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Everything's broken and nobody's upset

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Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#191

Post by obi-nine »

edw519 wrote: post #73

My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…

You could make your life even simpler and more active by dumping the car for a bicycle. Agree with you on the dishwasher - always thought them to be noisy wasteful appliances. Of course I grind my own coffee by hand too for the same reason.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#192

Post by antidoh »

yequalsx wrote: post #174
edw519 wrote: post #73

My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…

A lot of people are surprised that you don't use a dishwasher. This I find surprising. I don't use a dishwasher either but for a different reason. I do dishes as a fitness hack. No, you don't expend a lot of energy doing dishes. But doing things by hand as much as feasible leads to a less lethargic lifestyle. Another hack is not using a microwave for anything. For instance, I make oatmeal in a pot the old fashioned w…

Or, overall your non-lazy and energetic personality makes you more likely to want to do these manual things, and use that time for those things instead of other things.

Which is all good, either way.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#193

Post by romaniv »

luu wrote: post #35

The blurb on the sidebar proclaims Scott's MS experience. It's surprising to see someone with a Microsoft background making this complaint. MS spends more effort than any software company on testing, not only in just plain hiring lots of testers, but also on formal methods. They have some of the top formal methods people in the world doing research for them, and armies of people trying to put that research into pract…

Yours is a typical "everything is uncertain and hard" excuse.

There are plenty of cases when developers do avoidable things that will almost certainly cause issues. And then those things do cause issues. And then developers change nothing in their behavior, and continue doing those same kinds of things - because they don't care. I see results of this almost every day.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#195

Post by thebigshane »

nullc wrote: post #163
jmduke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things in particular I'll attack here: > - No Kindle You're definitely not alone in this -- a lot of my friends still prefer hard copies over eBooks -- but as someone used to literally lugging three-four textbooks to class, plus periodicals, plus personal reading, there's a clear and definitive value add from the Kindle. (That being said, just because you don't have a Kindle doesn't mean you don't, say, read eBoo…

> There's no other site where I can talk and keep up with my grandparents, my college roommate, and my girlfriend simultaneously. 'Necrophiliac bestiality, of course! How else am I to screw my food while I eat it?' If these people mean something to you, then you should be able to find the time to have adequate direct person to person communication with them instead of broadcasting to them and your closest 600 best bu…

  Necrophiliac bestiality
Umm, what? It appears to be a quote from... a movie or something but I am not at all prepared to google it.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#196

Post by timc3 »

yequalsx wrote: post #174
edw519 wrote: post #73

My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…

A lot of people are surprised that you don't use a dishwasher. This I find surprising. I don't use a dishwasher either but for a different reason. I do dishes as a fitness hack. No, you don't expend a lot of energy doing dishes. But doing things by hand as much as feasible leads to a less lethargic lifestyle. Another hack is not using a microwave for anything. For instance, I make oatmeal in a pot the old fashioned w…

You could have saved the time and gone outdoors instead. Washing dishes or going for a walk - I know which I choose.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#197

Post by thebigshane »

scott_s wrote: post #186
nullc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no other site where I can talk and keep up with my grandparents, my college roommate, and my girlfriend simultaneously. 'Necrophiliac bestiality, of course! How else am I to screw my food while I eat it?' If these people mean something to you, then you should be able to find the time to have adequate direct person to person communication with them instead of broadcasting to them and your closest 600 best bu…

There is more to Facebook than the friend-feed (the broadcast mechanism). Person-to-person communication is mostly what I use it for; it has replaced email and IM for many people.

What does Facebook's person-to-person communication offer beyond email and IM? (Honest question)

No doubt it indeed has replaced email and IM for some people, but I would think it is just because "well, everyone else is on facebook so I'll just use that too"...

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#198

Post by prawks »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84
edw519 wrote: post #73

My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…

I would seriously reconsider Kindle. It beats any kind of screen for reading, and beats any kind of paper materials in logistics. For me, personally, it's pure value; something I can't say about most of other electronics I own.

"Hey I read this great book the other day!" "Oh really? That sounds really cool!" "Yeah, here you can borrow it..... Oh wait never mind..." " :( "

I don't think it really beats paper materials in logistics. You're buying proprietary books. 14-day lending to other people (who may not have a Kindle) doesn't really solve that.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#199

Post by kfk »

Let me take 1 example: MS Outlook. It really, truly, amazingly, sucks. Badly. It is done to handle few email, few enough that you can remember about them. Good luck if you work in a corporate environment and you need to find an email from even only 1 yr ago.

Is this an issue? Yes. Do people care? Not enough apparently. What do you do? You either accept it or you find a solution at a low enough price that people start caring.

Bottom line: look at what people are willing to pay.

Re: Everything's broken and nobody's upset

#200

Post by thebigshane »

ganley wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would seriously reconsider Kindle. It beats any kind of screen for reading, and beats any kind of paper materials in logistics. For me, personally, it's pure value; something I can't say about most of other electronics I own.

Definitely. Like the grandparent commenter, I don't use any technology that frustrates or annoys me, which means that I don't use a whole lot of technology. The Kindle, however, has been great and fairly frustration-free - definitely a net positive. Related aside: The world seems to be making it more and more difficult not to have a smart phone (or, almost equivalently, to have a dumb phone). This sucks.

Has the Kindle become the new Kleenex and Google? Are the alternatives so insignificant that they aren't worth mentioning? I'm not talking about the Nook, I'm talking about a $50 Alturek e-reader that you can read text files and PDFs on. I think it's fantastic (but small).
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