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Comment Re:Let's see them patent the drum all over again (Score 3, Interesting) 127

There's also a use in controlled/clean rooms. You can already get some something similar, there called Talk-Throughs (not affiliated, just top google hit).

I am not sure if this technology has a benefit over the existing solution, but it may. Maybe just because it looks cool. There is also a section at the bottom of TFA that gives over uses.

Comment Re:Yeah, right! (Score 4, Insightful) 404

I agree that the centre should not have the tools under discussion. You suggestion that far left and far far right are further away from each other than from a central democratic position is flawed.

The archetypal manifestation of the far left is communism. In comunism the party elite take full control of the the system, supposidley to distrubute wealth evenly among the population (although I do not beleive this has ever happend). The party also used there power to control the populace to maintain the status quo and there positions.

The archetypal manifestation of the far right is fascism. In fascism the goverment takes all the economic and political power and gives it to an elite few. The elite few are meant to provide a functioning society for the populace in exchange for them being held above all others (this has on occasion happend, however the elite more often than not (by a wide margin) abbuse there power, to the detriment of the populace).

Effectivley it can be shown that the far left and the the far right are closer than the moderate left to the far left or the moderate right to the far right. This has bee described as Horseshoe theory/horshoe of politics.

You also suggest that the "national socialist party" = "left wing", this really is not true anymore since WWII, national socialism is connected to the the German Nazi party, and only parties wishing to attach the Nazi image would use this terminology to describe themselves. The Nazi party was a [agressive] nationalist party, wich ultimatley used fascist techniques to backup there stance.

Comment Linux CLI -gt MS CMD (Score 1) 1215

I use Linux for my primary home OS, and have done for 9 years. In that time I have found that Linux will do 90%+ of the things I can do in Windows. Likewise I have been in situatons where I am forced to use Windows, again 90%+ of the things I do in Linux I can do in windows. So which OS I use forms very little diffrence to what I'm trying to achieve. In the last year I have finally bitten the bullet and returned to having a Windows machine (Windows 7 dual booting with openSuSE 12.3, on my laptop). My desktop still runs Linux exclusively.

Reasons for needing/liking Windows
>My university has free student liscences for software that are windows only (the software is availible for Linux but would cost me €100s if not €1000s to aquire legally on linux, some libaries are held under NDA and I have to have a the university build (windows) and VPN to the university to use them.
>Some software is tied to the OS and is of benefit - Actually there is only one peice of software that I use frequantly that I cannot use in linux, this is a .NET script which ties into LTspice. LTspice itself works great in wine but I could not get the script to work in Wine/Linux.
>University support is better for windows - (e.g. connecting to University WiFi took 2 mins with a guide, same task took 30 mins on Linux - included reading man page to connect to a network type/authourization I had never used before, and reading the windows guide to extract the infomation needed).
>Most genral use PCs are windows, not just at university but in companies and the public libaries, knowing how to use windows becomes essentially.
>MS office is better than any alternative I have used (LO/OO/Abiword/Gnumeric), but I so rarely use office applications this makes little diffrence to me.
>Better hardware support - You don't have to reaserch if drivers are available you buy the hardware and install provided drivers if needed.

Reasons for needing/liking Linux
>Better command line, for me this is the biggest advantage. Quick bash scripts save me loads of time, being able to manipulate text streams is invaluble. When I am using windows I feel clipped WRT these features, I know they are acheivble in windows, but I am yet to come across a Linux install that does not have these tools where these features on Windows are rare.
>Large trustworthy source of free(gratis) software. I know there are plenty of of free/low cost software for Windows (I don't mind paying a small amount but I can't afford €50+ for an applications all the time). I feel I can trust the large collection of software availible in my repos, I have less trust of windows installers.
>Better documentation - In my experiance at least the documentation for Linux software seems better, alot of people seem to find the opposite.
>Software works as expected - I think this is just what I am used to, I often spend time working out what I am meant to be doing in windows or what a button actually does (actually this is more a GUI thing - I have the same problem with Gnome and KDE apps), where as on Linux/Bash I know what to do and what it is actually doing.
>Choice of desktop, I like tiling WMs I use xmonnard on my desktop, there is no simple way to do this.
>Lower overhead - my experiance is that Linux runs perceptivley faster on the same hardware (depending on DE)

Comment Re:A simple remote clock design (Score 1) 487

So your algorithm for determining the time on the local computer is

local time = (local time - remote time) + remote time

?

You realise that simplifies to:

local time = local time

No it's not, it's:
Thread 1:
while(1){
delta_t = remote_time - local_time;
sleep(5 mins);
}

Thread 2:
while(1){
display_time = local_time + delta_t;
update_clock(display_time):
}

This actually simplifies to:
display_time = local_time + (remote_time - local_time)
or
display_time = remote_time

But with the advantage of only polling the server every 5 mins, not every time you want to update the clock. 5 mins is probably to frequent for the application, but in the correct order of magnitude.

Comment Re:I hope it's John Hurt (Score 2) 375

What's with you people? This doctor is the most fun of any since Tom Baker, and maybe even moreso.

I also like the general attitude (both his character and the show) that the Doctors is someone all the foes have learned to fear since he always beats their ass.

It has, logically, indeed come down to this:

This may be case, but this may be my [reletive] dislike of him, the doctor should be fun at times but Matt Smiths episodes come off as having to much fun, it often ends up being silly (I suppose a lot of this comes from the first Matt Smith episode). For me Matt Smith never pulls off the serious aspect well, he never truly comes off as a tortured soul. For me this is one of the big charater trait that the Matt Smith incarnation fails to portray.

Most of the previous doctors would have been angry, or remourceful, but Smith comes off as conceited. I understand why he did what he did, but he seems to lack some depth that the doctor should have.

Comment Re:He should not have been pursued (Score 0) 302

I agree completely. AlphaWolf_HK did you actually read the link you posted? From TFL

But criminologists say crime figures can be affected by many factors, including different criminal justice systems and differences in how crime is reported and measured.

In Britain, an affray is considered a violent crime, while in other countries it will only be logged if a person is physically injured.

There are also degrees of violence. While the UK ranks above South Africa for all violent crime, South Africans suffer more than 20,000 murders each year - compared with Britain's 921 in 2007.

.
.
.

But Police Minister David Hanson said: 'These figures are misleading. Levels of police recorded crime statistics from different countries are simply not comparable since they are affected by many factors, for example the recording of violent crime in other countries may not include behaviour that we would categorise as violent crime.

Admitted this was after the the shouting about how bad the UK is, but considering the source the fact that they are willing to include these provisos speaks volumes. I'm half amazed they didn't have a graph suggesting that it was due to increased immigration, or the death of Dianna.

Comment Re:FTA (Score 1) 302

No you don't have to do any of that. You simple need to be outspoken and equally loud as the nuts (WBC are not the only ones, just the best known). The issue is that from outside it looks like most Americans are staying quiet on the subject. The people at the head of WBC are obviously clever and using US law to there advantage, are there no people with comparable skill set that see there actions as abhorrent and willing to take them on? Or are people to scared to take on these hate spewers, that they wont stand up and at least go on record that they don't? Maybe people just don't think its worth there time.

I know there are people who protest against the bigots but it is a small proportion of the community. If 70%+ came to a few of these protests it would send a clear message that the majority did not agree with there message, and found it disturbing/painful/unwanted/ etc... This would send a strong message to all the people viewing. As it is there is no way to tell that Average Joe does not agree or at least not see a big problem with the actions of the group.

Comment Re:I hope it's John Hurt (Score 2, Interesting) 375

I agree with this - I don't really like Matt Smith (he is OK but the worst of the modern Whos). I don't think it's just the age thing either, the Dr. has always been eccentric but Matt Smith comes off more as "quirky". He comes off as someone trying to eccentric for the sake of the image and not because that is how his mind works.

Comment 10% does not seem bad. (Score 2) 265

10% of people staying on for a year does not sound to bad (especially for a disorganized group). I would say that making the group accessible to people during the year (certainley the first term) will help boost numbers.I highley doubt you will achieve more than 25% of people to stay. I would say that 20% is really the best you can hope for. If you want more people your probably better off trying to get more people though the door (although this will drive down your %)

Have goals, - what do you want to achieve? Come up with a few ideas yourself for projects, then in the first few meatings get suggestions from members, do whatever you can to keep then involved and take ownership of the project. The decsion of which projects to follow needs to decided by the group. Don't run to many projects in parralel (not a problem if you only have 4 people) but have everyone working towards a common goal.

Don't be autocratic, members are putting time into it they don't want someone pushing them around, do be prepared to take on the role of arbiter in disagreements.

Don't assume everyone is at the same level, some people will have experiance, others will want to learn. Come up with an itroduction corse that is not mandatory, even if the course is just go away and read this documentaion/work though theese examples at home. Be prepaired to help. Agree on a group language, make it appropriate for the type of project you want to do, for application stuff I would recomend python.

I asuming that this will be be coding based - thats not a requirment but I would definatley go for somthing where you make/design somthing.

Comment Re:Photo Op (Score 1) 190

You can have a diffrent view of warm than I do. I would consider warm to be anything above the correct tempreture range for the Beer, and type does matter. I have had limited but good experiance with American (US) beer, (not the big mass market stuff). Diffrent beers need to be serverd at diffrent temps. Darker beers, bitters and ales genrally warmer but still at cellar temp (5'C-15'C) depending on the beer, lighter lagers and pilsners should be cooler (3.5'C - 10'C). There are probably exception I would have thought the super strong beers (e.g. TNP and STB) could benefit from being a little warmer, but still below room temp . Anything below 3'C may as well be fizzy water with an inebriating effect, if a beer can only be drunk like that its a bad beer.

Comment Re:Visas are going to be an issue (Score 2) 273

although the trains are slow until you get out of the country

Clearly you have not had experiance of trains in the UK, I have been in the Netherlands for almost a year now and my experiance Dutch trains although not super fast, they are puntual, and rarely suffer from extreme delays. I only have refrence of UK which is a known hell hole for trains (the last train I took in the the UK was >3hrs late and missing 2 carriages, so packed.)

The rest of your points all seem true, well as far as I know. I have only been here a year and am not fammiliar with NL/USA VISA arrangements.

Comment Re:Multi-tasking in windows (on x86) s novel? (Score 1) 782

It's running 3 VMs over a hypervisor. One is basically Windows 8 and does the apps and TV and movies and shit, the other is the Xbox OS which runs the games, and the third is a video compositor so you can seamlessly transition between them and have the little side pop-up things. It literally is running 3 OS instances at any given time.

OK, that does sound more impressive than the what the quote said, I did not really RTFA (this is /.), just kinda skimmed it. Although what is the advantage of this setup over a single OS with good task scheduling? Is the XBOX OS so radically diffrent to the rest of the system it need a totally independent OS? Is this a way to sandbox the game console from the media centre, possible to ensure MS lockdown of the console while still allowing the media centre to work more like a traditionol computer? It seems like an over engineered system that brings in overhead. Could some one fill me in on the benefit of this, I accept my understanding of OS design is somewhat lacking.

Comment Re:Backwards Compatible? (Score 1) 782

Any news on if it can play Xbox 360 games? The thing is if MS drops 360 Xbox Live support the 360 becomes an expensive boat anchor. Everything on the 360 revolves around Live including your profiles, Important game patches, Video content like renting movies and HBO GO, etc.

The new Xbox One will mean EOL of the 360, I am yet to see a new console release not have caused a lack of (new) software for old models withn 6 months. If they keep XBL silver running for 12 or 18 months thats more than enough time for critical games updates (Also why is it now acceptable to release games before they are ready). The lack of online gaming and services sucks, but it's kind of expected and if you bought your 360 for the live feature in the beleif that the service was going to run in perpetuity, then you are a fool.

Comment Multi-tasking in windows (on x86) s novel? (Score 2) 782

“Snapping in” is the Xbox One’s task-switching mechanism, and it’s made possible by some serious operating system kung fu.

WTF, this thing has a an x86 core and is running a modified version of MS Windows, how much effort did they put into multitasking. If they really did put this much effort into it isn't this a bit of wheel re-invention, or maybe they have a better scheduler than in desktop Windows. If the systems is better than standard Windows why is it not being pushed into there main OS.

I may well get one of these, I always liked my XBOXes (original and 360, never had one break). It really depends on whether the always on internet requirment is actually a requirment. I never connected my xbox to the net, and infreaquantly connected my 360. When I want to play games I like to be able to grab a beer and play by myself (I never really enjoyed online gaming) or even better get some mates round get more beer and play games on a big TV, oh and pizza don't forget pizza.

Although I won't be buying this when its brand new, I let some kinks get ironed out and the price drop a bit.

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