The last time someone put explosives in his shoe and try to light it on fire was in 2001. I don't recall a similar incident since then
The guy did not put explosives in his shoe. He tried to light a cigarette in the toilet by striking a non-safety match on the sole of his shoe. That requires leather soles, and he had plastic soles, so when the sulphur in the match caught, bits of burning sulphur were embedded in the plastic, and it caught fire.
The idiot then lied his head off because it is illegal to smoke in the toilets, and the plane crew had probably been over-hyped about terrorist risks and were not old enough to know about non-safety matches.
In simple terms, the entire business of taking off your shoes for the search is entirely based on gross stupidity - like almost all the airport security policies.
You are about 100 times more likely to die in a traffic accident on the way to the airport than in a terrorist incident in flight. These people have no grip on reality, let alone risk management.
You have to remember that MS customers includes the terminally stupid, who can't tell a USB cable from a mains cable. They probably buy two door cars cos they can't tell the back from the front.
For the past few months, my laptop speakers have been emitting a quick data "chirp" very sporadically. It's modulated frequencies above 10k, a duration of 0.5 to 0.75 seconds, and it happens on a very irregular basis.
Switch to Ubuntu: every time you logout, your sound system will switch back to default settings that won't work, and you will only remember to reconfigure it when you actually want to hear something, and then you can spend 20 mins getting it working again, by which time the bug infested chirpy-chirpy-cheep-cheep app will probably have crashed anyway..
Slashdot commenters are generally not good at reacting to abuse.
So the proper response is to join the NRA and come out with all guns blazing? Didn't work out well for Jimmy Cliff, did it (I here, but I disappear)?
Come on, we have all switched to Linux, moaned about Unity till it was scrapped, and use LibreOffice or Google. I have had Linux on my desktop since 1776. Looks like we are doing reasonably well.
I have a J7, with dual sim, huge removable battery, SD card slot, etc. I do miss the "Note" feature but the curved screen edge is a serious no-no if you want something to draw schematics on.
Samsung also make models Ax to Xx, Yx, and Zx, for a wide range of "x". You can avoid the Sx without any significant pain. They could probably slim down the range without losing a lot of customers.
If you want significant computing power, used Sun M series mainframes cost under $1,000. I admit that that a 42U rack probably won't fit in your pocket, and the fans deliver 80dB background noise, but if you want cheap computing power, you probably need to make some concessions. Personally, I am willing to go without the extreme compute power on my Smart phone in the interests of battery life.
But if you can replace the transistors in RAM memory with light based technology, then why not the entire CPU?
Because I am way too busy filing a patent for "a method of blending unicorn poo with fairy dust, with the potential to operate on an industrial scale at a lower cost that some existing methods".
A 1,000 W panel is its peak rating. It will give you about 300W average during daylight hours (in the tropics, not North London), so about 150W average over 24 hours.
Where you live is a lot different to here. Generally, we expect a house to average 4kW (over 24 hours) with no A/C. 5kW will probably only power one A/C in addition to routine loads, and a very small house has a 15kW gas boiler round here.
Electric heating costs 5 * the price of gas here. Even using an A/C in heating mode will cost you twice what gas would cost you.
Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface,
That is because it runs underground:-)
In reality, cars don't pay for the road, but rail users pay for the track. This is not a level playing field.
When I was a student (in the olden days), I conducted a (very unscientific) survey: I asked a large number of car drivers stuck in heavy traffic "Would you pay 50p to make the car in front of you disappear?" Approximately 90% said "Yes"., with a few saying, "I'd be happy to pay £1".
You need to explain to these voters that that is why they should subsidize rapid transit (or even appallingly slow buses).
Lucky you. I had to make do with an ASR33 connected to a remote Multics system connected by 300 baud acoustic coupler - which I repeatedly crashed for the whole 60+ userbase - by declaring a Fortran array with the name "ARRAY"!
It took several weeks for the operators to realise:
a) it was me doing it
b) that the name "ARRAY" for an array was not only illegal, but was not documented as such, so was not caught by the compiler, and brought the entire machine down by generating illegal (but not documented as such) opcodes.
I had assumed it was only my own instance that was dying each time I ran the program, and I got no diagnostics back other than
PXZ/*^%$....<no carrier>
which is not really very helpful, but was fairly typical of 1972.
and floppy drives were too expensive to afford more than one?
Assembling paper tape programs often took more than 12 hours on early 8008 systems.
And Installing a new OS on my PDP11/60 (with dual 40MB hard disks) typically took 24 hours. I admit that is because most of the device drivers had to be assembled and linked, but it was still over 20 hours from when it said:
> now would be a good time to go and make a cup of tea or coffee (time zone dependent)
until it printed the next prompt. And all that time, the washing machine sized disk drives were rocking around like mashing machines on a spin cycle, and the whole machine consumed over 10kw.
When running, it theoretically had about the power of a 486, but supported up to 12 people using dumb terminals for data entry, and writing the results to 1/2" tape.
It was gradually replaced by PCs running the same Fortran data entry program on DOS, and an 11/34 to copy the 8" floppy disks to 1/2" tape. Which cost about the same as the (second hand) PDP11/60, but used a lot less electricity,
Slashdot Mirror
A switch to buying (UK made) Nissans instead (imported) BMWs might safe a bit of dosh too.
The guy did not put explosives in his shoe. He tried to light a cigarette in the toilet by striking a non-safety match on the sole of his shoe. That requires leather soles, and he had plastic soles, so when the sulphur in the match caught, bits of burning sulphur were embedded in the plastic, and it caught fire.
The idiot then lied his head off because it is illegal to smoke in the toilets, and the plane crew had probably been over-hyped about terrorist risks and were not old enough to know about non-safety matches.
In simple terms, the entire business of taking off your shoes for the search is entirely based on gross stupidity - like almost all the airport security policies.
You are about 100 times more likely to die in a traffic accident on the way to the airport than in a terrorist incident in flight. These people have no grip on reality, let alone risk management.
You have to remember that MS customers includes the terminally stupid, who can't tell a USB cable from a mains cable. They probably buy two door cars cos they can't tell the back from the front.
Obviously, he missed the bit about the rise of Sexbots.
Switch to Ubuntu: every time you logout, your sound system will switch back to default settings that won't work, and you will only remember to reconfigure it when you actually want to hear something, and then you can spend 20 mins getting it working again, by which time the bug infested chirpy-chirpy-cheep-cheep app will probably have crashed anyway..
And no chance of Windows 10 here.
And Lord, we give you thanks for that!
If robots ever start thinking like fast food workers, we are in the really deep doodoo!
Disclaimer: I went to McDonalds today and ordered "Diet Coke with No Ice" (its bloody cold out there) and, guess what, it had ICE IN IT!
Hint: Dynamic (or any kind of) thinking is not normally associated with fast food workers.
There is the enormous benefit of: not being a customer of Madame L Guillotine.
As someone once said "A hungry man is an angry man!"
FTFY
But 5MB was a big improvement on 16k head-per-track drum memories - if you were prepared for the performance hit!
We always suspected you lot were illiterate. Now we have the evidence!
How can artificial intelligence be expected to compete with real stupidity?
So the proper response is to join the NRA and come out with all guns blazing? Didn't work out well for Jimmy Cliff, did it (I here, but I disappear)?
Come on, we have all switched to Linux, moaned about Unity till it was scrapped, and use LibreOffice or Google. I have had Linux on my desktop since 1776. Looks like we are doing reasonably well.
YMMV
Samsung also make models Ax to Xx, Yx, and Zx, for a wide range of "x". You can avoid the Sx without any significant pain. They could probably slim down the range without losing a lot of customers.
If you want significant computing power, used Sun M series mainframes cost under $1,000. I admit that that a 42U rack probably won't fit in your pocket, and the fans deliver 80dB background noise, but if you want cheap computing power, you probably need to make some concessions. Personally, I am willing to go without the extreme compute power on my Smart phone in the interests of battery life.
Because I am way too busy filing a patent for "a method of blending unicorn poo with fairy dust, with the potential to operate on an industrial scale at a lower cost that some existing methods".
What is your excuse? <Slashpoll required here >
Where you live is a lot different to here. Generally, we expect a house to average 4kW (over 24 hours) with no A/C. 5kW will probably only power one A/C in addition to routine loads, and a very small house has a 15kW gas boiler round here.
Electric heating costs 5 * the price of gas here. Even using an A/C in heating mode will cost you twice what gas would cost you.
I am more worried about the idea that "billions of people" are living in uninhabitable areas!
FTFY
Or, they might not.
However, now that buffaloes have wings, you might want to keep you head down!
That is because it runs underground :-)
In reality, cars don't pay for the road, but rail users pay for the track. This is not a level playing field.
When I was a student (in the olden days), I conducted a (very unscientific) survey: I asked a large number of car drivers stuck in heavy traffic "Would you pay 50p to make the car in front of you disappear?" Approximately 90% said "Yes"., with a few saying, "I'd be happy to pay £1".
You need to explain to these voters that that is why they should subsidize rapid transit (or even appallingly slow buses).
And why Libertarians are daft as a brush.
I think humbug is the word you are looking for.
It took several weeks for the operators to realise:
a) it was me doing it
b) that the name "ARRAY" for an array was not only illegal, but was not documented as such, so was not caught by the compiler, and brought the entire machine down by generating illegal (but not documented as such) opcodes.
I had assumed it was only my own instance that was dying each time I ran the program, and I got no diagnostics back other than
which is not really very helpful, but was fairly typical of 1972.
And it was uphill both ways
and the source code for the BIOS.
Assembling paper tape programs often took more than 12 hours on early 8008 systems.
And Installing a new OS on my PDP11/60 (with dual 40MB hard disks) typically took 24 hours. I admit that is because most of the device drivers had to be assembled and linked, but it was still over 20 hours from when it said:
until it printed the next prompt. And all that time, the washing machine sized disk drives were rocking around like mashing machines on a spin cycle, and the whole machine consumed over 10kw.
When running, it theoretically had about the power of a 486, but supported up to 12 people using dumb terminals for data entry, and writing the results to 1/2" tape.
It was gradually replaced by PCs running the same Fortran data entry program on DOS, and an 11/34 to copy the 8" floppy disks to 1/2" tape. Which cost about the same as the (second hand) PDP11/60, but used a lot less electricity,
You won't even need a flux capacitor!