In case you're wondering: Why Windows 10 Phone, HP?
This isn't going to be a long read. The simple answer, and this is a guess, is that HP sees three things.
- Windows 10 development is reportedly significantly easier than for 8/8.1. That should induce some developers to prep versions that run on all Windows 10 systems.
- Microsoft may have dumped Project Astoria, a dev kit to help Android app devs port to Windows 10, but Project Islandwood, a similar dev kit for iOS apps, is still on the workbench, and the iOS app ecosystem is significantly more cultured than Google's.
- HP has a very old relationship with corporate culture. HP can see the writing on the wall, and it's screaming CONVERGENCE = LOWER COSTS.
It should come as any surprise that companies would prefer to adopt an ecosystem that gives them the most control, the most integration, and the most efficient workforce for the lowest possible outlay. That's exactly what the HP Elite X3 is all about, and HP sees the potential quite clearly. They don't even care if they sell fewer traditional enterprise-grade desktops. Those are loss leaders. If they can get in on the ground floor, nay, BE the ground floor of this hot new segment, they can cement their dominance and exert control over the formation of the new segment.
Word from MWC last week was that an Elite X3 kit with optional laptop "dumb terminal" will cost much less than a smartphone and laptop, and the buyer gets both in one purchase. The dock comes with the handset, so just add a Monitor/Keyboard/Mouse combo kit for a few hundred more and you've completely outfitted one employee at a lower cost, reduced the time IT works on that employee significantly, cut down on the potential for shadow IT, and don't have to adopt any kind of lame BYOD policy. Sure, some people will complain, but I'm sure they'll pick their paycheck over their smartphone.
For the coup de grâce (if you think I'm misspelling it, look it up), HP has developed Workspace, something of an app store for virtualized desktop applications to run over a network to the device, though real details aren't yet available. I do know that HP Workspace requires a subscription fee, so it's unlikely that any consumers who are able to get a hold of one of these magnificent* devices will be able to afford to use it. All that will remain to be seen later this year when HP starts rolling them out.
* early reports from presser hands-on periods have suggested it's marvelous, but time always tells the truth when it comes to smartphones.
The Elegant Cape: A year in the life of America's preeminent perpetual loser optimist
NOTE: The original title to this piece was "If you feel like someone's out to get you, they probably are". I decided to change it because I had just written down what popped into my head and it's a little "out there", if you know what I mean. Nobody is out to get me. When I spent some time thinking about it, a visual metaphor came to mind. Hence, the new title. The cape is a beautiful distraction. Inside, my soul is broken and the laughing, jovial, juvenile, and kind imbecile I project is just a shadow of who I am. Look inside the cape, and the elegance fades quickly away. And yet, I remain optimistic, hoping that one day I achieve something, even something small and insignificant. Or, something big, like saving my family.
Ah, good old paranoia. It's an American classic with two slices of cheese and a side of Freedom Fries. The funny thing is, sometimes you are completely right to feel paranoid. I know I do, and with good cause. My little family has been having the shit hit the fan for well over a year now.
It started back in 2014 when we were told we'd have to move out of the condo we'd been living in for five years because they were selling it. It happens, and I had been wrapping up my book, so we'd just move. And so, we did. Now, you're already at a disadvantage, because you don't have the benefit of understanding that we're not rich. Hell, we're barely even solvent. I earn almost nothing since I can't get work. I get little gigs here and there, but most people just ignore me. It doesn't matter how often I apply for work or what kind. I almost never hear back, and when I do, they find out I'm 47 with 20 years of experience and they ditch me then. So, it wasn't a big surprise to find out from our former neighbors that our condo wasn't sold, they were renting it out to someone else for more money.
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They lied to us so we would leave easier. Capitalism at work.
So we moved into a new place near the mall. $400 more a month, pretty much most of our monthly income, but it was all we could find, and I did just finish the book. The advance helped get us in, but we'd need more to stay. Then we find out the complex had been sold to another management outfit (I am not kidding, it used to be The Promenade). When we were late with the rent, there was no leniency. There was no talking. We had X number of days to pay and X number of dollars fine to pay, and we didn't make it. My publisher simply would not move any faster, and my check was a few months late to save us. The evicted us just like that.
Step two as part of a downward spiral is to move into a hotel, but not just any hotel. It has to be a hotel with kitchens in the rooms, so the rate is just that much higher. The kitchen is critical because the daughter cannot eat outside food. She has severe allergies, and I mean severe. She also has special dietary needs due to her Epilepsy. And then there's the Autism. Yes, she was dealt a very poor hand in the poker game of life, but we manage. Now, however, we move to the montage portion of the story to get through about a year of crap quickly.
Here we are, about a week or so away from having to leave the last place we can stay. There are no shelters. We have our car, but how did you feel the last time you slept in your car for one night? The only thing we have is the small revenue coming in every month and Rima's writing. She's prolific, too. I should know, I get to edit her stories. She gets read quite a bit, too, and so she promotes our GoFundMe campaign on her site. What happens? The hosting company we've been with for nearly a decade suddenly develops a ridiculous series of issues.The parents are involved. This is hideously humiliating when you're in the ballpark of 50 years old. It's even more humiliating when your father treats you like you're still 18 and your step monster treats you like a convicted felon. For the record, I'm not. I end up not getting what I need to save my family, so I am doomed to going back and back and back until they finally move and don't tell me where. They moved because they are old and need a smaller place, not because of me, but that didn't stop them from using it to get me off their backs. The other father lives in another country and is a raging asshole.
We hit upon a plan to buy a used RV. I thoroughly research to find it's hard, but doable, and by doable, I mean requires regular maintenance, but makes our total costs per month about $1,800. We try to coordinate family and friends and others, and they come through for about $5,000, then the unbelievable happens. I find a sweet deal on Craig's List and it turns out too good to be true. It's a classic bait-and-switch scam. We're shown a really nice RV that works, and sold one that looks like it but is crap. Oh, you should have seen them as soon as I realized what they had done. They were like cats licking their chops after the kill.
We managed to put together one more chance to get an RV, and we were careful, but it just wasn't in the cards. This time around, the RV that we could afford was sold out from under us because of an error in communications. Every day we're in the hotel is money out, so the window for making a deal shrinks by the moment, and there just aren't enough RVs that are cheap and in good condition. To keep our options open, I keep scouring the regular rentals, but all of them have gone up, people aren't interested in renting to us, and Craig's List is full of scams it takes hours to sort through to find the real ones.
If you're thinking public support at this point, you'll likely not be surprised that it wasn't and isn't an option. We make too much. Yes, not enough to live anywhere, but too much to get help. Orange County is also out of housing vouchers. Every time I call to ask. We've been on the Section 8 waiting list for four years now, and we're at position #21,405. That's a change of roughly 4,000 positions since we got on back in 2012. I've long since used up all 99 weeks of unemployment. Now, just about two months ago, while out doing something nice (and free) for the first time in a long while, we get back to the hotel to find a notice that we're expected to move out in 60 days because we pay late.
You do the math. Parents are out. Friends have all been tapped and can't give any more. Internet relations have been exhausted. Jobs are not presenting themselves. Even when they do, they don't. I've gotten a few friends popping in to see if I can do X, Y, or Z. When I can, it sounds all good, but then nothing happens. Usually after I send my CV. Following up doesn't seem to help, either. So, we start up a GoFundMe campaign to try, as a desperate, last ditch effort, raise the funds we need to get an RV, our least expensive option to have a place to live. We get some help, and it's deeply appreciated, but it's not enough.
End montage.
Our sites go down 8 times in 10 days.
As a result, traffic trends down, less people see the campaign, and fewer people go, meaning fewer people chip in. It's like everything we do ends up heading in the wrong direction. It can make a family gun shy, but we still keep pulling the trigger hoping that THIS time something will actually happen in our favor, and then it doesn't. If I were paranoid, I'd think that someone was out to get us. Wouldn't you?
Well, that's where we're at. It's not pretty. It's not fun. It's not a party. It's mostly a daily struggle to stay sane and try to come up with something, anything to keep ourselves busy. Soon, though, it won't matter because we'll be homeless for realzies, like the On The Street kind. The kind of homelessness that treats people with medical issues and developmental disorders very poorly (as if being homeless wasn't bad enough). The kind of homelessness that prematurely ends both the promising career of a strong progressive voice for analysis and truth and the nascent talent of an artistic Autistic young woman who wants to be a Disney animator and who still managed to get herself into college nearly four years early.
I don't really care what happens to me, as long as they can thrive.
But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Nice knowing you, internet. Who knows, though. Maybe THIS time it WILL work out...
PS: In case you thought that my book's sales should be really kicking in, you'd be wrong. It didn't sell. It was a flop.
Message to HP: I really hate you, so stop trying to make me love you again
In all honesty, I used to love HP, but not for the reasons you might think. Their enterprise and server gear has long been solid, including their desktop and laptop products. I have much experience with many years of such equipment. That changed for me a few years ago when I purchased a brand new HP ProBook 4540s. Aside from the display being of lower resolution than I wanted, the machine was a 15.6" mid-range powerhouse. It has a 2.5GHz 3rd-gen Core i5, 8GBs of RAM, 750GB drive, all of the expected widgets for connectivity, and hybrid graphics featuring Intel HD 4000 for mundane stuff and an AMD Radeon HD 7650M with 1GB of RAM. That last item would be perfect for my gaming needs, which aren't cutting edge, but can tax integrated systems. I thought I'd found my soulmate, and at $600, a thrifty value, too.
Boy, was I wrong. Just try to imagine Tom Hanks having his maniacal laughing fit in The Money Pit after discovering hidden issue after issue with what he'd hoped was his dream home. To make an already long story short, all sorts of bits went wonky, I fought with HP over repairs covered by the warranty, had to take the battle to the BBB, and won without winning. Today, I still use it. The trackpad doesn't work. There is no keyboard anymore. It works, but it's a frustrating thing to be forced to work on a $600 lemon and that it was HP that screwed me. HP fought tooth and nail to avoid doing anything to make me happy, and if that was their goal, mission accomplished. So, like any jilted suitor, I decided to shun them.
For the longest time, they only released a few things that I found tempting, but I was able to. I won't even bother to list them because I can't. Hideous recall, you see. One was a tiny little blob of a compy. Overpriced. Another was a gorgeous laptop of some kind. WAY overpriced. Then today, they came out with this...
Right? That little guy on the left isn't so little. It's the HP Elite X3 and it's just shy of 6 inches. There's a better picture of the front at the end of this piece, and if you already desire it (who can blame you) prepare to be disappointed. Price and release date are not yet known as HP isn't talking, but there are hints of a Summer release. Timing could very well be up to when Windows 10 Mobile is released to Gold Master. If you need additional technical deets, here are the specs from Ars Technica:
Hardware-wise, the Elite x3 ticks all the boxes and then some: Quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 running at 2.15GHz, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, 5.96 inch 2560×1440 AMOLED screen with Gorilla Glass 4, 2×2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, LTE-Advanced, 16MP rear and 8MP front cameras, both iris recognition and a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, microSD, USB 3 Type-C, dual SIM, a 4150mAh battery with wireless charging using both the Qi and PMA standards, and IP 67 water resistance (safe against immersion in 1 [meter] of water for 30 minutes).
And, if you can't tell by looking, it's running Windows 10 Mobile. Now, that "laptop" next to it isn't really a laptop. It's the modern equivalent of a dumb terminal. See, Windows 10 Mobile has a neat trick called Continuum where, with a special dock, you can run a Windows-like desktop environment while still getting to use the phone. If you already have a nice monitor, keyboard, and mouse, HP does have their own dock, too. The lappy bit would come in handy for mobile workers, though.
That's exactly who HP is going after, too. Enterprise. HP already sells really well into corporate markets. Windows 10 will start to take off in those markets soon, and integration is highly prized because it can reduce costs and complexity. HP wants to be the winner for Windows shops by offering a complete, all-in-one, fully integrated Windows experience for users and administrators, a hat trick, if you will. Most data-intensive apps these days are SaaS, anyway. You don't need huge local storage, and mobile CPU capabilities are improving like gangbusters. My Dell Venue 8 Pro runs Windows 10 better on a dual-core Atom with 2GBs of RAM than my laptop does with a quad-core Core i5 and 8GBs. It's not bad with games, either (just not Team Fortress 2, my one and only love).
So, I'm faced with a quandary. Do I unreasonably sustain my harmful grudge of HP for dissing me and being unapologetic for said diss, or do I just let that anger and resentment go free to sulk in its own dark, gloomy corner so that I might readily accept the entire Elite X3 product lineup into my heart? I'm inclined to think that yes, I should let it go and just move on.
It's just that HP hurt me really bad, and right where I live; my writing.
I find it difficult to allow the superficial promise of something glossy and new override my ethical, if emotional, position. Then again, it is really nice looking and it's just a gadget. So, HP, if you're reading this, you can apologize by sending me one, with all of the accessories, of course.
How To Behave In Public - Water Fountains
Water is the single most important component for life on Earth. 70% of the human body is made of water. If you place your ear against a person who is jumping up and down, you might even be able to hear some of that water sloshing about. Isn't science fascinating? In order to live, a human must drink at least two gallons of what every day. Fortunately, American scientists armed with this knowledge were able to invent one of the most important devices we have in today's society.
The water fountain.
Imagine, if you will, being able to walk up to a box, push a button, and receive a refreshing, life giving stream of clean, clear water directly into your mouth! I know it seems insane, but I can assure you that the water fountain is indeed real. Studies have determined that the average human will encounter at least a dozen water fountains during their lifetime. This is testimony to the fact that American science has made a truly great achievement through the installation of water fountains all over the United States of America. If you see one, do not pass on your chance to experience a water fountain.
Now, if it wasn't enough to simply press a button to get water directed into your mouth, a true scientific milestone in its own right, try to embrace the concept of the electric water fountain. Don't worry. You won't shock yourself to death. The electricity, through the magic of science, keeps the water chilled, making already fresh water even more delicious!
Here are some tips and tricks you should keep in mind when visiting a water fountain:
- Water fountains come in all shapes and sizes. When in a public area you are unfamiliar with, try pushing, pulling, and tugging on anything that might look like a handle or button, and you're sure to find one of the many cleverly hidden water fountains those playful American scientists had installed
- Water is a precious commodity, so be sure to place your face as close to the Tubular Water Emitter as possible so as to avoid waste.*
- It's important to note the difference between a spigot and a water fountain. Spigots have knobs to turn on the water flow, water fountains have buttons, and sometimes unicorns.
- If you see someone acting suspiciously around a water fountain, be sure to contact the police, as they will want to make sure there are no villains around licking the splash guards of water fountains.
- Don't lick the splash guards on water fountains, at least not without permission from your local police or city mayor.
- Try to keep the time you spend using a water fountain to under 10 minutes so as to allow others the joy of using a public water fountain.
- If you are rich, consider installing water fountains in your home and around your property, so you can share fresh water with the proletariat. Trust us when we say that you will be heartily thanked for your consideration.
- We'd prefer not to say this, but recent actions have forced our hand. DO NOT pee in the smaller water fountains. Yes, they do resemble urinals, but they are not urinals.
* A principle rule of thumb is that the pressure of the output at the emitter is defined by the average height of the people who use it. In other words, if the stream arcs water over your head, it is meant for tall people. This doesn't mean you are forbidden to use it, just do so with caution.
There is little like the pure and simple joy one derives from the experiences that can be had when engaging with a public water fountain. Be respectful, wait your turn in line, don't leave anything behind, and if you have a fire pit, don't forget to stir the coals.
How To Behave In Public - Elevators
Congratulations! You've discovered vertical transportation through the miracle of the Elevator!! Elevators carry 3.82 billion people over 82.3 quadrillion vertical miles every single day. Elevators are one of the single most popular modes of transportation on the planet. Now that it's the first time you've been in a elevator, you should take a moment to savor that landmark you have achieved.
After some self-congratulatory back patting, however, it's time to understand your role in the Elevator. The following are some tips that will help you become acclimated to life in Elevators. Pay close attention to prevent anyone from becoming injured, or even killed. Who knows... The life you save may be your own.
Please memorize these important tips:
- Be aware that you will be given very little time to make adjustments or decisions. It's best to act as impulsively as possible when engaging an Elevator.
- After the doors have opened, quickly move inside and stake your claim. If this is your first Elevator, look to the left and right of the doors from the inside. On one or both sides, you will find the Elevator control panel. Do NOT panic.*
- Once the Elevator begins to move, you are free to move about the Elevator, just don't go to far. You might miss your floor!
- Elevators make a noise to indicate when it has arrived at a floor. Please keep your screaming and/or loud horseplay to a minimum so the other passengers can hear the indicator sound.
- Some Elevators use flimsy glass for the outside walls instead of bullet-proof steel plating. Make sure to keep your profile towards the glass or carry a shield for extra protection from snipers.
- Some Elevators that use flimsy glass are located in upscale regions where sniper fire is not common. In these cases, make sure to keep your hands on the glass to steady yourself as the Elevator moves.
- In case of an emergency which does not result in your Elevator falling hundreds of feet to reduce all passengers to a sticky, wet mess, you will find an escape hatch in the ceiling. Before opening the hatch all the way, be sure to check for trip wires or feral rodents.
- On the rare occasions you find yourself feeling confined or are prone to fits of claustrophobia, position yourself near the door and face the back of the Elevator. This signals your fellow passengers to respectfully back away to give you some room to clear your head. Be sure to smile broadly and give a thumbs up to show your appreciation.
* While you may think the Elevator a space craft or amazing machine from the future, the Elevator is well grounded in complex scientific theory. At no time should you ever try to reprogram an Elevator.
Once you start taking trips via Elevator, be sure to follow all the rules of etiquette and decorum and you'll do just fine. Also, remember to feel comfortable. Feel free to talk on a mobile phone or chat with your fellow passengers about their potential destination. People often feel tense while traveling, and a friendly face can help ease their anxiety.
Before you know it, you'll be an Elevator expert!