Podcast - This Is Only a Test

Episode 58 – The Message Came From Inside the Plane – 3/24/2011

This week, Norm recounts his adventures with tablets at CTIA, Gary talks about the real price of fanboyism, and Will shares an anecdote from his childhood. All that, plus fake outtakes and talk about the all the latest Honeycomb tablets.

Comments (44)

44 thoughts on “Episode 58 – The Message Came From Inside the Plane – 3/24/2011

  1. I have to say I really like this app tab feature in FF4. I’ve always found it a hassle to go to the twitter website when I could just use my phone but now that it’s always there it’s really useful.

  2. Loving Gary even more than usual lately. Your awesome! I chuckled pretty much at the exact same time and in the same manner at the 8 inch Chumby. 
     
    Also never be inte- FUCK YOU GARY. Stealing my thunder, saying it right before I finish typing it.


  3. Will couldn’t be more down on android, so annoying

    I don’t own an Android phone, and don’t plan on buying one either, but I got tired of Will’s Android insults, he cries so much. Its fucking annoying.  I had to turn off the podcast. 
     
    Every week its the same thing, Norm is the only objective person on the podcast, and Will and Gary talk about their love for Apple and their distaste for Android. 



  4.   Podcasts are not reviews. They are not cold, unbiased looks at products, theyre some guys sitting in a small room talking about products and events. We discuss the happenings of the day and our experiences testing various hardware. Sometimes that is going to be negative, if you want a podcast that’s going to paint a rosy every product, you shouldn’t listen to our show.   

     
    I am aware that these podcasts aren’t reviews of products. However, it’s important for you to understand that when you talk about Android, you have a tendency to moan, akin to a child crying about his  toy because its not as shiny as his friend’s new toy.  
     
    For goodness sake, at one point, Gary criticized Android because there are new devices released every month or so. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Don’t you understand that Android is no more than an Operating System on these phones. I mean, that’s just like complaining that there are new “Windows” laptops coming out every month and your laptop is not as new anymore. Gary is such an Apple fanboy, that he doesn’t understand that it’s not just simply Apple vs. Google. Android’s strategy is completely different from Apple’s, therefore you can’t cry about how your device isn’t as cool anymore.
     
    Finally, as a paying member, I find it  insulting that you ask me not to watch or listen to your show.When I visit this site, I expect a quality product, and I have the right to voice my concerns about what I don’t like. I want to continue coming back, but I’d like to hear some better INSIGHT into the tech. industry.  
     
    I’ve only complained about two podcasts, and when I do complain, I’m very specific and I don’t ever make general claims about how this “site sucks” or that “this site will never be as good as some other site”. Maybe you can learn a thing or two from me when you are comparing products.  ; )

  5. Since you asked, currently using FF4 and trying it out compared to Chrome 11.
     
    So far, FF4 is looking like a great improvement over FF3. Though I’m still undecided wheter I want to switch.

  6. Jesus fellas calm down they’re only phones, why people feel insulted or annoyed because someone criticized a product they own is beyond me.
     
    I’ve had a Nexus One for a while now and I’m really loving it, I honestly think that the only good Android phones are the Nexus line. That said I don’t blame Google for letting manufactures put custom UIs on their phones, Android is a open source OS after all, the only thing that Google can really use to enforce standards is their apps. If Google suddenly said no custom UIs or we don’t let you use Google apps there would be an influx of new Android Markets, which is exactly the opposite of what they want.

  7. I use Chrome and I love everything about it. Between the account syncing and low system overhead there is no reason for me to use any other browser. Also, I have never run into a site that I couldn’t run in Chrome so I have even less reason to switch browsers. As for my favorite part of Chrome, I am not sure if it is available in other browsers but hitting tab while typing in a wed address and then searching the site that way is infinitely convenient.

  8. When it comes to browsers I a reluctant Firefox supporter. There are a lot of great things about the browser, it has a lot of support, it steals good features from Opera (unfortunately a less supported browser), and it looks good.
     
    The caveats with FF are that I usually have to stay an update behind since the latest update usually takes a couple months to be stable, and when you do update it is such a hassle since a lot of plugins and extensions may at any time become incompatible.
     
    If the people over at Mozilla were smart they would take some of the most popular extensions and bring them into the browser. I can’t remember the last time I used FF without also installing Tab Mix Plus, Download Statusbar, Speed Dial, DownThemAll, and other helpful extensions.
     
    I plan to spend more time with Chrome just to see how it will go,but so far my experience hasn’t been good. I have yet to try out Chrome as my default browser, though.

  9. I quite like the Top Gear definition of what a supercar is and what a hypercar is.  It probably helps if you can remember (or at least imagine) what Britain was like in 1973:  
     
    “Super cars are designed to mess with G-forces, hyper cars are designed to mess with G-strings.  Super cars are built  for Jackie Stewart, hyper cars are built  for Rod Stewart.”  
     
    Broadly speaking, Ferrari make supercars, Lamborghini make hypercars. I think all other definitions are redundant.  
     
     
    **edit**  
     
    And I guess to answer the car question,  the V12 Aston Martin DBS and an album called No Cowboy by Vitalic, if only for this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOtmWxqN1fY

  10. If someone on a podcast disagrees with you about a phone OS, and that makes you in any way upset? I bet you’re living a damn good life. No real concerns, no real problems, and plenty of free time. Well that, or you’ve got some serious buyer’s remorse/validation issues. 
    – While talking about the Roku box, you mentioned being able to contact microsoft/xbox live to get a whiskey channel? Is this a thing? Cause I’d be all over that. 

  11. Gary’s battery story sums up the helpless baby seal Apple demographic so perfectly 😉 
      
    Will, I’m a medical student and have some perspective on doctor lifestyles. It’s a little ridiculous to broadly label doctors as unhappy and overworked. If a good lifestyle is the most important factor as a doctor, that is definitely achievable because there are so many types of practices, specialties, and sub-specialties.
     
    Very generally speaking, doctors with great lifestyle AND the big bucks are in dermatology, plastic surgery, and ophthalmology, which have few emergencies, cushy hours, and are highly competitive for obvious reasons. But working in fields like family practice and pediatrics are highly conducive to family/social life and will still give you a 6 digit salary. Other lifestyle friendly fields include anesthesiology, neurology and radiology among a few others. For instance, emergency docs work in fixed hour shifts and may only work 8 hours a day but sometimes have odd hours.  
     
    Having said all that, the advice given to medical students is to first find a specialty you enjoy, then worry about lifestyle because there are always options to pursue within each specialty.  

  12. Will talking about how the food pyramid was all a big scheme for us to buy more grain products blew my fucking mind.

  13.  You really don’t need to defend yourself from trolls, that just makes what they do more appealing for that kind of person. We got your back. 

  14. It’s always strange to hear people dismiss Opera, and then talk excitedly about stuff like syncing bookmarks and saving tabs on other browsers. Opera’s been innovating that stuff for years, just like mouse gestures, tabs, and the tile-based homescreens that everyone’s copying now. And they’ve been consistently the fastest or near the fastest browser while doing it.  
     
    As someone earlier posted, I think the low Opera visitor count is because you guys don’t test your site in Opera. The video player/ad implementation is broken in Opera – embedded videos work, but the video page doesn’t. I keep Chrome around to come to your sites and then use Opera for everything else. 

  15.  It’s more of a catch-22 situation since Opera has a low market share, people don’t test their site on it; and then sites don’t work, so people don’t use Opera. I don’t buy it’s just a bad rendering engine, Opera’s been the first to comply with ACID2 and ACID3 tests, and they’ve been huge HTML5 evangelists. I’m a web dev so I know all about designing for stupid browsers, and Opera’s quirks aren’t any worse than the rest, it’s just that no one bothers to test it sadly.

  16. About the Xbox Netflix app: me and my friends have been using it to get 3-6 guys together with the purpose of  watching dumb z-grade horror movies, which is actually really fun with the right crowd.


  17. Damn it, Will. Every time you bitch about grams over pounds, a scientist dies and a hillbilly gets his wings. Learn metric you crotchety old man! I’m sure there are tons of helpful apps for your tablet/phone platform of choice.

    Everyone knows metric is better. Well, except us arrogant Americans.
    (all it takes are a few higher education science and physics classes to realize how dumb the imperial measurements are).


  18. Completely disagree that creationism should be taught in science classrooms.   Creationism is not science, and as such has no place is science classrooms. 

    I disagree with both you and Tested about that. Creationism or intelligent design is 100% based on science. Biology. Archaeology. Astronomy. Scientific principles like the law of conservation of angular momentum, which goes against Venus and Uranus having retrograde motion, for example. I can go on and on, like how never in the thousands of years of human observation have we ever witnessed a beneficial mutation, or that mutations never add new information, only reproduce existing information, like an extra digit or chromosome. So if you think intelligent design is just someone saying “well, that’s what the Bible says” and ignores science, I suggest get informed. And yes, I actually have a formal education. Go figure.

  19.    Changing the way you measure things isnt easy though.  We still havent managed it in the UK, and as far as I am aware we have been teaching the metric system in schools since the 1970s.   
     Examples:   
    We officially use the metric system, but every single road sign gives distances in miles and yards. Fuel is sold at the pump in litres, but fuel efficiently is measured in miles per gallon.   A speedometer will display MPH and KPH though. 
    Soft drinks are sold in millilitres, but beer and milk is sold in pints (though a pint of milk is conveniently sold in a 568ml bottle)  
    If you buy something for the house, furniture, then the dimensions of it are generally quoted in millimetres, but  a new TV is still sold by screen size in inches.  Anything for the wardrobe, or to do with the body, is quoted in inches, ie waist size, chest size, inside leg (etc)  
    Processed food is sold in grams, but if you buy ingredients then it is sold in pounds.   Its bizarre to me and I have lived here my whole life, I dread to think what a visitor must think. 



  20. Completely disagree that creationism should be taught in science classrooms.   Creationism is not science, and as such has no place is science classrooms. 

    I can go on and on, like how never in the thousands of years of human observation have we ever witnessed a beneficial mutation, or that mutations never add new information, only reproduce existing information, like an extra digit or chromosome…And yes, I actually have a formal education. Go figure.

    Wow, better go call Medieval Europe then and tell them that the mutation that allowed resistance to the bubonic plague never occurred. Or all those people suffering from sickle cell anaemia that developed (through a beneficial mutation) a resistance to malaria because of it. They’re going to be pissed.
     
    Next time, try to not use arguments that Creationists at large have long given up using. Makes you look a tad antiquated. Next you’ll be going on about Moon-Dust thickness and geocentric models.

  21. Opera is my main browser and it’s a bummer to hear it dismissed like that, guys.

    That said, I would never use it as my only browser. Because the userbase is so small, many sites are not optimized for it, eg. Google stuff and Whiskey sites. Like Norm, I find myself wanting a browser that combines all the best aspects of existing ones, because each one is at least slightly lacking in some respect.

  22.   I never said science was wrong. That’s the complete opposite of what I said. My point was the theory of evolution has holes in it, and science I mentioned backs that up. The retrograde motion of the planets goes against what the big bang teaches. As for resistance to diseases, they started out human and ended up human. Sickle cell anemia is a horrible condition that has be treated daily and always causes premature death. Something tells me you don’t want sickle cell anemia. Curled up blood cells isn’t evolution. It’s another harmful mutation.

  23.  The notion of junk DNA has been disproven. What was thought be be junk 20 years ago has been shown to have a function. And just because someone doesn’t know what one particular DNA does, doesn’t mean it’s junk. It just means they don’t know. For the longest time we thought the appendix didn’t have a function. Also, again I repeat: ALL mutations either harmful or beneficially neutral, like a sixth toe. Mutations never add new information to the gene code. There’s only two places where that’s not the case: text books and X-Men comic books. 
     
    As for why a creator would allow certain things? This is about science, not theology.

  24.  
    No, the notion of junk DNA has not been disproven. There’s a ton of junk in your DNA (look up the Alu sequence). Moreoever, there are countless examples of beneficial mutations – this is how evolution works… If you’re really going to claim that all mutations are harmful or neutral, then you are woefully misinformed. You can learn about mutations here.
     
    I brought up the bit about a creator because you said that creationism was a valid explanation, which it isn’t.

  25. not sure if anyone has posted about the museum of tolerance

    I recently went there because there were extra spots on a field trip from my school, and it was pretty neat.

    We went with a 10th grade class, and it would have been more interesting if I hadn’t already known about the holocaust and known almost everything they talked about. First you go see some stuff about modern-day(read: post holocaust) intolerance and things like sexism, ageism, and racism. They give you a quiz that asks you to guess what some statistics are, and then tells you the answers. They have a thing where you sit in a “diner” and see a video where some dudes say some racist shit and then an innocent girl gets shot by the black security guard because he got in an argument with the racist guys about some conspiracy theory.

    After that, they tell you about the civil rights movement and show you some stations with “web” racism and intolerance like a flash game where you were supposed to shoot Mexicans crossing a river. You then get a little card that has a picture of a kid on it, go find out a little about your holocaust child from some 90s era computers that have failing CRT monitors, and then go through a tour experience that starts with some models of research people going through and explaining the lead up to the holocaust. You then move to some scenes from a German storefront street, a cafe, and some buildings from kristallnacht. Following that, you get to some things talking about the ghettoes in Warsaw and elsewhere, as well as about the “final solution”, and Hitler’s nuttiness. You soon come up to a gate, and are told to walk through it, where you stand and see a diorama of auschwitz. There is a display of human hair and poison gas cans. You are then told about how thye had two tunnels that the prisoners go through, and are told the selection process. They have you go through the tunnel you think you would have been sent through, then end up in a room that ostensibly is similar to the gas chambers, and hear some audio about German atrocities. Following that, you go through a door, see a little video about Americans’ reactions upon liberating the death camps, and go to another bank of computers with failing screens, put in your card, get a printout of what happened to your holocaust child, and then you’re done. 
     
    tl;dr: long, possibly poorly worded description of the Museum of Tolerance Experience, it’s late-ish, and I’ve been working on my Eagle Project all day. There’d be pics, but they make you leave your camera in the car or on the bus, depending on how you got there.


  26. Completely disagree that creationism should be taught in science classrooms.   Creationism is not science, and as such has no place is science classrooms. 

  27. & Gary. thanks for answering my question about video cards for my brother. and just to add to Will’s comment about my age, I’m 19. I was getting off a chest cold and my voice sounded deeper than normal and my mic is really crappy

  28.    nylonase
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria      A bacteria that eats nylon can only be a modern  phenomenon 100 years ago there was no such thing as nylon.

    It’s still a bacteria. In the millions of bacteria life cycles we’ve witness, never has a bacteria become something other than a bacteria. Variation of species is not evolution. There’s a difference. Plus, that’s what you call a theory. The only way that can be proven true is to go back in time 100 years with nylon and find that bacteria. 

  29. It’s still a bacteria. In the millions of bacteria life cycles we’ve witness, never has a bacteria become something other than a bacteria. Variation of species is not evolution. There’s a difference. Plus, that’s what you call a theory. The only way that can be proven true is to go back in time 100 years with nylon and find that bacteria.

    You don’t understand the definition of a scientific theory.
     
    The evidence both in terms of the fossil record and in terms of DNA is overwhelmingly if not completely convincingly in favor of evolution. I’m not sure about what level of evolutionary biology you’ve been exposed to but the claim that evolution does not cause new species to evolve is downright absurd.

  30. Also, my uncle is an orthopedic surgeon and he has a great house along the ocean in British Columbia. He also owns an island and he has a cool hut and a dock. So I guess it all depends…

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