Posts by Eddy Ito

Re: Cool heads prevail?

The outcome is highly variable depending on where in the US. I'm fairly certain the usual "big city" spots in NY, CA, DC, etc would all have a much longer list.

On a perhaps related note, the bar does bill itself as "the cleanest little dive bar this side of the river" so there's no telling what happens across the creek.

Ummm, a router with a built in VPN endpoint could probably use the GPU instead of a separate chip. Oh wait, would that count as playing games with the NSA?

Re: Victim mentality

"why do brain surgery on exports?"

Just out of curiosity, do embassies and consulates count as exports? It seems to me that the NSA would want to backdoor everything since it would be trivial for a diplomat to walk in to the nearest electronics shop and buy one off the shelf to act as a VPN endpoint to pass secrets back and forth with their own government.

Re: 1999 called...

It isn't the old dotcom bubble. It's like all the patents the USPTO have been handing out lately. It's dotcom bubble on a cloudy mobile device which makes it completely different and novel so there's nothing to worry about. Welcome to the new, new economy based on people mobilizing their heads to the cloud.

Hmm, need a tongue in cheek icon.

Re: BOM

There's a nail squarely struck.

I recently went through this with some folks at work over a quote for a laminated 22" x 17" poster because everyone who saw the quote couldn't believe the cost of "one lousy print", it was $1000 by the way. Of course saying it was a color print from a 200+ MB photoshop file didn't help much but what did help was pointing out that this wasn't just an inkjet job but a press print that was going to take someone a full day or two laying out the colors, setting the platens, etc and at the end that person was going to punch in the number of copies. I went on that it didn't matter if the number was 1 or 37 or 200 because the setup work was all the same. Tossing out some numbers I said it cost $500 for that persons 2 days of work plus the hour of vacation time they earned, the fractional healthcare and insurance cost, any retirement plan, the companies profit and let's not forget Jerry Brown's and Barack Obama's cut so that probably brings it right around $995 and the actual poster material hasn't been paid for yet. The clincher is when I run my finger to the opposite side of the quote where it says Qty: 200 = $2100 and the clever one in the group, there's always at least one, broke out the calculator and showed using the previous numbers show each copy actually cost about $5.50 after the setup charge. Granted, the numbers were a total SWAG but believable, all things considered.

Re: American GPS stations

@David W. I think the confusion comes from the Russians saying they are going to shut down the US GPS stations in Russia and the NY Times saying there are no US GPS stations in Russia to shut down. Of course that doesn't mean there aren't Russian stations using US GPS satellite data that we don't include in the count of stations the US operates.

Of course the fear that the Russians want the stations so their RT-23 Molodets with ten 550 kiloton MIRV warheads are more accurate is a bit like saying someone wants a surgical laser pointer for their 12 GA shotgun firing explosive 000 buck.

Re: data transmission devices?

There is also the very real threat of friendly fire which seems to be increasing. I don't know if it is lack of training, discipline or too many being just trigger happy.

"The FBI... said swatting caused significant distress and physical injury to police."

Just imagine how the victims and neighbors feel. You remember them, they were the ones awoken by the sounds of battering rams and flash-bangs. Oh right, they're just perps who haven't been convicted yet.

Re: G Pad

I hear they are working on a very small circular wearable device that I believe pins on. It's called the G-Spot.

Re: Do a closer comparison

It was an attempt to humorously point out that you can't make a blanket comparison between Canada and the US because there are too many other variables like weather, age, population density, gang activity, etc.. You wind up with the same problem comparing California with New Hampshire or even all of New England (which makes the population density more equal) but you might be able to compare parts of Metro NY with Metro Los Angeles (maybe only for certain periods when the weather is similar) or Vancouver, BC with Seattle, WA.

The "closer comparison" turns out to be not very close at all. For population density alone it's nearly an order of magnitude difference between the US and Canada.

Re: This actually takes more time than the old way...

Those extra keystrokes are actually a security feature to limit drunken twits from going on a spender bender.

Re: Getting rid of it all by 2018?

The thing with philanthropic foundations is they are largely tax exempt and when you start talking about real money, and make no mistake we're talking real money, it becomes very difficult to spend it fast enough to actually spend it all regardless of how high the impact you achieve is. After all, a billion or two here and there every year makes a pretty big crater but if the investment income on the remaining capital is four or five times that amount, how do you spend it all?

Re: "Beloved products like the iPhone..."

True enough. I had a coffee cup that on one side read "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job"

The other side read "I need the money".

Re: "use a fan to keep the air circulating"

"I can see how you're saving money by having a fan + AC/DC convertor running... Hm."

Sure bet, an old case fan mated to a usb cable plugged into a cell phone charger has to cost less to run than tossing half a sack of potatoes every month or so.

Re: So long as...

Just a guess but isn't he the guy who said he was going to change the way government does things and then stuck to the script of the last clown in charge? Yeah, I know, the more they claim they are different the more they remain the same.

Re: Scope

So you're claim is that a fingerprint is needed because the other documents, photograph and signature aren't enough?

Congratulations, you're lucky enough so it happens only once in a great while, good for you! Come talk to me about it when the state mandated hemorrhoid has you putting your print on something several times a week in addition to all the other forms of identity you have to provide - every single time - because even though you're doing multiple documents at once, each document gets the same BS treatment. Our notary literally has multiple pages in the log that are just me - name, address, ID number, signature, print, stamp, etc. and an equal number of pages dedicated to other folks in the office. It isn't a tin foil hat that's too tight it's the byzantine rituals that have to be performed over and over because the person who was here 90 seconds ago or an hour or yesterday might be someone else. Let's not mention Kalifornia is the only state I'm aware of that requires the language of the document to be "just so" which means that when I get a document from out of state that doesn't have the DPRC required verbiage it requires adding pages which have to be "permanently affixed" to the original. It's crap, there is no valid reason for it!

@DougS

The patent does say how the pulse is taken, essentially they use a "difference amplifier" to filter EMG from ECG and time the ECG. Of course the "difference amplifier" is purposefully vague because of the myriad ways of making such a thing.

It's always nice to have a preferred embodiment but the patent is a bit silly since the spacing could be fifty feet which I doubt would allow it to function. Simple testing might reveal that too small a spacing results in sweat creating a short circuit or difficult to manufacture and at some point it becomes impractical so putting in some numbers to specify a spacing range would avoid all of this. At this point it's a question of whether this was purposefully vague or simply lazy.

Re: Calories

Simon Harris, that ale you have there brings up another question. Is barley very expensive on the UK side of the Atlantic? Here in the US the cost by weight of hulled barley is about the same as rice but it has loads more protein and a similar calorie content. I just thought it odd that none of the posse has this on the menu.

Re: No change

…Why divide by seven??

A few possible reasons: First, it gets the stock price down into the range for potential inclusion into the DJIA.

Second, it works with the stock buyback and allows investors to realize some of the profit they have made over the years without totally cashing out.

Lastly the split and buyback gives them a "reboot" on the EPS (earnings per share) and forces the analysts to do some hard thinking since a penny per share in earnings will now be a much larger swing than a nickel per share used to be. Don't forget that with the buyback there will also be more room for Apple to manipulate their quarterly EPS with finer control.

In all, I like the move as it should be good for both the investors and the company. It is a sign they are moving to the value stock category from being a growth stock. Not a bad thing as "value" often outperform "growth" in real terms for investors.

Re: Only in America...

If you kill the owner of the phone, who or what triggers the phone's kill switch? Right now the problem is theft and mugging potentially leaving the victim in the hospital. Murder - which is a rather big leap for the traditional snatch and grab petty thief - solves the problem of having someone disable the phone. By the time the carrier realizes the subscriber is dead some months later, longer if they have auto-bill pay, the phone will have been used by someone in Spangalore Atoll for quite some time.

Re: Who at Microsoft is making up the names... and why do they still have a job?

Well, they clearly couldn't go to Windows 8.2 and if they went to 8.1.1 there would be a version mismatch with Windows Phone which is slowly crawling toward 8.1. How could they go forward and say that they are making one Windows experience for all your devices if they are different versions of Windows? You and I know the numbers are arbitrary but imagine the confusion who gets an 8.2 RT tablet or 8.2 laptop and it's visually, more or less, the same as his 8.1 phone? If they skip 8.1 on the phone and hop directly to 8.2 people will wonder what happened to WP8.1 and if the NSA insisted on sneaking something into 8.2 that caused the code jump or worse.

They could take a page from 95 and call it 8.1 OSR2 or from the great 98 and call it 8.1 Second Edition. Meh, 8.1 SP1 would be fine but what I'd really like them to call it is Windows 8.1 Take 2.

If the FDIC and NCUSIF had to start paying out huge sums, the NSA might have a look after the Secret Service and FBI asked for their help. Even then given the average account balance runs around $6,000 and 56% have total savings under $25,000 someone draining a million accounts is only getting 6 to 25 billion dollars. Sure, it would sting and a million or so people would be hurting pretty badly for a while and yes it's a substantial fraction of the intelligence budget but it still wouldn't qualify as being in the national interest even though it's near the same scale as the auto company bailout during that financial hiccup you speak of.

Of course it could be targeted to the wealthiest million people or corporations but to move those kinds of assets it would likely take a state sponsor and, like Mount Rushmore, it would be pretty hard to hide overnight. Likewise, no, the FBI isn't going after the random shop lifter pocketing a pack of gum, a turkey or even a watermelon because it's not what they do either.

Re: Why should 64 bit drive demand?

I know for several thousand dollars they'll be happy to tell you why.