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  1. Re:512 Atoms in 10U on Interviews: Ask Technologist Kevin Kelly About Everything · · Score: 1

    Did the Atom provide sufficient power to run the MythTV server?

    It ran fine as an SD PVR for over two years, but it's just too slow for HD transcoding in a reasonable amount of time. It's still running as a Zoneminder server, Zabbix server and game server.

  2. Re:512 Atoms in 10U on Interviews: Ask Technologist Kevin Kelly About Everything · · Score: 1

    atom is a dead cpu.

    I recently replaced my Atom MythTV server with an i5, and while the i5 is about 5x faster and only uses about 2x the power under load the i5 CPU and motherboard alone cost more than the complete Atom system.

  3. Re:I know we are all supposed to be against this b on Amazon, Google Cave To Apple, Drop In-App Buttons · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this like Best Buy putting an escape tunnel in a Walmart that leads to a Best Buy store?

    Uh, no. It's like Walmart demanding a 30% cut of anything that you buy online from Best-Buy using the computer you bought from Walmart.

  4. Re:Too complex on Getting the Latest Rover To Mars · · Score: 1

    A small rover or lander can only carry a small amount of instruments. If you want to do serious science, you need a reasonable number of those.

    But a single big rover with lots of instruments is useless if it's lost due to a hugely complex landing system failure, or the instruments can't be used due to a failed arm that has to rotate in multiple ways to deploy and return on each use.

    From the video the entire system seems way too complex to me. I hope it's been well tested.

  5. Re:Yes, because we need government in everything on FDA To Scrutinize Mobile Medical Apps · · Score: 2

    A long treatise that does not to address the point - low cost equates to low quality treatment.

    Why? High cost has only a vague correlation to high quality.

    Healthcare is expensive because government makes it so. There are huge swathes of costs which could be eliminated before doctors have to start giving you sugar pills instead of real medicine to cut their prices.

    Frankly, I'm thoroughly sick of the worship of medicine when so much of it is barely beyond the level of witch-doctoring. The real breakthroughs in medicine will come from engineering, not feeding people random chemicals to see what happens.

  6. Re:You know what's not renewable about Obamski Adm on Obama Administration Tests the Waters With Ocean Power Startups · · Score: 2

    Over the past 30 years if there is one thing that I've seen dry up is privately funded research. It simply no longer exists..

    Uh, what?

    I've been working in R&D in most of the companies that I've worked for in the last twenty years. So I'm somewhat surprised to discover that I've just been imagining it.

    As for this particular 'research', if the 'researcher' could make a good business case for it working and making financial sense then plenty of people would be eager to throw money at them. When they have to go to the government for taxpayers money that's pretty good evidence that there is no such case that makes any sense.

  7. Re:Why? on Apple Laptops Vulnerable To Battery Firmware Hack · · Score: 1

    Because Lithium Ion batteries are dangerous and require circuity and logic to make sure that they charge properly.

    Cool. So you're sitting on a plane using the Wi-Fi and you go to some dubious web site which uses a browser vulnerability to download new firmware that makes your battery explode.

    Ah, the joys of modern hardware design.

  8. Re:Totally false analogy. on Netflix Killing DVDs Like Apple Killed Floppies? · · Score: 1

    But who cares if new_customers * new_price > old_customers * old_price ?

    You are an MBA and I claim my five pounds.

    Sure, you don't care right now because you'll take your golden parachute in five years as you move on to destroy another company, but in the meantime you're pushing customers to your newer, more agile competitors who will be eating your lunch in six years.

  9. Re:Apple on Netflix Killing DVDs Like Apple Killed Floppies? · · Score: 1

    Ok...enough said...I ramble...but if you do ignore the audio aspect of it...most of the good HD tv's coming out today DO present an awesome picture, so, just wondering...why so many people settle for streaming when they spent so much $$ on a quality HDTV?

    People used to buy 50-inch SDTVs and watch VHS tapes on them.

  10. Apple fanboys are funny on Netflix Killing DVDs Like Apple Killed Floppies? · · Score: 2

    Apple may have been among the first to stop supporting floppies, but only a fanboy would claim that removing them from Apple machines that made up a minute percentage of the desktop market somehow killed them. Floppies simply became obsolete, though I still had to find a floppy disk to install a BIOS upgrade on a new system as late as 2008.

  11. Re:is this true? I'm not sure it is on Advertising Network Caught History Stealing · · Score: 1

    Yes, of course they have to track you to know that you have opted out of tracking.

    Here's an idea. Maybe they could, you know, have people opt-in to tracking, and then the only people being tracked would be the ones who had asked the company to track them.

    Of course as we all know, almost no-one would volunteer to be tracked unless there are financial benefits (e.g. supermarket store card discounts) and only inertia prevents most people from 'opting out' of online ad tracking.

  12. Re:Woohoo, more government!!! Yeah. on Malware Is a Disease; Let's Treat It Like One · · Score: 1

    Private companies are motivated by profit.

    And governments are motivated by power.

    I know which I prefer.

  13. Re:Ummm, this is news? on Massachusetts Plans To Keep Track of Where Your Car Has Been · · Score: 1

    They have a point, its the same point people here make when someone gets arrested for video taping a cop. We don't get to take both sides of the argument.

    Yes you do. On one side you have agents of the state with a legitimised right to commit violence, on the other side you have ordinary everyday citizens; obviously very different standards should apply to the two sides.

  14. Re:I.... don't really see a problem on Massachusetts Plans To Keep Track of Where Your Car Has Been · · Score: 2

    I know most folks are going to run up the "holy crap it's Big Brother!" flag... but I don't know if I really care or not.

    You will care. But only when it's too late to do anything about it.

    The time to stop rolling down a slippery slope is at the top, not at the bottom when you're smashed and broken after running into a brick wall.

  15. Re:A silly submission on Android Catching Up In the Tablet Market · · Score: 1

    That article you links says "PC shipments in the U.S were also down 4.2%."

    In the US, where pretty much everyone already has a PC.

    BTW, how are these figures calculated? I have five home-built 'PCs' which wouldn't be on any list of PC sales unless they're tracking motherboards.

  16. Re:In other words on Mozilla Announces Enterprise User Working Group · · Score: 1

    And yet bookmark operations are still instant for me.

    It's not bookmark operations, it's general sluggish performance when Firefox decides it wants to write lots of data to the database. It's particularly horrible on filesystems like ext3 where fsync translates into 'write all pending data to the disk'.

    You're whining about a performance problem that doesn't exist. And if it does - submit patches.

    Sure:

    Patch - remove all SQLite code.

    Done.

  17. Re:In other words on Mozilla Announces Enterprise User Working Group · · Score: 1

    You make it sound like firefox comes bundled with a full-on SQL server when in reality it just reads and writes to a SQLite database and some XML files.

    And SQLite has horrible write performance and Firefox keeps writing crap to the database that I don't care about, like the last time I visited a bookmark. If I remember correclty SQLite will call sync() three times every time it updates an entry.

    That does ensure that you don't lose all your bookmarks when Windows crashes anymore, but only at the cost of reduced performance all the time.

  18. Re:Don't like it? on TSA Body Scanners To Show Less Revealing Images · · Score: 1

    Want to fly? Then STFU and go through the body scanner. I doubt TSA gets enjoyment out of patting people down or looking at body scan images. It's their job to screen people and keep the flights safe.

    Troll Rating: 3/10.

  19. Re:Block their 'net access on 8% of Android Apps Are Leaking Private Information · · Score: 2

    as much as I hate to say this, because, well, this attitude is what got us into the mess with consumer computers... this is my phone I'm talking about, I shouldn't have to go through all this mess to keep my phone secure. ...

    That's why I have a dumb phone that just makes phone calls and sends text messages and laugh whenever people talk about their phone being infected with malware.

  20. Re:counting unhatched chickens on Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit · · Score: 1

    Just out of curiosity what is the loss of crew rate of the Soyuz?

    Zero over the time the space shuttle has been flying.

  21. Re:counting unhatched chickens on Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit · · Score: 1

    If 1 in 60 causality is really an unacceptable number for dangerous travel then we wouldn't have populated the western half of the US. And that was on the ground.

    Again utterly irrelevant because we're talking about now and not centuries ago. Nor are we talking about colonising space, we're talking about delivering pizza to the space station.

    And again, do you really tihnk that NASA would allow its astronauts to fly on a private spacecraft which had such an appalling casualty rate?

  22. Re:counting unhatched chickens on Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit · · Score: 1

    Talk to me when the car is being launched in to orbit or doing re-entry, THEN we will compare notes.

    That's irrelevant. In what other mode of transportation would a 1 in 60 chance of losing the vehicle and crew on every use be considered acceptable?

    And do you really tihnk that NASA would allow its astronauts to fly on a private spacecraft which had such an appalling casualty rate?

  23. Re:counting unhatched chickens on Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit · · Score: 1

    2 Failures out of 135 launches makes it an unreliable death trap?

    If your car exploded once a month while driving to or from work, what would you call it?

    NASA would laugh at SpaceX if they were offering a 'man-rated' transport to ISS which would kill the crew one time in sixty flights.

  24. Re:Risk on Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit · · Score: 1

    The reason that our space program is dead in the water is that we are pathologically afraid of the risk of anyone dying. If there's an accident, the entire program shuts down.

    There are shedloads of astronauts; if a crew was hit by a bus it would be replaced very quickly. What you can't afford is to lose a space shuttle when you only have three of them and can't make any more; that is why the program stops for years every time one is lost.

  25. Re:why no moon? still don't know why on Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit · · Score: 1

    Mr. Whittington's article is written with very little depth. He doesn't even answer his own question. Nixon siad it was too expensive... really? that's it?

    It was too expensive at billions of dollars per flight, and it was at the edge of what was technically feasible so the risk of losing a crew was substantial.

    And the shuttle was supposed to be the cheap alternative. It just didn't work out that way.

    We will go back to the moon when it's affordable. I believe SpaceX have been suggesting they could fly a Dragon around the Moon for $100,000,000 and change, so they could probably land some tourists there for a few hundred million.