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Comment Re:Obama Admin! (Score 3, Interesting) 284

Yes, I know Bush did a lot of spying, but that's different than encryption. Did any of Bush's honchos run around saying people shouldn't use encryption because the government needs to see it? Or pushing for laws banning the use of encryption, or trying to force everyone to have government-approved encryption chips with NSA backdoors built-in? Clinton did all of that, completely publicly, and now Obama's doing it.

Maybe I'm misremembering things, but I do remember "strong" (>40-bit) encryption being illegal to export during the Clinton years, and this finally being relaxed during the Bush years because it was so stupid and everyone outside the US already had it.

Yeah, Bush is evil and all, but I don't remember him being so obnoxiously paternalistic and publicly saying we should only be able to use computers with government backdoors; instead, he just did things behind everyone's backs.

Comment Re:SCUBA still has analog ... (Score 1) 155

Depends on the domain. Analog gauges are still popular

Sorry, you're right. I should have specified I'm really talking about cars here. For simple/low-cost applications, they still use analog mechanical gauges. For instance, the gauge on any air compressor is just a cheap mechanical gauge.

Also, mechanical gauges do tend to be very rugged. That's not a useful trait in a car, but for scuba gear it certainly is.

Comment Re:Claim is BS. (Score 1) 155

What did they expect? It was supposed to be the successor to the CRX and (first-gen) Insight, and was way worse than either of them. They should have made it out of aluminum, at the very least.

Even so, I really don't understand how it came out so bad. It's underpowered, but gets terrible gas mileage. I can go get a Mazda3 that's much bigger (4-door hatchback), and way more powerful (2.4L SkyActiv engine) and faster, and still get the same mpg (38). WTF? And the Mazda isn't even hybrid! It's just a gas engine, albeit with direct injection (which lots of cars these days have now). How did they manage to make a tiny little car with a tiny engine that's hybrid and still get such lousy mileage?

Also, I don't think the Prius is aluminum either. And it too is faster than the CR-Z while being much larger, and gets much better fuel economy. So aluminum might have helped a little, but not that much. It seems that Honda's engine tech is just plain obsolete now. Everyone else is doing much better even with steel frames (though there's more use of high-strength steel alloys these days).

Comment Re:Claim is BS. (Score 1) 155

There are plenty of cars now where an analogue speedometer isn't an option.

Have you been to a car dealership since the mid-1980s? I can't think of many cars which have digital speedometers only. Perhaps the Honda CR-Z, but that isn't exactly very popular (in fact, it's a flop; I'm surprised they still sell them). And even those cars still have analog tachometers (which is arguably much more important to be analog than the speedometer, because the tach changes so much faster).

Comment Re:Claim is BS. (Score 2) 155

No one, outside of some small specialty manufacturers (including some old-time avionics makers), makes analog meters implemented mechanically any more, if you mean something where a cable turns some gears which turn a needle. They're all electrical and digitally-controlled now, and have been for some time, and for good reason: mechanical meters simply aren't as reliable or accurate.

Comment Re:Claim is BS. (Score 1) 155

You're missing my point (see especially my comment about the Tesla). Regardless of the actual mechanics of the instrument (moving needle vs. LCD screen that depicts an image of a moving needle), analog gauges aren't going away, probably ever. Yes, we'll probably just have LCD screens for our dashboards soon, but they're still going to show us images of analog gauges, because they're inherently more useful than a numerical readout.

Comment Claim is BS. (Score 4, Informative) 155

There's plenty of analog meters being made every year. Just look at any automobile dashboard. They experimented with digital dashes back in the 80s and quickly abandoned them. Even Teslas, which have an LCD screen in the dashboard, have analog meters; they're just done in software, no different that a phone or PC that has an icon of an analog clock face.

Interestingly, though, modern cars with analog meters actually have them driven digitally; the indicator is really a servomotor, driven by digital information over a vehicle bus.

The reason analog instruments still prevail is because they can be interpreted easily at a glance (by looking at the position of the needle, rather than reading numerals and having to decide if those numbers are within a good range), and also because they show trends and rates of change which digital gauges do not.

Comment Re:TFA isn't about trolls (Score 1) 728

Huh? I don't think I'm mistaken at all. The previous poster said this trolling was "rampant against males as well", and then provided a list from Wikipedia of males who had been SWATted, except that Miley Cyrus was also in that list. Unless she's had a sex change very recently, I'm quite sure Miley is female. The comment about Justin Bieber is supposed to be a joke.

Comment Re:Alternative headline (Score 1) 429

There's no indication here that this tool isn't also meant to be used by network (store) owners. How else are store owners going to prevent people from using BitTorrent? If they were really savvy they'd know how to do so with the router's configuration tool (by looking for offenders and banning their MAC addresses), but that's laborious (they'd have to constantly attend to it as customers come and go, and a consumer router only has so many entries for blocked MACs) and requires specialized knowledge. This tool supposedly makes it automatic, though it of course it works in an entirely different way.

Comment Re:TFA isn't about trolls (Score 1) 728

And once again, this is not a feminist issue. Doxxing an SWATting are rampant against males as well. From Wikipedia:
* In the past, there have been swatting incidents at the homes of Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Chris Brown, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Clint Eastwood.

Miley Cyrus isn't a male.

I'm not sure about Justin Bieber....

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