posted out of historical interest and because Freddie Laker had a cooler name: SkyTrain:-)
I'll leave it to the reader to work out the inflation adjusted 1977 cost of a London > New York flight, with bonus for calculating comparisons to Laker setting up straight after the last oil price shock:)
(but put the Economist obit first because it's the second Google result from my search, and the first is a paywall to the same piece. Go figure:-)
I'd also take issue with the Wiki statement "Laker was popular with the public and regarded as one of Margaret Thatcher's golden boys of industry". I worked for years with a friend who (long after got a check from the class settlement for unfair costs when BA took Laker to the cleaners. BA led the pack, eliminating Laker conveniently just before Thatcher privatized them. Summary of that case: http://www.lfip.org/lawe506/documents/laker_airway s_limited.htm
So, not only did Laker get this whole thing going, he also was the first to trade jurisdictional rules (see RynanAir and other seeking preferred landing fees in backwater EU secondary airports) *AFAIK* First to mass market affordable tickets to normal people, first airline to challenge established national carrier privileges in the court . . . well and to boot he sounded like an all round nice guy. Really makes you think how sucky commercial air flight is compared to what it could be. All good reasons he hooked up with Branson to guide Virgin Airways into success and a big BA challenger. I think that kept him smiling into his old age.
In fact if anything, governments once upon a time played down the impact of terrorist activity. I mean it's logic, isn't it - if you keep crying wolf, ultimately the government's authority is undermined? Bush & Blair ought to be forced to sit in a locked room screening the finale scene of "Carry on Up the Khyber", looped, for about a week. (For those of you not familiar with that film, after a plot of disastrous relations with an Indian insurgent group, the local British establishment proceed to have formal dinner whilst shells progressively demolish their dining room, cracking jokes and nonchalantly ignoring the mayhem. One of the best "Carry on Films", IMO).
In the early 1990s i lived in a apartment block favored by MPs in Westminster. We had a fair few bomb scares, and one actual explosion that nearly ripped my windows, from half a block away. What did everyone do? Er, go down the pub for a pint. Was an interesting drinking crowd! No panic, fast police response, all very orderly (no-one hurt or hurt badly as i recall, which was probably very lucky). Hate to think what would have happened with today's so called security attitudes, there would surely have been a lot more fuss for no greater benefit.
Every time i read the quivering lips of our Home Office guys, something in me is screaming "You are taking away my fundamental Britishness! Get a grip Man!"
But this was a good troll. I just don't comprehend that some people couldn't tell from Dvorak's expression and voice he was just having a laugh.
Or did they choose not to laugh along, so they could troll the idea this Dvorak is serious about this, and - implying he was ever serious and not just a fun and often insightful columnist, that he must therefore be a fraud? Reverse meta-trolling.
Thus if you have a dual CPU pserver that is running a dual CPU VM and other single CPU VM's, whenever the dual CPU VM has access to the pCPUs all other VM must wait for it to release the pCPUs before they can get access.
This may be a silly question, but does what you say hold true for dual-core CPUs? I would expect more latency with cores (bus contention) but since i have to learn this now, i'd appreciate any experience you can offer. Scenario i am considering is if this is possible: 1 guest (DB) SMP enabled, multiple guests single CPU only, on a 4-core (dual CPU) box (assuredly with healthy amounts of RAM, RAID . . . )
cheers!
Cry/laugh news from a developer friend who works a provincial part of the world. Suddenly I was hearing for the first time from him a rant against Flash. All my buddy's clients have wanted fancy Flash navigation for the sake of it. What killed flash? Adobe opting in Yahoo Toolbar on their download page for the latest plugin. Yeah, that killed it. Too complicated. It became a _support issue . . Now i can get to talk ECMA/CSS to my mate:-)
Nothing against Flash, my mate has done some top work, mechanical training sims etc, for which Flash is a pretty much the choice for web delivery.
Me? At heart I'm still pitching art galleries why they should pay for Lynx support . .
CSS is just sooo 1997. What was it we were doing? I thought all this compatibility stuff was fixed with XSLT . . .
Give you that... almost. Hurried explanations are a boor. Try perceptual for the timebeing.
It is a very real effect/limitation (depending on what you want out of any particular photo) that is caused by physical interaction between light rays, the aperature, and lenses in your camera.
Great, so is all photography LOL. Jessops to you:)
It is commonly described as the distance between the furthest object in the photo in focus and the nearest object in the photo in focus.
Aha, "commonly"?
and inaccurately, since there is only one plane of focus. The DOF limit is the COC (Circle of Confusion) limit beyond which detail is inadequately resolved to be percieved in focus by the eye (another limiter as a good human eye resolves approx 8 lppm.)
Small digital cameras commonly have wider-angle lenses, which you should know have deeper depth of field - allowing a good-all-around photo from your 'snapshot' situation.
No again, (and what is it with this commonly save and hand waving?) they have shorter focal lengths. Are you saying that a feature shot on Super 16 has wider angle shots by definition than one on anamorphic 65mm? Sounds like it. Incorrect. "Wide angle" is just a descriptive term for FOV (Field Of View). On a smaller format you need shorter focals (wider lens as you inaccurately portray) because the sensor or film is smaller so only the theoretic center is cropped compared with the larger sensor / imager / halide substrate.
Once the photo is taken, a large print will have the same things out of focus as a smaller version of the same image; it's the same recorded image.
No, only when viewed at a proportionately greater distance.
The sharpness/blurriness is set at the point of creation (ignoring post-production Photoshoppin').
Actually, yes, but only partially correct. Unless you're running some hard core deconvolution algorithms in post, which changes the whole ballgame, you would have been right is you said that the limits of the DOF are set (permitting I may use this awful misleading DOF word for brevity).
But let's aside for illustration. You have a luma gradient with 8 bits of information, 0 through 255. It's perfectly smooth at proverbial first sight. Now enlarge it. Do you start to see the bands between discrete levels? Now do you see what i mean by changing the perceived DOF at bigger enlargements.
The only time this would not be apparent would be at extremes, where a photo is reproduced so small that the clarity might appear uniform because it's simply too small to make out the lack of sharpness.
Er, that's a function of the effect i have been describing, and happens more quickly than you might think, within an envelope Ill try to better describe below.
Any actual photography involved with you or is it all tech-specs? I just don't see it if you mangle something as core to photography as 'depth of field' into "a psychological effect"..."anecdotally true...at small print sizes like 6" by 4"."
Hmm, i mangled the word "psychologically" to hand wave a point, which I am now in the process of explaining. By reply you've mangled a pretty inarticulate insult.
DOF is not "core" to photography. What rot. Its a compositional rule of thumb, to be thrown out as you please, and it's a function that can be calculated from the focal length, subject distance, aperture, diffraction, resolving power of the imaging substrate, plane of focus *and* _resolving power of taking lens_. It is further complicated by the method of display, the point which is being made here, and the point at which the eye brain starts to play a significant role.
I'll give you circuit cal. In particular i mentioned temperature calibration (a real issue for many photographics situations) But not in the way i specifically mentioned, which certainly wasn't a generic comment. "Light levels, color levels, gain, dc bias, etc" Of the first two on the list how on earth do you calibrate without reference sources? When i switch on my cam, it has a lens cap on and shutter closed, so that i guess allows the CD to reference a dark frame. However when i calibrate a (handheld) light meter, it's a process needing a reliable light source. Colorimeters/ spectros are beyond my capability to calibrate. But then i am talking reference calibration and you are i think talking about operating calibration. My point was, in this thread, and the context of the OP comment, that other factors outweigh calibration in terms of slowness in use. I am pretty sure that the tolerance of consumer users in photography to variations in output quality is vastly greater than minute variations in calibration. Thus i posit, toungue in cheek, that i wouldn't be surprised if 2/3 of the startup time wan't necessary at all:)
I wasn't arguing against your point, just suggesting alternatives as to why digicams can be slow to respond.
Real digital cameras (read "not $200 consumer HP shit") don't have that issue. Not trying to flame you or anything, but the tech is there.
Sadly only at a $5,000 entry price. (Canon 1D and Nikon D2 series cameras as new with suitable lenses). Related to my other post, there is quite a cost associated with QA which is hard to overcome, though i expect the real obstacle is market segmentation and tax deductability for users such as myself. Imaging sensors need scale economies to improve (justify R&D and fab costs), and very good sensors are available in modest cameras. So there has to be something in the "pro" models to justify the cost leap, and it's not always the sensor. For this reason many pros using e.g. a Nikon D2x (a $4,000 body, no lens) also tote and do great work with a D70, for 20% of the price. But build quality, AF accuracy, AF speed, ruggedness and handling are all things pro photogs are habitually happy to pay big bucks for. It helps them get the shots they want more quickly, and better designs help get the gear out of the way when shooting. Honestly, the D2X is for me the easiest cam i've ever used, though i bet it would frighten a average user, and, natch, it is not a good performer when left on "auto-everything" mode. If you want great out of the box pictures _with little or no user input_, there are tons of great digicams out there that will far better suit you and, honestly, deliver more consistently pictures you enjoy.
Anyway, nothing starts up faster or delivers pictures faster than a manual focus manual metering film camera set to "sunny 16" rule:)
You complain about the zoom extending. Uhu, have you looked at compact multi-element zoom designs? 12 or more elements, many or even most of which geared independantly is not uncommon. The longer the zoom - comsumer guys want optical 10 times zooms, which would be unheard of in a professional lens for many other considerations (predominantly aperture speed and distortion characteristics) and that means even more complicated designs, even allowing small lenses are easier and simpler to design. Now try shifting all those elements _accurately_ with a tiny low voltage low torque servo (see why it's low torque here - too fe2w turns possible in such a small space to get a focus throw long enough to try to do this quickly and accurately and repeatably*). This is why my piezo-wave-effect ring-motor driven Nikkor zoom is several times more expensive of itself than almost any digicam.
Got the idea?
To the above poster - i sure hope there's not much calibration going on when i boot my Nikon. Unless it's to compensate for working temperature effects, if i've spent time and effort having a lens tuned to how i like it (yes this doesn't just happen, it's common) i want it to be left alone at that spec. Now that even modest digicams such as the Fuji F10/11 boot instantly and respond extremely quickly, there's simply no excuse for slow electronics and (electronic) shutter save at the real budget segment.
* even some (sadly many) professional photogs insist on continuing the myth that because the lens / sensor is small, everything remains sharp because the DOF (depth of field) is greater in those conditions. Er, DOF is a psychological effect which is a function of the print enlargement factor, print size, viewing distance and airy dic resolving limit - so the assumption is not true at equivalent apertures, hence the need even in very small "format" cameras to _still_ focus accurately, in OP's case, sadly, slowly too. The effect observed is anecdotally true however at small print sizes like 6" by 4".
hmm, thanks, i'd not thought of that. HP do some nice sounding ADSL2 modules for their routers and have equal features _save WLAN_ plus you get GbE ports, but they're not in the same price class, by a long way
877: ADSL over analog telephone lines (ADSL2/ADSL2+ hardware ready)
which may mean all or nothing, as these won't be standard WICs, but this does somewhat contradict your first thought, and I'd say this is one very featured router for small office / home lan use. Moreover they actually got around to supplying (some kind of) GUI setup with these . . .
Try a Cisco 87x router. These are sold in the UK, are fully IPv6, provide 4 10/100 ports in case your switch is v4 only, offer WLAN 802.11b/g option (does this carry v6? i dunno) and have lots of other nice features as well. Haven't had time to check compatability. Expensive - ish, see : http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.as p?ProductID=2277&CategoryID=325&ShopGroupID=78 (the top model in the series) but available now.
IPv6 translation-transport packets between IPv6-only and IPv4-only endpoints
ICMPv6
IPv6 DHCP
Until the ISP backhaul is routing IPv6 it's still not native all the way, so A&A or whoever your ISP is doesn't. Ask for a allocation and tunnel to the 6bone. Until not so long ago NTT UK offered ranges and free peering, and there were other free v6 peering intiatives. coupl'a years since i cared much about this so forgive me if anything changed (save the ready availability of IPv6 capable routers). Hopefully POPs with lots of LLU will be the first to go native in the UK, so we can have v6 and >=8Mbps to cope with all that traffic from my fridge, cooker, clock, toilet, kitchen drawer, hallway light . . .
and not counted either are private distibutions, or retail distros which bundle the app . . . i often have a mirror on private ftp, just in case some IE diehards i know have a weak moment when i'm uploading another file for them to grab;)
you can improve the single user, many downloads stat usefulness by writing a decent version upgrade system. i used Moz 0.82a "forever" just out of laziness;)
but - like it or not - free software is at a disadvantage when it comes to compiling persuasuve user statistics - there is neither any point in user registration, nor the expense of overhead for such a system, nor a stream of purchase receipts which can be held up as evidence that unique users are actually deploying an app. i'm not saying purchase = user, or registration = unique user, but those look to me a better starting point from which to begin discounting to guess real deployment.
the only thing that's useful to my mind is the rate of growth in downloads.
if the basic app is reasonably steady, and 1.5 is anyway now delayed, so the upgrade mill is discounted, then a decent steady rate of growth, can be confidently taken as largely new deployments. math up to you:-0
in this (very instructive) article: "Porting OpenVMS to HP Integrity Servers"
(Integrity is one line below Superdome, both Itanium - based. Superdome IA-64 is just coming together now.)
hmm, 'kay that doesn't mean they used Linux tools, but it does mean they are sitting on some very recent and very applicable knowledge.
Not being a fan of Linux, for historical reasons, as much as other more practical ones, i nonetheless truly appreciate how OSS just affected positively one of the most closed - source OSs still out there.
(okay, VMS used to be available with source on microfiche, but that's not my point)
Absolute crap : "They have long touted HP-UX as their non-stop platform,"
find me just one use of their trademark Non-Stop in a linux blurb.
this is modded up?
"but this seems to me somewhat as a concession that it, well, sucks and they need something more adoptable by the mainstream."
aha, really? Tandem was mainstream? Alpha was mainstream?
- cough - Itanium is mainstream?
Compaq/HP/Intel (plus contractors) ran some pretty awesome porting to get VMS and Tandem up on Itanium. This ain't "mainstream" unless you don't look outside of a fp (or stream) constrained / brokerage / medicare / financial op.
what you ARE right about, however is that Superdome is very good kit. What else runs Windows, HP-UX, Tru-64, Linux, VMS and Tandem on the same machine, on Aplha or Itanium, let alone allows dymanic partitioning and even (limited) cross- os clustering inside the same chassis?
bringing Linux to the mix makes sense. Lots of sense. More than the linked "article"!:)
Given the state of Tru-64 / HP-UX development, adopting Linux might make more sense now for HP. Adding decent clustering (iirc the VMS team worked on the Tru-64 features) to the mix would make a ton of sense. Tru-64 long lost its lustre in the HPC market (sadly), and the revised HP-UX dropped most of the good features, post "os-merger". So coming out with a clean linux base, with clusters, distributed FS . ..
well at least that might put SGI out of business with the Altix . ..
don't mean to be harsh, but "mainstream" and the whole context of the discussion do not go together.
If Linux can be virtualised under Tandem (and my apologies to all as i know VMS not Tandem) then maybe HP is aiming to consolidate hardware share by allowing Linux to replace data warehousing replication for fast market analysis . ..
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
many of the worst, most non-responsive web-pages are designed with WebObjects. etc.
another example:
No longer the case, but the original Dell.com was a webobjects project.
This changed, i believe, due to FrogDesign handling a makeover and their developer preferences / skillset (over and above their UI engineering, which was why they won the pitch), not for any technical reasons.
Didn't do Dell any harm to use webobjects, now did it?:)
Someone may be able to correct or refine my Dell/FrogDesign history. Please do if you can.
Once oil goes over something like $100.00/barrel it becomes cost efficient to refine shale oil,
Not if oil prices drive general inflation.
Although it is not a solitary inflationary driver, 1973 comes to mind, as does the double digit inflation that followed.
I do not have sufficient handle on the "import capital, export labor" model that some moot as a reason for continued low dollar interest rates, but dollar supply inflation is a common byproduct of both now and the (mid to late) 70's.
Though it's now widely appreciated that dollar money supply was inflated by policy in the 70's, so that the suddenly important "petrodollar" (value of dollar in Arabian reserve terms) would be 1. deflated due to supply 2. have to pass through the Federal Reserve and so back into the US banking system in any event, i do not wish to guess if there is an comparable policy today.
Anyone looking for a non academic view of this might read "Wriston" the bio of Walt Wriston, then chairman of Citibank. In there you have many anecdotal takes on how Citi expanded it's huge overseas network in lock - step with petrodollar recycling policy. I would even say that bio is fun - as it has enough interview material to cover the development of Citi in a very human, almost soap - opera style, whilst being very high on content. (I found myself re-reading individual *pages* to catch the significance of board - member quotes, e.g.)
As i'm interested recently in micro- not macro- economics, please forgive my lack of position on the issues i raised.
There are also VMS systems out there stable on much much older releases which haven't been deprecated by engineering. For that matter quite enough apps running under SharonVAX emu on peecee hardware . . . Mind you VMS system calls don't tend to get broken by engineering come an update. That nearly true for the Itanium port as well, because the internals were very well thought out originally, so little user code needs recompilation. Pity that with the glacial rate of most VMS product cycles it's taking a while for all the vendors to put the effort in.
I was digressing ..
So I don't agree that Linux is the _only_ way to go. But point taken on older kernels. I was thinking more about libraries and library dependecy which is a more moving target. A - Hem!:) Also i am sure that code contribution under GPL from the military would pose some concerns, from the POV of an oracle attack, as in "now why is geezer@org.mil" commiting _that_ to the tree?"
Regards msft extended support, i doubt "very expensive" actually worries a big government organisation, sadly. I learned the other day that our UK NHS (National Health Service) is the 3rd biggest employer in the world, after the Chinese army and the Indian railways. And, er, i believe they are buying microsoft stuff now . . . no wonder Mr Gates visisted Mr Blair during the tender process..
anyhow, point taken on older kernel maintenance, even whilst it just happens that last time i looked at linux 2.2 had just been released, which is a *very* short time in usage scenarios i consider. actually, i'm trying hard to remember when 2.2 was released, methinks '99 - i didn't find it in kerneltraffic? Anyhow, much less time ago than the halflife of (result) $ write sys$output f$getsyi("cluster_ftime"):-)
Anyhow thanks for the whiff of nostaligia i just got thinking back for a moment!
* Supports up to 108Mbps data tarnsmission (in 802.11a and Turbo mode)
* Up to 152-bit data Encryption
* Supports Power-Over-Ethernet
* Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
* Supports DFS and TPC
sounds like the ticket for a job i'm looking at as well.
sorry if this post comes across like a plug, though it isn't but those are feature sets i don't see in many high end AP products from more recognisable names, so i thought to post it here for those who skimmed over the names, or who tried first to google for and couldn't find (as i couldn't, not quickly anyhow) a page detailing Engenious products.
. . intention of replacing a previously licensed 32-bit version of Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (1-2 Processor Version) Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (1-4 Processor Version
(my emphasis)
does that mean
a) Microsoft changed their mind about dual core on the OS recently
or
b) There's a 4 - proc version of XP Pro that i haven't heard of.
?
I had been working under the assumption that XP Pro supported up to two processors, even if they are dual - core, but that for 4 processor support, you had to go with Server, which i don't want to use for a workstation because of the deprioritised performance quanta which are tedius to say the least to readjust (quanta determine priority of foreground apps, so background priority is fine if you are batching almost everything or acting as a server, but not so good if you want to throw everything at a real - time render or a vast photoshop file).
So asks I, as i now head off to Google for 4 way Opterons with dual 16 lane PCI-e so I can have *eight cores* on my desktop!/drool . .:-)
but seriously, that was a real question. I have neve heard of a specific 4-proc XP Pro edition. Anyone?
Now, years later, we learn that Win2k is being discontinued. This is very bad. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent developing systems around Win2k, and all that work is going to be invalidated
OK, now before i'm flamed, is anyone tracking the bugfix dependencies in the Linux kernel? Can you really freeze Linux at a certain point? And freeze everything else at the same time?
And, at the level you're talking about, does not Microsoft offer extended support for Win2K? If it was that critical, i see ways around, MSFT already license their code to Governments . ..
Of course this costs. Trade coding time to "standardise" against hiring some programmers to wrangle with glue code against static interfaces on, ooh VMS . ..
Since when *wasn't* a bunch of code you didn't write yourself - recently - a mess?
Just an aside, as i have no direct experience of Soviet school systems (though for the top streams i think you are pretty close) ..
I was taught at a school here in the UK which effectively speed binned students. You VERY quickly got a layer cake of aptitudes and attitudes.
Speed binning (I like that phrase you coined for education) is incredibly efficient IF all you want is to showw off with stars. It also creates some very complex characters. We also bombed through high level math very fast, e.g., had fantastic teachers who owere intense, and actually enjoyed it. But you had three distinct strata (gross simplification) - those who absorbed the strain and were pushed more and more until they lacked any social skill at all, those who cruised and tried to game the system (i was one of those, huh, so that's why i read Slashdot:) and those who really couldn't absorb the pressure and were carried along - very effectively - by the overall educational strength of the place. You couldn't be there and not learn, I assure you.
But i characterise this as the difference between Intelligent, Smart and Proto-Genius. In the last caategory, when 4 "A Levels" were normal, friends of mine took on as many as twelve in the same period. And passed (pass for this place was 85% and above), and thought it quite the regular thing.
But when it boils down to whether my school prepared anyone for anything outside its walls, I am less sure. That's being diplomatic. I was intimately involved with some of the fallout from that pressure . ..
Speed Binning people leads to people being in the bin.
If he wasn't snoring I'd say that to the Russian engineer asleep on my couch right now - a confused casualty i believe of the same approach when he was in school. Well, if you call ending up in advertising a punishment:-)
To the abovev poster, NO grades do not translate directly into salary. Maybe they do if you exist within a confined and structured path from Grade School through Colledge and recruitment . . . maybe. My experience - some of the "dumbest" (N.B. quotes) guys i went to school with haul salaries that put the Proto-Genii in shame. Sorry, no direct correlation, because you assume all is C.P. Pressure changes characters. The secret to any educational system is to provide the social structure wherein the talented can work together over a long period of time. THAT is crucial to the sucess of the Soviet system - engineers who worked together, lived together, studied together. At least in my brief life i do not think there is such a structure available today. Communism removed many of the barriers to organising such intellectual labor, by removing marketplace constraints and the disruption of commerce on talented employees.
I think you lack somee understanding of the processes involved, particularly in the Soviet planning system, and maybe should look closer too at how things are where you are. I sincerely hope you can drive a truck through my quickly worded comments, but in my defense this si an area which has touched me and fascinated me, not least because i saw the casualties of speed binning young talent up close, and became fascinated not to make the same mistakes with my kids.
p.s. just a unfounded thought, but nerds are nerds the world around. i do however have a fairly decent amount of (often anecdotal) evidence that Soviet education created a lot more female (and pretty) nerds than did the UK or US systems. Education is about growing, and that's a LOT easier when you have abunch of chicks you can talk to:-)
1. No chargebacks. Moneybookers is "hard" currency, once you have it it's yours to keep.
Moneybookers do look far more organised than any other merchant acquirer pass through i have seen, and i would decidely prefer to deal under UK law with a firm i can locate in my neighborhood, but you are wrong to say that chargebacks do not happen. I see no way that a _customer_ of a merchant network / acquirer can unilaterally negate terms which the network (Visa e.g.) imposes universally on all merchants.
I have not yet found how Moneybookers effects the clawback, but i presume it is doable because whilst the "payment" within Moneybookers' system is instant, the payment to your bank account via BACS, CHAPS, SWIFT or however they do this, is not instant. SWIFT and CHAPS _can_ be instant, but only expensively, and few but the largest corporations have access to those systems. BACS in the UK is not immediate, and has an automatic clawback system in place. I have banked with a proper retail bank in the UK which relied on just one solitary CHAPS terminal for it's whole operation, to give you an idea how carefully the "good" payment networks are actually controlled.
*BACS - Bankers' Automated Clearing Service *CHAPS - Clearing House Automated Payments System *SWIFT - Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
from http://www.moneybookers.com/app/help.pl?s=terms
6.4. When Customer receives a payment through the Service, he/she is NOT protected against a subsequent reversal of the transaction. Examples of such a reversal include, but are not limited to, a credit card reversal by the sender of the payment, and a reversal of the transaction because the sender of the payment was using a stolen credit card or unauthorized bank account.
Slashdot Mirror
to find a pioneer of cheap travel.
s tory_id=5518940
:-)
:)
:-)
y s_limited.htm
Now, if he only had had a website (or they existed when he was in business):
http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?
posted out of historical interest and because Freddie Laker had a cooler name: SkyTrain
I'll leave it to the reader to work out the inflation adjusted 1977 cost of a London > New York flight, with bonus for calculating comparisons to Laker setting up straight after the last oil price shock
also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2283244.stm
and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Laker
(but put the Economist obit first because it's the second Google result from my search, and the first is a paywall to the same piece. Go figure
I'd also take issue with the Wiki statement "Laker was popular with the public and regarded as one of Margaret Thatcher's golden boys of industry". I worked for years with a friend who (long after got a check from the class settlement for unfair costs when BA took Laker to the cleaners. BA led the pack, eliminating Laker conveniently just before Thatcher privatized them. Summary of that case: http://www.lfip.org/lawe506/documents/laker_airwa
So, not only did Laker get this whole thing going, he also was the first to trade jurisdictional rules (see RynanAir and other seeking preferred landing fees in backwater EU secondary airports) *AFAIK* First to mass market affordable tickets to normal people, first airline to challenge established national carrier privileges in the court . . . well and to boot he sounded like an all round nice guy. Really makes you think how sucky commercial air flight is compared to what it could be. All good reasons he hooked up with Branson to guide Virgin Airways into success and a big BA challenger. I think that kept him smiling into his old age.
In fact if anything, governments once upon a time played down the impact of terrorist activity. I mean it's logic, isn't it - if you keep crying wolf, ultimately the government's authority is undermined? Bush & Blair ought to be forced to sit in a locked room screening the finale scene of "Carry on Up the Khyber", looped, for about a week. (For those of you not familiar with that film, after a plot of disastrous relations with an Indian insurgent group, the local British establishment proceed to have formal dinner whilst shells progressively demolish their dining room, cracking jokes and nonchalantly ignoring the mayhem. One of the best "Carry on Films", IMO). In the early 1990s i lived in a apartment block favored by MPs in Westminster. We had a fair few bomb scares, and one actual explosion that nearly ripped my windows, from half a block away. What did everyone do? Er, go down the pub for a pint. Was an interesting drinking crowd! No panic, fast police response, all very orderly (no-one hurt or hurt badly as i recall, which was probably very lucky). Hate to think what would have happened with today's so called security attitudes, there would surely have been a lot more fuss for no greater benefit. Every time i read the quivering lips of our Home Office guys, something in me is screaming "You are taking away my fundamental Britishness! Get a grip Man!"
But HP has always been extremely AA sensitive
For those mis-informed souls; AA == Alcoholics Anonymous.
You mean Carly drove the workers to drink?
Figures.
Arthur Schopenhauer
:-)
For a more concise and virtually definitive guide to trolling, see The Art Of Controversy
Translated here: http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/
And though i can't find a date of publication for that work, it sure predates cable and the intardweb :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer
But this was a good troll. I just don't comprehend that some people couldn't tell from Dvorak's expression and voice he was just having a laugh.
Or did they choose not to laugh along, so they could troll the idea this Dvorak is serious about this, and - implying he was ever serious and not just a fun and often insightful columnist, that he must therefore be a fraud? Reverse meta-trolling.
Now, where was i . .
Oh, well . . .
Thus if you have a dual CPU pserver that is running a dual CPU VM and other single CPU VM's, whenever the dual CPU VM has access to the pCPUs all other VM must wait for it to release the pCPUs before they can get access. This may be a silly question, but does what you say hold true for dual-core CPUs? I would expect more latency with cores (bus contention) but since i have to learn this now, i'd appreciate any experience you can offer. Scenario i am considering is if this is possible: 1 guest (DB) SMP enabled, multiple guests single CPU only, on a 4-core (dual CPU) box (assuredly with healthy amounts of RAM, RAID . . . ) cheers!
. . .
:-)
Cry/laugh news from a developer friend who works a provincial part of the world. Suddenly I was hearing for the first time from him a rant against Flash. All my buddy's clients have wanted fancy Flash navigation for the sake of it. What killed flash? Adobe opting in Yahoo Toolbar on their download page for the latest plugin. Yeah, that killed it. Too complicated. It became a _support issue . . Now i can get to talk ECMA/CSS to my mate
Nothing against Flash, my mate has done some top work, mechanical training sims etc, for which Flash is a pretty much the choice for web delivery.
Me? At heart I'm still pitching art galleries why they should pay for Lynx support . .
CSS is just sooo 1997. What was it we were doing? I thought all this compatibility stuff was fixed with XSLT . . .
Give you that ... almost. Hurried explanations are a boor. Try perceptual for the timebeing.
Great, so is all photography LOL. Jessops to you :)
Aha, "commonly"?
and inaccurately, since there is only one plane of focus. The DOF limit is the COC (Circle of Confusion) limit beyond which detail is inadequately resolved to be percieved in focus by the eye (another limiter as a good human eye resolves approx 8 lppm.)
No again, (and what is it with this commonly save and hand waving?) they have shorter focal lengths. Are you saying that a feature shot on Super 16 has wider angle shots by definition than one on anamorphic 65mm? Sounds like it. Incorrect. "Wide angle" is just a descriptive term for FOV (Field Of View). On a smaller format you need shorter focals (wider lens as you inaccurately portray) because the sensor or film is smaller so only the theoretic center is cropped compared with the larger sensor / imager / halide substrate.
No, only when viewed at a proportionately greater distance.
Actually, yes, but only partially correct. Unless you're running some hard core deconvolution algorithms in post, which changes the whole ballgame, you would have been right is you said that the limits of the DOF are set (permitting I may use this awful misleading DOF word for brevity).
But let's aside for illustration. You have a luma gradient with 8 bits of information, 0 through 255. It's perfectly smooth at proverbial first sight. Now enlarge it. Do you start to see the bands between discrete levels? Now do you see what i mean by changing the perceived DOF at bigger enlargements.
Er, that's a function of the effect i have been describing, and happens more quickly than you might think, within an envelope Ill try to better describe below.
Hmm, i mangled the word "psychologically" to hand wave a point, which I am now in the process of explaining. By reply you've mangled a pretty inarticulate insult.
DOF is not "core" to photography. What rot. Its a compositional rule of thumb, to be thrown out as you please, and it's a function that can be calculated from the focal length, subject distance, aperture, diffraction, resolving power of the imaging substrate, plane of focus *and* _resolving power of taking lens_. It is further complicated by the method of display, the point which is being made here, and the point at which the eye brain starts to play a significant role.
If
I'll give you circuit cal. In particular i mentioned temperature calibration (a real issue for many photographics situations) But not in the way i specifically mentioned, which certainly wasn't a generic comment. "Light levels, color levels, gain, dc bias, etc" Of the first two on the list how on earth do you calibrate without reference sources? When i switch on my cam, it has a lens cap on and shutter closed, so that i guess allows the CD to reference a dark frame. However when i calibrate a (handheld) light meter, it's a process needing a reliable light source. Colorimeters/ spectros are beyond my capability to calibrate. But then i am talking reference calibration and you are i think talking about operating calibration. My point was, in this thread, and the context of the OP comment, that other factors outweigh calibration in terms of slowness in use. I am pretty sure that the tolerance of consumer users in photography to variations in output quality is vastly greater than minute variations in calibration. Thus i posit, toungue in cheek, that i wouldn't be surprised if 2/3 of the startup time wan't necessary at all :)
I wasn't arguing against your point, just suggesting alternatives as to why digicams can be slow to respond.
Real digital cameras (read "not $200 consumer HP shit") don't have that issue. Not trying to flame you or anything, but the tech is there.
:)
Sadly only at a $5,000 entry price. (Canon 1D and Nikon D2 series cameras as new with suitable lenses). Related to my other post, there is quite a cost associated with QA which is hard to overcome, though i expect the real obstacle is market segmentation and tax deductability for users such as myself. Imaging sensors need scale economies to improve (justify R&D and fab costs), and very good sensors are available in modest cameras. So there has to be something in the "pro" models to justify the cost leap, and it's not always the sensor. For this reason many pros using e.g. a Nikon D2x (a $4,000 body, no lens) also tote and do great work with a D70, for 20% of the price. But build quality, AF accuracy, AF speed, ruggedness and handling are all things pro photogs are habitually happy to pay big bucks for. It helps them get the shots they want more quickly, and better designs help get the gear out of the way when shooting. Honestly, the D2X is for me the easiest cam i've ever used, though i bet it would frighten a average user, and, natch, it is not a good performer when left on "auto-everything" mode. If you want great out of the box pictures _with little or no user input_, there are tons of great digicams out there that will far better suit you and, honestly, deliver more consistently pictures you enjoy.
Anyway, nothing starts up faster or delivers pictures faster than a manual focus manual metering film camera set to "sunny 16" rule
You complain about the zoom extending. Uhu, have you looked at compact multi-element zoom designs? 12 or more elements, many or even most of which geared independantly is not uncommon. The longer the zoom - comsumer guys want optical 10 times zooms, which would be unheard of in a professional lens for many other considerations (predominantly aperture speed and distortion characteristics) and that means even more complicated designs, even allowing small lenses are easier and simpler to design. Now try shifting all those elements _accurately_ with a tiny low voltage low torque servo (see why it's low torque here - too fe2w turns possible in such a small space to get a focus throw long enough to try to do this quickly and accurately and repeatably*). This is why my piezo-wave-effect ring-motor driven Nikkor zoom is several times more expensive of itself than almost any digicam.
Got the idea?
To the above poster - i sure hope there's not much calibration going on when i boot my Nikon. Unless it's to compensate for working temperature effects, if i've spent time and effort having a lens tuned to how i like it (yes this doesn't just happen, it's common) i want it to be left alone at that spec. Now that even modest digicams such as the Fuji F10/11 boot instantly and respond extremely quickly, there's simply no excuse for slow electronics and (electronic) shutter save at the real budget segment.
* even some (sadly many) professional photogs insist on continuing the myth that because the lens / sensor is small, everything remains sharp because the DOF (depth of field) is greater in those conditions. Er, DOF is a psychological effect which is a function of the print enlargement factor, print size, viewing distance and airy dic resolving limit - so the assumption is not true at equivalent apertures, hence the need even in very small "format" cameras to _still_ focus accurately, in OP's case, sadly, slowly too. The effect observed is anecdotally true however at small print sizes like 6" by 4".
hmm, thanks, i'd not thought of that. HP do some nice sounding ADSL2 modules for their routers and have equal features _save WLAN_ plus you get GbE ports, but they're not in the same price class, by a long way
p roducts_data_sheet0900aecd8028a976.html
so i did my research, and if you read the product spec at http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps380/
you find:
876: ADSL over ISDN (ADSL2/ADSL2+ hardware ready)
877: ADSL over analog telephone lines (ADSL2/ADSL2+ hardware ready)
which may mean all or nothing, as these won't be standard WICs, but this does somewhat contradict your first thought, and I'd say this is one very featured router for small office / home lan use. Moreover they actually got around to supplying (some kind of) GUI setup with these . . .
thinking of geting one, not pumping the product.
Try a Cisco 87x router. These are sold in the UK, are fully IPv6, provide 4 10/100 ports in case your switch is v4 only, offer WLAN 802.11b/g option (does this carry v6? i dunno) and have lots of other nice features as well. Haven't had time to check compatability. Expensive - ish, see : http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.as p?ProductID=2277&CategoryID=325&ShopGroupID=78 (the top model in the series) but available now.
p roducts_data_sheet0900aecd8028a976.html
Data sheet : http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps380/
IPv6 addressing architecture
IPv6 name resolution
IPv6 statistics
IPv6 translation-transport packets between IPv6-only and IPv4-only endpoints
ICMPv6
IPv6 DHCP
Until the ISP backhaul is routing IPv6 it's still not native all the way, so A&A or whoever your ISP is doesn't. Ask for a allocation and tunnel to the 6bone. Until not so long ago NTT UK offered ranges and free peering, and there were other free v6 peering intiatives. coupl'a years since i cared much about this so forgive me if anything changed (save the ready availability of IPv6 capable routers). Hopefully POPs with lots of LLU will be the first to go native in the UK, so we can have v6 and >=8Mbps to cope with all that traffic from my fridge, cooker, clock, toilet, kitchen drawer, hallway light . . .
and not counted either are private distibutions, or retail distros which bundle the app . . . i often have a mirror on private ftp, just in case some IE diehards i know have a weak moment when i'm uploading another file for them to grab;)
;)
:-0
you can improve the single user, many downloads stat usefulness by writing a decent version upgrade system. i used Moz 0.82a "forever" just out of laziness
but - like it or not - free software is at a disadvantage when it comes to compiling persuasuve user statistics - there is neither any point in user registration, nor the expense of overhead for such a system, nor a stream of purchase receipts which can be held up as evidence that unique users are actually deploying an app. i'm not saying purchase = user, or registration = unique user, but those look to me a better starting point from which to begin discounting to guess real deployment.
the only thing that's useful to my mind is the rate of growth in downloads.
if the basic app is reasonably steady, and 1.5 is anyway now delayed, so the upgrade mill is discounted, then a decent steady rate of growth, can be confidently taken as largely new deployments. math up to you
that you may be able to now use Linux-based tools for development and the cross-compiler
HP already have more than a little experience with just what you describe
"The book ia-64 linux kernel by David Mosberger and Stephane Eranian was extremely helpful"
from: http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/
in this (very instructive) article: "Porting OpenVMS to HP Integrity Servers"
(Integrity is one line below Superdome, both Itanium - based. Superdome IA-64 is just coming together now.)
hmm, 'kay that doesn't mean they used Linux tools, but it does mean they are sitting on some very recent and very applicable knowledge.
Not being a fan of Linux, for historical reasons, as much as other more practical ones, i nonetheless truly appreciate how OSS just affected positively one of the most closed - source OSs still out there.
(okay, VMS used to be available with source on microfiche, but that's not my point)
Absolute crap : "They have long touted HP-UX as their non-stop platform,"
8 2866-0-0-0-121.html
:)
.
.
.
find me just one use of their trademark Non-Stop in a linux blurb.
this is modded up?
"but this seems to me somewhat as a concession that it, well, sucks and they need something more adoptable by the mainstream."
aha, really? Tandem was mainstream? Alpha was mainstream?
- cough - Itanium is mainstream?
Compaq/HP/Intel (plus contractors) ran some pretty awesome porting to get VMS and Tandem up on Itanium. This ain't "mainstream" unless you don't look outside of a fp (or stream) constrained / brokerage / medicare / financial op.
HP do tout "open" standards - see: http://h20223.www2.hp.com/NonStopComputing/cache/
what you ARE right about, however is that Superdome is very good kit. What else runs Windows, HP-UX, Tru-64, Linux, VMS and Tandem on the same machine, on Aplha or Itanium, let alone allows dymanic partitioning and even (limited) cross- os clustering inside the same chassis?
bringing Linux to the mix makes sense. Lots of sense. More than the linked "article"!
Given the state of Tru-64 / HP-UX development, adopting Linux might make more sense now for HP. Adding decent clustering (iirc the VMS team worked on the Tru-64 features) to the mix would make a ton of sense. Tru-64 long lost its lustre in the HPC market (sadly), and the revised HP-UX dropped most of the good features, post "os-merger". So coming out with a clean linux base, with clusters, distributed FS . .
well at least that might put SGI out of business with the Altix . .
don't mean to be harsh, but "mainstream" and the whole context of the discussion do not go together.
If Linux can be virtualised under Tandem (and my apologies to all as i know VMS not Tandem) then maybe HP is aiming to consolidate hardware share by allowing Linux to replace data warehousing replication for fast market analysis . .
== Idle Random Thoughts. Usual Disclaimers Apply ==
Currency converter with free form text entry of conversion amounts and currencies
8 6132416392876567415754
http://coinmill.com/convert/USD_GBP.html?amount=7
7.8613241639288E+23 United States Dollars
are worth
4.34 Pounds Sterling
now i can afford that Fortune 500 company that's been bugging me with crap products. Lol!
Used 35mm film to archive data. Went the way of all projects at Kodak: Too soon, too expensive, too complicated.
.
do you have any reference to DOTs or even a full expansion of the acronym? Google is treating "DOTs" as case insensitive no matter what i try . .
thanks!
many of the worst, most non-responsive web-pages are designed with WebObjects. etc.
:)
another example:
No longer the case, but the original Dell.com was a webobjects project.
This changed, i believe, due to FrogDesign handling a makeover and their developer preferences / skillset (over and above their UI engineering, which was why they won the pitch), not for any technical reasons.
Didn't do Dell any harm to use webobjects, now did it?
Someone may be able to correct or refine my Dell/FrogDesign history. Please do if you can.
. .
Once oil goes over something like $100.00/barrel it becomes cost efficient to refine shale oil,
Not if oil prices drive general inflation.
Although it is not a solitary inflationary driver, 1973 comes to mind, as does the double digit inflation that followed.
I do not have sufficient handle on the "import capital, export labor" model that some moot as a reason for continued low dollar interest rates, but dollar supply inflation is a common byproduct of both now and the (mid to late) 70's.
Though it's now widely appreciated that dollar money supply was inflated by policy in the 70's, so that the suddenly important "petrodollar" (value of dollar in Arabian reserve terms) would be 1. deflated due to supply 2. have to pass through the Federal Reserve and so back into the US banking system in any event, i do not wish to guess if there is an comparable policy today.
Anyone looking for a non academic view of this might read "Wriston" the bio of Walt Wriston, then chairman of Citibank. In there you have many anecdotal takes on how Citi expanded it's huge overseas network in lock - step with petrodollar recycling policy. I would even say that bio is fun - as it has enough interview material to cover the development of Citi in a very human, almost soap - opera style, whilst being very high on content. (I found myself re-reading individual *pages* to catch the significance of board - member quotes, e.g.)
As i'm interested recently in micro- not macro- economics, please forgive my lack of position on the issues i raised.
There are also VMS systems out there stable on much much older releases which haven't been deprecated by engineering. For that matter quite enough apps running under SharonVAX emu on peecee hardware . . . Mind you VMS system calls don't tend to get broken by engineering come an update. That nearly true for the Itanium port as well, because the internals were very well thought out originally, so little user code needs recompilation. Pity that with the glacial rate of most VMS product cycles it's taking a while for all the vendors to put the effort in.
.
:) Also i am sure that code contribution under GPL from the military would pose some concerns, from the POV of an oracle attack, as in "now why is geezer@org.mil" commiting _that_ to the tree?"
.
:-)
I was digressing .
So I don't agree that Linux is the _only_ way to go. But point taken on older kernels. I was thinking more about libraries and library dependecy which is a more moving target. A - Hem!
Regards msft extended support, i doubt "very expensive" actually worries a big government organisation, sadly. I learned the other day that our UK NHS (National Health Service) is the 3rd biggest employer in the world, after the Chinese army and the Indian railways. And, er, i believe they are buying microsoft stuff now . . . no wonder Mr Gates visisted Mr Blair during the tender process.
anyhow, point taken on older kernel maintenance, even whilst it just happens that last time i looked at linux 2.2 had just been released, which is a *very* short time in usage scenarios i consider. actually, i'm trying hard to remember when 2.2 was released, methinks '99 - i didn't find it in kerneltraffic? Anyhow, much less time ago than the halflife of (result) $ write sys$output f$getsyi("cluster_ftime")
Anyhow thanks for the whiff of nostaligia i just got thinking back for a moment!
Thanks, BilliamBlake, for the tip!
This http://www.senao.com.sg/Products2.asp?EID=133
( SL-3054CB3 Plus Deluxe - 802.11g Client Bridge and Access Point with WDS capability
* Wi-Fi Compliant to 802.11b and g (in AP mode)
* 4 functions in 1 box: Access Point, Bridge, Client Bridge and Repeater
* Supports both modes, Bridge and Access Point simultaneously with WDS (Repeater Mode)
* Up to 54Mbps data transmission
* DHCP Server/Client (in AP mode)
* Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
* Support Power-Over-Ethernet
with a few of these
http://www.senao.com.sg/Products2.asp?EID=132
( SL-5354AP Aries - Dualband Wireless Hotspot Access Point (Enterprise version)
* Wi-Fi compliant to 802.11a,b and g
* 3-way bridging for 802.4 and 802.11a/g networks
* Supports up to 108Mbps data tarnsmission (in 802.11a and Turbo mode)
* Up to 152-bit data Encryption
* Supports Power-Over-Ethernet
* Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
* Supports DFS and TPC
sounds like the ticket for a job i'm looking at as well.
sorry if this post comes across like a plug, though it isn't but those are feature sets i don't see in many high end AP products from more recognisable names, so i thought to post it here for those who skimmed over the names, or who tried first to google for and couldn't find (as i couldn't, not quickly anyhow) a page detailing Engenious products.
Cheers!
from: https://microsoft.productorder.com/clientx64/defa
(my emphasis)
does that mean
a) Microsoft changed their mind about dual core on the OS recently
or
b) There's a 4 - proc version of XP Pro that i haven't heard of.
?
I had been working under the assumption that XP Pro supported up to two processors, even if they are dual - core, but that for 4 processor support, you had to go with Server, which i don't want to use for a workstation because of the deprioritised performance quanta which are tedius to say the least to readjust (quanta determine priority of foreground apps, so background priority is fine if you are batching almost everything or acting as a server, but not so good if you want to throw everything at a real - time render or a vast photoshop file).
So asks I, as i now head off to Google for 4 way Opterons with dual 16 lane PCI-e so I can have *eight cores* on my desktop!
but seriously, that was a real question. I have neve heard of a specific 4-proc XP Pro edition. Anyone?
cheers!
-
Now, years later, we learn that Win2k is being discontinued. This is very bad. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent developing systems around Win2k, and all that work is going to be invalidated
.
.
.
OK, now before i'm flamed, is anyone tracking the bugfix dependencies in the Linux kernel? Can you really freeze Linux at a certain point? And freeze everything else at the same time?
And, at the level you're talking about, does not Microsoft offer extended support for Win2K? If it was that critical, i see ways around, MSFT already license their code to Governments . .
Of course this costs. Trade coding time to "standardise" against hiring some programmers to wrangle with glue code against static interfaces on, ooh VMS . .
Since when *wasn't* a bunch of code you didn't write yourself - recently - a mess?
Peace .
Just an aside, as i have no direct experience of Soviet school systems (though for the top streams i think you are pretty close) . .
:) and those who really couldn't absorb the pressure and were carried along - very effectively - by the overall educational strength of the place. You couldn't be there and not learn, I assure you.
.
:-)
:-)
I was taught at a school here in the UK which effectively speed binned students. You VERY quickly got a layer cake of aptitudes and attitudes.
Speed binning (I like that phrase you coined for education) is incredibly efficient IF all you want is to showw off with stars. It also creates some very complex characters. We also bombed through high level math very fast, e.g., had fantastic teachers who owere intense, and actually enjoyed it. But you had three distinct strata (gross simplification) - those who absorbed the strain and were pushed more and more until they lacked any social skill at all, those who cruised and tried to game the system (i was one of those, huh, so that's why i read Slashdot
But i characterise this as the difference between Intelligent, Smart and Proto-Genius. In the last caategory, when 4 "A Levels" were normal, friends of mine took on as many as twelve in the same period. And passed (pass for this place was 85% and above), and thought it quite the regular thing.
But when it boils down to whether my school prepared anyone for anything outside its walls, I am less sure. That's being diplomatic. I was intimately involved with some of the fallout from that pressure . .
Speed Binning people leads to people being in the bin.
If he wasn't snoring I'd say that to the Russian engineer asleep on my couch right now - a confused casualty i believe of the same approach when he was in school. Well, if you call ending up in advertising a punishment
To the abovev poster, NO grades do not translate directly into salary. Maybe they do if you exist within a confined and structured path from Grade School through Colledge and recruitment . . . maybe. My experience - some of the "dumbest" (N.B. quotes) guys i went to school with haul salaries that put the Proto-Genii in shame. Sorry, no direct correlation, because you assume all is C.P. Pressure changes characters. The secret to any educational system is to provide the social structure wherein the talented can work together over a long period of time. THAT is crucial to the sucess of the Soviet system - engineers who worked together, lived together, studied together. At least in my brief life i do not think there is such a structure available today. Communism removed many of the barriers to organising such intellectual labor, by removing marketplace constraints and the disruption of commerce on talented employees.
I think you lack somee understanding of the processes involved, particularly in the Soviet planning system, and maybe should look closer too at how things are where you are. I sincerely hope you can drive a truck through my quickly worded comments, but in my defense this si an area which has touched me and fascinated me, not least because i saw the casualties of speed binning young talent up close, and became fascinated not to make the same mistakes with my kids.
p.s. just a unfounded thought, but nerds are nerds the world around. i do however have a fairly decent amount of (often anecdotal) evidence that Soviet education created a lot more female (and pretty) nerds than did the UK or US systems. Education is about growing, and that's a LOT easier when you have abunch of chicks you can talk to
(sorry too lazy to fix typos)
Moneybookers do look far more organised than any other merchant acquirer pass through i have seen, and i would decidely prefer to deal under UK law with a firm i can locate in my neighborhood, but you are wrong to say that chargebacks do not happen. I see no way that a _customer_ of a merchant network / acquirer can unilaterally negate terms which the network (Visa e.g.) imposes universally on all merchants.
I have not yet found how Moneybookers effects the clawback, but i presume it is doable because whilst the "payment" within Moneybookers' system is instant, the payment to your bank account via BACS, CHAPS, SWIFT or however they do this, is not instant. SWIFT and CHAPS _can_ be instant, but only expensively, and few but the largest corporations have access to those systems. BACS in the UK is not immediate, and has an automatic clawback system in place. I have banked with a proper retail bank in the UK which relied on just one solitary CHAPS terminal for it's whole operation, to give you an idea how carefully the "good" payment networks are actually controlled.
*BACS - Bankers' Automated Clearing Service
*CHAPS - Clearing House Automated Payments System
*SWIFT - Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
from http://www.moneybookers.com/app/help.pl?s=terms