Self-stocking internet fridge faces a delivery come down In the future, I will keep a vibrator in my shoes. This will allow me to walk down the street without having to hold it in my hands or stick it into my ear. My satnav smartphone, that is. With the help of Hi-Tec’s Navigator, vibrating pods in my footwear will guide me left and right along my walking route without recourse to …
I think Ken Hagan has come across some of the trendy ones.
Designed ( perhaps coincidentally) to barely be deep (concave) enough to hold a smear of any edible fluid.
If not actually designed to fit into a dishwasher they certainly do seem to come from the same school of design that finds form more interesting than function.
> And so it will be for everything devised by analysts who assume everything will always be in a specific place and do as it’s told
Let's face it, when software is tested all that happens is that some geek, somewhere, inputs a valid field, command or option and checks that the resulting output, action or message appears. Once that has happened: once that has happened the stuff gets shipped,
Not only is it far too complicated to test all combinations, including checking for reasonable reactions to incorrect conditions, but those throw up a distinct possibility - nay: certainrt - that something won't work. Thus delaying the release date or (more likely) an update to version 2 that half the idiot purchasers won't be able to install and the other half won't hear about.
Luckily, the Marketing Department have a solution. They ship loads of crappy products as free samples to dishonest and greedy "reviewers" who then write glowing "independent" reports about how wonderful the thing is. And we all believe them and assume that if stuff (as described above) doesn't work, it's our fault or failure.
As for delivery by drone: I foresee a resurgence in the popularity of chimneys.
Luckily, the Marketing Department have a solution. They ship loads of crappy products as free samples to dishonest and greedy "reviewers" who then write glowing "independent" reports about how wonderful the thing is. And we all believe them and assume that if stuff (as described above) doesn't work, it's our fault or failure.
"it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words – and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded – their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws."
"They ship loads of crappy products as free samples to dishonest and greedy "reviewers" who then write glowing "independent" reports about how wonderful the thing is."
That Gadget Show on C5 (is it still going?) used to be bad at that. The worst review something would generally get would be 3 out of 5. Almost nothing ever scored zero presumably because they were worried they'd never get test kit again. That coupled with the irritatingly psychotic enthusiam of the 40 something presenters acting like teenagers: "And this week Jase tests KETTLES! WOO HOO!" are the reasons I gave up watching.
"Not only is it far too complicated to test all combinations, [,,,]"
Reminds me of being drafted in to a development department for a comms processor. A developer had tested his terminal code and pronounced it satisfactory. Then I tried it with some previous products' known failings.
Sure enough - you could backspace to before the start of the buffer and it crashed. Input lengths that were chosen to be round the point where a new buffer was chained also caused crashes.
Reminds me of being drafted in to a development department for a comms processor.
A real software tester* I knew always started his test run by whacking both hands, flat, on the keyboard. In an (un)surprising number of cases, this was enough to bugger up the software being tested.
* I can personally attest to this species having existed, but they have, alas, seem to have gone extinct.
1. I think you're talking about one extreme end of the bell curve. Most developers are willing to at least test for a reasonable number of input conditions before shipping.
2. Not always fair to blame the developers, either. I happen to know of a shop where EVERY release of EVERY product is a fire being put out, regardless of how much the devs encourage the boss to schedule reasonable amounts of time. Then when problems come up, the devs are blamed for insufficient testing.
Me, I use a Garmin GPS in my car. I bought "last year's" model and applied the savings to a lifetime of free map upgrades, and traffic monitoring.
True, it only updates once a year. Fortunately I'm clever enough to check to see if there's a road before I turn onto it... I installed a nice female English voice onto it, which for some reason I find comforting. (That's "English" as in "from England".) I derive endless amusement from her calling the on- or off-ramp a "slip road", and other English phrasings.
I often wonder if some quirks of pronunciation are due to the language package. For instance, she correctly pronounces "Watt Avenue" if we're on the freeway (oh, sorry, I should say "motorway" :), but the second I hit the off-ramp -- I mean, slip road -- she starts saying "Wah Avenue". Off the freeway it's wrong, on the freeway (ANY freeway) it's correct. It's... actually a bit surrealistic.
Anyway, quirks and drawbacks notwithstanding, I'm happy to not be dependent on a data connection, and to be using a product from a specialist. And I can always use Google maps as a backup if the Garmin fails me.
I installed a nice female English voice onto it, which for some reason I find comforting. (That's "English" as in "from England".) I derive endless amusement from her calling the on- or off-ramp a "slip road", and other English phrasings.
Ours is set to Afrikaans. It's far more different from Dutch than English is from American, in grammar, vocabulary as well as pronunciation, but for us it's perfectly comprehensible in general, and driving instructions are a very limited set of sentences anyway.
For maps I've changed to Openstreetmap.
"[...] and driving instructions are a very limited set of sentences anyway.[...].
In England it used to be if you overshot your turning off a major road - you could usually turn left at successive junctions to correct the error. In South Africa you had to turn back - as major roads outside of towns rarely had those sort of matrix interconnections.
That probably explained why one moonless night cresting a hill on the motorway there was a sense of something vaguely ahead on the downhill side. Turned out to be a massive truck and trailer doing a U-turn across all lanes in both directions. Sideways on there wasn't a glimmer of light from its forward facing warning lights on top of its cab - and the headlights were off too.
An English ex-pat colleague announced one day that the authorities had kindly marked the route from the Pretoria office all the way to the Jo'burg office. Testing her theory it proved correct - "Follow the 'Hou Links' markings on the road" she said.
Indeed at every road junction taking the indicated left lane was a perfect way marker.
**Hou Links = Keep Left
Haven't heard that particular one myself, though I've heard her quietly have conniptions if I go off-track and have to make multiple turns to get back on, such as stopping for petrol. But I believe it. (Also not many roundabouts here in the U.S., and we call them "traffic circles".)
I bought a Garmin because, working for a flight simulator company, I've seen the quality of their airplane GPSes and hoped some would rub off on their consumer products. *shrug* it's good, not great, though far better than stories I've heard of TomTom. But I do miss certain features such as the ability to favor freeways, or eschew them; I will probably look into going back to Magellan next time.
For maps I've changed to Openstreetmap.
I've found two showstopper fuckups that make that shit useless for navigation:
1) There's no consistent road typing, so the only routing cue is the speed limit. This means that given the choice of a 50mph limited dual carriageway or a derestricted (60mph) country lane running parallel, the navigation software goes for the lane, despite the fact that you'll be pushed to achieve an average speed of 30mph along it.
2) The number of places where someone's drive on road A and someone else's on parallel road B are allegedly a road connecting the two is very scary indeed. Too many "contributors" who think 2+2=5 I guess.
We've got a Garmin and TomTom sitting unused in a drawer, the usual bunch of mobile phones. And a Pioneer built into our car.
The Pioneer is sometimes worse than useless; it costs more to update the maps than buying a whole new device and even when the map is correct ( not as often as it should be within a couple of years of purchase) its directions are awful. Sometimes it will send us in the complete opposite direction to our destination. And its traffic awareness is lousy.
The TomTom is good, and came with free map updates. But the traffic information subscription can only be renewed by buying a whole package of other stuff, that we don't want. Which is really annoying ( and expensive for stuff we don't want to own).
The Garmin is OK. Just OK. Better than the Pioneer ( but then a kids' drawing and a toy compass would be better than the Pioneer.). Not as accurate or as reliable as the TomTom.
Sometimes we sit in the car with the Pioneer droning on and two passengers using phones, trying to get to the place that the Pioneer has failed to take us to. Yesterday it tried to make us turn left into a footpath and wouldn't redirect to any other route. The phones took us 200m or so up the road to a decent left turn.
is the idea of a hands-free haptic navigation device. Not sure how you'd configure it, but for someone like these people, such a device that they could place in their shoes to guide them could really open doors for them.
It's been tried attached to a belt.
Yep, and attached to a stick, and head mounted.
Still, having something down at foot level is a different approach again, and is another way of freeing their hands for use with other tasks.
Drone arrives to deliver bag of cat biscuits.
Cats play with drone and it ends up as battered heap of junk on the floor.
Cats slash bag of biscuits open (I'm sure ths inspiration for Wolverine and his adamantine claws came from a cat owner as byproduct of cats is scratches & looking like you self harm) and happily eat food, and wait for next combo food and play installment.
> Cats slash bag of biscuits open (I'm sure ths inspiration for Wolverine and his adamantine claws came from a cat owner as byproduct of cats is scratches & looking like you self harm) and happily eat food, and wait for next combo food and play installment
Never happen. Once the bag was opened, it would take one sniff and decide that it doesn't eat that brand anymore even though it's been their favourite for weeks. Seriously, their mates are probably around the corner ROTFLMAO at our feeble attempts to guess what to order next time.
"Once the bag was opened, it would take one sniff and decide that it doesn't eat that brand anymore"
My two have finally settled on a brand and flavour they've been happy with now for over a year. With them the feline idiosyncrasy is the arrangement of the food in the bowl. It must be piled as a perfect cone, like a scale model of Mt Fuji, in the exact centre of the bowl, before they will consider eating it. If the food is pushed to the sides of the bowl, with the centre hollow (as it gets after they've eaten from it), that's an empty bowl as far as my cats are concerned, even if there's still plenty of food there. A quick repiling of the food back in the centre is all that's required to get them to continue eating it!
To all the posters complaining of picky feline appetites: I use Mrs. Noble's Rules for Cats. She was a lady of my acquaintance who rescued and fostered numerous cats in her time.
1. Ain't never found no cat skeleton up no tree. (If it got there, it will get down eventually).
2. Ain't never found no cat skeleton next to no full bowl of food. (Picky eaters are made, not born).
My cat happily survives on decent-quality dry kibble, with occasional additions of once-live fresh food, as opportunity and initiative (his) coincide.
Unfortunately, a friend of mine has disproved rule 1. A neighbour's cat had been lost for a while when my friend noticed an increasingly strong and unpleasant smell in their garden. They tracked it down to a tree and discovered said cat stuck in the fork of two branches, very thoroughly dead. They suspect it had fallen and got wedged there.
Unfortuantely, I can prove BOTH of them wrong.
1. The skeleton may not be UP the tree, but guaranteed it'll be at the FOOT of the tree once the cat loses consciousness, falls, and can't reorient itself to avoid the head-first impact. Plus plenty of cats have been found stuck in more spacious "up there" places like trestles.
2. You won't see the cat skeleton next to the full bowl of food because you simply won't find the CAT. It doesn't just sit there; it heads off on its own damn self. Remember, unlike dogs, cats have an independent streak and will do their own thing if they don't agree with you.
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