In a $2500 computer? You can get a 2TB drive for about $15 more than the cost of a 1TB drive. The upgrade to 3TB still adds about $50 to the price, and 4TB even more, but in a system that's got a base price of $2500, it seems like a really bad decision made by beancounters to scrimp on something like the hard drive, especially when the *retail* difference in price to double the storage is less than 1% of the list price of the device.
Well, since I switched to a Galaxy, my background data transfer has about doubled over my previous phone (a Shine Plus). Since I barely use any data at all, and none of my apps serve up ads, that extra transfer has to come from somewhere.
I'm actually conducting an experiment this week, to see if my usage goes down when I stop using voice dictation.
That being said, we're talking about a difference of only a few hundred kilobytes per day... I'm still not even close to exceeding my monthly cap, which is itself extremely low by smartphone standards (I only use it for e-mail, calendar, and contact sync, so I stay on a $5/mo data usage tier with my carrier).
So it is not really global warming; it's just month-to-month/year-to-year variation.
Not global warming, maybe, but definitely global climate change. Though it is an el nino year, it's much too early in the year for it to be affecting the weather this much. In Ottawa, ON (described as the world capital with the most extreme weather... coldest winters + hottest summers), we got over 85 degrees fahrenheit today, when it should be closer to 40 degrees. Today was June/July weather, not March weather.
Things are changing. And while countries like Canada and Greenland stand to benefit from a longer planting season, it's really hurting countries like Kenya (in the middle of one of the worst droughts ever).
You could just configure your browser to nuke all cookies on close. You can even whitelist specific cookies (like login tokens) if logging back into sites gets annoying, though with saved passwords it's not really that annoying.
The only thing I use incognito mode with is for online banking, though I'm effectively incognito anyway, since my chromium install has the no history addon, doesn't have flash installed, has the cache set to store in/dev/null, and is set to delete cookies on exit.
Which graphics card drivers do you use? If you don't care and use the proprietary ones from the card maker, fine. If you get all panty-bunched about they have to be open, then you're just as bad as Apple is with their locked-down-only stuff.
Actually, I don't care which graphics driver I use, because I haven't had to install a graphics driver on Linux in years. Since gaming is a wash on Linux anyway, and Intel graphics can easily handle stuff like compositing, I don't see the point in installing an after-market graphics card on my Linux systems.
And while it may not be gaming, specifically, that is the crux of the problem: proprietary software that only supports platform X. Both Windows and Mac have their share of software like that, and people are stuck with vendor lock-in. *that* is really what's keeping people from installing Linux wholescale... until you stop needing to run Application Y, there's not a lot you can do about it.
Well catharsis and other arguments have been used wrt pornography and violence in TV. Except that we HAVE become more violent and less able to have good relationships. Now, I don't assume that TV and videogames and porn sites are the culprits, but I am pretty certain that they don't work the other way as I have heard for decades.
Except that we haven't become more violent. Despite more things being illegal, rates for murder are lower now than they were in the 1970's, and all types of violent crime have been steadily in decline for 20 years. News media reports the crime, and thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and TV, you hear about it a lot more, but the rates are actually much lower.
My Windows machine gets turned on once a week, maybe... I use it on my days off to play computer games if the spirit moves me. Today, I think I'd rather go for a bike ride.:)
It's disabled by default on all consumer versions of their OS. It's been a while since I've installed 2003 or 2008, so I don't know if it's disabled on those systems.
Which makes me doubly pissed that I'd set up a game download overnight last night (my usage is unmetered overnight) and they decided to force an unneeded patch/reboot on me, which fucked up the download.:/
First, let's address the stock standard shitty ass paper cones they use first. Sometimes riveted into the door (RAV4 here). Just last week my factory radio LCD freaked out and every button I pushed ejected a CD. Only until I turned the ignition off would it reboot. I understand I have a bad head unit. But still. Crap crap crap all the way around. For that much money I would at least like to get a decent unit with polypropylene speakers. That level of tech is at least 10 years old. So it should be relatively cheap to mass produce. Whatever.
You're buying your car from the wrong company, if you expect high end audio equipment. Toyota does have some cars with good stereos, but they tend to be in the $50k+ range for the car. Subaru, by contrast, has been using Clarion for 20+ years, for both the speakers and the head units. The 6 speaker sound system that came with my 2011 Impreza is pretty good (and included as standard in every trim level above the basic)... it could benefit from some decent subs, but the 4 midrange and 2 tweeters that came with it are much better quality than you find in most cars.
The thing is... with the amount of extraneous noise you hear on the road, and the choice between either having road noise, or listening in a closed box with the windows closed, you're never going to get top quality sound in a car... to the point that most people will never hear the difference between a 128kbit MP3 and a good quality FLAC. The car is the last place you want to listen as an audiophile.
The problem is they got a thin majority, and that some of the ridings they won were won by fewer than 1000 votes. Many of those ridings, there are reports of this kind of robocall happening. There is every possibility that they wouldn't have won, or at least wouldn't have won a majority, if this kind of disenfranchisement wasn't happening.
More than that, it's illegal to represent yourself falsely as an official working for Elections Canada. It's also electoral fraud. Strictly speaking, under the law, they can have their charter as an official party revoked over this, meaning that if this goes all the way, we don't currently have a legal government, and our last election was invalid. Particularly interesting considering that Canada is one of the few countries that always gets asked to send observers to foreign countries to make sure the election is done properly.
"Hate crime" legislation is an abomination, and should be struck down as an offence against free speech.
Tell that to the people who are victims of hate crime... like the kid who got decapitated, dismembered, and then set on fire in Detroit last November for the crime of being transgendered....
I suggest you read through last year's TDOR list. That's a list of victims of hate crime, and it comes out every year... every person on that list died or was murdered because they were transgendered, and there are often very gruesome circumstances surrounding their deaths. These people are killed in a way that is very obvious that they were being "punished", and not just a random incident. I will not go into the details here, you can read them for yourself. I read them, out loud, last November at the national human rights monument.
It's very different from a random incident on the street. And many other groups are equally targeted... different racial groups, the queer community at large, religious minorities, etc.. Hate crimes exist specifically because those groups are targeted.
As for Ravi's actions... no, I don't think he was specifically targeting the gay community. I think he was an idiot who didn't consider the consequences of his actions. I think he was very firmly rooted in the "I'm the only person that matters" mentality that abounds in the US these days, and didn't even realize that his actions would have effects beyond his own enjoyment. As a lesbian, I don't feel any fear about his actions, which is probably why they didn't convict him of hate crimes, but that does not excuse his actions. And no matter how you sugar coat it, his actions were motivated by the fact that his roommate was gay, hence the finding of bias.
Ravi is a citizen of India. He is not a citizen of the United States. This means he does not have the same rights that citizens have, and that he is subject to deportation under various circumstances. Now, there is certainly an argument that immigrants should treated more like legal citizens, and not be subject to deportation, but you are writing as if he is an American citizen, which he isn't.
He's been in the US for most of his life though, hasn't he? While I'm not an American, and I don't know your immigration laws very well, I know that in *this* country, if you grew up in the country and have gone through school in this country, it's ridiculously easy to get citizenship. As easy as filling out a form applying for it, and waiting for an official to rubber stamp it. And this is a country that's *significantly* more difficult to get in to than the US: you basically have to come as a refugee, or be multilingual and have a graduate degree or better, and refugee numbers are limited.
Quite frankly, it's his own damned fault he never filled out the paperwork for citizenship. He probably wasn't planning on committing a crime that he can be deported for, but too bad. If he gets deported over this, it's his own damned fault... he should have considered the consequences for his actions.
btw "trial"?? you do know that the FREE version just requires you to register it every year (for free)
They do offer a "trial" version of the paid-for version of Avast. I've never felt inclined to try it, but I suppose it *could* remind you that you're on a short-term trial and should really consider paying for it on a periodic basis.
For personal use though, there's really no reason to go for the paid version of Avast. I'm considering buying it for one year, just to give them money, because I've been using their software for years. They're just plain better than any of the other free options.
Where the fuck in Canada do you live that you get that?? I want to move there.
Ontario. While my department isn't union, most of the company is, so we benefit from the union contract. And because we're in an industry that could have a *huge* impact on the economy were we to fuck things up, the government has set up rules that we're not allowed to outsource.
We do actually have offices in Manitoba where you could get the same contract, but it's under a different company banner, and org structure... not sure if the contract is exactly the same there.
That's a possibility, but the dot on the map is too far north, and too far west... it's off by thousands of miles. As it's depicted on the map that the GGP posted, it's in the middle of open water in the arabian sea, which is why I thought maybe it was representing a carrier battle group.
Here in Canada, things aren't that good... I work a 37.5h work week (5 days @ 8h per day, half hour unpaid lunch... my two 15m breaks are paid each day, though). In my contract, I get 3 paid weeks off per year, which goes up by 1 every 5 years you're with the company (they have to be taken as a whole week... I tried booking every other friday off when I started and they were unamused) , and I am able to spend my flex dollars from the benefits package on an extra week off. I also get 2 days in lieu for statutory holidays that can be taken as floaters, and I think 9 other statutory holidays throughout the year.
How does your employer treat sick and emergency days? Mine is... stupid. For your first 2 years, your first 2 sick days are unpaid, and you're allowed a total of 10 sick days per year. After 2 years, it's only the first day that's unpaid, and after 4 years, they pay from day one, but it never goes up from 10 sick days per year.... the result is that we have people coming in when they're sick, and that hurts productivity immensely, because they get everybody else sick. At least they're reasonable with emergency days and short-term disability... those are paid from the word go, and I can take up to 20 weeks' short term disability at full pay before I go on long-term at 2/3 pay.
In Canada they still weigh themselves in pounds half the time and I'm fairly certain they measure their heights by feet still (I talk to Canadians rather frequently). It's an odd hodgepodge of measurements.
Yes, and no. I know that I'm 5'11" tall, and that is what I'll usually respond with if I'm asked. I'll also tell you my weight in pounds. I also know that my Ontario driver's license identifies me as being 178cm tall, and that all of my medical paperwork lists my weight in kilograms. The current generation uses metric almost exclusively, but I'm in the transition generation where I was taught both metric and imperial in school, and have no problem switching between the two... such a transition generation is what it'll take in the US, too, because nobody expects anybody over 30 who never learned metric in the first place to start suddenly understanding metric intuitively.
One of those black dots representing a military base is in the middle of the arabian sea.... While it is probably meant to represent the presence of a US carrier battlegroup or something, it's a bit disingenuous to call it a military base.
That's not to say that the US military presence in the middle east isn't excessive, nor that Iran doesn't have a right to be a bit twitchy, especially with idiots on the Republican primary trail saying that the first thing they'd do if they're elected president is invade Iran, but they shouldn't need to manufacture an american military base on the bottom of the ocean in order to convince people that Iran has a point....
Slashdot Mirror
_Only_ a terabyte of storage?
Since when is that a little amount of storage?
In a $2500 computer? You can get a 2TB drive for about $15 more than the cost of a 1TB drive. The upgrade to 3TB still adds about $50 to the price, and 4TB even more, but in a system that's got a base price of $2500, it seems like a really bad decision made by beancounters to scrimp on something like the hard drive, especially when the *retail* difference in price to double the storage is less than 1% of the list price of the device.
Well, since I switched to a Galaxy, my background data transfer has about doubled over my previous phone (a Shine Plus). Since I barely use any data at all, and none of my apps serve up ads, that extra transfer has to come from somewhere.
I'm actually conducting an experiment this week, to see if my usage goes down when I stop using voice dictation.
That being said, we're talking about a difference of only a few hundred kilobytes per day... I'm still not even close to exceeding my monthly cap, which is itself extremely low by smartphone standards (I only use it for e-mail, calendar, and contact sync, so I stay on a $5/mo data usage tier with my carrier).
So it is not really global warming; it's just month-to-month/year-to-year variation.
Not global warming, maybe, but definitely global climate change. Though it is an el nino year, it's much too early in the year for it to be affecting the weather this much. In Ottawa, ON (described as the world capital with the most extreme weather... coldest winters + hottest summers), we got over 85 degrees fahrenheit today, when it should be closer to 40 degrees. Today was June/July weather, not March weather.
Things are changing. And while countries like Canada and Greenland stand to benefit from a longer planting season, it's really hurting countries like Kenya (in the middle of one of the worst droughts ever).
Remember Romper Room? She had a magic mirror that let her see things, and her best friend was named Do-Bee....
You could just configure your browser to nuke all cookies on close. You can even whitelist specific cookies (like login tokens) if logging back into sites gets annoying, though with saved passwords it's not really that annoying.
The only thing I use incognito mode with is for online banking, though I'm effectively incognito anyway, since my chromium install has the no history addon, doesn't have flash installed, has the cache set to store in /dev/null, and is set to delete cookies on exit.
Which graphics card drivers do you use? If you don't care and use the proprietary ones from the card maker, fine. If you get all panty-bunched about they have to be open, then you're just as bad as Apple is with their locked-down-only stuff.
Actually, I don't care which graphics driver I use, because I haven't had to install a graphics driver on Linux in years. Since gaming is a wash on Linux anyway, and Intel graphics can easily handle stuff like compositing, I don't see the point in installing an after-market graphics card on my Linux systems.
And while it may not be gaming, specifically, that is the crux of the problem: proprietary software that only supports platform X. Both Windows and Mac have their share of software like that, and people are stuck with vendor lock-in. *that* is really what's keeping people from installing Linux wholescale... until you stop needing to run Application Y, there's not a lot you can do about it.
Well catharsis and other arguments have been used wrt pornography and violence in TV. Except that we HAVE become more violent and less able to have good relationships. Now, I don't assume that TV and videogames and porn sites are the culprits, but I am pretty certain that they don't work the other way as I have heard for decades.
Except that we haven't become more violent. Despite more things being illegal, rates for murder are lower now than they were in the 1970's, and all types of violent crime have been steadily in decline for 20 years. News media reports the crime, and thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and TV, you hear about it a lot more, but the rates are actually much lower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
And the same trend is happening pretty much everywhere in the developed world.
Michael Bay Signs $50m Deal to Fuck Up Thundercats.
le sigh.
I'm guessing that catharsis isn't in their vocabulary....
Thank you... I'll look into it.
My Windows machine gets turned on once a week, maybe... I use it on my days off to play computer games if the spirit moves me. Today, I think I'd rather go for a bike ride. :)
It's disabled by default on all consumer versions of their OS. It's been a while since I've installed 2003 or 2008, so I don't know if it's disabled on those systems.
Which makes me doubly pissed that I'd set up a game download overnight last night (my usage is unmetered overnight) and they decided to force an unneeded patch/reboot on me, which fucked up the download. :/
Giving up your copyright is bad... what you should do is use Creative Commons. :)
First, let's address the stock standard shitty ass paper cones they use first. Sometimes riveted into the door (RAV4 here). Just last week my factory radio LCD freaked out and every button I pushed ejected a CD. Only until I turned the ignition off would it reboot. I understand I have a bad head unit. But still. Crap crap crap all the way around. For that much money I would at least like to get a decent unit with polypropylene speakers. That level of tech is at least 10 years old. So it should be relatively cheap to mass produce. Whatever.
You're buying your car from the wrong company, if you expect high end audio equipment. Toyota does have some cars with good stereos, but they tend to be in the $50k+ range for the car. Subaru, by contrast, has been using Clarion for 20+ years, for both the speakers and the head units. The 6 speaker sound system that came with my 2011 Impreza is pretty good (and included as standard in every trim level above the basic)... it could benefit from some decent subs, but the 4 midrange and 2 tweeters that came with it are much better quality than you find in most cars.
The thing is... with the amount of extraneous noise you hear on the road, and the choice between either having road noise, or listening in a closed box with the windows closed, you're never going to get top quality sound in a car... to the point that most people will never hear the difference between a 128kbit MP3 and a good quality FLAC. The car is the last place you want to listen as an audiophile.
The problem is they got a thin majority, and that some of the ridings they won were won by fewer than 1000 votes. Many of those ridings, there are reports of this kind of robocall happening. There is every possibility that they wouldn't have won, or at least wouldn't have won a majority, if this kind of disenfranchisement wasn't happening.
More than that, it's illegal to represent yourself falsely as an official working for Elections Canada. It's also electoral fraud. Strictly speaking, under the law, they can have their charter as an official party revoked over this, meaning that if this goes all the way, we don't currently have a legal government, and our last election was invalid. Particularly interesting considering that Canada is one of the few countries that always gets asked to send observers to foreign countries to make sure the election is done properly.
Ditto. It missed NoHistory and Social Fixer.
"Hate crime" legislation is an abomination, and should be struck down as an offence against free speech.
Tell that to the people who are victims of hate crime... like the kid who got decapitated, dismembered, and then set on fire in Detroit last November for the crime of being transgendered....
Follow-up to my other reply...
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/body-found-on-detroit's-east-side-identified-as-missing-trangender-teen-20111110-ms
Read that, and tell me that it wasn't a hate crime.
I suggest you read through last year's TDOR list. That's a list of victims of hate crime, and it comes out every year... every person on that list died or was murdered because they were transgendered, and there are often very gruesome circumstances surrounding their deaths. These people are killed in a way that is very obvious that they were being "punished", and not just a random incident. I will not go into the details here, you can read them for yourself. I read them, out loud, last November at the national human rights monument.
It's very different from a random incident on the street. And many other groups are equally targeted... different racial groups, the queer community at large, religious minorities, etc.. Hate crimes exist specifically because those groups are targeted.
As for Ravi's actions... no, I don't think he was specifically targeting the gay community. I think he was an idiot who didn't consider the consequences of his actions. I think he was very firmly rooted in the "I'm the only person that matters" mentality that abounds in the US these days, and didn't even realize that his actions would have effects beyond his own enjoyment. As a lesbian, I don't feel any fear about his actions, which is probably why they didn't convict him of hate crimes, but that does not excuse his actions. And no matter how you sugar coat it, his actions were motivated by the fact that his roommate was gay, hence the finding of bias.
Ravi is a citizen of India. He is not a citizen of the United States. This means he does not have the same rights that citizens have, and that he is subject to deportation under various circumstances. Now, there is certainly an argument that immigrants should treated more like legal citizens, and not be subject to deportation, but you are writing as if he is an American citizen, which he isn't.
He's been in the US for most of his life though, hasn't he? While I'm not an American, and I don't know your immigration laws very well, I know that in *this* country, if you grew up in the country and have gone through school in this country, it's ridiculously easy to get citizenship. As easy as filling out a form applying for it, and waiting for an official to rubber stamp it. And this is a country that's *significantly* more difficult to get in to than the US: you basically have to come as a refugee, or be multilingual and have a graduate degree or better, and refugee numbers are limited.
Quite frankly, it's his own damned fault he never filled out the paperwork for citizenship. He probably wasn't planning on committing a crime that he can be deported for, but too bad. If he gets deported over this, it's his own damned fault... he should have considered the consequences for his actions.
btw "trial"?? you do know that the FREE version just requires you to register it every year (for free)
They do offer a "trial" version of the paid-for version of Avast. I've never felt inclined to try it, but I suppose it *could* remind you that you're on a short-term trial and should really consider paying for it on a periodic basis.
For personal use though, there's really no reason to go for the paid version of Avast. I'm considering buying it for one year, just to give them money, because I've been using their software for years. They're just plain better than any of the other free options.
Where the fuck in Canada do you live that you get that?? I want to move there.
Ontario. While my department isn't union, most of the company is, so we benefit from the union contract. And because we're in an industry that could have a *huge* impact on the economy were we to fuck things up, the government has set up rules that we're not allowed to outsource.
We do actually have offices in Manitoba where you could get the same contract, but it's under a different company banner, and org structure... not sure if the contract is exactly the same there.
That's a possibility, but the dot on the map is too far north, and too far west... it's off by thousands of miles. As it's depicted on the map that the GGP posted, it's in the middle of open water in the arabian sea, which is why I thought maybe it was representing a carrier battle group.
Here in Canada, things aren't that good... I work a 37.5h work week (5 days @ 8h per day, half hour unpaid lunch... my two 15m breaks are paid each day, though). In my contract, I get 3 paid weeks off per year, which goes up by 1 every 5 years you're with the company (they have to be taken as a whole week... I tried booking every other friday off when I started and they were unamused) , and I am able to spend my flex dollars from the benefits package on an extra week off. I also get 2 days in lieu for statutory holidays that can be taken as floaters, and I think 9 other statutory holidays throughout the year.
How does your employer treat sick and emergency days? Mine is... stupid. For your first 2 years, your first 2 sick days are unpaid, and you're allowed a total of 10 sick days per year. After 2 years, it's only the first day that's unpaid, and after 4 years, they pay from day one, but it never goes up from 10 sick days per year.... the result is that we have people coming in when they're sick, and that hurts productivity immensely, because they get everybody else sick. At least they're reasonable with emergency days and short-term disability... those are paid from the word go, and I can take up to 20 weeks' short term disability at full pay before I go on long-term at 2/3 pay.
In Canada they still weigh themselves in pounds half the time and I'm fairly certain they measure their heights by feet still (I talk to Canadians rather frequently). It's an odd hodgepodge of measurements.
Yes, and no. I know that I'm 5'11" tall, and that is what I'll usually respond with if I'm asked. I'll also tell you my weight in pounds. I also know that my Ontario driver's license identifies me as being 178cm tall, and that all of my medical paperwork lists my weight in kilograms. The current generation uses metric almost exclusively, but I'm in the transition generation where I was taught both metric and imperial in school, and have no problem switching between the two... such a transition generation is what it'll take in the US, too, because nobody expects anybody over 30 who never learned metric in the first place to start suddenly understanding metric intuitively.
One of those black dots representing a military base is in the middle of the arabian sea.... While it is probably meant to represent the presence of a US carrier battlegroup or something, it's a bit disingenuous to call it a military base.
That's not to say that the US military presence in the middle east isn't excessive, nor that Iran doesn't have a right to be a bit twitchy, especially with idiots on the Republican primary trail saying that the first thing they'd do if they're elected president is invade Iran, but they shouldn't need to manufacture an american military base on the bottom of the ocean in order to convince people that Iran has a point....