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Comment Ok, well, let's give up then (Score 1) 129

Well, he seems to be saying a lot here The myth of startup success is just that: a myth. Declining infrastructure, a confluence of events, absolutely requiring the Big Lie merely for Silicon Valley to function. His conclusion is devastating and disheartening. So, seeing that he has proven his point, why don't we just give up? Silicon Valley is a failure. We need to change to a sustainable, workable system that provides benefits to everyone over the long run, instead of enriching a few people. Let's start turning the lights off and winding things down, everyone. It's over.

Comment Re:Cherthoff is a goddamned criminal. (Score 0) 82

You right-wing nutbags make me laugh, shaking your tiny fists in rage at your holy Constitution being violated like an altar boy after Mass. African-Americans had no voice in its creation, it's invalid by definition. The people who wrote it were slaveowners. It's time for your kind to fade into history. There, there, Grandpa, put down your gun, TEH COMMIEZ aren't going to get you, it's nap time now.

Comment Re:Passed data with a ton of noise? (Score 1) 391

The question is: is the signal-to-noise ratio good enough? If so a cheap cable that passes the data is every bit as good as an expensive one, so long as the packets arrive intact at the other end.

Ethernet already does a lot to counter noise. The signals are differential pairs (so instead of having ground and signal, you have signal+ and signal-). The wire pairs are twisted, which keeps them in close proximity. Interference tends to be common mode noise (so for two wires close together it will affect the signal in each wire almost the same), and differential amplifiers are designed to only amplify the difference between the two wires and will therefore reject common mode noise. Each end also has an isolating transformer, and each end has proper termination (to avoid things like reflections which can bugger up signal integrity). It takes a significantly terrible out-of-spec twisted pair cable to make ethernet stop working.

Incidentally, the signalling for 100baseTX ethernet only has a fundamental frequency of 31.25MHz (naively people would expect 1MHz per 1Mbps but this is not so). 100baseTX uses a 3 level (in other words +1, 0, -1) non return to zero signalling (in other words, a 1 will cause the signal to change level and a 0 will cause the signal to remain at the current level - or it might be the other way around, it's a long time since I did this stuff). Each 4 bits is encoded into a 5 bit symbol designed to prevent long runs of 0s (which would cause the signal level to remain constant for too long). Lots of people call an ethernet connection a "broadband" connection, but it's not, it's baseband (hence the "base" in 100baseTX).

Comment This just in (Score 4, Interesting) 66

Newsflash: places with machine shops need to fabricate objects, so they use the latest technology available. Surprise to uneducated people: US Navy ships have machine shops on-board, because they often need to fabricate objects while at sea. The surprising twist: when you're at sea, you can't just order from Amazon, you have to make it right then and there. Crazy, eh?

Comment Re: Caps Lock used to power a huge lever. (Score 1) 698

I'd have to question that (not that she has to do it or the reasons she was told, but the supposed reality that elders can't read normal text as well as caps). One of the pieces of research that was done here in the 1950s resulted in motorway road signs in the UK being in mixed case rather than all caps - it caused howls of anguish from old-timers resistant to change - but the thing is words with lower case text have more of a shape - for instance "Manchester" can be resolved as the word "Manchester" much faster than "MANCHESTER" - it was found you could read the mixed case before you could even resolve all the letters because you could recognise the shape of the word, given that lower case text has more features like ascenders and descenders. Hence all UK road signs ever since have been in mixed case.

Comment sigh (Score 4, Insightful) 210

This is a technical solution to a social problem. I learned this on Slashdot. The problem isn't urine, it's the fact that filthy people - sorry, MEN - are pissing all over the city. All the paint in the world won't fix that. Installing clean, publically accessible bathrooms would fix the problem permanently. Men who already piss everywhere aren't too worried about a little splashback.

Comment Re:Third Dimension (Score 5, Interesting) 1197

Drones are subject to the same rules that RC aircraft are subject to.

It is however extremely hard to enforce. RC users are generally pretty responsible - they've probably spent many hours building their aircraft, and during this time it has sunk in the dangers they can pose, and usually they've joined a local club to help them learn to fly their new expensive aircraft and the club will also coach them on safely operating their aircraft.

Drone users not so much. Many of the ready-to-fly drones require pretty much zero skill to operate, so people can take off and cause mischief pretty much straight away.

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