One of the great things about devices failing is when you’ve got other devices you depend on to keep everything synced up. In particular today I’m seeing another reason never to get an Iphone. If your computer goes down for any reason syncing between the phone and the computer is screwed up. You could, if you’re not careful lose all the apps you paid for, all the music you paid for and all other data you have on the iphone/ipod touch or other device.
There is a known issue with the Nvidia 8600 video card. That issue is that the card fails faster than average. There are two common problems with this video card. The first is that the screen is just messed up. That’s not the issue I have. The issue I am having with the macbook pro is that the screen just goes dead. The failure rate is around once per year. It failed a year ago.
If I had a perfect laptop it would be shaped just like the N97 but larger. I’m saying this because of how much I love having a keyboard and a touchscreen in such a small package. Now imagine if laptops did away with all that wasted space at the bottom, where the trackpad goes. Back to the matter at hand. The N97 is a great little device that can survive about a day with my use before needing a charge.
For the second time in a little over a year the video card on my macbook pro has failed and I am left with the black screen of death. As a result of this I will have to send the machine off for repair for a second time. Luckily the machine is still under warranty so the only challenge is finding a day off and bringing it for maintenance. It had to fail this weekend, on Saturday afternoon only once all the shops had closed.
Working at the Global Humanitarian Forum today, providing the live streams, was fun as some interesting conversations took place. Among the people present we had Micheline Calmy Rey, Kofi Annan, the writer of the wikonomics book (which I have as an audio book and haven’t finished yet), Nik Gowing, and a few more interesting people. Whilst I was working I didn’t have time to listen to the discussions that were taking place but they ranged from new media and communication to providing funds for organisations and the aspects to be taken into account, managing displacement, demographic dynamics and many more topics.
The free flow of information has been greatly facilitated by the development of modern tools such as the smartphone, more common laptops and data plans. As a result of all these tools the control of public opinion has become more of a challenge. It’s easy to block sites, but the problem is you need to be more aware of the communications systems than the users themselves. In particular I’m thinking of Iran, and another revolution before it.
The Worldcommunity grid is a datagrid style project where almost half a million people are offering computer cycles to help advance scientific research in a number of fields such as health, nutrition and more. One of the most recent projects to be added to the collection is the one for Influenza. If you so chose you can help speed up the process of finding a solution to the influenza problem. There is an interesting documentary on History HD called The Virus empire which uses a number of interviews with WHO officials and actors to demonstrate why over-hyping a new virus is the smart thing to do.
jonmaim - 6th of May, 2009
Thank you a lot Richard for the work you did on this interview !!! I’m so not used to see me talking on video
Is there a way to embed the video on the minsh blog ?
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If you’re learning about editing but don’t want to spend much money then Quicktime pro is a cheap and easy straight cut editor. It’s quick and easy to use. With the short cut apple+c apple+N and apple+v you have a very simple editor. Using J to play backwards, k to pause and L to play normally you control how the video plays. With the I key for marking in points and the O key for out points you’ve got everything you need.