Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet: How to choose | Android Atlas - CNET News

http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml?nid=57330571&cid=latest&bid=251&webref=reviews.cnet.com/kindle-fire-vs-nook-tablet-how-to-choose/8301-19736_7-57330571-251.html%3f

This makes it sound like the Nook Tablet is superior to the Fire. Just got one for Nana last night!

" Hardware compromises: There is nothing we love about the Kindle Fire's design. The screen isn't quite as pretty as the Nook Tablet, there are no hardware controls for volume, the power button is awkwardly placed, and the whole thing looks like a chunky version of 2010's Samsung Galaxy Tab. Under the hood, you have half the RAM of the Nook Tablet,half the storage, no integrated microphone, and no memory expansion.

That said, at $199, we're just happy to see that the Kindle Fire doesn't fall apart in your hand. The $50 savings over the Nook Tablet may be worth it for some.

Needs persistent Web access: The cloud is great--if you've always got access to it. When you're out of range, you can still enjoy your locally stored content, but many of the Kindle Fire's best features are unavailable without a connection to the Internet."

Drunk octopus wants to fight you (spotted in the wild)

Jon Stewart Goes Off on Jerry Sandusky

Bhttp://m.gawker.com/5859949/jon-stewart-goes-off-on-jerry-sandusky

If there was any doubt in my mind about Jerry Sandusky, this eliminated it. Also, check out the comments.

"In an unbearable phone interview with Bob Costas on last night's Rock Center, accused Penn State child rapist Jerry Sandusky kinda-sorta denied being sexually attracted to young boys. On tonight's Daily Show, an indignant Jon Stewart unloaded on Sandusky: "You can't even bring yourself to lie emphatically!""

And

" 'Mary Amendola (the woman who bore Sandusky's lawyer's child at age 16) is apparently unconvinced. When Costas asked the lawyer if he would leave his children alone with Sandusky, Amendola said "yes, without hesitation."

"OMG," Mary Amendola wrote on her Facebook page, "did Joe just say that he would allow my kids to be alone with Jerry Sandusky?"'"

Ever Wonder Where That Plane Flying Over Your Head Is Going?

http://m.gizmodo.com/5861031/ever-wonder-where-that-plane-flying-over-your-head-is-going

I havent been able to get Wolfram Alpha to tell me anything useful yet, but this looks interesting :

" It's an awesome—and supremely nerdy—new feature that the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha has cooked up: it will poll your geoIP location and tell you what planes are overhead. And that the mobile apps take advantage of the feature actually makes it somewhat usable IRL.

If you run a search for "planes overhead," it will return a list of any and all planes your eyeballs can spot, the flight number, where they're positioned in the sky and how many miles up they are. In the browser version, the flight version is hyperlinked, showing you its flight path. Sadly, in the mobile version, you have to manually search the flight number. And it may take some of the fun out of your whimsical ruminations, but whatever. Knowledge is power."

Review: Kindle Fire a worthwhile bargain - CNN.com

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/18/tech/gaming-gadgets/kindle-fire-review/index.html

Based on the above review and others that ive read, the Fire is a great choice if reading is your primary interest.

Great for
- Kindle ebooks
- reading content of all kinds (magazines, news, blogs, websites) - anything accessible thru a web browser
- email, Facebook
- music (thru Amazon music service)
- movies (another Amazon service)

These Android services make the Fire superior to the Nook.

But, the downsides are (and the Nook shares these)
- small battery
- poky performance
- fewer apps
- no cut/paste (i use this extensively while blogging, also cut/pasting UPS shipping numbers from emails to UPS  websites)
- no gps for google maps
- no accelerometer, gyro for fancy games
- no cameras
- no mic (no skype)
- no 3G service; Wifi only

" But the Kindle's battery loses a charger much faster than the iPad. I was able to surf the Web and play videos for several hours, but I found myself frequently searching for a charger after that.

That Amazon skimped on some of the components becomes evident when swiping through menus, switching the screen's orientation or playing games, which can all be jerky at times. The split-second delays are even present when turning pages on a Kindle e-book, which should be the pride of an Amazon device. The lack of a microphone means no Skype or other Internet telephony programs."

Speaking of octopii...

Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses To Completely Well-Meaning Signs | Happy Place

Inside the mind of the octopus

 Inside the mind of the octopus | Orion Magazine

"It seemed to Warburton that some of the octopuses were purposely uncooperative. To run the T-maze, the pre-veterinary student had to scoop an animal from its tank with a net and transfer it to a bucket. With bucket firmly covered, octopus and researcher would take the elevator down to the room with the maze. Some octopuses did not like being removed from their tanks. They would hide. They would squeeze into a corner where they couldn't be pried out. They would hold on to some object with their arms and not let go.
Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They'd leap off the mesh and onto the floor—and then run for it. Yes, run. "You'd chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat," Warburton said. "It's so weird!"
Octopuses in captivity actually escape their watery enclosures with alarming frequency. While on the move, they have been discovered on carpets, along bookshelves, in a teapot, and inside the aquarium tanks of other fish—upon whom they have usually been dining.
Even though the Middlebury octopuses were disaster prone, Warburton liked certain individuals very much. Some, she said, "would lift their arms out of the water like dogs jump up to greet you." Though in their research papers the students refer to each octopus by a number, the students named them all. One of the joubini was such a problem they named her The Bitch. "Catching her for the maze always took twenty minutes," Warburton said. "She'd grip onto something and not let go. Once she got stuck in a filter and we couldn't get her out. It was awful!" "

The rise and fall of the Columbia House record club

 The rise and fall of the Columbia House record club — and how we learned to steal music - Music Features


"The patron saint of the records-club schemers would probably be Joseph Parvin. In 2000, the 60-year-old was prosecuted for having received, between 1993 and 1998, nearly 27,000 CDs, using over 2000 fake accounts and 16 P.O. boxes. All told, he bilked Columbia House (and rival BMG) out of $425,000 of product, selling them at flea markets. For anyone who was paying attention when his arrest made headlines at the time, it was kind of like finding out that Paul Bunyan is real — someone actually was able to cheat the system the way everyone dreams of."

The decline of Elephants

 An Elephant Crackup? - New York Times

Article from 2006

"These were not isolated incidents. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-1990's to monitor the problem. In the Indian state of Jharkhand near the western border of Bangladesh, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004. In the past 12 years, elephants have killed 605 people in Assam, a state in northeastern India, 239 of them since 2001; 265 elephants have died in that same period, the majority of them as a result of retaliation by angry villagers, who have used everything from poison-tipped arrows to laced food to exact their revenge. In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks."

Foxconn chairman signs letter of intent for 'intelligent robot kingdom,' we cower in fear -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/06/foxconn-chairman-signs-letter-of-intent-for-intelligent-robot-k/

Not only will Foxconn employ robots, they will build them. Video below is an introduction to the ABB robot.

http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/fcfbdad9a72cfe08c1257862006bcfbf.aspx

Steve Jobs Declared Thermonuclear War Against Android

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/10/20/biography-reveals-steve-jobs-declare-thermonuclear-war-against-android/

"Isaacson's book 'Steve Jobs' reveals that Jobs views Android as a 'stolen product' that amounted to 'grand theft.' Jobs engaged in a shouting match with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 2008 over Google's release and push behind Android.

In the book, Jobs revealed, "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." "

Here’s the secret to Amazon’s, B&N’s tablet strategy | Mobile Technology News

http://gigaom.com/mobile/amazon-barnes-noble-tablet-strategy/

"Even from a strict hardware perspective, Barnes & Noble has out-maneuvered the traditional computer makers when it comes to tablets. If the leaked Nook Tablet specs are accurate, the $249 device has a dual-core processor, 16 GB of memory with an SD card expansion port, a 7-inch display with 1024 x 600 resolution and an expected battery life of 8 hours. Compared to Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, now available on Amazon for $399, it's nearly a mirror image of specifications, yet costs $150 less.

Another lesson learned for the traditional hardware makers: You can sell your hardware at cost, or a loss, if you can sell content to make up the difference."

What a difference a year makes: National Weather Service - NWS San Diego

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sgx/display_special_product_versions.php?sid=SGX&pil=AFD

"WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES. ON THIS DATE LAST YEAR...SAN DIEGO BROKE THE ALL TIME HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR NOVEMBER WITH A TEMPERATURE OF 100 DEGREES...THE ONLY TIME 100 HAS BEEN REACHED DURING ANY NOVEMBER. TODAY SAN DIEGO IS FLIRTING WITH THE LOWEST MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR THIS Date. "