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  1. Re:550 Watts = Bills on New nForce Boards Previewed · · Score: 1

    You think that a smallish electronics device is causing strain to a system designed to keep your house cool/warm?

    Not strain, but extra work. For every watt of heat outputted by your PCs, your AC has to input some fraction of a watt to move that watt outside your house. That means each amount of power consumption added to a PC also adds again to your cooling bills.

    sidenote: I wonder if anyone has included this in arguments for compact flourescent bulbs? Incadescent bulbs output mostly in the infared.

    Granted not all of a 550W power supply will be utilized, but with the CPUs themselves pushing 100W under load and GPUs not far behind, 150 to 200W total doesn't seem out of line. Add in 75 to 150 W for the monitor, and the annual power bill really can be well over $100.

    This is why I'm still content with my older sub-20W CPUs. I figure I'm not only saving the cost of a new PC but also a few dozen dollars per year in electricity. That's easily worth a few meals here and there.

  2. Re:Dave Thomas on Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide · · Score: 1

    .. and hamburgers ...and The Mutants Of 2051 A.D.

  3. Re:exaust on Jet Engine on a Chip · · Score: 1

    Instead of nitrogen, just have a tank of compressed air that you could pump up manually via a foot/hand pump.

    It depends on how sensitive the small turbine would be to humidity and dirt in the air or to oil from the pump. I was thinking more in terms of pre-packaged tanks, like those CO2 cartridges for paintball guns, which could have consistent quality control.

  4. Re:Like my boss said... on First Looks at Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55 · · Score: 1


    That's the worst thing a purchasing person can do: second-guess the engineers' request. Nothing squashes morale worse than working with SGI/Sun/IBM/whatever for years only for some bean counter to declare that Windows on x86 is as good as UNIX for some task they don't understand. It is sad that so many vendors have jumped on the Windows bandwagon leaving some engineers with no choice but to put up with Windows' limitations because their preferred tool migrated because "Windows is the future". Just losing /bin/sh is enough to make Windows suck from an engineering point-of-view--installing Windows add-ons like cygwin only highlights what Windows lacks for performing useful work on large datasets and many files.

  5. Re:exaust on Jet Engine on a Chip · · Score: 2, Insightful


    Why not use a small tank of compressed gas (i.e., nitrogen) to drive the turbine? For small portable power, the inefficiency inherent in compressing the gas in the first place isn't that big of a deal.

  6. Re:sigh. on Detailed Empire Strikes Back DVD Change List · · Score: 2, Funny

    Burger King Breakfast with the King commercial?

    If you are talking about that recent one with the two guys in bed, one wearing a king costume, obviously after a really intense night of bizarre prince-and-pauper role playing, that's one the best commercials I've seen in a while. I'm looking forward to the next commercial, where the king announces that he is really that guy's father, and the guy starts screaming just like Luke did on that platform. I hear they are going to spin off a mini-series of prequels finally telling the story about how the king and a former queen got together to give birth to twins, who were kept hidden, leading to the climax of the original commercial. Truly fascinating stuff.

  7. Re:What really bothered me today on Computer Problems Already Affecting Florida Voters · · Score: 1

    Then, the reporter ends his report basically blowing the concerns off and saying it was just people were afraid of computers raising a fuss.

    I hate it when local journalists inject their opinions into their stories. They do it all the time. Just lately, local journalists are making the flu shot shortage out to be much more than it is: "Will you be able to get YOUR flu shot? Tune in at 11." Just a couple years ago, I saw a news station help block a referendum by showing completely biased coverage of the issues. Last week, I saw a station play a computer trade show public relations video as news (the person on TV was an marketing rep for the company). Local news sucks.

  8. Re:CSI (Crime Scene Investigations) on Science Television: Does Joe Public Care? · · Score: 1


    If CSI didn't have astoundingly horribly incompetent writers with respect to science, I would agree with you. I can forgive Las Vegas (who takes Vegas seriously, anyway), but Miami and New York are just awful. The shows are entertaining, certainly, but there is almost zero factual information in those shows. The computer graphics and their sound effects only make it worse.

  9. No sharks, please on Science Television: Does Joe Public Care? · · Score: 1


    After all the sharks on the Discovery channel, the evening news, and Finding Nemo, sharks are simply cliche, now, for at least fifty years. No, make that 75 years. I want to be dead before I see another news report about a shark attack.

  10. Not entirely true, but mostly on U.S. Programmers An Endangered Species? · · Score: 4, Insightful


    There will always be a need for domestic programmers, at least for defense contracts.

    As far as the attrition of programmers go, it is very understandable. Programming isn't particularly rewarding in most workplaces. Also, that recent article about IT management being among the worst jobs is important, as unhappy or ineffective managers do rub off on their staff. Further, many programmers simply are not good at their jobs.

    Having worked as a programmer for over five years, I'm already burnt out and training myself for a career change. The politics, the people I had to work with, the lack of funding, the lack of understanding the complexity of software, all chisled away at me until I simply had to find something else to do for my sanity's sake.

  11. Re:Consumers aren't logical on Intel Scraps Plan For 4 Ghz P4 Chip · · Score: 1


    Most likely, Intel has a contingency plan, just like they had dor x86-64. They certainly can afford it.

  12. Re:Methane source? on Zero-emission Power Plants Proposed · · Score: 1


    The marketing phrase "Just plug in and go!" for future alternative fuel automobiles comes to mind...

  13. Re:Glad you asked... on Zero-emission Power Plants Proposed · · Score: 1


    Sure, eating a chunk of plutonium would just pass through, cook a couple cells here and there, and go out. That's fine. However, what about inhaled plutonium, as in airborne dust?

  14. Re:Hello Pinocchio, Nice Nose on Bush, Kerry, and Nader Respond to Youth Voter Questions · · Score: 2, Funny

    How does the man not go insane from mind-shattering cognitive dissonance?

    He is so good natured that he doesn't let little things like logical fallacies bother him.

  15. Re:you have it exactly backwards on Bush, Kerry, and Nader Respond to Youth Voter Questions · · Score: 1

    This is exactly the hoary old argument used to sell the original, non-abstinence based sex ed. Which turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

    No, the truth is that kids are the horniest apes on the planet, and the only reason those ones on the animal shows look hornier is that they aren't wearing pants. I'm very serious about this. The private thoughts of kids would even make Larry Flynt queasy, whether in 1960 or 2060. Any adult who claims otherwise is in some serious denial.

  16. Re:Just a couple points that struck me on Bush, Kerry, and Nader Respond to Youth Voter Questions · · Score: 1

    Sure he says it would most likely be a Roth IRA, but is that a bond fund? Is it an fixed annuity fund?

    Dillema: whether to advocate a privatized system to people educated in public schools with little or no financial curriculum. Fact: most people do not understand the risks and rewards inherent in investing, regardless whether in bonds, stocks, or a bank's crappy 2% IRA. Fact: most financial advice from magazines and professional advisors is so vague that people pretty much have to make their decisions completely on their own, anyway, and most people don't have enough of a grasp of the financial markets to really make the right choice. Aggressive growth? Stable value fund? Bonds in a bull market? The growth one sounds nice...oops, but the graph looked so high earlier!

    The government can offer privatized accounts, but there will be so much political pressure for government insurance and guarantees, that those accounts will pretty much turn right back into Social Security but with more paperwork and tax rules. People just don't want the risk. If they really wanted the risk, they would probably already have learned about the markets and be investing actively.

  17. Re:why a C book on just Solaris? on Solaris Systems Programming · · Score: 1

    why a C book on just Solaris?

    While Solaris implements all the standard stuff, like POSIX, it also has many things specific to itself. Solaris offers an alternative threading API, several IPC mechanisms, System V and BSD personalities, various process scheduling routines, etc. Mostly, people would use the non-standard stuff only if they had to for performance or scalability, which most people don't really need (even if they think they need it). Otherwise, everyone really should just stick to the standards.

  18. Re:Powered by Sun = Site down on Paypal Grinds To A Halt · · Score: 1


    You are trolling against Sun -- the obvious problem with PayPal is mismanaged software or systems architecture. No matter the hardware, if you give it software written by a team of college grad neophytes and idealistic middle management, it will crash and burn. Think about it: they probably have a farm of many gigahertz+ CPUs with gigabytes of RAM, and they still managed to screw it up. This is an amount of hardware that people only dreamed about even five years ago, no matter the manufacturer, and they still managed to screw it up. Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish, and so forth.

  19. Re:That was interesting... on Paypal Grinds To A Halt · · Score: 1


    I think the main problem you had was keeping more than a dime in your PayPal account and trying to use PayPal as more than just a CC processor. When I researched PayPal as a potential CC processor, my first thought about them not being a bank was that I should always transfer the funds to a real bank as they accumulate. Use PayPal for CC transactions, use a real bank for storing the money. That way, PayPal would only get my money by me writing a check to them, and, if they complained and I refused to write the check, then at least I would still have my money and could consult an attorney.

    I also figured that PayPal is really best suited to very small businesses, because their commissions are high enough to make other CC processors much more cost-effective above a certain volume of sales.

  20. Re:Poltics on One Terrible Job: IT Manager · · Score: 1


    Sometimes a symlink or two is actually an elegant solution. Perhaps it remedies inflexibility elsewhere in file naming. Perhaps it saves redundant files. No, they aren't appropriate for Windows, but whether that matters depends on the project.

  21. Re:Poltics on One Terrible Job: IT Manager · · Score: 1

    Subversion is actually very good.

    My point was that subversion is fairly young. I personally would have looked into the ~$1000/seat VC systems to see what they have to offer. With the already rediculous spending on CAD systems, database systems, web servers, etc., not to mention the layers of middle management, a good VC system would have been a drop in the bucket.

  22. Re:Poltics on One Terrible Job: IT Manager · · Score: 1

    I don't follow. What's your gripe?

    It doesn't deal with symbolic links, it can't do renaming on files and directories, it can't handle binary files efficiently, it is slow, it doesn't do changesets, and so forth. Subversion is better, but it is also young. Version control is just one of those things that is still a real huge PITA, even though it's been, what, 15 to 20 years since SCCS and RCS came out? Out of the cheap VC systems, SCCS is still my favorite for small projects. It's amazing how slow the progress has been, probably because good VC is hard. That's why people still have to pay for anything better.

  23. Poltics on One Terrible Job: IT Manager · · Score: 3, Interesting


    IMO, the worst aspect of IT is the baseless politics. Everywhere are factions of people who think their tools are the best or that the latest fad is perfect for the new long-term project. No one seems to understand why all their fancy layers of abstraction are actually detrimental to resolving problems (J2EE enterprise beans for a teeny weeny website?). Oh, and we must use CVS for commercial software development...oops, now where did that symbolic link go...oh, now the high lords of software fashion will allow us to use Subversion...version 1.0...oh yippee just kill me now. God forbid we pay for VC after spending $150K for an enterprise web server.

    And to have to try to manage all of this... No wonder I left.

  24. Re:As much as I hate to admit it . . . on Microsoft Media Center 2005 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Any bets on how many more people will reply with MythTV?

    Actually, I was betting that someone would claim the AC is actually an astroturfer, which wouldn't be suprising at all.

  25. Re:And so it begins on 32-bit Processors, Cheap · · Score: 1

    Would be good to know if your frozen burrito has cooked or needs another minute.

    The ultimate paradox: could God use his web-enabled Java Microwave System (based on Debian, this time) to microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?