Technology and Other Musings - Latest Comments

Re: Corbin Park Hunting Preserve in New Hampshire

Jim Lynch — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:51:46 -0000

Reposted here from a now defunct blog. Too good a post to let it go with the blog. My apologies if you posted comments on the other blog and they are not here now.

Please feel free to repost your thoughts about Corbin Park in New Hampshire.

Re: The Psychology Of A Distrohopper

excollier — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:03:11 -0000

I must be,I have a pc with 5 partitions, each with a different distro on it, and I am forever changing them

Re: Briefcase Hackintosh Case Mod

Speed Up My PC Free — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:40:05 -0000

Wow! Very creative. This is awesome. I like this kind of computer design. Thanks for posting dude. Cheers

Re: What’s Wrong With Modern Movies

Jim Lynch — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 12:20:55 -0000

Chick flicks? I feel for you, man! The horror! The horror! ;)

Re: What’s Wrong With Modern Movies

Brian Masinick — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:56:53 -0000

Well, to be honest with you, I have not been much of a movie watcher over the years, but I would agree that some of the old classics are good ones.

Most of what I have watched in the past five years, until just recently, have been cartoon movies with my son, so we've watched stuff like Curious George, Hotel For Dogs, numerous Scooby Doo movies (those are some of my favorites anyway), Kindergarten Cop, The Guardians of Ga'Hoole, and a few others.

Years ago, I'd watch various "chick flicks" with my wife. That passed when she passed on me, but just recently, I have started dating a special person, and once again, I get "couch time" snuggling with that special someone, and we watch mostly romantic comedy movies and a few regular "sit coms" on TV.

Gotta say, I find the "Big Bang Theory" amusing; it stereotypes geeks, but I have to laugh at myself; I see bits and pieces of myself in a few of the stories. Sheldon? I'd hate to admit being anything like him, but my friend claims that I am a cross between Sheldon and Leonard! Not sure I agree completely, but I do see some similarities from time to time! Gotta just laugh; it's a funny show.

I used to enjoy the old Sinatra war movies; lots of great songs and dance choreography in those movies.

Re: Timothy Treadwell: Bear “Expert” Killed By Bears

Jim Lynch — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:52:47 -0000

Irwin's luck obviously ran out, and Corwin almost got his arm ripped off by an elephant so who knows how much longer he'll be around. He might not be as lucky next time.

Re: Apple Making iPhone Plus in Multiple Colors

Jim Lynch — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 23:12:25 -0000

Doh! Speak of the devil! Heh. ;)

Yeah, I think the market has spoken regarding larger phones. A lot of people enjoy them, and Apple runs the risk of being left behind if they don't offer something.

The old days of just offering one size are behind us it seems. My fear was just being *forced* to use a phablet size phone instead of something I can use with one hand.

You try having a parrot in one hand, while operating a phone with two hands! It can't be done! :D

The little buggers always key in on the phone. One tries to destroy it entirely, while the other one things it's a toy and she must play with it.

I'm sure that Apple has carefully put parrot people at the top of their design concerns. We're very important like that. ;)

Re: Apple Making iPhone Plus in Multiple Colors

Patrick Shine — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:14:39 -0000

I think Apple *needs* to release a bigger, higher-res iPhone this year. I've read that this year will be the year of 5" 1080P flagship phones... Droid DNA is already there, and several other companies will be announcing their 1080P entries at CES. Apple will really start looking old-fashioned if their 2013 flagship iPhone sports a screen with 35% the pixel count of the competition. Plus, we'll see the return of relevant (perhaps) Blackberries to the market this year, another competitor Apple may have to worry about. The leaked photos I've seen so far look pretty neat.

I do think Apple will keep the 3.5" form factor around; probably not a new model though, just keep the 4S around another year, just as they've always done. It seems small to us that have used the iPhone 5, but lower-budget and/or non-technophiles using a prepaid service won't care, especially if the price is right. Used iPhones are plenty popular on the secondary market, I don't expect that to change much for a while.

If Apple introduces a bigger screen this year, would they also bump up the resolution? A friend of ours says that Apple could only increase the resolution by a factor of 2 (as they've done in the past), to keep developers happy. But iPhone 5 saw the introduction of a new form factor screen that was 176 pixels taller; that forced the community to re-do their apps, or just live with black bars. I think Apple could do that again... besides, they seem to not have too many problems with forcing unwanted changes on us (ahem, Lightning connector, Apple Maps). At least a higher-res screen is a wanted change! Developers can handle different screen resolutions; Android already does this, as does every modern desktop OS.

I'd love to see 4.5" or so iPhone 6 this year, with a nice sharp screen (maybe not 1080P, but at least a similar PPI figure). I'll be severely disappointed if all we get this year is a 5S with an incremental bump in specs.

Your friend that switched to Android sounds like a smart, swell guy! :-D

Re: Windows Blue and Yearly Upgrades

Jim Lynch — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:39:53 -0000

Yeah, true. And XP did not have the crazy Windows 8 interface either. The colors were different, but it still adhered to a traditional desktop UI. The same cannot be said for Windows 8. It's a totally different animal, and some folks will have trouble adjusting to it.

Re: The VLC Christmas Icon

Brian Masinick — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 15:10:13 -0000

Guess I didn't use VLC once during Christmas, or if I did, I failed to notice this! I tried it today, and the icon is gone, back to being just a "conehead"! LOL

Re: Windows Blue and Yearly Upgrades

Brian Masinick — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:40:48 -0000

People who use a computer as an appliance just want something as automatic as they can get. Quite a few people will dump and replace a computer rather than fix or update it, if they have the money.

Enthusiasts are different, and at least in the past, Apple Mac users were enthusiasts. They wanted the absolute latest and greatest, and were willing to pay for it. Apple made the process reasonably painless, though I'm not going to say they made it inexpensive; to me, nothing made by Apple is inexpensive, except perhaps OLD iPhone models that ISPs are stuck with that they're practically giving away with two year contracts.

But maybe a model like that would work with computer software too. I wonder if any computer vendors would get in cahoots with a VZW or AT&T chain and provide a pre-packaged combo of system, software and updates with a 1-3 year contract? Why not experiment with a few limited promos and see what happens?

Personally, I wouldn't be interested, but who knows what could be conjured up? I think a new "Start Me Up" advertising campaign is needed; that was one of the few successful launches MSFT has had. XP has sold truck loads, but it took 3-4 YEARS to really catch on! Inertia goes a long way though!

Re: The Top Ten Tech Flops of 2012

Jim Lynch — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 14:18:57 -0000

This is a repost due to site problems over the last few days. Everything is back to normal, finally. Heh.

Re: Why Do We Buy Ebooks with DRM in Them?

Jim Lynch — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 01:12:16 -0000

This is a repost due to site problems over the last few days.

Re: The History of NeXT and OS X

Jim Lynch — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 01:06:06 -0000

Note that this is a repost due to site problems over the last few days.

Re: Apple Bashing By the NY Times

Jim Lynch — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:58:57 -0000

This is a repost due to site problems over the last couple of days.

Re: The Best Google Android Apps of 2012

Jim Lynch — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:51:50 -0000

This is a repost due to some site problems over the last few days.

Re: Five Reasons Why I Love My 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro

Jim Lynch — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:09:43 -0000

Hi Tom,

Glad you are digging your 15" retina, they are awesome machines for sure. I don't think you can go wrong with either one, really. The size choice just gets down to the needs of the individual user.

:smile:

Re: Five Reasons Why I Love My 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro

Tom — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:03:11 -0000

I have a 15" Retina and my wife has a 13" Retina and we both love them. My wife also choose the 13" Retina over an Air. She also had been set on a Macbook Air until she wandered in the Apple store and saw the 13" Retina.

I can see hers and your reasons for getting it, but the 15" Retina is a better choice for me. Quad core Ivy Bridge I7 and 16 GB ram give it workstation performance in a 4 Lb ultra thin package.

Re: Five Reasons Why I Love My 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro

Mark — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:23:39 -0000

I also own a MBP 15" with a 750 GB hybrid drive and 16 GB of RAM and it was simply too heavy to carry around back and forth to work.
I have Linux running on that one as well and I still want to install Oracle, but I had problems installing it.
I'm also an IT guy (SQL Server DBA) and I can't say enough good things about this new laptop. The haters simply haven't given it a fair chance.

Re: Five Reasons Why I Love My 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro

Jim Lynch — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:53:35 -0000

Hi Mark,

Glad you enjoyed my column, and glad you are liking your Macbook pro. :smile:

Yep, I run virtual machines in VirtualBox and haven't seen problems either. Ubuntu 12.10 seems to run quite well.

Hopefully, my column will get a few folks to check out the 13-inch Retina Macbok Pro that might have been put off by some of the inaccurate information about it that has been put out there.

Re: Five Reasons Why I Love My 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro

Mark — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:30:18 -0000

I love my 13" MBP Retina. I have the same configuration you just reviewed and I completely agree. I run a Citrix session, VMWare Fusion with Windows 7, stream audio and still have yet to encounter any kind of lag or display problem.
You gave a great a review and I completely concur. This is a great laptop.

Re: Ad Blockers

Mark — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:39:53 -0000

Fighting ignorance with anger is not an effective means to address such an issue. While it may make you feel temporarily better by verbally abusing someone for their limited understanding of the situation, it accomplishes nothing in the long run.

While it's true that hosting and domain costs can be attained at a minimal cost these days, it is also true that the amount of time it takes to create, research, write, edit and maintain an informative web site such as this is quite extensive. So, since time is money in our society, if you want people to put up such helpful sites such as this one, then you are either going to have to pay for them in through a membership, or perhaps see a few adds on the pages.

Personally, I choose the latter. After all, how would we know what products to purchase and from whom, unless we are informed about them first?

Re: Erich Ritter: Stupid Person Meets Hungry Shark

Szwargotek Biedotek — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:57:19 -0000

I think that maybe bull sharks treat people as competitors 4 food, thus naturally 4 them is to attack us. It is logically that they do that to eliminate enemies. If we compete with shark 4 food we are their enemies.

Re: Ebooks: Goodbye Kindle, Hello iPad 3!

Cheri — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 13:50:54 -0000

I'd read the news and reviews of the iPad 3 but never paid much attention to them because I bought my iPad2 just several months before the iPad3's launch. I've got friends with iPad3s but I actually never bothered to compare the 2 with the 3. Your comparison of the screen resolutions, iPad3 vs HDTV - "It even beats an HDTV!" - has now got me pining for an iPad 3. Great review.

Re: Has Linux Mint Killed Distrohopping?

Ramon — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:25:54 -0000

Sorry to pop your bubble, Linux Mint is not the easiest distro out there. I tried it since Isadora, Julia and Lisa. they were ok though not great. Zorin OS is better than Mint and still there's a newer kid in town that made it easy for anyone to use a PC and his name is Pinguy OS. Now distro hopping has stopped for me, at least for the present. owrks out of the box, always!