quote from http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2054932&cid=35621288 :
"This is a CS program we are talking about. Much like economics, in these disciplines the real world is often considered a special case."
So I finally got myself an ebook reader. I'd been thinking about it for a while, but when my brother got a "wink" reader, I jumped. In short order, I'd asked my other brother (currently temporarily in the land of the un-free) to get me a Barnes and Noble Nook.
My only reason was that it has a real browser. Turns out the browser is more than somewhat crippled -- it can't even manage the redirection from chamarty.net to sitaramc.blogspot.com!
Getting stuff onto the device
It won't let you download anything using the browser either -- the only way to get PDFs and EPUBs on the box is either from B&N or via USB.
The wink, on the other hand, doesn't have a browser, for all practical purposes anyway. What it does have is an email client, which -- surprise -- lets you download stuff to the device. So you have two ways to get stuff onto the device, which is nice.
Deleting stuff you already read
The Nook will let you delete content from the device's interface. The wink won't; you have to do it from a host computer via USB.
Reading oddball stuff
The biggest thing the wink has is that the reader software is much better than on the Nook (gasp!) Firstly, it actually supports rotated reading for wide text if you want to do that, which is quite useful for some comics and cartoons. Secondly, it does not force everything into "reflow" mode. Of course, zooming while not in reflow mode makes a document wider than the screen and you have to pan left to right for every sentence, but at least it allows you to do that (this is important for figures in PDFs, for instance).
The Nook forces reflow on everything so it is crap at PDFs with bulleted lists, indents, tables, and such.
Hardware
Now that i realise the browser isn't that great, about the only thing the Nook has going for it is the hardware quality. It feels a little better built, and the buttons (there are only 4 by the way) have an "embedded" feel to them. The wink's keyboard is bad -- sometimes you have to hit twice for a button to register, and sometimes you hit once and it registers twice. (I guess a statistician would say that on the average the keyboard works fine then!)
I didn't get much of a chance to compare battery life but I suspect the Nook is crap. I'm getting far, far, less than what the ads and even reviews led me to believe. I'll have to wait till my usage stabilises somewhat, because the color LCD at the bottom is definitely a huge drain!
Security
Oh yeah -- the other reason I like the nook is it actually has a device password. There may be ways to get around it, but at least it'll keep out casual snooping...
Summary
Nook: if you absolutely need a password protected device. And/or you absolutely need a browser, even if it can't do most sites.
Wink: if you want to be able to receive content via email while on the road without your own laptop. And/or you want a better reader software in general (subjective opinion)
Just saw a very detailed account of a wedding. There was lavish
description of dress, decorations, and food, and the narration of the
ceremony included this:
"And the chanting of Mantras became louder, the sound of Shennai [sic]
became shriller and on dot [sic] at [elided] each of them placed the
Jeela Karra Bellam on the other's heads and the marriage was
consummated."
I want to say to him: I do not think it means what you think it means.
Would have been *totally* appropriate too, since he also said the
bride looked like a princess ;-)
someone was looking for a gitolite equivalent "with an interface". I first told him gitolite has a great interface; it's called "vim".
Then someone else said "but it's not pointy-clicky".
I told the original guy maybe he should use an ipad ;-)
I can just imagine vi on an ipad. Definition of hell I suppose (and yes, I know for most people the hell is the vi; for me it's the ipad!)
For a long while now, I've been ranting at kids (and many adults, sadly) who type "u" for "you", "gr8" for "great", "dat" for "that" (I mean really, how much did you save there?), and so on. I sometimes ask them: does your computer come with just a phone keypad? (And some of them even understand the joke!)
But a few days ago I saw this pathetic display of illiteracy move to a new dimension.
I heard a barely-teen kid say O-M-G in speech. I mean "Oh", "Em", "Geee" -- spoken out as 3 individual letters.
To all the people who lament the demise of Hindi, Telugu, and other mother languages, may I suggest that death by disuse is more dignified than this death by misuse?
When people like Miguel Icaza start praising the deal, you know it's time to say goodbye to one of your favourite (till last week) companies.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/71380
Apparently he said "the Microsoft/Nokia partnership will save Nokia and increase the relevance of Microsoft's fledgling mobile operating system."
He didn't say "saved from whom" but I presume he means Apple and Android.
Personally, I was very much looking forward to MeeGo, which was looking to be a much more full featured Linux than Android (for hackers who hate Java, Android is just an appliance).
Oh well... I guess I'll stick to my plain (not even a camera or bluetooth) cell phone, and use a laptop/netbook if I really need something smarter.
There was a fire at Bombay House last night which claimed 3 lives.
Very sad.
But here's what's even more sad: someone apparently asked "I wonder if there were any records lost in the fire".
I don't think what was implied is actually true. The sad part is that before Radia no one would even have *thought* of that when it comes to the Tatas.
Of course, with Reliance, this will never happen. They don't even keep records I am sure ;-)
http://lwn.net/Articles/414051/
A long-ish article about a talk that Michael Meeks gave about Libre Office, in which you find this gem (the emphasis is mine, not in the original):
OpenOffice.org has a somewhat checkered history when it comes to revision control. CVS was used for some years, resulting in a fair amount of pain; simply tagging a release would take about two hours to run. Still, they lived with CVS for some time until OpenOffice.org launched into a study to determine which alternative revision control system would be best to move to. The study came back recommending Git, but that wasn't what the managers wanted to hear, so they moved to Subversion instead - losing most of the project's history in the process. Later, a move to Mercurial was done, losing history again. The result is a code base littered with commented-out code; nobody ever felt confident actually deleting anything because they never knew if they would be able to get it back. Many code changes are essentially changelogged within the code itself as well. Now LibreOffice is using Git and a determined effort is being made to clean that stuff up.
Well, yesterday I attended my first ever Christian wedding. I guess it wasn't a true Christian wedding; the bride (Indian) and groom (Canadian, or Quebecois, as he would remind me) were members of a church called "the international church of christ".
Anyway, I took an instant dislike to the person who was officiating in the wedding. He talked patronisingly of India traditionally having many barriers against inter-caste, inter-language, and inter-state weddings, etc., and patted himself and his church on the back that this wedding was therefore unique or at least very special.
Of course, he conveniently left out "inter-religion". Probably because his church expressly prohibits it ;-)
Anyway, I'd say http://carm.org/what-international-church-christ (esp the last 2 paras) is more accurate than Wikipedia's wimpy "it is difficult to make any generalizations about the organization collectively". Google around for more if you're curious. Add the word "banned" to see even more interesting results.
