I really don't understand that 36mpg for a manual Yaris somebody must have fscked up the statistics (or had a lead foot). My wife has had one and if the consumption was ever that bad, it would be straight back to the shop. The normal real average is about 46+.
T-mobile is the mobile daughter arm of Deutsche Telekom AG. These guys have already been forced to allow network interconnection for land-lines even having call-by-call vendors accept calls out of DT and route them back into DT and eating their lunch. Mobile carriers aren't in such a monopoly position as fixed line vendors but competition is limited. I can see T-mobile and the other major carriers being beaten up over this by the regulators as they are holding back advancement.
I don't know how much experience you have had of quasi-realtime over 3G (using 1.8MBb/s HDSP). It can be jittery as you say, but skype quality is usually quite acceptable.
How do you manage data without a landline? I thought that to get data in the UK, you needed to have a telephone line for ADSL. I have used Skype over 3G, but have to be very careful of my monthly usage.
I have used Vodafone 3G, HDSP in the UK to access various internet services in addition to http/https including Skype, ftp and ssh and it has worked fine at rates of up to 1.8 MB/s. The plam I used gave me 1GB/mo flat and was taken out *before* they introduced any restrictions and it suited me well when in the UK. The access was from a data card and supported all protocols I threw at it. I was also able to bypass the Vodafone Mobile Connect software when working from Linux and drive the card directly.
A UK TV license costs rather less than a dollar a day and covers all the TV receivers in a household. If there an elderly person in the household then the license is free. There is no means-testing but that is often a joke and expensive to implement, especally for a low revenue pool. Direct payment from the government taxation pool is an issue because it would make the BBC more vulnerable to influence.
in the same way you would need a TV License to watch imported VHS's on a VCR (I'll avoid DVD's and the whole "I can't receive TV, therefore I don't have to pay" can of worms)
If do not have the ability to receive over the air transmissions then you do not need a license. It is probably safest if you have a monitor rather than a TV, but I have heard that a TV is acceptable if there is no convenient antenna connection. In Germany, they assume that if you have an internet connection, you may watch broadcasts there and apply the tax accordingly.
If, on the other hand, the advertising-free radio & TV channels disappeared, what would replace them? Well I see you agree about the limits of the advertising revenue pool so what could fill the gap? If you excuse the dross that Panorama produced this time, the BBC has a good approac to investigative journalism. Other channels seem to also be able to do so, but more is better than less. The documentaries are excellent. Funny how the commercial channels seem to steer clear of the big co-productions though. A program such as Top Gear would simply become impossible (it either offends road-safety people or potential advertisers.
Lastly, you appear to be concerned about the TVLA's databases. Well if that is all you are concerned about in the UK then you are very lucky. In my recent visits to the UK, I have been surprised how few people objected to the privatisation of formerly government run functions and the systematic erosion of civil liberties (even before 7/7). Heck even the former TV Licensing Authority is managed now by Capita.
I don't propose it merely by comparison with common practice but I add the observation that the excesses of commercial TV are moderated when there is competition. The alternative is direct legislation to limit their use of cheap filler material such as game shows and reality TV.
I am amused by your comment on "moral reprehensability" - there is a more and more limited pool of advertising money as it becomes split between many types and outlets. The cost of a TV license remains substantially less than a satellite TV or cable subscription elsewhere. The BBC's funding also gives it an independence that commercial channels lack and the Reithian ideals improve it and its main terrestrial competitors. Even with the latest technology, it still costs a lot of money to run a TV channel. If the BBC didn't exist as a commercial entity in the UK, what would replace it? Could the commercial channels take further downward pressure on advertising revenue?
Apart from producing a few good programs, the BBC has initiated many activities which wouldn't have interested a more commercially minded channel. For example their digital releases and experiments with P2P. In the early days, when they did more of their own production they also trained a lot of people who later moved onto commercial TV. The adage was learn with the Beeb then make money at ITV. Commercial TV has certainly benefited from the BBC in the past.
Lastly, you may have gathered from my comments about hotel rooms that I have travelled. I think I have visited about 43 countries at the last count I can categorically say that I prefer terrestrial channels in a country where they have a strong public service TV tradition. The US produces some great shows but the reality of too little choice (a heck of a lot of duplication between channels) and overbearing advertising limits it too much.
Lastly, your comment about a 'reading license' was funny. If I live in the UK can I refuse to fund the public library because I buy my own books, even perhaps from another country? Yes, some people escape the local tax system but not a lot.
The BBC 'gets' the money but don't forget that their program production is mostly outsourced. The BBC not being in hock to advertisers for their main channels gives them some more freedom, remember the quote about an angry auto executive who on hearing of Top Gear's treatment of their product promptly threatened to withdraw advertising. In those days the BBC only carried advertising on World Service so it didn't bother them at all.
Note that *many* countries have a license which helps pay for some public service and local TV. Few have totally ad free channels but it does seem to make life easier than in the States when watching without a Tivo becomes a series of inappropriate pharmaceutical ads interrupted by programming. It makes TV watching in a hotel impossible!!!!
Having the public channels does provide competition and it seems to stop or at least slow the race for the bottom that commercial TV ends up in.
You are right about the effects of magnetism on the insides of a TV but it is more likely connected with the PSU. A new transformer has windings that are locked in place using lacquer or whatever. This because part of the energy going into a transformer becomes physical with the field from the coil being forced into the core and secondary. Over time what with heat/whatever the lacquer deteriorates and the windings can move a little. A poorly made transformer may always vibrate. Mains hum from a transformer is usually not audible, but the 15Khz or so going into a line-output transformer is another deal. For younger people and animals it can be intensely annoying but there is no witchcraft or mysterious senses involved involved.
With high frequency noise knocking around the inside of TVs, decoupling capacitors become particularly important. Electrolytics can and do fail over time so the video noise can start leaking into the audio, i.e., via the DC feed.
The people enforcing the TV licenses in the UK have nothing to do with the BBC and you are right, they do behave obnoxiously tending to scare people into paying but it is a tax that only applies to those with the means to receive TV programs. However they do enforce the collection of a fee that the BBC mostly benefits from.
I guess you haven't travelled much. Modern programming costs money, lots of it. In Germany you pay for a TV license, actually more than the UK and they still carry advertisements. As for the US, it the ads are intrusive. For most satellite TV you pay for a subscription AND you get the ads. There is a wonderful story about a Top Gear program that was particularly acerbic towards a car where the manufacturer's CEO threatened to pull the advertisements, he was somewhat confused when informed, they carried no advertising. For the Murdoch empire, they tread carefully to avoid offendinfg advertisers. The BBC doesn't have to do this.
A high-end phone for just $499? That's cheap. You might just get a Nokia 8800 for that. Ir won't buy you a Vertu phone though ($2000 to $20000). In Russia, mobile phones are jewellery not just functional objects. There are people who will spend $$$$ on a mobile phone not because it has a BT diddlywhat but because it looks good and shows that the owner has lots of money (poss more money than sense). This keyboard will appeal to the same people. Keyboards in Russia are messy with both Cyrillic and Latin characters. This would certainly look far cooler on the desk of a high-ranking Gazprom exec.
As stated by James Gosling himself not long ago: it is basically impossible to do a financial transaction today without having Java involved at one point or another...
No, I know at least one major bank where the retail banking system is written in Assembler. It just works and handles an incredibly large number of transactions. I know of exchanges where the backend is written in a mixture of C++/C & COBOL all the way through to the client APIs. You *can* use a Java based GUI on the system, but you could also use any other language. Yes, quite a lot of banking is still Java free. The problem is that the idiots who brought in Java too early are now trying to do the same with C#.
Isn't it true that much of the high resolution photography on Google Earth and similar services is derived from standard aerial photography? Mapping is a commercial activity and aerial photography makes an invaluable contribution to the modern cartographer. The photographs are a byproduct of the process as well as a product in themselves.
Geolocation on E911 is nice to have, but is it really needed straight-away? The 911 service is improved by the information but is it really essential? Have they totally disabled the dispatcher's ability to enter an address as an interim measure? OK, back to the present. Geolocating a fixed IP address at a static location is easy. The only issue is when you have a dynamic address. Then toiu need to tie down DHCP leases to lines. Not a hard thing. Well not unless you are a telco who is very scared of a business that they don't understand too well.
I don't know wht the German system comes across so well. It offers a mix of public and private insurance. If you earn more than a certain amount or are self-employed then you must take out private insurance. The public insurance regulates more closely what kind of treatment you can get but the supply of treatment is by independent operations like hospitals or small clinics. This means that each must do its own admin and there is limited control on the cost of drugs, indeed the only real control is the insurance companies saying it is too expensive and will be out of plan. One point is good and that is the reduced need for liability cover, making care cheaper.
That is the point. When insurance policies have different coverage, then you need to check whether that aspirin is in 'plan' or not and charge accordingly. My policy pays cash back for anything other than a hospital stay but still the paperwork has to be generated with a detailed breakdown of exactly what was spent. The insurance company then examines each line item to see what is covered and to which level. Admin hell.
Both require a GPS-controlled platform, capable of shooting several shots a second.
Funny that, aerial mapping has been used for a looong time and before GPS. All you needed is a reference point with coordinates and then the rest follows. The old equipment used to put altitude, speed and direction onto the film for later use. Some cameras would take frames but some would in effect take a continuous strip using line-scan techniques.
I have worked at projects at a couple of big banks in the last couple of years. One was LoNo and the other was Outlook/Exchange based. Both had more downtime than I have ever had with Google, and it cost over a couple of thousand dollars per head per desktop for basic provisioning, i.e., 100MB mailbox, etc.
For me the biggest thing is 'crap' resistant. In the less developed countries, the closer you are to the villages, the more general dirt and dust there is around. Buildings often lack glazed windows, it is usually just a hole in the wall with maybe some bars for security. Everything gets dirty and modern electronics with lots of delicate connectors is especially vulnerable. Even in towns a lot of dust gets brought in from the streets.
The funny thing is that being rugged, I can see it being interesting for a lot of people who are on the road or outside in countries like that, even commercial users, i.e., farmers, construction. Proper ruggedised equipment is extremely expensive. Heck, I could even see the military in those countries being interested (gunnery calculations, logistics).
Yeltsin was a politician, not the best but definitely not the worst. He definitely was a drunk in his Kremlin days (a former colleague met him) which may or may not have been 'helped' by others in the Kremlin who wanted to exercise their influence through him. He had some positive achievements as well as some negative ones. Many of the negative points could also be laid at the feet of his western advisers who promoted rapid privatisation which required the infamous loans for shares. Note that these consultants had no experience to draw on, so they screwed up. It was the same discredited theories that were applied by Bremmer in Iraq. Privatisation in China was advised by Europeans who having hexperience of it themselves, suggested a slower pace to ensure that the economy could absorb it and be supported by an infrastructure. However, Yeltsin managed to roll back the state's influence in may areas and to improve democracy.
All that could be said of Valenti is that he managed to replace the Hays code but otherwise his protectionist measures have certainly caused more long-term harm to the industry than good.
According to This film is not yet rated, many of the MPAA's panel members are busy protecting children that they do not have. The MPAA tend to give members preferential treatment, making it much more difficult for independents and they tend to be arbitrary and unaccountable. Whether or not all the accusations made are true, it certainly seems easier to distribute a violent gorefest than a film depicting normal human activity. Lack of an MPAA certification doesn't totally prevent circulation, but it does restrict it considerably.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't understand that 36mpg for a manual Yaris somebody must have fscked up the statistics (or had a lead foot). My wife has had one and if the consumption was ever that bad, it would be straight back to the shop. The normal real average is about 46+.
T-mobile is the mobile daughter arm of Deutsche Telekom AG. These guys have already been forced to allow network interconnection for land-lines even having call-by-call vendors accept calls out of DT and route them back into DT and eating their lunch. Mobile carriers aren't in such a monopoly position as fixed line vendors but competition is limited. I can see T-mobile and the other major carriers being beaten up over this by the regulators as they are holding back advancement.
I don't know how much experience you have had of quasi-realtime over 3G (using 1.8MBb/s HDSP). It can be jittery as you say, but skype quality is usually quite acceptable.
How do you manage data without a landline? I thought that to get data in the UK, you needed to have a telephone line for ADSL. I have used Skype over 3G, but have to be very careful of my monthly usage.
I have used Vodafone 3G, HDSP in the UK to access various internet services in addition to http/https including Skype, ftp and ssh and it has worked fine at rates of up to 1.8 MB/s. The plam I used gave me 1GB/mo flat and was taken out *before* they introduced any restrictions and it suited me well when in the UK. The access was from a data card and supported all protocols I threw at it. I was also able to bypass the Vodafone Mobile Connect software when working from Linux and drive the card directly.
A UK TV license costs rather less than a dollar a day and covers all the TV receivers in a household. If there an elderly person in the household then the license is free. There is no means-testing but that is often a joke and expensive to implement, especally for a low revenue pool. Direct payment from the government taxation pool is an issue because it would make the BBC more vulnerable to influence.
If do not have the ability to receive over the air transmissions then you do not need a license. It is probably safest if you have a monitor rather than a TV, but I have heard that a TV is acceptable if there is no convenient antenna connection. In Germany, they assume that if you have an internet connection, you may watch broadcasts there and apply the tax accordingly.
If, on the other hand, the advertising-free radio & TV channels disappeared, what would replace them? Well I see you agree about the limits of the advertising revenue pool so what could fill the gap? If you excuse the dross that Panorama produced this time, the BBC has a good approac to investigative journalism. Other channels seem to also be able to do so, but more is better than less. The documentaries are excellent. Funny how the commercial channels seem to steer clear of the big co-productions though. A program such as Top Gear would simply become impossible (it either offends road-safety people or potential advertisers.
Lastly, you appear to be concerned about the TVLA's databases. Well if that is all you are concerned about in the UK then you are very lucky. In my recent visits to the UK, I have been surprised how few people objected to the privatisation of formerly government run functions and the systematic erosion of civil liberties (even before 7/7). Heck even the former TV Licensing Authority is managed now by Capita.
I don't propose it merely by comparison with common practice but I add the observation that the excesses of commercial TV are moderated when there is competition. The alternative is direct legislation to limit their use of cheap filler material such as game shows and reality TV.
I am amused by your comment on "moral reprehensability" - there is a more and more limited pool of advertising money as it becomes split between many types and outlets. The cost of a TV license remains substantially less than a satellite TV or cable subscription elsewhere. The BBC's funding also gives it an independence that commercial channels lack and the Reithian ideals improve it and its main terrestrial competitors. Even with the latest technology, it still costs a lot of money to run a TV channel. If the BBC didn't exist as a commercial entity in the UK, what would replace it? Could the commercial channels take further downward pressure on advertising revenue?
Apart from producing a few good programs, the BBC has initiated many activities which wouldn't have interested a more commercially minded channel. For example their digital releases and experiments with P2P. In the early days, when they did more of their own production they also trained a lot of people who later moved onto commercial TV. The adage was learn with the Beeb then make money at ITV. Commercial TV has certainly benefited from the BBC in the past.
Lastly, you may have gathered from my comments about hotel rooms that I have travelled. I think I have visited about 43 countries at the last count I can categorically say that I prefer terrestrial channels in a country where they have a strong public service TV tradition. The US produces some great shows but the reality of too little choice (a heck of a lot of duplication between channels) and overbearing advertising limits it too much.
Lastly, your comment about a 'reading license' was funny. If I live in the UK can I refuse to fund the public library because I buy my own books, even perhaps from another country? Yes, some people escape the local tax system but not a lot.
The BBC 'gets' the money but don't forget that their program production is mostly outsourced. The BBC not being in hock to advertisers for their main channels gives them some more freedom, remember the quote about an angry auto executive who on hearing of Top Gear's treatment of their product promptly threatened to withdraw advertising. In those days the BBC only carried advertising on World Service so it didn't bother them at all.
Note that *many* countries have a license which helps pay for some public service and local TV. Few have totally ad free channels but it does seem to make life easier than in the States when watching without a Tivo becomes a series of inappropriate pharmaceutical ads interrupted by programming. It makes TV watching in a hotel impossible!!!!
Having the public channels does provide competition and it seems to stop or at least slow the race for the bottom that commercial TV ends up in.
Wrong!!! Terrorists don't pay for advertising, the food companies do.
You are right about the effects of magnetism on the insides of a TV but it is more likely connected with the PSU. A new transformer has windings that are locked in place using lacquer or whatever. This because part of the energy going into a transformer becomes physical with the field from the coil being forced into the core and secondary. Over time what with heat/whatever the lacquer deteriorates and the windings can move a little. A poorly made transformer may always vibrate. Mains hum from a transformer is usually not audible, but the 15Khz or so going into a line-output transformer is another deal. For younger people and animals it can be intensely annoying but there is no witchcraft or mysterious senses involved involved.
With high frequency noise knocking around the inside of TVs, decoupling capacitors become particularly important. Electrolytics can and do fail over time so the video noise can start leaking into the audio, i.e., via the DC feed.
The people enforcing the TV licenses in the UK have nothing to do with the BBC and you are right, they do behave obnoxiously tending to scare people into paying but it is a tax that only applies to those with the means to receive TV programs. However they do enforce the collection of a fee that the BBC mostly benefits from.
I guess you haven't travelled much. Modern programming costs money, lots of it. In Germany you pay for a TV license, actually more than the UK and they still carry advertisements. As for the US, it the ads are intrusive. For most satellite TV you pay for a subscription AND you get the ads. There is a wonderful story about a Top Gear program that was particularly acerbic towards a car where the manufacturer's CEO threatened to pull the advertisements, he was somewhat confused when informed, they carried no advertising. For the Murdoch empire, they tread carefully to avoid offendinfg advertisers. The BBC doesn't have to do this.
A high-end phone for just $499? That's cheap. You might just get a Nokia 8800 for that. Ir won't buy you a Vertu phone though ($2000 to $20000). In Russia, mobile phones are jewellery not just functional objects. There are people who will spend $$$$ on a mobile phone not because it has a BT diddlywhat but because it looks good and shows that the owner has lots of money (poss more money than sense). This keyboard will appeal to the same people. Keyboards in Russia are messy with both Cyrillic and Latin characters. This would certainly look far cooler on the desk of a high-ranking Gazprom exec.
No, I know at least one major bank where the retail banking system is written in Assembler. It just works and handles an incredibly large number of transactions. I know of exchanges where the backend is written in a mixture of C++/C & COBOL all the way through to the client APIs. You *can* use a Java based GUI on the system, but you could also use any other language. Yes, quite a lot of banking is still Java free. The problem is that the idiots who brought in Java too early are now trying to do the same with C#.
Isn't it true that much of the high resolution photography on Google Earth and similar services is derived from standard aerial photography? Mapping is a commercial activity and aerial photography makes an invaluable contribution to the modern cartographer. The photographs are a byproduct of the process as well as a product in themselves.
Geolocation on E911 is nice to have, but is it really needed straight-away? The 911 service is improved by the information but is it really essential? Have they totally disabled the dispatcher's ability to enter an address as an interim measure? OK, back to the present. Geolocating a fixed IP address at a static location is easy. The only issue is when you have a dynamic address. Then toiu need to tie down DHCP leases to lines. Not a hard thing. Well not unless you are a telco who is very scared of a business that they don't understand too well.
I don't know wht the German system comes across so well. It offers a mix of public and private insurance. If you earn more than a certain amount or are self-employed then you must take out private insurance. The public insurance regulates more closely what kind of treatment you can get but the supply of treatment is by independent operations like hospitals or small clinics. This means that each must do its own admin and there is limited control on the cost of drugs, indeed the only real control is the insurance companies saying it is too expensive and will be out of plan. One point is good and that is the reduced need for liability cover, making care cheaper.
That is the point. When insurance policies have different coverage, then you need to check whether that aspirin is in 'plan' or not and charge accordingly. My policy pays cash back for anything other than a hospital stay but still the paperwork has to be generated with a detailed breakdown of exactly what was spent. The insurance company then examines each line item to see what is covered and to which level. Admin hell.
In debug mode, the C library in AIX used to initialise unallocated memory space to 0xDEADBEEF (it came from Austin, TX).
It has been out for a while. There is supposed to be some snowboard/skiing logging software for it too.
I have worked at projects at a couple of big banks in the last couple of years. One was LoNo and the other was Outlook/Exchange based. Both had more downtime than I have ever had with Google, and it cost over a couple of thousand dollars per head per desktop for basic provisioning, i.e., 100MB mailbox, etc.
For me the biggest thing is 'crap' resistant. In the less developed countries, the closer you are to the villages, the more general dirt and dust there is around. Buildings often lack glazed windows, it is usually just a hole in the wall with maybe some bars for security. Everything gets dirty and modern electronics with lots of delicate connectors is especially vulnerable. Even in towns a lot of dust gets brought in from the streets.
The funny thing is that being rugged, I can see it being interesting for a lot of people who are on the road or outside in countries like that, even commercial users, i.e., farmers, construction. Proper ruggedised equipment is extremely expensive. Heck, I could even see the military in those countries being interested (gunnery calculations, logistics).
No, possibly miniaturised and squeezed between the laser-head and the DVD/CD blanks being written around the world.
Yeltsin was a politician, not the best but definitely not the worst. He definitely was a drunk in his Kremlin days (a former colleague met him) which may or may not have been 'helped' by others in the Kremlin who wanted to exercise their influence through him. He had some positive achievements as well as some negative ones. Many of the negative points could also be laid at the feet of his western advisers who promoted rapid privatisation which required the infamous loans for shares. Note that these consultants had no experience to draw on, so they screwed up. It was the same discredited theories that were applied by Bremmer in Iraq. Privatisation in China was advised by Europeans who having hexperience of it themselves, suggested a slower pace to ensure that the economy could absorb it and be supported by an infrastructure. However, Yeltsin managed to roll back the state's influence in may areas and to improve democracy.
All that could be said of Valenti is that he managed to replace the Hays code but otherwise his protectionist measures have certainly caused more long-term harm to the industry than good.
According to This film is not yet rated, many of the MPAA's panel members are busy protecting children that they do not have. The MPAA tend to give members preferential treatment, making it much more difficult for independents and they tend to be arbitrary and unaccountable. Whether or not all the accusations made are true, it certainly seems easier to distribute a violent gorefest than a film depicting normal human activity. Lack of an MPAA certification doesn't totally prevent circulation, but it does restrict it considerably.