Posts by 45RPM 1402 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Oct 2010
Yup. The whole kettle and toaster thing was worrying me as I had my breakfast, and they took all the power that my solar panels could deliver. Fine in summer then, not so great in winter. I wonder if new alloys might be more efficient at turning power into heat? Otherwise, I’ll have to change my breakfast diet for half of the year.
For the hard of thinking, we don’t have a choice. And if selfish self professed freedom warriors want to guzzle fuel and wreck the environment for everyone else then it is only right that this should be legislated against.
Remember, if I had absolute freedom then I would also have the freedom to pop over to your gaff and perform a lobotomy with a rusty hacksaw, and you would be free to come over to my place and be similarly beastly. Absolute freedom is an illusion and most of the time when you act freely you restrict someone else’s ability to free. If you eat the cake then someone else can’t.
Anthropogenic Climate Change is a reality. We can’t undo it by wishful thinking or burying our heads in the sand. We need to take action - smaller families, reduced travel, less meat consumed, fewer power- guzzling computers. And the fact that some people, like you, rail against this and crap on about the impact to their freedom just underlines the need to legislate.
If people can’t be trusted to act decently then laws need to be written to force them to. I only wish that people could be trusted and the laws unnecessary - but that too is wishful thinking.
I can’t comment on the accuracy of this figure - but it doesn’t much matter because I agree with you. Not only that, but any devices built must be easily repairable (it takes far less energy to repair than it does to recycle). But energy consumption matters too. It all matters.
But if the device is idle, it shouldn’t be using much power at all - if it does then it’s badly designed and this needs to be fixed.
Sad, but we need to get to a point where everything has enforced limits on power consumption. You can have your 4x4 urban tank, but it mustn’t use any more power than a Mini. Ditto computers. Failure to limit consumption in all areas will quite literally bring about the end of a human habitable world.
The good news is that such limits will encourage innovation - and if Apple’s M1 is anything to go by, we can still enjoy high performance compute.
I say this as a hypocrite. I have a Ryzen gaming box - which can do graphically amazing things. Oddly though, my kids seem more attached to old Nintendo games (SNES era) - so perhaps we need to get back to the idea that it’s the gameplay that matters, not the graphical sparkle. I’m not an expert on such matters though.
I remember actively exploiting a flaw in the abacuses at infant school many decades ago. If you ‘shook’ them, the memory would become corrupted. If you were really determined you might force a ‘frame error’, and they’d dump their memories entirely. All over the floor. Mrs Robinson was not happy.
I’ve got no problem with an opt out on organ donation - it’s not as if it’s Live Organ Donation is it? That would be something completely different.
But if I’m dead, I’m dead - if someone else needs my spare parts then they can have ‘em. It’s not as if I’m going to even know about it. And after Brexit, imports are getting trickier - so they might even be necessary to stop people from starving!
Why the troll icon? That’s a bloody good idea. If they wanted to do it properly, it would be a separate leaflet with a bold headline. But even as money-grubbing opportunists they could have buried it in the small print of a vaccine information leaflet - and then say that they’d provided this information.
It does omit the antivaxxers, but I suspect that the antivaxxers are so deep in conspiracy theories that they don’t have much interest in genuine threats.
Of course they’re not going to commit to something that might reduce engagement - and hence reduce the amount of money that they get to stuff into their pockets.
Once a political party strays too far from the balanced centre, corruption becomes rife. And there’s no doubt in my mind that this conservative government is as venal, corrupt and incompetent as any from the past century or more. Perhaps not quite as bad as Trumps Republicans, but heading in that direction and dragging the UK to hell with them.
Nevertheless, they’ve done a number on the uninformed and disinterested UK electorate, reducing key policy issues to soundbites that they can hide and dissemble behind. Ignorant witlessisms like “yeah, we’re not great - but at least we’re not Labour or the Lib Dems”. And the public, slow on a diet of tabloid press, lap it up without a second thought. We’ve got the government we deserve, and we’re being royally screwed by them in everything they do.
That depends where the tagging is done, doesn’t it?
On-device would (probably) mean that the device and software is more expensive, but in that case the service is for my convenience and paid for by my rather emptier wallet.
Off-device, you make a very valid point. But as for all these things, if you can’t see how the service is financed then you are most likely the product being sold.
Since he claims to be Christian, he must be aware that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He’s spent his whole life abusing his enemies personally, inviting silly nicknames and so forth … and now we’re told that the same cannot be done to him. What is he? Some kind of snowflake? He’s just a tantruming toddler who desperately needs to be sent to bed without any stories - and told to behave better in the morning. Normally I’d prescribe a cuddle for the toddler too, since a lack of love can lead to massive twattery in later life, but you just know that the cheese puff monster would get carried away and turn it into a grope.
The problem is that it’s a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. If the majority are happy to have free software (paid for, perhaps, by invasion of privacy), how to software developers who want to write quality software, free of influence, get paid? They’re priced out of the market. They’d have to raise their prices to a prohibitive level - such that no one could afford it. And then what choice do consumers have? It’s free, and spying, or nothing.
Two points, and neither detract from my opinion of Audacity which is great software.
1. As a software developer who likes to have somewhere to sleep at night and who likes to have food to eat, I object strongly to the idea that software should be cheap or free. As a highly skilled developer who works with highly skilled developers I’d like to be paid accordingly. Nor do I want to be in the position of having to work for projects sponsored by the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon etc in order to get paid.
2. Audacity is great in terms of its functionality, but it’s ugly as sin. The same is true of most open source - it lacks oversight in terms of its UI and it suffers for it. Most of the stuff which looks good is a community edition of a commercial package (IntelliJ springs to mind, Visual Studio Code etc). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though, and maybe I’m just weird. I do like a spot of consistency in my UIs though.
Well, 67% voted to join in 1975. Now that’s what I call a mandate. It covered both the Common Market (the trading bloc that you refer to) and also the EC, the predecessor of the EU.
With regard to further integration, that was covered in the manifestos of the political parties involved - and we all had the choice to elect them (or not). In fact, this provides the only real legitimacy of the Leave vote - in that the Tory party got elected again.
Brexit - get over it. No. Because that’s not the way democracy works. Democracy only works if you have reasoned argument and counter argument, debate - and elections based on a considered weighing up of the facts. Once an election has been held, the ‘loser’ isn’t expected to roll over - they get to keep presenting their evidence and arguing the point until the next election.
Were you cheated on the vote? Actually, yes. Two reasons - one, if you have resort to knowingly lying to make your point (as team leave did) then you’re making a mockery of the process. Two - the margin was so slim and the impact so catastrophic that there was not sufficient mandate to leave. Especially on an advisory referendum that even vote leave wanted a 60% margin on for the result to be accepted (well, they did before they realised they were winning). Remember that if Remain had won then the status quo would have been preserved and Leave could have had a second referendum without any impact on the country. Leave won - and now we’re out with huge damage to our economy and reputation and no chance of getting back in without significant concessions (bye bye Gibraltar, bye bye veto, bye bye all those organisations which were based in the UK). We may (hopefully) get back in one day, but we’ll never be as well off as we were before Brexit.
Was it rigged? Well yes… and no. Yes, because a credulous electorate were knowingly lied to - and that’s not how a democratic system is supposed to work. See my earlier points. No, because the count was as near as dammit accurate, and therefore the result was as reported (with a very slim majority)
Sound like Trump supporters? Not really. To do so it would be necessary for us to lie and deny the opinions of anyone who disagrees.
I can’t work out whether you’re making a very bad joke or whether you’re just appallingly thick.
Merely failing isn’t sufficient unfortunately. You need to celebrate your failures and present them as yuge successes. If you’re not a complete psychopath, if you’re painfully aware of the consequences of your errors and the impact that they could have on others then you’re doomed to failure I’m afraid.
But why do you care? Presumably if you want that functionality you’ll buy an Android device. If you would prefer that that functionality isn’t available you can buy iPhone. Isn’t it good to have the choice? I’d have more sympathy with this view if Android didn’t exist, or if Android was total crap. But Android does exist, and it isn’t bad at all - so why do you care what the other team are getting up to?
You’re right - it isn’t. It’s better than most though, but still worse than some. The point is to protect the majority - some people will be such high-profile targets (world leaders etc) that it’s worth overcoming any security to get them. The security on the iPhone is good enough to protect my family - and likely yours too - and that is the key point. The more holes you poke into it the easier it is to attack people who aren’t tech savvy, and that is not a good thing.
You could, yes - and it would be very bad for security. You have the savvy to know not to enable such features just because that cold call from “Apple Macintosh” or “Microsoft Windows” told you to - my mother in law definitely doesn’t. At the moment, her iPhone keeps her safe - with your suggestion she’s be open to attack by predatory phone calls and social engineering.
A better idea, credit to John Gruber, might be to enable such functionality - but only to registered developers. Still sucks though.
Counterintuitively, I think that the freedom of choice argument is valid. Sure, the restrictions imposed by the App Store mean that I can’t fundamentally alter the OS or the features that it provides (GUI, way that NFC works, the App Store etc) but I can build apps to do nearly everything else. The thing is that, personally, I enjoy the security that not being able to change low level functionality provides. If I had one wish it would be that the curation was more rigidly enforced - I mean, they do let some right old crap through!
If I wanted to have a more open ecosystem, one where I can do pretty much whatever I choose, then I have choice. There are a lot of nice Android phones out there (and a lorry load of really nasty ones too if cheap and plasticky is my preference). If I want total openness, do whatever I like no holds barred, then there are pure Linux phones available too. I have choice.
To mandate that Apple has to open the iPhone up to third party app stores, or system level changes, is to deprive people who think like me of choice. I suspect that the people who are most rabidly pro third party in this case actually don’t want an iPhone anyway - this is a religious thing for them. They just want everything to work like Android does - and that’s not good for anyone.
There are many things that I disagree with that he espoused (not paying taxes being one of them… but that’s uh nuther story), I’ve had my fill of conspiracy theories and craziness, and I’ve had my fill of the objectification of women. But still, he was a character, I would like to have bought him a beer and chatted to him (though he could more than afford his own, and there are many more people he would have preferred to talk to!), and he will be missed. He definitely ripped up the rule book when it comes to defining what a geek is!
Must be a very good for morale having to walk around with a rictus grin plastered to your fizzog. A laugh a minute. I suppose we should be grateful for the small mercy that it applies to everyone and that it isn’t only the women who are being subjected to this indignity. Cheer up love, you’re much prettier when you smile and all that bollocks.
It’s certainly a point of view. But where’s your evidence? Perhaps the best analogy I’d give is that of a power station. You might argue that Labour governments didn’t maintain the generators properly so the power output dropped until someone fixed them. I’d argue that the Tory government has ripped out the turbines for their scrap metal value and the generators are spinning only on the residual energy in the flywheels - and the power station is now beyond repair.
Think of the lions of British Industry of the past century. The powerhouses of the British Economy. Well, most of those were sold off during Tory Governments (incidentally, I’m mainly thinking of private sector businesses which we failed to protect - Reuters, ARM, Apricot, Lyons, Rowntree etc) - but that’s okay. We didn’t need them did we? We had our powerhouse financial sector. Well, we did until Brexit. So how’s that for fiscal probity?
Politicians should always listen - but they should also be brave enough not to deliver if what is being asked for is not in our best interest. Part of that contract is to explain clearly why what was being asked for is not in our best interest of course - I don’t know how to fulfil that part in the 21st century, but maybe part of it is focussed, single message, YouTube videos which educate on a particular concept without any party political advertising. Useful topics might include (after the nag has done a runner):
* What Europe has done for us
* The benefit of proportional representation
* The importance of lockdown
* Why vaccination works
I’m sure that we can all think of others.
I sympathise with your cynicism - but I don’t agree with it.
Some politicians are in it to extract whatever benefit, usually financial, that they can for themselves. This seems to be the case for a majority of Conservative politicians (including UKIP / Brexit party, which are broadly conservative in their outlook), and a minority of Liberal and Labour politicians (even more so with the Greens).
Other politicians are in it for the public good, and genuinely believe that the views that they hold and the policies that they promote are for the benefit of the country and the wider population. As far as I can see, this holds true for the majority of centre and left wing politicians, whether I agree with them or not. You can be sure that I disagree with much of what Jeremy Corbyn stood for - but equally sure that I admire the man for trying to do what he genuinely believed would do the most good for the people of this country.
So who would I rather govern the country? Venal, grasping, rapacious predators who will stop at nothing to line their own pockets (the Conservative party). Or clumsy, sometimes naive, do-gooders who cock up once in a while whilst trying to deliver a better life for the broadest spectrum of people? Well, neither of-course - I’d rather a competent well oiled machine trying to deliver a better future for us all. But given hobsons-choice (a government trying to deliver in our best interest or no best interest at all) I’ll take the hippy over the pirate every single time.
And yet, despite all this, the ostrich voters of this country will still continue to bury their heads in the sand and try to justify their actions by saying that “sure, the Tories are bad - but they’re better than Labour or the Liberal Democrats”. There’s no evidence of this superiority, of course, and there’s quite a lot of evidence that the reverse is true - but still. Right wing Good, Left wing Bad. It must be so ‘cos it says so in the tabloid chip wrappers (in which category I also place The Maily Telegraph and The Times).
No wonder this country is screwed. It’s populated by imbeciles. /rant
He’s right. It is!
(Legs it as the Gnomeites and Cinnamonites start lobbing brickbats!)
In all seriousness, the wonderful thing about Linux is that we have the choice. The price we pay for that choice is a disjointed user experience where user interface elements from one program don’t match up with those from another.
Now why would I do that given how much better it works that the alternatives for my use-case?
In any event, I'm a) a geek, and I enjoy using OSs of all stripes - I love Linux, I love MacOS, I even love playing with DOS and Windows - and VMS, CP/M and MOS. Besides, it gives me 'one who knows what he's talking about status' which has got to be better than 'one who is prejudiced and likes to talk out of his hat status'.
And b) my software has been quite popular, and makes me more money on macOS than on all the other platforms it sells on put together. I'd be a mug to get off the gravy train given that I'm quite enjoying the gravy myself.
As I get older, the more of a pain in the proverbial this becomes. Back in the day, when my Mac LCIII became unsupported after only 3 major releases (7.1, 7.5, 7.6) and 4.5 years, it felt kind of annoying but okay. I mean, 4.5 years was practically the same as forever when I was in my twenties. Nowadays, with fewer years ahead of me than I have in the rear-view mirror, time gallops by at a hell of a lick - and it seems iniquitous that support for a computer should be dropped after a mere six years. Especially when one of my main computers is celebrating its 12th birthday (Mac Pro, with Catalina) and another is celebrating its 32nd (Mac SE/30 with A/UX).
I have an IBM 5150 in the loft (original 5 slot PC to you), and that was supported for the latest versions of its primary OS (MS-DOS) for a conquering 13 years. Outside of mainframes and industrial use, can any other computer make such a claim?
I have some seriously old perfectly working Macs, and none of them were rendered useless by Apples software updates. Perhaps you’re thinking of the other fellas. In fact, for a while, each release made the computer quicker (with the caveat that the original MacOS X was dogshit slow on my PowerMac G3, but was really very usable by the time Tiger rolled around)
Certainly, my 2009 vintage Mac Pro is really rather snappy with Catalina (albeit that Catalina wouldn’t install without a spot of help), my 2013 MacBook runs Big Sur without breaking a sweat…
It all renders your argument a little… well… pointless.
Taking my iPhone - well, that’s a 2016 model - and still runs perfectly well now that I’ve changed the battery, and all patched up with the latest OS.
Even the other fellas are fine. My HP z800 of ancient vintage runs the latest Windows 10 with no difficulty (although I suspect that if it had an i3 inside it might not be quite so happy)
Here’s my theory, putting aside bullshit and prejudice. If you spend serious dough on your gear then it will last a long time and be supported for a long time, without tedious slow downs. If you buy budget then you get a budget lifetime. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car, a fridge, a computer, a toaster, a TV, a phone. You get what you pay for.
As long as the Mac Pro is serviceable then, as long as the iMac et al are recycleable, they can sacrifice that maintainability in order for fashionable thinness. I hate typing those words - reuse is better than recycle, and for reuse maintainability is a key requirement. But, realistically, most people don’t care about maintainability - if it’s old, broken, or just a bit dowdy off it goes to the dump. So why bother making it maintainable if most people won’t maintain it?
I went to the dump yesterday (a load of failed flourescent tubes and their mounting apparatus in case you’re wondering), and the electronics skips were full of laptops and desktop PCs - most of them either quite repairable, I’ll bet, or full of useful components which were fully functioning. Will they get repaired? Of course not. They were in a bloody skip, exposed to the elements. They’ll get shipped to Turkey and dumped in landfill. So why go to the effort of making them repairable in the first place?
Sure, some people (most of us I’ll bet) do care about maintainability. But what are we going to buy? A pro spec computer (Mac Pro) or a home spec computer (iMac)? I bet most of us are going to go Pro - at least, if we can afford it. So then the argument becomes one of, sure, do what you will with the iMac - but for the love of Woz, make a Mac Pro that is affordable - at least in a base specification.
I don’t know the ins and outs of it, and I’m not sure that I really care. It’s all very well having a good idea, but your good idea is just puffery if you don’t do anything with it. If you do something with it then you deserve protection, if you don’t then you’re just being vexatious if you seek legal redress.
And whatever else he may be, electronics whizz, coding whizz, inventor, prankster, Woz is not a great businessman. He says that it doesn’t interest him, and his actions back up his words. Sure, he shouldn’t have signed the paper - but in his philanthropic heart he probably thought that Wrecker Ralph was a good guy, and that he’d be encouraging future generations by lending his support.
On the face of it, Ralph Reilly is just doing his best to get the whole of geekdom to hate him. Seriously, darling of the geek world (and love Apple or hate Apple, Woz did some amazingly cool things - and probably got more screwed over by Jobs and Apple than almost anyone else, and yet still found it in his heart to forgive. The man is a legend!) vs some puffed up fraudster? Screw that guy!
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