I will however now be buying an Xbox One and look forward to ignoring all the stupid cable TV features that they seem to think are the main buying point. #Games
I won't be.
The new Wii is worth looking at if you want Mario/Zelda/Metroid. The tablet controller is pretty nice, and the console overall isn't bad. It suffers from a lack of games still but its getting better. The backwards compatibility makes it a good buy if you skipped the last Wii. But if you aren't into the Nintendo first party stuff the WiiU is probably not worth it to you.
But the Xbox, I don't get it. I hooked up an HTPC last generation and I haven't looked back. I added wireless xbox controllers along with wireless keyboard/mouse/trackpads, and i picked up an ir receiver for 20 bucks so I can use it with my harmony one remote too.
The hardware costs about the same - you can spend more if you want, but you don't have to. And the games are cheaper (a LOT cheaper), with a much wider selection. There is no subscription per gamer (would cost me another $100/year). The storage capacity is an order of magnitude better, most of my games are HumbleBundle, GOG, and Steam so there's no disc juggling. Steam big screen mode in particular for games that support it is as good as a console. Never mind keyboard and mouse for FPS / RTS when I want it.
Plus I've got access to far more mods. Not to mention emulators for some of the classics.
And when I'm not at home, I can play pretty much my entire library on my laptop too. Or on my desktop pc. Huge wins there.
And when I'm not playing games its a full on PC, so torrents, VLC, Netflix, youtube, hulu, firefox (with adblock), etc.
What do I get from xbox (or ps4) for that matter that comes even close? A couple exclusives that really aren't -that- novel. And perhaps better server matchmaking, and integration of voice etc. (Although steam's got that pretty well taken care of too -- pc gaming in general has gotten, for better or for worse, a LOT more console-like over the last generation.)
Thus, instead of "make up an analysis", one could easily imagine someone with a less than perfect grasp of english meaning "do an analysis"
Really, one could easily imagine someone with a perfect grasp of english saying it.
I say things like, "I need you to make up some charts showing X and Y over Z..." and I've never once intended anyone to falsify the data. To "make up" something is to "create it". I could just as easily said "I need you to create some charts showing X / Y / Z" and again the called for action is to apply creative effort in constructing the charts not the data to be charted.
To "make up an analysis of X" to most people I've worked with would be interpreted as "make me a report containing your analysis of X".
This is much ado about nothing unless there is more evidence to go on.
So RIP Seagate's worth while mobile HDD's. Unless you've fixed the mediocre performance in your 5400rpm drives I'll either be doing full SSD or just buying somebody else's 7200rpm drive.
The hybrid 5400rpm drive vs a full SSD, yeah, I'm sure they aren't nearly as wildy different in terms of power consumption.
The mail selling point for a 5200 rpm hybrid vs pure SSD is clearly going to be storage capacity per dollar advantages, while still being very fast for a lot of use cases without being nearly as thirsty for electricity as a 7200rpm drive.
I think that might be a red herring. The new Macbook Air has a 14 hour battery life.
And is also designed to minimize power. If you stuck a high performance 7200 rpm drive into it, it would make a big difference.
Skimming benchmark sites for laptop ssd vs 7200 rpm hdd seem to be all over the map, from 1/2 hr to 2+hrs difference depending on the laptop and settings (the more energy efficient the rest of the laptop is, the LARGER the difference the hard drive makes).
I'd like to see what percentage of that power is spent on the drive.
Depends on a lot of factors. And again, the more efficient everything else is the great the impact the HD choice will make.
Also SSDs idle more than HDDs, due to spin up times/seek times, and faster transfer times. So if even if an SSD and HDD had exactly the same ratings: for example: 0.5W idle, 1W seek/read/write, in most real-world scenarios the SSD will use significantly less energy because it spends much less time doing seek/read/write. For every 2 seconds of read/write the HDD does, the SSD will do 1. For every second of seek the HDD does, the SSD is still idle.
That makes comparing them by specs almost meaningless, you really HAVE to look at actual usage profiles.
I took into account cost, capacity and performance when choosing the drives.
But not battery life, apparently, which is the one area where 5400 rpm drives beat out 7200 rpm drives, and is possibly the reason they even exist. A 5400rpm hybrid would need to spin up even less and should do even better on the battery front. Not to mention that if you get a cache hit, it doesn't have to spin up at all, which is a big performance boost too.
So while "benchmark" performance might not be great, real world use might be substantial; as the hard drive could spin down more, and you could access the drive without spinning it up some of the time, possibly even most of the time.
There's definitely potential to be both markedly faster in real world laptop use scenarios and consume less battery with a hybrid. Whether that pans out in reality I don't know.
They approve all applications because: First, the same few FBI lawyers make the applications and have a pretty good idea of what will get approved and what won't. Second, the FISA court clerks know what their bosses will and won't approve, so reject or send back for modification almost all deficient applications before they even hit the judges where they can be counted in this approval rate.
So we should expect the approval rate of warrants to be 100% elsewhere as well. I mean, the police looking for a warrant have to run it through their internal bureaucracy of lawyers and clerks too and they should all have a pretty good idea what will get approved and what won't....
What makes FBI lawyers and FISA clerks so much better at knowing where the line is? That none of them even ever once get close enough to let even a toe go over it?
Yeah... either they are that perfect, or the judge just rubberstamps the applications. I'm going with rubberstamps without evidence to the contrary.
A - agree B - agree C - agree D - not disagreeing - but as excluding it required reference to terms defined elsewhere which I did not have, it is reasonable, based just on what we had there to conclude it applied.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when using this device, a bullet, from a loaded cartridge, gets propelled down a barrel by action of the explosive powders in the cartridge.
Sunbird and Lightning are about as related as Linux and Windows are.
I was under the impression that when both projects were active code was actively merged back and forth between them. I could be wrong.
It doesn't make any sense to lard up my calendar program with years worth of emails, just so that I can use one program to do both.
The reason for the integration is that a large group create events and send invitations via email, and their counterparts who often accept events to their calendar from email.
Then there is the usual birthday/anniversary calendar items that tend to be fed from the email contacts.
So I can see the logic in integrating the two. Maybe not for YOU, but in general.
You seem to be going awfully out of your way not look at email though -- which is your perogative, but I have to admit I find it odd that you need your calendar open constantly. Seems to me, that if your looking at your calendar you'd be distracted enough from whatever you were previously focused on that having email come in at the same time wouldn't be a big deal. I mean, I get your desire to 'shut off' email and focus -- I do that too.. but then I don't need to look at my calendar at the same time -- as I'm focussed on something else. Maybe your workflow or habits are very different; it just struck me as odd.
Sunbird doesn't exist any longer, Lightning is a completely different product.
Different but related.
And not quite as good IMHO, as you have to run the entirety of Thunderbird to use it, whereas I often times liked to just run the calendar so that I didn't have to be distracted by emails coming in.
If you don't want emails coming in: File -> Offline -> Work Offline
Or set it up not to check for email automatically, then you have to press "get mail".
Running 2 separate instances/profiles seems like the wrong move to me.
Why not? Copyright law gives models and actors various rights over content they appear in.
Clearly these works were generated in violation of the law, and without the participants consent. If they object to them being shared it should be a no-brainer that their rights are being violated by the distribution of them for pornographic purposes.
Moreover copyright laws apply by default, so unless they've explicitly released these images for distribution by default it is against the law to distribute them.
From what I can tell we don't even need a specific law preventing the distribution of child porn -- existing law actually has all the bits needed. So a child-porn specific law isn't merely consistent with existing law, but almost redundantly so.
The main difference being related to the fact that the state is tasked with enforcement instead of requiring the injured parties to sue for each violation. Given the nature of the crime, this doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me. Forcing the victims to forever chase down unauthorized distribution their own images just further and perpetually victimizes them.
It would be more accurate to say I think that of all the places to draw your line in the sand this is the silliest.
The law should be consistent, and proportional. These are crucial elements to it being recognizable as justice.
Even if you disagree with libel, trademark, and copyright, you would probably agree that a prohibition on exchanging pictures of someone being criminally abused against their will is less of an abridgement of free speech than those, and that it would be pretty consistent with our legal system.
Now, having said that your welcome to disagree with entirety of trademark, copyright, libel, and the prohibition of the distribution of child porn and god knows what else...maybe you object to truth in advertising laws, the census, and foods having to list their ingredients too? These too are all government restrictions and requirements on what we can or must say and are all freedom of speech issues...
So of all the places to just now draw your line in the sand and stand up against 'the man' telling you what you can or can't say... distribution of child porn? There are better places to make your stand.
OK that's fine, but now what should the YouTube/Gmail/Wikipedias do?
For better or for worse...gmail seems to be on the verge of requiring you to have a mobile phone. And youtube is pretty much one with gmail so that's 2 out of 3 down.
Wikipedia can probably do with a reputation system.
What if I want my users to be able to post the form more than 50 times per day? Cooldowns and cacheing just wont do it. The only real alternative I see is to hide the form behind a login, which in the end is more inconvenient for the end user than a user friendly captcha.
If users need to post 50x per day, then logging in isn't going to be more inconvenient than a captcha.
If we put everyone under this light then would a McDonalds have to hire anyone with a college degree?
Only before they bring in an H1B employee.
The whole H1B employee thing is an "immigration loophole" where a company gets permission to import someone who otherwise couldn't immigrate because that company needs their unique skillset that can't be found in the united states.
Its not supposed to be "discount asian labor".
H1Bs are a market distortion. The solution to H1B is simple. Make them expensive, make the cost of bringing one in double or triple what the job actually pays. So if they're going to pay the H1B 25,000 make it cost another 25 to 50 k just for the priviledge of doing the end run around immigration to get them into the country.
Remember, these guys are very special, nobody in america is qualified to do their jobs -- that why we had to go abroad to find them in the first place. So I'm pretty sure anyone who really needs such rarified skills will pay up, or perhaps (more likely) discover suddenly that there are plenty of qualified americans after all, or perhaps slightly under qualfied americans who can be inexpensively trained. Either way, they didn't really need to import anyone after all.
That's nice and all, but I don't think we should resort to censorship just to make someone feel better.
Really?
With this we are prevented from violating someones privacy and dignity by spreading pictures of them being abused and violated.
With libel we are prevented from telling lies about someone. So... libel laws are ok? But the other thing is unacceptable censorship?
With trademark law we are prevented from using a registered mark in most settings; as it might be construed that the mark owner endorses or agreed to the use of the mark or something. Like if I put the coca-cola logo on my personal blog some inbred mouthbreathing halfwit might think he's at the official coca-cola site... so Coca Cola can say I can't do that.
And that's the law of the land.
But we shouldn't be prevented from sharing pictures of people getting criminally sexually abused because that's censorship. Really?
So now Google is sending over code to my computer saying in addition to playing a video, my tabs should blink
This ability to change the title is something that any javascript enabled page has been able to do since the dawn of javascript.
How is that code being sent?
OMG, your right, and I just noticed that when you use gmail and go from your inbox to a message it puts the subject of the selected message into the page title, and it does this without loading a whole new page... OMG OMG...how is this done its keylogging when i click on a message and code from a server something something... MITM vulnerability just waiting to happen... oh noes my bank infos...
Does it nag you because you dont have internet hooked up?
Full disclosure... I've actually got a Sharp not a Samsung.
But no, not one bit. It doesn't nag or complain about internet until I go into the menu and actually select one of the apps, e.g. netflix etc. It otherwise behaves as a monitor, and all I ever do is turn it on or off. Because all the switching is done at the receiver, I don't even switch inputs.
Its entirely possible though that there are TVs that are more intrusive about how "smart" they are.
This lesson keeps getting learned every few years or so, going all the way back to the first light pen on the SAGE. It was called Gorilla Arm back then.
While I actually agree with you, insofar that its not going to get rid of the keyboard and mouse its idiotic to pretend that there aren't lots of valid use-cases for this technology.
Painters, for example, manage it for hours on end, canvas on easel... standing in front of it and waving their arms around. Hundreds of years of worth of art produced suggests that in fact "gorilla arm" isn't quite the last word on the subject.
I can also see all kinds of other use cases such as presentation, teaching, and so on.
Can these Samsung Smart TVs be made to ignore all the convergence stuff and just be a monitor?
Yep, mine doesn't have a network cable or wifi connections. In fact all it has is one HDMI cable running up from my receiver. That's it.
The Wii/WiiU/HTPC/BRAYDVD/DVR etc are plugged into the receiver. The receiver isn't internet connected either.
When I want to do something online, the HTPC has internet access, and the Wii's can go online if necessary, but its not usually necessary.
As you can imagine the salesmen's pitch of the TVs long list of capabilities was shutdown pretty quick. All I cared about was brightness, black levels, and other characteristics of the LCD panel, along with physical dimensions and aesthetics (diagonal size, bevel thickness, screen thickness, etc.
I wish I could just get a great big monitor without having crammed full of smart garbage, 3d garbage, and "surround sound"... but that doesn't exist.
Slashdot Mirror
I will however now be buying an Xbox One and look forward to ignoring all the stupid cable TV features that they seem to think are the main buying point. #Games
I won't be.
The new Wii is worth looking at if you want Mario/Zelda/Metroid. The tablet controller is pretty nice, and the console overall isn't bad. It suffers from a lack of games still but its getting better. The backwards compatibility makes it a good buy if you skipped the last Wii. But if you aren't into the Nintendo first party stuff the WiiU is probably not worth it to you.
But the Xbox, I don't get it. I hooked up an HTPC last generation and I haven't looked back. I added wireless xbox controllers along with wireless keyboard/mouse/trackpads, and i picked up an ir receiver for 20 bucks so I can use it with my harmony one remote too.
The hardware costs about the same - you can spend more if you want, but you don't have to. And the games are cheaper (a LOT cheaper), with a much wider selection. There is no subscription per gamer (would cost me another $100/year). The storage capacity is an order of magnitude better, most of my games are HumbleBundle, GOG, and Steam so there's no disc juggling. Steam big screen mode in particular for games that support it is as good as a console. Never mind keyboard and mouse for FPS / RTS when I want it.
Plus I've got access to far more mods. Not to mention emulators for some of the classics.
And when I'm not at home, I can play pretty much my entire library on my laptop too. Or on my desktop pc. Huge wins there.
And when I'm not playing games its a full on PC, so torrents, VLC, Netflix, youtube, hulu, firefox (with adblock), etc.
What do I get from xbox (or ps4) for that matter that comes even close? A couple exclusives that really aren't -that- novel. And perhaps better server matchmaking, and integration of voice etc. (Although steam's got that pretty well taken care of too -- pc gaming in general has gotten, for better or for worse, a LOT more console-like over the last generation.)
Thus, instead of "make up an analysis", one could easily imagine someone with a less than perfect grasp of english meaning "do an analysis"
Really, one could easily imagine someone with a perfect grasp of english saying it.
I say things like, "I need you to make up some charts showing X and Y over Z..." and I've never once intended anyone to falsify the data. To "make up" something is to "create it". I could just as easily said "I need you to create some charts showing X / Y / Z" and again the called for action is to apply creative effort in constructing the charts not the data to be charted.
To "make up an analysis of X" to most people I've worked with would be interpreted as "make me a report containing your analysis of X".
This is much ado about nothing unless there is more evidence to go on.
Gotcha, I was addressing the OP's quote:
So RIP Seagate's worth while mobile HDD's. Unless you've fixed the mediocre performance in your 5400rpm drives I'll either be doing full SSD or just buying somebody else's 7200rpm drive.
The hybrid 5400rpm drive vs a full SSD, yeah, I'm sure they aren't nearly as wildy different in terms of power consumption.
The mail selling point for a 5200 rpm hybrid vs pure SSD is clearly going to be storage capacity per dollar advantages, while still being very fast for a lot of use cases without being nearly as thirsty for electricity as a 7200rpm drive.
I think that might be a red herring. The new Macbook Air has a 14 hour battery life.
And is also designed to minimize power. If you stuck a high performance 7200 rpm drive into it, it would make a big difference.
Skimming benchmark sites for laptop ssd vs 7200 rpm hdd seem to be all over the map, from 1/2 hr to 2+hrs difference depending on the laptop and settings (the more energy efficient the rest of the laptop is, the LARGER the difference the hard drive makes).
I'd like to see what percentage of that power is spent on the drive.
Depends on a lot of factors. And again, the more efficient everything else is the great the impact the HD choice will make.
Also SSDs idle more than HDDs, due to spin up times/seek times, and faster transfer times. So if even if an SSD and HDD had exactly the same ratings: for example: 0.5W idle, 1W seek/read/write, in most real-world scenarios the SSD will use significantly less energy because it spends much less time doing seek/read/write. For every 2 seconds of read/write the HDD does, the SSD will do 1. For every second of seek the HDD does, the SSD is still idle.
That makes comparing them by specs almost meaningless, you really HAVE to look at actual usage profiles.
Gunpowder doesn't explode, it just burns very rapidly.
For the purposes of the discussion here that's just semantics.
I took into account cost, capacity and performance when choosing the drives.
But not battery life, apparently, which is the one area where 5400 rpm drives beat out 7200 rpm drives, and is possibly the reason they even exist. A 5400rpm hybrid would need to spin up even less and should do even better on the battery front. Not to mention that if you get a cache hit, it doesn't have to spin up at all, which is a big performance boost too.
So while "benchmark" performance might not be great, real world use might be substantial; as the hard drive could spin down more, and you could access the drive without spinning it up some of the time, possibly even most of the time.
There's definitely potential to be both markedly faster in real world laptop use scenarios and consume less battery with a hybrid. Whether that pans out in reality I don't know.
They approve all applications because: First, the same few FBI lawyers make the applications and have a pretty good idea of what will get approved and what won't. Second, the FISA court clerks know what their bosses will and won't approve, so reject or send back for modification almost all deficient applications before they even hit the judges where they can be counted in this approval rate.
So we should expect the approval rate of warrants to be 100% elsewhere as well. I mean, the police looking for a warrant have to run it through their internal bureaucracy of lawyers and clerks too and they should all have a pretty good idea what will get approved and what won't....
What makes FBI lawyers and FISA clerks so much better at knowing where the line is? That none of them even ever once get close enough to let even a toe go over it?
Yeah... either they are that perfect, or the judge just rubberstamps the applications. I'm going with rubberstamps without evidence to the contrary.
A - agree
B - agree
C - agree
D - not disagreeing - but as excluding it required reference to terms defined elsewhere which I did not have, it is reasonable, based just on what we had there to conclude it applied.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when using this device, a bullet, from a loaded cartridge, gets propelled down a barrel by action of the explosive powders in the cartridge.
No. It does not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun
A series of magnets propels a projectile.
There is no explosive powder. There is no explosion.
It only needs to meet any of A/B/C/ and D, not all of them.
Based on the ridiculous definition presented, a jar of live termites could be classified as a "firearm", based on it meeting the threshold of:
"a destructive device"
Sunbird and Lightning are about as related as Linux and Windows are.
I was under the impression that when both projects were active code was actively merged back and forth between them. I could be wrong.
It doesn't make any sense to lard up my calendar program with years worth of emails, just so that I can use one program to do both.
The reason for the integration is that a large group create events and send invitations via email, and their counterparts who often accept events to their calendar from email.
Then there is the usual birthday/anniversary calendar items that tend to be fed from the email contacts.
So I can see the logic in integrating the two. Maybe not for YOU, but in general.
You seem to be going awfully out of your way not look at email though -- which is your perogative, but I have to admit I find it odd that you need your calendar open constantly. Seems to me, that if your looking at your calendar you'd be distracted enough from whatever you were previously focused on that having email come in at the same time wouldn't be a big deal. I mean, I get your desire to 'shut off' email and focus -- I do that too.. but then I don't need to look at my calendar at the same time -- as I'm focussed on something else. Maybe your workflow or habits are very different; it just struck me as odd.
Sunbird doesn't exist any longer, Lightning is a completely different product.
Different but related.
And not quite as good IMHO, as you have to run the entirety of Thunderbird to use it, whereas I often times liked to just run the calendar so that I didn't have to be distracted by emails coming in.
If you don't want emails coming in:
File -> Offline -> Work Offline
Or set it up not to check for email automatically, then you have to press "get mail".
Running 2 separate instances/profiles seems like the wrong move to me.
I don't agree with that.
Why not? Copyright law gives models and actors various rights over content they appear in.
Clearly these works were generated in violation of the law, and without the participants consent. If they object to them being shared it should be a no-brainer that their rights are being violated by the distribution of them for pornographic purposes.
Moreover copyright laws apply by default, so unless they've explicitly released these images for distribution by default it is against the law to distribute them.
From what I can tell we don't even need a specific law preventing the distribution of child porn -- existing law actually has all the bits needed. So a child-porn specific law isn't merely consistent with existing law, but almost redundantly so.
The main difference being related to the fact that the state is tasked with enforcement instead of requiring the injured parties to sue for each violation. Given the nature of the crime, this doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me. Forcing the victims to forever chase down unauthorized distribution their own images just further and perpetually victimizes them.
Phoenix is their email program
Thunderbird is the email program.
Phoneix is the original name of Firefox, but collided with Phoenix Technologies.
FireBird was a short lives calendering app.
Sunbird is the calendering app; it's still available but is now maintained as the Lightning extension for Thunderbird.
Thunderbird was the second name of Firefox, but collided into the ThunderBird database even worse than Phoenix.
It would be more accurate to say I think that of all the places to draw your line in the sand this is the silliest.
The law should be consistent, and proportional. These are crucial elements to it being recognizable as justice.
Even if you disagree with libel, trademark, and copyright, you would probably agree that a prohibition on exchanging pictures of someone being criminally abused against their will is less of an abridgement of free speech than those, and that it would be pretty consistent with our legal system.
Now, having said that your welcome to disagree with entirety of trademark, copyright, libel, and the prohibition of the distribution of child porn and god knows what else...maybe you object to truth in advertising laws, the census, and foods having to list their ingredients too? These too are all government restrictions and requirements on what we can or must say and are all freedom of speech issues...
So of all the places to just now draw your line in the sand and stand up against 'the man' telling you what you can or can't say... distribution of child porn? There are better places to make your stand.
The average wage of a programmer is only $45,000 a year and yet these guys expect to make $60k a year!!
I can see where they get their numbers from:
http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programmer/salary
Now where did you get yours?
OK that's fine, but now what should the YouTube/Gmail/Wikipedias do?
For better or for worse...gmail seems to be on the verge of requiring you to have a mobile phone. And youtube is pretty much one with gmail so that's 2 out of 3 down.
Wikipedia can probably do with a reputation system.
What if I want my users to be able to post the form more than 50 times per day?
Cooldowns and cacheing just wont do it. The only real alternative I see is to hide the form behind a login, which in the end is more inconvenient for the end user than a user friendly captcha.
If users need to post 50x per day, then logging in isn't going to be more inconvenient than a captcha.
If we put everyone under this light then would a McDonalds have to hire anyone with a college degree?
Only before they bring in an H1B employee.
The whole H1B employee thing is an "immigration loophole" where a company gets permission to import someone who otherwise couldn't immigrate because that company needs their unique skillset that can't be found in the united states.
Its not supposed to be "discount asian labor".
H1Bs are a market distortion. The solution to H1B is simple. Make them expensive, make the cost of bringing one in double or triple what the job actually pays. So if they're going to pay the H1B 25,000 make it cost another 25 to 50 k just for the priviledge of doing the end run around immigration to get them into the country.
Remember, these guys are very special, nobody in america is qualified to do their jobs -- that why we had to go abroad to find them in the first place. So I'm pretty sure anyone who really needs such rarified skills will pay up, or perhaps (more likely) discover suddenly that there are plenty of qualified americans after all, or perhaps slightly under qualfied americans who can be inexpensively trained. Either way, they didn't really need to import anyone after all.
That's nice and all, but I don't think we should resort to censorship just to make someone feel better.
Really?
With this we are prevented from violating someones privacy and dignity by spreading pictures of them being abused and violated.
With libel we are prevented from telling lies about someone. So... libel laws are ok? But the other thing is unacceptable censorship?
With trademark law we are prevented from using a registered mark in most settings; as it might be construed that the mark owner endorses or agreed to the use of the mark or something. Like if I put the coca-cola logo on my personal blog some inbred mouthbreathing halfwit might think he's at the official coca-cola site... so Coca Cola can say I can't do that.
And that's the law of the land.
But we shouldn't be prevented from sharing pictures of people getting criminally sexually abused because that's censorship. Really?
That's a strange place to set the bar.
So now Google is sending over code to my computer saying in addition to playing a video, my tabs should blink
This ability to change the title is something that any javascript enabled page has been able to do since the dawn of javascript.
How is that code being sent?
OMG, your right, and I just noticed that when you use gmail and go from your inbox to a message it puts the subject of the selected message into the page title, and it does this without loading a whole new page... OMG OMG ...how is this done its keylogging when i click on a message and code from a server something something... MITM vulnerability just waiting to happen... oh noes my bank infos...
Stupid troll.
And you still bought a Samsung TV?
Methinks price was a major factor.
Lol, I bought a Sharp actually; and it wasn't at the budget end of the lineup, but yes, price was a factor.
Does it nag you because you dont have internet hooked up?
Full disclosure... I've actually got a Sharp not a Samsung.
But no, not one bit. It doesn't nag or complain about internet until I go into the menu and actually select one of the apps, e.g. netflix etc. It otherwise behaves as a monitor, and all I ever do is turn it on or off. Because all the switching is done at the receiver, I don't even switch inputs.
Its entirely possible though that there are TVs that are more intrusive about how "smart" they are.
This lesson keeps getting learned every few years or so, going all the way back to the first light pen on the SAGE. It was called Gorilla Arm back then.
While I actually agree with you, insofar that its not going to get rid of the keyboard and mouse its idiotic to pretend that there aren't lots of valid use-cases for this technology.
Painters, for example, manage it for hours on end, canvas on easel... standing in front of it and waving their arms around. Hundreds of years of worth of art produced suggests that in fact "gorilla arm" isn't quite the last word on the subject.
I can also see all kinds of other use cases such as presentation, teaching, and so on.
Can these Samsung Smart TVs be made to ignore all the convergence stuff and just be a monitor?
Yep, mine doesn't have a network cable or wifi connections. In fact all it has is one HDMI cable running up from my receiver. That's it.
The Wii/WiiU/HTPC/BRAYDVD/DVR etc are plugged into the receiver. The receiver isn't internet connected either.
When I want to do something online, the HTPC has internet access, and the Wii's can go online if necessary, but its not usually necessary.
As you can imagine the salesmen's pitch of the TVs long list of capabilities was shutdown pretty quick. All I cared about was brightness, black levels, and other characteristics of the LCD panel, along with physical dimensions and aesthetics (diagonal size, bevel thickness, screen thickness, etc.
I wish I could just get a great big monitor without having crammed full of smart garbage, 3d garbage, and "surround sound"... but that doesn't exist.