I can’t believe the press release. Aside from allowing someone to remove the bottom of a pint and replace it without detection (not that I know anything about that), a small plastic lid lock from Ben & Jerry’s costs almost twice as much as a pint of their ice-cream:
The Euphori-Lock is a tenacious two-part plastic security ring that slips around your pint’s upper lid for “udder” peace of mind. And not to worry – it comes complete with an easy-to-remember secret code when you’re ready to unlock your favorite treat!
An easy-to-remember secret code? What could go wrong? I mean for $6.64 I expect a plastic ring to have alpha-numeric upper-lower case code with symbols and more than eight characters. And that’s not to mention a motion-sensor, failed-access alarm and log…where’s the USB port or Bluetooth so it can communicate with my kitchen’s incident and event monitor?
I completely destroyed two Apple iPhones within six months before I switched to Nokia. There has been no looking back.
My Nokia phones have taken far worse abuse than the Apple products ever did and yet there has been literally no signs of damage. It’s really an unbelievable experience.
When I pull out my N9 people ask me if it is brand new despite the fact that it has been through months of use and abuse all over the world. The following video gives a good demonstration of what I am showing them. It is a very dramatic difference in product quality. Try this with your iPhone:
Even the Motorola Defy, which is marketed as a tough phone, is easily destroyed. I just replaced the screen on one the other day. The upside to the Motorola is that parts are cheap and easily available. I would still prefer that over waiting in line at a retail location with a bunch of sad-faced Apple owners. There’s nothing worse than trying to find a specific retail location when you are on the road and then fighting to get a spot in line. No wonder kids think the 1980s are cool again. If they use iPhones they are literally in a proprietary retail experience of thirty years ago.
So if you want a sophisticated phone that is rugged, the Nokia Lumia 900 or N9 seems to be the clear (pun not intended) winner in the market right now. It’s not only beautiful, but its physical integrity and data availability are superior to the competition.
This isn’t taken well by analysts, of course, who try to come up with reasons why the data is flawed. Consider this example from SlashGear:
…since the Lumia 900 hasn’t been a commercial blockbuster, there are not as many customers to review it, meaning it’s much easier for that phone to get a 5-star average than something as incredibly well-selling as the iPhone 4S.
So when you eat a commercial blockbuster McDonalds McRib (pig tripe, heart, and scalded stomach) sandwich just remember how incredibly well-selling it is versus a top-chef Gary Danko dinner you could have been having instead. The 5-stars that Gary Danko received were much easier to get because far fewer people eat his food than the McRib, right?
Illuminating the vital role water plays in our lives, exposing the defects in the current system and depicting communities already struggling with its ill-effects, the film features activist Erin Brockovich and such distinguished experts as Peter Gleick, Alex Prud’homme, Jay Famiglietti and Robert Glennon.
Projected paths of the radioactive atmospheric plume emanating from the Fukushima reactors, best described as airborne particles or aerosols for 131I, 137Cs, and 35S, and subsequent atmospheric monitoring showed it coming in contact with the North American continent at California, with greatest exposure in central and southern California. Government monitoring sites in Anaheim (southern California) recorded peak airborne concentrations of 131I at 1.9 pCi m−3
“Greatest exposure” translates to rates 500% higher near Los Angeles than the rest of the coast. For many years now I have been researching methods of using dehumidifiers to source water. The military been developing some amazing technology that can pull water out of the air in the desert, or reclaim water from exhaust pipes in vehicles. Imagine having a drinking fountain in your dashboard. In San Francisco each building, or even each dwelling, would simply produce their own water from absorbing moisture out of the fog, powered by the sun or the wind, as I mentioned in my presentation at last year’s BSidesLV.
It makes a lot of sense to pull moisture from the air when it is such high humidity and there is no shortage of wind power. This move from ground-based systems avoids numerous pollution issues found in piping water from remote reservoirs and it creates higher resilience to attack or disruption. However, it does not help in cases where nuclear fallout or other risks are drifting through the air.
Bitter Seeds is Peled’s third film in a trilogy on globalisation. It explores the risks faced by Indian cotton farmers caught up in a genetically modified seed program by Monsanto. The movie follows a farmer’s daughter as she tries to expose the story of her father’s death.
Farmers unable to get bank loans instead try to borrow illegally but they take on high interest rates. Then they struggle to overcome low yields coupled with expensive seeds that need for even more expensive fertilizer and water. The traditionally stable means of living becomes a financial gamble that the farmers realise they can’t win; they then kill themselves to escape an inevitable loss of pride.
Monsanto’s pesticide is said to be a direct cause of death in hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides.
