Comment Re:Frosty RIP (Score 1) 344
So many memories of those early
RIP Roblimo.
Comment From lurker to active and back again... (Score 1) 726
Happy Birthday
It is difficult to fathom that the site has been around for 20 years, because I've "only" been online for 25 or so and I can't possibly be that old. Right? Right??
Comment Electric company (Score 1) 223
The electric company subscription service provides the voltage and amperage I need (all the time) when I need it (right now.) Without it, life would be very difficsy8907^#!Z NO CARRIER
Comment Re:Call it what you want... (Score 1) 67
I view streaming content on a variety of devices off of a perfectly acceptable cable internet connection and I still see the compression, but the worst of it is seen on the "main" family TV. Netflix offers the best experience (followed by Amazon Video, followed by the truly horrific Google Play), but it's still there.
I fully admit that I am not a hardcore video guy and not obsessed with tweaking a bunch of TV settings so there is indeed room to make adjustments. That said, I'm very happy with up-scaled DVDs of the same movies on the same TV. Adjusting contrast/brightness would only force the shadows even deeper for disk-based video and that's not an acceptable trade-off.
I should clarify my previous statement above. When I wrote "Visible gradients ruin every single scene always" I didn't meant to imply I'm seeing gradients all the time. I'm only seeing them in scenes containing large percentages of darkness/black.
Comment Call it what you want... (Score 1) 67
Call it anything you want: "Netflix uses bagels to compress video" I don't really care. I just wish they would take a closer look at the darkest parts of a scene and stop compressing the hell out of it. Visible gradients ruin every single scene always.
Comment Re:"There will come soft rains" (Score 1) 403
I too read this when I was young, as a part of a science fiction anthology book we had in school. It is the one story from that time that has always stuck with me. The over-shadowing sense of futility and loss in the story really triggered something in my brain.
Comment What is old is new again (Score 2) 321
2005 wasn't that long ago, was it?
Journal Journal: My new career path. 24
As a bonus , I'll probably soon reveal the unbelievable story of how I acquired my legal knowledge - by doing something nobody else ever has, and which, until now, would be considered pretty much impossible.
I'd rather not, because there is some danger involved, but it's necessary to achieve my goals in an open and transperent fashion.
Advice and help sought and welcome.
Journal Journal: Yet another open source failure 14
Trying to print an envelope address in openoffice under linux? What a waste of time.
Do the people who code this sh*t actually ever use it? Or do they never use anything else, so they simply don't know that it's possible to do better?
Journal Journal: Every browser is *still* broken. 17
After 15 years, we still don't have an un-b0rked browser. CSS 2.1 was done in 1997, and yet firefox, opera, chrome, arora - they all render differently for non-trivial layouts.
15 years, and they still can't get the basics right. It means that the problem is not the implementation, but the underlying concepts that are flawed in fundamental ways.
And there's no blaming Microsoft or Apple for this fiasco.
Comment Re:If you think open source is not the way to go.. (Score 1) 203
It can create some buzz and there's certain publicity channels (e.g. slashdot) that won't discuss purely proprietary software.
Want to re-think that one, Skppy? Windows, OSX, iOS, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Semantec yadda yadda yadda
Comment Re:I vote troll. (Score 1) 203
In reality, if you have software which cannot make you money directly, it's a very good candidate for making open-source
The "I'll give the code away and make money off support" model rarely works.
Journal Journal: NoSQL+ sprintf() == better. 7
Old technology doesn't die - it get re-implemented when newer ways get too bloated and turn everything it touches into Beavis and Butthead.
In the dying days of the last century (awk! - how time flies) I used to do web cgi using c, same as a lot of people. Used malloc and sprintfs() to insert variables into a "template" and then printf()s to output. It was easy to track memory allocation for such cases, so the whole "OMG you'll leak memory" issue was a non-starter.
Journal Journal: Bad news for Windows and Linux 9
Remember how Apple captured a generation of users by concentrating on getting their computers into schools? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
One trend that I haven't heard a peep about is how mothers and grandmothers are using their iPhones and iPads to play with their kids. I'm not talking grade-school children, but babies under a year old. I have yet to see a parent do this (play with their baby) with a non-iOS device.
Journal Journal: Time to take on DrugCo (Merck) 4
Olmetec and Benicar (Olmesartan medoxomil)are a $2.5 billion a year industry. I was on Olmetec for 3 months, and let me tell you, the side efffects were nasty.
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