Re: Canadians enjoying the show.
All the while forgetting that the U.S. can just /walk/ into Canada - same reason I don't consider anywhere in Latin America a viable bolthole come the day.
Posts by Someone_Somewhere
336 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Sep 2015
Donald Trump promises 'such trouble' for Jeff Bezos and Amazon
Google screening missed hundreds of malicious Android apps, researchers say
Intravenous hangover clinics don't work, could land you in hospital
Raspberry Pi celebrates fourth birthday with fruity version 3
Monday 29th February 2016 10:47 GMT
Re: DNLA server
Apart from my A/V production needs, I'm looking for something I can use as a VM server for my business - not quite cloud server farm, but the same principle.
Sure, they're small and cheap enough to use real hardware instead of VMs, but then there are other issues I face when I need to take my business on the road - my needs are indeed /very/ specific and, in all fairness, the Pi wasn't really conceived for them, but I can dream, can't I? ;)
Monday 29th February 2016 10:42 GMT
Re: Whichever way you slice it
I would stop using badly written, memory hogging programs, if there /were/ any.
Okay, I'm being unfair - the biggest culprit on my desktop is Fireofx, but since the only other options are Google (and its clonewars spawn), MS or Apple, I don't really have much choice in that regard.
Also, it isn't just the software that's at issue - no matter how good the software, audio and video production just requires /enormous/ amounts of RAM to do properly - latency simply isn't an option.
Moreover, as I said, slice it any way you like, 64bit means more RAM is required than is for 32bit for the same operations.
So a 'pocket'-production-studio isn't gonna be an option with 1GB on /any/ system.
Monday 29th February 2016 09:43 GMT
Whichever way you slice it
1GB RAM is not enough for a 64bit OS (let alone a server running a LAMP/ownCloud/open-X-change stack) even on ARM - not for /my/ purposes anyway.
In fact, 1GB RAM isn't even sufficient to run a 32bit desktop OS these days - unless you're a masochist.
<sigh> I can add a wireless dongle if I want/need to, but I'll never get 1Gb/s out of either network connection on this - and even if I could, there isn't enough RAM to do anything sensible with it :|
IBM is to cut more than 1 in 8 from its UK Labs, say sources
Investigatory Powers Bill to be rushed into Parliament on Tuesday
Monday 29th February 2016 13:40 GMT
Time to leave this sceptic isle methinks
and never communicate with anyone there again - no email, no sms, no voip, no telephone calls, no printer produced text, no handwritten letters.
No smartphone, featurephone or unremovable-battery-phone either.
No perusing any of the websites you normally read (behavioural fingerprinting, don'cha know).
Of course you'll noticably drop off the radar and become a person of especial interest as a result.
But it's nothing that a complete identity change (up to, and including, full reconstructive surgery*). elocution lessons and suchlike won't ameliorate.
Then relocate to a war-zone followed by more reconstructive surgery then a move to another war-zone followed by even more reconstructive surgery then a move to yet another war-zone and yet more reconstructive surgery.
Now you can come back (via Greece) with a completely new identity, having 'lost' your papers in all the confusion of the last war-zone**, and issued new ones in Germany.
Shouldn't take more than a couple of years at the most.
* not a sex-change - too obvious
** don't mention the previous two
Indian DEITY tells Google to choose broadband bride
Worldpay outs self as provider of easy-to-crack payment services
AdBlock Plus, websites draft peace deal so ads can bypass blockade
Sunday 28th February 2016 12:09 GMT
Re: How does society deal with the hopeless rejects?
Unfortunately, the solution to that requires a much more thorough overhaul to human nature than simply a change in source of income - and I'm not sure it will ever happen.
Giving your all just isn't enough in a world in which how hard you work is barely even tangentially related to the reward you reap for your efforts - you don't need to give your all: you need connections, luck, timing, something attention-grabbing and (best of all) inherited wealth.
You don't need to be any good, you just need to come up with something like 'Peeple', I'm sorry to say.
The world/Life isn't fair, no, but feeling sorry for onesself won't change that, so, we either pick ourselves up and keep trying until we finally 'get a break' or we try some other endeavour.
I am, myself, one of the 'rejects' we're talking about and I've had my share of failure (sometimes my fault, sometimes bad luck, sometimes due to the machinations of others) but I wouldn't attempt to blame any ethically dubious behaviour on lack of options: I refuse to indulge in ethically dubious behaviour - my self-respect is too high a price to pay as far as I'm concerned*
* I know because I've already paid that price in my life - haven't done it since though.
Tuesday 9th February 2016 14:07 GMT
Re: We Prefer
>And if none is forthcoming? You either starve yourself or take your stuff off the Internet?
In theory? Yes. You have moral values you're not prepared to compromise because the ends don't justify the means. If you handle stolen goods the Law deosn't look kindly upon you because you'd otherwise have to find a different source of income to keep the wolf from the door - and nor should it.
In reality? There are all these security/privacy solutions you can (and should) avail yourself of because nobody is going to watch out for your interests other than you yourself.
Yes, it's an imperfect world and we all have to make compromises in order to get by in it. But I have little sympathy for those who bleat that they have no choice. They always have a choice; they just don't want to have to make the one that takes more effort. If the content is /that/ good then enough people will be prepared to pay for it to cover costs and/or reputable people will want to advertise alongside it. If I find myself obliged to make deals with the morally disenfranchised in order to publish it then, just maybe, that content isn't as good as I'd like to think.
Tuesday 9th February 2016 13:29 GMT
Re: We Prefer
Agreed
Although, when I think about it, it's not really the advertisers who are at fault so much as the sites that do nothing to prevent it whilst reaping the benefits of allowing them to display their ads in the first place - for once, I think the messenger is actually to blame.
Of course, if we really want to hurt them, we should all learn how to hack/crack and deface the websites with our own intrusive elements until they stop behaving like pimps - pimps who don't care how many people get incurable diseases from their working girls so long as the money keeps rolling in.
No, "it pays for the free content you benefit from" isn't an excuse - get funding from reputable sources!!!
Tuesday 9th February 2016 13:19 GMT
Re: ESSENTIAL ADDONS
>were you just saying something about your browser inexplicably slowing to a crawl...?
Nope.
There's nothing inexplicable about my browser slowing to a crawl - it's thanks to all my addons.
And I've only mentioned the security/privacy related ones - I have 132 installed in total!
I resent the fact that (thanks to the human race producing so many c**ts with no morals) I need them, but need them I do; just like I need locks on my doors and windows, burglar alarms, sensor-activated lighting, etc. on my home - if other people weren't inclined to burgle my home, rape my wife and daugther and kill the dog, I wouldn't need them, but people are, so there's reallly no choice.
In fairness though, I don't have all of them activated all of the time - only the essential ones. - and I enable/disable the others according to need
I only occasionally need Bloody Vikings! and Plain Text Offenders for instance and most of the time they're disabled.
Same goes for the Informative/Interesting ones - I switch them on when I'm researching and want to know what hidden agenda(s) (if any) lurk behind what I read; the rest of the time, they're disabled.
I might remove Clean Links altogether as I mostly just check the statusbar anyway.
'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker...'
Controversial: The future is data integrity, not confidentiality
Holy litigation, Batman! Custom Batmobile cars nixed by copyright
Sunday 28th February 2016 12:32 GMT
Re: @Someone_Somewhere
You don't understand what copyright is about then.
Or royalties.
If you haven't created anything, no copyright exists - mechanics don't design the vehicles they work on; plumbers don't design the toilets they fix; electricians don't design the wiring they fit.
You don't get paid for copyright, you get to assert it and then you get royalties every time someone /else/ makes use of what you have independently created, if and when when you licence them to do so.
Not one of the examples you have cited involves the /creation/ of anything new except (possibly) in the case of the architect - and even then they will only have a copyright on anything they design themself, not for checking the structural soundness of the blueprints for someone /else's/ designs.
Sunday 28th February 2016 12:25 GMT
Re: Why should "artists" be any different?
Because 'artists' create something that no-one else does and that takes time.
That's time during which they aren't earning anything for it.
Whenever I tell people how much I get paid for my creative performances, they're astounded.
Then I tell them about all the unpaid time during which I prepare for that performance and about the cost of materials.
Then we calculate the actual rate I'm getting and that I'm still getting less than the minimum wage for my time and effort and they're no longer so outraged at how much I charge for my hour-or-three of performance time.
This program can detect if you're bored – which is going to make annoying ads, articles so much more annoying
Who hit you, HP Inc? 'Windows 10! It's all Windows 10's fault'
Sunday 28th February 2016 11:38 GMT
Re: I don't know how anyone can use touchpads with tapping enabled
Years ago, I couldn't either.
About a year ago though it became a necessity - long story involving a laptop on which (amongst /many/ other things) the USB ports wouldn't work .
Got used to it.
Can't imagine having to move my hand that far from the keyboard any more.
It also encouraged me to start using hotkeys instead of a mouse/pointer* and I now only use /that/ for when I /can't/ do what I need to without clicking - and that doesn't often arise any more either.
* not least because the mouse-buttons on my laptop are aggressively loud.
Thursday 25th February 2016 11:50 GMT
Re: no compelling reason to ditch functional hardware
Apart from the millions and millions of Android/iOS users who have to update their hardware to use the new OS version, you mean?
Or those who have to have the latest features so they can preen and pose in front of their peers?
That aside though, ink? Printer?
Do people actually print stuff these days?
The younger generation read on their device and then click away - if they need to read it again (at another location, for instance) they simply browse to the site/open up 'pocket'/load the saved file/select the bookmark/whatever.
If they need someone esle to see whatever it was they facebook/what'sapp/snapchat/whatever a link to it,
If whoever they need to see it is a reject from the 20th Century they might sms a link or email it (if either of they even have an email account).
Printing?
Really?
Don't take a Leaf out of this book: Nissan electric car app has ZERO authentication
IT's Holy Grail, but is DevOps a Poisoned Chalice for sysadmins?
Friday 19th February 2016 14:56 GMT
Architecting user-centric initiatives
used to be the purvue of programmers/developers, but, now that Marketing bods with MBAs have long since overused TLAs they've had to get a new Hungarian vocabulary with which to bullshit impress everyone and have gone all HR on our asses to boot.
DevOps is simply a buzzword for deploying mission-critical eyeballs to evolve interactive mindshare in ubiquitous relationships, thus disintermediating ubiquitous technologies that facilitate global deliverables, empowering rich technologies and productising bleeding-edge infrastructures.
It's no more than the maximisation of synergistic communities to syndicate best-of-breed partnerships that envisioneer innovative networks enabling the harnesssing of global partnerships to facilitate strategic initiatives.
Redefining strategic models and matrixing robust deliverables should have gone hand-in-hand with development all along but very few developers I have met have the least idea of how computers work, let alone understand the needs of real enterprises in the real world, so it's not /that/ surprising that this should have happened - the only surprise is how long it took HR to realise that automation was going to make them redundant and they'd better finds a new role quickly.
This comment was facilitated by Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Google and the Dack Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
Big, fat fail? Here's how to avoid that: Microservices and you
Friday 19th February 2016 13:43 GMT
It's a whole new paradigm, I tell you!
And I'm going to start remodelling my life around it!!
Instead of calling Interflora and getting them to send some flowers to my wife (who's in Mexico City, teaching a course) for her birthday, I'll call 118118 and get the number of an English speaking local telephone operator to get the number of an English speaking local business directory, so that I can contact a local (English speaking) courier service to collect them from the local florist I will speak to* and deliver them to the university campus .
I'm not sure whom I'll need to call in order to have a card with a birthday message added to the mix, but I'm sure it'll be easily sorted out by calling 118118 again and (eventually) getting the number of an English speaking birthday card manufacturer, getting it collected by courier, delivered to a card wrting service, collected by courier and delivered to the campus.
I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that both the flowers and the card arrive in the same place at the same time - or perhaps there's some service provider over there that will organise that for me too.
I don't know how Interflora do it now, but they're a monolithic service provider, so that has to be bad, right? It'd be much better to make use of the microservices supplied by all the different providers instead.
* After I've called 118118 again and got the number for the local telephone directory service that will provide me with their number.
Who would code a self-destruct feature into their own web browser? Oh, hello, Apple
Tuesday 9th February 2016 16:47 GMT
Re: come on now Mr Dabbs
>Safest way to browse, is to make yourself a browsing VM, which is both portable and cannot take down your main OS.
Whonix.
Or (WINE+) Portable Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Dragon/whatever.
My choice; SSH into a remote machine from my Whonix workstation and connect to the Whonix gateway on the remote machine - my ISP knows who I am but not what I'm doing; the remote ISP knows what I'm doing but not who I am.
Microsoft backports data slurp to Windows 7 and 8 via patches
Tuesday 9th February 2016 15:56 GMT
>I'll trust Canonical over Microsoft. At least the former do ship the source code and it's a very small step from there to Debian if they do something nasty.
Hmmmm
Granted, not everyone has the inclination, opportunity or wherewithal to go Slackware/Arch/Gentoo/whatever. And those who don't have it need something reliable that isn't going to end up as abandonware, leaving them at the mercy of whatever 0-day exploits are discovered after the cessation of security updates.
So, yeah, of the three (Microshaft and Crapple included), Cannonical looks like the best of a bad lot, sure. But that's a bit like leaving an abusive relationship for a slightly less abusive relationship. And that never works out well either.
Do I want my left testicle wired up to a car battery?
The right?
What about the perineum instead?
How about "none of the above"?
How about one of the other non-*buntu derivatives?
OpenSUSE is pretty good from the little experience I've had of it*.
I've heard good things about PCLOS - same about Manjaro.
Devuan might be a runner in future.
If you suspect Debian might be a better solution in the long run then why wait until it's already too late to make the switch?
* Had to do some comparative study of Ubuntu/Fedora/SUSE recently - Glad I don't have to use them myself!!!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
