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Comment Re:Not a replacement yet (Score 1) 340

Like every energy breakthrough in the past, someone decided the Big Oil companies would know how to handle and distribute it. Somehow, all those promising alternative energy sources never seemed to work out. BP axes solar power business, Transition from oil to renewable energy 100 years away, says Exxon Mobil and dozens more.

Comment Re:So MS may now back WebRTC??? (Score 1) 112

Correct again. Microsoft likes to play the "standards" game as long as they can retain a proprietary component inside. Their very first attempt at "standards" was to contribute WMV to the HD-DVD consortium and press for its adoption for Blu-ray without releasing any information required to create the codec. The effort eventually became the VC-1 standard, but the people I knew on the standards body said Microsoft kept thinking they didn't have to release any details about the codec believing the world would simply accept a Microsoft based "standard" because nobody dared bet against them. Meeting after meeting ended with no resolution which looked anything like a disclosure suitable for standards ratification. That was about the beginning of the end for Microsoft (the very first concrete indication that nobody trusted them any more) and signaled the end of HD-DVD.

Comment Re:So who won? (Score 4, Interesting) 182

You're being very kind by saying WebM is "less effective" compared to H.264. I'd put it closer to "why in the hell would I want crummy looking compression unless I use at least twice the data rate?" This from someone who's livelihood partially comes from putting compressed streams on the Internet. WebM isn't good enough and just got lapped again.

Comment Re:A strange game.... (Score 1) 597

China has just voted against North Korea probably for the first time. How angry are the North Korean leaders I wonder? How long before North Korea starts biting the hand that feeds it? If China thought through the likely outcome of what the North Korean behavior is, they'd probably take the DPRK out themselves.

I just looked up some sources on artillery and the DPRK has lots of artillery, most of which can't reach Seoul. They apparently have 17 guns that can, however, and those can be quickly located and silenced before too much damage is done to Seoul. All they have to do is fire one round from each gun and we'll have return fire on the way before their shell hits anything. It's likely that the South Koreans have figured on intercepting projectiles from these guns. The U.S. has had field portable radar systems since the 1960s designed to calculate the source of mortar fire for this purpose. I can imagine it's more sophisticated now.

The DPRK million man army (and 8 million reservists) would likely come pouring over the DMZ in an old fashioned charge and get chewed to ribbons before they finished the 40km trek to Seoul through the rugged mountainous areas. There are a bunch of mountain passes to defend but they can forget about making it through the passes or the mountains. The ROK army has thought of that and they've got some nasty surprises ready to go.

I'm sure the DPRK has got missile systems to deliver plenty of fire power to Seoul, so that would be the bigger worry. If I were a leader of the South, I'd have a line of anti kinetic weapons systems aimed northward. They already know where it's coming from.

I'd say a DPRK attack would create more psychological impact than physical damage to Seoul, much like the V1 and V2 rockets of WWII. Most everything coming over the DMZ would get toasted. Once the DPRK shoots that wad, they're essentially undefended. Then what?

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