Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment You DON'T have to pay big bucks for a smartwatch (Score 1) 331

And they are handy.

A couple of years ago I picked up a 'refurbished' Samsung Gear Live for $79 on ebay. Bestbuy had taken them in as returns and their elite geek squad refurbishers flashed it with the wrong rom. It worked but wouldn't update android wear. So those were sold and most came back again and they dumped them on ebay wholesalers. All it needed was to be hooked up to the pc with adb and flashed with the right rom.

Having gotten a perfectly well working watch for 1/5 the original list price, I put it to work.

It replaced my fitbit with android fit, told me the time, weather, charge state of itself and my phone, all my notifications came up on it, if I was in the car and the phone rang I could answer it, and with 'ok google' I could trigger my phone to do a lot without picking it up. Lastly, wink ran on it so I could open/close/lock my front door and garage door.

Fast forward to this year. Verizon abandoned their $400 wear24 smart watch after just a few months and they've been on ebay for $75-80 for months. Running android wear 2.0, with internal LTE and GPS, more ram than most smart watches and included wireless charging dock it was a steal. Took me 20 minutes to get it doing everything my old smart watch did. I can also run google maps with navigation on it and it vibrates and announces the turn by turn with a mini map on my wrist.

I can also activate it on verizon for 5-10 bucks and use it as a standalone phone, although the little speaker on it sucks for phone calls. It has NFC but verizon only allows it to work with verizon pay. Morons.

It won't get any more updates but my gear live was stuck on android wear 1.3 and still does everything fine. In 2 years I'll replace the Wear24 with someone elses deeply discounted mistake where the issue doesn't really impact me.

Comment Ya missed the big one (Score 1) 383

The presumption that everyone who installs it has years of linux technical experience coupled with never being able to get a straight answer about something on a support site.

Seriously, I've been a systems programmer since the 1970's and worked with at&t's 3b and vaxen with ultrix. Yet whenever I've installed a modern linux variant like mint or ubuntu, there's always a device that doesn't work right. Try asking how to get that to work on the relevant support sites and you're snobbishly asked to read 300 twelve page threads to learn for yourself. All that was needed was a different driver or edits to a file to make it work. The "If you don't know everything or can't figure it out on your own, f-you" is quite common and persistent.

Also, nobody who knows linux can explain anything to anyone else that doesn't have similar skills. I routinely go through a 'guide' to do something and find missing stuff. "Oh yeah, everyone knows that you have to do x, y and z. Its implied!"

I can get mature, reasoned responses for windows and max os questions. Guides for those tend to include ALL of the steps.

I'd have adopted linux for several machines in the home where the app demands are straightforward. However I found the opposite direction of chrome os to be perfectly satisfying.

Comment Did anyone say yet....? (Score 1) 241

"You're holding it wrong".

No dead pixels aren't normal, they're a sign of poor quality screens.

And peeps are already fixing the screwy left controller. The right controller has a proper antenna, the left one has a PCB printed antenna with a metal box next to it. Solder a wire on and the problem is solved.

Poor design, lack of testing and claiming that crap screens are normal. Sure, I'll run out and buy one right away...

Comment Re: Indeed! (Score 1) 333

Yes. If I throw someone under a bus, its the bus that killed them. I only share responsibility. If I shoot someone, its the bullet that killed them. The gun is an accessory. I'm just sharing responsibility. If I come across someone in white water rapids and elect to not let them into my boat, and they're killed by rocks, its the rocks that killed them, the water an accessory. I bear no responsibility as I didn't do anything that wouldn't have happened had I not been there.

We need look no further than the US sending back Jewish refugees in world war II, where most were killed. While the Nazi's were to blame for their death, our actions made us just as complicit if not moreso. Had we taken them, they wouldn't have been killed. When a result is a practical surety and ones actions can negate or fulfill that result, the one taking the action bears responsibility.

When you're able to prevent injury or ameliorate it at low cost and low risk to yourself, you're a hero. When you refuse or make the problem worse, you're a dunce.

And I'm sure that bringing light on these folks, having them sell or discard all of their belongings, bringing them to an airport under surveillance and then sending them back to that same surveillance...only with nothing and nowhere to go...certainly looks like we made things worse for them by the action.

Comment Re:Indeed! (Score 1) 333

You can vote based on what someone has done previously, and that isn't that complicated to figure out.

Trump lied, stole and cheated people to the extent where he has been sued more than anyone else, probably in the history of the world, after which US banks and many others refused to lend him money or support his "projects", which often crashed and burned, costing investors tons of money. Yet he always walked away with his pockets full. His patterns are well established from 50+ years of observation. Based on those, he'll lie, cheat and steal whatever isn't nailed down. And...ta da...

Clinton's hubs presided over the greatest economic expansion in most of our lives. She tried to bring everyone health care back in the 90's. She served very well as first lady, secretary of state and in the senate. Based on her historic patterns, we'd have gotten fair, reasonable and competent leadership. We'd have enjoyed far better relations with other countries. We'd have not tried to implement an illegal travel ban. We wouldn't be undoing the financial regulations that protect us from wall street psychos trying to smash the world economy into the ground, again. We wouldn't have put people like Tillerson on the cabinet.

Did ya know that Tillerson is working to revive the $500B arctic oil deal with Russia and Exxon, and that Russia "sold" 19% of their state run oil company through a series of shell companies that can't be traced, and that the "golden showers" dossier put together last summer said that Putin had promised 19% of the company to Trump if he became president and revoked the sanctions so that deal could go through? And the Russian who gave the tip to the spy that made the dossier showed up murdered in the back seat of his car about the same time the deal went through, around a week ago?

Trump already doubled his net worth on that deal and I'm sure he'll be on the Russian gravy train for many, many decades. Until Putin kills him, that is.

Comment Re:Stabile (Score 1) 25

As someone who has used the streaming version of sunday ticket, the problems with under provisioning network and server capacity are always an issue.

Directv says the problem is on my end. With my 240Mb/s internet connection and AC5300 router. I can stream multiple 4k netflix streams while my kid games online without a hiccup. Yup, must be on my end.

Of course, you can't cancel sunday ticket and canceling directv often carries an early termination fee. This will be pretty different for directv from a customer service perspective. You can't give BS excuses and keep the customer.

Slashdot Top Deals

Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve. - Anonymous

Working...