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User: jedidiah

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  1. Re:The great thing about standards on Ask Slashdot: Is Postgres On Par With Oracle? · · Score: 2

    This isn't just about Oracle. Everyone decides to do things differently because they each evolve in a vaccum and then once standards do come along, those standards bodies don't have any balls.

    If you can't point to a relevant standard that Oracle is ignoring then you have no leg to stand on. That doesn't just go for Oracle but it applies to any other vendor.

    Oracle has some features from the mid 90s that competitors are just getting around to implementing now. Sometimes you just have to make something up because there isn't a standard there yet.

  2. Re:what keeps us from switching ? on Ask Slashdot: Is Postgres On Par With Oracle? · · Score: 0

    No. Performance is just the wrong thing to be fixating on. Data management systems are not about being fast. They are about being correct. They are also about being robust. What you are really saying is that you don't care about your data.

    You're willing to lose everything just to save a buck.

    That's the wrong attitude to have regardless of how you decide your data needs to be organized.

  3. Re:Longer Life Cycle on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1

    It's far too easy to end up with a craptacular experience when you start trying to cut corners with computing devices. It's not necessarily so much about being terribly powerful but avoiding total suckage.

    Penny wise and pound foolish.

  4. Re:Longer Life Cycle on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1

    Sure I get it. You think that your children deserve scraps.

    Not everyone thinks like that.

    Some kids are appreciative of decent kit and responsible enough to take care of it. If yours aren't, perhaps you should consider that a result of poor parenting.

    Intentionally buying crap you know to be inferior ultimately just subverts capitalism.

  5. Re:The urban poor subsidized the rich for a while on FCC Rural Phone Subsidies Reach As High As $3,000 Per Line · · Score: 2

    > 2. Most states also draw income from urban poor in the form of taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and by state-run lotteries

    Cry me a river.

    You just jumped the shark with that one.

  6. Re:It isn't tablets on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Sometimes, the only suitable response to a jackass is to be "anti-social".

  7. Re:Not necessarily because of usage. on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1

    I have saved a number of machines from the rubbish bin by adding new video cards to them. All of those cards were dirt cheap but still a massive improvement with whatever original came on those machines. The end users were happy as clams as the machines ran as if they were shiny and new again.

    Repeat that a few thousand times and watch the global sales numbers implode.

  8. Re:This is the slope before the cliff on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1

    > Yes, clearly entertainment on PC is dead. There's no such thing as Netflix or Steam, those are just myths.

    Both of those are already more effectively delivered to the average consumer through some sort of speciality appliance. Game consoles have been the primary focus of the likes of EA for a long time now. Netflix is something that you can do with a $60 appliance.

    Comparatively speaking, something like Netflix sucks on a PC. It's a poorly optimized resource hog demanding far better specs than the task really calls for.

    One problem with PCs is that coders are used to being lazy.

  9. Re:This is the slope before the cliff on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1

    > That's not the real issue. What do most people need computers to begin with?

    They don't need the "power". They need the form factor. Tablets are basically a PC locked down to nothing but a one button mouse. For a lot of tasks, that just isn't good enough.

    For a lot of trivial tasks, it's tolerable though.

    The PC wasn't a new way of interacting with programs. It was just an older style machine that was under the full control of the end user. That level of control was what made the PC, not the keyboard or mouse or monitor.

  10. Re:Longer Life Cycle on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 2

    Kids can most certainly appreciate a powerful machine if you bother to give one to them. They will happily lug it around too.

  11. Re:Dropbox speed vs. SATA speed on Dropbox Wants To Replace Your Hard Disk · · Score: 1

    You can get 100MB/s transfer speed off of a wired home connection. That's what you can push around from room to room in your own house. Now that's faster than some of the slower hard drives and way faster than anything you are going to get from the cloud.

    Replacing your local storage with remote storage only makes sense if have no clue whatsoever about technology and have never tried any of this stuff for yourself.

  12. Re:Farts in their general direction. on Dropbox Wants To Replace Your Hard Disk · · Score: 1

    I have a 5 year old hard drive sitting in my main machine. I use it as a scratch drive not because it is old and unreliable but because it is old and small. It's been made obsolete by newer, cheaper, and LARGER drives.

    Despite of all of the FUD and the occasional scandal from the likes of Seagate, spinning rust still is more likely to become obsolete than die.

  13. Re:Why is DRM a nightmare for me? on How DRM Won · · Score: 1

    > DRM is a non-issue for the vast majority of people who are streaming their stuff.

    Says you. On the other hand, I have actually seen DRM validation glitches with iTunes content. Some network related nonsense was occurring with the AppleTV. Didn't know what the cause was, but the effect was that all iTunes content was unavailable. It was like someone took a backhoe to the coax running to the house.

    Of course my DRM free files were fine.

    DRM is just something else that can fail in mysterious ways and frustrate consumers. They might not know what it is when they see it but that doesn't mean they won't suffer.

  14. Re:I couldn't put it better myself on How DRM Won · · Score: 1

    Are you some kind of retard?

    Why would "recovery" of your music collection ever be a problem? Just pull it back off of one of your mobile devices.

    External storage is also a handy thing in this regard. Music remains small while external storage just gets larger and larger. Copies are easy to make and possibly even pretty cheap.

    There are so many ways of having an entire music collection in your pocket that your Forrest Gump attitude is just sad.

  15. Re:Seems like an over generalization... on How DRM Won · · Score: 1

    > Many are upset because generally those services only work on OSX and Windows.

    Who uses a PC for those services anyways?

    The PC versions of those services are put together in such a way that you need unnecessarily overpriced hardware to deal with them versus a $200 HTPC or a $60 streamer.

  16. Re:EMusic and Bitrot on How DRM Won · · Score: 1

    >> MP3's being compressed, are pretty vulnerable to bitrot.
    >
    > wtf?

    That was my reaction as well.

    My notification tone on my Android phone is a 20 year old AU file I happened to have lying around my media horde.

  17. Re:EMusic and Bitrot on How DRM Won · · Score: 4, Informative

    It may be easier but it certainly isn't cheaper. HELL, the thing you are interested might not even be available. That is one key problem with all streaming services. They ALL have limited availability when compared to what's available on physical media.

    Once something is available for sale as a physical product, it's in the market permanently. So even if something is discontinued, you will still have access to it. It may be hard to find. It may even be expensive. But it will still be available.

    Also, a rental may not even be available.

    They also aren't as cheap as you're claiming.

    I don't think you even use it at all despite the fact that you are trying to lobby for it.

  18. Re:EMusic and Bitrot on How DRM Won · · Score: 2

    > MP3's being compressed, are pretty vulnerable to bitrot

    They are also pretty trivial to back up to every device you own. Music is tiny compared to modern mobile devices. You can shove your entire collection into the underutilized space on most systems.

  19. Re:XBMC on How DRM Won · · Score: 3, Insightful

    XBMC gives you all of the shiny shiny of something like iTunes but with the possibility that you can own and control your own content. You only have to pay for something once and it's yours forever and you never have to worry about some disguised cable TV company going out of business.

    Of course it has to work against the framework that large corporations have lobbied for. Although that's not necessarily a show stopper.

  20. Re:I'm not sure on Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite · · Score: 2

    I think you will find that most people realize that they have rights and object to the idea that individual liberties should be subservient to the rights of corporations.

    Of course most non-enthusiasts won't realize what interesting things are being kept from them due to corporate lobbying.

  21. Re:Because the broken one costs more on Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite · · Score: 1

    Companies that have tried to market playback devices that allowed for such tie ins with user created content have been litigated off the market. If not for abusive content companies, these subtitle files likely would be perfectly usable with DVD players from the likes of Sony.

    Of course with a general purpose machine (HTPC), you can pretty much do anything.

  22. Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri on Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > You aren't allowed to muck with someone else's work without their permission. That's the whole point of copyright,

    No it isn't.

    The whole point of copyright is that we do have something to muck with. Copyright exists to foster what you would describe as piracy. It is not a virtual land grab. That's just corporate propaganda.

    No. The whole point of copyright is piracy.

    The corporations have just distorted things.

  23. Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri on Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite · · Score: 2

    No. We don't all know.

    You are just being a huge asshole and just declaring everyone to be thieves with nothing to back that up except your own stupidity and total lack of morals.

    You are simply projecting. YOU are the dishonest scum and you are projecting that on the rest of us.

  24. Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri on Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite · · Score: 2

    > I fail to see the relevance of your post.

    Of course not. You're too much of a corporate toadie.

    His post was an obvious prelude to a fair use defense. Fansubbing does not devalue the work. It is not piracy in any meaningful sense of the word. It's merely end users managing to find some way of making a particular creative work more useful.

    This "derivative" also can't be used without the original.

    Copyright related monopoly powers should be minimized rather than maximized as a matter of basic public policy and because that's what the copyright clause in the US Constitution indicates.

  25. Re:Looks Cool, Won't See It on Orson Scott Card Pleads 'Tolerance' For Ender's Game Movie · · Score: 1

    I was planning on waiting for it on Netflix anyways...

    I had actually forgotten about this whole "Card is a bigot" drama. If anything, I think it is him stirring the pot in a desperate attempt to be visible. You know what they say... any publicity is good publicity.

    He's just trying to go for the Ozzy Osbourne effect.