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I don't go out and about without my wallet

Several states, including California, are close to adopting digital drivers licenses and state ID cards. If your DL, credit/debit, and family photos are all on your cell phone, then what is your wallet for? In a decade, wallets will be as obsolete as buggy whips. Same thing with keys. I can use my cellphone to unlock my car and open my garage. My front door has a smart lock with a keypad. I normally carry no keys.

Not everything is about "SJWs"

Not everything. But Mozilla getting worse — is.

If adherence to Social Justice values becomes one of the deciding criteria, you begin to disqualify some otherwise best people. I would testify in front of any investigating committee, that Firefox started getting worse, when Brendan Eich was ousted — an achievement of SJWs and nobody else's. Memory consumption became worse and one of my FreeBSD computers lost the ability to play web-videos — because it runs a 32-bit firefox. Searching online confirms, this is neither an isolated case nor is it OS-specific.

On other fronts, now Mozilla wants to drop Thunderbird...

Having been involved with Mozilla for many years, I don't blame all of their problems on the new, politically-correct, management. Yet, some things did get worse without appreciable improvements to compensate elsewhere.

Some things really are about SJWs — and none of them good. If you count yourself among them, you should consider improving this world by killing yourself. (Erynk, guvf ynfg bar jnf n gebyy...)

Apple did something similar with the iPhone chargers which is why all the new ones had the green dot ( I believe it was 3G charger, which the plugs could end up detached from the charger ). They also did a recall of knock off third party chargers and replaced them with genuine ones after a bunch of issues with including a KIRF charger killing someone.

http://www.cnet.com/news/trump...

Well it's based on averages, so imagine just how much more humble and honest the rest of us are knowing Trump is one of our ranks.

http://www.cnet.com/news/trump...

I see your house, and raise you one 3D printed office building

http://www.cnet.com/news/dubai...

http://www.cnet.com/products/acer-predator-21x/

Jesus Christmas, it's thicker than his arm!

I know this sounds like a "that's what she said", but seriously, check out cnet's article on the laptop.

Yeah, the Obama FDA, that hotbed of conservative activism!

Also, since when was price fixing by governments a "free market" solution?

You make it sounds like the Democrats are in favor of free trade from online pharmacies, when a quick Google search and clicking on the first link is enough to dispel that.

I'm not saying there aren't government-lovers on both sides in this area, but to cast it as 'the "conservatives" are against a free market, and the "liberals" are for the free market.' when it's more the opposite is quite a stretch there...

Strawberry picking robot. "The robot can harvest strawberries every 8 seconds and works while farmers sleep."

No, do not run the Disk Cleanup wizard on Windows 7 under any circumstances. It has at least one system-destroying bug.

See:

http://www.cnet.com/forums/dis...

http://www.winhelponline.com/b... ... and many other links.

In my case it nuked \windows\system32, which I was able to restore by copying the files from another system. Lucky me.

Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.

It's still available from the assistive technologies page. You have to vouch that you use assistive technologies, but there's no proof required, and under the circumstances there's no reason to feel guilty (but using the magnifier for a few seconds once a year technically qualifies if that's a problem).

You misunderstand the meaning.

It doesn't mean to make a wholesale knock-off copy of something. That misses the point entirely. Everything is a remix: we all take elements from the thinks that came before us and improve on them to invent new things. We don't just try to copy an entire product from beginning to end. That doesn't advance the art, it's what a leech does to benefit from real innovation.

no, customers do not "demand" locked phones.. they DO however, demand the gimmicky handset giveaways and other promotions, and *that* is what "demands" a locked phone to keep the phone on carrier for the duration of whatever contract requirement the carriers throw at it..

Verizon doesn't lock most of their phones and the ones that they do lock, they will unlock for you without too much of a hassle.

http://www.verizon.com/about/c...

what you SHOULD be saying is that hardware and service should be separated.

Most carriers are allowing customers to have a 0% financing for their phones that are separate from the service. You can pay off the phone and move to another service or you can bring a compatible phone to their service.

hardware should cost what hardware costs.. a couple hundred usd, at minimum, for all but the cheapest devices.. unlocked and not carrier specific. a cdma should work on either cdma provider, a gsm should work on any gsm for voice and any carrier for data,

Most phones support LTE and work with GSM or CDMA. A GSM only LTE phone won't work with a CDMA carrier if it can't get an LTE signal. Then you have an issue with some phones don't support all of the LTE bands.

But CDMA sucks and only used by a few carriers worldwide.

services should cost what service costs... which is, a hell of a lot less than it does now due to it currently subsidizing hardware promos,

Phone carriers in the U.S. have moved away from subsidized plans toward service + (optional) finance plans. You can pay for the phone up front and just pay for service.

"smart phone" mandatory surcharges and data plans HAVE TO GO. ever hear of wifi-only data? no? it's entirely feasible, preferred even by many.. but carriers don't want you to have a smart phone that only does wifi data.

http://get.tracfone.com/smartp...

Plans do come with limited data but it's only $15/month. If you spend most of your time on wifi. There are plenty of free/low cost VOIP apps that include a phone number.

and the software ON the hardware needs to be supported and updated with security and bug fixes for the life of the hardware.. at least 7-10 years or more.. so you can jump off the upgrade train, keep a good device long-term, and do the environment a favor.

7 or 10 years support for phone? These were the top of the line phones in 2006:
http://www.cnet.com/news/best-...

My model S actually handles quite well in turns. It also is not surprisingly heavy for a car in its class, largely in part due to the all-aluminum body. Now the newer versions of my car have even better handling. My car weigh around 4700lbs (P85, 2013). A Lexus LS weighs between 4233 and 5115lbs according to Google.

Despite the weight, the car handling is supurb since all the weight is so low.

Precisely. The only time SGI took a stab at NT - actually, it was their subsidiary MIPS that did - was at the beginning of Windows NT, when they made a workstation called the Magnum based on an R4000 CPU and an EISA bus (mirroring DEC's first foray into the NT market w/ an Alpha 150MHz on the same configuration). That was somewhere in 1994-95, before Windows 95 was even out

Not the only. The SGI Visual Workstations didn't show up until 2002, initially running NT4 and moving to Win2K some time later and this was SGI, not MIPS.

http://www.cnet.com/news/nt-wo...

or maybe I'll make a social mobile flash gamification app for this.

I dont think you understand what those words mean, grandpa.

Anyway, you just use Google Now to do this. No social, no flash, no gamification, no buzzword bingo. http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how...

You can always block Windows Update completely and stay frozen at your current version.

In Windows 10 home version you can do that? No you can't block OS updates unless you're on Pro or Enterprise, unless you use workarounds that weren't intended for that like saying you have a metered connection. Or I await enlightenment as to how I was misunderstanding you.

Just looking for some software gets a user on a list :)
"Whether you're a regular user of Web privacy tools like Tor and Tails, or you've just checked out their websites, the NSA could be tracking your online movements, a new investigation reveals."
http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-l... (4 July 2014)

How have you not heard of VIZIO? They're extremely well reviewed, inexpensive and carried by all the major big box stores.

If you've never heard of VIZIO then I'm guessing you haven't shopped for TVs in about 10 years.

Peoples browsing/application/usage habits are unique enough that any generated random ID will be just as good and can likely uniquely identify an individual with very high accuracy. You've swapped one identifier for another. Privacy through obscurity?

I doubt swapping a user identifier (first.last, userid, whatever...) for an advertising ID will work. After all, Facebook tracks you by generating a random ID for every visit to a page that has a like button. If you are signed in, that page visit is tracked by them. If you sign in later, that page visit is retroactively added to your history. If you create an account later, that random ID is then merged with your account.

Similarly, I almost never sign into any google stuff other than the infrequent email that for whatever reason I can't get on Thunderbird or my phone. Yet the ads I see when I do sign into gmail are for those same items I searched for days/weeks ago. Though with a phone, Google tracks your location too. I seem to remember there being a patent on location-based coupons being sent to user phones some time ago...

Lately yes. If you go back 10 years ago they had a few slightly profitable years, but then if you go back in time at one point Microsoft was worth 620 billions so you have to put things in context.

It's not out of incompetence, though, it's how Jeff Bezos does business. See:
http://www.cnet.com/news/amazo...

Amazon has been sinking shittons of billions in automated warehouses and in brutal price wars against the competition in all segments. Just look at AWS vs Azure; Microsoft is basically printing money with their cloud segment while Amazon (which has a bigger market share) had just started to turn a profit, but AWS is a lot cheaper.

AWS is so cheap that I've actually moved all my "highly successful" blogs and other abandonned projects from Bluehost - which itself costs only $8/month after the initial discount. I pay about $3 for a nano CentOS instance on AWS, plus maybe $1.25 in bandwidth, and since it's sitting behind cloudfront it's fast as if it was a huge server. Same kind of thing on Azure can't be done under $15/month.

It's been pretty obvious to me that Nintendo's value is in it's IP, not it's hardware. Games on other systems, movies, tv etc. are where the growth is.

It has been suggested before:
25 Jan 2007: http://www.cnet.com/forums/dis...
28 April 2012: http://www.slashgear.com/why-n...
20 Aug 2013: http://www.ign.com/boards/thre...
2 years ago: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards...
7 Oct 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
21 Nov 2014: http://www.polygon.com/2014/11...

http://www.thetoptens.com/reas...

The preview versions just install themselves.

Computing is going cloud, and they're barely interested in ramping up their iCloud capabilities.

You've obviously never seen a recent WWDC Keynote, or owned an Apple product made in the past few years.

Not that it would matter, unless Apple found a way to access all that data being collected by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. . Then they would have to spend lots of money to hire actual geniuses to process and research that data in a way that would allow them to leapfrog current applications of computing.

You think there is only one reason for Cloud Computing. And you're wrong. Apple doesn't need to/want to Datamine their Customer Base to make money. They have awesome products (that happen to include some pretty innovative, secure and frankly quite-handy "Cloud" integration).

hey're not going to maintain their computing environment when no one wants to buy their products to type in queries

Again, you obviously haven't been keeping-up. You need to get your Apple news from places other than Slashdot.

when it becomes "unprofitable" to compete with smartphones linked with cloud computing features.

Man, you are so out-of-touch with the direction that Apple is going, it's actually a waste of time typing this "rebuttal".

Microsoft has more of a future in the computing industry than Apple.

That is not what their falling marketshare numbers in both Desktop and Mobile would lead a rational person to believe.

http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

Clickbait from 2014.

http://www.fool.com/investing/...

Clickbait that claims that the Fire TV/mobile is a competitor to the PS4/Xbox.

http://www.cnet.com/news/xbox-...

This one is about Windows apps on Xbox, and has nothing to do with your premise.

http://news.softpedia.com/news...

Clickbait from 2009, which means the "last generation" they were referring to was the 360 and PS3!

Sony is talking about no future playstations.

I've seen nothing of the sort, citation needed from SCEfoo themselves.

And as to ease of use... learn to use a computer or render yourself too incompetent to participate in the modern world.

I run Linux so by my standards, you windows using gamer dudebros are the incompetents who shouldn't even be trusted to admin their own computer.

The level of competence required to manage a gaming PC is within the easy reach of a ten year old child. If that's too much for you... then that can only be pitied.

The masses simply can't be trusted to admin their own machines well. They don't have the time, knowledge or inclination. Said people should not be gaming on PC's....at all. They probably shouldn't even be using PC's for web browsing or media consumption.

Again, I run Linux, so NEVER pull that "console gamers are dumb" shit with me.

http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

http://www.fool.com/investing/...

http://www.cnet.com/news/xbox-...!

http://news.softpedia.com/news...

The writing is on the wall. MS is talking about making the Xbox effectively a gaming PC with a console formfactor. Sony is talking about no future playstations. The industry is moved on.

The entire console system doesn't make sense. Its more expensive... period. In every way. The quality that you get is generally a lot less. Compatibility is less. And as to ease of use... learn to use a computer or render yourself too incompetent to participate in the modern world. The level of competence required to manage a gaming PC is within the easy reach of a ten year old child. If that's too much for you... then that can only be pitied.

Yep, Trump has lots of ideas, like shutting down the terrorist internet: http://www.cnet.com/news/donal...

http://www.cnet.com/news/bmw-d... Per BMW it eliminates the side view blindspots

"It is absolutely clear that he is talking about autopilot on with a reasonable driver behind the wheel. He is definitely not talking about how well the system works if the driver is asleep or non-existant."

Yes, it's absolutely clear that's why there are 5000 articles that "re-tweet" the Elon Musk says Tesla autopilot twice as good as a human driver".

That's the message that got out. You proved my point by looking to establish you were technically correct, instead of looking at the message that the general public is actually receiving. Bravo.

Now, keep going. I posted several links; including this one:

http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/v...

Tesla doesn't have a fully autonomous car yet. But, with the addition of Autopilot mode, cruising down the highway is now a hands-off affair.

Do you have an example of such marketing? I've never seen it.

Read *between* the lines like an actual human being. Not like a pedant trying to win an argument on a technicality.

https://www.technologyreview.c...

http://electrek.co/2016/04/20/...

"During a presentation following the release of the system, Musk said that in good road conditions âoepeople may [remove their hands from the steering-wheel], but we donâ(TM)t advise that.â "

In other words, you can do it, but we don't advise it. "wink wink [cough]lawyers made us say this[cough]".

That is generally the message they are broadcasting.

http://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-c...

" Even with this early version, itâ(TM)s almost twice as good as a person."

He doesn't say, it makes a human driver safer by acting as a useful failsafe. He specifically says it drives better than people do.

Read between the lines.

http://wccftech.com/tesla-auto...

" The feature itself has gained a lot of fame in the recent months thanks to its obvious novelty value and the fact that it is the first hands-off, self-driving technology on the market today."

Ah, but some of this is journalism and press coverage not actually marketing from Tesla. Right. So what? You think Tesla isn't loaning the cars and press kits to journalists? You think they aren't leveraging that mis information...

https://www.teslamotors.com/en...

They fucking link to it right from their own site. This link is on that page:

http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/v...

And this is the caption:
"Tesla doesn't have a fully autonomous car yet. But, with the addition of Autopilot mode, cruising down the highway is now a hands-off affair."

You can't credibly claim that Tesla isn't spreading the word that autopilot allows for 'hands off driving'; despite the disclaimers here and there.

You know, where Apple wouldn't approve the app, and never tell them why.

Please explain why the new headphone jack is better or even necessary

Somebody suing Apple for connecting a headphone to a smartphone good enough a reason?

I will pledge never to give them another dime.

Enjoy your piece of shit Samesung equipment.

I will pledge never to give them another dime.

Enjoy your piece of shit Samesung equipment.

Life. (Bonus: this link actually works!)

USENET. (Hacker Barbie's Dream Basement Apartment. "To me, the most realistic thing is how if you put in her in the chair in front of the monitor, she'll stare at it for hours without blinking or taking her hands off the keyboard.")

Link is under 'cnet.com' in the title bar,... http://www.cnet.com/news/game-...

* Sprays your desktop and start menu with THE BIGGEST ADVERTS EVER!

actually there isnt anything on the desktop. but in the start menu of course they will be the "biggest ever" because before this there was nothing at all. yes the one-liner "suggestions" that appear in the start menu didn't exist before and now they do, but handily there's a way you can just turn them off. we all know you average windows users are below the level of intelligence of the average linux or osx user but surely even you should be able to follow this simple guide to change a setting. you mouth-breathers tend to struggle for oxygen when you're trying to breath and froth at the mouth at the same time but changing a setting isnt a big deal.

Orwell was prescient, but he didn't foresee that his surveillance state would be sold to "consumers" as the latest shiny toy.

Are you sure? (Thanks, Bruce.) Gamers often buy Vizio TVs, that seems like part of their latest shiny toy. (Vizio was one of the first to offer a super-low-latency no-processing mode.)

Umm not really,
http://www.cnet.com/news/judge...

Soderbergh/Cuban did it.

http://www.cnet.com/news/soder...

There's no word on what the outcome was.

I do agree that there are so many logistical difficulties to seeing movies in the theaters that a large swath of the potential market is excluded by the Hollywood practices.

For two adults you're basically talking about $70+ to see movie if they have to get a sitter for the kids.

On the other hand, family movies are cleaning up on this. Make a movie the adults can see with the kids and the family saves money by just sending 2 kids to the theater for $20 instead of getting a sitter. And it goes into the theater and studios' pockets.

Benefit of a smart TV is it can largely function like a desktop computer, simple example plug in a USB hard drive and play content. What Samsung did and is playing to do is a breach of contract and blatant theft of consumer resources ie the use of the device paid for and owned by the consumer temporarily denied to the consumer in favour of the original manufacturer and of course using consumer internet bandwidth and data traffic without the consumers consent. These represent major breaches of many countries consumer laws and as such will result in major penalties. Those penalties will have double impact, not just the cost of undoing the damage to consumers but also putting consumers off future purchases of the product. http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sa... You can see they have already chickened out in Australia.

I had a lengthy conversation with netflix support, apparently, there is NO way to view 4K netflix content except for a smart TV that supports "software" as they call it. Essentially, its DRM as demanded by studio.

Is it DRM or is it just because Netflix is encoding their 4K content with H.265 (aka HEVC). There is no H.265 support in browsers and it's unlikely there ever will be due to patent licensing issues (two separate patent pools which means two separate patent licenses and there are rumours that there will be a third pool). Fortunately, the future for web video is AV1, royalty-free and aiming to be better than H.265 (see Alliance for Open Media and NetVC). In the meantime, Netflix is looking to stream 4K with VP9 so that may be an option for you soon.

ThinkPad 380XD: 2.4" thick.

With your nic you might be forgiven for thinking that a "System Restore Point" actually did something along those lines.

The Rest of Us know better.

Thanks for the snarky, but uninformative, response.

And I am (rather obviously) no friend of Microsoft; but isn't there an "uninstall upgrade" that is offered for some sort of limited time, like 30 days?

Ah yes, here it is.

Thanks for NOTHING, smartass. You were so proud of yourself riffing on my username that you completely ignored my question (Can you roll-back from Windows 10).

Good Job!

Yes, a shitty UI. That's why Apple paid Creative $100 million for the rights to use that UI. Shitty, indeed!

It wasn't the UI. It was the DATA ORGANIZATION. Ya know, Artist/Album/Genre? That COMPLETELY UNIQUE method of Organization that NOBODY ELSE thought of?

Fucking idiot.

Yes, a shitty UI. That's why Apple paid Creative $100 million for the rights to use that UI. Shitty, indeed!

And if you have a commitment and they alter the terms you can not accept the change and get out of the commitment for no charge. IIRC some cell phone companies had that happen when they raised a fee a few cents and customers walked away with a phone and no cancellation fee.

To get around that, they leave the "service" price alone, and instead raise one of the "fees" (of some description or another). They claim it's not altering the contract, which only speaks to service price, they had to raise the administrative fee to cover costs.

They seem to be getting away with it, too.

One of the biggest innovations of the iPhone was to strong-arm the carriers to allow an app store outside their control. This was so bad in Canada that it took nearly a year before any carrier would agree to sell them. http://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-coming-to-canada/#!

Before the iPhone, the *customer* was the carrier. The *features* were being able to lock people out of their phones and make them pay to download their photos, upload ringtones, tether, etc, etc. The more you could lock out and frustrate the customer into buying a new phone or paying for things which should be free, the more attractive the phone was.

I had to torrent updates for my BB from sketchy sources because the carrier didn't want to see me update... ever. It might mean I'd wait to sign another contract. None of my problems with BBs was ever fixed in any of the updates I found, and the phone never did half of what was advertised. (anyone remember wishing a "battery pull" could be mapped to a convenience button?)

That crap which makes the Android phones suck is the same old business model. Why would they discount these phones and allow you to update it if it means you might sign a new contract for a new phone instead? Why would Google interfere with this shady business model between manufacturers and telcos? Either way, Google gets your data, which is all they want.

Products which are abandoned is what the carrier wants.

Here's an out-of-the-box thought: Put the monitors somewhere else.
http://www.cnet.com/news/bmw-d...

Oops, forgot a link.