It was neither fake nor about this kind of thing. It was a missile defense system. And it actually developed into multiple working weapons systems. Patriot missile systems are one example, and there are more.
However, one cannot deny that the prospect of such a system was partially responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union as they economically couldn't manage the R&D work required to "keep up" with all that was going on. They tried, but it only hastened their economic collapse. So, Star Wars actually was successful as a strategy, even if it didn't produce a weapon system that achieved all it's stated goals. It was pretty good propaganda if nothing else.
While you're at it, please ignore our new Space Force.
You do understand that the "Space Force" thing is likely a reaction to this kind of activity from the Russians and Chinese right? As campy as it sounds, it sure seems like an idea who's time has long since come.
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I've had some great electric heaters (in the UK, they get made for UK conditions), the downside are the electricity bills. Electric heaters that are reliable and spec'd for purpose are power hogs.
I'm still of the opinion that electric is not the way to go in tank-less water heaters. Yes, they exist and many people use them and yes they are "power hogs" but no more so than an electric tank heater. My objection to them is that they are likely to be undersized because they can draw nearly 100 Amps and most modern residential service panels are about 250 Amps total. The temptation is to go smaller and not have to install a larger service panel (which involves considerable expense and inconvenience) and may not be easily available. But my main objection to electric tank-less water heaters is reliability. They are very sensitive to any air pockets that happen to sneak though them and subject to self destruction of the heater elements when this happens. I know of a number of times where this has happened among my friends.
Your mileage may vary and your specific unit may be more reliable. But based on my experience, I only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters unless you are doing a "point of use" install, which are very small units.
DC was initially the technology of choice being pushed by the well known Thomas Edison himself. Initially it made inroads in electrification of cities, but the voltage drop problem was real and Westinghouse, armed with Tesla's patents for AC, was the better technology. The only issue AC had was being able to run electric motors, as nobody had figured out how to do this until after Edison already had a foot hold.
My post was an attempt to point out that the proposed DC idea wasn't a good solution and you need more than solar panels to get power around the clock. I didn't propose a solution, but I agree with the one you have proposed. Solar panels are for charging batteries and batteries are for driving the inverter. Personally I'd use the generator as a backup charger too, for cloudy or high demand days.
IF you want to run DC, then by all means, go with 12 V because the available devices designed to use it are cheap. But if you do, keep your power wiring SHORT and watch that voltage drop. Personally, I'd go with an inverter for everything but possibly lighting.
Damm, I'm in trouble. I spent a couple of hours getting my Media Center Windows 7 machine working again after switching cable providers this weekend. I use old Xbox 360's as set top boxes and I get to watch TV anyplace in the house w/o paying the cable company for their set-top boxes at $12 each/month.
Try this shit in Texas and I guarantee youâ(TM)ll be saying hello to Satan about fifteen seconds later.
Right, you are going to have a weapon within reach while changing clothes, draw and fire, hitting your target who dies, all within 15 seconds. Maybe 30 seconds, but only if the weapon is on your person at the time and you manage a head shot, but it's going to take more than 15 seconds under most circumstances I can imagine.
Don't break into my house in Texas.... You may get more than 15 seconds to rummage around the house, but I don't mess around. Unless you are actually fleeing when the flash light hits you, the next thing you will get is the contents of the first and second shells in the shotgun (and maybe the third if you are still moving), which will start you on the way to your final eternal destination, though it may take a bit of time. Rest assured, you will be saying hello in your eternal home before the police who I called before I got the shotgun out, arrive and they are only about 3 blocks away. Why? If I shot you, I don't want you talking to the police, so the first three shells in my shot gun are buckshot followed by two large shot shells. It's point and shoot until intruder dead.
Don't forget that a circuit a round trip... So 100 ft between source and load is 200 ft of wire. 100ft of wire is only 50 ft between source and load.
Low voltage systems (under 48 V) are susceptible to line loss at high current/power levels. It's just a fact of life. And living on solar power is very much a low voltage DC affair without additional equipment. You can do it, my brother did in the jungle with solar panels (and a diesel generator for cloudy and/or high demand days), but he kept the wiring runs short and heavy gauge by building his house stilts with the batteries and generator on the ground. I think his longest run was 15 ft to the solar panels on the roof.
I had a tankless / on-demand water heater. It sucked.
Mine is wonderful, hot water forever, don't have to keep a tank of water hot so my gas bill went down some. The biggest problem I have with mine is the teenaged kids now have no limits in the shower, the hot water never runs out, so they stay in there forever.
But everybody needs to know you don't get a tank-less to save money and NEVER get an electric model, only gas fired. You only get tank-less for the convenience of endless hot water, and you pay extra for that.
I worked as a professional stage hand in college. It was an interesting job and a lot of fun. Got to meet a lot of interesting people, even a celebrity or two.
One night, when working in a small town in western North Carolina, we didn't have much to do that night so we decided to play. We took every last light fixture we could, wired them up to the dimmers to "play" with them. The idea was to come up with a crazy rock and roll type light show to amuse ourselves and maybe learn some stuff by playing with the control board. It took hours to wire it all up and it was the wee hours of the morning when we where ready.
Of course, we wanted the maximum effect when we turned all this on, so after a brief discussion, we agreed we'd turn every fixture we had wired on, all at once, or a "bump to full" and enjoy the blaze of glory we had created. The electrics op configured the scene on the old analog board by running all the channels to full and punched up the scene onto the main fader to await the queue that we where all ready to witness the spectacle of every light in the place going to full at the same instant.
I'm sitting in the middle of the house with my co-workers and dramatically the house lights dim slowly. We all wait in anticipation of what we all know is coming. Then it happens, every light in the place begins to flash on in a blinding display as the "bump to full" and just as quickly the whole place goes black. We all thought the electrics op had bumped to black for effect, but eventually we hear him yell "What happened?" Looking around we realize that NOTHING is on except for the battery operated exit lights, nothing. The power was out.
Walking out side you could see most of the town and it was also totally black. It stayed out for about half an hour, then popped back up.
My guess is that we tricked the electric provider into shutting down the town by massively increasing the load in the dead of night and tripping protection systems, designed to avoid power surges and the voltage excursions that come with them. We thought about trying it again, but figured that knowingly doing something like that might be frowned on if we kept doing it. Besides, it was 2AM and time to get to bed, even for us stage hands.
Ah, but the ISSUE is voltage drop over the length of the cable. @ 20 amps, 100 ft of 12ga cable is going to drop more than 25% of the voltage, turning that 24 V into about 17. You lose 6.35 V over that 12ga run. The problem with low voltage systems is voltage drop over distances. To keep 100ft of cable to within 10% voltage loss, you are going to spend a pile on wire, running 8ga, which will get you right at 10% loss @ 24 volts in. Most equipment is OK with about 10% of rated input voltage.
So that 480W in will turn into about 380W at the load using 100 ft of 12ga wire (you will lose about 100W) 12 ga may be SAFE at 20A for fire reasons, but it doesn't mean it's usable in a low voltage system.
This is what killed Edison's DC power business and brought Westinghouse's AC power into common use. With AC you can step the voltage up and down at will using transformers, lowering the current for the same power and lose less power/voltage over the smaller cables. BTW, If you go to a 12 V (13.8 actually) system things get even worse for you, with the loss of over half of your input power and half your voltage trying to push 20 Amps over 12Ga.
From de article: "have solar panels for power -- but those generate only enough electricity for a few hours a day"
Come on! Solar panels today are cheap enough to supply almost all the power you need. I have just 8 in my house and that's already enough to use power lavishly.
I guess they sort of enjoy to live like that. That's the only possible explanation.
Given that one has to run lights 24 hours a day underground and solar panels are day time only power, isn't it going to take some batteries to supply one's electric needs? I think so. Also, there is the question of wiring lengths. 24V DC needs some pretty large conductors to get very far carrying usable current levels. Not to mention the toxic nature of battery chemistry, marking the need to keep them away from living spaces and providing adequate ventilation. One doesn't need lead acid batteries underground, nor are LiIon options necessarily safe.
Having solar panels while on the grid is one thing, having solar panels as one's sole source of power is quite another, being underground adds additional challanges.
His intent was not obvious at the time, and was handled wrongly because he didn't knock.
I agree, he should have been trained by his employer to knock before entering a possibly occupied room. However, in NV the burden of proof is on the shooter, you have to justify the level of force applied. So saying "He didn't knock" might not be enough to justify shooting him if he was there and entering the room because it was his job. On the other hand, being it was a woman who occupied the room and she was changing clothes at the time might be enough. My point was that the case would likely find it into court and be contested either way. (I.E. It's not a cut and dried situation in NV. )
It's hotel property that they agreed to rent to you. There are laws governing this agreement, among them being hotel staff can't barge in to your room whenever they like.
That link only discusses the 4th amendment expiations of a hotel gest. Hotels may not allow searches of a room without a warrant, but hotel employees may enter rooms for cleaning and maintenance. So they can fix and clean stuff, but they may not allow Police access w/o a warrant.
The question here is one of self defense. Are you afforded your 2nd amendment rights in a hotel room? The answer basically is that you have all the same rights you would have if the room was your home. So, if you can legally shoot an intruder entering your home in the local jurisdiction, you can do the same in your hotel room under the same circumstances.
In NV, had the guy been shot entering a guests room, there would be serious legal issues for the shooter. The shooter would have to justify their belief that deadly force was required (as opposed to less force) and it would be a hard hill to climb. But this is NV where you have to justify the use of force. In other states, the assumption would be in favor of the shooter, where the state would have the burden of proof that the shooting was unjust.
Shooting him for what? It is hotel property. You gun nuts are bizarre people.
Um, in NV the stand your ground laws might not allow shooting the guy, but it's going to be a huge court fight because it's in the grey area of the law. Entering a hotel room, unannounced, is roughly the same thing as entering your home under the same circumstances and just shooting an unknown and unexpected intruder in your home is perfectly acceptable. However, it's clear that entering a home in this way would likely be associated with criminal activity, trespassing, stealing stuff and the like.
In this case however, the obvious lack of criminal intent (He was just inspecting the room for his employer) would be a problem for a shooter. That the guy immediately retreated, would also show his lack of criminal intent.
Personally, I'm not of the "shot first, ask questions later" mindset. But should I have my weapon with me and someone enters my hotel room, they had better be retreating pretty quick or I might assume they have ill-intent toward me and I need to defend myself. But it the maid or hotel security are knocking, entering and announcing themselves and quickly retreating once they know I'm in the room, nobody is getting shot.
So you use Emacs? Good luck sir... Personally, I use VI because it's usually ported to Unix distributions right away, with emacs a close second. Now get off my lawn!
Surprised it's lasted this long. The reason we're not seeing "innovation" is because a smartphone is a smartphone is a smartphone. We're pretty much topped out on what the useful purpose a smartphone is for. Everything else is just maybe nice to have, but not absolutely necessary.
However, I'd like to see more advancement on the camera side. Like a real optical zoom in a reasonably sized package.
You sound like a luddite... Not that I disagree, I'm a luddite too..
I used to think, who wants all this stuff on a cell phone? when the iPhone came along. I also thought "Who in their right mind would pay that much for a phone? But they sold and made money for their makers. I've decided that, if the manufacturers can sell these things doesn't mean I have to buy one.
Manufacturers will stop doing this yearly hype thing when it stops being profitable. Personally, I don't think innovation in smart phones is done quite yet so the yearly marketing blitz for the manufacturers will keep going. Even when they run out of new things to stuff in that handset, they will tweak things, up the model number and keep up the appearance (here's looking at you Apple and Samsung)..
Somebody is going to hack into the programming device in some doctor's office. Wait for the device to get turned on to update it's firmware, perform a man in the middle attack to load the firmware of the hacker's choice, which is designed to change the parameters of a specific pacemaker device in ways which will kill the patient, not right away, but later, say when the target is asleep.
I'm thinking that if death of a target is your goal, there might be easier ways..
....does not go to the BlackHat Conference, they should be fine!
It's not the patient's pacemaker that's at risk but the device the doctor uses to program the pacemaker.
So, you don't want your doctor to take his Medtronic pacemaker programming device to the BlackHat conference and turn it on to load firmware updates using whatever WiFi access point he happens to find. So, I'm not very worried... Zapp.. What was that? Zapp....
5 year warranty, 5 year guaranteed updates to android latest and patches, a dog and all it's shots.
And a fire extinguisher to put out the battery fires? Yea, I know. You want to Bash Samsung... But consider their competition...
Apple's flagship phone offering is a dollar less, it comes with ONE year warranty and will likely be supported for at least 5 years with ever slower releases of IOS being released until you get tired of it and upgrade. Everybody has their issues.
I guess if you're one of those who MUST have the latest/greatest of EVERYthing, and you have money to BURN, this could be considered a good deal, but I sure the hell don't.. My phone is a well-used rooted Nexus 5, that I bought for $65 on Glyde, and it uses the Ting MVNO, that saves me a lot of $$$ on monthly charges. I guess to each his own...
Have you seen the price of Apple's flagship phone lately?
It is suspiciously similar to the Samsung Note 9 price.. Imagine that.. I'm guessing that's what the market will pay.
That you don't mind running the older, less capable phones is fine, but some folks like to be more on the top end. If they can afford it, fine.
Slashdot Mirror
It was neither fake nor about this kind of thing. It was a missile defense system. And it actually developed into multiple working weapons systems. Patriot missile systems are one example, and there are more.
However, one cannot deny that the prospect of such a system was partially responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union as they economically couldn't manage the R&D work required to "keep up" with all that was going on. They tried, but it only hastened their economic collapse. So, Star Wars actually was successful as a strategy, even if it didn't produce a weapon system that achieved all it's stated goals. It was pretty good propaganda if nothing else.
While you're at it, please ignore our new Space Force.
You do understand that the "Space Force" thing is likely a reaction to this kind of activity from the Russians and Chinese right? As campy as it sounds, it sure seems like an idea who's time has long since come.
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I've had some great electric heaters (in the UK, they get made for UK conditions), the downside are the electricity bills. Electric heaters that are reliable and spec'd for purpose are power hogs.
I'm still of the opinion that electric is not the way to go in tank-less water heaters. Yes, they exist and many people use them and yes they are "power hogs" but no more so than an electric tank heater. My objection to them is that they are likely to be undersized because they can draw nearly 100 Amps and most modern residential service panels are about 250 Amps total. The temptation is to go smaller and not have to install a larger service panel (which involves considerable expense and inconvenience) and may not be easily available. But my main objection to electric tank-less water heaters is reliability. They are very sensitive to any air pockets that happen to sneak though them and subject to self destruction of the heater elements when this happens. I know of a number of times where this has happened among my friends.
Your mileage may vary and your specific unit may be more reliable. But based on my experience, I only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters unless you are doing a "point of use" install, which are very small units.
Congratulations. History repeats itself.
DC was initially the technology of choice being pushed by the well known Thomas Edison himself. Initially it made inroads in electrification of cities, but the voltage drop problem was real and Westinghouse, armed with Tesla's patents for AC, was the better technology. The only issue AC had was being able to run electric motors, as nobody had figured out how to do this until after Edison already had a foot hold.
My post was an attempt to point out that the proposed DC idea wasn't a good solution and you need more than solar panels to get power around the clock. I didn't propose a solution, but I agree with the one you have proposed. Solar panels are for charging batteries and batteries are for driving the inverter. Personally I'd use the generator as a backup charger too, for cloudy or high demand days.
IF you want to run DC, then by all means, go with 12 V because the available devices designed to use it are cheap. But if you do, keep your power wiring SHORT and watch that voltage drop. Personally, I'd go with an inverter for everything but possibly lighting.
XBox Media Centers.
Damm, I'm in trouble. I spent a couple of hours getting my Media Center Windows 7 machine working again after switching cable providers this weekend. I use old Xbox 360's as set top boxes and I get to watch TV anyplace in the house w/o paying the cable company for their set-top boxes at $12 each/month.
Sarc off
Try this shit in Texas and I guarantee youâ(TM)ll be saying hello to Satan about fifteen seconds later.
Right, you are going to have a weapon within reach while changing clothes, draw and fire, hitting your target who dies, all within 15 seconds. Maybe 30 seconds, but only if the weapon is on your person at the time and you manage a head shot, but it's going to take more than 15 seconds under most circumstances I can imagine.
Don't break into my house in Texas.... You may get more than 15 seconds to rummage around the house, but I don't mess around. Unless you are actually fleeing when the flash light hits you, the next thing you will get is the contents of the first and second shells in the shotgun (and maybe the third if you are still moving), which will start you on the way to your final eternal destination, though it may take a bit of time. Rest assured, you will be saying hello in your eternal home before the police who I called before I got the shotgun out, arrive and they are only about 3 blocks away. Why? If I shot you, I don't want you talking to the police, so the first three shells in my shot gun are buckshot followed by two large shot shells. It's point and shoot until intruder dead.
Don't forget that a circuit a round trip... So 100 ft between source and load is 200 ft of wire. 100ft of wire is only 50 ft between source and load.
Low voltage systems (under 48 V) are susceptible to line loss at high current/power levels. It's just a fact of life. And living on solar power is very much a low voltage DC affair without additional equipment. You can do it, my brother did in the jungle with solar panels (and a diesel generator for cloudy and/or high demand days), but he kept the wiring runs short and heavy gauge by building his house stilts with the batteries and generator on the ground. I think his longest run was 15 ft to the solar panels on the roof.
Some folks have no choice, electric is all they have. I feel for them, but there are quite a few places where this is true.
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I had a tankless / on-demand water heater. It sucked.
Mine is wonderful, hot water forever, don't have to keep a tank of water hot so my gas bill went down some. The biggest problem I have with mine is the teenaged kids now have no limits in the shower, the hot water never runs out, so they stay in there forever.
But everybody needs to know you don't get a tank-less to save money and NEVER get an electric model, only gas fired. You only get tank-less for the convenience of endless hot water, and you pay extra for that.
I worked as a professional stage hand in college. It was an interesting job and a lot of fun. Got to meet a lot of interesting people, even a celebrity or two.
One night, when working in a small town in western North Carolina, we didn't have much to do that night so we decided to play. We took every last light fixture we could, wired them up to the dimmers to "play" with them. The idea was to come up with a crazy rock and roll type light show to amuse ourselves and maybe learn some stuff by playing with the control board. It took hours to wire it all up and it was the wee hours of the morning when we where ready.
Of course, we wanted the maximum effect when we turned all this on, so after a brief discussion, we agreed we'd turn every fixture we had wired on, all at once, or a "bump to full" and enjoy the blaze of glory we had created. The electrics op configured the scene on the old analog board by running all the channels to full and punched up the scene onto the main fader to await the queue that we where all ready to witness the spectacle of every light in the place going to full at the same instant.
I'm sitting in the middle of the house with my co-workers and dramatically the house lights dim slowly. We all wait in anticipation of what we all know is coming. Then it happens, every light in the place begins to flash on in a blinding display as the "bump to full" and just as quickly the whole place goes black. We all thought the electrics op had bumped to black for effect, but eventually we hear him yell "What happened?" Looking around we realize that NOTHING is on except for the battery operated exit lights, nothing. The power was out.
Walking out side you could see most of the town and it was also totally black. It stayed out for about half an hour, then popped back up.
My guess is that we tricked the electric provider into shutting down the town by massively increasing the load in the dead of night and tripping protection systems, designed to avoid power surges and the voltage excursions that come with them. We thought about trying it again, but figured that knowingly doing something like that might be frowned on if we kept doing it. Besides, it was 2AM and time to get to bed, even for us stage hands.
12ga cable can carry 20amps or 480W at 24VDC.
Ah, but the ISSUE is voltage drop over the length of the cable. @ 20 amps, 100 ft of 12ga cable is going to drop more than 25% of the voltage, turning that 24 V into about 17. You lose 6.35 V over that 12ga run. The problem with low voltage systems is voltage drop over distances. To keep 100ft of cable to within 10% voltage loss, you are going to spend a pile on wire, running 8ga, which will get you right at 10% loss @ 24 volts in. Most equipment is OK with about 10% of rated input voltage.
So that 480W in will turn into about 380W at the load using 100 ft of 12ga wire (you will lose about 100W) 12 ga may be SAFE at 20A for fire reasons, but it doesn't mean it's usable in a low voltage system.
This is what killed Edison's DC power business and brought Westinghouse's AC power into common use. With AC you can step the voltage up and down at will using transformers, lowering the current for the same power and lose less power/voltage over the smaller cables. BTW, If you go to a 12 V (13.8 actually) system things get even worse for you, with the loss of over half of your input power and half your voltage trying to push 20 Amps over 12Ga.
From de article: "have solar panels for power -- but those generate only enough electricity for a few hours a day"
Come on! Solar panels today are cheap enough to supply almost all the power you need. I have just 8 in my house and that's already enough to use power lavishly.
I guess they sort of enjoy to live like that. That's the only possible explanation.
Given that one has to run lights 24 hours a day underground and solar panels are day time only power, isn't it going to take some batteries to supply one's electric needs? I think so. Also, there is the question of wiring lengths. 24V DC needs some pretty large conductors to get very far carrying usable current levels. Not to mention the toxic nature of battery chemistry, marking the need to keep them away from living spaces and providing adequate ventilation. One doesn't need lead acid batteries underground, nor are LiIon options necessarily safe.
Having solar panels while on the grid is one thing, having solar panels as one's sole source of power is quite another, being underground adds additional challanges.
His intent was not obvious at the time, and was handled wrongly because he didn't knock.
I agree, he should have been trained by his employer to knock before entering a possibly occupied room. However, in NV the burden of proof is on the shooter, you have to justify the level of force applied. So saying "He didn't knock" might not be enough to justify shooting him if he was there and entering the room because it was his job. On the other hand, being it was a woman who occupied the room and she was changing clothes at the time might be enough. My point was that the case would likely find it into court and be contested either way. (I.E. It's not a cut and dried situation in NV. )
It's hotel property that they agreed to rent to you. There are laws governing this agreement, among them being hotel staff can't barge in to your room whenever they like.
https://www.gsblaw.com/duff-on-hospitality-law/guest-room-privacy-and-the-fourth-amendment
That link only discusses the 4th amendment expiations of a hotel gest. Hotels may not allow searches of a room without a warrant, but hotel employees may enter rooms for cleaning and maintenance. So they can fix and clean stuff, but they may not allow Police access w/o a warrant.
The question here is one of self defense. Are you afforded your 2nd amendment rights in a hotel room? The answer basically is that you have all the same rights you would have if the room was your home. So, if you can legally shoot an intruder entering your home in the local jurisdiction, you can do the same in your hotel room under the same circumstances.
In NV, had the guy been shot entering a guests room, there would be serious legal issues for the shooter. The shooter would have to justify their belief that deadly force was required (as opposed to less force) and it would be a hard hill to climb. But this is NV where you have to justify the use of force. In other states, the assumption would be in favor of the shooter, where the state would have the burden of proof that the shooting was unjust.
Shooting him for what? It is hotel property. You gun nuts are bizarre people.
Um, in NV the stand your ground laws might not allow shooting the guy, but it's going to be a huge court fight because it's in the grey area of the law. Entering a hotel room, unannounced, is roughly the same thing as entering your home under the same circumstances and just shooting an unknown and unexpected intruder in your home is perfectly acceptable. However, it's clear that entering a home in this way would likely be associated with criminal activity, trespassing, stealing stuff and the like.
In this case however, the obvious lack of criminal intent (He was just inspecting the room for his employer) would be a problem for a shooter. That the guy immediately retreated, would also show his lack of criminal intent.
Personally, I'm not of the "shot first, ask questions later" mindset. But should I have my weapon with me and someone enters my hotel room, they had better be retreating pretty quick or I might assume they have ill-intent toward me and I need to defend myself. But it the maid or hotel security are knocking, entering and announcing themselves and quickly retreating once they know I'm in the room, nobody is getting shot.
Is this post cleverly disguised as a troll to get yet more comments going about a anddroid/iphone religious war?
LOL.. Yea, I miss the Emacs / vi debate too. Nothing lasts forever, but many things just have the names changed when they get recycled....
Ya, but at least vi died a well deserved death of obscurity.
You know what I really miss on Slashdot? John C. Dvorak articles. Here's one: The Traditional Laptop is Dead
So you use Emacs? Good luck sir... Personally, I use VI because it's usually ported to Unix distributions right away, with emacs a close second. Now get off my lawn!
Is this post cleverly disguised as a troll to get yet more comments going about a anddroid/iphone religious war?
LOL.. Yea, I miss the Emacs / vi debate too. Nothing lasts forever, but many things just have the names changed when they get recycled....
Surprised it's lasted this long. The reason we're not seeing "innovation" is because a smartphone is a smartphone is a smartphone. We're pretty much topped out on what the useful purpose a smartphone is for. Everything else is just maybe nice to have, but not absolutely necessary. However, I'd like to see more advancement on the camera side. Like a real optical zoom in a reasonably sized package.
You sound like a luddite... Not that I disagree, I'm a luddite too..
I used to think, who wants all this stuff on a cell phone? when the iPhone came along. I also thought "Who in their right mind would pay that much for a phone? But they sold and made money for their makers. I've decided that, if the manufacturers can sell these things doesn't mean I have to buy one.
Manufacturers will stop doing this yearly hype thing when it stops being profitable. Personally, I don't think innovation in smart phones is done quite yet so the yearly marketing blitz for the manufacturers will keep going. Even when they run out of new things to stuff in that handset, they will tweak things, up the model number and keep up the appearance (here's looking at you Apple and Samsung)..
You are right.
Somebody is going to hack into the programming device in some doctor's office. Wait for the device to get turned on to update it's firmware, perform a man in the middle attack to load the firmware of the hacker's choice, which is designed to change the parameters of a specific pacemaker device in ways which will kill the patient, not right away, but later, say when the target is asleep.
I'm thinking that if death of a target is your goal, there might be easier ways..
It's not the pacemaker that's the issue, it's the programming device when it got updated firmware that was insecure.
So, no HTTP access to your ticker or hacking the neighbor's pacemaker over his WiFi...
....does not go to the BlackHat Conference, they should be fine!
It's not the patient's pacemaker that's at risk but the device the doctor uses to program the pacemaker.
So, you don't want your doctor to take his Medtronic pacemaker programming device to the BlackHat conference and turn it on to load firmware updates using whatever WiFi access point he happens to find. So, I'm not very worried... Zapp.. What was that? Zapp....
Intel processors seem the most dense ones around and Intel fanboys are the most dense ones around too.
And here I thought I was denser than both....
5 year warranty, 5 year guaranteed updates to android latest and patches, a dog and all it's shots.
And a fire extinguisher to put out the battery fires? Yea, I know. You want to Bash Samsung... But consider their competition...
Apple's flagship phone offering is a dollar less, it comes with ONE year warranty and will likely be supported for at least 5 years with ever slower releases of IOS being released until you get tired of it and upgrade. Everybody has their issues.
I guess if you're one of those who MUST have the latest/greatest of EVERYthing, and you have money to BURN, this could be considered a good deal, but I sure the hell don't.. My phone is a well-used rooted Nexus 5, that I bought for $65 on Glyde, and it uses the Ting MVNO, that saves me a lot of $$$ on monthly charges. I guess to each his own...
Have you seen the price of Apple's flagship phone lately?
It is suspiciously similar to the Samsung Note 9 price.. Imagine that.. I'm guessing that's what the market will pay.
That you don't mind running the older, less capable phones is fine, but some folks like to be more on the top end. If they can afford it, fine.