Posts by JEDIDIAH 2525 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2009
I know a business user that had Win7 set to the "download and let me initiate" setting for the Windows update but it didn't actually do that. So he turned off updates all together because a machine decided to update itself right before a critical deadline.
> Mint has 8 different editions, why?
It's easy. They aren't mutually exclusive. They're all just different variations on packaging. You can start out with their version of the Debian minimal image and morph it into any Mint "version" with a single command.
There is also just one price.
What Microsoft does is nothing like that. They don't have a single system with identical capabilities that can run on multiple architectures offered for the same price.
Arbitrary artificial limits are always stupid and shortsighted. You would think Microsoft (and it's Lemming users) would have learned this lesson by now.
> AutoCAD I'll give you though, CAD software is a bit of a pain to find on Linux.
An Autocad USER is a bit of a pain to find actually.
It's been 20 or so years since this product was a visible thing to consumers. The PC market has grown and evolved since then. Back in the days of DOS, CAD programs were a much more significant portion of the overall user base. These days not so much.
"Taxation without representation" was just a marketing slogan. None of the patriots actually wanted representation in Parliment. They rightfully knew that their voices would not amount to much due to small numbers. Much more significance is given to that slogan than it really deserves. It's like shrinkwrapped history for lazy consumers.
Taxes in the US are as simple or as interesting as you want to make them. If your taxes are simple enough that they can even be all completely handled by your employee then they will be pretty trivial in the US too. The moment any part of your financial life is something that isn't managed by your employer, then of course things are going to get more interesting.
> I think you're missing the point. The billions of desktops don't know how or don't desire to switch engines tomorrow, that's the problem!
That's simply not Google's problem.
There's simply no technical or structural barrier keeping customers in place. The fact that most people are apparently too stupid (your own observation) to choose Pepsi over Coke is not a problem that should be solved by the government punishing the victor. If they are doing something like dumping, or even like what the article said (hiding competitors), that's something more along the lines of classic anti-trust.
The fact that most people buy Cambells, Ford, and McDonalds is not an anti-trust issue.
Search is a commodity. It's not a platform that requires buy-in from 3rd parties. So conflating Google and Microsoft is grossly misleading.
> I look forward to the downvotes of the self-righteously intolerant.
You're an idiot. Who is agitating for the law? The people agitating for this law are the retarded sorts that think their liberty includes the right to oppress. They're like the original Puritans that landed at Plymouth Rock not because the Dutch were such poor hosts. Their "persecution" in England was probably also overrated.
They came to America to be free to abuse those around them and isolate their followers from different ideas. They were much like a cabal of Mormon "fundementalists".
Never mind the fact these idiots are acting in a blatantly un-christ-like fashion.
These people actually need to crack open the book sometime.
I've had credit cards hacked before. Sometimes there is an obvious and blatant large purchase put on the card. Sometimes it's smaller and more subtle. Not everyone acts like Richard Pryor in Superman III.
Sony simply isn't honoring it's merchant agreement. What really should be happening here is that Sony should be under threat from the relevant credit card company.
Yet another reason to distrust the cloud.
This seems to be a collision of two different brands that have different approaches to legacy support. One lives and breathes legacy support while the other one despises it. One brand drop kicks their own customers in the balls when it comes to legacy support. Never mind people that use a rival OS.
This is a beautiful collision of world views. No conscious illegal intent is required.
This is just what happens when the ultimate legacy support brand meets the "ooh shiny shiny" brand.
> Just to be clear, though, there is no inherent premium value in a secondhand watch or car, no matter who makes it.
Just keep telling yourself that. Swiss watches are the sort of luxury brand that Apple pretends to be. A watch enthusiast could handily school any fanboy on the subject of "resale value".
The real problem here is that the iWatch is like any other Apple product. It's mass market tripe cheaply produced in some Chinese factory pretending to be something it's obviously not. It's not just a matter of having money to burn. It's also a matter of taste.
There are brands for the genuinely wealthy and then there are brands for those who are not but try to put up a convincing front otherwise.
> For $17k they should have had free upgrades for life.
>
> Take your gold watch in, get the new model back.
They could even use the Rolex model and charge for that kind of service. In this case "service" would mean getting the old innards upgraded to the new ones and having all of your data (if any) migrated.
Greed can work. Greed can work very well. Dreams of avarice drive the development of entirely new drugs. There are treatments for obscure diseases you've never even heard of because there is a fortune to be made in it.
Beyond that, it should be little trouble for less Ferengi nations to do the things that don't do well with Gordon Gekko types.
Net neutrality can accommodate protocol priorities. The usual complaint here is your service provider playing monopoly and hijacking the same kind of packets that they want to sell you themselves. Packets of the same type aren't being treated equal. They are being discriminated against (or for) based on source. THAT is the problem.
If I am using an alternate VOIP provider, my ISP shouldn't be hijacking my packets.
Also, I would HOPE that a self driving car would NOT be dependent on the network. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster regardless of the net neutrality debate.
> TV, unless on HD and watching the quality stuff probably better off with a smaller one.
Classic Trek (in it's original and unadulterated form) is fine on a big screen. So is a lot of older stuff that was all filmed in 35mm. It's the stuff from the 90s that was shot on tape that tends to look horrible on any modern television.
> What Blu-ray playback software would you recommend then?
Something that just plays the stream you are interested in. Perversely, the MacOS BD player is a better option in this regard. Ripping the content away from the context of the rest of the disk is also a good option.
Yup. That's the problem with paying the market for anything. It has to be paid in after tax wages. So at the very least you need to account for the tax consquences of how you make money. If you are going to split these kinds of hairs you can't just ingore some in favor of others.
The real problem is that the "market" is simply failing to provide adequate product.
It doesn't matter that you can find something (possibly) cheap for sale offered by someone else. It doesn't matter because it's crap and it's no substitute for the real thing. The real thing simply isn't being sold because of industrial practices and corporate corner cutting. If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself because there's NO WHERE you can buy it.
Even a good cleaning can fall in this category (sadly).
The problem with doing something for yourself even just one time is that you see just how sad the industrialized version is and how inadequate it is.
> It took me months just to get my Dad to mount images,
Don't be an idiot. Besides the fact that it's no longer 1994 and Linux automounts things, ANY HTPC should be set up as an appliance. It will be just like any other appliance (that doesn't run Windows).
If someone can't use a Tivo, clinging to Windows won't help.
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