Toadfish Monastery

All I can guess would be it's some sort of failure to show some sort of photo content.  Blocked content, perhaps? 

I've never seen what you describe, but I do frequently see "attachment unavailable" messages.

Awww... Zono stole my thunder.

I was going to say, I side-step the whole issue, by using plastic powder instead of expensive ink. 

My venerable laser-jet printer uses carbon-infused polyester powder instead of ink, just like the old Xerox machines of yesterday.  It's pretty cheap stuff-- I can print 10,000 or more pages with a $30 toner cartridge. 

Which for me?  Means that printer has a literal lifetime supply of "ink"-- it'll break down and quit working long before it runs out of toner.

I love how it just sits there patently in the back room, waiting quietly until I issue the "print this" command.  Then?  It wakes up, spits out the page(s) and goes back to sleep for another month or three. 

If, for some god-forsaken reason I actually need color?  I take my print job down to the local quicky-print shop, and use their $10,000 color laser printer-- it does 100 times better than anything I could conceivably afford, and I never have to pay for printer mess-ups-- they just move to an alternate machine, and viola!  My job is done--better than I could ever hope to do myself. 

Well done! 

I'm with Zono.  I like having my choice of reading material with me everywhere I go, so I can make productive use of time I'd otherwise waste.

I also like having my choice of music; I really don't like radio these days, it's either depressing, or the music too repetitive. 

I also keep my devices as long as possible; I don't much care for change.  Alas, I've discovered these latest gadgets have a memory issue; after about 2-3 years of daily use, they begin to lose memory function.  It's because of destructive memory (the so-called FLASH memory); after so many writes, it's destroyed.  There is some forethought in this arena, and extra memory is bolted in, as it wears out, the extra is parceled in to the pool.  But, as I've discovered, after about 2-3 years or so?  The extra is used up too.

If I were in charge of these?  All FLASH would be user-replaceable.  It'd be quite simple, too-- an internal slot for a microSD would do the trick just peachy.  Another trick?  Only utilize 1/2 of the inserted micro card, slowly working from one 1/2 to the other over time. 

Memory is cheap enough, and so are slots.  This could keep these devices functional for many years; simply replace the worn micro card with a new one.  The OS would be copied from read-only memory, or FLASH that is *only* written to when the OS needs updating.  Rare enough to keep that part going for decades.

I hate that the makers of these things deliberately make them so that they wear out and become expensive paperweights.   There's nothing wrong with the *other* parts at the end of their life:  the screen is still bright, the touchscreen still sensitive, the CPU humming along, and so forth. 

Uggg....

I've had some sort of Android tablet for going on 3 years now.  All were 9" or bigger.  If you go back to 7" size?  It's been even longer-- I got one of the ill fated Dell Streaks-- but I loved it nonetheless.

I've had an Android smart phone for even longer-- I was an early adopter with the G1.   I now have a venerable Samsung S3, which is about 2 or 3 iterations less than cutting edge--but it Just Works for what I use it for, so I haven't replaced it.  It's at least running the latest Android, so there's that.

I do some serious work with each device (phone/tablet).   My current tablet is another Samsung, 10.1 2014 Note, which is amazing.  The screen is superior in quality and resolution than a color page from National Geographic.  Seriously, it is that good (far better than the ipads).  I forget how many processors it sports-- it's not important to me.   It's battery life is good-- lasts me all day 9.5 of 10 times, good enough.  For the rare times it konks out?  I have a monster recharger:  a LiIon battery pack that re-ups either my phone or my tab in about 20 mins or so-- at least twice in a deliberate run-it-down test.   And since the battery pack is portable?  I can keep going, if I need to.

I also have a more modest Samsung tab, the Tab 3 7".   It's as modest a Samsung tab as I could find, and pretty much all I use it for is to host music, either blue tooth or via earphone cable.  It does sport very modest speakers, but they are too quiet for what I need, so I either bluetooth to the vehicle's radio, or cable to a worksite speaker set (a little Milwakee radio that shares my tool's LiIon batteries.  Nice.  Sounds quite good for what it is too).

I was going to just get an android, phone-sized music player to replace my now useless iPod Classic, but when I went shopping?  The 7" tablet was actually cheaper than phone-sized player-only devices, and it sports a micro SD slot too (most of the phone sized players did not).  I now have a lovely 64gig card in there, which holds all my music and as many audio books and podcasts as I want.  With room to spare (my music is only a modest 30gigs). 

I love not having to choose which music to bring with, ahead of time.

Same goes for my big 10" tablet-- I have all my ebooks on it too-- in a massive 128g micro card (music too, but that's mostly as a backup).

I love not having to choose beforehand.

But-- I do serious work with this beast too-- I have a Heat Load calculator in there.  Let's me do heating and cooling analysis on a building, to properly select the correct size.  Instead of guessing as so many do (and usually guess *wrong*... meh). 

I had purchased a bluetooth physical keyboard, but I find the 10" with it's stylus, the virtual keyboard is nearly as fast, and a darn sight more handy.  I've gotten quite good at click-clicking my way around that virtual 'board.  And at 10", there's plenty of room.  The stylus makes for pin-point accuracy--even backspacing or middle-of-word edits (really really hard to do with just your finger...)

I'll never go back, willingly, to a Traditional Laptop for portable work.   My desktop?  Is a box-- again?  I'll not willingly trade the repairability/expandability of a box over a fixed-in-place laptop. 

Yes-- I have an aging Windoze laptop-- but I seldom use the thing. It's running XP, I think-- not worth bothering with to either upgrade, or even update.  I just don't use it.   I really should have sold it, when it still had modest value.  Oh well.

Hear! Hear!

My dad's aging PC died-- the one he has connected to the living room TV.   So he wanted a new one-- alas-- the only ones available have Windoze 8. 

I thought-- "how bad could it be, really?"

..... Oh.

..my...

..... effing ... GOD! 

... "bad" cannot possibly describe the user-hell I went through to get the damn thing back to what Dad was used to (XP).

What the EFF, Microsquish?   Taking your cues from CrApple, now?  Where you change stuff just because?   No regards at **all** to the end-users? 

Idiots. 

Maximum wage?  What a lovely concept (seriously-- no sarcasm intended).

I think there really ought to be a maximum difference imposed on anything that calls itself "corporation".  Some reasonable figure between the lowest paid worker and the highest level of compensation-- including *all* stock options, etc.

Japan already does this, or so I'm told....

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2014/09/25/deeds/

I know *exactly* what you mean, Griffin.  I so like having *all* my contact list, categorized and grouped, on the desktop computer for easy editing and access-- and then, having any changes automatically go onto my smart phone.

I would never willingly go back to the old, number-by-painful-number data entry my old flip phone required.  In fact?  Back when I did have a flip-- I only had 5 emergency numbers in it-- the rest were on my Palm Pilot (which also used the desktop computer to enter data).

First world problems?  Yep...

Hmm... the backups to the cloud were automatic in my Samsung phones.  Perhaps it's a Sony vs Samsung difference?  That seems quite likely.

You can choose which data to backup, I only backup the contact list, and the calendar events.  I find having those available on my desktop as well as my phone, with automagic sync between the two, to be of immense value.  Since everything in there is pretty much public anyhow, I don't care either way about who really owns it.

Good luck again--these things can be very frustrating.

I have also found, that after 2-ish years of constant use, most smart phones begin to degrade in performance.  Something about the way the FLASH memory works-- if you google the tech stuff on this non-volatile memory, it appears to be self-destructive every time you write to it.   This is a well known phenomena.

If you have an Android phone, the default is to store all your really important stuff on the "cloud" (i.e. google's servers, under your required gmail ID).

That is automatic, unless you searched around and disabled it--possible, but not particularly easy.

Have you tried a "soft reset"?  Easy:  power on the phone-- then, regardless of where it's at in the power-cycle, pull the battery.

Supposedly that does more than a simple power-button push.  I dunno--it's worth a try, right?

Good luck!

Yes, you are correct (of course).

This is just a symptom of a larger problem-- solve the bigger issue?  And the too many guns one will go away (or at least be so inconsequential that it can be ignored).

*sigh*

One wonders how many children have to be ruined before things get better, though.   

Oh, yes-- I already know the answer to *that* one-- children are *always* the ones sacrificed first, in any sort of cultural issue(s).  Just look at religion's ugly and sordid history with regards to the treatment of children.

It's not that someone deliberately sits down, and tries to come up with "let's put the kids at risk *first* and foremost".  Rather, that's just how things eventually fall out-- the kids suffer first, as they are the most vulnerable, the weakest physically, the least capable mentally/emotionally, and so forth.

... meh.

Whatever happens next?  That poor kid is now scarred for the remainder of her life. 

That's two lives (at least), wasted.   

When will enough become enough?

Robin was brilliant as well as funny.

Sometimes, incredibly smart folk are able to see past the wrapping, to the real that is underneath; it could well be Robin saw the inevitable, and decided to exit stage left, while he was still ... himself.

A sentiment I can easily identify with, myself.

While I grieve for his loss?  I will celebrate his life's work-- to make people laugh, to bring joy and meaning to people's lives.

A goal he can continue to achieve, long after his mortal remains are dust.

So I raise a toast to Mr Williams' success.  May he find peace in his last act.

Quote from: Swatopluk on July 22, 2014, 08:56:56 PM
*independent of source, it affected German, British and American videos alike

Most YouTube is hosted directly on the YouTube servers, and the link is just a redirect to there, from the site posting/embedding the vid.

Likely, your pipe to YouTube's servers had been compromised in someway.