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Comment Re:Who cares about performance? (Score 2) 108

Besides gamers, who cares if it takes a few more milliseconds to launch a web browser or process an image?

I do... because that's a few less milliseconds my CPU isn't idle, which reduces battery life.

Seriously, does anyone understand this benchmark? I see pairs of performance and battery life numbers which seem to have no real-world meaning, so it's not at all clear to me why it makes sense to compare them. In addition, it's common that for a given set of tasks, a device with better performance will use less power because it spends more time in an idle state. The notion that devices trade off performance against battery life makes little sense in the ARM world.

Maybe this actually does say something useful, but if so I'm too dense to see it.

Comment I think they way you tune it can be bigger (Score 2) 108

I mean sure if you use heavy usage games lots then maybe this matters, but most of your use is standby and cell network stuff. I've got my Note 3 lasting 3-4 days on a charge. How?

1) Turning off background services that slurp up battery. Just took some looking at the battery monitor and then considering what I needed and didn't.

2) Turning off additional radios like Bluetooth and GPS when I don't need them. It doesn't take long to hit the button if I do, and even when they aren't doing things actively they can sip some juice.

3) Having it on WiFi whenever possible. In good implementations on modern phones it uses less power than the cell network. Work has WiFi and I have a nice AP at home so most of the time it is on WiFi.

4) Using WiFi calling. T-mobile lets you route voice calls through WiFi. When you do that, it shuts down the cellular radio entirely (except occasionally to check on things) and does all data, text, and voice via WiFi. Uses very little juice and an hours long call only takes a bit of battery.

The WiFi calling thing has been really amazing. When you shut down the cellular radios battery goes way up. Not just in idle, but in use. Prior to that (when I first got it T-Mobile was having trouble with the feature) standby life was good, though not as good as it is now, but talk seriously hit the battery. Two to three hours could do it in almost completely. Now? I can do that, no issue, and still have plenty left.

Comment Re:Bruce, I know why u r disappointed. Let me expl (Score 1) 187

So, I see this as rationalization.

The fact is, you took a leadership position, and later turned your coat for reasons that perhaps made sense to you. But they don't really make sense to anyone else. So, yes, everyone who supported you then is going to feel burned.

You also made yourself a paid voice that was often hostile to Free Software, all the way back to the SCO issue. Anyone could have told you that was bound to be a losing side and you would be forever tarred with their brush.

So nobody is going to believe you had any reason but cash, whatever rationalization you cook up after the fact. So, the bottom line is that you joined a list of people who we're never going to be able to trust or put the slightest amount of credibility in.

And ultimately it was for nothing. I've consistently tried to take the high road and it's led to a pretty good income, I would hazard a guess better than yours, not just being able to feel good about myself.

Comment Re:Android (Score 1) 77

The structure varies from device to device, yes. On the Nexus devices I'm most familiar with, which don't have SD card slots, there is no real sdcard partition. There is an /scdard, but it's a symlink. The advantage to not having a separate partition is not having to create a hard decision about how much to allocate to /data and how much to /scdard. This is one of the benefits of MTP over UMS that I mentioned, and it means that in terms of storage allocation you need only talk about /data, since it's the only r/w partitiion (except for actual SD cards, of course).

Comment Constitutions CAN be useful, if honored. (Score 0) 475

Yeah, this is stupid. You can't sentence people for drawing and using a paper and pen, whatever the content of their drawing, ...

Sure "you" can. This was in the UK. They don't have First Amendment protections, so the law is what's passed and enforced.

Last I heard, some jurisdictions in the US have some similar anti-pornography laws, banning drawn images. In the US the anti-pornography laws are justified against the clear prohibition on such laws in the First Amendment by claiming the purveyors of pornography are part of a conspiracy with the pornographer who abused an underage child by photographing her.

Obviously this justification is bogus when the image is drawn. So while the prohibition is on the books, I understand the authorities are reluctant to actually enforce it against anyone who has enough money to appeal it. So they tend to use such laws only when they can't find (or plant) any actual child pictures on a target(s) they've raided, but still really want to jail them and seize their assets, or as a "pour on the counts" measure when knocking the law down wouldn't do much for the accused.

(I think the underage are underripe and have no personal interest in such fare. So I don't follow the issue closely, except when someone threatens to post such stuff on a system I administer. Maybe somebody else, with more reliable and/or up-to-date knowledge, can comment?)

Comment How about an insulated box at the counter? (Score 1) 342

Even if the Nevada health department DID have an objection, what's wrong with having some ice bags in an insulated box at the counter and calling THAT a "cooler" or "icebox"? It wouldn't need to be powered, because it would be kept cold by the steady flow of fresh bags from the supply truck.

You'd have to run it as a FIFO, to avoid having bags sitting there for hours. (Bag porters put 'em in one end, clerks pull them out at the other - or put a moving partition in and run it as a circular buffer, so you don't have to slide them down. No additional communication between counter workers and bag-porters is necessary, because the available open space signals when more bags need to be toted. Only downside I see is that if/when the counter is about to close, you need to signal the porters to stop, to avoid having unsold bags in the cooler that need to be ported back to the truck to keep them from melting during the break.)

Such a local buffer would do all you want, without leaving the ice bags sitting on a counter in the desert. Also: The ice would be seen by the customers to be fresh, rather than partially melted while waiting to be picked up.

Comment Re:So what qualifies? (Score 1) 489

In Germany, it's written all the way into the Constitution. The very first article reads (in official translation), "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." The second article, about personal development, specifically limits it to development that doesn't contradict the previous part.

That doesn't make the definitions any more concrete, but it does suggest that it's a country which takes it seriously, and the requirement pervades the rest of the national law. I don't know if that can be adopted into a country like the US, where a great many people want their First Amendment rights to trump everything else. I can even see the case for it. It's just that I hear it defended most vocally by people who aren't in a position to be harassed and don't see the way it can interfere with the rest of their lives.

Comment Re:864 million bananas (Score 1) 275

It is a convenient standard unit. Inexpensive and tasty. Can be used for measuring mass, volume, friction (obviously), and radiactivity (due to its high potassium content). A chest X-ray is equivalent to 70,000 bananas.

Given the other sub-thread asking about the conversion to Libraries of Congress, apparently it can be used to measure data content as well.

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