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Comment Re:Open Standards, Not stupid plugins. (Score 3, Insightful) 166

HTML 5 is not perfect, however it does give us a lot of features that we think we should use flash for, and we really should follow the standards that comes part of the browser then rely on plugins.

HTML 5 is ideal but one of my problems with using pure HTML and JavaScript for certain tasks is that implementation can vary wildly and performance even more so. Browser A might implement only a part of the standard, Browser B might implement the entire standard and Browser C has no support and worse is when all of them fully support the standard but Browser A is super slow compared to Browser B and Browser C is basically unusable. I've also seen a few JavaScript intensive websites demand you use only Chrome and I think this is a symptom of these problems.

As bad as proprietary plugins are at least it'll always have a consistent implementation across browsers and perform, in the case of Flash, equally bad across all the browsers.

Its not that I don't support the idea of cross-platform and cross-browser HTML5 solutions for tasks previously only accomplished through Flash but I think people often fail to understand it isn't all unicorns and rainbows as its made out to be.

Comment Re:What are these shiny discs you speak of? (Score 1) 250

This is a phenomenon known as "bitrot." It is for this reason tape drive backups are still around but since SATA allows hotplugging and there are SATA docks now some people just buy hard drives and use those for long term storage. Hard drives as a backup medium I imagine would work pretty good as long as you keep them in a dark, dry and cool place mostly safe from any shock like drops or heavy vibrations. In fact I had a computer from the mid-80's once and its hard drive, file system and data was still intact.

I've always wanted to try tape drives mostly for the novelty but they're excessively expensive which is why I think hard drives as a long term storage medium have started to take off but ultimately I don't think they'll displace tapes for storage meant to last a magnitude of half a century or longer.

I suppose if you're daring enough you could try paper as a backup medium.

Comment Re:Is gaming on Linux actually going to take off? (Score 1) 132

Pretty much this.

I'm probably going to start a riot by saying this but I think KDE stands as the best candidate for a "standardized" desktop environment; it's all very well built and all its components are well integrated into the KDE framework and the environment itself will probably feel the most comfortable for Windows users. Of course everyone is entitled to their preferences (the beauty of the GNU/Linux platform) but I honestly believe KDE is an outstanding environment for general desktop usage.

I used to use GNOME2 but after the Gnome Project went full retard with mobilitis in Gnome 3 going the same direction as Unity and Windows 8 I decided to go back to KDE.

I'll also throw a shoutout here and say that I think Kubuntu is an excellent distro based on Debian but with the community and frequent updates of Ubuntu, however unlike Ubuntu it doesn't get much attention unfortunately.

Comment Re:What are these shiny discs you speak of? (Score 1) 250

Right hows your VHS collection going then? VHS tapes were still sold often only 10 years ago.

I have hundreds of VHS movies and I still have a VCR.

The problem is never if you have the 8mm, 8-track, vinyl, cassette, minidisk, etc. The problem is if you still have a functioning player for such thing.

I don't think we'll have quiet the same problem with optical media for time to come though because unlike VHS; which was an analog based format designed when computers where in their infancy, DVD's are digital and can be directly read by a common desktop PC and for the foreseeable future we'll only see optical based formats advance further. Just to prove my point how long digital formats live on its still possible to read 3.5" floppy discs if one is determined enough.

I suppose you could run into a problem in 20 years with being able to read a DVD still but you can always run Windows XP in a VM or use one of hundreds of Linux distributions with libdvdcss installed. There are also plenty of other free tools for preserving and converting DVD's Hollywood isn't too fond of that I would imagine will still be around for some time to come.

Comment Re:What are these shiny discs you speak of? (Score 2) 250

But if I wasn't interested in niche stuff, there'd be no practical (as opposed to philosophical) reason to continue to collect physical media.

I'm the complete opposite. I have some digital stuff but otherwise I continue to collect physical media whenever I can because I'll always have access to it and some big company won't be able to pull the licensing agreement and suddenly the movie/show/game is gone from my collection on Amazon or something because the big company wants more money from Amazon for their 20 year old movie.

When it comes to physical media the first sale doctrine is king so in addition to the already mentioned benefits of always having my media I can also sell or lend my media without interference or limitation.

Comment Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard? (Score 1) 241

Those Minis with 32-bit CPUs you can pop open and install an ordinary 64-bit Core 2 Duo from a "PC" into the Mini. The only thing is that the OS X installer for newer versions of OS X will read the model number of your mainboard and tell you they you're obsolete (regardless of the CPU installed) and that you'll need to purchase a new Mac but that can be fixed by unpackaging the installer, removing the check from the install scripts and repackaging it all back together.

My "obsolete" circa 2006 Mac Mini I bought used is actually running OS X Lion now and it works just fine whereas I would've had to have spent $900 to buy a new Mac Mini from Apple. Unfortunately all the iOS dev tools for iOS 7, among other things, have been locked to Mavericks by Apple so I'll need to figure out how to get Mavericks on it if it will even run on the older hardware due to the old video chipset.

Unfortunately you can't do this with newer Mac Minis because apparently Apple caught on to this and soldered everything to the mainboard.

Comment Re:Giving the FBI NSA's duties is a BAD idea. (Score 1) 324

We have had just about as many attacks in the 2000's and 2010's as in the 80's and 90's. In particular US embass's have been under multiple terrorist attacks in 20001 - Nairobi, Ben Gahzi, etc.

Any chance you could look up your equivalent of Wikipedia or some kind of newspaper archive in 20,001 and tell me what the winning lottery numbers are in 2014?

Comment Re:Common problem. (Score 1) 37

A common example occurs when IT dictates all passwords must be at least seven characters an include mixed case and punctuation.

Ha! My IT department where I work (I shall not disclose whom I work for) requires that all passwords have a minimum of 14 characters and the password is required to be changed on a regular interval in a mandatory basis. There is a policy in place against passwords; on post-it notes, in notebooks and so forth so it's really frustrating and really easy to forget if you're not careful.

Comment Re:Common sense? In MY judiciary? (Score 1) 457

I've lost a lot of trust for the police. I still respect them and the law they're supposed to uphold but that doesn't mean I trust them.

Unfortunately I've had some negative encounters with police like this one particular state trooper who threatened to arrest me and steal my camera. I took a picture of a wrecker pulling a car out of a ditch from my porch and when the trooper saw I had a camera he walked across my lawn onto my porch and started yelling at me that he was going to have to take my camera or arrest me so I asked him under what statute at which point he straightened his posture, raised his voice and said "WHAT STATUTE?!" and then he proceeded to tell me that I was illegally taking pictures of a crime scene and that doing so is indecent and if I didn't delete the pictures he'd have to confiscate the camera and arrest me.

I later consulted an attorney was told that the officer was likely in the wrong but it probably wasn't worth pursuing.

Comment Re:Liking my old cars more and more. (Score 1) 390

And, since as you point out in your subject, the reams of older cars without this in it is going to more or less negate the benefits of it.

Yeah, well, that might be true until the government mandates that everyone upgrade their old cars at their own expense or face a stiff penalty at which point the Supreme Court will uphold the penalty as a tax, meanwhile the politicians will be telling everyone; "you can keep your old car!"

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