I was a Verizon Blackberry user. I wanted to stay on Verizon because my phone needs to function as a phone. But I ditched Blackberry as soon as the HTC Incredible became available.
So I held out until April 2010. But the original Droid came out in October of 2009.
Check out the chart below. Verizon uses dumped Blackberry as soon as the Droid came out and haven’t looked back.
I’m fascinated by this whole story. I can’t say that I’m a supporter of WikiLeaks. There’s something altruistic about saying that everything should be open and transparent, but in the real world some aspects of diplomacy, like sausage-making, should not be exposed to the world. I want to still enjoy eating that bratwurst.
But this story is a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. He is widely reported as being wanted for rape in Sweden, yet the real charge is apparently for sex without a condom, which is apparently a crime in Sweden with a fine of around $700. For this Interpol wants him. Hmm.
Amazon gets pressured to yank his web site. Of course they claim that there was no pressure and that they just yanked him for violating the terms and conditions. And that’s actually decent cover. Amazon has terms and conditions to prevent illegal file sharing type sites that basically state you have to be able to prove ownership of whatever you post. WikiLeaks clearly can’t do that, so Amazon has a legit argument. And the phone call from Senator Lieberman had nothing to do with it.
Their DNS provider was clearly pressured. They tried to claim that WikiLeaks violated some terms but ultimately they said that they dumped WikiLeaks because the DoS attack threatened them. So in this case they are punishing a web site that is the victim of an attack. Senator Lieberman clearly got to them.
And then there’s the Denial of Service attack itself. It’s strong, it’s been going on for days, and no one is taking credit for it. WikiLeaks has been handling it pretty well (the founder is a former hacker after all), but the question of who is behind it is fascinating. There are plenty of candidates. Pretty much any major government including our own is a candidate, along with rival hackers.
Meanwhile Julian Assange is getting boatloads of the thing he probably appreciates the most, free publicity.
It will be fun to see how this one turns out. Personally, I think Scientologists are behind the whole thing…
OK, this is good developer humor. Someone at the US Embassy in Beijing creates an automated program that takes the air quality readings and tweets it.
There is an official scale used by the EPA that runs from 0 (good) to 500 (Hazardous), with various levels in between.
I would be willing to wager that no one specified what the program should do if the index is above 500. And the developer did what I would probably do:
if (level > 500) return "crazy bad";
And apparently the level exceeded 500 yesterday so people got an amusing (or scary) tweet.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/WJW-Eb59qwI/
You have to love Wired if only for that headline.
For the record I’m a huge Dogfish Head fan. I’d take the Raison D’etre over the 60 minute, but check out the 90 minute IPA if you can find it. Excellent.
I’m drinking one right now…
To test all the random quirks in IE since most of our clients still use really old versions of IE, I’ve set IE as my default browser for the first time in maybe five years.
After a day my complaining was already becoming epic and achieving a strange sort of groove. So with apologies in advance, an IE homage to Dr. Seuss:
That Juan Jose, that Juan Jose
I do not like that Juan Jose
You do not like IE today?
I do not like IE today.
I do not like it Juan Jose
Would you like it on a Mac?
Do you like their standards hack?
I would not like it on a Mac
I do not like their standards hack
I do not like IE today.
I do not like it Juan Jose
Would you like your format flipped?
Do you like its java script?
I would not like my format flipped
I do not like its java script
I would not like it on a Mac
I do not like their standards hack
I do not like IE today.
I do not like it Juan Jose
Would you like it all alone?
Would you like it on a phone?
I would not like it all alone
I would not like it on a phone
I would not like my format flipped
I do not like its java script
I would not like it on a Mac
I do not like their standards hack
I do not like IE today.
I do not like it Juan Jose
Would you like it on a pad?
Does it’s speed still make you sad?
I do not like it on a pad and
Yes it’s speed still makes me sad
I would not like it all alone
I would not like it on a phone
I would not like my format flipped
I do not like its java script
I would not like it on a Mac
I do not like their standards hack
I do not like IE today.
I do not like it Juan Jose
Would you like it in the cloud?
with the volume up real loud?
I would not like it in the cloud
or with the volume up real loud
I do not like it on a pad and
Yes it’s speed still makes me sad
I would not like it all alone
I would not like it on a phone
I would not like my format flipped
I do not like its java script
I would not like it on a Mac
I do not like their standards hack
I do not like IE today.
I do not like it Juan Jose
You don’t like it so you say
Try it now and now you may
Oh so sorry Juan Jose.
IE still sucks, now go away
I’ve been traveling a lot recently and I find myself very annoyed at the car rental counter. It may have something to do with my ZipCar experience.
You’ve been on a long flight. It’s late, you’re tired. You’re thinking, hotel, quick bite to eat, crash. You get to the car rental counter. There’s a line. But only 2 people, so it shouldn’t be bad. Twenty minutes later it’s your turn. Twenty minutes?
Why does it take 10 minutes to process a car rental when you’ve already reserved it? It’s absurd. They ask you a million questions that they should’ve gotten online and each thing then has to be entered into their system:
So what should be a quick and easy step becomes a torturous process for a very tired traveler.
It bugs me more because when I get a car with ZipCar the entire process is:
Seems to me that the rental companies could ask all the questions online, print out a piece of paper with your answers on it when you arrive, have you sign, initial, whatever and hand you keys. 2 minutes tops.
Rental car companies need some technology lessons from ZipCar…
I read the term "cloudwashing" today for the first time. Apparently the term refers to the latest trend to slap the word "cloud" in front of everything.
It’s true though, for the most part people do not understand what cloud computing means and sales and marketing folks are doing what they do and filling the understanding void with a bunch of doublespeak.
Risk and Insurance magazine does a spotty job discussing technology. Their stab at cloud computing is here and is full of inaccuracies. But this is fundamentally an insurance magazine so I would cut them some slack.
Oracle, however, is a technology company. So when they totally misuse the term, they get no slack.
The ZDNet article about Oracle has a link to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s definition of cloud computing. They have it right. They list five essential characteristics of cloud computing. If your "private cloud" doesn’t do these five things, your "private cloud" is a regular data center. Note the "rapid elasticity" point. That to me is the most important point.
On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.
Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).
Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.
Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.
I haven’t blogged about my phone recently. I’m still in love with my Incredible. Yes, that is partly because it’s on Verizon (it’s amazing how you get to know which of your friends have iPhones because their calls just drop periodically). But it’s still a great phone.
It’s interesting to see my daughters asking for both of our phones. It generally comes down to which game they want to play. So here’s a quick rundown of apps I like. One interesting point. iPhone users are so conditioned to pay 99 cents for an app. It seems like nothing, but 50 apps later it’s not nothing (brilliant marketing on Apple’s part). I have paid for exactly one app on my phone.
Essential:
Handcent SMS: A mild improvement on the default Android SMS client.
SportsTap: I love this one. You pick your favorite teams and get notifications on scores. Any change in the score of a Yankee or Packers game, I get a notification on my phone. Perfect.
Kindle: Not clear why I would buy a Kindle when I have the app on my phone for free.
Google Voice: I only use it for voicemail, not the phone number consolidation. Why would anyone ever access voicemail the old fashioned way? Treats voicemail like an inbox and even transcribes (with decent but not great accuracy) the voicemails.
NewsRob: RSS reader that uses Google Reader’s subscription list. I’m a big RSS guy.
Google Navigation: This comes out of the box, but it’s still the killer Droid app. Free turn by turn GPS navigation. For a ZipCar user, this is golden.
PdaNet: This was available before FroYo. It provides tethering for your laptop. I’d love to use the new mobile hotspot feature in FroYo but on Verizon that is $30/month. PdaNet is free.
Nice:
Gesture Search: A nice Google app that lets you swipe letters on the screen to search your contacts. The fastest way to get to a contact that I’ve seen.
Twitter/AIM/Facebook: All good standard apps.
FlickrFree: A nice Flickr interface. The Incredible comes with the ability to share photos on Flickr out of the box, but this is a bit nicer.
Skype Mobile: I’m not a huge Skype user, but it’s nice.
Pandora and Shazam: duh
Color Note: A nice note taking app. Very useful to do a quick grocery list.
Mint: Nice interface to your Mint.com account. There’s a nice widget (do iPhones have widgets? I’ve never seen one) that just shows your cash and credit debt and refreshes automatically. And the full app is great.
Games:
Most of these are for my girls. I don’t play games that much on my phone. I have a ton of them, but these are the best.
Shoot U: This is the only app I’ve paid for. We tried the free version, loved it and paid to get more levels. This is Android’s cool game like Angry Birds. I like it a little better than Angry Birds because it has more physics, but that’s probably just me. But my daughters love it too.
Fruit Pirate: If you’ve done sword fighting on the Wii in Sports Resort this is quite similar. Fruit fly up and you have to cut them in half.
Traffic Jam: A logic rearranging game. You have to move cars around to let your taxi get out. There’s a similar iPhone game, but my daughter likes this better.
You Tube: This isn’t a game, but it’s amazing how my three year old likes it. She asks me for Alvin and the Chipmunks, it’s a previous search so I quickly get the list of videos and she’s entertained for a half hour.
Talking TomCat: There’s a funny iPhone app called Talking Carl. This is pretty much the same thing with a cat.
I think I’ve pointed out in the past the media’s relative inability to report accurately on scientific studies. I’ve seen sensational headlines about some recent study where if you actually read the study, the conclusion is the exact opposite of the headline. I think the general understanding of scientific method is fairly pathetic these days overall, but the media makes it obvious.
The political news web site Slate actually has a series called Bogus Trend Stories where they point out the media tendency to take a few alarming anecdotal stories ("kids picking noses with both fingers"), cite an expert with no actual data ("children from broken families are more likely to be ambidextrous nose pickers"), and declare a trend where no actual evidence exists ("nose picking out of control!").
So today I saw a story with the headline, "Illegal drug use higher than in nearly a decade". Now given that Baby Boomers have a more tolerant view of drug use than their parents and their parents are slowly dying off and teenagers are teenagers, this seemed like a statistically likely statement.
The article pointed out a "sharp increase in marijuana use". The study was a self-reported one, meaning that people were voluntarily reporting their drug use (immediate red flag). And the study pointed out that medical marijuana sales in the 14 states that allow medical marijuana had taken off. Well duh.
And then, at the very end of the article, the second to last sentence:
The survey does not distinguish between medicinal and non-medicinal marijuana use.
Given the alarming headline, this is kind of a key point. After this long article about this terrible rise in illegal drug use, at the very end, comes the realization that the entire rise could be attributed to (legal) medical marijuana. Of course the article doesn’t actually examine this, so an unobservant reader would just be terrified about the frightening rise in nose picking (sorry, illegal drug use).
And an observant reader would be frustrated by the lack of data to make any real conclusion.
So anytime you read about a scientific study, do two things:
Because the media (and unfortunately too many regular people) simply do not understand the scientific method.
Our wireless router finally bit the dust. So we actually have internet, as long as you have wires.
But these days that feels the same as not having internet. Seriously, when’s the last time you connected a laptop to an ethernet cable?
So I’m on my phone tonight. New router tomorrow…
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 