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Comment Speed is indeed important (Score 1) 6

Not everyone has a brand-new computer; The manuscript of the book I'm about to publish is in Open Office Word, about 400 pages and full of large images, and autosave is a real pain because it takes minutes to save the file.

Like another commenter said, I wouldn't make it the most important thing, overall efficiency is. But software speed is important to anyone with an older computer, especially a Windows computer, because the computer slows as the registry grows, and the registry never gets smaller, only bigger.

Comment Re:Iran is not trying to save money (Score 1) 409

Well, you have to factor in the Iranian cultural mania for disagreeing with each other. The Shah couldn't keep them under his thumb, neither can the mullahs, who have their hands full disagreeing with each other.

From a tyrant's perspective Iran is ungovernable, which doesn't mean elements in the government don't give tyranny a go on a regular basis. It's an ideal setup for producing martyrs. The futility of cracking down means you have a little space to rake some muck before official anger overcomes reason.

Comment Re:Big giant scam ... (Score 1) 843

I distinctly remember it being promised that the F-35 would beat anything but an F-22 in air-to-air combat, at a fraction of the price. It was not part of the original concept for the system but it was definitely sold politically as being capable of acting as a poor man's F22.

I wonder about the helmet mounted display, whether that's something you'd consider absolutely necessary in an aircraft whose job is to hit surface targets in contested airspace.

Comment Re:Big giant scam ... (Score 1) 843

As a supposed air-superiority platform, this is an utter failure.

To be fair, that was not the original justification for the thing. That was mission creep.

I think the original impetus was to have something stealthy that could do ground strikes in enemy territory. And it makes sense to do a naval version of the same thing. If they'd just focused on that they'd have been done a long time ago with a solid design, which of course in engineering nearly always turns out to be more versatile than you planned for. Adding STOVL and the whizbang helmet (cool as that may be) as necessary elements of the system turned this into an "everything for everyone" project, which almost always turns out less versatile than you hoped.

Comment Re:Dogfights?! What year is it?! (Score 1) 843

Sure you can identify scenarios where the A-10 is useless. But in the last twenty years it's been extremely useful in a number scenarios we've actually faced.

The idea that a system ought to play every role in every conceivable situation is why the F35 performs none of them very well. In hindsight the idea of accommodating the Marines' need for a STOVL aircraft in the same basic design probably dictated too many compromises in the plane's other roles.

Comment Re:Refill (Score 2) 189

What in the printer is going to be damaged by stray toner? If stray toner was an issue then laser printers wouldn't exist because no fuser can possibly hope to keep every particle charged and then melted without any falling off. As to the carcinogenicity of carbon black I'll quote the EPA

RTECS posts a 90-day intermittent inhalation "lowest published toxic concentration" of 50mg/m3 for 6 hours/day (TOXID9, as cited in RTECS) for respiratory tract changes in the rat,

If you think that refilling a toner cart is going to result in anywhere near that concentration of carbon black in your house for that period of time I have a bridge or two I wish to sell you. You're as paranoid as the folks that rail against CFL's due to the tiny amount of inorganic mercury they contain.

Comment Re:Kinda similar ... (Score 4, Informative) 189

The lost leader carts in new printers generally have half or less toner than replacements so you're paying 2-3x as much per print AND you're contributing to e-waste. What I do is buy a toner refill kit and fill up the out of box cart with the same amount of toner as you get in the "high capacity" cartridges that cost more than the printer in some cases. My last 5 bottle refill kit (2 black, CMY) was $30 and printed a few thousand pages.

Comment Refill (Score 4, Interesting) 189

For most Brother cartridges you can find refill kits for a fraction of what even generic toner carts with poor reviews cost. I've had good luck with mine, though you WILL want to buy new end caps as they get damaged enough when you remove them that they will almost always leak toner which makes a mess and ruins prints.

Comment Re: is anyone using it? (Score 3, Interesting) 147

L3 has introduced random delays in their resolvers for anyone off-network so if you want decent performance you'll use just about anything but those. Google had some performance issues when they first introduced their anycast clusters but today they're as fast as anything I've tried.

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