"Smart" TV's are for dumb people

I had the idea of writing this post quite a few years ago, but left it as a draft until now. These days pretty much all modern TV's are smart TV's, but my point is still valid. 

Ever try using any of the wonderful trio of time-wasting (YouTwitFace.com) on a "smart" TV? Not only is the interface extremely slow and laggy, due to the primitive processor in the idiot box, but you have to enter characters one at a time using a remote. This will scarcely appeal to anyone who has membership in Mensa! And if that weren't enough, the TV screen won't be formatted properly for most of the websites you visit as, in addition to having a primitive processor, your TV also has a GPU whose technology dates back to somewhere around the Cretaceous era! Then there is the issue of ads and bloatware that many manufacturers are plying you with, and privacy issues as well. In contrast to your hitherto dumb boobtube, your new set can also spy on you!

But there is hope. You can turn any television (assuming not so old that it doesn't have HDMI inputs) into a genius by connecting even a modest computer to it. Now you will enjoy a fully modern internet experience with a full QWERTY keyboard and access to your drive data as well!

JMR

The true meaning of schadenfreude!

When the only thing preventing you from killing yourself is the fear of giving pleasure to your enemies.

The big and really only problem in this world is that the clock keeps ticking away and bridges really do burn down. All the Nietzscheian optimism in the world won’t change that fact. When I was a kid, I was an avid video game player. In that era this meant heading to an arcade with a pocket full of quarters, as Buckner & Garcia’s immortal “Pac-Man fever” evokes. I was a natural on these machines…routinely outperforming most adults whilst as young as ten. I would have dreams about playing these games and wake up with solutions as to how to improve my score. Anyway, I recall becoming sort of a perfectionist later on. For most games you would get three lives per play. If I died early or missed some desired objective during my first life, I would routinely kill off the rest of the game and start again by simply inserting another token. If only the real world provided the luxury of such restarts. Sadly it doesn’t. We are all forever connected to our past mistakes and misfortunes. For me, there is one mistake, or event of circumstance, if you will, that eclipses all others, and in fact, has been looming over me of late. It involves the loss of a relationship with someone very special to me. This person is not deceased, but for all intensive purposes they might as well be, or more precisely, I might as well be to them. Try as I might, with every fibre of my being, to rectify and reunite (rhyme coincidental), my efforts are met with futility, and my willingness to do anything humanly possible for her is simple not enough. This is not someone who can be replaced, and I cannot go back in time. Several clichés come to mind at this point, but I will refrain from uttering them. Instead I will quote Hal Hollbrook from the great 80's era movie "Wall Street": “Man looks in the abyss…there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”

JMR