Search results

  1. Mercutio

    Politics

    I have a hard time believing you'd rather have an extra Democrat in the Senate compared to a hawkish Republican with the gravitas of a former Presidential run behind him.
  2. Mercutio

    Politics

    We've had an obstructionist congress since at least the (first) Clinton administration. Even when one party has had full control of both congress and the Presidency, intra-faction fighting has done wonders to prevent any sort of lawmaking. It's worth pointing out that the Dems have around a 70...
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    It's not any sort of surprise at this point since we've widely discussed it, but sed's official, I-just-paid-for-it graduation present is a new Thinkpad T450. i5 / 250GB SSD / 8GB RAM / Windows 7. I'm going to see if I can upgrade the RAM and/or SSD before I pass it along, but I also purchased...
  4. Mercutio

    How can a router open your browser?

    Sounds like that's the IP Helper Service doing its job.
  5. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Not that this will make you feel any better, but an overclocked Rpi can also manage some Gamecube stuff at the intended 480p resolution. Something with a Broadwell Atom, however, can step up to Wii levels. And the Wii controller is just a Bluetooth device, which is hardware anything that a...
  6. Mercutio

    phone emulator

    I'm a big fan of Andy, a preconfigured Virtualbox machine that runs Android/x86. It's not a phone but rather a tablet session, but it runs well for anything that doesn't need specific GPU code (i.e. some Unreal Engine games). Edit: Also, stay right the fuck away from Bluestacks. Every...
  7. Mercutio

    How can a router open your browser?

    One thing they could be doing is Hijacking an HTTP request. That's within the realm of possibility. They could also be using the Windows IP Helper Service and/or a Service of their own devising (do you have the ISP's Support software installed?) to bring up the login page. Since they have...
  8. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    My friends like to do this thing where no one can go at the same time but they all like seeing super-hero movies with me. So I'm at three viewings now because of COURSE I want to go again. I'll be happy to break down what's going on in as much or little detail as anyone would like. Also...
  9. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    For all two of the other Windows 10 users, if you're on the fast update release cadence, you can get Adblock Plus for Edge now.
  10. Mercutio

    Something Random

    SF members have been amazingly generous this week. Seriously.
  11. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    You probably could do the work you need with something like Partition Magic, but you're also risking the possibility of killing something the laptop want in order to boot. Starting over is going to be easier if you can take the time to do it.
  12. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    Navy Pier!
  13. Mercutio

    Technet Advice

    Well, or new builds for folks who don't want 10. Personally I view Windows 7 keys as precious but I still have dozens of Windows 8 license keys that are just going to be wasted.
  14. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    Oh and also, there are two stingers. The first is after the graphical portion of the credits, the second after the complete credits roll. My second viewing was at a $5 matinee filled with older couples. They didn't find the movie as funny as the opening night crowd, but there was also a lot more...
  15. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    There was a new Marvel movie. That means, as usual, that I went to the first public showing. This is the thirteenth Marvel movie. And we all have favorites, but there's at least some consensus on top-tier outings. The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are usually right at the top...
  16. Mercutio

    Politics

    As a mild clarification: “The Republican establishment is prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton if it means holding onto their fiefdoms.” -- Rush Limbaugh, April 18, 2016. Rush is of course the very definition of "the Republican Establishment"; in this case he might as well be using the royal...
  17. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Several SF members have agreed to throw some cash toward a High School graduation gift for sed. If you want to kick in a little, PM me by Saturday. Depending on where we land on a final amount, I'm hoping we can hook sed up with some kind of decent portable computer-thing.
  18. Mercutio

    Politics

    I suspect that the ongoing argument that you're not voting for President, but rather which side gets to choose judicial nominees, will continue to carry a lot of weight in spite of general antipathy toward the presumptive nominees. It's also fairly amusing that at least one of the Koch...
  19. Mercutio

    Politics

    I find Howell's comments very interesting because the Democratic party has always been built on a coalition of interests (labor/urban/progressive/minority/non-Christian) that works together about as well as herding cats, while Republicans for the last ~25 years have largely worked in lock-step...
  20. Mercutio

    Politics

    Hillary went from a 98% chance of winning to a 97% chance. At least there's a message to her campaign that she might be too far to the right of her presumptive supporters.
  21. Mercutio

    SACD "ripping" over HDMI?

    That definitely sounds like too damned much work. I was hoping you had hit on something that might work universally for new recordings and formats but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
  22. Mercutio

    SACD "ripping" over HDMI?

    Hey did you ever make any progress with this?
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I think we'll probably set up something communal. I've run these things before for SF members. I ran it by a couple folks and I'm sure we're going to be OK for... something, at least. Anyone else who wants to kick in a bit, PM me and I'll put it in the bucket. What's your laptop situation right...
  24. Mercutio

    Politics

    I am mildly surprised that his campaign is still technically viable at this point in the season, but I'll get to vote for Bernie in Indiana's primary tomorrow. It's very rare for a primary vote to matter in my state, but I'll be happy to cast my ballot in this case.
  25. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    Not ALL Atoms, just the ones meant for mobile devices. I'm somewhat shocked by that, since it's seemed to me for some time that the primary thrust of its consumer CPU development has been to become competitive in that space.
  26. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Hey, so where do we send graduation presents?
  27. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    I suspect that ever-increasing video processing standards will also drive growth for both processing and storage on the consumer side. Samsung isn't going to get to 8k displays and call it a day when there's a solid market for convincing people they need a new $2500 TV every five years.
  28. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    I think a big question is who can manage the next couple semiconductor die shrinks and who can afford to build the fabs for turning out chips on that new technology. Samsung is one of the tiny number of companies competing in that space at the moment, but who is doing what in terms of R&D to...
  29. Mercutio

    Politics

    I had an opportunity to shake hands with Hillary Clinton back in 2008. She had a campaign stop at the USWA Union hall that's across the street from my place, a place where I occasionally work. She seemed like a human being made of plastic, someone devoid of sincerity. I've met other celebrities...
  30. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    C2E2 was like that as well. The first two years were 1/3 the size of the current con I think. I suppose I shouldn't complain, since we have Gen Con, but as I understand things, it has outgrown its space and is kind of a hassle to attend now too.
  31. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I can't believe there isn't a PAX show in the midwest.
  32. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I played both it and Last Night on Earth on the same weekend. I liked Zombicide better, but they're both fun games.
  33. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    I don't know if anyone else cares, but there's approximately a zillion tabletop strategy games in today's Amazon Gold Box deals, including Sentinels of the Multiverse, Zombicide and Dixit, all games I really love.
  34. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I rather thought a solemn moment at 11AM followed by many shrimps on the barbie (or the mid-autumn equivalent) would be in order.
  35. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    Andy Grove is gone, so there's no danger of the company ever being run by engineers again.
  36. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Happy ANZAC day to the antipodeans among us.
  37. Mercutio

    Library Management Software

    How big of a library? Is the collection already cataloged? Why not use the LCC instead of Dewey? Do you want or need to automate tracking (e.g. barcoding) at all? I ask because most people would probably just make a spreadsheet if their collection is small enough and anything more than that is...
  38. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    Maybe it'll dump a bunch of the money it has saved into acquisitions. IMO, Intel is already at a point where it's at least competitive with high end ARM for mobile and if it ever gets a Skylake or Cannonlake Atom with Iris Pro into shipping mobile devices, I'd even say it's ahead of the game...
  39. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    Well that will never happen. Those sales guys make Intel the money! ;)
  40. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I've had three 128GB Lexar USB3 flash drives die in the last two weeks. Normally, they're not worth the time it takes to send them back but that's so offensively crummy that I think I'm going to do it on general principle.
  41. Mercutio

    Intel lays off 10% of its workforce

    This is probably news. What's going on in the world of semiconductors that Intel no longer feels like it needs 10% of the people who work there?
  42. Mercutio

    SACD "ripping" over HDMI?

    Video capture was never 100% hassle free for me, no matter how hard I tried. I could get 98% perfect, but that last 2% just would not happen, which is why I gave up on vidcap. Now you're dealing with protected content streams and hardware that only has a barebone software suite and doesn't...
  43. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    They're ALL integrated with SmartThings. The problem is that none of the Voice Assistants are willing to acknowledge that people use services from outside their own walled garden. Google's can't even access a lot of other Google services.
  44. Mercutio

    Mini Wireless keyboard

    One nice thing about the basic Rii is that, while it loses connection easily, it also reconnects instantly.
  45. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    You Adobe-loving Photoshop Slores should like that Google has made Nik's filters available free of charge.
  46. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    No doubt you can do a lot of automation with If This Then That recipes, but these things are still limited in a lot of cases because the companies that provide them want to wring every tiny bit of data out of you they possibly can and the devices they're most designed to work with are limited by...
  47. Mercutio

    Something Random

  48. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I can see why Amazon does it. It's a big enough trial getting some people to go to a web page or type in login info that they should definitely know. I have people tell me pretty regularly that they don't have any need for logins and passwords in the same breath that they say they do online...
  49. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I started looking at it primarily because one of my customers keeps asking me questions about the Amazon Echo. The fact that none of these things are completely aware of files or work-related tasks speaks to the direction technology companies want to take things.
  50. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    The closest you can get right now is that the assistants can open the apps for you on the device where they're running. Although now that I say that, I haven't tried it with Alexa.
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