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User: atrus

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Comments · 265

  1. Re:I did a deal with an NY store on Consumer Strikes Back at Crooked Online Retailer · · Score: 1

    Generaly B&H and Adorama, etc. will actually do the warranty fielding themselves on gray market items. What they do (replace, send back to import country for service, etc) I have no idea, but they at least honor it. Its a sign of a reputeable store.

  2. Re:Not new. Old. on Copyright and Webcomics - A New Trend? · · Score: 1

    The distribution company owns the copyright since they paid money to produce it. In some senses, its a fore-hire work, with the actors and directors and crew as employees, where the company owns the product.

  3. Re:$13,000 on World's Most Powerful Subwoofer · · Score: 1

    Yeah, gold is for the radio shack "gold series" stuff. Rhodium is very popular though.

  4. Re:Heh. on End User License Gems · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You've never read an Oracle license then (or was it Oracle?). Basicly any review needs to be first approved by Oracle before it can be published.

  5. Re:Endangered species? on Mystery Australian Big Cat Shot · · Score: 1

    You do realize Austrailia has no native cat species, right?

  6. Re:Dell one-ups Apple, sells whatever it feels lik on Apple Upgrades Mac mini, Doesn't Tell Anybody · · Score: 1
    Its worse when you buy ~120 desktops, with the same hardware specified, and receive three variations of motherboards (of course, all with the same specified hardware), made in about 3 different countries.

    I know they're trying to cut costs, but, can you at least send the same machine when buying them together?

  7. Re:AC draws more power because of compressor on Hydrogen Generating Module to Help Your Car? · · Score: 1

    Uh, no. Energy doesn't come for free. The power required to turn an alternator/generator is directly related to the energy being produced by said alternator/generator. There isn't a fixed drag on the engine.

  8. Re:not anticompetitive! on Dell Dumping Itanium · · Score: 1
    How about your car? Toyotas ship with (I'm making this up) Panasonic audio components.

    Interestingly enough, except for the high end stuff, Toyota does ship Panasonic car radios :)

  9. Re:Standard phallacy on Performance of 64-bit vs. 32-bit Windows Dual Core · · Score: 1

    I run a Gentoo x86_64 system. Its a nice machine to develop on. Only downsides are using 32bit binaries: i.e. Flash and win32codecs.

  10. Ozone depleting on Utah Teens Invent Better Air Conditioner · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Last I check, most cars have R-134a, or have been retrofitted to run it. No one uses ozone depleting CFC refrigerants anymore (at least in the US).

  11. Re-fractionate on Calculator Flaw Forces Recall in Virginia · · Score: 1

    You know there is a kid out there that will figure out how to reconnect the disabled buttons, or swap the logic board from a regular 30xa into the case of the special version. Instant fraction satisfaction.

  12. Re:Non-disposable equivalent on sale at Target on Disposable Camcorder · · Score: 1

    Thats pretty terrible image quality. But then again its not comparable in price-point to my Canon EOS 20D.

  13. Wacom? on Mouse Uses RFID Instead of Batteries · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, whats the difference between this and a wacom tablet, besides the fact that wacoms are generaly superior? If you've never tried photoshop/other graphics app with a wacom, you're missing out.

  14. Re:power or non-volatile memory in disk on Your Hard Drive Lies to You · · Score: 1
    UPSs can still fail you. Something as simple as tripping on a power cord.

    Flash is too slow. What most raid cards worth their salt do is have a large DRAM cache which is battery backed. The stuff hits the fan? No problem, once the controller is booted and drives are powered, it can finish all thr writes it has previously delayed. Multiple levels of redundancy is a good thing.

  15. Re:My 1978 Mini gets over 55 mpg on Hybrid Drivers Provide Real-World Mileage Data · · Score: 1

    I have a 2004 Corolla and am in the same boat. Its not 50MPG, but its not bad at 40MPG.

  16. Re:My 1978 Mini gets over 55 mpg on Hybrid Drivers Provide Real-World Mileage Data · · Score: 4, Insightful
    • Emission control systems eat power from engines and add weight.
    • People don't like small cars (not that this is acceptable or anything, just telling it how it is)
    • Most people want AC, power steering, and other standard luxuries
    • While the weight of the car drops as the engine gets smaller, people tend to get bigger. An extra 500 lbs of people can really put a dent in your performance
    • People can't drive standard transmissions worth their life anymore (and torque converters are only so efficient). Step-tronic ("robot shifted standard transmissions") transmissions just add to the weight.

    Some random reasons. I'm defending any one of them, but just adding fuel to the fire.

  17. Its in the chipset anyway on Simple, Bare-Bones Motherboards? · · Score: 4, Informative
    Unless you go to server boards, the answer is no. The reason? Everything is integrated into the chipset. Once designed, it costs an insignificant amount more to build that way. All you have to do is add the right headers to the end of the board.

    Even in server boards, things still get integrated. Different sets of things (SCSI controllers, low-end video hardware). Reasons? It frees up slots (big +++ in 1U 2U rackmount land), and at the same time drops cost (may be hard to believe, but in the log run it does).

  18. Re:More about UMD disks on PSP UMD Format Cracked · · Score: 1

    Sure, that makes sense if your universe consists of only PSPs. But that would be a rather boring universe.

  19. DCraw on DMCA Prevents Photoshop Support of Nikon Camera · · Score: 1
    In case anyone is wondering where some of the RAW file support comes from in Photoshop, take a look at dcraw

    http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

    dcraw supports more raw formats with a handy command line interface, and runs on Linux and Windows to boot.

  20. Re:Misleadning on Modified Prius gets up to 180 Miles Per Gallon · · Score: 1

    Can you sell me any electricity? 10-18c/kWh is getting to me. /california

  21. Re:The rise (again) of console gaming... on Forbes Predicts 5% Desktop Share for Apple in 2005 · · Score: 1
    The weird thing is Microsoft still hasn't tackled some big office issues mainly relating to character encodings.

    For instance, create a PowerPoint on a Windows machine, use some bullets, and open it up on a Mac. Your bullets are now some other random character (shamrocks, lambdas, etc etc). Also, Equation editor stuff never seems to work when embedded. But thats what LaTeX is for :)

  22. Re:The end is coming and people want it!?!? on Major PC Makers Adopt Trusted Computing Schema · · Score: 1

    Hint: they already do, and thats pretty much the whole reason they were created (even though they now branch out into filtering broadcast content, which is another issue entirely). Even amateur radio requires a license.

  23. Re:The end is coming and people want it!?!? on Major PC Makers Adopt Trusted Computing Schema · · Score: 1

    I don't know about you, but it works fine for me. Hint: Steam can run offline for a reason.

  24. Team Aggie Spirit Video on DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As part of Team Aggie Spirit, I'd figure I should share our video:

    http://www.stackworks.net/TASVCD.mpg

    It takes an amazing amount of work to get to even this stage, but we're making very fast progress.

    We're a new, entirely student run team with a very limited budget, and always looking for sponsors. If you know anyone who can provide money, equipment, supplies or other assitance, let us know!

  25. Re:PCI Express IS backwards compatible on Athlon 64 SFF With PCI Express Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Well, all hardware compatible if you add a piece of hardware to translate :). But, you can't cram a PCI-33MHz card into a PCI-e slot. Whereas you could put one in a PCI-X slot.