botwerks

this is possibly the best reasoning i’ve seen someone use to argue for the use of android - Scripting News: Why I use Android.  personally, i find the OS and the devices running it to be something of a petri dish and for and element in my life that i depend on, as much as my phone, i’m not quite to the point where i’m willing to tolerate the nature of the OS and its corresponding apps marketplace.

however, there’s a need to have a competitive counter to iOS and something that’s open source provides a strong rationale.  the ability to manage and sandbox the phone in the same manner as a PC is still in its infancy.  i simply don’t have the confidence in the android marketplace right now in terms of device and app validation.  i’m left to puzzle it out as a consumer and most consumers simply aren’t there, or in my case, willing to invest the time to vet applications and their operation.

right now, i’m at a place in my life where i need things to work so i can focus on the problems at hand.  i lack the time to hack together the dependencies to make my phone workflow as seamless as i imagine you can get with android; nevermind working through the diagnostics to resolve conflicts.  you won’t see me ragging on android, i find it a compelling alternative, but i’m not willing to make that tradeoff at this point.

Warming Arctic Permafrost Fuels Climate Change Worries - ny times article about research taking place in alaska around massive methane bubbles.  for those deniers who haven’t been paying attention to the dangers associated with various gases, you might not think that CO2 is that big a deal (i’m looking at you michele bachmann) but methane is some particularly nasty stuff.  feedback loops are a real bitch.

check out the research that russian scientists are doing on this front as well.

how students consume media - classic TV is on life support.

it’s been a bad few months; ritchie, jobs and now hitch.

love him or hate him, he forced you to think and digest things.  i largely loved his columns and his books but i took issue with his iraq war stance.  i never wrapped my mind around the falklands bit and didn’t square with his socialist leanings. (real socialism, not the shit tea party definitions)

that said, i rarely missed the opportunity to read him.  though i’ll confess there were more than a few atlantic articles, where i just  shrugged a few paragraphs in and skipped to the next article.

• the atlantic obituary
• vanity fair obituary