The future sucks

[rmgill]

You don't have a Zune?

[Ssnake]

It wouldn't play my Hasselhoff tapes.

[Stargrunt6]

3 hours ago, Ssnake said:

I paid for a "lifetime ad-free" version of Muzio Player, and ... well, the software developer sells out to some investment firm (Red Sky Labs ... I don't know about you; to me this sounds decidedly villain-y), and they do the Vader move and tell me to pray that they won't alter the deal more.

https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Red_Sky_Labs_Muzio_Player_Premium_post-purchase_terms_change

Their idea was a $7.- weekly subscription just to stay ad-free. I don't know what these guys are smoking, but no MP3 player, no matter how good it is at just playing local files stored on local memory is worth $364.-, let alone per year.

The new ad-free player is more basic, I lost my playlists but nothing else, so .... what's left to do is to pray for their agonizing and slow death, I guess.

I have a Neato robovac who's maker went out of business, so the app stopped working. The vac still works, it's just harder to control.

[Ssnake]

I would never buy a household appliance that depends on an app.

 

I concede that apps can make things more convenient, but not for the price of complete dependency. I also acknowledge that sometimes circumstances change that force you to renegotiate terms and conditions with your customers. That should, of course, be the final recourse after all other options have been exhausted.

But it seems to become more and more customary to retroactively and unilaterally change terms and conditions (never to the advantage of the customer; just think of Unity3D).

In my case, they even refuse adequate communication about it. --- Okay - there isn't much to communicate. New owner shoves in obnoxious ads that play in the middle of a song, and demands completely delusionary extortion payments to get rid of it ($7 per week). So, there is no way how you can spin this as a good thing (TM) for your customers. In that sense it's just rational not to discuss this at all. But I just don't see how this could possibly become a profitable business case. Why did they buy the Muzio Player in the first place, if they were planning to run this into the ground? And if they didn't plan to run this into the ground, what kind of bizarre thought processes went on that made them think this would somehow work out?

Why not start your business plan with stealing underpants in phase I?

[Mr King]

My main issue with apps besides the ones you mentioned is the fact you have to sell your digital soul to use them. Every app is another piece of software weaponizing your smartphone and collecting your private data and reporting back to faceless corporate entities who sell it and share it with government/s

[Mr King]

This was posted in another thread and I thought I would repost it here for political discussion since this is the FFZ

I don't understand how any reasonable person would be excited to have their weapons digitized. Any digitized weapon is going to have back doors and like digitized vehicles, the government will be able to render them inoperable en masse at will.

I imagine it is only a matter of time before there is a serious push from within the government to force these digitized weapons on people and make the sale of all others illegal, with older non digitized weapons grandfathered in as a "compromise".

 

Edited February 27, 2025 by Mr King

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, Mr King said:

My main issue with apps besides the ones you mentioned is the fact you have to sell your digital soul to use them. Every app is another piece of software weaponizing your smartphone and collecting your private data and reporting back to faceless corporate entities who sell it and share it with government/s

Setup firewall rules that stop the devices getting out of your home network. You can reach them though. 
 

Doesn’t solve app issues but does the device reporting issue. 

[Mr King]

[Ssnake]

A reduction of accent to "intelligible" would suffice.

[Ivanhoe]

Call centers worldwide should focus on minimizing background noise and the inexplicable digital noise in their VOIP systems.

Last week I called the regional toll road authority to try to track down an invoice for recent toll road usage. Geographic distance of the call was maybe 75 miles. Acoustic distance was about 95 years. We don't have to live like this.