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Comment Re:This is why (Score 1) 80

Where you are is interesting for banks for example, they know that it is not possible to have two ATM transactions in the same hour on the other side of the world.

So AMEX blocked my card because they found it suspicious that I tried to buy a train ticket at Tokyo Narita Airport, 13 hours after having bought something at London Heathrow Airport...

Comment Re:And so therefor it follows and I quote (Score 1) 353

In many european countries there's laws against bundling two unrelated things together.

I think that statement is false. Without an OS, you can't even turn on your PC properly... The BIOS will error out saying "OS not found, press F1" or something like that, and that's broken from a consumer point of view. So an OS is not an unrelated part to the hardware, instead it's highly related and essential.

Let's rewrite your reply slightly...

It's the same for a CD player. Without a CD, I can't even turn it on properly. It says "disc not found, please insert disc" or something like that, and that's broken from a consumer point of view. So a CD is not an unrelated part to the hardware, instead it's highly related and essential.

Shall we be forced to receive CD collections with CD players, too? And DVD collections with DVD players? E-books with E-book readers? Dirty clothes with washing machines? Old bread with toasters?

Comment Re:Kill two birds with one stone (Score 1) 151

Okay, three things: if you want to use nuclear power to tow icebergs, how about using nuclear power to desalinate seawater instead? Saves you the trouble of having to build a ship around your nuclear power plant....

They used to have one "in the neighborhood"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor

Comment Re:conduit in anticipation (Score 1) 336

4) Have a 15A socket in the garage. UPS's work better with it, and, in an automated home, it might be nice to have control of some features.. Also, try to get a high-amperage TPS run to the garage (for electric cars potentially in the future).

Only 15A?

(In Belgium) All sockets are 16A now. At 230V.

Comment Re:It's about time (Score 1) 408

I've had a customer that said their new printer wouldn't work.
The issue:
The USB type A cable was plugged in upside down.....
I was able to yank the cable out and flip it, but then got usb protocol errors.
So, I got the printer up via its network port.
The customer was a marine. Anyone else I think wouldn't have enough strength to force it in upside down like that.

Nah, a long time ago at work, a contractor destroyed all four USB ports on a 20000 EUR Sun workstation by trying to insert a USB connector. If it doesn't work in the first port, use more force. It that still fails, try the next port. Only when you run out of ports, ask for help...

Comment Re:Microsoft will pull back (Score 1) 426

> Typing? You can't be serious.
> How do i even do that with my mouse?

You find the character you want to type, move the mouse over it while pressing the left mouse button. This is called the "copy" step.
Then you press the middle mouse button, and the character will appear magically! This is called the "paste" step.
Repeat for all characters you want to type.
Copy and paste a long empty line afterwards and the command will be executed!

Comment same (Score 2) 440

ftp://ftp.bitwizard.nl/same/

I used this to keep all versions of the Linux kernel source tree on my computer, with identical files hardlinked together to reduce storage space.
Both diff (blazing fast "diff -purN ") and patch handle hard links, so this was very workable.
It can be slow and take quite some memory (only 128 MiB-1 GiB in those days), but guess 16 GiB of RAM should handle 4 million files fine, as this is about the same order of magnitude as the few hundred kernel source trees I had lying around.

After git arrived, it was faster to just use git.

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