* Posts by Disco-Legend-Zeke

915 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007

Reindeer can see in ultraviolet, say boffins

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Reindeer Actually Need...

...to eat yellow snow in order to obtain necessary minerals.

This attracts them to Human habitations, and probably led to their early domestication.

Homemade yellow snow: Crushed ice + beer.

Netflix overtakes Bittorrent as traffic champ

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

US ADSL Prices...

*

...are kept in check by Cable Internet prices to a certain extent.

Example prices for a bundle with voice and unlimited Long Distance:

"Up to" 10 Meg $95/month plus taxes of $15 (i pay for this one. My real measured bandwidth is 7 megs, which was told to me by the installation guy, i had upgraded from 5 megs, and my NETFLIX quality jumped to HD)

5 meg $90

3 meg $75

1.5 meg $70

768Kb $65

The unbundled price is $30 lower if you have a phone, and $20 lower to rent a copper pair without dial tone.

The carrier in my area, Century Link, is rolling out FTTC and offering 20 and 40 meg services, i am not sure what the prices are. The cable company offers a similar price structure, but their bundle includes TV channels.

Just for comparison, a "real" high speed connection for business sells for about $15 per meg, plus local loop. Where fiber is already in the building, the local loop is about $1250 per month.

I have no way of checking this, but i rather imagine NETFLIX has a content delivery system in place in the larger markets, so the ISP's are not faced with the backbone load in the way that they are with P2P movie transfers.

A clarification of the

NETFLIX pricing structure, the $9 package includes one DVD out at a time and the streaming service. The $8 streaming only package does NOT include STARZ PLAY, which has many of the better titles.

*YMMV, but beer helps.

Google opens tiny window onto Baltic Sea-cooled data center

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Easy To See...

*

...pipes 7.5 miles long, not deep. You want nice clean water for your paper factory.

*i recall a similar system for cooling beer.

Engineering student cracks major riddle of the universe

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

90% Of My Phone...

*

...calls to SO begin with "where is."

*The other ten percent are beer related.

WTF is... 4G

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Great Writing:

"...a multiplicity of standards, nested within one another like a messy set of Russian dolls filled with alphabet soup."

Better than a Graph!

Comment on the LTE logo, it looks like the letter t is barfing. Probably over the L33t use of the numeral 4 to spell 4dvanced.

Comment on WI-Max, a proper compliment to Wi-Fi, they will eventually be merged by a really smart carrier. Using Licensed spectrum for backhaul gets the whole mesh up to carrier grade. AFAIK AT&T seems to get this already. Sprint already has a Wi-Max network thanks to CLEAR, but not integrated down to Wi-Fi hotspots.

Once Handsets are native VOIP the delivery and pricing models flatten out for the carriers.

Cybercrooks turn Eve Online into botnet battlefield

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Happens Every Day In...

...social networks, Carigslist, etc.

Automated spambots, and manually or script-driven bulk abuse reporting and DOS against competition in drug and prostitution chatrooms/fora. For example Nevada:1 in Yahoo Chat.

This is a huge marketplace, and domination translates into real Dollars.

Huge fat pipe squirts mighty streams

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Actual Data...

...based on viewing times for soft core pay-per-view in hotel rooms:

13.5 minutes average viewing time. Assuming higher quality pr0n on this super electronic pathway lets round down to 10 minutes.

So every 10 minutes would require 34K tissues, ignoring wankers using a sock or underwear for the final absorbancy. Heavy loads might not only require extra capacity, but probably need less time so that should average out.

Let's call it about 200,000 per hour. (YMMV.)

This requires funding for additional study.

Remastered 4K, 3D Titanic steams towards cinemas

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Just As In Still Photos...

...always shoot with the best quality/resolution you can afford.

When the digital format was being specified, the SMPTE did tests of cinema resolution and determined a projected 35mm image in an average theatre was equivalent to 800 TV lines of resolution in 4:3 aspect ratio., approximately 1600 pixels. A few hundred pixels were added for wide screen, and 1920X1080 was concieved.

The big loss of resolution in projected film was the optical losses during the editing process. The motion picture industry moved to laser scanning the original negative, then doing post production digitally, and scanning the finished movie to either a printer negative or to an "interpositive" from which the printer negatives were struck.

Some of the early scans were at 1920 or 2K, but 3K and then 4K followed. The jump in quality was immediately visible on the screen and even in DVD's which were suddenly so much sharper that makeup which had been crafted to overcome the poor resolution of film became visible enough to annoy.

Lucas used the Sony Cine Alta camera for episodes II and III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CineAlta) and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars) I ran a quick comparison of episode i and episode II and noticed the live action charactors in episode I were not as sharp as the CGI people . In episode II there is a better match between live and CG charactors. (YMMV)

In the case of Titanic, and most "film" films, the negatives have been carefully preserved, so rescanning at an improved resolution and rendering from the original Edit Decision List provides an upgrade path. Certainly not cheap, but doable.

As digital cameras reach 4K and beyond, much production is now being shot digitally, and Sony 's F65 8K Digital (which has 4K green sensors) indicate that the trend will continue.

Otellini: ARM servers 'ain't gonna work'

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

A new Compiler...

...for ARMs migh have an advantage... compiling to machine code instead of pseudocode.

For sure someone will build a server, and then the benchmarks will reveal the story.

CATS to be saved by BLASPHEMERS after the RAPTURE

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Thumb Up

Photons...

...do not experience time. They attach to time, like a rider on a streetcar.

Matter is bundles of photons, dancing in specific orbits. The indivitual photons within each particle continue to attach to time, but cannot travel with time because other photons are being pulled by time in other directions. Thus, to a rock or human, time "passes." Another effect we feel, is that a bit of time becomes held back by all the "hooked on" photons, creating the feeling of gravity.

A universal superbeing would need to be composed of photons. Individual photons can be very big, certainly as big as the universe. A being made of photons would experience all the universe, but would experience time in a Santa Clausian fashion.

But, just in case, I have created a PayPal button on my home page to take care of the adorable doggie.

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

All Your...

...Basset are belong to us.

Porn found in Osama bin Laden compound

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Flame

So I Guess...

*

...even three wives isn't enough.

Seems like the more a religious leader declares how evil porn is, the more likely he is to have some at home.

* flames as in Hell.

US Navy produces smart, cheap 6kg fire+forget missile

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

A Pod Of...

...these on a few merchant ships would pretty much end the pirate menace.

A much smaller version was carried by Harrison Ford in BLADE RUNNER, but you need to read the book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) for details.

Google floats monthly subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

I Expect Most Users...

...will bundle connectivity.

The bandwidth requirements of a thin client can be very low, the virtual machine will have access to your cloudy files, and to the Internet, at wire speed.

Google already has better backbone than the carriers to most cities and, as enigmatix points out, can afford to build out the last 100 yards with meshed WI-FI. The question is if they want to be in the carrier business.

If they do, they will eat the Internet. Starting with Sprint.

Reg reader lost for words over blank HP keyboard

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Back In High School Days, When Only Girls...

...took typing class, there were real mechanical typewriters with blank keyfaces.

We future exectutives were allowed to use them, but they were totally unusable.

To this day, 50+ years later, i can't keyboard in the dark.

In the other hand, most touch typists can't drink and type at the same time

Las Vegas EMC Confidential

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

But Before They Sleep...

...a quick visit to "casual encounters."

HP's beloved 12c calculator turns 30

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

HP-35 Serial #19

I didn't have the 2.02 antilog error fixed. Making it all the more rare.

I recall i used it when i designed some components for the World Trade Center.

Surrey voted tops for tits in birdwatching poll

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Dead Vulture

Pears Don't...

*

...come in pairs.

*Tombstone icon because i died laughing. Best joke of year!

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

So The Question Is:

Do woods attract tits, or do tits attract wood.

IE is tough on Flash cookies but ignores homegrown threat

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

The King James Translation...

...was written to be read aloud according to a PBS documentary.

It also reflects English language usage of the early fifteenth century.

The earliest versions follow the invention of phonetic writing. Written language had existed since 3000BC, but each symbol stood for a word, making it very difficult to learn. In 1500BCE a nameless Phonecian (Canaanite) came up with the idea of representing only the sounds.* The Jews, in their great migration from Egypt passed through Canaan about 50 years later, and used this new invention to transcribe their oral history.

*Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. ISBN 0-08-015612-0

Sony calls in data Sherlocks to unpick megahack disaster

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Joke

Sony Needs...

...the Pink Panther.

Cross-dresser kills goat while high on bath salts

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Goats Killed By Fake POT..

...one.

Goats killed by real pot...

Zero.

In the first three months of 2011 there were over 2000 emergency room visits by users of this crap.

Legalize, Tax, Educate.

Royal Weddings, PCs and Cameron's brass balls

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Correlation Is Not...

Causation, but in the years before 1400, the plague wiped out a lot of people, and England started making cannons, thus increasing the productivity of conquest/empire.

Save the planet: Stop the Greens

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Net Metering...

...and competitive transmission rates would push sales of town-sized thorium reactors.

The problems to be solved with thorium are financial and engineering. Forward looking companies around the globe have devoted resources to the engineering side.

The net base demand for electrical energy and the high cost of building transmission infrastructure make investing in local power generation very attractive.

Factories needing process heat would buy the appropriate model, and sell excess energy to the grid. Small nuke is a game changer.

There is nothing wrong with wind, per se. But wind probably has the highest death rate if you include tornados and suchlike in your data stream.

A true Carbon Tax would force drivers to extract the hydrogen from their fuel oil, and return the carbon. This becomes very attractive combined with mature low temperature fuel cell technology. Hydrogenated diesel is already available, the ideal fuel would give up most of it's hydrogen yet remain liquid to be recharged with hydrogen at a fueling facility..

ICT classes in school should be binned – IT biz body

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Thumb Up

Touch Typing Should Be...

...required as soon as the student's hands are big enough.

Word processing should integrated into Writing Class, Spreadsheeting into maths, etc.

By the 8th or 9th year, students would not only have career enhancing USER skills, but those with a knack could take specialist courses.

Hubble celebrates 21st with gorgeous galactic 'rose' snap

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Well, It Took...

...13.45 ± 0.11 billion years* from the Big Bang. How much time was used to design and build the Big Firecracker is somewhat moot, as Time is a property of our Universe, and may not have existed before the big celebration.**

*Wikipedia says the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years. Less 300 Megayears that Hubble is looking into the past.

**The attendees must be OOOHing and AAAAHing like I did when I saw this photo.

Modern-day ninja in epic battle with riot police, robot

Disco-Legend-Zeke

In Las Vegas...

...he would have been shot. Dead. in the first 5 minutes.

The inquest would have determined the 8 cops that fired 27 rounds into him were justified.

Apple sues Samsung over Galaxy look-and-feel

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Alert

Prior Art:

I have an antique doodad that slices the corners off innocent pieces of paper, giving a smooth rounded edge.

I used it to round one corner of my business cards, making them not only cool, but 25% safer.

Yahoo! Buzz! Given! Mercy! Bullet!

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

I Bet Digital Management Was...

...really glad to get rid of that turkey. I mean, where's the business plan in providing free search?

Sad that YAHOO! proved them right.

Forget China and India, Sweden is tech's superpower

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Joke

Swedish Foreplay:

"FREEZE!!!"

XXX domain names go live

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

But Then The Whole Point...

...of .XXX is to raise things.

WTF is... 4K x 2K?

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

The Problem Is...

...when displaying 3-D using passive glasses.

One of the monitors I saw Tuesday at the NAB show used the over/under compressed format and passive circularly polarized glasses. The polarization was applied to the screen in alternating stripes running horizontally.

The picture was beautiful untill you got a bit close to the screen and saw the picture broken up into horizontal lines. So the 1080 vertical resolution became 540.

In another booth, the problem was elegantly solved by using a 4K monitor. This was, to a certain extent, overkill, but 4K glass is now a production commodity item, so cheaper than setting up new manufacture.

The rumor i heard was that active glasses were becoming a thing of the past, but then i was hearing this from guys selling passive glasses.

Russian pres fumes at mystery DDoS hack

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Nothing Like A Bit...

*

...of direct exposure to enlighten politicos to the importance of cyber attacks.

A good politician is a communicator, and a DOS attack dampens the flow of creative juices just as annoyingly as broken pencil.

POTUS seems to have a staff to take care of that social networking type stuff. He was my second follower when i joined TWITTER.

I am constantly bothered by a skript kiddie that paid $25 for a "Booter," and tortures users of a YAHOO chat room by freezing all yahoo windows.

Being Cyber-Bullied is not fun, when it's being done by political enemies it must be worse.

*Cheers to Dimitry for his apparent restraint. Previous administrations would have been a bit harsher on the perps.

Banana-bender beer boffins drop drops for science

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

But Isn't Everything...

...in Australia already inverted anyway?

Antarctic meteorite yields exotic new mineral

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Titanium Sulphur Alloy...

...stronger than steel, but it stinks.

Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Thumb Up

Dictionary: Add...

...shonky.

Wonky's evil twin.

Thanks for this addition to my lexographical arsenal.

Verizon boosts 'selected' US backbones to 100G

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

Never Underestimate The...

...customer's need for bandwidth.

Nokia talks Pure typographic cobblers

Disco-Legend-Zeke

The Missing Foreskin...

...of the e can be found grafted to the top of the l.

Steve Jobs screws my wife (out of $944)

Disco-Legend-Zeke

If It's Genuine...

...leather, a visit to a proper shoe repair shop should provide a strip and dye experience for your cover.

Paramount buries Dune remake

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Heart

Perhaps...

...instead of collapsing the story, it should be expanded. So much great material there.

A trilogy at least.

Capitalism killed the Martians, suggests Hugo Chavez

Disco-Legend-Zeke

"There's A Deamon...

...for that," Maxwell.

Sensitive data easily swiped from eBayed mobiles

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Badgers

Never Underestimate...

*

...the determination of the data recovery team. Vis. probing memory dice that had been melted out of their packages by fire, as reported previously in these forums. Burning off** the reflective layer of a cd/dvd may not destroy the dye or intaglio image.

Shredding, at some specified sieve level is indicated. I recall seeing a commercial eraser that passed a grinding wheel across a spinning CD, grinding off info.

*Vaccinate your badgers now.

**It probably would smell bad.

The price of the average foaming tankard - in pictures

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

I Second...

*

...that, It would be Grocked immediately if it plotted the amount of beer you can drink for some appropriate Reg Unit of money.**

*A pint to Ken for his dedication to important datasets.

**Your suggestions needed.

Woman fingers ex in 15-foot strip pole theft mystery

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

May I Humbly...

submit:

2006 Pole-A-Palooza at Light Nightclub in the Bellagio (NSFW)

http://destination-fun.com/CHRON/2006/08/20/index.html

These girls were "advanced" and STRONG!

cheers

TV sitcom opens up the world of penetration testing

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

The Good Guy (Or Gal) Hacker...

*

...has become a staple member of every crime solving team on TV lately.

Not to be confused with the hero nerd.

*Beer improves TV reception.

Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

Disco-Legend-Zeke

With 20:20 Hindsight...

...may I suggest that plants which are built near natural bodies of water have reactor cores and cooling ponds located below the water level so that in an emergency, water can be dumped in by gravity.

Disney torpedoes Yellow Submarine

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Thumb Up

PhD Is Pronounced...

...FUD.

You don't want to be showing your motor to just anybody.

Lady Gaga puts the squeeze on breast milk ice cream

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Heart

Ice Cream? Bagh! Human Milk Comes...

...in such attractive containers.

Accept no substitutes.

No toys to throw from the PRAM

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

I Just Reread The...

...HP memristor article, and it flashed* on me that memristors could be easily mask programmed, yet electrically reprogrammed.

No idea how much money is spent burning firmware images into memory for mass market devices, but if it's not patented yet, remember you heard it here first.

*intentional inappropriate use of industry jargon in stoner context

Museum readies touch-tastic retro comms gear hands-on

Disco-Legend-Zeke
Pint

I Remember A Column...

...of 10 or so TTY-ASR33 machines in a classroom at Columbia B school. Me the vendor's guy, teaching MBAs of the future how to write BASIC.

"SCREW YOU CALL A COMPUTER!" types a student.*

"READY>" Replies the GE Datanet 30 Scheduler.

"Funny," says me, "now type LIST"

"Where's the program i just wrote?" he askes, somewhat shaken.

"Dartmouth BASIC** only parses the first three letters of a command line, so SCREW is the same as SCRATCH, which clears your workspace. You DID save you program before that little demonstration, right?"

*the ASR33 could only print uppercase letters.

**this is the language that Bill Gates learned to love.