You're doing better than me - I read that three times and still have no clue what he's saying. And yes, I've installed CM a few times on various phones.
As a Canadian I'm seriously embarrassed. A few years ago I lived in the US and was astonished that USPS was fast, reliable, and that people actually trusted it to deliver on-time. And even had Saturday delivery.
Canada Post has been under attack for a couple of (post Thatcher era) decades - part of the overall belief that government shouldn't actually supply essential services. It's now reached the point where postal mail is the last thing you think of when something has to be delivered.
Call me an old fashioned socialist fool, but there are a lot of things that government should provide to any functioning society: police, mail delivery, and public transit to begin with. Education and health care as well. Those are why we pay taxes - to ensure that essential services are available to everyone.
It's time to get rid of the idiotic mantra that government should be run like business. A lot of businesses are corrupt, nasty, inefficient, and act in ways that an individual would never be allowed. A lot of businesses close in the first year. A lot of businesses are run by idiots.
Of late my bank has been on a new drive to irritate all customers under the guise of protecting our security. On top the ever so secure four number PIN, and the usual login password, and the three digit CVV number (which I assume anyone stealing credit card info will also collect).
They now have two very secure additions to their arsenal:
1) Once you have logged in, and you wish to add another company to the list of those to whom you can send money - bill payments - you must also type in a five digit security code. A code that different from your PIN, or any other log-in.
Of course because you only use this about once a year you will have forgotten it, so you need to generate new one. While still logged in. With no further authentication.
Yes, adding a payee to the list requires you to enter a number that you created five seconds previously. Wow. I feel so safe.
2) Authentication Questions: the ever popular list of ten questions about things that you did thirty-five years ago, or where there could be multiple possible answers. Where did you meet your spouse? (Which one?) What was the name of your childhood pet? (Again, which one?) What was your favourite TV show at age 13? (Damned if I know.) What was the Zip Code of your Grade Three elementary school?
In other words, my money is secured through the use of a list of questions that any of my Facebook followers could find in about five minutes. Assuming that I ever put anything truthful on Facebook.
The basic problem is that the whole password concept stopped being an effective protection years ago, and no-one has come up with a really good way to replace it. So instead we get corporations forcing people to jump through meaningless hoops in the hopes that we won't notice.
Or worse, encouraging us to use one corporation's log-in across multiple platforms - thus ensuring that one security breach will open many doors to your on-line affairs. Seriously, does anyone think that using Facebook to log in elsewhere is a good idea?
Having skimmed though all of the comments above I feel obliged to offer my own assessment: Yes indeed, GMO foods are dangerous and cancer causing and likely cause acne as well, but only when consumed while standing next to a cel phone antenna.
I honestly trust opinions here more than most other places. Seems to me that most tech sites, though good, are so enthralled with the latest and greatest cool thing that they lose sight of the needs of mere mortals.
Now, my pet peeve isn't with hardware reviews, but with the various App stores. I've pretty much given up trying to judge any app on Google's Play site based on reviews. As often as not they seem to fall into two categories: "Wow! Cool App! Best App Ever!" or "Crap App wouldn't work on my phone."
The former reached a new pinnacle of uselessness when one guy posted "It hasn't finished downloading to my phone yet, but I'm sure this is the coolest thing ever!."
Yeah, most apps only cost a few bucks, but I'd still like to know if the damned things will actually work, without crashing, before I bother downloading it.
I'll likely try running it off of a USB stick at some point this week, but will ask anyhow:
If I'm generally happy with Mint Linux (64, v. 15) what things in openSUSE might convince me to change?
... since almost inevitably the final result is e-filed, either by you or by your tax preparer.
YMMV, but a couple of things came to my mind.
First, if you're asking this question it's really likely that doing your own taxes isn't saving you anything. An accountant or similar preparer can do them faster, and almost always finds savings that you won't. Plus, at least in Canada, if the tax people come a knockin' it will be your preparer who deals with them, not you.
Second, if you're one of those people with one tax slip from your employer, and two or three deductible receipts for charities or medical expenses, or if you're the typical student, you should be able to fill out a paper return in about ten minutes, or do it on-line or on your own PC with free software and mail it in. It's dumb to pay HR Block money to do this. The CRA even has a list of companies you can check out, almost all of whom offer free choices for simple returns.
Third, as with anything that could wind up putting you in jail, taxes are one of those things where I like to keep complete paper copies of the entire file. Somehow having it printed and/or copied on paper feels more secure than trusting bits somewhere on the Internet.
Realistically no serious Google user is going to try and replace all of Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Drive, Reader (now defunct), Chrome, Search, Youtube, Android, (and whatever other Google tools that I'm not recalling) at the same time.
I like having stuff like contacts and calendar synced between my desktop and smartphone. Google does that really, really well.
I've moved my RSS feeds over to Tiny Tiny RSS, and like that model - I control it.
I want to eliminate Chrome next because (I thought) it would be easy to change over to Firefox or Opera, but that is proving somewhat more difficult than I expected.
Can I move my contact lists away from Google and still have them sync between desktop and phone? That may be the next project.
Or perhaps I'll look at how I can move my calendar out of Google. I don't know.
The point is that once you're used to that lovely Google integration of many essential functions, and the overall ease of spreading that over multiple devices, it can really hard to extricate yourself.
Probably be Google's design of course - they certainly have learned much from Apple's model.
And would I like to get away from Android? You bet. Even flashed Cyanogenmod a couple of times on my last phone. Sadly the smartphone equivalent to Mint Linux isn't quite here yet.
But when it does arrive I'll be ready.
(Note: the problem with add-ons like XMarks is that it becomes just one more thing that needs to be watched over or maintained. The other nice thing about staying with Google, or Apple, or even a major Linux distro is that stuff tends to just work, and do so reliably without a lot of fiddling.)
What I'm finding is that Google has a lock on a lot of things that I use, that it can be difficult to replace many of them, and that the automagic Google integration is really something that I'll miss.
Add all that together and then realize that it all has to be recouped within the few weeks of the Olympics. It is easy to see why the IOC is very watchful of people infringing on their income streams. If you want the Olympics to continue the broadcast rights need to be worth paying for.
Let's be clear about one thing: all the things that you list are things that the poor sods in the host country pay for, up front. The IOC does not pay for these things, The only people who ever really win are the IOC members - not the host country.
How the Olympics work: Host country accepts all of the risk, and pays all of the bills. IOC skims the gravy and has a really nice party for them and their pals.
Trust me, if even had of what was promised had happened in Vancouver we would all be rich, fat, and happy.
Having lived through the 2010 games in Vancouver, I can fully believe this story. The corporations behind the Olympics answer to no-one, and respect only the laws that they create for themselves.
Local customs and laws, charters, and regulations are ignored or flouted without so much as a "Sorry," and the great armies of renta-cops rule the roost.
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Much the same in Canada, where agencies which used to protect workers have been de-fanged and de-toothed pretty effectively. For the most part anything resembling Worker's Compensation is primarily a tool that prevents workers from suing employers, not something that protects them.
And even then, there is rampant "You're not an employee, you're contractor, and don't even think about employment insurance or contributions to your pension."
The end result is stuff like guys working three stories up, on the roof, in the rain, with no safety gear of any sort.
Workers won't file a complaint because they would be fired immediately. Or more to the point, their "not an employee" contract would be ended immediately. The company knows full well that without a complaint there is zero chance that any inspector will visit the job site. Especially after years of cut-backs which eliminated half of the people who used to do that job.
The bottom line with safety has to be frequent inspections, big fat fines, and a rapid escalation of fines for repeated violations.
For about the last two or three decades, as more and more jobs and manufacturing have moved offshore, I've asked people: what will you do for that large swath of the population who used to work for Ford, or Whirlpool, or General Electric, and who now are literally unemployable?
Forty or fifty years ago "ordinary" people could take a job at the local factory, make enough to support a family and buy a house, and know that after 35 years they would have a good pension to retire on.
When I say "ordinary" I mean the people who won't ever go to university, who will never become computer programmers or doctors, and who surely aren't about to be "entrepreneurs." The people who used to be called "working stiffs" or "blue collar workers."
Once the blue collar jobs are gone, what do you do with these people - say a quarter of your population? Wal-mart jobs? Call centers? Waving pizza signs on street corners?
Re:Why You Shouldn't Trust the Cloud
on
Do Is Done
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· Score: 1
Agreed that Ark.OS isn't yet THE answer, but it is looking in the right directions.
As much as I like the ubiquity of Google's services - everything available anywhere, at any time - I find myself looking back very fondly to my old Palm Pilots. One sync per day to my desktop machine, and I knew that my contacts etc were safe and secure.
What I really want is a way to sync my smartphone's contents with the server that hosts our web sites, without forcing everything through someone else's servers.
Why You Shouldn't Trust the Cloud
on
Do Is Done
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Another web based service has the plug pulled with little or no warning. When Google does it it's news. When a small company does it it gets ignored.
In my case it was little company called Catch.com, which synced notes written in a little app called AK Notepad. Not the end of the world, but intensely irritating when it just stopped working one day and all data disappeared. And when they were too scummy to leave some way of downloading user data after a month or so.
At this point I'm looking at moving pretty much everything out of web based services and back to my desktop, or at least to a server space that I control. And watching ideas like Ark.OS with considerable interest.
I may not be a multinational corporation, but I no longer trust any company to handle data that matters to me.
Never considered Kyocera, but will now check them out
I too have been getting the feeling that (lower end) HP printers aren't what they used to be.
The color printer is because, hey, the GF wants color printing, but also has to copy sheet music. The lid on her current HP 2600 has broken hinges from trying to close it over music books.
She averages one or two sets of ink cartridges each month; at about $50 each time for genuine HP items.
The price of color laser toner had been scaring me off - say $300+ for four cartridges compared to $50 for a pair of inkjet cartridges - but then again if you only replace them twice a year it looks better. (I know, obvious...)
I remember her last printer was a Brother MFC something which irritated me me something fierce because if one of four ink cartridges was empty it just stopped working. To my mind it should at least keep printing B&W.
One of our challenges is that our particular suburb is decidedly lacking in office supply outlets. One Staples 20 minutes away, and that's it. As much as we would all love to plan ahead and have toner on hand, the reality is that the printer always runs out on a Sunday afternoon. And on deadline. So using a fairly commonly available toner does matter.
HP Drivers - yeah - I've got a second hand HP 4300 beside me, and it never did work right (esp. scanning) until I downloaded and installed the official HP linux driver pack. Totally Windows-esque. And still will not print off a Guardian Crossword puzzle. Seriously - prints the numbers but not the actual puzzle structure.
The Oatmeal link - thank you very much, but where's my ob XKCD link?
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm reading this correctly
You're doing better than me - I read that three times and still have no clue what he's saying. And yes, I've installed CM a few times on various phones.
As a Canadian I'm seriously embarrassed. A few years ago I lived in the US and was astonished that USPS was fast, reliable, and that people actually trusted it to deliver on-time. And even had Saturday delivery.
Canada Post has been under attack for a couple of (post Thatcher era) decades - part of the overall belief that government shouldn't actually supply essential services. It's now reached the point where postal mail is the last thing you think of when something has to be delivered.
Call me an old fashioned socialist fool, but there are a lot of things that government should provide to any functioning society: police, mail delivery, and public transit to begin with. Education and health care as well. Those are why we pay taxes - to ensure that essential services are available to everyone.
It's time to get rid of the idiotic mantra that government should be run like business. A lot of businesses are corrupt, nasty, inefficient, and act in ways that an individual would never be allowed. A lot of businesses close in the first year. A lot of businesses are run by idiots.
Wow. I can remember the days when this was a meme that all of the cool kids tossed out while laughing with derision!
I'm as green as anyone, but lordy that was some one-sided summary Hugh.
Can I at least ask for some other numbers, such as the number of bird kills resulting from pollutants dumped out by the big coal fired plants in Ohio?
Of late my bank has been on a new drive to irritate all customers under the guise of protecting our security. On top the ever so secure four number PIN, and the usual login password, and the three digit CVV number (which I assume anyone stealing credit card info will also collect).
They now have two very secure additions to their arsenal:
1) Once you have logged in, and you wish to add another company to the list of those to whom you can send money - bill payments - you must also type in a five digit security code. A code that different from your PIN, or any other log-in.
Of course because you only use this about once a year you will have forgotten it, so you need to generate new one. While still logged in. With no further authentication.
Yes, adding a payee to the list requires you to enter a number that you created five seconds previously. Wow. I feel so safe.
2) Authentication Questions: the ever popular list of ten questions about things that you did thirty-five years ago, or where there could be multiple possible answers. Where did you meet your spouse? (Which one?) What was the name of your childhood pet? (Again, which one?) What was your favourite TV show at age 13? (Damned if I know.) What was the Zip Code of your Grade Three elementary school?
In other words, my money is secured through the use of a list of questions that any of my Facebook followers could find in about five minutes. Assuming that I ever put anything truthful on Facebook.
The basic problem is that the whole password concept stopped being an effective protection years ago, and no-one has come up with a really good way to replace it. So instead we get corporations forcing people to jump through meaningless hoops in the hopes that we won't notice.
Or worse, encouraging us to use one corporation's log-in across multiple platforms - thus ensuring that one security breach will open many doors to your on-line affairs. Seriously, does anyone think that using Facebook to log in elsewhere is a good idea?
Having skimmed though all of the comments above I feel obliged to offer my own assessment: Yes indeed, GMO foods are dangerous and cancer causing and likely cause acne as well, but only when consumed while standing next to a cel phone antenna.
I honestly trust opinions here more than most other places. Seems to me that most tech sites, though good, are so enthralled with the latest and greatest cool thing that they lose sight of the needs of mere mortals.
Now, my pet peeve isn't with hardware reviews, but with the various App stores. I've pretty much given up trying to judge any app on Google's Play site based on reviews. As often as not they seem to fall into two categories: "Wow! Cool App! Best App Ever!" or "Crap App wouldn't work on my phone."
The former reached a new pinnacle of uselessness when one guy posted "It hasn't finished downloading to my phone yet, but I'm sure this is the coolest thing ever!."
Yeah, most apps only cost a few bucks, but I'd still like to know if the damned things will actually work, without crashing, before I bother downloading it.
I'll likely try running it off of a USB stick at some point this week, but will ask anyhow:
If I'm generally happy with Mint Linux (64, v. 15) what things in openSUSE might convince me to change?
... since almost inevitably the final result is e-filed, either by you or by your tax preparer.
YMMV, but a couple of things came to my mind.
First, if you're asking this question it's really likely that doing your own taxes isn't saving you anything. An accountant or similar preparer can do them faster, and almost always finds savings that you won't. Plus, at least in Canada, if the tax people come a knockin' it will be your preparer who deals with them, not you.
Second, if you're one of those people with one tax slip from your employer, and two or three deductible receipts for charities or medical expenses, or if you're the typical student, you should be able to fill out a paper return in about ten minutes, or do it on-line or on your own PC with free software and mail it in. It's dumb to pay HR Block money to do this. The CRA even has a list of companies you can check out, almost all of whom offer free choices for simple returns.
Third, as with anything that could wind up putting you in jail, taxes are one of those things where I like to keep complete paper copies of the entire file. Somehow having it printed and/or copied on paper feels more secure than trusting bits somewhere on the Internet.
Realistically no serious Google user is going to try and replace all of Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Drive, Reader (now defunct), Chrome, Search, Youtube, Android, (and whatever other Google tools that I'm not recalling) at the same time.
I like having stuff like contacts and calendar synced between my desktop and smartphone. Google does that really, really well.
I've moved my RSS feeds over to Tiny Tiny RSS, and like that model - I control it.
I want to eliminate Chrome next because (I thought) it would be easy to change over to Firefox or Opera, but that is proving somewhat more difficult than I expected.
Can I move my contact lists away from Google and still have them sync between desktop and phone? That may be the next project.
Or perhaps I'll look at how I can move my calendar out of Google. I don't know.
The point is that once you're used to that lovely Google integration of many essential functions, and the overall ease of spreading that over multiple devices, it can really hard to extricate yourself.
Probably be Google's design of course - they certainly have learned much from Apple's model.
And would I like to get away from Android? You bet. Even flashed Cyanogenmod a couple of times on my last phone. Sadly the smartphone equivalent to Mint Linux isn't quite here yet.
But when it does arrive I'll be ready.
(Note: the problem with add-ons like XMarks is that it becomes just one more thing that needs to be watched over or maintained. The other nice thing about staying with Google, or Apple, or even a major Linux distro is that stuff tends to just work, and do so reliably without a lot of fiddling.)
I've been working on moving much of my on-line life out of the Googleverse. It has proved surprisingly difficult.
Today I was trying to lose Chrome, and go for another browser. I wasted about an hour and a half trying to sync Firefox between Android and my Mint Linux desktop, then gave up.
I tried Opera, which does install and sync with ease, and looks great, except that it refuses to display Google Calendar at all well.
What I'm finding is that Google has a lock on a lot of things that I use, that it can be difficult to replace many of them, and that the automagic Google integration is really something that I'll miss.
Wrong lake. Also, Ogopogo doesn't have tentacles.
Yeah, I grew up in Ogopogo's back yard and probably waterskiied over him a thousand times.
Add all that together and then realize that it all has to be recouped within the few weeks of the Olympics. It is easy to see why the IOC is very watchful of people infringing on their income streams. If you want the Olympics to continue the broadcast rights need to be worth paying for.
Let's be clear about one thing: all the things that you list are things that the poor sods in the host country pay for, up front. The IOC does not pay for these things, The only people who ever really win are the IOC members - not the host country.
How the Olympics work: Host country accepts all of the risk, and pays all of the bills. IOC skims the gravy and has a really nice party for them and their pals.
Trust me, if even had of what was promised had happened in Vancouver we would all be rich, fat, and happy.
Dunno, but it looks like these guys would be an obvious choice. Does the good Dr accept Bitcoins?
Having lived through the 2010 games in Vancouver, I can fully believe this story. The corporations behind the Olympics answer to no-one, and respect only the laws that they create for themselves.
Local customs and laws, charters, and regulations are ignored or flouted without so much as a "Sorry," and the great armies of renta-cops rule the roost.
Thankfully the new "Compass" card being forced onto Vancouver transit users will absolutely, positively have none of these problems.
(Damn - when will Slashdot get an edit button.) Oh well, you get the idea.
I'm a big fan of the work for instance.
Much the same in Canada, where agencies which used to protect workers have been de-fanged and de-toothed pretty effectively. For the most part anything resembling Worker's Compensation is primarily a tool that prevents workers from suing employers, not something that protects them.
And even then, there is rampant "You're not an employee, you're contractor, and don't even think about employment insurance or contributions to your pension."
The end result is stuff like guys working three stories up, on the roof, in the rain, with no safety gear of any sort.
Workers won't file a complaint because they would be fired immediately. Or more to the point, their "not an employee" contract would be ended immediately. The company knows full well that without a complaint there is zero chance that any inspector will visit the job site. Especially after years of cut-backs which eliminated half of the people who used to do that job.
The bottom line with safety has to be frequent inspections, big fat fines, and a rapid escalation of fines for repeated violations.
Yee Haw! If we jest had more uh that good old poloooshun we'd all be stinkin' rich!!
For about the last two or three decades, as more and more jobs and manufacturing have moved offshore, I've asked people: what will you do for that large swath of the population who used to work for Ford, or Whirlpool, or General Electric, and who now are literally unemployable?
Forty or fifty years ago "ordinary" people could take a job at the local factory, make enough to support a family and buy a house, and know that after 35 years they would have a good pension to retire on.
When I say "ordinary" I mean the people who won't ever go to university, who will never become computer programmers or doctors, and who surely aren't about to be "entrepreneurs." The people who used to be called "working stiffs" or "blue collar workers."
Once the blue collar jobs are gone, what do you do with these people - say a quarter of your population? Wal-mart jobs? Call centers? Waving pizza signs on street corners?
Funny, and arguably accurate as well!
Agreed that Ark.OS isn't yet THE answer, but it is looking in the right directions.
As much as I like the ubiquity of Google's services - everything available anywhere, at any time - I find myself looking back very fondly to my old Palm Pilots. One sync per day to my desktop machine, and I knew that my contacts etc were safe and secure.
What I really want is a way to sync my smartphone's contents with the server that hosts our web sites, without forcing everything through someone else's servers.
Another web based service has the plug pulled with little or no warning. When Google does it it's news. When a small company does it it gets ignored.
In my case it was little company called Catch.com, which synced notes written in a little app called AK Notepad. Not the end of the world, but intensely irritating when it just stopped working one day and all data disappeared. And when they were too scummy to leave some way of downloading user data after a month or so.
At this point I'm looking at moving pretty much everything out of web based services and back to my desktop, or at least to a server space that I control. And watching ideas like Ark.OS with considerable interest.
I may not be a multinational corporation, but I no longer trust any company to handle data that matters to me.