While that is true, in practical terms it is irrelevant. Websites are now designed with little/no graceful degradation. That is simply the situation as it is, for better or worse. Websites are not designed to gracefully fall back and probably won't ever be designed that way going forward. There is insufficient economic incentive for commercial ventures to be bothered so it isn't likely to happen. Few people turn off Javascript and those that do are probably not of commercial interest so why design for them? Very annoying but I don't see any reasonably likely chance that it will change either.
Not as cheap as I expect they will be in a few years. I'll be somewhat surprised if I do better than break even but felt like it was the right thing to do. We had a tendency to leave the light on overnight as well as for hours at a time. More than a little wasteful
With the efficiency (and low cost) of LEDs, it might take YEARS of energy usage to pay off those (also reasonably inexpensive) timers and motion sensors:
Actually I have them connected to LED bulbs so I'm hitting it from both ends. I'm on record as disliking incandescent bulbs. Even with LED bulbs being relatively efficient I see no point in leaving them turned on unnecessarily.
I would love a little "bumper sticker/device" that I can control from the steering wheel that could flash "Calm down, I just see something ahead you don't." in clear letters with red lights..
My favorite bumper sticker was one I saw that said "unless you are a hemorrhoid, get off my ass".
My usual tactic when someone drives that close is to drive *exactly* the speed limit. I'll set the cruise control if I have to. I'll slow way down if I have to if they can get around me to encourage them to move on. I want to get where I'm going in a timely manner but I'm not going to be reckless to do it.
Used to be more fun when I drove beater cars and could hit the brakes without having to care about the car I was in. Not safe but usually effective. I can stop faster than they can react so if they want a citation for failing to maintain assured clear distance, I can oblige them.
Yes he is. He's trying to tell me that I have no right to be annoyed at someone who is driving slower than necessary and getting in my way. I disagree.
Look, you have no say over the legal driving of the car in front.
Never claimed I did. What I said was that their needlessly slow driving is incredibly irritating when it impedes someone else's progress. I don't care at all if someone wants to hypermile as long as they pay attention to the world around them and don't get in the way while doing so.
Your arrogance and impatience make you a bad driver.
I've given few hints as to the sort of driver I am. I cannot prove it but I'm actually a pretty careful an conscientious driver. However someone who is driving so slowly as to impede the flow of traffic is a danger to be around. The safest thing to do is to drive predictably, defensively and in a manner somewhere close to the locally expected norm. People who drive unusually slowly in an attempt to hypermile are doing something unexpected and therefore dangerous.
Probably but I doubt I'll ever wear a watch. I'm just not that obsessed with time or showing off to justify the annoyance of wearing a watch if I don't really need to. I have one but I only really wear it when I'm hiking in rural areas or doing a competitive run. I don't object to wearing a health monitor should there be a need but in most cases I figure my cell phone (which I already carry) could probably do the job adequately for quite a few use cases. I'd be more interested in something like a fitbit if it would work closely with my cell phone so that I only had to carry one or the other. I don't want to carry a bat-belt worth of gear without a damn good reason.
I learned to drive in Mexico. I find it one of the safest places to drive because you're basically always under the assumption that everybody will do whatever is in their best interests.
I've driven in Mexico too. It was mostly ok but you are right that in places they do some... interesting stuff.
The US was confusing because in some states it seems everybody follows the rules.
Generally true in most places. Fortunately the exceptions tend to be well known. Like in New Jersey. There are a few states I could mention (including my own) where if you make eye contact you lose the right of way.
I found canada to be the worst place to drive.
I drive in Canada a lot and there does seem to be a peculiar number of asshat drivers in parts of Canada. Particularly around Toronto. And I say this as someone who isn't exactly a shrinking violet on the road. Most places they are fine but I've probably been flipped the bird more times in Canada (for no good reason mostly) than everywhere else I've driven combined.
Why is your desire to put your foot down, and your misapprehension that you'll save much journey time by doing so a hyper-miler's problem?
Even if it is 1 second I save, it is one second of MY LIFE. I don't have any interest in trading my time for someone else's pointless pursuit of a few extra MPG. My time is the most valuable thing I have and I resent anyone who interferes needlessly with my ability to spend it on the things that matter to me.
What most people don't know is that you can improve your fuel economy rather dramatically using a variety of techniques commonly referred as "Hyper-miling".
People are well aware that hypermiling improves fuel economy. What they care a LOT more about is actually getting where they are going in a timely manner. Driving behind someone who is hypermiling is enough to drive even Mother Teresa to want to bust a cap in the asshat in front of them. If you really want to improve fuel economy, drive a motorcycle. You'll get FAR better gas mileage than any car you can buy and you won't have to drive slower than my grandmother while doing it.
In any event, you *can* get a rather sharp increase in fuel economy by paying attention to the forces of momentum, timing and friction.
At the cost of driving very slowly, getting in the way of others and annoying everyone around you who have zero interest in driving like that because they have things they care a lot more about than maximizing fuel economy. Even at 50mpg your car still is incredibly wasteful. It's like trying to put out a forest fire by urinating on it.
If anyone gets to within 1m of me at any kind of speed I'll slow down, to a crawl if necessary, until they get the hint*.
I do that too. I LOVE watching the steam come out their ears. I don't drive like a grandmother so anyone who is riding my bumper that closely is really driving recklessly.
Even in India there are count down clocks on many signals, telling you how many seconds of red is remaining or how many seconds of green is remaining.
That might be useful if drivers in India paid even the slightest bit of attention to traffic laws. Seriously, driving there you take your life into your hands.
I like a system I saw in Mexico and I've heard exists elsewhere, where the green light flashes for a few seconds before turning yellow.
But then the police department can't raise money by issuing tickets for running red lights. Oh Noes! We might not even be able to justify those fancy red-light cameras. Isn't it the 'Murican Way (tm) to profit from punishment?
They most certainly are a social pressure. Why do you think we have such laws in the first place? It's a social pressure codified into law. There is no functional reason to require people to be dressed in public and yet we insist that they are. Why? Social pressure.
That slanderous bitch down the hall is a social pressure.
I'm just guessing here that you don't date a lot. Aesthetics matter whether we like it or not. Looking nice sometimes doesn't involved practicality for better or worse. I'm not exactly the most fashion forward guy myself but I understand that sometimes how I look is important. People care about how others look and no that isn't always stupid. It's only stupid when one makes harmful decisions based on aesthetics when the important information is not aesthetic. Dressing nicely isn't just for your benefit. If you come to work looking sloppy and like someone who doesn't care then that says something about you to others. If you are trying to attract a romantic partner, how you look tends to matter. You think all the shaving and bathing and other primping both men and women (especially women) do is purely for practical reasons?
If you usually travel by public transit, having headphones is almost a necessity.
Different strokes for different folks. I strongly disagree that it is anything resembling a necessity. Preference for many I'll concede but there is no requirement to be listening to something on headphones merely because you are traveling somewhere on public transit.
Sitting there, doing nothing, just seems like such a waste of time.
Personally I prefer to be aware of what's going on around me. I also use travel time to think about things I might not have time for otherwise. Sure, sometime its boring but I have plenty of ways of solving that that don't involve headphones. Plus I find headphones rather uncomfortable in fairly short order and have little interest in using them any more than absolutely necessary. (yes I've tried a lot of pairs and no I don't like any of them)
Maybe if women didn't bend to those social pressures they'd no be pressures anymore
Grow up. Social pressures always exist and they aren't always bad things. You probably put on pants today and social pressure was a component of that action. Are you going to argue that you shouldn't bend to that social pressure anymore?
Peer pressure is a lame excuse for anyone over the age of 8.
Really? You do whatever you want regardless of the social consequences? (If you answer yes to that then you are either in jail or a liar)
I cannot imagine anything that I really want a smart watch to do.
Exactly. I don't carry a watch except rarely because it is A) redundant (my phone tells me the time), B) annoying to wear, and C) has limited functionality. The only time I really can imaging carrying a watch is for some specific task where I need certain data or sensors but weight or bulk is an issue. For instance when I'm jogging or doing some other athletic activity where a smartphone is too bulky to carry.
And I know that women tend to not use pockets - I cannot understand why
Because a lot of women's clothing tends not to have pockets. Can't use it if you can't buy it. Furthermore there are aesthetic reasons why they tend not to use pockets. Women have a different set of social pressures for appearance than men do.
Wearable devices will not be massively popular unless they will be as simple to use as headphones.
Maybe you are different but I don't carry headphones either and frankly I think headphones are a huge PITA. Headphones require all kinds of annoying cable wrangling or if wireless all kinds of unreliable setups that you are constantly dicking around with. Useful? Yes. Simple? Not so much.
I carry precisely 3 items 99% of the time - phone, wallet and keys - and I'd do away with any of them if I had a reasonable way to do so. I don't mind carrying a fitness tracker if I'm actually doing exercise but otherwise the phone should serve that purpose. I don't want to wear a special purpose device unless I'm doing something rather specific. I don't wear a watch except on rare occasions because they serve little purpose these days (clocks are everywhere) and are annoying to wear if you don't have to.
Just buy a case of those and replace anything that burns out with one.
If you're going to go ahead and buy them then you might as well replace the old inefficient bulb. Otherwise you're just wasting power since the LED bulb is a sunk cost at that point.
Now if we could do this for more components in our house.
I put a timer switch on a closet light my wife and I tend to forget to turn off. Automatically shuts off after 5 minutes as it is just a pantry/storage closet. I've got another spot with motion sensors. I have to turn the lights on but then a motion sensor turns them off if there is no motion in the room for X number of minutes. Good for locations like kitchens.
You check a PC's IP address to figure out the IP numbering scheme in use.
Great. My parents have no idea how to do this. Yes it sounds simple to you (and me) but it isn't. Hell, my wife who has a doctorate has no idea how to do this. You say what to do as if it is the most trivial thing in the world and the stream of your technobabble that follows proves you wrong. Non-geeks don't understand this stuff at all. Doesn't mean they are stupid, it means that it is arcane and needlessly complicated. People use services like dropbox because doing it yourself is a pain in the ass in most cases and provides them no additional benefit that they care about.
Joe Sixpack just did port forwarding. And he could have probably done it himself if he'd just RTFM.
No he didn't unless you stood over his proverbial (or literal) shoulder telling him how. And no they couldn't/wouldn't do it themselves because they don't even know what the hell it is. You can't solve a problem if you don't even know what questions to ask. Just because you think it is easy doesn't mean it actually is easy for other people.
If you've set up your own router using an off-the-shelf open source OS, then doing DynDNS-type things can be a bit complicated. A lot of cheap consumer routers, however, support it out of the box - you just provide it with your credentials and it works.
Setting up DynDNS is complicated period. Anyone who doesn't think it is complicated knows way too much about DNS to comprehend why it is complicated. Even explaining what DynDNS is to a lay-person tends to make their head explode. Hell, I can barely get my parents to understand how to use Dropbox which is WAY simpler than any open source stack some geek might set up.
Port forwarding is similarly handled via a pointy-clicky interface. It's definitely something that you can explain to a technically illiterate person who to do.
If you believe that then you have either A) never actually tried to coach a genuinely technologically illiterate person through this or B) you don't know any genuinely technologically illiterate persons or C) both. Port forwarding is seriously arcane stuff to 99.9% of the population. It requires a bunch of knowledge they do not possess, data they don't know how to get (like IP addresses), passwords they've probably forgotten if they ever knew them at all, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO these websites are examples of bad design .
While that is true, in practical terms it is irrelevant. Websites are now designed with little/no graceful degradation. That is simply the situation as it is, for better or worse. Websites are not designed to gracefully fall back and probably won't ever be designed that way going forward. There is insufficient economic incentive for commercial ventures to be bothered so it isn't likely to happen. Few people turn off Javascript and those that do are probably not of commercial interest so why design for them? Very annoying but I don't see any reasonably likely chance that it will change either.
I hope those devices were cheap.
Not as cheap as I expect they will be in a few years. I'll be somewhat surprised if I do better than break even but felt like it was the right thing to do. We had a tendency to leave the light on overnight as well as for hours at a time. More than a little wasteful
With the efficiency (and low cost) of LEDs, it might take YEARS of energy usage to pay off those (also reasonably inexpensive) timers and motion sensors:
Actually I have them connected to LED bulbs so I'm hitting it from both ends. I'm on record as disliking incandescent bulbs. Even with LED bulbs being relatively efficient I see no point in leaving them turned on unnecessarily.
I would love a little "bumper sticker/device" that I can control from the steering wheel that could flash "Calm down, I just see something ahead you don't." in clear letters with red lights..
My favorite bumper sticker was one I saw that said "unless you are a hemorrhoid, get off my ass".
My usual tactic when someone drives that close is to drive *exactly* the speed limit. I'll set the cruise control if I have to. I'll slow way down if I have to if they can get around me to encourage them to move on. I want to get where I'm going in a timely manner but I'm not going to be reckless to do it.
Used to be more fun when I drove beater cars and could hit the brakes without having to care about the car I was in. Not safe but usually effective. I can stop faster than they can react so if they want a citation for failing to maintain assured clear distance, I can oblige them.
Canadians really aren't polite.
Especially if there is a hockey puck involved!
He's not trying to tell you what to do.
Yes he is. He's trying to tell me that I have no right to be annoyed at someone who is driving slower than necessary and getting in my way. I disagree.
Look, you have no say over the legal driving of the car in front.
Never claimed I did. What I said was that their needlessly slow driving is incredibly irritating when it impedes someone else's progress. I don't care at all if someone wants to hypermile as long as they pay attention to the world around them and don't get in the way while doing so.
Your arrogance and impatience make you a bad driver.
I've given few hints as to the sort of driver I am. I cannot prove it but I'm actually a pretty careful an conscientious driver. However someone who is driving so slowly as to impede the flow of traffic is a danger to be around. The safest thing to do is to drive predictably, defensively and in a manner somewhere close to the locally expected norm. People who drive unusually slowly in an attempt to hypermile are doing something unexpected and therefore dangerous.
As you get older your priorities may well change.
Probably but I doubt I'll ever wear a watch. I'm just not that obsessed with time or showing off to justify the annoyance of wearing a watch if I don't really need to. I have one but I only really wear it when I'm hiking in rural areas or doing a competitive run. I don't object to wearing a health monitor should there be a need but in most cases I figure my cell phone (which I already carry) could probably do the job adequately for quite a few use cases. I'd be more interested in something like a fitbit if it would work closely with my cell phone so that I only had to carry one or the other. I don't want to carry a bat-belt worth of gear without a damn good reason.
I learned to drive in Mexico. I find it one of the safest places to drive because you're basically always under the assumption that everybody will do whatever is in their best interests.
I've driven in Mexico too. It was mostly ok but you are right that in places they do some... interesting stuff.
The US was confusing because in some states it seems everybody follows the rules.
Generally true in most places. Fortunately the exceptions tend to be well known. Like in New Jersey. There are a few states I could mention (including my own) where if you make eye contact you lose the right of way.
I found canada to be the worst place to drive.
I drive in Canada a lot and there does seem to be a peculiar number of asshat drivers in parts of Canada. Particularly around Toronto. And I say this as someone who isn't exactly a shrinking violet on the road. Most places they are fine but I've probably been flipped the bird more times in Canada (for no good reason mostly) than everywhere else I've driven combined.
So where do you draw the line?
Drive like the traffic around you per the local social convention. Thought that would be obvious.
Again, why is your neurosis the problem of the person driving the car in front?
Refer to previous statement. Don't waste my life and I won't waste yours.
The universe doesn't revolve around you.
Nor does it revolve around the asshat in front of me obsessing pointlessly about MPG and getting in my way to do so.
Why is your desire to put your foot down, and your misapprehension that you'll save much journey time by doing so a hyper-miler's problem?
Even if it is 1 second I save, it is one second of MY LIFE. I don't have any interest in trading my time for someone else's pointless pursuit of a few extra MPG. My time is the most valuable thing I have and I resent anyone who interferes needlessly with my ability to spend it on the things that matter to me.
What most people don't know is that you can improve your fuel economy rather dramatically using a variety of techniques commonly referred as "Hyper-miling".
People are well aware that hypermiling improves fuel economy. What they care a LOT more about is actually getting where they are going in a timely manner. Driving behind someone who is hypermiling is enough to drive even Mother Teresa to want to bust a cap in the asshat in front of them. If you really want to improve fuel economy, drive a motorcycle. You'll get FAR better gas mileage than any car you can buy and you won't have to drive slower than my grandmother while doing it.
In any event, you *can* get a rather sharp increase in fuel economy by paying attention to the forces of momentum, timing and friction.
At the cost of driving very slowly, getting in the way of others and annoying everyone around you who have zero interest in driving like that because they have things they care a lot more about than maximizing fuel economy. Even at 50mpg your car still is incredibly wasteful. It's like trying to put out a forest fire by urinating on it.
If anyone gets to within 1m of me at any kind of speed I'll slow down, to a crawl if necessary, until they get the hint*.
I do that too. I LOVE watching the steam come out their ears. I don't drive like a grandmother so anyone who is riding my bumper that closely is really driving recklessly.
Even in India there are count down clocks on many signals, telling you how many seconds of red is remaining or how many seconds of green is remaining.
That might be useful if drivers in India paid even the slightest bit of attention to traffic laws. Seriously, driving there you take your life into your hands.
(I joke but only a little)
I like a system I saw in Mexico and I've heard exists elsewhere, where the green light flashes for a few seconds before turning yellow.
But then the police department can't raise money by issuing tickets for running red lights. Oh Noes! We might not even be able to justify those fancy red-light cameras. Isn't it the 'Murican Way (tm) to profit from punishment?
[/sarcasm]
Public decency laws are not a social pressure.
They most certainly are a social pressure. Why do you think we have such laws in the first place? It's a social pressure codified into law. There is no functional reason to require people to be dressed in public and yet we insist that they are. Why? Social pressure.
That slanderous bitch down the hall is a social pressure.
I sense you have issues you need to work out...
The aesthetic reasons are stupid.
I'm just guessing here that you don't date a lot. Aesthetics matter whether we like it or not. Looking nice sometimes doesn't involved practicality for better or worse. I'm not exactly the most fashion forward guy myself but I understand that sometimes how I look is important. People care about how others look and no that isn't always stupid. It's only stupid when one makes harmful decisions based on aesthetics when the important information is not aesthetic. Dressing nicely isn't just for your benefit. If you come to work looking sloppy and like someone who doesn't care then that says something about you to others. If you are trying to attract a romantic partner, how you look tends to matter. You think all the shaving and bathing and other primping both men and women (especially women) do is purely for practical reasons?
If you usually travel by public transit, having headphones is almost a necessity.
Different strokes for different folks. I strongly disagree that it is anything resembling a necessity. Preference for many I'll concede but there is no requirement to be listening to something on headphones merely because you are traveling somewhere on public transit.
Sitting there, doing nothing, just seems like such a waste of time.
Personally I prefer to be aware of what's going on around me. I also use travel time to think about things I might not have time for otherwise. Sure, sometime its boring but I have plenty of ways of solving that that don't involve headphones. Plus I find headphones rather uncomfortable in fairly short order and have little interest in using them any more than absolutely necessary. (yes I've tried a lot of pairs and no I don't like any of them)
Maybe if women didn't bend to those social pressures they'd no be pressures anymore
Grow up. Social pressures always exist and they aren't always bad things. You probably put on pants today and social pressure was a component of that action. Are you going to argue that you shouldn't bend to that social pressure anymore?
Peer pressure is a lame excuse for anyone over the age of 8.
Really? You do whatever you want regardless of the social consequences? (If you answer yes to that then you are either in jail or a liar)
I cannot imagine anything that I really want a smart watch to do.
Exactly. I don't carry a watch except rarely because it is A) redundant (my phone tells me the time), B) annoying to wear, and C) has limited functionality. The only time I really can imaging carrying a watch is for some specific task where I need certain data or sensors but weight or bulk is an issue. For instance when I'm jogging or doing some other athletic activity where a smartphone is too bulky to carry.
And I know that women tend to not use pockets - I cannot understand why
Because a lot of women's clothing tends not to have pockets. Can't use it if you can't buy it. Furthermore there are aesthetic reasons why they tend not to use pockets. Women have a different set of social pressures for appearance than men do.
Wearable devices will not be massively popular unless they will be as simple to use as headphones.
Maybe you are different but I don't carry headphones either and frankly I think headphones are a huge PITA. Headphones require all kinds of annoying cable wrangling or if wireless all kinds of unreliable setups that you are constantly dicking around with. Useful? Yes. Simple? Not so much.
I carry precisely 3 items 99% of the time - phone, wallet and keys - and I'd do away with any of them if I had a reasonable way to do so. I don't mind carrying a fitness tracker if I'm actually doing exercise but otherwise the phone should serve that purpose. I don't want to wear a special purpose device unless I'm doing something rather specific. I don't wear a watch except on rare occasions because they serve little purpose these days (clocks are everywhere) and are annoying to wear if you don't have to.
Just buy a case of those and replace anything that burns out with one.
If you're going to go ahead and buy them then you might as well replace the old inefficient bulb. Otherwise you're just wasting power since the LED bulb is a sunk cost at that point.
Now if we could do this for more components in our house.
I put a timer switch on a closet light my wife and I tend to forget to turn off. Automatically shuts off after 5 minutes as it is just a pantry/storage closet. I've got another spot with motion sensors. I have to turn the lights on but then a motion sensor turns them off if there is no motion in the room for X number of minutes. Good for locations like kitchens.
You check a PC's IP address to figure out the IP numbering scheme in use.
Great. My parents have no idea how to do this. Yes it sounds simple to you (and me) but it isn't. Hell, my wife who has a doctorate has no idea how to do this. You say what to do as if it is the most trivial thing in the world and the stream of your technobabble that follows proves you wrong. Non-geeks don't understand this stuff at all. Doesn't mean they are stupid, it means that it is arcane and needlessly complicated. People use services like dropbox because doing it yourself is a pain in the ass in most cases and provides them no additional benefit that they care about.
Joe Sixpack just did port forwarding.
And he could have probably done it himself if he'd just RTFM.
No he didn't unless you stood over his proverbial (or literal) shoulder telling him how. And no they couldn't/wouldn't do it themselves because they don't even know what the hell it is. You can't solve a problem if you don't even know what questions to ask. Just because you think it is easy doesn't mean it actually is easy for other people.
If you've set up your own router using an off-the-shelf open source OS, then doing DynDNS-type things can be a bit complicated. A lot of cheap consumer routers, however, support it out of the box - you just provide it with your credentials and it works.
Setting up DynDNS is complicated period. Anyone who doesn't think it is complicated knows way too much about DNS to comprehend why it is complicated. Even explaining what DynDNS is to a lay-person tends to make their head explode. Hell, I can barely get my parents to understand how to use Dropbox which is WAY simpler than any open source stack some geek might set up.
Port forwarding is similarly handled via a pointy-clicky interface. It's definitely something that you can explain to a technically illiterate person who to do.
If you believe that then you have either A) never actually tried to coach a genuinely technologically illiterate person through this or B) you don't know any genuinely technologically illiterate persons or C) both. Port forwarding is seriously arcane stuff to 99.9% of the population. It requires a bunch of knowledge they do not possess, data they don't know how to get (like IP addresses), passwords they've probably forgotten if they ever knew them at all, etc.