Posts by Bob 18

I'm a scientist; I need to build stuff and run it in a sane environment. The best OS X for my needs was about 3-5 years ago; since then it's been going down. Starting with El Capitain they broke GCC so badly it's on longer usable. Unfortunately, no one else offers a Fortran compiler, a necessary part of scientific computing (yesterday, today and forever). I converted my Mac desktop to Linux and have been happier ever since.

OS X is still a decent laptop/terminal OS with an edge over Ubuntu. The retina display is beautiful and user things for the most part still "just work." But even there, they keep fiddling with no discernible movement forward. The "natural scrolling," for example. And all those iFeatures they fiddle with on every release? What a waste of time. I don't use iTunes, Pages, Mail or any of that other crap for my work.

Why GPL?

If Linus doesn't care about enforcing the GPL, maybe he should have chosen a different license. Unfortunately, too late for that now --- not after 25 year of contributions by thousands of people under the expectation that this is a GPL project. Grow up...

> Cook reckons smartphones are equivalent to TVs, in that people will own more than one

Oh Tim, there's a difference between iPhones and TVs. TVs. are big and non-portable, so you install one in every room where you want to watch TV. iPhones are a personal item you carry in your pocket. Why would anyone need more than one? Especially since each iPhone sucks up your time on maintenance, update,s etc?

Is this so wrong-headed?

Sorry, I'm with the Feds on this one. LA isn't so desperate for cash that we need obnoxious morons like that Irish kid in our country. Let him come back when he's a little more mature and ready to take things more seriously --- and less likely to "destroy" something, such as a car, a random pedestrian, a plate glass window, someone's head with a beer bottle, etc.

Many claims are made here that people don't publish nefarious activity on their Facebook pages. But experience with people who have committed violent, heinous crimes shows that's not true. After most big shooting, a look at the perp's FB page reveals shocking stuff. Rarely does violence just come "out of nowhere." Moreover, friends don't lie: the Feds can tell a lot about you from the company you keep. If half of your best friends are on a Terrorism Watch List, then that will raise a big red flag --- regardless of what you do or do not say on FB.

If you don't want government official trolling your social media accounts... then don't post on social media. Privacy is still a right, albeit one that people seem more than willing to give up for next to nothing.

This is why I think we'd be better off banning Bitcoin. If there's no Bitcoin ATM at the end of the block, it will be a lot harder to collect the ransom from Granny.

Don't waste your time

I got a Sony Vaio laptop for my 8-year-old kid, with Windows 8. It got upgraded to 8.1 But then... it was also badly infected. So I did the system restore. This brought me back to 8, and required about a zillion hours of upgrades to 8.1. Now Windows 10 is coming out, and my child's Firefox was hopelessly compromised with multiple bogus root certificates. I can see where this one is going... I'll have to do system restore back to 8, then about two zillion hours of upgrades to 10. Not my idea of fun.

Instead, I installed Ubuntu for my child. It is 100% better in every way. Faster, easier to use, better mouse tracking, more responsive, fewer bloatware pop-ups. She's actually able to go to her school website and concentrate on the math problems at hand. This was a clear win. We will never look back.

The singles biggest thing MS could do to keep customers on Windows is to enable an easy System Restore back to the latest version of Windows that came installed on the computer, rather than the original version it was purchased with. Stop wasting our time!

I won't believe it's secure until it's been open sourced and widely scrutinized.

Ah yes, the Copenhagen Wheel --- another highly innovative product that will go "blip" on the tranportation landscape. The Copenhagen Wheel does nothing more than take energy from you when you're going downhill, and give it back uphill. A REAL e-bike gives you extra energy without taking away from you. And decent e-bikes can be had for $1500. It's hard to see why people invent this stuff, when more useful devices are already mass-produced in China.

In the name of improving the "free market," let's also ban the government from building or maintaining roads, or running buses on those roads. NYC Transit especially should be banned, since they provide so much unfair competition to hardworking jitney operators. Places like Lagos, Nigeria should be our model for the proper role of government.

I agree with jimbo60, it shouldn't be a big deal. But if she doesn't like it, she can buy her own router rather than using the one Comcast provided. That's what I did, and it's a whole lot easier than launching a lawsuit. Saves $5/mo too. Since that option is available to all Comcast customers, I don't see how she has much of a case.

KISS

As someone who's been there too with charities, I repeat the warning about keeping things simple. Don't make the mistake of the aid workers who installed fancy electric pumps in the developing world, only to see them end up useless for lack of electricity, spare parts, etc. You have to install technology commensurate with the organization you're putting it in.

Does your charity have professional IT services available to fix things? Do they have a reliable network, both internal and external? If they don't have these basics, then don't give them a solution that needs them. How will new user accounts be added? How will they be shut down? Can people gain access to their stuff from outside the office? Will YOU be required to do all these mundane chores, and what kind of response time can you realistically provide?

Through hard lessons, I have come to some principles:

1. The less hardware in the office, the better. Ideally, you want to go serverless. If you MUST have a server, try for one that just serves files. You will still have to set up backups for it, of course.

2. Cloud services are great: professional-level IT services for pennies (or even free). Google Apps solved many problems at once (email servers, access from outside the office, large file sharing). Email was a BIG problem --- lost password, email client configuration, email password management, and of course SPAM. And it ALL went away in one fell swoop when we went to GMail.

3. Use consumer products as much as possible. They are VERY cheap: new computers can be had for under $300. More important than the dollar price, end users have a ghost of a chance of being able to do self-service if something goes wrong. We used to use Mac OS X Server with network logins. Now we use just basic consumer desktop machines with local logins. Whether we use Mac or PC on the desktop no longer matters. If they buy something from MicroCenter and put it on their desk, they can get it working. They just have to connect to our fileserver, to Google Drive, and then point their browser to GMail. They can get this stuff working without me, at least temporarily. Or an easy call over the phone.

4. Move to web-based databases. See above about eliminating servers from your office... CiviCRM is one free possibility, and there are many paid companies as well.

5. Desktop support is the achilles heel of charity IT. You pay top dollars for bottom skills. Anything that can be administered remotely, you can pay a lot less for better skills. And it's often so easy to do, you can just do what they need done during a coffee break. One more reason to go serverless in the office.

6. Remember that your time IS valuable. A new computer is $300. Setting up a new computer can cost a lot more than that, if you don't keep things simple. Free hardware isn't as much of an asset as you'd think at first, unless you have a VERY quick way to turn it into USEFUL hardware with proper stuff installed. Old hardware is deadly because installs are slower, and thus more costly for you in the end than just buying something new that works.

7. Do anything to avoid viruses. Each virus infection requires full rebuilds, see the costs in (6). We've had good luck with Macs, at least, which somewhat justifies their high price. Linux is better on this front, of course, if you can make it work.

8. Tech Soup is a good place for licensed software. But even better is software that doesn't need licensing. It's not just that it's free --- but also you avoid the hassle of managing license keys.

The difference between Google Glass and a camera phone is... you have to hold the phone up to take a picture, and everyone knows it. Google Glass lets you take photos incognito.

Better batteries

In making claims of the vertical take-off vehicle, they're probably assuming better batteries in the next 8-10 years, with a significantly higher capacity per kg.

Don't worry, the great unwashed will never buy these puppies and invade "your" airspace en masse. Beyond the issue of plunking down $200K to buy one, most of us probably won't be able to afford the gas to run it either.

Opening Old Files

They should provide Creative Cloud access for free to everyone, to open files. Saving or otherwise making changes to files would be restricted to subscribers. That would solve the "can't open my files" problem, and I think would bolster their potential revenues (because otherwise, people will shy away from them if nothing else for this reason).

Poor Complaint

I hope this doesn't get very far.

1. I chose GMail because my old ISP was falling apart and Google did a good job with the bear known as Email. I also use the K-9 IMAP client on my Android phone, for my non-GMail account. If MS (or anybody else) makes an email service as good as GMail, I will consider it.

2. I use Google Maps because it's better than the other services out there. There are many --- and I've tried them on my Android phone.

3. I use Google Search because no one else on Android has bothered to make an App that sends search their way. I don't think anyone has tried. I can't even change search engines on my Firefox. If there IS an anti-trust issue, this is where it would be.

4. I use Google's browser because (at the time I made the choice), nobody else had made one that works.

Two thoughts:

1. I never let anyone pet my dog, for any reason.

2. I would've knocked his iPad out of his hands, hopefully breaking the glass. Then I would've told him to get lost (without his iPad, of course).

What a bunch of jerks.

Yes, what a bunch of jerks.

Results of this

If this is real, it will be pretty great. It will go a long way to making electric cars range and price-competitive with gasoline cars. And when I replace my electric bicycle's battery, it will give me a 90-mile range --- enough for a full day of touring.

More Irrelevance

With its late-to-market products commanding miniscule market share, it is doubtful whether MS will ever become relevant in the tablet space. This is just one more reason they will fail. Anyone who wants freedom to install any software they like will be Android. Anyone who doesn't care will buy Apple.

Yawn...

Why would anyone bother to jailbreak a Windows RT tablet? If you want a tablet that you can run anything on, just get an Android. Nobody's forcing you to install dodgy software, but you can if you like.

Ubuntu in the Workplace?

Whatever your views on this behavior from an OS and Richard Stallman... I can't think of any workplace environments that would be happy with this stuff on their employees' desktops. We use a lot of Mac and Linux on our desktops at work, and Ubuntu is now NOT one of the options.

Good to Hear..

The article was small-minded, bigoted, and practically condoned domestic abuse. But reading the sheer number of enlightened comments and reasoned discussion was really a breath of fresh air. It looks like things really are getting better (slowly) for the trans community.

The Marketing Strategy

So.... you have this phone you're going to sell with a $70/mo data plan. And you're trying to sell it to children and young adults.

What's wrong with this picture?

Proud Android Owner

Apple makes great stuff. I don't own an iPhone for one reason: their restrictive policies in which THEY reserve the right to decide what I can and cannot run on MY phone. Watching numerous iTunes app rejection dramas play out over the years has confirmed my decision to go with Android. That is far more important in the end than whether or not my Samsung phone retains its bounce-back scrolling feature.

It's Not Just Extinction

"But far more dramatic changes in the climate have been experienced within the past 20,000 years, Lilley contends, with humans able to draw on far more primitive technological resources, and yet survive."

There's a difference between avoiding extinction and avoiding decimation of human society as we know it today. The challenge isn't just to keep SOME human beings alive in a changing climate, it is to keep ALL 7+ BILLION of them alive. A much harder problem.

Follow the Money

Someone paid them to slip this line into the show. Looks like a kind of stealth "product placement" to me.

Still a big honkin' company

Even at today's share price, FB is still worth $50b. That's about what Goldman Sachs valued it at in January 2011. Anyone who got in before then could still be making a ton of money, even at $19/share.

What will be interesting is to see if these early investors sell or not. If they're selling, it's because they don't think FB has much more potential, and they want to take their profits and run.

Useless

This has absolutely no civilian use, especially not with $100/barrel oil. The Concorde was never more than a niche product because it was a total gas guzzler. High-bypass turbofans, turboprops, blended wingtips and similar technology are the wave of the future, not hypersonic transport.