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User: adolf

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  1. Re:'by hand' - not really. on iPhone 5 A6 SoC Teardown: ARM Cores Appear To Be Laid Out By Hand · · Score: 1

    This is not by hand.

    Indeed. I used to have a relatively high-end CD player whose analog section was obviously put together by hand: The PCB traces had the gentle arcs and occasional aberrations of a steady and practiced (but somewhat imperfect) human hand aided by simple drawing tools. (The digital section's traces resembled that of any computer part from a few years prior: Obviously done by machine.)

    My example is on a much, much larger physical scale than anything discussed in TFA, but having actually read TFA, I don't see a damned thing that was done "by hand."

    FFS. Drawing circuits (however small they might be) "by hand" is the realm of rulers, compasses, protractors, and maybe stencils. And this isn't it.

    (And before anyone says "Oh but you can't draw an IC by hand -- tt is impossible!@!!!@ They're too small!!!" I suggest you go look at the history of the IC, or perhaps for a somewhat-lesser but easier-to-see mechanical illustration: The modern process of minting US coins from a large original, which is not entirely dissimilar in concept despite being entirely mechanical.)

  2. Re:meh on Tesla Reveals Charging Station Sites In 3 US States · · Score: 1

    more space than a nomad, though....

    Maybe.

  3. Re:Had to be said on Tesla Reveals Charging Station Sites In 3 US States · · Score: 2

    The best part about driving a 4-door BMW is that I don't have any idea what it looks like on the outside as I'm driving around. Really, the only time I even realize that it has a back seat is when I've got passengers back there and they start screaming with terror on exit ramps...

    The 2-seater version is/was the same car (same engine, same brakes, same suspension, same seats, same gearbox, same instrumentation), minus interior space. As a driver, it's about the same. As an object to look at and admire? Meh: I prefer to admire cars from behind the wheel.

  4. Re:Not 2-3 seconds when cold on Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. · · Score: 1

    Your CFLs must be magical.

    I'm forced to switch out the CFL in my dusk-to-dawn porch light with an incandescent every fall and reinstall a CFL in the spring: On cold nights the CFL never warms up enough to provide decent lighting.

  5. Re:Ban is dumb on Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. · · Score: 1

    Actually, if you follow human behavior, you'd find that the "choice" would be limited to incandescent bulbs. Necessity is the mother of invention, and without these bans, we'd still be using incandescents - CFLs would be a niche, and white LEDs a purely decorative thing.

    Wrong.

    I was buying CFLs for my home long before any such ban was even on the drawing board. They were plentiful, and widely available. The first CFL I bought was around 1993, and was a bit of an odd duck for the time, but they eventually became much more common without any discourse toward banning incandescents.

    FFS, Wal-Mart was a serious force in getting CFL out there without any governance dictating that they do so.

    Meanwhile, white LEDs becoming better at doing what they do is something that would've happened naturally, no matter what: Building increasingly improved widgets (in this case, LEDs) is something that the competitive semiconductor industry is extremely good at, all on its own.

  6. Re:Even better than that on Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. · · Score: 1

    In my own neck of the woods, outdoor wood furnaces and pellet stoves are banned by local legislation: It is illegal to operate a new one within the city limits.

    IIRC, the stated rationale behind the move was that the smoke was unpleasant, along with some half-cooked theory about safety, but I suspect the real reason is "they're just plain ugly."

    (My take on it is that it's wintertime and everyone's windows are closed, so who cares about smoke? And it's obviously safer to have a fire burning outside, than to have a fire burning inside. And I figure that if a neighbor of mine figures out how to heat his home cheap, then good for him! Even if it is ugly. But nobody asked me...)

  7. Re:Price is key... on Goodyear's 'On TheGo' Self Inflating Tire · · Score: 1

    So it helps even more than the previous poster predicted. Bargain!

    And you get bonus points for reducing tire failure due to under-inflation. As you say, the rubber is expensive enough as it is...nevermind downtime, rig damage, mechanics, and replacement tires.

    And while it's certainly a good idea to check pressures regularly (whatever that means), at least there's a good chance that a driver won't have to drag an air hose around with him as he does so -- a pressure gauge should be sufficient, if all is going according to plan. And this will certainly save time for the driver, though perhaps not directly save you any money (depending on how your drivers are paid).

    I don't see myself ever wanting this, or anything else strange (including run-flats) on my sport sedan, but it sounds interesting for the light truck I use for work (where I do care a lot more about efficiency and reliability than I do about ride quality or handling).

    And if I owned/operated a heavy truck I think I'd be all about it...as long as the system is reliable (time will tell, but someone will be guinea pigging these).

  8. Re:Silly on Is the Can Worse Than the Soda? · · Score: 1

    Agreed.

    Except the last time (and I do mean the last time) I tried Murphys, it left a mouth feel like that of the sweat from a grilled hot dog. Less than fun, that.

  9. Re:Silly on Is the Can Worse Than the Soda? · · Score: 2

    The last 12-pack of Guinness bottles I bought had no rocket widget, but instead some fancy verbiage on the package about how they decided that it wasn't necessary.

  10. Re:HDCP... on Intel Demos 7Gpbs Wireless Docking · · Score: 1

    There are two things stopping a man-in-the-middle attack: Range and bandwidth.

  11. Re:War lost long ago. on Is iPhone Battery Usefulness On the Decline? · · Score: 1

    Everything you say is true. I was generalizing because I half-way forgot because it's been a very long time since I've been exposed to it as a problem that I needed to care about. And, alas, the only providers here in my area of the US that are worth the time of day are CDMA, and all of them decided that honest-to-goodness GPS was the One, True Way to accomplish E911's requirements.

    (Indeed, I've never even held a GSM phone in my hand, unless you count my Droid 4...which ostensibly can grok GSM if it is fucked the right way first, but which really does want to live in CDMA-land.)

  12. Re:War lost long ago. on Is iPhone Battery Usefulness On the Decline? · · Score: 1

    My tinfoil hat prevents this from occurring.

  13. Re:this works great though on BMW Cars Vulnerable To Blank Key Attack · · Score: 1

    Anyone could walk off with a car if you can crank start it.

    But if by "anyone" you include today's uninitiated, then they've got a very good chance at "walking away" with a broken wrist and/or hand. That's good enough penance in my book: I'll let 'em drive the car until they can't, and refuse to press charges.

  14. Re:Stolen in 3 minutes? on BMW Cars Vulnerable To Blank Key Attack · · Score: 1

    I have an automatic choke with a Quadrajet on a temperamental Pontiac 301: The uninitiated will either fail to start it due to fuel starvation, or fail to start it due to flooding. (The trick is to press the loud pedal all the way to the floor, exactly twice, before starting. One won't do it, three begins the flood. Pumping makes the flood far worse.)

  15. Re:In other news: on BMW Cars Vulnerable To Blank Key Attack · · Score: 1

    My insurance covers auto glass for free*. Haven't had to use it yet for that, but at least the expense of a window doesn't enter the equation when I push the lock button and walk away.

    I also double-lock the doors, which is a function available on my somewhat-context-appropriate 1995 BMW. The doors simply won't unlock or open, from either outside or inside, without skilled fuckery, a key, or a good locksmith.

    This means that if a thief wants to break a window and get into my car, he's limited to grabbing whatever is within arm's reach, or he'll be forced to crawl through broken glass to get to what he's after.

    *: "free" == "covered by the amount of money I'm paying for decent insurance anyway, without an additional line-item expense, or a deductable."

  16. Re:War lost long ago. on Is iPhone Battery Usefulness On the Decline? · · Score: 1

    Slap a modern lithium battery into an old Nokia, and I'll wager that battery life will be much longer than 10 days. (Of course, you can't -- at least not in the US, since it won't have GPS as required by law. But in theory....)

    That said, I get a week or so out of an old OG Droid that has no cell phone service. I used to have to recharge that exact same Droid every day when I used it as a cell phone, whether or not I actively used it it at all.

    I remain puzzled as to how a phone that is just a dumb phone gets gets excellent battery life (and can make calls), and a smartphone with no service gets excellent battery life (but cannot make calls). But a smart phone that can actually be a phone? Phooey, charge it every day or be stricken with a dead battery.

    If anyone wants to offer up an explanation for this incongruous behavior, I'm all ears.

  17. Re:Not to Developers (and your chart is flawed) on Fragmentation Comes To iOS · · Score: 1

    The last two items on your chart (iPods) are not iOS devices.

    Yes, they are. All generations of the iPod Touch run some incarnation of iOS, and have access to the app store and all that other sort of goodness. They more-or-less have hardware parity with their iPhone brothers, aside (sometimes) from ancillary features such as GPS, cellular radios, screen type (TN vs. IPS), and the like.

    They all run the same programs, and function the same way.

    (It was at this point that I stopped reading. If you can't keep your most basic facts factual, I'm not interested in whatever else you might be saying.)

  18. Re:A better way? on Russia Builds World's Largest Nuclear Powered Ice-Breaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You think so?

    It's easy to see if you're right. Just get yourself some super-heated steam (a pressure cooker is a good start), an appropriately-sized chunk of saltwater ice (do you own a freezer?) and see if it is practical.

    Myself, I'm thinking that it doesn't work the way that you think that it does.

    But it's your idea so I'll let you either prove or disprove it yourself. Good luck!

  19. Re:Efficiency versus not breaking your phone. on Cutting the Power Cable: How Advantageous Is Wireless Charging? · · Score: 1

    I've replaced the MicroUSB connector in my cellphone *twice*. The phone would work for about a year, then it would go flaky - you'd have to wiggle the connector a few times for the phone to reliably charge, and sometimes I'd go check on it and it wouldn't be charging - and it would happen with different cables.

    Did you try cleaning it? A little squirt of Deoxit every now and then works like magic on all manner of flaky connectors, switches, and similar.

  20. Re:He's not even the author on Amazon Blocks Arch Linux Handbook Author From Releasing Kindle Version · · Score: 4, Interesting

    B&N, and I suspect Amazon, has since modified the TOS to require that the "authors" at least hold the copyright to the vast majority of the submitted work.

    The GFDL does allow him to do what he did. But Amazon doesn't have to be a party to this sort of thing.

    I wonder, then: Should Shakespeare's work be allowed in the Kindle store? Nobody holds exclusive publishing rights, and it's freely available on the web.

  21. Re:This is why we cook our meats on California's Unspoken Health Problem: Brain Parasites · · Score: 1

    What are you going on about?

    We're talking about raw meat: Sliced animals, ready to prepare and consume.

    AFAICT, the raw "non-organic" meat at Wal-Mart is not sterilized, pasteurized, irradiated, or "whatnot into oblivion".

    In what meaningful way does does "organic" meat produced for "farmer markets" differ from these conditions?

  22. Re:don't forget another important requirement on Ask Slashdot: Hackable Portable Music Player For Helicopters? · · Score: 1

    Don't forget this requirement: whenever the airman presses the push-to-talk button, you want the music to stop. I'm pretty sure the ATC controller will not be interested in your playlist...

    If this is important (and I'm not sure that it is), it is solved with a singular relay, perhaps with a diode across the coil.

    There's no reason for something such as a "hackable portable music player" to even be a part of this happening, let alone be relied upon...

  23. Re:This is why we need people in space on Space Station Saved By a Toothbrush? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A robot might not have cross-threaded the bolt in the first place (why do you think there were metal shavings in the threads?)

    Galling. If you haven't experienced it yet, you just haven't yet turned enough bolts.

  24. Re:I've coded on worse on Will Developers Finally Start Coding On the iPad? · · Score: 1

    Besides, if you're that hot to code on your iPad, you're a lot better off coding remotely through SSH on a machine with that 16-core processor and 8GB of RAM.

    Isn't this what things like distcc are for?

  25. Re:Have you tried that? on Ask Slashdot: Keeping Personal Tech Cool In Extreme Heat? · · Score: 1

    After posting, I realized I perhaps should have left my comment elsewhere in the thread. But, yeah: Ziploc bags generally aren't all that good at containing liquids in motion.