Posts by TechBearMike

How about DumbDungDon, Clueless Con?

Re: 10.15 Catastrophe. Just say no!

I was given a direct link to some older versions of macOS by one of Apple's support people. That link opens the App Store, where the old software still resides, though hidden. Problem I've had is that I can't get any of these old installers to download completely. There's always a "download could not be completed" error about ⅓ to ½ of the way in. And this is with a 300Mbps download cable Internet connection!

Sometimes I really miss installers that came on CD-ROMs.

Re: "Rational Gun Control"

And your point, should you have one, is???

Re: Near Phoenix

I don't remember the exact source from several years back, but a local business paper had a very brief item about Bill Gates personally investing in a huge residential development "near the White Tanks," a mountain range on the far west side of the Phoenix metroplex. Since then it's been hush-hush, since that's another slice of semi-wilderness that will be ruined by development and contribute mightily to Phoenix's sprawl problem. Now I wonder if these two projects are hand in hand. The residential area would be about halfway between the two data center sites. Ain't speculation grand?

Re: Bring on the stupid

Registered nurse with a lot of telemetry experience here: I agree with some of the other comments. NO ONE'S ECG is consistent enough to use as any kind of login or a password. The only perfectly consistent ECGs one ever encounters are in the lifesaving and telemetry classes, where the ECG is computer-generated. The heart is not a mechanical device, churning out identical beat after beat after beat, at least not in humans. It tries, but it's not a looping sampler. ;-)

This is one of the nuttiest ideas I've ever heard of for using medical info. Someone missed the critical thinking course on this one.

Re: apple doing something right for a change

I visit a number of websites that are still throwing up warning dialogs because I'm not using the ‘latest technology’ or “most secure browser” when accessed through Safari. The same dialog boxes advocate using Internet Explorer or Chrome. What the hell are they smoking?

Re: The US government set the precedent that governments can legally hack foreign computers

"Rather, when discovered it is just a case for diplomatic tit-for-tat gestures."

Unless you have special insider knowledge (in which case, why are you wasting time commenting here when you could be making bank undermining international diplomacy?), what you're saying isn't even proveable. Growing up with a parent in, ahem, national security-related business, one of the tenets I learned is that most of the most egregious cyberespionage stuff is never going to go near the light of day even to people in the business (i.e., diplomats), much less the general public. It's that whole "need to know" concept that's a bedrock principle of Spookland.

Re: Good luck with that

FWIW, there are only eight seniles on the SCOTUS at present, with the fate of the ninth in limbo. Also FWIW, the three female "seniles" aren't anything near what I would call senile, however jokingly. They show solid grasp of complicated issues on a regular basis. I would expect the three of them to make good calls on technology cases.

He probably finds pictures of naked tribal people in National Geographic profoundly erotic as well.

Re: You can never have too much disk space (or too much memory)

MacBook Pro, 15", 2015 model with SSD: blows the previous model I had out of the water, speed-wise. The SSD is warp speed, all the time. I don't want a spinning rust drive in my primary laptop again, ever. The only problem was that the maximum size offered by Apple was 500GB, which barely contains my music and photo libraries. Now that I've learned the SSD is upgradeable by the consumer, I'm upgrading to a 1TB SSD, the capacity I had in my previous MBP.

Re: as if xHamster were the only Site.

Also, ignant fapsters addicted to, er ENJOYING, free online porn doubtless are too intellectually/technologically- and financially-challenged to hook up through a VPN service. [Oh gawd. Now I probably have to explain to AC that "ignant" isn't a typo. And what a VPN service is.]

Re: Obviously a definition of "new" that I was previously unaware of

When I first saw the Night Shift feature in the iOS Public Beta, I figured there was much moaning, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments at f.lux. Their idea is appropriated by Apple and it's doubtless going to be incorporated into OS X as well. Another small developer gets steamrolled by Apple. Is this type of thing patentable and who had the patent, anyway?

Re: May I ask Americans a few questions?

@CaptainDaFt

"So Americans get to waste their vote yet again this November on one of two candidates whose whole purpose is to maintain the status quo in Washington without even realising that options exist."

The damning thing about voters' options anywhere is that the "options" have to be viable, n'est-ce pas? BTW, I don't think my vote is ever "wasted."

Do what a nearby city did in Louisiana.

Lafayette developed its own fiber optic network and fought tenaciously with Big Tele and Big Cable to operate it. Citizen backing for the creation and realization of the locally-operated network was tenacious. Internet-only top speeds are 1000x1000 Mbps (1 Gbps) $109.95/month. There are lesser speed tiers, all priced below cable providers' normal costs. Everyone who lives there brags about how fast their net is.

Eighteen miles north, in my small town, had to settle for Charter with max down of 35Mbps and max up of 2Mbps, and that service was overpriced. I would give some credence to the idea of starting local and working up bit by bit where networks of the locally-owned kind are concerned.

Re: Let's not be dicks about this

Given the enormous pay for staffers and even interns, the bills are coming due. When you're pampered at work as if you're at a lifelong resort stay, the money for that has to come from somewhere. I'm still waiting for Google to start charging for services.

I am a bit resentful—I save people's lives every day for peanuts pay compared to someone whose job it to make Google dominate the Internet. Staffers at Google, Yahoo, etc. are spoiled rotten and in the same league as overpaid pro athletes, Wall Street crooks, and talentless pop idols.

#endrant

Re: where do you park?

I'll go for underground parking with elaborate elevators/stairs/escalators and people movers (think airport) to get employees in and out in rapid, elegant fashion.

Re: the russians

Recently heard a radio talk show panel of engineers and other scientists who uniformly said that the state of science in Russia these days is deplorably lacking and quite behind the times. I would think this is probably the case only outside the military sector, but who knows?