How the Cool Stuff At CES Will Ruin Your Life 171
jfruh writes "Another CES has come and gone, and as usual the press has presented rather uncritically a list of super-cool gadgets that were unveiled at the show and that will make our world better. Let's leave aside the fact that many products shown at CES never make it to market; Paul Roberts provides the pessimistic case on the big CES news, explaining how all these gewgaws will strip away privacy, unleash an army of Clippys onto the world, and maybe even change human brains for the worse."
Re:You can decide to ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it? I am still waiting for a sturdy inkjet with cheap ink that can withstand some months of inactivity. I had one back in the 90s, they never did anything like that later.
Or does evolution explain how laptop makers implement secure boot and DO NOT DOCUMENT HOW TO GET INTO BIOS ANYMORE? http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=286290
Yes it does, but only if you define Fittest as Fittest for the dominant players for milking more money.
Re:I missed it! *thankfully* (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is why, since I was quite young, my rule has always been:
Until I can buy a unit of it, by a convenient method, with guaranteed delivery, it doesn't exist.
There's no point cooing over something that's "coming soon". You just add to hype around a product that may not even exist and - even if it does - you can't yet buy anyway. Until it is directly purchasable and will arrive at your door on a guaranteed date, it means nothing.
The number of products I've seen that never were (Phantom console, etc.), the number of products that were junk by they time they came out (e.g. Duke Nukem Forever, etc.), the number of products that just never reached critical mass or got into a reasonable price bracket (e.g. Optimus OLED keyboards, the "open source" graphics cards that are still based on a PCI/AGP architecture, etc.), and even the number of existing-but-completely-mismanaged projects that would have had me kicking myself for ever buying into (e.g. OpenPandora where pre-orderers are still waiting to receive units four years later having paid twice as much as those who can just order one from Germany today with guaranteed delivery, with little chance of a refund or unit without paying again) - it's just astounding. I would have wasted SO MUCH money on them if I didn't have my rule.
So I ignore everything that isn't purchasable. It might be as cool as anything, solve all my problems and do everything I always dreamed of. Great. Give me a call back when I can buy one. These affordable 40" OLED TV's I was promised nearly a decade ago? Still £20,000 from what I see.
I was promised tablet PC's back in the XP era. They've JUST come to fruition at one-tenth the cost (so actually affordable now), don't use Windows (well, soon they will, but that's very new), you can get them everywhere now, and I can't say that I see the use of them. If I'd bought in back in the XP era, I'd be really disappointed.
Am I disinterested in new products? Of course not. I was one of the first owners of a Raspberry Pi (as soon as they offered guaranteed orders + delivery) and had one before anyone else I know (was in the first batch, which meant you had to order within minutes of the announcement).
And I do support some kickstarters, but those where I will get the product or something worthwhile (e.g. Defense Grid 2 for a small backing - I got a DG1 key GUARANTEED and a video card GUARANTEED that I gave to my brother for Christmas that was worth the price alone, plus I get DG 1.5 next week I think - there are already at the Steam-key phase for deploying that, and I get DG2 whenever it comes out) and where they have manufacturing all sorted and ready to go and guaranteed dates.
I can't support those where the product doesn't even exist yet, or they offer you only "backing" for the project. I *have* supported some products purely on the basis of trust but we're talking literally a few dollars - and I'm GUARANTEED a copy of the game if it comes out. That's breaking my rule but never happens for anything of any significant value (if the projects existed in a working, deliverable state, I would happily back 10 times the amount I did without even thinking).
I can remember as a kid being disappointed so many times at the cool things I thought were coming "this year" and hanging on and waiting and waiting and checking up and waiting and never hearing of them again (even up to today!). All the great inventions and marvellous products and cool services. Nothing. And the ones that DID succeed, they succeed at the point you can buy them - and at that point, you can buy them and get them delivered and know what you are buying.
I think Aliens:Colonial Marines looks really nice and it looks like the game I've been promised and wanted since the days of Aliens (US) on the ZX Spectrum (damn, that movie is old!). It's on pre-purchase now. But I've not yet seen it. It's already been delayed a year from it's original date, and then a month again just now (was originally January). An
'Clippy' is a safe-scripted Vermicious Knid (Score:4, Interesting)
Visual reference
Knids: http://www.roalddahlfans.com/books/charglasknids.php [roalddahlfans.com]
Clippy: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991755,00.html [time.com]
He's loveable, cuddly and his extensible architecture allowed attackers in 2001 to inject malware with a single click. But Clippy is not the only gadget phenomenon with unintended features. The world is full of crappy and predatory engineering.
Predatory Engineering: underrated power supplies that run hot; expensive computers with glass bezel displays under tension snapped together with no screws which crack if one attempt to open them; automobiles where software action can cause acceleration; software (not hardwired discrete component) ABS braking or shift management; personal accessories such as headsets with thin wound-foil cords that have no strain relief whatsoever and fail at the slightest jerk; $600 TVs which wind up in the trash because of malfunctioning half cent click-buttons or 5 cent IR receivers; trapezoid shaped mini-USB connectors which actively participate in their own destruction on every attempt to plug them in upside down; and more.
Crappy Engineering, such as power windows in cars with no crank or even provision for one. Parents love power windows and the assurance that comes from disabling the master button, they'll love their power windows all the way to the bottom of the lake as the screaming family tries to beat out the windows with their bare hands. The trick is to wait until the entire vehicle fills with water, then the pressure equalizes and you can open the door and tow your drowned kids to the surface. Good luck.
I love writing about modern technology.
Re:You can decide to ..... (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree with the philosophy of allowing other people to dictate when I may use something I have bought. I would not accept it for a car, I would not accept it for a toaster
You do accept it for your car. You have to have car tax and insurance to be able to drive legally. A one-off activation isn't really any different from requiring that the car you're buying isn't stolen. Software that requires you to always have the disc in the drive, or connect every single time you go online, is of course annoying though. I like Steam better than any other way of installing games - including games from a disc that require no license key or online activation.
I don't feel like entertainment is worth compromising my principles for
As long as you have other ways to appreciate your time spent alive then sure. At some point though, there's no point trying to argue. Like I said before about Steam, it has certain obvious online requirements, but considering all of my electronic devices are online 100% of the time anyway, I don't see that as a problem. Plus, you can play in offline mode, or crack the DRM if you really wish.
Re:'Clippy' is a safe-scripted Vermicious Knid (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I agree with your point, I don't agree with your examples.
ABS only operates electronically. We can't design a mechanical system that will do the job as well and if we could, it would have a very limited life or be stupidly expensive and require constant calibration. It has to monitor wheel speeds and pulse brakes at fractions of a second, and adjust accordingly in extreme braking situations and we just don't have the engineering to do that. If we did, there would have been ABS on cars 50 years ago. Fact is, ABS is an electronic technology.
And window cranks? The hypothetical scenario of not being able to wind the windows down is just that. First, don't drive off the road into water, that avoids 99.9% of all water-based problems.
Where that's not possible, if you can't open the door, then you're stuffed (trying to swim out the window is harder than you think unless the water is crystal clear, and the car is flooded to the roof anyway - and there the door will open!). And if you wait for the car to sink, you're stuffed (do it before the car even STARTS to take on water and it's no more difficult than opening the door).
And you have other worries than the window (i.e. seatbelts, door locks, child seats, etc.). By the time you have all occupants of the car ready to go, you won't smash the window, no. But neither will the button not work. Try it. The conductivity of the electricity in the wires from the battery will not be affected much by the short-circuit of the water, and will open the window underwater. This is why you always see the car headlights on underwater in the movies. Hell, if it's a diesel you might even find the engine keeps running and churns up the mud making things worse!
In fact, the recommended procedure (after getting out before the car sinks below the surface which takes 20-30 seconds) is to turn the headlights on if you plunge into water and it looks like you're going to sink so you can see underwater to get out.
And if you can open the windows, you can open the door - the pressure on an electric window underwater is immense under the water levels equalise and it just won't open anyway. The motor isn't strong enough to wind the window against the SIDE-pressure pushing inwards. But the pressure isn't great when the water has filled the car, and you are only advised to open the window in order to LET WATER IN, so you can open the door with even pressure on both sides.
Literally, past a certain point, you have to let the car sink and wait for the water to fill the car until you're ready to go (how do you intend to swim against the flow of water into the window without the car being full of water within a second anyway?). Anything in between those two scenarios and you waste energy trying to open a door/window that would never open against the pressures anyway, or just hasn't the transition to a more dangerous state and panic you.
But your biggest problems are a) getting everyone out of their seats ready to swim in a confined, moving, sinking, dark, panicked environment, b) swimming further back to the surface with them, the longer you wait and c) being in a damn dangerous situation that not much else will save you anyway.
If we make car manufacturers take account of junk like that, we'd be unable to afford a damn car at all.
But,as I say, I agree with your point.
P.S. You can buy a "car-window-smasher" tool for $1 in any cheap shop that you can keep in your door pocket (like they have on trains to smash windows in case of an accident). Evidence suggests you'll never use it and, if you do need it, it won't work very well from a confined, seated stance in a panic situation. If it does work perfectly, you'll end up winding yourself from the force of water smashing into your face from the extreme pressure change, probably knocking the breath out of you and making it harder to survive. Or you could have just waited and then opened the door. Or, even better, opened the door before it sunk. Or, even better, not driven into the water.
All of it at CES was crap. (Score:5, Interesting)
Every single one of the "fitness" devices was designed to harvest your data and keep it hostage. not ONE of the products I looked at or talked to the guys at the booth kept your data private on your computer or Phone. All of them are "cloud based" and none of them let you have access to your raw data.
It seems that companies have zero ability to hire engineers that can make a real product that is not dripping in "lock in" or "data mining". And I personally am sick of it.
Outside of those, there was ZERO innovation at CES. Nothing at all that was a game changer like Google Glass, just a bunch of "mee too" rehashes of the exact same junk from last year.
Re:You can decide to ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Car analogy fail. Licensing a car, and paying taxes on the car, goes partially to the construction and upkeep of the roads that car needs. (E.g. you don't pay those same taxes on an off road farm use vehicle, or necessarily even register it.) But the road analogy is the internet, not the publisher's servers.
Paying the manufacturer to play the game on their servers is a better analogy. You use the shared resources, you pay for their upkeep.
Paying the manufacturer to check in with their servers to bless your local copy so it can run on your local machine is the violation of principles, and probably U.S. law (see the Doctrine of First Sale.)
You also mentioned the "I'm online 100% of the time anyway", as if the convenience somehow makes it OK that they're violating you. It only makes it so simple for them to enforce that they don't get complaints from people like you, but it does not make it principled.
Re:You can decide to ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
not buy it.
The good ideas/products will stay, the bad ones will die away. That's how evolution works.
That's why the Amiga, which came multi-tasking/color graphics/stereo sound/hardware accelerators out-of-the-box with a linear 64-bit memory system took over the world instead and the competing IBM PC AT with its lack of media outputs and feeble awkward 16-bit segmented addressing immediately tanked.
Re:You can decide to ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Principled"? The principle is perfectly reasonable. A lot of people have no scruples when it comes to acquiring software. That's why the content companies want some form of DRM. We all know DRM doesn't work, but that's besides the point. The content providers want something done. Steam does that. And even though Steam DRM is broken, we can still get our games there (and it's far, far more convenient being able to download from their central servers to any machine you want, without typing in license keys, blah blah). I think Valve have done their best with the reality that we are faced with.
Re:You can decide to ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Software that phones home to make sure you didn't rip it off is cheaper than software that has to be priced to take into account the fact that it can and will be ripped off.
Oh, now see, that's just funny. You were trying to make a joke there, right? Because plenty of PC software that doesn't "phone home" is out there, and quite a bit of it is cheaper than the crapware that does. See: Anything sold on GOG.com.
What you're buying is a service that happens to involve a licensed piece of software. If you want the exact same flavor of game to run without phoning home, start up a game company that charges enough per copy to cover piracy losses, and see how it goes.
Oh. You weren't trying to make a joke. That's kinda sad. As I mentioned above, GOG.com seems to be doing pretty well. But you go ahead and accept phone-home-ware ... and see what happens when the game company goes out of business or decides to stop supporting the activation servers.