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User: mr_mischief

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  1. Re:AMDs problem. on AMD Fusion Details Leaked · · Score: 1

    As soon as they find a water-cooling set that doesn't electrocute your balls until after the warranty period has expired?

  2. Re:AMDs problem. on AMD Fusion Details Leaked · · Score: 1

    Actually, I'd say the Atom is the late player compared to the Geode and the C3/C7 lineup from Via for low-power devices. When Transmeta was still selling chips instead of being a tech licensing company, Crusoe was handing Intel an empty lunch sack and slapping it on the ass. Arm and Freescale have been in that market with non-x86 chips for a long time.

    Intel might have a solid entry finally in the low-power space, but they are hardly pioneering anything there with Atom.

  3. Re:Anyone with more knowledge explain this to me on AMD Fusion Details Leaked · · Score: 1

    Actually, if you had 4 GB of memory on chip, you'd probably not wire it as cache, but as main system RAM at the full processor speed. DIMM slots, if any, would then just be a huge disk cache or possibly RAM drives for your swap.

    The hard part is fitting that many transistors onto the chip along with the cores. Four gigabytes means 32 gigabits, plus the interface circuitry to the memory controller. 4 GB on-chip would add sagans of transistors to a design. A Core 2 Quad has about 580 million transistors.

    You're talking about making a processor contain 60 or 70 times as many switches with no additional cores. Good luck with that.

    A NUMA machine with 256 megabytes on-chip per socket with 8 to 16 chip sockets wouldn't be a bad configuration for a server or workstation. Don't expect to see PCs made that way any time soon, though.

  4. Midori is already a browser. on Microsoft Working On "Post-Windows" Cloud Computing OS · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's quite sad that Microsoft feels the need to steal the name of an existing browser for their new browser-based project. A simple Google search reveals there's already a Midori browser. The company Steve wants to buy reveals the same thing. Even MSN knows about it, so Live Search isn't left out.

    Transmeta even had a Linux distribution meant for Internet appliances called -- you guessed it -- Midori.

    How about a little due diligence, Microsoft? Or is the plan to just lie, cheat, steal, and discredit credit-worthy opponents in the eyes of CIOs and the press? What about the new, nicer, more open Microsoft we keep hearing about? Is that just more underhanded marketing building on the goodwill of truly open companies?

  5. Re:Makes good points on Miguel De Icaza On Mono, Moonlight, and Gnome · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, although the Flash IDE is closed-source and proprietary, the SWF file format is now a published specification which others are free to implement.

    Adobe did this years ago with PDF, and didn't take long to do so for SWF once they bought Macromedia. They want everyone using their formats, and to then compete based on the quality and branding of their authoring tools. It's a good business case in my eyes -- make the pie bigger by opening the spec but keep most of the pie yourself by making the best-known implementation that the most people know how to use.

    To compare that with anything Microsoft has ever done, the executable format for Windows is the best example. To get more programmers targeting Windows, allowing more compiler makers into the market easily was a must. If you can only compile programs using the OS vendor's compiler, that feels very much like lock-in. By getting competing compiler and assembler products supporting their OS quickly made it easier for developers to decide to target the platform in its early days.

    OOXML, albeit a contentious, oversized, and and only partially specified format, is an example of Microsoft trying to do some of the same things. They're trying to get people who believe in open, competitive file formats to use a format they have a competitive advantage in producing and editing. With Microsoft's past (and some of the gotchas in the spec itself), it's easy to see how that advantage could be kept through much chicanery.

    However, the Adobe's got a pretty good record of allowing anyone to come along and make use of the Photoshop save format, the PDF publishing format (which is itself based on PostScript), and allowing JavaScript and ActionScript (both based on the ECMAScript standard, after all (which is based on earlier versions of JavaScript)) to interact cleanly. Now that SWF as a spec is published, it's difficult for honest people working with Microsoft technology to be judgmental about openness.

  6. Re:who gives a damn about the athletes on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    It's not about the athletes hurting themselves. It's about them making the competition unable to keep up without likewise hurting themselves and encouraging younger athletes to hurt themselves even more (because younger bodies respond differently, and high school kids don't get well-supervised, professionally-planned steroid programs).

    Just as important as the sports money, don't forget, is the sports book money. If you're doped and nobody knows, you might trash the spread. Nobody likes an angry bookie.

  7. Re:Hail Hydra on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    One more way to make one country's soldiers able to carry more and run farther than another's. Hail Malthus!

  8. Re:Already exsists = Dexadrine on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Neurostimulators and drugs which cause the expression of certain proteins within the muscle are two very different things. You might be able to achieve some of the same results, but the methods and likely side effects are completely different.

  9. Re:Doubt it will fix obesity. on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Giving someone extra muscle endurance doesn't mean it'll lower their body's fat content at all.

  10. Re:It's about time on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Actually, this being /., the majority of those preaching are probably doing so from their bedroom computers in mommy's house. There they are eating whatever they want and never gaining weight because their bodies are at the highest metabolic rate they'll ever experience in their lives. Since they have organized physical education classes and after-school sports, it's easy for them to find time to work out.

    Those who are saying it's hard but to do it anyway I can respect. Those who flippantly say, "LOL, lay the fork down, Blubberkins!" really need a reality check. Not everyone has the same life, and it's not easy for everyone.

    Hedonism isn't always about only "accepting" life's pleasures, BTW. Some people work really hard at making life a big party. There's a difference between doing nothing and putting pleasure before security no matter how much work it is. People who don't work for anything strike me more as nihilists than Hedonists. Hedonism is about the pleasure of life being a driving force rather than material wealth or lasting contributions to society. It's not about doing nothing to achieve pleasure. There is some conflagration there, of course, since the original Hedonists were largely wealthy slave owners. It was perfectly acceptable to work hard at throwing a party, though.

  11. Re:How is this different? on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Dude, you seriously need to quit driving down South Grand near 15th Street and posting what you see to /. -- try cruising Chatham sometime for all the pot-smoking munchies-fueled rich girls. It's a much more pleasant sight. ;-)

  12. Re:Pill would save lives. on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Once many people know they have diabetes, they are already significantly resistant to insulin. That means that sugar-lowering drugs which enhance insulin's function or insulin injections are necessary. Diet and exercise do not reverse insulin dependence, although they do slow its progression.

    Anyone can be born with Type I diabetes. Anyone can be born with a genetic predisposition to Type II diabetes. It's not all about junk food and sedentary lifestyles, although those are certainly contributing factors. They're bigger contributing factors than they should be, too. They're not the only factors, though.

    Binge drinking is also a contributing factor (just like for hypertension, cirrhosis, and kidney problems). I know lots of people who watch their diets and workout regimen closely who'll finish off a 6-pack on Friday night and another on Saturday along with a couple of shots or a pitcher of margaritas. A couple of drinks a day isn't bad for an adult. The sudden changes brought on by binge drinking and then sobering up can really damage the body, though, and diabetes is one way it can do that.

  13. Re:The heart muscle? on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Feel free to cry a little at Old Yeller and Field of Dreams, but only at the end of each. Laugh maniacally at action movies with your guy friends. Find other women with whom your wife or girlfriend can watch chick flicks while you and your friends watch the war movies and gangster movies she doesn't enjoy.

  14. Re:Performance Enhancing Nightmare on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    In high school, athletes are still growing. Men typically continue to grow some into their early to mid 20s.

    It's easy with the right training regimen to gain 40 pounds of mostly muscular body weight in a year. College and pro athletes are told what to eat more by coaches and trainers interested in their performance and less by their parents who are just trying to run a household.

    Much of the difference in size between high school athletes and college athletes is by selection. Much of the size difference between college and pro football or basketball is also by selection. The strongest get chosen from lower level of football for higher levels. The tallest get chosen for basketball. The rest go on to do other things. These levels of sport are very competitive and you're only seeing the guys on the field or court who made the cut.

  15. Re:Nerd Decisions... on Towards an Exercise Pill · · Score: 1

    Two words: sugar mama.

  16. Re:They have a point on Microsoft's "Mojave Experiment" Teaser Site Goes Live · · Score: 1

    It especially takes more than 10 minutes of simply watching what someone else was doing instead of actually using the system themselves and forming an informed opinion. So these are people who had an opinion formed from ignorance against Vista, who now have an opinion formed from ignorance for Vista.

    Microsoft only has less than a third of the people who watched a canned demo who came out impressed enough to be shown on video. The whole "experiment" is not representative of actual user experience with the OS. In short, Microsoft is scamming the technically less savvy and using their scammed results to scam the public.

    Vista really isn't as bad as people have heard, especially with SP1. It is still worse in several ways, in my opinion, than XP or Server 2003. I haven't tried Server 2008 yet to compare. What shouldn't be coloring people's opinions, though, is unethical marketing chicanery presented as actual user opinion. It can't be user opinion, because these are not users they're bragging about converting. Whatever happened to actual testimonials from real people who have actually used a product?

  17. Re:Might work ... on Second Mac Clone Maker Set To Sell, With a Twist · · Score: 1

    Legal acts in bad neighborhoods are still legal acts. Legal acts on web sites that also feature illegal acts by others are still legal acts. That something is distributed by The Pirate Bay does raise questions, but if downloading something is legal then downloading it from The Pirate Bay is legal, too.

  18. Re:Why do the even HAVE tickets? on Craigslist Forced To Reveal a Seller's Identity · · Score: 1

    Damn. I just spent my last mod point. You're insightful and funny all at once.

    Even many factories have lists of valid guests. You don't just wave a piece of paper around and get in without being on a list.

  19. two words: marketing incentives on MoBo Manufacturer Foxconn Refuses To Support Linux · · Score: 1

    As a certified Vista product manufacturer, Foxconn gets free advertising of their products on the Windows Marketplace and elsewhere. I'm not certain, but it's likely they also get part of their own marketing financed by Microsoft when they mention that they are certified and recommend Windows in their product ads.

    Intel does (or at least used to ) this with PC manufacturers. The "Intel Inside" mini-ads within PC ads meant that a PC manufacturer could send part of the commercial bill to Intel. Intel at some points allowed only companies that sold Intel and not AMD to use the "Intel Inside" marketing even for machines that did have Intel chips in them.

    As anticompetitive as Microsoft is, would it be shocking to find that they're abusing their marketing incentive program? Steve Ballmer has been raving this week about battling Apple because they have a whole 8% hardware share, some of which runs Windows under Parallels or Boot Camp. They've been known to tell PC builders that they must pay for a Windows copy for every PC they sell in order to sell Windows preinstalled at all, effectively killing preload deals for other OSes. They have an official policy of spreading FUD about Linux. Why wouldn't this be a natural step for them -- paying somebody off to make sure only their latest Windows version really works correctly with the hardware?

  20. So the one company is based out of Cambridge... on Online Colleges Could Spy On Students – By Law · · Score: 1

    They're based out of Cambridge and they sell products to help universities. So MIT, Harvard, Boston College, and Boston University are the first schools they should approach. Yet their first customer isn't even in a nearby state. Alabama? Seriously? Harvard, MIT, BC, BU, Pitt, Georgetown, Maryland, Carnegie Mellon, Yale, and New York University all pass, but we're supposed to think it's a good product/service package?

  21. Re:Precautionary Principle: Hide from everything on Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns of Cell Phone Risks · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    What if the cause and effect are indeed reversed? What if people talk on cell phones too damn much because thy already have tumors in their brain effecting certain types of thought. Particularly I'm thinking of the centers of courtesy, respect for high speeds in heavy machines, and recognition of proper volumes required for the other end to hear the conversation.

  22. Re:Man of science, my ass... on Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns of Cell Phone Risks · · Score: 1

    Hey, if WiFi doesn't give you headaches, you've never dealt with [insert brand name] equipment before. [insert brand name] equipment gives me a headache every time I have to install or configure one.

  23. Re:Wireless headsets work on Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns of Cell Phone Risks · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, my company makes the 12-foot pole, which offers infinitesimally more protection. We're also getting ready to release a 3.5 meter pole for the overseas markets, and a 3.5 metre pole for uppity overseas markets.

  24. Re:Wireless headsets work on Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns of Cell Phone Risks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it's the secretion of stress hormones, that probably has nothing to do with the radiation. It probably has to do with dealing with the assbag on the other end while driving your car, hoping not to hit some other brown nugget in his car talking to some git on the other end.

  25. Re:I'll believe it when it happens, not before... on The Death of Nearly All Software Patents? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is also a large amount of money in the software markets held by people who compete with patent trolls. RIM, Barnes and Noble's web design team or anyone who knows how to put payment information in a database, Novell, IBM, and a great many other companies will be glad when obvious, common-sense methods are not being used to fish for huge settlements.