Posts by JeffyPoooh

Re: Tiny, forced engines don't inspire confidence when it comes to long-term reliability

Junk yards are full of pristine crankshafts.

Everyone is paranoid about engine oil. Then the control arms rust off.

Daft. Completely bonkers.

Corporations paying zero tax, a solution?

When corporations export their profits, they import (not really) something to balance their books. Typically they import (not really) Intellectual Property such as rights to use a trademark, or they import (not really) Management Services.

Track down these imports (not really), and slap an Import Duty on them (really!).

Start slow, maybe 1%, so nobody panics. Ramp it up to the Corporate income tax rate.

Seems like a solution to exported profits with zero tax.

A billion here and a billion there might help to solve a few problems.

3D Printers in SPAAAAAAACE...

Good. Two major advantages.

1) They'll finally be able to 3D print things enclosing a vacuum, such as vacuum tubes or barometers. Obviously they'd need to leave the ISS door ajar during this procedure, and make other arrangements for breathing - details, details... Sales of 3D Printed in Spaaaace vacuum tubes to discerning audiophiles are expected to reach $3.2 Billion, nearly six such tubes, by October.

2) In zero g, they'll finally be able to 3D print little things that are floating inside other slightly larger things, without the inner unsuspended part falling down while being printed. There may be minor issues with the unsupported middle bit drifting during the printing process, but we mustn't let such trivial practicalities obstruct our view of the future.

Such 3D Printers in Space are the future!! Someday very soon, perhaps by January 2015, everything we buy, everything!!, will be custom manufactured by 3D Printers in Earth orbit.

This message brought to you by the 3D Printer Hyperbolic Claims Association, a leading source of 3D Printing information.

128Gb = 16 GB ??

Re: First iPhone late

"...calls." ?

Is that an app?

I have a suggestion

Sellers could write-in another Terms & Condition as part of the boilerplate they already include.

"In the event of an eBay service or significant Internet outage impacting access to this auction site during the auction period, then the seller reserves the right to cancel the sale even after conclusion."

Some already have similar Ts&Cs, so this is not much different.

Enforcible? One could argue that it should be a T&C already built into eBay.

Re: Replacement cycle....

I agree 5-6 years is low. A Dell 22" died on me after 7 years and that seemed way too damn early. Very sad, it was so nice up to then. Took it apart three times trying to fix it, but it was the panel itself. Sniff...

The good news is that 27-inch 1080-high monitors are constantly on sale for Cdn$200 or less.

Touch screen? No thanks.

Re: Possible; not likely.

And yet the "special sub" exists, as more than an assumption. It has a name, USS Jimmy Carter. The point aimed at those claiming all this is "not likely" instead of "I don't understand". It's widely accepted to be a sub for tapping undersea cables, so what the heck is all this article and doubt about?

I can't explain orbital mechanics, and yet the Saturn V existed.

"...powers exist to seize and interrogate devices..."

Meanwhile in other news... Didn't Apple *just* announce that the power to "interrogate devices" is no longer available to anyone except the owner?

Does the iWatch have a PIN Code?

"So only users, not Apple, can grant access to law enforcement agencies."

So not even Apple can unlock your iPhone if you're screwed-up the lock code?

What if you forgot your code? What if you entered your desired code incorrectly, and now have no idea what you've accidentally typed? What if your iPhone is unlocked and some joker locks it on you for laughs? Your data is safe, but beyond your own reach? Ideal for drug dealers, but suboptimal for most users.

I assume that an iPhone can be reset to factory clean, so that a hopelessly locked iPhone can at least have the hardware rescued, if not the data? Don't tell me that the locked hardware becomes landfill...

I await clarification for the details that I might have misunderstood. And thank you.

Re: the first iPhone "...wait until he could achieve perfection."

Hmmm. Then explaining the iPhone "2" thru "6" might a bit awkward.

:-)

Re: I'd still say it's MIMO

*His* doesn't, and isn't. If it were redesigned, perhaps it could be (but same as a coat hanger could be). MIMO is more than just an antenna. MIMO has to include a box of tricks in the router itself. And every one that I've seen has at least three antennas.

So multiply redundant No.

I'm using "MIMO" to mean "MIMO", not just the words.

Re: Consumers who care about quality?

"4:3 ... 16:9"

Stretch, Crop, or Black Bars - choose your poison. All are awful in their own way.

BUT WAIT!! There are some blended modes where they intelligently merge two or three of those techniques. Just a hint of cropping top and bottom, and some gentle stretching but mostly at the edges. It's subtle and works better than the other options. One of our TVs (Sony?) offers this mode and it's nearly invisible (Y Opinion MV).

Re: Fill up yer memory

"32GB" iPhone 4S, with 1.0 GB Available. And that's with all the music files removed, except for one U2 album that seems to have slipped through somehow.

So, yeah, It's easy.

Here's the inside story of why Microsoft bought Minecraft

You may recall that somebody using Minecraft built an 'actual' Hard Disk Drive using millions of those silly blocks. Others have built fully functional CPUs and so on, using the same silly blocks.

The technical folks at Microsoft having heard about these accomplishments got somewhat confused, and they somehow assumed that this meant that HDDs and CPUs could now be virtualized. They schemed to cut Intel, AMD, Seagate and other hardware manufacturers out of the PC market. All their hardware will be replaced with virtual hardware built up from those silly Minecraft blocks, trillions of them per fully-virtualized PC. All PC hardware will be replaced by virtual Minecraft blocks, rented by Microsoft.

Somebody from the HR section happened to be walking by the conference room and overheard their nefarious plans. The HR drone stuck their head in and asked if the virtualized PC would need to be run on actual hardware.

The MS Brain Trust replied nearly in perfect unison, "No, we plan to use recursion. It'll be software all the way down!"

Re: So much wrong with this.

"...easy to have twenty or thirty devices on a network."

For those of us that heat our houses with consumer electronics, it's easy to get up above 50. I think I can have more than 80 Ethernet ports (mostly empty of course). I've got three wifis covering the 2.4 GHz band, and two more on 5 GHz band. Fing shows dozens of clients on each router.

It's very educational, in terms of keeping it all working.

eBay is the replacement, if you can wait a month for delivery

Search on "kit" or "diy kit" under the category 'electronics' (adjust as required) and you can order up all sorts of cute solder-it-yourself building blocks kits. These wee kits can be adapted and integrated with Arduino to do almost anything. And everything is like $3 shipped. I think I could build a digital SW receiver out of such blocks for about $100.

The Good Old Days are actually right about... ...now.

FTTH IS A TOTALLY SOLVED PROBLEM - T-shirts already issued

A few months ago, we had Bell Aliant FirbeOP FTTH installed. Amazingly, we live in a low density neighbourhood with multi-acre lots. They rolled an out-sourced fleet of trucks to run the main cables. Then a nice man came and ran the pre-made fiber (length per satellite map images) through the trees to the side of the house in an hour or two. Then another nice tech showed up and screwed some boxes (same ONT box as shown in the image) to the wall in the basement (2 hours). Most of the expense was getting the fiber to the pole in front of my house. The added effort to install in the next 400 feet into my basement was a trivial addition. The whole exercise is financed by the fact that the local telco can now also provide 'Cable TV' service via fiber optic cable. They've opened up a huge new business, and it's working (they're winning). The fact that we now have 175 Mbps and 3ms ping in the forest is just a nice bonus.

Anyone in the world that is still struggling with the feasibility and financing of FTTH needs to reach out to Bell Aliant and see how THEY DID IT already. IT'S A TOTALLY SOLVED PROBLEM.

Re: USS Jimmy Carter

I came to the comments forum to post: "USS Jimmy Carter" followed by something witty.

Well done on your selection of "Just sayin'...". Perfect.

Note to those confused: Google the boat name. Figure out its purpose.

Re: Return of the Ramdisk?

AB: "...some SSDs use a set of capacitors on the circuit board..."

Apparently so, for example in the MX100 256GB SSD that I recently bought for $120Cdn shipped. The internal images on the 'net show a row of capacitors lined up on the circuit card.

The old T510 laptop is now noticeably snappier. Spend my evenings catching up on Brady Haran's videos on YouTube and sipping red wine. Fantastic.

Re: Meeeh

It was also a 'Power Toy' available under Windows XP; free from Microsoft IIRC.

We had it installed for so long that I'd forgotten that multiple desktops wasn't a built in feature.

Re: The problem is that it doesn't require any physical presence

Maybe there should be a physical button that needs pressing to enable the 'Write Protect Off' state of the program store. Maybe the button could be behind a wee locked door inside the printer.