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Comment This is a non-problem. (Score 4, Insightful) 254

All the newer, faster equipment supports the 5GHz band. Use a dual-radio access point, and set aside the 5GHz band for n/ac only. Run legacy devices on 2.4GHz. Use different network names for 2.4 and 5GHz so that people put their newer stuff on 5GHz.

Easiest way to do this is have "networkname" and "networkname_fast". People whose devices support 5GHz will probably use the fast one. Those with only 2.4GHz-only devices won't even see the "fast" one and use the regular one. Everyone should be (relatively) happy.

5GHz has been a godsend for WiFi performance. Sure, it doesn't penetrate as far as 2.4GHz, but in managed setups this is wonderful. Spend a little bit more on additional access points and have MUCH better performance.

Comment Of course... (Score 5, Insightful) 164

They don't want us to own our music collections!

I've been VERY careful with services like Spotify. If I really like a song, I still acquire a real copy that's mine, rather than depend on Spotify to listen to it when I want to.

The simple fact is that Spotify might be gone someday, yet my MP3s will still be sitting on my (backed up) hard drive.

Comment This is the problem with religious people. (Score 2, Insightful) 903

Religious people can't simply leave it well enough alone, and just say "Well if you think contraception is wrong, just don't buy it." Instead, they have to dictate to others what they may or may not do. "We can't allow you to get contraception through our health plan!"

This kind of thinking is wrong and needs to be abolished. Let each person decide what they think is best for themselves. If someone wants to believe a person will "go to hell" if they do something, that's fine. That someone can simply not do it. But don't try to legislate or make it more difficult for others to do what they like to do, provided they're not hurting others.

Comment Re:iOS 7.1 (Score 1, Interesting) 110

I used to think this way, and avoided buying iOS devices for a while because of this thinking.

Then I realized, iOS devices are more like appliances and less like "computers". They're meant to do a specific task well. They're not meant to be general purpose computing systems.

If I need a real computer, that's what my laptop is for. It's FAR more capable hardware-wise than my phone or iPad. The phone and iPad are both good at what they do, and incredibly stable and reliable. Both times I've jailbroken them, I never really ended up doing much with the jailbreak other than running console emulators, which work better on the laptop anyway.

Comment What the hell is the point of these huge numbers? (Score 5, Interesting) 366

How does fining someone many times their net worth accomplish anything?

Someone could fine me $5 million or $50 million dollars. It doesn't change the fact that I can't ever hope to pay it.

Are these numbers just meant to scare people, or do they *actually try* to collect many times a person's net worth from them?

Comment Electric cars are impressive power houses (Score 4, Informative) 296

A Tesla Model S sitting in a garage has enough energy onboard to run a typical single family home for many days. It's pretty impressive just how much energy our automobiles use when we're driving them; they put the power consumption of homes and small buildings completely to shame.

Comment Re:first time i play a "death match"... (Score 1) 225

I remember having to turn off error correction and compression on the modem to this, because the "packetizing" of the data stream made gameplay very laggy otherwise.

You also needed a 16550A UART for smooth gameplay. Most PCs at the time had 8250s or 16450 which had NO BUFFER! Every byte that came in generated an interrupt, which slowed things to hell. The 16550A had a 16 byte buffer, but that was enough to solve the problem.

The first time I played 4-player multiplayer DOOM on a gaming BBS with a 16550A UART (add-in serial card!) and error correction/compression turned off on the modem, I was blown away. It was the best multiplayer gaming experiences I had ever had to that point.

Comment The biggest irony of the monitoring devices... (Score 3, Interesting) 567

Someone I know has a Progressive monitor plugged into her ODB-II port. It beeps to "berate" her when she is driving "badly".

Apparently slowing down to stop at a red light is driving badly.

Also, slowing down quickly to avoid an accident is also driving badly.

She wants to throw it out the window, because the only time it ever "complains" is when she either stopped at a red light, or avoided crashing into someone who cut her off.

If insurance companies want drivers to use these things, they really have to come up with a better definition for "bad driving" than "slowing down quickly".

Comment I do often wonder what the point of Itanium was. (Score 1) 243

Did Itanium have any performance advantage over x86_64? It certainly didn't have a price advantage, if anything it was horrendously expensive for the performance you got.

We only have a SINGLE Itanium based server here, purchased more out of curiosity than anything else, years ago when the platform was new. There's nothing special about it whatsoever.

I keep thinking the platform should have been declared a failure years ago, unless there was some specific thing it was really good at that I'm not aware of...

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