The Vent and Rant Thread

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by drjd

That is sadly true. There are places around who have only dreamt of a broadband connection or may ask 'What does a mobile stand for?'

Yet another facet of the problem, I shifted to a farmhouse couple of years back, some 30 kms away from the city. The telephone companies won't give me a broadband connection because it's not 'technically feasible and economically viable' for them. I had no other option but to use a GPRS (too slow!) or a GSM-3G (too expensive!!) instead. I went for 3G, and now paying more than double of a broadband price every month.

Your telco is right about the technically feasible. What they likely offer is DSL, and the nature of the tech requires you to be within a certain distance of the equipment that provides it. 30km is far outside DSL range.

An old friend lives in rural PA. He used to connect via dial-up. I was quite startled when he was able to get a DSL line. I didn't think he lived close enough to a telco CO to get it.

TV is satellite. He lives in a valley out of line of site from transmission towers, so local stations aren't available. He can't get cable, either, unless he's willing to pay a $3K fee to the local cable company to get him them to run a line. He's too far off the beaten track to be worth it for them to do it unless he pays for it.

Most recently, he was telling me Hughes was pushing a satellite based Internet connection setup that would be far better than his DSL line. I'd feel happier if my friend wasn't negative technical. I've already had experience trying to resolve a problem he had with hardware and software I don't use long distance from NYC. I'd prefer to avoid more.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Or the ever popular assumption wifi is EVERYWHERE free.
Now I will grant where you live, wifi probably is pretty ubiquitous.

Pretty much. There are McDonalds, Starbucks and the like in walking distance that offer it.

But if I'm out and about, I am likely on my way to/from something, and not trying to use Wifi. And if I am someplace else I am likely busy doing something and not needing to be online as I do it.

Where I live, only the big box stores and only a limited number of restaurants offer wifi.
Now we do have pretty good 3g service here but if you drive an hour west, well keep driving. You will hit a cell tower in a few more hours.
There are many places out here that technology is not very useful.
But then the area I live in is roughly the size of NYC. Total population is about 1/2 million. I am talking in the entire Permian Basin and half of that is centered in about a 30 miles long by maybe 10 miles wide area.

This stuff is very much geographic.

Underlying the whole "Everyone has fast broadband" notion is a deeper one that everyone lives in a urban area. It's increasingly but far from universally true.
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Pretty much. There are McDonalds, Starbucks and the like in walking distance that offer it.

But if I'm out and about, I am likely on my way to/from something, and not trying to use Wifi. And if I am someplace else I am likely busy doing something and not needing to be online as I do it.


This stuff is very much geographic.

Underlying the whole "Everyone has fast broadband" notion is a deeper one that everyone lives in a urban area. It's increasingly but far from universally true.
______
Dennis

Well there are times when we are out that internet is handy. But that is usually needing quick information on whatever we are looking at. Since 99.9% of the time we are in an urban of sorts area, the cell towers come in handy.

[Katsunami]

I've never abandoned a game before, but I'm doing so with Sanitarium.

While I like the premise of Sanitarium (a guy who ends up in a madhouse, and goes through all kinds of disturbing environments and discoveries to escape), I have to say it's nigh unplayable.

If people thought walking in Baldur's Gate was slow, then try Sanitarium.

^$&^&^&$%^&$%#$!#$!#$%$^& !!

While moving, you need to keep the right mouse button pressed all the time, and then 'drag' your character through the environment. Then.... he.... waks.... really.... slowly.... and... it... takes.... you.... half.... a.... minute.... to.... get.... from.... one.... end.... of... the.... map.... to... the.... other. (Irritated already?)

If that wasn't enough, this point-and-click adventure is really convoluted. In chapter two, you need something to fish a large object out of the water. Cool, the dude with the fishing rod could be of help. However, the only way to get the fishing rod is to throw a stone at the church bell, so he thinks a mass is going to start. He runs into the church, leaving the fishing rod.

The problem is that the 'stone' is just a blob of pixels on newer screens. Even if you find it, you'll have to 'obviously' think about throwing the stone at the church bell to get the boy to leave the fishing rod. (Granted, he says that there hasn't been a mass for a long time now.)

I'm going to uninstall this. I don't have the patience of waiting on a character taking half a minute to walk from one place to the next, having to keep the mouse button pressed down and dragging the thing all the while, especially if you'll need to go back and forth *very often* to find all the clues.

It gets great reviews with regard to story and adventuring, but maybe people in the 90's had more patience and time.... I can't abide by this utter slowness.

This game beats Baldur's Gate by *leagues* with regard to 'slow walking'.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Well there are times when we are out that internet is handy. But that is usually needing quick information on whatever we are looking at. Since 99.9% of the time we are in an urban of sorts area, the cell towers come in handy.

You don't even have to be in an urban of sorts area, depending upon what cellular service you have and the coverage provided. (I was amused a while back when assisting a friend who owned property upstate, and my cell phone stopped working because I was out of the coverage area for my provider. Since the folks I might have to call were those I was traveling with, it was an amusement rather than a problem.)

If I lived somewhere other than NYC where anything I might need is in walking distance, I might find what you do of value as well. As it is, my phone is the smallest, cheapest, least powerful feature phone Samsung makes. All it does is calls and SMS, and that's all I want it to do, Everything else is something else's job.
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You don't even have to be in an urban of sorts area, depending upon what cellular service you have and the coverage provided. (I was amused a while back when assisting a friend who owned property upstate, and my cell phone stopped working because I was out of the coverage area for my provider. Since the folks I might have to call were those I was traveling with, it was an amusement rather than a problem.)

If I lived somewhere other than NYC where anything I might need is in walking distance, I might find what you do of value as well. As it is, my phone is the smallest, cheapest, least powerful feature phone Samsung makes. All it does is calls and SMS, and that's all I want it to do, Everything else is something else's job.
______
Dennis

Oh you mean rather like when I was in Brownwood and had no service because of my provider. That was a bit of a bother because of storms. And the park's wifi went down too.
So no weather information was a pain. We have since bought a good weather radio.

[PeterT]

Grrrr. Forgot both my e-reader AND tablet at home this morning. Having to survive with just my phone :-(

[Rumpelteazer]

Although I love The Sims series and various city building games, my all time favourite game is Pandora's Box. Which is a puzzle game designed by the maker of Tetris. The story is that Pandora's Box has been opened and it's up to you to find all the tricksters. To do so you have to solve puzzles, when you finish a level you capture a trickster. All in all there are 10 different types of puzzles and each level they get harder and harder.

I must have played it through over a dozen times, until it became unplayable. There are many lists of "games like Pandora's Box", and they list games I like, but those game are just one type of puzzle to solve. After a while those types of games get too repetitive for me to continue with.

I'm keeping my finger's crossed for GOG.com to eventually release it. Or maybe a version to play on a tablet.

[Blossom]

I love that game too. I love Sims 2 more though.

Sent from my XT1528

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Although I love The Sims series and various city building games, my all time favourite game is Pandora's Box. Which is a puzzle game designed by the maker of Tetris. The story is that Pandora's Box has been opened and it's up to you to find all the tricksters. To do so you have to solve puzzles, when you finish a level you capture a trickster. All in all there are 10 different types of puzzles and each level they get harder and harder.

I must have played it through over a dozen times, until it became unplayable. There are many lists of "games like Pandora's Box", and they list games I like, but those game are just one type of puzzle to solve. After a while those types of games get too repetitive for me to continue with.

I'm keeping my finger's crossed for GOG.com to eventually release it. Or maybe a version to play on a tablet.

There are messages on the internet stating that this game will run in Windows 10, if the following conditions are met:

- Install the game outside of "C:\Program Files (x86)" (use "C:\Pandora", for example)
- Set compatibility mode to "Windows XP SP3"
- Make sure your CD/DVD has drive letter D, and keep the original disc in the drive.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

There are messages on the internet stating that this game will run in Windows 10, if the following conditions are met:

- Install the game outside of "C:\Program Files (x86)" (use "C:\Pandora", for example)
- Set compatibility mode to "Windows XP SP3"
- Make sure your CD/DVD has drive letter D, and keep the original disc in the drive.

I wanted to try this, but I can't find the CD-ROM. However, I vaguely remember giving it to my father so that he could play the game. After my vacation I'll scour his CD-ROM boxes to see if I can find it.

I can remember it playing on XP, but it regularly crashed.

[Rumpelteazer]

Some time during the night my sore throat with an annoying cough turned into a raging throat infection (hello ibuprofen!). I also didn't sleep, though I did manage to doze between 4 and 6am.

It'll be a long day. First, work from 10am until 5pm. After that a trip to the supermarket to get some things for my vacation. I was also supposed to join my parents and visit friends, but I've decided that I'm not going (my parents tend to stay until after midnight and I won't be able to survive that).

Luckily, tomorrow will be a relatively easy day; laundry and some packing. I'm glad I opted for the lazy holiday park vacation instead of the trip abroad with loads of activities planned.

[Katsunami]

Damn. Jade Empire crashed during a play session. When I tried to restart it, the shortcut didn't work. The entire hard drive was gone from Windows Explorer.

While I did build a new desktop some time ago, I haven't yet used it much; I didn't move my data onto it. The laptop is still my main system until I do so.

Time to update my backup in case the hard drive fails. I'd hate to lose 15 hours of Jade Empire gameplay (although I could live with that), not to speak of some big additions and updates/tweaks to my music and e-book libraries I did in the last week.

Backup updating right now...

[Katsunami]

Backup updated. Now I'm going to move some dump data (such as disk images) to an external drive (and the companion backup of that drive).

I plan to keep the data on this laptop in sync with the master desktop (over the network), and I'll have to take the laptop out of the house next week. In case this thing gets stolen, I don't want people to get their hands on hundreds of e-books and digitized CD's, so I've enabled the laptop's TPM, and will be running Bitlocker on the drives.

That way, people can't log into the system without a password, and it's also impossible to use tools to reset it, or read the drive on another computer. Additionally, the really important stuff is on a set of encrypted USB-sticks kept in different houses.

Maybe I'm taking this backup and safeguarding thing too seriously since I lost three weeks worth of work in the mid-90's due to a hard drive crash, and forgot my work bag in a train 10 years later....

[Rumpelteazer]

I haven't been able to smell anything since Sunday and it's getting annoying. I didn't taste much on Sunday and Monday but it returned yesterday, though today it seems to be able to taste less than yesterday. But the fact that I can't smell anything also impairs my being able to taste things.

I never have lost my sense of smell completely when having a cold/flu. I'm now hoping that I'm not one of those persons that lose their sense of smell forever after a cold.