Buy a battery case or a battery back with a USB port. The worst case scenario is you have something that can charge other stuff in your house, something that came in handy for me during a recent power outage.
My personal choice is a rechargeable battery brick which has two USB outputs to charge other devices, and charges from USB. They have both 1A and 2.1A outputs.
I've currently got 4 -- two 6000 mAh ones, and two 5000 mAh ones. They're exceedingly useful for travel and vacatations since I don't need to be near an outlet to top stuff up. I've managed to find them for around $15-$20 each at various places (like a Marshall's type store).
Years ago I decided that, except for very specific things, everything MUST charge from USB. My cameras are the only things I have with their own chargers. Otherwise, I won't buy something which doesn't charge from standard USB.
I travel with 1 or 2 of my multi-port USB wall chargers, at least two of my battery packs (all four if both the wife and I are travelling, we each bring two), and about 6 USB cables. The multi-port USB chargers do both 110/220V and 50/60Hz, and have 3 or 4 USB ports... again, you can find these for $20 or so.
With that I can keep everything charged, and not be tethered to a wall to charge something like my tablet or my phone. The wall chargers cover charging everything else, including the batteries.
With a relatively small pouch I can carry all of my chargers, cables, and electronics - and it all fits easily into my carry on. Throw in a couple of USB chargeable speakers, my iPod, and my car GPS and I've got almost everything I need. Since my GPS charges from USB as well, I can charge it while sitting on a sofa and planning out a route.
My wife and I can pretty much keep all of our electronics charged without any hassle... and except for a tablet (which will use an entire charge), I can charge a lot of stuff from a 6000 mAh battery pack.
As an added bonus, they all have LED flashlights built into them... something which came in very handy for us during a power outage as well. And it will last a hell of a long time.
It's the kind of thing you can throw into your backpack and have with you in case you find you need to charge something which can be charged with USB -- which for me is pretty much everything.
You have succumbed to the very protestant "rich people are better people" fallacy.
Apparently you have succumbed to being an idiot.
I'm saying when you can afford the expensive watch, it's not really that much of an extravagance, and it isn't necessarily about showing off.
Just as it is basic human nature that you are desperately trying to impress fellow slashdotters with you have been rubbing elbows with very rich people.
LOL, you know, I don't care what my fellow Slashdotters think either. Anybody who is impressed that I've met people with a little money is a fool. But it was germane to my point about the expensive watches.
I haven't been rubbing elbows with "very rich people". I've met a couple of small-m millionaires, and I've met a couple of corporate executives, and some guys who made a good deal for themselves after years of working in the construction industry. I'm not talking the Trumps of the world, I'm talking about guys who still have rough hands who sold off a business they spent decades building. The non-tycoon millionaire isn't anywhere near as rare as it once was.
The people you meet in bars in airports and hotels can come from all walks of life... and apparently even some rich people don't stay at exclusive hotels, because I sure don't. Sometimes you just slowly realize the person watching the football game in the hotel bar, eating peanuts, and shooting the shit also happens to be someone who has done moderately well for themselves. You chat for an hour or so, and never see one another again.
My entire point is that the generalization that all people with a watch costing over $5k are purely doing it to show off is absurd. The guys who have actual money just buy it because the like it, and because they can afford it. They have it for themselves, not adulation and praise.
They're not flashing the watch in your face and saying "look at my Rolex". It's just there, and something they don't give a second thought about.
But I've seen a fair few things which are supposed to be dashboards but which don't do a good job of conveying the information quickly.
It seems like when they design the fancy ones for Hollywood you can look at it and get a real sense of what it is telling you. Obviously they're not real, but it seems like the FX guys just design stuff that looks like it would be useful.
Honestly, the only people I've ever known who spent more than $5K on a watch... they also had expensive cars, tailored suits, and don't give a fuck about what people think either.
That guy in the three piece Italian suit with the gold cufflinks, the Ferrari, and the $15K Rolex... he doesn't give a crap if you're impressed or not... and he's beyond the point of needing to spend his money wisely or not. But he's sure as hell not wearing a $20 Timex from Wal Mart.
The guy who drives the beat up car who works in a shit job who has the over priced watch to look cool? Yeah, that guy is an ass trying to impress.
The millionaire with the gold Rolex Mariner (among other expensive watches)... well, he's not really concerned about how you feel about it.
And the only people I've ever known with watches which cost more than $5K... well, for them money is a different thing.
The sudden realization that the guy you're having a beer with is casually wearing a hugely expensive watch, designer (but casual) clothes, thousand dollar shoes, and a few pieces of expensive jewelry... that can be the moment when you realize you're chilling with someone who is casually wearing more than a lot of people make in a year.
And those guys aren't wearing it to impress the plebes. That doesn't mean they don't like it when the plebes notice. But they sure as hell don't need your validation.
And, yes, I have in fact on several occasions realized I was shooting the shit with millionaires over a pint. Some of them are remarkably down to earth and nice guys, even if they are wearing watch which would buy you an entry level car. It's scary to realize someone is wearing an expensive watch as indifferently as if it was a cheap watch... they're not flashing it at you, it's just there.
The stupidity of the price of a watch or any consumer item is directly related to just how much wealth that represents to the owner. And I've known a few people for whom that watch would represent only a few days worth of income.
Hell, I have seen someone busing tables in a suit/shoes/jewelry/watch ensemble which would have paid my basic living costs for 6 months or more... because it was their damned restaurant, and that's what he happened to be wearing that day.
Trust me, not everybody with an expensive watch is doing it to impress anybody else.
Smartwatches are for people who want a smartphone on their wrist. Period.
Watches which aren't smart watches are for people who want to tell the time, without the need for connectivity, and without the need to recharge the damned thing constantly. You know, what watches have been for a very long time.
My solar powered digital watch will pretty much never need to be charged as long as I expose it to sunlight. My wife's Citizen eco-drive analog watch will simply never need to be charged as long as she wears it, and being titanium with synthetic sapphire crystal it also looks like it just came out of the box, despite a fair amount of abuse. Considering how many other watches she's destroyed in a few weeks, that's impressive. It's a zero maintenance watch which survives most anything a normal human will encounter.
You should in no way equate digital watches with smartphones. They are very different things.
A 'real' watch can be a durable, long lasting thing which allows you to swim or do normal things you'd do in life without worrying about the damned thing breaking on you.
Until an Apple watch is something you'd go into a pool or the ocean with, or do your gardening, or go to the gym and not have to worry about babying it... it's a fragile plaything which needs to be coddled, charged, and constantly cared for. That is a fashion statement.
I could break windows with my watch and it would still work, will your Apple watch do that? My watch will tell me the correct date until 2038 as long as it sees enough daylight to keep it charged... your Apple watch sure as hell won't do that.
Sorry, but I have no interest in getting text messages on my watch. And until an Apple watch is anywhere near as durable and maintenance free as my actual watch, it will remain a toy.
Watches can absolutely be a fashion statement, which is why I own more than one. But I can be away from electricity indefinitely with my rugged solar watch and still have all the functionality it has now.
Which tells me your Apple watch is more fashion statement than my timepiece. Because it's fragile, needs to be coddled, constantly charged, and is really only useful if I can't be separated from my phone.
I am far more likely to have to wonder where I left my phone than I am my watch.
I have watches which are purely fashion statements. They're pretty and tell the time, but even those can all go in the ocean and places an Apple watch won't. But I also have watches which will survive anything I'm ever going to do, and do it pretty much indefinitely, without ever having to worry about durability or power. The act of destroying them would probably lead to a crippling injury.
Sorry, but digital watches pre-date the smart watch by decades, and not everybody who wants a digital watch gives a sweet damn about a smartwatch or a smartphone.
Digital watch != smartphone. There's some overlap, but nowhere enough to make what you said true.
Tablets are so much a fad that they're killing your beloved computers left and right. While you're rocking back and forth in a corner murmuring to yourself that all will be well, the world is being changed around you. The choice is yours: ride the change or be pushed away.
Rubbish. Complete fucking rubbish.
Despite the breathless anticipation of marketing wankers, futurists, and prognosticators... remarkably little will change in the long run, in the short run there will be change.
There will continue to be desktops. Tablets are here to stay. The Apple watch isn't competing with the traditional watch, no matter what anybody tells you, it's a short term blip as a certain kind of consumer buys different things. Not everybody wants a smart watch, and buying a tablet doesn't mean you don't need a PC.
And then things will settle out, people will still buy traditional watches, the niche market for smart watches will continue to be a niche, and the world will have ultimately changed not as much as you think, nobody will have been pushed away, and you'll still be an idiot who thinks the world actually changes with every new piece of technology.
Trends and fads are, in the end, are just that. In the long run, actual watches will still exist... and the clueless idiots who either haven't been around long enough, or are paid to tell us what they think the future will be, will discover that just because some fool says we'll all be doing something in a few years doesn't bloody well make it true. Because it never has.
So you'll excuse me if I think your breathless belief that the world has fundamentally changed due to the existence of an Apple watch is the breathless gibberish of someone who hasn't been around technology long enough to know the difference between long term and shot term trends.
Talk to us in 2, 5, 10, or 25 years, and we might take any of this seriously. Until then, this is pink sweat-pants which say "Baby Phat" on the ass -- a mere fucking blip. A trend in style, not a fundamental shift in society.
The Apple watch, or any smart watch, has yet to prove anything other than, for the time being, hipsters are interested in it. Thankfully, long term trends are seldom defined by hipsters, as much as they like to think otherwise.
And then the rest of the world will carry on with normal life.
Don't get me wrong, I believe you, obviously you've based this on something real. I'm just suddenly slack-jawed at what you've said.
My current desktop (for personal use, not gaming, and never CPU bound) has 16GB of RAM and 8 cores (slow AMD ones because I don't need CPU power, just multi-tasking).
The reason I have this is because it gives me more than enough room for running multiple concurrent tasks, and isn't going to be slow because it's constantly thrashing. In fact the 16GB is mostly future proofing and I've never got anywhere near using all of it. I'll take half the CPU speed and twice the RAM any day.
I can't even begin to wrap my head around what you're compiling in 256GB of RAM and being entirely CPU-bound if your IO is being done that fast.
OK, in fairness, I can't wrap my head around 256GB of RAM. The largest servers I've had direct access to at work cap out at 32GB, and a couple of DB servers (which I don't have direct access to) are in the 72GB range.
Years ago I decided if I was never going to be CPU bound, I sure as hell don't want to be memory/swap bound and have a machine thrashing itself into oblivion. A friend's aunt was looking for a new PC, and she looked at me and said "you're going to tell me to buy the most expensive machine out there"... I told her "hell no, buy the oldest machine you can buy with double the RAM of an entry level system, and it will last you twice as long". She did, and several years later she still had a machine which worked just fine, and quite possibly still does.
My last machine was 8GB/4 core, so this one at 16GB/8 core was just a natural extension of that. For what I do with it I never really find I'm taxing the CPU that much, but I have gobs of resources to run whatever I feel like without worrying about concurrency. And in 4 years I likely still will be happy with it.
How many CPU cores are you running with that much RAM that you're keeping it CPU bound? I can't even wrap my head around that. The enormity of a compile job needing that much memory boggles my mind.
Why the fuck should we accept being constantly tracked by dozens of analytic companies as a price of using the web?
When there's 15 or 20 trackers in addition to ads in every page, the only reasonable response is to block the hell out of all of this crap.
It's none of score card research's fucking business what sites I visit. Nor it it Facebook's business. Nor is it any of the dozens of other companies I've blocked with privacy extensions.
This idea that self entitled corporations are entitled to all of this information about us is complete bullshit.
In the real world it would be like a retailer implanting a tracking chip in you when you walked in the store.
I don't care about anybody's damned analytics. And as much as I can, I'll block everything which isn't the content I'm there to see.
The revenue model isn't my damned problem. My privacy is.
And I'm not giving that away to some asshole marketer who wants to optimize his synergies.
Always assume the "evil maid" scenario could happen.
If dropping infected USB sticks into a parking lot and seeing who picks them up and plugs them in works, the "evil maid" is a subset of all things in which you can trick people into plugging in your exploit. Social engineering is a remarkable way around security.
It also says if you have a portable Thunderbolt device and ever use it anywhere from home, your own stuff could be the 'remote' vector.
One person's theoretical vulnerability can often become a real exploit before long.
Honestly, you're not describing "not obvious", you're describing "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
For the average home user, the group policy editor might as well not exist.
Hell, having to read the description of every MS update to determine if it isn't doing some sketchy stuff would damned near be a full time job
Businesses VOLUNTARILY spend some of the wealth THEY created on good works
all you statist running-dog's do is complain
We complain when every drooling idiot keeps claiming that giving corporations and the wealthy tax cuts is beneficial to society when the evidence is to the contrary.
We complain when government policy is bought and paid for by corporations, and government exists to advance the interests of corporations at. our expense.
Or economic policy is made by the idiots of the Austrian School of Economics who refuse to actually use empirical evidence to prove their flawed ideology actually works, especially in the face of evidence it doesn't.
roman_mir
LOL... I'm either un-surprised at this, or someone has done a remarkable job of trolling Roman Mir, who usually makes the same claims anyway.
You can keep believing your ideology based view of economics. Me, I think it's demonstratably wrong, corrupt, and absolutely NONE of the underlying premises are true.
There is no free market, and there is no scenario in which corporate greed should be allowed to gut an economy so that rich assholes can claim their share from the stock market without doing a damned thing to earn it.
that could act as backhaul for terrestrial cellular networks and take low-cost internet access worldwide
It could, but it won't.
There's far too much corporate interest in making sure we pay through the nose for cellular and internet access.
They're not going to allow low-cost anything. They might lower their costs, and increase their profits. But they will actively resist ever lowering our costs.
Low cost? Affordable? That sounds like communism right there, there's shareholder value and executive bonuses to maintain.
Sorry, but this is what happens when you let a country under the sway of a totalitarian government build you computers.
However, as almost every other government more or less demands the same thing... this as the new normal.
You can (and should) be outraged. But the fact that governments want back doors for everything is pretty clear.
I see this as precisely no different from the US tapping the telecom systems of other countries. People claim it's their right, and then get all freaked out when someone else does it.
Sorry, but fascism and the surveillance state is a creeping cancer on the whole world.
And in a year or so, these "philanthropists" will cry poor, and insist government does this.
This is special interest groups controlling education for their own corporate interests.
They don't give a damn about children. They care about a workforce of people who will be made to work cheaply as they've been educated to meet corporate requirements.
Having corporations dictating the direction of education is scary.
Welcome to the dystopian oligarchy, you'll do what we tell you to, and we have government on the payroll to ensure you do.
Well, speaking as someone from outside of America... your R's screech just as loudly about how they hate the D's and with just as much frequency.
What you have is two groups with polarized ideologies who are convinced the other is ruining the nation. Poo flinging monkeys.
From the rest of the world's perspective, they're all still in favor of selling the farm to corporate interests, engaging in treaty negotiations which mostly further corporate interests, are still interested in undermining your rights and freedoms, and entirely willing to decide the rights and freedoms of the rest of the world are irrelevant.
So, basically it seems like you're fucked either way, and by extension so is the rest of the world as every other government follows this mania of terrorism/copyright/child porn being used to trump every law, freedom, right, and anything else they can think of.
But keep telling yourself it's an RvD issue instead of a steady dissolution of governments being covered under the rule of law, or doing anything to defend the rights of their citizens.
Me, I think pretty much every government on the planet is now actively hostile to anything except protecting corporate interests at our expense, and forcing a surveillance society on us under the guise of keeping us safe and free.
Slashdot Mirror
My personal choice is a rechargeable battery brick which has two USB outputs to charge other devices, and charges from USB. They have both 1A and 2.1A outputs.
I've currently got 4 -- two 6000 mAh ones, and two 5000 mAh ones. They're exceedingly useful for travel and vacatations since I don't need to be near an outlet to top stuff up. I've managed to find them for around $15-$20 each at various places (like a Marshall's type store).
Years ago I decided that, except for very specific things, everything MUST charge from USB. My cameras are the only things I have with their own chargers. Otherwise, I won't buy something which doesn't charge from standard USB.
I travel with 1 or 2 of my multi-port USB wall chargers, at least two of my battery packs (all four if both the wife and I are travelling, we each bring two), and about 6 USB cables. The multi-port USB chargers do both 110/220V and 50/60Hz, and have 3 or 4 USB ports ... again, you can find these for $20 or so.
With that I can keep everything charged, and not be tethered to a wall to charge something like my tablet or my phone. The wall chargers cover charging everything else, including the batteries.
With a relatively small pouch I can carry all of my chargers, cables, and electronics - and it all fits easily into my carry on. Throw in a couple of USB chargeable speakers, my iPod, and my car GPS and I've got almost everything I need. Since my GPS charges from USB as well, I can charge it while sitting on a sofa and planning out a route.
My wife and I can pretty much keep all of our electronics charged without any hassle ... and except for a tablet (which will use an entire charge), I can charge a lot of stuff from a 6000 mAh battery pack.
As an added bonus, they all have LED flashlights built into them ... something which came in very handy for us during a power outage as well. And it will last a hell of a long time.
It's the kind of thing you can throw into your backpack and have with you in case you find you need to charge something which can be charged with USB -- which for me is pretty much everything.
Apparently you have succumbed to being an idiot.
I'm saying when you can afford the expensive watch, it's not really that much of an extravagance, and it isn't necessarily about showing off.
LOL, you know, I don't care what my fellow Slashdotters think either. Anybody who is impressed that I've met people with a little money is a fool. But it was germane to my point about the expensive watches.
I haven't been rubbing elbows with "very rich people". I've met a couple of small-m millionaires, and I've met a couple of corporate executives, and some guys who made a good deal for themselves after years of working in the construction industry. I'm not talking the Trumps of the world, I'm talking about guys who still have rough hands who sold off a business they spent decades building. The non-tycoon millionaire isn't anywhere near as rare as it once was.
The people you meet in bars in airports and hotels can come from all walks of life ... and apparently even some rich people don't stay at exclusive hotels, because I sure don't. Sometimes you just slowly realize the person watching the football game in the hotel bar, eating peanuts, and shooting the shit also happens to be someone who has done moderately well for themselves. You chat for an hour or so, and never see one another again.
My entire point is that the generalization that all people with a watch costing over $5k are purely doing it to show off is absurd. The guys who have actual money just buy it because the like it, and because they can afford it. They have it for themselves, not adulation and praise.
They're not flashing the watch in your face and saying "look at my Rolex". It's just there, and something they don't give a second thought about.
Oh, apparently I stepped on a meme without realizing it.
Thanks for the whoosh. ;-)
That's mere hypocrisy ... but the Republicans are far more likely to be ye olde "family values" types.
Often the ones screeching the loudest about the sins of others are just as likely to get caught doing the same thing.
Like that "wide stance" guy in the airport a few years back.
I honestly don't care what you implement it in.
But I've seen a fair few things which are supposed to be dashboards but which don't do a good job of conveying the information quickly.
It seems like when they design the fancy ones for Hollywood you can look at it and get a real sense of what it is telling you. Obviously they're not real, but it seems like the FX guys just design stuff that looks like it would be useful.
Except the UIs in games are designed to convey as much information as possible as readily as possible.
Game designers don't make the displays for the stuff you need to know difficult ... they make them useful.
Conveying more information quickly is something we don't see enough of. Especially with the trend of putting everything in a web page.
As a high-level "show me everything I need to know in one screen", I'd say this has done a really good job of that.
I've been saying for years software companies should be taking the lead of the UIs we see in the movies.
They often look better designed and convey more information than some of real GUIs I see.
That's a really clean looking dashboard in my opinion.
A lazy dungeon master?
Other than that ... no idea.
Lasting two days without charging (instead of one) versus pretty much running perpetually isn't the same thing.
And, as much as this might shock you ... not everybody gives a crap about a smart watch.
Who needs an Apple watch? I sure as hell don't. I don't want one, because it's a pointless gadget I have no need for.
It's a gadget for people who fetishize technology and their phones. For the rest of the world, traditional watches are all they'll ever need or want.
If you want one, buy one. But don't make the mistake of projecting that the rest of the world actually gives a damn about them.
Honestly, the only people I've ever known who spent more than $5K on a watch ... they also had expensive cars, tailored suits, and don't give a fuck about what people think either.
That guy in the three piece Italian suit with the gold cufflinks, the Ferrari, and the $15K Rolex ... he doesn't give a crap if you're impressed or not ... and he's beyond the point of needing to spend his money wisely or not. But he's sure as hell not wearing a $20 Timex from Wal Mart.
The guy who drives the beat up car who works in a shit job who has the over priced watch to look cool? Yeah, that guy is an ass trying to impress.
The millionaire with the gold Rolex Mariner (among other expensive watches) ... well, he's not really concerned about how you feel about it.
And the only people I've ever known with watches which cost more than $5K ... well, for them money is a different thing.
The sudden realization that the guy you're having a beer with is casually wearing a hugely expensive watch, designer (but casual) clothes, thousand dollar shoes, and a few pieces of expensive jewelry ... that can be the moment when you realize you're chilling with someone who is casually wearing more than a lot of people make in a year.
And those guys aren't wearing it to impress the plebes. That doesn't mean they don't like it when the plebes notice. But they sure as hell don't need your validation.
And, yes, I have in fact on several occasions realized I was shooting the shit with millionaires over a pint. Some of them are remarkably down to earth and nice guys, even if they are wearing watch which would buy you an entry level car. It's scary to realize someone is wearing an expensive watch as indifferently as if it was a cheap watch ... they're not flashing it at you, it's just there.
The stupidity of the price of a watch or any consumer item is directly related to just how much wealth that represents to the owner. And I've known a few people for whom that watch would represent only a few days worth of income.
Hell, I have seen someone busing tables in a suit/shoes/jewelry/watch ensemble which would have paid my basic living costs for 6 months or more ... because it was their damned restaurant, and that's what he happened to be wearing that day.
Trust me, not everybody with an expensive watch is doing it to impress anybody else.
Bullshit.
Smartwatches are for people who want a smartphone on their wrist. Period.
Watches which aren't smart watches are for people who want to tell the time, without the need for connectivity, and without the need to recharge the damned thing constantly. You know, what watches have been for a very long time.
My solar powered digital watch will pretty much never need to be charged as long as I expose it to sunlight. My wife's Citizen eco-drive analog watch will simply never need to be charged as long as she wears it, and being titanium with synthetic sapphire crystal it also looks like it just came out of the box, despite a fair amount of abuse. Considering how many other watches she's destroyed in a few weeks, that's impressive. It's a zero maintenance watch which survives most anything a normal human will encounter.
You should in no way equate digital watches with smartphones. They are very different things.
A 'real' watch can be a durable, long lasting thing which allows you to swim or do normal things you'd do in life without worrying about the damned thing breaking on you.
Until an Apple watch is something you'd go into a pool or the ocean with, or do your gardening, or go to the gym and not have to worry about babying it ... it's a fragile plaything which needs to be coddled, charged, and constantly cared for. That is a fashion statement.
I could break windows with my watch and it would still work, will your Apple watch do that? My watch will tell me the correct date until 2038 as long as it sees enough daylight to keep it charged ... your Apple watch sure as hell won't do that.
Sorry, but I have no interest in getting text messages on my watch. And until an Apple watch is anywhere near as durable and maintenance free as my actual watch, it will remain a toy.
Watches can absolutely be a fashion statement, which is why I own more than one. But I can be away from electricity indefinitely with my rugged solar watch and still have all the functionality it has now.
Which tells me your Apple watch is more fashion statement than my timepiece. Because it's fragile, needs to be coddled, constantly charged, and is really only useful if I can't be separated from my phone.
I am far more likely to have to wonder where I left my phone than I am my watch.
I have watches which are purely fashion statements. They're pretty and tell the time, but even those can all go in the ocean and places an Apple watch won't. But I also have watches which will survive anything I'm ever going to do, and do it pretty much indefinitely, without ever having to worry about durability or power. The act of destroying them would probably lead to a crippling injury.
Sorry, but digital watches pre-date the smart watch by decades, and not everybody who wants a digital watch gives a sweet damn about a smartwatch or a smartphone.
Digital watch != smartphone. There's some overlap, but nowhere enough to make what you said true.
Rubbish. Complete fucking rubbish.
Despite the breathless anticipation of marketing wankers, futurists, and prognosticators ... remarkably little will change in the long run, in the short run there will be change.
There will continue to be desktops. Tablets are here to stay. The Apple watch isn't competing with the traditional watch, no matter what anybody tells you, it's a short term blip as a certain kind of consumer buys different things. Not everybody wants a smart watch, and buying a tablet doesn't mean you don't need a PC.
And then things will settle out, people will still buy traditional watches, the niche market for smart watches will continue to be a niche, and the world will have ultimately changed not as much as you think, nobody will have been pushed away, and you'll still be an idiot who thinks the world actually changes with every new piece of technology.
Trends and fads are, in the end, are just that. In the long run, actual watches will still exist ... and the clueless idiots who either haven't been around long enough, or are paid to tell us what they think the future will be, will discover that just because some fool says we'll all be doing something in a few years doesn't bloody well make it true. Because it never has.
So you'll excuse me if I think your breathless belief that the world has fundamentally changed due to the existence of an Apple watch is the breathless gibberish of someone who hasn't been around technology long enough to know the difference between long term and shot term trends.
Talk to us in 2, 5, 10, or 25 years, and we might take any of this seriously. Until then, this is pink sweat-pants which say "Baby Phat" on the ass -- a mere fucking blip. A trend in style, not a fundamental shift in society.
The Apple watch, or any smart watch, has yet to prove anything other than, for the time being, hipsters are interested in it. Thankfully, long term trends are seldom defined by hipsters, as much as they like to think otherwise.
And then the rest of the world will carry on with normal life.
Wow ... what the hell are you compiling?
Don't get me wrong, I believe you, obviously you've based this on something real. I'm just suddenly slack-jawed at what you've said.
My current desktop (for personal use, not gaming, and never CPU bound) has 16GB of RAM and 8 cores (slow AMD ones because I don't need CPU power, just multi-tasking).
The reason I have this is because it gives me more than enough room for running multiple concurrent tasks, and isn't going to be slow because it's constantly thrashing. In fact the 16GB is mostly future proofing and I've never got anywhere near using all of it. I'll take half the CPU speed and twice the RAM any day.
I can't even begin to wrap my head around what you're compiling in 256GB of RAM and being entirely CPU-bound if your IO is being done that fast.
OK, in fairness, I can't wrap my head around 256GB of RAM. The largest servers I've had direct access to at work cap out at 32GB, and a couple of DB servers (which I don't have direct access to) are in the 72GB range.
Years ago I decided if I was never going to be CPU bound, I sure as hell don't want to be memory/swap bound and have a machine thrashing itself into oblivion. A friend's aunt was looking for a new PC, and she looked at me and said "you're going to tell me to buy the most expensive machine out there" ... I told her "hell no, buy the oldest machine you can buy with double the RAM of an entry level system, and it will last you twice as long". She did, and several years later she still had a machine which worked just fine, and quite possibly still does.
My last machine was 8GB/4 core, so this one at 16GB/8 core was just a natural extension of that. For what I do with it I never really find I'm taxing the CPU that much, but I have gobs of resources to run whatever I feel like without worrying about concurrency. And in 4 years I likely still will be happy with it.
How many CPU cores are you running with that much RAM that you're keeping it CPU bound? I can't even wrap my head around that. The enormity of a compile job needing that much memory boggles my mind.
It's more than that.
Why the fuck should we accept being constantly tracked by dozens of analytic companies as a price of using the web?
When there's 15 or 20 trackers in addition to ads in every page, the only reasonable response is to block the hell out of all of this crap.
It's none of score card research's fucking business what sites I visit. Nor it it Facebook's business. Nor is it any of the dozens of other companies I've blocked with privacy extensions.
This idea that self entitled corporations are entitled to all of this information about us is complete bullshit.
In the real world it would be like a retailer implanting a tracking chip in you when you walked in the store.
I don't care about anybody's damned analytics. And as much as I can, I'll block everything which isn't the content I'm there to see.
The revenue model isn't my damned problem. My privacy is.
And I'm not giving that away to some asshole marketer who wants to optimize his synergies.
As has been pointed out, it's yet another story linking back to dice.
Which means we already know not to expect quality writing.
It's click-whoring, just like every other time Dice is linked to from Slashdot.
It's Nerval's Lobster, pretty much all of whose posts link to Dice.
Which means either someone's really excited about Dice, or is on the damned payroll.
And I know which I'm betting on.
Always assume the "evil maid" scenario could happen.
If dropping infected USB sticks into a parking lot and seeing who picks them up and plugs them in works, the "evil maid" is a subset of all things in which you can trick people into plugging in your exploit. Social engineering is a remarkable way around security.
It also says if you have a portable Thunderbolt device and ever use it anywhere from home, your own stuff could be the 'remote' vector.
One person's theoretical vulnerability can often become a real exploit before long.
Honestly, you're not describing "not obvious", you're describing "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
For the average home user, the group policy editor might as well not exist.
Hell, having to read the description of every MS update to determine if it isn't doing some sketchy stuff would damned near be a full time job
all you statist running-dog's do is complain
We complain when every drooling idiot keeps claiming that giving corporations and the wealthy tax cuts is beneficial to society when the evidence is to the contrary.
We complain when government policy is bought and paid for by corporations, and government exists to advance the interests of corporations at. our expense.
Or economic policy is made by the idiots of the Austrian School of Economics who refuse to actually use empirical evidence to prove their flawed ideology actually works, especially in the face of evidence it doesn't.
LOL ... I'm either un-surprised at this, or someone has done a remarkable job of trolling Roman Mir, who usually makes the same claims anyway.
You can keep believing your ideology based view of economics. Me, I think it's demonstratably wrong, corrupt, and absolutely NONE of the underlying premises are true.
There is no free market, and there is no scenario in which corporate greed should be allowed to gut an economy so that rich assholes can claim their share from the stock market without doing a damned thing to earn it.
It could, but it won't.
There's far too much corporate interest in making sure we pay through the nose for cellular and internet access.
They're not going to allow low-cost anything. They might lower their costs, and increase their profits. But they will actively resist ever lowering our costs.
Low cost? Affordable? That sounds like communism right there, there's shareholder value and executive bonuses to maintain.
Companies, and governments, who do this are too stupid/greedy/indifferent to care.
They want it for their purposes, and they simply don't give a damn if it can be used by someone else.
You can't have any mechanism which does this which isn't exploitable. But the people who decide to do this are only interested in their own needs.
Sorry, but this is what happens when you let a country under the sway of a totalitarian government build you computers.
However, as almost every other government more or less demands the same thing ... this as the new normal.
You can (and should) be outraged. But the fact that governments want back doors for everything is pretty clear.
I see this as precisely no different from the US tapping the telecom systems of other countries. People claim it's their right, and then get all freaked out when someone else does it.
Sorry, but fascism and the surveillance state is a creeping cancer on the whole world.
And in a year or so, these "philanthropists" will cry poor, and insist government does this.
This is special interest groups controlling education for their own corporate interests.
They don't give a damn about children. They care about a workforce of people who will be made to work cheaply as they've been educated to meet corporate requirements.
Having corporations dictating the direction of education is scary.
Welcome to the dystopian oligarchy, you'll do what we tell you to, and we have government on the payroll to ensure you do.
Well, speaking as someone from outside of America ... your R's screech just as loudly about how they hate the D's and with just as much frequency.
What you have is two groups with polarized ideologies who are convinced the other is ruining the nation. Poo flinging monkeys.
From the rest of the world's perspective, they're all still in favor of selling the farm to corporate interests, engaging in treaty negotiations which mostly further corporate interests, are still interested in undermining your rights and freedoms, and entirely willing to decide the rights and freedoms of the rest of the world are irrelevant.
So, basically it seems like you're fucked either way, and by extension so is the rest of the world as every other government follows this mania of terrorism/copyright/child porn being used to trump every law, freedom, right, and anything else they can think of.
But keep telling yourself it's an RvD issue instead of a steady dissolution of governments being covered under the rule of law, or doing anything to defend the rights of their citizens.
Me, I think pretty much every government on the planet is now actively hostile to anything except protecting corporate interests at our expense, and forcing a surveillance society on us under the guise of keeping us safe and free.
Freedom is slavery, bitches.