Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science infotainment development?

Presumably, for such a complaint, the cops wouldn’t even bother to come to laugh at you unless they were very very bored. This is probably true in both circumstances you described. Also, I can’t speak for others, but unless detained I wouldn’t stick around most public locations long enough for someone to complain about a notification from my phone. Even if a call is received and must be answered, it seems appropriate to accept the call and leave the immediate shared area if possible. Obviously, in such circumstances as a moving bus, quickly leaving isn’t really feasible.

However, I partially agree with the person to whom you responded. Your phone shouldn’t make any media based sound (videos, music) in public. I also mostly agree with what I think you’re saying: in most circumstances, notification sounds are inoffensive. Movies are not the only exception to this but definitely are one. Laughing in the face of someone who requests quiet in a public shared area seems rude, though, and might escalate the situation.

To elaborate, recently I went to see a dental surgeon. As I approached the waiting area, my immediate thought was to set my phone to vibrate. Once I entered, however, I realized that not only was there a TV in the space; also there was an elderly couple watching TV on their phones. Not only were they doing so, not only were they watching something different from what was on the TV, not only were they watching their media at BLARING volume, but they were also watching vastly different content. In this circumstance, notifications could be - reluctantly - forgiven, but their blasting and conflicting media made it very difficult to concentrate on filling out my paperwork.

I’m too much of a wimp to have approached them, but in that circumstance I think it would have been appropriate to ask them to silence their media and would have only required a vague awareness of the existence of others for them to have done so without prompting.

Though the cops, if they came, would likely still have just laughed.

An aside: as soon as the presumed wife left the waiting area, the likely husband shut off his media. I don’t know what that means, but wanted to mention it.

This is useful information and the depth of your knowledge is impressive. Not that I expect operating system expertise from a car salesperson who has no reason to have any, but my salesperson told me it was still Microsoft. Thank you.

Suddenly I miss the Flex just a tiny, tiny bit less.

Honestly, it was a car, a thing; I can’t claim legitimate pain. It makes me a little sad on occasion, but overall in my life it won’t matter. My mom, who loved aphorisms, would have said “by the time you’ve been married twice, you’ll forget all about it.” I plan to maintain my first and current marriage, but the sentiment fits.

I am very sorry for the loss of your Element! I was only in one once, but I loved the way the dials worked. Perhaps this humorous lyric from the song “Swagless” by Spose might provide some comfort:

I could sign and drive a boxy Honda SUV and not be in my element

219,000 is pretty solid for any car. I think I bought my Flex at 83,000 miles and sold it at under 100,000. Maybe the starting mileage was 73,000, but somewhere in that vicinity. That included using it as my primary transport vehicle when moving across several hundred miles (which, TBH, is probably what killed it - but I appreciated that I was able to use it and its vast cargo capacity.)

With reference to the toast at the end of the comment, I’ve always loved boxy vehicles. As a kid, my favorite vehicle was my dad’s 1984 Toyota Celica (though his was maroon, unlike the picture). It’s also the car in which I learned to drive a manual.

They don’t make many boxy cars anymore. The first time I saw a Flex was on the highway and I said to my passengers “what was that?! I want one” then several years later I had referenced it so much my wife said to me some form of “FINE, shut up about it and go buy one.” Several hours later I drove home my favorite vehicle so far.

Thanks for the response!

Well, most nights, sunlight still bounces off the moon before it hits the earth and its inhabitants. This could imply that the sunlight is only dangerous to a vampire prior to interacting with another solid object. If one is willing to assume that the lens and its various filters qualify as a solid object, that could explain the lack of death.

Presumably the only reason they don’t employ this loophole on Earth is because an astronaut just walking around would draw unwanted attention.

Alternatively, perhaps the vampire keeps its back towards the nearest star at all times.

Sure, and for the eight years I owned it before it broke down beyond being worth repairing, I had no problem with those. The infotainment system did kinda suck, but it was a 2014 so I think it would get some leeway for that even if it weren’t Microsoft powered.

The emblem just offended my sensibilities. I never pulled it off, though, because the friends who rode with me all knew how passionately I feel about Linux (they mostly also work with it - I try not to proselytize to the disinterested) and found it funny.

According to KBB, the car was worth $8k when it broke down. I put almost double that into repairing the same part of the engine at three different mechanics before giving up. Sadly, for some silly reason, Ford no longer makes the Flex. I think the Explorer is pretty close, but I couldn’t find one close enough to test drive. I would have loved to convert my car to an EV, but I wouldn’t trust my own work on that front and didn’t want to pay as much as would cost to have a professional do it.

Every time I get into my new vehicle - a 2024 Ford Edge - I think to myself how much I miss the Flex. That said, I did get a great deal on the Edge.

Until recently, I had a Ford Flex.

The only thing I didn’t like about it was the proud “powered by Microsoft” emblem (and its implications).

I’m old enough to have been a fan of Buffy, but didn’t watch TV back then. I also enjoy some modern pop music but, in the vast majority of cases, have never seen the artists. I’m also terminally bad at faces even if I have seen them (I’ve had to ask my wife whether a picture of her was her; she took it well).

I did actually recognize Alyson Hanigan, since she has a few distinctive expressions and features, but had no idea of the rest.

All that said to say: thanks for the explanation; me not getting the joke or reference doesn’t mean it was a bad one.

While grateful for the explanation, I find myself no less confused.

I was actually wondering, when the previous commenter referenced the setup menu, if the shift+F10 thing still worked. I know it brings up the command prompt in the install interface, but in case you didn’t know, it also brings up the command prompt in general use Windows. (Or it used to. Again, I’m very out of date on the subject.)

I think “not hard, just annoying” means that anything tech related is out of reach for most people, unfortunately. Plus, to be honest, most people probably won’t care about or see a problem with Microsoft forcing an online account on them. I’m happy they’re happy, but their privacy ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

Apparently it can mean “excessively embellished in style or language,” so I guess if you were to describe a legally contested situation in a … Turgid manner, it could distort any case made based on your testimony? IANAL, so that’s just a wild swing at the appropriate application based on one web search.

Preemptive aside: I’ve seen lots of jokes made, so for anyone not familiar, IANAL is neither sexual nor any kind of innuendo or entendre.

Ah, fair enough.

I haven’t used, or especially installed, Windows in years. Wasn’t sure if what I described was still the case. Good to know there’s still a way, though, in case I get desperate!

There was a Basic Instructions comic about exactly this, but unfortunately the only thing I can remember about it is that the protagonist describes someone’s hair as “turgid” and “basic instructions turgid hair” isn’t getting many relevant results.

Also, is “chariots chariots” related to the rest of the post or am I just oblivious?

edit: s/coming/comic

This may not still be true, but previously if you disconnected or removed the NIC during installation, after some haranguing you could setup a local account. (Note that this is still obviously bad, but if you need a solution, it might provide one.)

Well, fair enough that you were exposed to them. I didn’t have a lot of friends, especially not those even remotely into any kind of tech, as a kid; I think I first heard of trackballs from a programming teacher in about 1996 and bought one to try out of curiosity. Ever since then I’ve used one whenever it was an option.

I’ve even mostly used the same model. If you look in my comment history, you can see I recently mentioned that most of what I use is Kensington Orbits. I’ve tried other models, but they don’t work for me.

The one PC gaming exception for me is Minecraft. In that game you have to right-click a lot (as I’m sure you know) and I guess I haven’t developed the muscles for that because it makes my wrist very tired very quickly. Still, I play a lot of FPS games and have no problem holding the right click for zoom and such; only quick, repetitive right-clicking causes problems for me.

edit: To address your original comment, I have one friend who uses a trackball at work but a regular mouse for anything else. Other than that, I rarely meet anyone who has even heard of them, let alone used them, let alone consistently done so.

On PC, I game exclusively with trackballs and have since the nineties. I’ve never not been given the side eye when someone found out that’s how I play.

When was this magical time during which they were popular?

It’s been a year or two, but I had no issues with Star Citizen in Linux. IIRC, I ran it through Lutris.

The person perhaps (eventually) most qualified to answer this might be Graeldon, who is on a quest to play every Steam game in alphabetical order.

Ancient video time!

https://youtu.be/yWYvl_AIIbU

It’s just the special effects department showing off.