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Comment: Re:no, thanks, Wayland, I need REAL networking (Score 1) 240

by Crispy Critters (#43948173) Attached to: Clearing Up Wayland FUD, Misconceptions
"I am a bit surprised at the number of people who fight for the cause of remote X."

Well, people use their computers for different things. If you have a hundred people sharing TBs of data and looking at it using massive complex home-grown analysis and modeling packages, remote X makes sense. It's the difference between shipping a few plot windows across the network vs. GB of data. (And X performance can be fine on a wired LAN when you have ping times in ms and no dropped connections. Again, depends on your own personal situation.)

Sure, this is a use case that only applies to a tiny fraction of users, but for those users it is absolutely necessary.

Comment: Re:no, thanks, Wayland, I need REAL networking (Score 3, Insightful) 240

by Crispy Critters (#43942751) Attached to: Clearing Up Wayland FUD, Misconceptions
Exactly, and the reply is always from the point of view of the developer. They want to talk about what style of protocol or something that remote apps will use--I don't care. I want to know whether I can run programs the same way that I do now.

A subset of people like me use their desktop as primarily a terminal to connect to more powerful servers. I want to know if Wayland will let me "ssh me@oldserver-running-X xterm" and then use the remote xterm to start a bunch of programs that open their own windows. I don't want to know how it does it, only if it will work.

If the Wayland developers don't want to commit to making something like this work, that's fine. It just means Wayland isn't designed for me. If they *are* going to make it work, I would feel more comfortable is they would come and say for certain that they are committed to supplying this functionality.

This same point comes up again and again. I think that the developers at some level don't understand the question, because there never seems to be an answer that is straightforward and pitched at the level of the user. (Not that anyone *owes* me an answer. I am just making a request.)

Comment: There IS a clutter problem (Score 1) 250

There is a major clutter problem. Have you ever looked at a browser on a small 16:9 screen? Count the number of lines of menus/tabs/messages/titles there are on the top and bottom of the already-too-short screen. (Heaven help you if you're also using gnome2.) It's a UI disaster. My solution is to stick with 3:4 screens (and not use gnome), but someday duct tape will not be enough to hold that old thinkpad together.

Comment: Re:Been reading ebooks since the 90's (Score 1) 212

The mass-market paperback market is not the important market to compare to, though. Books make their money on sales of hardbacks--that is what pays the author to write. The publisher and author might get 1/2 of the price of $25 hardback. It's not clear they can stay alive in a world of $10 ebooks.

Comment: Re:Problem with egos really (Score 1, Troll) 525

by Crispy Critters (#42912975) Attached to: CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S
I think Musk's plan was to turn this into a shouting contest, because if you look at his graphs, the car did not perform very well in the cold weather. The range was much shorter than the estimated range reported by the computer. Check Musk's graphs--it's right there. Strip away all the drama, and the test was bad for Tesla, unless the main result could be hidden under enough layers of BS.

If Broder were Tesla's biggest fanboi, all he could have done was bury the article--any version of it would have made clear the problems. The range was short--this is undeniable at it is in Musk's graphs. The range/charge measurement is no good on very cold mornings. If these points aren't the obvious takeaways, then it is because Musk is a PR genius.

Comment: Re:Problem with egos really (Score 2) 525

by Crispy Critters (#42912821) Attached to: CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S
"Facts should be cut and dry, end of the day."

But they aren't. There are supposed phone calls with no tapes. There are routes with no GPS recorders.

We have a journalist with notes and memories with errors and a businessman with access to uncheckable logs who is also a mind reader (look at how often Musk claims to know why Broder did something).

One fact is clear and consistent from Musk's graphs: Under reasonable winter driving conditions, the actual range on the car was only 75% the estimated range, and that means the charging stations are too far apart.

Comment: Re:Problem with egos really (Score 3, Insightful) 525

by Crispy Critters (#42912697) Attached to: CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S
Have you driven on I-95 in the dark much? Broder's statement about trying to find the charging station seems pretty reasonable from my experience in those giant rest stops.

In general, the first thing that happens is that the ramp splits to separate traffic between parking trucks, parking cars, and gas station traffic. Does these signs say where the charging station is? Is it a sign that you will miss if you glance in your rearview mirror to see if there is an 18-wheeler coming zooming up behind you as you pause to look at signs?

How can you be sure Broder is lying if you haven't been there in the dark yourself? There is no GPS recorder data and there is no camera footage.

Comment: Re:Problem with egos really (Score 1) 525

by Crispy Critters (#42912507) Attached to: CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S
The graphs show that this happened. Looking at the map of range over time, the most efficient leg of the trip was at this time, while the batteries were presumably warming up.

If the estimated range remaining is R and the distance traveled is L, then dR/dL= -1 under ideal conditions. Over most of the trip, dR/dL is about -1.25, presumably consistent with fast driving and heater use. On that one segment, dR/dL = -0.7, which means either rolling downhill with a tailwind or that the range estimation is wrong.

Comment: no tape of the calls with Tesla (Score -1) 525

by Crispy Critters (#42912345) Attached to: CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S
You can be smug and pretend you can read minds, or you can read the articles and think. Broder says that Tesla told him that the stated range was not right due to the cold and that the battery was more charged than that and would get him to his destination. Did they say this? There are no tapes, so no one knows. Did the car in fact go much longer than the range the computer said? YES IT DID. Did it make it to the charging station? Almost but not quite.

Which is more believable, that the author made something up because he hates electric cars, or that Tesla told him something qualitatively correct but quantitatively incorrect? Anyway, without tapes, it cannot ever be known.

Comment: SDA/SDB are not permanent names (Score 1) 458

by Crispy Critters (#42658103) Attached to: Fedora 18 Installer: Counterintuitive and Confusing?
I think that TFS and you are wrong about using /dev/sda(b,c...)

With the old IDE buses, names like /dev/hda and /dev/hdb depended on the physical connection and were permanent, as long as you didn't move the disks around. Currently, the sda, sdb... names do not depend on the physical hardware and are not guaranteed to stay the same every boot.

Size and manufacturer is the only reasonable way of referring to the drives. Would serial number be better? (Clearly, in this case listing existing partitions would be better.)

Comment: Re:Publish or Perish (Score 1) 67

> the way to make a name in academia is to overturn the status quo.

I don't think it's as simple as that. An unknown researcher can't fight the conventional wisdom merely by being right. A recognized rising star might fight the accepted view. Or the CW might be tottering and rotten and the critics ready to rally around the right attack from a newcomer who has nothing to lose by bucking the establishment.

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