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OriginalGriff wrote: Can I suggest that you fix the toilet before trying to flush the phone down it?
I think it was the phone unfolding that broke the toilet.
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Start with the telephones.
Really.
I mean it.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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This is my area (www.charmedquark.com), and it's bad. The problem is that there is no ubiquitous home automation backbone. And, since all these companies are just looking to sell doo-dads, not systems, they only option they have is wireless (or maybe if you are lucky wired) local LAN. Some of them maybe even actually think that's a good thing, though they are wrong. But, even if they don't, there's no other option for most of them. So, they throw some LAN connectivity into it, and probably don't remotely give enough thought to security.
Throw in the extra, modern issue that a lot of these companies making small doo-dads are probably just interested in getting bought out and they know that that is a lot easier if they have keywords like 'cloud based' and 'data collection' in their sales pitches. That drives them straight to cloud based interfaces, where you have to go to their servers and back to talk to something you are standing right in front of.
'Traditional' automation products were generally serial connected. You'd see a lot of newbies screaming about how horrible and old fashioned that is, but it's a completely safe system of point to point, unshared connections between the controller and the controlled devices. USB is reasonable as well in that way.
That mostly only works for devices in the closet with the controller. Though, to be fairly, typically there would be a gateway type box in the closet and that would have wired connections to the various doodads. So none of these security issues existed, and all control was local.
If you buy into a system like Lutron's Radio RA2, you can get the core stuff (lights, thermos, motion sensors, button panels, drapes, and a few other things) all wireless but via proprietary wireless protocol that isn't accessible from the outside.
The generic option should be Zigbee. It's a good quality, local-only wireless protocol. But it's not caught hold in the home automation world in a significant way yet (though it's huge otherwise.) It's used underneath the hood, in a proprietary way, by some products (Hue, Control4 and some others.) But it could be the ubiquitous automation wireless backbone from the home.
Z-Wave is the VHS to Zigbee's Betamax. It's a low end, not terribly reliable scheme that should die but refuses to. It's never going to be something that lots of IoTs doodad makers are likely to support and that's a good thing.
But, anyway, everything is pushing the whole boat in the wrong direction. You can still do the right thing at the more professional level. But for the consumer, it's a mess of disconnected doo-dads that are just sitting there in the local LAN, making outbound connections to who knows where, downloading firmware from those same places to run locally with full access to your network. And few customers are remotely savvy enough to wall them off into a DMZ or some such.
Explorans limites defectum
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Hammered nail around promise first (9)
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Inaugural
Hammered nail IN ... AL around AUGUR
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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Yup 
Have fun tomorrow!
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Browse to "about:config", and you get this nice warning. I did not know there was a warranty.
Did anyone here ever call upon their warranty and get their money back?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I've had to mess with some settings here and there. Recently VP9 videos would stutter like crazy or outright freeze so I had to change media.ffvpx.enabled to false to revert back to libvpx which fixed the issue.
The warranty thing caught me off guard at first too until it dawned on me it was a joke 
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I crashed my car while driving and browsing with the mobile version, so they paid me my car back. It works !
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Did anyone here ever call upon their warranty and get their money back?
I think that's the point. How much did you pay for FF?
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Whenever you see a weird warning, someone, somewhere, sometime probably did something dumb and then sued the company over the issue.
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This is not a warning nor a disclaimer, but a warranty-notice. Warranty does not apply to "free", which is between quotes because FF isn't.
It's a joke. Not a good one, and not one that many will notice, but still.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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It's still a legal disclaimer. Yes, it's presented as a joke, but I suspect there was a legal reason behind the warning.
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It's not a disclaimer; navigate to it, and you'll see that it is not even presented as legal-speak.
I also happily ignore the legalese in the TOC of any software or website; what is legal and isn't is up to the court and the judge. BS-agreements aren't legally binding, as are agreements that are pushed unto you, or that are mis-presented.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Here be dragons!
Changing these advanced settings can be harmful to the stability, security and performance of this application. You should only continue if you are sure of what you are doing.
Show this warning next time.
I accept the risk.
No warranty is mentioned. Must just be an EU thingy.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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My @rse!
The uncreative and unfunny bits, maybe.
Gaiman's rep for being incredibly creative is simply not true. Anyone who can't predict where his stories are leading are either asleep, or they're reading something else entirely.
Did Pratchett pull an Alan Moore?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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There were a few bits of the book that were obviously Gaiman, but I do think the majority of it was Sir Terry. Gaiman did the screenplay conversion though. How was it?
Not sure about the Alan Moore reference. Are you trying to say Pratchett hated the conversion? (So much that he died before it happened). That seems to be a pretty universal Alan Moore reaction (the hating, not so much the dying).
TTFN - Kent
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Not sure about the Alan Moore reference
The Yeti refused to have his name associated with the movies based on his comics, so was not named in the credits (even though he writes full script, so most of the creative input is his), and he even refused the money, after the first one or two.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Right, thought that was where you were going. In this case, it's probably "written by Gaiman" for the screenplay only.
Alan Moore really needs to take a chill pill though (he and ESR both)
TTFN - Kent
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Alan Moore really needs to take a chill pill though
Ha! I've known few less chilled-out guys!
It's his "magic is real" thing that we'll probably never see eye-to-eye on, but arguing about it is still fun, when the guy you're arguing with is not a F***wit.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Gaiman did the screenplay conversion though. How was it?
I made it through the first episode...it was rough. I'm not a fan of continued narration in movies to begin with, and the narrator in question is simply terrible.
Secondly, I know people would kvetch regardless, but a lot of dialogue that works on the page simply does not translate well to an actual, physical, dialogue. Some re-writes for screen are called for, and some movies/shows do this well. Good Omens is not one of them.
The scene I was most looking forward to, the "evolution" of "Dog", left me a bit flat as well.
Maybe it'll get better. The actors are doing a great job with what they're given, so there's that.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
- Hanlon's Razor
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I can't predict any of his endings!
To be fair I didn't read the first page (or any other page for that matter) of his books! 
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What about @rse btw? Why did you mention him? He has not written any article not participated in forum much! 
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My @rse does what I tell it to, and I haven't told it to post any messages or write any articles.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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When I found my toaster wasn't waterproof, I was shocked!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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