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User: zippthorne

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  1. Re:Tempest in a tea cup on "Lawful Spying" Price Lists Leaked · · Score: 1

    You can always use a "me-ternet" It's not exactly rocket surgery to set up your own mail server. Although I do wonder why there aren't more cheap router-type appliances for home use. How different is routing mail from routing packets, really?

  2. Re:No Turkey for you... on Reducing One Amino Acid Could Increase Lifespan · · Score: 1

    Taste. Regular milk is pretty rich (and it's between 3% and 4.something percent, btw.), but skim milk tastes rotten (too sweet due to the lack of milkfat).

  3. Re:Why ISS? on ISS Can Now Watch Sea Traffic From Space · · Score: 1

    Only if they're also piggybacking on equipment as well. Man-rated launch vehicles are expensive. The thing that might be cheap is the bandwidth to send a file full of instructions.

  4. Re:Idle computer resources on SETI@home Project Responds To School Firing · · Score: 1

    Once you've picked the parts, the actual assembly is usually very straightforward. Plug cable into the only thing it fits in and stuff like that. The only tricky bit is fitting the cpu heat sink.

    I hear you on the "balance" issue. I wish there was a utility you could run to see where your bottlenecks are really occurring. No point in upgrading the CPU if the reason your game is all framey is insufficient RAM. Similarly, no point in bumping up the ghz if it's wasting cycles waiting on L2 cache misses.

    But you still don't save anything. At least not over the classes of machines you'll find on the shelves at Best Buy. The website, strangely, does not seem to have the same deals.

  5. Re:Idle computer resources on SETI@home Project Responds To School Firing · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, you can't beat Best Buy's prices (on sale in-store items or HP machines). What you can beat is the components. By doing it yourself, you get to pick everything, so instead of having just one decent component in a heap of crap, you can have all moderate components that match up in capabilities. No point in having a 3 ghz quad-core machine with 8 GiBs of RAM if it's old, slow ram on a 400 mhz bus. And no sneaky 1 GiB of video ram on an integrated chipset that's robbing from the 8 slow system GiBs.

    Instead everything will match up with no bottlenecks for your intended application, and a quiet power supply, but in a flimsy, but adequate case with sharp corners that's a little too big aesthetically.

    But you're not going to save money. Get that idea out of your head.

  6. What?! on Salon.com Editor Looks Back At Paywalls · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Salon.com is still in business?

  7. Re:the real threat will be government intervention on The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism · · Score: 1

    Remember when O'Reilly was watchable

    No. When was that?

    I've always felt O'Reilly was actually a caricature of a conservative commentator, put there mostly to discredit real conservatives by virtue of being an obnoxious, often ignorant, blowhard. A feeling that was reinforced when he tried to go up against Limbaugh on the radio. There's a reason that didn't work out so well, even with Limbaugh's handicap of being unable to resist opening his mouth on the environment.

    But then I talk to family members who watch the 'Factor all the time and somehow can not only stand him, but do so repeatedly, almost as if they like what they're hearing and can't get enough of it. I really don't understand.

  8. Re:Quickpar... on One Way To Save Digital Archives From File Corruption · · Score: 1

    Plus, the empty space on the disk isn't doing anything useful anyway. Might as well fill it with as as much parity data as fits.

  9. Re:DVD Sales Gap on Why Movies Are Not Exactly Like Music · · Score: 1

    What's this business about "need?" No one "needs" even 720. If you've got an SD set, you've got enough to watch the local news and any public service announcements, which is all you can really justify under the "need" heading. Even that's tenuous. Non-video radio can get you all the information you really need in circumstances where timing is that important. Usually quicker even, for some reason.

    IMany of us have a set that has a native resolution of 1080x1920. A signal of anything other than that will be scaled using an algorithm that thankfully is quite a bit better than "duplicate every nth pixel." But it can't avoid blurring the source. The pixels just don't map directly to the screen. (the other option, of course, is to run smaller images letterboxed, which is imo less than ideal as well.

    Now, with CRT screen, it'd be a different story, but most don't, due to price and aesthetics. One can put up with 720, but yeah, there is a "need" for 1080 to get the full benefit of a 1080 set... except for cartoons (which ought to be in some kind of "broadcast flash" format, non? They're all basically vector/sprite graphics after all). Or anything filmed live indoors or at night. Or most sports (why TF does football, even during the day in full sunlight use such crappy, noisy image sensors, or appear to anyway on broadcast?)

  10. Re:Stop scaremongering on FCC Lets Radar Company See Through Walls · · Score: 1

    Police helicopters on the ground are a wasted investment. Part of that "hundreds of dollars an hour" is depreciation, which would happen anyway. If there isn't a crime, then they should be used for training.

  11. Re:What are the chances on FCC Lets Radar Company See Through Walls · · Score: 1

    There is absolutely no reason why radar couldn't produce an image. In fact, there are plenty of radars that already do.

    Ok, that last one isn't actually a radar, but it is an example of radio volumetric imaging, a related subject.

  12. Re:i want UHF CB Radio! on FCC Wants Proposals To Manage White Space Database · · Score: 1

    Get a HAM license and you can have 1.5 kW.

    But.. um.. your car is going to need a mast.

  13. Re:this is brave on Danish DRM Breaker Turns Himself In To Test Backup Law · · Score: 4, Informative

    Recordable disks aren't writable in the part of the disk where the key is stored, so if you don't decrypt it when you make the backup, you won't be able to play the backup in your player.

  14. Re:Easy Bake Ovens on Lifecycle Energy Costs of LED, CFL Bulbs Calculated · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure the most recent EZbake formulary doesn't actually require the bulb any more. Just mix the chemicals in the appropriate proportions and bam, 20 minutes later you get a delicious substance almost, but not entirely unlike brownies.

  15. Re:Malware, still? on Black Screen of Death Not Microsoft's Fault · · Score: 1

    Maybe, but a lot of things that think they need admin rights really don't, and so shouldn't be asking. Sure, it's not the user's fault that SuperPaint2009 asks for admin rights when you want to print, but that's not because programs need admin rights to send junk to the print queue.

    And anyway, they should change the name. It shouln't be "admin rights" which implies a maximum level of authority, and who wouldn't want to maximize their authority. It should be "maintenance access" or something. You don't drive around with the hood up because that maximizes your authority over the car, you only put the hood up when you want to work on the stuff under the hood.

  16. Re:Future doesn't want to be discovered? on LHC Knocked Out By Another Power Failure · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, but that was BS. Fact is, collisions of higher energies occur in the upper atmosphere with a much higher frequency than they will in the LHC, and have been for billions of years. The LHC iself is only expected to operate for a few tens of years by comparison.

    Hard science is hard. There is a lot that needs to go right for this to work, and any of apparently dozens upon dozens of things can make it hiccup. No spooky explanations necessary.

  17. Re:I'm immune! on Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times · · Score: 1

    No you don't. Cell towers aren't just a vertical whip. They're typically a ring of directional antennas. You don't get precise direction from them, but you can definitely rule out the image.

  18. Re:automated tool for locating cells? on Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times · · Score: 1

    A centrist? So your views depend on taking a bunch of other people's views and averaging them?

  19. Re:It works well in cities. on Recycling Excess Heat From the Data Center · · Score: 1

    Well, they have to be, because you're basically threading a steam bomb throughout your entire house. I'll stick with forced air thank you.

  20. Re:Waste of tax money on US Congressman Announces Plans To Probe Wikileaks · · Score: 1

    Wait.. if jail time is on the table, that makes it a criminal case doesn't it? Sweden surely doesn't have a justice system in which acquittals aren't final, do they?

  21. Re:I am scared. I am intrigued. on Scientists Create Artificial Meat · · Score: 1

    Not the kind you buy at Western Corral, but the NY cut or Filet mignon aged beef marinated over 24 hours cooked by a professional with the right blend of herbs spices that melts in your mouth usually costing you over 30-40 or even $100 per plate (depending on where you go) combined with a matched set of alcohol. Mmmm... I'm getting hungry....

    Filet is not a good cut of beef. It's a tender cut of beef. It's even tender if you ruin it by cooking it "well done." But what little flavor it has will be gone, so you'll need to replace it with sauce, rub, or marinade...

    As for the "aged" bit, I've never had beef that wasn't aged, so I don't know what that does, but I'm suspicious. It's awfully convenient for the stockyards that "sitting in a freezer for a month" improves the flavor, non?

  22. Re:Not if we create chicken killing meat-bots on Scientists Create Artificial Meat · · Score: 1

    Why? how do you think your heat works?

  23. Re:This is why My idea of the goods tax works on Modeling the Economy As a Physics Problem · · Score: 1

    When you tax "CO2 Consumption", what do you do with the revenues received by government as a result of the tax?

  24. Re:What? on Newspapers Face the Prisoner's Dilemma With Google · · Score: 1

    The big irony there is that Craigslist sucks, and apears to have no intention of improving. The page is visually noisy, and the navigation scheme wheren you drill down by state is archaic and inconvenient for those of us small state'rs and border town'rs.

    Craigslist is killing them, without even really trying.

  25. Re:Of course it's going public on Facebook Stock Going Public? · · Score: 1

    And how are you underwriting this guarantee? When can I expect payments?