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  1. Re:Thanks for pointing out the "briefly" part. on Half of Germany's Power Supplied By Solar, Briefly · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Germany has been improving the former for ages (up to insane levels, i.e. ever stricter building code) and now also is working on the latter. Good insulation for houses is not optional here, so that better insulation brings little, if any ROI.

  2. Re: In the 2020s bitcoins will run out anyway on Last Forking Warning For Bitcoin · · Score: 1

    Really? The 8 significant decimal places leave a lot of room when no new bitcoins are created any more.

  3. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    It would have been horrible if it had been my tape library, but since it belonged to an investment bank I can still laugh today. (It was long before the crash and it is not related to it)

  4. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    tar is another very useful program from the universe string comes.

  5. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    I stopped using tapes after the QIC-80 (80 MB, compressed 120 MB). Later had a brief affair with a DLT library, long enough to learn a DLT design flaw (when the plastic lip breaks off from a cartridge the drive it is inserted into is damaged, mechanically unhooked. Very funny in a multi drive robot library when the defective cartridge is passed around, Could not stop laughing for days). Anyway, have you tried tar?

  6. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    The problem is not the tape drive, but the software used to write the tapes. Using compression or encryption made it incompatible with other vendors.

  7. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    Why don't you mount the images? For me it was as traumatic as being woken up by a SWAT team und 5 machine guns stuck in my face :-) I also have some backup data left on QIC(?) tapes but not seen a drive in ages. I think I was sane enough not to use compression when I created them, so there still is hope,.

  8. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    My collection was sent to /dev/null in the 90ies when I let a friend use my computer for video editing. During booting he managed to enter the setup of the SCSI controller card and low levelled my 4GB drive.

  9. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    All true, and before the cassette player we used reel to reel devices, exhausting our funds for the tape. The teenage audience probably has more funds today, but also many more options to blow the cash. But it is the same situation for the content industry: they do not really loose money in this segment from pirating, maybe just a little. Equating a pirated copy with a lost sale is complete bs. I financed my first floppy drive with a bank loan and went ballistic when the copy protection schemes gnawed at its health. The kind of ballistic I later went when CD protection schemes lowered my quality of life and installed malicious sw on my computers. Never bought a CD again, they completely lost me as a customer at the turn of the century. I had plenty of vinyl and legally upgraded nearly everything to CD.

  10. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1
  11. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    I wonder if my original ADLIB could have done that. No, I do not consider sharing MID files as music pirating ;-)

  12. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    well, 300bps was at the beginning of the 1980s, I upgraded to 1200bps around 1983. DEC Rainbow with 5MB disk a year later. Online pirating of movies or music still unthinkable then, since there was no (affordable) equipment to digitize, process or store such a huge amount of data. Basically the only stuff that was pirated was software. Throw in a few notorious cookbooks with recipes you needed to be a complete idiot to try them out. BBS was fun.

  13. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    most of the 1980s there was no online pirating of movies or music. I remember downloading the K&R C ASCII book from CERN at 300 Baud, that took the whole night and corresponds to about 30s of mp3. Watched a stack of rented videos in the time it took to download. I think mp3 had not even been invented yet.

  14. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    well, mine does, but I do not use it because they do not have the groups I need. Third party and offshore, ssl encrypted, for a few cents per day. Can fill a 2TB disk in less than 10 days.

  15. Re:Interesting technology on Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    Lets call that way Usenet. Seriously, why should I even use bittorrent?

  16. Re:Speaking of WDTV... on Running Tor On Your TV · · Score: 1

    ... can connect my 6 2TB drives (and more) ... can keep track of what I watched (MediaMark) ... superior MediaNavigator ... and a zilion other things. Oh, and it is LX and not XL

  17. Re:There is no free lunch on The Woes of Munich's Linux Migration · · Score: 1

    5.25" floppies suck? Funny, my disks from 1983 are still working. Well, most of them.

  18. Re:This is stupid on EU Launches Yet Another Antitrust Probe Into Microsoft · · Score: 1

    Yes, indeed insightful, this guy has abolutely no clue of real life. You sir, are a moron and a wonderful example of US superficiality, go for president!

  19. Re:enough? on EU Launches Yet Another Antitrust Probe Into Microsoft · · Score: 1

    THIS IS INSIGHTFUL? Wow, where have the nerds gone?

  20. What a joke: eBay working on FF toolbar on Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On · · Score: 1

    Not all the eBay site even works with Firefox, e.g. the "Sales feature" for eBay shops. eBay is just doing propaganda, not surprising for a late capitalistic criminal organisation. Someone said that they would not piss off customers by disabling the third party toolbar, gosh is he in for a surprise.

  21. Reminds me of .... on Water Logic Gates Built at MIT · · Score: 1

    ... the Arpapool story Scientific American featured in their April issue some 20 years ago: String pulled by elephants to operate a mechanical computer.