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| The BlackBerry as black sheep |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-16 22:11:20 |
| "Rachel Crosby speaks about her BlackBerry phone the way someone might speak of an embarrassing relative. 'I’m ashamed of it,' said Ms. Crosby, a Los Angeles sales representative who said she had stopped pulling out her BlackBerry at cocktail parties and conferences. In meetings, she says she hides her BlackBerry beneath her iPad for fear clients will see it and judge her." Other products many people own but feel ashamed about: sex toys. So essentially, the BlackBerry is now the equivalent of a vibrator. In all seriousness though - why feel ashamed because of a phone? Are people really that shallow? I'm really getting too old for this stuff. |
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| RE: Hop on the bandwagon... |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-10-17 19:18:09 |
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A chap said to me "Lets face it, your real mates are people you go down the pub with". The British drinking culture aside ... he was completely correct. Your real friends are the people you spend time with. |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE: One question |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-10-17 19:20:49 |
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What gets me is that she is worried about what people think about her because of what phone she has ... not the substance of her actual character. This type of shit has gone on since the start of human history ... there are those that are insecure and follow the herd and there are those that are secure in themselves and do what they please. Edited 2012-10-17 19:22 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: le sigh.... |
| By Ultimatebadass on 2012-10-17 20:45:03 |
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Really, you hit the nail on the head. Miss Something Orother from LA is worried what people think about her phone OH NOES!!11 |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Seriously? |
| By oskeladden on 2012-10-17 21:42:24 |
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Aye, well, I *am* one of the people who uses a phone that's approaching a decade old. Seven years, to be precise - an HTC Wizard. I bought it because it had a phone, keyboard, diary and note-taking-thingie, and I could get Telnet and Usenet clients for it. All the above still work, so I've never really felt like I needed a replacement. I can't say I recall ever having gotten any odd looks when pulling it out - although I did get asked last year whether it was the new Nokia(!) - and I find it hard to imagine anyone laughing at me for my choice of phone. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Not just about superficial value |
| By grumpyoldman on 2012-10-18 00:50:34 |
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> Seriously when you use a blackberry it does say something meaningful about you, your technical acumen and how in touch you are with technology trends.. I can see where you are coming from and in a small part I agree with you. But I don't think that keeping up with technology trends equates to technical acumen most of the time, as actually witnessed with a lot of people nowadays. I have known too many people - please see my handle ;-), who thinks they are using these new 'technologies' and they think they are part of an elite ubergeek ubernerd fashizzle squad. But when tested, they fail miserably when their technical acumen is tested at a deeper-than-user level. In fact, they bolster their technical deficiencies with 'user skills' not 'developer skills'. There are people who _purposefully_ choose not to adhere to these technological trends wholesale, or they do so in a slow incremental way, because they see things differently. Side Note: Heh, after lurking for so many years in this site, I have finally registered myself and actually am now conversing with fellow users - must be me getting sentimental with these ole bones. :-) |
| - Score: 3 |
| The contrarian approach |
| By StephenBeDoper on 2012-10-18 16:58:24 |
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This crap (the smartphone-as-status-symbol ) has become completely absurd, I'm tempted to start carrying my old Treo again just out of contrarianism. Personally, I get a kick out of the odd looks & other reactions when I use obsolete tech in public... not sure if that's a geek thing, or just my inner child/troll at play. There's this ancient NEC "portable" that I like to haul down to the coffee shop sometimes and when people ask about it, I *usually* manage to keep a straight face when extolling its virtues. Dual floppy drives AND a "naturally-lit" screen (aka it has no backlight). I'm tempted to find some old rabbit ears and try to convince people that I have it connected to wifi. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: One question |
| By zima on 2012-10-19 19:22:24 |
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> What gets me is that she is worried about what people think about her because of what phone she has ... not the substance of her actual character. http://www.kyon.pl/img/21554,wom... And yeah, "has gone on since the start of human history" - quite a few posts above express the sentiment as if that's something ~new ...but we have a long history of positional or even veblen goods, make-up, fashion, and so on. We even cherish many of those as parts of "good old culture" - monuments or folk dresses for example, which typically required great effort and/or waste of time & resources ...basically largely just to show off, and certainly taking time & resources from more lofty pursuits. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: The contrarian approach |
| By zima on 2012-10-19 19:35:31 |
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> I'm tempted to start carrying my old Treo again just out of contrarianism. Personally, I get a kick out of the odd looks & other reactions when I use obsolete tech in public... not sure if that's a geek thing, or just my inner child/troll at play. There's this ancient NEC "portable" that I like to haul down to the coffee shop sometimes Outhipping the hipsters? :P Coincidentally, recently I dug out and repaired (the belt needed a replacement, old one ~fossilised after a decade) my old walkman... unfortunately, using it is not very visible (has auto reverse, controls on the headphone cable) Hm, now I'm thinking about bringing to ~Starbucks my Groma Kolibri :> ( http://typewriters.ch/collection... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L... possibly the smallest mass-produced one; a proto-ultrabook :P ) |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Hop on the bandwagon... |
| By zima on 2012-10-19 20:22:19 |
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> I'm a dinosaur when it comes to twitter, facebook, instagram. At a certain age you stop making sense of new phenomenons. I miss Instant Messaging. It was quick, personal and far better than self-publishing every boring minutiae of your life on a site where others leave feedback by telling you if they like it. Sadly, in my nook of the world IM seems completely dead. Or you mostly try to avoid new phenomenons, them sucking out your time for little perceived gain really (as concluded after some period of more active usage) - I mean, does "making sense" requires now constant participation?* But did IM ever really left? Well, I wouldn't know about your place, but maybe look beyond the "classic" IM networks of ICQ (which does live on in CIS), AOL, or MSN... (none of which was really very popular at my place BTW; we have our own monstrosity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gad... ) ...first, there's SMS. Which is IM, really, especially considering it often has conversation view on more modern phones. On those you also have more overt "mobile IM" networks (BBM, Apple one, Whatsapp). And IM tied to other services - like FB or Gmail/Gtalk (which is also integrated into Android, and can be used from any native XMPP client). Also Skype - perhaps used mostly for voice & video, but from what I see people do use its IM capacity (at the least, when explaining why they can't do VoIP at the moment) *and twitter & co. are a good supplement to IM & mail - a place for all the "interesting spam" people sent via mail or IM to buddies. Now, when they contact somebody directly, it's more likely to be something really pertaining to that person. Edited 2012-10-19 20:28 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Ring Tones |
| By zima on 2012-10-19 20:57:57 |
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DIE CRAZY FROG, DIE!!111 (especially for hijacking Popcorn; quite a few people seem to connect it mostly with Crazy Frog - when they hear Hot Butter or M & H Band versions, it's ~"oh, somebody remade the Crazy Frog song?") BTW, recently I had an idea of using as a ring tone a ~16s music composed by myself :> - in the demo of 1998 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus...) (~16s or so being the demo limit). It came out rather nice, especially for a ring tone; also has a short section very suitable for "SMS sound" - and it would be, you know, unique. :> Now, if only I could find it... (on a compact cassette or... notes scribbled on a piece of paper :p ) As a side note, on the topic of ring tones and stupid relatives (which we sort of discussed once, IIRC) - imagine a couple who knows how to change ring tones in their mobiles, I definitely heard one day the effects of such change ...but they reverted it to (horrible IMHO, but NVM that) operator-default one. Yes, both use the same operator. Yes, it usually ends up with "who's mobile is ringing?!" |
| - Score: 2 |
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