...more recent posts
I have some Carhartt pants that have a special cell phone pocket, about where a hammer loop would be. In my haste to start a load of laundry, I failed to check that pocket.
So now I have a Droid 2 that's an unhappy phone. It powers up, but no display. I moved service back to my Droid 1, which other than the keyboard is a mighty fine phone. Unlike the Droid 2, the basic telephony UI doesn't have the appearance of a UI designed by someone 20 years away from presbyopia. And the speaker phone volume goes all the way up to annoying!
So I check on the Droid 4. Five hundred and forty nine dollars, retail, with no contract renewal. Or $99 for a refurb unit -- but only with a contract renewal. Somewhere in between, perhaps half retail, is a new unit with contract renewal. Contract renewals get rid of the grandfathered "unlimited data". I don't use anywhere near the limit. But goddammit, I might. One day.
To me this pricing is like Safeway, but more insidious. If you ever go in a Safeway, you'll notice the way they do "sale" pricing. Do you want to pay "absolutely fucking ridiculous price" or do you want to pay "discount price that only comes with a discount card." What Safeway is doing is coercing you to submit to data tracking.
VZW is practicing the same sort of coercion, but they're coercing customers into new contracts. And they get to do it by talking about "subsidized price". They're doing you a fucking favor.
So, I'm a Droid 1 user.
Better video compression is coming soon.
Here’s a blast from the past:
Hello,
You are receiving this message because your email address is associated with an
unmigrated legacy Blogger account. As we announced in April of last year, legacy
accounts will no longer be accessible after May 30th, 2012 unless they are updated
to the Google Account system. Any blog content associated with this account will
also be unmodifiable after that date.
It was 1999 when Jim started this site; wow. I remember using blogger in the early days, and agonizing when it went down at inconvenient times. I trust this has no implications for our content at this point..?
Default email signature on new Samsung phone.
Screened call follow up.
VLC for Android, including HW acceleration.
Field Guide to the Verizon/Specturmco/Cox deal. Doesn't sound good.
DASH, which has HLS-like and smooth-streaming-like capabilities, is another MPEG standard. VLC is supporting it.
Low tech wi-fi boost w/ beer can here
For the first time, the number of wireless devices connecting to cellular networks in the United States and its territories over the past six months has surpassed the country’s total population. A semi-annual survey conducted by the CTIA found that wireless subscriber connections now total 327.6 million while the population of the U.S. and its territories is now 315.5 million people. This means the wireless penetration rate in the U.S. in now 103.9% according to the CTIA, marking the first time that wireless penetration has surpassed 100% in the U.S.
I met my first Apple fanboi in about 1980. He was a fellow electrical engineering student. I did some HW and SW work with microprocessors, but did not actually have my own computer. A few people did. I was waiting until they were better.
I remember asking this guy a smart ass question about the sticker on his truck. "Why is there a hunk out of that apple? And why is it striped? I've seen red apples, green apples, golden apples, but not one with stripes." He ignored my smart ass intent, and launched into a spiel about how great Apple was. I saw the Apple ][ as just another crappy little toy computer with *gasp* a weak ass 6502.
His excitement while talking about Apple was palpable. He could think of nothing better than moving to Cupertino to work for them. I didn't get it. I guess I did take away from that exchange that Silicon Valley is the place to be. So I did at least grasp that.
Thanks Steve, for making engineering a little more exciting.