I am everything you hate about people on the internet. I am here to help.

[Blacklight]

I am male, mid 20's and grew up with this technology.
Wondering what something means?
Wondering how to do something?
Wondering how your kids did something?
Wondering if you should let your kids do something?

@BuffytheThunderLizard

Celebrity implies I am celebrated. I don't think it's the right word to begin with, but my reaction is this: so what?

None, actually. Werables, who hasn't heard of the stupid iWatch. Here's a better question, would you consider a pacemaker a "wearable?" Quantifying is no different than doing analogue to digital conversions, it's close but will miss the odd blip the original contains. By making it simpler to "read" you're removing more data. I make every effort to block everything from tracking who I am. As for the oculus rift I saw it . Great example of situational awareness with an interface that couldn't be more intuitive, literally moving your head to change your view. For education I see no use for it in the classroom, but in specific fields it will be invaluable.

Kudos for coming back, Blacklight.

I am in no doubt of your knowledge in the field, but remain interested to know whether you see why this thread took the direction it did? And your contribution to that?

I have the wisdom to know that what I don't know about IT etc is vast and I do like to learn.
There are also many areas of currently available or developing technology that I simply have no interest in at all
Many bits of hard/soft ware will have huge use in a tiny small area and some will become universal no doubt. I'll sit and observe with interest

Blacklight, thank you so much for showing up and volunteering to be a resource!

I'm 47, female, and was at university with some of the people who invented seminal parts of the internet (the webcam for instance), and a particularly well-regarded form of encryption.

If there's anything you would like to know, I can pass your questions straight on to them.

Good stuff for having the balls to come back. There's a lovely Geeky stuff area on here with posters who are happy to give advice when asked. Have a look at that and where help is asked, volunteer your assistance. That will go far better for you.

As pp said, do you get why you got this reaction? It was too much "The menz are here to help you little dolly women with difficult stuff like computers" And a lot of women with a lot of professional tech experience blew you a huffing great raspberry.

Now if you can take that on the chin and just get on with chatting, answering questions and generally remembering that you don't know who you're talking to on here (nor do many of us) then you'll be OK. And remember that amongst the MNers there are all sorts of women with extraordinary knowledge about the most bizarre things. Aircraft engineering supremos for example which was incredible when the Malaysian Air flight went down. Doctors. Barristers. Mortuary workers. Care workers. You just can't tell what people know by looking.

Well durr Jamming of course I can

Which Smart TV was in the news recently for the manufacturer (?Samsung) advising customers not to say anything 'confidential' in front of it?

Playing games on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum aged 3 is "growing up with this technology". Being born after the Sega Mega Drive just means you completely missed the boat.

We had a ZX80, then ZX81, then a Spectrum. Ah, the joys of writing a programme to make it say "Hello". That was the extent of my Basic knowledge... Dfather was programming computers and writing software in the mid 60s at IBM so I grew up drawing pictures on printer paper and he had boxes of punch cards at home. His first business offered computer services to large companies, back in 1972.

PD yes Samsung but I think LG had a similar issue.

We also had an Atari games console which included "Tank Pong". Happy days... Think we plugged it in about 15 years ago and discovered it still worked.

I just googled the ZX80 and discovered they go for about £400-500 on Ebay!! Wonder if my mum still has ours...

Our Sprectrum went in the bin in the 90s

DH said they've been re-released, without the tape!!! What's the point in that?!!!

@duchesse

I do actually, you mentioned encryption, why is it the only algorithms available commercially [that are actually any good] only go as high as 256 bit?

Have passed your question on OP. Will be back when my friend answers.

D'you know the best thing about this thread?

It made me find this - www.repton3.co.uk/chuckieegg.aspx
I'm 10 again.

re Samsung and other voice activated TVs - mostly you have to hold down a button on the remote to activate it with your voice, and say something like "find me something funny". It will record your voice doing that, because it's trying to build up an idea of your preferences (after all, "funny" could be Monty Python or Mrs Brown's Boys or Keith Lemon or Plebs or... we don't all find the same things funny.) The user agreements are about 20 million pages long, because they've got all sorts of disclaimers and so on.

The thing is, while they may only be voice activated/record while you've got your finger on the relevant button, and while they might only store data locally, and not send it anywhere...

It has the ability to record your voice.
It is a networked device (it will be getting updates over the networks, it will probably have the ability to send some user statistics back, if not voice recordings.)
Sometime, someone somewhere is going to misuse these abilities to spy on people, just like the have with all other technology.

backlight

In your absence, the unicorn has now taken over the living room and has set up an autocratic government with the flying mini-penis and the collection of skylanders.

Earlier, I went in there to get my third born,, but they had sold him into slavery to fund their small but growing empire ... and now I have no pancakes, the unicorn ate them all.

WHAT DO I DOOOOO???

Repton! That link made me remember Repton. Now that was a fantastic game. And no saves within a level. You had to complete each level in one go. Hardcore.

why is it the only algorithms available commercially [that are actually any good] only go as high as 256 bit?

What are you talking about? Even RSA is commonly using 2048 bit keys and, while there are issues with some RSA implementations, the basic algorithm is still considered robust. Unless you are suggesting you have a convenient way of factoring arbitrary large numbers of course.

If it helps, I was using the Internet before Berners-Lee even invented the world-wide web.

Blacklight

Can I chip in on that encryption question?

Firstly, I am certainly no cryptanalyst but why would you want more than 256 bits for a modern symmetric cipher? It would take ~6.7e40 times longer than the age of the universe to exhaust half of the keyspace of a AES-256 key (using a billion high end graphics cards to brute force it).

Secondly, why would you want a commercially available algorithm? It is generally the published peer reviewed and heavily attacked algorithms which are trusted by most.

I shall back out of the thread now, because thats not nearly as funny as all the other posts...

I like Blacklight now. He is so very earnest.

You should all stop being horrible to the young maaaaaan.