As the article clearly states, this does NOT affect the search engine. It affects only AdSense. The search engine will retain the text only adverts. RTFA.
> I'd hope to hell Visual Studio is way down the list. It's just an IDE! > It has a GUI and a text editor. All the memory-chewing hard work > is done in the compiler back end.
You've obviously never used Visual Studio. Notepad and Wordpad are text editors. Visual Studio is NOT just a text editor. To get the same features under linux you'd need about 9 different programs. It has a very powerful help system, a debugger, build tools, resource editors, intellisense code editors for many languages, many different GUIs for designing web and windows applications etc etc etc. It even includes a web browser on top of all of those things and has a memory footprint which is still a *fraction* of the size of firefox's which is *only* a webbrowser.
It's an Operating System! Why *should* it come with more than that? Microsoft gets enough flack for simply including IE. Imagine the ensuing row if they also included things like Office and "everything they need" and users never needed to buy *any* third party applications. Yet linux does this all the time. The only reason it doesn't get slated for it is that it's not the market leader.
You're arguing my point for me. The linux distributions are bloated and install many applications that most users will never use. Primarily, this is probably because installing these applications yourself as a new user would be a nightmare and would put you off using that distribution.
> the code bloat at Microsoft has REALLY gotten out of hand......
I wish people would stop talking about Microsoft code bloat when nobody else does any better.
Currently, 50 processes. The two highest (memory and VM wise) are Thunderbird which is using (60mb of main memory) and Firefox which is using 55mb of main memory. All the microsoft products I'm running like Visual Studio.NET 2003 are WAY down the list as none are using more than 10-15mb of main memory.
Nearly all popular linux distributions now come on more than one CD (even if you ignore the source code) and the default installations are WAY bigger than that of Windows XP.
How do you know they're using TeleAtlas as opposed to Navteq? At the bottom of the page it has both names. How you can use two different sets of data on one map I don't know...
No, *you* got it wrong. They do not state the transfer rate anywhere in the article. They never say that the "one million bits at a time" is "per second". They are simply saying that the mechanism can read 1 million bits at the same time in a single operation, in the same way that a digitial camera CCD "reads" 5 megapixels worth of data at the same time (it uses similar technology to read the holographic information).
The article states that the "200-GB drive, the HDS-200R, would ship this year with a 20-Mbyte transfer rate". I assume the transfer rate will be roughly the same on the 300GB drive and not miracously increase to 1GB per second just because of a minor upgrade in data density.
> With Open Office, I can read and export every major Microsoft file > in and out of OO.
You can. In same kind of way that you can build a car with sellotape and cerial packets. You get something that's vaguely what you were after, but it doesn't look right and it's kind of messy.
If you've ever tried it on anything other than a very simple letter, you'll know that it doesn't really work AT ALL. The formatting gets completely messed up, things get resized, the layout goes haywire, some text gets lots etc etc... It really doesn't work.
Why? Because OO don't have access to the file format definition, so they have to guess everything. Unfortunatly, it's quite complicated, so despite lots of hard work, they get it wrong. Often.
The ghosting and wave patterns on those screen grabs look to me like classic symptoms of using a really shit cable. What the hell is this guy using as his video cable? I hope he's not trying to compare the quality of video cards using a £5/$5 scart cable he bought from a supermarket? The difference a decent £40 scart lead makes is astonding.
Look down the left hand side of all the screen grabs - you won't get any of those signal reflection problems with a decent cable.
One thing the review doesn't mention is how well each product handles 16:9 format TVs (and sources). In the UK, all our new TVs are 16:9 (apart from tiny little 14" things) and most TV content is distributed in 16:9 format (apart from the fscking Formula 1 GP!). But how well do these apps cope with this? Can they really switch your TV into real 16:9 mode or do they always render the picture at 4:3 and you have to 'zoom' your telly to get rid of the black bars at the side?
If anyone has any experience of this, especially if you use BeyondTV or MythTV, then I'd really like to hear how you got on.
Your first example is extremely poor. Only a handful of people in the whole world are still using the EXACT SAME cars that were built in the 60s. However we're still using the EXACT SAME shuttles (only one new one has been built since then AFAIR). No idea why this comparison was in your list. He wasn't suggesting an alternative to a shuttle - he was likely suggesting a replacement newly designed modern shuttle. I think that was obvious to all.
747 - fair enough, but it has been superceded (not in size, until the A380 but in technology). However there isn't a more advanced shuttle than the shuttle.
The last two aren't even technology examples and are extremely ridiculous comparisons! Your fifth would probably have been "we're still drinking water" or something equally stupid...
If I hadn't wasted my ability to moderate by posting this post, then I'd go for -1, Overrated. No idea how that post got to +5 Insightful - there's nothing insightful about it at all. It wasn't even your idea.
Er, insulated wires perhaps?! Why would the electricity be able to escape into the water without shorting out the 'crafts' own systems? If it's going underwater then it's all going to be sealed. After all, a shark is perfectly happy to swim right up to a massive research ship with a cage hanging off the side which probably has it's on mains-voltage supply running the length of the ship.
> Also, the Focus is a compact car, not a midsize one.
That's my point - in the UK, a Focus *is* a midsize car. All your cars are bigger! We simply don't have any cars as large as your larger cars. A small car is a VW Polo, a Ford Fusion (basically a mini Focus), or a Ford Fiesta.
I've been to the US quite a few times now, and I tend to get given hire cars like a Buick Century (or similar). To me that's a *massive* car - we don't have anything that big here apart from perhaps a large Volvo or maybe the bigger of the BMWs. Driving it around for quite a while I guessed that the engine was probably a 1.6 or 1.8 - it was incredibly slow to accellerate (and stop!). I was astonished to find it that it was a 3.0 litre V6! That car must really weigh a ton (or three). I nearly crashed though a toll booth the first time I approached one because I hadn't allowed for the fact that it's like driving an oil tanker and takes AGES to stop. I'd be interested to know how much that car weighs relative to my "midsized" Ford Focus...
You're right. I've checked. You guys don't import any cars which get decent fuel economy. Apparently they "don't sell". But for all other countries in the world, there are many many cars which achive a better fuel consumption than the Prius without the expense.
> Yes, it's true that diesel engines canget you greater fuel efficiency, > and they're widely available in other countries, but it's a mistake to > believe that it's better for the environment.
This also seems to be a sentiment held only by Americans. All european countries use diesels prevalantly in normal passenger cars. Sure, some really old diesels emit more particle waste - but that was years ago. Modern diesels are very environmentally friendly compared to a petrol car (especially the newest common-rail ones). Your argument about diesels not reaching US emmissions standards must have been a joke. The US has the worst vehicle emissions per vehicle than any other country in the world. Your emissions standards are so lax they're almost non existant. Have a browse around the web and look up for yourself how the US fairs for vehicle emissions compared to any other country. I was shocked.
> What is it about hybrid technology that you don't like?
Nothing in general but some experimental hybrids get 100+mpg. I don't see the point in one that only gets 45. Admittedly I had forgotten that the US gallon is a different size so the figures are not quite as bad as I thought. But it is still easily possible to get a normal turbo-diesel that outperforms the prius for emissions while saving yourself a packet (unless you live the US where none are available AFAICT).
> And where can I find one of these mythical "sub 1.2L" engines, pray tell?
In the UK you can find them quite easily. After some research, it seems you guys actively choose to not import any cars which get a decent fuel economy. Eg, I can't find cars like a VW Polo which are extremely popular here in the UK. You don't even seem to import the Smart car (0.8L) which accounts for a huge percentage of the cars on the road in some cities like Italy. It seems that even for mid-size cars like the Focus, you only import the 2 litre version which has BAD fuel consumption compared to the 1.4 or 1.6L.
Even taking into account the difference in size of the US and Imperal Gallon, the cars seem to achieve a worse fuel consumption in America than they do in the UK. Apparently this might be to do with your lower Octane fuel (ours is 95-98 in the UK).
That site has no cars on it that I would use in my arguments. It seems that Americans only import the cars with the biggest engines.
For example, I tried to find the 1.4 or 1.6L Ford Focus but that site only lists the 2.0L model with which has notoriously bad fuel consumption.
I can't actually find any of the cars that we have here in the UK that can do 50 miles per UK gallon so it seems that you guys don't actually import any cars with good fuel economy.
The biggest surprise was how BAD the original fuel consumption on the Prius was before the modification. 40-45mpg? That's the same as a typical small car would get - and the Prius *is* a small car. So why pay so much money for all this technology which amounts to a car that's LESS fuel efficient than a lot of normal petrol cars at half the price which can easily get 65+mpg? (Yank Tanks excluded of course, but most environmentally concious countries have many cars that can achieve these levels of efficiency).
The Prius was featured on the BBC's Top Gear program recently here in the UK and the general gist of the review as far as I remember was "why on earth are all the stupid celebrities and Americans spending a fortune buying these cars from the Japanese which are WORSE for the environment than a normal petrol car at HALF the price?"...and I don't even think the review took into account the enormous additional environmental damage and costs of disposing of the car at each end of it's lifetime (mainly due to the batteries).
If you want to save the environment, buy a small/light car with a small engine (sub 1.2L) and drive it sensibly.
I was sent some clever software that predicts the next slashdot story with amazing accuracy. I compiled it and ran it myself and it's currently predicting the next story will be "Paris Hilton Recruited to Publicize Linux".
We'll have to wait and see... but if this works, there will no longer be so much incentive to subscribe to slashdot...
A couple of months ago, my wife and I were approached with an interesting offer by an affluent couple from California. After thinking carefully, we've decided to take them up on their offer. My fetish for gadgets is well puplicised through this blog, and I think this offer will help me finally get those gadgets I've been coveting for so long.
That's right, we're selling our son for $30k. There's nothing sinister about this, he's not going into child slavery or anything, Randy and Linda just really liked his demeanor, and they're keen on a Kiwi kid because they're usually so healthy. I hear $30 grand is a really good number these days.
So help me out: what would be a good swag of gadgets to get hold of for US$30,000? Here's my initial wish-list:
A nice G4 Powerbook. I've always been a Windows guy, but only due to cost. I'm super-keen to try out a nice fast Mac.
A Mac mini for home. Our house is pretty small, and a mini would make an ideal home media server thing.
An Alienware PC gaming rig, or maybe a hand-built gaming machine.
A PSP and/or Nintendo DS.
One of those portable media players like the Mrobe or something.
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 1st, 2005 and is filed under Personal, Thoughts, Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0
-1, Wrong This is absolute rubbish. Google DOES crawl dynamic pages quite happily. It's crawled all of my sites with no problem.
Neither (no) search engine crawls dynamic sites where there are no links to the dynamic content (eg where you HAVE to search using keywords to find the content) but Google and Yahoo are happy to index any dynamic page which is directly linked to even if it has lots of parameters in the URL. Google has indexed 15000 dynamic pages on a directory site of mine quite happily.
> By the same token how can you vouch that your antivirus/antispyware > is a genuine one and not some trojanized version that is giving you > false sense of security?
Because I know exactly where it came from. Typically your antivirus software doesn't just arrive in the mail. What a stupid point.
>Once you get pristine Knoppix disk from authorized source...
A disc arriving in the mail is NOT an authorized source! Anyone could have sent you that. It could be your bank, but it could be your neighbour or a stranger or some kind of e-hitman that's been hired to specifically target *you* and your money.
Slashdot Mirror
As the article clearly states, this does NOT affect the search engine. It affects only AdSense. The search engine will retain the text only adverts. RTFA.
> I'd hope to hell Visual Studio is way down the list. It's just an IDE!
> It has a GUI and a text editor. All the memory-chewing hard work
> is done in the compiler back end.
You've obviously never used Visual Studio. Notepad and Wordpad are text editors. Visual Studio is NOT just a text editor. To get the same features under linux you'd need about 9 different programs. It has a very powerful help system, a debugger, build tools, resource editors, intellisense code editors for many languages, many different GUIs for designing web and windows applications etc etc etc. It even includes a web browser on top of all of those things and has a memory footprint which is still a *fraction* of the size of firefox's which is *only* a webbrowser.
It's an Operating System! Why *should* it come with more than that? Microsoft gets enough flack for simply including IE. Imagine the ensuing row if they also included things like Office and "everything they need" and users never needed to buy *any* third party applications. Yet linux does this all the time. The only reason it doesn't get slated for it is that it's not the market leader.
You can't have it both ways.
You're arguing my point for me. The linux distributions are bloated and install many applications that most users will never use. Primarily, this is probably because installing these applications yourself as a new user would be a nightmare and would put you off using that distribution.
> the code bloat at Microsoft has REALLY gotten out of hand......
I wish people would stop talking about Microsoft code bloat when nobody else does any better.
Currently, 50 processes. The two highest (memory and VM wise) are Thunderbird which is using (60mb of main memory) and Firefox which is using 55mb of main memory. All the microsoft products I'm running like Visual Studio.NET 2003 are WAY down the list as none are using more than 10-15mb of main memory.
Nearly all popular linux distributions now come on more than one CD (even if you ignore the source code) and the default installations are WAY bigger than that of Windows XP.
Where did you see that?
Overlaid on all the maps at the bottom right, it clearly says:
Map data (c)2005 Navteq(TM), TeleAtlas
I've not seen "Crown copyright" anywhere. It's not even in the source of the page.
Are you looking at the same site as the rest of us?
http://maps.google.co.uk/
How do you know they're using TeleAtlas as opposed to Navteq? At the bottom of the page it has both names. How you can use two different sets of data on one map I don't know...
No, *you* got it wrong. They do not state the transfer rate anywhere in the article. They never say that the "one million bits at a time" is "per second". They are simply saying that the mechanism can read 1 million bits at the same time in a single operation, in the same way that a digitial camera CCD "reads" 5 megapixels worth of data at the same time (it uses similar technology to read the holographic information).
The article states that the "200-GB drive, the HDS-200R, would ship this year with a 20-Mbyte transfer rate". I assume the transfer rate will be roughly the same on the 300GB drive and not miracously increase to 1GB per second just because of a minor upgrade in data density.
> With Open Office, I can read and export every major Microsoft file
> in and out of OO.
You can. In same kind of way that you can build a car with sellotape and cerial packets. You get something that's vaguely what you were after, but it doesn't look right and it's kind of messy.
If you've ever tried it on anything other than a very simple letter, you'll know that it doesn't really work AT ALL. The formatting gets completely messed up, things get resized, the layout goes haywire, some text gets lots etc etc... It really doesn't work.
Why? Because OO don't have access to the file format definition, so they have to guess everything. Unfortunatly, it's quite complicated, so despite lots of hard work, they get it wrong. Often.
The ghosting and wave patterns on those screen grabs look to me like classic symptoms of using a really shit cable. What the hell is this guy using as his video cable? I hope he's not trying to compare the quality of video cards using a £5/$5 scart cable he bought from a supermarket? The difference a decent £40 scart lead makes is astonding.
Look down the left hand side of all the screen grabs - you won't get any of those signal reflection problems with a decent cable.
One thing the review doesn't mention is how well each product handles 16:9 format TVs (and sources). In the UK, all our new TVs are 16:9 (apart from tiny little 14" things) and most TV content is distributed in 16:9 format (apart from the fscking Formula 1 GP!). But how well do these apps cope with this? Can they really switch your TV into real 16:9 mode or do they always render the picture at 4:3 and you have to 'zoom' your telly to get rid of the black bars at the side?
If anyone has any experience of this, especially if you use BeyondTV or MythTV, then I'd really like to hear how you got on.
Unfortunatly nobody can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.
Your first example is extremely poor. Only a handful of people in the whole world are still using the EXACT SAME cars that were built in the 60s. However we're still using the EXACT SAME shuttles (only one new one has been built since then AFAIR). No idea why this comparison was in your list. He wasn't suggesting an alternative to a shuttle - he was likely suggesting a replacement newly designed modern shuttle. I think that was obvious to all.
747 - fair enough, but it has been superceded (not in size, until the A380 but in technology). However there isn't a more advanced shuttle than the shuttle.
The last two aren't even technology examples and are extremely ridiculous comparisons! Your fifth would probably have been "we're still drinking water" or something equally stupid...
If I hadn't wasted my ability to moderate by posting this post, then I'd go for -1, Overrated. No idea how that post got to +5 Insightful - there's nothing insightful about it at all. It wasn't even your idea.
Why is Slashdot's icon (top right) for the "worms" section a picture of a caterpillar, which is in no way related to a worm?
Er, insulated wires perhaps?! Why would the electricity be able to escape into the water without shorting out the 'crafts' own systems? If it's going underwater then it's all going to be sealed. After all, a shark is perfectly happy to swim right up to a massive research ship with a cage hanging off the side which probably has it's on mains-voltage supply running the length of the ship.
> Also, the Focus is a compact car, not a midsize one.
That's my point - in the UK, a Focus *is* a midsize car. All your cars are bigger! We simply don't have any cars as large as your larger cars. A small car is a VW Polo, a Ford Fusion (basically a mini Focus), or a Ford Fiesta.
I've been to the US quite a few times now, and I tend to get given hire cars like a Buick Century (or similar). To me that's a *massive* car - we don't have anything that big here apart from perhaps a large Volvo or maybe the bigger of the BMWs. Driving it around for quite a while I guessed that the engine was probably a 1.6 or 1.8 - it was incredibly slow to accellerate (and stop!). I was astonished to find it that it was a 3.0 litre V6! That car must really weigh a ton (or three). I nearly crashed though a toll booth the first time I approached one because I hadn't allowed for the fact that it's like driving an oil tanker and takes AGES to stop. I'd be interested to know how much that car weighs relative to my "midsized" Ford Focus...
You're right. I've checked. You guys don't import any cars which get decent fuel economy. Apparently they "don't sell". But for all other countries in the world, there are many many cars which achive a better fuel consumption than the Prius without the expense.
> Yes, it's true that diesel engines canget you greater fuel efficiency,
> and they're widely available in other countries, but it's a mistake to
> believe that it's better for the environment.
This also seems to be a sentiment held only by Americans. All european countries use diesels prevalantly in normal passenger cars. Sure, some really old diesels emit more particle waste - but that was years ago. Modern diesels are very environmentally friendly compared to a petrol car (especially the newest common-rail ones). Your argument about diesels not reaching US emmissions standards must have been a joke. The US has the worst vehicle emissions per vehicle than any other country in the world. Your emissions standards are so lax they're almost non existant. Have a browse around the web and look up for yourself how the US fairs for vehicle emissions compared to any other country. I was shocked.
> What is it about hybrid technology that you don't like?
Nothing in general but some experimental hybrids get 100+mpg. I don't see the point in one that only gets 45. Admittedly I had forgotten that the US gallon is a different size so the figures are not quite as bad as I thought. But it is still easily possible to get a normal turbo-diesel that outperforms the prius for emissions while saving yourself a packet (unless you live the US where none are available AFAICT).
> And where can I find one of these mythical "sub 1.2L" engines, pray tell?
In the UK you can find them quite easily. After some research, it seems you guys actively choose to not import any cars which get a decent fuel economy. Eg, I can't find cars like a VW Polo which are extremely popular here in the UK. You don't even seem to import the Smart car (0.8L) which accounts for a huge percentage of the cars on the road in some cities like Italy. It seems that even for mid-size cars like the Focus, you only import the 2 litre version which has BAD fuel consumption compared to the 1.4 or 1.6L.
Even taking into account the difference in size of the US and Imperal Gallon, the cars seem to achieve a worse fuel consumption in America than they do in the UK. Apparently this might be to do with your lower Octane fuel (ours is 95-98 in the UK).
That site has no cars on it that I would use in my arguments. It seems that Americans only import the cars with the biggest engines.
For example, I tried to find the 1.4 or 1.6L Ford Focus but that site only lists the 2.0L model with which has notoriously bad fuel consumption.
I can't actually find any of the cars that we have here in the UK that can do 50 miles per UK gallon so it seems that you guys don't actually import any cars with good fuel economy.
The biggest surprise was how BAD the original fuel consumption on the Prius was before the modification. 40-45mpg? That's the same as a typical small car would get - and the Prius *is* a small car. So why pay so much money for all this technology which amounts to a car that's LESS fuel efficient than a lot of normal petrol cars at half the price which can easily get 65+mpg? (Yank Tanks excluded of course, but most environmentally concious countries have many cars that can achieve these levels of efficiency).
..and I don't even think the review took into account the enormous additional environmental damage and costs of disposing of the car at each end of it's lifetime (mainly due to the batteries).
The Prius was featured on the BBC's Top Gear program recently here in the UK and the general gist of the review as far as I remember was "why on earth are all the stupid celebrities and Americans spending a fortune buying these cars from the Japanese which are WORSE for the environment than a normal petrol car at HALF the price?".
If you want to save the environment, buy a small/light car with a small engine (sub 1.2L) and drive it sensibly.
I was sent some clever software that predicts the next slashdot story with amazing accuracy. I compiled it and ran it myself and it's currently predicting the next story will be "Paris Hilton Recruited to Publicize Linux".
We'll have to wait and see... but if this works, there will no longer be so much incentive to subscribe to slashdot...
A couple of months ago, my wife and I were approached with an interesting offer by an affluent couple from California. After thinking carefully, we've decided to take them up on their offer. My fetish for gadgets is well puplicised through this blog, and I think this offer will help me finally get those gadgets I've been coveting for so long.
That's right, we're selling our son for $30k. There's nothing sinister about this, he's not going into child slavery or anything, Randy and Linda just really liked his demeanor, and they're keen on a Kiwi kid because they're usually so healthy. I hear $30 grand is a really good number these days.
So help me out: what would be a good swag of gadgets to get hold of for US$30,000? Here's my initial wish-list:
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 1st, 2005
and is filed under Personal, Thoughts, Gadgets.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0
feed.
Not quite sure why you posted that when there aren't any April Fools stories on slashdot yet...
-1, Wrong
This is absolute rubbish. Google DOES crawl dynamic pages quite happily. It's crawled all of my sites with no problem.
Neither (no) search engine crawls dynamic sites where there are no links to the dynamic content (eg where you HAVE to search using keywords to find the content) but Google and Yahoo are happy to index any dynamic page which is directly linked to even if it has lots of parameters in the URL. Google has indexed 15000 dynamic pages on a directory site of mine quite happily.
> By the same token how can you vouch that your antivirus/antispyware
> is a genuine one and not some trojanized version that is giving you
> false sense of security?
Because I know exactly where it came from. Typically your antivirus software doesn't just arrive in the mail. What a stupid point.
>Once you get pristine Knoppix disk from authorized source...
A disc arriving in the mail is NOT an authorized source! Anyone could have sent you that. It could be your bank, but it could be your neighbour or a stranger or some kind of e-hitman that's been hired to specifically target *you* and your money.