The Gear Junkie:
Traveling in Nepal last month, the AdventurerOpti was constantly at my side. The product is small, easy to use and quick: Press the button, dip the lamp into your drink, and wait 90 seconds to purify a liter of liquid.
As a hiker we take water filtration and purification for granted. In the grand scheme of things these little devices are amazing, and hopefully we can get them into the hands of more people who need them on a daily basis.
Chris Foresman:
PTC [ed note: Parents Television Council] agrees with Jobs that this is a problem, as no other smartphone platform offers a system like Parental Controls. “We plan to draw attention to other platforms, such as Android, or Verizon’s Vcast service, that aren’t really doing anything,” McKiernan told Ars.” We definitely want to see progress from some of the other handheld devices.”
Ruh Oh.
Copy/Cut/Paste does not work for many users (including me). This is not good at all. I can’t copy and paste meaning that I can’t compose posts on the iPad (I don’t write them in the WordPress app).
This is a major flaw and I hope it gets fixed yesterday.
A month ago I, like many others, got and iPad. One thing that has really interested me is people complaining about not being able to print. Leading to dozens of iPad apps that allow you to print documents from the iPad via many different methods.
I have none of these apps and probably won’t buy any, the simple fact is that I am 90% paperless in both work and personal facets. So I asked myself, is printing still relevant. With email and signed PDFs, do we really need to print things, and when we do, does it really matter?
(Let’s put aside photo printing, as we all do it and we know just how important high quality is.) I think that now more than ever printing is very important.
Not so much in the sense that we desperately need printouts in order to survive in today’s world. The opposite is actually true, we truly can get by without paper these days – though most choose not to. It is for this very reason that printing is so important.
We need to change the way we think about printouts. Printing should be the new marketing materials that we use. Each printout should be high quality with thought put into it.
We no longer print for portability, we print to impress.
WSJ Staff:
The chairman essentially has three options. He could do nothing and simply ask Congress to pass legislation that gives the FCC authority to enforce net neutrality. (It’s unlikely lawmakers could pass legislation this year or possibly even next year.)
He could say the FCC made a mistake in 2002 when it deregulated Internet pipes and reverse itself, saying it will now apply rules written for traditional phone lines on Internet networks. Phone and cable companies are extremely opposed to this option, since it presents serious uncertainty about which rules will be enforced on Internet providers, like rate regulations and line-sharing provisions.
Finally, Mr. Genachowski could say that the FCC has plenty of authority to enforce net neutrality under its current scheme. The agency would basically need to take another shot at convincing the courts that it’s right. This is likely the easiest option for the FCC chairman, since he’d have the backing of phone and cable company lobbyists who could otherwise make his professional life a bit unpleasant. It would also likely take several years for the courts to rule on another attempt. It’s not clear if Mr. Genachowski will even still be at the agency then.
Everyone should be worried about how this will turn out.
Computerworld poses the following seven ethical questions (my answers shown below each):
Question 1: You open an e-mail to find a huge file of your company’s HR data that was sent to you in error. You can see how much everyone makes, their performance reports … everything that is pertinent to their employment. So, do you a) take a quick skim through before notifying the sender; or b) close it immediately and notify the sender? Is it wrong to look even if you keep the information to yourself?
This is the trickiest of all the questions. There is a line between what I believe to be right and what I would actually do. I think you should close it and delete it, notifying the sender of the error. However, I would most likely take a peek at the file, before notifying the sender.
Question 2: You find that you can examine people’s expenses claims and you see that your boss is cheating for a hundred or so dollars per month: Would you a) report him if you wouldn’t face any consequences; or b) report him, consequences be damned, or c) forget about it?
B) Report him who cares the consequences. My wife would say that I feel this way because I have never really had a boss, but I know I could never work for someone I knew to be cheating the company.
Question 3: Now assume the false claims amount to thousands, not hundreds of dollars: What do you do now? If your answer is different to your answer from question 2, explain.
Same as above.
Question 4: In these tough economic times many people are desperate to get a job. Is it unethical to intentionally and significantly underpay a highly qualified candidate?
No, I don’t believe this to be unethical. I see hiring the same as sales. The person hiring wants to pay as little as possible (just like a buyer) and the person trying to get the job wants as much money as possible (just like a seller would). If one party sucks at negotiating a good salary it is not unethical, however it is not a sustainable business practice. Resorting to underpaying employees will always lead to them leaving as soon as they can.
Question 5: You “know” you are underpaid. You can pad your expenses and get away with it and in the grand scheme of things, your overbilling would be virtually negligible. Is this wrong? If it isn’t, why not? If it is wrong, why?
Yes it is wrong, who would think it is right?
Question 6: You discover that a service provider has violated their terms of service and should have refunded some small portion, say a few dollars, of what they charge your organization, but they don’t make a correction on their bill. If you say anything, it’s going to be a huge fuss and could make your life difficult. Do you a) keep quiet or b) make a fuss. If you keep quiet because it’s only a few dollars then how much would it have to be before you took action?
There are a lot of factors at play here, I am inclined to answer A, remembering the info if there are later problems. I look at it as a cost factor, if I spend an hour trying to get back $3, then is my time worth less than $3 and hour? Certainly not. So I would wait until the amount was equal to or more than the amount I feel my time is worth to deal with the claim.
Question 7: You are part of the team looking for a new CIO. You are down to three candidates and, given the importance of the job, you have the candidates’ backgrounds investigated by a private investigator to see whether there is any “dirt” on them. Is it ethical to probe their backgrounds like this? If you were the candidate, would that change your answer?
I think it would only be unethical if you did not inform the candidate that this was part of the process. Made even more unethical if this is not something that you do for all applicants, only ones that you feel are hiding something.
There you have it, my moral standing.
Jolie O’Dell for Mashable:
The users are claiming that Linden Labs and Founder Philip Rosedale persuaded them to invest money and pay a sort of “property tax” with the promise of actual ownership of virtual land. Now, the users say, the terms of service have been changed without their prior knowledge or consent. They say the new terms “state that these land and property owners did not own what they had created, bought and paid for, and that these consumers had no choice but to click on a new terms of service agreement or they could not have access to their property.” Moreover, the group alleges that Linden Labs froze user accounts and deleted or converted non-virtual currency and virtual property without giving any explanation or avenues for recourse.
Uh Oh.
Cynthia Tamworth on how she uses Floppy Disks (as quoted in the BBC):
I buy these little beauties for a quite different reason. The floppy disk costs an average of £3.66 for 200, however they have a resale value of £5.50 at any good computer recycling centre, so I buy them in bulk and simply sell them directly at a profit. Take that, Bill Gates.
This list was spurned by Sony’s late to the party decision to no longer sell Floppy Drives. Reading through the list I couldn’t help but remember my middle school summers that I spent at my Father’s company formatting floppy disks to be reused and checking that there were no ‘important’ documents on them. Good times.
HotelChatter:
Today, the hotel landscape is firmly divided into those who follow Best WiFi Practices and those who do not. And while old stalwarts will probably never change their policies (cough, Four Seasons, cough), many up and coming hotel brands realize free, reliable, basic WiFi is an easy way to earn guest happiness and loyalty.
Be sure to take a look at this before you book your next hotel. Of the big chains Holiday Inn comes in at #4. Not surprisingly it is all the other chains that are pegged as the worst (W Hotels, DoubleTree, Four Seasons, Marriott).
Apple:
Apple® today announced that it sold its one millionth iPad™ on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.
Staggering.
I think perhaps the most interesting question we should be asking about this Net-Neutrality debate is nit whether we as consumers should stand for it but rather should big companies. Would you still be a Comcast or Vodaphone customer if Google and YouTube refused to pay them to be available for the users?
In other words would you pick your Internet provider based the provider or the websites that you can get with that provider? I tend to think we care far more about the content than we do about the ISPs.
Glenn Fleishman:
On the whole, AT&T’s 3G service options are still rather remarkable, with unique or rare elements on pricing, extending service, upgrading, and cancellation that make it flexible enough for occasional use but affordable for regular use. Watch that streaming video, though.
I didn’t go 3G because a) I had a Verizon MiFi already and b) I already pay AT&T for a 3G plan on my iPhone. If AT&T let’s you use the same data plan on both devices then I will get a 3G iPad.
Mark D. Rasch:
I don’t know what the sentence could be, but it could be significant as they’re going to say what he stole wasn’t something worth $150 or $400, it wasn’t even worth $5,000, but they’re going to say it’s worth the entire development cost of the iPhone prototype, which could cost tens of millions of dollars.
I also love this quote when asked if he had ever worked on a similar case:
There was a case I worked on many years ago in which a Soviet pilot defected to Tokyo and under the law he was granted asylum. The Soviets wanted their Mig25 plane back, but we had never seen a Mig25 before. So we and the Japanese had to return it because it was the property of the Soviet Union. But before it was sent back, it was taken apart, every piece measured, every piece replicated and put back together and then returned. Did we steal it? No. We returned it.
The really interesting point here is not who will be found right, but rather who will wave the white flag first. This is going to be expensive for Gizmodo, and Apple. I tend to think that Apple is the only one who can afford it.
This debate rages on and I want you to think back to pre-iPhone days. Pre-iPhone not to many regular users gave a crap about codecs, web standards and Flash. Now even people that I think are not tech savvy, talk about how the iPhone needs to support Flash.
With Microsoft onboard seems the writing is on the wall. It will be interesting to see how well Flash performs on Android, if and when they release it.
Leander Kahney:
As our friend Chris Foresman of Ars Technica fame points out in the comments, 3G tops out at a paltry 64Kbps. ” It looks like crap on the iPhone,” says Chris, “so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it looks like crap 4x as big?”
I don’t have a 3G iPad but based on what I have seen on the iPhone I believe it. Also I can confirm this to be true as well:
Meanwhile, our readers are reporting that Verizon’s MiFi delivers: there’s no difference in quality between Wi-Fi and 3G on Verizon’s network.
It appears to effect other iPad apps that stream video as well.
Mitch Joel:
Lacking Flash. Flash has become a standard technology to view websites, so while Apple battles it out with Flash’s owners, some websites will be a challenge.
So because Flash is not standard on the iPad, it sucks? Oh but wait then you say that only some websites are inflicted? How does this make the iPad bad? Mark me confused.
All I know is that during the past few weeks I have had an iPad I have run into only one website that I could not view because of Flash.