■ First table: some popular phones, as reviewed and testet by notebookcheck.net – the header is self-explanatory with regards to the usage scenarios. I don’t understand the first one (if the phone is idle, the screen should be black, not at minimum brightness), but I value the 2nd one very much – surfing the web while on Wi-Fi. Read more
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Jun17
JunSo this is iOS7:
And it’s ugly like shit.
It’s not just the icons (photo: Alex Washburn / Wired): Read more
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JunYes, it is. And yes, if you care about how it looks, you must add (with simple quotes, not these fancy ones):
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no”>
and no less, regardless of what some people say.
But my blog doesn’t look as expected on smartphones. This responsive theme adjust the layout, so that the top navigation menu shows as rectangular blocks for screen widths of 768px or more, and only degrades into a dropdown menu for smaller screen. However, even on smartphones having 800px or more (say, in landscape), it looks like this: Read more
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JunIs it me, or there is indeed a trend in designing ugly car rear lights? 2013 rectangular-ish collection:
2013 VW Polo BlueGT:
2013 Dacia Logan and Sandero:
2013 Fiat 500L Trekking: Read more
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Jun1942. Uzinele Renault de la Boulogne-Billancourt lansează un atac nerușinat asupra glorioasei Royal Air Force. Cel puțin așa credea Virginia Carianopol în 1999:
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JunParmi les autres produits interdits par les connards contemporains, un produit qui était très efficace contre la transpiration des pieds (bromhidrose, hyperhydrose localisée): l’Ephydol “classique”, celui qu’on a retiré du marché soit le 09/10/2007, soit le 05/07/2010, selon la source.
Son problème? (À part l’efficacité exemplaire.) Son contenu en formol (formaldéhyde). En effet, en voici la formule originale: Read more
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JunÎnțeleg să interzici substanțele nootrope și psihostimulante care pot da dependență sau au efecte adverse deosebit de periculoase, dar cu meclofenoxatul ce-au avut? În anii ’60-’70, francezii îi ziceau Lucidril, iar în anii ’80, se găsea la liber în România socialistă. Era bun când învățai pentru un examen, ceva, te ținea treaz. Avea 100 mg, și cred că mergeau până la 6 pe zi. Era ieftin.
În „civilizația contemporană”, nici o companie farmaceutică mainstream nu-l mai fabrică. Nostalgicii sau nespălații pe creier care-l doresc se văd obligați să-l comande de pe Internet de la fabricanți de suplimente alimentare. De pildă așa: Read more
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JunAproape singurul produs românesc (din cele care încă mai sunt „de pe vremuri, ca pe vremuri”) căruia o să-i duc dorul atunci când va dispărea. Apa de gură Ossidenta „clasică”. Atenție, nu pișaturile astea îndulcite „cu aromă de cireșe” sau de mentă, ci adevărata Ossidenta, cea care se diluează (iar soluția diluată se tulbură într-un mod specific), care este astringentă și care conține printre altele fenicul.
Adică asta: Read more
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JunFraunhofer SIT (Fraunhofer-Institut für Sichere Informationstechnologie) is currently developing a so-called SiDiM (Sichere Dokumente durch individuelle Markierung) technology meant to replace the current DRM methods by an outrageous “individualization” of a book’s contents — each and every reader will see a slightly different text, and this subtle watermarking (a sort of steganography) is meant to track down the original owner of a book.
As Janko Roettgers reports by summarizing info from several sources, SiDiM-protecting an e-book means
changing wordings like “invisible” to “not visible” and “unhealthy” to “not healthy.” Other examples included sentences in which the order of words was changed, or in which hyphens were added to words.
From the original blog report, alterations on German texts:
| Ihr hättet sie empört abgelehnt, um weiter in einem Hexenkessel von Kriegen, Gewalt und Verbrechen zu existieren. | Ihr hättet sie empört abgelehnt, um weiter in einem Hexenkessel von Gewalt, Verbrechen und Kriegen zu existieren. |
| Der Staub den er aufwirbelte, ließ ihn nicht sichtbar aus der Stadt verschwinden. | Der Staub den er aufwirbelte, ließ ihn unsichtbar aus der Stadt verschwinden. |
| (…) als ungesund wird aber auch eine unzweckmäßige Vereinigung von Speisen zu einer Mahlzeit oder auch ihre schlechte Zubereitung verstanden. | (…) als nicht gesund wird aber auch eine unzweckmäßige Vereinigung von Speisen zu einer Mahlzeit oder auch ihre schlechte Zubereitung verstanden. |
| Er musste schwer beladen sein, denn das Motorengeräusch war sehr laut, was auf eine niedrige Getriebeübersetzung schließen ließ. | Er musste schwer beladen sein, denn das Motorengeräusch war sehr laut, was auf eine niedrige Getriebe-Übersetzung schließen ließ. |
This is more than outrageous, this is criminal! Changing the exact words an author (or a translator) has put in his or her work is cultural terrorism!
Fraunhofer is going to kill the e-book, and this is happening with the complicity and funding of the Federal Government of Germany!
Dieses Projekt (Förderkennzeichen: 01IS10054A) wird im Rahmen von KMU-innovativ durch das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung gefördert.
Sure thing, the Fraunhofer Institute — the best example of how German “intellectual property protection” can be worse than in the United States — is also the infamous owner of several patents on the MP3 file format and algorithms. Alongside Thomson Multimedia (RCA), and with the licensing rights managed by Technicolor, Fraunhofer owns 20 patents on MP3 and MP3Pro. That would be “software patents”. Algorithms. Mathematics. Patenting mathematics.
Notwithstanding the reasonably large number of licensees for the MP3 patents, the fact that MP3Pro was never an open and free format simply killed it — and MP3Pro was by large the best audio file format ever, much better than the mediocre MP3! The MP3Pro case shows that sometimes a patent does not “protect” the inventor, nor does it “support innovation”, but it simply buries the patented concept so that it never reaches market acceptance.
And now, the same rapacious idiots from Fraunhofer are going to kill the e-books, but in an such ignoble way — by altering the text!
For any conscious individual, it should be a shame to work for (or to be associated with) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Since the Nazi period, it’s the worst way the German research has damaged our civilization.
If in some cases (such as the MP3 licensing), the researchers themselves have no direct responsibility in any wrongdoing, those who develop a technology for voluntary altering of e-books are definitely jerks. Protecting the intellectual property by destroying it?
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JunL’abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, lettre G:
Toutes les révolutions foirent. Tout le monde le sait. On fait semblant de le redécouvrir, là; faut être débile! Il y a Furet qui découvre que la révolution française, c’était pas si bien que ça. Très bien, d’accord: elle a foiré aussi. Et tout le monde le sait! La révolution française, elle a donné Napoléon. On fait… des découvertes qui, au moins, ne sont pas très émouvantes par leur nouveauté. La révolution anglaise, elle a donné Cromwell… La révolution américaine, elle a donné… quoi? Pire, non? Elle a donné… je sais pas qui… elle a donné Reagan. Ça ne me paraît pas tellement plus fameux. Alors, qu’est-ce que ça veut dire? On est dans un tel état de confusion. Que les révolutions échouent, que les révolutions tournent mal, mais… ça n’a jamais empêché les gens… Ni fait que les gens ne deviennent pas révolutionnaires!
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Jun17
JunThe small Saharan nocturnal fox seems to be a funny pet — here’s a collection of Fennec videos recently encountered on Twitter:
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JunLa poste pneumatique, je la connais depuis le journal de Pif, quand Pifou avait pris «pneu» littéralement, en se présentant au bureau de poste avec un pneu auto, auquel il avait collé un télégramme!!
La poste pneumatique, appelée aussi télégraphe pneumatique, télégraphe atmosphérique ou poste atmosphérique, est un système d’acheminement rapide du courrier (plis urgents, télégrammes, sacs de dépêches, lettres et petits paquets) dans des « curseurs » (appelés aussi navettes ou cartouches, ce sont des boîtes cylindriques creuses) circulant dans des tubes pressurisés essentiellement en fer-blanc. Il a été inventé par l’ingénieur écossais William Murdoch dans les années 1800 et développé par la suite par la London Pneumatic Dispatch Company. Des systèmes de poste pneumatique ont été employés dans plusieurs grandes villes à partir de la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle mais ont été largement abandonnés au XXe.
On envisageait qu’un système de tubes pourrait déposer le courrier dans chaque maison des États-Unis. Des tubes pneumatiques sont toujours en service à Prague, en République tchèque. Ce service de potrubní pošta fut ouvert en 1899 et couvre en 2009 environ 60 kilomètres, transportant du courrier et de petits paquets.
Au début du XXIe siècle, les applications typiques se trouvent dans les banques et dans les hôpitaux. De nombreux hypermarchés emploient eux aussi des tubes pneumatiques pour transporter des chèques, billets et autres documents depuis les caisses jusqu’à la comptabilité. Un de ces systèmes affiche une vitesse de 10 m/s.
Les stations de poste pneumatique reliaient d’ordinaire les bureaux de poste, les bourses, les banques et les ministères. La France (timbre à date de grand format en 19011) et l’Italie furent les seuls pays à émettre (entre 1913 et 1966) des timbres réservés à la poste pneumatique. L’Autriche, la France et l’Allemagne ont commercialisé de la papeterie à l’usage des pneumatiques.
Pourquoi seulement à Prague? Involution… Read more
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JunFor ages I wondered how could fonts defined in px (pixels) work in browsers. You know, the default font size is defined as 15px in Forefox and 16px in Chrome. So, in theory, the fonts should look smaller on screens with higher DPI values (think Retina, but not only it). In practice though, nothing breaks. How come?
All those font size equivalence tables saying “by default, 12pt, 16px, 1em and 100% are the same”, although I thought them only valid for the case when the DPI is 96, are actually… independent of the screen’s DPI!
It appears that CSS pixels are not real pixels when comes to text (they are still pixels when comes to pictures, DIVs and the like). In browsers, typography rules apply in the original form:
- 1 inch is always 72pt
- 1 inch is always 96px
So DPI is irrelevant when the font is defined in px or pt which are, here, absolute units. So the Firefox Bug 186718 – mozilla uses pixels instead of points for “default font size” setting is less outrageous than I thought it was. One display pixel is by no means the same as a typeface px. This is as crazy as it gets.
I should therefore stop replacing 15px with 11pt, and 16px with 12pt in the CSS files I’m using…
OTOH, fonts declared in em or percentage are really interesting, as both units are scalable:
- when the users change the default font size (defined in px or pt) in their browser, the fonts you declared as em or % in CSS will scale accordingly, which is what users are expecting — whereas fonts declared in CSS as pt or px won’t be affected;
- when you declare the base font size (for body) to a different value than 1em, 12pt, 16px, 100%, or the default value of the browser, then you declare other fonts in various % values, they are relative to the base font size you just declared, not to the default value in the browser (as a rule, % is relative to the parent element);
- when you declare the base font size (for body) in em, all the other fonts defined in em do not change when the base font size (for body) is adjusted — they only scale when the default font size changes in the browser;
- some people prefer to use “body{font-size:62.5%;}“, then to declare e.g. “p{font-size: 1.0em;}“, which is the same as “p{font-size: 10px;}“; to override the possible change of browser’s defaults, one may add “html{font-size:16px;}” (I’m not sure why all this game though: while other people love percentages, I prefer to just use em values without any other hack).
Beware! For anything else than fonts, px are real pixels!
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Jun
My experience with Android only dates from end-November 2011 (heck, I’m a Luddite, I resisted the temptation!). And it’s still mostly Gingerbread-based.
Therefore, I was surprised to read in several Android forum and websites that people were complaining for not being able to move apps to the SD card on Android 4.0 ICS and 4.1 JB devices ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]): I was used from Gingerbread that I could use the App2SD built-in mechanism (no need of an external app) to move apps to the SD!
Sure thing, apps wouldn’t move entirely on the SD, but in most cases at least 40-50% of the space that used to take from the internal storage would be taken from the SD, and in the happiest situations, up to 80-90% of the app would move out of the internal storage.
So, what’s the deal with Android ICS and newer? Is it a regression? Let’s try to explain the actual situation.
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JunQuick selection of some fake reviews posted by users of the Samsung Push Service Android app:
Read more
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JunMi se părea mie ciudat că în Stuttgart U-Bahn-urile circulă mai mult pe la suprafață (și mai și arată ca niște tramvaie), cu excepția zonei centrale și cu alte câteva excepții, iar S-Bahn-ul circulă mai mult în subteran. Firește, nu contează pe unde circulă S-Bahn (Schnellbahn), singura lui caracteristică este apartenența la Deutsche Bahn. Deci „S” înseamnă oricum S-Bahn în contextul unei rețele de öffentliche Verkehrsmittel. Dar „U”?
Ei bine, aflu din Wikipedia că situația e mai specială la Stuttgart.
Stuttgart has a light rail system known as the Stuttgart Stadtbahn. In the city centre and densely built-up areas, the Stadtbahn runs underground. Stations are signposted with a ‘U‘ symbol, which stands for Unabhängig (independent). Until 2007, Stuttgart also operated regular trams.
Așadar, Stadtbahn. Nu Straßenbahn, căci tramvaie nu mai există. „Light rail” s-ar traduce pe-aici cu „metrou ușor” (ca tramvaiul 41 din București), dar nu văd de ce metrou, dacă circulă mai mult pe deasupra. „Trenuri orășenești”, mai degrabă. Dar nu Untergrundbahn.
Și, chipurile, „independente” (unabhängig, „U”) — nu este clar independente de ce, căci oricum fac parte din SSB (Stuttgarter Straßenbahnen AG), regia care deținea și tramvaiele și care se ocupă și de autobuze. Independente ca management și proprietar (DB) ar fi S-Bahn-urile, dar și ele sunt integrate în sistemul de tarifare comun VVS (Verkehrs- und Tarifverbund Stuttgart).
Tot în Stuttgart mai circulă un tramvai cu cremalieră (Zahnradbahn Stuttgart), alintat cu „Zacke” (zimț, dinte, crestătură). De altfel, cele 8 stații nu-s marcate nici cu „S”, nici cu „U”, ci cu plăcuțe galbene pe care scrie „ZACKE”.