If anyone out there who has the wherewithal to buy a new TV is still clinging to their old cathode ray tube (CRT) monstrosity out of some codgerish nostalgic whimsy, please stop it. Throw it away.
We, the consumers, are supposed to know what we want and how and where to find it online. We’ve supposedly demanded unlimited choice and so now we have to make our selections and pick out our personal nuggets from the colossal heap of audio-visual spoil.
Information – about YOU – is the commodity that powers a free Internet. It’s the carrot that websites such as Google and Amazon dangle in front of commercial interests and makes Facebook worth squillions. But they’re not the only ones watching your every online move…
8.4 million adults in the UK have never used the Internet, SHOCK, HORROR!!! What are all those techno-muppets doing? Reading books? Having actual conversations? Walking the dog? Raising children? Playing sport? Going to the theatre? Picking fluff out of their belly-buttons??? I mean, stop it!! All of you!! Get with the programme. Stuff reality; get virtual, get digital, get online.
The movie, music and television industries are waging war against illegal, on-line file-sharing. But is it a battle they can ever win?
No one forces anyone to buy a book, whether it’s digitally rendered or paper and print. If Apple had set their prices too high, a lack of sales would have suggested their error. And there are always alternatives for the consumer such as libraries and those dusty repositories known as ‘book shops’
This isn’t so much built in obsolescence we’re talking about here, rather a deliberate and unnecessary removal of functionality from an otherwise perfectly serviceable device. That we paid good money for. And is now worthless, in every sense.
This bit of kit is integrated into a skull cap (a headband version is in the works) and displays the force sustained by head impacts on an LED display that sits at the back of the neck.
That’s what happens when you eavesdrop on conversations about subjects of which you know nothing. You find that the person upon whose eaves you were dropping doesn’t know anything either.
At 4pm the seething hordes of the geek media were let in to swarm around buffet tables groaning with free food and bars serving equally free booze. Somewhere amidst the platters of shrimp and beef skewers there were selected brands showing their products at very many small stands.
CES is now a curious circus, notable as much for some of the biggest names in tech that choose to be absent: Apple, Google, Amazon.
Users of social networks reveal far more about themselves than they should or that they are aware of and that in doing so they put themselves where the law, which has been tortoise-slow to try and get to grips with the new electronic age, cannot help them.
There is plenty written about the digital world that is mildly diverting, in a ‘what will they think of next?’ kind of way, while being unlikely to impinge on the lives of thee and me. Such is Bitcoin.
The HP website assures us that Windows 7 is pre-loaded with the driver that will make it and the 7690 sing sweet printerly music together. They are lying. And that lie is compounded by the fact that the driver we need cannot be downloaded from the HP website.
If you don’t like what’s being done with your online burblings, go offline, go analogue. Or just shut up.
Links to articles we’ve read recently, two from the Independent on Saturday 19th January and two from the New York Times on Sunday 13th January. All are worth a look.
Here’s a fine feature by Sam Anderson from the New York Times Magazine about mindless video games. The sort of things (Angry Birds) that have replaced the fag-break in the nation’s use of snippets of down time. This Fogey has spent an inordinate amount of time on Angry Birds and so far no 3-star level [...]
Jeffrey Steingarten is food critic for US Vogue. His writing is wonderful and, since he’s waxed lyrical often about kitchen gadgets and food and cooking technology, he’s a perfect fit for Tech Fogey.
David Pogue is a very funny man who knows what he’s talking about. A rare bird indeed.
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