I have an iPhone 5S and I find it perfectly readable, even outside, in broad daylight, on cloudless summer days. The difference with older models (I used an iPhone 4 before getting the 5S) is huge. The secret is that it simply has a backlight whose brightness can be jacked up to amazing levels, plus an ambient-light sensor that adjusts the backlight brightness automatically. The end result is that I never touch the brightness control.
Before anyone accuses me of posting an Apple advertisement, I'll say that I am sure that recent phones from other brands have probably also improved a lot in terms of daylight usability. They all buy their screens from the same small group of manufacturers, after all. But what I really mean to point out is: if you have an older smartphone that is difficult to use in broad daylight, shop around and try some of the newer models.
I doubt you'll have much luck finding phones with e-ink screens. My experience running a modified version of Android on a Nook convinced me that that just doesn't work well; e-ink updates really slowly, and needs to be "shaken up" periodically (where the screen goes all black and then all white, before repainting the UI), all of which looks like crap when you're trying to use standard smartphone apps that are constantly doing things that e-ink sucks at, like scrolling or animations.
I use the UniComp SpaceSaver at home and at work. They're excellent keyboards, but for my taste the springs are just a tad stiffer than I'd like.
I have fond memories of my mom's first computer, which was an early-'80s no-name cheap PC clone. That machine had a buckling-spring keyboard, with medium-to-long travel, and very light action. I would pay a pretty penny for something like that.
Latin turned into Italian (and Spanish and French etc.), modern English grew out of Old English which is incomprehensible to everyone except linguists today, and yes, even modern English will be a dead language someday. Languages drift, film at 11.
Honestly, every year, twice a year, the DST haters come out of the woodwork, because apparently adjusting your clocks twice a year is soooooo difficult. A couple of people seem to realize that having extra sunlight in the evening in summer is nice, but then *they* overshoot and suggest we should have DST year-round, apparently not realizing how much it sucks to be a working stiff and have to get up and go to work while it's still dark on winter mornings.
Take a breath, people. DST exists for a perfectly good and simple reason: to use daylight a bit more effectively than we would if we used a schedule that never changed with the seasons. Sure, if you live in or near the tropics, that's a non-issue, but for those of us in the rest of the world, DST is a good thing. And if you're one of those people who uses their smartphone as their alarm clock and pocket watch, you never have to worry about the adjustment; smartphones and computers make the adjustment automagically, *and* they even alert you that this happens. (Even back in the day, adjusting my clocks never took me more than five minutes; totally worth it for the improved quality of life that comes with more sunlight when it does the most good.)
What happens when we get to a point where we just don't need everyone to work in order to provide the goods and services people want? I'm thinking we may have already reached that point in some developed countries. Then what?
Then we do the same thing we did the last time this problem became acute. We reduced the working week from 48 hours to 40 early in the last century; I think reducing it further, to 32, is long overdue.
The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 442-1 on Tuesday to return to standard time this autumn and stay there all year.
Great move! And I guess that means it will take another three years before it sinks in that DST does still make sense in summer, when instead of being woken up by daylight two or three hours before the workday begins, you can have that extra summer daylight at the end of the day, when you can actually enjoy it in peace.
Just guessing here, but since this is the U.S. we're talking about, I'm thinking liability. Whether the hydrant is below or above ground, when it gets used that means big, heavy hoses are attached. If there's a car in front of the hydrant, there is a possibility that it might get scratched or dented by those hoses, and then presumably the fire department would be liable for that damage. Solution: ban parking near hydrants; liability problem prevented.
Also, those with higher intelligence tend to reproduce less.
That may be true today, but it clearly wasn't always (or mankind would be getting steadily dumber, and there is ample evidence to the contrary), and this is most likely a temporary situation. Right now, only the better-educated classes grasp just how tight the situation with the world's water, food, and energy resources has become, and they adjust their reproductive behavior accordingly, while the more ignorant parts of our species continue to pass on their increasingly unwarranted optimism to their many children. All it takes is a really major resource-scarcity-related disaster or war, and people's attitudes will change, even at the bottom... And once birthrates return to being largely independent of intelligence or education, the smarter ones will resume having their natural advantage in everyday life.
I think you're greatly overstating the importance of Linux there. Not to take away from the great work Linus did and continues to do, but he himself said: "If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."
I'll bet you anything this won't support native code, just like BlackBerry's Android compatibility box. Supporting native code would require running an actual Android kernel, because native code can perform system calls and all that -- it's outside of the Java sandbox.
It also means a country full of religious hotheads, who are going to view their own increasingly bleak existence as the result of a conspiracy of all those godless people in Europe and Asia. You sure you're enthusiastic about that kind of development in a country as heavily armed as the U.S.? I'd rather see them be smart, personally.
I use Sygic for navigation. They have iOS and Android apps. The apps use maps that are loaded on the device, so they take up a good chunk of space, but on the other hand this means you don't need an Internet connection to navigate (if you've ever been hit with international data roaming charges, you'll really appreciate this), and the app doesn't phone home to Google every time I use it.
They use the same map provider as TomTom. Whether that's better than OpenStreetMap or not probably depends on where you are... I've personally never had issues with map accuracy from any providers, but my travels so far have been exclusively in densely populated parts of Europe and the U.S., which are probably well mapped in any case.
N.B. I don't mean to advertise Sygic specifically; I'm sure other stand-alone navigation apps exist that are just as good. My point is that if you don't want Google to always know where you are, and are leery of the accuracy of community-provided maps, there are good alternatives.
I know I'm showing my age, but when I was little, computers were these huge things that sat in climate-controlled rooms. Unless that kind of hardware is now removed from the definition of "computer", I can think of a few pre-Apple manufacturers that are still around, like IBM, NCR, and Unisys.
I studied math in college, and many numerical algorithms textbooks refer to software as "codes". It seems to be common practice in the computational mathematics world. I assume it goes back to the days before Fortran, before high-level languages in general, when source code literally consisted of a series of codes.
Don't hold your breath waiting for prices to plummet when taxis are deregulated. This has already been tried in the Netherlands, and the result was that prices went up, not down, and service got worse, not better, capitalist dogma notwithstanding.
The problem is that taxi drivers need to make a certain amount of money to pay their cost of living, and if the number of cabs goes up while the number of passengers doesn't, they end up spending more time waiting for fares, and less time actually driving. And they can't just hop off to a second job while they are waiting. So, they have to *increase* their rates in order to make up for their reduced number of trips, so taking a cab becomes more expensive, and they will tend to refuse short trips, trying to hold out for the more profitable longer ones, so taxi availability gets worse.
And how are programs like affirmative action following in that spirit? They tell you that, for example, if you have slanted eyes then you immediately deserve lower preference than anybody, but if you have black skin then you automatically get to be first in line.
Holy hyperbole Batman!
Affirmative action means that the kid with brown skin has a slightly higher chance of getting into college than the kid with the pink skin. You know, a little bit of unfairness going *their* way, to counterbalance the unfairness dark-skinned people experience everywhere else in life. Like having odds of landing a job, with a clean slate, that are equal to a white man's odds with the same qualifications *with a criminal record*. If we can't eliminate racism, at least we can try to make up for it somehow, and that is exactly what affirmative action is for. It does *not* mean that if you're black you're automatically in and if you're Asian you're automatically out.
Try some other news sources than Fox for a change. Heck, try some actual *news* sources.
Greenland rebounding does absolutely nothing because the "extra" volume is not taken out of the ocean. The water doesn't suddenly jump back up on the land.
It is true that Greenland rebounding won't affect sea level, but not for the reason parent seems to imply. The real reason is that when a land mass is pressed downwards by an ice sheet, it sinks because it displaces material in the mantle. That mantle material is squeezed out sideways, and ends up raising adjacent land masses or ocean floor.
When the ice sheet melts, the displaced mantle flows back, the depressed land rebounds, and the raised adjacent land or ocean floor sinks back.
This effect is currently causing the Netherlands to sink at a rate of about five millimeters per year, while Scandinavia is rising at a similar rate. The rebound from the last glacial, in other words, is still ongoing, and quite significant. (Having to raise sea dikes by half a meter over a century, even without global warming induced sea level rise, is a pain in the ass and not something you can just ignore...)
If Greenland losing its ice and rising causes no dry land to sink but only ocean floor, that floor sinkage will compensate for some of the sea level rise, but not quickly enough to help us save our coastal lands and cities.
Couple of quibbles here. First, you won't traverse that tunnel in free fall: that would require the vehicle to move at orbital speed. If you're thinking of digging a parabolic (or, well, elliptical) tunnel where you could be in free fall at suborbital speeds, you would have to dig much of that tunnel at depths that are impossible with current technology.
Second, but on a more positive note, digging a tunnel that's X times longer than the Channel Tunnel doesn't have to take X times as long as digging the Channel Tunnel. New York to Los Angeles is under land except for a few river crossings, so there is no reason why you couldn't be digging at multiple places at once and create multiple sections of the tunnel concurrently. That would be more expensive, and getting the segments to line up exactly won't be easy, but should be doable.
We've managed to get to the point where it's no longer mandatory for women to wear dresses and high heels everywhere. Can we please move on and also stop requiring men to wear suits and ties?
If you're looking for an engineer, look for an engineering degree. If you want to hire a model, look for someone who looks good in a suit. Confusing the two is just unprofessional.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I never had anything stolen or destroyed from my checked luggage.
Even so, I try to travel light and cram everything into my carry-on... So I won't have to wait for half an hour or an hour at the carrousel, and so I won't have to pay the $25 or more per checked bag.
Yeah, and they would never frame anybody or tamper with evidence or anything, because their motives are always pure and above reproach. And unlike public officers, they're completely accountable!
Wait, who are these people again?
I can't tell if you're a smart guy trying to slam Anonymous or an idiot idolizing public officers. Either could be corrupt and/or unaccountable. Anonymous, however, has no vested interest either way in the lives, well-being and reputations of those in Steubenville Ohio - or their football team (which, if you read the NYT article, seems to be the main concern of many in the town)
How would you know Anonymous has no vested interest? You don't even know who they are. It worries me that people refer to Anonymous as an entity, rather than a mask of anonymity that could be worn by anyone or everyone, and that people ascribe lofty motivations to what is just another bunch of ACs.
Also, lack of vested interest, proven or not, is no guarantee of benign intent. I was falsely accused of several acts of vandalism once, back in school. Once the accusation was made, the entire class believed it and turned against me, and several came forward in following days making additional accusations. I didn't do any of those things but that made no difference to the court of public opinion. Now, you could argue that a bunch of stupid naive kids can't be expected to make sound judgements as to what is true and what is false, but unfortunately most adults are just as credulous, and for anyone to throw accusations about in public can create a dangerous situation. Not something I'd applaud the way I see people doing here. The place to find truth is in a proper court of law, not the court of public opinion.
Hmm, if you're trying to argue that Revenge of the Sith isn't our generation's greatest work of art, shouldn't you try to come up with counter examples that are actually from, you know, our generation? Something bothers me about eldavojohn's summary...
Titian: 1488-1576
Bernini: 1598-1680
Monet: 1840-1926
Picasso: 1881-1973
Pollock: 1912-1956
Slashdot Mirror
Before anyone accuses me of posting an Apple advertisement, I'll say that I am sure that recent phones from other brands have probably also improved a lot in terms of daylight usability. They all buy their screens from the same small group of manufacturers, after all. But what I really mean to point out is: if you have an older smartphone that is difficult to use in broad daylight, shop around and try some of the newer models.
I doubt you'll have much luck finding phones with e-ink screens. My experience running a modified version of Android on a Nook convinced me that that just doesn't work well; e-ink updates really slowly, and needs to be "shaken up" periodically (where the screen goes all black and then all white, before repainting the UI), all of which looks like crap when you're trying to use standard smartphone apps that are constantly doing things that e-ink sucks at, like scrolling or animations.
I use the UniComp SpaceSaver at home and at work. They're excellent keyboards, but for my taste the springs are just a tad stiffer than I'd like.
I have fond memories of my mom's first computer, which was an early-'80s no-name cheap PC clone. That machine had a buckling-spring keyboard, with medium-to-long travel, and very light action. I would pay a pretty penny for something like that.
Latin turned into Italian (and Spanish and French etc.), modern English grew out of Old English which is incomprehensible to everyone except linguists today, and yes, even modern English will be a dead language someday. Languages drift, film at 11.
Take a breath, people. DST exists for a perfectly good and simple reason: to use daylight a bit more effectively than we would if we used a schedule that never changed with the seasons. Sure, if you live in or near the tropics, that's a non-issue, but for those of us in the rest of the world, DST is a good thing. And if you're one of those people who uses their smartphone as their alarm clock and pocket watch, you never have to worry about the adjustment; smartphones and computers make the adjustment automagically, *and* they even alert you that this happens. (Even back in the day, adjusting my clocks never took me more than five minutes; totally worth it for the improved quality of life that comes with more sunlight when it does the most good.)
What happens when we get to a point where we just don't need everyone to work in order to provide the goods and services people want? I'm thinking we may have already reached that point in some developed countries. Then what?
Then we do the same thing we did the last time this problem became acute. We reduced the working week from 48 hours to 40 early in the last century; I think reducing it further, to 32, is long overdue.
The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 442-1 on Tuesday to return to standard time this autumn and stay there all year.
Great move! And I guess that means it will take another three years before it sinks in that DST does still make sense in summer, when instead of being woken up by daylight two or three hours before the workday begins, you can have that extra summer daylight at the end of the day, when you can actually enjoy it in peace.
Just guessing here, but since this is the U.S. we're talking about, I'm thinking liability. Whether the hydrant is below or above ground, when it gets used that means big, heavy hoses are attached. If there's a car in front of the hydrant, there is a possibility that it might get scratched or dented by those hoses, and then presumably the fire department would be liable for that damage. Solution: ban parking near hydrants; liability problem prevented.
Also, those with higher intelligence tend to reproduce less.
That may be true today, but it clearly wasn't always (or mankind would be getting steadily dumber, and there is ample evidence to the contrary), and this is most likely a temporary situation. Right now, only the better-educated classes grasp just how tight the situation with the world's water, food, and energy resources has become, and they adjust their reproductive behavior accordingly, while the more ignorant parts of our species continue to pass on their increasingly unwarranted optimism to their many children. All it takes is a really major resource-scarcity-related disaster or war, and people's attitudes will change, even at the bottom... And once birthrates return to being largely independent of intelligence or education, the smarter ones will resume having their natural advantage in everyday life.
I think you're greatly overstating the importance of Linux there. Not to take away from the great work Linus did and continues to do, but he himself said: "If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."
Source: http://gondwanaland.com/meta/h...
I'll bet you anything this won't support native code, just like BlackBerry's Android compatibility box. Supporting native code would require running an actual Android kernel, because native code can perform system calls and all that -- it's outside of the Java sandbox.
It also means a country full of religious hotheads, who are going to view their own increasingly bleak existence as the result of a conspiracy of all those godless people in Europe and Asia. You sure you're enthusiastic about that kind of development in a country as heavily armed as the U.S.? I'd rather see them be smart, personally.
They use the same map provider as TomTom. Whether that's better than OpenStreetMap or not probably depends on where you are... I've personally never had issues with map accuracy from any providers, but my travels so far have been exclusively in densely populated parts of Europe and the U.S., which are probably well mapped in any case.
N.B. I don't mean to advertise Sygic specifically; I'm sure other stand-alone navigation apps exist that are just as good. My point is that if you don't want Google to always know where you are, and are leery of the accuracy of community-provided maps, there are good alternatives.
I know I'm showing my age, but when I was little, computers were these huge things that sat in climate-controlled rooms. Unless that kind of hardware is now removed from the definition of "computer", I can think of a few pre-Apple manufacturers that are still around, like IBM, NCR, and Unisys.
I studied math in college, and many numerical algorithms textbooks refer to software as "codes". It seems to be common practice in the computational mathematics world. I assume it goes back to the days before Fortran, before high-level languages in general, when source code literally consisted of a series of codes.
Don't hold your breath waiting for prices to plummet when taxis are deregulated. This has already been tried in the Netherlands, and the result was that prices went up, not down, and service got worse, not better, capitalist dogma notwithstanding.
The problem is that taxi drivers need to make a certain amount of money to pay their cost of living, and if the number of cabs goes up while the number of passengers doesn't, they end up spending more time waiting for fares, and less time actually driving. And they can't just hop off to a second job while they are waiting. So, they have to *increase* their rates in order to make up for their reduced number of trips, so taking a cab becomes more expensive, and they will tend to refuse short trips, trying to hold out for the more profitable longer ones, so taxi availability gets worse.
And how are programs like affirmative action following in that spirit? They tell you that, for example, if you have slanted eyes then you immediately deserve lower preference than anybody, but if you have black skin then you automatically get to be first in line.
Holy hyperbole Batman!
Affirmative action means that the kid with brown skin has a slightly higher chance of getting into college than the kid with the pink skin. You know, a little bit of unfairness going *their* way, to counterbalance the unfairness dark-skinned people experience everywhere else in life. Like having odds of landing a job, with a clean slate, that are equal to a white man's odds with the same qualifications *with a criminal record*. If we can't eliminate racism, at least we can try to make up for it somehow, and that is exactly what affirmative action is for. It does *not* mean that if you're black you're automatically in and if you're Asian you're automatically out.
Try some other news sources than Fox for a change. Heck, try some actual *news* sources.
Greenland rebounding does absolutely nothing because the "extra" volume is not taken out of the ocean. The water doesn't suddenly jump back up on the land.
It is true that Greenland rebounding won't affect sea level, but not for the reason parent seems to imply. The real reason is that when a land mass is pressed downwards by an ice sheet, it sinks because it displaces material in the mantle. That mantle material is squeezed out sideways, and ends up raising adjacent land masses or ocean floor.
When the ice sheet melts, the displaced mantle flows back, the depressed land rebounds, and the raised adjacent land or ocean floor sinks back.
This effect is currently causing the Netherlands to sink at a rate of about five millimeters per year, while Scandinavia is rising at a similar rate. The rebound from the last glacial, in other words, is still ongoing, and quite significant. (Having to raise sea dikes by half a meter over a century, even without global warming induced sea level rise, is a pain in the ass and not something you can just ignore...)
If Greenland losing its ice and rising causes no dry land to sink but only ocean floor, that floor sinkage will compensate for some of the sea level rise, but not quickly enough to help us save our coastal lands and cities.
What about iPGMail for iOS?
They claim to implement OpenPGP.
Couple of quibbles here. First, you won't traverse that tunnel in free fall: that would require the vehicle to move at orbital speed. If you're thinking of digging a parabolic (or, well, elliptical) tunnel where you could be in free fall at suborbital speeds, you would have to dig much of that tunnel at depths that are impossible with current technology.
Second, but on a more positive note, digging a tunnel that's X times longer than the Channel Tunnel doesn't have to take X times as long as digging the Channel Tunnel. New York to Los Angeles is under land except for a few river crossings, so there is no reason why you couldn't be digging at multiple places at once and create multiple sections of the tunnel concurrently. That would be more expensive, and getting the segments to line up exactly won't be easy, but should be doable.
That's Isambard Kingdom Brunel, not Bunuel. Reference: http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=141 :-)
And remember, all this is to support Apple's DRM that blocks 3rd party chargers (or at least prevents them using the fast charge rate).
Huh? I use a third-party car charger, and it fast-charges my iPhone just fine.
We've managed to get to the point where it's no longer mandatory for women to wear dresses and high heels everywhere. Can we please move on and also stop requiring men to wear suits and ties? If you're looking for an engineer, look for an engineering degree. If you want to hire a model, look for someone who looks good in a suit. Confusing the two is just unprofessional.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I never had anything stolen or destroyed from my checked luggage. Even so, I try to travel light and cram everything into my carry-on... So I won't have to wait for half an hour or an hour at the carrousel, and so I won't have to pay the $25 or more per checked bag.
Yeah, and they would never frame anybody or tamper with evidence or anything, because their motives are always pure and above reproach. And unlike public officers, they're completely accountable!
Wait, who are these people again?
I can't tell if you're a smart guy trying to slam Anonymous or an idiot idolizing public officers. Either could be corrupt and/or unaccountable. Anonymous, however, has no vested interest either way in the lives, well-being and reputations of those in Steubenville Ohio - or their football team (which, if you read the NYT article, seems to be the main concern of many in the town)
How would you know Anonymous has no vested interest? You don't even know who they are. It worries me that people refer to Anonymous as an entity, rather than a mask of anonymity that could be worn by anyone or everyone, and that people ascribe lofty motivations to what is just another bunch of ACs.
Also, lack of vested interest, proven or not, is no guarantee of benign intent. I was falsely accused of several acts of vandalism once, back in school. Once the accusation was made, the entire class believed it and turned against me, and several came forward in following days making additional accusations. I didn't do any of those things but that made no difference to the court of public opinion. Now, you could argue that a bunch of stupid naive kids can't be expected to make sound judgements as to what is true and what is false, but unfortunately most adults are just as credulous, and for anyone to throw accusations about in public can create a dangerous situation. Not something I'd applaud the way I see people doing here. The place to find truth is in a proper court of law, not the court of public opinion.
Hmm, if you're trying to argue that Revenge of the Sith isn't our generation's greatest work of art, shouldn't you try to come up with counter examples that are actually from, you know, our generation? Something bothers me about eldavojohn's summary... Titian: 1488-1576 Bernini: 1598-1680 Monet: 1840-1926 Picasso: 1881-1973 Pollock: 1912-1956