Posts by Snake
76 posts • joined Thursday 18th October 2012 14:10 GMT
Posted in Opera rewrite comes to Android
Tried it this morning
and regretfully uninstalled it less than 10 minutes later.
Looks nice, shiny new features...code bloat city (versus previous version). Did not run well on my phone so I went backwards and it looks like I may have to stay there for a while.
Re: An open letter
We all know EXACTLY what Google is doing:
'Thank you for purchasing our ad program, Mr. Smith! Sign here...just disregard that the invoice says "Google Ireland' even though we're both here'
Smoke and mirrors, indeed. Many companies pull these shenanigans and yes, in this case it is only to say "We don't sell here!" when in actuality the accurate statement is "We just don't invoice, here'".
Re: WTF
Isn't this a violation of EU privacy laws? To submit data (even anonymized) without express permission of the user?
Re: Is this a defence?
"We believe that Google should not be held liable for terms that appear in Autocomplete even though we created it, we manage it, we market it, we enable it, we embed it and we feature it on all of our web pages. Just because we are linked inexorably to a creation of our own design does not mean that we should actually be liable for it."
There, Google. Fixed it for you now.
Re: "Germans are ..."
Yes, we have two problems:
- You being a self-righteous egotist
- Making universal declaration on a group different than yourself because you simply must know better than they do
From playing the 'screaming minority lazy Socialists!' card to declaring what the average German citizen 'do[es] not care about', you've managed to hit all the "Fool" buttons with a single hand swipe. Good work!
Re: The Popping sound..
But of course.
"better and more like TIFKAM (the interface formerly known as Metro), or Modern User as it is now called, than ever before. "
Only in this review has TIFKAM ever been listed as a positive attribute!
Re: Come on El Reg
Your limited viewpoint is only due to you believing that, personally, you have the power to decide the definition of "useful activity".
That is not your definition to decide. That definition is for each individual user to decide, and since Apple has a LARGE number of things that they will not allow to happen on an iPhone, for example
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/apples-new-iphone-restrictions-and-the-5-stages-of-grief/1904
your reply is a complete and utter FAIL.
Re: Come on El Reg
"Then what's it for? Just for carrying around, to show that you can't afford an iPhone?"
But why would I WANT an iPhone? To only show that I simply MUST follow a trend, to show that in order to be 'accepted' I will be judged by a DEVICE that I use? To use a locked-up, walled-off, nanny-stated interface to the real world, where Big Brother Corporation has the nerve to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own device? To have to go to the effort of "jailbreaking" my own, personal device - when jailbreaking is even available, as every time Big Brother Corporation does a firmware update they strengthen their hold on your personal thoughts by intentionally nullifying the jailbreak options you have applied - just to get around BBC's thoughthold on me?
If I want to watch porn on my device that is MY choice, not theirs. If they have a problem with an adult making adult choices for themselves, sell and market the device only to children and have the parents sign a permission form that gives Apple ("BBC") the right to censor the device content for "the good of the child". IN THE MEANTIME, I simply refuse to revoke my own freedom of will to a company simply to own their petty little device so as to feel like I belong with the REST of the blind sheep who have all *already* forfeited a portion of their adult choice simply to own said petty little device.
The free market is a form of willful, voluntary voting. Apparently, a large number of people throughout the world have voted for the idea that "Yes, we are willing to give up certain self-evident adult decision processes for the advantage of paying you to own your product". And then, a lot of these same people bitch and moan when they even *think* that the government may be considering the exact same thing.
What does this tell you? Sheep stupidity for profit = 'OK by me! Sign me up, the bauble is worth more than the absolute ability to exercise the choice of free will!" Remove bauble from benefit vs cost ration = "No! Never! I will never give up my rights and free will!"
Loki from The Avengers (Avengers Assemble!) had it right - humans ARE sheep looking to be blindly led.
Re: Don't Beggar Thy Supplier
BINGO!! I wondered if at least ONE person here would realize this.
Foxconn is a contract supplier. If the contract no longer meets a benefit vs cost ratio, any sane contractor will reexamine the cost of doing business with the customer and say "No, thank you!" to the next contract. Foxconn may not do this in its entirety but, considering the well documented difficulties with manufacture of the iPhone5's design and final finish requirements, don't be surprised if Foxconn decided to have much more say in the next iPhone design: "We can not manufacture that design to your satisfaction, so we won't. Redo the design so that we can actually built it".
As a manufacturer, I / we have certainly said "No, thank you!" to repeatedly difficult clients. After a while the benefit vs cost is simply not worth it; we have indeed used the line 'We can not manufacture this design to your satisfaction, so we won't' several times in the past.
Re: Face it, vinyl sucks
"I think CDs are better than vinyl in every way, and not just by a small amount, but by a huge margin. Eg the noise floor on a CD is so low it almost can't be measured."
And one of these days - and I've been pointing this issue out since the first days of CD - people will realize that noise floor means SQUAT as relative to music.
Proof? Unquestionable proof?! Easy. Which would you rather listen to: Miles Davis playing in the middle of Oxford Street / Times Square, or your 8-year old sister playing in the back study?
Case closed.
There is MUCH more to music quality that simply dynamic range and noise floor, folks.
Re: Always on gaming, are these guys allowing for ANY BREAK IN THE CONNECTION?
Since when does common sense have to do with this?
This topic has already been decided and settled - the companies have already won. They decided upon a corporate policy, required always-on, and implemented it. The public had the chance to vote yea or nay to this policy with their feet and wallets - they could have not purchased the products.
But, as history proved, they DID buy the products. Sim City had sales and continues to do so even after the always-on system was pointed out.
So common sense lost. The sales of the product has shown the companies that enough people are willing to purchase the product regardless of the type of DRM in use, meaning that their policy is justified. So this type of DRM use will only INCREASE because not enough people walked away from the company's products to teach them a lesson.
And this is the problem: there are enough people in the world to blindly swallow just about any stupid, bad idea that true failures are hard to come by. The lack of failure breeds arrogance (can we say "banking industry", as a modern well studied example) and the system runs on autopilot into dark oblivion. Happened more times than I care to admit.
Re: "Playing nice or rolling over."
Yes, there is.
Rolling over is something you just do.
Abiding by the laws of the land where you operate is the fundamental principles of a working society. If Apple doesn't wish to play by CCP's rules, then Apple should take their ball and go home. As a Westerner, you/we may not want to hear that - we believe ourselves to be entitled to just about any action we deem *personally* acceptable - but laws are laws no matter where they are. And, since Apple is nothing more than a foreign visitor to a host's land, playing by the rules is even more important.
Or should they be the typical "loud American" and be allowed to walk into any country they wish to, and do whatever they wish?
I have a soft spot for one-piece designs such the Heathkit; I preferred the Commodore 4032 more over the Commodore PET 2001 shown @ front-right due to the larger screen, full keyboard and external cassette drive over the latter.
I remember wonderful integrated chassis stuffed with Z-80 cards on S-100 bus with a generous 16K of static RAM. Wonderful!
I also miss 'luggables' They were fun.
But no TRS-80 Model 1 with expansion module in the updated photo! How could you?!
Indeed!
At 9:36, quote:
"When ever you abstract a part of your process away an organization, that's a good thing"
Really? When "you abstract a part of your process away from an organization", you also abstract RESPONSIBILITY away as well. That's reality.
"You make some assumption on the technology staff you're going to use"
Isn't THAT an understatement!
Sure, your abstraction salesmanship belief has always been good on paper, has been for years. Hand the responsibility of dealing with problems off to someone else, you only deal with what you wish to deal with on your end - using the system that someone else manages for you. But the reality has ALWAYS been different. Why don't you ask the aviation industry, for example, who abstracted their maintenance chores out to contractors beginning the 1980's...and ask them how their reliability experience went. The airlines thought they were washing their hands of the 'headaches' of maintenance only to realize that constant oversight of the third-party operations was the only way to guarantee work quality; I recommend you start your search with "ValuJet Flight 592" and work from there.
Or are you so blind to Apple's current Chinese labor issues that you believe this problem to not exist??
"Abstraction" only builds a layer of new management issues between you and the solution, it is *not* the solution. It *can" lower your personnel count, and therefore costs, but you'd better be prepared to deal with consequences. The fact is that you are now handing the massive responsibility of these chores off to a third party, a third party that must consider profit as much or more than 100% up-time (as it must, in order to remain in business). Since they ARE in business profit is required and, if your costs are lower, then their pay is lower and they must still work in a profit from that lower pay scale. So, in the end, something MUST give a bit - it is called "entropy".
You've just added a layer of entropy into your system and you had better have planned for that.
Re: Ahhh...@Snake...
Only if I don't have to pay him licensing agreement fees for the rounded corners on my old composition note pads, after I "apologize" with a bat, that is.
Re: Wow so he knew about all the chip roadmaps.....
Agreed. What "Dead genius"? Steve Jobs never designed or build anything himself - he was a salesman and stylistic designer, not an engineer. And considering that his stylistic input were all, fundamentally, built on the design principles of others (Henry Dreyfuss' principles, for one, plus of course Xerox) even his stylistic endeavors can be reasonably called into question as being truly 'individualistic'.
Two hours for 65 miles?
It was two hours for about 72 miles. And I guess you've never heard of TRAFFIC - you're all a wonderful bunch of pompous, self-important windbags on this "forum". Patting yourselves on the back on how SPECIAL you are, on oh! so many different story threads.
Do you know what it is like to end a day's work, travel a 110 MINUTE 108km commute to arrive...at a person's door who is desperately asking you for help, only to stay to 1 O'CLOCK in the morning fixing the problems to then drive 40 minutes back home, in order to wake up at 6 A.M. for the next day's workday?
I SERIOUSLY doubt it.
So, I'VE BEEN THERE. And I've put my money where my mouth is with that above post. I've put in more after-work hours on outside IT help than you people will ever do in your lifetime. I can't even COUNT how many times I've gone to a person's house after my standard workday just to work past midnight on their issues - I don't think my brain can rationalize a figure that large.
And, yes, for some people I did it without charge. Later, when the visits got regular, I did indeed charge...based upon their ability to pay. A number of people were middle class everyday workers and for all those hours I'd ask for (far) less than $100. For the businesswoman, I charged more.
After doing the above for, oh, err, say 12 years (?) I had some serious life issues and stepped away, unable to dedicate that much time - to just about anything, really. Yes, I *do* feel that I have my life back! But I did help people who were in need...and lost a good elderly man that I was helping and got to know well to cancer. I watched him fade away as I continued my IT support visits to him, and then several years later watched my own father die in the exact same fashion. It was too much to bear.
But I helped the people who needed help, and I felt rather honored that they would trust me enough to bring me into their homes and businesses to work on the equipment where they place so much of their lives into. Luckily my days of hand-recovering data from crashed hard drives and piecing damaged OS's back together is long behind me :)
Wow. Talk about short temper! Someone asks you for assistance and [he's] automatically a PITA fucker?
You seem to believe that all old people must automatically delve into the latest and greatest automation systems in order to be a functional part of society, that full comprehension of current technology is a must-have for every living soul.
No empathy whatsoever.
Have you ever considered that old people have other activities in their lives, that the technology forced upon them by modern society is not their main interests, and that actually asking for help is unreasonable? No one is saying that YOU must give the help, but your tirade of a column seems to make is so that their even *asking* for help is an abomination to modern living.
"Most of my neighbours are retired but that’s no excuse. Being eligible to book a world cruise with Saga ought not to make them technologically helpless"
YES, IT IS.
Just because YOU center your life around understanding modern technology does not mean that EVERYONE must do the same. Their lives are based upon other interests - do YOU make it a point to completely and utterly service EVERY SINGLE DEVICE in your life, including every single service on your vehicle(s) personally as well as replacing the defective IC chips in that blown-out stereo system? No, I doubt you do. You have other interests, other activities, that you would rather be doing than training yourself in keeping up mundane servicing of mechanisms in your life.
For these old people, it is the same. They have other personal interests that do NOT center around the fact that they simply "must" be on Facebook otherwise their peer neighbors won't think highly of them and then not invite them to the next district cookout. But you, so high and mighty, look dow on them: How DARE they not know how to work and maintain every technological toy near them! How gastly!!!
Refuse the requests for service - that is your right. But don't act as if the entire world must be so on top of what YOU perceive as interesting that they must have the same proficiency in the area as you do. Look at the request as flattering - they perceive you as knowledgeable and helpful - but that does not mean that you must bow to their wishes - refusing to help, because of your *own* time-taking life patterns, is valid.
Re: On a completely unrelated note...
Took me a second to reference that one. Classic!
Re: whats big?
And on that, I'll agree with AC 14:28 - Emperor's New Clothes.
Big Data, (adj):
1) A cute, supposedly cut-and-dry New Word for old problems with, supposedly, new solutions.
2) An appellation, applied by technologists in order to appear as expertise in an amorphous field where growth has been continual yet specific job descriptions applying to said field has been lagging.
3) A premise for a web article, which fails to specify exact skill sets required to tackle the issue but instead mention nonspecific and generalized industry catch phrases to appeal to one's sense of self worth.
But this is issue is what cloud providers, and their most vocal adherents, consistently miss. With questionable connectivity speeds even within the same geographic area, dodgy reliability and questionable ISP and provider security, how is the public - and business, especially - supposed to get all excited about cloud services?
Re: Anyone thinking about shopping there
"Will now probably just wait for the closing down sale."
Most certainly. Several stores in NYC have tried this tactic...they did not last long, either.
This type of policy leaves a bitter taste in customer's mouths - either real, current customers or even prospective customers. Its says "You are only good to us for your money" to passers by, and shoppers learn to say "Stuff off" back to the store.
Ouch
If the Chinese court decides against Apple, that's going to leave a mark.
Re: Don't blame Apple for the price drop
I personally think that some of this past year's events proves some Apple naysayer's point: that a good deal of Apple's "success" was simply the Cult of Jobs.
Now that Jobs is gone, big money is frightened that the cult consumers will no longer throw unending piles of money at the firm in an unrequited battle to constantly have the latest gadget. The analysts are scared that people will lose faith in Apple having a unified theme across their marketing systems; the public will back away from the rabid endowment of near-godlike properties towards anything Apple and therefore actually examine possible alternatives at their next purchase phase.
And competition for the mind of a consumer is bad for business.
And, quite simply, Apple is helping the doubt right along. Between the failure of Maps, the market shrug of 'excitement' due to a perceived lack of substantial model evolution of the iPhone 4 in light of Samsung's all-out Android attack, the lack of great iPhone lust in China, the eventual and rapidly increasing decline of the iPod market, the sales cannibalism of the iPad Mini (rather than opening a brand new market), etc etc etc - the analysts might have a good point. Apple has stumbled lately, and Big Money listens. Big Money get scared very quickly and runs for the caves at the first signs of trouble (note the well placed cro-magnon reference there
Re: Don't blame Apple for the price drop
Ah, yes, the quants. The same fools people who proposed the end of recessions and the great unknown due to their 'stupendous' analytical formulas.
As you know, those same formulas stated that real estate would always be such a great investment, and keep our economy booming, because no one would ever walk away from their mortgages....
and that's what you get for listening to "Experts" who play fortune tellers part time.
"Due to a software issue...
the knowledge of how much we suck has now been broadcast across the entire world.
All Your Sales Are Belong to Us. And, even if by some miracle they don't, we'll still suck you dry through our PayPal Transactional Fee Vacuum Magic©
You may now return to your regularly scheduled droneage."
Proof
Proof of what I have been saying: Conspiracy theorists, anti-government nutjobs libertarians and the media have all been telling you to worry about the government, for they are collecting information on you.
All the while you ignorantly, and blissfully, ignore CORPORATIONS, the real concentration of money and power in today's world.
Here is a company that is willing to penalize other companies, and therefore YOU via passed-on higher fees, because they can't grab more information on you than they already have.
But we're supposed to fear the government. Yeah.
Re: What is this article supposed to be?
If you were that concerned about ligatures, then you should not be concerned that a "word processor" is not applying them correctly.
Ligatures are due to the page layout typesetting and LaTex is page layout, so comparing apples to oranges is quite unfair. Word makes no claim to being a "page layout" application; you should, therefore, be properly using InDesign or Quark if accurate page layouts are what you seek. A generic "word processor" application, like Microsoft "Word", where the word processor functionality is mentioned but extreme layout accuracy is not, is unfairly asking too much of the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Re: Google.. Just say FU to the EU and Buyone
Because if it's American it can do no wrong?
It is too bad that the forum only allows 1 downvote tick per voting...
Re: Overturning a Supreme Court ruling
Boy do I hate agreeing with that sentiment...but I have to, because it is rather true.
What does this tell you? When you pray to money as King, and grant the greatest associations that trade in this asset (corporations) the equivalent power of an individual in a constitutional society...your individual rights are, inevitably, doomed. An individual cannot have the strength to fight a large political construct and their money - a direct inversion of what the Constitution was designed to protect against.
Re: Trying to find Windows 7 laptops for consumers is hard work
Quite right! Which is why I decided to jump into a Win7 laptop several weeks ago before my only option was Win8.
While at the store I tried Win8. It isn't as bad as some of the media, and users, make it out to be. What it is, in a word, is "unintuitive". It does indeed do everything you want and need, but in many ways it simply does so in a method that is either not apparent or does not make (reasonable) sense. Hot corners that aren't marked? Popping in and out of TIFKAM as the default navigation metaphor? And bright, primary colors without shading? Really? That's the "future", 1970's Revisited?
Re: RMA policy
"Don't forget that in the UK its the retailer you need to contact first, at least during the first year... not the Manufacturer.... and IIRC in the event of a faulty item, they are responsible for Postage for the return.."
Ah, then you UKers are fortunate. Here in the United States the manufacturers leave you out to dry in regards to defective merchandise beyond the retailer return period - you must deal direct with the manufacturer, who usually make you run around chasing your own tail. Device have a serial number? "We still require your purchase receipt". Then what is the use of applying a (traceable) serial number, you IDIOTS?!
I am in manufacturing and personally created the SKU numbering system in use. Give me just about any combination of the following - your customer name, the style of the item, the size, the approximate date purchased or the exact SKU serial number - and I have all the information I need to locate all the balance of the information I need including how much you paid for it and on what invoice number, going back 12 years now.
Once, years ago, I was in a different business - photography - and ran a camera store. Ordered 6 Nikon cameras for one customer (the local newspaper) and pre-tested them prior to delivery. One was dead. Called Nikon...who promptly told me to send it back FOR SERVICE. Excuse me? It is a BRAND NEW item. Replacement is expected and warranted, especially considering that all 6 must be delivered to the same client. 'No, we will only service it. Send it back for repair'.
You BET I steered customers away from Nikon after *that* reply...
Re: At least with Google...
That's the point. As demand for the Google product increases, more problems will happen. It is a statistically certainty.
Re: Death to the cloud
"The cloud really is the safest place for your data..."
Dream on with that belief. The only thing the "cloud' is, is that you are handing over hardware responsibilities for someone else to handle.
Almost forgot: plus network connectivity.
Almost forgot: plus security.
Almost forgot: plus system software upkeep.
Almost forgot: plus basic access rights, like making sure that your account is active and actually grants you access to your own data.
Almost forgot: discounting copyright and DRM search / lockdown procedures, the failure to guarantee that your own data will *remain* your own unless some big company decides to use auto-scanning on your data and delete what they see fit.
Almost forgot: cloud ownership and service continuity. Because if a company decides to shut down a service due to internal decisions, or even sell their service to a new owner, you have no guarantee of continued service.
Almost forgot - AND PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL - MTBF. This is EXACTLY what you are seeing today. When 10,000,000 users access a certain construct, the construct's MTBF is statistically altered. If a switch is rated at 180,000 MTBF, that calculation get modified by the number of switches and ends up λ= 1/Ɵ = r/T, using for example analysis such as:
http://www.vicorpower.com/documents/quality/Rel_MTBF.pdf
This factor must then be calculated across ALL devices in the data stream - your network card, your router, your wires, your modem, the data link to your ISP, the ISP switches, the ISP servers, the ISP link, all the segments to the cloud service, the cloud service data link, the cloud servers, the cloud switches, etc. etc. etc. PLUS you must add in the statistical analysis of the MTBF of the multiple hard drives that make up the cluster that your data is physically on; the hard drives must maintain the same MTBF calculation modifications and, therefore, the more drives in the cluster the more likely that one drive will fail within said cluster.
In other words, statistically a cloud MUST have more failures than an individual PC due to the fact that there are more component links to fail. Add in the human factors - software bugs, errors in administration of hardware, software *and* account configuration / rights / access, etc. - and cloud will ALWAYS have a greater statistical probability of failure. For example: ISP reliability. Wow, where I am currently located that is defined as "pipe dream", and I'm in the 8th largest city in the world (by population)! I have had to deal with 1 WEEK outages (infrastructure building wiring failure) at the job and 2 day outages at home. Was just yesterday dealing with an ISP blackout at my inlaw's home 35 blocks away, using a different ISP than I have personally. Last week? Last week *I* had that 2 day system outage; a combination modem and ISP configuration failure, as upon replacement of the modem with 3 different modems they still could not stay consistently connected until a phone call (made by me after the tech left) to the ISP forced a full reconfiguration of the newly replaced (3rd) modem! :(
FWIW, I have *never* lost one scrap of data or lost personal access to said data on any of the systems I use. Never. As the data is local and the system is mine, I can control data redundancy and maintenance and, as there are fewer failure points, the statistics are also on my side. Offline backups, offsite backups - and, amongst other things, no network probabilities between me and my data - assure that my data always there when and where I need it.
Depend upon the ISP, the internet AND the cloud service for my data needs? No, thank you.
Re: What he really means
Or, conversely, a good point from the Chinese perspective:
"You are charging money for your services, therefore you are "doing business" inside China. Are you properly licensed and registered for such activities?"
I hate to say it, but I'm on China's side on this one; just because Microsoft is a 'cloud' with parts outside of an individual state does not give them an automatic right to operate inside said state borders. Since Office 365 is a paid service Microsoft will be collecting fees from Chinese operations - it this subject to taxation? Doesn't the state have the right to regulate commerce within its own borders?
Just because Microsoft (and Google, for that matter) is American and 'cloudy' does not give them an automatic right to do whatever they wish, where ever they wish it.
Your recommendation, in regards to the topic of this story, makes absolutely no sense at all.
We are discussing support in regards to OS security. Exactly how has Windows 8 proven itself in regards to security protocols, zero-day attacks and programmic security flaws?
Oh yeah, it hasn't. Windows 8 is simply too new to have a proven security track record.
Yet, here you are. Recommending it as a security 'upgrade', better than the 3+ year field proven Windows 7.
You truly may wish to consider withdrawing your statement.
Re: XP is DEAD
"Anyone who wants to continue running XP, go for it. Just don't expect Microsoft to help you out of a hole."
What hole?! The OS is EIGHT YEARS OLD. If you're still dealing with "holes"...you're doing something very, very, VERY wrong.
XP has been patched, poked, altered, tweaked and run TOO DEATH. What kind of "holes" will a typical user be forced to deal with at this stage of life, after 3 Service Packs and several hundred upgrade patches?
Is that really a sound argument to stand upon?!
Re: Supprised companies on XP
Regretfully, no.
The problem with Linux fanatics is reality. The OS isn't the concern for the vast majority of users - it's the APPS. Linux has almost no native programs for specialized markets - no custom financial, system control, inventory control, Point of Sale, merchandising, CAD / CAM design, embedded system diagnostics, technical support assistance, et al. written for it. It makes absolutely no sense for the thousands upon thousands of companies currently dependent upon customized industry solutions to switch to a non-supported OS and then use an emulator or code interpreter just to run a program that can be run natively on the original OS, with willing tech support (by the developer or the OS manufacturer, MS) to boot.
No sense AT ALL.
And it is high well time that the Linux "Year of Linux!" fanatics finally realize this. Linux will NEVER grasp the desktop market because it is not - and has not been since the days of the war between Windows and OS/2 - about the operating system. People who believe that are living 20 years in the past, believing that the "Next Best Thing!", waiting over that hill, is the thing that will kill Microsoft Windows...which is exactly the same argument that OS/2 supporters used 20 years ago.
Repeat after me: "Yes, I can be cured. I have a problem. The problem is that I can't realize that people want solutions in the form of applications to run and don't give a hoot as to what OS they [need] to do it."
"Many security patches on many OS's are actually privately reported or internally discovered."
And what part of this discovery process occurs on a system that isn't "in the wild" - that is, already vulnerable because people are using it, unpatched, on the internet as the exploit is being reported?
Again, you are surfing "naked" NOW. All systems are vulnerable and the vulnerabilities get patched AFTER the OS rolls out, after the public is using it with all its existing holes and targets. The patches only try to plug some of the leaks in the sieve, after you have already been pouring the water of the internet in for, likely, months and months and months.
The realization and you are already "naked" is part of your cure - rampant paranoid is your only hope of internet survival. From personal information to data integrity, only the paranoid survive.
Re: kurt@delanoy.name
I AM, thank you very much.
If you want to feel superior while waiting for FireFox to load a page, while I, running Opera, am already *reading* that same page, be my guest.
Yes, FF has extensions and more features but too bad using it simply sucks. Non-intuative bookmarks, manual scroll all the way back to the top on a long page (is Opera-style 'super jump to top/bottom' arrow really too much to ask?) and painful load times on complex pages made it simply too unpleasant to use every day.
Re: kurt@delanoy.name
I switched from FF to Opera just under 2 months ago; FireFox's rendering was simply too painful to bear any longer.
I don't CARE if people believe that FF is better due to plugins and greater user controls (it does). The main function of a browser is to RENDER, and FF is a complete speed failure in that regard. Waiting twice as long as just about any other browser for a web page to appear gets old, no matter how much I wanted to support the project.
Sometimes, the wankers on this board lose sight of the forest through the trees.i
*Please* stop saying that you'll be "naked" after April 4 when Microsoft stops updates for WindowsXP. A claim like that is simply hyperbole.
We are "naked" NOW. Security patches for any OS occurs *after* the threat has been examined and determined, after the fact of threat release into the wild. Everyone, everywhere, surfs naked NOW and uses various forms of prevention to avoid infection. The only thing Microsoft, or Apple for that matter, technically does is either immunize or cure you AFTER the threat is real. All of this acts in a similar fashion to biological diseases except there is no built-in systemic immunity; it is added artificially to the system in response to the detection of a threat.
As a user, your actions will not change a single bit once Microsoft stops its updates. It will still be up to you to use preventative measures to avoid infections, only the source of a cure will change. Microsoft simply patches their systems to strengthen the measures you are taking yourself (anti-virus, firewalls, proxies, script controls, ad blockers and hopefully some common sense). WindowsXP sip not up and die on April 4, you will be as "naked" as before as your computer interacts with the world, that will not change much.
Re: kurt@delanoy.name
I certainly hope that FF on WP8 does *not* work like FF for Android.
I would hope, for your sake, that it works BETTER.
FF on Android is pitiful. As an FF desktop user, it was a massive disappointment. I really tried to like it, I really did. Sync was great but the rendering was so painfully slow that I was forced to abandon it for Opera Mobile.
Thank goodness. Salvation!
Re: can't deal with the idea of a motor vehicle not using gasoline
Because a car is NOT an efficient way to generate power. Only 20% of the power of gasoline creates motive force - the rest is simply friction waste and heat.
Do the research before you make such a claim. Electric generation is far more efficient in extracting power from fuels such as gasoline due to the fact that the stationary generation systems can use more advanced technologies to retrieve, or to keep, that power towards the benefit of producing electricity. Heat recovery, high efficiency gas turbine, gas recycling - all available when the space constraints of a car hood are removed from the equation.
Battery technology will evolve. To deny that is practically to deny the idea of Moore's Law - the idea that technology will advance given the necessity of development. The Tesla is a very solid proof that electric cars can work in the modern world...because they worked at the turn of the century. Oh, didn't know that many cars at the turn of the century were electric?
http://coachbuilt.com
They were quite successful at the time. But more development money was put into the Otto cycle than electric, and the internal combustion engine won the high volume production wars.
Re: Who cares?
The facts are that this is pure driver error. The driver failed to provide enough 'fuel' (power charge) to go the distance necessary.
Period. The driver ran out of gas.
Yet somehow this is the fault of an inanimate object. Somehow this is the fault of an electric car, not to go further than the charge level versus distance provided to it.
The quite indisputable fact is that Broder failed to charge the car fully at the Newark, DE Supercharger station. Broder stopped the charge at 72%. His excuse is 'it said I had enough charge'. But that's the car's fault.
Yet if a person in a gasoline-powered car only puts 3/4 of a tank of gas in, then complains when the car stalls on the highway...it's the driver's fault.
The *fact* is that people are applying a complete double-standard. And I HATE and REFUSE to accept double standards - in ANY part of my life. The driver ran out of 'fuel'. Indisputable. The driver failed to 'fill' the car to 'full - a point that Broder somehow never denies. The driver drove past numerous alternative charging points
http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/routestations.jpg
even as he watched his range gauge decrease, as it must have during the trip (as he never claims that the range gauge stopped working). His own editor has now, quite officially, criticized his test methodology:
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-with-precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/
For the record, I hold a United States Class AXM (tractor-trailer (18 wheel articulated lorry) / hazardous materials [tractor-trailer / articulated lorry] / motorcycle / car) license. I have driven all of the above. Until 4 years ago, I was personally driving 42,000 miles (67,000 km) a year commuting to and from my new job PLUS between 7,000 miles (11,000 km) to 13,000 miles (20,000 km) per year on the motorcycle. I refueled the car, a Jetta 1.8T with a 14.5 gallon (55L) fuel tank, on average 3 times a week.
Yes, that's a HELL of a lot of fuel.
I am about as "motor head" as they come - well, at least for motorcycles. I can usually spot a motorcycle's make and model just by following it on the road and looking at its final drive. I love motorcycles. I drive long distances in cars but believe in that old quote from Autoweek Magazine: "Cars are for wankers".
I am quite tired of the monopoly of "gear heads" telling me how I am supposed to love driving or riding. I'm supposed to, because I simply love driving and riding, worship the "sound of the engine at full throttle" and worship that "deep throaty roar" of an exhaust. To tell you the truth, I *always* ride with earplugs on. I am not riding to hear a mechanism beneath me, I am riding to FEEL A SENSATION OF FREEDOM AND BEING AT ONE WITH THE MOVING ENVIRONMENT.
So many "gear heads" are in LIVID FEAR of losing their precious gasoline internal combustion engines, as if the pleasure of conquering the skills necessary to control the dynamics of a vehicle at speed are coupled exclusively to the motive force used to move said vehicle. I, for one, am more open minded. It is about the EXPERIENCE, not the mechanics. For example, I am looking to go to a *smaller* motorcycle right now (gasp!) - the huge cruiser that I have now I feel impedes my ability to experience the freedom I seek. Weight is an enemy of true freedom of motion, and I'm currently in a mindset to get rid of all the extra that I can. My current bike is great - a real sweetheart that has taken me almost 2/3 the way across a vast continent and back in just 10 days round trip (5,200 miles in 10 days) - but its size always makes itself known.
I've read far too many "reviews" by these automotive "writers" that down-rate the electric vehicle simply because...it doesn't make that "Grrrrr!" noise when they open the throttle. Seriously. Read, for example, Motorcyclist Magazine's first review of the Zero electric bike. Most of the riding experience is judged from the perspective of no motor feel or noise, not whether or not it gave a good motive experience.
But it's the same all over. It really ticks me off that, in the motorcycle world, the only thing that the media seems to care about is horsepower. Bigger = Better. I'm jumping off that ship, I'm not locking into the stagnant thinking that they try to push, and therefore electric holds no fear.
Re: Who cares?
One: The Tesla S group owner's drive happened in the cold.
http://www.almanac.com/weather/history/DC/Washington/2013-02-17
The NYT editor, Margaret Sullivan, has already made a statement questioning Broder's accuracy and judgment, but backing his "good faith" in the review.
Two: Almost no one in the northeast portion of America does the drive from Washington DC to Boston, a distance of a 440 miles (708 km), taking two days. TWO DAYS?! WTF!? Really. Every single person who drives and knows this story has talked to me about the same issue: Two days?! What is he? Not a car reviewer, apparently. A wimp is more like it. Two freakin' days to go just 440 miles?!
Three: Almost any one with ANY form of intelligence would have either:
a) charged the car overnight to be fully prepared for the next travel day, or
b) charged the car at the next available opportunity to be fully prepared for the drive
What you are trying to excuse is the same as not refilling the car the next morning after an all night drive, then blaming the car for running ouit of gas! What's the first thing that you do when you (re)start a trip? Fill up. Why did Broder *intentionally* drive past Supercharger stations and NOT fill up? 'It said [he] could go on'. Does that 1/2 tank of fuel stop YOU from topping off before a large trip?
Well??
@AC 20:17
:applause:
I, also, read the pro-Win8 camp "Just hit CTRL / ALT / F9 / HOME / J / Q / E and R, all simultaneously, to get this quick shortcut!" solutions that they post to user UI difficulties.
And simply scratch my head at their mindless apologies of an apparent failure.
A visual UI that demands a number of keystrokes as a way to better open up a program...is simply not well designed. A UI where a valid productivity option is to install a third-party tool to *substitute* the UI for a prior version...is simply not well designed.
But I guess corporate apologists exists in all levels in today's world.
Huh?
But in the last review of anti-virus products by a web magazine, McAfee rated DEAD LAST with largest number of allowed intrusions. Which is disconcerting as a friend I know uses McAfee, and I must therefore get him to switch away from it. More likely, do the switch for him.
Kaspersky got the top rating in the test results.
Re: Who cares?
There is nothing to "believe". The facts speak for themselves.
Both CNN as well as a group of Tesla S owners duplicated Broder's supposed 'failure' trip...and ALL managed the trip without incident. AND, not only did CNN manage the trip without running out of power they did so while going 30 extra miles north to to avoid NYC traffic delays!!
http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/
The only person here without a decent brain in his skull is YOU. So many of you gasoline car-centric bigots can't deal with the idea of a motor vehicle not using gasoline for motivational power that you can't accept even the *idea* of alternatives. I'm a motorcycle rider and I look forward to seeing what great ideas the future will hold for motive transportation systems.
