The reason is that the computers at each end are able to compress the data WAY down, and they can EASILY get 6:1 compression ratios; or even more- and generally only one end would be talking at any one time as well, that cuts it by another factor of 2 on average. Normal long distance costs use far more bandwidth; and the quality isn't necessarily better.
The downside of VOIP is loss of quality. QOS is not guaranteed by the IP protocol right now, but IPv6 may be able to support this.
The other point you've missed is that the customer really have already paid for the bandwidth! When I buy, say a 500/250K ADSL line, in a lot of cases the ISP actually only guarantees 50:1 contention ratio, so I'm actually buying only 10/5k of backbone bandwidth worst case, which is far, far less than I'd get if I make a long distance call.
Incidentally, in a pretty real sense 'long distance charges' are already factored into the costs of buying an ISP line, the ISP knows what proportion of connections are long distance on average, so they've already charged you for this.
Finally, it costs the ISP less to charge you a flat rate for IP traffic. Recording the individual call items actually means they have to print stuff, pay for software and hardware to record stuff, people to chase the people who can't afford this months bill etc. etc. Flat rate is cheaper all around.
Intel and Microsoft have fallen out a while ago, Intel uses a whole bunch of Linux boxes internally for development purposes for example. Not going to go down well with Microsoft.
And Microsoft is fighting for its life (or atleast that's how Microsoft sees it) so you can bet that Microsoft has offered some bargaining chip or other to AMD under the table (or above the table) to testify in this way; and in view of the animosity between Microsoft and Intel, they're going to be inclined to take it.
Whether this bargaining chip will be worth anything at the end of the day is probably debatable; history says anything that Microsoft gives you is usually worthless, or atleast costless to Microsoft. And going into bed with Microsoft; what kind of idiot would voluntarily do this?
Oh, so you're claiming that enough energy to push a car up to to say 100 mph isn't enough energy to kill you if released in an accident? I'd like to see your calculation on that one; I collect crooked proofs.
Cake? Who said anything about cake? Please try to stay on topic.;-)
a) its energy density is pitiful (about 1/14 IRC of gasoline, so you'd have to have a tank 14x bigger)
b) its best stored in liquified form for maximum energy density (liquid hydrogen needs incredibly high insulation values, and tends to freeze things solid, or condenses oxygen- trust me, either is very bad, and its density still sucks- check out the Space Shuttle main tank, its enormous!)
c) alternatively you store it in a pressurised tank. Pressurised tanks are heavy as heck. Or you can use a rare earth catalyst to store it in. However, the overall weight is about the same if you do so, TOO HIGH. So big deal.
d) Hydrogen can go bang (in an enclosed space the explosion can be awesome). Sure, gasoline does that too. However hydogen leaks out much more easily.
e) Hydrogen embrittles many kinds of metals, once that has occured the metal fails catastrophically.
f) Hydrogen escapes from just about any container; the molecule is just too small to keep in in most cases; still you can control it in most cases, but it's awkward.
All in all, hydrogen is at best a waste of space and at worst a waste of time. Yeah, so it doesn't make any CO2. So what? We've got this handy recycling system called plants. Please go out and grow some, so I can carry on burning my hydrocarbons;-)
I had this same theory for a while, inspite of what I learnt in my physics degree course. Microwave frequencies ARE absorbed by water due to resonances in the molecules. Even ants and other tiny critters get fried in a microwave if you can keep them from dodging the hotspots; and they are much smaller than the wavelength. I've tried it with small drops of water too- they evaporate away really quickly and get hot. It's not a resistive thing at all (although that can happen as well.)
Basically what happens is the molecules get spun around by the microwaves and this causes the molecules to a) bump into each other and trigger heat b) generate out of phase signals that tend to cancel the microwaves out.
The metal in a microwave bit is a red herring. I've done it plenty of times with no light show at all. You only get sparking if the voltages generated cause arcing; otherwise they don't usually get hot because they reflect the waves away. The microwave itself is made of metal anyway.
p.s. I have a degree in physics, and we studied this during my degree. Also, I've seen the graphs of absorption curves by water for microwaves in that whole frequency band. Still, 1/r^2 in freespace is correct.
> Are we even to the point when a normal PC could handle Gigabyte?
Yes. Some memory parts are 333 Mhz and are 4 bytes parallel and instructions/s (as opposed to the clock rate) is over 1 GIP I think. So a PC can just about knock out a gigabyte/s if it has to, but it hasn't got much time to think about anything.
But this article is talking about gigaBITs/s. That's 8x slower. So that too.
>It's doable that way, but I think most emergency services would prefer a dedicated frequency.
Who wouldn't?;-)
>What's causing the exponential decay in GHz frequencies? It should be 1/r^2 with distance unless >something's absorbing it
The Ghz frequency bands are near enough the same frequencies as microwave ovens; so any wet stuff around is going to absorb it. People, trees, plumbing. And nearly everything has some water in it. Lots of things are lossy and resistive, so they will attenuate also.
> If you put a tower up on a mountain, and broadcast at GHz frequencies, you should get 1/r^2 > with distance.
Yes, definitely. That will create a noise floor. In scenarios like that, I think its much better to use directional antenna.
>The thing I don't like about spread spectrum is that it sucks up a large portion of the spectrum, >rather than individual frequencies.
Of course that isn't true in general. IEEE802.11b only sends on multiple channels in an 85 mhz band around 2.4 Ghz, and should not interfere [bluetooth notwithstanding] anymore than any other spectrum user.
Very wide band and spread sprectrum aren't quite the same thing.
> But then, in my opinion, the US is getting way too "radio loud" in areas where we don't need to > be, just like light pollution is getting way out of hand. People who put up anything that radiates > really should be taking care to ensure that it only goes where it needs to go, and nowhere else.
Yes, at the very least, good power control is required, the hardware should use the minimum power level possible. It helps the user too; battery life is enhanced.
> the only way to make certain things a priority is to use a different frequency.
For packets there are prioritisation in all packet protocols, or its trivial to add. Enforcement is a bit trickier; but to some extent we rely on manufacturers building sensible equipment that doesn't break protocols.
> The problem with spread spectrum is that if you're allowed to broadcast it (the cell tower thing I was talking about) then you futz EVERYONE's frequencies, and it really sucks.
Yeah, but if everyone else is using spreadspectrum in the same bands you are there's no problem. So certain bands should be allocated for spread spectrum is all you're really saying.
> Be careful - the raising of the noise floor idea is real, and it will suck.
The concept of noise floor really applies in free space, or at the lower frequencies. But distance at Ghz frequencies is more like exponential decay- beyond a certain distance you don't get any significant power without line of sight, and there are things you can do about that too.
> The worry is for commercial services, and people broadcasting (that is, intention omnidirectional broadcasting) - that will raise the noise floor.
Sure, that's a worry. But it's mainly a worry if you transmit on non-released bands. Besides the rules about omnidirectional broadcasting deliberately limit the power to help ensure minimal range.
It's not a noise floor if I can route through them or they route through me; it's called CONNECTIVITY. Don't forget that radiowaves get absorbed in most cases; we don't live in freespace on the earth's surface; so the concept of 'noise floor' is flawed; atleast, at the higher frequencies.
I'm a big fan of the idea of ad-hoc wireless networks. I think it will give us almost 100% coverage for IP services of all kinds. Wireless is a solution to the last mile issue of how you reach the internet backbones; and firewalls are a solution for how you charge for bandwidth and avoid 'leaching'.
If a particular service requires priority in certain situations (e.g. military, rescue services etc.), then their packets should be given priority on the network, and handled as such. I think we are gradually evolving towards this model, but there's a lot of equipment out there...
Re:Exactly! It sure rocks in aerospace though!
on
The Sexiest Metal
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· Score: 2
OK. It must go upto a few hundred degrees there. If they'd have used aluminum at that place the plane would have snapped in half or something because the aluminum would have lost most of its strength due to the temperature.
There's not much point in having it anywhere else- aluminum is much easier and cheaper to work and obtain, and exactly as strong, provided you can keep it cool.
Re:Exactly! It sure rocks in aerospace though!
on
The Sexiest Metal
·
· Score: 2
Titanium has almost exactly the same strength to weight ratio of aluminum in fact.
It's main advantages are impact resistance, and heat tolerance. You get aluminum to 400C and it loses its temper; do the same with titanium and its just getting into its stride. Was the titanium near any hot jet engine bits by any chance?
Its downsides are workability and cost. Titanium dust is extremely dangerous- it seriously, seriously burns.
> 1. The low delta T (temperature difference) for the water going through the system is a sure indication of low efficiency.
It can indicate that, but it's not a sure indication; in fact it can be a good thing!
The temperature difference of the water is inversely proportional to flow rate- big flow rate gives low delta-t. So it depends on how powerful his pump is. A more powerful pump will mean that the chip stays cooler, provided that the inlet temperature doesn't rise.
Clamps; check
A reservoir may well be all that is required, provided the temperature stays well within spec.
Indium? I think I start to see a pattern to your comments.;-)
And just because she deleted it; doesn't necessarily mean it is gone. Deleting files on a harddrive doesn't necessarily imply that the space had been reallocated; all it means is that the blocks have been unlinked.
On the other hand, doing ANYTHING to her computer in the meantime (even booting it) will create temporary files which can overlap the deleted data and reduce the chances of recovering anything.
Then the ISPs should 'traffic shape' their customers.
i.e. throttle back the available bandwidth over time to what the ISP actually guarantees (this is typically between 1/20 and 1/50 of the maximum bandwidth; that's typically the agreed contention ratio in the contract.)
That way, you can download at peak for half an hour or an hour, but after that they throttle you right back down; and overtime you will be getting just the service you pay for.
If the customer wants to use more than that, then they can up their contention ratio (i.e. pay business rates) and they'll get better bandwidth and the ISP can invest some of the money into the backbone to improve their connectivity.
It's just common sense.
The same idea stops wireless leaching, or atleast means that it doesn't harm any other users.
Also, it's not necessarily cereals that would cause this effect, high glucose sources, rice or candy bars or even lack of exercise for example, probably can induce this effect.
The other main theory is that myopia is related to close work, e.g. reading
There's a correlation between having lights on in a bedroom and developing myopia. My take on that is it allows reading in bed, and when reading in bed, the book is held closer.
The theory behind it is that doing lots of close work triggers growth hormones in the eye that optimise the eye for close work.
Possibly both theories are true; or one is more important.
In the past I've checked the Glycemic Index (GI is a measure of how quickly glucose is absorbed from food as regards insulin requirements) for brown bread. Contrary to popular belief, brown bread has almost exactly the same Glycemic Index; ok, its very slightly better, say 98 compared to 100, but this is far too small to make much difference.
Therefore brown bread would be unlikely to improve your sight.
On the other hand brown bread is more nutritious in other regards, so it's still better for you.
Yes, I had the same idea. The problem is scalability. What happens when you get 100 megabytes of mail, and you have to search the whole lot.
I was thinking it would be a good idea to search the emails, google style, by building indexes when you receive each email item. It would double the size of the mailbox; but who cares, disk is cheap. Besides, having quickly searchable mail allows you to delete stuff more easily.
> Their motive 'might' have been "to make more money" followed by "ensuring no-one encroaches on > their turf" - neither of which means their competitors must have had good products.
Yeah. Could have been. Wasn't. Have you actually read the findings of the court? Guess not.
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No; you've missed the point.
VOIP really is cheaper for everyone.
The reason is that the computers at each end are able to compress the data WAY down, and they can EASILY get 6:1 compression ratios; or even more- and generally only one end would be talking at any one time as well, that cuts it by another factor of 2 on average. Normal long distance costs use far more bandwidth; and the quality isn't necessarily better.
The downside of VOIP is loss of quality. QOS is not guaranteed by the IP protocol right now, but IPv6 may be able to support this.
The other point you've missed is that the customer really have already paid for the bandwidth! When I buy, say a 500/250K ADSL line, in a lot of cases the ISP actually only guarantees 50:1 contention ratio, so I'm actually buying only 10/5k of backbone bandwidth worst case, which is far, far less than I'd get if I make a long distance call.
Incidentally, in a pretty real sense 'long distance charges' are already factored into the costs of buying an ISP line, the ISP knows what proportion of connections are long distance on average, so they've already charged you for this.
Finally, it costs the ISP less to charge you a flat rate for IP traffic. Recording the individual call items actually means they have to print stuff, pay for software and hardware to record stuff, people to chase the people who can't afford this months bill etc. etc. Flat rate is cheaper all around.
Ok it's obvious what's happening here.
AMD and Intel are competitors.
Intel and Microsoft have fallen out a while ago, Intel uses a whole bunch of Linux boxes internally for development purposes for example. Not going to go down well with Microsoft.
And Microsoft is fighting for its life (or atleast that's how Microsoft sees it) so you can bet that Microsoft has offered some bargaining chip or other to AMD under the table (or above the table) to testify in this way; and in view of the animosity between Microsoft and Intel, they're going to be inclined to take it.
Whether this bargaining chip will be worth anything at the end of the day is probably debatable; history says anything that Microsoft gives you is usually worthless, or atleast costless to Microsoft. And going into bed with Microsoft; what kind of idiot would voluntarily do this?
Oh, so you're claiming that enough energy to push a car up to to say 100 mph isn't enough energy to kill you if released in an accident? I'd like to see your calculation on that one; I collect crooked proofs.
;-)
Cake? Who said anything about cake? Please try to stay on topic.
There's lots of problems with hydrogen:
;-)
a) its energy density is pitiful (about 1/14 IRC of gasoline, so you'd have to have a tank 14x bigger)
b) its best stored in liquified form for maximum energy density (liquid hydrogen needs incredibly high insulation values, and tends to freeze things solid, or condenses oxygen- trust me, either is very bad, and its density still sucks- check out the Space Shuttle main tank, its enormous!)
c) alternatively you store it in a pressurised tank. Pressurised tanks are heavy as heck. Or you can use a rare earth catalyst to store it in. However, the overall weight is about the same if you do so, TOO HIGH. So big deal.
d) Hydrogen can go bang (in an enclosed space the explosion can be awesome). Sure, gasoline does that too. However hydogen leaks out much more easily.
e) Hydrogen embrittles many kinds of metals, once that has occured the metal fails catastrophically.
f) Hydrogen escapes from just about any container; the molecule is just too small to keep in in most cases; still you can control it in most cases, but it's awkward.
All in all, hydrogen is at best a waste of space and at worst a waste of time. Yeah, so it doesn't make any CO2. So what? We've got this handy recycling system called plants. Please go out and grow some, so I can carry on burning my hydrocarbons
I had this same theory for a while, inspite of what I learnt in my physics degree course. Microwave frequencies ARE absorbed by water due to resonances in the molecules. Even ants and other tiny critters get fried in a microwave if you can keep them from dodging the hotspots; and they are much smaller than the wavelength. I've tried it with small drops of water too- they evaporate away really quickly and get hot. It's not a resistive thing at all (although that can happen as well.)
Basically what happens is the molecules get spun around by the microwaves and this causes the molecules to a) bump into each other and trigger heat b) generate out of phase signals that tend to cancel the microwaves out.
The metal in a microwave bit is a red herring. I've done it plenty of times with no light show at all. You only get sparking if the voltages generated cause arcing; otherwise they don't usually get hot because they reflect the waves away. The microwave itself is made of metal anyway.
p.s. I have a degree in physics, and we studied this during my degree. Also, I've seen the graphs of absorption curves by water for microwaves in that whole frequency band. Still, 1/r^2 in freespace is correct.
> Are we even to the point when a normal PC could handle Gigabyte?
Yes. Some memory parts are 333 Mhz and are 4 bytes parallel and instructions/s (as opposed to the clock rate) is over 1 GIP I think. So a PC can just about knock out a gigabyte/s if it has to, but it hasn't got much time to think about anything.
But this article is talking about gigaBITs/s. That's 8x slower. So that too.
Mutually Exclusive? Nope, just limited range. Fiber can go 1000km or more.
Still, sometimes you only want to go a few feet between two servers or something and there you can't really argue with the price.
>It's doable that way, but I think most emergency services would prefer a dedicated frequency.
;-)
Who wouldn't?
>What's causing the exponential decay in GHz frequencies? It should be 1/r^2 with distance unless
>something's absorbing it
The Ghz frequency bands are near enough the same frequencies as microwave ovens; so any wet stuff around is going to absorb it. People, trees, plumbing. And nearly everything has some water in it. Lots of things are lossy and resistive, so they will attenuate also.
> If you put a tower up on a mountain, and broadcast at GHz frequencies, you should get 1/r^2
> with distance.
Yes, definitely. That will create a noise floor. In scenarios like that, I think its much better to use directional antenna.
>The thing I don't like about spread spectrum is that it sucks up a large portion of the spectrum,
>rather than individual frequencies.
Of course that isn't true in general. IEEE802.11b only sends on multiple channels in an 85 mhz band around 2.4 Ghz, and should not interfere [bluetooth notwithstanding] anymore than any other spectrum user.
Very wide band and spread sprectrum aren't quite the same thing.
> But then, in my opinion, the US is getting way too "radio loud" in areas where we don't need to
> be, just like light pollution is getting way out of hand. People who put up anything that radiates
> really should be taking care to ensure that it only goes where it needs to go, and nowhere else.
Yes, at the very least, good power control is required, the hardware should use the minimum power level possible. It helps the user too; battery life is enhanced.
> Personally I think the solution is tightly collimated beams and making sure that you're not leaking radiation everywhere.
Not a bad idea at all; also making your receiver directional is very a good idea.
>You can't give wireless things priority, unfortunately.
Really? Why not- think packet wireless, think prioritised packets.
> the only way to make certain things a priority is to use a different frequency.
For packets there are prioritisation in all packet protocols, or its trivial to add. Enforcement is a bit trickier; but to some extent we rely on manufacturers building sensible equipment that doesn't break protocols.
> The problem with spread spectrum is that if you're allowed to broadcast it (the cell tower thing I was talking about) then you futz EVERYONE's frequencies, and it really sucks.
Yeah, but if everyone else is using spreadspectrum in the same bands you are there's no problem. So certain bands should be allocated for spread spectrum is all you're really saying.
> Be careful - the raising of the noise floor idea is real, and it will suck.
The concept of noise floor really applies in free space, or at the lower frequencies. But distance at Ghz frequencies is more like exponential decay- beyond a certain distance you don't get any significant power without line of sight, and there are things you can do about that too.
> The worry is for commercial services, and people broadcasting (that is, intention omnidirectional broadcasting) - that will raise the noise floor.
Sure, that's a worry. But it's mainly a worry if you transmit on non-released bands. Besides the rules about omnidirectional broadcasting deliberately limit the power to help ensure minimal range.
It's not a noise floor if I can route through them or they route through me; it's called CONNECTIVITY. Don't forget that radiowaves get absorbed in most cases; we don't live in freespace on the earth's surface; so the concept of 'noise floor' is flawed; atleast, at the higher frequencies.
I'm a big fan of the idea of ad-hoc wireless networks. I think it will give us almost 100% coverage for IP services of all kinds. Wireless is a solution to the last mile issue of how you reach the internet backbones; and firewalls are a solution for how you charge for bandwidth and avoid 'leaching'.
If a particular service requires priority in certain situations (e.g. military, rescue services etc.), then their packets should be given priority on the network, and handled as such.
I think we are gradually evolving towards this model, but there's a lot of equipment out there...
OK. It must go upto a few hundred degrees there. If they'd have used aluminum at that place the plane would have snapped in half or something because the aluminum would have lost most of its strength due to the temperature.
There's not much point in having it anywhere else- aluminum is much easier and cheaper to work and obtain, and exactly as strong, provided you can keep it cool.
Titanium has almost exactly the same strength to weight ratio of aluminum in fact.
It's main advantages are impact resistance, and heat tolerance. You get aluminum to 400C and it loses its temper; do the same with titanium and its just getting into its stride. Was the titanium near any hot jet engine bits by any chance?
Its downsides are workability and cost. Titanium dust is extremely dangerous- it seriously, seriously burns.
It might be explained by exercise levels in the different countries.
If you have a lot of exercise then the muscles burn up a lot of glucose.
They then are a lot more sensitive to insulin, and the level of insulin won't go as high, and the eyes will be less effected.
> 1. The low delta T (temperature difference) for the water going through the system is a sure indication of low efficiency.
;-)
It can indicate that, but it's not a sure indication; in fact it can be a good thing!
The temperature difference of the water is inversely proportional to flow rate- big flow rate gives low delta-t. So it depends on how powerful his pump is. A more powerful pump will mean that the chip stays cooler, provided that the inlet temperature doesn't rise.
Clamps; check
A reservoir may well be all that is required, provided the temperature stays well within spec.
Indium? I think I start to see a pattern to your comments.
Oh well, that explains everything then.
> Now, why someone would want to remove IE and Windows Media Player is beyond me.
;-)
Makes you wonder what security hole they've found that they don't want to/know how to fix and don't want to tell us about
And just because she deleted it; doesn't necessarily mean it is gone. Deleting files on a harddrive doesn't necessarily imply that the space had been reallocated; all it means is that the blocks have been unlinked.
On the other hand, doing ANYTHING to her computer in the meantime (even booting it) will create temporary files which can overlap the deleted data and reduce the chances of recovering anything.
Then the ISPs should 'traffic shape' their customers.
i.e. throttle back the available bandwidth over time to what the ISP actually guarantees (this is typically between 1/20 and 1/50 of the maximum bandwidth; that's typically the agreed contention ratio in the contract.)
That way, you can download at peak for half an hour or an hour, but after that they throttle you right back down; and overtime you will be getting just the service you pay for.
If the customer wants to use more than that, then they can up their contention ratio (i.e. pay business rates) and they'll get better bandwidth and the ISP can invest some of the money into the backbone to improve their connectivity.
It's just common sense.
The same idea stops wireless leaching, or atleast means that it doesn't harm any other users.
Also, it's not necessarily cereals that would cause this effect, high glucose sources, rice or candy bars or even lack of exercise for example, probably can induce this effect.
The other main theory is that myopia is related to close work, e.g. reading
There's a correlation between having lights on in a bedroom and developing myopia. My take on that is it allows reading in bed, and when reading in bed, the book is held closer.
The theory behind it is that doing lots of close work triggers growth hormones in the eye that optimise the eye for close work.
Possibly both theories are true; or one is more important.
And yeah, genetics definitely play a part too.
"There were *many* competing products (Wordstar anyone) in all categories but they were all shite and missed the mark."
You clearly stopped reading too soon.
Possibly, but unlikely. The insulin presumably triggers permanent growth in the length of the eye.
In the past I've checked the Glycemic Index (GI is a measure of how quickly glucose is absorbed from food as regards insulin requirements) for brown bread. Contrary to popular belief, brown bread has almost exactly the same Glycemic Index; ok, its very slightly better, say 98 compared to 100, but this is far too small to make much difference.
Therefore brown bread would be unlikely to improve your sight.
On the other hand brown bread is more nutritious in other regards, so it's still better for you.
Yes, I had the same idea. The problem is scalability. What happens when you get 100 megabytes of mail, and you have to search the whole lot.
I was thinking it would be a good idea to search the emails, google style, by building indexes when you receive each email item. It would double the size of the mailbox; but who cares, disk is cheap. Besides, having quickly searchable mail allows you to delete stuff more easily.
> Their motive 'might' have been "to make more money" followed by "ensuring no-one encroaches on
> their turf" - neither of which means their competitors must have had good products.
Yeah. Could have been. Wasn't. Have you actually read the findings of the court? Guess not.