I thought part of his point about websites is that they should allow customization by users and make it easy for third-party tools and websites to interact. Examples might be user-selected stylesheets, RDF feeds, XML-RPC interfaces, and even just simply making it easy for Joe Schmoo to create a deep link from his site into yours.
Pretty common practice on Slashdot, Freshmeat, etc but sadly many mainstream sites aren't as flexible.
Might as well go for it then. It's easy to sit outside a house and tap into someones phone lines. If you're not using encryption, with any physical layer, then you're wide open to snoopers. A wired LAN is reasonably safe if it's all contained within a know safe area (such as your apartment) but otherwise I wouldn't consider it safe. The only security benefit I can see to dialup over wireless is that people have to briefly get out of their car to tap your phone line.
As a teenager a 7/11 refussed to sell us candy bars or sodas anymore because some local teens were shoplifting. In retaliation we started putting dead rats in their microwaves and letting them cook for a while. This has a lovely effect as the dead rats tend to blow up.
Why should there be no way to register a walker is waiting when the traffic isn't always busy enough? I like the suggestion of the second story that they are reconnecting the buttons for people like me that walk at night. I don't think buttons should override the traffic control system but they should be taken into account. It's hard enough walking with so many drivers not even bothering to look for crossing pedestrians. I'm hit by cars all the time. No serious injuries yet but I frequently hear of walkers or bikers killed by careless drivers.
Of course if it was up to me I'd outlaw driving inside the city for non-emergency and non-delivery vehicles. Let people walk, bike, or take public transit. It'd make the city cleaner, people healthier, and increase business for small shops and street venders (not to mention for taxi services, limo services, buses, trains, etc). Probably what I'd actually do is charge tolls frequently (at every intersection with lights?) along the streets for people who didn't have a business pass. So people could still own cars for use of driving outside the city or for their own emergency use.
Honestly I tend to get up and walk around and do other things while letting ideas bounce around in my head. This acomplishes much the same thing as sleeping. When I go back to concentrating on the problem I often find much more elegant solutions than I do if I just slam right into it.
Interesting. I actually tested the speed of a faster C3 processor with more RAM on the system then my own and it's dramaticlly slower. It isn't using a mini-itx mobo so I guess maybe that IS the difference. Or maybe it's something to do with the video/audio drivers.
Why would I do that? PHP is a good templating language and is cleaner than any template library I've seen. Probably the most flexible too. Might as well pick the ebst tool for the job. Python is better for application logic and PHP is better for templating. Using different languages also makes it easier to keep template and logic sepperate as there is no easy way for them to gradually merge. Finally the major benefit of using PHP for templating is that lots of people know PHP. I'd much rather let someone else deal with layout issues and communicating with the browser so it helps if I use a template language that is well known.
I use Python for the application logic and PHP for the display logic to set up a three-tier system. I use load balancing between the client and the display logic machines and another between the display logic machines and the application logic machines. I let the layers talk to each other with requests passed with HTTP. You can drop in as many machines at those levels as needed which IMO indicates good scalability. You can even use normal web caching methods between layers.
The DB is the bottleneck but I don't see there being any problem with connection pooling or caching if you set things up well. Usually I use MySQL as the DB anyway so it's pretty quick. As needed I also use other DB's and they seem to work well also. I've yet to run into a situation where the DB was a major problem on performance unless somebody used a really bad query.
PHP can produce graphics fairly easily as can Python. Both use libaries written in C to get the job done. You'd have to be doing something really special to need to resort to homegrown C. What's that have to do with scalability anyway?
Umm yeh right. I have several 300-500Mhz systems from AMD and Intel and none of them can play a DVD decently. Not without dropping shit loads of frames.
DVD playback on the equiv Celeron system uses about the same in my experience. What more do you want from it? With hardware mpeg decoding then sure you can play a DVD on like a 300Mhz CPU easily enough. All in software though and it takes a much more powerful CPU.
Hrm, I'll see if I can run down somebody I know with a C3 on another mobo and see about doing a comparison. I remember reading that the mini-itx mobo was playing a major part in compensating for the CPU but I wouldn't think it'd be that much.
Have you tried turning off swap space on both systems and seeing how they compare then?
The Via CPU's and even mobo's could be targeted for the PDA market pretty easily. Given that the nano-ITX mobo is less than 7 inches per side and the actual CPU is about the size of a penny. It'd be a good idea for them to offer a version with the external connectors and any other extra fluff removed that could be used for a PDA and similar apps.
I was wondering if it'd be possible for them to offer a mobo that could have multiple CPU's so I could get a dual or quad system. With the CPU's that small and power effecient why not cram more of them into the available space. A quad-CPU system in the size of a PDA would be pretty awesome.
If you're into doing it yourself you can build a really small portable system easily enough. You can get a power conversion board that fits snug to the mobo and removes the need for a bulky power supply. Also you can use CompactFlash as the hdd so that there are no moving parts and everything can fit into a space about the size of my dvd box for Fellowship of the Ring. I like tablet PC's but they are more useful if you can custom build them to your own needs.
In the least Transmeta and Via and forcing Intel to seriously work on the power usage and heat issues of CPU's. Without the competition there would probably be no Centrino. If we could just start a real competition among those companies that supply the batteries and such then maybe we could finally get decent uptime for laptops and such. I believe that the other major power consumer, the screen, is already an area of competition and seemingly we'll be seeing some improvement there soon.
*sighs* Crusoe was actually kind of a cool name I thought. Efficion is just a bad (even if more trademarkable) name. Via's Eden name is fairly cool still. I think the name alone will benefit sales somewhat.
By the measure that they can get the job done without hardly using up the available CPU horsepower? I've done a fair amount of testing of the C3 processors to find out how much they can deliver. Even fairly hefty tasks like unassisted dvd playback usually take the CPU usage to less than 90% even with a bunch of other stuff already going on (desktop, webserver, proxy server, mail client, etc). A Celeron CPU does about the same in my experience. Normal usage with the above mentioned desktop, webserver, etc only use something like 5-10% of the CPU. That'd seem to me to indicate that the performance is decent enough for most people.
I wonder if that'd still be true if Transmeta wasn't an underdog? If they could compete in production costs with Intel how much could they drop their prices? Or if Intel licensed the technology and used it in their own CPU's.
Hrm.. I have a C3 933Mhz system and it competes well against my 1Ghz Celeron system. What kind of uses are you seeing where it is falling short? I do run Linux on mine and haven't compared them when running Windows so maybe that could be involved? Do you have the same type and amount of ram in both systems? Configured along similar lines?
Also my system uses a mini-itx mobo which from what I've read compliments the C3 processors to make up for some defeciencies of the CPU. Are you using such a mobo or a non-specialized one?
I have a mini-itx system with Via C3 processor and for most uses I'd not switch back to the power hungry heat blasting CPU's from Intel and AMD. Already a lot of people (family, friends, clients) I run into are interested in the Via CPU's and mini/nano itx mobo because they are power effecient, cooler, quiet, and have a very small form factor. For people who use their computer for business, the Internet, or even small servers these are exactly what they want. For most people a 1Ghz CPU is plenty. The only people that really want the higher speed CPU's are hardcore gamers and people doing heavy data crunching.
Also Via, I think, is being highly intelligent to take their low power CPU's and add-in special functionality that lets them do things like encryption and mpeg decoding at high speed with specialization. The only thing they are still really lacking is a powerful 3D graphics core that can also run within the low power requirements. If they could cover that base then I think they'd quickly become a major power in x86 CPU's. When they add that they'll also begin a wild spree in tiny homebrew game consoles (set top boxes being an existing common use). Even already I think there is a huge market that could be addressed by such systems as consoles.. for less CPU intensive games which are under represented in todays market. I think a set top box that could play CD's, DVD's, and a good selection of card, board, and classic arcade style games could be a major hit. I know far more people that play Solataire than I know that play Unreal.:)
All I can say is that if the Chinese have the initiative, that the US evidently has lost, that I'm willing to sign on with them if they'll let me join a space colony. If the US doesn't see this as a wake up call that you can't live in the glory of your past acheivements forever then I have no problem switching sides. I've been sick of the budget conscience apologistic excuse for a space program that we have for most of my life. Onward to where no (wo)man has gone before!:)
Sure.. in this case they'd have a bunch of people willing to do the work for them for free while they made increased sales. Though to be honest I wonder about their code quality if they would drop Mac support because of something so minor.
I really hope they can finish this movie and do it well without DNA around to babysit the project. I was just reading Salmon of Doubt last night at the section about the Hitchhiker movie and wondered if it was still in progress or a dead project. If they can pull it off I'd then really like to see a Dirk Gently movie. It's about time these classic books (and radio shows.. and pretty much everything else) made it to the movies.
If you haven't read Salmon of Doubt and are a DNA fan I suggest picking it up. It's really a shame DNA died so young. I blame Thor the Thunder God. Clumsy brute.
There should be rules for JetSki's etc about how close you can get to swimmers and people fishing but other than that I see no reason they shouldn't use the lake as they want. Unless of course it's your private property.
As a kid (~7yo) we'd do that to knock people off motorcycles. Not piano wire but fishing wire actually. We'd string it back and forth across the street and see who we could knock off. It was actually a pretty shitty thing to do as some people got hurt but yknow as kids we thought it was funny.
Alt.com has the history of Jefferson's treatment of his slaves?
I find it more amusing than anything for people to pretend a master/slave relationship. I guess if it works for you then great but I don't think it'd be a thrill for me as long as I knew it isn't real. I've wondered if computer sims might not help with such things eventually. Either by providing a virtual partner or better yet by being able to temporarily modify your mind so you can't remember it's a game and not real.
Obviously, it's also wrong to keep slaves for real so I figure that such fantasies are down there with the primal instinct to kill with your bare hands and eat raw meat. They're always waiting to pop out if your civil manner is broken.. which is how we end up with serial killers, rapist, etc. I'd also guess that's part of why soldiers who are trained to be killers often become rapists while at war and have trouble readjusting to society when the war is over. I used to know a guy who couldn't live with anyone cus he'd beat the shit out of anything near him in his sleep.. reliving hand to hand fighting he did during the war. That sort of thing.
I guess I could see, for teaching reason, law as part of a liberal arts degree or anything that doesn't really require deep thinking but I'd agree that it'd be a bit redundant for science or engineering degrees. If you don't learn how to think things out by writing software, designing a bridge, or researching a new medical breakthrough then I doubt going to law school is going to help. If it does then maybe you should go to law school instead.:)
I do think there is some value in just teaching people to reason but I think it'd work better if it was taught throughout the gradeschool years instead of waiting for college. If I recall my psych correctly abstract reasoning and such is something you learn mostly during your early teens. IMO it's more important to teach people how to learn and how to reason during those years than it is to teach them the exports of Spain or who was the 13th President.
I've been hit by everything else and have yet to get worse than a sprained ankle. I may not be immortal but I have an improbable level of luck for somebody who has been involved in so many major accidents. May I ask if, and how, you were hit by a jetski? I need something to go by if I'm going to try to duplicate the accident. I don't think I'm lucky enough to drown but I'll make a good effort.:)
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I thought part of his point about websites is that they should allow customization by users and make it easy for third-party tools and websites to interact. Examples might be user-selected stylesheets, RDF feeds, XML-RPC interfaces, and even just simply making it easy for Joe Schmoo to create a deep link from his site into yours.
Pretty common practice on Slashdot, Freshmeat, etc but sadly many mainstream sites aren't as flexible.
Might as well go for it then. It's easy to sit outside a house and tap into someones phone lines. If you're not using encryption, with any physical layer, then you're wide open to snoopers. A wired LAN is reasonably safe if it's all contained within a know safe area (such as your apartment) but otherwise I wouldn't consider it safe. The only security benefit I can see to dialup over wireless is that people have to briefly get out of their car to tap your phone line.
As a teenager a 7/11 refussed to sell us candy bars or sodas anymore because some local teens were shoplifting. In retaliation we started putting dead rats in their microwaves and letting them cook for a while. This has a lovely effect as the dead rats tend to blow up.
Why should there be no way to register a walker is waiting when the traffic isn't always busy enough? I like the suggestion of the second story that they are reconnecting the buttons for people like me that walk at night. I don't think buttons should override the traffic control system but they should be taken into account. It's hard enough walking with so many drivers not even bothering to look for crossing pedestrians. I'm hit by cars all the time. No serious injuries yet but I frequently hear of walkers or bikers killed by careless drivers.
Of course if it was up to me I'd outlaw driving inside the city for non-emergency and non-delivery vehicles. Let people walk, bike, or take public transit. It'd make the city cleaner, people healthier, and increase business for small shops and street venders (not to mention for taxi services, limo services, buses, trains, etc). Probably what I'd actually do is charge tolls frequently (at every intersection with lights?) along the streets for people who didn't have a business pass. So people could still own cars for use of driving outside the city or for their own emergency use.
Honestly I tend to get up and walk around and do other things while letting ideas bounce around in my head. This acomplishes much the same thing as sleeping. When I go back to concentrating on the problem I often find much more elegant solutions than I do if I just slam right into it.
Interesting. I actually tested the speed of a faster C3 processor with more RAM on the system then my own and it's dramaticlly slower. It isn't using a mini-itx mobo so I guess maybe that IS the difference. Or maybe it's something to do with the video/audio drivers.
Why would I do that? PHP is a good templating language and is cleaner than any template library I've seen. Probably the most flexible too. Might as well pick the ebst tool for the job. Python is better for application logic and PHP is better for templating. Using different languages also makes it easier to keep template and logic sepperate as there is no easy way for them to gradually merge. Finally the major benefit of using PHP for templating is that lots of people know PHP. I'd much rather let someone else deal with layout issues and communicating with the browser so it helps if I use a template language that is well known.
I use Python for the application logic and PHP for the display logic to set up a three-tier system. I use load balancing between the client and the display logic machines and another between the display logic machines and the application logic machines. I let the layers talk to each other with requests passed with HTTP. You can drop in as many machines at those levels as needed which IMO indicates good scalability. You can even use normal web caching methods between layers.
The DB is the bottleneck but I don't see there being any problem with connection pooling or caching if you set things up well. Usually I use MySQL as the DB anyway so it's pretty quick. As needed I also use other DB's and they seem to work well also. I've yet to run into a situation where the DB was a major problem on performance unless somebody used a really bad query.
PHP can produce graphics fairly easily as can Python. Both use libaries written in C to get the job done. You'd have to be doing something really special to need to resort to homegrown C. What's that have to do with scalability anyway?
They do if it crashes before they press save.
Umm yeh right. I have several 300-500Mhz systems from AMD and Intel and none of them can play a DVD decently. Not without dropping shit loads of frames.
DVD playback on the equiv Celeron system uses about the same in my experience. What more do you want from it? With hardware mpeg decoding then sure you can play a DVD on like a 300Mhz CPU easily enough. All in software though and it takes a much more powerful CPU.
Hrm, I'll see if I can run down somebody I know with a C3 on another mobo and see about doing a comparison. I remember reading that the mini-itx mobo was playing a major part in compensating for the CPU but I wouldn't think it'd be that much.
Have you tried turning off swap space on both systems and seeing how they compare then?
The Via CPU's and even mobo's could be targeted for the PDA market pretty easily. Given that the nano-ITX mobo is less than 7 inches per side and the actual CPU is about the size of a penny. It'd be a good idea for them to offer a version with the external connectors and any other extra fluff removed that could be used for a PDA and similar apps.
I was wondering if it'd be possible for them to offer a mobo that could have multiple CPU's so I could get a dual or quad system. With the CPU's that small and power effecient why not cram more of them into the available space. A quad-CPU system in the size of a PDA would be pretty awesome.
If you're into doing it yourself you can build a really small portable system easily enough. You can get a power conversion board that fits snug to the mobo and removes the need for a bulky power supply. Also you can use CompactFlash as the hdd so that there are no moving parts and everything can fit into a space about the size of my dvd box for Fellowship of the Ring. I like tablet PC's but they are more useful if you can custom build them to your own needs.
In the least Transmeta and Via and forcing Intel to seriously work on the power usage and heat issues of CPU's. Without the competition there would probably be no Centrino. If we could just start a real competition among those companies that supply the batteries and such then maybe we could finally get decent uptime for laptops and such. I believe that the other major power consumer, the screen, is already an area of competition and seemingly we'll be seeing some improvement there soon.
*sighs* Crusoe was actually kind of a cool name I thought. Efficion is just a bad (even if more trademarkable) name. Via's Eden name is fairly cool still. I think the name alone will benefit sales somewhat.
By the measure that they can get the job done without hardly using up the available CPU horsepower? I've done a fair amount of testing of the C3 processors to find out how much they can deliver. Even fairly hefty tasks like unassisted dvd playback usually take the CPU usage to less than 90% even with a bunch of other stuff already going on (desktop, webserver, proxy server, mail client, etc). A Celeron CPU does about the same in my experience. Normal usage with the above mentioned desktop, webserver, etc only use something like 5-10% of the CPU. That'd seem to me to indicate that the performance is decent enough for most people.
I wonder if that'd still be true if Transmeta wasn't an underdog? If they could compete in production costs with Intel how much could they drop their prices? Or if Intel licensed the technology and used it in their own CPU's.
Hrm.. I have a C3 933Mhz system and it competes well against my 1Ghz Celeron system. What kind of uses are you seeing where it is falling short? I do run Linux on mine and haven't compared them when running Windows so maybe that could be involved? Do you have the same type and amount of ram in both systems? Configured along similar lines?
Also my system uses a mini-itx mobo which from what I've read compliments the C3 processors to make up for some defeciencies of the CPU. Are you using such a mobo or a non-specialized one?
I have a mini-itx system with Via C3 processor and for most uses I'd not switch back to the power hungry heat blasting CPU's from Intel and AMD. Already a lot of people (family, friends, clients) I run into are interested in the Via CPU's and mini/nano itx mobo because they are power effecient, cooler, quiet, and have a very small form factor. For people who use their computer for business, the Internet, or even small servers these are exactly what they want. For most people a 1Ghz CPU is plenty. The only people that really want the higher speed CPU's are hardcore gamers and people doing heavy data crunching.
:)
Also Via, I think, is being highly intelligent to take their low power CPU's and add-in special functionality that lets them do things like encryption and mpeg decoding at high speed with specialization. The only thing they are still really lacking is a powerful 3D graphics core that can also run within the low power requirements. If they could cover that base then I think they'd quickly become a major power in x86 CPU's. When they add that they'll also begin a wild spree in tiny homebrew game consoles (set top boxes being an existing common use). Even already I think there is a huge market that could be addressed by such systems as consoles.. for less CPU intensive games which are under represented in todays market. I think a set top box that could play CD's, DVD's, and a good selection of card, board, and classic arcade style games could be a major hit. I know far more people that play Solataire than I know that play Unreal.
All I can say is that if the Chinese have the initiative, that the US evidently has lost, that I'm willing to sign on with them if they'll let me join a space colony. If the US doesn't see this as a wake up call that you can't live in the glory of your past acheivements forever then I have no problem switching sides. I've been sick of the budget conscience apologistic excuse for a space program that we have for most of my life. Onward to where no (wo)man has gone before! :)
Sure.. in this case they'd have a bunch of people willing to do the work for them for free while they made increased sales. Though to be honest I wonder about their code quality if they would drop Mac support because of something so minor.
I really hope they can finish this movie and do it well without DNA around to babysit the project. I was just reading Salmon of Doubt last night at the section about the Hitchhiker movie and wondered if it was still in progress or a dead project. If they can pull it off I'd then really like to see a Dirk Gently movie. It's about time these classic books (and radio shows.. and pretty much everything else) made it to the movies.
If you haven't read Salmon of Doubt and are a DNA fan I suggest picking it up. It's really a shame DNA died so young. I blame Thor the Thunder God. Clumsy brute.
There should be rules for JetSki's etc about how close you can get to swimmers and people fishing but other than that I see no reason they shouldn't use the lake as they want. Unless of course it's your private property.
As a kid (~7yo) we'd do that to knock people off motorcycles. Not piano wire but fishing wire actually. We'd string it back and forth across the street and see who we could knock off. It was actually a pretty shitty thing to do as some people got hurt but yknow as kids we thought it was funny.
Alt.com has the history of Jefferson's treatment of his slaves?
I find it more amusing than anything for people to pretend a master/slave relationship. I guess if it works for you then great but I don't think it'd be a thrill for me as long as I knew it isn't real. I've wondered if computer sims might not help with such things eventually. Either by providing a virtual partner or better yet by being able to temporarily modify your mind so you can't remember it's a game and not real.
Obviously, it's also wrong to keep slaves for real so I figure that such fantasies are down there with the primal instinct to kill with your bare hands and eat raw meat. They're always waiting to pop out if your civil manner is broken.. which is how we end up with serial killers, rapist, etc. I'd also guess that's part of why soldiers who are trained to be killers often become rapists while at war and have trouble readjusting to society when the war is over. I used to know a guy who couldn't live with anyone cus he'd beat the shit out of anything near him in his sleep.. reliving hand to hand fighting he did during the war. That sort of thing.
I guess I could see, for teaching reason, law as part of a liberal arts degree or anything that doesn't really require deep thinking but I'd agree that it'd be a bit redundant for science or engineering degrees. If you don't learn how to think things out by writing software, designing a bridge, or researching a new medical breakthrough then I doubt going to law school is going to help. If it does then maybe you should go to law school instead. :)
I do think there is some value in just teaching people to reason but I think it'd work better if it was taught throughout the gradeschool years instead of waiting for college. If I recall my psych correctly abstract reasoning and such is something you learn mostly during your early teens. IMO it's more important to teach people how to learn and how to reason during those years than it is to teach them the exports of Spain or who was the 13th President.
I've been hit by everything else and have yet to get worse than a sprained ankle. I may not be immortal but I have an improbable level of luck for somebody who has been involved in so many major accidents. May I ask if, and how, you were hit by a jetski? I need something to go by if I'm going to try to duplicate the accident. I don't think I'm lucky enough to drown but I'll make a good effort. :)