Discussions

11 hours ago, jamie wrote

you go hardware.

...

hardware wins. you cant pirate hardware.  enough with the software.

Right and wrong.  Hardware FTW, but you can and will be able to pirate hardware as easily as software in the near future.  As for software ... what is software, really?  Software is instructions to hardware, so it certainly will not ever go away if we think of it just as instructions, but how that interacts with hardware will certainly change.

The two shall become one:

Back to software again - with quantum entanglement, encryption, and teleportation, it would be possible to make a secure link between hardware devices that transmits the software from one to another.  Then software would not ever be able to be pirated again; at least based on what we know now.

@vesuvius:  Don't worry man, we'll do all of that, but it's still winter here so we read and play and watch soccer/football.  She doesn't spend a lot of time on the devices - maybe 15-20 minutes, 2 times a day, tops, but I haven't counted.  Mainly she wants to walk, and she just stood up by herself about a week ago, in her crib, pulling herself up.  She's got a few words as well.  Momma, daddy and/or Nadia (we aren't sure half the time about that one), and hi.  And she says Neh for milk, which is an extension of her reflex sound for hunger, since we reinforced it, but we always say, "Neh?  Milk?" when she says it now to teach her.  I studied early childhood development in neuroscience and it's a passion of mine, so I am very interested in making sure she learns and is exposed to nature and has a well rounded education.  Thanks for the concern though. 

P.S. I'm using stuff like this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxMnF60_Jxg based on teachings from people like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lijw6gkB4, to teach numeracy and literacy.  And working on a  Surface RT app (EDIT:  I mean Modern UI ... ugh ... app).

@Maddus Mattus: MetricHub just became free to Azure customers ... Using-MetricsHub-to-Monitor-Your-Windows-Azure-Applications ... haven't watched this (yet), but it might help you.

So, I just installed ModernMix, and it's great, but there are issues with it (it's still in beta, so we'll see if they can fix this somehow.  Although I can finally resize a Modern UI window that plays video, if I switch focus to another Modern UI app, the media stops playing.  The only way to have 2 windows open and have it keep playing is to dock the media playing application.  Docking one app causes the 2nd app to immediately revert to the standard fullscreen (or 3/4, 5/8, whatever it is) mode. 

I use the Surface RT a lot, but my wife uses it a lot more and loves it.  She mostly uses it for browsing the web, but I use a lot of baby-oriented apps - flashcards and music games, FreshPaint as well, and I'll tell you, I can't believe how quickly my now 6-month old daughter is learning to use touch-based devices.  She loves the Surface and my Nokia Lumia 920.  She doesn't know what to do, but she knows she touches stuff and stuff happens.  She smiled and laughed the first time she managed to make a FreshPaint stroke with her hand without just moving the canvas.  I wish there was a mode to lock the canvas so that it took just input from the hand though, then she would be able to finger paint more easily.  Right now it's hard because she usually just tries to slap both hands down and that enters drag or zoom mode, more often than not. 

I also show her the Travel app sometimes, and she loves that as well.  Looking at the pyramids through the Surface, like a window - AWESOME.  In case you haven't seen or tried it, it moves the Photosynth panorama around as you hold and move the Surface around.  Incredibly fun. 

All the Twitter apps suck now, because of the limits Twitter imposed.  They never seem to work anymore.

I use a mix of other applications, like Stanford University's app and lots of reference applications like Study Online, StumbleUpon, various cookbook apps - I like AllRecipes app with video. 

Anyways, there's a lot out there that I haven't tried.  The reason being is that they all run full screen and taking up a full monitor is not acceptable to me 90% of the time.  So they don't get used at work.  It's just not acceptable, sorry MS.  I need to be able to scale down the windows to the size I desire.

So, speaking of that, it's time to try StarDocks ModernMix application and see how it fares.

Also, had to say, a lot of these programs are really, really buggy.  There's usually no refresh or anything so sometimes things just don't do anything at all, and you have to restart them.  There's a lack of status from those apps to tell you what they are doing (usually getting data from somewhere, and it's just not coming through).

The Mail app, I use on the Surface a lot, and on the desktop sometimes.  However, it's really buggy on the desktop because somehow the connection to an Exchange account totally messes up the contact info resolution.

@Ian2 & @Jim Young:  That did not work for me, but there is definitely dust around it and the camera lens.

I have this problem.  There's some kind of short in the proximity sensor.  Mine started like yours, but then quickly got so bad that as soon as you start a phone call, it will turn off the screen, like the proximity sensor is always in the on or off state (whichever activates/deactivates the phone).  There's nothing I can do but constantly hit the power button repeatedly while trying desperately to hit one of the phone buttons; if I manage to hit the speaker button, then the screen will stay on and I can use the bloody phone.  Hanging up involves hitting the power button repeatedly and attempting to hit the end call button until I finally get it to hang up - or the other person hangs up first.

I cannot get it repair under warranty because I got the phone at Build and the phone, according to Nokia's website is not covered in either Canada or the USA.

It is definitely a short however, as sometimes if I squeeze the phone in the right spot, the proximity sensor will work for a while.  It's become rarer and rarer that it will actually work like that, however.  So there must be a loose solder point or something.  I'm eventually going to crack it open and attempt to fix it myself.

Nice, thanks!

@Sven Groot:  Awesome!  Big congrats Sven, sounds exciting! 

@felix9: Well he did say that writing De Bruijn indices has become a way of life ... what can that be used for?  I thought something like Wolfram Alpha - expression rewriters, automated formula manipulation, theorem provers etc....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_index.  That would fall into the Tangram space, as well.  However, Bart wouldn't bite and give me more hints when I asked.