The username/email conundrum

iMess with your messages

Call for ideas

#raspeberrypi #sip

As I said in my previous journal entry, I'd install Windows XP Home (OEM) in a Virtual Machine today in order to commemorate the death of XP. I documented it with screenshots. Yes, I know, it's Facebook album, but it's public. It was the quickest way to get something online.
From VM creation and installation from SP3 OEM ISO to fully patched in 1 hour and 30 minutes. Not all that shabby.
It also indicates that XP will most likely die totally when they turn off the activation servers. I don't think they'll hand out the promised "no activation patch", ever. (Well, I always heard they'd promised such a thing, it might simply be legend.)

Tomorrow Windows XP dies, long live Windows XP!

Posted a few comments on this Ask Slashdot article yesterday. Come back, and they've disappeared. They've not been deleted - I can still access them, from the recent comments area of my profile - and they've not been downmodded either. Not a Beta issue, as I'm not currently on it.

??????

Just spotted that people are stuffing comments into various stories here for the sole purpose of complaining about the /. Beta.

Maybe it's because I only occasionally visit here, but are people really that hung up on the current design?

Hell, I can remember when /. didn't even bother with any testing, period, just shoved changes straight onto the production servers. Fun times. (Not)

Having looked at the Beta, it seems to me a damn sight cleaner that some news sites I can think of*. Ok, the comment view controls could use some refining, but that's the whole point of beta-testing, right?

(*I still have nightmares about pre-2000s ZDNet. Makes the current design look almost pleasant by comparison.)

Turned 0x30 on Christmas Eve. That sounds better than 48. I expect to start acting 20 when I hit 50.
insert goatse link here.

On shared computer accounts.

You want me to blacklist you on Facebook? Here is the recipe

Google Plus Custom URL is so messed up it's not funny.

Yeah, well, I've got a new soapbox. On social media in the past

I'm a masochist. No, not of the sexual variety. Of the slashdot variety. For some reason, not only do I still continue to read this site, I click on links to stories about cars and phones. The raging stupidity and arrogance is amazing.

And yet I come back.

Yep, /. is just as UI-fugly as I remember it. :P

-MT.

In the past few weeks different people came to me with the dreaded phrase: "I have an idea for an app". If you feel targeted, you probably are, but you're not the first, and you won't be the last. Some even trusted me enough to tell me what their great idea was. Many, though not all, couldn't code their way through a paper bag and thus they look for someone "to code the app for free".

You even might find someone like that, and if you do, it's someone with a lot of time on their hands like a student with not much experience.

What those ideas (if I get to hear them) all have in common is that they need infrastructure behind it. Uploading pictures, movies, heck, even simple text need a place to be stored. That's definitely not your phone, especially if others need to be able to access it. Yeah, you can start off with hosting a little database and web front end on your DSL line (if you have one), but in the long run this will require some serious money. I'm not even talking about the people managing and creating it for you. I'm just talking about bandwidth, storage, electricity.

So, if you have an app idea, assess where you want to store what: if you have no concrete answers to those questions, shelve your idea until you do.. An app is nothing magical, it requires real resources, real work and thus real money.