Forecasting:- Science or Magic?

Hi folks
 This is the first in a series of articles where I'll be taking a brief look at prediction and forecasting. One of my favorite sites for scientific understanding is Skeptoid.

So I thought we'd take a quick look at some predictions made by Skeptoid around the year 2012 (because we know the other failed predictions!)

Skeptoid predictions for 2012 (from 2008)
Asteroid 433 Eros is going to pass within 17 million miles of the Earth in January;
<correct>
the United States will hand over control of the Korean military back to the Koreans in April;
<fail - CFC won't be dissolved until at least 2015>
there will be an annular solar eclipse in May and a solar transit of Venus in June;
<correct>
the Summer Olympics will take place in London;
<correct>
the Earth's population will officially pass 7 billion people in October;
<fail - world population has reached 7 Billion on October 31, 2011>
the United States will elect a new President in November;
<fail - the us reelected the incumbent president>
construction of the new Freedom Tower will be complete in New York City;
<fail - the freedom tower is still under construction>
the sun will flip its magnetic poles as it does at the end of every 11-year sunspot cycle;<fail - the solar magnetic pole reversal wasn't complete as at December 21 2012 and AFAIK is still underway> and, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the Mayan calendar completes its 5,125 year cycle, <correct>,

Out of 9 predictions, Brian got a score of:- 
4 correct 
5 fails 

 I reckon that's a pretty good effort. Even though Brian has less than half as a hit rate, I bet anyone would struggle to find a better set of testable concrete predictions that can be easily verified when the time comes. I'd say Brian has been better at predicting the future than Nostradamus, Jesus, Niburu, Zacheria Sichin, Alex Jones, David Icke or any other charlatan claiming to have "secret" knowledge or through misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the scientific method come to conclusions that actually aren't scientific (thus implying some kind of secret knowledge that the "establishment" is out to get).

Protection

Just ordered my OtterBox Defender Series Hybrid Case with Screen Protector and Stand for the Nexus 7 - Black for my Nexus 7 for $49! Given I know how fragile these things are first hand I've been wrapping it in pillows, and also given that these otter box thingies are normally $70, I couldn't pass up the amazon deal.

I must say I've been completely wrong about the whole ordeal. My experience was this: I had my Nexus 7 for about 3 months. Totally in love with it, making apps now and then. But then one (fateful?) day I noticed a paper thin scratch on the screen. It seemed to be no big deal, it all still worked. Not long after that however I was playing a game (Sonic CD) and the screen cracked and was no longer responsive in the lower left hand corner (it must have gone through to the digitizer as I would later come to understand).

Well this made the whole thing nigh on useless (I'd have to switch from portrait to landscape and back again just to type things out  properly). Games were out of the question. I looked into the warranty and tried to take it back to my retailer to no avail, they said to contact ASUS, and that in general cracked screens are not covered.

I was depressed. I looked into alternative options. Maybe I could try to replace the screen? It seemed costly prohibitive. The cheapest and apparently only option was around the $200 mark after shipping, and then I would have to install it myself. I could buy a new Nexus 7 for not much more than that. Maybe I could sell it on eBay and get like a hundred for it (someone with more technical tenacity than myself was sure to want a bargain.) In the end, I thought, bugger it. I will call ASUS. So I did, and was greeted with a very friendly and helpful customer service rep who said they would send a courier out to pick it up that day.  Within 10 days I had a new Nexus 7 arrive on my door step. So despite all of my previous whinging, I'm still a happy owner of a Google Nexus 7 and will continue to make apps when I can (but until I receive my OtterBox Defender Series Hybrid Case with Screen Protector, I will be keeping my Asus Nexus 7 lodged firmly between several pillows.

Cheers
N

yey

I take it back. Asus replaced my device at no cost. Yet. More apps to come.

On the way to Asus

Well, the Nexus is on its way to ASUS right now. The turn around time will be 6 to 7 working days (and they couldn't let me know over the phone if I would need to pay for repairs or that it would be covered under warranty. If it is the former, I will opt out and add the repair money to the new tablet fund. However, if they fix it under warranty, then I will be very happy :).

CHEERS
N

Nexus 7 = Zero Quality

Hi Forum

Well around four months after I got what I thought would be the next big thing (Nexus 7) the screen cracked whilst playing sonic CD. Yep the device broke while doing what you are expected to be doing with it. Talk about lack of quality control! I did a little research and found out that the nexus 7 screen is heaps fragile. Hundreds of thousands of people complaining on all sorts of forums that the screen cracked either after some minor impact or playing a game. Seriously Google and Asus, do you think people like poor quality products? So anyways, I bought mine from that great Australian retail giant HarveyNorman, I thought I'd take it back and claim defective product (the thing broke while using it how it was meant to be used, after all - kind of like if you bought a breast implant and it exploded inside of you, or if you bought a dog and it turned out to be a horse, or if you went swimming with dolphins and you accidentally caused the formation of a Stallinist cult of personality around you, and when you left, the dolphins all starved to death because they spent all of their time building monuments to you instead of eating) Anyslut, like I said, I took the thing back and the answer I got was " we'll, your customer care plan doesn't cover cracked screens (good thing I don't believe in warranties) I said well what about the manufactures limited liability warranty? (Comes standard) "yeah they explicitly exclude cracked screens and dead batteries" - hrm... well that's shit. Can you show me where it says that? He couldn't.  This isn't a fight I'm going to win, because plenty of other people have been through the whole process. They have had to pay around $170 for the repairs plus postage. The thing only cost 250  bucks to start with. Also at the end of the day you'll have the same shitty screen that will crack in less than 12 months (now that's more of a guarantee, really!)  So do you fork over your hard earned dosh for another defective device or do you just save it and add it to the iPad fund.  Because at the end of the day, the fragile screen ISNT THE ONLY ISSUE! Light bleeds, bent screens, unresponsive touch etc the list goes on. Seems to me that the quality managers at Asus and Google must have been taking bong hits while this thing was getting built (and I mean like bucket bongs, not your average filthy hippy regular bong - those guys must have been friggen HIGH). Spread the word. Don't buy the Nexus 7 (I've only heard bad about the 10 as well) Teach these pricks that lack of quality won't be stood for. Teach these pricks that you should stand by your product through proper warranties that put the customer first (it seems like Apple already do this. The result? They are the biggest company in the world). So FCUK you Asus and Google, I for one won't be buying any of your shitty, poorly built, lacklustre, unsupported pieces of shit products again. Ever. Which also means I won't be making any more Android apps. I might turn my nexus into a netbook with a keyboard and mouse and install KDE active or something. As it is, it (the nexus with android and a cracked screen) is fairly unusable because the the screen and the digitiser are fused together, so when you crack the screen you break the digitiser, rendering touch input useless.  I might even turn this into an anti Google blog or something, we need to let these pricks know that we won't put up with being treated like idiots. That's obviously what they think anyone who bought a nexus is, an idiot, because that's how they treat us. 

Cheers all and good Apple'n.

dget exanple

More VBA Sweetness

Continuing on the theme of VBA stuff, here is my implementation of the QuickSort algorithm, as with all quicksorts, it scales at nlogn. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say its at least as fast as the builtin sorting.


Public Sub QuickSort(ByRef vArray As Variant, inLow As Double, inHigh As Double)

  Dim vPivot As Variant
  Dim vSwap As Variant
  Dim lLow As Double
  Dim lHigh As Double

  lLow = inLow
  lHigh = inHigh
 
  vPivot = vArray((inLow + inHigh) \ 2)

  Do While lLow <= lHigh

     Do While vArray(lLow) < vPivot And lLow < inHigh
        lLow = lLow + 1
     Loop

     Do While vPivot < vArray(lHigh) And lHigh > inLow
        lHigh = lHigh - 1
     Loop

     If (lLow <= lHigh) Then
        vSwap = vArray(lLow)
        vArray(lLow) = vArray(lHigh)
        vArray(lHigh) = vSwap
        lLow = lLow + 1
        lHigh = lHigh - 1
     End If
     
  Loop
 'in quick sorts case, recursion is really handy....
  If (inLow < lHigh) Then QuickSort vArray, inLow, lHigh
  If (lLow < inHigh) Then QuickSort vArray, lLow, inHigh

End Sub

This method should work for both 1D and 2D arrays, with some transposition etc prior to calling. I FLY quick sort and binary search. You guys make programming fun!

Cheers
N