Eventual breakdown is a design feature... as long as it lasts past the 90 day warranty, the early edge of the design goal has been met. If the system doesn't suffer a "replacement level" failure within 3 years the design is faulty - damaging to the future of the company.
They mention "difficulty delivering quality audio" through the analog channels, and I surely have experienced hum, hiss and static interference on analog headphones, but... reseating the connector to get a better ground, re-routing carelessly placed intermediate cables, etc. usually can dramatically improve the situation, even in cheap headphones.
On the other hand, every single pair of sub $100 digital headphones I have ever used have a ton of digital hiss in the background, and there's nothing you can do about it other than adjust your expectations of what signal to noise ratio should be when listening to quiet music.
"back in the day" (1990s) I had a dialup provider who fingered me for "violation of the TOS" unspecified infraction, and terminated my account - which was fine since their 14.4Kbaud dialup service was delivering about 100 baud of actual throughput during prime time hours after they signed on more customers than they could service.
I'm pretty sure they didn't like the fact that I used to download usenet newsgroups 8 hours a night, and since most people didn't do that, they just jettisioned the 2% of their customer base who was using up 25% of their bandwidth. Didn't help them, they continued to provide absolutely unusable service to all the customers who signed on for year long discount lock-in contracts, and were replaced by newer providers who did slightly better at managing growth.
I hear you, and agree - I really want mine to offer the connectivity it does and just "serve" the data from itself instead of the cloud - perhaps with an option where the company compensates me $5/month for sharing my data with them for as long as they are that interested in collecting it at that price.
"The cloud" makes configuration a little simpler for people who want to see what temperature it is in their house when they are away - but not enough to force the whole thing to run through their servers with no alternative to bypass them.
Yep, if there were a non "cloud dependent" alternative, I would have bought that. At the moment, I needed these features and this is all that's on offer.
Spot me $25M and I'll start a company to develop a cloud free thermostat, it should be on the market within 48 months after the money hits my account - I promise.
I'm registered (D) because they usually have the more interesting primaries.
I voted (R) for my HOR in 2014, because the competition were obviously incompetent.
I'm not overly politically savvy or well read on the local races, I have my prejudices (female judges have consistently been better than male, in my experience - I'm sure there are exceptions), so my votes are often guided by these prejudices, and sometimes when there are only two candidates and I know nothing about either, I will abstain or go "party line" if it's a race where party dominance is important, like legislatures.
I'm seriously frustrated with both Red and Blue peddling "middle of the road" undifferentiated positions on matters of substance, and of course forgetting their campaign promises after election time, in equal measure on both sides of the aisle - as far as I can see.
As for "supported by your tax dollars" - to me, that's preferable to being supported by special interest groups, and you don't run national campaigns without support from somewhere. Still, I check off "NO" to volunteer money into the system, I think there should be better ways to finance national politics (contribution limits, transparency, etc.), but am lacking in any real power to influence the system to adopt better ways. Maybe someday a candidate will run on a platform of campaign reform and actually deliver on the promises.
The problem is that the laws (written by lawyers and legislators, many of whom use these vehicles of financial obscurity) are written with relatively little penalties in them.
Sure, the law says you must pay your taxes, but there's no penalty clauses in there for doing the kinds of things that the lawmakers themselves are engaged in.
I've got one "connected" light switch - it turns on at dusk, off at 10pm - outside lights... and they can be controlled from our phones. Works, works well, I'd probably install a half dozen more of the things around the house if they weren't $50 each.
My "connected" thermostat has sensors in multiple rooms, that enables better control of temperature in the whole house, not just the one place the thermostat is mounted. Since installing it, we are more comfortable (less over and under cooling at various times), and the electric bill dropped enough to "pay back" cost of the thermostat and extra sensors in just about 1 year.
All in all, I think it is economically advantageous to us, and probably would be for most people in a typical 3+ bedroom house, especially if you have challenging variations in heat/cold distribution around the house.
I have a different "IoT" thermostat, and my best use for it is to set it in "vacation mode" from my phone, after I've already left on vacation and forgot to do it before I left. It's also handy to have the thermostat interface on my phone so I don't have to walk my lazy butt over to the thermostat to interact with it. The temperature/humidity and system operation logging and graphing functions are kind of informative to look at / compare how long the system runs when set at 74 vs 76 degrees - a couple of degrees can make a huge difference in daily run time, or almost none, depending on the weather outside.
Instead of cancelling the ride for no penalty, how about letting the late fees cut both ways? We all have time synchronized cell phones, both rider and driver should endeavor to be at the pickup 5 minutes early - if one or the other is more than 2 minutes late, let's respect both sides - drivers compensated for late customers _and_ customers compensated for late drivers.
People are free to vote for (I) if they have R & D phobia.
The two party system is seriously entrenched, and broken, and when the Boomers start to die off in droves it will either adapt or die. Until then, there are too many people raised on polar thinking to realistically expect winning politicians who are not associated with either team Red or Blue.
Some people are pretty comfortable throwing around 3000psi SCUBA tanks, too - but their "high pressure" hoses run closer to 150psi, IIRC - the regulator is right on top of the tank. It's all very do-able, but a pretty steep departure from freon based stuff and the pressures it needs.
Except the part where CO2 needs 2000psi to achieve the phase transitions, would be a bitch if you lost pressure and the pipes filled with sublimated CO2.
I suppose if you can afford the high pressure pumps, pipes and fittings, then the thermal efficiency of the cycle starts to pay off.
The/. karma system actually downgrades new accounts, and them only by 1 point on a 5 point scale - it's workable, but primitive and I think lacking.
I'm thinking more like Digg / now Reddit scoring for message visibility (unlimited points), but with more of a/. rationing of moderation points apportioned to accounts of higher karma (maybe a floating point karma system, everybody starts with 1 point, which you can grow to a maximum of maybe 3 points per post over time and positive ratings, or diminish to 0.1 points if you are constantly downvoted), coupled with that "poster's reputation level" clearly marked on the post - sure you can dig into their history and judge for yourself, but why make people be deep stalkers in order to vet casual discussion sources?
Lawyers profit from suffering (and occasionally death), the bigger industries profit from wide-scale poisonings both subtle and obvious. I'll circle back around to: Transparency is the answer - get rid of the secrets and we can judge on merit which companies are serving our interests more than their own (hint: they all serve their own, the question is whether or not we're getting anything worthwhile out of the deal.)
"Old guys, especially successful old guys, often evolve away from handling the soldering irons themselves."
That makes them useless. If you want to invent, then get in there and do it. If you want to talk, get a TV slot and stop wasting our time.
-1 disagree, after 20 years of handling a soldering iron, you can usually contribute more effectively by educating / leading the younger generation, passing on your knowledge to many workers instead of continuing as a single worker yourself. For one thing, the eyesight, fine motor skills, and other things required to do real work do decline... but the ability to be a blowhard rarely does.
I think with sufficient feedback mechanisms (so, I've been labeled Astroturf once, if 20 other people label me not Astroturf, that puts my Astroturf score around 4%...) it can work. It's essentially the Google page rank problem, but applied to social media accounts. It will have a certain amount of arms-race to it, but overall Google seems to be keeping a handle on page rank, even with the gamers in the system.
What I'm really looking for is a "real person" test. Now, if a "real person" develops a reputation over the course of years and then takes money to back one group or another, that's not going to be easy to tell.
If a person takes money to back one group or another and then runs out and creates 20 new social media accounts to push the agenda, that should get flagged quickly. I'm not saying to freeze out new accounts, new accounts are necessary, but they should be shown with the grain of salt they deserve - like new people on eBay.
Slashdot Mirror
And multiple players operating through parallel interfaces will be - problematic, at best.
Eventual breakdown is a design feature... as long as it lasts past the 90 day warranty, the early edge of the design goal has been met. If the system doesn't suffer a "replacement level" failure within 3 years the design is faulty - damaging to the future of the company.
They are fitting more and more children with cochlear implants - wouldn't be inconceivable to have an Intel digital audio interface layer in those....
They mention "difficulty delivering quality audio" through the analog channels, and I surely have experienced hum, hiss and static interference on analog headphones, but... reseating the connector to get a better ground, re-routing carelessly placed intermediate cables, etc. usually can dramatically improve the situation, even in cheap headphones.
On the other hand, every single pair of sub $100 digital headphones I have ever used have a ton of digital hiss in the background, and there's nothing you can do about it other than adjust your expectations of what signal to noise ratio should be when listening to quiet music.
How do you determine if someone actually remembers a password or not?
I certainly have forgotten passwords to systems I left on the shelf for 7 months or more.
"back in the day" (1990s) I had a dialup provider who fingered me for "violation of the TOS" unspecified infraction, and terminated my account - which was fine since their 14.4Kbaud dialup service was delivering about 100 baud of actual throughput during prime time hours after they signed on more customers than they could service.
I'm pretty sure they didn't like the fact that I used to download usenet newsgroups 8 hours a night, and since most people didn't do that, they just jettisioned the 2% of their customer base who was using up 25% of their bandwidth. Didn't help them, they continued to provide absolutely unusable service to all the customers who signed on for year long discount lock-in contracts, and were replaced by newer providers who did slightly better at managing growth.
I hear you, and agree - I really want mine to offer the connectivity it does and just "serve" the data from itself instead of the cloud - perhaps with an option where the company compensates me $5/month for sharing my data with them for as long as they are that interested in collecting it at that price.
"The cloud" makes configuration a little simpler for people who want to see what temperature it is in their house when they are away - but not enough to force the whole thing to run through their servers with no alternative to bypass them.
Yep, if there were a non "cloud dependent" alternative, I would have bought that. At the moment, I needed these features and this is all that's on offer.
Spot me $25M and I'll start a company to develop a cloud free thermostat, it should be on the market within 48 months after the money hits my account - I promise.
I'm registered (D) because they usually have the more interesting primaries.
I voted (R) for my HOR in 2014, because the competition were obviously incompetent.
I'm not overly politically savvy or well read on the local races, I have my prejudices (female judges have consistently been better than male, in my experience - I'm sure there are exceptions), so my votes are often guided by these prejudices, and sometimes when there are only two candidates and I know nothing about either, I will abstain or go "party line" if it's a race where party dominance is important, like legislatures.
I'm seriously frustrated with both Red and Blue peddling "middle of the road" undifferentiated positions on matters of substance, and of course forgetting their campaign promises after election time, in equal measure on both sides of the aisle - as far as I can see.
As for "supported by your tax dollars" - to me, that's preferable to being supported by special interest groups, and you don't run national campaigns without support from somewhere. Still, I check off "NO" to volunteer money into the system, I think there should be better ways to finance national politics (contribution limits, transparency, etc.), but am lacking in any real power to influence the system to adopt better ways. Maybe someday a candidate will run on a platform of campaign reform and actually deliver on the promises.
The problem is that the laws (written by lawyers and legislators, many of whom use these vehicles of financial obscurity) are written with relatively little penalties in them.
Sure, the law says you must pay your taxes, but there's no penalty clauses in there for doing the kinds of things that the lawmakers themselves are engaged in.
I've got one "connected" light switch - it turns on at dusk, off at 10pm - outside lights... and they can be controlled from our phones. Works, works well, I'd probably install a half dozen more of the things around the house if they weren't $50 each.
My "connected" thermostat has sensors in multiple rooms, that enables better control of temperature in the whole house, not just the one place the thermostat is mounted. Since installing it, we are more comfortable (less over and under cooling at various times), and the electric bill dropped enough to "pay back" cost of the thermostat and extra sensors in just about 1 year.
All in all, I think it is economically advantageous to us, and probably would be for most people in a typical 3+ bedroom house, especially if you have challenging variations in heat/cold distribution around the house.
I have a different "IoT" thermostat, and my best use for it is to set it in "vacation mode" from my phone, after I've already left on vacation and forgot to do it before I left. It's also handy to have the thermostat interface on my phone so I don't have to walk my lazy butt over to the thermostat to interact with it. The temperature/humidity and system operation logging and graphing functions are kind of informative to look at / compare how long the system runs when set at 74 vs 76 degrees - a couple of degrees can make a huge difference in daily run time, or almost none, depending on the weather outside.
I know Netscape lost, but did IE really win long term? I mean, from my perspective, not - most people I know only use IE when forced to...
Dump the heat into your bloodstream via the watchband... Now, where do you get the power for all that heat?
Instead of cancelling the ride for no penalty, how about letting the late fees cut both ways? We all have time synchronized cell phones, both rider and driver should endeavor to be at the pickup 5 minutes early - if one or the other is more than 2 minutes late, let's respect both sides - drivers compensated for late customers _and_ customers compensated for late drivers.
People are free to vote for (I) if they have R & D phobia.
The two party system is seriously entrenched, and broken, and when the Boomers start to die off in droves it will either adapt or die. Until then, there are too many people raised on polar thinking to realistically expect winning politicians who are not associated with either team Red or Blue.
Some people are pretty comfortable throwing around 3000psi SCUBA tanks, too - but their "high pressure" hoses run closer to 150psi, IIRC - the regulator is right on top of the tank. It's all very do-able, but a pretty steep departure from freon based stuff and the pressures it needs.
Except the part where CO2 needs 2000psi to achieve the phase transitions, would be a bitch if you lost pressure and the pipes filled with sublimated CO2.
I suppose if you can afford the high pressure pumps, pipes and fittings, then the thermal efficiency of the cycle starts to pay off.
The /. karma system actually downgrades new accounts, and them only by 1 point on a 5 point scale - it's workable, but primitive and I think lacking.
I'm thinking more like Digg / now Reddit scoring for message visibility (unlimited points), but with more of a /. rationing of moderation points apportioned to accounts of higher karma (maybe a floating point karma system, everybody starts with 1 point, which you can grow to a maximum of maybe 3 points per post over time and positive ratings, or diminish to 0.1 points if you are constantly downvoted), coupled with that "poster's reputation level" clearly marked on the post - sure you can dig into their history and judge for yourself, but why make people be deep stalkers in order to vet casual discussion sources?
Lawyers profit from suffering (and occasionally death), the bigger industries profit from wide-scale poisonings both subtle and obvious. I'll circle back around to: Transparency is the answer - get rid of the secrets and we can judge on merit which companies are serving our interests more than their own (hint: they all serve their own, the question is whether or not we're getting anything worthwhile out of the deal.)
"Old guys, especially successful old guys, often evolve away from handling the soldering irons themselves."
That makes them useless. If you want to invent, then get in there and do it. If you want to talk, get a TV slot and stop wasting our time.
-1 disagree, after 20 years of handling a soldering iron, you can usually contribute more effectively by educating / leading the younger generation, passing on your knowledge to many workers instead of continuing as a single worker yourself. For one thing, the eyesight, fine motor skills, and other things required to do real work do decline... but the ability to be a blowhard rarely does.
I think with sufficient feedback mechanisms (so, I've been labeled Astroturf once, if 20 other people label me not Astroturf, that puts my Astroturf score around 4%...) it can work. It's essentially the Google page rank problem, but applied to social media accounts. It will have a certain amount of arms-race to it, but overall Google seems to be keeping a handle on page rank, even with the gamers in the system.
What I'm really looking for is a "real person" test. Now, if a "real person" develops a reputation over the course of years and then takes money to back one group or another, that's not going to be easy to tell.
If a person takes money to back one group or another and then runs out and creates 20 new social media accounts to push the agenda, that should get flagged quickly. I'm not saying to freeze out new accounts, new accounts are necessary, but they should be shown with the grain of salt they deserve - like new people on eBay.
Now you're trying to train the world to think, I'm just trying to make it easier to check the biases of opinions that are presented.