I HATE touchscreens, its like a terrible fad overtaking computing, for no significant reason. Its like campy 3-D movies from the mid-1980s. Its like, really, why the fuck are we all doing this? Tablets themselves just seem so, LAME! Yeah, they have better battery life, true, but aside from the Windows 8 tablets they are essentially glorified, over-sized cell phones! I want to do my computing, not a bunch of underpowered "apps"..



In what universe is a touchscreen better than a keyboard? SERIOUSLY??

For a tablet, yes. For a smartphone, no.

I can agree, but again, what is the point exactly of having an enormous cell phone like the Galaxy 5?? I highly doubt the majority of people who have this have legitimate reasons to need that kind of computing in their pocket, more likely they waste it on YouTube and Facebook rather than work ;)

i need a smartphone for my job, i have an s3 but could easily use a note. all this crap about it being too big and all this anti smart phone snobbery pisses me off. so what if its big? well maybe the fact they are made with the cheapest materials possible and smash when dropped and loads to fix. but we proles cant do anything about that, its called 'built in obsolescence' and its the reason for apples profits.

a certain section of old people need to accept the fact they will probably die before not having to deal with internet/computers is too socially disabling to allow them to function, but otherwise they need to get over their stupid 'i cant do this!' whining and get with the times. i know its 2013 and the young are evil and are too be harvested for profit so the old can grow senile and fat by collecting rent and cutting social services for everyone but themselves, but you can go fuck yourselves if you think we're not going to do our best to profit from your tech illiteracy.

take a fucking course for fuck sake. its not going to hurt you. the internet is not witchcraft. if you're afraid of getting scammed then take some effort to learn.

i get the impression people in shops or queues, especially old people, stare at me with my smartphone and are irritated by it. im fucking working! im not playing farmville or giving my money to nigerian pirates like you pensioners do.

this was super-funny to read.

only quibble is the s3 and note are samsung not apple but eh, the rest still works.

and good to hear you got a job. i hope it's not horrid like the last one.

being anti smart phone is not snobbery. Snobbery is what the smartphone companies seek to instill in customers to make them feel validated as people for purchasing what is essentially a very expensive toy.

iPhone dickheads ripping on Droid dickheads and vice versa.

They need to have a different name. The "phone" feature on all these new ones is the least important feature for most people. They should be called something like "Pocket computer" or "mobile computer"

I am 40 years old. I remember giant car phones. I started University a year or so before the WWW came into being. I LOVE living in what is to me the future! These shits are straight star trek man! My only deal is that there are a whole herd of people under 20 who do not know how to walk down a street or cross a busy street without staring straight down at their phones. Working at a University, I must growl "Watch where you're going" at least twice a day to some fuck idiot who expects the universe to clear out of their path so they can stroll while burying their face in their stupid phone.

easy pickings this new generation. Easy to rob from, assault, kidnap, and carjack. They sit in their cars with open laptops, airbooks, ipads, iphones and $500 droid phones just waiting to get jacked, and many do.

No street sense.

i haven't read the rest, but i was going to comment to DB that suchfriends is not necessarily anti-technology but rather and more broadly a liberal who thinks he knows what is best for all. in that sense he could be called a snob. which is not a major offense, is it? i mean, everyone is a poser in some way or another. it's social life.

but back to topic-- what people don't need they won't buy. sure, they might buy for reasons you and i don't agree (e.g., status), but if a product doesn't deliver its promise people stop buying it and businesses discontinue it or go broke. e.g., the palm pilot.

i used to be a liberal too and yes i tend to be a know-it-all so it comes naturally but i also think that i don't know more than the market-- it's not up to me to decide what my neighbor or some person 5,000 miles away needs or doesn't need-- they should spend their money as they see fit. i mean, i may have many more opinions (millions) than i have assholes (only one) but one of those opinions is that i trust markets more than i trust some moral authority to decide what people need.

okay i read the rest


MEET ME ON THE PARKING LOT AND GET READY TO LOOT. BRING WEAPONS. 50/50?

there is no such thing as "markets' when the rules are rigged, "Free enterprise" is a crock of shit. Government tax subsidies to corporations, tax breaks which benefit huge multinationals and not small business, the Copyright law enforced only when it favors a giant corporation. The game is so rigged, yet every 'merican is raised to believe we are a free market and have free enterprise.

60/40 I get a 10% finders fee

psh...I almost never leave my phone in my car...unless I forget it...which doesn't happen too often ;)


but seriuosly.... don't even like to leave it in my car even if I'm just going to pay for gas.

do you have a 357 magnum revolver and a short barrel shotgun? 60 for me then or nothing. ha!


exactly, we don't have a free market, we have a corporatist government, but why advocate for MORE control of the market by claiming to know what people "need" or "don't need"?

for all the corporatist tendencies we have to put up with, i have yet to be forced by a branch of the government to purchase a touchscreen device i don't want or need.

The Government forced my dad to buy an 8-track

ha ha.

actually we're being forced to buy health insurance. i used to be for that, but now i'm not sure.

businesses are being forced to provide health insurance for their workers.

everyone is forced to register their cars in usa every fucking year.

we are forced to buy auto insurance, renter's insurance, etc. Not having insurance is ILLEGAL. fuck that bullshit.

legally, driving is a privilege and not a right though-- the insurance requirement is only for liability-- e.g., you fuck someone up, you can't claim "sorry, i can't pay damages." uninsured drivers are a fucking nightmare and more likely to hit and run than others.

but yeah, coupling insurance to employment is anti-business. you can no longer just devote yourself to the design of manufacturing of vapes and bongs, now you have to become an insurance expert and but it for your employed children. it's fucked up.

smartphones, tablets, laptops, dishwashers, fridges, smart tv's. nice gadgets alright...


"slavery made tracking devices"?

you goddamn amerinazis are culturally programmed to unconsciously view government as an omnipotent satanic diety and it is the single greatest cognitive bias holding you back

you goddamn euroserfs are culturally programmed to unconsciously view government as an ominpotent angelic benefactor and it is the single greatest cognitive bias holding you back.

but seriously now, like grownups who aren't afraid to discuss ideas, the guy who wrote the book on tyrannical governments developing from central control of the economy was an austrian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

cant believe you're referencing hayek brohann

i really really really dont think that europes problems are caused by government or that government itself leads to tyranny or that it inevitably evolves into it or that its remotely fair to use the potential of a government turning fascist in the context of things like social security programmes/health care/regulations. in fact that argument is to me so completely ridiculous that i cant even take it seriously. obviously to americans its not but to me i cant even pretend that that idea is anything other than insane.

the idea that you can subtract government and then have a situation that has been purged of fascism, or somehow more likely to create a power structure that is not far far worse is also a bit nuts/

that's not an argument, that's an appeal to… herd mentality or something? come on, you can do better.

and austrian economics are at this point so utterly bankrupt, out dated and refuted that at best they are mostly quaint archaisms and at worst they are the worrying sign of an american economic culture in serious decline. a kind of ugly conservatism that the chinese probably cackle at. its fucking hick shit.

tl;dr; ad hominem?


it's a bit nuts because…

to me its fascism itself that wants to allign basic government services with tyranny and the american culture that does this just comes across as so utterly insane and irrational that i cant see it as 'another opinion' and it comes off more like the most ridiculous cultural quirk.

there are very well understood reasons for how the anti government meme arose in american culture. the historical history of this has been thoroughly examined.

at least take into consideration that this idea MIGHT not be a rationally considered one based on hard experiential data...

i still don't hear your argument so i guess i'll go play a game or something

i thought it was self explanatory. you see the cultural thing going on here?

if you think capitalism can be helped by infusing some idea into the social body 'be an entrenpeur and dont ask the state for handouts' you're just playing folk psychological bumpkin rhetoric politics and thats not interesting to me.

if you think chinas growth which isn't just better than yours its hundreds and hundreds of percent better over a few mere decades could have happened with hayekian bullshit then it's not just that you're wrong it's that if everyone in american really thinks like this you're really really screwed.

You're more thorough than I.

^^^ yeah, I wish that cunt was here a year ago when I was begging for help and ideas on how to save my vinyl to digital.

I ended up saying fuck it and just mailing it all internationally.

I think I'd like more specifics on how you'll be using the Pi transfer it all.

Please provide a step-by-step for idiots such as I.

man, that civ II is decades worth of fun

will it run in win 8(.1)???

Did it run on 7?

don't know. i'm still hanging on to xp trying to delay the inevitable.

wouldn't mind some new pc games though as games for mac are still utter shit-- usually ported and buggy and bloated. i just don't want to lose the old ones.

Could you run it through dosbox?

Why on earth would you do that? XP was probably EVERYTHING that was ever wrong with Windows, meanwhile 7 seamed to solve every problem Windows ever had in 20 years of versions. I don't like 8, but I LOVE 7. I say at least upgrade to 7, you will hardly regret it.