offbeatmammal › Comments

"I like the new look :) sadly the line up of phones isn't really inspiring. Best thing they could do now it to either use some of that ATT spectrum to support a wider range of devices - I have a Nokia Lumia 800 that I love but on t-mo I can only get Edge out of it when I'm in the US :( They also need to look at their pre-paid/pay-as-you-go options ... there's no voice/text/data options that travelers can pick up for a week or folks who are not heavy users can build loyalty with (I travel a lot and local SIMs are a great way to try out a service)In fact, they should take a leaf out of the European carriers and offer a real breath of fresh air for consumers who want a simple model with no lock in... or perhaps look at what (eg) Ting are doing and bring a similar model (especially good for families with voice, texts and data shared and no nickle and dime for incremental lines and features)" - offbeatmammal

"Oh and of course while window.onerror works fine in IE, Chrome and Firefox as well as new Opera builds out is still partly broken in Safari" - offbeatmammal

"Also free, and open source (via github) is http://jsErrLog.appspot.com - real time with gTalk notifications available" - offbeatmammal

"I have many fond memories of OS/2 - we used it from about 1.2 through to Warp both for the ADW CASE tools from KnowledgeWare but also for the GoServe webserver and REXX (the little programming language that could!) Sadly, as the article sums up pretty well, it never got the "love" it needed from IBM and Microsoft's focus on WinNT meant there was always going to be a struggle for it to gain traction. Like Betamax it was a great product but poorly understood by the potential audience and IBM - more used to marketing to Enterprise customers - failed to understand the value of appealing to the users with a slick and polished product. Ironically it seems to be exactly what Apple has done to the existing players in the smartphone market with the iPhone" - offbeatmammal

"I have gone from 2 androids (latest was a Desire Z) to a Nokia 800 WP and really like it, not planning to switch back. I'm typing this on a Chromebook that's just used for IMDB browsing in the living room. Google are not perfect, but neither are Microsoft or Apple and there are always highs and lows. For the Android tablet story... Google needs a serious partnership with someone like Target or BestBuy backed up with good advertising to get alternatives to the iPad in front of consumers... same is going to be true of the Windows8 ARM devices... iPad has such an emotive connection to the audience that unseating it isn't just going to be about the $ it's going to be about the whole experience ... wanting it, acquiring it and being happy using it (so a good app story, lack of device fragmentation, regular timely OS/firmware updates) ... if they fail to match Apple on that then it will be hard for this to be more than a 3 month experiment..." - offbeatmammal

"nice. fairly simple changes but it comes together really well and breathes new life into an already good platform. couple that with the fact that, unlike the US, HD are not an every day sight and it would be a great bike around town. would probably go for some less nobbly rubber myself but the do fit the look" - offbeatmammal

"It's a Kickstarter project, due to ship in about a month. I've pre-ordered and can't wait to get my hands on it" - offbeatmammal

"I've been with T-Mo for years and am a fan - though recently discovered similar to other commentators the surprise addition of handset insurance - but I think if they want to dig themselves out of the mire they are in then the answer isn't to be like the big boys, it's to take a page out of Apples book and "think different" and actually become a consumer first carrier... they need to stop "leading" with second rate phones... the Nokia 710 is a nice phone, but it's not the 800 and with Nokia trying to make a splash in the US now would be a great time for them to get behind that. then they need to stop the constant churn on plans... Creedo are doing something smart with their family plans where everything (except data) is shared... why not go the whole way and share data as well and stop with the nickle and dime strategies. Right now T-Mo and Sprint are both less expensive options than Verizon and AT&T (have a look at BillShrink.com) but they're busy overcomplicating the story so it's..." - offbeatmammal

"this is a great example of a much bigger problem - very well described here theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_..." - offbeatmammal

"When I moved from the UK (where they still have pennies) to Australia (where the lowest denomination coin is 5c after they withdrew the 1c and 2c coins in 1992) it took me a couple of months to adapt, but the rounding seems to work out just fine and certainly makes the maths easier juggling a pocketful of change Moving here and coming back to the world of pennies was a bit of a trial - though the "leave a penny / take a penny" trays some stores still have certainly helped me with the transition One thing I really like about both the UK and Australia though is that the price on the sticker/shelf is what you pay... no adding 9.8% (or whatever) at the register to roll in the taxes I suspect that a lot of the inefficiencies being blamed on the penny at the checkout is actually largely down to the fact that the consumer doesn't know what they purchases are going to cost because they can't easily keep a running total based on the numbers they see when they shop... I'd vote for both the..." - offbeatmammal

"sadly I have never seen Intel Wireless Display advertised as a feature for a laptop, TV or console... if folks don't know about it they're never going to look for it" - offbeatmammal

"looks awesome. hope it handles well - especially in NY traffic ;)" - offbeatmammal

"I for one hope that Google never start crawling places like 23andMe (despite the close personal relationship between the founders) - there are very clear boundaries" - offbeatmammal

"did you not read the article? He's made it pretty clear that over the next 20-50 years he is going to use the vast majority of that for the Foundation beyond the small inheritance for the kids. what disturbs me far more though is the fact he drinks so much diet coke... that's not going to be good for him!" - offbeatmammal

"I wonder if these guys sell the parts -  http://www.zeromotorcycles.com... :)" - offbeatmammal

"Sadly today the process is more complex, the backlog is longer (just look at the priority dates on the visa bulletin for an eb3 for instance) and in most cases you are strongly advised to hire representation as a simple typo can set you back. Luckily from resident to citizen still seems less fraught but the h1b to green card is hurting a lot of people (i know several who have up hope and walked away)" - offbeatmammal

"the biggest problem/barrier to getting things back on track for those like us is that because there's no political benefit no-one who has the power to do anything will make a stand - even as a resident we can't vote (until another 5-10 years have passed on the Citizenship trail) so why would anyone rock the boat and potentially upset their supporters by giving away jobs or whatever the rallying cry is. As Tim Harrington commented earlier we need the carrot and the stick (for both individuals and businesses) rather than two sticks of differing thickness ;) Whatever is put in place needs to be at a Federal level - not random State by State initiatives and it needs be a clear, concise and not riddled with loopholes and special cases as that's where the problems start. Thinking back to my Australian experiences both the resident and citizen workflows were straightforward and had very well documented timelines with reviews guaranteed within much shorter timeframes than here (from memory my..." - offbeatmammal

"as someone going through the legal process... please tell me that the beatings will eventually stop!" - offbeatmammal

"While I'm not in favor of random police checkpoints pulling everyone who looks "foreign" over and demanding their papers (smacks of Nazi Germany and would have a negative impact on too many citizens and legal migrants) I do think that as part of any existing police action or need to utilize taxpayer funded resources a simple check that you're entitled to be here is fair. I have a driving license and a social security number and I have no issue with needing to show them to register my car, enroll my daughter in school or get medical treatment. I am doing things by the book and I think that is the absolute baseline... not because of any political leaning (I find a lot of Romney and the GOP rhetoric to be very wrong headed) but because it's the right thing to do as a guest who want's to become part of society. I am just hoping that whatever the changes they don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and penalize those trying to play by the rules and make things any harder/complicated or..." - offbeatmammal

"not quite sure what your point is there? I'm actually originally English and became Australian a few years before getting offered a job in the US so I've been through the process a couple of times now. I actually have no problem with labor certification and associated steps because it proves that I'm not taking away anyone's job, I've got no problems with a fair and transparent system but the fact I've got to sit here for another 6 years before an opaque and arbitrary decision may send me packing (which watching news reports of folks who've hopped a fence and not gone through any of the process or expense get jumped to the front of the queue) is pretty stressful. Are you saying I should just suck it up and go back where I came from and take my family with me or stick out another 6 years without questioning the arbitrary nature of the delay (when we started the process the wait for less than a year, but the time we'd got the paperwork to the point where we are it had ballooned to 6..." - offbeatmammal

"As an H-1B on the Green Card route (labor certified, I140 in hand) I am still faced with another 6 years in limbo where my wife and daughter can't even get part time work so our savings diminish and we are unable to make firm plans for the future although we pay taxes and contribute in a number of ways to the local community. At the same time we see politically motivated queue jumping and exceptions angering the general population.. Making us feel unwelcome. We want you make a life here, heck my daughter sounds more American than Australian but the legal route is incredibly tortuous and stressful... Sad and ironic for a country founded on migration!" - offbeatmammal

"curious how it achieves the cost saving... the power output (1458w) = the amount of heat it can generate... what would make this more effective at heating a room than any other 1.4Kw appliance?" - offbeatmammal

"meant more blocking Win8 rather than other Linux flavors ..." - offbeatmammal

"Not sure that MS could be accused of being a dominant player in the ARM space. Linux (via Android) has pretty much had that it itself for some time and the tablets available today are pretty much locked bootloaders and hard/impossible to put your preferred flavour of Linux on (assuming you can find drivers etc) This is a new space, so anything MS (or Apple or an Android OEM) do is new territory. Maybe I'm missing the argument here but I don't see this as being a problem... if an OEM choose to build a machine that will ship with Win8 they can - if demand exists - just as easily ship the same SKU with one small difference... no lockdown... for Linux... but in order to do that there has to be the market demand for it (and expecting MS to provide a "free ride" is disingeneous and unless you hold Apple and Motorola etc to the same standard unfair). If I buy a phone today - I expect to run the OS I bought it with because in many cases the OS developer and the OEM worked hand-in-hand to get..." - offbeatmammal

"Not sure that MS could be accused of being a dominant player in the ARM space. Linux (via Android) has pretty much had that it itself for some time and the tablets available today are pretty much locked bootloaders and hard/impossible to put your preferred flavour of Linux on (assuming you can find drivers etc) This is a new space, so anything MS (or Apple or an Android OEM) do is new territory. Maybe I'm missing the argument here but I don't see this as being a problem... if an OEM choose to build a machine that will ship with Win8 they can - if demand exists - just as easily ship the same SKU with one small difference... no lockdown... for Linux... but in order to do that there has to be the market demand for it (and expecting MS to provide a "free ride" is disingeneous and unless you hold Apple and Motorola etc to the same standard unfair). If I buy a phone today - I expect to run the OS I bought it with because in many cases the OS developer and the OEM worked hand-in-hand to get..." - offbeatmammal

"How is this different from Apple selling iPads2's locked to only run iOS or the various Android tablets with locked bootloaders. On the generic PC platform the decision is down to the OEM but they are steered in the direction of letting a physically present user disable to protection. On an ARM tablet - which could be argued is no longer the same class of generic device - it's taking the same path Apple and others have already established. If there really was a demand for a Linux powered slate I don't see why there isn't an Ubuntu powered one in the market today to fill that need. Of course this starts to get into Cory's discussion of the death of general purpose computing devices [boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lock...] but the blame can't be laid at Microsoft's door." - offbeatmammal

"I'd probably learn to live with it :) Really like my Dyna but this would get me on a Sporty :)" - offbeatmammal

"I'm looking forward to the result of the sentiment analysis that says the voting population are fed up to the back teeth with the way their elected (so called) Representatives are behaving and that Stephen Colbert is the only candidate they'll vote for -  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45..." - offbeatmammal

"WANT! This looks amazing - well balanced and great color scheme. Makes me wish I was back in Aus. The only thing I'd change is to switch from mid to forward controls (I find the Sportster too cramped otherwise)" - offbeatmammal

"I am pretty happy with t-mo pricing and service. I don't want an iPhone so I'm glad to see them supporting Nokia's assault on the US market. I think one other area that t-mo could do well to differentiate themselves in is genuine family plans where minutes/texts and data are shared across a number of lines - helps drive the costs down while helping engender loyalty. The first carrier to offer the same warranty on a device as the contract terms... now they'll clean up for sure :)" - offbeatmammal