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Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1) 355

Actually they are both pretty meaningless. 12x faster at .. what? 2x faster at .. what? 12x faster at a NOP loop? 2x faster a drawing the screen (1ms instead of 2ms?)

And what is it (other than some very poorly written apps) that requires continuous speed bumps? Are we still not drawing webpages fast enough? Are mp4s still stuttering at full screen? I suppose games might be an issue but most of the ones I've seen run pretty much fine already.

We seem to have hit (or are nearing) a point in mobile devices where increments just dont matter anymore. 500dpi? really? Most people can't tell past 250dpi. 3GHZ vs.. 2? 32 cores vs.. 4?

Comment Re:Really? (Score 0) 144

Again, what does any of that have to do with the Nobel Peace Prize? The girl has accomplished little other than to bring an additional reminder of the plight of women in Afghanistan and some other repressive Muslim countries. Has she brought substantial change in those countries? The man has done good deeds in India but not really anywhere else.

So in the first case you have the award going to a feel good, sympathetic figure and in the second, a country specific figure. Neither has brought peace to the world. Once again the committee has given an award to those not worthy of the award given. Unfortunately, those who mark this as famebait miss the point and instead misinterpret what is being said. To say their work is not worthy of this prize is not to say their work is not valuable, important or deserving of some other more appropriate award, today or sometime in the future.

As to your specific comment re India/Pakistan: If the Nobel committee wishes to make statements like that they should just issue a press release - the peace prize should not be used for that purpose. What would be worthy of the prize is someone(s) who actually negotiate a lasting peace between the two countries and their disputed territories.

Comment Really? (Score -1, Flamebait) 144

Certainly in the west nobody has heard anything about the young girl since she was released from hospital after her recovery. I'm interested to know the real world changing accomplishments she has personally brought to fruition? In addition, Satyarthi "accomplishments" appear to be limited to one country. Is this then the Peace prize for India? I've seen Mother Teresa's name bounced around in justification because of her work in Calcutta but she worked in tends (if not more) nations around the world.

This is another Nobel fail. Nice people but not worthy of the prize.

Comment Re:FreeBSD (Score 1) 303

ha you beat me to it! As much as I loved Slakware for so many years, I will not go back to linux. FreeBSD and .. gasp... xmonad.

In fact, the past year or so I've been running my (desktop) FreeBSD installs through virtualbox on top of Win 8. If I really want, yes I can boot directly into FreeBSD. But the virtualization solution has really worked well for me. FreeBSD on one desktop and windows on another, both across dual monitors.

Comment One of the worst awards ever (Score 0) 276

as I pointed out previously (and was marked as flamebait) this was a dreadful award. Partly because it totally ignored all earlier work, partly because it is awarding based on "technology" which, though difficult, was incremental. But all of that is being polite. You only have to read the cmte. press release to see why the award was given: politics. What was stated over and over? Saving energy! This was all about the politics of "green" and (indirectly) global warming.

Comment Re:Worst physics nobel (Score 1) 243

DId you read the fucking press release? Did it mention any of that other shit? NO.

It was all about political happy "green" talk.

As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights. The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids: due to low power requirements it can be powered by cheap local solar power.

Can we sing Kumbaya now?

If blue LED's were the first LED made, I would not object. But which was a bigger first? Blue LEDs or

The first visible-spectrum (red) LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak, Jr., while working at General Electric Company.[9] Holonyak first reported this breakthrough in the journal Applied Physics Letters on the December 1, 1962.[20][21] M. George Craford,[22] a former graduate student of Holonyak, invented the first yellow LED and improved the brightness of red and red-orange LEDs by a factor of ten in 1972.[23] In 1976, T. P. Pearsall created the first high-brightness, high-efficiency LEDs for optical fiber telecommunications by inventing new semiconductor materials specifically adapted to optical fiber transmission wavelengths.[24]

wikimedia

So my point again - this was a dreadful choice of Nobel prize. And just because something was hard to do and took a technological breakthrough to do is not reason for a Nobel prize. If it were, we could give them out like candy.

Comment Worst physics nobel (Score -1, Flamebait) 243

that I can remember. The jury is far from in on the true worth of LED lighting. Longevity claims are just that, claims and unproven. The cost remains very high and a burden to anyone forced to use LED lighting. Efficiency matters not if the bulb designed for 10 or more years dies in one or two.

While Nobel wished to award for discovery or technology, there had to be better choices on the technology side than this obviously political choice.

Comment TV is not dead (Score 1) 320

When "Dancing with Stars" pulls 12.8M in the number 10 spot and a 8.3 rating, there are still a lot of people watching broadcast TV. The highest ranked prime time cable show that was non-football pulled 4.1M with a 2.5 rating. Netflix has about 45M subscribers. Their most popular showing, House of Cards was estimated to garner about 15% viewership (by one ISP on day), so thats in the 6M ish range.

So while internet based viewing may have put a dent into broadcast (and cable), they are still the heavy weights by a good margin.

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