"Its like shutting off phone service to thousands of people simply because they have the same prefix as an obscene caller," explained Soular."
Well, it's more like shutting off phone service to a house that's got more than one jack. You can only really be as granular as one IP address, and if that hosts 1000 sites...
When all is said and done it's funny to see militant anti-spammers fighting militant censors. Although at least the anti-spammers are improving quality of life...
Since I'm responsible for "corporate standards" for a big conglomerate, I'll try to answer from the perspective of "The Establishment".
Unfortunately many companies don't house full-time developers and instead prefer to outsource on a per-project basis. Because of this many of them are concerned only with making their app run, at the expense of others. ie - Develop an app that's dependent on IE 5.0 despite the fact many company sites only work under IE 4.0. Bad code all around, eh?
This leads many companies to implement lock-down and I have to sympathize. In a perfect world all your tools would be installed by your Desktop folk and even your development PC would be locked down. In a more realistic world you would have a more open development platform but all testing would be performed on a locked-down PC. A nice compromise since it affords you the freedom to install the tools you need (I think historically no Desktop support technician has ever installed Visual Basic 100% the way a developer wants it!) while still ensuring you are developing an app that doesn't stomp all over settings and files that other apps rely on.
Also, keep in mind that there is (essentially) no user context in Windows that "locks down" the entire registry. What it does is grant full access to user areas and no access to system areas. The only big difference here between "secure" *nix and "insecure" Windows is that in Windows full control is the default. There's no reason why lock-down has to be a bad thing for a developer. In fact it's often a good thing as it prevents the next developer in line from writing an app that will kill yours.
I have to say I think you completely mis-read this one. It's the traditional news outlets such as the 6 o'clock news and daily newspapers that are the primary source of hysteria these days. By non-stop anthrax coverage and "special reports" on the one or two nuts who have outfitted their families with gas masks, they are obscuring the fact that this threat is relatively minor. Only three people have died of anthrax -- tens of thousands of people die every year in the U.S. from the common flu.
In fact, I usually turn to technology (the internet) to get the real facts. For example, the 6 o'clock news teaches you that the USA is involved in the Middle East because they're dependent on Gulf oil. However by surfing the web you learn that the USA gets the vast majority of its oil domestically, and most foreign oil from South America. However since many U.S. allies are heavily dependent on Gulf oil, the USA tries to maintain the status quo in the Gulf to prevent global instability.
It's amazing what you can learn when your news isn't filtered for you.
Well, this is interesting but keep in mind that "reverse hijacking" requires the plaintiff be contesting a trademark they didn't have at the time the domain was registered. I sorta assume that if you snooze, you lose. How about the rest of ya?
> Jesus, your first linux GUI was KDE? Mine was mc.
Well, if we're in a "who's more old-school" comparison, I *did* run nc (the program that mc was written to emulate) on DOS 3.2... Mind you I'm sure there are a few CP/M nuts about who've got me beaten handily...
I couldn't agree more. Working in the M$ world has gotten me accustomed to assuming that only competition can better a product. Thx for pointing out there's more to success than that...
I've gotta wish KDE a happy birthday -- it was my first Linux GUI and arguably my favourite. The "winds of change" have prompted me to switch to GNOME and while I have to admit I adore Ximian/GNOME I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for KDE. Isn't it great to see how alive and well competition in the Linux scene is? Thank God for KDE (and GNOME) because they've made each other a tonne better simply by their existence.
While I agree that it would be bad if this OS violates the GPL in any way I've gotta say that I sure hope not! In fact, I think the community should be darned excited about this announcement. One of the founding principles of Linux is *choice* -- including the choice to not run Linux at all. I think it's a credit to the sharing spirit of the community that a company is capable of accomplishing this...
I disagree with this view provided the barriers to entry on internet remain low. What I mean by this is that internet and the associated freedom of speech really took off because there was very little preventing anyone off the street from posting a page, an idea, or a thought. This allowed ideas (good and bad) to all have equal footing which is necessarily a Good Thing. (You have to have access to bad ideas to be able to see them for such.)
While 50% of web content may be owned by a few big corporations, there's still very little barring the average Joe throwing a race relations thesis online for others to comment on. While it may not get tonnes of traffic there has been no barrier to the free flow of information. So long as these barriers remain low, internet will remain Free. (You may not *like* the corporate sites, but they have as much right to existence as Joe's thesis.)
Things that could put this freedom at risk include rising web hosting costs that could potentially limit sites to only wealthy commercial ventures. ISP's that pull content at the slightest complaint are another risk. Content filters, especially politically-motivated ones are another risk (ie - Country-specific content banning). Even the spiralling complexity of markup languages and browsers could make it cost prohibitive to publish content. Not to mention proprietary extensions!
I don't think any of these possibilities have really hit us yet and the web is still quite free. After all, think of how easy it was for me to fill this space with my opinion! However these are the things that we need to watch most closely. As long as there remains simple means to share information (the new, ripped Britney Spears CD probably doesn't count!) on the web I think we remain free.
The internet was a small, subversive group when it started and hence its reputation as being a completely free society. Now that there are a billion AOL subscribers surfing the web there seems to be a great lament that internet has "gone mainstream." Not surprisingly these protests tend to come from the billion AOL users looking for granny pr0n.
I think the subversives remain and the shutdown of a "wanna-be" site like Napster doesn't particularly change a thing. When rebellion becomes mainstream the rebels simply dig themselves deeper.
There is all sort of old-school internet content out there if you're willing to dip your toes in the churning waters outside Yahoo...
It's too bad to see Bluetooth struggling to get out of the gates as I think the concept is right on the money. Imagine the ability to have your palm synchronize simply by entering the same room as your PC. Or your notebook to hop onto the LAN automatically when you enter your office. Or seamlessly having all the devices in your home networked without cables? A Bluetooth-enabled thermostat or burglar alarm could be configured easily from your PC without any wires. You could set your VCR to record "Seinfeld" from your desktop or (even better) from work using a browser. All without a single wire! I think there's a huge market for this type of technology, I hope Bluetooth can be rescued!
You are missing the entire moral ground here. Pirating DVDs is *illegal* and no one should do it. Anyone who really understands this issue would agree. But DeCSS is simply decryption code that has a multitude of perfectly legal uses.
Unfortunately the media giants have pressured the goverment to make decryption itself illegal if the work is copyrighted. Panty-hose can be used to cover your face during a bank heist BUT YOU CAN STILL BUY THEM! Rather than prosecuting people for encryption algorithms they should be prosecuting the people using [ DeCSS | Napster | CD-R Drives | insert evil technology here ] to illegally trade in copyrighted works.
That is called being impartial. Endorsing the misinformation that the media giants are spewing about the "evils" of DeCSS is not.
A 200 byte message reduced to 2 bytes? I don't know ASN.1 but I would have to assume tags are counted, and added to an indexed table. Using variable-length encoding you can squeeze some extra compression out of your algorithm but 100:1 compression? So basically you have a 180-byte XML tag with a single value reduced to a single symbol with an index of 1. Meaning that the "benchmark" is a sham. Add to that the fact that the symbol table obviously wasn't counted in their "compression" technique. I would assume you don't LZ-compress the symbol table (creating a symbol table for a symbol table) so basically what you have is after compression the code goes from 200 bytes to 200 bytes + 2 bytes and a few bits. What a joke. The worst part of all is that I'm sure it achieves fairly good compression on a 100k XHTML document but they have to throw bogus numbers at us thinking we'll go all doe-eyed. Very insulting.
If you ask me, this highlights some of the biggest problems being faced by manufacturers and designers of portable devices today. Let me state a couple sweeping generalizations:
1. Specialized devices are better than generalized ones.
2. People are unwiling to carry more than 1 or 2 devices at once.
Most people disagree with me on #1 so I'll need to explain a bit more. The telephone is a specialized device and has barely changed in 100 years. Why? Because the interface just works. The keyboard and "output" (screen, paper) interface is another specialized interface that has lasted over 100 years. Again, simple and fit for purpose. The palmtop has existed for a much shorter time but is great for reading (not inputing) data. All are specialized, and all work great.
What happens when you combine these things, however? Combine a phone with a PDA and you get a Qualcomm PDQ. It's too big to be a phone and when you talk you get face gunk on the PDA screen. It didn't sell... Combine a keyboard with a PDA and you get.. uhm.. a PDA with a keyboard. The point being, they never sold either. Combine a PC with portable capability and you get a notebook. They work great traveling from your work office to your home office but if you've ever used one on a plane you know they aren't great on the road. Personal devices need to be ergonomic and this necessitates specialisation.
Point #2 is where the wireless world starts to hiccup. If people insist on a phone that looks like a phone and a PDA with a screen large enough to read and a PC with a full-size keyboard yet refuse to carry multiple devices, how will this wireless world catch on?
Well, maybe people need to be more sensible about what they combine... A cel phone could combine with a headset and MP3 players to play music and accept calls and SMS messages. Maybe throw in a smart card for banking and debit payments. A Palmtop could combine with a docking station and provide storage for data while on the road and the power of a PC when plugged in. Any other ideas?
I hope someone who understands robotics better than me can explain -- what is so special about this device? I saw the chess and poker chip demos and I was impressed, but the same could be accomplished using a robotic arm, probably in less time. Can someone in the know explain the import of this technology? I'm sure it exists but I haven't read enough on the topic to see it plainly... ---
Bing! Give the man a gold star! I still think this market is driven by cost, not features. Palm obliterated the competition by creating something simple and cheap. When Palm started to dilute their product line with wireless, colour screens, titanium cases etc. they started to lose ground. Handspring (created by the Palm founders) has taken up the "cheap, small, simple" torch and is doing as well as can be expected in these tight times. The market has spoken, make PDAs simple and cheap! ---
Again, the mainstream press is trying to inflate PDAs into something they're not. Let me say this very clearly so it's not missed:
PDAs will never replace a desktop PC.
Here are some reasons this will never happen:
- PDAs have tiny screens and no keyboards -- the interface is too cumbersome.
- You can't talk to your voice-enabled PDA during a meeting or on a busy bus so don't expect the interface to ever improve.
- PDAs appeal to techno-geeks and power-hungry professionals, but they don't appeal to the average Joe who still prefers pen and paper.
- PDAs aren't powerful enough to do what a PC does.
- PDAs aren't expandable.
- Portable computers break down more and are more expensive to fix when it happens.
- Most home users who want a low-cost entrypoint to the web will opt for the much-more-powerful console gaming system.
- Dropping PC prices will continue to put pressure on the bottom end of the market, making the PC an attractive purchase.
I could go on with dozens more points and I'm sure I'll be attacked by all the technology messiah's out there, but the fact is that they don't nor will they ever be able to give an ideal mix of low cost, low footprint, and high power. Because of this they will remain as fancy personal organizers for the forseeable future.
... because I saw the movie and all the characters definitely had facial blemishes. That's one of the things that impressed me about the graphics, not even the heroine had a flawless complexion. ---
Microsoft was slapped on the wrist because they both made the desktop, and dictated what content could sit on it. ie - leveraging monopoly control on one product to bolster sales in another sector. This is not what AOL-T/W is doing.
Disclaimer: This does not mean I don't consider AOL Time-Warner to a monopoly. I just don't think this is an example of it.
A couple quotes from the article that disprove this hypothesis:
"Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."
"Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain"
What her research proves is that gamers who are talented enough to play at "national competitions" have better hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and quicker responses. Duh, I already knew that. She should study me -- I play games constantly. And I lose. Badly.
Rather than studying people who excel at gaming she should have studied people before and after they took up gaming. The unorthodox and obviously biased means in which this study was carried out suggests the author was only fishing for a catchy headline.
True, the fiber backbone isn't the bottleneck -- but the routers and switches *are*. Points where you need to convert from optical to electrical and often back to optical again. That's why optical switching companies were the darling of the tech sector until the bust -- while there's more than enough fiber to last us for years to come, the switching technology is still woefully inadequate. ---
Sorry, but you can stop holding your breath. Fiber is an excellent backbone technology but it's too cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to deploy to ever become a "last mile" solution.
People clued in long ago that fiber to the workstation on corporate LANs was far more expensive than copper and offered no speed increases. Fiber to the home is the same -- it's cheaper to just install better quality phone cable or find better transmission methods for existing cabling. Why spend all that money on fiber?
---
Geez, I thought that post was about Galeon!
on
Galeon At A Glance
·
· Score: 5
"A new version of Mozilla has been posted on their site, but I only use Konqueror."
"Here's a site with some great info on Galeon, which doesn't happen to be Konqueror, the world's greatest web browser."
"John Carmack has been interviewed on Blue's News. John's neighbour owns an Apple iMac. Apple is run by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs once used Netscape which isn't Konqueror!"
Please, please cut it out Hemos. We don't care how horny Konqueror makes you, it doesn't have to be mentioned in every single post.
Slashdot Mirror
"Its like shutting off phone service to thousands of people simply because they have the same prefix as an obscene caller," explained Soular."
Well, it's more like shutting off phone service to a house that's got more than one jack. You can only really be as granular as one IP address, and if that hosts 1000 sites...
When all is said and done it's funny to see militant anti-spammers fighting militant censors. Although at least the anti-spammers are improving quality of life...
Since I'm responsible for "corporate standards" for a big conglomerate, I'll try to answer from the perspective of "The Establishment".
Unfortunately many companies don't house full-time developers and instead prefer to outsource on a per-project basis. Because of this many of them are concerned only with making their app run, at the expense of others. ie - Develop an app that's dependent on IE 5.0 despite the fact many company sites only work under IE 4.0. Bad code all around, eh?
This leads many companies to implement lock-down and I have to sympathize. In a perfect world all your tools would be installed by your Desktop folk and even your development PC would be locked down. In a more realistic world you would have a more open development platform but all testing would be performed on a locked-down PC. A nice compromise since it affords you the freedom to install the tools you need (I think historically no Desktop support technician has ever installed Visual Basic 100% the way a developer wants it!) while still ensuring you are developing an app that doesn't stomp all over settings and files that other apps rely on.
Also, keep in mind that there is (essentially) no user context in Windows that "locks down" the entire registry. What it does is grant full access to user areas and no access to system areas. The only big difference here between "secure" *nix and "insecure" Windows is that in Windows full control is the default. There's no reason why lock-down has to be a bad thing for a developer. In fact it's often a good thing as it prevents the next developer in line from writing an app that will kill yours.
I have to say I think you completely mis-read this one. It's the traditional news outlets such as the 6 o'clock news and daily newspapers that are the primary source of hysteria these days. By non-stop anthrax coverage and "special reports" on the one or two nuts who have outfitted their families with gas masks, they are obscuring the fact that this threat is relatively minor. Only three people have died of anthrax -- tens of thousands of people die every year in the U.S. from the common flu.
In fact, I usually turn to technology (the internet) to get the real facts. For example, the 6 o'clock news teaches you that the USA is involved in the Middle East because they're dependent on Gulf oil. However by surfing the web you learn that the USA gets the vast majority of its oil domestically, and most foreign oil from South America. However since many U.S. allies are heavily dependent on Gulf oil, the USA tries to maintain the status quo in the Gulf to prevent global instability.
It's amazing what you can learn when your news isn't filtered for you.
Well, this is interesting but keep in mind that "reverse hijacking" requires the plaintiff be contesting a trademark they didn't have at the time the domain was registered. I sorta assume that if you snooze, you lose. How about the rest of ya?
> Jesus, your first linux GUI was KDE? Mine was mc.
Well, if we're in a "who's more old-school" comparison, I *did* run nc (the program that mc was written to emulate) on DOS 3.2... Mind you I'm sure there are a few CP/M nuts about who've got me beaten handily...
> Don't forget cooperation.
I couldn't agree more. Working in the M$ world has gotten me accustomed to assuming that only competition can better a product. Thx for pointing out there's more to success than that...
I've gotta wish KDE a happy birthday -- it was my first Linux GUI and arguably my favourite. The "winds of change" have prompted me to switch to GNOME and while I have to admit I adore Ximian/GNOME I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for KDE. Isn't it great to see how alive and well competition in the Linux scene is? Thank God for KDE (and GNOME) because they've made each other a tonne better simply by their existence.
While I agree that it would be bad if this OS violates the GPL in any way I've gotta say that I sure hope not! In fact, I think the community should be darned excited about this announcement. One of the founding principles of Linux is *choice* -- including the choice to not run Linux at all. I think it's a credit to the sharing spirit of the community that a company is capable of accomplishing this...
I disagree with this view provided the barriers to entry on internet remain low. What I mean by this is that internet and the associated freedom of speech really took off because there was very little preventing anyone off the street from posting a page, an idea, or a thought. This allowed ideas (good and bad) to all have equal footing which is necessarily a Good Thing. (You have to have access to bad ideas to be able to see them for such.)
While 50% of web content may be owned by a few big corporations, there's still very little barring the average Joe throwing a race relations thesis online for others to comment on. While it may not get tonnes of traffic there has been no barrier to the free flow of information. So long as these barriers remain low, internet will remain Free. (You may not *like* the corporate sites, but they have as much right to existence as Joe's thesis.)
Things that could put this freedom at risk include rising web hosting costs that could potentially limit sites to only wealthy commercial ventures. ISP's that pull content at the slightest complaint are another risk. Content filters, especially politically-motivated ones are another risk (ie - Country-specific content banning). Even the spiralling complexity of markup languages and browsers could make it cost prohibitive to publish content. Not to mention proprietary extensions!
I don't think any of these possibilities have really hit us yet and the web is still quite free. After all, think of how easy it was for me to fill this space with my opinion! However these are the things that we need to watch most closely. As long as there remains simple means to share information (the new, ripped Britney Spears CD probably doesn't count!) on the web I think we remain free.
The internet was a small, subversive group when it started and hence its reputation as being a completely free society. Now that there are a billion AOL subscribers surfing the web there seems to be a great lament that internet has "gone mainstream." Not surprisingly these protests tend to come from the billion AOL users looking for granny pr0n.
I think the subversives remain and the shutdown of a "wanna-be" site like Napster doesn't particularly change a thing. When rebellion becomes mainstream the rebels simply dig themselves deeper.
There is all sort of old-school internet content out there if you're willing to dip your toes in the churning waters outside Yahoo...
It's too bad to see Bluetooth struggling to get out of the gates as I think the concept is right on the money. Imagine the ability to have your palm synchronize simply by entering the same room as your PC. Or your notebook to hop onto the LAN automatically when you enter your office. Or seamlessly having all the devices in your home networked without cables? A Bluetooth-enabled thermostat or burglar alarm could be configured easily from your PC without any wires. You could set your VCR to record "Seinfeld" from your desktop or (even better) from work using a browser. All without a single wire! I think there's a huge market for this type of technology, I hope Bluetooth can be rescued!
You are missing the entire moral ground here. Pirating DVDs is *illegal* and no one should do it. Anyone who really understands this issue would agree. But DeCSS is simply decryption code that has a multitude of perfectly legal uses.
Unfortunately the media giants have pressured the goverment to make decryption itself illegal if the work is copyrighted. Panty-hose can be used to cover your face during a bank heist BUT YOU CAN STILL BUY THEM! Rather than prosecuting people for encryption algorithms they should be prosecuting the people using [ DeCSS | Napster | CD-R Drives | insert evil technology here ] to illegally trade in copyrighted works.
That is called being impartial. Endorsing the misinformation that the media giants are spewing about the "evils" of DeCSS is not.
A 200 byte message reduced to 2 bytes? I don't know ASN.1 but I would have to assume tags are counted, and added to an indexed table. Using variable-length encoding you can squeeze some extra compression out of your algorithm but 100:1 compression? So basically you have a 180-byte XML tag with a single value reduced to a single symbol with an index of 1. Meaning that the "benchmark" is a sham. Add to that the fact that the symbol table obviously wasn't counted in their "compression" technique. I would assume you don't LZ-compress the symbol table (creating a symbol table for a symbol table) so basically what you have is after compression the code goes from 200 bytes to 200 bytes + 2 bytes and a few bits. What a joke. The worst part of all is that I'm sure it achieves fairly good compression on a 100k XHTML document but they have to throw bogus numbers at us thinking we'll go all doe-eyed. Very insulting.
If you ask me, this highlights some of the biggest problems being faced by manufacturers and designers of portable devices today. Let me state a couple sweeping generalizations:
1. Specialized devices are better than generalized ones.
2. People are unwiling to carry more than 1 or 2 devices at once.
Most people disagree with me on #1 so I'll need to explain a bit more. The telephone is a specialized device and has barely changed in 100 years. Why? Because the interface just works. The keyboard and "output" (screen, paper) interface is another specialized interface that has lasted over 100 years. Again, simple and fit for purpose. The palmtop has existed for a much shorter time but is great for reading (not inputing) data. All are specialized, and all work great.
What happens when you combine these things, however? Combine a phone with a PDA and you get a Qualcomm PDQ. It's too big to be a phone and when you talk you get face gunk on the PDA screen. It didn't sell... Combine a keyboard with a PDA and you get.. uhm.. a PDA with a keyboard. The point being, they never sold either. Combine a PC with portable capability and you get a notebook. They work great traveling from your work office to your home office but if you've ever used one on a plane you know they aren't great on the road. Personal devices need to be ergonomic and this necessitates specialisation.
Point #2 is where the wireless world starts to hiccup. If people insist on a phone that looks like a phone and a PDA with a screen large enough to read and a PC with a full-size keyboard yet refuse to carry multiple devices, how will this wireless world catch on?
Well, maybe people need to be more sensible about what they combine... A cel phone could combine with a headset and MP3 players to play music and accept calls and SMS messages. Maybe throw in a smart card for banking and debit payments. A Palmtop could combine with a docking station and provide storage for data while on the road and the power of a PC when plugged in. Any other ideas?
I hope someone who understands robotics better than me can explain -- what is so special about this device? I saw the chess and poker chip demos and I was impressed, but the same could be accomplished using a robotic arm, probably in less time. Can someone in the know explain the import of this technology? I'm sure it exists but I haven't read enough on the topic to see it plainly...
---
Bing! Give the man a gold star! I still think this market is driven by cost, not features. Palm obliterated the competition by creating something simple and cheap. When Palm started to dilute their product line with wireless, colour screens, titanium cases etc. they started to lose ground. Handspring (created by the Palm founders) has taken up the "cheap, small, simple" torch and is doing as well as can be expected in these tight times. The market has spoken, make PDAs simple and cheap!
---
Again, the mainstream press is trying to inflate PDAs into something they're not. Let me say this very clearly so it's not missed:
PDAs will never replace a desktop PC.
Here are some reasons this will never happen:
- PDAs have tiny screens and no keyboards -- the interface is too cumbersome.
- You can't talk to your voice-enabled PDA during a meeting or on a busy bus so don't expect the interface to ever improve.
- PDAs appeal to techno-geeks and power-hungry professionals, but they don't appeal to the average Joe who still prefers pen and paper.
- PDAs aren't powerful enough to do what a PC does.
- PDAs aren't expandable.
- Portable computers break down more and are more expensive to fix when it happens.
- Most home users who want a low-cost entrypoint to the web will opt for the much-more-powerful console gaming system.
- Dropping PC prices will continue to put pressure on the bottom end of the market, making the PC an attractive purchase.
I could go on with dozens more points and I'm sure I'll be attacked by all the technology messiah's out there, but the fact is that they don't nor will they ever be able to give an ideal mix of low cost, low footprint, and high power. Because of this they will remain as fancy personal organizers for the forseeable future.
---
Seeking: Funding for orbital assault vehicle
In-field Testing: Over 2 decades
Description: The "DFA" Orbital Assault Vehicle is a multi-purpose space-based weapon. It features vertical take-off, a heavy-duty tank-like assault vehicle (depicted at left), a retractable missile-crushing remote controlled arm, an army of robot droids, and the ability to lock onto and board large military craft. If you are a member of the Pentagon or an aspiring third-world nation, don't hesitate to contact us to find out about our wide array of military applications!
---
... because I saw the movie and all the characters definitely had facial blemishes. That's one of the things that impressed me about the graphics, not even the heroine had a flawless complexion.
---
Microsoft was slapped on the wrist because they both made the desktop, and dictated what content could sit on it. ie - leveraging monopoly control on one product to bolster sales in another sector. This is not what AOL-T/W is doing.
Disclaimer: This does not mean I don't consider AOL Time-Warner to a monopoly. I just don't think this is an example of it.
---
ROFL. It's like a distilled version of natural selection.
"Scientists have found that children who scratch their ass for 1 hour every day instead of watching television are smarter that children who don't."
---
A couple quotes from the article that disprove this hypothesis:
"Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."
"Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain"
What her research proves is that gamers who are talented enough to play at "national competitions" have better hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and quicker responses. Duh, I already knew that. She should study me -- I play games constantly. And I lose. Badly.
Rather than studying people who excel at gaming she should have studied people before and after they took up gaming. The unorthodox and obviously biased means in which this study was carried out suggests the author was only fishing for a catchy headline.
---
True, the fiber backbone isn't the bottleneck -- but the routers and switches *are*. Points where you need to convert from optical to electrical and often back to optical again. That's why optical switching companies were the darling of the tech sector until the bust -- while there's more than enough fiber to last us for years to come, the switching technology is still woefully inadequate.
---
Sorry, but you can stop holding your breath. Fiber is an excellent backbone technology but it's too cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to deploy to ever become a "last mile" solution.
People clued in long ago that fiber to the workstation on corporate LANs was far more expensive than copper and offered no speed increases. Fiber to the home is the same -- it's cheaper to just install better quality phone cable or find better transmission methods for existing cabling. Why spend all that money on fiber?
---
"A new version of Mozilla has been posted on their site, but I only use Konqueror."
"Here's a site with some great info on Galeon, which doesn't happen to be Konqueror, the world's greatest web browser."
"John Carmack has been interviewed on Blue's News. John's neighbour owns an Apple iMac. Apple is run by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs once used Netscape which isn't Konqueror!"
Please, please cut it out Hemos. We don't care how horny Konqueror makes you, it doesn't have to be mentioned in every single post.
---