...come with a CD drive anymore, this is to be expected.
Let's face it, you don't see anyone with a CD (Discman) anymore, unless it's the obscure retro-freak that just likes to show off old toys (like me), but seriously - most people have their music on their cellphone today, just look at all the hi-fi equipment in the store, those that are regularly sold - has a "iPhone" or some other cellphone docking feature to them. At the very least - their own streaming services and possibilities.
It's just an impractical format today. It had 30 good years, now it's all memory - literally. CD is dead - long live the CD
Even Blu-ray kinda died because of that, no one wants that clunky old format when you can store it all on an harddisk or simply stream it from the cloud. I gotta say - I do miss collecting DVD's for the sake of always having a hardcopy of my favorite movies, and yes - I still do have them, and a few players just in case they're unavailable in the future.
There's both a good and bad side to this. I like services like Netflix where you can basically just browse trough a huge library of movies, no need to physically find them there and then, and just select it for viewing here and wherever I want to play them. It's very convenient, especially when it's AD free. It's not even expensive for that kind of access.
What is sad tho, is that they can remove our favorite movies at will, some months these movies just aren't available, in cases like that - a good private collection can't be beat.
As for music CD's, since we have perfectly good streaming services available, with pretty much every tune on the planet available on those services, the CD as a musical medium is pretty much gone.
Same story all over again. Those kiddos can't get enough of trolling and "cheap thrills" from no-effort gaming, while the rest of us who are actually honest player, rages to the brink of needing a psychologist over the fact that some trollers are gaming you (literally "gaming" you) till insanity. Too unhealthy, life is too short for that, there are so many other things to do. Cheating killed multiplayer.
However - when we feel like some multiplayer action - me and my friends run exclusively on private servers, because no one of us cheats, and we're not quick-fix instant-gratification teenagers anymore, so we like a good honest game and a lot of laughts. Playing on our private servers is a blast, because if someone actually makes it there, we know the history of the players, we know they're good, and everyone's struggle is real. Here you gotta work for your experience.
Yep, Olsmeister is actually right, 25-30k is actually the norm, even in Denmark and Sweden which is considered the richest countries in the world. How do I know? Well...I'm a 40+ something IT Helpdesk worker, and yes, that's what we get in one of the worlds biggest companies.
Sorry if you had a blissful dream of riches, this is the real world. Anyone that says you get 50-70K for being an IT-Helpdesk coworker, is FULL OF BS - period!
Information wants to be free = people want to be free, this is what we fight for. Those who are in control, wants to have MORE control. You're always guilty unless proven innocent in the eyes of those who have everything to hide fro you. A thief thinks everyone steals.
Once information is free - those in power realize they must abide by those who hired them to do the job of government in the first place - we the people did, we are their entire purpose, not the other way around. Freedom of information means that no one is safe if they do wrong, because it becomes hard to hide from the general population, and that's the way it should me.
Freedom = to be free, free from tyranny and control.
There's plenty of countries where the tax rates are high that offer a WAY higher quality of life than most of the US for most of its people.
Well, Sweden is almost U.S with high taxes and a little extra welfare...
In Germany the work week consist of 36 actual work hours while they get paid for 40 hours.
In Sweden the work week consist of 45 hours, but they get paid for 40. And the healthcare albeit ALMOST free isn't really free. You pay a fee of 25$ each time you visit, untill you reach a maximum of roughly 250$ of which hereafter the visits are "free" for the rest of the year, and then it starts over. And you pay for unemployment insurance, and you have to go to a "job-corps" like thing at an unemployment office if you're unemployed and want to collect on your unemployment insurance, which is ludicrously low anyway.
And Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage - you can pay your workers under 10$ and no fingers lifted from any gov. In fact, they do this at a lot of schools - because the schools are understaffed, many of the biggest factories doesn't pay HALF of an average Amercian salary, and yet we have the highest taxes in the world. I live here, and I wonder sometimes if I traded down...
To go to work 6 o clock in the morning and come home 6 o clock in the afternoon is not a sustainable life for me...I might want to move again.
If I understand it right, you can still do whatever you want with the hardware itself, the restriction is on the drivers (software). That is why it does not apply to those who do not update the drivers.
I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. Ever heard of "rooting"? It simply means bypassing and editing the BIOS (which technically is also software) to your own liking, this often means bypassing access to hardware. This was the case for the longest time for those who wanted to use the powerful multi-core processors of the old Playstation 3.
These companies, don't want you to use your hardware for other purposes than they intended - as long as it competes with their own alternate products, never-mind the competition...
History repeats itself, did you ever remember the stories about Microsoft and Xbox? Apple and the iPhone? The right to modify your own hardware device?
The consumers and the companies that produced these product - couldn't quite agree on the ownership, even though it should be blatantly clear: If you OWN the hardware you purchase, you're technically free to do what it as you wish (in a perfect world free from lobbyist that convince lawmakers to follow the way of the companies rather than the public wishes).
Now, that said - the companies in turn, has no specific responsibility to offer you free software that support certain functions for your own purposes if they don't wish to do so, you may own the hardware, but you don't have rights to demand them to do anything for you in the future with your hardware (unless promised by them).
Nor do they have any obligation to provide you or anyone with full documentation on how your hardware works.
You in turn - have the full rights to refuse their products, you simply don't buy them.
It runs a Phone os (Android 6.0), and my Sony L1 runs Android 7.0 - same thing. Turn off the phone's wifi - and it lasts for nearly a week. Turn it on, and I'm happy if it makes it to the next day.
I have a Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 pro that does this, add a bluetooth keyboard - and you have that laptop you're talking about.
The key to long battery time, is to DISABLE WIFI. Bluetooth is okay, it uses a fleafart's energy of power, but WIFI is another beast, it sucks the batteries dry within hours of any device.
When I disable wifi, it's not uncommon for me to have the device on for a whole week, and still able to just within seconds turn on wifi and go on about my business as nothing happened.
The always-connected isn't really needed, and if it is - you'll be recharging it anyway.
To believe we're the only ones in the universe is the most arrogant (and naive) belief we can have.
If you want to see life out there (but not as we know it), all you need to do - is to lay down one summers night (preferably out in the woods) with a set of high quality binoculars and a lot of patience (3 hours ought to do it). You'll notice things that aren't quite like you'd think they are, it's mostly just lights that takes a different route than e.g. a satellite or an asteroid would do. An asteroid wouldn't all of a sudden do a 90 degree turn or fly in a fast wave like pattern, sure - it could be a military experiment, a drone reflecting from far away - but to YOU...this is still an U.F.O. (which unsurprisingly stands for Unidentified Flying Object), which it is...unless you know exactly what it is besides that.
Would it come as a surprise to anyone that alien animals might be flying out there? Entities that comes together like a cloud like formation that lives on gases or micro-particles? Just because we don't know - doesn't mean it can't exist.
We'll find out - but it won't be as we think of it.
As an IT-Service helpdesk guy, I do this all the time. I've also been a teacher large parts of my life so that helps a lot too.
Curiosity is a natural part of us all, even if you don't have the slightest clue or interest in computers, you want these things to work for you - help supporting your everyday work to make it easier for you to do your job.
My job as an IT-Service helpdesk support is to make sure you're happy with whatever tool you need to make your job easier and smoother for you and your customers.
Many have asked me how a computer really works, and why it sometimes breaks down on them the way it does, I keep things real simple and keep out the heavy details and simplify it like this:
A computer is essentially an automated shopping list.
You have a bunch of task you want your family member to do, such as fetching all the groceries, pick up little bobby from school and make sure everything is safe and in place. So let's say that you want to deliver little bobby to his school first, you enter this as your first task, Now in order to make him safe on his way to school - you also have a "shopping list" with tasks to do to ensure that he arrives safely. 1) Has he got all the items he needs to complete a full school day like food, books, pocket money etc. 2) Is he all cleaned up, brushed teeth, well fed and ready to go? 3) Is he firmly seated in the car with the seatbelt firmly on? etc...now you can proceed with the main task...namely to get Bobby safely to school. When that has been done, you may proceed with the shopping list - visiting a nearby grocery store, where you look at a list and go from top to bottom (which is what the CPU - central processing unit does), it simply looks trough this list (which is in the computers case - the memory). The memory contains tasks that needs to be executed exactly like described above, but more technical than our little example - but it's essentially the same task-oriented list of duties to perform.
Now where things can go wrong, is when you interrupt that daily routine (just like in real life), you ask more of your family member, perhaps you want to pick up little Jenny too...which happens to live a lot further away from your place and the school. Now the CPU get's an extra task and have to go perform that task as well. We refer to that as multi-tasking, although you could say the computer has to jump from space A to space B to get both tasks down - this WILL slow down the process as the computer now have to do two tasks at the same time, in your world - this would just be driving the extra distance to pick up Jenny, and slow down the overall progress to execute the entire list of chores.
Now if you put more and more tasks on the family member, things will get cluttered and slow down the CPU (your family member executing the tasks), and things can go wrong, especially if all the duties on the list isn't available (resources in the computer is missing and can cause you to not perform as well as you wanted it to), same with your family member, missed an appointment? Job can't be done, or at least slowed down somewhat. Missed an cooking ingredient, well - you can't really make an Apple Pie without Apples, so that failed and crashed. You could say, if a few necessary files are missing from the computer - the CPU who has been asked to do a specific task - can't do that without those files, just like you can't make an Apple Pie without the Apples.
...mostly our craving for more and more entertainment.
We're getting increasingly bored with our lives, we've never had it this good before in any century, we have all the luxuries of the modern world. From birth we're literally given a tablet computer where we can interact with whatever is crawling around on the screen, we're constantly connected to everything and everyone around us on an smartphone or similar devices - and it's addictive, and it's not necessarily in a good way.
A.I. can indeed create wonderful alternate realities - but even before that, we have had so many creative artists already creating those alternate realities for us in video games, this isn't going to decrease - this will only increase, and our demand for new content has never been bigger than it is now.
With the growing advances in technology, we're seeing more and more jobs replaced by both automation and A.I. This means we're going to have a LOT more spare time on our hands, and what to do with all of that time? The world has never seen such luxury, but - is it really good for us?
We all know that videogames can keep us mentally active, so in a way there's an upside to that, especially for elderly people. But all this sitting in front of a smartphone screen, computer screen - even at work, has some serious physical health implications (hence why many game dev. studios actually demand a fitness program for their employees) that it's not heading anywhere good, but we can change this, we just need to realize what it does to our bodies and our evolution.
...I lived in a 3 room rental area in a house with no keys to my rooms for 3 years, I had this weird feeling that the guy who rented it to me kinda stole my stuff.
I got so paranoid on the 3rd year, that I decided to purchase an ip camera (a camera that can send mpg. files to my mail address without a computer connected to the camera, in other words...totally independent of my computer). I set it up, and no longer than half a day during a sunday, it actually captured the guy in action. When I was out of my "rented rooms", he was there prowling my private premises. he was doing something funky to my clothes, I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but he kept running for the window to see if I was on my way home, and back to my closets just to continue his business over and over again. I got these mails at work (with mpg4 files 10 seconds worth each), unfortunately a lot of them was sent to me due to light changes in the room...like the clouds passing by etc, but I quickly found a way to search the image files for file-size changes as the files would pretty much stay the same size if nothing changed but colors, but when there was detail change in the images - the files would get considerably bigger.
Lo and behold...he was there - rummaging trough my stuff.
So yes, you can't trust people - you really can't! this isn't just one off, I've had 3 cases like this, all with their own weird fetishes.:/
When Downloading or streaming music became a thing (Napster), the music industry panicked, and did all kinds of bad things in order to get their users back to their drug of choice (music industry's choice), they where old fashioned, not with the times and actually totally out of touch with their user base.
Same with traditional media like newspapers and television, it was the hardest time for them to realize everything is up to the customer and not what THEY want to sell you.
Televison and Newspapers as we know it - is a dead horse. No use trying to revive it. Get on with the program already. Netflix was at least innovative and went with the movie concept online, and every connected device could let you watch your (limited) favorite movies everywhere, The reason I say Limited...every netflix owner in the world already knows, it's because they're themselves fighting all the traditional media (that also happens to own a lot of the content netflix want's to show you), and licenses are only available in certain countries at a certain time, this is why you so often experience eg. that there's much more movies to watch in the U.S. version of Netflix rather than say...the Swedish version (or insert smallish country of your choice here). It's all about the population (larger numbers of people = more movies & serie) because the number of subscribers in that particular area is the ones who foot the bills for the license/rights to the show and availability.
And the price of Netflix is STILL low for what you get, you have a certain amount of freedom - you can watch it whenever you feel like it, on whatever you feel like watching it on. Traditional TV is not like that.You've gotta pay huge cable-fees and get tons of channels you don't even need or want, but you'll still have to pay these huge hook-up fees and licenses - traditional media LOVES that, because it gives them a guaranteed source of revenue, and they control the content.
This is when pirating occurs, because people want to be in control of their own content, and lo and behold...most don't even mind paying for the content.
But Traditional TV don't want you to be in control, they want to control WHAT you watch WHEN you watch it and WHERE you watch it, and they want to feed you advertisement you can't run away from or skip. They say it's for your own good and for the content quality - but Netflix proves that that's far from the actual truth, since you can pretty much get pretty good quality content for a 3rd of the price and totally without the advertisement.
The money is simply too good to resist, and almost certainly (to them) worth the fight against you,
Amiga 3000 is high class right there, I remember swapping my Amiga 1200 (which had better graphics as you probably know already) for an A3000. But I expanded it with a v-motion card and an insanely overpriced graphics card anyway), good times!
You have to understand users, whatever is easy - and whatever gets them trough the every day life - is what they will chose.
I'm a Linux user since 1998. I still use the Linux platform (Mint 18.1 right now, but I was a slacker...slackware for most of the time, I just grew old and didn't want to spend endless time finetuning everything), but I use windows 10 for my gaming pleasures, and at work we use windows 10 too (I work at a HUGE worldwide company now), and it doesn't suck. In fact, I'd wager that after 1 year...windows 10 actually kinda rule. It's easy to use, it's not ugly, it's functional, it's not breaking down every second day, it's fairly well protected and it actually just work. I'm a fan already, but it was a long road, because at home - I'm one of those 50+ something that still is a gaming freak, I have the latest hardware as always (1080Ti graphics card, and the latest i7 generation motherboard and processor), and on windows 10 it just doesn't suck. Not even at work, where we have MUCH less hardware, we're using vanilla Dell laptops with i5 processors, SSD storage devices, and D6000 Dell docking stations with 3 screens connected, works like a charm every day.
So yeah, I totally get it - if it works perfectly, if it runs smooth every day, if I don't have to concentrate on my freaking setup every day...but can concentrate just on my job - then I'm all for it!
...I got some experience on the subject, I'm in my 50's and have shopped online for over 14+ years, and 35+ years in stores, especially electronics stores.
The thing about shopping in a store is that you get an hands-on experience of everything you want to purchase, you get to test it - right there and then, if you don't like it - it's more of a "meh..." experience, and you walk away, no harm done. But if you get that "woah" experience, you'll most likely make a purchase right there and then, or come back later for a purchase. The thing is - you get a realtime experience with the goods in question instead of some video representation of it, and you get a real life feel for how the product actually work.
Some of you, might ask - well, why don't you go to a physical store and test the product, and later - go get it cheaper on the internet?
Well, there's a reason we don't really do that, many actually. Some of mine are that I can easily return a product I tested in store if it doesn't live up to my "store" experiences, without too much problems. If I do this online, I can do this...but it's a lot of hassle...I have to carry the product back to the postal offices, if it's pickup-based, I usually have to cover the cost if the company doesn't agree with my view on the subject... (at least in Sweden).
And when I bought it in a store - I get a lot of support, the seller will recognize me and immediately give me support when I have questions or need help, whereas when I do that online, it's more of a hassle to get a RMA and finally get to ship it off, just to have it returned to me with 100+ scratches from all the handling + loads of more risks involving shipping damage, where the company in question is not to blame....but the postal services...which I've had the worst luck with...blaming everything on bad packaging etc.
Classy online companies, won't have this issue...usually clothes related companies, as they will pretty much accept any returns, without complaints...but try that with small online companies dealing with IT-Tech and small margins...you're in for the battle of your life..
...it's overpriced, it's over-hyped. Beach property, near the sea, near the beach, near a pond - and cost 3-10 times as much as a normal property. You're investing badly, and you're gonna find out the hard way.
I already knew this when I moved from Denmark to another country (several Danish cities is suffering from the ocean eating up the ground, and houses are constantly falling into the sea when the ground gets eaten up by the sea). I now live 80m above sea level - and 10 times cheaper, with the same solid building.
>I got one, and it was bought for a 100$, came out of the factory this august - and sported the latest operating system Android Nougat 7.
What make/model? I'm due for an upgrade one of these days and I'd like to know my options.
In my case it was a Sony Xperia L1. Retail price is 200$, but was on sale in Sweden for 100$ without any subscription plans at a company called Telia.
Beware tho, you DO get ton's of bloatware with the phone, such as several Sony apps that will "suggest" something to purchase or something every day (sort of push notification), it can be turned off - but not removed unless you root it, and it will still "nag" you to "please turn it on" every so often, I guess that's part of the way they "finance" this phone, because otherwise it really is an excellent phone for what you get.
The smartphone has become a part of our everyday life, it's now possibly more influential than a PC, games console or any other device we use. Have you taken a stroll on a busy city street lately? 90% of everyone is either talking on, or looking at a mobile phone of some sort, either browsing the news, keeping in touch with their friends, gaming, or texting (sms, chat, snap, twitter etc...)
People use it to take pictures, look for recipes, look for a restaurant nearby, recommend a store, look for the lowest prices and compare, laugh at other peoples social messages, videos or whatnot - even as a portable television set.
All that taken into consideration - smartphones are now so common, that you can (and will probably) have 100$ smartphones available to you that will perform ALMOST (and in some case better or) as good as one of the expensive high end type brand phones, I know - I got one, and it was bought for a 100$, came out of the factory this august - and sported the latest operating system Android Nougat 7. Came with a 4 core processor, 3D accelerator, Bluetooth, Double Wifi network, 4G, Lte, 3G etc, even an NFC reader to pay the bills or check out cards, and a 5.5 inch screen with almost borderless edges, crazy thin too.
But again - it's a lifestyle choice. If you want the latest iPhone - you WANT the latest iPhone, or an "Edge" model (as the competing opposing brand with Android OS instead), that's the way it is. You'll be able to talk about it at work, at school - get your friends attention, and before you know it - half of your friends have it, and you're downloading the apps of your choice together.
Some people purchase IKEA furniture, nothing wrong with that - some others purchase a brand that is 10 x as expensive, may even be inferior quality wise - but it doesn't matter - because it's a LIFESTYLE choice.
But sure, I agree - I don't think it's worth 1000$ to me either to have a phone that's a little glossier, 10% faster etc. so I'd rather pay a 10th for mine and enjoy all the same features, and I do. That's MY lifestyle choice.
Because where I live (in Scandinavia), buying a house is the best damn investment you can ever do. They're built like a tank to handle our weather conditions, they often last 100+ years. And I can only explain my case, I bought a small house out on the countryside, luckily our country has plenty of good infrastructure, I got fiber internet, I got a train station near by that will take me to any bigger city within an hour, and our smallish town got plenty of competing warehouses anyway.
I bought my house roughly 10 years ago, now it's worth 3 times the price I paid for it (my neighbors bought their houses for 2-3x the price I paid for mine, and their's are smaller). And since I paid in cash (meaning I didn't take up a bank loan) I don't pay any mortgages. Now...if my basic school math serves me right, not only did I at least double the value of my home, but I also lived in it for 10 years - rent free. The amounts of repairs doesn't even match a years renting, so no worries there either. Considering the rent-fees in our neighborhood, I'd say I couldn't even invest in the stock market and earn that much interest, not even in a high risk market.
Surprise surprise, I didn't expect that to happen, but a large company just recruited me.
And I'm not even the oldest one they recruited, the oldest one was over 60. In fact, in our group of 20 people just newly recruited, every age group imaginable was represented, everyone from 19 to 60+ and inbetween.
I'm still kinda surprised by that, pleasantly surprised - but quite surprised. Guess there's a lot of common misconceptions about age discriminations.
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...come with a CD drive anymore, this is to be expected.
Let's face it, you don't see anyone with a CD (Discman) anymore, unless it's the obscure retro-freak that just likes to show off old toys (like me), but seriously - most people have their music on their cellphone today, just look at all the hi-fi equipment in the store, those that are regularly sold - has a "iPhone" or some other cellphone docking feature to them. At the very least - their own streaming services and possibilities.
It's just an impractical format today. It had 30 good years, now it's all memory - literally. CD is dead - long live the CD
Even Blu-ray kinda died because of that, no one wants that clunky old format when you can store it all on an harddisk or simply stream it from the cloud. I gotta say - I do miss collecting DVD's for the sake of always having a hardcopy of my favorite movies, and yes - I still do have them, and a few players just in case they're unavailable in the future.
There's both a good and bad side to this. I like services like Netflix where you can basically just browse trough a huge library of movies, no need to physically find them there and then, and just select it for viewing here and wherever I want to play them. It's very convenient, especially when it's AD free. It's not even expensive for that kind of access.
What is sad tho, is that they can remove our favorite movies at will, some months these movies just aren't available, in cases like that - a good private collection can't be beat.
As for music CD's, since we have perfectly good streaming services available, with pretty much every tune on the planet available on those services, the CD as a musical medium is pretty much gone.
...Because when they don't get an income anymore, no matter how rich you are - they WILL be coming for you.
Same story all over again. Those kiddos can't get enough of trolling and "cheap thrills" from no-effort gaming, while the rest of us who are actually honest player, rages to the brink of needing a psychologist over the fact that some trollers are gaming you (literally "gaming" you) till insanity. Too unhealthy, life is too short for that, there are so many other things to do. Cheating killed multiplayer.
However - when we feel like some multiplayer action - me and my friends run exclusively on private servers, because no one of us cheats, and we're not quick-fix instant-gratification teenagers anymore, so we like a good honest game and a lot of laughts. Playing on our private servers is a blast, because if someone actually makes it there, we know the history of the players, we know they're good, and everyone's struggle is real. Here you gotta work for your experience.
Yep, Olsmeister is actually right, 25-30k is actually the norm, even in Denmark and Sweden which is considered the richest countries in the world. How do I know? Well...I'm a 40+ something IT Helpdesk worker, and yes, that's what we get in one of the worlds biggest companies.
Sorry if you had a blissful dream of riches, this is the real world. Anyone that says you get 50-70K for being an IT-Helpdesk coworker, is FULL OF BS - period!
...you control the people.
Information wants to be free = people want to be free, this is what we fight for. Those who are in control, wants to have MORE control. You're always guilty unless proven innocent in the eyes of those who have everything to hide fro you. A thief thinks everyone steals.
Once information is free - those in power realize they must abide by those who hired them to do the job of government in the first place - we the people did, we are their entire purpose, not the other way around. Freedom of information means that no one is safe if they do wrong, because it becomes hard to hide from the general population, and that's the way it should me.
Freedom = to be free, free from tyranny and control.
Sweden, Norway, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, ...
There's plenty of countries where the tax rates are high that offer a WAY higher quality of life than most of the US for most of its people.
Well, Sweden is almost U.S with high taxes and a little extra welfare...
In Germany the work week consist of 36 actual work hours while they get paid for 40 hours.
In Sweden the work week consist of 45 hours, but they get paid for 40. And the healthcare albeit ALMOST free isn't really free. You pay a fee of 25$ each time you visit, untill you reach a maximum of roughly 250$ of which hereafter the visits are "free" for the rest of the year, and then it starts over. And you pay for unemployment insurance, and you have to go to a "job-corps" like thing at an unemployment office if you're unemployed and want to collect on your unemployment insurance, which is ludicrously low anyway.
And Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage - you can pay your workers under 10$ and no fingers lifted from any gov. In fact, they do this at a lot of schools - because the schools are understaffed, many of the biggest factories doesn't pay HALF of an average Amercian salary, and yet we have the highest taxes in the world. I live here, and I wonder sometimes if I traded down...
To go to work 6 o clock in the morning and come home 6 o clock in the afternoon is not a sustainable life for me...I might want to move again.
I was thinking, disable the ME and keep the 10% - and add extra security on top, by simply not having an ME available for the world to enter.
https://hardenedlinux.github.i...
If I understand it right, you can still do whatever you want with the hardware itself, the restriction is on the drivers (software). That is why it does not apply to those who do not update the drivers.
I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. Ever heard of "rooting"? It simply means bypassing and editing the BIOS (which technically is also software) to your own liking, this often means bypassing access to hardware. This was the case for the longest time for those who wanted to use the powerful multi-core processors of the old Playstation 3.
These companies, don't want you to use your hardware for other purposes than they intended - as long as it competes with their own alternate products, never-mind the competition...
History repeats itself, did you ever remember the stories about Microsoft and Xbox? Apple and the iPhone? The right to modify your own hardware device?
The consumers and the companies that produced these product - couldn't quite agree on the ownership, even though it should be blatantly clear: If you OWN the hardware you purchase, you're technically free to do what it as you wish (in a perfect world free from lobbyist that convince lawmakers to follow the way of the companies rather than the public wishes).
Now, that said - the companies in turn, has no specific responsibility to offer you free software that support certain functions for your own purposes if they don't wish to do so, you may own the hardware, but you don't have rights to demand them to do anything for you in the future with your hardware (unless promised by them).
Nor do they have any obligation to provide you or anyone with full documentation on how your hardware works.
You in turn - have the full rights to refuse their products, you simply don't buy them.
It runs a Phone os (Android 6.0), and my Sony L1 runs Android 7.0 - same thing. Turn off the phone's wifi - and it lasts for nearly a week. Turn it on, and I'm happy if it makes it to the next day.
I have a Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 pro that does this, add a bluetooth keyboard - and you have that laptop you're talking about.
The key to long battery time, is to DISABLE WIFI. Bluetooth is okay, it uses a fleafart's energy of power, but WIFI is another beast, it sucks the batteries dry within hours of any device.
When I disable wifi, it's not uncommon for me to have the device on for a whole week, and still able to just within seconds turn on wifi and go on about my business as nothing happened.
The always-connected isn't really needed, and if it is - you'll be recharging it anyway.
To believe we're the only ones in the universe is the most arrogant (and naive) belief we can have.
If you want to see life out there (but not as we know it), all you need to do - is to lay down one summers night (preferably out in the woods) with a set of high quality binoculars and a lot of patience (3 hours ought to do it). You'll notice things that aren't quite like you'd think they are, it's mostly just lights that takes a different route than e.g. a satellite or an asteroid would do. An asteroid wouldn't all of a sudden do a 90 degree turn or fly in a fast wave like pattern, sure - it could be a military experiment, a drone reflecting from far away - but to YOU...this is still an U.F.O. (which unsurprisingly stands for Unidentified Flying Object), which it is...unless you know exactly what it is besides that.
Would it come as a surprise to anyone that alien animals might be flying out there? Entities that comes together like a cloud like formation that lives on gases or micro-particles? Just because we don't know - doesn't mean it can't exist.
We'll find out - but it won't be as we think of it.
As an IT-Service helpdesk guy, I do this all the time. I've also been a teacher large parts of my life so that helps a lot too.
Curiosity is a natural part of us all, even if you don't have the slightest clue or interest in computers, you want these things to work for you - help supporting your everyday work to make it easier for you to do your job.
My job as an IT-Service helpdesk support is to make sure you're happy with whatever tool you need to make your job easier and smoother for you and your customers.
Many have asked me how a computer really works, and why it sometimes breaks down on them the way it does, I keep things real simple and keep out the heavy details and simplify it like this:
A computer is essentially an automated shopping list.
You have a bunch of task you want your family member to do, such as fetching all the groceries, pick up little bobby from school and make sure everything is safe and in place. So let's say that you want to deliver little bobby to his school first, you enter this as your first task, Now in order to make him safe on his way to school - you also have a "shopping list" with tasks to do to ensure that he arrives safely. 1) Has he got all the items he needs to complete a full school day like food, books, pocket money etc. 2) Is he all cleaned up, brushed teeth, well fed and ready to go? 3) Is he firmly seated in the car with the seatbelt firmly on? etc...now you can proceed with the main task...namely to get Bobby safely to school. When that has been done, you may proceed with the shopping list - visiting a nearby grocery store, where you look at a list and go from top to bottom (which is what the CPU - central processing unit does), it simply looks trough this list (which is in the computers case - the memory). The memory contains tasks that needs to be executed exactly like described above, but more technical than our little example - but it's essentially the same task-oriented list of duties to perform.
Now where things can go wrong, is when you interrupt that daily routine (just like in real life), you ask more of your family member, perhaps you want to pick up little Jenny too...which happens to live a lot further away from your place and the school. Now the CPU get's an extra task and have to go perform that task as well. We refer to that as multi-tasking, although you could say the computer has to jump from space A to space B to get both tasks down - this WILL slow down the process as the computer now have to do two tasks at the same time, in your world - this would just be driving the extra distance to pick up Jenny, and slow down the overall progress to execute the entire list of chores.
Now if you put more and more tasks on the family member, things will get cluttered and slow down the CPU (your family member executing the tasks), and things can go wrong, especially if all the duties on the list isn't available (resources in the computer is missing and can cause you to not perform as well as you wanted it to), same with your family member, missed an appointment? Job can't be done, or at least slowed down somewhat. Missed an cooking ingredient, well - you can't really make an Apple Pie without Apples, so that failed and crashed. You could say, if a few necessary files are missing from the computer - the CPU who has been asked to do a specific task - can't do that without those files, just like you can't make an Apple Pie without the Apples.
...mostly our craving for more and more entertainment.
We're getting increasingly bored with our lives, we've never had it this good before in any century, we have all the luxuries of the modern world. From birth we're literally given a tablet computer where we can interact with whatever is crawling around on the screen, we're constantly connected to everything and everyone around us on an smartphone or similar devices - and it's addictive, and it's not necessarily in a good way.
A.I. can indeed create wonderful alternate realities - but even before that, we have had so many creative artists already creating those alternate realities for us in video games, this isn't going to decrease - this will only increase, and our demand for new content has never been bigger than it is now.
With the growing advances in technology, we're seeing more and more jobs replaced by both automation and A.I. This means we're going to have a LOT more spare time on our hands, and what to do with all of that time? The world has never seen such luxury, but - is it really good for us?
We all know that videogames can keep us mentally active, so in a way there's an upside to that, especially for elderly people. But all this sitting in front of a smartphone screen, computer screen - even at work, has some serious physical health implications (hence why many game dev. studios actually demand a fitness program for their employees) that it's not heading anywhere good, but we can change this, we just need to realize what it does to our bodies and our evolution.
...I lived in a 3 room rental area in a house with no keys to my rooms for 3 years, I had this weird feeling that the guy who rented it to me kinda stole my stuff.
I got so paranoid on the 3rd year, that I decided to purchase an ip camera (a camera that can send mpg. files to my mail address without a computer connected to the camera, in other words...totally independent of my computer). I set it up, and no longer than half a day during a sunday, it actually captured the guy in action. When I was out of my "rented rooms", he was there prowling my private premises. he was doing something funky to my clothes, I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but he kept running for the window to see if I was on my way home, and back to my closets just to continue his business over and over again. I got these mails at work (with mpg4 files 10 seconds worth each), unfortunately a lot of them was sent to me due to light changes in the room ...like the clouds passing by etc, but I quickly found a way to search the image files for file-size changes as the files would pretty much stay the same size if nothing changed but colors, but when there was detail change in the images - the files would get considerably bigger.
Lo and behold...he was there - rummaging trough my stuff.
So yes, you can't trust people - you really can't! this isn't just one off, I've had 3 cases like this, all with their own weird fetishes. :/
Remember CD's?
When Downloading or streaming music became a thing (Napster), the music industry panicked, and did all kinds of bad things in order to get their users back to their drug of choice (music industry's choice), they where old fashioned, not with the times and actually totally out of touch with their user base.
Same with traditional media like newspapers and television, it was the hardest time for them to realize everything is up to the customer and not what THEY want to sell you.
Televison and Newspapers as we know it - is a dead horse. No use trying to revive it. Get on with the program already. Netflix was at least innovative and went with the movie concept online, and every connected device could let you watch your (limited) favorite movies everywhere, The reason I say Limited...every netflix owner in the world already knows, it's because they're themselves fighting all the traditional media (that also happens to own a lot of the content netflix want's to show you), and licenses are only available in certain countries at a certain time, this is why you so often experience eg. that there's much more movies to watch in the U.S. version of Netflix rather than say...the Swedish version (or insert smallish country of your choice here). It's all about the population (larger numbers of people = more movies & serie) because the number of subscribers in that particular area is the ones who foot the bills for the license/rights to the show and availability.
And the price of Netflix is STILL low for what you get, you have a certain amount of freedom - you can watch it whenever you feel like it, on whatever you feel like watching it on. Traditional TV is not like that.You've gotta pay huge cable-fees and get tons of channels you don't even need or want, but you'll still have to pay these huge hook-up fees and licenses - traditional media LOVES that, because it gives them a guaranteed source of revenue, and they control the content.
This is when pirating occurs, because people want to be in control of their own content, and lo and behold...most don't even mind paying for the content.
But Traditional TV don't want you to be in control, they want to control WHAT you watch WHEN you watch it and WHERE you watch it, and they want to feed you advertisement you can't run away from or skip. They say it's for your own good and for the content quality - but Netflix proves that that's far from the actual truth, since you can pretty much get pretty good quality content for a 3rd of the price and totally without the advertisement.
The money is simply too good to resist, and almost certainly (to them) worth the fight against you,
Haha, great - I might take you up on that beer.
Amiga 3000 is high class right there, I remember swapping my Amiga 1200 (which had better graphics as you probably know already) for an A3000. But I expanded it with a v-motion card and an insanely overpriced graphics card anyway), good times!
You have to understand users, whatever is easy - and whatever gets them trough the every day life - is what they will chose.
I'm a Linux user since 1998. I still use the Linux platform (Mint 18.1 right now, but I was a slacker...slackware for most of the time, I just grew old and didn't want to spend endless time finetuning everything), but I use windows 10 for my gaming pleasures, and at work we use windows 10 too (I work at a HUGE worldwide company now), and it doesn't suck. In fact, I'd wager that after 1 year...windows 10 actually kinda rule. It's easy to use, it's not ugly, it's functional, it's not breaking down every second day, it's fairly well protected and it actually just work. I'm a fan already, but it was a long road, because at home - I'm one of those 50+ something that still is a gaming freak, I have the latest hardware as always (1080Ti graphics card, and the latest i7 generation motherboard and processor), and on windows 10 it just doesn't suck. Not even at work, where we have MUCH less hardware, we're using vanilla Dell laptops with i5 processors, SSD storage devices, and D6000 Dell docking stations with 3 screens connected, works like a charm every day.
So yeah, I totally get it - if it works perfectly, if it runs smooth every day, if I don't have to concentrate on my freaking setup every day...but can concentrate just on my job - then I'm all for it!
Good job MS, for once!
...I got some experience on the subject, I'm in my 50's and have shopped online for over 14+ years, and 35+ years in stores, especially electronics stores.
The thing about shopping in a store is that you get an hands-on experience of everything you want to purchase, you get to test it - right there and then, if you don't like it - it's more of a "meh..." experience, and you walk away, no harm done. But if you get that "woah" experience, you'll most likely make a purchase right there and then, or come back later for a purchase. The thing is - you get a realtime experience with the goods in question instead of some video representation of it, and you get a real life feel for how the product actually work.
Some of you, might ask - well, why don't you go to a physical store and test the product, and later - go get it cheaper on the internet?
Well, there's a reason we don't really do that, many actually. Some of mine are that I can easily return a product I tested in store if it doesn't live up to my "store" experiences, without too much problems. If I do this online, I can do this...but it's a lot of hassle...I have to carry the product back to the postal offices, if it's pickup-based, I usually have to cover the cost if the company doesn't agree with my view on the subject... (at least in Sweden).
And when I bought it in a store - I get a lot of support, the seller will recognize me and immediately give me support when I have questions or need help, whereas when I do that online, it's more of a hassle to get a RMA and finally get to ship it off, just to have it returned to me with 100+ scratches from all the handling + loads of more risks involving shipping damage, where the company in question is not to blame....but the postal services...which I've had the worst luck with...blaming everything on bad packaging etc.
Classy online companies, won't have this issue...usually clothes related companies, as they will pretty much accept any returns, without complaints...but try that with small online companies dealing with IT-Tech and small margins...you're in for the battle of your life..
Not worth it.
Shop locally!
...it's overpriced, it's over-hyped. Beach property, near the sea, near the beach, near a pond - and cost 3-10 times as much as a normal property. You're investing badly, and you're gonna find out the hard way.
I already knew this when I moved from Denmark to another country (several Danish cities is suffering from the ocean eating up the ground, and houses are constantly falling into the sea when the ground gets eaten up by the sea). I now live 80m above sea level - and 10 times cheaper, with the same solid building.
To quote Nelson from the Simpsons -> "Ha haa!".
...I bet pedo's are giving these smartwatches away for free everywhere now.
>I got one, and it was bought for a 100$, came out of the factory this august - and sported the latest operating system Android Nougat 7.
What make/model? I'm due for an upgrade one of these days and I'd like to know my options.
In my case it was a Sony Xperia L1. Retail price is 200$, but was on sale in Sweden for 100$ without any subscription plans at a company called Telia.
Beware tho, you DO get ton's of bloatware with the phone, such as several Sony apps that will "suggest" something to purchase or something every day (sort of push notification), it can be turned off - but not removed unless you root it, and it will still "nag" you to "please turn it on" every so often, I guess that's part of the way they "finance" this phone, because otherwise it really is an excellent phone for what you get.
Lifestyle choices.
The smartphone has become a part of our everyday life, it's now possibly more influential than a PC, games console or any other device we use. Have you taken a stroll on a busy city street lately? 90% of everyone is either talking on, or looking at a mobile phone of some sort, either browsing the news, keeping in touch with their friends, gaming, or texting (sms, chat, snap, twitter etc...)
People use it to take pictures, look for recipes, look for a restaurant nearby, recommend a store, look for the lowest prices and compare, laugh at other peoples social messages, videos or whatnot - even as a portable television set.
All that taken into consideration - smartphones are now so common, that you can (and will probably) have 100$ smartphones available to you that will perform ALMOST (and in some case better or) as good as one of the expensive high end type brand phones, I know - I got one, and it was bought for a 100$, came out of the factory this august - and sported the latest operating system Android Nougat 7. Came with a 4 core processor, 3D accelerator, Bluetooth, Double Wifi network, 4G, Lte, 3G etc, even an NFC reader to pay the bills or check out cards, and a 5.5 inch screen with almost borderless edges, crazy thin too.
But again - it's a lifestyle choice. If you want the latest iPhone - you WANT the latest iPhone, or an "Edge" model (as the competing opposing brand with Android OS instead), that's the way it is. You'll be able to talk about it at work, at school - get your friends attention, and before you know it - half of your friends have it, and you're downloading the apps of your choice together.
Some people purchase IKEA furniture, nothing wrong with that - some others purchase a brand that is 10 x as expensive, may even be inferior quality wise - but it doesn't matter - because it's a LIFESTYLE choice.
But sure, I agree - I don't think it's worth 1000$ to me either to have a phone that's a little glossier, 10% faster etc. so I'd rather pay a 10th for mine and enjoy all the same features, and I do. That's MY lifestyle choice.
Should be called - Adam Ruins the American Dream.
Because where I live (in Scandinavia), buying a house is the best damn investment you can ever do. They're built like a tank to handle our weather conditions, they often last 100+ years. And I can only explain my case, I bought a small house out on the countryside, luckily our country has plenty of good infrastructure, I got fiber internet, I got a train station near by that will take me to any bigger city within an hour, and our smallish town got plenty of competing warehouses anyway.
I bought my house roughly 10 years ago, now it's worth 3 times the price I paid for it (my neighbors bought their houses for 2-3x the price I paid for mine, and their's are smaller). And since I paid in cash (meaning I didn't take up a bank loan) I don't pay any mortgages. Now...if my basic school math serves me right, not only did I at least double the value of my home, but I also lived in it for 10 years - rent free. The amounts of repairs doesn't even match a years renting, so no worries there either. Considering the rent-fees in our neighborhood, I'd say I couldn't even invest in the stock market and earn that much interest, not even in a high risk market.
So each to their own I guess.
Surprise surprise, I didn't expect that to happen, but a large company just recruited me.
And I'm not even the oldest one they recruited, the oldest one was over 60. In fact, in our group of 20 people just newly recruited, every age group imaginable was represented, everyone from 19 to 60+ and inbetween.
I'm still kinda surprised by that, pleasantly surprised - but quite surprised. Guess there's a lot of common misconceptions about age discriminations.