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Comment Re:Well, isn't this nice (Score 1) 961

Yes, if I realized that I would be dead either way in such an assault, I would not try to kill my assaulter and drag them into death with me. Life is too precious a thing for questionable fucks like you to cheapen it.

I would. I don't trust the universe to deliver karma. Sometimes it takes direct action. If killing my assailant means they are no longer capable of killing someone else, that justifies it as far as I'm concerned.

Comment Re:Liberty is the only thing in danger here. (Score 1) 550

Smokeless powder is largely unregulated, as it is considered obsolete. Casting your own bullets from lead ingots is a cinch. While smokeless powder doesn't pack the same punch as the powder used in modern cartridges, it's still quite capable of inflicting lethal injury. You'd just have to get your hands on the brass and the primer. Or, make yourself a black powder revolver and skip the cartridges. It would be extremely slow to reload, but just as fast as a modern revolver for however many shots you equip it with.

Comment All-liquid is worthy. (Score 1) 172

An all-liquid formulation is probably the most worthy of these goals, for increasing energy density still further without losing the seriously impressive power density and charge rate of LFP batteries. The voltage will also be a factor in some devices -- already many devices can be powered by single cells, simplifying charge circuits (no need for balancing or detecting a failing cell) and possibly improving reliability (since one failed cell = a dead pack).

Comment Re:Slashdot Lameness... Deleted (Score 2) 193

If someone has a gun to your head, do you keep your mouth shut and live, or do you mouth off, get your brains blown out, and wind up never able to talk about *anything* again?

Say "what" again! Say! "what"! again! I dare you! I double-dare you, motherfucker! Say "what" one more goddamn time!

It depends a whole lot on how calm you can stay under the pressure.

Comment Re:If Apple still needed to worry about Microsoft. (Score 1) 229

Merry Christmas AMD indeed, provided they could survive the ten years needed to become the dominant x86 manufacturer. Meanwhile, you could expect x86 front ends to pop up on fundamentally different hardware, even if it's inefficient. This move might increase the adoption of non-x86 platforms in the office, and get Microsoft to write for them as well (having a fully operable Office would be enough for a lot of businesses), but AMD would be stronger than they are now.

Comment Re:Any reason these have to be corrective only? (Score 1) 68

I think these will have a limited but important role in certain fields. Any occupation where you have to wear eye protection anyhow, and can use the magnifications, may be potentially assisted. Indoors, one can generally throw more light at the problem. Increasing lighting by a factor of four to account for two stops of loss is mostly a cooling problem, though it may be uncomfortable for anyone NOT wearing shaded goggles. With the touch of a button (which may or may not be attached to the eye protection itself), one could magnify the work area. I wouldn't be surprised if gem cutting and appraisal see this technology adopted pretty quickly.

Where these WON'T be so useful is outdoors in uncontrolled conditions, where you have little control over the light level, and the polarizing lenses are an extra piece of hardware you might not otherwise need (and the polarization is not always a good thing, it can make glare WORSE if it's rotated wrong). Even there, they may prove useful in certain niches -- it's not at all unusual to wear sunglasses at the beach, and nobody would see the contacts behind them. Still, the worst someone can do with them is gawk from a distance, since they aren't cameras. They can ALREADY be long-distance lechers, this just makes it less obvious.

Comment Any reason these have to be corrective only? (Score 3, Interesting) 68

Is there some fundamental reason why these are only useful to someone with damaged vision? Since they are not implanted and have no moving parts, they shouldn't be much worse than regular contact lenses, which some people wear for purely cosmetic reasons. The biggest problem I can see would be the light loss from the polarizing glasses. Two stops is significant, especially at night, and the ability of the iris to compensate will be hampered by the size of the central pupil in the contact lens.

Comment Re:It's dead either way, why not try this? (Score 1) 371

It would be wiser to assume that all your ham radio traffic is being monitored. It's out there in the clear, the only "secrets" being what frequency you'll pick, and when. A software-defined radio receiver will take care of the first, and always listening will take care of the second. If you have someone specific you want to avoid, and you know where they are, you could deliberately beam your signal away from them -- but if they have multiple locations you're sort of screwed. Propagation from most antennas is a cone at best.

Comment Re:reclaim their original battery? (Score 1) 377

I don't know how old the spec is, but my 98 Acura followed it and my 89 Subaru does not. There is no indicator inside the car for where the fill pipe is. More confusingly, the Subaru has only an unmarked lever which operates both the trunk release AND the gas cap cover door. Pull up to open the trunk, push down to open the fuel door. Then again, ALL the driver controls on an XT are totally weird. Almost nothing (except the turn signal lever) is where you'd expect it to be from previous experience, yet everything is within easy reach once you find it.

Comment Re:Use COTS first, custom-fill the gaps (Score 1) 36

No, this was a standard trackball you'd find in an office supply store, just the largest one you'd typically find. The ball was about the same size as a typical billiard ball. It may have even been the same, Ive seen people use billiard balls (usually the 8) in opto-mechanical trackballs. It was a lot like this Kensington, but beige and it had only two buttons and a scroll wheel rather than the scroll ring. It didn't matter (she only used the ball part) until I had to hack it to think the middle pedals were its scroll wheel. Everyone else used a mouse on the right, and her trackball lived on the left.

The one she was using for buttons and that I initially hooked the pedals to was this Logitech, with a rather small ball intended to be operated by the thumb. I think you can see why this would be awkward for any kind of foot manipulation, even if used only for buttons and scrolling.

Comment Re:Use COTS first, custom-fill the gaps (Score 1) 36

Heh, she was jailbait that many years ago and I have no idea where she has gone or what she has done since, except for hearing that she got a bad boob job. When I knew her, she looked a fair bit like Maisie Williams does now (when she's not playing the role of an 11 year old Arya Stark).

I remembered (after posting) that her brother was moderately dyslexic, and the family's approach to both of them was much the same -- "we'll get you what you need to circumvent/overcome your obstacles, but YOU have to find the solutions." The attitude worked pretty well on her, and whatever she needed to do, she figured out the best tool for the job. The brother, on the other hand, just didn't think his problem was really a problem at all. I suspect that the fact that her problem was clearly visible meant there was no shame in admitting that she needed to do things differently, while her brother's invisible problem was too shameful to face.

Comment Re:Nice biased wording there (Score 1) 339

e.g. my current main system has a 990FX AM3+ motherboard with a Phenom II 1090T CPU...I haven't bothered upgrading it to an FX-8350 piledriver CPU but will probably upgrade it to a steamroller CPU next year.

I can understand why. It's rare (maybe 45 minutes in a month, always when encoding video) that I can keep all 6 cores pegged on the 1090T. If it's a Black Edition, it will happily run all 6 cores at the Turbo speed provided you upgrade the cooling (which is advisable for the sake of your ears anyhow). The real advantage over the quad-core is that you can pound on it, but it still has just enough power to respond to requests in a reasonable manner.

I don't overclock mine any more just because it's too damn loud, though I would if I did more video encoding. The extra heat from running at 3.6 instead of 3.2 makes the exhaust fan spin up, and at 4 GHz (+0.0775V) it will eventually heat to the throttling point which is obviously counterproductive. The (2 x 120 mm) CPU fans CAN'T spin up. I locked them at 100% because I can't hear them over the other fans at all, unless the case is open. Why throw less air at the CPU if it doesn't produce a tangible benefit?

I've considered getting more exotic cooling so I could choose between stock and near silent, or significantly overclocked but loud. Better still would be to put it in an adjacent room but I can't currently cut a hole in the wall to route the cables though. I did that in the last place though.

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