I"m a LUDDITE! I like small phones that aren't impossibly thin and obnoxiously wide and tall.. So yeah, I like like a 5S or iPhone SE. Thick enough to not have thermal detonation issues, thick enough for my fingers to actually grab to something other than a near knife-edge, thick enough to not destroy the chips within (touch-disease, anyone?)
5S / SE is perfection. It could be argued that 4 / 4S was perfection, but they were too heavy and in the hands of the clumsy the rear glass could easily break. Beautifully made, though - that stepped bezel - anyone else notice it was a dozen or so little steps milled out of the stainless slab? No? no one else notices little touches like that? Or like the 4 / 4S and 5 / 5S / SE have a very slight concave shape all around the periphery? Maaaaybe to let your fingers lift it from a surface easily?
Huh. I"m betting some of you did notice these little things.
This is the IT version of sending manufacturing jobs overseas. While I was not a "rah rah buy 'Murican" I agree that certain things must be built here. Or in their country of origin. Seeing my projector from Panasonic say "Made in China" is as sad as seeing a "Made in China" on the back of my iphone, my monitor, and some of my speakers - Klipsch - which USED to be built in Hope, Arkansas. Some models still are, but not the affordable stuff.
So no... I will not shed a tear for these Indian companies, nor for the asshats who hire them.
Why are these people further polluting my gasoline with this crap? Today's cars are designed for 10% ethanol in the gasoline. What's going to happen when they keep polluting the fuel? Broken seals? Broken fuel pumps? Outright degradation of the metals used in the engine?
Fuck congress. Electing Trump was throwing an (figurative) (ethanol-polluted) Molotov Cocktail at the white house, now Congress must be cleansed as well.
My 5S exhibited this battery problem once - went from 30% to about 5% in maybe 5 minutes.
The curious thing is, this was with 10.1.0. With 10.1.1 it has been just fine... and I'm one who uses this phone to make actual phone calls (not facetime, not sms, not imessage) that last 3, 4 hours. I also watch video on it, listen to music, stream to apple tv.. so yeah, this old phone gets used.
So, maybe this is model dependent? TFS says "older hardware" but my "old" 5S doesn't do this.
I do the bulk of amazon shopping on my 5S, with a screen some allege it way too small in this era of surfboard-sized phones.
I find the app quite useful, I don't have to pinch zoom, I can read the reviews and product info just fine.. even with eyes that can't see clearly without glasses except at precisely 3.5 inches away. I can read this app with my progressives no problem.
So long, AKG, JBL.. it was nice knowing you and owning some of your products over the years.. and enjoying some behind-the-movie-screen* without ever seeing them.
I fear for the future of these two brands. They still offer genuine pro-quality performance and worry that Samsung won't respect the heritage of both names and encourage growth and R&D for improving the breed.
Both are the real deal, not audiophile voodoo. And for the record, plenty of audiophiles use AKG and JBL (And Klipsch, and old Altec speakers) instead of exotic boutique brands sprinkled with pixie dust backed up by dubious pseudo-science.
I dearly miss the BBS experience, both as a user and sysop.
A guy in Biloxi, MS got me into the sysop side of things, he ran QuickBBS, I ended up with RemoteAccess Pro with FrontDoor handling the mail. Two nodes, one on a built-from-spare-parts 386, one on a Packard Bell 486 that had been demoted from desktop use. One 28.8 line, one 14.4. The 14.4 handled ZMH.
The menus always evolved, first garish, then I toned it all back down to something simple, elegant and quick. I did admire ACiD and their crazy ansi stuff.
Was a member of FidoNet, carried quite a bit of echos and moved a fair bit of netmail, and was an avid reader of Mindless Chatter and Drivel, and of course the echos dedicated to RA and FD.
Had TW2000, Yankees and Rednecks, LORD and some others I can't even remember, this was 20 years ago!
I did had a fairly sizable file collection, and a real neat piece of gear to serve up a lot of files on CDs: A NEC SCSI 5-CD-ROM changer. It was a trip to be in the room, hear the whirr-click-clack-shhk-shhk of the changer loading a given disk, then seeking to where the file was. "There goes another one!"
It was all strictly hobby, no fee, no membership. Send me a check if you want, or buy me a beer at a BBS pizza night.
Ah.. those were the days. Then in 1998 I unplugged it, and never put it up again.
I long ago lost the diskettes for RemoteAccess Pro, but I still have the Front Door disks, in the envelope they shipped in, with the original invoice still intact.
This is payback for the Powell Memo and the implementation of policy built on its recommendations, which gave rise to many a pro-large-industry thinktanks and universities and the corruption of existing universities. Ultimately, these policies led us to where we are today.
Both sides share the blame. Enjoy the hangover, USA.. but this was a drink we desperately needed.
What grinds my gears? People with headphones that leak sound. "Waaah I have headphones, why do you bother me?" "Because they're open.. because you play way too loud."
Open radios are even worse. The one guy that just has to force his music on the entire group of workers.
The antidote? Absolutely nerdy AKG K271S headphones. Sealed, I don't hear them, they don't hear me, and they look like something a WWII tank commander would wear. I bought them for the sound quality and isolation. Ruler-flat response and ruthlessly honest.
I've not worked in an open office since 1999, but I have no love for them. I'm actually a bit confused by their re-emergence. There's a happy medium and some companies have found it. I wish more did.
I got those AKGs a decade ago. Best office well-being purchase I ever made. Back then they were Made in Austria.. today they're Made in China... after Harman Kardon bought AGK. I have a MIC pair.. they sound just as nice. I have them at home, so I don't have to listen to the neighbor across the street blast his music while I'm trying to enjoy a book, a cigar, and a whisky.
White background hurting your eyes? Maybe your monitor's too bright. Easy to fix. Set ambient light to where you use your monitor the most. Take a piece of white paper, set it on your desk. Now put a white background site on your browser.. say.. slashdot, as an example.
Now turn the brightness up or down on your monitor until the intensity of the white background matches the intensity of the white paper. Problem fixed! Does your ambient light vary? Get intimate with your Brightness control!
Some monitors do this automatically, as do most phones and pads. I'm frankly amazed by how many people have the brightness setting on their monitors at or near full intensity in a place with low-to-moderate ambient light.
If you have a crap monitor with crap defaults, you can use Huey or something like it to correct your crap color gamma, etc. Like my desktop's monitor: I have an ancient Acer 24 inch with horrible defaults. It's so much work to tweak that I just use Huey. My Dell E6420 laptop, in comparison, has a glorious screen that requires no color or gamma adjustment to look awesome. I just vary the brightness according to environment. (yes, I know there was an option for auto adjust on the 6420, but alas, I bought mine used and then retrofitted the backlit keyboard and "hd" screen, I don't see a way to retrofit auto brightness)
As to text / widgets with low contrast relative to the background.. yeah.. that's a bone-headed design and will only be cured by time, when something worse replaces it.
It's all about $$$, is Apple willing to shell $400m for such privilege?
Nah, Apple will build a (walled) garden around the NFL, and make the NFL pay for it.
Oblig. wall jokes aside, it's all about the $$$ until the client decides the product is bunk and demands the vendor deliver on promises, backed by a team of legal sharks.
But when I have.. which is maybe 2 or 3 times, it was the 12w iPad charger. I made double sure I selected the "sold by and ships from Amazon" option, no matter how hard it was buried.
The rest of the times I've needed anything Apple related i got it at Worst Buy.
Why do people not make sure that the seller is Amazon and not some shady 3rd party? Yes yes yes, I @#!$% know Amazon many times sets the default to "some random chinese faker".. but really? People don't check it? I do. Every single time. For everything I buy. The rare exceptions are when it says "sold by blah and Fulfilled by Amazon"
The electronics portion was designed by Tom Holman. Do you think these speakers count as THX Certified?
If they don't have the THX logo, they aren't. But that doesn't mean much anymore. In the end, I think THX was a joke, applied to tiny desktop speakers.
That Holman designed the electronics in your speakers probably assure they are of higher quality, even if the THX logo isn't on them.
I read Holman joined Apple in 2011. (as per wikipedia article on Holman). I think this is a good arrangement, Apple, for as much hate as people heap on them, do care about sound quality. I bet they can take the syrupy bass-heavy Beats and make them sound good. Y'know, like AKG or Sennheiser or Koss or Grado or... well, anyone other than Beats have for the past six or so decades.
Tomlinson Holman, the TH in THX, left THX to co-found Audessey.
For those not in the know, the Audessey calibration system and hardware many home cinema receivers come with addresses the problems the great majority of users have: Room correction and EQ. It did to home cinema what THX did to the movie studio mixing room and movie theater.
Of course, just using Audessey is not going to be a magic bullet. You still need to have a room with good control over ringing, etc. You still have to know where to put your speakers. And you still need your speakers to be at least in the same family. But if you put in the effort, start with semi-competent hardware and maybe tweak a little what Audessey comes up with, you will have sound better than most has-been multiplexes.
In short, Tomlinson Holman has done more for movie sound in the cinema and in the home than people realize.
The German side of WWII was started by a false-flag attack on a radio station and a suspicious fire on the Reichstag building. Minor things on their own, but were leveraged into a full invasion of Poland, and well, you know the rest.
Obama has previously declared that cyber intrusions may be dealt with in meatspace with real weapons. Given all the recent hubbub about supposedly russian h4xx0rz, would it truly be beyond reason that this could escalate hidden in plain view?
I used to think the tinfoil brigade were paranoid weirdos, but now I wonder if they were right all along: They are *all* out to get you.
Slashdot Mirror
...when they scrape it off my cold, dead lungs.
Orwell was too narrow in how omnipresent and omniscient Big Brother is.
I"m a LUDDITE! I like small phones that aren't impossibly thin and obnoxiously wide and tall.. So yeah, I like like a 5S or iPhone SE. Thick enough to not have thermal detonation issues, thick enough for my fingers to actually grab to something other than a near knife-edge, thick enough to not destroy the chips within (touch-disease, anyone?)
5S / SE is perfection. It could be argued that 4 / 4S was perfection, but they were too heavy and in the hands of the clumsy the rear glass could easily break. Beautifully made, though - that stepped bezel - anyone else notice it was a dozen or so little steps milled out of the stainless slab? No? no one else notices little touches like that? Or like the 4 / 4S and 5 / 5S / SE have a very slight concave shape all around the periphery? Maaaaybe to let your fingers lift it from a surface easily?
Huh. I"m betting some of you did notice these little things.
This is the IT version of sending manufacturing jobs overseas. While I was not a "rah rah buy 'Murican" I agree that certain things must be built here. Or in their country of origin. Seeing my projector from Panasonic say "Made in China" is as sad as seeing a "Made in China" on the back of my iphone, my monitor, and some of my speakers - Klipsch - which USED to be built in Hope, Arkansas. Some models still are, but not the affordable stuff.
So no... I will not shed a tear for these Indian companies, nor for the asshats who hire them.
Wow. I've become an Angry Old Man!
Why are these people further polluting my gasoline with this crap? Today's cars are designed for 10% ethanol in the gasoline. What's going to happen when they keep polluting the fuel? Broken seals? Broken fuel pumps? Outright degradation of the metals used in the engine?
Fuck congress. Electing Trump was throwing an (figurative) (ethanol-polluted) Molotov Cocktail at the white house, now Congress must be cleansed as well.
My 5S exhibited this battery problem once - went from 30% to about 5% in maybe 5 minutes.
The curious thing is, this was with 10.1.0. With 10.1.1 it has been just fine... and I'm one who uses this phone to make actual phone calls (not facetime, not sms, not imessage) that last 3, 4 hours. I also watch video on it, listen to music, stream to apple tv.. so yeah, this old phone gets used.
So, maybe this is model dependent? TFS says "older hardware" but my "old" 5S doesn't do this.
I do the bulk of amazon shopping on my 5S, with a screen some allege it way too small in this era of surfboard-sized phones.
I find the app quite useful, I don't have to pinch zoom, I can read the reviews and product info just fine.. even with eyes that can't see clearly without glasses except at precisely 3.5 inches away. I can read this app with my progressives no problem.
Maybe everyone else's mobile app sucks?
So long, AKG, JBL.. it was nice knowing you and owning some of your products over the years.. and enjoying some behind-the-movie-screen* without ever seeing them.
I fear for the future of these two brands. They still offer genuine pro-quality performance and worry that Samsung won't respect the heritage of both names and encourage growth and R&D for improving the breed.
Both are the real deal, not audiophile voodoo. And for the record, plenty of audiophiles use AKG and JBL (And Klipsch, and old Altec speakers) instead of exotic boutique brands sprinkled with pixie dust backed up by dubious pseudo-science.
I dearly miss the BBS experience, both as a user and sysop.
A guy in Biloxi, MS got me into the sysop side of things, he ran QuickBBS, I ended up with RemoteAccess Pro with FrontDoor handling the mail. Two nodes, one on a built-from-spare-parts 386, one on a Packard Bell 486 that had been demoted from desktop use. One 28.8 line, one 14.4. The 14.4 handled ZMH.
The menus always evolved, first garish, then I toned it all back down to something simple, elegant and quick. I did admire ACiD and their crazy ansi stuff.
Was a member of FidoNet, carried quite a bit of echos and moved a fair bit of netmail, and was an avid reader of Mindless Chatter and Drivel, and of course the echos dedicated to RA and FD.
Had TW2000, Yankees and Rednecks, LORD and some others I can't even remember, this was 20 years ago!
I did had a fairly sizable file collection, and a real neat piece of gear to serve up a lot of files on CDs: A NEC SCSI 5-CD-ROM changer. It was a trip to be in the room, hear the whirr-click-clack-shhk-shhk of the changer loading a given disk, then seeking to where the file was. "There goes another one!"
It was all strictly hobby, no fee, no membership. Send me a check if you want, or buy me a beer at a BBS pizza night.
Ah.. those were the days. Then in 1998 I unplugged it, and never put it up again.
I long ago lost the diskettes for RemoteAccess Pro, but I still have the Front Door disks, in the envelope they shipped in, with the original invoice still intact.
...I, for one, would welcome the news of my untimely death.
Most, if not all, of that corruption came from the implementation of the Powell Memo.
Now, to get rid of Citizen's United and abolish superPACs.
This is payback for the Powell Memo and the implementation of policy built on its recommendations, which gave rise to many a pro-large-industry thinktanks and universities and the corruption of existing universities. Ultimately, these policies led us to where we are today.
Both sides share the blame. Enjoy the hangover, USA.. but this was a drink we desperately needed.
What grinds my gears? People with headphones that leak sound. "Waaah I have headphones, why do you bother me?" "Because they're open.. because you play way too loud."
Open radios are even worse. The one guy that just has to force his music on the entire group of workers.
The antidote? Absolutely nerdy AKG K271S headphones. Sealed, I don't hear them, they don't hear me, and they look like something a WWII tank commander would wear. I bought them for the sound quality and isolation. Ruler-flat response and ruthlessly honest.
I've not worked in an open office since 1999, but I have no love for them. I'm actually a bit confused by their re-emergence. There's a happy medium and some companies have found it. I wish more did.
I got those AKGs a decade ago. Best office well-being purchase I ever made. Back then they were Made in Austria.. today they're Made in China... after Harman Kardon bought AGK. I have a MIC pair.. they sound just as nice. I have them at home, so I don't have to listen to the neighbor across the street blast his music while I'm trying to enjoy a book, a cigar, and a whisky.
White background hurting your eyes? Maybe your monitor's too bright. Easy to fix. Set ambient light to where you use your monitor the most. Take a piece of white paper, set it on your desk. Now put a white background site on your browser.. say.. slashdot, as an example.
Now turn the brightness up or down on your monitor until the intensity of the white background matches the intensity of the white paper. Problem fixed! Does your ambient light vary? Get intimate with your Brightness control!
Some monitors do this automatically, as do most phones and pads. I'm frankly amazed by how many people have the brightness setting on their monitors at or near full intensity in a place with low-to-moderate ambient light.
If you have a crap monitor with crap defaults, you can use Huey or something like it to correct your crap color gamma, etc. Like my desktop's monitor: I have an ancient Acer 24 inch with horrible defaults. It's so much work to tweak that I just use Huey. My Dell E6420 laptop, in comparison, has a glorious screen that requires no color or gamma adjustment to look awesome. I just vary the brightness according to environment. (yes, I know there was an option for auto adjust on the 6420, but alas, I bought mine used and then retrofitted the backlit keyboard and "hd" screen, I don't see a way to retrofit auto brightness)
As to text / widgets with low contrast relative to the background.. yeah.. that's a bone-headed design and will only be cured by time, when something worse replaces it.
It's all about $$$, is Apple willing to shell $400m for such privilege?
Nah, Apple will build a (walled) garden around the NFL, and make the NFL pay for it.
Oblig. wall jokes aside, it's all about the $$$ until the client decides the product is bunk and demands the vendor deliver on promises, backed by a team of legal sharks.
That should be called: WalmartExxonGoogleAppleGoldman, or WEGAG.
Oh, for mod points...
Why not use something airline pilots are already using?
Good enough for commercial aviation, good enough for pro football?
Buy n' Large
BnL will take care of all your sociopolitical needs as well as the material ones.
This is the logical conclusion of today's course -- the overt, out-of-the-closet marriage between Industry and Government.
.... or by the 2nd?
Looks like the shoe's on the other foot, at least for their 15 minutes of Internet infamy, whomever did this.
I made double sure I selected the "sold by and ships from Amazon" option, no matter how hard it was buried.
Bah.. n'ermind, this also affects "sold by and ships from amazon."
But when I have.. which is maybe 2 or 3 times, it was the 12w iPad charger. I made double sure I selected the "sold by and ships from Amazon" option, no matter how hard it was buried.
The rest of the times I've needed anything Apple related i got it at Worst Buy.
Why do people not make sure that the seller is Amazon and not some shady 3rd party? Yes yes yes, I @#!$% know Amazon many times sets the default to "some random chinese faker".. but really? People don't check it? I do. Every single time. For everything I buy. The rare exceptions are when it says "sold by blah and Fulfilled by Amazon"
Tomlinson Holman Crossover (X-over)
Also Tomlinson Holman eXperiment
In any case, yes, an homage to THX1138
And for ink and paint lovers of a certain age, there's "THUD - The Audience Is Now Deaf"
The electronics portion was designed by Tom Holman. Do you think these speakers count as THX Certified?
If they don't have the THX logo, they aren't. But that doesn't mean much anymore. In the end, I think THX was a joke, applied to tiny desktop speakers.
That Holman designed the electronics in your speakers probably assure they are of higher quality, even if the THX logo isn't on them.
I read Holman joined Apple in 2011. (as per wikipedia article on Holman). I think this is a good arrangement, Apple, for as much hate as people heap on them, do care about sound quality. I bet they can take the syrupy bass-heavy Beats and make them sound good. Y'know, like AKG or Sennheiser or Koss or Grado or ... well, anyone other than Beats have for the past six or so decades.
Tomlinson Holman, the TH in THX, left THX to co-found Audessey.
For those not in the know, the Audessey calibration system and hardware many home cinema receivers come with addresses the problems the great majority of users have: Room correction and EQ. It did to home cinema what THX did to the movie studio mixing room and movie theater.
Of course, just using Audessey is not going to be a magic bullet. You still need to have a room with good control over ringing, etc. You still have to know where to put your speakers. And you still need your speakers to be at least in the same family. But if you put in the effort, start with semi-competent hardware and maybe tweak a little what Audessey comes up with, you will have sound better than most has-been multiplexes.
In short, Tomlinson Holman has done more for movie sound in the cinema and in the home than people realize.
The German side of WWII was started by a false-flag attack on a radio station and a suspicious fire on the Reichstag building. Minor things on their own, but were leveraged into a full invasion of Poland, and well, you know the rest.
Obama has previously declared that cyber intrusions may be dealt with in meatspace with real weapons. Given all the recent hubbub about supposedly russian h4xx0rz, would it truly be beyond reason that this could escalate hidden in plain view?
I used to think the tinfoil brigade were paranoid weirdos, but now I wonder if they were right all along: They are *all* out to get you.
...and so starts WW III
Or maybe it's just a storm in a teacup. Can't say quite yet.