I keep working at getting them out of the car earlier.
There's a whoooole lot more than lessened reactions... and even more than the fact that their ability to judge distance and speed of oncoming objects diminishes, too. There's an overall lack of awareness in many situations.
Until we have those cars that will drive themselves, then get them out of the cars.
And when we DO get cars that drive themselves, I'll buy one for my parents, and one for myself.
In my company, when we would put out an ad for a Perl programmer, we would be completely inundated with terrific-looking resumes.
Unfortunately, very few of them even came close to showing how poor of a programmer they were. I can sum most of them up with one story: The applicant had a resume showing significant time creating impressive-sounding applications in Perl. I asked him to write a VERY simple program. He sat down, typed a couple of lines, got nervous, started reading perldoc, gave up, and said "Uh... I usually just cut and paste this."
We spent so many hours weeding out applicants with exagerated resumes that we came up with a simple test to take BEFORE you got an interview. Nothing hard, just some stuff that you really should know.
Here's where it gets interesting: Each applicant is given an ID to log in to the test. We log when they start the test (EACH time they start it), and when the finish. We see a good number who log in one day, don't finish, then log in three days later and finish it in three minutes. We know that they printed it and took three days researching. They don't get a call back, if it takes three days to look up these answers, something is WRONG.
On the other hand, we see people who log in, take three hours, and then finish. They obviously used the resources available... like looking things up in books or the Internet. If they came up with good stuff, we give them a call. We like someone who can be resourceful on the spot.
It's always a relief for them when people walk into the interview and say "Listen, I'm really sorry, I kind of cheated on my test... I looked up some answers online" and we tell them "Good. We like that."
And just as often, it's because of developers who use crappy technology on which to base their site, then wonder why their server bogs down with just a few simultaneous users. Or developers who just have no idea of efficient programming. Or both.
Now: Even for the case of Ancestry, with.3MB of scripts, ModGZIP can make that transfer quite quickly. Execution by your browser may be another matter.
More properly... ISPs only charge you about 5% of what you're able to get.
If you don't believe me, call around your town and ask what it would cost for 6 megabits of guaranteed, SLA-d bandwidth. Then compare to what a cable modem or DSL costs.
Then they just have to make sure that they work the cash register one night per week....
Our registers had a way to add things up without actually finalizing a transaction. You do that, and tell them the total. If they hand you cash, you cancel and hit the "cash" button (as if you were going to give them change), stick their money in the register, and give them change.
Later, when nobody is looking, you take that much out of the register. No transaction entered, no cash appears to be missing.
If you're not the owner, there are ways to look for that, like missing tickets from order books, etc., but if you're the owner... you just do it, and nobody knows better.
Sure, they may not *want* to work the register that night, but hey...
You FTP your backups? Wow. Try rsync, or any of the utilities built around it. Once you're only transfering what has *changed*, you'll find that backups happen much faster.
Plus, with the ability to checksum files for comparison, you'll find it much more reliable than FTP.
Except that 100KB/s is nearly a full megabit. Ask your ISP what a full, dedicated, guaranteed 1 megabit line with full, unlimitted, uncapped usage would cost.
Unless your VOIP is sending raw, uncompressed 16-bit, 44KHz PCM data, you could not possibly generate that much even if she talked 24 hours per day, every single day.
Because so far, while some solid-state drives have very low latency, they have not yet been able to match the combination of bandwidth, capacity, and cost of a moving platter.
Making faces more attractive is easy. All you have to do to get a reasonable increase is to make them more symmetrical.
If you want yet another increase, there is a set of ratios for distances between features that uncannily applies to pretty much everyone who is widely considered attractive. Shift everything closer to those ratios, and you'll get a big improvement.
Want more? Fix skin blemishes.
Between the three of those, you can make incredible strides. I would highly encourage any interested to watch "The Human Face".
Netflix charges by the month, not by the disc. Unless they're going to offer a refund, they won't lose any revenue, excepting disgruntled customers who leave.
In fact... since they aren't paying postage, they could actually be saving money, particularly if they told their employees "Too bad, don't clock in for the next few days."
The fiber is only part of the issue. Even though Utopia can bring you fiber, you still have to pay some ISP to sling bits around. Price out how much 15 megabits of guaranteed, SLA-d bandwidth costs, and you'll see how much you have to oversubscribe to break even.
Of course, the costs drop if you're the big company that already has fiber all over the places, and peers instead of paying for transit. The smaller guys, who will have to actually BUY transit, are at a large disadvantage, and hence, the barrier to entry. I don't see a reasonable way to get around that, unfortunately.
On Utopia providers, I do see 15 megabits for $40 per month, or 50 megabits for $60 per month... but with limits on transfer. That means that it's fast and bursty for the average user, but anyone who wants to transfer large amounts is going to pay a LOT. And let's face it, you don't need 50 megabits if you aren't going to transfer a lot of data. In fact, the 100 GB limit from one provider comes out to just 4.5 *hours* of transfer at 50 megabits/second.
I've worked at a small-to-medium local ISP, and seen the pricing on things. I know folks who run other small-to-medium local ISPs, and regularly work with medium-to-large ISPs. By the time you buy your bandwidth and pay for someone to support the thing (tech support with end-users is a nightmare), it's tough to make a very big profit. It's not until the economies of scale kick in that things get a lot better.
But do people in Wisconsin pay as much tax as people in Finland? And are our broadband companies as socialized as those in Finland? Does our government subsidize it as much?
Exactly. The population density of Japan makes it very easy, whereas in many areas in the "Great unknown" of the USA (that big part between California and New York that everyone forgets about), bringing broadband to 1/10th as many residences as in Japan would involve 10 to 100 times as much fiber to be laid.
And, don't forget that people in the US will whine, moan, complain, and sue if the gubmint here were to DARE subsidize broadband for its constituents. Well, except for the poor, that's OK.
It seems like the only problem with your home computer is FTP. Why not use rsync, which does things much more intelligently - and with checksumming, guarantees correct data?
The first time would be slow, but after that, things would go MUCH faster. Shoot, if you set up SSH keys, you can automate the entire process.
So, you don't put an untested query on a production server. Great. What happens when someone changes data in such a way that your query now explodes?:D
In the last case I had to deal with that, one boneheaded programmer had his code set to send him an email if it couldnt' find a good match in the DB. Someone changed the data, and with the amount of traffic, his code, spread across our web serving farm, had injected almost a million messages into the email queues. Programmers are awesome.
Slashdot Mirror
A 32" widescreen makes people what... 12" tall?
When a new $800 television has shorter people than the 27" clunker that most people have, they don't consider it much of an upgrade.
Most consumers don't care. They just pop in a disc and watch it.
One of the factors is probably that for a BluRay player to give you any benefit, ignore the $400 player... you need a $1500-$4000 television.
Some folks still won't drop four grand on a TV, go figure.
I keep working at getting them out of the car earlier.
There's a whoooole lot more than lessened reactions... and even more than the fact that their ability to judge distance and speed of oncoming objects diminishes, too. There's an overall lack of awareness in many situations.
Until we have those cars that will drive themselves, then get them out of the cars.
And when we DO get cars that drive themselves, I'll buy one for my parents, and one for myself.
In my company, when we would put out an ad for a Perl programmer, we would be completely inundated with terrific-looking resumes.
Unfortunately, very few of them even came close to showing how poor of a programmer they were. I can sum most of them up with one story: The applicant had a resume showing significant time creating impressive-sounding applications in Perl. I asked him to write a VERY simple program. He sat down, typed a couple of lines, got nervous, started reading perldoc, gave up, and said "Uh... I usually just cut and paste this."
We spent so many hours weeding out applicants with exagerated resumes that we came up with a simple test to take BEFORE you got an interview. Nothing hard, just some stuff that you really should know.
Here's where it gets interesting: Each applicant is given an ID to log in to the test. We log when they start the test (EACH time they start it), and when the finish. We see a good number who log in one day, don't finish, then log in three days later and finish it in three minutes. We know that they printed it and took three days researching. They don't get a call back, if it takes three days to look up these answers, something is WRONG.
On the other hand, we see people who log in, take three hours, and then finish. They obviously used the resources available... like looking things up in books or the Internet. If they came up with good stuff, we give them a call. We like someone who can be resourceful on the spot.
It's always a relief for them when people walk into the interview and say "Listen, I'm really sorry, I kind of cheated on my test... I looked up some answers online" and we tell them "Good. We like that."
And just as often, it's because of developers who use crappy technology on which to base their site, then wonder why their server bogs down with just a few simultaneous users. Or developers who just have no idea of efficient programming. Or both.
Now: Even for the case of Ancestry, with .3MB of scripts, ModGZIP can make that transfer quite quickly. Execution by your browser may be another matter.
More properly... ISPs only charge you about 5% of what you're able to get.
If you don't believe me, call around your town and ask what it would cost for 6 megabits of guaranteed, SLA-d bandwidth. Then compare to what a cable modem or DSL costs.
$5 per day? that isn't even worth it. Working the register, you can do $40-$120 per transaction with no problem.
Then they just have to make sure that they work the cash register one night per week....
Our registers had a way to add things up without actually finalizing a transaction. You do that, and tell them the total. If they hand you cash, you cancel and hit the "cash" button (as if you were going to give them change), stick their money in the register, and give them change.
Later, when nobody is looking, you take that much out of the register. No transaction entered, no cash appears to be missing.
If you're not the owner, there are ways to look for that, like missing tickets from order books, etc., but if you're the owner... you just do it, and nobody knows better.
Sure, they may not *want* to work the register that night, but hey...
When I worked in a restaurant, several of the employees had ways to make it look like they had wrung up a transaction, but never actually entered it.
Cash in their pockets, and no record of the event. No need for software at all!
Probably download. Their download speeds are pitiful, you couldn't exceed 250GB upload in a month no matter what you did.
You FTP your backups? Wow. Try rsync, or any of the utilities built around it. Once you're only transfering what has *changed*, you'll find that backups happen much faster.
Plus, with the ability to checksum files for comparison, you'll find it much more reliable than FTP.
They do offer a business connection, but if I recall, it's in the range of 3x to 4x more expensive.
Except that 100KB/s is nearly a full megabit. Ask your ISP what a full, dedicated, guaranteed 1 megabit line with full, unlimitted, uncapped usage would cost.
Unless your VOIP is sending raw, uncompressed 16-bit, 44KHz PCM data, you could not possibly generate that much even if she talked 24 hours per day, every single day.
8.3GB = 8300 MB/day, or 66400 megabits per day. Divide by (24*60*60), about 770 kilobits/second. Or am I too sleep-deprived to do math?
Couldn't run 50 PCs? Wow, that must suck.
Our office has 440V coming in, and we generally run 200+ amps on all three phases. 50 PCs would barely be a blip on the radar.
Because so far, while some solid-state drives have very low latency, they have not yet been able to match the combination of bandwidth, capacity, and cost of a moving platter.
Making faces more attractive is easy. All you have to do to get a reasonable increase is to make them more symmetrical.
If you want yet another increase, there is a set of ratios for distances between features that uncannily applies to pretty much everyone who is widely considered attractive. Shift everything closer to those ratios, and you'll get a big improvement.
Want more? Fix skin blemishes.
Between the three of those, you can make incredible strides. I would highly encourage any interested to watch "The Human Face".
Netflix charges by the month, not by the disc. Unless they're going to offer a refund, they won't lose any revenue, excepting disgruntled customers who leave.
In fact... since they aren't paying postage, they could actually be saving money, particularly if they told their employees "Too bad, don't clock in for the next few days."
The fiber is only part of the issue. Even though Utopia can bring you fiber, you still have to pay some ISP to sling bits around. Price out how much 15 megabits of guaranteed, SLA-d bandwidth costs, and you'll see how much you have to oversubscribe to break even.
Of course, the costs drop if you're the big company that already has fiber all over the places, and peers instead of paying for transit. The smaller guys, who will have to actually BUY transit, are at a large disadvantage, and hence, the barrier to entry. I don't see a reasonable way to get around that, unfortunately.
On Utopia providers, I do see 15 megabits for $40 per month, or 50 megabits for $60 per month... but with limits on transfer. That means that it's fast and bursty for the average user, but anyone who wants to transfer large amounts is going to pay a LOT. And let's face it, you don't need 50 megabits if you aren't going to transfer a lot of data. In fact, the 100 GB limit from one provider comes out to just 4.5 *hours* of transfer at 50 megabits/second.
I've worked at a small-to-medium local ISP, and seen the pricing on things. I know folks who run other small-to-medium local ISPs, and regularly work with medium-to-large ISPs. By the time you buy your bandwidth and pay for someone to support the thing (tech support with end-users is a nightmare), it's tough to make a very big profit. It's not until the economies of scale kick in that things get a lot better.
But do people in Wisconsin pay as much tax as people in Finland? And are our broadband companies as socialized as those in Finland? Does our government subsidize it as much?
There's more than just population density.
Exactly. The population density of Japan makes it very easy, whereas in many areas in the "Great unknown" of the USA (that big part between California and New York that everyone forgets about), bringing broadband to 1/10th as many residences as in Japan would involve 10 to 100 times as much fiber to be laid.
And, don't forget that people in the US will whine, moan, complain, and sue if the gubmint here were to DARE subsidize broadband for its constituents. Well, except for the poor, that's OK.
Novus #2 works wonders. Some of my friends use it quite successfully, this is exactly what it is intended for.
I got some disc-polisher long ago for $10 or so, it still works well. It doesn't get them to 100%, but enough that they do work.
It seems like the only problem with your home computer is FTP. Why not use rsync, which does things much more intelligently - and with checksumming, guarantees correct data?
The first time would be slow, but after that, things would go MUCH faster. Shoot, if you set up SSH keys, you can automate the entire process.
So, you don't put an untested query on a production server. Great. What happens when someone changes data in such a way that your query now explodes? :D
In the last case I had to deal with that, one boneheaded programmer had his code set to send him an email if it couldnt' find a good match in the DB. Someone changed the data, and with the amount of traffic, his code, spread across our web serving farm, had injected almost a million messages into the email queues. Programmers are awesome.