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Somebody had to be the fall guy for Ballmer.

Yes. Especially ones that were new in 1997.

I use Drive Autosync and manually move files into a couple specific folders in Google Drive when I need to deal with something than needs careful handling, like a specific receipt or card. I don't need to do those things THAT often so I'd rather manage the occasional file than bother with using...

I've set up Samba for use as a DC, primarily in the context of centralizing password changes and basic policy management. I probably still have one or two machines from the early 2000s still running out in the world. Setting it up for the size of environments I'm dealing with was relatively...

On a mildly related topic, Amazon and Newegg were both offering APC BGE70 "home network" UPSes for $20 last week. They're meant to run your router, cable modem and maybe a phone or something for around 4 hours. I'd never heard of that product line prior, but it's a solid idea and possibly a...

A flash drive is usually cheap enough to be considered disposable. Even the 128GB USB 3 drives I carry are only worth about $25 these days.

Maybe look under Advanced Power Settings, at the USB Selective Suspend? On a white box system, I might be inclined to go look for a firmware USB power management setting, but I doubt the Yoga would have such a thing.

The Dell Venue can't handle Wii games. My i5 NUC will, but I don't have internal antennas to pair the Wii controller with its bluetooth adapter. Also, I signed on to play the beta version of Unreal Tournament and Epic is giving away a game called Shadow Complex. Looks like you don't have to do...

The biggest problem I have with the default theme is that there isn't much contrast between the light bluish grey of "unread" threads and the regular grey of read threads. Thank you for fixing it regardless.

SMR seems fine for its intended purpose. Even two or three 8TB drives are cheaper than an LTO changer and work really well for infrequently accessed, near-line storage. Don't use it for anything time-sensitive and it's pretty good.

If they're smart, not-Oracle. The Oracle license model is "You tell us you want to use Oracle. We come back every few months with new reasons you should be giving us money." Of course, just like using Windows as a desktop OS or Adobe for content creation, you go where the expertise is, and the...

The main thing I've learned so far is that every goddamned console needs a completely different gamepad and none of them are like any of the others. I have a MAME-style 6 button controller, a PS3 controller and what I've come to understand is a Super-Nintendo-style 14-button controller, but none...

I wonder what the pricing difference will be between Server 2016 and Azure instances.

I actually like doing documentation. Especially when I'm getting my hourly rate for doing it. :D

If it's not a big deal where you have a real computer as home base, what makes anyone think it's an adequate station for engineering work? Whose bright idea was it to buy those and are you sure you want to work for them? The Surface Pro is actually great for a lot of applications. I use mine...

With my Surface Pro, I mirror the screen to an external display and use a USB keyboard and trackball when I can. Having it as a small portable device for presentation needs works well enough and I can get by with the Type cover and trackpad if I have to, but it's never ideal. I don't think I...

My project for this weekend: figure out a decent recipe for RetroPi. I have several Pi2s and a few different gamepads sitting around. As I understand it the big challenge is getting gamepad configs right for more than one emulator, but if I can figure out two or three emulators, a Pi2, case, 8GB...

One thing I can now say for sure: FreeNAS runs like ass on a dual core Atom with a maximum of 2GB RAM.

I had a haul like that a few months ago when I found out the Seattle Public library was selling all the almost-impossible-to-find CDs included with issues of BBC Music Magazine from the last 20 years through Discogs. I bought I think 44 discs. They're all safely ripped now, so I guess I can sell...

Did they ever address the issue with inconvenient screw placement on the Helium drives? IIRC there's no middle screw, which can make mounting the drives a PITA.

The S5 was probably Samsung's best overall phone. It's a solid choice. As far as a plan, you might want to look to see what you could do for a Verizon-based MVNO if you're not planning to be a big mobile data user. There's going to be a huge change in coverage by moving to Tmobile.

I'm almost positive that you can upgrade with Windows 10 Pro media as well. I'm not sure why Microsoft ended the Upgrade Anytime program. It's really useful for making images since I can set my baseline at Home and switch based on the product key I need to deploy rather than create multiple...

It does. The Basic VGA driver that ships with Windows 8/2012/10 supports resolutions up to at least 1920x1200 and 32 bit color, but using that isn't going to make SD's fancy GPU-assisted video processing work and it's not going to help for DirectX/OpenGL. nVidia is doing something fucky now too...

This is still an issue and it makes me a sad panda.

Speaking to that, my 24, 27 and 30" Ultrasharp displays all failed at least once in their warranty period and the 24" and 27" both failed after the warranty ended as well. I could NOT find service manuals for anything. I can swap the TCon board on a TV just fine and I figured the monitors...

... upwards of two of those are possibly even good for storing data!

That USB interface on the bare drive is never OK.

Weren't you pretty disappointed with your previous Seiki purchase? It's all delivered over the internet. Samsung and Sony have proprietary delivery services and Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo and Amazon have a certain amount. I don't expect it to come out of Cable/Satellite TV boxes for some time and...

It's a matter of bit rate more than anything. I've seen "1080p" content off cable TV that barely looked DVD quality to me. I don't actually know what Amazon is delivering with 4k. Maybe that's a thing to investigate next.

I bought three $19 128GB flash drives, a new FireTV, a Fire Stick and a pair of $104 5TB hard drives. The only deal on that list that was for Prime Members only was the Fire Stick and frankly if you're buying one of those, you're probably already in the bag for a Prime membership. I'm incredibly...

Amazon fulfilled from multiple sites because no single location had the quantity you need. I just got a delivery to my parents' home. It's almost 10PM here. The delivery was made by a US Postal Service employee. I don't know what Amazon is doing but I do believe they are serious about getting...

I don't think it's bad at all, but I also don't ever go more than five miles from a major highway. I certainly don't think it's worth a 150% increase in my bill to have Verizon or AT&T.

Actually, I do think I'd give an IP to a TV if it supported Miracast, like the LG 4k TVs do. Can you tell from moment to moment if the 4k stream is actually being delivered? I realize the the difference for a lot of content is going to be inconsequential, but I'm guessing that it doesn't take...

It would be decent for something other than gaming. For gaming, it's actually going to be CPU and I/O bound. Putting a mid-range GPU in that thing is a bit like sticking a Corvette engine in a Toyota Corolla.

Captain America: Civil War, from the guys who made Winter Soldier.

That's still a pretty anemic CPU, Clocker. As a shorthan, the big difference between the Pentium G and i3 CPUs is basically that the i3s have hyperthreading and some virtualization features enabled. For a single-thread task, an i3 and a Pentium G should be pretty much identical if they're...

I put a GTX960 into a Core 2 Quad machine a few months ago. I thought it was a stupid-ass idea and I said so, but it runs Call of Duty 4 at 1080p and apparently that's more important than having a generally decent PC.

NUCs aren't THAT small either. The HDMI Stick type machines are massively underpowered for anything more than basic document editing or browsing in a small number of tabs. They're not pleasant and they tend to be both RAM and CPU constrained. That's not a winning combination.

I hate to says it because it because I still think the GNU people are pricks and therefore all things derived from Debian are suspect, but Ubuntu probably has the biggest collection of support resources for someone who doesn't know exactly what they're doing.

There's a case to be made for not repurchasing probably $20k in software licenses if the existing stuff is doing what it needs to, but editing powerpoint in RDP seems like a bad setup in the first place. It may just be a matter of wanting the administrative benefit of a terminal-style login but...

Given how lousy the feature set is on any SmartTV, I don't know why I'd bother to give one an IP in the first place.

If sound is important, you might want to hunt down a Via Envy-based card. They're a big step up from the crappy onboard audio of the time and don't have the shitty driver issues of Creative Labs stuff. I might have an Asus Xonar sitting around, now that I think of it. AGP Graphics card are a...

I saw a 60" Vizio M-series display at my local Sam's club for $979 this morning. I'd definitely call that within the threshold of active affordability for a large screen. I can't find a store that stocks both Vizio and LG 4k panels. I'd love to see them side by side.

It's not a very good movie, but the books were progressively worse as well. The latest movie is paced terribly because they did the "Let's break it into extra pieces so we can double our box office!"-maneuver. The new "Man in the High Castle" series from Amazon looks pretty good, so that's my...

Are these users working in the same file at the same time?

Quebec does not need grass mowed. It has vast fields of moose and poutine, not grass.

Based on reactions among my friends, it is very hard for women to watch it once the implications of what the villain can do become clear. It's a kind of evil that hasn't really been seen in comic book adaptations before. To put it another way, the whole series can use a trigger warning. It...

You can do that easily with Linux, including Word document editing. You can also do it with Windows, though I'd tell you that it doesn't run all that well unless you have a 64GB+ USB 3 flash drive because there's a setup process that has to be re-initialized every time you use it on a different...

That's the idea. I have people asking for cheap notebooks all the time and I can't think of anything better to offer. I got them off Ebay from a church of all places.

7 has a non-destructive upgrade to 8. XP did not have a non-destructive upgrade to 7, which may be what you're remembering. Other than that, you can back up your Firefox profile with MozBackup. In practice I've found that Chrome doesn't like userlaned tools that mess with its Profile folder...