Obligatory XKCD reference:
http://xkcd.com/397/
1068 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2009
all the non-productive consumers really are a large part of the problem. I wouldn't say they're the poor, though. It's more the lawyers, marketers, PR, politicians, around 50% of accountants and 90% of economists, and similar non-productive or minimally-productive positions that ought to be eliminated.
Not violently, though, they should be taught an honest trade and rehabilitated back into society.
That's not the exchange they're making. "Homeland Security" (what a misnomer) know there's an infinitesimally tiny chance of someone actually trying to smuggle a bomb through the checkpoint and an even smaller chance they wouldn't already have been detected prior to the scan.
The point of the security theatre business is to keep people afraid that they might actually be necessary, thereby ensuring a continued stream of business and to provide excuses for any demands they care to make. If people are scared enough they'll submit to anything, goes the thinking.
I, too, would opt for the pat-down instead. I'd probably pepper it with comments like "Yeah, that's good," "Squeeze a bit harder right there" and "Can you teach my wife how to do that?" Might as well make it as uncomfortable for them as for me.
Their 3G coverage is just as patchy down here in Australia too. In a few too many areas, including right where I work, I have to use 2G to get any kind of reliable signal. When my contract is up in a couple of months I think it'll be time to look at a new service provider.
A phone that's been out less than a year is venerable? What's a year-and-a-half old phone considered? Doddering?
Most people, most techies even, don't buy a new phone every three months even if tech media people do. Seems to me the Nexus One is still one of the most powerful phones on the market even if it's no longer THE most powerful.
All that aside, I look forward eagerly to Gingerbread, I can't wait to see what it brings to my phone.
and found it still too big and slow,as well as rendering pages somewhat ugly. I've already uninstalled it, which is a shame really as I have been waiting to put Adblock plus on my phone. I actually really like the default Webkit-based browser and wouldn't see a need for mobile Firefox at all if it were not for all the damn advertising. It's slowly driving me insane given I've become used to an ad-free web on the desktop.
I've often wondered what I'd do if my work tried to give me a phone. Guaranteed, it'd be something shitty like a Windows phone.
I couldn't stand having something like this as my only phone, and I wouldn't want to carry two phones. I think I'd have to divert calls on that number over to my personal mobile and leave the work phone switched off, in a drawer somewhere.
There are cheap-as-chips low-end phones running Android, and at the other end there are the Nexus One, HTC Desire, HTC Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy S, etc - all of which are considerably better than the iPhone 3GS and some of which are better than the iPhone 4. I've even seen video of Android running on an iPhone, although I have no guarantees of the vid's authenticity.
Use whatever phone you want and whatever OS you want, just remember Android already has the whole spectrum covered.
I reckon the reason for the decline is games have all done a fine job of simulating the boring parts of a race - pit stops, going round and round and round the track - and failed to put in more of what people really look for in motor sports: the crashes! Put in obstacles and have cars smashing themselves to bits on them all around you as you drive, make sure the crashes are spectacular and I for one would find these games way more fun.
While I'm quite happy with my Android phone and plan on sticking with Android for the foreseeable future, I must agree with your points. More competition in the mobile space can only benefit everybody, and this is one arena where it looks like Microsoft won't be able to leverage their desktop monopoly to squeeze out competitors.
Quite honestly - so effin' what? Holding a copyright comes with responsibilities as well as rights. You have to police your own copyrights, and if that's too difficult and/or expensive, then maybe it's not worth keeping the copyright. Or at least not keeping it for the whole eternity-plus-a-billion-years that copyrights last these days.
are complete shite. Where I work, there are a bunch of research scientists who need to connect their laptops to various elderly (sorry, apparently I mean *legacy*) measurement devices, and of course none of the laptops we're allowed to buy have serial ports. I have to light black candles and sacrifice chickens to dark gods to get those bloody USB-to-serial adapters to kind-of, maybe work, some of the time, if the wind's favourable.
that some decent Android based tablets are finally starting to appear, but ye gods! The price! People who want an Android tablet are not the same as the ones who buy iPads. We won't pay fashion-statement prices. When something like this costs half of what they're currently asking or less, I'd buy one. The price they're asking today? Not a chance.
This is the kind of tablet I've been waiting for since the iPad was announced - basically a Nexus One writ large. I can't believe it's taken manufacturers so long to realise nobody's going to buy and Android 1.5 or 1.6 device. Now to find out what they're going to charge for it - no I am not willing to pay iPad-style prices.