Word: buffer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Facing record gas prices, President Bush reluctantly signed a bill to halt the deposit of 70,000 barrels of oil per day into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a two-month buffer of crude last tapped to offset disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina. The amount of extra oil is relatively tiny--the world produces close to 75 million bbl. per day--meaning the move will have little impact on prices. Still, the measure sailed through Congress with overwhelming support...
...have a few quibbles. On two occasions, movies paused for a few seconds to buffer. That's a buzz kill. The Roku folks say that can happen when your broadband speed drops below 1 megabit per second. (My standard Comcast connection is usually above 2 megabits per second, but congestion happens.) On the Netflix front, it suffers from two limitations. Netflix doesn't yet offer high-definition movies on demand, while its competitors (Apple, Vudu) do. And 10,000 titles is still a relatively modest selection. Indeed, a head-to-head comparison with, say, Apple's online store shows iTunes...
Twice, the movie paused for a few seconds to buffer the video stream. That's a buzz kill - the Roku folks say it can happen when your broadband speed drops below 1 megabit per second. (My standard Comcast connection is usually above 2 megabits per second, but congestion, I guess, happens. Either that or Comcast, which has long been suspected of throttling back on bandwidth hogs, is punishing...
...subjects' baseline intellectual ability. In other studies, researchers could never be sure, for instance, that people who remained intellectually active and therefore suffered fewer cases of dementia, didn't have some sort of brain reserve, or start out with a higher level of cognitive ability that served as a buffer during their declining years...
...decades, the two parts of Cyprus have been separated by a heavily guarded buffer zone manned by U.N. peacekeepers. The southern, primarily Greek part of the island joined the European Union in 2004; the northern, mainly Turkish part has been an international pariah since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded the country after Greece's then ruling military junta vowed to annex the island. Only Turkey recognizes the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; Greek Cypriots refer to it as "occupied territory." The North has just one extradition treaty (with Turkey), and scant police and prosecutorial cooperation with the outside...