Interesting Links for 1-2-2011

[andrewducker]

• Boots to start selling paternity tests over the counter. 1 in 25 fathers to get unexpected news...
  (tags: parents children)
• Finally, an Android tablet that's not a huge pile of poo. (Seriously - what is it with all the shit Android tablets?)
  (tags: android tablet archos)
• IPv4 enters exhaustion phase
  (tags: ipv6 internet)
• Egypt shuts off its last ISP. I can't see this lasting much longer.
  (tags: egypt internet)
• Artemis - a computer game where 6 of you take control of a Star Trek-like ship, and have to work cooperatively. Awesome!
  (tags: computer_games startrek)
• Android overtakes Nokia to become the world's leading smartphone platform
  (tags: android mobile_phones)
• New Age terrorists develop homeopathic bomb
  (tags: homeopathy funny terrorism)

Comments

[cheekbones3]

So, they're selling a couple of envelopes and swabs. I hate to see how much they're charging for this...

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I was just reading that Archos review. I think the most telling line is the last one: "...which makes it the only tablet now on sale that I would actually spend my own hard-earned on."

I've not been that bothered about the tablet market up until now, mostly due to cost and waiting to see if the market would just die out as a novelty that no-one actually had a use for, but at that price it's almost tempting.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. It's still a little high for me, but give it a year or two and we'll be talking mass market.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Boy is that 1 in 25 number optimistic. Every study I've ever read has shown "mistaken paternity" stats to be MUCH higher than that.

They did a blind study a few years ago testing the paternity of children whose parents were in the process of divorce and about 25 percent of the kids didn't have a genetic match to their "father."

Another study showed that in cases where men were questioning or unsure if they were the father (which would be the case in buying these kits) the rate of nonpaternity was close to 30 percent.

Overall in the Western world the assumption is that roughly 10 percent of kids were not fathered by the man the woman claims was the father.

For odd reasons this number is considerably higher in certain parts of the the UK and the US and considerably lower in Scandinavian countries.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

that's pretty much what I have read on the subject. 1 in 25 is just too low.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Perhaps all other things being equal parents who divorce are more likely to be ones where the father is not in fact the father?

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

That's true, but it still has to skew the numbers.

And, less face it, if your marriage was in great shape you wouldn't be buying an over the counter paternity test, would you?

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Indeed, and that's where things become interesting:

Will there be child support claims made against biological fathers from those who turn out to be social ones?

Could we subsequently see DNA tests on aborted foetuses / foetii (?) to see who was indeed the father?

Do you [Bart] have a blog where you post about porn business / website stuff BTW? The comments you have made around your work are fascinating from a sociological and philosophical perspective IMO.

After all, in Plato's Republic children wouldn't know or care who their parents were.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

I think the generally reported figure is 1 in 10, but I can't recall the source.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Which is still a lot larger than 1 in 25.

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

That's the figure we were taught at medical school.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I know I shouldn't care, but it drives me mad that all the articles taking the piss out of homoeopathy get it wrong! A homeopathic bomb wouldn't be ludicrously diluted explosives - that would be a homeopathic bomb shelter!

[andrewducker]

You can't expect people to understand the things they're criticizing. That's crazy talk!

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Do you think the Android tablet is a good buy then? My mum turned round last week and asked for an ipad for her birthday (70th)! I told her how much they cost and she changed her mind. But I did tell her that I would investigate alternatives.

She wants to be able to go into a meeting and pull up the relevant documents (from email, or desktop shortcut?) without having to print them out. She saw someone else doing that and was jealous.

70-year-olds these days, eh!

[andrewducker]

Good question. I'd have to have a play to be sure. But I believe that Word, Excel and PDF documents would be ok.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

What would be likely to be less ok? She wouldn't be doing anything complicated with it, but my main concern is it be user friendly. Her basic understanding of computers is not good.

[andrewducker]

The answer there is I _think_ so, but you'd have to actually play with one to be sure.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[andrewducker]

Looking at the comments on that article, it looks very much as if it's very usable with all sorts of files (including Word and PDF).

My main worry is that this is the _first_ Android tablet I've seen that looks worthwhile. I'd expect things to improve significantly over the next six months, so I'd be wary of buying anything before then.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Her birthday's not til June, you reckon it's worth holding out until then, then? Do you think I might be lookig at the same-ish sort of price?

Thanks, sorry for the third degree!

[andrewducker]

In six months time there will have been at least two generations of Tablet. I'd _definitely_ hold out until then.

And no worries - I like this kind of thing!

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Thankyou! Thinking about it, it's only 4 months but still sounds like something new will be about. I will doubtless come back to you, and the internet at large, with more questions then!

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The Egypt thing is interesting.

If they go offline, truly offline, then the payment processors will begin to fall over within a day or two. I mean, who uses X.25 any more?

At which point, Egypt's financial infrastructure goes tits-up, and if they didn't have a revolution before that point ...

[andrewducker]

Also, apparently the ISP that was holding out (Noor) was the one that provided the connectivity for their stock exchange...

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

If the stock exchange is suspended anyway, presumably this is no longer quite so important...

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

It's a short-term measure - not sustainable for more than a few days.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Apparently S&P just downgraded Egyptian bonds to one notch above "junk".

ObMubarak: "I'll just get me coat ..."

(If the head of state is singlehandedly responsible for the national credit rating tanking, he's not long for the presidential palace.)

[andrewducker]

Yes. If he was going to crack down it should have happened days ago. Failing that, if the populace aren't going to spontaneously back down he's lost all credibility and is going to have to get out of there.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I have the Archos 5 and it's....well that mix of awesome and annoying that Archos kit has always been (I've had a few of their products).

If the 10.1 is stable, then that's really, in my experience, a first :-)

[andrewducker]

I had a very early Archos MP3 player, which was good in some ways, but as you say, intermittently annoying.

If you get a chance to play with a 101 let us know what you think!

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I'd love for there to be a great, non-Apple tablet. There are loads of tasty-looking ones due out this year, I think I liked the specs (and looks) of the Sony (argh, bookmark for the preview is on a different computer....).

I might even be tempted into learning how to program on the Android platform if there is a useful device available. I don't see Windows-based tablets taking off due to all forms of Windows being so damn power-hungry - but ya never know....

[andrewducker]

Yeah, Windows is power hungry, and I don't think the UI suits it. Having now played with an Android phone (and an iPhone somewhat) I can see why custom-written apps work much better for touch interfaces.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Thought you might be interested in linking to this:
http://colorlessrevolution.blogspot.com/

It was set up by a friend of mine (who studied at Edinburgh for a semester or so while I was there, a fellow gamer) who was in Egypt when things kicked off and wanted to share a few thoughts he scribbled while incommunicado. He's a very clever man and a very good writer.

[andrewducker]

Cheers, that was good. I've linked it for tomorrow, and added an RSS feed at colourlessrevol (it'll take a while to pick up the posts).

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Well, I have no idea whether or not he's going to continue with updates but I figured it was interesting enough as is.

[matgb]

Actual numbers on smartphone growth and number shipping. Nokia up 30% (which is phenomenal), RIM up 36% (which is even moreso), but Apple and Android both up massively, but from a smaller base.

Very very interesting to see--those stats saying "Blackberry in trouble as market share tanks" are utterly at if the reality is "Blackberry up 36% but overall size of market up 88%".

Reading through reviews of various products, and most on, for example, the N8, are rather grudging, but Jennie and I both read one which was complainign about various things going "but we like that feature".

Apparently both Virgin and T-Mobile are shipping more Desires than anything else, but also getting a much higher proportion of returns than they normally get. Those stats from call centre staff so may or may not be accurate.

Jennie's N8 arrived yesterday and her Desire got posted back. I want an N8 already, it's really good. Very few things about the Desire impressed me enough to want it.

[andrewducker]

I'm just glad that there's widespread competition, rather than Apple getting all of the developer love.

I'm not likely to go back to Nokia unless they massively overhaul their interface and get a lot more developers on board.

Meantime, I'm very happy with my Desire, although I now seem to have replaced all of the interface except for the Dialer (and am tempted to change that too, I keep playing around with alternatives). The sheer fact that I can do so makes it for me (although there are a lot of other things I like too).

[matgb]

Absolutely, the entry of Android has forced both Nokia and Apple to up their game, and will continue to do so. The N8 appears, by sales, to be a success, and there're apps for it that I really want (I rang Orange, I can next upgrade on my contract may14th, I shall be doing so). Developers are there, but whether they'll get enough is another thing.

Ultimately, a phone has to suit you and your purposes--Android I can see is good, but for use primarily as a phone, not good enough. Yet.

I suspect this may partially be due to different phone use cultures in the US compared to the UK/EU--we use SMS more from what I understand, and don't pay to receive them (I mean, really, WTF?).

But Jennie's Desire not loading all her contacts to Google like it said it would, then rebooting and deleting all the data, really was bad--she had her karate club AGM last night, but couldn't actually ask anyone for a lift there as she's not seen any of them to get phone numbers back as she's still not allowed to actually do karate yet. If a phone can't be trusted to keep the phone numbers it's had uploaded to it, it's not a functional mobile phone, even if it's an unusual glitch, it's wrong.

I really hope they continue to improve, and especially get the 'phone' aspects fixed. I also suspect I'll stick to Nokia for a bit, but continuing to have multiple choices is good.

[andrewducker]

I have to say that if it had eaten all my contacts I'd be very fed up with it too. So far it's not done anything like that to me (and, indeed, the way I got my contacts _on_ to it was via syncing it with Google Contacts).

Works for me just fine for SMS though - I'm curious what problem you/she had?

[matgb]

Specific, yesterday she tried to use it for the last time to text all her contacts with her new number (might as well use up the free texts).

One of the numbers was wrong. It kept retrying to send, was unable to send, and then reattempted it. We couldn't find the outbox, couldn't tell it to stop sending, and eventually just turned it off then put it on silent.

Nokia and Sony phones I've had always ask to retry if there's a problem number. Whether it was a one off or similar, it was still daft. And sure, finding the outbox is something you know how to do or not, but Nokia's have a logo shortcut whent here's something in there in the status area.

[andrewducker]

How odd. I don't get failed texts often, but when I do they pop up in the notification bar to tell me they've failed, and then I can choose to resend them or not. Having said that, that's through a different SMS program, and I can't remember what the original is like. In any case, that must have been horribly frustrating.

[ipslore.livejournal.com]

My question is, as a patron of the Internet, will I have to do anything about IPv6? Update my browser, get a new modem, bitch at my ISP, anything like that?

[andrewducker]

Your browser is fine. Your ISP will eventually get their finger out and sort it at their end. You may need a new modem/router, but you can worry about that when it happens.