Why Smartphones like the Nokia N900 Will Continue to Lose to the iPhone, Despite Superior Hardware

I’ve been an iPhone advocate for a long time, at least since the 2.0 update.  Before that, it was just a touchscreen phone that could function as an iPod.  But with the addition of the App Store, everything changed.  Functionality that most phones, including the first-gen iPhone, couldn’t ever imagine being supported natively can now be added with the addition of a simple app.  That’s what makes the current iPhone OS experience great.  No longer do we have to wait for Apple or Nokia to add features to the main OS so that we can take advantage of them (although they should).  Instead, 3rd party developers now have the power to make an already powerful OS even greater, and to add fun and entertaining games to the mix.That’s why I’m really torn with phones like the Nokia N900.

 

The N900 comes packed with technical goodies that iPhone owners, like myself, could only dream of.  In addition to a QWERTY slide out keyboard, FM transmitter, and a 5 megapixel camera, it also comes with the most highly requested smartphone feature of all – native support for Flash.

However, all of these features come at a price.  Not to mention the fact that it will cost about $700 to import this unlocked bundle of joy, it is also missing the function critical to the iPhone’s success – an application store.  While the N900, like many other phones, may pack in much more value on the technical front, they lack the ability to play quality games or have 3rd party native apps.  This is something that most iPhone owners can’t live without.  There is no “app for that” on these sorts of smartphones.  And while the 5 megapixel camera is nice, and I wish Apple would adopt a camera of that caliber, there isn’t a slew of applications that can take advantage of the pictures from the N900 like there is with the iPhone.

I think the analogy here is sort of like the ongoing and neverending war between the Mac and PC platform.  Sure, the PC side of things offers much more choice in terms of hardware, and you can certainly get a lot more “bang for your buck” by going with that option.  But in the end, what good is fancy hardware without the software to take advantage of it?  The Macintosh has proved time after time again that it’s the software that counts, and so does the iPhone.  It doesn’t matter what sort of horsepower you’re dealing with if the end user interface is garbage and lacking different ways to use it (3rd party applications).

In the end, phones like the N900 are very nice technically, but lack the software to make the hardware truly useful.  I guess one can only hope that phones like this make enough of an impact to make companies like Apple and Palm, who both have excellent phone OSes, to step up their game on a technical front.

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Climate Change: The Hoax that will Never Die

Well folks, it’s official. We live in a world full of fairy tales and outright lies.

The wackos that brought you the failed Ozone Hole scare are at it again, this time claiming that “climate change” is a threat to U.S. national security. In the article by the New York Times via MSNBC, the fear mongerers warn of food shortages, water crises, and catostrophic flooding that could respond if “climate change” is not addressed. Of course, the failed presidential nominee John Kerry, never wanting to miss a political opportunity, jumped on board saying that “[he's] been making this argument for a number of years, but it has not been a focus because a lot of people had not connected the dots.”

The only problem is, climate change is an absolute and utter hoax. It’s clearly a politicized issue that has no basis in fact or reality. For one thing, scientists are nowhere near a consensus on whether or not the theory is true. Despite what Al Gore might try to tell you in his pathetic excuse for a movie, not all scientists believe that global warming is happening. Here’s a panel of scientists dismantling the lies in his movie:

I guess those people don’t exist, huh?? Wrong. In fact, the brushed-under-the-rug Oregon Petition is comprised of over 31,000 scientists, 9,000 with PhDs, who believe that climate change is an out and out hoax. Don’t believe me? Check Wikipedia.

The group behind the petition is so angry with how they’ve been constantly dismissed in the mainstream media that they’ve decided to take legal action in the court of law in order to get noticed. Here’s a clip from the Fox News Channel’s Red Eye show with John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, explaining their motives. Personally, I believe that all sides of any argument should be heard, especially one as important and as expensive to potentially address as “climate change”:

And for those of you who simply do not trust Fox News, here’s an article from abc.net.au explaining why there is no consensus on “climate change.” In addition, there is also a particularly juicy article from the Times Online debunking the global warming myth, and explaining why the news surrounding it is so corrupt. The latter of the two is particularly interesting, so make sure to check it out.

And another thing, where’s common sense in all of this? The main fear of “climate change” is rising sea levels, correct? Now let’s think about this for a second at an elementary level.

Ice and water have the same mass. Elements never gain or lose mass when they change forms, due to the law of conservation of mass. However, that is not to say that ice and water are the same size. Due to the arrangement of the molecules within ice, it is actually larger in physical size that water, with a common example of this being ice wedging.

So the question then is, why would all of the glaciers suddenly melting cause water levels to rise? Think about it. Let’s say you take a glass of water and place a few ice cubes in it. The water level in the glass rises. If you let the glass sit in the sun for a while, the ice melts. Comparing the water level in the glass before and after, which is higher? The answer is – before, when the ice was not melted.

So tell me “experts”, if ice has a larger physical size than water, then why would the ice melting cause water levels to rise? You’re lying!

The sad thing is though, no matter how many facts that people come up with debunking “climate change” as a myth, they are still considered to be idiots and ignorant morons for dissenting against popular opinion. It’s amazing how so many people can so easily be swayed in one direction of an argument, just because a has-been politician like Al Gore comes out with an outright lying and deceptive movie intended to scare and indoctrinate, just to put himself back in the limelight. It’s just flat-out sad that so many people fall victim to the lemming effect, becoming brain dead zombies of a mind numbing cult that they treat like a religion. The earth has constant cyclical climate changes. How do people think that the earth transformed from the tropical paradise of the dinosaur era into the arctic tundra that was the Ice Age? They just don’t use their brains! They become dependent upon talking figureheads that are constantly feeding them lies, and don’t come up with a single independent thought of their own. If we think that we, as pathetic little human beings in this universe, have the power to change our planet’s climate due to the use of our technologies, specifically the automobile, then we are not only being self-serving and pompous as a species, but also nonsensical.

In the end, it seems that unless something is done to stop this insanity, we’ll be forced to drive little tin can smart cars due to the sort of fear mongering that caused nuclear power to go out of fashion and become utterly politicized. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look below:

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Cash for Clunkers: Yet Another Government Nightmare

President Obama hasn’t had much luck during his “Cash for Clunkers” program, one of the more controversial pushes coming out of the eager new administration. From computer crashes to inadequate funding, the plan has been ridden with misfortune. In addition to simple misfortune, however, it has suffered the fate of all programs created by the incompetent federal government.

An example of this is the general confusing nature of the program, pushing away those who would be interested in it. Last Tuesday, the Environmental Protection agency completely overhauled the list of vehicles eligible for the $3500 – $4500 government vouchers. Their reason? As usual, it was in order to comply with incompetent, misguided government legislation. This time, it’s a more unusual obscure and flat out nonsensical clause – that miles-per-gallon ratings be accurate up to four decimal places. How that matters is anybody’s guess, but because of the new overhaul, 78 vehicles that were eligible for vouchers during the beginning of the “Cash for Clunkers” program are no longer listed as such.

However, stepping aside from the intricacies of the program, the bottom line is that this program simply will not work because it is not fundamentally sound. Like all of the other “stimulus” projects that Obama has conjured up, this is simply covering a slit wrist with a band-aid. It’s just throwing money at the situation, a reaction that is quickly becoming the norm with our current president. I guess the current United States federal deficit of $11.6 trillion and growing is not a concern to Mr. Obama. Let’s just spend some more money! How about another $700 billion just for kicks? My generation will gladly foot the bill!

And on top of that, you’d think that if the government was throwing away all of this money that they’d at least try to get some of it back by reselling the cars, right? – Wrong! In fact, after being turned in to the government, all cars, not just the unusable ones, are being systematically disabled and destroyed by the mandatory rules of the program. Don’t believe me? Take a look below at the perfectly working engine of a Volvo car being destroyed under the plan’s requirements:

Elections have consequences, folks. The sooner people start realizing that, the better we’ll end up being as a country and as a society as a whole.

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