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User: Groo+Wanderer

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  1. Patents on What Will Microsoft's "Embrace" of Open Source Actually Achieve? · · Score: 0, Troll

    Until they stop playing games with hidden and required patents, their talk is just BS. They have shown they have no intent to change that model time and time again, this round is no different. You can open source something that requires a DX call but if you don't open source DX and threaten anyone who does with patent suits, is there a point? It is hollow BS for all the same reasons. Don't buy the PR meant to distract, the underlying mechanics are still the same. They are antagonistic to open source and that won't change at a level deeper than the public messaging.

              -Charlie

  2. Not so fast on Ask Slashdot: How To Unblock Email From My Comcast-Hosted Server? · · Score: 1

    Before you say such things, you might want to look up the legal morass surrounging mail servers under your direct control and those not. Start with Megaupload and then follow links to the less public ones. There are DAMN good reason to keep your mail server on premises be it home or business, if you don't understand why you might want to educate yourself before giving advice.

                    -Charlie

  3. Speaking as a Comcast victim on Ask Slashdot: How To Unblock Email From My Comcast-Hosted Server? · · Score: 1

    I too am a Comcast victim, business class, and I have a mail server on their static IPs. This has been the case for years and while I have seen occasional blocking during inter-company spats, nothing blaket like you are seeing. It could just be the range you are on or it could be something else. What I am trying to say is that it is not those big three blanket blocking Comcast IPs.

    I would see if Comcast can give you another set of statics in another range. That may help.

                        -Charlie

  4. Re:Atari on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Best Games To Have In Your Collection? · · Score: 1

    Agreed. My collection includes a Guantlett 2, Tempest, Ms PacMan, Xevious, Robotron 2048, and Smash TV (not in original cabinet). The rest of the modern stiff pretty much pales in comparison.

  5. Re:Touch Server on Windows 9 To Win Over Windows 7 Users, Disables Start Screen For Desktop · · Score: 1

    It's OK, this version will change all those commands to equally long but completely different commands. According to their internal surveys, that should help sales out by giving administrators a sense of accomplishment in learning a new command set. What could go wrong?

                  -Charlie

  6. Re:Touch Server on Windows 9 To Win Over Windows 7 Users, Disables Start Screen For Desktop · · Score: 2

    Ha! I get the joke there, you made a funny. Windows in the datacenter, har har.

              -Charlie

    P.S. For those who don't get my joke, you should look up the marketshare data of Windows in the datacenter. No not the BS "Sales of OSes on servers" that MS commissions from Gartner, Forrester, and all the others who know where the checks come from, but share by installed socket. If you have access, look at it over the last 6-7 years, it is brutal. Make sure you get installed rather than sales, MS keeps commissioning reports that somehow manage to not count Google, Facebook, Baidu, Tencent etc etc's servers. Not sure why though. :)

  7. Who cares? on Windows 9 To Win Over Windows 7 Users, Disables Start Screen For Desktop · · Score: 1

    Is Windows relevant to anything anymore?

  8. I can see why this would work on Microsoft Wants You To Trade Your MacBook Air In For a Surface Pro 3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gosh, why not? I can see someone looking at their MBA saying, "It works perfectly, has a great OS, awesome battery life, and does everything I could ask for and does it fast. I need to dump this for a barely functional device with an actively antagonistic OS sold by a company unable to secure a wet paper bag or make software that works acceptably. All this for far less battery life and far more money. I wish I had 2 MBAs to trade in!",

    Back to the real world....

    Did I mention that the day after the S3's release I was at a press event on a bus full of journalists. Anand has his S3 and in less than 24 hours it broke. The entire bus full of tech journos all concluded it was better that way.

    That said, some people do like it. Microsoft traded in an absolute monopoly lock on the desktop to cater to 10% of their base. Clever that MS management, clever.

                                    -Charlie

  9. Easy enough on HTML5 App For Panasonic TVs Rejected - JQuery Is a "Hack" · · Score: 1

    "Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer?"

    Try this...

    Panasonic good, hacks bad. Panasonic good, JQuery good too. Panasonic good and shiny, JQuery not a hack and shiny too. Boing boing, whee! Panasonic good.

    That should do it.

  10. That's obvious on Translating President Obama's NSA Reform Promises Into Plain English · · Score: 2

    "Okay, who is this magical third party?"

    There is only one entity that could be trusted with the security and sanctity of such a trove, the TSA of course.

                -Charlie

  11. Late? on EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming · · Score: 1

    You mean there was someone EA hadn't terminally pissed off before this debacle? Could have fooled me.

              -Charlie

  12. The economics are wonderful on Why Don't Open Source Databases Use GPUs? · · Score: 2

    Gee, a $1000 GPU that runs 7x as fast a 1/8th of an $1500 CPU. It woud be good idea if you didn't need that CPU to run it, but just barely so. If you cheap out on the CPU and only spend ~$750 on it, assuminng there is no slowdown on the GPU because of it, then the economics break. And people wonder why GPU compute on databases isn't catching on.

    Then there is the power use aka TCO/running costs to think about. And everything mentioned above. And.... This study has all he hallmarks of an Nvidia research project who's targets are financial analysts rather than potential customers. The science is fine but that is not the intent.

                -Charlie

  13. Perks? on The NSA Is Looking For a Few Good Geeks · · Score: 1

    Does an employment contract come with the perk of war crimes indemnification in writing? Just curious.

  14. You are missing the point. on A Playstation 4 Teardown · · Score: 1

    You missed the point, it is not a case of "My platform isn't quite as shitty as yours." this time around.

    That said we have reached a state of meta-fanboi-ism, the new argument is, "The platform I don't have and have no real clue about isn't quite as shitty as the platform you don't have and have no real clue about." And for the record, yes this is yet another internet derived regresion of the human species.

  15. Story is a PR plant on Microsoft Donates Windows 8.1 To Nonprofit Organizations · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work with a charity that has access to the MS discounts and there is one authorized outlet for it, Tech Soup. MS has ALWAYS made the latest version available so this is nothing new. It is just an astroturfing post to try and drum up some good PR for the embattled and truly miserable OS.

    That said why is MS so cruel to those in need?

  16. It has been around for a while on MS Researchers Develop Acoustic Data Transfer System For Phones · · Score: 1

    This tech is old, they are called "ringtones" by others. They transfer information quite reliably telling others, "The phone is owned by a total *sshole" when certain things play with near 100% accuracy. MS is probably going to use this to patent ringtones, and start suing android vendors.....

                -Charlie

  17. Re:Boo Whoo! on Class-action Suit Filed Against Microsoft Over Surface Write Off · · Score: 1

    "I have never understood why listening to morons on CNBC, Fox Business, or anywhere else was any different from listening to some guy screaming on a street corner."

    Two differences. For the guy on the street corner, you have to go outside. Secondly, said guy screeming about the impending space eel apolcalypse because people have lapsed from believing in the book of Jed The Holy Phebotomist could possibly be right. That is about the sum of the difference if you don't count such tangential things as looks, shoes, and holes in clothes.

                      -Charlie

  18. What I have seen on Bad Connections Dog Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi Network · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While I haven't used the Google service yet, I see similar problems in a lot of public areas like airports where I happen to find myself a lot. It seems to be more of an issue with the non-direct data traffic like the auth services, ads/gateway tasks, and DNS. More often than not it is one of these 'services' that are unrelated to the traffic that are acting up.

    One example is the wi-fi networks in the Minneapolis or San Fran airports. You can log on, and then getting an IP, getting on the "I agree" screens, the videos you have to watch etc etc are all dog slow to one degree or other. The Delta lounge in the Minneapolis and San Fran airports are very extreme examples of this problem especially when they were T-Mobile (damn their black souls). You would 'get on' and then nothing or something trivial really slow.

    Once on you would have decent ping times and some speed tests would be OK but anything that needed 'extra services' was pain. Changing your DNS to something you have or a know fast provider helped a lot which tells me the NAS/Radius/whatever server they use was overwhelmed. Now that I am thinking about it I should do a traceroute next time I am on to see what is happening in more detail, I am curious.

    My first bet is that the majority of these services go through a single auth/security box that is under-CPUd and forces everything out a single overloaded link. If anyone has the time. I also wouldn't be surprised if DPI had a hand in it too, especially from Google.

  19. Re:Sony should hire the XBox PR dept on Want To Record Xbox One Gameplay? Get Ready To Pay · · Score: 1

    "Why cant i record on my Xbox offline and transfer the resultant file to a PC that can upload for FREE?"

    Because Bing wouldn't know how to find it, duh. :)

  20. Post is ignorant on Building a Full-Auto Gauss Gun · · Score: 2

    The big problem with this post is that it misses the entire point of the problem. You can make Gauss guns with ease, they work, and they fire things at high enough velocities to destroy hardened armored targets. That is not a challenge, the problem is making them last more than a few shots before they self-destruct.

    This story was all about a low velocity gun that can fire more than 10 bolts at low speed. Again not a big deal. The problem is that they are using low power (relatively) to do this and it lasts a "long" time. When you up the power to useful level, it rips the rails us, oxidizes/burns them, warps them from heat, and all the other problems that are real engineers are struggling with.

    In essence the OP says that they can avoid all the consequences by avoiding the useful effects of the device. Great, how can this not be considered a step forward! I can make a 500MPG car that doesn't actually move very fast and isn't large enough to carry a can of beer much less a person, is that too a massive advance in tech? Idiots.

  21. Did he get the cash? on Samsung Offered StackOverflow Users $500 For "Organic" Publicity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given the publicity he gave Samsung, did they pay him the $500 in the end?

  22. Re:Pick a rumor, any rumor: on Apple Renews Contract With Samsung Over A-Series Processors · · Score: 1

    Except my site is not ad revenue supported. Basic reading comprehension does seem to be a problem here.

              -Charlie

  23. Re:Apple has bought a fab according to semiaccurat on Apple Renews Contract With Samsung Over A-Series Processors · · Score: 2

    You do realize that the UMC rumor came from the Mac sites who all wrote me asking for free access to essentially republish my work openly. Before I could even respond they flat out made up that I was saying it was UMC, which I did not do. They got this flash of inspiration from the metatags my editor put in. For some reason they picked out UMC and ignored the five other fabs in the tag list. Could it be that UMC was the last one? Did they miss that the tags get alphabetized by the system? Are they that ignorant? Don't answer the last one.

    Short story is that the morons at the Mac sites flat out made up the UMC thing and attributed it to me. That is modern 'journalism' for you.

                -Charlie

  24. Think about this one people on Apple Renews Contract With Samsung Over A-Series Processors · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Stop and think about this.

    1) When was the last time Apple leaked plans like this?
    2) The level of detail is too high for a 2015 part
    3) Apple never gives the foundry product names
    4) They also never specify time frames even to their foundry that far out.
    5) Apple and Samsung are not on good terms.
    6-17) See 5)
    18) Apple is trying to get away from Samsung, cost is not an issue
    19) Samsung is not any better than the other two common platform partners for tech.
    20) Apple has signed with TSMC for 20nm
    21) Losing Apple is a big deal for Samsung Semi, and enough of a big deal to be unpleasant for their stock
    22) The source for the story is a Korean newspaper that is likely quite beholden to Samsung

    You can draw your own conclusions from the above, mine is damage control on Samsung's part.

                    -Charlie

  25. Re:Apple has bought a fab according to semiaccurat on Apple Renews Contract With Samsung Over A-Series Processors · · Score: 1

    I lost the plot? Darn now what am I going to do this evening? :(

                  -Charlie