Dump out a Word document. You will see each character takes 16 bits. The original Unicode standard specified 16 bits for each character. For example, here is Unicode version 2.1.8. Note that each character is 16 bits. That's not just another "encoding", that is the official standard. The whole point of Unicode is a unique code for each letter.
Other standards have cropped up to deal with the PITA of dealing with 16 bit chracters, including UTF-8. But UTF-8 is more of a compression encoding.
Now, they may have moved to 32 bits, I'm not sure. I haven't paid attention to Unicode for a number of years. According to the unicode.org site, they've recently added a whole slew of new symbols, which brought them up to around 94000 symbols which obviously exceed 16 bits.
UTF-8 is UTF-8, not Unicode. Note that it is an encoding of Unicode character strings, not Unicode character strings.
I'm not making a judgement on whether one is better than the other, in fact, I like UTF-8 better. But it's an explanation for why Microsoft's files are larger.
It's also worth pointing out that Microsoft embraced Unicode before UTF-8 became a standard.
Do you know what Unicode is? It's an encoding that stores two bytes per character. If the whole thing is readable XML, then it is NOT stored in Unicode format, it is stored in ASCII.
There are a couple of explanations for that. First of all, Word saves thing in Unicode which could double the size right there if StarOffice does not. Also, Word saves all the style information. I don't know what StarWriter actually saves.
Actually, the first Crocodile Dundee movie was pretty damn funny. If only he had stopped with the first one... it's been so beaten into the ground that everyone has forgotten that the first movie was good.
What gives you the right to tell a sysadmin what they can and cannot block?
Because ISPs are lazy like everyone else. They will just trust that MAPS has not become corrupt.
Put it this way: do you think Experian should be able to publish anything they want about a person regardless of accuracy? After all, banks have the choice whether to use Experian or not.
This is actually pretty real world, because all three credit agencies suck when it comes to accuracy (which is not surprising when you have 150 million records). That's why they need government regulation because of the power they hold.
Believe me, I am very anti-government regulation, but blacklists of any kind are very apt to be abusive.
Experian only maintains a database that provides information to others, who seek that information. That database expresses an opinion: in the opinion of Experian, the people listed in the database have good or bad credit.
Shouldn't that be protected by the first amendment and they should be able to do anything they want with it, whether it's accurate or not?
Or to put it another way, should I be able to put up a web site that is a "blacklist" of employees who are incompetent? What if someone put you on that list unfairly? That's called defamation.
Free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to say anything you want, regardless of damage.
Do you really want to enable people to kill your e-mail easily by just signing you up for a few dozen multi-megabyte-per-day single-opt-in mailing lists?
Fine, if these theoretical multi-megabyte-per-day mailing lists are being abused in that way, then they can choose to be a double opt-in. But insisting that every mailing list in the world be a double opt-in or they get blacklisted is radical and absurd. That's when I start yelling "Whoa!!!!" and saying the "freedom fighters" have started looking like the "oppressors".
If I sign up for a mailing list, I should NOT have a bunch of nannys insisting that companies waste my time with another verification step.
I appreciate that they are pushing for opt-in standards, but there is a very fine line between looking out for the rights of consumers and looking to "protect" consumers from themselves.
Which do I hate more: people who want to exploit me, or people who want to coddle and protect me, whether I want it or not? Tough choice.
I think I hate the coddlers more. I can always protect myself against exploitation, but I can't always get away from the nannys.
Considering Reagan has been deep in the throws of Alzheimer's Disease for the last 5 years, I highly doubt he was capable of making any lucid political statements in 2000.
I've never read the Times of India, but if they are pushing that quote seriously, it should tell you something about their journalistic standards that they don't even know Reagan's current mental health.
The was the word the original poster used. I would prefer "illegal" myself.
...offline storage and archiving device...
Even if I bought into your contrived bullshit, 0.1% legitimate purpose doesn't excuse the other 99.9% illegal purpose. The primary purpose of these services is illegal trading. Just because a pizza parlor serves pizza to you legitimately doesn't mean it won't be shut down if they are primarily laundering money.
A tool could be a weapon, but a weapon is never a tool.
Nope. All weapons are tools, but not all tools are weapons. Read the definition: "Something used in the performance of an operation; an instrument"
Weapons are simply instruments used for injuring or killing people. Again I quote: "An instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword."
so I guess if all of these people are using
their computers to primarily download music,
then that makes the computer evil.
Sheesh. No, just like one person who primarily uses steak knives as weapons doesn't make all steak knives evil, because most steak knives are used for lawful purposes.
And all of the implicit assumptions that could justify that claim, "A tool is evil if it can be used to do evil things",
Wrong. A tool is evil if it is primarily used to do evil things. Machine guns are illegal, even though it's "just a tool". In many places, switchblades are illegal even though they are "just a tool".
The primary purpose of KaZaA et al is the illegal trading of music. 0.1% legitimate use doesn't excuse the other 99.9%.
I simply will never understand the mentality of the green screen luddite.
Sure, if you are writing letters to grandma plain text might suffice. But any sort of business doc or programming documentation is far easier to read with proper use of bolding and large fonts. Not to mention that proportional fonts are far easier to read and are far more compact of text.
And things like headers and footers are occasionally useful. I'll bet you also feel that diagrams and tables are way overrated. Hey, why not just use ASCII-art?
No one cares about file size, except people who are stuck in the past of 110 baud modems and 5 megabyte hard drives.
The only point you might have is platform independance, but the solution is making documents platform independence, not returning to the dark ages.
And yes, I post HTML to Usenet and insist on sending HTML e-mail. Screw all people who can't update their news readers or mail readers.
I may care about this subject a good deal, but I'll express it in a form I use... Not a medium I don't use...
Here's a clue: If you can't be bothered to put a piece of paper in an envelope and drop it in a mailbox, you don't give a shit about this issue -- at all.
Hey, I may prefer to "express it in a form I use" by spray painting it on walls, but that doesn't mean it will do any good.
Online petitions are actually worse than useless, because they give the illusion to people that they are actually doing something, when they might otherwise have written a letter.
If you care about this issue, write a real letter, on real paper, with a real stamp.
No one who values freedom should be celebrating this. Yes, spam is annoying. But do you really want the government telling you who you can send e-mail to? Good god, many of you people freak when the government gets close to tracking your toilet usage, but if it comes to restricting your right to send e-mail, it's "GO GO GO"!
There are ways to solve the spam problem without restricting freedom. Requiring a tag on the e-mail would be a great start, either by putting something in the subject line or adding a line to the header information.
But dammit, I don't want the government telling me who I can and can't e-mail to!
Er, yes you could. It's called government funded research. Which, incidentally, is what produced the Internet...
No, that's what produced the Arpanet. The Internet that we know today, meaning the investment and development of high speed lines, is a product of private enterprise.
and what underwrote much of the basic and long-term research that many corporations profit from today.
Certainly we have a body of research that was created from public investment. It's not a question of whether you can get research from public investment, it's a question of efficiency. For example, no one doubts that the government could produce a "universal automobile" to compete with the major car companies. However, no one also doubts (that is sane, that is) that it would be a huge space-station-style, unbelievable disaster.
Research works the same way. Most of research feeding at the public trough is absolute crap designed to 1) line the pockets of the researcher, and 2) secure their reputation. There is a simple reason for this: public research has very little incentive to actually produce anything useful, like research in, say, a drug company.
All this said, I think there is a place for government funded research. There is a lot of very long term research that won't get done very well privately, like basic physics research. It's still inefficient, but it's better than nothing.
Both public and private research funding have their place. Public research is better for long-term basic research, and private research is better for actually producing practical results, efficiently.
No. The goatse.cx guy is not creative... merely annoying.
I was joking.
OK, I'm going to come clean on a troll I did the other day because I was bored. I don't do it very often, but I'd been annoyed by all the fools who think the WTC attack was no huge deal. Check this out and tell me what you think. I wanted to see if anyone would come out of the woodwork and support giving Manhattan back to the Indians. All the pro-Indian posts ("internet enabled teepee") are mine.:)
Reality Master 101, as a troll you are boring and unimaginative.
If I was intending to troll, my posts would be much more interesting and imaginative. Besides, how do you know that I don't troll? For all you know, I could be the goatse.cx guy, and I can't imagine much more imagination than that.
in some ways you are a little bit inteligent. Surely you must be able to think of something better to do with your time....
Thank you. But I can't think of any higher purpose for my god-given gifts than to attempt to set the world straight.
that have the capacity to hurt real people [AIDS drug patents]
It's so ironic that people complain about AIDS drug patents, when the drugs wouldn't exist at all without the ability to patent them. Patents are possibly the single greatest single saver of lives in the history of mankind. You simply could not spend billions of dollars to develop 1 successful drug and 100 failures if Joe's Drugs down the street could simply copy your research and cut out your ability to make a profit. People really need to look at the big picture, rather than these simplistic, emotional views.
Actually, many of us belive that ideas cannot be owned [usewisdom.com],
I know. It's a very naive and dangerous viewpoint.
and thus cannot be stolen. It's no surprise our corporate government doesn't share this viewpoint.
Ah yes, the old "corporate government" argument. If something is good for business, then it must be automatically bad for everyone "else" (as if everyone is not affected by what is good or bad for business).
Well guess what: It's not just "big money" that cares about this issue. There are a lot of us who can look at the big picture. The fact is that it takes a big company and big money to develop many types of inventions. If there was no protection, then those inventions simply would not be invented, because there is no seed money to develop them.
Patents serve only to tip the scales to the party with the most money/lawyers.
That's certainly the conventional (Slashdot) belief, but it's frankly not true. Patent attorneys will often work on a contingency basis if you have a real case. Prove it to me: Show me a patent that was filed by a little guy that was "smashed" by a big guy.
I can easily show the opposite. Heck, let's look at the Stac lawsuit against Microsoft. They won $120M lawsuit against MS, and they we're a tiny company.
Corporate interests own hundreds of thousands (millions?) of patents. What do you think they own them for?
They own them because they invented something first. What difference does it make how big an entity is if they invent something novel? I repeat: Big interests have the same rights as small interests. Personally, I don't think someone should lose rights just because they get larger.
Now, software patents are a different deal, because we've had a lot of abuses of the system by trying to patent prior art. But that's a problem with how patents are granted, not patents themselves.
(And here is my opportunity to be controversial): The only reason many Slashdotters are against patents is because they want to steal other people's ideas, not because they are worried about corporations stealing the little guy's ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
Dump out a Word document. You will see each character takes 16 bits. The original Unicode standard specified 16 bits for each character. For example, here is Unicode version 2.1.8. Note that each character is 16 bits. That's not just another "encoding", that is the official standard. The whole point of Unicode is a unique code for each letter.
Other standards have cropped up to deal with the PITA of dealing with 16 bit chracters, including UTF-8. But UTF-8 is more of a compression encoding.
Now, they may have moved to 32 bits, I'm not sure. I haven't paid attention to Unicode for a number of years. According to the unicode.org site, they've recently added a whole slew of new symbols, which brought them up to around 94000 symbols which obviously exceed 16 bits.
UTF-8 is UTF-8, not Unicode. Note that it is an encoding of Unicode character strings, not Unicode character strings.
I'm not making a judgement on whether one is better than the other, in fact, I like UTF-8 better. But it's an explanation for why Microsoft's files are larger.
It's also worth pointing out that Microsoft embraced Unicode before UTF-8 became a standard.
Do you know what Unicode is? It's an encoding that stores two bytes per character. If the whole thing is readable XML, then it is NOT stored in Unicode format, it is stored in ASCII.
There are a couple of explanations for that. First of all, Word saves thing in Unicode which could double the size right there if StarOffice does not. Also, Word saves all the style information. I don't know what StarWriter actually saves.
Paul Hogan's... um... everything?
Actually, the first Crocodile Dundee movie was pretty damn funny. If only he had stopped with the first one... it's been so beaten into the ground that everyone has forgotten that the first movie was good.
What gives you the right to tell a sysadmin what they can and cannot block?
Because ISPs are lazy like everyone else. They will just trust that MAPS has not become corrupt.
Put it this way: do you think Experian should be able to publish anything they want about a person regardless of accuracy? After all, banks have the choice whether to use Experian or not.
This is actually pretty real world, because all three credit agencies suck when it comes to accuracy (which is not surprising when you have 150 million records). That's why they need government regulation because of the power they hold.
Believe me, I am very anti-government regulation, but blacklists of any kind are very apt to be abusive.
Experian only maintains a database that provides information to others, who seek that information. That database expresses an opinion: in the opinion of Experian, the people listed in the database have good or bad credit.
Shouldn't that be protected by the first amendment and they should be able to do anything they want with it, whether it's accurate or not?
Or to put it another way, should I be able to put up a web site that is a "blacklist" of employees who are incompetent? What if someone put you on that list unfairly? That's called defamation.
Free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to say anything you want, regardless of damage.
Do you really want to enable people to kill your e-mail easily by just signing you up for a few dozen multi-megabyte-per-day single-opt-in mailing lists?
Fine, if these theoretical multi-megabyte-per-day mailing lists are being abused in that way, then they can choose to be a double opt-in. But insisting that every mailing list in the world be a double opt-in or they get blacklisted is radical and absurd. That's when I start yelling "Whoa!!!!" and saying the "freedom fighters" have started looking like the "oppressors".
If I sign up for a mailing list, I should NOT have a bunch of nannys insisting that companies waste my time with another verification step.
I appreciate that they are pushing for opt-in standards, but there is a very fine line between looking out for the rights of consumers and looking to "protect" consumers from themselves.
Which do I hate more: people who want to exploit me, or people who want to coddle and protect me, whether I want it or not? Tough choice.
I think I hate the coddlers more. I can always protect myself against exploitation, but I can't always get away from the nannys.
Why do 1337 teenagers and twentysomethings spell words with numbers and symbols?
Considering Reagan has been deep in the throws of Alzheimer's Disease for the last 5 years, I highly doubt he was capable of making any lucid political statements in 2000.
I've never read the Times of India, but if they are pushing that quote seriously, it should tell you something about their journalistic standards that they don't even know Reagan's current mental health.
Rock and roll trivia: That was actually said by The Who's Keith Moon, and Led Zeppelin decided they liked the name.
The was the word the original poster used. I would prefer "illegal" myself.
Even if I bought into your contrived bullshit, 0.1% legitimate purpose doesn't excuse the other 99.9% illegal purpose. The primary purpose of these services is illegal trading. Just because a pizza parlor serves pizza to you legitimately doesn't mean it won't be shut down if they are primarily laundering money.
A tool could be a weapon, but a weapon is never a tool.
Nope. All weapons are tools, but not all tools are weapons. Read the definition: "Something used in the performance of an operation; an instrument"
Weapons are simply instruments used for injuring or killing people. Again I quote: "An instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword."
so I guess if all of these people are using their computers to primarily download music, then that makes the computer evil.
Sheesh. No, just like one person who primarily uses steak knives as weapons doesn't make all steak knives evil, because most steak knives are used for lawful purposes.
And all of the implicit assumptions that could justify that claim, "A tool is evil if it can be used to do evil things",
Wrong. A tool is evil if it is primarily used to do evil things. Machine guns are illegal, even though it's "just a tool". In many places, switchblades are illegal even though they are "just a tool".
The primary purpose of KaZaA et al is the illegal trading of music. 0.1% legitimate use doesn't excuse the other 99.9%.
I simply will never understand the mentality of the green screen luddite.
Sure, if you are writing letters to grandma plain text might suffice. But any sort of business doc or programming documentation is far easier to read with proper use of bolding and large fonts. Not to mention that proportional fonts are far easier to read and are far more compact of text.
And things like headers and footers are occasionally useful. I'll bet you also feel that diagrams and tables are way overrated. Hey, why not just use ASCII-art?
No one cares about file size, except people who are stuck in the past of 110 baud modems and 5 megabyte hard drives.
The only point you might have is platform independance, but the solution is making documents platform independence, not returning to the dark ages.
And yes, I post HTML to Usenet and insist on sending HTML e-mail. Screw all people who can't update their news readers or mail readers.
I may care about this subject a good deal, but I'll express it in a form I use... Not a medium I don't use...
Here's a clue: If you can't be bothered to put a piece of paper in an envelope and drop it in a mailbox, you don't give a shit about this issue -- at all.
Hey, I may prefer to "express it in a form I use" by spray painting it on walls, but that doesn't mean it will do any good.
Online petitions are actually worse than useless, because they give the illusion to people that they are actually doing something, when they might otherwise have written a letter.
If you care about this issue, write a real letter, on real paper, with a real stamp.
No one who values freedom should be celebrating this. Yes, spam is annoying. But do you really want the government telling you who you can send e-mail to? Good god, many of you people freak when the government gets close to tracking your toilet usage, but if it comes to restricting your right to send e-mail, it's "GO GO GO"!
There are ways to solve the spam problem without restricting freedom. Requiring a tag on the e-mail would be a great start, either by putting something in the subject line or adding a line to the header information.
But dammit, I don't want the government telling me who I can and can't e-mail to!
Er, yes you could. It's called government funded research. Which, incidentally, is what produced the Internet...
No, that's what produced the Arpanet. The Internet that we know today, meaning the investment and development of high speed lines, is a product of private enterprise.
and what underwrote much of the basic and long-term research that many corporations profit from today.
Certainly we have a body of research that was created from public investment. It's not a question of whether you can get research from public investment, it's a question of efficiency. For example, no one doubts that the government could produce a "universal automobile" to compete with the major car companies. However, no one also doubts (that is sane, that is) that it would be a huge space-station-style, unbelievable disaster.
Research works the same way. Most of research feeding at the public trough is absolute crap designed to 1) line the pockets of the researcher, and 2) secure their reputation. There is a simple reason for this: public research has very little incentive to actually produce anything useful, like research in, say, a drug company.
All this said, I think there is a place for government funded research. There is a lot of very long term research that won't get done very well privately, like basic physics research. It's still inefficient, but it's better than nothing.
Both public and private research funding have their place. Public research is better for long-term basic research, and private research is better for actually producing practical results, efficiently.
No. The goatse.cx guy is not creative... merely annoying.
I was joking.
OK, I'm going to come clean on a troll I did the other day because I was bored. I don't do it very often, but I'd been annoyed by all the fools who think the WTC attack was no huge deal. Check this out and tell me what you think. I wanted to see if anyone would come out of the woodwork and support giving Manhattan back to the Indians. All the pro-Indian posts ("internet enabled teepee") are mine. :)
I thought it was pretty amusing, myself.
Reality Master 101, as a troll you are boring and unimaginative.
If I was intending to troll, my posts would be much more interesting and imaginative. Besides, how do you know that I don't troll? For all you know, I could be the goatse.cx guy, and I can't imagine much more imagination than that.
in some ways you are a little bit inteligent. Surely you must be able to think of something better to do with your time....
Thank you. But I can't think of any higher purpose for my god-given gifts than to attempt to set the world straight.
that have the capacity to hurt real people [AIDS drug patents]
It's so ironic that people complain about AIDS drug patents, when the drugs wouldn't exist at all without the ability to patent them. Patents are possibly the single greatest single saver of lives in the history of mankind. You simply could not spend billions of dollars to develop 1 successful drug and 100 failures if Joe's Drugs down the street could simply copy your research and cut out your ability to make a profit. People really need to look at the big picture, rather than these simplistic, emotional views.
Actually, many of us belive that ideas cannot be owned [usewisdom.com],
I know. It's a very naive and dangerous viewpoint.
and thus cannot be stolen. It's no surprise our corporate government doesn't share this viewpoint.
Ah yes, the old "corporate government" argument. If something is good for business, then it must be automatically bad for everyone "else" (as if everyone is not affected by what is good or bad for business).
Well guess what: It's not just "big money" that cares about this issue. There are a lot of us who can look at the big picture. The fact is that it takes a big company and big money to develop many types of inventions. If there was no protection, then those inventions simply would not be invented, because there is no seed money to develop them.
Patents serve only to tip the scales to the party with the most money/lawyers.
That's certainly the conventional (Slashdot) belief, but it's frankly not true. Patent attorneys will often work on a contingency basis if you have a real case. Prove it to me: Show me a patent that was filed by a little guy that was "smashed" by a big guy.
I can easily show the opposite. Heck, let's look at the Stac lawsuit against Microsoft. They won $120M lawsuit against MS, and they we're a tiny company.
Corporate interests own hundreds of thousands (millions?) of patents. What do you think they own them for?
They own them because they invented something first. What difference does it make how big an entity is if they invent something novel? I repeat: Big interests have the same rights as small interests. Personally, I don't think someone should lose rights just because they get larger.
Now, software patents are a different deal, because we've had a lot of abuses of the system by trying to patent prior art. But that's a problem with how patents are granted, not patents themselves.
(And here is my opportunity to be controversial): The only reason many Slashdotters are against patents is because they want to steal other people's ideas, not because they are worried about corporations stealing the little guy's ideas.