A consumer should be able to mark his packets as high/low priority, and the ISP should treat them as such. If a consumer marks too much of his traffic as high priority, it should automatically get downgraded to low priority.
Which packets that should be prioritized or not should be completly up to the consumer and his programs. The ISP deciding which network traffic gets low and which gets high priority is a big no-no.
If someone wants to use his priority bandwidth to transfer bittorrent files that is his buisness. He just won't be able to use it for VOIP.
The current TCP/IP protocol already provides the bulk flag. 10 years ago it wasn't used because it was expensive for the hardware, but with todays more intelligent routers that already do packet prioritizing, it doesn't seem that hardware is the issue any more.
Yup. There is one important thing to note from all of this though.
Science tries to create prediction models based on observed data. The more chaotic an observed system is (and the more parameters you have to track), the more difficult it becomes to create a correct model.
This is the reason why there are so much debate around climate science. Both weather and climate are very chaotic systems, which makes it very difficult to create good models. There are just too many parameters involved.
Gravity on the other hand was very easy to create a decent model for. Einstein showed that it wasn't 100% correct in all cases, but it was a good prediction model that works for most common day cases.
The basics of Evolution Theory creates a pretty simple model. The "fittest survives" is actually more mathematical than scientific, in that it doesn't actually require any observations. It is just a logic formula that says that if a certain kind of material is more likely to be passed on to the next generation, the next generation are more likely to contain that genetic material. A fact that humans has used to breed things suchs as dogs, cows and wheat for a long long time, before it was said with words.
One button? Paladins have more trouble that any other class to place their skills on the hotbars. Between, blessings, seals, healing, utility and auras, there is lots to do for a Paladin.
Of course that is only for PvE and especially 5 man groups.
If you play WoW for PvP you have chosen the wrong game. Blizzard has totally killed PvP by overpowering attack compared to defense.
That pretty much sums up my opionion of Evangelion.
The first 10 episodes are pretty decent. Some good combat, and some decent story potential. Unfortunally the story never goes anywhere good, but instead builds into some pseudo religous bullshit.
Even with the sucky story I could have forgiven it a little and given it a slightly below average rating. However, because of the most pathetica and whiny main character ever created Evangelion has made it to my bottom 10 list of animes. I am not kidding about the whining. Around episode 20 my adrenaline was pumping because I wanted to kill him myself just to shut him up (And I am usually a very friendly and peaceful guy).
The only way to prevent spam without completly reconstructing the email system is to use disposable email addresses.
Give a different email address to every person that wants to be able to contact you. If one address gets compromised, disable it. Good email servers even have support for creating aliases using the + sign. (User+code@example.com will be sent to User@example.com). What is missing is an email client that automatically generates and tracks codes for each person you know.
The above method only works with personal email. Since public email addresses can't be revoked every time a spam bot picks them up it becomes a little more difficult. One way to reduce spam on these kind of addresses is to time limit them so the address is valid for a limited time only.
The advantage with the method I have described is that it is a technical solution that doesn't need redesigning of email on a global scale. The biggest problem is that it isn't possible to give an email address to someone when you don't have access to the email client. This could of course be solved by pregenerating a bunch of addresses that can be printed out and kept on a piece of paper.
If they can't sell to the US they will just use the goods themselves. The consumer will always suffer more than the producer when trade is cut off, since the producer atleast can consume his own goods while the consumer is left completly empty handed.
Yes, China would also suffer some, especially since they are importing lots of raw materials. The west is however a lot more dependent on asia than vice versa.
The real scam is how isps are boosting about their download speed, but never mentions the upload.
Considering that a large percentage of the traffic on internet today is p2p, the value of a connection is determined by the minimum of the download speed and upload speed. Since upload speed usually is lower than download speed, that is the limiting factor.
Having a nice download speed can of course speed things up when getting something that is very well seeded, but upload speed becomes more useful if you are a good netizen and keep a 1:1 ratio on p2p.
"The problem with Biometrics is that if they are ever comprimised, you are stuck with them."
Which is exactly why biometrics is good at exactly one thing. To verify that one sample belongs to the same person as another sample. The key to using biometrics as a safety measure is to understand that biometrics is no stronger than the possibility to fake a sample.
This is why biometrics is useless for protection transactions. It involves a third party (the one getting paid), that can record and reuse the hashed biometric. This is no different than credit card numbers, but with the additional disadvantage of the biometric being unchangeable. The single most important rule in transaction security is that the third party never gets any information that can be reused.
The real use of biometrics is when the original keeper of the biometric data want to verify that you are the same person. In that case it doesn't matter that everyone knows your biometric information, because they still can't fake your dna when it is taken directly from their body.
Just look at the movie Gattaca to learn how difficult it is to fake biometrics taken from your own body. He still succeeded, but it was because of a combination of luck, bad procedures among those checking the dna and the full cooperation of the original dna host.
The real problem with identify theft is that your identity can be stolen using only public information. Because of this it is possible to steal someones identity without even being in contact with the person in question. Just look at credit cards where the same 16 digits are reused every time you buy an item. It is just begging to be stolen. The same can be said about the social security number, the home address, the name and anything else.
Digital Signatures (PGP, etc.) should be a minimum requirement. The private key and hardware for signing should be on the card/usb key or whatever is used.
Biometrics is only a solution for identifying that you are who you are when you are physically present. It doesn't work well for remote identification since the hash can be intercepted and reused. It could probably be possible to let the digital signature hardware do a biometric scan, but that is only useful against pick pocketing and against that a simple passcode would work just fine and be much cheaper, since it is just needed to give you time to revoke your signature.
There is nothing that can be done against physical theft, but that is a pointless problem to solve. Physical theft/coercion will always be possible in one way or the other. The only way to limit that is to keep less money in the account you use to pay, in much the same way you don't keep all your money in the wallet.
The sad thing is that excessive swearing is a sign that the person in question is lacking in vocabulary. Swear words are mostly used in sentences as replacement for more complex words or sentence structures.
People who swear every other sentence have serious problems expressing themselves because their speech are very binary. Either someone is a fucker or an ordinary person, but the inbetween doesn't exist. It is of course possible to place different values on each swear word, but that rarely happens because it would defeat the purpose of using swear words to simplify sentences.
This is why it is very important to make sure that children don't swear. Swearing is addictive because it is easy to do and doesn't require thinking and as long as someone uses swear words he/she won't learn to take advantage of the full range of the language.
Swearing is in my opinion best reserved to expressing extreme emotions. The more they are used the more diluted they become.
One more bad thing about raids is that they force players to specialize and makes the game more boring and actually easier than an equally hard 5-man instance. Hardcore players that doesn't want non-uber-guild players to have access to good items usually claim that raids should have better items because it is more difficult. The truth is that the most difficult thing about raids is organization. And in my opinion, organization shouldn't affect rewards, atleast not much.
When it comes down to gameplay raids is basically a healer/tank/damage dealer/crowd control game. Each person specializes on one thing and basically has to use only those skills for the whole raid. Also, due to there being 40 people, the death of any one person has less impact on the overall performance of the raid.
In a 5-man instance each player will have to use most of their skills because there aren't enough people to specialize. A single death will reduce the group size by 20 percent and things like mindless healer rotation is impossible.
Of course it is possible to make raids challenging in other ways, but it is also possible to make 5-man instances more challenging and without forcing people to join uber-guild to have fun.
ISPs today like to advertise a single number, the download speed. Unless you are mostly using your connection to download large files from servers, that number means very little. Add the fact that lots of ISPs oversell and have usage caps and you have a very ugly market where it is almost impossible for a consumer to make a good decision.
It is more like people using private trackers are intelligent enough to understand that everyone needs to share 1/1 ratio for a file to stay alive, while the braindead zombies (leechers) that crawl around the public sites don't understand it.
This comment was in no way meant to disrespect people using public trackers that share as much as they leech. Neither was it meant to disrespect any real zombies.
The reason is simple. People join and use the private pirate sites because they track upload/download ratio and ensure that everyone shares. By ignoring the private flag, BitComet makes it possible for people that doesn't belong to the site to use the torrents. This of course removes the whole purpose of making the site private.
Here is an example:
Numb3rs.S02E10.HDTV.XviD-LOL - This is the latest episode of the tv series Numb3rs.
Current Seeder/Leecher ratios Public site 1: 641/554 Public site 2: 698/336 Public site 3: 152/45 Private site 1: 172/4 Private site 2: 51/1 Private site 3: 132/6
It is pretty easy to see why people prefer private sites. Personally I share the same (until I reach 1.1 ratio) on both private and public sites. That is unfortunally not true for everyone.
Strange, because I have never managed to get banned. The most common reason for I have seen for people getting banned is that they didn't follow the rules, or possible didn't even read the rules. Reading the rules is always the first thing I do when I join a new channel. If I don't like the rules I leave. There is of course the occasional power abuse, but that isn't any different from real life.
Yup, it can sound pretty hilarious when you look at it that way. There are lots of different ways to look at the p2p-issue.
These are just a few different attitudes that are common in the p2p debate. They are by no means exlusive so you can belong in several of them.
Anti-p2p: They are stealing content. p2p Skeptic: I pay higher prices because I have to pay for those that copy also. Poor: I couldn't afford it anyway. Greedy: I can download and spend my money on something else instead. Tester: I download first and buy what I like. Consumer: I can only afford to buy that much. The rest I download. Leecher: Why should I share? Psuedo-Leecher: My connection is to slow so I can't share. Fooled-Leecher: I have a bandwidth cap so I can't share. Sharer: If I share, someone else will have it also. Trader: I give as much as I take. Collector: I want to have it all. I don't really use it, but I like collecting.
A fairly common p2p personality is a sharer/trader. They will find it completly moral to share and the trader part of their personality will find it immoral not to share back the same amount as they recieved.
Then they shouldn't use a public p2p network then...
They aren't. By including the private flag in their torrent file they expect it to be a private p2p network. BitComet however doesn't acknowledge the flag. It is much the same as a search engines that doesn't acknowledge robot.txt.
WHY someone would not want to share amongst everyone.
Because some people don't like sharing with people that doesn't share back and the best way to make sure that everyone is sharing back is by making it a private community.
Actually, the main reason the sites are private is to enforce a higher standard of sharing. By limiting registration and banning people who don't share you get a community where everyone shares.
The fact that there is mostly illegal files on these sites are mostly coincidental. It is just that most peer to peer sharing on the internet is illegal and private trackers aren't any different.
The problem isn't your upload/download ratio. The problem is that bitcomet will broadcast the peer list to people that aren't authorized to use the tracker.
Since, these people usually have worse ratios (since they don't care), it will cause the files on the tracker to die more quickly.
You don't seem to understand what the problem is so I will try to explain.
By using DHT it is possible to connect to peers, even though you get the "IP not recognised" error from the tracker. DHT (Distributed Hashtable) is a peer-to-peer network that completly bypasses the tracker. In fact, most dht implementations only use the dht network once they fail to retrieve peers from the tracker. it is a very useful feature if a tracker is down.
The private flag is there to tell clients that have access to the private server that they shouldn't respond to any dht requests for that torrent.
Here is some recursive c# code. It will take a while to run though. On my computer it takes a couple of seconds per word, using the 20000 word dictionary linked to elsewhere in this article thread.
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.IO;
if (depth == PuzzleSize)//Print solution PrintSolution(depth); else { char[] wordStart = new char[depth]; for (int i = 0; i < depth; i++) wordStart[i] = currentSolution[i][depth];
class Dictionary { List<String> dictionary = new List<string>();
public Dictionary(string dictionaryFile,int wordLength) { using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(dictionaryFile)) { while (sr.Peek() != -1) foreach (string word in sr.ReadLine().Split(' ')) if (word.Length == wordLength) dictionary.Add(word); } dictionary.Sort(); }
public IEnumerable<string> WordsThatBeginWith(string s) { int index = dictionary.BinarySearch(s); if (index < 0) index = -index - 1; while (index < dictionary.Count && dictionary[index].StartsWith(s)) yield return dictionary[index++]; } }
You make a very good point about not confusing quality with taste. It is sad that so many people assume that anything they don't like is bad quality. I for example personally rate Cowboy Bebop quite low, but I can see why others may like the style.
Naruto is an interesting case. It suffers from the filler-itus syndrome. The main storyline in Naruto is pretty good with a lot of interesting action, but the filler episodes, which is needed because anime progresses faster than manga, range from watchable to pure crap. It is a good example to bring up to demonstrate that a single series can be both good and bad quality.
One of the best things about anime in my opinion is that there are a lot of story based animes with a planned beginning, middle and end.
This is in contrast with american tv series that seem to be produced on the basis that there will be several seasons and therefore are construct in such a way that it always is possible to append another season.
Yes, there are two types of zooms when it comes to web browsers. One zoom changes relative percentages while the other doesn't. Since changing relative percentages just makes it so you have to side scroll when zooming in, that version isn't that useful.
That leaves the version that doesn't change relative percentages. Note, that text wrapping also uses relative percentages, so text should usually wrap inside the browser borders. This basically means the following, assuming 150% zoom:
* Images will take 150% of their base pixel size. * Text will take 150% of their base pixel size. * Pixel offsets should be multiplied by 150% (1.5) * Relative percentages should remain the same. * Text should wrap as it currently does.
In some cases, there will be problems when text/images are forced outside of the width of the page, but that is nothing different than if you resized your current browser and made it really small. A good browser should be able to handle those cases.
It isn't brain surgery. Opera has done it for a long long time. Unfortunally, firefox/mozilla hasn't come closer to a solution since the feature suggestion was added to bugzilla in the year 1999 (bug #4821).
You want to use a new and better codec, but you aren't allowed to download a new and better codec, and neither are you allowed to choose the player they use? And you aren't allowed to install anything? You are basically screwed, more screwed and yet again screwed. Did I mention that you are screwed.
I would avoid wmv, rm and mov like the plague. They are all properitary container formats. For a container format use you are probably stuck with avi. It is supported by most players. It's main problem is that it is becoming somewhat outdated, which can cause problem with modern codecs.
If you actually had some possibility to install something I would have recommended Videolan. A single stand-alone platform independant player that doesn't use external codecs but instead includes its own. A player like that should be easy to support and cause minimum codec problems. An avi or mkv container with an mpeg-4 codec (xvid, divx, etc.) and aac or mp3 for sound should work perfectly in Videolan and you wouldn't have to worry about having trouble playing it in the future.
Ok, time to quite dreaming. The video codec market is a patent minefield so it practically impossible for a commercial entity to use open source video tools in USA. Good look with wmv:)
First of all I would like to say that being able to make a program output a predetermined output given some input can be significantly harder than it looks like.
First of all, out of the top 10 on TopCoder, a majority belongs to a university and the rest seems to be to old to be highschool students.
I also don't buy your proposition that the so called "really good programmers" are doing better things. It sound too much like the excuses that PHBs use when they can't understand something. They simply say they are too busy with other things.
I would of course value your opinion more if you took the time to place high in atleast one Division One Single Round Competion at TopCoder or find one of those really good programmers you are talking about and let him do it.
Slashdot Mirror
My idea on net neutrality is the following.
A consumer should be able to mark his packets as high/low priority, and the ISP should treat them as such. If a consumer marks too much of his traffic as high priority, it should automatically get downgraded to low priority.
Which packets that should be prioritized or not should be completly up to the consumer and his programs. The ISP deciding which network traffic gets low and which gets high priority is a big no-no.
If someone wants to use his priority bandwidth to transfer bittorrent files that is his buisness. He just won't be able to use it for VOIP.
The current TCP/IP protocol already provides the bulk flag. 10 years ago it wasn't used because it was expensive for the hardware, but with todays more intelligent routers that already do packet prioritizing, it doesn't seem that hardware is the issue any more.
Yup. There is one important thing to note from all of this though.
Science tries to create prediction models based on observed data. The more chaotic an observed system is (and the more parameters you have to track), the more difficult it becomes to create a correct model.
This is the reason why there are so much debate around climate science. Both weather and climate are very chaotic systems, which makes it very difficult to create good models. There are just too many parameters involved.
Gravity on the other hand was very easy to create a decent model for. Einstein showed that it wasn't 100% correct in all cases, but it was a good prediction model that works for most common day cases.
The basics of Evolution Theory creates a pretty simple model. The "fittest survives" is actually more mathematical than scientific, in that it doesn't actually require any observations. It is just a logic formula that says that if a certain kind of material is more likely to be passed on to the next generation, the next generation are more likely to contain that genetic material. A fact that humans has used to breed things suchs as dogs, cows and wheat for a long long time, before it was said with words.
One button? Paladins have more trouble that any other class to place their skills on the hotbars. Between, blessings, seals, healing, utility and auras, there is lots to do for a Paladin.
Of course that is only for PvE and especially 5 man groups.
If you play WoW for PvP you have chosen the wrong game. Blizzard has totally killed PvP by overpowering attack compared to defense.
That pretty much sums up my opionion of Evangelion.
The first 10 episodes are pretty decent. Some good combat, and some decent story potential. Unfortunally the story never goes anywhere good, but instead builds into some pseudo religous bullshit.
Even with the sucky story I could have forgiven it a little and given it a slightly below average rating. However, because of the most pathetica and whiny main character ever created Evangelion has made it to my bottom 10 list of animes. I am not kidding about the whining. Around episode 20 my adrenaline was pumping because I wanted to kill him myself just to shut him up (And I am usually a very friendly and peaceful guy).
The only way to prevent spam without completly reconstructing the email system is to use disposable email addresses.
Give a different email address to every person that wants to be able to contact you. If one address gets compromised, disable it. Good email servers even have support for creating aliases using the + sign. (User+code@example.com will be sent to User@example.com). What is missing is an email client that automatically generates and tracks codes for each person you know.
The above method only works with personal email. Since public email addresses can't be revoked every time a spam bot picks them up it becomes a little more difficult. One way to reduce spam on these kind of addresses is to time limit them so the address is valid for a limited time only.
The advantage with the method I have described is that it is a technical solution that doesn't need redesigning of email on a global scale. The biggest problem is that it isn't possible to give an email address to someone when you don't have access to the email client. This could of course be solved by pregenerating a bunch of addresses that can be printed out and kept on a piece of paper.
If they can't sell to the US they will just use the goods themselves. The consumer will always suffer more than the producer when trade is cut off, since the producer atleast can consume his own goods while the consumer is left completly empty handed.
Yes, China would also suffer some, especially since they are importing lots of raw materials. The west is however a lot more dependent on asia than vice versa.
The real scam is how isps are boosting about their download speed, but never mentions the upload.
Considering that a large percentage of the traffic on internet today is p2p, the value of a connection is determined by the minimum of the download speed and upload speed. Since upload speed usually is lower than download speed, that is the limiting factor.
Having a nice download speed can of course speed things up when getting something that is very well seeded, but upload speed becomes more useful if you are a good netizen and keep a 1:1 ratio on p2p.
"The problem with Biometrics is that if they are ever comprimised, you are stuck with them."
Which is exactly why biometrics is good at exactly one thing. To verify that one sample belongs to the same person as another sample. The key to using biometrics as a safety measure is to understand that biometrics is no stronger than the possibility to fake a sample.
This is why biometrics is useless for protection transactions. It involves a third party (the one getting paid), that can record and reuse the hashed biometric. This is no different than credit card numbers, but with the additional disadvantage of the biometric being unchangeable. The single most important rule in transaction security is that the third party never gets any information that can be reused.
The real use of biometrics is when the original keeper of the biometric data want to verify that you are the same person. In that case it doesn't matter that everyone knows your biometric information, because they still can't fake your dna when it is taken directly from their body.
Just look at the movie Gattaca to learn how difficult it is to fake biometrics taken from your own body. He still succeeded, but it was because of a combination of luck, bad procedures among those checking the dna and the full cooperation of the original dna host.
The real problem with identify theft is that your identity can be stolen using only public information. Because of this it is possible to steal someones identity without even being in contact with the person in question. Just look at credit cards where the same 16 digits are reused every time you buy an item. It is just begging to be stolen. The same can be said about the social security number, the home address, the name and anything else.
Digital Signatures (PGP, etc.) should be a minimum requirement. The private key and hardware for signing should be on the card/usb key or whatever is used.
Biometrics is only a solution for identifying that you are who you are when you are physically present. It doesn't work well for remote identification since the hash can be intercepted and reused. It could probably be possible to let the digital signature hardware do a biometric scan, but that is only useful against pick pocketing and against that a simple passcode would work just fine and be much cheaper, since it is just needed to give you time to revoke your signature.
There is nothing that can be done against physical theft, but that is a pointless problem to solve. Physical theft/coercion will always be possible in one way or the other. The only way to limit that is to keep less money in the account you use to pay, in much the same way you don't keep all your money in the wallet.
The sad thing is that excessive swearing is a sign that the person in question is lacking in vocabulary. Swear words are mostly used in sentences as replacement for more complex words or sentence structures.
People who swear every other sentence have serious problems expressing themselves because their speech are very binary. Either someone is a fucker or an ordinary person, but the inbetween doesn't exist. It is of course possible to place different values on each swear word, but that rarely happens because it would defeat the purpose of using swear words to simplify sentences.
This is why it is very important to make sure that children don't swear. Swearing is addictive because it is easy to do and doesn't require thinking and as long as someone uses swear words he/she won't learn to take advantage of the full range of the language.
Swearing is in my opinion best reserved to expressing extreme emotions. The more they are used the more diluted they become.
One more bad thing about raids is that they force players to specialize and makes the game more boring and actually easier than an equally hard 5-man instance. Hardcore players that doesn't want non-uber-guild players to have access to good items usually claim that raids should have better items because it is more difficult. The truth is that the most difficult thing about raids is organization. And in my opinion, organization shouldn't affect rewards, atleast not much.
When it comes down to gameplay raids is basically a healer/tank/damage dealer/crowd control game. Each person specializes on one thing and basically has to use only those skills for the whole raid. Also, due to there being 40 people, the death of any one person has less impact on the overall performance of the raid.
In a 5-man instance each player will have to use most of their skills because there aren't enough people to specialize. A single death will reduce the group size by 20 percent and things like mindless healer rotation is impossible.
Of course it is possible to make raids challenging in other ways, but it is also possible to make 5-man instances more challenging and without forcing people to join uber-guild to have fun.
There are lots of different uses of the Internet and they all have different demands.
* Latency (gaming, voip, browsing)
* Upload Bandwidth (p2p, servers)
* Download Bandwidth (media downloads)
* Stability
ISPs today like to advertise a single number, the download speed. Unless you are mostly using your connection to download large files from servers, that number means very little. Add the fact that lots of ISPs oversell and have usage caps and you have a very ugly market where it is almost impossible for a consumer to make a good decision.
It is more like people using private trackers are intelligent enough to understand that everyone needs to share 1/1 ratio for a file to stay alive, while the braindead zombies (leechers) that crawl around the public sites don't understand it.
This comment was in no way meant to disrespect people using public trackers that share as much as they leech. Neither was it meant to disrespect any real zombies.
The reason is simple. People join and use the private pirate sites because they track upload/download ratio and ensure that everyone shares. By ignoring the private flag, BitComet makes it possible for people that doesn't belong to the site to use the torrents. This of course removes the whole purpose of making the site private.
Here is an example:
Numb3rs.S02E10.HDTV.XviD-LOL - This is the latest episode of the tv series Numb3rs.
Current Seeder/Leecher ratios
Public site 1: 641/554
Public site 2: 698/336
Public site 3: 152/45
Private site 1: 172/4
Private site 2: 51/1
Private site 3: 132/6
It is pretty easy to see why people prefer private sites. Personally I share the same (until I reach 1.1 ratio) on both private and public sites. That is unfortunally not true for everyone.
Strange, because I have never managed to get banned. The most common reason for I have seen for people getting banned is that they didn't follow the rules, or possible didn't even read the rules. Reading the rules is always the first thing I do when I join a new channel. If I don't like the rules I leave. There is of course the occasional power abuse, but that isn't any different from real life.
Yup, it can sound pretty hilarious when you look at it that way. There are lots of different ways to look at the p2p-issue.
These are just a few different attitudes that are common in the p2p debate. They are by no means exlusive so you can belong in several of them.
Anti-p2p: They are stealing content.
p2p Skeptic: I pay higher prices because I have to pay for those that copy also.
Poor: I couldn't afford it anyway.
Greedy: I can download and spend my money on something else instead.
Tester: I download first and buy what I like.
Consumer: I can only afford to buy that much. The rest I download.
Leecher: Why should I share?
Psuedo-Leecher: My connection is to slow so I can't share.
Fooled-Leecher: I have a bandwidth cap so I can't share.
Sharer: If I share, someone else will have it also.
Trader: I give as much as I take.
Collector: I want to have it all. I don't really use it, but I like collecting.
A fairly common p2p personality is a sharer/trader. They will find it completly moral to share and the trader part of their personality will find it immoral not to share back the same amount as they recieved.
Then they shouldn't use a public p2p network then...
They aren't. By including the private flag in their torrent file they expect it to be a private p2p network. BitComet however doesn't acknowledge the flag. It is much the same as a search engines that doesn't acknowledge robot.txt.
WHY someone would not want to share amongst everyone.
Because some people don't like sharing with people that doesn't share back and the best way to make sure that everyone is sharing back is by making it a private community.
Actually, the main reason the sites are private is to enforce a higher standard of sharing. By limiting registration and banning people who don't share you get a community where everyone shares.
The fact that there is mostly illegal files on these sites are mostly coincidental. It is just that most peer to peer sharing on the internet is illegal and private trackers aren't any different.
The problem isn't your upload/download ratio. The problem is that bitcomet will broadcast the peer list to people that aren't authorized to use the tracker.
Since, these people usually have worse ratios (since they don't care), it will cause the files on the tracker to die more quickly.
You don't seem to understand what the problem is so I will try to explain.
By using DHT it is possible to connect to peers, even though you get the "IP not recognised" error from the tracker. DHT (Distributed Hashtable) is a peer-to-peer network that completly bypasses the tracker. In fact, most dht implementations only use the dht network once they fail to retrieve peers from the tracker. it is a very useful feature if a tracker is down.
The private flag is there to tell clients that have access to the private server that they shouldn't respond to any dht requests for that torrent.
Here is some recursive c# code. It will take a while to run though. On my computer it takes a couple of seconds per word, using the 20000 word dictionary linked to elsewhere in this article thread.
//Progress report
//Print solution
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
class AcrosticSolver
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
AcrosticFinder(0);
}
const int PuzzleSize = 10;
static Dictionary dictionary = new Dictionary("Dictionary.txt",PuzzleSize);
static string[] currentSolution = new string[PuzzleSize];
static void PrintSolution(int depth)
{
for (int i = 0; i < depth; i++)
Console.WriteLine(currentSolution[i]);
Console.ReadLine();
}
static void AcrosticFinder(int depth)
{
if (depth == 1)
Console.WriteLine(currentSolution[0]);
if (depth == PuzzleSize)
PrintSolution(depth);
else
{
char[] wordStart = new char[depth];
for (int i = 0; i < depth; i++)
wordStart[i] = currentSolution[i][depth];
foreach (string possibleWord in dictionary.WordsThatBeginWith(new string(wordStart)))
{
currentSolution[depth] = possibleWord;
AcrosticFinder(depth + 1);
}
}
}
}
class Dictionary
{
List<String> dictionary = new List<string>();
public Dictionary(string dictionaryFile,int wordLength)
{
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(dictionaryFile))
{
while (sr.Peek() != -1)
foreach (string word in sr.ReadLine().Split(' '))
if (word.Length == wordLength)
dictionary.Add(word);
}
dictionary.Sort();
}
public IEnumerable<string> WordsThatBeginWith(string s)
{
int index = dictionary.BinarySearch(s);
if (index < 0)
index = -index - 1;
while (index < dictionary.Count && dictionary[index].StartsWith(s))
yield return dictionary[index++];
}
}
You make a very good point about not confusing quality with taste. It is sad that so many people assume that anything they don't like is bad quality. I for example personally rate Cowboy Bebop quite low, but I can see why others may like the style.
Naruto is an interesting case. It suffers from the filler-itus syndrome. The main storyline in Naruto is pretty good with a lot of interesting action, but the filler episodes, which is needed because anime progresses faster than manga, range from watchable to pure crap. It is a good example to bring up to demonstrate that a single series can be both good and bad quality.
One of the best things about anime in my opinion is that there are a lot of story based animes with a planned beginning, middle and end.
This is in contrast with american tv series that seem to be produced on the basis that there will be several seasons and therefore are construct in such a way that it always is possible to append another season.
Yes, there are two types of zooms when it comes to web browsers. One zoom changes relative percentages while the other doesn't. Since changing relative percentages just makes it so you have to side scroll when zooming in, that version isn't that useful.
That leaves the version that doesn't change relative percentages. Note, that text wrapping also uses relative percentages, so text should usually wrap inside the browser borders. This basically means the following, assuming 150% zoom:
* Images will take 150% of their base pixel size.
* Text will take 150% of their base pixel size.
* Pixel offsets should be multiplied by 150% (1.5)
* Relative percentages should remain the same.
* Text should wrap as it currently does.
In some cases, there will be problems when text/images are forced outside of the width of the page, but that is nothing different than if you resized your current browser and made it really small. A good browser should be able to handle those cases.
It isn't brain surgery. Opera has done it for a long long time. Unfortunally, firefox/mozilla hasn't come closer to a solution since the feature suggestion was added to bugzilla in the year 1999 (bug #4821).
You want to use a new and better codec, but you aren't allowed to download a new and better codec, and neither are you allowed to choose the player they use? And you aren't allowed to install anything? You are basically screwed, more screwed and yet again screwed. Did I mention that you are screwed.
:)
I would avoid wmv, rm and mov like the plague. They are all properitary container formats. For a container format use you are probably stuck with avi. It is supported by most players. It's main problem is that it is becoming somewhat outdated, which can cause problem with modern codecs.
If you actually had some possibility to install something I would have recommended Videolan. A single stand-alone platform independant player that doesn't use external codecs but instead includes its own. A player like that should be easy to support and cause minimum codec problems. An avi or mkv container with an mpeg-4 codec (xvid, divx, etc.) and aac or mp3 for sound should work perfectly in Videolan and you wouldn't have to worry about having trouble playing it in the future.
Ok, time to quite dreaming. The video codec market is a patent minefield so it practically impossible for a commercial entity to use open source video tools in USA. Good look with wmv
First of all I would like to say that being able to make a program output a predetermined output given some input can be significantly harder than it looks like.
First of all, out of the top 10 on TopCoder, a majority belongs to a university and the rest seems to be to old to be highschool students.
I also don't buy your proposition that the so called "really good programmers" are doing better things. It sound too much like the excuses that PHBs use when they can't understand something. They simply say they are too busy with other things.
I would of course value your opinion more if you took the time to place high in atleast one Division One Single Round Competion at TopCoder or find one of those really good programmers you are talking about and let him do it.