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User: ducomputergeek

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  1. Great! on Bing Translator Adds Klingon · · Score: 1

    Now I only have to be fluent in Javascript and leave Klingon to Bing!

  2. And what about the plugins? on Firefox 21 Arrives · · Score: 1

    Recently I needed to find a plugin for a certain feature and remembered one for FF4 I used a while back. When to down load it on this new computer to find out the developer had stopped updating the plugin. The reason: these frequent updates didn't leave him enough time to continuously test and make sure it still worked with each version every few weeks. I searched for similar plugins and everyone I saw the author pretty much said the same thing. They had all discontinued development for FireFox because the release cycle was too quick.

    Instead I ended up finding a plugin for Chrome and went with it. Frankly other than to test against FF and certain debugging. I don't use it that much anymore.

  3. Re:Point? on Samsung Testing 5G Phones With 1gbps Download Speed · · Score: 2

    As a 4g hotspot user let me tell you that even now the limiting factor for me is only the allowed bandwidth on my plan (12GB per month). The 4G speed is plenty fast to do pretty much all the work I need and will even run games if they aren't absolutely latency dependent (basically anything but FPS). Even with four or five devices connected 4G is fast enough for most business uses and I would say for most people's internet use. In fact oftentimes the limits on the download speed is the server on the other side.

    I have the hotspot to connect my WiFi tablet and laptop when I'm out on the road or in meetings, especially meetings where the client has a secured wifi and either doesn't know the password or can't grant guest access, etc..

    I mean hell, we have a 100MB/s line into our office and we are only tapping a fraction of that on a daily basis.

    So 1Gb/s sounds cool, but device and access speed now isn't my problem. Bandwidth cap is the problem.

  4. Re:Entertainment vs. Chores on World of Warcraft Loses 1.3 Million Players in First Quarter of 2013 · · Score: 1

    I played a couple MMO's, BSGO during it's open beta phase when it was really fun, and STO until it got grindy. In the case of both games I could grind a couple hours a week and then earn enough resources to do what I wanted. Well when that ended I ironically went back to playing Battlefied 3 because if I took off two months and then picked it up for an hour, I wasn't out that much. It seemed like in the other games if I took time off and came back you were so far "behind" it would be an endless grind trying to catch up.

    What got me more than anything in STO was the new starbase system and the fact you needed a guild/fleet about twice to three times our size to really complete it in any decent amount of time. And we had a fun group of about 10 - 15 active players. Trying to expand that beyond 15 started to cause problems. I know STO has a new expansion coming out with the new movie and I looked at it and pretty much went "meh".

  5. Re:Truly Absurd on DoD Descends On DEFCAD · · Score: 1
  6. Re:Chris Rock was right on DoD Descends On DEFCAD · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree with this and it's annoying to someone who actively shoots on a regular basis and no longer can. I used to buy a brick of .22LR every couple months and at least 100 rounds of 9mm & .40 every month. I even gave up my range membership this year. No sense in spending $300 when there's no ammo to shoot. And I have a feeling that the ammo that is going to be produced this year is already spoken for by the panic buyers as people like me decide that maybe the next time we see ammo available at decent prices we should stock up in case of more panic.

  7. Re:So many people miss the point. on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1

    Really? Because both my grandfather had dynamite and blasting caps on their farms even as I was growing up in the 80's. I don't recall either having or requiring any permits. In my Dad's era they went down to the MFA and bought it by the create when they wanted to clear some land. And down in that area this wasn't exactly uncommon either.

    Hell, our school had .22's and .410 shotguns we learned to shoot in the 5th grade as part of hunters education and safety. The high school had M1's and 1903 Springfield's for the rifle club/marksmanship team. I hear gun free zones today and think to myself that back then our school had a freaking armory located in the school. Kids had shotguns in their trucks and would go hunting after school. Guns were everywhere. No one even thought about coming into school and shooting up the place.

    I look around and wonder what exactly happened in the past 40 years. I mean I run across people today, especially in the city, that when I tell them that we learned to shoot at school as kids react in complete shock and horror.

  8. Re:Bullet control on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1

    Well that's only going to work if you also ban white tip matchsticks.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0jxpLH8FtY

  9. Something Microsoft got mostly right w/ Office365 on Adobe's Creative Cloud Illustrates How the Cloud Costs You More · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We have our full time employees and thus we know we need X seats of Microsoft Office split between Windows & Mac users. Well we're coming up on summer where we will have 3 - 5 interns working for us and bringing their own computers. Office365 gives us the ability to add an extra 3 seats for 4 months costing ~ $150 vs. $1500 to go buy extra seats. Actually one of the interns is a graphics arts major and instead of spending nearly $2k for software to be used by one person for a couple months it's going to cost us around $200 for Adobe Cloud. Usually we sub the graphics design stuff out, but we have a project the students will be working on over the summer. So for us, it gives us great flexibility being able to price things per project as opposed to having to sink large sums of money into software that we may only need for one project.

    Now to those like the graphics artist we hire to do most of our graphics work, yeah I can see where they'd be pissed. Many of them I know generally spend $2k and get about 4 years out of the software before upgrading. I still know a lot of professionals still using CS2 because it does all they need and see no reason to upgrade until they absolutely have to.

  10. Re:bollocks on US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27 · · Score: 1

    Think is, it's not only tax rates, it's what is and is not taxed. That varies from state to state. As example, my state does not tax groceries. The state 20 minutes from my house does. But they don't tax clothing items under $50 or $100 (can't remember off hand). Then someone has to make sure that the taxes collected are then paid to the states that they are owed. And when do you pay them? Monthly? Quarterly? It depends on the amount of sales often in those states. Or instance one of the companies I work with primarily sells within an 8 state region in the midwest. Do they make sales to California and New York? Of course, but not that much.

    I'm sure that there will be services that will offer it, but how much will it cost? Credit cards charge about 2% just to collect money from one persons account and deposit it to yours. This is a much more complicated transactions, so how much is that going to cost? 1%, 2%, 3%? Both companies operate on margins of about 10 - 15%, meaning after the cost of everything is factored in that's their taxable profit. Add in another $10k a month to hire additional accountant or two plus additional legal services, even if a third party service collects and distributes there are going to be issues and someone has to balance the accounts and make sure the service is doing their job and in the case of one of my clients, you've just about halved their profits.

  11. Re:This is a good idea. on US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27 · · Score: 1

    Never run a business have you? Let's see here:

    Cost of Raw Materials = $3M.
    Labor to turn Raw Materials into Widgets- $28.50 per hour (Internal Labor Rate) = $1.1M
    Overhead: (Salaried Employees, Benefits, Building Mortgage, Insurance, Utilities, Maintenance) - $175k per month = $2.1M

  12. Re:General Electric on US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27 · · Score: 1

    The US needs to revise it's tax code and stop double taxing income from international operations. Double tax I you say? Yes you pay taxes in the country of operations, then if you transfer that money back to the US it gets taxed again under the US code. Most other countries don't do this. This is why international firms set up shop outside the US in more friendly taxing jurisdictions. Even when I worked at a small company, about 35 employees with operations in the US & Europe that's exactly what they did. They moved the corporate HQ out of the US and set up the US company as a holding unit. After we paid US tax we shipped the rest offshore where it wasn't taxed again. Same with income from the UK & Germany.

  13. Re:bollocks on US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only this, but most people hear $1M in online sales, you must be rich!. They don't seem to realize that $1M in sales != $1M in profit. I do consulting work for a couple clients that are above the $1M per year in sales mark. One did about $1.4M in sales last year and had profits of less than $200k. The other did about $7M in online business last year and still had profits of less than $1M.

    Add in the additional legal and accounting costs for having to track at least 50 different taxing jurisdictions and up to potentially almost 10k and be up on all the changes to tax law and try to figure out what items are taxable where....it's a nightmare. No only that but it's a legal minefield. For instance our state exempts certain grocery items from sales tax. And some of the things considered grocery items gets funky. An example: a big bag of potato chips are a grocery item. A small sized bag at a snack counter is not. Charge sales tax on the wrong item and get caught and the fine is rather steep even if it's an honest mistake.

    If I have a retail location in this state, I get to keep a percentage of the sales tax I collect to cover the cost of being the collector. What about the other states? How much of that tax collected will be owed? Now you times this by at least 50 opening up your legal liabilities tremendously.

  14. Re:This is a good idea. on US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27 · · Score: 2

    $1 Million in sales != $1M in profit. I consult with a couple clients that do more than $1M in sales annually online. One had $1.4M in sales last year. Profits were less than $200k. The other does about $7M a year, profits about $900k. The latter business was almost driven out of the market by PCI compliance a couple years ago. Both companies are less than 20 employees.

  15. Re:Opportunity to showcase GIMP on Adobe Creative Suite Going Subscription-Only · · Score: 1

    Until GIMP gets full CMYK support, it's not going to be seen as anything but a toy.

  16. Re:I know everyone is going to hate on Bill but... on Bill Gates: iPad Users Are Frustrated They Can't Type Or Create Documents · · Score: 1

    You bough the wrong device. I bought, 2 actually, apple docking stations for my iPad. One for the office, one for home. They are full sized keyboards with a charging port, hold the device in portrait mode as well. Works extremely well for writing emails and even creating basic documents in Pages/Numbers/Keynote. If I need to create something that is media heavy, I go to my laptop. I also have one of those iPad cases with the mini keyboard. It sucks to type anything long, but in a pinch it is handy.

    Truth is most of my days are meetings. My iPad works extremely well for those as I can plug into projectors to give a presentation or jot notes with the travel keyboard and the battery lasts pretty much all day. It's also a hell of a lot lighter to carry around than a 15" MBP.

    Now there are days I still have to review code and do other kinds of work that doesn't work on the iPad. But those are fewer in between.

  17. Re:This is a good idea. on US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27 · · Score: 2

    Sales taxes haven't been applied to catalog businesses for decades. What's the difference between a dead tree catalog and a catalog on the inter webs?

  18. Re:Youtube could potentially dominate all other vi on YouTube To Offer Subscription Service This Week · · Score: 1

    It's kind of interesting because the industry has already come up with a solution for this. They allow streaming to mobile devices, but first got to log in with your cable/sat provider's info to verify you subscribe to their service. I know a couple years ago my Dad had a package with everything including all the HBO's. I signed in my iPad under his account and was able to watch the first season of Games of Thrones on my iPad through HBO GO.

    Truth is there is starting become a blur between content providers and creators, especially with Comcast now controlling NBCUniversal.

  19. Re:TL;DR on The First Fully 3D-Printed Gun Has Been Successfully Test-Fired · · Score: 1

    The Undetectable Firearms Act was passed in 1988. We hadn't yet seen the slippery slope that lead to almost total confiscation of firearms in other countries like the UK and Australia yet.

    That's primarily the biggest change between then and now. Those of us who are standing up and drawing "the line in the sand" against further gun regulations are doing so because of what we saw happen in those countries, and a lesser extend up north in Canada, during the 1990's and are bound and determined not to let it happen here.

    As far as no chance against the military & police go, well that is a matter of numbers I'm afraid. Total number of US military and law enforcement personnel at all levels: about 8 Million. If 5% of the american population decided, for whatever reason, that it was necessary to take up arms they'd outnumber the total US military & law enforcement about 2 to 1. Couple with the fact that most of the "local" level law enforcement are likely abandon their posts or even be in that 5% taking up arms...

    Truth be told that's an unlikely. Once you get populations that large, usually you can affect real change without the resort to mass violence.

    I own an AR and have for a few years as well as a couple pistols for CCW. Why do I own an AR? First off, easy and fun to shoot. Secondly in case of a Korea Town like situation where there is a temporary breakdown in law and order. For those who don't know what happened in Korea Town, here is the short version: During the LA Riots the cops were ordered to abandon Korea Town and they did. The rioters then proceeded to burn, pillage many Korean owned businesses. Except for a few businesses where armed civilians, owners and volunteers, defended those businesses with firearms. If suddenly there were no cops on the streets tomorrow, what would you do? What would happen to you? Is it likely to happen? Not usually, but it can and it does. And when it does it tends to be quick and unexpected.

    Call me paranoid or whatever, but I have a generator, water purifier, a couple guns with enough ammo to load all the mags I own once, and keep about 20 gallons of fuel on hand. I also keep enough non-perishable food for about two weeks on hand. That's enough supplies that in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency I can decide to wait it out or vacate the area.

  20. Re:Postgres has a poor toolset on There Is No Reason At All To Use MySQL: MariaDB, MySQL Founder Michael Widenius · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you not looked at the enterprise DB folks? A few years ago I was working on a project that started out using MySQL because MySQL was everywhere and initially it was for a single store. Then that became 50 and then 200 and we ran into some interesting problems with MySQL. Long story short, we ported the backend to PostgreSQL in a couple weeks and then ran for another three years processing tens of thousands of transactions a day without further hiccups from the database before we sold the company. The plan originally was to use PostgreSQL and then migrate to DB2 at some point once the revenue was coming in. Even when we reach that point PostgreSQL was handling everything we threw at it and we did hire Enterprise DB to come in and tune the database set up since we didn't have and couldn't afford to hire a DBA full-time at that point. IIRC they had a pretty decent toolset that we used there after, but it wasn't free as in beer or speech.

  21. Re:Today is not next week... on Is Google Glass Too Nerdy For the Mainstream? · · Score: 1

    The ear piece thing had nothing to do with dorky, it had all to do with making the impression on people that you were somehow IMPORTANT. So important that you had to be reached 24/7 by your phone. Most of the people I saw walking around with them were salesmen of some kind whether it be real estate agents and stock brokers being the worst offenders I remember. Maybe that was just where I was living at the time as well.

    The people I knew who were actually important detested the things. Anyone that's been in upper ranks of corporate management learns to detest the phone. I know at the last company I worked at a CXX position the only time my phone rang was because there was a problem.

  22. Re: what? on What Modern Militaries Can Learn From Battlestar Galactica · · Score: 0

    This sort of goes back to what the after action reports for the conflicts fought in the past 20 years have said: equipping an infantry with any more than a rifle, compass, map, ammo, rations, and canteen is about all they really need to be effective. Yes squads need radios, but with off the shelf SIGINT & ELINT gear these days the more technology you give soldiers the bigger target you make them.

    It's just like the Air Force and their horrendously expensive F-22's and F-35's that don't really address what the reports say the Air Force really needs: more A-10's and B-52's.

  23. And those of us who don't need glasses? on Google Glass Is the Future — and the Future Has Awful Battery Life · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm in my early 30's with better than 20/20 vision. I know that won't hold out forever, but I've never needed glasses. Why would I want to wear these?

  24. Re: And this is why BlackBerry will go out of busi on BlackBerry CEO: Tablet Market Is Dying · · Score: 1

    Blackberry thought they had a lock on the enterprise market. Then apple licensed exchange making expensive BES systems uncessary.

  25. Re:Dubious story, dubious subject... on How LinkedIn's Project Inversion Saved the Company · · Score: 1

    Linkedin landed me a consulting gig with a company. I spend 6 - 10 hours a month getting paid $250 an hour talking with hedge funds due to a company I built and sold a couple years ago. The reason they found me was my linked in profile.