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  1. Re:Do they self destruct like other Greens? on WD Launches 3 Terabyte HD · · Score: 1

    Other members of the Green line have an "Intellitpark" feature that can destroy the drive in a matter of months for certain workloads (like using linux).

    I've been running 'Green' WD drives in my MythTV server for years with no problems. The oldest has well over 10,000 hours of run time.

  2. Re:I wonder though on One Step Closer To Speedier, Bootless Computers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But the one about 'You can keep them powered on', it's like a game changer from out of left field. Maybe booting will become irrelevant by then?

    Not if they're running Windows. Doesn't it still have to reboot whenever you update the freaking PDF viewer?

  3. Re:Ironically it's in the C-written part of the JV on A Tidal Wave of Java Flaw Exploitation · · Score: 1

    So far there has not been a single buffer overflow targetting pure Java code because, well... The Java specs simply make this impossible (or the hypotetical JVM that would be affected wouldn't be complying with the Sun/Oracle Java specs and hence wouldn't be a "JVM")

    Clearly the solution is to rewrite the JVM in Java.

  4. The big question on Duke Nukem 3D On Unreal Engine 3 · · Score: 1

    Will it be released before Duke Nukem Forever?

  5. Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine on Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not written in Java. It requires Java for some optional features, but believe it or not, it's slow, buggy and heavyweight even without Java's help.

    I was actually amazed recently when I discovered that Open Office _wasn't_ written in Java because I'd always assumed that was why it seemed so slow at many things.

  6. Re:Less piracy from on Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice · · Score: 1

    It's amazing to me. Today's mac-version Gimp almost seems designed to make things difficult.

    I believe you'll find that's true of all versions of Gimp, not just the one for Macs :).

  7. Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones on Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The only application that MS Office still has as a killer app is PowerPoint.

    Indeed, Powerpoint has probably killed more people than any other Microsoft application (Columbia's last crew, for example). I'm not sure that's an argument for using it though.

  8. Re:Open office != MS Office on Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's *NOT* about being a Microsoft "shill", it's a matter of being realistic and understanding that the Open Office product doesn't *YET* measure up in terms of professional standards and needs, what people that use such products in a serious business setting need.

    For the one percent of people who actually _need_ them.

    For the other 99%, Open Office is fine.

  9. Re:Open office != MS Office on Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

    Probably 90% of people use Office for basic word processing and the occasional basic spreadsheet, for which a ten-year-old version is overkill.

  10. Re:Ridiculous on Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 · · Score: 1

    Is space on the earth infinite? No. And an individual human's need for space is much greater than zero. Given those two fact there is a limit, just on living space, for how many humans the earth can support.

    But so long as you can build upwards, that limit is far into the trillions. And if we can replace goop brains with nanotech AIs, humans could be built much smaller than our current body size.

    Other limits are likely to stop population growth well before available space does.

  11. Re:Easier solution on Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 · · Score: 1

    Following an outdated dogma that advocated male over female children is not my problem.

    Of course it's your problem. Whenever the government demands that people do something they don't want to do, there are unexpected consequences of this kind; this is why just about anything government does turns out to be a disaster in the long run.

  12. Re:Easier solution on Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 · · Score: 1

    One child per couple one would lower the population over a few generations to more sustainable number.

    Perhaps you should ask the Chinese how wonderful 'population control' has been? First Mao demands more kids to fight the EVIL AMERICANS, and their population explodes. Then they decide that actually they don't have the ability to feed that many people so they'd better stop and demand that Chinese couples only have one child. Now they have a rapidly aging population with about 50,000,000 more men than women.

  13. It may happen one day... on Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 · · Score: 4, Informative

    But I still remember in the 70s how oil was going to run out by 1990; we seem to have had only twenty years' supply of oil left for as long as I remember. Similarly, half the world was going to have starved by 2000, but instead we've seen population continue to increase.

    The hair-shirt left have cried disaster so many times that it's impossible to take them seriously anymore.

  14. Re:It all depends on detection... on How To Deflect an Asteroid With Today's Technology · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So please, stop doomsaying, the experts say they are ready to nuke the sucker if that's what needs to be done.

    MIT were saying that back in the 60s, so it's not really news.

    But there's the slight problem of being able to _get_ a nuke to the asteroid in the first place; the MIT study used an Apollo CSM on top of a Saturn V with a 100MT nuke on board, and there's not much hope of being able to fix up one of the remaining Saturn Vs to fly at short notice and nuke an incoming asteroid today (they also planned to launch 5-6 of them to allow for failures and near misses).

  15. Re:It all depends on detection... on How To Deflect an Asteroid With Today's Technology · · Score: 1

    Obviously it depends on detection time. If we detect the asteroid years ahead of time, then even tiny changes in course will save us from impact.

    If you detect it years ahead of time, can you actually measure the orbit accurately enough to prove that it's going to hit, when a small error in orbital measurements could make the difference between impact and missing?

    If you had a tiny error in the orbital measurement which just happened to match the tiny course change you applied a few years before impact, then you could take an asteroid which wasn't going to hit the Earth and _cause_ an impact.

  16. Re:Where is the private sector here? on How To Deflect an Asteroid With Today's Technology · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Cost of preventing impact >>> (cost of impact * probabilitiy of impact)

    About once a century we get an impact that's equivalent to a few megatons, and there's a 75% chance of it hitting an ocean and about a 99% chance of not hitting a heavily populated area. Sucks if your farm happens to be ground zero, but there's no sane reason to spend billions of dollars a year trying to prevent it.

  17. Re:Scary on The Spread of Do-It-Yourself Biotech · · Score: 1

    What makes you think we can do better?

    A mutant virus that kills the host in minutes won't spread far from its originating source, and hence will rapidly die out. An engineered virus that kills its host in minutes can deliberately be spread widely by artificial means.

    The virulence will still ensure that it can only be spread by such means, but if it's been spread around your city you might be a bit upset.

  18. Re:3D TV To Watch What??? on Huge Shocker — 3D TVs Not Selling · · Score: 1

    You'd think Avatar, the movie that started the latest round of 3D interest, would have been the first on their list of priorities (but I can see why they thought Step Up 3D was more important...)

    Forcing people to sit through another butt-numbing three hours of digitial Smurfs would probably completely eliminate any desire to buy 3D TVs.

  19. Re:content on Huge Shocker — 3D TVs Not Selling · · Score: 1

    Unlike color which the studios embraced once they discovered it actually added to the telling of a story, 3D has never amounted to much more then a way to separate the uninitiated from their hard earned cash..

    I'd partially disagree with that: some of the IMAX 3D -- I mean really shot in 3D on IMAX cameras, not shot in 2D on 35mm and then faked into pseudo-3D -- looks very impressive and really brings you into the movie. But I don't know anyone who has an IMAX cinema in their house.

    One of the biggest problems with 3D is that nothing can move outside the viewing frustrum of the screen, so unless it fills your field of view (as it should with a decent IMAX setup) the effect will never be particularly good.

  20. Re:I Can Only Hope This Keeps Fumbling on Huge Shocker — 3D TVs Not Selling · · Score: 1

    We have a Blu-Ray player, and I have to agree - the difference between Blu-Ray and a DVD with good upscaling, such as what the Blu-Ray player offers, is not huge.

    Indeed. Blu-Ray only gives you five times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD.

    Sarcasm aside, I'd agree that such an improvement in picture quality is nowhere near as strong an incentive to buy as the difference between VHS tape and DVDs (picture quality, analog vs digital, tape vs disk, etc).

  21. Re:Can't wait for this fad to die... on Huge Shocker — 3D TVs Not Selling · · Score: 1

    But they also said color was gimmickry. So were moving pictures. And sound.

    You don't need to wear special glasses for color, moving pictures or sound. And they provide real color, moving pictures (ok, stills at 24-30fps which fool the eye into seeing motion) and sound rather than fake 3D which doesn't change when you move and is focussed on a different place to your eyes.

    I watched part of a movie on a 3D TV a while ago and while it was OK it really didn't add anything worth paying $3000 or wearing silly glasses for. Or even paying $200 for yet another Blu-Ray player.

  22. Cool on Sony HDTVs To Come With Google TV Interface · · Score: 1

    Now even my TV can get infected with malware.

  23. Re:A hyperlink is a citation on NY Times Confident of 'First Click Free' Paywalls · · Score: 1

    A hyperlink is no more than a citation backed by a best-effort automated retrieval system. Documents can cite documents on the web with <a> elements. Before that, documents could cite documents on paper with footnotes. Just because the retrieval is automated doesn't mean it has to be without payment.

    Linking to pay sites pisses off readers and the vast majority of web sites either stop linking to such places or stop being read; there are very few places where the average reader is also going to have a subscription to any site it links to, because if they have a susbscription to the sites it links to, why would they bother reading about it second hand?

    A glaring example is Wikipedia: how can you possibly cite an edit on an open encyclopedia by linking to a site that requires payment?

  24. Re:Good journalism is worth paying for on NY Times Confident of 'First Click Free' Paywalls · · Score: 1

    The problem is finding a way to sell users a single article at a fair price that isn't overwhelmed by the transaction costs of processing the payment. The market needs a really good micropayment system, that can profitably handle transactions in the $.25-1.00 range.

    I don't remember the last time I read a newspaper article which was worth $0.25 to me. Most 'news' just isn't very useful to anyone other than news junkies, and that's even ignoring the majority of 'news' that's just regurgitated press releases or celebrity gossip.

  25. Re:Orbitally Dumb on Countries Considering Circumlunar Flight From ISS · · Score: 2, Informative

    So, if NASA is already building a rocket that can go to the Moon with two low-inclination launches, being redundant and going to ISS is both dumb and pointless.

    Not if you want to get there before 2050.