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User: ivan256

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Comments · 6,818

  1. Re:No compiler needed on Windows Genuine Advantage Servers Out · · Score: 2, Informative

    By that logic, someone with Ubuntu can't compile anything, because it doesn't come with a compiler.


    Except that it does.
  2. Re:Noise on Seagate to Offer Solid State Drives in 2008 · · Score: 1

    It's not that the fans are quieter in my machine....

    The hard drive noise is just significantly higher pitched, and thus (to me) far more annoying. The problem can be mitigated slightly with slower drives, but that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

    Maybe I just need to wait until I'm old enough to no longer hear the high pitched noises my machines make.

  3. Re:if we had a tough FCC, on New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities · · Score: 1

    They're always bitching about how they don't have time to show all the footage, and to go to their website to see the rest. Here's the real scoop:

    1. Play the myths "shuffled"
    2. People have to watch the entire show instead of just the 1/3rd of the show with the good myth they're actually interested in.
    3. ??? (Ratings stay flat for the hour instead of having a peak in the beginning)
    4. Piss everybody off because the show sucks now.... But the advertisers are "happy", so PROFIT!

  4. Re:if we had a tough FCC, on New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities · · Score: 1

    I wish somebody would start uploading torrents of the mythbusters episodes with the myths un-shuffled. (Like they were in the first season)

    I'd rather watch one myth end to end instead of having them jump around and spend a third of the time on recaps.

  5. Re:if we had a tough FCC, on New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities · · Score: 1

    Mythbusters has jumped the shark. It happened right around the time they built that sign which says "Warning: Science Content".

  6. Re:Not really on Breaking a Car's Cipher · · Score: 1

    I don't doubt your story at all, but you were pretty lucky. You must have either found one of the rare little-used but well-maintained cars that are out there, or were just plain fortunate that you had nothing major fail. If I could be sure I'd have an experience like that, I'd go that way every time.

  7. Re:Not really on Breaking a Car's Cipher · · Score: 1

    Thus, there are plenty of old cars from the likes of rolls royce, jaguar, mercedes etc available very cheaply, and most of them have sizeable engines and lots of goodies to play with.


    If you use the words "Jaguar" or "Mercedes" in the same sentence as "cheap" you obviously haven't owned one for very long...

    When I transitioned from old "cheap" cars to fancy-ish new cars was the first time I had six consecutive months of the maintenance costs on my Eldorado (Which I bought for $2500) being higher than the payment for a 36 month loan for $20,000.

    Old cars with luxury features and toys can easily cost more than new cars with luxury features and toys. Especially if they're european cars, which are more expensive to fix.
  8. Re:Not really on Breaking a Car's Cipher · · Score: 1

    In many places you are required to purchase auto insurance that covers theft. This is almost universally true if you finance the vehicle.

    My wife and I each have a car. Mine uses this KeyLoq chip, and a couple other security devices, and hers does not. We both have a perfect driving record. My car cost almost double hers when new, and my car is only a year old, while hers is four years old. Yet due to the anti-theft devices, insurance for her car costs more than double what it costs for mine.

    It is annoying though when you drop your key in a puddle and suddenly you can't start your car until it dries all the way through (which can take days). Of course, that's only an issue because they didn't seal the damned thing properly...

    It's certainly cheaper to own a car that you don't care about being stolen, but you miss out on the pleasurable indulgence of owning a car that performs well, and has fun toys.

  9. Re:No kidding on Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns · · Score: 1

    Since this is supposed to be a lunar lander, my question would be how they intend to use GPS away from the earth.

    GPS was designed for mission-critical applications, even if consumer receivers were not.

  10. Re:Target sells HD DVD on Paramount to Drop Blu-Ray for HD-DVD · · Score: 1

    They went exclusive for standalone players. They still carry the 360 add-on, and a pathetic (8 titles at my local Target) selection of movies.

  11. Re:We need 2 way cable cards and open digital boxe on Bandwidth Crunch Looms for Cable Companies · · Score: 1

    You can soon buy a settop box from BestBuy, rent just the MCard from your cable provider, insert, and watch TV. Settop box makers now have to compete on features and price instead of the backroom deals with cable providers. At least this is the what I have heard from all my higher-ups.


    You can already do this with the first-gen CableCARD. With the second generation cable card (MCard is something completely different), sure, you'll be able to buy a box, but it won't do very much. The program guides and interactive features are implemented inside the card. That doesn't leave much room for innovation on the part of the set top box maker, and is contrary to the intention of the integration ban.

    So technically you're correct, but so was I.
  12. Re:We need 2 way cable cards and open digital boxe on Bandwidth Crunch Looms for Cable Companies · · Score: 1

    Two way cards exist, but the upstream signaling hardware currently must live in the STB. It does not live in the card. There is no standard for implementing such an interface, so the current two-way cards are only bi-directional if they are used in a box that you get from your cable company.

    MCards don't need to be bi-directional. They are simply multiple-stream cards which allow for things like picture-in-picture without requiring multiple cards.

  13. Re:We need 2 way cable cards and open digital boxe on Bandwidth Crunch Looms for Cable Companies · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Two way cable cards are designed to eliminate open digital boxes. By taking all the logic that a regualr box has and pulling it into a bi-directional cablecard, you effectivly make it impossible to add any value with a third party box. It won't matter that they can be made.

    The cable companies need to create an open-standards network service for all upstream communications, allow third parties to implement the protocol that requests on-demand content and SDV channels, and then distribute single direction cable cards which do *nothing* but decode the signal.

    Bi-Directional CableCARD 2.0 is an industry scam to bypass the integration ban entirely.

  14. Re:This explains a lot! on Warhawk PS3 Server Clusters · · Score: 1

    There are 180 PS3s in that picture (15 per rack side/30 per rack. 6 racks). If they build one of these "clusters" for each region, or even a few per region, you're still talking less than 1000 PS3s. That's hardly a blip in the sales numbers either way.

  15. Re:Won't change a thing on Increased Linux Use With SCO's Defeat Predicted · · Score: 2, Informative

    It was actually a bit of a boon to the likes of RedHat and Novell.

    I work on embedded linux for a living, and all of the customers I have done work for switched from a "roll-their-own" (usually based on an existing freely-available distribution) model for their embedded solution to buying from RedHat or SuSE. The impression that investors and decision makers got was that it was worth the per-unit fee to go through one of them just to avoid the legal hassles down the road.

    Now, though, I'm already transitioning an embedded linux appliance from SuSE to Debian... The company doesn't want to pay $200+ to SuSE for every box they ship anymore.

  16. Re:TFA Interesting on See Who Is Whitewashing Wikipedia · · Score: 2

    Do you really think we are all so childish as to completely demonize everyone we disagree with?


    That's one possible assumption you could make as an explanation of his comment...

    A more realistic assumption would be that he thought many people view opaque government entities as a faceless unit, and don't think about the fact that such an agency is made up of real individuals.

    Even saying that he "disagrees" with them is a logical leap. I don't see any evidence of that in his original comment. The fact that you read such meaning into his very simple statement probably reflects more on your outlook than his.
  17. Re:ditto on iPhone Bill a Whopping 52 Pages Long · · Score: 1

    Nothing like a poor craftsman other than to blame the tools.

    It is possible, easy even, to write quality, high performance, easily maintainable web applications in PHP. There are few languages where it is truly difficult.

    Sure, it's got library inconsistencies, and quirks. It's also frequently the best tool for the job (tied for first anyway).

    Few things piss me off more than programmers/engineers who would rather bitch about the tools than to just solve a problem and get the job done.

  18. Re:Wow on Google's $10 Local Search Play · · Score: 1

    Given the availability of people willing to pay for such data, and the fact that it's already publicly available (though not cataloged appropriately), I'd say without this program the value is roughly $0. Usually local business have to pay to have this information listed somewhere, and have to organize it themselves.

    How much are you fooling yourself into thinking this data is worth?

  19. Re:Power-of-10 prefixes are the norm in IT on Terabyte Hard Drive Put To the Test · · Score: 1
    You say examples that aren't based on bits or Hz....

    Then you list a 56kbps modem, and bus speeds that come from the clock rate (measured in Hz) of the bus...

    It all misses the point, however, which is that things which used to be measured with a power of two are now measured with a power of 10. Sure, most things have gone over to the dark side. That doesn't make it right.

    Let me fix your list for you a little bit:

    • A 1x PCI-e lane is a serial link. One bit at a time. Either way, it's rated at 2.5Gbits/s (2500MHz) with 10 bits per byte.
    • There's no such thing as a 56kbaud POTS modem. It's a 56kbits/s modem. It's baud rate is actually significantly lower.
    • A "650MByte CD" is correctly reported as holding 619MB when it is placed in a system with practically any modern OS.
    • A "300MB/s" SATA link is actually 3gbits per second, and can transfer data at 357MBytes (power of 2) per second minus overhead.
    /me revokes your geek badge.
  20. Re:Still have to eat well. on Bone Hormone Linked to Obesity and Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Ketosis (buring fat stores for energy)


    I hate when people (who have done reading on low-carb diets) spout this mis-definition of ketosis.

    Ketosis is simply the state of having excess levels of ketones in your blood stream. One of the was that this happens is for your body to convert a lot of stored fat back into energy. Ketosis is the result of burning fat. It is not the process of burning fat, and it is not something you trick your body into doing to burn fat. If you drink enough fluids and lose weight at a healthy pace (instead of really quickly) it is something that a dieter should never experience.

    It also makes you smell bad.
  21. Re:Personally..... on Karl Rove Resigning Aug 31 · · Score: 1

    He probably couldn't officially state that he's "Leaving to help [Candidate X] with his campaign" until he was no longer officially in the service out the president.

    What? You thought he was leaving in disgrace or something? This is the typical time for a guy in his position to leave to try and secure his spot in the next administration.

  22. Re:Don't blame Canada on The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off · · Score: 1

    It's a cooperative though, so the subscribers can choose to benefit through better access or profit, whichever they prefer.

    The only valid justification for most telcos is return-on-investment.

    Worse, due to monopoly agreements, competition just plain isn't allowed to start laying cable in many areas. The locality takes a cut of the existing carrier's revenue in exchange for not letting any other players into the market.

  23. Re:Don't blame Canada on The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off · · Score: 1

    Why would anyone run ADSL over fiber, when it's a copper technology?


    To save money, companies like AT&T are running FTTN networks instead of FTTP networks. This means they run fiber to a big ugly box on the pole at the end of your street, and then use the same old copper to give you DSL access. You get the best DSL can offer, because you're a few hundred feet from the DSLAM, but it's still just slow old ADSL. Or ADSL 2, or whatever.... It's nothing like FTTP. Verizon offers 50Mbit down and 15Mbit up on it's FTTP network, and it still has bandwidth to spare for more HDTV channels than cable.

    And again, you're citing only downstream numbers. We need to get the upstream going too. And not just enough for TCP ACKs. The internet is not a one-way medium, even if certain players wish it were.
  24. Re:For A Start on The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off · · Score: 2, Funny

    The real problem is that the most they can sell you is an "8meg" connection (it's not *really* 8meg because it's asymmetric).

    1999 called. It wants it's internet connection back.

  25. Re:Don't blame Canada on The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It still costs a lot of money to string fiber up to every residence. Competition could, theoretically, actually impede development of such a network, since they're so expensive to build that you're only going to build it if you have a reasonable expectation of recouping you investment.

    Not only that, but it's horribly inefficient for us to build multiple networks. There should be one physical network, and competition should exist on it.

    The problem is that in most of the country (Everywhere non-Verizon), this network isn't being built. And in Verizon territory, there is no competition allowed. Worse, in some areas, inferior technology is being installed (FTTN, etc..) that will actually delay the possibility of anything but 7ish Mbit ADSL. Even worse, we paid for the fiber network, but we don't actually have it.

    What is needed? We need some politicians with ethics who aren't in the pocket of the telcos to actually stand up and hold them to their promises. Either that, or we need the physical network to be a public utility. The former would be best for everybody, but it hardly seems likely... Everybody up the chain from the local town governments on up to the senate and even the executive branch is used to receiving their cut of what are essentially bribes from last-mile carriers (unscrutinized regressive taxes on citizens, really, funneled through telcos and cable-cos into local treasuries and national campaigns), and nobody is going to give the money back unless the voters hold them accountable. Most of the voters don't even know what's going on.