The special magic thing is to hit the Windows key + X. That brings up a menu that has pretty much everything you'd want to do from a start menu. Win + X also works on desktop Windows 8.x.
The hilarious thing to me is that the Windows 8/Server 2012 line is ironically the most keyboard centric version of Windows I've used, but all people want to do is bitch about the Modern (Tile) interface that you can completely, totally ignore if you're on something that has a real keyboard and mouse.
Also, Windows RT? It's not awful. Printing and scanning work great and they have real USB and storage support. Surfaces ship with Office pre-installed. RT is missing a lot of media consumption tools that are present on other mobile OSes, but as a device for doing work they're credible. I'd rather have an RT-based Surface than anything that runs iOS, though I'd prefer a good quality Android device to either.
An acquaintance of mine is a senior guy in Chicago's IRS office. He does large corporate audits, which means he's sitting across from guys in $2000 suits all day. The laptop he was carrying until late 2012 had a Windows 2000 license sticker on it and his "new" government-issued laptop is an HP that was manufactured in 2004. These guys really do make more with less and I have no trouble believing that the equipment Lerner was using was painfully obsolete and used until it died.
A Pivos Xios running Linux firmware with XBMC might be a decent fit. It can't keep up well at high bit rates, but the one I have can and and does play 1080p content including AC3 and DTS.
This review read like an Apple user looking for things to whine about. I don't recall seeing anywhere in the verbiage of press over the last two days any promise from Amazon that it would be some universal media-seeking device.
That being said, like any respectable media streamer these days, it DOES support Plex access, which should be your go-to tool for local content access. If it's on the same LAN with a client, you can also connect to it via DLNA and thereby use it with pretty much set top box smart enough to connect to the internet.
The single best STB I've ever found in terms of capability is the LG Smart TV Upgrader, which LG sold for about two months back in 2009 or so. It supports SMB, AFP and NFS, but it also has support for Netflix, Youtube, Hulu Plus and Amazon. It can play h.264, open VideoTS folders and it doesn't have a problem with AC3 or DTS audio. Unfortunately, it's slow as hell and the UI is ugly. I'm not entirely sure if LG is still releasing firmware updates for them but they're a pretty good alternative to a fully functional HTPC.
Plex accesses locally defined content libraries, scrapes them for metadata and makes them available both locally for clients smart enough to play back the raw data or transcodes them for access by dumb (DLNA, like Playstations or the like) or reduced-capability clients like iFruits. Furthermore, it negotiates authentication-based access and sharing with the Plex Web Service, meaning that you can expose your media collection over the internet, for access outside your home or use the service to share with others. Plex isn't supported by as large a collection of consumer electronics as Netflix, but it is on a lot of smart TV systems and runs on most mobile and desktop platforms.
If you already have a respectable collection of local media and a half-decent computer you're willing to leave on, you more or less have a streaming media service that is entirely under your control. If you're enough of a nerd to be reading this deep in a Slashdot comment thread, you're also enough of a nerd to figure out how to leverage Plex or something like it to make a content service that is satisfactory for your needs.
8 at a time Netflix costs about the same amount as purchasing three new Blu-Ray releases or taking myself and my SO to the theater three times. Do you judge me more or less harshly for watching more than three movies a month?
I've had an 8-at-a-time Netflix subscription since 2000 and I've been copying discs for that entire time. My goal is to touch a disc one time and Netflix facilitates that - I rip the disc and send it back. I don't mind doing it (at this point it's automated). My local copies tend to be better than the pirated product and it's not like my ISP is going to rat me out for doing it. In theory I can download faster than Netflix can mail me discs, but dealing with physical discs more or less eliminates the risk factors from piracy. I'm willing to accept the slight inconvenience of having to put a disc in a drive for that.
I actually kind of like the Surface2 for some tasks, since it's thin and light for a 10" tablet and has a nice keyboard and a really nice screen. I often use it as a second or tertiary screen while I'm working since it's pretty easy to drop in to an RDP session or open Office documents and it can deal with printers and scanners just as well as any Windows 8 PC. It's a genuine workplace tablet.
But web browsing on it BLOWS. Metro-IE has to be switched to desktop mode to make any configuration changes (say, changing your default search engine or adding a TPL), but desktop-IE's controls are too damned small to be used with a finger and switching back and forth is PITA as well. Tabs and favorites are a hassle in Metro mode. It's just too much an ugly duckling. Windows RT has another general purpose browser, UC Browser, but that doesn't really improve the user experience over Metro-IE.
I actually find myself using the Metro-based NewsBento for about 75% of the web browsing I do on my Surface2. NewsBento is an RSS reader, which takes care of most of my normal sort of reading, but that doesn't really help for quick searches. I otherwise get a better web browsing experience with Firefox on my 5" phone than on a 10" tablet with IE.
So anyway, I want a decent arm's length, touch interface browsing experience for the devices I have. Microsoft doesn't give it to me, and I've been holding out hope for Firefox (or to a lesser extent Google) to make something decent. Honestly, if the Surface2 had a decent web browser (and a better Metro-based local media player, though VLC was just released for Metro a couple days ago), it would be a vastly more credible general-purpose mobile device.
The replacement for tape is different tape. Optical media isn't going to catch up to the data densities or transfer rates that tape has to offer any time soon. The (kinda old) LTO4 changer I use for my personal stuff handles 800GB/tape and only needs about three hours per tape. This new disc format isn't even going to be competitive with an eight year old tape spec.
Communities that don't have access to fast internet services and likewise don't have video stores are definitely in the land that time forgot. I have a few cousins who'd probably have to make two 70 mile round trips if they really wanted to see "I Was a Teenage MILF #71" since there's neither a mom and pop video store nor any internet service other than dialup or satellite available to them.
Here in the midwestern US we have Family Video, which at one time also had pretty decent dialup service. All the local Family Video stores I'm aware of are still open, have free titles, rent most stock for $1 and have a porn section. As the last chain standing I'd say they did it right. I've been an eight-DVDs-at-a-time Netflix subscriber since 1999 but I'm glad the local brick and mortar store (not vending machine) is around. Sometime it's nice to just browse.
Since no one has ever called me that in an email message, I'm sure that I would remember. I'm not saying I can remember the exact shuffle order from a deck of cards, but I definitely don't have a problem with names, dates or phone numbers.
OK actually he's right that different IMAP clients interact with different IMAP servers when displaying folder structures. Gmail isn't the end all and be-all of IMAP and I don't think every IMAP client should just standardize on the way Google does something, but you really can run in to issues where three different clients name or use certain folders on the same server differently.
People still use email for anything other than verifying forum accounts and retrieving forgotten passwords? There are so many faster and easier ways to communicate
That's possibly generational. I don't like to send SMSes because of the character limit and the idea that it's at least nominally tied to one device. I don't use any social networking services because I've actually read their terms of service. I think phone conversations are intrusive and damaging to my concentration, so I prefer not to talk on the phone, and many slow typists I know dislike any sort of realtime IM system.
Most of the people I know who dislike E-mail don't like the "formality" of having to write complete sentences or are paranoid about the possibility of some kind of record being kept of the exchange, but to me it's clearly the best general-purpose communication tool available most of the time. The haters tend to be young and want to conduct as much communication as possible through either Facebook or SMS.
I don't know if that's you or not, but I will say that E-mail isn't going away any time soon regardless of your wishes to the contrary.
I keep every single message I've gotten since 1993 in the same inbox with perhaps a half dozen total messages segregated into a different folder. That's around 300,000 emails. I have a very good memory so I seldom need to search, but when I do, I've never found a weakness in the search component of any mail client I care to name, even going back to elm or pine. The greatest degree of flexibility comes with having all my messages in the same directory; over the last 20 years I've treated it as a quasi-journal and usually if I go back to read a message or two for a given date I can give a pretty accurate summation of everything else I did on that day, so as an organizational structure I'd say it works just fine.
I don't understand the problem either. Gmail works fine with any IMAP client I care to configure. IMAP itself has some weirdness around how clients interact with various folders, but that's not Gmail's fault.
I really don't like Gmail because of a distaste for threaded comment view (yes, I know I can turn it off on the web, but not in the Android client), but as someone who has every non-spam e-mail I've received since 1993 sitting in my inbox I can say that it performs just fine in spite of that and I can access it anywhere, which is the biggest single reason to stick with it.
You're not going to build a 5W ARM system with two or four hot-swap SATA drive bays in a decent enclosure with a decent transformer using new parts for less than what baby Synology NAS costs. I'm fully capable of assembling that sort of system but I can't do it cheaper, especially not if my time has value.
I re-sell NAS systems based on the idea that no on in an SMB setting is interested or even capable of dealing with a fully functional file server. To the folks in the office, the NAS is just "The network drive", while the guy who set it up probably isn't going to give it another thought until he hears that it's not working AND someone is offering to pay to get it fixed.
I also see a lot of NAS systems deployed as workarounds for dealing with slow IT staff response times, often because a manager someplace doesn't understand why it's so much of a hassle for a storage admin someplace to allocate 6TB of space than it is to buy a low end Drobo and some crappy desktop drives. Staff IT might not even be aware that the boxes are out there.
Being able to be disinterested is in fact part of the sales pitch for a NAS in the first place.
I could walk in to the Dunes National Park in something under five minutes from where I'm sitting right now. It's very pretty here. That does not solve the problem of the people who live here, the anti-intellectual regressives who run the state or their steadfast determination to never let anything get any better. College educated people by and large leave and it's for very good reason. This is a terrible place and it is devoid of worth.
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The special magic thing is to hit the Windows key + X. That brings up a menu that has pretty much everything you'd want to do from a start menu. Win + X also works on desktop Windows 8.x.
The hilarious thing to me is that the Windows 8/Server 2012 line is ironically the most keyboard centric version of Windows I've used, but all people want to do is bitch about the Modern (Tile) interface that you can completely, totally ignore if you're on something that has a real keyboard and mouse.
Also, Windows RT? It's not awful. Printing and scanning work great and they have real USB and storage support. Surfaces ship with Office pre-installed. RT is missing a lot of media consumption tools that are present on other mobile OSes, but as a device for doing work they're credible. I'd rather have an RT-based Surface than anything that runs iOS, though I'd prefer a good quality Android device to either.
An acquaintance of mine is a senior guy in Chicago's IRS office. He does large corporate audits, which means he's sitting across from guys in $2000 suits all day. The laptop he was carrying until late 2012 had a Windows 2000 license sticker on it and his "new" government-issued laptop is an HP that was manufactured in 2004. These guys really do make more with less and I have no trouble believing that the equipment Lerner was using was painfully obsolete and used until it died.
Chromecast doesn't do enough to add value. The only thing it really brings to the table is the novel control scheme. Yes, it's a cheap streamer that I can control with a $75 tablet or retired smartphone, but I'll bet I can find a price-competitive BluRay player that can do both those things and still play discs AND use a proper ethernet connection.
A Pivos Xios running Linux firmware with XBMC might be a decent fit. It can't keep up well at high bit rates, but the one I have can and and does play 1080p content including AC3 and DTS.
This review read like an Apple user looking for things to whine about. I don't recall seeing anywhere in the verbiage of press over the last two days any promise from Amazon that it would be some universal media-seeking device.
That being said, like any respectable media streamer these days, it DOES support Plex access, which should be your go-to tool for local content access. If it's on the same LAN with a client, you can also connect to it via DLNA and thereby use it with pretty much set top box smart enough to connect to the internet.
The single best STB I've ever found in terms of capability is the LG Smart TV Upgrader, which LG sold for about two months back in 2009 or so. It supports SMB, AFP and NFS, but it also has support for Netflix, Youtube, Hulu Plus and Amazon. It can play h.264, open VideoTS folders and it doesn't have a problem with AC3 or DTS audio. Unfortunately, it's slow as hell and the UI is ugly. I'm not entirely sure if LG is still releasing firmware updates for them but they're a pretty good alternative to a fully functional HTPC.
There's this thing called Plex Media Server.
Plex accesses locally defined content libraries, scrapes them for metadata and makes them available both locally for clients smart enough to play back the raw data or transcodes them for access by dumb (DLNA, like Playstations or the like) or reduced-capability clients like iFruits. Furthermore, it negotiates authentication-based access and sharing with the Plex Web Service, meaning that you can expose your media collection over the internet, for access outside your home or use the service to share with others. Plex isn't supported by as large a collection of consumer electronics as Netflix, but it is on a lot of smart TV systems and runs on most mobile and desktop platforms.
If you already have a respectable collection of local media and a half-decent computer you're willing to leave on, you more or less have a streaming media service that is entirely under your control. If you're enough of a nerd to be reading this deep in a Slashdot comment thread, you're also enough of a nerd to figure out how to leverage Plex or something like it to make a content service that is satisfactory for your needs.
8 at a time Netflix costs about the same amount as purchasing three new Blu-Ray releases or taking myself and my SO to the theater three times. Do you judge me more or less harshly for watching more than three movies a month?
I've had an 8-at-a-time Netflix subscription since 2000 and I've been copying discs for that entire time. My goal is to touch a disc one time and Netflix facilitates that - I rip the disc and send it back. I don't mind doing it (at this point it's automated). My local copies tend to be better than the pirated product and it's not like my ISP is going to rat me out for doing it.
In theory I can download faster than Netflix can mail me discs, but dealing with physical discs more or less eliminates the risk factors from piracy. I'm willing to accept the slight inconvenience of having to put a disc in a drive for that.
I would strongly prefer tabs and basic controls to remain on-screen in the first place.
I actually kind of like the Surface2 for some tasks, since it's thin and light for a 10" tablet and has a nice keyboard and a really nice screen. I often use it as a second or tertiary screen while I'm working since it's pretty easy to drop in to an RDP session or open Office documents and it can deal with printers and scanners just as well as any Windows 8 PC. It's a genuine workplace tablet.
But web browsing on it BLOWS. Metro-IE has to be switched to desktop mode to make any configuration changes (say, changing your default search engine or adding a TPL), but desktop-IE's controls are too damned small to be used with a finger and switching back and forth is PITA as well. Tabs and favorites are a hassle in Metro mode. It's just too much an ugly duckling. Windows RT has another general purpose browser, UC Browser, but that doesn't really improve the user experience over Metro-IE.
I actually find myself using the Metro-based NewsBento for about 75% of the web browsing I do on my Surface2. NewsBento is an RSS reader, which takes care of most of my normal sort of reading, but that doesn't really help for quick searches. I otherwise get a better web browsing experience with Firefox on my 5" phone than on a 10" tablet with IE.
So anyway, I want a decent arm's length, touch interface browsing experience for the devices I have. Microsoft doesn't give it to me, and I've been holding out hope for Firefox (or to a lesser extent Google) to make something decent. Honestly, if the Surface2 had a decent web browser (and a better Metro-based local media player, though VLC was just released for Metro a couple days ago), it would be a vastly more credible general-purpose mobile device.
The replacement for tape is different tape. Optical media isn't going to catch up to the data densities or transfer rates that tape has to offer any time soon. The (kinda old) LTO4 changer I use for my personal stuff handles 800GB/tape and only needs about three hours per tape. This new disc format isn't even going to be competitive with an eight year old tape spec.
Does Redbox rent porn?
Communities that don't have access to fast internet services and likewise don't have video stores are definitely in the land that time forgot. I have a few cousins who'd probably have to make two 70 mile round trips if they really wanted to see "I Was a Teenage MILF #71" since there's neither a mom and pop video store nor any internet service other than dialup or satellite available to them.
... or even a well-encoded BD rip from a torrent site?
I can't say I've ever had a movie-watching emergency of such intractable, spontaenous nature that I had absolutely nothing suitable on hand.
Here in the midwestern US we have Family Video, which at one time also had pretty decent dialup service. All the local Family Video stores I'm aware of are still open, have free titles, rent most stock for $1 and have a porn section. As the last chain standing I'd say they did it right. I've been an eight-DVDs-at-a-time Netflix subscriber since 1999 but I'm glad the local brick and mortar store (not vending machine) is around. Sometime it's nice to just browse.
Since no one has ever called me that in an email message, I'm sure that I would remember.
I'm not saying I can remember the exact shuffle order from a deck of cards, but I definitely don't have a problem with names, dates or phone numbers.
OK actually he's right that different IMAP clients interact with different IMAP servers when displaying folder structures. Gmail isn't the end all and be-all of IMAP and I don't think every IMAP client should just standardize on the way Google does something, but you really can run in to issues where three different clients name or use certain folders on the same server differently.
People still use email for anything other than verifying forum accounts and retrieving forgotten passwords? There are so many faster and easier ways to communicate
That's possibly generational. I don't like to send SMSes because of the character limit and the idea that it's at least nominally tied to one device. I don't use any social networking services because I've actually read their terms of service. I think phone conversations are intrusive and damaging to my concentration, so I prefer not to talk on the phone, and many slow typists I know dislike any sort of realtime IM system.
Most of the people I know who dislike E-mail don't like the "formality" of having to write complete sentences or are paranoid about the possibility of some kind of record being kept of the exchange, but to me it's clearly the best general-purpose communication tool available most of the time. The haters tend to be young and want to conduct as much communication as possible through either Facebook or SMS.
I don't know if that's you or not, but I will say that E-mail isn't going away any time soon regardless of your wishes to the contrary.
I keep every single message I've gotten since 1993 in the same inbox with perhaps a half dozen total messages segregated into a different folder. That's around 300,000 emails. I have a very good memory so I seldom need to search, but when I do, I've never found a weakness in the search component of any mail client I care to name, even going back to elm or pine.
The greatest degree of flexibility comes with having all my messages in the same directory; over the last 20 years I've treated it as a quasi-journal and usually if I go back to read a message or two for a given date I can give a pretty accurate summation of everything else I did on that day, so as an organizational structure I'd say it works just fine.
There's an official Gmail client for iOS if you really, REALLY need push updates.
Does the iOS mail client not do IMAP push?
I don't understand the problem either. Gmail works fine with any IMAP client I care to configure. IMAP itself has some weirdness around how clients interact with various folders, but that's not Gmail's fault.
I really don't like Gmail because of a distaste for threaded comment view (yes, I know I can turn it off on the web, but not in the Android client), but as someone who has every non-spam e-mail I've received since 1993 sitting in my inbox I can say that it performs just fine in spite of that and I can access it anywhere, which is the biggest single reason to stick with it.
You're not going to build a 5W ARM system with two or four hot-swap SATA drive bays in a decent enclosure with a decent transformer using new parts for less than what baby Synology NAS costs. I'm fully capable of assembling that sort of system but I can't do it cheaper, especially not if my time has value.
I re-sell NAS systems based on the idea that no on in an SMB setting is interested or even capable of dealing with a fully functional file server. To the folks in the office, the NAS is just "The network drive", while the guy who set it up probably isn't going to give it another thought until he hears that it's not working AND someone is offering to pay to get it fixed.
I also see a lot of NAS systems deployed as workarounds for dealing with slow IT staff response times, often because a manager someplace doesn't understand why it's so much of a hassle for a storage admin someplace to allocate 6TB of space than it is to buy a low end Drobo and some crappy desktop drives. Staff IT might not even be aware that the boxes are out there.
Being able to be disinterested is in fact part of the sales pitch for a NAS in the first place.
I could walk in to the Dunes National Park in something under five minutes from where I'm sitting right now. It's very pretty here. That does not solve the problem of the people who live here, the anti-intellectual regressives who run the state or their steadfast determination to never let anything get any better. College educated people by and large leave and it's for very good reason. This is a terrible place and it is devoid of worth.
My degree is from Purdue and I stand by my assessment. Including the part about the nuke.