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What's in Your Gadget Bag, Cory?
Cory Doctorow has taken a two-second break from his road warrior ways to pen this description of the crud he lugs around. Read it and weep, wanna-bes.
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Is there anybody anywhere in North America selling a GSM phone that isn't locked to a provider? You'd think that true road warriors would want to either chip-swap or have multiple chips and enough brains to suggest which network to make a call on, or could be told by the user which one to use in software...
i don't understand what's to be upset about. he has normal geek stuff that most /.'ers own. I probably make way less than him, but I have a laptop, bag, digital camera, wireless router, and cell phone. and while i've yet to buy the ipod, i have had multitools and pda's in the past. i clicked the link expected crazy stuff. there's no gps. no plasma tv's. no rackmount servers. its cool to see what's in his bag and cmdr taco's but ... its not like i should 'read and weep.'
You are, of course, a Troll.
1- The poster posted the article as an AC
2- the slide IS slashdotted so I got to read it thanks to him. So will everybody else on slashdot for the last few hours.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Does this make me less of a person in the eyes of /.?
Not at all, I hate carrying around tons of stuff. I think all those gadgets are cool, but they're expensive too. What would you rather have, a new laptop or a down payment on a house? I chose the house.
I had an IBM laptop once when I worked for IBM, it was cool to have, especially as a portable game server or extra client for the occasional LAN party, but it was paid for by the company and as much as I'd like a new T40, I'd rather spend the $4000(cause I'd deck it out) on a new fireplace insert(my wife calls me a pyro) and pay off student loans.
Um... hell-ooo? It's called *sarcasm*...
@sshatrack
It's times like this when I recall the old TV show "Connections" by James Burke. He said he liked to challenge people to empty their pockets or purse and try to find one object that wasn't mass-produced. Keys, coins, paper, pens, money, etc, it's all mass produced. I've tried this on dozens of people, and only one person had a single non-manufactured object, my sister had a fossilized shark's tooth she carried as a lucky charm. Everybody carries around nothing but manufactured crap. It's all instantly replaceable garbage, nothing of any intrinsic value. If you were stripped naked, you could replace all of it without difficulty, if you had some cash to buy new crap. Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle? Even worse, do you want to live a craphound lifestyle, reveling in consumerist crap like Cory does?
> Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle?
Wait, so the only "real" "non-consumerist" you found was a credulous superstitious person who carries a lucky charm? Yeah, believing in fantasy, what a wondeful saving grace. Maybe next time you'll find someone with an "real piece of the original cross."
> Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle?
Nothing like an english speaking westerner with a computer and an internet connection telling us to go back to the woods. Its called hypocrisy. You happen to be using a large "disposable consumerist gadget" yourself.
>If you were stripped naked, you could replace all of it without difficulty, if you had some cash to buy new crap.
So if there was a fire in my apartment its good to know I can get back to my business, my lifestyle, etc with minimal effort. Heck, these evil "consumerist goods" are compatible with my off-site backups! Comrade you have truly awakened me!
>Even worse, do you want to live a craphound lifestyle, reveling in consumerist crap like Cory does?
Craphounds look for junk with no resale value like a clock found in the garbage that has a 1950's pinup girl painted on it. (its called ironic appreciation) Going to the local thriftsore or garbage-bin to collect 'crap' is the polar opposite of consumerism.
> speaking as a multilingual buddhist
Yeah, its fairly obvious you're some religious view.
>Filling your pockets with crap will not reduce the emptiness in your life.
What emptiness? Don't try to be play "everyone's shrink." Thanks.
Now, if I pull out a USB drive from my pocket and it has all my writings on it and my art then guess what - it is exquisitely unique. But from the ignorate macro level, to you, its just another gadget.
If I pull out a mass-produced camera full of data which when rendered are photos of all my loved ones then its unqiue and important to me. But to you, its just an consumerist addiction and I'm a gadget buying fool.
I seriously suggest you stop and think about what you're complaining about and realize that good things come in "Evil consumerist packages."
Finally, little grasshopper, what if my USB keychain had a photo of a cool shark's tooth I saw on the beach, but didn't want to take for my own moral reasons. I would think that someone who did that would be much more respectful of nature than your (as you define it) "craphound" sister.