* Posts by Smilin' Stan

28 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2007

Official science we knew all along: Facebook makes you sad :-(

Smilin' Stan
FAIL

Re: No mention of...

I find most smaller businesses have zero ability to maintain a website, but any damn fool with a keyboard can post to Facebook (and every damn fool will, sad to say). The fact that it's a pain in the backside for the users (content layout, by definition, does not exist in a FB feed) never seems to occur to them, nor the fact that folks without a FB account are locked out. [icon represents my opinon of this strategy]

Milk IN the teapot: Innovation or abomination?

Smilin' Stan

Re: Anyone who puts the milk in tea whilst the bag is still in the cup

Somewhat related: "It was the kind of place where you got your coffee out of a machine, and having done that, couldn't get it back in." (Kingsly Amis, I believe.)

What's ordered in Vegas, doesn't stay in Vegas? $6.7m of printer ink 'stolen by office worker'

Smilin' Stan

Not a crime if the company does it!

A few years back stateside a multi-state regulated monopoly utility had its rates set at expenses plus X% by the various state regulators. Such utility bought all of its expensed office supplies from a wholly-owned non-regulated supply shadow company - at 100% markup over retail!

Empty your free 30GB OneDrive space today – before Microsoft deletes your files for you

Smilin' Stan

Not being an ex-President or Prime Minister...

...no one gives a sh*t about my past correspondence or files. Except for photos, 99.99% of all digital data at home and at work created/received since 1982 are stored permanently at very low cost. In the trash. Have I EVER wished I hadn't trashed a file? No.

Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'

Smilin' Stan

Re: Alternative is'nt pain free

Yep - used MS OSs from 1982-2016. Supported same (and MS desktop software and networking for 20+ of those years). After mistaken Win10 update to my Toshiba laptop that was happily running Win7 I gave the laptop away.

Now 100% Microsoft-free. No OSs, no software, no cloud-stuff - nothin'. Now using only iPhone/Mac/iCloud and Chromebook/Google Apps - and couldn't be happier!

BOFH: Thermo-electric funeral

Smilin' Stan

Or, as the Romans were supposed to have said...

"If it doesn't fit, get a bigger hammer."

Smilin' Stan
Alert

The only tool you'll ever need...

In another industry, a hammer is referred to as a "Ford carburetor adjusting tool;" a sledge hammer is a "Ford electronic fuel injection calibrator."

Monster motor breathes fire in Mississippi

Smilin' Stan
Pint

1500 gal/sec x 500 sec = 750,000 gallons pumped, then 750,000 gal / 660,000 gal/pool = 1.136 pools emptied.

Note: 1500 gal/sec x 4 engines = 6,000 gal/sec, then 660,000 gal / 6,000 gal/sec = 110 seconds to empty an Olympic-sized pool, not 60 as noted in the article.

For reference, it takes about two minutes to pump ten gallons of fresh, clean gasoline into my xB. As it's Friday, I need to pop off and see how long it takes to draw a pint...

Uh-oh, no mo' dough to 'slow-mo' GoGo: American Airlines aims ammo at Wi-Fi pros

Smilin' Stan

Re: Shooting itself would be an even bigger improvement

Bob Newhart, I presume (from way back before the TV shows).

Twitter reduces BBC hacks to tears with redundancy notice

Smilin' Stan

More better: http://qz.com/522824/jack-dorseys-jargon-free-firing-memo-edited-to-remove-the-jargon/

Microsoft, the VW family sedan of IT, wants to be tech's new Rolls-Royce

Smilin' Stan
WTF?

Re: May they get their wish

MS wants to be the new Rolls-Royce? VW tried it (anyone buy, or even remember, the Phaeton?) - MS won't do any better.

Spotify now officially even worse than the NSA

Smilin' Stan

...yet.

HP slaps dress code on R&D geeks: Bin that T-shirt, put on this tie

Smilin' Stan

Commonality of 'suits' people

There are three professions where suits are nearly always worn: politicians, managers, and salesmen. What they all have in common is they make their living convincing you to do things that are not in your best interest (go to war, pay higher taxes, work overtime for free, buy things you don't need, etc.) in order to pad their best interest (themselves).

What a hang-up: AT&T dumped from Dow index, Apple installed

Smilin' Stan
FAIL

"In any 30-year period, the DOW always shows a gain."

Of course it does, because every stock in the DOW on a losing trend is dumped, and replaced with a stock that is moving upward. In 1985 the DOW included such future greats as Sears, US Steel, Eastman Kodak, and Woolworth's, but for some reason are not in the mix for 2015...

Apple deliberately wiped rivals' music from iPods – iTunes court claim

Smilin' Stan

Re: And now they're doing something similar with photos

iPhone 5s > iOS 8.1.1 Settings > iCloud > iCloud Photo Library (Beta): "Photos Synched from iTunes will be Removed - Synching photos via iTunes is not supported when iCloud Photo Library is turned on. - 43 photos will be removed. - Remove Photos [or] Cancel"

Smilin' Stan
WTF?

And now they're doing something similar with photos

If you enable the new! improved! so much better than the last one! iCloud sync for photos, all photos synced from outside your iTunes library are wiped from your iPhone. These include photos synced VIA iTunes, but from other image files/folders on your computer. I imagine Apple is restricting content that can be iCloud stored to ONLY Apple-device created content. Silos, anyone?

Ploppr: The #VultureTRENDING App of the Now

Smilin' Stan

No app yet, but...

A Poop Bank in Massachusetts Will Pay You $40 Every Day - Are you under 50 years old, willing to make daily trips to Medford [Massachusetts], and have regular bowel movements? You, my friend, could be earning $40 a day—just for pooping. All you have to do is visit OpenBiome, launched in 2012 as the only independent nonprofit stool bank in the country. The brainchild of MIT postdoctoral associate Mark Smith, OpenBiome collects, tests, and provides fecal samples to 122 hospitals in 33 states for one of the most interesting medical treatment innovations today: fecal microbiota transplantation...

full article: http://www.boston.com/health/2014/10/15/poop-bank-massachusetts-will-pay-you-per-dump/FMMhBXMKyFNTRXKoThmnpM/story.html?p1=Must_Reads_hp

PEAK APPLE: iOS 8 SHUNNED by refusenik fanbois

Smilin' Stan

Re: Now crossed over the line to "evil"

"Evil" only within the micro-climate of tech > user tech > this thread. Otherwise, meh.

Smilin' Stan
FAIL

Now crossed over the line to "evil"

I've got ONE spreadsheet in Apple's cloud. I tried to update it this morning from my Win7 laptop - no go, cannot access it any way. I had to upgrade to the new, improved, shiny iCloud first. But wait, there's more! Once upgraded to the new cloud, I can no longer access my spreadsheet from my iPhone or wife's iPad without upgrading THEM to ios8, which I have no intention of doing! Risk to upgrade to ios8: high; possible benefits: none (in fact, even if ios8 worked perfectly, it adds features and complexity I would remove if I had the option). Summary: evil, pure evil.

Payment security bods: Nice pay-by-bonk (hint: NO ONE uses it) on iPhone 6, Apple

Smilin' Stan

NFC: Not Found Commonly (in northeastern US)

A year or so ago I got an updated major bank credit card with NFC. Worked great at McDonald's (in particular, the drive-thru cashiers loved it - one less thing to do for them). The only other retailer I came across that had a NFC reader didn't have the NFC feature hooked up. The bank replaced it last month with a card with a chip, but no NFC ("There was no strong useage for it."). Chip worked OK in Europe (but since I never set up a PIN, I still had to sign receipts), but no one around here knows what it is.

So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

Smilin' Stan
Alert

The one time Microsoft marketing actually worked...

When Excel was introduced, Microsoft gave out free floppies like they were AOL coasters of Excel (with a runtime version of Windows [3.1?]) at a time when 123 was expensive (~$300) and locked. Most folks never looked back.

That 'wiped' Android phone you bought is stuffed with NAKED SELFIES – possibly

Smilin' Stan
Holmes

Sold by "owners?"

Not to discount stupidity by the sellers (motto: *never* discount stupidity), but how many of these devices were sold on eBay by the actual owners vs. sold by petty thieves?

Google staggers toward BEEELLION-dollar Twitch gobble - report

Smilin' Stan
WTF?

No tech bubble here...

I'm going to create a new app called WTF, where users can post live screen-shot videos of themselves entering numbers into Excel spreadsheets. Got to be worth a few hundred mil, at a minimum.

Lotus 1-2-3 rebooted: My trip back to the old (named) range

Smilin' Stan
Coat

And don't forget the BIG boogeyman: copy protection!

Lotus being Lotus, had the most ornery copy-protection schemes around, and kept them long after they had any value. Microsoft, on the other hand, was handing out Excel with a Windows runtime built-in on a single floppy - and they gave them away like AOL later gave away CDs. Only the most die-hard accounting types stayed with 123 after getting one of those floppies - the difference in user experience - and lack of copy-protection - was like night and day. Why you could make spreadsheets at work AND at home. For free! (You can buy a pretty good laptop today for what Lotus was charging for a single copy of 123 20+ years ago.)

Attack code in the wild targets new (sort of) Adobe Flash vuln

Smilin' Stan
Pirate

Flash - smlash...

...who cares? I uninstalled it a few weeks ago and never missed it. Most pages load faster, too, without the gimcrackery.

Skull and crossbones - since everyone should be warned to stay away from Adobe bloat-mal-ware.

Microsoft takes a shine to Logitech?

Smilin' Stan
Alert

Mice, schmice...

Did anyone else pick up on the Logitech "commitment to open source?"

M$: "Not if we own you!"

We can reQall it for you wholesale

Smilin' Stan
Thumb Up

Try Jott First

Jott.com - browse the site and see how this type of service can be used. Email/Text-transcription w/link to wav file to individuals, groups, self, reminders, appointments in Google calendar, and more. Very simple, and very surprisingly, "just works." Nothing to do with ability to type (as some have commented), but as an alternative - very handy from my cell.