An iPod copies a track into RAM in its entirety, then plays it with the hard drive powereed down. This video player will have to stream off a disk and render in real time, that has to be a more intensive task.
I don't understand why. Wouldn't it be possible to grab 64 MB worth of the video (depending on the format, that might be about 5 minutes) and then stream from memory?
Even though it'd only be buffering 5 minutes instead of a full album, it'd still greatly reduce usage of the hard drive.
Look what happened with telemarketers! It became an epidemic, people got ticked off, and the FCC created the "Do not call list".
I still get calls coming through every once in a while. Others like to waste the telemarketers' time, chatting them up then saying "hang on a minute, let me get my credit card" and then just putting the phone down and going off and doing something else, checking back in a half hour to see if they've hung up yet.
Seinfeld's response was great as well: "Okay, give me your home number and I'll call you back later so we can discuss this." (pause) "Well now you know how I feel!" (click)
Me, I just say, "No, I'm not interested. Please take me off your calling list." Then I hang up. I don't need to get upset; they follow a script, and so do I. With SPAM it's not that easy because responding gives them the information that the email address is valid, and then it gets plastered all over the lists.
Whitelists seem to work quite well; the biggest issue is getting a new friend onto the whitelist so that they can send you email. Having it bug you for each new sender's email address won't work since spammers are always inventing new "from" addresses. For my use, I'm using SpamBayes with Outlook (soon I'll be Windows-free, soon) and it seems to catch upwards of 90% of the spam I'm getting.
They're getting sneakier, though; lots of spam now has misspelled words, and even some of it starts with what appears to be a story or a news article, totally unrelated, and then goes into the sales pitch. So I've been having to train more lately (the last couple weeks). Perhaps a whitelist where everything not on the whitelist goes into the "Junk Suspects" box, combined with a Bayesian filter? I don't have the answer, but there's gotta be one.
but as a theory it must as always be taken with a grain of salt.
I saw the movie last night, and when they started talking about the polar caps melting and dumping tons of fresh water into the ocean and the rapid desalinization being a bad thing, I was thinking, "Morton to the rescue!"
(Morton makes salt, for those who aren't in Morton's distribution area...)
Never heard it being illegal in MA. Just talked to my brother (he lives in NH) and he said that if you were talking on the cell phone, or eating or drinking, when you got in an accident, it adds $1,500 to the fine. So it's not clear whether you can be pulled over and ticketed with "talking while driving" (if that's an offense then they should remove all the other passengers too, or seal off the driver in a separate compartment), or if it's just something designed to add fines when an accident happens. (I believe the original seatbelt laws were designed "only at the scene of an accident" and then of course creeping featurism led to officers pulling people over solely for failing to wear their seatbelts.)
A quick search found very little, but eventually I stumbled on this site, (scroll a bit more than halfway down for states) which shows that both MA and NH have "partial" cell phone laws: drivers are required to keep one hand on the steering wheel while talking on the phone. Which is rather ridiculous; when you're not talking on the phone it's acceptable to drive with your knees, or no hands? Why make the distinction? Just say "one hand AT ALL TIMES."
At any rate, thanks for the discussion and I hope to one day join you in NH!
Thanks for responding. I remember a WBCN short from about 15 years ago regarding NH: "Live free or die? There must be a lot of dead people paying rent!"
I have relatives in NH and they're REALLY not happy about the cell phone law. Perhaps that's something you can get repealed? (I remember when NY was the first to pass that law, a guy pulled over to answer his cell, being a good citizen, and got hit by a car and died--damned if you do and whatnot.)
I completely agree with you; I do not want laws saying how I should protect myself, and I always wear my seatbelt, even when going down the street.
That said, though, I thought of a very good reason to have seatbelt laws: in a minor accident (15-25 mph) a seatbeltless driver stands a good chance of ending up not-in-front-of-the-steering wheel, and may lose control of the vehicle and cause further damage.
This directly affects others, so there may be some basis for a seatbelt law. A collision at higher speeds would likely wreck the car enough that either it will careen into something whether the driver is in control or not, or the tires will be so out of whack that it'll stop (again, whether the driver is in control or not).
Helmets, though, are a different story: that's strictly personal responsibility.
And protecting children is something worthwhile, but I don't know the answer to that. One side says "Welfare leads to reduced gene pool quality" (welfare, in this case, being protection of those who otherwise wouldn't be protected), but the other side says "Socialized medicine means your kid's accident costs me money" so there's really no right way about removing welfare if we don't also remove socialized medicine. Anyway, I'm done.;-)
Any particular town/city in NH, or just in the state? I know libertarian-leaning people who work in Boston so it might be viable for them if it's either anywhere, or in a southern town.
I checked the site but couldn't find an answer to the above. It's cool that they've surpassed 5,000 people and chosen a state (currently 5,777 members).
Reading further it says the vote was taken in August and September of 2003, which was almost a year ago; to have only gotten another 777 members in 9 months doesn't sound like anybody is going to be moving soon.
You do realize that talking on cell phones while driving is illegal in NH? That doesn't sound much like "a culture of individual responsibility" (as mentioned on the homepage, left sidebar near the bottom) -- although it's nice to see that they don't have seatbelt or helmet laws, and the tax rate is low or non-existent.
I remember the Oceania project from about 10 years ago; they were going to build a floating city with libertarians on board. Any relationship with the people who ran/funded/cheered on that project?
Just like zero-tolerance policies in schools, when a person puts themselves into a situation where they are governed by idiots (in this case, an idiot landlord or idiot repair people), just living their ordinary life becomes a risk.
You're not kidding. The subway (not food) recently passed around flyers saying "Be suspicious of people with the following attributes: [...] sweating [...]".
So now when I run to catch the train, people think I'm a terrorist. WTF, I gues IHBT by the authorities...
I can see why grandparent was modded down, he used an ugly font and promoted "trialing" Pimsleur via Kazaa.
I have used Pimsleur's courses to learn several foriegn languages, and they have an amazing "stick rate." The main reason is due to the scientific method Pimsleur uses to teach the language:
A new word is introduced. Then, mixed in with other words, the new word is repeated after 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, etc. The other words of course follow the same pattern, so it's something like (each letter being a word):
ABCABCDEADEBCDFEFABCDF etc.
My times may not be exact; the point is repetition drives home the learning. The Pimsleur method works great, and I highly recommend it. It's a bit light on the written word but as far becoming conversational in a foreign language: you can ask "Where's the hotel?" "How much does this cost?" after the first lesson IIRC, and it goes on from there.
It may not be the cheapest course, but for about $200 you get the entire course, and a sampler is available for about $20. I just checked Froogle and found many Pimsleur resources for as low as ten bucks.
I agree with you. We used to use Citrix, but we found that it had a number of issues:
1. Some applications conflict with other applications, requiring us to install them on separate Citrix servers ("server siloing", doubling the hardware and administration costs).
2. Performance over a slow link degrades to the point that fast typists could enter an entire line before seeing the first character appear.
3. The "thin client" model assumes that the client has little to no intelligence and just sends keystrokes/mouse movements up, and screen updates down. It doesn't use any of the local processor, RAM, or hard drive (like the old "green screens").
Since most companies (ours included) aren't purchasing "thin clients" because they end up costing about as much as a full-blown computer, we just bought computers for our employees. Running Citrix does not use the resources in our company to the fullest; most of the time those machines just sit there, idle.
We have found a great solution from a relatively small new company called Softricity.
Their product, SoftGrid, streams the application to the client. Your IT department will have to "sequence" the application (basically, install it in a monitored environment so it can determine what files, Registry entries, INI files, etc. to package up), and it creates a single file which contains everything. It also determines what pieces of that file are used when running the application, and streams that to the client initially (generally about 10-20% of the full package). When a client uses features that weren't in the initial section, the client will request them from the server.
As to the issues I mentioned above above:
1. This has completely solved our application conflicts; we can run any application next to any other application, on the same client machine. We also have some applications set up in a "three-tier" method, where the applications are streamed from the SoftGrid server to a Terminal Server, and then the clients connect to the Terminal Server and run their applications from there. With this model, anything Citrix would add to it is superfluous--we just use the basic TS functionality that Microsoft provides.
2. The link speed does not slow performance down, once the application has been loaded into the client's cache. And the user can load the entire app if desired, which helps with our laptop users--they load the application and can then run it disconnected from the network.
3. The software doesn't have to run on the server, since it uses local resources (RAM, disk, processor). This means our SoftGrid server can serve thousands of users (not that we have that many), whereas our Citrix server starts to slow down when we have more than 25 or so users on it.
Managing the environment is also made much easier with the Management Console, and being able to specify Registry entries in the startup file which will override the entries in the package, so for instance each user can have their own startup file which specifies their username, department, extension, etc. And if there's ever a problem with an application that requires, for instance, a reinstall, it's basically a 30-second operation to have the user bring up the Control Panel application, remove the application from cache, and then run the application again which starts it back at the same state it was at when it was initially packaged.
I've been very happy with their solution, and although it's not cheap it's cost-similar to Citrix, and gives us more benefits and more flexibility (our traveling salespeople love it, since they don't have to connect in order to run applications).
The problem is, with CNN or Fox News you're a passive consumer. At Slashdot you can be both a consumer and a producer; you can participate in the discussion, instead of having it fed to you.
Perhaps they can create a "Politics" topic, so you and others with your tastes can just not see it?
Disney's veto of the Miramax distribution has probably made it 10x the political bombshell it would have been otherwise.
ObConspThe: Perhaps that was MM's plan all along? "Hi, I've got this movie, let me work on it then tell me you won't distribute it. It'll get you presidential points, and the movie will be 10x more powerful; when you ultimately cave and distribute it you'll make at least 5x more money than just distributing it in the first place would have."
But your other responder has data that seems to conflict with that, so I'm just adjusting my tin-foil hat. (Does that make the Tin Man completely resistant from government interference? His whole head was made of solid tin, not just foil!)
That reminds me of the circa-80s Lysol(?) commercial, where the parent uses the competition's spray in the kitchen, and the little girl wails, "Now it smells like fish and lemons!"
My folks have a dog who plays ball by herself: she'll nudge the ball closer and closer to the edge of the porch, catching it just in time, until finally she pushes it off the edge and runs down, brings it back up, and starts over again. She prefers if we throw it for her (lacrosse sticks work great for this--good range with little motion, and no touching the slimy ball), but when we tire, she starts being a little scientist.;-)
Thanks for the response. I like the idea of sending emissions in a narrow beam, perhaps they're all dumping emissions toward the outside of the galaxy? Then it'd be difficult for galactic citizens to detect, and intergalactic citizens would take a while to get here.;-)
Of course, those stars near the core would have to dump emissions toward some part of this galaxy, so that's perhaps not as effective an argument. Although they could dump "up" and "down" as it's much narrower, and since we're out on one of the unfashionable arms we wouldn't be able to detect it.
However I don't want a camera since there are new security laws being written, as I type this, to restrict the use of camera-phones.
Perhaps I've been living under a rock, but what new laws are these (and why wasn't a link provided)?
I know many companies restrict the types of digital equipment employees and visitors can bring onto their private property, but I haven't heard anything about legislation.
Is it possible that advanced civilizations might produce something similar to superconductors but on an EM basis? In other words, the outer shell of their Dyson spheres might mop up the rest of the emissions so that there is nothing for us to detect?
The other response mentioned gravity. We are currently doing experiments with gravity. Perhaps in the future we'll figure out how to contain it?
Yes, I'm appealing to essentially the same forces that religious folk appeal to when they attempt to explain God to you. And I definitely do not understand all the physics and maths involved. However, I stand by my potential correctness(?). More things than Horatio and all that.
The following was caused by the Pentium thread I was reading last night where someone said "Pentium MMV" and someone else responded with "Pentium: YMMV" (first M is "Megahertz"):
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand why. Wouldn't it be possible to grab 64 MB worth of the video (depending on the format, that might be about 5 minutes) and then stream from memory?
Even though it'd only be buffering 5 minutes instead of a full album, it'd still greatly reduce usage of the hard drive.
I still get calls coming through every once in a while. Others like to waste the telemarketers' time, chatting them up then saying "hang on a minute, let me get my credit card" and then just putting the phone down and going off and doing something else, checking back in a half hour to see if they've hung up yet.
Seinfeld's response was great as well: "Okay, give me your home number and I'll call you back later so we can discuss this." (pause) "Well now you know how I feel!" (click)
Me, I just say, "No, I'm not interested. Please take me off your calling list." Then I hang up. I don't need to get upset; they follow a script, and so do I. With SPAM it's not that easy because responding gives them the information that the email address is valid, and then it gets plastered all over the lists.
Whitelists seem to work quite well; the biggest issue is getting a new friend onto the whitelist so that they can send you email. Having it bug you for each new sender's email address won't work since spammers are always inventing new "from" addresses. For my use, I'm using SpamBayes with Outlook (soon I'll be Windows-free, soon) and it seems to catch upwards of 90% of the spam I'm getting.
They're getting sneakier, though; lots of spam now has misspelled words, and even some of it starts with what appears to be a story or a news article, totally unrelated, and then goes into the sales pitch. So I've been having to train more lately (the last couple weeks). Perhaps a whitelist where everything not on the whitelist goes into the "Junk Suspects" box, combined with a Bayesian filter? I don't have the answer, but there's gotta be one.
I saw the movie last night, and when they started talking about the polar caps melting and dumping tons of fresh water into the ocean and the rapid desalinization being a bad thing, I was thinking, "Morton to the rescue!"
(Morton makes salt, for those who aren't in Morton's distribution area...)
A quick search found very little, but eventually I stumbled on this site, (scroll a bit more than halfway down for states) which shows that both MA and NH have "partial" cell phone laws: drivers are required to keep one hand on the steering wheel while talking on the phone. Which is rather ridiculous; when you're not talking on the phone it's acceptable to drive with your knees, or no hands? Why make the distinction? Just say "one hand AT ALL TIMES."
At any rate, thanks for the discussion and I hope to one day join you in NH!
You'd think he would have required cameras, to make sure these abuses never happen again. Oh, wait, wrong game.
I have relatives in NH and they're REALLY not happy about the cell phone law. Perhaps that's something you can get repealed? (I remember when NY was the first to pass that law, a guy pulled over to answer his cell, being a good citizen, and got hit by a car and died--damned if you do and whatnot.)
That said, though, I thought of a very good reason to have seatbelt laws: in a minor accident (15-25 mph) a seatbeltless driver stands a good chance of ending up not-in-front-of-the-steering wheel, and may lose control of the vehicle and cause further damage.
This directly affects others, so there may be some basis for a seatbelt law. A collision at higher speeds would likely wreck the car enough that either it will careen into something whether the driver is in control or not, or the tires will be so out of whack that it'll stop (again, whether the driver is in control or not).
Helmets, though, are a different story: that's strictly personal responsibility.
And protecting children is something worthwhile, but I don't know the answer to that. One side says "Welfare leads to reduced gene pool quality" (welfare, in this case, being protection of those who otherwise wouldn't be protected), but the other side says "Socialized medicine means your kid's accident costs me money" so there's really no right way about removing welfare if we don't also remove socialized medicine. Anyway, I'm done. ;-)
I checked the site but couldn't find an answer to the above. It's cool that they've surpassed 5,000 people and chosen a state (currently 5,777 members).
Reading further it says the vote was taken in August and September of 2003, which was almost a year ago; to have only gotten another 777 members in 9 months doesn't sound like anybody is going to be moving soon.
You do realize that talking on cell phones while driving is illegal in NH? That doesn't sound much like "a culture of individual responsibility" (as mentioned on the homepage, left sidebar near the bottom) -- although it's nice to see that they don't have seatbelt or helmet laws, and the tax rate is low or non-existent.
I remember the Oceania project from about 10 years ago; they were going to build a floating city with libertarians on board. Any relationship with the people who ran/funded/cheered on that project?
You're not kidding. The subway (not food) recently passed around flyers saying "Be suspicious of people with the following attributes: [...] sweating [...]".
So now when I run to catch the train, people think I'm a terrorist. WTF, I gues IHBT by the authorities...
I have used Pimsleur's courses to learn several foriegn languages, and they have an amazing "stick rate." The main reason is due to the scientific method Pimsleur uses to teach the language:
A new word is introduced. Then, mixed in with other words, the new word is repeated after 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, etc. The other words of course follow the same pattern, so it's something like (each letter being a word):
ABCABCDEADEBCDFEFABCDF etc.
My times may not be exact; the point is repetition drives home the learning. The Pimsleur method works great, and I highly recommend it. It's a bit light on the written word but as far becoming conversational in a foreign language: you can ask "Where's the hotel?" "How much does this cost?" after the first lesson IIRC, and it goes on from there.
It may not be the cheapest course, but for about $200 you get the entire course, and a sampler is available for about $20. I just checked Froogle and found many Pimsleur resources for as low as ten bucks.
It's actually:
Assuming, that is, you are quoting the man who controls the universe from HHGTTG...
1. Some applications conflict with other applications, requiring us to install them on separate Citrix servers ("server siloing", doubling the hardware and administration costs).
2. Performance over a slow link degrades to the point that fast typists could enter an entire line before seeing the first character appear.
3. The "thin client" model assumes that the client has little to no intelligence and just sends keystrokes/mouse movements up, and screen updates down. It doesn't use any of the local processor, RAM, or hard drive (like the old "green screens").
Since most companies (ours included) aren't purchasing "thin clients" because they end up costing about as much as a full-blown computer, we just bought computers for our employees. Running Citrix does not use the resources in our company to the fullest; most of the time those machines just sit there, idle.
We have found a great solution from a relatively small new company called Softricity.
Their product, SoftGrid, streams the application to the client. Your IT department will have to "sequence" the application (basically, install it in a monitored environment so it can determine what files, Registry entries, INI files, etc. to package up), and it creates a single file which contains everything. It also determines what pieces of that file are used when running the application, and streams that to the client initially (generally about 10-20% of the full package). When a client uses features that weren't in the initial section, the client will request them from the server.
As to the issues I mentioned above above:
1. This has completely solved our application conflicts; we can run any application next to any other application, on the same client machine. We also have some applications set up in a "three-tier" method, where the applications are streamed from the SoftGrid server to a Terminal Server, and then the clients connect to the Terminal Server and run their applications from there. With this model, anything Citrix would add to it is superfluous--we just use the basic TS functionality that Microsoft provides.
2. The link speed does not slow performance down, once the application has been loaded into the client's cache. And the user can load the entire app if desired, which helps with our laptop users--they load the application and can then run it disconnected from the network.
3. The software doesn't have to run on the server, since it uses local resources (RAM, disk, processor). This means our SoftGrid server can serve thousands of users (not that we have that many), whereas our Citrix server starts to slow down when we have more than 25 or so users on it.
Managing the environment is also made much easier with the Management Console, and being able to specify Registry entries in the startup file which will override the entries in the package, so for instance each user can have their own startup file which specifies their username, department, extension, etc. And if there's ever a problem with an application that requires, for instance, a reinstall, it's basically a 30-second operation to have the user bring up the Control Panel application, remove the application from cache, and then run the application again which starts it back at the same state it was at when it was initially packaged.
I've been very happy with their solution, and although it's not cheap it's cost-similar to Citrix, and gives us more benefits and more flexibility (our traveling salespeople love it, since they don't have to connect in order to run applications).
I'm considering proposing a solution like this at work.
Perhaps they can create a "Politics" topic, so you and others with your tastes can just not see it?
ObConspThe: Perhaps that was MM's plan all along? "Hi, I've got this movie, let me work on it then tell me you won't distribute it. It'll get you presidential points, and the movie will be 10x more powerful; when you ultimately cave and distribute it you'll make at least 5x more money than just distributing it in the first place would have."
But your other responder has data that seems to conflict with that, so I'm just adjusting my tin-foil hat. (Does that make the Tin Man completely resistant from government interference? His whole head was made of solid tin, not just foil!)
That reminds me of the circa-80s Lysol(?) commercial, where the parent uses the competition's spray in the kitchen, and the little girl wails, "Now it smells like fish and lemons!"
I'd love to see the attempt at explaining to the cops how you needfully damaged that property...
My folks have a dog who plays ball by herself: she'll nudge the ball closer and closer to the edge of the porch, catching it just in time, until finally she pushes it off the edge and runs down, brings it back up, and starts over again. She prefers if we throw it for her (lacrosse sticks work great for this--good range with little motion, and no touching the slimy ball), but when we tire, she starts being a little scientist. ;-)
Well, there is and there isn't.
Don't forget spindle!
Of course, those stars near the core would have to dump emissions toward some part of this galaxy, so that's perhaps not as effective an argument. Although they could dump "up" and "down" as it's much narrower, and since we're out on one of the unfashionable arms we wouldn't be able to detect it.
Again, thanks for enlightening me!
Perhaps I've been living under a rock, but what new laws are these (and why wasn't a link provided)?
I know many companies restrict the types of digital equipment employees and visitors can bring onto their private property, but I haven't heard anything about legislation.
The other response mentioned gravity. We are currently doing experiments with gravity. Perhaps in the future we'll figure out how to contain it?
Yes, I'm appealing to essentially the same forces that religious folk appeal to when they attempt to explain God to you. And I definitely do not understand all the physics and maths involved. However, I stand by my potential correctness(?). More things than Horatio and all that.
wmv == Windows Mileage Varies?
"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!" - Crowe T. Robot, MST3K