Why I don't want anything Amazon Alexa...

[RealBlackStuff]

Amazon Alexa: Who needs it?
No effing way!
http://www.zdnet.com/article/big-bezos- ... kin-house/

[olex126]

Kinda hafta agree with you on this one RBS.

My son has his house wired with this stuff; he and my grandsons love it.

I just find it totally creepy every time I walk into his house.

(Side Note:)

If/When we form the "International Thinkpad Luddites Forum", you can be President

BUT: I get to be the Secretary.

(That's so I get to type the monthly meeting minutes on my "Old" T43p 7-row keyboard and get to test each new batch of Guinness as it arrives and BEFORE it's passed out to the rest of the members!. )

Regards.

Dave

[Cigarguy]

I'd rather have Dislexia.

[MikalE]

There will never be one of those in my house. Windows 10 is bad enough.

[Geartooth]

I love how we once feared being Spied on, now we introduce the spies into our home.

[Thinkpad4by3]

It is bascially a buy your own wiretap!

[shawross]

The newer the computer technology the more it's compromised and the more the owner is compromised.

[MikalE]

It really is 1984. This stuff scares the crap out of me.

I have physically disconnected the microphones in all of my Thinkpads and un-installed the software. The cell phones are kept in another room from where I normally spend time.

Data collection is bad enough without being able to totally turn it off, but no one needs to be listening to what i say while at home or watching what I do.

I'm not convinced my Smart TV isn't spying on me.

[BillP]

I have physically disconnected the microphones in all of my Thinkpads and un-installed the software. The cell phones are kept in another room from where I normally spend time.

All conversations in my house are conducted in the Cone of Silence as seen on the American television show "Get Smart".

[Thinkpad4by3]

I'm not convinced my Smart TV isn't spying on me.

I have officially replaced my Smart TV with something that I KNOW won't spy on me, a 15" Black and White Wood Grain TV right out of 1976. If you want proof, I will post a picture.

Proof: https://i.imgur.com/GQQpUcQ.jpg

[olex126]

Annecy:

At "The Home", the nurses let me use different coloured crayons to mark my menu choices for meals, and I just get used to having colourful surroundings! .....

My socks have five-coloured individual toes, and Doctor tells me it's a perfectly acceptable way of keeping track of the days-of-the-week.... Monday for Red, Tuesday for Blue, etc... (Haf'ta figure out what to do for Saturday and Sunday though...I run out of toes, unless I use both feet, but then that leaves leftovers in the middle of one foot at the start of the next week.... decisions, decisions....)

The BEST use for colour of course is for my medication... especially the green ones, 'cause THEY make sure I don't forget whatever it was that I was supposed to remember.... whatever THAT was, 'cause I forgot to take the green pill AGAIN.... Nurse Nancy is gonna be SOOOOOO mad at me!!

However, (And THIS is the MOST exciting news:) "The Home" Computer People (who are VERY forward-thinking technicians) have JUST ugraded my high-end Thinkpad 750C from boring old black-and-white DOS to the NEW Windows 95 operating system, and now I am SO excited to use COLOUR!! Did you know that the "Windows 95" logo is actually a design that uses FIVE DIFFERENT colours : black, green, blue, yellow and red ? How funky COOL is THAT?! WOW !!!

Did you know that now they even have colour Television in the visitors' room here? They had to replace the black-and-white TV set last week after Morty (he's one of my roommates, 'cept he's not 'puter-literate like I am... Anyway, he didn't have money for his OWN personal computer, so I gave him an old desktop keyboard, and Annie (she's another 'puter-literate type like me, who'da thunk with that weird hair-do and all, huh?) said "Why don't we pretend to hook the keyboard up to the TV set in the Visitors' Room and Morty will believe he's got his OWN personal computer?"...

So you can guess what happened next...Morty was furiously pounding away on the keyboard trying to change the channel 'cause he didn't want to see ANOTHER re-run of "Bonanza" (which we ALL love here at "The Home", even Nurse Yvette (Hubba-Hubba!) even though she's not old enough to remember it the first time it ran on TV!) [Leastwise, I don't THINK she's old enough to 'member.... I'm pretty sure I've got warts that are older than her! Boy, wish they would hire more Nurses like Nurse Yvette....]

So anyways, as I was sayin' before I got off-track (see, TOLD YA that my meds work!....sometimes), Morty was trying to change from "Bonanza" to "I Love Lucy" with his new keyboard by pounding away furiously on every key. Did I mention that this was just around midnight when all the TV stations at "The Home" (both of them!) go off the air for the night? All Morty got as he pounded on the keyboard was the log-off signal.... ya know, that LONG, uninterrupted boring DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO signal that pierces your ears if the volume is up too high? Morty got so mad that his new "Personal Computer" didn't work that he threw the keyboard at the TV set and broke the screen!

And THAT'S how we got the new colour TV!

I'd fill you in on some of the more exciting activities here, like how Nurse Anthony (yep, a real guy nurse...Whod'a thunk, huh?) tries to teach me the finer art of playing "DOOM" with HIS new computer... It's ONLY a desktop, not a real Thinkpad, but It's got a REAL "Intel 386" processor in it, and it can run circles around my 750C, so I'm gonna have to upgrade my equipment to compete ... I THINK I can maybe get the kids to spring for a new Thinkpad T23 with one of them latest Pentium thingies in it...should leave Nurse Anthony in the dust! HA!.....

Anyways, I haf''ta run now... Nurse Shelly says it's time for "Bath" and then "Counting Lessons".... I keep telling her I ALREADY know how to count backwards from one hundred, but I guess she doesn't believe me. I think it's got something to do with my falling asleep before I reach ninety-two!

And then after I wake up from "Counting Lessons" I get to have Nurse Lisa teach me all about how to use the pointy red thingie in the middle of my Thinkpad 750C keyboard...she says it's supposed to be a "Mouse Replacement", whatever THAT is! So many new things to try with my new Windows 95 Operating System, and Nurse Lisa is really up on the latest in technical advances, just like I will be soon!

Cheers!

Dave