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User: cheesybagel

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  1. Re:Lesson learned on The Story Behind a Failed HPC Startup · · Score: 1

    Dunno about the other ones, but distributed shared memory and parallel languages are being funded in the IBM PERCS DARPA program, while CORBA was basically replaced by web services.

  2. Re:So in other words on X11 Chrome Reportedly Outperforms Windows and Mac Versions · · Score: 1

    Quartz is based on NeXTStep Display Postscript. Probably the closest thing to NeWS in your list.

  3. Re:head scratch... on Hunt For Earth-Like Planets Delayed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yep, the issue is bandwidth. The downlink does not have enough capacity to send the daily produced photographs for ground processing, so the satellite does on-board image processing on the photographs and just sends the results back to Earth. Consider the SuperWASP system generates 100 GB per night and you will get an idea of the amount of data being processed for this kind of application.

  4. Re:Well, maybe one day... on Will Google and Android Kill Standalone GPS? · · Score: 1

    IMO the ideal "screen" for in-car GPS is a HUD and several car companies (e.g. BMW) have this as an option for some time. If you want GPS on the go however, such devices would have their uses.

  5. Re:Well, maybe one day... on Will Google and Android Kill Standalone GPS? · · Score: 1
    Actually, phones with games have not killed the hand held game market for a couple of practical reasons namely the software platform performance, human interface, developers. Once you start having platforms with larger displays and multi-touch interfaces however, the tables start turning rapidly. Mobile phone GPS has none of those issues.

    TV's with builtin DVD players have nothing to do with it.

  6. Re:Well, maybe one day... on Will Google and Android Kill Standalone GPS? · · Score: 1
    It is not the GPS satellite constellation that will be replaced, but the standalone consumer GPS navigation devices. Once every cellphone comes with GPS facilities and navigation software, who needs to buy standalone units from TomTom or Garwin? Smartphones have been taking market from PDA companies like Palm for years now. GPS navigation is just the next application to be done by smartphones instead of custom hardware.

    I still see a market for standalone units embedded in cars, much like car radios come integrated, but dedicated portable GPS devices are going the way of the dodo.

  7. Re:The Big Bus on Russia Develops Spaceship With Nuclear Engine · · Score: 1

    Would a nuclear powered car be interesting enough?

  8. Re:They haven't "developed" anything on Russia Develops Spaceship With Nuclear Engine · · Score: 1

    They actually developed a nuclear thermal engine some years back. They could dust that off, put it on top some Angara stages and build a rocket.

  9. Re:The space race isn't over... on Russia Develops Spaceship With Nuclear Engine · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, the Soviet Union dropped a satellite with a BES-5 nuclear reactor over Canada once. But who cares about Canada anyway.

  10. Who cares about Windows? on ARM Stealthily Rising As a Low-End Contender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even if there was a Windows port, if you cannot run the vast set of Windows applications a port is useless. You would be better off running a Linux distro since it effortlessly comes with most categories of apps people need, because said apps are open source and usually can be recompiled fairly easily. If most Windows applications were targeted at .NET by now I could see a point, but they are not.

  11. Re:just wait for LED bulbs on Reliability of PC Flash SSDs? · · Score: 1
    There is always some other technology just around the corner. I keep hearing about OLEDs for displays as well, but barring small cellphones they seem to be taking forever to get it to scale up in size and fix the longevity issues.. For indoor illumination for long periods.CFLs are still the best. More lumens/Watt and cheaper.

    If everything was like we hear in these press releases, we would be using portable computers with foldable OLED screens, powered by direct methanol fuel cells, and wireless meshed networks like 4 years ago.

  12. Re:Why the CF bulb hate? on Reliability of PC Flash SSDs? · · Score: 1

    Sure, buy cheap and shitty CFLs and they will go out on you fast if you keep turning them on/off very frequently. Cheap CFLs also often have lousy color and are often purplish or pink. You get what you pay for. CFLs are not supposed to be used in these kinds of applications anyway: e.g. I use halogen bulbs in the bathroom and CFLs in the office. If you use an LCD screen you are most likely using a CFL and probably do not even realize it.

  13. Re:MS on ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atom · · Score: 1

    Why would IBM design new desktop processors when they had no desktop OS of their own, and the only desktop OS of interest for PPC was done by Apple, who were not interested in PPC anymore? I guess it is easier to blame IBM and Motorola than looking at your own issues. I find it interesting you give a blank check to Apple for taking their own financial interests at heart, while thinking IBM got to survive all these years by making products for third parties with no viable market in sight.

  14. Re:MS on ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now that is silly. 8086 had like 29 thousand transistors. 80386 had some 275 thousand transistors. The StrongARM SA-110 processor had 2.5 million transistors, more transistors than a 80486, and that was years ago. x86 decoding is hardly the issue people think it is. Not at todays transistor budgets. Intel has surprised a lot of people with Atom and they should be able to shrink it further.

  15. Re:MS on ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atom · · Score: 1
    Applications? If they just wanted an OS, any OS, they might as well use Linux. Having Windows with no decent applications to speak of provides little help. DEC and SGI had to figure that out the hard way.

    Apple solved that problem by making their own applications.

  16. Re:MS on ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atom · · Score: 1
    If that was the case Apple could have simply bought a license to one of those console designs. The Xbox 360's Xenon triple core CPU, for example, is pretty decent. They could also have commissioned IBM to design processors for them. They had enough volume to do it. They did not because using Intel processors was more cost effective.

    Apple killed the PPC market when they sank the PPC Mac clone market (e.g. Power Computing), forcing companies like Motorola and even Be (which used hardware based on a PPC CHRP platform) out of the market. Apple could not compete in an open hardware market. The clone manufacturers often had superior hardware (Power Computing, UMAX) than Apple did.

  17. Re:More advanced identity? on ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atom · · Score: 2, Informative
    What they mean is that the instruction set is compatible. So you can run the same binaries on both (although they would probably run faster if you recompiled them).

    ARM has several different instruction set versions and optional extensions. You cannot run binaries interchangeably in a simple fashion. This is arguably true as well for x86's SSE and the ilk but to a much smaller degree. Why do you think cellphone vendors use Java ME even if, more often than not, they use ARM processors?

    The hardware architecture is pretty different since A5 is in-order and A9 is out-of-order. It is like comparing an Intel Atom to an Intel Core processor.

  18. Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand on Brian Aker Responds To RMS On Dual Licensing · · Score: 1

    Tell that to the Wine developers.

  19. Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but on Brian Aker Responds To RMS On Dual Licensing · · Score: 1

    If you prefer the GPLv2 to v3, you are perfectly fine with being fined or sued for infringing patents like mp3 and dvd player software. Nice huh?

  20. Re:That's a new one on Brian Aker Responds To RMS On Dual Licensing · · Score: 1

    Like OpenAL?

  21. Re:I think that's missing the point on Brian Aker Responds To RMS On Dual Licensing · · Score: 2, Informative

    The MySQL model was not radically different from how Aladdin Ghostscript used to be released. Stallman tolerated that licensing model as a necessary evil. So it would be non-coherent for him to be against the MySQL model. RMS is a pretty cohesive guy in his ideas. He is also more flexible about revenue creation models for free software than people give him credit for.

  22. Re:just great. on Element 114 Verified · · Score: 1

    Plutonium was actually synthesized before it was found to occur in nature.

  23. Re:No quite yet. on VASIMR Ion Engine Could Cut Mars Trip To 39 Days · · Score: 1

    This is nuclear electric propulsion we are talking about here. Ever seen the designs for JIMO?

  24. Re:No quite yet. on VASIMR Ion Engine Could Cut Mars Trip To 39 Days · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Nuclear reactors for electric propulsion in near Earth space are not nearly as useful as claimed... You need to dissipate a lot of thermal energy from the reactor using radiative dissipation. The dissipation panels end up being so large and heavy you were probably better off using the solar panels in the first place.

    Once you get away from Mars though, they start to make sense.

  25. Does it cause nausea? on Sony Demo'ing 360 Degree 3-D Tabletop Display · · Score: 1

    Like the 3D displays I saw at SIGGRAPH?