Posts by Martin Maloney 296 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jul 2007
1. Burn petroleum, to boil water, to produce steam, to turn a turbine, attached to a generator, to feed the electric grid, which loses 25% due to resistance, to charge batteries in an electric car.
2. Burn petroleum in a car engine.
Which is more efficient?
In cold weather:
1. Pump warm air from a petrol engine's cooling system to heat the car's interior.
2. Pump warm air from a battery-powered electric heater to heat the car's interior.
Which is more efficient?
Does anyone really believe that the average home user of XP will care about the end of XP support in April next year?
Will they even notice? After all, the end of XP support doesn't mean that XP will self destruct, Mr. Phelps.
Those fanbois who are dreaming that the end of XP support will start a stampede to Linux are just that -- dreaming.
(BTW, I'm not knocking Linux. I switched to Linux Mint four years ago. I just don't fantasize that "the year of the Linux desktop" will ever arrive.)
"If Microsoft can switch Windows to a similar release model, the whole concept of a Windows 8, followed by a Windows 9 and an eventual Windows 10, could disappear. Instead, the product would simply be Windows, with Blue being just the first of many major upgrades."
If I'm reading this right, it means that people who decided to pass on Windows 8, hoping that Microsoft would come to their senses and ditch not-Metro, when they released Windows 9, are out of luck.
It sounds like "Windows 8 Forever!"
The fact that the viewing quality of camera-captured movies stinks doesn't matter.
On the providing end, it is a matter of bragging rights -- make that "bragging rites." There is competition among the various pirate groups for first release. Then there is further competition about (what passes for) quality.
On the consuming end, it is a game, comparing, by skimming through, the (lack of) quality of subsequent releases by subsequent pirate groups of the same movie. It's a hobby, mostly for tweeners and teens, collecting pirated movie releases, like other people collect stamps or commemorative plates. The fact that they're breaking the law adds to the mystique.
Only the most brain-dead freetard would actually watch such bilge rather then paying money to see the film at a theater.
Prosecuting the pirates is the same old scam as always. It's based on the myth that piracy costs the studios money in lost ticket sales.
OK, it's not free, although it is, right now, on a promotion:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/avanquest-powerdesk-pro-7-free-download-with-registration-license-code/
You can get either version 7 or 8 -- or both. They will email you a license.
It's a file manager, a file finder, an archiver and even an FTP program.
I've used it since version 2.x on Win 3.1, and I consider it essential.
Dumb meter: You don't pay your bill, and the electric company sends someone out to disconnect your power.
Smart meter: Someone else doesn't pay his bill, and someone at the electric company hits a wrong key on a keyboard, and your power is turned off.
Dumb meter: The electric company monitors and records your total electric use during each billing period.
Smart meter: The electric company monitors and records your electric usage continuously.
If you still don't get it, then watch "Brazil" and read/watch "1984."
You and the article's author both got it wrong.
All that you have to do is visit linuxmint.com's download section, and you'll discover that you can download it as either a DVD or a CD. The page explicitly states that the CD version doesn't include the restricted multimedia components.
And yes, I get pissed, when people are too lazy to do their own research and spout off misinformation.
Stu and Artie are loitering outside their local A&P. To break the boredom, Stu challenges his friend -- "I'll give you a dollar to choke the next three blokes who come by."
Artie puts the first guy into a choke hold, snaps his windpipe, and the guy falls to the ground, dead. The same with the next two.
An outraged citizen calls the cops, who arrest the assailant.
The headline in the next morning's paper read, "Artie chokes three for a dollar at A&P."
...however, the readership stats have nothing to do with the quality of the articles on El Reg.
Rather, it is the increasing level of sophistication of the puns in the comments that is attracting your audience.
If you don't understand what I'm talking about, then get thee to a punnery!
I see it as coming from the Puritan work ethic standpoint. That is, it's immoral to get anything for free.
Whether it's P2P ifle sharing or copying computer program disks or movie DVDs or using a box to decrypt cable TV or satellite TV, it's all the same: We should have to pay for anything that we get.
It's not about lost revenue -- it's about morality. That's why rational arguments on either side of the so-called piracy issue never go anywhere -- they are irrelevant.
What the opponents of so-called piracy are really saying is that it is a sin, and that so-called pirates are sinners.
Every new technology is immediately glommed onto by the military/security state.
Forget for a moment using it as a platform for launching rockets. Rather, think in terms of using fleets of these units instead of orbiting surveillance satellites over a nation's own territory and also over the open seas. (Perish the thought that one country would violate another country's air space, right?)
Cameras, radio receivers and other sensors at 100,000 feet would be far smaller and lighter in weight than equivalent devices on a geostationary satellite at ~23,000 miles. They could be launched on a just-in-time basis. Without the need for a ground-launched rocket and a launch facility, they would be dirt cheap, too.
The total surveillance world is about to gain a "neat" new enabling toy.
("The spawn of satan" icon is appropriate, right?")
That's the section of the story that clicked for me, too.
The legal way would be for a law enforcement agency to go to a court for a warrant. Apple employees/agents would then be deputized to accompany law enforcement, for the purpose of identifying the contraband for law enforcement to seize.
This isn't an isolated incident. Apple has done this at least once before. Moreover, employees/agents of a certain GMO firm are trespassing on and seizing crops from private farms, without following legal requirements.
Corporations are behaving as law enforcement agencies. The USA has become a corporatocracy.
Given that we're getting nowhere, marching, blogging, writing letters to congress critters about the obscene loss of human life in our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc...
Perhaps someone could snap a photo of Obama's swatting a fly. Then we could sic PETA on him!
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