Posts by DropBear

Re: Shutterstock!

"But I guess it's just me."

Nope. That's what the rule blocking all of regmedia.co.uk is for. Bliss.

Re: What link?

For some reason it's there now. No idea what made it appear (yes, it's where previously definitely wasn't). Pointless though seeing as how I dump cookies after each session (because making it a permanent per-logged-in-user option is for losers amirite). I guess RSS it is, then. I just hope you count that as a "NOPE" vote too.

The thing is, when you're selling what is effectively a (massively overpriced) glorified breakout board for an MCU, there's remarkably little to truly screw up. I'm not saying there never was a notable issue with some of their hardware, but by and large Arduino being indeed more than a bit shite is down to basically everything else about it _except_ the boards themselves.

Re: Just downplay it

Not necessarily, assuming Windows does its usual thing and happily "views" the image internally as soon as downloaded, for thumbnail and metadata / indexing purposes...

Re: Saw this coming

So... what's the concept, exactly? Every camera everywhere publishing its public key via blockchain immediately as soon as it gets turned on for the first time or what...? Because if you need possession of the original piece of kit that physically took the footage each time you want to authenticate a video, it's not going to work. Also, how does it handle (legitimate, "on the record") ulterior editing operations, considering most footage would probably undergo multiple edits before it gets important enough to warrant getting authenticated...?

"If you really think you need to mange your network infrastructure from a cell phone over the internet"

Not necessarily. I don't know the exact circumstances of his specific piece of kit and its app, but generally speaking there seems to be a trend towards making routers configurable through a smartphone directly connected to their WiFi hotspot, which is indeed a bit less hassle than the traditional "unplug your PC, reconfigure it to 192.168..., plug it into the router and configure it, restore your original IP on your PC, etc...". That does not immediately imply said app is connecting to said router trough the internet or that the router even has any configuration interfaces open to the internet by default - it might, but it may well not. Of course, none of that requires one to register, so that part here might be linked with remote access - or it might just be marketing greed. Still, it's not really clear cut...

Re: "95% of the calls I get on my cell phone and landline are junk"

Seconded. Voice may not go anywhere in the immediate future but I see it used much less too - at least in a personal context; calling people left and right like there's no tomorrow for hours on end still seems to be a thing whenever business is involved, but a lot less when it isn't.

For most of the twentieth century, making a call was the only way to contact anyone unless you were willing to wait for a telegram / letter or had the chance to meet in person. As revolutionary as phones were at the time, SMS / e-mail / IM / social media ended up offering alternatives that greatly reduced the need to place a call anywhere a real-time two-way dialogue was not necessary - which, frankly, is most cases. Various notifications don't need an actual call - today you just get them in your mail. If you need to get hold of someone _right now_ then yeah, you're going to attempt to call them - but you're also going to disturb and distract them from whatever they may have been doing. Anything moderately urgent but only on a "some time today or tomorrow" scale is much better served by a typed message that doesn't have that disadvantage - you can always fall back to a call if time runs out without a reply*.

And don't you ever wonder how come that although video calls became technically possible over half a century ago - and everyone thought they were going to be the future - they never really became popular, most people preferring to shun them even today? It's not much of a riddle, frankly - it's pretty obvious that most of the time the convenience of being able to see the other party during such a call is far, far outweighed by the inconvenience of needing to be prepared to be seen by the other party. And calls have the same drawback compared to typed messages - you need to put on a socially acceptable mood and voice and you don't get to carefully compose and edit your messages should you find it difficult to choose the right words in a live conversation.

* this does not cover those who obsessively reply to any message they receive immediately, often flinging a few words back and forth at exhausting lengths, regardless of what potentially much more important functions they drop right around them to do so. I suspect their reasons not to just make a call instead** are pointed out in the next paragraph.

** I mean beyond the basic failure to realise they are NOT literally "on call" 24/7 and a number of "do not disturb" aka "fuck you I'm not going to pick up even if I forgot to set the damn thing on mute" situations very much do exist in the real world - sometimes I wonder what on earth can they possibly think the little red handset icon is for on their smartphones, if they believe every call absolutely HAS to be answered immediately, no matter what, no exceptions...

Re: Vodaphone

Actually, I had been a prepaid Vodaphone customer for a whole decade before eventually their asshattery reached levels that convinced me to switch to a different provider - frankly, I can't remember the exact issues anymore but they certainly weren't trivial and were just betraying a general contempt for their customer. Not that I particularly expect others to be fundamentally different or any better, but at least they seem to be doing a reasonable job of hiding that so far...

Re: Pace

I rather suspect he discovered his job would have required him to be a bit more, uh, creative with money than he would have felt comfortable being.

Re: I find it heartening...

"Finding a way to jump the queue..."

That may well be, but I'd like to point out that human existence throughout our entire history as a race all the way up to the present has never stopped being entirely about "how can I take possession of $scarce_resource instead of that other guy". Wealth, power, the chance to reproduce - it applies to everything. Those sufficiently skilled get to make a choice about screwing over others and enjoying the spoils or voluntarily taking the high road and doing without. The rest of us don't have that problem, we just get screwed full stop. Not participating is not an option. And there's never enough for everyone.

Re: @ Douchus McBagg

You use BING?!?!?!

You jest (and I'm right with you there) but in all seriousness did you know their by-image search is actually _far_ superior to Google's...? It offers funky features like "select the part of the image you want to search for" instead of using the entire picture as target, while Google not only fails to find almost _any_ results on by-image search for me lately (it's a relatively recent development) but also flat out removed by-image searching completely from the regional page it absolutely insists on redirecting me to, regardless of where I come from - so the only way I can access it these days is typing in the direct URL of the main by-image search page...

Re: Trump bashing inaccurate here

"Yeah, but only a ginger can call a ginger a ginger."

Ah, thanks for reminding me it's about time to start re-watching all those Tim Minchin clips yet again (goodness gracious, was it really that long ago?!?)