Kinda, sorta ...

I *still* use HP iPAQs, which run Windows Mobile. Keep four of them around so if one dies, I'm not stuck trying to find an increasingly-rare replacement. I'd be the first to admit they're not tablets -- but they're small, and they can handle most of my files. (I also have an Android tablet, a tower, and two laptops. One of the laptops has two hard drives set up to swap, so the machine can do either Windows XP or Windows 7 with purity.

I have an MP3 player, a dumbphone, and a plain ol' digital camera. The biggest problem with the mobile do-it-all devices is that if they break or are lost, you lose *everything*. So call me a troglodyte, but I'm perfectly happy with what Microsoft did before Apple created the iWhatevers.

Does not compute full time

It'll get all bunged up when we have a leap second.

Some people say 'different is better'. If they annoy you, just point to Windows 8.

Patented -- or worse?

It could be worse -- patents have a limited life, but copyrights are forever.

More Money for Amazon

I've read numerous posts where it's claimed Amazon just breaks even on selling e-readers. They make their money by selling e-BOOKS. While it's true the Kindle ties you to Amazon, and the iPad ties you to Apple, you'll probably keep on buying your books in the same old place even if you're using a tablet.

Business as is becoming usual ...

It doesn't matter what you did. It doesn't even matter if you did it. The only thing that truly matters is when a prosecutor (or his/her boss) decides you need to be Gotten. Even if you finally make it to court and prevail, you will have wasted years, spent all your money, and probably become somebody your friends no longer recognize.

The only thing dumber than trusting a Chinese manufacturer is trusting a Chinese court or a Chinese arbitrator. At least Foxconn is paying *something*.

Everything?

So what about my computerized hearing aids?

Governments shouldn't make laws that breed contempt. It only makes it easier to ignore the laws that really MEAN something. If an airplane is made electrically-invulnerable enough to live through a lightning strike, I doubt my MP3 player is going to cause problems. Devices with transmitters or speakers, now that is a different matter. With speakers, most of the other passengers will help enforce the rule!

Re: Re: Language, language!

"Earth" is a word indicating a substance, as well as a planet. It's reasonable to say "trundle across the substance". But in that case, the word would be earth, not Earth. There is no substance-word for Martian soil as of yet.

Language, language!

"...having now trundled across the Mars for six days..."

THE Mars? I've been seeing this linguistic abomination for some time now, everywhere I go. Stop doing it.

This troglodyte says NO!

So they propose making computers that won't even BOOT unless they're connected to the Internet? That won't even let you at the BIOS? Meaning you're shafted if you're in a no-signal area?

I don't think I want one of those.

Watchbird

Reminds me of cartoons by Munro Leaf from the days when I was a child. The key phrase, repeated over and over, was "This is a watchbird, watching you."

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/blog/index.cfm?postid=1404

Backup

I do my own backup, on an external HDD. I have enough problems with my *own* mistakes -- why should I let the rest of the world help make mistakes for me? No cloud, not for me.

Bah, humbug!

I'm getting together a desktop computer with a swappable HD tray for the OS. It'll be able to run anything I want. Right now, it's running XP, because some old, familiar applications do not play nicely with 7. My Windows 7 laptop runs Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office. 7 broke many of my applications, and I'll not give Microsoft a second drink from my wallet for new ones. The laptop's virtual XP powers are there, and are used. Fortunately, there's only one of me -- even as I sit in a room with six computers.

Tracking - not

NoScript, AdBlock Plus, and Do Not Track Plus, with the 'do not track' flag set in firefox. Plus I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, which promises it does not collect or share personal information. I don't see very many ads of any sort.

Of course the advertising industry will move on. Offense and defense have played leapfrog throughout history, in just about every venue.

Belt and suspenders

I keep old stuff. Old media, old programs, old computers. I don't necessarily use the old stuff every day -- but I have a USB floppy drive and a USB DVD drive. (I gave up on the 5 1/4 inch drives some while ago, and have never messed with 8 inch drives.) So I can get away with a netbook, and still install programs from CD or DVD, or even read old floppies -- but I don't have to carry the drives around with me. For *that* I can use SD cards and thumbdrives.

Security

There's another reason to use fax: security. As another elReg article of this day notes, "the internet never forgets". But the telephone isn't the internet. (Your telephone may vary.) I write the message, I fax the message, you get the message. Our faxen hang up. There are two paper copies, but unless our phone has been tapped, there is no electronic copy to be found twenty years later by some geek halfway around the world.

Of course sooner or later assorted governments will tap and record everything, and that security will be gone. But at least the person you're looking to get a date with, or a job, won't have it.

Bull!

As long as the telco controls what will run on their network -- and it *is* their network -- they will insist on control over what runs on the device in your hand that *connects* to their network. And hey-presto, an open-source OS is forked.

Machine Intelligence?

People have been talking about machine intelligence for at least half a century. This usually includes statements to the order of "If a machine can do (such-and-so), then it's intelligent. And quite a few times, machines have done (such-and-so) competently, and the judges have simply moved the goalposts.

The question is not whether machines may become intelligent. The question is whether humans will admit it when they do.

TRS-80 Model III

I first programmed on an IBM 704. It had vacuum tubes. But the first computer I took home was a TRS-80 Model III. It was either that, or an Apple II. And the TRS already had a monitor, and didn't need a silly add-on for capital letters. The cassette tape storage was miserable, but it worked, and eventually bought a Model IV and switched over to floppies. Novels were written on those computers. They're still with me, having been ported to CP-M and then MS-DOS.

The most miserable part about the Model III was that you could not trust it to save your files if you had more than 32k of memory. Radio Shack wouldn't believe us. We eventually cut the memory from 48k to 32k, and it behaved just fine after that.

Bah, humbug!

I like Windows XP. I like Windows 7. But 7 breaks a lot of programs I'm fond of. Worse, the current versions are expensive. So I keep two machines, one for each, and intend to continue that. Why go to the fuss of upgrading the XP box, or the fuss of recycling it, when I have the room and the power strip for it?

Violet Ray

The Violet Ray machines popular since the 1920s did exactly this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_ray. They provided a mixture of ultraviolet light, ionization, and ozone on the surface of the skin.

This machine may be a new implementation, but it's hardly a new idea.

Durability

Long ago, when vinyl was king, I'd buy vinyl -- then transfer the music to a cassette tape, and store the vinyl in a safe place. If something happened to the tape, I'd just make another. These days it's a CD and a computer or MP3 player (or both).

In no case can the seller reach down my ISP and take away the music. Which, if I'd bought the soundtrack to "1984: The Musical" from Amazon, might turn out to be important.

The reproduction of music just keeps getting better. Who but an extremist needs anything better than a CD? My ears aren't that good.

Another viewpoint

Forget the password and the encryption. Where did [he] get a laptop with five hard drives?

"...the suspect allegedly refused to supply the passphrases for five of his laptop hard drives and five external hard drives."

Data vs. Truth

I don't care where or how it happens -- I've seen it in politics, religion, advertising, creationism, and AGW. Anybody who knowingly and deliberately ignores, fakes, or contradicts data in the process of spreading a Higher Truth is an enemy to all thinking humanity. We don't need our paths encumbered with the bones of Piltdown Man.

Death

Something's going to kill me eventually. If it's food, I want it to have tasted good.

Addictive? Useless?

Never had mushrooms, but for me, marijuana was therapeutic. About forty years ago, I quit smoking tobacco. And the only thing that held me together through all that was smoking mj.

Then one day I realized I hadn't smoked anything for several weeks. Hadn't even noticed. Try *that* for addictive.

Ecosystem

The Web ecosystem has enough predators already. It doesn't need more. This won't end well.

Precaution

This is why I use a dumbphone, and try to keep one computer isolated from the Net.

Current lithium batteries are bad enough when they catch fire. I'd hate to have someting with ten times the energy in my pocket when it went postal.

These Things Happen

In similar wise, I have made reproductions of artifacts. One of them was an artifact that had had a *hard* life. So I aged the living daylights out of it. It went to live with its inventor; but his housekeeper thought it looked terrible, so he gave it a coat of fresh paint.

Fortunately, I only had to re-do the painting and aging. It's hard to tell how difficult ersatz rainwater would have been.