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User: jedidiah

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  1. Re:Any actual examples? on Tumblr Co-Founder: Apple's Software Is In a Nosedive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > I'm sorry that this is the first time that you have ever upgraded an operating system. it must be tough wading into an area that is brand new to you.

    What you have there is a great argument for NOT UPGRADING SO MUCH. It's true. Software "engineering" is anything but. If you fix a bug, you will likely create another (if not two). So the obvious thing is to avoid gratuitous upgrade cycles.

    In corporate IT management, this is pretty standard and pervasive.

    It's an idea that's even managed to catch on with consumer PC users.

    You've just made the guy's argument for him. Congrats.

    So slow the beast down and actually treat users of old kit like they are valued customers of a luxury brand. Model yourself after Rolls Royce rather than Dell.

  2. Re: Nosedive on Tumblr Co-Founder: Apple's Software Is In a Nosedive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once you're committed to the ecosystem, it's probably hard to change. You're used to Apple's little quirks and would probably find Windows annoying. You may have a lot of expense tied up in software or even hardware that only works with other Apple kit.

    Thunderbolt storage array? Good luck with that. Commercial MacOS apps? Good luck with those.

  3. Re: Nosedive on Tumblr Co-Founder: Apple's Software Is In a Nosedive · · Score: 2

    It's not done until Lotus won't run.

    This isn't just some random app. This is the name that everyone wants to drop any time they want to beat up on Linux. If these two companies together can't get that right then they should just liquidate Apple like Dell said they should.

    Why should old apps break in the new OS?

    If it were anything but Apple you would be raking that OS vendor over the coals.

  4. Contemplating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin may be fun but it puts you in no position to comment about science either as a philosophy in general or what actual kind of consensus may exist among actual practitioners.

    It seems like the Journal is perfectly willing to be a sounding board for ICR nutters while ignoring rebuttals. That undermines the Journal for no good reason really.

    They should leave the nutters to their own publications and not contaminate their business related focus.

  5. "Conservative types" tend not to care terribly about issues like food quality or about the political consequences of allowing the corn equivalent of Microsoft. In either case, they will be all for allowing "job creators" to completely run amok.

  6. Re:Its a cost decision on Professor: Young People Are "Lost Generation" Who Can No Longer Fix Gadgets · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some brands are simply more maintainable than others.

    Spare parts may be readily available. This isn't true universally. Most brands are cheap crap that are intended to be disposable. Ensuring that the product has a long useful life isn't even a consideration.

    If longevity is something you care about then that's an informed choice you have to make at the time of purchase.

  7. Re:Dupe on Professor: Young People Are "Lost Generation" Who Can No Longer Fix Gadgets · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some things can be fixed but would you want to? My previous oven got replaced because it's failure mode was to go into it's cleaning cycle. I could have replaced the faulty control board but I didn't really want to. I didn't want another one of THOSE control boards nor did I want a same brand replacement.

    I didn't want to wait for this "fixed" item to eventually burn my house down.

    OTOH, many other things are so cheap that they are not worth the parts and labor it would take to fix them.

  8. Re:Always struggling with a Dodgy NVS mobile... on AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Catching Up To and Beating Windows · · Score: 1

    ...or perhaps you have cooling issues that you need to deal with. Nvidia cards run hot. In a small enclosure, this can be a problem.

    I had an nv based Mac Mini cook itself to death and had a similar Revo nearly do the same.

    Fans are not the enemy!

  9. Re:blu rays are cheaper than the movie on Box Office 2014: Moviegoing Hits Two-Decade Low · · Score: 1

    Any spinny disk media is going to subject you to nonsense unless you rip it or play it with some kind of unauthorized player. BD is not any more or less annoying in this regard.

    if your home setup is any good then you can notice the difference between a DVD and BD. It can be quite stark.

    That's kind of the whole point of having your own home theater.

  10. Re:blu rays are cheaper than the movie on Box Office 2014: Moviegoing Hits Two-Decade Low · · Score: 1

    ...that's nice and all but those old Vaudville houses don't exist anymore. You can be nostalgiac all you want but today you have to deal with the houses that exist. Most of them are crap. Even the bigger ones aren't that impressive compared to a good home theater setup. You will be lucky if your film is even showing on one of the "good" ones.

          That's not even getting into all of the other tangential nonsense like rude patrons and advertisements.

  11. No need to lower the bar any further really. on US Army Could Waive Combat Training For Hackers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Army is already a 2nd tier service with lower standards. Short of creating an entirely new branch of the service, they aren't going to get away from the fact that they are the Army and get whatever cultural baggage comes along with that.

    Watering down bootcamp is really not going to address the real problem.

    They spun off the Air Corps and there wasn't nearly as much of a culture gap going on there.

  12. Re:I hate it on The Open Office Is Destroying the Workplace · · Score: 1

    Are you kidding? The whole "brogrammer" narrative that the media wants to shove down our throats is PERFECT for this kind of mindset. A manager with the "brogrammer" mindset won't have any problems with that kind of bluntness. He probably prefers it.

    Cut the crap. Get shit done.

  13. Re:Well duh on The Open Office Is Destroying the Workplace · · Score: 1

    With 2 or 3 groups of people trying to outshout each other so they can each hear themselves, a set of headphones just isn't going to cut it. You will have to damage your hearing in order drown them all out.

    Some people can't do anything but shout and this quickly escalates. It's like a Chinese restaurant full of chinese patrons versus some American chain.

    Past a certain point you just have to take a Slashdot break.

  14. Re:Well duh on The Open Office Is Destroying the Workplace · · Score: 1

    The problem with such drone factory setups is that you are thrown together with all sorts of people who may or may not have any direct relation to your own duties or department. It's not that you have all of your team together in one place. You have this big sausage grinder with no thought put into it.

    You have extra noise and distractions people can all see each other's business (which may or may not be appropriate).

    Open plan in a Fortune 100 is NOTHING like the same thing with a Valley startup. One is dehumanizing and the other fosters teamwork.

  15. Re:Well duh on The Open Office Is Destroying the Workplace · · Score: 1

    You are rambling on about the apparent trustworthiness of the employees. You're not saying anything about how much management trusts labor. You are completely confusing the issue.

    Higher rates of Aspbergers among ethic Germans is not the issue here.

  16. Re:Not replacing PCs after all on Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes · · Score: 1

    I know a 93 year old that has no problems with a mouse.

    It's not the technology. It's the user.

    Kids are comfortable with anything and barely acknowledge that there are different computing platforms. While the middle aged and older are inflexible and generally unwilling to deviate from what they are used to, the real problem users are helpless nitwits that won't be saved by fancy new tech meant to save "average people".

    Doesn't matter if it's a Mac or a tablet.

  17. Re:Tablet? on Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes · · Score: 2

    Such people actually do exist in IT. They just aren't going to be applying for a job at a law firm.

    The people at that law firm are entirely too full of themselves (which is common enough).

  18. Drives that old are pretty irrelevant in a discussion about multi-terrabyte drives. While I do have a single one of those notorious 1.5TB Seagates, all of it's siblings died a long time ago.

    Seagate has done quite a bit lately to earn it's bad reputation.

  19. Re:Buy two... on 6 Terabyte Hard Drive Round-Up: WD Red, WD Green and Seagate Enterprise 6TB · · Score: 1

    Recreating my machine from install media is really not that gruesome of a prospect. Then again, I don't run the kind of OS that makes a naieve sort of backup of one's user files a problematic nightmare requiring special arcane tools to deal with.

    For the small stuff, I would rather use extra SATA ports (if I have any) for load balancing IO.

    It's the mountains of multimedia data accumulated over 20+ years that worries me. Now rebuilding that from the original media would take awhile.

    Backing up 6TB is no problem. Backing up several times that isn't either. You just have to be willing to spend money on extra hardware. Pretty trivial for companies, not so much for cheapskate end users.

  20. Re:Who cares about rotational speed these days? on 6 Terabyte Hard Drive Round-Up: WD Red, WD Green and Seagate Enterprise 6TB · · Score: 1

    > RAID5 is great and all, but once a hard drive fails and you go non-redundant, waiting for the array to rebuild and hoping no other drive goes bad in the meantime is quite stressful.

    Not if you have more than one copy.

    RAID is no replacement for backups.

  21. Re:online DVD rental service on Aereo Gets OK From Bankruptcy Court To Auction Technology Assets · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The law isn't the problem. Judges are corrupt and willing to consider inappropriate things like "will this cause the profits of a corporation to suffer" rather than just applying the law. It was a well crafted bit of technical trickery meant to follow the letter of the law.

    The court chose to ignore that. Lower courts then chose to ignore the mental gymnastics the higher court came up with.

    They changed the rules and refused to allow Aereo to change to accommodate them.

  22. Re: wow on Aereo Gets OK From Bankruptcy Court To Auction Technology Assets · · Score: 1

    ANY technology is ultimately "loophole" technology. Aereo is not unique in this. People will sell anything to anyone as long as it makes them a buck and doesn't get them arrested. Even an arrest might not slow some people down.

    That's capitalism.

    Agile rats try to outmanuver lumbering dinosaurs.

  23. Re:Buy two... on 6 Terabyte Hard Drive Round-Up: WD Red, WD Green and Seagate Enterprise 6TB · · Score: 2

    > You realistically can't backup 6TB worth of data

    Sure you can. Just get another drive. Redundancy and backup strategies haven't changed just because drives are bigger. If anything, you have a bit of an advantage now as overall drive prices are lower (even on the high end).

    Thanks to Seagate, I have tested this very procedure several times over the last year.

  24. Re:Idiots on Romanian Cybersecurity Law Will Allow Warrantless Access To Data · · Score: 2

    Not even all American SENATORS believe in that "playbook". Never mind the actual population.

  25. Re:What Paul Graham doesn't get... on Paul Graham: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In · · Score: 1

    The only problem with your slander is that many of us that abhor the notion of creating an inferior underclass have no problem with the idea of importing equals and we often quite vocally say so.

    Perpetrating the current immigation regime for importing tech talent is mainly advocated by those that seek to take advantage of the weak. They want an exploitable labor pool that they have leverage over. Corporations want people they can easily abuse.