I have now owned my Pebble for a month and have been using it with my iPhone 4S the entire time. I absolutely love it. The ability to keep my phone on silent while still seeing text messages, and who's calling without pulling my phone out is great. I backed it back in May 2012 when it was first featured here.
One thing I love about the Pebble is it's usable! The E-Paper display and 7 day battery life got me. I once owned a Fossil Abacus (Look it up) back in 2006. It ran PalmOS 4. Battery like was dismal, a day at best, and it didn't even display the time unless you pressed the button. There was no connectivity, as smart phones were just coming into existence. After a month of use I called it quits because of the dismal battery life, always needing charging. Why I got the pebble is because I already have to charge my iPhone daily, or every other day. I don't want another device I use all the time always needing a charge. I regularly get 6 days battery life on my Pebble, and that's when Low Battery comes on. If i let it go no doubt it would go a full 7 days.
Why I think Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google etc will fail in this market. I believe if any of them got into the SmartWatch market, they would use Full-Color LCD's. This means a dismal 2-3 days of battery. And the average Android and iOS user would want Video's, Songs,and all their favorite Android and iOS apps to work on it, like a tiny iPod Touch. This means battery draining graphics and higher end processors. The Pebble is great in this market because it accepts it's a Watch and a Companion device to a phone, where I dont think Apple and the other big players would try to market it as such.
So Google, you're shutting down Google Reader? Yeah, well... I'm gonna go build my own Web-Based RSS Reader with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the RSS Reader!
I have been a avid Google Reader user for 3-4+ years. I check it every break at work and usually first thing in the morning on my Tablet and at night before I go to bed. Love it. After hearing this, EVERY other web based RSS / Reader site was slammed and down. Then I thought... what if any of those services just randomly *poof* overnight went offline, like Google Reader, but without notice?
Having my own shared server, I looked into PHP / MySQL solutions. So far Tiny Tiny RSS Reader Wins out. http://tt-rss.org/
Set up and running in 20 minutes. Being a shared server I couldn't run daemons so I had to use a cron job to have it update the feeds every 10 minutes but it works great so far for the last 12 hours.
Oh. Needless to say I will only own manuals from now on, so long as the vehicle is offered in manual...Which in the U.S. is becoming increasingly hard to find. My last vehicle was manual. However it was time to replace it and the only car in my price range with the features and such I wanted was automatic. Hate the thing. Hate knowing it's possible for the onboard Engine Control or Transmission Control module computers could freak out and I'd be stuck. There's been cases in some cars where the Transmission controls lock up even so you can't even shift to Neutral. In a manual its as easy at throwing it out of gear and BAM you're good.
It seems everyone here has forgotten about power steering. I see numerous references to "Steering Lock", however that's a totally different system. In most cars, when the car is off, the steering column itself will lock to prevent any turning of the wheel at all. This is a theft deterrent feature. Sometimes when the car is off you might be able to turn it left/right once or twice before it locks.
THEN you have Power Steering, which is either hydraulic or electric. Either way, the car needs to be on for it to function. Hydraulic required a pump to be active, and electric is pure electrical motor assist. Hydraulic systems will still operate for a few turns once the car is turned off until pressure is lost due to lack of the pump running, electric power steering will cut out as soon as power is lost. The reason why you wouldn't want to just *TURN OFF* the car at 125mph would be you would lose power steering and lose total control of the vehicle. Let alone you would also most likely lose power brakes, and make it *MUCH* harder to stop. Essentially turning your car into a speeding bullet in which you have little to no ability to turn or brake. This is why it's Neutral only or bust, so you won't end up flipping your car.
This same thing happened to me about 8-9 years ago.I was actually bringing my elderly grandmother back from visiting a relative, coming down a hill with a 7% grade that's a slow left hand turn for over half mile to 3/4 mile. It was my parents car, automatic. To save on the brakes I normally would downshift from "Drive" to "3" (It was a 4 speed auto and had gear selection of 3, 2, 1, or D). This is normal practice for cars. However in the shift, the onboard computer had a brain fart and the car shut off. I had no power brakes, no power steering, going down a 7% grade left hand turn. The only way to restart the car would be to pop it into Neutral and restart. The shifter was on the column, and at the time I had to use both hands with excessive force to keep the wheel turned to prevent smashing into the side of the road, not a option. I kept as calm as possible and managed to get to the bottom of the hill and managed to slam the brakes hard enough (pressing down as hard as i could for 30-40 seconds) to slow down enough to pull over and stop the car.
Come to find out the car had shut off on my parents like that once before, and once after this incident. A little after the 3rd time we got notice of a recall to reflash the onboard computer because of the very specifc problem where certain conditions it would cause the car to shut off. After the reflash, it did it one more time, and a few months later there was another recall stating the first recall didn't completely solve the problem. Fortunately we had already ditched the car. (2001 Mazda Tribute, same as Ford Escape if anyone is wondering).
So the man flying into the ditch my bet is the car running out of gas. As it sputtered, full power remained so he had access to power steering and brakes, and was able to slow down *SOME* from 125mph. When the cars engine finally shut off somewhere between 0mph-125mph he lost power brakes and steering, and was unable to control the car and ended up going off the road into a ditch, fortunately at a slow enough speed where he didn't sustain as much damage as he would have had it been 125mph.
Okay so you are paranoid about someone attacking your device via Bluetooth, yet you're connection is a unsecured unencrypted WiFi network.
Also if you believe someone is coming in via Bluetooth, then it's limited range, and someone in your home is doing it. Time to file criminal charges or move.
This might be legit. However this strongly reminds me of a client we had to deal with that we had to finally tell to stop calling us, as he believed "hackers" were out to get him, and installed a virus in his phone line. As in the wire. Despite hours and hours of patiently explaining how it was impossible, and local phone company replacing and checking for wire taps according to him. He believed it because a person would always join the AOL Chat room he was in and tell him his phone conversations he just had. This was in dial up days. Within the last year, the same guy stopped in. (Only I recognized him as others who were working for our business at the time have all left). He claimed hackers kept installing viruses on his smart phone and he wiped it and they kept coming back.
I work at a small local workbench and have seen many of the issues above. (Customers ranting on how smoke is caused by a software problem, or that the screen on a laptop not working has nothing to do with the giant fist mark on the screen, hell even customers coming in saying their new laptop shut off and wont turn back on, who thought she didn't need to plug it in and charge it because it was "wireless").
The best story that comes to line is a guy we call "Phone Line Virus Guy" who we have dealt with on and off for over four years. Approx 40 year old guy, so not some 70-80+ year old who's inept to technology. Originally, he called our store 4 times in one week, somehow getting a different person each time and taking up 10-15 minutes of our time each time he called asking how to remove a virus in his phone line. He was stating how he would sign on AOL and this person IM's him and emails him saying things he said in phone conversations. He was told they put a virus in his phone line. Try as I might none of us could convince him that if he had any virus it's not in the phone line but on the computer, and even then it sounds more like a prank. APPARENTLY he had even gone to the length of getting a new computer, and even having AT&T replace the phone wiring in his house. After being rude and criticizing us for not telling him how to get rid of the phone line virus over the phone for free, we would have no choice but to politely hang up on the man. End of the week one of us exchanged the story of our phone call and it was revealed that he talked to every person working at our store all different days of the week. Later that week when talking with several other customers who offer their own computer repair services, we find out that he had called them as well.
So about a year later, same exact thing happens. He calls us every day for a week, except after the second call we write his number from caller-id down and then dont answer. However on the first call after we told him to go to the Police over this if he thinks he's being spied on... he responded "They won't answer my calls anymore".
Fast forward to a few months ago. He then physically comes to our store. This time he has a Android based phone, and is insisting that he has a virus on it, because now the "hackers" are not only listening to his phone conversations (and emailing and harassing him about them online) but they are also tracking his location and saying and talking about places he has been. After spending over 20 minutes of valuable time trying to explain to him that what he's saying is impossible yet again, we had to walk away from him and tell him there's nothing we could do to help him.
Many not build upon the Hollywood's decades of pain staking research into the subject. Clearly the cheapest, quickest, and most effective manner is to send Bruce Willis into space with a nuke. Problem solved.
I would think about putting the box in the garage. Yes it seems like a great location, it's out of the way and such. However it might not be the cleanest place in the house. I for one know my garage to be one of the dirtiest places. In the winter the car drags in massive amounts of sand from the the winter roads, and leaves in the spring. Spiders and other insects, not to mention baby snakes and rodents, also make their way in from time to time and would just live a nice warm dark place inside the case to live...in city area's it could also attract roaches in from outside. (Despite sonic repellents and traps they still get in). Combined all that with being near moisture (wet car or rainy days). I don't see the case lasting long there. It would need to be cleaned out fairly often to keep fans and heat sinks from gunking up. Of course I understand some people's garages are nice and clean, and not subject to some of these things, but just saying I know for me it would not work out well.
This just in: Every troll whining about radar systems in FPS's aren't real and ruin the game play all shut up at one. Everyone was happy and the world prospered.
A customer came to my place of work, a local workbench, and asked if we could recover a file from a 5.25" Floppy. Luckily coworker managed to dig up a working 5.25" from our junk bin, and put the floppy in.. and it worked. The last modified date on the file was from 1991, and it was a CAD design for some Microwave device the company used to make back in the day.
I've had quite the negative experience with HP/Compaq. They've had a ongoing problem with many of their dv2000, dv6000 and dv9000 laptops which are nVidia chipset based, mostly those with AMD processors, where the south bridge chipset fails. This started happening after about one year of use, and more prevlant once laptops got 2+ years old to the point where I see at least two a week now at my local workbench. With such a massive problem, you think they would issue some recall or something? All they did was issue a extended warranty, which adds one year warranty to the affected laptops. Most only had one year warranties.. and if they are two years old, it does NOTHING for them. Also, only those who took the time to search could find the extended warranty information. This is almost worst than the recent Dell problems IMHO, and the press and the like has not picked up on it.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01087277&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189&lang=en
They've been declining for years, and been selling defective parts for years.
I work at a local small privately owned workbench, and for years Dell's computer's motherboards BIOS, by default, has SMART error reporting turned off. If you turn it on, and go to "restore defaults" it will also reset it to off. I turn it on in every case in hope that it will save someone's important data, which I have seen SMART do, so that they can backup their data before the drive completely fails. I discovered this when someone brought us a maybe 4 month old Dell desktop system who's filesystem, and this windows, was ripped to pieces. Running a diagnostic tool, in this case SeaTools for DOS on it, revealed SMART was tripped, and it fail read element tests, so bad sectors. Seeing SMART was tripped, I wondered why the BIOS did not report it, as most modern BIOS have it and it is enabled by default. I looked, and found the above results.
Yea. I have no idea what the setup was in my dorm at the time. I know it was done on a tight budget. Likewise, my solution at the time was to throw DDWRT on my cheapo Linksys router and make it a AP just for myself and room mate.
I'm going to suggest the ultra low tech solution and suggest a good old fashion land line. With a modern cordless you can go your dorm's floor and perhaps one above and bellow with ease with it.
The problem is if you use a call over WiFi at a university, you will have to stay where you are for the duration of the call. I had the same issue two or three years ago. The university had just a series of repeaters / access points with same SSID / Chanel lined up, and if more than one was in range (as they usually are to provide decent coverage) my wireless device would hop between the access points. Fine for web browsing, but using any service such as VOIP would result in the call disconnection each time it "hopped" between AP's.
I have been aware of this problem since early January when a friend's dv6000 series died and I managed to find this article.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&docname=c01087277&product=1842155&dlc=en
HP has extended their coverage for these laptops to two years and replace and/or fix them for free under warranty. Although the affected models, dv2000, dv6000, and dv9000's to have a wide range of chipsets, the majority of the dv6000's are nVidia chipset based, and at the workbench I work at all 3 cases I have seen and printed that Extended Warranty sheet for have been dv6000 series with nVidia chipsets and all had replacement motherboards put in from HP for free.
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I for one welcome our new creepy crawly overlords.
I have now owned my Pebble for a month and have been using it with my iPhone 4S the entire time. I absolutely love it. The ability to keep my phone on silent while still seeing text messages, and who's calling without pulling my phone out is great. I backed it back in May 2012 when it was first featured here. One thing I love about the Pebble is it's usable! The E-Paper display and 7 day battery life got me. I once owned a Fossil Abacus (Look it up) back in 2006. It ran PalmOS 4. Battery like was dismal, a day at best, and it didn't even display the time unless you pressed the button. There was no connectivity, as smart phones were just coming into existence. After a month of use I called it quits because of the dismal battery life, always needing charging. Why I got the pebble is because I already have to charge my iPhone daily, or every other day. I don't want another device I use all the time always needing a charge. I regularly get 6 days battery life on my Pebble, and that's when Low Battery comes on. If i let it go no doubt it would go a full 7 days. Why I think Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google etc will fail in this market. I believe if any of them got into the SmartWatch market, they would use Full-Color LCD's. This means a dismal 2-3 days of battery. And the average Android and iOS user would want Video's, Songs,and all their favorite Android and iOS apps to work on it, like a tiny iPod Touch. This means battery draining graphics and higher end processors. The Pebble is great in this market because it accepts it's a Watch and a Companion device to a phone, where I dont think Apple and the other big players would try to market it as such.
So Google, you're shutting down Google Reader? Yeah, well... I'm gonna go build my own Web-Based RSS Reader with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the RSS Reader! I have been a avid Google Reader user for 3-4+ years. I check it every break at work and usually first thing in the morning on my Tablet and at night before I go to bed. Love it. After hearing this, EVERY other web based RSS / Reader site was slammed and down. Then I thought... what if any of those services just randomly *poof* overnight went offline, like Google Reader, but without notice? Having my own shared server, I looked into PHP / MySQL solutions. So far Tiny Tiny RSS Reader Wins out. http://tt-rss.org/ Set up and running in 20 minutes. Being a shared server I couldn't run daemons so I had to use a cron job to have it update the feeds every 10 minutes but it works great so far for the last 12 hours.
Oh. Needless to say I will only own manuals from now on, so long as the vehicle is offered in manual...Which in the U.S. is becoming increasingly hard to find. My last vehicle was manual. However it was time to replace it and the only car in my price range with the features and such I wanted was automatic. Hate the thing. Hate knowing it's possible for the onboard Engine Control or Transmission Control module computers could freak out and I'd be stuck. There's been cases in some cars where the Transmission controls lock up even so you can't even shift to Neutral. In a manual its as easy at throwing it out of gear and BAM you're good.
It seems everyone here has forgotten about power steering. I see numerous references to "Steering Lock", however that's a totally different system. In most cars, when the car is off, the steering column itself will lock to prevent any turning of the wheel at all. This is a theft deterrent feature. Sometimes when the car is off you might be able to turn it left/right once or twice before it locks. THEN you have Power Steering, which is either hydraulic or electric. Either way, the car needs to be on for it to function. Hydraulic required a pump to be active, and electric is pure electrical motor assist. Hydraulic systems will still operate for a few turns once the car is turned off until pressure is lost due to lack of the pump running, electric power steering will cut out as soon as power is lost. The reason why you wouldn't want to just *TURN OFF* the car at 125mph would be you would lose power steering and lose total control of the vehicle. Let alone you would also most likely lose power brakes, and make it *MUCH* harder to stop. Essentially turning your car into a speeding bullet in which you have little to no ability to turn or brake. This is why it's Neutral only or bust, so you won't end up flipping your car. This same thing happened to me about 8-9 years ago .I was actually bringing my elderly grandmother back from visiting a relative, coming down a hill with a 7% grade that's a slow left hand turn for over half mile to 3/4 mile. It was my parents car, automatic. To save on the brakes I normally would downshift from "Drive" to "3" (It was a 4 speed auto and had gear selection of 3, 2, 1, or D). This is normal practice for cars. However in the shift, the onboard computer had a brain fart and the car shut off. I had no power brakes, no power steering, going down a 7% grade left hand turn. The only way to restart the car would be to pop it into Neutral and restart. The shifter was on the column, and at the time I had to use both hands with excessive force to keep the wheel turned to prevent smashing into the side of the road, not a option. I kept as calm as possible and managed to get to the bottom of the hill and managed to slam the brakes hard enough (pressing down as hard as i could for 30-40 seconds) to slow down enough to pull over and stop the car.
Come to find out the car had shut off on my parents like that once before, and once after this incident. A little after the 3rd time we got notice of a recall to reflash the onboard computer because of the very specifc problem where certain conditions it would cause the car to shut off. After the reflash, it did it one more time, and a few months later there was another recall stating the first recall didn't completely solve the problem. Fortunately we had already ditched the car. (2001 Mazda Tribute, same as Ford Escape if anyone is wondering).
So the man flying into the ditch my bet is the car running out of gas. As it sputtered, full power remained so he had access to power steering and brakes, and was able to slow down *SOME* from 125mph. When the cars engine finally shut off somewhere between 0mph-125mph he lost power brakes and steering, and was unable to control the car and ended up going off the road into a ditch, fortunately at a slow enough speed where he didn't sustain as much damage as he would have had it been 125mph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London,_Connecticut
PPpppst! Are you Buzz Lightyear? I LOVE your movies! Mmmpphmpphmpphmpmhmhmh!!!
Okay so you are paranoid about someone attacking your device via Bluetooth, yet you're connection is a unsecured unencrypted WiFi network. Also if you believe someone is coming in via Bluetooth, then it's limited range, and someone in your home is doing it. Time to file criminal charges or move. This might be legit. However this strongly reminds me of a client we had to deal with that we had to finally tell to stop calling us, as he believed "hackers" were out to get him, and installed a virus in his phone line. As in the wire. Despite hours and hours of patiently explaining how it was impossible, and local phone company replacing and checking for wire taps according to him. He believed it because a person would always join the AOL Chat room he was in and tell him his phone conversations he just had. This was in dial up days. Within the last year, the same guy stopped in. (Only I recognized him as others who were working for our business at the time have all left). He claimed hackers kept installing viruses on his smart phone and he wiped it and they kept coming back.
Silly. Everyone knows its Steppenwold that makes FTL possible.
Immediately thought of this as soon as I read it. http://xkcd.com/325/
I work at a small local workbench and have seen many of the issues above. (Customers ranting on how smoke is caused by a software problem, or that the screen on a laptop not working has nothing to do with the giant fist mark on the screen, hell even customers coming in saying their new laptop shut off and wont turn back on, who thought she didn't need to plug it in and charge it because it was "wireless"). The best story that comes to line is a guy we call "Phone Line Virus Guy" who we have dealt with on and off for over four years. Approx 40 year old guy, so not some 70-80+ year old who's inept to technology. Originally, he called our store 4 times in one week, somehow getting a different person each time and taking up 10-15 minutes of our time each time he called asking how to remove a virus in his phone line. He was stating how he would sign on AOL and this person IM's him and emails him saying things he said in phone conversations. He was told they put a virus in his phone line. Try as I might none of us could convince him that if he had any virus it's not in the phone line but on the computer, and even then it sounds more like a prank. APPARENTLY he had even gone to the length of getting a new computer, and even having AT&T replace the phone wiring in his house. After being rude and criticizing us for not telling him how to get rid of the phone line virus over the phone for free, we would have no choice but to politely hang up on the man. End of the week one of us exchanged the story of our phone call and it was revealed that he talked to every person working at our store all different days of the week. Later that week when talking with several other customers who offer their own computer repair services, we find out that he had called them as well. So about a year later, same exact thing happens. He calls us every day for a week, except after the second call we write his number from caller-id down and then dont answer. However on the first call after we told him to go to the Police over this if he thinks he's being spied on... he responded "They won't answer my calls anymore". Fast forward to a few months ago. He then physically comes to our store. This time he has a Android based phone, and is insisting that he has a virus on it, because now the "hackers" are not only listening to his phone conversations (and emailing and harassing him about them online) but they are also tracking his location and saying and talking about places he has been. After spending over 20 minutes of valuable time trying to explain to him that what he's saying is impossible yet again, we had to walk away from him and tell him there's nothing we could do to help him.
Many not build upon the Hollywood's decades of pain staking research into the subject. Clearly the cheapest, quickest, and most effective manner is to send Bruce Willis into space with a nuke. Problem solved.
I would think about putting the box in the garage. Yes it seems like a great location, it's out of the way and such. However it might not be the cleanest place in the house. I for one know my garage to be one of the dirtiest places. In the winter the car drags in massive amounts of sand from the the winter roads, and leaves in the spring. Spiders and other insects, not to mention baby snakes and rodents, also make their way in from time to time and would just live a nice warm dark place inside the case to live...in city area's it could also attract roaches in from outside. (Despite sonic repellents and traps they still get in). Combined all that with being near moisture (wet car or rainy days). I don't see the case lasting long there. It would need to be cleaned out fairly often to keep fans and heat sinks from gunking up. Of course I understand some people's garages are nice and clean, and not subject to some of these things, but just saying I know for me it would not work out well.
Dr. Evil would be proud...
This just in: Every troll whining about radar systems in FPS's aren't real and ruin the game play all shut up at one. Everyone was happy and the world prospered.
A customer came to my place of work, a local workbench, and asked if we could recover a file from a 5.25" Floppy. Luckily coworker managed to dig up a working 5.25" from our junk bin, and put the floppy in.. and it worked. The last modified date on the file was from 1991, and it was a CAD design for some Microwave device the company used to make back in the day.
I've had quite the negative experience with HP/Compaq. They've had a ongoing problem with many of their dv2000, dv6000 and dv9000 laptops which are nVidia chipset based, mostly those with AMD processors, where the south bridge chipset fails. This started happening after about one year of use, and more prevlant once laptops got 2+ years old to the point where I see at least two a week now at my local workbench. With such a massive problem, you think they would issue some recall or something? All they did was issue a extended warranty, which adds one year warranty to the affected laptops. Most only had one year warranties.. and if they are two years old, it does NOTHING for them. Also, only those who took the time to search could find the extended warranty information. This is almost worst than the recent Dell problems IMHO, and the press and the like has not picked up on it. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01087277&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1842189&lang=en
Well.. we are talking about the "death" of a company =P
They've been declining for years, and been selling defective parts for years. I work at a local small privately owned workbench, and for years Dell's computer's motherboards BIOS, by default, has SMART error reporting turned off. If you turn it on, and go to "restore defaults" it will also reset it to off. I turn it on in every case in hope that it will save someone's important data, which I have seen SMART do, so that they can backup their data before the drive completely fails. I discovered this when someone brought us a maybe 4 month old Dell desktop system who's filesystem, and this windows, was ripped to pieces. Running a diagnostic tool, in this case SeaTools for DOS on it, revealed SMART was tripped, and it fail read element tests, so bad sectors. Seeing SMART was tripped, I wondered why the BIOS did not report it, as most modern BIOS have it and it is enabled by default. I looked, and found the above results.
Yea. I have no idea what the setup was in my dorm at the time. I know it was done on a tight budget. Likewise, my solution at the time was to throw DDWRT on my cheapo Linksys router and make it a AP just for myself and room mate.
I'm going to suggest the ultra low tech solution and suggest a good old fashion land line. With a modern cordless you can go your dorm's floor and perhaps one above and bellow with ease with it. The problem is if you use a call over WiFi at a university, you will have to stay where you are for the duration of the call. I had the same issue two or three years ago. The university had just a series of repeaters / access points with same SSID / Chanel lined up, and if more than one was in range (as they usually are to provide decent coverage) my wireless device would hop between the access points. Fine for web browsing, but using any service such as VOIP would result in the call disconnection each time it "hopped" between AP's.
I have been aware of this problem since early January when a friend's dv6000 series died and I managed to find this article. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&docname=c01087277&product=1842155&dlc=en HP has extended their coverage for these laptops to two years and replace and/or fix them for free under warranty. Although the affected models, dv2000, dv6000, and dv9000's to have a wide range of chipsets, the majority of the dv6000's are nVidia chipset based, and at the workbench I work at all 3 cases I have seen and printed that Extended Warranty sheet for have been dv6000 series with nVidia chipsets and all had replacement motherboards put in from HP for free.
Whoever decided this DID NOT see Terminator 3.... Skynet = large botnet! It will turn on us!! AHH