Random Thoughts Thread

[MrPopo]

The issue isn't the questions. He asks a question, we give him an answer, and then he goes "nuh uh!" That's the frustrating part.

[pierrot]

I get that people are frustrated, but I don't see him saying, "nuh uh." It looks a little to me like a type of miscommunication I see frequently in the STEM world, where one person asks someone else a question, potentially relying on some expertise, doesn't receive an answer he finds totally satisfactory, asks follow-up questions that are increasingly more challenging, and is met with increasingly more frustrated responses. In those situations, I find it's common for the person answering the questions to put all the burden on the person asking, without acknowledging any potential misplacement of frustration in not being able to effectively communicate something, or possible deficiency in how the subject is being explained or how it's understood by the person explaining it.

I don't want to pretend to be some master communicator here, but I think it's worth reading that last post of RCBH's again: He's asking for more examples of places where torrents are being used today, that would support the idea that they haven't become some (even more) niche utility in software distribution. I don't personally feel like answering that follow-up question, because I would have to put in some leg-work to find the answer. That's my prerogative, but I don't think the correct response is to jump down his throat about it. I don't think it's his mission to just be difficult. I think he's just looking to have a conversation, and potentially gain some new perspective. On a personal level, whether or not to engage in that might be the question, moving forward, no? I don't feel like he posts here all the often, to begin with.

No one here would respond to questions from their kids in this way, would they?

[marurun]

Pierrot, the problem is not asking questions. Their questions are making assumptions, and could easily be addressed by a quick visit to Wikipedia. And the underpinning assumptions are often wrong. And when our answers attempt to dispel those incorrect assumptions, they double down. That is what I perceive, anyway. RCBH has admitted in the past that they prefer having us summarize info to reading it in Wikipedia or Google, but I never took that as a compliment that we were good explainers so much as not wanting to go to the effort. Perhaps I am misinterpreting something, and if that is the case I am sorry.

[fastbilly1]

Alright I will jump in and take the bullet. The legal uses of bittorrent are all over even if you do not notice them. Blizzard uses it for patching in Diablo 3 and WoW, The World of X games by Wargaming all use it for patching, even EVE online uses it. If the program is always online, it allows the owner to distribute the workload to users and transfer the server power to actually handling the games. Taking those easy ones out of the picture, many universities use it to distribute very large files, Facebook and Twitter use it to update their servers, and DGMlive uses it to power their store. You just do not see it on because its baked into their software.

All of this and more can be obtained here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

As for popular, the Piratebay just recently was knocked out of the top 100 in Alexa rankings.

[noiseredux]

so my wife and I decided to finally cut cable about a month ago. We had attempted to do so earlier in the year and test drove the Hulu Live TV option but it was way too buggy. However, we recently tried out Direct TV Now's cheapest package, and have found it a low cost alternative to cable. Even with the monthly costs of Netflix and Hulu (and if you want to count Amazon Prime Video), we're saving considerable money by not having cable. And we've mostly just lost 150 channels that we never watched anyway.

Anyway, the point of this post is actually to ask if there's such a thing that lets me 'borrow' streaming movies from my local library via a Roku? We have a bunch of Rokus around the house, and I know that you can borrow ebooks/audiobooks/movies on a phone or tablet, but I can't seem to find anything about a library app that lets me actually borrow movies on a TV... which is where I actually want to watch a movie. Anyone know something that I don't?

[fastbilly1]

Cant you screen mirror to a roku?

[noiseredux]

Cant you screen mirror to a roku?

Probably - though I'd prefer if it was something native (ie: less cumbersome for my wife).

[Erik_Twice]

Windows deactivated itself for god knows what reason and it's annoying and I don't know where the hell I put my Windows activation code when I bought this computer years ago,

[noiseredux]

Question(s)... I currently have an old (Acer, w/ Intel something CPU circa 2011 - nothing fancy) that I revitalized with Linux Mint. It's basically just my work-from-home machine so it doesn't do lifting much heavier than internet, Libre Office, the occasional Spotify/Netflix stream and well, a calculator. It works fine for my purposes except that I really need a new battery which I think I can take care of via Amazon and about $30. The charge only holds for 1-2 hrs which is pretty bad, but it's rare that this thing even leaves my desk so it's not all that big a deal.

Anyway, the real question is about ChromeOS and Android... as much as I think Linux works just fine here, I've been curious about maybe loading some flavor of Android (or ChromeOS) on here because - well mostly because I can't help but like to tinker and experiment w/ trying stuff like this. And I mean, I'm certainly more comfortable with Android as an OS anyway. But I'm just kind of curious about actually running Android etc on a laptop.

I know of RemixOS which is apparently no longer supported, and PhoenixOS which I know less about but seems similar. I think each of these is basically Android dressed up to look like Windows. I think that they can both run the Google Play Store as well as native Android apps. Yes? What I'm not sure of is how well either of these will run on an aging laptop.

On the flip, I know that there's CloudReady which (basically) installs Chormium on any old laptop - however my understanding as that this method will NOT allow me to run actual Android apps. So that's a deal breaker.

Anyway, thoughts? Experiences? Etc?

[marurun]

There may be some apps that won’t run on an Intel CPU. It depends on whether they use any ARM native code or not.