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Comment: Answer: Both (Score 5, Insightful) 126

by Que_Ball (#47262773) Attached to: Google To Take On Apple's CarPlay
Why would it have to be exclusive?

Car makers can simply support both protocols in their built in systems and whatever device you bring just pairs up with it.

Why would an automaker want to exclude potential customers by only supporting one method or the other is the question you need to ask.  Unless Apple or Google is subsidising the cost of the car they just want to make the most attractive package possible and sell more cars.

Comment: Never use them except when below cost (Score 1) 110

by Que_Ball (#47203009) Attached to: GoDaddy Files For $100 Million IPO
Personally I avoid using Godaddy unless there is one of those sales where they are selling domain registration or transfers at below cost.

I have registered a fair number of domains with them at the $1 to $5 price points you can sometimes get and when a decent coupon for transfer comes up from someone better like Namecheap I transfer them away.  Godaddy looses money on the deal.  I might transfer those domains back into godaddy on another below cost transfer deal but I just transfer it back out again if I find another deal or if the renewal is approaching.  I have never paid them the normal cost of renewal.  Every time I have done any business with them it's below the approximately $7.85 cost they are paying to the central registry.

So if you advocate a boycott of Godaddy that's fine.  But if you want to hurt them even more then take advantage of their below cost coupons when you can and actually cost the company money but remember to transfer those domains away again when you can.

Comment: Industrial look get industrial looking cable trays (Score 4, Interesting) 250

by Que_Ball (#45584791) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For Beautiful Network Cable Trays?
You can get really nice industrial cable trays.  Mount them high enough that they aren't immediately noticeable but they maintain that industrial and exposed look.

The good ones are powder coated so you can get a colour of your choice to match the office.

Use a tool called a cable comb when you are running the cables to put the cables into very straight and neat bundles.

Here is the manufacturer of a good quality system for cable trays:
(they have many resellers.  Your cabling contractor likely deals with a supplier who can get this)

Here is the cable comb tool for making straightened bundles of cables that look neat in they tray:

If you want something more enclosed then you can go to full conduit installation using metal pipes.  The pipes can then be painted to match your ceiling colour.


Ask Slashdot: Best/Newest Hardware Without "Trusted Computing"? 290

Posted by timothy
from the in-light-of-recent-events dept.
An anonymous reader writes "What is the best/newest hardware without trusted computing (TC) / Trusted Platform Module(TPM)? I am currently running ancient 32-bit hardware and thinking about an upgrade to something x64 with USB3, SATA3 and >1 core on the CPU ... but don't want TC/TPM. I have no need to run anything like Blu Ray movie disks or Microsoft Windows that requires TC/TPM or the UEFI boot process. Is anybody else still trying to avoid TC/TPM? What have your experiences been? Any pointers?" Worth reading on this front, too: Richard Stallman on so-called Trusted Computing,.

Comment: Re:The solution (Score 3, Informative) 144

by Que_Ball (#44534617) Attached to: Bad Connections Dog Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi Network

Would it shock anyone to know I actually did this reboot to a malfunctioning public Wifi base station recently and it worked?

I had a client moving into a new commercial location where the local cable company (Shaw) has one of their public Wi-Fi terminals installed.

They did not have their own network connection yet (booked for a few days later) so we just joined their computer to the public network but it was horrible. The connection showed moderate to high packet loss which was strange because the base station was in the roof a few feet away. Even doing a ping test to first hop (the base station) was showing the packet loss problem. Increasing the packet size on the ping tests showed the problem was got worse as you increased the packets so anything that wanted a sustained download and not small little transactions was suffering worse effects.

So I went into the back, found the power injector for the base station and cut the power. Plugged it back in, and after the reboot it was working well. No more packet loss, and a usable connection.

Maybe Shaw needs to update the firmware on these Cisco base stations they are using.

Comment: EDI VAN charges ~$0.50 per KC (1000 characters) (Score 1) 168

by Que_Ball (#42018007) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Data Storage Highway Robbery?

Back when EDI (Electronic data interchange) was new it was often described as each transaction costing "similar to a long distance fax" back in the days when long distance was expensive. Was about $1.50 per transaction.

They measure the data in KC (kilo characters). Typical pricing back when it was popular was $0.50 per KC in early 90's plus many other fees. (could have been more when it first came out)

For a small company you would make a dialup connection to a VAN (Value Added Network) to submit a transaction and check for new transaction responses. Larger companies would have a permanent X25 network connection to the VAN which would have it's own monthly connection fees and data fees but was faster and near instant. There are still legacy users of these EDI VAN networks who have not shifted to the Internet versions of the EDI standards. Hopefully they renegotiated their rates at some point and didn't just let their contract auto-renew all these years.

SMS is easily the most expensive current communication on a per MB basis in common use today and it gets more expensive as providers tend to increase the rates on SMS and not lower them. $0.25 per message domestic, $0.60 per roaming message on Telus.

Comment: Re:Obvious High Risk (Score 2) 199

by Que_Ball (#41761471) Attached to: Experts Warn About Security Flaws In Airline Boarding Passes

I was randomly selected for the SSS tag on my boarding pass. It was great. We were in Phoenix and the regular screening line was massive, at least an hour long. The "special" line had about 10 people in it. We zipped right through. Would have needed to skip lunch if we were in the regular line.

We noticed the letters on the pass too before entering the lines so I guess they have not really cared about this "issue" in the past.

I think the special screening is more of a quality control measure on the regular screening guys than it's a real boost to security.

Comment: Re:Like .ca for Canada? (Score 1) 87

by Que_Ball (#41526411) Attached to: "Secure" Shorter<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.uk Internet Domain Proposed

It was possible to register the same name with a different province but the original owner would have to give you written permission first so it was less likely to occur. I can find a few examples where two different companies did get their provincial level domain and now one of them has claimed the second level domain. But it's very rare. Most of the time if another company wanted to register the domain in their province and the system told them it was unavailable they wouldn't pursue it further and try to get permission, they would just pick something else.

So yes, owning mydomain.ab.ca used to mean that the system would not allow anyone else to register mydomain.bc.ca or mydomain.ca. They used to require proof that your corporation was registered nationwide before they would let you use the second level national domain but they would reserve all variations on second and third levels of your domain name automatically. When the system switched to putting all domains at the second level then most of those provincial domain name owners got their second level name registered. They can keep the historical old one and keep paying for it or let it expire and only keep the second level version. There was no discount or extra costs for second or third level domains. They never tried to kick up the costs to register the second level domains.

Maybe the UK could handle their second level domains the same way? I mean they still get the extra money from people who decide to keep both versions but at least they are not raising the pricing.

Comment: Re:Thorium reactors? (Score 5, Informative) 226

by Que_Ball (#41442529) Attached to: Accelerator Driven Treatment of Nuclear Waste

Primary reason is the many billions of dollars of development needed to figure it all out.

There is no design for a "working commercial thorium reactors". It's all just bits and pieces of theory, and experimental reactors that only answered some of the questions.

It's a possible technology, just not an actual technology. Kind of like the guy at NASA who recently got into the news for a pen and paper proposal of how warp speed might be possible. We are still a long way from building interstellar spaceships. Just like we are long way from building a Thorium salt reactor that works and is economically viable.

Comment: That's the long term plan for the industry (Score 5, Insightful) 226

by Que_Ball (#41442419) Attached to: Accelerator Driven Treatment of Nuclear Waste

Yes. Spent fuel has always been considered a long term asset by the nuclear industry. People in that industry believe that as mining the raw ore becomes more expensive and the technology for reprocessing the spent fuel becomes better it starts to become a more valuable source of future fuel.

The industry would be very different if the governments did not push the technology towards weapons production. The reactor designs we have are all old and they are designed in a way that facilitates the production of plutonium. If the research into other reactor and fuel designs that did not have as many dangerous byproducts were pursued it would be a safer industry today.

The most promising alternative is and was to use Thorium fuelled reactors instead of uranium. There is the potential for far safer reactor designs and far less hazardous waste when using that type of fuel. The USA took a relatively short look at this but then they stopped since they could not also produce weapons from these reactors and at the time it was all about the bomb. But from what I have read they will likely become a technology that becomes more interesting over time as it's capable of using depleted uranium along with the Thorium as a way to use up that spent fuel that's hanging around.

It should be obvious though there are significant challenges to getting the theory into a practical design. All those research reactor projects back in the 50's that gave engineers and scientists the knowledge to build the current reactors would need similar efforts to develop the technology for these alternative fuels and reprocessing technologies. It's starting to happen but in China and India where they have not lost their love for nuclear power yet.

Comment: Re:Rest Assured (Score 1) 301

by Que_Ball (#39682633) Attached to: Why Your IT Spending Is About To Hit the Wall

Oh, you noticed they effectively doubled the price of SQL server on April 1 too?

Yeah, they went from pricing based on how many CPU's were in the server to how many cores are on those chips. But the price only remains the same if you have 4 cores in the server yet brand new machines genrally have 8 core CPU's now so it's twice the price now compared to last month for a new server. Microsoft says that the average CPU in the field has 4 CPU's but the average server is a few years old and when it is time to replace it you need to spend twice as much.

Comment: Re:A practical matter (Score 1) 467

by Que_Ball (#39013703) Attached to: Dealing With an Overly-Restrictive Intellectual Property Policy?

And if you're not in one of the states that explicitly grants exemptions, don't just go ahead expecting that you'll win the legal battle.

Good advice. I would suggest the outcome will depend on if the outside project is related in any way to the job you do. If it can be argued that your knowledge required to complete the project was acquired as a result of your employment or a result of training your received at work then things may not be resolved in your favour.

Comment: Re:No *official* port. (Score 2) 333

by Que_Ball (#38477506) Attached to: Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab Won't Get Android 4.0

Hardware issue on Galaxy S. No software fix possible. Using a GPS test app you can only see a small number of satellites in most conditions. Unless you are sitting out in a wide open field on a nice day when there are no sources of interference nearby or high solar activity it will not lock on.

Even the windows in a car will attenuate the GPS signal enough to give you poor performance. Turn it off is the best advice I can give. It will only serve to lower your battery life and frustrate you.


Tech Site Sues Ex-Employee, Claiming Rights To His Twitter Account 267

Posted by timothy
from the depends-what-the-meaning-of-his-is dept.
nonprofiteer writes "Noah Kravitz worked as a mobile phone reviewer for a tech website called Phonedog for four and a half years. While there, he started a Twitter account (of his own volition) with the handle @PhoneDog_Noah to tweet his stories and videos for the site as well as personal stuff about sports, food, music, etc. When he left Phonedog, he had approximately 17,000 followers and changed his Twitter handle to @noahkravitz. This summer, Phonedog started barking that it wanted the Twitter account back, and sued Kravitz, valuing the account at $340,000 (!), or $2.50 per follower per month. Kravitz claims the Twitter account was his own property. A California judge ruled that the case can proceed and theoretically go to trial. Meanwhile, Kravitz continues to tweet."
