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User: vanyel

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Comments · 917

  1. Re:features on Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation · · Score: 1

    Actually, as I look more carefully at the top output I posted, that's exactly what it's doing --- only 143M of that 1G was resident. It's disconcerting to see processes that large, but as long as it really is going to cache, it makes sense. Perhaps one way the Firefox people could alleviate concerns like this is to put some stats of current usage in the "Help/About" window... Oops, that's another feature...

  2. Re:features on Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation · · Score: 1

    so I keep hearing, but large caches like that ought to be on the disk, not in ram, which has better things to be doing. I do fear that you're sort of right though: most of the bloat comes from web developers who are forcing web browsers to have all sorts of crap in them in order to be able to view their unique idea of perfection.

  3. Re:features on Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation · · Score: 1

    What makes you think so?

    A 1G vsize for one...

        PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
        332 firefox-bi 1.5% 9:47:18 20 535 1014 140M 40.9M 163M 957M

  4. Re:Great phone, shitty provider on iPhone, Apple TV Headline MacWorld Keynote · · Score: 1

    That was my thought --- I switched to sprint from at&t a couple years ago because gsm coverage sucked if you were outside a medium sized metro area, and they charged a fortune for data service. From what I've heard, service has gone down ever since cingular took over. I paid that much to *avoid* the contract when I got my latest Treo, so no thanks. Though having a readable google maps on the fly would be nice. It's not worth it...

  5. Re:Not particularly unusual on Some 'Next-Gen' DVDs May Not Work With Vista · · Score: 1

    That's pretty much what I was figuring too

  6. Not particularly unusual on Some 'Next-Gen' DVDs May Not Work With Vista · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My Denon receiver (and/or the HD Tivo I have hooked up to it) does the same thing. I tried to hook up an LCD monitor to it so I could twiddle my Tivo without firing up the projector --- no dice. What's going to be interesting is seeing how virtual machine software handles virtual drives...

  7. Re:Ugh on NASA Detects Meteoric Rise In Lunar Meteors · · Score: 1

    Not only is the headline at best misleading, and I would say just wrong, but the article is completely lame too. The observation it's discussing is, however, interesting...

  8. Make the retailer deal with it on Plastic Packages Cause Injuries, Revolt · · Score: 1

    Whenever I remember to think of it, I have the store clerk open it so I don't have to deal with the crap. Though I am pleased to note that many such packages now have scoring and/or perforations so they're relatively easy to open.

  9. Re:It's not game length that's the issue on The Importance of Game Length · · Score: 1

    I'll spend some karma with a "me too!" reply. I don't live in games, so I need something that makes you feel like you've accomplished something in a short session, and doesn't require you to coordinate with a group, or put together a bunch of unknowns into a group, to make progress. The more there is in the game (i.e. the "longer" it is), the better, as long as I can accomplish something interesting during a short session.

  10. Re:IGo and others (Re:Easy!) on Traveling with Too Many Chargers? · · Score: 1

    That's ok, so am I

  11. Re:Yeah for the raccoons on Supreme Court to Rule On 'Obvious' Patents · · Score: 1

    as always when claiming something is obvious, it begs the question "how come you didn't think of it then?"

    "because I wasn't trying to solve that problem"

    I think the best course of action is ask "what is the problem this solves", then ask people "knowledgeable in the field" (but unfamiliar with the product in question) ways to solve that problem. If any of them come up with the product's solution, then it's obvious.

  12. Re:When will they stop making asses of themselves? on Justin Long No Longer A Mac · · Score: 1

    The people you hang out with take these ads *way* too seriously. What ad *is* accurate? That's not the point. They *are* funny, if you have any sense of humor at all, and they do convey the impression that Apple wants to make, reinforcing the general impression that people have of Macs.

    As for Justin Long, I thought he was great myself. The complaints about him seem to me to surround the fact that he's the straight man to Hodge's jokes about the PC. That's his *role*, and he's doing a good job of it.

  13. Re:Now if they were *good* movies... on High-Def Format Wars - Battle of the Freebies · · Score: 1

    I went to check on Samsung's player (the one I'd heard about) and comments indicate you may be right, in which case they can use both formats for the fertilizer they are (HD-DVD for the format itself, Blu-Ray for Sony's idiocy), as far as I'm concerned.

  14. Now if they were *good* movies... on High-Def Format Wars - Battle of the Freebies · · Score: 1

    ...then when a dual media player comes out, I'll happily take all the freebies they want to give away... I refuse to buy hardware that's limited to one or the other though.

  15. Re:Fan noise on smcFanControl — Cool Your MacBook Pro · · Score: 1

    I'm not complaining about the noise, like I said, it's much less than a typical desktop. They're just far from silent at the higher speeds. Perhaps your environment has sufficient background noise to drown them out...

    Personally, I didn't even realize it *had* fans before, in fact thought that the lack of them was the reason it got so hot...

  16. Fan noise on smcFanControl — Cool Your MacBook Pro · · Score: 1

    I have my fans set to spin at a minimum of 3000 RPM and I still don't hear the fans spinning.

    I strongly suggest you get your hearing checked --- at 3000rpm, they're very audible (though not as bad as most desktops), at least in my 15" Macbook Pro. They're still audible at 2000 even, but not as much.

  17. 100Mbps == fiber??? on Copper Wire As Fast As Fiber? · · Score: 1

    Very *slow* fiber maybe... and my line will barely do current dsl speeds, so I'm not holding my breath...

  18. Re:SOP on Retailers Pressure Studios on Web Deals · · Score: 1

    I worked for "a large chipmaker" which had the same problem when they dabbled in the retail market, vs their typical OEM channels.

    In this case, it really pisses me off as a consumer. These are different products with different costs and different benefits. It's even worse in the ebook business: a large number of the books I want to buy in e-formats are being sold at *hardcover* prices. It is absolutely inexcusable to make the consumer pay for the production costs of a book when there are essentially no production costs. ebooks should be priced slightly lower than paperbacks, though I'm willing to pay paperback prices for the convenience of access. But because of this same nonsense, they're preventing the consumer (or at least a subset of them) from getting what they want.

    What they *should* be doing, if they want to compete, is put up kiosks where you can plug in your device and download on the spot at local speeds. They could get the product at e-prices and compete, they get the consumer's impulse shopping from seeing the product (or displays), the consumer gets instant downloads (and for movies in particular, even with cable and DSL, local is going to be much faster). It would be a win for everyone.

  19. Re:Just say no. on Sony Reader Now Available · · Score: 1

    I've been reading ebooks on my treo for a year or so now, and I've pretty much stopped buying paper. Aside from having recently moved my library of about 600 books for the second time in a couple of years (and not looking forward to ever doing it again!), it's very nice having my entire library with me at all times (ok, so my electronic library is small, but it *would* be nice to have it all).

    Most of the books are open pdfs from fictionwise.com. It's true, I would have more if they weren't charging outrageous prices for some of them, but hopefully as more people do this that'll change. I'm trying to order the Reader now (apparently I'm far from the only one!) to have something more book sized to read --- I like having my Treo with me everywhere, but when it's convenient, it would be nice to have something bigger than a postage stamp to read...

  20. Re:Power? on Thrust from Microwaves - The Relativity Drive · · Score: 1

    According to the sidebar image, the drive is compared to the ESA Smart-1 Ion drive, both using 700W. I imagine you can get 700W from solar cells for quite some distance from the sun.

  21. Re:Power? on Thrust from Microwaves - The Relativity Drive · · Score: 1

    The article specifically talks about solar cells in space or some sort of electrical generation here, though burning up your coolant hydrogen in the electrical generator seems counterproductive. And how much energy does it take to supercool the hydrogen? Not sure it's a mileage win.

    One thing I'm curious about is the mechanism by which movement absorbs energy in the system. Absorption and conversion to heat would seem to the end product of the microwaves, but I don't see how movement affects that, at least until you reach speeds high enough to make a noticeable difference in the wavelength...

  22. New meaning on Motorola Unveils Phone Vending Machines · · Score: 2, Funny
    apparently a robotic arm will 'gently deliver' the product to consumers

    Let me be the first to say this gives a whole new meaning to "reach out and touch someone"...

  23. Re:Oh for the love of..... on California Sues Automakers for Global Warming · · Score: 1

    I know someone with a Hummer; it seems to spend half its time in the shop. Part of the steering linkage is only good for something like 6K miles. I think his habit of taking it out and using it like it was supposedly designed to be used is part of the problem, but still, 300K? Utter BS. Likewise claiming a Toyota is only good for 100K miles. A Toyota at 100K is just getting a good start. The battery pack may need to be replaced, though their charging algorithm is so conservative, I'm not even convinced of that, but the car is far from history even were that to be the case.

  24. Re:To Clarify... on Digital Cameras vs Scanners for OCR? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was thinking about this recently, and what I want is:

    1. stick the paper in the slot, it feeds, scans and files in "New Docs"
    2. drag thumbnail to register entry in gnucash, it optionally (sometime in the distant future) ocrs it and tries to find the total and the vendor, as well as matching the last 4 to one of your cards to verify it's going into the right account, then gives you a chance to correct its mistakes. The scanned image is included in the financial db attached to the register entry.

    Unfortunately, few of the sheet feed scanners seem to get very good marks in reviews...

  25. Low end of the curve on Advertising Comes to DVR Owners · · Score: 1

    I've been expecting the better advertisers to start hooking the beginning and ends of commercials with either key info or something that makes you want to watch it. A really clever admaker will create one that looks normal at normal speed, but does something different and interesting at fast forward speeds. Granted, that will be really hard to do, but I'll bet we see it someday.

    I'm also expecting the first and last commercials of a commercial break to be worth more than the middle ones, but that's probably already the case --- even before tivo, people used commercials for bathroom breaks and other alternate activities. I was muting them for well over 10 years before I got a Tivo, but you still had to keep an eye out for when the show came back on.

    And of course, you've got product placement, from clever and subtle, to the kinda clever, yet brute force style of cisco in Eureka a couple weeks ago: Stark's conferencing system threw up a huge cisco logo when he shut it off: outlandishly obvious, yet that's exactly the way a lot of software works, so it actually fit into the story, even if it was a little distracting for a moment. Yet, the advertisers actually want you to notice them. It's an effective way, if you don't overdo it, but I'm afraid that bit of heroin is going to be too irresistable and end up destroying a series or two in the future. I just hope it's not Eureka, which has to be one of the best shows ever...