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Ask Slashdot: What Single Change Would You Make To a Tech Product?
An anonymous reader writes: We live in an age of sorcery. The supercomputers in our pockets are capable of doing things it took armies of humans to accomplish even a hundred years ago. But let's face it: we're also complainers at heart. For every incredible, revolutionary device we use, we can find something that's obviously wrong with it. Something we'd instantly fix if we were suddenly put in charge of design. So, what's at the top of your list? Hardware, software, or service — don't hold back.
Here's an example: over the past several years, e-readers have standardized on 6-inch screens. For all the variety that exists in smartphone and tablet sizing, the e-reader market has decided it must copy the Kindle form factor or die trying. Having used an e-reader before all this happened, I found a 7-8" e-ink screen to be an amazingly better reading experience. Oh well, I'm out of luck. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I'd fix it immediately if I could.
Here's an example: over the past several years, e-readers have standardized on 6-inch screens. For all the variety that exists in smartphone and tablet sizing, the e-reader market has decided it must copy the Kindle form factor or die trying. Having used an e-reader before all this happened, I found a 7-8" e-ink screen to be an amazingly better reading experience. Oh well, I'm out of luck. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I'd fix it immediately if I could.
Nobody wants to be stalked with creep ware.
No LEDS to tell me the device is turned off. No LEDS to tell me it's "sleeping". OR simply a method to disable these LEDS because I'm old enough to not want my computer room looking like the engine room of the enterprise WHEN EVERYTHING IS POWERED OFF NO LEDS
I'd remove systemd from Debian so that Debian became usable again.
Mac os X remove the apple only locks.
Yes you can do your self but it will be nice to have so you can install updates without braking stuff.
1) No telemetry, or all telemetry shall be user-disablable.
2) If telemetry is disabled, updates shall be offered to the user on demand, but there shall always exist the option to roll back to the prior version.
3) Fire all UX designers. Into the sun. With a cannon. (Many updates are delivered with unwelcome UX changes. #3 is merely the fallback solution in case I don't get #2. Although if we fired all the UX designers into the sun with a cannon, I might not need to worry so much about having to roll back unwanted updates.)
If a led is on, the device is not "OFF", it's in standby mode, which means that is still suck a non-negligible amount of permanent electricity, like 10-20$ / Year.
These modes should be forbidden, or better, they should be taxed !
aaaaaaa
I have many little ideas to improve laptops.
- Allow disabling LEDs or have them all under the lid. I don't want my whole room blinking when the machine is in suspend.
- Do not use eye-scorching low frequencies like 200 Hz for backlight PWM.
- Make Macs with matte screens.
- Put in place dedicated volume keys instead of clunky Fn buttons.
- Have a small maintenance hatch in every machine for easy dust removal from the heatsink.
- Include a trackball so I can play 3D games on couch without an external mouse.
Just mod it yourself...
a bit of metalwork is not so difficult. And as a bonus, it's really cool.
aaaaaaa
Demote the Gnome Shell to "sad historical artifact" and promote the Cinnamon developers to lead Gnome development (cf "egcs").
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I'd force manufacturers to open their products and support them regardless of their users.
It's ludicrous that we live in a world of locked bootloaders and warranty fuses. How can you void a hardware warranty by running a different OS? How can we release a device that gets no updates after only the shortest time?
Devices have a useful life, they should be supported throughout that useful life.
Oops, the launch vehicle lifted off with telemetry disabled, no UX, no command update, and with Moscow as a target.
aaaaaaa
Title says it all.
GIT and/or apt takes care of that. Just install or compile the older kernel.
aaaaaaa
... every product that I use, in whichever way I want it. Like my car should recognize whichever device I want it to recognize at any given time - be it the music of my Winbook, or my phone or anything else. Oh, and have Bluetooth hosts be capable of handling multiple guests - like if I'm in the car w/ both my phones, as well as tablets, I should be able to play music on the iPod but at the same time, if an incoming call comes, the car navigation system should be able to switch to my phone.
I would definitely go back and make it common practice to use email addresses for usernames instead of letting users choose.
I'd make dumb TVs again that didn't try to make use of the wifi without my permission.
And I'd require Smart TVs to have a physical jumper at the back that's easily reached by the end consumer that can completely disable the smartness if someone so desired.
No, I don't want a tablet in my pocket thank you very much.
How about turning fleshlight into a girlfriend?
love is just extroverted narcissism
It probably will never happen, but getting rid of the Dice sponsored stories would be a good start.
Seriously, guys... we're smarter than the average Internet user. We can spot marketing drivel from a mile away.
I would make it open source (or at least unlocked). Locked hardware (and to a lesser extent, 'cloud' services) is one of the biggest threats to the worldwide computer community these days. It gives control of things to corporations, much like AOL was trying to do in the 90s. Who wants to be locked into the AOL world?
Right to Read is fiction, but corporations have been trying to make it reality for a long time. Walled gardens are bad for our freedom (and frankly don't improve security, either).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I want to be able to login to my phone. And toaster. And dishwasher. ssh would be best, but even the silly old unencrypted telnet is fine. With the standard assortment of Unix command-line tools, of course, plus the phone-specific utilities.
The devices currently make certain things very easy, but other things remain impossible (MS Windows approach). Opening up would allow proficient users to do things, Apple/Google could not think of...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'd rather have a thicker laptop which could work off battery from when I wake up to when I go to sleep (~16 hours - both work and evening relaxation use), and charge overnight. A thicker phone which only needs to be charged every 2-3 days, instead of every night. A thicker tablet that can last a week or two on a charge instead of a few days.
My phone (Nexus 5) was so thin compared to my previous (Galaxy S with a slide-out keyboard) that I dropped it more times in my first week owning it than I had dropped the old phone in 3 years. I ended up getting a case for it, not to protect it but to make it thicker so I wouldn't drop it so much. I don't need nor want it to be any thinner. Do something useful with that extra space - like pack in a bigger battery. (I'm happy to report though that with the Marshmallow update, the phone easily lasts 36-48 hours on a charge. Many days it still has over 70% charge left by the time I go to sleep. Maybe we'll manage to get back to the days when you only had to charge your phone every 3-4 days.)
Everything should be two factor password system with one being a token/phone/pc, the second one should be a short, (no more than 6 symobls - including every key on a standard keyboard - and you should not have to change anything more often than twice a year.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I'd roll Windows back in stages until it reached 1.0 and after that, back into oblivion.
Stop preloading crap that I don't want and didn't ask for.
If for some inconceivable reason I wanted the Facebook app, I can find it and download it quite easily. After that, it every time I upgrade my device, I will automatically have that app pre-installed. If you must pre install it to avoid tech support questions, then at least make the God forsaken thing un-installable!
I have nothing against Uber, but if I wanted their app, I would install it.
Maybe you should pre-install a computer algebra system app? (CAS) Since I use it, I would tend to believe that everyone would be interested in such an app!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Backslash-as-a-filepath-separator is extremely annoying, both because it's gratuitously different from every other OS, and because it's also used (in C, C++, and elsewhere) as an escape character, which can cause endless hilarity for anyone who isn't very careful about that.
And I'd also like them to replace the Windows DOS prompt with bash running inside a proper terminal window. Installed by default.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Huh? I can install apps on an SD card, and I can easily move apps that are already installed between the unit and the card. This is true for my Galaxy S1, S3, and S5 phones, and my Tab 10.2 as well. All Samsung gear, but this seems to be an Android and not a Samsung feature.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Phones with no way to replace the battery? Gosh, your battery is dead, you have to buy a whole new device.
The video card on your lap top is flakey? What a shame, time to buy an entirely new machine.
Your provider won't update the official version of Android (or whatever) on your device? Well it's really hard to do, I guess if you want that new version you better buy a new device, or figure out how to jailbreak the old one and pray you don't brick the thing.
Love sees no species.
Legacy BIOS/Support on all these new x86 Tablets/device.. No locked secureboot..
Almost every streaming media player on almost every platform, from Windows to Linux to HTML5 Video to DRM-encrypted stuff like Amazon Video and Netflix, has severe limitations on its willingness to download the video while it's not actually playing.
This is not helping anyone. It's not a security feature, because anyone who wants to pirate the video will do so regardless of how they try to restrict it. It's not a bandwidth-saving feature, because most people who start to watch a video are going to either close the video player or watch it all the way through anyway.
The people it really hurts are, oh, I don't know, *the vast majority* (at least in the US), who don't have enough connection throughput to stream the video "live" at the highest-available bitrate. Almost no one has the ability to stream 2K or 4K at decent quality. Most people still don't have the ability to reliably stream at 1080p; "smart" streaming players will frequently drop down to 360p or 480p during playback when there are throughput bottlenecks caused by other customers or background programs or other users on the same uplink. There are even probably a lot of people who can't reliably stream 720p.
Yet streaming video players are deliberately coded to be as stupid as possible, and not allow the user to "pre-roll" the entire video, basically meaning that they open up the video player, then leave it paused for half an hour or an hour while the video downloads, then come back and watch the whole thing at full quality with no "graceful downgrades" due to their connection being slow.
This is a draconian and quality-killing misfeature that puts users in a bind, since most (good) streaming video content providers don't allow downloading, or if they do, it's in SD only. HD viewing is almost universally restricted to streaming only. And on the few devices and services where downloading in HD is allowed, often the video is encrypted and can't be streamed off of the tiny tablet you have to download it from (see the Kindle Fire lineup) without using some flaky, unreliable piece of shit like Miracast.
Apparently the video content providers are wholly uninterested in giving the best experience to the vast majority of their customers who aren't lucky enough to live in a high-income, high-population-density area that got fiber to the premises before all the big ISPs decided to stop rolling out fiber to new customers. They're perfectly content to let us watch video in varying levels of quality as the player constantly recalculates the data transfer rate and delivers quality varying between 240p and 480p most of the time, with occasional jumps to 720p.
It's galling to think that something as commonplace as streaming video has been implemented so incorrectly, and probably deliberately so, by so many tech companies -- Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, and so on and so forth. And if it's actually the content cartels making them do this, well fuck them. I've stopped subscribing to their services and stopped handing them my money. They can get my money when they and/or the ISPs stop putting every citizen who doesn't live in Dallas or Seattle or San Francisco in a double bind, where they can't get a decent ISP, and can't take advantage of commonplace and desirable online services even if they pay for them, without moving their life, family, job and household into the inner city where they're choking to death on smog and can't even fart without being heard by a dozen neighbors packed in an apartment like sardines.
An eraser on the other end of the Apple Pencil, or a button on the side that switches it to "erase" mode while pressed. Because I make mistakes, and even the Apple Mouse has always included a single button (real or simulated).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Turn off sponsored posts on SlashDot. Or, at least, allow us to comment on them. (Boy are there some stupid ones posted. Looking at you, CA.)
All mechanical and electronic equipment must immediately acknowledge any and all user input, whatever the interface may be. The response must be in the form of a pleasant sound and a visual change in the device or another device (in the case of remote controls). I'm so sick of pressing a button and nothing happens. Did the thermostat not see my action? Is my toaster busy doing something else? Is my AppleTV ignoring me? I just want all machines to respond as if humans are their overlords and even if they can't act on my command, they must acknowledge they received a command. I'm tired of all the arrogance Engineers built in to the products I buy. Led by Apple the unresponsive machines are now the norm. Look at your AV equipment. If your TV is off and you press any button on your remote, the TV should turn on and execute that command. Why does only one button work on the whole damn remote?
Now that I said that, I fell better.
LCD monitors displays frames when they get them. Quality of the panel be damned.
or
Games framerates are now stable, rock stable. Delta time and benchmark performance be damned.
or
Bluetooth sync is just to press sync on both buttons, and it just works after that without ANY hazzle.
The Swiss Army Knife School of Software Development needs to die, please, die now. My graphics editor will never be used to email my congressman, and I sure the fuck don't need my phone texting me about what's in my refrigerator.
I want fast, uncluttered software that doesn't bitch at me or offer to order me boner pills.
It depends on the Android device. The manufacturer gets to turn this feature on or off, and many turn it off while only providing 8 GB on board storage, of which half is taken.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I'd remove anonymous posting on political threads so we could have a productive discussion.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The Swiss Army Knife School of Software Development needs to die, please, die now. My graphics editor will never be used to email my congressman, and I sure the fuck don't need my phone texting me about what's in my refrigerator. I want fast, uncluttered software that doesn't bitch at me or offer to order me boner pills.
That screen (the gmail ad ) that greets you should be changed so you would NOT need to click a mouse (or touchpad).
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Modern app appers know that only apps can app apps, so all LUDDITE software should be trashed and replaced with appy APPS!
Apps!
because IBM's trackpoint hits the right spot absolutely positively every f****g time.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Not eventually when the program gets around to it.
Oh my god LEDs.
My living room needs a warning sign for people with epilepsy. I don't need to know every flippin bit that is going across the wire for my router AND modem.
The 5 LEDs that are constantly on to indicate connectivity? Useless after the first 5 seconds of booting. I can tell if it's working by having internet or not! I don't need fancy blue then orange then green lights to tell me this.
I feel like marketing said "We need what people see in movies with huge machines and dancing lights that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of the people."
If those LEDs are so absolutely needed to figure out whats going on, then that person shouldn't be trying to figure out whats going on, and they should be put behind a maintenance panel that triggers then being on or off by it being open ( Meaning I don't want a panel to cover it, then seeing a rainbow of colors from the heat vent )
Make it visual, so I can skip going through all of them but pick and choose which ones I want to process pronto. I'm making my schedule for the day, and I don't have the luxury of sifting through each and every one in that artificial sequence of yours, really.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
As I approach an empty intersection, the light should turn green! I can't imagine the amount of fossil fuel this would save.
We could extend that to require POSIX compatibility for windows.
aaaaaaa
If so, revert it to how it was about 8 years ago.
Also, make Apple not do about half of what they've done, design-wise, in the last 5 years, to both hardware and software. Thin gray letters on white? Buttons that look like text? Colors from the background creeping into every UI surface? A phone that's so thin, there's a bump for the camera lens to fit, and so thin that its battery doesn't survive one day of moderate use? Fuck all that.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That EULA should block the entire screen if you click 'do not accept' Here you are provided with a menu of other options.
a) Install an OS of your choice from CD or USB.
b) I need this as a paperweight for my flatbed.
c) I need this as a doorstop first, then wish to donate it to the library after (I have enough tablets and hardware, thank you)
d) why is still in beige, it doesn't go with anything I have in the den!
e) I wish to continue my descent into hell; please install the latest Windows.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I would reset the popular smartphone form factor back to 4.5" to 4.7". I don't want to have to carry around a small tablet in my pocket, in order to have the latest features.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I recently upgraded to an iPhone 6 from an Iphone 4. What a freaking nightmare because Apple only "allows" you to copy your data from what you have saved in their cloud,
And not everything is saved in the cloud. For example: If I download a PDF reader, and then download PDFs to read, what gets backed up by the computer is the PDF reader, and NOT the PDFs.
This could have been avoided by having a USB port or a card reader in the iPhone. This is something Android gets right, and Apple gets horribly, horribly wrong.
I now realize that because I use the phone as a general purpose computing device and SAVE DATA TO THE PHONE, so I can access it anytime (even when I don't have a phone signal), I can only upgrade my phone once every ten years or so, because the hassle Apple has created for me is too much trouble.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
An example of this is the Kindle app, which I'm a heavy user of. I want to see pages left in book, and pages left in chapter. What the app insists on doing is displaying time left in chapter. To do this it has to go through a laborious "Learning your reading speed..." process at the beginning of each chapter, which it has to do all over again after any time when you momentarily suspend the app. A straightforward display of pages left would be easier to implement and a lot more useful.
This should be made illegal. When i purchase a phone from a service provider (Verizon, i'm looking at you) there should only be the most basic apps for functionality from the OS. I would even settle for the ability to uninstall this crap-tastic spam, but the best they will let you do is 'disable' aka, 'i'm going to sit here, take up storage, and bug you repeatedly to update me'. I should not have to purchase an unlocked phone from the manufacturer just to evade what essentially amounts to corporate malware.
The latest Macs (including the Mac mini and low-end iMacs - desktop computers) cannot even have their RAM upgraded, meaning you either get something that's not future-proof or you need to shell out more money right at the start to get more. It's a PITA to upgrade/change the hard drive too. Why do they need to make their desktop computers smaller and thinner? There's no point in doing that.
It makes Macs even more expensive because you can't save up to get one and then save more later to upgrade it.
vim keymappings in all programs intended to be used with a keyboard! I've got AHK doing most of this for me now.
load "linux",8,1
I'd introduce Voice Messaging
Sender Side
1 - Click to voice message someone from the phone dialer
2 - Talk
3 - Click Send
Receiver Side
1 - Notification akin to text
2 - Listen / Look at the transcribed message
Calls are inturruptive in nature, this would be a non-inturruptive voice option.
Easy to re-record if desired
Voicemail is ANNOYING
Submit technical support or customer service requests
I know some tried this with proprietary solutions...but without global or at least platform level availability it was doomed to fail.
I'm waiting for a Raspberry Pi 2, Model A+
I need the CPU speed and the extra RAM but I don't need all the superfluous hardware.
I would remove WordPress from existence across all of time and space.
Since I'm a gamer, I'll talk about what I would have changed with modern controllers:
Windows has been Posix 1.0 compliant since the Win NT days.
Seriously, touchpads are the worst pointing devices in the history of pointing devices. Every manufacturer claims to have a "better" touchpad, but they all just end up sucking in different ways. I typed my thesis on a 10+ year old IBM keyboard with a trackpoint on it, because I couldn't stand any other option that was on the market (and I paid dearly to acquire it!).
My change would therefore be for more manufacturers to use trackpoint (or trackpoint-style) keyboards. Laptops, desktops, even foldable bluetooth keyboards for tablets. Give us something that works. We've seen other vendors (Dell, HP, Toshiba, and even Sony) use them in past years, it can be done again.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Example, my PS3 has Play TV, and is used primarily as a DVR/media center. Why when I turn it on by inserting a disc, does it load that disk, but when I turn it on after having been used as a DVR, it goes to the default on screen? Why can't I tell it to default to PlayTV or Netflix? Or better yet, Play TV if turned on between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. and Netflix any other time?
Simple rules are impossible for that, and everything else. I want my water heater to drop 10 degrees between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and again from midnight to 6 a.m. Better yet, have it learn my patterns, and provide the optimal water temp with the minimal power. Perhaps some of that can be done with home automation, but that doesn't work yet, at least not on a mass consumer level.
But the single biggest product change I'd make is 240V to the socket, with a single high efficiency power supply providing 5v/12v/48v to every socket as well. 5V so you can have USB charging at the wall with no adapters (except for Apple).12V for low-use DC, such as Christmas lights, cordless phones, and other uses that need more than 5V, and 48V for high-use DC, such as laptops and such. Have them all remote-switched so without anything plugged in they are zero draw. And every consumer device will be re-designed for the new voltages. Never hunt for a wall wart or charger again. Standard power plugs for everything, shared cords, and same voltage. Cut costs and boost efficiency.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't understand this obsession with white backgrounds and light shaded text. Why can't we have true high contrast background & text coloring? And don't point me at those crappy system themes that don't work 80% of the time. I'm talking about true high-contrast regardless of the application or web page.
That would require getting out of the basement, so not likely to happen.
I miss 4 inch screen, high end Android phone. If I want a phone with a good screen I have to go to 5.5 inches or above, or settle for a low end, slower phone.
I understand it's not possible to put our current standard batteries in the latest phone. OTOH, a bulky DSLR has no excuse for a proprietary battery.
Related: make your equipment capable of running on both the lower-voltage rechargeable and alkaline. I'm pretty happy with my NiMH charger and AAs, but I know my lantern could be brighter if it hadn't been designed for alkaline. The only reason I have any alkaline in the house is because of this stupid irrigation timer--I just assumed that all modern stuff would work with a wider range of voltage now, but the timer doesn't. It doesn't draw that much power either--worked all summer and barely drained the alkaline batteries, yet it insists on the higher voltage.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Dangit! I lost my mod points because I commented. I have wanted this for years. I hate signing-up for electronic delivery of anything important (tax forms, bank statements, credit card statements) because I fear something technical will go wrong, or I'll get massive spam. Those problems are largely eliminated with postal mail. The government backs it, so it is reliable enough to be used for legal purposes. And it has a cost so the volume of spam is limited.
YES, it is an issue and nobody even try to convince me otherwise! I need (a) Steve back whole will kill these "compromises" immediately!
I would add a universal power/volume control to the Roku remote.
Zoid.com
Here are a few...
1) Tailor TV commercials to my likes and profile. I don't need nor want to see commercials for Depends, Viagra, Tampons, etc. And it's a waste of the advertisers marketing dollars. I'm willing to give the cable company or whoever my gender and age in exchange for this, that should be sufficient.
2) Make digital TV tuners support PiP again like our old analog CRT TVs did. Right now I can only get 1 PiP of a coax input, which is far less channels. In fact, add support for say 12 PiPs at once with live channel previews.
3) Also, as with old CRT TVs, make the channel change response time instant again, instead of the ~1 sec delay with each Up/Down channel change click on the remote. Don't understand why this slowed down with newer digital technology!
I would change intellectual property laws so that we can get an actual *evolution* of device and UI design.
Forcing companies to poorly ape better design features only gives us half-baked products with confusing interfaces as R&D departments dance around IP rules preventing them from simply using a superior design.
E.g. The continued awful design of Windows making a kludge of Macintosh's far better UI. The above-mentioned 7-8" e-ink reader being superior to the Kindle and Kindle kopy-kats. Android vs. iPhone. The list is nearly endless.
The second thing I would change is: Adding basic html formatting to Slashdot, ...like Reddit has. It ain't that hard..
I can't believe no one has complained about microUSB connectors yet (or maybe I missed it). I'd eliminate the microUSB connector and go back to the much more robust miniUSB connector on phones and other such devices.
While they're at it, they need to increase the thickness of phones and use the space for much bigger batteries. And build an Otterbox-type case in as well, so it's an integral part of the device instead of an add-on. And make the thing easy to disassemble, service and repair too.
You know you only need to use blackslash on the command line, right? And that's because Windows originally used - and still does, in many cases - forward slash to indicate command options. Changing that would break their users' stuff.
In most places other than the command line, forward slashes work fine; in C, "c:/Users/Jeff" works just as well as "c:\\Users\\Jeff".
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
I'd get rid of APK. Everything else is fine by comparison.
You know how I know you've never actually tried to write Posix-compatible software for Windows?
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
Make everything an option the USER controls.
The implications would be massive, the complexity even more so. It'll never happen but one can dream.
I would want ALSA of some sort to run under MS-DOS (or FreeDOS), in extended memory and emulating Sound Blaster 16/Pro/Vanilla, Adlib etc. so we can play the good old games without DRM, slowdowns and sound glitches, or Windows.
I like PCs too, so what about putting a PC in my PC.. 300MHz 486 on a PCIe 1x card that beams VGA and sound output (SB compatible) over the PCIe bus to my main PC, my PC gives it input and block devices. Nerds can get GPIO and serial on the card, and total cost low.
That stuff was boring 20 years ago (Mac Performa DOS compatible, Amiga before that and Z80 add-ons for 6502 computers etc. before that)
Stop just connecting the LEDs to AC such that they switch on and off at 60Hz (or 50). That's incredibly annoying. Rectify the power feeding them.
Then I'd just implement the really good ones and take it in!
For laptops, how about Kensington lock slots? Computers are not cheap, and it would be nice to be able to chain it down to a desk without having to either go with a laptop cage, lock it in a drawer, or use some slapdash method like a piece of metal between the hinges.
For desktops, I'd like to see real keylocks return. Not the crappy round-key cheapie type, but the real 5-6 pin Medeco locks that IBM used on their PS/2 machines. The keylock in front would be a soft-switch to the OS to disable all HID devices and blank the screen (so someone plugging in a USB keyboard or mouse would still be locked out.) The keylock in back would keep the case from being opened without leaving obvious damage. Combine this with some type of cable, and it will help ensure the desktop stays put.
Of course, it might be nice to have a fiber optic cable that each end plugs into a set of S/PDIF slots. If the cable is cut or unplugged, it acts as an intrusion sensor, and immediately hard-powers off the machine. This way, if a machine is physically grabbed, the data is protected.
A simple one for me. The ability to click on a context menu item and have the menu stay open afterwards. RISC OS mice had three buttons, and one of them let you do just that.
Enabling interlacing is a pain in VLC because of this.
Right click->Video->Deinterlace->On->Left click
Right click->Video->Deinterlace mode->Yadif (2x)->Left click
Then if you want post processing, that's another right-click/navigate/navigate/left click.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
1- All hard drives, and flash drives, and any drives, need to have a write protect tab with hardware protection, by spec.
2- Any CD that needs to eject for realsies needs to have an override more reasonable than a paperclip.
3- Way the hell more little kitchen doodads should have magnets on them capable of sticking them to the side of a fridge, dishwasher, or each other in a drawer.
4- Clamshell packaging needs to go, period.
5- Any tech that displays prices should have an option to round the price up and keep rounding. 2999? That's 3000. The computer does it because only one small part of your brain can, and the rest sees 2000.
6- It would be fantastic if everyone who labels a controller for a video game system could not be idiots about it. Nintendo established a standard with X on top. Sony moved the X to the bottom. Microsoft stuck it on the left. I guess we are just stuck with three standards now, one for literally each of the three consoles. If even ONE button was in a consistent location, it would be so great.
7- We'll probably all need routers that can block ads and tracking and crap, so that probably needs to be a physical button on routers soon.
And standard cables/connections, standasrd replaceable batteries, standard communication protocols, and detailed technical manuals by request for free.
Twinstiq, game news
Well you are wrong about that too. I developed software which ran in a variety of platforms (solaris, nt, linux, vms, ultrix/tru64) using the posix compliant set of calls.
You can still find monitors and laptops with matte screens if you look, but TVs are all shiny mirrors now. Bring back the large matte TV screens please.
This is less tech and just the sorry state of physical and digital media.
Why does amazon charge more for the physical than the digital on some movies and the reverse for other movies?
While we're at it, how about a service that charges me $1/hour to watch movies and then gives me access to 100% of everything that was ever made.
Yes, amazon prime and netflix are cheap but their selection is terrible. Amazon's paid side is better but some of the prices are completely out of line.
Right now, the best selection would be netflix by mail but then you have the huge delay of actually mailing out the physical dvd.
A good compromise would have been the "remote dvd player" services that loaded the dvd for you but they've unfortunately been killed.
I'm tired of having to constantly upgrade to upgrade in order to meet the next upgrade. All of these, if not many, require online registration and create account and password. I want to install and use it. If I want an upgrade then I will seek that out. Otherwise let me use the program, offline, and don't bother me.
mfwright@batnet.com
Oh well, if only you could find a 7-8" ereader. You must of scoured the earth.
You must of searched heaven and hell for that 7-8" e-reader.
You need to update your sig Coren. Your favourite moron stalker now uses 6 posts of insane drivel.
All I want for Christmas, is Spotify Connect to be supported by Sonos. Never gonna happen though.
And I'd also like them to replace the Windows DOS prompt with bash running inside a proper terminal window. Installed by default.
I can't give you installed-by-default, but download MobaXterm. It's about a trillion times quicker than installing Cygwin on every Windows machine you use, especially because you can just put it in Dropbox or similar and have it follow you around.
to allow save / quit in case of power bloops.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
In one stroke, I've increased the chance its functionality will actually be improved at some point, slowed the creep of ads getting stuffed into it, improved Steam's (and therefore any Steam game's) voice functionality significantly, and introduced a glimmer of hope that the client source might be opened.
I'll buy an OLED TV when you sell it without the useless curved screen gimmick.
The user interface on computers, tablets and phones have continued to "evolve" beyond comprehensibility. Constantly changing the interface does not make it better only different and in many ways worse. Hiding menus and requiring several different ways to access settings makes for a very poor user experience. The Apple clean look, Androids and windows attempt to replicate it just shows that the programmers know nothing about human factors and interface design. It should be obvious how to do something not hidden. Searching for how to open a menu is not fun its a pain in the ass. It should be easy to turn off annoying garbage functions not take 15 minutes of internet searching to learn the secret handshake of the month.
I have lived through several iterations of what was originally called "time sharing" and is now called "the cloud." my biggest complaint is that vendors want the primary location of all my data to be on their site. We only get to look at it, or maybe download an archive of it. I have always believed in the opposite model: My data exists and is used and manipulated on my local system. The cloud should only be there as a replication service to facilitate merging that data to my other devices (and only if I don't feel like actually connecting those devices directly). Kind of like a universal, automatic GIT for all file types.
Find a way for a touch screen to tell the difference between my index finger and my middle finger so I can go back to using context menus on all my devices. Also so I can tell it when I'm really angry with it.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Virtual keyboards suck, especially for non alpha-numeric characters!!!
I've started using f.lux and on my iPad and Computers. I feel it makes a huge difference at the end of the day plus it visually alerts me to bedtime.
f.lux® software to make your life better
Some initial studies has shown that using f.lux on your screens at night is equivalent to getting extra sleep.
Apple claimed f.lux violated the developer agreement and made them take down the source, but you can still get it here:
Git Hub for f.lux
Just use Xcode to install and side load.
What is flux?
f.lux indicator applet
Better lighting for your computer
f.lux indicator applet is an indicator applet to control xflux, an application
that makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm
at nights and like sunlight during the day
I'd stop slashdot from auto-scrolling to the middle/end of the main page when I refresh it. Or at least make it optional. And get rid of all the video stuff.
Word! I hate have to take my eyes off the road, and go through menu levels, just to turn the bass down a little.
With file brower windows, the copy and move buttons always seem to next to each other, so one slip and duplicate copies of files rather than moving them.
Fix the increasing code size in Android. It's becoming impossible to install new applications on a Samsung Galaxy SII because of all the "updates" from Google. I have to remove them in order to update Skype. And it's annoying to find out that Skype needs to be updated simply because it has become impossible to log in.
Allow the panoramic photograph option in Android to enable the camera lens to zoom in. This used to be the case, but somebody decided that thy "camera lens shalt always be zoomed out."
When I'm installing Linux on a external HDD drive, it copies the GRUB bootloading data from /dev/sda rather than creating an new fresh install.
Get ALSA sound to work on GT72 laptops (with the ALC898 sound chip). I'm sure it's something in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf, but just can't find anything that works.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I grow weary of having to reset: radio stations, EQ, crosser points, disable animation.... every time I have to disconnect my battery. Memory is cheap, why is this a still a thing? Hell, just write a small file to the thumb drive that stores all my music.
PC's are hugely powerful, yet strangely cut off from the outside world. How about bringing pack some ADC/DAC plus GPIO to the PC so that kids can actually do something with a PC beyond typing, web surfing, and playing games?
Aside from the issue of data plans and the alternative of getting a MiFi, I would add cellular connectivity directly into a laptop. People shouldn't have to hunt for WiFi or carry around a secondary device for Internet access.
I'd change the locked down nature of many consumer devices to that root access can be obtained without relying on vulnerabilities.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
I'd like to see a standard way to store and import/export settings for applications such that each one doesn't reinvent the feature management wheel. That way one can use a single tool to search, study, import, export and change them. Here's a rough draft of a settings attribute layout:
app-ID // or app name // group feature belongs to // string, number, integer, date/time, uri, other // default install value // user can save reason for change // synonyms to aid feature search engines // global (computer), user, document, etc. // used if there is a usage ranking
feature-ID
title
group-ID
value-type
custom-value
factory-value
value-changed-on
feature-notes
user-notes
key-words
scope
sequence
I realize there are various intricacies to work out, such as prerequisite settings, but this can serve as a starting point.
Table-ized A.I.
No more sealed-edge pilfer-proof packaging that makes it:
- unreasonably hard to get at the contents
- necessary to use tools
- hard to return the product
- easy to cut your hand on jagged edges
Imagine if beer were packaged like that! Wouldn't be good for sales...
I would like global shutter to return to cameras again. CMOS image sensors usually have rolling shutter, a step backward from CCDs. With rolling shutter, each line of the image is taken at a different time, as the sensor's reader rolls down the frame. This leads to many artifacts: camera flash banding, leaning trees and buildings as you go by, bent golf clubs, scattered fan blades, and others.
Who turns down bass, old man!
... by everyone's favorite munitions manufacturer: Dow Chemical.
Dow makes a LOT of chemical stuff. Some of it's useful to the military.
If their Dow Corning partnership-subsidiary hadn't been hammered into bankruptct by a bunch of (later shown to be bogus) suits claiming medial harm from their silicon breast implants, we might have had hybrid cars a couple decades earlier, out of Detroit rather than Japan, using lenticular, glass fiber, super flywheels, rather than batteries, for energy storage.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'd stop slashdot from automatically reloading the page at random, causing it to suddenly jump away from whatever paragraph I was reading. Drives me crazy. You'll find lots of discussion around the net with people trying to find ways to fix it.
https://webapps.stackexchange....
http://www.kellestine.com/disa...
http://lifehacker.com/5321420/...
Please slashdot, just get rid of this horrible behavior, or at least give a way to turn it off.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
It is frustrating to me that we now have "shortscreens" everywhere - instead of full-height screens (e.g. 20" at 1600x1200), we now have 16:9 (and no doubt 16:7 in due course). For real work, whether programming, CAD, or just reading webpages and documents, there is no substitute for screen-height. Yet a combination of the DVD-tail wagging the productivity dog, and a dishonest marketing campaign (17" widescreens have less area than 17" regular screens) means that we can't get decent screens anywhere. For desktops this is just about tolerable with the advent of very very large 16:10 screens, but for laptops, it is a nightmare.
Seriously, why is sending a file or blob of data not a better, easier experience? You have to attach it to an email, often with pretty limited sizes and/or number of files. They then live on in my email history.
I want to be able to send files to someone (often myself) or to a specific computer (again often to myself across the room or building). There is a need for this, and things like Dropbox and cloud storage are trying to address it, but it should be a more core function to computers and be simple, and secure without third party opportunities for failure/obsolescence. You can use sharing of a drive/folder, but often I am only sharing to get the file across and for no other reason and would prefer if it was a direct action to see the file arrive with a notification and click accept&save, rather than a passive one where it shows up silently in email or a shared folder.
It's so easy to include the smoothing capacitor - but so many LED lights strobe at 50/60 Hz. This produces a really unpleasant effect, especially if people move about (or simply move their eyes). LEDs are far worse than tungsten here, because the LED is usually on for only a very small fraction of the duty-cycle, has no thermal inertia, and many of them only operate on one half-cycle not both. When LED lamps are dimmed, it's truly horrid. (I also hate the poor colour rendering, and the tendency to get harsh ("cool-white") or dirty-grey ("warm white") llight rather than a full spectrum.
Even better - let's put the down-arrow offset slightly down (so that it is easier to feel for it), and let's not have PG-up and PG-down in the arrow-key block!
(1a) Root/jailbreak everywhere, as an easy option (not called that any longer). Rather like the security control on Mac OS. "Security" on by default, but can be turned off with a click.
(1b) An unlocked SIM socket on every device, of every size, along with a dialer/calling app for mobile networks. So that I don't have to choose amongst the limited selection of "phablets" but can instead use an iPad Mini or a Samsung Galaxy S2 as my phone if I want to.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'd fix users.
Actually, only half a joke there. The net has allowed ways to be educated and informed whilst unleashing ways to witness stupid, never possible before it.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Whichever dipshit thought light grey on white was an elegant or usable contrast ratio for normal text?
But we see it all the time.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Although everyone seems to be doing it these days, videos in web pages shouldn't autoplay by default. Or at least there should be a consistent, user-friendly way to disable it.
I'm sorry, but today's so called smart phones (both apple and android) are crap. They are more trouble than they are worth unless you are simply looking for a distraction. I want something that will allow me to effectively manage my email, make and receive calls, manage my contacts, maybe browse the web and do it all without the pain and lack of privacy involved with today's devices. It really isn't too much to ask for. The very fact that so many people put up with the crap manufacturers put out today is just amazing.
Schematics for everything
No pre-installed anything, you take the OS you already paid for on your last computer and install it on your new computer. It's just another piece of software. Or you buy a newer OS for your old computer. A lot of our problems could have been resolved if we never had so much damn lock-in that granted one company control over all our PCs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My first android was the G1. Frankly I never got a better one! Sure, I like the nice, large screens we have now too. But imagine a 5" screen with the same keyboard mechanism underneath. It would, for all intends and (most) purposes, be a small laptop. I would buy one!
Add write protect to all routers, BIOS, USB sticks, etc. Eliminate infections from and to memory sticks,
The truth shall set you free!
I couldn't imagine anything worse than an adult toy talking back.
If I could make any change I wanted, I would make it illegal and/or impossible to display advertisement to someone without prior consent. No spam, no pop-ups, pop-unders, malware, clickbaiting, punched gorillas, max-volume ads, interstitinal ads, all that bullshit gone. The world would be a better place.
If it has to be a technological change, I would wish for a universal connector. Everything going in and out of my computers, screens, drives, etc. is zeroes and ones anyways, why do I need twenty different form factors for those bits? I want one cable instead of power, audio, HDMI, DVI, VGA, USB, mini-USB, micro-USB, lightning, thunderbolt, ethernet, and all its relatives.
Also, it should be a bus. One cable into computer, into a hub, and from there into screen, external drive, lan and whatever else. Power across all those cables to all the devices.
A man can dream, yes?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Make my human thumbs pointy so I can type on my phone.
Mobile devices that last for a week on battery. 'nuf said.
I was add a user configurable plug-in security module that would encrypt all documents before they are stored/synced to Googles cloud.
1. Physical keyboard on all phones
2. Phone battery lasts 2-3 days with phone becoming however much thicker as needed to make that happen.
All chiclet style keyboards die in a fire and (at least for desktop computers where 'slimness' isn't either needed or a virtue, all keyboards must have a decent tactile feel. Something like the IBM Model M. http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...
I run two 12" JL woofers flat out all the time. Some recordings have more bass than others. Minor adjustments must be made, to maximize bass, while avoiding damage, or muddy sound.
No, they are not desperately trying to copy the Kindle format. The purpose of an e-reader is to REPLACE A PAPERBACK BOOK, which is of a size that you can put it in your back pocket (if you have them, sorry about the morons who design womens' clothes).
Your bigger format won't fit my back pocket. Not sure if that's up to digest size - it's not quite magazine size... but you can't roll it up and put it in your pocket.
Wish they still had freakin' buttons, instead of magic swipes....
mark
because some idiot fucked it up.
The kindle size screen mimics the size of a paperback book. Easy to read holding in one hand yet large enough to display a decent size page for clarity. You can read a magazine while sipping soup.
Tablets that try to simulate a functional computing device are too unwieldy for comfortable, casual, reading. When you change from what has come to be the most popular form factor; it is like trying to market a customized toothbrush handle. Why a customized toothbrush handle? "Because we can" just doesn't sell that well.
Form follows function...
So, most e-readers end up with a similar size and form factor; sized as a paperback book. And most tablets seem to emulate a standard sheet of paper size.
NRRPT/RCT
Stock iOS should have a toggle switch to enable Cydia. All those amazing people who spend their time finding security holes to enabled jailbreaking could then focus on making the OS better. I hate that in order to use my iPhone the way i want i have to depend on a security hole being found.
Windows 95 likewise had an annoyingly loud chime composed by Brian Eno.
OS X, Solaris, IRIX, AIX, have turned a profit for a long time without [product activation] in place.
That's because these proprietary UNIX systems are meant to run on computers sold by the operating system publisher. Authentic hardware activates the operating system. "Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext" anyone?
a LTS release.
This already exists, provided that by "LTS" you mean something like Canonical providing security updates for each LTS release of Ubuntu for five years or Red Hat supporting RHEL for ten years. Microsoft has been providing extended support for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8/8.1 for ten years after release or seven years after the successor release, whichever is longer.
SSH.
Coming.
Second if they could/wanted to wait for as little as half an hour, the customer would have gone outside and headed to their nearest Redbox or even (gasp!) brick and mortar store to get the DVD/Bluray themselves.
Brick and mortar DVD rental is dead, and Redbox carries only new releases, not the back catalog. Besides, buses to and from the store don't run on Sundays (source: fwcitilink.com).
Apple makes a Lightning to USB adapter. Or is your complaint that it supports too few device classes, or that its implementation of USB mass storage class supports too few file systems and too few file types?
Since I only get to pick one thing just go down through this list in order. The first thing a device doesn't have.. that's my pick for that device.
1) USB Host
2) Video Out (Probably HDMI)
3) Above should both be usable at the same time
4) Ability to add drivers allowing one to use above USB host with devices the original manufacturer never intended
5) Mouse friendly (but not mouse required) UI
6) Slide-Out Physical QWERTY keyboard