The wife and I haven't been inside a movie theater in nearly 10 years.. We splurged on a nice big screen tv a few years ago, and now, when a movie comes out that we want to see, we wait till it comes out on DVD at Redbox, I go rent it, slap it in the pc, rip it to my Plex media server, then that night, she makes a big bowl of popcorn, and thanks to the cute little Roku box under the tv and its Plex plugin we can watch the movie at OUR leasure.. pause for a nature-break or a drink refill... Since there has been soooo very few movies that we want to see, I've not had to upgrade the RAID array on the server above the 2 1TB drives it has now.. With the clunkers that Hollyweird puts out, I don't expect to need to upgrade anytime soon....

yup... I did US Army back in the early 70s.. Was initially drafted, got the song-dance in boot camp about re-upping for an additional year to *avoid* being an 11B (Infantryman). I thought I'd avoided that by opting for training as a radar repair tech.. Funny thing... I got sent to Vietnam and guess what? they had no open slots for a fixer of this particular radar, so I got assigned as an *operator* of this particular radar (AN/PPS5, a 3-man-pack-able anti-personnel radar), which was essentially an 11B "grunt" but with a piece of hi-tech equipment on his back.. The tech school was 3 months, with ONE WEEK on operating the radar, and where does the Army assign me??? Really efficient...

Actually its the mark of a statist/totalitarian masquerading as a Conservative.. Most *actual* Conservatives don't like those things, but we don't try to prevent others from partaking of them. All we ask is to not shove the fact you're doing these things in our faces.. Such as.. we believe homosexuality is a sin, but we don't give a damn what you do in the privacy of your bedroom.. Not to mention, most of us do NOT hate gays, we hate the sin.. BIG difference there.. Hate the sin, NOT the sinner... I suspect I'd have to classify myself as a Conservative/Libertarian... I believe in the motto "live and let live"...

Bottom line: David Cameron is as far from a true Conservative as one of the old-line USSR dictators...

Stop calling me Shirley....

TSA is a jobs program for those who wouldn't be hired for any other jobs.. thus they get all the thieves, perverts and power-trippers, since being in the TSA gives the power-tripper a channel to exert his "power" over others. Not to mention the thief, who arranges to get on the TSA team that inspects luggage.. Perfect job for him... Then theres the pervert, who arranges to get on the team that watches the nude-scanner... After a day doing that, he can go home and get his jollies off...

One of the most worthless TLA government agencies, right close behind the IRS....

Dunno what distro you're using, but on Ubuntu 14.04, two 19" widescreens running off an Nvidia card have zero issues getting dual-screen set up.. My only regret is my two 19" widescreens are somewhat old and can't swivel to portrait, as much as I'd LOVE to have one set that way...

Sure am glad I've moved all of my families systems over to Linux. I spent from about 1991 till 2010 cleaning up behind Microsoft's crap, at various companies, all the way from Windows 3.1 to XP.. Last company I worked for in 2010 before retiring is *just* now finishing up moving to Windows 7 from XP. They hadn't even started when I left in 2010. There is no way in hell I'd pay MS per month to use their crap... Linux does what we need (and more) and Linus doesn't have his hand out for $$$ nor do I have to call and talk to a robot to "authorize" Linux... THOSE two features alone are worth using Linux vs Windows...

These comments remind me I'm currently reading a new sci-fi novel by Larry Niven and Greg Benford, actually two novels, "Bowl of Heaven" and its sequel, "Shipstar".. Imagine a spinning bowl that had the circumferance of somewhere close to the orbit of Venus, and being propelled by plasma from the captive star thru a knot-hole in the bowl. .. THAT could truly be called a "star-drive"... The bowl has a spin for about 8/10s of a G, and has a bunch of alien species living on it.. And as close as I can tell, as the authors never actually (so far into the second book) tell you how fast the lash-up is going, the story tells of a 1/3 lightspeed colony starship from Earth that catches up to it about 1/2 way to the colony ships destination All in all, I'm about 1/2 way thru the second book and its DEFINITELY a page-turner, but then most of Niven and Benford's writings *are* page-turners...

You're lucky they're just brown-outs... Given ANY kind of weather, wind, a bit of rain, or a deluge of rain, my power company hits my neighborhood with these frequent little 10-30 second complete outages. The power goes out *just* long enough to kill all of my computers. Our area was built in 1977, and the utilities are all underground. Oddly enough, several blocks over is an area that is a bit older and has power above ground and does not have these outages. I have several friends who live in this area and they don't get the outages. I've had to go out and buy a small ups for the cable modem/router/voip box and two big ones for the workstation and server.. For the rest of the house we just live with it...

NO KIDDING!! We needed a new car back in 2012 and we decided on a 2012 Ford Escape. Oh if I had it to do over, I would SOOOOO not buy that vehicle.. We went with Ford, since I wouldn't touch a GM car for all the tea in China.. Let me count the ways I hate it...The braindead beeper that beeps endlessly with the key in the ignition EVEN if I'm sitting there in the drivers seat... The way the radio shuts off after 10 min EVEN if the key is in the ignition and I'm sitting there listening to it.. You have to flick the key on and back off to get Ford to grant you another 10 min to listen to YOUR radio.. This hits me a lot as I hate going into stores with the wife, thus I sit in the car listening to the bazillion Sirus/XM channels.. Another BIG hate is the braindead Microsoft/Sync abortion that passes for a radio/entertainment center in this car.. I suppose I should have realised that when Microsoft is involved, its gonna be crap... witness Windows 8... Getting the bluetooth to connect up to my common-as-dirt android phone is a non-starter, nor the wife's equally common android phone.. Not to mention, the endless dropouts the satellite radio gets, mostly sitting at a stoplight.. I suspect there is *some* RF source from the traffic control system that is causing desense in the likely crappy satellite radio front-end... Once again, Microsoft was involved with it, and lemme tell you, the user interface leaves sooooo much to be desired... But then, UI design and Microsoft?? need I go any further??... Sorry about the rant...

I wonder just how long it will be before 1) there is a law *requiring* you to own/use a television-like device, 2) the only units that are sold have these "features", and 3) once installed you are unable to turn them off or if you do manage to do so, you get a visit by the "tv police"... Of course, the reason for such a "law" making this requirement would be couched in terms like "for the children... terrorists... " ... you get the drill... I feel sorry for the kids of today who will have to live with such shit..
George Orwell had it right, just a few years too early... Glad I'm over the hill, probably won't last more than 10 more years.. (64 now).. Hopefully, this shit happens after I'm gone....

I'm on Ubuntu, and if I want to get an HP USB headset to work, I gotta rip out Pulseaudio and go back to Alsa, where the USB headset *just works*, kinda like it does when I use it on (shudder) Windows... In Windows (and Alsa) you plug the USB headset in, your audio out goes to the headset, your mike audio comes from the headset mike.. You pull the USB plug out and audio is back to internal mike and speakers... I spent days fucking around trying to get this to work in PA, then read an article that basically said "Alsa is the only way to get one of these headsets to work".... Sure, I know, *somebody* here is gonna pipe up and say "I had NO trouble getting USB audio to work right on Pulse".... yippy for you.. THAT was NOT my experience... I've been working with Linux since 1994, started with Slackware.. so I'm not a rank noobie.. And on another note, I suspect Pat and I will get reacquianted here pretty soon, since I have it on good authority he hates systemd as much as a LOT of us do and since every other distro seems to be going that way, its likely back to Slackware for moi...

Ummm... Banks can suck my balls.. I've had my money in a credit union for the last 30 years or so.. They don't fee you to death, getting a loan is a piece of cake, and usually as convienient (or sometimes moreso) as a bank. Not to mention, if you have a problem, which I did, once, with my current credit union, I placed a call to the CEO of the credit union, whose phone number is plainly listed on the CU website.. Problem was solved WHILE I WAS on the phone with him... Try THAT with a bank... I dare ya..

At the risk of being considered a conspiricy nut.. I gotta funny feeling this is all in the plan.. Nationwide problem, therefore the problem gets "nationalized".. A perfect excuse for martial law.. The shitstain currently in the Whitehouse has been praying to Allah/Satan for just such an excuse. I expect the announcement any day now..

Since I know I'll get modded down by the majority of Communist/Liberals who infest /. I'll put this right here.. I'm neither an (R) or a (D) (shudder).... I'm A FUCKING AMERICAN and I'm sick and tired of the road this country is going down... The road is soon to be REALLY REALLY bumpy......