I never claimed to have a mathematical method that nobody else has. As a matter of fact, "finding prime factors of large numbers" is its own mathematical field, as I understand it. I claim to have a new application for that field.
The rant you linked to is ranting about being screwed out of money by the person asking for an NDA - there's no money here, I thought I made that plain. I have an algorithm that needs some work, and due to what I know of programming languages, would be much better suited to one I don't know, and not for lack of trying to pound it into my brain. so, basically, we're looking at porting some code and making it more efficient.
Whatever, this is just more of the "flame the noobs" that I talked about in an earlier post. Between you and my new cyberstalker, I'm tired of rebutting stupidity.
Unlike my newfound "friend", though, you actually had something useful to say - maybe I'll look into this "github" you describe.
I have code that I wrote using an 8x8 VCP to offload MPEG-1 QCIF encode in 1997.
The issue here would be that the patent was applied for in 1994.
Well, that and "how the hell can a 16-year-old technology patent apply to anything in the modern world?"
Might as well patent using spoons to eat soup - if you hurry, you might beat the rush. Half the stuff that patent might apply to was obsolete 10 years ago.
Modify your process so that if *any* of the examiners come up with the same solution, it's obvious, and I'd be willing to give that a shot. Oh, and throw out all the rest of the "obvious" patents while you're at it.
As an aside, what does Microsoft think an MPEG decoder card does? Just curious...
You have repeatedly called me a name-dropper, name-caller, name-tosser... to what do you refer? I have yet to say anything about you other than that your posts lack spelling, grammar, and writing style. Oh, and that some of them are based on false pretenses, and appear to be factually inaccurate.... and you're terrified of anyone finding out who you are.
As I look over your original post, and the few items you have "let slip" in your posts, I am realizing that this whole game is probably about generating pageviews for your ridiculous forum posting, because you might have gotten paid for it, or might be being paid for it. By a third-party website that isn't even referenced. Assuming you're even the person whose posts you're pretending to have written.
As for your supposed validity, you have backpedaled countless times when asked to identify yourself, even going so far as to deliberately obscure your identity. What's wrong, you don't believe your own posts? Advocating privacy is one thing, but I'm calling you out, son! Show me something I can point to and feel like I have a sense of an actual person, or at least stop pointing at other people and claiming you did the work they're credited with.
Oh, and your writing style, ugh... I'm still trying to decide whether you're schizophrenic, or have a some strange written form of Tourette's without the profanity. It wouldn't be so bad, if you could stick to a topic other than how horribly wrong I am about the hosts file (which is still up for debate). Even the post you yourself referred to by your idol Mr. Day said that putting the whole internet into your hosts file was stupid.
"In the early days of the Internet, when it was ARPANet, there were so few nodes that it was possible to manage the host file as a sort of phonebook. Today, few would suggest manipulating a host file since it would quickly be out of date and is considered completely redundant in light of DNS." - His words, not mine. Look a few paragraphs above the lines you quoted for the relevant text, smartypants. Yes, now I'm calling you names.
Oh, and your idiotic, foaming-at-the-mouth ranting is still making me giggle.
you are for example, FREE to write Mr. Eric Dickman (CEO of SuperSpeed.com) & ask him if I wrote up the part of SuperCache I/II that made it 40% more effective
...except you still have yet to identify yourself, so that information is meaningless. Are you the creator of that part of SuperCache? We don't know. You are Anonymous Coward, who may be APK, or may just be yet another anonymous coward.
In any event, this has ceased to amuse me, other than to laugh at your dumbassery. I'm done here, you can go back to your hole now.
I ask for you to cite works proving you are a "degree-holding multiply published programmer", and you spit back a bunch of random magazine titles which I would need to track down an online version of (if such a thing exists) to determine the validity of, followed by a link to an article PCPitStop (a well-renowned website, I'm sure) supposedly paid you to write, yet your link leads to a forum called "xtreme pc central". Why didn't you link to something "official"? Can I respond by linking to my slashdot postings to show how "official" I am? After all, this is an online forum, too...
There's a picture of a kid who might be a couple decades old as the avatar on that forum post... is that you? Is that kid the person we're supposed to believe has been "in this art & science for decades now"?
Still no name, and ridiculous "references". I'm enjoying your idiocy more with every post. Keep it coming!
Oh, and slashdot apparently doesn't send me a notification when an Anonymous Coward replies to my posts, so pick a spot and stick to it, would you? I'm getting bored with looking over all of my recent posts to see whether you've replied to one of them with more inane blathering. Alternatively, log in (you can figure out how to create an account, right? With all of your worldly knowledge?). You can even use a pseudonym to protect your secret alter-ego, if you feel the need (or if APK is already taken, or you're scared of slashdot's DNS server logs).
Giggle.
P.S. - I read your "guide", and I have to say, you just keep making me laugh! Arguing with the producers of a security testing tool because you can't get your score any higher? You take the cake!
It sounds like you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and you don't know this. And it sounds like what you do is either impossible, or easily done within a week by a competent programmer.
I may not have a clue what I'm really talking about. What I am trying to do may actually be impossible. Speaking with someone who *does* know what I'm talking about would be most helpful, but no one seems inclined to provide any contact information. Ah, well, posting the request here was just a spur-of-the-moment whim, anyway. I didn't actually expect any responses other than trolls and others similar in nature to yours. This whole thread seems to be devoted to ridiculing the "newbie" who posted in the first place, spitting out pet projects in the hopes of free assistance, or ridiculing people who took the original post seriously. Yeah, I know, I'm in the second group. I'll work out my software issues on my own, if I get no serious responses, and be no worse off than I was before I posted.
What I want to do is not impossible; although I am not aware of anyone using it in quite the way I have in mind, I am well aware that several others have successfully done the same maths. It could very well be easily done by a competent programmer in a week, although I have not seen any evidence that anyone else has done so. I have seen news articles on related subjects when researching how to go about doing what I am doing which came to basically the same conclusion that I did; Math is hard.
If my posts seems deliberately vague about what I'm actually doing, then you should realize that the behavior you are witnessing is "working as intended". I'm not ready to share my project with the world yet, because it's not quite developed to the point that I can point my finger at it when someone else does it and say "that's my idea, I came up with that". I intend to open the source for the project, but I want my name attached to it first.
The biggest hurdle I currently have is how to speed the process up; I have the rest of it pretty well figured out, and it seems to work. Do us all a favor and either offer to help, submit something that might be useful, or don't bother responding. Being catty is not helpful to anyone.
... and yet you didn't notice the reply to your lunatic ravings, despite having linked to the post I responded to in this post's parent.
If you're evading a ban, do you realize that you can be sued for fraudulent use of a service? Real-world application of internet logging features are wonderful. Did you post this stuff from home? Do you realize that IPs are logged here on slashdot?
... and still no name to respond to. You're no fun whatsoever.
1500 watts, then. I never claimed to be an electrical engineer. I would suspect that > 90% of the people reading this are not electrical engineers, either. Yourself included. I'm not going out to the garage to read the actual specs off the side of a generator that ran a mobile home for two weeks during/after hurricane Rita, climate control and all appliances, just as if the power grid weren't down, just to make you happy. Brand isn't all that important either.
Besides, the "power" I was referring to was "electricity", you pedantic punk. Wanna gripe about something that's actually germane to the conversation at hand? Perhaps actually read some comments with a little bit of comprehension, rather than sniping at grammatical errors or unit conversions?
Nevermind, I don't know what I was thinking there. This is slashdot, where people with nothing to say get to shout it at the top of their lungs.
In other words, if you say it's an electric car, I should be able to remove the internal combustion engine
Or, in other words, like the OP you make nonsensical claims based on... well, pretty much nothing beyond groundless assumptions.
Logically speaking, if it's an electric car, why would it require an internal combustion engine? Assume I meant a logical removal, rather than a physical removal, and reevaluate. Consider, perhaps, that I was referring to the fact that their ICE is in fact attached to the drive train of the vehicle, and then see if you can understand why I stated that it was dishonest of them not to call their vehicle a hybrid.
Would you buy an "electric stove" that required natural gas hookups? Here, let me sell you my flashlight; it runs on solar power, no batteries required!
Wow, my very own anonymous slashdot cyberstalker. I don't know whether to be amused, or terrified. How many of my posts have you responded to in your attempt to discredit me with your poorly-constructed rantings?
I was going to give you another line-by-line rebuttal, but I think anyone who does a little research on their own can make up their mind as to who is correct. I'll even be nice, and point out that hosts files can be useful - but if yours is a million lines long, you've got serious issues, and they're not all on your computer. As for the question of speed or security... again, I'll let the readers do their own research, and decide which of us is correct.
As for your being a respected member of a programming community? Unless it's the script-kiddies, I seriously doubt it. Your attitude, spelling, grammar, and use of the written language insist to me that you are a child, shouting about childish things, and responding to logic with screams of MINE MINE MINE and other temper tantrums. The idea that you have the communication skills to get another of these raving tantrums posted as something other than a comment in any "respectable publication", online or otherwise, is absurd.
To bring this post back on topic, I will say that AdBlockPlus and NoScript have been huge boons to my surfing, both in Windows and in Linux (surprise! FireFox is multi-platform, therefore so are the addons) and negated any reason that I had for using hosts files, proxy servers, and several other ad-blocking techniques. Your use of whatever technology suits you is entirely up to you.
The issue that I took with your original post is the blind preaching about the use of a tool that may or may not have any speed effects on your browsing, and your apparent blind faith that keeping/maintaining a file that contains the address of every site on the internet on your local hard drive is somehow better than using the service that is dedicated to and provided for that purpose. (Seriously? "millions of lines long"? And you don't think that's affecting your system's speed?) At best, you are duplicating the system's automatic DNS caching (which you stated you disable, by the way) with a manually-updated file. I fail to see any benefit from this action that is not superseded by having decent security software in place.
Repeatedly telling me how I should be concerned that someone may be tracking my DNS requests is just the paranoid ravings of a lunatic with not enough tinfoil in his hat. If someone wants my browsing habits (and other internet activity) badly enough, they can either subpoena them from the ISP (assuming that information is logged, and the interested party has legal authority to request it), or place a tap directly on my line (assuming nefarious purposes). How am I (or you, for that matter) going to be able to tell if they've tapped into the cable 3 miles down the road from my house?
As for your ideas that malware can not have higher privileges than the user... Have you never heard of privilege escalation? Exploits? Given an appropriate amount of time to research the relevant information and develop the coding skills necessary, I would be willing to bet that even I could craft an executable file that could elevate its own privileges to the point of being able to completely control your system, regardless of whether it was started with administrative privileges or by your kid brother's account, which is locked down so hard all he can do is open MS Paint. You're still running XP on that i7 with an SSD, right?
I'm done here; this was originally going to be a rebuttal of your "technical points", but I can't find anything coherent to respond to that I haven't already. Congratulations on the trolling, since i seem to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for it. To close this particular discussion, permanently (I hope) - don't bother responding until you can do so as something other than an Anonymous Coward, I won't be debating you further without having a name to add to my "foes" list. If you weren't afraid your talking points were a complete fabrication, you wouldn't hide behind anonymity. You claim to be a degree-holding "multiply published programmer in this art & science for decades now alongside Mr. Oliver Day"... and yet you don't want to use your own name to add some semblance of validity to your ravings?
I don't know why I'm bothering to respond to an off-topic AC cross-post troll, but here we go...
You posted that 20 minutes ago; Saying that I was unable to reply to it is jumping the gun a bit. To be honest, I haven't even read your response, since I was in another thread (this one) and hadn't read my email to even see that you had responded yet.
Attacking my programming skills (which I think I've been fairly obvious about not being "pro" in) is kinda silly, when the original subject of your post is a system configuration file, not programming (regardless of my "correctness").
And again, I'm wasting my time responding here, because you'll never see this post; you're still an Anonymous Coward.
Mods, feel free to throw this particular bit in the "off-topic" bin; my karma can take it.
I'm curious - why do you think that it's best to work with *strings* to hold your numbers? As opposed to, say, arrays of integers, with code to handle an overflow from one position in the array to the next-more-significant position? (There are already various arbitrary-precision arithmetic libraries, and I suspect - but don't know - that they use this latter method.)
I'm actually doing something similar to what you suggest, but using arrays of bytes instead of integers - since I'm using VB, I think of an arbitrary-length array of bytes as a string, instead of an array of characters. Using strings to hold my bytes just seemed logical, since the "length" of my "strings" can be arbitrarily assigned, and a single "digit" takes up one position. Come to think of it, I suppose I actually am using arrays, and just wasn't thinking of them as such.
I understand that C/C++ considers strings to be arrays of bytes, so I would probably have eventually gotten to the point where I scrapped my string manipulation process and generated an array, instead... I'm not the best coder, and my brain seems to be stuck on VB's methods of communicating instructions. Unfortunately, it is probably generous to call me a "hobbyist" programmer; I've got a few real-live, actual, finished applications under my belt, but I'm no pro (not by a long shot). Of course, I'm only counting the applications that actually do stuff, as opposed to just being a time-waster(game); I'm not counting the concept pieces I taught myself something with, or just some piece I worked on long enough to get it to manipulate some data into a format that was more suitable for some other task (stuff that was never even compiled or saved, just monkeyed with long enough to call the procedure in the debug window - usually even using the debug window for the output and just copy/pasting the result into another app).
This particular application has been wandering around in my mind for several years, and is only recently well-formed enough to be transcribed into actual code. Or maybe it's just that now I'm unemployed, i have more "spare" time on my hands. Project completion is complicated by the fact that I haven't done anything more complex than some shell scripting in several years... There are many times that I feel like I'm learning to code all over again, with this new-fangled dotnet stuff.
All I'm saying is that before you start hiring employees, you should probably invest a lot more effort in vetting your idea.
I'm not "hiring employees", I'm asking for help with a project that might have some form of profit associated with its completion. That profit may or may not be monetary, and is much more likely to be the bragging rights of being able to point at the finished project and say "I helped build that". Whether the project is brag-worthy would be something that could be discussed after an NDA is signed, at which point more details about the project would be forthcoming. If it's not a worthy project, then the NDA won't matter. If it is worthy, the NDA allows me some legal means to protect myself, should you decide to "fork" the project before I am ready for that to happen. I will say that I have been "kicking around" this idea for several years, and I believe it to not only be a worthy project, but an actual innovation.
Long story short: I see your point, but you're not helping.
It's pretty common for us to have ideas that seem great and innovative, but because of our lack of expertise in a given field, we don't realize that the idea is either flawed, or has already been refined and applied. I expect this is especially true with difficult math problems, such as large-number factorization.
You are absolutely correct, and looking back at some of my ideas, they were awful. On the other hand, I have a habit of coming up with ideas, mentioning them to someone who has something to do with the field most appropriately aligned to produce something from it, and then watching something "come out" a year or two later. Simultaneous ideation is not something I am unaware of, nor am I so arrogant or ignorant to believe that mine was the only idea in the field, but I do tend to have good ideas and simply lack the means of expressing them in a manner that guarantees my own profit. This particular project is, in my opinion, something that is not in the same vein as my "ooh, shiny!" ideas of the past. The scope is breath-taking, for one thing.
Bah, now it sounds like I'm all self-important, and I think this project is the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It's a significant advancement in a particular segment of information technology, and one that I'm not aware of anything in the field that has anything within several orders of magnitude of the apparent efficiency of my method. More testing is *obviously* required, either to disprove my theories or to produce a working prototype of the process. You're aware of the "cheap/fast/good; pick two" business rule, yes? Well, this is supposed to be free and excellent - speed is the issue that I'm having with my current Procedures, and I don't have enough of the appropriate education to "fix" it myself. Shame on me for not finishing college.
Suffice it to say that this idea has been (at least preliminarily) vetted to my own satisfaction, and that I will be completing it regardless of whether I receive any assistance. It may take me several years, perhaps a decade, to do it on my own, whereas someone who already knows an appropriate language and already has an affiliated skill-set could help me to implement it in a matter of months.
Again, I'm not "hiring" anyone - I'm a poor broke slob like the rest of us, and the economic downturn combined with an unfortunate date of moving to another state (and the already saturated IT field in my destination) has been harder on me than some others. When I say I'm broke, I mean exactly that; I'm about to start losing possessions due to being unemployed. To be honest, I'm looking for work, myself. I'm hoping to get something in the fast-food industry in the next couple days, before I lose my phone and/or car.
I was under the impression that the original poster was looking for an open-source project that would welcome a "decent coder". My project isn't currently "open", but only because I don't want to lose control of it before it's "re
please correct me if i'm wrong and provide an example of how an ATC system could be used 'at home'
One word: gaming.
And while we're on the subject, I'm absolutely certain that an open-source trig library like the phenomenal one that must be present in EVE Online would be a fantastic addition to the free (as in liberty) gaming community.
I am not a strong programmer, although I can at least code my way out of a wet paper bag, if given enough time. Similarly, math is not my strong suit.
I have a personal programming project which I will eventually end up releasing to the open-source community for several reasons;
I think the possible benefits to the information industry would outweigh any profit potential in it.
I can't figure out how to monetize it without massive litigation in our current patent system.
The idea may actually already be patented, but I have a 1970's science-fiction story that contains the "prior art" if anyone wants to challenge me. I don't actually think there are any patent issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm correct, especially since I haven't done any actual research along those lines. I can say without a doubt that I don't believe the concept is currently in use in any field that I'm aware of.
My programming and math skills are not sufficient to bring it to fruition in a reasonable amount of time.
I haven't released the details "into the wild" yet because I want my name attached to the end product (for portfolio reasons, I guess, or maybe I'm just proud of the idea). I'm not entirely sure how to go about protecting my interests in this matter.
It deals heavily with prime factors of extremely long numbers (so long, in fact, that I believe I will eventually require 128-bit computing for efficiency with my current algorithm ideations; it appears that it would be best to work with 120 binary bits at a time (or some multiple thereof, but quantum computing is still a good ways off from consumer-grade products, I fear). I will still need to work with strings (as opposed to pure numerical constructs) due to the immense size of the numbers involved. I initially came up with the concept while reading about a related idea in a sci-fi novella from 40 or so years ago, and I started toying with it as a... well, I guess the best thing to call it would be an informal feasibility study. After some research and some limited testing, it seems to be holding up to my initial ideations, other than length of time involved to actually perform the process. It seems the process is a bit cpu-intensive, and my initial estimates of "several hours" for completion appear to have jumped several orders of magnitude. Distributed processing should ease that quite a bit, although threads are a bit out of my scope. I do have some good ideas on how the process might be parallellized (is that even a word?).
I have a basic grasp on most of the algorithm, but I am (go ahead, laugh) primarily a VB coder, and I believe this project would be better suited to C, or perhaps python (I have heard something about sci-py?) I am not going to trumpet about my skill set, obviously, but I do believe I can eventually finish this project on my own - I've bounced the idea around in my head for several years, and only recently started actually working on the code. Unfortunately, as I said earlier in this post, I think I'm using the wrong language; and I'm not currently in the best position to be learning a new one. I also seem to have some sort of mental block for languages other than VB (even.NET is problematic, most of my coding has been VB4 and VB5) or so-called "scripting" languages.
I'm not sure how best to get someone to contact me via slashdot, but if anyone is interested in a (probably) not-for-profit endeavor, and can throw me some contact info, I would cheerfully find a means of communication to give this project a productivity boost. I would be requiring an initial non-disclosure agreement, of course, but am totally willing to share credit (and any profit that may arise) from any actual release.
My understanding is that the gasoline is (supposed to be) there to power a small electric generator which recharges the batteries which run the car. Therefore, if your battery is dead and your car has gas, you have another problem entirely.
If you have a source of electrical power (ie, the generator), then it doesn't matter whether the batteries are dead or not. This is why jump-starting a normal car with a dead battery will get you going again - the alternator (a generator that runs off the ICE) provides the electrical power required to keep your car running. In other words, if the gas-powered generator works, then you have motive power, whether the batteries have any juice left in them or not. Charging is a moot point, in my opinion, if the electric vehicle runs from a gas-powered generator.
Speaking of which, I think that the "hybrid" vehicles we should be producing could be running from gas-powered generators instead of batteries, eliminating the storage concern entirely. I have a generator that produces gobs of power (something like 1500 amps) for periods of 18-20 hours, using only 7 gallons of gasoline to do so. You could go an awful long ways on 18-20 hours of driving time.
What difference does it make if the drive doesent bring enough energy along for the trip at hand - be it electricity in the battery, or fuel in the tank.
The difference would be that if you had a flexible solar panel rolled up in the trunk, you could trickle-charge your battery enough to maybe get to the next town (albeit slowly). You're not going to be able to carry enough equipment in the trunk to drill for oil, then refine it into petroleum...
On the other hand, walking to the next gas station with a small gas can, then walking back sounds a lot easier than walking back with a spare battery...
Actually two of the Tesla prototypes had electric generating trailers made for them, it lessened pure electric range by ~15% but enabled the total range to exceed most "normal" cars. Obviously it made parking and maneuvering more difficult, but I think for the enthusiast who would only rarely want to take his roadster on long trips I think it was a cool compromise.
Now imagine something the size of a Smart4Two, with a small generator on a low-profile trailer behind it. The whole thing could probably still fit in a "compact" parking space. I don't understand why this isn't where electric vehicles are going.
I understand electric vehicles not having huge hauling capacities, they're not necessarily the best choice for dragging large loads around (despite the fact that a diesel generator is what powers freight trains' electric engines, or the fact that the US' nuclear navy uses a reactor to drive steam through turbines to generate electricity, which is then used to drive electric motors to propel the ship).
They're not necessarily the best for long distances, due to energy storage constraints? Ok, sure, I'll buy that... except... I have a 1500 Amp generator that runs continuously for 18-20 hours on 7 gallons of fuel; It was used to power an entire mobile home in Louisiana during hurricane Rita. For two weeks. Running all the appliances and climate control as if the power grid weren't down. Why couldn't that be used to power a fully-electric vehicle? It seems to me that 7 gallons in 18-20 hours is a lot better fuel efficiency than 6 hours' driving time on a current combustion engine using twice the fuel.
Yes, I know I'd be burning petroleum anyway... but not nearly as much per mile traveled, and I have the option of not using it if the battery is topped off. If I was simply to strap my generator (which isn't even a very good one, as I understand it) to an electric vehicle in place of the battery, my math suggests I'd be increasing the range by an order of magnitude - how's that for fuel economy? As another poster in this thread said, you could run it on a trailer with just a few lines for power transmission and control of the generator. The additional battery they suggested on the trailer to start the generator seems redundant to me - just use the electrical power available in the car's battery (the one you're charging with the generator), or if it's dead (ie, you're using the generator as backup instead of mains power), the generator has a pullcord, like a gas-powered mower. If the battery's already dead, you're stopped anyway. I can see it being no more of a nuisance than a flat tire (and actually quite less, since I can't just get out, yank on the tire a couple times, then get back in and drive off).
Oh, and I wasn't disagreeing with you, just finding this a convenient place to toss my two cents in.
I think the point the GP was making was that if it's a hybrid, then we expect to perform maintenance on both components, and we don't expect to be able to swap out the ICE component.
The claim being protested seems to be that GM's claims make it seem as if the gasoline-powered portion could reasonably be swapped out for a battery, fuel cell, more storage, what-have-you, when in actuality the ICE is still attached to the drive train. For the extra money GM is asking for the vehicle due to its nature, we would expect that it is not a "hybrid", but a "full EV", with all the connotations thereof.
In other words, if you say it's an electric car, I should be able to remove the internal combustion engine... this appears to not be the case for this vehicle. Since it is driven by both electric and ICE components, I would simply call this vehicle a hybrid. Calling it something else is dishonest.
That may not be the most relevant document - I pulled it from a quick google search to refute my parent. Nearly all countries ban foreigners from owning real estate in their borders; it saves a ton of trouble, and avoids having to come to blows when (as a fictitious example) Japan buys up California, Washington, and Oregon, then tells the world they're moving to "New Japan", their newly-acquired property.
- Treat the following as a separate post, please -
Personally, I'm against having national borders.
The economy is global, as are most corporations. We can travel to a point exactly opposite our current location, and be there in less than 24 hours. Neither pollution nor diseases seem to have any issues crossing humanity's arbitrary lines drawn in the sand, whether there are fences or not.
Drawing a line and saying "this side is mine, that side is yours" is something we laugh at when children do it; why isn't it just as ridiculous when adults do it?
I try not to respond to AC posters, but this is the biggest bunch of stupid I've ever seen someone try to promote as gospel truth. I had to stop you before someone actually believed the drivel you're spewing.
HOSTS files can also not only protect you, but they can also aid in speeding you up online websurfing even more by avoiding DNS lookups by using hardcodes of hostsnames/domainnames to IP addresses of your favorite websites and by blocking ad banners also
Ok, simple experiment. Toss 20,000+ "127.0.0.1" entries into your hosts file, as you are recommending. See if your browsing doesn't slow down by an order of magnitude as your system searches a multi-megabyte sequential file instead of asking the DNS server with the database first. Note: this affects *all* browsing, not just the "bad hosts".
1.) HOSTS files eat A LOT LESS CPU cycles than browser addons do no less (since browser addons have to parse each HTML page & tag content in them)!
Try complaining about something that is an actual problem, since the browser itself parses the HTML to figure out what to display to you. Also, is your system so slow that surfing the web eats a significant proportion of your CPU? Time to come off with some of that hard-earned coin and spend 2 weeks' worth of McDonald's money to get something less than a decade old, then.
2.) HOSTS files are also NOT severely LIMITED TO 1 BROWSER FAMILY ONLY... browser addons, are.
This was precisely what a poster upstream suggested. It is the only interpretation of "NoScript needs to work in every browser" that I can think of, anyway.
3.) HOSTS files allow you to bypass DNS Server requests logs (via hardcoding your favorite sites into them to avoid not only the TIME taken roundtrip to an external DNS server, but also for avoiding those logs OR a DNS server that has been compromised (see Dan Kaminsky online, on that note)).
Ignoring the invisible (read: nonexistant) speed difference, if you're visiting sites that you wouldn't want showing up on a DNS request to a server that handles hundreds or thousands of requests per second, then I must question your motives, and probably call you paranoid.
4.) HOSTS files will allow you to get to sites you like, via hardcoding your favs into a HOSTS file, FAR faster than DNS servers can by FAR (by saving the roundtrip inquiry time to a DNS server & back to you).
I think this would depend on your net speed, and where your DNS server is. Mine is sitting next to me, between my computer and my cablemodem. There is another one on the other side of my cablemodem, politely provided by my ISP. Allow me to politely contradict your supposed point by pointing out that searching a sequential access file (ie, reading an entire multi-megabyte file, in its entirety) for every DNS lookup has a massive performance penalty versus accessing a database that resides in memory on a purpose-built system. There are typically 20+ lookups per webpage, thanks to ads. In addition, thanks to DNS caching (supported (and enabled by default) not only by your OS, but also by your browser), any non-HOSTS query is cached for future lookups.
5.) HOSTS files also allow you to not worry about a DNS server being compromised, or downed (if either occurs, you STILL get to sites you hardcode in a HOSTS file anyhow in EITHER case).
If the DNS server (sitting next to me, remember?) is compromised, I have bigger fish to fry. If I am more concerned about a DNS server than surfing the web, something is wrong. If my ISP's DNS server is compromised, someone is in deep doo-doo; that's (at best) a denial of service attack against thousands of customers, probably crossing state lines... They're committing a federal offense carrying hefty jailtime and monetary damages as a possible penalty. And in the event of a downed DNS server, you can use the alternate
If you'd take a break from huffing paint, smoking meth and fucking your relatives, you might be able to detect sarcasm before cuntpasting the magic words your KKK leader gave you. Just a thought.
ROFL. That is all.
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 17 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Chances are, Slashdot is just bitching because I'm responding as AC to an AC thread. There might even be an objectionable words filter in play. This message is rarely seen on actual logged-in posts.
Perhaps we could use it as a jumping-off point for the mesh network, since the biggest issue with mesh is that no one wants to be the actual "service provider" at the back end.
Slashdot Mirror
I just think EVE is praised for the wrong reasons a lot of the time.
You have to admit, it's very pretty.
Oh, and yeah... zero-gravity, no-horizon environments... you know, like in space games ;)
I never claimed to have a mathematical method that nobody else has. As a matter of fact, "finding prime factors of large numbers" is its own mathematical field, as I understand it. I claim to have a new application for that field.
The rant you linked to is ranting about being screwed out of money by the person asking for an NDA - there's no money here, I thought I made that plain. I have an algorithm that needs some work, and due to what I know of programming languages, would be much better suited to one I don't know, and not for lack of trying to pound it into my brain. so, basically, we're looking at porting some code and making it more efficient.
Whatever, this is just more of the "flame the noobs" that I talked about in an earlier post. Between you and my new cyberstalker, I'm tired of rebutting stupidity.
Unlike my newfound "friend", though, you actually had something useful to say - maybe I'll look into this "github" you describe.
I have code that I wrote using an 8x8 VCP to offload MPEG-1 QCIF encode in 1997.
The issue here would be that the patent was applied for in 1994.
Well, that and "how the hell can a 16-year-old technology patent apply to anything in the modern world?"
Might as well patent using spoons to eat soup - if you hurry, you might beat the rush. Half the stuff that patent might apply to was obsolete 10 years ago.
Modify your process so that if *any* of the examiners come up with the same solution, it's obvious, and I'd be willing to give that a shot.
Oh, and throw out all the rest of the "obvious" patents while you're at it.
As an aside, what does Microsoft think an MPEG decoder card does? Just curious...
You have repeatedly called me a name-dropper, name-caller, name-tosser... to what do you refer? I have yet to say anything about you other than that your posts lack spelling, grammar, and writing style. Oh, and that some of them are based on false pretenses, and appear to be factually inaccurate. ... and you're terrified of anyone finding out who you are.
As I look over your original post, and the few items you have "let slip" in your posts, I am realizing that this whole game is probably about generating pageviews for your ridiculous forum posting, because you might have gotten paid for it, or might be being paid for it. By a third-party website that isn't even referenced. Assuming you're even the person whose posts you're pretending to have written.
As for your supposed validity, you have backpedaled countless times when asked to identify yourself, even going so far as to deliberately obscure your identity. What's wrong, you don't believe your own posts? Advocating privacy is one thing, but I'm calling you out, son! Show me something I can point to and feel like I have a sense of an actual person, or at least stop pointing at other people and claiming you did the work they're credited with.
Oh, and your writing style, ugh... I'm still trying to decide whether you're schizophrenic, or have a some strange written form of Tourette's without the profanity.
It wouldn't be so bad, if you could stick to a topic other than how horribly wrong I am about the hosts file (which is still up for debate). Even the post you yourself referred to by your idol Mr. Day said that putting the whole internet into your hosts file was stupid.
"In the early days of the Internet, when it was ARPANet, there were so few nodes that it was possible to manage the host file as a sort of phonebook. Today, few would suggest manipulating a host file since it would quickly be out of date and is considered completely redundant in light of DNS." - His words, not mine. Look a few paragraphs above the lines you quoted for the relevant text, smartypants. Yes, now I'm calling you names.
Oh, and your idiotic, foaming-at-the-mouth ranting is still making me giggle.
you are for example, FREE to write Mr. Eric Dickman (CEO of SuperSpeed.com) & ask him if I wrote up the part of SuperCache I/II that made it 40% more effective
...except you still have yet to identify yourself, so that information is meaningless. Are you the creator of that part of SuperCache? We don't know. You are Anonymous Coward, who may be APK, or may just be yet another anonymous coward.
In any event, this has ceased to amuse me, other than to laugh at your dumbassery. I'm done here, you can go back to your hole now.
Giggle.
As in, you make me laugh.
I ask for you to cite works proving you are a "degree-holding multiply published programmer", and you spit back a bunch of random magazine titles which I would need to track down an online version of (if such a thing exists) to determine the validity of, followed by a link to an article PCPitStop (a well-renowned website, I'm sure) supposedly paid you to write, yet your link leads to a forum called "xtreme pc central". Why didn't you link to something "official"? Can I respond by linking to my slashdot postings to show how "official" I am? After all, this is an online forum, too...
There's a picture of a kid who might be a couple decades old as the avatar on that forum post... is that you? Is that kid the person we're supposed to believe has been "in this art & science for decades now"?
Still no name, and ridiculous "references". I'm enjoying your idiocy more with every post. Keep it coming!
Oh, and slashdot apparently doesn't send me a notification when an Anonymous Coward replies to my posts, so pick a spot and stick to it, would you? I'm getting bored with looking over all of my recent posts to see whether you've replied to one of them with more inane blathering. Alternatively, log in (you can figure out how to create an account, right? With all of your worldly knowledge?). You can even use a pseudonym to protect your secret alter-ego, if you feel the need (or if APK is already taken, or you're scared of slashdot's DNS server logs).
Giggle.
P.S. - I read your "guide", and I have to say, you just keep making me laugh! Arguing with the producers of a security testing tool because you can't get your score any higher? You take the cake!
It sounds like you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and you don't know this. And it sounds like what you do is either impossible, or easily done within a week by a competent programmer.
I may not have a clue what I'm really talking about. What I am trying to do may actually be impossible. Speaking with someone who *does* know what I'm talking about would be most helpful, but no one seems inclined to provide any contact information. Ah, well, posting the request here was just a spur-of-the-moment whim, anyway. I didn't actually expect any responses other than trolls and others similar in nature to yours. This whole thread seems to be devoted to ridiculing the "newbie" who posted in the first place, spitting out pet projects in the hopes of free assistance, or ridiculing people who took the original post seriously. Yeah, I know, I'm in the second group. I'll work out my software issues on my own, if I get no serious responses, and be no worse off than I was before I posted.
What I want to do is not impossible; although I am not aware of anyone using it in quite the way I have in mind, I am well aware that several others have successfully done the same maths. It could very well be easily done by a competent programmer in a week, although I have not seen any evidence that anyone else has done so.
I have seen news articles on related subjects when researching how to go about doing what I am doing which came to basically the same conclusion that I did; Math is hard.
If my posts seems deliberately vague about what I'm actually doing, then you should realize that the behavior you are witnessing is "working as intended". I'm not ready to share my project with the world yet, because it's not quite developed to the point that I can point my finger at it when someone else does it and say "that's my idea, I came up with that". I intend to open the source for the project, but I want my name attached to it first.
The biggest hurdle I currently have is how to speed the process up; I have the rest of it pretty well figured out, and it seems to work.
Do us all a favor and either offer to help, submit something that might be useful, or don't bother responding. Being catty is not helpful to anyone.
... and yet you didn't notice the reply to your lunatic ravings, despite having linked to the post I responded to in this post's parent.
If you're evading a ban, do you realize that you can be sued for fraudulent use of a service? Real-world application of internet logging features are wonderful. Did you post this stuff from home? Do you realize that IPs are logged here on slashdot?
... and still no name to respond to. You're no fun whatsoever.
1500 watts, then. I never claimed to be an electrical engineer. I would suspect that > 90% of the people reading this are not electrical engineers, either. Yourself included.
I'm not going out to the garage to read the actual specs off the side of a generator that ran a mobile home for two weeks during/after hurricane Rita, climate control and all appliances, just as if the power grid weren't down, just to make you happy. Brand isn't all that important either.
Besides, the "power" I was referring to was "electricity", you pedantic punk. Wanna gripe about something that's actually germane to the conversation at hand? Perhaps actually read some comments with a little bit of comprehension, rather than sniping at grammatical errors or unit conversions?
Nevermind, I don't know what I was thinking there. This is slashdot, where people with nothing to say get to shout it at the top of their lungs.
In other words, if you say it's an electric car, I should be able to remove the internal combustion engine
Or, in other words, like the OP you make nonsensical claims based on... well, pretty much nothing beyond groundless assumptions.
Logically speaking, if it's an electric car, why would it require an internal combustion engine? Assume I meant a logical removal, rather than a physical removal, and reevaluate. Consider, perhaps, that I was referring to the fact that their ICE is in fact attached to the drive train of the vehicle, and then see if you can understand why I stated that it was dishonest of them not to call their vehicle a hybrid.
Would you buy an "electric stove" that required natural gas hookups? Here, let me sell you my flashlight; it runs on solar power, no batteries required!
Sheesh.
Wow, my very own anonymous slashdot cyberstalker. I don't know whether to be amused, or terrified. How many of my posts have you responded to in your attempt to discredit me with your poorly-constructed rantings?
I was going to give you another line-by-line rebuttal, but I think anyone who does a little research on their own can make up their mind as to who is correct. I'll even be nice, and point out that hosts files can be useful - but if yours is a million lines long, you've got serious issues, and they're not all on your computer. As for the question of speed or security... again, I'll let the readers do their own research, and decide which of us is correct.
As for your being a respected member of a programming community? Unless it's the script-kiddies, I seriously doubt it. Your attitude, spelling, grammar, and use of the written language insist to me that you are a child, shouting about childish things, and responding to logic with screams of MINE MINE MINE and other temper tantrums. The idea that you have the communication skills to get another of these raving tantrums posted as something other than a comment in any "respectable publication", online or otherwise, is absurd.
To bring this post back on topic, I will say that AdBlockPlus and NoScript have been huge boons to my surfing, both in Windows and in Linux (surprise! FireFox is multi-platform, therefore so are the addons) and negated any reason that I had for using hosts files, proxy servers, and several other ad-blocking techniques. Your use of whatever technology suits you is entirely up to you.
The issue that I took with your original post is the blind preaching about the use of a tool that may or may not have any speed effects on your browsing, and your apparent blind faith that keeping/maintaining a file that contains the address of every site on the internet on your local hard drive is somehow better than using the service that is dedicated to and provided for that purpose. (Seriously? "millions of lines long"? And you don't think that's affecting your system's speed?) At best, you are duplicating the system's automatic DNS caching (which you stated you disable, by the way) with a manually-updated file. I fail to see any benefit from this action that is not superseded by having decent security software in place.
Repeatedly telling me how I should be concerned that someone may be tracking my DNS requests is just the paranoid ravings of a lunatic with not enough tinfoil in his hat. If someone wants my browsing habits (and other internet activity) badly enough, they can either subpoena them from the ISP (assuming that information is logged, and the interested party has legal authority to request it), or place a tap directly on my line (assuming nefarious purposes). How am I (or you, for that matter) going to be able to tell if they've tapped into the cable 3 miles down the road from my house?
As for your ideas that malware can not have higher privileges than the user... Have you never heard of privilege escalation? Exploits? Given an appropriate amount of time to research the relevant information and develop the coding skills necessary, I would be willing to bet that even I could craft an executable file that could elevate its own privileges to the point of being able to completely control your system, regardless of whether it was started with administrative privileges or by your kid brother's account, which is locked down so hard all he can do is open MS Paint. You're still running XP on that i7 with an SSD, right?
I'm done here; this was originally going to be a rebuttal of your "technical points", but I can't find anything coherent to respond to that I haven't already. Congratulations on the trolling, since i seem to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for it. To close this particular discussion, permanently (I hope) - don't bother responding until you can do so as something other than an Anonymous Coward, I won't be debating you further without having a name to add to my "foes" list. If you weren't afraid your talking points were a complete fabrication, you wouldn't hide behind anonymity. You claim to be a degree-holding "multiply published programmer in this art & science for decades now alongside Mr. Oliver Day"... and yet you don't want to use your own name to add some semblance of validity to your ravings?
Good day, sir.
I don't know why I'm bothering to respond to an off-topic AC cross-post troll, but here we go...
You posted that 20 minutes ago; Saying that I was unable to reply to it is jumping the gun a bit. To be honest, I haven't even read your response, since I was in another thread (this one) and hadn't read my email to even see that you had responded yet.
Attacking my programming skills (which I think I've been fairly obvious about not being "pro" in) is kinda silly, when the original subject of your post is a system configuration file, not programming (regardless of my "correctness").
And again, I'm wasting my time responding here, because you'll never see this post; you're still an Anonymous Coward.
Mods, feel free to throw this particular bit in the "off-topic" bin; my karma can take it.
I'm curious - why do you think that it's best to work with *strings* to hold your numbers? As opposed to, say, arrays of integers, with code to handle an overflow from one position in the array to the next-more-significant position? (There are already various arbitrary-precision arithmetic libraries, and I suspect - but don't know - that they use this latter method.)
I'm actually doing something similar to what you suggest, but using arrays of bytes instead of integers - since I'm using VB, I think of an arbitrary-length array of bytes as a string, instead of an array of characters. Using strings to hold my bytes just seemed logical, since the "length" of my "strings" can be arbitrarily assigned, and a single "digit" takes up one position. Come to think of it, I suppose I actually am using arrays, and just wasn't thinking of them as such.
I understand that C/C++ considers strings to be arrays of bytes, so I would probably have eventually gotten to the point where I scrapped my string manipulation process and generated an array, instead... I'm not the best coder, and my brain seems to be stuck on VB's methods of communicating instructions. Unfortunately, it is probably generous to call me a "hobbyist" programmer; I've got a few real-live, actual, finished applications under my belt, but I'm no pro (not by a long shot). Of course, I'm only counting the applications that actually do stuff, as opposed to just being a time-waster(game); I'm not counting the concept pieces I taught myself something with, or just some piece I worked on long enough to get it to manipulate some data into a format that was more suitable for some other task (stuff that was never even compiled or saved, just monkeyed with long enough to call the procedure in the debug window - usually even using the debug window for the output and just copy/pasting the result into another app).
This particular application has been wandering around in my mind for several years, and is only recently well-formed enough to be transcribed into actual code. Or maybe it's just that now I'm unemployed, i have more "spare" time on my hands. Project completion is complicated by the fact that I haven't done anything more complex than some shell scripting in several years... There are many times that I feel like I'm learning to code all over again, with this new-fangled dotnet stuff.
All I'm saying is that before you start hiring employees, you should probably invest a lot more effort in vetting your idea.
I'm not "hiring employees", I'm asking for help with a project that might have some form of profit associated with its completion. That profit may or may not be monetary, and is much more likely to be the bragging rights of being able to point at the finished project and say "I helped build that". Whether the project is brag-worthy would be something that could be discussed after an NDA is signed, at which point more details about the project would be forthcoming. If it's not a worthy project, then the NDA won't matter. If it is worthy, the NDA allows me some legal means to protect myself, should you decide to "fork" the project before I am ready for that to happen. I will say that I have been "kicking around" this idea for several years, and I believe it to not only be a worthy project, but an actual innovation.
Long story short: I see your point, but you're not helping.
It's pretty common for us to have ideas that seem great and innovative, but because of our lack of expertise in a given field, we don't realize that the idea is either flawed, or has already been refined and applied. I expect this is especially true with difficult math problems, such as large-number factorization.
You are absolutely correct, and looking back at some of my ideas, they were awful. On the other hand, I have a habit of coming up with ideas, mentioning them to someone who has something to do with the field most appropriately aligned to produce something from it, and then watching something "come out" a year or two later. Simultaneous ideation is not something I am unaware of, nor am I so arrogant or ignorant to believe that mine was the only idea in the field, but I do tend to have good ideas and simply lack the means of expressing them in a manner that guarantees my own profit. This particular project is, in my opinion, something that is not in the same vein as my "ooh, shiny!" ideas of the past. The scope is breath-taking, for one thing.
Bah, now it sounds like I'm all self-important, and I think this project is the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It's a significant advancement in a particular segment of information technology, and one that I'm not aware of anything in the field that has anything within several orders of magnitude of the apparent efficiency of my method. More testing is *obviously* required, either to disprove my theories or to produce a working prototype of the process. You're aware of the "cheap/fast/good; pick two" business rule, yes? Well, this is supposed to be free and excellent - speed is the issue that I'm having with my current Procedures, and I don't have enough of the appropriate education to "fix" it myself. Shame on me for not finishing college.
Suffice it to say that this idea has been (at least preliminarily) vetted to my own satisfaction, and that I will be completing it regardless of whether I receive any assistance. It may take me several years, perhaps a decade, to do it on my own, whereas someone who already knows an appropriate language and already has an affiliated skill-set could help me to implement it in a matter of months.
Again, I'm not "hiring" anyone - I'm a poor broke slob like the rest of us, and the economic downturn combined with an unfortunate date of moving to another state (and the already saturated IT field in my destination) has been harder on me than some others. When I say I'm broke, I mean exactly that; I'm about to start losing possessions due to being unemployed. To be honest, I'm looking for work, myself. I'm hoping to get something in the fast-food industry in the next couple days, before I lose my phone and/or car.
I was under the impression that the original poster was looking for an open-source project that would welcome a "decent coder". My project isn't currently "open", but only because I don't want to lose control of it before it's "re
please correct me if i'm wrong and provide an example of how an ATC system could be used 'at home'
One word: gaming.
And while we're on the subject, I'm absolutely certain that an open-source trig library like the phenomenal one that must be present in EVE Online would be a fantastic addition to the free (as in liberty) gaming community.
I am not a strong programmer, although I can at least code my way out of a wet paper bag, if given enough time. Similarly, math is not my strong suit.
I have a personal programming project which I will eventually end up releasing to the open-source community for several reasons;
The idea may actually already be patented, but I have a 1970's science-fiction story that contains the "prior art" if anyone wants to challenge me. I don't actually think there are any patent issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm correct, especially since I haven't done any actual research along those lines. I can say without a doubt that I don't believe the concept is currently in use in any field that I'm aware of.
I haven't released the details "into the wild" yet because I want my name attached to the end product (for portfolio reasons, I guess, or maybe I'm just proud of the idea). I'm not entirely sure how to go about protecting my interests in this matter.
It deals heavily with prime factors of extremely long numbers (so long, in fact, that I believe I will eventually require 128-bit computing for efficiency with my current algorithm ideations; it appears that it would be best to work with 120 binary bits at a time (or some multiple thereof, but quantum computing is still a good ways off from consumer-grade products, I fear). I will still need to work with strings (as opposed to pure numerical constructs) due to the immense size of the numbers involved. I initially came up with the concept while reading about a related idea in a sci-fi novella from 40 or so years ago, and I started toying with it as a... well, I guess the best thing to call it would be an informal feasibility study. After some research and some limited testing, it seems to be holding up to my initial ideations, other than length of time involved to actually perform the process. It seems the process is a bit cpu-intensive, and my initial estimates of "several hours" for completion appear to have jumped several orders of magnitude. Distributed processing should ease that quite a bit, although threads are a bit out of my scope. I do have some good ideas on how the process might be parallellized (is that even a word?).
I have a basic grasp on most of the algorithm, but I am (go ahead, laugh) primarily a VB coder, and I believe this project would be better suited to C, or perhaps python (I have heard something about sci-py?) I am not going to trumpet about my skill set, obviously, but I do believe I can eventually finish this project on my own - I've bounced the idea around in my head for several years, and only recently started actually working on the code. Unfortunately, as I said earlier in this post, I think I'm using the wrong language; and I'm not currently in the best position to be learning a new one. I also seem to have some sort of mental block for languages other than VB (even .NET is problematic, most of my coding has been VB4 and VB5) or so-called "scripting" languages.
I'm not sure how best to get someone to contact me via slashdot, but if anyone is interested in a (probably) not-for-profit endeavor, and can throw me some contact info, I would cheerfully find a means of communication to give this project a productivity boost. I would be requiring an initial non-disclosure agreement, of course, but am totally willing to share credit (and any profit that may arise) from any actual release.
My understanding is that the gasoline is (supposed to be) there to power a small electric generator which recharges the batteries which run the car. Therefore, if your battery is dead and your car has gas, you have another problem entirely.
If you have a source of electrical power (ie, the generator), then it doesn't matter whether the batteries are dead or not. This is why jump-starting a normal car with a dead battery will get you going again - the alternator (a generator that runs off the ICE) provides the electrical power required to keep your car running. In other words, if the gas-powered generator works, then you have motive power, whether the batteries have any juice left in them or not. Charging is a moot point, in my opinion, if the electric vehicle runs from a gas-powered generator.
Speaking of which, I think that the "hybrid" vehicles we should be producing could be running from gas-powered generators instead of batteries, eliminating the storage concern entirely. I have a generator that produces gobs of power (something like 1500 amps) for periods of 18-20 hours, using only 7 gallons of gasoline to do so. You could go an awful long ways on 18-20 hours of driving time.
What difference does it make if the drive doesent bring enough energy along for the trip at hand - be it electricity in the battery, or fuel in the tank.
The difference would be that if you had a flexible solar panel rolled up in the trunk, you could trickle-charge your battery enough to maybe get to the next town (albeit slowly). You're not going to be able to carry enough equipment in the trunk to drill for oil, then refine it into petroleum...
On the other hand, walking to the next gas station with a small gas can, then walking back sounds a lot easier than walking back with a spare battery...
Actually two of the Tesla prototypes had electric generating trailers made for them, it lessened pure electric range by ~15% but enabled the total range to exceed most "normal" cars. Obviously it made parking and maneuvering more difficult, but I think for the enthusiast who would only rarely want to take his roadster on long trips I think it was a cool compromise.
Now imagine something the size of a Smart4Two, with a small generator on a low-profile trailer behind it. The whole thing could probably still fit in a "compact" parking space.
I don't understand why this isn't where electric vehicles are going.
I understand electric vehicles not having huge hauling capacities, they're not necessarily the best choice for dragging large loads around (despite the fact that a diesel generator is what powers freight trains' electric engines, or the fact that the US' nuclear navy uses a reactor to drive steam through turbines to generate electricity, which is then used to drive electric motors to propel the ship).
They're not necessarily the best for long distances, due to energy storage constraints? Ok, sure, I'll buy that... except... I have a 1500 Amp generator that runs continuously for 18-20 hours on 7 gallons of fuel; It was used to power an entire mobile home in Louisiana during hurricane Rita. For two weeks. Running all the appliances and climate control as if the power grid weren't down. Why couldn't that be used to power a fully-electric vehicle? It seems to me that 7 gallons in 18-20 hours is a lot better fuel efficiency than 6 hours' driving time on a current combustion engine using twice the fuel.
Yes, I know I'd be burning petroleum anyway... but not nearly as much per mile traveled, and I have the option of not using it if the battery is topped off. If I was simply to strap my generator (which isn't even a very good one, as I understand it) to an electric vehicle in place of the battery, my math suggests I'd be increasing the range by an order of magnitude - how's that for fuel economy? As another poster in this thread said, you could run it on a trailer with just a few lines for power transmission and control of the generator. The additional battery they suggested on the trailer to start the generator seems redundant to me - just use the electrical power available in the car's battery (the one you're charging with the generator), or if it's dead (ie, you're using the generator as backup instead of mains power), the generator has a pullcord, like a gas-powered mower. If the battery's already dead, you're stopped anyway. I can see it being no more of a nuisance than a flat tire (and actually quite less, since I can't just get out, yank on the tire a couple times, then get back in and drive off).
Oh, and I wasn't disagreeing with you, just finding this a convenient place to toss my two cents in.
I think the point the GP was making was that if it's a hybrid, then we expect to perform maintenance on both components, and we don't expect to be able to swap out the ICE component.
The claim being protested seems to be that GM's claims make it seem as if the gasoline-powered portion could reasonably be swapped out for a battery, fuel cell, more storage, what-have-you, when in actuality the ICE is still attached to the drive train. For the extra money GM is asking for the vehicle due to its nature, we would expect that it is not a "hybrid", but a "full EV", with all the connotations thereof.
In other words, if you say it's an electric car, I should be able to remove the internal combustion engine... this appears to not be the case for this vehicle. Since it is driven by both electric and ICE components, I would simply call this vehicle a hybrid. Calling it something else is dishonest.
That may not be the most relevant document - I pulled it from a quick google search to refute my parent. Nearly all countries ban foreigners from owning real estate in their borders; it saves a ton of trouble, and avoids having to come to blows when (as a fictitious example) Japan buys up California, Washington, and Oregon, then tells the world they're moving to "New Japan", their newly-acquired property.
- Treat the following as a separate post, please -
Personally, I'm against having national borders.
The economy is global, as are most corporations.
We can travel to a point exactly opposite our current location, and be there in less than 24 hours.
Neither pollution nor diseases seem to have any issues crossing humanity's arbitrary lines drawn in the sand, whether there are fences or not.
Drawing a line and saying "this side is mine, that side is yours" is something we laugh at when children do it; why isn't it just as ridiculous when adults do it?
I try not to respond to AC posters, but this is the biggest bunch of stupid I've ever seen someone try to promote as gospel truth. I had to stop you before someone actually believed the drivel you're spewing.
HOSTS files can also not only protect you, but they can also aid in speeding you up online websurfing even more by avoiding DNS lookups by using hardcodes of hostsnames/domainnames to IP addresses of your favorite websites and by blocking ad banners also
Ok, simple experiment. Toss 20,000+ "127.0.0.1" entries into your hosts file, as you are recommending. See if your browsing doesn't slow down by an order of magnitude as your system searches a multi-megabyte sequential file instead of asking the DNS server with the database first. Note: this affects *all* browsing, not just the "bad hosts".
1.) HOSTS files eat A LOT LESS CPU cycles than browser addons do no less (since browser addons have to parse each HTML page & tag content in them)!
Try complaining about something that is an actual problem, since the browser itself parses the HTML to figure out what to display to you.
Also, is your system so slow that surfing the web eats a significant proportion of your CPU? Time to come off with some of that hard-earned coin and spend 2 weeks' worth of McDonald's money to get something less than a decade old, then.
2.) HOSTS files are also NOT severely LIMITED TO 1 BROWSER FAMILY ONLY... browser addons, are.
This was precisely what a poster upstream suggested. It is the only interpretation of "NoScript needs to work in every browser" that I can think of, anyway.
3.) HOSTS files allow you to bypass DNS Server requests logs (via hardcoding your favorite sites into them to avoid not only the TIME taken roundtrip to an external DNS server, but also for avoiding those logs OR a DNS server that has been compromised (see Dan Kaminsky online, on that note)).
Ignoring the invisible (read: nonexistant) speed difference, if you're visiting sites that you wouldn't want showing up on a DNS request to a server that handles hundreds or thousands of requests per second, then I must question your motives, and probably call you paranoid.
4.) HOSTS files will allow you to get to sites you like, via hardcoding your favs into a HOSTS file, FAR faster than DNS servers can by FAR (by saving the roundtrip inquiry time to a DNS server & back to you).
I think this would depend on your net speed, and where your DNS server is. Mine is sitting next to me, between my computer and my cablemodem. There is another one on the other side of my cablemodem, politely provided by my ISP. Allow me to politely contradict your supposed point by pointing out that searching a sequential access file (ie, reading an entire multi-megabyte file, in its entirety) for every DNS lookup has a massive performance penalty versus accessing a database that resides in memory on a purpose-built system. There are typically 20+ lookups per webpage, thanks to ads.
In addition, thanks to DNS caching (supported (and enabled by default) not only by your OS, but also by your browser), any non-HOSTS query is cached for future lookups.
5.) HOSTS files also allow you to not worry about a DNS server being compromised, or downed (if either occurs, you STILL get to sites you hardcode in a HOSTS file anyhow in EITHER case).
If the DNS server (sitting next to me, remember?) is compromised, I have bigger fish to fry. If I am more concerned about a DNS server than surfing the web, something is wrong. If my ISP's DNS server is compromised, someone is in deep doo-doo; that's (at best) a denial of service attack against thousands of customers, probably crossing state lines... They're committing a federal offense carrying hefty jailtime and monetary damages as a possible penalty. And in the event of a downed DNS server, you can use the alternate
If you'd take a break from huffing paint, smoking meth and fucking your relatives, you might be able to detect sarcasm before cuntpasting the magic words your KKK leader gave you. Just a thought.
ROFL. That is all.
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 17 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Chances are, Slashdot is just bitching because I'm responding as AC to an AC thread. There might even be an objectionable words filter in play. This message is rarely seen on actual logged-in posts.
Seriously. 17 minutes?
Perhaps we could use it as a jumping-off point for the mesh network, since the biggest issue with mesh is that no one wants to be the actual "service provider" at the back end.