2020-04-01 TechLife

(singke) #1

Mousotronblacksunsoftware.com/mousotron.html
Perhaps you’ve glanced at question five of our 60-second quiz and chuckled at the
unbelievable answer. How can a mouse cursor possibly travel that far? Let’s prove it with the
help of Mousotron, a freeware application that does indeed track how far your poor cursor
has been forced to move over time. You can set it to give you statistics in metric or imperial,
depending on your preference, and it’s incredibly light – install it, leave it in your system tray,
and open it up to marvel at your mousing prowess every now and then.
It’s also able to track your clicks, so you can see (for instance) how many times you’ve
used the right mouse button, and it’ll also make a rather worrying tally of the number of
keystrokes you’ve struck. Thankfully for us it doesn’t specifically track the number of times
you’ve hit backspace.


If you’re the owner of a Sonos smart speaker
and you fancy picking up an upgrade, Sonos
bTWWZʬP]dZLOT^NZY_TQdZ]PNdNWPdZ]
old device. That’s great, isn’t it? You get a
cheaper speaker, and your old model moves
on elsewhere. What isn’t so great is Sonos’
XP_SZO%SPNZX[LYdʮT[^LaT]LW^bT_NS which throws your existing speaker into ɩ]PNdNWPXZOPɪPʬPN_TaPWdOT^LMWTYRT_ forever. It doesn’t matter whether the SL]ObL]PbL^bZ]VTYR[P]QPN_WdMPQZ]PSLYO Z]XTRS_MP^PQWQZ]LNSL]T_dZ]^PNZYO owner; once the deed is done, it’s destined QZ]_SPWZNLWP bL^_PMTY There are many logical reasons for this. Sonos estimates that over 90% of the hardware it has ever sold is still in use. Those with older hardware miss out on newer features, which Sonos is keen to push. And removing that older hardware from the equation makes sense from Sonos’ standpoint the company is in no way forcing users to recycle, and they are not ZMWTRPO_Z_LVP_SPOT^NZY_
Sonos is also not alone, as many other
companies take the same route, particularly


for hardware recalls; Nvidia, for example,
recently issued a recall on many of its Shield
devices, sending a signal to the old ones to
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users disconnected their old devices from
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not a tactic that works with every piece of
hardware.
What’s most worrying is not Sonos,
Nvidia, or any other company, it’s the fact
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^TX[WPZYWTYPNZXXLYO9ZOZ`M__SP]PL]P
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]P PYLMWTYROPaTNP^bSTNSSLaPMPPY^P__Z
=PNdNWPXZOPMdXT^_LVPM`_bSL_SL[[PY^
if a company decides to no longer support a
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We’ve seen it happen with software, we’ve
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what you sign up for.. TL

Everyone’s talking about:


Planned obsolescence


Technology’s most controversial topic just won’t go away – should
we really be producing more e-waste?


You’re going to have to work hard to
meet Mousotron’s top users.

The 60-Second Quiz
Pens at the ready, your time
starts now!

01 How does the OED suggest
pluralising ‘computer mouse’?
AComputer mice
BComputer mouses
CEither

02 Who invented the mouse?
ADouglas Engelbart
BGerman engineers
at Telefunken
CBoth, at the same time

03 Between 1982 and 2008,
how many mice did Logitech
sell?
A10 million
B100 million
C1 billion

04 Which computer is said to
have first popularised mouse
use?
AZX Spectrum
BCommodore Amiga
CApple Lisa

05 How far does an average
mouse cursor travel in a year?
A1 mile
B12 miles
C120 miles

06 What innovation did Mouse
Systems’ ProAgio bring in 1995?
ALaser tracking
BNine buttons
CA scrollwheel

Next issue on sale
6th of April

Answers 1C 2C 3C 4C 5C 6C

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