"iPadification" is my new favorite word. It's so rich in meaning. It implies content consumer, not content creator. It implies an interface even a five year old could use, with all the implied limitations of that. It's a TV with a touch screen. Cool.
So, Microsoft again tries to sell their user base on full screen applications. "Oh, we didn't make it appealing enough in Windows 8. We'll make it natter at the users while they're trying to get work done. You know, remember Clippy? They'll love it."
Reading the description, it looks like Windows will become something like One Note All The Time.
It also kinda reminds me of CRT terminals with job control.
But we will see. I'm somewhat forced to use either Windows or Apple, because those are the platforms for Adobe CC. The Apple culture is really not a good fit for me; I don't like the idea of disposable computers. Maybe it's time to give Adobe the axe and go Linux full time.
Really, Windows 10 is... usable. Why can't they just leave it the hell alone? Maybe write applications instead?
The wifi signal could be swamped out by a strong enough transmitter, also. Wifi security cameras are convenient and easy to set up (I have a couple) but may not be appropriate for the most sensitive locations. My doorway cam is hard wired to a computer in the garage. To foil a physical brute force attack (break into the house and steal the surveillance computer) the computer emails me and puts the clip on dropbox when the motion sensor trips. Even that isn't a perfect solution, but at some point you have to say "good enough".
And so... what's keeping me from ordering from a different online service? It sounds like Walmart thinks their only competition is themselves. Let's disabuse them of that.
With everything turned on, I'm getting about two days on a charge. It's a 3 year old battery, though. I'm thinking about changing it out and see if that improves.
The later versions have front facing cameras (do Dick Tracy - like facetime) wireless charging and look more like a real watch, (which is attractive to me) but I don't have a good enough use case to warrant the cost of trading up, yet. Also, I'm not wedded to Samsung -- am also interested in the Garmin with GPS incorporated into the watch. It'll take more research and a little more cost. I don't buy stuff just to have it; the device has to fill a genuine need. The Apple watch is not a contender, though, for the simple reason that I don't carry an iphone.
The objective is to not need to carry the smartphone unless I really need something with a larger screen. My use case for the Gear S was that if the phone gets out of bluetooth range, calls to the phone are automatically routed to the Gear over cellular. (And this works really well, in my experience.) So when I leave the phone on the charger (happens 3 or 4 times a month) or at my desk when I'm at lunch, I don't miss calls. And before you ask, devices like watches and tablets with sim cards are priced differently (at least, with T-mobile) than phones. I think I pay $10 a month flat fee for the watch.
The Apple watch, I believe has been marketed differently -- it was never intended to be a stand-alone device, but only ever as an accessory for the phone, something to make the iphone a more attractive purchase. I can see where Apple would be really reluctant to give it stand-alone capabilities. It doesn't match their marketing paradigm. I think this is the real reason Apple was reluctant to incorporate cellular capability into the watch. Bulk and battery life are marketing fud.
This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed.
Who said it's his words? As with things like Riverdale, they could just buy the rights to the characters (if they haven't already) and do whatever they like with them
Fair enough. (And incidentally, I'd have no interest in watching that.) But then, in what capacity is the Tolkien estate (which means Christopher, let's face it) involved?
This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed. That LotR and The Hobbit were exceptions because JRRT sold the rights while he was still alive, but no more under any circumstances. This is why Jackson had The Hobbit and some material from the appendices at the end of Return of the King (if you haven't read them, you should -- there are stories in there) instead of filming "The Quest of Erebor", the larger, more serious version of The Hobbit that was supposed to align more completely with LotR, which JRRT hadn't finished prior to his death. QoE is told from Frodo's perspective, as he receives the tale from Gandalf.
So why, after all these years of feeding off his father's works, and hamstringing further attempts at filming his father's works, does Christopher suddenly give the ok to film other stories, to his old nemesis New Line, of all people?
b) I really wish they'd stop moving the delete key around.
c) I have big hands, which trip over the trackpad as I'm typing. Some laptops have a switch to disable, but they're usually gamer laptops and I'm not a gamer. I'm sure manufacturers spend a lot of time envisioning interesting things that can happen when you stroke the trackpad certain ways, but it's entirely lost on me.
d) The extent to which a laptop keyboard is bearable is in direct relation to the amount of tactile feedback. In the quest for thinness, we're losing sight of that.
What, seriously? You were actually running the driver that happens to come with the OS? Ok, everyone together, what is the very first thing Microsoft Tech Support says when you're having video problems? Use the drivers from your card's manufacturer, and keep them up to date. It's not that hard.
Now if we could get our spam filters to automatically route spam to the spambot, we'd really have something. Either a significant number of spammers would go out of business, or the universe would enter a recursive sequence and pop like a balloon.
One or two a month. It used to be a lot more. In the last five years the number of books I read a month has dropped dramatically. But I read a lot of online tech magazines, and I follow four webcomics (Stand Still Stay Silent, Gunnerkrigg court, Schlock Mercenary, and currently finishing up The Red Fox's Tale.)
Currently reading John Rin's "Live Free Or Die", a novel that takes place in the Schlockverse, a few hundred years before the beginning of Schlock Mercenary. It's a little slow. I'm hoping it picks up.
Late last year I'd become addicted to the Honor Harrington novels. Best depiction of space combat I've read or seen anywhere. But by the fourth or fifth novel the author got lazy, cutting-and-pasting the same stuff over and over again. So I dumped it.
Also read recently "Dome City Blues" and "Angel City Blues". I'm a fan of cyberpunk and hard-boiled detective novels, and these novels stroke both.
Most gaming laptops have a button that will allow you to turn off the trackpad. Upgrade to Windows Pro, you can turn off most the suggestions, notifications, and ads that are now embedded in Windows. You should be able to get a pretty decent machine for about $1000 that will play all games. Don't get a 4k screen, 1080p is plenty. More will only require more, hotter, hardware.
All good suggestions, most especially the second one, of which I WAS NOT AWARE. I know what *I* will be doing this weekend! (Evil laugh.)
(I only run Windows Pro on my machines and my family's machines. In my experience, networking on the Home editions tends to be wonky, and higher than Pro is generally only for bragging rights. And slowing down your computer.)
The biggest problems that are remaining on Windows are 1) Dumb users (like on Mac) and 2) MS Spyware (but I bet this also happens on Mac)
But unlike Mac, Dumb Windows users usually knows a tech savvy Windows user
Sigh. As someone on the hook for systems administration for my entire extended family, my wife's extended family, my wife's friends, my wife's friends' friends, yeah Dumb Windows users usually know a tech savvy Windows user, which would be me. Windows 10 still has some ugly legacy from that horrible Windows 8, which means among other things that systems administration tools are in more than one place, so even tech savvy Windows 7 users have some things to relearn. (And I'd really like to be alone just for a few minutes with the guy who thought that was a good idea. With the cameras turned off.)
As a former Mac user, I'd say that tech savvy Mac users aren't too hard to come by. A lot of things can be puzzled out by someone with Unix experience and access to the internet. But battle scarred veterans of various Windows debacles are probably easier to come by.
But unlike Windows, Dumb Mac users don't need to know anybody, they can still use their Mar.
That is an oft-repeated urban legend. Mac forums indicate otherwise.
Wait, I'll walk that back this far: If all you're doing is content consumption, you probably don't need to know a technically savvy person. But real work and real problems go hand in hand. At that point you either know a Mac wizard, or become one.
A lot of that, patches that break apps, applications that corrupt registry, driver issues, were real and extremely annoying issues a few years ago, not so much now. It's like jokes about Harleys leaking oil. It was a real problem. Back in the eighties.
The workstation on which I do business (photo and video post processing) runs Windows. This is because Adobe Creative Suite runs on (a) Windows, or (b) Mac. (It *almost* runs on Wine, but not close enough.)
I switched from Mac to Windows back when Apple and Adobe got into a pissing contest, I believe about that very same trackpad you like so much. I work with a mouse in my right hand and a midi controller with motorized sliders under my left hand. A trackpad does nothing for me. It's just something to accidentally touch when I'm using the keyboard. Typically the first thing I do on a new laptop is disable the damned trackpad.
The computer on which I do everything else, runs Mint.
I've got two elderly, high-end-at-the-time G series Macs parked under my desk. I need to remember to take them to freegeek.
I'm not a Windows fan. The moment Adobe comes out with a native Linux port, it'll be a pox on both your houses. I'll dump the Big Two and never look back. But until then, I have to put up with Windows.
And I have to say truthfully, although I've pushed my current and previous Windows 10 boxes pretty hard, both in the work I do, the ancillary apps I run, and the hardware I attach, I have yet to have a single blue (or whatever color it is this iteration) screen of death. I've never had a hang. I've never had a USB device not be recognized. It Just Works. Windows used to be a heaping pile of garbage, and with one release to another the heap just got taller or shorter. But right now, it appears to be dead nuts stable. Imagine my surprise.
It does a lot of things I find annoying, like constantly begging me to use Edge instead of Firefox, and shamelessly promoting Cortana at every opportunity. But it runs Adobe CC acceptably well. And it hasn't crashed since I "upgraded" to Windows 10.
In summary, that patter is getting a little stale. You might think about harping on lack of privacy and interrupting one's work with "Ask Cortana a question! Go on! You know you want to!" instead. There's still lots of reasons to hate Microsoft. Your arguments would carry more weight if you used ones that were still valid.
'DisplayMate said this means that it's now "absolutely pointless" to increase the display resolution and pixels per inch of the iPhone any further, since there would be "no visual benefit" for users.'
But they'll do it anyway, because how else are they going to sell users on the iPhone XI?
"We can hear the pitch now," jokes The Verge. "It's like Game of Thrones, only with a series of books that are actually finished."
I can't help but think of all the books that have popped up in the Tolkien section after his death. He's been more prolific from the grave than L. Ron Hubbard, what with Christopher Tolkien publishing everything his dad scribbled in a liner.
It seems to me that if this -- the TV itself inserting ads into ad-free content -- is important to people, it will open a market for "dumb tvs", monitors with modern viewing specs that don't have the capability to do this. They could even develop an "AD FREE" sticker to inform the consumer.
But if enough don't care, of course, it'll definitely happen.
Slashdot Mirror
"iPadification" is my new favorite word. It's so rich in meaning. It implies content consumer, not content creator. It implies an interface even a five year old could use, with all the implied limitations of that. It's a TV with a touch screen. Cool.
So, Microsoft again tries to sell their user base on full screen applications. "Oh, we didn't make it appealing enough in Windows 8. We'll make it natter at the users while they're trying to get work done. You know, remember Clippy? They'll love it."
Reading the description, it looks like Windows will become something like One Note All The Time.
It also kinda reminds me of CRT terminals with job control.
But we will see. I'm somewhat forced to use either Windows or Apple, because those are the platforms for Adobe CC. The Apple culture is really not a good fit for me; I don't like the idea of disposable computers. Maybe it's time to give Adobe the axe and go Linux full time.
Really, Windows 10 is... usable. Why can't they just leave it the hell alone? Maybe write applications instead?
They would say that.
The wifi signal could be swamped out by a strong enough transmitter, also. Wifi security cameras are convenient and easy to set up (I have a couple) but may not be appropriate for the most sensitive locations. My doorway cam is hard wired to a computer in the garage. To foil a physical brute force attack (break into the house and steal the surveillance computer) the computer emails me and puts the clip on dropbox when the motion sensor trips. Even that isn't a perfect solution, but at some point you have to say "good enough".
And so... what's keeping me from ordering from a different online service? It sounds like Walmart thinks their only competition is themselves. Let's disabuse them of that.
How are their battery lives though?
With everything turned on, I'm getting about two days on a charge. It's a 3 year old battery, though. I'm thinking about changing it out and see if that improves.
The later versions have front facing cameras (do Dick Tracy - like facetime) wireless charging and look more like a real watch, (which is attractive to me) but I don't have a good enough use case to warrant the cost of trading up, yet. Also, I'm not wedded to Samsung -- am also interested in the Garmin with GPS incorporated into the watch. It'll take more research and a little more cost. I don't buy stuff just to have it; the device has to fill a genuine need. The Apple watch is not a contender, though, for the simple reason that I don't carry an iphone.
The objective is to not need to carry the smartphone unless I really need something with a larger screen. My use case for the Gear S was that if the phone gets out of bluetooth range, calls to the phone are automatically routed to the Gear over cellular. (And this works really well, in my experience.) So when I leave the phone on the charger (happens 3 or 4 times a month) or at my desk when I'm at lunch, I don't miss calls. And before you ask, devices like watches and tablets with sim cards are priced differently (at least, with T-mobile) than phones. I think I pay $10 a month flat fee for the watch.
The Apple watch, I believe has been marketed differently -- it was never intended to be a stand-alone device, but only ever as an accessory for the phone, something to make the iphone a more attractive purchase. I can see where Apple would be really reluctant to give it stand-alone capabilities. It doesn't match their marketing paradigm. I think this is the real reason Apple was reluctant to incorporate cellular capability into the watch. Bulk and battery life are marketing fud.
> The new device, Apple's first that connects to the internet without being tethered to a smartphone [...]
About damned time. I'm currently wearing a Gear S that's been able to do that since 2014.
This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed.
Who said it's his words? As with things like Riverdale, they could just buy the rights to the characters (if they haven't already) and do whatever they like with them
Fair enough. (And incidentally, I'd have no interest in watching that.) But then, in what capacity is the Tolkien estate (which means Christopher, let's face it) involved?
This really puzzles me. Christopher Tolkien has said many times, some in court, that no further words of his father's will ever be filmed. That LotR and The Hobbit were exceptions because JRRT sold the rights while he was still alive, but no more under any circumstances. This is why Jackson had The Hobbit and some material from the appendices at the end of Return of the King (if you haven't read them, you should -- there are stories in there) instead of filming "The Quest of Erebor", the larger, more serious version of The Hobbit that was supposed to align more completely with LotR, which JRRT hadn't finished prior to his death. QoE is told from Frodo's perspective, as he receives the tale from Gandalf.
So why, after all these years of feeding off his father's works, and hamstringing further attempts at filming his father's works, does Christopher suddenly give the ok to film other stories, to his old nemesis New Line, of all people?
Yeah, I just read the wiki synopsis. A barrel of laughs, are the children of Hurin. I bet Game of Thrones fans would love it, though.
Best rant this week, and it's only Monday.
a) None of them.
b) I really wish they'd stop moving the delete key around.
c) I have big hands, which trip over the trackpad as I'm typing. Some laptops have a switch to disable, but they're usually gamer laptops and I'm not a gamer. I'm sure manufacturers spend a lot of time envisioning interesting things that can happen when you stroke the trackpad certain ways, but it's entirely lost on me.
d) The extent to which a laptop keyboard is bearable is in direct relation to the amount of tactile feedback. In the quest for thinness, we're losing sight of that.
What, seriously? You were actually running the driver that happens to come with the OS? Ok, everyone together, what is the very first thing Microsoft Tech Support says when you're having video problems? Use the drivers from your card's manufacturer, and keep them up to date. It's not that hard.
Now if we could get our spam filters to automatically route spam to the spambot, we'd really have something. Either a significant number of spammers would go out of business, or the universe would enter a recursive sequence and pop like a balloon.
Big into both of them, also Phillip K. Dick.
One or two a month. It used to be a lot more. In the last five years the number of books I read a month has dropped dramatically. But I read a lot of online tech magazines, and I follow four webcomics (Stand Still Stay Silent, Gunnerkrigg court, Schlock Mercenary, and currently finishing up The Red Fox's Tale.)
Currently reading John Rin's "Live Free Or Die", a novel that takes place in the Schlockverse, a few hundred years before the beginning of Schlock Mercenary. It's a little slow. I'm hoping it picks up.
Late last year I'd become addicted to the Honor Harrington novels. Best depiction of space combat I've read or seen anywhere. But by the fourth or fifth novel the author got lazy, cutting-and-pasting the same stuff over and over again. So I dumped it.
Also read recently "Dome City Blues" and "Angel City Blues". I'm a fan of cyberpunk and hard-boiled detective novels, and these novels stroke both.
This is great, I only have a few things to add:
Most gaming laptops have a button that will allow you to turn off the trackpad.
Upgrade to Windows Pro, you can turn off most the suggestions, notifications, and ads that are now embedded in Windows.
You should be able to get a pretty decent machine for about $1000 that will play all games.
Don't get a 4k screen, 1080p is plenty. More will only require more, hotter, hardware.
All good suggestions, most especially the second one, of which I WAS NOT AWARE. I know what *I* will be doing this weekend! (Evil laugh.)
(I only run Windows Pro on my machines and my family's machines. In my experience, networking on the Home editions tends to be wonky, and higher than Pro is generally only for bragging rights. And slowing down your computer.)
The biggest problems that are remaining on Windows are 1) Dumb users (like on Mac) and 2) MS Spyware (but I bet this also happens on Mac)
But unlike Mac, Dumb Windows users usually knows a tech savvy Windows user
Sigh. As someone on the hook for systems administration for my entire extended family, my wife's extended family, my wife's friends, my wife's friends' friends, yeah Dumb Windows users usually know a tech savvy Windows user, which would be me. Windows 10 still has some ugly legacy from that horrible Windows 8, which means among other things that systems administration tools are in more than one place, so even tech savvy Windows 7 users have some things to relearn. (And I'd really like to be alone just for a few minutes with the guy who thought that was a good idea. With the cameras turned off.)
As a former Mac user, I'd say that tech savvy Mac users aren't too hard to come by. A lot of things can be puzzled out by someone with Unix experience and access to the internet. But battle scarred veterans of various Windows debacles are probably easier to come by.
But unlike Windows, Dumb Mac users don't need to know anybody, they can still use their Mar.
That is an oft-repeated urban legend. Mac forums indicate otherwise.
Wait, I'll walk that back this far: If all you're doing is content consumption, you probably don't need to know a technically savvy person. But real work and real problems go hand in hand. At that point you either know a Mac wizard, or become one.
A lot of that, patches that break apps, applications that corrupt registry, driver issues, were real and extremely annoying issues a few years ago, not so much now. It's like jokes about Harleys leaking oil. It was a real problem. Back in the eighties.
The workstation on which I do business (photo and video post processing) runs Windows. This is because Adobe Creative Suite runs on (a) Windows, or (b) Mac. (It *almost* runs on Wine, but not close enough.)
I switched from Mac to Windows back when Apple and Adobe got into a pissing contest, I believe about that very same trackpad you like so much. I work with a mouse in my right hand and a midi controller with motorized sliders under my left hand. A trackpad does nothing for me. It's just something to accidentally touch when I'm using the keyboard. Typically the first thing I do on a new laptop is disable the damned trackpad.
The computer on which I do everything else, runs Mint.
I've got two elderly, high-end-at-the-time G series Macs parked under my desk. I need to remember to take them to freegeek.
I'm not a Windows fan. The moment Adobe comes out with a native Linux port, it'll be a pox on both your houses. I'll dump the Big Two and never look back. But until then, I have to put up with Windows.
And I have to say truthfully, although I've pushed my current and previous Windows 10 boxes pretty hard, both in the work I do, the ancillary apps I run, and the hardware I attach, I have yet to have a single blue (or whatever color it is this iteration) screen of death. I've never had a hang. I've never had a USB device not be recognized. It Just Works. Windows used to be a heaping pile of garbage, and with one release to another the heap just got taller or shorter. But right now, it appears to be dead nuts stable. Imagine my surprise.
It does a lot of things I find annoying, like constantly begging me to use Edge instead of Firefox, and shamelessly promoting Cortana at every opportunity. But it runs Adobe CC acceptably well. And it hasn't crashed since I "upgraded" to Windows 10.
In summary, that patter is getting a little stale. You might think about harping on lack of privacy and interrupting one's work with "Ask Cortana a question! Go on! You know you want to!" instead. There's still lots of reasons to hate Microsoft. Your arguments would carry more weight if you used ones that were still valid.
'DisplayMate said this means that it's now "absolutely pointless" to increase the display resolution and pixels per inch of the iPhone any further, since there would be "no visual benefit" for users.'
But they'll do it anyway, because how else are they going to sell users on the iPhone XI?
"We can hear the pitch now," jokes The Verge. "It's like Game of Thrones, only with a series of books that are actually finished."
I can't help but think of all the books that have popped up in the Tolkien section after his death. He's been more prolific from the grave than L. Ron Hubbard, what with Christopher Tolkien publishing everything his dad scribbled in a liner.
It seems to me that if this -- the TV itself inserting ads into ad-free content -- is important to people, it will open a market for "dumb tvs", monitors with modern viewing specs that don't have the capability to do this. They could even develop an "AD FREE" sticker to inform the consumer.
But if enough don't care, of course, it'll definitely happen.