Re:As long as I can buy VHS tapes
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 1
It is obvious that you have never had to deal with tapes and backups for a living.
The shelf life of an unused VHS tape is between 5 and 7 years which is quite a lot compared to things like DAT or Travan, but still not even close to the age necessary for long term archiving. Cross-magnetisation or whatever it is called. Neigbouring magnetic layers influence each other which results in the magnetic particles changing their orientation. It is he bane of any tape medium and there is nothing you can do about it for analogue recordings. So your tapes are not going to be useable to be dumped to any medium. That is besides the fact that 7-10 years are enough for the plastic carrier to become brittle and start flaking the magnetic covering or breaking at random.
I am not junkie, but I have to deal with a list of complaints from users who are annoyed by the fact that its search facility in newsgroups magestically sucks rotten eggz. Only subject and date. No search on header fields or message body.
I am afraid they do. Check the reviews and the register which has an article on the matter.
This is the exact reason why the storage requirements have gone up by up to 200% in some cases compared to the old palmOS.
Re:This is a marriage made in heaven :-)
on
Skype + Kazaa = ?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
No. It is a lose-lose.
1. Kazaa does not become any more legitimate because Skype is not using anything in it. It is just a bundle. I suspect that it is not even using Kazaa information for supernode and relay selection which it definitely could have done. And as many other people have pointed out putting vitamins in a cigarette pack does not make the cigarettes eligible for the taxation levied on health product. It is still taxed as cigarettes.
2. This will give a number of legitimate reasons for a list of usual suspects to go after skype. They are only waiting for an opportunity to open a broadside at it and they will grab the chance and run. I seriously doubt that Verizon would have taken such a tough "fight all subpoenas" stance if these subpoenas would have also cleaned competitors for its VOIP service.
3. As a network admin I wipe both programs anywhere I see them for liability reasons, but many people have allowed Skype, but disallowed Kazaa. I suspect that they are going to disallow both now. This will take out people who are most likely to become paying skypeOut or In customers. At the same time a bunch of freeloaders will come along who are least likely to pay anything as long as they can. So this move will also hit Skype financially in the long run.
4. The only reason I see for this move is a possible Skype IPO or digging for a new funding round. They are looking at a possibility to wave numbers at people with wallets and make a run once it becomes clear that the numbers are not related to anything substantial as far as finances go.
Err... You are off by very far. Both as price and efficiency.
1. There is only one more petrol (loads of diesels though) car besides the Smart to make the UK top 10 lowest pollution (and best economy). It is the new Daihatsu Charade. It is a 4 seater and is priced at about 50% of the Smart price. If you compare how bad of a deal you get when getting a Smart you should compare it to it, not to a Jazz or a Modus which are much bigger.
2. Modus or Jazz are in the higher category and should be compared to FourFour. There the category benchmark is Diahatsu Sirion (from next year Daihatsu Boom AKA Toyota Passo). It does 60+ mpg, under 9 secs 0-60, under 3.5 secs 0-30, 5 seater (though the 5 person will get a bit cramped) and has a very reasonable boot. Add a second on top of these for the 4x4 model (while keeping the same fuel economy). Basically - 2-3 times better acceleration then the Modus, the Jazz or the FourFour with the same size. And it is by 2K cheaper then the Jazz. Compared to it the relevant Smart (fourfour) is a laughing stock (15-20% worse performance and 15/20% higher price). Oh, almost forgot, 1m less turning circle, almost as good as on the two seater Smart.
Overall you do not get anything positive from buying a Smart. It is a big waste of money. All you do is to demonstrate that you are a silly idiot.
You are mistaking a Sun plugin exploit with Java exploits in general. This limits this exploit to people who actually have a jdk installed. This limits the population of susceptible systems to people who develop with java or to people who use java based software which uses a recent java spec. Once again a fairly small group (I am talking general population, not slashdot readers).
This will also falsely mark works partially done by students and apprentices as fake. It was a standard practice up to the beginning of the 19th century to have students and apprentices do the "easy" bits and the grand master only finished off stuff. Leonardo did it, Rembrandt did it, so on so fourth.
Mainly because nobody ever considered the batteries to be a "maintenance" item in that fashion.
Nope. They are. But they are a maintenance item on the major service list. 5 years/60k miles or something like that. So there can be taken out and have been designed to be taken out. It takes around 2h hours as far as I know for a full battery replacement on a hybrid Civic or a Prius.
Seconded. It is not the first time they have done it.I remember plenty of flash served by them that was trying the buffer overrun in the player. The important bit is that it is the first time people have taken notice which in itself is a very good sign.
If you have not seen it, it is a definitely must see. If you see it after you have laughed your guts out on the floor compare the now (bunch of idiots drinking vodka from the bottle) and then (nobody drinking becides two people who are discussing politics in french and slowly sipping some coniac from time to time).
Re:Well...
on
Hacking Vodka
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· Score: 2, Informative
Not really, less hydrophilic substances will displace it. This will definitely improve the hangover and drinking properties, because it is the high molecular weight alcohols, ketones and aldehides which are the primary cause of hangover (not methanol as many people think). So adsorbing them out should definitely help.
Not that I drink vodka anyway. In fact in Russia only the drunks on the street drink it. Why - see here:httpwwwamazoncomexecobidostgdetail-B0001P29Q2 qid1100944430sr8-6refsr8xsapi6xgl74002-1004512-908 0059vglancesdvdn507846
Who cares about the code. It is data that should be signed and countersigned at every step and travel by at least 2 or more parallel pathways which are crossverified as well as the signatures. I am sorry, but 5th world country like Bulgaria has been doing this for nearly 10 years now. India has done it in the last election. It is time for the US to actually get a clue and learn how to run an election or import the Bulgarian or Indians who designed the election data flow (note the architecture, not the code) for a short H1B stint.
To the extent of my knowledge (as I am not a ferengi so I do not know exact numbers) all foreigners on work permits in my company are payed above the average for the same region or industry. None of them is from Bangalore though. Eastern Europeans, Central Europeans as well as some Commonwealth. They are generally more qualified then the industry average as well though so the difference is justified.
Re:This is interesting...
on
Internet Hunting
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If you hunt just because of the sportsmanship, have you ever considered trying to hunt with a camera? Getting a clean professional quality shot of a deer is thousands times more difficult compared to shooting it. A rifle will shoot through branches and leaves. A camera does not.
Take a camera next time and see what a lame shot you actually are.
You really think that a NATIONAL database of everyones fingerprints, iris scans and some face encoding (not sure how the face stuff works) is better than everyone knowing what you buy?.
Now let's have this again. Let's see... You make a life insurance or a health claim and your insurer goes through several years of your shopping history and tells you "Sorry pal, you have deliberately consumed too much high holesterol food. We cannot aprove your claim as the problem is selfinflicted". While the example is an extreme case, the possibilities for doing this are right there. And this is the actual reason why all of the insurance lowlife is sucking Nectar data feeds. If you use the card of course. As I said, his Blunkettness is pale by comparison.
On the database - all Eastern European countries who have a free travel agreement with the Shengen states already have them. It was part of the conditions to get the free travel arrangements. Most Shengen states have them as well. They are using it and none have revolted for a very simple reason - it is not the database which is the problem. It is the access to it. What Blunkett wants is to allow nearly every parasite employed by the government to have access to everything. Just like rulebook for the RIP act where he wanted to allow the Post Office (which was already private at the time) and local councils access to anybody's keys and encrypted data. That is the problem. Not the database.
While I am allergic to blunkettism, I have to admit that his Blunkettness has a valid point. He was not referring to just any card. He was referring to the Nectar. This card has been invented as a specific mean to violate most of the Data Protection and Consumer Protection legislation in the UK. It is not just a store card. Your shopping habits and purchase information are shared by:
Nearly half of the insurance brokers in the UK. Yep. No other country has it - verification of your lifestyle by insurers via your shopping habits.
British Petroleum. So the insurers can derive information on how you really drive and how much, not what you submitted when applying.
Major banks including Barkleys which in total hold 30-40% of the consumer account market.
So on so fourth.
Basically, if you use it you line up all of your life in front of nearly all of the most disgusting marketing and data mining lowlife in the UK. 1984 and Blunkett ideas are pale by comparison.
I "love" Americans. You state something that is valid for US only as it is valid for the rest of the world.
In reality your statement should be amended to: all 5 L gaz guzzling monsters designed to run on shite fuel in first place and sold in North America can be modified to run on E85. As stated, the statement is correct.
The rest of the world runs on 95 Octane or higher fuel and ethanol/methanol octane does not go that far without adding some really nasty stuff to it.
One minor problem. The license explicitly specifies the current draft and only ther current draft - version 1. There is nothing in it about further enhancements to the draft.
Considering that the draft will be enhanced with things like per-hop signing, trust schemes, etc I find this bit slightly worrying.
Does a 100W gold laser count as high power? . No. It does not. If you want to go to Mars and beyond from the earth surface you are looking at Kilowatts. It is a catch 22 - a probe has little resources to align itself perfectly towards the signal source. As a result it has to use a relatively low gain receiver (be it radio or optical) which covers a relatively large sector. Common radio antennas used on long range probes have a sensitivity diagram where the max is up to 10-20 degrees wide. Similarly, you will be stuck with a very small ref(le or ra)ctor system with relatively little optical amplification. In order to get a good signal to noise ratio you will have to transmit at it with high power. How much - dunno. I suspect that we are talking kilowatts here. And kilowatts have no problem boiling off a nitrobenzene polarisation cell. Note - it is different on the Earth end as we can align a 2+m dish exactly at the target if necessary. One more note on the same subject - a laser gives you at best around 0.5 - 1 degree beam for gas or eximer, 1 degree for crystal and 4-5 degrees for semiconductor. A relatively small 4m antenna will give you 1 degree. A 15+m dish like the one in the Cambridge University Radio Observatory, the NASA ground control stations or the Russian and American ships will give you less then 0.2 degrees.
The mirror technique you are mentioning will give something in the same range - Kilobits at best. Most likely less then a dual polarisation system.
Ever tried to modulate a high energy laser?
I do not mean semiconductor toys. Even in space their useable distance can hardly exceed a few million km.
I am talking about something real which can be seen a few ae from Earth - CO2, HF or HI eximer or the high end crystals. The only way to modulate them is a combination of two polarization cells which are controlled by electric field. The switching speed for this is rather lame. It is a few kbit at best and you have to fire it in short pulses so that the cell does not boil off.
It is much easier to introduce a signal into a high power microwave beam. We have been learning on how to do this for more then a century now. We are yet to learn how to do this with light at power levels that make it useable for very long distance communications.
Slashdot Mirror
The shelf life of an unused VHS tape is between 5 and 7 years which is quite a lot compared to things like DAT or Travan, but still not even close to the age necessary for long term archiving. Cross-magnetisation or whatever it is called. Neigbouring magnetic layers influence each other which results in the magnetic particles changing their orientation. It is he bane of any tape medium and there is nothing you can do about it for analogue recordings. So your tapes are not going to be useable to be dumped to any medium. That is besides the fact that 7-10 years are enough for the plastic carrier to become brittle and start flaking the magnetic covering or breaking at random.
I am not junkie, but I have to deal with a list of complaints from users who are annoyed by the fact that its search facility in newsgroups magestically sucks rotten eggz. Only subject and date. No search on header fields or message body.
I am afraid they do. Check the reviews and the register which has an article on the matter.
This is the exact reason why the storage requirements have gone up by up to 200% in some cases compared to the old palmOS.
No. It is a lose-lose.
1. Kazaa does not become any more legitimate because Skype is not using anything in it. It is just a bundle. I suspect that it is not even using Kazaa information for supernode and relay selection which it definitely could have done. And as many other people have pointed out putting vitamins in a cigarette pack does not make the cigarettes eligible for the taxation levied on health product. It is still taxed as cigarettes.
2. This will give a number of legitimate reasons for a list of usual suspects to go after skype. They are only waiting for an opportunity to open a broadside at it and they will grab the chance and run. I seriously doubt that Verizon would have taken such a tough "fight all subpoenas" stance if these subpoenas would have also cleaned competitors for its VOIP service.
3. As a network admin I wipe both programs anywhere I see them for liability reasons, but many people have allowed Skype, but disallowed Kazaa. I suspect that they are going to disallow both now. This will take out people who are most likely to become paying skypeOut or In customers. At the same time a bunch of freeloaders will come along who are least likely to pay anything as long as they can. So this move will also hit Skype financially in the long run.
4. The only reason I see for this move is a possible Skype IPO or digging for a new funding round. They are looking at a possibility to wave numbers at people with wallets and make a run once it becomes clear that the numbers are not related to anything substantial as far as finances go.
Wrong car to compare to. Compare it to a Daihatsu Charade - better fuel economy and a four seater.
Err... You are off by very far. Both as price and efficiency.
1. There is only one more petrol (loads of diesels though) car besides the Smart to make the UK top 10 lowest pollution (and best economy). It is the new Daihatsu Charade. It is a 4 seater and is priced at about 50% of the Smart price. If you compare how bad of a deal you get when getting a Smart you should compare it to it, not to a Jazz or a Modus which are much bigger.
2. Modus or Jazz are in the higher category and should be compared to FourFour. There the category benchmark is Diahatsu Sirion (from next year Daihatsu Boom AKA Toyota Passo). It does 60+ mpg, under 9 secs 0-60, under 3.5 secs 0-30, 5 seater (though the 5 person will get a bit cramped) and has a very reasonable boot. Add a second on top of these for the 4x4 model (while keeping the same fuel economy). Basically - 2-3 times better acceleration then the Modus, the Jazz or the FourFour with the same size. And it is by 2K cheaper then the Jazz. Compared to it the relevant Smart (fourfour) is a laughing stock (15-20% worse performance and 15/20% higher price). Oh, almost forgot, 1m less turning circle, almost as good as on the two seater Smart.
Overall you do not get anything positive from buying a Smart. It is a big waste of money. All you do is to demonstrate that you are a silly idiot.
You are mistaking a Sun plugin exploit with Java exploits in general. This limits this exploit to people who actually have a jdk installed. This limits the population of susceptible systems to people who develop with java or to people who use java based software which uses a recent java spec. Once again a fairly small group (I am talking general population, not slashdot readers).
This will also falsely mark works partially done by students and apprentices as fake. It was a standard practice up to the beginning of the 19th century to have students and apprentices do the "easy" bits and the grand master only finished off stuff. Leonardo did it, Rembrandt did it, so on so fourth.
Nope. They are. But they are a maintenance item on the major service list. 5 years/60k miles or something like that. So there can be taken out and have been designed to be taken out. It takes around 2h hours as far as I know for a full battery replacement on a hybrid Civic or a Prius.
Seconded. It is not the first time they have done it.I remember plenty of flash served by them that was trying the buffer overrun in the player. The important bit is that it is the first time people have taken notice which in itself is a very good sign.
Wrong url. This is the actual book where it has been investigated: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312 863551/qid=1100961942/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-100451 2-9080059?v=glance&s=books
If you have not seen it, it is a definitely must see. If you see it after you have laughed your guts out on the floor compare the now (bunch of idiots drinking vodka from the bottle) and then (nobody drinking becides two people who are discussing politics in french and slowly sipping some coniac from time to time).
Not really, less hydrophilic substances will displace it. This will definitely improve the hangover and drinking properties, because it is the high molecular weight alcohols, ketones and aldehides which are the primary cause of hangover (not methanol as many people think). So adsorbing them out should definitely help. Not that I drink vodka anyway. In fact in Russia only the drunks on the street drink it. Why - see here:httpwwwamazoncomexecobidostgdetail-B0001P29Q2 qid1100944430sr8-6refsr8xsapi6xgl74002-1004512-908 0059vglancesdvdn507846
There is one more variable missing. It is the most obvious regression variable:
m
. stm
See this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3959307.st
and this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3973197
The missing variable is plain and simple: CHURCH
Who cares about the code. It is data that should be signed and countersigned at every step and travel by at least 2 or more parallel pathways which are crossverified as well as the signatures. I am sorry, but 5th world country like Bulgaria has been doing this for nearly 10 years now. India has done it in the last election. It is time for the US to actually get a clue and learn how to run an election or import the Bulgarian or Indians who designed the election data flow (note the architecture, not the code) for a short H1B stint.
Dunno about H1B.
To the extent of my knowledge (as I am not a ferengi so I do not know exact numbers) all foreigners on work permits in my company are payed above the average for the same region or industry. None of them is from Bangalore though. Eastern Europeans, Central Europeans as well as some Commonwealth. They are generally more qualified then the industry average as well though so the difference is justified.
If you hunt just because of the sportsmanship, have you ever considered trying to hunt with a camera? Getting a clean professional quality shot of a deer is thousands times more difficult compared to shooting it. A rifle will shoot through branches and leaves. A camera does not.
Take a camera next time and see what a lame shot you actually are.
Now let's have this again. Let's see... You make a life insurance or a health claim and your insurer goes through several years of your shopping history and tells you "Sorry pal, you have deliberately consumed too much high holesterol food. We cannot aprove your claim as the problem is selfinflicted". While the example is an extreme case, the possibilities for doing this are right there. And this is the actual reason why all of the insurance lowlife is sucking Nectar data feeds. If you use the card of course. As I said, his Blunkettness is pale by comparison.
On the database - all Eastern European countries who have a free travel agreement with the Shengen states already have them. It was part of the conditions to get the free travel arrangements. Most Shengen states have them as well. They are using it and none have revolted for a very simple reason - it is not the database which is the problem. It is the access to it. What Blunkett wants is to allow nearly every parasite employed by the government to have access to everything. Just like rulebook for the RIP act where he wanted to allow the Post Office (which was already private at the time) and local councils access to anybody's keys and encrypted data. That is the problem. Not the database.
I though I said fairly clear - if you use it. If you are going to buy your petrol in Tesco you might as well not have a card in first place.
- Nearly half of the insurance brokers in the UK. Yep. No other country has it - verification of your lifestyle by insurers via your shopping habits.
- British Petroleum. So the insurers can derive information on how you really drive and how much, not what you submitted when applying.
- Major banks including Barkleys which in total hold 30-40% of the consumer account market.
- So on so fourth.
Basically, if you use it you line up all of your life in front of nearly all of the most disgusting marketing and data mining lowlife in the UK. 1984 and Blunkett ideas are pale by comparison.In reality your statement should be amended to: all 5 L gaz guzzling monsters designed to run on shite fuel in first place and sold in North America can be modified to run on E85. As stated, the statement is correct.
The rest of the world runs on 95 Octane or higher fuel and ethanol/methanol octane does not go that far without adding some really nasty stuff to it.
Considering that the draft will be enhanced with things like per-hop signing, trust schemes, etc I find this bit slightly worrying.
Unfortunately that is right.
In the US he died long ago.
In the UK he has died recently as well.
In Europe he is on his way towards the crematorium door.
In Eastern Europe he is still alive. But he will die.
Does a 100W gold laser count as high power? . No. It does not. If you want to go to Mars and beyond from the earth surface you are looking at Kilowatts. It is a catch 22 - a probe has little resources to align itself perfectly towards the signal source. As a result it has to use a relatively low gain receiver (be it radio or optical) which covers a relatively large sector. Common radio antennas used on long range probes have a sensitivity diagram where the max is up to 10-20 degrees wide. Similarly, you will be stuck with a very small ref(le or ra)ctor system with relatively little optical amplification. In order to get a good signal to noise ratio you will have to transmit at it with high power. How much - dunno. I suspect that we are talking kilowatts here. And kilowatts have no problem boiling off a nitrobenzene polarisation cell. Note - it is different on the Earth end as we can align a 2+m dish exactly at the target if necessary. One more note on the same subject - a laser gives you at best around 0.5 - 1 degree beam for gas or eximer, 1 degree for crystal and 4-5 degrees for semiconductor. A relatively small 4m antenna will give you 1 degree. A 15+m dish like the one in the Cambridge University Radio Observatory, the NASA ground control stations or the Russian and American ships will give you less then 0.2 degrees.
The mirror technique you are mentioning will give something in the same range - Kilobits at best. Most likely less then a dual polarisation system.
Ever tried to modulate a high energy laser? I do not mean semiconductor toys. Even in space their useable distance can hardly exceed a few million km. I am talking about something real which can be seen a few ae from Earth - CO2, HF or HI eximer or the high end crystals. The only way to modulate them is a combination of two polarization cells which are controlled by electric field. The switching speed for this is rather lame. It is a few kbit at best and you have to fire it in short pulses so that the cell does not boil off. It is much easier to introduce a signal into a high power microwave beam. We have been learning on how to do this for more then a century now. We are yet to learn how to do this with light at power levels that make it useable for very long distance communications.