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User: petermgreen

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Comments · 10,783

  1. Re:Print? on Polaroid: This Time It's Digital · · Score: 1

    How much effort/expense will it take to view today's digital photos a century from now?

    Depends if anyone made the effort to look after them and keep copying them to new media.

    The good side of digital is it's REALLY easy to make copies and you can do so without generation loss.
    The bad side of digital is that individual copies often have a rather limited lifespan.

  2. Re:Police Ssurveillance on Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found On SUV · · Score: 1

    There are a few differences

    1: this is MUCH cheaper than having someone tail a vehicle, that makes it much more prone to abuse.
    2: this device will follow the car everywhere it goes even on private land
    3: fitting the device means that the cop is tampering with your property.

  3. Re:Is it more expensive today to develop a process on AMD To Lay Off 10% of Global Workforce · · Score: 1

    AIUI intel still does a lot of manual design. Manual design tends to get the best results but it is also EXTREMELY expensive for something as complex as a modern CPU.

    AMD OTOH have apparently moved towards a more automated design process. This should reduce R&D costs but it comes at a price in terms of the competitiveness of the final product. Bulldozer currently has worse IPC then it's predecessor!

  4. Re:Hardware manufacturers on No Windows 8 Plot To Lock Out Linux · · Score: 1

    Have you ever worked with big brand OEM systems? Afaict they pretty much always have bioses that have been customised by the OEM to remove options.

  5. Re:I am gonna start my own ask slashdot thread on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    The second a person realizes their $15 wal-mart webcam or off brand scanner wont work with it, they will be upset. Not the fault of Linux.

    Well linux makes life much harder for hardware vendors than windows.

    With windows they gather together some driver coders and tell them to develop a driver for the significant versions of windows at the time (right now that means XP, vista and 7). They have no reason to care about the code quality or every updating the thing. The thing will probablly be dead by the time a new version of windows comes out anyway.

    With linux they have two options

    1: Push support upstream. This (mostly) saves them from worrying about distro differences but it also means they have to pass code quality review and there is pretty much a gaurantee of singificant delay between releasing the product and the drivers being available in major linux distros.
    2: Try and offer a driver package, the trouble with doing this is that pretty much every linux distro does things a bit differently and new distro releases come out all the time so it's a massive task to provide useful drivers.

  6. Re:Try the later Windows versions before judging.. on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    Not to mention XP considers SATA to be exotic hardware

    The real issue isn't to do with SATA it's that the setup program is archaic. So in the post-floppy era loading drivers for your primary storage device (be it SATA, SCSI or whatever) is a pain. Still I can make that issue go away by slipstreaming "driverpack mass storage" from driverpacks.net into my install media so it's not too big a deal for me.

    drivers haven't been written for it for years

    BS. Any component or perhipheral manufacturer that failed to provide XP drivers for their hardware at this point would be cutting off a massive chunk of the market. The likes of NVIDIA are even making regular updates to their XP drivers. Some complete computers don't come with XP drivers but afaict that is usually more a case of the computer vendor not bothering to collect them together than the hardware manufacturers not making them.

    its PnP driver capabilities are way outdated

    Really? in what way? The only real difference i've noticed between XP and win7 is that while XP pops up a dialog when it can't find a driver while win7 gives up.

  7. Re:Can you invest in AMD though? on AMD To Lay Off 10% of Global Workforce · · Score: 1

    now that Microsoft is porting Windows to ARM,

    Sure MS has "ported windows to ARM" but IIRC they are planning to make windows 8 arm metro only and will not be implementing any form of compatibility layer for running x86 apps on it. So unless everyone suddenly ports their apps to metro/arm the windows port won't really help arm's prospects on the desktops.

  8. Re:No (fission) Nukes on Spontaneous Fission In Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 · · Score: 1

    Which strongly suggests that we do not have the beginnings of a clue about how to build a safe and environmentally sound nuclear power industry.

    As opposed to a clue about how to build a safe and environmentally sound coal power industry?

  9. Re:How are they enforcing it? on Google Maps To Charge For API Usage · · Score: 1

    I suspect in the first insance they would look up the info and send a message along the lines of

    "We beleive you are using our service in violation of our free usage terms. If this continues we will ban you from the service. Contact xxx@google.com to arrange a paid account."

  10. Re:openstreetmap.org on Google Maps To Charge For API Usage · · Score: 1

    If you access the maps through their servers directly then they have an acceptable use policy. They don't specify explicit numeric limits though.

    If you download the dumps and run your own servers you can access them as much as you like.

  11. Re:Also, on Rethinking the Nature of Files · · Score: 1

    Files-11 and HFS+ also support a notion of files as being containers of discrete data records, rather than streams of bytes. Again, Macs used this concept heavily in the pre-OSX days, mostly when dealing with a file's resource fork, but it's not as common anymore.

    And the reason it's not as common is that it made cross platform compatibility a nightmare. Everything can handle files that are a simple sequence of octets but many platforms and/or filesystems can't support anything more than that and when they can they often do so in incompatible ways.

  12. Re:Not popular, not currency on New Mac OS Trojan Produces BitCoins · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a bank with service fees. Banks without a large capital backing are always at risk of bankruptcy.

    Real banks are backed up by national governments. Bitcoin exchanges are not.

    You know that Visa and Mastercard take a 2% cut of everything you buy with a card, right?

    I know they take a cut, afaict how big that cut is depends on the merchant. OTOH they also give you a month or more of interest free credit which balances out some (not all obviously) of that cut.

    Afaict the only way using bitcoin is likely to end up with less fees than conventional transfers is if you keep the money "in the bitcoin system" either in the form or bitcoins or in the form of cash balances at bitcoin exchanges. Both are risky for different reasons (the former because of the volatitily and general decline) of bitcoin, the latter because of the fact that

  13. Re:Prices are already rising on ASUS Running Out of Hard Disks · · Score: 1

    Is that site smart enough to only list prices from vendors that actually have the things in stock? If not then with many vendors selling out of many drive models it may be considerablly underestimating how much prices have risen.

    When I look at my local parts vendor I see prices of arround £100 for a 1TB drive that is in stock but 1TB drives that are out of stock are still listed starting at arround £50. Similarlly 2TB drives that are in stock are listed at about £120 while ones that are out of stock are still listed starting at £55.

  14. Re:Portal 2? on Minecraft Wins Gaming Arts Award · · Score: 1

    I think Portal 2 is a much better game, but for every hour I've spent in it, I've spent 20 in Minecraft.

    mmm, I think it applies to sandbox construction style games in general. I haven't played minecraft but I've spent countless hours on various variants of transport tycoon, roller coaster tycoon, sim city etc. There is always something more to do.

    Wheras with story based games you either complete them or get stuck on them and then you move on to playing other things. Some story based games have a load of side stuff to do but it's often not all that engaging.

  15. Re:Not popular, not currency on New Mac OS Trojan Produces BitCoins · · Score: 2

    Some of us are glad to see the price drop. I just want to send money to people without PayPal taking a cut or getting a say in who I can send it to. As such, it makes no difference to me what the price is - I can send 3 coins worth $10 or 10 coins worth $3, and it's all the same.

    But what do you do with those coins when you receive them?

    If you keep them then you are exposing yourself to the massive price volatility and general decline of bitcoin's value.
    If you sell them and keep your money on the exchange you will likely be hit with fees for the trade and you are putting your money at risk of the exchange going tits-up.
    If you sell them and withdraw your money you will pay even more fees.

  16. Re:bitcoin works... on New Mac OS Trojan Produces BitCoins · · Score: 1

    bitcoin works at least to some extent; this is further evidence.

    Well it's evidence there are suckers^Wcustomers who are still prepared to buy the things albiet at drastically reduced prices compared to the peak. It doesn't really say much more than that.

    I don't think anyone has ever seriously disputed that bitcoin works technically. The real questions are

    1: does it work economically? can it ever become stable enough that people seriously use it for commerce rather than just mining it/speculating on it/stealing it/making a few token transactions in it to stick it to the man?
    2: will the powers that be decide to try and kill it?

  17. Re:Wrong, buddy on New Mac OS Trojan Produces BitCoins · · Score: 1

    The only thing "backing" dollars is the fact that people accept them - that's it. Nobody forces you to accept them, not even the government.

    Afaict in the US you are forced to pay your taxes in US dollars. That means that at some point you must exchange some portion of whatever it is you have of value for dollars. The government also went through a phase of trying to force people to exchange their gold for dollars.

  18. Re:EZ-Pass? on Multi-Target Photo-Radar System To Make Speeding Riskier · · Score: 1

    Average speed checks seem very common arround motorway roadworks in the UK. I think they use automated number plate recognition. Afaict they work much better at controlling traffic speeds on a section. than conventional cameras because to avoid a ticket the driver must keep their speed down through the entire section not just when they see a camera.

    They don't seem to be used on other roads though, I guess the gear must be expensive or something.

  19. Re:Could be used to catch other unsafe drivers on Multi-Target Photo-Radar System To Make Speeding Riskier · · Score: 1

    They also need to take current conditions into account (wet roads, fog, etc.) to determine if someone is breaking the basic speed [wikipedia.org] law, even when they are driving below the posted speed limit.

    Surely what speeds are safe for the conditions depend on the car and driver as well as the weather.

    And if they can do all that, they can objectively determine if you're tailgating

    Out of interest what is the legal definition of tailgating in most jurisdictions like? Is it simply driving close enough to the vehicle in front that you can't dependebly stop if they stop suddenly? or is it driving closer than some arbitary distance set by the governement for a given speed? does it vary by jurisdiction?

    The latter seems easy to enforce with this system but the former is much harder since it would depend on the capabilities of both car and driver.

  20. Re:Qantas never crashed... until now. on Australia's Biggest Airline Grounds Its Entire Fleet · · Score: 1

    That article doesn't say anything about quantas pushing ahead with an uneconomic repair for prestige reasons.

  21. Re:Update & security responsiveness on How Can I Justify Using Red Hat When CentOS Exists? · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that one of the main reason to use the rhel rebuilds over debian/ubuntu is long term security updates. If you install a fresh copy of the latest stable release of debian you have 1-3 years (depending on where you are in the release cycle) of security updates before you have to upgrade to a new major version. Ubuntu LTS is similar on the desktop and a bit better (3-5 years) on the server.

    Since RHEL provides longer term support and rebuildling redhats updates is relatively easy compared to doing your own backporting centos can provde security update support for much longer.

  22. Re:Wireless Privacy??? on UK Police Buy Covert Cellphone Surveillance System · · Score: 2

    Sure cellular data is encrypted but there are people out there who can decode it.

    And there are people who can climb a phone pole and attatch a recorder to your phone line.

    I don't see any reason to treat cellphone calls different from landline calls just because the methods of gaining illicit access are different.

  23. Re:Question: on UK Police Buy Covert Cellphone Surveillance System · · Score: 1

    Presumablly they could set the device to masquerade as whatever network they wanted.

  24. Re:Support them from your own money on How Can I Justify Using Red Hat When CentOS Exists? · · Score: 1

    if CentOS vanished today (as is seemed to nearly do a while ago when there were problems with a key maintainer)

    Note that CentOs is just the most (currently) prominent of a number of RHEL rebuild projects. If one of them vanished people would just switch to others (afaict a lot switched to scientific when centos was dithering over version 6).

    If redhat really wanted to heap pain on the RHEL rebuilds they could probablly do so. For example they could replace RPM with a propietry tool. I don't think they want to though because as you say if they did people would just switch to other distros.

  25. Re:Qantas never crashed... until now. on Australia's Biggest Airline Grounds Its Entire Fleet · · Score: 1

    Do you have a link for that? my google searches don't seem to be turning up anything relavent.