Technology catch-all thread

[RockRaines]

Yea, I scoured my entire collection and got rid of any dupes, songs I never listened too or didn't like, etc.

 

Like, for example, I have quite a few GNR songs right now, but there was a time my collection consisted of every album, every best of album, etc...including all the duplicates that came with them. and all the songs I never listened too. All gone. My GNR collection probably went from 150 songs to 15.

 

I've removed all that garbage and just kept what I liked/used, instead. In the process, the size of my library probably dropped by 50%.

I do that per device usually, and just make a ton of playlists and go off of that. Its kind of a hoarding activity, but I have so much storage on my iMac that its ok to keep around.

 

Video on the other hand is really getting to be an obsession. I have so many seasons of every show on one of my hard drives its ridiculous.

[Whitewashed in '05]

I do that per device usually, and just make a ton of playlists and go off of that. Its kind of a hoarding activity, but I have so much storage on my iMac that its ok to keep around.

 

Video on the other hand is really getting to be an obsession. I have so many seasons of every show on one of my hard drives its ridiculous.

Everyone does it. It's bad...

 

From hundreds of songs they don't listen to all the way to blurry pictures and duplicates of everything. I try to check the play count of songs on iTunes. If my iPod has never played it, in lets say a year, its gone.

[Y2HH]

Everyone does it. It's bad...

 

From hundreds of songs they don't listen to all the way to blurry pictures and duplicates of everything. I try to check the play count of songs on iTunes. If my iPod has never played it, in lets say a year, its gone.

 

And to me, it's not even space -- space isn't a problem -- it's the why bother part. I don't bother having a bunch of stuff I'll never use, whether it's creating clutter in the physical world, or cluttering up my music collection in whatever program I use to catalog it.

 

I don't need 10 versions of the same song, from different compilation albums, all recorded at the same (or even different) bit rates.

 

I encode almost everything at 320 (which is more than the human ear can pick up anyway), and is more than the physical media of a CD can even create. The files are bigger -- but like I said -- space isn't a concern anyway. It's the clutter...and the duplicates, etc. They do nothing. I know people that carry their entire music collections of 100+Gigs on their ipods, and they have 8 versions of every song on there...that to me is lazy and pointless.

 

Clean your s*** up. I can even see having a live version, an acoustic version and the studio version...which is 3 versions...not 15.

Edited July 29, 2011 by Y2HH

[Controlled Chaos]

Cheap Tablet. Anybody own one?

 

I was going to buy my daughter a portable dvd player for the car. The kind that just attach to the head rest. I figure instead of spending 100 - 125 on that, maybe I can get a cheap tablet that she can have some interaction with, as well as watch movies. I certainly don't want a 200-400 tablet for a kid, but if I can get one for 150 or less, it's close to what it would cost for a dvd player and there's more she can do with it. Is it feasible to watch movies on a tablet? Is the battery life decent?

 

Anybody have any ideas?

[Iwritecode]

Cheap Tablet. Anybody own one?

 

I was going to buy my daughter a portable dvd player for the car. The kind that just attach to the head rest. I figure instead of spending 100 - 125 on that, maybe I can get a cheap tablet that she can have some interaction with, as well as watch movies. I certainly don't want a 200-400 tablet for a kid, but if I can get one for 150 or less, it's close to what it would cost for a dvd player and there's more she can do with it. Is it feasible to watch movies on a tablet? Is the battery life decent?

 

Anybody have any ideas?

 

I didn't think portable DVD players cost that much. I thought they were closer to $50. I just got one a few years ago with a carrying case for $30 on Black Friday.

[RockRaines]

Cheap Tablet. Anybody own one?

 

I was going to buy my daughter a portable dvd player for the car. The kind that just attach to the head rest. I figure instead of spending 100 - 125 on that, maybe I can get a cheap tablet that she can have some interaction with, as well as watch movies. I certainly don't want a 200-400 tablet for a kid, but if I can get one for 150 or less, it's close to what it would cost for a dvd player and there's more she can do with it. Is it feasible to watch movies on a tablet? Is the battery life decent?

 

Anybody have any ideas?

Buy a DVD player. The "cheap" tablets are less than 200 but are made like crap.

[iamshack]

Buy a DVD player. The "cheap" tablets are less than 200 but are made like crap.

So is it worth upgrading to Lion? Took me forever to get into Snow Leopard...I don't use a lot of the advanced functionality of the OSX, just because I am too lazy to learn how.

 

I know it's only $30 or something, but is it worth the trouble?

[Steve9347]

Anybody know of a good app to listen to AM 670 or AM 1000?

A Online Radio

 

It's awesome. It's free.

[RockRaines]

So is it worth upgrading to Lion? Took me forever to get into Snow Leopard...I don't use a lot of the advanced functionality of the OSX, just because I am too lazy to learn how.

 

I know it's only $30 or something, but is it worth the trouble?

Its pretty good, definitely better on a macbook because of the "ipad-like" touch functionality.

[Balta1701]

So is it worth upgrading to Lion? Took me forever to get into Snow Leopard...I don't use a lot of the advanced functionality of the OSX, just because I am too lazy to learn how.

 

I know it's only $30 or something, but is it worth the trouble?

One of my friends who uses Mac's heavily hated it and went back to Snow Leopard within about a week.

[iamshack]

Its pretty good, definitely better on a macbook because of the "ipad-like" touch functionality.

Ok...I don't have a macbook so I will probably just stick with Snow Leopard on the iMac. Pretty happy with it and I am sure I don't even scratch the surface as far as functionality goes.

[RockRaines]

One of my friends who uses Mac's heavily hated it and went back to Snow Leopard within about a week.

Its different at first until you tweak it. For macbooks it has an ipad-like touch interface and all macs now get a ipad-like launching menu for apps. Outside of that its not all that different IMO.

[danman31]

Its different at first until you tweak it. For macbooks it has an ipad-like touch interface and all macs now get a ipad-like launching menu for apps. Outside of that its not all that different IMO.

As someone who runs Snow Leopard and went to an Apple Store to demo Lion myself, I didn't think it was all that different. I don't have enough applications to use the goofy launch pad, but that's not a negative. Most of the features can be ignored or turned off so it's not all that different. Some of the touch gestures are cool and potentially a significant upgrade for someone who would use them, but a lot of them already exist. There is a decent amount of customization available with the new options as well. I don't see how someone that uses Snow Leopard would hate Lion. You can make them pretty similar if you know how. I just didn't see enough of a change to pay anything at all for it, even if $30 is a cheap upgrade.

[Y2HH]

As someone who runs Snow Leopard and went to an Apple Store to demo Lion myself, I didn't think it was all that different. I don't have enough applications to use the goofy launch pad, but that's not a negative. Most of the features can be ignored or turned off so it's not all that different. Some of the touch gestures are cool and potentially a significant upgrade for someone who would use them, but a lot of them already exist. There is a decent amount of customization available with the new options as well. I don't see how someone that uses Snow Leopard would hate Lion. You can make them pretty similar if you know how. I just didn't see enough of a change to pay anything at all for it, even if $30 is a cheap upgrade.

 

The biggest difference, behind the scenes, is that Lion is secure -- not only secure -- but more secure than even Windows 7, and far more secure than Snow Leopard. In addition to full application sandboxing (a sandbox is a subsection of memory/kernel that can only access specific system functions to prevent applications from doing something other than their intended purposes), it also has full implementation of address space randomization, something that didn't exist in Snow Leopard. This randomizes the spaces of memory in which vital system components run, a common and easy exploit hackers usually rely on. For example, if you know the exact area of memory a system function resides in, you can bypass most (if not all) system security merely by pointing to that exact location of memory and execute functions through it...with address space randomization, hackers have no idea where anything resides in memory because it's completely randomized. Lion does this from the kernel level on, across the board. Snow Leopard stored vital system components in ram in the same positions regardless of computer make, model, etc.

 

That alone makes it worth the 30$ upgrade.

Edited August 4, 2011 by Y2HH

[RockRaines]

Lion is running very slooooooowwwwwww for me. And apps seem to freeze up when quit. Not impressed so far but I'm sure a patch will come out eventually.

[Y2HH]

Lion is running very slooooooowwwwwww for me. And apps seem to freeze up when quit. Not impressed so far but I'm sure a patch will come out eventually.

 

That's not normal...runs perfect for me, no issues at all. I know there are a few bugs, but nothing so major that it should slow down or freeze.

[HuskyCaucasian]

So, who do you think TabCo is?

 

Nokia? Amazon? Intel? Google?

[southsider2k5]

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/techno...ts/?iid=Popular

 

A "brute force" attack on an iPhone can cycle through nine password guesses per second, according to Dino Dai Zovi, an independent security consultant and notorious Apple hacker.

 

Which means...

 

-A password made up of 4 numeric characters would take 18 minutes to hack

 

-Alphanumeric characters are trickier. A password with 4 of them would take 51 hours to break.

 

-5 alphanumeric characters: 8 years

 

-8 alphanumeric characters: 13,000 years

 

more at link

[lostfan]

I got a HTC Sensation after using the Motorola Cliq for a year and a half and it feels like upgrading from a laptop from jotting down notes on random sheets of paper. Man what a piece of s*** phone I had. What was I thinking? Since my G1 (the original Android phone) broke I've basically missed out on cutting-edge phones for a year and a half, just because I wanted a slide-out keyboard. Ugh.

[BigSqwert]

This patent made me laugh.

[Balta1701]

[HuskyCaucasian]

Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger - Lawyer Accidentally Decimates AT&T's #1 Talking Point

 

Yesterday a partially-redacted document briefly appeared on the FCC website --accidentally posted by a law firm working for AT&T on the $39 billion T-Mobile deal (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today). While AT&T engaged in damage control telling reporters that the document contained no new information -- our review of the doc shows that's simply not true. Data in the letter undermines AT&T's primary justification for the massive deal, while highlighting how AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands.

(more at the link)

 

Summery: ATT says it needs to spend $38 billion to buy T-Mobile to build out 4G wireless to 97% of the country. Letter says they already had plans to build out to 97% of the country for only $3.8 billion.

Conclusion: ATT is buying T-Mobile to keep them away from Sprint, and they are lying to regulators to get it approved.

 

Might this be a dagger in the merger?

Edited August 12, 2011 by Athomeboy_2000

[Balta1701]

Might this be a dagger in the merger?

No.

 

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

[iamshack]

So I am sick of paying DirecTV so much money every month. Currently, I get the Premier package, which includes every channel, and then I purchase the MLB Extra Innings package as well as the NFL Sunday Ticket package.

 

All in all, I figure I probably give about $1800 a year for programming.

 

Yikes.

 

I don't really ever watch the movie channels, except to DVR shows like True Blood, Spartacus, Dexter, Camelot, etc. I primarily watch baseball in the Summer via the Extra Innings package, with heavy doses of the History Channel, and other like channels that come with the basic package.

 

I love the Sunday Ticket, and am not sure if I can give that up, but I do live in Vegas, so I could go to a sportsbook and watch Bears games if I really needed to.

 

I just realized I can buy Apple TV and then buy an mlb.tv subscription for $50 a year instead of paying the $250 or whatever I pay for Extra Innings.

 

I can watch shows like Dexter, True Blood, etc, by renting them with my monthly Blockbuster mail account, buying them on dvd, or buying them on Apple TV.

 

Anyone have any suggestions on the best way to lower bills and still get access to the shows we all love?

[Iwritecode]

So I am sick of paying DirecTV so much money every month. Currently, I get the Premier package, which includes every channel, and then I purchase the MLB Extra Innings package as well as the NFL Sunday Ticket package.

 

All in all, I figure I probably give about $1800 a year for programming.

 

Yikes.

 

I don't really ever watch the movie channels, except to DVR shows like True Blood, Spartacus, Dexter, Camelot, etc. I primarily watch baseball in the Summer via the Extra Innings package, with heavy doses of the History Channel, and other like channels that come with the basic package.

 

I love the Sunday Ticket, and am not sure if I can give that up, but I do live in Vegas, so I could go to a sportsbook and watch Bears games if I really needed to.

 

I just realized I can buy Apple TV and then buy an mlb.tv subscription for $50 a year instead of paying the $250 or whatever I pay for Extra Innings.

 

I can watch shows like Dexter, True Blood, etc, by renting them with my monthly Blockbuster mail account, buying them on dvd, or buying them on Apple TV.

 

Anyone have any suggestions on the best way to lower bills and still get access to the shows we all love?

 

That's interesting because we are debating on switching to DirecTV because we are sick of paying $70/month for cable.