Posts by JEDIDIAH

...late to the party.

> Presumably also allowing you to buy things from Amazon through your TV as well?

That's already covered.

Don't swim in the Kool-aid

> Because selling more smartphones and tablets...

Is an argument that only plays well to the rest of the cult. Everyone else realizes that ARM devices are quickly becoming a replay of MS-DOS and the original Mac. The platform with 10 cutthroat vendors trying to sell you variations on the same thing are finding more success catering to more people than a one hit wonder.

The iPad Mini is a great illustration of that.

Apple finally came around and decided to supply what the rest of the market was offering.

It turns out that there are a lot more "irrelevant geeks" out there than Apple or it's fanboys realize.

Re: Android permissions design

> - Instead of allowing apps to send messages,

You cripple the device so it can't do much of anything.

That's the real problem with modern security issues. Everything is about trojans placed in software that's supposed to be legitimate but really isn't. A lot of this is driven by various forms of the cheapskate mentality that prevents both Free Software and Shareware from flourishing.

You might want to send messages.

Although ultimately end users should be able to revoke any permission after installation. We should never be in a position to be held hostage to developers that want the moon and the stars in terms of system permissions.

I should be able to do something like I do with noscript. ANY app is banned from sending text messages unless I say otherwise. Doesn't matter what it asked for during installation.

Re: What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?

>>> How do they discover this?

>

> When they want to lend a book to someone with a non-Amazon e-reader, or their Kindle breaks and they decide to replace it with a Kobo.

That sounds like a Kobo problem.

I can read the books "trapped in DRM hell" on any of our multiple iOS or Android devices. It's just like how I have 4 different brands of streamer device that can handle Amazon Video (or Netflix).

Some vendors like being a single device walled garden. Amazon isn't one of them.

Re: It has been the default kernel for a decade now

If Photoshop and Office are really the best you can come up with than you have just proved the other guys' point.

Both are certainly generic for anything you use them for.

That's even assuming that you are willing to spring for a copy of Photoshop.

Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.

Wasn't there just another article a couple days ago about how Win8 is killing PC sales and how everyone's sales are in the crapper?

Vendors pushing stuff and vendors selling stuff are two entirely different things.

Of course the industry doesn't want netbooks or nettops. Why let you buy suitable kit for $300 when they can sell you something for $600 or $1200?

The benefits to streaming

Considering how much of a gap there is between streaming and BluRay, a mere 50% improvement in bandwidth may not be good enough. If you are the sort to opt for the spinny disk instead, it's probably not going to be a worthwhile improvement.

(too dang long)/2 is probably still (too dang long).

Re: Huh?

Google doesn't prevent you from removing apps, your phone carrier does. If you got some crappy bundle ware on your phone, chances are that it's not Google's fault at all.

The whole "app store" thing makes it an entirely different world between now and the 90s. So does pervasive and easy networking. Replacing default apps on any OS with a modern package manager is not quite the same thing anymore.

Things that are intolerable from anyone but the monopoly.

> 10000K is the sum required to pay off all of your workers because you couldn't get things running correctly.

If you're workers are that stupid, they are already costing you that kind of money.

It's like the "Linux migration problem". Just wait and Microsoft will create one of it's own for you. (Win8/Vista/Ribbon)

Re: Are these the same people...

Sure. It's a toy.

Toys don't necessarily displace tools. They're certainly not going to displace tools for those that actually need something more than a toy.

Jobs even made his little truck analogy. Except plenty of people drive trucks and find them indispensable.

PCs have become durable goods.

Re: Nope

> Comparatively slow to some desktop PCs perhaps but it's still an i3-3217U, HD Graphics 4000.

Slow core coupled with the worst graphics vendor in the industry.

When you have to fallback to software, it takes quite a bit of computing power. That's why something like an ION or a PI is a problem. If you have to depend on the included CPU, you're toast.

It takes a LOT of of computational power to make up for the lack of good specialty silicon.

Modern codecs, High definition. High bit rates.

Re: First time in a long time.

> 1) Install it in wine and piss around trying to get the bugger to work. I don't care what anyone else says I've never found wine reliable.

This is pretty much automagical in any recent variation of wine including the commercial ones they sell in the Mac section of Best Buy or the one you can get from the Ubuntu repository.

That's not a very interesting example of wine really.

Re: Interesting article

One thing that is different now is that virtual machine technology is commonplace. You can encapsulate your entire decoding envrionment into a nicely encapuslated format. It's been done for DOS games from the age of AutoCAD 1.3, so it can probably be done for any other format you care to mention.

Output to some common standardized format like PS and you've solved a big bulk of the problem right there.

Having documents in a print-ready format that's not vulnerable to client sabotage is a pretty good first step actually. Those formats are a bit more stable and much more standardized.

Re: Nudity-free Playboy?

Apple managed to achieve what decades of social conservatives and feminists couldn't accomplish.

Re: This Drone

Why shouldn't the farmer shoot at trespasser? It doesn't matter if the perpetrator is on the ground, in the skies, or in some sort of tunneling machine.

This sort of "you peasants have no rights" attitude might be fine for the old world.

It is fashion nonsense....

Yes, it is all fashion nonsense. The problem though is that Apple caters to that kind of person. Apple customers are the kind that are going to buy that nonsense because they are self selecting. You can't project what Apple users will do and apply that to the industry at large.

A Mac-wannabe may fail in the general PC market because non-Apple users likely don't want to buy from Lenovo what they aren't buying from Apple.

PC users care about practical concerns like cost and features and maintainability. They are less willfully ignorant than their Apple counterparts. They are less interested in engaging in conspicuous consumption than their Apple counterparts.

As someone that hasn't bought into the Apple group think, I am much more likely to employ a 5 year old Compaq in place of a brand new Mac Mini. That 5 year old Compaq can be tweaked in ways that makes it much more effective than newer inflexible designs.

That also means that I may not buy a new PC either.

Re: Add / Remove disks?

> Oh, and never ever forget the mantra "RAID is not Backup" - checksums and snapshots are all very good, but no backup means no safe data!

That kind of undermines much of the point of having the newest and shiniest FS available now doesn' t it?

Re: and this is why I only run Ubuntu on my desktop

As a home owner, Windows can be serious business. I am talking about the real kind that you look through. The ones that tract home builders put in tend to be crap. Plus you've got house settling. Being a miser when it's time to finally replace them can lead to unsatisfactory results.

Talking about my experiences with real Windows can be entertaining enough for suburbanites. They're into that sort of thing. More than computers actually.

Re: Replacing an ancient workstation

Are you kidding?

A Mac Mini is expensive, slow, and unmaintainable. I have an older Mac Mini sitting collecting dust because it's not much good for running anything but Linux. Unlike an older PC, I can't really fix or improve anything on it. It's difficult to get into and back together again. I can't modernize it with a better video card or fix it's busted internal NIC. Replacing an old drive would also be an exercise in pain.

PCs aren't as noisy or as big as they used to be. They aren't usually as tiny as a Mini but they don't really need to be. Fawning over an unmainable form factor is strictly an Apple fanboy passtime.

Disposable PCs are great for Apple's bottom line but not much else.

Re: Completely right on all accounts

The cost of textbooks was never about the paper. It was always about minor revisions forced down your throat every semester. A lot of subjects could be taught out of 50 year old books and you might actually find that it's an improvement. As long as you have middlemen trying to take a thick percentage, it will always be a scam perpetrated upon public school boards and debt ridden college students.

Re: Necessary Evil

> Unless we want to go the way of subscribed services for everything - and believe me that will drive the cost of watching TV through the roof - then some sort of advertising is necessary

No it won't. You will just have to be picky about what you consume. It's pretty easy to replace an overpriced cable subscription with a much cheaper set of streaming video subscriptions from Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix. First run material really isn't that expense and a lot of reruns are dirt cheap an nearly free (as they should be).

This isn't just theoretical anymore. You can take your collection of Tivo Watchlists to Amazon RIGHT NOW and see what the pricing would be like. It's no great mystery.

Re: De Icaza? The Microsoft employee?

Well, the article itself admits that he "went off script" way back in 2001. Why is anyone even giving him a sounding board now? He has clearly been fixated on Microsoft and other non-Unix tech for over a decade now. He's been a Microsoft cheerleader for far longer than he's been anything else.

It would be like any one of us fixating on what we were doing 10+ years ago.

That ship sailed already.

Re: People in denial

Nope. We understand just fine.

What we understand is that a "hack" like this is so bad that anyone associated with it should put a bag over their heads and never be seen in public again. Its' a situation so bad that it calls for Puritan style public shaming complete with stocks and rotten produce.

If you build trash that makes the rest of us look bad, don't expect any sympathy.

Can't let a merchant do your thinking for you...

Building the PC is the easy part really. Regardless of what form you are buying the parts in, you still need to be familiar with those parts. Otherwise, you won't know if they are suitable or overpriced. You just can't get away with letting some merchant do your thinking for you.

PC salesmen and used card salesmen...

Re: @LarsG Given

New OS hard on old hardware? As if that should be a great revelation around here...

It's a general problem. Even Apple products suffer from it (namely iPhones).