I'm pretty sure it was a Dell product, it was a slightly non-standard resolution, and didn't have a single resolution it could do which matched the physical aspect ratio. All they did was make a monitor with rectangular pixels.
We couldn't understand the point behind it.
Near as I can figure, and some morons in marketing decided to "make teh widescreen for teh movies".
But it was useless for both graphics and videos, because graphics it couldn't draw a circle, and videos it just flattened the image as well.
It basically felt like the company got swindled and bought some crappy desktops targeted to home users to pretend like they were all fancy, but were, in fact, utter crap.
A lot of people spent a lot of time grumbling about it. It was quite pathetic.
If the hardware doesn't work with default Windows or Linux distribution, it's shit. (think clean install).
Years ago at work, we got some new desktops.
The desktops had 4GB of RAM, but the Windows XP Pro on them could only see 3GB. One of the guys decided to put Windows 2003 on the machines to get access to all the RAM.
It turns out there were NO drivers for that hardware which existed for Windows 2003, and even getting back to XP Pro proved exceedingly difficult because... it was almost impossible to find the drivers again as they basically weren't published anywhere. Essentially this machine could only work with the OEM image made up of drivers and other custom crap which were almost impossible to find.
To add insult to injury, whatever idiot had ordered them got us some new-fangled wide screen monitors. The problem was that while the actual resolution of the monitor was a 4:3 aspect ratio... the actual pixels were flattened so that in its native resolution the screen drew circles as flattened ovals.
I 100% agree with you. Because non-standard crap from vendors makes for utter garbage machines.
So, basically they have shit hardware or shit drivers, and the only way they can think of to fix this is to prevent your operating system from trying to apply updates?
This sounds like incompetence all the way around, and is on-going proof of why I hate OEM laptops. Because they fill them with so much garbage.
It seems like every time I hear anything about Samsung, I find myself thinking "nope, I would never buy their crap".
And, once again, corporations put their own crappy "innovation" ahead of the needs of their customers.
Yeah? And my tax software? The thing to update my navigation GPS? The thing to update my golf GPS? The software which came with my camera? iTunes?
Every other damned thing for which there isn't an equivalent on Linux?
Sorry, I've been using Linux since 1993. It has its places and uses.
But if you think it's a viable replacement for all Windows stuff, you are utterly delusional.
It too me many years to eventually say "fuck it", and go with having a Windows machine... but I got there because there are many things I wish to do with my computer that to this day utterly suck on Linux. And I have zero interest if fucking around with a bunch of crap which almost works.
Saying the only trustworthy encryption scheme is the one you create only works if you're a cryptography and programming expert.
I never said create it yourself.
I said if you are looking for a "trusted encryption" being implemented by someone else on your behalf, there's a very high likelihood it's not secure from them. And if you want it to be secure form them, encrypt it yourself.
So, use a solution which exists, and which has a good reputation. But the cloud provider should be left out of the process of encryption and used to only store the encrypted data, because in all likelihood either for ease of use, or compliance with law enforcement... if they have access to the crypto keys, your trust level is pretty much reduced to pretty much zero, because if they have the keys they can decrypt it.
The last thing people should be doing is rolling their own damned encryption solutions. The second last thing you shouldn't do is to use a service which is doing the encryption for you unless you know explicitly they have the ability to decrypt your stuff.
So, back when DropBox first came out and said "it's encrypted, we promise".. it wasn't encrypted from them, they could and did look into it, and they could and would open it for law enforcement.
If you want it secure so only you can open it, you have to do it yourself, and understand that you have to take ownership for it if you screw up. Just don't assume that when a service says they'll encrypt your stuff that it means it's secure or private from that service.
Except for work computers, which almost always require at least one annoying thing per year which needs Flash... I've had Flash disabled or simply not installed for as long as there has existed Flash.
Because it's been a horribly broken security hole since it has existed.
My solution to broken videos that require Flash? I simply don't give a damn.
I'm sure there are things people feel they can't live without that require Flash... for me, I have yet to find a single one.
After over a decade of simply not using Flash, I don't really feel like I've missed much.
I hope you find what you're looking for, but I would suggest that:
Ideal would be a competitive cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive that provides trustworthy encryption with suitable clients
This isn't possible.
Unless you own the crypto bits, and you know for a fact that they don't have any way to access your keys, you should assume any provider can probably comply with court orders and hand over your data.
Some of them might be peaking even if they claim not to be.
The only way you can be guaranteed your stuff is secure is to encrypt it yourself, and cut the cloud out of the process entirely.
There pretty much is no such thing as "trustworthy encryption" you didn't do yourself.
Actually it is dumb of him to establish his brand based on an URL which he has no control of.
Well, this was his username on YouTube, and even if YouTube changed their URL structure, the channel registered in his name got taken away, assigned to an entity who didn't ask for it, and marked as now being the property of someone else.
This isn't like making a reference to something which should be changing... this is saying "my channel on YouTube is Lush, and even if YouTube changes its URL, my channel is still Lush".
When YouTube basically exists to make money from showing the content other people have created, suddenly deciding after ten freaking years that the channel should be arbitrarily given to someone else is basically bullshit.
This is entirely about Google being assholes, who are preemptively trying to maximize the branding for people who didn't ask for it, and suddenly deciding that the 10 years he used that account and placed content on YouTube doesn't matter.
Sorry, but this is stupidity on behalf of Google, and has nothing to do with URLs which change. They took away his frigging account name for NO other reason than some algorithm said so.
Basically they picked the entity who they felt deserved the name, instead of the one who had been using it and had a legitimate claim to us.
It's just another example of how Google is full of shit and no longer following their "do no evil" thing -- because this is an asshole move.
My municipality tried this whole incinerating thing.
The short version: the technology wasn't up to the task, the amount of energy they got out of it was woefully inadequate, the company went out of business.
Incineration technology just doesn't sound like where it needs to be, and it doesn't produce energy in a way that is worth actually doing.
It may be a good idea in theory, but in practice, I don't think it works very well.
But there is no justifiable reason why Google should do crap like this.
Lush isn't a sufficiently unique or trademarked term that there could only be one entity using the word Lush. It's not like it was "Lush Cosmetics" and he was stepping on their trademark.
And since trademarks are only valid in your area of business, there is NO legal justification for saying it's not his anymore.
He's been using it for a decade by the looks of it, so there is no way you can claim he's a late comer or cybersquatting.
Basically this is a bullshit policy, badly implemented by Google/YouTube, which basically says "we're going to arbitrarily decide that the branding you have worked on for years is no longer your own because we say so".
So, take your pick, evil, incompetent, or just plain old assholes -- possibly all three. But Google is the ones doing stupid things here.
This is kind of like Slashdot saying "we've decided the account name cdrudge should belong to someone else now" -- because it makes no sense whatsoever to take it away from someone who has been using it for so long.
This is just random garbage by random algorithms which isn't based on a damned thing than the arbitrary code Google has decided is the arbiter of these things.
And, once again, Nerval's Lobster gets a piece accepted which is little more than a thinly veiled reason to link to one of the endless stream of lame stories about "how much toilet paper do you really need" articles.
Have you guys become so blatant with the click-whoring to Dice you have designated people who write pithy sounding summaries for repetitive and lame articles to drive to Dice.com?
Because there are suspicious amount of lame "how much do you" articles submitted by this one poster, and all linking back to Dice.com. And never a mention that Dice.com is the parent company and is shamelessly shilling their own crap.
Sorry guys, but you're becoming really obvious with this.
Well, having had Microsoft try to sneak in something to my Windows 8.1 which was solely for their benefit... nagging me to upgrade to Windows 10, and embedding stuff to measure how bad of a job they did... I simply don't believe or trust that this will be no different than before.
Because Microsoft is actively making changes to push us to Windows 10, has said that Windows 10 Home will not be able to defer updates, and have more or less decided they'll be the ones calling the shots.
So, I don't think it is a slippery slope, and I don't think stopping paying will simply mean you now have an older OS with no more updates. I don't trust them to play fairly and honestly.
Because Microsoft is already doing crap of rolling stuff out as an important update which really are nothing more than crapware to start nagging you to upgrade.
I'm just not buying at all this will be benign and stuff you can ignore. Because they're already well past that when I have to uninstall the thing which basically says "upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later" -- there simply was no option to say "no, I don't want this upgrade now or ever piss off an go away".
Which means Microsoft isn't asking me to upgrade, they're telling me to. And, again, fuck that. It's my computer, not theirs.
If they're already sneaking in shit which is 100% about turning me into a beta tester, they're already proving they're not trustworthy and are acting like they're in charge of the machine. They're not. And they need to realize that quickly before they piss off users even more.
Honestly, install Classic Shell, follow the instructions you can find on the intertubes to make the Metro crap almost completely go away, get rid of their stupid start screen altogether, disable the Windows store and the apps... and then just realize that the crap Microsoft has "innovated" is useful for touch screens, and beginning users and get on with their life.
Windows 8.1, once you remove the crap interface stuff Microsoft put into it, is a stable platform with a Start menu, which looks like it has for years.
I had to track down what update Microsoft snuck in as an "important update" which immediately started nagging me to install Windows 10 so it would leave me in peace. I fully expect to have to do that again because I'm sure Microsoft is going to try to decide for me that I really did intend to upgrade.
Sorry, Microsoft. It's my computer, not yours. I'll fucking decide when to upgrade the OS, and I'm not using my time and resources to be a damned beta tester for you.
Out of the box, Windows 8.1 is nothing but crap interfaces optimized for tablets, but terrible as a desktop. Get rid of the Metro crap and run Classic Shell, and it's pretty nice.
Well, I'll tell you the problems with a subscription model.
First off, it's a nuisance. I've bought a new PCC which came with an OS. It's a done transaction. I have no intention of then providing my credit card and billing information to Microsoft. It's just not happening.
And then there's the expectation that eventually it becomes extortionware -- nice OS you have, shame if something happened to it if you stopped paying us.
Again, not happening. We just don't trust companies to not screw us over. Especially not Microsoft.
You shouldn't be surprised at the ban hammer when you venture into 'grown up racing'.
Ban hammer? You seem to assume those of us who like a particular kind of racing game give a shit about online gaming.
Trust me, you will never have to worry about me in your precious online racing -- I don't play online games precisely because of smug assholes like you.
The move is likely to concern online publishers who rely on advertising to generate revenue.
Boo fucking hoo.
If the ad industry is going to be a vector for malware, then too damned bad. Inside the corporate firewall, the integrity of the systems is all that matters, and your damned ad revenue isn't even relevant.
Yes, your model says you'll make money from ads. But nobody is under any obligation to view your damned ads.
Don't like people skipping your ads? Make it a subscription site with login required.
Between the security risks, and the privacy implications, I will block any and all ads for as long as I have the technology to do so.
There are 8 domains just on this page as I type this whose sole purpose for being embedded in this page is advertising revenue. And that's not my damned problem.
I would love to see more corporate firewalls just straight up blocking ads. Corporations would probably have far less viruses and security problems.
If you're looking for a Linux command... throw the word Linux in.
Sometimes it takes a little coaxing to tell Google what the hell you're searching for, that doesn't mean it's not there, it means you're not giving enough context.
And, sometimes, what you're looking for is so damned specific there's almost nothing on the internet for it.
I've always found a couple of keywords and some quoted strings can go a long way to coaxing out what you're looking for.
Maybe your problem isn't that the search engine is thinking too much, it's that you're not thinking enough and blaming it for trying to help. If it's just common words, you'll get the most common matches.
While I admit that I don't have the requisite great big bushy beard to be 100% true to the image
No, no... the big bushy beard is for Big Iron UNIX people, Dungeon Masters, and lumbersexuals. The still-filling-in beard, goatee, or chinstrap is for the Linux people.
Come to think of it I should scoff about how WYSWIG office tools are pathetic
You can, I'm not so sure about should. Again, don't scare the normals. they spook easily.
PS vim is the best editor.
As long as it doesn't break any of the vi key sequences, there's nothing worse than being almost vi.
Slashdot Mirror
It was the dumbest monitor I ever saw.
I'm pretty sure it was a Dell product, it was a slightly non-standard resolution, and didn't have a single resolution it could do which matched the physical aspect ratio. All they did was make a monitor with rectangular pixels.
We couldn't understand the point behind it.
Near as I can figure, and some morons in marketing decided to "make teh widescreen for teh movies".
But it was useless for both graphics and videos, because graphics it couldn't draw a circle, and videos it just flattened the image as well.
It basically felt like the company got swindled and bought some crappy desktops targeted to home users to pretend like they were all fancy, but were, in fact, utter crap.
A lot of people spent a lot of time grumbling about it. It was quite pathetic.
Years ago at work, we got some new desktops.
The desktops had 4GB of RAM, but the Windows XP Pro on them could only see 3GB. One of the guys decided to put Windows 2003 on the machines to get access to all the RAM.
It turns out there were NO drivers for that hardware which existed for Windows 2003, and even getting back to XP Pro proved exceedingly difficult because ... it was almost impossible to find the drivers again as they basically weren't published anywhere. Essentially this machine could only work with the OEM image made up of drivers and other custom crap which were almost impossible to find.
To add insult to injury, whatever idiot had ordered them got us some new-fangled wide screen monitors. The problem was that while the actual resolution of the monitor was a 4:3 aspect ratio ... the actual pixels were flattened so that in its native resolution the screen drew circles as flattened ovals.
I 100% agree with you. Because non-standard crap from vendors makes for utter garbage machines.
So, basically they have shit hardware or shit drivers, and the only way they can think of to fix this is to prevent your operating system from trying to apply updates?
This sounds like incompetence all the way around, and is on-going proof of why I hate OEM laptops. Because they fill them with so much garbage.
It seems like every time I hear anything about Samsung, I find myself thinking "nope, I would never buy their crap".
And, once again, corporations put their own crappy "innovation" ahead of the needs of their customers.
Pathetic.
Yeah? And my tax software? The thing to update my navigation GPS? The thing to update my golf GPS? The software which came with my camera? iTunes?
Every other damned thing for which there isn't an equivalent on Linux?
Sorry, I've been using Linux since 1993. It has its places and uses.
But if you think it's a viable replacement for all Windows stuff, you are utterly delusional.
It too me many years to eventually say "fuck it", and go with having a Windows machine ... but I got there because there are many things I wish to do with my computer that to this day utterly suck on Linux. And I have zero interest if fucking around with a bunch of crap which almost works.
I never said create it yourself.
I said if you are looking for a "trusted encryption" being implemented by someone else on your behalf, there's a very high likelihood it's not secure from them. And if you want it to be secure form them, encrypt it yourself.
So, use a solution which exists, and which has a good reputation. But the cloud provider should be left out of the process of encryption and used to only store the encrypted data, because in all likelihood either for ease of use, or compliance with law enforcement ... if they have access to the crypto keys, your trust level is pretty much reduced to pretty much zero, because if they have the keys they can decrypt it.
The last thing people should be doing is rolling their own damned encryption solutions. The second last thing you shouldn't do is to use a service which is doing the encryption for you unless you know explicitly they have the ability to decrypt your stuff.
So, back when DropBox first came out and said "it's encrypted, we promise" .. it wasn't encrypted from them, they could and did look into it, and they could and would open it for law enforcement.
If you want it secure so only you can open it, you have to do it yourself, and understand that you have to take ownership for it if you screw up. Just don't assume that when a service says they'll encrypt your stuff that it means it's secure or private from that service.
That's not possible.
Except for work computers, which almost always require at least one annoying thing per year which needs Flash ... I've had Flash disabled or simply not installed for as long as there has existed Flash.
Because it's been a horribly broken security hole since it has existed.
My solution to broken videos that require Flash? I simply don't give a damn.
I'm sure there are things people feel they can't live without that require Flash ... for me, I have yet to find a single one.
After over a decade of simply not using Flash, I don't really feel like I've missed much.
I hope you find what you're looking for, but I would suggest that:
This isn't possible.
Unless you own the crypto bits, and you know for a fact that they don't have any way to access your keys, you should assume any provider can probably comply with court orders and hand over your data.
Some of them might be peaking even if they claim not to be.
The only way you can be guaranteed your stuff is secure is to encrypt it yourself, and cut the cloud out of the process entirely.
There pretty much is no such thing as "trustworthy encryption" you didn't do yourself.
If it isn't malware, it's massively badly written code by a bunch of idiots.
Once again, companies take shortcuts, and add in security holes.
I'm not entirely sure I know anything about MacKeeper, what with me not having used a Mac in a very long time ... but this sounds idiotic.
Well, this was his username on YouTube, and even if YouTube changed their URL structure, the channel registered in his name got taken away, assigned to an entity who didn't ask for it, and marked as now being the property of someone else.
This isn't like making a reference to something which should be changing ... this is saying "my channel on YouTube is Lush, and even if YouTube changes its URL, my channel is still Lush".
When YouTube basically exists to make money from showing the content other people have created, suddenly deciding after ten freaking years that the channel should be arbitrarily given to someone else is basically bullshit.
This is entirely about Google being assholes, who are preemptively trying to maximize the branding for people who didn't ask for it, and suddenly deciding that the 10 years he used that account and placed content on YouTube doesn't matter.
Sorry, but this is stupidity on behalf of Google, and has nothing to do with URLs which change. They took away his frigging account name for NO other reason than some algorithm said so.
Basically they picked the entity who they felt deserved the name, instead of the one who had been using it and had a legitimate claim to us.
It's just another example of how Google is full of shit and no longer following their "do no evil" thing -- because this is an asshole move.
My municipality tried this whole incinerating thing.
The short version: the technology wasn't up to the task, the amount of energy they got out of it was woefully inadequate, the company went out of business.
Incineration technology just doesn't sound like where it needs to be, and it doesn't produce energy in a way that is worth actually doing.
It may be a good idea in theory, but in practice, I don't think it works very well.
But there is no justifiable reason why Google should do crap like this.
Lush isn't a sufficiently unique or trademarked term that there could only be one entity using the word Lush. It's not like it was "Lush Cosmetics" and he was stepping on their trademark.
And since trademarks are only valid in your area of business, there is NO legal justification for saying it's not his anymore.
He's been using it for a decade by the looks of it, so there is no way you can claim he's a late comer or cybersquatting.
Basically this is a bullshit policy, badly implemented by Google/YouTube, which basically says "we're going to arbitrarily decide that the branding you have worked on for years is no longer your own because we say so".
So, take your pick, evil, incompetent, or just plain old assholes -- possibly all three. But Google is the ones doing stupid things here.
This is kind of like Slashdot saying "we've decided the account name cdrudge should belong to someone else now" -- because it makes no sense whatsoever to take it away from someone who has been using it for so long.
This is just random garbage by random algorithms which isn't based on a damned thing than the arbitrary code Google has decided is the arbiter of these things.
And, once again, Nerval's Lobster gets a piece accepted which is little more than a thinly veiled reason to link to one of the endless stream of lame stories about "how much toilet paper do you really need" articles.
Have you guys become so blatant with the click-whoring to Dice you have designated people who write pithy sounding summaries for repetitive and lame articles to drive to Dice.com?
Because there are suspicious amount of lame "how much do you" articles submitted by this one poster, and all linking back to Dice.com. And never a mention that Dice.com is the parent company and is shamelessly shilling their own crap.
Sorry guys, but you're becoming really obvious with this.
Well, having had Microsoft try to sneak in something to my Windows 8.1 which was solely for their benefit ... nagging me to upgrade to Windows 10, and embedding stuff to measure how bad of a job they did ... I simply don't believe or trust that this will be no different than before.
Because Microsoft is actively making changes to push us to Windows 10, has said that Windows 10 Home will not be able to defer updates, and have more or less decided they'll be the ones calling the shots.
So, I don't think it is a slippery slope, and I don't think stopping paying will simply mean you now have an older OS with no more updates. I don't trust them to play fairly and honestly.
Because Microsoft is already doing crap of rolling stuff out as an important update which really are nothing more than crapware to start nagging you to upgrade.
I'm just not buying at all this will be benign and stuff you can ignore. Because they're already well past that when I have to uninstall the thing which basically says "upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later" -- there simply was no option to say "no, I don't want this upgrade now or ever piss off an go away".
Which means Microsoft isn't asking me to upgrade, they're telling me to. And, again, fuck that. It's my computer, not theirs.
If they're already sneaking in shit which is 100% about turning me into a beta tester, they're already proving they're not trustworthy and are acting like they're in charge of the machine. They're not. And they need to realize that quickly before they piss off users even more.
Honestly, install Classic Shell, follow the instructions you can find on the intertubes to make the Metro crap almost completely go away, get rid of their stupid start screen altogether, disable the Windows store and the apps ... and then just realize that the crap Microsoft has "innovated" is useful for touch screens, and beginning users and get on with their life.
Windows 8.1, once you remove the crap interface stuff Microsoft put into it, is a stable platform with a Start menu, which looks like it has for years.
I had to track down what update Microsoft snuck in as an "important update" which immediately started nagging me to install Windows 10 so it would leave me in peace. I fully expect to have to do that again because I'm sure Microsoft is going to try to decide for me that I really did intend to upgrade.
Sorry, Microsoft. It's my computer, not yours. I'll fucking decide when to upgrade the OS, and I'm not using my time and resources to be a damned beta tester for you.
Out of the box, Windows 8.1 is nothing but crap interfaces optimized for tablets, but terrible as a desktop. Get rid of the Metro crap and run Classic Shell, and it's pretty nice.
Well, I'll tell you the problems with a subscription model.
First off, it's a nuisance. I've bought a new PCC which came with an OS. It's a done transaction. I have no intention of then providing my credit card and billing information to Microsoft. It's just not happening.
And then there's the expectation that eventually it becomes extortionware -- nice OS you have, shame if something happened to it if you stopped paying us.
Again, not happening. We just don't trust companies to not screw us over. Especially not Microsoft.
Why should the data center even care.
Most of them are essentially charging rent ... as long as the customer keeps paying, WTF do they care if you actually use them for anything?
This isn't incompetence on behalf of the data centers. Maybe companies who have machines they've lost track of what they're for.
I'm pretty sure the current internet has blackjack and hookers. Like, for real.
I know, it's shocking. But try to keep up.
Well, start small ... block ads, ignore sourceforge, disable Flash, block javascript.
That probably covers a lot of it.
Gee, that's funny ... because a google search for "linux command line transcode video" gives me a ton of relevant looking searches right off the bat.
Again, experience tells me you can feed it words to tell it what it is you're looking for.
What, you mean things somehow different from the already fucked up money system we have?
Sorry, but the only people who would notice that would be the ones skimming off the top through High Frequency Trading.
The rest of us will have no damned way of knowing.
Ban hammer? You seem to assume those of us who like a particular kind of racing game give a shit about online gaming.
Trust me, you will never have to worry about me in your precious online racing -- I don't play online games precisely because of smug assholes like you.
Boo fucking hoo.
If the ad industry is going to be a vector for malware, then too damned bad. Inside the corporate firewall, the integrity of the systems is all that matters, and your damned ad revenue isn't even relevant.
Yes, your model says you'll make money from ads. But nobody is under any obligation to view your damned ads.
Don't like people skipping your ads? Make it a subscription site with login required.
Between the security risks, and the privacy implications, I will block any and all ads for as long as I have the technology to do so.
There are 8 domains just on this page as I type this whose sole purpose for being embedded in this page is advertising revenue. And that's not my damned problem.
I would love to see more corporate firewalls just straight up blocking ads. Corporations would probably have far less viruses and security problems.
If you're looking for a Linux command ... throw the word Linux in.
Sometimes it takes a little coaxing to tell Google what the hell you're searching for, that doesn't mean it's not there, it means you're not giving enough context.
And, sometimes, what you're looking for is so damned specific there's almost nothing on the internet for it.
I've always found a couple of keywords and some quoted strings can go a long way to coaxing out what you're looking for.
Maybe your problem isn't that the search engine is thinking too much, it's that you're not thinking enough and blaming it for trying to help. If it's just common words, you'll get the most common matches.
Not until you are clear from danger. In the event of an actual emergency, these people are your last line of defense.
In the case of a real emergency, you don't have time to stop to disable them just for sport.
Once you're clear and can do so from good cover, go ahead. ;-)
No, no ... the big bushy beard is for Big Iron UNIX people, Dungeon Masters, and lumbersexuals. The still-filling-in beard, goatee, or chinstrap is for the Linux people.
You can, I'm not so sure about should. Again, don't scare the normals. they spook easily.
As long as it doesn't break any of the vi key sequences, there's nothing worse than being almost vi.