Posts by cbf123

US Navy coughs $34.5m for hyper-kill railgun that DOESN'T self-destruct

Re: Cooling

The A10 warthog was pretty much designed around the gun.

I loved railgun in Q2...nothing like jumping off a ledge and nailing someone off in the distance while you're falling.

Of course it was also fun in the early days of high-speed DSL--20ms ping times and minimal congestion were sweet.

Universities teach us a thing or two about BYOD

vnc not that bad

I regularly VNC in to machines 3000km away. There's some lag, but it's acceptable (and *way* better than poorly-written native X applications).

T-mobile US in invisible handset handcuff contract smackdown

minor quibble

First, there actually is a contract, just on the phone instead of the service. So saying "no contract" is a bit disingenuous.

Second, if you cancel the service, the remainder of the outstanding balance on the phone is due in one lump sum. Many people had (arguably logically) expected that they would be able to keep paying off the phone at $20/month even if they cancelled the service.

missing the point

If you cancel the service you need to pay for the phone *immediately*.

Ideally, the service and phone should be totally separate, so that if you cancel the service you just keep paying the (much smaller) monthly payment for the phone hardware. Of course, at that point they'll need to charge interest on the outstanding phone hardware balance or else cover their costs some other way.

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

Lots of reasonably priced headphone options...

The Koss KSC35 looks a bit odd, but has excellent sound. The Koss PortaPro uses the same driver but fits over the head and is foldable, plus it has a cool retro look.

Another decent on-ear headphone is the Crado SR80i. For over-ear you might consider the Sennheiser 280 Pro.

For ear-bud style, the Creative EP630 gives excellent value for money.

Hey, monkey: Just 'cos your mates eat FOUL corn, YOU have to eat it too?

What's more likely, that _all_ my friends (including the ones scared of heights) are idiots, or maybe they noticed something that I missed?

Boffins KALQ-u-late the ultimate 'board for two-thumb tablet tappers

Where's the punctuation?

What about modifier keys, punctuation, numbers, etc.? There's a reason I use the hacker keyboard on my tablet...

WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?

want it for computer monitor

I would LOVE a decent-sized 4K TV for use as a computer monitor.

No mobile signal? Blame hippies and their eco-friendly walls

this is standard north american housing construction

I live up in Canada and typically we have exterior walls framed with 2x6 lumber, interior walls framed with 2x4. Interior walls are generally covered with drywall (aka plasterboard or gypsum board).

My parents' 2-storey house is framed this way and is over 100yrs old. Shows no signs of falling down any time soon.

Note: in construction, a "timber frame" actually means something different, where you use large (8 inches square or even bigger) timbers spaced quite far apart as the load-bearing structure. This is typically not used as much any more except when explicitly chosen as a design statement.

Chrome OS code suggests Chromebook Pixel could be real

high res text

The high res devices make a huge difference for web browsing...the text looks beautifully sharp.

A new Mac Pro coming this spring? 'Mais oui!'

Re: Nah.

I've got a Power Mac G5, the precursor to the Mac Pro...we installed Linux on it ages ago because even then it was cheaper than buying a Power4 workstation from IBM.

It's a gorgeous machine, love the transparent side panel below the aluminum panel (so you can take off the aluminum panel and show off the interior without disrupting air flow. I always thought it was kind of cool that when you remove the transparent panel all the fans sped up.

Jammy b*stards: Admen flog chocolate bars with 'Wi-Fi-free' zones

how is it worse than talking to your neighbour?

I have no problems with people talking on their phone on the bus/train. I have a problem with people talking *loudly* on their phone.

Get a decent headset and a noise-cancelling mic and you can talk at a reasonable level and still understand each other.

Asus pledges Android 4.2 update for Google Nexus 7

phones should definitely have multi-user accounts

My wife and I share a phone since I work from home. Whoever is out takes the phone. I'd *love* to have multi-user on a smartphone.

ARM cranks up cache and memory designs for servers

I think you've got your terminology wrong. big.LITTLE mixes A-15 and A-7 cores so you can idle on the low-power low-performance A-7 and then switch over to the faster A-15 when there's lots of work to do.

See http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/bigLITTLEprocessing.php for more details.

Rumour: Asus rejects $99 Nexus 7... rumour

gps not useless

You can download standalone apps with maps that get stored on the device, turning it into a decent GPS for use when, say, driving a car.

HTC's 4G patent beef could get iPhone 5 BANNED in US

there are some

A significant number of the core Linux developers (including Linus) run Linux on Apple laptops because they like the hardware.

Gabe Newell: Windows 8 is a 'catastrophe' for PC biz

Re: I believe the MS is getting a unusually bad rap here on this one.....

It doesn't stop you from doing those things _yet_.

Why do you think they required that ARM-based systems *must* have Secure Boot enabled? You don't think they'd like to eventually do that to x86 as well?

Dell seeks Linux fans to try cut-price Ubuntu Ultrabook

720P display???

Not sure what developers they think will be satisfied with 720 vertical pixels. I'd much rather have a Macbook with the Retina display.

Intel: Xeon E5s to surf impending server upgrade wave

what makes you think they pay retail?

If they're a big enough account they may be able to get OEM pricing on cpus later as well...

Coders breathe Android into dead HP fondleslab

you need to ask why?

To get a modern tablet running Android for $100. Duh!

Lawyer touts new legal time-bomb for Android

pure clones not okay

If you "distribute" GPL-licensed binaries, you must meet the criteria for making the source code available.

If you install a standard Linux distro on a PC, then sell the PC, that would normally count as noncommercial distribution so you can just include information on where to find the source code. That option is not available to commercial distributors--they must either include the source or else a written offer to provide the source to anyone that asks.

Can virtualisation rejuvenate your old servers?

missing the main reasons

While power consumption may be one driver there are others as well:

1) centralized management

2) ease of failover (if host hardware is starting to fail (and you do have hardware fault monitoring, right?) then you can move the running guest onto another host on the fly)

3) isolation from hardware upgrades (if you develop an embedded appliance, you can code to the virtual machine and isolate your system from changes in the underlying host hardware)

4) enables running "unsupported" OS/hardware. If your app needs windows but the cluster runs linux, you can run a windows instance in a vm. If you buy a fancy new Sandy Bridge machine but your enterprise app requires redhat 4, you just install it in a VM.

And to the doubters...10G/s ethernet is becoming the new server standard. Telecom stuff is now looking at 40Gig.