Posts by Random Coolzip
81 posts • joined Friday 18th August 2006 17:59 GMT
"dually elected officials"
That's right -- elected by the people and by the special interests they serve.
Re: LoveFilm vs Netflix
IIRC, Netflix runs on AWS, so there's no capacity/bandwidth difference between them and LoveFilm. Unless, of course, Netflix has some additional QoS-enhancing voodoo code running atop AWS, which is certainly likely.
Posted in Movie review: Star Trek Into Darkness
Re: I might have thought this was a good review until I got to this bit:
| This whole "the ship nearly gets destroyed" pish is part of what killed off the TNG movies. Another couple of films and they would have run out of letters for the 1701!
Yeah, I started referring to it as the "USS Kenny"...
Re: I will never understand...
It's like hot sauce -- some people think Tabasco is too hot, some aren't happy unless they sweat profusely from the first bite.
Re: What about Iran's internet firewall?
The great persian firewall only prevents you from looking at fluffy cat pictures. This cuts down on approximately 40% of all intarweb traffic...
Re: Can you blame them?
Funny, that's exactly why I ditched my iPhone. Was great out of the box, then did a minor release update and noticed it was a bit slower, then the update to the next major release pretty much crippled it. Finally got to the point where it was quicker to scoop the GPS off the floor of the car, plug it in and let it figure out where I was than to use the phone. Shame, really, as I liked the phone but I wasn't going to be forced into a mandatory biannual upgrade cycle.
Re: China exporting tech to the US
Yeah, the US imports so much Chinese-designed tech, it's shameful. Don't think Intel will ever recover after those Loongson CPUs flooded the market. And thank goodness Foxconn was there to design the iPhone circuitry or I'd probably be stuck with a Motorola or something. Something running Aliyun, anyway, since it crushed the Android market. Maybe I'll pick one up cheap on Alibaba, now that eBay's virtually wiped out. Hopefully I'll get one that matches my new Shenzhen TV!
(Note: Chinese tech <> Chinese manufacturing)
Posted in Ten backpacks for tech-heads
Re: No Timbuk2?
I'm still rocking a 10+yo Dee Dawg messenger bag. None of your fancy padded backs or a gazillion little pockets to search through when you can't remember which one has your change/notepad/pen/commuter pass. Just a big honkin' waterproof bag with a proper strap. No mesh, no elastic, no apologies and no prisoners. I have a sleeve for my laptop and a pencil case for fiddly bits. My power brick has its own rubbery band thing, and any other cables just get coiled up and tossed in. Works a treat, and since I'm only about twenty years from retirement I don't imagine I'll ever have to replace it.
$85K????
That's barely-passable wages here on the Least Coast. I imagine in Mt. View/Palo Alto that's sleep-in-your-car money (and not a terribly decent car, at that)!
Posted in iPhone 5 tops benchmark chart
Re: iphone 5 benchmark
Hell, give it three months and the first software update will take it to its knees!
Re: post-upgrade performance
Same story here -- iPhone 3G, pretty sweet kit originally, after the iOS4 upgrade it was so up-to-date it was useless -- dog slow, with spontaneous restarts. Binned it as soon as my contract was up, did *not* replace it with another fruit-phone.
Why does transition have to mean rotation? Why can't you simply have another (possibly bigger) set of engines pointed to the side? Then transition is simply a matter of throttling back (and possibly stowing) the low-speed engines and throttling up the mains. Or you could do a ducted-thrust thing, if you can get the intakes worked out. Just take off at a right angle to your intended heading, then kick it supersonic on the correct course once you're clear.
Seems odd...
Seems strange that they'd drop the brand. Has Logica become "tainted" in recent years? I had friends who worked there back in the '80s and it was a well-known company even then, can't imagine why they'd just walk away from that kind of brand recognition.
Posted in Pasce Minirig micro speaker
"Avoides temptation to overdo the bass"?
More like "lacks the surface area". Although 15W in a package that size is pretty impressive. I assume it's a Class D amp? They're pretty, but also pretty pricey. I think I'll stick with my old boom-box that I modified to hold my MP3 player in the cassette door -- it's got bigger speakers and a handle. I'd rather that than hauling around a bag full of bits and cables.
What, no phone?
I'm disappointed you didn't benchmark a contemporary phone. I think any of the latest dual-core models would put up a respectable showing.
Posted in Ten... gaming mice
Re: Madcat RAT 7
I had one go wonky too -- about one month in, it suddenly started shooting the cursor to the far left side of my desktop at random intervals, and would spuriously deny it knew anything about a Y axis. Sometimes unplugging and replugging it would help, but not always. After three days I unplugged it for good and took it back. I've have gotten another one, but they were out so I just went back to my old Logitech. I'm tempted to try another one, but the blush is off that particular rose, and I suspect the price will keep me away.
Re:4S?
Nah, it'll be a 3S instead of a 4. Only incremental improvements, don't'cha know.
@Richard Boyce
Yeah, just what we need -- more junk floating around in LEO.
Posted in HP hawks huge 132in 'tablet'
Z800 workstation?
And here I thought Zilog never pushed the Z800 into production...
Interesting....
Just interviewed a chap this morning whose CV listed Aviva, claimed he developed their presentation tier and web services. Wasn't too keen on him to start with, think I'll just bin that 14-page resume he sent...
Posted in Samsung SSD 830
Re: reliability
Samsung lists the MTBF for the 830 series drives at 1,500,000 hours. I don't know where they're getting that number from, but it's way out of line with the lifetimes I've observed. Everyone I know with an SSD just budgets for a replacement drive every 14-18 months, and keeps good backups.
Like it or not...
Most customers will judge the Fire against the iPad and will find the Fire significantly cheaper. When you're hungry and all you've got is a pocketful of change, a $2 hot dog looks better than a $5 sandwich.
All those specs and no ship date?
The Kindle Fire is supposed to ship on the 15th, when's this thingie supposed to materialize? Are we supposed to pre-order for a mid-December delivery? And who'd be dumb enough to do that?
Titles are optional now?
Bah, no mention of George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" -- surely the banal, inane song this side of a toddler's jukebox...
Re: older versions of Windows
Older versions of Windows aren't really a concern, because they won't work without a BIOS. I haven't heard anything about UEFI providing a "compatibility mode" or any other accommodation for older software. Recent Windows software will probably work because MS abstracted all that away in the HAL, but I seriously doubt they'll ship a HAL for XP that speaks UEFI. And no more booting up with that old copy of DOS 6.22, either.
Posted in Onkyo TX-NR609 AV network receiver
NTSC support?
I've got an older TX-NR801 and it's quite annoying that it doesn't support NTSC for the OSD and video switching. Does this new kit support NTSC, or am I going to have to go back to Pioneer's Elite series?
re: reliability
Anyone know what the MTTF distribution looks like across SSDs? If it's fairly tight, then once they start to fail you're going to have a pretty busy IT team as they rip and replace a cascade of dying boards. As well as a significantly less busy back office waiting for the volumes to rebuild.
Posted in OCZ samples twin-core ARM SSD controller
Re: Dual core?
On-the-fly data compression and advanced wear-leveling, I'd expect. Some kind of failure prediction would be nice too, but I doubt there's much that can be done there.
Lensman? Bah!
Starship battles using trench warfare tactics? Uh, thanks, I'll pass.
I'd chip in a couple of bucks for a short indie around the "Retief" series, though.
Le plus ca change...
So, we're heading back to the mainframes, then? One vertically-integrated stack with networking, apps, database and storage?
Why was this a bad thing, again?
"redefine what you think is possible"
More like "we'll redefine what you thought was permissible".
Beware the cook-off!
Heat build-up can lead to rounds "cooking off", or firing unexpectedly when the gunpowder ignites due to heat. This can make the other members of your squad very unhappy when you're behind them covering their advance...
Are torpedoes really effective anymore?
Aren't "dreadnaught-class" ships equipped with hulls on the order of a dozen or so feet thick? ISTR that the *Iowa* class battleships were supposed to have the ability to withstand several direct torpedo hits (from WWII-era torpedoes). Aren't most submarines just damp missile platforms nowadays?
Still a single rotor
As I understand it, one of the biggest problems with high-speed helicopters is the fact that the advancing blades provide all the lift, while the retreating blades provide very little, torquing the craft along the longitudinal axis. I don't see anything in this design that seem geared towards countering this force. If they're planning to use those stubby little wings, they're going to have to crank those trim tabs pretty hard, resulting in a lot of drag.
I'm also not convinced this design is significantly simpler than the X2. You're going to have three power shafts all linked together, two of which will be multi-piece units with associated gear assemblies. That's a lot of drive train to keep adjusted, lubed and balanced.
@Not the XBox
Maybe it's not for the main CPU, but an aux I/O processor(s). This could offload some work from the main CPU, possibly enabling the use of a lower-powered (=cooler-running) chip in that position.
Hardly innovative
At one PPOE, we got close to 40% of our heat during the winter from an IBM 1130[0]. The building was designed with that in mind, and simply had a large "hood" that collected the heat and pumped it into the ductwork (or directly outside, during the summer). Low tech, but it worked well and allegedly saved a significant amount of money.
[0] I think it was one of the last two or three still being used (this was in 1992), they finally decommissioned it and sold it to the US Army (who operated the rest of the still-functioning 1130s).
Posted in The Linux Chronicles, Part 1
re: "PowerPoint is actually used by quite a few people"
PowerPoint is the current "golden hammer" of the not-quite-ready-for-business-software set. Much like early users used to type documents in 1-2-3 or couldn't send a screen capture without wrapping it in a Word document (after saving it as a bitmap, of course). The majority of .ppt documents I get sent are just containers, apparently prized for the animations between slides and the clip-art more than the actual ability to present anything.
If you actually *need* animation and sound effects to present some information, I question the need to share the information in the first place...
Posted in Hybrid hard drives: what's not to like?
@BillC
The flash is used to hold the most-frequently-accessed files. It doesn't appear to be a cache, as the files aren't written through to the disk, they just get stored in the flash area. The manufacturer claims it's "adaptive", so presumably files migrate back and forth between disk and flash, based on some usage metric.
RE: Crop Rotation
That's exactly what a modern combine/harvester does with corn. It chews off the corn stalk, grinds everything that's grindable (pretty much everything but the corn kernels) and blows it out the back, where it eventually gets tilled back into the soil.
That's for seed corn, anyway -- not sure what they do with the edible stuff.
15min upgrade?
Took close to a damn hour to upgrade my 3G. I've got some 5GB of stuff on an 8GB model, can't understand why it took so long. And afterwards, all my ringtone assignments are gone (just like after every other OS upgrade). Makes me wonder just what *does* get backed up, and what doesn't.
Other than that, upgrade went flawlessly.
Posted in Google borgs 3D desktop
Still doesn't beat Looking Glass
...and that's been dead since 2006. Hmmm, about the time BumpTop (am I the only one who thinks that sounds like a lame pinball game?) got started.... Hmmm....
PRAM limitations
Does anyone know if PRAM is subject to the same R/W cycle limitations that Flash has? Does it require similar wear-leveling and related tech, or is it a more robust technology?
@Moon buggies
So you've got a rocket in your pocket?
Re:Sulfur<>Sulphur
"So how does one stand on a patent infringement?"
With one foot on the neck, leaving the other foot free to get the boot in.
Mine's the one with the matching Doc Martens.
Posted in 'I'm an IT worker not an assassin'
They kill processes, don't they?
Just sounds to me like somebody doesn't want to participate in a cross-functional team!
Mine's the one with the Beretta tucked behind the green card in the pocket.
Posted in Oracle: destroyer of virtual worlds
Never did take those seriously
I was intrigued by Project Wonderland when I first heard of it, but I had some serious doubts when I found out i couldn't access it on my Ultra 20 because they didn't have a Solaris client...
Tried it a few months ago on a PC, and it was so laggy I couldn't do squat. Reminded me of the time I implemented a 3-D wireframe browser on a 286, except without the fun.
Posted in Oz eyes Chinese cane toad market
Rabbits?
@DLZ: Oh, you mean learn to isolate and produce virus toxins which they then spray indiscriminately about to slaughter fuzzy bunnies by the truckload? I'm guessing there isn't an analogous highly-communicable fatal disease that affects the little buggers.
Posted in Pioneer puts Pandora Radio in your car
Phase II
So how much longer until some safety-freak connects the dots and realizes that the hardware for the "eco-graph" could be re-purposed to analyze the current driving style and switch the current artist from AC/DC to Enya if too many 0.5G-magnitude events are recorded in a minute?
Posted in Kingston SSD Now V 40GB boot drive
@Steven Jones
"what is really required is a file system that can map across both SSD & HDD partitions and place files according to appropriate access patterns."
I think it won't be long now before we start seeing disk migration utilities that act something like meta-defragmenters. They'll do exactly what you describe: examine your access patterns and migrate frequently-accessed files to the SSD, others to HDD, and possibly even create burn groups so you can archive unused files to DVD.
