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Comment Re:Ironic (Score 1) 71

I'm not so sure the shop should be allowed to choose what agent the user employs. You wouldn't like it if they banned particular web browsers and said you had to use Chrome or Edge. The browser is the User-Agent, a program that acts on behalf of the user and shows the user the results. It might also filter those results in a way the retailer doesn't like, for example removing advertisements or popups, but that's between the user and their browser.

Comment Mercator works okay when you are zooming (Score 1) 274

But for a zoomable world map, the Mercator projection isn't too bad. Most of the time you are not opening Google Maps to see a view of the whole planet. You will zoom in to a smallish area, and within that area, the shape and relative sizes are preserved. OK, zoom level 5 in Iceland is a different magnification from zoom level 5 in Colombia. That doesn't matter much, as you just zoom to whatever level shows the area you want.

By contrast if you pick a projection like Equal Earth, it's great for a whole-planet view, but anywhere away from the central meridian is skewed. Your city map of Vancouver will show roads that run due north pointing diagonally up and to the right -- while east-west roads are still horizontal, so you can't just rotate. The fact that your zoom level shows the same magnification as someone in Madagascar viewing the same zoom level is irrelevant.

Comment Re: Pare down the bloat (Score 1) 91

A stock kernel on an MRI machine?

No, I don't want that level of DIY on any equipment that is critical to anything.

Almost nobody runs stock kernels. Stock kernels are used by distributions to build their own kernels.

That MRI machine is running on a 1.2 kernel. Maybe 2.0. It's separated from the hospital network by a firewall.

If the MRI machine is getting attacked then a LOT has gone wrong already.

Comment Re:I live in Washington state (Score 3, Insightful) 58

Sure, you don't want to pay full sticker price, because that's the sucker price. You have to waste a day of your life haggling with the dealer so that he can charge different prices to different customers. If you buy straight from the manufacturer under a no-haggle system, they have to offer the same price to everybody. So it's likely to be quite a lot less than the sticker price of a dealership-sold car. The manufacturer still wants to segment the market and milk more money out of less price-sensitive customers, but they have to do it by selling more luxurious trim levels.

Comment Re:USB 2? (Score 1) 31

I still want to use iTunes on my phone to replace my CD collection (or let me put the CDs in the basement while still listening to them). Sadly Apple has crippled it in another way. Songs disappear from iTunes on the phone if they would not be able to stream in your region, even though you ripped them from your own disc.

Comment Re:8k is nice for computers though (Score 1) 138

Yes, I saw crisp text on my 1024x768 LCD display a quarter century ago. But you missed the next part of the sentence, "even at small sizes". As text gets smaller you reach a point where it is no longer clear. On an 8k display even the smallest sizes are pin sharp. They are a bit fuzzy on 4k (as I use at work) and would be headache-inducing mush if you tried to show such tiny text on a 1920x1080 display.

Back in the day there were hand-created bitmap fonts for crisp display at small sizes. Nowadays, for better or worse almost every application uses outline fonts, which look a bit jaggy if rendered without anti-aliasing ("font smoothing") and a bit fuzzy with it. Only on a very high DPI display is this completely unnoticeable. My laptop is 4k and I am very happy with it, but to make best use of a 32 inch screen a higher pixel density is better.

Comment Re:It should be 8K (Score 4, Insightful) 138

You're an outlier. Top 0.1% vision. Or better.

I've got very good vision. Diopt 0.0 in both eyes. Due to my age I will be needing reading glasses within a couple of years but for now I can still read fine without them.

For me, the difference between HD and 4K is visible but small. I can't resolve individual pixels on 4K at any reasonable distance.

Since most people will have worse vision than us, 4K will be beyond their limit. 8K is only adding cost without adding quality.

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