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User: Jeremy+Erwin

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  1. Re:Hacked? on Kids With Operators Manual Alert Bank Officials: "We Hacked Your ATM" · · Score: 2

    I recently read Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's egg and a good many of "Hunter's" exploits were based on nothing more than known service passwords. You'd think that things would have changed since 1989, but apparently the same mistakes are being made.

  2. Re:UV on Plastic Trash Forming Into "Plastiglomerate" Rocks · · Score: 1

    So geologists can't use this a marker for the Anthropocene? They'll have to use subway tunnels instead?

  3. Re:terrifying? on The Disappearing Universe · · Score: 1

    Suddenly, as a member of a Type 0 civilization, I feel rather stupid and insignificant.

  4. Re:terrifying? on The Disappearing Universe · · Score: 3, Informative

    pardon me. I get my science from xkcd, which recently stated:

    Suppose there are 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy, and every one of them hosts an Earth-sized population of 7 billion Ted Olsons.

    There's your quadrillion. Are you a fan of hive minds?

  5. Re:terrifying? on The Disappearing Universe · · Score: 1

    Imagine how many quadrillions of intelligences exist in a galaxy the size of the milky way. Imagine how many of them will be destroyed by relativistic jets

  6. Re:Do we really need new books? on Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil? · · Score: 1

    Oh, they're quite aware of the distinction. You can find definitions from Norman Spinrad, Gregory Benford, Larry Niven, Hal Clement, etc.

  7. Re:PR on SpaceX Shows Off 7-Man Dragon V2 Capsule · · Score: 2

    The Russians own half the modules on the ISS.

    It's more like 5 out of 17. And one of those (Zarya) was bought with US funds. A real shame that functions of Zvezda aren't redundant, though..

  8. Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors. on 4K Displays Ready For Prime Time · · Score: 1

    One common method of setting up stereo speakers is to set them up so the the left speaker, the right speaker, and your ears form an equilateral triangle. This often makes for a spectacular stereo image.

    Now Imagine that the space in between the left and right speakers is now completely filled by a screen, (and that it somehow did not cause acoustical problems)

    That's what the optimal screen size for 4k looks like.

  9. Re:Please quit conflating TV's and monitors. on 4K Displays Ready For Prime Time · · Score: 1

    My TV has far more extensive calibration controls than my monitor-- perhaps the latter is simply too inexpensive.

  10. Re:Marketing idiocy on Curved TVs Nothing But a Gimmick · · Score: 1

    First, I sit about 9 feet from the TV, not 16.5, so the curvature will be wrong anyway.

    If you want to sit 9 feet away from a 4k display, you'll probably need a 120 inch screen. For 16.5 feet away, you'll want a 225 inch screen. By choosing an absurdly close viewing distance, you are depriving the set manufacturers of tens of thousands of dollars. Shame on you!

  11. Re:No Way! on Curved TVs Nothing But a Gimmick · · Score: 2

    It's a reasonably popular gimmick. The local theater is showing four films in 3D-- X-Men, Spiderman 2, Godzilla and Maleficent, as well as seven 2D only titles . A few months down the road, if you want to replicate the experience of seeing any of those four films at home, a 3D TV would be useful.

  12. Re:I dislike Beats... on Apple Confirms Purchase of Beats For $3 Billion · · Score: 1

    Grados sound nice in quiet rooms, particularly if paired with a half decent headphone amplifier. Connected to an ipad, outside, with the wind and the traffic? Not so much.

    If sealed headphones that sound as good can be had, I'm all ears.

  13. Re:Beats? BEATS? on Apple Confirms Purchase of Beats For $3 Billion · · Score: 1

    Beats takes analog audio hardware that hasn't changed since the 70s

    If a pair of headphones incorporates neodymium magnets, it was designed after the 1970s. As for analog? Most passive headphones are analog.

  14. Re:Do we really need new books? on Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil? · · Score: 1

    Hard Science Fiction is about worlds and plots and themes that could happen, but haven't happened yet.

  15. Re:Do we really need new books? on Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil? · · Score: 1

    More to the point: Iain Banks or Iain M. Banks?

  16. Re:No bluetooth? on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 1

    Considering how modern processors save power-- turning off cores, reducing frequency, a performance benchmark is an unrealistic workload when measuring battery life-- most battery benchmarks loop video, or test web browsing.

    Here's a review of the nexus 7 Note that the battery life under GLBenchmark is dramatically less than the benchmark under "web browsing."

    The display brightness for the tablets was set to 200 nits, which is is probably not enough to use outdoors.

    [The 2013'sNexus 7] is also incredibly bright. I typically view 500 nits as the threshold for outdoor usability, and the new Nexus 7 definitely exceeds that threshold. The tablet will drink away all of your battery life if you leave it at this brightness setting indefinitely, but if you need to actually use your tablet outdoors for a while the Nexus 7 works.

    Those two usage profiles do overlap, though. If you need it to work outside, ready access to an outlet is probably not in the cards.

  17. Re:Do we really need new books? on Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil? · · Score: 1

    So you enjoyed Hellstrom's Hive?

  18. Re:How about all the rah-rah on The Major Theoretical Blunders That Held Back Progress In Modern Astronomy · · Score: 1

    Interesting. The History of Science is inconsistently taught.

    In his paper "Réflexions sur le phlogistique" (1783), Lavoisier argued that phlogiston theory was inconsistent with his experimental results, and proposed a 'subtle fluid' called caloric as the substance of heat.

    (wikipedia)

    And yet for all this time, I had only heard of phlogiston. Boy was I missing out.

  19. what a name! on Google Releases VirusTotal Uploader For OS X · · Score: 3, Funny

    Virus Total Uploader sounds like a malware development kit. The Headline had me thinking of Google taking the IOS-Android war to new levels of barbarity.

  20. Re:Do we really need new books? on Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stross's novels are an extrapolation of contemporary science and culture into various futures. As a geek, you should be able to recognize the beginnings of Stross's fantasies--crypto currencies, IT culture, malware, MMORPGs, maker culture, -- and laugh as these trends are taken to their logical conclusion in the various universes he has devised.

    Now, I seek out and read hard SF. The trouble with classic works of this subgenre, (the vast bulk of which is still under copyright protection) is that it becomes obsolete. For instance, take the Bussard Ramjet-- a relativistic spaceship that was (at least for the time)theoretically possible without breaking physical laws. The Bussard Ramjet enabled a host of authors, most notably Poul Anderson, to write stories about Relativistic Time (twin paradoxes, and the like) But IIRC, the fuel density in the interstellar medium is insufficient for the Bussard scheme to work. So all those stories suffer from a patina of obsolescence.

    To avoid this, it's necessary to acquaint yourself with the writers of the here and now. Stross is one such writer.

  21. Re:No bluetooth? on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 1

    The ipad's battery life is up there-- it, not just apple's promotional materials, claims 10 hours. The ideal would be getting a full days work out of the tablet without necessarily charging it religiously. (Oh damn, I forgot to recharge it overnight!)

    So it's not perfect. It is, however closer to the optimum than 4 or 6 hours.

    e-readers are in an entirely different world. Oh damn, where did I put the blasted charger? I knew I had it last week...

    But those use a different kind of screen, and are rather slow.

  22. Re:No bluetooth? on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 1

    Far too short. Battery life should be decent enough to leave the charger at home.

  23. Re:Is this really news? Got a $99 tablet at Aldi on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 1

    Now, if they included RPN...

  24. Re:This is not the tablet you're looking for on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 1

    Can't you just use the onscreen keyboard?

  25. Re:Is this really news? Got a $99 tablet at Aldi on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 2

    > Arstechnica wants GPS in a tablet? I suppose that's good if you want a substitute GPS device, but I'd still prefer dedicated units for a car.

    Why not just use your cell phone?