Comment Re:Better QWERTY Phone? (Score 1) 291
I haven't been able to find any of those in a while. The only ones I've found in the last 8-12 months have been for 7" and bigger tablets.
I haven't been able to find any of those in a while. The only ones I've found in the last 8-12 months have been for 7" and bigger tablets.
There is another option now: buy a Cyanogen phone. The best one is the OnePlus One and is very hard to come by, but it will get easier.
Cyanogen only lags behind mainline Android by weeks or a few months at most, and more than makes up for that with all the extra features you get. It's incredibly customizable and has lots of privacy enhancing tools. I hope we start seeing a lot more phones shipping with it.
Okay, so the question becomes: What is a better QWERTY phone? He mentions T-Mobile by name, but even better if it runs on all networks. The single requirement is a hardware QWERTY keyboard.
Yeah, I know, almost no one uses a hardware keyboard anymore, it's all on-screen and autocorrect now. But some of us don't like on-screen keyboards and some people do more than poke the Like/+1/retweat button.
The reason is that the old hardware they use in these things only gets support from the manufacturer for older versions of Android. They provide something called a Board Support Package, or BSP, that is basically drivers for the hardware but is also tied to certain versions of the OS.
Cyanogenmod normally doesn't have a problem with this and just ports the drivers to newer versions, or finds newer drivers from other vendors that are compatible. Cheap shitty phones don't exactly have the best people working on them or much motivation to even try and not be shit, so your only real hope is that Cyanogen helps you out.
Software isn't free, even if it's open source. If you want quality you do, unfortunately, have to pay for it. Pay for it in money (a higher end Android phone like a Nexus 5) or in time (fixing it yourself, installing Cyanogen etc.)
Cheap phones carry more crapware precisely because they are cheap. They money they didn't make on the hardware is clawed back through the crapware.
Here's my latest Snowden / Binney 2016 bumper sticker art, suitable for printing at 2.75" x 5" cropped size plus a
PNG
Vector (LibreOffice Draw)
This is my original artwork, CC BY-NC-SA, so print a pile and spread them around if you like. I use psprint.com, and I recommend searching "vinyl bumper stickers" on DuckDuckGo, where psprint is usually running a coupon in the search results. I haven't received the color proofs for this version yet, but these are corrected from a previous batch and should be pretty good.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with DuckDuckGo or PSPrint, and Snowden/Binney is (perhaps unfortunately) neither a real nor a realistic campaign. This is just for giggles.
Most games used the video vertical blank for synchronization, so ended up running too fast on NTSC displays. Rarely it created problems on faster CPUs but mostly an 060 Amiga will run games just fine.
At this point I'm thinking that the NSA or GCHQ asked them not to implement HTTPS. What other reason could there be for not taking the simple, low cost, minimal action required to enable it? Soylent News, which runs on the same code base, supports it.
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to increase the cost of mass surveillance to a level where it is no longer feasible. Surveillance is too cheap because much of the data is just there for collection, unprotected.
For example, the UK government just pass emergency data retention laws that require all ISPs to continue logging the domain names of every web site every subscriber visits. If more people started using VPNs regularly that capability would become far less useful, and while I'm sure they could attack the VPN providers or crypto or even the individual target's computers the cost would be much higher than simply requiring the ISP to run a large database. They would be forced to stop bulk collection and only target people of genuine interest, which is the reasonable.
The russians could only say "this is too secure, design something that can be broken more easily".
Like the NSA did with TrueCrypt?
When travelling from the UK to Chile... Flying is pretty much the only sensible option for me right now.
I pretty much hate the entire experience but there are not better alternatives for when you NEED to travel to some places.
When travelling in and around the UK I would never fly if I can avoid it as the entire experience has become pretty inconvenient.
Excellent -- it sounds like you are making all reasonable efforts to cut their cashflow.
>> There's also question of motivation. Why would soldiers waste expensive missiles for some irrelevant passenger plane?
> To shoot down Ukrainian military aircraft. They had already shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian fighter within the previous week. They were on a roll.
That's the same point looneycyborg was attempting to make; that it was not terrorism because it was not an attempt to target civilians.
Though I agree with your accurate and informative correction regarding the civilian flight route issue.
This is way out of Bob the arms dealer's league.
Bob9113 here. Don't tell my potential customers what I can and can't supply. You don't know my inventory, nor my procurement abilities. Though you are right that the price would be substantially above $50,000.
Vote with your feet and if necessary your wallet.
I always fly with JAL now because their economy class gives you 10cm extra leg room. It doesn't sound like much but it makes a massive difference. They have plenty of staff to do check-in and let you take an extra hold bag over what most of the competition offer. They charge the same or only slightly more (£20-30 on a flight costing £850).
Don't put up with shitty service for the sake of a few bucks or shopping around.
"Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."
Remember those stickers on the registers at K-Mart, facing the cashier, with the letters, "TYFSOK"? It stands for, "Thank You For Shopping Our K-Mart." The sticker was to remind the beleagured minimum wage employee to recite the words. Did anyone, ever, feel that the person mechanically parroting that catch phrase actually cared? How about the greeters at Wal Mart? (I think they've pretty much gone away, like the TYFSOK stickers)
You can teach an automaton to mimick human emotion, but even when it is an actual human such mimickry is patronizing and irritating. If you want human warmth, hire warm humans (downside; warm humans who can keep their positive mental attitude while working at an airport are expensive and they need time to recover from their shifts).
If you are going to use computers, embrace their natural advantages. Computers are fast, predictable, and emotionless. Those can be good characteristics in a user interface -- particularly when the customer just wants to get the process finished and move on. Work with the entire industry to develop a standard interface and sequence so the user and bang through it without even engaging their brain -- everyone is better off with travellers on autopilot. Painting a computer in whore's makeup won't make it a lover for any but the most desperate.
And, for you air travellers, a quick question: Why are you still endorsing them? Why are you still agreeing to be subjected to the TSA and the awful customer service of the airlines? Have you really made all reasonable efforts to switch to alternatives? If you aren't making significant personal sacrifices to cut their cashflow, you are lending aid and comfort to the enemy. I've driven 6,000 miles in the past year avoiding air travel. What are you doing?
Solar is already way cheaper than nuclear, has been for a few years now. Wind, geothermal and hydro even more so.
I agree we need diversity, but the massive drain nuclear is placing on the available funding distorts the market. It's so bad that in the UK we have to guarantee well above the normal selling price of electricity for the lifetime of the plant just to get some Chinese guys to build it for us, because no-one here wants to. They know that Scotland's wind and eventually other renewables making it a losing proposition otherwise, and even with the vast subsidy it only works if the Chinese build and run it at a knock-down price.
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol