Ever feel like technology has passed you by?

[rotarymazda]

I can build PCs, have designed commercial CPUs, write software, design FPGA/ASICs, 300Gbps PCBs and even dabble with engine mapping, was teaching my 9yr old daughter how to monitor air-fuel ratios from her laptop on the way back from her swimming class last night.

But I avoid buying technology wherever possible. Pre-2000 cars for me and an Linn LP12 at home. Electronics and software has a lifetime shorter than an arthritic hamster.

At work, I can see everything moving to GPU arrays, supercomputer performance for peanuts. I'm too old to get into that so will need to find something else to do.

[RizzoTheRat]

br d said:

GroundEffect said:

bks. It works very well, particularly on Mac. Think of it as the frontend of your phone/iPod not just a File Explorer. It consolidates all music from your computer in to one UI. You can't use it like your old school drag-and-drop systems.

Whoa there!
Why can't you just use it like your old school drag and drops? Why? WHY???
That's what everybody in the whole world did before i bloody Tunes. It's a pile of unmitigated horses arse nuggets is what it is.

Because it's a bit of software for playing and synchronising music between devices not a drag and drop file manager. That's a bit like moaning that an MX5 is rubbish at crossing ploughed fields when your old Landrover was great at it. They're designed for completely different things.

Pothole said:

The Don of Croy said:

FaceBook - why?

Why not?

I don't really understand this question and I suspect those who ask it only believe the negative hype.

I find people moaning about Facebook quite funny. The usual moan is it's full of narcissistic idiots posting crap. That's not Facebook that's the problem, it's their friends.








FWIW:

• I'm 42
• My PC started out at 486 DX2-66 in about 1991 (I think one of the cables is original), but upgrades are a lot more complicated these days, there used to be a choice of a couple of different processor speeds from each of AMD and Intel, and half a dozen graphics card options, these days I struggle to know what's what.
• I quite like Windows 10, it's a massive improvement on 8
• Have a Raspbery Pi running OSMC as a media streamer, it took about 20 seconds effort to set up, I was almost disappointed as I thought I was going to have to learn a bit about Linux to set it up.
• My watch and camera both have GPS
• iTunes on my PC is great for downloading podcasts and automatically synching to my iPod, plus it tracks things like when I last listened to songs so I can have playlists set up to only play me things I've not listened to in a couple of months. I can also sync selected playlists to my phone and export music to SD card to go in the car.
• I work abroad and find Facebook and Skype very useful for keeping in touch with friends and family.

[GroundEffect]

br d said:

GroundEffect said:

bks. It works very well, particularly on Mac. Think of it as the frontend of your phone/iPod not just a File Explorer. It consolidates all music from your computer in to one UI. You can't use it like your old school drag-and-drop systems.

Whoa there!
Why can't you just use it like your old school drag and drops? Why? WHY???
That's what everybody in the whole world did before i bloody Tunes. It's a pile of unmitigated horses arse nuggets is what it is.

And I'm free of it thank christ. After years of using Apple stuff I couldn't live with iTunes any more and have been Android for ages now, it's lovely

Just a different way of doing it. As I said, think of it as a front end of your phone/device. You control everything there and then sync it to your device. It's an elegant system when you get your head around that. It's more work to set up up-front but then after really easy. You can set it up as only syncing certain artists so as you get more songs/albums for them you just plug in and it auto-loads to the device.

[DragsterRR]

Or they could just put an SD slot into an iPhone and you could have as much music as you wanted on it without all the dicking about.

[ReallyReallyGood]

GroundEffect said:

As I said, think of it as a front end of your phone/device. You control Apple controls everything there and then sync it to your device.

EFA

[AClownsPocket]

rxtx said:

AJS- said:

I resisted touchscreens

That made me grin, for reasons you're probably not aware of.

Just spotted that

[CrutyRammers]

DragsterRR said:

49 and I used to care.
I work in the IT industry.
I used to build PCs. I used to care about the latest gadgets.

Now I couldn't care less.

I have a smartphone because I needed a phone and got it free with the contract.
I have no TV.
I don't upgrade my computers anymore, I just buy a new laptop every couple of years.
I have pre 2000 cars.
I don't want any bit of technology telling me that "What I really wanted to do was this instead..."

My only concession to modernity is Spotify, the rest of it, facebook, twitter etc. can go hang.

It has all become so trivial and uninspiring.

This is it, I think. I work in a tech industry, so I'm in touch with it, but much of modern "innovation" is just pointless jerking off. We've stopped sending men to the moon and building supersonic jet airliners and stuff, now the main thrust seems to be trivial bks like internet enabled kettles and lightbulbs. Rot. If it's useful to me, I'll use it; but boil my kettle via wifi doesn't in any way come under "useful" in my book.

[Squirrelofwoe]

DragsterRR said:

Or they could just put an SD slot into an iPhone and you could have as much music as you wanted on it without all the dicking about.

But then you'd be into the nightmare realm of actually letting the user expand their storage as they needed, cheaply and easily- meaning there would be no justification for getting several versions of the same product onto market at different price points under the guise of product differentiation. Imagine that sort of world. It would be horrific.

Won't somebody think of the margins!

In all seriousness I remember having the discussion with a co-worker who was selling her iPhone to 'upgrade' to one with more storage- I thought she was being incredibly dense and not realizing you could simply put a bigger memory card in. That was when I first discovered that iPhones have no expandable memory.

I applaud Apple for essentially saying, I know it's cheap and easy to expand the memory of phones/tablets, but we are going to make it so that you can no longer do this. You will have to pick a memory size at time of purchase, and if you want more you will have to sell and buy one with more memory. And not only will we NOT make our product cheaper to make up for this deficiency, we will actually charge you more. And people lapped them up. Arguably the greatest marketing success story of our generation.

It always makes me think back to the quote in The Usual Suspects- "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist".

[Pints]

MrBig said:

I guess as I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm 40 in 3 years time, I now have reason to consider all the things I used to be able to do, but somehow just don't quite 'get' any more.


I bought a Foscam from ebay the other week, so far I've spend 6 hours trying to get it set up. Thought I'd cracked it, but now it seems windows built in firewall is blocking the IP address for the camera so I can't actually access it.

I'm your age and I don't even know what a Foscam is!

[qube_TA]

The Don of Croy said:

FaceBook - why?

Facebook makes sense in principle to me but what I struggle with is the massive social shift to wanting to share every microscopic aspect of your life on-line. It's like there's a desire to be famous, if you have people follow your blog or whatever then you're special.

Being observed is unwelcome for me, if I go somewhere, buy something, do a thing then unless I'm inconveniencing anyone else then it's no-one's business but my own. The 'Y' generation have only ever known broadband, social medial and being monitored 24/7 and

It's like when I was 18 I bought my first car, being able to just go any where at any time was really liberating, it was an XR2 but it was ace, spent loads of time and effort tinkering with it, put a big stereo in it, different wheels, bulbs, all the usual chav stuff, I'd go on long drives with friends, we'd all drive our cars across the country just for fun. The idea of a car that would drive itself (other than KITT) was rubbish, yet the idea that you will push a button on your phone or whatever and a Uber car will magically appear and take you to where you want to be, where you can carry on surfing the net providing a full record of all of your movements is being welcomed with open arms. Yes there are lots of gains as traffic should be better, less accidents, no need for street furniture, filling stations, Halfords, Top Gear and whatnot but it'll be the automotive equivalent of an MP3 player; once people used to buy music, lots of it, they were hugely passionate about it, technology made all that redundant and the passion was lost, music is just a play-list now and no-one really cares, it's just something to have on and songs are instantly forgotten. Cars will go the same way as they become uniform taxis, all driving at the designated speed in the designated way. If you buy a car you'll be looked at as odd, just as you are if you go to a shop and buy a CD or LP. Very few will care about cars as they did.

Yes life moves on and people change but I can't help but feel that technology was supposed to make everything better, but I can now see a future as depicted in 50's and 60's science fiction where everyone wears the same (silver) clothing and does the same thing in the same way. In Star Wars/Trek every planet it occupied by these one dimensional people, they all do and act in the same way, if you want to see people that act in a different way then you need to fly to a whole new planet! Within the next 40 years or so I won't be here any more, but I'm sure that by that time the world will have totally passed me by and I'll be little more than a relic.

I'm depressed now

[AJS-]

Have I shown my technological illiteracy or something else?

[CrutyRammers]

AJS- said:

Have I shown my technological illiteracy or something else?

Touch-screens are "resistive" or "capacitive" types - so, err, the former I guess

[Hooli]

I work in 3rd line IT & have almost no tech at home. In fact our hifi is the best sounding one we've ever had & it's a 1950s Blaupunk Radiogram, admittedly I have plugged a DAB receiver into it as well.

[Smitters]

There's an interesting video doing the rounds on FB about a guy who was jailed in 1975 and only recently released. He's followed around NYC for a few days relaying his experiences about how things have changed. He comments on how everyone is talking to themselves, though he then realises they all have ear-pieces in "like the CIA", and their walking about, not looking where they're going talking all the time. It's equal parts sad, insightful and amusing.

For what it's worth, I hate technology for technology's sake. I can't remember the last "innovation" that has genuinely improved my life. Pretty much everything that's genuinely useful in life is well grounded and solid technology, most of which I'd love to be rid of anyway. Also, I'm in my 30s, so not like I'm in a demographic unused to tech.

[putonghua73]

Pothole said:

Why not?

I don't really understand this question and I suspect those who ask it only believe the negative hype.

YOU are the product.

I enjoyed FB for what it was: a simple means to catch-up with friends and acquaintances, many of whom I would otherwise have no social interaction although I was still interested to occasionally hear about what was going in their lives.

Unfortunately, all of the FB improvements have been a vehicle to capture more personal data to package and sell. I deleted my account 4 years ago because it was proving harder and harder to restrict how my personal data was used and shared. The final straw was two-fold: changing how you received news-feeds to FB's own algorithm (FB dictated to me what was deemed important and that I ought to know), and the use of personal images in ads on friends' news-feeds.

FB moved from the simple premise of a social network, where you could upload and share information with selected friends, acquaintances, yada yada yada, to this all encompassing monster that revolves around commoditizing its user-base.

Back to the thread, I do not feel that technology has passed me by (I have detested iTunes - so much so, that I switched from Apple back to Windows and Android - save my iPad2), more that I have no real interest / need re: Instagram, Twitter, et al. I use WeChat / WhatsApp as a means of connecting with a few select friends, no longer use Skype since I am not studying [Chinese] with a teacher at the moment, and have zero interest connecting my home appliances to the 'net.

I do intend to check-out an iOS app that visualises data; Raspberry PI interests me in a geeky, back to basics way (but I won't have the time); actually am using Khan Academy - as well as old school O & A Level Open University books - in tandem to brush up on Maths (want to bring myself to old school A Level standard).

VR / AR head-sets? Only interest will be 5 years down the line, once the adult entertainment industry have led the innovations.

Edited by putonghua73 on Friday 27th November 13:53

[br d]

GroundEffect said:

Just a different way of doing it. As I said, think of it as a front end of your phone/device. You control everything there and then sync it to your device. It's an elegant system when you get your head around that. It's more work to set up up-front but then after really easy. You can set it up as only syncing certain artists so as you get more songs/albums for them you just plug in and it auto-loads to the device.

I think "sync" is the bad word for me, I've never felt syncing is that important. I turn syncing off on anything I use.

The last Apple device I own is an iPod in the car, it's stuffed in a compartment and holds a couple of thousand mp3's that I can listen to when the mood takes me. If I download different music on my PC then fine, I'm not bothered in the least if it's not instantly transferred to every situation I might find myself in. I'm happy to have different stuff in different places, I can cope with that.

But then again I don't get involved in most of the "must know straight away" mediums, no Facebook or twitter or any of that so perhaps I'm not the right person to appreciate it all. I've never downloaded a film or TV program in my life so I only have music to consider, I've had Spotify Premium since day one but again I don't make up endless playlists or organise stuff into genres I would never have the time to do all that, I just search for whatever I fancy there and then.

iTunes was a massive ballache for me, constantly hectoring me to sync and buy and organise and getting in the way of just doing stuff.
Different mindsets I suppose, I think iTuners v non-iTuners is much more a personality thing than a software thing.

[Nom de ploom]

sometimes I do. Although sometime I think technology is lauded long before it is properly ready.

Google talk for example - the other day I spoke into my phone for the address of one of our regional offices, it sent me to one that we had moved out of 5 years ago....

[AJS-]

CrutyRammers said:

AJS- said:

Have I shown my technological illiteracy or something else?

Touch-screens are "resistive" or "capacitive" types - so, err, the former I guess

Ah ok.

[superkartracer]

MrBig said:

Stuff

Not at all , years ago technology was very hard to use ( and very new ) these days it's piss easy , with Goggle it now takes seconds to work stuff out .

[The Don of Croy]

Pothole said:

The Don of Croy said:

FaceBook - why?

Why not?

I don't really understand this question and I suspect those who ask it only believe the negative hype.

Because I think you can keep in contact with people without using a branded service (although Friends Reunited was fun in the early days too).

There was some anthropological research published years back looking at human interactions. They went across continents, all social groups, even semi-feral Amazonian tribes...and they found that the most common number of interactions a person can have over a lifetime was 150. That's 150 people you would know by sight, share personal info with, remember significant dates and happenings, and want to keep in touch periodically (but not every day or hour). Apparently it didn't change over time, either.

Tech may enable us to keep tabs on more people, more of the time. But we're human and I think there's a big part of us that requires human interaction, not third party contact via an ubiquitous screen device (although they do help, to be fair). What's happening now is - arguably - the opportunity to be nosy.

So Facebook, Bebo, Friends Re or whatever the next big thing is, I'm sure there's oodles of money to be made linking people together through whatever app, but it's still just a programme.

In my defence I did fit a DAC to my telly recently - best £5.95 spent this year.