The New Adventures of Mr Stephen Fry » Forum: Science, Technology and Gadgets

The New Adventures of Mr Stephen Fry » Forum: Science, Technology and Gadgets - Recent Topics http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/forum/science-technology-and-gadgets Just another bbPress community en-US Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:18:19 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/search.php Nitro on "The Computer that fits in your palm" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/the-computer-that-fits-in-your-palm#post-275149 Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:05:38 +0000 Nitro 275149@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Fantastically idealistic ( how we need more idealists these days! ) British computer company makes not only a tiny computer, but, even better, one that works in most of the usual ways and aimed at ensuring that even the most economically devestated people can have access to anything and everything the rest of us take for granted... <a href="http://news.dice.com/2011/05/16/a-25-computer-that-fits-in-your-palm" rel="nofollow">http://news.dice.com/2011/05/16/a-25-computer-that-fits-in-your-palm</a> BrigittePaleo on "i-pad: made in China !" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/i-pad-made-in-china#post-235421 Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:41:00 +0000 BrigittePaleo 235421@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ I just read in my favourite French newspaper 'le Canard Enchaîné' that the giant Chinese factory where the i-pads are made (300.000 employees) witnesses an impressive amount of suicides. This factory hires hords of young workers coming from remote areas, who have not the right to go to town, who eat, work and sleep in this 'forbidden city of technologies'. They're paid 100€ per month. So the direction has found an idea: they must now sign an engagement promising not to jump from the windows, and one has put large nets (1.5 million of square metres) all around the buildings. Just have a thought for these poor young Chinese when paying with your new toy... Brigitte Nitro on "Roll your own" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/roll-your-own#post-280099 Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:42:02 +0000 Nitro 280099@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ do you really think apple and nokia and samsung and [otherstuffwebuy] from a certain big city in china where foxcon is, do not know that 13 and 14 year olds build this stuff for endless hours every day in a city whose air quality makes hong kong's look pristine? a company known for how much it prides itself on the detail of shape and color and components doesn't know? or...do they just see what they want to, like we all do when we buy 'stuff from china'? anything that can be made by hand, IS made by hand because the labor costs are, effectively, zero....when you compare one of these workers wages to what you'd make at the local fast-food restaurant, it's effecitvely no dollars per hour....there are no unions...the chinese unions are communist fronts and if you are desperate enough to go to them for your non-existant employee rights, you go to prison for complaining...even being a member of a union can get you thrown in prison... there are no yoga breaks, bathroom breaks, or cigarette breaks...and beyond the 'neon city' of Popular Electronic Gadget are other factories....no machines in these buildings...just the hushed sounds of tiny fingers, under camera watch their entire shift, attached to bodies that work no less than 12 hours a day...14 is the average...or the 'hot new gadget' will peg it to 16hrs a day for months and months...straight 16 hour days under the watchful gaze of cameras in every room and hallway and space one of these human bodies can move in at work...a foxcon worker dies after working a 36 hour shift, not an anomaly by the way... this isn't a post-apocalyptic crap-making journey set in the future....it's now...robots aren't making these phones...mostly human hands in China are because it's cheaper.... and that's how you get your Smart Phone and tablets...tell yourself their lives are better, say whatever you need to in order to justify your purchases that make you feel 'connected', but at least be 'connected' to the human lives and the truth of them that build your stuff... ...btw, there are no iPads sold retail in China...most workers that build them have never even seen one whole, much less turned on... this message brought to you by the work of one Mike Daisy who went to China, as a huge apple fanboy, to find out the truth...all fact-checking on Mikes story have proven out, except where one relies on 'official' information ( for example, wether the foxcon cafeteria seats 10,000 or 4,000..it's 4,000 - all labor org's that have managed to 'see', unescorted, into factories ( auditors ) that Mike visited...winds up he didn't exaggerate anything...aww, were you hoping otherwise? yeah, me too ) ...Apple refuses to comment on Mike's story, not surprisingly, except that their own auditors did find 91 underage workers in various suppliers to their products and though Apple asked them all to stop the practice, many still continue without further bother by Apple... The good news is that child labor is being worked on, but kids slip under the radar on fake id's...sadly, not to have fun but to work... Apple will claim to be 100% transparent, and also refuse to talk about any of this on the air with anyone...which is rather Orwellian in its own right...Apple also refuses to name the suppliers who DO violate their own company policies which means few can independently verify Apple's claims...if anyone... The harsher critics say that except for memo's and external auditing and training programs, as well as a formal refusal to not buy from various suppliers there, Apple's own reports every year actually show little change from year to year with non-compliance regarding working hours, hazardous waste and various other pollution sins, poor health care for injured employees etc etc... as if everyone should be happy that people are raised from 'abject horror' in economic terms to 'abjectly exploitive conditions' should be happier...and not complain...and not talk about it... I'd like to think those of us who buy the stuff these human beings slavishly work on to build for us, still have enough personal integrity to openly talk about what's important to us and at what price? we should be able to ask ourselves, before we buy a thing, what it cost beyond mere dollars and is there anything that those of us WITH money for things we don't need but instead want, can do to make sure these workers actually DO acquire a better standard of human existence? should we be OK with waiting 100 years BEFORE this happens for them? i'm not ok with it myself and have altered how i spend money but i'm not writing this to come off as self-righteous anything...i still have plenty of 'made in china'...'out of sight, out of mind' is alright if we're talking about socks, but about human beings?...no, i'm not 'ok' enough with that to ignore it.... are you? can you talk about what you're 'ok' with amongst your friends on facebook and twitter? or are we so consumed with our own consuming; is a gadget so much a fashion statement now; and is our need to see things as we want to see them, versus how they really are, all the evidence The Future needs to condemn us in one fell swoop as a couple generations of self-absorbed, specious, trend junkies? finally...pardon the self-reference...i HAVE noticed an abject "Pish!!" response, an almost visceral sense of defensiveness coming my way when i have tried to broach the above with my other gadget loving friends ( fiends? )...in a society that so much claims to value free speech and thought, the barks and violent dismissiveness for anyone, not just myself, to broach this topic is stunning.... we can talk about WHAT we buy, but not HOW it's made...i can say i bought an iPad, but i'm not allowed to think about or discuss outloud who and how went into building it....that, to me, is one of the scariest parts of buying any of this stuff at all...fawning and gushing is allowed...critique and wonder are not... that doesn't seem like 'thinking outside' of any 'box' to me...it seems like being confined by it... Clive on "iPad Glee" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/ipad-glee#post-279869 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:21:53 +0000 Clive 279869@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ I have an iPad! I'm typing on it now! The keyboard is so responsive - moreso, certainly, than any woman I've ever typed on. I could seriously spend the rest of my life on this thing. Really, it has everything I need. I want for nothing more. It was a bit of a faff buying it at PC World - there was a barely-sixteen terrified-looking salesgirl and a mythical warehouse manager named Carlos and a computer that foretold the possibility of there only being a display model left which they weren't allowed to sell and only Carlos knew if they had any more in stock, though no one knew where Carlos was - he'd left, days ago possibly, to help someone carry a washing machine to their car and hadn't been seen since, and for a while it looked like the salesgirl was going to start crying and then another tiny bloke with a goatee beard got involved and tried to check the stock but no, it turned out they definitely needed Carlos, who by this time (I think I'd been there three hours) I'd built up a picture in my mind of as a kind of eight-foot winged being with x-ray vision and eight long claws for carrying washing machines and other sundry electrical appliances. Then this bald bloke appeared with a little cardboard box and it turned out that THIS was Carlos, and I said, 'but where are your wings?' and looked at me strangely. In the end, though, I got the iPad, which is the main thing in the whole world. You know, I think the realisation of my transsexualism is actually helping me to appreciate gadgets more. I'm taking a far more masculine satisfaction in this piece of equipment than I would ever have allowed myself to as a lesbian. My relationship with technology and machinery in general seems to be improving. I even feel more friendly with the coin counting machine at work. It seems to respect me more. Nitro on "Siri's Return Reputation Under Suspicion of being Fawlty" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/siris-return-reputation-under-suspicion-of-being-fawlty#post-279621 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:28:10 +0000 Nitro 279621@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/why-the-problem-with-siri-matters/853" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/why-the-problem-with-siri-matters/853</a> Was someone on the Siri, ( the "assistant app" in the Apple store that is fairly popular ), development team a religious, pro-life fanatic who snuck some not-so-liberal design principles into the applications "nature"? The suspicion is not so crazy-paranoid, especially if you've ever written a software program in your life ( read: php, perl, VB, jax, html....erm, yeah...these don't 'count' in terms of real software engineering, sorry but there's big kids and adults and the two don't jibe 'under the hood' ). Point is, a software engineer, particularly a savvy, experienced one, could very easily design a program with a whollllllll lotta 'default' behaviors that would strike most people as behaviors that should not be 'default'. Like, plotting against someone you don't know and never will, behind their back, simply because you don't like what they write should not be a default behavior and isn't, as far as I know, considered either socially acceptable nor particularly intelligent. We know that pro-lifers have done some really crazy stuff. For example, starting The Army of God. A few members, I believe, were guilty of murdering doctors who worked in clinics that offered women abortions should they so choose. The article to the link above indicates Siri has some problems with women finding rape counseling centers and abortion clinics. Hmmm....on first glance most would think,"Meh, just some trivial glitch." I wouldn't even be surprised if some of Siri's female users first blamed themselves for Siri returning 'pro-life counseling' centers. But Siri has been put to the query test over and over lately and isn't really coming out smelling so particularly 'enlightened' when it comes to womens issue....sorry, but the question,"Who and how many were responsible for designing Siri?" is certainly credible and the answer to that question is important. I think many of you can imagine lots of ramifications of malfunctioning software as those that are 'life critical'. That's a no-brainer. But what about search engines who are designed not just to get you results, but to get results *in your best interests* as determined by people you don't know? What do you think of that? pamfran2 on "Assistive Technology and Apple" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/assistive-technology-and-apple#post-279367 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:49:53 +0000 pamfran2 279367@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Why oh why does it seem that AT producers can't seem to make software etc that works on my beloved iMac, iPad and iPhone? Is it the Apple OS? I had a demo of Eyegaze yesterday and it would suit me down to the ground to communicate and operate my environmental controls (tv etc) just using my eyes but, it doesn't work on Mac!!! PLEASE Apple can you do something for us Mac loving people with disabilities?? Nitro on "Terminal Technology" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/terminal-technology#post-279299 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:27:17 +0000 Nitro 279299@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ This will mean nothing to no one, and I fully support and understand that, but my laptop is terminal. Maybe I should rephrase that... My laptop is dieing a slow death and some of it's my fault. This one's a Toshiba and I have to bow to them for making such a physically durable little machine. I am very, very hard on machines because, well, they're machines and I want to be able to drop a thing and bump a thing and you get the point, without it crying or making me feel guilty. I also don't want it to scratch too easily and I want it to be stable from the inside out. That's too much to ask of living things, but not plastic and metal ( sorry if I'm upsetting those sensitive to machines in an emotional way ). This fine creation has endured much and still kept working, but Toshiba can't steal the Timex copy. On one occasion I squeezed the LCD screen just a bit TOO hard when my foot became entangled in the power cord on my way to get myself a drink. I stayed balanced but the pull was causing the laptop to slide towards the edge of the table, so I made one of those desperate grabs at it. The pressure was too much and the little crystals broke underneath my thumb. Over the days, they 'bled out' and a black kind of rust, ( like blood mwah hahhahaha ), spread across and down the screen. I lost quite a bit of desktop with that and spent many months just resizing the windows enough away that I could still see stuff. My desktop I just accessed via the start panel. Clumsy me... Then one fateful tired night I fell asleep with a cigarette in my mouth and woke to find it glued to the space bar, the 'N', and the 'H' keys. The plastic melted, of course, and left a snakey brown scar on their surfaces. Between the keyboard and my screen you may be able to imagine what it looks like after many previous normal abuses of just wearing letters off from normal typing, bumping, and spills. Speaking of spills...the most recent one may be the straw that has broken the little machines back. It wasn't a horribly big spill, and I managed it alright, but it has had a corrosive effect by degrees on key depression. In other words, it's at the point I'm, for certain words and expressions, having to finger pound the keys too frequently. Not to mention some other more subtle degradations of GUI use that I probably won't be able to frustrate myself with for much longer. I dread the backup chores and the transfer chores that threaten me with more tedious technonecessities to face, but can't help but remain impressed with the years of service this nice little laptop has allowed me to enjoy. And I hope one day to find a laptop specifically designed for users who would like to be able to purposefully drop-kick their machines across a floor for no other particular reason than that they can. In the interim, if they can take some drooling, burning, snoring, scratching, squeezing and bumping, I'll be a happy camper. Thank you Toshiba for having ever considered your clumsier customers and thank you my faithful laptop for enduring my company for so long. ( But boy will I be happy as a pig in shit to be rid of Vista!! ) Lissu on "Voco Clocks - Money Gone!" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/voco-clocks-money-gone#post-255949 Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:58:51 +0000 Lissu 255949@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Dear lovely Forum people, Please forgive this newbie in case of posting in the wrong place/repeating a previous topic, but I wondered if anyone else has experienced problems with the Voco company that are (or were?) selling the marvellous 'Good Morning Madam' clocks i.e. the ones with Stephen's dulcet tones onboard? The website selling them was up and running, and took my 75 Euros at the beginning of November, but I've received no clock, no answers to phone calls (goes to some chap's answerphone only), my emails bounced back, and the website has in the meantime disappeared. (I could only find their details from the voco bible clock sister site, which is still there,...) T'would appear I've been diddled! Has anyone here any similar experiences or information about this company or product?? I'm gutted not to be able to wake up to Stephen's lovely voice! Yours very miffedly, Lissu Nitro on "The early days of Apple" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/the-early-days-of-apple#post-270577 Wed, 25 May 2011 11:50:00 +0000 Nitro 270577@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Here's an interview with Michael Scott. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-first-ceo-michael-scott-2011-5" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-first-ceo-michael-scott-2011-5</a> Maybe I should've titled this 'For Hardcore Fanboyz/fangirlz' but...I'm not allowed to use words like that anymore. Nitro on "Oh Apple" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/oh-apple#post-273163 Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:05:08 +0000 Nitro 273163@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ During all of your evolutions and iterations and whatnot, could you PLEASE build a simple uninstaller into your o/s? I mean really!! That's not something micropoo should be able to do better. It should be intuitive and handle cleanup in every directory necessary. I detest with a real passion the absurd unfriendliness of it. And hey, how about a 'cut' option that's intuitive too, eh? Having to delve into the terminal, and all that contains which is a helluva lot, isn't 'user friendly' design. BTW, am a fan. Have several quite old mac things laying around. Just please, for gods sakes... Nitro on "U can't run forever sports..." http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/u-cant-run-forever-sports#post-276754 Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:12:34 +0000 Nitro 276754@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ <a href="http://lulzsecexposed.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html" rel="nofollow">http://lulzsecexposed.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html</a> Very interesting site. It appears that despite the PR efforts, that there are counter-efforts to arrest and punish those who abuse whatever computer skills they may have to break into db's and put people in jeopardy. I also think this topic is of little general interest to most people who are far more concerned about what [pop star x] is up to <img src="http://www.stephenfry.com/bb-content/plugins//bb-smilies/default/icon_rolleyes.gif" title=":roll:" class="bb_smilies" /> <img src="http://www.stephenfry.com/bb-content/plugins//bb-smilies/default/icon_lol.gif" title=":lol:" class="bb_smilies" /> Nitro on "How's your FaceBook?" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/hows-your-facebook#post-274999 Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:57:25 +0000 Nitro 274999@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Uh ohhhhhhhhh....Anonymous are threatening the total destruction of FaceBook effective 5 November. This comes on the heels of taking down the Syrian gov's website ( for killing 2,000 protestors secretly since those particular revolts ), and tunneling into NATO db's... They charge FB with the fact that the company says they know more about their users than their families do. Well, that's not all that unusual <img src="http://www.stephenfry.com/bb-content/plugins//bb-smilies/default/icon_lol.gif" title=":lol:" class="bb_smilies" /> But the privacy stuff, FB selling stuff to police depts or just giving them info outright etc etc... They hacked all those gmail accts when google shut down their google+ account. But they didn't exactly wipe out google. They may, though, as result of the attack improved security (some) for googles users. Will they do it? They've never really wiped out, in the totally gone sense, any website for good. They also say once FB is gone, they'll be putting up a truly secure social networking site. Not everyone in this loose collective is agreement about the FB attack. And there's so much disinformation between various sources that it's very difficult for the 'average' google or fb user to know at various points who's just behind the scenes when on the internet. Chinese spies? Teenage hackers? Disgruntled workers? Alex Jones? <img src="http://www.stephenfry.com/bb-content/plugins//bb-smilies/default/icon_lol.gif" title=":lol:" class="bb_smilies" /> who knows? Shorter point: FB knows about the threat so maybe your account's safe, maybe it's not. But thought I'd mention for anyone who may not have heard it yet. gjhsu on "Google+ Hangouts" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/google-hangouts#post-273337 Sat, 09 Jul 2011 06:02:34 +0000 gjhsu 273337@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Is pretty much one of the coolest things ever. Just had a seamless and smooth four-person chat that Skype couldn't have held a picture of a candle up to. Integrated YouTube, chat box for links, and an awesome video feed switching based on who is talking. All very cool stuff. Google+, I do believe you are going to be a winner. Nitro on "How safe is your cell phone, really?" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/how-safe-is-your-cell-phone-really#post-267087 Sat, 19 Mar 2011 13:52:47 +0000 Nitro 267087@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Bob Smith goes home and takes a picture of his son in the front yard of their home, then texts it to Grandma. The image is intercepted by people suspicious of Bob, or computer thugs hoping to exploit Bob, and Bob's picture of his kid leads them directly to his home address. This isn't future tech. It exists in your phone, now. Any file you transmit with your cellphone gives your latitude and longitudnal co-ordinates. In America alone, various authorities accessed these files, via the carriers db's, over 8 MILLION TIMES, give or take. Depending on how you look at it, the earthquake in Japan causing a slight drift off course of some GPS satellites may be a good thing. Nitro on "Mac Help Tutorials" http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/mac-help-tutorials#post-273145 Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:16:49 +0000 Nitro 273145@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ Here's a link to some tutorials on many things 'Mac' ( iPhone, MacBook, OS X, various app's ) <a href="http://www.iclarified.com/tutorials/index.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.iclarified.com/tutorials/index.php</a> have fun! <img src="http://www.stephenfry.com/bb-content/plugins//bb-smilies/default/icon_smile.gif" title=":)" class="bb_smilies" />