Agreed on the GUI.

NT 3.1 at least had modern underpinnings, and using the Norton Desktop on it instead of the Windows Shell made it much like what we got with “Chicago” - the 95/Win2k UI.

Wow, you got me thinking about that stuff and remembering Norton Desktop. I’d forgotten ever using it on NT back then. Gonna have to go look for a copy now.

Certainly not from malware. The play store is the central repository of Android malware.

The first Android was made about 1999/2000, I’d read about it in a trade mag just before I was laid off from one company (they provided that trade mag, which is why I know the date). The idea of running Linux for a phone OS was intriguiging at the tomr, as we were doing some Linux testing ourselves.

At that same time (late 90’s), we were already deploying full-color Palm Pilots with wifi, and eagerly waiting for the integrated phone models whi were projected to be released about 2000.

I was using a Treo with a touch screen before iPhones existed, and I was a late adopter in about 2003 because I don’t do early versions, I wanted CDMA, and didn’t want the Palm-like flip cover thing. The Treo was kind of the first bar-type smart phone, just rounded. I used to watch movies on that thing on flights. I kept multiple SD cards so I could swap them out (they ejected from the top, no opening the case, no power cycle).

I (well, my deployment team) had deployed thousands of Palm Pilots with wifi access, and then Treos, which synced to a desktop app, in the early 2000s, probably 5 years before iPhone existed.

It could send/receive emails, SMS, calendar, load all sorts of apps from simple games like checkers to Monopoly. It did GPS and mapping with a third party SD card.

It had a third party office app that is now available on Android. I used a shopping app that could sync to an account online. It could browse the web (though the web browsing was pretty awful at the time). It could send data wirelessly to people nearby using infrared.

It had a camera (a shitty one) that could also do video. It used a data connection with the cell provider. It had Bluetooth, and could send Palm apps to other devices with it.

There were versions that had Windows Mobile on them, they were pretty good.

I moved to Android from Treo in 2009.

Smartphones weren’t a new idea, Palm had been on it since the mid 90’s, just waiting for the phone tech to be small enough to pack into a Palm Pilot.

Apple never leads, despite what their PR is so good at promulgating.

What they are excellent at is watching the market and timing their entry perfectly, with a product people want, giving the impression that they lead the market. And I don’t say this as a criticism, what they do is brilliant, and the products they release are usually good at what they’re intended to do.

I really like their design at times. The iPhone, from a physicality stand point, is brilliantly balanced, shaped, sized. Unfortunately iOS just doesn’t meet my personal needs.

That and other people were already working to use what PARC had developed.

But I’ll give Apple the credit for being the first to implement a personal computer that made computing much more approachable, with the MAC.

It was years before Windows had anything close in Windows 3.1, which frankly wasn’t actually all that close.

NT 3.1 is probably the first Windows OS that had the consistency of Mac OS, with modern (non-DOS) underpinnings.

And the reality is it was heavily influenced by the DEC Alpha system because MS had hired much of the Alpha team from DEC. Technet Mag had a great article about it circa 1996.

Fines for this stuff need to work like courtroom penalty of destroying records: assume the records were the worst-possible evidence.

Let’s assume most-possible profit, make the fine 10x that.

Then whatever BS “liar figuring” is done, it’ll still be a massive fine. One that can’t be escaped via bankruptcy.

This article, and everying about this subject, presumes EV is better than ICE. That’s the positive claim.

Show me the math, the studies. If it holds true, this should be easy. And, it would end the debate.

Data trumps. If the research is so overwhelmingly in favor of EVs, let’s publish that info everywhere for people to read, study, analyze. Lots easier to convince people with the information out there, warts and all.

Conventional ICE can last 30 years, with engine and trans rebuild, which is trivial from a materials standpoint.

We have multiple 30 year old ICE vehicles that still get 30mpg, have air conditioning and unlimited heat.

EV will never compete with that unless we find new ways to make batteries.

Hahahaha public transit.

Have you looked at the energy/environmental costs of trains or busses?

Hint: they both consume the same energy fully loaded or empty, as a start.

And train infrastructure is a massive user of concrete, steel, copper, etc.

So Ford will just split into smaller companies, become a source for engineering and manufacturing, with the smaller companies leasing design and manufacturing facilities.

I’m just an average idiot, but I can see how they’ll sidestep this stuff.

American here. Even in some northern US states we see - 20F in the winter.

I currently live where winter includes below freezing all the time, with temps approaching 0F frequently. I have friends with EVs, who can’t use their resistive heat (worst way to use battery power) in the winter or they can’t get to work and back, so they conserve power for window defrosting only.

We’re a long way from EV being viable. Wish people would admit that so we can have a proper conversation about it.

And if you read about Venus you’ll understand the greenhouse effect as observed on Venus isn’t applicable to earth.

Greenhouse Effect is a political football with no meaning.

Eleven years is no time at all.

EV simply will not be ready by then.

Non-sequiter.

Good point about being awake at the same time, and have sync conditions met.

I deal with that by using a computer at home as the always-on cloud.

Definitely something to consider for sync jobs.

It’s an encrypted network that’s overlaid on other networks. Wireguard, Tailscale, Hamachi (that’s an old one).

It’s a virtual network using encrypted links to appear logically like its’ own network. All your devices see each other, as if they were on the same LAN, even if they’re halfway around the world.

Lol, careful, you’ll waken the VW mob. They don’t like to hear what garbage VWs are.

Can’t give me one.

Oh they KNEW what they were doing and just didn’t give a fuck.

We need a People of Walmart equivalent for this bullshit. Start finding the designer/engineer/manager responsible for this garbage and shame them publicly.

How does this stuff pass any kind of Accessibility regs?

Oh ffs what a fucked up convoluted mess.

We need to find the engineer that designed this, and their managers who pushed it, and shame them People of Walmart style.

How is it people can willingly violate fundamental UI/UX rules?

As mentioned, how do these things pass Accessibility regs?

Post this over in Selfhosted - it’s right up their alley.

Some ideas, at a high level:

First you need/want a machine that can function as a media server, but also has low idle power consumption.

Second, a mechanism for secure access for streaming or syncing.

One simple, easy approach that isn’t streaming, but would require copying files first, then watching: install Resilio sync on your file server, share your media folder, and use Resilio on your mobile devices. Then you can (from your mobile device) browse the share with Resilio, select files to sync, and when sync is completed use a local app (say VLC) to watch it.

If you keep mobile-quality media beside your high-quality media, it’ll reduce sync time. After all, a phone doesn’t need 1080 resolution.

Alternative, use a VPN/Mesh network to maintain access to your home network (Wireguard/Tailscale), then use native tools to copy, or use media servers/players to watch via the encrypted connection.

Not an unfair comparison, though I find Obsidian overly complex/convoluted. But I think that comes with the territory when your design philosophy is very open extensibility and using standard document types rather than a proprietary binary format like ON.

Plus OneNote is 20 years old now, was extended (after MS bought it) to integrate with SharePoint (maybe it was designed that way, I don’t remember), so really is a 20th century piece of software. There are add-ons that greatly extend its capability (Onetastic, Gem, etc). So in a business environment the full desktop app with SharePoint is pretty impressive. To it’s credit, I have 15+ years and gigabytes of data in it, and have never (knock on wood) lost anything, moving it across perhaps a dozen systems.

All that said… I’m moving to Joplin, lol. Trying to get away from dependence on apps I don’t control (and I want a notebook that works on Linux too).

To sync to mobile devices, OneNote requires Onedrive (or setup your own SharePoint server, uggh). At least with Obsidian/Joplin, etc, I get to manage how things sync. And if I’m happy with the features in my current setup, I never have to change anything. Never know when MS will fuck up Onedrive sync, requiring a version of OneNote I can’t run, or has issues.