What I don't know, however, is why they would need "connectivity." Why do you need wi-fi operating your iPad or Surface if you have all of the relevant info on the device? If they don't have all the relevant info on the device, what do they need it for?
This is easy to explain: even though everyone's devices now have many gigabytes of storage built-in (terabytes now for PCs and laptops), no one actually wants to use that storage for anything, and they want to stream everything from "the cloud".
Whenever Satya decides to go into full extortion mode
I seriously look forward to that day. I'm already having a great time watching the fireworks with all his moves so far, and enjoy watching users suffer with debacle after debacle.
I have long, thin fingers and I'm extremely dexterous and do just fine with touch panels on payment kiosks, phones, etc. (I also play guitar, which requires dexterity.) But even despite all this, the tapping function on touchpads always screws me up. IMO, it's a fundamentally stupid feature: the touchpad on a laptop is always just below the keyboard, where the wrists normally rest (or at least hover above), so there's no way to avoid touching it from time to time. If an inadvertent touch just moves the mouse cursor slightly, no big deal, but if it registers as a click, it can have all kinds of nasty effects.
But the answer is simple: turn the fucking thing off!!! I've never seen a computer (Windows or Linux) where there wasn't a configuration option to disable "tapping". I just configure mine to only allow standard mouse-cursor movement, and 2-finger scrolling, and that's it. Any special corner actions are disabled too because those are just going to cause problems like tapping.
WTF? That's a terrible analogy. No one has ever replaced a stereo system (the kind with separate speakers) with a portable music player and headphones. That's like replacing a car with a bicycle. They're both useful, but in different ways and for different purposes. Proof: get out your phone, plug in your headphones, put them in your ears, then play some song you really like for your friend who's in the same room with you. Whoops, they can't hear it! Then take out the headphones and play it on the single tiny speaker. It sounds like crap (actually, it's pretty impressive how good such small devices sound these days, but it's still nothing like real stereo speakers).
For publicly playing music in a way multiple people in a room can hear it, or for playing music so that you don't need to continually wear uncomfortable head/ear phones, nothing will replace speakers, which need some kind of amplifier to drive them.
Now what *has* changed is what kind of equipment you need for great sound. Instead of a giant rack-mount or component setup, all you really need is a single "receiver" which generally has everything integrated except the speakers. They can even play music files off a USB stick or your PC, and this has been around for at least 10 years now.
No, not any touchpad supports multi-touch. It's implemented in the sensor interface IC (which itself is likely a small pre-programmed microcontroller on an ASIC), which usually communicates with the CPU over a SPI or USB bus. Drivers (in the OS) aren't going to help with it. You can see this in Linux already: in KDE, for instance, certain touchpad features will be enabled or disabled depending on your hardware. Basically, older hardware doesn't support multi-finger touch, or it can't detect as many simultaneous fingers as the newest stuff.
I disagree slightly. I always turn off "tapping" on any computer I have control of, because that causes all kinds of problems when I brush the touchpad with my hand while typing.
However, I *do* keep 2-finger scrolling enabled. That's the *one* thing I've found that touchpads are really quite useful for. On a desktop PC, it's not necessary because modern mice have scroll wheels, but on a laptop without a mouse plugged in, the 2-finger scroll gesture substitutes for this incredibly handy mouse feature. There's a reason the scroll wheel took off so quickly when it was introduced years ago.
Am I the only one who doesn't have this problem? It's really easy to avoid, at least on a computer you own or control: just go to your system settings, and disable "tapping". That's it. Tapping is what causes this problem; if you disable it, then an errant flick of the touchpad does nothing more than move your mouse cursor a little, which isn't a problem as long as you don't have a focus-follows-mouse DE.
I *do* really, really, really hate using someone else's laptop, however, because of this very problem. For some reason, everyone else on the planet leaves tapping enabled, and then just complains about this kind of thing. I've tried suggesting to people that I could disable this for them but almost no one takes me up on it.
Tapping is incredibly, incredibly stupid. Every decent touchpad I've ever seen has separate, physical buttons, so tapping just isn't necessary. Maybe stupid Macs don't have buttons and need it, but that just proves Macs are unusable crap if they allow you to cause inadvertent actions by accidentally brushing the touchpad when you're typing, which is hard to avoid when the touchpad is right under your hands as you type.
I'm not sure you can get pain and suffering compensation because you got butt hurt over Apple fanboi comments on your Facebook feed.
That's easy to fix: immediately defriend and blacklist anyone like that. Anyone that obnoxious and annoying (like "macs4all" on here) is not your friend, and doesn't deserve any of your time or attention.
I don't have this problem, and I'm very, very happy with my phone selection. I have a Samsung Galaxy S5. It's waterproof, it has an easily-removable battery, it has an SDcard slot, it has a gorgeous AMOLED screen, it's still getting updates, and on top of that it's super cheap since you can get them on Ebay now for $150-200 (brand-new ones are selling for just over $200 last time I checked). I'm really not sure why I'd want something newer and fancier, at least for the foreseeable future. Why should I care about even higher resolution than what I have now (which is already extremely high)? I doubt I'd be able to tell the difference, plus I don't watch movies on this thing. Why do I need more processing power? It's already extremely responsive.
AFAIC, phones have really plateaued, much like computers did about 4-5 years ago: upgrading to the newest model really doesn't get you anything all that worthwhile, because the older models are already "good enough". There just isn't a good reason to get a brand-new phone any more.
Personally, I'm really curious what the problem with these batteries is anyway. I can buy all kinds of cheap replacement batteries for phones in the S4-S5 generation off Ebay, many of them non-OEM, and these don't have a lot of problems exploding. If you can buy cheap aftermarket batteries from China that don't catch fire and explode, then what is Samsung doing wrong with their OEM Note7 batteries?
How about old hardware? I have an ancient Creative EMU 0404 USB audio interface with two XLR inputs. After El Capitan, forget about that old (64bit intel!) driver still working. On Linux or Windows? No problem. It'll probably run as long as the thing still works.
Huh? I've heard tons of complaints from Windows users about old hardware no longer being supported on new Windows versions because the drivers aren't fully compatible, and being forced to toss out perfectly good hardware because they "upgraded" Windows.
The only place where this doesn't happen is Linux. Something has to be *really* old for Linux to drop support, such as when they finally dropped the floppy-tape driver (remember those old QIC40/80 cartridge drives that connected to your floppy drive interface?) probably a decade after these things had really become museum pieces.
Apple is so focused on selling iPhones and iPads, they simply don't care about customer needs any more. It can be a damn nightmare to get real work done.
If you want to get real work done without your OS vendor throwing up roadblocks, the *only* serious choice is Linux. Apple, as you say, is too focused on selling mobile fashion accessories, and Microsoft is too busy adding advertising and spy/malware and broken updates to their OS. If you want real stability, get a solid Linux distro and use a LTS version of it.
I'm not understanding your beef with Qt5. I'm not an expert on Qt5 specifically (I have direct experience with Qt4), but Qt has been used for quite some time in embedded systems, in fact that's one of it's big money-makers, and embedded systems do *not* run Intel CPUs of any kind, they overwhelmingly use ARMs. In fact, performance is generally cited as one of Qt's strengths, even compared to Gtk. LXDE switched to Qt because of all the problems with Gtk under Gnome's stewardship, and according to the LXDE team, their performance with Qt was no worse.
As for what's gained in going from Gtk2->3, probably about the same thing as going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 (i.e. nothing good). Reportedly, the maintenance of it is abysmal, as the Gnome team completely disregards all non-Gnome use of the library and will remove useful features willy-nilly with no notice, hence why projects like LXDE have jumped ship.
I've tried pairing my phone to Ford cars, and it never works. It pairs, but then: zilch.... Phone doesn't function through the car. I always carry - YES - a 3.5 audio cable and connect the phone through the headphone jack to hear music.
Not any more you don't, if you have an iPhone, since the new iPhone doesn't have a headphone jack. You need to use Bluetooth audio with the new iPhone. Except that doesn't work with your Ford! Oh well! Well, you can just get a Lightning-to-3.5 adapter cable... oh wait, now your phone will die since you can't charge and use the adapter at the same time!
As long as people keep buying Fords and Apples and MS software and other products this broken, we can expect more woes like this.
Wife has a Jeep Wrangler. A hoot to drive, but the engineering is the best combined efforts of Fiat and Chrysler engineers...about as shit as it sounds.
Yep, and a ridiculously inflated price tag too. Jeeps are like Harley Davidsons: horrible engineering, shit quality, and gigantic price tags. The only reason to buy one is "It's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand". Yeah, I guess I'm weird for not understanding why I should pay a lot of money for something with horrible quality and horrible engineering when I can get something else that's far better for less money.
Yep, but interesting how this doesn't stop people from continuing to use their crap all the time. Anyone who knows tech could have foretold a debacle when Ford partnered with MS, but that didn't stop one of the world's largest automakers from doing so, nor did it stop millions and millions of people from buying that crap (including a bunch of Slashdotters, complaining right here in this discussion today about how they love their Ford XYZ but absolutely despise the MS-based infotainment system in it--you didn't know this was going to be a big problem before you bought the car???).
Honestly, I think humans as a group are either actually insane, or far more stupid than I could have ever believed. Problems with MS software are nothing new (not to mention all their evil business dealings--"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run"), and yet people continue to buy and use their software, somehow thinking "it'll be different this time!!"
Android? I thought Ford switched from MS to QNX for their Sync systems.
As for assembly, I'm constantly glad my most recent car (well, plus most of my older cars too) was made in good ol' Japan. There's been several problems with the Mexican-built version of my Mazda, but the Japanese ones are usually problem-free (and mine has been completely problem-free; I always check when someone has a complaint about anything on the forum I frequent). I had toyed with the idea of trying out an American-made car this time around, but after the GM ignition switch fiasco, and then two giant problems with Fords (1: the problematic DSG transmissions, 2: the MyFordTouch debacle), plus constant quality problems with Chryslers (plus a lack of desirable cars from them), I decided against that. I'm really glad I stuck with Japanese-made.
(BTW, the one exception I've had was a 2005 Volvo, made in Belgium. That's been a great car too. The only thing I really don't like about it is that I haven't been able to get a service manual for it, probably because it's not such a mass-market car as my Mazda and doesn't have the enthusiast/DIY appeal this car does. The only other exceptions are the 70s/80s/early 90s GM and Ford cars my family had when I was young: holy shit, those cars were total garbage.)
Because not everyone else is like this. You don't see this crap very much in the embedded world, especially for safety-critical stuff. Avionics systems sure as hell aren't like this, and there's plenty of software-driven systems in modern cars which aren't like this either (ECUs, electric power steering systems (EPS), ABS/TCC/DST systems, SRS systems, I could go on and on. In most modern cars, these systems all work just fine and don't need continuous updates, it's just shitty GUI-based crap that does.
You might be right about Hondas only working well with iPhones. My mom has a '15 Odyssey and an iPhone (5-something), and I had zero problems getting them to sync for her. But I never tried it with my Samsung. If this is the case, that's rather disappointing.
That bit about BMW is rather galling, but somehow I'm not too surprised. The more I hear about those cars, the less I would ever want one; they just seem to be designed to extract as much money from owners as possible. I've been really happy with my '15 Mazda3: well-engineered, drives wonderfully, fantastic fuel economy, I really don't have any serious complaints though the infotainment system could be a bit less laggy. Oh yeah, Bluetooth works great in it, paired to my Galaxy S5.
The high belt lines in modern cars are necessary for crash protection. They're not really a problem though as long as you get blind-spot monitors. But there's no way I'd get a modern car now without BSM and a rearview camera.
Yep, the MyFordTouch stuff was a major reason I didn't bother looking at Fords when I last got a car (even though they had switched away from MS by this time, I was car-shopping in May 2015). That, and also all the reviews slamming the DSG transmissions they were using.
I ended up getting a Mazda. It works great. Zero problems so far (except some asshole scraping the rear bumper when they backed out of a parking space), and Bluetooth works just great. It always auto-connects whenever I restart the car, and even lets me associate multiple devices with it. The system runs on Linux and is easy to get root access to so you can tweak it, and there's a healthy community of modders who have published many tweaks for it. The only downsides are 1) the system is a bit slow (I think it's because they're running on a JavaScript-based UI for some odd reason), and 2) it doesn't support Android Auto officially yet (there is an unofficial mod for it that adds this though--use at your own risk).
We're not talking about residential ISPs here, we're talking about mobile telcos. There's 4 main choices for that in the US: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The article even mentions that AT&T's and Verizon's plans are a response to the unlimited plans that T-Mobile and Sprint offer.
In addition to those 4, you can get phone service from myriad different resellers, which can be far cheaper than the plans the big boys offer, while still using their towers and networks. Personally, I have a Sprint phone that I use with Ting. I spend less than $20/month per person on my plan.
You're leaving out an extremely important point about Ting: you don't have to use their phones. You can buy any Sprint or T-Mobile phone you want and use it. Personally, I like the Galaxy S4 and S5 phones (I now have an S5 as the prices are about $150 for a really nice used one; the S4s are now under $100 for nice ones); they're still getting updates and are flagship phones. They also have great Otterbox cases available at cheap prices (because they're several years old now).
I have 3 phones on my Ting plan currently (3 users), and we pay about $50-55 per month total. It does help that we use WiFi calling apps while at home though. Ting is great because you only pay for what you use, so if your usage goes down, so does your bill. And there's no overage charges, you just pay more for more usage.
The only thing that's not as great about Ting is that, unlike Project Fi you mentioned, it can't switch between T-mo and Sprint networks, even though the phones should be compatible with both. Hopefully they'll figure out how to do that eventually, but it's a small company it looks like, so of course their development resources are going to be limited. In spite of their size though, I've had very good experiences when I've needed tech support (which was all through online chat). It's also generally pretty easy to do stuff on their website, like switching phones, provisioning new service, etc. But yeah, I'm sure you're right: if you're a really heavy phone (or data) user, it'll end up being more expensive than one of the unlimited plans from the main carriers.
It's simple: why should they care about long-term impacts? They'll have left the company with their golden parachute long before the shit hits the fan.
Your mistake is thinking that political and business leaders have any kind of conscience or care for the state of their nation in 10 years' time.
You're missing the fact that your MMORPG election has only two candidates. Candidate 1 is the one you're talking about, who's exploited the rules to his benefit (along with a bunch of other players who've done the same), and promises to fix this. Candidate 2 is good buddies with many of those other players who have also exploited the rules, has zero intention of changing them, but makes some lame excuses about how it's not politically feasible to change them.
Which one are you going to choose?
There's also a 3rd candidate you can choose, who's very unlikely to get elected, who says the rules are fine and that "The Invisible Hand!!!" will correct all wrongs....
Slashdot Mirror
What I don't know, however, is why they would need "connectivity." Why do you need wi-fi operating your iPad or Surface if you have all of the relevant info on the device? If they don't have all the relevant info on the device, what do they need it for?
This is easy to explain: even though everyone's devices now have many gigabytes of storage built-in (terabytes now for PCs and laptops), no one actually wants to use that storage for anything, and they want to stream everything from "the cloud".
Why? Because they're lemmings.
Whenever Satya decides to go into full extortion mode
I seriously look forward to that day. I'm already having a great time watching the fireworks with all his moves so far, and enjoy watching users suffer with debacle after debacle.
I'm sure the XCFE users disagree with you about that.
I have long, thin fingers and I'm extremely dexterous and do just fine with touch panels on payment kiosks, phones, etc. (I also play guitar, which requires dexterity.) But even despite all this, the tapping function on touchpads always screws me up. IMO, it's a fundamentally stupid feature: the touchpad on a laptop is always just below the keyboard, where the wrists normally rest (or at least hover above), so there's no way to avoid touching it from time to time. If an inadvertent touch just moves the mouse cursor slightly, no big deal, but if it registers as a click, it can have all kinds of nasty effects.
But the answer is simple: turn the fucking thing off!!! I've never seen a computer (Windows or Linux) where there wasn't a configuration option to disable "tapping". I just configure mine to only allow standard mouse-cursor movement, and 2-finger scrolling, and that's it. Any special corner actions are disabled too because those are just going to cause problems like tapping.
WTF? That's a terrible analogy. No one has ever replaced a stereo system (the kind with separate speakers) with a portable music player and headphones. That's like replacing a car with a bicycle. They're both useful, but in different ways and for different purposes. Proof: get out your phone, plug in your headphones, put them in your ears, then play some song you really like for your friend who's in the same room with you. Whoops, they can't hear it! Then take out the headphones and play it on the single tiny speaker. It sounds like crap (actually, it's pretty impressive how good such small devices sound these days, but it's still nothing like real stereo speakers).
For publicly playing music in a way multiple people in a room can hear it, or for playing music so that you don't need to continually wear uncomfortable head/ear phones, nothing will replace speakers, which need some kind of amplifier to drive them.
Now what *has* changed is what kind of equipment you need for great sound. Instead of a giant rack-mount or component setup, all you really need is a single "receiver" which generally has everything integrated except the speakers. They can even play music files off a USB stick or your PC, and this has been around for at least 10 years now.
Factually wrong.
No, not any touchpad supports multi-touch. It's implemented in the sensor interface IC (which itself is likely a small pre-programmed microcontroller on an ASIC), which usually communicates with the CPU over a SPI or USB bus. Drivers (in the OS) aren't going to help with it. You can see this in Linux already: in KDE, for instance, certain touchpad features will be enabled or disabled depending on your hardware. Basically, older hardware doesn't support multi-finger touch, or it can't detect as many simultaneous fingers as the newest stuff.
I disagree slightly. I always turn off "tapping" on any computer I have control of, because that causes all kinds of problems when I brush the touchpad with my hand while typing.
However, I *do* keep 2-finger scrolling enabled. That's the *one* thing I've found that touchpads are really quite useful for. On a desktop PC, it's not necessary because modern mice have scroll wheels, but on a laptop without a mouse plugged in, the 2-finger scroll gesture substitutes for this incredibly handy mouse feature. There's a reason the scroll wheel took off so quickly when it was introduced years ago.
Am I the only one who doesn't have this problem? It's really easy to avoid, at least on a computer you own or control: just go to your system settings, and disable "tapping". That's it. Tapping is what causes this problem; if you disable it, then an errant flick of the touchpad does nothing more than move your mouse cursor a little, which isn't a problem as long as you don't have a focus-follows-mouse DE.
I *do* really, really, really hate using someone else's laptop, however, because of this very problem. For some reason, everyone else on the planet leaves tapping enabled, and then just complains about this kind of thing. I've tried suggesting to people that I could disable this for them but almost no one takes me up on it.
Tapping is incredibly, incredibly stupid. Every decent touchpad I've ever seen has separate, physical buttons, so tapping just isn't necessary. Maybe stupid Macs don't have buttons and need it, but that just proves Macs are unusable crap if they allow you to cause inadvertent actions by accidentally brushing the touchpad when you're typing, which is hard to avoid when the touchpad is right under your hands as you type.
I'm not sure you can get pain and suffering compensation because you got butt hurt over Apple fanboi comments on your Facebook feed.
That's easy to fix: immediately defriend and blacklist anyone like that. Anyone that obnoxious and annoying (like "macs4all" on here) is not your friend, and doesn't deserve any of your time or attention.
I don't have this problem, and I'm very, very happy with my phone selection. I have a Samsung Galaxy S5. It's waterproof, it has an easily-removable battery, it has an SDcard slot, it has a gorgeous AMOLED screen, it's still getting updates, and on top of that it's super cheap since you can get them on Ebay now for $150-200 (brand-new ones are selling for just over $200 last time I checked). I'm really not sure why I'd want something newer and fancier, at least for the foreseeable future. Why should I care about even higher resolution than what I have now (which is already extremely high)? I doubt I'd be able to tell the difference, plus I don't watch movies on this thing. Why do I need more processing power? It's already extremely responsive.
AFAIC, phones have really plateaued, much like computers did about 4-5 years ago: upgrading to the newest model really doesn't get you anything all that worthwhile, because the older models are already "good enough". There just isn't a good reason to get a brand-new phone any more.
Personally, I'm really curious what the problem with these batteries is anyway. I can buy all kinds of cheap replacement batteries for phones in the S4-S5 generation off Ebay, many of them non-OEM, and these don't have a lot of problems exploding. If you can buy cheap aftermarket batteries from China that don't catch fire and explode, then what is Samsung doing wrong with their OEM Note7 batteries?
How about old hardware? I have an ancient Creative EMU 0404 USB audio interface with two XLR inputs. After El Capitan, forget about that old (64bit intel!) driver still working. On Linux or Windows? No problem. It'll probably run as long as the thing still works.
Huh? I've heard tons of complaints from Windows users about old hardware no longer being supported on new Windows versions because the drivers aren't fully compatible, and being forced to toss out perfectly good hardware because they "upgraded" Windows.
The only place where this doesn't happen is Linux. Something has to be *really* old for Linux to drop support, such as when they finally dropped the floppy-tape driver (remember those old QIC40/80 cartridge drives that connected to your floppy drive interface?) probably a decade after these things had really become museum pieces.
Apple is so focused on selling iPhones and iPads, they simply don't care about customer needs any more. It can be a damn nightmare to get real work done.
If you want to get real work done without your OS vendor throwing up roadblocks, the *only* serious choice is Linux. Apple, as you say, is too focused on selling mobile fashion accessories, and Microsoft is too busy adding advertising and spy/malware and broken updates to their OS. If you want real stability, get a solid Linux distro and use a LTS version of it.
I'm not understanding your beef with Qt5. I'm not an expert on Qt5 specifically (I have direct experience with Qt4), but Qt has been used for quite some time in embedded systems, in fact that's one of it's big money-makers, and embedded systems do *not* run Intel CPUs of any kind, they overwhelmingly use ARMs. In fact, performance is generally cited as one of Qt's strengths, even compared to Gtk. LXDE switched to Qt because of all the problems with Gtk under Gnome's stewardship, and according to the LXDE team, their performance with Qt was no worse.
As for what's gained in going from Gtk2->3, probably about the same thing as going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 (i.e. nothing good). Reportedly, the maintenance of it is abysmal, as the Gnome team completely disregards all non-Gnome use of the library and will remove useful features willy-nilly with no notice, hence why projects like LXDE have jumped ship.
I've tried pairing my phone to Ford cars, and it never works. It pairs, but then: zilch. ... Phone doesn't function through the car. I always carry - YES - a 3.5 audio cable and connect the phone through the headphone jack to hear music.
Not any more you don't, if you have an iPhone, since the new iPhone doesn't have a headphone jack. You need to use Bluetooth audio with the new iPhone. Except that doesn't work with your Ford! Oh well! Well, you can just get a Lightning-to-3.5 adapter cable... oh wait, now your phone will die since you can't charge and use the adapter at the same time!
As long as people keep buying Fords and Apples and MS software and other products this broken, we can expect more woes like this.
The moment I saw that Microsoft bezel under the infotainment system, I knew it was trouble.
And yet, you bought the car anyway.
Wife has a Jeep Wrangler. A hoot to drive, but the engineering is the best combined efforts of Fiat and Chrysler engineers...about as shit as it sounds.
Yep, and a ridiculously inflated price tag too. Jeeps are like Harley Davidsons: horrible engineering, shit quality, and gigantic price tags. The only reason to buy one is "It's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand". Yeah, I guess I'm weird for not understanding why I should pay a lot of money for something with horrible quality and horrible engineering when I can get something else that's far better for less money.
Yep, but interesting how this doesn't stop people from continuing to use their crap all the time. Anyone who knows tech could have foretold a debacle when Ford partnered with MS, but that didn't stop one of the world's largest automakers from doing so, nor did it stop millions and millions of people from buying that crap (including a bunch of Slashdotters, complaining right here in this discussion today about how they love their Ford XYZ but absolutely despise the MS-based infotainment system in it--you didn't know this was going to be a big problem before you bought the car???).
Honestly, I think humans as a group are either actually insane, or far more stupid than I could have ever believed. Problems with MS software are nothing new (not to mention all their evil business dealings--"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run"), and yet people continue to buy and use their software, somehow thinking "it'll be different this time!!"
Android? I thought Ford switched from MS to QNX for their Sync systems.
As for assembly, I'm constantly glad my most recent car (well, plus most of my older cars too) was made in good ol' Japan. There's been several problems with the Mexican-built version of my Mazda, but the Japanese ones are usually problem-free (and mine has been completely problem-free; I always check when someone has a complaint about anything on the forum I frequent). I had toyed with the idea of trying out an American-made car this time around, but after the GM ignition switch fiasco, and then two giant problems with Fords (1: the problematic DSG transmissions, 2: the MyFordTouch debacle), plus constant quality problems with Chryslers (plus a lack of desirable cars from them), I decided against that. I'm really glad I stuck with Japanese-made.
(BTW, the one exception I've had was a 2005 Volvo, made in Belgium. That's been a great car too. The only thing I really don't like about it is that I haven't been able to get a service manual for it, probably because it's not such a mass-market car as my Mazda and doesn't have the enthusiast/DIY appeal this car does. The only other exceptions are the 70s/80s/early 90s GM and Ford cars my family had when I was young: holy shit, those cars were total garbage.)
How is that different from anyone else.
Because not everyone else is like this. You don't see this crap very much in the embedded world, especially for safety-critical stuff. Avionics systems sure as hell aren't like this, and there's plenty of software-driven systems in modern cars which aren't like this either (ECUs, electric power steering systems (EPS), ABS/TCC/DST systems, SRS systems, I could go on and on. In most modern cars, these systems all work just fine and don't need continuous updates, it's just shitty GUI-based crap that does.
You might be right about Hondas only working well with iPhones. My mom has a '15 Odyssey and an iPhone (5-something), and I had zero problems getting them to sync for her. But I never tried it with my Samsung. If this is the case, that's rather disappointing.
That bit about BMW is rather galling, but somehow I'm not too surprised. The more I hear about those cars, the less I would ever want one; they just seem to be designed to extract as much money from owners as possible. I've been really happy with my '15 Mazda3: well-engineered, drives wonderfully, fantastic fuel economy, I really don't have any serious complaints though the infotainment system could be a bit less laggy. Oh yeah, Bluetooth works great in it, paired to my Galaxy S5.
The high belt lines in modern cars are necessary for crash protection. They're not really a problem though as long as you get blind-spot monitors. But there's no way I'd get a modern car now without BSM and a rearview camera.
Yep, the MyFordTouch stuff was a major reason I didn't bother looking at Fords when I last got a car (even though they had switched away from MS by this time, I was car-shopping in May 2015). That, and also all the reviews slamming the DSG transmissions they were using.
I ended up getting a Mazda. It works great. Zero problems so far (except some asshole scraping the rear bumper when they backed out of a parking space), and Bluetooth works just great. It always auto-connects whenever I restart the car, and even lets me associate multiple devices with it. The system runs on Linux and is easy to get root access to so you can tweak it, and there's a healthy community of modders who have published many tweaks for it. The only downsides are 1) the system is a bit slow (I think it's because they're running on a JavaScript-based UI for some odd reason), and 2) it doesn't support Android Auto officially yet (there is an unofficial mod for it that adds this though--use at your own risk).
WTF are you talking about?
We're not talking about residential ISPs here, we're talking about mobile telcos. There's 4 main choices for that in the US: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The article even mentions that AT&T's and Verizon's plans are a response to the unlimited plans that T-Mobile and Sprint offer.
In addition to those 4, you can get phone service from myriad different resellers, which can be far cheaper than the plans the big boys offer, while still using their towers and networks. Personally, I have a Sprint phone that I use with Ting. I spend less than $20/month per person on my plan.
You're leaving out an extremely important point about Ting: you don't have to use their phones. You can buy any Sprint or T-Mobile phone you want and use it. Personally, I like the Galaxy S4 and S5 phones (I now have an S5 as the prices are about $150 for a really nice used one; the S4s are now under $100 for nice ones); they're still getting updates and are flagship phones. They also have great Otterbox cases available at cheap prices (because they're several years old now).
I have 3 phones on my Ting plan currently (3 users), and we pay about $50-55 per month total. It does help that we use WiFi calling apps while at home though. Ting is great because you only pay for what you use, so if your usage goes down, so does your bill. And there's no overage charges, you just pay more for more usage.
The only thing that's not as great about Ting is that, unlike Project Fi you mentioned, it can't switch between T-mo and Sprint networks, even though the phones should be compatible with both. Hopefully they'll figure out how to do that eventually, but it's a small company it looks like, so of course their development resources are going to be limited. In spite of their size though, I've had very good experiences when I've needed tech support (which was all through online chat). It's also generally pretty easy to do stuff on their website, like switching phones, provisioning new service, etc. But yeah, I'm sure you're right: if you're a really heavy phone (or data) user, it'll end up being more expensive than one of the unlimited plans from the main carriers.
It's simple: why should they care about long-term impacts? They'll have left the company with their golden parachute long before the shit hits the fan.
Your mistake is thinking that political and business leaders have any kind of conscience or care for the state of their nation in 10 years' time.
You're missing the fact that your MMORPG election has only two candidates. Candidate 1 is the one you're talking about, who's exploited the rules to his benefit (along with a bunch of other players who've done the same), and promises to fix this. Candidate 2 is good buddies with many of those other players who have also exploited the rules, has zero intention of changing them, but makes some lame excuses about how it's not politically feasible to change them.
Which one are you going to choose?
There's also a 3rd candidate you can choose, who's very unlikely to get elected, who says the rules are fine and that "The Invisible Hand!!!" will correct all wrongs....