Posts by Charles

@Mike Richards

"Asymmetric bars" was an improper name. They are indeed symmetric along two axes--along a line that intersects both bars halfway and along a parallel line exactly halfway between them. Thus the term "uneven"--describing that each bar is a different height and thus not "even" to each other.

@alyn

Actually, if you use a 3x3 logic grid, then eight cores would be the ideal number--the ninth (probably center) space would be given over to the hardware that's common to all eight cores, such as control hardware and common (say L3) cache.

In another 20 years, who's gonna care?

So they jazzed up the looks a little bit. Does it play the same? I would imagine so. It simply may well be that the old posh look of Clue was in fact detrimental to its sales because today's people couldn't fit in (Who reads Agatha Christie anymore? We're more into watching CSI and the like--or whatever it watched across the pond.). If giving the game a face lift brings in more players, then bully to them.

@Mark

Just for the record, the rings are a *trademark*, not a copyright. Thus the complaint gets filed with the PTO, not the copyright office. Furthermore, there's no time limit for a trademark.

Re: KT7 Raid

Not necessarily. As long as there is SOME competition, the situation is far from unbearable. In fact, some may welcome it since it helps narrow options while still keeping the competitive spirit going. The performance graphics market has been a two-horse race for years (only recently has Intel declared intentions to enter it) with barely a complaint.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

However the computer system itself works, the paper printout is the key to the final result. Be it on a full or partial sheet of paper, the printout should contain the following:

1) The machine-readable portion of the ballot, encoded cleartext in a public-domain format such as PDF417 or DataMatrix. This machine-readable portion should ONLY contain the codes for the votes cast on the ballot. This would allow for a separate machine to read the code if necessary and allow a person to verify the machine part against the following human-readable part.

2) The human-readable portion of the ballot, printed in clear legible text literate people with reasonable vision can easily read. For each line, there is both the code and the name(s)/decision(s) of the ballot/proposition in question.

Barrier of entry

The biggest problem Linux faces in the end-user world is that there are tons of compelling reasons to stick with Windows (the giant product library), but the most important one is not a product but a service. For Linux, the only way you'll get an average end-user to accept your product is to make it "turnkey" simple: turnkey as in you turn it on and it goes with no intervention on the user's part--and no matter what the user's machine presents to the OS. But the Linux world's base philosophy of customizability ultimately clashes with this simplicity--many kinds of customization leads to information overload for most people, causing them to balk.

Re: wind, radar, nuclear

You got 1 and 2 the other way around. Active radars transmit pulses and listen for returns. Passive radars simply listen for ambient radiations. The military uses passive radars, sonars, etc. because they don't give away your position.

As for #4, ins't nuclear power still more a NIMBY or even NIABY issue than wind turbines?

@Matthew Ellen

For the China scenario, this doesn't work. All that's needed is an assurance that the exit node is outside China. Once that happens, it's outside their jurisdiction. Or are you saying that various Chinese sleepers (located outside China) are really going to pose as Tor exit nodes, sniff the data, and be able to pass it along back to the homeland without breaking some kind of data protection law in the country in which they're currently stationed (if not charged with out-and-out espionage)?

RE: 12 Megawatts

I imagine most of the Work watts would be put into the thruster assembly, transferring the energy into the "reaction mass" as a newtonian force and "pushing" it out, providing a resultant desired reaction of forward acceleration.

IOW, those watts wouldn't become heat but rather kinetic energy.

@Paul

Sovereign power. One nation doesn't necessarily have to see eye to eye with another. Only when they agree (by, for example, ratifying an international treaty) are they legally bound to do anything.

@benn

According to what I've read, the i860 suffered because it tried to put too much of the pipelining and scheduling work on the programmer and compiler (similar to the Itanium). It proved to be too difficult to program efficiently.

Whereas with the Fusion, they're integrating two well-established chips: an x64-based CPU with a modern ATI GPU, both of which have a long real-world history.

@uhuznaa

Believe me. Virtual keyboards are the pits. I have to put up with them on my Palm T|X. The big problem with virtual keyboards is that most of us are used to typing on the horizontal and reading against the vertical and receiving tactile feedback to acknowledge our actions and correct those near-misses. With virtual keyboards, you get no tactile feedback and (unless you use a projected keyboard) have to type on the same plane as the screen--very slow and uncomfortable.

I think one of the reasons screen sizes aren't too big is power consumption. Driving a larger screen inevitably requires more power to alter the LCD as well as more power on the graphics chip to render the higher resolution--especially since LCDs are not a persistent-display technology. This may change in future with further development of "e-ink" persistent displays (which are also being developed to be deformable--maybe not foldable but would you take rollable?).

re: Bytes?

Actually, for it to be properly classified as a byte, there has to be 2^8 (256) possible combinations. I don't think they've made the technology that precise as yet. The closest term is "nibble" (4 bits--16 possibilities).

As for why use DVDs, I'm pretty sure this is just an experiment--a way to see if it can be done using well-available technology. Adopting the technology in blue-laser discs will probably be the next step--the smaller pits will require higher levels of precision in making those beveled pits.

@Temp

Perhaps AVG is saying that proxies are too easy to detect...and then bypass or even exploit.

@Steven

The intense power of a NightSun is intended to light up a large area--it's a flashlight on steroids. Since the helicopter is up in the air, having that large spotlight makes for an effective night canvass. Down at ground level, it's supposed to be no worse than a car's headlights or a street lamp. And since it's going *downward*, drivers usually are at little risk of blindness because they're shaded by their vehicle roofs.

@Nomedias

Not necessarily. The non-ASCII DNS lookups would more than likely simply match up to their extensive ASCII counterparts for the time being. As noted, a comprehensive plan of action concerning non-ASCII domains in general will probably take a more gradual approach--perhaps long enough to formulate a proper solution.

If it ain't broke...

I think some people are stretching things a bit here. Sure, a corporation isn't pursuing Vista, and perhaps that is a good thing if everything is running fine with no compelling need to upgrade. Seeing as how the parts of Intel that would be dealing with modeling and so on would probably be on heavier-duty workstations using more professional cards and driver sets (and perhaps even different operating systems), the old saying applies:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."