Comment Re:Priorities. (Score 1) 555
So you think government should not spend during a recession?
Do you lack any knowledge of economics or do you really want a new great depression?
I think they lack all knowledge of economics.
NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games 155
After a group of StarCraft II beta testers reported technical difficulties following the installation of NVIDIA driver update 196.75, Blizzard tech support found that the update introduced fan control problems that were causing video cards to overheat in 3D applications. "This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic graphics." NVIDIA said they were investigating the problem, took down links to the new drivers, and advised users to revert to 196.21 until the problem can be fixed.
Comment Re:Things I look for (Score 1) 456
Hi,
As a systems administrator at a hosting company I'd suggest you do the following:
* Use a 3rd party registrar. A real registrar not a reseller of a reseller of a reseller of a registrar. Do not keep domains that have any value with your hosting provider.
* Use a 3rd party backup service. Do not depend on your hosting providers backups.
So what you are saying is that you or your company can't deliver services that you or your company promiss so it's your customer's fault for not buying additional services from other people that can?
You may want to find a different line of work or a different company to work for.
Comment Re:Things I look for (Score 1) 456
I agree with TheReaperD, I wasn't pleased with the outages - but a company that posts to their status admissions of errors or unplanned outages and other issues like server specific problems (my server was running out of memory so they yanked it down afterhours and doubled it).
Previous hosts wouldn't tell you jack squat and would blame my ISP's routing tables (!?) and DNS servers for downtime. If I were making money on the sites - I would reinvest some of the profit for higher hosting offerings that come with SLAs. But I don't so Dreamhost works well for me.
Comment Re:Things I look for (Score 1) 456
I couldn't agree more - VPS is the way to go if you don't want to be tossed in a box with the rest of the morons running php proxy and chatback forum scripts that run your server loads into the sixties.
I use dreamhost vps, but there are many others that come highly recommended. I get free hourly, daily, weekly backups (and self service restores). Sure they're not a bulletproof as Rackspace or other more expensive hosting providers but they let you know what's what in their status blog and their support has always been top notch (especially if you're having a problem, admit you screwed something up, and ask nicely
I spend about twenty bucks a month for unlimited/unlimited + 50GB of personal backup space. I'd say that was a pretty good value.
WARNING, AD: If you're interested in signing up, use GEEK25 for $25 off your signup (any level).
Comment Re:Ah, and is it Useful? (Score 1) 200
We're looking for such a solution for a lecture room that also is used for online testing. Do we deploy three wireless AP's to handle the load of sixty to seventy wireless laptops or just one of these optical devices? Then account for modification or addition of optical wireless gear to each of the laptops and my costs are now far beyond that of the three APs.
Pretty cool solution - but not very practical for most situations.
It's an answer looking for a question.
US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum 1324
A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."
Comment Re:Apple to force ads on the iPhone?! WHAT? (Score 1) 463
Here's your million dollars - no.
How much ad revenue would they make on me, you, or the average schmoe? A few bucks at the most per month? Hardly justifies giving up my screen and bandwidth for a token discount on an outrageously expensive cell phone bill.
Comment Re:Probably just a bug. (Score 1) 332
try robots.wtf
Comment Re:This is not a shock... (Score 1) 422
I've seen similar price differences in the same retail outlet, the only difference being whether or not an item was covered by Medicare. I needed to buy a portable wheelchair for my mother to use occasionally. The store marketed chairs for $120 to people whose chairs were not paid for by Medicare, and then chairs for $500 for people whose chairs were paid for by Medicare. The more expensive chairs looked better, but were not functionally different.
There is actually a justifiable reason for this... but I'm only going by what I hear from people I know who work in the medical field.
Medicare pays pennies on the dollar for most medical treatments, but are much more accommodating in hardware or support devices that get people out of hospitals. So, to recoup some of the money hospitals (and insurance companies) are losing to medicare patients - they farm the markets they can harvest.
Comment Re:Um. (Score 1) 619
Streaming to my legacy device which cannot be easily reprogrammed such as my Xbox 360 really relies on XVid. So, for now, I guess Handbrake is the rough beast. Oh well, I use dvd::rip anyway and avidemux when I need to do some transcoding. Computers can be easily upgraded, devices not so much: that is something to keep in mind too.
I don't want to take the air out of your argument... but... your Xbox 360 never had the ability to play divx/xvid videos until Microsoft released an update. They can release another to accept mpeg4 - but they won't. That's a great feature for the next Microsoft gaming console.
Comment Re:Do not want. (Score 1) 199
If I wanted color, I'd hit an iPod touch, tablet PC, or laptop.
You must be one of those "I want my phone to be just phone" people.
Hardly... I have a deep appreciation for multifunctional devices. I'm simply saying that if by introducing color to an e-ink device you make it dimmer and slower - then go home, you're fucking doing it wrong.
Don't cripple the kindle just so it can show a color picture. Make it color, brighter, AND refresh faster - then I'll be interested.
Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off His Wi-Fi 428
Scyth3 writes "A man is suing his neighbor for not turning off his cell phone or wireless router. He claims it affects his 'electromagnetic allergies,' and has resorted to being homeless. So, why doesn't he check into a hotel? Because hotels typically have wireless internet for free. I wonder if a tinfoil hat would help his cause?"
Comment Do not want. (Score 5, Insightful) 199
The beauty of grayscale eink is that it's very close to paper - making it easy to read for long periods of time. However, the transition time on the Kindle or other grayscale eink devices is long enough to be annoying. Making these transitions longer will decrease my satisfaction in them, making the display dimmer will make them worthless to me.
If I wanted color, I'd hit an iPod touch, tablet PC, or laptop.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
Comment Re:still flogging this old dead horse? (Score 2, Funny) 360
He offered $500 to Sony, to my knowledge, and they turned him down and have now succeeded in the big bucks.
Sony needed much more to offset the cost of developing and marketing all their proprietary formats... ATRAC, MiniDiscs, and MemorySticks all took a lot of effort you know.
