Re: How sexist

It's only sexist when it's directed at women. Just ask Jezebel.com.

D'oh...

Of course someone beat me to posting this.

Re: There will almost certainly will be a "5G" mobile broadband network

Bell Canada was also the first thing that came to mind here. The single most irresponsible service provider on the planet, I'd wager.

In 2009 they finally got around to rolling out 21 Mbps HSPA in a few locations and called it "the world's largest 4G network". Just ludicrous what you can get away with when you have a mandated duopoly and complete (and I do mean COMPLETE) regulatory capture.

While I agree totally with you, there may be some cues being taken here from other units at Microsoft. The DirectX team, for example, has been working this way for over a decade. They lay down the spec, the GPU vendors then create the hardware to fulfill it. Don't have the hardware, DirectX will report as much and may emulate the behaviour if it's feasible.

Of course an OS is wholly different, and there's no effort made to detect the lack of things like touch or deal with that lack by falling back to behaviours which work without touch. The whole thing leaves the OS interface team seeming... a little out of touch?

Re: 3D looking storm

Oh Eadon,

I know it's a lost cause, but if you're going to say that Earthbound hurricanes are "2D" because they're wider than they are high, then you have to say this is "2D" also. It's certainly nowhere near 2000 km in height. I'm assuming your initial post was just due to sheer ignorance and now you're spinning without thinking, as per your usual MO.

So as someone who paid enough attention to pass first year atmospheric science, rather than just cheating off the guy in front while muttering death threats to Bill Gates, let me help you out: hurricanes - much like all synoptic scale weather systems - reach the tropopause. They're fueled from the ground. The altitude of the tropopause varies from about 10-15 km depending on a number of factors. Their immense power creates effects into the stratosphere. The vertical structure of the hurricane is also quite involved with layers of rising and falling air actually fuelling the thing, giving it shape, creating the eye wall, etc. There is nothing 2D about them.

In fact hurricanes wouldn't survive even a minute as a "fairly 2D" structure, because the up-down convection is an essential part of their formation and the air currents capable of actually pushing the hurricane around are all necessarily well up in the atmosphere where wind speed and direction is more or less uniform for massive distances.

Re: What's Next?

To summarize: http://bit.ly/16TkttR

Re: Unsecured loans

Let me simplify your life.

http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=FL

Re: Chips on a Platter

If you're strongly concerned about the HD outliving the flash or the characteristics of the SSD portion (in an integrated drive like this, probably the cheapest TLC Samsung would sell them) then consider converting your existing two-drive solution into an equivalent caching solution.

All the newer Intel motherboards support Smart Response Technology, which lets you designate one drive as the SSD cache and another drive as the main disc. Same effect as this. Those boards usually come with an mSSD mount on the motherboard so you don't even have to waste space in your case on the cache drive.

Sounds about right. The 12 seconds figure is a fresh install with nothing else on it. My pure SSD system drive takes about 20 seconds now that I have my full selection of cruft installed.

I'd bet you're getting SSD or near-SSD speeds on boot.

Re: Educate me?

It's probably very similar to Intel SRT. Caching is done by logical blocks, the most used blocks are kept in the cache and on the disc, reads/writes to those blocks only have to deal with the cache (SSD speed) and can write-back to disc later (controlled by drive controller/firmware). Writes to less used (uncached) blocks have to deal with magnetic disc as normal.

The exact caching policy I'm not sure about, but probably looking for frequent access. So the sensitive OS files that get touched a lot will be cached, the 50 GB of Simpsons episodes you watched once and then left alone will stay on magnetic platters. Except Mr Plow, natch.

Re: very vague

Don't think the original iPhone was a smartphone in many people's books. Edge case at best.

Re: Definition please

It's not just marketing fluff. It's very useful to distinguish between phones which are used for computing and telephony vs phones which are used for only telephony. The lack of a clear line between the two is a huge nuisance, and that's driven in part by marketing, but the concept doesn't originate with marketers.

As for 3G/4G etc, those are not only not marketing terms, but they're actually strictly defined. In order to be 4G you have to be using certain technologies and providing certain minimum speeds, ditto 3G.

Now, Bell Canada is a serious claimant to 'worst corporate citizen on Earth' so it's not really a surprise that they ruin everything. As long as the CRTC protects them from the legal accountability a normal corporation has, there's not a lot you can do to stop them advertising Hondas with stickers on the bumper as Ferraris. Write your MP.

Re: Definition please

It's something of a vague distinction, like boat vs ship.

The key idea behind a smartphone is a phone which incorporates computer tasks. The sharpest distinguishing single feature you could point to is the ability to handle third party apps (although stuff like BREW blurs the line anyway). Data (esp email and browsing) is also characteristic.

Not sure about the Asha phone, but your description sounds like a featurephone.

Re: That blooper always annoyed me...

Two others beat me to it, but as they said, the black hole explanation is a fan whitewashing to try and make the line palatable. And it makes no sense (the idea that he was going so fast the event horizons of the black holes were effectively 6 parsecs smaller is hilarious).

But there's another, even more painful thing you're forgetting. In Star Wars their FTL travel is based on going to super-special-hyper-mega-other-dimension-space where they travel in straight lines, that means normal navigational hazards pretty much can't be there. So this run has to be done in normal space if he's beating hazards, where the light speed limit applies. 12 parsecs is about 40 LY. That means the trip, even at relativistic speeds, is going to take 50+ years. Hell, even in hyperspace it makes no sense, considering Han said the Falcon goes 1.5c. That's still 25 years.

Long story short, if you're awake while watching Star Wars there is a lot of jarringly stupid dialog that knocks you out of the movie. Either you can suspend disbelief enough or not, but it was pretty lazy on Lucas' part.

Re: USB 2.0

>I suspect TB is at risk of going the same route as Firewire - great for those people who might specifically benefit from it, but not sufficiently better than USB 3.0 for most people's real-world use cases to make it worth the upgrade cost. Which is a shame, because TB is the best option so far to allow adding an external GPU to portable device when needed.

I strongly agree on the first one, given that USB 3.0 is rarely a bottleneck on the transfer speed of the large capacity 5400rpm drives that most people are using for backup/mass storage. Someone doing field video or sound work will of course prefer Thunderbolt, just like they preferred Firewire. But most users won't pay even a cent extra, and Thunderbolt has both price and availability working against it wrt USB 3.0.

About the second point, not so sure. PCI-Express has had an external connector and cable since day 1, so surely that would be the best option? Not even a need for new drivers or firmware for existing video cards in that case, just a housing and a new plug. I think the reason there aren't many devices like that on the market is just because there's not much demand in reality.

Similar to OP

Similar story to the OP. I bought a netbook for my lady for similar reasons. Battery life, portability, small size, keyboard, etc. It's still lighter, smaller and longer life than a high end ultra-book, and it cost only $200. What's the downside? It does everything asked of it and more without having to spend a stupid amount of money.

I think a big part of what killed netbooks was the Atom. The netbook I bought her was based on AMD's fusion, and it can even do basic gaming tasks in reasonably modern games. More CPU and GPU grunt than any Atom, same battery life. Also had a 1280x720 screen. Aspire One 522 for anyone who is curious. If more netbooks were speced out this way I bet they'd still be around.

Re: First...

Mandatory upvote for Futurama reference.

Re: As had been said... WTF Java?

The guy above me correctly pointed out that your over-simplification isn't necessarily true, but let me follow up with two things:

1) C++ has many of the same OO facilities as Java, especially ones that would be relevant to this kind of work.

2) At no point was I talking about performance or ease of use, I was talking about scaling which you seem to have missed entirely. The VM is a constraint on massive scaling, and that's what this kind of project ultimately needs to be economical.

Bonus: I doubt very much the breakeven for ASICs would be here, and the inability to recode bits would pretty much defeat the entire purpose of a research cluster like this.

Re: Brings back memories

I get that Apple nowadays is a hype machine, and it's a pretty sad state. But, be fair to Apple II, the hype was largely deserved and it was the best machine of its vintage as far as consumer targeted stuff went. Choice of monitors, massive expansion slots, colour "graphics". The engineering and thought on that machine was truly high art, and Woz kept Jobs in check so it was a function first machine (contrast Apple III).

Re: Myself

Sorry, memristors got RRAM, not MRAM. My mistake.

Re: Downvoters

The problem there is that these new technologies are showing up all the time, and inevitably there are always a bunch of new caveats that come with them. Only once we have our hands on early devices and get to play with them will we be able to say MRAM is replacing anything... and that assumes that they can ever get it commercialized and QA passable (many techs get early hype and then never appear because the cost didn't make sense or it couldn't be mass produce right, etc).

So far none of the new NVRAMs similar to MRAM have lit the world on fire. I believe TI's chips using FRAM (similar in end result to memristor RAM) are flaky and often under-perform in both their power envelope and performance specs.

Re: "The US has an employment problem"

Russia's economy looked awesome in the '60s too.

Take a look at some of the analysis of what China is doing to keep their economy where it is. Constructing roads that don't go anywhere, demolishing them, constructing them again. Building ghost towns that nobody ever has any intention of living in. The list goes on. The infinite money from Beijing to keep industry over-stimulated will dry up, and the economy will be sharply checked at that point, already the municipalities are having loans that they can't possibly service ready to be called in just a few months from now and are relying on the central government to cancel them or bail them out. Not to mention the ridiculous levels of speculation in their real estate market, homes and condos get turned over every couple of /weeks/ at continually higher prices. These kind of things make American bubbles look tame by comparison, and even in a planned economy they can't be held in check forever.

Re: "Dig" at the iPhone 5

You see that part at the start of the "dig" - which you had to read past - where it says "For a pound less"? Yeah, that's why the "dig".

This just in: Reviewer compares device to only competing device of same cost. Commentard offended and confused by this travesty.

@Fibbles

"The punishments are certainly getting to the point of insanity.

Luckily there is away to avoid them completely; don't download music you haven't bought a license for and don't upload music if you are not authorised to do so.

It's not rocket science."

Now granted beheading as a punishment for wearing yellow is getting to the point of insanity.

Luckily, there is a way to avoid it completely: don't wear yellow and don't let others to wear yellow if not authorized to do so.

It's not rocket science.

Yeah, this line of reasoning seems like it only leads sensible places...

I wonder if...

Samsung will be able to get the iPhone 5 banned in the meantime. High probability that it will be found to violate those patents and all...

Re: All is forgiven

Honestly, I like Android. My current phone is a Motorola droid and my next phone will likely be a Note 2 regardless.

That said, Nokia phones were hugely under-rated. A lack of touch screens and other shiny-shiny killed their classic Symbian smartphones, sure. But the trade for that lack of shiny was that they were massively stable, did everything that they actually did do extremely well, got ridiculous battery life, and even the physical design just felt like every nook and bump was thought through and had some very clever solutions to non-obvious design problems. The 'it's over-engineered, done right and just works' concept that Apple marketing has tried to sell is my user experience with Nokia's older smartphones to a T. Ymmv of course, and no comment on their WinPhone stuff as I haven't tried it.

Re: 'This has to be a first', admits hospital insider

Not a first, and I was just coming here to post the same story.

Here's a clicky: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/man-dies-after-eel-is-ins_n_560842.html

Re: Relativity

I was unaware Apple had started offering a service where they swap your empty battery for a charged one every day around 5 as you're leaving the office. Is there a number I can call for that?

Re: Right..

"But surely people will just throw it on the ground?"

This, pretty much. It just means that instead of swiping my ID and paying for trash removal, I'll take the 5 steps to the dumpster near the local convenience store/elementary school/whatever whenever I have something big. Not to mention that either the public bins on the street are locked down the same -- in which case tourists are forced to dump on the street where they stand -- or you can just toss crap there.

Another Dutch "innovation" from the guy who brought you the bicycle lane where you can't make right turns. Maybe that works in Holland too, but it sure as hell wouldn't work here (North America pour moi).

Re: OK I'll feed the troll

"The burden is on the plaintiff to prove validity, not the defendent to prove invalidity."

This would be the exact opposite of how the legal system works, and the exact opposite of common sense for that matter. The defendant proved the patent was valid when they registered it (in theory anyway). If you want that overturned, you better come with a case. The onus is on you any time you want to attack an established position, why is this weird? Much less warrant calling the judge a fuckwit?

"No only that, but a small but significant portion of devs is switching to iPads (with external keyboards)."

Are you kidding? I mean, the first statement was implausible, but this is just ludicrous. Quick: Name a C++ debugger for iPad.

Re: I suppose I'm being dumb about GPL but

I assume you didn't read anything beyond the vague article. His problem is that several people did one or more of the following:

1) Took his software and made a closed source fork which consisted mainly of a name change with no attribution (GPL violation)

2) Took his software and re-released it essentially unchanged other than name under a restrictive commercial licence (GPL violation)

3) Did 2) while claiming his project is abandoned and his repository is non-authoritative (giant dildo violation)

4) Forked Mayan with zero attribution of where the code came from (GPL violation)

Because of the very Enterprise-y nature of this particular project, it seems to be serially attracting this crap, and he's pulling the dev and hotfix branches (not the existing release) until he finds a strategy for dealing with them.

Re: I think that I should....

You might as well. What a joke of a country the United States has become. Just imagine Franklin getting sued by some guy who patented straight lines, insisting that electricity can't use wires unless he's paid.

The most hilarious part is that the few patents in the case which actually had some sort of engineering value, Samsung's, were tossed for no apparent rhyme or reason. I guess Apple's marketing team can chalk up a big win for having brainwashed the jury ahead of time.

Re: Oh, joy -- our US gun nuts have reached El Reg.

>I've always thought that the anti-gun lobby has missed a trick by not calling in the militia, on Superbowl Sunday.

How this didn't get more upvotes, I'll never know. Maybe people don't understand US culture well enough to appreciate it. Brilliant in any case.

Re: How is this not extortion?

Feels like extortion to me. The big hint is that this technique works equally well whether they have evidence or not, and in fact whether you've ever actually downloaded their crap or not.

They're relying entirely on the threat of the release of names - and the subsequent loss of reputation even if you exonerate yourself - to force payment. At that point it seems like you'd have to step in as a government agency, or the precedent you set is that anyone can get a settlement from anyone just by threatening to sue them frivolously for downloading embarrassingly fringe videos.

Threatening to go after diplomats from countries with touchy relations first can't possibly be the smart move, either. Yeah, let's more or less directly fire a shot at the government.

Re: Fixed.

@Graham: not true. Remote exploitation through the onstar cellular modem and through bluetooth have both been demonstrated