one got caught. There could be others running wild that have slipped the net.
The problem are the carriers, not Google. Once a carrier has sold you a device and locked you in to a contract, what incentive is there to keep your device up to date? It's just a money sink to them, and they'd much rather have you drooling over an early upgrade in part because of an OS upgrade too.
Personally, i like sticking to Google's phones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar#Use_as_surveillance_device
Short version: It's possible in theory, but the design is supposed to guarantee several forms of notification (both visible and audible) if someone is listening in. If you had physical access to the vehicle, you could disable the notifications though. So in crack-pot theory land, it's doable; in reality, it probably hasn't and won't ever happen.
IAAFM (former mechanic), and yes I had heard of this when OnStar was introduced. Now you two play nice :)
You would prefer they asked the Geek Squad?
If I were buying a new phone today, the only other one i'd consider is the SGS3. I'm happy with the Nexus though.
Also, I doubt the Nexus will disappear overnight. It's more likely they'll be able to sell their current remaining stock, but not replenish it. And hell, you can always ship one down from Canada.
My provider likes to call me every few months and ask if i'd like their telephone service. I keep having to explain to them that me and my girlfriend are in our late twenties, we don't have a landline and we don't want one and even if my cell phone exploded in my pocket tomorrow, i'd probably just use Skype.
Honestly I'm getting tempted to start threatening to cancel the cable too. It's something i've wanted to do for a long time, but being Canadian my options for cable-cutting are quite a bit, uh, shallower. The girlfriend likes certain sports and the occasional fit of channel surfing too (also, she's not very patient with finicky bits of technology), which just makes things even more difficult. If they keep pushing me though, I might just be tempted. The sad part is, I know no matter where I go (and there are really only 3 options where I live) i'd have to deal with the same shit.
It's a very (very) short range RFID chip. It can read/respond to RFID tags like those found on credit cards ("swipe to pay"), and so can become a replacement for your credit cards or other bank cards. The idea is, one day, instead of carrying a wallet you'll just carry your phone and pay for everything that way.
It has other uses too, like using an RFID tag to trigger certain behaviors in a phone (eg: putting one behind the phone cradle in your car, which triggers bluetooth, opens navigation, turns vibration off, etc etc) but they're secondary as far as the general public is concerned.
This post gave me deja-vu. I swear it was only a few years ago we were all sitting around complaining about Microsoft "arc-welding" IE to Windows and limiting customers' ability to change browsers. Only difference this time is that Apple doesn't have quite the same market stranglehold that Microsoft did/does. It does make one wonder though - given the mass shift away from desktop PCs towards more portible devices, and if Apple did come to utterly dominate the laptop/mobile market, how long would it take for Apple to wind up in a courtroom? If ever?
TFA explains it - if you're using YouTube, Google search, gmail, or any other google service, you're using Google+. It's just a big wrapper for the whole experience. No one cares if you aren't posting about drunken weekend escapades because your digital footprints are just as valuable without the meaningless banter that serves as an excuse to use the FaceTubes.