I'm sure that just a dash of your famous 'courage' will magically make Bluetooth every bit as reliable as a piece of wire! It might have been nice, though, if you had instead demonstrated the courage to NOT favour fashion over function. But I guess indulging your vanity, while making your customers pay more for less standard and less reliable gear, was the more courageous choice. You old lionheart, you!
Quoting parent so it will be seen by more Slashdotters, because I believe it's an important point of view.
"s 100% available to spend, immediately. Of course if it were to somehow bounce or be recalled,"
Then it's not liquid and your bank is just fucking you.
With modern computing, even taking the batch processing of banking transactions into account, there is zero reason why a bank account should ever be overdrawn. It's just fuckery from the banks to fuck with the poor people who spend their paycheque every month. It's fucking disgusting that we tolerate it as a community.
I've always wanted to start a political movement to decree that "a bank account" is now a basic necessity, like water, power, electricity, and to some extent, internet. As such, banks should be forced to offer a basic account entirely free of charge. What I consider reasonable would be free online access, free ATM use (own bank only), free over-the-counter withdrawals, no overdraft, no credit, no bullshit. Sounds good doesn't it. When banks are making huge profits, why the fuck can't we get this going?
I was thinking along similar lines just a few days ago when I was looking at my transaction record and noting how badly I was being hosed by totally spurious 'service fees'. Back when all of the tracking and calculation was done manually by paid employees, banks still paid interest on even a few dollars in a savings account. Now that the tracking is done by computers and costs WAY less than it did 50 years ago, the banksters are charging way MORE and aren't paying interest unless a customer maintains a fairly hefty minimum balance. A one-hundred-dollar balance can disappear in time, without any withdrawals, simply because of bullshit fees. The entire banking system is basically legalized theft - it's a scam, and we ought to be treating the perpetrators the same way we treat any other scammer, thief, or con artist.
But in the end, I'd rather M$ have some details on my browsing habits than a competitor have a dump of my databases.
And isn't it just lovely being stuck between a rock and a hard place? And ain't it great that Microsoft gave you the choice between paying with money up front, and paying with privacy AND money down the road? Oh, wait... they didn't give you that choice, did they?
I get your point about visceral hate versus customer needs. OTOH, although favouring the kinder, gentler extortionist makes your and their lives easier, it still actively encourages extortion rackets.
...they had a plan to make a lot of money off Win 10 even if people upgraded for free (increased used of MS' services (bing, hotmail, their cloud service), data gathering, people buying from the Windows Store...).
They had a plan to make a lot of money off of Win10 and its successors by forcing people to buy into software-as-a-service. Software that runs independently, without relying on an Internet connection, a paid-up subscription, and contact with the mothership, will soon be a thing of the past if MS has their way. Office 365 is just the thin edge of the wedge.
Dude! I know you're being serious, and I agree - but man, I am laughing my ass off right now! I have never read anything so insightful and to-the-point, which was also such a sure-fire spit-take generator. Good job!!!
Linux on Windows is part of Microsoft's 3-E strategy. If they can stunt the growth of Linux as an OS by co-opting Linux applications to run on Windows, they may eventually succeed in cutting the heart out of FOSS altogether. And they would LOVE to do that, because FOSS is one of the few significant forces standing between them and the conversion of the whole world to a software-as-a-service model, wherein the average user doesn't own shit and has fuck-all in the way of rights, choice, or legal recourse.
Anybody who has a choice shouldn't run Windows, and certainly shouldn't run Linux applications on Windows. And anybody who MUST run Windows, should also run Linux, and use Windows ONLY for those things that absolutely require it.
>> app...without needing to install anything
Congratulations - you invented the World Wide Web
Yes. And when ALL applications are web-based, and all of our computing devices require an Internet connection to do anything at all because all of the software we use lives on somebody else's computer, then we will be well and truly pwned by our corporate overlords. It absolutely blows me away that Joe and Jane Public don't see where this is all going, even when it's explained to them in very basic terms. As a result of software-as-a-service and a burgeoning IoT that includes automobiles, lights, and refrigerators(!), average people are gradually, (or not so gradually), losing control over every single device in their lives that uses electricity. So even battery backup and local power sources won't be able to prevent the powers-that-be from remotely 'pulling the plug' on a large percentage of the developed world.
I'm starting to worry that I'm going to have to wrap my house in a Faraday cage in a few years...
You're being funny, but you've inadvertently raised a rather serious issue. It's inevitable that manufacturers will eventually design ALL appliances so that they either don't work at all, or have important features crippled, when they can't successfully 'phone home'. In the foreseeable future, a lot of stuff simply won't run unless it's allowed to rape your privacy in a variety of ways, and there will be a whole (probably illegal) industry devoted to bypassing the connection requirement or faking out a connection. But even that will be iffy - manufacturers will simply design their products to stop working if they haven't talked to the mothership in X days, weeks, or months.
The days of 'if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product' are almost gone; very soon it will be 'you ARE the product', full stop, no qualifiers. Ownership as we know it will be largely obsolete. Just about everything will be rented or leased; the down-payment will be money, and the rental / lease fees will be in the form of mined data and exposure to advertising.
Anscochrome came in a bright red box. GAF claimed the film was balanced for 6500K (or 6000K?) light, which implies that images would come out redder than the Kodak film balanced for 5500K. I don't recall any difference in color balance, but I never tied to compare them.
GAF - now there's a company I haven't thought of in a long time! I think one of my film development tanks was made by them. I don't think I ever used their film though.
The differences in colour balance among brands and types wasn't pronounced, and you'd probably only be certain of the differences if you shot the same scene at the same exposure with more than one type, then compared the results. And that assumes consistent, professional film processing - variations in process and chemistry could result in pretty large variations.
25 kilobucks???!!! WTF?? Realistically, such a solution would be worth AT LEAST seven figures. And anyone smart enough to come up with it shouldn't be dumb enough to sell it off for chump change, especially in an era where 'rounded corners' can not only be patented, but can almost be successfully defended against "infringement".
It's not an ad, it's a straight-up review of a product...
Perhaps it isn't an ad, but in may ways it reads like one. For this crowd in this forum, making the story sound less like an advert, by toning down the hyperbole, would likely make it better received. Phrasing such as "most significant design reinvention", "accentuating a beautiful 4K IPS panel", "most standout feature", and "reproduction and output capabilities to a whole new level", won't win you many friends here. Most of us are primarily interested in the facts; we'll make up our own minds about just how "gee golly gosh" a product is based on its features and specs, not on the enthusing of a breathless reviewer. Here, personal opinions tend to be well regarded only if they're written in the language that most of would use in a casual conversation. If they sound like they came from a Madison Avenue press release, prepare for pushback.
Fujichrome was always very blue in my non expert opinion.
Actually, Fujichrome favoured green. Many people don't realize this, but back in the day the colours on boxes of major-brand slide film were a reliable indicator of what colour they favoured. Ektachrome had blue colouring on its otherwise Kodak-yellow box, and favoured blue. Agfachrome boxes were orange, and when their adverts touted 'better blues begin with orange', they weren't talking just about the orange colour associated with Agfa - they were alluding to the slight orange shift in their film which, because it was complementary to blue, made that colour snap a little more. And of course, Fujichrome boxes were green - IIRC the photos in their ads leaned toward shots with lots of foliage in the background. And Kodachrome, (known for its brilliant, saturated colour), favoured reds just slightly - as indicated by the red accents on the otherwise Kodak-yellow box.
Clearly, Microsoft programmers got solidly behind the concept of ramming Windows 10 down everyone's throats, just so they could force their freak-show visions of user interface experiments upon the largest possible number of rubes. The data mining and potential ad revenue were just a bonus.
I would have thought that anyone serious about using Tor, would also be savvy and suspicious enough to have data turned off on their smartphones and tablets when it's not being used. I don't even use Tor, but WiFi and cellular data on my phone are turned on only when I'm browsing or emailing. As for computers, any cameras are taped over, and microphones are unplugged, or, in the case of a laptop, muted.
When I use other people's computers to use the Internet...good god it's like I'm in some sort of fledgling Total Recall...There is a massive joke that you and I are not seeing, and that's because we're not suffering the expense of being the butt of the joke that is Internet advertising.
Hear, hear! If the majority of unsophisticated users could see our browsing experience for just one day, and then understand how easy it would be for them to have the same, I think a large portion of Internet ad revenue would dry up overnight.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I'd like everyone to experience the Web without ads. On the other hand, I'm grateful that they don't, because their acquiescence allows me to avoid ads without taking heroic measures.
REALLY bad idea. the company is fucked up. or, their leadership is, at least. I'll never touch another ftdi chip by choice, again. just search for 'ftdi gate' and you'll see the back story.
What part of "first open source microcontroller" did you not understand? I'm no fan of FTDI after what they did. But seriously, you read a story about a ground-breaking first product based on an OPEN MICROCONTROLLER, and all you can do is kvetch about the closed bit of silicon they used to get the first version out the door?
...Do you think they have crazed conservative personalities ranting about the fact they live in a Socialist welfare state there?
Probably not to anywhere near the extent that you 'enjoy' those cranks in America. Socialist welfare states have the same corporate shills and their deluded hangers-on, but on the whole that rhetoric doesn't play nearly as well here as it does in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure that just a dash of your famous 'courage' will magically make Bluetooth every bit as reliable as a piece of wire! It might have been nice, though, if you had instead demonstrated the courage to NOT favour fashion over function. But I guess indulging your vanity, while making your customers pay more for less standard and less reliable gear, was the more courageous choice. You old lionheart, you!
PSA stands for "Prostate Specific Antigen", and elevated blood levels of it can indicate the presence of cancer. Coincidence? I think not!
that it has, in fact, totally lost the plot and has no clue about what's important for its continued survival.
we ought to be treating the perpetrators the same way we treat any other scammer, thief, or con artist
Electing them President?
That would be funny, if it wasn't so pointedly true.
Quoting parent so it will be seen by more Slashdotters, because I believe it's an important point of view.
"s 100% available to spend, immediately. Of course if it were to somehow bounce or be recalled,"
Then it's not liquid and your bank is just fucking you.
With modern computing, even taking the batch processing of banking transactions into account, there is zero reason why a bank account should ever be overdrawn. It's just fuckery from the banks to fuck with the poor people who spend their paycheque every month. It's fucking disgusting that we tolerate it as a community.
I've always wanted to start a political movement to decree that "a bank account" is now a basic necessity, like water, power, electricity, and to some extent, internet. As such, banks should be forced to offer a basic account entirely free of charge. What I consider reasonable would be free online access, free ATM use (own bank only), free over-the-counter withdrawals, no overdraft, no credit, no bullshit. Sounds good doesn't it. When banks are making huge profits, why the fuck can't we get this going?
I was thinking along similar lines just a few days ago when I was looking at my transaction record and noting how badly I was being hosed by totally spurious 'service fees'. Back when all of the tracking and calculation was done manually by paid employees, banks still paid interest on even a few dollars in a savings account. Now that the tracking is done by computers and costs WAY less than it did 50 years ago, the banksters are charging way MORE and aren't paying interest unless a customer maintains a fairly hefty minimum balance. A one-hundred-dollar balance can disappear in time, without any withdrawals, simply because of bullshit fees. The entire banking system is basically legalized theft - it's a scam, and we ought to be treating the perpetrators the same way we treat any other scammer, thief, or con artist.
But in the end, I'd rather M$ have some details on my browsing habits than a competitor have a dump of my databases.
And isn't it just lovely being stuck between a rock and a hard place? And ain't it great that Microsoft gave you the choice between paying with money up front, and paying with privacy AND money down the road? Oh, wait... they didn't give you that choice, did they?
I get your point about visceral hate versus customer needs. OTOH, although favouring the kinder, gentler extortionist makes your and their lives easier, it still actively encourages extortion rackets.
...they had a plan to make a lot of money off Win 10 even if people upgraded for free (increased used of MS' services (bing, hotmail, their cloud service), data gathering, people buying from the Windows Store ...).
They had a plan to make a lot of money off of Win10 and its successors by forcing people to buy into software-as-a-service. Software that runs independently, without relying on an Internet connection, a paid-up subscription, and contact with the mothership, will soon be a thing of the past if MS has their way. Office 365 is just the thin edge of the wedge.
... Machine learning does not summon the Four Horseman...
No, but it's a powerful tool in the hands of those who, by choice or by chance, would bring the apocalypse down upon us.
Seems like the easiest thing to replace by "AI" would be a useless and expensive CEO.
Overkill. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and a recording of a voice actor reciting PHB lines from Dilbert.
Dude! I know you're being serious, and I agree - but man, I am laughing my ass off right now! I have never read anything so insightful and to-the-point, which was also such a sure-fire spit-take generator. Good job!!!
Linux on Windows is part of Microsoft's 3-E strategy. If they can stunt the growth of Linux as an OS by co-opting Linux applications to run on Windows, they may eventually succeed in cutting the heart out of FOSS altogether. And they would LOVE to do that, because FOSS is one of the few significant forces standing between them and the conversion of the whole world to a software-as-a-service model, wherein the average user doesn't own shit and has fuck-all in the way of rights, choice, or legal recourse.
Anybody who has a choice shouldn't run Windows, and certainly shouldn't run Linux applications on Windows. And anybody who MUST run Windows, should also run Linux, and use Windows ONLY for those things that absolutely require it.
>> app...without needing to install anything Congratulations - you invented the World Wide Web
Yes. And when ALL applications are web-based, and all of our computing devices require an Internet connection to do anything at all because all of the software we use lives on somebody else's computer, then we will be well and truly pwned by our corporate overlords. It absolutely blows me away that Joe and Jane Public don't see where this is all going, even when it's explained to them in very basic terms. As a result of software-as-a-service and a burgeoning IoT that includes automobiles, lights, and refrigerators(!), average people are gradually, (or not so gradually), losing control over every single device in their lives that uses electricity. So even battery backup and local power sources won't be able to prevent the powers-that-be from remotely 'pulling the plug' on a large percentage of the developed world.
I'm starting to worry that I'm going to have to wrap my house in a Faraday cage in a few years...
You're being funny, but you've inadvertently raised a rather serious issue. It's inevitable that manufacturers will eventually design ALL appliances so that they either don't work at all, or have important features crippled, when they can't successfully 'phone home'. In the foreseeable future, a lot of stuff simply won't run unless it's allowed to rape your privacy in a variety of ways, and there will be a whole (probably illegal) industry devoted to bypassing the connection requirement or faking out a connection. But even that will be iffy - manufacturers will simply design their products to stop working if they haven't talked to the mothership in X days, weeks, or months.
The days of 'if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product' are almost gone; very soon it will be 'you ARE the product', full stop, no qualifiers. Ownership as we know it will be largely obsolete. Just about everything will be rented or leased; the down-payment will be money, and the rental / lease fees will be in the form of mined data and exposure to advertising.
Anscochrome came in a bright red box. GAF claimed the film was balanced for 6500K (or 6000K?) light, which implies that images would come out redder than the Kodak film balanced for 5500K. I don't recall any difference in color balance, but I never tied to compare them.
GAF - now there's a company I haven't thought of in a long time! I think one of my film development tanks was made by them. I don't think I ever used their film though.
The differences in colour balance among brands and types wasn't pronounced, and you'd probably only be certain of the differences if you shot the same scene at the same exposure with more than one type, then compared the results. And that assumes consistent, professional film processing - variations in process and chemistry could result in pretty large variations.
25 kilobucks???!!! WTF?? Realistically, such a solution would be worth AT LEAST seven figures. And anyone smart enough to come up with it shouldn't be dumb enough to sell it off for chump change, especially in an era where 'rounded corners' can not only be patented, but can almost be successfully defended against "infringement".
It's not an ad, it's a straight-up review of a product...
Perhaps it isn't an ad, but in may ways it reads like one. For this crowd in this forum, making the story sound less like an advert, by toning down the hyperbole, would likely make it better received. Phrasing such as "most significant design reinvention", "accentuating a beautiful 4K IPS panel", "most standout feature", and "reproduction and output capabilities to a whole new level", won't win you many friends here. Most of us are primarily interested in the facts; we'll make up our own minds about just how "gee golly gosh" a product is based on its features and specs, not on the enthusing of a breathless reviewer. Here, personal opinions tend to be well regarded only if they're written in the language that most of would use in a casual conversation. If they sound like they came from a Madison Avenue press release, prepare for pushback.
Fujichrome was always very blue in my non expert opinion.
Actually, Fujichrome favoured green. Many people don't realize this, but back in the day the colours on boxes of major-brand slide film were a reliable indicator of what colour they favoured. Ektachrome had blue colouring on its otherwise Kodak-yellow box, and favoured blue. Agfachrome boxes were orange, and when their adverts touted 'better blues begin with orange', they weren't talking just about the orange colour associated with Agfa - they were alluding to the slight orange shift in their film which, because it was complementary to blue, made that colour snap a little more. And of course, Fujichrome boxes were green - IIRC the photos in their ads leaned toward shots with lots of foliage in the background. And Kodachrome, (known for its brilliant, saturated colour), favoured reds just slightly - as indicated by the red accents on the otherwise Kodak-yellow box.
Clearly, Microsoft programmers got solidly behind the concept of ramming Windows 10 down everyone's throats, just so they could force their freak-show visions of user interface experiments upon the largest possible number of rubes. The data mining and potential ad revenue were just a bonus.
If you buy this device, Intel still owns it due to the binary blobs that are required to run things...
What is the OS of choice that Intel uses for this card?
If Intel did to this what they've done to their later x86 processors, then it probably doesn't matter much.
At half a centimetre thick, I don't think so! Maybe ON TOP OF my wallet...
"Quadraphonic audio".
I would have thought that anyone serious about using Tor, would also be savvy and suspicious enough to have data turned off on their smartphones and tablets when it's not being used. I don't even use Tor, but WiFi and cellular data on my phone are turned on only when I'm browsing or emailing. As for computers, any cameras are taped over, and microphones are unplugged, or, in the case of a laptop, muted.
When I use other people's computers to use the Internet...good god it's like I'm in some sort of fledgling Total Recall ...There is a massive joke that you and I are not seeing, and that's because we're not suffering the expense of being the butt of the joke that is Internet advertising.
Hear, hear! If the majority of unsophisticated users could see our browsing experience for just one day, and then understand how easy it would be for them to have the same, I think a large portion of Internet ad revenue would dry up overnight.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I'd like everyone to experience the Web without ads. On the other hand, I'm grateful that they don't, because their acquiescence allows me to avoid ads without taking heroic measures.
REALLY bad idea. the company is fucked up. or, their leadership is, at least. I'll never touch another ftdi chip by choice, again. just search for 'ftdi gate' and you'll see the back story.
What part of "first open source microcontroller" did you not understand? I'm no fan of FTDI after what they did. But seriously, you read a story about a ground-breaking first product based on an OPEN MICROCONTROLLER, and all you can do is kvetch about the closed bit of silicon they used to get the first version out the door?
...Do you think they have crazed conservative personalities ranting about the fact they live in a Socialist welfare state there?
Probably not to anywhere near the extent that you 'enjoy' those cranks in America. Socialist welfare states have the same corporate shills and their deluded hangers-on, but on the whole that rhetoric doesn't play nearly as well here as it does in the US.