Microsoft office had everything I needed about 15 years ago
Seriously. Yes, I need Office every now and then. No, I don't need ANY new updates. NOW, which is more expensive?
89 posts • joined 13 Apr 2015
I'll tell you whats going on: People LIKE the idea of a smart speaker. They like that it can voice control automation. They like that it cant deliver information on commmand. What they DONT like is that almost every single piece of information goes through a central computer that records EVERYTHING. At this point, it is really going to be recording EVERYTHING , and not just a few seconds of shit after someone yells "Alexa". Suddenly, every sound in the damn room is a key for your speaker to report back to central command, which means it would record virutally all the time.
We want the smart speaker that works without the internet and a direct connection to Google/Facebook/Amazon
"It's "fuck" when humanity gets to the stage that it trusts a consumer product vendor to provide mission-critical information!"
Um...in that case, we are all "fuck" We depend on consumer product vendors to provide mission critical information all of the time. Look in your CAR. If you are SCUBA diver, you still rely on a WATCH and a PRESSURE GAUGE and DEPTH GUAGE to go on your SCUBA TANK.. These are ALL consumer products that provide mission critical information upon one relies on the way to and during a dive. And this is just a TINY portion of products that are mission critical that we rely on every single day.
The next time you get in a car or start your oven, try to do it without relying on those "fuck" consumer products that you claim. You are left with a Flintstone's car and a hot rock.
It does not matter that he did not have OTHER backups... they owe him. I am sure that he considered that the cloud had his data, and the drive was his backup. That is a legitimate view to take for a non-technical person. And let me say this: running a video program does not make him a technical person. It makes him a person capable of running a video editing application.
Ultimately, though, Adobe deleted files that it was not authorized to delete. They owe him $$$$.
"1. User replaceable battery.
2. microSD card slot.
3. Let the user install their own apps."
Oh, and a spiff that no one else gives you: a working FM radio. So if you need to catch that sports event that is blacked out or on a paid channel, you can listen to it on the radio.
""Facebook doesn't listen to, view, or keep the contents of your Portal video calls," the company said. You can turn off the camera and mic with a double tap, and delete your entire voice history with one command."
Maybe true... the instant he said it. As for the future....it is clear to me that Facebook can and will change the terms of service at their pleasure, and that they will change this policy just as soon as it becomes financially favorable to do so (I'll bet their EULA doesn't have they above statement). You simply cannot trust ANYTHING they say with respect to your privacy because they don't respect your privacy.
"I don't think the US REALLY cares about 3D printing of guns though, not enough to make up charges against this guy. "
You don't know U.S. liberals. People who fear just holding a gun. People who prosecute kids for using a pencil like a gun and saying "Pow". YOU don't know squat about the U.S.
"Which means that you can't redistribute it. It in no way means that Microsoft gets to treat your machine as if they own it."
And that, folks, is the crux of all of this. Microsoft is planning on actively scanning everything you do on your system. In my paranoid world, it means that they probably already are
" I'm in the process of weeding out my micro usb cables that don't work at all, ones that look like they're charging but aren't, and ones that are too thin for my Samsung charger to trust to Rapid Charge."
I did this about 6 months ago. I threw away all of the crappy chargers and cables... tossed them so as never to be tempted to use them again. And I only buy known quality stuff... It makes a huge difference to be using quality cables and chargers everywhere.
"At my last phone upgrade, I bought a pre-owned iPhone 7 Plus for $400, "
This. I purchased a used Galaxy S8+ for $300. I see people in this forum slam those phones over and over again, but the S8/S8+/pixel 2/etc really are all fine phones. The problem is the price. Nobody would be saying "theres too much this or that or we dont need this or that " if they were giving them away (well, maybe Reg posters would, lol). In may area (a major metro city in the U.S. ) rock bottom prices on a used S8/S8+ right now are $300, and on an S9/S9+ $400., unlocked.
And at $300, I think an S8+ is well worth it.
I'm just going to say the obvious: DONT CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS.
This scam fails utterly if the user goes to the Netflix site and logs into their own account. It only succeeds if someone has clicked on a link sent through email.
Just the other day, Google sent me a notification with a G**D*** link in it, and I sent them back a "WTF is this?" message. The average user CANNOT differentiate between a real/fake, and should just about NEVER click a link unless someone has specifically said to them: "I'm sending you a link". And that is what we ought to be teaching the average joe.
"I predict flocking behaviour will be an interesting failure mode for fully autonomous cars..."
Your prediction is already wrong. That was the fault falure mode of all GPS systems for the first 15 years of their existence.. just like your boat example above. We are WAY past that. Waymo already does realtime traffic sensing and makes offers to divert around jams while using their mapping system. It makes sense that they would put this logic, that they already posses, in cars to drive around jams.
"Hey genius, tell us who do you think will subsidize cheap-shit phones when margins on the high end models shrink"
Umm.... just about EVERYBODY besides Samsung and Apple. LG, Alcatel, Huawei... the list is actually quite extensive. I have a Huawei Sensa right now. $45. 5.5", 1080p screen, enough RAM for me, takes a microsd cardslot, has an FM radio, and a 3.5" jack. The real "problem" is margins . If Samsung or Apple could do with less than 200-300% margins, they could start selling vast amounts of phones. Yes, I would rather have one of the last two or three generations of the big two manufacturers... at Huawei prices. We have not reached peak phone. We have reached peak phone at the current price levels.
"So when they realise they have a crappy failing business model that doesn't provide any recurring revenue they can start charging for storing video"
This. everyone wants another revenue stream. The fact is, there are apps out there that will coordinate RTSP streams from multiple cameras to a storage device ... no 3rd party internet required. But those manufacturers that DID support that in their cheap cameras , INCLUDING MI, have removed that functionality so that they could charge you for cloud storage and viewing. That is a big steaming pile o'crap that is really killing the home security setup, as well as any sort of privacy.
And as crowdfunding goes ,those are words to live by.
I have bought into 4 campaigns similar to this. Two panned out and delivered a first round of product, and subsequently failed a month or two later, and two others never delivered anything. The value that I received from the two delivered items was exceptional. The problem was that they should have charged more and accepted fewer orders and they might have made it as a business. But they charged too little, were overcome with orders, and the projects that initially delivered subsequently failed.
They have spent appx the same amount of time as the original missions to get to the moon in the 1960s. While the U.S. gov't did this 40 years ago, they did it with ancient, heavy technology. I would have thought that a private company using 21st century technology could have accomplished this in a similar timespan as the U.S. gov't 40-50 years ago.
I guess this just illuminates what a damn fine job they did in the 60s.
"This is just another step in the lifecycle of the IT mega-corporation: they've hit the stage where they are now driven by greed as opposed to any desire to innovate, and projects that are not making money are sidelined or dropped. At the same time, it becomes harder and harder to kick off anything new or innovative because the board/shareholders need proof that the new project is going to be profitable to a desired level within a given timeframe..."
In a nutshell, that was my experience at HP for the last 20 or so years.
"But would you trust the footage of your suicidal stunt being missed due to a shoddy cheap knock off?"
I have been using a "shoddy cheap knockoff" for a year. I guarantee that 99/100 could not tell the diff in footage between this and a gopro. Yes, I would trust a shoddy cheap knock off.
This past year, the TRUE 4k knockoffs came out... using the same chipsets as gopro... for about $100. Virtually the same camera specs in the same form factor. GoPro is losing the action cam market. They really can't compete with products that are nearly the same but cost 25% as much.
I imagine that, in the beginning, that Google thought that they would put out updates and the bloatware pushers would update THEIR respective images and send out an update. I imagine that Google DID care, but they couldn't fathom that ATT/Verizon/Sprint/Tmobile would sh!t on their customers. Once realized... and with a few really really nasty bugs floating around like a time bomb, Google finally acted.
"The US Department of Transportation estimated that the tech – which has been developed over a decade at the cost of countless dollars – could prevent or reduce the impact of up to 80 per cent of collisions."
But lets also look at the deaths caused BY tech. People on cell phones are now responsible for more deaths than drunk driving and guns put together. Wouldn't it save a lot of lives to prevent distracted driving? WELL????
We shame and criminalize drunk driving for 30 years, but barely give notice to the pile of deaths mounting up do to texting. Now we want to legislate that cars self correct for our texting and driving habits. How about, instead, we have first/second/third offenses... costing thousands of dollars and much community service... just like for drunk driving? Lose your license mostly permanently after the third offense.
I write all of this in complete seriousness. When an activity produces as much death as another activity, punishment for each should be similar. We shouldn't be trying to mandate electronic interventions for our electronic habit.
I've been using an Echo with a Samsung Smartthings hub to control quite a few devices/things around the house. A lot of it is just like this article... patchy and sketchy. But, and this is what you have to take from this, it is getting by leaps and bounds every few months. It is useful enough that I am going to set up my 81 year old father's house with a lot of conveniences to make his life a bit easier.
I don't know what x3 products are, but I purchased enough HP-abandoned consumer products in the 2000's to NEVER touch another. That, and the big NVIDIA graphic adapter problems that HP/DELL went through around 2006/7 (an how HP handled it compared to DELL) convinced me to never buy ANYTHING from HP ever again, and I worked for them at the time!
its an interesting perspective. I have had a similar perspective for a long time. My dad worked for
Burroughs when they were #2. And Digital when they were #2. I worked for HP when they were #2. Are we starting to see a pattern? IT companies that depend on self made software/hardware can , for a time, strike gold. They rarely strike gold again. What's innovative at Microsoft?? Apple??
It is really sad to see it happen to HP. They have a legacy that none of those companies come close to... like the Woolworths or the Sears of a bygone era. Getting big was the end of them.
"Not saying others copied Apple rumors but clearly this began the design process before any bezel-less Android phone shipped."
"Clearly"??? Not to me. You obviously have inside info on ALL of the major manufacturers design processes so that you can make this "CLEAR" conclusion. But, Apple fanboi, let me say this: the bezel-less design is an obvious goal, just as it was for monitors and TVs. OBVIOUS!
"China is making more progress towards environmentaly sound travel than any other country..."
Yep. That is because they are a polluted mess. The same could have been said about the U.S. decades back. It seems the will to make progress is stronger when you can't breath.
I have made about 12 orders from Alibaba. Of those, only the orders that were less than $5 were legit. Everything else was a SCAM, and took me a month to get my money back. EVERYTHING. By my estimation, about 80-90% of everything there is a scam. Most are "importer/exporter" type operations where they get a line on one item, advertise 100 similar things for sale. You buy one, and then they try to switch you to the one item that they DO have, and if you refuse you spend one or two months trying to get your money back. Or, they pretend to send you something by giving you a shipping number, and try to run the clock out on your CC purchase. Alibaba is a pit of thieves.
"The Register has to sadly support our old American neighbours. "
While that statement might make sense for any random person from the U.S., any American who is reading this article will generally be very well acquainted with different temperature and measurement systems. In fact, most of us wish the U.S. would just change so that we wouldn't have to learn every formula in two systems.