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Comment ZoneAlarm (Score 1) 46

ZoneAlarm used to be the go-to for this. Kinda like the NoScript browser extension for internet connections. Everything is blocked until you explicitly allow it. It used to be pretty comprehensive, but I don't know how much of the network it can control, as I know Microsoft has been disallowing easy network control access to 3rd parties since Windows 10.

Comment Re:US government (Score 1) 96

=What makes you think the US government is more trustworthy than the Chinese government, especially given the direction Trump is taking it?=

Because the US government doesn't make operating systems? They've taken Apple to court to get unfettered access to iPhones and have lost. It's far from perfect, but there is still a system of checks and balances happening.

Besides that, you can post a photo of yourself holding the bloody severed head of Trump, and the worst that happens to you is loosing a gig at CNN and a squatty potty endorsement job. If you call president Xi a silly name, you disappear.

Comment Unrelated (Score 2) 67

There's an interesting story out of Detroit roughly related.

A long time ago a Detroit-based millionaire donated a big chunk of land and a bunch of money to start the Detroit Zoo, and to build an adjacent golf course. When Detroit was going bankrupt, the city tried to sell off the golf course to make some money, as it is in an expensive subdivision now, and would have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars. However, in the deed, the millionaire put in a clause saying if the city tried to do anything other than maintain a zoo or golf course on the property, the ownership of ALL the property would revert to his descendants. A couple of his great-grandchildren showed up in court, and the deal was tanked.

Comment +1 (Score 4, Informative) 39

Novas were 16-bit machines. I know because there are 16 select toggles on the front of mine :)

Soul of a New Machine was about the development of the MV line, which was the 32-bit extension of the Eclipse line, which was an extension (virtual memory, multitasking, etc.) of the Nova line. Similar to how VAXes were based on the PDP-11 architecture.

Comment Re:because (Score 1) 140

That said Colbert doesn't know jack about screenwriting, it is like nothing else, not even writing novels (look at how JK Rowling did when she tried to write screenplays instead of novels) so I would question how much input he's really going to have.

The headline threw me, then I saw his son, whom is a screenwriter, is attached as well. Then I looked up his son's credits on IMDB. He was a production assistant on one of Colbert's shows and.... that's it.

I hope it will be good, but it's not looking that way.

Comment Cost (Score 1) 314

In the olden days, it cost a lot of money to shoot down an anti-ship missile. Either a CWIS firing expensive ammunition at thousands of rounds per second, or firing a pricey RAM.

It isn't the olden days any more. Now they drop missiles using a giant microwave. It costs almost nothing to fire.
https://thedefensepost.com/202...

Comment Economics (Score 4, Informative) 116

The new streaming economics are that, unless you are an established multi-billion dollar IP, like Star Trek, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones, you aren't going to get enough money together for live-action anything beyond a simple detective show or medical drama.

There's a rare exception now and then - bestselling novel adaptation, established director or writer, etc... Whedon has a bad name right now, so nobody is going to be throwing money at him. His last huge-budget TV show, The Nevers, got pulled from HBO before it was finished airing.

Comment Re:Here's the missing info (Score 2) 52

But when shipping shows to far-flung international destinations, BBC "transferred" the video tape to film by filming a TV! That's what was found in the collector's cardboard box. That BBC used video tape is what allowed them to erase said video tapes.

My understanding is that, given the variety of video tape machines and differing video standards, 16mm film was the easiest way to distribute shows internationally. Everyone had some sort of 16mm telecine machine, but videotape recorder standards were all different. The downside was frame-rate sync issues, which were fixed in the olden days by slightly speeding up or slowing down the film. Nowadays it can be re-sync'd to the original framerate using compositing/resampling tools. Modern "AI" tools are pretty phenomenal at doing this. They can re-create missing frames to sync up odd frame rates, and you'd never know the difference.

Comment Here here (Score 2, Informative) 46

I'm running a 5x ZFS+2 30TB FreeNAS array. All our desktops and laptops back up to it, and it stores all our ripped CDs that get streamed through Plex. The really important stuff has a secondary off-line backup (photos, tax stuff) as well. Total cost was around $1000 including a Dell server. Worth every penny if you don't want to loose all your stuff.

Comment Quality (Score 5, Interesting) 46

At this point I think it depends on the individual drive mechanism, even from the same manufacturer. The best data source for this stuff is Backblaze, whom unfortunately only covers enterprise class drives. There is even quite a bit of variation across different manufacturing runs of the same drive.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog...

One run of Seagate 12TB drives has a 2.7% failure rate, which is mediocre, while a different run of the same drive is at 0.9%, which is pretty good. HGST used to be great, but now their numbers are mostly well north of 1%. WDC looks pretty good, except for one drive at 2.6%,

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