I have to admit, this idea had never before entered my head, but now - well, I'll just say that if I ever have an arm amputated, I'm going to end up with one kick-ass cupholder.
He was probably doing an experiment where various objects were presented to fish to gauge their reaction (e.g. stress level as measured by die-off rate) or using the 3D printer to make environmental obstacles to control the behavior of the fish.
It's certainly possible the fish embryos saw the 3D printer parts and died from hype overdose.
Don't know that I'd go that far. I didn't see anywhere in the article where the company was claiming anything that they aren't providing. The phone is being sold as modular and easily repairable. They don't say anything about being able to use those modules in future phone models.
...Second, you might spend the initial money as you would on those Samsung or iPhones, but over the years instead of purchasing it again, you can just upgrade it bit by bit at a fraction of the price.
I don't see how this phone is really all that upgradeable. From the article:
The smartphone consists of seven major building blocks: the back cover, removable battery, display assembly, main chassis, receiver module, rear camera module, and speaker module. Positioned this way, the components that break most often, like the screen, are isolated for better repairability.
The only components I see that would actually be upgradeable are the battery, camera, and possibly the screen. The screen size is pretty much fixed by the physical constraints of the phone, but I could imagine replacing it with a higher DPI model. Other than that, your only upgrades are better camera and higher capacity battery. Unless their main chassis has socketed CPU, RAM, or flash storage, you're not going to be able to upgrade this phone bit by bit as you said.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of building for better repairability. Make it easy to replace the screen or swap out a broken charging socket. But this isn't like a PC where I can upgrade the RAM, hard drive, and video card as need requires and budget allows. The article even closes by saying it's unlikely that modules will be compatible with future generations of Fairphones.
Best part of it is transparent back cover. This way, everybody around can see how cool you are for building your own phone. Even if it is as complicated as putting together 6-part Duplo duck.
But is it as cool as taking apart a digital clock and putting it into a suitcase?
Most of your points I agree with, but I do take issue with this one:
I also see little difference between using an external battery pack to recharge my phone when it gets low & swapping batteries. My son has a phone with a removable battery that he has changed twice & yet he still has to use an external battery to get through the day.
Here's the difference: Once the phone is a couple of years old, then the original battery doesn't hold a charge as well as it used to. If you have a removable battery, you can replace it with a new one, sometimes even with a higher capacity than the original battery.
I have a cousin who put a Cummins diesel into a '70-something Ford pickup. Dropped right in, except there was no room for the stock air filter. The first substitute filter he found that would fit was one originally made for a combine. Gotta love farmer ingenuity.
For Tor to be effective, more people need to use Tor. The problem is, people using Tor are usually people needing to (or wanting to) hide something, not the "more" people needed.
This is why I make it a point to fire up the Tor browser at least a couple of times a week. It's not because I'm doing something I want to hide, it's that everybody should be free from having to live under the all-seeing Eye of Sauron. If they're going to watch all Tor traffic, they can watch my webcomics and funny cat pictures.
Amen to this. The proper response to, "If you don't have anything to hide, what are you worried about?" is "I'm worried about what will happen if I don't hide *everything*," followed up with, "Unless you've got a good reason to be looking, mind your own damn business."
I absolutely support the idea behind this project. I support encryption everywhere, for everyone. I don't want to live in a world where the only people who are worried about encryption are drug dealers, child porn collectors, international spies, and government folks trying to catch the first three. I don't want to live in a world where use of encryption automatically qualifies as "probable cause".
In a sense, it's almost like a business having an email retention policy in place. There's nothing suspicious about a company with a policy in place where they automatically delete emails after a certain time period. A company that has a mass purge of old mail 3 hours after being served with a subpoena looks like they have something to hide. In the same vein, if I have an encrypted flash drive that's in the back of my freezer inside a box of fish sticks, that looks suspicious, but if I have full-disk encryption on my desktop, my laptop, and my phone, I'm just taking a wide approach of "secure by default".
Seems way overpriced, but not a bad design. I own a Lenovo Yoga 10, and I've been very happy with it. The barrel edge really does make it much more comfortable to hold than other tablets I've used. (I'll add that I paid less than half of what Dell's asking for this thing, even without a keyboard. And seriously, 16GB internal storage? I know it's got an SD slot, but still...)
The only time I got motions sickness from a game was in the "crashing starship" level in Jedi Knight. Played through the Descent 1 and most of 2 without trouble, though when playing, I tended to throw out any preconceived idea of "up" and "down". But in the Jedi Knight level, there was an up, there was a down, and it was constantly changing. Never got to the point of throwing up, but I did have to lay down for a bit till my head and stomach came to and agreement on up, down, and keeping my stomach contents contained.
I'm really looking forward to trying VR with a space sim - shame it's been so long since any good ones have been released. I know Freespace II has been open-sourced, so if nobody's added VR support yet, I'm sure somebody will.
*Ctrl-tab - google oculus rift freespace* Looks like it's in progress -- Holy crap, I forgot about Star Citizen! *makes mental note to dust off flight stick*
Oh, sweet Lord, yes! A few of your points in particular:
1. Default apps for many file formats are ridiculously dysfunctional Metro versions. This means users are cast into Full Screen Hell, showing Beelzebubs re-imagining of a PDF reader, image viewer or music app, designed for those confined in the darkest levels of hell. Escaping from these apps is actually hard. Noone can hear you scream.
Whoever designed the included Metro apps should be chained to a helpdesk and doomed to provide support to elderly computer users who are confused as to why their new computer doesn't work like their old one. And this is coming from someone who regularly provides support to elderly computer users who are confused as to why their new computer doesn't work like their old one. Normally I'd say it's the sort of frustration I wouldn't wish on anyone, but it's exactly what I'd wish on the Win8 UI designers.
4. Settings Schizophrenia. Where is that setting? Full-Screen-Hell-Mode or Control Panel? Or (gasp) BOTH? Oh My @#(&$ing GOD!
Holy crap, yes! The Win7, (or was it Vista?) switch to nested control panel categories was bad enough, but at least you could easily switch it to classic. But this? Two different Control Panel universes with no good way to know what is where? The really scary thing about Windows 10 is that they're supposedly considering doing away with the classic Control Panel altogether and hiding all the system settings in Metro-land.
Anyway, you may feel less anger and pain about the above than I do but the point remains that Win 8's peculiarity (See, I can be nice too) isn't confined to having a start screen instead of a start menu.
The sad thing is that there are actually some things about Win8 I actually like. I've gotten it tweaked enough that the parts I hate generally stay the Hell out of my way. But Windows 10 really, really, needs a global "Disable Metro, yes really, yes everywhere on the entire damn computer" button
IANA psychologist, but here's the armchair difference as I understand it: Sociopathic behavior is driven by some misguided version of self-interest, whereas psychopathic behavior acts without regard to self-interest. For a simple (over)generalization, if you piss off a murderous sociopath, he will stalk you and attempt to kill you at a time and in a manner where he believes he's most likely to get away with it. If you piss off a murderous psychopath, he will likely attempt to kill you immediately with whatever he happens to have at hand, up to and including strangling you with his bare hands in front of a group of law enforcement officers.
Another Aeropress fan here! It's perfect for me since I'm the only one in the house that drinks coffee. I do have a standard drip machine for when we have guests and I need more than one cup at a time.
I discovered the wonders of Aeropress on a coffee-related Ask Slashdot a few years ago.
I always hated group projects in gen-ed classes in college.
I'm in my second semester of going back to school pursuing an engineering degree. So far, I've had a group project both semesters, and have had good experiences in both. They have both been in engineering classes, rather than gen-ed, which makes a lot of difference. The only downside is that I learned if the group project is a research paper, and the group consists of Kushal, Hatim, Stanislav, and Josh, it's going to be Josh that gets stuck doing all the final edits. Not to criticize the rest of the group; they're smart guys who did good work, but the writing needed a bit of cleanup by someone for whom English is their primary language.
In one of the earliest meetings for the group project this semester, one of the girls in the group said, "I always hated group projects in high school, because I always ended up being the smart one that got stuck doing all the work. I don't mind them now, because we're all 'the smart one'."
Not even close. Looking at the other responses, I'm clearly not the only one who's thought of this joke.
My personal favorite SSID that I've seen was when I was eating at Buffalo Wild Wings. I went to connect my phone and saw their public hotspot, but someone nearby had set up one called "pubes in my bww". I'm assuming it was just some customer with a sense of humor, but I like to think it could also be either an unhappy neighbor or a semi-disgruntled staff member.
... for a few dollars (or as others are pointing out "zero dollars", which a few dollars approaches asymptotic to zero) you can incite bureaucrats to attack the air traffic system.
Cheap phones in AP mode with maliciously-chosen SSIDs, randomly distributed at airports = instant DoS attack against the US air travel system.
Doesn't really seem like Al Quida's style, but I imagine people at Amtrack and Greyhound might be interested.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a friend who runs his VW Jetta on used cooking oil. During the winter, he has a small heating unit in the gas tank to prevent gelling.
You don't keep them closed, you use them to adjust gradually.
1) Close eyes
2) Turn on light
3) Wait a second
4) Slowly open eyes
5) Profit!
. Holy Shit! You just learned a new use for eyelids!
I'd bet even money you could get this patented.
That Core i3 isn't flashy...
That Core i3 doesn't meet the Oculus minimum specs.
If you look at a mirror and say "Adblock" 4 times, he'll appear. Do yourself a favor, and never try this.
I don't know.
THIRD BASE!!
One word: taxidermy
I have to admit, this idea had never before entered my head, but now - well, I'll just say that if I ever have an arm amputated, I'm going to end up with one kick-ass cupholder.
He was probably doing an experiment where various objects were presented to fish to gauge their reaction (e.g. stress level as measured by die-off rate) or using the 3D printer to make environmental obstacles to control the behavior of the fish.
It's certainly possible the fish embryos saw the 3D printer parts and died from hype overdose.
Don't know that I'd go that far. I didn't see anywhere in the article where the company was claiming anything that they aren't providing. The phone is being sold as modular and easily repairable. They don't say anything about being able to use those modules in future phone models.
...Second, you might spend the initial money as you would on those Samsung or iPhones, but over the years instead of purchasing it again, you can just upgrade it bit by bit at a fraction of the price.
I don't see how this phone is really all that upgradeable. From the article:
The smartphone consists of seven major building blocks: the back cover, removable battery, display assembly, main chassis, receiver module, rear camera module, and speaker module. Positioned this way, the components that break most often, like the screen, are isolated for better repairability.
The only components I see that would actually be upgradeable are the battery, camera, and possibly the screen. The screen size is pretty much fixed by the physical constraints of the phone, but I could imagine replacing it with a higher DPI model. Other than that, your only upgrades are better camera and higher capacity battery. Unless their main chassis has socketed CPU, RAM, or flash storage, you're not going to be able to upgrade this phone bit by bit as you said.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of building for better repairability. Make it easy to replace the screen or swap out a broken charging socket. But this isn't like a PC where I can upgrade the RAM, hard drive, and video card as need requires and budget allows. The article even closes by saying it's unlikely that modules will be compatible with future generations of Fairphones.
Best part of it is transparent back cover. This way, everybody around can see how cool you are for building your own phone. Even if it is as complicated as putting together 6-part Duplo duck.
But is it as cool as taking apart a digital clock and putting it into a suitcase?
Most of your points I agree with, but I do take issue with this one:
I also see little difference between using an external battery pack to recharge my phone when it gets low & swapping batteries. My son has a phone with a removable battery that he has changed twice & yet he still has to use an external battery to get through the day.
Here's the difference: Once the phone is a couple of years old, then the original battery doesn't hold a charge as well as it used to. If you have a removable battery, you can replace it with a new one, sometimes even with a higher capacity than the original battery.
I have a cousin who put a Cummins diesel into a '70-something Ford pickup. Dropped right in, except there was no room for the stock air filter. The first substitute filter he found that would fit was one originally made for a combine. Gotta love farmer ingenuity.
You might have been thinking of the original XBox - it was x86 hardware.
For Tor to be effective, more people need to use Tor. The problem is, people using Tor are usually people needing to (or wanting to) hide something, not the "more" people needed.
This is why I make it a point to fire up the Tor browser at least a couple of times a week. It's not because I'm doing something I want to hide, it's that everybody should be free from having to live under the all-seeing Eye of Sauron. If they're going to watch all Tor traffic, they can watch my webcomics and funny cat pictures.
Amen to this. The proper response to, "If you don't have anything to hide, what are you worried about?" is "I'm worried about what will happen if I don't hide *everything*," followed up with, "Unless you've got a good reason to be looking, mind your own damn business."
I absolutely support the idea behind this project. I support encryption everywhere, for everyone. I don't want to live in a world where the only people who are worried about encryption are drug dealers, child porn collectors, international spies, and government folks trying to catch the first three. I don't want to live in a world where use of encryption automatically qualifies as "probable cause".
In a sense, it's almost like a business having an email retention policy in place. There's nothing suspicious about a company with a policy in place where they automatically delete emails after a certain time period. A company that has a mass purge of old mail 3 hours after being served with a subpoena looks like they have something to hide. In the same vein, if I have an encrypted flash drive that's in the back of my freezer inside a box of fish sticks, that looks suspicious, but if I have full-disk encryption on my desktop, my laptop, and my phone, I'm just taking a wide approach of "secure by default".
Seems way overpriced, but not a bad design. I own a Lenovo Yoga 10, and I've been very happy with it. The barrel edge really does make it much more comfortable to hold than other tablets I've used. (I'll add that I paid less than half of what Dell's asking for this thing, even without a keyboard. And seriously, 16GB internal storage? I know it's got an SD slot, but still...)
So you're saying VR companies should concentrate their US marketing efforts in Colorado and Washington?
The only time I got motions sickness from a game was in the "crashing starship" level in Jedi Knight. Played through the Descent 1 and most of 2 without trouble, though when playing, I tended to throw out any preconceived idea of "up" and "down". But in the Jedi Knight level, there was an up, there was a down, and it was constantly changing. Never got to the point of throwing up, but I did have to lay down for a bit till my head and stomach came to and agreement on up, down, and keeping my stomach contents contained.
I'm really looking forward to trying VR with a space sim - shame it's been so long since any good ones have been released. I know Freespace II has been open-sourced, so if nobody's added VR support yet, I'm sure somebody will.
*Ctrl-tab - google oculus rift freespace* Looks like it's in progress -- Holy crap, I forgot about Star Citizen! *makes mental note to dust off flight stick*
Oh, sweet Lord, yes! A few of your points in particular:
1. Default apps for many file formats are ridiculously dysfunctional Metro versions. This means users are cast into Full Screen Hell, showing Beelzebubs re-imagining of a PDF reader, image viewer or music app, designed for those confined in the darkest levels of hell. Escaping from these apps is actually hard. Noone can hear you scream.
Whoever designed the included Metro apps should be chained to a helpdesk and doomed to provide support to elderly computer users who are confused as to why their new computer doesn't work like their old one. And this is coming from someone who regularly provides support to elderly computer users who are confused as to why their new computer doesn't work like their old one. Normally I'd say it's the sort of frustration I wouldn't wish on anyone, but it's exactly what I'd wish on the Win8 UI designers.
4. Settings Schizophrenia. Where is that setting? Full-Screen-Hell-Mode or Control Panel? Or (gasp) BOTH? Oh My @#(&$ing GOD!
Holy crap, yes! The Win7, (or was it Vista?) switch to nested control panel categories was bad enough, but at least you could easily switch it to classic. But this? Two different Control Panel universes with no good way to know what is where? The really scary thing about Windows 10 is that they're supposedly considering doing away with the classic Control Panel altogether and hiding all the system settings in Metro-land.
Anyway, you may feel less anger and pain about the above than I do but the point remains that Win 8's peculiarity (See, I can be nice too) isn't confined to having a start screen instead of a start menu.
The sad thing is that there are actually some things about Win8 I actually like. I've gotten it tweaked enough that the parts I hate generally stay the Hell out of my way. But Windows 10 really, really, needs a global "Disable Metro, yes really, yes everywhere on the entire damn computer" button
IANA psychologist, but here's the armchair difference as I understand it: Sociopathic behavior is driven by some misguided version of self-interest, whereas psychopathic behavior acts without regard to self-interest. For a simple (over)generalization, if you piss off a murderous sociopath, he will stalk you and attempt to kill you at a time and in a manner where he believes he's most likely to get away with it. If you piss off a murderous psychopath, he will likely attempt to kill you immediately with whatever he happens to have at hand, up to and including strangling you with his bare hands in front of a group of law enforcement officers.
Another Aeropress fan here! It's perfect for me since I'm the only one in the house that drinks coffee. I do have a standard drip machine for when we have guests and I need more than one cup at a time.
I discovered the wonders of Aeropress on a coffee-related Ask Slashdot a few years ago.
Why am I not surprised that someone who would go to a setup like that is using an IBM Model M keyboard? Awesome.
I always hated group projects in gen-ed classes in college.
I'm in my second semester of going back to school pursuing an engineering degree. So far, I've had a group project both semesters, and have had good experiences in both. They have both been in engineering classes, rather than gen-ed, which makes a lot of difference. The only downside is that I learned if the group project is a research paper, and the group consists of Kushal, Hatim, Stanislav, and Josh, it's going to be Josh that gets stuck doing all the final edits. Not to criticize the rest of the group; they're smart guys who did good work, but the writing needed a bit of cleanup by someone for whom English is their primary language.
In one of the earliest meetings for the group project this semester, one of the girls in the group said, "I always hated group projects in high school, because I always ended up being the smart one that got stuck doing all the work. I don't mind them now, because we're all 'the smart one'."
Not even close. Looking at the other responses, I'm clearly not the only one who's thought of this joke.
My personal favorite SSID that I've seen was when I was eating at Buffalo Wild Wings. I went to connect my phone and saw their public hotspot, but someone nearby had set up one called "pubes in my bww". I'm assuming it was just some customer with a sense of humor, but I like to think it could also be either an unhappy neighbor or a semi-disgruntled staff member.
... for a few dollars (or as others are pointing out "zero dollars", which a few dollars approaches asymptotic to zero) you can incite bureaucrats to attack the air traffic system.
Cheap phones in AP mode with maliciously-chosen SSIDs, randomly distributed at airports = instant DoS attack against the US air travel system.
Doesn't really seem like Al Quida's style, but I imagine people at Amtrack and Greyhound might be interested.