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Comment Re:Failure rate? (Score 1) 290

I was thinking the same thing. A whole man's job could be to replace these disks. He'd probably always be busy, too.

Estimating that a single drive fails in approximately 7 years, it is estimated that at or around that time and from then on you would have 28,571.429 drives failing per year. This comes to 78.277888 drives per day that would need to be replaced to maintain the system. And that's counting on it being a raid system that can restore itself.

Comment Psychic (Score 1) 302

He can see the movie magically in his head as it plays. He envisions the movie's "psychic vibe rays" in the air as it is projected across to the wall. He can do this in real time, before the light actually hits the wall, so he can see the movie's end before anyone else can. All good psychics can, you know!

Comment Incandescent = NO mercury (Score 1) 990

There is NO mercury in incandescent bulbs... But the coal used to generate electricity does contain mercury.

I have seen numerous people make the untrue statement that incandescent bulbs contain mercury. They do not. However about 50% of our power still comes from coal - and that does contain mercury (and it is released when power is generated...) But it is not in the bulbs themselves.

Think of it this way - would you rather have a CFL bulb (with mercury) break in your home and be directly exposed to mercury (which is a neurotoxin), or would you rather have it exposed in the environment where it will dissipate greatly so it's concentration in any particular area is minimal? Of course the perfect thing would be a energy source that didn't release anything harmful (in particular, for this post, mercury), and halogen bulbs (think incandescent version 2.0), which saves energy, and doesn't have mercury, either.

Of course all Flourescent bulbs, including CFLs, DO HAVE mercury.

As for LED Bulbs, they don't have mercury but their quality of light is quite poor. Our eyes were designed to receive more than a very limited spectrum of light at a time (read: not natural). They are costly and not great for your eyes. I don't understand why the government didn't give tax breaks or other incentives to adopt halogen bulbs instead. The process would support energy conservation, and allow people to use bulbs that won't catch fire, don't contain dangerous neurotoxins, and emit a higher quality of light (which will help save your eyes from extra strain).

We don't have anyone competent in the government anymore - you know - people who are willing to admit they aren't knowledgeable on a topic - and instead obtain outside input from people in that field - you know - people that know what they are doing. People that have a neutral standpoint (nothing to gain either way) but can provide the pros and cons of changes like this? I mean how hard could it be? When I don't know about something I obtain my opinions after researching both sides of an argument and I come to my own conclusions. I become more knowledgeable in the topic and can defend my opinion well because of it. Haven't we grown beyond having opinions based on either incomplete information or from what our colleagues and friends have said? From what I have seen lately, my opinion is that government officials (at least) have not - how sad!

I think it's time we get these clowns out of congress, before it is too late.

Comment Re:I hope that.. (Score 1) 391

The fraud protection is a fraud...

No, it's not... Didn't you read between the lines of the agreement? They forgot to mention that you have to defraud them to get it.

That's why I always use a credit card with them. Had the same problem once. My credit card co took care of it. As paypal refused to live up to their agreement, I helped them make the right choice and made them live up to their obligations.

Comment Stupid (Score 1) 284

My bank a year or two ago required you to enter an answer to two or three questions. I gave them false information (which I wrote down).

Think about it - why would giving a financial more private information make your information more secure? I mean sure it would be harder to break in that way to an individual account, but what if someone hacked the whole server, and got that private information? Wouldn't that make me less secure in the future?

I don't like this ask x personal questions about your customers policy one bit. I like the intent - but I dont' like the possibility of more private information getting into the hands of hackers and evil-doers.

While not perfect, we need some way to authenticate biometric data via the internet - be it a fingerprint or whatever. Or maybe a secret electronic key that only the account holder has - maybe something you plug into a usb port? a physical device that has a hard coded encryption key that only works on your account mixed with a password would be in my opinion much more secure than this 'ask x questions about our customers private lives' trend.

I mean really - it's none of the bank's fucking business where I lived when I was 13, or what my first car was.

Comment Re:With that kind of attitude... (Score 1) 353

That is all speculation on your part. I don't know what hiring practices itself has to do with this - employees generally will do as they are instructed. But as for management... I would like to note that I have never hired employees at Google, or been hired there. Unless you have, it's all speculation on your part. But, I don't see what that has to do with what/how managers approve / instruct employees.

As for the management part, we can only speculate that their management is better than that. I certainly hope it is... But unless either of us has a direct point of reference (aka - somehow interacting with these managers - be it being employed by Google, having one as a friend, etc...), there is no way to state for certain that Google's management is truly better than that.

I definitely hope you are right. But I'll believe it when I see it.

Comment Re:With that kind of attitude... (Score 1) 353

They don't specifically say it. But they don't mention anything about any type of warning either. When a web site doesn't want to work for me it usually states something like "this is an unsupported browser". So while I can honestly only say that it is speculation (based on past experience) on my part, I wholeheartedly believe that my scenario is a reasonable possibility. I don't think it's any less reasonable than your assumption that there will be a warning message displayed on unsupported browsers.

Companies do such things to keep the general public from accessing something that won't work for them, and to help minimize confusion, and to get them to upgrade if possible. That is why, while they don't state it specifically, I believe they may end up doing this user-agent filtering in the end. I realize you do not concur with my conclusion. I think we're at a stalemate. It's anyone's guess what might happen.

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