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Comment ooVoo (Score 1) 250

I've been using Skype video conferencing for the past 5 years to take an online Spanish class, and for the past several months it has been terrible. There have been many instances of dropped calls, degraded call quality, frozen video, etc. Throw in the v5 UI fiasco and it was time for a change.

A few weeks ago we started trying alternatives (MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, and a few others) and finally settled on ooVoo [http://www.oovoo.com], which is not a perfect replacement, but works much better than Skype in the areas that matter. The video is much more clear and we have not suffered a single dropped call.

Comment Not ready to be #1 workhorse (Score 1) 577

Disclaimer: I own every fucking Apple product made in the last 10 years. And 2 of some of them.

I use my iPad2 all day long - listening to music, playing games, taking notes, managing my OmniFocus todo lists, reading Slashdot.. you know, the usual. I have often thought "Could this replace my Macbook Pro?", and the answer is always "no!".

It isn't fast enough. It doesn't have tab from field to field, even with the external keyboard. While the apps that it does run are nice, they are not nearly as full featured as their "real" Mac based counterparts. There is no file system, so you can't manage your documents in a hierarchy like you can on a "real" Mac. Apparently this is what Apple wants to kill anyways... who needs folders, right? Well, I do. I like folders, and the iPad doesn't have them. There is no external storage, other than a very awkward (not to mention slow) interface to iDisk and/or Dropbox. And finally, there is no way to use my Magic Trackpad with the device... I constantly have to reach up and touch the screen when I am using the external keyboard.. and you know, after 15 minutes, my arm feels like it wants to fall off. ;-)

And there's one more thing... I can't install apps other than what Apple says is ok to install on the iPad. Until they give me full control over the device, it'll just be a toy that is good at managing todo lists and playing games.

Comment What do you expect? (Score 1) 532

The University of Lincoln, NE is known for 1 thing - the Cornhuskers. I grew up in Nebraska, and the running joke was "What does the big red N on the front of the college entrance mean? Knowledge."

What do you expect them to say? They want more money, but are not the best thinkers... so they come up with something idiotic. Go team!

Comment Bad call by the Japanese (Score 1) 370

What happened is pretty simple, really. You have an island that is prone to earthquakes. You have a very bright people who decided to do something that in hindsight was really stupid and put a fragile building that houses incredibly frail yet awesomely powerful technology on said island. Mix and stir and you have a deadly and devastating cocktail of doom.

Sad, but true.

Comment Re:Any chance we'll get rid of Java? (Score 1) 129

They call it Java, but technically it's not Java... it doesn't run on a JVM, and uses a custom development kit (not the JDK).

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)

"Dalvik does not align to Java SE nor Java ME Class Library profiles[8][9] (e.g., Java ME classes, AWT or Swing are not supported). Instead it uses its own library[10] built on a subset of the Apache Harmony Java implementation."

Comment NASA and security of data (Score 3, Interesting) 172

A friend of mine used to be a contractor to NASA and he used to tell me stories about how you could get into trouble if you queried the wrong column in a database table. His background check was so extensive that it went on for 3 months, while he just sat around and brought home paychecks for doing absolutely NOTHING.

He also said that if you pushed the wrong number on the elevator and got off on the wrong floor, you would be interrogated and possibly fired. If you did it more than once, you would definitely be fired.

Those gubment folks are pretty strict.

Comment Re:Who wins? (Score 1) 424

You have a good point, but that wasn't what I was referring to. I am simply referring to the capitalist idea of "competition being good for the consumer".

When Android innovates, Apple must respond, and vice versa. This benefits people with money looking to buy a phone - aka "consumers".

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