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Comment Re:Who gives a shit? (Score 1) 593

The original note says "To put things in perspective, it [Google] looks like the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers." That doesn't put things in perspective. In 1947, there was a Negro League full of very talented players who were barred from major league baseball. If there was a league of very talented black hackers today, would Google (and the rest of the tech industry) hire them? How long would it take?

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 1) 230

The article talked about 1983. In 1981, you could get the Cadillac of ASCII terminals, the Ann Arbor Ambassador, for about $1000. In today's terms, you might call that a dumb terminal, but in those days, dumb terminal was an LSI-ADM3A, and Ann Arbor Ambassador was the hacker's choice. The LSI ADM-3 cost about $1000 in 1975.

See: http://terminals.classiccmp.or...

You also had bitmap terminal options like Bell Labs Blit/Jerq and BBN Bitgraph that had Motorola 68000s but used them as display processors, sort of like an X Window System terminal, but with their own custom windowing systems.

By 1983, Sun, Apple, and dozens of other companies were selling fancier personal computers with UNIX and other OSes based on the Motorola 68000 series and other CPUs, but their cost was more like $10,000-$30,000.

Comment the Guardian article is wrong too (Score 1) 360

The article says: "how could a siphon possibly work by a difference in pressure when atmospheric pressure is the same for the liquid at both ends of the tube?" It does work by a difference in pressure, just not a difference in atmospheric pressure. The liquid falling out of the exit end of the siphon causes a difference in pressure.

Submission + - Can I buy the Classic interface? 3

Max Hyre writes: LWN almost went under a number of years ago because its volunteer editors couldn't afford to keep it up. The readers rose up and insisted that they be allowed to pay for it.

Can we do the same for Classic?

I'm a nerd. I read. I'm the one in the museum ignoring the display and reading the description. I want text, easily accessible, clearly laid out, and plenty of it. I'll pay to keep the UI I know and love.

The Beta has none of those characteristics. The Beta site is repellent, unusable, and unneeded. I won't use it, and if ``Classic'' goes away, I won't visit /., and it'll be a pity.

How much do you actually receive in revenue for each user? I suspect I'll match it to keep the status quo. Ask us what it's worth to us. I'd certainly pay $1/month, and would think about $5/month. I bet that I'm not alone.

Comment Re:More sources (Score 1) 3

I think Fox is wrong. I believe the explanation I quote below, from this link, is correct.

http://www.zdnet.com/what-happened-to-the-new-york-times-website-7000019453/

Specifically, according to a source close to the NYT, the primary cause for the outage was due to bad firewall configuration change that blocked all incoming traffic and for some reason the IT staff wasn't able to rollback the change.

Comment Re:upside down keypads? (Score 1) 120

That's amusing. It's definitely possible to interpret the text the way you describe, and looking again, I'm sure that's what the author intended. But not only is the preceding phrase describing 123 on the top, so is the following phrase. So the parenthetical phrase refers to the 123 on the bottom, but in "it made for more accurate dialing," "it" flips back to 123 on top.

Comment Re:upside down keypads? (Score 1) 120

Yes, the upside down keypads are his "fault." The obit has the info wrong. Adding machine keypads always had the lower numbers at the bottom, and so do computer keypads. You can google for about this, but I think he figured that American phone users (who mostly weren't adding machine users) were used to reading from left to right and top to bottom, hence the order.

Comment one-quarter the size (Score 4, Insightful) 123

These high-tech mystery machines — 29 feet long — are about one-quarter the size of NASA's old space shuttles and can land automatically on a runway.

The X-37B is not one-quarter the size of the Space Shuttle, it's one-quarter the length of the Space Shuttle. The launch weight of the X-37B is 5.5 tons. The launch weight of the Space Shuttle is 125 tons. This ignorance about the meaning of dimensions reminds me of the Stonehenge scene from Spinal Tap.

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