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User: rsmith-mac

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  1. Re:A more contemporary example on After 47 Years, Computerworld Ceases Print Publication · · Score: 1

    I remember watching cnet on television back in the mid 1990's. When it went off the air in in favor of an all web media outlet, I thought it was the end and was actually kind of depressed. It turned out television was limiting and now cnet probably makes more money from me browsing their site then they ever did with television advertising.

    Yes. But technology has never been the same without Desmond Crisis, Richard Hart, Sofie Formica, and especially John C. Dvorak's silly little "Try It, Buy It, Skip It" reviews.

    Though we could have done with less Ryan Seacrest. He was annoying, even in the 90s...

  2. Re:Easier on Researchers Find "Achilles Heel" of Drug Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 4, Informative

    Stop disinfecting and over-cleaning everything. Remove the Purell crap

    Purell is alcohol based (good ole' ethanol). That has nothing to do with antibiotics and the antibiotic resistant bacteria in TFA.

  3. Re:Some questions on IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation · · Score: 2

    Please provide a list summarizing what other data was irretrievably lost in the computer crash. If the loss involved any personal data, was the loss disclosed to those impacted? If not, why?

    The data was obliterated, not taken. Any personal data is gone, and disclosure implies a scenario that didn't happen. In other words no one would be impacted. Keep in mind that this was a personal laptop and not a server.

  4. Re:Really? on Average HS Student Given Little Chance of AP CS Success · · Score: 1

    That falls under "'born, not made". You're either born to good parents or you're not.

  5. Re:Not doing it right on AT&T Says Customer Data Accessed To Unlock Smartphones · · Score: 5, Informative

    Credit checks for post-paid accounts.

  6. Oh fudge on AT&T Says Customer Data Accessed To Unlock Smartphones · · Score: 1

    SSNs? Oh fudge.

    It would be nice to get more details about this than what's available in TFA. Was this only accounts in California, etc?

  7. Re:screw that on Nintendo To Split Ad Revenue With Streaming Gamers · · Score: 1

    It's not as reasonable as it gets. Plenty of other companies are ecstatic with the free publicity of gameplay videos and do not attempt to take any of the ad revenue. That's why it was seen as ridiculous that Nintendo took the stance that it did.

    By modern standards Nintendo is an odd duck. Some of the things they do is outright antiquated (and I don't mean just videos) and some of the other things they do are weird. With that said, Nintendo markets differently and their customer base is wider than just "core gamers", so what works for the latter isn't necessarily the right move for Nintendo.

    Since starting with Nintendo Directs, Nintendo has started doing a lot of low-key publicity on their own. The Directs are chock-full of gameplay footage (especially near launch time) and Nintendo frequently posts additional gameplay videos. Furthermore Nintendo seeds the press with review copies of games weeks in advance, and lets those reviews be published well before a game actually launches. This means that those reviewers have also put out their gameplay videos well in advance, and have had plenty of time to put them together.

    This is massively different from how many other publishers handle promotions, as Nintendo is far more "open" than most publishers. Take the just-launched Watch Dogs for example: not only did Ubisoft primarily focus on cinematic trailers, but they gave reviewers a relatively short amount of time to work on their reviews and didn't allow reviews to be published until after the game shipped. I'd prefer not to be cynical, but when Ubisoft says that it's their most pre-ordered game yet, it's not a big leap to suspect that they are withholding information because it would hurt sales. Which makes reviews and gameplay videos all the more important, as this information isn't otherwise being volunteered in a timely manner.

    The point of this being that while the "free publicity" angle can definitely help companies and buyers, the games that benefit the most are the games where the publisher is "closed" and withhold information, followed by indie games where they just outright lack promotion. Nintendo doesn't fall in to either of these categories; they have plenty of promotion and they demonstrate gameplay in a relatively transparent and open manner. Which is not to say that Nintendo should discourage these videos, but it's hard to imagine they gain much from them.

  8. Re:Error Message on HP Delivers a Big-Name, 7-inch Android Tablet For $100: Comes With Compromises · · Score: 2

    They're aware (one of the editors replied on Friday). However it's a long weekend in the US, so don't expect anyone to be around to replace it until Tuesday.

  9. Compared To What? on New Middleware Promises Dramatically Higher Speeds, Lower Power Draw For SSDs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't doubt that the researchers have hit on something interesting, but it's hard to make heads or tails of this article without knowing what algorithms they're comparing it to. The major SSD manufacturers - Intel, Sandforce/LSI, and Samsung - all already use some incredibly complex scheduling algorithms to collate writes and handle garbage collection. At first glance this does not sound significantly different than what is already being done. So it would be useful to know just how the researchers' algorithm compares to modern SSD algorithms in both design and performance. TFA as it stands is incredibly vague.

  10. Re:SteamBox just got really interesting on Valve In-Home Game Streaming Supports Windows, OS X & Linux · · Score: 1

    This is what Sony should have done with the PS4 - let users stream from their old PS3 to the PS4 rather than rely on the PSNow solution they're pushing but I guess they don't have the flexibility of a PC to do that sadly.

    The PS3 is not well suited for the task. The PS4 has a dedicated H.264 hardware encoder - AMD's Video Codec Engine - which is what allows it to so easily stream to the Vita and Vita TV and with such low latency. The PS3 doesn't have a dedicated encoder, and heck it doesn't even have a dedicated decoder, as it does a good chunk of its H.264 decoding in software. This is why PS3 remote play to the PSP and Vita never worked well, nor would it work well streaming to a PS4.

  11. Re:PS3 Optimization: Parallelizing code 7 ways on The Technical Difficulty In Porting a PS3 Game To the PS4 · · Score: 4, Informative

    In practice, a lot of games did most of their work in the main CPU (a MIPS machine) and the GPU

    Minor correction: Cell's main CPU - called the Power Processing Element - was a PowerPC processor, not MIPS.

  12. Re:If this is CONOP 8888, what's in CONOP 666? on Pentagon Document Lays Out Battle Plan Against Zombies · · Score: 1

    That plan is for use should Satan rise from Hell. Though I hear that for some inexplicable reason the plan involves Saddam Hussein and a vulgarity-spewing 8 year old.

  13. Re: AT&T land line on Cable TV Prices Rising At Four Times the Inflation Rate · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's that and a general decline in long distance usage/profits. Before deregulation the bulk of the profits for telephone operation came from long distance, to the point that local infrastructure and usage was essentially subsidized by long distance. Post-deregulation competition quickly drove down profits, and more recently VoIP and other non-POTS communication methods have further erroded profits.

    The end result is that the bulk of the cost of POTS has been shifted on to local; you now pay for the cost of your infrastructure rather than the long distance "whales." Which arguably is how it always should have been, however POTS (and callers) benefited from the network effect so much that POTS likely wouldn't have been as successful if every subscriber was paying their own infrastructure costs from the start.

  14. Re:Question ... on Cable TV Prices Rising At Four Times the Inflation Rate · · Score: 1

    There's actually a row in the results table that more or less answers that question: "Expanded basic price per channel."

    That value only went up 2.1%, which is still higher than inflation but not by nearly as much. In other words, more than half of the cost increase from expanded basic came from content additions.

  15. Re:Not for Nerds on What It's Like To Be the Scientific Consultant For The Big Bang Theory · · Score: 2

    that said, please tell me one sitcom that wasn't designed for you to laugh at the cast?

    M*A*S*H, specifically the comedy years. It was nothing at all like the appalling Nerd Blackface that The Big Bang Theory is.

  16. Re:4G mobile should have been IPv6 only on ARIN Is Down To the Last /8 of IPv4 Addresses · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that all of the mobile carriers are running CGN these days, so whether or not they support IPv6, they're not consuming much in the way of IPv4 addresses.

  17. Re:$409.99 WHAT THE FUCK on WRT54G Successor Falls Flat On Promises · · Score: 5, Informative

    The router has just been released and none of Amazon's usual resellers (including themself) have it in stock yet, so only a handful of grubbier resellers are listing it. The list price is $249, and undoubtedly it will be even cheaper than that once it's in good supply.

  18. Re:What surprises me... on Intentional Backdoor In Consumer Routers Found · · Score: 1

    Who is the expected user here, and what did they gain by trying to hold on to an existing backdoor so shoddily as to have it detected again?

    I think you hit the nail on the head. This is clearly meant to be a remote management backdoor for the ISPs, hence the need to secure it but not remove it. As dodgy as it is, the fact that it can now only be triggered by the local network and can't be passed over IP means that it's probably good enough by ISP and Sercomm standards, especially if it's treated as a little-used feature and not as a security concern.

  19. Re:It's OK for Apple but not Microsoft? on Microsoft Confirms It Is Dropping Windows 8.1 Support · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well you're comparing phones/appliances to computers, so yes.

    Windows has for many years now used a multiple-tier support strategy (the Windows Lifecycle policy). Microsoft supports an OS for 10 years, and during that period if they issue a service pack then they support the previous sub-version of Windows for 2 years. Windows 8.1 Update is about 30% of a service pack; the update contains a number of feature enhancements and on a code level it becomes a "base" OS that all future updates are built against. So unlike a normal security update, you can't skip Windows 8.1 Update and still get other security updates. This in turn can be interpreted as a violation of the Lifecycle Policy, as it's functionally a service pack and therefore Microsoft should continue providing security updates for Windows 8.1 (sans Update) for 2 years.

    iOS on the other hand offers no such policy. You are expected to use the most recent version of the OS and Apple has never said any differently, full stop.

    Never mind the huge difference between an OS for a disposable device, and an OS for computers that is expected to last for a decade or more and is interfaced with massive amounts of custom hardware and software. Unsurprisingly, the type of device and the expected use case for it is a big factor in how long an OS is supported and how OS updates are handled.

  20. Order Of Events on Comcast PAC Gave Money To Every Senator Examining Time Warner Cable Merger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It would probably be useful to specify the order of events in TFS, as the current summary implies they received campaign contributions after they started investigating the merger.

    TFA is focusing on past campaign contributions - that is contributions before the investigation, seeing as how the investigation just started. Everyone on the committee has received a campaign contribution at some point in the past, even Al Franken. Which is more a statement on the fact that Comcast pretty much contributes to every incumbent's congressional campaign, rather than this being a case of where these senators were specifically targeted.

    Which to be clear, still isn't a good thing by any means. This means everyone on that committee has received a contribution at some point. But it's not the same thing as giving contributions to someone when an active investigation is going on, something that would be far shadier.

  21. Re:WTF? on Stephen Colbert To Be Letterman's Successor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And because most of us like Stephen Colbert. It fits under the "news for nerds" criteria.

  22. Re:Free to play, otherwise known as pay to win.... on Do Free-To-Play Games Get a Fair Shake? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Indeed.

    As a whole, mobile game players don't actually buy anything. It's the tiny, tiny percentage of whales that brings in much of the revenue (and ads fill in much of the rest).

    0.22 percent of players account for 46 percent of mobile app revenue

    Given this, it's no surprise that mobile game development is so damn broken. It's impossible to have a healthy development environment if most players aren't actually willing to pay for the game.

  23. Re:I must have taken the wrong courses on Estimate: Academic Labs 11 Times More Dangerous Than Industrial Counterparts · · Score: 3, Funny

    That...isn't always true... after certain classes of mathematics accident

    Quantum physics isn't any better. Oh sure, they send you home in one piece; but you're in a state of quantum superposition. As a result no one is willing to open the box and let you out, for fear of collapsing the superposition and killing you.

  24. Re:$10,000?!? on Study: Half of In-App Purchases Come From Only 0.15% of Players · · Score: 1

    So, Candy Crush then?

  25. Re:Are you sure? on South Park Game Censored On Consoles Outside North America · · Score: 1

    But is modifying it because "it won't be carried on store shelves because it's rated X" a business reason or a censorship reason?

    Businesses aren't the government and therefore what they do technically isn't censorship. But what else do you call refusing to sell a creative work based on the offensiveness of its content?