Odd thing in the U.S. that the same people pushing to be better World Citizens have an awesome exception(I’d prefer to call them Hypocrites) system. Particularly when it comes to Google.

Bill Gates made a similar comment in the form of a question and I will have to paraphrase it: “when doing business in another country, should you ignore their laws in favor of your own?”. The answer to that is: absolutely not. Anyways, take it away Jute!

jute

When I was a kid, I use to visit the homes of the other kids in my neighborhood often. Some have big house, some have small house; some have clean house, some have messy house. Some of my friends have very strict parents. If I’m to play in their house, I have to wash my hands, wipe my shoes before entering, can’t watch the TV, can’t make loud noise…

Of course, I love my house the most. I love my parents the best. But when I go to my neighbor’s house, I respected him, and his parents. I follow their rules. I do not call them evil or bad just because they don’t think the same way I do, or don’t have the same habits or beliefs, or not have the same rules as in my house (especially about watching TV). My parents always tell me that if I don’t like it, I can always leave and come home!

We have forgotten some, may be most, of these important life lessons when we become adults, especially here in America. We have a lot of neighbors in this world. They don’t think the same way we do, or share the same beliefs or cultures or philosophies. They certainly do not have the same laws about how to run their country. So when we visit them, we follow their rules. If we don’t like it, we can leave and come home! The sooner we realize this fact, the sooner we’d become better neighbors and live in a more peaceful and tolerant global village.

By the way, some of my many different and eccentric neighbors have become my life long friends. Some have gone separate ways, but when we meet up with each other, we’d still laugh about the old times. We had a great neighborhood. I wish we could have just as great a world!

One truly bizarre instance centering around Twilight(of all things) saw someone completely fly off into orbit accusing me some pretty outrageous stuff. I tried to say, “hey man you’ve gone way too far with this” only to find out I had been blocked. So that’s how it’s going to be? That’s pretty lame. My crime? I suggested that not everyone would agree that Twilight encourages and supports pedophilia along with abuse and aggression towards women. How dare me right?

The latest instance I made a (more than likely) offhanded and cynical response/joke to a comment made on the latest health care bill. Now if there’s some situation I’m not aware of that deeply got into someone, I’ll gladly take it back and say I’m in the wrong. Even if someone just doesn’t like it, I’ll gladly say “hey man, meant no offense. Sorry.”. I figured I’d at least be given that chance. Wrong again.

In today’s partisan world, there’s no room for friendships anymore I guess. You can only be friends with people that are “on your side”. That puts me in an awkward place really. No one is on my side because I am on no ones side. I guess there’s no such thing as respect anymore. Respect doesn’t require agreement. Tolerance also doesn’t require agreement. Respect doesn’t require sides. Oh well. That’s the way it is now. Carry on I suppose.

Whatever it is you do or like, good for you. I am glad you have a place in life that makes you happy. I hope that you can see that other’s may have that too and it may not be the same as yours but you can at least be glad that they are happy. Coexistence would be a beautiful thing.

The example is here:
Accessing Phone API’s via .NET Compact Framework

Here it is specifically:

Byte[] buffer = new Byte[516];
fixed (byte* pAddr = buffer)
{
IntPtr res = SmsGetPhoneNumber((IntPtr)pAddr);
if (res != IntPtr.Zero)
throw new Exception("Could not get phone number from SIM");

byte *pCurrent = pAddr;
phoneaddr.AddressType = (AddressType)Marshal.ReadInt32((IntPtr)pCurrent);
pCurrent += Marshal.SizeOf(phoneaddr.AddressType);
phoneaddr.Address = Marshal.PtrToStringUni((IntPtr)pCurrent);
}


This code is unsafe and requires it be compiled as such. It’s unsafe because of it’s use of pointers. The CLR will allow use of pointers, but they need to be wrapped as such. I’m not going to go into the details why. If you are familiar with memory management, then you know why. The other portion I am not a huge fan of, is the fact that the pointer is modified. There’s two pointers to one memory location (three if you want to count buffer itself), with one of them have arithmetic performed on it. Job gets done sure, but this is coding that I wouldn’t do. It’s messy.

Here is the same code rewritten:

byte[] buffer = new byte[516];
IntPtr pBuffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal((sizeof(byte)*516));
IntPtr pResult = IntPtr.Zero;
string sPhone = string.Empty;
pResult = SmsGetPhoneNumber(pBuffer);
if (pResult == IntPtr.Zero)
{
for (int i = sizeof(Int32); i < 516; i++)
{
buffer[i] = Marshal.ReadByte(pBuffer, i);
}
sPhone = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetString(buffer, 0, buffer.Length).Replace("", string.Empty);
}
Marshal.FreeHGlobal(pBuffer);

Marshal.AllocHGlobal intrinsically does a security permissions check. Straight declaring pointers does not. This allows for type safety and bypasses the need for unsafe code. While perhaps not as memory efficient (since the data is copied to managed memory), it will be less prone to error and easier to maintain data within managed resources.

1. Very dark. Like literally. A lot of the difficulty dealing with the “Xenos” is the darkness. Can’t shoot what you can’t see. This was the principal challenge. A “flashlight” that is almost useless, flares (on a CD but unlimited), and the motion tracker are your tools.
2. “Smart” AI. I say “smart” because this goes back to the darkness issue. Locating the targets is a challenge. The AI will get out of the line of fire if it gets hit. In the case of the “Xenos” they typically hop onto the wall/ceiling. The darkness makes it so that they are easy to lose when they strafe out of the LoF.
2a. The “Xenos” tunnel vision their targets. They shift between the walls and ceilings all while freight-training at you. I found that I’d survive better if I stayed on the move and kept my distance(duh).
2b. Improvement of “Xeno” attack. The prior entries in this series saw them just freight-train towards you. Now they are at least aware “I’ve been hit, strafe away”. The crawling on other surfaces has been used to great effect. I have to look “everywhere” when the motion tracker goes off.
3. Human Weapons = OP. For the most part, I never had enough ammo for my better weapons. With the Pulse Rifle I could easily take out the “Xenos”. The Shotgun made it even easier. The Pistol comes loaded with infinite ammo. I can see why. You’ll be resorting to it a lot due to being bingo on ammo.
4. Head Shot = kill. This one is dicey. Headshots are difficult to get. Your crosshair is on the head, but it doesn’t seem to actually hit the head. I’ll get a body shot off only to see the head spray and wonder “that was a headshot?”
4a. Leg shots are fun. They start crawling to you. At some point I will attempt to make it a goal to get as many of them crawling at me as possible and SS it.

The good so far:
-Setting is well done
-Mood is well done
-Sound is well done

The bad so far:
-Excessive and asinine bad language. Whoever decided that having diary entries where every other word is an f-bomb should be fired. It doesn’t add any realism or cool factor. It just sounds like a 16 year old trying to sound “grown up”. An f-bomb here and there, sure. Every other word? Seriously.
-Wheres the ammo? I pick up a shotgun with 4 rounds. Not long after, I get attacked by 6 “Xenos”. No more Shotgun ammo the rest of the level. Theres plenty more “Xenos” in the level though. /headscratch
–Wheres the ammo pt2? I will pick up a pulse rifle with 70 rounds… and 6 grenades? whaa…? In those tight corridors the grenades are awesome btw. Gibbed myself twice due to not seeing that thing jutting out because IT WAS DARK BRAH! /facepalm

The oddly stimulating:
-The dance club with the virtual stripper. Yeah I’ll admit it, I stopped to watch longer than I should have. There wasn’t any nudity(well certain things were covered if only to the absolute minimal level) or stripping involved… but it was obviously a tribute to an older game. “Shake it baby”.

**** “Xenos”. This is the term Sergeant/Captain/Corporal/BananaHammock Tequila (no I am not making that up. can you guess the accent she has? /facepalm) frequently uses when referring to the Aliens(Xenomorph). A term that I always thought was kind of “Hey guys lets come up with a term that sounds scientific!” sounding. They could have done better imo. Xenomorph is quite literally “strange shape/form”. As a side lesson “Xenophobia” is the fear of strangers. “Xenophilia” is the fondess/love of strangers.

Observe….

“The idea that Gates is going to throw some money at a couple of guys that think they’ve got a new idea and this is gonna blossom into something that really works is a pretty low probability,” he said.

Isn’t that how innovation happens? /head-scratch

Link to Article

Putting things into perspective, Dr. Cochran’s agenda is that he has swallowed whole the idea that the world will end via Global Warming. What’s more interesting is that cutting carbon emissions is the short and long term answer to global warming. In effect, he is answering a question no one asked. Hell he’s not even understanding the purpose. Be that as it may, he’d rather not see one of the wealthiest men in the world jump behind innovation. Innovation is a bad thing according to Dr. Cochran I suppose. A lot of environmental extremists suffer from A.D.D. (proof of this is Cochran not getting the point, or even bothering to pay attention to the message it seems) in respect to the fact that the energy issue entails “D) All of the above”. Cleaner, renewable, economical, efficient, and practical. Anyone who is even just a little familiar with engineering processes knows that a problem is solved in phases. You can’t tackle everything at once otherwise your product will never see the light of day. It becomes more and more evident to me that environmentalists (and their proxy of choice is politicians) are possibly interfering too much in the process. They want the ‘silver bullet’ solution (thanks Tommy!) that solves everything at once right now. At some point the scientists need to step aside or go back to the lab. In the case of Dr. Cochran I’ll stick with Mr. Gates. A 50% solution is better than Cochran’s -25% solution. I like the fact that someone with the stones to face this issue, because we all know what type of personality Gates has, love him or hate him, is doing something about it.

Would a Jobs reactor be called iEnergy? iPlant? iReactor? Would it be fed with iRods, iSticks, iFuel?

kcabsinamzeew.

After re-flashing the iPhone it has started behaving very well. It’s snappy and quick. It works well. Which points to one thing that Microsoft knows so well: It’s not the OS stupid, it’s the crappy developers who write piss poor applications for it.

I didn’t restore all my previous apps. I just put the few on there that I actually used with some regularity(Blizz Authenticator, Armory, AIM). So I guess, sorry Apple. I will have to chit chat with the iPhone dev guy and see if Apple has any sort of certification program for apps written for the iPhone. If they don’t, they should implement one. :p

Yesterday I went to make a call and I noticed that it was “Searching”. I waited. Waited. Waited. Waited. Waited. “Searching…”. The trouble is, I know the signal in the area is fine. I have 2 other AT&T phones that sit on my desk with signal just fine. So I power down the device. I turn it back on, and it locks up at the Apple. I try the hard reset. It locks up at the Apple. For fun, I leave it at the locked up apple. After about 20 minutes and several reboots (or at least, the screen flashes and returns to the Apple) it comes back.

Today, I have it plugged in and I punch the menu button thing. I slide the slider but nothing happens. I notice “No Service” in the corner. I hold the button to power down the device and nothing happens. I do the hard reset dance. Looks like I will be waiting again for 20 minutes before I can use my phone. It’s into its 4th reboot as I write this. Terrible behavior for a device. Even PocketPC from almost 10 years ago didn’t behave this poorly. Very shoddy work Apple.

*Update*
Flashing the device. Hopefully it comes back. I have backups laying around at home luckily.

Enjoy.
Some pics