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Comment Re: Bad programming idea that works (Score 1) 674

It doesn matter. When you run a server room, and a consultancy _firm_ makes that recommendation, it's not your business to do their HR work for them.
A consulting firm that allows this kind of shit is a liability for the health of your systems, and a waste of resources. You need to get rid of them, and put a higher bar if any other company wants your money or attention. That's the safest bet.

Graphics

Ask Slashdot: Why Don't Graphics Cards For VR Use Real-Time Motion Compensation? 159

dryriver writes: Graphics cards manufacturers like Nvidia and AMD have gone to great pains recently to point out that in order to experience virtual reality with a VR headset properly, you need a GPU capable of pushing at least a steady 90 FPS per eye, or a total of at least 180 FPS for both eyes, and at high resolutions to boot. This of course requires the purchase of the latest, greatest high-end GPUs made by these manufacturers, alongside the money you are already plonking down for your new VR headset, and a good, fast gaming-class PC. This raises an interesting question: virtually every LCD/LED TV manufactured in the last 5 or 6 years has a 'Real-Time Motion Compensation' feature built in. This is the not-so-new-at-all technique of taking, say, a football match broadcast live at 30 FPS or Hz, and algorithmically generating extra in-between frames in real time, thus giving you a hyper-smooth 200-400 FPS/Hz image on the TV set with no visible stutter or strobing whatsoever. This technology is not new. It is cheap enough to include in virtually every TV set at every price level (thus the hardware that performs the real-time motion compensating cannot cost more than a few dollars total). And the technique should, in theory, work just fine with the output of a GPU trying to drive a VR headset. Now suppose you have an entry level or mid-range GPU capable of pushing only 40-60 FPS in a VR application (or a measly 20-30 FPS per eye, making for a truly terrible VR experience). You could, in theory, add some cheap motion compensation circuitry to that GPU and get 100-200 FPS or more per eye. Heck, you might even be able to program a few GPU cores to run the motion compensation as a real-time GPU shader as the rest of the GPU is rendering a game or VR experience.

So my question: Why don't GPUs for VR use real-time motion compensation techniques to increase the FPS pushed into the VR headset? Would this not make far more financial sense for the average VR user than having to buy a monstrously powerful GPU to experience VR at all?

Comment Re:Not a surprise (Score 1) 227

It's why on the Android side other than a few top selling phones, cases are non-existent and you either deal with it caseless, use an ill-fitting generic case, or use whatever crappy one the manufacturer supplies.

Remove your goggles.
You don't "deal with it" caseless. It's not a problem you have to deal with, it's the expected case. A phone doesn't need a case for regular use, including being dropped from time to time. That's why they are made of plastic, and they try to make them very light, which helps with damade. Some specific phones do expose their glass a bit more, and have a fragile design, like iPhones. Those do definitely need cases, but a phone without a case is not something you have to "deal with", it's the most reasonable scenario.

Comment Re:Cost Increase...for customers (Score 1) 595

... The other issue is security. You're broadcasting everything whether you think the connection is secure or not. It's a possible exploit vector. I'll stick with wires and my iPhone 6. ...

Analog wires (you can also call them antennas) are very easy to eavesdrop on. Bluetooth is much harder, even though it's still not _that_ hard. Security in your audio shouldn't be a reason to choose analog wires over BT.

Comment Re:Cost Increase...for customers (Score 3, Informative) 595

Pretty much exactly this. Apple is and always has been a HARDWARE company. Removing these things and creating a walled garden on even the equipment that is usable with their devices just feeds right into that model, but goes against the rest of the industry giants (mostly anyway). Problem is this will eventually kill them if they can't keep coming up with revolutionary ideas (and be first to market with them), because everyone can do it cheaper while still making money and being compatible with everything else.

You haven't been paying attention. This is Apple.
They don't come up with revolutionary ideas, at least not regarding their products. They don't have to be first to market. Let HTC/Samsung, or even some guy on Kickstarter be first to market.

They take new stuff that already exists, make it better, package it well, market it well, charge a premium. Nothing revolutionary about that.

As long as their competitors keep producing inferior quality products, they can keep pulling this kind of stuff on their customers. They only need to keep the quality bar very high, and they are safe.

Comment Re:Discuss solutions (Score 2) 343

I think the discussion in this post is great, and this is why I come back to Slashdot.

The problem itself is nothing.
From and engineering standpoint, locating a plane is no big deal. We all know that if we want to find a fallen plane, the best approach is to track it all the time. It's expensive, takes time, but also has a lot of advantages for regulating traffic.

The fact that this is such an obvious idea and is not being done yet, explains how hard it is to make changes to this kind of thing. It's not for lack of ideas. As always, it's execution that counts.

Comment Re:They are doing the same in Brazil (Score 1) 429

OK, read the news.

Dilma's impeachment is not about alleged corruption.
They accuse her of making government number look better than they are, by moving money around.
You can call that bad government, or even hiding the truth from the people, whatever, they are not impeaching her for corruption.

If you want to know further, her party has many officials involved in corruption. The trigger for the impeachment was that they accused some guys that were part of the governing coalition, of corruption. The guys felt betrayed, and hit back by trying to overturn Dilma.

The president, again, is not being accused of corruption.

Comment Re:They are doing the same in Brazil (Score 1) 429

You forgot to mention that while corruption scandals were in all parties, they affected most of the guys who are impeaching the president.

"The other guy does it too" is a terrible excuse for corruption. Impeach em all, says me.

Read again. I never said that. I'll say it differently:

Dilma is clean. The ones that impeach her are corrupt, she is not even been accused of corruption.

Comment Re:They are doing the same in Brazil (Score 1) 429

You forgot to mention that while corruption scandals were in all parties, they affected most of the guys who are impeaching the president.

Also, the president is not involved in any corruption issue, so the scandals did trigger the impeachment, but they are not the cause or excuse for it. They accuse her of misreporting public finances, not a crime, just something they don't like.

Comment Re:Outsourcing danger (Score 1) 301

Well, that's the thing. If you work for an outsourcing company, they get to fire you on a whim, but you don't get to care, and you can leave some clients yourself, without big harm for you, if you manage your timing. If your project is scrapped, you just go to the bench for a couple of weeks, and then go to a different project, maybe for a different client. In my job, I got "laid off" at least once, only to go back to the same client after a month. I also managed to leave assignments I just didn't like, without having to take drastic measures like change jobs. If they paid a bit more, I could keep doing this for a long time.

Comment Re:Outsourcing danger (Score 3, Insightful) 301

I do work for an outsourcing company, won't say which, but your I don't think you comments about dangers of outsourcing quality are accurate right now.

Not IBM, but some outsourcing companies have learned to provide very good quality services, and do anything, from providing more staff, to taking over all IT from a company.

I wouldn't outsource my core business IT if I were a CIO/CEO, but I know why old fashioned companies would do it. You may pay less, but you can at the same time get way better results. Outsourcing companies scale up and down a lot more easily, they bring experience from other industries, you get some free consulting, and you even get to "fire" employees for any reason, no question asked, no sheriffs to call.

Google

No More Public Access To Google PageRank Scores 43

campuscodi writes: Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that it is removing PageRank scores from the Google toolbar, which was the last place where someone could check their site's PageRank status. Many SEO experts are extremely happy at this point, since it seems that PageRank is responsible for all the SEO spam we see today.

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