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User: TheTrueScotsman

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Comments · 116

  1. Re:Blinders Much on Sony To End Sales of Betamax Tapes Next Year · · Score: 1

    As others have said, pretty much all of the value of digital camera is in the back. The front/top basically is for mounting the lens, but also contains some useful features like the shutter button.

    Let's think how a digital back is going to interface with the film mechanics: no doubt some kind of mechanism could detect the shutter press and/or film winding, but it all sounds a bit clunky and you've still to to wind the 'film' to cock the shutter. Digital cameras just do this and I doubt a 35mm digital back containing these special mechanisms (and especially with such low expected production runs) could be made any cheaper than a low or even mid-range digital.

    The real value of your old stuff is the lenses. I've got a reasonable selection of older Nikon AI lenses (and a couple of F3 bodies) and I use them with a D7000 which cost about double your 'few hundred dollars' desired price. Works great (the APS format is very usable but you can get full frame bodies as well, e.g. D750) and also takes very nice looking videos. I can't see the F3s ever getting used again - even if they suddenly turned into 'digital' camera (that motor drive is pretty hefty and I wouldn't want to bother with winding again).

  2. Re:So are we at Wall-E levels of inactivity yet? on The $6,000 Computer Desk That Lets You Lie Down While You Work · · Score: 1
  3. Re:They aren't revolutionizing shit. on Soylent 2.0 Comes Bottled and Ready To Drink · · Score: 1

    where do you get your fertilizer for example?

    The Haber-Bosch process fixes nitrogen from the air. All it needs is power.

  4. Re:It's Wrong on There Is a Finite Limit On How Long Intelligence Can Exist In Our Universe · · Score: 1

    Poincaré recurrence probably applies to our universe**, so the sequence of Boltzmann brains

    I don't buy that. Surely the horizon in de Sitter space is eternally expanding, so the entropy on the horizon's surface is always increasing. We can walk through an expanding phase space without needing to recur.

  5. Because quantum mechanics.

    If we end up in eternal de Sitter space (looks likely), then we can look forward to existing as an infinite sequence of Boltzmann Brains.

    That's a great picture of Freeman Dyson.

  6. Re:Renewing the domain name? No on The Challenge of Web Hosting Once You're Dead · · Score: 1

    During this period, 2 disks died at his place on the Raid 5 NAS backup, and nobody noticed.

    In all this "RAID is not a backup" back-and-forth, has nobody noticed that the NAS was the backup? Multiple disks failing on the backup is not a problem. since you've still got the main copy (i.e. the main respository if you're a company with things like websites). You just laugh and renew the backup.

    Now, reading between the lines, it may be that this deployed (production?) VM with the website may have been the 'main' repository. In which case, the failure of this company is only a question of a (rather short-term) when. Suicides of lead developers notwithstanding.

  7. Re:At the same time on Single Verizon IP Address Used For Hundreds of Windows 7 Activations · · Score: 2

    When Intel refused to license the 386 for second sourcing IBM refused to buy it, instead sticking with the 286 (which they made) damned near until the Pentium was released.

    I developed on OS/2 in the late 80s. I used various IBM PS/2 machines, including Model 80 (Intel 386DX) and Model 55 (Intel 386SX).

    So it can't quite be true that IBM refused to buy the 386.

  8. Have you been the victim of recruiting spam? on Want 30 Job Offers a Month? It's Not As Great As You Think · · Score: 1

    No. Because I don't place my resume on a job board.

    If I did (presumably because I wanted a job), I'd be pleased to be getting 30 offers a month. (Is that all?)

  9. Re:leave open a Skype channel on IBM CIO Thinks Agile Development Might Save Company · · Score: 1

    So my habit now is to pedantly close all my applications, VMs and to shut down the PC

    Rather than just configuring Windows not to automatically reboot when updates are available?

  10. Re:Wow ... on Crashing iPad App Grounds Dozens of American Airline Flights · · Score: 1

    There was no ssh 'back in the day'. First version was in 1995.

  11. Copyright has a good side on The Great Canadian Copyright Giveaway: Copyright Extension For Sound Recordings · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's a lot of bad feeling on this thread about the extension of copyright, but there are a lot of positives. For example:

    - Copyright income lets bands keep on making great music. It's likely that with a short copyright term, U2 wouldn't have made an album after 1990.

    - The income allows artist to perform great philanthropic and charitable deeds. Let's face it: the United Nations as it is today is almost completely down to Bono.

    - Artists support great works in other fields. E.g. would the Ferrari LaFerrari exist without buyers who relied on copyright income? I think not and that would be a tragedy.

    This is a modest extension and a good thing for everybody.

  12. Re:First light == last light on The Origin of the First Light In the Universe · · Score: 2

    and that is all that there will be left --- according to current theories at any rate!

    Well, that and you as an infinite series of Boltzmann Brains in various states of psychosis.

  13. Re:The incredible shrinking nucleus on Mars Orbiter Beams Back Images of Comet's Surprisingly Tiny Nucleus · · Score: 1

    Some folks have recommended nabbing some passing asteroids and detonating them in the Martian atmosphere, just to create more atmosphere as they burn up.

    Even if it didn't create more atmosphere, wouldn't that be a cool thing to do just for the hell of it?

  14. I don't see what the problem is on New EU Rules Will Limit Vacuum Cleaners To 1600W · · Score: 1

    If 1600W is enough, then just buy two vacuum cleaners. Duh.

  15. Re:Good Thing on Inside BitFury's 20 Megawatt Bitcoin Mine · · Score: 2

    That is incorrect. The validity of a transaction depends only on how it relates to the transactions that precede it. Mining simply keeps track of the "official" history of transactions, to guard against double-spend attacks.

    Transactions are useless unless they're confirmed in the blockchain. That's the whole point of bitcoin. Mining and the blockchain is all there is to bitcoin.

    And that's another problem: the energy used for mining depends on the hashrate, not transaction rate. It's true that increasing popularity of Bitcoin rises both, but trying to calculate "energy per transaction" on that basis is pretty much the same as trying to calculate "drowned people per litre of ice cream consumed" on the basis that warm weather increases both.

    You might have noticed that my calculation started off with network hash rate because that's where the energy is being used. I don't really think it's that important a calculation anyway, but I did it to show the $35 per transaction of the OP was incorrect. Indeed, if the transaction rate goes up faster than the hash rate, then the transaction cost is even lower.

    Instead of criticizing, maybe you can come up with a better cost per transaction for bitcoin (because there surely is one).

  16. Re:Could Be Curing Cancer on Inside BitFury's 20 Megawatt Bitcoin Mine · · Score: 1

    This a thousand times over. Run this equipment with World Community Grid or Folding@Home

    How would that work? Do any of these tasks benefit from a metric fuckton of SHA-256 rounds?

  17. Re:Good Thing on Inside BitFury's 20 Megawatt Bitcoin Mine · · Score: 1

    Pretty much all the power needed for a transaction is going to be the mining (a transaction isn't valid unless a miner has entered it into a block). So we can do a quick-and-dirty calculation; if we assume:

    - 150000 Thash/s total network performance
    - power consumption of 1kW per Thash
    - power cost of 10 cents per kWh
    - 6 blocks per hour
    - 400 transactions per block

    ((150000 * 0.1) / 6) / 400 = $6.25 per transaction

  18. Dual Gbit LAN Please on New Raspberry Pi Model B+ · · Score: 1

    With (true) dual Gbit LAN, I would use a boatload of these. Never mind, there are (more expensive) alternatives.

  19. Re: Gimmick on New Car Can Lean Into Curves, Literally · · Score: 1

    British Rail did it first with the ATP:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

  20. Re:NASA needs SpaceX. SpaceX doesn't need NASA. on Back To the Moon — In Four Years · · Score: 2

    And for doing the funny voice.

  21. Re:Ignorant author on Bugatti 100P Rebuilt: The Plane That Could've Turned the Battle of Britain · · Score: 1

    A turboprop is not a jet engine; it's a turbine engine mated to a propeller.

    A jet engine produces thrust using jet propulsion (it doesn't even have to be a turbine).

  22. Re:If central bankers are like rats... on Bitcoin Tops $1,000 For the First Time · · Score: 1

    Bitcoin will soon be on a parity with gold (per ounce) and is much cheaper and easier to secure and transport.

  23. Re:They will break all the encryption on Experts Hail Quantum Computer Memory Stability Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    Symmetric (shared-key) algorithms do have vulnerabilities to quantum computing: Grover's algorithm allows a brute-force search to be performed in square-root time of the key size (i.e. 256-bits -> 128-bits, 128-bits -> 64-bits). This isn't a big problem as long as you're using at least 256-bits.

  24. And those wobbly suicide doors are hilarious.

    Why can no modern car maker design something with the beauty and elegance of an E-Type or Muira?

  25. This is great news on South African Education Department Bans Free and Open Source Software · · Score: 1

    The last thing this industry needs is yet another wave of bad Java programmers.