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Comment Re:About half (Score 2) 293

Chrysler (including Jeep) - okay, cheap pieces of shit there, I'll grant you that
Mercedes
Newer Toyota models (including Lexus), especially the higher end models

You can get a CAN interface to bypass the radio but at risk of losing audio for turn indicators, headlamp warning, key left in ignition warning, and so forth. You may or may not also lose your steering wheel controls for the radio; some aftermarket head units and CAN interfaces can translate various makes' control codes, but some cannot, and most head units lack this integration entirely. Getting vehicles' warning tones with an aftermarket head unit is very iffy at best, so many installers take the factory head unit and relocate it so the functionality is retained, sometimes by rerouting or eliminating ductwork and shoving the radio deeper into the dash, but increasingly often by either eliminating the glove box or extending the factory wire harness and relocating the head unit to a different location, or simply installing aftermarket head units above or below the factory head unit and custom fabricating a new center console.

Comment Re:Raises a point about tech reviews (Score 1) 72

> But when it comes to expensive bits of hardware like SSDs and high-end graphics cards, I'd be interested in reviews which came out a bit later but gave a better reflection of failure rates and longer-term issues. I've been stung before by buying a well-reviewed graphics card which turned out to have a horrible failure rate over time.

You may very well be waiting for the product to go EOL and be superseded by a new model. In technology that is the ongoing story....

Comment Re:Too bad it did not happen on Osama Bin Laden (Score 2) 250

How do you figure that?

While it is true that kerosene (aka "jet fuel") burning in open air will not get hot enough to melt steel, it will raise steel to the curie point, but that is not the case here. Remember that in order to withstand the temperature of the burning kerosene, most steels are not good enough so many turbojet and turbofan components actually utilize titanium and in some cases tungsten(!) alloys in order to resist the heat, because in a forced-air situation kerosene gets hot enough to vaporize steel.

What you have is many thousands of pounds of kerosene which in open air will soften or even melt kerosene, which dissolved or at least softened many plastics in the building (styrofoam insulation and ceiling panels, PVC insulation in cables, plastic office furniture, plastic carpets, etc.) and those plastics also ignited, not to mention cellulose-based materials (wood, paper) which burns quite hot.

Add in the fact that the towers are structures with very tall vertical shafts distributed throughout the middle portion of the towers (stairwells, elevator shafts, etc) you have created a huge convection situation, which was fueled [sic] by the raging inferno, which only served to add more oxygen to the combustion process causing the towers to form a crude jet engine - as the fire got hotter convection increased, which only added more oxygen to the combustion process. Now, remember that most airliners are mostly aluminum, commercial buildings use a mix of aluminum and steel (aluminum for non-structural studs in partitions, frames in drop ceilings, etc) so that liquified aluminum would come into contact with melting steel and form thermite, making the combustion even hotter, especially with the humongous amount of convection going on.

Ergo, it's no problem to arrive at the conclusion that yes, those planes did in fact cause those towers to implode, and probably could have been predicted beforehand. The planners of that attack were certainly sociopathic and deluded, but definitely not stupid and probably had expected the towers to come down the way they did because of the reasons I mentioned above.

I don't know why people point to kerosene burning in open, still air and say "kerosene can't melt steel" when the whole reason titanium and tungsten are used for jet engines is because kerosene when provided more oxygen absolutely will vaporize steel.

Comment Re:Bring on the discussion of fair sentencing... (Score 1) 230

Read the second amendment in its entirety and read up on the founding fathers' writings leading up to it.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That is, the people. I.e., you and I.

"well-regulated militia" - the government already had the established right to maintain a standing army. This preserves the right of the people to form militias to protect against tyranny (such as the one we had just thrown out of the colonies around that time), and by "well regulated" they meant that they expected The People to be able to competently use those arms to kill tyrants.

Comment Re:FTA (Score 2) 198

No, when Best Buy goes out of business, very likely Fry's will expand.

Best Buy sucks because they never stock the items I want - be it a television, high end AV receiver (for which which I went to a small family-owned hi fi shop), keyboards, monitors, video cards, speakers- you name it, Worst Buy tends to stock the low-to-mid range items, not high end.

Comment FTA (Score 4, Insightful) 198

Best Buy joins other retailers that are feeling the pinch of more shoppers making purchases online and giant e-commerce rivals such as Amazon Inc. stealing business.

"stealing business?"

Really?

I want to buy certain items locally - like the Roccat Ryos MK Pro with blue switches, the ROG Swift monitor, and stuff like that. Best Buy doesn't stock them and I've got Amazon Prime, so why would I order from Worst Buy and wait 3-5 days for an item when I can get it next day for $3.99 shipping? (as far as why Best Buy doesn't stock the ROG Swift when they are among a very small handful of authorized retailers for that model, I have no idea.) I could drive 70 miles to Micro Center down in MA, but then I'd also have to pay sales tax. So, when I buy that monitor, I'm going to get it from Amazon.

Amazon sells MANY things brick-and-mortars don't any more. Want to find a good precision screwdriver set? I can't find a good set at Sears any more, nor Home Depot, nor Lowes, or smaller hardware stores, nor at Best Buy, or even harbor Freight. Sooo, where do I turn? Amazon.

Ass Kickin' ghost pepper hot sauce - I cannot find it anywhere local. So, where do I order that from? Amazon. Amazon stocks darn near everything you can imagine.

Comment Use passphrases (Score 1) 159

I use passphrases - but not the phrases themselves. I come up with a really long sentence and then just use the first one or two letters from each word.

So, like I would come up with a phrase such as "I like Robert Reich, and think he should run for president in 2016" I would have a password "ilrr,athsrfpi2016" that would be easy to remember. Even if it were somehow tangentally related to a site by topic or theme or "feel" it is a whole lot more secure than a combination of dictionary words and numbers, because I'd bet that most people have stupid passwords in the form of "Password1" just to meet complexity requirements that really aren't effective at all because ironically it would only serve to incentivize people try to further simplify their passwords.

The ideal complexity tester would test for dictionary words and leave it at that.

Comment Ryos MK Pro (Score 1) 452

Go for the Ryos MK pro. I have one at work and two at home and at work I make use of the macros for often-used commands. At work I have the red switch keys for quieter typing, and at home I have the blue switch version (there is no substitute for Cherry MX Blue switches).

I also have a Razer BlackWidow Ultimate at home (blue switches) but I gave Razer a miss when I bought additional keyboards because they stopped using Cherry switches.

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