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Comment Re:kool aid (Score 1) 284

Japan isn't governed by a totalitarian regime that explicitly enforces conformity. So I guess when China finally undergoes that NEXT revolution (that would be their sixth in less than two centuries) I'm sure they'll then be a force to be reckoned with...

Comment Re:kool aid (Score 1) 284

Wow, more kool aid for you.

The US long ago STOPPED mining those rare metals because it was "cheaper to buy them from china." IOW they adopted the wal-mart mentality and treated selenium and barium like air conditioners and tube socks.

Comment Re:kool aid (Score 1) 284

You rant as if this is something new. "Deadbeat dads" (and moms, and it's very easy to become one) have been denied that right since the Clinton administration. If you owe child support, you get no passport. This works especially well when one has opportunity to work abroad (and, thus, to pay that child support) but cannot work abroad because one is denied rights explicitly granted under the 14th amendment.

Comment Re:kool aid (Score 1) 284

[i]US technology doesn't originate from the US government. It originates from bright individuals that live in the US. They can migrate to other countries, just like they have all their technology mass produced in other countries. [/i]

Yes, and we see that happening now in droves. I'm sure that will happen in even greater numbers when the economy of china has stagnated.

I think you just want something to worry about.

Comment kool aid (Score 0) 284

You're swallowing his kool aid. The fact is without US technology and US raw materials China would have a LOT less to produce. China is two decades away (at least) from having trees to support its production of lumber, furniture and other such goods. They're also dependant upon western (often american) technology which they essentially clone and sell domestically. They have demonstrated a great ability to produce but little in the way of useful original ideas when it comes to those gadgets and geegaws.

A trade war with China would hurt them way more than us. We do still have factories sitting idle, and we have workers without work. There's also an entire globe for each of us to compete in. Just wait til Brazil gets rolling in another decade or two... China who?

Comment unity only half sucks (Score 1) 441

I can't stand unity either, but some of the tools make using a GP computer mo better. My PC uses a 42" monitor attached to my living room wall and my eyesight and great, and tools like global menu both save screen real estate and make things ultimately simpler.

But yeah, I hate unity. But you really NEED things like mini/max/close buttons next to the global menu - so I made my own, very simply, using xsendkeys and three panel launchers. A vertical panel running dockbarx gives me a great launcher/task selector, and maximus makes it easy to keep track of one thing at a time when I want that without being intrusive.

Basically, the only thing that sucks about unity is the unity desktop itself. The only thing from there I miss is the text search/launcher. If that didn't take up the whole desktop it would be much better.

http://mypicturepalace.com/albums/userpics/10001/Screenshot~4.png

Comment Web 101: Google don't fuckin work without js (Score 1) 262

That's the problem. They had a GREAT web search page but then had to fuck it up with IFRAMES (web security 101: IFRAMES are not made for use outside a corporate firewall) and eight layers of javascript. I use google image search a LOT and the solution ultimately came down to me carving out a command line google grabber as a means to avoid all their bullshit.

gggrabber -a -s xga +its+britney+bitch|wget -i -

It sucks not having instant real time update on search terms, but it's a lot less dangerous to sort through a bunch of extraneous images than to use that fucked up "improved" google image search.

Comment time is on my side (Score 1) 729

that's the thing, tho: the LTS releases are really no more stable than any other - in some cases it seems even LESS so becayse they seem to figure "we'll fix those problems on the next update."

And they do. 10.04.2 works pretty much flawlessly for me where 10.04 was a clusterfuck of bugs. The only thing now missing for me is hdmi audio - not a big deal, but annoying none the less when it was working under 10.10 before I did that "upgrade" to 11.04 and fucked everything up to the point I had to ffr the goddamn machine.

I hope I have learned my lesson now: the last three releases I have "upgraded" within weeks of the latest becoming available, and in each case I was forced to revert back to the previous version (a time costly procedure that inevitably leaves me still having to correct some /home settings by hand). I think from now on I will stick with lts releases ONLY at least six months after their initial release.

Comment AAAAGHHH! (Score 2) 126

The 6800 came from Motorola. The 6502 was the successor the the 6501, both of which came from MOSTEK. Commodore may have had cpus contracted out, but the 6500 came nearly a decade before commodore hit the bigtime. MOSTEK was one of the leaders at the time because they offered experimenters a $20 "kit" that included a manual AND a 6501 CPU chip. This price was phenomenal at the time. The 6502 was the cpu that powered the KIM and SYM microcomputer kits, which were also very capable and very affordable - at $250 they were a fraction the price of the 8080 and z80 based machines of the time, and were equally capable (in fact, in many cases, much faster).

NOT a 65000, NOT a 68000, not a 6800, and so on. The 6800 was a slightly different beast, pushed by Motorola because they thought they had the power to overcome mostek's intertia because they're freaking motorola. But the 6800 was inferior in many ways, and it didn't happen until the 65xx line was long sold and dying.

Comment Re:unity (Score 1) 729

Wow some of you really are nto thinking. I never said the KEYBOARD was going anywhere, nor have the UI designers. In fact, most fo the changes yall are complaining about are changes that move MORE of the UI from mouse clicks to keyboard related stuff. This also works well because anything that can be done from the keyboard can also be done UTTERING SOUNDS, which are also coming hard fast and heavy and none too soon.

I'm not mak9ing apologies for any of the mess these folks are creating. But I think some of us are learning there's a new line on the "cutting edge" and are really more pissed because we're starting to realize we're not longer "cutting edge" users. There's no real reason to upgrade your machine's OS every 6 months unless it lacks something that your present machine does, and I honestly cannot say mine lacks anything. I upgraded because I really wanted to see what all this new stuff was about, and now that I have I'm sorry - well, lesson learned: leave it to the young kids with their facebook crap and their 8-way messaging interfaces, and I'll just select the best bits and pieces from that and add it to mine as I can.

Comment Re:unity (Score 1) 729

I think the problem si that we are stuck using the hardware we have been used to, while these UI designers are preparing for the hardware that is fast approaching. We're at a crossroads, and that's tough on everyone.

The paradigm we are used to is a keyboard and mouse. The paradigm that's coming is no more mouse, and keyboard and UI are all part of one unified bit of hardware - "point" with your finger to drag sliders, click buttons and such.

Think about it: if you had to operate your car going down the road by "clicking" via a mouse virtual representations of headlight switch, high beams, windshield wipers, radio buttons and so forth, it'd get old REALLY quick. Yet this is the paradigm we seem to be clinging to in the computing arena.

Comment Re:Absurd (Score 1) 729

bullshit. I logged out, clicked my name, chose "classic session" and logged back in. Guess what? After restarting many times it's still on "classic session" - the last choice I made - by default - just like in the last previous releases.

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