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User: toddestan

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  1. Re:My experience driving a Prius on Are US Hybrid Sales Peaking Already? · · Score: 1

    I believe that you can get a manual in the Honda CRZ, though apparently you take a noticeable mileage hit compared to the CVT. Though the most disappointing thing about the CRZ to me is it actually gets worse mileage than the CRX from the late 80's.

  2. Re:I can't buy one on Are US Hybrid Sales Peaking Already? · · Score: 2

    Also, by buying a new car you can also get what you want, as opposed to what you manage to find on the used car lot. Which may be important if you have to live with the car for 15 years. With that said though, nowadays you just don't have the option to order it exactly how you want from the factory like you could 50 years ago, with some high-end exceptions.

  3. Re:Age of the earth on Why the Moon's New Birthday Means the Earth Is Older Than We Thought · · Score: 1

    It's a bit more like the house has a toaster in it, and the wiring was upgraded to handle the current the toaster draws, which gives you a rough idea of how old the house must be because of how old the toaster is. Except now you discover that the upgraded wiring may have been done to power some other appliance before the toaster showed up.

    Maybe I should try a car analogy?

  4. Re:Hack on Civilians Try to Lure an Abandoned NASA Spacecraft Back to Earth · · Score: 1

    Perhaps to keep it from transmitting and interfering with radio astronomy?

  5. Re: This is what happens on The Nightmare On Connected Home Street · · Score: 1

    The world population is still growing at just over 200k people per day. That's like 200 Enterprise-D's worth of people every day that you would need to transport off the planet. Barring some crazy new technology straight out of science fiction, there's just no way we could move that many people off the planet.

  6. Re:Clueless article on One Developer's Experience With Real Life Bitrot Under HFS+ · · Score: 1

    I have wondered about those i3-taking, ECC-supporting server boards if the error checking still works with the consumer processors.

    Since the memory controller is part of the CPU you can't just drop in a regular consumer processor and get ECC this way. You're stuck with whatever models that Intel decides to turn on the ECC bit for, which is pretty much the Xeons and a few oddball embedded versions.

  7. Re:What about multifunction devices? on Ask Slashdot: PC-Based Oscilloscopes On a Microbudget? · · Score: 1

    My experience is that it's decent enough hardware, but you pay through the nose for it. On the other hand, their software is the worst bloatware I've ever seen, which basically installs a whole interdependent ecosystem of NI drivers and services on top of Windows, with many of the drivers, libraries, and services doing little more than duplicating the functionality that's already there.

    On the other hand, it is pretty simple to get started. It's likely you could connect that device up to a computer, fire up LabView, drop in a few VI's and drag some wires, and have it plotting data and turning LEDs on and off in a few minutes, which in an education environment may be the way to go. In many ways, it's a lot like doing things in Excel - you can whip up something to solve a problem quickly and easy, but it may not be a good solution for building a complex application.

  8. Re: Progenitors? on Aliens and the Fermi Paradox · · Score: 1

    That's not strictly true. There are some rock formations in Canada and Australia that have been dated back to about 4 billion years or so. Though those are the exceptions - most of the Earth's crust is far newer than that.

    Interestingly, the oldest dated rocks on Earth are the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts.

  9. Re: Progenitors? on Aliens and the Fermi Paradox · · Score: 1

    Well, perhaps it was aliens who destroyed the technologically advanced dinosaur civilization, and then systematically erased any evidence that they ever existed including their satellites and moon colonies?

  10. Re:What About Electricity? on Cisco Opposes Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    When it comes to the electrical grid another example is the "Saver's Switch" that the power company will install on people's air conditioning units. This allows the power company to remotely "prioritize" what gets electricity by allowing them to remotely shut off my air conditioner. So yes, on a hot day if the power grid is strained to the max, I expect that someone at the power company will push a button and shut off a bunch of people's AC.

    Of course, the program is opt-in, if you opt-in they give a discount on your bill, and there are some rules that the power company claims they will follow such as they can only shut off the AC for a maximum of 20 minutes in a 3 hour period (or something like that). I think the past 6 years I've had this, I've actually noticed that my AC was shut off remotely twice. As far as I'm concerned it's a win-win.

  11. Re: Liability on Comcast Converting 50,000 Houston Home Routers Into Public WiFi Hotspots · · Score: 1

    That's an interesting idea.

    1. Spoof the Comcast SSID & login page.
    2. Wait for people to 'log in' to your router with their Comcast credentials. You could even grant them access to the internet after gathering their login information so they wouldn't even suspect anything is amiss.
    3. Now you have access to free wifi anywhere Comcast is.
    4. ???
    5. Profit!

  12. Re:You'll have to forgive Sheiff Gayer on America 'Has Become a War Zone' · · Score: 1

    Yes, there are real problems in the world, and stopping a pothead from getting high isn't one of them.

  13. Re:this seems silly on Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History · · Score: 1

    A bigger example might be the Louisiana territory that included much of what is now called the midwest. If it wasn't for Napoleon taking this territory back from Spain, setting it up to be later sold to the US as the Louisiana purchase, things could have turned a lot different for the United States.

  14. Re:Yeah, right on Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History · · Score: 1

    Hey, a list of the people most linked to in Wikipedia could be interesting, and it turns out it is, for various reasons. To call it the "Most influential people in history" is a bit much though.

  15. Re:It's Time To Move On. on Microsoft Fixing Windows 8 Flaws, But Leaving Them In Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    It couldn't be features like ASLR and isolation control in Windows, with Apple taking years to catch up to the level of security that Microsoft included in Vista. Naw, couldn't be.

  16. Re:Doesn't surprise me. on Driver Study: People Want Fewer Embedded Apps, Just Essentials That Work Easily · · Score: 1

    The Honda Odyssey is gigantic now. Unless you mean a used one from the late 90's.

  17. Re:So that you don't have to RTFA on How Open Government Data Saved New Yorkers Thousands On Parking Tickets · · Score: 1

    Here in Minnesota you're required to clear the snow around a hydrant if it's on your property. If you don't within a reasonable time, you can be fined. With that said, they usually put a small sign next to them so that if it's not cleared they'll still know where the hydrant is.

  18. Re:Infosys age discrimination on Tech Worker Groups Boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower · · Score: 1

    Except for maybe a high level security clearance, that's just insane.

  19. Re:Infosys age discrimination on Tech Worker Groups Boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower · · Score: 1

    Having to provide a graduation date can just as easily be used to discriminate against older workers as it could against younger ones.

  20. Re: Can we PLEASE get rid of "turbo" on Intel Announces Devil's Canyon Core I7-4790K: 4GHz Base Clock, 4.4GHz Turbo · · Score: 1

    Wow, that's a huge amount of L2 cache on a Socket 7 board. Most came with 256k. Some had 512k. Are you sure it's not a Socket 8 (aka Pentium Pro)?

  21. You might try a newer processor. The latest chips from Intel are considerably faster than the Core 2 chips even if they haven't increased the core count and the clock speeds are more or less the same. Even in the Core i5 line, I would estimate that clock for clock, a fourth gen i5 is 40-50% faster than a first generation Core i5. That's of course, assuming the encoding times are problem for you - if you start it before going to bed and it's done by the time you wake up then it may not matter :)

  22. Re:why get this when Broadwell + new chipsets are on Intel Announces Devil's Canyon Core I7-4790K: 4GHz Base Clock, 4.4GHz Turbo · · Score: 1

    Those chips have been long out of production, so you're either looking at a used chip or maybe the occasional new-old stock. The problem with trying to buy the high-end chips from older sockets is that there is a fairly good sized number of people after those chips who want to do an easy upgrade, or perhaps have a computer where the OEM Windows license is tied to the motherboard. This usually keeps the "top dog" at around $100-$200 for a surprising long time. A hint though, is to search for another model that's a few steps back from the top end. They usually go for considerably less, and that could get you into a quad core of some sort.

  23. Re:why get this when Broadwell + new chipsets are on Intel Announces Devil's Canyon Core I7-4790K: 4GHz Base Clock, 4.4GHz Turbo · · Score: 1

    I would say this was true a few years back, when memory was expensive and you generally never had enough to keep your OS from having to hit the swapfile/pagefile. Nowadays, memory is cheap and with "entry level" machines coming with 4GB, that's more than enough for most anyone who isn't going to push the machine hard. Someone else mentioned a SSD - that's probably the one performance upgrade that most anyone is going to notice, though if someone was concerned primarily about stability and longevity I would have a hard time recommending a SSD. I'd probably tell them to get a fairly basic machine and put the extra money towards a nicer screen.

  24. Re:Long term repair complexity on Tracking Tesla's Quiet Changes To the Model S · · Score: 1

    Actually, things are relatively stable nowadays as compared to the past. Nowadays, they'll typically release a new model or design, let it run for 3-5 years or so with only small changes and updates, then do a "refresh", let that run a few more years, before a major redesign happens. Back in the 50's and the 60's, it was common for the car to be redesigned every year. All new sheetmetal, new engines and options, new paint colors, etc. That's why everyone talks about the '57 Chevy - there were also '56 and '58 Chevy's too, but those are different cars that didn't reach the same level of notability. Or why people will argue endless about whether the '68 or '69 Charger was the better car

  25. Re:Is quantity Job Zero? on Tracking Tesla's Quiet Changes To the Model S · · Score: 1

    No, I haven't driven a Ford Lately. Is that a new model?