* Posts by Armando 123

1116 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2011

Ballmer disses Android as cheap and complex

Armando 123

"His dancing is without peer..."

I dunno, have you ever seen a Cowboys fan have an epileptic fit?

Armando 123

You can't even use the "doesn't sweat much for a fat chick" line ...

Armando 123

Nice to hear from NASCAR Nation on this one ...

Armando 123

The Pauly Shore of a new generation.

Armando 123
Black Helicopters

In this light, Apple's Soviet-like secrecy policy seems to make sense.

Armando 123
Windows

Keep Ballmer at MS

He's Apple's greatest asset.

Michael Dell declines to eat his Apple (humble) pie

Armando 123

Hold on a second

Let's apply that logic to other companies.

What does MS still sell that they had in '97? Windows 95 is gone, Office has been updated many many times, etc etc etc. GM has dropped Saturn, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac, and all the other vehicles have been redesigned/replaced/updated. McDonald's is still making Grade E But Edible Burgers, but that's not an innovation-driven business.

If you take any company in a competitive business which involves engineering and innovation and design, then they have all changed a lot since '97.

Pumped-up radio telescope seeks new moniker

Armando 123

Sell the naming rights

Hey, it works for stadiums. (Stadia?)

Apple, tech titans lead US brands to world domination

Armando 123

Fogy question

Anyone remember when "branding" was something Texans did to cattle?

ICANN rescues time zone database

Armando 123

Yes.

And yes.

IRS audits Google for funneling profits to Ireland

Armando 123

No, the government is for the government. As H.L. Mencken said, if there were a sizable number of cannibals in a voting district, their politicians would be promising free missionaries fattened at taxpayer expense.

Armando 123

"Why are governments so dumb? "

Because voters are dumber; they don't have to be intelligent.

Armando 123

"US has one of the lowest Corp tax rate in the world."

Then why, in 2010, were seven of the eight most expensive places to do business in the world in US cities?

Part of that is local and state taxes (which have really shot up in the last decade+), but still.

C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead

Armando 123

Yeah, I'd forgotten about Cutler. Thanks for the reminder.

I do remember pinging a fresh out-of-the-carton NT box when we were setting up servers for a new project and spending more than a minute wondering why I kept finding some BSD server when we had no BSD servers, only Solaris, AIX, and the new NT box.

Armando 123
Pint

Sad news

I'm sorry to hear this, but tonight at the local eatery, I will have a moment of silence and raise a corned beef on rye to him. (I'm off alcohol until I'm off some meds.) And I'll tell the kids about him.

Armando 123

"To be fair, it's pretty hard work coercing a compilation error out of a K&R C compiler."

Apparently you've never worked with Accenture/Andersen ...

Armando 123
WTF?

And by some logic that is too bureaucratic for me to follow, Windows NT was certified as a Unix system. Certainly the got BSD's IP code ...

Gigantic KRAKEN fingered in prehistoric murder mystery

Armando 123

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

..... "I will not buy this record, it is scratched." I think I bought the wrong phrasebook.

Armando 123

*golf clap* Bravo! Sir and/or madam, you have given me a new favorite fake band name. You now may freely use my former favorite, Pontias Pilate and the Nail Drivers.

Windows 7 overtakes XP - finally

Armando 123
Holmes

Hm

"Windows 7 adoption has been quick since it hit the shelves in 2009."

This probably says more about the age of XP and the state of Vista than the state of Win7.

Armando 123
Devil

I thought it was the year that the politicians fix whatever the latest problem is.

Where am I going tomorrow? My electric car charger wants to know

Armando 123

Ridiculous

On top of everything that's been posted, who, pray tell, is going to find a way to access that diary?

Say what you want of Jeremy Clarkson, he was right when he said that the first thing left-wing dictators do is restrict movement. So there's the electric car. Then they want to control all the power. And if the government controlling the electric grid doesn't fall under there, I'll eat my cat. And now with GPS and onboard diaries of trips and OnStar-like services, we see where this is leading.

That's it, I'm going to play Rush' "Red Barchetta" and look for an old Delorean.

Armando 123

Wait, the new John O'Groats outlet store is next to the mall with the Land's End.

Armando 123

Here's why no father worthy of the title will buy one. If your teenage daughter, out with friends, gets left behind and there's some creep ogling her, she'll call you in a panic. Your response? "Sorry, honey, we didn't plan for a rescue-from-rape call tonight, you'll have to deal with that University of Miami football player yourself, we have to save the planet ..."

Armando 123
Thumb Up

So if I figure out a way to get that cost from 250,000 to 1000 I'll be a wealthy man. Right, I'm off to the shed. [Grabs the arc welder, returns to get the hedge trimmer, the drill, ........ and some ordinary household bleach.]

Armando 123

Seriously?

Could we get this designed by people who have busy lives, rather than by engineers who've read about lives on wikipedia? We have kids who are active in school, both my wife and I work fulltime and part time, we have to run errands of an evening, we volunteer with local animal shelters, etc etc etc. The idea of planning or scheduling our lives around a car charge is ... mind-boggling.

This is one reason why hydrogen may win out: convenience. With electric cars, those long drives to visit relatives are NOT going to be feasible and we'll be forced to pay more, and spend more time, on public transportation.

Which, come to think of it, is what the watermelons probably want.

Brit micro-biz needs tax breaks, promotion, cuddles

Armando 123

Here's a wacky thought

How about not taxing the hell out of people and businesses so that they can compete?

Scottish rats scoff optic fibre, take down broadband

Armando 123

Unfortunate title

At first I thought Gordon Brown was involved.

Win 8 haters are just scared of change, say MS bosses

Armando 123

There is something in what you say, but a couple points. First, I don't think most people would call any version of Windows "great", unless most people are MCSEs or whatever they've renamed that useless certification to. Some are enough to be getting on with. 2K was good, particularly for its time, but when XP came out a LOT of people didn't see the point, and it was considered just a face-saving stopgap until Longhorn (*snicker*) could actually ship. Eventually people moved to XP, mostly because drivers became available and old machines were replaced with ones that shipped with XP and nothing else. Heck, even when XP finally shipped it was considered way behind the OS X of the time by a lot of people who weren't exactly Apple fans. I think people just got used to XP.

Vista was a dead dog (with apologies to dog lovers), and people hadn't gotten used to it before 7 came out. 7 is ... okay at best and still far behind OS X's Leopard/Snow Leopard, let alone Lion. Now MS seems to be attempting the iOS/OS X fusion that Apple has pulled off ... not perfectly, but surprisingly well if you think about what you'd have to do.

The thing is, Apple is like Louis Armstrong: they've learned what to leave out. MS doesn't know this.

Armando 123

"firstly everything has a place, Metro on the phone works, on a tablet will work, on a desktop... im not so sure but ill hold judgement until its out, from my early tests i find the mouse clumsy to use metro"

Well said. This is one place where Apple did well, the gestures in iOS could be incorporated where sensible for touchpads on laptops and their new touch-oriented "mouse". It's a "right tool for the job" approach. I don't know that MS has ever really gotten this with their interface, and making a big smoosh of Metro and desktop, without the thinking through that Apple did, probably won't work.

Armando 123

"the only 3 useful menu commands we ever use"

Copy, paste, and cut?

Steve Jobs death certificate: 'respiratory arrest'

Armando 123

Believe me, given the money people would make off this, Corporate America is not suppressing it. More likely it hasn't gone through all the necessary trials.

Crims prefer old exploits: Microsoft

Armando 123
Coat

They don't like it up 'em.

"You! Vhat is YOUR passvord?"

"Don't tell him, Pike!"

Which actor should play Steve in upcoming biopic?

Armando 123

With Allen Davis as Wozniak?

Armando 123

Woody Allen? Only if Steve shot a moose once. He put tied it to the hood of the car, and was driving home.

[Great, now I need to listen to that old Moose bit again.]

And there's law in New York about driving through the Holland Tunnel with a live moose strapped to your car on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and alternate Saturdays ...

MS kills, un-kills kills Zune player line

Armando 123

Well

I have seen exactly 1 (one) in the wild. That is against countless iPods, and a smattering of others from other companies.

And that one person is the kind who WOULD buy a Zune. I'll leave it at that.

iPhone 4S pre-orders obliterate sales records

Armando 123

"buying a phone to give them some status."

And how many geeks buy things to give them some status among other geeks?

I have an iPhone because it does all I need, it's been very reliable, does all I want very simply, and Apple's after-sale service has been second to none for the last few years. I would prefer not being on AT&T, but until I can convince my wife to move all of us to Sprint, that ain't happening no matter WHAT phone I buy.

Armando 123
FAIL

"If your upset over the term "tech illiterate" then your options are 2:

Take the shame

Learn something new"

*facepalm* And perhaps you can learn something new, like the apostrophe.

Armando 123

Nah, just more marketing blah, which is what we should all expect from all companies.

Armando 123

What?!?!

"most people use holsters for their phones,"

Dude, I spent a week in Texas this last summer, and no one IN HOUSTON used a holster. And if Texans aren't using one, ... Holster are used for holding instruments for shooting snakes and lawyers, if you'll pardon the redundancy.

The only holster users I've known are those hardcore IT types who drone on and on and on about how some piece of hardware is completely superior because of one little spec, ignoring things like build quality, usability, living with it day to day, etc. They're the geek equivalent of Oakland Raider fans.

Genetics and technology make Columbus Day a fraud

Armando 123

And don't forget domesticated horses for combat; that helped. The technology difference in 1000AD was appreciable. The Norse had a definite edge in sailing, metallurgy, etc. However, they didn't have enough of an edge to make a difference, given the disadvantages of being so far from their home bases. By 1492, that technological difference was HUGE, and Europe's diseases seem to have gotten nastier. (Or perhaps the colder-climate Vikings weren't carrying diseases as nasty as those to the south.)

I do like Eddie Izzard's take that if the Native Americans had reached Europe first, Europeans would have been sitting on mountains in a stupor from chocolate baked goods, while the Native American leader says "Don't worry, we have bakeries back home working 24/7 to keep them this way,"

Would you let your car insurer snoop on you for a better deal?

Armando 123

Maybe

But it has gotten so bad that some places in the US (Arkansas, Indiana, and at least one other state) have tried to make it against the law to go under the speed limit in the passing lane unless impeded from doing so (slow traffic ahead of you, construction, weather, etc). This was one thing where left and right, black and white, Democrat and Republican, libertarian and socialist, all agreed. In fact, I know one pacifist who was for imposing the death penalty for it, and no one called them crazy. (And keep in mind, she was a pacifist, so it's not like she'd fight you over it.) However, in at least one case the ACLU blocked it because people had the right to go under the speed limit in the passing lane.

I always thought that driving was a privilege, not a right. The ACLU lost the plot here.

Armando 123
FAIL

Would you let your car insurer snoop on you for a better deal?

The short answer is "No". The long answer is "*#$% no!!!"

Armando 123

But truck drivers are not driving their own trucks (usually) and because of the risks that such massive vehicles pose, they are subject to stricter monitoring and stricter licensing.

I can only thank the gods that people who don't care about cars, who tend to be the worst drivers, generally buy little crapwagons that fall apart after running over a nightcrawler, or drive a minivan, which has the acceleration and maneuverability of a warthog giving birth to octuplets. During the SUV craze it could get a bit hairy. (And I say that as someone who drives an SUV.)

BBC One and bureaucracy spared in Auntie cuts

Armando 123

"Which channel were you watching for your unreliable information? :-)"

Al Sharpton on MSNBC

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

Armando 123

Better be careful

Their business is based on psuedo-scientific claptrap and ridiculous lies. Expect all religions and political organizations to sue THEM now.

The life and times of Steven Paul Jobs, Part One

Armando 123

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

I used that the other day when a crap-wagon-driving friend claimed he wouldn't buy the car we are considering because he didn't see the point of having something that can actually accelerate.

Armando 123

Newspapers -- in so far as there still are newspapers -- have these things in readiness for a lot of well-known people, particularly those who are or have had health issues. It seems a bit morbid from the outside, but it makes a lot of sense. You give a more accurate, lengthy retrospective on someone, which is in fact a more respectful result.

Obama+world pays tribute to Steve Jobs

Armando 123

"I for one do not pay tribute to a guy that ripped off everyone around him, made profit based on chinese slave labour and played on people's greed and vanity to sell products at hugely inflated prices."

But enough about our politicians ....

Kinect 'augments' Bulgarian airbags

Armando 123

It's a breasticaboobular, chasticamammical, tubular, bubular joy! #mst3k