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Could You Live Without a Smartphone For a Year? (techtimes.com)
shanen writes about Vitaminwater's latest "publicity stunt," where they will pay $100,000 to one select contestant who can live without their smartphone for a year: All you have to do is come up with the most amusing entry [about how you will spend 365 days without the device] and have sufficient willpower to give up your smartphone for a year. They obviously have to pick a power user to make it interesting, but that's not the reason I'm disqualified. I would just read more books, which is boring from their perspective. So maybe you want to share your idea here? If it's really good, you don't have to worry about someone stealing it. After all, you'd have the evidence that it was your idea first, but you might be able to refine your entry while amusing the mob. The company will reportedly give you a 1996 cellphone to use in times of emergencies. Also, they will reward you with $10,000 if you are able to get through 6 months. According to Tech Times, contestants can use computers or desktops, "but not smartphones or tablets, even those owned by other people, or anything which the candidate can scroll or swipe on." Always-listening smart speakers, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, are permitted.
To make sure the candidate doesn't cheat, Vitaminwater will subject them to a lie-detector test at the end of the year.
To make sure the candidate doesn't cheat, Vitaminwater will subject them to a lie-detector test at the end of the year.
That's easy-peasy for me as I don't own a smart phone.
And I'm not a senior citizen to boot!
CAP === 'objector'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Full keyboard, wide display, email, probably enough to run ssh to my server and a VNC client......
"I will spend 12 months practicing defeating lie detectors." Thank you.
I don't have a cell phone. Well, I have one (a gift) in a drawer, but no subscription.
At jobs I have been issued smartphones, which I have kept laying unused in a corner after the necessary updates.
I use a wrist watch, a couple of tablets (WiFi), DSLR and proper computers with large screens and good keyboards. ...
Those serve my use cases better, and I won't get run over by a train or trip into the water
I have a good sense of direction (which gets practiced by not relying on GPS).
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
And yet they can go their whole lives without ever being subjected to an accurate lie detector test. In fact, nobody has ever done anything else.
That should be:
"To make sure they don't get paid, Vitaminwater will subject them to a phony lie-detector test at the end of the year."
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I keep myself busy with professional, family and social events, and everything goes into Google Calendar. Usually I add things from my Linux workstation, and those entries are all synced to my Google Pixel 2 phone. As something gets close, my phone will remind me, and Waze can also tell me it's time to start driving.
I had the Twitter and Facebook apps on my previous phone (a Nexus 5) and consciously didn't install them on the Pixel 2 -- I spend enough time on social media as it is, I don't need to be crouched over a phone when I'm out -- that's when I should be chatting with friends, family, and people in my network. I even use my smartphone as a .. phone. I'm self-employed, so my clients can call me with questions. I have a stand-up meeting with my main client every day or two. Sure, I could use a land-line for that, but if he calls me and I'm travelling .. pfft.
The smartphone's also my alarm clock and my camera. Giving up all (most) of the functionality of a smart phone isn't going to happen.
And we have detected a bullshit-campaign. Lie-Detectors do not exist. The only thing that exists is elaborate pseudo-science scams that scare people into thinking their lies could be detected.
Probably some people calculated how much getting this amount of attention would cost them conventionally and found that 100k plus, say, another 100k of work was actually very cheap.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
for only 100K (they are only going to pay 1 person, not *every* person that does it)
It's even worse. They are going to offer just one person a chance to win up to $100,000.
First, you have to "win" a competition to become that one by sending a tweet and instagram outlining how that year would be. They will pick the "best" from all the entries (but they still retain the right to refuse you, should you be less than ideal for marketing purposes).
I have never owned any kind of mobile phone. My wife has a dumb phone, which we used while we were evacuated from southern California's Woolsey Fire.
Our land-line phone at home (copper line, POTS) is self-powered by AT&T. When Southern California Edison (SoCalEd) goes down -- which happens several times a year -- VoIP (voice over Internet phone) dies as do those cell-phone antennas whose backup power systems have not been recently serviced. AT&T, however, remains available for me to call SoCalEd to report their outage.
Our land-line phone gave us assurance that our house was still standing during the Woolsey Fire. We were able to call our house. The answering machine on the second floor answered, which meant that our house was okay and we even still had electricity. We know that Internet service (including VoIP) through Spectrum and some cell antennas were lost during the fire. In our community, however, the copper phone lines are all underground.
No, I am not a Luddite. My entire career was in computer software. I just like to get away from the phone when I leave my house.
.
I have a good sense of direction (which gets practiced by not relying on GPS).
I actually think my sense of direction has been honed and even improved by training against my smartphone. I've become better at retaining orientation in stairwell reversals and in "feeling" what maps actually mean on the ground without relying on distinctive landmarks as much as I used to.
These days I've become increasingly able to study the map in advance and negotiate complicated routes without needing the smartphone--but it's also reassuring to have it available if I need it.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I've managed to live quite well without a mobile phone, let alone a 'smart' one. When I see the ridiculous expense, and all the absurdly insecure apps, and all of the problems people have with them ... including tensions and dependency ... I don't see how the word 'smart' applies.
It's a fucking telephone. It's also a computer with no keyboard and a 'monitor' like a game-boy. REtarded.
It's like high-sugar cereal. And then people bitch when their teeth fall out.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson