It's nice to be able to scroll through your contacts and dial someone on the car's UI as opposed to having to use voice dialing or look at the phone's screen (especially for names that voice recognition has trouble getting right). I agree though, it's all more complicated than it needs to be.
A lot of cars don't support using the voice input function of the phone (e.g. Siri). So they need your contacts for the voice dialing via the car's recognition capability. Once Siri hit the mainstream, I found it amusing how auto manufacturers were touting "Siri support", as if they had to do anything other than support the basic bluetooth action button, which could activate Siri on my most ancient bluetooth headset.
This is true even of over the air digital TV. A digital signal has to buffer to the next I-Frame before it will start playing, and will never change as fast as an old analog TV. TWC might have worse delay than usual depending on their multicast / unicast setup and whether they are using D servers for quick channel change and where those D servers are located.
You should check out AT&T U-verse IPTV (sometime before it goes away completely in favor of the DirecTV). They somehow figured out a way to do digital channel changing that's nearly as fast as analog cable. The picture quality wasn't the greatest due to bandwidth limitations, but the channel changing speed was surprisingly impressive, especially since it was having to join multicast streams from external servers.
> Facebook messenger app - why the fuck is that separate? > Literally, it's quicker and easier to load up Chrome on my phone and do Facebook from there.
I used to feel the same, but I think you just answered your own question. By keeping Facebook Messenger as it's own independent thing, people can more easily use it as their primary "chatting" platform without a lot of bloat. Need to send a message? The icon to take you there can be right on your phone's home screen, and you don't need to wade through FB's "news feed" while trying to get there. As a separate app it's barely more work than using the phone's built in SMS tool.
Why would someone let your employer monitor YOUR iphone? I could see if they supplied it but not if it is mine.
Typically because you want access to email and meeting schedules, but don't want to carry around two devices. At least at the last 3 big companies I worked for, they allow you to bring your own device, but the email gateways require you to allow the company to manage the phone so your email is protected by their security policies.
That's exactly what I don't miss. Regular people aren't power users. They just want things to work. If the included feature set is so deficient that they have to rely on third party software, it's more stuff they have to learn, and more work for those who help them to support.
In the DOS days I used to use Norton Commander. I felt blind without it. I'd go to work and my boss would ask to look at something on his machine, and he was an XTreeProGold guy. OK, it's a great program too, but it's like we spoke different languages. To use someone else's machine, there was always some learning curve to figure out THEIR "bag of tricks". These days I can get most everything done with the tools included with Windows. I don't want to have to rely on some "vibrant marketplace", everything I really need is consistently included on any Windows machine I touch.
Power users are a different breed. Linux seems to offer exactly that "vibrant", choice-filled competitive atmosphere you're looking for. Seems like an OS that would fit you better.
The key difference is that Windows 95 did not use DOS to access the hard drive. It had its own 32 bit disk manager. DOS's file access provisions went dormant once the system booted as long as an appropriate driver was available. If no driver was available, you'd have an exclamation point in control panel, and very bad performance. Fraxinus is spot on - DOS was still there, but was relegated to being a bootloader and recovery console.
My new car has exactly that feature. If a car ahead of me stops abruptly, it flashes a red car on the HUD well in advance. The timing is the key, the couple of times it has happened, the car "saw" the obstacle VERY early, giving me plenty of time to stop. It happens very rarely, such that if that warning is up, you know it's important to be alert. It's pretty intuitive and really doesn't distract as it's complementary to what I've hopefully already been looking at. It's also small and low in your field of view, so it doesn't block your view of traffic. The car will also apply the brakes itself to avoid a crash.
TFA shows a red car with a green arrow directing the driver to go around. I can definitely see how that might be too much in an emergency situation, particularly if you aren't trained on how to interpret and respond to that alert. My "red car icon" is more of a "HEY! WAKE UP!" and mostly leaves the avoidance decisions up to me. I could see more complex HUD alerts like in the TFA also being beneficial, but requiring training, so less time is needed to understand and react to the alert.
I don't think TFA's controlled tests are representative enough of how mature drivers drive. We practically drive on auto-pilot most of the time. The alerts are really helpful at getting you to focus when you need to, if your mind wanders a bit because you're making the same drive you've driven hundreds times before.
Yes, you can do a lot through the OBD. So what? If you have access to the OBD, you also have access to roll under the car and cut the brake line or pop open the hood and tamper with the engine that way.
That part kind of got me too, shouldn't all deals subject to regulatory approval be structured where they could walk away? Wouldn't anything else be outright flaunting in the face of regulation?
I think he meant walk away without significant impact. For example, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal failure had very serious repercussions for AT&T. From Wikipedia:
"Deutsche Telekom will receive $3 billion in cash as well as access to $1 billion worth of AT&T-held wireless spectrum."
The author did a good job of outlining what worked for him. I also lost about 40 lbs over the last year (from 190lbs down to 150 now, which is a good weight for me). I've held around 150-152 for the last 3 months or so and feel great.
For me, it's less about the diet and more about the exercise. For me the key was making my health my own #1 priority. I had to make time for myself to go the gym. I had to stop putting work, or spending time with my significant other/family/friends/pets ahead of my gym schedule. I also learned to stop depending on others - having a gym buddy or going to class with a friend is great, but at the end of the day you need to go whether they do or don't.
Yes, I watched what I ate, and yes, I looked at the calorie counts to roughly budget, but I never kept logs of how many calories I was eating over a week. I'd just weigh myself once in a while to ensure I was still progressing. For me, I found the more I exercised, the more I naturally wanted healthier foods. Something like a donut or a dessert seemed revolting after spending a couple hours cycling. As with his calorie intake needing to be reduced has he progressed, if you keep working out, your ability to burn more calories increases along with your stamina. I can easily knock out 800 calories in a spin class now.
Find healthy foods and forms of exercise that you actually enjoy so you can keep the weight off. My breakfast/snack of choice is now greek yogurt, and I've found that I have a great time taking group fitness classes.
Failing that I'd probably try to get laplink (DOS has a built in version called INTERLNK/INTERSVR) going against a more modern machine with a real parallel port. The disk might get interesting (remember you need a FAT32 volume and DOS 7.1 or later). A USB stick might actually work if the BIOS presents it to DOS as a fixed disk.
Local loop unbundling only made sense for traditional DSL since there is typically a dedicated pair of wires back to the CO that some other company can tap into and truly provide better service. With Time Warner Cable, or even AT&T VDSL (U-verse FTTN), there's a lot of shared infrastructure between your home and the central office. That makes the prospect of "unbundling" the infrastructure from the provider less technically feasible.
In both cases there are already choices of ISPs: Earthlink Cable, and DSLExtreme TrueStream. The choice, however, is mostly an illusion. If the connectivity sucks, "having a choice of ISPs" doesn't really do you a damn bit of good, you're actually renting the same connectivity you would have had from the incumbent provider. Speeds and pricing (the things you really want competition for) are also pretty much dictated by the incumbent. About the only thing it's good for is the possibility of improved customer service or add-on services like email servers. With the incumbent taking the lion's share of the profit, those improvements tend not to be so great anyway.
With old telephone infrastructure not able to keep pace with old cable infrastructure, we're facing a true monopoly. We need to encourage deployment of new fiber infrastructure or other alternatives. I'm afraid making existing companies share their aging infrastructure isn't going to be very fruitful.
In a proper home automation setup, the light switches are replaced with smart switches. This leaves the simplicity of turning lights off at the switch in place, but adds the ability for remote control.
I've had a "smart home" for many years, and it takes a long time to figure out which aspects of having a smart home are actually useful in practice. While most of the lights in my home can be controlled remotely, I only control a small number of them from my phone on a regular basis. For the most part, I've found that I want automation around switches that are not likely to be in convenient locations. For example, I commonly use my smart interface to shut off my back porch light, because I often forget when I go to bed, and it's way easier than running downstairs. I also use various climate controls (thermostat, ceiling fan) a lot. Light switches in the same room that you're occupying, not so much - it's faster to just walk to the switch and flip it than pull the interface up from a controller.
Automatic timers and sensors I've found to be a mixed bag. They work well until you want to "override" whatever behavior they're doing automatically. For example, I have an automatic sensor that turns on my hallway lights to a dim setting if I approach it at night time, so I can see at night. That automation is helpful 95% of the time, but the other 5% I may want to turn the lights on bright and leave them on. I don't have an easy intuitive way to tell my automation to stop trying to show the dim light without pulling out my smartphone.
My hot tub is probably the best example of where my automation really shines. I can turn it on remotely so it's ready for use by the time I get home. Once I'm home, I can control everything about it from one screen - I can turn the filter pump on/off, turn the heater on, turn the light on, and turn the outdoor speakers on, even fill the water up if it's low, all from one place. Doing those things manually otherwise requires going to many different places and getting into weatherproof boxes to access the manual switches.
I think lighting control, in general, is the least useful part of my home automation setup, despite it being the most iconic.
buying a home. Hasn't made sense since the 1970s. The social contract is broken, you no longer can rely on job security or a decent pension. Yet the banks still expect you to pay them on time. A home is a *liability*, not an investment.
Landlords expect you to pay them on time, too.
I bought a home in 1998. It's paid off now and worth over double what I paid for it. Somehow, I'm just not regretting my silly decision to buy.
Alternate option would be that people with issues aren't using official Apple® AirPort® Extreme® wireless stations.
Nope. I can say first hand the issue happens with an Apple® Time Capsule®. Issue started with Yosemite. The wifi randomly (but infrequently) decides to disconnect and just stays idle with a grayed out signal indicator. It reconnects fine if you just click on the network from the list, but at the VERY least, OSX should try to search for, and connect to known wifi networks when the current one becomes disconnected. It doesn't do that, it seems like the whole process for managing the wifi connection just falls asleep.
This isn't too far off of what a lot of the virtual pinball cab folks are doing to add light shows and other toys alongside their virtual pinball machine (currently controlled by emulated ROM). They've designed whole APIs that abstract hardware (arduino, cheap Sainsmart USB relays, LEDWiz, etc) from lighting commands and macros. It could be used with any combination of lighting controllers. There is a lot of off-the-shelf hardware that is designed for this purpose, including the amplifiers you can use to control more power hungry arrays of lights.
For the software that runs it, see the DOF project:
Notice how it has a bunch of built in effects - that would be perfectly suited to this. It would probably be very trivial to modify this project to trigger off time codes instead of the ROM solenoid requests that it currently looks for to activate a sequence.
> Bluetooth works but it sucks for music quality and you only have rudimentary controls on the head unit.
I've seen bluetooth interfaces that support what looks like the full iPod interface (playlist selection, listing tracks within playlist). There are also bluetooth profiles that allow an iPod to just send an AAC stream to the head unit for decoding. So I think both of those concerns are mostly solved unless you need lossless quality audio.
There's actually a gizmo that almost provides a bluetooth-to-iPod interface with full playlist selection support and whatnot, and supposedly it uses one of the higher quality audio profiles
well, there is one component that is pretty standard and easilly upgradable, the stereo. I just purchased a used car (2008 miata). The stereo came with a 30 pin ipod connector tucked in the glovebox. Ive outfitted it with the required lighting adapter to work with my phone, but i wouldn't mind having a modern stereo that can do bluetooth. The upgrade might be painless, but there's one big issue: THIEVES. The big selling point of the kind of crummy factory stereo is it's good enough and nobody is going to want to steal it.
And yes, you raise a great point about thieves. When I used to use aftermarket radios I was always stressed about them being stolen. These days I just use aftermarket speakers / amps with the factory head units.
Hey Detroit - stop trying. Give up. Let Apple/Android/[new startup] give me the tech I want. If you want to get fancy, give the phone a read-only API to the car's status.
You're right that the interface is probably better left to Apple and Google. Cars used to have standard din and "double-din" spots for radios. Thing is, Detroit isn't the only one dong a horrible job. The third party junk from the usual suspects (Sony, Pioneer, Kenwood, etc.) is even worse. Last year we bought a new Pioneer AVIC-X930BT for a 2004 truck. The online reviews on it were generally favorable but I'm blown away by how terrible it is compared to say, the basic system in a Chevy Cruze rent-a-car.
1) The device takes about 30 seconds to boot up when you start the truck. It's apparently based on Windows CE. 2) Once it boots, it then takes another 30 seconds or so for it to initialize bluetooth. 3) Once bluetooth is initialized and connected, it goes through another "connecting" process to connect to bluetooth audio, but it will not automatically start playing music. You have to manually press the play button after it "un-grays out". If you're driving on a short trip you're probably halfway to your destination now. 4) It supports USB sticks too. After the boot process it always re-scans the entire memory stick. If you have a lot of songs it takes about a minute before the music starts playing.
Seriously, does Pioneer not do any usability testing?
It has all kinds of other gimmickry, including "AppRadio" that's supposed to let you use your phone's interface as an app but it's so clunky we'd never, ever use it.
I'd like to know how the kid fared on E.T. for the Atari 2600.
It sounds like the Atari 2600 got mostly glossed over, which I think was an error on the Dad's part in the way he conducted his experiment. He started the kid off with "real" arcade games then tried to graduate to the 2600. While that's chronologically correct, it doesn't match the actual experience we had as kids. We only got to enjoy arcade games on a limited basis (when going out to arcades/pizza parlors). Arcade game plays were limited by quarters. The 2600 had woefully inferior versions of games, but could be played at any time.
Not too surprising that the kid wasn't interested in the 2600 when he had unlimited access to the "real" versions of the games. Would seem like a huge step down, unless he happened to have a supercharger with "Escape from the Mindmaster" or "Dragonstomper":)
I haven't played it myself; but they say that Robot Odyssey will either break your pitiful hominid brain like reject before The Monolith, turn you into a hardcore programmer geek for life, or turn you against any computer game that isn't Medal of Halo Gears of Assault 3.
I played and beat Robot Odyssey when I was in 6th grade. It was in the bargain bin at Radio Shack. Mom thought it might be fun. The box said it was from The Learning Company, which was an instant turn off, but I gave it a shot anyway and am glad I did!
Crappy graphics but it was easily the best game I've ever played, and may ever play. The way the game let you "walk into" and wire up robots with logic gates was pure genius. There were some really tough problems, solving them was so rewarding. The Learning Company actually sent me a plaque for having completed it, I wish I had kept it.
Let's face it. With the exception of cash, there isn't an easy way to pay where you cannot become compromised. It seems like every week another retailer has their databases compromised. Do I really believe even for a moment that letting google, apple, or someone else manage my cards for me will stop that? Can you imagine a situation where one of these companies is compromised and not just one but maybe all of your accounts become compromised with it?
You're right to be skeptical, but the current method of credit card payments gives every retailer the data they need to go on a shopping-spree. The bar for security is currently very low anyway.
Apple already has a lot of people's credit cards in its database (think app store). What you're describing is one of the problems that Apple Pay (NFC payments) is trying to solve - handling credit card transactions with one-time tokens so it's less likely to be compromised by men in the middle. In theory, it eliminates the Home Depot/Target database breach issues as well as payment terminal skimming problems. Putting re-usable credit card information into less people's hands should reduce the attack surface a bit.
Iphone development in 2007 driving Mac sales? Probably not. iPhone didn't even get an app store until 2008.
Boot Camp was a feature specific to Intel-based macs. People using Parallels was more common though. Prior to the Intel Mac, nobody in their right mind depended on Virtual PC, it was way too slow.
I think being able to run Windows software at acceptable performance levels was the safety net a lot of people needed to invest in a Mac. That ability was also critical to Mac adoption in the workplace. I also think the increasing prevalence of Windows malware helped convert some folks who were bitten too many times.
By denying you subsidized upgrades, Verizon has effectively increased the price of the unlimited data plan by about $18.75 per month. I come to this figure because you have lost the value of them being willing to kick in a ~$450 subsidy every two years.
So, if your wireless data rate plus around $20 per month is still better pricing than a limited data plan given your current usage, it's worth keeping unlimited.
I have unlimited data from AT&T still. They haven't gone down this road (yet). If they do, I'm going to have a hard time justifying keeping unlimited as I really don't use that much data usually, but I like not having to worry about it. They will be at a much higher risk of me defecting to another carrier, though.
Further - no viable light bulb replacements will work with dimmer switches (Which my house has many).
Although I'm sure some must exist, I haven't seen an LED bulb that's NOT dimmable, even the newest cheapest ones. Their dimmability is one of their their best advantages over CFL. Dimmable CFLs do exist, but they don't work very well; they are usually quite bright at the lowest dim setting.
I put in around 20 recessed CREE (EcoSmart-branded) LEDs almost 4 years ago. All of them are on dimmer switches. None have burned out yet. I've since put in lots of others both indoors and out. I did have one landscape LED fail - it started blinking like a turn signal a few weeks after I installed it. I also had one screw-in bulb that failed within a week. In both cases I was able to exchange them at the store since they were early failures.
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It's nice to be able to scroll through your contacts and dial someone on the car's UI as opposed to having to use voice dialing or look at the phone's screen (especially for names that voice recognition has trouble getting right). I agree though, it's all more complicated than it needs to be.
A lot of cars don't support using the voice input function of the phone (e.g. Siri). So they need your contacts for the voice dialing via the car's recognition capability. Once Siri hit the mainstream, I found it amusing how auto manufacturers were touting "Siri support", as if they had to do anything other than support the basic bluetooth action button, which could activate Siri on my most ancient bluetooth headset.
This is true even of over the air digital TV. A digital signal has to buffer to the next I-Frame before it will start playing, and will never change as fast as an old analog TV. TWC might have worse delay than usual depending on their multicast / unicast setup and whether they are using D servers for quick channel change and where those D servers are located.
You should check out AT&T U-verse IPTV (sometime before it goes away completely in favor of the DirecTV). They somehow figured out a way to do digital channel changing that's nearly as fast as analog cable. The picture quality wasn't the greatest due to bandwidth limitations, but the channel changing speed was surprisingly impressive, especially since it was having to join multicast streams from external servers.
> Facebook messenger app - why the fuck is that separate?
> Literally, it's quicker and easier to load up Chrome on my phone and do Facebook from there.
I used to feel the same, but I think you just answered your own question. By keeping Facebook Messenger as it's own independent thing, people can more easily use it as their primary "chatting" platform without a lot of bloat. Need to send a message? The icon to take you there can be right on your phone's home screen, and you don't need to wade through FB's "news feed" while trying to get there. As a separate app it's barely more work than using the phone's built in SMS tool.
Why would someone let your employer monitor YOUR iphone? I could see if they supplied it but not if it is mine.
Typically because you want access to email and meeting schedules, but don't want to carry around two devices. At least at the last 3 big companies I worked for, they allow you to bring your own device, but the email gateways require you to allow the company to manage the phone so your email is protected by their security policies.
That's exactly what I don't miss. Regular people aren't power users. They just want things to work. If the included feature set is so deficient that they have to rely on third party software, it's more stuff they have to learn, and more work for those who help them to support.
In the DOS days I used to use Norton Commander. I felt blind without it. I'd go to work and my boss would ask to look at something on his machine, and he was an XTreeProGold guy. OK, it's a great program too, but it's like we spoke different languages. To use someone else's machine, there was always some learning curve to figure out THEIR "bag of tricks". These days I can get most everything done with the tools included with Windows. I don't want to have to rely on some "vibrant marketplace", everything I really need is consistently included on any Windows machine I touch.
Power users are a different breed. Linux seems to offer exactly that "vibrant", choice-filled competitive atmosphere you're looking for. Seems like an OS that would fit you better.
The key difference is that Windows 95 did not use DOS to access the hard drive. It had its own 32 bit disk manager. DOS's file access provisions went dormant once the system booted as long as an appropriate driver was available. If no driver was available, you'd have an exclamation point in control panel, and very bad performance. Fraxinus is spot on - DOS was still there, but was relegated to being a bootloader and recovery console.
My new car has exactly that feature. If a car ahead of me stops abruptly, it flashes a red car on the HUD well in advance. The timing is the key, the couple of times it has happened, the car "saw" the obstacle VERY early, giving me plenty of time to stop. It happens very rarely, such that if that warning is up, you know it's important to be alert. It's pretty intuitive and really doesn't distract as it's complementary to what I've hopefully already been looking at. It's also small and low in your field of view, so it doesn't block your view of traffic. The car will also apply the brakes itself to avoid a crash.
TFA shows a red car with a green arrow directing the driver to go around. I can definitely see how that might be too much in an emergency situation, particularly if you aren't trained on how to interpret and respond to that alert. My "red car icon" is more of a "HEY! WAKE UP!" and mostly leaves the avoidance decisions up to me. I could see more complex HUD alerts like in the TFA also being beneficial, but requiring training, so less time is needed to understand and react to the alert.
I don't think TFA's controlled tests are representative enough of how mature drivers drive. We practically drive on auto-pilot most of the time. The alerts are really helpful at getting you to focus when you need to, if your mind wanders a bit because you're making the same drive you've driven hundreds times before.
Yes, you can do a lot through the OBD. So what? If you have access to the OBD, you also have access to roll under the car and cut the brake line or pop open the hood and tamper with the engine that way.
That part kind of got me too, shouldn't all deals subject to regulatory approval be structured where they could walk away? Wouldn't anything else be outright flaunting in the face of regulation?
I think he meant walk away without significant impact. For example, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal failure had very serious repercussions for AT&T. From Wikipedia:
"Deutsche Telekom will receive $3 billion in cash as well as access to $1 billion worth of AT&T-held wireless spectrum."
The author did a good job of outlining what worked for him. I also lost about 40 lbs over the last year (from 190lbs down to 150 now, which is a good weight for me). I've held around 150-152 for the last 3 months or so and feel great.
For me, it's less about the diet and more about the exercise. For me the key was making my health my own #1 priority. I had to make time for myself to go the gym. I had to stop putting work, or spending time with my significant other/family/friends/pets ahead of my gym schedule. I also learned to stop depending on others - having a gym buddy or going to class with a friend is great, but at the end of the day you need to go whether they do or don't.
Yes, I watched what I ate, and yes, I looked at the calorie counts to roughly budget, but I never kept logs of how many calories I was eating over a week. I'd just weigh myself once in a while to ensure I was still progressing. For me, I found the more I exercised, the more I naturally wanted healthier foods. Something like a donut or a dessert seemed revolting after spending a couple hours cycling. As with his calorie intake needing to be reduced has he progressed, if you keep working out, your ability to burn more calories increases along with your stamina. I can easily knock out 800 calories in a spin class now.
Find healthy foods and forms of exercise that you actually enjoy so you can keep the weight off. My breakfast/snack of choice is now greek yogurt, and I've found that I have a great time taking group fitness classes.
WFWG will do file transfers fine, just remember to enable the NetBEUI protocol on XP, because WFWG doesn't natively speak TCP/IP.
http://support.microsoft.com/k...
Failing that I'd probably try to get laplink (DOS has a built in version called INTERLNK/INTERSVR) going against a more modern machine with a real parallel port. The disk might get interesting (remember you need a FAT32 volume and DOS 7.1 or later). A USB stick might actually work if the BIOS presents it to DOS as a fixed disk.
Local loop unbundling only made sense for traditional DSL since there is typically a dedicated pair of wires back to the CO that some other company can tap into and truly provide better service. With Time Warner Cable, or even AT&T VDSL (U-verse FTTN), there's a lot of shared infrastructure between your home and the central office. That makes the prospect of "unbundling" the infrastructure from the provider less technically feasible.
In both cases there are already choices of ISPs: Earthlink Cable, and DSLExtreme TrueStream. The choice, however, is mostly an illusion. If the connectivity sucks, "having a choice of ISPs" doesn't really do you a damn bit of good, you're actually renting the same connectivity you would have had from the incumbent provider. Speeds and pricing (the things you really want competition for) are also pretty much dictated by the incumbent. About the only thing it's good for is the possibility of improved customer service or add-on services like email servers. With the incumbent taking the lion's share of the profit, those improvements tend not to be so great anyway.
With old telephone infrastructure not able to keep pace with old cable infrastructure, we're facing a true monopoly. We need to encourage deployment of new fiber infrastructure or other alternatives. I'm afraid making existing companies share their aging infrastructure isn't going to be very fruitful.
In a proper home automation setup, the light switches are replaced with smart switches. This leaves the simplicity of turning lights off at the switch in place, but adds the ability for remote control.
I've had a "smart home" for many years, and it takes a long time to figure out which aspects of having a smart home are actually useful in practice. While most of the lights in my home can be controlled remotely, I only control a small number of them from my phone on a regular basis. For the most part, I've found that I want automation around switches that are not likely to be in convenient locations. For example, I commonly use my smart interface to shut off my back porch light, because I often forget when I go to bed, and it's way easier than running downstairs. I also use various climate controls (thermostat, ceiling fan) a lot. Light switches in the same room that you're occupying, not so much - it's faster to just walk to the switch and flip it than pull the interface up from a controller.
Automatic timers and sensors I've found to be a mixed bag. They work well until you want to "override" whatever behavior they're doing automatically. For example, I have an automatic sensor that turns on my hallway lights to a dim setting if I approach it at night time, so I can see at night. That automation is helpful 95% of the time, but the other 5% I may want to turn the lights on bright and leave them on. I don't have an easy intuitive way to tell my automation to stop trying to show the dim light without pulling out my smartphone.
My hot tub is probably the best example of where my automation really shines. I can turn it on remotely so it's ready for use by the time I get home. Once I'm home, I can control everything about it from one screen - I can turn the filter pump on/off, turn the heater on, turn the light on, and turn the outdoor speakers on, even fill the water up if it's low, all from one place. Doing those things manually otherwise requires going to many different places and getting into weatherproof boxes to access the manual switches.
I think lighting control, in general, is the least useful part of my home automation setup, despite it being the most iconic.
buying a home. Hasn't made sense since the 1970s. The social contract is broken, you no longer can rely on job security or a decent pension. Yet the banks still expect you to pay them on time. A home is a *liability*, not an investment.
Landlords expect you to pay them on time, too.
I bought a home in 1998. It's paid off now and worth over double what I paid for it. Somehow, I'm just not regretting my silly decision to buy.
Alternate option would be that people with issues aren't using official Apple® AirPort® Extreme® wireless stations.
Nope. I can say first hand the issue happens with an Apple® Time Capsule®. Issue started with Yosemite. The wifi randomly (but infrequently) decides to disconnect and just stays idle with a grayed out signal indicator. It reconnects fine if you just click on the network from the list, but at the VERY least, OSX should try to search for, and connect to known wifi networks when the current one becomes disconnected. It doesn't do that, it seems like the whole process for managing the wifi connection just falls asleep.
This isn't too far off of what a lot of the virtual pinball cab folks are doing to add light shows and other toys alongside their virtual pinball machine (currently controlled by emulated ROM). They've designed whole APIs that abstract hardware (arduino, cheap Sainsmart USB relays, LEDWiz, etc) from lighting commands and macros. It could be used with any combination of lighting controllers. There is a lot of off-the-shelf hardware that is designed for this purpose, including the amplifiers you can use to control more power hungry arrays of lights.
For the software that runs it, see the DOF project:
http://directoutput.github.io/...
Notice how it has a bunch of built in effects - that would be perfectly suited to this. It would probably be very trivial to modify this project to trigger off time codes instead of the ROM solenoid requests that it currently looks for to activate a sequence.
> Bluetooth works but it sucks for music quality and you only have rudimentary controls on the head unit.
I've seen bluetooth interfaces that support what looks like the full iPod interface (playlist selection, listing tracks within playlist). There are also bluetooth profiles that allow an iPod to just send an AAC stream to the head unit for decoding. So I think both of those concerns are mostly solved unless you need lossless quality audio.
There's actually a gizmo that almost provides a bluetooth-to-iPod interface with full playlist selection support and whatnot, and supposedly it uses one of the higher quality audio profiles
http://www.amazon.com/ViseeO-W...
well, there is one component that is pretty standard and easilly upgradable, the stereo. I just purchased a used car (2008 miata). The stereo came with a 30 pin ipod connector tucked in the glovebox. Ive outfitted it with the required lighting adapter to work with my phone, but i wouldn't mind having a modern stereo that can do bluetooth. The upgrade might be painless, but there's one big issue: THIEVES. The big selling point of the kind of crummy factory stereo is it's good enough and nobody is going to want to steal it.
There's an app, I mean, a product for that!
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/al...
And yes, you raise a great point about thieves. When I used to use aftermarket radios I was always stressed about them being stolen. These days I just use aftermarket speakers / amps with the factory head units.
Hey Detroit - stop trying. Give up. Let Apple/Android/[new startup] give me the tech I want. If you want to get fancy, give the phone a read-only API to the car's status.
You're right that the interface is probably better left to Apple and Google. Cars used to have standard din and "double-din" spots for radios. Thing is, Detroit isn't the only one dong a horrible job. The third party junk from the usual suspects (Sony, Pioneer, Kenwood, etc.) is even worse. Last year we bought a new Pioneer AVIC-X930BT for a 2004 truck. The online reviews on it were generally favorable but I'm blown away by how terrible it is compared to say, the basic system in a Chevy Cruze rent-a-car.
1) The device takes about 30 seconds to boot up when you start the truck. It's apparently based on Windows CE.
2) Once it boots, it then takes another 30 seconds or so for it to initialize bluetooth.
3) Once bluetooth is initialized and connected, it goes through another "connecting" process to connect to bluetooth audio, but it will not automatically start playing music. You have to manually press the play button after it "un-grays out". If you're driving on a short trip you're probably halfway to your destination now.
4) It supports USB sticks too. After the boot process it always re-scans the entire memory stick. If you have a lot of songs it takes about a minute before the music starts playing.
Seriously, does Pioneer not do any usability testing?
It has all kinds of other gimmickry, including "AppRadio" that's supposed to let you use your phone's interface as an app but it's so clunky we'd never, ever use it.
I'd like to know how the kid fared on E.T. for the Atari 2600.
It sounds like the Atari 2600 got mostly glossed over, which I think was an error on the Dad's part in the way he conducted his experiment. He started the kid off with "real" arcade games then tried to graduate to the 2600. While that's chronologically correct, it doesn't match the actual experience we had as kids. We only got to enjoy arcade games on a limited basis (when going out to arcades/pizza parlors). Arcade game plays were limited by quarters. The 2600 had woefully inferior versions of games, but could be played at any time.
Not too surprising that the kid wasn't interested in the 2600 when he had unlimited access to the "real" versions of the games. Would seem like a huge step down, unless he happened to have a supercharger with "Escape from the Mindmaster" or "Dragonstomper" :)
I haven't played it myself; but they say that Robot Odyssey will either break your pitiful hominid brain like reject before The Monolith, turn you into a hardcore programmer geek for life, or turn you against any computer game that isn't Medal of Halo Gears of Assault 3.
I played and beat Robot Odyssey when I was in 6th grade. It was in the bargain bin at Radio Shack. Mom thought it might be fun. The box said it was from The Learning Company, which was an instant turn off, but I gave it a shot anyway and am glad I did!
Crappy graphics but it was easily the best game I've ever played, and may ever play. The way the game let you "walk into" and wire up robots with logic gates was pure genius. There were some really tough problems, solving them was so rewarding. The Learning Company actually sent me a plaque for having completed it, I wish I had kept it.
Let's face it. With the exception of cash, there isn't an easy way to pay where you cannot become compromised. It seems like every week another retailer has their databases compromised. Do I really believe even for a moment that letting google, apple, or someone else manage my cards for me will stop that? Can you imagine a situation where one of these companies is compromised and not just one but maybe all of your accounts become compromised with it?
You're right to be skeptical, but the current method of credit card payments gives every retailer the data they need to go on a shopping-spree. The bar for security is currently very low anyway.
Apple already has a lot of people's credit cards in its database (think app store). What you're describing is one of the problems that Apple Pay (NFC payments) is trying to solve - handling credit card transactions with one-time tokens so it's less likely to be compromised by men in the middle. In theory, it eliminates the Home Depot/Target database breach issues as well as payment terminal skimming problems. Putting re-usable credit card information into less people's hands should reduce the attack surface a bit.
Iphone development in 2007 driving Mac sales? Probably not. iPhone didn't even get an app store until 2008.
Boot Camp was a feature specific to Intel-based macs. People using Parallels was more common though. Prior to the Intel Mac, nobody in their right mind depended on Virtual PC, it was way too slow.
I think being able to run Windows software at acceptable performance levels was the safety net a lot of people needed to invest in a Mac. That ability was also critical to Mac adoption in the workplace. I also think the increasing prevalence of Windows malware helped convert some folks who were bitten too many times.
By denying you subsidized upgrades, Verizon has effectively increased the price of the unlimited data plan by about $18.75 per month. I come to this figure because you have lost the value of them being willing to kick in a ~$450 subsidy every two years.
So, if your wireless data rate plus around $20 per month is still better pricing than a limited data plan given your current usage, it's worth keeping unlimited.
I have unlimited data from AT&T still. They haven't gone down this road (yet). If they do, I'm going to have a hard time justifying keeping unlimited as I really don't use that much data usually, but I like not having to worry about it. They will be at a much higher risk of me defecting to another carrier, though.
Further - no viable light bulb replacements will work with dimmer switches (Which my house has many).
Although I'm sure some must exist, I haven't seen an LED bulb that's NOT dimmable, even the newest cheapest ones. Their dimmability is one of their their best advantages over CFL. Dimmable CFLs do exist, but they don't work very well; they are usually quite bright at the lowest dim setting.
I put in around 20 recessed CREE (EcoSmart-branded) LEDs almost 4 years ago. All of them are on dimmer switches. None have burned out yet. I've since put in lots of others both indoors and out. I did have one landscape LED fail - it started blinking like a turn signal a few weeks after I installed it. I also had one screw-in bulb that failed within a week. In both cases I was able to exchange them at the store since they were early failures.