<SNIP>
It's not a luxury in 2022. It's one of the main interaction points of society and an expectation.
I'd rather have a newer phone (under 4 years old iPhone) than a better car if I had the choice.
Well how can I put this delicately, you claimed many times here in this thread that you're a cheapskate, well that would seem from the above that you're a cheapskate by choice when it suits you. For many people, they don't have that choice, they are cheapskates through necessity, so a newer phone is a luxury for them.
Many need a car and also need that car to be reliable if they live in the sticks, whereas you are living in perhaps the best city in the UK for public transport options and best fares, so you could, as you have said before, manage without a car at all. That is far from being a reality across most of the UK, where public transport is not seen as a public service, but a profit generator for the wealthy owners. If a service is not being profitable, it suffers a drastically reduced service, even down to sometimes a single service a day or even weekly with the local authority subsidizing it.
That situation was bad enough for some really rural areas when it was the National Bus Company, like it was when I worked on the buses, but since deregulation and subsequent privatisation, the only thing that matters is pure profit and that really was the time when it became far cheaper for most people, especially those with families, even those in large towns, to convert to becoming car owners.
With the UK's track record for deregulation and then eventual privatisation, that even gave a massive boost to mobile phone uptake as when they sold off the British Telecom, it was the death for loads of public boxes (something I remember only too well) I used to have to phone in to H/O at times during the working day while out on the road to reply to pager messages. That caused the company to drop pagers and go with car phones, so we could be conducted directly by either H/O or customers because it was not always possible to find either a phone box that worked or one that didn't already have a massive queue of other sales reps / customer service engineers all waiting to use it to respond to their pages, all while keeping a beady eye open for the dreaded yellow jackets (traffic wardens) or the Police who would regularly move us on because we were causing obstruction to the flow of traffic. 
If you didn't work in an industry where that was the normal practise, then you really have zero idea just how fraught those times were.
If companies also perceive that Android is a serious threat to their security, then let them issue iPhones / Blackberries to their staff. I have never known a company that actually expected their staff to provide a mobile phone, it was always a company asset and had to be handed back upon leaving their employment and strictly NO private calls were allowed.
I respect people who are up front with me.
It's probably a good idea that I clean up these perceptions here and my attitude.
There is one important aggregate facet of life that people seem to always to completely ignore and that is security. I'm not talking about wielding guns against hypothetical assailants, like some members of the TEA fraternity, the odd armed chav or filling your house up with tins of beans for when the nuclear mutant zombies attack. No I'm talking about being aware of what can change for you and having a plan ready to roll against it. That means actually understanding changes that might occur.
To do that your skills, knowledge and
tools need to adapt to societal and employment risks and you need to make sure that they are tested regularly and that you understand what the risks are. That requires research and planning.
With respect to the smartphone, it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, it is absolutely the most important
tool of this century. You are expected by society to actually be able to communicate freely and using tools which are prescribed to you, not the other way round. This isn't about having a company phone, it's about being literally ready to jump on the next opportunity that comes along before there's a queue. And that's your responsibility and can't be abstracted to someone else or shrugged off. Also it's not just a phone for making calls on; it's a pocket computer that allows you to leverage even more opportunities and a lot of the time both other people and the government expect you to meet them half way.
The cheapskate comes from the compromise between balancing security and budgetary concerns. At one end of the scale there is negligence and lack of preparation that is now affecting Vince (sorry Vince but you shot yourself). This costs you opportunities and incurs incidental costs which may be out of budget. On the other hand there is overspending which means trading any financial security you have for high risk assets (buying nice cars when you have £20 in the bank) which causes large incidental losses.
Right in the middle is making sure you have a minimum spec competent tools. I specified earlier a reasonable refurb iPhone 7 as an example which is fine for this case. It's cheap, still supported by Apple, spares and reliable service are available.
As for most of the people you refer to above in the privatisation comments, they did not even think for two seconds that their situation was possibly even a risk, nor did they prepare for it in any way when they had the opportunity to do so. Most people are completely fungible as well which is a massive security risk. Having been stuck in some shitty backwards towns for most of the 90s I was well aware of the risks of staying there and my employment, upskilled and took opportunities and got out of it. The risk now is that the globalised transport fuel supply chain is knackering those who chose to stay, and yes it was a choice. But of course everyone is sitting there being fed the shit about rising prices everywhere, sitting in their own mire and doing sweet fuck all about it.
Case in point, when I was sitting there at the bus stop with my 10 minute reliable metro service earlier, I took this. Owning a car is a risk. Doing a job that requires owning a car is a risk. Living somewhere that requires a car is a risk. I saw this 12 years ago when I moved here. I only own a car because it is a luxury but that's rapidly becoming a liability.
I hate looking at America which is entirely built on energy usage. That's going to go to shit very vey quickly when it does go.
YMMV but consider security/risk first. The
real cheapskate can see the horizon, knows what is going to cost them
everything in the long run and doesn't care about the best priced bananas in the supermarket or the 70€ android because they are insignificant really. The cheapskate is only scared of unexpected expenses, uncalculated risks and unreliable technology.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread (Read 14971420 times)