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Comment Missing Options out the wazoo (Score 1) 639

Anarchist reactionary running dog revisionist
Hindu Muslim Catholic
Creation evolutionist
Rational romantic mystic
Cynical idealist
Minimal expressionist
Post-modern neo-symbolist
Armchair rocket scientist
Graffiti existentialist
Deconstruction primitive performance photo-realist
Be-bop or a one drop or a hip-hop lite pop metallist
Gold adult contemporary urban country capitalist

Comment Whatever happened to my Double X bumper sticker? (Score 2) 92

Don't Let's Start was not perceived as a standout track to us or really anyone in our audience until many months after the album was out. A Pittsburgh radio station started playing it like it was a hit song, and that really turned it into something else.

We keep hearing echoes of WXXP in Pittsburgh, even after all these years. That was the most daring rock playlist in the city in the late '80s, but without all the WTF-ishness of WRCT. We'll never see its like again, though, especially with Clear Channel and CBS dominating the market.

Comment Re:Hopefully this accelerates its adoption (Score 1) 437

Until 480 Mbps high-speed USB was widespread, Apple had specific use cases for USB and Firewire. USB replaced ADB and RS-232 for devices like keyboards, mice, and modems. Firewire replaced SCSI for devices that needed higher speeds, mostly hard drives, but later digital video.

The original iPod was a Firewire device because USB 2.0 was still a paper spec when the iPod was in development. If you were prototyping a new device built around a 5 GB hard drive, and given the choice of a 400 Mbps Firewire connection or a CPU-dependent 12 Mbps USB 1.1 connection to fill that drive, which would you choose? Creative Nomad players from that same era had both USB 1.1 (sloooowww sync, but PC compatible) and Firewire (fast sync) ports, but they were also much larger than the iPod. They also had more space, and were not lame.

Comment The Missing Summary from TFA (Score 2, Informative) 429

By linking directly to the PDF, the submitter bypassed a summary from ScriptLogic's web page that directly contradicts the summary provided by angry tapir and kdawson:

The primary goal of this survey was to assess the impact of the weak economy on IT infrastructure projects and we found that, despite its impact on short-term plans, 41% of organizations plan a wholesale migration to Windows 7 by the end of 2010. This is actually a strong adoption rate when compared to the historical adoption rate of Windows XP in its first year which was cited as 12-14%.

Furthermore, in ScriptLogic's primary market segment it is usual for businesses to upgrade operating systems piecemeal as they purchase new desktop hardware, so the fact that nearly half of organizations surveyed are planning major rollouts during 2009-2010 indicates a high acceptance of Windows 7 among small and medium businesses.

Hat tip: Ed Bott

Comment Re:More than enough time... (Score 1) 182

Um, no, the tabloid you linked to said that. Microsoft only said that they have new keyboards, mice, and webcams that leverage some of Win7's snazzy new features.

And why the hell would Creative get out of the PC audio market because Microsoft makes game consoles? That would be like Chrysler throwing in the towel on automobiles because they couldn't compete with Braun razors.

Oh, BTW, Microsoft did an own-brand sound card back in the early 1990s, and it was an also-ran. They left the market and never came back.

Comment Revealing statement (Score 3, Funny) 615

I'd rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.

We've just learned two things about Jim Whitehurst:

  1. Fedora is going to bail his ass out when "cloud computing" goes out of vogue.
  2. On any given night, he is the most knowledgeable hockey fan in the Carolina Hurricanes' luxury boxes.

Comment Breaking my silence, for a moment (Score 1) 6

You know, you really shouldn't call attention to yourself like that. (Or maybe an AC supporter of yours is not really doing you any favors.)

For the record, those submissions you found on my firehose are there because I tagged them. That way, I can exclude that tag from my mainpage firehose filter, thus removing your posts from my view, without demoting it from public view.

I haven't moderated in years, and I don't really promote or demote in the firehose either. I like to use it to see what stories are just under the radar, because they're usually closer to the original spirit of Slashdot than what escalates to the main page today.

I never down-mod opinions I disagree with. I'll debate. I'll argue. I've stooped to trading insults on more occasions than I care to admit. I've walked away in disgust for long periods of time. I've used the "foe -6" preference and tag filtering to ignore people I don't want to deal with. But I will not use Slashdot's moderation tools to deny the other side of a debate their right to voice their position. Do unto others...

You can choose to believe this or not, Twitter. You probably won't, and I'll be disappointed, but no more than that. There's no sense in fretting things that are out of my control. I'm far from the only person you've had heated exchanges with over the years. (You should know. You have quite a list there.) There's not much to be done about that signal-to-noise ratio. The best any of us can do is to state our case, and this is mine.

User Journal

Submission + - What's After Multi-Core?

Alien54 writes: As Moore's Law continues to hold, IC designers are finding that they have more and more silicon real estate to play with. David Chisnall hazards some guesses as to what they might do with it. As he notes: 'Throwing more cache onto chips worked for a little while. Throwing more cores on will work for a little while longer. Eventually, however, a more intelligent solution will be required.'

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