Posts by Eddy Ito

Re: Research...

This isn't Chromecast vs AppleTV it's Chromecast vs AirPlay. Sure AppleTV may be 7 years old as you say but AirPlay has only been around since 2010. I suppose it is possible, albeit implausible, that Apple actually had AirPlay in the AppleTV and didn't mention it for the first four years.

Re: BS

Remember this is a survey about "Brand Equity" which Harris defines as "a brand's Equity is determined by a calculation of Familiarity, Quality and Purchase Consideration."

Since AT&T is likely to be very familiar to most folks and given limited number of national networks it is obviously in contention of purchases. Also note that just because they ranked above the category average it doesn't mean it is well loved it just means it's not most hated.

Re: This law

So you're saying it's about the government making sure they get a cut.

Now then, in this case she wasn't technically on the street so I have to wonder how she gets around. I imagine a taxi would be out of the question and a double-decker bus could fund a town for a month.

Write once?

Once data is written, can it be erased, securely, without damaging the crystal so it can be written to again?

Re: @ Naughtyhorse - What he said!

You can't fool me. I know you saw the unicorn, how else would you know it was pink?

Re: Editorial oversight?

"... not up as much as someone in 'Yahoo! Finance' thought they should be. Yes, that august body Yahoo! Finance."

Minor point but it isn't "someone" but merely that Yahoo reports the average, high and low estimates of analysts covering a particular stock. Those analysts are someones actually employed by the likes of Barclays Capital, Standpoint Research, BMO Capital Markets, Oppenheimer and UBS to name but a few. Also have a look at the "No. of Analysts" reported by Yahoo for each and you'll see that the Google statistic includes 40 analysts and Microsoft's has 31 analysts. As to why Yahoo! reports these numbers that are clearly integers with two decimal places in the earnings estimate befuddles me and that is especially true since in the revenue estimate it is displayed correctly.

Re: Long time Apple user and previous Fanboi seeks new platform

Quick question, given the Lion download is a problem, is it the Apple store, the size of the download, the dodgy connection or a combination that is the main headache? I'm just curious if you wanted to be able to buy discs for a few bucks or wanted a smaller download or something you could do in chunks as available.

As for the rest of the questions. Are you up for compiling? Are you interested in keeping the older hardware alive and up to date as well as the newer MacBook?

Going cross platform limits your options somewhat distribution wise but it allows you to get your feet wet on the iBook before fully committing your main hardware. If that's the case and you don't mind the occasional compile, although the porting systems make this fairly painless, then I'd say your best bets are Gentoo Linux or [Net, Open, Free]BSD. Some others around here may know of other Linux distributions that are x86 and PPC friendly but when I still had an iBook it seemed that they all dried up except for Gentoo and I stopped looking when the iBook died.

Now then, for your iPod, you can try amarok, atunes, rhythmbox, yamipod, or banshee to name a few and if you're really game I understand there is a version of rockbox under development for the iPod classic.

"What you can do to protect yourself"

From the US EPA webpage on Depleted Uranium Projectiles

"Be Informed -- Although DU poses little risk when outside the body, DU has about as much toxicity as other heavy metals, like lead. Because DU can cause kidney or other damage if inhaled, ingested in large amounts or at high velocity, it should be avoided by humans and animals."

Well, more or less. Still, how quaint.

Re: Idiots

You're lucky, I've had VISA block my credit card several times. Nearly always it's at the end of a business trip and I have to pay for something in the airport terminal while rushing to catch a flight.

@AC 06:41

And you seem to think that makes Huawei different from Verizon, MS, Apple, et al. Granted, it's structured slightly differently with a super secret court slipped in the stack but the end is the same.

Re: @Eddy Ito

Yes, but at a system level you still have to account for the internal resistance of things like the battery and the traces on the circuit board. Also notice I didn't bother to mention that power also goes with CV²f although rightly I should have since it could easily be the dominant term given the theoretical voltage disparity if we assume the capacitance and clock frequency of both circuits were similar.

That said, I don't believe for an instant that they were measuring the current of the actual chip alone. It looks like they simply took the current of the entire device and subtracted off the current used by the display to get around the obvious disparity in in the screen sizes.

Re: Blue

Well, it was blue 63 years ago and I suppose it's possible it could be orange with green polka dots now but we won't know for another 63 years. Not that I plan to live to hundred and a lot just to find out.

Re: hmmm...

It doesn't fit. The goal is to hover without lateral translation so the effective center point is bounded by a box 10m on a side. I admit I'm not clear if it's indeed a box or a circle but meh.

Or Christmas gifts for the children of the whole department.

- "What happened to all the expensive computer equipment?"

- "Uh, it, ah, had a virus. Yup, it had a virus all right, so uh, we, ah, had to um, smash it! Yeah that's it, smash it to bits."

I think it would handle the spin rather easily. I assume it uses technology similar to that used in DARPA's Samarai UAV by Lockheed which produces some rather impressive video considering it's little more than a single rotor blade.

ISPs

That's my main IPv6 hurdle. Every piece of kit I have, even the printers, claim to be IPv6 ready except one and that is the one that my ISP, which is spelled with a v, makes me use to connect to their network. Sure, they will let me buy my own, no discount, but it has to be one of three approved models more or less identical to the unit I have. As you say, the box on the edge. I'd wager the stumbling block is that ISPs don't want to change their kit and have to retrain the service techs and deal with the support calls from customers who want to blame the 'new' protocol for their misconfigured [game, email, armadillo].

Re: Very glad that someone is at least thinking about this

"Today's middle-bell computing consumers feel liberated from the thrall of geeks, I think..."

I think that is partially true but, speaking as someone who spent nearly two decades being the geek of the family, isn't it also partly the result of the exasperation of the geeks resulting in trying to make systems idiot proof? I imagine computer companies aren't any different since part of their quest is to reduce the number of tech support calls to zero. The ultimate goal is to have a 1/0 switch and [magic happens here] we get exactly what we want. I don't think anyone would complain, even Trevor, as long as the magic works but that's the problem. The magic too often doesn't work because the current attempts at magic are all misdirection without the amazing part.

Hmm, "Exasperation of the Geeks" isn't a bad movie title but it sounds a bit too much "Revenge of the Nerds" meets "The Net" meets "Plan 9 from Outer Space" for a general release so a porn movie perhaps.

Re: "Not sure how the females do it"

I would think that with females at least the source would be obvious even if the mechanism isn't known. Surely the sound emanates from the G spot roughly seven octaves above middle C.

Re: DILLIGAF?

Does it look like I give a fuck

I'd say it depends upon the patents they have. If it's US only then it is perfectly reasonable the university would go after the finished product since it may not be in violation to make the device in China. The violation then occurs at importation.

Re: Pretty shit really

There is also the existing security camera that could easily be purposed to spot and indicate a bare shelf to the folks in the stock room so the fleshy checking to see if those legs go all the way up that short skirt carefully overseeing store security isn't troubled by naked shelf warnings.