Pretty dumb that you can't do this on a smartphone

I would think, as a newbie owner of a smartphone, that it would be straightforward to assign one ringtone to everyone on my Contacts list, and a different one to every other incoming call.

Apparently, though, this is not possible. You can assign a ringtone to one person on your Contact list, and then to another, and then to another ... but that seems tedious. Granted, it's likely that I'd only need to do this for a small fraction of my Contacts list, for all practical purposes, but still, how is this not something that a smartphone can do, right out of the box? I mean, when I get an incoming call from a friend, it takes no discernable time for the phone to display that person's name and avatar, as obtained by a look-up from the Contacts list, so why can't this info be used to play a different sound file, as well?

And given that an incoming call from someone not on my Contacts list is at least 99% likely to be a scam, why wouldn't phone programmers jump all over this opportunity to make our devices safer, and then indulge in a big splash of self-congratulations? Not to be all cynical or anything.

If I'm wrong about this, please do not hesitate to correct me.

Deep thought: An instruction I have never followed. And will never follow.

"Rinse rice thoroughly before cooking."

If being submerged for thirty-five minutes in boiling water ain't gonna do it, ten seconds of cold water beforehand sure ain't, either.

I pretty much never watch videos anymore, and this one sums up why

While scrolling through Deadspin or Gizmodo, I saw a link to a post, titled "Discover the Secrets of the Tape Measure," on one of their sister sites, Lifehacker, that made me pause for a moment. I was pretty sure there wasn't going to be any new information for me -- I've been using tape measures for going on half a century, professionally, even, for many years -- but I thought, eh, don't be a closed-minded old guy, maybe you'll learn something new.

Clicked the link and *sigh*, yep, it was a video. Didn't click play. I like to read. Watching, like a drooling couch potato, makes me antsy as all hell. It never goes fast enough, there's no equivalent to skimming, it always feels like three more minutes of life tossed out the window.

A couple of days later, I thought, okay, one quick look. And all of my gripes about videos were confirmed.

I mean, even going in, I was thinking, this could (should!) have been a text post, that would have taken about a twentieth of the time to read as it did to watch. And worse, 98% of the useful information conveyed was? Yes. Nothing. But. Text. Streamed over video. With each sentence displaying on screen for an excruciatingly long time.

And further, in this age of oligopolistic telecommunications giants, how about the bandwidth considerations? Even if you thought the post would need some visuals, a few line drawings would have done just fine. Say, four PNGs, at about 50Kb each. Instead, who knows how many Mb were spent.

And don't even get me started about the pre-roll ads.

You want an idea for a killer AI app? Make something that "watches" video, distills it down to its essence, and delivers the result in text, the way God intended.

Grumble.

[Update 2019-12-25 18:02] Some more thoughts on the matter, from me, in comments under this Facebook post.

Prepositional Pet Peeve

Ngram only returns book results, and only through 2008. If the corpus was all published material through 2016, I bet the red line would cross the blue line.

Yes, yes, living language and all that. But enamored with grates almost as much as singular they.

P.S. Enamored by? No. Not budging on this. That's just wrong.

Worst modifier ever

Dunce cap and a dope slap for R. J. Ellory.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the humans

Not really, obvs, but cheese and rice, sometimes a blurb will make your knee jerk.

Salmon, once nearly extinct on part of the Columbia River, are recovering, to the delight of birds. As a result, those charged with protecting the fish have a new plan: shoot the birds.

(story link)

Hey, Google "+". You know enough about me ...

... that I'd think you could get the goddam pronouns right by now.

[ + ]

Above: my G+ posts page as viewed by "public."

They is me? Sounds like Pogo.

Welp, all I'll say ...

... about this is that, back in the day, I thoroughly enjoyed pissing all over the urinal screens featuring Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No To Drugs" message.

(Ask your grandparents, kids. Oy, how we suffered.)

Well, no, I will say one other thing. What happens when someone gets it in his or her head that the better coupons are always near the inside of the roll?

Please help spread that rumor.

May?

And come to that, suggested?

Whoever writes the blurbs for the NYT's front page ought to sack up. How about saying what the article really says; e.g., Good writing need not be constrained by dictionary definitions?

The article would be better with some more examples, but it does offer something rare, to you, a decent person with your head on straight: the opportunity to agree with someone who writes for The Weekly Standard.

How to blockquote in the new new new Gmail [UPDATED]

(Updated below)

I don't see a (mouse-clickable) toolbar option to blockquote a section of text in the new Compose And Reply Experience, but you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-9. And who wouldn't remember that?

Also, you can increase indent with Ctrl-] (control key + right bracket) and decrease it with Ctrl-[ (control key + left bracket).

Full list of keyboard shortcuts available by hitting ? when in Gmail (obvs, you'll have to click outside the area you're typing in, if you're in the middle of composing a message), and also here.

__________

[Update 2013-04-07 02:04] My bad. It actually is possible to blockquote and indent text using the mouse:

I.e., click on the A button. In the pop-up toolbar, click the button second from the right and then choose from the next pop-up toolbar.

How to change the subject line when forwarding in the new new new Gmail

(The following refers to what your Google is calling "Gmail's new compose and reply experience, speaking of words I'm thoroughly tired of.)

It took me a few minutes' hunting to find out how to do this, so I figured I'd pass it along in case the excessively subtle immediate visual cue escapes your attention as well.

If you're forwarding a message and you want to change the subject line from the default fwd: [original subject line], do the following.

1. Click the  ⇨ ▾ button next to the To: button
2. Click Edit subject on the drop-down menu

As always, changing the subject line in the message you forward will cause this message to be separated from the conversation thread (those messages sharing the original subject line) in your Sent folder.

hth.

Kill Me Now

The opening of the closing paragraph in what was represented not as transcribing a press release but as an Actual News Story In The Paper Of Record:

Still, the threat is large enough that Barnes & Noble executives are working hard to determine a strategy that focuses on core strengths …

Probably you already know my feeling that we ought to sue for surrender and try to get in return one shred of dignity -- a declaration that the space between the g and the h be declared superfluous -- but apart from just that, how the fuck do you cash a paycheck as a Reporter™, and type a CONCLUSION involving the phrase " … working hard to determine a strategy that focuses on core strengths … ," AND sleep at night?

Stop saying "as per usual." Please.

Bad enough that phrasings like as per your instructions instead of per your instructions are becoming ever more common, but for the love of Strunk and White, this is just horrible:

... you will be able to read them on your Kindle as per usual ...

As usual. As usual. As usual.

Not that Erez Zukerman is solely guilty. (RIGHT, ROY?). He's just the latest.

[Added] vacuumslayer weighs in.

Google Two-Factor Authentication Fail

Just noting for the record:

MORE »

I suppose I should be glad they didn't say they were Working Hard to bring me this Awesome feature

While I think Mozy is a fine company ...

Dear Mozy Customer,

We’re pleased to announce an exciting new way of managing your Mozy account and accessing your files. Effective later today, when you log into mozy.com, you'll go directly to your files.

Increasingly, our MozyHome customers have told us that they come to the Mozy website to quickly access their files. We've facilitated this by updating the default "log in" location as your backed up and Stash files, instead of the "Account Home" details page. [...]

... I do not think saving me one mouseclick is "exciting."

Corporate email received

In addition, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation has pledged $1 million dollars in support of relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy …

How nice.

But next time, spend ten bucks on a proofreader.

Hear, hear

Most read AND most shared:

You will be unsurprised to learn this about Farhad Manjoo's editor:

I asked [him] if he’s willing to consider making the single-page view the default on Slate. He said: “We should certainly consider making single-page views our default for articles below, say, 1200 words. That’s probably a good idea. I suspect it makes sense to keep paginating long articles.”

Eh, whaddya expect from a guy named Plotz.

(h/t: Smashing Magazine)

Remember that Microsoft password thing I was griping about ...

... last month?

Dan Goodin at Ars Techica has an article on this policy, which was until recently a "secret policy." (You'll recall I thought silently dropping the excess characters was reasonable, but I am persuaded that it's not such a good idea. So, if you're still using Hotmail, for example, and you thought your super-long password or passphrase was helping to keep you secure, you might want to rethink.

There's CYA and then there's just ridiculously paranoid CYA

I mean, seriously. How hard is it to automate management of an email subscriber list? And really, what would be the worst thing if you allowed an extra email to go to me after I'd clicked the Unsubscribe link? I promise not to sue, if you all promise never to show me another one of these dumb-ass disclaimers.

Line of the Day: 2012:08-31

... there should be a "minimum of 30Mbps for every remaining home and business in the country—no matter how rural or remote."
    -- a senior official in some civilized country

And it's not just nice talk. The government there is going to put up money "to support the market’s failure to deliver broadband in rural areas."

The horrors of socialism.