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User: jbengt

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  1. Re:A decade long product cycle sounds good to me on Moore's Law Blowout Sale Is Ending, Says Broadcom CTO · · Score: 1

    IIRC, the separate "core" CPI that leaves out food and energy is for short term comparisons since food and energy can be very volatile. Large short term swings in those commodities can mask the "real" inflation rate in monthly reports. Of course, prices of food & energy are still part of the cost of living, and are considered in the CPI.

  2. Re:Isn't it ironic... on Tech Companies Set To Appeal 2012 Oracle Vs. Google Ruling · · Score: 1

    I don't know that it is entirely clear that without clean room BIOS, IBM would have dominated.

    That is not what the GP was saying. GP was making the point that in a more heterogeneous hardware environment, MS would not have been able to build a monopoly based on a single dominant operating system.

  3. Re:Bull hockey on Tech Companies Set To Appeal 2012 Oracle Vs. Google Ruling · · Score: 1

    Let's avoid the battle over "originality" and "creativity" and note that the issue at hand is actually whether the code in question is expressive or functional.

  4. Re:Bull hockey on Tech Companies Set To Appeal 2012 Oracle Vs. Google Ruling · · Score: 1

    You can only get a copyright on an original work

    You can only get a copyright for original expression, it does not cover the functionality expressed.

  5. Re:Tough luck.. on Thieves Who Stole Cobalt-60 Will Soon Be Dead · · Score: 1

    "But of course nobody in the US seems to actually give a shit about this part of Jesus' teachings or else you would not have the death penalty."

    Excuse me Euroweenie. The death penalty is about as direct eye for an eye and you are likely to see.

    Excuse me Anonytestes, but did you read the post you responded to?

  6. Re:Hey California, I have a solution for you on Sweden Is Closing Many Prisons Due to Lack of Prisoners · · Score: 1

    Sweden hasn't been genetically and socially homogenous in a long time. They have Sami minority in the north, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian across the country and they have been taking refugees

    You may have a valid point, I don't know the demographics. I'm from Chicago, where you can (I have) eat at a Swedish restaraunt owned by a Greek, served by an African, food cooked by a Swedish chef, with your table bussed by an Hispanic. As an American of Swedish and Danish descent, I don't think Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians are really that diverse from each other.

  7. Re:New sub-category 'Sports' on Why There Shouldn't Be a Chess World Champion · · Score: 1

    Surely chess is a game, not a sport.

    Then why did my brother need to pass a physical in order to be on his high school chess team?
    (OK, the answer is stupid bureaucratic rules, but still)
    More seriously (or more pedantically, really), Sports and Athletics don't mean the same thing. If you're doing it for fun, it's a sport. If it requires athletic ability, it's athletics.

  8. Re:TIFF on Microsoft Warns of Zero-Day Attacks · · Score: 1

    Problem is, most email to fax gateways use either TIFF or PDF, and most of them are TIFF. Though PDF isn't any better (in fact, historically it is much worse, security wise) . . .

    Considering an image in a .pdf is typically a tiff with all the .pdf "goodness" wrapping around it, it shouldn't be surprising.

  9. Re:chaotic on Snowden Seeks International Help Against US Espionage Charges · · Score: 2

    An individual should not have the right to decide which of his government's secrets should be revealed.

    A government should not have the right to decide which of its policies & laws should be kept secret from its' citizens.

  10. Re:Oracle! YES!! on Tech Titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google To Help Fix Healthcare.gov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've had the misfortune of needing to use an Oracle system with a web interface to deal with a large client for construction management & billing. If that experience is any indication of how Oracle will fix the problem, the Feds would be better off keeping the very crappy existing system. (seriously)

  11. Re:Not a law on The Mile Markers of Moore's Law Are Meaningless · · Score: 1

    Moore's law is an observation, assumed to be true until observations contradict it, which is exactly what a scientific law is.
    Also, correct me if if I'm wrong, but wasn't Moore's law about the number of transistors in an integrated circuit, rather than the (closely related) size of features?

  12. Re:Red state on Would-Be Tesla Owners Jump Through Hoops To Skirt Wacky Texas Rules · · Score: 1

    And they don't care whether your car gets its energy from gas at the pump or natural gas at the generator.

    Actually, most of them would probably rather sell more natural gas to the electric companies: Fracking has created a huge glut in natural gas supply in the US, which can't be easily shipped out of the country, so its' price has dropped dramatically in the US. On the other hand, the oil extracted by fracking can easily be sold on the world market at world market rates, even if we don't consume here.

  13. Re:Metric on Carbon-Negative Energy Machines Catching On · · Score: 1

    1/2 " and 1" sizes are hardly 'the same everywhere in the world'
    The world is metric.

    Call it 1"NPS or DIN 25, steel pipe dimensions and threads are the same almost everywhere. (Note that the Nominal Pipe Sizes of common small steel pipes are not all that close to the actual ID or OD, anyway.)

  14. Re:What about the humidity? on A Thermoelectric Bracelet To Maintain a Comfortable Body Temperature · · Score: 1

    One other thing.
    You can improve dehumidification somewhat just by reducing the air flow of the A/C unit. You get a little less cooling, requiring the A/C to run longer, and reduce the temperature of the air significantly further below the dewpoint, ringing more moisture out. Of course, you can only go so far before running into problems so like freezing the coil or shutting down on safeties (if they're there), so YMMV.

  15. Re:What about the humidity? on A Thermoelectric Bracelet To Maintain a Comfortable Body Temperature · · Score: 1

    Any AC/Climate Control people know how the energy costs of modifying humidity compare to those of modifying temperature?

    Depends on how you do it, of course.

    The typical pre-energy codes way was to cool the air below the dewpoint with a regular A/C cycle then reheat using electric heat (or another heat source, if readily available). That is very cheap to install but very energy-intensive.

    The "weedy little freestanding units" do essentially the same thing, but use the hot gas from the compressor to reheat the air. This doesn't cost much more to install (the refrigeration controls used to be the tricky part) and uses a little less energy than regular air conditioning that rejects the heat to outdoors because of the lower condensing temperatures. Larger packaged A/C systems can usually provide this as an option, but the extra cost is not often spent. (Most of the hours needing dehumidification need cooling too, so why add reheat for those few hours a year when it's 75F and raining?)

    More sophisticated systems use dessicants to dry the air, which is regenerated by passing exhaust air across the dessicant and/or heating it. This uses very little energy, but is pretty pricy to install. Still, it's a popular choice as part of a "energy recovery" systems for those wishing to score energy efficiency points.

  16. Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to on Obamacare Website Fixes Could Take Two Weeks Or Two Months · · Score: 1

    The problem with contracting to the government is that any company looks at government contracts as a license to print money.

    On the contrary, most companies I have worked with consider government contracts to have a high probability of losing money for them, which combined with open bidding means the government gets higher costs and/or lower quality contractors.

    YMMV. I work on a lot of government projects, as a consulting engineer in construction. Granted, they are mostly state & local projects, though they often have federal $ and the consequent federal requirements.

  17. Re:Ring = Long Building on A Peek At Apple's Planned $5B HQ · · Score: 1

    While I agree that a curved building will be more expensive (I've worked on a plumbing re-design on a round building, e.g.), it won't double or triple costs, and a long, gradually curved building won't be more inefficient in space utilization than most attempts at architectural aesthetics are.

  18. Re:Ring = Long Building on A Peek At Apple's Planned $5B HQ · · Score: 1

    Why "both wrong" when you agree with one?

  19. Re:ugh on Charlie Stross: Why Microsoft Word Must Die · · Score: 2

    I first encountered Word when it came bundled with a new computer (MS used their OS monopoly to influence the PC manufacturers to do that.) Didn't use it much, though, until the place I worked decided they had to switch from WordPerfect because most offices (especially clients) had moved to Word.

  20. Re:Liquid carbon on Diamond Rain In Saturn · · Score: 1

    . . . the 'rain' would be liquid carbon.

    Yes, the diamond precipitation would be more properly called a hailstorm.

  21. Re:How does this happen? on TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe Get Splashed With Radioactive Water · · Score: 1

    Actually, I work with piping diagrams more complicated than that quite often. The diagram is easy, figuring out which pipe in the field matches which pipe in the diagram is the hard part. But it's done correctly by workers all the time, and in the case of really seriously hazardous fluids, mistakes are exceedingly rare (and never repeated;).

  22. Re:fried fish on TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe Get Splashed With Radioactive Water · · Score: 1

    They would have been screwed even if the generators were fine, because the pumps, and the motors/turbines which drive the pumps, were also located in the basement and were ruined. This placement is almost unavoidable because you generally need to put the pump below the lowest possible water level of the supply tank.

    If that's the case, then next time it should be remembered that it is possible to use submersible pumps.

  23. Re:The Internet of Disposable Things on Nest Protect: Trojan Horse For 'The Internet of Things'? · · Score: 1

    CO is about the same density as air, which is mostly N2. If it's coming from a fire, CO just might be significantly hotter & lighter tahnair

  24. Re:It's not "bells and whistles!!!" on Nest Protect: Trojan Horse For 'The Internet of Things'? · · Score: 1

    Any building that uses gas, oil, coal, wood etc. for heat, cooking, light, water heating, etc. needs a CO detector, especially if you want to comply with modern building codes.

  25. Re:Open Standards on Nest Protect: Trojan Horse For 'The Internet of Things'? · · Score: 1

    There's not exactly a whole lot of competitors to standardize with yet

    Actually, there are several large competitors, including the open protocol BACnet that can be used by any device maker, the"open" protocol Lontalk that requires a proprietary chip, Modbus, and several more or less proprietary control protocols.