If you have a file with huge blocks of any one symbol, bz2 will take a huge amount of processing time to compress. I have also found times where bz2 can take both more processing time, and produce a larger output file (then gz).
I've also noticed that bz2 isn't really better than gz. Generally, over lots of different data types, I've found that bz2 compresses slightly better, but it takes way, way more time compared to gz. I've found 7zip to be much better overall, but often I just use gz since it's the fastest of the three.
Some radios use the headphone cable as the antenna. I don't know the technical details, but I don't see any fundamental reason not to do it, since the radio frequencies are well away from the hearing range.
However, they do have the problem that you cannot connect the headphone output into an amplifier. The amp will screw up the reception. I've tried:)
Now the material is integrated into a chip and uses simple thermal conduction instead of radiation to achieve the effect. The distances are much smaller and the environment is much more controlled, which means that you do not need to overpower the devices. This results in reduced wear, which means a longer life.
This is what I meant when I said the process is tweaked to be much better. But the difference is just a matter of degree. It's hard to imagine that you can take something that wears out after 1000 cycles, and improve it into something as reliable as dynamic RAM. It sounds like improving the number zero so that it becomes one, while maintaining the essential properties of a zero element.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it sounds highly suspicious. I'm sure the article has left out lots of crucial technical details, so I'm getting the wrong impression.
PCM chips use the same material, chalcogenide, that's used inside to store data in a rewritable optical discs.
But instead of using a laser to change the properties of the material and thus create the zeros and ones that make up data, the chips use electricity that flows through a resistor.
The resistor heats up and does the job of the laser, changing the material's properties to represent a zero or a one.
This sounds exactly like the phase change in CD-RW, albeit done in smaller scale. I'm sure they have tweaked the process to make it better behaved, but there's no fundamental technical difference as far as I can see.
every 10 dB is a factor of ten (the log here is base 10 for reasons I can't understand.
Well, the base of the log _is_ the factor between the 10-dB increments. It's a lot easier than having a scale where the each increment of 10 means 2.7182818284590451.. times more power. E-based logarithms are more natural for scientists, but the dB scale is supposed to be something you can explain to laypeople.
As you can see from the Wikipedia article, this was originally called the 'bel' scale in honour of Alexander Graham Bell, so that 10 times more power means a step of one bel. IMHO this makes more sense; the 10 in '10x power' == '10 more dB' is confusing as the two 10s are only related by convention. Nowadays people only use dB even for large values, which is as silly as using centimeter for the base unit of length.
BTW, funny that you had to explain the dB scale to a sound engineer;)
I know. But I still don't understand what the confusion in sound has to do with written language. I see this kind of misspelling on/. every day and I'm really curious as to where it comes from. It's as if people spoke the words aloud, then forgot about the meaning, and parsed the spoken form back into written text.
You are worse than 7 Hitlers.
I take that as a compliment. Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I don't get it. How is it possible to confuse a numeral with victory when typing text? Are you using some kind of speech recognition, or having images of winning as being number one?-) Besides, what kind of a Slashdotter isn't used to typing at 2am?
Even if the costs are same, it's better for Europeans for the money to stay in local economy, than to be flushed away to Redmond. But I'm probably just forgetting all the jobs that will be created by Vista;)
I'm planning to get a PS3 for a generic computer, provided that Linux won't be too crippled on it. Since Cell is already supported by the vanilla kernel, and Sony will be preinstalling some kind of distro, it's pretty obvious why I want it over the 360.
The Luddites were fighting against the use of machines as tools of oppression. We are doing the same by resisting the tide of DRM and 'Trusted' Computing headed for our golden shores.
Good point. I'd go even further to state that DRM is a kind of backwards technological development. I imagine that the Internet and computing technologies were largely developed with the rather noble idea of a 'universal library' in mind. Now that we're finally getting there, media giants are realizing they don't like the idea, and they want to take us back to an age where you buy tangible pieces of information.
A similar idea of anti-technology technology can be seen in Microsoft's bloatware. (Slashdot groupthink aside, just look at the hardware requirements of Vista vs. Linux with XGL.) The idea of a technological singularity assumes that technology is allowed to progress by itself, so it isn't necessarily the way we're heading.
IMHO, selective breeding is just one way of genetic modification. It does alter the DNA as well, and the difference is a matter of degree. People have practiced it for millennia, and for some weird reason it's only in recent years that we've had anti-GM activity.
I imagine it's possible to get the same results with modern, direct GM, as these guys did with SB. In that case this is equally evil and unnatural as any GM;)
As a Finn, I actually find it better to simply forget the dots if the charset doesn't have them, in the style über -> uber. The correct form is usually apparent from the context, whereas the ae/oe/ue form looks like a diphthong to us and thus confusing. It's particularly annoying when you have a long monophthong like "ää" transliterated into "aeae"
However, there are some examples where the umlaut really makes a difference: näin (I saw) vs. nain (I fucked).
I'm looking at Emacs 21.3.1 in X mode, and I can't figure out what ugly window you're talking about. It looks pretty much exactly the same as a session inside a terminal window except that the scrollbar is graphical instead of ANSI.
I agree. Perhaps the GP is confusing XEmacs with the X11 interface of GNU Emacs?
Linux is a kernel (as opposed to the BSDs which include a set of integrated userland tools - not just package a bunch of independently developed GNU tools)
I don't really buy this, even if I hear it all the time. Linux is not developed in a vacuum, and neither is GNU userland software. For all practical purposes, Linux is the GNU kernel.
Then again, if you want to argue on the merits of integrating kernel with userspace, look how well Microsoft is doing it;)
Actually, the resistance of the tongue would probably limit the current to a safe level, even if the battery were capable of much bigger current than today's batteries.
-- TeknoHog, ruining perfectly good jokes with technical facts since 1978.
Legislators - They are passing dumbass copyright laws. Yes, there should be copyright. No, it shouldn't last 873 years or whatever the hell it is currently.
So, there are dumbass laws and they should be rewritten. I agree.
Illegal filesharers - They are committing copyright infringement. This is illegal, end of story. Regardless of what you feel about copyright or the music business, copyright exists and makes it illegal for you to share these files.
So, copyright is somehow an absolute that can't be rewritten? End of story?
An atheist wouldn't believe in the concept of Buddha either.
I think you need to learn more about Buddhism. It's fundamentally a form of atheism, and Buddha is certainly not a god. The word Buddha means an enlightened being, the kind that a Buddhist strives to become. It also refers to the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama. So, in a sense, Buddha is comparable to Mohammed or Jesus.
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I've also noticed that bz2 isn't really better than gz. Generally, over lots of different data types, I've found that bz2 compresses slightly better, but it takes way, way more time compared to gz. I've found 7zip to be much better overall, but often I just use gz since it's the fastest of the three.
Some radios use the headphone cable as the antenna. I don't know the technical details, but I don't see any fundamental reason not to do it, since the radio frequencies are well away from the hearing range. However, they do have the problem that you cannot connect the headphone output into an amplifier. The amp will screw up the reception. I've tried :)
This is what I meant when I said the process is tweaked to be much better. But the difference is just a matter of degree. It's hard to imagine that you can take something that wears out after 1000 cycles, and improve it into something as reliable as dynamic RAM. It sounds like improving the number zero so that it becomes one, while maintaining the essential properties of a zero element.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it sounds highly suspicious. I'm sure the article has left out lots of crucial technical details, so I'm getting the wrong impression.
This sounds exactly like the phase change in CD-RW, albeit done in smaller scale. I'm sure they have tweaked the process to make it better behaved, but there's no fundamental technical difference as far as I can see.
Well, the base of the log _is_ the factor between the 10-dB increments. It's a lot easier than having a scale where the each increment of 10 means 2.7182818284590451.. times more power. E-based logarithms are more natural for scientists, but the dB scale is supposed to be something you can explain to laypeople.
As you can see from the Wikipedia article, this was originally called the 'bel' scale in honour of Alexander Graham Bell, so that 10 times more power means a step of one bel. IMHO this makes more sense; the 10 in '10x power' == '10 more dB' is confusing as the two 10s are only related by convention. Nowadays people only use dB even for large values, which is as silly as using centimeter for the base unit of length.
BTW, funny that you had to explain the dB scale to a sound engineer ;)
I know. But I still don't understand what the confusion in sound has to do with written language. I see this kind of misspelling on /. every day and I'm really curious as to where it comes from. It's as if people spoke the words aloud, then forgot about the meaning, and parsed the spoken form back into written text.
I take that as a compliment. Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!I don't get it. How is it possible to confuse a numeral with victory when typing text? Are you using some kind of speech recognition, or having images of winning as being number one?-) Besides, what kind of a Slashdotter isn't used to typing at 2am?
Even if the costs are same, it's better for Europeans for the money to stay in local economy, than to be flushed away to Redmond. But I'm probably just forgetting all the jobs that will be created by Vista ;)
I'm planning to get a PS3 for a generic computer, provided that Linux won't be too crippled on it. Since Cell is already supported by the vanilla kernel, and Sony will be preinstalling some kind of distro, it's pretty obvious why I want it over the 360.
Good point. I'd go even further to state that DRM is a kind of backwards technological development. I imagine that the Internet and computing technologies were largely developed with the rather noble idea of a 'universal library' in mind. Now that we're finally getting there, media giants are realizing they don't like the idea, and they want to take us back to an age where you buy tangible pieces of information.
A similar idea of anti-technology technology can be seen in Microsoft's bloatware. (Slashdot groupthink aside, just look at the hardware requirements of Vista vs. Linux with XGL.) The idea of a technological singularity assumes that technology is allowed to progress by itself, so it isn't necessarily the way we're heading.
Haven't you seen Young Einstein? Even the summary mentions this idea of selective breading.
IMHO, selective breeding is just one way of genetic modification. It does alter the DNA as well, and the difference is a matter of degree. People have practiced it for millennia, and for some weird reason it's only in recent years that we've had anti-GM activity.
I imagine it's possible to get the same results with modern, direct GM, as these guys did with SB. In that case this is equally evil and unnatural as any GM ;)
How the heck can you slack using Unbuntu (sic)?
As a Finn, I actually find it better to simply forget the dots if the charset doesn't have them, in the style über -> uber. The correct form is usually apparent from the context, whereas the ae/oe/ue form looks like a diphthong to us and thus confusing. It's particularly annoying when you have a long monophthong like "ää" transliterated into "aeae"
However, there are some examples where the umlaut really makes a difference: näin (I saw) vs. nain (I fucked).
How about you read the question again. Why "HJKL" instead of the more natural (for touch typists) "JKL;"?
Actually, HAL -> IBM corresponds to VMS -> WNT. The latter makes more sense in a way, since WNT came after VMS.
I don't really buy this, even if I hear it all the time. Linux is not developed in a vacuum, and neither is GNU userland software. For all practical purposes, Linux is the GNU kernel.
Then again, if you want to argue on the merits of integrating kernel with userspace, look how well Microsoft is doing it ;)
Actually, the resistance of the tongue would probably limit the current to a safe level, even if the battery were capable of much bigger current than today's batteries.
-- TeknoHog, ruining perfectly good jokes with technical facts since 1978.So, there are dumbass laws and they should be rewritten. I agree.
So, copyright is somehow an absolute that can't be rewritten? End of story?
I think you need to learn more about Buddhism. It's fundamentally a form of atheism, and Buddha is certainly not a god. The word Buddha means an enlightened being, the kind that a Buddhist strives to become. It also refers to the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama. So, in a sense, Buddha is comparable to Mohammed or Jesus.
I thought it was named after the ELF binary format, which might possibly stand for Erisian Liberation Fnord/Front.
And in case you're atheist:
-1. Bud Dham