Trust is an intricate thing to say the least. Some people put trust in other people and other entities too easily and others are as paranoid as they come. As with many things, I guess neither extreme is that good and to my shame, I'm still searching for an equilibrium myself. Trust is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to uphold. From a game theoretical point of view, there are quite many strategies which suggest that abusing trust in certain situations would be beneficial. Perhaps even necessary, if you have the ability to strike first and in that way defend your positions better. But game theory is also an interesting thing in the sense that it offers some lenses to view the world through, but following it blindly is not good either.
I took a Pendolino to Salo this today and a person sitting behind me didn't have a ticket. That by itself isn't that big a deal, as he was running late and wanted to purchase the ticket from the train. Unfortunately for him, Visa Electron doesn't work unless there's a direct connection to the bank with which the account balance can be checked and the money deducted. The person checking the tickets, however, did something rather unusual. He showed trust. He advised the passenger that the passenger should go and purchase the proper ticket in Turku and that he would go by the ticket office to check that the passenger had indeed bought the ticket.
From a selfish game theoretical point of view the passenger could've just walked out of the train and be done with that. Free train ride to Turku. The only incentive for the passenger to buy the ticket would be that in the future a same sort of arrangement could be used if people do not abuse the trust that they are given. At least from my point of view it's very strange that this level of trust is shown towards complete strangers. I just hope that the guy actually bought the ticket. In fact, I do believe that he bought the ticket and that's one of the things I like about Finland. The honesty.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
New phone...
Got another phone this Monday, again. Our secretary wanted to switch phones since she had recently ordered a Nokia N76 for herself, but wasn't liking it after a couple of days. So I gave away the 6110 Navigator that I had and got a shiny, red N76. I typically don't post that many comments/reviews on things, but I guess this time I'll do an exception and type up some comments.
Firstly, the clamshell is useless. You can't open it easily with one hand. You need to use two. A very big annoyance. Secondly, the back cover is a real pain in the ass to remove. If you have slightly sweaty hands and are trying to remove it for the first time, it's pretty damn difficult to do. That wouldn't be such a bad thing but occasionally when S60 freezes, you have to remove the battery to do a complete reboot. And try doing that while driving on the motorway. Wasn't easy with the 6110 Navigator and it'll be even less easy with this phone.
One of the most common use cases with a phone is switching the profile. From General to Meeting to Silent and back again. But if you have the cover open, you can switch the profile easily because the upper half of the cover blocks to power button that you've become accustomed to using when you want to switch profiles. The 3.5mm audio jack is also next to the power button, meaning that when you plug in a headset, you can't open the cover all the way open again.
The top side of the phone contains a small external screen that doubles up as a mirror. Except that it smudges very, very easily. Then the keypad. It's metallic. Even RAZR-esque. Actually it's pretty damn near identical. Unfortunately that means that it's almost as useless as the RAZR's keypad. Then there are the keys to control the audio player on the cover of the phone. And I haven't figured why it doesn't go into keylock mode by default -- meaning that you occasionally turn on the player and start it playing while just playing around with the phone.
And then the battery. The battery is awful. It can't take any sort of punishment. My old E70 stayed on for days and days. And this phone can't even make it through 24 hours. And apparently it can handle about 2.5 hours of talking. Wouldn't know, I've always had it plugged in when I'm in longer calls.
So to sum it up, the phone is pretty terrible. Or not really terrible, but annoying. It has lots and lots and lots of silly design flaws, which is a real shame because otherwise the phone is actually sort of decent. But it seems that this'll be the phone that I'll be using for a while anyway. Or at least until I get seriously annoyed with it and switch back to the E70. Which at least has a QWERTY-keyboard.
Firstly, the clamshell is useless. You can't open it easily with one hand. You need to use two. A very big annoyance. Secondly, the back cover is a real pain in the ass to remove. If you have slightly sweaty hands and are trying to remove it for the first time, it's pretty damn difficult to do. That wouldn't be such a bad thing but occasionally when S60 freezes, you have to remove the battery to do a complete reboot. And try doing that while driving on the motorway. Wasn't easy with the 6110 Navigator and it'll be even less easy with this phone.
One of the most common use cases with a phone is switching the profile. From General to Meeting to Silent and back again. But if you have the cover open, you can switch the profile easily because the upper half of the cover blocks to power button that you've become accustomed to using when you want to switch profiles. The 3.5mm audio jack is also next to the power button, meaning that when you plug in a headset, you can't open the cover all the way open again.
The top side of the phone contains a small external screen that doubles up as a mirror. Except that it smudges very, very easily. Then the keypad. It's metallic. Even RAZR-esque. Actually it's pretty damn near identical. Unfortunately that means that it's almost as useless as the RAZR's keypad. Then there are the keys to control the audio player on the cover of the phone. And I haven't figured why it doesn't go into keylock mode by default -- meaning that you occasionally turn on the player and start it playing while just playing around with the phone.
And then the battery. The battery is awful. It can't take any sort of punishment. My old E70 stayed on for days and days. And this phone can't even make it through 24 hours. And apparently it can handle about 2.5 hours of talking. Wouldn't know, I've always had it plugged in when I'm in longer calls.
So to sum it up, the phone is pretty terrible. Or not really terrible, but annoying. It has lots and lots and lots of silly design flaws, which is a real shame because otherwise the phone is actually sort of decent. But it seems that this'll be the phone that I'll be using for a while anyway. Or at least until I get seriously annoyed with it and switch back to the E70. Which at least has a QWERTY-keyboard.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
The Fourth Screen
Another Nokia video, this time about the internet...
I actually think that this video nicely points out how Nokia is eventually starting to grasp where we're at right now and starting to show a possibly interesting value proposition for the users -- a way to keep connected regardless of time and place. If WiFi cut us loose from our desks but forced us to carry along tons of equipment, then more intelligent smartphones with nifty, cheap connectivity via 3G/3.5G/4G/WiMAX/LTE/whatever will cut us loose from the ton of hardware.
Nokia is always getting laughed at for being the naive and slightly slow guys from Finland who always mess things up. And I'll be one of the first people to point out all of the stupid things we've done. But I think it's fair to say that right now we're doing some interesting things (enterprise stuff like Intellisync, then some consumer stuff like Gate5, Loudeye and now Navteq, experimenting with Open Source with the Maemo platform and the internet tablets, and so on).
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Stupid things
Went for a jog today. Or actually a run. Some statistics below:
- Peak HR: 211
- Average HR: 184
- Duration: 40 minutes
- Was it wise? Hell no.
- Was it required? Hell yes.
Sometimes you just have to do stuff like that.
Slippery slopes
Nearly two weeks again without blogging, so I guess it's time to pull my act together again. It just seems that there's a ton of stuff on the agenda again. Last week was sort of hectic thanks to a day-long team workshop on Tuesday (8 AM to 10 PM), an excursion to IBM and then on Thursday I was speaking at NRC Ruoholahti about what it's like working for Nokia. The presentation might've been slightly unorthodox, but I did get some positive feedback about it and at least the freshmen laughed. Quite likely at me, not with me. But oh well...
On the job front I got a new contract. Again. This time it's no longer for a fixed time, but instead a permanent one. Additionally they gave me a shiny new title and raised my salary. Always a nice turn of events. I also stopped working full time again and resumed my part time + school routine, which became familiar last winter.
I also ran across my thesis instructor on Monday. As you may or may not know, I've been working on my thesis since last January, but it's been on hold for a while. Mostly because I hated the way I had scoped it and then because I haven't had the energy to actually start doing it. Anyway, for the past month I've been thinking about it and have sort of re-scoped the thing and on Monday I presented it to Nilay. I guess his initial reaction was sort of positive and I drafted a brief two-pager on what I want to do and sent it to him for comments. But right now I am somewhat motivated that this new direction is where I want to take the thesis. It's not after all a big thesis, but I want to do it properly. I guess I'll try to blog about it more as the work continues.
The jogging project has also been taking a bit of damage recently, namely meaning that I haven't been able to get around to running recently (the last run was a week and a half back when I blogged about the new Crystal Method album). So things are looking slightly grim on this front. I'd also need to go look for new clothing so that I could run during the colder months of the year. I think I need to revamp my personal targets (i.e. the new year's resolutions) to cover this jogging project if I want to actually truly get myself to train properly.
Anyway, that was the quick update, I guess I'll try to blog more often again, if only to keep a sort a written memory of what I'm doing for myself.
On the job front I got a new contract. Again. This time it's no longer for a fixed time, but instead a permanent one. Additionally they gave me a shiny new title and raised my salary. Always a nice turn of events. I also stopped working full time again and resumed my part time + school routine, which became familiar last winter.
I also ran across my thesis instructor on Monday. As you may or may not know, I've been working on my thesis since last January, but it's been on hold for a while. Mostly because I hated the way I had scoped it and then because I haven't had the energy to actually start doing it. Anyway, for the past month I've been thinking about it and have sort of re-scoped the thing and on Monday I presented it to Nilay. I guess his initial reaction was sort of positive and I drafted a brief two-pager on what I want to do and sent it to him for comments. But right now I am somewhat motivated that this new direction is where I want to take the thesis. It's not after all a big thesis, but I want to do it properly. I guess I'll try to blog about it more as the work continues.
The jogging project has also been taking a bit of damage recently, namely meaning that I haven't been able to get around to running recently (the last run was a week and a half back when I blogged about the new Crystal Method album). So things are looking slightly grim on this front. I'd also need to go look for new clothing so that I could run during the colder months of the year. I think I need to revamp my personal targets (i.e. the new year's resolutions) to cover this jogging project if I want to actually truly get myself to train properly.
Anyway, that was the quick update, I guess I'll try to blog more often again, if only to keep a sort a written memory of what I'm doing for myself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
