Posts by Gritzwally Philbin 85 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jul 2007
...once the metric ton of Perl dependencies are installed.
Oh, that's something I wish I knew about some years back. Helped a friend who'd amassed well in excess of 20k mail messages in her email inbox - the product of running a small mailing list for decades - and was on a mail service that to the end, was accessible with Claris Emailer for Mac... classic.
God, what a job it was.
Apple is still selling DRM'd music? Can't speak to the moving accounts thing, as I'm one of those hoary 'old school' music collectors that still sticks to mp3, 320k VBR files and learned decades ago (fuck me has it really been *20* years?) that if you don't locally store and back up your music files, there is no guarantee that Apple's music player apps (iTunes or now Music) won't bork it's library and send your files into the ether.
After losing my first library to an errant iTunes update in 2003.. hup, ho.. no more of that.
Now everything is on a few select vintage machines (a G4 MDD being the host of the audiophile sound card that the vinyl is ripped with) and the master library is tucked away on a pair of pocket drives and long-term archived on my old 1 terabyte laptop drives in some cabinet storage boxes. I gave up using my iPhone once the headphone jack was removed - the dongles just don't last - so now my playlists of the month are on a USB so it's plug and play on whatever machine I'm currently using.
Given that I just read that Sony is going to nuke the content from an anime streaming site they purchased, the notion of digital content being yours once you buy it, is laughable to these jackasses.. Back your shit up, portable storage is cheaper than ever. The best you'll ever get out of streaming is to be a renter whose access can and will be revoked on the most capricious of whims.
Vinyl siding is cladding that looks like either grooved asbestos shingles, or clapboards that snaps over the wood.
The benefits are, it can come pre-colored so no more painting and of course doesn't get eaten by termites or rot (older brands do get the UV breakdown, but the newer stuff is pretty good resisting that now..)
Really cheap housing tracts built by fly-by-night builders often go with vinyl right over the strandboard siding and of course that shit is utter crap.
Anecdotally, my sister is an architect and was on a renovation project in a neighborhood outside of Washington DC a few decades ago, the ENTIRE neighborhood was built with strandboard exterior walls with spray-on vinyl 'brickface' that was scored and tinted to look like the real thing.. only the vinyl was applied directly to the strandboard w/o it being properly primed/treated (fly-by-nighters, man, get you EVERY time..) and the vinyl delaminated and let water in. Lo and behold the cement used to bind the strandboard (basically it's pressed wood chips) was corn-based and became mold bombs as the wood rotted under the vinyl brickface. THOSE houses you literally could cut through the vinyl with a box cutter and into them between the wall studs. HUGE lawsuits against the builder IIRC.
You'll see lots of vinyl cladding in the Northeast US on older homes because it does a bang up job protecting the clapboards already on..
Kill me now. The small business I work at is recently on the cloud with google docs and it's a nightmare. I've taken to slipping into the office and sorting, dating and saving the documents - usually left open in multiple tabs on one of any number of browsers. The manager is completely lost with how to use the system. The downloads folder? Mother of God.. I counted 37 redundant downloads of the SAME document. Who does this?
At one point, everything was locally stored and the folders were organized. I kept it all tidy for the department directors. Then the manager got sold on the cloud and well.. I'm not needed anymore for this aspect of the job, thankyouverymuch.
On top of it, former employees still have their remote logins *in* the system. At the point when *that* ticking time-bomb goes off - it makes me absolutely delighted to have been marginalized and relieved of my duties WRT the IT. I'll repair the laptops, set up networks, and get everything running again (fucking HP printers!) when it goes titsup, but am completely and utterly out of it as far as data.
My biggest peeve with the cloud, is that it enables too many users that have ZERO capacity to run IT for a business, to think they can.
This whole metrics thing in 365? Good luck with that Jack.
Okay. Education it is. And when the lesson is one of being aware of the situation and location one is in? I saw the video early on when it came in on one of the sites I go to.. the gruesome tally happened in part the way it did (useless sack of shit asshole with firearm notwithstanding) as the mosque had no rear emergency exits or windows for the victims to escape through. There were no doors I could see or walls with alcoves, to step into, no place to hide. Only ONE way in and out.. through the front door where the assailant was shooting from and he had a clear view the length of the rooms to both rear corners and a hallway down the center of the building that was - and this is a shit thing to say - like a shooting gallery. The next time something like this happens, it could be in a movie theater, a shopping mall, a sports venue.. an office. Basically anywhere. With that as a given, it's certainly a wise move from now on for ALL of us - each and every one - to be mindful of where we are and the ways to escape if things go bad. For sure I am now going to be keenly aware of spaces I go into and if there's only a single way out, I will avoid them.
What's amazing to me is that people just don't shut off the Location Services access on their devices - per each application. It's all there in the Settings. The apps I use that have ads in them are only used when I tick the phone into Airplane Mode or just shut off Cellular and WiFi. I never see targeted ads and stick to using the browsers with adblockers instead of the apps themselves. I will NOT install and use the Youtube app, I will NOT use Google Maps, and I haven't EVER visited facebook on the device - let alone install or use their app.
Everyone acts like it's so damn difficult to limit the apps and access them with the settings in a particular way.. It's not. It's all about the things you choose to set as habits. Want that instant gratification of 'having it on all the time' like a teenager? Pay the price. Users that are concerned about privacy just need to stop acting as if they are helpless. There are tons of ways you can skin that cat. It's the convenience aspect that is the hook. Anyone that thinks they don't pay for it at the cost of their personal data and privacy is a fool.
Where's the Phone Home feature hidden? I's a bit of code somewhere - a binary? So who knows where it is? One of the last updates of Win 10 on my gaming rig pushed most of my older games into unplayable state so I'm full well ready to start digging since I'm going to copy the games and saved data to an external then wipe and reinstall anyhow. If I can find that fucker and make it so it doesn't work, I'll suss it out on the reinstall and get it gone and do all updates manually. It's not like I do anything with the gaming rig other than play games with it..
Oh hell.. well that's it for me and my 2 dollar spiral bound blank-page notebook I bought in 1998. 20 years on and it's not been nicked, copied or dropped in the toilet (my God, who pulls out their password book on the toilet? Unnatural, that is..)
The biggest drawback is that over the years I've pulled pages to make shopping lists with and the poor notebook is running out of room.. Though I DO still have my AudioGalaxy password and username jotted down. The thing that makes you think the most however, are the number of old e-mail addresses and contacts with folks I knew that have died over the years. Hmm.
That, I think is an accurate assessment of the situation: I too used PB very little - though I do think I may have an account from the very start - I am not certain anymore, once they started deleting the nude paintings I had been sharing with an art group - nothing obscene or pornographic - but skin was definitely out, so I bailed and switched to a yahoogroup which is going on 13 years now. I really don't know how the company managed to hang on this long with such a limited business model - it's as relevant to me now as MySpace (of which I do still have an all-but abandoned page). You're most likely correct: Photobucket is looking to bail on image-hosting.
> "..a)Probably an American.."
Ehh.. I doubt that. Pretty much everyone I know and have spoken to over the last three years is of the mind that the for-profit medical insurance model is not keeping costs down, and when we here can read of insurance CEO's paying themselves millions and kicking back billions in stock valuations and dividends to the Idle-class investors.. brought to them by taxpayer subsidies.. Even the rich folk with their gold and platinum-plated insurance plans are getting hit with soaring costs - now that the Millennials are creeping into the medical need picture by coming down with costly with chronic diseases 25 years ahead of schedule..
Keep your ears open, outside of the beltway or Fox news, most that still have to work for a living are grumbling that its getting close to time for a Single Payer here in the US of A.
"This is a side effect of people voting against their enlightened self interest."
THAT is the exact arrogance that got Trump elected. You or I have zero idea what the 'enlightened self-interest' of a Trump supporter is.. hell, THEY have no idea, though I may have a clue. They voted for the lesser of two evils and they voted for a change - regardless of how shitty and terrifying it is.
I voted Trump because, well fuck the Republicans. They are eating the shit-sandwich they've served to the working poor (of which I've been all my life and Trump changes ZERO aspects of the improvidence in it - and let's be real now.. the Democrats have in reality done fuck all themselves.) for decades and it's so fucking fun to watch the sorry old cocksuckers twist as Trump attacks everyone.
Bring on the chaos - it's what most poor in America have been dealing with for a long, long time. I think most of the Trump supporters are rather like myself.. just put in the worst candidate possible and watch Washington DC eat itself. (I know no one that actually thinks/thought he'd be a good president.. but pretty much most who voted for him knew he'd be a shitty one)
The Republicans getting the political fiasco they deserve? Couldn't happen to better people.. and it's a wondrous show. There is no self-interest left at this point, it's just schadenfreude, and it's delicious.
Is there not a way to grab the program itself and re-install it post-update?
Deprecated doesn't mean dead.. QuickTime7.6.6 has been deprecated since Snow Leopard in favor of QuickTimeX and I use the former *to this day* with the Perian codec pack installed, even under the High Sierra beta - it's my go to for anything not h265.
Mac OS X 10.6.8 running SeaMonkey 2.38 shows the real address.. https://www.xn--80ak6aa92e.com/ the second link gives the fake epic.com address.
Hmmm. Interesting. This is sort of why I only click links that are in certain email messages - like The Register and a few other sites I am subbed to. None however are tied to anything that deals with putting in any financial info.
Any site I use that is linked to my credit card or banking, is entered manually.
End of story.
Hawaii has a VAT - though they call it a General Excise Tax - and it's an absolute PITA - my mom is a crafter there - makes kid's masks out of marine vinyl and she's expected to tax everything she sells at 4.15% - 4% for the state and she gets to keep the .15% as a 'deputized' tax collector, though as it's a tax applied at every level of sales - from raw materials, supplies to the final cost of wholesale and retail, it's actually significantly higher once it gets to the end consumer.
But hey, they have a great welfare system on the islands.. and milk at well over 6 dollars a gallon.
Gah! Bad indeed.. if you had a half hour to kill and a VM you could have had some wild fun. I think the record I've managed to keep one of these asshats online trying to 'help' me with my Parallels VM was nearly 43 minutes. I use an ancient copy of Windows 95 to play the first version of Sim City on (yeah, I know) and it doesn't go online.. Imagine trying to get the thing to do so inside the VM, and me playing the 'daft older woman' who's computer is *just* used for online shopping and looking at pictures of the grandkids on facebook.. The best part is when they finally get around to asking how I connect to the internet, and when I tell them it is through a telephone line, you can hear the car crashing noises in their heads. "Um.. well I go online with a telephone modem.."
"Oh, miss.. do you have a different telephone that you can use?"
"No.."
"Do you have a cell-phone?"
"No!" getting irritated sounding now. "I have a telephone on my desk, it has a dial." spins dial of desktop rotary to make clicking noises.
"I'm so sorry madam, we cannot help you."
"But what about the viruses in my computer? Will it destroy my computer?"
"I'm so sorry.."
"Can you put me through to a higher level support?" sounding panicked now.. and around it goes.
At the very last of it, after nearly three quarters of an hour, I finally got in the parting shot.. "You've just spent nearly 45 minutes trying to get into my computer.. so, before you go.. just one thing.. I HAVE A Macintosh and am running a PC virtually you scammer! Bwahahahah!"
Funny, the calls stopped and it's been several months now.
Yup. Set up with Ghostery. make a note of the ads coming in that are slipping past ABP or uBlock, and add to the hosts list. Problem solved.
I run my browser with NoScript, uBLock and also have a monstrously edited hosts file and nothing gets through. I also haven't had a single site lock up on me in well over a year, which I credit to the hosts file.
Yes. Also, and this is critical, never *ever* maintain your Music Library in the Default location in your Home folder.
If you move it to a secondary drive (or volume - partitions works perfectly) and change the settings in iTunes preferences to have it copy songs, but NOT organize the library, it doesn't move the files in any way, shape or form.
Unfortunate guy did not have the correct settings in the preferences - a common thing - and the effin' program ate his files.
NEVER leave your music in the default location however, as it stops the 'space-saving' measure in its tracks. I've used iTunes from the start - actually prior to it as I ran Casady and Greene's Sound Jam (which Apple bought and reworked into iTunes) on OS 8.1 and in 17 years haven't lost a single file to anything but my own stupidity.
SeaMonkey, Mr Dabbs.. SeaMonkey. It is a fork of FF based on the old Netscape Communicator suite and it runs quite snappy.
http://www.seamonkey-project.org
(I quit on Safari back when Panther 10.3 was the current OS - it was shite back then and I see nothing has happened to change that.)
Get it and run with uBlock Origin and NoScript and you're golden.
Safari is a total bag of dicks.. big floppy limp ones that stiffen at the most inopportune time and bone your system..
You know.. it's absolute bullshit that it is difficult to cancel a Comcast subscription. It's fucking *easy-peasy* but involves - HORROR! - walking in to a Comcast service/sales office and *physically* returning your rented kit.
I've cancelled service plenty of times - just return the equipment, get a receipt and ask for a print-out of the balance due, cut a check at the service desk and it's done.
People are fucking lazy, is all.
You make the assumption that because someone is western, they are automatically Christian. There are many that disrespect Jesus because they are atheist and do not need to believe in a deity to find meaning in their lives. There are also plenty of people in the west that are Christian and respect Christ - you just do not see it.
That is when you, and other consumers so afflicted by short-life CFL bulbs start mass mailing the dead ones to his office with notes attached, expressing your admiration for such a well written bill to be passed, one that had in effect no QA standards for the CFL technology it pushed, and was so carefully crafted as to allow such shoddy product into Australia.
Give him BIG KUDOS for that. Each and every time a bulb fails before it should.
Shame and keep shaming and throw the onus for disposal of the poor-quality bulbs upon his office. You've got to out dick the politicians - esp. ones that are buffoons.
> What's it even for?
Getting results from flickr, and from Groups - the TWO properties it's tried, and failed, to kill.
Seriously, the idea that it's more than those two services is laughable.. they're the only ones making money and of course, the only ones driven by users content.. Funny how that goes, eh? (then again I use both on a regular basis and my group is now 11 years old..)
Ms. Pao IS correct, most of the Reddit users ARE uninterested in what happened.
But she's oblivious to the greatest problem with that attitude: It's the unpaid mods that bring content to the site and keep the various subreddits in order. ALL the content on the site is delivered by the mods and once they leave - the others who are passive users - the ones Ms. Pao says don't care - will leave, following the mods and that content to wherever they go.
This is the YahooGroups effect and why Yahoo hasn't been able, really, in well over 15 years to monetize the Groups in the same fashion as the rest of their properties.
Ah, the perils of using unpaid users to generate links and content. (I've already set up an account at voat.co)
Okay, thanks for the tip!
Yeah, I have run into incompatible software issues with Macs. Apple churlishly makes it impossible to install an older OS on newer kit, and when I set up users that are digital artists, it's sometimes a hunt to find the correct model that will run with their ancient software. Had a guy recently want his system on a G5 rolled back to Tiger from 10.5 because of the classic environment not being supported on the latter OS. Needless to say the hoops I had to jump through to find video drivers for his *newer* card that would run under that older OS.. Not fun. I found a base set of drivers that allowed him to run the card with no controls, or get an older card, which he wasn't too keen on. Eventually went for dual boot.
I've tried to shoehorn YellowDog linux 3 onto a few powerbooks - apparently it's supposed to work on the RISC processors but I've not gotten it to work ever. Eh, Tiger's good enough on hardware a decade old which the primary function is a jukebox.
Will be mindful to run the Live distro first when I get ready to leap into the newest PC adventure.
Thanks.
Deb.
That's actually good to read, thanks!
I've done some work recently in a Mac store and the new MacBooks came in and I just about died. They're not at all what I would have hoped they'd be and the one USB3 data/power port? What the fuck, Apple. Call me disappointed. I have an ancient 1.67ghz PowerBook G4 that I'd choose before that new frisbee. At least with the old klunker I can port video to a TV on S-Video and run a second monitor with a standard DVI cable and it's got an expansion slot and FireWire and dual USB ports. Yeah.. really unimpressed with the direction Apple is going - but then again, I take it everyone's headed this way.
So if the new ThinkPads come with all the retro hardware and I get one, I should also buy a retail version of whatever Windows is available and do a clean install to strip out the bloatware? Is the possibility of partitioning the drive and throwing a Linux volume on, workable? (I was thinking Mint - have run across it in one or two homes where the grandkids have set it up for their parents and grandparents to use and I had an easier time of navigating that than Windows.)
Thanks!
Deb.
Okay gents.. I'm an Apple user and have a MacBook, but have dabbled with a few Acer laptops running Vista and in the next year, am planning on getting a Windows laptop - I troubleshoot networks and help seniors set up their homes for wireless, and am getting more PC users calling me - I really need to take my game up a notch as I got stuck trying to connect three PCs across a network and couldn't make heads or tails of the system Control Panels and figure it out for the life of me. My PC knowledge is dated, I should just re-learn Windows from scratch.. (the last PC I had ran Windows 95 so obviously I need something that is a bit more current.. ya think?)
Since you are all so keen on the ThinkPad, what is the biggest appeal? I'm honestly curious to find out, since other than Macs, I have rarely seen such a buzz over a machine.
Thanks!
(Paris, because I really want to know).
Not the one you were replying to, but he and I could be the same person.
I too do everything he does, and also hit some of the really dodgy porn sites as well - and as I have a budget speed internet connection I will go offline most nights if I am working on my graphics (this also allows husband to watch youtube with no lagging) and I run little snitch and one app called Private Eye that sees all traffic.. Mostly it's the things like Adobe and the Apple programs trying to get out for updates. Then again, I have specific uses for the different browsers - I use Chrome for the pornsites, (the videos play better for some reason) and Safari for Facebook - both are set to delete all data on close. Opera for ebay/Amazon or any shopping I'll do and a fork of Firefox called SeaMonkey for the general El Reg/Google/BBC news/Reddit surfing.
So far, I've managed, by keeping everything segregated by use, to not have issues. This on Snow Leopard no less. Perhaps I'm just lucky? Don't know, but I DO pay mind to where on the net I am and also what browser I am using.
Second the Rampant Spaniel's remarks. Been on the same service for 15 years now - Comcast - and other than my wireless hopping onto the xfinitywifi after waking from sleep and dealing with that annoyance, I've not noticed a slow-down or interruption in any of the torrents, file-lockers, Tor browsing.. None of it that I use. I imagine that if I was pulling a file off of a public tracker like piratebay, I might see some throttling if I was grabbing a movie that was still in theaters, but I can't say for sure. There's plenty of other things I'd rather use my bandwidth for.
Meh, a made-up tempest in a teapot.
FYI, just as a technical note, Comcast quietly dropped the bandwidth limits about the time they started rolling out their dual-channel wireless routers and expanding the xfinitywifi network. Unbeknownst to most who lease one of these new devices, they are now subsidizing Comcast's wireless network through their electric bills.
@PhilW.. Hmm. American sci-fi is good?
Really? Stick around long enough at it all looks the same. Guys with blazing lasers, hot babes in tight spandex, flaming rockets and a handful of rinse and repeat storylines involving lost explorers, brave adventurers or alien visitors with a hidden, sinister agenda.
And then there's Dr. Who.. you've got living plastic shop dummies, deadly Christmas trees, Spitfires in outer space, flying sharks, Toclafane, werewolves and the Royals, Weeping Angels.. New New New New New New New New New New York, Cassandra (now THAT was a real stab at the vanity of cosmetic surgery seekers!) Witches.. it is at least COMPLETELY and utterly off its tits and way more interesting.
(I won't even get into Red Dwarf which rates as some of the funniest comedy - the third and fourth seasons esp. so - I've seen..)
The hard sci-fi like Star Trek (Of which the only ones worth a shit were ToS, ST:TNG and DS9) just has run it's ground for lack of *unique* ideas because it has to stay 'serious'.. It's also pure boredom at this point so it falls back on the explosions, spandex and all the other shit that makes the 16 Y.O. boys go 'schwing!!'
As someone that's had a perfectly useable *vile* YahooGroup (four actually, with well over 2,000 members on my mailing lists) for the last - oh, 9 years.. you 'web 2.0' folks are missing the point: YahooGroups are a LISTSERV.
That's - Web 1.0 - for those of you with the inability to parse meaning in more than 140 characters.
It's not supposed to look good, it is supposed to work and be a platform for the archiving of USER-created content. Who needs that managerial light and functionally thin, bland white 'facebook-wannabe' bollocks?
Oh wait, that'd be the Short-attention span theater, ADD-afflicted 'look at MEEEEEEEE!!' twenty/thirty-something crowd.
Either way, I don't hold out hope that Yahoo isn't going to make a hash of it, they've got such a screaming inferiority complex about their service and pathetically play the 'keeping up with the facebook' crowd, they've lost sight that Groups don't NEED to be 'updated', when the bulk of the members *most* Groups have use their mail apps for access.
You want to know what's vile? Google Groups and the pathetic attempt at Groups that facebook put up. Boring white pages with banner photos. Cookie-cutter internet.
At least with Yahoo, the Groups could be set up so that interacting with them wasn't an invite to be cyber-stalked by advertisers across the interwebs. Well, it wasn't.. until this latest 'neo' coat-hanger abortion attempt.
Aye, am hearing that. Alas, I too was disappointed at the final call for Camino, but it was becoming obvious that it was on it's last legs about the time youtube stopped working for me. Hated that too, as it was faster to bring up pages on the various forms I inhabit than any other browser - still is, but if I want to stick to a handful of sites it still works well on - nope - too limited.
Have found that Seamonkey works good enough, OmniWeb started getting crash-prone on the Flash-enabled portals. Just don't care for Chrome enough to keep it and of course Safari on Snow Leopard is a huge bag of 'meh!'.. Adios Camino.
"This way thy could get rid of most pirated copies.."
Are you serious? Look at the patcher for CS5, it intercepts the activation from Adobe and also puts a white-list of ports on a modified hosts file that prevents the app from calling home yet *somehow* manages to get a valid key.
What witchcraft that is, I know not.
It may take a while for the code-head pirates to work it out, but they will. They ALWAYS do. This 'cloud' shift will only alienate users that can't pony up money every month..
I don't have a twitter or facebook account and have yet to have it be an issue let alone even be asked about it. I suppose my standard answer would be 'I don't waste my valuable time or energy on such trivialities, I have too much to do.." and let any prospective employer work out that. If they won't hire based on that, then they're idiots and as such, one wouldn't want to work there in the first place.
Choices are always available, just that some are less onerous than others.
(Heck, I don't even have a cell phone - a iPhone, yes, but it's got no phone service.. Go figure)
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