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User: MachineShedFred

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Comments · 6,735

  1. Re:Religions on Apollo 8 Astronaut Re-Creates 1968 Christmas Broadcast To Earth · · Score: 1

    And for some people (like the parent post) the bashing of the concept of religion is their religion.

  2. Re:Near the waterfront? on Enormous Tunneling Machine 'Bertha' Blocked By 'The Object' · · Score: 4, Funny

    So we really have moved past "Too big to fail" then. Good to know.

  3. Re:This rumbling in the distance? on Life-Sized, Drivable 500,000 Piece Lego Car Runs On Air · · Score: 1

    Honestly, I'm imagining the accident right now - that thing gets T-boned by a car going 40, and half a million Lego flying all over the place.

    What a fantastic mess!

  4. Re:don't connect everything to the internet! on Target Has Major Credit Card Breach · · Score: 1

    Actually, it will be the Secret Service, as they are more equipped to deal with currency and wire fraud, being a part of the Department of the Treasury.

  5. Re:don't connect everything to the internet! on Target Has Major Credit Card Breach · · Score: 1

    I doubt they used a skimmer to get 40M credit card numbers. Or, Target has the most efficient point-of-sale solution that could ever be, as that one swipe terminal would have been processing 24 credit swipes per second in the 19 day period TFA states.

  6. Re:"because it originated from the wireless networ on Harvard Bomb Hoax Perpetrator Caught Despite Tor Use · · Score: 0

    Whether they're guilty or not, they're gonna lie. Everyone lies. Murderers lie because they have to; witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to; everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop.

  7. Re:"because it originated from the wireless networ on Harvard Bomb Hoax Perpetrator Caught Despite Tor Use · · Score: 2

    Rule #9 of the American Justice System: To a jury, any doubt is reasonable; the better the case, the worse the jury; a good man is hard to find, but 12 of them, gathered together in one place, is a miracle.

  8. Re:Themostat on Google Testing Smart Appliance, Would Compete With Nest Thermostat · · Score: 2

    Look at the whole puzzle, not just the price tag.

    Nest understands that their product is expensive up front, but delivers far more than the price tag in energy savings over it's lifetime. People like to bitch about the up-front cost of LED lighting too, but everyone around here at least understands the savings of those products.

  9. Re:The issue has moved to the Internet on A Year After Ban On Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, because there's absolutely nothing bad that can happen when a local commercial plays at literally TWICE the volume of the programming bookending it. This happened to me earlier in the year while watching a football game - fairly standard audio level of crowd noise with guy talking over the top. Then, obnoxiously loud fast food commercial that had me jump off the couch, and fumble for the remote until I could find the mute button. I had a headache for an hour after that.

    I actually called the cable company office and complained, not that it did anything to prevent it from recurring. Needless to say, I'm not eating at that restaurant EVER again.

  10. Re:TV at negative extra charge on A Year After Ban On Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked? · · Score: 1

    Because DOCSIS cable modems are only one technology in use by ISPs. See: DSL, fiber, frame relay, metro ethernet, ISDN, 3G cellular, 4G cellular, WiMAX, etc.

  11. Re:This is horrible news on Decades-Old Rambus Litigation Against Micron For RDRAM Tech Reaches Settlement · · Score: 1

    a) The patents were originally filed before Rambus joined JEDEC.
    b) The patents were amended after Rambus left JEDEC.

    s/left/was kicked out of/

  12. Re:Now I feel old. on Decades-Old Rambus Litigation Against Micron For RDRAM Tech Reaches Settlement · · Score: 1

    You also forget that the adoption of Pentium 4 didn't actually take off until the release of the Intel i845 chipset, which allowed the usage of good ol' DDR SDRAM. With that, a P4-based system didn't cost in excess of $1800.

    RDRAM was an albatross around Pentium 4's neck except in very few usage scenarios. You're right though - the super deep pipelines that only existed to ramp the clock rate sky high meant that a whole lot of clock was wasted on branch prediction failures. The so-called NetBurst architecture was a complete failure, and the design team in Israel saved Intel from complete disaster with Pentium-M based on the P3 core.

  13. Re:Big problem here... on Harvesting Power When Freshwater Meets Salty · · Score: 1

    Yeah, or you could use your brain for half a second for something besides sarcasm. Consider:

    It takes X watts of power to desalinate 1000g of fresh water
    In desalinating 1000g of fresh water, you get enough brine suitable for generating Y watts of power, where X > Y.

    So, would you rather have 1000g of water, or 1000g of water + Y watts of power? And is X - Y watts of net power used better than X watts of power used, where Y > 0?

    Is regenerative braking on an electric vehicle also perpetual motion in your world? This is the same concept - harvesting spent energy from waste.

  14. Re:Something has to give, buddy on US Issues 30-Year Eagle-Killing Permits To Wind Industry · · Score: 1

    Never dropped this on anyone before, but:

    [citation needed]

    Average fuel economy of US passenger car fleet: 24.9 (a new record!)

    Estimated average motorcycle fuel economy: 35 - 40 mpg. Many models get almost double that.

    Show your data where "most motorcycles use more fuel than cars", or shut the fuck up.

  15. Re:Security model on FTC Drops the Hammer On Maker of Location-Sharing Flashlight App · · Score: 4, Informative

    On iOS, you do have granular permissions - if an app requests your location, you can say no, and the app can go fuck itself - the API doesn't give it shit. It's not all-or-nothing.

    Disabling data access per app is a different story though, so your point still stands.

  16. Re:As a user on FTC Drops the Hammer On Maker of Location-Sharing Flashlight App · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think at this point, the default mode for most Android users is to just allow, as most apps have a laundry list of things they want access to. It's probably the second-least read message from an app install of all time (first being the EULA).

    No, that is not wise. But people aren't always wise.

  17. Re:Poor bastards on Thieves Who Stole Cobalt-60 Will Soon Be Dead · · Score: 1

    If they intentionally pry open a big heavy thick box covered in warning labels and radiation symbols and start making a Cobalt-60 sand castle, then YES THEY DESERVE TO DIE LIKE THAT.

  18. Re:Tough luck.. on Thieves Who Stole Cobalt-60 Will Soon Be Dead · · Score: 1

    Actually, it's exactly in balance.

    They started with robbery / assault. Then they took a big heavy box out of the truck that probably had large warning labels all over it, written in Spanish, with a radiation symbol on it. They then proceeded to crowbar it open and dump it out all over the place, and do Jeebus knows what else with it.

    If you're stupid enough to screw around with well labeled and sealed radioactive materials, you're gonna get sick.

  19. Re:What Internet? on FCC Chair: It's Ok For ISPs To Discriminate Traffic · · Score: 1

    "That's a nice streaming content service you've got there. It would be a shame if something was to happen to it..."

  20. Re:And they wonder why... on Anonymous Member Sentenced For Joining DDoS Attack For One Minute · · Score: 1

    It's not my idea, it is how it currently works. Don't participate in an illegal conspiracy if you don't want to get caught and penalized. Besides, if we start dividing up the total penalty based on the amount of participants, and the amount of time they participated, it would serve to encourage more people to participate in order to divide the punishment into a pittance.

    It's called a "punitive damage" for a reason.

    This guy knew exactly what he was doing, and now he's crying about being the only one (so far) to get prosecuted for it. Maybe this will serve as a lesson to someone else, and they won't involve themselves in a DDoS attack if they don't want to discover the length, width, and breadth of the shaft.

  21. Re:And they wonder why... on Anonymous Member Sentenced For Joining DDoS Attack For One Minute · · Score: 1

    I only stabbed him once, and it was just in the hand. Those other guys stabbed him way more, and in the chest!

    If you participate in an illegal conspiracy, you are a conspirator and you take the full weight that everyone else in the conspiracy would take absent a plea bargain. If he can give up some other conspirators, however...

  22. Re:No company can build well with a bad spec on How Much Is Oracle To Blame For Healthcare IT Woes? · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should ask your state government why their contract with Oracle didn't include some kind of clause about them getting less money if they don't deliver on time. Why is it that the State of Oregon is such a fan of building in contractor bonuses for early delivery, but never any repercussions for being late or over budget? It's because they let the taxpayer eat those problems, and let the contractor move onto the next contract.

    It's been this way for decades with Oregon, and all we get out of the state when something goes sideways like this is some weak shit boo-boo woe-is-me piece on NPR about how the big bad corporation took advantage of us. Where are all the Department of Administrative Services lawyers going after Oracle for breach of contract? Oh, they aren't because Oracle isn't in breach, because I'd bet anything that there was no date actually stipulated in the contract; or if there was, there was no penalty stipulated for missing it.

    The reason why, as you put it, there are plenty of people who like to spew forth "anything-about-state-government-is-bad" feedback is because the state has been managed by the same network of Goldschmidt cronies for 20+ years, and this is business as usual.

  23. Re:Victory at last on IDC: PC Shipments Decline Worse Than Forecasted, No Recovery Expected · · Score: 1

    They knew there would be cannibalization of the Mac at the low end when they released the iPad. This question has been asked of Apple at practically every press conference and interview since the introduction of the thing. But, as Steve Jobs said himself - the first automobiles were largely trucks. Then they were passenger cars, and the ratio of trucks to cars began to diminish. But trucks are still sold today because people still need a truck to do work.

    The PC won't be that much different, straight from the "visionary" mouth.

  24. Re:Victory at last on IDC: PC Shipments Decline Worse Than Forecasted, No Recovery Expected · · Score: 1

    Apple's Keychain functionality goes all the way back to Mac OS 8.6, released in 1999. It's quite unlikely that there are add-ons to other platforms that predate this.

  25. Re:Expected on IDC: PC Shipments Decline Worse Than Forecasted, No Recovery Expected · · Score: 1

    False.

    In any Intel-based uEFI implementation, you can disable Secure Boot in the firmware setup.

    Microsoft only made Secure Boot compulsory under ARM / Windows RT.