Recent Comments

Really I'm probably going to hang on to my Nexus 5 for a while now. I don't think I could buy any phone without wireless charging now(why isn't that more popular?), so that shortens the list a lot. Maybe I'll look at the S6 when that comes.

Not sure how that graphic came about, but hopefully I'm not the only one who noticed that's a Jack Russell Terrier, not a Poodle.

But whatever.

Not even the stylus? Just kidding, but I loved my old Palm Treo, so maybe it's nostalgia. To be fair, you could go down one notch to a Galaxy 5 or even Galaxy 4, saving a couple hundred bucks and getting a phone that fits better in the pocket. I think the 5 is just about perfect in size.

I do miss my old flip phone though, since it fit so well in pants pockets I lost it on more than one occasion. Not enough to give up this gadget though - endless fun, and I'm just getting started.

I was willing to try it, but not for that price. The draw of the nexus for me was that is was a great phone for a middle of the line price. There's too much competition at the $600 point and nothing to really make it stand out.

Maybe I'm missing it but that article is about the SKA, not the SQA, and doesn't seem to have anything controversial involved in it aside from a little trouble with an oil company possibly messing up their radio waves. The last line of the article is telling - "The largest risk to the overall project is probably its budget, which to this datehas not been committed." But you were talking about an "SQA" - maybe it's a different thing? Wikipedia is not very helpful on the acronym, though.

Happy to keep Pipedot techie. I'm also doing my best to keep all that lefty-righty conspiracy, faux-rage stuff off the site too.

I've got less time these days though, and this site is only going to be as good as its article-submitters, editors, and commentators.

I hear you about the 'big screen.' I too used to laugh at people who had to take their phone out of their pants pockets to sit down. Then I bought a Samsung Note 3 and I love it. It's a bit big on weekends - doesn't fit well in shorts and t-shirts, etc. But during the week it fits right into a suit jacket pocket and does miracles. It's an awesome PDA (remember that word?) that just happens to also have a cellphone chip in it. I make the occasional call with it but mostly it's a tablet that's HDMA enabled, so I can do data stuff from anywhere there's a network connection. I even posted a Pipedot article from this place using it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podor That's pretty far off the beaten track by anyone's standards.

Don't knock it til you try it.

Doesn't seem techie enough.

I used mine for portable writing - never needed or wanted internet (realizing fully I'm not representative of your average gadget user). Just whipped it out on the train/bus and started typing away - loved that thing. Ran for ages on two AA batteries and with a Flash memory card installed, could just save stuff right to the card, export to text, without having to worry about connecting it over RS232 and the like. Good for taking notes in class, too, without having to carry a laptop around.

Good times. Done now though.

Different usage scenarios. The Razor scooter fits next to you on the train/subway and gets you the 10 blocks from the train station to your office without getting your suit/tie all sweaty. You're not supposed to be taking your razor scooter down the highway (and you'd like like a mad fool if you did).

The Honda Metro doesn't go on the train. You take it all the way across town in traffic, at speeds approaching car speeds.

They're not meant to be compared; they are for two totally different things.

Can it be any worse that what happened with the SQA? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array

I think you're right... A phone with a 6" screen, simply ceases to be a phone. It's a tablet that can also make phone calls, which isn't really new.

I really don't understand why people like phones with huge screens. Particularly when they then buy the model that's advertised as "thin and lightweight" while a smaller phone would be far better... It's so strange to think that Dell's failed attempt to break-in to the market was just too far AHEAD of it's time to find the market:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2010/05/25/dell-streak-the-versatile-5-inch-android-tablet

That's no tablet either, but Google simultaneously announced the Nexus Player, a TV player and that the "L" in Android L stands for Lollipop.

See also http://www.cnet.com/news/google-unveils-nexus-9-tablet-nexus-6-phone-nexus-player-streamer/

Whatever my customer wants me to use.

It's hilarious reading through the Android Nexus device specs. Ultra high-end across the board... ~2.5GHz processor, 2 or 3GB DDR3, AMOLED or IPS screens, 802.11ac, etc.

AND THEN!!!

...

wait for it

...

USB2.0

.

Well, USB 3.0 has only been out for 6 years or so. I suppose you have to be careful not to rush these things. Hooray for 1990's technology!

And I'd like to reiterate my call for tablet manufacturers to include HDMI inputs on their devices: http://pipedot.org/comment/2SHD

Cleared the "Cached Web Content" and now Poodle reports not vulnerable.
Thanks!

Oops. I saw 6" and assumed it was a tablet. Nope. That's a 6" phone. I guess that helps explain the price bump too.

Obvious suggestion, clear your cache?

Also try rebooting; Mozilla likes to leave processes running in memory, so your settings may not have really reloaded when you thought you restarted the browser.

Yeah, I think that's fair. In my experience, the people from China we do business with have non Chinese Ip addresses that they source from ( to get around the Great Firewall).

Or that would help me get up the hill or against the wind. Ideally one that would charge when it wasn't assisting, like downhill, flat, or with the wind.

In Firefox 26.0 (a reasonably stable older version) I first changed "security.tls.version.min" from 0 to 1. Ran the Poodle test and was not vulnerable.

Perhaps stupidly(??) I then changed back to 0 and re-ran Poodle, now I'm vulnerable, OK so far, that makes some sense.

*** Changed back to 1 and still vulnerable (wtf?)
Restarted Firefox with it set to 1, still vulnerable...

Any idea what is going on here? Do I have to reboot WinXP?

Pretty sure that Thunderbird disables javascript on HTML emails. Otherwise, that would be a pretty big exploit on its own.

i'm tired of slapping my ballsack

I'd agree. The big thing is the cost of the low end laser printers has declined. So I have much better quality than I had with ink jet years ago. But a laser of today and a laser of 10- 15 years ago is about the same quality.

Do you mean Seamonkey (and other Mozilla based browser)? Probably, yeah.

Or do you mean that an HTML e-mail message can be exploited? Hmm.

Thunderbird being based on the same technology as Firefox, can it be considered vulnerable too ? it seems the vulnerability "only" requires javascript enabled (which I believe is the default for TB)

On an unrelated side note: there is an interesting and detailed technical explanation of POODLE available at openssl.org (pdf file)

2001. Yeah, 2001. Worldwide market share: 3.8%. China uses it quite a bit, though, 11.1% of their users. I wonder what this has to do with the large number of attacks I get on servers I host from Chinese IPs tossing me an IE6 user agent - I strongly suspect it's script kiddy tools tossing out a false UA. China makes up the majority of IE6 users, and honestly, I block the whole country via firewall anyway on the principle that my company doesn't do business there. I feel a bit bad doing that, but considering how much trouble I get from those IPs, it's just not worth it.

They had a great device, but really let everything fall apart right when they had the perfect chance. They didn't offer ethernet, nor WiFi when it came along, so it quickly felt like a relic. It seems they pinned all their hopes for years on the Nokia 9210 Communicator, which had plenty of limitations the Psion 5 didn't (short battery life, no touch-screen, etc), and still didn't offer ethernet and WiFi, being an even more specialized device that always depended on cellular connectivity, when that was primitive (early 2G with poor coverage), painfully slow, and ridiculous expensive. A great device for its one specific use case of business travelers with plenty of money to burn, but that's about it... Most people (including the key demo) were perfectly happy tethering their PDAs to their phones via RS-232 or IrDA at the time, so it wasn't a big hit, unlike later smartphones when 3G came around. It wasn't until years later with the 9500 that WiFi (and a camera) was added.

But I'm just ranting at this point. They had a great device, but they failed miserably to really capitalize on it, so somehow Apple managed to re-create the market that had practically died-off, with an inferior device (no keyboard, crippled productivity apps, etc).

Also, I would have kept the Psion 5MX around and working to this day, as as dumb terminal (via RS-232), but the screen resolution was too low to show 80x24 characters on-screen comfortably without scrolling all the time to view everything, and the CPU (or perhaps the terminal software) was so slow that it wasn't nice and responsive and comfortable to use.

IE6 users have been out in the cold for a long time now, and for more reasons than just this. I love old tech as much as the next guy, but browsing with an old browser is asking for trouble, and IE6 is very, very old. (too lazy to look it up, but it's got to be 10 years old at this point, if not more). Hell, even IE8 is considered too old now; Opera for Linux at 12 is considered abandon-ware (sniff sniff), and Konqueror while great for intranet/SFTP and the like, is too unsafe to take on line, it would seem. I know it chokes on some basic CSS, which is a bad sign.

[off topic] happy to meet another Psion 5MX user. It's one of my favorite gadgets, unmatched even now by some modern stuff. I owned two of them, and regret their demise. Wrote this about it back in '06: http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/171-The-Psion-5-for-Writers-on-the-Move.html

Wireless networking and mobile computing are everywhere.

Wireless networking wasn't pervasive (and back then we only had line-of-sight IrDA, not WiFi), but PDAs were everywhere... A huge number of people had Palm Pilots, many had Windows CE devices or Psions. Windows CE was first released in November 1996... They didn't make the OS for a class of devices that didn't exist.

In the late 90s, I was printing full documents, with charts and graphs in them, composed on my Psion 5MX PDA that fit in my pocket (with slide-out touch-type keyboard), wirelessly via IrDA. It was an impressive road-warrior thing at the time... People carrying around bulky laptops were always tethered to the nearest outlet, took forever to start-up/shut-down so they still had pencil and paper for quicker note-taking. And with no WiFi, organizations being extremely careful and refusing to allow 3rd devices to connect to their network, and almost no laptops having IrDA, they had to drive back home (or to their own office) to print. The option was those ridiculously expensive tiny portable inkjet printers, but I practically never saw anybody with one.

We no longer want printer drivers, but expect printers that support standard protocols and formats

Printers have long "support[ed] standard protocols and formats". My first (home) laser printer was made in 1992 (by Epson), and supported (HP's) PCL language in addition to its own. Long before that, business class printers ALWAYS supported Postscript. And plenty of NEW printers, today, intended for home users only support their own proprietary languages.

Samsung's popular CLP printers only include PCL on the few in the series with WiFi, while even their other networked models require proprietary drivers for their proprietary printer language. But you are still able to print to them via your smartphone/tablet with their own mobile printing app. Canon's printers require UFRII unless you've opted to purchase PCL/PS compatibility at extra cost. Konica, Ricoh, etc. Their low-end printers continue to require their proprietary languages. It's taken a lot longer to get to standard printer languages than I would ever have imagined, end users are still ignorant of such technical issues, and manufacturers and retailers are still hiding that info, better than ever before.

with fantastic output quality that we could only dream of 15 years ago.

Fantastic output quality? Laser printers are still too dark. Inkjet printers still saturate the paper. There are pretty good printers today, if you want to spend the obscene amounts of money, but that was true of printers 15 years ago, too. The first Tektronix solid ink (wax) printers were sold in the late 1980s. If anything, modern printers crank-up the theoretical resolution, without actually improving picture quality. And some new models are being sold at the same low resolutions we were using in the early '90s.

Today our focus on printing is much different than in 1999.

I'm really not seeing how the world of printing has changed (much).

What's changed? Many printers today have WiFi, and accept SD/Flash cards directly. And laser printers are relatively cheaper. Per-page costs seem to actually have gone-up, significantly. And yes, the uptick of smartphones, more than anything else, (and projectors to a lesser extent) has meant far less printouts, so the printer has become less mission-critical across the business world. I don't know what "more focused and personal" even means....

Huh, I'm surprised Razor couldn't make a better looking scooter. But it seems that its range is only 10 miles, max 15 mph.

Anyhow, as I said I'm looking for a bicycle, and have no need for boosting at present. :)

Huh, a used Segway is still $3K-$6K. Crazy.

Meanwhile, something like a "Honda Metropolitan" gas scooter looks better, carries more, MSRPs at $1,999, and has a range of about 140 miles at 117 mpg.

And is maybe slightly less dorky than all these electric jalopies. Maybe.

Just within your budget:

http://www.amazon.com/XB-300-SLA-X-Treme-Electric-Mountain-Bicycle/dp/B00GRPAEH6/

But I'd go for something even cheaper:

http://www.amazon.com/Razor-E300S-Seated-Electric-Scooter/dp/B0085HM3VE/

Tell someone to code it for me. ;-)

Since the 1930s scientists have been searching for particles that are simultaneously matter and antimatter.

Err ... you mean particles like the photon? Or like the pi^0 meson?

Wow, prices have come down in the last five years since I bought my bike. I would have gone with an electric, if they had been even twice the price. Now they've pretty much reached price equality for the cheaper models. Pedaling is great fun and a good work out, but it would have been nice to have something that could take over on a hot day to prevent needing a shower when I got to work.

Holy crap, $800?? For the wheel? Before you add in a $300-$10,000 bike to go with it?

They're kidding I hope. I need a new road bike and my budget is $600 tops. Probably go online (rhymes with schmikesdirect).

And the range is a measley 30 miles, maybe? This is just dumb. (At 20 mph it's barely an hour of cycling!) No indication how long it takes to charge either. Maybe if it came with a fat rack or bottle mount battery pack for extended range.

And again, the safety of someone riding a thin conventional road or MTB with power assist when they're not capable of or used to that speed, it sounds like disaster. But I guess the sensors appeal to new age would-be geek hipsters...

I totally agree here, this "Chemicals in the male sperm" weak interaction kind of smacks of homeopathy.. It is just not how the thing we call "Chemistry" works.

Lack of evidence is not evidence.

What I see a lack of here is actual evidence, beyond anecdotes, that this effect is a real thing.

You are correct but many make the mistake of trying to prove something that does not actually exist based on anecdote rather than actual empirical evidence.

My explanation, in humans the female tends to go back to their ex for a little booty from time to time. This is supported by genetic evidence and statistics that says something on the order of 15% of us, our fathers are not who we think that they are, because (Surprise) Mom cheated on Dad.

If I inherited anything from my Mom's ex BF it was the tendency to speak directly to the elephant in the room.

Farscape-1

Strikes me as a bit overpriced when an all-electric "bike" that you never need to pedal can be had for under $250. They work great for moving around all day long, such as huge warehouses, apartment complexes, campuses, or other sprawling job sites. Replacement batteries (every year) run as little as $30 on amazon.

On a completely unrelated topic, this is gross: http://dailyhealthpost.com/the-only-video-that-coca-cola-never-wants-you-to-see/

As a kid I used-to drink coke mixed with milk plenty of times. Tastes just fine, though unlike anything else. Theirs only turned into a mess after 6 hours of sitting around (I wouldn't let a cup of milk sit on the counter for 6 hours, to begin with), and then it merely looks like the heavier fluid separated from the lighter, and stirring it up might still fix it.

All the health information they include was pulled from someone's backside, with no basis in reality. You really should listen to the FDA rather than tin-foil hatters.

You're going to be outside, without any benefits of HVAC (heating or cooling), so you're at the mercy of the weather. If it's hot out, I don't care how little you have to pedal, you're still going to sweat.

From the other side, I dislike when people put motorized vehicles in the bicycle lane. This might be on the edge, it's probably not moving much faster than your average cyclists, which makes it dangerous to put in the bicycle lane, yet slower than your average motorist, which makes it dangerous to put in the car lane.

I fully admit to a complete bias, as I'm a year round cyclist who uses good old fashioned pedal power to get around.

Might be more elegant from a visual standpoint, but I believe there are major compromises required in a direct drive motor with suitable torque and rpm for a pedal assist bike? Recently Bosch got into the pedal-assist business and they have (according to a friend that worked with them) really done their engineering homework. Their system uses a smaller, higher rpm motor with reduction gearing.

I used to ride my pushbike every day. The extra change of clothes and time eventually led to the pushbike gathering dust. On a completely unrelated topic, this is gross: http://dailyhealthpost.com/the-only-video-that-coca-cola-never-wants-you-to-see/?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral

Great, another moped design so people get even less exercise. It's more elegant to have direct assist in the hub, I'll give them that. I just can't help thinking that for those who don't need the exercise (non-Americans) there are more rugged, cheaper, SAFER, and more efficient motorized bikes.

Could be wrong. :-)

I know it can wreak havoc with the current DNS database architecture, but I'm one of those fools who thinks arbitrary TLDs are just hunky dorey. You KNOW .mcdonalds is coming. You just KNOW it. So why fight the current?

At the SAME time, this highest-briber wins crap is for the birds. Open the damned floodgates you thieving bastards.

.zafiro is a perfectly cromulent top level domain name. And it should cost $15, same as in town.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. If you remember what a wasteland of disorganized crap the alt section of Usenet got to be, I think the geniuses at ICANN, blinded by their own greed, are about to do the same thing to domain names. I plan on registering .sucks as soon as possible so I can go register up slashdot.sucks, putin.sucks, obama.sucks, and the like - not because I care but because important people will pay to have them taken down. Then some other chucklehead can register .sucks.not.really and then suddenly we're halfway to .flonk.flonk.flonk and .usenet.kooks and the like.

Nice work ICANN, you rapacious bastards.

Thanks for the heads-up, AC. I appreciate it. I love batch files though. :)

Sorry for the lack of substance in this post but I did want to acknowledge your contribution.

From a layman's perspective:

Boeing is Boeing. They know how to manage complex technical programs .

SpaceX is SpaceX. They were the first commercial suppliers of the space station.

SNC is ???. As far as I'm aware they haven't built a complete craft like this before anywhere near this scale. They've built parts and engines, but not the whole kit and kabootle.

I'm sure by granting Boeing they were appeasing the more risk adverse people at NASA, and by going with SpaceX they appeased the more innovative faction. I don't know if SNC had anyone emotionally tied to its proposal. Not that "emotion" was a criteria. But we'd be lying to ourselves if we were to pretend that emotion had no role at all.