conspiracy theories - Programming Blog

Posts Tagged ‘conspiracy theories’

23 Dec 2009

A lot more people have ordered the Barnes & Noble Nook, first announced on October 20, than the company expected (despite getting panned by the official reviewers). The company had Foxconn, their ODM, build far fewer of them than they should have.

The original plan was to ship pre-orders by November 30 but that date was pushed back to December 7. It took a mere month for the entire order process to break down. Now a small number of pre-orders still haven’t arrived and most brick and mortar stores are sold out and even then they were only available in “higher volume” stores on December 7.

B&N is assuaging those customers whose pre-orders and early orders haven’t shipped with a $100 B&N gift certificate if the device doesn’t ship by December 23. The company wrote: “With our sincerest apologies, we will send you an e-mail notification on December 23rd with a $100 Barnes&Noble.com Online Gift Certificate.”

B&N reports that a “small number” of pre-order customers are facing difficulties and there are some conspiracy theories that state that B&N keeps pushing back ship dates to ensure purchasers don’t cancel their orders. For example one customer wasn’t happy with the wait and requested a cancellation. The result? A refusal to cancel the order because the “device has entered the shipping process” even though he still had three days to wait before it even hit the truck to his home.

According to B&N most pre-orders have shipped although it is currently impossible to purchase a Nook right now in time for Christmas or, presumably, Easter. The Nook, for better or worse, is this year’s Wii.

So how many will ship this year? Our Asian sources tell us around 60,000, which is more than B&N expected people to buy (only about 400,000 Kindles sold in the first year it was offered).

But B&N has Foxconn geared up to build a whole lot more Nooks right away. Between online and brick and mortar demand, the company is expecting to sell half a million Nooks in the first three months of 2010, way beyond their initial projections.

The biggest problem with the device was on the software side, which is slow and glitchy. Once that’s worked out the device will be a serious threat to the Kindle. And the fact that people can buy it in the offline world is a competitive advantage, too. One place you probably will never see the Nook sold, though, is Amazon. I’d bet on that.

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Tags: asian sources, Barnes, brick and mortar, brick and mortar stores, company, conspiracy theories, December, device, e mail notification, lot, Noble, Noble Nook, year

Mystery Of Droid Autofocus Conspiracy Solved (For Reals This Time)

In: web resources

18 Nov 2009

The problem: users have complained about the autofocus feature on the Droid since day one. As in, it didn’t work (video). Last night I wrote that some users found a fix – clean the lens. It turns out that probably didn’t do a darn thing.

But there were even better conspiracy theories out there, such as Engadget’s idea of a secret software update, which quickly spread around the Internet.

It turns out that wasn’t true, either. And we’ve confirmed that there’s no such thing as a secret software update on Android phones anyway, at least according to people at Google. Updates, even security updates, must be approved for installation by the user.

So what was the real reason for the problem, and the fix? Well, it fixed itself. The problem, as MobileCrunch duly noted, was an issue with the phone’s timestamp: “According to Google Engineer Dan Morrill, there is an unfortunate bug in the Droid’s autofocus routine. It improperly rounds a timestamp used in the calculations, which somehow throws the entire focusing process off. Today it works, and tomorrow it will work…but 24.5 days from now, the bug will be back.”

But by the time the problem cycles back again, Verizon will have pushed out a fix for the problem.

As we say around the office, Android is freedom from the iPhone. But sometimes that freedom feels a little bit like this:

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Tags: conspiracy theories, Dan Morrill, didn, Droid, Fix, google, iPhone, problem, problem users, secret software, thing

Money | Secrets on your Bills

In: web resources

12 Nov 2009

Did you every really look closely on your dollar bills? Ever found anything interesting on there that you never saw before. Well, let me tell you that it’s not the easiest thing in the world to find some of them Everything from aliens to owls are on there. Yup, that’s right. Never seen them? Just look through your bills and see if you can spot some of the things hidden on them before checking out these clips.

Of course these are just further ideas of conspiracy theories that people like to think up. But, the incorporation of such images are quite interesting and they must be there for a reason. However, I think the reasons are way more simple than some of these theories. What’s your thoughts on it? Did you ever really look at your dollar bills?

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