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Comment Re:Yesterdays Enterprise (Score 2) 512

So you want to strap yourself to an exploding console? Neat!

I actually wonder at the many plot devices that placed high power conduits through control consoles. I mean, really? Why wouldn't you design the bridge system as low power system sending control signals to high power equipment in some cabinets a few firewalls away?

Comment Re:Can I vote for.. (Score 1) 512

Almost all characters in TNG got twisted and bent to fit the plot at some point or another. This is really annoying to watch at times. I find it amazing that the actors put up with that and managed to act out these scripts. There's actually some really good acting from almost all main actors in there, but also a good amount of bad acting as well.

Comment Re:I was wondering about that... (Score 1) 377

As far as I can tell the problems aren't the Realtek chips themselves, but some half-assed mainboard integration. The snd-hda-intel driver is full of workarounds for wrongly connected chips. Plus, nobody cares for the quality of the analog audio signal which is generated and amplified on the board. The result is fucking terrible. I can listen to my programs working when I connect my headphones to the onboard audio. At times I was able to tell which stage of the algorithm the GPU was computing from the noise.

Comment Re: 35 GB of uncompressed audio? (Score 1) 377

40GB is going to be the start of the future. With every new generation of consoles so far the size of the game data increases *a lot* because the new generation of console hardware is capable of handling that and competition with other game titles required that the hardware gets pushed to the limit. Get used to it!

Comment Re:all PRNGs are deterministic (Score 1) 143

Randomness in sensor data surely exists. Take a recording with your computer's microphone or line-in port with maximum amplification and take the least significant bit of each sample. Unless you manage to get a recording where each and every sample is clipped (most won't be, even if you have clipping), the result is very random and absolutely not predictable.

Comment Re:Why now? (Score 1) 105

Actually, it is quite true. Slowness in Java can come from many things (inefficient algorithms, inefficient memory usage, overloading the GC with too many claimable objects on the heap, ...), but the code that JITs generate for Java can be very good and fast. At least Sun's/Oracle's JVM really can claim a good performance. I've benchmarked it repeatedly by porting Java code to C++ and running it on the same problem. And I've been surprised. If there's a big performance difference somewhere it's most likely because your own code is doing something wrong and there's often a way to fix it. Of all the things annoying or broken in Java, raw execution speed isn't.

Comment Re:I'm sorry I'm an idiot (Score 1) 204

Well, neither gtk nor qt use any drawing primitives within X. They have their own, quite complex internal rendering backends for that and just push the resulting images to the X server in many cases. The reality is a bit more complex than that because they can draw things entirely in software, use OpenGL acceleration, fall back onto the X server for some things where it is useful and so on. But essentially, when you run a gtk and a Qt application at the same time, you're already running that kind of duplication. So with a lightweight display server you get at least the third independent implementation out of your RAM.

Comment Re:Word unlocked. (Score 1) 276

He is the head of the state. Similar separations of offices exist in other countries. The Weimar constitution did give the President a lot of powers, for instance, to declare a state of emergency and to take any emergency measures he deems necessary. This was a loophole that was exploited by Hitler.

The successor of the that constitution removed almost all remaining powers from the President. This is a mostly representative role these days with very little freedom for making decisions. Most of his tasks (appointing the Chancellor and Ministers, signing laws etc.) are strictly mandated by the constitution. The only exception I know is that he may call the "Bundesverfassungsgericht" (special court ruling on matters related to the constitution) before signing a law if there are serious doubts about the law being in accordance with the constitution.

Comment Re: The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug. (Score 1) 726

The film opens with a recruitment commercial which is a bit over the top and then shows a small ad like piece of clear propaganda about the new planetary defenses. This should make you suspicious of the tone of the film right there. And as the film goes on, these inserts become more and more ludicrous.

Comment Re: The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug. (Score 1) 726

The bugs are not defeated in the film. The ending narration states that the war effort is ongoing with more success than ever. So nothing really has changed. It even stands to reason that the whole Brain Bug hunt is pure propaganda to boost morale and nothing that is actually expected to have a positive impact. Remember, when you watch Starship Troopers you are actually watching a propaganda program that is running a story about some recruits and their story in the service. So you cannot take take anything in the movie quite at face value. Would you like to know more?

Comment Re:Upstart (Score 1) 362

I honestly wonder what the systemd developers were thinking when they turned it into a feature-creep laden mountain of mostly annoying features which slowly takes over the system from you. The way it seems to force itself into other things in the system (e.g. by way of systemd-specific modifications in daemons and such) just should have set off a lot of software engineering alarm bells. Why didn't that happen?

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