It doesn't sound like you're too big a fan of city life in general, though.
I've lived in cities and large metro areas before. I used to live outside NYC, and wouldn't mind living in Manhattan if I could find a job that paid well, but the industries there don't work too well with my skillset and I really don't like the idea of working in finance.
I just don't like the idea of DSL speeds. As the other poster noted, if you have Comcast and those speeds, you don't live in Seattle. Other cities don't have that problem.
That's pretty stupid. A "shill", by definition, is someone who is paid to act as a supporter for a product or company. Linux isn't a company, and there's been no evidence that any Linux companies like Red Hat have employed shills the way MS does with their "Technical Evangelists".
I'm not so sure about NK. You can really only stay there as a tourist, and that's for a limited duration. At least with Russia, as Snowden has shown, it's completely possible to go over there and obtain gainful employment if you have decent skills.
Well there's the Samsung Galaxy S4, which I just got recently. It's a couple years old now, but it meets 2 of your 3 factors, plus the removable battery. It only has 2GB RAM instead of 3 though, but it seems to work well enough for me, even with the Samsung bloatware/crapware on it. You can always install CyanogenMod on it to get rid of that. The screen is right at 5". You can also go for the S5 which is 5.1" and adds a waterproof case and Gorilla Glass 3 (but still only 2GB).
Honestly, I don't know why 3GB is important to you. You don't need it for simple web-browsing.
Sounds reasonable, but it doesn't seem many people agree with you, or else sales of the phablets and near-phablets wouldn't be doing so well. Companies can only sell what people are willing to purchase. If people don't want something, it won't sell. So (assuming there isn't a monopoly or oligopoly situation going on) if a bunch of people are complaining about a lack of choices, then there's only a few possibilities: 1) those people are a vocal minority, 2) what the people want just isn't feasible technically or logistically, or 3) the majority of people are acting like stupid sheep.
Unfortunately, it does seem like #3 is a significant factor at times. But with Android phones, there is a large amount of selection.
A FedEx driver isn't a "random person"? I don't know about you, but I have no idea who the typical people who deliver USPS, UPS, and FedEx packages to me are. They might be wearing a uniform, but that doesn't mean much; anyone can get one of those. It's amazing how much trust we place in people wearing uniforms.
The only way I see this being worthwhile is if you can plan it out so that you can swing by the Amazon warehouse and grab some stuff and deliver it to a place that happens to be along a route you're already traveling along, such as your commute home.
If they get one driver to deliver a bunch of packages to a group of closely-located addresses which is 15 minutes away, it'll be a lot cheaper than paying FedEx $5-10/box.
That's why you don't live in a small city. You thought the reduced cost of living was free? It comes at the expense of reduced quality of life.
Not always true. This story is about a delivery service by Amazon which is being tried out in Seattle. Seattle has no broadband internet service. I live in a tiny town and I can watch Netflix, which is something that people in Seattle cannot do. I'm already thinking about where I want to move next in a year or three, and while I am looking at larger cities, Seattle's been crossed off my list for that reason alone. I'm not moving any place that's so horribly run that they can't even get some kind of decent broadband service in place.
And why the hell would you outsource grocery shopping of all things? Someone else doesn't know what things I might like (unless she's married to me...), or what brands I do and don't like, or what I might want to buy on a whim. That's just ridiculous.
And why would I want some stranger stomping around my house just to fix a leaky toilet when I can do it myself in 5 minutes?
Or have someone else do my laundry and screw it up with too much bleach? I used to have a wife who thought like you, and wanted to hire domestic help for stuff like that. I got a bunch of broken glasses and dishes and a ton of completely ruined laundry as a result. The only thing that housekeeper was good at was hiding all her mistakes for as long as possible. The reason people get jobs like that is because they're too stupid to get a normal job that pays better, and I have better things to do with my time and money than go buy new glasses and dishes and clothing and sheets constantly. (And again, that's something else that can't be outsourced, because I'm not going to be happy with what someone else picks out for me.)
So while these people might enjoy getting Amazon packages delivered to them in an hour, they're going to have a miserable time just browsing the Amazon website with ~128kbps DSL to make these purchases.
I live in a rather rural area currently (a very very small town) and I have very fast cable internet, and have no problems watching Netflix, something that people in Seattle simply cannot do.
What are you talking about? The comments I see aren't poo-pooing emulation, they're poo-pooing *browser-based* emulation. Maybe you've gotten too old and forgotten, but I actually remember the days when applications ran natively on computers, rather than only in browsers with HTML5 and CSS and JavaScript. Native emulators for all these systems *already exist*, and have been around for many years, and they're naturally going to run far faster and have better features than anything that runs on a browser. Can a browser-based app save your NES game state at any arbitrary point so you can restore it? I doubt it. But I can easily do that with MESS, and I can play CastleVania without using all my (older) machine's memory too.
I recommend getting a holster. I understand wanting to be able to have your phone in your pocket for convenience, but seriously, a phone of any size in your pocket is still a pain if you're wearing jeans. A holster fixes all these problems.
What Google *really* screwed up on (yet again) is not putting in a removable battery or SDcard.
However, I will take this time to tout why the Android platform is superior to Apple: with Android, at least, if I don't like one company's phones (Google's for instance), I can go look at other company's phones and hopefully find something I like better, such as the Samsung Galaxy series before the stupid S6 removed these two features. With Apple, you're stuck with whatever they decide is best for you.
No, you're supposed to put all that stuff in the cloud. Then you're not supposed to worry about it when you get charged $$$ because you went way, way over your data plan allowance.
Yeah, but you're not supposed to need any mass storage on your phone, you're supposed to put everything in the cloud, and then pay hefty data charges to access it!!!
I even know at least one Android-using person who is thinking of switching to the iPhone because "What's the point without being able to swap batteries and SD cards?"
That's funny, I just picked up a phone with swappable batteries and SD cards: the Samsung Galaxy S4. It's not brand-new of course, but it works great for me, and I'm not really sure why I would need anything newer. It's even still supported by the manufacturer for software updates; I just got one last month. Or if I decide to move to CyanogenMod, it's well-supported there too, unlike most phones.
And if I do want something newer, I can upgrade to the Galaxy S5, which also has swappable batteries and SD cards, AND is waterproof!
(Of course, I'll avoid the Galaxy S6 since it eliminated all three of those features for some dumb reason, and added nothing of value.)
The S5 is only a year or so old at this point; why are fools like him deciding to abandon the platform just because these features are disappearing from this year's line-up? It's not like you have to change your phone every year.
Not a problem for him. He's not an employee or agent of the Russian government, or doing anything that annoys them. In fact, having him there basically lets Putin thumb his nose at the US, so he's welcome there.
Russia's basically one of those places where you're probably fairly safe, as long as you don't get on the wrong side of anyone who's too powerful.
In the movie, Milton won. He got all the money and retired to a small island. Isn't that what we all want?
Yep, it was great for Milton, not so much for the rest of the company which burned to the ground. That's basically the point: a useless EA is hurting rather than helping the company as a whole, while drawing a large paycheck for it.
Maybe, but I don't really see the problem here. This is the price you pay for using Apple products. You can't even install a different browser like Firefox on Apple's iCrap devices because they won't allow anything that doesn't use their own WebKit renderer, so everything is going to be stuck with whatever vulnerabilities that the regular Apple browser has.
Android has its issues to be sure, but at least you're allowed to install whatever browser you want on an Android device. So if the built-in one sucks, just install Firefox.
Yes, the on-screen keyboards on phones are a pain to type on. However, it's better than nothing at all, or in many cases trying to lug around a laptop. That's why many of us use them.
I guess if you never leave your parents' basement, then you might not see the use in a handheld mobile communication device with internet access.
I'm an introvert too, with a lot of the same traits ("if I am comfortable with you, I have a good time; if I just met you, I clam up" for instance).
However stage fright just isn't a problem for me. I can give a speech in front of a crowd easily. It's impersonal, so it doesn't really bother me, and the duration is usually highly limited. It's close, one-on-one interactions which really drain me, especially when they last all day.
Not me. This place is so full of trolls and shills it's really not much fun any more. Discussions like this are OK, but if it has anything to do with Linux it'll be filled with all kinds of caustic anti-Linux comments from MS "evangelists".
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It doesn't sound like you're too big a fan of city life in general, though.
I've lived in cities and large metro areas before. I used to live outside NYC, and wouldn't mind living in Manhattan if I could find a job that paid well, but the industries there don't work too well with my skillset and I really don't like the idea of working in finance.
I just don't like the idea of DSL speeds. As the other poster noted, if you have Comcast and those speeds, you don't live in Seattle. Other cities don't have that problem.
So what? It's all well-deserved and accurate. This place used to be a haven for FOSS fans about 15 years ago. Now, not so much.
That's pretty stupid. A "shill", by definition, is someone who is paid to act as a supporter for a product or company. Linux isn't a company, and there's been no evidence that any Linux companies like Red Hat have employed shills the way MS does with their "Technical Evangelists".
You can call Linux fans "fanbois" if you want.
I'm not so sure about NK. You can really only stay there as a tourist, and that's for a limited duration. At least with Russia, as Snowden has shown, it's completely possible to go over there and obtain gainful employment if you have decent skills.
Well there's the Samsung Galaxy S4, which I just got recently. It's a couple years old now, but it meets 2 of your 3 factors, plus the removable battery. It only has 2GB RAM instead of 3 though, but it seems to work well enough for me, even with the Samsung bloatware/crapware on it. You can always install CyanogenMod on it to get rid of that. The screen is right at 5". You can also go for the S5 which is 5.1" and adds a waterproof case and Gorilla Glass 3 (but still only 2GB).
Honestly, I don't know why 3GB is important to you. You don't need it for simple web-browsing.
Sounds reasonable, but it doesn't seem many people agree with you, or else sales of the phablets and near-phablets wouldn't be doing so well. Companies can only sell what people are willing to purchase. If people don't want something, it won't sell. So (assuming there isn't a monopoly or oligopoly situation going on) if a bunch of people are complaining about a lack of choices, then there's only a few possibilities: 1) those people are a vocal minority, 2) what the people want just isn't feasible technically or logistically, or 3) the majority of people are acting like stupid sheep.
Unfortunately, it does seem like #3 is a significant factor at times. But with Android phones, there is a large amount of selection.
A FedEx driver isn't a "random person"? I don't know about you, but I have no idea who the typical people who deliver USPS, UPS, and FedEx packages to me are. They might be wearing a uniform, but that doesn't mean much; anyone can get one of those. It's amazing how much trust we place in people wearing uniforms.
The only way I see this being worthwhile is if you can plan it out so that you can swing by the Amazon warehouse and grab some stuff and deliver it to a place that happens to be along a route you're already traveling along, such as your commute home.
If they get one driver to deliver a bunch of packages to a group of closely-located addresses which is 15 minutes away, it'll be a lot cheaper than paying FedEx $5-10/box.
That's why you don't live in a small city. You thought the reduced cost of living was free? It comes at the expense of reduced quality of life.
Not always true. This story is about a delivery service by Amazon which is being tried out in Seattle. Seattle has no broadband internet service. I live in a tiny town and I can watch Netflix, which is something that people in Seattle cannot do. I'm already thinking about where I want to move next in a year or three, and while I am looking at larger cities, Seattle's been crossed off my list for that reason alone. I'm not moving any place that's so horribly run that they can't even get some kind of decent broadband service in place.
And why the hell would you outsource grocery shopping of all things? Someone else doesn't know what things I might like (unless she's married to me...), or what brands I do and don't like, or what I might want to buy on a whim. That's just ridiculous.
And why would I want some stranger stomping around my house just to fix a leaky toilet when I can do it myself in 5 minutes?
Or have someone else do my laundry and screw it up with too much bleach? I used to have a wife who thought like you, and wanted to hire domestic help for stuff like that. I got a bunch of broken glasses and dishes and a ton of completely ruined laundry as a result. The only thing that housekeeper was good at was hiding all her mistakes for as long as possible. The reason people get jobs like that is because they're too stupid to get a normal job that pays better, and I have better things to do with my time and money than go buy new glasses and dishes and clothing and sheets constantly. (And again, that's something else that can't be outsourced, because I'm not going to be happy with what someone else picks out for me.)
Do you have high-speed internet? (I mean higher than slow-ass DSL)
If so, then don't worry, you're doing better than everyone who's getting this. They're in Seattle. Seattle has no high-speed internet.
So while these people might enjoy getting Amazon packages delivered to them in an hour, they're going to have a miserable time just browsing the Amazon website with ~128kbps DSL to make these purchases.
I live in a rather rural area currently (a very very small town) and I have very fast cable internet, and have no problems watching Netflix, something that people in Seattle simply cannot do.
What are you talking about? The comments I see aren't poo-pooing emulation, they're poo-pooing *browser-based* emulation. Maybe you've gotten too old and forgotten, but I actually remember the days when applications ran natively on computers, rather than only in browsers with HTML5 and CSS and JavaScript. Native emulators for all these systems *already exist*, and have been around for many years, and they're naturally going to run far faster and have better features than anything that runs on a browser. Can a browser-based app save your NES game state at any arbitrary point so you can restore it? I doubt it. But I can easily do that with MESS, and I can play CastleVania without using all my (older) machine's memory too.
I recommend getting a holster. I understand wanting to be able to have your phone in your pocket for convenience, but seriously, a phone of any size in your pocket is still a pain if you're wearing jeans. A holster fixes all these problems.
What Google *really* screwed up on (yet again) is not putting in a removable battery or SDcard.
However, I will take this time to tout why the Android platform is superior to Apple: with Android, at least, if I don't like one company's phones (Google's for instance), I can go look at other company's phones and hopefully find something I like better, such as the Samsung Galaxy series before the stupid S6 removed these two features. With Apple, you're stuck with whatever they decide is best for you.
No, you're supposed to put all that stuff in the cloud. Then you're not supposed to worry about it when you get charged $$$ because you went way, way over your data plan allowance.
Yeah, but you're not supposed to need any mass storage on your phone, you're supposed to put everything in the cloud, and then pay hefty data charges to access it!!!
I even know at least one Android-using person who is thinking of switching to the iPhone because "What's the point without being able to swap batteries and SD cards?"
That's funny, I just picked up a phone with swappable batteries and SD cards: the Samsung Galaxy S4. It's not brand-new of course, but it works great for me, and I'm not really sure why I would need anything newer. It's even still supported by the manufacturer for software updates; I just got one last month. Or if I decide to move to CyanogenMod, it's well-supported there too, unlike most phones.
And if I do want something newer, I can upgrade to the Galaxy S5, which also has swappable batteries and SD cards, AND is waterproof!
(Of course, I'll avoid the Galaxy S6 since it eliminated all three of those features for some dumb reason, and added nothing of value.)
The S5 is only a year or so old at this point; why are fools like him deciding to abandon the platform just because these features are disappearing from this year's line-up? It's not like you have to change your phone every year.
Not a problem for him. He's not an employee or agent of the Russian government, or doing anything that annoys them. In fact, having him there basically lets Putin thumb his nose at the US, so he's welcome there.
Russia's basically one of those places where you're probably fairly safe, as long as you don't get on the wrong side of anyone who's too powerful.
In the movie, Milton won. He got all the money and retired to a small island. Isn't that what we all want?
Yep, it was great for Milton, not so much for the rest of the company which burned to the ground. That's basically the point: a useless EA is hurting rather than helping the company as a whole, while drawing a large paycheck for it.
Someone else who's been in a cave for two decades.
Have you been living in a cave for the past couple of decades? The movie Office Space came out in 1999.
Maybe, but I don't really see the problem here. This is the price you pay for using Apple products. You can't even install a different browser like Firefox on Apple's iCrap devices because they won't allow anything that doesn't use their own WebKit renderer, so everything is going to be stuck with whatever vulnerabilities that the regular Apple browser has.
Android has its issues to be sure, but at least you're allowed to install whatever browser you want on an Android device. So if the built-in one sucks, just install Firefox.
Yes, the on-screen keyboards on phones are a pain to type on. However, it's better than nothing at all, or in many cases trying to lug around a laptop. That's why many of us use them.
I guess if you never leave your parents' basement, then you might not see the use in a handheld mobile communication device with internet access.
Do you not understand what server-side scripting is?
Hint: it's different from client-side scripting. And turning off JavaScript in your browser has no effect on it.
I'm an introvert too, with a lot of the same traits ("if I am comfortable with you, I have a good time; if I just met you, I clam up" for instance).
However stage fright just isn't a problem for me. I can give a speech in front of a crowd easily. It's impersonal, so it doesn't really bother me, and the duration is usually highly limited. It's close, one-on-one interactions which really drain me, especially when they last all day.
Not me. This place is so full of trolls and shills it's really not much fun any more. Discussions like this are OK, but if it has anything to do with Linux it'll be filled with all kinds of caustic anti-Linux comments from MS "evangelists".