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User: Detritus

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Comments · 6,170

  1. Support your Products on How Would You Like a Business to Behave? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The #1 thing that pisses me off about many companies is their disregard for the customer when they discontinue products. One month they are hyping the product as the optimal solution to your problems, the next month, they kill the product, drop support for it, remove all references to the product from their web site, and pretend it never existed.

  2. A is for Asymmetric on US Broadband ISPs Expect Price Cuts · · Score: 2, Informative

    The A in ADSL stands for asymmetric.

  3. T1 Pricing on US Broadband ISPs Expect Price Cuts · · Score: 3, Insightful

    T1s have been historically overpriced, so it isn't really a fair comparison. What would T1s cost in a truly competitive market?

  4. Telco Attitudes Towards DSL on US Broadband ISPs Expect Price Cuts · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The telcos still have a major problem with selling and deploying DSL. Their copper wire infrastructure sucks and they aren't interested in doing anything, especially spending money, to improve it. Even though I live in an area with above average population density, it's 25,000 feet to the nearest central office. That means no DSL for me. The number and placement of central offices were frozen decades ago, when this was primarily a rural area. New housing developments get SLCs (subscriber line concentrators), not copper pairs to a central office. If the telcos were serious about providing DSL service, they would upgrade their network to make DSL available to every customer, not just those lucky enough to live near a central office. I'm not a big fan of the cable company, but they have spent far more money than the telco on upgrading and extending their network.

  5. Re:Death to Democracy on Gerrymandering by Computer · · Score: 1
    Plus this time it is the Democrats who are getting their ox gored, leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth. They didn't seem to have a problem with the process when they used it to screw Republicans and political enemies in the Democratic Party.

    The same thing happened in Congress when the Democrats lost control for the first time in decades. They were now the victim of all of the rules they had put in place to marginalize the Republicans.

  6. Moon Landing on Why Mars May Be Difficult · · Score: 1
    You've forgotten about the large number of unmanned spacecraft that missed the Moon entirely or underwent catastrophic disassembly (splat) on the surface of the Moon.

    Space is hard. Making unsupported and unwarranted allegations about the incompetance of NASA managers is easy.

  7. Copyright on Sega Goes Crazy, Sues Fox, EA Over Taxi · · Score: 1

    Try publishing a book about Garry Rotter and his adventures at the Bogwood School of Sorcery. Characters in literature have had copyright protection for a long time. You can write a book about a similar type of character, but it can't be a direct rip-off of someone else's work.

  8. HPFS on Microsoft to Charge for FAT File System · · Score: 1

    HPFS was designed by Gordon Letwin of Microsoft.

  9. Common Carrier on Canadian Supreme Court To Define ISP Role · · Score: 1
    It's called being a common carrier. There are rules that common carriers have to follow. They have to offer a service to the public on a non-discriminatory basis. They can't terminate service for reasons other than provided by for law or regulation. Their rates are usually regulated.

    If the Gay Nazis for Killing Whales, Barbecuing Unborn Children and Sodomizing the Elderly, wants service and can pay their bill, the common carrier must provide the service.

  10. Tracker Action on Linux PCs Drive 74-Channel Pipe Organ · · Score: 1
    The article does not say what type of keyboard action they are emulating. I fear that it is the electric action of many modern organs.

    Having listened to way too many E. Power Biggs records, I agree with his poor opinion of electric actions, which he once described as the organist telegraphing his intentions to the instrument.

    An organ that uses a mechanical tracker action to connect the keyboard to the pipes, allows the organist to control the attack of the notes. Sort of a velocity sensitive keyboard, like a piano. The article didn't say if they tried to model this.

  11. Re:Whatever happened to the 80186? on What's Out There for Handheld Math? · · Score: 1

    It's because IBM screwed up when they designed the BIOS for the IBM PC. If you look at the Intel 8086/8088 data book, Intel reserved some of the interrupt vectors for future use. IBM used some of these reserved vectors in their BIOS. This caused problems for IBM PC compatible computers based on later Intel chips, which used some of the reserved vectors.

  12. Re:Why is it so hard to track these guys? on Another Worm Targets Anti-Spam Sites · · Score: 1

    That's assuming the box has an admin. There are a lot of boxes out there that are running on autopilot. They only get attention when they fail or catch on fire.

  13. Moore's Law vs. Evolution on Real Security? · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Long and complex passwords are a waste of time and do little to increase security. Computer speeds have grown at a rate much faster than the user's ability to memorize "secure" passwords. Any system that allows an attacker to use brute force guessing or dictionary attacks is broken.

    My bank gave me a random 4-digit PIN for my ATM card. Why isn't this horribly insecure? Because the ATM eats the card after three failed attempts to enter the correct PIN.

  14. Rounding Errors on EverQuest Players Defeat 'Unkillable' Monster · · Score: 1
    Sorry if I didn't understand your argument, but one of the nice things about IEEE floating point is that it can be used for exact integer arithmetic, if you stay within the limitations of the mantissa size. This is very useful if the largest integral type supported by your compiler is 32-bits, and you need more bits.

    I've used it extensively to process time tags, which are often larger than 32-bits.

  15. Re:spam / calls / address book on Viruses Find A New Host: Cell Phones · · Score: 1

    Better yet, a virus that overwrites the flash memory with random garbage and turns the phone into an expensive paperweight.

  16. Re:so how did they get his addy? on Laptop Thief Caught via AOL Login · · Score: 1
    If he used dial-up, AOL can get his phone number from Caller-ID or the telephone company's logs. With the phone number, its easy to get the name and address of the subscriber.

    On broadband, the ISP can look at their logs to see what physical port was associated with the user's IP address.

  17. Re:100 billion hitpoints? on EverQuest Players Defeat 'Unkillable' Monster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IEEE double precision floating point gives you 52 bits of mantissa. That's good for about 4.5 quadrillion hit points.

  18. EMI on Project Plex-Box · · Score: 1

    I cringe every time I see one of these plexiglas masterpieces. It may look cool, for certain values of cool, but where is the shielding?

  19. Tar and Feathers is too good for them... on Implanted RFID Tag To Replace Cash? · · Score: 1
    You don't have to be a Fundamentalist Christian to want to string up anyone who advocates the implantation of these devices in human beings.

    The danger is that they will be "voluntary", as in you don't have to have the chip, unless you want privileges like the freedom to travel, medical care, a bank account, a driver's license and a job.

  20. Re:Fire Engine TCP/IP stack on What's Coming in Solaris 10 · · Score: 1

    What you want isn't TCP. You might as well complain that a Porsche 911 can't ford rivers and cross ditches. There are very good reasons for the way timeouts are set and adjusted in TCP. See any of the numerous papers on the subject in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review. Fairness and efficiency are primary goals, determinism isn't.

  21. Product Safety on "iPod's Dirty Secret" · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I believe there are some relevant issues with lithium batteries and product safety. If the iPod is only designed to work safely and reliably with Apple specified and tested batteries, they may want to prevent end-users from mucking with the battery. Nokia has been blamed for catastrophic battery failures that were caused by sub-standard counterfeit battery packs. Apple may have decided that making it a user-replaceable part wasn't worth the risk. Plus, it avoids the added cost and reliability issues of a case with a user-accessible battery compartment.

  22. Re:Questions on Diebold ATMs hit by Nachi Worm · · Score: 1
    Back in the old days, pre-Internet, ATMs were connected to the bank's mainframe with a synchronous modem and a leased data line. My guess is that they used some proprietary communications protocol like SNA.

    It might have been "old technology", but how many hackers are going to be able to tap a leased line, install a synchronous modem, crack the encryption, write software that can understand SNA, and create an exploit for an unknown system? Not to mention that mainframes are usually paranoid about security.

  23. Re:Nearly immortal? on Red Sea Urchins Nearly Immortal · · Score: 1

    I doubt that it would get anywhere near that big. The record for an American Lobster is about 1 meter in length. Who would volunteer to stuff that monster in a pot of boiling water?

  24. Cheap Notebooks on Wal-Mart to Offer Wal-Mart Notebooks · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I think there is a market for cheap notebooks, although I wouldn't call $750 cheap.

    I don't care if it isn't able to run the latest video games. I'd like to see a sturdy notebook computer that has good battery life and a price under $500.

  25. DEC on In Search of Stupidity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've always wondered how DEC transformed itself from a great computer company (PDP-8, PDP-10, PDP-11, VAX, Alpha) to a historical footnote.