Dvorak News Blog

Motorola Phone Update Process Sucks

By Marc Perkel Wednesday June 25, 2014

You would think a company as big as Motorola would be able to put out a cell phone update that wasn’t so flawed it was unusable. But they have done it again. The latest KitKat for the Droid RAZR M (XT907) is the buggiest version they released yet.

So why is Motorola so bad at getting it right?

I used to be part of their “soak test” group who would preview new versions about to be released. I did that for two releases and then quit. The reason I quit was that it was a waste of my time. I would generally make a list of say 20 or so bugs I found – many of them very serious bugs – and other people would report bugs – and none would get fixed before being released. Not only that but often these bugs weren’t fixed in the next release either.

As far as I can tell the only reason for the soak test is so Motorola can say they did testing before the release. ?But part of testing is actually fixing the bugs reported to you.

At a minimum soak testing should involve at least 2 releases. An initial release and then a second release with at least the most serious and easily fixable bugs repaired. No one thinks that software is going to be perfect but it seems to me that it’s a lot less expensive to put in a little more effort up front than to have to pay tech support people to deal with all the issues not fixed before the release.

DH Unplugged
Dog Meat Festival

By John C Dvorak Tuesday June 24, 2014

2 Comments

earnings

Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything.

Click here for non-Flash version.click ► to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

No Fly List Process — Ruled Unconstitutional

By Uncle Dave Tuesday June 24, 2014

36 Comments

The U.S. government’s no-fly list banning people accused of links to terrorism from commercial flights violates their constitutional rights because it gives them no meaningful way to contest that decision, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown, ruling on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Oregon by 13 Muslim Americans who were branded with the no-fly status, ordered the government to come up with new procedures that allow people on the no-fly list to challenge that designation.

“The court concludes international travel is not a mere convenience or luxury in this modern world. Indeed, for many international travel is a necessary aspect of liberties sacred to members of a free society,” Brown wrote in her 65-page ruling.

Outlook is Down

By Marc Perkel Tuesday June 24, 2014

21 Comments

I’m not sure who is more incompetent, Yahoo or Microsoft, when it comes to email systems. Right now Outlook is down. Outlook is not totally down but can only accept a single message at a time. I’m a one man operation doing spam filtering and email hosting and I have better uptime and email services than Microsoft does. Go figger!

“421 4.3.2 The maximum number of concurrent server connections has exceeded a limit, closing transmission channel”

Squirrel is back again

By Marc Perkel Monday June 23, 2014

14 Comments

He’s back! he’s now 5 years old. He’s big – he’s loud – and he’s trying to get laid. As you can see he’s responding to my voice and making eye contact, something the wild squirrels in the area don’t do. But other that a sense of being familiar he don’t respond like he did when he was a baby.

Do we have free will?

By Marc Perkel Monday June 23, 2014

69 Comments

Do we have free will? Or are we just slaves to physics? Are we just the physical laws of the universe playing itself out? Many people like Sam Harris think we’re the universe’s puppet.

I think we have free will. And I also think free will has nothing to do with determinism. The more I think about free will the more I conclude that we really have no idea what it is.. However – I think that basically our “soul” is like a piece of software running on a meat computer we call the brain. And that this software is so very different than any software we have created that we don’t understand it or the property of it that we experience as free will.

I think that in maybe 20 years when we first create software that has agency, “I think therefore I am” then we will at least know what free will actually means. Maybe the computer will explain it to us?

Thoughts?

Also – those who don’t believe in free will have the right to choose not to believe in it if they don’t want to.

Student gets stuck in giant vagina sculpture

By Eideard Monday June 23, 2014

19 Comments

What was meant to be a funny dare turned into an utter embarrassment for an American exchange student, who found himself trapped in a giant stone vagina in Germany.

Oooo… So Close!

By Uncle Dave Sunday June 22, 2014

27 Comments

Guerlain Chicherit attempted to beat the record for longest car jump. The result was a record of a man confronting his own mortality and ultimately experiencing a moment of grace.

Our Amazing Skies

By Uncle Dave Saturday June 21, 2014

20 Comments

View it full screen for the best effect. Read about the photographer, Vincent Brady.

Congressional committee ordered to court – hiding info on insider trading

By Eideard Saturday June 21, 2014

24 Comments

A U.S. judge on Friday directed the House Ways and Means Committee and a staffer to appear at a July 1 hearing to address their alleged refusal to respond to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenas as part of an insider trading probe.

Hacking the NSA’s Hacking Hardware

By Uncle Dave Saturday June 21, 2014

11 Comments

RADIO hackers have reverse-engineered some of the wireless spying gadgets used by the US National Security Agency. Using documents leaked by Edward Snowden, researchers have built simple but effective tools that can be attached to parts of a computer to gather private information in a host of intrusive ways.

The NSA’s Advanced Network Technology catalogue was part of the avalanche of classified documents leaked by Snowden, a former agency contractor. The catalogue lists and pictures devices that agents can use to spy on a target’s computer or phone. The technologies include fake base stations for hijacking and monitoring cellphone calls and radio-equipped USB sticks that transmit a computer’s contents.

But the catalogue also lists a number of mysterious computer-implantable devices called “retro reflectors” that boast a number of different surreptitious skills, including listening in on ambient sounds and harvesting keystrokes and on-screen images.

Because no one outside the NSA and its partners knows how retro reflectors operate, security engineers cannot defend against their use. Now a group of security researchers led by Michael Ossmann of Great Scott Gadgets in Evergreen, Colorado, have not only figured out how these devices work, but also recreated them.

Reverend Reality at TedX talk

By Marc Perkel Friday June 20, 2014

152 Comments

Reverend Reality speaks at TedX about Reality Reconciles Science and Religion. Talking about the Evidential Reformation Reverend Reality lays out a common path that both Religion and Atheism can evolve into. This is religion 3.0 – the authority of evidence rather than the authority of scripture. And this is a religious view that even Atheists can appreciate. (If you can listen long enough to get past religious terminology).

Does the religious world and Atheism have a common future? Michael Dowd says YES! How so?