why wouldn't you attempt to correct the problem with the dollar (by not running a 1/2 trillion dollar deficit) rather than finding cheaper materials?
Couple of things:
- The "devaluation" of the dollar that would impact the price of metal has more to do with inflation than its international trade value. The latter is mostly artificial, and can be raised and lowered to keep an economy stable in the world market.
- Deflation is a horrible thing to do to an economy. Most of today's economies depend on inflation to maintain long-term spending power. From the Wikipedia article
A small amount of inflation is often viewed as having a positive effect on the economy. One reason for this is that it is difficult to renegotiate some prices, and particularly wages, downwards, so that with generally increasing prices it is easier for relative prices to adjust. Many prices are "sticky downward" and tend to creep upward, so that efforts to attain a zero inflation rate (a constant price level) punish other sectors with falling prices, profits, and employment. Efforts to attain complete price stability can also lead to deflation, which is generally viewed as a negative outcome because of the significant downward adjustments in wages and output that are associated with it.
As a result, there's no good way to "adjust the value of the dollar" to make the metals more affordable. We simply must accept that money grows ever weaker as time goes on. The logical maneuver is to eliminate the penny at some point, though many countries have simply reissued new currency with a high new to old exchange rate.
Couldn't you just do a frameset with no borders and a single frame of 0 px?
Not really. Netscape 4 couldn't make any changes to the document once it was rendered. Later versions allowed for some colors to be dynamically swapped, and for objects to be resized to reflow the page. But you couldn't actually add or subtract any information.
In my case, I had used the IFrame to show a list of selected items as the user checked them. The user could page through different weeks on a calendar, so it was important to tell them which dates they'd already selected. The data had to be inlined (according to the specs I was given; and not allowed to change) so I used an IFrame to do both the server upload and the display. There was some alternate logic in Netscape that would refresh the page instead.
No, it's an error. A crash would be if the server went down.
it's exactly the same thing for the user : "Website doesn't work".
Considering that the GPs point was that the user was trying to break it, I don't see what your complaint is. The server shrugs off the error and keeps chugging along.
While Java is more difficult to exploit, it is still possible to crash an app (say, a servlet container running a major web site) by sending data in such a way that an array's capacity is exceeded.
You can't crash a Java App Server with just an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. It will produce an error for that user, sure, but it won't propogate any farther than that. Read the specs sometime. The servlet container is responsible for trapping all exceptions thrown by the servlet, then dealing with them in an appropriate manner. Usually that means giving the user an HTTP 500 error.
I recently graduated from school with a CS degree, and several of my classes were very theoretical in nature. I remember first time I saw them, I thought console emulators were really cool. I have no idea how someone would begin writing one.
Yes you do. You just don't know it yet. (Assuming your school wasn't out and out terrible.) There's a huge divide between theory and practice that every new programmer has to overcome. The best way to overcome it is to dive in and learn about the practical designs of today's technologies.
For example, you want to write an emulator. Many of the early game consoles were based on the 6502 microprocessor. If that scares you, it shouldn't. Read this webpage:
It will introduce you to 6502 assembly. It explains not only the text commands you can use, but also the hex codes that will be output by the assembler. You can get an assembler like DASM and try it out for yourself. Try writing a simple program like:
clc
lda #2
adc #2
Next, run it through the assembler. Open it in a hex editor and you should be able to see the direct mappings between your code and the program output. If you target a specific platform like the Atari 2600, you can use an existing emulator with a debugger like Stella to watch your code execute line by line.
Remember, learning doesn't end when you exit school. It just begins. So start digging up everything from reverse engineered documentation to documents put out by standards commities like the IETF's RFCs, the W3C standards, and the ECMA standards. You'll gain a much greater appreciation for how things work after you take them apart and understand them.;)
You're lucky you didn't have an original IBM or PCjr.
32K
[3 seconds]
64K
[3 seconds]
96K
[3 seconds]
(ad nauseum)
If you hit a key at any point in the memory check, you'd lock up the computer and have to reboot. The excrutiatingly detailed memory check was the first thing that the clone manufacturers booted out the window.
Ocarina of Time is at least a seven year old N64 game, not a gamecube game.
Twilight Princess is more of a direct descendent of OoT than of Wind Waker. While those who played Wind Waker loved the game, it was met with some rather critical reactions from Zelda fans. So Nintendo went back to the tried and true formula established in OoT to produce a new, yet traditional Zelda for the Gamecube. Unfortunately, development took a LONG time. (A couple of years, in fact.) By the time they were ready to release, they decided to just delay the game and release it for the Wii.
I'm interested in hearing how the game is without all the waving and what not. Will this be like having a 3-d movie but no glasses for those of us still on the cube?
Twilight Princess was originally developed for the cube, then ported to the Wii late in development. So it's likely that the controls will not feel unnatural to anyone who's played Ocarina of Time.
Very well. I suggest you reference Fischer v. United States, pp 402-414, in which the court wrote:
Did you actually read that case? The court was NOT compelling the defendent to produce the documents, but rather his tax attorney. Since the tax attorney was not on trial and the judge found no client-attorney privledges in those documents, the attorney was forced to turn them over. Section 1, Paragraph (a) gives the relevant portion of the decision:
(a) Whether or not the Fifth Amendment would have barred a subpoena directing the taxpayers to produce the documents while they were in their hands, the taxpayers' privilege under that Amendment is not violated by enforcing the summonses because enforcement against a taxpayer's lawyer would not "compel" the taxpayer to do anything, and certainly would not [425 U.S. 391, 392] compel him to be a "witness" against himself, and the fact that the attorneys are agents of the taxpayers does not change this result. Couch v. United States, 409 U.S. 322 . Pp. 396-398.
The judge just said in that paragraph that he cannot compell the defendent! They can seize all the evidence they want, just as long as it's not directly from the defendent himself.
As held in United States v. Hubbell,
You should have read the rest of that document. United States v. Hubbell was overturned in the Supreme Court because the defendent had been compelled to produce documentation against his fifth amendment rights. The portion you quoted was the decision that certain actions could be justly construed as not witnessing against one's self. It was then compared against the actions taken in the case to show that the defendent had indeed been forced to provide witness against himself.
Moreover, the court has long held that only the defendant in a criminal trial has any fifth amendment protection whatsoever, so the court could force production of the keys from the other side of the communication channel even if for some reason the fifth amendment prevented them from retrieving them from the defendant.
That they could. As I've said all along, only the defendent himself has fifth amendment protection. However, that protection is extremely strong and does not allow the court to order access to potentially incriminating evidence from the defendent, as held by United States v. Hubbell. The court is thus forced to look for other avenues of obtaining the evidence, such as the remote party.
Sure. You have the right to remain silent... and the court has the right to throw you in jail for the rest of your life for contempt of court, and it has done so.
They cannot throw you in jail for exercising your fifth amendment rights. And I dare you to prove otherwise.
The Kay Skeleton issue that someone used as an example is two fold:
1. It's a New Zealand case, not a U.S. case. 2. Fifth amendment rights are narrowly defined. Since the issue is finding a child who is separated from his parents (and potentially in danger), Ms. Skeleton would have no rights to not disclose the location.
However, in the case of an encrypted communication, the police are in possession of the evidence, they simply cannot read it. You are obligated to help them do that
That is out and out incorrect. Under U.S. law, you have a right to remain silent. Period, end of story, not a single thing more to add. You don't need to explain any knick knacks to them, you don't have to give them your keys to your house, and you sure as hell don't have to give them a codebook to your coded diary just because the cops think you have written down your dirty deeds in there.
You are to remain silent at all times unless you want the police to use your words against you. That is a guaranteed fifth amendment right, and is the FIRST THING that cops tell you. If they don't tell you that you have the right to shut up, they can actually lose a case for failing to inform you of your rights.
What you are describing is the very definition of self-incrimination.
The U.S. used to have a law-enforcement method similar to the U.K. law you are describing. Under that law, strong encryption was classified as a munition, and required a license to use. However, we also have a law about the punishment fitting the crime. Specifically, the eigth amendment states, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Which means that the punishment for using unlicensed strong crypto was not to exceed the realistic damages caused by that usage, on a case by case basis. 30 years in jail would be considered extremely excessive for an otherwise minor violation.
Since then, strong crypto has been redefined under U.S. Law, allowing free access to all.
Frankly, it's nothing at all like self-incrimination, either legally or logically.
It's exactly like self-incrimination, both legally and logically. Law enforcement in the U.S. can seize the keys under a subpoena, but there is no requirement that you tell them where they are. In fact, the fifth amendment specifically allows someone not to answer any question for fear of self-incrimination. The question, "Where/What are the encryption keys?" would fall under that umbrella as it would potentially provide evidence against you. The police might as well ask, "Where did you hide the illegal drugs?"
There's a reason why the first words out of an officer's mouth when making an arrest are, "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..." In other words, you should truthfully provide only your identity to the police, then act as if you were a mute from there on out.
Wire-tapping is more like search and seizure. Law officers can tap the line with court authority in order to seize your communications. However, you still have a free right to use a phone scrambler to hide your communications. It may look suspicious, but there would be little the police could do about it. (Most likely, they'd bug your handset.) Of course, if you're relying on scrambling or encryption provided by, say, your cell phone company, then you're in trouble. Since the cell phone company would not be under investigation, they would be legally required to comply with a court order to turn over the encryption keys. Failure to do so would get them slapped with an "obstruction of justice" charge.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I have stayed at the Holiday Inn Express.
1) The company will. The other seeders are just to reduce load, if they exist.
That still doesn't address the issue of being nipped at by old videos. Let's say that they have 500 old videos that only get one user downloading every 12 hours. These users shut down their PCs at night, so their clients won't be able to assist the next downloader. For HD video, the result would be a rather massive drain on their bandwidth. I sincerely hope they're planning for such massive increases.
3) Average user doesn't know jack about bandwidth and won't care.
They will after they realize Splinter Cell or World of Warcraft is running slowly. All it takes is a, "Hey guys, why am I lagging so much?" to tarnish the reputation of Zudeo.
5) Not true. There are BT clients that prioritize the beginning of the file and tend to download it first. It could be used to stream, just not as nicely as normal streaming.
Has you ever had that work? I have the option set, but Azureus invariably leaves far too many holes at the beginning and the end for VLC to play. Annoyingly, those key pieces never seem to fill in until the end of the download. My guess is that the balancing algorithm (the one that attempts to ensure that there are enough pieces out in the wild to survive the loss of seeders) combats the effectiveness of the "Download Beginning and End" option.
But the visual clarity of internet video tends to be less than stellar, mostly because the bandwidth costs associated with serving large, high-quality video files is prohibitively expensive. However, the BitTorrent protocol enables content distributors like Azureus to share large files using much less bandwidth.
Such a beautiful idea, but with such a high chance of failure.:(
The key issues I see are:
1. Who's going to keep videos seeded? On Youtube, if the video is available, the video is viewable. Not so for Azureus! The video could be only partially intact (no seeders with not enough downloaders) or it could just be gone. The Bittorrent network has already lost several fan films due to this issue. Will Zudeo keep a seed of every video they've ever carried? Will they be able to afford the bandwidth when the viewers start trickling to videos rather than assisting each other with their downloads?
2. Like it or not, Youtube is often used in workplace camaraderie. Many corporate firewalls whitelist business appropriate ports rather than blacklisting P2P clients. Youtube uses regular HTTP, so it works. Azureus uses the Bittorrent protocol which requires more esoteric ports.
3. Will the bandwidth usage be acceptable for the average user? When you view a Youtube video, you use only the bandwidth necessary to download the video. This active form of downloading means that bandwidth usage stops as soon as the video is completely downloaded. With Bittorrent, users will both upload and download while waiting for the video to complete. They also are recommeneded to leave the client open while going about other tasks. Which can have a negative impact on their other Internet activities.
4. Zudeo breaks up your workflow by launching an external program. This not only breaks up the user's workflow, but it also presents a more confusing interface. If the user wants to view the video, he has to open the torrent tab, click on "Files", then double click the correct file. This action is non-obvious to someone who simply wants to view the show. In addition, Azureus may not even launch when the Zudeo link is clicked! Magnet links are intended as a generic P2P descriptor, and are often claimed by programs other than Azureus.
5. Perhaps the most important point of all: Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded. With Youtube, they can simply watch their show with no intermediary steps.
IMHO, the best bet for Zudeo is to reinvent themselves as an iTunes competitor. If they created a frontend program to Azureus that did all the dirty work, they could at least compete in an arena where they're more likely to succeed. Streaming will still be an issue, but consumers may be willing to wait for High Def content.
attempting to give equal space for climate change skepticism is unrepresentative of the scientific community, and in my opinion it creates an illusion of controversy when there really isn't controversy.
That's the entire point of an investigation like this. If no serious dissenting opinions exist, then the noise about counter-claims will be exposed as overblown hearsay. Or the investigation could go all X-Files on us and find that "the truth is really out there". We'll see when the reporters get back with their findings.:)
Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.
*THUNK*
* AKAImBatman's forehead has hit the desk
Hemos, the entire point of an investigation like this is to uncover if such counter-claims actually exist. If they are being stifled, then you probably wouldn't know about them. Why? Because they're being stifiled.
If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown. In that case you may freely state that Lomborg is leading the charge against the current scientific position, and that no other counter-claims exist. But by making presupositions in the story, you are biasing your readership to the outcome. Which could have negative effects on getting the truth out should the BBC find evidence that climatologists are self-censoring their own.
I realize you were trying to be helpful by sharing the information you do know, but journalistic integrity requires that you not make judgements until such an investigation is done. In other words, there are times that it's best to just report the news.
The story contains some great facts for people who are unaware, but the author doesn't seem to be going anywhere with it. First he talks about the "billion dollar patent" then goes off on a tangent about IP without ever explaining how any of it ties back into the original issue.
I'd give it an A for research, but a C- for usefulness.
Also, what is up with the "we're being censored by Digg" bit at the end? Following his Digg links, it seems like everything is working fine. The only thing I found on the subject was this accusation claiming that Roughly Drafted is trying to game digg. The only thing I can figure is that some of the new algorithms (which favor users who have gotten stories to the front page) killed the stories from getting to the front page. Whether someone is gaming the system or not, he needs more established users in order to get his stories to the front page.
Apple does the same thing with Safari. Or does that not count? If bundling is bad, hold everybody to the same standard.
The real question is, would Apple be bundling a web browser if their biggest competitor hadn't? After all, Apple must stay competitive. If a company like Microsoft is gaining business by illegally bundling extra products, there is nothing that can be done but to follow suit. Thus Microsoft could be help accountable for Apple's bundling.
Something to ponder: What browser was bundled with Mac OS before Safari? Hint: It wasn't Netscape.
Futhermore, let's consider what would have happened once web browsers were so ubiquitous that they'd be bundled with new computers anyway. Who would that web browser software have come from? Would it have been Microsoft and Apple, or would it have been third party competitors like Netscape, SpyGlass, and Opera? Would Microsoft and Apple have swallowed the cost of bundling third party software, or would the PC manufacturers have paid to bundle the software to improve sales? If the PC manufacturers had bundled a web browser, wouldn't that mean that different PC manufacturers could have bundled different browsers? If they bundled different browsers in an attempt to stay competitive with each other, then we would have something much closer to a perfect market than what Microsoft foisted on us, now wouldn't we?
Bah, it was nothing more than a Federation ploy to weaken two star systems so that the Federation could take over. The flight computers worked exactly as programmed. That is, they were supposed to collide.
The 300 floppies were from the time when the C64 was still an active system.
That's a lot of floppies. Especially if some of them were flippies! You must have been spending a heck of a lot of time modem-jockeying back then!;)
Unfortunately my brother sold our C64 system on eBay about two years ago and before that it was sitting in the basement. I almost wish that I set it up to let my kids play with the "old" computer.
You might consider getting another one. The C64 itself doesn't cost much (got mine for about $10), but a 1541 in good condition might run you a few tens of dollars. I don't know if you can see my sig or not, but I recently let my kid have-at a C64 with rather interesting results!
Slashdot Mirror
Couple of things:
- The "devaluation" of the dollar that would impact the price of metal has more to do with inflation than its international trade value. The latter is mostly artificial, and can be raised and lowered to keep an economy stable in the world market.
- Deflation is a horrible thing to do to an economy. Most of today's economies depend on inflation to maintain long-term spending power. From the Wikipedia article
As a result, there's no good way to "adjust the value of the dollar" to make the metals more affordable. We simply must accept that money grows ever weaker as time goes on. The logical maneuver is to eliminate the penny at some point, though many countries have simply reissued new currency with a high new to old exchange rate.
Not really. Netscape 4 couldn't make any changes to the document once it was rendered. Later versions allowed for some colors to be dynamically swapped, and for objects to be resized to reflow the page. But you couldn't actually add or subtract any information.
In my case, I had used the IFrame to show a list of selected items as the user checked them. The user could page through different weeks on a calendar, so it was important to tell them which dates they'd already selected. The data had to be inlined (according to the specs I was given; and not allowed to change) so I used an IFrame to do both the server upload and the display. There was some alternate logic in Netscape that would refresh the page instead.
No, it's an error. A crash would be if the server went down.
Considering that the GPs point was that the user was trying to break it, I don't see what your complaint is. The server shrugs off the error and keeps chugging along.
Except that it didn't work in Netscape 4.x. Which was the big reason why it didn't take off back then.
(Yes, I pulled the IFrame trickery several times as well.)
You can't crash a Java App Server with just an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. It will produce an error for that user, sure, but it won't propogate any farther than that. Read the specs sometime. The servlet container is responsible for trapping all exceptions thrown by the servlet, then dealing with them in an appropriate manner. Usually that means giving the user an HTTP 500 error.
It's not that big of a surprise. With Chuck Norris prowling the area, they figure that everyone has a right to take their chances.
Look on the bright side. They'll never see it coming! (The roundhouse kick to the face, that is...)
Yes you do. You just don't know it yet. (Assuming your school wasn't out and out terrible.) There's a huge divide between theory and practice that every new programmer has to overcome. The best way to overcome it is to dive in and learn about the practical designs of today's technologies.
For example, you want to write an emulator. Many of the early game consoles were based on the 6502 microprocessor. If that scares you, it shouldn't. Read this webpage:
http://www.obelisk.demon.co.uk/6502/
It will introduce you to 6502 assembly. It explains not only the text commands you can use, but also the hex codes that will be output by the assembler. You can get an assembler like DASM and try it out for yourself. Try writing a simple program like: Next, run it through the assembler. Open it in a hex editor and you should be able to see the direct mappings between your code and the program output. If you target a specific platform like the Atari 2600, you can use an existing emulator with a debugger like Stella to watch your code execute line by line.
Remember, learning doesn't end when you exit school. It just begins. So start digging up everything from reverse engineered documentation to documents put out by standards commities like the IETF's RFCs, the W3C standards, and the ECMA standards. You'll gain a much greater appreciation for how things work after you take them apart and understand them.
You're lucky you didn't have an original IBM or PCjr.
32K
[3 seconds]
64K
[3 seconds]
96K
[3 seconds]
(ad nauseum)
If you hit a key at any point in the memory check, you'd lock up the computer and have to reboot. The excrutiatingly detailed memory check was the first thing that the clone manufacturers booted out the window.
"The great thing about standards is that there are so many to chose from." --Attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper
You heard Hirai at the E3: "The next generation doesn't start until Wii say it does!"
:P
I don't think Nintendo has remembered to make the announcement yet.
Twilight Princess is more of a direct descendent of OoT than of Wind Waker. While those who played Wind Waker loved the game, it was met with some rather critical reactions from Zelda fans. So Nintendo went back to the tried and true formula established in OoT to produce a new, yet traditional Zelda for the Gamecube. Unfortunately, development took a LONG time. (A couple of years, in fact.) By the time they were ready to release, they decided to just delay the game and release it for the Wii.
Twilight Princess was originally developed for the cube, then ported to the Wii late in development. So it's likely that the controls will not feel unnatural to anyone who's played Ocarina of Time.
Did you actually read that case? The court was NOT compelling the defendent to produce the documents, but rather his tax attorney. Since the tax attorney was not on trial and the judge found no client-attorney privledges in those documents, the attorney was forced to turn them over. Section 1, Paragraph (a) gives the relevant portion of the decision:
The judge just said in that paragraph that he cannot compell the defendent! They can seize all the evidence they want, just as long as it's not directly from the defendent himself.
You should have read the rest of that document. United States v. Hubbell was overturned in the Supreme Court because the defendent had been compelled to produce documentation against his fifth amendment rights. The portion you quoted was the decision that certain actions could be justly construed as not witnessing against one's self. It was then compared against the actions taken in the case to show that the defendent had indeed been forced to provide witness against himself.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
That they could. As I've said all along, only the defendent himself has fifth amendment protection. However, that protection is extremely strong and does not allow the court to order access to potentially incriminating evidence from the defendent, as held by United States v. Hubbell. The court is thus forced to look for other avenues of obtaining the evidence, such as the remote party.
Try again.
They cannot throw you in jail for exercising your fifth amendment rights. And I dare you to prove otherwise.
The Kay Skeleton issue that someone used as an example is two fold:
1. It's a New Zealand case, not a U.S. case.
2. Fifth amendment rights are narrowly defined. Since the issue is finding a child who is separated from his parents (and potentially in danger), Ms. Skeleton would have no rights to not disclose the location.
That is out and out incorrect. Under U.S. law, you have a right to remain silent. Period, end of story, not a single thing more to add. You don't need to explain any knick knacks to them, you don't have to give them your keys to your house, and you sure as hell don't have to give them a codebook to your coded diary just because the cops think you have written down your dirty deeds in there.
You are to remain silent at all times unless you want the police to use your words against you. That is a guaranteed fifth amendment right, and is the FIRST THING that cops tell you. If they don't tell you that you have the right to shut up, they can actually lose a case for failing to inform you of your rights.
What you are describing is the very definition of self-incrimination.
The U.S. used to have a law-enforcement method similar to the U.K. law you are describing. Under that law, strong encryption was classified as a munition, and required a license to use. However, we also have a law about the punishment fitting the crime. Specifically, the eigth amendment states, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Which means that the punishment for using unlicensed strong crypto was not to exceed the realistic damages caused by that usage, on a case by case basis. 30 years in jail would be considered extremely excessive for an otherwise minor violation.
Since then, strong crypto has been redefined under U.S. Law, allowing free access to all.
It's exactly like self-incrimination, both legally and logically. Law enforcement in the U.S. can seize the keys under a subpoena, but there is no requirement that you tell them where they are. In fact, the fifth amendment specifically allows someone not to answer any question for fear of self-incrimination. The question, "Where/What are the encryption keys?" would fall under that umbrella as it would potentially provide evidence against you. The police might as well ask, "Where did you hide the illegal drugs?"
There's a reason why the first words out of an officer's mouth when making an arrest are, "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..." In other words, you should truthfully provide only your identity to the police, then act as if you were a mute from there on out.
Wire-tapping is more like search and seizure. Law officers can tap the line with court authority in order to seize your communications. However, you still have a free right to use a phone scrambler to hide your communications. It may look suspicious, but there would be little the police could do about it. (Most likely, they'd bug your handset.) Of course, if you're relying on scrambling or encryption provided by, say, your cell phone company, then you're in trouble. Since the cell phone company would not be under investigation, they would be legally required to comply with a court order to turn over the encryption keys. Failure to do so would get them slapped with an "obstruction of justice" charge.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I have stayed at the Holiday Inn Express.
That still doesn't address the issue of being nipped at by old videos. Let's say that they have 500 old videos that only get one user downloading every 12 hours. These users shut down their PCs at night, so their clients won't be able to assist the next downloader. For HD video, the result would be a rather massive drain on their bandwidth. I sincerely hope they're planning for such massive increases.
They will after they realize Splinter Cell or World of Warcraft is running slowly. All it takes is a, "Hey guys, why am I lagging so much?" to tarnish the reputation of Zudeo.
Has you ever had that work? I have the option set, but Azureus invariably leaves far too many holes at the beginning and the end for VLC to play. Annoyingly, those key pieces never seem to fill in until the end of the download. My guess is that the balancing algorithm (the one that attempts to ensure that there are enough pieces out in the wild to survive the loss of seeders) combats the effectiveness of the "Download Beginning and End" option.
Such a beautiful idea, but with such a high chance of failure.
The key issues I see are:
1. Who's going to keep videos seeded? On Youtube, if the video is available, the video is viewable. Not so for Azureus! The video could be only partially intact (no seeders with not enough downloaders) or it could just be gone. The Bittorrent network has already lost several fan films due to this issue. Will Zudeo keep a seed of every video they've ever carried? Will they be able to afford the bandwidth when the viewers start trickling to videos rather than assisting each other with their downloads?
2. Like it or not, Youtube is often used in workplace camaraderie. Many corporate firewalls whitelist business appropriate ports rather than blacklisting P2P clients. Youtube uses regular HTTP, so it works. Azureus uses the Bittorrent protocol which requires more esoteric ports.
3. Will the bandwidth usage be acceptable for the average user? When you view a Youtube video, you use only the bandwidth necessary to download the video. This active form of downloading means that bandwidth usage stops as soon as the video is completely downloaded. With Bittorrent, users will both upload and download while waiting for the video to complete. They also are recommeneded to leave the client open while going about other tasks. Which can have a negative impact on their other Internet activities.
4. Zudeo breaks up your workflow by launching an external program. This not only breaks up the user's workflow, but it also presents a more confusing interface. If the user wants to view the video, he has to open the torrent tab, click on "Files", then double click the correct file. This action is non-obvious to someone who simply wants to view the show. In addition, Azureus may not even launch when the Zudeo link is clicked! Magnet links are intended as a generic P2P descriptor, and are often claimed by programs other than Azureus.
5. Perhaps the most important point of all: Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded. With Youtube, they can simply watch their show with no intermediary steps.
IMHO, the best bet for Zudeo is to reinvent themselves as an iTunes competitor. If they created a frontend program to Azureus that did all the dirty work, they could at least compete in an arena where they're more likely to succeed. Streaming will still be an issue, but consumers may be willing to wait for High Def content.
That's the entire point of an investigation like this. If no serious dissenting opinions exist, then the noise about counter-claims will be exposed as overblown hearsay. Or the investigation could go all X-Files on us and find that "the truth is really out there". We'll see when the reporters get back with their findings.
*THUNK*
* AKAImBatman's forehead has hit the desk
Hemos, the entire point of an investigation like this is to uncover if such counter-claims actually exist. If they are being stifled, then you probably wouldn't know about them. Why? Because they're being stifiled.
If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown. In that case you may freely state that Lomborg is leading the charge against the current scientific position, and that no other counter-claims exist. But by making presupositions in the story, you are biasing your readership to the outcome. Which could have negative effects on getting the truth out should the BBC find evidence that climatologists are self-censoring their own.
I realize you were trying to be helpful by sharing the information you do know, but journalistic integrity requires that you not make judgements until such an investigation is done. In other words, there are times that it's best to just report the news.
The story contains some great facts for people who are unaware, but the author doesn't seem to be going anywhere with it. First he talks about the "billion dollar patent" then goes off on a tangent about IP without ever explaining how any of it ties back into the original issue.
I'd give it an A for research, but a C- for usefulness.
Also, what is up with the "we're being censored by Digg" bit at the end? Following his Digg links, it seems like everything is working fine. The only thing I found on the subject was this accusation claiming that Roughly Drafted is trying to game digg. The only thing I can figure is that some of the new algorithms (which favor users who have gotten stories to the front page) killed the stories from getting to the front page. Whether someone is gaming the system or not, he needs more established users in order to get his stories to the front page.
The real question is, would Apple be bundling a web browser if their biggest competitor hadn't? After all, Apple must stay competitive. If a company like Microsoft is gaining business by illegally bundling extra products, there is nothing that can be done but to follow suit. Thus Microsoft could be help accountable for Apple's bundling.
Something to ponder: What browser was bundled with Mac OS before Safari?
Hint: It wasn't Netscape.
Futhermore, let's consider what would have happened once web browsers were so ubiquitous that they'd be bundled with new computers anyway. Who would that web browser software have come from? Would it have been Microsoft and Apple, or would it have been third party competitors like Netscape, SpyGlass, and Opera? Would Microsoft and Apple have swallowed the cost of bundling third party software, or would the PC manufacturers have paid to bundle the software to improve sales? If the PC manufacturers had bundled a web browser, wouldn't that mean that different PC manufacturers could have bundled different browsers? If they bundled different browsers in an attempt to stay competitive with each other, then we would have something much closer to a perfect market than what Microsoft foisted on us, now wouldn't we?
Bah, it was nothing more than a Federation ploy to weaken two star systems so that the Federation could take over. The flight computers worked exactly as programmed. That is, they were supposed to collide.
PC Gamer died years ago when they merged with PC Accelerator. The PC Gaming industry went with them.
That's a lot of floppies. Especially if some of them were flippies! You must have been spending a heck of a lot of time modem-jockeying back then!
You might consider getting another one. The C64 itself doesn't cost much (got mine for about $10), but a 1541 in good condition might run you a few tens of dollars. I don't know if you can see my sig or not, but I recently let my kid have-at a C64 with rather interesting results!