The Swamp

Sabo wrote:So, Apple made a big announcement yesterday about some lame updates to the iPhone (sans headphone jack, because it takes "courage" to force your user base to spend more money, but whatever), lame updates for the stupid Apple Watch no one uses and "AirPods", which are wireless ear buds that probably will be lost a few minutes after you wear them.

Fortunately our friends at the Guardian had a good take on Apple's short-sightedness with having wireless ear buds.

The beauty of the headphone cable is just like the beauty of a tampon string: it is there to help you keep track of a very important item, and help you fish it out of whatever nook and cranny it might have fallen into. Apple's apparent blindness to this blindingly obvious problem is perplexing.

Well said, Guardian writer. Well said.

I am at the point where I would like to switch to the "other" kind of smart phone. I have had problems getting the charger to connect to my latest iPhone 6 for nearly the entire time I've had it.

But at this point I have seven years worth of apps, data, topographical maps, waypoints, photos, etc. on my iPhone. If I switch to a Samsung or whatever, would I have to buy all those apps again and start from scratch? I have googled a little and found ways to transfer music and contacts, but not apps.

Steve of phpBB wrote:

Sabo wrote:So, Apple made a big announcement yesterday about some lame updates to the iPhone (sans headphone jack, because it takes "courage" to force your user base to spend more money, but whatever), lame updates for the stupid Apple Watch no one uses and "AirPods", which are wireless ear buds that probably will be lost a few minutes after you wear them.

Fortunately our friends at the Guardian had a good take on Apple's short-sightedness with having wireless ear buds.

The beauty of the headphone cable is just like the beauty of a tampon string: it is there to help you keep track of a very important item, and help you fish it out of whatever nook and cranny it might have fallen into. Apple's apparent blindness to this blindingly obvious problem is perplexing.

Well said, Guardian writer. Well said.

I am at the point where I would like to switch to the "other" kind of smart phone. I have had problems getting the charger to connect to my latest iPhone 6 for nearly the entire time I've had it.

But at this point I have seven years worth of apps, data, topographical maps, waypoints, photos, etc. on my iPhone. If I switch to a Samsung or whatever, would I have to buy all those apps again and start from scratch? I have googled a little and found ways to transfer music and contacts, but not apps.

I'm in this same boat too. No headphone jack is the Rubicon for me with Apple products. I'm not in need of a new phone now, but when it comes around next time, I'll need to know the best way. This what I hate about digital media. I've purchased hundreds of dollars of music through iTunes. Am I fucked now if I want to transfer that music to a non-Apple device?

I don't know if it still works, and its a pain in the ass, but you used to be able to burn down from iTunes then reupload wherever to break the chain.

mister d wrote:I don't know if it still works, and its a pain in the ass, but you used to be able to burn down from iTunes then reupload wherever to break the chain.

I've seen that presented as a way to transfer music. But could iOS apps work in the other operating system.

(I don't even know - is the other operating system Android?)

BSF21 wrote:No headphone jack is the Rubicon for me with Apple products?

Me too. I'm ready for a new phone, but ima gunna get a 6se. I bet by the time I'm ready for the next one, Apple will have reversed this no headphone jack bullshit. If not, then it's blackberry time for me.

howard wrote:

BSF21 wrote:No headphone jack is the Rubicon for me with Apple products?

Me too. I'm ready for a new phone, but ima gunna get a 6se. I bet by the time I'm ready for the next one, Apple will have reversed this no headphone jack bullshit. If not, then it's blackberry time for me.

Blackberry? Aren't they really unreliable? I was just reading about someone who went through something like 8 Blackberries in a couple of years.

Can't remember who ...

And a friend whose company still uses them said they're probably going to stop because they're not convinced Blackberry sees itself as having much of a future.

Steve of phpBB wrote:

Sabo wrote:So, Apple made a big announcement yesterday about some lame updates to the iPhone (sans headphone jack, because it takes "courage" to force your user base to spend more money, but whatever), lame updates for the stupid Apple Watch no one uses and "AirPods", which are wireless ear buds that probably will be lost a few minutes after you wear them.

Fortunately our friends at the Guardian had a good take on Apple's short-sightedness with having wireless ear buds.

The beauty of the headphone cable is just like the beauty of a tampon string: it is there to help you keep track of a very important item, and help you fish it out of whatever nook and cranny it might have fallen into. Apple's apparent blindness to this blindingly obvious problem is perplexing.

Well said, Guardian writer. Well said.

I am at the point where I would like to switch to the "other" kind of smart phone. I have had problems getting the charger to connect to my latest iPhone 6 for nearly the entire time I've had it.

But at this point I have seven years worth of apps, data, topographical maps, waypoints, photos, etc. on my iPhone. If I switch to a Samsung or whatever, would I have to buy all those apps again and start from scratch? I have googled a little and found ways to transfer music and contacts, but not apps.

For Photos, I recommend the Google Photos app. It downloads from your phone to your google account. On Apps? I got nothing.

For apps as far as I know you just gotta re-download and setup them all. I have an Android tablet and an iOS phone and I looked for any kind of way to synch over data but nothing exists as far as I know. Though I didn't stress too much since there's only a handful of apps I want to run on the tablet anyway.

Not much new to add, but add my voice to those pissed at fucking Apple. The headphone/earbud cable that worked in your uncle Howard's 1980s Walkman still works in all your devices. All headphones, all devices - compatible. Now, Apple wants to fuck all that in the ass and force obsolescence as it regards their products - for no good reason. When floppy disks and dvds and cds etc. became obsolete, it was because a new way or a new product was better. Here, things are not better. Eliminating the universally accepted headphone jack makes for a patently worse product, and Apple does it for no good reason except to make you buy more unnecessary stuff.

Worst part of this is that I will no longer be able to identify douche hipsters at a safe distance by the white cords emanating from their ears.

sancarlos wrote:Not much new to add, but add my voice to those pissed at fucking Apple. The headphone/earbud cable that worked in your uncle Howard's 1980s Walkman still works in all your devices. All headphones, all devices - compatible. Now, Apple wants to fuck all that in the ass and force obsolescence as it regards their products - for no good reason. When floppy disks and dvds and cds etc. became obsolete, it was because a new way or a new product was better. Here, things are not better. Eliminating the universally accepted headphone jack makes for a patently worse product, and Apple does it for no good reason except to make you buy more unnecessary stuff.

Your comparison is a little off since people complained about getting rid of literally all those things. I remember about how Apple was going to go out of business because they elected to not have a disk drive for the iMac.

I don't necessarily agree with the decision to get rid of the headphone jack, just saying all the Sturm und Drang every time there's a new model of something is pretty tiresome. Someone was going to be the first to get rid of removable media disk drives. If not Apple taking that hit your phone might have a tiny little drive in it because heaven forbid a piece of consumer electronics doesn't have a disk drive.

sancarlos wrote:The headphone/earbud cable that worked in your uncle Howard's 1980s Walkman still works in all your devices.

Ironically (or not), I never owned a Walkman. I did have a sweet Panasonic boombox 'convertible' where the cassette player section popped out to function as a stand-alone walkman like player. But I never liked the idea of walking around with headphones/earbuds listening to music.

Until the iPod. I happened to be buying a new desktop mac when they introduced the pod, and they were offering iPods for only $50 with a desktop, so I bit. And changed my listening habits. Since then, can't imagine not riding the subway or exercising w/o portable music.

So solid Microsoft Outlook Bug at my company....The holiday calendar puts election day as November 1st this year.

Nice change of pace this morning, where the Swamp was up but most of the rest of the internet was inaccessible (for me, at least).

Yeah, big hack-induced DNS outage apparently. I was ready to ask Dave to talk to asmallorange and get them to hook up Twitter again

Sorry, for me should have been "for my part of the US" or something.

Does anyone here know how to copy music from an iPhone to a PC (and then back to another iPhone)? I got a replacement phone, but I've tried backing it up three times, and each time a few hundred songs won't copy over. The guy at the Apple Store says that not all music will physically copy over when it is backed up, especially music that was not originally purchased through iTunes. He unofficially recommended that I try Senuti or another program that can copy music from a phone.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks.

Steve of phpBB wrote:Does anyone here know how to copy music from an iPhone to a PC (and then back to another iPhone)? I got a replacement phone, but I've tried backing it up three times, and each time a few hundred songs won't copy over. The guy at the Apple Store says that not all music will physically copy over when it is backed up, especially music that was not originally purchased through iTunes. He unofficially recommended that I try Senuti or another program that can copy music from a phone.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks.

Yeah, I've used that in the past. I used something else too when I was a PC guy but I can't remember what the name of it was for the life of me.

If the Apple Store kid recommends it, he's likely recommended it before and knows it'll do the job you want it to do.

Spend the $19 though, otherwise you probably have to transfer something like 10 songs at a time, instead of dragging and dropping the entire database.

EnochRoot wrote:

Steve of phpBB wrote:Does anyone here know how to copy music from an iPhone to a PC (and then back to another iPhone)? I got a replacement phone, but I've tried backing it up three times, and each time a few hundred songs won't copy over. The guy at the Apple Store says that not all music will physically copy over when it is backed up, especially music that was not originally purchased through iTunes. He unofficially recommended that I try Senuti or another program that can copy music from a phone.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks.

Yeah, I've used that in the past. I used something else too when I was a PC guy but I can't remember what the name of it was for the life of me.

If the Apple Store kid recommends it, he's likely recommended it before and knows it'll do the job you want it to do.

Spend the $19 though, otherwise you probably have to transfer something like 10 songs at a time, instead of dragging and dropping the entire database.

I ended up using Touchcopy. Apparently Senuti is more for Mac and not PC. It worked.

Getting my son a Raspberry Pi kit for the holidays. Figure he and I can build some stuff together. First project will be the game emulator. Anyone have other good projects (and decent sources for old game ROMs)

Wlu_lax6 you can just google them, for old stuff it won't be too hard to find. They'll be kind of annoying to download, or you can go on pirate bay if you just want a shitload of roms all at once (though torrents are usually pretty terrible for individual roms)

wlu_lax6 wrote:Getting my son a Raspberry Pi kit for the holidays. Figure he and I can build some stuff together. First project will be the game emulator. Anyone have other good projects (and decent sources for old game ROMs)

I'd also order some retro style controllers of Amazon (or other internet store of your choice.) RetroPi is the place to start on the emulator if you weren't aware. https://retropie.org.uk/

This make use of post has a good list of past systems and where to DL the ROMs: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/retro-gami ... o-know-si/

There are lots of Pi for kids stuff all over Google, not sure how old the boy is, and what his interest in programming or just having fun with computers so can't point to specifics.

Just got an Amazon Echo for a gift. Anyone else have one? Any tips or tricks or suggestions?

brian wrote:Just got an Amazon Echo for a gift. Anyone else have one? Any tips or tricks or suggestions?

Have one. Glad I bought the dot. It is a really nice radio when cooking and cleaning as ours is in the kitchen/dining area. Kids like asking it silly questions to get pre-rigged response ("Execute order 66", "meaning of life", "Why do birds suddenly appear", etc). I use the timers and alarms frequently. One of my plans during the holidays is to spend some time getting my IFTT integrations set to help with some basic automation.

so what is raspberry pi and why should I get it?

Brontoburglar wrote:so what is raspberry pi and why should I get it?

It's a cheap mini computer that with a little bit of know-how can do some cool shit. Most common applications are old school game console or as a music/media player. XMBC/KODI runs really well on it. Allows you to consolidate all your digital media in one place, and add online streams.

I've seen projects that people turn it into an Echo or Google Home like device.

Rush2112 wrote:

Brontoburglar wrote:so what is raspberry pi and why should I get it?

It's a cheap mini computer that with a little bit of know-how can do some cool shit. Most common applications are old school game console or as a music/media player. XMBC/KODI runs really well on it. Allows you to consolidate all your digital media in one place, and add online streams.

I've seen projects that people turn it into an Echo or Google Home like device.

Here is a article on the stuff you can do. I am viewing this as a simple electronic project that I can do with my son. See if he gets the urge to muck with it and not destroy our home useful computer. Weather station and home automation are probably on the list of projects we tackle after retro pi.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/25-fun-thin ... pberry-pi/

brian wrote:Just got an Amazon Echo for a gift. Anyone else have one? Any tips or tricks or suggestions?

We have a Tap and use it mostly for music, but it works well as a timer and weather/sports updates. I haven't played with it much beyond that and we really have no other "smart" devices in the house. I think that for music, unless you just want to listen to the radio (via TuneIn) you probably need Amazon Prime or Spotify Premium, or at least a Pandora account, to get the most out of it.

Just got a Dot when they were on sale for $40 and put it upstairs with a good quality Bluetooth speaker (which had been sitting unused since we got the Tap) for easy access to music while doing housework.

Anyone familiar enough with Flickr/Creative Commons to know exactly what

NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

means? Does resizing/cropping count?

Ryan wrote:Anyone familiar enough with Flickr/Creative Commons to know exactly what

NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

means? Does resizing/cropping count?

I wouldn't think so.

rass wrote:

brian wrote:Just got an Amazon Echo for a gift. Anyone else have one? Any tips or tricks or suggestions?

We have a Tap and use it mostly for music, but it works well as a timer and weather/sports updates. I haven't played with it much beyond that and we really have no other "smart" devices in the house. I think that for music, unless you just want to listen to the radio (via TuneIn) you probably need Amazon Prime or Spotify Premium, or at least a Pandora account, to get the most out of it.

Just got a Dot when they were on sale for $40 and put it upstairs with a good quality Bluetooth speaker (which had been sitting unused since we got the Tap) for easy access to music while doing housework.

What's the difference between the Echo and Dot? I don't get why one is 150+ and they keep trying to give away Dots.

BSF21 wrote:

rass wrote:

brian wrote:Just got an Amazon Echo for a gift. Anyone else have one? Any tips or tricks or suggestions?

We have a Tap and use it mostly for music, but it works well as a timer and weather/sports updates. I haven't played with it much beyond that and we really have no other "smart" devices in the house. I think that for music, unless you just want to listen to the radio (via TuneIn) you probably need Amazon Prime or Spotify Premium, or at least a Pandora account, to get the most out of it.

Just got a Dot when they were on sale for $40 and put it upstairs with a good quality Bluetooth speaker (which had been sitting unused since we got the Tap) for easy access to music while doing housework.

What's the difference between the Echo and Dot? I don't get why one is 150+ and they keep trying to give away Dots.

Echo comes with a big speaker built in. Dot has a little speaker, but you can pair it with a bluetooth speaker or go headphone jack into it. The Echo also has a better microphone. It can pickup your voice from farther away.

wlu_lax6 wrote:Getting my son a Raspberry Pi kit for the holidays. Figure he and I can build some stuff together. First project will be the game emulator. Anyone have other good projects (and decent sources for old game ROMs)

have you tried this?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/

So....anyone got any experience writing webservers in python? Using tornado websockets? And any feelings on using JSON vs BSON to increase throughput?

(I know...its a long shot, but I'm desperate)

DaveInSeattle wrote:So....anyone got any experience writing webservers in python? Using tornado websockets? And any feelings on using JSON vs BSON to increase throughput?

(I know...its a long shot, but I'm desperate)

I'm familiar with JSON but the rest is lost on me.

DaveInSeattle wrote:So....anyone got any experience writing webservers in python? Using tornado websockets? And any feelings on using JSON vs BSON to increase throughput?

(I know...its a long shot, but I'm desperate)

Why would you write your own webserver? That problem has been solved quite well a few times.