The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[ratinox]

<ker-delete>

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Actually, I think it used AAA batteries. That's what my Handspring Video (a Palm OS PDA).

Could be. I'm pretty sure the Pilot line used AAA as did my Handspring Visor. Never owned a Palm VII, thought it was an overpriced, dumb idea at the time.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One friend of mine used to be fun to take to the movies. Even watching a boat on a still pond caused him to feel seasick.

One film that I actually tried to watch caused this to me: The Bourne Supremacy. After some excellent fight choreography in the first film in the franchise, the second cheaped out hard with shakey-cam filming and fast edits. Had to leave the theater it was so bad.

I figure anything that relies on shakey-cam filming is going to cause the same experience, so I avoid films which use this "technique".

[Quoth]

Apparently people OK with water / car travel often can't manage weightlessness*, but the nausea is supposed to wear off.
I'm fine in any kind of boat, or driving, but occasionally find planes tricky. Usually OK as a car passenger, as long as not reading, but once caught out.

Dislocation between view and what the inner ear is sending is generally bad.


[* hence training plane is called

Spoiler:

the vomit comet

]

[pdurrant]

Moderator Notice
And enough discussion of motion sickness, thanks. This box is green for more than one reason.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Could be. I'm pretty sure the Pilot line used AAA as did my Handspring Visor. Never owned a Palm VII, thought it was an overpriced, dumb idea at the time.

Thinking about it, I just remembered that some of the PDAs from Palm (like the Palm V) had a rechargeable battery. However, I just checked Wikipedia and the Palm VII used two AAA batteries.

To me, the Palm VII might have been the beginning of the decline of the Palm PDAs. One of the reasons that Palm OS PDAs were great was they had a limited number of functions but those functions worked very well (I haven't found a To-Do List app for my smartphone that is as good as the one for my Palm PDA). Palm's view was that if you wanted functions beyond the basics write them yourself...and many people did. I had a database program for my Palm that was better than the ones for my Windows machine.

[Quoth]

I've a Palm but the screen is stupidly small and poor even for when it was made, 2005 (160x160 STN). I bought it as a bargain only a few years ago out of curiosity. Does still work with a Linux program and there are still programs to download. The battery isn't easy to replace.

I had a Nokia Communicator N9210i in 2001 (640×200 TFT) and the decision of Nokia to scrap S80 and stick with S60, was stupid internal politics.

[ownedbycats]

Hallucinating AI support chatbots that tell you to go to pages that don't exist.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Thinking about it, I just remembered that some of the PDAs from Palm (like the Palm V) had a rechargeable battery. However, I just checked Wikipedia and the Palm VII used two AAA batteries.

The entire Tungsten line is the same with the rechargeable, fixed batteries.

I agree about the decline of Palm. Pilots were small, simple, and functional, and that's what made them so good. Then they started getting bigger and more complex and/or complicated in order to compete with Blackberry in particular though they were facing competition from Pocket PC (a palmtop version of Windows CE), Zaurus and others.

Originally Posted by Quoth

I had a Nokia Communicator N9210i in 2001 (640×200 TFT) and the decision of Nokia to scrap S80 and stick with S60, was stupid internal politics.

I used to have a couple of Nokia "Internet Appliances", the N800 and... N770 if I remember correctly. Neat little devices. Bit of a shame that "proper" smartphones and tablets killed the concept, along with Netbooks.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Renate

I'm the biggest ereader fan and I am happy to have ereaders replace all the books in the universe.

But I don't care how far technology goes, real thinking requires a pad of paper and a pen.

Or a whiteboard if more than one brain doing the thinking, preferably one that can print or store what's drawn/written thereupon.

[DNSB]

One friend of mine has a child who is moving away from home in a couple of weeks. They purchased around 6 ebooks from Amazon to give them as a housewarming gift (family plan). Fortunately, they made the mistake of looking at them before the kid did.

Ummm... 3 cookbooks that say they have 500 to 800 recipes but actually contain from 230 to 315. Recipes that leave out ingredients especially when the ingredients are part of the name (Spicy Quinoa Salad with no quinoa listed for example). A book on housekeeping which they thought would give ideas on cleaning, etc. Sadly, half the suggestions seem to predate the invention of the vacuum cleaner, one recipe has you using sulphuric acid on the inside of your windows to keep them from frosting up. (I remember that one from a 2 volume book dating from the 1880s that I used to own. I picked it up for it's photography section which was dangerous enough but a lot of it's other items were, by today's standards, extremely hazardous.) Beating carpets? When was the last time you saw a carpet beater in use.

Overall, 4 of the 6 books read like poorly generated AI output as did most of the positive reviews for them. The other two were simply outdated with many of the recipes sounding like you would prepare them for a adult party in the 1950s. So many aspic recipes!

Amazon did allow them to return all the books and the kid is getting copies of books such as "The Absolute Beginner's Cookbook (Or How Long Do I Cook a 3-Minute Egg?).

[ownedbycats]

I wonder if people will now check the publish date to avoid AI slop. We shouldn't have to!

[Solitaire1]

ratinox wrote the following as part of a post:

Originally Posted by ratinox

The entire Tungsten line is the same with the rechargeable, fixed batteries.

I agree about the decline of Palm. Pilots were small, simple, and functional, and that's what made them so good. Then they started getting bigger and more complex and/or complicated in order to compete with Blackberry in particular though they were facing competition from Pocket PC (a palmtop version of Windows CE), Zaurus and others.

The downfall of Palm began with Palm OS 4. They moved to a new processor, and due to that it rendered all of the previous Palm apps (which numbered in the hundreds) obsolete.

Added to that is that due to a lawsuit from Xerox they had to change the handwriting system to Graffiti 2 (based on Jot, an alternative handwriting system). Unfortunately, it was like completely rearranging the keys on a keyboard which made the device difficult to use. I ended up having to use the on-screen keyboard, which slowed down my writing speed and made it so I had to look at the screen to write, rather than just using the stylus on a touchpad (which I could write without having to look at the screen).

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I wonder if people will now check the publish date to avoid AI slop. We shouldn't have to!

Rather than that, why not just have an indicator to let you know that the book is AI generated? Then, it comes a matter of "let the buyer beware."

Concerning AI, one thing that irritates me is the text-to-speech stories read by AI on YouTube. It's not the AI voice itself that is the problem but often they use the wrong sex (the OP is female but the reading voice is male). Plus, I've seen the same story with small changes posted many times.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Rather than that, why not just have an indicator to let you know that the book is AI generated? Then, it comes a matter of "let the buyer beware."

Because the seller will lie.