Posts by Jeffrey Nonken

Re: Wouldn't Happen Here

"Xerox" as a generic verb has been a thing for a long time. Shorter and easier to say than "Photocopy." Other genericizations happen like "Kleenex", "Hoover", "Scotch tape".

I think the non-branded generic name for what we call "scotch tape" is "adhesive tape", though the correct name is apparently "pressure-sensitive adhesive tape". Can't imagine why people don't always call it that. :) I believe in England they prefer to call it "sticky tape".

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-taser-xerox-brand-names-generic-words-2018-5

"This urban person doesn't hold it in very high regard either."

Nor this one. I see 5G as a cross between a wet dream and a boondoggle.

Re: Just Drop[ped]Box. new three device syncing limit is unworkable/pathetic, 5 minimum needed.

I've been using Resilio Sync ever since Dropbox lost three days of my data. Fortunately it was a simple task to recover, but it put me off Dropbox forever.

Resilio Sync is strictly peer-to-peer and not perfect, but even the free option is quite useful. It also has options for eschewing their relay servers and so on if you want to keep everything off their systems. Your Paranoia May Vary. :)

I use something called Gadwin for the handy screenshot capture feature that Dropbox had. Also has a useful free version.

I consider both worth the cost of buying the pro versions and I like to support products that work for me so I have done so. YMMV.

Re: Austin isn't really Texas

"...38C..."

I had a girlfriend like that once.

Re: Keep moving...nothing to see here....

"What the difference is, is intent.....CIsco makes backdoors because they are incompetent. Huawei makes backdoors because the Chinese government tells them to do it."

Citation needed.

Re: a victim of circumstance?

Hah! I found the answer to my own question!

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/landroid-m-robot-lawnmower/

Re: Defense against the Darknet

Then there was the time I was called upon to translate between a Frenchman and a German whose only common tongue was English.

Turns out the German fellow had retired, so Marcel had to get his house wiring upgraded somewhere else. Which may have been just as well. Though I suppose in the end they would simply have gotten everything in writing.

"Single-sided disks were often just double-sided ones where one side had failed verification[1]. If they left both access holes on those the manufacturers would run the risk of getting sued if the disk failed."

The 8" floppies moved the index hole for the double-sided floppies, so that wouldn't happen. Unless you knew the secret and had a hole punch and a pen handy. And a write-protect sticker.

I've never seen floppies with only one access hole. Doesn't make sense to me, because if you put such a disc into a double-sided drive, you'd end up dragging one of the heads across the surface of the sleeve.

Not sure why the manufacture would get sued when the floppies were clearly marked with the number of sides and the density.

Re: Why it's important to specify units.

Eh, units are units.

0 to 100 Celsius apparently represents the respective freezing and boiling temperatures of pure water at sea level. Seems to me that if you're not working with pure water at sea level, any unit of measurement is as good as any other.

...Oh right, almost forgot the Simpsons quote. "Metric is the tool of the devil! My car gets eighty rods to the hogshead and that's how I likes it!"

...except my phone includes Google Assistant. I guess you mean, don't buy a smartphone.

Or a tablet. You can bypass the mic on a laptop by inserting an empty plug into the jack... Maybe? These days the switchover is electronic, so maybe not...

Secret City?

I started watching because of Fringe actress Anna Torv.

It takes an astonishingly large amount of energy to melt ice, as James Burke has pointed out.

Hmm... two thumbs down?

I never got the vaccination because I got the measles before the vaccination was available.

My sister got the vaccination because it was available before she got the measles.

I have the immunity because I have godlike powers... er, I mean, because I got it the old fashioned way. What can I say? I'm an old-fashioned guy.

Re: Scary people in IT

I always say that a person who never makes mistakes never learns from them.

Re: EFF, Wikipedia, Google...

One of my favorite things is that when I buy a DVD and hit Play, the first thing that I see is a big red screen that screams OMG! YOU SHOULDN'T STEAL! at me.

Apparently if I buy the medium, I'm ipso facto a thief.

The easiest way to avoid that -- plus half an hour of advertisements and other crap -- is to either download the movie or rip the disc.

Good job, studios. Good job.

Re: I'm definitely part of the problem...

I splurged $490 for this Pixel XL 128 a year and a half ago. These days the same model going for about $200, but I have no regrets -- it's been a real trouper, and so far as been getting the latest updates. (Though it will probably end with Pie.) It's got a pretty clean interface and doesn't have a shipload of manufacturer apps (Samsung, for example, loves to dump a ton of these onto their phones) and another shipload of carrier apps, all of which can't be uninstalled.

I could have gotten a cheaper one but wanted to max out the ROM size due to the absence of an SDcard slot.

For me it was worth it. YMMV. But I agree that $500 feels like a pretty hard cutoff for a phone for me too.

Re: I used to do this for a living

It likely varies per person. Lots of people experience nausea trying to play first-person video games on regular computer screens, probably for much the same reason.

(I myself experience vestibular migraines if I play for too long when I'm too tired. Fun stuff. One silver lining to the cloud of having to take Metoprolol is that it mitigates the effects. They're no longer debilitating, merely uncomfortable.)

And this isn't even full immersion stuff, just staring at a screen. The disconnect between body and vision is at least part of what causes car sickness and the like. I can see how full immersion would intensify the effect.

Re: Yes, it gave me pause

You guys are making her sound like Thumbelina. She's 5'4 fer crissakes. She's not THAT short. (Some sources say 5'5, some say 5'4.)

(FTR, my mother was 5'4, my wife is 5'2 and my shortest-ever GF was 4'10. So, no, 5'4 doesn't seem all that short to me.)

Add to that, at least according to Wikipedia, the average height for Scottish women -- indeed, for women in most of the UK -- is 5'3.5, so how is it this woman is considered to be so remarkably diminutive?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide

Re: Why should apple care?

You might be splitting hairs. If I swap out the starter in my car, have I repaired the car? By your argument, if I don't rebuild the starter myself, I've merely swapped parts. Even then, if I replace a worn part in the starter, I haven't repaired it either.

Or if my GPU dies I should... Swap out a chip instead of repairing the chip? I confess I might be able to desolder a large scale integration chip (mmmmmayyyybe?) But I doubt I'll be able to repair its internals. I'll more likely repair my computer by replacing the whole card. Especially considering that I doubt Nvidia will sell me the part. Or give me specs enough to pry it open and fix those tiny transistors. Pretty sure I don't have the equipment out manual dexterity for the latter.

At what point does swapping out a damaged part go from "repair" to "parts replacement"? I understand your outrage but suspect you are tilting at windmills.

Re: This will get solved when it becomes a problem that people can see

JohnFen is correct. Zero Rating is something that Tom Wheeler initially ignored, but had come to realize was a problem and started to work to solve it, when the regime changed and he stepped down. It's still controversial, though those of us with critical thinking skills can see that it does not ultimately benefit the subscriber.

There are other things that ISPs have throttled or limited as well, to nobody's benefit.

Re: Land Rover Defenders

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.

Re: Bork

I expect it started with a typo of "broken", being "borken". Geeks love to turn those into memes. Jeph Jaques claims that Marten's "TEH" t-shirt remains his best seller, for instance.

So now "bork" is a present-tense verb. Eh. I've seen worse.

Re: Maybe a solution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_in_Flight

Sorry, it's been done. :)

Re: Holy cow, it's everywhere

Personally, I find most perfumes and artificial scents obnoxious, if not downright noxious. One man's "smell nice" is another man's anaphylaxis.

And before anybody gets snide: I shower daily with tea tree oil soap and Aussie brand shampoo, and change to clean cotton underwear (washed in unscented detergent). I don't get complaints.

Re: International plugs

Unless you mount an archeological expedition, I'm afraid it's lost to the mists of time. Possibly not even then.

I know this from personal experience, of course.