I just write out an outline of what I want to do in my code first, in English. I put in notes about what tricks I think I can use, etcetera. I use a macro to convert each line of that outline into a comment in the format of the language I am working in. Then I write my code between all the comments. Voila! Commented code.
I find it a big help so I don't forget why I need to do what where.
Besides, when you start off by just writing out a line of code, your brain gets locked in to that line of code and you tend to write everything else around that first thought as expressed in code. When you are writing out an outline in English, it is psychologically easier to change your plans as the outline gets fleshed out. Your brain doesn't have to worry about syntax errors. It is just words. You can easily rearrange them.
Not that I am a professional developer, but I think it is just stupid to write code and then think you can come back later and remember everything about that code to put in appropriate documentation. Besides, when you force someone to put in documentation after the fact, how can you trust that they aren't just writing BS to fill up space to make you think they are doing their job. If they don't want to document their code then you should probably find someone else. They may be awesome at writing elegant code but what good is it if it can't be maintained? It becomes a minefield as soon as they quit for a "better" job.
I am a former IT guy. I could easily install Windows 7. I even already own the install disk. But I plan to upgrade my hardware "real soon now" so I am waiting till then. I have a lot of installed software and I do not feel like installing it twice if I don't have to.
Well, I hope there is enough room for this. I went to the site and signed up for their mailing list. I also mentioned that I could not find any of their books as public domain. Get a load of the line of technically correct, yet terribly misleading e-mail I got in response:
Dear Mr. Robertson,
Thank you for your note. However, I am a bit perplexed. The Center offers many materials that are downloadable. I’m not sure why you had a problem finding them on our site. And links were provided to the most germane ones in the pages for Public Domain Day.
Regarding why our materials aren’t in the public domain: this is a matter of law in the United States. Most of the materials have been produced in the past decade. Current U.S. copyright law provides that all written materials, for example, have copyright once they are fixed in a tangible form (such as when written on a piece of note paper, printed on a personal printer, commercially printed, stored in electronic files, etc.). Therefore, all our materials are automatically under copyright for 95 years from the date they are produced. There is no mechanism under the law to renounce copyright.
However, the Center does publish its materials under a Creative Commons license to make them available for non-commercial uses without requiring people to contact us or pay royalties/fees. (Please note that some materials actually pre-date the creation of the Creative Commons concept and the expanded use of GNU Open Licensing, so this might lead to the impression that we restrict access.)
If it would help, here are the pages where you can find the Center’s most significant materials for download:
We also provide access to related materials, though these are not produced by the Center itself and therefore the right to reprint is controlled by the organizations who publish the materials. We do try to encourage those organizations to make the materials available under Creative Commons or GNU licenses.
Finally, we also link to materials on our site that are published by other organizations but written by members of the Center’s faculty. In those cases, it is up to the publisher and the author to negotiate the terms under which the book is made available. The Center’s members always try to work with their publishers to release the materials in a more open, accessible format and in some cases succeed (so that a book may be available under a Creative Commons license); in other cases, the publishers are not ready to take that step. But, I assure you, we do attempt to get them to do it.
Sincerely,
Balfour
Balfour Smith
Program Coordinator
Center for the Study of the Publi
Same is true with the Techdirt blog and others who say "look, my stuff is free, why isn't yours?". That's like a weekend golfer offering to let anyone see them play for free, and arguing he should get the same deal with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
However, this is not a proper analogy. A proper analogy would be if Tiger Woods publicly stated that he supported free viewing of sports, made a big deal of pointing out that football games are not free, but then continued to charge money for people to see him play. This is what the Center for the Study of Public Domain seems to be doing.
Warning: Shameless Self-Promotion ahead. But read it anyway.
The Distributable Educational Material Markup Language (DEMML) is both an XML format for marking up educational material in a highly structured yet incredibly flexible manner and a system for authenticating and distributing that content for independent or shared use throughout the world, even where there is no internet connection. This material is organized and classified to a degree never before attempted, using what turns out to be a rather simple system of encoding the hierarchical tree of all possible educational material right down to the paragraph - or even sentence - level. This allows anyone to easily contribute any amount of material to what will quickly grow to be a vast library of vetted content for all to use. In addition the format facilitates a new level of flexibility in computer based learning by allowing educators to specify what material the student should study while still allowing the student instant access to additional, alternative material as their needs require. Multiple different explanations or presentations can exist for any one fact within any very specific topic. This allows any student at any level to quickly find just the right explanation that helps them most efficiently understand the topic at hand.
To be clear, DEMML is not yet another Computer Based Training (CBT) system. Instead, it is a way of creating a library of educational material in a standardized format which all compatible CBT systems can instantly draw from, with no manual editing whatsoever. Existing CBT software can be modified slightly to make use of this content or modified even further to employ the rich functionality that only DEMML provides - facts, multiple alternate explanations, questions and answers, problems and solutions, multiple alternate explanations for each of those, prerequisites, etc., with very rich metadata about everything. Just as hyperlinking existed long before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and HTML, CBT has been around a long time before DEMML. Before HTML all hyperlinking systems were proprietary and only worked within limited confines. Similarly, current CBT systems are all either proprietary systems or are relatively unavailable to the public. DEMML will be to CBT what HTML and WWW have been to hyperlinking. It will open up a world of possibilities by making education easily available to everyone, everywhere.
“Only when students can easily obtain and master all the material necessary for a course of study entirely on their own will they be free of the barriers that stand between them and knowledge. Only when everyone in the world has free and easy access to all the education they want or need will we be able to overcome the suffering created when the uneducated are left to fend for themselves against the unscrupulous.”
OK, the Taliban don't give a shit about obscenity. That is just a ruse for another wave of controlling the people. Just like it has always been. The Taliban are just afraid of an Arab Spring happening in their area. So they are destroying all means of communication and spreading of information and education.
This is a perfect opportunity for the CIA or other US covert organization to start putting trackers in cell phones and laptops and leave them around for the Taliban to "round up." Then it will be easy to trace them to their hide-out. Sure it will only work for a while but it will be a help. Sure, they may start smashing them where they find them but the assholes are sure to keep some for their personal use.
The icing on the cake will be to put explosives in the cell phones. When the Taliban jackass puts the thing in his pocket, just set it off and blow his dick off. Then let him bleed out slowly while the nearby women jump on his crotch to add to his humiliation.
Normally, I am mister anti-violence, passive guy. But these Taliban jackasses truly deserve to die in the worst way possible.
They still sell clackers at the street fairs here in Tucson, AZ. When I mention to the locals about how I thought clackers were banned, everyone looks at me as if I am crazy. Tucson is very "Live and let your children break their forearms."
This is not a change in language. It is a fad of using a particular vocal style. There is a considerable difference.
I have actually been noticing this irritating vocal style myself. I think it sounds a bit snotty and have attributed it to sorority girls and former sorority girls. A perfect example of how this vocal style sounds is the Grammar Girl podcast (yeah, Google it yourself). It is also a perfect example of how one can adopt a fad vocal style while still adhering to strict usage of a language.
Walled gardens work and sell because the people are uneducated. Educated people want more control of their lives, whether it be on the computer or off. We can bitch and moan all we want. But until we work to educate the populace then we will always get the same result.
I have been using a Tablet PC (Note: capital 'T') for taking notes in class since I started back to school in 2005. I actually owned it for a few years before that. Yes, they cost more than an iPad or an Android tablet but you are going to need a real laptop anyway so you are actually saving about $500 by not buying a useless (in this context) toy. I started with an Acer model but now have a Fujitsu Lifebook T4310. I can write on the screen using a stylus, in handwriting as tiny as any I would write on paper. If I make a mistake I just flip the stylus end for end, "erase" my mistake and keep going, just like a pencil but much faster. I can easily switch between different colors of pen in just one tap, something that you can't do with a regular pen (except those cool four color pens, I love those). However, in contrast to using a pen and paper, I can quickly and easily drag to make more room for more notes between previously written notes. I can quickly select text and move it around to make more room or make more sense. My Fujitsu also has a capacitive touch screen so I can easily just tap with my finger and scroll the screen around to any section of the infinitely large page I want. If I run out of room on the right edge of the paper, I just slide the screen over to the left and keep on writing because the page is as big as I need it to be.
In addition, when you are finished taking notes, you can easily search for text within your notes. Something that can't be done with paper. You can also easily convert those handwritten notes into text. Sure it isn't perfect but it is better than my typing accuracy and that is good enough for me. Later, you can flesh out your notes by pasting pictures or embedding whole files right there on the page. If you want, you can record the audio or video while you are taking notes. Then, later, you can replay that audio and OneNote will automatically highlight the notes you took as that part was being recorded. Or you can select your note and it will play the audio or video from around when you took that note so you can add more info to that note if necessary.
Finally, when it comes time to write research papers, I use OneNote to keep track of all my research notes and then use it to build an outline for my paper. Now getting that into Word is an absolute mess (MS totally dropped the ball on this one) so I just copy and paste the plain text of what I need to move over to the actual paper, but everything else is like a student's dream.
I have seen students, and even professors, trying to use an iPad to take notes in class or in lectures and it is ridiculous. They spend all their time messing with the screens and windows, switching between one tiny window and another, calling up the stupid screen keyboard and closing it down. Over the course of the lecture it seems they get maybe a hundred words of notes typed in. In an HOUR. Meanwhile, I am handwriting notes faster than most of the other students who are using pencil and paper. Plus, my notes are more useful to me after class.
All in all, I personally believe that every student should be issued a Tablet PC with OneNote. It is the most powerful note taking and paper writing tool ever.
If you think I am just a plant for Microsoft (and I know most Slashdotters will assume anyone saying anything positive about MS is being paid to do so) then you haven't read my rants on what used to be the Microsoft newsgroups. I've damned near been banned a few times. I just know a good tool when I see it and OneNote has proven so helpful to me that I put up with the rest of the MS crap just to keep using it. Now THAT is saying something.
Dick Tracy's TV wrist-watch was used as prior art in a patent case. Though any beginner's book on patents will tell you that you can't patent an "idea" people do it all the time. However, if that "idea" has prior art, even in fiction, it cannot be patented. However, the implementation of an idea is a separate matter. One can still patent how to make a TV so small that it could fit into a wrist-watch.
The problem arises when someone patents the "idea" of doing something by using a very vague patent and then someone comes along later and figures out how to actually implement that idea. The latter inventor is legally bound to license the first patent unless they can invalidate it. While prior-art seems to be the favored method of invalidating patents, it seems to me that the obviousness test should be used more often for these vague, "idea" patents. Who gives a crap whether there were ever any examples of a tablet computer in prior art. Everyone knows that has been an end goal for ages. A computer you can hold in your hand and do stuff with that is as flat as a magazine. Duh! That's not innovation. The innovation is in how you get it done.
Gene Ruth, a research director at Gartner, said generally he's not heard of a problem with DVD longevity. And, while he admits that a DVD on a car dashboard could be in trouble, the medium has generally had a good track record.
There goes Gartner's credibility, right out the window.
I have found I prefer Repligo Reader to EZPDF. The latter may be better now, but I preferred Repligo at the time I tried them both, several months ago.
I suggest Repligo Reader for reading.PDFs on any android device. It is the only one I have found that allows you to add annotations just like Acrobat Pro does so you can share the file between your device and your desktop.
For e-ink this is what I would recommend. However, I prefer Repligo Reader for reading.PDF files. You can mark up the document with highlights, notes, drawings, etc. just as you can with Acrobat Pro. Plus, these annotations are put into the file using the same format as Acrobat so you can sync your files between your e-reader and your computer and use the exact same file on both. The program has several other features that I think make it the best.PDF reader around.
1. Brand recognition. The iPhone name is huge, and instantly recognizable, especially as the "cool, slick, hip" thing it has been marketed as. Saying "Smartphones can read tattoo ink" is boring and "Charges can read tattoo ink" can be confusing.
2. News people are here to attract you. No matter what your opinion of the phones themselves may be, there's no denying that iPhone breeds more interest than any other.
I call fan-boy on that one. It is not the job of a journalist to achieve or play to "brand recognition." That is, unless all that "journalist" cares about is page hits. The terms "camera phone" and "smart phone" are also instantly recognizable, especially among the potential target audience of such articles. Your sample alternative headlines are obvious straw-men in that they are intentionally devised to appear boring, confusing, and inconsequential. Much more appropriate headlines could easily have been chosen: "New Tattoo Ink Puts a Medical Test Lab Under Your Skin" See, no need to mention the phone at all. If you don't think people are interested in tattoos then you don't get out much. I would venture to guess that more people have spent more money on tattoos than all the iPhones combined. Finally, if the iPhone really breeds more interest (among the readers) then why are Android powered phones overtaking iPhones? Not to mention all the other smartphones out there. Crackberry, anyone?
As I have said many times, iPhones are simply over-hyped status symbols, marketed to those with money to burn and thus, clamored for by those without who wish they had. They are nothing but "buttons" (See "Witness," the movie, the scene where Harrison Ford is first putting on his Amish clothes.) "Buttons," by the way, that lock their owners in to the control of a megalomaniacle organ stealer. Sorry, but I'm not buying into that particular lifestyle choice.
Though I haven't thrown anything or hit anybody, I adamantly agree as well.
I am so sick to death of damn near every mobile tech researcher and every media outlet of any form tying everything to the frikkin' iPhone for no damn good reason. I'm waiting for the headline that says, "iPhone wins Indy 500" just because some driver forgot to take his phone out of his pocket before taking off.
What do they think, that Steve Jobs will reward them with a free iPhone? Or is it that they all fell for the marketing crap that told them they had to have an iPhone in order to be cool, and now they are trying to repair the cognitive dissonance that comes from not actually becoming cool by continuously promoting the very thing that embarrassed them? Could it possibly be that Apple has inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) created the first marketing campaign driven by customer's post-purchase embarrassment and disappointment? Naturally, no one would admit to such. It would confirm that they were wrong and create more intolerable cognitive dissonance.
I have some crazy old IDE drives sitting around that I use for things like storing all the installation files for almost every version of every program I have ever installed. In fact, I have one fired up as I write this. They still work just fine. Sure, they may go bad sooner than other drives - especially if I start running and accessing them all day - because they are older. But I have no worries that any of them will go bad on me just sitting there in the ancient IDE-USB drive enclosure it is sitting in.
I have been dinking around with computers since the days when we had to store our programs on cassette tape. I have continuously finagled all kinds of drive setups to make use of older / cheaper drives. I have never heard of any modern drive going bad just sitting on the shelf. Sure, I guess it is possible for the magnetic field to dissipate over time.This used to happen on some of the very first PC hard drives (does anyone remember RLL and connecting two data cables to each drive?), back in the eighties, but I haven't heard of it happening since. So, you can just run SpinRite on them once a year or so to refresh the magnetization and you are good to go.
Has anyone done any studies of the effects of turning on and off repeatedly? Turning things on is a not infrequent cause of failure.
Even if they have, it is irrelevant to this situation. Remember, one does not turn on a hard drive to archive a major project multiple times per day. Perhaps not even once per day. Only when the project is complete and ready to be archived. Certainly not "repeatedly." Therefore, this is fewer power cycles than a normal hard drive endures. I can only presume that when a reliability test says the drive is on a certain number of hours per day, that they had to turn the thing off during the other hours of the day. Thus, at least one power cycle per day is incorporated into the reliability tests. If I am doing fewer power cycles, then my drives will last longer. Heck, I only turn one drive in my collection on about once a week or so, and only leave it on for a few minutes at a time. So, again, I figure my drives will last a lifetime.
Slashdot Mirror
I just write out an outline of what I want to do in my code first, in English. I put in notes about what tricks I think I can use, etcetera. I use a macro to convert each line of that outline into a comment in the format of the language I am working in. Then I write my code between all the comments. Voila! Commented code.
I find it a big help so I don't forget why I need to do what where.
Besides, when you start off by just writing out a line of code, your brain gets locked in to that line of code and you tend to write everything else around that first thought as expressed in code. When you are writing out an outline in English, it is psychologically easier to change your plans as the outline gets fleshed out. Your brain doesn't have to worry about syntax errors. It is just words. You can easily rearrange them.
Not that I am a professional developer, but I think it is just stupid to write code and then think you can come back later and remember everything about that code to put in appropriate documentation. Besides, when you force someone to put in documentation after the fact, how can you trust that they aren't just writing BS to fill up space to make you think they are doing their job. If they don't want to document their code then you should probably find someone else. They may be awesome at writing elegant code but what good is it if it can't be maintained? It becomes a minefield as soon as they quit for a "better" job.
I am a former IT guy. I could easily install Windows 7. I even already own the install disk. But I plan to upgrade my hardware "real soon now" so I am waiting till then. I have a lot of installed software and I do not feel like installing it twice if I don't have to.
However, this is not a proper analogy. A proper analogy would be if Tiger Woods publicly stated that he supported free viewing of sports, made a big deal of pointing out that football games are not free, but then continued to charge money for people to see him play. This is what the Center for the Study of Public Domain seems to be doing.
The Distributable Educational Material Markup Language (DEMML) is both an XML format for marking up educational material in a highly structured yet incredibly flexible manner and a system for authenticating and distributing that content for independent or shared use throughout the world, even where there is no internet connection. This material is organized and classified to a degree never before attempted, using what turns out to be a rather simple system of encoding the hierarchical tree of all possible educational material right down to the paragraph - or even sentence - level. This allows anyone to easily contribute any amount of material to what will quickly grow to be a vast library of vetted content for all to use. In addition the format facilitates a new level of flexibility in computer based learning by allowing educators to specify what material the student should study while still allowing the student instant access to additional, alternative material as their needs require. Multiple different explanations or presentations can exist for any one fact within any very specific topic. This allows any student at any level to quickly find just the right explanation that helps them most efficiently understand the topic at hand.
To be clear, DEMML is not yet another Computer Based Training (CBT) system. Instead, it is a way of creating a library of educational material in a standardized format which all compatible CBT systems can instantly draw from, with no manual editing whatsoever. Existing CBT software can be modified slightly to make use of this content or modified even further to employ the rich functionality that only DEMML provides - facts, multiple alternate explanations, questions and answers, problems and solutions, multiple alternate explanations for each of those, prerequisites, etc., with very rich metadata about everything. Just as hyperlinking existed long before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and HTML, CBT has been around a long time before DEMML. Before HTML all hyperlinking systems were proprietary and only worked within limited confines. Similarly, current CBT systems are all either proprietary systems or are relatively unavailable to the public. DEMML will be to CBT what HTML and WWW have been to hyperlinking. It will open up a world of possibilities by making education easily available to everyone, everywhere.
Learn more at www.demml.org
Did he make a tiny air vent for a tiny Lego bird to drop a tiny Lego biscotti down?
OK, the Taliban don't give a shit about obscenity. That is just a ruse for another wave of controlling the people. Just like it has always been. The Taliban are just afraid of an Arab Spring happening in their area. So they are destroying all means of communication and spreading of information and education.
This is a perfect opportunity for the CIA or other US covert organization to start putting trackers in cell phones and laptops and leave them around for the Taliban to "round up." Then it will be easy to trace them to their hide-out. Sure it will only work for a while but it will be a help. Sure, they may start smashing them where they find them but the assholes are sure to keep some for their personal use.
The icing on the cake will be to put explosives in the cell phones. When the Taliban jackass puts the thing in his pocket, just set it off and blow his dick off. Then let him bleed out slowly while the nearby women jump on his crotch to add to his humiliation.
Normally, I am mister anti-violence, passive guy. But these Taliban jackasses truly deserve to die in the worst way possible.
They are waiting till another disaster happens so they can vote on it while everyone is distracted. Mark my words.
They still sell clackers at the street fairs here in Tucson, AZ. When I mention to the locals about how I thought clackers were banned, everyone looks at me as if I am crazy. Tucson is very "Live and let your children break their forearms."
Red Herring Alert!
This is not a change in language. It is a fad of using a particular vocal style. There is a considerable difference.
I have actually been noticing this irritating vocal style myself. I think it sounds a bit snotty and have attributed it to sorority girls and former sorority girls. A perfect example of how this vocal style sounds is the Grammar Girl podcast (yeah, Google it yourself). It is also a perfect example of how one can adopt a fad vocal style while still adhering to strict usage of a language.
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
Walled gardens work and sell because the people are uneducated. Educated people want more control of their lives, whether it be on the computer or off. We can bitch and moan all we want. But until we work to educate the populace then we will always get the same result.
I agree with Tragek.
I have been using a Tablet PC (Note: capital 'T') for taking notes in class since I started back to school in 2005. I actually owned it for a few years before that. Yes, they cost more than an iPad or an Android tablet but you are going to need a real laptop anyway so you are actually saving about $500 by not buying a useless (in this context) toy. I started with an Acer model but now have a Fujitsu Lifebook T4310. I can write on the screen using a stylus, in handwriting as tiny as any I would write on paper. If I make a mistake I just flip the stylus end for end, "erase" my mistake and keep going, just like a pencil but much faster. I can easily switch between different colors of pen in just one tap, something that you can't do with a regular pen (except those cool four color pens, I love those). However, in contrast to using a pen and paper, I can quickly and easily drag to make more room for more notes between previously written notes. I can quickly select text and move it around to make more room or make more sense. My Fujitsu also has a capacitive touch screen so I can easily just tap with my finger and scroll the screen around to any section of the infinitely large page I want. If I run out of room on the right edge of the paper, I just slide the screen over to the left and keep on writing because the page is as big as I need it to be.
In addition, when you are finished taking notes, you can easily search for text within your notes. Something that can't be done with paper. You can also easily convert those handwritten notes into text. Sure it isn't perfect but it is better than my typing accuracy and that is good enough for me. Later, you can flesh out your notes by pasting pictures or embedding whole files right there on the page. If you want, you can record the audio or video while you are taking notes. Then, later, you can replay that audio and OneNote will automatically highlight the notes you took as that part was being recorded. Or you can select your note and it will play the audio or video from around when you took that note so you can add more info to that note if necessary.
Finally, when it comes time to write research papers, I use OneNote to keep track of all my research notes and then use it to build an outline for my paper. Now getting that into Word is an absolute mess (MS totally dropped the ball on this one) so I just copy and paste the plain text of what I need to move over to the actual paper, but everything else is like a student's dream.
I have seen students, and even professors, trying to use an iPad to take notes in class or in lectures and it is ridiculous. They spend all their time messing with the screens and windows, switching between one tiny window and another, calling up the stupid screen keyboard and closing it down. Over the course of the lecture it seems they get maybe a hundred words of notes typed in. In an HOUR. Meanwhile, I am handwriting notes faster than most of the other students who are using pencil and paper. Plus, my notes are more useful to me after class.
All in all, I personally believe that every student should be issued a Tablet PC with OneNote. It is the most powerful note taking and paper writing tool ever.
If you think I am just a plant for Microsoft (and I know most Slashdotters will assume anyone saying anything positive about MS is being paid to do so) then you haven't read my rants on what used to be the Microsoft newsgroups. I've damned near been banned a few times. I just know a good tool when I see it and OneNote has proven so helpful to me that I put up with the rest of the MS crap just to keep using it. Now THAT is saying something.
Dick Tracy's TV wrist-watch was used as prior art in a patent case. Though any beginner's book on patents will tell you that you can't patent an "idea" people do it all the time. However, if that "idea" has prior art, even in fiction, it cannot be patented. However, the implementation of an idea is a separate matter. One can still patent how to make a TV so small that it could fit into a wrist-watch.
The problem arises when someone patents the "idea" of doing something by using a very vague patent and then someone comes along later and figures out how to actually implement that idea. The latter inventor is legally bound to license the first patent unless they can invalidate it. While prior-art seems to be the favored method of invalidating patents, it seems to me that the obviousness test should be used more often for these vague, "idea" patents. Who gives a crap whether there were ever any examples of a tablet computer in prior art. Everyone knows that has been an end goal for ages. A computer you can hold in your hand and do stuff with that is as flat as a magazine. Duh! That's not innovation. The innovation is in how you get it done.
There goes Gartner's credibility, right out the window.
I have found I prefer Repligo Reader to EZPDF. The latter may be better now, but I preferred Repligo at the time I tried them both, several months ago.
I suggest Repligo Reader for reading .PDFs on any android device. It is the only one I have found that allows you to add annotations just like Acrobat Pro does so you can share the file between your device and your desktop.
For e-ink this is what I would recommend. However, I prefer Repligo Reader for reading .PDF files. You can mark up the document with highlights, notes, drawings, etc. just as you can with Acrobat Pro. Plus, these annotations are put into the file using the same format as Acrobat so you can sync your files between your e-reader and your computer and use the exact same file on both. The program has several other features that I think make it the best .PDF reader around.
Being libertarians, I would hope they wouldn't expect anyone to come help them when the hurricanes and pirates come to visit.
EXACTLY!
I can think of two, very good reasons:
1. Brand recognition. The iPhone name is huge, and instantly recognizable, especially as the "cool, slick, hip" thing it has been marketed as. Saying "Smartphones can read tattoo ink" is boring and "Charges can read tattoo ink" can be confusing. 2. News people are here to attract you. No matter what your opinion of the phones themselves may be, there's no denying that iPhone breeds more interest than any other.
I call fan-boy on that one. It is not the job of a journalist to achieve or play to "brand recognition." That is, unless all that "journalist" cares about is page hits. The terms "camera phone" and "smart phone" are also instantly recognizable, especially among the potential target audience of such articles. Your sample alternative headlines are obvious straw-men in that they are intentionally devised to appear boring, confusing, and inconsequential. Much more appropriate headlines could easily have been chosen: "New Tattoo Ink Puts a Medical Test Lab Under Your Skin" See, no need to mention the phone at all. If you don't think people are interested in tattoos then you don't get out much. I would venture to guess that more people have spent more money on tattoos than all the iPhones combined. Finally, if the iPhone really breeds more interest (among the readers) then why are Android powered phones overtaking iPhones? Not to mention all the other smartphones out there. Crackberry, anyone?
As I have said many times, iPhones are simply over-hyped status symbols, marketed to those with money to burn and thus, clamored for by those without who wish they had. They are nothing but "buttons" (See "Witness," the movie, the scene where Harrison Ford is first putting on his Amish clothes.) "Buttons," by the way, that lock their owners in to the control of a megalomaniacle organ stealer. Sorry, but I'm not buying into that particular lifestyle choice.
Depending on the size of what you caught:
...or...
A) Boy, your arms must be full!
B) You seriously need to start using protection!
Though I haven't thrown anything or hit anybody, I adamantly agree as well.
I am so sick to death of damn near every mobile tech researcher and every media outlet of any form tying everything to the frikkin' iPhone for no damn good reason. I'm waiting for the headline that says, "iPhone wins Indy 500" just because some driver forgot to take his phone out of his pocket before taking off.
What do they think, that Steve Jobs will reward them with a free iPhone? Or is it that they all fell for the marketing crap that told them they had to have an iPhone in order to be cool, and now they are trying to repair the cognitive dissonance that comes from not actually becoming cool by continuously promoting the very thing that embarrassed them? Could it possibly be that Apple has inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) created the first marketing campaign driven by customer's post-purchase embarrassment and disappointment? Naturally, no one would admit to such. It would confirm that they were wrong and create more intolerable cognitive dissonance.
It's not as if they are fruit or anything.
I have some crazy old IDE drives sitting around that I use for things like storing all the installation files for almost every version of every program I have ever installed. In fact, I have one fired up as I write this. They still work just fine. Sure, they may go bad sooner than other drives - especially if I start running and accessing them all day - because they are older. But I have no worries that any of them will go bad on me just sitting there in the ancient IDE-USB drive enclosure it is sitting in.
I have been dinking around with computers since the days when we had to store our programs on cassette tape. I have continuously finagled all kinds of drive setups to make use of older / cheaper drives. I have never heard of any modern drive going bad just sitting on the shelf. Sure, I guess it is possible for the magnetic field to dissipate over time.This used to happen on some of the very first PC hard drives (does anyone remember RLL and connecting two data cables to each drive?), back in the eighties, but I haven't heard of it happening since. So, you can just run SpinRite on them once a year or so to refresh the magnetization and you are good to go.
Has anyone done any studies of the effects of turning on and off repeatedly? Turning things on is a not infrequent cause of failure.
Even if they have, it is irrelevant to this situation. Remember, one does not turn on a hard drive to archive a major project multiple times per day. Perhaps not even once per day. Only when the project is complete and ready to be archived. Certainly not "repeatedly." Therefore, this is fewer power cycles than a normal hard drive endures. I can only presume that when a reliability test says the drive is on a certain number of hours per day, that they had to turn the thing off during the other hours of the day. Thus, at least one power cycle per day is incorporated into the reliability tests. If I am doing fewer power cycles, then my drives will last longer. Heck, I only turn one drive in my collection on about once a week or so, and only leave it on for a few minutes at a time. So, again, I figure my drives will last a lifetime.