The problem with the left-and-up is that when you go into the car, you don't know if your gear is in 1st or reverse.
Or you try to set the reverse, but you may set the 1st by mistake.
It's happened to me more than once that the car went in the reverse direction to what I was expecting. Granted, I was distracted, but still, I think it's bad design.
I don't think it would be so bad to have an extra column to the right of a 6-speeder. Or you could simply have the pull-collar-up system, but do it left-down instead of left-up.
Maybe there's a great reason for the current design, as many manufacturers are adopting it. I just can't see what it is.
I have no idea how the pedal could get stuck under the mat. I've never seen that happen.
I know, because it has almost happened to me more than once. If the mat slides forward while you're driving, the tip of the mat may end up where the pedal meets the floor.
When you give full gas (or use your clutch), the tip of the pedal becomes flush with the floor, and if the mat goes forward a bit more, it may end up going over the pedal.
It's happened to me before, with the clutch pedal. It didn't get stuck, but I could feel the mat "grabbing" it a bit when I released the clutch. It was both anoying and a bit stressful.
BTW, at least my VW has hinges on the floor and corresponding holes on the mat so that it's not able to move forward. I guess it really was a big problem for VW.
The brake and clutch pedals can still get stuck, but in either case the car wouldn't move, so that wouldn't be as dangerous.
Still, I don't like the design much because the gas pedal is lower than the brake pedal. I think that's also on purpose in order to distinguish both pedals better (in case of panic it's easier to press the brake).
It that makes it a bit harder to move quickly from the gas to the brake, and if you have shoes with wide soles, they can get momentarily stuck under the brake pedal.
I guess that's not a problem with automatics, but with a normal transmission, you use the break and gas with your right foot and the left foot is exclusively for the clutch.
Honda had so many it redesigned the pedals on the new Civic to pivot from the floor instead of the firewall so the mats can't get under them.
So that's why my VW Golf has that weird gas pedal when the break and clutch pivot from the top!
Man, I was breaking my noodle trying to figure that one out, because except for maybe looking a bit cooler, it made no sense. According to your link, VW had the most complaints/100,000 vehicles, so that makes perfect sense.
But all of that is mitigated by the fact that you can charge at home.
For the daily commute with an electric, most people wouldn't even have to stop at a gas (electricity?) station. If you imaging only 10% of the people would be using the station to recharge, then the usage would be pretty similar to that of the current gas stations.
The dives are to make sure that the referee saw the foul.
Yes, its acting, but in a fast-paced game with sometimes 20 players going at the ball, the referees don't see anything, and since video replays are still verbotten, diving is the only way to bring attention when you're fouled.
Diving without a foul, however is shitty gameplay, and on those cases, I agree entirely with you. Those players should be penalised for that post-game, especially if it results in a game-changing decision, like a penalty shot.
Also, post play, referees could go through the footage and identify divers and play actors. Those will be sanctioned post game with red cards and/or suspensions.
This is already happening. The punishment post-game is adjusted according to the severity of the foul which originated the expulsion.
If the player got an undeserved red card, for example, he will usually be able to play in the next game (though the damage is already done for the game where he was expelled).
Similarly, if the foul is considered very hard, he may be suspended for more than the usual 1 game.
My torrent client is already dropping completed torrents into a specific folder.
I don't like to use XBMC's "series" feature because it doesn't work well with some of my series, especially anime.
After writing this, I set off to find if there was a plugin for XBMC to interact with torrent clients, and apparently there is something for trasmission.
I'll try that when I get home. I've been using deluge-daemon, but it seems transmission-daemon has better support from third-party torrent UIs.
First thing I will be implementing in my front end for skype: Some kind of filter so I stop getting those damn penis enlargment ads / chat with Mis-sxyxxx chick etc. that keep popping up every few days.
Have you tried going to the preferences and simply setting skype to only accept calls and chats from people in your contact list?
It's kind of annoying that this isn't set by default, but you just have to do it once after installation.
The author of a project I'm currently following closely posts his updates on twitter. Since I don't visit the twitter webpage all that much, or have any clients for it, I simply subscribed his feed with my RSS reader.
I like Twitter. It's a nice way to follow people/projects/things in which you're interested, and you can even reply easily, turning the platform from a "bog-standard RSS reader" into a quick-and-dirty IM/email service for a quick chat.
There's another, as-yet unpublished Google patent filing that discusses the use of a 'mobile device data collection module' to 'collect data on a set of mobile devices which are using [a] wireless base station', including GPS location information, time information, and 'application specific data, such as, map requests, etc.'
Well, the fact that they have the patent, does not mean they intended to use it.
They may have just figured that it would make the patent more complete if they included the part about "application specific data", so that someone else couldn't come after and patent the same thing with that addition.
The listed 'inventors' include a Google Latitude Product Manager.
You mean a location service-related patent is coming from the guys working with location services at Google?
I did it on my Android app mostly because I wanted a way to push users to buy the "full" version.
It was either that, or limiting the feature set in the free version, or worse -- inserting some kind of annoying artificial limitation. This way I'm pushing people to buy it, but in the end if they don't, I still get something for my trouble, and the users get the full functionality.
I think mobile ads offer a good compromise between asking the users to pay for the app, and making it available to as many people as possible. If the ads annoy you that much you can pay the 1 Euro, hack it (it's not that hard), or pirate it.
And of course if you have to target a newer API, presumably because it has a feature that you can't live without, you limit your app to that version and above (just as if I use Transactional Filesystem calls my Windows app would be Vista or newer).
Actually that's not completely true. You can target a newer API version and still define a previous version as your minimum API level in the manifest. That's what the documentation proposes if you want to support different DPIs (introduced in 1.6) and still make your app available to devices running 1.5.
This will work well as long as you don't explicitly call any functions which are only available in the newer API. In fact, I haven't tried this, but I guess if you want to use a new API feature, you can do it as long as you block previous APIs from making that call with an IF clause. As I said, I haven't tried that, but my guess is it should work.
Actually Android is DPI aware -- your controls and images will be scaled according to the system's DPI.
The current solution with Android is to pack your images in different resolutions inside the app, and the system will use the correct version for the screen it's running on.
It works fairly well, but it's still not ideal. The ideal solution would be, as you say, to use vector graphics, but the problem on mobile apps is that vector images are more expensive to draw.
Current smartphone platforms are becoming amazingly powerful, but even if the CPUs were fast enough to provide a smooth experience (which I'm not so sure they are), you'd still need to worry about the battery usage, which is bad enough as it is today.
When we started working with Android last year it was 1.5 (which had been our for a while on the G1) and 1.6. Then suddenly it was 2.0, then 2.1, now 2.2 all the last 9 months or so. Apple has generally release a new OS every year with a minor.1 release shortly there after. Same with blackberry.
Would you rather Google had named their Android updates in smaller numbers?
Or are you saying that Google should slow down the rate of improvements to the OS because you can't keep up?
If it's the second, then I advise you to target a release which offers you the features you need and stick to it. Android's backward compatibility works amazingly well.
The framework is completely preppared to support hardware keys. If you really really need a touchscreen, you can define that in your app's manifest, and the market will filter it only for those devices.
I developed a complete app for Android without ever considering that some devices might not have touchscreens. Then, just the other day I tried to use the app only with the hardware buttons and to my amazement, it worked perfectly.
For an open OS like Android it only makes sense not to limit the hardware it might be running on, but the API is well thought out in order to support those differences as best they can.
But have you tried Amazon? At least in Europe they have a (15 day?) return policy. It's not as convinient as taking it back to the store, but at least it's a possibility.
I bought an LCD TV last year and was hit with a dead pixel. The waranty wouldn't cover it, but thankfully I got the TV from a store where they take unconditional returns during the first 15 days.
I figured if they didn't want to replace the TV because of the pixel, I'd just get my money back and buy the same TV at another store (with a simmilar return policy, of course).
To their credit, the TV was replaced without issue.
Exactly. I've found mobile phones before, and the first thing I do is call one of the recent numbers, because that'll usualy be someone who know the guy well and will know how to reach him.
If I wanted to keep the phone, on the other hand, I'd probably just start playing with it, at least until it got bricked...
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Speak for yourself. I'm running a custom ROM, compiled from source code which I can freely browse.
In any case, the availability of the source makes it easier to spot any tampering.
"I wonder what these packets being sent every 30 minutes are..."
The problem with the left-and-up is that when you go into the car, you don't know if your gear is in 1st or reverse.
Or you try to set the reverse, but you may set the 1st by mistake.
It's happened to me more than once that the car went in the reverse direction to what I was expecting. Granted, I was distracted, but still, I think it's bad design.
I don't think it would be so bad to have an extra column to the right of a 6-speeder.
Or you could simply have the pull-collar-up system, but do it left-down instead of left-up.
Maybe there's a great reason for the current design, as many manufacturers are adopting it. I just can't see what it is.
I have no idea how the pedal could get stuck under the mat. I've never seen that happen.
I know, because it has almost happened to me more than once. If the mat slides forward while you're driving, the tip of the mat may end up where the pedal meets the floor.
When you give full gas (or use your clutch), the tip of the pedal becomes flush with the floor, and if the mat goes forward a bit more, it may end up going over the pedal.
It's happened to me before, with the clutch pedal. It didn't get stuck, but I could feel the mat "grabbing" it a bit when I released the clutch. It was both anoying and a bit stressful.
BTW, at least my VW has hinges on the floor and corresponding holes on the mat so that it's not able to move forward. I guess it really was a big problem for VW.
I think you didn't understand. The gas pedal pivots from the floor, which means it can never be stuck under the mat.
It looks kind of like this: http://www.klawit.homepage.t-online.de/images/18_Alu-Sport-Pedalset.jpg
The brake and clutch pedals can still get stuck, but in either case the car wouldn't move, so that wouldn't be as dangerous.
Still, I don't like the design much because the gas pedal is lower than the brake pedal. I think that's also on purpose in order to distinguish both pedals better (in case of panic it's easier to press the brake).
It that makes it a bit harder to move quickly from the gas to the brake, and if you have shoes with wide soles, they can get momentarily stuck under the brake pedal.
I guess that's not a problem with automatics, but with a normal transmission, you use the break and gas with your right foot and the left foot is exclusively for the clutch.
Honda had so many it redesigned the pedals on the new Civic to pivot from the floor instead of the firewall so the mats can't get under them.
So that's why my VW Golf has that weird gas pedal when the break and clutch pivot from the top!
Man, I was breaking my noodle trying to figure that one out, because except for maybe looking a bit cooler, it made no sense.
According to your link, VW had the most complaints/100,000 vehicles, so that makes perfect sense.
Now if I could just understand why the reverse gear selector position is to the front instead of to the back, I'll be golden. http://vwgolfr32.co.uk/images/Passat-3C-6Spd-Gear-Knob.jpg
But all of that is mitigated by the fact that you can charge at home.
For the daily commute with an electric, most people wouldn't even have to stop at a gas (electricity?) station.
If you imaging only 10% of the people would be using the station to recharge, then the usage would be pretty similar to that of the current gas stations.
The weekends could be worse, though.
Exactly. Some people are saying banning the vuvuzellas is intruding on Africa's culture.
I say it's a part of being good hosts.
The dives are to make sure that the referee saw the foul.
Yes, its acting, but in a fast-paced game with sometimes 20 players going at the ball, the referees don't see anything, and since video replays are still verbotten, diving is the only way to bring attention when you're fouled.
Diving without a foul, however is shitty gameplay, and on those cases, I agree entirely with you. Those players should be penalised for that post-game, especially if it results in a game-changing decision, like a penalty shot.
Also, post play, referees could go through the footage and identify divers and play actors. Those will be sanctioned post game with red cards and/or suspensions.
This is already happening. The punishment post-game is adjusted according to the severity of the foul which originated the expulsion.
If the player got an undeserved red card, for example, he will usually be able to play in the next game (though the damage is already done for the game where he was expelled).
Similarly, if the foul is considered very hard, he may be suspended for more than the usual 1 game.
Ah, I see.
My torrent client is already dropping completed torrents into a specific folder.
I don't like to use XBMC's "series" feature because it doesn't work well with some of my series, especially anime.
After writing this, I set off to find if there was a plugin for XBMC to interact with torrent clients, and apparently there is something for trasmission.
I'll try that when I get home. I've been using deluge-daemon, but it seems transmission-daemon has better support from third-party torrent UIs.
You get a message from XBMC? Pray tell, how does that work?
I did the same as you, but I only realized the series had started when I saw the file drop into my "completed downloads" folder.
I wish I could interact with my torrent client directly from XBMC in some way.
First thing I will be implementing in my front end for skype: Some kind of filter so I stop getting those damn penis enlargment ads / chat with Mis-sxyxxx chick etc. that keep popping up every few days.
Have you tried going to the preferences and simply setting skype to only accept calls and chats from people in your contact list?
It's kind of annoying that this isn't set by default, but you just have to do it once after installation.
Yes.
The author of a project I'm currently following closely posts his updates on twitter. Since I don't visit the twitter webpage all that much, or have any clients for it, I simply subscribed his feed with my RSS reader.
I like Twitter. It's a nice way to follow people/projects/things in which you're interested, and you can even reply easily, turning the platform from a "bog-standard RSS reader" into a quick-and-dirty IM/email service for a quick chat.
There's another, as-yet unpublished Google patent filing that discusses the use of a 'mobile device data collection module' to 'collect data on a set of mobile devices which are using [a] wireless base station', including GPS location information, time information, and 'application specific data, such as, map requests, etc.'
Well, the fact that they have the patent, does not mean they intended to use it.
They may have just figured that it would make the patent more complete if they included the part about "application specific data", so that someone else couldn't come after and patent the same thing with that addition.
The listed 'inventors' include a Google Latitude Product Manager.
You mean a location service-related patent is coming from the guys working with location services at Google?
Yeah, that's strange...
I did it on my Android app mostly because I wanted a way to push users to buy the "full" version.
It was either that, or limiting the feature set in the free version, or worse -- inserting some kind of annoying artificial limitation. This way I'm pushing people to buy it, but in the end if they don't, I still get something for my trouble, and the users get the full functionality.
I think mobile ads offer a good compromise between asking the users to pay for the app, and making it available to as many people as possible. If the ads annoy you that much you can pay the 1 Euro, hack it (it's not that hard), or pirate it.
Sounds good to me, but I'm no OS guru :-)
Actually, my post wasn't entirely correct. Android does support a type of vector images called ShapeDrawables.
From what I've seen, it looks like a really, really simple implementation of SVG (which unfortunately is missing from the current APIs).
Though because it's so simple, it's not very useful.
And of course if you have to target a newer API, presumably because it has a feature that you can't live without, you limit your app to that version and above (just as if I use Transactional Filesystem calls my Windows app would be Vista or newer).
Actually that's not completely true. You can target a newer API version and still define a previous version as your minimum API level in the manifest.
That's what the documentation proposes if you want to support different DPIs (introduced in 1.6) and still make your app available to devices running 1.5.
This will work well as long as you don't explicitly call any functions which are only available in the newer API. In fact, I haven't tried this, but I guess if you want to use a new API feature, you can do it as long as you block previous APIs from making that call with an IF clause. As I said, I haven't tried that, but my guess is it should work.
Actually Android is DPI aware -- your controls and images will be scaled according to the system's DPI.
The current solution with Android is to pack your images in different resolutions inside the app, and the system will use the correct version for the screen it's running on.
It works fairly well, but it's still not ideal. The ideal solution would be, as you say, to use vector graphics, but the problem on mobile apps is that vector images are more expensive to draw.
Current smartphone platforms are becoming amazingly powerful, but even if the CPUs were fast enough to provide a smooth experience (which I'm not so sure they are), you'd still need to worry about the battery usage, which is bad enough as it is today.
When we started working with Android last year it was 1.5 (which had been our for a while on the G1) and 1.6. Then suddenly it was 2.0, then 2.1, now 2.2 all the last 9 months or so. Apple has generally release a new OS every year with a minor .1 release shortly there after. Same with blackberry.
Would you rather Google had named their Android updates in smaller numbers?
Or are you saying that Google should slow down the rate of improvements to the OS because you can't keep up?
If it's the second, then I advise you to target a release which offers you the features you need and stick to it. Android's backward compatibility works amazingly well.
So what?
The framework is completely preppared to support hardware keys. If you really really need a touchscreen, you can define that in your app's manifest, and the market will filter it only for those devices.
I developed a complete app for Android without ever considering that some devices might not have touchscreens. Then, just the other day I tried to use the app only with the hardware buttons and to my amazement, it worked perfectly.
For an open OS like Android it only makes sense not to limit the hardware it might be running on, but the API is well thought out in order to support those differences as best they can.
Point taken.
But have you tried Amazon? At least in Europe they have a (15 day?) return policy. It's not as convinient as taking it back to the store, but at least it's a possibility.
I bought an LCD TV last year and was hit with a dead pixel.
The waranty wouldn't cover it, but thankfully I got the TV from a store where they take unconditional returns during the first 15 days.
I figured if they didn't want to replace the TV because of the pixel, I'd just get my money back and buy the same TV at another store (with a simmilar return policy, of course).
To their credit, the TV was replaced without issue.
Exactly. Besides, with the integrated unit the risk of getting it stolen is much lower (though the consequences are much higher).
I'm still waiting for an integrated Android system to replace the crappy cd player that came with my car.
You probably don't have any control over this, but it'd make it easier to know what the icon means if there were a mouseover text tag explaining that.
It was the first thing I tried (sorry, I didn't recognise immediately Rackspace's logo, and even if I did, I wouldn't have gotten the meaning of it).
Anyway, kudos for the transparency.
Exactly. I've found mobile phones before, and the first thing I do is call one of the recent numbers, because that'll usualy be someone who know the guy well and will know how to reach him.
If I wanted to keep the phone, on the other hand, I'd probably just start playing with it, at least until it got bricked...