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Shifting the blame
When I see kiosks with Windows error messages, I usually love to blame Windows as I'm a life long (OK, I was 16 when I got my first Mac) Mac user so Windows is an easy target. Several weeks ago, I was at the San Diego airport picking up my wife and son when I saw an error on one of the displays. I realized that the displays were still running and the only problem was the crash message on the screen. I attribute this error to the person that setup the kiosk. Software is going to crash running most operating consumer operating systems (Mac OS and Windows primarily), so whoever sets up the kiosk needs to do whatever is possible to make sure the kiosk or display keeps running. This includes background processes to monitor the foreground processes and vice versa. In addition, all error messages need to be suppressed. Mac OS X has a command line option -
Fixing broken laws
I've written before about the California hands free cell phone law and how useless it is. While studies say that hands free still distracts people (my wife says that I'm distracted when I'm just talking to her in the car), a hands free law is a start to getting people to focus on the road.
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Useless case protector
Since the Samsung Reclaim isn't a flip phone and the screen risks getting scratched in my wife's purse, she wanted a case. I saw that Sprint had a plastic case that clips onto the Reclaim to protect it. I didn't order it right away because the price went up from the time I looked at it and the time I was going to purchase which basically meant that I could get it cheaper at the Sprint store with my Sprint Premier discount. I was at the store today and tried out the case; the sales person was nice enough to clip it onto my phone.
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Review: Samsung Reclaim
Last week, I finally bit the bullet and got new cell phones for my wife and me. (The batteries weren't holding charges and I've been unable to get replacement batteries that hold a charge.) I was very cautious to pick phones that wouldn't affect my plan, so that pretty much ruled out phones such as the Pre or HTC Hero. As I liked the slider on the Pre I have for work, I decided on the Samsung Reclaim for our new phones (we already had unlimited data for both our phones; unlimited data being EVDO Rev. 0 data).