Disqus - Latest Comments for Gatesbasher

Re: NASA's Space Launch System Program PDR: Answers to the Acronym | NASA

Gatesbasher — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:14:13 -0000

Except where storeability and instant readiness are the only considerations, as in missiles, solid-fuel rockets have no place in this day and age. And yes, by "this day and age", I mean when the Shuttle was being designed as well.

Once they start out with solid-fuel strapons, they'll be stuck with them forever.

Re: On Coffee

Gatesbasher — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:48:31 -0000

In General Sparks' memoirs—he was the British general who became De Gaulle's handler when he split from the surrendering French army to form the Free French forces—he remembers as the news of the French surrender came in (paraphrasing somewhat, probably), someone asked De Gaulle if he'd like a cup of tea. He took a sip and said: "This is coffee."

"This was his introduction to the tepid British liquid that does service for both. His martyrdom had begun."

Re: On Coffee

Gatesbasher — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:21:21 -0000

I recognize your illness.... I worked graveyard for about 10 years. Refusing to drink (or pay for) the crap from the vending machines, I hid an old-fashioned electric percolator in a cabinet, and every night I would drag it out and make my own. That coffee kept me alive, and I still judge all coffee by its approximation to that (objectively lousy) ideal.

Re: If you're complaining that Apple \"obsoleted\" your iPad 3

Gatesbasher — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 08:45:10 -0000

Since I started following the Apple-oriented forums I have, as you might imagine, read some really retarded shit...but honest to fuck, this meme is the stupidest of the lot.

If Apple doesn't change everything every few months: "Same old, same old", "Falling behind", "Apple's doooooomed!".

If they do change anything: "My brand new device is obsolete!", "How dare they?", "The arrogance!".

But somehow the new Android crap every week touting some new feature the nerdorati have been creaming their jeans anticipating...that's OK.

Re: Saddling the Unicorn

Gatesbasher — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:50:09 -0000

Seeing these gormless twits get paid for making up shit gets me all stabby, too.

I could maybe see Apple bringing out an iMac with the guts of an Apple TV stuffed in—that would cost them approximately nothing. They could cheap out on the computer specs, anyway. Hell, I'd buy one for the bedroom!

Of course, the 27" iMac is already higher-def at 2560 x 1440. Here's my fantasy scenario—it's as good as his, but given Apple's aversion to Blu-Ray it'll never happen—get enough of those out there that it would be worth the studios' while to issue "Super-Blu-Ray" discs with all those wide-screen movies the full 1080 lines high. They'd fit in the width: 1080 x 2.35 = 2538. And my "Wouldn't it be cool!" is better than his—this idiot wants crap surrounding his movies?

Re: It’s the Content Providers, Silly.

Gatesbasher — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:34:22 -0000

Well, I welcome the change if it will keep the mail service from becoming the neglected stepchild of the quixotic web-based fantasy. It will be decades (and by the plural I don't mean just two) before a large majority of people in this country have internet service that will allow streaming of the same quality as a physical disk. And you can't put a data stream in your pocket and take it over to a friend's house.

Re: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Gatesbasher — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:11:08 -0000

The Supreme Court really is the frontline of the war. Anthony Weiner had to go because he had the goods on Clarence Thomas, but the information didn't evaporate. A shockingly small percentage of the population is aware of that Scalia quote about "mere technical innocence" being no bar to the execution of a death sentence. I think we have some media-savvy people in the Democratic campaign organization, but they don't want to shoot their wad too early. The public's nose is going to be rubbed into what kind of justices president Bachmann would appoint as the campaign heats up. After 2012—I don't know if a Supreme Court Justice has ever been impeached, but we may find out how that works.

Re: FUCK!!

Gatesbasher — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 01:10:37 -0000

Jenny McCarthy is the public face of the anti-vax movement, and Amanda Peet has been doing PSAs to try and inject some sanity into the situation.

Re: FUCK!!

Gatesbasher — Tue, 31 May 2011 18:43:53 -0000

Amanda Peet?

Re: FUCK!!

Gatesbasher — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:31:27 -0000

Never mind all that—the only real question is: "What does Jenny McCarthy have to say about it?"

Re: Boom

Gatesbasher — Wed, 25 May 2011 14:15:09 -0000

At any rate, now we can move on to the next Apple outrage. I’m betting on long lines for the crappers at WWDC.

Well, it won't be the next one—no way it'll be that long—but I'm waiting for the "curved glass" on the next iPhone being concave instead of convex. Or vice-versa. Or, in the 99.999999% probable case that it's flat—both at the same time!

Re: Helpful Pro Tips for reading pundits

Gatesbasher — Tue, 03 May 2011 22:41:16 -0000

I usually quit reading the second any whiff of the smaller-target theory on malware rears its ugly head.

Re: Adobe CS installers, three years later

Gatesbasher — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:52:48 -0000

Well, if watching Flash videos on the Playbook just crashes the browser "sometimes" and drains the battery in a "couple of hours" I guess RIM customers are supposed to be knowledgeable enough to just shake their heads and say: "That Darn Flash!" We'll see how that works out in the real world.

One thing I do know is that if the iPad displayed any such behavior, Flash would not get the blame. Most people don't know Flash from fellatio. They would tell all their friends: "That iPad's a piece of crap! I was just watching videos and it kept crashing on me! And don't get me started on the battery life!"

So repeat after me: "Flash fucks up an Apple product—Apple's fault. Flash fucks up a non-Apple product—Adobe's fault, or Youtube's fault, or...."

Yes, yes, I know, the hundreds of millions of people who buy iDevices are not as "tech-savvy" as we thousands of "normal" people who read tech blogs, so it's really their fault for not knowing who to blame the problems on, but you know what? That doesn't cure the problems! I knew why I couldn't restart my old Chevy for half an hour or so after parking it—vapor lock. Did that cure the vapor lock?

Re: The Ever-Increasing Hyperbolic Idiocy of the Apple Press

Gatesbasher — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:58:59 -0000

So let's see...there are two possibilities:

A) Android phones do the same thing, in which case all the fainting spells are pretty damn dishonest—on a par with Antennagate, and I thought nothing could beat that, or...

2) Android doesn't have this capability, for which I can see innumerable applications. So...reason Android is lame, number eleventy kajillion and one.

Wonder which it is....

Re: Useless IS a loaded word. Too bad.

Gatesbasher — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:28:53 -0000

By the time they hear the word "useless", it doesn't even mean "useless", anyway. They want to be insulted, they need to read my mind when I read the description of their "baby" and say to myself: "Well, that's useless! Next!"

When someone downloads the app and tries it, and then complains that it's "useless", it means "I thought it would be useful, and it would be except for this...." It's called feedback. Sack up and deal with it!

Re: Obligatory iPad 2 Commentary

Gatesbasher — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 02:58:08 -0000

It's funny how just 2 or 3 years ago the black MacBook was the prestige item you had to pay $400 extra for. Then with the iPhone 3G it was backwards—you had to pay extra for white. Now—just because of manufacturing difficulties—I've seen people so desperate for a white iPhone that they're bragging about how much extra they'd pay if they could get one. Apple can't be as "style over substance" oriented as people say if they're apparently not going to take advantage of that.

Re: A Quick Note on NDAs and Ethical Behavior

Gatesbasher — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:44:51 -0000

Well, as you said, John C. Welch summed it up perfectly. I have nothing to add, so I will proceed to do so:

My objection to these early revelations is neither legal nor moral, though I sympathize with the moral one, it's simply this: The features and changes that the professional bitchers and moaners complain about in anything new are always, without exception, just exactly what I care least about. It's positively uncanny! Therefore, any effect these complaints have on the development process can only be bad...for me.

There, a utilitarian argument for any Randorrhoids who are listening!

Re: The Incredibly Credulous Tech Press

Gatesbasher — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 06:52:00 -0000

If it helps any, the tech press was almost the last segment of society to succumb to this malady—the Atwaterization of political discourse and the Murdochization of the regular news media were already complete.

I attribute the downfall of tech press at least where reporting on Apple-related topics is concerned to the paid (I can only assume) dirty-tricks artists who would spread the most insane speculations about the features of Apple's upcoming products, getting the blogosphere into a froth of anticipation such that anything Apple produced that didn't have antigravity and emit Viagra rays was a crushing disappointment.

Re: The Death of Upgrade Pricing [Mac App Store]

Gatesbasher — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 21:08:31 -0000

I can't imagine that Adobe would be able to sell as many new versions of Photoshop every few years without the psychological trickery of upgrade pricing.

Josh Schoenwald said it all here. "Upgrade pricing" is just a way to keep the rubes locked into one application and keep them from checking out the competition. It always slays me how people complain about Apple's always-the-same-price OS versions ("It's only a point upgrade!") and think Windows' discount upgrades are more user-friendly. The exact opposite is the case. (Never mind the fact that it's supposedly illegal to sell a used computer without wiping the existing installation of Windows.)

It's the same strategy as drug dealers handing out free samples in the schoolyard.

Re: The Death of Upgrade Pricing [Mac App Store]

Gatesbasher — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 21:08:00 -0000

Sorry about the double—usually it's my fault, but this time, I don't know how I did it.

Re: Obligatory Google Wave Post

Gatesbasher — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:58:50 -0000

Google's got their own way of doing things, which is fine I guess... And we all use Google Search and a lot of us use Gmail, so I look at these interfaces every day. I was never one of those who thought engineers were all barbarians, but honest to doG, would it hurt to give ANY thought to how they look?

I could understand people criticizing Apple for wasting cycles on "eye candy" (way, way, back when that was a consideration) but can't they SEE how looking at this shit is sucking the juice out of your eyeballs?

Is it that they think paying any attention to design makes them pussies? As I said somewhere else, if Google ever comes out with an "iPad Killer™" tablet, using it will be like sitting in Hell's waiting room reading a 50-year-old magazine.

Re: Excuse me? Why does God need a Starship?

Gatesbasher — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:35:12 -0000

Apple should let the marketplace determine whether cross-compiled apps are good or not and I'm sure everyone will ultimately get a clue and see that they are inferior. End of story.

Couldn't disagree more strongly. 99% of "the marketplace" doesn't know cross-compiled apps from shit. If the app store becomes clogged with this crap, people are just going to say: "This iPhone's a POS; next time I'm buying a Droid (or whatever.)"

This is M$'s old strategy in a nutshell: Windows fucks up? "This Dell's a POS, next time I'm buying an HP, next time I'm buying an Acer", etc., etc. By the time everybody runs the deck, they come along with: "Oh, Vista will solve all those problems for you," and the whole cycle begins again.

Apple wants their products to work for their customers. If that makes them "Closed" or "Monopolistic" or "Unethical (Gawdelpus!)" Fine!

Edit: I realize my bringing up Microsoft looks like a non sequitur—it was the game of "Musical Computers" so many people I know go through that I would like to see Apple prevent in the smartphone space. Just a comparison.

Re: Six Signs That the iPad Review You’re Reading Is Crap

Gatesbasher — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:41:31 -0000

You forgot:

"256 MB of RAM isn't nearly enough!"

Then, faced with people happily using the device for all the functions it was designed for:

"That just shows they're clueless n00bz! If they were doing it right, it'd take at least 2 GB!!"

Re: Mike Monteiro Fucking Gets It

Gatesbasher — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:12:51 -0000

Your last sentence says it all. If you had really queried any of the über-geeks up until 8 days ago, they would have said this was their inspiration to get into the field in the first place. Then, somebody hands it to them on a silver platter, and they're saying: "Oh, did I say Star Trek? I meant The Flintstones!"

Re: iPad, Letters.app and Nerd Myopia

Gatesbasher — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:09:25 -0000

I think Speirs (and you) hit the nail on the head. When I hear that such-and-such a device can't do "Real Work™", in most cases it turns out the speaker considers "real work" to be fucking around with the computer trying to get it to do something—anything. Which is great if that's your job, but it's not for all of us.

Disqus - Latest Comments for Gatesbasher

Re: NASA's Space Launch System Program PDR: Answers to the Acronym | NASA

Re: On Coffee

Re: On Coffee

Re: If you're complaining that Apple \"obsoleted\" your iPad 3

Re: Saddling the Unicorn

Re: It’s the Content Providers, Silly.

Re: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Re: FUCK!!

Re: FUCK!!

Re: FUCK!!

Re: Boom

Re: Helpful Pro Tips for reading pundits

Re: Adobe CS installers, three years later

Re: The Ever-Increasing Hyperbolic Idiocy of the Apple Press

Re: Useless *IS* a loaded word. Too bad.

Re: Obligatory iPad 2 Commentary

Re: A Quick Note on NDAs and Ethical Behavior

Re: The Incredibly Credulous Tech Press

Re: The Death of Upgrade Pricing [Mac App Store]

Re: The Death of Upgrade Pricing [Mac App Store]

Re: Obligatory Google Wave Post

Re: Excuse me? Why does God need a Starship?

Re: Six Signs That the iPad Review You’re Reading Is Crap

Re: Mike Monteiro Fucking Gets It

Re: iPad, Letters.app and Nerd Myopia

Re: Useless IS a loaded word. Too bad.