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User: DrMrLordX

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  1. Re:Tripwiring flaws on GSA Bidding Site Compromised By Flaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    An interseting theory. However, the kind of data available due to this exploit was sensitive enough that the GSA would have been nuts to let it leak to competitors in the first place. One violater could have racked up tons of data on other bidding firms and distributed to any number of non-violaters, so the prospect of punishing exploiters later doesn't really make up for the fact that dozens, if not hundreds, of firms could wind up with sensitive data without ever being caught by the GSA.

  2. Re:ComputerWorld has more detail on GSA Bidding Site Compromised By Flaw · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That explains the flaw, but can anyone explain why it took three weeks to take the system down after the flaw was reported? And here I was thinking the delay in correcting false news coming out of the Sago mine was bad. Three hours is nothing compared to twenty days.

  3. Re:Confused about confusion? on Alternative Energy Confusion · · Score: 1

    What confuses me is why large wind farms are being built. It makes more sense to promote sustainable housing to take home consumers and small businesses off the grid altogether(or mostly, anyway).

  4. So how hard is it to program for Cell? on IBM's Radical Cell Processor · · Score: 1

    Going from coding for single-cored CPUs to CPUs with up to 9 cores that perform different functions can't be easy. I don't think Gabe Newell seemed enthusiastic about doing it, either.

  5. Oh great on Study: Waking Up Like Being Drunk · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So am I going to get a DUI for sleeping through the alarm and rushing to work while groggy? Can't wait for that.

    At least it won't show up on a breathilizer.

  6. Re:I knew it on Microsoft FAT Patent Upheld · · Score: 1

    They didn't patent angry monkies. what the hell?

  7. Re:this is a longterm stop-gap on Europe Warms to Nuclear Power · · Score: 1

    A carbon tax is backwards and silly. Why not attempt to correct each and every instance of wasteful energy consumption you enumerated rather than punish people for simple consumption? Remember that some consumers of energy are doing useful things with it, and yet, your tax punishes everyone equally.

    Furthermore, high consumption rates aren't necessarily bad for anyone. High consumption spurs development of production, or at least, it should. If we weren't all so frightened of or annoyed by our various methods of producing electricity, life would be much easier for developed nations. Between people being afraid of nukes and bothered by wind and solar power(and their costs), we in the US have quite a bit of trouble advancing new energy production. I have no idea how bad it is in the UK. How is that tidal energy thing coming out?

    Personally, I'd like to see 50-75% of money in the US federal budget that we put into Medicaid and Medicare pulled out and spent on energy production. Sure, neglecting the poor and the old sucks, but if we fail to build a modern equivelant of the Hoover Dam(or several such production facilities, in fact), we'll effectively be pulling the plug on our entire country.

  8. Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut on Europe Warms to Nuclear Power · · Score: 1

    er well, store energy. Doesn't have to be electricity. As other posters have noted, you can bypass electrical generation altogether in the process of making hydrogen.

  9. Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut on Europe Warms to Nuclear Power · · Score: 1

    Hydrogen is only meant to be used as a method of storing electricity. It's currently more desirable than using battery-power due to the ridiculous weight of batteries and the fact that batteries often wear down over time, while a fuel-cell system does not. Hydrogen probably offers a better ratio of energy stored to weight than battery systems.

    If you can think of a better way to store energy than in cumbersome metallic batteries or as hydrogen, by all means, sell it to the masses!

  10. Re:Yeesh.. on The Softening of a Software Man · · Score: 1

    You know he's just doing it to keep his wife happy. Most of his charity initiatives can be traced back to her. Were it not for her, I doubt he'd give away as much money as he does, and his choice in charities would probably be quite different.

  11. Re:RAMBUS - Another company people love to hate. on Rambus Allowed to Continue Patent Dispute Case · · Score: 1

    That's what I've disliked about RAMBUS, inc. for some time now. They bitch and moan about how memory companies kept price-fixing to keep RDRAM expensive and SDRAM cheap, but this ignores the fact that RAMBUS, inc. refuses to invest or develop their own fabs and produce products based on their own designs. They pretty much expect the memory manufacturers of the world to license their designs so that RAMBUS can use other, larger companies that actually have fabs as cash cows. What a bunch of bastards.

    If RDRAM, XDR, etc are all so great, then why don't they build a fab or rent space in somebody else's? Jeez. Even Cyrix produced more of their own chips than RAMBUS.

  12. Re:Voodoo 5 on NVIDIA and Dell Display Quad-SLI System · · Score: 1

    That has V5-6000 written allllll over it. Good call.

  13. Please, no on Fighting Android Sparring Partner · · Score: 1

    With Data also comes Lor before him. You don't want that, now do you?

  14. Re:Um on Microsoft's Big Bet on Online Gaming · · Score: 1

    Sadly, being social with hundreds of people throughout the world often falls below being social with one's girlfriend, wife, significant other, etc. Or, at least, it does in their eyes.

  15. Re:Run for its money.. on Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955 · · Score: 1

    Essentially, yes, a 4800+ that fails some tests at 2.4 ghz will be downgraded to a 4400+. One that has bad cache may be downgraded to a 4200+ or 3800+.

    Sometimes the flaws on the low-end CPUs are so miniscule that your average user can run them at the "top-end" clock speeds, or even higher, without noticing problems. Sometimes they can cover up for these problems by raising the voltage(vcore) they feed to the chip. Raising vcore can really reduce the lifespan of the chip, but when you're going down from maybe a 10-year effective lifespan to 2-3 years, most enthusiasts don't mind with current hardware upgrade cycles.

  16. Re:Use words more precisely on Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955 · · Score: 1

    There's been so much pro-AMD buzz out there for the last year(or longer) that people are reaching as far as they can to say something good about Intel products. Nobody "in the know" really expected any Presler-based product to perform well vs AMD's months-old X2 processors.

    Netburst has not transitioned well to dual-core. Even with a 65 nm process, brand-new Preslers are getting their butts handed to them by 90nm X2 processors that have been out for a long time now and that consume less power.

    Wait for Conroe, people. Nothing to see here.

  17. Re:Run for its money.. on Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955 · · Score: 2, Informative

    What you don't seem to appreciate is that most high-end CPUs, with a few exceptions(such as the EE with its large l2 cache) are cut from the same wafers as lower-priced CPUs. They're often binned based on how well the cores come out, with the best cores being put in the most expensive CPUs.

    Of course they could make more money selling "these chips" for "half as much"(or even less). Just look at the low-end range of products from any of these processor lines.

    Example: The AMD X2 4400+ vs 4800+, and AMD x2 3800+ vs 4200+. The 4400+ and 4800+ are the same core(Toledo), and the 3800+ and 4200+ are the same core(Manchester). They come from the same wafers. What makes a 4800+ a 4800+? It was just a better core that went through testing better. Same cost of manufacture vs a 4400+, but a higher price tag.

    In some cases, the 3800+ and 4200+ are Toledo cores with half their l2 cache disabled, meaning that some 3800+ CPUs out there(which retail for about $320-$350) cost the same to manufacture as the $780+ 4800+.

    Intel does about the same thing with their CPUs, though EEs usually have more in common with existing Xeon processors than anything else. Usually.

    Furthermore, I would submit to you that two Mac Minis can get a lot less raw data-crunching done than just about any dual-core CPU on the market can do on its own.

  18. Re:3.5 GHz limit on Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955 · · Score: 2, Informative

    They already have, just not on dual-core parts. Expect major reduction in clock speeds on Intel CPUs once they migrate away from Netburst-based chips towards more efficient designs such as Yonah, Merom, and Conroe.

    Conroe is the chip to watch.

  19. Re:But do games support them? on Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955 · · Score: 2, Informative

    How about Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2?

  20. Re:Hahahahaha on RIAA Sets Their Sights on Russia · · Score: 1

    What I wonder is, what sort of piracy is the RIAA really going to fight against? I don't know how wide-spread profiteering is in Russia when it comes to music piracy. It's one thing for the government to ignore file leechers, but it's another thing when the local music stores are all stocked to the brim with bootlegs and other cheapo knock-offs that were burned somewhere down the street last week.

    If organized crime syndicates in Russia are actually making money off piracy, the RIAA may find itself in deep, deep trouble if they try actually pushing copyright enforcement there. Russian gangsters are not stupid, nor are they afraid of killing people who stand in the way of their business.

  21. Typical on Good and Bad Procrastination · · Score: 1

    As usual, we have a procrastinator(I'm one too, hell, we all are to an extent) attempting to justify procrastination by assigning to it positive traits. What if I avoided doing the laundry to do something great? Oh boy! Type-C procrastination baby!

    What if you never do the laundry? Oh no!

    Seriously, mundane tasks need to be done. Someone who repeatedly perform mundane tasks while deliberately avoiding matters of a grander scale could either be thought of as extremely dull or obsessive-compulsive. However, I have noticed that those who are neat, tidy, organized, and could be classified as "workaholics" always seem to make enough time for important stuff as anyone else(myself included). I don't think anyone who wrote a great novel or came up with a wonderful new invention put off doing something of the "useful but mundane" category to complete the task. I find that works of genius are often completed during time otherwise spent on truly useless AND mundane tasks, such as playing mediocre video games or watching bad television when there's "nothing better on right now".

    There's quite a lot of idleness and boredom in everyone's life. All you have to do to accomplish something great is to figure out what it is you're going to do and then do it in the time you normally spend doing pointless, useless crap. It's quite a cop-out to claim that you're avoiding washing the dishes, cleaning the floors, doing the laundry, brushing your teeth, or performing some other essential task because you've embarked on some quest of great importance. Some stuff just has to be done, repeatedly, no matter how much you hate doing it. What do you do after you've finished eating? Wash your bowl.

  22. Re:All Hooked Up on Japanese Find Robots Less Intimidating Than People · · Score: 1

    Look what it did to France.

  23. Re:misleading... on First Intel Yonah Laptop Announced · · Score: 1

    All very true, though it should be noted that Yonah is basically a stopgap until Intel can release Merom and Conroe later in 2006(also low-power dual core procs). Yonah will clock as high as 2.33 ghz before it is replaced by Merom(mobile part), which should make it competative with possibly the X2 4400+ which has been out for months now.

    Intel really hasn't closed in on AMD's performance level in that Yonah is currently competing with the low-end of a CPU group(the X2) that will be replaced in about 3-6 months by AMD. I'm interested in seeing how well the new dual-core mobile Semprons will hold up against Yonah.

  24. Re:applications of dual core for a on-the-go on First Intel Yonah Laptop Announced · · Score: 1

    But when the single core uses about a quarter of the power that a single Prescott core uses, then using two of them at once is still preferable to some of Intel's other core designs.

    A 2 ghz Yonah uses something like 130W at load, which isn't a big deal. It's very efficient, and with two cores, sometimes you can get twice as much work done per unit of time than you can with a Dothan-based CPU.

    In terms of work/kwh and in terms of overall power consumption, Yonah strikes a good balance and is a powerful mobile processor. Bring on the dual-core mobile Semprons!

  25. Big whoop on Britain to log all vehicle movement · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I fail to see how this is any worse than, say, a bunch of Americans voluntarily buying vehicles equipped with OnStar that tracks your vechile's movements pretty well by means potentially more insidious than cameras.