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User: tech.kyle

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Comments · 93

  1. Re:TEST PLEASE IGNORE on Microsoft Releases 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report · · Score: -1, Flamebait
  2. Re:Microsoft and US Gov attempting to ban HOSTS fi on Microsoft Releases 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I don't know whether I should be laughing, or reporting this as spam >.

    My face when..

  3. Scam != Hack on BBC Twitter Accounts Hacked By Pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army · · Score: 1

    I get plenty of e-mails at work about my $4,000 Verizon bill or a confidential, registered e-letter that I must respond to that ends in ".pdf.exe". Tricking someone in to opening those isn't hacking.

    Yes, I know I'm picking nits, but still.

  4. Re:Asking for it on Apple Yanks "Sweatshop Themed" Game From App Store · · Score: 2

    Not if it's so popular, it makes people want to buy your phone even more. If millions of people loved "Sweatshop HD", Apple would conveniently forget their clause. Rule of Acquisition number 202. The justification for profit is profit.

  5. Re:Cloud This! on Google Launches 'Keep' To Rival Evernote · · Score: 1

    Google likes Linux. If there isn't a client now, I would expect either comparable web functionality or a Linux client in the works.

  6. Re:Eh, that's it? on Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4 · · Score: 1

    When camping with my S3, I made extensive use of airplane mode and it worked wonders. I haven't tried forcing it down off LTE, but I've heard that works well too.

  7. Re:First 8 core phone on Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4 · · Score: 1

    Makes less sense than Tegra 3 to me. If we're going for low power, why are we using four cores? Why not one?

  8. Re:Eh, that's it? on Samsung Unveils the Galaxy S4 · · Score: 1

    I'm still on my $30 unlimited data plan. There was a small window where you could pre-order the S3 and be grandfathered in on unlimited data. Now, Verizon will force me off it if I upgrade and now and it looks like Verizon will try to force me on to a share everything plan if I upgrade any of the other lines.

    The S4 is shiny and new and fast, but even ignoring the $200-300 it'll be to upgrade on contract, it's not worth losing my data. I regularly use more than 20GB per month since DSL in my area is slow (1.5Mbps), wireless internet is intermittent (due to trees), and if I place my phone in my window, I get about 8-10 Mbps on LTE and 2-4 Mbps otherwise. Recently, I had used my phone to download an Ubuntu server ISO to set up a World Community Grid client and played Counter-Strike on my low bandwidth, but low latency DSL connection while I waited for the download to complete. I find I end up doing things like this often.

    As upset as I am at Verizon about this whole data thing, my faith in the network of other carriers (in my area) is minimal.

  9. Logic (or rather a lack thereof) on Interviews: Blendtec Founder Tom Dickson Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    Why did this teen think beefy steel crowbar versus metal blender blades would work? Round two, titanium?

    Even if it had worked, it seems like everything would have tasted a bit off after that.

  10. Re:I get up .. on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Stay Fit At Work? · · Score: 1

    Biscuits and cakes? I want biscuits and cakes. :(

    I assume they have showers at the gym? If high school gym/weight training taught me anything, it's that Axe won't mask it all.

  11. Re:Seriously.. on Google Will Cut 1,200 More Jobs At Motorola Mobility · · Score: 1

    Insights like these are why I read through the comments on Slashdot. Thank you.

    You mentioned people were held back by the company. The impression I've had so far is that there are, like you say, good people designing good phones, but there's some higher-ups who are shooting everything down.

    I bought a Motorola phone (Droid X2) when it was fairly new because it looked very good on paper (and it was), but the support and general service policy was terrible. It only saw three OTAs and Motorola was very back-and-forth about what they were going to do with the phone. Yes, we'll unlock it. No, we never said we'd unlock it. Yes, it'll get ICS. Wait, no, it won't get ICS. In the end, the customers suffered. A lot of X2 owners were quite upset.

    As did many other X2 owners, I swore off Motorola phones and tried a Samsung phone (SGS3). Compared to my X2, it didn't take long to appreciate my old phone's hardware (specifically Moto's antennas), but the lack of support kills it for me. Would I go back? Yes, but only if a bootloader unlock was available (including unofficial means). How does Motorola not understand that they can hand off support to the community once they tire of their old phones?

    tl;dr: Motorola Mobile, to me, feels like a very confused company.

  12. Seriously.. on Google Will Cut 1,200 More Jobs At Motorola Mobility · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Am I the only one that was hoping Google would take Motorola and do a complete 180 to start developing really awesome phones that aren't locked down? What are their plans for the company? I think Google is starting to turn evil, guys.

  13. This just in.. on Triple Monitor Solutions From AMD, Nvidia Face Off · · Score: 1

    A $1000 video card is a little bit better at playing games than a $400 video card? Blasphemy! Oh, my fragile little world is crumbling before my very eyes.

  14. Re:Can't believe their arrogance on Microsoft Fined €561 Million For Non-compliance With EU Browser Settlement · · Score: 2

    As an IT help desk monkey, I would have to agree. I'd say the average age of browser-aware users has gone up over the last few years, but there's still quite a few people who don't care that there are other browsers available.

    Also, why is the EU focusing on Microsoft? There's a "default" web browser integrated in just about ALL other OSes. Why doesn't the EU get their panties in a twist about something bigger, say, not being able to install Android on an iPhone?

    You know what? Come Windows 9, don't include a browser at all for the EU market. Leave the IE icon, but just have it say "Internet Explorer has not been included in this copy of Windows due to an EU ruling. Please go to www.microsoft.com/download_IE or contact your local governor." Let them sneakernet it from a previous version of Windows that DID include it. Better remove calculator too just to be safe... and mspaint... and notepad... and wordpad.. and spider solitaire... and..

  15. Re:It's worse on Microsoft Fined €561 Million For Non-compliance With EU Browser Settlement · · Score: 1

    The EU needs to go install Linux then. There you are, not a monopoly.

  16. Re:A hard time keeping on the forefront? on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 1

    For some, a $35 Raspberry Pi, $20 keyboard/mouse combo and a $120 monitor may be enough, but not everyone does only the web/e-mail/light word processing combo. While ARM system-on-a-sticks are fast enough to offer basic functionality where optimized, they don't have the raw power to crunch through things such as file compression. Even if you bothered, it would take more energy to complete the task on an ARM system than it would on x86 at the same power usage. ARM miiiight have a chance if they start cramming 8 or 16 cores on a chip at high clock speeds, but then programs will need to be (re)written to take advantage of it. This is all, of course, completely ignoring backwards compatibility.

    All that aside, there is some talk about (forgive the random article found with a quick Google) ARM-based servers and I would LOVE to try one, but I see some pretty big hurdles for it to overcome. Massive parallelism like this often runs in to issues addressing memory (and keeping latency down while doing so). I'd certainly be interested in seeing the results, but I don't think I'm ready to hold my breath on it. Massive parallelism also, like I've said above, needs the programs to be optimized for that. Single-threaded tasks would simply crawl.

    For you, yes, your metaphorical $500 used Ford Taurus is overkill if all you really need to do is take a bicycle down to the co-op for groceries every few days, but most other people need to drop the kids off at school, haul that old, broken stereo to the recyclers, etc. Your bicycle won't cut it.

    Personally, I'm considering a Raspberry Pi with Rasbian to replace my laptop which never leaves my desk. The laptop is mainly used for web and e-mail tasks and a replacing a 85-100 watt laptop with a 10-watt Pi certainly makes sense, but I'm only considering it since I know I won't need it to do anything extraordinary (and the geek factor, of course).

    In summary, I don't doubt you one bit. I agree with you completely. I'm sure you'd be fine with an ARM-based system. Some other people probably will be too, just not everyone.

  17. Re:Of course on Six-Strikes System Starts In U.S. · · Score: 1

    I work as tech support at a small ISP. We sometimes get copyright infringement notices and the most we do is forward them to our clients. It's rare when we get them and I don't think we have a policy for "repeat offenders".

    RIAA needs to stop blaming the spoon for making them fat. As people have already mentioned, for many, piracy was simply the more convenient way to acquire media. The more copyright holders lock down legitimate goods and the more complicated it becomes to purchase and use these goods legitimately, the more appealing piracy becomes.

  18. Re:Umm, yeah on Mosquitoes Beginning To Ignore DEET Repellent · · Score: 1

    I'm no biologist either, but yes, your genetic material is (as far as I'm aware) typically fixed. Evolution isn't about mutating once you're born, it's about rolling the genetic dice before you're born. If you roll the dice and end up with an advantage over the rest of the population, you're more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce which spreads your advantage to your offspring. If, say, one of your offspring manages to end up with more of that same advantage, that offspring would be even more likely to reproduce before the rest of the population without it.

    If, say, a species constantly had to race each other to get food and, for the sake of an example, hunted in parties of three, and whoever got to the food first was the only one who could eat it, the slower of that species (in our example, the other two) would die off and the faster would live to come back home and reproduce. Those offspring will carry the parent's advantage. If three siblings grow up to hunt together, the one who's rolled the dice the best will live and the others will perish. Repeat for many generations and, over time, that species as a whole will be able to run much faster than their great, great, great grandparents.

    Another, more real world, and less-about-death example would be blue eyes, which if memory serves, is a recessive trait. Having blue eyes doesn't mean you're more likely to survive (or, for the sake of neutrality, better in any way), but people typically like other people with blue eyes and that, in history, often pushes the average above the expected 25% baseline if eye color did not matter at all. If having blue eyes makes you more likely to attract a mate a little sooner, even by a very small percent, that trait will slowly become more common.
    If, for some odd reason, a deadly, unstoppable virus that affected only blue eyed people were to pop in to existence, we'd likely see an instant drop in people born with blue eyes since everyone with the two necessary recessive traits will have died, therefor the the only people still alive have either two dominant genes or one dominant, one recessive. Given many, many, MANY generations, the recessive gene for blue eyes would most likely disappear almost completely.