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Comment We are all copyright holders (Score 5, Interesting) 78

Sooner or later people will work out that we are ALL copyright holders. For every photo you take, joke you write, or funny cat gif you edit, you hold the copyright. Go ahead, make some and send them to your representative's office, to their kids, or to their parents. All you have to do is wait for them to forward them on to someone else, and then use the laws and tools they are introducing against them. The law will become reasonable again pretty quickly I think.

Comment Re: Public transit (Score 1) 389

Yes, because the people using the public transport are decreasing the congestion on the roads, therefore making it possible to actually drive if you need to / choose to. Alternatively, we could build more roads - but that would also involve increasing tax to cover the construction and maintenance costs. So basically, subsidizing public transport doesn't cost more - and you get public transport that you can use if you ever need it.

Comment Re:New TCP (Score 1) 566

TCP uses a mechanism called slow start. This starts out transmitting information at a slow rate, and gradually speeds up until it reaches the maximum the network can handle. For long-lived connections this is a really good approach, but for small requests such as a web page, it will probably transmit the entire file in the slow phase. If you then kill that TCP connection and start another for the next file, then the next file goes through the same slow start process.

HTTP 1.1 will re-use a single TCP connection to receive multiple files one after another - but that is still slow since the server has to finish sending one file before getting told what the next file is, and then going and loading that file from storage into memory and prepping it for sending. It would be quicker if you could say 'send me the following 20 files' at the start, and then the server could keep busy by loading the next file while the first one is being sent.

Comment Re:It's really about multiplexing (Score 1) 566

By implementing multiple streams over a single TCP connection you only pay the TCP set-up cost (slow start, MTU discovery, etc) once. If you break it out into multiple TCP connections then you incur that cost for each stream. Since all the streams are going to the same host, you might as well share the same TCP connection.

Comment Re:Wait... what sort of comparison is that? (Score 1) 253

Because drones at the moment are much closer to the bomber role than the fighter role. They are armed with air to ground ordinance, they are turbo-prop driven, and operate only in uncontested airspace.

The current generation of drones would be mostly ineffective in a battle against an enemy with an air force of their own. Even a 3rd generation fighter aircraft could take out modern drones without trying very hard, and I believe they can't presently arm drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper with air to air missiles (although they are working on that).

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 275

Have you ever written out a long and detailed response to an on-line post (or an email in a web based email client), and submitted it only to find out the network link is down, or the remote server is down, or you have moved out of wi-fi range, or any of a thousand other reasons why you can no longer submit the form?.

With local storage, the client side javascript can handle this for you by saving a draft copy locally, and then later when you have your link back again you can send it successfully.

Comment Re:Not bicycle powered? (Score 1) 123

What if the fans were mounted in the middle of the wheels, and tilted from vertical to horizontal when needed. There would need to be some kind of stand on the bike that held it in place while the wheels tilted around, and some handling of the rear wheel chain/shaft linkage, but that shouldn't be hard to do.

Comment Re:Is that really the problem? (Score 2) 297

I generally believe this is a major factor in underestimation, Even a "good" manager will unconsciously apply pressure to produce optimistic estimates. I was once asked how "accurate" my estimates were, and I said +/- 15%. I was told to go away and work out a "3%" estimate. I added 12% and gave the numbers back - they went nuts. They expected the same numbers but with a promise that they were more accurate.

Comment Re:Scotty Principal... (Score 1) 297

Unfortunately not, because you never got any work, so you went out of business. The company that lied about it has managed to suck another 50% out of the client - who has never heard of the sunk cost fallacy, and then used a bit of money from another contract to deliver something that has 75% for the functionality. The client is mostly happy because they asked for the world and got something that was almost good enough.

Comment Re:Missing taxes are still paid (Score 1) 631

Actually Google is deducting the cost from their tax bill. The catering company is deducting the cost of the food, staff wages, and all other business expenses from their income. The only parts that probably gets taxed are the income of the catering company staff, and any profit that the catering company makes. Since catering typically has very low profit margins and pays minimum wages I expect this tax to be rather low.

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