Posts by Martin Maloney 296 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jul 2007
"...Can't recall anyone ever calling them "Xerox machines" or similar."
To cite just one example, what about Jello? When a commercial product or service becomes dominant in its category, its trade name often becomes a generic term.
Have you ever ordered a fruit-flavored gelatin dessert?
As another example, people say, "Google it," rather than "Yahoo it" or "Enter a term into any Internet search engine."
"The Korean electronics giant says it will replace all of the recalled units with new phones less prone to spontaneous combustion..."
"Less prone?" How does one quantify that? "Our replacements are XX% less prone to spontaneous combustion?"
I can see the ad campaign now:
The New Samsung Galaxy Note 7 -- The Less Prone Phone
"...the universe has stars and galaxies that are further (sic) than 6000 light-years away..."
The person, religious or not, might refer you to the work of Chip Arp and others, who dispute that red-shift is a Doppler manifestation.
In short, they contend that the Big Bang/Expanding Universe paradigm is faulty.
Do the research -- even read a book or two.
"...after agents linked the "encrypted email address used by 'Area51' and 'DarkApollo'" to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook social media accounts."
In reality, the so-called "social media" are intelligence gathering/data mining operations.
So what kind of clueless idiots, who are engaged in illicit online businesses -- drugs, prostitution, kiddie porn, etc. -- also sign up for social media accounts?
The kind who get caught.
"Errr. Take courses at a college or university [and verify if a student, you met the requirements]."
Perhaps you missed these lines:
“Windows 10 Pro Education” and “Windows 10 Education” have been “designed for the unique needs of K-12 institutions.”
“ … to all K-12 customers as it provides the most complete and secure edition for education environments.”
"A slightly dented human from standing too close to a car assembly robot I would assume..."
Slightly dented? On July 1, a worker in a Volkswagon plant in Germany was grabbed by a robot and shoved into a metal plate, crushing his chest, killing him.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/robot-crushes-contractor-death-vw-motor-plant-germany-n385541
"...The Public must start hunting down bad police behavior and the Law must be changed to ensure that no cop can confiscate evidence, legally that is."
The first step is to stop using the expression "confiscate evidence." When a person with a gun orders you to surrender your private property, the correct legal term is "armed robbery."
Who would want to hack a bathroom scale? Well…
Let's say that some obnoxious show-off bloke brags to you about his expensive IoT bathroom scale. So you hack into it, causing it to increment his actual weight by 1-2pounds every 3-4 days. After a couple of weeks or so, he would become concerned about his “weight gain” and cut back on his food consumption – and it wouldn't do any good!
Then you reverse the hack, decrementing his weight. At first he would be gratified that his diet was finally starting to work. However, when you reach the point that the scale gives an accurate weight display, you continue decrementing, taking him 15-20 pounds “underweight,” and increasing his food intake wouldn't do any good!
It would never occur to the bloke that his expensive, state-of-the-art toy was malfunctioning.
(They're really not supposed to allow Internet access from this ward.)
The best thing about Linux is not that most distros are free. The best thing about Linux is not that it is relatively immune to various kinds of malware. The best thing about Linux is not that it is bundled with more applications than the typical Home/SOHO user will ever want to use.
The best thing about Linux is that Microsoft can't coerce/trick you into “upgrading” to Windows 10.
It's the same scam that we've seen from cellular providers. They hook people in with their unlimited data plans, and then they come out with a set of limited plans. They claim that they were "forced" to take this action by people who "abused" their "unlimited" plan -- by actually using it! They even go so far as to denigrate the "abusers" as being "unfair" to everyone else.
The dirty little secret is that they had it all planned out that way from the very beginning.
Add "business ethics" to the late George Carlin's list of oxymorons.
I could probably cobble together an odor sensor, plugged into a PC's USB port, with a program to monitor it, that would sound a klaxon, every time that my cat takes a dump in her litter box, just as a similar setup could tell me when to water my plants.
My question, though, is, “Why?”
Wouldn't a regular schedule, with the self-discipline to follow it, accomplish the same thing?
Doesn't anyone comprehend that Rube Goldberg contraptions were a joke?
https://www.rubegoldberg.com/
If you dual boot in the usual way, it alters the MBR – the Master Boot Record – on your hard drive. I infer that the Windows 10 “update” “repaired” the MBR to only boot into Windows 10.
Instead, why not look into EasyBCD?
http://neosmart.net/
It's free for personal and non-commercial use. (I am not in any way affiliated with the company.)
It's a Windows program that works by replacing the standard boot loader with its own boot loader, not by altering the MBR. If you choose to uninstall it, then it restores the original boot loader.
There are two Windows programs that I use on a daily basis for which there are not adequate Linux equivalents. Being able to choose to boot into Windows 7 or Linux Mint 17.2 makes my life work.
It's also a good way to wean people off Windows and into Linux, by keeping Windows available as a “security blanket.”
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