When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone 175
The Atlantic is running an article about how "smart" devices are starting to see everyday use in many people's home. The authors say this will fundamentally change the concept of what it means to own and control your possessions. Using smartphones as an example, they extrapolate this out to a future where many household items are dependent on software. Quoting:
These phones come with all kinds of restrictions on their possible physical capabilities. You may not take them apart. Depending on the plan, not all software can be downloaded onto them, not every device can be tethered to them, and not every cell phone network can be tapped. "Owning" a phone is much more complex than owning a plunger. And if the big tech players building the wearable future, the Internet of things, self-driving cars, and anything else that links physical stuff to the network get their way, our relationship to ownership is about to undergo a wild transformation.
They also suggest that planned obsolescence will become much more common. For example, take watches: a quality dumbwatch can last decades, but a smartwatch will be obsolete in a few years.
Welcome to Walmart of Things... (Score:5, Funny)
Your stove has no more credit left. Do you want to purchase a $2.99 "Heat Pack" to continue cooking?
Get a free car! Want to drive? $19.99 in-app purchase for 100 miles. Want to unlock door? $0.99 for a 10-pack. Or $9.99 for a mega-pack with AC.
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You forgot to mention that all the while, the gadgets report your habits.
Drive a long time? Cook very little or mostly fried (unhealthy) dishes? Oooh, health risk, insurance companies would love to know that.
Filling up the tank only by halves instead of full? Potential cash inflow on the horizon, let loose the repo-man!.
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That sounds like the airline of things. Each peanut in the bag costs a dollar. 50 cents for each 10ml of water to wash them down. Wanna use the john? HA! You can't afford it..
Don't kid yourself ... (Score:3)
Yeah, they do, just like you do except maybe even more.
Big business keeps them informed through massive lobbying and super PACs. They know more about it than you do.
Politicians don't need to know how to make money from technology. They need to know how to get votes from technology.
Germany?
Scroll down to the section, "Targets [wikipedia.org]."
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Actually, generally not. Politicians are being lobbied by thousands of different interests continuously - even with a huge staff tracking all the things they need to vote on they only have time to develop a the most superficial of understandings of most topics. They may know which way to vote to get campaign contributions, but that's a far cry from actually understanding what they're voting about. And that means that somebody who can tell them a compelling enough story before the high-caliber lobbyists r
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The ONLY currency politicians deal with is votes.
Regarding technology you and I use, politicians are on a level playing field.
To think otherwise is to suggest, for instance, that politicians don't know how to send text messages or send a tweet.
Judging by the lack of judgement, I judge that they do
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Not really - votes are what puts them in office, but not the reason they want the office: politicians deal in money and power, votes are only the means by which they maintain their position. Moreover as a rule you don't get votes by doing right by your constituents - you get votes by *convincing them* you're doing right by them (or that your opponent would be worse), which in modern politics is largely an unrelated topic which correlates well with how much money gets spent on your deceptive campaign ads.
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Politicians give up money and sell their grandmothers for votes.
And, politicians only need to know how social media works as a vote-getting machine.
And that's all there is to that.
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So on your world I suppose politicians pursue the position for the deep emotional satisfaction of serving their constituents?
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You are taking this a step to far.Do you know how to live off the Grid?
GP was being sarcastic. However, it's true that it's an alarming trend. And it's only a trend because people have allowed it to be.
"Owning" a phone is much more complex than owning a plunger.
I *OWN* my phone. It's rooted and unlocked, and I do what *I* want with it, not what some large corporation thinks I should do with it. They get the information I want to give them, and little else.
It's time to take back "things"! Say NO to subscription services. Say NO to term contracts. Buy it, own it, do what you want with it.
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> I heat with a wood stove only, and have cooked on it in the winter
Excellent. That is sustainable as long as you cook slowly enough to allow for tree regrowth.
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> I heat with a wood stove only, and have cooked on it in the winter
Excellent. That is sustainable as long as you cook slowly enough to allow for tree regrowth.
Someone told me years ago that oil is a renewable energy source, it just takes a long time to renew...
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Needs not be slow - you just need enough land and fast-growing trees. If your house is well-insulated or your climate mild you don't even need all that much.
Willow is an excellent source of fuel if your climate allows it, as it readily lends itself to coppicing - where you keep getting fresh growth from an essentially immortal well-established root structure - there's trees in Europe that have been continuously harvested for several centuries. As a bonus they're also voracious, and will suck an outhouse p
Doesn't scale well (Score:2)
Needs not be slow - you just need enough land and fast-growing trees.
That gets a tad difficult when you are trying to grow enough trees for 7 billion people.
Furthermore wood burning stoves are rather dirty from an environmental standpoint. Most traditional wood burning stoves are quite inefficient and release a lot of particulate matter.
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>That gets a tad difficult when you are trying to grow enough trees for 7 billion people.
A tad, but at 5 acres of land area per person it's still quite doable, especially since you can grow wood in a lot of places unsuitable for modern food crops - just look at Canada and north Asia. And now that we're beginning to understand the mechanics of desertification there's hope for a relatively rapid reversal of that, which would significantly increase the fertility of much of the land on the planet.
>Most t
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Until a blight decimates the monoculture, and we all freeze to death.
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The good ones do. The things they call fireplaces in the US are pretty much universally abysmally inefficient, but even here you'll occasionally see ducting to bring in outside air.
Clothes dryers maybe not so much - they're run a lot less regularly when it's cold outside, and you're adding the cost and trouble of a set of ducting.
But forget wasting the heat already in the house - we have a machine specifically designed to produce heat, why are we then dumping all all that lovely heat out into the cold sky?
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Needs not be slow - you just need enough land and fast-growing trees.
That gets a tad difficult when you are trying to grow enough trees for 7 billion people.
Furthermore wood burning stoves are rather dirty from an environmental standpoint. Most traditional wood burning stoves are quite inefficient and release a lot of particulate matter.
Soylent Green is people!
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I heat with a wood stove only, and have cooked on it in the winter
Excellent. That is sustainable as long as you cook slowly enough to allow for tree regrowth.
We also heat our home with wood, and cook using it too; we live in Finland, so this means quite a lot of wood is burnt every year. The annual growth in our forest greatly exceeds the annual cut, even with an extra couple of hundred or so mature trees cut for lumber. It's the freeloaders who only burn fossil fuels who are screwing with the environment...
Hobsons choice (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you want a crockpot that has to be replaced at every few years—or at least that will be forever upgrading itself? Would apps change your mind?
When enough others decide to buy an app-able crockpot, you won't have any choice but too buy one as well. The market does not provide what people want -- it provides what is profitable.
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Nope.
You buy phones like others do, because it's a symbol that's always visible. You aren't going to be lugging pots around or inviting every friend/acquaintance/colleague/boss in your kitchen to see them. Same for washing machines, fridges and whatever.
Also ... they'll have to be REAL moneymakers to relieve the research and marketing costs. You can do that by reducing quality & maintaining prices, maintaining quality & increasing prices or ... make a giant leap of faith and risk millions by subsidi
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Nope.
You buy phones like others do, because it's a symbol that's always visible. You aren't going to be lugging pots around or inviting every friend/acquaintance/colleague/boss in your kitchen to see them.
But the only way for something to be always visible is to instagram/pinterist/facebook it ... which is what people would do with these appliances. And when they are actually physically in the same room as their friends they would be conspicuously on their phones and talking about the sous vide rig they are adjusting the temperature on or what groceries their refrigerator has just ordered to be delivered by drone. Did anyone who bought a Nest thermostat not saturate the web with their experiences with it?
Re:Hobsons choice (Score:4, Interesting)
When enough others decide to buy an app-able crockpot, you won't have any choice but too buy one as well.
Yes, for normal people, but we're nerds. We'll simply hack them, just like we jailbreak iPhones.
This story reminds me of something that happened in a bar a year or so ago. A fellow had a strange looking contraption that looked like it had something to do with a furnace. I asked him what it was, and he said it was an "obsolete" analog part that cost him twenty bucks new that he was installing in a friend's furnace to replace a burned up digital board that cost $200 used.
Look at cars, my last car had a digital circuit to control climate. If it had gone out, the replacement was $300. $300 for something that surely cost the automaker less than $5 to manufacture.
If I'm forced to buy an internet-connected toaster, you can bet its antennas will be the first parts to be removed.
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Do you want a crockpot that has to be replaced at every few years—or at least that will be forever upgrading itself? Would apps change your mind?
When enough others decide to buy an app-able crockpot, you won't have any choice but too buy one as well. The market does not provide what people want -- it provides what is profitable.
Yea, not so much. I can still buy a "dumb" cellphone, that won't do much besides voice and SMS, and they are easy to find and significantly less expensive, despite the fact that "most" people buy smart phones. I can also find solid keyboards without "Windows" keys, wood-burning stoves, stove-top percolating coffee makers, and while everyone makes fun of buggy-whip manufacturers losing jobs, the producers of buggy whips and horse-drawn carriages are still meeting the demand for those products, even though
Like most appliances for the past 40 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
These phones come with all kinds of restrictions on their possible physical capabilities. You may not take them apart. Depending on the plan, not all software can be downloaded onto them,
You mean, just like basically every electric appliance ever made for the past, what?, 40 years?
My washing machine, fridge, rice cooker, air conditioner, TV, HiFi, radio, electronic alarm clock, etc, ALL comes with "all kinds of restrictions on their possible physical capabilities" and I can't take them apart without voiding their warranty. Most of them have logic circuits, or even CPU, running inside, which I have no way to download ANY software into them.
I have no way of knowing if I am able to utilize EVERY bit of their physical capabilities. Can I, say, tell my rice cooker to heat up beyond its preset safety limit? I would think its heating element should be capable of reaching temperatures way more than cooker normally allows it to before shutting it off. Hey, that's a "restrictions on its possible physical capabilities"! Can I download software into my of PAL TV so it can accept NTSC signal? Can I change the software of my electronic alarm clock to do more?
Gee, so now instead of every lazy journalist just rerunning old stories by add "... on the Internet!", now they rerun old stories by add "... on the smartphone!"?
Re:Like most appliances for the past 40 years? (Score:5, Informative)
> You mean, just like basically every electric appliance ever made for the past, what?, 40 years?
No not even close.
None of those devices were deliberately restricted. The difference is that before phones (and other manifestations like tivoization) the cases were the manufacture actively interfered with the owner's ability to tinker were few and far between.
In fact, congress thought that the right of owners to tinker with their property was so important that they passed the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act [wikipedia.org] which forbid manufacturers from denying warranty claims just because the owner had tinkered with the device in ways unrelated to the failure.
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Are you f*cking kidding me? My washing machine has a controller board with the numbers erased off the embedded CPU. My car requires proprietary tools to fix. And on and on.
People have been deliberately restricting technology for just about as long as there has been technology. Most people are just too stupid to notice because they stopped fixing things themselves and just call the manufacturer's service center.
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My washing machine has a controller board with the numbers erased off the embedded CPU.
My washing machine has a corroded useless controller board with a rotary switch whose spring loaded contacts failed, then fused. A burnt out hot water solenoid valve and a broken load weight sensor.
That is why my washing machine has a hole drilled in the panel in which I have mounted a double pole double throw center off toggle switch. Click it down to wash, up to spin. Click to center and it turns off. It's just a DC motor that agitates or spins based on direction. There is a garden hose hooked to the h
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The old devices are not deliberately restricted. I usually buy an older device that suits my needs instead of a new one for this reason and because if is easier to repair when it does fail.
Let's say I have an old tape deck. It is what it is, the sound quality or functions are not artificially restricted. If I want to I can improve it beyond the original specifications, but that requires modifying it. Same with my car - if it does not have some part then it doesn't, if I want to I can install it and use the
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Compare that to, say, modern phones. Android is very similar to Linux, but I cannot get a root shell on my own phone (without modifying it) even though it is physically capable of this, but that feature is restricted by the manufacturer.
The feature is just not provided by the manufacturer and if you want it you can add it yourself, it's really simple and easy to do.
For example, I have a video file that plays without sound on an Android tablet because the sound codec is not supported. Decoding sound does not take a lot of CPU power, so I should be able to just install the codec as I can do on a PC, but it is restricted.
So just get root access then, there are a myriad of tutorials on the net showing how to do it. Yes they come somewhat restricted out of the box because - as we have seen with Windows - the vast majority of people will end up with malware-infected systems if you just allow them root access by default to install anything and everything. Then they blame the device, the OS or the ma
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You mean, just like basically every electric appliance ever made for the past, what?, 40 years?
That explains why my Marantz amplifier from 1980 (which I still use) came with a circuit diagram that I will consult in a near future to fix a low frequency hum that started occurring a few weeks ago after 34 years of flawless sound reproduction. oh wait...
When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone (Score:4, Funny)
Everything working OK, only the 'phone' part sucking?
No thanks.
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Depending on the plan... (Score:2)
A perfect example of why connectivity should be controlled by the PUC (and considered a public utility). I don't want providers shoving locked, altered OS's with applications they deem necessary or recommended. I don't want to be told what type of device I can use to access bandwidth running RFC spec communication protocols. I don't want your DNS servers shoved down my throat, providing compensated landing pages in lieu of the address I requested. I don't want them believing they have a right to profit off
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A perfect example of why connectivity should be controlled by the PUC (and considered a public utility). I don't want providers shoving locked, altered OS's with applications they deem necessary or recommended. I don't want to be told what type of device I can use to access bandwidth running RFC spec communication protocols. I don't want your DNS servers shoved down my throat, providing compensated landing pages in lieu of the address I requested. I don't want them believing they have a right to profit off of any data I care to view.
Venturing even further, you can take your POTS system
separation from my bandwidth and the double income you have been earning for the past 15 years and put it where the sun doesn't shine.
I feel better now..
There are three problems with that:
1, the PUC is a local...VERY local...authority, at most reaching to the borders of a state. There are hundreds of them in the US alone. Unless you want things like wireless standards adoption to be fragmented across that large a scattering, you don't want this.
2, there's a nation-wide PUC equivalent that deals specifically in the things you just spoke about. And it's called the FCC. Which proves that the basic hopes and dreams you have are unrealistic, based on their pa
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Oh, sure, because that worked so well when we had a regulated phone service! It's not like AT&T ever told you what phones you could connect to the phone line, or what you could do with your phone service. Oh, no! Never!
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Do you even have a fucking brain?
So you want the government to control the performance of your internet connection, and wireless phone? Because they are going to give you a free and open platform, plus yearly doubling bandwidth, right? After all, they have so much incentive to do so.
If you have been on this planet at any time during the past few years, you might have noticed that the first priority that any government has is making sure all your digital communications go through THEIR taps and get or st
Programmed obsolescence? (Score:4, Insightful)
The authors say this will fundamentally change the concept of what it means to own and control your possessions.
So the authors are considering a future where we have to replace all our domestic appliances every 2 years, simply because someone somewhere has decided that the control software *must* have this new feature (that nobody asked for) and that it will only run on version X. You now have 3 months to toss the old fridge / cooker / vacuum cleaner / lightbulb before it gets automatically bricked. Even though it performs its primary function perfectly.
No thank you.
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One of the main reasons while I only have three internet and/or networked devices in my home, not including my router. My phone, laptop and Roku.
Re:Programmed obsolescence? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is bogus. While there are restrictions if you "buy" your phone on a contract where you're paying it off at so much a month, it's the same as any other lease. Until you've completely paid for it, you don't own it. Don't like that? Then buy the phone outright. Then you're free to unlock it (heck, the big-box stores here sell the same phone locked with a plan and unlocked without at a higher price), take it apart, blend it, bend it, mod it, replace the OS, whatever.
Contrary to the article, owning a phone is not complex. Leasing one - same business practices as leasing a car.
If you live outside T-Mobile's coverage (Score:2)
Until you've completely paid for it, you don't own it. Don't like that? Then buy the phone outright. Then you're free to unlock it
That works in countries where all carriers use GSM/UMTS. But in North America, how do you use a phone that you bought outright if you happen to live where Verizon has a good signal and T-Mobile doesn't? Verizon and Sprint use CDMA2000 and won't activate service on any phone not purchased from them.
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Leases can have restrictions on the use of the vehicle (non-commercial use only,. so forget delivering pizza or doing the Uber thing), or on leaving the country -- or even the state (vacation? visiting relatives? better check first). Also you're required to maintain the vehicle properly. Even if it's just going to sit parked for the next 12 months because you suddenly lucked into a job that provides a car, you still have to insure and plate it.
Big accident? It's not up to you whether to just accept t
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Lose your job? If you own the car, you can sell it. A lease? You're probably upside-down.
If you own the car you are likely as much or more upside down than if you have it leased. Selling a leased car is allowed, as is turning it in early. You have *more* options with a lease, not fewer. You can sell it by transferring the lease, or by buying out the lease then selling the 100% owned car, options you don't get if you buy it.
So you can't really just do what you want when you lease a car as opposed to owning one.
You obviously have been told that leasing is a bad idea, and never tried it. I leased a car once. The manufacturer inventives made it much cheaper to lease (then buy out
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Lose your job? If you own the car, you can sell it. A lease? You're probably upside-down.
If you own the car you are likely as much or more upside down than if you have it leased. Selling a leased car is allowed, as is turning it in early. You have *more* options with a lease, not fewer. You can sell it by transferring the lease, or by buying out the lease then selling the 100% owned car, options you don't get if you buy it.
If you own your car, you own it. Debt-free. If you owe the bank, you don't own it outright - there's a lien on it. It's the same as the cell phone contracts - you don't own the phone outright - you've financed it via the phone company, and will always be upside down on it.
Financing something means you don't own it. Ask all those people who "bought" houses that were then repo'd.
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So you were lying when you were bashing "leases". The problem isn't "leases" it's "financing."
Now you're down to name calling. Don't like the message, attack the messanger, which you do several times.
Leasing is just another way of financing something, rather than purchasing it. Whether you borrowed the money to pay for something and the lender has a lien, or you leased it and the leasing entity has a lien, it's not yours until it's paid for. You can't dispose of it and keep the proceeds, for example. You can't give it in guarantee for something else. You can't gift it to someone else. The lie
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Your saying it doesn't make it so. The "bashing" I originally did on car leases was on car leases specifically, not on financing in general. That I started with leasing (one form of financing) doesn't mean what you claim - that I somehow lied when I said leasing was the problem, and not financing in general. Leasing is a subset of financing, same as mortgages. The problem isn't leases, the problem isn't financing in general - it's that people don't want to pay full price for their phone up front, so in
Dumb watch (Score:4, Insightful)
Very true. I have a cheap Casio watch that I've had since the 1980s. The band long-ago broke, but I replaced it with a belt-loop hook. I can only recall changing the battery twice. It runs a tiny bit fast (several seconds a month), but until it completely dies, I see no reason to replace it for telling time at a glance (something that can't be done with a smartphone). Plus, if I lose it, I don't care (I've gotten more than my money's worth out of it) and nobody wants to steal it.
When would I need it? (Score:2)
It runs a tiny bit fast (several seconds a month), but until it completely dies, I see no reason to replace it for telling time at a glance (something that can't be done with a smartphone).
Which is exactly why those devices remain useful. And there are times when that is valuable. I sometimes carry a (dumb) watch when I'm hiking or doing some competitive distance running. Also useful if you are flying a plane or navigating a boat.
Here's the thing though. How often to you *really* need to know the time at a glance and do not have several clocks within eye shot these days? I spend most of my day working near a computer that has the time right on the menu bars. My car has a clock. I have
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I have no idea -- which is why I gave up wearing a watch on my wrist and now wear it on my belt-loop (as I originally mentioned). Even if I were to buy a new watch, I'd get one that either came on a belt-loop from the vendor or one that I could easily replace the band with one (as I did with my Casio).
The watch-on-a-belt-loop also allows me to stealthily
No thank you (Score:4, Funny)
If I really need to connect my toaster to the internet then I deserve to buy a new one every 2 years.
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Dude, don't connect your Cylon online!!
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During a power failure I found that I can make much better toast in the fireplace than in a toaster. I prefer it now.
So? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comparing a phone to a plunger is silly, and makes me question the cognitive abilities of the person making the analogy.
Everything is a trade off. My car is so complex I can't begin to figure out how to fix it, but I do have a diagnostic tool on my iPad that I could not possible afford 10 years ago. My watch, and iPod Mini, is obsolete but it still tells me the time. As long as that is all I want it do it is fine. I used my 3GS over the summer as a roaming phone. Slip a sim card in it and I was good to go. As long as I wanted it as a phone, I was good to go.
Yes, you can't take stuff apart. OTOH I was one of the few people I knew that actually soldered computers to repair them, rather than just plug and play with a new board. Yes, some phones are not upgradable to current software, but many consumers seen to happy to make that choice to have a cheaper phone or a phone with other features. I can even see the current situation where you pay per page for ink is an option that many people would prefer.
Certainly there is a loss when we do not have a choice, but I think in many cases we still have a choice, it is just that we do not want to pay the real or opportunity costs for that choice.
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There are jobs the electric tools can do that human muscle can not. Try boring a quarter inch dia. hole through an inch of case hardened 4140 chromemoly hand drill and get back to us.
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There are jobs the electric tools can do that human muscle can not. Try boring a quarter inch dia. hole through an inch of case hardened 4140 chromemoly hand drill and get back to us.
Or just will do massively better and faster - I just had to drill through 3 layers of masonry to run new lines at work. I'm sure I *could* have done it manually, but the hammer drill I had did it with a nice clean inch wide circular hole in only a few mins. The best tool for a job is the one that lets you get it done right, get it done fast, and move on. It's nice to make sure you have a manual backup around, but electric tools get the job done for most people.
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Why we use fancy tools (Score:3)
A good hammer, a good manual drill, a good screwdriver, will last a lifetime.
And will sit in a drawer for any but the most basic or simple of tasks. I have each of those tools and use them but 9 times out of 10 I find myself reaching for the cordless hammer-drill or the pneumatic nail gun because I value my time and don't believe in pointless effort. Plus a good part of the reason those hand tools last is because you are somewhat limited in the amount of work you can do with them. I can generate FAR more torque with my hammer-drill than with any manual screwdriver or hand drill.
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I believe myself to be practical man who doesn't easily succumb to the latest in gadgetry. But a manual drill? That's pushing it. I will get off your lawn now. ;-)
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Everything is a trade off. My car is so complex I can't begin to figure out how to fix it, but I do have a diagnostic tool on my iPad that I could not possible afford 10 years ago.
I assume you mean you couldn't afford the $400 ipad ten years ago and not that you couldn't afford the $50 diagnostic tool 10 years ago.
So? (Score:2)
Why hacking and making are so important (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as Digital Restrictions Management and various schemes for 'protecting' 'intellectual property' have not been unqualified successes, this trend also will be undercut, to some extent, by people who hack, make, reverse engineer, re-purpose, and repair hardware, firmware, and software. It just remains to be seen how the legislative and enforcement aspects play out. And that depends largely on Joe and Jane Average's opposition to A) basically renting or leasing most of the stuff in their lives, and B) paying to be spied upon, advertised to, and held hostage by corporate interests.
If even a large minority of citizens refuse to put up with this crap and instead have old stuff fixed and new stuff modified or boutique-built, then it will be hard for governments to justify what will otherwise be a very heavy hand in favour of laws enforcing corporate control. I'm not optimistic that people who have been lulled into thinking there is no alternative, (or that planned obsolescence and corporate nosiness are somehow right and inevitable), will do anything other than cave and roll over. But there is some hope.
I volunteer as a fixer for an organisation called Repair Cafe - we run events wherein once a month people bring items in to be fixed for free. Not just computers, printers, phones, earbuds, and the like, but also household appliances, clothing, books, etc. Many of these people aren't bringing things in because they can't afford replacements; rather, they recognize the quality is better in their older items, and they hate the wasteful and controlling aspects of planned obsolescence. So we may yet see large numbers of average citizens who reject the dystopian plans of those who call their greed-driven view of the future 'Utopia'.
In the category of 'not likely', but still worth considering, is the possibility of simplifying our lives. All of these technological innovations are cool, and they drive our economies, and some of them are significant. But really, how many new shinies contribute to our fundamental sense of worth, fulfillment, happiness, and meaning? I would argue that they tend to undermine those values - and many sociologists and psychologists would agree with me. It's probably too late to try stuffing that genie back in the bottle though...
RMS was right .. again (Score:2)
Richard Stallman is playing the world's tiniest violin somewhere right now.
Gee, what a shitty, dystopian world that would be (Score:4, Informative)
To be blunt about it: Fuck that shit. It's already bad enough that for too many people, their 'phone' is more like a 'lifestyle' instead of just being a communications tool; is it serving them, or are they serving it? Will so-called self-driving cars (something else I have less than zero interest in having anything to do with) be a tool for us to use? Or will it be just another way to control us? When every goddamned thing in your house, right down to your lightbulbs and your toilet, are connected to the Internet, is it really your home anymore, or is it a prison, and all these things are just there to facilitate the monitoring of you by corporations and governments? For fuck's sake, you can't even ride your bike somewhere anymore without some corporation trying to convince you that you should take a GPS tracker with you, and voluntarily upload the tracking data to them (Strava).
No thanks. I don't live to serve things, it's the other way around.
Works like a cellphone? (Score:2)
We've gone from "So clear you can hear a pin drop" to "Can you hear me now?!?"
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We've gone from "So clear you can hear a pin drop" to "Can you hear me now?!?"
Right. Cellular telephony just barely works now. There's lag as long as a second, even when the call supposedly isn't going over VoIP. (Sprint seems to have that problem.) There's occasional echo when the lag exceeds what the echo suppressors can handle. Background noise kills the cellular compression algorithm.
Why don't we have CD-quality audio on phones?
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In business, whenever you have to ask, why?, the answer is generally, money.
Was Ted right? (Score:2)
"dumb" watch? (Score:2)
My hand-built mechanical watch may be less than 100% accurate, provide only basic functions and may indeed only last decades.
It's also far from dumb. It's intricate, complex and beautiful.
Functional jewelry (Score:2)
It's also far from dumb. It's intricate, complex and beautiful.
I think no sane person would argue that a good mechanical watch isn't beautiful as well as an amazing piece of engineering. (I cannot say the same for crappy digital watches however) That doesn't change the fact though that they are a single purpose device that generally speaking is seldom necessary these days. I don't really need to carry around an extra gadget whose sole purpose is to tell me the time 99.99999% of the time. There are occasions when that is useful/necessary but they are rare these days
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Just recognize that you are wearing a piece of functional jewelry rather than making a practical choice.
I like the convenience of "time on wrist" - it's definitely functional jewellery but when it's not practical to wear an expensive delicate watch I put on a far cheaper one instead; it's a practical choice.
Making stuff last... (Score:2)
In my opinion, there is no reason why a crockpot that also has an app interface or a smart interface cannot run for decades (short of the built-in MBTF of the electronics). After all, some basic standalone functionality has to be provided. Granted, it might be harder to find the apps to run it 10 years down the line, but that doesn't mean that it will stop working.
Like anything else, if it is a popular model, the apps will be archived on the internet. As an example, most manufacturers keep drivers for di
When everything works like your cell phone (Score:2, Insightful)
Cast Iron (Score:2)
My cast iron frying pan has worked for nearly a century and will likely last several more centuries without any upgrades, fees, etc.
Personally I'm not all that interested in having a microprocessor in every device. Most things don't need them. However, virtually everything I own I can take apart, fix, hack and rebuild - yes, even "Smart" devices.
The original poster's comments say more about them than they do about technology. There have always been people who didn't know how to do more than turn the switch
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I have one that is very old. Exact age not known but I've had it since the early 1980's and it was old then. I have several others that are probably older based on the types. I know several people that have ones that are from their great grand parents. They last.
Speaking of manual transmission, I hear your pain, but I just bought one with manual transmission, and high-low as well. Nice machine.
Also, just because a machine is digital doesn't mean it has to have the nonsense monthly subscriptions and limitati
Anybody Notice? (Score:2)
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On the other hand, it means that people with a psychiatric problem (or autists) can now walk around talking loudly to themselves without looking like crazies. Which is brilliant!
Some of those people walking around with their heads down having a social life through their phone do, in fact, fall further out on the autism spectrum than most people. The phone enables them to function significantly more than they otherwise would be able to.
I'm quite certain autism is over-diagnosed today, but there are plenty of genuine sufferers and the percentage of the population who is autistic only has to stay steady for the number of autistic people to rise. Population is still going up, albeit
What is the market willing to accept? (Score:2)
I can't believe anyone is still paying attention to the drumbeats of marketeers as they masturbate about the future of their dreams.
Dream what you want, think the world is full of clueless suckers all you want... When your shit provides no value, stops working as soon as its pitiful warranty expires or becomes obsolete as it is leaving the store or otherwise annoys the customer for selfish reasons (cloud BS, ads, spying, unnecessary restrictions..etc) people will remember past experiences they had with your
Why on earth would you buy this stuff? (Score:2)
Another hyperventilating article about things I have no desire or intention to possess.
When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone? (Score:2)
You mean everything: Doesn't have good coverage in the small town I'm in? Or, the batteries don't last long enough? Or gets roaming charges when in the wrong place?
Yeah... Big win...
Philip K. Dick (Score:2)
Foresaw all of this.
I can remember readind here on /. an excerpt of a novel in which a man was fighting with his door that wouldn't let him go out anymore due to licensing problems.
More knowledgeable fans are welcome to input more details on that particular novel.
All that's old is new again (Score:2)
It wasn't very long ago that; guess what? NOBODY owned their telephone! That's right, you RENTED it from the phone company! In fact it was ILLEGAL to third party phone. In fact some people STILL RENT their phone. Their ROTARY land line phone.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-09-14-phone_x.htm
Funny how quickly people forget. As they say in china, there's nothing new under the sun.
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On the other hand, if he does try to modify his plunger, it's not a crime under the DMCA. And anyone can make an identical plunger without having to pay someone else money to license the patents,
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What kind of phone does he own?
Most modern smartphones are sealed units without so much as a user-replaceable battery. Assuming you can open the case you likely void any warranty. Although in the case of smartphones you cannot replace components apart from maybe the screen and digitizer but even then the manufacturer prefers you take the device to an authorised repair centre. I am no fan of planned obsolescence as I see no need for smartphone manufacturers, for example, to release new devices every year. At least Apple, not that I use th
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No, only iPhones are like that. I don't know a single Android phone that doesn't have a replacable battery. And most phones are not from Apple.
Re:May not take apart? What? (Score:4, Informative)
No, only iPhones are like that. I don't know a single Android phone that doesn't have a replacable battery. And most phones are not from Apple.
Actually, most Android phones have sealed non-user replaceable batteries. Samsung has been the exception to that, always having replaceable batteries, and LG's latest G3 has one, too, but their previous generation, the G2, and a sealed, welded-in battery. HTC's previous "Vivid" generation had a replaceable battery, but their latest popular HTC One (M7 and M8) line of phones do not. So pretty much everybody except Samsung and (recently) LG are producing Android phones with embedded batteries, including Motorola (and Google), HTC, Nokia and Amazon.
Re: May not take apart? What? (Score:3)
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My wrist watch a 7 year battery. And I replaced the battery, along with a new back cover gasket for $8.00 combined parts and labour.
My next wristwatch, if one day I decide to get one, will be a model with photocell to charge the internal battery/capacitor. As the abilities to use 14nanometers of line thickness, and tighter densities, I would say that power consumption of small devices will drop and all devices could last forever.
But then, value engineering, the art of making a device last the length of t
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I won't use a smartphone unless it has removable storage and a removable battery, one of the many reasons I keep accepting the free Samsung Galaxy phone rather than the free iPhone from my telco every 2 years.
iPhone != "most".
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He doesn't own. (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of phone does he own?
Isn't it obvious? he doesn't own the phone and he doesn't know what he is paying his operator for.
It's fairly obvious the author is an american sheeple - who "buys" a 700 bucks cellphone for fifty bucks. never mind that he doesn't actually buy it, just sort of rents it, along with buying internet that he can sort of use only on the sort of devices the operator wants or he can pay extra. I'm fairly certain he also has an UNLIMITED high speed internet on his phone, limited only by a megabyte limit the operator put on there(but don't be scared! the limit is more than what their customers on average use! so next month the limit can be made even lower and the speed even faster, never mind that it's impossible customers to use more than the limit on average.)
it's not about "when everything is like your cellphone" - it's an article about when americans will pay for coke by subscription... and rent their cars with mileage limits.. while thinking they get a good deal while getting shafted.
it's fucking horrendous to read american reviews on cellphones because 99% of the time the reviewer actually thinks the iphone costs fifty or hundred bucks - while he is actually reviewing a 700 dollar product and then comparing them to something that actually factually costs under 100 bucks to own!
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Notice that most people wear a surveillance device (known in newspeak as "cellphone" or "smartphone") and you don't.
Don't you want to be liked? Don't you want to blend in? Don't you want to be normal? Don't you want to join in reindeer games?
You already have access to /. and you are spying my post.
Maybe you should cut that out.