It's nice to see some competition for Google, but it still has ways to go.
One problem is that many of the maps are black and white...making it hard to see specific details if they're the same shade.
The other problem is that the zoom doesnt go where I want it to. Center new york in the map and zoom in and I end up looking at woop-woop in new jersey.
Google have been doing this for a long time now. Probably a couple of years. Why has/. been reporting all of these "new features" for services which have been around for a long itme?
The price of software is whatever value it adds to my business, or personally it's whatever I'm willing to pay for whatever convenience it offers (after all, software is 90% "convenience" for personal use)
If I were a doctor, a full medial records + billing application would be worth many thousands (or equivalent of support services for free software). If I am running a bakery, then inventory software is worth far less.
As a hobbyist, software related to my hobby would be worth more than some random game to play with once in a while - if I'm a gamer, that game is worth a lot more than the same hobbyist values it.
Mixing videos and music - ok, that's pretty normal and doesnt take a skilled person to come up with something..
But mixing a TV guide??? A lot more of a challenge.
I guess what they are after is for example something where someone can do better seraching through the guide, or perhaps linking the information within an application.
One such thing could be linking an article or other media where you can refer it to an upcoming show on tv. Eg, you're browsing some website about natural disasters, and have it automatically tell you about an upcoming TV show about floods.
That's about the extent of my creative juices though..
The problem with reliability and quality with VOIP is generally not the fault of the VOIP providers.
Rather, it's caused by the fact that the traffic goes over the public internet. This has zero Quality of Service, meaning that they have to 'join the queue' with normal data packets. Any congestion as a result of things like Bittorrent and Kazza will kill the connection.
If there is any hope in hell of VOIP actually working as good as the PSTN, something has to be done about this limitation. Some broadband providers are starting to provide VOIP themselves, and their ability to control the quality end-to-end will help.
Unfortunately a lot of the people building and running these networks are IP guys, not telco guys, so uptime is still an issue.
But despite these issues...it's a young technology. It has it's place now in the right environments, but will still be a while before it's a true PSTN replacement.
This is of limited effectiveness. It works for while, but has been cracked.
A few months ago, a well known Dutch bank (Postbank) was targetted, with scammers directing people to a phishing site. This site asked for their username, password, and the next 3 of these codes (many people mark the ones they've used).
Many people were duped, proving that it's not that good for security.
It's about time more banks started implementing true security online. In Europe, the majority of banks give a device which gives at least the same level of security as a normal cash machine/ POS transaction.
You put your bank card in the device, enter your PIN, and then enter a number given on the site. Hit OK and put into the site a number returned by the device. The algorithm requires the pin number and specific card to calculate the number, so dictionary attacks are thwarted.
Having these 3 personal questions is of limited effectiveness - until the scammers simply make a phishing site which asks the same questions.
Why can't US (and Australian) banks just issue these card reader/token devices? It satisfies the requirements of user authentication.
- Something you know (your PIN) - Something you have (card + device)
I guess they're too cheap to do it and rely on fraud insurance to compensate for lost money.
Having used those handset audio guided tour things, I can see that this is certainly a step up.
What would be even better would be to have some standard system whereby anyone with a wireless enabled PDA type device can walk into some attraction/theme park, and fire up their own PDA through which the audio/video can be viewed over some standard URL. Those rental things are often damaged or otherwise not working a lot of the time anyway.
The next step (or perhaps the first step) could even be a system where any mobile phone can be used as a guided tour handset. A combination of a micro-cell and custom phone system (Asterisk?) could achieve this.
It's rather interesting to see that they were caught in Nigeria. Nowadays it seems that more and more of these scammers are actually based outside Nigeria.
Many of the scammers are based in Amsterdam and though they might be originally from African nations, the easy access to technology and communications in more modern cities brings them there.
Let's hope that the more modern policing in western countries helps to catch more of these scammers.
It's wonderful that archive.org are archiving all of these sites, but I've always wondered how they manage to avoid getting into all sorts of legal trouble regarding copyright, etc...
Given the huge amount of potentially embarassing material out there, I'm surprised more people arent claiming copyright breach.
I seriously doubt that this is cool nowadays. A huge case, a lot of fans and the heat it generates isn't something in anyway impressive nowadays.
It takes just TWO modern disks to get 1/2 terabyte of space, and not much more ot get them in raid5, plus you can have a compact box (the one in TFA is very boxy and ugly) and a lot less noise and power consumption.
Yup, we all know you need containers for things in space. Can you imagine what would happen if an ant farm in space didnt have a container, and the ants spilled out all over the place?
Oh, the horror, the horror. New insect overlords, indeed.
Big deal...it's been in the Netherlands for quite some time with hundreds of delivery places around the country on the one site. I usually order once a week. Select your city/town, pick a type of food or restaurant and browser the menu, create your order and fill in your details. 1/2hr later the food's at your door.
I've always wondered why there is a need for a movie of this...the six TV episodes themselves make for a great story, and there is nothing more that a movie could do aside from shorten the storyline.
Personally, I'll be continuing to watch the TV episodes myself. Modern 'movie magic' really can't do much for this.
I went back to bash after being totally unable to get zsh to remember the history between sessions. Bash is handy as I can log out, log back in, and up-arrow takes me back to my history from the previous session(s). I can't get zsh to do this. If someone can explain how, I'll go straight back to zsh again!
With all of the advances going on in Asia with regards to IPv6, is this going to result in a large split in the internet as more sites appear on possibly ipv6-only servers?
Most of Europe and the US is seriously falling behind with IPv6, and there's still very little incentive to improve this - chicken and egg indeed. My employer is a large telecom with 1 million ADSL subscribers, but has no concrete plans to roll out IPv6 still, as they see no pressing business need for it. But I fear this will isolate us from the huge economy in asia.
There will soon be a time where there will be a lot if great content on servers that are only IPv6 capable, and these may slowly develop into separate 'internets'. What can be done for the rest of the world (ie, Europe and the US) to catch up on this? We may end up being left behind as asia powers ahead with technology.
But then again, Asia is where most of the newer tech goodies come from, so hopefully we will start seeing more everyday appliances supporting IPv6 natively, which could be the boost we need for full v6 support in the infrastructure.
One thing that shits me with gaming audio is that in the games I've played, all the effects, monsters, etc ALL SOUND THE SAME.
Eg in doom, each type of sound is exactly the same, only slightly pitch shifted. The same goes for the quake series - every sound only differs with a little pitch. Whether the surrounding geography is a small room or a huge hall, it sounds the same.
what I want to see is true dynamic audio - each sound effect being created dynamically out of base sounds, so that each time you hear a particular effect, it's sound varies according to the immediate geography - big booming echoes in large halls, crisp, close and loud shrieks in small spaces.
THAT is what would make audio advance in gaming to the next level.
Back in 95 or so, I'd just taken delivery of a shiny new dual processor motherboard, posted all the way from the US (to australia). I was upgrading from a 486 33 to a dual P150 and was itching to get it all running.
So, I get it all assembled in the case, and it being around christmas (this was a present to myself), it was very hot that day (remember this is Australia), so had a glass of Coke to keep me fresh.
I rested the coke on the PC case, as I was assembling the machine. And, no prizes for guessing, I knocked the coke all over my brand new motherboard! Oh I was shattered to see Coke fizzing and spreading all over my dream motherboard, and into the pins under the RAM sockets! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
In a sorry attempt to do something about it, I quickly whipped the board out of the case, shook it dry, and used a whole roll of paper towels mopping up all that cose, as well as a very slightly damp cloth to clear it fully.
And after about half a day of drying, it went back in the case, completed the assembly, prayed like I've never prayed before, and brought the power up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to see some competition for Google, but it still has ways to go.
One problem is that many of the maps are black and white...making it hard to see specific details if they're the same shade.
The other problem is that the zoom doesnt go where I want it to. Center new york in the map and zoom in and I end up looking at woop-woop in new jersey.
But at least it works in FF!
Google have been doing this for a long time now. Probably a couple of years. Why has /. been reporting all of these "new features" for services which have been around for a long itme?
The price of software is whatever value it adds to my business, or personally it's whatever I'm willing to pay for whatever convenience it offers (after all, software is 90% "convenience" for personal use)
If I were a doctor, a full medial records + billing application would be worth many thousands (or equivalent of support services for free software). If I am running a bakery, then inventory software is worth far less.
As a hobbyist, software related to my hobby would be worth more than some random game to play with once in a while - if I'm a gamer, that game is worth a lot more than the same hobbyist values it.
Mixing videos and music - ok, that's pretty normal and doesnt take a skilled person to come up with something..
But mixing a TV guide??? A lot more of a challenge.
I guess what they are after is for example something where someone can do better seraching through the guide, or perhaps linking the information within an application.
One such thing could be linking an article or other media where you can refer it to an upcoming show on tv. Eg, you're browsing some website about natural disasters, and have it automatically tell you about an upcoming TV show about floods.
That's about the extent of my creative juices though..
Google Earth shows roads throughout most of Europe, so it's just a matter of time before they put that data onto Google Maps.
what has made Orkut such a popular site for Brazilians? (aside from drugs!)
You mean like Rubberhose?
/. breaks on archive.org urls, hence the tinyurl.
(Seems down, see archive.org copy.) And i just noticed that
The problem with reliability and quality with VOIP is generally not the fault of the VOIP providers.
Rather, it's caused by the fact that the traffic goes over the public internet. This has zero Quality of Service, meaning that they have to 'join the queue' with normal data packets. Any congestion as a result of things like Bittorrent and Kazza will kill the connection.
If there is any hope in hell of VOIP actually working as good as the PSTN, something has to be done about this limitation. Some broadband providers are starting to provide VOIP themselves, and their ability to control the quality end-to-end will help.
Unfortunately a lot of the people building and running these networks are IP guys, not telco guys, so uptime is still an issue.
But despite these issues...it's a young technology. It has it's place now in the right environments, but will still be a while before it's a true PSTN replacement.
Interesting to see that FF has to play catcup on the version number game.
Are people really that silly to think that the (soon to be released) IE7.0 is almost 6 versions "ahead" of FF?
I guess this is a sacrifice we need to make to get some of the mum&dad market.
So when will they release maps on Google Earth of the other planets and complete moon (without the cheese)?
Curiout minds want to know - I could sure do with some extra terrestrial google touring.
There's a HUGE load of further potentials with mapping - after all, it's just another type of search (plus travel planning opportunities).
This is of limited effectiveness. It works for while, but has been cracked.
A few months ago, a well known Dutch bank (Postbank) was targetted, with scammers directing people to a phishing site. This site asked for their username, password, and the next 3 of these codes (many people mark the ones they've used).
Many people were duped, proving that it's not that good for security.
Far better is the card/token type system (see my comment for details).
It's about time more banks started implementing true security online. In Europe, the majority of banks give a device which gives at least the same level of security as a normal cash machine/ POS transaction.
You put your bank card in the device, enter your PIN, and then enter a number given on the site. Hit OK and put into the site a number returned by the device. The algorithm requires the pin number and specific card to calculate the number, so dictionary attacks are thwarted.
Having these 3 personal questions is of limited effectiveness - until the scammers simply make a phishing site which asks the same questions.
Why can't US (and Australian) banks just issue these card reader/token devices? It satisfies the requirements of user authentication.
- Something you know (your PIN)
- Something you have (card + device)
I guess they're too cheap to do it and rely on fraud insurance to compensate for lost money.
Having used those handset audio guided tour things, I can see that this is certainly a step up.
What would be even better would be to have some standard system whereby anyone with a wireless enabled PDA type device can walk into some attraction/theme park, and fire up their own PDA through which the audio/video can be viewed over some standard URL. Those rental things are often damaged or otherwise not working a lot of the time anyway.
The next step (or perhaps the first step) could even be a system where any mobile phone can be used as a guided tour handset. A combination of a micro-cell and custom phone system (Asterisk?) could achieve this.
It's rather interesting to see that they were caught in Nigeria. Nowadays it seems that more and more of these scammers are actually based outside Nigeria.
Many of the scammers are based in Amsterdam and though they might be originally from African nations, the easy access to technology and communications in more modern cities brings them there.
Let's hope that the more modern policing in western countries helps to catch more of these scammers.
--
BB
Travel the world - virtually
It's wonderful that archive.org are archiving all of these sites, but I've always wondered how they manage to avoid getting into all sorts of legal trouble regarding copyright, etc...
Given the huge amount of potentially embarassing material out there, I'm surprised more people arent claiming copyright breach.
Finally! It's taken all these years to actually get a break in the clouds to photography these cities from above!
I seriously doubt that this is cool nowadays. A huge case, a lot of fans and the heat it generates isn't something in anyway impressive nowadays.
It takes just TWO modern disks to get 1/2 terabyte of space, and not much more ot get them in raid5, plus you can have a compact box (the one in TFA is very boxy and ugly) and a lot less noise and power consumption.
Not impressive. Sorry.
Yup, we all know you need containers for things in space. Can you imagine what would happen if an ant farm in space didnt have a container, and the ants spilled out all over the place?
Oh, the horror, the horror. New insect overlords, indeed.
Big deal...it's been in the Netherlands for quite some time with hundreds of delivery places around the country on the one site. I usually order once a week. Select your city/town, pick a type of food or restaurant and browser the menu, create your order and fill in your details. 1/2hr later the food's at your door.
I've always wondered why there is a need for a movie of this...the six TV episodes themselves make for a great story, and there is nothing more that a movie could do aside from shorten the storyline.
Personally, I'll be continuing to watch the TV episodes myself. Modern 'movie magic' really can't do much for this.
I went back to bash after being totally unable to get zsh to remember the history between sessions. Bash is handy as I can log out, log back in, and up-arrow takes me back to my history from the previous session(s). I can't get zsh to do this. If someone can explain how, I'll go straight back to zsh again!
So how many rods to the hogshead does this steam contraption do?
With all of the advances going on in Asia with regards to IPv6, is this going to result in a large split in the internet as more sites appear on possibly ipv6-only servers?
Most of Europe and the US is seriously falling behind with IPv6, and there's still very little incentive to improve this - chicken and egg indeed. My employer is a large telecom with 1 million ADSL subscribers, but has no concrete plans to roll out IPv6 still, as they see no pressing business need for it. But I fear this will isolate us from the huge economy in asia.
There will soon be a time where there will be a lot if great content on servers that are only IPv6 capable, and these may slowly develop into separate 'internets'. What can be done for the rest of the world (ie, Europe and the US) to catch up on this? We may end up being left behind as asia powers ahead with technology.
But then again, Asia is where most of the newer tech goodies come from, so hopefully we will start seeing more everyday appliances supporting IPv6 natively, which could be the boost we need for full v6 support in the infrastructure.
One thing that shits me with gaming audio is that in the games I've played, all the effects, monsters, etc ALL SOUND THE SAME.
Eg in doom, each type of sound is exactly the same, only slightly pitch shifted. The same goes for the quake series - every sound only differs with a little pitch. Whether the surrounding geography is a small room or a huge hall, it sounds the same.
what I want to see is true dynamic audio - each sound effect being created dynamically out of base sounds, so that each time you hear a particular effect, it's sound varies according to the immediate geography - big booming echoes in large halls, crisp, close and loud shrieks in small spaces.
THAT is what would make audio advance in gaming to the next level.
Back in 95 or so, I'd just taken delivery of a shiny new dual processor motherboard, posted all the way from the US (to australia). I was upgrading from a 486 33 to a dual P150 and was itching to get it all running.
So, I get it all assembled in the case, and it being around christmas (this was a present to myself), it was very hot that day (remember this is Australia), so had a glass of Coke to keep me fresh.
I rested the coke on the PC case, as I was assembling the machine. And, no prizes for guessing, I knocked the coke all over my brand new motherboard! Oh I was shattered to see Coke fizzing and spreading all over my dream motherboard, and into the pins under the RAM sockets! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
In a sorry attempt to do something about it, I quickly whipped the board out of the case, shook it dry, and used a whole roll of paper towels mopping up all that cose, as well as a very slightly damp cloth to clear it fully.
And after about half a day of drying, it went back in the case, completed the assembly, prayed like I've never prayed before, and brought the power up.
"131027Kb memory OK"
HOLY SHIT IT FUCKING WORKS!!!!!!
Still does, too.