Well, I've moved from Mozilla to the Firebird and Thunderbird combination because of one great feature: Neither of them needs to be installed to work. You unzip them and you're good to go. Which also goes for the extensions that they support too. Install all the extensions you need, put 'em on a CD and then take 'em with you for perfect browsing from any computer - works like a charm at a uni.
Just one little gripe: Could they come pre-packaged with the basic plugins? I'm thinking Flash and Java. Or maybe even a simple button saying "Click here to install the basic plugins". Or even something like when you open the browser the first time, background tabs open up with a simple "click to install" procedure for Flash and Java.
The current "click to install" feature does not work well for Java on WinXP with Firebird for some reason - Java does not find Firebird and so does not install the plugins for it. Flash seems to work fine.
Another thing I've noticed when trying to get some of the more technically challenged folks to use Firebird: 1) Their first reaction is "Where is Internet Explorer?". Only when you tell them that this browser blocks pop-ups and is faster than IE is the sale made. 2) Next, they're not used to the concept of tabbed browsing, but once explained to them, they love it. 3) They also really love the search bar next to the address bar and the fact that they can add more "websites to search from" to it.
So how about this? Instead of Firebird opening up with the Firebird home page the first time, how about a simple HTML page that explains a few of these features so more people can try it?
Wouldn't a breakup by a measure of the size in bytes of content served by the various web servers make a much more realistic figure?
I mean, if the traffic logs and stats are not available for all the sites around, surely, a measure of the size of the content would give one a fair idea of where the heavy weights really lie?
"...Please note: this is not a review of iTunes for Windows or of the iTunes Music Store. Rather, this is an editorial on some of the challenges facing Apple now that iTunes has come to Windows."
Let me give you two simple reasons for switching from Windows to Linux:
1) Privacy: Just how secure do you think your information is on a Windows PC with just about every other app contacting some server or the other with updates, with your Windows box trying it's best to get you to let it "automatically manage updates", added to which is Microsoft's reputation as far as privacy is concerned? That is why I prefer Open Source. It's much easier for me to trust an application that, even though I may not be able to examine the code and check, there are others who are and if they say it's safe, well that's good enough for me since there is no single enttity controlling them.
2) Legality: Sure, Windows comes on every new box. But just how much comes with Windows? Notepad, Wordpad, a calculator, WMP, and Windows Movie maker. Notepad is hardly useful. Wordpad just a little more so. WMP and WMM try their best to get you to save in the wma and wmv formats - how about just letting me choose the format I want ?. So, now you need an Office suite. How many of you Windows enthusiasts have actually paid for the software you use? Have you paid for Office, PhotoShop, 3DSMax, TrueSpace, Premiere, Visual Studio, DreamWeaver, Flash, a good text editor, etc etc? I guess not because then your costs will run into several thousands and you don't want to spend THAT much now do you? So you crack the software and use it and then gloat. How much time did it take you to get all that stuff installed, all the reboots included? A few days maybe?
Do a standard install of any Linux distro out there and I'm sure even you will appreciate the wide variety of apps that let you run them out of the box. And it's free. No cracking involved. Perfectly legal. Just the product of people donating their time and money to help others. They may not be as good as commercial products in many cases but they're good enough for me because I can still get my work done and I don't need to spend additional time getting stuff installed just to bring my comp to a certain degree of usability.
And then you gripe about the freeware that's available for Linux and it's driver support? Give it a little time people! It's really surprising the speed at which hardware support has evolved for Linux.
It also gives me peace of mind knowing that the software I'm using was written by individuals who have donated a lot of time, money and effort into developing something and then sharing it for free just so others can enjoy it too - without any ulterior motives in mind about "tying the customer to the product".
I personally do not mind waiting a bit as long as I know that my privacy is protected and that I am not breaking the law in any way. That is what is the most important for me and that is why I use Linux.
Can you say the same for Windows? Or is it that you just don't care?
If over 90% of the browser market share is owned by Internet Explorer, does that not mean that over 90% of visitors to the Do Not Call site will be affected?
That's a major effect to me. Not a nitpick.
Just how many people do you think actually browse the internet at all times with a text mode browser? I'm asking people here - not scripts or web spiders or any such thing, so be careful when quoting numbers:)
1) The Japanese are a people that seem to have an affinity for the latest gadgets and technology which is the reason a lot of really cool things show up first in Japan. Not sure if you can say the same about the average American.
2) I don't know how it works in Japan, but over here in the States, it seems that corporations are really out to milk the customer for all the green they can get. So I don't think it's not possible over here. I just think that instead of giving you 12Mb/Sec, they'd start off with maybe 10 for the first few months, then chop bandwidth based on average usage and drive the price up while all the time telling you they're actually making things better - basically what's already happening to broadband.
3) Also, if there was something like that over here, they would price it according to value. Let's face it : if people are willing to shell out approx $45 a month for cable/DSL, what would they pay for something like this? Answer : probably $100+ per month. Consequence : Nobody really buys it since the majority are not very tech oriented and really wouldn't see any justification to it.
4) Finally, you wanna bet whether the MPAA is going to sit idly by when something like this is going on? They'll probably turn the whole thing into some really expensive form of "PPV over IP" (pay per view over iP).
At the end of it all, look at the final price and ask yourself if you'd still go for it. And there you'd have the reason why it wouldn't work over here. If you boil it down to the basics, it's nothing but corporate greed.
Need help here. I've seen evidence that PNG can really out-compress GIF, but when I try to find out how, all they say is, "Oh, it's a black art - it depends on the image". Now don't mod me as a troll for saying this, because I am all for open standards and open source but this is a genuine question:
When compressing GIFs isn't a black art, how can you expect me (or the average website developer) to use PNGs on the website I'm working on when there is no real guide on what settings/program to use to get that good compression?
I don't want a method that depends on the image or a program with a bunch of compression options where I still need to use "human intervention" for best results! I have a lot of images to compress and I would like a method that I can use on a batch of images at a stretch once I've finished working on them - like I can do with JPG and GIF.
Q : What's my solution till I can do that? A : Use JPG compression and fake image translucency by synching the background of the JPG with the page backgroung. PITA, yes, but it works with all browsers, the difference is negligible, I get translucency too with anti-aliasing and all it's benefits and I get the best compression.
So maybe somebody here can tell me a way to get "better than GIF" compression for PNGs that I can use in oh, say, a shell script? God knows I've tried to find out for months, with no success.
Linux almost grows by itself. This is nothing short of absolutely sound decision on Munich's part. However, who would benefit the most from this would be OpenOffice. Like the Linux wave, I think Munich might have just given OpenOffice enough energy to start it's own wave.
Now corporations have a GOOD reason to use OpenOffice. This is going to mean a huge increase in OpenOffice usage and, if things go well, the eventual shift to an open office standard.
This could not have come at a better time.
Interesting, but....I have a question.
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 1
I wonder what this would do to say a modulated light beam carrying information. Since I'm a DSP guy the first thing that came into my head was "aliasing". Yeah, I know we're not sampling here, but that's what I thought of.
So let's assume we have a modulated light beam carrying some information. I don't think the information would be affected if it does not require the whole bandwidth of the new light frequency.
But what if it does? What frequencies will get chopped out? Or does the whole stream become unreadable? Anyone got any ideas? I know this sounds crazy, but what if, just what if nothing is lost? I can immediately see applications of "slowing down information transfers". And suppose certain frequencies are chopped...could that be used to implement a kind of bandpass filter?
Quite fascinating actually. By the way, I need a job:) A DSP one.
Will the battery backed RAM reset when the computer does? Because if it does, this does not become practical for everyday machines that crash once in a while - I don't want to lose part of my filesystem because of a crash.
And if it doesn't reset, that's good, but then would it not also introduce security concerns? For example, if we're talking small files, wouldn't the internet cache qualify? What about/etc/passwd files? Wouldn't it a simple matter to read this off the RAM?
Does an agreement for EA to "promote" NVIDIA also mean an agreement for EA to "demote" ATI?
Now that ATI has the flag as far as graphics hardware is concerned, it will be a sad thing to see the large number of games that EA pumps out only work well with NVIDIA cards.
Granted, this is more a micosoftish thing to do, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. NVIDIA has been known to be bossy in the past.
You need a file that is guaranteed to produce a BSOD. Use it a couple of times for effect, then use the only other thing you need - a Linux installation CD:)
Well currently I must say that even Xft2 is not up to the mark. Sun's proposed solution does seem to be an improvement. I think we should let both these projects flourish and let the community decide. This is tantamount to getting community opinion on quality and implementation.
Competition is good. I don't think it will lead to fragmentation. I think you need to see it more as evolution since that is what it will boil down to.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I've moved from Mozilla to the Firebird and Thunderbird combination because of one great feature:
:
:
Neither of them needs to be installed to work. You unzip them and you're good to go. Which also goes for the extensions that they support too. Install all the extensions you need, put 'em on a CD and then take 'em with you for perfect browsing from any computer - works like a charm at a uni.
Just one little gripe
Could they come pre-packaged with the basic plugins? I'm thinking Flash and Java. Or maybe even a simple button saying "Click here to install the basic plugins". Or even something like when you open the browser the first time, background tabs open up with a simple "click to install" procedure for Flash and Java.
The current "click to install" feature does not work well for Java on WinXP with Firebird for some reason - Java does not find Firebird and so does not install the plugins for it. Flash seems to work fine.
Another thing I've noticed when trying to get some of the more technically challenged folks to use Firebird
1) Their first reaction is "Where is Internet Explorer?". Only when you tell them that this browser blocks pop-ups and is faster than IE is the sale made.
2) Next, they're not used to the concept of tabbed browsing, but once explained to them, they love it.
3) They also really love the search bar next to the address bar and the fact that they can add more "websites to search from" to it.
So how about this? Instead of Firebird opening up with the Firebird home page the first time, how about a simple HTML page that explains a few of these features so more people can try it?
Wouldn't a breakup by a measure of the size in bytes of content served by the various web servers make a much more realistic figure?
I mean, if the traffic logs and stats are not available for all the sites around, surely, a measure of the size of the content would give one a fair idea of where the heavy weights really lie?
From the article :
"...Please note: this is not a review of iTunes for Windows or of the iTunes Music Store. Rather, this is an editorial on some of the challenges facing Apple now that iTunes has come to Windows."
"Mommy, mommy, can I go play outside?"
"No Jimmy, now go stand there till I finish browsing the Internet"
"Mommy, mommy, who's that man on the bed?"
"He's the SBC-Yahoo-ElectAura repairman, dear."
Sign at an Internet Cafe:
"Browsing : $2/hr
Holding hands : forbidden"
Remove all blank lines. Simple.
Let me give you two simple reasons for switching from Windows to Linux :
:
1) Privacy
Just how secure do you think your information is on a Windows PC with just about every other app contacting some server or the other with updates, with your Windows box trying it's best to get you to let it "automatically manage updates", added to which is Microsoft's reputation as far as privacy is concerned?
That is why I prefer Open Source. It's much easier for me to trust an application that, even though I may not be able to examine the code and check, there are others who are and if they say it's safe, well that's good enough for me since there is no single enttity controlling them.
2) Legality:
Sure, Windows comes on every new box. But just how much comes with Windows? Notepad, Wordpad, a calculator, WMP, and Windows Movie maker. Notepad is hardly useful. Wordpad just a little more so. WMP and WMM try their best to get you to save in the wma and wmv formats - how about just letting me choose the format I want ?. So, now you need an Office suite. How many of you Windows enthusiasts have actually paid for the software you use? Have you paid for Office, PhotoShop, 3DSMax, TrueSpace, Premiere, Visual Studio, DreamWeaver, Flash, a good text editor, etc etc? I guess not because then your costs will run into several thousands and you don't want to spend THAT much now do you? So you crack the software and use it and then gloat. How much time did it take you to get all that stuff installed, all the reboots included? A few days maybe?
Do a standard install of any Linux distro out there and I'm sure even you will appreciate the wide variety of apps that let you run them out of the box. And it's free. No cracking involved. Perfectly legal. Just the product of people donating their time and money to help others. They may not be as good as commercial products in many cases but they're good enough for me because I can still get my work done and I don't need to spend additional time getting stuff installed just to bring my comp to a certain degree of usability.
And then you gripe about the freeware that's available for Linux and it's driver support? Give it a little time people! It's really surprising the speed at which hardware support has evolved for Linux.
It also gives me peace of mind knowing that the software I'm using was written by individuals who have donated a lot of time, money and effort into developing something and then sharing it for free just so others can enjoy it too - without any ulterior motives in mind about "tying the customer to the product".
I personally do not mind waiting a bit as long as I know that my privacy is protected and that I am not breaking the law in any way. That is what is the most important for me and that is why I use Linux.
Can you say the same for Windows? Or is it that you just don't care?
I disagree that this is Nitpicking.
:)
If over 90% of the browser market share is owned by Internet Explorer, does that not mean that over 90% of visitors to the Do Not Call site will be affected?
That's a major effect to me. Not a nitpick.
Just how many people do you think actually browse the internet at all times with a text mode browser? I'm asking people here - not scripts or web spiders or any such thing, so be careful when quoting numbers
From the source code of http://www.donotcall.gov/:
/ njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript">
<span id="userHeader_lblError"><!-- Date: 10/8/2003 Time: 6:53 PM From: W3 --></span>
<br>
<noscript>
<img BORDER="0" NAME="DCSIMG" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" SRC="http://g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net/DCS000003_6D4Q
</noscript>
.....
Windows install torrent link :
/ OO o_1.1.0_Win32Intel_install-zip.torrent
http://www.emptylogic.com/suprnova/torrents/378
Linux torrent anyone?
Server's slashdotted.
Anyone got a torrent file?
Thanks.
Yes, 6 cm is 0.06m.
:
:
However look at the calculation. There is a counter-error which evens things up
0.6x2=0.12m which is wrong.
The correct calculation is
0.06x2 = 0.12m.
Anyway,
0.12x2.5x10^9 = 3x10^8 is correct.
So I think it's just a typo with a zero missing. The actual calculation IS correct.
Interesting you should ask this.
:
I have a few ideas why compression was not used
1) At such a high data rate, what would be the processing power required for real-time compression?
2) It's usually better to go uncompressed because it's easier to analyze the data later on.
3) My guess is you want to eliminate as many unknowns as possible in an experiment. Therefore, no compression.
I was referring to the MPAA kicking up a storm should somebody actually offer this service in the states.
I think it's a combination of a lot of factors:
1) The Japanese are a people that seem to have an affinity for the latest gadgets and technology which is the reason a lot of really cool things show up first in Japan. Not sure if you can say the same about the average American.
2) I don't know how it works in Japan, but over here in the States, it seems that corporations are really out to milk the customer for all the green they can get. So I don't think it's not possible over here. I just think that instead of giving you 12Mb/Sec, they'd start off with maybe 10 for the first few months, then chop bandwidth based on average usage and drive the price up while all the time telling you they're actually making things better - basically what's already happening to broadband.
3) Also, if there was something like that over here, they would price it according to value. Let's face it : if people are willing to shell out approx $45 a month for cable/DSL, what would they pay for something like this? Answer : probably $100+ per month. Consequence : Nobody really buys it since the majority are not very tech oriented and really wouldn't see any justification to it.
4) Finally, you wanna bet whether the MPAA is going to sit idly by when something like this is going on? They'll probably turn the whole thing into some really expensive form of "PPV over IP" (pay per view over iP).
At the end of it all, look at the final price and ask yourself if you'd still go for it. And there you'd have the reason why it wouldn't work over here. If you boil it down to the basics, it's nothing but corporate greed.
Need help here. I've seen evidence that PNG can really out-compress GIF, but when I try to find out how, all they say is, "Oh, it's a black art - it depends on the image". Now don't mod me as a troll for saying this, because I am all for open standards and open source but this is a genuine question :
When compressing GIFs isn't a black art, how can you expect me (or the average website developer) to use PNGs on the website I'm working on when there is no real guide on what settings/program to use to get that good compression?
I don't want a method that depends on the image or a program with a bunch of compression options where I still need to use "human intervention" for best results! I have a lot of images to compress and I would like a method that I can use on a batch of images at a stretch once I've finished working on them - like I can do with JPG and GIF.
Q : What's my solution till I can do that?
A : Use JPG compression and fake image translucency by synching the background of the JPG with the page backgroung. PITA, yes, but it works with all browsers, the difference is negligible, I get translucency too with anti-aliasing and all it's benefits and I get the best compression.
So maybe somebody here can tell me a way to get "better than GIF" compression for PNGs that I can use in oh, say, a shell script? God knows I've tried to find out for months, with no success.
The beginning of a horror story for SCO maybe?
Linux almost grows by itself. This is nothing short of absolutely sound decision on Munich's part. However, who would benefit the most from this would be OpenOffice. Like the Linux wave, I think Munich might have just given OpenOffice enough energy to start it's own wave.
Now corporations have a GOOD reason to use OpenOffice. This is going to mean a huge increase in OpenOffice usage and, if things go well, the eventual shift to an open office standard.
This could not have come at a better time.
I wonder what this would do to say a modulated light beam carrying information. Since I'm a DSP guy the first thing that came into my head was "aliasing". Yeah, I know we're not sampling here, but that's what I thought of.
:) A DSP one.
So let's assume we have a modulated light beam carrying some information. I don't think the information would be affected if it does not require the whole bandwidth of the new light frequency.
But what if it does? What frequencies will get chopped out? Or does the whole stream become unreadable? Anyone got any ideas? I know this sounds crazy, but what if, just what if nothing is lost? I can immediately see applications of "slowing down information transfers". And suppose certain frequencies are chopped...could that be used to implement a kind of bandpass filter?
Quite fascinating actually. By the way, I need a job
Will the battery backed RAM reset when the computer does? Because if it does, this does not become practical for everyday machines that crash once in a while - I don't want to lose part of my filesystem because of a crash.
/etc/passwd files? Wouldn't it a simple matter to read this off the RAM?
And if it doesn't reset, that's good, but then would it not also introduce security concerns? For example, if we're talking small files, wouldn't the internet cache qualify? What about
Does an agreement for EA to "promote" NVIDIA also mean an agreement for EA to "demote" ATI?
Now that ATI has the flag as far as graphics hardware is concerned, it will be a sad thing to see the large number of games that EA pumps out only work well with NVIDIA cards.
Granted, this is more a micosoftish thing to do, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. NVIDIA has been known to be bossy in the past.
simple.
:)
You need a file that is guaranteed to produce a BSOD. Use it a couple of times for effect, then use the only other thing you need - a Linux installation CD
And then laptops get fusion reactors...
:)
;)
And then lots of people using Dell laptops get impotent...
And then Dockers releases pants with "fusion shielded" pockets...
And then Jay Leno jokes about it
Amazing how technology affects everyone
Wanna bet he had a major crush on her by the time all this was over? :)
Well currently I must say that even Xft2 is not up to the mark. Sun's proposed solution does seem to be an improvement. I think we should let both these projects flourish and let the community decide. This is tantamount to getting community opinion on quality and implementation.
Competition is good. I don't think it will lead to fragmentation. I think you need to see it more as evolution since that is what it will boil down to.
China banned this game long back.