Posts by Sonya Fox

Australia

I've always thought Aussies were a little weird (Vegemite, for example) but if all Aussie bathrooms are so microscopic that you can actually get stuck in one I do believe a revision to the building codes may indeed be in order, as per Dr. Stevenson's recommendation. I've yet to figure out the utility of even making a bathroom that tiny, especially in a home, my bathroom is 12' by 8' and I think that's too small.

Snake oil

I've been working with recordable media for 20 years and I've heard hundreds of claims like this and all of them are little more than speculation. When commercially pressed CDs were first marketed they were touted to last 100 years, currently I have pressed CD-ROMs of only 10 years of age that are completely unreadable. The fatal flaw in all optical discs is the layered construction, an acrylic layer, a dye layer, a foil layer, and a lacquer layer. No matter what the dye layer is made of the layers will eventually seperate due to various chemical processes, and if that doesn't happen over very long periods (30+ years) then eventually even the most durable layer, the acrylic, will warp, yellow or become opaque. Most of the long term studies I've read recommend tape storage as the most reliable method of archiving massive amounts of very important data. I use DDS on my workstation to archive photos because it scales well, and offers the best reliability for the price. Unfortunately, tape isn't the best option for every situation, storing 26PB of data on 170,393 160GB DDS cartridges would be a nightmare, but probably not as bad as writing 6,224,423 single layer DVDs. However, if one must use DVDs, the best option I've come across so far is Mobile Fidelity's 24K gold Ultra Discs, the price is a lot better at $4.99 each and they can be read or written on any extant CD/DVD-R drive and (based solely on my experiences) tend to hold up much better than store bought media.

Toilet?

May I ask what he'll do if nature calls? Being suspended in a transparent box in view of the public for 16 hours with only his clothes as a convenience sounds a bit like many a classic BOFH episode. Will he be forced to do it pigeon style then?

I wouldn't do it

That does look like it would hurt like hell after a few rounds but if I were her I think I'd rather change careers. Surgery seems like kind of a drastic option.

Am I that old?

I didn't think I'd ever get nostalgic about computers, but the first time I ever used the internet was in 1983 using a "state of the art" Kaypro II with a smashing 64KB of RAM and a 300Bps modem via CompuServe. That was so long ago 30 pound luggables like my Kaypro were still called "microcomputers" and they ran CP/M, none of that wimpy MS-DOS stuff. :) I was but a wee lass back then but it was great fun and a good way to waste time during the winter months. Its a shame to see them go, but not as much of a shame as it is too see great old companies like CompuServe, Maxtor and Compaq acquired then turned into low-end "value brands" by their purchasers.

Passive repeaters work well for many applications

Here in the US, most department stores have metal roofs, which as a consequence of their metal supporting poles are grounded and create a shield that's all but impenetrable to even VHF radio waves. One thing I've seen done at least once in these stores, as well as in an underground tunnel is the use of a passive repeater, which can be a small directional antenna like a UHF yagi on the outside of the building (aimed at the nearest cell tower) connected to a UHF dipole inside via coaxial cable. Then you have a solution that uses no power, requires no maintenance or management, and gives relatively decent coverage where there otherwise would have been none at all.

May be possible

I tend to hesitate to say something is impossible when referring to computers, given the staying power of stupid predictions (like Bill G's proclamation that 640KB is enough memory) but a petaflop in a cabinet is pretty unlikely in the foreseeable future. Shrinking current tech to the proper size is certainly possible but then the whole power/cooling thing becomes a huge problem as eventually you get to a point where Moore's law slows down and you can't fit enough electrons through your tiny traces to run your tiny transistors without literally melting the thing into oblivion.

Its cute

Its cute but I can't really think of a use for it. Price-wise its way cheaper to build something yourself, the other day I assembled a 2.8GHZ Athlon/1GB RAM Micro ATX machine for under $45. There are other cheaper thin-client looking things out there that can probably work just as well. What I don't get is why it's always Linux? Specifically the most irritating distribution of Linux? They seem to be marketing this thing as sort of an embedded device, and I've always found NetBSD to work much better on embedded things. As an added bonus it lets you use cheaper, lighter non-x86 processors like the Super H, etc...

Nothing new

"that will feed you the "high-quality news" you want - even when you don't realize you want it"

Isn't that the exact same thing as all of that "portal" nonsense a few years ago?

"sink in a cesspool of drivel"

That's already happened: Twitter, Wikipedia, pretty much every result of a Google search....

Re: Bad Beaver

"why would one be so disappointed about not being able to leave that place?"

Um, it's China? That's not reason enough for raving hysterics???

Microsoft Wal-Mart?

If they're trying to compete with Apple's high-end boutique stores, I don't think hiring a guy from Wal-Mart will work. Wal-Mart's people know how to rake in tons of cash, but they do it by catering to the lowest common denominator. Considering how hard they've been pushing Vista, it's kind of ironic that Microsoft hired a guy from a store chain that makes most of its computer sales from low-end netbooks and sub-desktops running WinXP. Go figure.

Re; angry raving loony, andrew stevens

@angry raving loony

"It's about time that bloodsucking bastard got what's coming to him"

<sarcasm>That bastard! Where does he get off donating all of that money to charity? Someone really must put a stop to this, what a felonious cad!</sarcasm>

@ andrew stevens

"you spelt "fucking" wrong"

You spelled "fscking" wrong.

Quite a shame

If NEC computers are even half as good as their excellent optical drives, monitors and integrated circuits then its quite a shame to see them go. Unfortunately, NEC PCs have been discontinued for quite some time here in the US.

Cheap?

I wonder if this will make the price go down for the old used G4s? I've always wanted a Power PC machine to run FreeBSD.

Not that big of a deal

Its way cheaper just to dismantle the thing and replace the cells yourself, odds are the warranty's expired by the time the battery goes flat anyway. Mouser sells every kind of battery cell out there, and replacing them is a pretty trivial task if you can solder, but you have to replace them with exactly the same brand and model unless you want to have a pic of your incinerated notebook in the Reg. I'd sooner take my chances than shell out the big bux to them.

Bleh.

There really do need to be stiffer penalties for poor driving, especially for drunken and phone related fatalities. While some cases include mitigating factors, for example if the victim was drunk and stumbled in front of car (obviously not the case here), this particular case is more or less equivalent to murder as she intentionally made a conscious decision to engage in an unnecessary activity which resulted in death and general mayhem. In an ideal world such gross stupidity would be thoroughly punished, however in the real world even massive fines and jailtime are unlikely to deter people like this, they will just continue in their destructive behavior until it gets them or someone else killed. In example, I live in the United States and penalties for drunk driving are quite stiff in my state, however it does absolutely nothing to stop the hordes of drunken teenage boys speeding across city streets and parking lots at two or three times the speed limit. They just don't care.

COOL!

That is one tremendously spectacular looking machine, though for my money I still do really like the shuttles. I'll be very sad when NASA finally retires them.

My Two Cents...

Windows XP Professional SP3 is the best OS I have used in a long time, it does exactly what it needs to, has the advanced features like NTBackup, Group Policy Editor, Regedit, etc... that the lower versions lack, runs games and media applications exceptionally well and is generally very stable and well-mannered. It would be nice to see Microsoft release Windows 7 as a single version with approximately the same general feature set as WinXP SP3, with the option to install any of the other applications from the install CD. That would be what I would consider a "classy" OS. Windows Server 2008 can take care of the enterprise market.

@4a$$Monkey

Seriously. You can't be afraid of that thing, can you? Its about as dangerous as a garden gnome. Something like this could only come from the country that brought us Hello Kitty and used panty vending machines.