When I said support I meant more like software updates and such, but you are right on that part, Google doesn't provide any real support for their products.
Motorola already made the absolute best hardware handsets out there. Their problem was the complete lack of after sales support, and their awful software customization, and lock down. Those 3 things are things that Google knows how to fix. Not sure why nothing decent has come out yet...
I host my own file storage at home, but mail is on a VPS, It is somewhat of a risk, but I do have nightly backups to my home storage. (and vice-versa for off site backup)
I've tried to use DuckDuckGo, my main complaint though is that I find I use image search a lot more than I thought, and DuckDuckGo doesn't seem to have that feature. Do you have a viable alternative for that?
That would be fine for callendar sync but don't try it with email, it's just asking for trouble. Many messages to other people will fall afoul of all sorts of spam filters, and your ISP is likely to outright block the port anyway. I did that years ago, and my connection was actually a "business" connection where I was allowed to run servers, unfortunately most spam blacklists still decided my IP was "residential" so half my email messages to people never got there. After moving to a residential connection I noticed that all relevant ports were blocked so I couldn't send mail directly anymore anyway (not that I was really trying, that was discovered by accident, by that time I had moved everything to a VPS anyway)
At a certain point, more reliability doesn't really help any more. I host my own email, on a VPS, is it as reliable as gmail? no. has it ever gone down? yes. has it ever been down long enough that anyone has got a bounce message ? I don't think so. And that's really what counts. it's "good enough" even if not perfect.
Once something passes the "good enough" threshold, it doesn't matter how much more reliablie it is than that, and the way the email protocols work, a few minutes of downtime here and there just don't really affect it any. Now if you have some specialty application that requires more reliability than that, I'd be sure to get a signed contract for uptime with whatever provider you're with, (even if you end up choosing gmail) because no matter how reliable something claims to be, or appears to be, or has historically been, if your application actually requires anything specific, you had better have it in writing so you can take them to task if need be.
Assuming all she said is "bad job" then it is hard to define, but if she stated that they built things off-level, or that there were gaps in trim, or that the paint peeled off after a week, or whatever else, then it would be easy enough to check, and would meet the usual definition of "bad job" fairly quickly.
>We should automate vehicles to take over the mundane tasks of driving the vehicle and leave the decision making to the human operator. We are the highest order of intelligence for making such decisions (thus far).
While I like the idea, the sorts of decisions being discussed aren't ones that you can wait for input on, they need immediate decisions, not asking the driver to pay attention and then choose something. (negating the fact that humans aren't necessarily all that good at those decisions either...)
In every instance I can think of, accidents happen due to driver carelessness, inability, or simply due to knowledge a driver could not have
While driverless cars should greatly reduce the frequency of collisions by eliminating carelessness, inability, and increasing the amount of data available for decision making, there is some knowledge that just will never exist, and simply can't be known. Things happen that aren't predictable, and aren't always avoidable. I don't expect my driverless car to be able to anticipate the deer jumping out on to the highway from behind a tree, nor do I expect it to notice the kid who appears from behind a parked car immediately in front of my vehicle. I hope it will be able to deal with both situations better than I can, but I don't delude myself in to thinking that in absolutely all cases the situation is completely avoidable. In the first case the choice may be between hitting the deer and hitting a tree, in the second it may be better to hit the parked car than the kid, but in either case you may end up in a situation where you have no choice but to hit something, the question is what do you choose to hit.
Sometimes, no matter how safe you try to make things, the choice ends up being between bad and worse. I only hope the car can choose "bad" in those situations.
While the vast majority of collisions are avoidable, I'd hesitate to say that 100% are. Sometimes there just is no "good" choice, only bad and worse. The thing is I'd like the car to choose bad over worse.
Granted human drivers haven't solved this problem yet either, so I'm not sure how much different it is just because a machine is driving.
Morality is also a difficult thing to program because it's all subjective. Do you program it to kill the driver instead of an innocent pedestrian? How about 2 pedestrians? A driver will value themselves over the others, but should the car? and if not, do you want to "drive" it if you know it thinks you aren't as important? Once the systems are capable of detecting the situations reliably, programming the rules becomes easy, but deciding what they should be is anything but.
Exactly this. I don't EVER want to see a mobile version of any website on my tablet. And yet far too many websites refuse to give me the full site no matter what I click, ignoring the flag in my browser for "request desktop version" and not having anything of their own I can click to get there.
I have never seen a site that works better on my tablet in mobile version than full, but I have seen many sites refuse to let me even try the full version.
Additionally, my phone is now in the same range, I only want the desktop version on it too. again, not an option on many sites.
Needless to say I never leave the house without locking a deadbolt too.
Considering that the clip you link to specifically shows using a bump key in a deadbolt... what exactly are you accomplishing?
Now to be fair, I'm sure it's still a good idea to lock your doors with a good deadbolt despite bump keys, but maybe the better option is to get a higher security lock (The clip you link to recommends Medeco, but I was under the impression that they too can be bumped, I believe Abloy locks are one of the few that can't) or get an alarm or a dog (The dog is probably the absolute best security you can have for your house, but it's also the most expensive in terms of ongoing maintenance...)
That's an interesting idea... is there any package manager that actually does this? and how does it differentiate between what's not in a package and is an installed program, vs what's not in a package because it's a user's personal files or what not?
Of course I would expect an OEM to play really dirty and simply not install "base operating system" package, but instead install "base operating system with all our crapware pre-loaded" package (which happens to have a name that looks the same as the first one). Sure you CAN remove it, but then you're left unbootable unless you also re-installed the real one at the same time.
It's back to the point that you CAN remove it, but it will never be "easy" the manufacturers gain too much through this stuff.
Of course your best bet is always to simply install your own OS on any new machine, then you always know what your starting point is.
As much as I don't like Windows, I'm not arguing about what the base OS includes. The problem is that when you buy a new PC from any major brand, you don't get the OS install disks, or a clean install. You get a whole lot of garbage pre-loaded by the OEM. They also don't include install disks, only restore disks, so cleaning is difficult.
At least with Linux, if the OEM messes with it, you can just download the original un-modified version from your favourite distro's website and install. Microsoft hardly has easy download links on their main webpage.
Show me where to find legal and trustworthy download links to MS software. and as this is supposed to be easy for the average user to do to get a clean install, please show the links from Microsoft's website to these downloads.
They certainly don't make that easy to find on the microsoft website... and yet the "average" user is supposed to be able to find and do that? hardly likely.
Has something changed there? Because in the past Microsoft has been quite clear that the OEM license on your machine does not permit you to download a retail copy from wherever you want to install it, and being that the only Windows CD that comes with most machines is the restore CD (which is loaded with all the garbage) I'd love to hear how exactly you are supposed to legally acquire a clean copy of Windows to install on that machine that came with the OEM version on a restore CD (not an install CD)
True. But his point still stands that Crapware doesn't play by the rules. If an OEM installs Crapware that they want on your system, they won't put it in a package that can easily be removed through the package manager, You'd likely have to do it manually which is no different from Windows.
Often the only copy of Windows that you are legally allowed to put on the machine you just bought is the restore CD that came with it. Which has all the crapware loaded on it.
So to "clean" Windows by doing a fresh Windows install, you generally have to either purchase a whole new Windows license (in addition to the one you paid for when you bought the machine) or pirate Windows (despite already having paid for it)
I think it's obvious that a 747 flying at 30,000 ft isn't trespassing... but it also seems obvious that somone on a hovercreaft skimming along a couple inches above the ground is. A drone weaving through your trees "feels" like tresspassing, but maybe one a couple hundred feet up wouldn't be?
It does bring up an interesting question about where the distinction lies, what altitude is considered "public" vs "private"?
Of course if the drone is camera equipped (almost guaranteed) you may be able to skip tresspassing rules and use peeping tom type laws against it at almost any altitude if it's filming parts of your property that would otherwise be private...
It's impossible to speak for every member of any group larger than one. However I believe the general concept still stands. Older people use less tech, and are less comfortable with it, younger people use more tech and are more comfortable with it, some exceptions do apply
. So please guys, not all of us are into Tech that can be taken away at the flip of a switch.
While I can understand a desire to hold the physical object, from the stand point of "can be taken away at the flip of a switch", what difference does it make if it's just a rental? The whole point being that it's gone tomorrow anyway.
As for purchasing, that's one of the biggest arguments against most DRM schemes. Don't pretend you've sold me something if you can still take it away later against my will. This is also one (not the only) reason why pirated material remains popular, Pirates know that once they have the file, they can use or store it however they want.
The problem isn't the store, it's the studios. The studios refuse to license that stuff that way, if they haven't started selling the whole season on DVD yet (which generally happens only after the whole season has aired in all markets) then they won't let someone rent people the DVD either.
In fact that is the single biggest thing holding back all new video watching services. Studio licensing. People want to be able to watch anything, anywhere, on any device, at any time. They are willing to pay for it. Studios on the other hand still see the model as "release movie, let it run in theatre for a few months, wait a few months to build up demand, release DVD for rental only, wait a few months until everyone has rented it, finally offer for sale, wait a couple of years, discontinue product, wait a couple more years, release the extended version, or director's cut, or whatever" Slowly the studios are introducing things in to the gaps, but they are always careful not to let one thing compete with another, which means you can never go to one place to get everything. For example with TV shows now, often shows end up in the TV provider's "on demand" catalogue shortly after airing, however they are removed from that catalogue before the season goes on sale so as not to compete.
People don't want to play those games anymore, they just want to watch what they want, when they want it, and people have finally realized that this is all artificial too, so there's no good reason for it.
The older crowd sounds like a good idea, while university students love technology and will download anything, people in their 60s-80s simply don't. They're comfortable with the old way of doing things. They also tend to watch different types of movies than the younger generations, stock the movies these people like, and advertise in places these people are, and you could well hang on for another decade or so without much of a change in business plan. Obviously this is a stop gap measure, but it should buy a fair amount of time (The summary doesn't say how much time he needs, I'm sure he plans to retire eventually, if that's in 5 years, this is probably great, if it's still 35 years away, then he'll still need to find something else in the future)
Providing better service than the competition is another way to stay relevant, you don't really have to niche yourself.
I'd argue that this is a niche, but it sounds like a very good one. By partnering with a product that can't be downloaded (pizza) and is often consumed in conjunction with your movies, you could make quite the business. The return part is a little tricky though, and I don't know that your purchase option is really right. The difference between what people expect to pay for a rental, vs the price they expect to pay for a purchase is pretty large these days, going purchase only would probably price you out of the market when compared to download services. Considering the vast number of "give up" comments on here, it's good to see one with a truly innovative suggestion.
If only that were the case... A license for renting out the movie is probably just as hard to get as a license to stream it. Just because the DVD is available in your region, doesn't mean you're allowed to show it to others. Further, the biggest problem with foreign films is the DVD usually ISN'T available in your region, in fact streaming services are sometimes more likely to be able to get a license than someone who wants to buy just a handful of rental DVDs. (the studio likely sees it as a better payback than stamping custom DVDs)
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When I said support I meant more like software updates and such, but you are right on that part, Google doesn't provide any real support for their products.
Motorola already made the absolute best hardware handsets out there. Their problem was the complete lack of after sales support, and their awful software customization, and lock down. Those 3 things are things that Google knows how to fix. Not sure why nothing decent has come out yet...
I host my own file storage at home, but mail is on a VPS, It is somewhat of a risk, but I do have nightly backups to my home storage. (and vice-versa for off site backup)
I've tried to use DuckDuckGo, my main complaint though is that I find I use image search a lot more than I thought, and DuckDuckGo doesn't seem to have that feature. Do you have a viable alternative for that?
That would be fine for callendar sync but don't try it with email, it's just asking for trouble. Many messages to other people will fall afoul of all sorts of spam filters, and your ISP is likely to outright block the port anyway. I did that years ago, and my connection was actually a "business" connection where I was allowed to run servers, unfortunately most spam blacklists still decided my IP was "residential" so half my email messages to people never got there. After moving to a residential connection I noticed that all relevant ports were blocked so I couldn't send mail directly anymore anyway (not that I was really trying, that was discovered by accident, by that time I had moved everything to a VPS anyway)
At a certain point, more reliability doesn't really help any more. I host my own email, on a VPS, is it as reliable as gmail? no. has it ever gone down? yes. has it ever been down long enough that anyone has got a bounce message ? I don't think so. And that's really what counts. it's "good enough" even if not perfect.
Once something passes the "good enough" threshold, it doesn't matter how much more reliablie it is than that, and the way the email protocols work, a few minutes of downtime here and there just don't really affect it any. Now if you have some specialty application that requires more reliability than that, I'd be sure to get a signed contract for uptime with whatever provider you're with, (even if you end up choosing gmail) because no matter how reliable something claims to be, or appears to be, or has historically been, if your application actually requires anything specific, you had better have it in writing so you can take them to task if need be.
Assuming all she said is "bad job" then it is hard to define, but if she stated that they built things off-level, or that there were gaps in trim, or that the paint peeled off after a week, or whatever else, then it would be easy enough to check, and would meet the usual definition of "bad job" fairly quickly.
>We should automate vehicles to take over the mundane tasks of driving the vehicle and leave the decision making to the human operator. We are the highest order of intelligence for making such decisions (thus far).
While I like the idea, the sorts of decisions being discussed aren't ones that you can wait for input on, they need immediate decisions, not asking the driver to pay attention and then choose something. (negating the fact that humans aren't necessarily all that good at those decisions either...)
In every instance I can think of, accidents happen due to driver carelessness, inability, or simply due to knowledge a driver could not have
While driverless cars should greatly reduce the frequency of collisions by eliminating carelessness, inability, and increasing the amount of data available for decision making, there is some knowledge that just will never exist, and simply can't be known. Things happen that aren't predictable, and aren't always avoidable. I don't expect my driverless car to be able to anticipate the deer jumping out on to the highway from behind a tree, nor do I expect it to notice the kid who appears from behind a parked car immediately in front of my vehicle. I hope it will be able to deal with both situations better than I can, but I don't delude myself in to thinking that in absolutely all cases the situation is completely avoidable. In the first case the choice may be between hitting the deer and hitting a tree, in the second it may be better to hit the parked car than the kid, but in either case you may end up in a situation where you have no choice but to hit something, the question is what do you choose to hit.
Sometimes, no matter how safe you try to make things, the choice ends up being between bad and worse. I only hope the car can choose "bad" in those situations.
While the vast majority of collisions are avoidable, I'd hesitate to say that 100% are. Sometimes there just is no "good" choice, only bad and worse. The thing is I'd like the car to choose bad over worse.
Granted human drivers haven't solved this problem yet either, so I'm not sure how much different it is just because a machine is driving.
Morality is also a difficult thing to program because it's all subjective. Do you program it to kill the driver instead of an innocent pedestrian? How about 2 pedestrians? A driver will value themselves over the others, but should the car? and if not, do you want to "drive" it if you know it thinks you aren't as important?
Once the systems are capable of detecting the situations reliably, programming the rules becomes easy, but deciding what they should be is anything but.
Exactly this. I don't EVER want to see a mobile version of any website on my tablet. And yet far too many websites refuse to give me the full site no matter what I click, ignoring the flag in my browser for "request desktop version" and not having anything of their own I can click to get there.
I have never seen a site that works better on my tablet in mobile version than full, but I have seen many sites refuse to let me even try the full version.
Additionally, my phone is now in the same range, I only want the desktop version on it too. again, not an option on many sites.
Needless to say I never leave the house without locking a deadbolt too.
Considering that the clip you link to specifically shows using a bump key in a deadbolt... what exactly are you accomplishing?
Now to be fair, I'm sure it's still a good idea to lock your doors with a good deadbolt despite bump keys, but maybe the better option is to get a higher security lock (The clip you link to recommends Medeco, but I was under the impression that they too can be bumped, I believe Abloy locks are one of the few that can't) or get an alarm or a dog (The dog is probably the absolute best security you can have for your house, but it's also the most expensive in terms of ongoing maintenance...)
That's an interesting idea... is there any package manager that actually does this? and how does it differentiate between what's not in a package and is an installed program, vs what's not in a package because it's a user's personal files or what not?
Of course I would expect an OEM to play really dirty and simply not install "base operating system" package, but instead install "base operating system with all our crapware pre-loaded" package (which happens to have a name that looks the same as the first one). Sure you CAN remove it, but then you're left unbootable unless you also re-installed the real one at the same time.
It's back to the point that you CAN remove it, but it will never be "easy" the manufacturers gain too much through this stuff.
Of course your best bet is always to simply install your own OS on any new machine, then you always know what your starting point is.
As much as I don't like Windows, I'm not arguing about what the base OS includes. The problem is that when you buy a new PC from any major brand, you don't get the OS install disks, or a clean install. You get a whole lot of garbage pre-loaded by the OEM. They also don't include install disks, only restore disks, so cleaning is difficult.
At least with Linux, if the OEM messes with it, you can just download the original un-modified version from your favourite distro's website and install. Microsoft hardly has easy download links on their main webpage.
Show me where to find legal and trustworthy download links to MS software. and as this is supposed to be easy for the average user to do to get a clean install, please show the links from Microsoft's website to these downloads.
They certainly don't make that easy to find on the microsoft website... and yet the "average" user is supposed to be able to find and do that? hardly likely.
Has something changed there? Because in the past Microsoft has been quite clear that the OEM license on your machine does not permit you to download a retail copy from wherever you want to install it, and being that the only Windows CD that comes with most machines is the restore CD (which is loaded with all the garbage) I'd love to hear how exactly you are supposed to legally acquire a clean copy of Windows to install on that machine that came with the OEM version on a restore CD (not an install CD)
True. But his point still stands that Crapware doesn't play by the rules. If an OEM installs Crapware that they want on your system, they won't put it in a package that can easily be removed through the package manager, You'd likely have to do it manually which is no different from Windows.
Often the only copy of Windows that you are legally allowed to put on the machine you just bought is the restore CD that came with it. Which has all the crapware loaded on it.
So to "clean" Windows by doing a fresh Windows install, you generally have to either purchase a whole new Windows license (in addition to the one you paid for when you bought the machine) or pirate Windows (despite already having paid for it)
I think it's obvious that a 747 flying at 30,000 ft isn't trespassing... but it also seems obvious that somone on a hovercreaft skimming along a couple inches above the ground is. A drone weaving through your trees "feels" like tresspassing, but maybe one a couple hundred feet up wouldn't be?
It does bring up an interesting question about where the distinction lies, what altitude is considered "public" vs "private"?
Of course if the drone is camera equipped (almost guaranteed) you may be able to skip tresspassing rules and use peeping tom type laws against it at almost any altitude if it's filming parts of your property that would otherwise be private...
Shouldn't speak for all us youngsters
It's impossible to speak for every member of any group larger than one. However I believe the general concept still stands. Older people use less tech, and are less comfortable with it, younger people use more tech and are more comfortable with it, some exceptions do apply
. So please guys, not all of us are into Tech that can be taken away at the flip of a switch.
While I can understand a desire to hold the physical object, from the stand point of "can be taken away at the flip of a switch", what difference does it make if it's just a rental? The whole point being that it's gone tomorrow anyway.
As for purchasing, that's one of the biggest arguments against most DRM schemes. Don't pretend you've sold me something if you can still take it away later against my will. This is also one (not the only) reason why pirated material remains popular, Pirates know that once they have the file, they can use or store it however they want.
The problem isn't the store, it's the studios. The studios refuse to license that stuff that way, if they haven't started selling the whole season on DVD yet (which generally happens only after the whole season has aired in all markets) then they won't let someone rent people the DVD either.
In fact that is the single biggest thing holding back all new video watching services. Studio licensing. People want to be able to watch anything, anywhere, on any device, at any time. They are willing to pay for it. Studios on the other hand still see the model as "release movie, let it run in theatre for a few months, wait a few months to build up demand, release DVD for rental only, wait a few months until everyone has rented it, finally offer for sale, wait a couple of years, discontinue product, wait a couple more years, release the extended version, or director's cut, or whatever" Slowly the studios are introducing things in to the gaps, but they are always careful not to let one thing compete with another, which means you can never go to one place to get everything. For example with TV shows now, often shows end up in the TV provider's "on demand" catalogue shortly after airing, however they are removed from that catalogue before the season goes on sale so as not to compete.
People don't want to play those games anymore, they just want to watch what they want, when they want it, and people have finally realized that this is all artificial too, so there's no good reason for it.
The older crowd sounds like a good idea, while university students love technology and will download anything, people in their 60s-80s simply don't. They're comfortable with the old way of doing things. They also tend to watch different types of movies than the younger generations, stock the movies these people like, and advertise in places these people are, and you could well hang on for another decade or so without much of a change in business plan. Obviously this is a stop gap measure, but it should buy a fair amount of time (The summary doesn't say how much time he needs, I'm sure he plans to retire eventually, if that's in 5 years, this is probably great, if it's still 35 years away, then he'll still need to find something else in the future)
Providing better service than the competition is another way to stay relevant, you don't really have to niche yourself.
I'd argue that this is a niche, but it sounds like a very good one. By partnering with a product that can't be downloaded (pizza) and is often consumed in conjunction with your movies, you could make quite the business. The return part is a little tricky though, and I don't know that your purchase option is really right. The difference between what people expect to pay for a rental, vs the price they expect to pay for a purchase is pretty large these days, going purchase only would probably price you out of the market when compared to download services.
Considering the vast number of "give up" comments on here, it's good to see one with a truly innovative suggestion.
If only that were the case... A license for renting out the movie is probably just as hard to get as a license to stream it. Just because the DVD is available in your region, doesn't mean you're allowed to show it to others. Further, the biggest problem with foreign films is the DVD usually ISN'T available in your region, in fact streaming services are sometimes more likely to be able to get a license than someone who wants to buy just a handful of rental DVDs. (the studio likely sees it as a better payback than stamping custom DVDs)