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Comment Re:Patch. Your. Lightbulbs. (Score 1) 183

So, you are running the Osram bulbs off of a Hue hub? I didn't know you could do that. But, all I can say is that they run just fine off of my Wink 2 hub.
The white colors as set by my scenes in the Wink app look fine to me. They also handle primary colors just fine, the only color I have noticed they really struggle with for some reason is purple.

Comment Re:Patch. Your. Lightbulbs. (Score 1) 183

I have both Hue and Osram stuff that I control from a Wink 2 hub and have been happy with both. Hardware wise the latest gen Hue bulbs probably have better overall color reproduction than Osram bulbs with certain colors (the 1st gen Hue ones sucked at certain colors as well). But, Osram light strips are far more consumer friendly coming in easily joinable 2' segments as well as a full assortment of connectors and are so much cheaper it is not even comparable. So, I have my living room full of Hue lights and my kitchen full of Osram bulbs and strips. I have never had any reliability problems with the Osram lights whereas sometimes the Hue hub gets disconnected and I have to manually reconnect it to my Wink Hub.

Comment Re:Lies (Score 3, Interesting) 330

My wife works for the state office of Goodwill in our state. We live in a northern state where it gets COLD. They get far more clothes donated to them than they can resell or even give away. They actually have to resort to bailing clothes like hay just to store them in rented or purchased old semi trailers. More beat up clothes they send away to be cut up into rags or stuffing as mentioned. They have had to reduce the days that they will accept donations because it takes their staff so long to sort and process the tide of donated clothing. And yet, no one is coming in to get them here. So, then it comes down to shipping. They have to pay companies to take away their bails of clothes to other states with higher need so that someone else can unbail and go through all of the clothes again to try to get them to people who need and want them. They barely break even with the clothes they can sell to pay for taking away the clothes that they don't.

Comment Lostech (Score 1) 564

This makes me think of the word "Lostech" that I learned from a game when I was a teen. I have adopted it into my vocabulary and it is amazing how much once state of the art wondrous technology is getting lost to time as it is replaced. Think of the Vacuum Tube that lead to transistors and microchips. They almost seem like magic now (even though I know the basic physics behind them). Or the Cathode Ray Tube that lead to color tube TV's being everywhere at one time and now you can hardly find one as they have all been replaced by LCD's or other flat panels.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lost...

Comment Re:So what's new about this? (Score 1) 193

If you are calling yourself an IT guy and you don't know how to change the USER AGENT of a phone web browser than you don't sound like much of an IT guy. They are many ways to do that. The easiest is to install almost any other web browser such as Dolphin or Firefox.

I was a die-hard keyboard user. I hung on to my Droid 4 until I couldn't take the battery life anymore. But with good virtual keyboards like SwiftKey for regular messaging and Hacker's Keyboard for SSHing into servers I can still pretty much do anything I want from it.

Comment Yet, who gets infected? (Score 1) 106

Despite all of this Android malware that is supposedly in the wild, who actually gets infected by it? Sure, I am computer systems engineer and know better than to do dumb things, but I know many people in lots of different tech and non-tech circles with Android phones and I have never even heard an anecdotal rumor of someone actually getting some kind of malware on their phone. Despite all of the malware clickbait stories, people with modern phones on major carriers that aren't trying to use pirated apks from shady sites seem to be pretty darn safe. Wake me up when there is a major worm outbreak that affects Android 6+ phones on Verizon and AT&T.

Comment Ghost in the Shell (Score 1) 1222

OK, I am probably going to get flamed for this, but I really enjoyed the new Ghost in the Shell live action movie. Could it have been a better remake of the original anime? Yes. Could it have had better dialogue and acting? Yes. Was it dumbed down for the masses? Yes. Hollywood whitewashing? Blek. But, all in all, despite being a long time fan of the original anime movie, I really enjoyed this movie. My anime hating wife even enjoyed it. The special effects were excellent, the depiction of the future cityscapes were incredible. The plot, although quite different from the animes was alright, if a bit predictable. Some of the homages to the original movie such as the thermoptic camouflage fight scenes and the fight with the spidertank gave me chills. I think just taking it as a stand alone sc-fi movie it deserves a lot more credit than it is getting because of all of the other controversy being dragged along with it.

Comment We Are Bob (Score 1) 259

I am currently rereading the excellent sci-fi book "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" in preparation for the sequel "For We Are Many" to be released on April 18th. It is a story about a computer programmer and sci-fi fan (like many of us here) who pays to have his body frozen when he dies. He then wakes up far in the future to find that his consciousness has been placed in a computer which is to be sent out in space in a self-replicating probe. This is easily one of the best sci-fi books that I have ever read. It is entertaining, funny, relatable, and engaging. I have been very eagerly awaiting the sequel and I would highly recommend them both to any Slashdotter.

Comment Re:Good - G.i.t.S: S.A.C. (Score 1) 312

This reminds of one of my favorite anime series that I think has some of the best writing of any show and that is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. At the beginning of every episode is labeled as either Stand Alone or Complex. They are mixed together from episode to episode, but the Stand Alone ones do just that as self contained episodes, and the Complex ones further the overall serialized season plots. I have always though it was a brilliant way to have the best of both worlds.

Now that we have a live action G.i.t.S movie coming out (all controversies aside) I wouldn't mind if Netflix came out with a G.i.t.S: S.A.C. like live action series.

Comment FTB Infinity (Score 3, Interesting) 90

I am a long time gamer, but I just could never get into stock Minecraft nor could I understand how many people would be so interested in it. Then, a coworker talked me into trying his modded Minecraft: Feed The Beast: Infinity server and it literally opened up whole new worlds and I am currently a daily addicted player.
So, my advice is if you grew bored with the original, seek out some modded servers. It can really be so much more entertaining with the right mods.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fftbwiki.org%2FFeed_The_B...

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