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Comment Re:Streetlights anyone? (Score 1) 291

Would it be ok if the electric company required you to aim your yard light into the street for the publics free use?

your electric company has never tried to sell you "security lighting"? It's exactly that, they charge you money to install a light that shines on the street. You have to pay every month on your bill for it.

Data Storage

How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive 438

itwbennett writes: For too long, it looked like SSD capacity would always lag well behind hard disk drives, which were pushing into the 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB. That seems to be ending. In September, Samsung announced a 3.2TB SSD drive. And during an investor webcast last week, Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Meanwhile, hard drive technology has hit the wall in many ways. They can't really spin the drives faster than 7,200 RPM without increasing heat and the rate of failure. All hard drives have now is the capacity argument; speed is all gone. Oh, and price. We'll have to wait and see on that.

Comment Re:Meet somewhere in the middle (Score 1) 179

Up to $0.25 per Mb in overage fees or $256 per GB.

That sounds like you're talking about subscribers with no data plan, the most expensive overage fee for data plans is $59.96 per GB (not GiB as you mistakenly gave the price for).
However for most of the dataplans it is $10 per GB as per
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/dataplans.html
Elsewhere on their site (burried in http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html It looks like they may be going up to $15 per GB. All of these prices, even the highest of $59.96 per gb are far lower than your listed $256 per GB(sic)

Comment Re:Orbital (Score 1) 443

It's not a terribly serious setback in the history of space flight, but it could be a serious blow to Orbital.

Their whole program is built around the idea of using old surplus Soviet-era rocket engines, originally designed for the ill-fated N1 program. (The N1 program, as a sidenote, is responsible for one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history when one of its launch vehicles had a failure shortly after takeoff. On top of a zero-for-four launch record, it's not the program I'd pick to emulate.)

My understanding of the Soviet engines is that they have some design features that make them lightweight for their output, but represent tradeoffs not typically taken on Western engines, due to the risk of "burn through". But some people--perhaps including Orbital--thought that the designers had solved the problem and the risks were overstated.

Too early to tell right now, but if the engines turn out to have a fatal flaw, that would be bad for Orbital. It'd probably be good for SpaceX, since they're the obvious alternative, but it'd leave NASA down one contractor for the commercial launch program.

Comment Re:Meet somewhere in the middle (Score 1) 179

after the cap you owe a certain amount per gigabyte

You've described AT&T's only data plans new subscribers can get now.
The capped plans are the old grandfathered 'unlimited' plans that no one can subscribe to now. All new subscribers subscribe to say 5 gigs per month and after 5 gigs they charge like $10 per gig

Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 558

The only thing they are not allowed to do is to decline to accept legal tender. I.e. they legally aren't allowed to reject a $100 if it is a genuine bill, regardless of what store policy is.

You should probably let the US Treasury know that as they disagree with you.
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx

Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.

Comment Re:Computer Missues Act 1990 (Score 1) 572

I dont believe that driver is from FTDI. A) Russ Dill is a known kernel developer. B) from what I udnerstand that patch would actually brick legit FTDI FT232RL devices as well. He submitted the patch as a joke but it looks like it just overwrites the checksum located at an even address rather than using a collission by modifying only odd addresses. That even address write would cause a write on the real FTDI chips as well.

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