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Comment Math (Score 1) 277

In the first phase, which lasts 1.5 years, hard drives have an annual failure rate of 5.1%. For the next 1.5 years, the annual failure rate drops to 1.4%. After three years, the failure rate explodes to 11.8% per year. In short, this means that around 92% of drives survive the first 18 months, and almost all of those (90%) then go on to reach three years.

Extrapolating from these figures, just under 80% of all hard drives will survive to their fourth anniversary.

1.00 (total) - .051 (failure rate for 1.5 years) = .949 (non-failure), but only 92% survive for 18 months (a.k.a. 1.5 years)? What?

Comment Re:How about benchmarking the binary? (Score 0) 196

Can you read?

It’s interesting that the code built with the g++ compiler performed the best in most cases, although the clang compiler proved to be the fastest in terms of compilation time.

Just in case you didn't get that: They did benchmark the resulting binaries, and g++ made the best ones.

Submission + - Battlefield 4 DRM Locking Part Of North America Out Of Its Release Date.

An anonymous reader writes: On the whole, Battlefield 4 had a reasonable launch. The have clearly learned from their past experiences with Battlefield 3 and, more notably, SimCity. Still, some customers are unable to access the game (until presumably October 30th at 7PM EDT, 39 hours after launch) because they are incorrectly flagged by region-locking. Do regional release dates help diminish all the work EA has been putting into Origin with their refund policy and live technical support? Should they just take our money and deliver the service before we change our minds?

Submission + - Samsung Smart Kit: Wireless Zigbee Controlled LED Light Bulbs, Android App

An anonymous reader writes: The Apple store has offered wireless LED bulbs for over a year now courtesy of a partnership with Philips Hue. Now, thanks to a recent FCC filing, we know Samsung is jumping into the illumination game with wireless LED bulbs of their own. "Samsung Smart Kit is a lighting management solution that allows you to control LED bulbs in your house using your Android smartphone. Now you can easily turn lights on and off and change the ambiance in your living space with a touch of your finger." The kit will include 3 LED Bulbs (white) and 1 Ethernet to Zigbee Bridge.

Submission + - Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth wins Austria's Big Brother Award (muktware.com)

sfcrazy writes: Austria’s Big Brother Awards has picked Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth for the coveted Big Brother Award for their online extension to local searches. In times like these when spying by these two countries is becoming such a huge concerned there are companies like ownCloud and Kolab Systems which are building technologies to protect users from surveillance states. At the same time it’s unfortunate to see that Canonical is going in an opposite direction by building a system which will make it easier for NSA and GCHQ to reach the hard drives of users.

Submission + - The Telegraph Says Coding Is For Exceptionally Dull Weirdos (i-programmer.info) 1

mikejuk writes: The UK Government is trying to figure out how to teach children to code by changing what is taught in schools. The Telegraph, a leading UK newspaper, has put the other side of the case — Coding is for "exceptionally dull weirdo(s)"
The recent blog post
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/willardfoxton2/100011290/the-government-wants-to-teach-all-children-how-to-code-heres-why-its-a-stupid-idea/
  by Willard Foxton is an amazing insight into the world of the non-programming mind.
He goes on to say:
"Coding is a niche, mechanical skill, a bit like plumbing or car repair."
So coding is a mechanical skill — I guess he must be thinking of copy typing.
"As a subject, it only appeals to a limited set of people – the aforementioned dull weirdos. There’s a reason most startup co-founders are “the charming ideas guy” paired with “the tech genius”. It’s because if you leave the tech genius on his own he’ll start muttering to himself."
Why is it I feel a bout of muttering coming on?
"If a school subject is to be taught to everyone, it needs to have a vital application in everyday life – and that’s just not true of coding."
Of course it all depends on what you mean by "vital application".
The article is reactionary and designed to get people annoyed and posting comments — just over 600 at the moment- but what is worrying is that the viewpoint will ring true with anyone dumb enough not to be able to see the bigger picture. The same attitude extends not just to programming but to all STEM subjects. The next step in the argument is — why teach physics, chemistry, biology and math (as distinct from arithmetic) to any but exceptionally dumb weirdos.

Comment Re:GCC still has a long way to go... (Score 2) 191

Yes, "much better", going by available data. Here's that table with version numbers converted into dates. I deleted rows with missing data for either compiler, and removed other compilers. If I get bored, I might actually go through their changelogs for missing data.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AsJ4G9Bsq42ddHRjbmJNbldUbWxFckpITTFQUkVJUUE&output=html

Comment Re:Lack of competition = stagnation (Score 1) 479

I hope that there are very few people that do their graphics editing inside Word, so using an external tool like Inkscape shouldn't be a burden. For the rest of the listed items, except MathML, try Maqetta (http://maqetta.org). You could get bonus reputation points for your company by convincing them to sponsor MathML support in Maqetta. If you need a more advanced editor, try JetBrains WebStorm.

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