I bought the CCleaner suite really for the SpaceMonger application; CCleaner was just a very useful bonus. The real reason I use it, though, is because it covers all of my browsers. I'll have Firefox, Chromium, Opera, and Internet Explorer all open at the same time; I don't get caught up in browser religion. Thus, CCleaner covers all bases, and I don't have to think about it.
Eternal September was the death of the internet. What we have now is a superhighway of advertisements directed into your eyeballs, and automated grabber arms reaching for your banking information.
In a somewhat-amusing irony, Usenet is much more usable now and has basically-no spam anymore.
NoScript with only first party scripts allowed by default, and a handful of CDNs whitelisted. CCleaner Pro cleans up all of my browser activity every time I close it. Untangle denies connections to ad servers and trackers at the firewall level.
Am I still being tracked? Probably...but the information obtained is much less juicy. I haven't seen an ad 'follow me' around the internet in quite some time.
Exactly how would the community "fix up all the problems and snooping"? It's a closed source operating system, you are totally beholden to the manufacturer for any changes. And you have no say whatsoever in the design, implementation and quality of the product.
You're right, this can't be readily changed by the community at the OS level. However, Windows still (at least for the moment) gives users root access. I got sick of Cortana's executable starting up, so I went to the folder and did a 'deny all everyone' file permissions change; not even the system user can access it. O&O ShutUp 10 and Spybot AntiBeacon both reduce telemetry and set policies that disable many of the snooping/syncing features. It's possible to configure Windows Firewall to block system applications and - at least for the moment - the firewall isn't smart enough to ignore those rules if configured.
The community can't change the OS...but there are measures that can be taken to reduce the telemetry. If the community wants to conjure up an open source "Windows 10 Privacy Suite", there's nothing stopping them from writing it, and nothing stopping users from installing it.
Genuine question: Did you also do a Wireshark session on a Win10 machine after running both Spybot Anti-Beacon and O&O ShutUp 10? They appear to do more than the regular placebo that the toggle switches, but I definitely would be interested in whether they cause a reduction in that sort of traffic.
That because, as been demonstrated time and again, Apple is truly the only company that seems to be able to make a buttonless Trackpad that isn't cringe-worthy.
FTFY.
I got stuck with the Sentelic trackpad from hell last year...but I've generally been a fan of Synaptics trackpads. The trick is disabling tap-to-click and using the left mouse button to click. I completely agree that only Apple makes trackpads that are usable without any buttons, which is an annoying fact, considering that trackpads with buttons are an endangered species. On the whole, Synaptics trackpads with buttons and tap-to-click disabled are great to work with.
Well, think about it. ISPs cite peak hour congestion because everyone is streaming during primetime. If I could set my iPad to kick off a download at 3AM that I could watch the next day, that helps stagger the network usage so it levels out better...and if you've ever attempted to use Wi-Fi at an airport, this would be an amazing thing on both ends - fewer people needing the Wi-Fi relieves congestion for those who do.
I've been a fan of Netflix making a "Magical Netflix Box" that allowed queuing and off-peak downloading, as well as transfers between MNBs, rather than hitting up the Netflix servers for content where possible. If it's kept encrypted and unreachable by traditional network means (trail blazed by the AT&T and Verizon microcells), it'd be entirely possible to make everyone happy by distributing the load.
What display has been *removed* from a car since the inception of the infotainment system? Cars still have both dashboards and radio readouts. In many cases the climate controls have indeed been consolidated into the screen, but the standard set of knobs were their own readout. Not that hard, and it's not like the space has been more efficiently utilized for anything since.
If the lock-in wasn't a requirement, there's no reason why things didn't stay double-DIN and have standardized connectors that allowed any "with climate control" stereo to fit in the dash and have additional inlets for steering wheel buttons and backup camera displays. the lack of these things indicate that, even if it wasn't an intended change to make everything proprietary, it was an outcome that seemed to have happened to basically everybody at basically the same time.
It's not the cassette deck that people are looking to use in their car. Remember - cars typically have about a ten year useful life. Ten years ago, there was no iPhone, and if you had a SatNav in your car, it required a $500 map DVD. Not too long ago, there were a handful of radios that supported Napster To Go, a service that was ahead of its time...but is utterly useless now.
The ability to change out entertainment systems when the technology changes is incredibly helpful, and even if I give a massive amount of faith to the auto industry, they went from non-proprietary to proprietary, for reasons that do not benefit me.
Me Either. When Facebook made the change, I looked around and found this app: https://play.google.com/store/... Sane permissions (internet, camera, location), much smaller footprint.
Why the hell was this upvoted? Updating a Bios is "terrifying". A whole bunch of unqualified bitches. Alienware was always in the "you must think I'm stupid" range. Maybe OP is just less stupid now.
Yes, updating a BIOS is indeed terrifying. If it doesn't complete, your machine is likely bricked. If it completes, your machine might still be bricked. If it completes and doesn't brick your machine, there's no guarantee your settings will remain the way they were. If you're doing it remotely and don't have a DRAC/iLO or equivalent, the machine stays down until on-site happens.
Have there been advances in the field? Yes. Many motherboards have a dual-BIOS that gives a fail-safe option now, the updater utilities tend to go through a bit better QA than they used to, and it's not uncommon for some motherboards to have user-replaceable BIOS chips that can be ordered from the company. Still, it's always nerve-racking whenever a BIOS update is performed because you don't know when you'll be in 'the other 10%' of moments when things go pear-shaped and your evening plans change.
With respect to Alienware's pricing, they've always been expensive...but the value was that the units were hand tested, bloatware free, tended to have custom themes, genuinely useful bundled software, higher end hardware, and solid technical support that was very dependable and weren't too familiar with the word 'no'. Within a year of Dell buying the company, most of that went away; machines were mass produced, calls went to India with the rest of Dell's support queue (unless you ponied up even further), and the bloatware was back.
If you want Alienware, the company you're looking for is Origin PC. Founded by the Alienware founders, still hand-built and supported in Florida, great tech support, solid machines. They take a month from order to shipping, and they're indeed Clevo chassis...but I've owned two of them and I'll never buy from anyone else.
Perhaps you should consider buying a DVR instead of a console if you're upset that DVR capability is not included.
Microsoft indicated at the onset that it was intended to be able to perform DVR functions...until they decided that they weren't.
Buying a DVR isn't much of a picnic anymore. If you're building one, you're stuck on Windows 7 or 8.1, because MS actively removed Media Center from Win10. To my knowledge, there's no such thing as a CableCard compliant tuner for OSX. Showshifter, BeyondTV, and a number of other software-based DVR applications have all gone pear-shaped. Mythbuntu is somewhat-viable, but it's really picky about which tuner cards it supports, and even at that, it's not possible to use it with HBO or other premium channels because DRM. TiVo is still hanging on by a thread, but they cost more than an Xbox, and the service cost is about the same as an Xbox Live subscription.
Or, dealing with the usual complement of craptastic DVRs from cable companies that are as ugly, laggy, and poorly supported as they are expensive. One can save money by buying one's own cable box from around the internet, but even if those weren't running the same terrible software as the cable companies, they're again $300-$500 a pop.
All to make up for the fact that Microsoft removed functionality that was explicitly used to promote the product.
I've got a web designer friend who prefers Joomla, in large part because it works similarly to the design tools he's used to...though he fully admits that it has a much bigger learning curve than others.
My personal blog is run on WordPress. This is, in large part, because it's a blog and intended to be one. I like the fact that there's a mobile app for quick uploads and microblogging. I've never had to write a line of code to make anything work. I use a few plugins to make it work, namely The Shield and IQ Block Country to make my blog much more secure.
I'm not a web designer, and I don't claim to be. I just want to blog. Wordpress helps me do that much better than the other CMS's I tried - Ametys, Concrete5, Silverstripe, and at least one other one whose name escapes me. There were always drawbacks to the others - theme availability, responsive/mobile layout compatibility, media management, or something else - Ametys requires Tomcat, which required a special hosting account (I tried both Arvixe and HostISO, both became a world of regret), and even in a sandboxed environment, lots of things were much more complicated than they should be.
I'm certain the Slashdot groupthink goes against Wordpress, and there are legitimate reasons why - PHP and security spring to mind. Even so, I've been hack free, and it's allowed me to focus on content, rather than implementation.
Okay stop right there. Are you proposing that the vendor of the most popular mobile OS adopts a similar model to probably the most miserable failure in the entire history of mobile OSes?
No, I think he's saying that the vendor of the most popular mobile OS adopts a similar model to the most successful desktop OS. For all the criticism Windows gets (not undeservedly so), it is highly irregular for an update to botch things, And *everyone* gets updates unless they opt out of them. Furthermore, OS patches and UI lobotomies are different animals under most circumstances.
I was thinking the same thing. 1TB seems like an awfully high cap to be worried about. Windows Updates are now peering on the LAN, so five computers will end up downloading their updates once. Business accounts (i.e. the ones actually running servers) aren't subject to the caps. If you're hitting a terabyte a month with torrenting, a rented seedbox will give you better stats and cost less than what Comcast wants for the overage cap. If you're hitting a terabyte a month in video streaming...that's a LOT of video streaming - maybe not quite my place, but is buying the movies off iTunes or good old fashioned Blu-Ray discs, along with an internal streaming server, not a worthwhile project to look at? What about using an Untangle box with their web caching and ad blocking?
Now, the obvious problem is that it was 1TB, and at first I did not speak out because I didn't use 1TB, then it was 500GB...I definitely get that. Sea level is rising, and even though 1TB is incredibly high right now, Comcast is finding fewer and fewer grandmas who are still paying for AOL and use a gig a month, because even she has a Kindle Fire now and is watching streaming video on occasion. Comcast's likely strategy is that going from no-caps to very-high-caps will make it easier to get caps passed at all, and from there squeeze the next fifth percentile, and the next fifth, and so on until they've unilaterally raised rates on everyone who isn't incredibly careful.
In the same vein, I'm not sure if "requiring very heavy users to pony up for their fair share" is the correct place to make a call to arms, but really, how low must they go before they do? Because if it hits 100GB, it means there were dozens of missed opportunities in the past, and there will be no one left to speak for me.
Because this is about microsoft accounts, aka Google Accounts, except by Microsoft. Now yes, the line blur comes with the fact that Win8/Win10 make it a bit of a challenge to create a local account rather than a Microsoft account when starting the computer, but let's take that out of the equation for a moment. A Microsoft account includes OneDrive storage, so think in terms of Dropbox allowing '12345' as a password. Microsoft accounts include webmail, which still support POP/SMTP, so hacked accounts = spam relays. Sure, none of those users are domain admins on the remote servers, but I see no downside to saying, "this is my house, play by my complexity rules".
If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update
Did the person who wrote this actually read what they wrote? If they're identifying what users are listening to and matching them to something else, then that's still a record, even if it's not an audio recording.
I gave up the Facebook app years ago. m.facebook.com gives all the functionality I need; I don't even miss it...and it takes far less data than the app.
They also need to demand that at least all updates to the OS be pushed to phones within 30 days of release
I'd argue two things:
1.) The update debacle is just as much Google's fault as the carriers, because the updates aren't properly modular. A whole lot of people are losing their s!!t right now because their Windows 7 or Windows 8 machines became Windows 10 machines this past weekend. The general Slashdot consensus is that Microsoft is wrong for updating computers without meaningful consent, and rightly so...but like clockwork, Samsung/HTC/Motorola/AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile are terrible for *not* rolling out OS updates fast enough.
2.) Android is not designed to allow users to update when they want to; updates are downloaded automatically and if an option is given, it's either "install now" or "remind me in four hours", with no opt-out. While Google is at least somewhat helping the situation by keeping the APIs current with Play Services on older Android releases, the fact is that the security updates and OS patches that don't massively change the UI (never heard a non-slashdotter be happy about the Lollipop upgrade) or kernel (to remove the requirement of new drivers and baseband communication) should be separate. Windows has had this for twenty years. There's no reason for Google to compound the problem by making everything as monolithic as it is. I want to run KitKat until I replace my phone. Why? Because f'k you, that's why. The present situation is the worst set of swinging doors - either users who want to update can't, or users who don't want to update are forced to, but the technical community seems to only assume one side to be appropriate.
I don't disagree that Google isn't handling the Android update situation properly, but I'd similarly argue that it's largely because no one agrees on what the 'right way' is. Wake up one morning and realize my phone is on a new version of Android that either installs without consent or nags me six times a day until I do? Have Google/Samsung/HTC make a desktop application explicitly for managing/backing up/updating the firmware? Have new phones with the new OS pre-loaded and let users swap out their old ones for free at their local Verizon store, letting Aunt Google move all of their data over through The Cloud(tm)? Foundationally re-write Android to adopt the Windows model of updates independent of the OS?
Yes, the update situation should be worked out much better than it presently is. No, forcing carriers to send the MD5's over the air isn't the be all and end all solution to the problem.
disabling location disables Cortana, from what I read
Oh, I wish. That tramp is the T-1000 of software.
Disabled every single option shown to me during installation. Cortana.exe still running. Went into the Win10 settings and disabled as many privacy-relevant options and data transmission processes as I could find. Cortana.exe still running. Disabled the Windows Search and Indexing Service services. Cortana.exe still running. Ran O&O ShutUp 10, disabled everything. Cortana.exe still running.
Ultimately, I had to right click the process, go to the file location, take ownership of the folder, and set 'deny all' permissions for system and trustedinstaller. She's finally dead for the moment, but I'm all but certain I'll be doing this dance again during the next round of Windows patches.
With the price of a good sized NAS these days being around the cost of a dinner for two at a restaurant
I went to a *nice* steakhouse on Valentine's day in New York City, and two 18-ounce boneless steaks, three sides, an appetizer, two glasses of red wine (mid-range), two cappuccinos, and dessert cost about $250.
A drive-free Netgear or Synology NAS costs about $220 on Newegg. 3TB hard disks are about $100 a pop on sale, so we'll assume a simple RAID-1 to start out on. Not exactly "good sized" by my standards personally (My NAS has 15TB raw), but we'll roll with it.
Another one to echo your sentiment here. There are no tasks that the Fitbit account does that couldn't be handled within the app with the data kept locally. The fact that this isn't an option - not just on a fitbit but with any of the other fitness trackers I've looked at - gives me grave discomfort. It'd be a trivial selling point for anyone to do, but the fact that no one is doing it means that someone, somewhere, is paying handsomely for that data.
I'll chime in as another "$240?!?" voice here, because whittling that number down a bit can certainly be done. First off, you can purchase your own cable box outright. My cable company charges $20/month for a standard box, and $36/month for a DVR box. these boxes will pay for themselves in less than a year, and by law, your cable company must make a Cablecard available for you. If you're a DIY type like me, you can pick up one of these and use it with either Windows 7 (it's the only OS that supports all the DRM necessary for some of the ultra-premium channels) or Mythbuntu (free and formally supports that card) in a PC build. More expensive for sure, but even it will pay for itself in less than two years, especially if you have one Mythbuntu backend and use Raspberry Pis as frontends. Assuming three cable boxes and a DVR that are replaced with this setup and you buy new parts for the back end, you'll spend about $800 and two Saturday afternoons configuring it all, while my cable company would charge me $912 for the same service. The two caveats I'll fully admit is that the cable company's Video on Demand probably won't work, which may or may not be important to you - and I've got no idea how Pay-Per-View works (UFC fights, etc.), and also that the cable company may charge a fee to rent the CableCard (mine costs $2/month) while only providing support for the CableCard - you're responsible for the functionality of your own box.
Another thing I've done to save money is to get rid of their telephone service. Ooma costs me about $5 a month, plus $40 for the number port. They have their own handsets, or you can use units that will work with the base directly. They've been around for a while, and I couldn't be happier.
Finally, buy your own modem. That's $5-$10/month right there.
This has been Voyager529's guide on saving a bunch of money on your cable bill.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought the CCleaner suite really for the SpaceMonger application; CCleaner was just a very useful bonus. The real reason I use it, though, is because it covers all of my browsers. I'll have Firefox, Chromium, Opera, and Internet Explorer all open at the same time; I don't get caught up in browser religion. Thus, CCleaner covers all bases, and I don't have to think about it.
Eternal September was the death of the internet. What we have now is a superhighway of advertisements directed into your eyeballs, and automated grabber arms reaching for your banking information.
In a somewhat-amusing irony, Usenet is much more usable now and has basically-no spam anymore.
NoScript with only first party scripts allowed by default, and a handful of CDNs whitelisted. CCleaner Pro cleans up all of my browser activity every time I close it. Untangle denies connections to ad servers and trackers at the firewall level.
Am I still being tracked? Probably...but the information obtained is much less juicy. I haven't seen an ad 'follow me' around the internet in quite some time.
Exactly how would the community "fix up all the problems and snooping"? It's a closed source operating system, you are totally beholden to the manufacturer for any changes. And you have no say whatsoever in the design, implementation and quality of the product.
You're right, this can't be readily changed by the community at the OS level. However, Windows still (at least for the moment) gives users root access. I got sick of Cortana's executable starting up, so I went to the folder and did a 'deny all everyone' file permissions change; not even the system user can access it. O&O ShutUp 10 and Spybot AntiBeacon both reduce telemetry and set policies that disable many of the snooping/syncing features. It's possible to configure Windows Firewall to block system applications and - at least for the moment - the firewall isn't smart enough to ignore those rules if configured.
The community can't change the OS...but there are measures that can be taken to reduce the telemetry. If the community wants to conjure up an open source "Windows 10 Privacy Suite", there's nothing stopping them from writing it, and nothing stopping users from installing it.
Genuine question: Did you also do a Wireshark session on a Win10 machine after running both Spybot Anti-Beacon and O&O ShutUp 10? They appear to do more than the regular placebo that the toggle switches, but I definitely would be interested in whether they cause a reduction in that sort of traffic.
Doesn't anybody back their crap up?
I kept telling people to back up their data, but no one listened.
I found, however, they were somewhat more receptive when I told them to back that thang up.
That because, as been demonstrated time and again, Apple is truly the only company that seems to be able to make a buttonless Trackpad that isn't cringe-worthy.
FTFY.
I got stuck with the Sentelic trackpad from hell last year...but I've generally been a fan of Synaptics trackpads. The trick is disabling tap-to-click and using the left mouse button to click. I completely agree that only Apple makes trackpads that are usable without any buttons, which is an annoying fact, considering that trackpads with buttons are an endangered species. On the whole, Synaptics trackpads with buttons and tap-to-click disabled are great to work with.
If SSL certs can have their expiration date baked into them, so can the video files.
Got to keep those bandwidth costs down!
Well, think about it. ISPs cite peak hour congestion because everyone is streaming during primetime. If I could set my iPad to kick off a download at 3AM that I could watch the next day, that helps stagger the network usage so it levels out better...and if you've ever attempted to use Wi-Fi at an airport, this would be an amazing thing on both ends - fewer people needing the Wi-Fi relieves congestion for those who do.
I've been a fan of Netflix making a "Magical Netflix Box" that allowed queuing and off-peak downloading, as well as transfers between MNBs, rather than hitting up the Netflix servers for content where possible. If it's kept encrypted and unreachable by traditional network means (trail blazed by the AT&T and Verizon microcells), it'd be entirely possible to make everyone happy by distributing the load.
Uhm...no.
What display has been *removed* from a car since the inception of the infotainment system? Cars still have both dashboards and radio readouts. In many cases the climate controls have indeed been consolidated into the screen, but the standard set of knobs were their own readout. Not that hard, and it's not like the space has been more efficiently utilized for anything since.
If the lock-in wasn't a requirement, there's no reason why things didn't stay double-DIN and have standardized connectors that allowed any "with climate control" stereo to fit in the dash and have additional inlets for steering wheel buttons and backup camera displays. the lack of these things indicate that, even if it wasn't an intended change to make everything proprietary, it was an outcome that seemed to have happened to basically everybody at basically the same time.
It's not the cassette deck that people are looking to use in their car. Remember - cars typically have about a ten year useful life. Ten years ago, there was no iPhone, and if you had a SatNav in your car, it required a $500 map DVD. Not too long ago, there were a handful of radios that supported Napster To Go, a service that was ahead of its time...but is utterly useless now.
The ability to change out entertainment systems when the technology changes is incredibly helpful, and even if I give a massive amount of faith to the auto industry, they went from non-proprietary to proprietary, for reasons that do not benefit me.
Me Either. When Facebook made the change, I looked around and found this app:
https://play.google.com/store/...
Sane permissions (internet, camera, location), much smaller footprint.
10/10 would download again.
Why the hell was this upvoted? Updating a Bios is "terrifying". A whole bunch of unqualified bitches. Alienware was always in the "you must think I'm stupid" range. Maybe OP is just less stupid now.
Yes, updating a BIOS is indeed terrifying. If it doesn't complete, your machine is likely bricked. If it completes, your machine might still be bricked. If it completes and doesn't brick your machine, there's no guarantee your settings will remain the way they were. If you're doing it remotely and don't have a DRAC/iLO or equivalent, the machine stays down until on-site happens.
Have there been advances in the field? Yes. Many motherboards have a dual-BIOS that gives a fail-safe option now, the updater utilities tend to go through a bit better QA than they used to, and it's not uncommon for some motherboards to have user-replaceable BIOS chips that can be ordered from the company. Still, it's always nerve-racking whenever a BIOS update is performed because you don't know when you'll be in 'the other 10%' of moments when things go pear-shaped and your evening plans change.
With respect to Alienware's pricing, they've always been expensive...but the value was that the units were hand tested, bloatware free, tended to have custom themes, genuinely useful bundled software, higher end hardware, and solid technical support that was very dependable and weren't too familiar with the word 'no'. Within a year of Dell buying the company, most of that went away; machines were mass produced, calls went to India with the rest of Dell's support queue (unless you ponied up even further), and the bloatware was back.
If you want Alienware, the company you're looking for is Origin PC. Founded by the Alienware founders, still hand-built and supported in Florida, great tech support, solid machines. They take a month from order to shipping, and they're indeed Clevo chassis...but I've owned two of them and I'll never buy from anyone else.
Perhaps you should consider buying a DVR instead of a console if you're upset that DVR capability is not included.
Microsoft indicated at the onset that it was intended to be able to perform DVR functions...until they decided that they weren't.
Buying a DVR isn't much of a picnic anymore. If you're building one, you're stuck on Windows 7 or 8.1, because MS actively removed Media Center from Win10. To my knowledge, there's no such thing as a CableCard compliant tuner for OSX. Showshifter, BeyondTV, and a number of other software-based DVR applications have all gone pear-shaped. Mythbuntu is somewhat-viable, but it's really picky about which tuner cards it supports, and even at that, it's not possible to use it with HBO or other premium channels because DRM. TiVo is still hanging on by a thread, but they cost more than an Xbox, and the service cost is about the same as an Xbox Live subscription.
Or, dealing with the usual complement of craptastic DVRs from cable companies that are as ugly, laggy, and poorly supported as they are expensive. One can save money by buying one's own cable box from around the internet, but even if those weren't running the same terrible software as the cable companies, they're again $300-$500 a pop.
All to make up for the fact that Microsoft removed functionality that was explicitly used to promote the product.
I've got a web designer friend who prefers Joomla, in large part because it works similarly to the design tools he's used to...though he fully admits that it has a much bigger learning curve than others.
My personal blog is run on WordPress. This is, in large part, because it's a blog and intended to be one. I like the fact that there's a mobile app for quick uploads and microblogging. I've never had to write a line of code to make anything work. I use a few plugins to make it work, namely The Shield and IQ Block Country to make my blog much more secure.
I'm not a web designer, and I don't claim to be. I just want to blog. Wordpress helps me do that much better than the other CMS's I tried - Ametys, Concrete5, Silverstripe, and at least one other one whose name escapes me. There were always drawbacks to the others - theme availability, responsive/mobile layout compatibility, media management, or something else - Ametys requires Tomcat, which required a special hosting account (I tried both Arvixe and HostISO, both became a world of regret), and even in a sandboxed environment, lots of things were much more complicated than they should be.
I'm certain the Slashdot groupthink goes against Wordpress, and there are legitimate reasons why - PHP and security spring to mind. Even so, I've been hack free, and it's allowed me to focus on content, rather than implementation.
Even MicrosoftÂ...
Okay stop right there. Are you proposing that the vendor of the most popular mobile OS adopts a similar model to probably the most miserable failure in the entire history of mobile OSes?
No, I think he's saying that the vendor of the most popular mobile OS adopts a similar model to the most successful desktop OS. For all the criticism Windows gets (not undeservedly so), it is highly irregular for an update to botch things, And *everyone* gets updates unless they opt out of them.
Furthermore, OS patches and UI lobotomies are different animals under most circumstances.
So yes, even Microsoft.
I was thinking the same thing. 1TB seems like an awfully high cap to be worried about. Windows Updates are now peering on the LAN, so five computers will end up downloading their updates once. Business accounts (i.e. the ones actually running servers) aren't subject to the caps. If you're hitting a terabyte a month with torrenting, a rented seedbox will give you better stats and cost less than what Comcast wants for the overage cap. If you're hitting a terabyte a month in video streaming...that's a LOT of video streaming - maybe not quite my place, but is buying the movies off iTunes or good old fashioned Blu-Ray discs, along with an internal streaming server, not a worthwhile project to look at? What about using an Untangle box with their web caching and ad blocking?
Now, the obvious problem is that it was 1TB, and at first I did not speak out because I didn't use 1TB, then it was 500GB...I definitely get that. Sea level is rising, and even though 1TB is incredibly high right now, Comcast is finding fewer and fewer grandmas who are still paying for AOL and use a gig a month, because even she has a Kindle Fire now and is watching streaming video on occasion. Comcast's likely strategy is that going from no-caps to very-high-caps will make it easier to get caps passed at all, and from there squeeze the next fifth percentile, and the next fifth, and so on until they've unilaterally raised rates on everyone who isn't incredibly careful.
In the same vein, I'm not sure if "requiring very heavy users to pony up for their fair share" is the correct place to make a call to arms, but really, how low must they go before they do? Because if it hits 100GB, it means there were dozens of missed opportunities in the past, and there will be no one left to speak for me.
Because this is about microsoft accounts, aka Google Accounts, except by Microsoft. Now yes, the line blur comes with the fact that Win8/Win10 make it a bit of a challenge to create a local account rather than a Microsoft account when starting the computer, but let's take that out of the equation for a moment. A Microsoft account includes OneDrive storage, so think in terms of Dropbox allowing '12345' as a password. Microsoft accounts include webmail, which still support POP/SMTP, so hacked accounts = spam relays. Sure, none of those users are domain admins on the remote servers, but I see no downside to saying, "this is my house, play by my complexity rules".
If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update
Did the person who wrote this actually read what they wrote? If they're identifying what users are listening to and matching them to something else, then that's still a record, even if it's not an audio recording.
I gave up the Facebook app years ago. m.facebook.com gives all the functionality I need; I don't even miss it...and it takes far less data than the app.
They also need to demand that at least all updates to the OS be pushed to phones within 30 days of release
I'd argue two things:
1.) The update debacle is just as much Google's fault as the carriers, because the updates aren't properly modular. A whole lot of people are losing their s!!t right now because their Windows 7 or Windows 8 machines became Windows 10 machines this past weekend. The general Slashdot consensus is that Microsoft is wrong for updating computers without meaningful consent, and rightly so...but like clockwork, Samsung/HTC/Motorola/AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile are terrible for *not* rolling out OS updates fast enough.
2.) Android is not designed to allow users to update when they want to; updates are downloaded automatically and if an option is given, it's either "install now" or "remind me in four hours", with no opt-out. While Google is at least somewhat helping the situation by keeping the APIs current with Play Services on older Android releases, the fact is that the security updates and OS patches that don't massively change the UI (never heard a non-slashdotter be happy about the Lollipop upgrade) or kernel (to remove the requirement of new drivers and baseband communication) should be separate. Windows has had this for twenty years. There's no reason for Google to compound the problem by making everything as monolithic as it is. I want to run KitKat until I replace my phone. Why? Because f'k you, that's why. The present situation is the worst set of swinging doors - either users who want to update can't, or users who don't want to update are forced to, but the technical community seems to only assume one side to be appropriate.
I don't disagree that Google isn't handling the Android update situation properly, but I'd similarly argue that it's largely because no one agrees on what the 'right way' is. Wake up one morning and realize my phone is on a new version of Android that either installs without consent or nags me six times a day until I do? Have Google/Samsung/HTC make a desktop application explicitly for managing/backing up/updating the firmware? Have new phones with the new OS pre-loaded and let users swap out their old ones for free at their local Verizon store, letting Aunt Google move all of their data over through The Cloud(tm)? Foundationally re-write Android to adopt the Windows model of updates independent of the OS?
Yes, the update situation should be worked out much better than it presently is. No, forcing carriers to send the MD5's over the air isn't the be all and end all solution to the problem.
Pro-Tip....
Search for ANYTHING + Rule 34. There is porn of it.
OK Google: Find me pablo_max, Rule 34. ...OK Google: Find me that laundromat where Spywhere went. I need some bleach for my eyes.
disabling location disables Cortana, from what I read
Oh, I wish. That tramp is the T-1000 of software.
Disabled every single option shown to me during installation. Cortana.exe still running.
Went into the Win10 settings and disabled as many privacy-relevant options and data transmission processes as I could find. Cortana.exe still running.
Disabled the Windows Search and Indexing Service services. Cortana.exe still running.
Ran O&O ShutUp 10, disabled everything. Cortana.exe still running.
Ultimately, I had to right click the process, go to the file location, take ownership of the folder, and set 'deny all' permissions for system and trustedinstaller. She's finally dead for the moment, but I'm all but certain I'll be doing this dance again during the next round of Windows patches.
With the price of a good sized NAS these days being around the cost of a dinner for two at a restaurant
I went to a *nice* steakhouse on Valentine's day in New York City, and two 18-ounce boneless steaks, three sides, an appetizer, two glasses of red wine (mid-range), two cappuccinos, and dessert cost about $250.
A drive-free Netgear or Synology NAS costs about $220 on Newegg. 3TB hard disks are about $100 a pop on sale, so we'll assume a simple RAID-1 to start out on. Not exactly "good sized" by my standards personally (My NAS has 15TB raw), but we'll roll with it.
Where the hell are you going for dinner??
Another one to echo your sentiment here. There are no tasks that the Fitbit account does that couldn't be handled within the app with the data kept locally. The fact that this isn't an option - not just on a fitbit but with any of the other fitness trackers I've looked at - gives me grave discomfort. It'd be a trivial selling point for anyone to do, but the fact that no one is doing it means that someone, somewhere, is paying handsomely for that data.
I'll chime in as another "$240?!?" voice here, because whittling that number down a bit can certainly be done. First off, you can purchase your own cable box outright. My cable company charges $20/month for a standard box, and $36/month for a DVR box. these boxes will pay for themselves in less than a year, and by law, your cable company must make a Cablecard available for you. If you're a DIY type like me, you can pick up one of these and use it with either Windows 7 (it's the only OS that supports all the DRM necessary for some of the ultra-premium channels) or Mythbuntu (free and formally supports that card) in a PC build. More expensive for sure, but even it will pay for itself in less than two years, especially if you have one Mythbuntu backend and use Raspberry Pis as frontends. Assuming three cable boxes and a DVR that are replaced with this setup and you buy new parts for the back end, you'll spend about $800 and two Saturday afternoons configuring it all, while my cable company would charge me $912 for the same service. The two caveats I'll fully admit is that the cable company's Video on Demand probably won't work, which may or may not be important to you - and I've got no idea how Pay-Per-View works (UFC fights, etc.), and also that the cable company may charge a fee to rent the CableCard (mine costs $2/month) while only providing support for the CableCard - you're responsible for the functionality of your own box.
Another thing I've done to save money is to get rid of their telephone service. Ooma costs me about $5 a month, plus $40 for the number port. They have their own handsets, or you can use units that will work with the base directly. They've been around for a while, and I couldn't be happier.
Finally, buy your own modem. That's $5-$10/month right there.
This has been Voyager529's guide on saving a bunch of money on your cable bill.
https://www.oo-software.com/en...
That, plus telemetry blocking at the firewall level have placated my concerns, personally.