Hardwarebug

Some time ago now, I was looking for a new laptop. Having compared the technical specifications of a number of models, I turned my attention to the most important aspect: the colour. Everybody knows black is the best colour, but which particular shade of black? There are, apparently, quite a few to choose from.

While some may settle for the plain Black, others will demand something more distinguished. The musician, for instance, might find Piano Black more attractive, while Ebony Black has, perhaps, an organic touch. For a more “hi-tech” feeling, there is Carbon Black, and if that is insufficient, Ultimate Carbon should hopefully do the trick. The French-sounding Intense Noir might, I speculate, be designed to evoke quasi-artistic images, whereas Platinum Black to me rings mostly of expensive and hardly at all of black. The last entry on my list is Liquorice Black, for which interpretation I refer to those capable of ingesting this vile substance.

To this day I remain completely clueless regarding any actual variation in physical appearance, as for my purchase I selected black, plain and simple, and spent the difference on a RAM upgrade.

I have had a Nexus One for about a week (thanks Google), and naturally I have an opinion or two about it.
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It has come to my attention that this blog suffers a complete lack of the single most important thing on the Internet: cat pictures. Here is a feeble attempt to remedy this most shocking of shortfalls.

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Press releases are always rich riddled infested with current buzz-words, but this one is better than many.

The analytics-enabled video lifestyle management of the title is, apparently, some kind of video surveillance system targeted at home users. According to the press release, it uses mobile video intelligence (MVI), which has got to be a good thing, even having been given an acronym. With all this power, it delivers proactive, video-based information, and does so in a manner that fits today’s connected, mobile lifestyle.

This must be a truly amazing device. It provides users with better lifestyle management, and to top it off, the surveillance footage it supplies is allegedly so great that it also changes how consumers view video – from a passive, entertainment form to a source of rich, real-time information. Not a bad feat for a video of your back door, I must admit.

In my previous post, I attributed a quotation to one Robert J. Hanlon. This quotation, known as Hanlon’s Razor, deserves a little more attention.

Firstly, I altered the phrase slightly compared its most common form, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity,” substituting incompetence as the final word. I did this simply because I found this form more suitable in the context.

Secondly, the origin of this adage is disputable. A selection of alternatives follows.

• In his 1980 book Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons why Things Go Wrong!, Arthur Bloch credits Robert J. Hanlon as the creator, citing the above version.
• Bill Clarke claims to have coined the phrase in 1974, in the story Axioms of a Mad Poet he published that year.
• In the short story Logic of Empire (1941) by Robert A. Heinlein a similar phrase appears: You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
• Napoleon Bonaparte allegedly uttered the words “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence,” although accurate references do not appear to exist.

Perhaps there is some truth to the saying that great minds think alike.