Posts by Matt Piechota
162 posts • joined Wednesday 2nd August 2006 17:42 GMT
Re: WTF?
"Californians, much like New Yorkers, think they are the entire country."
And yet, the middle folks most often use the phrase "Real Americans".
Posted in Attention large Linux workloads
Binaries
I've run Linux on POWER, and it always seems like my damn users always come up with some piece of software that isn't available on anything other than x86.
Re: What do people do on these OS's?
"As along time and mostly happy windows user I read these Linux articles with interest. Not wanting to start a war but genuinely curious.
What do people do on these OS's?"
My normal computing. Mail, Web, streaming TV, etc. The rare occasions I need to edit audio or video, there are tools that work fine. I don't know how to use Photoshop, so it would be lost on me. Plus, I can't really draw.
Of course, I've never been someone that learns a tool, but concepts. I think in terms of what task I need to accomplish, not what buttons I have to hit. This way has it's pros and cons, but I can generally move between different tools and accomplish the same tasks relatively easily. I'm not going to say that I'm not more comfortable in Excel than LibOffice's Calc, but if I had to use calc at work I'd be comfortable pretty quick.
Re: manners
"Simple things too, when I am wearing sunglasses I take them off when I am talking to someone (this can be bent a little if it is bloody sunny out, but I used to keep them on when in a store and grabbing a couple of things all through checkout, I realized it is actually quite rude, and adds a nice personal touch to the interaction)"
You wear sunglasses indoors? Hmm, that's... rude.
Re: Wonder if it will fit in an altoids tin?
The tin I have here appears to be wide enough, at 2 3/16 and long enough at 3 1/2. With the rounded corners of the tin and the board, I'm guessing that's not an accident.
GF
"I am betting he doesnt have a girlfriend."
I think (hope) the knick-knacks would say differently.
"All I know is I can turn beer into water, sodium, and potassium at room temp at a rate of 16oz per 1/2 hour."
That rate seems a bit slow, slacker.
Re: This article is missing something...
"Some people want smartphones, but don't need all the app-gumph that comes with it (and the requirement to spend, spend, spend on apps)."
I must have missed that part of my phone contract; I have yet to spend a penny at the Google store. I generally find plenty of free options that are suitable for my relatively light phone usage (email, social media, restaurants, maps, etc.).
Meanwhile, at the spaceport:
I'll have a round-trip ticket to Kerberos, thanks!
"They pin pictures for one another, my wife gets artsy-craftsy ideas from there (the loft bed I built for my daughter came from a picture my wife saw on Pinterest). No real use for guys though."
Seems that way. Lots of good recipes floating around in there too. Think a community-driven version of Marth Stewart's Living Show. Although my wife has a bunch of pinned motorcycle pictures as well (which is kinda awesome, really).
Re: Could be worse
"You're not even a very good troll as you lack either mad wind-up skills or unhinged capitalisation, it's just repetitive bollocks."
I dunno, he seems to be doing a pretty good job trolling you. :)
Jedi
Jedi Force-talkers, duh!
Re: Once the dirty trick is out.
"How many of those last million consoles sold are the new model, barely functioning, with no motorised parts PS3 consoles that are being given away currently? There's no advantage with regard to sales in having those PS3 units out there because they won't be used."
I'm sure they factored in the people-who-buy-stuff-just-to-not-use-it factor.
Re: Hats off guys
"Every time we turn around, the british are rebuilding another historical computer. Great job!"
Well, you can't really expect the Brits to build a modern computer, right? :)
Test Cycle
"We tested the devices in Mil-STD-810G sand and dust testing environment. They were blasted with really fine grain dust from many different angles," he said. "After four days we had all six devices still working with no problems."
Wow, 4 whole days! :)
I think most tech folks will note that it's not sandy dust that they find in computers but that nasty, sticky, skin-based grey stuff. That's where the testing needs to be.
Re: But...
"don't want cool, I want something which works with what I already have, is fairly tough, not too expensive, will be supported after the first six months and is expandable."
So what you're saying is you want a new horse when everyone else is buying these new-fangled auto-mo-biles.
"But does that package include a Nexus 7 that actually works?"
The one I got last week worked fine. Took it out, played with it for an hour or so (update to 4.2, etc, etc.), did a factory reset on it and put it away. It's a Christmas gift.
What's funny is how impossibly small my 4.6" phone screen seemed when I picked it up after using the nexus.
GFX
"Is that picture wallpaper for the Windows 8 desktop?"
It's a screenshot from a Wii U. :)
Hmmm
That sounds dreddful.
Nexus S?
"I wasn't on about top sellers. If you read what I wrote I was on about flagship devices. The Nexus range are supposed to be the raised bar device for each Android release that others aspire to beat, but sadly the last one didn't make it as far as a .2 OS release."
I think you (or I) am confused, the Nexus S is two devices ago (Current: Nexus 4, Previous: Galaxy Nexus, Prior: Nexus S). The Nexus S was released with 2.3, and has been updated twice so far (4.0, 4.1). It was released 2 years ago, which coincides with most people's upgrade cycle. I don't love that cycle, of course.
I'm just hoping Verizon sees fit to push my CDMA Galaxy Nexus to 4.2 at some point. I don't need it to be right now, but I'd like at least one more upgrade. At least it's pretty easy to flash it to something else if I get really excited about it.
AfterStep
Sounds a lot like my mid-late 90s AfterStep configuration with xload, xeyes, etc. docked on the right side of the screen. And Windowmaker in the later 90s.
But... wouldn't it make sense for Google to delay that app, just a bit? Yes, they'd forgo some proximity-based business ad revenue. But think of all the people who may opt for an Android instead. Tasty! Why pull Apple's chestnuts out of the fire?
Google doesn't really care if Android wins, they just need ad revenue. Although you do have a point for the most point, Apple can (and probably will) lock Google out at some point. For Google it's a calculation of whether they'll get more out of providing the app vs. the number of people that *may* switch. How many fanbois are realistically going to switch to Android?
And, as far as no-network/caching map software goes, I nominate PocketEarth (paid app & not to confused with an older celestial app of the same name) which uses OpenStreetMap.
Before this, I didn't realize Google Maps on iOS doesn't cache. That is crap.
"And some prominent developers still insist that we should rewrite all software in Java or other managed languages. It's all about security and safety, they say, which one can never achieve with the C/C++.
Well, I'm glad to see the people being repeatedly proven wrong.
Worst part is of course the fact that the managed language VMs themselves become the targets. Considering complexity of e.g. Java VM I think we are going to have a bumpy road ahead."
I think there's a baby and bathwater issue here. If you write in C/C++, you're going to have pretty close to full access to the system (barred only by OS user permissions). With this Java flaw, you get pretty close to full access to the system (same user permissions as above). So Java, at worst case with a giant flaw, is as secure as C/C++ on a given system. The only issue I see is that people might feel "Java is secure" and run things they wouldn't normally run.
Re: What is a "breakout room" ?
"IIRC, it's the bigger version of a huddle room. It's part of the new corporate architecture... where everyone lower than VP sits in a cube, with varying sized meeting closets (a.k.a. huddle, breakout, etc) replacing where all the manager offices used to be."
In my day, we called them "Conference Rooms". :) Unless you mean they had a table-top version of the arcade classic "Breakout" in there. That'd be awesome.
In the US
In my (probably limited) experience in the US, the only people that *do* have Blackberry devices are middle-aged men since that's what the corporate IT dept issues for work stuff. Everyone else has Android or iPhone devices.
I've heard my corporate IT dept is investigating sandboxed Android Apps for corporate email. No cut and paste in or out of the app so there's no data leakage to the unsecured portion of the phone.
Re: Trivia Fact
"What you say is generally a good enough approximation, but that's all it is and is demonstrably wrong in many cases."
Yep. My monkey arms are 80" fingertip to fingertip, but yet I'm 6" short of being 6' 8". Rule of thumb but not accurate.
Ummm
There PC, Mac, iOS, and Android Nook apps, and they've been out for quite awhile (at least a year, probably more).
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/free-nook-apps/379003593/
They were pretty hard to find, I had to Google 'nook app' and click on the first link.
"LiPo will not perform well in the cold, might even damage the cells. Maybe LiFePO4 could cope, but even that is usually only rated to -20C."
Use the batteries as part of the heat sink. ;-)
Tittle
You had miner, rocket, scope, strap, and virgin and that's the best title you could think of?
Thanks!
"I, for one, respect Mr. Orlowski and Page, and appreciate their take on this subject. It's very easy to side with every other blog joint out there, but it takes some special balls to rise above the "I read it on the Internet, so it must be true" mentality."
Thanks Mrs. Orlowski, you should come 'round for tea some time.
Press release
The Press Release (in the comments above) notes:
"The founders of the company marketing this app are speech-language pathologists who were trained by PRC, and who used their knowledge of the Unity system to develop a Unity-like app of their own and market it in the Apple iTunes store."
That's a horse of another color. We can talk about how crap software patents are, but that's different than "we just happened to make something similar".
Re: Nice stereotype.
"You have my condolences. Come visit Buffalo, New York as we don't just shoot people here."
Unless you're hanging around Busti Ave. :) (Nice to see a fellow Buffalonian on here)
Posted in OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB PCI-E SSD
Re: This is the future
"Which means a dedicated SAN will be dead. I mean, seriously, if we have 20, 50, or 100TB on a PCIe card close to the northbridge of the CPU, and 10GigEth networks for the 4 way DRBD, why wasting more money on a separate SAN system."
Unless you want to run a cluster (especially VMs). Or have failover hardware. Or want to manage backups centrally.
Posted in WTF is... Li-Fi?
Re: I predict ultrasonic networking
"Light is good, its the fastest thing we can "control" in our universe and therefore ideal for data transfer. But in a cable makes sense because optic fibre can carry the light and there are no issues with line of sight. But wireless, all you'd need to do to corrupt a file is throw a mirror in the way."
Excuse me, you're standing in my network.
Also, how are you going to power the 'bulb' when you cut power to the socket?
Re: "Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine"
"Is it just me, or does that comment remind anyone else of the "Paperless office" comments of the '80's and '90's? I think it's going to be a while before people do everything on their phones and/or tablets."
Depends on whether he meant desktop as in desktop OS (Windows, OS X, etc.) or desktop PC (iMac, tower+monitor, etc.). Desktop OS is BS, but if you think about it, there's an interesting point about desktop PC vs. laptop, in that you can pick up your 'computing life' and take it with you, something far less common 10 years ago.
Posted in VIA outs $49 Raspberry Pi-alike
Re: Size?
"quote "1708 x 85mm"
Is this thing really nearly 2m long?"
That's a big banana.
B&N not announced, shipping
A friend recieved her GlowNook last week, so it's shipping not announced. :)
Re: And then...
"Actually any space-faring culture would have to be industrial [1], and any industrial culture is going to leave traces that should still be visible - even after 65 million years."
Duh, the earth was a hunting preserve with a very strict "Leave no trace" policy. :)
"No programmer should ever make a program that does what this program does as humans do not need to be hounded down by twatter & facecrack feeds at all hours of the day and night."
What if that's exactly what the user wants?
Audience
"No argument there, but maybe they are simply playing to their audience, which in this case is Facebookers."
Or, you know, kids. As in trying to get kids excited about space so they'll think about working at NASA when they grow up?
"The Big Pile of Stupid is the fact that the domestic production costs would be only very slightly higher - probably no more than a grand total of $30 - but there would be more money floating around in the US or Euro economies from taxes and discretionary worker spending."
While I don't disagree with the last statement, $30 x 10 million iPhones == $300 million. That's not exactly chump change.
That's it.
Android just can't compete with high quality apps like this, I'm switching.
Posted in 2011's Best... Cars
"A car almost entirely designed for London?"
Considering how large a percentage of people live in and around large cities in the world, kinda makes sense to design cars for them, no?
Posted in Obama says his birthplace is 'in Asia'
US-born
"In a recent press conference given in Hawaii (the US state where Mr Obama was born), the president said "here in Asia", a statement which – had he been correct – would have disqualified him from office."
Not true. Any person born within the borders of the US *OR* to a parent that is a US-citizen is considered a natural-born citizen. Obama's mother was born in Kansas, QED. This comes up most often births on overseas military bases.
@ Chris Wilson - Dell laptops have TrackPoints too
But only the Latitudes.
Sigh.
Really, we're not all like that.
Posted in Earth escapes obliteration by comet
"Remember, kiddies, F=MA ... It doesn't matter how many chunks you cut it into, the mass and vector remains the same. If it hits the Earth, the total energy transfer will also be the same. Think about it."
While true, the increased surface area means much more will burn up in the atmosphere.
Boom
"Personaly dumpstering ex-MOD kit would not be wise on many levels, heck one day those storage modules for milatary could very well have tampering explosives in which if connected to a normal controller would cause the storage module to explode. Not that I'm aware of such items, but they are certainly not beyond the realms of reality in some MOD situations."
You've seen too many movies, I think. Data storage devices are taken out of the machines and send to the shredder, the rest is recycled or junked.
And, have none of you heard of DBAN? http://www.dban.org/
RE: Clamshell
"Yes, no way I'm going to have a bare piece of glass lying around in my pocket amongst the coins, keys etc. I'll wait until the stupid non clamshell fad passes thanks."
I've had a original Droid (milestone UK and other places) for nearly two years now, and put the first scratch in the screen yesterday. By dropping the phone face-down on pavement and sliding. Gorilla glass is really, really tough.
