Posts by Joe Desbonnet

Cost of nuclear power should not be measured in "deaths"

I don't dispute much of what you say in this article. I too am cautiously pro-nuclear. But I find that many in the pro-nuclear camp like to quote the number of deaths caused by accidents. That's like gauging the quality of a financial product based on the number of people it manages to bankrupt. The true cost of nuclear power must factor in the economic and quality of life damage caused by accidents. And unfortunately the supposedly once in a millennium accidents seem to be occurring once every few decades.

3D printing with paper

MCor Technologies has an interesting take on this: 3D printing with regular paper as the working material:

http://www.mcortechnologies.com/

Samsung misleading names

Samsung seem to be in the habit of putting misleading labels on their products. Eg their "LED TVs" -- which of course are *LCD* TVs with LED backlights -- but try telling that to the Currys salesdroid who was convinced that each pixel was actually an individual LED.

The Big Android Elephant in the Nokia Board Room

I've been a big Nokia fan since ~ 1996. One brief interlude with a Motorola around 2002 but came running back to Nokia begging for forgiveness.

Nokia do make great hardware. The N95 specs when it came out (and still is) fantastic. What phone in 2007 had a accelerometer, TV output, IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, FM radio, light sensor, front video conf camera, high quality main camera, flash, LAPTOP TETHERING CAPABILITY, VoIP, standard head pone jack?

Apart from the obvious lack of touch screen, a slower CPU and chronic lack of RAM (a real Nokia signature) it actually ticks many boxes my new Android based HTC Magic does not.

But it runs Symbian. And Symbian is crap. I've tried to develop apps (in a hobby capacity) with Symbian. It's not easy. In comparison, within one hour of the delivery guy dropping in my HTC Magic, I had installed and configured a development environment and written my first "Hello World" app. In another hour I had useful stuff written and working on my phone. Android is sooo much easier to develop software for. And that is the key difference. A rich market place of apps. Symbian will never have that.

It seems Nokia is internally very much conflicted right now. I've heard stories that their engineering people generally hate Symbian. It seems to be only the top brass that are trumpeting Symbian... kinda reminds me of Comic Alli ... Sadam's media spokesman during GW2... always a tad on the optimistic side...

So what next for Nokia? A hodgepodge of different OSs? Android or other Linux? Or, God forbid, Windows Mobile? Sure would be fun to be a fly on the Nokia board room wall.... or maybe a Cupcake, Do(ugh)nut or Eclare on the table :-)

Non-linear pricing

I have no problems with download limits, or pay per MB pricing. But what really galls me is a pricing system where the first 1GB is say EUR 10, the next GB is EUR 1000. Normally when you consume in bulk you get discount. With mobile companies, it like it's a rationing system.

Them modern units....

"80 degrees Fahrenheit "..... what would that be in Gas Mark ?

Apollo Guidance Computer software used SI units

"We landed on the moon using feet and inches! How many times have we landed on the moon using meters? Case closed."

Actually the Apollo Guidance Computer did it's computations in SI units [1]. The Apollo astronauts who were all pilots couldn't get their head around the metric units so it was decided that the instruments would dynamically convert and display in imperial units.

[1] "Digital Apollo" published by MIT Press.

Not available on Vodafone Ireland

No mention of HTC Magic on Vodafone Ireland's website. As usual, we're last (and pay the most).