Vedant’s blog

The comments below explain why I don’t like Android quite well. It’s got this thing about being open and open source when, in spirit, it really isn’t. I can’t auto-reply to SMSes depending on attributes like sender, date/time; I can’t put my own system which plays a voice saying "Hey, I’m very busy right now; if your call is important, press 1" so, depending on the input it can either drop the call, notify me with a beep or start ringing. I can’t connect to the phone from the Internet and retrieve information from it, and that would still use less power than wifi or bluetooth. Bluetooth is still a pain in the arse; it is too complicated in spec which ruins it. I don’t have a system to block callers from specific numbers if I don’t use the Do Not Disturb registry. I can’t track my phone and have it send debug-level logs of positioning systems (cell-id and GPS) to my computer in near real-time (without using an app that would drain your phone battery in a few hours). There’s nothing that efficiently connects all neighbouring phones with each other (with consent) without using the cell network. With such a lot of focus into phone operating systems, you would think companies would bring features that customers need rather than overwhelm all the customers with features that aren’t very useful.

I wonder if Palm’s webOS would be good. I wish it would, but I doubt it.

Also see a previous post by me on a similar topic.

Comments are from a Slashdot story about how bloatware is becoming a problem on android phones):

I’m Confused… (Score:5, Insightful)
by RobotRunAmok (595286) on 2010-07-22 23:03 (#32992646)

I thought android was the "Open" one…

Re:I’m Confused… (Score:5, Funny)
by MrEricSir (398214) on 2010-07-22 23:06 (#32992716)

Of course it’s "open," you just have to jailbreak it first!

Re:I’m Confused… (Score:5, Insightful)
by nine-times (778537) on 2010-07-22 23:35 (#32993236)

Funniest thing is that people have said that to me, and they weren’t joking. Part of the reason I got an HTC Incredible is that everyone kept talking about how open Android phones are. Then I was like, "Ok, now how do I get WiFi tethering on this bad-boy?"

The response was, "Oh, it’s easy. You just have to root it."

"So you’re saying I have to hack it. Same way I can do whatever I want with my iPhone, but I have to hack it first."

"No, no. It’s totally different. Android is open."

"But you have to hack it in order to be able to do what you want?"

"Yes."

*sigh* "Ok, so how do I root an Incredible?"

"Oh, you can’t. Someone will probably figure it out sooner or later, but for now you’re just stuck with what you have."

"But I could jailbreak an iPhone now and do whatever I want with it. People already figured it out."

"Yeah, I guess."

"How is this more open again?"

"Because with Android, you can do whatever you want! It’s Linux, after all."

One could use My Maps and the Distance Measurement Tools, etc. in Google Maps without logging in with a Google Account earlier. Now they can’t. Pathetic, both in amount of time and bandwidth wasted and the loss of privacy.

It’s amazing how many legitimate email is marked as spam by Gmail. It is now placing every email from the lath.in domain into it’s spam folders. It does not even see that the sender is in the contacts list of the Gmail mailbox since ages. This is just awful for me, as it means I cannot use my primary email address to send email to Gmail recipients.

If I was running a small business with an email address on my own domain, I might have been doomed. This shows how centralised systems are much more fragile to failure than distributed systems. Maybe I mean how monopoly in email has disastrous consequences.

Gmail has a support document that says:
“Also, each time you mark a message as ‘Not Spam,’ your Contacts list is automatically updated so that future messages from that sender are received in your inbox.” However, emails from me were going to the spam folder even after previous such messages were marked as ‘Not Spam’ by a user.

Searching in Google reveals posts from as far back as 2007, when many users were apparently receiving email from Google themselves in their spam folders.

This is pathetic for a product that was in beta for years, and initially had a very good spam filter. At this stage, one wonders why don’t they use SpamAssasin anyway.

Gmail is great for email with other Gmail users, but not for non-Gmail users. Great, we have just seen lock-in with email from your favourite web company, Google.

Slashdotters aren’t human, you insensitive clod. Humans are social animals, we on the other hand, are not.

Not true. We’re social, but only with our own kind.

I tried to be social sometimes, but never succeeded. Society dictated that I had to go some wedding parties with parents, and I would often find myself alone going round and round so as not to stand all the time at the same place, and I had nothing else to do. I didn’t know anybody, nobody knew me. I just waited and wished my parents would be over with the party now, and we would go home.

When I go back to my hometown once in a while, I try to avoid social contact as much as possible. I even consider running or hiding if it allows me to avoid social contact.

Caution: This is a draft.
TLDR: I mistook a neutral wire for a line one in the *mains* power distribution unit, fixed a small electrical problem, and went for a walk at 5 in the morning.
First version: May 10, 6:14 am.
Second verson: circa May 11.
Third version: May 15, 6:15 am.

Phew. It’s 6 in the morning and I haven’t slept yet. Cool. However there were a lot of good things about it:

First, the electricity. It’s summer here, so electricity is notoriously bad. At least it is better than the situation in my hometown, where we have been without power for days (non contiguous measure). What happened tonight was similar to events on a previous night, but as I couldn’t determine the events on that night accurately, I can never be sure if the events were the same.

This is what happened today:
Symptoms:
The air conditioner in my room and the inverter had no power.

Cause:
One line from the mains had no power.

Resolution:
Move the inverter and air conditioner lines from the affected line to a line which was not affected.

But the events leading to me fixing it were interesting. At first, I didn’t consider fixing the problem at all. The inverter ran on battery power and supplied the room with electricity. The only thing which has non-functioning in our room related to this problem was the air conditioner. I was not much affected by it because I had lived without an air conditioner for 17 years. However, my roommate seemed very inconvenienced about it. He found it very difficult to sleep. At last he slept, but after an hour or so, the inverter ran out of battery power. We were in the room without any means of cooling; no fan and no air conditioning. My roommate, dissatisfied, went outside to look at the power distribution system. Our head staff, “Daddu”, also woke up and they starting talking about it. I thought I might as well go and join the discussion as I had a considerable idea about the electrical system in our house. Human voices at around 5 in the morning got a housemate and friend of ours curious about what’s going on. He came down from the upper floor to see what was going on.

That was a very good event, because it indicated that he was awake and therefore he could give me my electrical tester which he had taken for *cough* some reasons. With the tools in hand, I successfully fixed the problem without any immediate side effects in about half an hour.

Power was back in my room; all electrical sockets had power now. Both the fan and the air conditioner were working again. This was a huge relief, especially the fact that there were no negative effects of my doings. At least, none have been visible yet. Fire might be starting to ignite in the circuits, but no symptoms have been visible yet. The roommate said thanks, and we finally went to a walk, after the roommate and the housemate had waited since the start to fix the problem.

This indicated a few things:
- I have practical knowledge of electricity
- I can fix electrical problems in the house
- I /know/ what I am doing, as nobody could detect any fault with my methods or result.

To sum it up, there was no power coming to the inverter and the AC in my room, but there was power in other rooms, except the devices connected to the ground floor inverter. I fixed it so that all inverter devices have power now and the AC in our room is working.

We also went for a walk in the park. The walk was good and it told me that I /should/ go for walks much more frequently. We stared at around 5:27 am and returned at around 6:05 am. The increased pace yet not very fast pace of our walking should have been good for my health.

I also got the idea that early mornings are indeed good and quiet here. Except the extra light, it doesn’t disturb concentration inside my room. Outside my room, the extra light which is a decent shade of white yet not yellowish because the sun hasn’t risen yet is great for being outside of the house for a while.

It also helped me realize that I can stay awake till these times without having an adverse effect on my next day unless I have to get up before the afternoon.

So my intended schedule for the holidays is to have coffee at midnight, do useful things till 5 am in the morning, go for a walk, return and review the things done for any improvements, see if there is time for doing more things, and when I get tired, go to sleep. Reviewing things after returning from a walk should be a good idea because my mind will be much fresher then. Also, writing thoughts down while in the walk or after the walk is also a good idea.

Such an eventful night, it’s significance is unparalleled in the last 30 or 60 days or even more!