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User: toddestan

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  1. Re:Still too expensive on Aiming To Beat Tesla's "3", Chevy Tests and Teases a Cheaper 200-Mile Electric Car · · Score: 1

    The Tesla is a large heavy car. My guess is that it would look like those big car versus Smart Car crash tests where the Bolt would get tossed back like a toy and the Tesla would barely slow down.

  2. Re:AMD used to kick ass on AMD's Project Quantum Gaming PC Contains Intel CPU · · Score: 1

    The P4 really didn't take off until about 2002 or so. The first ones ran on Socket 423 which required Rambus memory. They were expensive, not really any faster than the P3, were hobbled by small L2 caches, and ultimately Socket 423 ended up being a very short-lived dead end socket. It wasn't until about 2002 when Socket 478 came out, chipsets that supported SDRAM and later DDR memory, and the Northwood P4 that had 512k of L2 cache came out that the P4 started to catch on.

  3. Re:Holy Cow on Lenovo Could Remake the ThinkPad X300 With Current Technologies · · Score: 1

    That's almost certainly a 5:4 screen running a 1280x1024 resolution. Screens like that are still somewhat common and not that expensive, but you won't find one in Best Buy. Actual 4:3 monitors are pretty much extinct, with almost no one making 1024x768 or 1600x1200 (or less common sizes such as 1440x1050 or 2048x1576) monitors anymore

  4. Re:Holy Cow on Lenovo Could Remake the ThinkPad X300 With Current Technologies · · Score: 1

    Most modern film formats are wider than the common 16:9 that's now used for television. Televisions were 4:3 mostly because it's difficult to build CRTs that vary too much from a circle. The most common use for film in 4:3 is still images, which is still the case today with higher end digital cameras using sensors that are the same size as their 35mm predecessors.

    It's good that there's finally monitors available with a decent amount of vertical resolution again, but in most cases the large amount of horizontal space seems wasted, unless I'm playing games or watching videos. For laptops, 16:10 seems t work pretty well as it's about right for the keyboard plus armrest plus trackpad.

  5. Re:It really doesn't matter on Political Polls Become Less Reliable As We Head Into 2016 Presidential Election · · Score: 1

    I don't think the media cares too much so long as it's a mainstream politician with either a D or an R next to their name. But it's pretty easy to see that if the media doesn't want a candidate to win, they''re pretty effective at making that not happen by first not even acknowledging the candidate even exists, and failing that, by branding the candidate as fringe or a kook. It's not just the Pauls, but also candidates like Bernie Sanders and virtually every third party candidate.

  6. Re:No HDMI 2.0 support, not even in Fiji on AMD Reveals Radeon R9 Fury X Specs and Preliminary Benchmark Performance Results · · Score: 1

    In theory an active Displayport to HDMI adapter is still possible. My guess is such a device will be made at some point.

  7. I switched to Duckduckgo when I found Google to be hopelessly broken a few years back. Sadly, Duckduckgo seems to be going down a similar path as Google, though it's not as bad as Google yet.

  8. Re:Of course not. on Russian Official Calls For "International Investigation" of the Apollo Program · · Score: 1

    I'd take a look at the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey released the year before. The special effects in that movie blow away Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun and hold up quite well today.

  9. Re:win32 really? on Microsoft's Skype Drops Modern App In Favour of Old-Fashioned Win32 App · · Score: 1

    It may be that most people, out of ignorance, use 'PC' to mean 'a Windows computer', but that hasn't "always" been the case.

    No, of course not. The first IBM-compatible PCs only ran DOS.

  10. Re:OPNsense on M0n0wall Fork SmallWall Has First Official Release · · Score: 1

    One thing to compare is the hardware requirements for running OPNsense versus m0n0wall or SmallWall. OPNsense requires essentially a fairly modern computer, whereas I run m0n0wall currently on a 15+ year old 600Mhz P3 (which spends about 90% of its time twiddling its thumbs). I'm guessing that almost no one who was running m0n0wall is able to install OPNsense on the same hardware, as the requirements for OPNsense would be extreme overkill for m0n0wall.

    That does bring up an interesting question about the MIXTPC boxes. My understanding is that m0n0wall will only use one core in a multi-core system, a few tens of MB of disk space, only and certainly won't use more than 128MB of ram. The MIXTPC boxes will still work, but even the cheapest one at $250 is way more than you'll need.

  11. Re:Good god. on Missing Files Blamed For Deadly A400M Crash · · Score: 1

    Bracing yourself like that is about the worst thing you can do. Ideally you'd try and go as limp as possible to avoid injury, and if at all possible let go of the steering wheel before crashing. Which is of course counter to what your brain and body wants to do, as your reflex is to tense up. Not tensing up is one of the reasons that drunks tend to better survive the accidents they get themselves into.

  12. Re:Still Running Like a Champ on Ask Slashdot: What Hardware Is In Your Primary Computer? · · Score: 1

    Considering it would be a 486 motherboard, that's even more impressive. Though later 486 motherboards would take 72 pin simms. Actually, you would not want to put more than 64MB in most Pentium motherboards because the L2 cache would only cache the first 64MB, and since Windows likes to use the higher memory first you could take a performance hit in many cases.

    The Pentiums were actually okay at MP3 playback. The worst were the Cyrix chips. Their silly "PR" rating really only applied to integer operations, their FPU's were completely outclassed. I had a 6x68 PR200 system that would take 50%+ CPU to play an MP3 and was basically unusable for anything else while doing it. I finally upgraded to the somewhat uncommon K6-3 and was amazed that playing an MP3 was now like 3-5% CPU and I could easily leave Winamp in the background with no noticeable impact on anything else.

  13. Re:Hey! I still *run* a P4 3.8GHz on How Today's Low-Power X86 & ARM CPUs Compare To Intel's Old NetBurst CPUs · · Score: 1

    My router is still a 600MHz Coppermine P3. Runs 24/7, and never gives me a problem. Those are (were) good chips, the early Coppermine CPUs were only 10-15W, much better than the later P4's.

  14. Re:Google Fiber on Why Americans Loathe Cable Companies · · Score: 1

    I hate the whole game they play where they demand an explanation, and then they'll argue with you over it. Why do I need to provide a detailed explanation before they'll stop service? I don't want your services anymore, so just shut if off. Should be simple.

  15. Re:Dear Microsoft. on Microsoft To Release Low-Cost Windows 10 With Bing Branding · · Score: 1

    Probably very few. Anyone who wants Windows but doesn't want to pay for it just pirates it instead. Besides, unless they built their own PC, most of those people probably paid for Windows anyway, but for various reasons aren't using the license that came with the computer.

  16. Re:Hard-coded with Bing on Microsoft To Release Low-Cost Windows 10 With Bing Branding · · Score: 1

    I'm assuming that one of the main reasons why Chrome has so many users is that it comes bundled with so much other stuff that if you're not careful you'll inevitably end up with a drive-by installation of Chrome on your computer.

    As for Bing, I don't really find Google's search results to be any better nowadays.

  17. Re:But 'Murica?! on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    In case anyone is curious, the shekel was actually a unit of weight, weighing approximately half an ounce (like many units back then, the exact weight was not as well defined as units today and varied over time). Not surprisingly coins minted with the weight of one shekel ended up being called by the same name. The shekels accepted for payment for temple tax was about 95% pure silver, which would make the modern value about $8-9 US in terms of precious metal content. The Denarius was about 80% pure silver, and hence considered less desirable by many.

  18. Re:We can't have this! on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    2000 lbs would be a short ton in the English system. A long ton is 2240 lbs, which actually turns out to be 1016 kg, which is considered "close enough" to a metric ton for many purposes. By the way, the metric ton isn't really an SI unit, the proper usage would be a megagram, though most people know what you're talking about.

  19. Re: Meh on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    For people who live in cold climates, 0F is the temperature that salting the roads to melt the ice is no longer effective.

  20. Re:Meh on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    Also technically, the countries share a land border because the border as currently defined goes down the middle of the Nares Strait which manages to intersect some small islands located smack dab in the middle. Even more interesting is that this border is currently under dispute, with both countries claiming ownership of some of these small islands. See Hans Island for an example.

  21. Re:May be of some use on Company Extends Alkaline Battery Life With Voltage Booster · · Score: 1

    Exactly. A battery that's near the end of its useful life but not completely dead can register a decent voltage measured with a voltmeter, but a battery tester which puts a load on the battery (usually just a resistor in parallel) then measures the voltage will show the battery as nearly exhausted cell that it truly is. A lot of sensors like that I have seen recommend lithium batteries (the non-rechargeable type) as they will perform better for the short, high current draw situations when the sensor takes a reading. And I've generally found that is true.

  22. Re:It's just joule thief on Company Extends Alkaline Battery Life With Voltage Booster · · Score: 1

    They are called lithium batteries because they use lithium as the anode. Lithium is a metal, it's not a synonym for "rechargeable".

  23. Re:It's just joule thief on Company Extends Alkaline Battery Life With Voltage Booster · · Score: 1

    That's why you replace them when they go dead. Any decent alkaline battery isn't going to leak if you take it down to nothing so long as you don't let it sit for an extended period of time after doing that. Now, cheap Chinese shit batteries you buy at Harbor Freight might be a different story.

  24. Re:If it sounds too good to be true on Company Extends Alkaline Battery Life With Voltage Booster · · Score: 1

    Alkaline batteries used to contain significant amounts of mercury in them which is why they wanted them recycled. Around the late 90's, they managed to remove almost all of the mercury, so now in many places it's considered acceptable to throw them away (but not all places, California still considers them hazardous waste). There really isn't anything in them that's terribly valuable so there's little interest in recycling them to recover the raw materials. So into the landfill they go.

  25. Re:What do we get? on Features That Windows 10 Will Deprecate · · Score: 1

    The thing is that the free upgrade offer is only good for a year. Though some of the details are a bit murky if I take them up on it and change my mind. What if I wanted to go back to 7/8? What if I find some reason that I simply cannot run Windows 10, either because of hardware or some software package that won't run?