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User: 25thCenturyQuaker

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  1. 12-year-old HW not ready to retire on Apple Expects Users To Replace Their iPhone, Apple Watch After Three Years · · Score: 1

    I have to wonder how Apple viewed this turnover/replacement rate earlier in their lifetime as a company. My current G5 DP PowerMacs have been run HARD since they were new in 2004; they were made well, were *meant* to last, and they still perform like champs, considering their age.
    The problem is that I'm brickwalled. My OS version, Pro-level apps (Adobe Suite, Logic, Final Cut, and browsers, plus ancillary apps & utilities) are all as updated as far as the hardware will possibly allow.
      The HW is still great, but I'm choking on the dust of all the upgrades that Intel architecture has forced, or demands. And it's not just the hardware that's the problem...coders are creating features and functionalities online that my browsers used to be able to deal with, but they put in so much proprietary "cutting edge" scripting—which my browsers refuse to deal with—without providing any fall-back functionality. Cripes, I can't even access my own damned Soundcloud page, because of all the "improvements" which have been made. The engineers say their pages and features should all work after I have dutifully reported all my system specs and have vehemently promised them that I have followed all suggested troubleshooting procedures. I tell them it doesn't. They got tired of fielding my questions and won't reply anymore. F***K them with fire.
    Getting new hardware would only be half of the expense for me...updating all the software I use on a daily basis would cost more than a mid-level fully-tricked iMac...a system that would run circles around my G5s.

  2. Re:EULA on Facebook Goes After Greasemonkey Script Developer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I have an actual web site if anyone wants to contact me."

    So, what's the name of that site, mate? Anonymouscowardnumbersixpointeightthreebillion-giveortake.com? Sorry, Captian Luddite, but you're confusing the medium with the content. I'm 50 years old and have prodigiously developed abilities with Google Fu. After over a year of badgering to join Facebook—which I countered with arguments similar to yours, such as:

    • "I've been online and had my own sites and blogs and photosharing galleries for over a dozen years...why can't all these people find me !?"

    —I finally relented. Since doing so about a year ago, I've reconnected with a ton of old friends I couldn't find any other way.

    As a shining example, two of us had an idea to start an ACTUAL website to gather material on musicians & bands we knew from our area, and from days and decades gone by. Despite sending tons of emails, and making tons of phone calls pleading for friends to get on board with the idea, nobody wanted to go to the trouble of contributing to it. I was even offering to send out pre-paid mailers for them to send me stuff to scan and audio/video material to digitize. It was just too much trouble for them

    So, my friend and I started a Facebook group hoping to create a historic record of bands, clubs, & musicians from the Central Pennsylvania area, and in less than 2 months 360+ old friends and acquaintances have found each other again, to share hundreds of photos and stories, and to get back together to jam, or to go see each others' current bands.

    I could also regale you with tales of smaller BBQs, ballgames, golf outings and beer bashes organized and thrown, of old loves rekindled, of new jobs found, of dogs and cats saved from being euthanized, of rare car parts bought & sold, of bands booking money-making tours in markets they would have otherwise never reached, of small group renunion cruises and vacations taken, and many more.

    But apparently, you've explored it all enough to know that Facebook, MySpace and other SocNet sites are just for the pathetic, or the tech—challenged, or the kids...so good luck, and have fun with your decision to dismiss them out—of—hand. In the meantime, there are a whole shtload of us who are having tones of fun, both online and in meatspace, precisely because of them.

  3. Re:This Should Be Interesting on Microsoft Wants To Participate In SVG Development · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Or is this some hilarious attempt to sidle in at the last moment and hope everyone forgets..."

    <Elaine Benes-ish>"That's what they are! They're real sidlers!!!"</Elaine Benes-ish>

    Someone needs to slip little boxes of Tic-Tacs in Microsoft's pockets.

  4. Re:The overkill solution on Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer? · · Score: 3, Funny

    But can an idiot grandma in a hurry figure out how to do that?

  5. The Tech That Oughtta Be on Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's a great question, and an even better request to broadcast to manufacturers. I have a 4 unit/1 base V-Tech cordless system at home that I love (rugged [survived a drop in a toilet and kept on working], battery life, etc), except for wishing that it did stuff that it doesn't. The feature tech isn't the difficult part, it's getting the manufacturer's attention so they know it's wanted.

  6. Re:Vacuum tubes are a dying tech, ehhhh? on NASA Probe Blasts 461 Gigabytes of Moon Data Daily · · Score: 1

    Clearly, you're not an electric guitar player.

  7. Re:Vacuum tubes are a dying tech, ehhhh? on NASA Probe Blasts 461 Gigabytes of Moon Data Daily · · Score: 1

    Pragmatic does not necessarily make for the best guitar tone possible.

  8. Vacuum tubes are a dying tech, ehhhh? on NASA Probe Blasts 461 Gigabytes of Moon Data Daily · · Score: 1

    I attended a 2 year electronics engineering college (shout out to Electronic Institutes in Highspire PA!!) in the early '90s with the aim of learning enough about vacuum tube circuitry to design and build best-in-class guitar and audiophile amplifiers. My instructors looked at me like I was insane, insisting that solid state and digital was poised to take over everything in the industry.

    Funny how those old-fangled tubes are providing data transfer this fast over nearly 400,000km distance.

  9. Re:My experience on Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bloody lugzhury.

    We had to write "dent-code" in braille using a white-hot knitting needle on sheets of wet tissue paper of while being submerged up to our tits in lava.

    The worst punishment of all? The only thing we were allowed to drink was shitty American megabeer.

  10. Re:Already illegal in NY on South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity · · Score: 1
    Disorderly conduct is one thing.

    Felony is quite another.

    Smarten up, you fuckin' fuck-brained shit sucker!

  11. Language as felony!? WTF!!!! on South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity · · Score: 1
    This is real, I sent it to Senator Ford's office just a little while ago.

    Hyperbolic, for intended effect.

    http://sparkbox.blogspot.com/2009/01/lick-my-stinking-asshole-sc-senator.html

    Go ahead.

    Arrest me.

    I dare you, you motherfucking assholes, you cocksucking alterboy abusing shit-eaters!.

  12. Re:The ending on Cory Doctorow's Fiction About An Evil Google · · Score: 2, Funny
    >>>Ahem wrote, "... the ending was a bit anti-climactic for my tastes."

    Uh-Oh.

    The Great Corius is gonna get mad at you and hold a grudge for years .

    You can forget ever registering an account to leave comments on the new BoingBoing 2.pi, because he knows people at both Google and the DHS.

  13. Re:Bad Googler! BAD!! on Sound Waves Kill Skin and Prostate Cancer Cells · · Score: 1

    You must not be too handy at Googling.

    kelvin-hertz relationship (physics.nist.gov)

    Maybe you'd prefer a Pittsburgh (PA)-based acid jazz DJ Kelvin Hertz

  14. Don't know what Expression's all about? on Initial Review of Microsoft's Acrylic BETA · · Score: 1

    No worries, most people have never heard of it. But it's a damned cool application. Adobe should have bought it when they had the chance, just as they should have bought Painter.

    About 6 months ago a few people on the Adobe Forums were wondering about Expression, and I did a quick image to show them.

    For the benefit of you folks here I gathered together a couple precursor images, plus 2 screenshots of the image I did and slammed a quick page up on my server. Don't hate me because I suck at building web pages!

    THIS PAGE might give you a bit of an idea what's going on with Expression.

  15. Re:pneumatic injectors are NOT painful... on Needle Free Injections With Microjets · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and neither are most standard injections, when done properly.

    I got my German Measles (rubella) vaccination with a pneumatic injector. I think this was in 6th grade, which would have been sometime in 1970-71 for me. I don't really remember it hurting any more or less than a standard hypodermic needle injection (which didn't really bother me much as a kid, anyway), but it was quick, taking maybe 10 minutes, tops, to administer to a class of 30 students. School officials really played up the fact that there was no needle involved, and I think this had the psychological effect of making it much easier on the students who were scared of any type of injection.

    I'll admit I'm jumping the gun with my reply here, so I'll need to read a little more to see what the difference is between the old pneumatic injectors and this new-fangled device.

  16. Re: Dai Vernon on Laser Painting Could Lead to 25-Year Prison Term · · Score: 1

    Who else might that be a reference to? I met that old geezer back in the early 1970's when I went to some lectures at Tannen's in NYC. Also learned some stuff from Slydini, and met a real young, real obnoxious and very dorky David Copperfield (he's from NJ).

  17. Re:You Bastards! on They Killed Ken! · · Score: 0, Troll
    You fucking assholes.
    Slashdot just jumped the shark of propriety.
    http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@251.Yh VhcWjk4wF.2858837@.3bb5d68d

    Phosphor=25thCenturyQuaker.

  18. TMI Killed my Dad on 25th Anniversary Of Three Mile Island · · Score: 2
    My Pops was a newscamerman for KYW (Philadelphia) and KDKA (Pittsburgh) working out of the state capitol in Harrisburg.

    He and his reporter, Sandy Starobin, were the first crew on the scene when the story about TMI's incident first broke, and he was there for a full week.

    He later contracted a form of leukemia that is most often associated with an extended exposure to the type of radiation generated from a power plant.

    Our family was involved in a class-action suit against G.P.U. and MetEd, but it was thrown out of court twice for lack of provable evidence that TMI was the cause.

  19. Re:creepy on Photoshop CS Adds Banknote Image Detection, Blocking? · · Score: 1

    The "First Dollar" display at a business means exactly and specifically that: You put the first actual note handed to you in a real frame, under glass. Were you born in the late '80's--early '90's, perchance? Note to creepy: Disingenuity is NOT a good character reference.

  20. Re:Don't copy machine have this feature too? on Photoshop CS Adds Banknote Image Detection, Blocking? · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is no urban legend. Read the thread on the Adobe forum where I (UID "Phosphor" was taken here, had to come up with something else) talked about my discovery that currency recognition routines are in place on high-end color copiers. I discovered this in 1996 or '97, and the machine was a Canon something-or-other. Apologies for the lack of specifics, but I'm sure currency detecting routines are installed on most new color copiers these days.