* Posts by Doug Glass

1445 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Feb 2008

Giffgaff says some subscribers yakked for 9 days a month

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Typical Corporate Response

They offer something they know some people will jump all over. Some people jump all over it. The company acts surprised and ends the offer because some people did what the offer told them they could to. Typical business intelligence.

Facebook set to unveil 'Gmail killer'

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Using Facebook email is like .....

.... peeing in public. Everybody will size you up and know your secrets. Not to mention giggling and laughing.

iPhone users are sad and mentally unfocused

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Human Nature

Everybody fondles their slab at one time or another. The trick is to enjoy what you're doing as opposed to thinking about what you're doing. That's multitasking and I thought that was what the computer age was all about ... getting more output with the same or less input. Then there's synergism which is getting more out than you put in. As an old fart I can tell you those realities morph with age. Pretty soon we all get to the point that any fondling is a pleasure and to hell with what other people think or do. And that's called retirement or sometimes true independence.

How I built a zero energy cost, zero carbon home server

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Ointment and Flies

Too bad it'll take him 117 years, at current recovery rates and costs, to reach that point where the cost benefit of his investments are positive. It'll take that long for him to reach that break-even point considering ALL his costs. Too bad most people have actual jobs that don't allow for such experimentation. Or have no job at all in some cases. Nice try though; IT angle or no.

So did Windows Phone 7 'bomb in US'?

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When I get asked ...

... I look the half-witted pseudo-human in the eye and say, "I've given you my order" and say nothing more. If the idiot keeps on asking questions I either ask to see the manager or simply walk out. It's my money, it's my decision and there are too many low class joints all over town to put up with inane script recitation. And I always enjoy it. We old fart retired and socially retarded folk are like that ... yes we are.

Pay rises all round for Googlers

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Neither New Nor News

Re: "Google will also pay any tax due on the $1,000 bonus."

This is an established accounting practice called "Grossing Up". It's very common, widespread in the USofA and certainly not news worthy. My old corporation did it as a matter of course.

"Which do you want, a $1,500 bonus and you pay the taxes or a $1,000 bonus and we gross it up?"

Shut up, Spock! How Battlestar Galactica beat Trek babble

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The Answer Is Obvious

Why??? Because in the show the geeks finally have a machine they can have sex with. Hairy palms makes it so hard to type.

Dell dumps RIM, saves fortune

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The Way It Works

I retired for the largest electricity producing company in the USofA in 2008. Just this year we got our gas stove. Those of you not in the corporate world have no idea of how it really works. Sometimes i laugh out loud at what I read here; thank you all for such rich entertainment. My bride usually thinks I've read another employment ad I just say no; enjoying the babes in the woods again.

Apple coughs to time zone problems

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Huh?

What idiot relies exclusively on a single source to get the correct time? You damn well better do a time check every now and then and stop depending on some basement dwelling programmer who hasn't seen the sun in years.

Old PCs: When it's time to die

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Why Ask Why?

My 1999 Ford F-150 pickup starts fast, gets very good gas mileage (petrol mileage?), is paid for and cheap to insure. Everything works well and it fits my butt very nicely after 200,000+ miles. That 321868.8+ km for you that use the MKS system. The vehicle does all I need it to do in near-vintage style. Not to mention it stills looks mint.

My old AMD socket A XP 3200+ CPU desktop runs a fully updated, cleaned and maintained XP system with ease. And it does everything I need it to with ease and has power to spare for my needs. I have two identical machines so i tried Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit on one. Just as soon as I disabled all the menu sliding, animationing and fading it's actually faster than XP in every way except video encoding. But I have my bride's multi-core box for that.

We throw away way to many good old things including our elderly citizens in many cases. Keeping the old and capable just feels right to me.

US census takers fight angry Americans for their data

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Wrong Take Pommy

It's all about privacy and an intrusive government. As some of you might remember, we yanks tend to get rather angry when a government becomes too invasive and possessive. We have been known to take action on occasion to put a stop to that. I think you might find that in your more progressive history books under "1776".

Zuckerberg: the iPad 'is not mobile'

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Symantics

And the universally accepted definition of "mobile" is ???? "is too", "is not", "is too", "is not" ........... n-1.

Top Ten Retro PC Games

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What???

No Frogger????

Tech grads least likely to find a job

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Drinking the [original] Kool-Aid ...

... or shooting oneself in the foot. Looks like all those articles telling teenagers all the best jobs, highest demand and highest pay was in the IT field paid off. From the corporations viewpoint that is.

Now the corps have, what, dozens of applicants for every job so they just pick the best of the best and leave the rest. Maybe it's hundreds of applicants for each job. Whatever, but the fish sure took that bait and now maybe wished they hadn't. What did they (you) expect to happen? Did you expect the boom to last forever? Probably.

Never hurts to have a backup plan. "Backup", now there's a term every IT guy should know and respect. Sure glad I got my business degree, engineering license. and teacher's certificate. Made things very nice and flexible.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

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Dumb and Dumbass

Re" Even then, about a third of the newbie CS CVs I get contain tragic spelling and grammar errors. "

And we have an internet that sponsors and promotes bad grammar and spelling, i.e. "pwned" and all the rest of the pitiful examples of just how low and irrelevant a really good education is now days. Or so it seems. Looks to me the "dumbing down of America" has spread across the water.

No matter, let those who can think ... think, those who can learn ... learn and the rest will be digging ditches. We need ditch diggers and lug nut spinners. And from my years of teaching I can tell a lot of potential "diggers" are out there.

Microsoft holds Androids hostage in open source wars

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doug39a@yahoo.com

Hitting the nail on the head is always painful when you're the nail, i.e. the freetards.

Microsoft vision chief sees world without Microsoft PCs

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Spot On

I'm an idiot all right. My investment in Microsoft many years ago has, well, paid HUGE dividends. "Dividends" in the general sense as well as financial. You have to know when to hold and when to fold, but that was not all that hard. But, happily, that initial investment in MSFT made me a pile so I'm very content in my idiocy.

Yeah, Balmer needs to go, but for more reasons than you think. But hey, $62,000,000,000 is working out for me pretty well so I can't complain a whole lot.

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Huh?

oligopoly = Sole buyer; many suppliers. The British government is essentially an oligopoly in that it can have/has more than one maker of battlefield tanks. Seen any civilians driving an FV4034 Challenger 2 lately? Now, Vickers Defence Systems make be called a single source, but in time or war when many items are needed quickly, the sole source can farm out the manufacturing process to increase production. But the concept stands: military equipment has a single buyer, the govera-ment, with any number of makers. That's an oligopoly.

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To Paraphase Mr. Churchill

Never have so many understood so little for so long. Those of you who throw the term "monopoly" around desperately need to do some earnest research and understand what the term actually means as opposed to what you've heard it means or believe it means.

A monopoly is: SOLE supplier with many buyers. Microsoft is not the sole supplier of operating systems. There is, after all, Linux, Apple, chrome, WebOS and etc. Microsoft is the sole supplier of Windows OS. Ford is the sole supplier of F-150 light duty pickup trucks. Ford is certainly not monopolistic with regard to trucks. They, like Microsoft, are the sole supplier of a specific product line. But that is not included in the definition of "monopoly".

LimeWire (finally) dies under judge's gavel

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Never Say Die

At least for now ...

http://www.old-versions.net/

Two-year wait for Windows 8, MS blurts

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Version

Do you 'spose Windows 8 will be version 7? It will be if they just move to the next higher number. If they call it version 8, then we'll have proof version 6.1 (Windows 7) was truly pay-as-you-go service pack 1 for Vista's version 6.0.

Ah the possibilities; the intrigue; the idiots.

Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed

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Re: "Disks fail, not partitions"

Yep, so keep your files close at hand on the system drive's "Data" partition and back that data up to one, or more, internal hard drives on a regular schedule. Or even to an external HDD. I've had the OS fail far more often than the HDD, so a reinstall to the system drive's "System" partition is fairly painless.

The idea of Ubuntu doing the auto partition and separation thing is very appealing. But then what the hell do I know, I'm just a multi decade end user.

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Nawwwwww

Just create like-named User folders on another drive or partition and then change the location in the original folder's "Location" tab to the new folder. 7 even moves all your file for you if you wish. Easy as pie, falling off a log or whatever makes you happy.

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Huh?

Care to explain that?

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Causes cancer too

Whatcha bet.

Red Hat exec proposes end to IT suckage

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Hmmmm

Listen to your customers and deliver what they need and not what you believe them to need. How quaint.

Microsoft loses chief software architect Ray Ozzie

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R&D

To Microsoft, all the other companies are simply R&D at arm's length.

Jobs dubs Google's 'open' Android speak 'disingenuous'

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Yeah,

doublespeak and political correctness. What the fuck wrong with these bastards?

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Damn!

My fridge is a virus! And it has no chips so it can't be a cow. post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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Damn!

My Ford truck is closed! I can't make a Chevrolet key work in it or for that matter my wife's Explorer key. Or battery, or seats, or hell anything that's not either custom designed or OEM. Just damn! My beloved 1999 Ford truck is an iPhone. But as a driver and not a design engineer I just don't give a damn. I just drive it and enjoy it's features and grow older with it under my butt getting me to the apps sto .... er no ... the gun store. And damn again! Glocks are iPhones too! Frakk, I need to stop thinking about this. Pretty soon my bride will be an iPhone. Thank God she's not from Stepford. Oh frakk!

Microsoft steers OEMs away from putting Phone 7 on Tablets

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Did you know....

... film cameras are still produced and supported my many photographers? It's true, it really is.

Doug Glass
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Ozymandias ???

A modern techy type knows of the "king of kings"? I'm a retired old fart and I'm impressed. But you have to have actually been in the corporate world for a number of years to fully understand the phenomenon. It's called a "death spiral" and many a corporation has fallen into it. May not be a force today given "bailouts" and "stimulus packages" but corporations regularly kill themselves: Lehman Brothers to mention one.

Just nature's way of culling the herd. If you're bent on destruction, some corporate entity will be there to pick up the pieces and market share. It's "The Peter Principle" in full force in most cases.

Microsoft's fear of an OpenOffice

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Spot On!

Exactly, give me that 21st century OpenOffice !

Robot goes berserk in Balkan lab: 6 boffins given dead arms

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Since the slaves beat their masters,

is this "master-bation"?

Facebook is 'killing privacy for commercial gain'

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Stating The Obvious

Just can't wait for the author's writings on water being wet, heat being hot and politicians being crooked.

Microsoft plans biggest ever Patch Tuesday

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Just be happy ...

... they don't make you pay for the damn things.

Legendary steampunk computer 'should be built' - programmer

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Already Built

But the Mayans built it and got 12/12/12 from it. Packed it away later to be "discovered" by Babbage.

Google's 'instant' search springs keyboard controls

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What Instant Search?

<sigh> Try this; no instant search ... for now.

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en

Stuxnet worm can reinfect PCs even after disinfection

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:+) [The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.]

hehehehehehehehehe

RIM unveils The BlackPad BlackBerry PlayBook

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Yeah ...

... a name is so much more important that the device itself.

Apple in 873-page legal claim to word 'Pod'

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I guess this megalomaniacal ...

... pathetic little POS will now lay claim to all the world's whales.

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Fuck Jobs ...

... and the horse he rode in on too. This little pissant is rapidly becoming just another microsoft in a turtleneck bib.

Google data center links shot down by 'bored' riflemen

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Not Sportsmen

These are not hunters, these are vandals pure and simple.

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Yes We Do

And plenty of these shooters get prosecuted. The problem is catching them. Usually they get turned in by a buddy who knows how to be responsible. But when you live in a society where nobody is held personally accountable, the fines and imprisonments are both not a deterrent.

The facts are it only take a single "oh shit!" to wipe out a million "atta boys" so the millions of responsible, law abiding hunters get a bad name from the very few turds among us.

Steve Jobs chops student hack down to size

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What a Turd

Obviously The Sacred J is interested only in getting what money she might have out of her pocket and into his. What a common turd! Not a way to win friends and influence people in my opinion and just pushes me further from the Apple store. Unless she's his next liver donor he has no use for her.

ZoneAlarm slammed for scarewarey marketing

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Not A Surprise

In the late '90s, I bought several licenses and maintained them for over five years; product quality steadily declined and support was prompt but often worthless. It's easy to imagine the Zone Troopers going to extremes to sell their product. A death spiral always brings out the worst in a company.

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THe Freaks Come Out At Night

Got to be a Zone troll person who voted your comment down. Morons.

Microsoft: IE9 will never run on Windows XP

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Huh?

Runs beautifully on a machine with 1GB RAM and an old AMD XP 3200+ socket A CPU. It loads faster than XP and things are just as snappy if not snappier. Now I'm just a plug doing business type work with very little video stuff going on but them that wasn't mentioned was it? And I just bought my grandson a Toshiba minibook with 2GB RAM and an AMD 1.7GHz CPU. A tad slow to load but hey, once loaded it does very well. So I guess the slow and deliberate old farts like me can be satisfied with having a slooooow Win7 machine just so long as we got a fast hot woman ... which I have. After all, the computers are cold boxes with no life. My bride is a, well... better not go there. But you get the picture.

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<yawn>

BFD

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Yep

And you'd be amazed how many corporations specify IE. It's got something to do with being a Microsoft customer or something along those lines.