Y2HH

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 12:50 PM) Theres not a ton of retail or restaurants so I was hoping that would improve a bit, or start to grow a town. But the downside is the kids around there arent quite doing what we did which was band together, spend your days and nights outside and have some real summer friends. I see kids inside or sometimes out on the boat for a short period of time. There is something to be said about family bonding in a small cottage in the summer with no technology. I already witness this with the people I go up there to see...everyone used to be out in the water playing, etc...these days they're in the house playing No-Friend-O Wii. Most of this next generation is setting themselves up to be the most anti-social people of all time.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 12:21 PM) Good memory that is correct. Tons of southside folks up there, but now its changing and people are putting multimillion dollar houses in the place where tiny cottages were before. Which means the area will slowly begin to get boring over the years.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 12:41 PM) You can play windows games on an Apple, its not that hard. Sure you can...but most people don't buy Apple computers specifically to do so. I have a Win7x64 partition on my iMac, I sometimes straight boot into that or use Parallels for games that don't work in OSX native, but most of what I play works in OSX.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:23 AM) Its not the degree that makes the person, its the person who makes the degree. As for money, like Rock said, you cant take it with you. I dont really care that much about it, I make enough to live what I consider is a fun life, and that is all that really matters. No point in being the richest guy/gal in the graveyard... That said, it's also not fun not having money for emergency situations/emergency costs/repairs on cars/houses...I save a little...I keep myself in the black, but I also spend money and have fun.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:01 AM) If I am Apple die hard and I'm looking for a new laptop with cash to blow, I'd totally buy the new Macbook for $900 more. I found this funny...it might be able to play Crysis. I see that it comes with a GTX 650M with the newest Ivy Bridge CPUs. I'm fairly sure the 650M might be an add-on option though. I believe all Apple laptops in the pro line come with 2 graphics cards -- one for regular business type application processing, and one that kicks on if you need graphics power. In this case, the 650M.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:52 AM) This is the case with almost every new Apple product. You and I both know that there are a group of people who will buy anything with an Apple logo slapped on it. Usually that group isn't into 2k+ purchases, though. They're fine with spending 299$ on a new phone or 499$ on a tablet...but not 2k+.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:45 AM) Well, there's always dumb people regardless of degree, but the degree certainly helps. You know what helps more than a degree? A degree that's actually worth something to the world.

Whatever the case may be, the people have spoken and it's apparent that the laptop crowd is willing to pay a premium for an awesome screen/sleek engineering... This new Macbook Pro with retina has already slipped to a 2-3 week ship time...which means they're selling like hotcakes.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:38 AM) I never said the technology sucked or that it wasn't useful. If you're paying $2100 for a laptop, it better be able to play Crysis 3. The people that buy laptops like this aren't doing it to play Windows only games. They're doing it for photography/graphics and/or the occasional game...but maybe no games at all.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:10 AM) Most third party applications aren't even optimized to use the screen. So you're basically paying the premium to use Apple's currently optimized applications. And?! It's about driving technology forward, which Apple is doing right here. 3rd party companies cannot optimize their software to support hardware that doesn't exist...so are you seriously knocking Apple for giving them access to technology that would allow it?! Wow. Take the blinders off, Mr. Apple Hater. When they do optimize their applications for this new display, it will look amazing, especially for photographers, graphics majors, etc. You may not realize it, but this release, and their "retina" screen technology in general, has pushed screen quality forward in a way nobody bothered to do before they did it. Today, in direct response to apples "retina" phones, you have competing Android phones now using upwards of 300 ppi screens at much higher resolutions...until Apple started pushing higher density screens, nobody cared about them...all they did was up resolution, but the screen quality/density was still lacking.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:06 AM) I know it's chic to say things like this but I haven't seen anything more than anecdotes to back it up and frankly I don't believe it. I just think some forms of entertainment have gotten cheaper and replaced other forms of entertainment. If you look at inflation-adjusted expenditures on entertainment, they were the same in 2009 as they were in 1989. For some reason this data is really hard to find before 1984 but the BLS gave me an easy 1984 comparison here. If you look at the columns that have really changed...we spend somewhat less on food, significantly less on clothing, and generally less on transportation. That is balanced by an increase in spending on housing, and substantial increases in spending on healthcare, insurance, and retirement/pensions (the things that have been stripped out of the government safety net since the 1980s). How is it "chic" or ancedotal for me to say entertainment spending is through choice and not necessity? Also note, that some "entertainment spending" isn't considered entertainment spending. For example, having an iPhone is NOT necessary. A 20$ per month feature phone can make phone calls and text...but the 100$ a month iPhone is more fun...and 80% of that bill SHOULD be in entertainment spending, but it's not because it's a phone bill. It's NOT necessary to have a 200+$ cable bill every month. It's simply not. That's not an anecdote...it's real. People who complain about bills most often have a 200$ cable bill, and that's not even mentioning the movies they go see every weekend, or rent. Also, a good television costs a lot of money...I see a LOT of people with MULTIPLE 50+ inch TV's in the same boat...

I wasn't really sure where else to put this, but a bunch of separate but related threads on Reddit (and other similar service) got me wondering about the modern family dynamic and how everyone appears to believe how much things have changed for the worse... For example, you'll often hear thing like, "Before Reagan, a family could be raised on a single income...today, it takes two college degrees to do the same, not to mention the mountain of debt accumulated from those educations...", etc...of course, many of these are pointless claims riddled with political rhetoric. That aside, I wonder what there may be too this, and if it's the people, not necessarily the time... It's obvious it costs more to raise a family than it did back in the day, but much of this is through choice. I remember growing up and my family had no cell phone bills, no cable bill, one television etc...so many of these added expenses are through modern choice versus actual necessity. The reason I'm wondering is because I know a LOT of couples that both have degrees, and often make more than I do because of their dual incomes, but seem unable to do what I do on a single income...raise a family, pay the mortgage, pay my bills, etc... Sometimes I wonder if it's the person/people versus what they ACTUALLY have, but think they don't have...because they often spend their money so trivially, they don't even realize they're doing it. I do realize that some people accumulated a mountain of student loan debt to get degrees that would take forever to pay off that debt...but didn't they know BEFORE they graduated the average of what such a degree would pay them and think about that?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 08:41 AM) I just find it crazy that it took this long for them to get free turn by turn. That's a feature I use very often on my phones. That's because they used Google maps for their built in mapping application, and it was in Google's *short term* interest to take their sweet time adding turn by turn to their competitors iOS application. Of course, it was shortsighted for Google to do so...because now that Apple has effectively jettisoned their maps app in place of their own, Google has now lost pending licensing agreements. iOS users generate 4 TIMES (possibly more) the amount of money FOR Google than devices based on their own Android software... "April 06, 2012, 7:33 AM — Mobile devices running Apple's iOS are more profitable for Google than Android devices, analysis of data revealed in court shows. Last week the Guardian reported that according to figures revealed as part of a proposed settlement in an ongoing patent dispute case with Oracle, Google makes four times as much from an iOS device than it does from devices running its own Android OS. The court documents reveal that Google has made about $543m from Android between its launch in 2008 and 2011. We know that by the end of 2011 around 200 million Android devices had been activated, with around 90 million of these activations taking place in the last two years."

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 07:55 PM) $2000 for a laptop? O.o Yes, with a LCD that probably costs upwards of 1500$ alone. Do me a favor, go find me a 15.4" laptop with a 2880x1800 screen at 220ppi and let me know what it costs. Odds are nobody else even offers anything close to that resolution, and if they did...they'd also cost a lot. If you're going to nitpick the Apple tax, which is what you're doing...use the Mac Pro as a better example, it's clearly overpriced and contains nothing you couldn't get elsewhere for less...aside from style that is, the Mac Pro really offers no real substance. Whereas, the retina display Macbook Pro offers something nobody else does...so the premium is at least temporarily justified.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 11:37 PM) Without turn by turn directions Apple's maps thing probably sucks compared to googles, and that's what they're doing to the people who don't have a 4s. Ridiculous that turn by turn is only on the 4s Apple's maps in iOS6 probably won't even be available until the iPhone5 is out...that will give 2 generations support for turn by turn (4S and 5). As it is now, NO iPhone gets turn by turn with the Google maps software they currently use...so I don't see how you can possibly pretend this is a negative. Currently, nobody gets turn by turn unless they buy a GPS specific app, such as Garmin, etc...for over 50$. After the change, 4S and 5 users will get turn by turn via built in maps software.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 05:14 PM) I thought Android 4.0 was a huge leap from 2.3 in terms of user interface and performance. 2.3 still felt like it wasn't good enough, I'm very satisfied with 4.0 so far. If you use Cyanogen you'd have had that performance all along. The Cyanogen 4.0 is probably 50% faster than the release version, too.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 04:32 PM) So, I'm looking to get an Ipad. I've been pc based, but the applications I'm looking for just aren't available on Android. I'm going to be using the Ipad for music production, web browsing, games and Netflix. Storage will be an issue because the Ipad doesn't support USB hard drives. Is there an alternative for storage? Does anybody have recommendations for which model I should be looking into? I have a limited budget and would love to get one used. Refurbished 16 GB Ipad 2's are pretty reasonable, but the lack of storage scares me. Any guidance is appreciated. You use offload data you aren't using at that time by synching it to your PC/MAC or use Dropbox much the same way. Storage space does mean something, so if you can get 32gigs, I'd recommend it...but 16 gigs is still quite a bit of space for a portable device, and for most things you can always offload the data onto a PC as I mentioned above to clear up space.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 03:20 PM) http://gizmodo.com/5917359/ios-6-new-featu...iphone-and-ipad I'm not that impressed. The Passbook thing looks pretty cool, but I don't know how useful it'll actually be. Most of the new features are just minor updates to previous functions. iPad 1 will not get this update. There is nothing to be impressed by...much like new Android updates...it's evolution of an existing product, not a dramatic revolution like Windows Mobile, which brings another entire slew of issues, like non compatibility, etc. Some of the changes in IOS6 are pretty nice...but they're still minor tweaks/updates, not radical shifts in the way things work.

QUOTE (knightni @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 01:52 PM) These abbreviations took me a few minutes to figure out. It's like a crossword puzzle with your posts lately. Ya, those abbreviations have to go.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 09:31 AM) I'm actually very anxious for Microsoft's platform to take off a bit more. Right now, apps are very limited. As soon as they start getting more apps, I might consider it. The Metro UI interface is great for phones IMO (PCs, not so much). They either need to take phone design in house like Apple, or get more 3rd party manufacturers involved...the Nokia marriage is a failure at it's inception...and they're doing nothing to push the envelope despite all the promises made. The "new" Nokia Lumina that recently made it's big debut was already 2+ year old hardware at release...and while the "design" was sleek, the internal components were from 2010...which is just absurd for a phone that came out in 2012. Microsoft needs to levy much stricter control over the hardware if this the route they wish to take. Otherwise, they need to go out of their way to get others involved to force Nokia into using better components. I'm actually very impressed by the WM7 OS in and of itself...but the hardware it's on is no where close to as good as the latest Android devices, let alone Apples iPhone4s which is nearly a year old now.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 11, 2012 -> 08:43 AM) Time to herd the sheep. Let's just be glad this isn't pre-07' anymore...where there was only one choice for a "Smartphone OS", which wasn't very "smart". Windows Mobile 4.x, 5.x and 6.x were nearly identical in features, non-intuitive and generally just bad in design...take it from a user that used all 3, on multiple devices back in the day when I was searching for a non "feature" phone that would suffice as a portable. Then came iOS and Android around 2007-2008, and things change drastically -- for the better -- in the smartphone industry. Microsoft finally followed up with a good release of their own in WM7 a few years later, a drastic change/rewrite from their previously terrible implementation of windows mobile. That said, I'm happy iOS, Android and WMx exist. And it doesn't matter which you use.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 01:12 PM) We get those #14's (fuzzy eyebrows we call them) in the house here. Not even sure what they are - centipedes, millipedes, or something else? What do they eat? They're centipedes. Far less threatening looking than the disgustingly creepy millipede.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 01:11 PM) There's always a way. On the Galaxy S I disassembled a few months ago, the antenna was on the side of the phone, with a connector on the bottom. But that connector was part of a larger multi-purpose chip that included sensors for the capacitive keys, the microphone, etc. If you don't have capacitive buttons ( or buttons period), that chip can be much smaller. I'm fairly positive they can move the antenna elsewhere and still get it to work. The antenna system of the HTC Sensation is etched on its back cover (although that had a death grip issue). Plus, didn't the iPhone 4 have an antenna system that was wrapped around the phone or something? That caused some issues during launch. Of course over time, as technology changes, designs can change, too. But right now components/antenna require too much space to allow screens to extend that far. Earpieces/microphones, etc...are all a current reality design teams have to deal with, can't just slap a screen over the earpiece, or you'd not be able to hear...not to mention you'd have a hole in your screen, which is a distraction. Also, when you hold the phone horizontally for gaming, or movie watching...you now need a bezel on the top/bottom of the phone, which your design removed. As for cell phone "death grip" issues, yes...the original iPhone4 had a problem because they put the antenna bridge in a spot where people could easily touch it, however, death grip is a signaling reality that exists on ALL phones...Apple simply made it VERY easy to present to people when they moved their antenna to the external metal in order to save internal space.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 12:57 PM) Even though this one had a ton of money in it...I'm not quite sure the results would have been any different had there been an even spending field. It matches up so closely with the results from 18 months ago. I agree. Not only did many Wisconsinites disagree with the recall...but the Democrats ran an opponent that already lost once. Were they honestly expecting different results?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 12:46 PM) That's more or less on the side of the phones though, not the top and bottom. I see a lot of wasted space on the bottom of most phones. That's because of components beneath those areas require open space, particularly the cellular antennas...putting stuff (such as screens) in front of them impedes the signals to/from the devices.