Pretty good deal you got. Was that $450 in USD, CAD, or some other currency? $450 USD back in November would have been closer to the $495 Canadian. Plus everything in Canada is usually more expensive due to levies and such.
Regardless those specs at $500 Canadian would be pretty good. I don't regret my purchase. I like the 15.6" screen, the touchpad sucks but I use a wireless mouse when its more convenient.
In Nov/2012 I bought an HP 15.6" AMD based laptop (notebook?) with 8GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD, USB3, Win7 Home Premium, and Beats Audio for $399.00 Canadian. This was retail price.
Upon purchase, I wiped and installed Funtoo Linux, and have since replaced the HDD with an SSD. It does everything I need it to do. I regularly get 4.5 hours battery life of continuous use. Runs a tad warm but I don't use it on my lap so its fine.
My point is, this is android based notebook is limited as a general purpose machine, and costs more than I paid for mine a year and a half ago.
I do understand is had a touchscreen, larger battery and built in flash based memory, and that can drive costs uo a bit, but in terms of general usefulness I don't think it will fly.
Could always hit up a sports bar? You don't/have/ to drink so it could be free. If you are there with friends, volunteer to be thr dedicated driver and you may get free soda and/or coffee.
One thing the USA has is cheap Virtual Private Servers. I've seen them as low as $25/year. That plus a little bit of time to read up on setting up OpenVPN or a SOCKS proxy would be worth it.
Not only could you tunnel Hulu, you could tunnel many other services. Maybe store some encrypted backups of important data if you really need to justify the cost.
I personally use Telegram (https://telegram.org/), and have for quite some time now. I like it for various reasons. Mainly its open source, and multi-client.
What I/don't/ like about plain jane SMS is I can't sit back at my desk and message people back who message me. I have to completely break my submersion into my computer, pick up my phone, and type on a tiny (virtual) keyboard. Drives me absolutely insane.
But if the car has an alarm system and it's active, this doesn't help much. If I unlock my car with a physical key, there's a three-step process I need to do in order to disable the alarm and engine kill. If your owners didn't realize their keys would work, what's the likelihood they'd then remember everything else required before driving away?
The alarm will also go off if I open it with a tool to bypass the lock... It's not my responsibility to know how to turn the alarm off. The point I was trying to make was these people did not know they could unlock their car, and gain access to their belongings, without their keyfob.
Of the three calls I handled in this in the situation I described, they were factory keys with the remote unlock buttons on the key itself.
I even had one case, where the passenger window was rolled down half way, allowing me to reach in effortlessly and unlock the vehicle.
My wife's family owns my towns only Locksmith company.
I spent some time working there, and let me tell you the best tool for breaking into cars is the correct tool for that vehicle. We had toolboxes of roughly 15 tools for various vehicles. Knowing which tool to use and how to use it is a skill I think everyone should learn.
My favourite was the slimjim. I even made my own because I wasn't fond of the one included in the kit. Its so versatile.
As an aside: We worked with CAA (Canadian version of AAA) and once every month or so we'd get a fax to unlock a vehicle (usually a Ford for some reason) who's keyless entry fob's battery had died. We would arrive and they are holding their key in their hand, pressing the button to unlock it and they are getting frustrated the vehicle isn't unlocking. I would calmly ask to see their key, walk up to the door and stick it in the door's keyway and turn it. The look on their face was always priceless. I even had one lady confess she didn't know that was even possible.
A hybrid DNS/Proxy service can really come in handy. Theoretically you could set it up to route around through different regions for services like Netflix.
*cough* unblock dash *cough* dot com *cough*
Seems that Canadian Winter cold is getting the best of me.
If I could register with an organization and submit donations for movies that I pirated and watched, I would absolutely pay. I still pay my cable bill even though I pirate all of my TV and haven't turned my cable boxes on for over 2 years.
I thought this up quite a while ago, and even brought it up on slashdot once before. I was modded down because the people who did see it screamed "think of the transportation industry!"
Anyway, my vision is quite clear. The media companies put together a website in which we could simply buy a license to obtain a copy of a specific work by any digital means available in whatever formats available.
The idea is since they are selling the license only, it completely cuts out the cost of producing physical media and the costs of distribution. Therefore, the per unit costs would be drastically reduced. For example, a full length movie would be $5.00 or less. A price point I think most people have no problem spending even if the movie turns out to be garbage. It could result in more sales, is easier to track sales. I can even envision companies set up to sell these licenses coupled with high quality versions of these works.
This obviously is a dream. As no media corp would consider it because, well, they are greedy assholes and enjoy their monopolies and ability to fuck with everyday normal people like me who flat out have no need for physical media or DRM encumbered crap I can't play on my home media center.
I live in Saskatchewan. We have Sasktel, Bell, Telus, Rogers and the "spinoffs" (Fido, Koodo, 7-11's SpeakOut).
My current plan is with Telus. $60/mo for unlimited nationwide talk (unlimited to anywhere in Canada, from anywhere in Canada), unlimited sms/mms, with 5GB of sharable Data. My wife also has the exact same plan, so we have a total of 10GB of usable data between the two of us. After 911 fee's and taxes, we are paying $133.24 total. As it stands this is about as good as it gets for my needs.
I was with Sasktel for many years until last July/2014. We were locked into a 3 year contract, and paying $60/mo each for 300 local daytime minutes, unlimited local calling in the evenings,unlimited SMS (but not MMS, those were $1.00 each), and "unlimited" data. One gotcha they didn't tell you, is they also charged an $7-$8 "system access fee" on top of your plan, plus 911 fee's and taxes. In total we were paying ~$155/month. This does not account for overage or long distance fee's we would end up paying most months.
I personally have been looking at the Gbox Midnight MX2. They come pre-rooted, with a bunch of pre-loaded software such as Xbmc.
Right now I use a WD TV Live, and it works alright. I really do not like how it organizes content and is not very customizable.
I had a HTPC at one point, running Linux and my own custom interface I developed myself, but the lack of Netflix is what drove me to the WD TV Live. Now netflix is supposed to be easier to set up on Linux via pipelight, I haven't played with it yet though, and I'm sure I could integrate it into my software... but the Gbox Midnight MX2, with Full Android and access to Google Play, hard to pass up, honestly.
Good to know. I just assumed it used the Android Kernel much like Firefox OS, and was more or less android-ish. I didn't know you could run Linux Binaries.
12MP is roughly 4000x3000px. High end mainstream screens cant even display half of that. A 100% quality JPEG you're looking around 2.5MB. That's pretty trivial, really. If you can halve your bandwidth and completely eliminate image processing by reducing down to, say, 8MP, would you not do it?
I wasn't saying to resize it down to 800x600 pixels, that would be crazy. 8MP ought to be enough for anyone;-)
Personally I build my own servers and colocate them into datacenters.
With that said, I have both enterprise grade servers (600GB SAS drives) and non-enterprise grade (2TB SATA drives). Storing things for serving up on the SATA drives is fine in most cases. The server automatically caches the popular files in RAM, reducing bottlenecks and slowdowns. RAM is also very cheap. 64GB minimum in my machines.
Proper servers, in proper datacenters, with load balancing, and a proper DNS setup and it starts to look like a Cloud solution. I'm still of the mind the "cloud" is just a buzzword.
I can see that, yes. But those same phones also support client side image scaling via the HTML5 Canvas tag. (See here: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/...)
The fact is screen resolutions simply aren't there yet. There is no reason to upload and store the whole 15MP photo when you can only see 1/4 of it (if that).
With the canvas tag you can actually generate a thumbnail client side as well, and upload it alongside the main image, completely offloading the imag processing and reducing bandwidth (inbound and outbound upon re-serving up the file)
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty good deal you got. Was that $450 in USD, CAD, or some other currency? $450 USD back in November would have been closer to the $495 Canadian. Plus everything in Canada is usually more expensive due to levies and such.
Regardless those specs at $500 Canadian would be pretty good. I don't regret my purchase. I like the 15.6" screen, the touchpad sucks but I use a wireless mouse when its more convenient.
According to `cat /proc/cpuinfo` its an AMD A6-4455M w/ Radeon HD 7500G.
The HP model # on the bottom is Envy 6-1040ca.
In Nov/2012 I bought an HP 15.6" AMD based laptop (notebook?) with 8GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD, USB3, Win7 Home Premium, and Beats Audio for $399.00 Canadian. This was retail price.
Upon purchase, I wiped and installed Funtoo Linux, and have since replaced the HDD with an SSD. It does everything I need it to do. I regularly get 4.5 hours battery life of continuous use. Runs a tad warm but I don't use it on my lap so its fine.
My point is, this is android based notebook is limited as a general purpose machine, and costs more than I paid for mine a year and a half ago.
I do understand is had a touchscreen, larger battery and built in flash based memory, and that can drive costs uo a bit, but in terms of general usefulness I don't think it will fly.
So its like StumbleUpon?
Don't we already have a few dozen clones of that? What's the benefit other than explicitly giving Google (and advertisers) your bookmark data?
I personally don't see the value in this. Even as an advertiser I don't see the value in it.
Honestly it sounds more like it wasn't a mistake, and something malicious if the server reformatted itself. To, you know, cover your tracks.
Could always hit up a sports bar? You don't /have/ to drink so it could be free. If you are there with friends, volunteer to be thr dedicated driver and you may get free soda and/or coffee.
We switched to just Netflix+UnblockUS about a year ago. OTA is pretty much useless around here (Saskatchewan, Canada).
Still paying $90/mo for internet, though. To be fair its 100Mbps, which is mostly for the higher bandwidth limit.
Depending on the situation, RAM and SSD makes a huge difference. I personally upgraded to an SSD before deciding to upgrade the rest of my system.
Cost was the biggest factor, drop $200 now and I can still use it when I upgrade the rest. No compatability issues.
My old system was an AMD Athlon X2 5200, 6GB DDR2 RAM. Just upgraded to an AMD FX-8320 w/ 8GB DDR3 back in December(2013).
One thing the USA has is cheap Virtual Private Servers. I've seen them as low as $25/year. That plus a little bit of time to read up on setting up OpenVPN or a SOCKS proxy would be worth it.
Not only could you tunnel Hulu, you could tunnel many other services. Maybe store some encrypted backups of important data if you really need to justify the cost.
localhost ~ # modprobe dafuq
I personally use Telegram (https://telegram.org/), and have for quite some time now. I like it for various reasons. Mainly its open source, and multi-client.
What I /don't/ like about plain jane SMS is I can't sit back at my desk and message people back who message me. I have to completely break my submersion into my computer, pick up my phone, and type on a tiny (virtual) keyboard. Drives me absolutely insane.
But if the car has an alarm system and it's active, this doesn't help much. If I unlock my car with a physical key, there's a three-step process I need to do in order to disable the alarm and engine kill. If your owners didn't realize their keys would work, what's the likelihood they'd then remember everything else required before driving away?
The alarm will also go off if I open it with a tool to bypass the lock... It's not my responsibility to know how to turn the alarm off. The point I was trying to make was these people did not know they could unlock their car, and gain access to their belongings, without their keyfob.
Of the three calls I handled in this in the situation I described, they were factory keys with the remote unlock buttons on the key itself.
I even had one case, where the passenger window was rolled down half way, allowing me to reach in effortlessly and unlock the vehicle.
My wife's family owns my towns only Locksmith company.
I spent some time working there, and let me tell you the best tool for breaking into cars is the correct tool for that vehicle. We had toolboxes of roughly 15 tools for various vehicles. Knowing which tool to use and how to use it is a skill I think everyone should learn.
My favourite was the slimjim. I even made my own because I wasn't fond of the one included in the kit. Its so versatile.
As an aside: We worked with CAA (Canadian version of AAA) and once every month or so we'd get a fax to unlock a vehicle (usually a Ford for some reason) who's keyless entry fob's battery had died. We would arrive and they are holding their key in their hand, pressing the button to unlock it and they are getting frustrated the vehicle isn't unlocking. I would calmly ask to see their key, walk up to the door and stick it in the door's keyway and turn it. The look on their face was always priceless. I even had one lady confess she didn't know that was even possible.
A hybrid DNS/Proxy service can really come in handy. Theoretically you could set it up to route around through different regions for services like Netflix.
*cough* unblock dash *cough* dot com *cough*
Seems that Canadian Winter cold is getting the best of me.
If I could register with an organization and submit donations for movies that I pirated and watched, I would absolutely pay. I still pay my cable bill even though I pirate all of my TV and haven't turned my cable boxes on for over 2 years.
I thought this up quite a while ago, and even brought it up on slashdot once before. I was modded down because the people who did see it screamed "think of the transportation industry!"
Anyway, my vision is quite clear. The media companies put together a website in which we could simply buy a license to obtain a copy of a specific work by any digital means available in whatever formats available.
The idea is since they are selling the license only, it completely cuts out the cost of producing physical media and the costs of distribution. Therefore, the per unit costs would be drastically reduced. For example, a full length movie would be $5.00 or less. A price point I think most people have no problem spending even if the movie turns out to be garbage. It could result in more sales, is easier to track sales. I can even envision companies set up to sell these licenses coupled with high quality versions of these works.
This obviously is a dream. As no media corp would consider it because, well, they are greedy assholes and enjoy their monopolies and ability to fuck with everyday normal people like me who flat out have no need for physical media or DRM encumbered crap I can't play on my home media center.
Tell me about it.
I live in Saskatchewan. We have Sasktel, Bell, Telus, Rogers and the "spinoffs" (Fido, Koodo, 7-11's SpeakOut).
My current plan is with Telus. $60/mo for unlimited nationwide talk (unlimited to anywhere in Canada, from anywhere in Canada), unlimited sms/mms, with 5GB of sharable Data. My wife also has the exact same plan, so we have a total of 10GB of usable data between the two of us. After 911 fee's and taxes, we are paying $133.24 total. As it stands this is about as good as it gets for my needs.
I was with Sasktel for many years until last July/2014. We were locked into a 3 year contract, and paying $60/mo each for 300 local daytime minutes, unlimited local calling in the evenings ,unlimited SMS (but not MMS, those were $1.00 each), and "unlimited" data. One gotcha they didn't tell you, is they also charged an $7-$8 "system access fee" on top of your plan, plus 911 fee's and taxes. In total we were paying ~$155/month. This does not account for overage or long distance fee's we would end up paying most months.
I live in Canada. We don't get Hulu.
I personally have been looking at the Gbox Midnight MX2. They come pre-rooted, with a bunch of pre-loaded software such as Xbmc.
Right now I use a WD TV Live, and it works alright. I really do not like how it organizes content and is not very customizable.
I had a HTPC at one point, running Linux and my own custom interface I developed myself, but the lack of Netflix is what drove me to the WD TV Live. Now netflix is supposed to be easier to set up on Linux via pipelight, I haven't played with it yet though, and I'm sure I could integrate it into my software... but the Gbox Midnight MX2, with Full Android and access to Google Play, hard to pass up, honestly.
Absolutely agree.
I use KeePassX on my desktop, workstation and laptop (all Funtoo Linux), and KeePassDroid on my mobile.
In addition, I've been playing with BTsync lately. I've found it invaluable for my password.kdb file.
I accidentally hit the Submit button
The end should have read:
I'll have to look more into it.
Good to know. I just assumed it used the Android Kernel much like Firefox OS, and was more or less android-ish. I didn't know you could run Linux Binaries.
I'
Does it have an ssh client available to use in said console?
So far on Android the best I've found is ConnectBot. Honestly the screen real estat sucks, even on my Nexus 4.
12MP is roughly 4000x3000px. High end mainstream screens cant even display half of that. A 100% quality JPEG you're looking around 2.5MB. That's pretty trivial, really. If you can halve your bandwidth and completely eliminate image processing by reducing down to, say, 8MP, would you not do it?
I wasn't saying to resize it down to 800x600 pixels, that would be crazy. 8MP ought to be enough for anyone ;-)
Personally I build my own servers and colocate them into datacenters.
With that said, I have both enterprise grade servers (600GB SAS drives) and non-enterprise grade (2TB SATA drives). Storing things for serving up on the SATA drives is fine in most cases. The server automatically caches the popular files in RAM, reducing bottlenecks and slowdowns. RAM is also very cheap. 64GB minimum in my machines.
Proper servers, in proper datacenters, with load balancing, and a proper DNS setup and it starts to look like a Cloud solution. I'm still of the mind the "cloud" is just a buzzword.
I can see that, yes. But those same phones also support client side image scaling via the HTML5 Canvas tag. (See here: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/...)
The fact is screen resolutions simply aren't there yet. There is no reason to upload and store the whole 15MP photo when you can only see 1/4 of it (if that).
With the canvas tag you can actually generate a thumbnail client side as well, and upload it alongside the main image, completely offloading the imag processing and reducing bandwidth (inbound and outbound upon re-serving up the file)