I'm a South African and most of my friends and family use WhatsApp. In South Africa, as in many other developing countries, SMS text messages are expensive and WhatsApp is used to save costs. BlackBerries are also (still) popular here - free BBM was a main reason for its popularity. WhatsApp's cross-platform capability (iOS, Android, BB and even Symbian) makes is a very attractive option.
I'm a South-African who volunteers for the Shuttleworth Foundation and subscribes to the same LUG mailing lists as the people who design, build and mintain the toasters.
The latest version of the freedom toaster also contains the Gutenberg project (free ebooks) and the Open CD.
I've downloaded some of the first 5 symphonies at work at about 10kB/s, and at home at about 5 kB/s using my 56k modem. I was quite happy with those downloading speeds (I live in South Africa, the country with the most expensive internet access in the world).
After the Slashdotting I'm only getting 2.1 kB/s. Hopefully I'll be able to download the rest before they take it off. I want to keep it 100% legal, so therefore I'll only use the torrents as a last resort.
Hopefully the Beeb won't stop making music freely available for download because of the/. effect...
From the article:... the rather rarer British version was renamed... Raving Bonkers Fighting Robots... wo square-jawed robots (named, in the English version, Biffer Bonker and Basher Bonker, but let's not dwell on it).;-)
There is actually an African Union with an African Parliament.
BTW, I am a South African. In 1999, during my studies at Stellenbosch University (close to Cape Town) I attended a talk by representatives from Thawte. If only I quit my studies and stated working there... (Each of the Thawte employees, including the gardener, got awarded 1 million South African Rand (Probably about US$ 150k at the time)
Tubes amps actually produce more even harmonics, which are integral numbers of octaves above the fundamental, and therefore do not clash with other notes. Even for single notes, they sound better. (Read it in an old ETI magazine).
Interestingly enough, valve/tube-powered electronics are also EMP-resistant, which is probably why most Russian military aircraft used them in preference to silicon in their avionics.
The Soviets also have an attitude of "why replace perfectly good old technology with new if it is still adequate". Take the Soyuz capsules as an example.
I know that it is planned for MSIE, but this would be a nice feature. If it could store browsing history in a central location, it would be great too, because often I can't remember if I'd seen something while surfing at work or at home.
Some kind of a history.html file that is automatically modified on ones personal webspace could be a an idea.
During my final day in the DSP lab at my university where I had finished my thesis, I wrote everything to CD on the only windows box (called jack) in the lab. I'd transferred all my files to a samba mount on the machine, mounted under my ~/mnt/jack directory. I started writing the CD without first creating an image, and then cleared my home dir with rm -rvf * while the CD was being written to.
The CD seemed have have all of my files on it, but unfortunately, many just had zeroes in them, as the FAT/whatever table had already been written before the files were erased. I did not have a spare hardcopy of the thesis, so basically I don't have a copy of it anymore, as thesis.ps was just full of 0s!:-((
There are many songs which were never number one hits, but which remained popular, or even gained popularity, for many years after their releases. In short, they have become "classics". Also, some songs are instant hits, but are forgotten as just as quickly. (Macarena, Blue Da Ba Di, Chihuahua, Doop, etc)
I wonder how the HMI system will cope with these two different cases. Maybe it will group potential classics with existing classics. Maybe classics are songs which have some unique quality which make them stand out in the collective consciousness of the music-listening public and therefore remain popular. (Bohemian Rhapsody springs to mind)
Our SCADA system (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality, Port Elizabeth, South Africa) rus on SCO Unixware. I used to be opposed to any "upgrades" to Win2K boxen, purely on the grounds of "Unix=stable=cool" vs. "M$=unstable=suck". Now I'm pretty blase about the whole matter.
BTW, none of our outages have been due to the SCADA system not operating properly. Most of them were due to lack of staff/maintenance and theft of conductor. The communication links between the remote outstations and the comms gateway are in general also less reliable than the computer running the SCADA system. And our operators are also in general pretty dim...
Mark Shuttlewoth (1st African in space, and South African Internet millionaire and founder of Thawte) must try to talk sense into the heads of the SA government. He is after all considered to be a hero, lauded by all, even the government... Maybe he is the only guy they'll listen to.
With the new internet laws in SA, he might not have been able to start his company!
CD technology allows levels of quality that is impossible to obtain with vinal technology, for example:
CD players have unmeasurably small wow and flutter (pitch fluctuations due to small speed fluctuations of the platter). In CD players, the decoded data is buffered in memory and clocked out out at a constant speed regulated with a quartz crystal.
CD players have higher bandwidth, e.g. more high-frequency content. (20 kHz as opposed to approx. 15 kHz) I am aware of the fact that the increase in bandwidth leads to an decrease in SNR, but it can be alleviated by the propor use of high-quality quality equipment.
Your PinArt analoqy is flawed. A theorem in Digital Signal Processing (Nyquist) states that if you sample an input signal at more than twice its highest frequency component, you dont lose any detail. (Quatizataion effects disregarded for now)
To use the PinArt analogy again: It means that with CD players, the pins are so close together tha it captures every detial of the bre..,er signal. AS smoothing filter smoothes out the result.
The SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of record players are lower (about 50 dB) than that of CD players (About 90 dB)
This is probably OT, but the PinArt anogly is exposing a common misconception about digital audio. I also used to have that opinion, until I asked my professor. (Dave Weber).
While I appreciate the effort and technology invested in the chair (Working in a lab where 50% of ppl. do image recognition) a much cheaper solution to bad posture is to sit on a Swiss Ball . Being round it forces you to sit up straight and will then automagically releave lower back pain.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 I wish I had mod points. Your comment is completely applicable to South Africa as well. See my post re Developing Countries.
I assume the girlfriend and fiancée is the same person, otherwise you could get into trouble if you chat to both at once! ;-)
I'm a South African and most of my friends and family use WhatsApp. In South Africa, as in many other developing countries, SMS text messages are expensive and WhatsApp is used to save costs. BlackBerries are also (still) popular here - free BBM was a main reason for its popularity. WhatsApp's cross-platform capability (iOS, Android, BB and even Symbian) makes is a very attractive option.
Please see the article below:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/...
Electric field strength is measured in Newtons per Coulomb or Volts per metre. They are equivalent.
Why yes, IAAEE. (I am an electrical engineer)
I'm a South-African who volunteers for the Shuttleworth Foundation and subscribes to the same LUG mailing lists as the people who design, build and mintain the toasters.
The latest version of the freedom toaster also contains the Gutenberg project (free ebooks) and the Open CD.
I've downloaded some of the first 5 symphonies at work at about 10kB/s, and at home at about 5 kB/s using my 56k modem. I was quite happy with those downloading speeds (I live in South Africa, the country with the most expensive internet access in the world).
/. effect...
After the Slashdotting I'm only getting 2.1 kB/s. Hopefully I'll be able to download the rest before they take it off. I want to keep it 100% legal, so therefore I'll only use the torrents as a last resort.
Hopefully the Beeb won't stop making music freely available for download because of the
No 61. Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots.
... the rather rarer British version was renamed... Raving Bonkers Fighting Robots ... wo square-jawed robots (named, in the English version, Biffer Bonker and Basher Bonker, but let's not dwell on it). ;-)
From the article:
And you all know what "bonk" means in the UK...
There is actually an African Union with an African Parliament.
BTW, I am a South African. In 1999, during my studies at Stellenbosch University (close to Cape Town) I attended a talk by representatives from Thawte. If only I quit my studies and stated working there... (Each of the Thawte employees, including the gardener, got awarded 1 million South African Rand (Probably about US$ 150k at the time)
It's just a POFMST (plain old FM Stereo) transmitter. Don't know what's up with the neo-retro nomenclature...
Tubes amps actually produce more even harmonics, which are integral numbers of octaves above the fundamental, and therefore do not clash with other notes. Even for single notes, they sound better. (Read it in an old ETI magazine).
For revolution, they just plugged straight into the mixing desk and were overdriving the mixer preamps.
t ai ls.asp?forumID=23&topicID=9914
http://www.vintageguitar.com/bulletin_boards/de
Interestingly enough, valve/tube-powered electronics are also EMP-resistant, which is probably why most Russian military aircraft used them in preference to silicon in their avionics.
The Soviets also have an attitude of "why replace perfectly good old technology with new if it is still adequate". Take the Soyuz capsules as an example.
I know that it is planned for MSIE, but this would be a nice feature. If it could store browsing history in a central location, it would be great too, because often I can't remember if I'd seen something while surfing at work or at home.
Some kind of a history.html file that is automatically modified on ones personal webspace could be a an idea.
Sigs waste bandwidth in 56k land.
During my final day in the DSP lab at my university where I had finished my thesis, I wrote everything to CD on the only windows box (called jack) in the lab. I'd transferred all my files to a samba mount on the machine, mounted under my ~/mnt/jack directory.
:-((
I started writing the CD without first creating an image, and then cleared my home dir with rm -rvf * while the CD was being written to.
The CD seemed have have all of my files on it, but unfortunately, many just had zeroes in them, as the FAT/whatever table had already been written before the files were erased. I did not have a spare hardcopy of the thesis, so basically I don't have a copy of it anymore, as thesis.ps was just full of 0s!
Damn! I wanted to almost say that!
Sasol in South Africa has been doing this since at least the 1960s.
There are many songs which were never number one hits, but which remained popular, or even gained popularity, for many years after their releases. In short, they have become "classics". Also, some songs are instant hits, but are forgotten as just as quickly. (Macarena, Blue Da Ba Di, Chihuahua, Doop, etc)
I wonder how the HMI system will cope with these two different cases. Maybe it will group potential classics with existing classics. Maybe classics are songs which have some unique quality which make them stand out in the collective consciousness of the music-listening public and therefore remain popular. (Bohemian Rhapsody springs to mind)
Our SCADA system (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality, Port Elizabeth, South Africa) rus on SCO Unixware. I used to be opposed to any "upgrades" to Win2K boxen, purely on the grounds of "Unix=stable=cool" vs. "M$=unstable=suck". Now I'm pretty blase about the whole matter.
BTW, none of our outages have been due to the SCADA system not operating properly. Most of them were due to lack of staff/maintenance and theft of conductor. The communication links between the remote outstations and the comms gateway are in general also less reliable than the computer running the SCADA system. And our operators are also in general pretty dim...
Cool, now I'll start buying Ernie Ball strings.
Mark Shuttlewoth (1st African in space, and South African Internet millionaire and founder of Thawte) must try to talk sense into the heads of the SA government. He is after all considered to be a hero, lauded by all, even the government... Maybe he is the only guy they'll listen to.
With the new internet laws in SA, he might not have been able to start his company!
- CD players have unmeasurably small wow and flutter (pitch fluctuations due to small speed fluctuations of the platter). In CD players, the decoded data is buffered in memory and clocked out out at a constant speed regulated with a quartz crystal.
- CD players have higher bandwidth, e.g. more high-frequency content. (20 kHz as opposed to approx. 15 kHz) I am aware of the fact that the increase in bandwidth leads to an decrease in SNR, but it can be alleviated by the propor use of high-quality quality equipment.
- Your PinArt analoqy is flawed. A theorem in Digital Signal Processing (Nyquist) states that if you sample an input signal at more than twice its highest frequency component, you dont lose any detail. (Quatizataion effects disregarded for now)
To use the PinArt analogy again: It means that with CD players, the pins are so close together tha it captures every detial of the bre..
,er signal. AS smoothing filter smoothes out the result.
- The SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of record players are lower (about 50 dB) than that of CD players (About 90 dB)
This is probably OT, but the PinArt anogly is exposing a common misconception about digital audio. I also used to have that opinion, until I asked my professor. (Dave Weber).While I appreciate the effort and technology invested in the chair (Working in a lab where 50% of ppl. do image recognition) a much cheaper solution to bad posture is to sit on a Swiss Ball . Being round it forces you to sit up straight and will then automagically releave lower back pain.