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Comment: Re:Spell it out the first time (Score 1) 279

by devphaeton (#46021431) Attached to: Linus Torvalds: Any CLA Is Fundamentally Broken

Google Groups has all but destroyed Usenet unfortunately.

That said, I still tolerate it when reading a few groups.

As for the grandparent poster- A bunch of musician friends and I got fed up with Harmony Central and created our own private, invite-only forum where we discuss music and gear and perpetuate our own memes.

Comment: Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter (Score 1) 359

by devphaeton (#46000481) Attached to: GPUs Dropping Dead In 2011 MacBook Pro Models

Not an appliance, but I just repaired my 19" Acer LCD a couple of weeks ago. It had a few bad caps so I replaced all of them, and now it's good as GNU^H^H^Hnew.

Total cost was around $5 in parts, though the bummer was $6 shipping. But what can you do? $11 is still cheaper than a new LCD.

Comment: Ergonomic 'Split' Keyboards! :D (Score 5, Interesting) 459

by devphaeton (#45998317) Attached to: Stop Trying To 'Innovate' Keyboards, You're Just Making Them Worse

The only thing I would ever want from a laptop is a keyboard that's in the ergonomic 'split' style. Yes that would be butt-ugly and probably make the laptop itself the size of an elementary school desk, but with RSI issues I can't type on a standard keyboard for very long. Yes you can plug a standard ergo USB keyboard into a laptop, but that setup requires a desk as it is too big for my lap. Since I'm desk bound with that, I just use the desktop computer I already have.

Meanwhile, I'm noticing that decent ergo kbs are getting scarce for desktops too. Back 10 or 15 years ago there were dozens of brands and all of them cheap and good, now there are only 2 or 3 to chose from with crappy key layouts and they last about a year or so.

+ - Groklaw is shutting down->

Submitted by devphaeton
devphaeton writes "Groklaw's pj writes: "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.


What to do?

What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad. But it's good to be realistic. And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how "clean" we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don't know how to do Groklaw like this."

Groklaw is a pillar of the Internet Community. It is a sad day when we lose such giants who have fought for truth and goodness in our favour."

Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:If only (Score 2) 117

by devphaeton (#42343307) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Would You Build a Microsatellite?

With this business philosophy, one could have regional offices that collect this knowledge and store documents of it in little cannisters. When someone in one region needs to access the knowledge from a different region, they could send a request and have that cannister (with the relevant document inside) sent along a pneumatic piping system, just like at the bank teller window. One could call this business The National Tube Service, or simply The Tubes(tm).

Comment: Here's the Apocalypse in Motion (Score 0) 450

by devphaeton (#42267797) Attached to: North Korea's Satellite Is Out of Control

On 12/12/12, the wheels were set in motion for the 12/21/12 Apocalypse.

A chain reaction of low-orbit and geostationary satellite collisions cause flaming satellite debris to rain down from the sky in a cataclysmic event. Now that Twinkies have been phased out, not even cockroaches have survived.

Comment: Even 15 year old stuff is hard to keep going now (Score 1) 338

by devphaeton (#42210555) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Old Technology Coexisting With New?

I've had several collections of 'throwaway' computers, with my last 486 and P100 going to that big recycling heap in the sky a few years back.

Right now, I've got nothing super old, but I've been keeping an AMD K6-II alive through the ages. It was my first IBM-compatible machine (after a C= plus/4) and I still use it regularly as a development box (Debian Stable in console mode all around. vi, gcc, perl, ssh, ftp, lynx. What more do you need?).

It is fortunate to have 2(!) USB ports on an add-in interface, so I can still plug a MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and modern optical mouse. Most of the hardware is original and all works, but the three things I've had to replace periodically are the optical drives (several), cpu fan (twice) and memory (twice). Up until about 5 years ago, compatible parts were plentiful from old computers, but I haven't seen the right sized fan or any SDRAM for the picking in ages, and it's now getting harder and harder to find IDE anything, even used.

I still enjoy the hell out of my i5 (and other smatterings of computers lying about) but I'll be sad when I have to put the ol K6 down.


+ - Buyer's remorse for iPad 3 owners, as iPad 4 released only seven months later->

Submitted by devphaeton
devphaeton writes "Jason Schreier writes: "Surprise! Today, October 23, Apple revealed the iPad 4. "Look how shiny it is!" Apple's executives preached to a crowd full of cheering fans and press. "New processing chip! Double the graphics power! You want one!" Nowhere did Apple mention the iPad 3, the machine that was touted oh-so-passionately just seven months ago as the next big thing. Seven months ago. It's like a Simpsons parody of how often companies release new iterations of their hardware.""
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:iPads! Clouds! LinkedIn! (Score 1) 152

by devphaeton (#41316837) Attached to: Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants

"The Cloud" is only good as secondary backup if you don't care that it becomes public.

Encrypt it all you want. Access to your data is the hardest hurdle and by using the could you give it away.

But.. but.. but... smartphones and virtualization and...and...and...free community wireless internet over dark fiber!!!

(Yes, I'm just being silly. Having a slow day at work and the free coffee sucks)
