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Comment Re:Split The Userbase?! (Score 1) 50

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49903957) Attached to: Google Announces YouTube Gaming

I've said it before and here it is again. Within a decade, perhaps within the next 5 years, some bright young web designers will "discover" new methods of making websites that will turn out to be almost identical to the usable, intuitive, and inviting websites we had in 2008. I'm talking side navigation panes, site maps, links with actual words on them, legible text and fonts, content borders, actual fucking dense, readable, clear content instead of a 2+MB page that take 5 seconds to fade in a single login screen. In short people will discover how to make a motherfucking website again.

I'll be glad when that happens. Webpages are getting slow and slower with more JavaScript crap that doesn't gain anything (fine if it's an interactive Office App, but just a blog post?) It's causing me to have to retire computers simply because surfing the web is too slow. The requirements of a web page are normally pretty simple: Show text, show pictures, show links, and in select cases show videos.

Comment Re:Here's mine ... (Score 1) 558

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49886801) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Hardware Is In Your Primary Computer?

Sounds about right. I'm shocked how much DDR2 has gone up. For DDR the only way I could justify upgrading old PCs from 512MB to 2GB to upgrade to Windows 7 was to get used RAM from the local Computer store (they're the only ones in town selling used RAM).

On my new system I went with 16GB, but only filled 2 of 4 slots. The system can handle 32GB, so when prices come down enough I'll put in the other 16GB.

Comment Core i5-4690 (Score 1) 558

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49886675) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Hardware Is In Your Primary Computer?

Gigabyte B85M-D3H Motherboard (Intel B85 chipset).
Core i5-4690 (picked for best value for single thread execution)
16GB RAM (upgradable to 32GB)
256GB Crucial M550 SSD for OS and applications
1TB Western Digital Black HDD for storage
I use the onboard graphics because I don't game, has h.264 hardware acceleration, and it has outputs for HDMI, VGA, DVI, so I can connect 3x 1080 monitors. I have a VGA extension cord running to the living room, so I can plug it into the VGA port to use as a "media PC" with wireless headphones and Logitech K400 keyboard (in addition to my desktop keyboard/mouse set).
Windows 7 Home Premium

I didn't build it myself, but had a local PC shop build it.

Comment Re:.pst? (Score 1) 203

I know plenty of people with 40GB PSTs too, you haven't been limited to 2gb since Office 2007

But sometimes Outlook ends up in "compatability" format and will screw up at 2GB.

If I were using Outlook at work, I'd probably partition my emails off into PSTs by calender year. That way I can have a fixed archive for previous years. I partition off "My documents" by year as well.

Comment Re:3D printing (Score 4, Insightful) 85

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49870923) Attached to: Combating Climate Risks With 3D Printing

The article also seems to think 3D printers can make anything out of thin air. You save transportation costs because you don't need to ship anything, and you avoid supply chain disruptions because you don't have to ship anything.

From the article:

The effects of natural disasters extend far beyond individual companies. In 2012, a severe drought temporarily halted the transport of goods down the Mississippi River, affecting the entire region. This is the type of problem likely to become more common in a changing climate. The ability to print goods where they are needed would clearly decrease vulnerability to droughts and other disruptive weather events.

From the linked Bloomberg Article on the drought:

which could be shut to cargo from companies including Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. next month.

-Agricultural. We can print food now?

“If you’re shipping raw materials to a steel mill in Chicago, you’re trying to figure out if you can go to Cincinnati or Louisville, Kentucky, unload it out of the barge and rail it up to the steel mill.”

-Thank god 3D printers can print steel out of nothing

Barges on the Mississippi handle about 60 percent of the nation’s grain exports entering the Gulf of Mexico through New Orleans, as well as 22 percent of its petroleum and 20 percent of its coal.

Good thing we can print fossil fuels now too.

Comment Re:This isn't really new (Score 1) 133

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49844793) Attached to: Microsoft To Release Low-Cost Windows 10 With Bing Branding

Except, obviously, that it's Windows 10, not Windows 8.1. My HP tablet comes with Windows 8.1 with Bing, and I've been suspecting the "free upgrade" I'll be getting will be to an equivalent Windows 10 version.

Windows 8.1 with Bing is actually free to manufacturers of cheaper devices. I assume that was partly why it was on my $150 HP tablet.

Is it a Stream? I've been surprised at how well my $100 HP Stream 7 (with free case) runs. Chrome (even in desktop mode) is actually designed for touch use (keyboard pops up when required, mobile type select, copy, paste functions), and I'm surprised that most desktop applications function properly with drag scrolling, and pinch zooming.

Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 408

>I think the purpose of tarrifs and duties is to specifically hinder this kind of ad-hoc cross-border arbitrage

Duties on all items brought over for personal consumption/use is GST, or HST in areas having HST. This pegs the maximum legal of charge at 13%.

There is actually a parts of Canada outside Ontario. Here HST is 15%.

Comment Re:"stealing just like stealing anything else" (Score 2) 408

The agreement was that you would not only pay the fee but also pay it from United States soil and remain on United States soil while viewing works available through the service. What makes such a contract invalid?

No. I setup a Netflix Canada account. A courtesy they provide to all Netflix users is to provide the content library of the region you appear to be in, regardless of where you registered your account. They just think me, and thousands of other Canadians, and UK, and Australians, are just visiting the USA for months at a time, from the same IP.

Comment Re:"stealing just like stealing anything else" (Score 2) 408

It can't even be imagined as "stealing" in my mind. Since it's paid for in the U.S., I fail to see the difference if you had driven to the U.S. and purchased something to take back to Canada. it might be "smuggling" if anything, by way of avoiding paying whatever bullshit tariffs Canada might be able to levy, if there even are any that apply.

You actually set up a Netflix Canada account, and pay in Canadian Dollars. Connect by VPN (or DNS proxy), and Netflix thinks you're "visiting" the US. Regardless of where you registered your account, Netflix will provide the content library of the country you appear to be in. Netflix will do this no problem even though you were just in Canada moments earlier, and even though you apparently travel to the states for months at a time, and are coming from the same IP as hundreds or thousands of other Canadians (and other international customers).

Netflix very much turns a blind eye to this. There's no way they don't know about how many people are bypassing region locks, but they turn a blind eye because they know people will pay to sign up for the crappy Canadian content, with the intention of VPNing into the US content. They try to do the bare minimum to make content creators think that they are trying to block it, without really doing anything.

Myself, I use TVUnblock It's free, and it's just a DNS setting. To get it to work on Chromecast, I set the router DNS to TVUnblock, and I set a firewall on the router to prevent Chromecast from connecting to Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) causing it to fall back on the router's DNS settings.

Comment Re:funny we can't shutoff computers anymore (Score 1) 106

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49770579) Attached to: No, Your SSD Won't Quickly Lose Data While Powered Down

It is coincidental that this article comes out just as I lost a lot of data on my computer last night after shutting it off. I have an SSD, however I think it might have been because I didn't let Windows 8 shut down cleanly I simply powered it off. I can't be sure if it is because of the unclean shutdown or being off for a number of hours. When I booted my machine just moments ago and tried to login, it said the nvidia and intel graphics drivers were corrupt. Also, my laptop's updater tool is missing from the program files. I don't know how many different files I might have lost. I was able to boot into safe mode and start repairing, however. Note: I don't normally just shut it off like that, but I was heading to bed and I was bit groggy so I just held the power button out of apathy. I really didn't expect an utter catastrophe to follow.

You haven't been supposed to just force power off since at least Windows 95, so almost 20 years. You must have been running on battery, normally I go start->shutdown, then walk away and let it do it's thing (or just leave it running). What make/ model SSD do you have?

Comment Re:The Case of Mondays (Score 1) 106

by LinuxIsGarbage (#49770475) Attached to: No, Your SSD Won't Quickly Lose Data While Powered Down

The drives will instantly brick themselves at the following Monday.

That's being optimistic. More likely is Saturday night at 3AM, resulting in a call in to repair the downed system. Bonus points if you don't require people to be "on-call" rotation, so you have to find someone that isn't too drunk to come in.

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