Gah. I had the opportunity to visit Vienna, Austria for work last summer, and my chip-and-signature cards were useless for automated kiosks. Fortunately a friend had lent me a few euros before I left, so I was able to use cash to purchase U-Bahn fare. Thanks to reading Slashdot comments, I knew about this problem and asked before the trip, and the credit card company (the one contracted by my employer for our company cards) said, "Errr, what? We have European travelers all the time and you're the first to ask!" But the same damn company has issued a chip-and-signature (personal) card to me for years. Yearrgghhh.
Austria seemed to be more of a cash operation anyway. I got a few odd looks when I pulled out the card, and I quickly realized cash was the norm. I even ran into one place that refused the card. The people were awesomely friendly, though. Austria is definitely on the list for a second visit.
I'm with you. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2009 because I didn't like any of the Linux laptop offerings, and I didn't want another Windows machine. I figured if I didn't like OS X, I could run Linux on it. Well, here we are over 5 years later and I'm still running OS X it. It's pretty nice, and I still have the command line.
That said, I'm typing this on a Kubuntu 14.04 desktop, and it's pretty nice too. My one gripe is that it seems a bit flaky compared to my prior Slackware installs - weird things like the login box showing on different monitors when I boot up (today it was on the second monitor; yesterday it was on the primary). Things like that make me a bit nervous, but aside from those it does work well. I just wish I'd installed Kubuntu 64 bit instead of 32 bit...I'm not sure why I did that, probably because of issues I had with libraries under Slackware64. (I still use Slackware on my server, but it's due for a software upgrade...I haven't decided what route to go with it.)
My experience with the WRT54G v1.1 was ten years of trouble free use. I replaced it only because I wanted a faster network (I move large files around frequently). In fact, I still have my WRT54G, and I needed to come up with a way to get internet access for one device to multiple devices at a show we run, so I installed dd-wrt or openwrt on it and had it connecting to two wireless networks (one with net access and our private one). Even when I was running a live video stream through that connection, the WRT54G performed perfectly. I wish my newer Netgear router was as reliable as my WRT54G was; it requires a power cycle every few weeks.
Your dot matrix suggestion made me think of another printer: Daisy wheels. I don't think they lasted long, but...what a racket when they were running! I'm not even sure how to describe it - very fast, irregular (because of spaces) banging.
As soon as I type the first 'o', itunes suggests "Alice COOPER", and autocompletes what I'm typing; and it helpfully capitalizes the 'o' I just typed too. I literally could not find any way to get itunes to accept "Alice Cooper" into the box via the keyboard. I resorted to typing Alice Cooper in notepad, and using paste in iTunes as the ONLY way to fix the artist name.
A few versions back that dialog box worked just fine.
That's just one tiny example that represents an entire CLASS of grief I have with apple software these days. I run into the same sorts of grief all over the place.
Even clippy was less annoying... at least it asked if you wanted help, and you say no, and you could even turn it off. Apple now just assumes you need help, won't let you say no or turn it off, and won't even let you fix its incorrect guesses. UX idiocy.
You know, I'm seeing that in Safari on my MB Pro. I have a home-brew photo database with a web front end, and for picture #1 I might type a caption like, "skater types on slashdot", then for the second picture which happens to be of me, I'll type in "skater". Then it fills in the "...types on slashdot" and I have to fight with it to keep that part away. I thought it was because my computer is running slowly and I was typing quickly, but it sounds exactly like what you're seeing.
I gave my iPhone to my daughter and bought a Nexus 5 precisely because getting the operating system (iOS 7 at that point) was just one big piece of suckage, and having to use the iTunes software to move songs, video and books off my computer. iTunes may actually be the worst software I've seen any major software house produce. If its designers and coders had any sense of honor, they'd find the highest building they could, and leap off of it.
Android has its flaws, but when I plug my into my computer's USB port, I can copy files on and off without trouble, create new directories, without any hassle at all.
The worst part of my saga is that my wife went out and bought an iPhone and an iPod, and I was trying to show her how to move all her MP3s on to those devices, and I discovered the newest version of iTunes is every bit as awful and non-intuitive as its forebears. After an hour of fucking about, my wife finally admitted that she should have gone with Android.
I had exactly the opposite problem with Android - getting music on to my S3 was a nightmare; after wasting many hours fighting with it, I finally had to buy software to sync over the air, and that never worked all that well. I never could get my Macbook Pro or my Linux desktop to recognize my Android phone when I plugged it in, even with the Android drivers for OS X that are available. When the iPhone 6 came out, I preordered one and was able to load songs on to it with just a couple clicks and some time to sync, no problem. Maybe iTunes for Windows is bad, but it always seems to work fine for me under OS X.
I just tried Ubuntu on my MB Pro 5,5 yesterday. It wouldn't come out of resume (after a minute or so of screwing around, it would lock up to the point where I could see my desktop background and a useable mouse cursor, but nothing else happened). I haven't had time to search for a potential solution to that issue.
I was Linux trying because I've been having major slowness issues since Mavericks when displaying pictures. There are lots of proposed solutions in the Apple forums, but none seem to work for me; it's still slow. I know it's a 5 year old computer, but I wasn't having an issue under Mountain Lion! The delay started when I upgraded to Mavericks. And, frankly, a Core 2 Duo processor ought to be able to render a picture within a few seconds; it can take 20-30 seconds in Preview or LilyView (an app I downloaded when this problem first appeared). I checked; it's definitely processor bound; I was hoping perhaps a flash drive upgrade would help, but it's the processor that spikes, not I/O. From what I read, the issue is that Mavericks went fully 64 bit and the old 64 bit processors really suffered from the change... maybe trying to encourage me to buy a new one? You know, I still have a Mountain Lion disc around...
I was testing Linux on it because I was hoping it'd be faster, but unfortunately Linux wasn't working all that well on my MBP, and RAW files and Linux are still a bit of a beast. I could probably work around the latter, but the former was kind of a PITA.
I hate to buy a new one because they're damn expensive, and my old one should be working fine. Rendering 16 megapixel pictures is not one of the things that's driving processor design these days.
I don't recall noticing lens flares in either movie. But that might be because I went to be entertained for two hours or whatever, not to nitpick the movies apart because they don't match my exact definition of what Star Trek should or shouldn't be.
We had a debate in a "Current Events" class in high school about violent lyrics. As a heavy metal fan, this was important to me. Unfortunately, at the time, I wasn't very familiar with the words to "Suicide Solution", and one of my classmates had transcribed only one verse, showing how it was "advocating suicide". (To keep this semi-relevant, I'll also add that he said the lyrics were hard to understand and took him a while to discern.) I told him he was taking it out of context, but unfortunately I couldn't remember the full context of the song. He just shrugged as though context didn't matter, when, in fact, "Suicide Solution" is probably something everyone should listen to and think about. I wanted to kick myself when I remembered the theme of the song.
The debate accomplished nothing other than teaching me that I need to be as familiar as I can with the music I love, because people have a lot of misconceptions about it. I still get very strange looks when I say I listen to metal. I've even gotten my wife into some of it - I catch her singing Ozzy songs now and then, things she never listened to before she met me, and she's gone with me to Rush and Queensryche concerts.:) Of course, in recent years, "Crazy Train" and Judas Priest's "Electric Eye" intro have appeared in minivan commercials, so it's apparently not quite as bad as it supposedly once was.
I've got a Samsung S3 with a broken screen sitting at home. I was getting out of our truck with my hands full, and my phone fell. I think it actually broke when it hit the running board. My fault, and these things happen. I have a new screen to put on it, but I haven't gotten a heat gun yet to remove the old one. I didn't know how easy they were to replace until I was at a car dealer, and the financing guy saw the broken phone and showed me the kit to replace the screen, and says he does it all the time for friends and family. (He happened to have one in his office because a coworker had broken her phone.)
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. I've lived in the US my entire life, and I've read a lot about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, but the GP post was the very first time I'd heard this supposed strong connection between Reagan's speech and the wall falling. His speech may have been a significant event - everyone remembers "Tear down this wall!" - but I've never heard the theory that that's what caused the opening. I've also never heard that the Hoff had anything to do with it, either, other than singing atop it after the gates opened. I didn't bother to check the article for the other three people.
Why? You'd have the gov't spend money to overbuild or be able to scale a website for the one time every few years it gets overloaded? Seems like a waste of money to me. It does just fine 99.9999999% of the time.
The other issue was that all the news articles said things like, "X Million Hondas Recalled!" As a Honda Accord owner, I clicked on the article and looked, only to discover it was for rather old Accords (nothing newer than like 2003; ours is a 2012). Others probably went to safercar.gov instead, only to find it didn't apply. (That headline should have been in the favorite clickbait poll. "X Million Cars from 1998-2003 recalled!" would have been better, but...fewer clicks!)
I know of one near DC where the speed limit is 55 mph and there are traffic lights (it's actually a very well-known road - Pennsylvania Avenue - but the Maryland portion of it). However, during rush hour, the traffic rarely moves as fast as 55 mph, at least inside the beltway, I suspect because of volume and people are conditioned to think "traffic lights = max speed is 45 mph" or something like that. The latter theory is based on seeing people doing 45 mph with a clear stretch of road in front of them, and the next light quite a ways away.
I saw a documentary that demonstrated the Exxon Valdeez was large enough to support life for quite a few people...as long as no one dropped a match into the tanks, of course.
A small family sedan that hasn't been made since 1994 still hits #7 in getting the most tickets? It's the Mercury version of the Ford Tempo, which didn't make the top 20 at all. And I'd be willing to bet Ford sold a lot more Tempos than they did Topazs...
I had a similar problem with a work-issued Blackberry 9930. The only chargers that worked with it were the included Blackberry charger and the charger for my Samsung S3. We have at least 30 chargers laying around our house and cars, ranging from name brands like Apple and Samsung to no-name chargers we got for free, including chargers for my wife's iPad and my Asus tablet, and I tried them all. Only the Blackberry and Samsung adapters worked to charge the Blackberry. The cable didn't seem to matter - as long as it had the correct USB port, it worked - but the power adapter did.
Here in the US, I've done it once, and that was to confirm the chip in my card worked before I flew off to Europe with it. Turns out it's a chip-and-signature card, so it was as useless there as any other non-NFC card...perhaps even more useless come to think of it, because it ACTED like it was working. (From reading Slashdot, I knew this was likely the case before leaving, and I'd asked my banks about a chip-and-PIN card and got back, "Wuuhhh?", so I was prepared for this problem.)
So, for us, the Apple pay is actually a nice leap forward - as others said, right now it's a very fragmented market. I've had an Android phone with an NFC chip for two years now, and I've used it perhaps half a dozen times, just playing around to see if I could scan a credit card, my passport, or my cat's RFID chip (no go on the cat). Until I saw the Apple Pay announcement, I didn't care whether my next phone (which I had already decided was going to be an iPhone) had an NFC chip or not. I get why people in other countries wouldn't care as much about it, though.
Re:Just one question...
on
iOS 8 Review
·
· Score: 1
Only 3rd party alarm apps - the built-in app from Apple works fine whether it's in the foreground or not.
I have an iPhone 6 on order, and I plan to use it either way, but I couldn't find the answer to this in the article: Can I use a playlist for an alarm, or can alarm apps work correctly in the background? Since the built-in alarm app only plays one song, you had to use another app if you wanted to wake up to a random song off a playlist. iOS 7 and older versions required that app to be in the foreground for it to play the song. Normally not a big deal, but if you answered a text message in the middle of the night or couldn't sleep and did a little websurfing and forgot to switch back to the alarm app, your alarm wouldn't go off. This isn't an issue with Android, and I'm hoping Apple has fixed this serious limitation - either by allowing the alarm app to use a playlist, or by allowing 3rd party apps to play a song without being in the foreground. It's my biggest pet peeve about iOS, especially after having an Android phone without this limit for the last two years. (If you read reviews in the App Store for alarm apps, most or all of them have people complaining about the app having to be in the foreground - they don't realize it's a limit of iOS rather than a limit of the app. So, I know it's not just me that's annoyed by this.)
I ordered one this morning, because I can't wait to stop using my Samsung S3. The S3 was supposed to be an iPhone killer; instead, it killed my interest in Android.
Slashdot Mirror
Gah. I had the opportunity to visit Vienna, Austria for work last summer, and my chip-and-signature cards were useless for automated kiosks. Fortunately a friend had lent me a few euros before I left, so I was able to use cash to purchase U-Bahn fare. Thanks to reading Slashdot comments, I knew about this problem and asked before the trip, and the credit card company (the one contracted by my employer for our company cards) said, "Errr, what? We have European travelers all the time and you're the first to ask!" But the same damn company has issued a chip-and-signature (personal) card to me for years. Yearrgghhh.
Austria seemed to be more of a cash operation anyway. I got a few odd looks when I pulled out the card, and I quickly realized cash was the norm. I even ran into one place that refused the card. The people were awesomely friendly, though. Austria is definitely on the list for a second visit.
I'm with you. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2009 because I didn't like any of the Linux laptop offerings, and I didn't want another Windows machine. I figured if I didn't like OS X, I could run Linux on it. Well, here we are over 5 years later and I'm still running OS X it. It's pretty nice, and I still have the command line.
That said, I'm typing this on a Kubuntu 14.04 desktop, and it's pretty nice too. My one gripe is that it seems a bit flaky compared to my prior Slackware installs - weird things like the login box showing on different monitors when I boot up (today it was on the second monitor; yesterday it was on the primary). Things like that make me a bit nervous, but aside from those it does work well. I just wish I'd installed Kubuntu 64 bit instead of 32 bit...I'm not sure why I did that, probably because of issues I had with libraries under Slackware64. (I still use Slackware on my server, but it's due for a software upgrade...I haven't decided what route to go with it.)
My experience with the WRT54G v1.1 was ten years of trouble free use. I replaced it only because I wanted a faster network (I move large files around frequently). In fact, I still have my WRT54G, and I needed to come up with a way to get internet access for one device to multiple devices at a show we run, so I installed dd-wrt or openwrt on it and had it connecting to two wireless networks (one with net access and our private one). Even when I was running a live video stream through that connection, the WRT54G performed perfectly. I wish my newer Netgear router was as reliable as my WRT54G was; it requires a power cycle every few weeks.
Why did you cite a New Jersey webpage for a question about California's laws?
Your dot matrix suggestion made me think of another printer: Daisy wheels. I don't think they lasted long, but...what a racket when they were running! I'm not even sure how to describe it - very fast, irregular (because of spaces) banging.
Shit - that totally did it! It's now about 2 seconds to display a picture! MUCH better. THANK YOU AC!
I keep typing ... A-l-i-c-e- -C-o...
As soon as I type the first 'o', itunes suggests "Alice COOPER", and autocompletes what I'm typing; and it helpfully capitalizes the 'o' I just typed too. I literally could not find any way to get itunes to accept "Alice Cooper" into the box via the keyboard. I resorted to typing Alice Cooper in notepad, and using paste in iTunes as the ONLY way to fix the artist name.
A few versions back that dialog box worked just fine.
That's just one tiny example that represents an entire CLASS of grief I have with apple software these days. I run into the same sorts of grief all over the place.
Even clippy was less annoying... at least it asked if you wanted help, and you say no, and you could even turn it off. Apple now just assumes you need help, won't let you say no or turn it off, and won't even let you fix its incorrect guesses. UX idiocy.
You know, I'm seeing that in Safari on my MB Pro. I have a home-brew photo database with a web front end, and for picture #1 I might type a caption like, "skater types on slashdot", then for the second picture which happens to be of me, I'll type in "skater". Then it fills in the "...types on slashdot" and I have to fight with it to keep that part away. I thought it was because my computer is running slowly and I was typing quickly, but it sounds exactly like what you're seeing.
I gave my iPhone to my daughter and bought a Nexus 5 precisely because getting the operating system (iOS 7 at that point) was just one big piece of suckage, and having to use the iTunes software to move songs, video and books off my computer. iTunes may actually be the worst software I've seen any major software house produce. If its designers and coders had any sense of honor, they'd find the highest building they could, and leap off of it.
Android has its flaws, but when I plug my into my computer's USB port, I can copy files on and off without trouble, create new directories, without any hassle at all.
The worst part of my saga is that my wife went out and bought an iPhone and an iPod, and I was trying to show her how to move all her MP3s on to those devices, and I discovered the newest version of iTunes is every bit as awful and non-intuitive as its forebears. After an hour of fucking about, my wife finally admitted that she should have gone with Android.
I had exactly the opposite problem with Android - getting music on to my S3 was a nightmare; after wasting many hours fighting with it, I finally had to buy software to sync over the air, and that never worked all that well. I never could get my Macbook Pro or my Linux desktop to recognize my Android phone when I plugged it in, even with the Android drivers for OS X that are available. When the iPhone 6 came out, I preordered one and was able to load songs on to it with just a couple clicks and some time to sync, no problem. Maybe iTunes for Windows is bad, but it always seems to work fine for me under OS X.
I just tried Ubuntu on my MB Pro 5,5 yesterday. It wouldn't come out of resume (after a minute or so of screwing around, it would lock up to the point where I could see my desktop background and a useable mouse cursor, but nothing else happened). I haven't had time to search for a potential solution to that issue.
I was Linux trying because I've been having major slowness issues since Mavericks when displaying pictures. There are lots of proposed solutions in the Apple forums, but none seem to work for me; it's still slow. I know it's a 5 year old computer, but I wasn't having an issue under Mountain Lion! The delay started when I upgraded to Mavericks. And, frankly, a Core 2 Duo processor ought to be able to render a picture within a few seconds; it can take 20-30 seconds in Preview or LilyView (an app I downloaded when this problem first appeared). I checked; it's definitely processor bound; I was hoping perhaps a flash drive upgrade would help, but it's the processor that spikes, not I/O. From what I read, the issue is that Mavericks went fully 64 bit and the old 64 bit processors really suffered from the change... maybe trying to encourage me to buy a new one? You know, I still have a Mountain Lion disc around...
I was testing Linux on it because I was hoping it'd be faster, but unfortunately Linux wasn't working all that well on my MBP, and RAW files and Linux are still a bit of a beast. I could probably work around the latter, but the former was kind of a PITA.
I hate to buy a new one because they're damn expensive, and my old one should be working fine. Rendering 16 megapixel pictures is not one of the things that's driving processor design these days.
I don't recall noticing lens flares in either movie. But that might be because I went to be entertained for two hours or whatever, not to nitpick the movies apart because they don't match my exact definition of what Star Trek should or shouldn't be.
We had a debate in a "Current Events" class in high school about violent lyrics. As a heavy metal fan, this was important to me. Unfortunately, at the time, I wasn't very familiar with the words to "Suicide Solution", and one of my classmates had transcribed only one verse, showing how it was "advocating suicide". (To keep this semi-relevant, I'll also add that he said the lyrics were hard to understand and took him a while to discern.) I told him he was taking it out of context, but unfortunately I couldn't remember the full context of the song. He just shrugged as though context didn't matter, when, in fact, "Suicide Solution" is probably something everyone should listen to and think about. I wanted to kick myself when I remembered the theme of the song.
The debate accomplished nothing other than teaching me that I need to be as familiar as I can with the music I love, because people have a lot of misconceptions about it. I still get very strange looks when I say I listen to metal. I've even gotten my wife into some of it - I catch her singing Ozzy songs now and then, things she never listened to before she met me, and she's gone with me to Rush and Queensryche concerts. :) Of course, in recent years, "Crazy Train" and Judas Priest's "Electric Eye" intro have appeared in minivan commercials, so it's apparently not quite as bad as it supposedly once was.
I've got a Samsung S3 with a broken screen sitting at home. I was getting out of our truck with my hands full, and my phone fell. I think it actually broke when it hit the running board. My fault, and these things happen. I have a new screen to put on it, but I haven't gotten a heat gun yet to remove the old one. I didn't know how easy they were to replace until I was at a car dealer, and the financing guy saw the broken phone and showed me the kit to replace the screen, and says he does it all the time for friends and family. (He happened to have one in his office because a coworker had broken her phone.)
-5 seconds to comply...
-10 seconds to comply...
(They're unarmed.)
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. I've lived in the US my entire life, and I've read a lot about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, but the GP post was the very first time I'd heard this supposed strong connection between Reagan's speech and the wall falling. His speech may have been a significant event - everyone remembers "Tear down this wall!" - but I've never heard the theory that that's what caused the opening. I've also never heard that the Hoff had anything to do with it, either, other than singing atop it after the gates opened. I didn't bother to check the article for the other three people.
Make every single elected official list their top 5 corporate sponsors next to their name on the ballot.
It's probably the same list for each candidate from the two major parties.
Often, they build an assembly plant in the US to get around this issue. Then, this happens.
Why? You'd have the gov't spend money to overbuild or be able to scale a website for the one time every few years it gets overloaded? Seems like a waste of money to me. It does just fine 99.9999999% of the time.
The other issue was that all the news articles said things like, "X Million Hondas Recalled!" As a Honda Accord owner, I clicked on the article and looked, only to discover it was for rather old Accords (nothing newer than like 2003; ours is a 2012). Others probably went to safercar.gov instead, only to find it didn't apply. (That headline should have been in the favorite clickbait poll. "X Million Cars from 1998-2003 recalled!" would have been better, but...fewer clicks!)
I know of one near DC where the speed limit is 55 mph and there are traffic lights (it's actually a very well-known road - Pennsylvania Avenue - but the Maryland portion of it). However, during rush hour, the traffic rarely moves as fast as 55 mph, at least inside the beltway, I suspect because of volume and people are conditioned to think "traffic lights = max speed is 45 mph" or something like that. The latter theory is based on seeing people doing 45 mph with a clear stretch of road in front of them, and the next light quite a ways away.
I saw a documentary that demonstrated the Exxon Valdeez was large enough to support life for quite a few people...as long as no one dropped a match into the tanks, of course.
Mercury Topaz – 28.8%
A small family sedan that hasn't been made since 1994 still hits #7 in getting the most tickets? It's the Mercury version of the Ford Tempo, which didn't make the top 20 at all. And I'd be willing to bet Ford sold a lot more Tempos than they did Topazs...
I had a similar problem with a work-issued Blackberry 9930. The only chargers that worked with it were the included Blackberry charger and the charger for my Samsung S3. We have at least 30 chargers laying around our house and cars, ranging from name brands like Apple and Samsung to no-name chargers we got for free, including chargers for my wife's iPad and my Asus tablet, and I tried them all. Only the Blackberry and Samsung adapters worked to charge the Blackberry. The cable didn't seem to matter - as long as it had the correct USB port, it worked - but the power adapter did.
Here in the US, I've done it once, and that was to confirm the chip in my card worked before I flew off to Europe with it. Turns out it's a chip-and-signature card, so it was as useless there as any other non-NFC card...perhaps even more useless come to think of it, because it ACTED like it was working. (From reading Slashdot, I knew this was likely the case before leaving, and I'd asked my banks about a chip-and-PIN card and got back, "Wuuhhh?", so I was prepared for this problem.)
So, for us, the Apple pay is actually a nice leap forward - as others said, right now it's a very fragmented market. I've had an Android phone with an NFC chip for two years now, and I've used it perhaps half a dozen times, just playing around to see if I could scan a credit card, my passport, or my cat's RFID chip (no go on the cat). Until I saw the Apple Pay announcement, I didn't care whether my next phone (which I had already decided was going to be an iPhone) had an NFC chip or not. I get why people in other countries wouldn't care as much about it, though.
Only 3rd party alarm apps - the built-in app from Apple works fine whether it's in the foreground or not.
I have an iPhone 6 on order, and I plan to use it either way, but I couldn't find the answer to this in the article: Can I use a playlist for an alarm, or can alarm apps work correctly in the background? Since the built-in alarm app only plays one song, you had to use another app if you wanted to wake up to a random song off a playlist. iOS 7 and older versions required that app to be in the foreground for it to play the song. Normally not a big deal, but if you answered a text message in the middle of the night or couldn't sleep and did a little websurfing and forgot to switch back to the alarm app, your alarm wouldn't go off. This isn't an issue with Android, and I'm hoping Apple has fixed this serious limitation - either by allowing the alarm app to use a playlist, or by allowing 3rd party apps to play a song without being in the foreground. It's my biggest pet peeve about iOS, especially after having an Android phone without this limit for the last two years. (If you read reviews in the App Store for alarm apps, most or all of them have people complaining about the app having to be in the foreground - they don't realize it's a limit of iOS rather than a limit of the app. So, I know it's not just me that's annoyed by this.)
I ordered one this morning, because I can't wait to stop using my Samsung S3. The S3 was supposed to be an iPhone killer; instead, it killed my interest in Android.