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Comment Actually Belkin bought them from Cisco (Score 4, Informative) 134

Belkin purchased Linksys from Cisco last year. Linksys no longer has ties to Cisco, thus the unpossible is now possible.

and Belkin routers have a lovely feature that lets you schedule an automatic reboot so that you don't have to manually do it anymore... Rather than fixing the firmware problem that requires the frequent reboots.

Comment Re:so NASA/the US owns the moon now? (Score 1) 251

actually it sounds like they're offering a partnership, not permissions. you need NASA's permission to launch from their facilities, use their resources, and work with them on getting there and back.

China didn't need permission for Jade Rabbit, so I think this is just for american companies to work WITH NASA, not in competition with NASA...

Comment Actually I do, but not for any particular reason (Score 2) 635

My commute is now a 15 minute jaunt on the highway to work, this is not by design, nor is it because I moved closer. (In fact 8 years ago I moved farther away from my current place of employment) back then I had a 30 minute commute, and I suppose if I was still living in that one bedroom apartment (with two kids would be hell) I'd have a 10 minute commute as opposed to the 15...

I drive mostly to and from work, other times, not so much.

Gas prices actually around here gas prices have gone up slightly in the past 10 years, but really, when a look on the historical gas price list. in 2004 gas was roughly 70c/l it was 2005 when gas first peaked 100c/l, this morning it was a comfortable 99.7c/l on my drive in to work. So gas prices are slightly higher, but not as bad as they were 5 years ago, and my salary in the same time has more than doubled. It's settled down. hasn't hit 130 in a long time.

Shopping has become less of a hassle as well. It used to be that when I wanted to buy a new motherboard, it took driving around to about 3-4 different stores to get pricing because not every store had an up to date website. that's greatly improved in the past 10 years, same with shopping for furniture, TVs, etc. What used to be a 10 stop shopping trip is usually down to 1-2 now.

10 years ago I was also single, online dating wasn't really all that big yet, so if I wanted to meet someone I had to go out and cruise around. heck back when I was a teenager that was the primary way to meet girls. Now a lot of people meet people online. heck I met my wife of 8 years online. Also I no longer have to drive as much to go on dates with my wife, as we live together. so that's another.

Also entertainment. it used to be more entertaining to go to the mall, the theatre, whatever the kids of the area did to hang out and usually ended up driving there. now, it's more why drive to hang out, we can hangout online and chat online. so no need for physical contact anymore. (which is another study's results that there isn't enough person-person contact with teenagers anymore.

frankly. There has been a lot of societal changes in the last 10 years, and a lot of that results in less driving. plus the whole recession that hit in 2008, kinda put a damper on being able to afford a car in your teenage years.

Earth

Solar Lull Could Cause Colder Winters In Europe 320

Taco Cowboy writes "Since September of last year scientists have been wondering what's happening to the Sun. It's supposed to have reached the peak of its 11-year cycle, but sunspot and flare activity remains much quieter than expected. Experts now think the recent cold snap that hit North America and the wet weather that hit part of Europe might be linked to the eerie quietness of the Sun. According to the BBC, solar activity hasn't been this low in 100 years, and if activity keeps dropping, it may reach levels seen during the 'Maunder Minimum,' an 'era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century [which] coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.' It wouldn't have a big effect on global temperatures, just regional ones. Why? The sun's UV output drops during these lulls, and the decreased amount of UV light hitting the stratosphere would cause the jet stream to change course. Prof. Mike Lockwood says, 'These are large meanders in the jet stream, and they're called blocking events because they block off the normal moist, mild winds we get from the Atlantic, and instead we get cold air being dragged down from the Arctic and from Russia. These are what we call a cold snap... a series of three or four cold snaps in a row adds up to a cold winter. And that's quite likely what we'll see as solar activity declines.'"

Comment Gravity is not constant... (Score 2, Informative) 299

It's hard to consistantly and accurately measure weight when the force of gravity constantly changes, add to the fact that there may be radioactive decay of trace elements, oxidation of metals, Dust/erosion, sublimation of trace components), it's easy to understand how using a physical object to consistantly measure a weight, would fluxuate. when your "constants" are actually "variables" it's really hard to nail down constants...

Comment Re:9.1 (Score 1) 1009

Why would it be 3.5 Generations after 7? (note I consider 8.1 to be a minor generation as it resolved my major complaints about windows 8, and while the metro start menu is annoying, 8.1 has made it so I see it in my daily usage about... once a month? Heck it's so woefully out of date none of the apps I use are even tiles on the start page.

Just curious why Windows 9 is automatically banished as a corporate version without even being released yet. following the currently established pattern, (which doesn't actually exist, NT4 - 2000 - XP - 7... 1 gen, 1 gen, 2 gens... and you're suggesting it goes 3 gens? 1, 1, 2, 3? why the initial 1, and before NT4 there were several options before that. it's really dependant on where they came from. be it Novell, NT 3.5, DOS, Windows for workgroups, Unix, etc. So some of the moves might have been lateral, some might have been vertical. so really before NT4 it's hard to read. I can see jumping 8, but if 9 works out...

Comment Re:My first multiplayer game (Score 1) 225

A buddy of mine and I played Doom forever, heck we still do on occasion.

We didn't have the ability to play direct connect, so we discovered and figured out how to get modem play to work. we upgraded to USRobotics 28.8 DSVD modems, and figured out how to get them to work and how we could talk over the phone line while playing the game. This was all pre-internet days, so I had to figure out the AT Commands to enable DSVD, to dial, to answer etc. fun times. again lots of trial and error, dropped connections, all that fun stuff. and now, here we are where you can pick up a console connect multiplayer over the internet and instantly play with anyone you want anywhere in the world.

people who say there's been no progress in 20 years, obviously don't know where to look.

Comment Re:Fireworks in 3...2...1... (Score 1) 1251

It's not about offence... it's about freedom of religion, a central tenet of the US constitution. everyone has the right to worship as they see fit. and if that's christian, wiccan, hindu, buddhist, shinto, Satanism, paganism or Pastafarianism.

There should be no offense to putting up another religion's symbolism if the government has already decreed that it is alright to place religious symbolism on government property. There really is no arguement against it.

They don't need a 3/4ths majority, the government has already allowed "Religious monuments" they cannot specify a specific religion as that is unconstitutional.

Comment Re:Fire vs. Potential Fire (Score 2) 293

Why does everyone thing Tesla's done nothing about this? Because they released an OTA workaround patch to their software to allow the cars to avoid the issue, instead of a massively expensive and publicized recall, while they're looking for a better solution? Instead of finding out about a problem, keeping it quiet while they look to fix the problem, finding the problem, finding a fix, then announcing a recall publicly?

I hate when people assume nothing is being done when things are. It makes the people who are actually working on the issue's work seem futile, since if they do have a recall, (maybe replacing the 1/4 inch aluminium with 1/2 inc aluminum if that actually fixes it, but that's something tesla's engineers will have to test and that's just one example) It will be because of all the people complaining that nothing was being done, even though they've been working on it for months. Or worse, it'll garner the response of "It's a knee jerk reaction that hasn't been properly tested, and probably won't fix the problem because it was rushed" even if it's been in the works for months before the issue.

Comment Re:How will this help? (Score 1) 161

yes but for example on a 6 lane N/S Road, with lots of traffic northbound in the morning and lots of traffic southbound in the evening (rush hour), can be changed from 3/3 lanes both directions to 4/2 n/s morning and 2/4 n/s evening. should there be traffic at different times of the day, at say 6-8 PM and 10-12 PM, (say a hockey games traffic) it can automatically adjust the lanes depending on the amount of traffic. heck it could even go to 5/1 or 1/5 depending on volume at the time.

How this is better than the current axle counters they have I don't know, in fact I see it as probably worse. since it's not quite as accurate. maybe easier to plug into the traffic control systems.

it's probably to ease traffic to and from Canucks games.

Comment Re:Steve Jobs looked at this option and rejected i (Score 1) 123

you realize this is not talking about the screen, but the display UNDER the glass right? while I doubt we'll see flexible devices for a long time, I could see curved displays becoming more and more popular. people talking about curved display iphones and android will finally become feasible, of course the glass on top will still be glass, for the reasons you've suggested. using plastic as the display has it's own issues, but your concern about it having a cheap feel, well that's completely ignorant of the article and the technology. the outer glass is NOT the display. look at your computer LCD, chances are it has a plastic film over the glass display. this technology replaces the glass with plastic.

Again. the Gorilla Glass will still be laminated on top of the display, this allows for cheaper manufacture, and even curved displays. imagine a big screen concave tv, just like the projector screens in movie theatres. allowing for better display angles. That's where this will become very good technology. or convex displays, or even wrap-around displays, like it seems many rumour mills keep talking about the next great phone having. Glass won't go away for touch surfaces for a long time.

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