* Posts by JEDIDIAH

2525 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2009

Mourning Apple's war against sockets? The 2018 Mac mini should be your first port of call

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: Naysayers ...

I found Apple style apps too limiting and it seemed silly to run mostly Free Software on a non-libre OS.

The subtle gratuitous differences in MacOS just annoyed the other users in my household. Lack o of that "pervasive 3rd party support" also didn't help.

Then there's that whole problem with doing something slightly "creative". Apple users don't seem to appreciate power users that push boundaries. Windows the OS may be crap but the user community is far less pedestrian.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: Naysayers ...

> It’s human to be afraid of what you don’t know.

What makes you think we haven't "been there" and done that? What makes you think we haven't been there and done that multiple times going all the way back to the 68K days?

JEDIDIAH
Thumb Down

Re: That £3,859.00 BTO version Andrew is talking about...

This style of machine tends to be a problem regardless of who makes it. It's an inherently bad combination of design choices for a power hungry machine.

I had 3 similar boxes from 3 different vendors (including Apple) that all failed the same way for basically the same reason.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: "Hmm, as o'l Democritus put it: "The poor will always be with us""

Only the top 10% can be in the top 10%. There will always be distinctions even if your "poor" people are living better than Henry XIII.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Features that don't matter.

> it's not as small

That is not really a downside.

"Not as small" means that it is more maintainable, more flexible, and less likely to cook itself. Smallness is a pretty optional feature in 99% of real consumer use cases. It's not really an advantage.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

> Not to mention the fact that it's most likely better designed in terms of heat dissipation

That's funny. My last Mini cooked itself to death and you can easily burn yourself on an iMac if you're not careful.

The PC laptop is probably better equipped to deal with heat dissipation because it's not trying to achieve form over function.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Silly toys from toy makers.

You can blow way more money on a non-Apple product. In a free market, people line up to take your money. They will offer you all sorts of crazy things that you can't get in an Apple approved form factor.

AI clinician trained to save humans from sepsis – and, er, let's just say you should stick to your human doctor

JEDIDIAH
Devil

It really is that unpredictable.

> But your first sentence, that human illnesses, accidents, etc can be completely random is where I disagree.

Then you likely don't have enough experience.

The human body is a really complex system. We really don't understand it nearly as well as we think we do. We certainly don't understand it as well as certain LAYMEN think we do.

This quickly becomes obvious if you talk to enough patients with the same condition.

You make quickly lose your belief in "scientific certainty".

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Say hello to the future, it's already here.

> Call me a cynic, but until AI takes over the cockpit, it can't take over the clinic.

If you've ever flown through Heathrow then you have already "been there, and done that".

They don't even let humans land at Heathrow anymore.

I used to know a commercial pilot that flew that route.

Never mind Brexit. UK must fling more £billions at nuke subs, say MPs

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: "By the time..these subs are built most..nuclear powers will have tracking technology

ppppffffft.

We could track your subs in the 80s.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: Useful rule of thumb

This feels like a bit of deja vu. A certain subset of Americans like to tell themselves that we spend all of our money on guns and that if we just gutted the defense budget they could get everything they always wanted and not pay any extra taxes.

Although ditching the boomers still might be a good idea.

I feel the same way about our own carriers. Not sure we need so many. We could lose a few and still have more than the rest of the world combined.

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Seagate Syndrome

Many of us have genuine real world experience with crap storage tech. It's not "fatal" but it ends up being terribly inconvenient. Plus, who wants to overpay for a lemon or a turd?

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Pants! Pants I say!

Spinning rust on a NAS is still 10x faster than the nonsense he's talking about.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

You must be joking.

100mbit is pants for file transfer speed.

Gigabit is a bad enough throttling of storage tech. 100mbit is like being banished into the 90s (or worse).

Forget about this SSD fantasy? When are we going to get affordable consumer level 10G ethernet?

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: Until the price...

This isn't 1983. This doesn't need to be some brain dead false dichotomy.

Also I still find the idea that a modern OS is so disk bound that you need to use an SDD as a bandaid to be pretty pathetic.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Meh

There's good reason to go SSD for a laptop. Not so much for a desktop.

If anything, there is more reason now to have more than one internal storage device. Hot swap bays should be mainstream now so that it doesn't have to be a painful process when you want more internal storage space.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: Ah, but

On the other hand, all of my bulk storage sits on the network to be accessed by the rest of the house. So my top speed is really the speed of my network. So SSD being faster really doesn't buy me anything for my bulk storage.

All of the "bells and whistles" you are fixating on are not likely relevant to most consumers.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: Ah, but

Magnifying my bulk storage costs by 4x isn't going to happen.

Perhaps you a some rich git with lots of rental properties or a trust fund and can just throw money into a fire pit and light it up. Most of us aren't.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: QLC? It's not the one for me

I would say it's less about familiarity and more about cost. HDD is still cheap enough (relatively) that you can have multiple copies for the price of one piece of replacement SDD media.

Tech continues to improve on both fronts. I can almost put my entire hoard on a single piece of spinning rust now. I don't even want to contemplate the cost of duplicating all of my data with SSD.

Other entities have WAY more data than I do.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: No story here

With the exception of the very early 8-bit machines that used it for primary storage, tape was NEVER really a big thing in the consumer space.

Another German state plans switch back from Linux to Windows

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: "you are surely using a web-based system"

German IT crawls at a snail's pace. So they may simply be behind the curve when it comes to tech in general. They might have not yet discovered this whole "web" and "cloud" thing. They may still be stuck in a "client-server" mentality.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: The problem is not Linux itself...

Why would an MS spreadsheet format matter? OpenOffice was pretty good at dealing with that kind of thing even when it was still called Star Office. I originally switched back in the day because it had the best MS format support of any of the any alternatives (most notably the commercial Win32 alternatives).

The only real issue here was the odd weird obscure feature some MS power user might come up with.

Indictment bombshell: 'Kremlin intel agents' hacked, leaked Hillary's emails same day Trump asked Russia for help

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: poor security

> Fuck all. Stop blaming the victim.

This isn't your piddly personal email server. This is part of the government. They are no "victim".

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: I bet the democrats

Not sure about that really. I am not convinced that the GOP honestly examined their screw up with Palin any more than Democrats at large are willing to admit that Hillary screwed the pooch.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: What difference did Russia allegedly make?

Sure. The fact that she did everything wrong doesn't mean she isn't responsible. Do you even hear yourself. Any you gits wonder why you alienate people that have voted for Democrats for decades.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: What difference did Russia allegedly make?

There has been a 3 way split since the Revolution.

If you are one of the established political parties, you can depend on your own partisans. You can write off the other partisans. What's left is the middle. You have to convince people that don't drink your brand of Kool-Aid to vote for you. You also have to excite your own partisans more than the other camp does.

The Dems annointed someone with the juice associated with being married to a past president. This someone was hated by the other partisan tribe. The whole mess with Bernie split the ticket, annoyed their base, and alienated the center.

Meanwhile, fundies were rightly focusing on future supreme court nominations rather than the libertine character of Trump.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: Gullible?

Believing that we're fucked is one thing. Believing that we are powerful enough to done it to ourselves is another. This doesn't even get into the question of whether or not we can do anything to stop it.

Beyond all of that, there is the very obvious question of "Why do you littering gits need an armageddon narrative to start doing the right thing and 'leave no trace'? ". Not that the armageddon narrative helps, you still trash any place you have a large gathering.

JEDIDIAH
Holmes

Too true.

I found the level of detail in all of this to be rather peculiar. We can nail down what was supposedly a foreign intelligence operation to the point where we can try and indict what are basically a bunch of CIA/KGB agents. This sounds like a more robust investigation/evidence than what might occur for some domestic organized crime bust.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: Shooting the messengers much?

> There were proud boasts in detailed blog posts after the US Presidential elections claiming that their voter suppression campaigns

In Yankee states? Seriously? That's an epic bit of geographical and historical fail there.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: Shooting the messengers much?

If you are worried about the elected monarch then the pooch has already been thoroughly screwed. It's screwed because you've already subverted the system. The system is supposed to prevent th elected monarch from becoming a problem. THIS is the proper lesson to learn from the failure of the Wiemar Republic. If you think that you need to "fear men that say mean things", then you completely misunderstand history and governance.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: Shooting the messengers much?

...versus the pervasive narrative posing as "journalism" that the vast majority of the media pushes constantly? The vast chunk of the "professional" news media are shameless party rags shilling for one particular political party. Compared to that, a few more posts on social media is nothing to get your knickers in a twist over. It doesn't even shift the needle when compared to what nonsense people are already sharing amongst themselves.

Democrats demonstrated that they have a much larger wing nut contingent during the last election to a level that's much more embarasing if you previously identified as liberal or left or center left. You can't blame the Russians for that.

Even if the nonsense was authored by a Russian plant, our own wing nuts willingly propagated it. At a certain point, you have to take responsibility for your own stupid. Doesn't matter if you are the DNC or some random nit wit.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: anonymous coward

So what? If you really think a few Russian hackers can compete with CNN, Facebook, or the Koch Brothers than we're all in much more serious trouble than anyone is willing to acknowledge.

Tech support chap given no training or briefing before jobs, which is why he was arrested

JEDIDIAH
Facepalm

Training Schmaining.

What kind of DOPE thinks that they can take ANY THING away from a secure facility? Even if you are dealing with a "normal" client, it seems like what he did would be just wrongful. I would expect that there would be an expectation to communicate with the client about everything you are doing including the replacement of faulty hardware and including taking the customer's property off site. I am not sure ANY ONE would be comfortable with the idea that their proprietary data might sprout legs and leave the building.This seems like a Sheldon-esque sort of gaffe.

Microsoft's most popular SQL Server product of all time runs on Linux

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: Embrace, extend...

Lay off the Kool-Aid. SQL Server isn't any cheaper than Oracle. Both are expensive payware. Microsoft is just better at marketing.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: Microsoft will truly endorse Linux...

Oracle predates industry standards. So the fact that they have some of their own proprietary APIs (that include COBOL) is not as exciting as you make it sound.

Also, Oracle hasn't had "only" proprietary APIs for quite a long time.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: laugh or cry

> Microsoft know the vast majority of users will eventually want features like

...like what's been in Oracle for ages? So there's no real point in bothering with Microsoft then.

Mind the gap: Men paid 18.6% more than women in Blighty tech sector

JEDIDIAH

Re: Self selection and poor selection for better paid roles

IT isn't "sexist". It's a brutal meritocracy. This is especially true for places like Silicon Valley. A lot of guys can't cut it and do little more than occupy space. They would quickly get ejected from a high demand IT environment.

Women self select against IT for painfully obvious reasons that have nothing to do with this "sexism" narrative. HELL, this sexism narrative is one of the things keeping them away. It takes what little supply there might be and reduces it even further.

The smart ones gravitate towards jobs with better pay and more respect. They gravitate towards professions that are glamorized by our culture rather than shat upon by it. This should not be a shocking result.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: Sooo...

Get over yourself.

This is about CLASS and not gender.

A female oncologist is as elite as anyone else. A nurse or cleaner is not. Each of those women made their own personal choices and is now living with them. The consequences here were never a mystery. NO ONE deserves a pity party over this stuff. They certainly don't deserve one just because of their genitalia. THAT is the opposite of equality.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Communist nonsense.

A cleaner simply isn't that valuable. They shouldn't get shit. If you want to live large then you actually need to earn it. This includes putting in the prep work required to make more money. Nobody owes you a damn thing.

The fact that a nurse gets paid less than a physician is just and good. It places the individual incentives where they need to be so that someone is there to save your sorry ass.

If you start shitting on those of us that have spent out entire adult lives working to do better, then we will stop and you will shit out of luck when it matters most.

IT peeps, be warned: You'll soon be a museum exhibit

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: Back in the day

> I bought a 500MB SCSI drive, in 1995, for video and animation work, thinking that it would be enough last me for the full MTBF lifetime of the drive. Now I couldn't even fit my music collection on something that size.

Forget about now. Just a couple of years after that I had multiple classes of multimedia data that would not fit on a mere half gig. Music was just one example. That ship sailed a long time ago.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: Back in the day

By the time 1G hard drives came out, there was more than enough user data to fill them up with. I archived stuff on CD's in those days.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: What job will last forever

Unless your taxes can be sent in on a post card, they are too complicated for a machine. The rules are just a little too complex and subtle. It's a bit like law.

In the US you need a post-doc degree to be a tax lawyer.

It's not about keeping the accountants employed. It's about keeping billionaire campaign donors happy.

NASA budget shock: Climate studies? GTFO. We're making the Moon great again, says Trump

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: I really hate that man

> Let's not forget that he has the Republican party behind him, Ted Cruz has been very vocal for such a change to NASA.

That's quite a bit of spin there.

Ted's position on the matter is that we shouldn't toss the thing after we've spent a ton of money on it. If it's still useful, we should still keep using it.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: We don't need no education

> The next generation should be taught to believe whatever their local pastor and Koch brothers tell them - not this fancy pants thinking business

The fun thing about high school level physics is that you can do it yourself. You can't do that with "climate science".

JEDIDIAH

Re: We don't need no education

You are committing numeric fraud that would make Disraeli blush.

You are conflating "GDP" with anything concrete.

The real ranking is more like #5 with countries like Germany, France, and the UK spending less.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: We don't need no education

>> Today I teach Physics to our next generation.

>

> This is not needed for real estate speculation and swapping Slavic trophy wives every few decades. So there is no reason to fund it.

Physics is very handy for teaching genuine, practical, repeatable science. You can do real science, on your own, in the class room. It makes you far less prone to being vulnerable to every flim-flam man that comes along. This drives "science groupies" nuts though.

REAL civil engineering is very relevant to real estate.

Numeracy is also very important in business.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Re: We don't need no education

> eliminate the Department of Education entirely, leaving education up to the states and local gummints, which is how things used to be.

No. It's always been like that. Creating a new ministry in DC really didn't change that. What happens at the local level in your own town still is the most relevant thing. That includes local tax measures, the local school board, and even your own PTA.

Americans really need to be bludgeoned with a civics text book until it starts to sink in.

The rest of you have an excuse.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Been there. Done that.

> How do you know? You take it on trust from the very same scientists

I've lived long enough to experience it personally. Kids get excited about a cold snap or some unusually nasty weather and I get nostalgiac rather than going into a media induced panic whining about "climate change" that had to be "re-branded".

JEDIDIAH
Devil

Re: Not what they say, what they do

> No, they are just being the best democracy money can buy.

Climate change is now taken as an article of faith. If you indicate any kind of disagreement, people start building bonfires to burn you with.

At this point, fixating on watching the fire burn doesn't really make any sense any more. We know the house is on fire (or rather, you're certain of it). We're way past the time to actually do something about it. That action may be nothing more that getting your ready bag and running out of the house.

Spending money to watch the house burn is a bit dubious at this point. Not wanting to spend that money any more is not what you think it means.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

All of this to avoid fessing up.

> I am surprised the Russians have not done it already. With all the vehement russophobia promoted by the USA lately this is very long overdue.

Democrats have selective amnesia. They forgot who shuttered our manned space program and who we now have to hitch hike with in order to get to the ISS.