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Comment Did anyone do the math? (Score 1) 79

When are advertisers going to learn that too many ads run people away from their product. That has been a great deal of technical market research that proves that. The bottom line after increases in ad spend also proves it. I guess the people buying ads haven't collectively figured out that the only people who are falling for the ad agency's BS is the ad buyers, not the end customers. There is plenty of data showing only 2 commercials in a typical sitcom work which is the 1st one past the end and the one before it starts. The rest of the commercials in a sitcom decrease brand value.

The Aussie ABC has a show called Gruen which is about ads and covers the technical and psychological details behind advertising while making fun of bad ads. The show was named after the well studied psychological technique of confusing customers with shop layout.

Comment Re:Welp (Score 1) 116

Sun tried that 25 years ago and even today it is hard to find correct examples of how to create the configuration to make it useful. There were a lot of good things in Trusted Solaris that never got used even in most places that decided they needed the "Trusted" version.

Comment Re:I see no reason to go beyond Git. (Score 1) 114

The time/date meta data is fine when it is correct with a properly written Makefile. The problem is most projects have never had a proper Makefile which is one of the reasons so many other build systems are out there. People don't seem to know how to build a proper Makefile. When Linus started with Linux, he was using systems that didn't do timestamps correctly and there were ugly hacks to keep things working. Even today some of those concepts have made their way into many other Linux based distros even though the underlying technology was fixed long ago. I think git needs an option to "preserve as much metadata as possible" including the create/modify times. Right now I use a program that pulls that out of git and sets the times which seems like a hack that should be a config file option.

Comment Re:Utilities have been playing with this for ages (Score 1) 143

That isn't good news about Redflow going bankrupt. I was hoping their next battery bank would be better priced because they work well in hot conditions.

The article mentions that the storage of flow batteries just requires a bigger tank. That isn't true, it needs a bigger cell as well. The Redflow batteries would add or subtract about a kilogram of metal to the plates between a full and empty state of about 600kg of fluid.

Comment Re:Where "we" is people with US-based credit cards (Score 1) 136

My card from Commbank from this month has a signature panel and the number is printed in a font I can clearly read from 3 meters away. Since it is their common BIN, someone would only need to remember the last 6 digits. At least the expire date is a smaller font but the CVC is right next to to it. The security cameras of every grocery store and bar will pick up all the details.

Comment When will one collapse? (Score 4, Insightful) 49

Full racks are heavy. Most office buildings are built to deal with office floor loads, not computer racks. The heavy part of an office will be 5 drawer file cabinets. A 2x4 ft rack can weigh 2 tons. I wonder when the first converted building won't be able to deal with the floor loadings.

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