While you most likely do not need such a large microSD card in your life...
At one time I bought an iPad with 16 GB of storage, since the storage was infinite compared
with my ability to come up with material to store on it. Then I discovered new applications
like ForeFlight for flight planning. I now use a 128 GB iPad mini in the cockpit.
When I bought my current Mac (admittedly, a few years ago) I figured that 4 GB of RAM and 250 GB of
disc space was ample. I bought a GoPro camera earlier this year. Two hundred fifty gigs is
now nothing.
Like so many of these things, the lawyers can pass all the laws they want. But this has already
been settled by the engineers. The onus is on the lawyers to figure stuff out, because this isn't going away
any time soon.
I have a legit account for the Canadian Netflix-lite and may pull the plug soon since
there is little of interest on it. U.S. Netflix doesn't interest me,
but I use a U.K. VPN to access BBC and ITV streaming content. I'd pay a reasonable amount to access it legitimately.
The Victor Hugo quote about nothing being more powerful than an idea whose time has come is, to me, the story
of Linux.
In the '90s we had the beginnings of the internet, so people could collaborate in ways they had never done
before. We had commodity PC hardware that could do interesting OS things. More.
My first Linux system was a 486/66 with Slackware 96 back in 1997. It worked fine. I use Slackware to this day on my own computers.
The standard at work is CentOS. So be it.
Many of these issues apply to the SkyTrain system here in Vancouver. High-tech (for its time), wildly non-standard, minimal
adoption by anybody else (Scarborough RT, Detroit Muggermover, partially London DLR), far
more expensive than an off-the-shelf system like they use in Calgary or Portland, showing its age after only 30 years...the
list goes on.
They had issues when they added a new line in 2002, and the control system
suddenly had to handle more than 256 cars at a time.
Like everybody else, I have an iPad. It works well. With no compelling reason to buy another one, I won't.
QED
Actually, I was planning to buy an iPad Mini until I won one in a contest.
It's smaller than my regular iPad and a better fit in the cockpit as an electronic flight planning tool.
They can tweak all they like but it won't make any difference. The underlying business model is broken
Changes in technology will do that.
I pulled the plug on cable years ago. When I look at what's on cable now
it's not even the handful of channels I would watch, it's the handful
of programs I would watch, since most of the content is garbage.
An on-demand setup like Netflix is a much better fit for me.
I've followed EV development with interest, but the larger ecosystem needs to be sorted out.
We need to generate electricity to charge EVs, and we need to distribute it where it's needed.
Here in British Columbia we generate almost all of our electricity with hydroelectric dams, so I'm not
worried about the carbon footprint.
I'd love to drive an electric car myself, and a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. But I live
in an apartment building, there are no EV facilities, and in the absence of incentives or legal requirements,
the owners aren't interested in changing that.
Here in Canada we ditched $1000 bills some years ago. They were a neat colour, rose pink. I only ever saw a
couple. Never handled one. We also turned $1 and $2 bills in to coins, and killed the penny entirely. But that's another story.
The biggest cash purchases I've ever made have been in the $1000 to $2000 range, and I paid in $100 bills.
There were very good reasons to use a pure oxygen atmosphere. And some very good
reasons why it was a really bad idea. NASA found that out. The hard way.
These things happen. At least it happened on the ground where they could figure out what went wrong.
If it had happened in space there would have been screams, garbled telemetry, then silence.
Nobody would have ever known what happened.
If you have a good story, everything else falls in to place.
I remember talking to people about
The Matrix. They went on at length about the special effects. The story
(if any) was incidental. I concluded it had no story at all.
The opposite extreme from my recent experience would be something like the old British
spy show
The Sandbaggers. Most of it is people talking on the phone and arguing in offices.
And it's utterly spellbinding...
I've always had decent posture, stood up straight, and colleagues at one past job wondered
if I had a military background. Figures. I try to give myself an excuse to stand up and
walk around every hour or two. Coffee is helpful.:-)
Like all things, it's a matter of balance. I'm tall (6'1") and if I didn't have good posture I'd
be in trouble.
I see an epidemic of slouching people with incipient dowager's humps from constantly leaning over
their smart phone...
I reuse to use my passport as ID for any national activity. International, sure. That's what it's for. But I do not, repeat,
do not need a passport to travel within my own country, or from one location to another in the U.S.A.
I usually use my pilot's license as ID when I check in. Canadian ones
look like passports and have many of the same
security features. Fine. Or so I thought once when a glubeshnik at Oakland International Airport started blankly
and called his supervisor. Rather than argue I showed him my driver's license instead.
Canada has gone for debit cards in a big way. I hardly ever pay cash for anything.
Our local public transit system is rolling out a
smartcard fare system. On my way to work maybe one person a day
pays their fare in cash. Yes, TransLink can track where I ride the bus. And if they ever misuse that information
I'll ditch my current Compass card and buy an unregistered anonymous one.
I too thought of my Maidenhead grid square (I'm typing this from CN89lg).
The most generally whacked-out addresses I've seen are in Costa Rica. No house numbers or anything,
mail is addressed by landmarks. One hotel I've stayed at had the postal address "300 meters East of the Escazú Country
Club, Old Highway to Santa Ana, Escazú, Costa Rica". Mail may be addressed with respect to any well-known (to locals, at least...)
landmarks; I've seen
stuff that referenced the town square, the bus station, even the local McDonald's.
It's because this year transgender issues have really come into the public conciousness, and I've seen a number of mainstream media outlets publishing articles on the language surrounding them. The general public is becoming more aware and learning how to speak about transgender people and issues without accidentally being offensive.
I don't view this as a transgender issue. I view it as a needed word. At one time "he" was accepted as a generic third-person
singular pronoun, but since few people born since about 1920 accept it as such, we needed a new word. Singular "they" fills that need.
Slashdot Mirror
My Samsung Galaxy something-or-other has FM radio and it works fine as long as you have headphones plugged in.
I'm in Canada, my phone is on Telus. I don't have data on it, it's too bloody expensive.
...laura
While you most likely do not need such a large microSD card in your life...
At one time I bought an iPad with 16 GB of storage, since the storage was infinite compared with my ability to come up with material to store on it. Then I discovered new applications like ForeFlight for flight planning. I now use a 128 GB iPad mini in the cockpit.
When I bought my current Mac (admittedly, a few years ago) I figured that 4 GB of RAM and 250 GB of disc space was ample. I bought a GoPro camera earlier this year. Two hundred fifty gigs is now nothing.
...laura
With the limited availability of Amazon Prime video this show is going to set new standards for piracy.
...laura
Canadian content applies to cable channels too. The authorities are still trying to figure out streaming services.
When I pulled the plug on my cable BBC Canada had degenerated to endless reruns of Top Gear and various Mike Holmes shows.
...laura
Like so many of these things, the lawyers can pass all the laws they want. But this has already been settled by the engineers. The onus is on the lawyers to figure stuff out, because this isn't going away any time soon.
I have a legit account for the Canadian Netflix-lite and may pull the plug soon since there is little of interest on it. U.S. Netflix doesn't interest me, but I use a U.K. VPN to access BBC and ITV streaming content. I'd pay a reasonable amount to access it legitimately.
...laura
The Victor Hugo quote about nothing being more powerful than an idea whose time has come is, to me, the story of Linux.
In the '90s we had the beginnings of the internet, so people could collaborate in ways they had never done before. We had commodity PC hardware that could do interesting OS things. More.
My first Linux system was a 486/66 with Slackware 96 back in 1997. It worked fine. I use Slackware to this day on my own computers. The standard at work is CentOS. So be it.
...laura
Many of these issues apply to the SkyTrain system here in Vancouver. High-tech (for its time), wildly non-standard, minimal adoption by anybody else (Scarborough RT, Detroit Muggermover, partially London DLR), far more expensive than an off-the-shelf system like they use in Calgary or Portland, showing its age after only 30 years...the list goes on.
They had issues when they added a new line in 2002, and the control system suddenly had to handle more than 256 cars at a time.
...laura
Like everybody else, I have an iPad. It works well. With no compelling reason to buy another one, I won't.
QED
Actually, I was planning to buy an iPad Mini until I won one in a contest. It's smaller than my regular iPad and a better fit in the cockpit as an electronic flight planning tool.
...laura
They can tweak all they like but it won't make any difference. The underlying business model is broken Changes in technology will do that.
I pulled the plug on cable years ago. When I look at what's on cable now it's not even the handful of channels I would watch, it's the handful of programs I would watch, since most of the content is garbage. An on-demand setup like Netflix is a much better fit for me.
...laura
I've followed EV development with interest, but the larger ecosystem needs to be sorted out. We need to generate electricity to charge EVs, and we need to distribute it where it's needed. Here in British Columbia we generate almost all of our electricity with hydroelectric dams, so I'm not worried about the carbon footprint.
I'd love to drive an electric car myself, and a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. But I live in an apartment building, there are no EV facilities, and in the absence of incentives or legal requirements, the owners aren't interested in changing that.
...laura
Here in Canada we ditched $1000 bills some years ago. They were a neat colour, rose pink. I only ever saw a couple. Never handled one. We also turned $1 and $2 bills in to coins, and killed the penny entirely. But that's another story.
The biggest cash purchases I've ever made have been in the $1000 to $2000 range, and I paid in $100 bills.
...laura
Then there is every time an airplane uses GPS to find where the airport and runway are, i.e.an RNAV approach.
...laura
There were very good reasons to use a pure oxygen atmosphere. And some very good reasons why it was a really bad idea. NASA found that out. The hard way.
These things happen. At least it happened on the ground where they could figure out what went wrong. If it had happened in space there would have been screams, garbled telemetry, then silence. Nobody would have ever known what happened.
...laura
All ADS-B ever seems to do is tell me the blindingly obvious, like the airplane holding short right in front of me waiting to take off.
I find VFR flight following to be much more useful.
...laura
If you have a good story, everything else falls in to place.
I remember talking to people about The Matrix. They went on at length about the special effects. The story (if any) was incidental. I concluded it had no story at all.
The opposite extreme from my recent experience would be something like the old British spy show The Sandbaggers. Most of it is people talking on the phone and arguing in offices. And it's utterly spellbinding...
...laura
No, thank you. A really fun concept, but after a while it had gotten repetitive and it was time to move on...
...laura
I've tried to contribute to Wikipedia. Nothing ever made it past the editors.
I don't try any more.
Case closed.
...laura
I've always had decent posture, stood up straight, and colleagues at one past job wondered if I had a military background. Figures. I try to give myself an excuse to stand up and walk around every hour or two. Coffee is helpful. :-)
Like all things, it's a matter of balance. I'm tall (6'1") and if I didn't have good posture I'd be in trouble.
I see an epidemic of slouching people with incipient dowager's humps from constantly leaning over their smart phone...
...laura
I reuse to use my passport as ID for any national activity. International, sure. That's what it's for. But I do not, repeat, do not need a passport to travel within my own country, or from one location to another in the U.S.A.
I usually use my pilot's license as ID when I check in. Canadian ones look like passports and have many of the same security features. Fine. Or so I thought once when a glubeshnik at Oakland International Airport started blankly and called his supervisor. Rather than argue I showed him my driver's license instead.
...laura
Canada has gone for debit cards in a big way. I hardly ever pay cash for anything.
Our local public transit system is rolling out a smartcard fare system. On my way to work maybe one person a day pays their fare in cash. Yes, TransLink can track where I ride the bus. And if they ever misuse that information I'll ditch my current Compass card and buy an unregistered anonymous one.
...laura
I too thought of my Maidenhead grid square (I'm typing this from CN89lg).
The most generally whacked-out addresses I've seen are in Costa Rica. No house numbers or anything, mail is addressed by landmarks. One hotel I've stayed at had the postal address "300 meters East of the Escazú Country Club, Old Highway to Santa Ana, Escazú, Costa Rica". Mail may be addressed with respect to any well-known (to locals, at least...) landmarks; I've seen stuff that referenced the town square, the bus station, even the local McDonald's.
...laura
I didn't get the original email, but I got one from Patreon repudiating that original email.
I contribute to a couple of Youtube channels. This is one about aviation. This one is too. So sue me.
...laura
It's because this year transgender issues have really come into the public conciousness, and I've seen a number of mainstream media outlets publishing articles on the language surrounding them. The general public is becoming more aware and learning how to speak about transgender people and issues without accidentally being offensive.
I don't view this as a transgender issue. I view it as a needed word. At one time "he" was accepted as a generic third-person singular pronoun, but since few people born since about 1920 accept it as such, we needed a new word. Singular "they" fills that need.
...laura
I'm surprised singular "they" has only just now made it. I've heard it (and used it myself) since the 1980s.
Times change. Language changes.
...laura
Never a good start...