I'm still on XP until I finally get around to putting some version of Linux on the machine. I didn't want Win10 for free, I'm sure as hell not paying for it, either. If I wanted to be spied on and watched like a criminal in prison or an animal in a zoo exhibit, I'd go live in a tent near any major intersection in America in full view of the cameras and microphones.
What the fuck are you even talking about? I'm talking about a corporation that is abusing people's rights when it comes to managing their own computer, and abusing their rights to privacy and data security, and you're complaining about technical problems? Seriously? You just DO NOT GET IT.
If your computer was a self-driving car, what Microsoft is doing is more or less the equivalent of them arbitrarily saying "We want your destination to be {arbitrary location}, not where you said you wanted to go, because we run your car and we'll do as we please." This is why Microsoft must be brought to heel: you own your computer, regardless of what OS has been on it, and it is not, nor has it ever been, Microsoft's prerogative to decide whether you 'upgrade' or not, install patches or not, or anything else.
Microsoft needs to be forced to be broken up again, like they did once before, the last time they got too big for their britches and started bullying everyone. Microsoft fanbois and shills can go fuck themselves, too, we know who you are, you're not fooling anyone, and we don't want to hear any more of your bullshit so STFU.
At least you're trying to quit. I can respect that. someone else who commented, however, is clearly an unrepentant addict, and seriously butthurt over being called out for it, and projecting like there's no tomorrow; 'imposing my will on others', indeed! All I'm doing is voicing my rather strong opinions on a semi-anonymous 'tech news' site; whoever that is, is 'imposing' their shitty health choices on everyone around them with their second-hand smoke/vapors. Sure, I'll respect someone's 'personal freedoms' -- so long as I don't have to be subjected to the same poisons you're expressing your 'freedom' to put into your body. Then I cry foul, and rightly so.
It's a drug delivery device, that was clear from the first time I ever heard of such a thing, and as such, anyone is surprised that it 'emits toxic vapors'?
They need to be outlawed, plain and simple. They're no 'healthier' than regular smoking, just more complicated, and now we see that people in your vicinity aren't safe from them either, which makes them no better than cigarettes or any other flaming, nuisance. Just outlaw them, and keep trying to educate apparently self-destructive people that smoking is one of the worst things you can do to your body, and maybe, eventually, it'll go away completely. Although I'm cynical enough to believe that smoking will go away about the same time people stop believing in irrational things like 'god' and 'religion'.
Smokers with moderation points, and others who will now defend the totally irrational and highly self-destructive act of 'smoking' can kiss my ass. You don't have a leg to stand on. Modding this post down just proves you're irrational and can't possibly defend your disgusting, self-destructive habit. Trying to argue to me that it's your 'freedom of choice' likewise confirms that you're irrational and self-destructive, and perhaps someone should actively stop you from your self-destructive habit; you're mentally ill.
Oh look, the double-digit IQ Trump supporters have moderation points! And they apparently figured out how to use them! Tough shit, idiots, your boy Trump is a fucking CRIMINAL, and his traitorous comment has drawn fire from both the Dems AND the GOP, as well as everyone else, it's ALL OVER the media now. Trump is DONE. HE NEEDS TO BE REMOVED. NOW.
You know what? I owe you an apology. I thought you were just mocking me and didn't read past the first line. Good on you that you're not falling for the 'two party system' meme.
Oh look, yet another fool who forgets: WE HAVE MORE THAN TWO POLITICAL PARTIES IN THIS COUNTRY.
Read my lips: I am not voting for EITHER TRUMP OR CLINTON, I AM VOTING FOR A 3RD-PARTY CANDIDATE. I recommend YOU do the same, and tell your friends to, also.
2016: Still falling for the "we're a TWO party system" meme
No, you jackass, I am not voting for either one of them because so far as I am concerned NEITHER ONE is qualified for one reason or another! I'll vote for a 3rd-party candidate. That way my hands are clean. I'll not vote for the 'least bad of the two' again. I'd rather throw my vote away on someone who has no chance so at least I can say "I didn't vote for {whoever}, don't blame me!" with a clear conscience and a straight face. I suggest you all do the same!
You are most certainly NOT A TROLL. You are 100% correct, I 100% agree with you, and the GOP needs to REMOVE Donald Trump, IMMEDIATELY, as Candidate for POTUS. He has just demonstrated that not only is he not suited to be President, he cannot be TRUSTED either. HE HAS TO GO.
The GOP needs to remove Trump as candidate for POTUS; he just demonstrated that he's in no way, shape, or form suitable to be POTUS, he in fact is a TRAITOR to this country, inviting foreign powers to cyber-attack us -- or at the very, very least, inviting foreign CRIMINALS to cyber-attack a major U.S. political party. This is not the mindset or behavior of someone who is qualified or suited to be President of the United States, or of any other country! Even the most rabid, least intelligent Trump supporters have to come to a Full Stop on this one, he is inviting Russians to come screw with our political system!
What's next, Trump? You going to say you'll mandate learning to speak, read, and write Mandarin in public schools?
I mean, what do the Chinese care about me, other than as a potential customer?
As another node in their government-funded-and-operated botnet, so when they're ready to start World War III, they can use U.S.-based botnet nodes to attack internet-connected U.S. infrastructure, like the power grid, other utilities, U.S. military assets, etc. as well as using them as proxies to hack into U.S. military and government systems to steal information. But you personally? Nothing. The Chinese government, demonstrably, documentably doesn't really care that much about individual human lives. You're just another resource to be potentially exploited.
Unless, of course, you want to factor in what the initial cost of the antenna on my roof, the coax and other supplies to install it cost me. No labor costs, I installed it myself.
2016: Actually PAYING to watch television
It's like you enjoy throwing your money away or something.
And i've no idea where you got the idea that the spirit of the law is important; that's what laws are for.
Are you trolling? You must be, or you're hopelessly pedantic and literal. If all there was, was just the strict interpretation of the law, then the entire country would be one huge prison. Judges and juries exist in part to interpret the law and make appropriate judgements, not just mechanically apply potentially flawed, certainly imprecise text authored by potentially flawed, certainly imprecise biological brains.
How about a common sense regulation saying that anyone operating a drone over a certain weight has to be available on a particilar CB radio channel?
If some people with their drone-toys were responsible adults in the first place then none of this would be happening now, but no, you have to have some people act like entitled, irresponsible, spoiled brat children who have to have their way, and fly their toys into places and situations where they clearly don't belong, but they DGAF so now we HAVE to have the government step in and regulate something that, like model aircraft, wouldn't have had to be if only they would have acted like responsible adults in the first place. You don't like the current situation? Too bad, it's way too late to do anything about it now. Be glad they allow you to have your drone-toys at all instead of outlawing then outright.
Just have everyone who decides to share their password with him sign an agreement or waiver of some kind that spells out what it's being shared for, what he can and can't do with it (like change it and not tell them what it's changed to), the duration of his access to their Twitter account, and that they understand that at the end of the term of the agreement, it's their responsibility to change the password to something else. Any judge or jury should understand the difference (and importance) of the 'spirit of the law', and the 'letter of the law', and how the former is what applies here.
Here's a better idea: Travelling outside the country? Get a pre-paid 'burner' phone, and leave your regular phone at home. They take it from you for a while then return it? Tell 'em "I don't want it back, you can keep it now" and walk away. They don't touch it? Keep it for the next trip. Either way your data and privacy are safe.
..and most importantly to reprogram this outdated software..
You stupid son of a bitch, we are not anywhere near the point, knowledge-wise, and especially wisdom-wise, to 'edit' our own genomic 'software'. Some of you make jokes about a zombie apocalypse? This is the arrogant mindset that will bring about the equivalent of that! GMO foods are bad enough: I don't even say anything about them anymore because the horse has already left the barn: it's out in the wild now, literally in the wind, and nothing can ever change that. Screwing with our own DNA on the level he seems to imply? No. Just, No.
Never happen, it would be a huge step backwards, into the early 90's. Besides which that's what equalizers are for. There are too many people who would want to listen to their music through a stereo system of some sort, and they'd be very annoyed at not being able to connect their source directly to it. Besides which, nothing they can do to obfuscate the signal source is really effective: it all has to, in the end, be an analog signal of some sort. With a trivial amount of electronics (off the top of my head, just an audio transformer would probably be enough) your retro PWM sound 'system' would still be easily connected to a nice convenient jack to provide baseband audio. Or, as you say: soundproofed enclosure containing the speaker, and a decen microphone. Either way you have baseband audio again.
Correct. They want to close the 'analog hole', so-to-speak. Of course the problem with that is that, in this case, all you have to do is get a dongle that has an ANALOG headphone jack on it, and you're back to baseband audio. Of course what they'd like to do next is ban all analog headphones and dongles to connect them and force people to buy 100% digital headphones -- but that'll only work with people who are technically unskilled. The signal has to become analog at some point so you can hear it. Hacking headphones is trivial for some of us, and there will always be some company somewhere selling dongles using the DAC that the headphones use anyway, to provide a baseband signal. All the above also goes for video; only the technically uninclined are limited by it.
..no, it 'wears out fast' FOR YOU. There are many, many people out there who never have a problem with it. You, I'll have to assume, and a relatively small percentage of people, are just not as careful with things as the rest are, and as a result, you break phone jacks. I'd also suspect you're one of those people for whom you have to replace headphones themselves every so often because you inadvertently rip the cables out of them. You just have to be more careful with things and mindful of how you're moving in relation to where the 'phones are plugged in. Or, perhaps, you'd be better off with Bluetooth stereo headphones. I understand the ones that support the latest Bluetooth specifications are pretty good-sounding.
Sure, because there's still compression. Compression is the only reason we have DTV in the first place. Even Standard Definition wouldn't work if it was uncompressed, the bitrate would be too high for the available OTA channel bandwidth. Same goes for DVD and even Blu-Ray video; without compression algorithms, it wouldn't work. So sure, in an OTA DTV broadcast, if there are too many quantization blocks changing from one frame to the next, it drives the compression ratio of the overall frame up to keep the total bitrate for the frame within the bandwidth availavble for the channel, the result being very noticeable compression artifacts and 'blockiness' (i.e. if it's bad enough you can, for a moment, actually see the quantization blocks, as their contents are compressed enough that the edges don't match up enough to look smooth anymore). Theoretically if you transmitted a 1080i picture of the 'snow' that you used to see on analog TV when it was tuned to a channel with no signal, you'd see all sorts of compression artifacts, because the 'data' that represents the picture of the 'snow' is literally as random as it can get -- it's the video equivalent of white noise. Conversely, when transmitting a DTV picture of a scene where literally nothing is moving at all, it's completely a static scene, the bitrate of the signal drops way off to it's lowest point, because nothing in any of the quantization blocks ever changes -- and the way the compression works, only the blocks that have pixels that changed from one frame to the next are the ones that get transmitted. So yeah, even OTA broadcasts are going to have some artifacts when there is motion, and the more motion the worse it is. But it's still better than what cable companies do (recompress it at a higher ratio, to get the average bitrate down) to jam more channels into the total available bandwidth of the cable system. I suspect that satellite does the same thing (never fell for the 'satellite TV' meme though, so no direct experience).
Or, at least, that's how I understand how things work. You may have already known all this, and I may have got some of the details wrong.;-)
I wouldn't even waste my time with their TV service if it was free. I found out the hard way the awful truth: recompression. They recompress the living fuck out of every channel to get it all into the available bandwidth. You may be technically getting 1080i, but as soon as there is any sort of motion, you see the compression artifacts like crazy. I'll stick with the antenna on my roof and downloading everything else.
It's a lack of understanding of how gravity actually works.
You idiot, if we understood how gravity works, we'd probably have gravity generators. Aircraft wouldn't need wings anymore, and spacecraft wouldn't need reaction motors either. Hoverboards would be real.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still on XP until I finally get around to putting some version of Linux on the machine. I didn't want Win10 for free, I'm sure as hell not paying for it, either. If I wanted to be spied on and watched like a criminal in prison or an animal in a zoo exhibit, I'd go live in a tent near any major intersection in America in full view of the cameras and microphones.
What the fuck are you even talking about? I'm talking about a corporation that is abusing people's rights when it comes to managing their own computer, and abusing their rights to privacy and data security, and you're complaining about technical problems? Seriously? You just DO NOT GET IT.
If your computer was a self-driving car, what Microsoft is doing is more or less the equivalent of them arbitrarily saying "We want your destination to be {arbitrary location}, not where you said you wanted to go, because we run your car and we'll do as we please."
This is why Microsoft must be brought to heel: you own your computer, regardless of what OS has been on it, and it is not, nor has it ever been, Microsoft's prerogative to decide whether you 'upgrade' or not, install patches or not, or anything else.
Microsoft needs to be forced to be broken up again, like they did once before, the last time they got too big for their britches and started bullying everyone. Microsoft fanbois and shills can go fuck themselves, too, we know who you are, you're not fooling anyone, and we don't want to hear any more of your bullshit so STFU.
At least you're trying to quit. I can respect that. someone else who commented, however, is clearly an unrepentant addict, and seriously butthurt over being called out for it, and projecting like there's no tomorrow; 'imposing my will on others', indeed! All I'm doing is voicing my rather strong opinions on a semi-anonymous 'tech news' site; whoever that is, is 'imposing' their shitty health choices on everyone around them with their second-hand smoke/vapors. Sure, I'll respect someone's 'personal freedoms' -- so long as I don't have to be subjected to the same poisons you're expressing your 'freedom' to put into your body. Then I cry foul, and rightly so.
It's a drug delivery device, that was clear from the first time I ever heard of such a thing, and as such, anyone is surprised that it 'emits toxic vapors'?
They need to be outlawed, plain and simple. They're no 'healthier' than regular smoking, just more complicated, and now we see that people in your vicinity aren't safe from them either, which makes them no better than cigarettes or any other flaming, nuisance. Just outlaw them, and keep trying to educate apparently self-destructive people that smoking is one of the worst things you can do to your body, and maybe, eventually, it'll go away completely. Although I'm cynical enough to believe that smoking will go away about the same time people stop believing in irrational things like 'god' and 'religion'.
Smokers with moderation points, and others who will now defend the totally irrational and highly self-destructive act of 'smoking' can kiss my ass. You don't have a leg to stand on. Modding this post down just proves you're irrational and can't possibly defend your disgusting, self-destructive habit. Trying to argue to me that it's your 'freedom of choice' likewise confirms that you're irrational and self-destructive, and perhaps someone should actively stop you from your self-destructive habit; you're mentally ill.
Oh look, the double-digit IQ Trump supporters have moderation points! And they apparently figured out how to use them! Tough shit, idiots, your boy Trump is a fucking CRIMINAL, and his traitorous comment has drawn fire from both the Dems AND the GOP, as well as everyone else, it's ALL OVER the media now. Trump is DONE. HE NEEDS TO BE REMOVED. NOW.
You know what? I owe you an apology. I thought you were just mocking me and didn't read past the first line. Good on you that you're not falling for the 'two party system' meme.
Oh look, yet another fool who forgets: WE HAVE MORE THAN TWO POLITICAL PARTIES IN THIS COUNTRY.
Read my lips: I am not voting for EITHER TRUMP OR CLINTON, I AM VOTING FOR A 3RD-PARTY CANDIDATE. I recommend YOU do the same, and tell your friends to, also.
2016: Still falling for the "we're a TWO party system" meme
No, you jackass, I am not voting for either one of them because so far as I am concerned NEITHER ONE is qualified for one reason or another! I'll vote for a 3rd-party candidate. That way my hands are clean. I'll not vote for the 'least bad of the two' again. I'd rather throw my vote away on someone who has no chance so at least I can say "I didn't vote for {whoever}, don't blame me!" with a clear conscience and a straight face. I suggest you all do the same!
You are most certainly NOT A TROLL. You are 100% correct, I 100% agree with you, and the GOP needs to REMOVE Donald Trump, IMMEDIATELY, as Candidate for POTUS. He has just demonstrated that not only is he not suited to be President, he cannot be TRUSTED either. HE HAS TO GO.
The GOP needs to remove Trump as candidate for POTUS; he just demonstrated that he's in no way, shape, or form suitable to be POTUS, he in fact is a TRAITOR to this country, inviting foreign powers to cyber-attack us -- or at the very, very least, inviting foreign CRIMINALS to cyber-attack a major U.S. political party. This is not the mindset or behavior of someone who is qualified or suited to be President of the United States, or of any other country! Even the most rabid, least intelligent Trump supporters have to come to a Full Stop on this one, he is inviting Russians to come screw with our political system!
What's next, Trump? You going to say you'll mandate learning to speak, read, and write Mandarin in public schools?
I mean, what do the Chinese care about me, other than as a potential customer?
As another node in their government-funded-and-operated botnet, so when they're ready to start World War III, they can use U.S.-based botnet nodes to attack internet-connected U.S. infrastructure, like the power grid, other utilities, U.S. military assets, etc. as well as using them as proxies to hack into U.S. military and government systems to steal information. But you personally? Nothing. The Chinese government, demonstrably, documentably doesn't really care that much about individual human lives. You're just another resource to be potentially exploited.
2016:
Actually PAYING to watch television
It's like you enjoy throwing your money away or something.
Is the malware and spyware that will come pre-installed in these fully compatible with the malware and spyware that's baked into Windows 10?
And i've no idea where you got the idea that the spirit of the law is important; that's what laws are for.
Are you trolling? You must be, or you're hopelessly pedantic and literal. If all there was, was just the strict interpretation of the law, then the entire country would be one huge prison. Judges and juries exist in part to interpret the law and make appropriate judgements, not just mechanically apply potentially flawed, certainly imprecise text authored by potentially flawed, certainly imprecise biological brains.
How about a common sense regulation saying that anyone operating a drone over a certain weight has to be available on a particilar CB radio channel?
If some people with their drone-toys were responsible adults in the first place then none of this would be happening now, but no, you have to have some people act like entitled, irresponsible, spoiled brat children who have to have their way, and fly their toys into places and situations where they clearly don't belong, but they DGAF so now we HAVE to have the government step in and regulate something that, like model aircraft, wouldn't have had to be if only they would have acted like responsible adults in the first place. You don't like the current situation? Too bad, it's way too late to do anything about it now. Be glad they allow you to have your drone-toys at all instead of outlawing then outright.
Just have everyone who decides to share their password with him sign an agreement or waiver of some kind that spells out what it's being shared for, what he can and can't do with it (like change it and not tell them what it's changed to), the duration of his access to their Twitter account, and that they understand that at the end of the term of the agreement, it's their responsibility to change the password to something else. Any judge or jury should understand the difference (and importance) of the 'spirit of the law', and the 'letter of the law', and how the former is what applies here.
Here's a better idea: Travelling outside the country? Get a pre-paid 'burner' phone, and leave your regular phone at home. They take it from you for a while then return it? Tell 'em "I don't want it back, you can keep it now" and walk away. They don't touch it? Keep it for the next trip. Either way your data and privacy are safe.
..and most importantly to reprogram this outdated software..
You stupid son of a bitch, we are not anywhere near the point, knowledge-wise, and especially wisdom-wise, to 'edit' our own genomic 'software'. Some of you make jokes about a zombie apocalypse? This is the arrogant mindset that will bring about the equivalent of that! GMO foods are bad enough: I don't even say anything about them anymore because the horse has already left the barn: it's out in the wild now, literally in the wind, and nothing can ever change that. Screwing with our own DNA on the level he seems to imply? No. Just, No.
Never happen, it would be a huge step backwards, into the early 90's. Besides which that's what equalizers are for. There are too many people who would want to listen to their music through a stereo system of some sort, and they'd be very annoyed at not being able to connect their source directly to it. Besides which, nothing they can do to obfuscate the signal source is really effective: it all has to, in the end, be an analog signal of some sort. With a trivial amount of electronics (off the top of my head, just an audio transformer would probably be enough) your retro PWM sound 'system' would still be easily connected to a nice convenient jack to provide baseband audio. Or, as you say: soundproofed enclosure containing the speaker, and a decen microphone. Either way you have baseband audio again.
Correct. They want to close the 'analog hole', so-to-speak. Of course the problem with that is that, in this case, all you have to do is get a dongle that has an ANALOG headphone jack on it, and you're back to baseband audio. Of course what they'd like to do next is ban all analog headphones and dongles to connect them and force people to buy 100% digital headphones -- but that'll only work with people who are technically unskilled. The signal has to become analog at some point so you can hear it. Hacking headphones is trivial for some of us, and there will always be some company somewhere selling dongles using the DAC that the headphones use anyway, to provide a baseband signal. All the above also goes for video; only the technically uninclined are limited by it.
..no, it 'wears out fast' FOR YOU. There are many, many people out there who never have a problem with it. You, I'll have to assume, and a relatively small percentage of people, are just not as careful with things as the rest are, and as a result, you break phone jacks. I'd also suspect you're one of those people for whom you have to replace headphones themselves every so often because you inadvertently rip the cables out of them. You just have to be more careful with things and mindful of how you're moving in relation to where the 'phones are plugged in. Or, perhaps, you'd be better off with Bluetooth stereo headphones. I understand the ones that support the latest Bluetooth specifications are pretty good-sounding.
Sure, because there's still compression. Compression is the only reason we have DTV in the first place. Even Standard Definition wouldn't work if it was uncompressed, the bitrate would be too high for the available OTA channel bandwidth. Same goes for DVD and even Blu-Ray video; without compression algorithms, it wouldn't work. So sure, in an OTA DTV broadcast, if there are too many quantization blocks changing from one frame to the next, it drives the compression ratio of the overall frame up to keep the total bitrate for the frame within the bandwidth availavble for the channel, the result being very noticeable compression artifacts and 'blockiness' (i.e. if it's bad enough you can, for a moment, actually see the quantization blocks, as their contents are compressed enough that the edges don't match up enough to look smooth anymore). Theoretically if you transmitted a 1080i picture of the 'snow' that you used to see on analog TV when it was tuned to a channel with no signal, you'd see all sorts of compression artifacts, because the 'data' that represents the picture of the 'snow' is literally as random as it can get -- it's the video equivalent of white noise. Conversely, when transmitting a DTV picture of a scene where literally nothing is moving at all, it's completely a static scene, the bitrate of the signal drops way off to it's lowest point, because nothing in any of the quantization blocks ever changes -- and the way the compression works, only the blocks that have pixels that changed from one frame to the next are the ones that get transmitted. So yeah, even OTA broadcasts are going to have some artifacts when there is motion, and the more motion the worse it is. But it's still better than what cable companies do (recompress it at a higher ratio, to get the average bitrate down) to jam more channels into the total available bandwidth of the cable system. I suspect that satellite does the same thing (never fell for the 'satellite TV' meme though, so no direct experience).
;-)
Or, at least, that's how I understand how things work. You may have already known all this, and I may have got some of the details wrong.
I wouldn't even waste my time with their TV service if it was free. I found out the hard way the awful truth: recompression. They recompress the living fuck out of every channel to get it all into the available bandwidth. You may be technically getting 1080i, but as soon as there is any sort of motion, you see the compression artifacts like crazy. I'll stick with the antenna on my roof and downloading everything else.
It's a lack of understanding of how gravity actually works.
You idiot, if we understood how gravity works, we'd probably have gravity generators. Aircraft wouldn't need wings anymore, and spacecraft wouldn't need reaction motors either. Hoverboards would be real.