Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 12 Jan 2014 11:50

Thanks guys. CoD will have to go I guess especially after two hakims - one phony like me and a real one unlike me - say the same thing.

I do not like violence of any kind but it is tuff to control one's anger at times.

chandrasekhar.m · Post by **chandrasekhar.m** » 12 Jan 2014 12:57

Bhailog, thinking of ditching a mobile phone completely. Extremely poor signal in my home. Moroever no longer feel like answering calls anytime anywhere.

Has anyone used Ooma for national and international calls? The other choice seems to be Vonage.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 12 Jan 2014 22:21

prasannasimha wrote:BSNL will accept an ADSL modem . You can buy dlink ADSL modem.

If you have ACT Broadband you can get that too. We have both BSNL ADSL and ACT fiber broadband at home. Both work well but ACT has a higher speed which some family members need for (sometimes) for work related issues.

thanks.. i think i have motorola surfboard.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 12 Jan 2014 22:42

Satya_anveshi wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:That being said, the ChromeBook concept recognizes a very fundamental fact that people do spend a majority of their time online
But Android is also the superset of Chromebook and brings in much more (mobility, touch, aaps etc) and it could even be cheaper (?).

So, you agree folks buying these devices are ~~buddhijeeves~~ buddhichutyas?

ChromeOS is a desktop OS, Android is not. They serve different device categories.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 12 Jan 2014 22:49

pandyan, vonage rates are actually cheaper no? 30 bucks per month and unlimited, where as I just checked ooma website, it says 8.5c per minute to desh.

and for voip, if you have decent ip service, it should be good. perhaps the poor quality of voice is perhaps bad quality of service in desh.

KrishG · Post by **KrishG** » 12 Jan 2014 22:55

Satya_anveshi wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:That being said, the ChromeBook concept recognizes a very fundamental fact that people do spend a majority of their time online
But Android is also the superset of Chromebook and brings in much more (mobility, touch, aaps etc) and it could even be cheaper (?).

So, you agree folks buying these devices are ~~buddhijeeves~~ buddhichutyas?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 12 Jan 2014 23:04

^^^that's a crappy ad. How many people use PhotoShop??? What they need to show is that ChromeBook doesn't have a good app ecosystem, doesn't really work offline and highlight that Asus product with soup-e-rear capability & storage comes for the same price instead of shoving it towards the end of the commercial. Otherwise people will hear that chick say Photoshop and tune the ad out as a biased one.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 12 Jan 2014 23:08

what they need to do the right FUD tactics.. that is losing your data, and that data of yours is actually not yours anymore if you use chrome book.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 12 Jan 2014 23:25

That would be a selfgoal against office 365....which runs perfectly well on a chromebook.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 13 Jan 2014 01:06

Unless Chacha has changed terms, they were retaining the right to use, modify data stored on their servers which would be controversial for a lot of people. Mickey didn't have that...probably based on their past experience hosting all sorts of gobermint/mil/oil data over the years. Maybe they need to highlight that when comparing Office365 vs Docs/Drive.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 13 Jan 2014 02:27

The right to copy and modify data is related to the right to replicate data, make copies for backup and to generate things like thumbnails. This is explicitly spelled out in any online service's agreement.

Which online service provider would be stupid enough to want to copy and use your private data? US department of interior uses Google Apps.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 13 Jan 2014 04:40

Raja Bose wrote:... the new Forza Motorsport, give it a try - the graphics on that are way out of this world...I have never seen such detailed lighting effects anywhere.

Mentioned this to the kid and he is willing to mothball CoD for a few years if we buy this game. I asked him why he did not want that game in the first place and he failed to give me a satisfactory answer. No idea how the kids' brains work and their thinking process. May be somebody in his school got this game and he wanted the same.

Another disappointment with XBox - the initial 14 day Gold membership has expired. Now even going to Netflix is a problem since watching Netflix requires Gold Membership which is a low low $9.99 per mahina. This on top of the $7.99 per month of the Netflix. What the heck M$ is thinking? Why would I pay another $9.99 to those bozos and for what? I would rather get a blue ray player and go to Netflix from that device.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 13 Jan 2014 05:37

Anujan wrote:The right to copy and modify data is related to the right to replicate data, make copies for backup and to generate things like thumbnails. This is explicitly spelled out in any online service's agreement.

Which online service provider would be stupid enough to want to copy and use your private data? US department of interior uses Google Apps.

Its not just about any private data, its about IP. That is why if there are specific cases when data will be copied or modified and for what purpose, those are spelled out in most service agreements. In Chacha's case, it was a blanket statement about having automatic rights to the data and its modifications, which is why it caused a tamasha and rightly so. Last thing some small company storing an invention report on Google Drive/SkyDrive/DropBox wants is to see it in another form patented by Chacha/Mickey/DropBox.

US Department of Interior still uses Office/Outlook as their mainstay (like all other sarkari babooze all over the world) though I recall Chacha suing them for being unfair to Google Apps few years back.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 13 Jan 2014 05:38

matrimc wrote: Another disappointment with XBox - the initial 14 day Gold membership has expired. Now even going to Netflix is a problem since watching Netflix requires Gold Membership which is a low low $9.99 per mahina. This on top of the $7.99 per month of the Netflix. What the heck M$ is thinking? Why would I pay another $9.99 to those bozos and for what? I would rather get a blue ray player and go to Netflix from that device.

They need to get rid of the current Gold membership pricing - its a rip-off.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 13 Jan 2014 06:42

^^^This is what I said several months back. I usually wait for an Amazon special and buy a XboX 12-month Gold Membership at a discount, but in the last 1.5 years MSFT no longer supplies them at a discount. As long as the XBoX sells as the number 2 gaming console (PS3 was no. 1 barely), then MSFT doesn't care.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 13 Jan 2014 07:05

thanks pandyan. i think it is worth it.. but i don't know what shq paid for vonage device? without international calls i was wondering what is the comparison?

anyway the need is this: this feb month desh visit i'm planning to take a voip device with me (vonage or ooma or anything). mom can call me anytime she wishes for free. i will establish the internet for her.

she is not okay with using kompootar.. so the problemo

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 13 Jan 2014 09:33

yup.. that is the idea. mom from desh can call me for free.

chandrasekhar.m · Post by **chandrasekhar.m** » 13 Jan 2014 11:22

Thanks pandyan and SaiK for your thoughts. I will go with Ooma, it is cheaper than Vonage and 1000 minutes of international calling is more than enough for me.
My only concern was about voice quality, but I guess that is a risk that comes with any VOIP provider and you don't seem to have any bad experience using these.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 13 Jan 2014 11:29

no, the voice quality comes in the bandwidth and delays in the internet, the point you call to the point you are making from should be the best path method by ISPs. bandwidth for good voice is not that much..normally the 256bits sampling rate is pretty good for quality voice transmission, hence 64k bps to less than 100kbps is good enough for voice unless you want stereophonic quality audio been delivered (say you are learning or doing music over the internet while you sing in massa, your friend does the guitar in desh) then still you would not exceed about a 700kbps.

so, essentially for good voice, it is the data all the way, and nothing to do with ooma or vonage. in my understanding.

Karan M · Post by **Karan M** » 13 Jan 2014 14:59

How is facetime better than skype?

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 13 Jan 2014 16:15

Old wine in a new artecal, but posting.

Phones become smarter, people get dumber
Araina Huffington

What leading executives need more than anything today is wisdom. And one of the things that makes it harder and harder to connect with our wisdom is our increasing dependence on technology. Our hyper-connectedness is the snake lurking in our digital Garden of Eden.

“People have a pathological relationship with their devices,” said Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist who studies the science of self-control at Stanford’s School of Medicine. “People feel not just addicted, but trapped.” We are finding it harder and harder to unplug and renew ourselves.

Professor Mark Williams summed up the damage we’re doing to ourselves: “What we know from the neuroscience — from looking at the brain scans of people that are always rushing around, who never taste their food, who are always going from one task to another without actually realising what they’re doing — is that the emotional part of the brain that drives people is on high alert all the time.

Mindfulness

“So, when people think: ‘I’m rushing around to get things done,’ it’s almost like, biologically, they’re rushing around just as if they were escaping from a predator. That’s the part of the brain that’s active. But nobody can run fast enough to escape their own worries.” Mindfulness, on the other hand, “cultivates our ability to do things knowing that we’re doing them”. In other words, we become aware that we’re aware. It’s an incredibly important tool — and one that we can’t farm out to technology.

There are some who believe the increasing power of big data (using powerful computers to sift through and find patterns in massive amounts of information) is going to rival the human consciousness at some point. But there’s also growing scepticism about how effective big data is at solving problems.

As Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, writes: “Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information.” And even when the information is not false, the problem is “that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack”.

Empty information

The quest for knowledge may be pursued at higher speeds with smarter tools today, but wisdom is found no more readily than it was three thousand years ago in the court of King Solomon. In fact, ours is a generation bloated with information and starved for wisdom.

Stand-up Louis CK has put a brilliant comedic mirror in front of us and our screen addictions. In one of his routines, he captures the absurdity of children’s events where none of the parents is actually able to watch the soccer game or school play because they’re straining to record it on video with their devices, blocking “their vision of their actual child”. So hell-bent are we on recording our children’s milestones that we miss them altogether. “The resolution on the kid is unbelievable if you just look,” he joked. “It’s totally HD.”

File it under: Be careful what you wish for. Big data, unfettered information, the ability to be in constant contact, and our growing reliance on technology are all conspiring to create a noisy traffic jam between us and our place of insight and peace. Call it an iParadox; our smartphones are actually blocking our path to wisdom.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/p ... ?css=print

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 13 Jan 2014 22:41

what is that ooma linx?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 13 Jan 2014 23:29

Raja Bose wrote:They need to get rid of the current Gold membership pricing - its a rip-off.

RB: They should eliminate it.
---
Mort: Even two pennies (I will pay a penny if some legality has to be followed) is one penny too many. I am paying to the content provider (Netflix), I am paying to the ISP (AT&T), and I already paid for the device (XBox One or Wii or a Bluray player). What exactly M$ ($ for S is quite apt in this particular case - SwamyG please note) doing here for me that I have to pay them some money? Why do I have to buy it at all leave alone at discount?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 13 Jan 2014 23:31

Karan M wrote:How is facetime better than skype?

Former is Apple and the latter is M$.
Both grub money but Apple delivers.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 13 Jan 2014 23:44

In general I get very suspicious of people who start by "in my grandpappy's time ...."

This is how social people were in 1950s before cellphones, iPods and smarphones.

Apparently when fountain pens became popular, famous writers and authors lamented that because people were not pausing to dip their pens in an ink pot, they were wrting very fast and were becoming thoughtless.

"In my grandpappy's time..." Has existed in some form or other over the times.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 14 Jan 2014 00:05

matrimc wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:They need to get rid of the current Gold membership pricing - its a rip-off.
RB: They should eliminate it.
---
Mort: Even two pennies (I will pay a penny if some legality has to be followed) is one penny too many. I am paying to the content provider (Netflix), I am paying to the ISP (AT&T), and I already paid for the device (XBox One or Wii or a Bluray player). What exactly M$ ($ for S is quite apt in this particular case - SwamyG please note) doing here for me that I have to pay them some money? Why do I have to buy it at all leave alone at discount?

Why pull my taang here onlee saar. I am onlee AAPL and AMZN stock holder.

I did face the same issue with XBox. However, I had plethora of devices - WII, Roku, Netgear, XBox and Apple TV. So I pick the device that is free....no doubt I must have spent $750 getting these devices.

Finally, I am happy streaming Netflix or DishAnyWhere on my Mac. Apple zindabad. If only AMZN bought Netflix.....

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 14 Jan 2014 00:54

Anujan,

I think the point is that people are too enamored in their devices or tools, rather than utilizing them as such. I'm an older guy who is not in IT, but uses IT as a tool to do what I need to do.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 14 Jan 2014 01:13

Well. You could say the same about TV. before TV people presumably read books or played outside. Now average massaland muj watches 5 hours of TV a day.

It could be educational if you watched college lectures etc. But mostly is trash.

The point I am trying to make is people don't watch TV because they are enamoured how nice their TV is or the awesomeness of the remote or the novelty of TV (TV is what? 70 years old? People still don't seem to want to let it go). Point is: wanting to waste time is a human condition. Existed since the time of cavemen. People just find new ways of wasting time. That's all.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 14 Jan 2014 01:13

Sync with NIST clock server over the internet

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 14 Jan 2014 01:18

^^^I don't trust NTP or at least its implementation.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 14 Jan 2014 01:21

Anujan wrote:Well. You could say the same about TV. before TV people presumably read books or played outside. Now average massaland muj watches 5 hours of TV a day.

It could be educational if you watched college lectures etc. But mostly is trash.

The point I am trying to make is people don't watch TV because they are enamoured how nice their TV is or the awesomeness of the remote or the novelty of TV (TV is what? 70 years old? People still don't seem to want to let it go). Point is: wanting to waste time is a human condition. Existed since the time of cavemen. People just find new ways of wasting time. That's all.

Wokay, boss.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Jan 2014 02:53

Anujan wrote:This is how social people were in 1950s before cellphones, iPods and smarphones. .

That was the case even in 1997/98 on NY trains.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 14 Jan 2014 03:54

I thought the phrase was "During our time..." or "When we were young....", rather than "During my grandpappy's time..."....the key intention being to harp about the "good" ol' days and one's own soup-e-rearity in younger days when none of the current audience was present to validate the tall claims being currently made

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 14 Jan 2014 05:20

Chacha acquires Nest for 3.2 billion

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 14 Jan 2014 09:19

I hope to see better products from Chacha (and also more margins for Chacha?) iChromebook, iChromecast, iNexus

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 14 Jan 2014 09:45

iGlass

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 14 Jan 2014 10:04

Aha that makes eminent sense and also reminds me to go for my biannual iExam

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Jan 2014 10:14

iSmoke too.

btw, that b&w grandpas pic bottom right fella looks like MKG/(ben kingsley)/capt. piccard!

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 14 Jan 2014 11:18

Mort Walker wrote:^^^I don't trust NTP or at least its implementation.

You aren't the only one sir. The NTP code that came with some OSs was full of scary code and hard to debug. Luckily, one German fella decided to do something about it and wrote a replacement which doesn't go for full 100% microsecond accuracy, but something that is practical enough, supports most of the use cases and is not filled with lots of questionable code. Plus, it works with very minimal configuration.

http://www.openntpd.org/

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 14 Jan 2014 12:30

Didn't net gear hard code university of Wisconsin time server into their routers and in effect DDoS it?