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User: Freischutz

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Comments · 1,267

  1. Re:Cannot compute... on EU's Highest Court Delivers Blow To UK Snooper's Charter (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm imagining here, but I reckon Brexitards are cool with the Snooper's Charter and big goverment surveillance. Partly because they're mortally fearful, cowardly people who want the government to give them the warm fuzzies by spying on them, and partly because they're fucking cunts.

    Yeah, but its's fun to see them try and fail to withdraw money from an empty account a whole two years before payday. Brexiteers may get a stiffy at the mere thought of living in a society with 1984 level surveillance but they'll have to wait at least another two years before they are able to stroke that particular pole and achieve total surveillance nirvana.

  2. I would be a lot less annoyed by the lack of Mac attention at Apple if OS X would run on non-Apple hardware.

    Read the next four words carefully and let them sink in: Never going to happen ... Apple has said so on many occasions. Not licensing OS X to crapware producers in China is a key part of their business strategy. Still, congratulations on getting modded '+4 Insightful'.

  3. Working on laptops is a horrible experience. How mac users can tolerate this is baffling.

    Trollish as this may be, you have raised an interesting question. ALL laptops are crappy compared to a good desktop running the same OS: cramped keyboard and display, processor low-specced to prevent overheating, components that have to be ruggedized against vibration and shock. Everything on a laptop costs more to repair than on a desktop.

    We have been putting up with the limitations of laptops because of the need to be able to run the same software on the road as on your desk. Now that tablets and phones are taking over on the road, the advantages of good desktops are being recognized again.

    Of course everything costs more to repair on a laptop than a desktop. It's the nature of laptops to be as compact and light as possible and those are the things you sacrifice. How many upgrading options you want to sacrifice for reductions in weight varies from person to person. I am prepared to sacrifice a whole bunch of upgrading options and repariability for radical reductions in weight but other people may not feel that way. If you want an upgradeable laptop stay away from ultra compacts and buy one of those big clunky Dell slabs. As for tablets taking over from laptops for work on the road I can't second that. Unless all you do is very simple word processing, spreadsheet work or something in that vein you are better off with a laptop simply because it has a more powerful and flexible desktop environment. I don't play games, my development projects are not so resource heavy that replacing an i5 with an i7 will cut an hour off my compile time so a 12" MacBook type ultra compact laptop is more than enough for me and the amount of Photoshop work I do. I'll never buy a big fat tower case desktop again as long as I live. If I ever feel the need for more processing power I'll get something in the same league as the Mac Mini and the only upgrading options I'll care about there is RAM and storage.

  4. Re:Imagine the reverse on Electoral College Elects Donald Trump As President (nbcnews.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can only imagine the outcry, if HRC had won and the republicans were asking to ignore the votes of Americans, because they voted incorrectly. Seriously, the people who were honestly hoping that the electoral college voters would ignore the votes of the people of their states, and simply disenfranchise however many million voters it would take, just so they can get their way?

    I personally think Trump will be a horrible, horrible president. I cannot imagine any good coming from his presidency. The world climate alone may never recover. My only hope is that he will do something that can get him impeached relatively quickly, before too much damage can be done. Having said that, I still cannot understand the thought process behind attempting to tell 50% of the country, "your vote doesn't count, unless you vote the way you are supposed to". If that actually happened, the utter and complete demise of any semblance of democracy in the USA would have happened, and there would either be a) a revolt, or b) a new, non-democratic country.

    Can you imagine the outcry if China had hacked the RNC and tipped the election so that HCR won? Do you really think that all we'd have at this point would be a bipartisan call by the handful of remaining still rational Rep. and Dem. senators for action, a call that will come to nothing, and a few media personalities expressing 'concern'? We'd have a full scale armed uprising on our hans complete with convoys of camo coloured pickup trucks full of tacticool 2nd amendment people carrying tricked out M4s and AK-47s cruising through the streets and sweeping house to house looking for 'librul China lovin traitors'.

  5. Re:Full Employment Act for Comedians on Electoral College Elects Donald Trump As President (nbcnews.com) · · Score: 1

    One thing I can see happening is the Senate is going to give Tillerson a rough ride, and I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't make the cut. Trump may think Russia is America's new bestest friend, but it's pretty clear there's bipartisan sentiment in the Senate that the Kremlin is the same as it ever was.

    Trump is a dangerous imbecile and unfortunately large swaths of congress fall into the same category. I don't see the GOP opposing him too much, the popularity of Putin among GOP voters is soaring and most of the GOP's people in congress are far to busy cooking up ways to suck up to Trump. I don't really have problems with being tougher on China and easing tensions with Russia, but the way Trump is now behaving he will either (a) start a war in the Pacific by stepping over the line with China and drag the rest of NATO into it or (b) he will start a war in Europe by giving the Kremlin carte blanche on aggression to improve Exxon Mobile's bottom line and land a few good real estate deals ... or (c) the most frightening option, that he'll do both. If we get through 8 year of Trump without any of those three things happening it will be a borderline miracle.

  6. Maybe at the end of this the lesson here for Apple, Google, ... et al is that you should not piss off large blocks of nation states because they are bigger than you and not only do they have more lawyers than you, they make the laws. It must be surreal for a soulless megacorp to finally find out what it is like for a regular citizen when he/she gets bullied in court by somebody way bigger than them.

  7. Re:Do like them thar foreigners on Can Consumers Fight Package Thieves With Technology? (geekwire.com) · · Score: 2

    You've failed to take "most couriers are lazy, incompetent and/or overworked/underpaid" into account. Given detailed instructions and the person being in I've had multiple failed deliveries due to the courier being too damn stupid to survive in the wild. Or they've still managed to leave it outside the wrong address, or it's vanished without trace. Couriers are one of the least reliable services imaginable.

    Years and years ago I read a forum post by a guy who had some serious issues with some courier company. He was convinced they were deliberately damaging his shipments after he got a string of damaged packages. So one day he flipped (not sure if I recall correctly but I vaguely recall something abut him ordering a vintage vinyl record which, when it arrived, had been neatly folded over and pushed through his mail slot). He went to a hunting-goods store, got several glass bottles full of something called 'Moose Piss' (apparently this is a very very pungent product), packed the stuff into a box, covered it with 'Fragile' stickers and sent it to his father's house. Not surprisingly the package disappeared in transit. He then spent several days amusing himself by giving the courier service a hard time about how he didn't want to be compensated for the loss, he wanted his damn package back. So you see, you can have fun with these bozos too.

  8. Re:All climate research data and modelling should on US Scientists Scramble To Protect Research On Climate Change (cnn.com) · · Score: 2

    I do think there is a legitimate problem with our climate and that us humans are more than capable of influencing it for good or for worse even if it was an entirely natural cycle, if nothing else we should be able to ensure our survival.

    The problem I see is indeed the politicized parts of it. We are donating large swaths of money in the form of carbon credits to the very nations that should be improving their situation, but instead we export our "dirty air" and allow them to make it worse even though Chinese smog particles are now affecting coastal cities in the US. In the end it's just a taxation to offset debts and improve their economy and when it comes time for "them" to pay up they'll just back out of whatever agreement they signed, just like Trump wants to do.

    The United States with 318 million citizens produces something like 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions with an upward trend that is set to become even sharper now that Trump is president, persecuting climate scientists and promoting fossil fuels process that looks set to continue for the next eight years since there is little reason to believe that Trump won't be re-elected. The EU 28 with 508 million citizens manages to produce 10% of Greenhouse gas emissions with a downward trend. Pundits in the US likes to blame China for emissions and makes the case that China is a bigger emissions sinner than the US and that people should stop unfairly picking on the US which ignores the fact that China emits less per capita than the US. This is not to say that China should be exempt form emissions reduction but it is worth keeping in mind, when American Conservatives start whining about China's emissions and how the US is being treated unfairly by people demanding a decrease in US emissions, that compared to Europe the US should be producing about 6% of Global emissions in stead of 16%. The way I see Trump, Tillerson the entire US coal and oil lobby, Putin, Rosneft and the rest of the Trump administration's buddies in Moscow the Gulf states and the rest of OPEC is the they diehard holdouts of a dying energy industry. People can go on endlessly about nuclear which is alway going to be a leper in any discussion about energy production reform and they can pin their hopes on fusion but the countries that will dominate the energy production in the future are those that are working on renewables and perfecting related technologies (unless fusion finally pans out after being just around the corner for half a century).

  9. Re:Dual sims are popular in Asia... on Apple Explores Dual-SIM Capability in iPhones, Patent Filing Reveals (ibtimes.com.au) · · Score: 0

    Just don't try to charge your phone while you're listening to music...

    ... or you could stop bitching and pick up a bluetooth earplugs. It really isn't the end of the world.

  10. Re:New product opportunities on Apple Will Charge You $69 To Replace a Lost AirPod (macrumors.com) · · Score: 2

    That's why I'll be offering a special device called an AirPods retention strap. It consists of a small cord connected to the end of each AirPod, that you tie to the device. It's so genius, and so obvious, I don't know why anyone never thought of doing that before.

    You'd better patent that one fast... or let Apple do it for you...

    Too slow: https://www.amazon.com/Spigen-...

  11. Interesting... on Iceland Seeking 'Supercritical Steam' For Power Source (bbc.com) · · Score: 1
    Nothing ventured nothing gained. I particularly like this bit:

    If the drill does hit magma, because it is under pressure, it would be likely to come to the surface rapidly, he explained. "It would come out rather like lancing a boil or popping a spot. It would cause huge problems for the drilling operation itself, but it is unlikely to cause anything more significant than that."

    Would not want to be on that drill crew. Falling into lava or getting splashed with lava is just about the worst way I can imagine to die.

  12. The Pirate Bay, BitTorrent Websites To Be Blocked In Australia, Federal Court Rules (abc.net.au)

    Australian Torrenters, for those of you who haven't met him yet, allow me to introduce our new friend Virtual Private Networking...

  13. Re:Taking bets on Amazon Delivered Its First Customer Package By Drone (usatoday.com) · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think if they hovered over people's property they would get shot more often.

    UPS trucks are not much of a challenge but those Amazon drones are a whole other story. Those suckers are fast and manoeuvrable, which is why I have an auto targeting 100KW EMP gun on the roof of my truck. It's given a whole new meaning to the word 'wardriving'.

  14. Re:Statistics on California To Adopt First US Energy-Saving Rules For Computers (reuters.com) · · Score: -1, Troll

    California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors -- devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state.

    Does these figures include or exclude the extra cooling needs due to the computers and monitors? If your computer burns 200W, if you live in the South, you likely spend an additional 300+W on cooling to offset that heat production.

    You are wasting your time worrying about this. By the time Trump is done with these rules computers and all of their periphreals will be coal powered.

  15. Re:Farm? Hardly on First Offshore Wind Farm In US Waters Delivers Power To Rhode Island (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2, Informative

    Five turbines is more of a backyard wind power vegetable patch. There is an off shore wind farm at Anholt in Denmark that has 111 turbines and outputs 400MW, there is at least one bigger wind farm that Siemens built in the UK near London (IIRC) that has something like 170 turbines and outputs ~600MW. There is an even bigger array of wind farms coming on line at Nordeney in Germany called Gode Wind 1, 2, and 3 which will have a max output of something like 900MW. But let's not be too hard on our American friends, I applaud any effort on their part to kick their fossil fuel addiction and they do have a habit of not doing things in small measures for long.

  16. They'll buy 50 companies with an average of 1000 US workers each, then lay half of them off.

    ... in four to eight years when Trump leaves office.

    TFTFY

  17. This is what happens when you outsource manufacturing to China. Also, watch out for Amazon. Are there currently problems with counterfeits getting into the stream when fulfilled by Amazon? Or is it just their affiliates?

    Huh? Outsourcing to China is OK as long as you don't skimp on quality assurance. This is what happens when you don't kick China and others like it in the nuts for allowing product forgers to run rampant.

  18. Re:Environment Trumps money! on Fossil Fuel Divestment Has Doubled In the Last 15 Months (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    An that answer would be none. You know if you little snowflakes stopped worrying so much over what Trump might do and start telling him what you want done, well this might all work out after all.

    You mean like this:

    Mr. Trump.
    We want you to publish your tax returns, be tough on China without starting a war, be tough on Putin when he annexes the territory of neighbouring countries, honour your obligations under the NATO treaty in regard to Russian aggression in particular, prove that 3 million illegals voted in the election or withdraw that accusation, reform the rigged electoral system by eliminating Gerrymandering, work to abolish the electoral college and ensure that POTUS will in future be elected by popular vote, stop picking on racial and religious minorities, combat climate change, don't rob 22 million Americans of their health insurance, don't start any trade wars and please stop reading conspiracy blogs without having a few critical thoughts before re-tweeting their bullshit.

    Regards,
    The 'politically correct' people

    I kind of doubt he'll do any of that.

  19. Most likely the cause is fracking. Mining companies have been under-reporting and trying to cover up the levels of methane released by fracking for the past decade. We know this from several scientists in the United States that have done ground water testing and shown entire water supplies which can be lit by a match.

    It's more likely that this is methane being released from methane clathrate deposits on the ocean floor as the oceans warm up.

  20. Re:Deja vu on Bill Gates Announces A New $1 Billion Clean Energy Fund (fortune.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Er?

    Surely the salient differences are

    - Gates isn't in government - he didn't run for election on the basis of 'draining the swamp' of corruption - he didn't run for election on the basis of representing individuals against globalists

    Do you even know for sure that Gates is a liberal?

    I don't care if Gates is liberal or conservative, he seems to be sane and rational on a bunch of stuff ranging from Pandemics like Malaria to clean energy and climate change so I applaud his efforts.

  21. Re:Well... on Why Did Japan Just Ratify The TPP? (businesstimes.com.sg) · · Score: 1

    The only reason I think that Japan would have done it, is if they think that the current coup to put Hillary in power by flooding the news with propaganda about "Russian hacking" will definitely succeed, which will result in Hillary signing the TTP into law. I would rather not actually see this happen, considering how horrible the law actually is (Personally I don't like the idea of it killing the Dojinshi industry, not to mention the US jobs and jobs of whatever other modern country joins in). This was more likely a leak than a hack, considering the suspicious death of Seth Rich.

    Here, Mr. Bannon, have a tinfoil hat ... looks like you need one.

  22. Re: Your new president doesn't pay taxes on Why Apple Just Invested in Wind Turbines In China (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    > Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.

    a) You European fuck, you clearly don't know much about American elections and their rules. b) Back in 2000, Gore won the popular vote. A popular vote "loss" is meaningless.

    You don't have to be an American to understand that in a democracy the guy/gal with the most votes wins and that whatever your 'electoral college' is it's not democracy if it allows the runner up to win the election. Oh, and try to come up with some more imaginative profanity.

  23. Re: Your new president doesn't pay taxes on Why Apple Just Invested in Wind Turbines In China (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    And don't claim you didn't vote for Trump. The American ppl did.

    Actually, the American people voted for Hillary. 65,4 million to 62,8 million.

    If you disagree then you either don't believe in democracy

    No, if you disagree, then you support facts. And, for that matter, if you support democracy (aka, the person who gets the most votes wins). The US is, however, not a democracy - at least when it comes to electing the president. Which is why Trump will be president.

    The US isn't a democracy either when it comes to congressional elections given how heavily gerrymandered the congressional district are gerrymandering and the ongoing efforts of the GOP to ensure that voters who are not likely to vote for the GOP are prevented from voting in the first place.

  24. Re:Trump lost by millions on President Obama Orders Review of Cyber Attacks On 2016 Election (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    The only real discrepancies are from cities known for voting fraud and letting illegals vote-...

    [citation needed]

  25. I always put cases on my phones precisely so they will be a little thicker and easier to hold. I find the thinner the phone the more awkward it is to use. Even to hold it in front of me an interact with it.

    I put my phone in a shock proof case because the damn things are fucking expensive and I want mine to last until it dies of old age.