September 18, 2012
On 9/18/2012 2:08 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Install headers and a cherry-bomb exhaust,
> Heh, I don't even know what those are :P

Watch "Bullitt".

> Yea, so was I, but then I discovered that that we're basically trading
> one set of problems for another, especially with video. Casettes suck,
> and I'm glad to be done with them, but with discs:

My car stereo takes a USB stick. I specifically picked that model for that reason. CDs in the car suck.


> Some fantastic 80's shows off the top of my head:
>
> - Soap
> - Hunter
> - Magnum PI
> - Remington Steele
> - Miami Vice

I loved MV in the 80's. It was on netflix, so I started watching it. It was *horrible*! Awful. Cringeworthy.

> - MacGyver
> - Cheers
> - Golden Girls (ok, minus the occasional "After School Special" scenes)
> - Married With Children (the first two or three seasons were in the
>    80's)

I do like MwC. Cheers - awful. The rest I never watched.

There's nothing, nothing remotely as good as Breaking Bad.


> I once heard someone say the 70's were the hangover from the 60's.
> That's how I feel about the 80's and 90's:
>
> - Torn jeans? Awesome. Sagging? GTFO.
> - Spandex/leather? Sweet. Flanel? Blech.

I love my flannel. Nothing like it on a cool Seattle day!

> - Flock of Seagulls? Radical. Combover? What is this, "Leave it
>    to Beaver"?

I meant the hairstyles for women! My "hairstyle" is a buzz cut.


September 18, 2012
On 9/18/2012 6:21 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Last time I've seen that was on a Delta flight. If the UI
> designer optimized for something, it must have been the maximization of the
> number of key presses for doing anything.

What's miserable is the guy behind you stabbing the touchscreen on the back of your seat with his finger, unable to find anything he wants to watch.
September 18, 2012
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:03:13 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 08:36:26AM -0700, Sean Kelly wrote:
> > On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:48 AM, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> > > The most common failure I've had are the power supplies, they're still as bad today as in the 80's.
> > 
> > There are good power supplies, they just don't come in pre-built computers because they're expensive.  I think the same could be said of products from any era.
> 
> Yeah, I've learned the hard way not to trust pre-assembled PCs.  They may have one or two good components listed in the ad just to hook you, but usually many other parts (that people don't usually pay attention to) are crap. PSUs are one of them. Nowadays I only ever buy parts, and assemble my own PCs. Things tend to last much longer this way.
> 

I think the last time I bought a fully pre-assembled desktop, it was a a 486. I got into the habit of building from parts just because that was the easiest way to get *exactly* what I wanted (Yea, I'm a control freak). And it's not difficult to do either, it's not like building a car from parts (Although my large hands/fingers are admittedly a liability when digging around a PC's internals).

I wish it was reasonable to do the same with laptops. Unfortunately the necessary compactness tends to work against that, so you can only go with pre-built, and therefore there's *always* compromises you have to make. I mean, I like my laptop overall, but I could give you a whole laundry list of my annoyances with it. But it was the best I could find (in my price range anyway).

> (Same thing goes for software... one thing I really like about Linux is that you can replace parts freely without voiding warranties or violating EULAs or wrestling with straitjacketed software licenses or fighting with gratuitous incompatibilities between software not written by the same people, that sorta thing. And usually OSS software comes with alternatives for everything, should the default one turn out to be crap. (Well OK, sometimes all the alternatives are crap too, but that's another story.))
> 

Yup, same here. Like the "Play/Pause" keyboard button on a Win7 machine: Windows insists on taking it over - completely. Not much you can really do about it. And MS doesn't care, so you're SOL. They *could* have offered a simple "Do what when that button is pressed?" setting, but they didn't.

But OTOH, sometimes the lack of standardization on Linux can be a pain, and sometimes you can't find a nice alternative (for example, I have yet to find a linux file manager I like, and I've tried LOTS of them).

September 18, 2012
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:21:38 -0400
Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:

> On 9/18/12 8:53 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> > I never ever ever accidentally call someone when the phone is in my pocket, because it gets locked when I'm done with it. In fact, I never accidentally do *anything* on my iPhone. Never happened with my flip-phone either, but certainly the capacitive touch screen has not reintroduced that problem for those who are willing to learn how to use them.
> 
> Yes!
> 
> > These rants are absolutely hilarious. It's like saying you hate calculators because you can't slide the buttons like on your abacus.
> 
> I thought I'm alone in thinking so. To me these rants are eery - I can't recognize in them one single problem I've actually experienced.

But I'm sure you're aware just because you haven't had any such problem doesn't mean others haven't.

Honestly, I've never had stray "In my pocket" behaviors on the iPhone or the Android, either. Their lock system *is* effective at that, at least.

Actually, it's a little too effective: It's impossible to reach down into my pocket and adjust the volume because it plain refuses to *let* me adjust the volume without taking it out, pushing "Lock" or "Home", sliding the touch-slider, and *then* using the damn volume buttons - which *still* don't even do what I want most of the time. And there's a ton of other issues I have had with the devices, like poor accuracy (because my fingers aren't <=1mm in diameter and the damn thing won't even register touches from anything that's actually more accurate).

September 18, 2012
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:25:00 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> Heh. Reminds me of my UPS... I bought it to protect my very expensive PSU from power surges/failures, but guess what? The PSU is still running and the UPS has been dead for 4 years. :-P
> 

One thing I learned, the batteries in those things (just like any
battery) won't last forever. You're supposed to replace the battery
in it roughly every 2 years (IIRC). Personally I find it worth it. I'd
never run my desktop without a UPS again - just one random power
flicker and the whole thing reboots no matter what I'm in the middle
of? I can't be having that. Every time our power fluctuates I'm thinking
"Phew, I'm *so* glad I have that UPS, otherwise this thing would be
rebooting right now."

September 18, 2012
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:22:50 +0200
"Chris Nicholson-Sauls" <ibisbasenji@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I do believe conky can provide SMART monitoring. http://conky.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Although periodically running GSmartCtl (GUI front-end to the command line tool) isn't a bad idea, either, to see the specific details (spin-ups, heat stress, etc) and/or execute the drive's self-test.

See, that's the problem though. A SMART tool that needs to be periodically run manually is next to pointless. I expect a SMART monitor to *always* be running and *actively* notify me when something starts going downhill.

Naturally, that's not a substitute for actually looking at the stats now and then, but the "always-on, active notification" is a MUST.

September 18, 2012
On Sep 18, 2012, at 1:09 PM, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 9/18/2012 2:08 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> 
> My car stereo takes a USB stick. I specifically picked that model for that reason. CDs in the car suck.

Mine does bluetooth, so I don't even have to take my phone out of my pocket to listen to music.  CDs are terrible and DVDs are worse.  Most of the kids movies we have at home don't even play any more, even though the underside for most isn't terribly scratched.
September 18, 2012
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:12:50 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> Reformatting and reinstalling, though, is a matter of course on any Windows installation that I've ever seen. I've heard of such things as stable Windows installations, but as far as my experience goes those are mythical beasts. Things just fail the moment you start doing something non-trivial, like anything besides read email, watch youtube, and browse the 'Net. I've been spared this pain for the most part 'cos I swore off Windows and have been running Linux as my main OS for at least 10 years, but I do still get requests for help to fix broken Windows installations. Most of the time, the thing's either unfixable (hood is welded shut) or not worth the effort to fix 'cos reformat + reinstall is faster (shudder).
> 

My desktop's XP installation (SP2 even) has been aces for years. And years ago, when I did have to reinstall, it was just because of something stupid I'd done.

I've seen plenty of screwed up Win boxes (even Win7), but it's always
owned by someone who doesn't even know what a "web browser" is, so
I figure chances are it's due to one of two things:

A. The user doing something stupid.

B. The user not using the web the way I do: with Adblock Plus installed, and JS and Flash disabled by default.


> That's not to say that Linux doesn't have its own problems, of course. The libc5 -> libc6 transition is one of the memorable nightmares in its history. There have been others. X11 failures can get really ugly (back in the days before KVM, a crashed or wedged X server meant your graphics card is stuck in graphics mode and the console shows up as random dot patterns -- good luck trying to fix the system when you can't see what you type).

Oh man, I can't even tell you how many times I've had X suddenly fail to startup with some errors for *no* apparent reason (and once that happens, X *stays* dead, unless you happen to be a Linux guru). Luckily this isn't so common anymore though, it was mostly about ten years ago. That was one of the main reasons I swore off linux for years, until just a few years ago I got back into it.

> Once I accidentally broke the dynamic
> linker, and EVERYTHING broke, because everything depended on it. The
> only thing left was a single bash shell over SSH (this was on a
> remote server with no easy physical access), and the only commands
> that didn't fail were built-in bash commands like echo. So I had to
> transfer busybox over by converting it into a series of echo commands
> that reconstituted the binary and copy-n-paste it. It's one of those
> moments where you get so much satisfaction from having rescued a
> dying system singlehandedly with echo commands, but it's also one of
> those things that puts Linux on some people's no-way, no-how list.
> 

Ouch.

September 18, 2012
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 16:50:18 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Actually, it's a little too effective: It's impossible to reach down into my pocket and adjust the volume because it plain refuses to *let* me adjust the volume without taking it out, pushing "Lock" or "Home", sliding the touch-slider, and *then* using the damn volume buttons

Actually, I wish that my Android worked that way. The perfect behavior IMHO would be for no buttons on the phone (including the power button) to do _anything_ other than turn on the screen if the phone's on unless you unlock it first. I _hate_ it how the volume changes while my phone is in my pocket or how my phone keeps rebooting just because there's enough pressure on the power button with how it shifts in my pocket.

- Jonathan M Davis
September 18, 2012
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:09:39 -0700
Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> 
> > Yea, so was I, but then I discovered that that we're basically trading one set of problems for another, especially with video. Casettes suck, and I'm glad to be done with them, but with discs:
> 
> My car stereo takes a USB stick. I specifically picked that model for that reason.

I've already decided, next time I look, I'll be looking for a 1/8" Aux input jack (which does seem to be pretty common now).

> CDs in the car suck.
> 

I'm not a fan of CDs anymore anyway. Too much disc swapping. Plus poor durability. I've got a 40GB HDD-based portable music player, and I'll *never* go back to anything less (I do want to upgrade the HDD though...and get a new battery, which is gonna be difficult...).

Being able to have all (or in my case: "most") of your music in one place is just something you never want to give up once you get used to it.

> 
> > Some fantastic 80's shows off the top of my head:
> >
> > - Soap
> > - Hunter
> > - Magnum PI
> > - Remington Steele
> > - Miami Vice
> 
> I loved MV in the 80's. It was on netflix, so I started watching it. It was *horrible*! Awful. Cringeworthy.
> 

I've heard that the third and fourth seasons went downhill. I saw the whole first season just about a year ago and loved it.

> Cheers - awful.
> 

Really? That's just weird!

> There's nothing, nothing remotely as good as Breaking Bad.
> 

Not familiar with it.