Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Swiftness, Ender's, Streams
When it comes to records, context begets significance. Fandu writes: "In regards to the article about the new internet2 land speed record.. That is not correct, The Canadian CA*Net3 network is about 60X faster still. It may be a net speed record for Internet2, but it's certainly no new internet speed record. See the ABC Article about the network from a few years back and the NOC webpage."
And no one is in line for tickets yet? flea writes: "So, fans of orson scott card (to whom I was turned onto by luna) should be happy. The books Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are on the track to being made into a movie. Script is being written and OSC is involved in the process. It's being made by Wolfgan Petersen, who has a few hits and misses (http://us.imdb.com/Name?Petersen,+Wolfgang); Air Force One and Outbreak are, well, ya know ... To his credit though, he did Enemy Mine, the movie with Louis Gossett Jr. playing the speach impediment'd alien trapped on a rock after a battle with Dennis Quaid and then LGj gives birth (wtf). C'mon, we all liked that. Anyway, it hasn't even started filming yet and the script isn't done, but things look good. More info here."
Speak up for Ogg Vorbis! SgtChaireBourne writes: "The BBC's testing period for Ogg Vorbis is now finished, but they are still soliciting feedback.
Now's the chance to add any words of encouragement to the BBC regarding Ogg, especially since, perhaps by oversight, RealOne (formerly RealPlayer) is now only available for Windows 98, 2000, ME, NT and XP. Currently, the download page for older versions seem to turn up empty for all requests for Linux versions, but deep links can still get you there.
As far as I can tell, the BBC is the first large (or even medium) news service to try Ogg. Here is last year's announcment on Slashdot about the start of the test."
"Sounds cool." blocksetter writes: "Cool Chips plc appreciates the interest of the Slashdot community. We've made an effort to address the points raised in last week's discussion of our technology and we've posted the resulting FAQ on our site. In the interest of conserving bandwidth, a text-only version is available for your viewing pleasure. We would like to thank everybody whose questions and criticisms inspired us to do this.
If there is something we haven't covered, you can also write directly to Cool Chips President Isaiah Cox, or to myself, Company Wonky Chris Bourne."
Wolfgang Petersen also did Das Boot, one of the best war movies of all time. (IMHO) This could be a spectacular film under his direction.
instructions and link to get it: RealOne
There is NO direct link to the download because of the registration process.
Here is how to get it:
1) Goto http://scopes.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html
2) Fill in the form and Choose Linux 2.x (libc6 i386).
3) click on "Download Community Supported Player"
4) Don't click on the normal download links. Go look at the very bottom of the page. You will see
" RealOne Player for Unix - Preview Release If you would like to try the alpha version of RealOne Player for Linux 2.2 x86, use the button below." 5) Click on that button and download
There is NO direct link to the download because of theregistration process.
Here is how to get it:
1) Goto http://scopes.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html
2) Fill in the form and Choose Linux 2.x (libc6 i386).
3) click on "Download Community Supported Player"
4) Don't click on the normal download links. Go look at the very
bottom of the page. You will see
" RealOne Player for Unix - Preview Release
If you would like to try the alpha version of RealOne Player for
Linux 2.2 x86, use the button below."
5) Click on that button and download.
Now, that may not all have been Wolfgang Petersen's fault, apparently he was brought in at the last minute to clean up somebody else's mess.
> Funny someone would name an encoding format after a caveman...
and there was me thinking it was a Terry Pratchett reference. (Nanny Ogg + Vorbis the Exquisitor)
signed
confused
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
The land speed record is not how fast your network is in aggregate. It's how fast and how far you can push a single pair of hosts using TCP. How fast the backbone links are on CANet is entirely irrelevant. Lot's of big providers have links running at OC-12 or OC-48, both of which are faster than 400Mbps. Abilene itself routinely runs links at over 400Mbps 24/7. Check out the graphs
But how fast an aggregate link is isn't the point. It's how fast you can send data from one computer to another. If you've ever actually tried to send data at over 100Mbps on the WAN, you would know how hard it is. To get 400Mbps requires the link to not only be fast enough, but to have essentially zero loss. And to get several networks that are that clean, especially to Europe, is pretty amazing. If you don't believe me, try sending a CD's worth of data across your room at that speed. Never mind sending it across the Atlantic Ocean.
I am a huge fan of the book but has anyone read the scriptment that OSC put up on the net? Ughhhh it was BAD It sounded more like Wing Commander than Ender's Game. Anderson is turned into a woman, Bean is more prominent in order to do the sequel (sidequel), Peter and Valentine are removed from the story altogether. The P and V thing I understand, a lot of the other stuff just shows how bad a FILM writer OSC is.
my $.02
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Enemy Mine was a horrible adaptation of the original story, with critical plot elements (like the human reciting the other's lineage to his family) given short shrift
Note that Wolfgang Petersen was the director of Enemy Mine, NOT the screenwriter. The screenwriter is the one who makes the decisions of what to keep or leave out when adapting a book. If you think Orson Scott Card is going to let anyone else write the script, you haven't been paying much attention. He's been waiting for years to find a studio that would let him write the script, give him some say in the director and cast, etc. He's a perfectionist and a control freak, and would much rather never have the movie made than have it made without his input. I'm completely confident that if this movie is being made at all, it's being made the way Card wants it.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
According to someone on the Vorbis User and Discussion List, "Ogg Vorbis" is named after the "ogg tactical maneuver" in Netrek and Vorbis after the Terry Pratchett character from the book Small Gods.
What does the name "Ogg Vorbis" mean?
First, Vorbis was taken from a character of an ''exquisitor'' in the book
"Small Gods," a title in a series of Terry Pratchett fantasy novels.
Formally, Vorbis is the name for the specific audio compression scheme used
to create Ogg Vorbis files. It is ultimately part of the Ogg Vorbis CODEC
project (a branch of the overarching, open-multimedia Ogg project), which is
headed by Christopher Montgomery and his team.
cpeterso
Er, there's this nifty layman's book called A Brief History Of Time by Steven Hawking. I found this book particularly interesting because he explains everything in nice simple terms and doesn't assume you've just taken a college-level calc course. Of course, i'll probably get flamed to a crisp for even mentioning this book or something.
I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
Um, in England "Hat" and "Twat" rhyme. I'm guessing the poet is British. Points two and three are therefore both invalid, leaving just one "unforgivable sin".
Cheers,
David Parry.