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User: sandman_eh

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Comments · 36

  1. Re:Ideal situations on 802.11ac 'Gigabit Wi-Fi' Starts To Show Potential, Limits · · Score: 0

    If you want to spell know how to spell "metre", perhaps you should adopt the spelling of a country which uses the metric system..

  2. Re:Transcript on Boot To Zork · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well the pirate doesn't have the usual avian on his shoulder, so it not a PARROTY ERROR

  3. Re:Why the hell do phones not have a firewall?? on FTC Offers $50,000 For Best Way To Stop Robocalls · · Score: 1
    I thinking about doing a captcha. "Dial the the number you hear spoken after the tone."

    .

    Background noise and effects could be added , but it's uncommon enough at the moment that I doubt the robot calls would be able to cope with it even when the spoken voice clear.

  4. Re:POD? on Bookstores May Boycott New Amazon-Published Books · · Score: 1
    I've got a nice eBook reader which I bought for reading the sort of scholarly articles I can get from the ACM digital library, and other web sources.

    I still find myself using printed copies purely because I can *much* more easily flip between pages, and can organise the pages on the desk the way I like as I try to follow the argument (and a self printed copy is better than a bound copy here, because the binding restricts the layouts).

    I use a ebook reader/printed copies rather than the screen to give my eyes a rest, and a change. The point is that a single format is not the best for every use, so I think the death of the printed book is overhyped and it will just become another media format (and probably a niche one). But books do have some major advantages over the other formats. They don't require any support technology to read, they are stable for a long time , are not as fragile as an ebook screen, and they are cheaper than an ebook reader. All of which may be important to your needs.

    Novels, I prefer in ePub/Mobi formats since the reader I have is has a form factor which allows it to fit into a pocket better than the massmarket paperback format. And this is depsite having a screen approximately equal to the pages size, the ebooks thinner form factor work better given the way most pockets are constructed.

  5. Re:Prediction on Hacker Steals $12 Million Worth of Zynga Poker Chips · · Score: 2
    If you haven't already read "Halting State" by Charlie Stross .

    It deals with these issues. And is an enjoyable read anyway - as you'd expect from Stross.

  6. Re:A simple resolution on Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps · · Score: 1
    I completely disagree.

    There is no reason for the OOXML specification to use date formats based on the old .xls format. The issue about keeping bug for bug compatibility is about in-memory representation, the standard specifies on-disk representation. They do not have to be the same you know...

    Microsoft have specified a new on-disk representation which continues to have a madness just to simplify their load/save implementation. The fact that it is due to compatibility with an ancient bug from a competitor is completely irrelevant. They could have specified the OOXML standard to be clean and dealt with any issues in their save/load code, or elsewhere in excel.

  7. Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 on Suggestions For a Coax-To-Ethernet Solution? · · Score: 1
    Unfortuantely you aren't quite right.

    The different impedance is sometime enough to trip the collision detection circuitry. Also the drivers are actually low impedance as they deliberately drive current into the cable , and have high impedance detectors.

    It's all about the collision detecttion..., I have seen it work though - but you've got to be careful or lucky.

  8. Re:Pining for the good old days on Mozilla Jetpack and the Battle For the Web · · Score: 2, Insightful
    True.

    Except that doesn't account for having a method (destructor) which will be called when your variable goes out of scope.

    Then you have generic's on top of that.

    And in c++0x, auto, lambda and rvalue refs. There a whole lot more to c++ than objects.

    [Note: I program in both. & python & perl &......]

  9. Re:Not Samba? on Best FOSS Active Directory Alternative? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    But since you haven't posted anything more we can't be sure.

    What did you investigate? What samba tuning parameters did you try?

    Last year I had a very similiar problem, which actullay turned out to be network card driver issue. I upgraded from the stock debian stable kernel to one from testing and the problem went away.

    My point is a single example without actually knowing what was investigated - is just a worthless anecdote.

  10. Re:the good old days of 40/80 floppies. on PC Historian Finds Puzzling Game Diskette Image · · Score: 1
    The acorn scheme was the the essence of simplicity itself .

    It worked by zoning the disc like this:-

    track 0 - common.

    tracks 20-39 Data area 2.

    So if you take an 80 track disk, you format and your image to the disk with a 40 track drive. Touching (8 track) tracks 0,1 40 to 79.

    You can then go back with and 80 track drive and format and save the data to tracks 20-39 again.

    Of course some bigger games, like Elite used most of the top surface of the disk for 40 track drives and they put the 80 track game on the other surface. To achieve this they wrote te different data to the two data areas - so the 80 track image contained only a loader to use the other disk surface.

  11. Re:ST/Amiga Format on PC Historian Finds Puzzling Game Diskette Image · · Score: 1
    Sector skew was a standard parameter on 5 1/2 " and 8 " drive systems. It had almost disappeared by the time I saw 3 1/2" floppies. I'm sure it still exists in hdd media, but that below the layer that is exposed outside the device these days.

    The idea is , skew the sectors around the disc by an amount equivalent to how far the disc rotates during stepping - so the next sector (eg 0 - as this was a consecutive read optimisation) was arriving under the read head just as the drive started to search for sector 0.

    But the first floppy format routine I had, sector skew was a command line parameter (or similiar). Different drives and different stop characterstics - I remember having to program the defaults in.

  12. Re:Direct debit on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1
    Cheques are getting rarer in the Uk.

    But If you go to a small event/festival it is the only non-cash option for payments. As the CC companies merchant fees for the cc terminals which are cellular are horrendous.

    Also in UK cheques are paid in 4days of presentation, and many banks issue 50 & 100 UKP guarantee cards , which protects the merchant.

  13. Re:Sounds like an abuse cool technology on Google's New Patent on Commercial Breaks · · Score: 1

    I don't think the earlier poster is referring to product placement. We actually have programmes showing a compliations of humorus ads - as a cheap entertainment / sketch show...., And then hthy put more Ads between the Ads....

  14. Re:All the things true Audiophile needs.... on James Randi Posts $1M Award On Speaker Cables · · Score: 1

    People have. /Some/ Audiopjile can hear a significant difference in double blind tests, but there not usually the ones who buy this guff. Unfortuantely I don't have anything to cite for this, except the shaggy dog story... My Dad used to work as and engineer in broadcast and recording studios, and often he had users saying I can hear intefereing with or such and such a device is noisy. Cleaning the case of or randomly solved most of these.

  15. Re:I agree, but... on Forget Math to Become a Great Computer Scientist? · · Score: 1

    I agree with you in general, but there's a particular point I disagree with. VBScript is a great scripting language to embed into applications Possibly. But for WSH I have much more luck using JScript - JScript supports closures and similiar stuff which I have no clue whether are even possible in VBSscript - is more portable meaning I can test my algorithms in spidermonkey . Asva a result my JScript stuff tends to be neater and more elegeant the the same in VBScript.
  16. Re:As if computer science wasn't stunted enough on Forget Math to Become a Great Computer Scientist? · · Score: 1
    I dislike syntatic whitespace. A lot.

    But I find I'm liking python.

    I've only just recently come to use it anger having been aware of the language and kept half an eye on it since about 2000. The main reason it has taken me until now to learn it properly has more to do with not having a project to do with.

    This year , two maybe three have come along at once, and hence i have thrown myself in.

    Yes the syntatic whitespace can feel awkward at worst, but the rules for it are reasonably natural and I haven't have any problems.

    But the other elements of the language are really good, and quite frankly I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And it is clean bathwater anyway - just not to my taste....

  17. Re:What do you do it. . . on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    Not that you leftpondian's can speak English properly anyhow. You have your own language which you insist on calling English to promote confusion.

  18. Re:The GPL: Intellectual Theft on GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3 · · Score: 1

    Linux's lack of Token Ring support Pardon! Is drivers/net/tokenring in the kernel a fragment of my imagation then ?

  19. Re:And one of those is on No Wine for Dell Ubuntu Users, Says Shuttleworth · · Score: 1

    Hell , you might not have to go to winehq, but you might need to edit your apt sources to list the standard ubuntu archve. Or you could side-grade to debian .

  20. Re:All's quiet on Is Assembly Programming Still Relevant, Today? · · Score: 1

    You missed an important one.

    If you writing boot code, or in the case of a PC BIOS code.

    You can probably get away with C for a bootloader, but for the cpu setup you often need to toggle them into 32 bit mode and set other stuff like turn the RAM on (with special asm instrctions) before you can do aynthing more complex.

  21. Re:I wonder... on BBC Signs 'Memo of Understanding' With Microsoft · · Score: 1
    The bbc isn't actually a private company that can be sold. It's a state owned (but not state controlled) organisation with a charter to serve the public, that also fulfills, as part of it's charter, essential services, shipping forecasts, world service etc.

    And that differs from British Telecom in the 80's how exactly?

    And actually in the broadcasting industry, many who where there in the 80's think they were , err, royally fscked over - in the 199x broadcasting act.

    I don't see why Blair can't or won't do what Thatcher did - but to the BBC rather than ITV.

    OTOH, I think the predictions of doom of over blown - It seems to be that the BBC R&D and tech depts. are pretty pro open source, however this is not necessarily true of the management.

    Basically we need everyone wether a windows user or not , to make a lot of noise about publicly accessible formats.

  22. Re:why on Pirate Radio Stations Challenge Feds · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Seriously, who would these people be talking to on emergency vehicle frequencies?

    You are aware the effect of non-linear Amplifiers on a signal spectrum right?

    The point is you have to be careful when you design your RF power-amp not in introduce any non-linearities as it can mean you generate noise on frequencies well outside those in the input signal.

  23. Re:Scaling of pictures and text on First Look at Sony's Tiny Vaio UX180p · · Score: 1

    Firefox can certyianly scale images. I have the following JS, snipped from somewhere or other in a bookmark, this allow me to scale any images on the current pages just by selecting the bookmark. javascript:factor=Math.sqrt(2); if(!window.scale) { scale=1; zW=[]; zH=[]; unitless=/^[0-9.]+$/; function r(N) { w=N.width; h=N.height; if (unitless.test(w)) zW.push([N,w]); if (unitless.test(h)) zH.push([N,h]); var C=N.childNodes,i; for (i=0;iC.length;++i) r(C[i]); } r(document.body); } scale*=factor; for(i in zW) zW[i][0].width=zW[i][1]*scale; for(i in zH) zH[i][0].height =zH[i][1]*scale; [].v

  24. Re:90 days, eh? on Police Need 90 Days To Crack Hard Drives · · Score: 1
    No we don't, they issue warrents right out in the open

    Can I remind you of the Steve Jackson case.

    Since he was writing a roleplay supplement for a cyberpunk game world , a judge secretly (he signed it 'X') authorised a search warrent for against that company as it cyberpunk research was clear dangerous and forming a organised groups of hackers.

  25. eek. on MP3s From The Phone Box · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And how long befor some enterprising hack , fixes the phone box so that it always downloads Malware into your ipod ?