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Comment Common Economic problem (Score 5, Interesting) 500

As an engineer in a big multi-national I also see similar things going on in our company.
They try to prevent untrained/unauthorized technicians from doing what we call "low-level" maintenance even though our equipment might be of vital importance of that buyer.
In our company this is not necessary bad intent towards the customer, but more a way of protection our own business because selling only gives you 1 paycheck, service gives you hundreds in the course of years.
Our machines are pretty comparable in complexity to modern tractors I believe as years of research and development have made it so they are of higher quality for the customer. This does not immediately relate to longer life times of our products but does improve on requirements because of new industry, government & environmental standards.
But it also makes it harder to do a correct maintenance if you don't know the complete working of the machines.

Anyways, I don't want to justify John Deer's way of working, or any other car manufacturer ( because that seems to be the case here in Europe), but I do understand their position better.

The customer should be informed when they buy a product that their new product can only be maintained by the approved technicians, there for the EULA probably that has been forced onto the farmers.
I also don't know how the market competition is for farming vehicles in USA, Europe or the rest of the world.
And I think that part should be fixed then, if there is no (reasonable) competition/alternative for the farmers then there is a problem there.

Comment It only takes one ... (Score 5, Interesting) 381

It only takes one stupid uncooperative idiot ( maybe from a certain news station) to spread the disease.

And I wouldn't compare USA (or for that matter EU ) citizens to Nigerian citizens, Nigeria is known for it scare tactics, I don't see our governments try the same tactics without getting trouble back.
Let alone that no lower class person will stay home from their job for 3 weeks without pay, they will lose their job and get evicted.
Or is the government finally going to pay for those kind of expenses?

Comment Re:Kill the zombies (Score 2) 203

if that hurting yourself brings other people in danger, yes.
Some people are that stupid that this is the only way of learning from their mistakes.

I can go and discuss a lot of reasons why this is off course stupid but if people already read my post that means they probably are smart enough to see that this is not realistic with current laws and consequences but hell, somebody had to say it.

Comment Kill the zombies (Score 1) 203

Why don't people still not kill the zombie computers when a botnet is discovered and they have control over a Command Server?
In my perspective that would teach the people that security is more important than they realize.
And yeah i know that could kill some essential piece of hardware. And to that my response is. WTF. Why is an essential piece of hardware on the internet and not secure? This isn't 1970 when the internet was 2 computers and they had line of sight to validate trust.

Comment Re:Users are morons (Score 1) 262

This is why I choose the Engineers.
If they can't analyse the requirements from the different partners (users, marketing, UI guys) correctly then the end result will never satisfy anybody.
Management can only help if it comes down to spending 100$ buy a closed source component or paying a programmer 1000$ to build it inhouse.

Some others have mentioned asking the righ questions helps you a lot, yes it can, but once in a while you get a smartass who thinks he knows it beter and will specify the wrong things for the right reasons without thinking about the general program.

Comment difference with regular manure? (Score 2) 103

As far as I know (and even google claims I'm correct in think this), doesn't manure also generate H2S in a limited amount?
Ok the link between manure and growing food was maybe incomplete since they only thought the nutrients where mainly the nitrogen based compounds.

The only application I see is the hydro-culture vegetables/fruits here in Belgium and they already have no taste compared to real soil cultivated vegetables, and now they will get rotten egg taste?

Comment Re:Impact (Score 1) 2

This courts decisions will have impact on all lower courts in the european union countries that recognize it (almost all of them).
But it's not file-sharing that gets copyright protection, it's information-sharing with an intent to uphold some democratic rights that gets better protection.

Comment Re:So what is Apple actually accused of? (Score 1) 168

I don't see the loss for us as consumers in this.
The consumer has more opportunities when buying expensive stuff and it gets broken.
(And yes for us as belgians products are more expensive then in our surrounding countries)

And I don't see a loss of opportunity for producers either since it is the seller that pays for the guarantee and the producer only has to make sure it has a good image.

Comment Re:So what is Apple actually accused of? (Score 4, Informative) 168

In Europe there is a consumer law that demands that the sales person of a electronics device is required to give 2 years guarantee for free. So what our consumer-organisation is suing for is that apple only give 1 year and sells the other year for a profit while this should be free. (Or roughly something like that) But off course this will not make a lot of difference since 1million euros is hardly a dent in Apple profits around here since a couple of schools are starting to make iPad a basic necessity for education and others are looking at them as an example instead of going for the open-source android communities.

Comment Re:Get over it already (Score 1) 807

FF9 doesn't crash my NVidea drivers, FF10 does, and this because all the 3d bullshit after FF 4 Now I'm on Chrome which also uses 3d rendering but doesn't crash my XP. and i'm getting used to it being faster and smoother most of the time. Oh yeah, upgrading Hardware and OS isn't a real fast option in our company because the IT guys still promote IE 6

Comment Re:Why is this impossible? (Score 1) 1088

ok then why not talk about how 100y ago nobody thought the speed of sound could ever be broken by human beings. The point isn't the myth about "the earth that once was flat and now is round" but the fact that sometimes humans limit their own way of thinking until somebody proves it to them right before their eyes. And physics still being a science that eventually needs to prove it's statements is a real incarnation of that way of thinking. (This doesn't prove that the research isare correct but that we might not be smart enough yet to see past the speed of light if that where somehow possible)

Comment Re:The AES-128 "crack" requires 2^88 bytes of stor (Score 1) 176

Is my math wrong but i come to different numbers:

20'x8'
135TB * 280 = 36.9 PB
2^88 Bytes = 274 877 906 944 PB
=> ~ 7.5 Billion shipping containers

1 container = 160 ft => 1miles = ~174240 containers => ~43000miles
=> stack 8 high => 5380miles => 73 miles to each side

40'x8'
135TB * 1400 = 184.6PB
=> ~ 1.5 Billion shipping containers
1 container = 320ft => 1 miles = ~87120 containers => ~17220miles
=> stack 8 high => 2152miles => 47 miles to each side

maybe there is some space left beneath area 51

Comment Re:more importantly (Score 1) 366

Try that with chrome,ie8,safari,... please and let us know if your windows is crashing. Because chrome will open up a seperate sub-process for each task resulting in much more overhead for windows. And ie8, well i don't have to draw a picture of it.

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