Posts by Delbert Grady

Python-esque

' My Hovercraft is full of Eels '

i guess..

Just look at the trending on Youtubes' frontpage, it's a dreadful low-brow mix of superficial, vacuous, trendy mindless shit - the fact that this news story makes the carriers a little nervous, because the complex world we're in now, sensitive subjects get the attention in a bid to not offend the masses.

The masses actually enjoy mindless, infantile bullshit. It fits their world view & makes them comfortable in this scary, changing and increasingly complex world. It gives them something.

As is often said, the internet (content) is about as truthful as that drunk Guy in the pub, and should be treated as such, but sadly, far too many people gobble up such bullshit, having no built-in sense of what's true or false, it's a problem with human society, and peoples inability to understand societ and complex systems, and they retreat into small spaces and seek coonfirmation bias, So if the original news story was old news, there'd be much less complaining, as there are already thousands (if not millions) hundreds of flat-earthers, ghost-hunters, Yeti's, zealots, nutcases, psychos, hoaxers et al already on Youtube, but they're not currently under the spotlight.

I guess Youtube (for all their faults) is gonna be in trouble from someone, whatever they do. Not even touching free speech.

Should we actively seek out and censor sensitive stories at the cost of education and free speech, or should we Nanny them and decide what it true or not, who checks 'our' world view and values ?

Youtube is Google, It's a private company, as much as we interact with it, and they have no real requirement to free speech, it's a private company, and can pretty much do as it pleases, within the confines of the law, of course certain guidlines could or should apply when you're in such a position, but the real answer is for the user himself to use their own discretion, but trying to enforce one world-view, tastes or morals onto another is, ultimately, doomed to failure,

There are dumb gullible people, evil people, and simpletons who will believe nothing they're shown, and the others who believe everything, and all points inbetween, so no company is, nor can, say anything goes, so the company should perhaps continue to editorialise, but try to remain impartial instead of reacting to knee-jerk criticism, rising above that, however tough, to then become a useful, knowable resource.. but money, power & politics is involved, and we all know how those improve things...

I'm still waiting..

I like Macbook Pros.

Not a fan of Apple, but the 15" MBP is where i need to be.

Still not found a reasonable replacement for my late 2010 15"

it's SSD 8GB and quad core, battery life is still good, solid build, with a decent array of ports, and a lovely chicklet backlit keyboard & decent filtered charger that doesn't kill my radio reception when it's plugged in, with upgradeable battery, RAM and HD a replacemebt *Must* run BSD & Linux out of the box and by doing so have same battery life and stay as cool as it would running Windows or Mac.

A few of the Asus are pretty interesting, but the PSU look like the generic cheap shitty unfiltered radio interference device :( but nothing has tempted me yet, as i haven't tried one for long yet, and not sure they'll run BSD without major buggering about, heat generation, lack of features or fail.

Until then, i'll just buy used Macbook Pros and when the outdated OSX i run becomes impractical, i'll try one of these things or spend 2 months trying to get BSD or Linux running as sweet on the MBP as well as crappy Windoze.

still waiting.

declining scale related to $$

I'd rather they 'wasted' their (our) money on chasing UFOs rather than designing ever easier ways to kill and hurt other humans..

Then again.. i'd rather they spent their (our) money on health and education..

and yet again .. i'd rather they gave a infinitesimal fraction and let me move to Nevada, lovely place, and i promise to buy a really big pair of binoculars & report any strange goings-on to the relevant authorities (obviously)

Optional

Well remember SIP can be turned off simply enough, troublesome Kext's removed, and either left off, or re-enabled, no biggie for most, if you need to, but for many, they will just leave it all 'as is'

for me, I *always* remove iTunes, messages, all that photo, maps, social media and cloud crap, and the rest of the included shovl-ware.. but admittedly, i'm not exactly a regular type of user however..

Mozilla Firefox Predictions:

"Firefox was slammed for being increasingly slow and buggy,

never mind lagging behind Chrome for features."

what features ? some kind of sandboxing maybe.. oh and more spyware and bloat than FF.

features .. er no. not really. when FF came with the Fisher-Price interface i knew the writing was on the wall for Firefox, the thin end of a wedge so tospeak. It's said, that they want to re-write the code as it's getting old, complicated (thus buggy) and hard to maintain. Okay. i get that, i have coded. The trouble is that Mozilla will inevitably make Firefox crap then, (if they don't rename it too) with a code re-write which will likely kill off most or all of the extensions and other things (power) users need to do to make Firefox how it *should* be, you know, like being able to config it.. i remember the days when every update added stability, security and speed.... only joking.

in no particular order, here's the prediction: (remember where you read it first)

We will be stuck with crappy swoopy more extreme UI fail, wasting more screen real-estate, bigger empty space on swoopy tabs, and no extensions or any way to change the UI.

More bloat. more social media integration.

Toolbar will ship, by default, with even fewer buttons, maybe a back button, maybe a home button if you're real lucky, there may be some additional buttons you can add, but not as many.

defaults.. they will be set at the most ridiculous, privacy invasive, info sharing it's possible to have.

Even more controls will be hidden away.

will be slower, buggier and less configurable.

extensions will get less access to the browser, and will be less useful.writing addons will be harder.

desktop Firefox will get an 'app store'

people will hate the new UI

some users will complain, Many users leave

Mozilla doesn't listen

Firefox dies.

Mozilla incorrectly thinks it's because other browsers were better, instead

of realizing they screwed it up.

Firefox becomes regarded just as Netscape Navigator is.

so er..

"avoid the TV show or the website – entirely "

.. suits me just fine, i already gave my TV set away years back (trendy huh)

and use HOSTS/Proxies/noscript/extensions/element hiding and apps for youtube

and such like.

I hate ALL adverts. Yes. All of them. It wouldn't be quite as bad if the advertisers

could be trusted not to be asshats, but you can't. one pushes the rules, the others then do

then it all goes into a kind of arms race.

I also hate the visual noise of it all too, i can filter much of it out in my brain,

but the problem *is* that you can end up filtering out more than just adverts

- you can end up filtering your environment out too.. just ask those idiots who walk around

staring into cell phones - walking into roads, people, objects etc.

If i want something, i go out and get it. I've been lucky i guess, i've always known what i want,

though, i'm a minority.. so it seems.

everything old is new again.

Yes Microsoft, less *can* be more, but why didn't You get that years ago ?

Musicians figured this idea out hundreds of years back, maybe because *their* code is open

Microsoft.. Either way, they'll screw it up.

I wish software developers thought 'less is more' - code bloat in general and OS bloat are the two big Fux ups that needs fixing in the IT world.. right after they get security done :)

Optional

or just dont install it. scrutinise everything you own between the keyboard and the fibre/wire leaving your house.

Windows long tiime fails

Have they still got 'Format' directly above the 'Eject' in the right click menu on Win8 and 10 ?

i have a Windows computer, but i refuse anything after Win7, so disgusting is MS and its toy OS.

I wish the species wasn't as hung up on bloody cell-phones as it is, i was sat in the Doctors waiting room a few weeks back, every single person (except 2) was sat there hunched over, staring into a 3" screen, seemingly oblivious. Yes, the only two human beings who weren't staring into magic boxes was myself and (curiously) the only other male in the room, we exchanged head shakes..

- do we really need to ignore each other so efficiently ?

Yet more proof Apple died when Steve Jobs did..

I like Apple computers, up until they started gluing stuff together. i own iMacs and Macbooks.

i found the retina MBP only just acceptable as you can replace the battery if you dissolve the glue.

However.

What seems to have happened now is that Apple have gone completely insane, and rather than 'Thinking Different' they are now indistinguishable from any other large faceless corporate entity.

In fact, i may argue that they have gone one step further, and become a parody of themselves, with no uber-controller to reel them in and say 'that's a stupid idea' and so the stupid ideas go forwards, unchecked, the rest of Apple only knowing about cellphones does not have the chops to offer another (possibly more sane) direction, and worse still, stupid ideas then flourish into wat seems an almost pathological quest to give the customers less, whilst charging more, spin the elephant in the room with extra BS, never admit you're wrong, and move on regardless.. that is what politicians do... i don't buy 'their' lies either, and Apple's free pass is running out very quickly too.

The insular bubble that Apple seem to inhabit continues to grow, and become unweildly and their detatchment increases, and design becomes 'more so' as the design team there have been high profile historically, and, post Steve, no-one really challenges them now, so they end up working carte blanche and it becomes 'Art for Arts sake' at the expense of the customer ultimately, forgetting completely the original ethos.. the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

I'm not going to mention (again) glued in parts or removal of I/O and OS bloat .. those things that matter us 'pro' users, no, Apple's abstraction from the real world is summed up perfectly with a book.

The BS continues apace however, fine Apple, print a paper book, but stop it with the BS, you're making yourselves look foolish and alienating your customer base. You can gouge the spotty 16 year olds for every pound or dollar their hipster iPhones can handle, that's what we expect of multinational businesses, but us who have been around longer have seen Apple slowly losing it's mojo and are tiring of the almost-insults you throw at us,one day we will not come back, one of the other firms will get our custom, and we'll fondly remember the days when there was an alternative, and we'll let Apple become the phone company they so much want to be, and we'll all switch to Hackintosh, Linux or BSD and watch as Apple's new motto becomes "Think Similar"

so much for a book ? i feel like Apple are insulting me, and i don't know why, but i do know, this BS must end, or i'm off..

"much-promised GNOME beauty"

which universe was Gnome ever beautiful ?

which universe even had the humour to write those 2 words in the same sentence ?

Those of us that didn't just start using Linux a couple of years ago will remember old Gnome, the mucky, old GTK2 misery which was as clunky and ugly as a low-end,beaten u, rusty 1970s Easten block Trabant - huge areas of screen UI wasted screen real-estate, adjustment in what appeared to be a direct port of the Windows registry to Linux in Gconf (IIRC) and the already clunky window controls and buttons could only be *increased* to something Fischer Price would reject as outrageous.

Look, attraction is obviously subjective, but dammit, Gnome is butt ugly, because today's UI designers are apparently insane and have no taste, and have contempt for poor dumb users .. even the imperfect but supremely customisable and logical KDE 3.5 which was QT3 was dropped seemingly to catch up to Gnome version numbers (somewhat reminiscent of Firefox getting jealous of chrome's versioning number scheme - WGAF ?) and KDE 4 jumped to QT4 and started failing, hiding stuff and screwing its userbase over... but i digress ..

Optional

i'd love another dumb terminal.. my last was an ex BT Data General amber screen. RS232 jobby. Lovely. I'd like to use it as a simple private IRC terminal. prices on Ebay are insulting. I miss those days... before OS got in the way too much.

still not fixed..

bad design, still. when i have the misfortune to use Windows and eject a USB thumb drive, i'm still annoyed Microsoft have got 'Format' directly above the 'Eject' in the device icons right click menu.. i wonder how many USB devices have been accidentally formatted.. as the automatic response for many users - is to click 'OK' .. good design there Microsoft. i thought that might have been a bit obvious years ago, but nope, it's seemingly only me that would have moved the 'Format' option to the other end of the dialog box...

too many cooks ....

I was going to keep this one brief, but i cant. I'm seeing Microsoft sending different signals..

'You remember those rounded corners and shadows ? well here at Microsoft we got rid of the idea of pseudo 3d depth and texture on the desktop and instead gave you an infantile desktop with flat tiles, UI elements so sharp you could cut your finger on them, and bulky, shadowless window elements"

Contrast that to this 'New desktop utilising 3D' etc - read the blurb and spot the difference.

and it seems to me that UI designers are just about out of ideas, Win, Mac & Linux, all dumbing down the UI at the same time the underlying OS gets more complex and pervasive.

the desktop metaphor works, because

a) it makes sense, some humans are not spacially aware.

b) most of us have been using it for 20 years or more

c) monitors and mice limit the actual input we can have to the PC

d) 'more' is 'less', and such horseplay just gets in the way

OS's across the board are turning into appliance operating systems. dammit, They're NOT appliances. Sorry. it has to be said maybe portable tablets are, but leave the damn desktop alone eh folks.

Now, maybe i'm using flawed reasoning, but which is it be Microsoft ?

- such contrarianism (to me at least) smells like UI designers are lost or maybe it's an internal battle of two differing idealogies inside the company, but every OS seems to be in fear of someone wanting to paint their own ideas on it, and not everyone works the same, but we're humans, and we've adapted to what we have quite well. Lets change it then. er..

Maybe, and this is my harsh favourite (and it's not just pointed towards UI folks at MS either) the 'designers' were needing to keep themselves in jobs, so they have to come up with something to justify their positions, and MS have, another old idea, recycled, and it didn't take off last time.

Apple has been ditching it's skeuomorphism for a few years now and is letting it's minimalistic design ethic dribble down and dictate the actual UI by hiding things from it's users. So much for 'Think Different'

The thing is, user interface is largely dictated by the hardware it's running on, we've got windows, icons, mice and pointers because *it makes sense* to try to drastically change the desktop paradigm may be a noble effort, but ask Alan Kay and the folks at Xerox PARC about why OS' look the way they do.

is it just to show off ? living in a cumbersome environment looks as comfortable having to wear that heavy multicoloured jumper Aunt Flo knitted you for xmas ..

An OS should get *out of your way* and let you get doing stuff you want. it's an Operating System, it's used to run programs and manage hardware & provides an interface to it all. simple, It's is not an end in itself, deliberately hiding stuff is bloody stupid, as it's against the whole idea of what an operating system is for, Yes, UI elements should be on every window, yes, shadows giving 3d desktop depth and and helps with window stacking and recognition in a useful visually pleasing 'environment'.

The GL desktop cube stuff that was compiz and with it's wobbly jelly-windows was a lot of *fun* on Linux several years ago, but i bet no-one hardly uses it, it adds little and is only cool to show to someone who has never seen it before, maybe the desktop switching on cubes was not too bad, but wasn't needed, i bet most users switched most the eye candy off too after a while of playing with it. I did, It got in the way, If you eat ice cream everyday, it gets very boring and makes you ill..

If it's a neccessary evil ..

at the risk of teachin' Grandma to suck eggs, you may want to investigate a couple of options, first is the 'Element Hiding' helpers and such like in Adblock plus and Ublock, and probably a few more.. it can be a little bit of a pain to correctly hide the bits of the webpage you dont want to see, but it's generally successful, and slims page load times down too, so try it if you haven't, and a with little trial and error and you can stop much visual noise, on almost ANY website.

Secondly there are userscripts, Userstyles.org and the Stylish extension for Firefox, Safari and Chrome, is a community which lets you customise sited in your browser, for example i hate white backgrounds and dark text, it all seems eye damaging to me, so i use Stylish and a script like the 'Midnight surfing' one to make all webpages light text on a dark background.. sheer bliss. however, for Facebag adverts there are advert and other panel removers and customisations aplenty ...

Style over content

Jony Ive been set wild without Steve Jobs to wind him in, Maybe Mr. Ive gets so far up his own ass, spending an inordinate amount of time in the Aple ecosystem, he has become blind to his self indulgances, and apple is becoming just another company.

In a world recession, (or at least the western world) upper market goods still sell better than you might expect, counter-intuitive as that seems, but the gotcha is that as this high-teir hardware is basically just becoming a throw-away item, as there are few (if any) user replaceable parts inside Apple things nowadays and people are starting to want to hang on to their iDevices a little longer perhaps, and they're discovering all that glitters may not be gold.

My brother is a long time Apple fanboi, but recently has switched mobile fone to Android..

he had the latest iPhones up until last year, but he had to stand outside the kitchen door to make phonecalls, and if he moved, the call dropped, now his new Samsung fone works whan he's sat anywhere in his house.. and he doesn't need Apple TV to stream stuff to his smart TV.. win win.

Plastic keyboards, poor quality design and general cheap plastic crappy PS bought me to Apple computer hardware. I have a couple of 2009 iMacs and similar vintage Macbook / pro 15" and the hardware is very good from that vintage. i can change RAM, battery and HD easily. The hardware was very good, i say was.

Xmas 2015 i bought a Macbook Pro retina 15", 2012 from business sellars on Ebay.

the first one had the screen issue, so after a day sent it back, the second had pitted keys on the keyboard and display weirdness, so that went back, so last try, a 2011 Macbook Pro retina 15"

- this too had display issues, so was sent back.

Three different Ebay sellers on Ebay UK sending three duff Retina Macbooks out, Yes i did my research before i bought money, but i thought out of three over xmas i might have got one good one, but no, the fiasco that was the early retina MBP bit me three times in a row, I was ready to replace the tricky battery if needed, i can live without DVD drives, and such like, but QUALITY was so low, i would *cheap* chinese laptops to fare better. Wrong.

Apple care less now, I'm not sure they cared too much in the first place, they're a huge multinational business which almost by definition doesn't give a shit about anyone, even it's customers.

The video card fiasco in the older Macbook Pro's - the ensuing class action following on,

with Apple slapping customers in the face after daring to complain about GPU failures after paying top dollar - you can push people away time and time again, but eventually, they'll stop coming..

"should you do it ?" Answer "No. of course not "

amazing.. it seems as if trustworthy old Microsoft actually want people to *pay* for being spied on, as if their toy-OS wasn't bad enough already, what's even sadder though, is that millions will. I already dislike the trend across all modern operating systems of built in bloat, countless daemons, desktop searches, databasing and collecting data and spying and UI dumbing down for all us dumb users who have only been using computers for 30-odd years.

Optional

does this apply to pig fellatio websites too ?

my latter 6502 days

it was back sometime in the 90s, but when my old BBC Master died, i noticed that the nice, heavy, metal and beige (naturally) dual BBC Micro 5.25 floppy drive - (i think it was an Opus) was the same size as the spare PC CD drive i had gathering dust, (i think it was one of those that connected to a soundcard) and i was delighted to find it all fited and had the familiar 4 pin molex power connectors inside the old 5.25 dual height case, so i fitted the CD drive as it had a built in switch mode PSU, and i dispensed with the flat grey floppy cable and connected the 3.5mm audio out to my stereo amp and was happy. I miss the heavy build quality of some of that old stuff.

I later fitted one of the rather fetching black 5.25" drives into my new 386 (i think it was) IBM-PC,

but by then i found out everyone was using 3.5" floppies by then.

- you can't win 'em all

It only happened once to me..

then installed the recent GWX stopper util, disabled Windows update and removed the half dozen telemetry and spy-ware patches MS installed and then it was 'corrected' .... it happened to some of my neighbours computers too, and i 'corrected' them as well. I won't use Windows on the net.. i unplug it from the net, only need it just to run one or two programming bits of sw.