cosmix.org

Inception (2010)

cosmix — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:52:19 +0000

The Thirteenth Floor. Existenz. The Matrix. Movies that more or less, in their respective segments, defined a time, set a trend. That was 1999 and while the first two movies became ‘cult’, mostly due to their lower budgets and respective promotion, the latter ended up being a megahit that drew praise from geeks, critics and [...]

What’s wrong with this?

cosmix — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:56:24 +0000

Check out this table. A bunch of modern, high-quality, high-performing codecs. AAC+, AAC LC, enhanced AAC+, MP3. All decodable by Android, on all devices. Sadly, Android devices can only encode on AMR-NB at the sad sampling rate of 8KHz. At the miserable bitrate of 4.75 to 12.2kbps. At qualities unheard of since the early days [...]

Νοσταλγώντας τα €0.85/λίτρο.

cosmix — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:06:20 +0000

Θυμάμαι σαν εχθές τη στιγμή που κατέφθασα στην Πάτρα, τον Ιούνιο του 2005. Είχα μπροστά μου έναν γεμάτο μήνα: μετά από επτά χρόνια διαμονής στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, έπρεπε να μαζέψω και να αποστείλλω τα πράγματά μου — ένα ολόκληρο σπίτι — στην Ελλάδα, να χαιρετήσω τους φίλους και γνωστούς μου, να απολαύσω το Λονδίνο μαζί [...]

Κλιματιστικό = “Δωρεάν” Quasi-απεσταγμένο Νερό*

cosmix — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:38:17 +0000

Μια split air-conditioning ‘οικιακής χρήσης’ μονάδα κλιματισμού της τάξεως των 8K BTU μπορεί να αποδώσει μέχρι και 10 λίτρα ημερισίως! Σε μεγαλύτερες εγκαταστάσεις (βλ. κεντρικός κλιματισμός σε κτήρια γραφείων) τα κλιματιστικά αποδίδουν μέχρι και 40 λίτρα ανά 100 τ.μ. Σαράντα λίτρα νερού που συχνά πάει χαμένο. Αρκετό νερό για να ποτιστούν αρκετά μεγάλες εκτάσεις των [...]

Bing and OpenStreetMap

cosmix — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:20:55 +0000

Bing, Microsoft’s portal/search/mapping service has announced that they will start providing OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, as an optional layer, in Bing Maps. OSM data will be downloaded from Microsoft’s fast Azure CDN, as opposed to OSM’s ‘slow’ servers. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Microsoft using OpenStreetMap data. That’s why it’s Open. But then again, I am [...]

Kindle and Parochial Thinking.

cosmix — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:51:46 +0000

A few days ago Amazon presented the new Kindle and started taking pre-orders for the device. On the frontpage of both amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of the company made the announcement in typical Amazon fashion. I always liked the Kindle, but was — for a long time — convinced that [...]

The Books – The Way Out (2010)

cosmix — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:01:55 +0000

The Books are back! After four — long — years The Books return with The Way Out. An album upon which they’ve worked for a year and a half, it is a gradual evolution of their fantastic work of the early to mid 2000s. Familiar, yet daring in parts, The Way Out felt like ‘more [...]

Nokia. A Company in Denial.

cosmix — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:24:50 +0000

Arrogant. Disoriented. Unfocused. Accurate characterisations of Nokia? Perhaps. Still, who’d have thought in the early 2000s that the market leader of mobile phones, one of the most innovative companies in its field that owned the European market would be the dying king of the 2010s; high volume sales of silly feature phones, low profit margins, [...]

Rails3 Critique Tidbit: html_safe, raw() and h.

cosmix — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 05:50:30 +0000

One of the most annoying thing with Rails has always been how it provides for convenience at the expense of uncertain (and sometimes shady) abstraction implementations. It’s a great framework for prototyping, yet there are reasons why quite a few people are skeptical about it. Nevertheless, in the truest tradition of Ruby, Rails provides a [...]

Changing our mode of thinking

cosmix — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:13:11 +0000

Despite appearances, this goes well beyond Marxism vs. Capitalism (thinking in such one-dimensional terms would be degrading to anyone doing so). The issues that have surfaced through the world economic crisis of the late 2000s could not have been part of a ‘socioeconomic’ theory from the 19th century, the 1930s or the 1950s or even [...]