This is the best deal I've seen yet on the 10" Galaxy Tab. This Costco only had 3 of them left!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Did you get what you wanted for the Holidays??
Always read the comments : DailyTech - HP Slashes webOS Staff, Moves Mobile OS Closer to the Grave
http://www.dailytech.com/HP+Slashes+webOS+Staff+Moves+Mobile+OS+Closer+to+the+Grave/article22783.htm
I always read article comments, some of them are gems. Check out the one below. Thanks buckwally.
" Leo Apotheker and the Kobayashi Maru Test By buckwally on 9/20/2011 1:00:45 PM , Rating: 2
The Kobayashi Maru is a famous test in the fictional universe of Star Trek. It is a Starfleet training exercise designed to test the character of cadets in the command track at Starfleet Academy. The mission is to rescue the civilian vessel Kobayashi Maru, a disabled ship, on the wrong side of the Klingon Neutral Zone. The approaching cadet crew must decide whether or not to attempt rescue of the Kobayashi Maru crew –endangering their own ship and lives, and possibly starting a war – or leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. "there is no correct resolution, it is a test of character."
Stardate: Last October. Cadet Leo Apotheker, former exec from the lawsuit riddled SAP takes over the Starship HP, which has spent $2B on a phone and tablet bid to take on Apple with the avowed goal of becoming #2 in the i-market. You do a big show to launch the Touchpad and Pre, but fail to take the market in 2 months. The Klingons (Apple) have fallen in behind the Romulans (Droid) and have you surrounded, cut off, and are ready to eat your customers. His response? Separate the Saucer section (HP's PC Group), ram it into the Kobayashi Maru (the webOS/Touchpad), and run for the border with the main body of the ship. Oh yeah, and blow $10B (x4-16 its value) on Autonomy in a bid to become #2 behind SAP, as a smokescreen.
Character test: FAIL. and we the customer will not soon forget it. "
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Here's the Sexual Harassment Letter That Got Mark Hurd Fired - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD
I have one more question. OK, two. How can the HP board have found that the below was NOT sexual Harassment? And talking about the EDS purchase was OK too? In other words, everything Hurd did was okie dokie except for falsifying expense reports ?
""She continually had to put you off,make excuses,scurry away or simply leave," the letter read. "Oftentimes,you would be irritated and angry and on a few occasions,you were so angry when she put you off,she expected to get fired."
Yet Hurd would always engage her again,the letter recounted. But,by 2009,the letter said,it was clear his patience was wearing thin.
He tried another tack,offering her money,asking if there was anything she needed. Hurd confessed that he felt he could spend the rest of his life with her,but would have to see "how the chemistry in bed was."
She told him,the letter said,that she wasn't interested in dating a married man. At this point in the letter,a lengthy passage was redacted. Sources familiar with the matter said the sections deal with the state of Hurd's marriage at that time.
Hurd,the letter read,persisted,offering Fisher more HP events and a $100,000 a year job. "With [Hurd's] obvious growing irritation with her put-offs,these opportunities never came to pass," the letter said.
Finally,at an October 2009 meeting in Boise,Hurd allegedly grabbed Fisher and kissed her. Fisher said she wasn't feeling well and wriggled free.
"You were angry," the letter said about Hurd. "It was becoming clear. She knew that if she did not have sex with you soon,her job was over,which is exactly what occurred. All your advances were unwelcome,awkward, and were never reciprocated in any way.""
NYT: Letter That Led to Downfall of Mark Hurd...
Does nobody get it? It doesn't matter whether they consummated the relationship. Stating (implying) that continued employment is contingent on having sex with you is illegal. Sexual Harassment 101. Every HP employee has to take that online course.
" (after the settlement Ms. Fisher also stated that she and Mr. Hurd never had sexual relations)"
So tawdry : Former HP CEO Hurd Tried to Cajole Fisher Into Sex, Letter Says
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/29/bloomberg_articlesLWZUY00YHQ0X.DTL
Girlfriends in every city! Sheryl Crow at his beck and call! A Million bucks in the bank! I don't know, is this a more sophisticated approach than a picture of him in his underwear? Or dirty talk about a cigar? Does this kind of cretinous behavior really get these guys women? Or do they get the girl due to their position power, despite their poor behavior?
Tawdry and embarrassing... But it doesn't quite add up. According to earlier statements from Hurd, the two frequently met for dinner by themselves - one of the reasons he was fired was for lying about there being multiple dinner guests when it was just the two of them. I find it very hard to believe that a woman as brazenly pursued as she says she was, would have allowed this very uncomfortable environment to go on for several years. And let this lecherous old coot into her hotel room? More than once? She cannot possibly be that stupid, unless this was entrapment. And, why wait so long to press charges? This happened in 07/08. But she presses charges in 2010? As if she wasn't sure whether his behavior was unacceptable and/or illegal, and needed time to sort it out?
And she even says Allred's letter was full of inaccuracies? What was this all about then? Was she just golddigging, hoping some embarrassing details would force him to handover a few mil rather than see this go public? She has said before that she didn't intend to get him fired. Perhaps Allred talked her into a little blackmail action, to set her up for retirement. Perhaps she didn't count on him turning the letter over to HP Legal. Perhaps HE thought HP Legal would just quietly take care of this little blackmail attempt. Perhaps he didn't realize how many enemies he had inside HP that were just waiting for an excuse to take him down...
"According to Allred's letter,Hurd,who is married with two daughters,made sexual advances toward Fisher during dinners and other meetings. During an October 2007 visit to her hotel room at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta,Hurd twice touched Fisher's breast and asked her to stay in his room for the night,the letter said. Two months later in a hotel room in St. Louis,he embraced her and quickly kissed her on the lips.
At another meeting,Hurd told Fisher he had girlfriends in New York and San Francisco, according to the letter. He also told her that many women were "crazy about" him,including singer Sheryl Crow,the document said. Jay Cooper,a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig LLP who represents Crow,said he'd never heard her name in connection with Hurd.
During a meeting in Madrid in March 2008,Hurd walked Fisher to an ATM and showed her his checking account balance of more than $1 million to impress her,the document said."
Monday, December 19, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Over Steve Jobs' dead body... Literally!
Apple may launch 'iPad mini' in Q3
BGR: THE THREE BIGGEST LETTERS IN TECH | DECEMBER 16, 2011
http://pulse.me/s/44zFq
Apple is reportedly working on a smaller version of its popular iPad tablet that will launch in the third quarter next year. Citing sources in Apple's parts supply chain, DigiTimes on Friday claimed that a new iPad with a 7.85-inch display will enter production at the end of the second quarter. LG Display and AU Optronics will supply the panels, according to the site's report. DigiTimes suggests that Apple, which previously stated that a 7-inch display was too small for a tablet, will build the smaller slate to "cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors."
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet: How to choose | Android Atlas - CNET News
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."
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
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."
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
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!" "
"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 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."
Thursday, November 10, 2011
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."
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."
Sunday, November 06, 2011
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
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Steve Jobs Declared 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." "
Friday, November 04, 2011
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. "
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