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User: picoboy

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  1. Re: This might be a problem for short sellers on Tesla Model 3 Achieves NHTSA's 'Lowest Probability' of Injury Ever (thedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    The NHTSA ratings are not subjective, they are based on scientific experiments performed on the vehicle measuring structural integrity of the vehicle and force of impact on the test dummies which is a function of force absorption achieved by the vehicle's structure and its active and passive safety features. There were five other vehicles made by four manufacturers (Ford, Honda, Subaru and Toyota - no Volvo, by the way) that also received five star ratings in all categories. NHTSA provides more detailed data, but they digest the data into coarse "star" ratings for easier public consumption. However, the detailed data showed the Tesla Model 3 achieving the lowest probability of injury of any car they ever tested.

    Those are the facts. All the other comments about subjective ratings, poorly designed and distracting controls, driver attentiveness, etc., are just spin - mostly by people who have never driven a Tesla Model 3 or who own a Volvo and can't accept that even Volvos don't score as well in safety tests (hint: it's because of the unavoidably massive chunk of metal sitting under the hood).

  2. Re: Does it measure driver attentiveness? on Tesla Model 3 Achieves NHTSA's 'Lowest Probability' of Injury Ever (thedrive.com) · · Score: 1

    The thumb wheel on the left side of the steering wheel controls volume (up/down), track skip (right/left) and pause (press in). The thumb wheel on the right side of the steering wheel controls the cruise/autopilot speed limit (up/down), following distance (right/left) and voice commands (press). Turn signals are on the left stalk, wiper and headlight controls on the right stalk. The controls are perfectly efficient and work more or less like any other car. The climate controls are on the touchscreen and are simpler and easier to adjust than on any other car I have ever driven. I rarely touch the entertainment or nav system while driving because the voice controls are more convenient.

    Everyone here talking shit about the controls who doesn't own it and drive it every day, you have no idea what you're talking about.

  3. Misguided in so many ways... on Intel's Attempt At A-La-Carte Television Hits Delays · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone else read the arrogant comment attributed to some unnamed source at Intel, stating that Intel was frustrated with "everyone doing a half-assed Google TV so it's going to do it themselves and do it right." ?

    So, not surprisingly, Intel has now run into "delays" in securing agreements with content providers (in this case, the word "delay" means a quantity of time as large as forever). Why on earth would Intel believe that they have the consumer electronics clout to pull this off where Apple and Google continue to fail?

    And who in their right mind at Intel decided to blast the media with their arrogant claims before they actually secured the elusive content agreements? Are they this completely incompetent as to think that Internet TV has anything at all to do with their fabulous semiconductor technology, instead of realizing it has everything to do with negotiation and leverage?

    The kool-aid must run strong...

  4. Re:Economies of scale on Intel Announces Atom S1200 SoC For High Density Servers · · Score: 1

    How can lots of slow processors be better than a few fast ones with virtualization on top?

    A few points..

    1. Most hyperscale server applications are memory and/or I/O bound, not CPU bound (and "memory bound" meaning frequent memory accesses, not memory size bound)

    2. Typical applications are search, web serving and data mining. Anything that requires Apache or Hadoop where the processing is highly parallel (and memory or I/O bound...)

    3. For those types of workloads, there are often frequent idle times for any individual CPU, so individual CPUs can frequently enter a low power state while only the active CPUs are operating full bore. It's more problematic for large, monolithic CPUs to be power efficient with these types of workloads.

    4. Because the applications are typically I/O bound, hyperscale servers have (or will have) more sophisticated parallelized I/O subsystems that provide lower latency access to distributed datasets.

    Hyperscale server = I/O engine
    Hyperscale server != computation engine

  5. Anyone else thinking... on Science Panel Recommends Censoring Bird Flu Papers · · Score: 1

    Streisand effect for would-be bioterrorists?

  6. correction on Angry Birds Boss Credits Piracy For Popularity Boost · · Score: 2

    "We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans."

    Here, I'll fix that for him...

    "We took something from the INDIE music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans."

  7. Re:Really nice looking and interesting phone for 1 on Before the iPhone, Apple's Stunning Phone From 1983 · · Score: 1

    So, why do you think Apple is successful and Linux isn't?

    Assuming you are referring to Linux as in "Linux on the desktop", it's because the masses prefer the friendly confines of a walled garden over the freedom to run a lot of half-baked free software. (Sorry, I had a bad day a few weeks ago when the latest kmail2 that ships with Ubuntu 11.10 ate all of my mail, prompting countless wasted hours reinstalling older software, restoring from backups, etc).

    If you're referring to Linux in general, the reality is that Linux is actually way more successful than Apple, if you measure success in terms of deployed instances. I have no less than 9 embedded machines running Linux in my household if you include my and my wife's Android phones. Even if I chose iPhones over Android, the score would still be 7 to 2. I suspect even the households of Apple fan-people typically hold more Linux products than Apple products - they just don't realize it.

  8. Re:Microsoft can't compete in the market... on Barnes & Noble Names Microsoft's Disputed Android Patents · · Score: 1

    I know Slashdot thinks all patents are evil (along with copyrights, commercial software, paying for music, etc.), but there are legitimate patents, and companies do deserve compensation for their research and development.

    No, you missed the point. Read the Groklaw article that is referenced by TFA.

    "If, as Barnes & Noble claims, Microsoft and its allies are using them (the patents) primarily as a legal instrument, it can take the matter into the area where patent law and antitrust law meet." ...and all the text that follows.

    This is no longer about Microsoft defending its patents, legitimate or not. This is now an antitrust case in which MIcrosoft is accused of overreaching the domain of its patents in an attempt to illegitimately control a parallel market.

  9. Re:Bitcoin on Value of Bitcoin "Crashes" · · Score: 1

    You are most likely already doing that already anyway. What do you think your bank does with your money?

    At the present time they are doing something with it other than lending it out.

  10. I'll invest on Martin Jetpack Climbs 5000 Feet Above Sea Level · · Score: 1

    ...if he adds some frickin' laser beams.

  11. Re:Hasn't this been done already? on Creating a "Force Field" Invisible Touch Interface · · Score: 1

    Try 39 years ago, at least. University of Illinois PLATO IV terminals connected to a Control Data mainframe. We used to do our physics and chemistry homework on these things, and I can tell you from personal experience that they worked great.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Platovterm1981.jpg

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

  12. Re:Scary on Univ. of Illinois Goes War-of-the-Worlds On Students · · Score: 1

    The really scary part is that we live in a society where the police have to pre-prepare texts and emails to warn students that someone is shooting up their school.

    "pre-prepare"?!?

    Which makes this discussion a pre-prepare post-mortem?

  13. Re:Sod SATA on Intel Unveils SSDs With 6Gbit/Sec Throughput · · Score: 1

    Give us fucking SAS already.

    Sadly, SAS SSDs will probably never be mainstream (i.e. cheap and ubiquitous). I'm assuming that's what you mean by "Give us fucking SAS already."

    On one hand, Romley with its integrated SAS ports may help seed the market for SSDs using SAS protocol.

    On the other hand, NVM Express (http://www.intel.com/standards/nvmhci/) is pushing SSD designs toward direct attach on PCIe. The reality is that Intel doesn't care about all the beautiful things that SAS brings, such as long cables, hot plugging and multiple initiators. They're happier just getting the intermediate protocol controller out of the way and pushing the protocol stack into software running on an x86, thereby reducing cost and keeping more margins for themselves.

    Don't hold your breath for SAS, unless you want to pay enterprise storage prices.

  14. To avoid trademark infringement, on Sarah Palin Seeks To Trademark Her Name · · Score: 2

    I think we should all just start calling her "She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named".

  15. Re:WTF? on Senate Panel Backs Patent Overhaul Bill · · Score: 1

    hundreds of attorneys and document reviewers pour though millions of pages of notes

    I really need a bigger notebook.

  16. Re:The good and bad... on Verizon Finally Unveils Apple iPhone · · Score: 1

    True. But if you're on the phone and they say "Sending you the email now", you're boned. You'll have to hang up, allow the data transmission, and then call them back.

    Fortunately for Verizon, AT&T chose to level the playing field a little with their network's periodic auto-hangup feature.

  17. Re:Incorrect headline on Scientifically, You Are Likely In the Slowest Line · · Score: 1

    In his example of three lines, there is still a 2/3 chance that you are not in the slowest line. So unless "one in three" has become "likely," the headline demonstrates a failure at basic maths.

    Now redo the example with 5 or 10 checkout lines as is more typical at the big box stores, and let me know how it turns out.

  18. Re:Costco on Scientifically, You Are Likely In the Slowest Line · · Score: 1

    I love the self service lines...

    I hate them. Hire a damn person, clerks aren't that expensive and we have a lot of unemployment. This is not a case of automation being massively more efficient, its just penny pinching and putting people out of work. Plus whenever there is a problem, and they happen often, you have to wait for the one clerk at the kiosk to come over and correct the issue. It amounts to poor service in the name of minimal savings.

    You must like waiting in line. I don't know where you shop, but where I shop the self-service lines are the only ones that properly implement output queuing. One line feeds usually 4 to 6 registers, as it should be. Even if one or two of the self-service registers has a problem that needs to be serviced by the one designated clerk, it is still substantially more efficient for the rest of us that are up to the task of scanning our own groceries.

  19. Re:Steampunk on Electromechanical Switches Could Reduce Future Computers' Cooling Needs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just to be clear, processors don't run at the toggle frequency (f-sub-t) of an inverter. At best, a CPU will run somewhere south of 1/10th of the inverter toggle frequency. So we're talking more like 50 kHz, probably slower.

    Not saying that there aren't applications for a really slow CPU running in a 500 degree C environment. (Like my DVR? Chuckle...)

  20. Re:Foo on Minnesota Moving To Microsoft's Cloud · · Score: 1

    What guarantee does OSS make that will save taxpayers millions of dollars?

    Just a wild guess, but I'd say that it's because you don't need to pay to use it.

    You're forgetting about Total Cost of Ownership. (Duh!)

    Here's a link to an independent study about that to help you out:

    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/default.mspx

    --

    I Have a Master's Degree.... Innnnnnnnnnnnnnn Science!

  21. Oxymoron? on The Science of Truthiness · · Score: 1

    > a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool

    Lost me right there...

  22. Re:Wait a minute. on Stuxnet Analysis Backs Iran-Israel Connection · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hell, thousands of hackers across the world have the motivation, capability, and demonstrated willingness to do things like this.

    So you're suggesting that thousands of hackers knew that Iran used Siemens PLCs, knew the specific equipment being controlled by those PLCs, knew how to modify the program code in those PLCs to damage that equipment, had multiple stolen certificates, and had apparently four zero day exploits cued up and ready to be blown on this. Even as a self-righteous slashdot-reading geek, I'm not buying it. This was government all the way. The bullshit dates were thrown in the code to add an intentional tinge of unprofessionalism to an otherwise ridiculously professional piece of work.

  23. Re:Sounds impossible on Apple Patents Directional Flash Tech For Cameras · · Score: 1

    It’s basically a low-resolution B&W (or perhaps grayscale) LCD projector. Hardly revolutionary.

    Yeah, that's exactly what I meant in my original suggestion of an LCD mounted in front of the flash. Basically a grayscale LCD projector without a lens. Or maybe with a lens. Beats me, I'm not an optics guy (got a C in that class).

    Although from the original article it would appear that Apple is taking the opposite approach. The article suggests an array of light sources (LEDs) that can be controlled individually rather than a single light source with an array of masks (LCDs) in front of it.

    And no, I haven't patented it. And no, I couldn't give a crap about patenting it. And unless someone else has already filed on this variation then I hereby declare it part of the prior art and NOBODY can patent it. Not that it would pass the non-obvious test anyway. Not that that's a requirement to patent anything anymore. Not that any of this would stop me from building it if I wanted to even if someone else already patented it because it's obviously so obvious that even I thought of it. Not that that would stop some asshole at Apple from suing me. Obviously. Have a nice day, get off my lawn, etc.

  24. Re:Sounds impossible on Apple Patents Directional Flash Tech For Cameras · · Score: 1

    > Sounds impossible

    Why wouldn't it be as simple as an LCD array mounted a very short distance in front of the flash source?

  25. Re:OSS Strikes Again on Linux Kernel Exploit Busily Rooting 64-Bit Machines · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Tell us how great OSS is.

    Tell us how much better Linux is.

    Tell us how badly Microsoft sucks.

    I'm a PC, and using Windows instead of Linux was my idea.

    I knew it was just a matter of time before Ballmer showed up as an AC on Slashdot.