Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 01 Feb 2014 04:04

http://m.technobuffalo.com/2014/01/31/m ... ar-pichai/

Microsoft CEO Frontrunner is Now Allegedly Google’s Sundar Pichai

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Feb 2014 04:51

^^Better than Yahoo! hiring Marissa.

Pichai is good but he doesn't strike me as a product person and his experience in that regard is also not as deep as some of the other folks in the running. Next rumor needs to be Marissa being touted as next Microsoft CEO.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Feb 2014 05:30

For those looking to buy a Surface Pro or MacBooks, Best Buy has them for sale...Surface Pro for $500.- and $100.- off on MacBooks.

amdavadi · Post by **amdavadi** » 01 Feb 2014 05:43

Soon we will hear boseullah's name on the CEO list......boseullah are you ready to move to seattle?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Feb 2014 06:28

^^^Long time no see on BRF....where were you? I doubt somebody even in my next 2 generations will reach CEO level but then why would one want to? All stress, no life.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Feb 2014 06:55

my phone downloaded the lumia black update last night. the changelog notes something called Silent Installer.
developed and certified under the benign supervision of NSA no doubt.

amdavadi · Post by **amdavadi** » 01 Feb 2014 06:59

Been here working. I see you became a mod......

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Feb 2014 07:18

Blame ramana saar for the chankian move....negi bach gaya by the skin of his teeth

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Feb 2014 03:36

How Intel tried to rewrite history and erase the name of the actual inventor of the world's 1st commercial microprocessor - the Intel 4004

Except they missed one tiny detail. The guy (Federico Faggin) had etched his initials into the design

ChipZ is one ruthless mofo company.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 02 Feb 2014 05:46

Anybody has any experience with techBASIC for iPad? Pandyan or RB? Dr. Dobbs gives good review and at the AppStore too the reviews are good with a 4.4 rating. Can the programs be entered on MBP or a Linux desktop and downloaded to the iPad for running and compiling into an App?

TIA

---

Marten, please note: It is $14.99 and looks to be great fun to learn App development. Also available for Andriod.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Feb 2014 06:51

We didn't have this TFTA tech-shech BASIC when I was a nanha. For us it was GWBASIC and QBASIC (you could link into standalone EXEs! AoA!

).

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 02 Feb 2014 07:04

EXEs as in for 'doze? Who wants that now a din babu?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Feb 2014 07:14

Exe as in executable binary....hardly obsolete yet.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 02 Feb 2014 07:28

If it is for doze then it is passe. Everyone wants to run apps on iThingy at least for now.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 02 Feb 2014 08:51

Raja Bose wrote:We didn't have this TFTA tech-shech BASIC when I was a nanha. For us it was GWBASIC and QBASIC (you could link into standalone EXEs! AoA! ).

Turbo BASIC ftw. Also, BASICA (which was just GWBASIC under a different license, released by IBM) and Sinclair BASIC/SuperBASIC.

kenop · Post by **kenop** » 02 Feb 2014 10:21

Please suggest a point and shoot camera for SHQ's needs. I had proposed some Canon DSLR. Lenses I have for my 15 yr old Canon SLR could have been used with this DSLR. The proposal was shot down in no time So only a point and shoot can be brought home.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Feb 2014 11:35

Sony dsc TX 1

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 02 Feb 2014 16:01

Raja Bose wrote:We didn't have this TFTA tech-shech BASIC when I was a nanha. For us it was GWBASIC and QBASIC (you could link into standalone EXEs! AoA! ).

I used to love LOGO.

draw rectangles and triangles.

PenUP Pendown.

etc. etc.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 02 Feb 2014 19:22

LOGO is still in use. my son ICSE school has started him off in class3. free logo interpreter is also available for home use.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 02 Feb 2014 22:24

nice

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 02 Feb 2014 23:24

Singha wrote:LOGO is still in use. my son ICSE school has started him off in class3. free logo interpreter is also available for home use.

Yes. IIRC, LOGO was the brainchild of Papert (as RB said) and Minsky - see below.

Marvin Minsky is the author of Society of Mind, AI and Robotics pioneer for which he won the Turing Award, MIT professor, and ideator of Lego Mindsorms. I think the best languages for learning are Scheme, and Squeak (a version of SmallTalk), and possibly Python.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Feb 2014 00:06

pandyan, thanks a bunch. I want to use it as an experimentation tool for my kid(s) (and my inner kid). Only question I have which I was unable to find is whether I can enter/edit the programs on a desktop and load them onto the iPadmini. It is a pain to enter them on the pop-up soft keyboard on the iPadmini itself.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Feb 2014 00:18

Minsky was brain for LOGO?? What about Alan Kay and Papert

negi · Post by **negi** » 03 Feb 2014 02:14

What MSFT should IMO do is consolidate their devices under the Nokia group , obviously unnecessary fat needs to be shed for that. Let Nokia make devices in mobile, ultra book and even laptop segment . I think Nokia still retains their reputation for good hardware and MSFT should use it to it's own advantage their surface pros could be so much better if produced by Nokia . I am being selfish as a consumer here we need likes of MSFT to step up to the plate and force fruit co to rationalise their unit MRPs

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Feb 2014 02:17

There won't be any Nokia group - Nokia will get absorbed into Mickey's IEB business (called Devices or some such now), which now also includes Jeff Han's PerceptivePixel group and manufacturing. Nokia can't do squat about improving the Surface Pro's form factor and power consumption unless ChipZ makes true mobile x86 chips instead of putting lipstick on a desktop pig.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Feb 2014 02:28

Raja Bose wrote:Minsky was brain for LOGO?? What about Alan Kay and Papert

~~Oopsy~~. Is it Papert and Alan Kay? I don't remember.

Looks like I am partially correct and you too are. It is Minsky and Papert (I am putting in alphabetical order). Also look at Minksy's students - that's a "wow" list.

From Marvin Minsky

He developed, with Seymour Papert, the first Logo "turtle". Minsky also built, in 1951, the first randomly wired neural network learning machine, SNARC.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Feb 2014 09:08

Marten wrote:Bought an LG G2 instead of the GNex 5. Not sure why but just liked that better (grip etc). Almost bought a 1520 off Ebay but decided against it since the G2 came for just 275, and made more sense.

Also looked around for a Mindstorm, but the kid is just too young so decided against it. Perhaps some other learning tool like a leappad, but this one's already writing the alphabet and numbers without our intervention/teaching. Plus we like reading out the stories.

I thought about a G2, but wasn't sure about LG's capacity and track record to update. After KitKat 4.4, will LG update their current lineup of phones?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Feb 2014 09:27

Why such lagaw with WebOS saar?

So are you driving down to Bay Area by any chance? I don't know if negi is still lurking around AfPak joints here in search of booze or he winged it home to get halaled.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Feb 2014 22:30

Marten,

Sorry to hear your work trip isn't going as well as you thought. Maybe you and Negiji will compensate for it over a few bottles of daru.

Some of the kaalifornia wines are pretty good.
Enjoy the G2. It is a fine device with great battery life.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Feb 2014 00:45

Gaze tracking as a primary input modality. This would be a vast improvement for our jawans at the Paraplegic rehab centre in Khirkee Pune. Currently they have to tap into a keyboard with a pencil held between their teeth.

Sorry Mortullah, but it runs on a Surface Pro, with Windoze onlee as does most stuff in this world

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Feb 2014 03:29

Sorry Mortullah, but it runs on a Surface Pro, with Windoze onlee as does most stuff in this world

Which is why exactly why I use Windoze. There is no other choice.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Feb 2014 04:01

Perhaps then you should ask like Rahul Gandhi, why is there no other choice? Its not like Mickey held a gun to someone's head and said use it or else! And it wasn't like Mickey's Windoze was fantastic in version 1.0 or 3.1 and then went downhill or competition caught up (like iOS). So what were the other OS/platform vendors doing in the meantime? Sleeping?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 04 Feb 2014 04:41

There are no other OS/platform vendors worth their salt, Bose babu. Sun had this strange windowing system where the error dialog box is displayed in an enormohumungus 1000 character window whose right end would go off the screen and presumably the OK, Cancel buttons are located. They used to advertise heavily for replacing all departmental Big Blues with their Unix work stations but they were running all their Supply Chain and MRP (at that time Supply Chain Mgmt. systems were called MRP you see and you had COPICS and MAPICS and yours truly had programmed some transactions for MAPICS) were being run on Big Blue MFs.

DEC was a laugh fest and we all know what happened to their Alpha. I remember pne lecture by Prof. Raj Reddy where he was talking about recent advances in processor technology and was very impressed with Alpha with its 500 MHz clock. Soon after DEC made the cardinal mistake of allying with M$ who completely DEC's lead due to their joined at the hip partnership with Intel - the famous Wintel mono-duo poly was at play. PA-RISC and HP/UX went the way of the dodo. Most of these companies were the victims of the Wintel. Only IBM survived albeit barely after the OS/2 fiasco.

Apple's second coming after mahdi got resurrected is by any measure is a resounding success story. Not all companies are blessed with the people who have mahdi like showmanship or ruthlessness. Bill Gates is ruthless but lacks the charm and the danger mahdi used to exude.

Another person I really like is this Guy Kawasaki (ex-Apple) - fantastic guy - who says he learnt a lot from mahdi.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Feb 2014 04:48

Raja Bose wrote:Perhaps then you should ask like Rahul Gandhi, why is there no other choice? Its not like Mickey held a gun to someone's head and said use it or else! And it wasn't like Mickey's Windoze was fantastic in version 1.0 or 3.1 and then went downhill or competition caught up (like iOS). So what were the other OS/platform vendors doing in the meantime? Sleeping?

No, more like no other choice than paying off the local RTO pandus. In fact, Windoze 2.0 was fantastic at the time. It provided a good GUI for the IBM PC and clones which people were using because DOS based applications became popular. There is legacy and inertia to change. You know, for a company like MSFT whose profits are in the tens of billions, if you throw enough sh!t out there, some of it is going to stick - and I would put Gaze in that category. I'm sure it is very good. This is the same company that laughed at the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Shalav · Post by **Shalav** » 04 Feb 2014 05:50

So the "missus purchased" a Lenovo Yoga 10 tablet for me for our anniversary. "She thought" the pebble steel watch may not be so useful after all!

Anyway I was wondering if there is any gyan here on rooting the thing. I have rooted android stuff before - the Droid Eris, the Moto Droid (original and Droid 2), as well as an ONDA tablet. But all this has been > 1 - 1.5 years ago. I stopped using android and settled on iPhone and WinPhone for my needs, so am out of touch right now.

Things move at the speed of light in the droid world, and I hear of one click rooting. Would anyone know of one click or any other rooting solutions for the Lenovo Yoga Tablet model B8000-F off-hand.

I've done the usual google/bing and the searches of XDAdevelopers etc... but could not find anything specific to this.

Any help appreciated.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Feb 2014 06:01

Mort Walker wrote:This is the same company that laughed at the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Know of any company which doesn't have blind spots?

And why blame Mickey for others' sitting on their collective musharrafs and not coming up with a decent OS platform, office suite, SDKs. Blame it on inertia, turd sticking, billions of $$s, gullible consumers but the stark reality is like what the Mahdi famously said many times, "Its not like we are really good, its just that the others are really bad".

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Feb 2014 06:07

matrimc wrote: Another person I really like is this Guy Kawasaki (ex-Apple) - fantastic guy - who says he learnt a lot from mahdi.

There is a hilarious interview of Uncle Fester by Guy Kawasaki

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Feb 2014 07:57

Guy Kawasaki is now an Android guy with Google. There was article written by him on he preferred Android over iOS.

kenop · Post by **kenop** » 04 Feb 2014 08:12

Another gadget down at home. 11 years old Sony Trintron (CRT) gives up. The service center people are not too supportive of replacing the CRT ("thoda aur daal ke 22" LCD aa jayega") ignoring that a reasonably SQH-acceptable model (32" LED not LCD) will cost thrice the CRT replacement option

The days of CRT TVs were good when the min:max price ratio was about 1:3. It is 1:10 or more now. These days it is important to fix budget before going out shopping.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 04 Feb 2014 08:20

I have an unsed sony trinitron crt 32" for about 5 years now, and it was put to use for about 12 years before that making it 17 years. but it is working great and of course i have not tested for quite sometime now.

if you can pay for the S&H, take it free!