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Comment Re:Still trying to wrap my head... (Score 1) 51

Common inexpensive server machines are very powerful today. Many cores, many GB of RAM. It becomes a management and flexibility nightmare to host all the desired servers on a single operating system.

For example, group A needs a web app hosted in a Tomcat environment; B needs a a JBoss based app; C and D need two different Django apps; E and F need Rails apps.. All of those apps together still only need 10% of the resources of the server. So, you can also host 20 other services on it. Good luck managing the dependencies across all the apps. Try upgrading libraries used by multiple servers. You're stuck with the lowest common denominator. Now add in the fact that group J and K want an app supported in Windows Server 2003, and L and M want Windows Server 2012.

In a VM environment, you can isolate each server into its own OS, with its own minimal set of needed libraries, and you need only manage and test how it works with the single hosted app. You can also bolt on more resources by throwing another server in the cluster and distributing the load.

TL;DR: Servers today are really powerful. You can be very resource inefficient to gain a ton of operational efficiency.

Comment Cause is key (Score 2) 145

They mention looking at the causes "terrorism, pilot error, sudden depressurization and engine failure" to estimate likely search locations. Of course, that's true.. But, if the cause is a rogue pilot who doesn't want to be found (as evidenced by the manual disabling of communications) things get tough really quick.

I guess at that point you're working with the fuel radius and removing areas covered by some form of tracking that would have definitely detected them.

Comment Improvements for more modest uses? (Score 1) 101

This tech looks cool. But, it's a bit surprising to me that we've not had any leaps in basic networking for a long time. Everything is gigabit ethernet. I thought 10Gbps Ethernet would have trickled down to some home usage by now.

A 10Gbps connnection to my NAS, hypervisor, or server would be very useful. Or, just an uplink between switches.. But, I've not seen anything available.

Comment Re:MSFT seems to work... (Score 1) 314

I have an aging '08 Ford, and the Sync system is quite impressive. It has good bluetooth integration with smartphones, voice control of everything and works quite well even compared to new systems in cars sold today.

But, not long after the early success, they added more infotainment bells and whistles and started having reliability problems with Sync. This is at the time that they were releasing new models that had really good reliability ratings mechanically, but they were getting dinged badly for the Sync problems. I'm surprised it took them this long to move on to a new partner.

I like QNX, but given all the uncertainty about Blackberry's viability, it's surprising that Ford would choose them as the partner.

Comment It only meets 98% of my needs (Score 1) 810

98% of the driving I do work great with a basic EV. My daily commute is no problem. The vast majority of other common trips fit comfortably in its range. But, the other 2%.. a round of golf two hours away or a weekend ski trip are dealbreakers. Keeping an EV plus a basic gasoline vehicle is an option, but creates a lot of logistical issues for parking, storage, insurance, etc.

Comment Re:It never worked (Score 1) 69

Yes, I would also like Google Fiber. But, to say they never give back is a bit harsh.. Google wireless was an attempt to give free WiFi. It sucks, and I never use it. But, it was a legitimate attempt. I'm sure they discovered that to do it right it would be prohibitively expensive, and so they let it languish. But, they're not a charity.

Comment Re:It never worked (Score 1) 69

I can confirm. There is an AP on a light post just across the street from my house. When I first moved in in 2008, I tried to use it and found it to be very poor. Trouble getting an IP, trouble authenticating. It was slow at low times. In the evening, it was unusable - I'm guessing because of overload at some point in the network.

Comment Re:It's about jailbreaking. (Score 1) 512

Why would this be power inefficient? They're not running ESX underneath iOS, it would be more akin to a microkernel doing low level memory segmentation. It shouldn't make much difference in CPU/Power. But, it will be less memory efficient.

I don't think jailbreak protection was the big driver. But, there IS a huge push in the enterprise realm for split devices. A tablet/phone that has a hard separation between personal use and corporate use solves a lot of issues. Keep data separate. Enforce cumbersome security requirements only on the corporate side. Allow remote policy enforcement, data deletion, encryption mandates, on the corporate side. In other words, make the corp side hard to use without effecting my personal experience. If the new architecture enables this, it will be a huge win for business use.

Comment MythTV / Multimedia Frontend (Score 1) 197

This looks like it would make a great DVR frontend device IF it has usable video acceleration. The summary says that it does, but there is a huge difference between hardware capable of a feature and functioning Linux support for it.

What video formats does it support? Only H.264, like most recent devices? Or, will it do MPEG2 (the U.S. broadcast HDTV standard)?
Does it have Linux drivers for the video acceleration? VDPAU API support?

There are tons of devices out there that look great on paper, but very few that are usable in reality. If this turns out to work, I'll buy a few of them. But, I'll wait for that to be proven before jumping in.

Comment I disabled mine, I'm sure many others did too. (Score 3, Interesting) 380

My phone made an awful, loud, startling noise. I had never heard it before, and it scared the crap out of me. It sounded like a fire alarm. Once I realized it was my phone, my first thought was some sort of disaster requiring evacuation. Once I saw the message, it was only confusing. No real information, no linkage to details.

A google search turned up more about the Amber alert, which I discovered was several hours away from me in Southern California. I'm in Northern California. The details on the web mentioned that they were suspected of escaping to Texas. So, it was absolutely irrelevant to me. I immediately looked into how to disable it, and had it disabled in a couple minutes. 75% of the others I talked to today also disabled there Amber alerts.

1. The alarm should be more moderate, or at least adjustable. It was very startling. If I had been driving when it went off, I think the effect would have been dangerous. I would have left it on if I could disable the audio alarm and just get the message.

2. It needs more information, or at least a simlpe click-through to details, location radius / distance from me, pictures of the people involved, etc.

Comment Get an AP with "Guest Network" capability (Score 1) 332

Get a new wireless access point. Many new models include what you're looking for. They appear as if they are multiple Access Points. Make two networks:

ChurchBusiness: WPA2 security, user accounts or strong password; full access to internal network
ChurchGuest: Security either as WPA2 password, or no wireless encryption and web redirect to authentication page; has only access to Internet, no church net access.

Many new routers under $200 have the ability to do the above. The Apple Airport Extreme can do the above, as can various Netgear or Linksys. Pick one up at a local retailer, give it a try.

Comment Not likely (Score 1) 232

Apple is not going to enter a market that is already in an aggressive price reduction war. Just look back at their same reasoning for not messing with Netbooks. If they can come in with a way to redefine the market, they would do that. But, not a "me too" television. Many/most other TVs have competitors to TV + Apple TV. Most suck, but they are still close enough to not allow Apple to price the TVs how they want, meaning they won't get in the market.

In the past, I thought they might do a next-gen Apple TV with integrated HD DVR. But, that's another fully saturated market bundled with cable/satellite services. Tivo has been unsuccessful in exploiting that market, so Apple will probably not go there. They could do iOS integrations, like auto-converting content to iPod/iPad/Mac friendly format. But, that would compete with iTMS purchased content. So, it's a no-go.

So, I think that this, like most Apple rumors, is rubbish. It's just someone's "how can I drive traffic to my www site? I'll make up the next possible step for existing apple technology."

Comment Re:Live demo of the definition of insanity (Score 1) 495

Mozilla gets money from advertisement, a well documented example of this is the $$ from google searches via Mozilla's search bar.

So, it's like TV advertisement. It's only worth money if you get a lot of eyeballs. Keep pissing off your users, and they will go elsewhere. As your market share decreases, advertisers willingness to pay you goes with it.

Comment Re:Asus RT-N16 (Score 1) 398

I also use the RT-16. It was at the top of the list in terms of CPU Speed, RAM size, and Flash size when I bought it. It has a gigabit switch, which not all the devices in this class do. It also has 2 USB ports, for storage, printer, etc.

The one drawback was that it only does N at 2.4GHz, no 5GHz support. But, I already had a 5GHz N WAP, so I was just looking for a new switch/router.

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