Posted 10/26/2009 at 06:51:19pm

Nunc est bibendum!

Since 2000 I had relied on eBay for the bulk of my income. I'd watched eBay wage a war against its sellers while doing absolutely nothing to prevent some of sellers' biggest issues (such as non paying bidders, retaliatory negatives, etc). In fact, they have made it even worse by making it so sellers can't leave negative feedbacks to non paying bidders, thus making sellers afraid to file non-paying-bidder complaints. eBay has also astronomically increased their fees while providing worse service and manipulating search results to force buyers to do things "their way" (such as making you offer free shipping whether you can afford to or not, or else they'd put your listings at the bottom of the search results). On top of all of this, they have embraced large Chinese sellers and have made it quite clear that they have no use for smaller sellers. They have destroyed eBay.

 Two weeks ago I had enough and quit. I pulled the plug on my small business and went back to my trade (auto mechanics). eBay sucks. eBay buyers suck. And I am so glad I will never have to deal with either again. My only regret is that I didn't make the move 5 years ago. I'll take dirty fingernails, greasy mitts and a steady paycheck over dealing with douchebags 24/7/365 who buy something Monday and threaten me with negative because they don't have the item on Tuesday, then nail my "DSR" ratings because USPS took its time delivering the package. For the past two weeks I feel as though the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders.

Yeah, eBay can suck my tinkywinky. 

/rant

Posted 08/01/2009 at 08:22:25pm

Nunc est bibendum!

IMO every copy of Mac OS is crippled. If it won't run the software I want it to run it's crippled. There are millions of gamers and businesspeople who would agree with me, I'm sure...

Posted 07/26/2009 at 06:05:45pm

Nunc est bibendum!

I think I may be the only person on Earth who was unimpressed with 7. I was running RC1 from the day it was released until last Tuesday. It may have been the fact that I was running it on old hardware (a Gateway laptop with an Athlon 64 4000+ processor, Radeon X600 graphics, 100GB HDD and a whopping 1.5GB RAM), but I was having problems from the start. Quite often (but not every time), when I'd go to open or save something, in any program (Paint, Word, Firefox, etc), the little explorer window that displays your folder contents would half load, then stop, and it would crash whatever program I was running. I'd have to CTRL+ALT+DEL and shut the program down that way. 

For example, if I was on a message board and wanted to upload a file, I'd click the "upload attachment" link. This would bring me to the screen where I'd click on the "browse" button. As soon as I did that the (windows) explorer window would open and crash the browser (Firefox).

It wasn't a Firefox issue though. If I was editing one of my wiring diagrams in Paint, as soon as I'd go to save the file it'd crash. So often that I'd do a Print Screen before trying to save so that if it crashed I could reopen Paint and CTRL+V my image back.

Word would do the same. In fact, any time I tried to open or save a file of any sort in any program explorer would crash. Sometimes explorer would crash when I opened explorer from the start menu. It seemed to be something to do with displaying files on the computer.

I lived with that, though, understanding that it was an RC OS and I was using old, underpowered, under-rammed hardware. What made me finally uninstall 7 was when the machine started blue-screening every time I opened the lid. It was a driver going into a loop, likely caused by the machine either going to or waking up from sleep mode. Rather than troubleshoot a beta driver on an RC operating system I uninstalled 7 and went back to Vista.

 That being said, I am replacing the machine this fall. I'm holding out for Seven. I know I could buy a machine now and get a free upgrade, but I'm just gonna wait until the OS is actually available.

Posted 07/26/2009 at 05:46:19pm

Nunc est bibendum!

I'm planning on buying a new midrange laptop (in the $800-$1000 CDN range) this fall to replace this ancient Gateway, and I'll probably go with an Intel chip this time around (the Gateway has an Athlon 64 4000+ chip). I was planning on doing so anyway, simply because I've read more good things about the Core2 Duo than I have of the Turion, but this new announcement is justifying my decision even more. I know, the Core i7 is even better than the Core2, but it's also outside my target price range.

Posted 07/20/2009 at 07:54:22pm

Nunc est bibendum!

I think you're confusing "DRM" with "DMCA".

DRM = Digital Rights Management, a bunch of schemes the RIAA (and MPAA, and game and software companies - Windows Activation and Windows WGA are two types of DRM) use to prevent copying.

DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act, a bunch of laws that makes it illegal to circumvent DRM schemes.

Just because some companies may stop using DRM does not make it legal to circumvent DRM schemes. Similarly, if Sony decided today to stop using DRM on its future PS3 games, it's still illegal to circumvent any DRM on existing titles.

...and DRM or no, it's still illegal to provide copyrighted material for unauthorized downloads. Don't hold your breath waiting for the RIAA's refund checks...

Posted 06/30/2009 at 12:33:28pm

Nunc est bibendum!

I hope the print version never dies. Can't take the online version into the bathtub with you (unless you're willing to risk a thousand dollar laptop and/or electrocution). It'd be too big a pain to take the laptop into the bathroom every time nature calls, as well. And sometimes you just feel like sitting out on the patio on a nice summer day with a magazine. A hot, heavy, hard-to-see-in-sunlight laptop isn't optimal here either...

Posted 06/05/2009 at 08:22:14am

Nunc est bibendum!

For an idea of what that hardware cost back in the day, I've got the entire 1983 Tandy computer catalog scanned and stored online. Simply go to http://www.foxthundercats.net/images/radioshack/page4.jpg (there are 40 or so pages, just change the page number to view the different ones). The prices for what we now look at as laughable technology will astound you.

I was disappointed to see no mention of the TI99/4A. That's the first computer I ever sat in front of, back in grade 4, at the brand new computer lab at Smokey Drive Elementary. We played around with Logo. The ol' 4A had a more imaginative way of dealing with errors - instead of DOS's staid "Bad command or file name" the 4A would say "Tell me how to ...". For example if you typed in "drw" instead of "draw" the machine would say "Tell me how to drw". Being a bunch of 10 year olds I probably don't need to tell you we had no end of fun coming up with funny things to type in so the computer would ask us to "Tell me how"...

Posted 06/04/2009 at 10:51:41am

Nunc est bibendum!

Great, now all I have to do is hope this four-year-old POS Gateway laptop can stay in one piece until then. I bought it at the worst possible time - just before dual core CPU's were released (It's rocking an Athlon 64 4000+), before DDR2 became the norm (I've got a whopping 1.5GB of DDR1), before SATA became common in laptops (it has an 80GB ATA), before 802.11.g was common (it has 802.11.b), and just before Vista (it had XP Media Center), so even though it was brand new it was already a generation behind in both hardware and OS.

It will be my last Gateway. It has not aged well. The fact that it was a generation behind when new notwithstanding, it just is not built very well. The battery lasts for about 30 minutes now, the CD part of the CD/DVD drive doesn't work anymore (it reads DVD's but not CD's, the CD laser is bad), the cold-cathode backlighting is flickering, and the hinges have both broken (it is actually the hinges that started me on this anti-Gateway rant today - I just this morning welded up the right hinge after it broke yesterday, so it matches the welded up left hinge that broke  a few months ago). Gateway's shoddy customer support for their shoddy product didn't help, either. That "won't read CD's" problem happened 366 days after I bought it. Exactly one day after the warranty expired. Their customer support wouldn't even talk to me - they'd ask my serial, I'd give it to them, they'd say "Oh, your warranty has expired. Goodbye" and hang up.

Yeah, I know, this has little to do with the article, but it does have one thing, which I started my rant out with: I need a new laptop, but now I've gotta wait, and hope this POS holds together until October... 

Posted 05/20/2009 at 08:40:55pm

Nunc est bibendum!

I'd call the LS-120 drive a bigger failure than the Zip. At least the Zip made it into the mainstream and stayed there several years.

Posted 05/20/2009 at 02:54:53pm

Nunc est bibendum!

 Insert "Microsoft's been crippling PC's for years" comments here